Whispers (28 page)

“
Help me? Into an early grave maybe.”

“
What’s a saloon without women? I thought Aiken had convinced you that you needed them.”

“
You bartering out their flesh these days?”

“
At least give them the choice. Give them the chance. They’ve been doing this to save their lives. Maybe they’ve been doing it because they didn’t have a choice. But if they knew they were working toward freedom….”

He looked at me from where he crouched down, inspecting the hooves of his horse. I stared back, trying to make myself appear earnest, beseeching ... obliging.

“
They would work for you, Sawyer. They think you’re a good man.”

His eyes narrowed as he watched me. “What about you?” he said at last, and his voice was low and deep. It made something in my belly tighten.

“
What do you mean?”

“
You think I’m a good man?”

Dry-mouthed, I nodded. He made a derisive sound that mocked me. He didn’t believe it.

“
I can’t see you taking on customers,” he said.

I hadn’t meant that I would, but I saw from his face how hypocritical that made me. I was trying to keep us alive, but I was using their bodies for payment.

“
I’ll do what I have to do to stay alive,” I said, wondering where the fierce words came from. Could I, would I really? I couldn’t say what I might have done had the burly man hauled me into that tent. To survive, would I have complied?

Sawyer watched my thoughts flash across my face. Then he stood and approached me, his steps slow and measured. I thought of a wolf, moving silently through the underbrush. What was I doing negotiating with this outlaw? He’d helped me last night, but what made me think I could depend upon him? He was no gentleman, no knight in shining armor.

A shiver went through me, sending a fine tremor up as the wind teased a strand of my hair across my face. His hand beat mine to brush it back.

“
I don’t believe you,” he said.

I turned defiant eyes up to meet his. It mattered not that I didn’t believe me either. I knew I couldn’t let him leave us out here, miles from any sign of civilization, prey waiting to be taken. I had brought this on these women who had taken me in. I was responsible for their being stranded. Yes, they’d been at Aiken’s mercy before, but even he couldn’t compare to dying of thirst and hunger. That would be our fate out here in the middle of nowhere with barely enough supplies to last a week. That or Jake Smith, who now had the murder of his brother to add to his reasons for vengeance. I’d seen what he’d done to my family. I could only imagine the torture he could inflict on us.

I lifted my chin, showing Sawyer that I would not back down. I would face him and any other man.

“
You’d bed a man for them,” he asked, his voice tight and dangerous.

He was testing me. I swallowed and nodded. “For us. If it meant you’ll see us safely back to civilization.”

“
What if that man was me?”

My eyes widened as he stepped closer still. The hand that clutched the blanket around me was white-knuckled, but I didn’t back up. If I gave an inch to him now, he would ride off and leave us. Just like that. I felt my breath coming in short bursts, but I didn’t move, even when his hands settled on my arms.

“
What if that man was me, Ella?”

I tipped my head back so he could see my determination, but the sight of those Mississippi eyes so close, so turbulent and filled with swirling need wiped the rebel from me. I watched as if hypnotized as he lowered his face—watched and did nothing to stop him. His lips touched mine and the shock of it went through me like the bullet had last night. Only pain didn’t follow. Heat did. It raced through my veins and lit a fire within me, burning like it had that day so long ago in town. My world had been different then, but not the sensations he caused. Not the spiraling tightness inside me.

A part of my mind spoke in warning even as my body responded. Suddenly, life had come so close to the edge of death that right and wrong no longer seemed valid. I’d killed a man last night. This morning I was in another’s arms. It didn’t seem real, and yet every touch, every sense told me it was more real than anything I’d ever experienced.

Sawyer tasted of power and potency. He’d drunk coffee with sugar and it was on his lips, hot as the feelings moving inside of me. My hands let loose the blanket and it slipped to my feet as I moved my arms up the wall of his chest to wrap around his neck. It never occurred to me to push him away.

His hands slid across my back to the curve of my spine and he hauled me up hard against him. His mustache was soft against my skin and his mouth felt like heated satin. His tongue touched my lips, teasing and insisting until they parted and I opened for him. He deepened the kiss, moving his tongue against mine in a caress more intimate than anything I’d ever known. Low inside me everything became hot and liquid. I curled my hands into his shoulders and held on as I rode the wave of feeling that washed over me.

When his hands began to roam again, I didn’t protest. My body became a stranger that welcomed any touch he offered. His fingers slid up my ribs and then closed over the soft flesh of my breasts. I caught my breath and held it as awareness emptied me of everything but feeling.

The sound I made stilled him and for an instant we were like statues, frozen in a moment of intimacy. Then slowly he lifted his head and looked into my eyes. I saw wonder and need in the deep flecked swirls but then it changed and became something else. He pushed me back roughly, glaring at me as his chest rose and fell with his labored breathing. I staggered and caught my balance, looking at him with hooded eyes. I knew my lips were red and full from his kisses as his were from mine. But the look he gave me was angry, and I felt the need drain as red heat climbed my neck.

“
I don’t need a whore,” he said coldly.

The words whipped through me and I couldn’t conceal the sting they left behind. I wanted to hide my face from him, I wanted to snatch up the blanket and huddle beneath it so he couldn’t see me, but I didn’t. Once again I lifted my chin and stared him in the eye.

He looked away. Turning his back, he picked up one of his bags and threw it across the camp with a low rumble of anger. “Damn it,” he growled.

The muscles in his shoulders bunched tightly and he stared away from me, cursing under his breath. But I wasn’t afraid. It was foolish to believe, but I sensed that I was winning. He quieted, shook his head, and made a sound of laughter, though nothing was funny. Finally, he turned around and looked at me, still shaking his head.

