Rexanne Becnel (17 page)

He gave her a halfhearted grin. “I’m fine, Abby. It’s nothing that won’t heal.”

“I … I never really thanked you. For saving me—and little Carl from those snakes.”

“No. You didn’t.”

At that unexpected response Abby tried to decipher his expression. Was he teasing her? But his face was serious and his eyes … his eyes held her enthralled. Mesmerized. Caught in a web of uncertain emotion.

“Thank you,” she managed to whisper, though her mouth was suddenly as dry as the vast land that surrounded them, and every thought seemed to flee her head. “Thank you.”

He frowned slightly. Was he in pain?

“Could you come in here?”

Abby was inside the cramped wagon in a moment. “What’s wrong? Where does it hurt?”

He looked up at her from his seat on her bed. Their gazes held once more, and his glittering stare roused the most inappropriate feelings inside her. She felt a flame of color rise in her cheeks, but she could not look away.

“I hurt—I hurt deep inside,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“Your ribs?” Abby took a step nearer so that they were but inches apart.

Tanner’s eyes moved down to her lips for one agonizingly long moment. When he again met her eyes, she knew he must see every one of her emotions clearly written in her face: how she yearned for him, how she wanted him to feel the same toward her. And for a moment she could believe he did, for the deep navy of his eyes seemed to burn with a hot blue fire. Those eyes seared her with their scorching intensity. Then he caught her hand in his, and with the faintest of pressure drew her so close, their knees
bumped.

“Kiss away my pain,” he ordered in a low, beguiling voice. “Kiss me, Abby.”

She should not. Yet all the lessons of a lifetime disappeared at Tanner’s softly worded request. Kiss him. Why not? She wanted to—oh, God, how she wanted to. And he wanted it also.

Abby bent to the tug of both his hand and her heart. She leaned forward, caught by his compelling gaze and the urgent needs of her own femininity. She’d been aching to kiss him again, ever since that first time.

Her eyes closed when their lips touched. So gentle. So light and fleeting. Merely the press of skin to skin. Yet it was infinitely more.

Then the wagon lurched—just another rut in the well-worn road west. But Abby almost lost her balance. She braced herself with a hand on his shoulder and he steadied her with a hand at her waist. Two more simple touches, yet they changed the tenor of the kiss entirely. This time he slid his lips back and forth along hers, and she responded from some wellspring of repressed emotions. She leaned into the kiss, and when he nipped at her lower lip, then soothed the same spot with his tongue, she opened to him on a long, welcoming sigh.

Abby heard a faint moan of passion. Did it come from her? But it didn’t matter. Tanner’s mouth took possession of hers and she melted against him. His tongue slid within her mouth, stroking boldly, stoking her hidden passions into a hungry fire. His hand slipped around her waist to pull her between his legs and up against his chest.

Relying solely on her feminine instincts, Abby’s hands cupped his face as she bent down to kiss him. His other arm circled her, holding her most intimately just below her derriere.

“Tanner,” she gasped, lifting her head from his. But her fingers remained entwined in his long, damp hair.

“I still hurt,” he murmured, his voice husky, his eyes alive with passion. He slid one hand over her derriere, slowly, provocatively, until Abby thought she would burst into flames beneath his touch.

“Oh!” she breathed, unable to be any more coherent than that. No one had ever touched her derriere before. No one had ever told her how it would make her feel, not even Solomon in his many verses. Then Tanner’s hand moved down again, and somehow she found herself sitting on his lap.

At his slight grunt of pain she tried to get up. What in heaven’s name did he think he was doing? What did she think
she
was doing?

But Tanner held her there. “Kiss me. Quick,” he added. “I’m hurting bad.”

She did as he asked, though the sensible side of her knew her kiss would have no impact whatsoever on his physical ailments. But that sensible side of her, that rational, logical part of her, was fast disappearing. In its stead appeared some other emotional creature, some wanton, full of strange desires and foolish longings.

She kissed him, held close in their intimate embrace. She kissed him, opening her mouth to the exquisite assault of his tongue, meeting his probing shyly at first, then more boldly. Her arms wound around his shoulders and neck as he fitted their mouths together even better.

