Desperate Hearts (22 page)

“
Let me go first,” he said
in a low voice, and his eyes touched on her red hair. “Better cover
your head with your shawl, too.”

She cringed and pulled up the shawl with a
sudden, jerky movement. “Do you think—?” she whispered.

“
I don’t know, but it’s
best to be safe.”

Jace led them inside, but the main floor was
empty except for a cadaverous-looking clerk who sat at a roll-top
desk behind the counter. Dozing with his feet on the desk, he
didn’t wake as they crossed the short lobby to the stairs, but
snored on.

They stepped lightly in the uncarpeted
second-floor hall to reach Kyla’s room. Jace heard low voices
behind a couple of doors, but the building was quiet for the most
part.

Taking the key from her, he turned it in the
lock. “I want to have a look in there before you go inside.” He
glanced around the empty room, then pulled a match from his pocket
and flicked it with his thumbnail. Kyla took it from him and lit
the lamp mounted on the wall.

Now he stood in the hall again, looking at
her in the open doorway. He felt awkward, not wanting to go to own
room, but reluctant to stay. She gazed at him with those turquoise
eyes and lowered her shawl to shoulders. Her slim, white throat
came into view. What would it feel like to press a kiss there?

“
Are we leaving at
daybreak?” she asked, as if she the tension, too, and tried to
cover it with small talk.

“
A little later, maybe. We
want to get there, but we can let the chill burn off the morning a
bit. You should probably get another coat before we set out,
anyway. The days aren’t going to turn warmer now.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have the money
for a coat.”

“
I’ll get it. You can add
it to the list of the other stuff want to pay for,” he said. “But I
think this was money well spent.” Carefully, he touched the lacy
edge of the wide flounce that trimmed her gown’s neckline. He stood
close enough to smell the faint, clean scent of her skin. He looked
up at her again—gazing at her roused his desire. “You’re
beautiful.” Voicing the thought came hard to him—he was
unaccustomed to expressing such sentiments.

“
I am?” she asked in barely
more than a whisper. Her eyes were riveted on his face and he felt
her breath fan his hand.

Yes, she was. The delicate planes of her
face offered a dozen places he wanted to kiss. Her long lashes,
dark and lush, framed her eyes and made them offer promises he knew
she could not keep. He wanted to skim his hands along her breasts
and feel their fullness against his palms. He longed to sleep with
her tucked in his arms and his bed.

But he could say none of those things. And
those desires were only a daydream.

“
More beautiful than I can
tell you.” He let fingertips rise from the flounce to graze her
flushed cheek and run along the edge of her jaw. He knew it was
folly, that suffocating frustration was sure to the result. But he
just wanted to touch something soft in a life marked with
coarseness. Dropping his gaze to her sensitive mouth, the mouth
that never seemed to fit when she posed as a boy, he ached to
caress it with his own lips.

The feel of Jace’s hand on Kyla’s cheek
raised goose bumps on her scalp and arms. The moment felt so close,
so intimate. Her heart picked up its tempo, beating in a way that
made her breath come a little faster.

“
Kyla.” He pressed his
forehead against hers. “Kyla, may I kiss you?” His voice was low,
intense.

“
Please don’t ask,” she
said, surprised that would seek permission.

His hand dropped from her jaw and he backed
up a pace. He drew his mouth into a tight line, and he looked as if
she had slapped him.

“
You don’t
need
to ask,” she
whispered again, hardly believing her own voice. Just a few days
ago she’d promised herself that nothing like this would happen
again. Now that promise evaporated like morning mist. She started
to reach for his hand, but then thought better of it. “Just—just
kiss me.”

She heard his swift intake of air. Stepping
closer again, he put his fingertips to her cheek

At that moment, a door opened down the hall.
Kyla flinched as though she’d been jabbed with a fork.

“
Goddamn it to hell,” Jace
muttered at the intrusion. Quickly, he nudged her into the room and
closed the door behind them. He leaned his rifle against the
wall.

