Desperate Hearts (19 page)

Pushing aside the notion, he bounded down
the steps and untied his horse. “All right, let’s go. We’ll get
rooms at the hotel, then I’ll go talk to Travis.”

She nodded shortly and put the brush back in
her saddlebag. Then with one wistful backward glance at the shop
window, she untied Juniper and hoisted herself onto his back.

“
I didn’t care about that
old dress, anyway,” she muttered.

* * *

Blacksmith And Livery

T. McGuire, Prop.

Jace paused in the street and considered the
tall letters on the wall before him. The building was new, the
paint bright. Around the foundation there was still a bit of
sawdust left from its construction. Taking a deep breath, he walked
toward the doorway where he lingered for a moment while his eyes
adjusted to the dimness. Inside, the timbers were pale and clean,
and a scent of new wood was strong enough to drift above the acrid
smell of hot iron. Metal striking metal echoed off the walls.

The place didn’t seem ominous. Jace didn’t
get that knot in his stomach that most blacksmith shops gave him.
Instead, he had a sense of a man’s accomplishment and hard work, a
feeling of permanence.

A man wearing jeans and a long leather apron
stood at the forge pumping the bellows while a chunk of iron he
held in the coals turned white-hot. His back was turned to Jace but
his tall leanness and stance were familiar.

“
I’ll be with you in a
minute,” he called over his shoulder.

Jace smiled. Travis McGuire would have made
a tracker or a good bounty hunter. He had managed to elude Jace for
months while he searched for him last year. He didn’t know any
other man who was as aware of the moment and his surroundings as
Travis was. It seemed as if he had eyes in the back of head. Only
Many Braids and Jace himself surpassed him in his skills. His
single weakness, as Jace Remembered, was his temper.

“
How did you know I was
standing here?” he asked.

“
I heard your . . .” Travis
let the sentence hang. His head came up slowly, and he turned to
face him. He held the tongs like a weapon, with the red, glowing
crescent of metal still clutched in its jaws. He looked stunned,
wary, before his expression smoothed out behind a blank mask and
gray eyes that lightened to almost silver.

“
I heard your spurs. I
didn’t expect to see you again, Jace. What are you doing
here?”

Jace took a couple of steps forward, mindful
of the tongs. He could understand the man’s mistrust, but he hadn’t
expected it. “I went to Misfortune to find you. Albert DeGroot said
you moved up here.”

Travis nodded slightly. “So you found me.
What do want?”

“
To talk to you about
Celia.”

With two tense strides, Travis moved closer.
"We said whatever was left to say about her a year ago. She’s been
dead a long time, and I put it behind me. I didn’t kill her and I
don’t know who did.”

“
But I do know. He was a
saddle bum named Sawyer Clark.”

Travis blinked and lowered the tongs as
though they were suddenly too heavy. He swallowed hard but his
voice had a strangled sound. “You’re positive? Really
positive?”

Jace nodded. “Yeah. He admitted it to me,
and to bunch of witnesses.”

“
Where is he?” His tone was
dark and bitter. Jace thought that he looked ready to throw off the
leather apron and strap on his gun to go after Clark.

“
He’s dead.”

The color drained out of Travis’s face.
“You’re sure?” he repeated. “Did you kill him?”

“
Yes.” Jace recounted the
events leading up to afternoon in the Magnolia Saloon—Clark’s
arrogant bragging and the brief gunfire that erupted. “I saw his
body stretched out at the undertaker’s.”

Breathing a heavy sigh, Travis sank down on
an upended nail keg by the door and sat hunched with his elbows on
his knees. “God, after all those years in prison . . . all the
nightmares . . . it’s finally over,” he said, his gaze fixed on the
new planking between his boots. “I’m finally free.” He was silent a
long moment, then he looked up at Jace again. Pulling off his heavy
gloves, he put out his hand. “Thanks, Jace, for letting me
know.”

They shook hands. “It took me a year to find
him, but I did it.” He gave him a rueful smile. “You didn’t know
what to think when you saw me, did you? I figured that coming here
was the least I could do after, well, you know, everything. I’m
sorry about it all. Lyle was a mean bastard.”

