Rexanne Becnel (34 page)

“I didn’t know you were the one I was looking for. In the beginning … in the beginning I was attracted to you. If I misled you, well, I’m sorry. But once I found out you were who you are, I kept my distance. Or at least I tried.”

Abby raised her chin and tried to breathe slowly, regularly. He was attracted to her until he found out her true identity. Could this be true? Could she trust him?

“If that’s so,” she began in a carefully controlled voice, “why should things be any different now that you know my real name?”

It was Tanner’s turn to look uncomfortable. “You’re Willard Hogan’s granddaughter,” he replied as if that should explain everything.

“That doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

“Well, it should. And it will once you meet him.”

“He’s not going to run my life,” Abby countered. “I’ve had enough of other people trying to run my life. My father. You.”

He nodded slightly, almost apologetically, then took a step nearer her. “If I could have convinced you to go back without kidnapping you, I would have.”

Around them the twilight gathered, soft and cool. Abby stared at Tanner. He was just an arm’s length away, close enough to touch. When he spoke so directly to her, so honestly, it seemed the connection between them could grow stronger and stronger. If he would just let it.

“Tanner.” His name came out like a sigh, like a fervent wish, although she did not realize it.

He responded with a frown. “Don’t, Abby. Don’t make things worse than they already are. You don’t realize how different your life in Chicago is going to be.”

“I don’t want to live in Chicago.”

“You don’t know what kind of man I am, then.”

Abby pressed her lips together, not sure how her anger had turned around so swiftly—not sure she wasn’t trying to seduce him. Oh, when had she abandoned her moral upbringing?

“I
do
know what kind of man you are. You saved my life—not once, but twice.”

He laughed, a short, unpleasant sound that held no hint of mirth. “I was protecting my investment, Abby. Nothing more.”

“Not the first time. Not when Carl and I were surrounded by those snakes.”

He looked away from her and she saw his chest rise then fall in a slow sigh. “I was trying to impress a pretty woman. Nothing more, nothing less.”

He was being deliberately evasive, and Abby couldn’t bear it. “Why are you doing this?” she cried in complete frustration.

He swore fluently. “Because somebody’s got to be sensible, and you’re sure as hell not doing it!” His fists clenched, then relaxed, and he ran both hands through his hair.

“Listen, Abby. You’re making me into some kind of hero. But I’m not. I’m a bounty hunter. I hunt down people for money. I’m not educated like you and I never read the classics.”

“But you knew about Venus,” Abby countered, not wanting the things he said to be true.

“A story I heard during the two years I more or less went to school. I use it as a line with women. It always works,” he added pointedly. When her face fell in disappointment, he pressed on. “My mother was a prostitute, Abby. A
whore. I grew up watching a stream of men go in and out of her bed. But it gets better,” he said, advancing on her as he warmed to his story. “One of them killed her when I was fourteen. So I killed
him.
And I’ve killed other men too.”

He smiled, a cold grimace that made him a stranger to her, a man she didn’t know and shouldn’t want to. “Your father was right about me all along. You should have listened to him while you had the chance.”

He reached out a hand to tilt her chin up, and Abby flinched at the gesture. His smile changed then, and for an instant she was certain she saw regret—and sorrow. He didn’t want her to be afraid of him, even though he was doing everything he could to scare some sense into her.

That realization, coupled with the power of his simple, seemingly impersonal touch, chased away all that fear and uncertainty. In that moment she knew he was afraid of his feelings, too, and uncertain about her.

Without weighing the consequences she stepped inside the curve of his arm and pressed up against him. Her arms slipped around his waist and she stared straight up into his shocked and wary eyes.

For one long second he went completely still. His hand had slid to her cheek when she’d moved near, and he cupped her face now with surprising tenderness. Then he let out a pained groan, and any tenderness was swept away by the violence of his embrace. He crushed her against him like a wild man, clutching at her, devouring her with his hands and then with his mouth. Their lips came together in a crescendo of emotions, and Abby let herself be swept along in the overwhelming tide. It was terrifying and wonderful, desperate and thrilling. He forced her mouth open, then took swift possession with his tongue, searing her inner lips with his bold thrust, demanding that she grant him every right, every privilege.

