Cherished (18 page)

“So?”

“You and he have the same last name.”

Juliana shrugged. “So?” she said again, in a
cool, haughty tone. “It’s a coincidence.”

“Then who’s the Tommy you mentioned?” he
persisted relentlessly.

“N-no one. A former sweetheart, that’s
all.”

The narrow-eyed look he fixed her with made
her lick her lips nervously. He spoke in a low, even tone. “You
married to someone in that gang, lady, or kin in some other way?
Tell me.”

“I already told you ...”

“Lies. You’ve told me nothing but a pack of
lies.” Disgusted, he hauled her to her feet so suddenly, the
blanket slipped away. Her near nakedness was a shock for them both.
Cole couldn’t help noticing the lushness of her curves, or the way
her full breasts strained against the thin chemise, just as he
couldn’t help the tension that hardened in his body at the sight of
her. He pulled her close.

“When are you going to level with me?”

“I already have and you wouldn’t listen.”

She was struggling to get away, to reach the
blanket, but he wouldn’t let her. Cole stared down at her,
breathing hard. Her face was raised to his, and her expression was
so filled with anger, fear, and some emotion he couldn’t quite
read, that he could do nothing but gaze at her for a moment, caught
in the spell of that heartrending, flowerlike beauty. Her hair
spilled over her shoulder like sunshine, and he fought the urge to
crush it between his fingers.

“Please,” Juliana gasped, not struggling
anymore but aware of how tightly he held her, of the strength in
that tall, muscled form. She felt vulnerable beyond
description.

“Please?” he repeated, his eyes glinting.
“Are you asking me to let you go—or to do something else?”

Heaven help her, for one instant she didn’t
know. She despised him—didn’t she? And yet, there was a current
between them, a potent electricity that jolted her senses as she
stood here in his arms, half naked and afraid—yet not afraid. Her
heart was pounding wildly, her body tingled every place his body
touched hers, and she could not stop staring at his mouth.

What was wrong with her? This was insane.
Cole Rawdon was her enemy. He had her in his power more surely than
even John Breen would have if she had married him. Yet, she wasn’t
frightened of him. Some instinct told her he would not hurt her,
despite what he wanted her to believe. And especially not now, not
the way he was holding her. Strange, she had never felt the
smallest spark between her and John Breen: when Breen had touched
her, it made her skin crawl. But Rawdon’s touch made every sense
spring to life. He made her ache deep down. She ached for something
she didn’t understand, couldn’t name, couldn’t figure out, yet she
ached all the same. She wanted him to ... to what?

Kiss her. Hold her. Stroke her cheek, her
hair. Tell her ... what?

“Crazy.” She didn’t realize she had said it
aloud until she saw the smile curve his lips.

“You’re right. But you still haven’t answered
my question.” His voice grew husky suddenly. “Or maybe you have
...”

She wasn’t fighting him, she didn’t want to
get away. Without thinking, purely on instinct, Cole bent his head
suddenly and kissed her. She might be an outlaw, but she was all
woman in his arms. He kissed her hard and for a very long time.

Cole found her lips even more intoxicating
than he had imagined. She tasted so sweet. Her scent was light and
fresh, purely feminine. And that cloud of hair the color of spun
gold nestled soft as flower petals in his hands.

Juliana couldn’t breathe. His lips imprisoned
hers, and set them afire. His mouth was warm and strong and as
determined about what it was doing as Cole Rawdon was about
everything he set himself to. He stroked her hair, his hands rough,
greedy, yet somehow gentle as they tangled themselves in her curls.
She quaked inside and out. She felt explosive little ripples
surging through her. Oh, it was madness, but she didn’t want it to
stop. She never wanted it to stop ...

Suddenly, he shoved her backward and she lost
her balance, nearly falling. Cole drew his gun and wheeled toward
the cave entrance in one lightning movement, even as a man’s voice
gasped out, “Whoa there, mister. We don’t mean you no harm.”

Two strangers crouched just within the
entrance.

They looked to be prospectors. The older one
had a pickax in his hand, and the younger carried a sack of tools
slung over his bony shoulder. Cole stepped in front of Juliana,
keeping his gun leveled on the elder of the two. He was a stooped
man of about fifty, grizzled of face and with black, shining eyes,
whose skeletal form was covered with frayed bib overalls and a
tattered fedora that looked to have been through flood and famine.
He had a gun stuck in his worn-out belt, and both his boots had
holes where the toes ought to be. The other man, Juliana noted, was
a gaping youth of no more than fifteen years, his flannel shirt and
trousers in even worse condition than his companion’s.

