The Renegades: Cole (18 page)

“Something about my namesake?”

“Oh. Yeah. The dawn. Doesn’t Aurora mean dawn?”

Her face brightened. She was coming awake now.

“Yes, and it’s very romantic of you to mention that, Mr. McCord. Almost as romantic as bringing me flowers.”

Romantic
. For sure nobody had ever called him that before.

“Hey, thanks,” he drawled, “but you don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

She flipped onto her stomach in a heartbeat, tight as he was holding her, and reached for the bouquet.

“These are so, so gorgeous,” she said, and brought them closer to bury her face in them. “Thank you, Cole. You are so thoughtful.”

Dear God. She was making too much of him.

“Hey, watch it there, missy,” he said, wiping at the drops of water coming off the stems of the flowers, “you’re getting our bed all wet.”

Our bed
. He should tell her right now. This was a one and only one-time happening, for they mustn’t get attached to each other. Sleep with her once more and no telling what’d be coming out of his fool mouth.

But she was looking into his face, blue eyes twinkling.

“That’s a laugh, coming from the champion of dunking people in the river. Decided you’re made of sugar? Afraid you’ll melt?”

He only grinned at her. That was all he could think to do, since he couldn’t remember what he’d started to say.

Her mischief faded into a misty look.

“I dreamed about you,” she said, brushing her cheek against the petals of the flowers.

His heart contracted. When had
anyone, ever
, dreamed of him?

“No, darlin’,” he drawled, “you were awake. You only thought it was a dream.”

She laughed.

“You always think I don’t know my own mind, but I do.”

Then, with a smile that melted him, she reached over and stroked his cheek with her soft fingers. Velvet fingers.

“Keep on wearing your gloves for riding,” he said. “It’s paying off.”

She grinned.

“So you approve of
one
thing I do.”

He let his gaze wander down the length of her, over the one shoulder that was bare and the leg twined with his on top of the blanket.

“I approve of
many
things you do.”

She laughed and blushed, a little bit embarrassed, which made him smile.

And made him think about the fact that he was the first man who’d ever lain with her.

The sound of pots clanging together and then Cookie’s voice floated up to them from camp.

“No!” she whispered, and snuggled closer to rum one tantalizing fingertip down the middle of his chest.

“Don’t do that,” he whispered back, “I’m leaving you now.”

Coward. Yellow-bellied, craven coward
.

He opened his mouth.

He looked into her eyes and closed it again.

Lowering his head, he took a quick, hard kiss from her lips, then let himself have another light one from the tip of her nose.

“We don’t want to set the boys’ chins to wagging, now, do we?”

“Fine with me,” she said, her blue eyes wide and fixed on his. “What the boss and the bodyguard do is none of anybody else’s business, I’ve decided.”

He already was hard, longing to feel her around him again, and that sent a sharp shaft of desire straight through him.

“I’ve got to get away from you, Vixen. I’m scared you’re gonna corrupt me.”

She laughed, and she looked so beautiful, lying there in his arms with her hair curling all around her face in a soft, blonde cloud, that he came within an inch of losing his control. He forced himself to put her down gently, disentangle them, and reach for his pants.

“Better get your blanket on, ma’am,” he said. “Folks is stirrin’.”

She sat up and looked around while he was pulling on ids boots.

“Why, you can see my wagon from here, plain as can be! It’s not far, either, as the crow flies.”

“Bodyguard position,” he said. “I wasn’t
sure whether you’d come out here or not.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she said, and leaned forward to hug him from behind, the mass of flowers still in one arm. “You even had a bouquet for me. Next time I’ll bring a bottle of wine.”

Her bare breasts against his bare back were exquisite torture.

Her words were torture, too.
Next time
. What had they started here?

He said good-bye with one more quick kiss and got out of there and into the trees, carrying the rest of his clothes. In the nick of time. Looking for the cold creek to jump into before breakfast and a wagonload of courage.

