After Sundown (18 page)

His arm fastened around her hips, drew her in tight against him.

And she felt exactly how much he wanted her.

A shudder went through her. A splinter of panic.
What was she doing?
She broke the kiss, turned her head. “Lucas,
no
.”

He went still. She could feel his harsh breathing. Heard him curse. He pulled away from her, the flimsy cotton of her camisole clinging to his skin.

The blanket had fallen to her ankles and she had never even noticed. She looked up at him. He stood staring down at her for a second, his eyes almost black, a muscle working in his jaw. Then he let her go, turning away and grabbing the lantern as he stalked out.

He slammed the door to her cell and locked it. She heard him throw the key across his room. Heard it hit and shatter something made of glass. He turned his lantern down. All the way.

And vanished in the darkness.

“W
hy
is
that man in such an ornery mood?”

The sound of the disgruntled feminine voice made Annie look up from her chair beside the window, where she had been watching snowflakes float downward through the afternoon sunlight. After more than a week of clear, crisp autumn weather, a drizzle of rain that morning had turned into the first snowfall of the season.

“Rebecca!” Annie smiled with relief and rushed to the door of her cell as her friend entered the sitting room, carrying a wicker hamper. For most of the past week, Katja and Mrs. Owens had taken turns bringing her meals, since Rebecca had been indisposed. “I’m so glad to see you. Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, lamb. It was just another of my spells. I ain’t the youngest filly in the herd anymore, you know.” Rebecca set the basket down and brushed melting snowflakes from her woolen cape, which was a rich cardinal red, and untied the satin ribbons of her enormous purple bonnet. “Stage arrived this afternoon, so I thought I’d come over early and bring the marshal’s mail. But did that man thank me for saving him the trouble of coming to the store? No, he did not. Stormed out of here without even lettin’ me in your room.”

As Rebecca turned to set her coat and hat on a chair, Annie’s smile faded. She dropped her gaze to the scuffed toes of her patent-leather shoes.

Annie had no doubt that
she
was the source of Lucas’s awful temper the past week, after the way she had responded to his kiss, his touch, the heat of his body against hers—and then rebuffed him a moment later. She had only confirmed exactly what he thought of her: that she was a temptress, a tease.

Her mother’s daughter.

And it had obviously made him hate her all the more.

“That cantankerous varmint.” Rebecca glanced from the basket to the locked cell door, her cheeks pink from the frosty weather outside, her blue eyes full of annoyance. “How am I supposed to serve you your supper?”

Annie shook her head. “You’ll have to pass the food through the bars, I suppose.”

“Hmph. I wonder what was in his mail.” Rebecca bent down and lifted the basket’s lid. “Wasn’t but two letters, and he barely opened them ’afore he snapped at Travis and went out the door, looking riled up enough to eat the Devil with his horns on.”

“Oh?” Annie asked mildly.

“But then, I heard tell he’s been in an awful temper all week.” Rebecca started handing items through the bars: a white tablecloth and a napkin and some silverware. “Here I’d been thinkin’ maybe I had him wrong, after Daniel and Valentina told what he did over at Fairfax’s last week—though I still ain’t forgiven him for sneaking into my place and taking things from your room.” She sighed dramatically. “One minute he’s actin’ like a thief and a scalawag, and the next he turns into a... a...”

“Hero,” Annie suggested softly.

“Never did meet a lawman like him.” Rebecca passed an empty china plate sideways through the bars. “It’s near impossible to figure him out.”

“Yes,” Annie agreed, her voice so quiet it was almost lost beneath the crackling of the fire on her hearth.

Rebecca paused, still holding on to the plate. She squinted at Annie’s hands, then looked up at her face. “By the horn spoons, I just realized you’re runnin’ around loose in there! He didn’t handcuff you ’afore he left?”

“No,” Annie said lightly, not looking up as she took the plate.

Lucas hadn’t entered her cell once all week. He hadn’t handcuffed her when he went out, hadn’t touched her. Hadn’t come near her.

“Ain’t that a mite odd?”

“Um-hm.” Annie turned away to carry the items to the table beside her bed.

But not before she caught Rebecca looking at her with wide, interested eyes.

