The Renegades: Cole (3 page)

“
You
will? You don’t have a trail boss?”

“I
am
the trail boss.”

He smiled at her, shaking his head as if she were a precocious child playing games of pretend.

“Then you must’ve bumped your head when we took our little tumble in the street,” he said. “Don’t you know it’s easier to go to Texas through Kansas than the New Mexico mountains?”

One of the old men laughed out loud. Her blood went icy with anger.

“Mr. McCord,” she said, “could we step into the diner there and perhaps talk about this over a cup of coffee? It’s my treat, of course. I’d like to make you a specific offer.”

She turned to start toward the door.

“No …”

She faced him again. He leaned back against a post and crossed his muscular arms, flashing a wry grin as he looked her over again, his dark, dark eyes lingering on her mouth.

“… thank you, anyway, Miss Benton.”

Lord, but he was enjoying this. And he thought he was winning. He thought because she was a woman behaving in an unconventional way he could intimidate her into giving up.

“Then we shall talk here,” she said, willing her voice to stay cool, although her lips were warm from the heat of his gaze and her cheeks were hot from anger. “But if you think you can embarrass me into giving up my pursuit of you by making salacious innuendos that others can hear and rudely perusing my person, you’re wrong, Mr. McCord.”

He smiled.

“Mercy! I’ll have to think on that a minute,” he drawled, with infuriating insolence. “The only thing I caught for sure is that you are pursuing me and, ma’am …” he paused to tip his hat, “… I want you to know I’m truly flattered to hear that.”

She felt her cheeks grow red again, she heard the old men laugh, and she knew the Reicherts had taken in every word. But what was a little bit of chagrin compared to what she’d face on the trail? And in Texas? Drought, outlaws, hard traveling, and maybe even Comanches. This
teasing was nothing. If she wanted a ranch of her own, she had to ignore these little irritations and remember that from now on she was living by her own set of rules.

“My pursuit of you, as you well know, is purely business,” she said briskly. “The compensation I have in mind is fifty dollars a month, but I’m willing to deal a little on that. Your only responsibility will be the safety of my person.”

“
Will
be?” Cole McCord drawled in a low, intimate tone that made her feel as if he’d touched her. “You sound mighty sure of yourself, Miss Benton.”

She smiled.

“I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

He sighed and shook his head in mock sorrow. “You sound just like Kid Dolby.”

The old men and the Reicherts waited, straining to hear her reply.

She tilted her head, crossed her arms, and looked Cole McCord slowly up and down in the same suggestive way he had looked at her.

“Why, Mr. McCord,” she drawled, “all the Kid and I are after is a little satisfaction.”

He tried but couldn’t hide his surprise at her boldness, and that made her smile, even as she felt Mrs. Reichert’s horrified gaze on her back. She could hardly keep from laughing out loud in spite of the fact that she’d slightly embarrassed herself. He deserved a dose of his own medicine.

“I’m not willing to satisfy the Kid by letting
him shoot me,” he said with a wicked grin, “but to you, Miss Benton, I’d be happy to give a different kind of satisfaction … any time.”

He let the words hang in the air between them for a long moment.

“At your pleasure, Miss Aurora.”

He touched the brim of his hat with exaggerated politeness, then turned his back on her, stepped off the sidewalk, and started across the street with his prowling panther walk. The slanting beams of the setting sun made his white shirt burn orange like the heart of a fire.

Like the fearful anger inside her.

Not once, in two encounters, had he considered what she had to say or discussed it with her sensibly. He had dismissed her as demented or silly or impossibly foolish, as everyone else had when they’d heard she was planning to trail the cattle.

He stepped up onto the boarded walkway on the other side of the street, strolled across it, and pushed open the swinging doors of the saloon. Of course he would go there, where she couldn’t follow.

A
urora marched directly across the street to the entrance of the Golden Nugget. Let the Reicherts and the rest of Pueblo City gossip, it’d make no difference—she’d soon be gone to Texas, and anyway, from now on polite society might as well be on the moon. Any woman who carved a ranch out of the Panhandle would be living far beyond anybody’s rules of behavior but her own.

