Deborah Camp (31 page)

“I doubt any of that will matter. I think the sheriff thinks he has his man and that man is me.”

“Then we’ll prove him wrong.” She lifted her gaze to his and tucked her arms around his middle. “Be careful out there. Dress warm and take plenty of food and—”

His chuckle stopped her flow of admonitions. “I’ll be back tomorrow, boss lady, and I know how to take care of myself. Been doing it for years.”

“I know.” She ran a hand down the front of his shirt. “But I’ll worry anyway.”

“You stick close to home and don’t go riding alone. If you need something, send Gabe or T-Bone for it.”

“I’ve been taking care of myself for years, too,” she told him with a gentle smile that became sensuous. “I’ll miss you something terrible tonight when I’m all alone in that bed and wishing I could wrap myself around you.” She hugged him tightly, relishing the power in his body and the tenderness of his hands smoothing down her back to her waist.

“Lord help me,” he groaned, then pushed her away from him. “You sure don’t make leaving easy.”

“It shouldn’t be.” She grinned and then went to the kitchen. “I’ll pack your food and you see to your bedroll.”

She prepared more food than she knew he and Ice would need but wanted to err on the side of plenty. A lump formed in her throat, and she tried to dispel the vulnerability growing inside her with the advent of his departure.

He’ll be back lickety-split
, she repeated over and over again, but it did little to assuage her fears. When he joined her again in the kitchen, bedroll tucked under one arm, she couldn’t pretend not to have tears in her eyes. When he saw them, he growled an epithet and embraced her.

“What’s this? Hell, you’re not sending me off to war or prison, Cassie.”

“I know.” She sniffed and stepped back from his arms. Wiping aside her tears, she fashioned a smile. “Go on, then. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll be back.”

He kissed her lips softly, then turned toward the bedroom. “Oleta, bring Andy out here,” he called, and the girl emerged and handed the baby to him. Holding Andy high, he laughed up into the baby’s grinning face. “Hey, there, boy, you keep your mama busy, you hear?” He lowered Andy and kissed him soundly on the mouth and then on the cheek. “When I get back, I think I’ll teach this cowboy to ride.”

“I don’t think so.” Cassie took him from Drew. “He’s too young and you know it.”

“Soon, though,” Drew told her with a shake of his
finger. “Soon he’ll be riding the range with us men.”

“He’s going to be Mama’s boy for a couple more years at least.” She kissed Andy’s angel-soft hair and shared a speaking glance with Drew. That he would take a few minutes to say good-bye to her son filled her heart with sweet, sweet love. She could tell by the way Drew looked at her that he understood her fragile emotions. Finally he gave a short wave and opened the front door.

“I’m ready, Sheriff.”

“Good. Ice is here with the horses.”

Cassie moved out to the porch. T-Bone and Gabe stood nearby, worry clearly etched on their faces. The three men rode away, the sheriff flanked by the other two, and Drew looked back once and waved at Cassie and Andy.

Swallowing against the tightness in her throat, Cassie gave a sigh. “I guess we should get on with our work. Have you finished feeding the stock?”

“Yeah.” T-Bone tucked his fingers under his belt. “We were gonna start building the new smokehouse today.”

“Good. We’ll need it up before winter sets in. I’ll put on some other clothes and give you a hand.”

“Does the sheriff think Drew took the cattle?” T-Bone asked, stopping Cassie in her tracks.

“No. He just wants Ice and Drew to swear to a statement about how they found the Quentin cattle and returned them.”

“Wonder why? Ain’t their word good enough?”

“I guess not.” Cassie shrugged. “You know these lawmen. They like to have everything signed and sealed.”

T-Bone turned and said something under his breath to
Gabe. The two men walked toward the lumber Drew had stacked a few yards away from the house.

Anxiety seeped into Cassie, jarring her nerves, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that their troubles were only beginning.

T
he house was uncommonly quiet as Cassie placed Andy in his bed and crept from the room. She avoided the loft, putting off sleeping alone for as long as possible, and went to stand by the front window. Pale moonlight barely lit the landscape. She wondered if Drew was asleep or awake and missing her.

“If he’s awake, he’d better be lonely,” she whispered with a wry smile. She looked up at the heavens and found cold comfort there.

