Katherine O’Neal (29 page)

“I’m sure I can’t understand your behavior.
If anything, I should be the one—”

“I’m sure you can’t,” he slurred.
“Understand.”

“Then help me. Tell me what’s troubling you
so much that you’d forget why we’re here.”

“I shall ask you again. Get the hell out of
here before I—” He stopped and took a long drink from the
bottle.

“What have I done to you?” she whispered,
alarmed now by the depth of his torment.

“What have you done?” He gave a laughing
snort. “You’ve held up a mirror. It doesn’t matter where you go or
what you do. That mirror just keeps following you around.”

“Have you forgotten? We have a job to
do.”

“A job. Always another job—”

“Mace, you’re scaring me.”

He stood up slowly and tossed the bottle
aside. It slammed against the wall, shattering and spilling the
remains onto the wagon floor. She glanced at it and back to him as
he came toward her, towering above her, forced to lean slightly
beneath the low roof.

“I’m scaring
you
. That’s a laugh.
That’s nothing, sweetheart, to how you scare me.” He reached out
and took her silvery hair in his hand, yanking her to him so that
she came up breathless against his chest. “Christ, you’re so
desirable. Everything a man like me should want in a woman. My
brother—damn his soul—took one look at you and wanted you above all
things. Do you think I don’t know what that’s like? Do you think I
can look at you, smell you, without wanting to see you panting
beneath me?” He kissed her fiercely. His breath, reeking of
whiskey, mingled with hers as his tongue plundered her mouth. He
held her so tightly, she thought she’d suffocate in his arms.

He captured her breast in his palm, took both
hands, and ran them down the length of her slender back to cup and
squeeze the generous buttocks and pull her into his groin. He was
so hard, it was like coming up against a shaft of steel. She
whimpered, because in spite of it all, she wanted this man more
than she wanted to live.

But she wanted more than his body. She wanted
to heal him. She desired his heart, freely given. She craved his
soul.
If only he weren’t a Blackwood
...

“I’d like to take you right here and now,” he
rasped against her ear. “Slip inside and make you crazy. Crush you
to me and make you forget every man you’ve ever known.”

“Oh, yes,” she whispered. She was aching with
desire. His hands at her buttocks kneaded with a demanding rhythm,
parting the cheeks as he thrust her up against the swollen armor of
his lust.

“I want to feel your skin beneath my hands.
Taste your nipples on my tongue. Shove myself up inside you and
feel you quiver beneath me.” He withdrew a hand and ruminatively
smoothed the backs of his knuckles across her lips. “I want to come
in your mouth.”

She opened her lips and took his fingers
in.

He jerked them from her mouth, took her chin
in his hand, and raised it so he was glaring viciously into her
eyes. “But I’d be proving myself a Blackwood, wouldn’t I?”

“You’re wrong,” she panted. “It wasn’t the
same. It wasn’t that way at all.”

“Well...” His eyes took in her mouth as she
parted it beneath the cruel grip of his hand at her chin. “You
always were a good liar.” Leaning, he gave her a chaste parting
kiss. “Don’t fret, darling. You haven’t done a thing. You’re not,
after all, responsible for the accident of my birth.”

He turned, dismissing her. She stood for a
long time, watching him, breathing hard.

When he spoke, it was in a cautious, clipped
tone, as if leashing some inner fury. “Now do as I say and get the
hell out of this wagon. Before another Blackwood brother forgets
himself and rapes you too.”

Lucy was driving the lead wagon one afternoon
when she was stopped by a trio of riders. They were Mexicans,
heavily armed and loaded down with ammunition. Expecting trouble,
Lucy pulled rein.

The other wagons came to a halt behind her.
Since Mace had taken over the lead wagon, Saranda had been forced
to share the second with the other women—a situation that was
uncomfortable at best. Now, as the wagons lurched to a halt, she
looked out the small window and saw the men talking to Lucy.
Bandits! As one of them motioned with his rifle, Lucy cast a
hesitant glance back at her own wagon where she knew Mace was and
stepped to the ground.

Another bandit pounded on the lead wagon’s
door. After a moment, the door swung open and Mace stepped down,
his hair rumpled, his jaw stubbled with black beard, making him
look nearly as disreputable as the intruders.

