Behind a Lady's Smile

Jesus
. “Sure, kiddo.” He leaned over her, intending to kiss her a forehead, but she lifted her head at the last moment and her lips pressed against his. He meant to pull back, and did a bit, but she followed him, pressing closer as he jammed one fist into the blanket beside her to stop himself from pulling her against him. It was obvious she didn’t know how to kiss, and that was one thing Mitch was thankful for. She kept her mouth closed, but her lips were so damned soft, all he could think about was nudging down her jaw gently and tasting her. But he didn’t.

He pulled back slowly and she smiled drunkenly up at him. “Minnie said you looked like a man who could kiss.”

More Historical Romance from Jane Goodger

 

Behind a Lady’s Smile

Jane Goodger

LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

H
is little shadow was back.

For two days, Mitch had noticed . . . someone. He wasn’t quite sure whether it was male or female, but that didn’t matter. Out here in the middle of nowhere, where a man could disappear and never be found, a man had to be careful. A man had to make certain his rifle was loaded, his canteen was filled, and he listened to his gut. And right about now, his gut was telling him whoever had been watching him for two days was up to no good.

“You wait here, Millie.” Mitch patted his mule and tied her to a scraggly white pine. If Millie really got in a mind to escape, the sapling wouldn’t do much to keep her in place, but he very much doubted Millie would get in the mind to do more than nibble on some grass.

Mitch was no stranger to the mountains of Yosemite. He guessed he knew them better than most. He knew how to walk silently and he knew when to make a noise that might scare a grizzly away. That was one creature he wasn’t ashamed to admit he didn’t much care for. He’d seen the results of a bear attack and was quite certain he didn’t want to be on the receiving end of those razor-sharp claws. Other than grizzlies and men with guns, he wasn’t afraid of much else. A man who’d seen and done what he had learned not to be afraid.

Whoever was trailing him was high up, likely taking little peeks over the rocks that jutted out above him like crooked teeth. He climbed silently, his boots pressing into the thick cushion of pine needles, until he was pretty sure he was above his prey. He scanned the area, Winchester in hand, fully loaded and ready to fire. And then he saw a movement, a flash of hair.

“Well, damn,” he whispered, looking at the girl through his gun sight. At least he thought it must be a girl with that long, pale braid down her back. She was lying on her stomach, no doubt staring at Millie and wondering where the heck the man she’d been spying on had disappeared to. His eyes moved down, following the trail of her braid, until he reached the decidedly feminine curve of her backside. Definitely female.

Now, he didn’t like holding a rifle on a woman or a girl, but he’d learned the hard way that women and girls could be just as dangerous with a gun as a man, so he wasn’t about to take any chances. If any of his friends back home saw him, they’d probably punch his jaw. But this wasn’t New York City and that girl was no debutante, and so he held his gun on her real careful. She turned her head and he saw the delicate curve of her smooth cheek, and seeing that bit of feminine beauty in such an unlikely place did something odd to his stomach. It was like seeing the first crocus after a long and terrible winter. He eased his gun down; the girl didn’t have a weapon that he could see, and he relaxed slightly.

“Looking for someone, darlin’?”

It happened so quickly, he wasn’t even sure what occurred. She shot up to her feet, took one step back, and a rock beneath her foot slipped—then she disappeared, just like that, over the edge, backward. He heard a sickening thud and then a scream and his blood ran cold.

“Shit.” Mitch ran as fast as he could through the rough terrain, his ears filled with the sound of a female crying out in agony. He flew around a cluster of large boulders, grateful at least that she was still screaming. Screaming meant she was alive.

There she was, lying on her side, clutching one leg, which was obviously and grotesquely broken. He swore again and ran over to where she lay. And damn if she didn’t try to scuttle away when she saw him, her bright green eyes filled with as much fear as pain.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, hunkering down beside her. She looked up at him, eyes wide, her face smudged with dirt, making it difficult to determine her age. “I promise.”

She just stared at him, panting like a trapped, frightened animal and he wondered if she could speak. What the hell was this girl doing out here anyway? There wasn’t a town for miles, and the only people he’d seen since he’d been in the valley were his own crew. She was dressed in oversized men’s clothing, sleeves and pant legs rolled up to accommodate her smaller size.

“My name’s Mitch Campbell,” he said, softly, looking her over to see if she had any other obvious injuries. Her arm had a nasty scrape, but other than that, he couldn’t see anything. “What can I call you?”

She swallowed and looked away. “Genevieve Hayes.”

Mitch was stunned. More than stunned. She sounded decidedly British. Upper-class British, like that Lady Something-or-other who’d come to New York when he was a kid to give a speech on abolition. “Where are you from, Genevieve Hayes?”

“Here. I live here.”

“Who else?”

She closed her mouth tightly and pushed herself back, then let out another terrible cry of pain.

“Miss Hayes, I swear to you I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help you. You’re hurt. Looks like you broke your leg pretty bad, and I can’t just leave you out here to fend for yourself. If there’s someone nearby who can help, let me get them and I’ll be on my way. Please.”

She looked away again, no doubt weighing her options. “My father died eight months ago.”

“And your mother?”

“When I was eight.”

Holy God, she’d been living on her own for nearly a year. “Do you know anyone else? Anyone else living nearby who could help you?”

She shook her head. Hell. She was alone, with a badly broken leg—a condition he was partly to blame for—and Mitch became painfully aware that his plans for the next few days were about to change drastically.

“All right. I need to see that leg of yours. I’m going to have to cut off your pants leg. Just the right one, okay? I’ve set more than one bone, in case you were wondering.” He tried to sound confident, but the truth was, the thought of setting her leg was making him slightly ill. He had set two broken bones in his life, one during the War Between the States and one on the trail not three years prior. But he’d never set a bone so obviously broken and never on a girl.
Hell.

