Elizabeth Lowell (12 page)

A cold breath of caution shivered over Ty’s skin. The bartender was no more drunk than Ty was.

“Who?” Ty asked, scratching his beard.

“The red-haired gal.”

“Don’t know her. She live around here?”

Ned squinted at Ty with pale, watery eyes. “Nobody knows where she lives. ‘Cept maybe you. She pulled your tail out of a mighty tight crack.”

“Mister, the only crack my tail has been in lately was with Cascabel’s renegades, and I got shuck of them by running my feet to the bone, hiding in brush, drinking rainwater, and eating snakes. Not a one of them had red hair.”

Ned stared at Ty for a long time and then nodded slowly. “If that’s the way you want it, mister, that’s the way it is.”

“Wanting has nothing to do with it,” he drawled coolly, standing up. “I’m telling you the way it was. Thanks for the beans. I’m going over to the Preacher’s store. I’ll leave a list of what I take. He can get his payment out of the gold Blue Wolf left at the fort.”

“I’ll tell Preacher when I see him.”

“You do that.” Ty started for the door, feeling an acute need for fresh air, then realized he wasn’t through with Ned yet. “I need to buy a horse.”

“The Circle G has right fine horseflesh. Best in the territory. Course, if’n a man was to ride one out of the territory, he might run into a cowpoke what lost a horse just like it.”

Ty smiled wryly as he got the message. “I’ll settle for a town horse.”

“Ain’t none,” Ned said succinctly. “Took ‘em all to the fort.”

“Where’s the closest homestead that might have an animal to sell?”

“Ain’t none left for a hundred miles, ‘cept renegade camps and wherever that redheaded gal lives. But you don’t know nothin’ about her, so it don’t help you none.”

Ty shrugged. “I’ll find a horse between here and Mexico. Thanks for the beans.”

The door shut behind him, but he still felt Ned’s narrow, calculating eyes boring into his naked back. It made his spine itch and his palms ache for the cool feel of an army rifle.

Janna didn’t know it, but she wasn’t coming back to Sweetwater again.

Ever.

Janna awoke when a man rose up from the ground in front of her, blocking out the sun with his body. She was grabbing for her knife when Zebra snorted and the man turned and sunlight caught the emerald glint of his eyes.

Hardly recognizing Ty beneath his store-bought clothes, she could do no more than stare. The slate-gray shirt and hat, black bandanna, and black pants emphasized his size and masculine grace. He looked as handsome as sin and twice as hard. His beard was shaved off, leaving his face clean but for a midnight slash of mustache that heightened the pronounced planes of his cheekbones and made his teeth gleam whitely.

In that instant, with fright still vibrating in her body and her defenses awry, Janna’s response to him was so intense that she could scarcely breathe.

“Ty?” she asked huskily. “Is that really you?”

“You better hope it is,” he snapped. “What the hell were
you doing asleep? It could have been Joe Troon who cut your trail rather than me. Or maybe you’d like to be kept by him again?”

Her heart was beating too rapidly for her to make sense out of Ty’s words. “You scared the life out of me, sneaking up like that!”

“Sneaking up? Hell’s bells, Janna, you expect Cascabel to march in here with a band playing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’? You should have been on guard and seen me coming half a mile away!”

“Zebra was on guard,” she said, standing and wiping her palms on her baggy pants. “Yell at her. She must have recognized your smell and not made a fuss.”

He looked over at the mustang. Zebra was cropping at wisps of dry grass, lifting her head to scent the wind, then relaxing once more for a few moments before sniffing the wind again.

“Scented me, huh?” he said, feeling his anger slide away as he realized that she had been well guarded after all. “Are you saying I need some more time in your hot spring?”

“Ask Zebra. Her nose is better than mine,” Janna retorted, forcing herself to look away from the hard, handsome planes of Ty’s face. She closed her eyes, braced her fists in the small of her back and knuckled the tight muscles. “Lordy, there was a root beneath me the size of my arm. No matter how I lay I couldn’t avoid it.”

Whatever he had been going to say was forgotten beneath the impact of the supple reach and sway of Janna’s body while she worked out the kinks of lying in cover for several hours.

“Here,” he said gruffly. “This will help.”

