Only You (10 page)

The valley that wasn’t really a valley began to descend with increasing steepness. As it slanted down to the stone maze, the land changed, rising slowly on either side of the dry wash Reno had chosen to follow.

The wash was lined with stunted cottonwoods whose leaves were a dusty green that gave shade but little coolness. Plants that required surface
water to survive had long since flowered, gone to seed, and died back to brittle stalks that rustled with every breeze, waiting for the seasonal rains to come.

The farther the wash went to the west and north, the higher the walls on either side became, and the more narrow the passage between. After a time, Reno slipped the thong that held his six-gun in the holster and pulled his repeating rifle from its saddle scabbard. He levered a round into the firing chamber and rode with the rifle across his lap.

Reno’s actions told Eve that there was no other way to go but the one ahead. And that one led farther and deeper into what was rapidly becoming little more than a crack in the dry body of the land. She pulled the old double-barreled shotgun from its worn scabbard and checked the load.

The dry, metallic sound the shotgun made as Eve broke it open to put a shell in each firing chamber turned Reno’s head. She closed the gun and rode as he did, with a gun across the saddle, its muzzle pointed in the opposite direction of Reno’s rifle. The look on her face was intent and wary, but not frightened.

At that moment Reno was reminded of Willow, who once had stood with her back to him and a shotgun in her hands, waiting to see if the next person coming out of the forest would be Caleb or a member of Jed Slater’s savage gang.

It had been Caleb who came out of the forest, but Reno had no doubt that Willow would have shot anyone else.

He didn’t doubt Eve’s courage, either. Not in that way. She had spent too many years defending herself to flinch from what must be done.

They learned to leave me alone.

Reno’s eyes moved ceaselessly, probing shadows
and the random turnings of the stream bed. The blue roan mustang he rode liked the narrowing wash no better than he did. Her ears swiveled and pricked at the least sound. Despite the long trail behind, she carried herself lightly, muscles coiled, ready to leap in any direction at the first appearance of danger.

The lineback dun was equally edgy. Eve could feel the mare’s wariness in her quick movements and nervously lashing tail. Even the two Shaggies were skittish. They crowded up on the dun’s heels as though taking no chance on being left behind.

Dry watercourses came in from the right and the left, yet still the main channel narrowed, eating deeper and deeper into the land. The bluffs on either side became cliffs that rose high enough to cut off the sun.

Abruptly Reno reined the mare into one of the side channels. The other horses followed. When Eve would have spoken, he gestured curtly for silence.

Long minutes later, a small band of wild horses trotted past the mouth of the narrow side canyon. The sound of their passage was all but smothered by the sandy ground. The horses were heading back the way Eve and Reno had come.

Eve felt the dun’s barrel swell as the horse drew breath to whinny. Immediately she leaned forward in the saddle and clamped her fingers around the mustang’s nostrils.

The motion caught Reno’s eye. He saw what Eve had done, nodded approvingly, and went back to watching. Long after the last wild mustang had gone by, he waited.

Nothing else moved.

Reno considered the tiredness of the horses, the
time of the day, and the map in his mind.

It didn’t take long to decide.

“We’ll camp here.”

T
HE
spring was marked only by the shocking green of growing things. Where water overflowed, there was a narrow ribbon of fern and moss that gave way almost immediately to plants better suited for surviving the relentless sun. Yet even those plants didn’t last long, for the air drank water more quickly than any growing thing. Fifty feet from the spring, the trickle of water vanished into sand and pebbles.

Reno sat on his heels, studying the tracks leading to and from the water hole. Deer had been to drink. So had coyotes, rabbits, ravens, and horses. None of the horses showed clear signs of being shod, but something about the tracks disturbed Reno just the same.

He had used various herds of wild horses to hide the tracks left by his own horses. There was no reason to think that Slater was any less clever at disguising his own tracks. But Reno couldn’t prove that it had happened here.

