Lynna Banning (14 page)

Just as the sky began to lighten, Ben pulled the gelding up short. Quickly he slid out of the saddle and studied the ground. When he climbed on his horse again, he turned hard to the right.

Even at night, Jessamyn knew this wasn’t the way they’d come. The trail narrowed, twisted along the hilltops instead of zigzagging down to the river she could faintly hear rushing far below them. They were moving away from it. The mare’s hooves rang against the rock-strewn trail cut into the hillside. Ben raised one arm and pointed downward.

Jessamyn drew up her horse and peered over the mare’s neck into the canyon below. For a moment she saw nothing, and then her throat closed. The river looked like a rumpled black ribbon in the faint light of dawn. The white spume on the water told her it was swift and treacherous.

And Ben was headed straight for it.

T
he sheriff stepped the gelding along the rock-strewn riverbank. “We’ll take the shortcut. Cross the river north of the ford.” He pointed upriver where the river boiled around a bend.

Jessamyn blanched. The water shone like burnished metal in the first rays of early-morning sun. It surged over boulders the size of a small house, swirled with-terrifying force along the uneven bank.

“There,” Ben shouted over the roar of the water. “It’s not as shallow as the ford where we crossed before, but here there’s no Indian reception committee waiting for us.”

He pointed out a section where the riverbed curved, the water eddying into a frothy lacework of silvery foam. “The current slacks about where that fallen tree lies.”

Jessamyn stared at the gnarled black roots of a massive upended fir. Oh, no. She wasn’t about to willingly risk drowning Cora’s mare, much less herself, in that swiftsliding dark water.

“Isn’t there some other place we could cross?” She had to yell to make herself heard.

Ben shook his head. “Got no choice,” he shouted. “Have to cross before daylight. Otherwise, Running Elk will spot us. He’s downriver now, waiting.”

Jessamyn struggled to grasp their dilemma. “But he’ll follow us, no matter where we cross, won’t he?”

“He can’t cross to the west side of the river for fear of being captured and sent to the reservation. He expects us where we forded before, not here.” He glanced at the flaming sun, now crawling over the mountain peaks behind them. “Come on! We can’t waste time.”

Ben pulled the gelding about and edged down to the riverbank. Turning his face toward her, he shouted something Jessamyn couldn’t hear over the rushing water. He nudged his horse forward, motioning her to follow.

She balked. She couldn’t walk her horse into that raging water—she’d be swept away in an instant, along with the mare. She couldn’t make herself kick the animal into motion.

“Ben!” she screamed. “I can’t do it! I can’t!”

He didn’t hear. Only when he reached the water’s edge did he glance back at her, frozen on the mare’s broad back.

He wheeled and rode toward her. Grabbing the mare’s bridle, he yanked the animal forward. He caught the reins out of her hands, looped them around his wrist and started forward.

Water spilled over her boot tops, soaked her trouser legs. Numb with fright, Jessamyn clung to the saddle horn and felt the animal bump into the river, then abruptly strike out with its legs and begin to swim.

Icy blue-green water sloshed at her waist, rose to her midriff. She kicked her feet free of the stirrups and fought to keep her balance.

No use. The mare plunged sideways, and Jessamyn toppled out of the saddle. With one hand she grabbed at the horse’s mane, tried to knot her fingers into the long hair, but the flowing strands were wet and slick. She couldn’t hold on.

She went under, thrashed to the surface, then sank again.
God help me, I damn well won’t die before I put my first newspaper to bed!

She kicked violently against a submerged rock and came up spluttering. Her hat floated away. She reached out and snagged it. Cora would never forgive her if she lost Frank Boult’s favorite Stetson.

Clutching the sodden mass of felt in one fist, she struck out for the opposite bank, breaststroking slowly, oh, so slowly toward a stretch of calm water. Ahead of her, Ben’s gelding and the gray mare swam in tandem.

Jessamyn caught the mare’s tail and hung on.

At last her feet scrabbled on the rocky bottom. She stumbled. Coughing up water, she released the horse’s tail and tried to stand up.

The mare scrambled up the bank and stood facing her, trembling violently. She couldn’t reach it! Her chest ached with a cold, tight feeling, as if an iron band squeezed the air out of her lungs. She tried again, slipped to one knee as she lost her balance.

“Jess!” Ben rode toward her, pulled her upright and pressed her clawed hands around the edge of his saddle. “Hold on!”

He leaned down over her, his body pressing her face into his thigh, and grabbed her waistband. Hooking his thumb inside her belt, he pulled her up and began walking the gelding out of the riverbed. Jessamyn’s weakened legs scraped over the tops of the shore rocks.