She pushed the swinging doors back with both hands and burst into the saloon without changing her unladylike pace. How could she slow down with her blood beating in her head like a marching drum?

Cole McCord was leaning on the bar, his white shirt shining like a beacon in the dim, smoky room. As she started toward him, striding down the aisleway between tables with her skirts switching angrily back and forth about her ankles, conversation in the place began to lessen and then die. She didn’t look at anyone,
but she felt dozens of eyes on her. Soon, the tinny piano’s lively version of “Buffalo Gals” became the only sound.

She ignored everyone around her and didn’t miss a step on her direct path to the bar. The piano player started singing, then, and before she reached the place where Cole was standing, men’s voices began to rumble again. A respectable woman in a saloon might be a novelty but not enough of one to stop gambling games and serious drinking. Or to make Cole McCord look her way. He hadn’t glanced at her once.

At last, she walked up beside him and leaned on the bar, which was almost too tall for her. Cole wheeled on her then, with a hard look that held anger but no surprise.

“Good,” she said, “that means you’re alert at all times.”

He stared at her as if she’d spoken in a foreign language.

“I wasn’t sure that you saw me come in,” she said briskly. “Now, from that irritated glare, I know that you did. Therefore, you’ll make a good bodyguard.”

“It was my understanding that you already believed I’d make the most amazing bodyguard on the face of the earth and that was the reason you’re tormenting me.”

“It was my understanding that you are enough of a gentleman to listen until I have finished talking with you. Instead, you ran away into this den of iniquity thinking it was the one place I couldn’t follow you.”

She marveled that her voice didn’t shake from the weight of her anger. Most of it stemmed from the fact that she had very little right to be angry at all, but she wasn’t about to admit that to him.

He cocked his head to one side and looked her up and down again.

“But you did follow me,” he said wryly. “Obviously, I can run but I can’t hide.”

Slight chagrin tinged her anger, and she turned away so he wouldn’t see it. Honestly, he was being rather patient with her, since she was following him around town accosting him at every turn. Maybe women pursued him all the time, since he was handsome enough to stop a beating heart.

“Tell me, Miss Benton,” he said, leaning close to her as the din grew louder, “why me
again?
I have refused your request. There must be fifty other men, at least, right here in this one place. Why don’t you take ‘no’ for an answer and simply go find yourself another bodyguard?”

His breath felt warm on her ear. A thrill passed through her, made her shiver. She moved a bit away from him and lifted one hand to signal the bartender, as she’d just seen someone else do.

“Lemonade, please.”

“If you’re man enough to come into a saloon, you ought to be man enough to order whiskey,” he snapped.

“I have to keep my wits about me.”

She waited for her drink without looking at
him, but she could feel his eyes assessing her profile.

“Why not get someone else? Answer me, Aurora.”

He had never called her by her given name before, but there was no thrill in it—the cold hardness in his voice could have cut wood.

She spun around.

“How many of these men in here are trustworthy, Cole? How many wouldn’t leave me and my men tied to a tree or dead in a coulee somewhere, run new brands onto my cattle and start their
own
ranch in Texas? How could I know which one to trust?”

“You don’t know me. I might do the same.”

“Never. You’re a Texas Ranger.”

His full lips tightened, a sharp shadow passed through his eyes.

“Not any more.”

“You still have honor, though. I’ve asked a lot of people about you.”

“You wasted your time. Nobody knows me.”

He held her gaze with a long, hard look. His eyes turned black, filled with thoughts she couldn’t read, but she looked back at him steadily, not flinching, not giving an inch.

“Many men have honor,” he said shortly. “You live around here. You know many who do.”

The bartender brought a mug of lemonade. She sighed and leaned toward Cole, reaching for her glass with both hands, willing the few pieces of ice in it to cool the heat of rising anticipation
building in her blood. A person couldn’t make assumptions about Cole McCord, this much she had already learned about him, so the fact that he was actually testing her reasons for offering the job to him didn’t mean anything. But maybe it did.