“
Yeah. He was,” Travis
agreed. “I don’t know if he really gave a damn about anything or
anyone except Celia. But you and I, we go back a long
way.”

He glanced at the floor again. “You were the
closest friend I ever had. I loved you like a brother.”

Jace shifted from one foot to the other.
Marriage and time must have mellowed Travis McGuire, he thought.
Certainly he looked more content, as if he had found his place in
the world after a lifetime drifting. But even more striking was his
openness. “I never should have let the old man convince me that you
murdered Celia. We were friends a lot longer than we were
enemies.”

Travis shrugged. “But it’s over. Even you
will have put this behind you and go on with your life. What do you
think you’ll do now?”

Jace turned over a crate and sat down across
from Travis while he pondered the question. It was one that had
crept into his thoughts every night since he shot Clark. What would
he do now?

“
I’m headed to Blakely with
a woman I met in Silver City. She needs help with some trouble over
there.” And after that—what? a voice in his head asked.

“
A woman, huh?” Travis
lifted his brows and a smile crossed his features.

Jace shook his head. “Don’t go getting any
notions. Kyla isn’t your typical female.” That was an
understatement. “She’s a little rough around the edges.”

Travis rested his head against an upright
behind him. “I don’t recall that you ever let any woman get too
close, typical or not. What kind of trouble is she in?”

“
It’s a complicated story,
but there are some men looking for her and it’s best that they
don’t find her.” Knowing he could trust Travis to keep it quiet,
briefly he explained Kyla’s predicament. He left out the details of
her true grudge against Hardesty; he figured that was her business,
and it was told to him in confidence. “We’ll be heading for Blakely
at first light, but I told her I had to stop here first.” Jace
lifted his hat and resettled it with a slight sigh. “We’ve had a
hell of a trip so far.”

Travis crossed his ankle over his knee. “So
you’re the one being chased this time? It’s a lousy feeling, isn’t
it?”

Jace’s head came up sharply at the comment,
but the man’s face registered no malice. “Yeah, well, it isn’t just
my own back I have to watch. But Kyla is pretty tough—brave, too.
Kind of like your wife would be if she wore pants and a Colt
rig.”

Travis chuckled. “You ought to come by for
dinner tonight. Chloe would be happy to see you.”

Jace’s laugh was flat. “Oh, yeah, I’ll bet.”
Nobody was ever glad to see a bounty hunter.

“
Sure she would be. After
all, you took the bullet that was meant for me that day in
Misfortune.”

“
I imagine she probably
thought I got what I deserved for tracking you down,” he
muttered.

“
No, come on to dinner, and
bring this wildcat Kyla. It sounds like she might enjoy the company
of another woman for a change.”

Jace mulled it over. For Kyla . . . “All
right, we’ll be there.”

* * *

Kyla lay across the white iron bed in her
hotel room, wandering in and out of sleep. Her healing arm still
produced a dull ache and she had pushed a pillow beneath it.
Through the open window the muted sounds of wagons, braying mules,
and general traffic drifted up from the street.

After a quick wash in the tub at the end of
the hall, she was forced to put on her jeans and shirt again, since
those were the only clothes she had. The simple luxury of being
able to soak in a warm tub seemed so long past, she wondered if
she’d ever know it again. As it was, her bath had been hurried and
furtive, but least she was clean.

As she dozed, the street noise faded and the
sweeping grasslands of the ranch drifted past the inside of her
closed eyelids. From the porch she saw a March sky at sunset, with
huge dark clouds erupting on a delicately blue horizon, shot with
bright arrows of the last daylight. Rain was coming. She smelled
it. And she could see the vapor of her own breath—it would be a
cold night. But inside the house it was cozy, with a good blaze in
the fireplace. Inside the house he waited for her—a man with a
tender touch that kindled a fire in her, too, when he held her. A
man, lean and muscled, who smelled like leather and horses, with
eyes the same color as the pale blue sky. In the house . . . she
had only to go to him. In his arms she found strength and desire,
and her troubles melted away under the flame that pulsed through
her body. In his arms . . . in their bed . . .

