Desperate Hearts (30 page)

“
I’ll pay—”

“
Yeah, yeah, I know, you’ll
pay me back when we to Blakely." He gestured in the general
direction of her breasts. “And you’d better start wrapping yourself
up again. I don’t want to be out on the road and run risk of having
someone discover that you’re actually a woman. It’s a lot less
dangerous traveling with a boy named Kyle.”

Her eyes glittered like hard, blue-green
agates. “Yeah, well, Kyle is the one who took that bullet for you
in Cord.” She dragged her sleeve across her nose. “So I guess it’s
less dangerous only for you.”

* * *

Kyla lay awake in the musty, dark cabin, the
dead of night surrounding her. On the other side of the small room
she could hear Jace’s even, quiet breathing. Whether he slept she
didn’t know, but it sounded like it. Obviously he was untroubled by
the same turmoil churning inside of her. He’d settled down on the
floor with his head propped against his saddle and his ankles
crossed. Tonight the Henry lay beside him. He’d once told her that
he thought more of that rifle than he did most humans, and she was
beginning to believe him.

A return of the hostile, unfriendly mood of
their early days together made their dismal meal of biscuits and
hot coffee silent and awkward. Jace withdrew into the solitary
figure that he presented to the world, and she wore Kyle’s
sullenness to hide her double pain. Not only did she suffer keenly
from him shutting her out, he either didn’t realize or didn’t care
how much it hurt to be consigned again to the prison of Kyle
Springer.

Barring her experiences with Hardesty, she
couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so miserable and lonely.
She wished she could roll over and weep into Jace’s blanket, but he
would hear her. And when she thought of the night before, she felt
even worse. The heat and passion that had blazed between them only
twenty-four hours earlier now burned as anger.

Better that she had kept her attention
focused on her original goal of vengeance instead of straying into
this matter of two hearts. But that goal was not as clear now as it
had once been. Oh, she was still determined to prevail, to see Tom
Hardesty pay. Only . . . She shifted on the sagging rope bedstead,
seeking a comfortable position that continued to elude her. Only,
after she’d nearly died in Misfortune, she’d doggedly believed that
her craving for revenge had saved her. That the powerful presence
dragging her back into her body during that odd dream with Many
Braids had been determination to see justice done.

Now she realized that it had been love, and
she felt trapped by the emotion. She had no outlet for it, the man
she wanted to give it to would not receive it or return it. The
glimpse he’d permitted her of the true man behind his reputation
had disappeared again. She let her fingers drift over her
locket.

Though she lay wrapped in his blankets just
a couple of feet from him, Kyla missed Jace.

* * *

“
Sorry, Mr. Hardesty, I
still haven’t seen a wire for you.”

Tom Hardesty swore audibly under his breath,
a malignant vituperation. On his side of the counter Edner Pomeroy
blanched, his expression one of cringing regret.

“
I know you’re expecting
something important, so I’m ready and waiting for that message to
come through. Just as soon as I see it, I’ll drop everything to
bring it along personally.”

Today, Tom found the man’s fawning to be
irritating. “See that you do, Edner.” Without another word, he
slammed out of the telegraph office and looked at the pale blue
autumn sky. Brown leaves scudded over the dry street and gathered
against the edges of the sidewalks, and the wind had a decided
bite. That, and the business with McIntyre was enough to make him
turn toward the Pine Cone Saloon. It was almost four o’clock—that
was late enough for a little elbow-bending at the bar.

Three days, three long, silent days, and no
word from Hobie McIntyre or any of his men. Goddamn it, if he had
let Kyla and Rankin slip away from him once more Tom would— Well,
there wasn’t much Tom could do. He didn’t expect to see McIntyre
again if he failed. But Luke Jory would have plenty to say about
it. His kettle was already boiling over this situation, and he was
not a patient man.

As Tom passed the shops on his way to the
Pine Cone, he made deliberate eye contact with a clerk here, a
proprietor there. It was a useful tactic he’d learned from Jory to
keep people around town aware of the Vigilance Union. Not much
happened in Blakely that he and Jory didn’t know about.

