Nan Ryan (25 page)

The toe of her dainty kid slipper, with the full weight of her body behind it, caught him on the left cheek, just above the jawbone. The blow stunned him and knocked him over backward.

Mollie wasted no time. She ran, heading straight for the tethered stallion, cursing the handcuffs and the long, cumbersome skirts threatening to trip her.

The grazing horse lifted his head and shook it up and down when she came crashing through the undergrowth. Desperate to be up on his back and gone, Mollie rushed toward the stallion. She was less than six feet away—ready to lunge up into the saddle—when Lew caught up with her.

She screamed her outrage and fought him when his arms came around her from behind.

“No!” she hissed, furious, “Let me go! Damn you, let me go!” She kicked at him and tossed her head from side to side, wincing in pain when he jerked her back against him, catching her cuffed hands between their pressing bodies.

“You’re only making it hard on yourself, Mollie,” Lew said flatly. “You know I won’t let go, so you may as well stop fighting me.”

“You unscrupulous bastard!” she shrieked, chafing against the strong arms that encircled her, helpless as she’d never been in her life. “You despicable, deceitful charlatan!”

She managed to jab a sharp elbow into his ribs. Lew winced and loosened his grip slightly. Mollie immediately twisted around and managed to sink her teeth into his left shoulder. He yelped in pain and automatically released her. She spun the rest of the way around until she was facing him. Then she swiftly brought her knee up, slamming it forcefully into his groin. He groaned and paled, but managed to grab her skirts as she wheeled away. It threw her off balance and she crashed to the ground at his feet. Bent over with agony, muttering oaths, Lew clung tenaciously to the billowing skirts and sank to his knees beside her.

Mollie struggled and fought him for what seemed an eternity. They were both breathing hard from exertion, each determined to subdue and conquer the other. At a definite disadvantage, Mollie, with so much more to lose than Lew, fought wildly, kicking and biting and wrestling as though her life depended on it.

Lew, his jaw and ribs and groin hurting badly, stayed with her, letting her beat herself. Hardened outlaw though she was, he couldn’t bring himself to rough her up. Cuffing a female had been distasteful enough. Striking her was out of the question, as foreign to his nature as surrendering was to hers.

So he allowed her to pummel him as best she could. He ducked the most vicious blows from her flailing feet and carefully avoided her sharp teeth.

He knew that she was tiring when, tears of frustration slipping down her hot cheeks, she threatened hollowly, “You’ll never reach Denver and the authorities! You hear me? Never!” Her breasts were rising and falling from the strenuous exercise and from the sobs she could no longer hold back. “I’ll escape if it’s the last thing I do, bounty chaser! You’re right, I am the last of the Rogers Renegades, and nobody will ever take me in. Not marshal or deputy or sheriff.” She spat contemptuously on the ground. “And certainly not some mercenary bounty hunter who pretended to be … who cruelly led me to believe … who … who …” Out of breath, out of hope, she struggled back up onto her knees. Then sank back onto her heels, blinking back her tears, her slender body jerking and trembling.

Lew, crouching close, watched her warily, expecting the unexpected. Naked to the waist, she looked haughty and proud kneeling there with her head held high, her blond tangled hair falling into her face. One yellow Mexican poppy remained pinned above her right ear. Another blossom, slightly crushed, clung to her left breast. Shiny with perspiration, the bare breast quivered involuntarily when she felt his eyes touch her.

“I’ll help you get dressed,” he said, and gently pushed the fallen bodice up to cover her nakedness.

Her eyes closed, and she refused to speak or to look at him. Ever watchful, he maneuvered himself around behind her and began pulling the dress together in back. His jaw hardened when his eyes again fell on the damning butterfly birthmark.

“I’ve money,” he heard her say finally in a tired voice. “You can have it all. The price on my head can’t be nearly as much as I have. Take me back to Maya and I’ll give you the gold. Lots of gold.”

Lew finished buttoning her dress. He pulled the puffed sleeves up over her shoulders, then dropped his hands away. Coldly, he said, “There’s not enough gold in this world.”

Baffled, Mollie’s anger rose anew and she hissed, “Then what the devil is this all about if not for money? Why the hell have you—”

“Let’s go,” he cut her off, reached out, took her arm, and drew her to her feet.