Aurora slipped down the hillside to her wagon, keeping to the shadows, which were vanishing fast in the rays of the rising sun. She ran along the offside of the hoodlum wagon and climbed up onto the tailgate on the side away from the fire. It was true what she’d said to Cole, though, she really didn’t care what anybody thought about her coming in from the woods wrapped in a blanket with her arms full of flowers. She just didn’t want to listen to Cookie’s ranting about her and Cole, that was all.

She smiled to herself as she climbed up onto the tailgate and slid in behind the canvas flap. Her and Cole. Cole and Aurora. Aurora and Cole.

Quickly, she looked through her clean clothes
and chose the new blue and fawn jacket and riding skirt she had bought in Pueblo City. She might not even need it to ride into a town before they got to Texas, they might not even go near any town. Besides, she wanted to wear new clothes to celebrate. They had all survived a stampede with most of the cattle, hadn’t they?

She put on her wrapper, gathered her towel and wash pitcher, and, smiling, stepped out of her wagon into the pink and yellow dawn of a great new day. All during breakfast, all during the saddling of the horses and her telling off the riders—giving assignments for the search for the strays—she couldn’t stop smiling. She tried, because she didn’t want old eagle-eye Cookie quizzing her, but she couldn’t, because this was just the most wonderful day since they’d started the drive. Since she could remember, actually. The attraction between her and Cole
was
physical, but not
just
that.

The two of them took the southeasterly quadrant for their share of the search so that they’d also be able to scout the way they were headed with the herd. He was disinclined to talk much, but most of the time they separated anyway to look for strays. They stayed within sight of each other, though, at all times, and she could fairly feel the bond between them in the air.

Aurora found a half-dozen strays and rounded them up, started them to meet Cole, who had come across about as many and was heading them in her general direction. One of the steers Aurora had in her gather was a big,
rangy black with one horn tip broken, whom the men had nicknamed Snarly. He was a truly mean-spirited creature who already had caused much grief on the trail by alternately attacking his companions and trying to break away from the herd, and as she and Cole threw their finds together, he was up to his old tricks.

“Hi-
ya
!” Aurora yelled, riding around the others to try to slap at him with a coiled rope. “You hateful thing, you, get away from her.”

She looked across the jostling cattle to Cole.

“I don’t know why I’m waiting until we get to the new ranch to make barbeque out of him,” she said.

Cole was circling the little herd of strays to tighten them up before they started them back to the main herd.

“Yep,” he said. “You’d save all of us a lot of trouble if he was supper tonight.”

“I know,” she said, as he rode up beside her. “But we have plenty of supplies now, and we might need him worse next winter.”

She smiled at Cole.

“When we’re catching up on our playing, like we said, after all this summer’s work.”

He gave her an odd look she couldn’t read. His shoulders flinched as if she’d dealt him a blow. He looked straight at her, but he didn’t smile back.

“Do you like barbeque in the wintertime?” she said. “Or would you rather have an enormous pot of stew with onions and potatoes and lots of jarred tomatoes?”

Still, he was strangely silent for a moment. Only an instant too long.

And then, only a shade too carefully, he said, “No telling what I’11 be eating this winter. No telling where I’ll be.”

A swift shard of hurt rolled through her, sharp points hitting, then missing.

“Hey,” she said, trying to force a light tone, “that’s your business. I’m only going by a remark you yourself made about next winter’s activities.”

He smiled, but it wasn’t quite the same.

“I reckon I oughtta curb my tongue,” he said. “I’m old enough to know when to stop flirting, knowin’ what a beautiful woman you are.”

She stared at him, an intolerable cold spreading all through her.

“Now, if you’d said, ‘knowing what an
ugly
woman you are,’ or hateful or grouchy or irritating or whatever, then I might be able to make some sense out of what you just said.”

He grinned at her, his old devilish grin. Almost.

Then he sobered.

“I should’ve left you alone. I should’ve known I couldn’t resist you.”

Anger was beginning to fight hurt for her main reaction to this shock. And anger was winning. By a long haul.

