Desperate Hearts (32 page)

Silence fell again for a moment, and Kyla’s
eyes grew as wide as dollars. She turned to look at Jace. She said
nothing, but her expression revealed every word of her
thoughts.

“
I’ll take care of
Hardesty,” he assured her in voice that carried only to her ears.
“That’s why I’m here.”

“
But it’s like I told you
in Silver City,” she said. “What good will that do when Jory finds
another Tom? And you know he will—the world has more than its share
of people like him. Evil, greedy, always watching for someone
weaker to take advantage of.

Jace felt his conscience stirring, a
sensation that did not like. “Well, Jesus, I can’t save the whole
world!”

“
No one is asking you to do
that.” Then she gave him a knowing look, the gaze that seemed to
examine his very soul. “But maybe this is a good chance to make up
for what happened at the Bluebird Saloon.”

He felt as if she’d punched him in the
stomach, as if she had been saving this one vague fact she knew
about him to hold over his head. All the air seemed to leave his
lungs and he couldn’t get a breath. “Goddamn it, Kyla—”

“
I propose we hire Jace
Rankin to wipe out the Vigilance Union," someone then suggested.
The proposal met with unanimous approval.

“
Wait a minute!" Jace said,
appalled, his voice rising to a roar above their conversation.
Grabbing a crate, he stepped up to try and gain their attention,
but only the horses in the stalls appeared to heed him. "Listen to
me!” he thundered again. "I’m no crusader, saving ranchers and
farmers from vigilantes! I’m a bounty hunter.”

They rallied closer, as if at a leader’s
feet, and finally quieted long enough to let him speak. He looked
at the upturned faces. It was a new experience to have people
hanging on his every word. “I’m a bounty hunter,” he went on in a
lower voice. “And I’m one man, I can’t take on this group alone.”
He glanced down at Kyla and drew a deep breath. God, he couldn’t
believe he was going to say this— “If you want my help, you’ll have
to help me. You can’t just hire someone to do your dirty work for
you, and then sit back and wait for things to get better, like
you’ve been doing. You have to take action and fight for what’s
yours.”

The men shuffled uncomfortably under the
bluntness of his words, but from his place leaning against a stall,
Jim Porter smiled at him, as if Jace had said exactly what he
wanted him to.

“
Well, you men heard him,”
he said. “And it’s same thing Hank Bailey told you, too. Are you
ready to fight?”

Murmurs of agreement swept through the
group. “Hell, yes, I’m ready. I can’t afford to lose one more head
of cattle to those thieves.”

“
I’m tired of payin ’em for
the privilege of grazing stock on my own land.”

“
I want to see Luke Jory
fall from that throne he put himself on.”

“
All right, then,” Jace
said, catching a glimpse Kyla’s face, beatific as she gazed up at
him. This was almost worth it to see her look at him like that.
“I’ve got business to take care of first. We’ll meet again in a
week, and in the meantime don’t talk about this with anyone.
Not anyone.
”

The meeting broke up then, and while most of
the men didn’t go so far as to shake Jace’s hand he were one of
them, there was a lot of smiling and hat-tipping.

As he watched the last of them go, he shook
head in disbelief. He’d never been part of a group in his entire
life, and long ago had grown accustomed his solitude and the sound
of his own thoughts conversation. Now, with absolutely no intention
doing so, he had agreed to lead these people in a battle against
the Vigilance Union.

“
Shit.”

* * *

“
Jace?”

“
What.”

“
Will you tell me what
happened at the Bluebird Saloon?”

Kyla waited in the darkness for his answer.
They bedded down in the only empty stall in Jim’s barn, she on one
end, and he on the other. They had done the same thing many times
out on the open prairie, fully dressed as they were now. But
somehow the shelter of the barn made it seem all the more intimate
to her, and she was keenly aware of Jace wrapped in his blankets a
few feet away. Moonlight cut through the hayloft window and threw a
square of light between them.

“
Aw, damn it, Kyla.” He
sighed, more with weary resignation than irritation.

