Desperate Hearts (27 page)

Kyla stirred unwillingly, and opened her
eyes to find Jace towering over her. From her place on the floor,
she looked straight up one long, denim-covered leg, past the swell
behind his fly buttons and beyond his flat belly to his eyes. He
dropped to a crouch beside her and rested his arms on his knees. He
was so handsome, especially now, tousled and shirtless from
sleep.

“
Are you hungry?” he asked
and reached for his dry shirt where it hung on the back of the
chair.

She nodded and dragged up the blanket.
“Starving. We didn’t have much time to eat yesterday.” In fact, she
felt wonderful—hungry, rested, and energized, as if the shackle on
her spirit had been broken.

She even looked forward to the long miles of
travel they still faced. Before, the days had been arduous and
long, made even harder by the pressure she’d put on herself to
prove her ability to Jace. Now she knew she had nothing to
prove.

“
All right, then,” he said,
and stood to tuck his shirt tails in. “You hurry and get dressed,
and we’ll eat. Then we need to get started—oh, and someone is
waiting for you outside.”

“
Who?” she asked,
immediately suspicious.

Grinning, he reached out and took her chin
between his thumb and forefinger. “You’ll have to get up and look.
But I think you’ll be happy about it.” He dropped his hand. “I’ll
go see about my horse while you dress.”

Wrapping a blanket around herself, Kyla
padded to the window and peeked out. Juniper, wet and muddy but
seeming otherwise unharmed, paced near Jace’s horse.

“
Juniper!” She turned to
Jace. “How did he get here?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s a real
stroke of luck. It would probably take awhile to find you another
horse out here.”

While Jace went outside to saddle his horse,
she washed in the water warming on the stove and recalled moments
from the night before.

Kyla never would have imagined that an act
she had learned to think of as degrading and vulgar could be so
moving, so emotionally uplifting. How far she had come since that
day in Silver City. Then, she would have shot anyone who tried to
touch her, especially intimately. But Jace had gradually changed
all of that, leading her back one step at a time to the ability to
enjoy his kiss, his caress. She thought of the feelings he had
summoned from her, the way he had responded to her with a hot, dark
passion, and the intensely personal communion they had shared. It
had been the most satisfying experience of her adult life, and one
that she would hold dear . . .

Just as she finished dressing, she heard the
unmistakable sound of gunshots. Jace—Kyla froze, a boot in her
hand, and her heart pounding behind her breastbone. A moment of
silence ensued, followed by more shots. They were carried on the
wind, and she couldn’t tell from which from direction they came,
but instinct made her duck. Dropping to her hands and knees, she
scrambled for her gunbelt in the corner, and began to strap it on
with hands that shook.

Jace was out there.

The door crashed open then and Jace dove
toward the table to grab the Henry.

“
Oh, thank God you’re safe!
What is that?” she asked uneasily. “Is someone shooting at
you?”

He nodded. “I think so,” he said, peering
around the edge of the window. The long muscles in his forearms
swelled as he gripped the rifle. “But I’m going to find out for
sure.” He glanced at her. “You stay here, and stay down. No one has
seen you so they won’t know you’re here. I’ll be back as soon as I
can.” He grabbed his duster and his hat.

“
Why do you have to go out
there?” she asked, trying to keep the quiver out of her voice.
“Can’t we just wait and see if they go away?”

“
Kyla, if they’re looking
for me, they aren’t going to go away. They’ve already seen
me.”

“
But you don’t have to rush
out there to meet them!”

“
I’m not going to meet
them,” he said, his eyes wearing that cold, flat expression she’d
first seen through the window at the Magnolia Saloon, when he stood
over Sawyer Clark. “I’m going to run them off.”

“
Jace, don’t go. Please,”
she implored. “It’s too dangerous.”

He smiled, and glanced away almost
self-consciously. Maybe no one had ever bothered to worry about him
before. “Hell, I’ll be all right,” he said, returning his gaze to
her.

When had she ever seen eyes that color? she
wondered irrelevantly. Like ice, like a hot blue summer sky.

