Renegade Bride (42 page)

"Oh, yes, thank God... indeed." She turned to go, but his voice stopped her.

"Mariah, I know you're upset about the Lochries, but that's not why you're so angry. What else?"

She sniffed and kept her face turned away.

"What the hell did that old biddy say to you?"

She sent him a haughty look, bordering on tears. "I hardly think I need to remind you of your exploits. You are, after all, the talk of the brothel. Not to mention," she added with a sniff, "the dress shop."

He took a step back, as though she'd punched him. "Mariah, I know Desiree, I admit, but—"

"Know her," she parroted with a bitter laugh. "In a strictly biblical sense, you mean."

Creed's expression darkened and he took her elbow again, this time dragging her into the lobby of the hotel. "Come on."

"What are you—? Let go of me." She tripped on the carpet inside the door, but he held her up. Her feet barely touched the floor as he whisked her past the two leather-covered settees parked in the lobby. "Creed!"

"We're going somewhere more private to discuss this before someone hears us fighting and gets the wrong idea."

The desk clerk watched open-mouthed as Creed dragged her across the foyer toward the hallway to her room. The rail-thin man cleared his throat timidly. "Uh... Miss Parsons? Is... uh, is everything all right?"

"She's fine," Creed snapped, cutting off her gasp of protest. "Mind your own damn business!"

The desk clerk drew in his chin and resettled his wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose.

Mariah's skirts tangled with Creed's trunk-like thighs as he hustled her toward her door. His fingers cut into her upper arm. He yanked her to a stop in front of room sixteen. "Where's your key?"

"You're hurting me," she told him, looking pointedly at his hand. When he let her go, she released the breath she'd been holding.

"You're not coming in," she said defiantly. "And how do you know this is my room? Have you been following me? Is that how you happened to be standing outside the dressmaker's shop today?"

"What if I have?"

She searched for the proper curse, but failed. "Well, don't. I don't want you following me."

With a look that would have put goose flesh on a snake's skin, Creed backed her into the door and placed one arm on either side of her shoulders, effectively trapping her, yet leaving a hand's span between them. The gown in her arms slid to the floor unnoticed. There was a restrained violence in his eyes, the kind that made her fear for her safety and sanity.

Mariah gulped and pressed her back against the hard surface behind her. Her pulse, already rapid from running, cranked up another notch and a low ache started in her belly. He smelled of fresh air and male sweat, and there was just a hint of alcohol and tobacco on his breath. He didn't touch her.

He didn't have to.

Simply standing this close to him made her limbs turn to gelatin and had her thinking thoughts she'd sworn never to think again. Damn him, damn him!

"What you want, Mariah, is not always what's good for you." His whiskey-raw voice slid inside her bones and kindled an irreverent heat. What made it all the worse, she thought, was that he could still make her react like this after everything she'd just learned about him.

It made her want to sit down and cry her eyes out, or scream at the sky. But she could barely breathe, so she simply stared at him with her trembling chin held high.

"Now," he went on, "you will tell me what has you so upset." He inched threateningly closer. "Tell me."

Her lip quivered. "How c-could you?"

"How could I what?"

"Go to that... that woman after... after... what we—" She dropped her gaze to the floor. "You were barely in town before you ran to her bed."

Creed blinked and his scowl deepened. "Who told you that?"

"What does it matter?"

"Desiree's a friend, Mariah—"

She snorted.

"—and I did go to see her that first night, after Sadie's. But not for what you think. I was drunk. We only talked."

Her gaze leapt to his like a wild flame. "Talked? You must think I'm very naive to believe—"

He slammed an open palm against the door next to her ear, rattling it in its frame and making her jump. "You can believe whatever you damn well please," he growled. "And since when am I answerable to you, anyway?
Sacre bleu
! You're the one marrying another man. If anyone has the right to be jealous, it's me!" He shoved away from the door and paced to the opposite wall, banging his hand there, too, as if that would assuage the irreconcilable rage inside him.

"Jealous!" She gathered herself to her full height. "You told me to marry Seth."

"
Mais oui
, but I don't have to like it." The words rushed out before he could stop them and the two of them stared at each other in stunned silence.

Like a plant reaching for sunlight, Creed's gaze drifted to her breasts, which rose and fell rapidly beneath the blue gingham fabric of her gown. A fleeting memory of his fingertips drifting over those soft breasts tightened his groin and made him wish he'd never gotten this close to her again.

He looked at her, his face registering guilt.

Mariah sucked in a breath as his gaze took her in. As if she could hear his thoughts, she knew what he'd been remembering. She was remembering it, too.

What are we doing?
she wondered.
What makes us think we can leave each other and forget what was between us? There will never be another man who will make me feel this way.

Never.

Creed jerked away from her, pacing back and forth in the narrow hallway, grinding a fist into his palm. "Don't look at me that way."

Tears welled in her eyes. "What way?"

"I can't give you what you want," he nearly shouted, then braced his hands high up on the wall and hung his head between his arms. "But, goddammit, Mariah, I'm only human. You're tearing me apart."

"And you're alone in that, I suppose? As usual. Do you think I'm not hurting as well?"

"What we did was wrong. Dead wrong."

"Not if you love me." It was out before she could call the words back.