Cole studied them with a piercing glance.

“Who are you?”

“N-name’s Jebediah Garsden, mister. This is
my boy, Gus. Now lookee here, we don’t want no trouble. No need for
that there gun.”

“You ought to know better than to sneak up on
strangers.”

“Wal, we wasn’t meaning to, but we was
passing by and saw your horses—our claim ain’t far off.” He peered
worriedly at Cole from beneath his hat. “You weren’t headed for it,
were you?”

“Do I look like a prospector?”

“Nope, but that’s not to say ... well, never
mind. Reckon me and Gus are just gettin’ suspicious these days.
Heerd about a fellow whose claim got jumped over near White
Mountain. Kinda makes a body think. You know, you folks ought to be
more careful. We coulda been Apache or something, ‘stead of just a
couple of miners....”

“Outside.” Cole still held the gun. “Let’s
give the lady some privacy.”

The two backed out of the cave with Rawdon
following right behind them. While she dressed Juliana heard the
three men talking of the storm, the shortest route to the nearest
town, the latest rumors of Apache renegades hiding out in the
mountains. Her muslin was still damp, but she yanked it over her
head anyway and pushed her arms through the sleeves, trying not to
think about what had happened a few moments earlier. She didn’t
know how she would face Cole Rawdon—or those other men. She didn’t
know what she had been thinking of. That was the problem, she fumed
inwardly, fastening the buttons of her dress up to her throat with
shaking fingers, she hadn’t been thinking at all.

The word
passion
had never had any
meaning for her before, but now she still felt warm with the heat
of it. She was mortified, and furious with herself, and cringed
with shame at the thought of facing Cole Rawdon beneath the
merciless clarity of the sun. Why had she let him kiss her, and
even kissed him back? Why did she feel passion for Cole Rawdon in
the first place?

He was not an acceptable, civilized man. He
was a bounty hunter, a dealer in flesh and misery. To add to that,
he considered her nothing but a lying thief. So why had he wanted
to kiss her? The answer made her burn with shame. Because men
didn’t care about anything but a pretty face and a ... a comely
figure. He didn’t give a damn about her. He had just wanted to
satisfy some horrid male lusting ...

Her cheeks flamed with humiliation. She
didn’t know what her excuse was. Did women have this lusting too?
Was it only his rugged male beauty that had drawn her to him and
made her want to stay in his arms? She couldn’t think of any other
reason. Many handsome men had courted her. John Breen was handsome,
and he had wanted to marry her.

But she had never felt anything for any of
them remotely similar to what she had known when Cole Rawdon held
her. None of the suitors who’d flocked to her door, none of the
silly, smitten beaux who had sent her flowers and poems and begged
her for a dance had ever set her heart to racing or blood pounding
to her head. Cole Rawdon, with his cool, nonchalant face and his
infuriatingly self-assured way with horses, caves, storms, and
campfires, and his stubborn, domineering manner had affected her
like the clash of cymbals in a musical piece, jarring her, jolting
her, playing havoc with her pulse and her poise.

But she could have no more of that. She
mustn’t let this despicable lust, if that’s what it was, get the
better of either of them, ever again.

That still didn’t help her with the immediate
problem besetting her—how could she face him?

Juliana hesitated as long as she could. When
she heard the prospectors moving off, she slipped out of the
cave.

He was watching the two men and their pair of
pack mules disappear down the mountain and didn’t even glance at
her. “Wait here.” He sounded as curt and as cold as ever. “I’m
going to follow them a ways and make sure they’re really gone.”

Juliana was grateful he hadn’t looked at her.
Yet his cold indifference made her feel even more foolish and
ashamed than before. “Why don’t you trust them?”

“I don’t trust anyone.” He didn’t tell her
that some of these old prospectors had been known to go loco
occasionally and murder anyone found within fifty miles of their
so-called claim.

He moved off on foot after them, so quickly
and stealthily, Juliana could do nothing but stare after him in
awe. Suddenly, she realized something. In his preoccupation with
the strangers, he had left her alone with the horses. Both horses.
If she took them both before he got back, he’d have no way to
follow her.