Reluctantly he stood, mounted Darlin’, and rode back up the wash to the place where Eve and the packhorses waited. After a hundred feet he turned to look at his own back trail. Darlin’s shod hooves left clear marks in the damp, churned earth at the fringes of the spring.

“Has Slater been here?” Eve asked with outward calm as Reno rode up.

He had been expecting the question. The hours and days on the trail had taught him that Eve was accustomed to using her eyes and her brain. Even though there was no trail marked in the journals that Slater could have taken to get in front of them,
that possibility still remained.

The Spanish hadn’t found all the ways through the wild land. Nor had the U.S. Army. The Indians had; some of the men who rode with Slater might easily know things that no white men did.

“Couldn’t prove it by the tracks,” Reno said.

She let out a silent breath of relief.

“Couldn’t disprove it, either,” he continued. “Not all of Slater’s men are riding shod horses.”

“They were in Canyon City.” Then, before Reno could say it, she added dryly, “But we’re not in Canyon City anymore.”

The corner of his mustache lifted in a smile.

“Comancheros aren’t welcome in Canyon City,” Reno pointed out.

“Couldn’t the tracks you saw have been made by mustangs?”

“Some of them were. And some of them were cut deep into the ground.”

“Like a horse carrying a man?” Eve asked.

“Or a horse digging in to shy away from an irritable neighbor. A lot of nipping and squealing goes on at a water hole this small.”

Eve made a sound of exasperation and licked her dry lips.

“Don’t worry,
gata
,” Reno said. “I’m not planning on making you go without your bath.”

She smiled with delight. As she did, she realized that somewhere along the hot, hard trail to Spanish gold, she had lost her displeasure over Reno’s nickname for her.

Or maybe it was simply that his voice had lost its cutting edge when he called her
gata
. Now his tone was darkly caressing, as though she were indeed a wary cat being coaxed closer and closer to his hand for a thorough petting.

The thought brought a flush to Eve’s cheeks that
had nothing to do with the heat radiating from the canyon’s stone walls.

“Cover me from here while I fill the canteens,” Reno said. “When I’m finished, I’ll water the horses one by one.”

By the time the canteens, the humans, and the horses had drunk their fill and returned to the small side canyon, the sun no longer touched even the highest edges of the rock walls. The air was hushed, for no breeze disturbed the hidden canyon. Shadows flowed out from every crevice, pooled, and rose in a soundless tide. Overhead the sky flushed darkly with the passionate hues of sunset.

While Reno took care of the horses, Eve built a small fire against a boulder. By the time the smoke rose to the boulder’s top, nothing remained to give away the camp’s presence but a faint fragrance of piñon fire and coffee. With the meager light of the flames to aid her, Eve ate quickly and gathered up what she would need for a “bath.”

Silently Reno watched Eve walk out into the darkness with a canteen, a small metal pan, a soft rag, and a piece of soap. The faded dress made of old flour sacks was draped over her shoulder. He couldn’t decide if she was going to wear it back to camp or use it as a towel.

“Don’t go far,” Reno said.

Though he had spoken quite softly, Eve froze.

“And take the shotgun with you.”

Reno followed the small sounds Eve made as she picked up her shotgun and walked once more into the darkness. She didn’t go far. Just enough to be well beyond the reach of light from the fire.

Reno heard the muted splash of water and told himself he could not possibly hear the subtle whisper of cloth against skin as Eve undressed. Nor
could he hear her sigh of pleasure as the cool water caressed her. He most certainly couldn’t hear her breath shiver when her nipples peaked in response to the wet cloth. But he could imagine it.

And he did.

T
HE
air felt sleek and cool on Eve’s damp skin as she finished her bath. She shivered, but not from chill. Like the half-wild, wary mustangs, Eve sensed she was no longer alone. She shook out her flour-sack dress and hurriedly pulled it on over her head.

“Finished?”

Reno’s voice came from only a few feet away.

Eve spun toward him, her eyes wide. He was standing within reach. Clean clothes were bunched in one hand.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m finished.”