“Look, Mr. McCord, I know you think I’m crazy, I know you’re sick of my annoying you, but I’m desperate. We’re talking about my survival here. My only hope for a decent life is to try to get to Texas with twenty-two hundred head of cattle, five cowboys, and an old man and two youngsters, counting Skeeter, who’s all crippled up from a horse wreck. I can’t pay any more hands than that, so I have to ride scout myself, and I can’t do that and keep constant watch.”

“Sell something and hire some more men.”

“I’ve sold all I can. And what money I’ve saved would be much better spent on you, considering your abilities and your reputation.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“No maybes. I know it. Who better to protect me than the most dangerous man in Colorado?”

He gave a derisive snort.

“My reputation won’t help you any—it’ll just attract every would-be outlaw like Kid Dolby who can beg, borrow, or steal a horse to ride out to meet your herd.”

She gripped the mug hard to steady her hands. Dear Lord, please let this discussion
mean he was seriously thinking of agreeing to come with her.

“Your reputation will work the opposite way, too, though, remember that,” she said, “especially on the man who’s sworn to keep me from getting my cattle through. He’ll be afraid of you, I know he will, so really, you’ll have very little work to do.”

“Just dealing with you every day would be a lot of work,” he said dryly.

That annoyed her at first, but then it pleased her, too. This was personal, she was making progress! At least she’d pulled him out of that awful remoteness.

“I’ll be too busy to give you any problems,” she said. “I won’t even talk to you—all you have to do is stay out of my way and keep an eye out for trouble.”

He frowned fiercely.

“Stay out of your way?”

“While I boss the drive.”

“Have some sense! I can’t turn you loose … I mean, whoever you hire to be your bodyguard … can’t let you make all the decisions when it’s his job to keep you safe. What if you pick a stretch of quicksand as a place to ford a river and mire yourself up to your neck? Then it’s his job to get you out.”

“
You
have some sense! I know what I’m doing. How do you think I’ve held onto these cattle and my last few possessions for six months with half the thieves in Colorado riding out to
my ranch, trying, legally or illegally, to strip me of everything?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“By threatening to put the greedy grabbers to work against their wills?” he said sarcastically. “By assigning a job to each one and badgering him until he either buckles down to it or runs screaming down the road?”

She laughed. “Right. But they’ve all run away, the cowards. I take you for a braver man than that.”

His lips turned up at the corners. A little warmth ran through her. Good. If she could make him laugh and let down his guard, she could win him over.

They each took a sip of their drinks. He kept looking at her.

“This buzzard who threatened you,” he said, “the one who told you he’d stop you from going down the trail. He must be a bad one.”

“He thinks he is,” she said, drinking from her glass again, suddenly dry-mouthed from too much hope, “and sometimes that’s the most dangerous kind.”

He shook his head.

“You think you’re a trail boss, you think you know bad men, you think you can persuade me to come with you … I think you’re overconfident, Miss Benton, and that’s a dangerous way to be.”

Her spirits dropped into her shoes, but she made her expression as impassive as his.

“No,” she said quietly, looking him straight
in the eye, “I
know
I can persuade you. I know I can be a trail boss, and I know a lot about people, bad ones and good ones. You’re coming with me, Mr. McCord. You might as well finish your drink and go pack your warbag.”

He stared at her for a moment more, then he threw back his head and laughed, really laughed. It was a wonderful, rippling sound, truly delightful.

“Aurora Benton,” he said, “I’ve heard of mule-footed and mule-eared and mule-headed horses, but you’re the most mule-
minded
human being I ever saw.”

He was laughing at her, but there was admiration in his voice, too. She gritted her teeth and gave him a determinedly sweet smile.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He looked into her eyes, searchingly, as if she were some kind of curiosity. “Don’t you have any ‘quit’ in you?”

“Not anymore, I don’t,” she said. “If I quit on this drive, I’m lost.”