When he released her, she crumpled on the spot. Ben slid off the horse and was beside her in an instant.

“Jess! Stand up!”

Stand up?
Was the man crazy? She couldn’t draw breath, much less stand up!

She gasped for enough air to tell him what a stupid, inconsiderate, loutish order he’d just given. A gulp of air whooshed in. Oh, thank God. She could breathe. She was safe! Despite her resolve, she began to cry. Great heaving sobs racked her frame.

“Jess! It’s all right. We made it! Running Elk has turned back—I can see him on the ridge behind us.”

“G-good,” Jessamyn sobbed. She struggled to her feet and Ben pulled her into his chest, pressed her head into the hollow of his shoulder. Long tendrils of dark, wet hair straggled down her neck.

The warm rays of the sun on her back eased the tight, aching knot in her rib cage. She felt warm and safe here in his arms. She wanted nothing more than to just stand here with him, feel his strong hands at her back, listen to the thrumming of his heart through the wet canvas shirt. She wanted to feel him tight and hard against her.

Ben wrapped both arms around the trembling woman before him, steadied her against his body. They’d done it— outrun Running Elk, crossed the river just in time. A heady joy at being alive and in one piece coursed through him, kicked his pulse into a gallop. He felt giddy with happiness.

He was alive. And Jessamyn was alive—very much alive, judging from the trembling warmth enfolded within his arms. He and Jessamyn together had outfoxed both Black Eagle and his scout, Running Elk. He and Jessamyn—that proper, petticoated, steel-spined Yankee who wouldn’t take No for an answer. Who now wept in his arms like a frightened child.

But she was no child, he acknowledged. No child—or woman, either—had ever made him feel this way, simultaneously exasperated and protective, admiring and infuriated.

And no woman before her—not even back in Carolina— had felt this good pressed hard against his body.

A kernel of heat in his belly exploded into an inferno of need. He inhaled the scent of her thick hair coming loose from the prim bun, clinging to his shirt, teasing his chin, gazed at her wide, soft-looking mouth so near his. He licked his lips. My God, he had a three-day growth of beard. If he had any sense…

Jessamyn stirred and tipped her head to look up at him with drowsy green eyes. Before he knew what he was doing, he tilted her chin up and covered her mouth with his.
Behind his closed lids, scarlet and gold sunbursts faded to black velvet as his lips tasted hers. She jerked and then went still.

Her heart fluttered like a bird’s wings against his chest. Warmth washed into his groin. He pulled her closer, moving his mouth on hers, his breathing growing ragged.

He deepened the kiss, deepened it again as she began to respond, moving unconsciously into the rhythm that pulled at his body. She made a small sound in her throat, and a strangled groan escaped him.

Goddamn. He wanted her so much he felt dizzy. He caught her buttocks, lifted her to meet him, to fit

A shaft of hot sunlight on his closed eyelids reminded him where he was. And who he was. Who she was. Jessamyn Whittaker was
not
his woman.

He released her. Bringing his hands to her temples, he loosened the wire hairpins, threaded his fingers into her thick hair. “Jessamyn.
Jessamyn.”
He barely recognized his own voice. He breathed in the sweet scent of her and worked to keep his hands still.

Jessamyn thought her body would melt when Ben’s lips touched hers. His mouth was dark and silky, mysterious, his tongue wicked and wondrous as it teased her lips open. He moved—oh, how he moved!—as if he knew her intimately, sensed what she wanted before she knew it herself.

A needle of white-hot pleasure pricked her belly, settled lower, lacing her senses into a flame-licked net of desire. His tongue flicked across the tip of hers and a jolt of sweet aching sensation tightened her loins. With drowsy abandon she let him lift her, position her hard against him. She ached,
ached!

Dear God, she wanted him inside her, hard and deep.

She groaned, felt his body tremble. Her hands fluttered toward the top button of her shirt. She wanted to be naked against him. Now.

She wanted—

His hands found her hairpins, discarded them. She
couldn’t move for the pleasure of it, his fingers deep in her hair, stroking, stroking. He spoke her name, his voice thick, and something within her twisted with longing.

Hot and wet, she reached up for his hands.

“Ben. Ben, stop.” Jessamyn’s voice shook. She had to put an end to this. As much as she wanted what was happening, she knew it had to stop. Ladies did not lose their heads after just one kiss.

She settled his palms at her waist and bent her neck until her forehead pressed against his chest.

