Desperate Hearts (6 page)

“
Do you see a woman here?
You’ll just end up with a bullet in your head,” he warned again,
more pointedly this time. “Go sleep it off, and you’ll wake up to
live another day.” He could usually outstare almost any man and
scare the pee out of him, but it wasn’t working with this saddle
bum. Christ, not much was worse than a drunk with a gun. Any kind
of wild shot was likely to fly.

He felt Kyle still holding his ground, but
he couldn’t risk sparing him even one glance or a word to tell him
to move. Damn-fool kid—didn’t he have the wits to stay back? Jace
had enough to worry about without that boy getting in his way.

“
Whatsa matter, Rankin? You
scared? Prob’ly no tougher than him.” McIntyre snorted and gestured
at Kyle, then his red eyes narrowed. "Say—now I remember. A
boy—Gracie said she was dressed like—”

Kyle gasped as McIntyre turned suddenly in
his direction and advanced on him. That was exactly the opening
Jace had been looking for. He leveled his revolver on him. But with
familiar dream-slow movement, he saw Kyle whip out his gun and aim
at the drunk. The man grinned evilly and kept coming. A brief
confusion of close gunfire exploded in the tiny store, combined
with the ping of ricochets and broken glass. Through the smoke Jace
saw McIntyre go down. Jace could not tell who had shot him. He
might have, or it could have been the boy.

When the air began to clear, McIntyre lay
howling and swearing on the floor. He gripped his shattered,
bleeding right hand.

“
You son of a bitch! Look
what you did to me!” he yelped, adding to the chaos.

The racket scraped Jace’s nerves. He kicked
Mclntyre’s boot. “Shut up that goddamned caterwauling!”

Jace whirled and saw that Kyle was down,
too. He sat slumped against the rough counter, his face white, and
his eyes blank and staring. He still gripped his gun with tight
fingers but he didn’t move. Jace dropped to a crouch next to him
and grabbed his shoulder. He looked dead.

“
Kid! Damn it to hell, kid,
why didn’t you get out of the way?” he demanded.

Slowly, the boy turned his
head to look at him. "My name is
Kyle
," he muttered.

Relieved, Jace almost laughed. “Where are
you hit?”

“
My arm, I think.” He
looked down his left shoulder at his upper arm where a bullet
ripped his coat. “It’s burning like fire.” His eyes drifted closed
for a moment, and a sheen of sweat broke out on his thin
face.

Jace considered the sleeve that was growing
soaked with blood and shook his head. “Where’s the doc in this
town?” he shouted to the shop clerk.

From the depths behind the counter, the
clerk replied, “We don’t have one anymore. He got killed in a card
game last year.” His voice shook so much, Jace had trouble
understanding him.

He made a noise of impatient disgust. He
thoroughly regretted ever stopping in this place. It seemed like
his mistakes were compounding by the day. “It figures. All right,
then,” he said, and hauled Kyle to his feet. “I’ll see to
this.”

He put an arm around the boy’s waist to keep
him upright, and was struck again by how slight he was.

“
I can walk,” Kyle
protested, and pulled away. Swaying, he rested against the wall and
cradled his injured arm at the elbow.

Jace leaned over to look behind the counter.
“Come out of there—it’s all over,” he snapped at the clerk. Even
Kyle had more guts than he did. “I want some bandages and a bottle
of whiskey.”

The store had no bandages, but the rattled
clerk produced a package of a dozen new linen handkerchiefs and a
dusty bottle of expensive rye that had obviously been in stock for
years.

While Jace tied up Kyle’s arm with a
temporary bandage, McIntyre finally stopped yowling long enough to
regain his feet.

“
You’ll pay for this, you
bastard!" he vowed as he staggered out the door

Jace wanted to get out of Cord just in case
Lem lost interest in the proceedings at the saloon and decided to
come looking for his partner.

“
Can you ride?” he asked
Kyle. He didn’t like the kid’s pasty color.

The boy nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of
here.”

“
Right.”

* * *

They left town at a gallop, but when no one
followed they slowed to a trot.