He crossed the tiny floor to the corner
where she still knelt, and gave her a long, searching look. Then,
shooting out his free hand, he gripped her by the back of the neck
to press his mouth to hers in a hard, brief kiss. “Stay safe, and
stay down. I won’t be away long.” He winked at her and gestured at
her revolver where it rested against her thigh. “Just don’t shoot
me when I come back.”

With gnawing apprehension, Kyla watched him
walk to the door, his boots reverberating on the floorboards.

And then he was gone.

Kyla paced the length and width of the
small, dark cabin, a task that was accomplished in very few steps.
The shooting continued, although more sporadically now, and it
seemed to be coming from farther away. She had no way of knowing if
any of the shots fired were from Jace’s guns.

Although she had held him
in her arms last night, and had seen him at his most vulnerable
moment, that didn’t change who he was. He was Jace Rankin, the most
famous bounty hunter in the region, smart, dangerous, and utterly
fearless. He could take care of himself—he’d been doing it, and
very well, for years. But her mind showed her pictures of a bullet,
white-hot and deadly, finding its mark. And it only took
one
shot with the right
aim to strike a heart or a head or a belly. The thought made her
throat tight with terror and anguish.

She sank to the rickety chair next to the
stove and propped her feet on the fender. She hadn’t expected to
fall in love with him. In fact, falling in love with anyone was the
last thing she wanted. It was a pretty ideal that had nothing to do
with her goal. But in the most secret corner of her heart, she
recognized that loving him was an inevitability, a path upon which
she had unwittingly set her feet the day she sought him out. To
make matters worse, her feelings for Jace were one-sided. Oh, she
supposed he liked her well enough, and she had earned his respect.
He didn’t love her, though, and she wished she could shut off the
emotion flooding her heart.

Time and again he had proven his honor, and
had revealed so many good and decent facets of his complex
personality. She touched her locket where it hung suspended above
her heart. Maybe given the chance and enough love to make up for
all that he’d been denied as a youngster, Jace might find his own
heart again—

Suddenly, the door flew open. Kyla jumped to
her feet to face men she didn’t recognize, and five guns all
pointed at her. Panic engulfed her and made her heart give a
tremendous lurch in her chest. But as they advanced on her, she
found Kyle’s toughest voice, and whipped out her own gun.

The men were coarse and rough, reminding her
of some buffalo hunters she’d seen once when she was a girl. One of
them, a short, wiry redhead, studied her with small, rabbity eyes.
The cabin filled with their rank, unwashed stench.

“
All right, you come along
now,” one of them ordered. “Mr. Hardesty’s waitin’ on
you.”

“
You stinkin’ sheep turds
stay back, or I’ll shoot your balls off, if you got any!” She swung
the revolver in a wide arc, threatening all of them.

“
Shee-it, ain’t she a sassy
one?” another remarked, faintly amused, as if he were merely a
spectator.

“
She won’t talk so sassy
once she realizes it ain’t no use,” the apparent leader said,
laughing as well. Aghast, Kyla recognized the speaker as Hobie
McIntyre. He was the low-down saddle tramp who had shot her. “Lem,
see to that,” he added, inclining his head at her
revolver.

The man answering to the name Lem was big
and stupid-looking, and missing most of his front teeth. He took a
step forward, and Kyla flashed the gun at him.

“
Best you
don’t
see to it, Lem,”
she challenged with false bravado. She cocked the hammer but she
silently cursed her hand for shaking nearly as much as her
voice.

In the confusion of being threatened by so
many, it wasn’t difficult for one of them to distract her. Lem
grabbed her arm and twisted it so hard she thought it would snap.
She suppressed the cry that crawled up her throat, but the revolver
fell from her nerveless hand like a ripe apple from a tree.

“
Mr. Hardesty sent us to
find you and bring you back to Blakely,” McIntyre said, gazing at
her with his pale, bulging eyes. “And that’s what we aim to do. It
can be easylike, or we can do it the hard way, if you’ve a mind
to.” He looked her up and down with distaste, while he sucked some
food particle from his ocher-colored teeth. “Like I told him, I
don’t know what he wants with a wildcat like you. I seen the scar
you left on his face. Oh, he didn’t say where he got it, but
everyone knows. I don’t fancy that you’re even worth gettin’ hard
for, but he’s got a hankerin’ for you. After we take you to
Blakely, he can do with you what he will. I ’spect he’s got some
big welcome-home planned for you.” He grinned suddenly.

