Cherished (31 page)

The wind was blowing north, so the herd had
not yet caught the human scent in the sage-tinged air. Juliana and
Cole lay side by side for long moments, watching the shaggy-maned
mares and the stallion keeping such careful watch over them.

A slight awkwardness had been between them
until, after breakfast, Cole had taken her riding, showing her more
of the rugged beauty and glorious isolation of this land he called
Fire Mesa. The wild, indescribably gorgeous countryside somehow
soothed both of them, forging an unspoken bond of appreciation
between them. She hadn’t known what he was tracking at first, or
why he kept switching trails and directions, until he brought her
here to this lonely spot on foot, leaving the horses tethered in a
rocky dell some fifty feet back.

They had settled down and not spoken until
the wild band showed itself, and Cole had shared with her at last
this miracle of the proud and tough wild horses who roamed among
the valleys and buttes and lower canyons of Fire Mesa. Something
inside Juliana quivered with awe at the sight of these hardy and
brave creatures. There was no doubt that Cole, for all his
toughness and experience, felt as she did about these fascinating
creatures. His eyes glinted, and his face shone in the hazy light
as he studied the watering band. Their shared pleasure in spying
the herd and secretly watching its movements eased the remaining
awkward feelings between them. Juliana could have stayed here
forever, side by side with Cole, watching the horses in that
near-mystical setting. But suddenly the wind changed and the
stallion caught their scent. Instantly, his head came up, and he
snorted in anger. He caught sight of them, low in the grass across
the stream, and charged forward, stopping at the riverbank. Head
up, he tossed his silvery mane and stomped the ground in fury. Then
he reared up, forelegs pawing the air.

“
Adiós
, my friend,” Cole muttered under his
breath.

Then, as if hearing him, the stallion gave a
harsh, screaming whinny, alerting the band of mares to danger.
Their heads flew up, and almost as one they scrambled toward Eagle
Mesa, guarding their colts close, nipping, bumping together,
streaming around the shimmering gray rocks toward the safety of the
secluded canyons beyond. The stallion stayed behind, rearing up,
screaming, giving the mares and foals time to flee. Only then did
he wheel about and depart after them, his hooves flying over the
grass like sparks of white fire. An old gray mottled mare, slower
and weaker than the rest, waddled behind the pack, and the stallion
nipped her rump ferociously as he caught up with her. That sent her
galloping. As the sun sailed overhead through the cloudless arc of
pale blue, they disappeared in a flurry among the rocks and brush
and aspen.

“That was wonderful! Thank you for bringing
me here,” Juliana exclaimed as he helped her to her feet. “That
stallion was magnificent. Have you ever seen a horse as pure white
as he?”

He was quiet for a moment before he answered
her. “Not for many years.”

She wondered at his grim tone, then rested
her gaze on him questioningly. Unsure what had brought that tight
line to his lips, she regarded him in silence and waited.

“A man I used to know had a white horse much
like that one. No dark markings, pure white. A mustang, hardy as
even that stallion, though he was a gelding.”

“You didn’t like this man very much, I
gather,” Juliana commented as he cupped a hand beneath her elbow
and led her down the path to where their horses were tethered.

“Oh, I liked him well enough, until he and
the woman he was working with—a woman I imagined myself in love
with—shot me in the back and left me for dead in the desert,” came
his casual reply.

She stopped, staring at him in horror. “Who
was this man?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dead. So is
Liza. Not by my hand,” he added quickly. “Though if I’d found them
alive, it would have been my doing. They died in San Francisco,
killed over the gold they stole from me, and from some poor old
prospector left murdered in the hills.”

His eyes were haunted, despite his calm tone.
She sensed that this hurt and the old hate that accompanied it ran
very deep within him, as deeply perhaps as his grief over the
atrocities committed at Fire Mesa. “Why did they try to kill
you?”

He lifted a hand as if to dismiss the
question, then saw the soft compassion in her eyes. Something about
that tender, intent look stopped him from avoiding the discussion,
as he had intended to do. He had not talked about this with anyone
in twelve years. So why, now, Juliana?