Turning to her, he took her face between his
hands lightly, with his thumbs resting under her chin, as if she
were a bowl from which he might drink. He gazed at her like a man
who was searching for his last hope. His eyes, which could be so
cold, now seemed that they would melt her own frozen heart.

When his mouth touched hers, she was
unprepared the sweetness that coursed through her like drizzles of
thick, warm honey. His lips moved over hers with a tender, aching
hunger that excited rather than repelled her. She inhaled the smell
of him—his shaving soap, a faint scent of whiskey, the essence that
his alone. He surrounded her.

Kyla’s heart pounded inside her chest, born
of a feeling she’d never known. Not fear, not revulsion. It was
much too thrilling for either of those.

She was aware of all the sensations within
and on her body: Jace’s hot touch, her heartbeat, her breath, her
stockings silky on her legs, the smoothness of her chemise.

He leaned against the wall behind him and
his hands moved from her face to her hair as he deepened the kiss.
Pulling her to him, he enfolded her in the strength of his embrace.
She lost her balance and fell against his hard-muscled, lean body.
He groaned deep in his throat—it was an anguished sound—and his
arms around her tightened. Reaching to encircle his lean waist, her
shawl fell from her shoulders. Through the fabric of his shirt he
felt vital and warm.

Jace broke the kiss and pressed his lips to
her throat, just as he’d imagined doing earlier. Her pulse throbbed
swiftly under his mouth. All the desire he felt for this woman, the
yearning that had slumbered uneasily inside him, awakened now with
a fiery need. She was beautiful, like a butterfly emerged from her
chrysalis, and more tempting than any woman he’d ever known.

He sought her lips again, this time teasing
them with the tip of his tongue. She moaned softly, and arousal
burned hotter and higher. Without thinking, he dropped his hands to
her buttocks and pulled her to him, gently, rhythmically thrusting
his hardness against her softness.

Immediately, she stiffened
and drew back, struggling to regain her feet.
No, no, don’t pull away
, he wanted
to beg her. He didn’t want to let go of her, the only good thing
left in a world gone so wrong.

“
Jace,
don’t
,” she demanded. She pushed
hard at his chest, and he heard the alarm in her voice.

The spell broken, he released her, his
breath coming fast. He caught a glimpse of her fear. Somehow, the
ribbon that held her hair back had come loose and hung over her
shoulder. Her shawl lay in a puddle at her feet. Her mouth was red
and slightly puffy. Had he done all that?

He could have kicked himself. Was his memory
so damned short that he’d forgotten what Hardesty had done to her?
Or how easy it would be to lose the trust he’d won from her? He
wasn’t even sure why that mattered, but he found that it did. Very
much.

“
Kyla, wait—” He tried to
put his hand on her arm, she backed up.

“
It’s time for you to be
goin’,” she said. Kyle’s hard-edged speech contrasted wildly with
the delicate, yellow-gowned woman who stood before him. She crossed
her arms over her chest, withdrawing into herself, into
Kyle.

“
Kyla—God, I’m sorry. I
didn’t mean to—”

“
You prob’ly didn’t. But
you go on now.” She stepped to the door and opened it.

“
In the
morning—”

“
I’ll be ready to
go.”

Jace sighed and considered her set face. She
didn’t look mad, exactly, but he couldn’t be sure what she was
thinking. He was accustomed to being in control of most situations.
Now he felt stupid and guilty as he picked up the Henry and backed
into the hallway.

“
Well, I—aw, hell.” He
turned on his heel and strode toward his room and didn’t look back.
Behind him, the door closed and the key turned, distinct and
unmistakable.

Locking her in. Locking him out.

It was the loneliest sound he’d ever
heard.

* * *

Kyla lay in the darkness, the sheets cold
against her where her drawers ended on her thighs. In fact, was
acutely aware of all her senses. The feel of her chemise on her
nipples, the loud tick of the walls in quiet night, the taste of a
kiss—

Yes, Jace had scared her. When he put his
hands on her backside and pulled her to him, she felt the hard
length of him against her abdomen. A confusion fears had collided
in her mind—a fleeting, cruel image of that night in the barn, the
strength she felt in Jace’s grip. But most of all, she was
frightened by her own response, the sweet yearning that had grown
inside her under his hands and his mouth.