Creed's fists curled at his sides as he spun to face her. "Seth is like a brother to me. He saved my life. He trusted me with you. I betrayed him." He grabbed her upper arms and rattled her as if he could shake some sense into her. "Look at me. Take a good, long look at the man you see. A man who would betray a friend like I did. I have nothing to offer a woman like you. Seth can give you everything. There is no choice here, Mariah."

Her eyes flamed in the dim hallway light. "It's so easy for you to talk about choices. What choices do I have? Do you think I want to hurt Seth? Do you think I meant to fall in love with you? Believe me, it was the last thing I intended. But it happened, God help us, it did." Creed's eyes flashed up to hers as if to deny what she'd said, but she rushed on.

"Some things are out of our power to control. You of all people, with that gift of yours, should believe that. It's what brought us together." Her hands went to grasp his arms. "I love you, Creed. Damn your honor! I love you and you love me. Look at me and deny it."

Creed's mouth was only a kiss away, and his gaze searched hers the way a starving man would covet a crumb of bread. His breath, sweet and warm, whispered across her skin in uneven bursts. Reaching up, he slid his hands into her hair and raked through her swept-back tresses as if he were memorizing the feel of her, drawing her fractionally closer to his lips. But his eyes, dark as a wind-tossed sea, betrayed his turmoil. She felt herself drowning.

No. She was lost already. Didn't he know? Couldn't he see? None of those things he thought were so important to her mattered at all. But this... this did.

His thumb traced almost reverently across her parted lips before he shook his head and slammed his eyes shut.

"Creed." The word was a whisper, a plea.

"No." He wrenched himself from her arms, pushing her back against the hallway wall. "No, dammit. Forget me, Mariah. I have nothing to offer you. It's over."

Before she could reply, he turned and strode down the corridor. She watched him go, until he disappeared around the corner, until all she could hear was the sound of his boot heels ringing against the lobby floor and receding out the door.

Mariah sank back against the wooden door for support. Tears squeezed out under her shut eyelids and spilled down her face, unchecked. She could do no more.

It was over. All of it. Over.

* * *

Downing plucked a stem of hay from the haystack and picked at a piece of jerky stuck between his teeth as he watched shadows of evening creep up the barn's rafters. The two men Pierre had recruited into the gang from the Cottonwood Ranch, Quincy and Snake, snored quietly ten feet away, hands folded corpse-like across their chests.

The temperature had dropped with the sun, but despite that, beads of sweat glistened on Pierre's forehead and stained the front of his shirt. Downing wondered absently if Pierre's shoulder was festering. He found the possibility decidedly encouraging.

Crossing his legs at the ankles, he watched LaRousse polish his precious Spencer for the fourth time today. Sucking at his teeth with his tongue, Downing shook his head at the half-breed's obsession with the weapon and looked down at his own sorry old Henry with a sharp twinge of resentment.

"There's another two dozen of them beauties back in camp, in case you forgot," he said, drawing a heated glance from Pierre. "I reckon as how Petey will figger us for dead by now. Might just take it into his head to sell them rifles himself."

"Saa-aa! You seenk too much,
mon ami sans dessein
. You talk too much, too."

Downing sighed, deciding it prudent not to take offense at being called stupid. He wasn't so stupid he hadn't picked up a few words of French from Pierre's ramblings. LaRousse could call him anything he wanted. He'd decided to get the hell out. He was sick and tired of waiting for Pierre to make his move. Finished with hanging around the Gulch like a tethered mallard, waiting for someone to take a potshot at them.

Hell, he couldn't even sneak into a brothel and take advantage of bein' in town, for fear of bein' recognized. No, Pierre had definitely gone over the edge with Devereaux, and he had no intention of followin' him.

"Maybe I should take a stroll outside now that the sun's goin' down. See if I can spot her."

"I know where she ees." His cloth glided up and down the gun's stock the way a man's hand would caress a woman's back. "I know where zey both are."

It shouldn't surprise him that Pierre had his ways of finding things out. He wondered for the first time if Pierre had picked up a fifth man without telling him. It was no skin off his teeth. He shifted tacks. "Well, I'm hungry, an' I'm sick of jerky," he said, getting to his feet in the steep-roofed loft. "I'm gonna go find me some-thin' to eat."

He heard the click of the Spencer's cocking mechanism and looked up to find the rifle pointed at his belly. "What the hell-?"

"Seet down and keep your voice down. No one goes anywhere tonight."

If he thought he stood a chance, Downing would have jumped the son of a bitch right then and there. After all, if he had a fever, maybe he was weak. Downing's gaze assessed the half-breed's blazing black eyes and decided against anything impulsive. He'd never seen a weak bone in LaRousse's body and he dared not assume a little fever might diminish him. He dropped back to the hay pile. "What are we doin' here, sittin' like a pair of fools up in this loft? Somebody's gonna find us here sooner or later."

"Later will be too late," Pierre replied.

Downing pounded his fist in the hay, sending up a cloud of chaff. "You know somethin' I don't know? Well, you just come out an' say it."

Pierre eased the hammer of his rifle back down and smiled. "Tonight,
mon ami sans dessein
, Étienne's death will be avenged."

Chapter 22

"Honey, yer as nervous as a cat teeterin' over the edge of a washbasin," Sadie told Mariah, and patted her hand. The woman gestured at the crowded hallway of Hasty's Livery which had been transformed into a dance floor for their party, complete with punched-tin candle holders hanging on long chains from heavy pine rafters. Brighter lanterns dangled from nails above the empty stalls. The stock had been moved outside for the party.