Desperate Hearts (18 page)

From the distant hills a wolf’s howl rode on
the wind, and Kyla shivered. Yes, she understood. What she didn’t
grasp was the meanness of Jace’s stepfather. She hesitated to ask
about him again. He’d gotten angry this afternoon when she had
questioned him. As it turned out, though, he didn’t need much more
prodding to continue.

“
Why would your stepfather
lie about his own son-in-law? Is he a bad person?”

“
No. In fact Travis and I
were a lot alike once. Except he’s tall.” A short, bitter laugh
escaped him. “I think Lyle enjoyed turning me against one of the
few friends I had. I guess it stuck in the old man’s craw that I
got to five-foot-six and stopped growing. He was a blacksmith, a
big shaggy bear of a man, and he made sure everyone knew that he
hadn’t fathered me. When I was a boy, I thought the loggers’
stories about Paul Bunyan were really about him. He stood a good
head higher than me. I was never sure if he thought it was fun to
beat me with his belt, or if he intended to make a man out of his
runt stepson. It got worse after my mother died.”

Kyla blurted, “That’s horrible! You couldn’t
help your height, any more than you could help”—she groped around
for a comparison—“the color of your . . . eyes.” Those eyes.

He smiled again, an oddly flat smile that
she had seen him use on people who had exhausted his patience but
didn’t realize it. “He thought I was too puny to make it in the
world. I know a couple of times he paid bullies to pick fights with
me.”

“
Oh, Jace,” she said, her
voice low with regret.

Lifting his hat, he pushed a hand through
his hair and shrugged, as if neither this nor anything else
mattered much. “It made me strong. And I learned to fight back.
Wolverines aren’t very big, but they’re vicious, fearless—they’ll
take on any enemy, no matter what size, including a human. And only
a fool would forget that one can crush a man’s leg in its jaws. I
wanted a reputation like that, like a wolverine. I had to prove to
the old man that he was wrong about me, that I wasn’t a scared,
puny runt. That’s why I became a bounty hunter.”

Kyla put aside her own plate. “It doesn’t
sound like you had much choice.” Then she added, more to herself,
“Why weren’t we good enough for being ourselves?” Why hadn’t her
father been content with a daughter? Why had he been so eager for a
son that he believed Tom could do no wrong?

Jace drew on the cheroot and took another
sip of coffee. “What bothers me is that as much as I hated him for
what he did, in a way he won. He did make me tough, but sometimes .
. .” He swallowed and his voice trailed away.

“
Sometimes?”

He gazed across the rangeland, glazed now in
moonlight, and sighed slightly. “I guess I feel like I lost part of
who I really was.” He turned to look at her, and the wistfulness
she saw in his eyes unsettled her. “That’s what could happen to
you. And it would be a pity, Kyla.”

* * *

Jace didn’t sleep much that night. He
figured they were safe from Hardesty’s men but just the same, it
would be a hell of a thing to wake up and find the end of a gun
barrel jammed between his eyes. So he only catnapped. The rest of
the time, thoughts of Kyla Springer Bailey bumped around in his
head. He felt useful somehow standing watch over her, even though
she claimed she didn’t need protecting.

He couldn’t believe he had told her all that
stuff about Lyle Upton. Hardly anyone knew about that; he sure
never talked about it. Somehow, though, once he got started it was
hard to stop. But he hadn’t told her everything.

How could he talk about a twelve-year-old
boy who had run from a pack of bullies who looked more to him like
huge, ravening wolves? A twelve-year-old was almost a man—men
didn’t turn tail on a fight, no matter what. They stood their
ground. That’s what his stepfather had said.

Jace couldn’t tell her that same boy, heart
nearly bursting with terror, had hidden under a soap crate behind
the general store, trying to stifle his panting, mopping his tears
and his bleeding nose on his sleeve, angry and ashamed, but scared
to death that he would be discovered.

Nobody knew about that. But Kyla had
listened to the part he had revealed, and she didn’t seem to think
any less of him for it. He was beginning to think of them as
kindred spirits, two desperate hearts alone in the world. Wearing
only brave faces even when they wished they could hide. Something
she had said nagged at the back of his memory, something about not
being good enough as they were. . . .

