The Renegades: Cole (25 page)

Something in her face told him that she knew this was good-bye. She knew him so well—except
for thinking that he was a much better man than he was.

He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t speak. The big cedar enfolded them in its shadow, in its spicy smell, and waited with them. Aurora didn’t move, didn’t take her gaze from his face.

“This cedar,” he said finally. “There’s a legend about the cedar tree that lots of Indian people know.”

She watched him through those sky-eyes of hers, her look steady and straight with a hot light burning deep in it like a sun.

“Lightning can strike near the cedar tree, it can run along the ground and in circles around it trying to enter, but it can’t. It cannot split the heart of a cedar the way it does other trees.”

“So?”

The huskiness was taking over her voice.

“My heart is the heart of a cedar,” he said. “My heart doesn’t open. I live in the middle of danger, always, because my real name is He-Stands-In-Lightning.”

The corners of her luscious mouth lifted a little.

“At last,” she said, “I hear your real name.” He couldn’t resist their old game. “You
think
.”

“I
know
,’” she said, and the trace of a smile vanished from her lips. “I know when you’re telling me the truth.”

She went so solemn so suddenly that his gut knotted. What if she burst into tears? What
would he do? If he touched her to comfort her, he was lost.

“My name was given to me because of my life,” he said, and he fought to loose the tightness in his own voice. “I’m not meant to have a home or any peace. I never have, I never will.”

She only looked at him.

“I’m leaving at sunup tomorrow,” he said, and his voice sounded harsh as a crow’s cry. “My job’s done. I got you here safe.”

There. He had told her, honorably, and had not left her twisting in the wind the way he’d left so many other women. He could go now. He could get up and walk away and be able to look himself in the eye.

But her face held him there. So beautiful and so stricken, yet strong. So strong. She was no longer the girl who had badgered him into coming with her. This was a woman to be reckoned with.

“And I’m not meant to marry,” she said. “You don’t have to run away the minute I start making a home, He-Stands-In-Lightning.”

“That’s nothing to do with me,” he said, and the truth of it was like a knife in his heart.

“I know that. But you’re always welcome in my home, we’ll always be friends.”

“You don’t know me,” he blurted. “I killed my best friend.
I
killed Travis.”

Not one thing changed about her. She didn’t pull back in revulsion or stare at him in horror.

“You shot him? Why?”

“No, some bandido shot him, but I put him in front of the bullet. We raided a hideout on the Nueces when we should’ve waited for help—they outnumbered us six to one and we knew it.”

“If Travis knew that, too, then why is it all your fault?”

He wiped his hand across his eyes, but it didn’t help. All he could see now was Travis’s face when his spirit had left him.

“I wouldn’t hear to waiting. I badgered him. I hoo-rawed him.”

“He didn’t have to listen to you.”

“He did when I said I was going in alone. We were partners.”

He stared at her, horrified that he was actually talking about this, yet somehow relieved, too. All these months he could hardly bear to think the truth about Trav’s death, much less speak it.

“I hate to break the news to you,” she said wryly, “but you’re only human, Cole McCord. Human beings don’t know everything. Sometimes they make a bad call.”

It helped. Not a whole lot, but it helped.

“I make more than my share of bad calls,” he said. “I brought my little brother into the Rangers, and he got killed within a year. I went off to my mother’s people and played in the woods the summer she worked herself to death on the farm.”

She looked at him a boundless time with that fierce, blue gaze.

“
You’re not God
, Cole McCord. I’m trying to tell you that.”

“And I’m trying to tell you that you don’t want me to love you. The people I love don’t live long.”

“
You
don’t want to love me,” she said in her husky voice.

“No, I don’t.”

He intended to get to his feet, to go to his horse and leave her then, to ride on up the trail and out of the canyon before he had even planned. But that old trap of wanting to know her opinion, of needing to see how she saw him, held him still. He looked for the disgust in her eyes, the disapproval she might be too polite to voice.

It wasn’t there. He saw only acceptance and admiration. And love. That had to be love, that look like the one she’d given him on the rimrock.

“You have to go tell this to Travis’s widow,” she said. “I know that.”

“Yes.”

“And you may not come back, I know that, too.” “Yes.”

She lifted her hand, then, and caressed his cheek, traced his cheekbone with her thumb. He felt so familiar to her now, although they hadn’t touched each other for weeks. That was because he was now and would always be a part of her.