“
Was it really
bad?”

She heard the straw rustle on the other side
of the box, and he sat up and leaned against the wall. A gray-white
slice of moonlight fell over him, accentuating the shadows of his
cheekbones and his mantle of hair.

When he began speaking, chills flew over
Kyla’s and scalp. It was as if she were listening to some other
man, a stranger whose voice she didn’t recognize.

“
I’d been trailing a cattle
rustler and it was turning out to be more work than the reward was
worth. Losing propositions have never much interested me, so I
stopped in Paradise Creek to think over my next move and get a meal
and a beer.” Kyla saw him cross his ankles in the low light. “I was
halfway through a steak supper when a woman walked up to my table.
She had a little kid with her, a girl with big blue eyes and gold
hair. They were both dressed like they’d gotten their clothes from
a charity barrel. I don’t think I’d ever seen two people who looked
so tired. And the woman, she kept glancing around her like she
thought she might be followed. The little girl—I think she was
about five years old—she just stared at me with those big blue
eyes.”

“
What did they want?” Kyla
whispered.

“
The woman asked me to take
her and her daughter to Pendleton so they could catch the train.
The stage wouldn’t be in Paradise Creek for a week, and she was in
a panic to get away before her husband found out she’d
gone.”

“
Why?”

He shrugged. “She said she was afraid he’d
kill her. She pulled out a lace handkerchief with some gold coins
tied in it to prove she could pay. Oh, I sure as hell didn’t want
any part of that. She asked me two more times—practically begged
me. It wasn’t like I didn’t notice the bruises on both of them. But
I wasn’t about to get involved in some mess between a husband and
wife. Anyway, that wasn’t the kind of work I did, nursemaiding
women and kids. I chased bank robbers and horse thieves. I thought
Hank was somewhere in town, so I told her to go to find him. Maybe
he’d help her.” He wrapped a blanket around shoulders, as if taken
with a sudden chill.

Kyla knew he could see her in the moonlight,
but didn’t look at her. “Did Hank help her?”

He shook his head. “She never talked to him.
When I saw him late that night at the Bluebird, I found out he’d
been gone most of the day, seeing about a horse he wanted to buy.
It was pretty quiet in there at that hour, quiet enough to hear a
gunshot that came from a house at the end of the street.”

“
Oh, no . . .” Kyla moaned,
horrified, and pressed hand to the base of her throat.

“
Well, we all ran down
there to have a look.” His voice grew suddenly rough and he paused.
“There she was, and her little girl, too. But her husband hadn’t
shot them. He’d shot himself after he slashed their throats with a
skinning knife. I’d never seen so much blood.”

“
Oh, God, Jace—” she
whispered, completely unprepared for what he’d told her.

“
I dreamed about that night
for three or four years. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen . .
.
ever
. I lost
count of how many times I wished I could live that day over. I
should have taken them to Pendleton. If I had they’d still be
alive, and maybe living a new life away from that man.”

Kyla gaped at his shadowed form. He must
have condemned himself countless times for the death of that woman
and her child. And Kyla had unwittingly dredged up the event and
used it as a means to gain her own ends. She waded through the
straw to his side of the stall and sat beside him. The Henry lay
between them.

“
Jace, I’m sorry. When I
mentioned it—I didn’t know—”

She saw the careless lift of his shoulders
in the gloom and her heart ached with love for him.

“
Hank knew. You were in
danger, and he knew I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. That’s
why he sent you to me for help.”

She felt guilty for
dragging the story out of him. With a little hesitation, she
covered his hand with her own, where it rested on his knee. “And
you
have
helped
me. More than once. You took care of me when I was sick, you saved
me from those men, you brought me back to Blakely.”

Jace gazed down at the
small hand on his. Yeah, and somewhere along the trail between
Silver City and Blakely, this scrappy, red-haired woman, with a
cast-iron will and beauty as delicate as a butterfly’s wings, had
roused his heart, stirring it in its emptiness. He didn’t want to
think of it as anything more, because there could be nothing
between them. As soon as he finished here, he reminded himself, he
would be gone. It didn’t matter how tempting the image was that he
carried in his mind, of riding home—
home
—to this woman, of crystal cold
nights, wrapped in thick quilts with her, warming his heart on
hers. He gave up any chance for that the day he picked up that
wanted poster on the sheriff’s desk.