He glanced at her bundled in her blankets on
the other side of the fire. She looked sweet and tempting at the
same time. It was a chilly night, and he wished he had the right to
join their bedrolls. To put his arms around her and cradle her head
against his chest. To finish that kiss he had started and begin to
woo her back into her womanhood.

He sat up straighter, searching for a more
comfortable place on the boulder to lean against. God, she gave him
all kinds of damn-fool ideas. Now and then when he lay between
sleep and wakefulness, he found himself envisioning the ranch she
had described so vividly. If the idea had once crossed his mind
that she wanted the place back just to spite Tom Hardesty, she had
proved him wrong. She loved that land, and her devotion was plain
to see. Maybe even catching.

It might be nice to sit on a porch swing at
sundown with a glass of whiskey on his knee and this flame-haired
woman next to him. To watch those colts she talked about romping
across a newly green pasture. To sleep under the same roof every
night, and wake up in the same bed with her in his arms.

Disgusted, he tossed a twig
into the fire. Who the hell did he think he was, anyway? A regular,
anonymous man who could simply decide to alter his life and take up
with this woman? That was a joke. He was Jace Rankin, a bounty
hunter, a man who was respected, but also hated and feared, thanks
to the reputation that he had cultivated for himself. He couldn’t
just
change
that,
the way he changed his shirt. This was the life he’d chosen for
himself all those years ago. Like it or not, he was stuck with it
now.

He let his gaze rest on Kyla again. Why did
he think she would even want him? She had gone through hell to get
to this point in time, and she didn’t have much to show for it
except bitterness and a bullet wound.

She wasn’t likely to want a man who had to
look over his shoulder every time he went to the outhouse.

Besides, he’d seen what love could do to a
man. He’d watched his own sister truss up Travis McGuire like a
Thanksgiving turkey—he had lost not only his heart but his sense of
self.

Love was for fools. And Jace Rankin was no
fool.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“
We can be in Baker City
this afternoon if we push it,” Jace said, reining in to survey the
terrain and the horizon.

The morning dawned crisp and clear blue, and
after a quick breakfast he had them packed up and on an old wagon
road to Baker City. It wound through the hilly yellow landscape,
which was peppered here and there with abandoned mining operations
and piles of tailings. Now their horses picked their way down the
road that ran alongside the Powder River.

After hearing why it was so important that
he talk to Travis McGuire, Kyla had accepted the detour to Baker
City. She could spare a day or two for a man who had given up five
years of his life for a crime he didn’t commit. “We won’t have to
spend the night in the open?”

Jace’s gaze skimmed the brow of the
surrounding hills, ever watchful. She thought it must be exhausting
to always be on guard, to always worry about what, or who, waited
around the next bend, the next corner, the next day.

“
No, we’ll stay at the
hotel. Tired of living like an outlaw?” he asked and gave her an
amused smile.

“
I’m feeling like one these
days,” she admitted with a sigh, “getting chased, getting shot,
hiding out.” Even her disguise was beginning to grate, elbowed by
her growing desire to be feminine again.

If she felt like an outlaw, Jace resembled
one. His jaws were shadowed with two days of dark stubble. With the
beard and his hat brim hiding most of his face, he looked as
sinister as any desperado she could imagine, and ten times more
attractive. Now and then she caught the glint of his eyes—they were
like cat’s eyes, huge and blue. And just as with a cat, there was
no telling what he was thinking.

They rode hard for most of the day, stopping
only to rest and water the horses. Lunch was a hunk of dried beef
wrapped in a slice of bread, eaten in the saddle. Kyla’s arm was
much stronger than she had expected; even without the sling her
discomfort was minimal. But sitting around for two weeks in
Misfortune had taken the traveler out of her, and in the afternoon
her strength began to wilt. As the sun grew warm, she shed the
duster and eventually became so drowsy she wished she could rest
her head on Juniper’s neck while he followed Jace’s lead.

When they reached the busy streets of Baker
City, though, the sun angled low and golden over the town, and Kyla
felt revived by the bustle. It was the busiest place she’d seen
since Silver City. Traffic of all kinds filled the dusty main
street—freight wagons and teamsters maneuvered around horses,
riders, and pedestrians. Cowboys, apparently in from fall roundup,
tied their mounts to the hitching rails outside the saloons. It was
more activity than she’d like a regular basis, but the change was
nice.