This was her fate, her destiny, to love him. Forever. And somewhere inside her she had
known that from the first sight of his face.

“I only want one promise from you, He-Stands-In-Lightning.”

“What is it?”

She looked deep into his wary eyes. For the longest time they looked at each other in the growing sunlight, trembling a little in the rising wind. She removed his hat, laid it on the ground, and brushed his hair back from his forehead, coming a little closer to him with each movement.

“Remember this,” she said.

“Until the day I die.”

They came together like fire and fuel, already alight, already burning before their lips could meet. He thrust one big, hard hand into her hair and took her mouth with a passion that stopped her breath, nearly stopped her heart.

She reached for the buttons at the fly of his Levis, brushing the swelling bulge beneath with her knuckles as she ripped at it with trembling fingers, aching to hold him in her hands. He groaned and cupped her breast in his palm, he tried to break the kiss to help her at her task but, once kissing, they couldn’t stop except to kiss again.

He blazed a hot trail down her throat with his mouth, she kissed the hollow of his collarbone and tore his shirt open. She unfastened the buckle of his belt, pushed at the waistband of his jeans, he pulled her blouse from her riding skirt without lifting his lips from her skin.

At last, somehow, without ever letting go of
the kiss, they managed to peel off their clothes, and they fell into the delight of touching each other with no barriers at all. His hands slid down her back, burning her skin, cupping her buttocks in a greedy, quick caress before coming back to her yearning breasts again. He found both her nipples. The need to have him inside her made her lose breath, it hit her so hard.

Their eyes met. Her whole body thrilled to his.

This would be the last time. She’d live the rest of her life on this.

“Rory,” he whispered.

His eyes blazed. They devoured her face.

Then he brought her hard against his hot maleness, wrapped her body with his and started the kiss all over again.

I love you, Lightning. Oh, dear God, how I love you!

She told him that with her greedy lips and long, slow, importunate caresses of her tongue and her hands that could not get enough of him, she told him with tiny, faint moans deep in her throat, she told him in every way possible except with words. For words would be shackles to him, and he had to be free. He wouldn’t be Lightning if he couldn’t be free to roam in the storm.

He gathered her to him, sheltered her close in the curve of his big body, began to pleasure her with his hand. When she lay melted and helpless, unable to so much as lift her finger, he
drew back and smiled at her, his face warmed with the gold of the sunlight falling through the leaves.

Then he took her breast into his big, calloused hand to cradle it there, and she began to stroke his hair, running its silk beneath her palm again and again until he lowered his head and began to lave its tip with his tongue. Her arms, her hands, her whole body went nerveless except for that exquisite sensation, except for the precious sight of his dark head bent so tenderly over her breasts.

“Never stop,” she whispered, “never stop.”

But soon her whole body contradicted her, her blood began to race for more. Shameless with need, her hands caressed him everywhere she could reach, her voice made wordless little begging sounds she didn’t even recognize.

He knew, he knew what she wanted, what she needed, but still he made her wait.

She writhed beneath him, she gathered the breath to whisper “Please,” she rubbed her face against his jaw and bit his ear, and finally, at last, after an eternity when she thought she would die, he wrapped his arms around her, stroked her back, and lifted her to meet him as gently as if she were glass. He entered her.

The comfort was glorious.

But then he moved, and she wanted still more. She wrapped her arms around his bare shoulders, her skin moving on his, and the sheen of sweat they both created sealed them together. She arched up to him, brought him more fully into her.

They moved together then as if this ancient rhythm had been theirs to share for years and years, moved together as if their only other time, that one sweet night beneath the pine tree, had taught them to be one. Always. Forever.

The word came, again, into her mind where, only a heartbeat before, no words had been. This had to last her forever.

She thrust her fingers into his hair, brought his mouth to hers, and kissed him avidly, silently begging him not to leave her with her lips and tongue, her heart and soul. He brought her back to that moment, then made her believe that it would never pass, that no other time would ever come.

He kissed her wild and free and thoughtless again, he held her so close that they could never part, and he consumed her with the hot maleness of his body. She moaned and whimpered, deep in her throat, for mercy.

But he gave her none. His hands swept trails of fire onto her back, and his lips dropped burning kisses at random on her face and neck. He took her deeper and deeper into the conflagration that drew them both like the lost to light.

Until their blood sang and the lightning struck and they rode like conquerors on the back of the storm.

