Liz Ireland (21 page)

She reached out and touched his hand, her eyes soft. “Is something wrong?”

Wrong? Everything was wrong! Last night he’d lain awake thinking that kidnapping Emma would solve all their problems, and maybe it had in the short run. But what if Emma tired of life on the run, or they never made it to California, or she simply tired of
him?
The responsibility for what he’d done warred with his desire to pull Emma into his arms and simply bury all his worries in her soft flesh and warm lips.

She stepped closer to him, so that he could smell the faint vestige of a tart perfume in the air. The scent was almost his undoing, but he managed to walk the razor’s edge between control and insanity. Making love to Emma right here in the open when heaven only knew how many people were hunting them would have been crazy.

“I’m not mad anymore, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Emma said. “I can see now you did the only sensible thing.”

Her voice was an understanding caress that pricked the hair on the back of his neck. He clenched his hands into fists and felt his lips form into a taut line. “Even for tying up your niece?”

She smiled. “Annalise will be thrilled. She’s lived
through an adventure that will have Davy pea-green with jealousy.”

“And Lorna?”

“William will comfort her, though I suppose this did put a kink in her wedding day.” Her pink lips tilted up in a smile, bringing him just a little closer to the brink of something foolish.

He muttered, spun on his boot heel and crouched by the creek again. The canteen didn’t need filling so much as he needed something to do to get his thoughts back in order. He cupped his hands and splashed the cool water against his face and neck.

“Get yourself ready for another long ride,” he instructed Emma. “We won’t stop again till after dark.”

He glanced up at her only briefly, but in her face he caught every nuance of confusion he’d dreaded seeing. One minute he’d been talking with her, the next he was barking orders. But she had nothing on the jumble of conflicting emotions inside his own heart.

B
y the time they stopped and Emma was finally able to get down from her horse, her legs felt like cast-iron noodles. She’d never known a body could feel so stiff and weak at the same time, so heavy and yet so wobbly. If it weren’t for her sister’s corset—a contraption surely invented by someone who despised womankind—she was afraid she might have simply stepped off her horse and collapsed to the ground in a heap.

As it was, the inky night covered her inability to straighten up entirely, thank heavens. She didn’t want Lang to think she was a weakling, which she was beginning to suspect she was. She’d always assumed the outlaw life would be something of a lark. Why else would so many be drawn to it?

Maybe because they’re fools
, she thought with a groan as she inched stiff-backed toward the campfire Lang was quickly and methodically setting up. Somehow he knew all about these things—fires, and navigating the open land by the stars, and what water was safe to drink. Life and its hardships had taught him how to survive, while she had lived twenty-eight years, and one measly day of roughing it was nearly her undoing. She sank to the ground, mindful
of her sore behind, which felt as if it had been thrashing against a boulder all day, not a saddle. Even her hands ached from clutching the reins so tensely. And her head! She gritted her teeth, making sure not to hit the dirt too quickly and unduly rattle her headache. When she was safely settled both to her head and her behind’s satisfaction, she carefully removed her hat.

As she watched Lang’s progress on the fire, her brow furrowed. “Won’t that draw attention to us?”

Lang didn’t deny it. “It seemed to me that you could use a little warmth, but I’ll make it small, so that it will burn out soon after you go to sleep.”

Sleep! She’d never imagined that she’d so fervently look forward to sleeping. She felt all that she would have to do would be to close her eyes and she might never wake up. She dearly wanted slumber, yet…

Her gaze caught Lang’s and her every nerve ending became a little more awake. There would be no privacy here in this tiny camp. Would Lang sleep next to her…or
with
her? She flushed at the thought, and yet she couldn’t deny that she’d been dreaming about such a possibility all day long, and not with dread. She supposed running away with Lang—no matter how much he tried to disguise her going with him as a “kidnapping”—made her something akin to an outlaw’s moll. Would Lang now expect her to behave like a moll?

So far he hadn’t made many demands. She’d expected him to try to steal a kiss by the creek the first time they’d stopped. He’d been watching her with such hunger she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her straight into tomorrow. But maybe that’s why he hadn’t. They hadn’t had time. But now…As she gazed into his eyes, a molten warmth pooled at her very core and radiated desire throughout her body. Hours of
darkness stretched ahead of them, and surely Lang would want to take advantage of that fact.

