The Renegades: Cole (8 page)

Dear God, please help her learn to be trail
boss. Cole and her crew could take care of everything else.

Cookie was in one of his famous snits when they reached the wagons. He had gone so far as to pick his own nooning spot and have Nate build a fire, and he was gunning for Aurora the minute he walked around the wagon and saw her and Cole riding up.

“Where in tarnation have you been, Missy?”

“I’m sorry you’ve already had Nate build a fire, Cookie, because we’re going to have to keep moving all day. I want to be as far from Rocky Springs as we can get before dark.”

He glared at her.

“Somethin’ wrong with the town?”

“Its citizens,” she said, reining to a stop. “They want to hang me and Cole.”

“I ain’t in no mood fer tall tales. I’ve got dinner to cook and a late start on it—”

“She’s telling you the truth,” Cole said, stepping down from his horse. “I had to shoot two men and kick another in the teeth, so their brothers and cousins may come after our hides.”

The expression that came over Cookie’s face as he absorbed the news made them both laugh.

Aurora ordered the cold food for the men, and she and Nate climbed into the chuck wagon to pack it into cloth flour sacks while Cole told Cookie the whole story. She heard the cook shout Gates’s name furiously before Cole had gotten halfway through. The story ended as she finished her chore.

“Thank ye for gettin’ her outta there safe!” Cookie cried as she climbed down over the wheel.

He grabbed Cole’s hand and began to shake it.

“I’d shore like to’ve been there to protect that girl but you done as good as I could’ve, McCord.”

“Thanks, Cookie,” Cole said. “She helped me—she set it up so I could get a swipe at them. I don’t think we have to worry too much about Miss Aurora.”

Oh yes, you do. Without you, Yd still be back there in Rocky Springs facing an uncertain future, to say the least
.

The feeling of sharp relief came over her again. If Cole hadn’t been so fast with his gun—and his boot—there was no telling what might’ve happened.

He took half the food sacks and she took the other to go back to the herd. Nate and Cookie began breaking up camp even before she and Cole had left them.

“Let’s get everybody fed and then head out to find the bedgrounds for tonight,” she said. “I want a river or a mountain at our backs if we can find one.”

“We can. And we can welcome anybody Gates sends to visit us, so there’s no need to run your horse like a Nueces steer.”

She realized for the first time that she was holding them at a high lope, so she slowed Shy Boy and tried to relax a little. Her gaze kept
sweeping the horizon ahead, though, looking for the dust of the herd.

When they saw it and drew closer, Monte rode ahead to meet them and took the food to distribute, then Aurora and Cole took off to the south at a long trot. Mostly they rode in silence, because he suddenly seemed as remotely distant as he had the day they’d met.

And she was too exhausted to talk. The reaction was setting in, and all she wanted was to fall off her horse into the thick grass beneath their feet and stare up at the sky. She didn’t want to ever think about Lloyd Gates again.

Yet her mind was whirling like a dust devil that would never stop, and her nerves were strumming, her emotions swirling in confusion. She resisted the urge to keep looking back over her shoulder. Cole was quietly keeping a sharp lookout, even though he seemed lost in thought. Cole was with her, so everything was all right.

But she hated depending on him!

Finally, when they’d covered what she judged to be the most miles the herd could travel before dark, she began scanning the horizon for the best bedgrounds. They were coming out into a more open valley, and ahead, running a little to the west of the trail, ran a curving line of trees.

“Let’s go see if that’s a river over there,” she said.

He nodded, and they headed in that direction. When they rode through the trees and out
onto the bank of a wide, meandering creek, they could see the rocky bottom through the water.

“Well, at least our first river crossing won’t require us to swim,” she said, laughing a little. “Do you think it’s too shallow to hold them if somebody tries a stampede tonight?”

“It’ll do,” he said. “They’ll try to break out into the valley before they’ll take to the water.”

“The bank’s fairly high, on downstream, there,” she said.

They rode up and down the north bank for half a mile in each direction, but the bend Aurora had pointed out seemed to be the best spot, so she chose it for the night camp.

“Don’t you think we should bed them here?” she said.

It was the third time she’d brought them back to that spot.