Afterward, they lay entwined for the longest time, skin melded to skin, legs and arms entangled so they could never be separated. They couldn’t be parted. Not after this. It would go
against the laws of nature, the structure of the world, the form of the universe.

Except that after the dark fell tonight and the sun came up tomorrow, Cole would be gone.

Tears began to roll down her cheeks, they forced their way between the bones of their faces, pressed together, ran into the hollows of their throats.

“Here, now,” he said gruffly. “What’s this?”

He pulled back onto his elbow to wipe them away, the touch of his rough hand so gentle that it made her cry harder.

Desperate to look at him, to drink in the sight of his face, she raised up and wiped her eyes, trying to see him clearly.

“Who told me she believes in living one moment at a time and that moment to the fullest?”

“Some simpleminded girl who had no idea what she was saying.”

He smiled, a smile to break any woman’s heart.

“That’s all there is, Rory,” he said softly. “One moment at a time. You were wise beyond your years.”

“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t want to hear it.”

Laughing a little, he dropped a kiss on her hair.

“Cole …”

He shook his head, laid a long, rough finger across her lips.

“Now,” he said. “This day. Live this.”

And he kissed her like a wild man as he drove her back down.

A
urora bent over the cookfire to fork bacon from the skillet onto the tin plate. Cookie had the biscuits done, too, even though the last guard hadn’t come in and most of the men were still asleep. The sun was rising, sending the faintest of pale, purple light into the canyon. A haze drifted up from the creek.

And Cole was saddling up, getting ready to leave.

She carried the bacon and a plate full of biscuits she’d taken from the Dutch oven to the tailgate of the chuck wagon and began to make them into little sandwiches, amazed at the fact that her hands didn’t tremble. How could they not, when an earthquake was shaking the inside of her body to bits? How could they not, when her heart was aching with pain enough to kill her?

When the bacon biscuits and a bundle of ground coffee were all packed in the cloth sack she had already put his wages in, she climbed
up into the chuck wagon for tomatoes and peaches. She came out, with her hands and pockets full, to find Cole standing waiting, holding the reins. His saddle looked like a stranger’s with his bedroll tied on behind the cantle.

“Oh, Rory, that’s too much,” he said, when he saw all the food she’d gathered.

“Don’t tell me that,” she said fiercely. “It’s a long way to Fort Worth and no Mattie’s Diner on the way.”

Her lips went suddenly stiff, and she couldn’t say any more.

He stood silent while she took another bag, emptied the first one, and put the heavier airtights on the bottom of each. Then she added some of the biscuits and bacon to both and connected the two with leather straps to hang on either side of his saddle. The straps kept slipping from her grasp, but after an age the job was done.

They walked away from the camp, then, toward the foot of the trail that led out of the canyon. It felt so right to her, walking beside him, that his leaving seemed more incredible than ever.

At the foot of the trail, he stopped.

“You’ll do fine here,” he said, turning to look down into her eyes. “I told you the truth when I said if there was a woman on earth who could do this, you’re the one. Don’t forget that.”

For an instant the lump in her throat wouldn’t let her speak. Finally, although she
couldn’t swallow it, she could talk around it.

“And don’t you forget that you’re a good man,” she said. “The best.”

His dark eyes hardened.

“Don’t use this trip to see Ellie Henderson as a stick to measure my character,” he said. “I never even thought of it until that day I told you I was going, and I don’t usually worry much about other people.”

She looked at him straight.

“While I was fixing your food I was remembering what you told me about the day Travis was killed. Cole, one thing you need to remember is that he would’ve done the same to you.”

He frowned.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re blaming yourself for hoo-rawing Travis into the attack,” she said, “but wouldn’t he have dared you into it if it’d been his idea?”

“It
wasn’t
,” he snapped. “The fault’s all mine.”

“But he was the same kind of man as you, right? Since he was your partner?”

“
What
kind of man?”

“Sure of himself, maybe to the point of being … reckless, sometimes. Fast at the draw and used to winning. Wild enough to go over to Mexico and do something that would get him chased by the Federales all the way to the Rio Grande. A great rider on a great horse he was used to carrying him out of every scrape.”

He scowled at her.

“I guess so.”

“Well, then, if he’d been the one in the feisty mood that day, he would’ve wanted to go on in and not wait for any help, and if you’d held back, he would’ve hoo-rawed you into it or threatened to go in alone. It would’ve been the very same deal turned around.”