Tom’s own anger, which he
rarely bothered to curb, was on the rise over gossip he’d
heard—people seemed to know that Rankin was on his way.
How
they’d heard was a
mystery to him since no telegrams came in or went out without his
knowledge. It was as if the man’s reputation had a power of its
own, carried on the wind and whispered in men’s minds.

Although he’d never seen the bounty hunter,
he’d begun dreaming of an eight-foot-tall, rifle-toting angel of
death, mowing down rows of adversaries with a single shot that
felled men like wheat in a hailstorm. He shook off the image.
Jesus, this was no time to get jittery.

But he’d rather face the phantom from his
dreams than Luke Jory if he were to get wind of the rumor. Since
his last message from McIntyre, Tom had visited the telegraph
office more and more often every day, looking for word that the
bounty hunter was dead and Kyla captured. But there was no such
news.

He paused in front of the saloon as he
pictured Rankin’s image again. Tom had to solve this problem. No
goddamned bounty hunter was going to make him look like a horse’s
rump.

Or steal his woman.

* * *

Perversely, now that Jace had decided he
must distance himself from Kyla, he wanted her more than ever.
Their last night in the cabin he told himself that he didn’t sleep
because the episode with McIntyre had him leery of intruders. But
that didn’t explain why he was alert to every breath Kyla took,
every restless movement she made during the night. Or why he wished
to God that he could lie down with her again, if only to hold her
in his arms and taste her kiss. He had pushed her away and now he
had to live with the decision.

Riding ahead most of the time, Jace felt her
eyes burning into his back. She remained watchful but she stopped
speaking, for the most part. When she did talk it was with a farm
boy’s bad grammar, and she had taken up Kyle’s personal habits
again. His memory of a soft, yellow-gowned, beribboned woman was a
sore contrast to this belching, hostile female. In fact, she seemed
to go out of her way to be obnoxious. He had himself to blame, he
knew—he’d told her to resume the disguise, secretly hoping that it
would distract him from the beauty that he knew lay underneath.
Originally he’d been amused by Kyle Springer. Now the boy was
downright irritating.

In Dayville, they stopped at a general store
to get Kyla another coat and a bedroll. Since Jace felt pretty
certain that no one was following them, he took advantage of the
freedom to buy them a decent meal in a chop house. Amid the busy
clatter of dishes and silver, no one had seemed to recognize him so
they placed their order with the stout woman waiting tables. Jace
asked for a beer as well, but when Kyla tried to follow suit he
sent the woman on her way.

When she returned a few minutes later with
their supper, Jace watched with brows lifted as Kyla wolfed her
food with a fork she held like a shovel. At least she’d tucked her
blue-checkered napkin into her shirt collar. “Hungry?” he inquired
dryly.

She gave him a sullen look, then put both
elbows on the table and mopped up the gravy on her plate with a
piece of biscuit that she shoved into her mouth.

He scowled back, unable to stop himself. By
God, if she had been a boy, he’d turn her over his knee and give
her a smart paddling to teach her some respect. She’d been a snotty
pain in the ass ever since the scene in the cabin last evening.

“
We’re about two days
outside of Blakely,” he went on, doing his best to ignore her
conduct. He took a long drink of beer, then added, “I think it’s
time to let Hardesty know we’re coming.”

She looked up. “Let him know—what for? We
ought to sneak up and surprise him.”

“
Oh, he’ll be surprised.
But a little mental advantage”—he tapped his temple—“won’t hurt,
either. I have something in mind for him.”

She shrugged, and poking another biscuit
half into her mouth, chewed noisily.

Short of a spanking he
couldn’t deliver to a woman, he reached over and lightly tugged her
ear in reprimand “You mind your manners,
Kyle
, or you’ll be eating in the
livery stable with the horses.”

Kyla sat back in her chair and glanced at
her lap, as embarrassed as if he’d slapped her hands, and her face
grew hot with shame. She knew she’d behaved terribly, but she was
so angry and hurt that she couldn’t make herself be civil.

She looked at the meal she pretended to
enjoy, and wished she could, but it sat in her stomach like a rock.
It was her own fault for gobbling it up like a hog. At least that
was part of the reason.