She felt only half-ashamed at the way her blood boiled through her veins in anticipation. It would have been different if she didn’t love Lang. But she did. She’d loved him enough to be willing to marry Barton Sealy, but now that he’d saved her from that, her love knew no boundaries, no reason. And in saving her from a marriage that would have been a fate worse than death, hadn’t he proved he loved her, too? Surely loving a man made their relationship less sinful. After all, Lang probably would have married her himself if he’d been able to. Maybe that made her less an outlaw’s moll than an outlaw’s bride.

The question thrumming through her was, would tonight be her wedding night?

“Here,” Lang said, handing her his canteen. “You look like you need a drink.”

“I do?” Actually, water had been the last thing on her mind.

“Well…you were licking your lips.”

Luckily it was dark, or Lang might have seen the fiery blush in her cheeks. Worse, he might have looked into her green eyes and detected exactly how much she wanted him. She might tell herself she was a bride, but the feelings coursing through her were definitely more on the moll side.

She glugged down a hefty draft of water.

Lang grinned and struck a match, illuminating his handsome face as he coaxed his carefully constructed fire to blazing life. Funny to think that a few short weeks ago she’d found his face so rough and wild. Now she saw strength, kindness and a sensuality that set her ablaze with a mere glance. She’d never expected to fall in love with a man like Lang, who was so comfortable with himself, so at one with the earth around him. Then again, she’d never
expected she would be running off to parts unknown with
any
man. For so long, her life had centered around her little world—her father, the house and Midday. She was sad to leave those things behind, but at the same time, she felt wild and adventurous, as if for the first time she was really living.

She smiled. “I guess California needs nurses just as much as Texas does.” She’d come to terms with her destination mere hours into their ride that morning, about the time she started getting sore. In fact, her only regret now was that California wasn’t a little closer. “Don’t you think so?” She stretched her arms and allowed herself a moment of fanciful dreaming. “I hear the country there is like Eden.”

Lang blinked in surprise. “Where?”

“California. They say parts of it are just like paradise, lush and bountiful. Anything will grow there—grains, vegetables, fruits….” Her voice trailed off as Lang continued to stare at her as if she were speaking Greek to him. It was as if he’d never heard of a farm before. “Haven’t you heard that about California?”

“Well…yes.” But his voice held not a trace of enthusiasm for the subject.

Her lips tightened, then twisted in confusion. Perhaps he hadn’t guessed that she would be so eager to go with him. Maybe he thought she didn’t even want to go. “Don’t worry about me, Lang. It will be better this way. Rose Ellen’s always been bitter about Daddy leaving me the house and all that land. I might have made a go of it, but the future was uncertain at best.” She chuckled. “Of course, it’s still uncertain, but with you by my side, I have more confidence.”

He frowned. “You’d give up your house to Rose Ellen, just like that?”

“Well, of course! What else can I do now?”

“What about your hospital?”

“I’ll still pursue that goal, depending on where we end up. If, for instance, we’re near San Francisco, then the people there will probably already have a hos—”

“San Francisco!” Lang’s exclamation cut off her words. “Emma, what are you talking about?”

Her face felt frozen, in spite of the warmth from the fire. Could she have heard him wrong? “Two days ago you spoke of running away to California, so I just assumed that’s where we were going.”

His eyes shuttered.

“Isn’t that what you had planned, Lang?”

“Sure…a few days ago.”

A tremor of foreboding overtook her. “Well then, where
are
we headed?”

“
You’re
headed to San Antonio.”

She jumped to her feet with an energy she never would have guessed she had left in her. But even as her movements quickened, dread pounded in her heart. “And where are you going?”

“After my brother.”

Emma felt sick. Lang was planning on going after Amos—the man who’d betrayed him and left him for dead—and all along had planned on leaving her behind in San Antonio. “But you can’t do that!”

“I need to clear my name. It’s what you suggested from the first.”

Of course. Clearing his name sounded good in theory when she was sitting in her comfortable house in Midday, and appealed to her sense of high-mindedness; but now she could see the risk involved. “To get your brother you’ll have to walk into a nest of outlaws. You could be killed!”

A muscle in his clenched jaw twitched. “That’s a risk I’ll have to take.”

“Death?” she practically squeaked.

“If I don’t risk it, I won’t have a life worth speaking of.”

She was momentarily dumbfounded. Here she was thinking that she was embarking on a grand adventure, and Lang was speaking as if he were at the end of his rope! “But I thought that’s why you kidnapped me—so we’d be together when you ran off to California. I thought we were going to start anew….”

“I just didn’t want you to marry the sheriff.”