A terrible expression passed over his face. He turned away and threw the reins across Border Crossing’s withers.

“What’s done is done,” he said, his voice even harder than before. “No amount of thinking or talking can change that.”

“All
right!
”

Stubborn as she might be, she wasn’t going to argue this. It was too delicate of a subject with him, it would only drive him away before they’d even said good-bye.

She stared at his broad shoulders, the copper skin of his neck between his hair and his collar. If only she could put her lips to it. If only she could kiss him all over. Forever. If only he would stay.

“At least take a spare horse,” she said. “Take your pick.”

“No, thanks.”

She looked at him, biting back the tears she would not let him see, waiting for him to turn around.

“You wouldn’t be obligated to bring it back, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she snapped, her tone cross and cranky, her voice about to break.

The muscles tightened across the top of his shoulders. He went stiff and still.

She shut her mouth. Hadn’t she promised herself she’d be brave? That she’d be dignified and self-possessed in his last memory of her?

He whirled on his heel.

“Take care of yourself, Rory,” he said, in his low, rich voice that held no anger in return.

Unsmiling, he searched her face, and for one heart-stopping moment she thought he would reach for her.

He didn’t. He turned to his horse, stuck the toe of his boot into the stirrup, and swung up into the saddle.

“If I touch you I’ll not let you go,” he said, in the raw, rough voice of a stranger.

“Then don’t.”

It came out in a venomously hateful tone.

She brushed back her hair and looked up at him, silhouetted against the rising sun.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she blurted. “I love you, Lightning.”

He stared down into her eyes, he searched her face.

“I’ll never forget you, Rory.”

Her heart stopped. Every cell in her body went quiet to listen.

But that was all he said.

She was completely amazed that she could speak, or even think of anything else, but she said, “What’ll I do with your twenty head?”

“Brand ‘em,” he said, “with the Slash A.”

“They already
are
that—it was the trail brand.
I’ll take a new one for my new place.”

“Then mark ‘em yours,” he said.

He reached down and touched her face, just once, so lightly it could’ve been the brushing of a feather.

“Don’t forget to carry your gun,” he said.

Aurora stared up into his unfathomable eyes.

“So long, Rory.”

And then he tore his gaze from hers, faced the wall of the gorge, smooched to Border, and started upward.

She stayed there, watching breathlessly as he took the narrow, winding trail. Sunlight was building into the canyon now; soon it would burn the haze away. It washed Cole and Border Crossing with a blinding yellow light on the outside bends of the trail, shaped their dark silhouette in the shadows on the inside.

Pain paralyzed her. How could she ever have thought that she’d already faced the worst life could throw at her? How could she ever have guessed that she could hurt so much and still live?

It would be easier, far easier, if Ellie were a woman he loved. Or, better yet, a woman he’d thought he loved until he held Aurora in his arms. Then, competing with another woman, she might have a chance.

She didn’t have a prayer against Travis’s ghost.

She stood rooted where she was until he had climbed every inch of the narrow, winding trail back up into the wide world, never pausing until
he reached the top and rode out onto the caprock. Shading her eyes against the sun, she walked backwards a few steps to try to see him better.

On the rim of the gorge, he sat his horse and looked down at her. He lifted his hand, and she waved back. Then he rode away from her.

Cole traveled like a man possessed. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he would’ve killed his horse, he would never have slept in all those many miles. He rode toward Fort Worth and Ellie Henderson—if she was still there—as fast and furiously as if she could help him somehow.

That thought twisted his lips in a bitter grin as he made camp that last night, close enough to see the lights of town. Nobody could help him. He had left Rory to survive as best she could in the wildest country left on the frontier. He had left Rory. The only woman who had ever truly loved him.

Those words from her brought him a flash of happiness every time he recalled her saying them, a brief joy in the instant the memory came to him, but then it always added to his old storm clouds of black guilt and shame. He didn’t deserve her love and, in not returning it, he’d broken her heart.

Staking Border Crossing on a rather thin graze, he patted him in apology.

“Too many travelers been camping here,” he told him. “We should’ve gone on in to the livery
tonight so you could have grain.”

But only God knew whether he’d be able to face a town full of people tomorrow, even. He didn’t care if he never saw another human face to face. Unless it was Rory.

And he could never do that unless he went back to stay.