He shoved her toward the stallion, his face as hard as stone. Mollie could tell by the rigid set of his jaw and the punishing fingers gripping her arm that it was futile to argue or question him. She stared at him, angry and mystified. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. The kind, handsome man she thought she was in love with, a cold-blooded bounty hunter? And why wouldn’t he listen when she offered him the gold?

Confused and heartsick, Mollie turned her thoughts to the professor. What would he do when he learned that Lew had taken her? If no one else in the whole wide world cared about her, the professor did. This would never have happened if he had been in Maya. The professor would never have allowed some revenge-seeking bounty hunter to get his hands on her.

Poor, dear Professor Dixon. Lew had fooled him too. She knew what the professor would do as soon as he learned she was missing. He would come after her! That thought gave her comfort for only a minute before she considered what might happen if the professor found them. He would try to kill Lew, she knew he would, but the professor was no gunfighter. He was a gentle, refined man more at home with a book in his hand than a gun.

Mollie shuddered.

Lew could easily kill the professor if they went up against each other. She couldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t. But there was only one way she could keep the professor from following them.

“I’ll come with you willingly,” she said, half startling Lew. “But please, can’t we go by the mansion so that I can get a few of my things?”

Lew lifted her atop the bay stallion, then swung up behind her. “I’ll take you there, but I’ll be watching you every minute. If you have any notions of slipping away from me, forget them.”

At the Manzanita Avenue mansion the pair tiptoed quietly up the stairs. Louise Emerson, sound asleep in a room at the back of the house, never knew they were on the premises.

Inside Mollie’s room Lew unlocked the handcuffs with the whispered warning, “Don’t try anything foolish.”

Mollie shot him a scathing look which he ignored. He leaned against the door frame while she changed her clothes behind a dressing screen. His eyes never left her. When she stepped out from behind the screen, Fontaine Gayerre was gone forever.

A defiant Mollie Rogers stood before him in a pair of tight buckskin trousers, loose-fitting shirt, and tall boots. The transformation was remarkable. Not just the change in costume, but the tilt of her determined chin, the unfamiliar stance, the murderous look in her eyes.

Staring at her, Lew felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Her appearance and manner were so unlike the beautiful young woman he had courted all summer. It was easy to picture this insolent, trousered woman with a gun on her hip and larceny in her heart.

“I’ll just throw a few things in my saddlebags,” she coolly informed him and headed for her dressing room.

Pushing away from the door, he said, “I’ll come with you.”

“I’m hiding no firearms, bounty hunter,” she said icily.

He didn’t reply, but followed her into the dressing room where row upon row of colorful feminine frocks hung above dozens of pairs of shoes. Already she looked out of place here. Yet Mollie, changed irrevocably by the happy time she had spent in the professor’s home, automatically snatched up silky underwear, lavender-scented soap, and a silver hairbrush. She crammed the articles into her red leather saddlebags.

She hurried back into the bedroom. Lew was right behind her. From her vanity she picked up an ivory-handled mirror, a bottle of French perfume, and some expensive skin cream. Then she grabbed a couple of her favorite books and some lilac-hued notepaper and pencils from her writing desk.

“That’s it, outlaw,” said Lew.

Mollie nodded, but reached for the fancy velvet sewing box—a gift from the professor—with its colored thread and needles and pin cushion and silver thimble and sharp embroidery scissors.

“Now!” Lew ordered, taking her arm.

Mollie thrust the bulging saddlebags at him and returned to the desk. Taking a feathered quill from its inkwell, she hurriedly wrote notes to both the professor and Louise Emerson. She sealed the professor’s message. Louise’s she merely folded and laid atop her big four-poster—the first place Louise would look in the morning.

Mollie hated the lies she told them in the notes, but she had no choice. She was far too fond of the professor to risk his being shot. This way was best. The note would keep the professor from coming after her.

Mollie crossed to where Lew waited impatiently. She paused there, turned, and looked back on the decidedly feminine room where Fontaine Gayerre had been so happy—where she had spent so many pleasant hours daydreaming about a tall, handsome, black-haired broncbuster.

Mollie felt the abominable lump rise to her throat, but refused to give in to self-pity or fear or to any more foolish tears. Fontaine might have done so. Mollie Rogers would not.