Jace broke with their established custom and
rode next to Kyla. She could feel his eyes on her but she couldn’t
turn to look at him. She was too drowsy and exhausted—it took all
of her concentration to stay in her saddle. The landscape of
endless beige dotted with scrub zoomed in and out of focus, and the
horizon bounced around as if it were not attached to the earth.
Juniper’s gait made her arm throb; it felt like a thousand hot
knives were stabbing it. She was chilled everywhere else, though,
and beginning to tremble with the cold. If she’d had tears, she
wouldn’t be able to stop them. But she had none.

Jace said if they were lucky, she had only a
flesh wound, that the bullet had plowed a deep furrow in her arm
but had not lodged. That way, he told her, he wouldn’t have to dig
the lead out with a knife.

Shot. She’d been shot. She considered it
with numb surprise that would probably sharpen after the shock wore
off. Seldom in her life had she known such fear as when that
filthy, louse-ridden McIntyre pointed his gun at her. Now she
recalled seeing him at the Magnolia Saloon two days before. Surely
it was only the worst possible luck that had brought him and his
partner to Cord.

That Jory or Hardesty would send men to
capture her was something she had not once considered. No one knew
where she had gone except for a few of the Midnighters. Now she had
been tracked all the way to Silver City—God, this was a hundred
times worse than she’d thought.

So Gracie
had
realized Kyla’s true
gender during that incident at the Magnolia. Oh, damnation, she
thought. Who else would the woman tell?

During the confrontation at the general
store, she’d seen the bounty hunter’s face under the brim of his
hat—icy, controlled. He never raised his voice. The universal
respect and fear he roused in people made her wonder why anyone
would dare cross him. Drunk or sober, McIntyre had to have been a
complete fool to challenge Jace Rankin.

And
she
had challenged McIntyre, so who
was the bigger fool? But the reaction that made her draw on him had
been purely instinctive. She didn’t know why she hadn’t done the
wise thing and hidden in the corner, instead of staying close to
the danger and Rankin. But it required far too much energy to
figure out now. She remembered the feel of Jace’s arm around her
when he pulled her up from the floor. For a second, it was almost
comfortable to lean against him. But even in her shock she’d known
she couldn’t give in to it. She didn’t want to be touched, and Kyle
wouldn’t permit such mollycoddling. And anyway, she didn’t like
Jace.

“
How are you holding up?”
she heard him ask.

She glanced at him and shivered hard enough
to make her teeth chatter. “I—I’m okay. B-but it’s so cold.”

He swore, as if she’d said something
wrong.

Jace knew Kyle was not okay. He was cold and
sleepy—he could see that in the kid’s face, hear it in his voice.
He had to get him to a warm fire and check his arm. The hankies
he’d wrapped around him in Cord were only makeshift. He hoped the
bullet hadn’t gone in too deep—he’d dug out his share of lead but
never from a kid.

Added to that, the clouds that had rolled
into the sky earlier were now producing a fine, soaking drizzle. He
twisted in his saddle and peered through the gray veil, searching
the broken limestone formations for a sheltered place.

“
We’ve got to get out of
this rain. It’ll be dark soon and I don’t want to be riding around
after sundown.”

He led them along a creek until they came to
a spot under a rocky overhang that was dry and out of the
weather.

Jace dismounted, then stood at Kyle’s foot.
He looked bad, Jace thought, still sickly white and a little
disoriented. But maybe a sip of whiskey and something to eat would
put the color back in his face. He sure as hell hoped so, anyway.
Beneath his open coat lapels, the boy looked as blood-soaked as a
soldier wounded on a battlefield.

“
Can you get down by
yourself?”

Kyle nodded but for a moment he didn’t move.
Then with obvious effort, he slowly swung a leg over his dun. Just
about the time it cleared the pommel, his eyes rolled back and he
fell into Jace’s arms.

Jace carried him to the wall under the
overhang and opened his coat. Jesus, his shirt was so red, he must
have been hit someplace else. Who could tell in the confusion of
gunfire and their flight from Cord? The kid himself was probably
too stunned to realize the extent of his injuries, and Jace hadn’t
had time to look.

He yanked off his gloves. Without hesitation
he grasped the front of Kyle’s blue shirt and ripped it open.
Beneath, he encountered blood-stained binding that was working
loose. Baffled, he sat back on his heels and pushed up his hat.
God, he was nursing broken ribs, too?