“
Wake ‘em up,” he said. “Before I change my mind.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

I was trembling as I moved to the slumbering women and bent to gently wake them up. When I reached Athena, her eyes were wide and black in the glowing light of dawn. She stared hard at me, backing me up as she sat.

“
You think you in charge of us now? That what you think?”

“
No—”

“
No? You makin’ deals wit Captain for us. I hear you. What happen to killin’ him? You sure changed from killin’ to kissin’ quick enough.”

“
What you talking about, Athena? Who kissin’?” Chick asked.

“
Ask her,” Athena said, bottom lip protruding and eyes hard like ball bearings.

I looked at the expectant faces, some still heavy with sleep, some wide-eyed and waiting.

“
Look around you,” I said. “Do any of you know where we are?”

Chick frowned and shook her head. “We never do.”

“
But you always have someone guiding you.”

“
Or dragging, more’s the like,” Meaira said.

“
She gone and tol’ Captain we work for him,” Athena said.

Meaira’s head snapped back. Honey said, “Is that true?”

I caught my lip between my teeth as I nodded. “Aiken is gone and even if he does come back, I don’t think any of us wants to be here. The Captain was saddling up—he was going to leave us. Leave us here with nothing but a wagon, a horse, and a good wish. At least if we go with him, we’ll end up at a town. Some place we can find our way home from.”

“
This wagon my home,” Chick said.

“
She tell him we his,” Athena said.

“
You’d planned to go when Aiken was taking you,” I told them. “The only difference now is we go with the Captain. You think he’s a good man. Honey, you said he was, didn’t you?”

Honey nodded, watching me with narrowed eyes.

I shrugged. “You’ve been doing . . . what you’ve been doing for Aiken and you haven’t gotten anything but more of the same for it. Isn’t that right?”

“
That’s right,” Honey said.

“
With Sawyer—the Captain, you’ll have a choice. You’ll have a chance to make some money. Money that can help you start over if that’s what you want.”

“
How ‘bout you?” Athena demanded. “What choice you get?”

I held my head up. “The same as you.”

“
You gon’ work for Captain?” Chick exclaimed.

“
She gon’ work under Captain. She kissin’ up with him.”

Honey’s eyes rounded. “You were kissing the Captain?”

My face was burning, but I nodded. “I had to prove I meant what I said. I told him we would be an asset.”

“
He know we got asses.”

Meaira snorted. “That he does.”

“
Well, now he knows I have one too.”

“
And you gon’ use it?” Athena said with disdain.

I thought I might throw up. I found myself repeating my words to Sawyer. They tasted no better with time. “I will do what I must to survive.”

They each exchanged glances in silence.

I was banking that somewhere in Sawyer was a man whose honor would not allow him to use me that way. I was betting that he’d put me on the first train east. But where would I go? I had no family. No money. All I could do was return to Alamosa and give myself to the charity of the people there. I thought they would take me in, but what if Jake Smith decided to hunt me even there?

I shook my head. I could not think about that now. I needed to get beyond this moment, this day, this problem.

“
We need to hurry,” I said. “He’ll leave us if we’re not ready.”

They jumped up and began gathering things together. By the time Sawyer had returned from watering the horses, the women were up and ready. He gave them each a steady look, ending with me.

“
I ain’t no babysitter,” he growled at them. “I’d as soon as part ways here. Any of you want that, you just say so.”

“
Ella say you gon’ let us work in your saloon and keep some of our money,” Chick said, her voice high and thin and clear.

Sawyer looked at me with an expression of such disbelief I might have laughed. But I didn’t.

“
That’s right,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”

I was as surprised as they, but I didn’t let it show.

“
But I ain’t guaranteeing that Aiken won’t be in Diablo Springs by the time we get there. If he is, you ain’t my responsibility.”

He gave a nod that spoke the rest. I could see from their faces that none of the women needed it spelled out. They’d said it themselves—they belonged to Aiken. Sawyer would not fight for their freedom. That they had to do alone.

Sawyer’s eyes lingered on me for another moment and just the look brought a fresh wave of awareness to me. An anticipation I was ashamed to feel, but couldn’t deny. How I’d gone from wanting him dead, to begging for help, to hoping for his touch, I didn’t know. But there it was.

He tossed Athena the harness. “You gotta earn your keep, though. I ain’t waiting for none of you.” The last said to me. “You fall behind, I leave you.”

He couldn’t have been much clearer than that. Looking at the faces around me, I realized he didn’t need to be. We all understood.

“
Would you like some breakfast before we go, Captain?” I asked.

He stood, hands on his hips, looking as if he wanted nothing less.

“
And some coffee,” Honey said with her pearly smile. “A man needs his coffee in the morning.”

“
You sit by the fire, Captain. Just go on,” Chick said. “Athena and me, we get the horses ready. We get it all ready. Ain’t that right?”

Athena was still glaring at me. “What she gon’ do?”

“
She gon’ take care of Captain’s breakfast. Make sure he don’t need nothing.”

I swallowed. “That’s right. I believe we still have bacon, Captain. And biscuits. May I bring you some?”

He looked like he’d been pole-axed. “You going to shoot me with my mouth full?”

“
Where would be the benefit of that? We need you, Captain McCready.”

I couldn’t make out the words he said under his breath, but I was sure they were curses. Reluctantly, he let Chick take the saddlebags from his hands and Meaira and Honey set about packing things up as I prepared a quick breakfast, served without hesitation.

Chapter Twenty-Four