Abby noted only vaguely that every place he touched seemed to incite her raging emotions to ever higher peaks. Her arm. Her knee. When he leaned her back, then hovered over her, kissing her senseless, pressing her into her own familiar sheets and pillows, she clasped him to her with unfettered enthusiasm. Then his hand slid up her side to cup her right breast and the entire world seemed to stand still.

The entire world, that is, except for the wagon. At a sharp whistle the wagon began a slow turn. Then her father’s shout, “Giddap, Mark. Giddap!” pierced her consciousness, and her eyes flew open in alarm.

Tanner’s face was mere inches above hers. His hand still curved around her breast.

In the heated silence they stared at each other, both struggling with a passion that had almost gotten out of control.

Abby closed her eyes and groaned in dismay.
Almost
gotten out of control?
Almost!
Dear God, what had she done?

At once Tanner straightened up, though his hand was slow to leave her bodice front. They sat that way for a moment. Or rather, she lay, her legs across his thighs. Then with another small, embarrassed sound Abby swung her legs around and leaped up as if she’d just been scalded.

She nearly fell, her legs were so unsteady. But she held onto the tent bracing and stepped as far back from him as the crowded interior would allow. What was she to say now?

“Ah, damn. I’m sorry about that, Abby.”

She glanced hesitantly at him, knowing her cheeks were aflame.
He
was sorry? “Why?” she blurted out without thinking.

Tanner raked both hands through his hair and shifted on the bed as if he were uncomfortable. Then he looked up at her. “I don’t usually take advantage of innocents.”

Abby swallowed hard. Should she be upset or relieved by his words? “Who
do
you usually take advantage of?”

Only when he laughed did she realize how awkwardly that had come out. “I try not to take advantage of any woman. But if you’re asking who else I’ve … kissed like that,” he finished after a brief hesitation. “It doesn’t matter who they were. It didn’t mean anything anyway.”

Feeling like a fool already, Abby decided to complete the role. “Did this mean anything?”

At her softly worded question his eyes searched her face. Then the wagon came to an abrupt halt, and for a few seconds the canvas top swayed above them. Her father’s bark broke in. “Abigail. Come along, daughter. Time to make camp.”

Suddenly Abby was afraid to hear Tanner’s answer. She turned toward the back of the wagon, but he caught her wrist before she could escape. For a long moment their gazes clung, and she fancied his was as fearful as her own.

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I don’t know.” Then he let her wrist fall, and turned away.

Abby wanted to say something. That it had meant something to
her.
That it had meant everything. But she was afraid to appear too bold. He wasn’t looking for a woman like her, he’d once told her. But if she could just be patient, just bide her time and not lose her head and perhaps drive him away…

With quiet efficiency she smoothed her blouse and straightened her skirts before leaping down to the ground. She gave Eenie an affectionate pat, but her mind was preoccupied. She feared her father would be able to tell at once from her flustered expression what had just happened between her and Tanner.

To her surprise, however, it was Dexter she ran into first.

“How is your patient?” he asked, his expression noncommittal. He had a good face for a preacher, she realized. Nonjudgmental.

“He is … well, in some discomfort. But there doesn’t appear to be anything broken.” She pushed a loose curl back from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “How is my father?”

Dexter stared at her through dark, serious eyes. “His soul is in pain. Your mother,” he added when her eyes widened in concern. “He mourns her, and yet …”

“And yet?”

He shrugged. “I feel sometimes that it’s more than that. That he’s keeping some secret, some pain he’s not ready to share with anyone just yet.”

“I’ve thought the same thing.” For a moment Abby was tempted to tell him about their use of the name Morgan, when their real name was Bliss. Maybe Dexter could get her father to open up to him if he knew about that. But her father appeared from around the wagon and she was prevented from acting on that idea.

“I’ve invited Reverend Harrison to sup with us,” he announced, challenging her with his lowered brows to counter his words.

But Abby couldn’t have been more pleased. “How nice that will be.” She smiled at her father and the lanky, bearded reverend. How nice that she would not have to keep the peace between her father and Tanner all alone. How nice that she would have a less threatening person to converse with, for she was not at all certain how she would be able to face Tanner again. She smiled. “Well, I’d better get started.”