Jace led them to a dry-goods store and
jumped down from his horse. “I’ll be back in a minute. I’m just
going to find out where the McGuires are living.”

She watched him disappear into the store,
following line of his shoulders as he went. A funny kind of
restlessness, a longing, came over her again, tired as she was. She
couldn’t put her finger on what it was, exactly—not hunger, not
thirst. It wasn’t even homesickness or her desire for revenge. But
she had felt it several times during the last few weeks.

Stiffly, Kyla climbed out of her saddle,
still favoring her arm, and tied Juniper to the hitching rail. She
stepped up to the sidewalk, her boots reverberating on the boards.
With her hands on her hips, she stretched her back, first to the
right and then the left, and glanced around, hoping Jace wouldn’t
be inside too long.

“
Make way, sonny,” a woman
said as she approached from behind with her children in
tow.

“’
Scuse me, ma’am,” Kyla
replied, jumping out of the way. She felt her face grow hot with
embarrassment.

She had fooled these casual
observers, just as she fooled everyone else. Nearly everyone else.
At least the woman and children on the sidewalk took no particular
note of her. And across the street, the men lingering outside the
saloon didn’t look familiar to her, or seem to pay her any mind.
She simply blended in, and that was her aim. But suddenly she
wished she could yell out loud,
I’m not a
boy, I’m a woman!

Maybe Jace would just get her a room at the
hotel and visit the McGuires on his own. After all, if she met them
who would she be? Kyle Springer, or Kyla Springer Bailey? Would she
speak with Kyle’s bad grammar and hold her fork in her fist like a
shovel? Or would she be able to admit to her true identity, the one
that drifted farther away from her each day?

The couple of times that Jace had warned her
against that danger, there was nothing she could do except shrug it
off. But now, in the shop’s window, she saw her reflection. It was
as if she were seeing herself for the first time, and her feeling
of safety and courage faltered. Her shoulders were hunched and she
had jammed her hands into her pants pockets, something Kyle would
do. Her battered hat was pulled down tight on her head and she was
wearing her binding again, made from strips of sheets she’d found
in the house in Misfortune. The short hair, the straight shape and
boy’s clothes—was this really what she had become? This?

Looking beyond her own image, her eyes rose
to a dress displayed in the shop window. There was nothing
remarkable about it, but she stared at it longingly, as though it
were the loveliest creation she’d ever seen. Made of forest green
cotton, the full skirt was gathered to a point at the waist, and
the three-quarter length sleeves were trimmed with two rows of long
ruffles. The square neckline was cut for afternoon or evening wear
and trimmed with smaller ruffles that matched the sleeves. A pair
of high-button black kid boots stood next to it, along with a bag
and a parasol. Kyla didn’t even realize that she’d pressed her
gloved hands flat to the plate glass until a customer appeared on
the other side of the window with the shopkeeper. The woman pointed
at the dress and he took it out of the display.

“
Oh,” she moaned in a
whisper, unaccountably disappointed. For just an instant, she put
her hand to her hair. Her throat worked and her vision blurred with
tears. She turned toward the wall, worried that someone would see
Kyle’s red eyes. Damn it, what was wrong with her? Getting shot,
losing her home, seeing Hank die, those were things to cry over,
not this.

Inside the shop, Jace had just asked about
McGuire’s blacksmith shop when he saw Kyla through the glass.

She gazed up at the dress and followed it
with her eyes as it was taken out of the window. Her forlorn
expression twisted his heart, and he wanted to look away. She made
him think of a young girl watching a beautiful doll, one that she
knew she could never have.

Jace shook his head. Jesus, but he was
getting soppy and sentimental—the old man must be turning over in
his grave. The idea gave him grim satisfaction. When he walked
outside, he found Kyla brushing Juniper’s mane with firm,
determined strokes. She pulled the brush through the horsehair and
smoothed her hand over it again and again, until it looked as silky
as a woman’s long hair. Maybe as silky as her own had been . .
.