Something had been bothering her all day. Something about T-Bone and Gabe wasn’t right. She’d worked beside them most of the day, hammering together the frame of the smokehouse, but she’d felt like an interloper, a nuisance. She had caught the two men whispering heatedly several times, and when they saw that she’d noticed, they shut up. They were planning something. Something they didn’t want her to know about. But what?

Tired of conspiracies and whispers, she put on her hat and gloves and went out to the barn to check on the pregnant mare. The big gray horse didn’t seem in any
distress, standing in her stall and munching on hay. Cassie ran a hand over the animal’s swollen belly and felt the baby inside squirm.

“You about ready to pop, huh, girl?” Cassie said, and the mare made a low, snuffling noise. “I know I’m not Drew. I can’t sweet-talk you like he does. Do him a favor and don’t have this baby until he gets back.”

She examined the mare and determined that she wasn’t in labor. After brushing the horse and giving her some extra oats, Cassie fed the milk cows and goats and checked on the other horses in the barn. Dynamite’s empty stall tugged at her heart and made her even more melancholy.

Turning away from the stall, she reached for the lantern she’d hung on a peg but stiffened when she saw a man standing only a few feet from her. Her heart jumped into her throat and she released a strangled cry, then fear bolted through her when she recognized him—
Buck Wilhite
.

She lowered her hand, leaving the lantern where it was, and tried hard not to let Wilhite see how unnerved she was in his presence.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she said, making her voice hard and unforgiving. “You’ve no business here.” She looked past him. “Is Monroe with you?”

“I came calling all by my lonesome, honey lamb,” he said, his tone like greasy velvet.

Honey lamb
. That odd endearment sent her back, back to her girlhood, when she had been impressionable and a Montana lady named Miss Tess had given her the first pair of many gloves she would own. There had been a man in that Montana town where Miss Tess lived … a
skinny man who had called young Cassie Little honey lamb.

Buck had called her that in Whistle Stop, too. Could he have been the man in False Hope, Montana, as well? Was it possible that this man was a bad omen, popping up in her life over and over again?

She stared hard at him, trying to remember things about him. He’d told Drew that he wore a patch because a Blackfoot had carved out his eyeball. A Blackfoot. Miss Tess had fallen in love with a Blackfoot named Storm—Storm something or other. She couldn’t rightly recall.

She gave a derisive sniff. “You’re chasing
false hopes
again,” she said, setting a trap. When he narrowed his one eye and his head jerked back, she decided that he
was
her bad omen and she wanted desperately to shake loose from him once and for all. She wanted to be sure: she wanted to know that her hunch was true and that fate was playing a cruel game with her. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you looking at me like that?”

He blinked and his mouth turned down at the corners. “You brought up bad memories, and I was feeling so good.”

“What memories?”

“Of a town. False Hope. It’s a dirty hole I was in once.” He lifted one hand to touch the black patch. “Lost my eye there.”

The world went gray, and Cassie thought she might faint. She reached out and wrapped an arm around a post to keep from pitching forward. Through a haze she saw Wilhite smile and move closer. His voice hissed in her head like a snake. She couldn’t hear… couldn’t understand…
there was a drumming in her ears … a pounding in her head.

“… looking right peaked, Little Nugget.”

Suddenly her head cleared and the ringing and drumming and pounding stopped. All stopped. She stared at her nemesis and knew that he was pure evil, her personal demon.

He knew. He recognized her. She had never fooled him. She was the fool
.

“You remember me,” she said, her voice seeming to come from a far distance deep, deep inside her.

“Yeah. Who could forget you? Why, you’re one of the prettiest little fliptails I ever did see. I offered to pay top dollar for you back in Whistle Stop, but Taylor was selfish. Didn’t want anybody else touching you. He said he used to rent you out but that I didn’t have enough money to buy even one minute of your time.” One side of his mouth kicked up. “You don’t charge anymore, do you, honey lamb?”

“No. That life is behind me.” She inched backward, trying to figure out how to escape him. Should she scream? Would he let her dash past him? Maybe he only meant to taunt her, to frighten her.

“Hendrix said you married an old man and that he upped and died on you. Left you this ranch. Hendrix would surely love to get his hands on this spread—and on you.” His one eye glinted in the lantern light. “Guess you know that.”