“
I dunno . . .” the fifth
one said, appraising Kyla speculatively, rubbing his chin. “I done
some bronc bustin’ in my time. It might be fun with a filly like
her. She’d prob’ly give a man a good ride.”

Kyla swallowed hard, trying to unstick the
sides of her dry throat. Oh, dear God, no—

“
Just forgit it, Sims. If
she comes back to Hardesty with even one hair out of place,
there’ll be the devil to pay and she ain’t worth it,” McIntyre
said.

Although she continued to search for an
opening, a single opportunity to escape or divert these men, she
knew circumstances were against her. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere with
you. Hardesty and the rest of you can go to hell!" she shot back
with brave venom, but inside she trembled.

“
Now you shut up, or I’ll
shoot you again,” McIntyre snapped, his smile gone. “We stood here
yappin’ long enough. Boys, get her and let’s go.”

She suddenly found herself being hustled
toward the door—there might not be much she could do, but she
refused to be herded along like a lamb to the slaughter. She fought
and kicked, struggling against the hands that gripped her. Being
shorter than the rest of them, she couldn’t see much beyond a
confusion of sweat-stained buckskins, grimy denim, and greasy,
beard-shadowed faces. Her heart nearly bursting with fear and rage,
she squirmed and thrashed around, hoping desperately that she might
break free. Once, her boot connected hard with a nearby shin and
she heard someone swear. She screamed blue murder, then sank her
teeth into the dirty, foul-smelling hand that covered her mouth and
nostrils to silence her. She spit out the taste, and screamed
again. Maybe Jace would hear her . . .

“
Goddamn it, shut her up!”
McIntyre ordered as they struggled out the door as a unit. “I can’t
hear myself think.”

“
I’m tryin’!” Dirty Hand
yelped indignantly, clamping his injured hand between his knees.
“She bit me, the bitch!”

“
Well, tie her up and gag
her so’s she can’t bite you,” McIntyre said, “then get to ridin’.
Rankin ain’t no fool—it won’t take him long to figure out he’s been
lured away. We want to be ready.”

Despite her bucking and wriggling, Kyla
couldn’t prevent them from lashing a rope around her wrists and
ankles. Dirty Hand grabbed Jace’s bandana from the table and gagged
her, and her screams were silenced. Carried outside like a sack of
grain, she was flung across a horse’s back and the wet ground was
her only view from then on. The sound of horses’ hooves, creaking
saddle leather, and rough voices were all she could hear.

“
All right, you two take
her off to those trees,” she heard McIntyre say. “We’ll meet you
there after Rankin is dead.”

* * *

Jace rode far from the cabin to a distant
tree line. He wove in and out of the dark firs, staying away from
open rangeland. The morning sky was heavily overcast, working to
his advantage to provide cover. But it also gave the gunman the
same edge. Intermittent shots continued to ring out, occasionally
striking just close enough to acknowledge his presence, but not to
necessarily hit him. All right, goddamn it, they had his attention,
whoever they were, he thought with cold fury. And he was going to
find out what the hell this was all about. The situation was too
risky to ignore. If he turned back and tried to ride out with Kyla,
she would be in danger, too. He’d have to confront the person on
the other end of that gun.

Finally, Jace determined the location from
which the shots were coming. Whoever the bastard was, he made no
effort to hide evidence of himself. A small fire, obviously built
with wet wood, sent up a tall plume of smoke over the trees ahead
of him.

Something about this felt wrong. Jace
rechecked the rounds in the Henry and broadened his sweeping
inspection of the woods near him. He never lost sight of the fact
that there was always someone who wanted to make his own reputation
by challenging Jace Rankin. That could be the case here, too.

As he drew closer to the smoldering fire, a
horse and rider burst from the trees and galloped off in the
opposite direction, away from Jace.