But Abby wanted as much from him. She accepted his need to dominate her in that moment, yet found a way to conquer him by her very submission. She coaxed him to greater liberties, to a hotter fire. She curled her fingers in his hair and held him remorselessly. Then she rubbed her breasts against him, meeting the urgent pressure of his loins with her own softness.

When they broke apart, gasping for breath, she knew a sweet victory, a delicious sense of power that made being a woman the most glorious thing she could ever hope to be.

But her victory was short-lived. Their eyes met in complete concert, then in a blink he seemed to come awake. As if he’d let himself dream for an instant, then abruptly come back to reality.

“Son of a bitch!”

He thrust her back from him, holding her a stiff, unyielding arm’s length away. He struggled for breath and for words. “Don’t ever do that again, woman. Do you understand me? Never!”

Abby shook her head, not willing to back down when she was so close to breaking through to him. “I want you, Tanner McKnight. And you want me, too.”

He let go of her as if she were on fire, and backed up with a haste that would have been laughable if it weren’t so heartbreakingly sad.

“Forget it, Abby. You and me—” He broke off, shaking his head vehemently. “Christ, what an ass I’ve been.”

Abby hugged her arms across her chest. She was taking a huge chance, assuming Tanner could care for her as she cared for him. But if she didn’t try, she’d never know. Still, she was charting new territory, lost in a strange landscape with love as her new and perhaps unreliable guide.

Ignoring her galloping heartbeat, she took a shaky breath. “The thing is, I love you.”

The night seemed to rise up around them in the silent aftermath of her words. The dark seeped up like a fog overtaking the land, chilling the world. And as the silence lengthened, it chilled her too.

“You don’t love me,” he countered in a flat tone that revealed nothing. His eyes, too, hid whatever he really felt. “You’ve felt a passion for me. Desire. But neither of those has anything to do with love.” Then he turned away, and that more than what he’d said struck her as cruelly as a mortal blow.

“Perhaps you feel that way. Perhaps you can do what … what we did with any woman who makes herself available to you. But I couldn’t. I could never make love with a man I did not love.”

He turned his head, just enough to see her, to see all her emotions laid open for him to examine and weigh and reject. The last of her pride was stripped from her. The last of her self-respect. Yet she clung still to the touch of his eyes on her in the hope—the desperate hope—that he would take back everything he’d said and profess his love, just as she had done.

His jaw flexed once, then again beneath the shadow of two days’ stubble of beard. “You don’t love me, Abby. Once you’re in Chicago, you’ll realize it’s true. It wasn’t love at all, just lust.”

“Y
OU RIDE ON TULIP.”

It was the first words he’d spoken to her since their disastrous confrontation the night before, and it fell like one more lethal blow to her heart. But you couldn’t kill something—or someone—that was already dead, Abby decided grimly.

She didn’t respond to him, just swiftly finished plaiting her hair, then jammed her battered straw hat on her head. Her stomach knotted, then turned over. He hadn’t protested when she’d not prepared breakfast. He’d eaten a handful of crackers, stuffed a length of jerky into one of his pockets, and drank two cups of cold coffee. But Abby had been unable to eat. Now she watched as he reapportioned their supplies between the two patient animals. Though she was relieved that she would not have to ride with him any longer, she was nonetheless infuriated to be once again rejected.

She refused to help him in any aspect of this forced journey. On principle. But she kept a close eye on him, and once he finished with Tulip and turned toward Mac, she shoved her comb and brush into her small carpetbag and slung it over the saddle horn. Then without waiting for his assistance, she half jumped, half dragged herself up onto the saddle and fumbled to fit her feet into the stirrups.

She’d never ridden much, at least not until the past couple of days. But between her newly acquired experience and her determination to show Tanner up, there was no room left for fear. With reins in hand she gave Tulip an experimental kick, and they were suddenly under way.