Maybe because last night had been the first
night of peace, true peace, he ever remembered. Maybe because her
kisses, her voice, her silken arms tight around him made the
shadows retreat, the stone-cold loneliness he had taught himself to
live with, even to enjoy, go away—if only for a little while. No
one except Sun Eagle, who had saved him in the desert and allowed
him to live among The People for a time, a brother among brothers,
knew the story of how Jess Burrows had betrayed him. But he told it
to Juliana now, on that quiet hillside, seated beside her on a slab
of red rock beside the yuccas and agave. While the sun shone bright
as fool’s gold, and a tiny wild geranium poked its scarlet head
between two small boulders at Juliana’s feet, he told her the dark
tale of murder and betrayal that had haunted him for the past
twelve years of his life.

He had met Jess Burrows in California about a
month after he’d hunted down Barnabas Slocum. Burrows was a
strapping, good-looking fellow, congenial and generous, for all
that he was as dirt-poor as Cole. It was Burrows who introduced him
to Liza, working at the time as a dance-hall girl in one of the
hundreds of saloons that had sprouted up in the wake of the gold
rush. And it was Burrows who introduced him to Abe Henley, the
flinty-eyed old prospector Burrows was supposed to protect but
eventually murdered in order to steal his gold.

Henley had hired both of them, Burrows and
Cole, to help him work his claim near Yuma, Arizona, and to help
him protect it from claim-jumpers. He promised them a share in his
treasure if they were lucky enough to hit a rich find. They struck
gold, plenty of it, but Burrows double-crossed the old man. He
murdered Henley while Cole was away from their camp. And Liza, who
had left her saloon job to journey with them across the wilds of
Arizona, told Cole a story about bandits who had raped her before
murdering Henley, convincing him that Burrows was away from camp as
well when the murder took place.

Cole had wanted to set out after them right
away. Liza remembered their saying something about Bear Pass. But
she hadn’t let him go alone. With no sign of Burrows’ imminent
return, she had clung to Cole and begged him to take her with him.
She was terrified, she said, of being attacked again and would only
feel safe with him. In the tumultuous emotions of that scorching,
bloody afternoon, she had told him it was really him she loved, not
Jess Burrows.

“And I was just young and stupid enough to
believe her,” Cole told Juliana dispassionately as they sat
together while prairie grouse squawked overhead. “Only it wasn’t me
she loved after all. It was Henley’s gold, and my share of it. She
led me into a trap at Bear Pass, where Burrows was waiting to
ambush me. He shot me in the back, stole my horse, and left me to
die in the desert, at least fifty miles from any town. I would have
died if not for Sun Eagle. And that’s another story.”

Juliana thought of the way Uncle Edward and
Aunt Katharine had betrayed her, selling her in marriage to a man
she detested. She remembered how hurt and disillusioned she had
felt, realizing that they cared so little for her happiness that
they could dispose of her to the highest bidder, regardless of her
feelings. But all that, painful as it had been, could not compare
to what Cole must have suffered at the hands of this pair. Betrayed
by both his friend and the woman he thought he loved, left to die a
horrible death, she wondered that he was not hopelessly embittered
to the rest of the world. And to women in particular. What was she
like, this Liza? How much did he love her? she wondered, but
couldn’t bring herself to ask. It seemed that there would always be
things about Cole she would not know or fully understand; his past
had been too tragic, too crammed with violence and the dark side of
human nature. Maybe if she had time, she would eventually learn
more, but she sensed it would take years and even then there would
probably always be something held back. It didn’t matter. All she
wanted was to be with him, to erase that tough, iron-hard
expression from his face for just a little while, to bring him away
from the pain of the past and to heal his hurts in whatever small
way she could.

It was time for him to find some happiness,
Juliana thought, reaching for his hand. She wasn’t sure what to say
about Jess Burrows and Liza, she could only say what was in her
heart.

“It wasn’t wrong to love that woman, Cole.
What
she
did was wrong. You mustn’t blame yourself or ...
or fear love.”

His hand closed over hers, but his grin
widened, making his face suddenly boyish. “What makes you such an
authority on the subject, angel? I suppose you’ve been in love a
hundred times.”