The stone in her heart, the one upon which
she had carved her bitter vow to exist alone, was shaken to its
very foundation. So was her opinion of Jace Rankin.

He was hard and tough and merciless . . .
wasn’t he? At a place called the Bluebird Saloon, he had failed as
a man in some way that he wouldn’t talk about. In way that had even
surprised Hank.

But there was more to Jace than any of that.
And layer by layer he was revealing another side to her, one that
she would never have guessed lurked beneath that flinty veneer he
showed to the world. She laid her palm over the locket, where it
rested on her chest. A gold heart, the metal warmed with her body
heat.

She thought of what Chloe McGuire had said
about him, that perhaps what he really wanted was a home and place
to belong. Might he be the man who would accept her strengths and
her failings, and build the kind of life at the ranch she had once
envisioned?

No, he was not. Where in
the world did she get such an idea about the bounty hunter? Rolling
to her side she wadded up her pillow with annoyance. She would make
it on her own—Tom Hardesty was the only obstacle in her way, and
she’d
hired
Jace
to help her with that. Why did she keep forgetting it?

Kyla wasn’t certain she wanted to know. But
as she gazed at a square of moonlight on the wall from under heavy
lids, she made no more promises to herself about Jace.

She didn’t think she would keep them.

* * *

Jace knew it was all different now. It had
been one thing to take care of Kyla while she was sick, to wash her
hair, to sneak half a kiss in a kitchen. At that, he’d thought
those were all torture. But, they were nothing compared to tonight.
Until tonight, he’d only guessed how she might look dressed as a
female.

Now he’d seen it. Felt it. And she was more
womanly than he had imagined, more poignantly innocent that he had
dreamed.

He lay naked in the cold bed and tried to
sleep, one arm thrown over his eyes. But his mind tormented him
with the memory of her softness. He envisioned her tender mouth, he
pictured running his hands over the bare curve and plane of her,
suckling at her soft breast, reaching for the heat between her
thighs, where completion and fulfillment waited. And afterward,
sleeping in her arms—

His arousal was swift and heavy, pulling him
to the mattress. He felt edgy and restless, and drawn as tight as a
fiddle string. Oh, hell, sleep would be hours away now.

Aggravated, he dragged himself up to his
elbow and reached for his shirt where it hung on the bedpost under
his gun belt. He rummaged through the pockets he found a cheroot
and a match.

The room flared briefly with light when he
struck the match on the iron bedpost. Pulling deeply on the
cheroot, he cursed himself again. How was he going get her out of
his head? Even tomorrow, when she dressed like Kyle for their trip
to Blakely, he wouldn’t see her as the tough-talking female who
masqueraded as a farm boy. For him, those, boys’ clothes would no
longer screen her beauty.

He flopped over on his back and sighed. No,
maybe they wouldn’t, but Jace knew he had to conquer the images
drifting through his mind. He had nothing to offer her, and he
wouldn’t fit into her life.

After Blakely, he and Kyla Springer Bailey
would part company. And not a moment too soon.

CHAPTER TEN

“
Mr. Hardesty! This just
come for you.”

Tom Hardesty stopped, his hand outstretched
toward the swinging doors of the Pine Cone Saloon. He turned around
to see Edner Pomeroy hurry out of telegraph office holding a piece
of paper high like a flag. He was a short, heavy man, and the
sprint just about undid him.

“
Transcribed it myself,”
Edner panted, catching up to Tom. He perspired with his effort and
squinted against the hard-edged morning sun. He was a nervous,
servile toady, the kind who begged to serve, the kind who pleased
Tom enormously. Edner
respected
him.

He plucked the telegram from Edner’s pudgy
hand and unfolded it. He permitted a wide grin to spread across his
face as he read the short message. A surge of victory raced through
his veins. Well, maybe not victory just yet, but it was pretty
damned close. At least it might satisfy Jory for the time
being.