The twins, who’d been driving the other
wagons, were rousted from their perches and forced to the ground.
While the leader held them all at rifle point, the others made
their way back to the women’s wagon. Their boot-steps crunched in
the dry terrain, heralding their approach.

Flying Dove joined Saranda at the window. “I
do not think they came to rob us,” she whispered.

“To kill us, then? But why?”

The Indian turned and gave her a steady gaze.
“Perhaps you know better than I.”

There was banging on their door then, and one
man yelling for them to come outside.

“Have you ever shot a man?” Flying Dove asked
in the same hushed tone.

“No.”

“Nor I. Could you?”

Saranda shook her head. She hadn’t been able
to kill Lance Blackwood, even when she’d had the chance.

“Then I will take the gun and pray for
strength.”

At that moment, the door opened and one
bandit reached inside. Swearing in Spanish, he caught Saranda’s arm
and jerked her out of the wagon. While he was distracted, Flying
Dove took the gun and thrust it into the back waistband of her
skirt.

They were shoved out into the glaring sun.
The heat was still and oppressive, the sun so bright it hurt the
eyes.

Mace was speaking drunkenly to the head
bandit in fluent Spanish. Since she didn’t speak the language,
Saranda couldn’t understand the words. But his tone was clear.
Swaying slightly on his feet, Mace was attempting to con the
bandit.

She looked at the twins and saw the terror in
their faces. Obviously, they feared what she did: that Mace, drunk
and self-destructive, would be of no help in this fight.

She could smell the danger. The bandit’s eyes
were cold, unfeeling, the look of a man who has no intention of
being swayed. He barked an order at Lucy.

“He wants you to get the money,” Mace told
her. He turned back to the Mexican and began a litany in persuasive
Spanish. For a few moments, the bandit seemed to listen, his gaze
hungry. Then, with a stained-tooth grin, he spoke again.

As the women held their breaths, Mace
shrugged expansively, as if to say,
Well, I tried
. He jerked
his head toward the wagon, bidding Lucy to do as she was told.

“I’m not going to just hand this louse the
money we worked so hard for,” Lucy protested.

Mace turned and gave her a level look. “Do
you want him to kill you?”

“If you were any kind of a man, you wouldn’t
let them do this.”

The bandit interceded. In Spanish, Mace told
him what Lucy had said. Amused, the bandit dropped his head back
and roared with laughter. As Lucy went into the wagon to retrieve
the money box, Mace offered the robber a drink from his bottle.
Dropping his arm companionably over Mace’s shoulders, the Mexican
drank heartily.

Meanwhile, the other bandits were eyeing the
women. One called to his boss as he moved close to Abby.

The leader disengaged himself from Mace and
went to join his fellow outlaws. Abby began whimpering as the man
trailed a hand along her arm. She shot Mace a look of fury that
blasted his betrayal for allowing this to happen. Desperately, she
shrank away from the Mexican’s foul breath.

Together, the three men surveyed the women
one by one, making obviously crude comments and laughing as they
went to each, stroking their faces and fingering their hair. When
they came to Flying Dove, she turned to the side so they couldn’t
see the gun. But Mace saw it. His eyes flicked to it, then quickly
away.

The Mexicans apparently had no use for a
half-breed. The leader made a great show of sneering and spat at
her feet.

Lucy came forth with the money box and handed
it resentfully to the leader. The men circled her, nodding their
heads as they noted her red hair and pouty lips. One bandit made it
clear he wouldn’t mind having her.

Then the leader turned and spotted Saranda.
He stood rooted for a moment, staring. She met his suddenly heated
gaze with a rebellious tilt of her chin. But she knew with a
sinking heart that there would be no help for her. She’d seen that
same look in Lance Blackwood’s eyes, just before he’d raped her.
Now that the bandit had noticed her, she knew this man wouldn’t be
turned away.

Mace saw it, too. He put his arm about the
bandit’s shoulders as he’d done earlier, and in jovial tones
offered him another drink. The Mexican didn’t even look his way. As
though in a trance, he shrugged Mace off, handed the money box to
his partner, and walked toward Saranda.

