Daisies In The Wind (3 page)

Rebeccah’s intense violet eyes skewered him.
“Are you the sheriff, sir?”

Ernest took a step back beneath that
blistering stare.

“Why, no. I’m Mayor Duke. But—”

“I prefer to tell my story to the sheriff.”
She turned away from him with a dismissive wave of her gloved hand,
let her glance flit over Myrtle Lee’s bulky form, and allowed it at
last to come to rest upon Waylon Pritchard’s sweating one.

“Would you be so kind,” she said in slowly
distinct accents, as if speaking to a very small child or someone
bereft of sense, “to fetch the sheriff to me? I have no wish to
stand here in the sun for however many hours remain in the
day.”

Waylon flushed beneath those large,
brilliant, icy eyes. He had never seen a woman like this before.
He’d thought Coral was beautiful, with her pale, curly hair and
sweet light-green eyes, but this girl took his breath away. Regal
as a princess she was and talked every bit as fine. Her face was
heart-shaped, as delicately formed as his ma’s best china. Beneath
that little feathered hat of hers, her skin glowed like fresh
cream. He was fascinated by the way those eyes of hers tilted
slightly upward at the outer ends. Most appealing. They were a
rich, wild violet hue, so deep and brilliant, they put the poor sky
to shame. She was tall, willowy—but not too willowy, he noted
admiringly. A few wisps of jet-black hair had escaped her heavy
chignon during the journey and now sprang rebelliously about her
cheeks, adding dark, earthy drama to the beauty before him.

“Ma’am,” Waylon stuttered at last as she
continued to stare at him with growing impatience, “I’ll be glad to
fetch the sheriff for you. It’d be an honor. It’d be a privilege.
I’d like nothing better than to do you this service.”

“Then git goin’!”
the driver, Slim,
bellowed, tossing baggage down onto the street.

And then someone from the crowd yelled, “Hold
yore horses, Waylon! Here comes the sheriff now!”

And Rebeccah sighed with relief. At last. The
crowd parted. She braced herself for the explanation ahead of her,
for the tough stance she was prepared to take in order to get
possession of the reward money. She had exactly forty-seven dollars
in her reticule, all the money she possessed in the world, and it
wasn’t nearly enough to build up and maintain a ranch. She would
need every penny to survive on her own out here. The thought of how
close she was to poverty frightened her, but she took refuge in
knowing that at least she didn’t look poor. Anyone seeing her fine
clothes and the ruby ring winking on her finger, the pearl choker
at her throat, would think she was rich as Midas. But appearances,
Rebeccah knew well, could be deceiving.

She shaded her eyes with her hand and peered
through the opening in the throng. She had a deep-seated distrust
and resentment of lawmen and was eager to get this business over
with as rapidly as possible. The less she had to do with the
sheriff of Powder Creek, the better, but she needed this money, and
he was the only one who could get it for her. Rebeccah believed in
facing up to difficult tasks immediately instead of putting them
off. She’d dispatch matters with this sheriff, she told herself,
and then get out to the ranch in time to sleep in her very own bed
tonight.

She didn’t know precisely what she expected,
perhaps a balding, middle-aged lawman with a paunch and red-rimmed
eyes, or an ancient oak of a man, leathered and squinty and
bow-kneed, but the man coming toward her with easy, purposeful
strides was none of those things.

He moved with the grace of an Indian.
Something about his height, the way he carried himself seemed oddly
familiar.

Rebeccah felt a curious twisting of her
heart. And then it began to hammer ...

He was tall, with wide, muscular shoulders
beneath his blue shirt and leather vest. He had a lean,
taut-muscled body and a flowing, dangerous gait.
Don’t mess
with me
, his walk said.
I don’t look for trouble, but I
won’t run from it either.

Like him
... she thought on a wave
of memory.
Like him
.

The sun glided westward, no longer hampering
her vision, and she could see his face as he paused before her.

Rebeccah gasped.

It was
his
face, strong and stern
and quiet. And strikingly familiar, even after all these years.

Wolf Bodine.

He was the same—and yet different.

He could be no more than thirty years old,
but there was a grim hardness now in the set of his jaw, a sort of
weathered toughness that had matured and intensified over the
years. The cool gray eyes had tiny fine lines around their edges
now, a hint of sadness or bitterness or perhaps harshness reflected
in their clear depths—and they glinted like polished stones,
missing nothing.