While Dexter helped her father unhitch the three oxen, then lead them and the limping Eenie away, Abby built the cooking fire. She folded down the table, fetched water, and performed myriad other chores. But she avoided any task that might require that she climb back into the wagon. Though she knew she couldn’t put it off forever, she simply did not know what she was going to say to him. How she should behave.

Then a thud and a muffled curse came from within the wagon, and her heart began to pound. “Do you need any help?” she called in a tentative tone.

“No.”

Another thud sounded, and the wagon creaked with his movements. “Son of a bitch!”

Abby pressed her lips together in panic. He was coming out. Despite her nervousness, however, she moved to meet him. He would need a helping hand.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” she scolded when he teetered at the tail of the wagon. His weight was all on his good leg while he held one arm pressed to his bruised side. Somehow he’d managed to put a clean pair of trousers on as well as his boots. But his shirt hung out of his pants and he looked as if the effort to dress had cost him dearly. “I can bring you your supper inside the tent.”

He snorted. “I might be able to eat in there, and sleep and bathe too. But there are some things better done elsewhere.”

Once Abby caught his meaning, blood rushed scarlet to her cheeks. He needed … some privacy. She swallowed her embarrassment as best she could and moved nearer him. But she couldn’t look at him.

“Lean on me. I’ll help you get down.”

Somehow they managed, though not without a few grunts of pain from him. Once on the ground he let out another muffled curse. One of his arms rested heavily over her shoulder, and her arm encircled his waist. As she disentangled herself from him, she couldn’t help saying, “Please don’t curse. If my father hears you …”

“He’ll leave me sitting in the dirt, crippled or not,” he finished for her.

“I don’t think he’d go that far.”

Tanner grimaced, then hobbled toward the thigh-high grasses beyond the rutted wagon track. “I’ll try to remember,” he called over his shoulder. He planted his hat on his head as he limped off, his broad shoulders dipping with every step.

As encounters went, Abby wasn’t entirely disappointed. Better to have him grouchy than amorous, she supposed. But her eyes lingered on him, and even as she returned to her work, she couldn’t help periodically sending searching glances for him. What would happen the next time they were truly alone? Should she avoid such a circumstance, or should she seek it out?

She added salt and pepper to the water heating over the fire, then the chopped onion grass she’d picked several days ago in a pretty valley just past Fort Kearney. But her mundane tasks left her mind free to wander, and her thoughts returned again and again to one subject alone. Tanner had kissed her and touched her—and thrilled her—in a way she’d not known was possible. The very idea that she could maneuver them into a situation where that could happen again …

A heated knot tightened in her belly at the thought.

She took a shaky breath and blew it out, then did it again. She knew she had to get these unseemly urges under control, but it was practically impossible. Tanner would be with them for several days. There would be so many opportunities for them to be alone.

“I don’t want you alone with that man.”

Abby jerked upright at her father’s curt remark. Were her immodest thoughts so clearly written on her face? She might have argued with him, but one glance at his glowering expression told her that she would get nowhere with him just now. “Yes, Papa,” she murmured, though somewhat grudgingly.

He stared at her for several seconds, then nodded and moved to the wagon gate. Once he had their three chairs pulled out, he lowered himself into one of them. “He’s too coarse a man for you, Abigail, no matter what you say about him having read the classics. The fact that he can read—if that is even the truth—doesn’t make him suitable.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she replied. She thrust the heavy skillet onto the struggling fire and slapped a spoon of bacon grease into it. “You’ve made your opinion clear. What I don’t understand is why you dislike him so. You disliked him from the minute you laid eyes on him. You’ve never given him a chance.”

“He’s a hired gun, daughter. A man who makes his living on the basis of how good he is with his weapons.”

“But we all benefit from that. He hunts for all of us. And I bet you’d be mighty grateful for his hired gun if we were to be attacked by Indians.”

“That’s not the point,” he thundered. “Do you honestly think that’s all he’s ever hunted? Did you ever wonder how he got so good with a gun? He excels at violence because he is a man of violence—” He broke off in a fit of coughing. But for the first few seconds Abby did not respond. Then as his face grew red and he doubled over, she leaped forward in chagrin.