“I truly do,” he said, “but you’re the trail boss and I’m the bodyguard, remember?”

She made a face at him.

“That’s it,” she said, as much to herself as to Cole, for she had to make a decision, and make it now. “Let’s go back and get Cookie.”

Shy Boy moved forward at her command, but then she stopped and turned. Her blue eyes questioned Cole sharply from beneath the brim of her hat.

A dozen different feelings grabbed at his gut. The strongest, by far, was the most recognizable: he wanted to pull her off that horse and into his arms, he wanted to kiss her until those
pieces of sky eyes of hers glazed over with desire.

He wasn’t going to be able to stay angry with her all the way to Texas as he had hoped. This was only the first day on the trail, and her beauty, her bravery, even her confusion was drawing his interest. No wonder he had let those ignorant yahoos ambush him back there—all his instincts were pulling him toward Aurora instead of feeling for danger.

To keep her from saying whatever was making her look at him that way, he said the first thing that popped onto his tongue.

“It’s fine,” he said. “You’ve done fine picking your first bedground. You’re gonna make a trail boss that’ll lay old Charlie Goodnight himself in the shade.”

He intended to ride on, then, but she wouldn’t let him look away.

“I never took you for a flatterer,” she said, with a faint, suspicious smile curving her luscious mouth. “How come you’ve turned so encouraging, Cole?”

Her amusement
and
her distrust stung him a little.

“What do you mean? I’m …”

She interrupted.

“Two days ago your freely stated opinion was that I couldn’t trail a herd of turtles across a hardpan yard,” she said, “and now I’m better than Goodnight and Loving all rolled into one. How come?”

He folded his arms across his saddle horn
and smiled. That was another thing he liked about her: everything up front and on the table.

“I’ve gotta make you feel confident now that my life is in your hands.”

“How do you figure that?” she demanded. “From my point of view it looks like that’d be the other way around.”

“You’re telling me where to sleep and where to wade the rivers,” he said.

“And you’re telling me that I can take care of myself and Cookie not to worry about me. Are you getting ready to go off on some big scouting expedition and leave me to fend for myself?”

A sharp sympathy tugged at him. Virgil and crew had shaken her up pretty bad.

He tried to shut off the compassion. He hadn’t taken this job to worry about her feelings or what she might be thinking. All he intended to do was keep her safe until he deposited her on some ranch in Texas.

“No, I’ll not leave you for very long at a time,” he said, irritated that he felt so much for her. “But when I do, you’d better be on guard and able to watch out for yourself.”

That seemed to satisfy her for the moment, and she said no more about it as they rode out to find Cookie and guide him and Nate in. But still his mind kept trying to think of other ways to reassure her, and that didn’t improve his mood any.

Finally, as they pulled the wagons onto the campsite and Nate began to gather more wood
for the fire, he left her with the boy and Cookie and rode up onto the next ridge to the south. He wanted to look for riders and also, to get an idea of the lay of the land. But sitting there staring off into the distance didn’t help him much—he kept seeing Aurora’s pale face when Virgil had appeared and then the shocked satisfaction in her eyes when he’d knocked the man off his mule and got them out of there.

He could still hear her husky voice, too, saying,
You saved us, Cole
.

At that moment, too, he had ached to drag her into his arms and kiss her senseless.

He shook his head, finally, and turned Border back toward camp. The horse deserved to be unsaddled and grained, deserved to get some rest. The remuda was catching up to them, coming on at a steady pace, and the dust from the herd announced they would be bedded down before dark.

Even the word “bedded” made him think of Aurora.

Giving a great sigh, he lifted Border into a long trot. What he ought to do was seduce her, bed her, and get it over with. That would restore his instincts for danger and his balance, that hardly ever failed to dull the fascination any woman held for him.

What was it she had said that night in his room? Something about having experiences and living life to its fullest. Well, being seduced by him was an experience she definitely should not miss.

He reached the bedgrounds and unsaddled Border, grained him, and turned him over to the boy in charge of the remuda. Then he washed up, all without so much as a glimpse of Aurora, and as he came back toward the fire he was wondering edgily where she might have gone. He was headed for Cookie to ask if she’d gone out to meet the herd—which, knowing her, she might’ve done simply to try to conquer her new worry of riding without him—when the sudden music filled the night air.