Kyla came awake with a jolt, making the
bedsprings squeak. She shot up to her elbow, her heart thumping in
her chest. No, not Jace Rankin, she thought feverishly. She didn’t
want to dream about him, or any man. How could she?

Why did he, of all people, invade her sleep
and give her such strong feelings of both sanctuary and
yearning?

She didn’t know. But she admitted to herself
that lately, whenever she wasn’t thinking about the ranch, or her
revenge, or the past, Jace materialized in her mind. And last
night, when he’d told her about his stepfather, he seemed more
human to her, less invincible, and therefore infinitely more
dangerous to her—

A sudden soft rap on the door jerked her out
of her thoughts. She froze, then grabbed for her revolver which
hung in its holster on the bedpost.

Creeping to the door, she stood with her
shoulder pressed to the wall next to it, her gun at chest level.
“Who is it?” she demanded in Kyle’s surliest voice.

“
Kyle
, it’s me.”

Rolling her eyes with an exasperated,
relieved sigh, she reached down and unlocked the door. “Why are you
prowling around out there in the hall?” she asked irritably and
pulled open the door. Fright put an edge on her voice.

Jace looked at the gun she still clutched.
“I wasn’t prowling—I came straight up here.” He closed the door
behind him. He carried a large package wrapped with brown paper and
tied with twine.

Kyla holstered the gun and moved closer to
the window. He seemed to fill the little room with his presence.
How odd that she should be unnerved by that, when they’d already
spent so much time alone together, both on the road and in
Misfortune. She lowered her eyes, as if he might see the evidence
of her dream written there. “D-did you talk to McGuire?”

He tossed the package on the bed and sat on
the edge of the mattress. He would have to sit there, she thought.
Taking off his hat, he raked his fingers through his hair. It
really was such beautiful hair, long and thick, Kyla thought,
distracted by the urge to touch it. She wished he’d cover it again.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned against the window
frame.

“
Yeah, I found him. He was
glad to know what happened in Silver City. Even though he was
released from prison almost two years ago, I guess he didn’t really
feel like a free man until today.” A pensive expression crossed his
face.

“
Did you tell him about
me?”

He nodded. “A little. I told him where we’re
going next. We can leave tomorrow morning and head to Blakely.
Tonight, though, we’ve been invited to dinner with Travis and
Chloe. I told him we’d wait until nightfall just in case any of
Hardesty’s people are around.”

“
Dinner! Oh no, I wouldn’t
be comf—I mean I don’t—” Self-consciously, she glanced down at her
shirt and jeans and touched her damp hair. She thought again of the
green dress in the store window and her chest grew tight. “No,
they’re your friends, you should go.”

His gaze swept over her, making her even
more uncomfortable. Rising from the mattress, he put hand on the
package. “This might make you change your mind.”

Kyla surveyed the parcel warily. “What is
it?”

He smiled. She wished he wouldn’t smile like
that, as if he knew what she was thinking. “Come and open it.
Unless you’re chicken.”

Instinctively, she rose to the taunt. “I’m
not chicken! I’m not afraid of you, Jace Rankin, or anyone
else.”

“
Prove it, then, and see
what’s in here," he said. He was teasing her, she knew, but
something else lurked in the blue depths of his eyes.

She edged one step closer and craned her
neck with brows raised, as if the package held a bundle of
snakes.

“
Tell you what,” he
continued and plucked his hat from the mattress, “I’ll go get
washed up, and you open this. I’ll be back here in an hour or so to
take you to dinner.”

“
But—”

He sighed, and when he spoke the teasing was
gone from his softly uttered words. “It’ll be all right, Kyla. I
didn’t buy this to make you feel bad.” His expression was solemn,
unguarded. Then he opened the door and walked out.

Kyla left the window and went to close the
door behind him. Leaning against the smooth wood panel, she heard
his footsteps move down the hall and finally fade away.

She pressed her fist to her mouth. Oh, she
didn’t want him to look at her like that! It wasn’t just desire saw
there, it was a glimpse of his soul and a man who was perhaps even
lonelier than she was. She didn’t want to think about any of
that—the promise of seeing Tom Hardesty finally pay had brought her
back from the edge of death. That was the only thing wanted to
focus on.