The Renegades: Cole (12 page)

“What the
hell?
” he said. “Aurora, that’s an insult as long as I’m in your employ.”

“What were you telling me not two days ago? To be able to take care of myself when you’re not around.”

Or when Terrence was around. Was that it? Were things between them going the opposite way from what he’d guessed, and she was trying to get at least one shooter in the family?

One thing he did know about women for sure: they were protective of the people they loved. And, six ways to Sunday, Aurora was out to protect Terrence Peck.

“And don’t be calling Terry a tenderfoot,” she said. “He was born in the West and grew up in Colorado. His father started his ranch there not long after we moved up here and Papa started ours.”

“You don’t say,” Cole drawled, glancing over his shoulder to see the heavily laden Terrence closing in on them. “Well, one thing’s for
damn
sure: he ain’t no Texan.”

To his surprise, instead of rushing to Terry’s defense, she laughed.

“But
I
am, I was born in Nacogdoches. That’s why I have to learn to shoot,” she said lightly, “so I won’t disgrace you and the whole state of Texas in a fight.”

“All right,” he said, though his jaw was stiff with aggravation. “We’ll start as soon as we pick the bedgrounds tonight.”

“No, no. Wait until Terry’s gone!”

At least she didn’t expect to be going
with
Terrence. Something inside him relaxed a little.

“Terry needs shooting lessons worse than anybody I know,” he said.

She giggled.

“Maybe so. But I don’t want to make him feel bad.”

He pretended to be shocked.

“You think you’d show him up that much, huh?”

“I
know
I would.”

That warm feeling about her spread through Cole again. She wouldn’t be bragging and joking like this with anybody else, and she wasn’t going home with Peck.

“Spoken like a true Texan,” he said, and held back to let Terrence catch up.

C
ole watched Aurora set the boxes of extra ammunition on a rock to keep them out of the dew-wet grass. She didn’t seem sad now, but she had looked after Terrence Peck until he and his horse had turned to a tiny black speck and then disappeared over a hill.

“I’m going to run over there and check Shy Boy’s rope and stake one more time,” she called to him. “It may be that he’ll always spook at gunfire now.”

“Border Crossing won’t turn a hair,” he called back. “That’ll help.”

Then, as she was running toward her horse, he shouted to her again.

“Check all you want but don’t touch anything. I locked him down pretty good a minute ago when the wagons pulled out.”

She stopped in her tracks and turned back, her hands on her hips. He grinned. She’d get riled up now and forget Peck entirely.

“Because you thought I couldn’t even stake a
horse by myself?” she yelled at him.

He deliberately turned away and arranged two more empty airtights on the length of the dead tree that had supplied their firewood the night before. He was
not
going to cross the space between them in two strides, pull her into his arms, and kiss her. Peck’s departure was making him a little light-headed with relief, about to make him lose control.

“No,” he called back in his most reasonable tone, “because your boy, Nate, hit the stake with a wheel when he followed Cookie out of camp. He was too busy teaching ol’ Bubba to sit beside him on the seat to watch where he was going.”

Slowly, she turned around and walked back toward him. He looked away and set another airtight into the line.

“In a way I’m jealous Bubba’s taken up with Nate so much,” she said, “but I’m glad, too. It keeps him from wearing out his poor paws walking all day, and Nate needs him.”

“Well, I need you to get your mind off your children and dogs and onto your shooting,” Cole said. “Your horse can’t get loose, and Peck’s isn’t here to agitate him.”

“I can’t believe Terry came all the way out here to find us and then rode four more days down the trail. It’ll take him a week to get back home.”

He set the last tin can into place and turned, came to meet her.

“I don’t care
how
long it takes, I’m just glad that he’s goin’ home,” he said.

She looked startled when he said it, as if he had surprised her as well as himself by blurting that out. Surprise made her look very endearing.

“Why, Cole, I’ll declare, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you might be jealous.”

She gave him a flirtatious smile.

But he managed not to smile back, managed not to stand too close.

“Nope. And nothin’ against him, either,” he said. “I’m tired of poetry with every meal, that’s all.”

“Now that’s an exaggeration if ever I heard one,” she said, going to pick up the ammunition.

“Leave it,” he said. “We’ll start you out shooting from there.”

He followed her, trying to stop looking at her, trying to figure out exactly why he
was
so happy about their guest’s departure. It was none of his business who came and went, as long as they didn’t threaten Aurora’s physical well-being. And Peck certainly didn’t—at least not directly.