“
I know how to handle
Hardesty,” he continued quietly. “I’m going to make him sweat a
little before I call him out. So we’ll need a place to hide for a
couple days after we get to Blakely. Is there anyone you trust who
can put us up?”

She nodded. “Jim Porter would probably do
it. He’s one of the Midnighters and his ranch is near town.”

Jace threw a couple of silver dollars on the
table and pushed back his chair. “All right, then. I’ve got one
stop to make at the post office, then we’ll ride for Blakely.

Ride for Blakely, Kyla thought as she
followed him out to the street. And he was one day closer to riding
out of her life.

* * *

After two days of traveling, Jace and Kyla
reached the Painted Hills and embarked on the final leg of their
trip into Blakely. The landscape began to look familiar to her, and
she stopped to consider how long she’d been away from here and
everything that had happened since she left.

She had been shot, she’d nearly lost her
life, she had been kidnapped, Juniper had been lost twice before
coming back to her. And her heart—that she feared was gone for
good, lost to the man riding ahead of her

That night, their last on the road before
they reached town, they sat around the campfire she had built.
Although their hostility had cooled, Kyla still had not achieved
the sense of dull resignation she hoped for, and she stared at the
fire, alone in her reflections. Even Jace, who usually gave no
indication of his thoughts, was uncommonly quiet and pensive. A rim
of sunset lit the darkening blue sky with brilliant fire, and on
the opposite side of the sky an autumn moon, heavy and golden,
began its ascent on the eastern horizon. It was a beautiful night,
full stars and longing.

When Jace broke the silence, his question
amazed her. “Do you have much regret for things past? I mean, do
you wish you could go back and live some things over again?” He
didn’t meet her eyes, but twiddled with a stick at the edge of the
fire.

“
Well, sure,” she replied a
bit warily. Oh, please God, she thought—she couldn’t bear to hear
that regretted making love with her, or that he was sorry he’d
agreed to help her. She didn’t think she deserved that punishment.
“I can think of a few things I’d do differently, if I had the
chance.”

He nodded and remained silent for a moment.
Firelight leaped across his handsome features and deepened his eyes
to cobalt. Then in a low voice he admitted, “Sometimes I wish I had
learned to be a rancher instead of a bounty hunter.” He looked up
at her, a rueful, unguarded smile on his face.

Kyla swallowed hard but she couldn’t dispel
the lump compressing her voice. “It’s not—” She cleared her throat
and tried again. “It’s not too late, you know. Hank gave up bounty
hunting and settled down.”

“
Well, Hank had someplace
to go, something to do. This is the only job I’ve ever had, that
and being a deputy sheriff. I don’t know how to do anything
else.”

“
You were a
deputy?”

He tossed the stick into the flames. “Yeah,
in Salem. just for a few months, and I wasn’t much more than a kid.
Then I saw a wanted poster on the sheriff’s desk for a man who’d
robbed a bank in Hood River. Five hundred dollars, dead or alive.
It was more than I could earn in two years, and I thought if I
captured him it would really show Lyle and the rest that I was
tougher than they thought. I brought in the robber, alive—there’s
no trick in bringing in a dead one. After that, there was another
robber, and after that a murderer. One year rolled into the next,
and I liked the respect I got.”

“
Going into ranching now
might be too big a change,” she agreed. “But you could be a sheriff
or a marshal. You have a lot of experience now to draw
on.”

His eyes gleamed briefly as if he were
considering the idea, then he shook his head. “Sometimes there’s no
going back. I worked so hard to make people fear me, no one would
want me in their town. I trapped myself in my own reputation, and
there’s no escape from it. I’m an outsider now.” A huff of
humorless laughter left him, and he looked at her. “Anyway, I’m
glad to have Kyla to talk with again, instead of snot-nosed brat
Kyle.”

On another night, she might have taken issue
with his remark and reminded him that it was he who resurrected her
disguise. But in the years to come, she did not want to add this
last night to her own list regrets. She felt like crying for them,
for the lack of love that had pushed Jace into the life he had now,
and for all that could never be between them.