Her eyes flew open when she felt his strong hands knead down her spine to her hips and back up again, lingering at the curve of her waist, rubbing the muscles in the small of her back, then caressing her waist once more before probing at the bands of cloth that wrapped her rib cage beneath her shirt. When he discovered the knotted muscle in her shoulder, he pressed down firmly, smoothing away the knot, making her knees loosen with relief.

“Oh, that feels good,” she said huskily, her voice catching with pure pleasure. “Yes, there. Ahhh...You’re unraveling me like a snagged mitten.”

With a low sigh that was almost a moan of pleasure, she let her head slowly drop back until it rested on Ty’s chest. His hands hesitated as his heart slammed suddenly, sending blood rushing through his body, making him feel both heavy and powerful. Taking a discreet, deep breath, he resumed the leisurely, gentle massaging of her back. Each murmur of her pleasure was like flames licking over him, tightening every muscle in his big body, flushing him with sensual heat.

The piñon-and-sunshine smell of her hair intoxicated him. The curve of her neck above her clothes tantalized him. The sounds she made inflamed him. He wanted to bend over and taste the clean skin rising above her collar. Then he wanted to peel her clothes away and taste soft skin that had never seen the sun.

Yet she felt so fragile beneath his big hands, almost frail.

She
’
s just a girl,
he reminded himself harshly.

The memory of what Ned had said about Joe Troon and Janna went into Ty like a knife

Poor little thing,
he thought, moving his hands up to her shoulders and rubbing very gently before he released her with a reluctance he couldn’t disguise.
She
’
s known little of kindness from men. I can
’
t take advantage of her just because she comes undone at a gentle touch.

She turned her head, brushing her lips lightly over his fingers as they moved away from her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she murmured, her eyes closed and her voice a sigh of pleasure. “That felt as good as sunlight on a cold day.”

Head still turned toward him, she opened her eyes—and felt her breath wedge tightly in her throat. He was so close, his eyes a glittering green that was both beautiful and savage. Tiny shards of black acted to deepen and define the vivid green surrounding the pupils. The dark gleam at the center of his eyes was repeated in the dense midnight of his eyelashes. His pulse beat full and strong at his temple and his lips were a flat line, as though he were angry or in pain.

“Did...did everything go all right in Sweetwater?” she managed.

Janna’s question sounded very far away to Ty. Slowly he realized that he was staring into the depths of her rain-clear eyes while his fingertips traced and retraced the soft curve of her cheek.

“You’re never going back there, Janna. That damned greasy bartender...” Ty’s voice died. He could think of no delicate way to put into words what he had seen in Ned’s eyes when he talked about women.

“Ned?” she asked, shrugging. “I stay out of his way. I’m careful never to be in town more than a few minutes at a time. Even if someone sees me, the Preacher makes sure I’m left alone.”

“The Preacher pulled up stakes and went to the fort along with everybody else except Ned. Renegades from all over the territory are drifting down to Black Plateau to join Cascabel.”

She frowned. “Why would Ned stay in town? Nothing in his dingy old shack is worth dying for.”

“Before Cascabel caught me, I spent some time in Hat Rock. The folks there think Ned is the one selling guns to the Indians. If that’s true, he wouldn’t be too worried about getting his hair cut by a renegade barber.”

“Pity,” she said. “He could use a trim.”

Ty smiled and her stomach did a little dip and curtsy. She looked away hastily.

“Guess we’d better get back to Black Plateau,” she said, clearing her throat. “It will be—”

“You’re going to the fort,” he interrupted.

“What?”

“It’s too dangerous for a woman out here. On the way in to Sweetwater I cut the trail of three different groups of Indians. Two or three braves to a group. No sign of women or kids.”

“Utes?”

He shrugged. “If they are, they’re renegades. Black Hawk is trying to keep a short rein on his young warriors.”

“Where were the tracks headed?”

“Sweetwater,” Ty said succinctly. “I’ll bet they bought rifles from Ned and then hit the trail for Cascabel’s new camp.”

Frowning, she looked at the sky over toward Black Plateau. The thunderheads were a solid, blue-black mass that trailed dark curtains of rain. The Fire Mountains had been buried in storm clouds when Ty left for town, which meant that several hours of rain had fallen on top of Black Plateau. The finger canyons would be filling with runoff before too long.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said, following her glance. “The crack leading to your camp is probably up to a horse’s fetlocks by now. Even if Zebra galloped all the way back, the water would be hock-high for sure. Chest-high, more than likely. But it wouldn’t matter.”