“Well, maybe only dinner and supper,” he said, wrenching his mind back to the conversation. “I’ll have to hand you that the old boy was generally too busy rubbing his eyes and gulping coffee to spout poems to us during breakfast.”

“Terry’s not used to getting up early or to
working,” she said. “His father has always hired everything done.”

“Well, Terry better hope they never lose their money,” he said. “I’m not sure he could trade those poems for food. The pictures, maybe.”

“What did he say to you when he told you good-bye?” she said.

Ah. So that was which way the wind blew. Maybe she just wasn’t letting him see how she really felt about seeing the back of Terry. Although, again, she might just be curious. She truly was a curious one.

He told me to take good care of you and said it in a way that sounded like he was giving you to me
.

“Told me to keep a sharp lookout,” he said, “whenever you have a gun in your hand.”

“He did
not!
”

Cole motioned for her to start handing him bullets to fill the loops in his gunbelt.

“Better get your mind on your shooting instead of your old beaux,” he said. “Every time you pick up a gun, don’t be thinking about
anything
else. You’re the one responsible for where your bullet goes.”

“Aren’t you going to let me wear that holster?”

She reached for the buckle, but he took a step back. This was no time for her to touch him, not with her eyes sparkling so blue and searching his with that secret little smile on her lips.

And she knew that, too. As usual, she was reading his mind.

“You’re the one wanted shooting lessons,” he snapped. “Now pay attention.”

“Yes, sir.”

She waited one significant beat.

“
You
pay attention, too, Cole.”

That made them both laugh, finally, as they stood looking into each other’s eyes. Then, still holding her gaze, he grew deadly serious, forced his thoughts off her looks and her teasing. He made his voice completely solemn.

“Learning to use a gun could save your life sometime, Aurora,” he said, “but it could also get you killed.”

“I know that. I’ve carried a rifle all the time since Papa died, after I went through all the papers and saw what a treacherous back-shooter Gates really is.”

“How good are you with the long gun?”

“Not bad. I’ve done a fair amount of practice.”

“This will be entirely different, so start getting the feel.”

He lifted the Colt from the holster and gave it to her.

“Use both hands,” he said, “one to brace the other.”

He stepped around behind her as she took the six-shooter and immediately had to restrain himself from putting his arms around her in order to place his hands over hers. Words. He could do all this with words.

“Lock your elbows,” he said, as the muzzle wavered in a widening circle.

“This thing is heavier than it looks,” she said.

“You can do it. Now, pick out an airtight and look along the top of the barrel through the sights.”

She did as he said, held the gun level for an instant, then wavered again.

Instinctively, he grabbed her hands and steadied it.

That was his first mistake. The curves of her breasts lay against the insides of his arms.

“Have you picked your target?”

His own voice sounded so rough he hardly recognized it.

“The peach on the one in the middle,” she said, very low, in her husky, breaking voice.

So she felt it, too, this nearly unbearable force pulling them to each other.

He could do nothing except reholster the gun and fold her into his arms, take her down beneath him right here in the sweet-smelling grass.

Instead, he set his feet farther apart and dug the heels of his boots deeper into the ground.

“Might widen your stance a little,” he croaked, and she did.

That was his second mistake. She threw him a blue-eyed glance over her shoulder.

“Far enough?”

No. Step back one pace. Come closer to me so I’ll have no choice. So we can make love and the responsibility won’t be all on my renegade soul
.

“Fine.”

Damn it all, he had to get a grip on himself.
Had to get this over with so they could walk away from each other and get on their separate horses and stay on them, God willing, until they were too exhausted to move when they dismounted way after dark. So long after dark that he couldn’t see her beautiful heart-shaped face.

Except that he would always see it when he closed his eyes.

“Now when you get ready to take your shot,” he said, helping her cock the gun, “squeeze the trigger. Slowly. Don’t jerk it fast.”

Then he peeled his hands away from hers and hooked his thumbs, as hard as he could, into his front pockets. His whole body ached from wanting to put them on her, instead.

She did as he said, she even took in a long, steadying breath and let it slowly escape as she squeezed. The shot cracked through the early morning stillness. The empty airtight with the tomato on the label, two over from the peach one in the middle, went flying.

“
Dang
it,” she said through clenched teeth, rocked back by the recoil.

He caught her by the shoulders.

“Mustn’t let it drive you into using profanity,” he said, teasing her, laughing a little. “At least you hit
something
on your first try.”

She grinned at him, faced front, narrowed her eyes, and sighted again.