No. Something was wrong. Something—

Pulling out his long-bladed hunting knife,
he grabbed the bunched binding in one hand and cut it open with a
single slice. He stared down in stunned disbelief at full, rounded
breasts that were definitely not a boy’s.

“
I’ll be
goddamned—”

He quickly brushed a hand between the kid’s
legs and felt nothing there but rounded female warmth. His body
responded to hers so swiftly, with such intensity, he felt hot and
a little breathless.

Of all the possibilities that had crossed
Jace’s mind when he considered the puzzle of Kyle, that he—she—was
a woman had never occurred to him. And a woman she certainly was,
no mere girl. The soft mouth, the delicate planes of her face, her
light bones—sure, they all looked out of place on a boy, but on a
woman they were very desirable. The freed binding revealed not just
a bosom, but the very decided curve of her waist, and skin that
looked as smooth and pale as cream. She was beautiful beneath her
disguise. And now more trouble than she was before.

So this was the big secret, huh? This was
the reason he felt twitchy around her. How could he have missed
something that now seemed so obvious? He must be slipping.

Satisfied that only her arm was wounded,
with a cold, escalating fury he jerked together the edges of her
shirt. He stared at the slack face and he pulled his mouth into a
tight line. Now, instead of being saddled with a grudge-bearing boy
he thought he knew a little about, he had a gunshot woman he knew
nothing about. Except that someone was chasing her, and now him
too.

She wouldn’t be his problem for long,
though, he resolved. Not for long.

CHAPTER THREE

Chased by terrifying images, Kyla fought her
way back to consciousness. Tom Hardesty, horned and hoofed like a
demon, pursuing her with a staff that split open her arm with fire
. . . Hank, awash in his own blood, struggling for breath to tell
her about a bounty hunter with a killer’s reputation . . . a pair
of ice blue eyes that fascinated her as much as they frightened
her.

She didn’t know where she was, but she heard
the soft, faraway sound of a woman weeping. Firelight flickered
against her closed eyelids and the whisper of falling rain
penetrated her confusion. And whiskey, she thought she smelled
whiskey. It was strong, as if it were right under her nose. Beyond
that was the scent of brewing coffee. She took a deep breath and
the nightmare visions receded. But her arm, that pain was very
real.

When she opened her eyes, she saw the blurry
form of a man looming directly over her in the darkness. He was
wiping her face with something white. Gasping, she wrestled to
escape while reaching for her gun. She found that not only was it
missing, but her gun belt was gone, too. Her heart pounded behind
her breastbone. Further, she was bundled in blankets and stretched
out like a mummy next to the small fire.

“
So you’re finally
awake.”

She recognized Jace Rankin, his long dark
hair and pale eyes that gleamed in the firelight. The veil over her
memory began to lift. He sat back against the rock wall next to her
and crossed his ankles.

Gingerly, she touched a hand to her arm and
couldn’t suppress a moan. Her shirtsleeve was missing, torn off at
the shoulder, and the skin on her arm was hot to the touch, even
through the bandage.

“
I cleaned up your wound
with the whiskey and put a new bandage on it. You’re going to have
a scar.”

She moved her hand from her arm to her wet
eyes and face.

“
You were crying," he
added, and tossed a handkerchief at her. His tone was flat, the
expression on his face, a cold blank.

She gripped the hankie in her fist. “Where’s
my gun?” she demanded in Kyle’s voice. She struggled to sit up, a
task she found surprisingly difficult with only one arm to balance
on.

Jace held up the gun in its holster. "Right
here. Along with some of your . . . underwear."

Kyla recognized the fabric that made up her
binding. It was bloodstained and looked as though he’d cut it off
her. She gaped at it in heart-stopping horror. Groping around under
the blanket, she felt her shirt-clad ribs without the constricting
wraps. No wonder she could breathe so easily.

He held the very heart of her disguise in
his outstretched hand. She felt vulnerable, exposed. Her armor, the
shield she showed to the world and carried before her—the persona
of Kyle Springer—was lost to her. And to take it away from her,
that meant he’d seen her down to her bare skin. God, how long had
she been unconscious? And what else had happened during that
time?