He’d also be stranded in the mountains.

She stood torn for a moment, battling her
conscience and her determination to get clean away. But there was
really no choice.

She couldn’t do it.

But she could take one of them, she told
herself, starting into the cave with alacrity. Not his precious
pinto, but the bay that had belonged to Cash Hogan. He was already
saddled and ready to go. She had only to hurry, and she’d have a
head start ...

She led him to a rock, but as she began to
mount she felt herself grabbed roughly from behind and yanked clear
of the horse. Rawdon shook her by the shoulders, none too
gently.

“At it again, lady? Don’t you ever
learn?”

Frustrated nearly to tears, Juliana thrust up
her chin.

“What do you expect me to do?” she demanded.
“Wait around to be mauled by you, and then packed off to jail? I
don’t know which is worse!”

The only sign he gave that her jibe had hit
home showed in the flash of steel in those vivid blue eyes. “I
don’t expect anything of you, Miss Montgomery, except trouble. And
you’ve already caused me plenty of that. You want to ride?” He gave
a grim laugh that chilled her blood. “We’ll ride. Come on.”

Hours later, Juliana was to wish she had
never set foot aboard the train leaving the St. Louis station all
those months ago. She wished she had never come anywhere near a
horse or a mountain.

She had long ago given up trying to remember
their trail through the dense forested plateaus of the Mogollon
Rim, but as hours passed and the hot afternoon sun blazed down on
her head, she decided this could only be a road into hell. The
pinto carried both her and Rawdon along a seemingly endless winding
canyon trail. The sky was crystal clear, scrubbed clean of all the
storm clouds that had descended the previous evening, and the earth
was fragrant and damp with the aftermath of rain. It was hot and
quiet enough to hear lizards gliding along the rocks. Quiet enough
to hear the cry of eagles—or was it vultures?—echoing from distant
hills. They dipped through a precarious rocky pass masked by jagged
boulders and stands of hardy scrub oak, then picked their way up a
steep gorge to a bald hilltop. Below raced a cascading mountain
stream, and the sound of the water rushing through the rocks made
Juliana’s parched throat ache; but although she glimpsed the
beautiful gurgling waters of the crystal stream when Rawdon turned
the pinto to a cactus-studded trail headed north, the man sitting
in the saddle behind her never paused for rest or drink. On they
rode, climbing higher through a forest of fragrant pine, then
suddenly descending a canyon so steep, it made her gasp in fright.
She closed her eyes against the dizzying sight of jagged gray and
purple rocks far beneath the sheer drop, trying to blot out her
fear, her exhaustion, and the terrible aching of every muscle in
her tortured body.
He must be made of iron,
she thought at
one point when the sun had begun to dip in the western sky and pink
shadows of impending sunset tinged the horizon. Throughout this
endless day, from the moment they’d left the cave, Cole Rawdon had
never slowed the steady pace of his horse, never faltered in his
path or direction. It was as if he knew every crevice of the
mountains, every pass, every chasm, rock, and tree.

From the tension in his body she sensed that
he was very angry. He didn’t speak to her once that entire day.
Which was just as well, because after hours on horseback over
grueling trails, Juliana couldn’t have spoken a single civil word
to him, and she knew that would have only made him angrier. Behind
them on a lead rope came Cash Hogan’s bay, bearing the gear and
supplies. At first Juliana had wondered why Rawdon hadn’t let her
ride Cash’s horse instead of forcing her to ride with him, then she
had realized as the day wore on that he probably doubted her
ability to survive the precipitous trails over which they were
riding. He didn’t want to see his two-thousand-dollar reward tumble
over a cliff any more than he had wanted to see it die of exposure
last night, and that at least, was something for which she could be
thankful. He wouldn’t kill her—she was too valuable to him alive.
Now all she had to do was figure out how to get away from him. It
shouldn’t be too difficult, escaping a man much stronger, more
experienced, and more familiar with the terrain than she
was—eluding him in the middle of this godforsaken Arizona
Territory, with nothing around for miles but mountains and cliffs
and snakes and coyotes—and other bounty hunters searching for her
besides. Simple. Easy. Like baking a strawberry pie—without benefit
of flour, sugar, berries, or stove.