Slapping her might have produced a less chilling reaction. She almost wept. Lang didn’t want her to marry the sheriff…but he mentioned nothing about wanting to marry her himself. Or being in love with her. She wasn’t an outlaw bride, she realized. She wasn’t even a moll. She again was just Emma Colby, spinster, secretly in love with a man who apparently didn’t give a flip about her. If he did, why would he walk right into a lion’s den?

“If I left the state with my brother still at large, I’d never be free, Emma. All my life I’d be looking over my shoulder, wondering if the law was ever going to catch up with me. That’s no way to live.”

“But in California—”

“California is a state, too. They could catch me there.”

“What are the odds?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’d always be worrying about it.”

She practically quivered in frustration of his putting himself in such danger. She’d seen what a few angry men had done to his body once before. How many more bullets could Lang withstand? If anything happened to him now, what would she do?

At that terrible thought, she rushed forward and took his
hand. “You wouldn’t have to worry. Even in Midday, when supposedly the whole town was looking for an outlaw, no one suspected you.”

He laughed. “Sure, except the sheriff.”

“I should have been more careful! I
will
be more careful in California. No one there will know us, and they won’t be looking for you anyway.”

Lang shook his head, and she felt the argument slipping away from her. “It’ll be better this way, you’ll see.”

She stamped her foot. “You can’t leave me in San Antonio while you go risk your life.”

“I can’t take you with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s dangerous.”

“All the more reason why I should be with you.”

Lang took a breath for patience. “What could you do? Can you shoot a gun?”

“Of course!” He pinned her with a skeptical gaze until she practically writhed at the lie she’d told. “Well, I know how one works.”

“These fellows I’m going after won’t hold their draw long enough for you to bone up on an instruction book, Emma.”

“All right,” she conceded, “maybe I’m not the best with a gun, but I can help you in other ways.”

“How?”

She swallowed. “I can cook for you and make camp so you can rest more. You’ll need your strength.”

She thought she detected a softening in his gaze. “Sweetheart, after one day of riding, you’re practically dead on your feet. How will you hold up after tomorrow? And what do you know about cooking on the trail, or building fires, or hiding a camp so people can’t trail us?”

He was right; she was useless. But at least he was calling
her sweetheart. “Nothing. But I do know that two are usually better than one.”

“Not in this case,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll leave you in San Antonio and come back for you when I have Amos.”

The thought of being in some strange room without knowing Lang’s fate was bad enough, but he just kept piling on disturbing news. “
Have
him? You mean to take him
alive?
”

He looked at her with something akin to horror. “You didn’t think I’d kill my own brother, did you?”

“But he almost killed you—or as good as tried to!”

From the way his body stiffened, she could see that she lanced a part of his consciousness that he’d just as soon forget. “I wouldn’t murder my own flesh and blood, Emma. I just want Amos to own up to what he’s done, and let me clear my name.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be happy to,” she retorted, unable to bite back a sarcastic tone. If Lang thought he could just waltz up to his brother, slap his hand and haul him off to the nearest sheriff, he had another think coming. And if he thought that she was just going to sit idly by while he attempted such madness, he was even more wrong still!

“I won’t stay behind.” He opened his mouth to interrupt her again, but she rushed on. “I don’t care what you say. I’m going with you, Lang. I love you.”

There. She’d said it again.

Maybe this time he’d hear her.

Lang stared at her stonily for a long minute that seemed to stretch even longer as an embarrassed flush crept up her to her cheeks. She raised her chin, as if she didn’t give two hoots whether he reciprocated her feelings or not.

Finally he took another deep breath and gave her one of
those looks that indicated he was running out of patience. “You should get some sleep, Emma.”

What little hope remained inside her sank like a rock.
I tell him I love him, and he responds by telling me to go to bed?
She clenched her hands into fists at her sides in determination. “I said I love you, Lang.”

Before the words were even out, he retorted, “I heard you.”

She glared at him. “And?”

He stared back at her with his eyes burning with emotion she couldn’t quite read. “And I still say you need your rest.”

Fury coursed through her. “Just once I’d like to have a man respond to me the way he’s supposed to!”

The stony stare remained, though one of his lips twitched. “How’s that?”

“I don’t know—like men respond in books! When Juliet told Romeo she loved him, Romeo didn’t tell her good-night!”

“Yes, he did.”

She blinked, astonished. “He did?”

“‘Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast/Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest.”’

Lang grinned as Emma stared at him with slack-jawed amazement. She hadn’t expected an answer at all, much less a letter-perfect recitation. At least, she thought it was letter-perfect. To her chagrin, she couldn’t exactly remember.

“I only went to school eight years,” Lang explained, “but I tried to make the most of them.”