“Jess,” he breathed. “I’m sorry. I had no right.”

“Don’t talk, Ben. I wanted you to.” The confession surprised her. Accustomed to speaking her mind, she now blanched at her unladylike blurting of the truth.

But she
had
wanted it. She still wanted it. She hadn’t wanted him to stop.

“It won’t happen again,” he said in a careful, throaty voice.

Disappointment niggled at the back of her mind. “I—I’m not offended. But I don’t mean to…to suggest…”

“You didn’t.”

“Then I hope you won’t dwell on what just…occurred between us.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Ben lied.

“I was just so glad to be alive, and safe, that I lost my head.”

Ben nodded, his chin brushing the top of her head. “Sure, Jess. Happens all the time.”

She jerked away. “All the time?”
Frost tinged her words. “You mean this has happened before?”

Ben gazed down into eyes so green and hard they shone like polished agates. “No,” he said truthfully.

“Oh.” The silence lengthened. Ben remained motionless, his hands at her waist.

The pull of the tension between them drove all rational thought from her mind. She didn’t want him to move. She wanted him to—

“Time to mount up,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Should reach town by afternoon.”

Jessamyn hesitated. “Yes,” she said again.

Ben chuckled. “I’ll bet my spurs you’re dying for a hot bath.” He made no attempt to move away from her.

“Cora’s probably heating the water right now,” she murmured. “But after crossing the river back there…” Her voice trailed off. She did long for a bath in Cora’s cozy, savory-smelling kitchen. But just the same, she hated this journey to end, hated the adventure—all of it, right down to Ben’s heart-stopping kiss—to end.

She wrenched her mind away from the glorious experience. She thought of Papa, of his life out here in the West. He must have had plenty of excitement in this rough, untamed place. He’d written in the
Wildwood Times
about some of his adventures. His editorials were full of fascinating events and places, captured in vibrant detail.

She’d do exactly the same, she resolved. She had to focus on her newspaper, not on Ben Kearney. She’d work hard, make every issue of the
Wildwood Times
sparkle with interesting vignettes, move her readers to tears with heartfelt descriptions of people and events in Douglas County.

But to do that, she had to get her mind off the man who still held her in his arms. She had to ride back to town and set some type.

She spun on her heel and made her way to the gentle gray mare waiting patiently beside Ben’s big-boned gelding. Without looking at Ben, she hooked her toe in the stirrup and hoisted herself up into the saddle.

For the next hour they rode in tense silence, following the snakelike course of the river. They skirted fences enclosing green alfalfa fields and rolling pastureland so lush it looked like dimpled velvet. Eventually, they picked up their original trail. Side by side they drew inexorably closer to Wildwood Valley and civilization.

Part of Jessamyn rejoiced at their return. She wasn’t a
horsewoman, she was a newspaper editor. She had her notes, and her ideas for her lead stories, and she itched to get to work. Another part of her longed to just keep riding beside the tall, quiet man who had coaxed her body into aching response just a few miles back.

Now his touching her, kissing her, seemed unreal, like a dream she must have fashioned out of relief and exhaustion. She gave herself a mental shake, then settled into the memory again. Real or not, she knew she would never forget the feel of Ben’s warm mouth on hers, his shaking fingers laced in her hair.

She shivered with delight, and an odd sense of loss swelled inside her. She snatched off Frank’s hat, tossed her hair loose in the hot sunlight. She wanted to see that same expression kindle in Ben’s eyes—that indefinable look of hunger tinged with fear. She cast a covert glance at him.

Ben’s attention was not on her. Instead, his smoke blue eyes focused on something far off in the distance, ahead of them. With a swift intake of breath, Jessamyn followed the direction of his narrowed gaze.

Riders. Two of them, judging by the size of the dust cloud kicked up by their horses.

And coming fast.

“Wait here,” Ben ordered. He spurred his mount forward to meet the two men at a jog in the trail. Pulling the gelding up short, he raised his hand in greeting.

Jeremiah touched two blunt fingers to his hat brim. “Got trouble, Ben.”

Silas Appleby glowered at him from under his Stetson. “Forty more head gone, just like that!” He slapped his leather gloves against his palm. “Forty head! Goddammit, Ben, whoever took ‘em must have known you were gone. I’m positive it’s those Indians.”

Ben sat back in the saddle and pulled one knee to rest on the saddle horn. Leaning over it, he eyed the angry rancher. “Positive, are you?”

“Damn right! I wanted to round up a posse, but your
deputy threatened to put me in jail if I so much as opened my mouth.”