Marrying Miss Marshal (21 page)

A
t first, Danna thought she must be imagining the voice—Chas's voice. But the shock of heat when his hands touched hers, as he untied her, was real.

And then she was free. Time seemed to suspend itself as she stared into his impossibly blue eyes, and all she could think was,
He came for me!

“What—how did you find me?” she asked in a hushed voice, afraid to disturb the silence that surrounded them. Afraid he was an apparition she'd conjured with the strength of her wish to see him again.

Chas nodded to the side, toward a figure that hadn't even registered while she was fixated on Chas.

“Rob?”

Chas watched Danna's brother rush to her and swing her up in a hug, and
still
he couldn't make his feet move.

Danna was alive.

She hadn't been hurt or killed.

The rush of relief left him light-headed.

Danna's dog jumped and danced around the pair still embracing, and then he started to bark. Both Danna and Rob shushed him.

Danna nodded over her shoulder. “O'Rourke has set up a camp just there.” The pair of them started moving toward Chas. Rob held her tightly to his side, supporting her weight, and Chas knew a sudden fear that maybe she
was
hurt. He turned and hustled to where he and Rob had left their horses, just over the top of the hill.

He pulled his bedroll from where it was tied behind the saddle, knowing Danna would need its warmth if she'd been out in the cold for any length of time. He was still facing his horse, trying to school his rioting emotions into submission, when he sensed her approach.

“I can't believe you came.” The soft-spoken words from behind him threatened his composure
again,
and he spun to face her, needing to see for himself she was all right.

Tears sparkled in her brown eyes, and it prompted him to swing the blanket around her shoulders and clasp her to his chest. One hand clung to her waist while the other cupped the back of her head, his fingers threading through her hair.

“I never left,” he admitted.

In his arms, she felt fragile, but he knew it was an illusion. She was strong and capable. She'd managed to nearly get herself loose and was on her way out of there, all without help. She didn't need him or anyone else.

So what was he going to do, now that he knew
he
needed
her?

“We should head out and meet the others,” Rob said. Chas looked up to find the other man already mounted up, with a small smile quirking the corners of his lips.
Rob's assessing gaze made Chas uncomfortable, and he shifted away from Danna.

Her head came up. “Others?” She wiped her face with the corner of the blanket and stepped away from Chas. The emptiness of not having her in his arms had him sliding into his own saddle, lest she see his emotions written on his face.

Rob answered her, speaking quietly. “Yeah, there's ten of us crazy enough to come out here after you. We got halfway up the mountain last night and had to stop because of the snow. Your husband refused to wait until morning, though. He dragged me away from a warm fire and my bedroll to get to you sooner.”

Danna's upturned face revealed her surprise, and was that joy in her eyes? When Chas reached for her, she came easily into his arms and used his boot in the stirrup to boost herself into the saddle in front of him.

Chas wrapped his arms around her, unable to keep from noticing how perfectly she fit there. He didn't ever want to let her go. Careful not to bump her, he guided his horse to follow Creighton's down the same way they'd come. Danna's dog followed a little off to the side, silent, but with his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

“Men from town?” Danna murmured over her shoulder, giving Chas a good look at her profile. She didn't have a single bruise on her face.

“I'm afraid not. Your brother brought several hands from his ranch. And your stablehand friend brought a little gal who happened to know where this cave was located—Katy.”

He read her disappointment in the tightening of her lips before she nodded and turned her face forward
again. Until he mentioned Katy, and then her face lit up. “You found her?”

“She found us. Just before we left town. Said her pa used to run with Lewis's gang until Hester killed him. She ran away from them. I think she's been afraid all this time that they'd track her down and kill her, too.”

His thoughts jumped from the outlaw gang killing Katy to what he'd feared the most since yesterday afternoon—them killing Danna. He hated riding away. He'd never been closer to enacting his revenge on Hank Lewis than right now.

“How'd you know where I'd gone, though?”

Danna's question broke through his thoughts. “The doctor found me right after you rode out of town. And I'd…well, I found a passage in Fred's journal that implicated Sheriff O'Rourke as part of the rustling ring.”

“You read the journal? That's why you came after me?”

He couldn't tell if that made her angry. He had invaded her privacy.

“I couldn't…let you face the danger alone, not if these men were ones who killed your first husband. I couldn't leave you to die!”

He knew he'd said something wrong when she frowned and turned her face into the blanket. Her breathing changed and he thought she might be crying. Maybe he shouldn't have brought up Fred Carpenter. He knew she loved the man, and it must hurt to know who had murdered him.

She stayed that way for the short time it took them to reach the site where they'd camped. The other men were up and about, as were the stablehand and girl. The scent of coffee welcomed them when they pulled up near where the other horses were tied off.

Chas hopped to the ground and reached up for Danna, then released her as soon as her feet touched the ground.

His head spun with confusion. She'd been happy to see him, he knew she had. Why was she pulling away?

 

Embarrassed by her teary breakdown, Danna kept her eyes averted from Chas's face as he set her down off his horse.

It was exhaustion and relief that had caused her to cry like a little girl. Not Chas's admission that the only reason he'd come for her was because he felt
responsible
for her.

Not because he loved her.

What had she expected? Their marriage was temporary. They'd agreed on the coming annulment.

Her feelings hadn't changed since she'd first fallen in love with him, but she held on to hope.

Chas propelled her over to the blazing fire and pushed her down to sit on a conveniently placed log.

“Let's get some coffee into her,” he called out, and men jumped to do his bidding.

He pulled off her gloves, and she saw her hands were chapped, but not discolored like she'd expected them to be, with little blood flow in the freezing conditions. She might not lose any fingers after all. Chas chafed her hands between his, and the warm that infused her was more than just from the fire and his hands.