“Annie Sutton,” her friend said in a curious tone, “you know something you’re not telling.”

Annie shook her head, trying to look as if she had no idea what might account for the change in Lucas’s behavior. She took a bit longer than necessary to set the table, smoothing out the tablecloth, arranging the napkin and plate and silverware... because she felt her cheeks warm, and feared the blush would give her away.

Reveal her shame.

She hadn’t told any of her friends about the impulsive kiss she had shared with Lucas. In fact, she had been trying very hard not to think about it or him or that night. She was too mortified by the way she had surrendered to that reckless, heated embrace.

On the morning after, she had counted herself lucky that Valentina was the one who’d brought her breakfast. The sweet-natured girl hadn’t noticed the reddened, irritated skin along Annie’s jaw—or at least hadn’t guessed what it meant. Fortunately, Valentina had been too busy thanking Lucas for saving her the night before.

If Annie’s visitor that morning had been Rebecca, or Katja or Mrs. Owens, she wasn’t sure how she would’ve explained the fact that she had obviously been the recipient of a deeply passionate kiss.

“So?” Rebecca prompted impatiently. “Why do you think he didn’t handcuff you? I can’t believe he forgot, even if he
is
in a ripsnorter of a temper. He ain’t gettin’ careless, is he?” she asked hopefully. “He ain’t goin’ soft?”

“No.” Annie fidgeted nervously with a corner of the napkin.
Soft
was the last word she would use to describe Lucas. The idea was almost enough to make her laugh.

Almost.

“Annie?” Rebecca sounded concerned now.

Annie forced a smile, turning and walking back over to her cell door. “He... um... he lost the key to the handcuffs, I think.”

“Lost the key?”

“Well, he threw his keys across his room one night—”

“What? What made him all-fired angry enough to do that?”

“—and he looked for them the next morning. He found the one to the door but I don’t think he found the one to the handcuffs, so it must’ve fallen through a crack in the floorboards or something,” Annie finished without taking a breath.

In truth, he had only thrown the key to her
door
, and found it again the next morning. But she had to make up some kind of explanation.

“You mean that key might be lying around here somewheres?” Rebecca asked excitedly. She started exploring Lucas’s room, peering at the floorboards.

“Rebecca...”

“Land sakes, even if the critter lost the key to the handcuffs, he still could’ve let me into your room before he went out,” Rebecca muttered. “Somebody’s got to tend to your ribs.”

Annie shut her eyes, feeling her blush deepen as she remembered, vividly, the night that Lucas tended her injuries. Telling Rebecca half-truths made her feel awful, but how could she tell her friend what had really happened?

The day Annie had left St. Charles behind, she had vowed that her life would be different. That
she
would be different. That never again would she allow herself to become a man’s plaything—or a man’s
anything
. She didn’t trust men, didn’t want one in her life. Didn’t want or need a man’s strength or his protection or his touch... or his kisses.

For one irrational moment last week, she had forgotten all the promises she had made to herself.

Lucas McKenna, who always seemed determined to remind her that she was nothing, had made her forget everything.

“Rebecca, I don’t think you’ll find it,” she said at last, opening her eyes. “And really, it’s not necessary anymore, since he hasn’t used the handcuffs. And my ribs are hardly bothering me at all today. In fact, I...” She glanced at the open door between the sitting room and the hotel’s main room, where she could hear Travis’s harmonica.

She lowered her voice. “I started thinking yesterday that I’m healed up enough to travel. Especially since the marshal has started making plans to leave for Missouri—buying supplies, checking the train schedules out of Denver.” She gestured to some torn newspaper pages tacked to his wall.

“Tarnation.” Rebecca walked over to peer at them. “Ain’t it just like that man to lose the key we
don’t
need and keep the one we
do
need. Right when we need it.”

“Are we still hoping to get copies of the keys?” Annie whispered.

“Lessin’ you want me to take a sledgehammer to this here door.” Rebecca frowned at the cell’s sturdy lock.