“It’s a long way to Denver, outlaw.” Lew’s hand was cupping the back of her neck.

Swallowing with difficulty, she looked up at him, and said, “You’ll never get me there, bounty chaser.” She jerked free of his hold and told him, “You’ve known only Fontaine Gayerre. Meet Mollie Rogers!”

Now, three days later, Lew knew what she had meant. The sullen, sunburned woman riding behind him was nothing at all like the sweet-tempered, lovely Fontaine Gayerre. Every hour, every mile had been pure torture. Mollie had already tried a half dozen times to escape. Each time he had caught her it had taken a little more out of him. She could fight like a wildcat and cuss like a trail boss and he found himself having to constantly curb the strong impulse to slug her, which was what she deserved. She couldn’t be trusted for a minute, and he was bone-tired from watching her every move and sleeping with one eye open.

Lew rubbed his burning eyes and looked at the salmon-colored cliffs looming in the near distance ahead. They were starting to climb out of the valley. Tonight they could camp on the banks of the Santa Maria and head on up into the Weaver Mountains come morning. In three or four days they would reach Prescott.

Lew smiled at the prospect.

Cherry Sellers was in Prescott. Big, warmhearted Cherry. He could stop in and stay with Cherry for a night. Have a home cooked meal. Take a bath in a real bathtub. And get a good night’s sleep while Cherry, ever a nocturnal creature from all the years she had spent at the Red Slipper, kept an eye on Mollie.

In silence they rode on, each lost in his own thoughts while the sun westered to their left.

Mollie, watching the dark, broad-shouldered rider through half-closed eyes, silently conceded that he was harder to handle than any man she had ever known. He didn’t let down his guard for a minute. In the three days they had been riding north, she had failed to escape him, despite several serious attempts.

The maddening man seemed to be constantly poised and alert for trouble, his lean, lithe body ready to spring into action in a heartbeat, like a deadly predator. It was as if he was able to sense when she was thinking about trying something. And when she had made those failed attempts to escape, he had pursued her like a demon out of hell.

Mollie cringed recalling the mad gallop across the hot desert sands that first afternoon when she had thought Lew was dozing in the saddle. Seizing the opportunity, she had wheeled her mount about and dug her heels into his belly, spurring him on. But in a matter of seconds Lew had caught up with her, reached out, grabbed the bridle and brought her horse to a plunging halt.

Angry, she had struck out at him, lost her balance, and fallen to the ground. Before she could scramble to her feet, he was off his horse and to her. She hit at him frantically, screaming at him and doing her best to hurt him. Remaining irritatingly composed, he had calmly climbed atop her, deaf to her sputters of outrage. He had pinned her to the ground with the weight of his body, catching her wrists and easily forcing them up over her head. And then he simply looked down at her from icy blue eyes while she struggled futilely and cursed him hotly, detesting the forced intimacy of his hard, heavy body pressing down on hers. When finally she could no longer move a muscle and went limp beneath him, she felt his lean body relax. He moved off her, stood up, reached down, hauled her to her feet, and snapped the handcuffs back on her.

Trapped and furious, she had said, “Why don’t you save us both a lot of trouble, bounty hunter? Why don’t you cut my head off and take it back to Denver in a sack? That’s how it’s done, isn’t it? You turn in my head and collect the reward.”

Holding her by her shirt collar, Lew looked down at her and whistled through his teeth. “You sure have a vivid imagination, outlaw.”

“Do I?” She tried to shrug free of his grasp. Failed. “Isn’t that how it’s done? The sneaky bounty hunter takes in the head of the captured outlaw, dumps it out on the table, and collects his blood money.”

“You’ve a pretty head, outlaw. I’ll let you keep it.”

“No!” she shouted at him. “Don’t you call me pretty. Never again, you hear me, you repulsive, unprincipled impostor.”

A dark eyebrow lifted. “I an impostor? And what are you, outlaw? You unstrapped your gun belt, put on a petticoat, and pretended to be a prim young lady.”

“You go to hell!”

“Baby, we’re on the way.”

That had been but one of several similar incidents, and Mollie had to admit that it was not going to be as easy to elude this cold, heartless man as she had first supposed. He was as hard and ungiving as she. And he was every bit as determined, as crafty, as smart.