“Then you won’t mind if I use the basin.”

“Oh…”

Eve took a shaky breath and told herself she wasn’t disappointed that Reno had followed her merely because he, too, wished to refresh himself after the long ride. Quickly she held out the basin.

“Here,” she said.

“May I use your cloth, too?”

The husky darkness of Reno’s voice heightened Eve’s awareness of him until it was almost painful. Her skin tingled as though it had been stroked.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“And your soap?”

She nodded.

The motion of her head set her carelessly bound hair free of its loose knot. Moonlight tangled in the tawny locks that fell below her waist.

“And your hands,
gata
. May I use them, too?”

Reno heard the break in Eve’s breathing and wished that he could see her eyes. He wanted to know whether curiosity or dread, sensuality or fear, had caused that soft, tearing intake of breath.

“I know that wasn’t part of our bargain,” he said, “but I would appreciate a shave. Heat makes beard stubble itch like the very devil.”

“Oh. Yes, of course,” she said hurriedly.

“Have you shaved a man before?”

Moonlight gleamed and ran like liquid silver through Eve’s hair as she nodded.

“And cut hair,” she said. “And gave manicures.”

“Another way you earned your keep, is that it?”

The edge in Reno’s voice made Eve flinch.

“Yes,” she said.

Then, knowing what he was thinking, she added, “And none of them touched me.”

“Why? Did it cost extra?”

“No. I had a razor at their throat,” Eve said succinctly.

Reno remembered how he had seen her a few minutes ago, naked in the moonlight, all glistening silver and black velvet, with curves that made a man ache. He wanted to believe that she was as pure as she looked.

But he couldn’t.

Even night and shadow didn’t conceal Reno’s skepticism. Eve saw it clearly. Her expression changed, becoming as cool and remote as the moon.

“I never sold myself, gunfighter.”

Reno smiled rather grimly. He wanted to believe Eve the way he wanted to take his next breath. He would have given up heaven and taken on hell if it would have made Eve half as innocent as she had seemed as she stood naked, shimmering with moonlight and water.

The depth of his desire to believe that Eve had never been bought and sold shocked Reno. Yet he could no more deny his futile wish than he could control his primal response to something as simple as watching her move around the campfire.

Nor could Reno understand his reaction to Eve. He had never fancied saloon girls. Nor had he ever used them. He had preferred to go without rather than to slake his thirst at a tainted water hole. Yet he wanted Eve like hell burning, no matter how many other men she might have had in her young life.

That was why he had taken cards in the Gold Dust Saloon. A single look at Eve’s steady eyes and trembling mouth had drawn him straight across the room. He hadn’t cared if the two outlaws at the table with her objected to having a stranger join them for a few rounds of draw poker. He would have fought just to sit near her. He would have killed.

And he had.

Abruptly Reno turned and went to the smooth, blunt shelf of sandstone that Eve had used as a table for her basin of water. He sat on the rock ledge, put the clean clothes aside, and started undoing
his shirt with quick, angry motions of his hands.

“Do you have a razor with you?” Eve asked.

Reno reached back to his hip pocket and took out a folding straight-edge razor. Without a word he handed it to Eve, for he didn’t trust his voice not to reveal how much he disliked the idea of her hands moving over other men’s faces, their hair, their hands; and all the while the men would be looking at her lips and her breasts, breathing in the scent of lilacs from her skin, undressing her in their minds, opening her thighs….

Warily Eve came closer to the dangerous man who watched her with eyes made colorless by moonlight. Years of living in the Lyons’ Gypsy wagon had taught her how to wash herself and others with a minimum of fuss and water. She wet Reno’s hair and heavy beard stubble and began to work soap into both.

Normally she stood behind a man to do this, but Reno was sitting on a smooth stone outcropping rather than a chair. She had no choice except to stand in front of him.

And, Eve admitted silently to herself, no real desire to stand elsewhere. She liked watching Reno’s closed eyes and knowing that her touch was pleasing him.