He spread out his bedroll without eating, without even making a fire, shucked his boots, and crawled in. Going back to stay was nothing but a loco wish, even if it had come to him in a dream, even if he had had the dream every night since he left the Palo Duro.

The dream was another punishment for his sins, along with its twin, the one where Travis was the one pushing
him
into going in after ol’ Garza and his gang, laughing like crazy at the answers Cole was giving. He wished he’d never told Rory anything about that day in hell.

And God help him, now here he was, he’d see Ellie tomorrow and he didn’t even know why he’d ridden all this way. What could he do for Ellie if she
was
miserable or in trouble, except maybe get her some money from his account at the Bank of Ft. Worth?

What would he say to her?
If you’re too lonesome since I got your husband killed, I’ll marry you myself?

That’d be like serving a jail sentence for life. That’d be a punishment, at least, so it might make him feel better.

The wind turned to come from the west and sent a chilly breath down his neck. He turned
on his side, pulled the soogans up over his shoulder and his hat down over his face. Blowing sand sifted in under it anyway, into his mouth, onto his tongue. No matter. He
sure
couldn’t sleep inside a hotel tonight.

Being under a roof, being inside four walls didn’t seem right, not while his need for Aurora was a cold rain in his heart.

He did manage to be around people enough to visit the barber shop for a bath and a shave and a mercantile for clean clothes before he visited Ellie Henderson. Not only was she still in town, he learned upon inquiring about her while he got his haircut, but she was setting up her own business there, making hats. From what little he’d ever seen of her, Ellie had been a shy, retiring woman, not given to dealing with the public. This was his fault, that she’d been forced into a life she didn’t want.

That thought drummed through him over and over again as he walked toward her shop, then past its windows filled with fancy women’s hats. The fateful decision he’d made that September day reached out in all directions, and its consequences went on and on.

In spades. Because when he stepped into the shop and glimpsed her reaching to take down a hat from a shelf, he saw she was going to have a child. And very soon. God help him, he had orphaned a baby!

“Ellie Henderson?” he said, although he knew her immediately.

He removed his hat.
How
would he ever get through this?
What
the hell could he say?

The bell tinkled its warning as the door closed and she turned to face him.

“I’m Cole McCord,” he said, although his mouth seemed filled with cotton.

Her wide brown eyes looked him over.

“I know who you are,” she said, and walked slowly toward him, holding the brightly colored hat in both hands.

“I didn’t know if you’d remember, since we’d only met once or twice.”

“I could never forget you,” she said.

His gut tightening, he waited for the rest of it.
Because you’re the one who killed my husband
.

But instead, she said, “This brings back such memories, Mr. McCord. Won’t you sit down?”

“Call me Cole,” he said, “please.”

She nodded absently.

“Ellie,” she said.

Then she seemed to realize for the first time that she was still holding the hat, and she made a motion toward the counter with it, changed her mind, and walked toward the two chairs sitting at a small table in the corner. He followed, his heart thumping in his chest.

It had been a damn-fool idea to come here in the first place.
Why
had he done this stupid thing? He’d told Aurora the truth when he’d said this wouldn’t change anything. He could already tell that it wasn’t even going to make him feel any better.

Ellie sat down, though, and indicated the
chair facing her, so he sat in it. His knees felt like they’d bump his chin at any minute—these dainty armless rocking chairs were obviously meant for ladies only.

For a little while they just stared at each other, holding their hats in their hands, waiting for Cole to say something. But his tongue felt frozen.

Finally, Ellie said, “Someone told me you left the Rangers.”

That brought his purpose back to mind like a slap in the face, but it didn’t put any words in his head. He swallowed hard.

“Yes. I … couldn’t stay without Trav.”

Her eyes misted.

“I know how you feel,” she said kindly. “I thought the same way when he was first gone.”

“He’d be here now if it wasn’t for me,” Cole blurted. “I killed him.”

Her gentle expression changed to one of shock.

“Captain Haley said when he brought Trav’s body home that bandidos killed him.”

A dam burst inside Cole.

“Bandidos shot him, yes, but I’m the one who set him in the path of their bullets, sure as if I’d picked him up and dropped him in the line of fire. I insisted that the two of us raid that Garza outfit, Ellie, when I knew they outnumbered us, bad. Haley and Martin and their partners were on the way to meet us. It wouldn’t’ve been more than a half a day more for us to hook up
with them and come back to take the outlaws, but I wouldn’t wait …”