Outlaw Carson (20 page)

“What’s happening to you, Kit?” she asked,
trying and failing to keep the tremor out of her voice.

He slumped against the tunnel wall with a
moan. Her arms encircled him, but his weight was too much, dragging
them both to the cramped floor.

“Kit?” She spoke his name quietly, then
shook him, yet still got no response. Panic crept into the
darkness, pulsing through the air, until she saw things that
weren’t there, heard voices in the silence, and felt a presence
other than her own and his.

“No,” she said firmly, tightening her jaw
and fighting the adrenaline rushing into her bloodstream. “No.” She
would not give into rampant confusion and the terror it would
bring.

A vague sensation, like a touch, tugged at
her sleeve, and she whirled around.
Back off, Jack
, she
growled from some deep place in her mind.
He is mine. You
cannot have him
.

She turned back to Kit. Using every grain of
strength and every shred of will she had left, she hauled him to
his feet, only to find her last inch of strength wasn’t enough. He
slipped back against the wall.

Breathing heavily, she rested her forehead
on his and began to pray and curse in a litany of desperation, her
hands wrapped around the collar of his tunic.

“Dear God . . . help me . . . help me get
this stupid son of a bitch and two fathers to his feet . . . Excuse
me, Melanie. No offense and nothing personal intended.” She pulled
him up and pressed her chest against his to hold him. “Damn you . .
. Kit Carson, you better find whatever the hell it is you just
lost, like your consciousness, or I’ll drag you out of here by your
feet. You hear that? Your feet. And on this floor that’s going to
be one poor way to go.” She shoved her shoulder beneath his arm and
felt her knees give way. She locked them, trapping herself into
immobility. “Last chance, outlaw,” she hissed between her teeth.
“Come to, or suffer the consequences.”

His knee bumped hers in a feeble, unfinished
step, but it was enough.

Four months later…

Kristine swirled around the dance floor on
her father’s arm, a vision in yards of white lace and satin. She
was primped, coiffured, curled, powdered, and lipsticked to within
an inch of her life. Rouge had been unnecessary; she glowed like a
full-blown rose.

Across the room, her very own husband was
waltzing with her mother. Muriel glowed a little herself, even if
the man she danced with was not who she might have chosen for her
daughter, a man wearing a white tunic lightly embroidered down the
front in gold thread, a melange of anciently inscribed gold
bracelets, and roan braid that hung below his shoulder blades. It
was the biggest wedding her family had ever pulled off.

The Golden Plum, the finest caterer in
northern Colorado, had plied the guests with champagne and
strawberries, pricy treats of shrimp and lobster without a chicken
breast or Swedish meatball in sight, and the tiniest little
sandwiches Kristine had ever seen. The cake was four tiers of
chocolate confection draped and laden with white frosting and
candied violets to match her eyes. She and Kit had already vowed to
eat themselves into indulgence and beyond on the leftovers.

They had a band, practically an orchestra.
They’d rented the country club hall and had it decked to decadence
in cascades of white carnations and lavender—to match her eyes. Up
by the bandstand, an undeniably gaudy display had her and Kit’s
initials intertwined in pink rosebuds within a heart of baby
iris—to match her eyes. Her bouquet was white roses, baby’s breath,
and orchids of a color to match her eyes.

This was her wedding, and Kristine knew she
was only going to get two. She’d wanted to do this one with pomp
and circumstance, and her father hadn’t balked at the price.

Kit had insisted on buying all those flowers
that matched her eyes, and she loved them, each and every one.
She’d privately paid the caterer, but the band was her father’s,
all twenty pieces of it.

Jenny and her mother had taken over her
dress and the bridesmaids’ apparel with a vengeance. Denver had
never seen such a burning commitment to shopping. The two older
women had lost five pounds apiece, though Jenny swore she’d lost
six.”

“Mrs. Carson?”

Her father whirled her around and into her
husband’s arms.

“Yes, Mr. Carson?” She grinned up at
him.

“I have married you twice,
patni
,
once under the Eyes of Buddha, and once in the way decreed by your
Christian Bible, though I doubt God had a hundred guests and four
tiers of cake in mind as additions, and still you keep your secret
from me. This is not the manner of a good wife.” He arched one brow
at her.

He had married her under the Eyes of Buddha,
literally, in a monastery tucked into the highlands of the
Forbidden Kingdom of Mustang, now a province of Nepal and once his
home. A wizened lama with a sparse gray beard had given them their
vows while Kit had lain on what she feared would be his
deathbed.

She’d gotten him out of Chatren-Ma, but
she’d never told him how. Looking at him now, with his skin
returned to its normal healthy color and the energy of his
life-force surrounding her, she knew she never would. To tell him
was an invitation to disaster. He wanted to go back.

“You’ll never get it out of me,” she said,
flashing him another smile. The secret was locked in her heart, and
she’d learned how to keep her thoughts to herself.

In answer, he swung her up into his arms,
his own grin turning sly. “I have a secret, also, Kreestine. One it
would do you well to learn. Maybe we can trade, eh?”

He strode out of the ballroom with long sure
strides, but Kristine barely noticed they were leaving.

He had a secret? From her? She doubted it.
She’d spent two weeks in that monastery cooling his heated brow and
talking to every monk not under a vow of silence. She’d learned
plenty, some of which she could have done without.

The gold mask, for instance, had been a gift
from an Asian princess in the throes of unrequited love. The
semiprecious stones and the luxurious sheepskin spread on his bed
had been the not-so-subtle offering of a wealthy Indian woman to
the monastery. She’d wanted to “buy” herself a house-boy, and had
chosen Kit from the ranks of novices not destined for a life of
pure faith. He’d been fifteen. Kristine had figured the rest out on
her own, and decided she would have run away too.