Slowly, subtly, Reno shifted his position as Eve worked. Before she quite understood how it had happened, she found herself standing between his legs. She made a startled sound.

As though she had stumbled, Reno’s hands came up to steady her.

“Perdition,” she whispered.

His eyes opened. “I beg your pardon?”

“The manicure. I forgot your hands.”

Reno raised a single black eyebrow and flexed
his hands, sinking his fingers into the lush flare of Eve’s hips. He felt the heat of her body dearly, for there was only one layer of cloth between his skin and hers. She was quite naked under the floursack dress.

Eve’s breath rushed in and stayed until she felt dizzy. She had never imagined that there would be pleasure in a man’s hands on her hips.

“Your hands,” she said.

Reno smiled and flexed his fingers again.

“My hands,” he agreed. Then he bent forward and whispered against Eve’s breasts, “Where else would you like them?”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

She turned away quickly, stepping beyond Reno’s reach. Using the canteen he had brought, she poured just enough water in the basin to cover his hands.

“Here,” Eve said, putting the basin in Reno’s lap. “Soak your hands.”

Wryly Reno moved his knees together to make a platform for the basin. As he did, he wondered if Eve really thought putting his hands in a basin would keep them off her warm curves.

The feel of Eve’s fingers rubbing his scalp made gooseflesh ripple over Reno’s body. In the silence of his mind he cursed his unruly response to this one woman, but he said nothing aloud. If Eve chose to ignore his arousal, he wasn’t going to call attention to it.

He wanted to give her no more hold over him than he already had. The feel of her fingers buried in his hair and rubbing his scalp was arousing him to the point of pain.

“Are you cold?” Eve asked when she sensed a faint tremor in Reno.

“No.”

Reno’s voice was too husky, but he couldn’t change that any more than he could help watching the play of moonlight and shadow over Eve’s face as she bent and turned, working over him with hands that were surprisingly strong.

Belatedly Reno remembered the ragged sores he had seen on Eve’s hands from burying the Lyons in a trailside grave. He grabbed one of her hands and turned it over, holding it in the moonlight. Though nearly healed, the skin still showed the cruel marks of the shovel. So did her other palm.

“Does it hurt?” Reno asked.

“Not anymore.”

He released Eve’s hands without a word.

She gave him a wary look before she turned to the razor. The small sound the folding blade made as she opened it seemed almost loud in the hushed night. She tested the razor’s edge delicately. Despite her care, the razor sliced a shallow line in her skin.

“Perdition,” she muttered. “Don’t make any sudden movements. The razor is very sharp.”

Reno’s smile was like a thin slice of moonlight.

“Cal honed it for me,” Reno said. “That man could put an edge on a brick.”

Though nothing showed on Eve’s face, Reno sensed the inner tightening of her body.

“Now what’s wrong?” he asked.

She looked at him warily, wondering when he had learned to read her so well.

“Don’t do anything to, er, startle me,” Eve said finally.

“Such as?”

“Touch me.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Reno drawled, lifting his hands from the water.

“That’s not what I meant,” Eve said hastily, stepping back out of his reach. “Well, it is, but not that way.”

“Make up your mind.”

“I meant that you shouldn’t touch me.”

Reno’s whole body became still.

“We have a bargain,
gata
. Remember?”

Eve closed her eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “I remember. I think of little else.”

Table stakes. Five-card draw. A royal heart flush or a busted heart flush.

Ante up or get out of the game.

“I’m not trying to go back on our bargain,” she continued, “but if you start touching me, I’ll get nervous, and this blade is hellishly sharp.”

Cautiously Eve watched the man who was sitting so still, watching her with a hunger that even darkness couldn’t disguise.

“I’ll sit very still,” Reno said in a deep voice.

“All right.”

She drew a deep, steadying breath and let it out. Reno barely hid the shiver of response that went through him at the warm rush of her breath over his bare chest.

“Ready?” she asked.