The sound stopped him in his tracks.

Piano music, there was nothing else it could be. It was coming from the wagon he had told her to sell in Rocky Springs.

A
piano
, for the love of all that was holy! What was it she had said?

There’s nothing extra. The contents of that wagon are the absolute, bare necessities
.

Surely it was Aurora playing, for the ravishing melody held as much turmoil as they had gone through all day and the whole confusion of feelings that he’d seen in her eyes that afternoon. He stood still for a long moment, listening.

Well, there was one thing he could set straight for her.

He turned on his heel and strode toward the sound. He was going to collect on that bet.

C
ole was in the wagon at her shoulder, before she knew it. She startled, then glanced up into his hawk brown eyes and immediately lost the thread of her music.

He dropped onto the bench beside her, facing her, refusing to let her look away. She kept on playing, but not very well now.

“Not one unnecessary item in this wagon, hm?”

The purposeful look in his eyes sent a thrill through her.

“Not one single thing,” she said, and played louder.

Those four words used up all her breath, took all the air out of the crowded wagon. Even so, she continued to play.

“I disagree,” he growled, “and we had a wager on that.”

His
closeness
, the incredible heat and bulk of his thigh touching hers weakened her wrists, caused her fingers to falter. She tried to speak but could only shake her head.

“It’s dangerous to welsh on a bet,” he whispered, and took her mouth with his. She played only one note more.

His lips tasted of hot, molten honey, and they knew her already. They devoured her, they made her mouth open to him, in pure instinct, the shock of their power erasing any resistance she might have offered.

It was too late for pushing him away, too late, even, for holding back her own response to him. She knew that in her bones and in her flesh. And in her soul, which felt a sudden, sweet peace. Yet he also stirred her like a storm, carried her off on the wind of desire and then she was lost, lost forever, offering her tongue, entwining it with his.

The amazing magic of his kiss took the strength from her body but not from her mouth. She stayed still as midnight in his arms, telling him,
begging
him with long, stroking caresses of her tongue and tiny pleading sounds deep in her throat, never to stop. She wanted him to kiss her forever.

He promised that he would, swore it with his lips and his tongue, pledged it with the way he sat so close to her. But he wasn’t holding her.

You can get up and go away from me any time you want
.

That was what he was saying with his one hand resting securely at the small of her back. Only it and his mouth were touching her.

And that marvelous mouth wasn’t letting her
go unless she could find the will to move it away.

The smallness of her waist beneath his hand, the sweetness of her hair brushing his face should have moved him, but the marvel of the kiss made him powerless to want more, much less to take it.

There had never been another woman like this, not in his experience. Her lips burned against his, her tongue stirred in him a new desire, a craving beyond hunger he had never felt before, a wanting that burst to life as a conflagration in his blood.

He took her in both his hands, his thumbs just beneath her breasts, almost spanning her body with his fingers, feeling the wild beating of her heart. Absorbing the heat of her through the thin fabric of her blouse, he moaned a little, and her tongue pushed deeper into his mouth, teasing his, stroking it, and then pulling away. Calling him to her.

He moved one hand higher to cradle the perfect roundness of her breast. Her mouth went still on his.

With his thumb, he brushed the hard, firm tip, standing waiting for his hand, caressed it through the fabric of her blouse. Once. Twice.

She broke the kiss to give a little, helpless gasp, as if she had no more breath and never would. Then, after a moment, she melted more completely into the palm of his hand and pushed the nipple against his thumb in a mute demand for more.

He gave it. And he kissed her again at the same instant, branding her lips and her tongue as belonging to him with a stormy passion he had never felt before.

She responded with wild, unbridled desire for one heartbeat, then she tore her mouth away.

“Oh,” she said, gasping for air. “No, Cole.”

He had scared her. He’d lost all control, he was losing his mind.

But still he couldn’t help himself. He kissed her cheek, her nose, then her chin and her slender, arching throat, dropping pleading kisses lower and lower on it, pressing
begging
kisses to her hot, sweet skin until she tore herself away from him.