“Why did he hire you?”

“To look after his interests.”

“Seems to me that wherever you show up, misery follows. You brought nothing but blood and woe with
you in Whistle Stop. If there was any justice in the world, you’d be dead.”

His brows arched. “Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you don’t like me.”

“I despise you, and I want you to get yourself back to the Star H.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll call for my men, and they’ll send you off packing lead, that’s what.” She tried to appear unflappable but felt her chin tremble. This time she knew better than to believe he hadn’t noticed. Moving with speed, she started for the barn door, but he blocked her passage, and his strong hands closed on her upper arms.

“Where you going?”

“I’ll scream.”

“You’ll try.”

His mouth closed on hers, chopping off the scream she tried to make, and his tongue gagged her. She squirmed, trying to free her hands so that she could hit him. Instead she only managed to work the gloves off her hands and lose her hat somewhere at their feet. Memories of a life she had detested flooded her, and with them came her lessons of survival. She couldn’t breathe, could barely move, so she went limp, forcing him to hold her up or let her crumple to the ground. He let go of her.

Scrambling, she tried to make it to the door again, but he snaked an arm around her waist and lifted her feet off the ground. Airborne, she was flung into a stall and landed in the hay with a thump that knocked what breath she had left right out of her.

Black spots floated before her eyes and her lungs burned. When she could breathe again, think again, Wilhite
was on top of her and his wet mouth was making sucking noises on her skin. She pushed at him, kicked at him, bit him. He was her old life coming back to haunt her, and she fought him with all she had in her. Her breath rattled from her, and his weight, plastering her to the suffocating hay, made her dizzy. She screamed again and again in her head, but no sound emerged from her dry mouth and cracked lips except for her hoarse breathing when he lifted his foul lips from hers and allowed her a few gasps of hot air.

“Spread your legs, honey lamb,” he murmured, his hands locking on her knees. “Let me at you. What you got on here, some kind of split skirt?”

With her lungs inflated again, she gained a measure of strength and hammered at his head with her fists. He cursed and caught her wrists. She drove her knee up and into him. He grunted and used his body to pin her down.

“We can do this rough, or we can do this nice,” he rasped into her face. “But we’re gonna do it. You’ve always been full of spirit, haven’t you? You snuck up behind me back in Whistle Stop and split a bottle over my head. Remember that? If I hadn’t left town quick like, I would have done this back then. I figure you owe me a good time after giving me that headache.”

She struggled, only half listening, her mind working on how to escape, how to find an inch of advantage.

“I swear if you don’t leave right now, you’re a dead man. I’ll kill you myself,” she assured him, her voice coming out of her like ground-up glass. “I’ll tell Drew about you. I’ll tell everyone about you. I’ll tell them that you’re a murderer, that you kill innocent people and take money to do it. Nobody will care when I shoot you dead.”

He smirked and clutched her head between his hands, squeezing until pain shot from one temple to the other. “Go on. Then I’ll tell him you’re a whore. I’m not the only one hiding a past, honey lamb.”

A terrible maw opened inside her. She moaned, and hot tears flooded her eyes. Once again she was helpless and on her back, a position she had fought so hard against. After tonight she would never feel clean again or whole again or worthy of anything good again. Never. The futility of her existence sat like a stone in her heart, and she went limp with resignation, letting him have his way because she couldn’t find any reason to fight anymore. She could not run fast enough to escape her past.

Then other voices intruded. Distant but growing near. T-Bone and Gabe! Wilhite heard them, too. He clamped a hand over her mouth and bore down on her to whisper in her ear.

“Another time.”

His body peeled off hers like a snakeskin, and she stared up at a spider’s web tucked in the corner of the intersecting beams above her. The wispy strands swayed in the night breeze, fragile but strong enough to endure winds and rain, freezing nights and blazing days. Like her.

Slowly she sat up and shook straw from her hair, brushed it off her clothes. She put on her hat and stood up, checked her clothing, buttoned her shirt and tucked it back into her skirt. A trembling permeated her body, but her will was strong and intact. Using it, she stepped from the stall and saw a wide, loose board swinging from a single nail at the back of the barn. Wilhite’s means of entry and escape. She’d fix that tomorrow first thing.