Winter Fire (18 page)

“—around and muttering,” he interrupted curtly. “I know that part.”

“Who's telling the story, you or me?”

“Neither one, near as I can tell.”

She bit back a searing word.

Normally it wasn't difficult to keep her temper. But this one man got under her skin worse than nettles.

“I talked to you for a time,” she said tightly. “Soothing you.”

“With that honey and sunshine voice,” he suggested, his face expressionless.

She shrugged.

“When you settled down some,” she said, “I got close enough to touch you. I wanted to wake you up gently.”

“You sure you weren't dreaming? I don't remember any of this.”

“You were asleep,” she shot back.

“Uh huh.”

“When I touched you, you didn't wake up, not all the way,” she said, biting off each word. “You just mumbled
Emily's name, and then something about how you thought she had gone.”

Case didn't move, yet he closed up completely.

“Keep talking,” he said.

“You put your arm around me, pulled me under the covers, and told me not to worry, Uncle Case would chase the ghosts away.”

His eyelids flinched. It was the only sign that he heard Sarah's words.

“Then you tucked me along your side,” she said, “cradled my face with your hand, and went back to sleep. It was a good sleep, clean and gentle.”

She waited, but all he said was, “Anything else?”

“When I tried to ease out of your bed, your arm tightened and you started to wake up. I waited, and tried again. Same thing.”

Case looked away from Sarah, but she sensed that she still had his full attention.

“I fell asleep,” she said simply. “It was so warm and peaceful to be held like that. No wonder Emily came to you when her dreams troubled her.”

A flash of stark pain went over his face like black lightning.

Sarah's breath caught. Despite everything, she wanted to go to him, to hold him and be held in turn.

There were times when life simply hurt too much to bear alone.

“Emily is dead, isn't she?” Sarah whispered.

Only silence answered the question.

“Is that why you're hunting Culpeppers?” she asked.

“I will see every last one of them in hell.”

His voice was like winter itself—quiet, cold, unstoppable.

She shivered and rubbed her hands over her arms.

“I don't doubt it,” she said. “Unless you get yourself killed first.”

“No one will hang crêpe if I die.”

“I would.”

Slowly Case looked back to her.

“Don't,” he said simply.

“Don't what?”

“Care about me. It will only hurt you.”

Sarah's smile was bittersweet.

“That's how you know you're alive, Case. You hurt.”

After that, nothing disturbed the morning silence but the sound of her footsteps moving away.

 

Case dumped an armload of wood in the cabin. Sitting on his heels, he sorted and stacked the wood neatly near the fire.

Sarah looked up from her spinning. Though she was tired enough to fall on her face after a day of grinding corn with Lola, boiling laundry, and making soap, the spinning still had to be done. The cloth not only made their own clothes, it was one of the few sources of cash she had.

Unfortunately she wasn't too tired to blush every time she thought of what had happened that morning, with the sun barely up, her pants down around her knees, and a wild singing in her body.

Hastily she looked away from Case. The firewood he had brought in was obviously from the higher country beyond Lost River Canyon. There was even some pine wood among the piñon and juniper.

“Thank you,” she said. “You're very handy with that ax Ute, uh, found.”

She suspected Ute had “found” the ax—and more besides—at the raiders' camp in Spring Canyon.

“No thanks necessary,” Case said. “I eat food cooked over that fire just like Conner does.”

The cabin door opened. Conner stuck his head in.

“If you're finished with that wood,” he said to Case, “I could use a hand.”

Sarah looked up quickly from her spinning.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” her brother said.

“Then Case doesn't need to worry about it, either,” she said. “He worked like a donkey getting firewood today.”

“It won't take long,” Conner said.

Case glanced at the rawboned boy and stood up smoothly. He had been expecting something like this ever since Conner had reluctantly walked off this morning, leaving his sister in Case's bed.

“Be right with you,” he said.

Conner withdrew. Rather pointedly he left the door open behind him.

“That boy,” Sarah muttered, setting aside her spinning. “You would think he was born in a barn.”

“I'll get the door on my way out.”

When Case closed the door behind him, Conner was standing off toward one of the clumps of big sage. In the waning light, the boy cast a long, thin shadow. The six-gun he wore was a blunt black bulge on his hip.

He put the sun behind him
, Case realized.
Right in my eyes. The boy has promise
.

Hope he lives long enough to grow into it
.

“What happened this morning?” Conner demanded as soon as the other man was within speaking range.

“You heard your sister.”

“How did you nick your eye?”

“What's on your mind? Something special eating on you?”

“Sarah. Leave her alone.”

Deliberately Case hooked his thumbs through his belt and took a relaxed stance.

“You do recall whose bed is out in the brush and whose is in the cabin?” he asked quietly. “Have you considered that you might be lecturing the wrong person?”

Conner's mouth thinned. The look in his dark green eyes was far too adult for a boy of fifteen.

“Sarah wouldn't turn away from a creature in need,” he said. “Ute said you needed her. She went to you and you grabbed her.”

“Your sister came to me. I didn't grab her. That's all you need to know. If you don't believe me, ask her. She won't tell you any different.”

Conner gave Case a level, measuring look.

“My sister wouldn't tell me different even if you had raped her,” he said flatly. “She would be worried about me calling you on it and getting killed.”

“But you aren't worried.”

“I'm not that stupid. I can no more beat you in a fair fight than Sarah could outwrestle you in the dark.”

Case nodded, but he wasn't as relaxed as he looked. He half-expected to have to jump Conner when the boy went for his out-sized belt gun.

“So I wouldn't fight fair,” Conner said coolly. “I'd come at you with a shotgun from ambush. This is the only warning you'll get.
Leave Sarah alone
.”