“
I think you’re a very good
man,” she added softly “The finest I’ve ever known.”

Her words shook him to his soul. He felt her
next him, soft and vital, her thigh brushing his. The denim between
them didn’t hinder his memory of that night in the cabin, and her
body under his hands and lips, fragrant, smooth, lush.

She edged closer, and her hand on his
tightened. Unbelievably, she leaned forward and laid a trail of
timid kisses that began at his temple and touched the corner of his
eye, his cheek, the edge of his upper lip

He put an arm around her to enclose her
within the blanket. When he turned his head toward her lips, she
surprised him by claiming his mouth in a moist kiss. He couldn’t
suppress the groan that rose in his throat. Her touch was silky,
healing as she slid her fingertips along his jaw. When she broke
the kiss, she sat back and unbuttoned her shirt, holding his eyes
with her gaze. The binding, bright in the moonlight, came away as
if by magic. Her breasts, pale and full, called for his caress but
he didn’t move. Jace swallowed, uncertain for the first time in his
adult life. If he obeyed the demands of his body, they would have
this moment but it wouldn’t change their future. And perhaps after,
she might think less of him than she did now for bedding her in a
stable because he could offer nothing more. He couldn’t bear to
lose her respect.

“
Kyla, I don’t
think—”

“
I don’t want you to
think,” she whispered. "This is something I want to give you, and
take from you.”

Her innocent seduction roused a familiar
aching heat low in his belly, the urge to proclaim and reaffirm his
life within her. To surrender himself to her in a dark
conflagration and rise from his own ashes, reborn. A different Jace
Rankin.

But when still he made no move to touch her,
she reached for his hand and cradled it under her breast. Her taut
nipple pressed against his thumb.

With an oath, Jace flung away the remains of
his shredded resistance. Pulling her to him, he buried his mouth
against her flesh, muttering her name even as he closed his lips
over it to suckle her. His heart pounded in his chest, thundering
between his deep breaths.

Two spirits brimming with emotions and
lifetimes of hurt, they fell to his blanket on the sweet straw,
desperate and twisting, pulling clothes and boots away as they
fought to get closer. She lay naked beside him, beautiful,
unafraid, the scar on her arm forgotten. He sank his hands into her
hair and held her while he kissed her greedily, his tongue seeking
the slick warmth inside her mouth. Her hands moved restlessly up
and down his bare back. He traced indent of her waist, the swell of
her hip. Her breast, full and heavy, fit perfectly in his hand.
Each moan he summoned from her, every sigh fueled his own arousal
until he thought he would explode.

Jace enfolded Kyla in his arms and rolled
her over so that she lay on top of him. With his hands gripping her
buttocks he pulled her hips flush to his own in a rhythm that was
as primal as the course of the tides. Boldly, she pushed against
him, feeling his erection that lay between them.

She dropped to his side and let her fingers
roam the naked length of him, over the soft hair on his chest and
down his flat belly to his hard fullness.

“
You’re in charge, Kyla,”
he told her as he had first time, his voice gritty and low. He lay
on his back, arms open, unguarded. “You make love to
me.”

“
I don’t know what to do .
. .”

“
Then I’ll show you,” he
said, and whispered urgent instructions to her.

Suddenly Kyla found herself lifted to lie on
him again, her breasts flattened against his chest. His hands and
her own instinct carried her the rest of the way. He entered her,
completed her, filling the emptiness that was meant to hold only
him. But as she began to move with him, she found what he had meant
when he gave her power over their bodies. She thrust along the
length of him, spiraling the intense waves of tightly coiled
pressure that grew tighter in her abdomen. No self-consciousness or
fear hindered her. There were just the two of them in the world
tonight, making love in the shaft of a moonbeam.