“This time I’m not telling you which one I’m aiming for,” she said.

“Deception and lies lead to a wide, straight
road downhill,” he chided. “Best be honest with your teacher.”

She chuckled, a low, ragged sound that heated his blood.

“I’m taking a better stance, too,” she said, “and you can prop me up for when this thing kicks me back.”

She set her boots just inside his, and her pert, round hips brushed against his thigh.

To hell with virtue. He was no saint, and he’d be the first to admit it.

Coolly, deliberately, he placed his hands on her hipbones.

That brought a sharp little gasp from her, and she turned her head to look at him. He captured her gaze with his own and held it, pressed his palms flat against her and slid them slowly, firmly, over onto her flat belly, circled them on it deliberately, boldly, while he looked into her eyes. They widened with pleasure. They devoured his face.

The real sin in this deal would be
not
to kiss her.

The heavy gun dropped to her side, her arm sagged with its weight. He lifted one hand to cup her delicate shoulder, slid it slowly all the way down her arm, savoring the shape and the feel of her soft flesh, her small bones, took the six-shooter from her and holstered it.

That done, he pressed her belly with the one hand to bring her back against him, to rock her small, rounded hips against him, to bury his face, just for an instant, in her cloud of fragrant
hair. But his mouth was starving for the taste of her, and he soon had to cradle her cheek in one hand and turn her to face him with the other.

“Aurora.”

He said her name, very low and against her mouth in his dark velvet voice. She melted even more against his warm hardness, her very bones giving way, her whole being aching to surround him. To kiss him.

God had better protect her, because she was long since past protecting herself. She had to have Cole’s mouth on hers again or die.

But more than the kiss she wanted her skin against his skin, every inch of her demanded to feel every inch of him, while her mouth begged to kiss him. She slid her palms up his chest to cup his face in her hands, but he was already devastating her mouth, drawing the air from her body never to put it back again.

Yet he did. He became the source of every breath she took, every sensation she knew.

Her very womanhood wept for his touch, her breasts strained for the feel of his hot, hard hands, her arms flew around his waist to hold him tight to her. Her mouth had to say his name, had to feel the shape of it.

“Cole,” she whispered, against his lips, “Cole.”

He took her face in his big hands and made her fall into the hot, honeyed world of his mouth once again, kissed every thought right out of her head and every shred of strength
from her body. She would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding her up.

When he tore his mouth from hers and stood stroking her back, her arm, the curve of her shoulder as gently as if she were something precious made of glass, she clung to him, looking up into his deep, dark eyes.

“We’re alone,” he said. “All the others have gone.”

She was in danger of losing her sanity, right here, right now. She had hungered for his kiss all those endless days since the first one until she couldn’t even think. If they did more, much more than kiss, she’d be in a fit of wanting him forever.

“I know,” she said, tracing the intriguing slant of his strong cheekbone with the tip of her finger as she had longed to do from the first moment she saw him, “but we have to go on, too, and soon.”

He found her breast and cupped it in the hollow of his palm.

“Not
that
soon.”

Longing washed through her in such a powerful wave that she swayed toward him, deeper into his hand. He flicked his thumb across her hard, yearning nipple. Even through her shirt she could feel its strength, its calluses. Its skill.

Cole McCord obviously knew what he was doing when it came to women. How could she ever hope to be his only one?

Somehow she took a step back from him even
though her feet felt rooted in the ground all the way to China.

“Cole, we have to finish my lesson! And we have to catch the wagons and go past, way past, to find the nooning place.”

His face filled with thunder. He let his hands fall away from her.

“Still thinking about
Terry?
That’s it, isn’t it? Well, why didn’t you accept his offer and go back with him? I really thought you might do that.”

He turned on his heel and strode away fast. For the first time since she’d met him, she couldn’t even see the loose-hipped, prowling way he walked. All she could see was a red blur of hot anger which, at bottom, was cold as white ice. He didn’t know her. He didn’t know the first thing about her. He wasn’t even
trying
to know her, or he would have seen her true feelings for Terry.

And for
him
, bless goodness! Could he not
see
the difference in her feelings for the two of them? Did he think she’d kiss him the way she’d just done if she were thinking of Terry?

No, because he hadn’t even thought, hadn’t looked, hadn’t even tried to see it—Mr. Cole McCord, bodyguard and scout extraordinaire who never missed a scrap of sign on a trail. She was not an individual to him, not a real person, she was just another woman to him and that was all. Thank God she hadn’t made love with him. Now, knowing this, she never would.