Oh, God. He was as handsome as she
remembered—no, she realized dazedly, more so. The years had
chiseled him, hardened him, stamped him with a keen, fine-honed
ruggedness. His body was corded with muscle. His stomach was flat,
his hips lean beneath his dark trousers.

Wolf Bodine.

How can this be?
she thought with a
quivering disbelief, her gaze taking in those compelling eyes, the
clean-shaven jaw, the burnished chestnut hair that just reached the
collar of his shirt. She trembled inwardly at the bronzed toughness
of that never-to-be-forgotten face, lost herself in the long-lashed
gray eyes that pierced her like tomahawks as she held her ground on
the boardwalk. She was all too aware of the sinewy muscularity of
his imposing frame, of his steady, quiet manner that was no less
dangerous for all its calm. It was
him
.

She had seen him a thousand times in her
memories, her dreams, her thoughts. He was the one ... the one
she’d been foolishly, idiotically in love with since she was twelve
years old.

Loco. That’s what she was. Loco to have
thought all this time about a man she’d met as a child, a man she’d
spent only moments with, a man who was her father’s enemy.

A man she’d left for dead on the dirt floor
of a hideaway cabin in the middle of nowhere.

His badge glittered in the late-afternoon
sun. Rebeccah clenched the silken strap of her reticule and worked
at not letting her feet fidget. Bear always said her feet twitched
when she was nervous. And lawmen always made her nervous.

Reflex, probably. She’d spent a good portion
of her life running from the law.

But there’s no reason to be in such a
tizzy over Wolf Bodine
, she told herself desperately.
You’re a grown woman now, nearly twenty-one years old, not a
stupid little girl
.

And you’ve done nothing wrong.

Besides, he didn’t remember her. He was
staring at her with a cool detachment that held no trace of
recognition.

Well, why should he remember a filthy kid
who’d spit in his face and let him get clobbered with a Colt
revolver?

Better if he never remembered any of that,
she realized hastily. She gulped in a deep breath. She knew she’d
scream if the silence went on another moment.

“Sheriff,” she blurted out, her words
tumbling a shade too fast, “that man up there, the dead one, tried
to rob our stagecoach. I shot him in self-defense. The driver says
he is a wanted man by the name of Scoop Parmalee—of the Parmalee
gang. There is a price on his head. I wish therefore to claim the
reward money.”

He had his thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, and
he was staring at her, staring hard.

“Have we met before?”

“No ... oo.” She went pink. The lie had just
jumped out before she even realized it, and now it was too late to
take it back.

His cool eyes studied her. “I’m reckoned to
be good with faces.”

“How nice for you.” Sweat dripped down her
armpits, dampening her gown.

“Ever been to Tucson?”

Relentless, that’s what he was. Typical
lawman. Rebeccah’s nerves stretched taut.
Think!

Her mind racing, she dropped her reticule to
give herself more time. She wasn’t very good at this business of
feminine wiles, but if ever there was a time for it, Rebeccah
concluded, this must be it. The small bag struck the boardwalk with
a thud.

Wolf Bodine moved not a muscle.

“Oh, dear.” She tried to sound helpless and
dismayed.

Still he made no move to retrieve it for her.
Instead he advanced closer. Rebeccah was intensely aware of his
size, his strength. She breathed in the scent of him, a clean scent
... like cake soap and good leather and pine needles. With
misgiving she saw the determination in his eyes as they pinned her
coldly, ruthlessly.

Suspiciously.

“You didn’t answer my question, ma’am,” he
said in a quiet drawl that was nevertheless purposeful.
“Have
you ever been to Tucson?”

“Never.”

Lies ought to come easily to her, but they
didn’t. She met his gaze with tremendous effort, keeping her stare
unflinching. Someone coughed behind her. The stagecoach driver
threw down another trunk. Rebeccah’s feet itched to fidget. She
knew she’d burst if she had to stare into those piercing eyes
another moment.

In desperation she stooped to retrieve her
own bag. As luck would have it, Waylon Pritchard bent to retrieve
it at precisely the same moment.

Their heads banged together.

There was a resounding thump.