“Stop,” she whispered. “Stop, Cole. We must stop.”

“We can’t.”

His own voice was so hoarse he didn’t even recognize it.

“We have to. I … I …”

“Did I scare you? I’m sorry.”

“No. I mean … yes. Yes, you scared me bad.”

But he hadn’t. Her voice and her eyes and her swollen, bruised lips told him that.

Her gaze kept going to his mouth and lingering there.

“You didn’t
act
scared,” he drawled.

She looked up and stared at him, her eyes huge in the dimming light that filtered in through the canvas.

“Go,” she said. “Get out, Cole. You shouldn’t have come in here like this.”

The dismissal sparked his anger, it was so unexpected, so abrupt, after all they’d just shared. He didn’t move.

“
You
shouldn’t have hauled a goddamned piano down the trail in a hoodlum wagon.”

“Stay away from me.”

“How the hell can I stay away from you when I’m your bodyguard? Are you firing me off this job? For a
kiss?
”

Her hands flew to his arm, clutched it, then let it go. He could still feel the long, slender shapes of her fingers as he had the day they’d met.

“A kiss. And you can’t say I held you down and forced it on you.”

“No, I’m not firing you. Just go.”

He stood up, took the two steps toward the door, then turned to look at her again.

“We don’t want to stay away from each other, Aurora. You know that now.”

“Yes, we do,” she cried. “Don’t you ever kiss me again.”

“Suit yourself.”

He stepped outside and jumped down from the tailgate. She appeared in the doorway, color high in her cheeks.

“Don’t kiss me,” she repeated, her voice breaking a little on the last word.

An edge of steel came into it.

“And don’t ever grab my reins away from me again!”

She closed the canvas flap between them with a fast, sharp snap.

Cole strode off into the growing gloom of the evening as fast as his feet could move. The woman was
loco
. He had thought so the first time he saw her.

Aurora’s plan had been to change and sleep in the hoodlum wagon after the cowboys had taken out their bedrolls at night. She intended to dress and undress in there and unroll her bed in the aisleway between the boxes and barrels each night so that she could maintain a modicum of privacy.

But tonight, the very first night out on the trail, she thought she would smother in there. She barely had room to spread out her quilts between the piano and the wooden boxes that held her grandmother’s silver and china.

But what was most disturbing was that Cole’s scent hung in the air. A scent made up of horse, leather, and his own renegade self, some cedary
man
scent that belonged only to him. She had to get away from it or she’d never be able to sleep. It had been on her, too, on her skin, and she had deliberately washed it off when she changed her clothes for bed.

A cold pain twisted her heart. She couldn’t sleep because she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

She pressed the tips of her fingers against her swollen lips, tasted the flavor of his mouth on her tongue again. Tears stung her eyes.

He was staying away from her, all right. From the time he’d walked away from her wagon, he had not shown up at the fire all evening.

Thank God, Cookie had sent Nate out with a plate and some coffee to find him. The boy had come back empty-handed, saying that Cole was keeping watch, and she had felt a little bit better—it would’ve been terrible if Cole had eaten nothing after the horrendous day they had had.

The thought made her throw her arm over her eyes. For the first day on the trail, this one had held enough adventure and excitement for the whole trip. It had worn her out completely, and she had to make decisions in the morning—like exactly where they should cross the creek. And there might be a river to cross before the day was over. That or some of Gates’s minions to fight or a runaway wagon or no telling what else.

She had to get some sleep or she wouldn’t be able to think.

But, although pure exhaustion held her body limp on her quilts, her mind went back over and over the day, and her memory wouldn’t let her rest.

Never, ever, would she have believed that a kiss could rock her whole world, that it could shatter her bones. She thought she’d been kissed before, but she hadn’t.

Cole McCord. She’d had no idea what she was doing in hiring him.

But the whole thing was scarier, even, than
the desire he roused in her. He had touched her deepest self, she was coming to depend on him. Already. On the very first day.

When Virgil and his crew had had them under their guns, she hadn’t been able to think of what to do because deep down she’d kept on expecting Cole to take care of her. Which he had.