“What the hell—”

She heard Tanner’s irritated oath with a certain satisfaction and she leaned forward more confidently. What did he have to be irritated about anyway? She was heading east, wasn’t she? It wasn’t as if she were fleeing back to the wagon train on his horse. Not that she wouldn’t be justified in doing so. But there no longer seemed any reason for her to head for Oregon. She was going to Chicago. She would hear what her mother’s father had to say. But from now on she was going to chart her own course. Be her own woman. She would become a writer and follow her own muse no matter what anyone else wanted her to do.

Tulip headed down the long slope of a hill, ambling with hardly any limp through a sea of dock and sedge grass. Behind her, Abby could hear Mac’s snort, then the thud of the bigger animal following at a canter.

She had decided during the long, sleepless night that the sooner she got to Chicago, the sooner she’d be rid of Tanner—and the constant reminder of what a fool she’d made of herself. She’d wept copious tears of self-pity, then plotted myriad vengeful plans to get even with him. In the end, however, she’d had to admit, if only to herself, that the loss of her virginity and the breaking of her heart were both, in their own perverse ways, rather liberating events. What did she have to fear now? She was ruined both for marriage and for love.

“Don’t ride off without me again.”

Abby ignored his angry order when he drew up beside her. She planned to ignore him all the way to Chicago. But she didn’t intend to let him ignore her. Oh, no. Let him rant and rave and order her about all he wanted. She would make him very sorry he’d ever thrown her love for him back in her face. She wasn’t sure quite how she was going to do it yet. But she knew she would.

They made good time, keeping a steady pace through the morning until the sun was a hot, hazy ball standing straight overhead. A constant breeze out of the northwest kept them reasonably cool, and at least here, away from the well-traveled trail, there was no dust. Even her legs were not as tired as they had been the past two days. Tulip was a smaller horse than Mac and easier for Abby to ride astride.

Still she was more than ready for a break when they spied the green outline of trees snaking through the otherwise treeless sea of tall grasses. A sure sign of water and shade.

She urged Tulip ahead, though the little mare was more than eager once she scented water. By the time Tanner rode into the dappled copse of box elder and ash, Abby had dismounted and was removing her heavy pegged boots. She flung her hat aside, rolled her sleeves up, then boldly hitched the back of her calico skirt up between her legs and tucked it securely into the front of her waistband. Then still ignoring Tanner, she waded up to her knees in the shallow waters of the lively creek.

It felt divine. If she could have stripped down to nothing and plunged fully into the refreshing water, she would gladly have done so.

And how would Tanner react to that, she wondered bitterly. She sent him a sidelong glance, then froze when she found his gaze fastened intently upon her. She looked away at once, but goose
bumps rose up on her arms and legs. From the chill of the stream, she preferred to believe, but she could not wholly convince herself.

Nonetheless she was heartened to know that desire at least still burned in him. That one night had not exhausted it for him either. It scared her to think of the consequences should she try further to entice him. But then, what precisely did she have to lose?

As if totally unaware of his proximity, she lifted her skirt above one of her knees and with her other hand cupped water to trickle on the warm flesh she’d just exposed. She did the same with the other leg, boldly displaying her anatomy in the most shameful yet exhilarating manner imaginable. She was both refreshed and overheated by what she did. But how was Tanner reacting to it?

She dared a peek at him when she bent down to splash her arms, only to be frustrated anew. He’d turned away. In the same way he’d ignored her all day, he acted as if she were not even there.

She sent his broad back a venomous glare, but he was unaffected. He only lifted one set of saddlebags from Mac, then squatted down to remove a tin of crackers from the bag.

“Jerusalem,” she swore, then nearly lost her footing in the uncertain creek bottom.

Tanner heard her softly muttered curse, but it hardly eased his mind. It only meant that the seductive pose she’d struck wasn’t an accident. She’d meant to draw his eye with the exposure of her legs and knees. She’d meant to arouse his lust. And dammit, the little minx had succeeded.

Hell, but he’d opened up a hornet’s next when he’d seduced the very prim Miss Abigail Bliss. A Pandora’s box, he decided, remembering another of those mythological stories he’d listened to so avidly all those years ago. He’d opened the closed door to her natural sensuality and now he was going to have to pay the price. Almost two weeks of travel ahead of them and he would need to be on his guard the entire time.