“Let me see if I can puzzle this out,” she said tightly. “Now that you’ve learned that you ‘can’t resist me,’ you’re hot to leave me at the
end of the trail?
Before
that you were thinking of maybe wintering with us?”

“Aurora,” he said.

Now he was his old self again, his old, arrogant self who had told her to get lost the moment she’d asked him to come with her, his old, obnoxious self who didn’t hesitate, didn’t equivocate. He cocked his head and gave her a look that she already ought to know whatever he was about to say.

“Aurora, if we wintered together you know damn good and well that we’d be nothing but crazy for more when spring rolled around. You have got to know that, after last night.”

She blinked.

“Well, yes, I suppose I do. However, if this is your usual morning-after attitude, that could slow things down some.”

The corners of his mouth twitched as if he might smile.

She, however, didn’t feel the least bit inclined to smile.

“What’s the matter, Cole, are you thinking that because we … spent one night together that I’m expecting you to stay all winter and marry me in the spring? Is that what’s galling you?”

All of a sudden, a sense of aloneness came down on her worse than she’d ever felt it before. It weighed a ton. Two tons. She sat up very straight in the saddle beneath it and called up her pride.

“Because if that’s it, you can give up your
worries and rest easy—I’ll
never
marry anyone. I’m finally in control of my life, and I will never give up that freedom to any man.”

Her throat hurt hideously from the huge lump of pain that had formed there, but there was no trace of it in her voice, for which she was thankful.

“Good Lord, Cole,” she said. “Last night was one of my adventures. One experience. That’s all.”

What a lie. God help her. Cole had walked right into her heart.

“I know that’s what you think now,” he said, in his smoothest, deepest,
surest
voice. “Aurora, I know you aren’t expecting marriage, but it would come to that. It always does. Women think along those lines, and you’re an emotional woman.”

“And a stubborn one, as you’re so fond of pointing out,” she said coldly. “What’s the matter, afraid I’ll have you hog-tied and branded before you know what hit you?”

He did smile then, but only for an instant. A sadness passed over his face, a lonesomeness that reached out and touched her through all the other feelings exploding inside her.

“You’re a good woman,” he said, “and I’m a bad man for you in every way except what you hired me to do. We’d best stay away from each other.”

“Not an easy thing considering what I hired you to do.”

“You know what I mean. Except for the job.”

Her fury rose like a storm. He was saying that last night had meant nothing to him, nothing at all, and had meant the world to her, the emotional woman.

“
Oh?
Well, if
you
were a more emotional
man
you might get a little more out of life! What do you think, that I’ll sit around mooning over you for years and years, remembering what happened between us last night?”

She probably would. God help her, she would never forget it.

“I’m trying to tell you I’m bad for you, Aurora. It’s only fair that you know.”

“Bad in what way?” she cried. “What are you
talking
about?”

“I’m a renegade, always have been. I don’t play by any rules but my own. Until I got to be captain myself, I nearly got thrown out of the
Rangers
, for God’s sake.”

“So that makes you a big, bad one,” she said sarcastically. “Let me tell you, I am so impressed. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I make
my
own rules, too.”

“Aurora,” he said, in the coldest tone she could imagine, “I’m responsible for the death of a man.”

“You’re responsible for the deaths of many men. That’s why I hired you. That’s life on the frontier. It doesn’t mean you’re bad,” she said stubbornly.

Why, dear God, was she defending him, when what she wanted was to drag him off his horse and pummel him thoroughly?

He turned away and stared into the distance, and she opened her mouth to say something else. But he spoke.

“Riders coming.”

It took a moment, but then she saw them: three horses and riders, coming toward them from due east through the tall grass. Her stomach knotted even tighter than it already was.

“Who could they be?”

Cole shrugged.

“We’ll see. Stay back, keep me between you and them.”

“I can take care of myself.”

She reached back for the gun she carried in her saddlebag.

“Leave it,” he said, without even turning around. “I can take care of three. Look around and see if there’re any coming from another direction.”

She did as he said.

“No sign.”

“Good.”