It felt like he cared.

No matter how much she told herself not to feel too much for Chas, her love for him continued to grow.

Wrong Tree butted his head under Chas's arm, looking for attention from the man he'd liked from the be
ginning. Chas gave the mutt a playful push out of the way and settled close to Danna's side.

“All right. So what's the plan?” Rob squatted down next to Danna's other side. He handed her a tin cup, steam rising from its rim. The rest of the cowpokes stood near enough to listen without intruding on their conversation.

“The plan?” she echoed.

“You mean to tell me you weren't working on a way to round up those bank robbers while you were tied up?” Rob's voice held both a teasing quality and a note of seriousness.

“I'm sorry.” She shook her head, feeling as if it was stuffed with cotton. “I'm not thinking real clearly yet.” She drank a big gulp of the coffee, hoping it would help.

“You didn't think we came all the way up here just to save your hide, did you? We're going to help you bring in those outlaws.”

She risked a glance at Chas, who was staring hard into the fire, his jaw tight. Had that been his intention? She couldn't tell. But she had a job to do, even if she didn't have the official title, and if these cowboys were willing to help, she'd be foolish not to take them up on it.

“I saw four men in the cave last night, plus O'Rourke. Two are injured. By my count, there should be another man, but I never saw him.”

“Who are the two injured?”

She couldn't look at Chas when she told them. “Hank Lewis and the man who was shot during the robbery.”

“How bad is Lewis?” Chas asked, his voice low and angry.

She shrugged. “He'd lost a lot of blood. The gunshot was in his upper thigh. He was alive when I got done patching him up, but I don't know if he made it through the night.”

“You
patched him up?
” Chas spat the words and vaulted to his feet so she had to look up at him. His face and neck had gone red, making his light freckles disappear. “After what he's done? He murdered my—” He cut himself off, but she could still hear the words, as if he'd said them aloud.
He murdered my love.
The reminder burned a hole in her gut.

“He killed my brother and his wife,” Chas said in a slightly more controlled voice. She could still hear the undercurrents of anger in his tone. “He doesn't deserve to live.”

She'd known his temper would blow when he found out she'd helped Lewis, but she'd been hoping he'd be a mite more rational.

“I'm not a judge,” she replied. “I can't make the decision whether he should live or die. Plus, they had a gun on me. If I refused to treat him, O'Rourke would have shot me.”

Chas's face paled, all the red seeping out of his cheeks, but he still stared at her as if he didn't know who she was, couldn't believe she'd done what she had.

Slowly, he shook his head, then ran a hand from forehead to chin. The action wiped all the expression from his face, leaving only a hard-set jaw and empty eyes behind. “So what do we do now?”

Rob shifted in his crouch, clearly uncomfortable to have witnessed their conversation. “We can assume they've figured out Danna's disappeared. The question is, what'll they do about it?”

“If they saw our tracks, they'll know she's not
alone,” Chas put in. “They could follow us pretty easy in all that snow.” He shared a secret smile with Danna, warming her down to her toes. “I think even I could track in these conditions.”

Danna didn't like the way her stomach swooped to think that O'Rourke and his men might be heading this way right now. Their group was out in the open and would be easy targets for a rifle. She glanced around the craggy, snowy scene around them, but didn't see any sinister shadows lurking behind the trees.

“Or they might decide to hole up in the cave, to see if we come after them,” Rob offered. That thought wasn't particularly comforting either, as they'd be much too vulnerable if they tried to approach the cave with the scant cover the landscape around it offered.

“They might make a run for it.” She knew that alternative was the least likely, due to the injured men. Or maybe they'd leave the hurt kid and Lewis behind to shoot it out, and the rest of them would try to run.

After a moment of tense silence, Rob said what was on all their minds. “If O'Rourke knows he's been caught out, he's going to want us dead.”

Rob's hands all murmured their agreement. They all looked to her, and their gazes were like a weight on her chest. She'd
wanted
this responsibility?

Chas turned to her from where he'd stood with his back to the group, one hand massaging his neck. “So tell us what to do, boss lady. You wanted deputies. Now you've got 'em.”

 

In the end, everything fell into place beautifully. Danna took command of the situation, like Chas had known she could. She sent four of Rob's men out scouting for anyone who might have left the camp after the
snow had stopped, with instructions to fire a sequence of shots if they caught the men or needed help. She ordered the stablehand and the girl to stay put and to keep her ornery dog tied up with them. That left five of them to figure out a way to approach the outlaw's campsite without getting shot.

“We came in from the south last night, and there wasn't much cover at all.” Danna seemed to have regained her equilibrium. She paced a tight ring around the fire, alternately clasping her hands in front of her and waving them around when she spoke. She was adorable.

“Is there another way into the cave?” Rob asked, as he checked his weapon.

Danna shook her head. “The inside walls are solid rock. I couldn't see any other way in or out, and believe me, I looked.”

“From what I could tell, we'd have the most cover approaching from the east.”

“Or we could hang a rope and someone could shimmy down to get to the cave.”

It was risky. He hadn't gotten much of a glimpse of the cave through the trees this morning, as Danna had been tied pretty far from the entrance, but he'd seen enough to know it was a sheer drop of thirty feet.

“Danna could do it. She likes to climb things. Like roofs.” For the second time, he gave her a smile that said they both shared a secret. She flushed under his gaze and looked away.

“I guess you never grow out of some things,” said Rob, shattering the moment.

Danna kept her face averted, but then her gaze cleared and she turned to Chas. “Do you have Fred's journal with you? And a pencil?”

He'd thought she would be angry that he'd violated her husband's memory by reading the journal, but she'd done what she always seemed to do when faced with a situation that needed to be handled—put aside her personal emotions in order to work.