His eyes took in her every curve, lingering
on the full breasts, taking in the rounded arch of her hips. He
grabbed her arm, turned her around as if inspecting a horse, and
caught his breath. His hand, caked with dirt, molded itself to her
backside as the breath choked in her throat.

He began to speak to her in a low tone. The
words were unintelligible, but she recognized the sound of a
lust-crazed man when she heard it. When he turned her back to face
him, she saw the awful glitter in his hooded eyes.

She looked over at Mace. For an instant,
their eyes met, hers registering panic, his genuine despair. Was he
going to stand there and let these men take her, out here on the
desert like some spoils of war?

The bandit spoke to his partner, who gave an
appreciative snort, came around behind her, and cruelly twisted her
arms behind her back, forcing her breasts to rise. Holding his
rifle halfway up the barrel, the leader circled the outthrust
globes with the muzzle. His lips curled in a sneer as he reached
over, grabbed the neckline of her dress in his hand, and yanked it
open. Saranda struggled, but could do nothing. She stood bared to
the waist in front of these brutal strangers, with the sun beating
down on her exposed breasts.

Mace said something in a low voice. The
bandit shrugged him off, reaching forth to touch her flesh. She
gritted her teeth to keep from vomiting as the twins burst into
tears.

Again, Mace spoke in a low, persuasive tone.
Angry now, squeezing her breast possessively, the bandit turned on
him and growled out a command. With a shrug, Mace retreated,
leaving Saranda staring an awful reality in the face. Once again,
she was going to be brutalized. But this time it was different,
worse. Because the man she loved would stand by and watch, and do
nothing to help her.

She looked desperately at him as the Mexican
lowered his cracked lips to her skin. “Mace...” she moaned in soft
entreaty.

He stopped next to Flying Dove. His shoulders
slumped, his back to Saranda, he muttered in English, “Some people
are just too stupid to con.”

Then, with lightning reflexes, he grabbed the
gun from the Indian’s skirt and whirled. At Mace’s harsh words, the
leader had lifted his head, and the next thing Saranda knew, Mace
was firing the gun. The Mexican’s face exploded before her
eyes.

In the horror of it, time seemed to grind to
a halt. As if in slow motion, the bandit fell before her, his face
blown clean away. The man pinning her arms shoved her forward, so
she fell on the dead body. When she looked up, both remaining
bandits were running for their horses. One leapt over the backside
and into the saddle and, taking the money box with him, raced with
his partner across the desert at full speed, scattering clouds of
dust behind.

Mace raised his arm and aimed at the fleeing
men. The bandits had ridden some distance off by then, but he
tracked one coldly and pulled the trigger. It was an impossible
shot. Yet, a split second after it rang out, the fugitive fell to
the ground. Mace fired a third shot and missed, the outlaw with the
money box already too far away.

As the smoke cleared, a tremendous silence
settled over the land. Saranda stared up at Mace, shock and terror
mingling in her gaze, as in the other’s. He stood there, dead
sober, looking with horror at the faceless bandit who’d only
moments before been a living man.

The women watched in stunned silence as he
stood, the smoking gun dangling at his side as if it were suddenly
too heavy to carry. They watched as this man who’d just saved them
dropped to his knees in the dust and stared at the body before him
as if belatedly praying for the dead man’s soul. They watched in
horror, in hushed reverence, for still they couldn’t believe what
they’d just witnessed.

Oblivious to them, Mace sat, knees apart,
crouched over the body, the gun—still in his hand—dragging on the
ground at his side. He never moved, seemed unaware that they stood
there.

Saranda rose in a daze, her bare skin
splattered with blood and bits of the bandit’s remains. She barely
noticed as Abby retrieved a shawl from the wagon and wrapped it
around her. She had eyes only for Mace. She’d never seen such
remorse, such torment, such self-recrimination, in all her
life.

“Now I’m like Lance,” he said, almost too
softly for her to hear.

“He was evil, Mace. He would have killed me.
After they
all
raped me.”

“Saranda, there hasn’t been a man alive I
couldn’t flam. I could have done it. But I got scared. I lost my
head.”

He dropped the gun, as if belatedly realizing
he still held it, then sat staring at his hand as if he’d never
seen it before.