Then she hadn’t even been able to make a decision about a bedground without asking his opinion, and his praise had warmed and reassured her.
Her
, Aurora Benton, who never relied on anyone but herself!

She was relying on him, not just for her physical safety but emotionally, too. Already. On the very first day.

Worst of all, so frightening she could barely bring herself to think of it again, was the way she had felt at the first instant of his kiss. That weird calm, that sense that this was so
right
, their mouths melded together, their flesh delivered up into flame in a heartbeat. That harmony was stronger than the heat and desire.
That
was the danger, far more than the pleasure.

She had wanted to be with Cole forever, to kiss him from now on, to feel she was with him for the rest of her life.

That in itself was far scarier than Virgil and five shotguns.

The next morning she stayed busy giving orders while Cole rode out ahead, even before the wagons started, to scout for enemies. He came
back when the herd began to move and then rode three or four lengths ahead of her south down the trail.

By the time the sun was halfway up, the silence between them was too heavy to bear. They had hundreds more miles to ride, after all, and there was no reason they couldn’t behave like civilized persons.

“Cole!” she called. “Wait!”

He greeted her with a scowl as she loped up beside him.

“What?”

“I just wondered how you like your mount so far.”

Both of them were riding different horses to let their personal favorites rest and travel with the remuda.

“How can I know a thing like that? This is the only one I’ve tried.”

Each of the hands had approximately ten horses in his mount, and the same was true of her and Cole.

“You don’t have to be so grouchy,” she said in a teasing tone. “I wish you could see your sulky face.”

He didn’t take it well—he looked surprised and then fighting mad. No doubt he was the handsomest man ever born, with his dark, mysterious eyes and the hard, uncompromising line of his jaw that fairly begged her to run her fingertip along it. She wouldn’t, though, and she wouldn’t think such things. She’d look at him dispassionately from now on.

“You’re getting mighty personal with your remarks,” he growled.

“My
remarks?
Plural? I haven’t said a word to you before now and you talk as if all I’ve done since sunrise is talk your ears off!”

He threw her a wry glance.

“That wouldn’t take you from sunrise to the middle of the morning. That’d be about an hour’s job for a medicine tongue like you.”

His tone was still gripy, but a bit of amusement had crept into it, too, and she decided to try to make him smile. They might as well be pleasant as well as polite.

“That’s not fair,” she said, pretending great indignation. “Yesterday there were long stretches of silence in our scouting.”

“Hmpf! About half an hour, as I recall, and that was only when we were riding at a high lope to save our necks from a hanging tree.”

Her irritation became a little more real.

“I’m perfectly capable of maintaining a companionable silence,” she said. “I do
not
talk all the time, Cole. You have to admit that.”

“You promised me that night in the saloon in Pueblo City when I foolishly signed on with this piano-toting trail drive that you wouldn’t talk to me at all.”

“Did I?”

“Yes. You did. Remember that and abide by it.”

“But you would get too lonesome,” she said, unable to resist teasing him some more. “I’m only thinking of you.”

That did make the corners of his mouth turn up in the tiniest hint of a smile.

Then his face filled with thunder again.

“Yesterday you weren’t thinking of me,” he said, “throwing me out, telling me to stay away from you, ordering me never to grab your reins again. You’ve turned through yourself since then, Aurora. How come?”

All of it came rushing back to her—the passion and fear that his kiss had inspired, the desire that had threatened to take her over. Those feelings had been there all night long and all morning while she’d been trying to deny them. When would they go away?

“I was thinking of both of us,” she said to her saddle horn, so quietly that he had to lean toward her to hear. “Such a … an association would be impossible.”

He didn’t answer, but his silence seemed to contradict her.

She turned to look at him.

“I meant it,” she blurted, fighting through the images in her mind to find a new topic of conversation. “Don’t ever grab my reins away from me again. I hate that. It makes me feel like I have no control over where I’m going.”

“Because you don’t. And I’ll grab them again if I have to.”

Then he just sat there, riding his horse at a slow trot, watching her. He nodded, slowly, while he searched her face.

“What else? And don’t ever kiss you again?
Don’t you want to repeat
that
order, too, Miss Trail Boss?”

Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

He was looking at her with his eyes hot enough to burn her skin.