“Ouch!” she gasped, wincing and seeing stars
as the pain rocked straight through to her skull.

“Dang it,” Waylon moaned, sinking onto the
boardwalk.

Myrtle Lee Anderson guffawed. Mayor Duke
tsked sympathetically, and the stagecoach passengers murmured
concern as Waylon went on to curse out a string of colorful oaths.
The rest of the onlookers laughed and began drifting away. They had
chores to finish, work to do, and plenty of time to hear the gossip
about the lady who shot Scoop Parmalee later.

Rebeccah’s head smarted from the force of the
collision. She straightened with an effort, then a moment later
staggered back, dizzy. Instantly Wolf Bodine’s hands shot out to
steady her, preventing her from falling.

“Easy, there. You all right? Waylon, you
clumsy oaf. Are you trying to help this lady or kill her?”

Pritchard, a bristly-bearded young man with
the wit of a longhorn, hunkered down on the boardwalk and cradled
his head in his hands.

“Aw, come on, Wolf. I was just
tryin’
to be a gentleman, but this here lady has the
hardest head I ever did come up against—”

“How dare you!” Stung out of her own pain,
Rebeccah jerked free of Bodine’s grasp. The damnable temper she’d
inherited from Bear flared up and galvanized her instinct to
protect herself—for over the years she’d learned that if she didn’t
do it, nobody would. “You’re the most clumsy, dim-witted fool ever
to cross my path, you ... you obstreperous calamity. And give me
back my bag!”

Bodine watched as the girl snatched her
reticule from Waylon and smacked him in the shoulder with it.
“Sheriff, are you going to give me that reward money or not?”

Bodine had to admire her for sheer
orneriness. How could anyone who looked like such an elegant little
angel be so full of spice and chili pepper? And this petite,
violet-eyed angel was oddly familiar. But he couldn’t place her to
save his life. Maybe it wasn’t Tucson ... but something nagged at
him.

Regardless, she was trouble.

He knew it just by looking at her, by the
lush cloud of velvet-black hair framing her dainty cheeks, by the
imperious glimmer in those soot-lashed eyes, by the intelligent
tilt of her majestic little chin. Trouble. He smelled it as surely
as he smelled her fancy French perfume.

He fervently hoped she was just passing
through Powder Creek and not coming to visit for any length of
time.

With an effort Wolf dragged his eyes from
her. He turned his attention to Slim and the shotgun rider, Raidy.
“Is this lady right about what happened today?”

Slim left the horses to lumber up beside him.
The top of the driver’s shaggy head nearly reached the lawman’s
shoulder. “Sure as you’re standin’ there, Sheriff,” he declared.
“Four of ‘em tried to hold us up—this young lady shot two. Winged
one of ‘em, but Scoop is shore dead. Nice shootin’, eh? Mebbe you
should take her on as a deputy.”

The remaining crowd guffawed with laughter.
Bodine grinned, his eyes lightening suddenly. “Maybe I should.”

Rebeccah gritted her teeth.
Deputy? Over
my dead body.

Again his gaze burned a hole through her.
“Would you like a badge, ma’am?” he drawled with a slow, lazy grin
that would have melted her heart if Rebeccah had let it. Instead
she steeled herself with every ounce of determination she
possessed.

“All I want is my reward, Sheriff,” she
managed to bite out.

He threw a quick glance at the dead man atop
the coach, pulled himself up for a better look, and then nodded
grimly to Slim and Raidy. It was Parmalee all right.

Wolf jumped back down and ran a quick glance
over the other passengers, who were waiting as if for permission to
go on their way. “Anyone hurt?” he inquired.

“Only that awful bandit, Sheriff,” the woman
in black bombazine piped up. “This young lady saved our lives.”

Wolf touched the tip of his hat. “Then I
reckon she ought to get her reward,” he said. He took Rebeccah’s
arm. “My office is down the street. Come sign some papers, answer
some questions, and this business will be all wrapped up.”

“Don’t worry, miss, I’ll set your bags inside
the hotel till you’re ready to fetch ‘em,” Slim called after her as
Wolf Bodine drew her along the boardwalk. “All you folks continuing
on to Silver Bluff—we’ll take supper and head out in an hour’s
time,” he announced, and turned toward the saloon.