“It wouldn’t?” she asked, surprised.

“Hell, no. We’d be dead before we got there, picked off by renegades and staked out for the ants to eat.”

“But—”

“Dammit, don’t you see? Cascabel must have passed the word that he’s getting ready for one last push. Every renegade Indian west of the Mississippi is jumping reservation, stealing a horse, and riding hard for Black Plateau. The only safe place for you is at the fort.”

“For me?” she questioned.

He nodded tightly.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’m going after Lucifer.”

“What makes you think
Cascabel won’t get you?”

“If he does, that’s my problem.”

“Then we agree.”

“We do?” Ty asked, surprised.

“We do. We’d better get going. I know a good place to camp on the northeast slope of the plateau.”

“The fort is to the west of the plateau. Won’t you be taking us the long way around?”

“I’m not going to the fort.”

“The hell you aren’t.”

“That wasn’t our agreement,” she said quickly.

“What?”

“Our agreement was that it’s your problem if Cascabel gets you, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then it follows that it’s my problem if Cascabel gets me.”

Ty opened his mouth, closed it, grabbed Janna in his powerful hands and lifted her until she was at eye level with him.

“You,” he said coldly, “are going to the fort if I have to tie you and carry you belly down over my saddle.”

“You don’t have a saddle.”

“Janna—”

“No,” she interrupted. “You can tie me up and haul me from one end of the territory to the other, but the second you turn your back or take off the ropes I’ll be gone to Black Plateau.”

He looked into her unflinching gray eyes and knew that she meant every word. Her body might have been slender but her will was fully the equal of his own.

Ty looked from Janna’s wide gray eyes to her lips flushed with heat and life. He could think of many, many things he would like to do at that moment, but none would be quite as sweet as sliding his tongue into her mouth until he could taste nothing but her, feel nothing but her, know nothing but her.

Yet he shouldn’t even touch her. Even if she didn’t have the sense to realize it, she was a nearly helpless girl whose life was at risk every hour she spent running free with her mustangs.

“What am I going to do with you?” he asked huskily.

“Same thing I’m going to do with you.”

Ty smiled slowly. “What are you going to do with me?” he asked, his voice deep, his mouth frankly sensual.

“Hunt L-Lucifer,” she said, stammering slightly, wondering what had given Ty’s green eyes their sudden heat and intensity.

“I thought you didn’t want to help anyone catch Lucifer.”

“I said ‘hunt,’ not ‘catch.’”

“Little one, what I hunt, I catch.”

She tried to breathe, couldn’t, and tried again. “Ty...” she said, her voice ragged.

The word sounded more like a sigh than a name. She licked her lips and prepared to try again.

His hands tightened almost painfully around her rib cage as he watched the pink tip of her tongue appear and disappear, leaving behind lips that were moist, soft and inviting. Knowing he shouldn’t, unable to help himself, he slowly brought her closer to his own mouth.

Just beyond the shelter of the brush, Zebra threw up her head and pricked her ears, staring upwind. Her nostrils flared, fluttered, and flared again. Abruptly her ears flattened to her head.

Ty dropped to the ground, taking Janna with him.

Moments later, no more than two hundred feet away, a group of four Indian warriors rode out of a shallow ravine.

Stomach on the hard, uneven ground, Janna lay wedged between a boulder on one side and Ty’s body on the other. Very slowly she turned her head until she could see beneath his chin. He had a pistol in his left hand and was easing his right hand toward another boulder, where he had propped his new carbine before he woke her up. From the corner of her eye she saw his long fingers wrap around the stock of the weapon. Without making a sound he lifted the carbine and slowly, slowly eased it into firing position at his shoulder.

Screened by brush and rocks, Janna and Ty watched the warriors cross a small rise and angle back toward the cover of another dry wash.

For long minutes after the Indians vanished, Ty lay unmoving. The weight of his body ensured that Janna stayed motionless, as well. Not until Zebra snorted, rubbed her muzzle against her knee, and then resumed grazing did Ty release her. Even so, when he spoke to her, he laid his lips against her ear, and his voice was a mere thread of sound.