“How so?”

“I’ll have no freedom, ever again. If I don’t save this one herd of cattle and find some free land to ranch, I’ll have three unacceptable choices: move into town here and live in poverty as a teacher paid half what a man would make, marry a man I cannot abide, or go back East to live off the charity of relatives.”

A warmth came into his eyes, a look she took to be admiration, a look that made her blood heat like a sudden stroke of the sun. She was
going to win. He was going with her to Texas, and she’d better start learning right now not to let herself become too attracted to him.

But he only finished his drink, set the glass down, and pushed it away.

“I can’t help you,” he said. “But I wish you plenty of water, tall grass, and luck.”

Stunned, she watched him fish a coin from the front pocket of his well-fitted pants and toss it onto the counter, indicating with a gesture that it took care of the lemonade also.

“Ride safe,” he said, with a cursory tip of his hat.

Before she could think how best to reply, he was gone.

The smoke threatened to choke Cole with every breath he took, and his mind wandered so constantly that he couldn’t keep in mind the cards he himself had been dealt, much less make a guess as to which ones his opponents might hold. No wonder he wasn’t winning—it was pure luck that he was even breaking even. Before the next round of betting could start, he stood up and threw in his hand.

“I’m out,” he said. “Thank you, gentlemen.”

He was through the door and into the back corridor of the hotel in a heartbeat, striding toward the stairs at a feverish pace, but the air seemed just as thick there as in the Gentleman’s Club. Worse, his thoughts continued to roil. He took the stairs two at a time. What he needed, all he needed, was sleep.

The thought twisted his lips into a bitter smile. Every night sleep was hard enough to come by, had been ever since Travis got killed, but tonight it’d be a true lost cause. He hadn’t been this stirred up in years.

It must be because of how close he had come to having to kill the boy, or maybe because of the little whelp’s insistence on not giving up until they drew on each other. Kid Dolby was even more of a greenhorn than Cole had been when he ran away from home to join the Rangers. At the rate he was going, he wouldn’t live to become much older.

Cole reached his room, took out his key, unlocked the door, and went in, realizing as he closed it behind him that he was still moving as fast as if he were running from someone or something. Well, he was. All day long this emotional turmoil had been threatening to swamp him.

The latch clicked closed in the sudden silence of the room, but being alone gave him no peace: his thoughts kept racing, he still felt too hot, too confined. Maybe he ought to just turn around, go get his horse, ride on out, and take temptation away from the Kid. He could simply be gone when the boy got out of jail—and when the man he was supposed to meet tomorrow arrived from Denver. He didn’t want a job with the Pinkertons, anyhow.

And he sure as hell didn’t want any more days like this one.

He stripped to the waist, dunked his head in
the water bowl, went to the window, wrenched it open, and leaned out into the moonlight. The air bathed his skin—cold air—but in spite of the temperature it carried spring on its breath. A light breeze blew from the east, and he would swear it smelled of flowers and damp earth.

A sudden longing, a fierce, unnameable yearning, twisted inside him, and he searched the night as if he could see something that might assuage it. The sky stretched high and wide, clear and black, the full moon shone yellow, the stars gleamed white as the feathers they were said to be in the Chickasaw legends of his mother’s people. A thousand more feelings surged, swirling, inside him, and, without warning, the truth rode to the surface.

Aurora Benton was the one who’d whipped up the maelstrom inside him. She had done it to him from the very first moment he had found himself lying in the middle of the street with her in his arms, while that terrible flood of relief and fury and desire roared in his blood.

The
life
in her, the way she’d taken him to task for being too serious, the way she’d smiled, the way she’d simply assumed he would be her bodyguard if she only asked had drawn him to her. The way she’d come marching into the saloon on his trail as no other respectable woman would ever do, hotly indignant because he hadn’t stayed to hear her out, sharpened his curiosity even more. Dear God, the way she’d assumed she could trail a herd all the way to Texas and set out to do it was enough to make
him root for her. Everything about her had pierced his hard shell.