“No, but I thought maybe...” She glanced at her windows, looking out through the iron bars at the softly falling snow. “Rebecca, I heard footsteps outside my window last week. And again two nights ago.” She shivered with a sudden chill, despite the woolen dress she wore. The sound in the night had woken her up when she heard it this time—and scared her so badly, she had nearly called out to Lucas. “Katja and the others said they didn’t know anything about it, but I thought maybe it was you, planning something?”

Rebecca shook her head. “I been laid up all week.” She came back over to the cell door, her brow furrowed. “Did you mention this to the marshal?”

“No, but... but I guess I will.”

Rebecca bent down and started taking Annie’s supper out of the basket. “Well, if you’re fit to travel and that varmint’s lookin’ at train schedules, we best do something about this here door, and right quick.” She handed the foods through the bars—a sandwich of cold sliced turkey, a pewter mug filled with corn chowder, and a dish of lemon cookies. “You eat up. I’ll go to Daniel’s place and see if he’s back from birthin’ Mrs. Hall’s baby. Maybe he’s found us a skeleton key or a good thief, and we can get you out of here.”

Rebecca turned and grabbed her cloak and bonnet, then hurried out, leaving the basket. With a sigh, Annie carried the foods over to the table, though she wasn’t very hungry. She hadn’t had much of an appetite the last two days, she had been so busy worrying about Lucas’s plans to leave for Missouri, and wondering about the midnight prowler.

And trying to forget that breath-stealing kiss.

She was setting the foods down when she heard the hotel’s front door open again.

Annie turned with a puzzled frown. Had Rebecca come back?

From the sound of the heavy footsteps, it clearly wasn’t her friend. And it wasn’t Lucas. She heard Travis’s harmonica cut out in the middle of a note. Heard him say something.

But whoever it was didn’t reply. There was only silence.

Then the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

“Travis?” Annie rushed to the door of her cell, grabbing the bars, a cold tingle going down her back.

The footsteps came toward the sitting room. A man appeared in the open doorway.

Annie froze, her eyes widening. “Who are you?”

~ ~ ~

Lucas had left the town behind before he even realized it, had stalked past the end of the board sidewalk and kept going, blindly, his blood hot with fury, his hand clenched into a fist around the two letters.

He’d passed townspeople bustling along the street, standing in front of the general store, collecting their mail and visiting shops. Some of them had greeted him but he hadn’t even looked at them. Snowflakes swirled around him but he barely felt the cold, though he had left without his coat or hat or gloves.

He just kept walking, unable to think, unable to feel anything but rage. Gut-churning, helpless rage.

Thompson and Reynolds were dead.

The road narrowed to a steep trail winding down the mountainside before Lucas finally stopped. Realized he was going nowhere and couldn’t do anything and stopped. His fingers tightened around the letters, crushing the pages. He wanted to smash his fist into the nearest rock. Wanted to shout his fury into the wind. Knew the mountain’s echoes would only throw it back in his face, over and over.

Seth Thompson, the best of his deputies for more than three years, levelheaded and experienced and cool under fire. He had a wife and two boys.

And Henry Reynolds, the youngest, such a skilled rider that they always kidded he should go work for one of the new wild west shows and make some real money.

Dead. Both dead. Shot up by the Risco gang down in Las Cruces.

The letter from his men reported that they had captured one of the gang and killed two more during the gunfight—but Jasper and Willie Risco had escaped and were still on the run, racing for the Rio Grande and safety in Mexico.

Lucas stared up through the falling snow, into the dim afternoon sun, and realized only now that he had been walking south, without even thinking. His every instinct urged him to go after them.

But he couldn’t go. He had to stay here.

With
her
.

He glared down at the other letter crumpled in his fist, the first one he’d opened—from an orphanage in Denver.

Yes indeed, the headmaster wrote, they had received a large, anonymous donation two months ago: almost fifteen thousand dollars. If Lucas knew the donor’s name, the children would like to thank their kind benefactor...

Lucas crushed the letter into a ball and flung it away. Like he wanted to push her away. From him, from his life.
She
was the one locked in a jail cell and
he
felt trapped. He wanted to get out of here. Get back to his duty. His work. While he still had some shred of sanity left.

Because that seemed to be slipping through his fingers more and more with each day he spent in her company.