“No. Never. Men used to chase me all over
ballroom floors to dance with me, court me at picnics and parties,
flirt with me over tea and in the park and in drawing rooms over
champagne and candle-lit suppers. But I never cared a fig for any
of them,” she said matter-of-factly. Her tone changed, and her hand
crept up shyly to touch his cheek. “Until now,” she said in a low
voice he had to strain to hear.

Cole stared at her. Her beauty was so
intense, it took his breath away. Only that impish dusting of
freckles saved her from icy perfection, imbuing her with that
delightful, sensuous warmth that was such a vibrant part of her
charm. But it was her words that hypnotized him. What did she mean
by
until now
?

Juliana swallowed and forced herself to go
on, to get past the shyness so uncharacteristic of her. But she’d
never spoken these words to any man before, never even imagined the
powerful emotions that would summon them forth. But those emotions
compelled her now to speak to Cole of what was in her heart.

“I love you, Cole,” she said simply. “And I
promise you from the bottom of my heart that I will never hurt
you.”

He dropped her hand and stood up. “There’s
something you need to understand. I’m not like any of those men who
chased you around ballrooms.”

“I know that ...”

“I’m like that stallion we saw by the stream.
Wild, Juliana, needing to be free. I can’t romance you with
candle-lit suppers or waltz with you around fancy ballrooms—and I
can’t make any promises. None at all. Do you understand that?”

Because I don’t want to hurt you
either
. But he kept that part to himself.

“I understand, Cole,” she said, rising
alongside him, gazing up at him with naked hope in those vivid
green eyes. “But I’m not talking about promises. I’m talking about
love.”

Love. It scared him more than Apaches,
prairie fires, cornered outlaws, and a rattler’s bite all rolled
together. He’d rather face a Texas norther or a mountain flood than
the expectation in Juliana Montgomery’s all too vulnerable eyes.
Nothing he had loved had ever survived. How could he let himself
love this beautiful, kindhearted girl?

“I’ve got to ride over to the ranch house at
Fire Mesa today to see Joseph Wells,” he said, as if she hadn’t
spoken. “Time we headed back.”

He moved away from her before he could wrap
her in his arms. He didn’t look back. What she was thinking, he
didn’t know, he only knew that he had to stop this madness growing
between them before he destroyed her.

She followed him to the horses, silent, hurt.
Well, better she feel a little hurt inside than end up dead like
everyone else he cared for. Cole held the bridle for her and helped
her mount, then without a word sprang onto Arrow.

They headed back to the cabin with only the
drone of insects and the rustle of the breeze breaking the silence
between them.

* * *

“I’ll be back before sunset. Stay inside the
cabin.”

Juliana rubbed her palms on her trousers,
squinting in the brilliant afternoon light. “But didn’t you say
there was a stream down there in the valley? I won’t go a step
farther.”

“You’ll go nowhere near that stream—or
anywhere else. Stay inside the cabin!”

“You’re not my captor anymore—I’m a free
woman and I’ll do as I please!”

All the intimacy between them had vanished,
as well as all the tender feelings. Anger blazed in her eyes as she
faced him in the cabin doorway, sunshine pouring through to light
her face with gold. After what had happened this morning, she was
damned if she’d let him tell her what to do. He wasn’t the only one
who needed to be free. He might have made love to her last
night—all night—but that didn’t give him the right to keep her
locked in this cabin all day—she was no servant, no saloon whore,
no prisoner. She had given of herself willingly, given him
everything she had to offer with all the love and passion in her
heart, and offered it again to him this morning—only to be thrust
aside like a stranger who has put oneself in the way. If Cole
Rawdon thought he could dismiss her whenever he chose, yet rule her
life whenever it suited him, he had better think twice.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” Cole bit out,
grabbing her by the arms so forcefully, she gasped. “Knife Jackson
and his outfit will be combing the mountains for you. Line McCray
will have them searching every inch of land between here and New
Mexico. Not to mention the fact that renegade Apache are on the
loose. And you won’t fire a gun.”