He laughed. “You have no idea just how ready lam.”

Eve bent and began shaving Reno with deft, neat motions, wiping the blade on the washcloth every few strokes. As she worked, she tried to tell herself that this was just like a thousand other times when she had shaved Don Lyon. Don had sworn that her hands were his secret luck. They made him look sharp and prosperous before he talked his way into a card game with little more than his aristocratic good looks and a handful of silver coins that
wouldn’t bear close examination.

“Be very still now,” Eve cautioned in a low voice.

“Like a rock,” Reno promised.

She pushed his chin up and ran the razor over his throat with light, even strokes. When she finished, she heard the long breath he let out. Gingerly he touched his neck.

“I didn’t cut you,” Eve said quickly.

“Just checking. That blade’s so damned sharp, I wouldn’t know I’d been killed until I saw the blood running down to my belt buckle.”

“If you’re that worried about my skill,” she said tartly, “why did you want me to shave you in the first place?”

“I’ve been asking myself the same question.”

Eve hid her smile as she rinsed the rag in cool water. She was still smiling when she turned back to him with the wet rag between her hands. His breathing hesitated, then resumed more deeply as she rinsed his face once, then again for good measure.

While Eve worked, small drops of water dripped onto Reno’s shoulders and tangled in the dark thicket on this chest. When he breathed, the drops trembled and gleamed like translucent pearls. The temptation to touch a drop was so great that it startled her.

“Something wrong?” Reno asked huskily.

Eve shook her head too hard. Her hair spilled over her shoulders and across Reno’s chest. His breath hissed in as though he had been burned.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I’m not.”

She gave him a startled look, then gathered up her hair and twisted it into another knot at the nape of her neck.

“I like it better when it’s free,” Reno said.

“It’s in the way.”

“Not for me,
gata
.”

“Lift your hands,” was all Eve said.

Reno moved his hands and waited while Eve poured more water into the basin and rinsed him thoroughly from crown to collarbones.

“Not a single cut,” she said with satisfaction. “While you finish your bath, I’ll get some witch hazel.”

Before Reno could object, Eve was hurrying back to camp.

The thought of stripping, bathing, and waiting naked for her to return tempted him. The thought of the deeply cut hoof marks by the water hole told him how foolish he was being even to consider it.

He could divide his attention long enough to taste Eve’s cool skin and hear her breath break with desire; but if he had his pants off when she came back, the next thing he would be wearing would be soft, sultry woman.

Cursing silently, Reno stripped, washed himself, pulled on the clean underwear he had brought with him, and yanked his pants back on. Only then did he begin on his chest. He was just reaching for his clean shirt when Eve’s voice came from the darkness.

“Reno?”

“Come ahead. I’m decent.”

She walked close enough to see the faint shine of his damp, naked shoulders and the dark silhouette of his jeans.

“Thank you,” she said.

“What for?”

“Not shaming me.”

“An odd choice of words for a…”

Reno found he couldn’t finish the sentence. He
didn’t like thinking of Eve as a saloon girl. With an irritated sound he turned his attention back to straightening out his shirt so he could put it on. Then he had a better idea.

“Fix this, would you?” Reno asked, holding out his shirt.

When Eve hesitated, he said sarcastically, “Never mind. It wasn’t part of our
bargain
, was it?”

She took the shirt and shook it vigorously. He watched with eyes moonlight had transformed to the color of hammered silver. It was obvious that men’s clothing was almost as familiar to her as her own.

“You’re real good at that,” Reno said.

“Toward the end, Don couldn’t get into his clothes, much less fasten them,” Eve said.

“Then you wouldn’t mind helping me out?”

Surprised, she said, “Of course not. Hold out your arms.”

He did, and she slipped the shirt on.

“Fasten it for me?” he asked blandly.

Eve gave him a wary look.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “It’s not part of—”

“Our bargain,” she muttered, reaching for the first button. “Perdition. I suppose you’ll want me to undress you, next.”