She’d found another of his secrets in his
saddlebags, and she’d laughed until the tears rolled down her face,
a much-needed stress reliever that had left her sobbing in a huddle
on the ground. She’d been so afraid he would die.

Days later, after his fever had broken,
she’d found the humor again and wondered how the Turk was liking
his new haircut.

“What secret?” she asked Kit now, her arms
wrapped around his neck.

“A trade, nothing less.” He set her back on
her feet by their new car, a Cadillac of all things. He’d toured
every showroom, then surprised her by opting for what he called an
“American thoroughbred.” Barbarian, indeed, she’d thought to
herself. The man had impeccably refined taste. It had taken her all
of two minutes to get used to traveling in style.

She looked around the parking lot. “We can’t
leave, Kit. It’s our party.”

“The secret,
patni
.” He pressed
against her and seared her with a kiss. Damn the man, she thought,
he knew all her soft spots—his kisses and her curiosity.

“You first.” She sighed the words along the
line of his jaw, stealing more kisses on the way.

“You will have our child.”

There he went again, stunning her into
silence.

“Well—well yes,” she stammered when she
recovered. “Someday, no doubt, we’ll have children and—”

“Nine months, Kreestine.” His hand slid
across her tummy. “In nine months you will have this child.”

“Impossible,” she gasped. “You can’t know
that.”

“This I know, and more.” He kissed her
cheek.

“More?” She angled her head back to look up
into eyes soft with mystery, and her voice lowered to an
incredulous whisper. “You know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Yes.” A rogue’s smile teased his mouth.
“But for this knowledge there is a price.”

“No.” She forced herself to say no. She
couldn’t . . . wouldn’t . . . pregnant? With his baby?
Unconsciously she covered his hand with hers. “Make me a promise.”
She had to know.

“I will not return without you, I promise. I
will prepare myself in a manner to lessen the effect of the cavern,
I promise. There are ways. And I promise our . . . child, will only
need one father to see him, or her, through life. All these things
I promise.”

She took a deep breath. He never broke a
promise. “I think you’ve already realized that I must have found
another way out of, and consequently into, Chatren-Ma.”

“Yes.”

“The only people who ever need to go back
into the caverns again is a spelunking team, hopefully under the
auspices of a certified historical and archaeological
expedition.”

“Yes,” he agreed patiently. When she didn’t
continue, he prompted her. “The way, Kreestine?”

“Do you know how many cells are in the
monastery?”

“About a hundred, not counting the shrines,
meeting rooms, work areas, and kitchen,” he answered, giving her a
quizzical look.

“It’s common sense, Kit,” she said. “A
hundred men, monks, without nary a woman to tote and clean for
them, would not have hauled their water through that maze of paths,
tunnels, and traps of emptiness day after day after day. They would
have built something, like plumbing, or a viaduct, or at least a
shortcut to the river.”

His eyes widened. “You found a path to the
river?”

“It used to be a path, now it’s a
rockslide.”

“You destroyed a path to the river?”

“I was desperate, and at the time, and to
this day, I’m very grateful we didn’t go down with the rocks,
though that might have been quicker than walking over them. Your
turn.” An expectant—very expectant—smile lit her face. She thought
she was finished. He didn’t.

“What is the location of the path inside the
monastery?”

“Kit,” she warned.

“Our child will probably lead such an
expedition,
patni
. He should know these things.”

“He?”

“A son,” he confirmed with a smile, taking
her back into his arms. “Our son.”

She held him for all she was worth, brimming
with happiness. Then she stretched up on tiptoe and whispered in
his ear, “Ninth cell east of the granary on the north side.”

The adventure of life with the outlaw
Carson, it seemed, would never end.

* * * * * * * * *

Read on for excerpts from
Shameless
and
The Dragon and the
Dove

The brick wall was hot against Colton
Haines’s back, seared by a Wyoming summer sun and burning through
his shirt. It was support, though, hard and reliable, a place to
get what he couldn’t find elsewhere.

A mist of fine dust kicked up at the end of
the alley and sheeted by him in its journey east, blown by a
ceaseless wind. He swiped at a tear with the back of his hand,
hating the weakness in himself even more than he hated the tears’
cause. The dampness mixed with the sandy grit on his knuckles,
making a patch of salty mud he wiped off on his jeans.

He couldn’t stand in the alley, leaning
against the back wall of Atlas Drugs, and cry. He couldn’t. He’d
driven the ten miles into town to get to
her
.

Sarah.

His chest constricted on a sudden breath,
and he squeezed his eyes shut to hold back another tear. She had
never betrayed him, not from the very beginning, not like his
mother, who’d just betrayed everything.

He needed Sarah’s loyalty like a lifeline.
In return she deserved a man, not a twenty-year-old boy crying
because his mother was—He didn’t know what to call it, not even in
the privacy of his own mind. “Taking a caller” was the best he
could do, and even that hurt. He couldn’t think about it, no more
than he could stand there and cry about it.

He pushed off the wall, propelled by his
anger, and walked over to use the water spigot. As he crouched next
to the running stream of cool water, his glance raked the endless
expanse of prairie surrounding the town of Rock Creek. A herd of
antelope grazed less than a hundred yards away from the main
street, proof of the town’s lack of worth. His mouth tightened.
Rock Creek didn’t even have enough civilization to hold back a herd
of skittish wild animals.

And he’d thought it was the neatest damn
place on earth. He made a short sound of disgust and rose to his
feet.