For a moment Case looked thoughtful.

“What if she comes to me again?” he asked.

“If she does, it wouldn't be for sex.”

Case's left eyebrow rose in a dark arc.

“Just because Sarah is your sister doesn't mean that she lacks womanly needs,” he said evenly.

“Sex?” Conner asked derisively.

“Sex,” Case agreed.

“Anything that leaves a woman bloody and whimpering isn't something she would seek out. Sarah sure didn't. She ran like hell every chance she got.”

Case went still. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“You think that's what sex is?”

“Isn't it?”

“No.”

“Then why do men have to pay women to get it?” Conner asked sardonically.

“Not all men do.”

The boy shrugged. “So they marry for it. Same thing in the end. The husband pays room and board and the wife suffers his attentions in exchange.”

Case took a deep breath and blew it out soundlessly. He had no idea where to begin fixing Conner's sour view of what sex between a man and a woman was all about.

“Big Lola may not be the best example of womanhood to judge sex by,” Case said after a moment.

“She sure as hell has a lot of experience.”

“Of a kind, yes. But there's another kind.”

“Marriage?”

Case thought of Hunter and Elyssa. Their love for each other haunted him even as he avoided any possibility of such emotion for himself.

“Love makes it different,” he said finally.

“Uh huh,” Conner said, not convinced.

“It's true. When a woman loves a man, she wants him. Physically. There's no bribery, no threat, no force. Just the kind of loving that makes the sun shine brighter.”

“I haven't seen anything like that.”

“I haven't seen Paris but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.”

“Are you saying that my sister
loves
you?”

The blunt question made Case wish he had never started the conversation.

“I'm not saying anything of the sort,” he muttered.

“Sounded like it.”

Case blew out another breath and tried again.

“A lot of people never know the special kind of love that makes the sun brighter,” he said. “But that doesn't mean they don't enjoy sex with someone they like.”

For a long time Conner looked at the older man without speaking. Then slowly, subtly, the boy relaxed.

“You didn't force Sarah?” he asked.

“No. And the next time you even hint at such a thing, I will personally whale the living tar out of you.”

Surprisingly, Conner laughed.

“I'll bet you would,” the boy agreed. “I'm sorry if I insulted you. I just had to know that Sarah wasn't being forced by a man again.”

“You were pretty young when she was married. You might have misunderstood what all the, er, grunting and groaning was about.”

“Even a baby knows the difference between a pat and a fist.”

Case tried to think of a tactful way to ask his next question.

He came up empty-handed.

“Wasn't there any tenderness between Sarah and her husband?” he asked bluntly.

“Tenderness?”

“Like kissing and such.”

“Far as I know, my sister got her first kiss the night she came back riding double with you.”

“Judas priest,” Case whispered. “Why did she marry the old—never mind. None of my business.”

Conner's face seemed to flatten and tighten. It was a flash of the man he would become in time, honesty and strength and force in equal parts.

“Why do you think my sister married him?” he asked coldly.

“Necessity.”

“Damned straight. She was barely fourteen and I was nine. No relatives survived the flood. We were starving. She answered an advertisement in the newspaper.”

“And married Hal?”

Conner nodded. “The old son of a bitch couldn't even get a squaw to put up with him.”

“How did you kill Hal?”

The easy question caught Conner off-guard. He looked around quickly.

No one else was in sight.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“I didn't, until now.”

“Don't tell my sister,” he said urgently. “I want your word on that.”

I'm supposed to keep my half of the ranch secret from Conner
, Case thought wryly,
and now here's a second secret I'm supposed to keep from Sarah
.

“Are you sure she doesn't already know?” he asked.

“Yes!”

“What happened?”

Conner made a hard, chopping motion with his hand.

“What does it matter? He's dead.”

“Shotgun from ambush?” Case asked casually.

“No. Hell's fire, I didn't even mean to kill the old bastard.”

Case lifted an eyebrow and waited.

Sighing, Conner ran a hand through his hair, settled his hat with a jerk, and started to talk.

“He'd been after her the night before. It was one of the few times he caught her.”

Case's eyelids flinched once, then again. He didn't like thinking about Sarah and an old man so cruel he couldn't even get an outcast Indian woman to live with him.

Far as I know, my sister got her first kiss the night she came back riding double with you
.

“He was on a real toot,” Conner said. “He was still drinking when he rode out prospecting the next morning. I followed him.”

“On foot?”

“Hal's horse was as old as he was. But he was a real walking fool. It was afternoon by the time I caught up.”

Case watched the boy through narrowed eyes.

“I told Hal to quit mistreating my sister,” Conner said. “He started to pistol-whip me. It wasn't the first time, but it sure was the last.”

“You shot him?”

“We fought over the gun, it went off, and Hal just sort of folded up.”

Despite Conner's matter-of-fact words, Case could see the shadows of old anger and horror in the boy's green eyes and thinned mouth.

“I tried to feel bad about it afterward,” Conner said softly. “But I felt worse when I had to shoot a mustang that had a broken leg.”

“How old were you when Hal died?”

“Twelve.”

“Hard way to grow up.”

“I grew up when I was nine,” Conner said. “After that, all that mattered was Sarah.”

“And you're all that matters to her.”

“Me and the land. And now you.”

Case ducked the veiled question.

“What about Ute and Lola?” he asked.

“It's not the same. Oh, we all get along real well, and Ute would fight to the death for Sarah, but…” Conner shrugged. “My sister doesn't fret about them the way she does about me or you.”

“I think she values your hide one hell of a lot more than she values mine.”

Conner hesitated, then shrugged. “Maybe.”