He took out a wicked-looking Bowie knife and her eyes grew even wider. “Miss Hayes, will you please stop looking at me as if I’m going to murder you?”

Her expression didn’t change, but her breath hitched slightly and he wondered if she were trying not to cry. As gently as he could, he cut away the fabric of her pants, revealing her leg. “Holy Mother of God.” He had to look away.

She let out a low moan.

“Don’t look at it,” he said, himself unable to look at her leg for long. “This is good. It didn’t break the skin so there’s no chance of infection. And I think you only broke the one. Okay?”

She nodded and two tears slipped down her cheeks, leaving clean tracks in their wake.

“I don’t have any whiskey,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “I’ll be right back. I need to get something for a splint.” He jogged to where he’d tied up Millie, and without thinking, he grabbed the camera tripod still tied to the mule’s back and snapped one of the legs in two. Perfect. In less than five minutes, he was back.

“Good, you’re still here,” he said, and thought he’d nearly won a smile.

He reached into his pocket and drew out an incongruously clean piece of linen, carefully embroidered with his initials by the sweetheart he’d left at home five years ago. She’d long since married another, but he kept the handkerchief anyway, not for any other reason than it came in handy. It was the last vestige of his New York life tucked in his trail jacket. “It’s clean. Put it in your mouth and bite down hard. This is going to hurt like the dickens. I don’t want to hurt you, you understand? But I have to set this leg or you’ll never walk right again.”

“Do what you must,” she said, taking the handkerchief from his hand. She fingered the soft cloth, noting the embroidery, before lying back down and stuffing it into her mouth.

“Ready?”

She nodded and closed her eyes.

“Please, God,” Mitch said, grabbing hold of her leg as gently as he could just below her knee and wrapping his other hand on her slim ankle below the break. And then he pulled and she screamed, instinctively trying to push away from him with her other leg. Instantly, his skin was bathed in sweat, his hands were shaking. “Hold still. Please, Miss Hayes. I’m almost there.” Another pull and then he could feel the bone almost snap back into place. Sweat dripped into his eyes despite the cool late May air, and he wiped at it impatiently with his shoulder.

“How old are you, Miss Hayes?” he asked, trying to distract her from what he was doing.

She pulled the cloth from her mouth, her face pale beneath the dirt. “I’m not certain, but I think twenty.”

Placing the wooden pieces on either side of her leg, he carefully wrapped strips of her ruined pant leg around the splint, wincing each time she cried out. “You don’t know?”

“Lost track, I’m afraid.”

Finally, he was done. He knelt, head down, breathing heavily, with his hands on his thighs, never in his life so glad for a task to be completed.

“It feels quite a bit better now. Thank you.”

He smiled. She sounded so damned proper.

“We have to figure out where to put you. You can’t stay here and you can’t come with me to camp. We move around too much and I don’t think that would be good for you.”

“There are more of you?”

“Ten of us working for the United States Geological Survey. My job’s to take photographs. See Millie over there? She carries around my equipment. Since you’ve been spying on me for two days now, I’m pretty sure you saw me working.”

She nodded. “But I didn’t know what you were doing.”

“Government wants to know what’s out here, to see if there’s anything to see.” He tilted his head and studied her. “How long you been out here?”

“We moved here after my mother died.”

“And where were you before that?”

“Philadelphia. That’s where I was born.”

“Then why do you sound like you came from England?”

Her face lit up so suddenly, Mitch was momentarily stunned by the change. Despite living in the wilderness most of her life, her teeth were straight and white and not a single one was missing. She was very nearly pretty.

“I do? Truly?”

“Like you’re best friends with the queen.”

“My parents came from England, so I suppose I talk the way they did.”

“Makes sense. So, Miss Hayes, where do you live now?” He looked around. “I haven’t seen a house since we came into the valley.”

She craned her neck to look back up the mountain. “Up there a ways.”

Mitch looked up past the rock hanging and saw nothing but pines and more rocks, then looked back at her. “How far?”

“Do you see that rock that looks like a bear’s head?”

Mitch looked up and saw nothing but big pine trees. “To the right. Our cabin is just below it.”

And there it was. He cursed. She didn’t look like a heavy thing, but he wasn’t certain he’d be able to carry her all that way. Putting her on Millie would be far too jarring and he was in no mood to listen to any more female screams. He’d have to carry her.

“I don’t suppose you can walk it,” he said, anticipating the shake of her head. “All right, then. I’ll carry you.” He hunkered down by her side. “Put your hands around my neck and see if you can hoist yourself up a bit with your good leg.”

“Perhaps I could try to walk?”

“Miss, I’m pretty certain you can’t even stand, never mind walk. Now put your hands around my—”

“I could at least try . . .”

“Put your goddamn hands around my neck or I’m going to put them there for you. If I was going to kill you, I would have done it by now.”

The look she gave him nearly made him laugh, part anger, part rebellion, part something he couldn’t put his finger on, a certain devilishness that was about as unexpected as her being out in the middle of this wilderness. She put her hands around his neck and let out a scream when he straightened, bringing her slowly to a standing position. “Holy Jesus, will you promise to listen to me from now on?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, her hands still around his neck. She was shaking like a leaf and he was afraid she was about to faint. Cursing himself a thousand times for frightening her off that cliff, he carefully lifted her into his arms. She tried not to scream, he could tell by the way she clamped her mouth shut and closed her eyes, but it came out anyway. Every time he hurt her, he felt sick. And hell, she weighed nothing. Didn’t this poor girl eat?

He began walking, trying to be careful not to jostle her, but maneuvering around rocks and trees made his task nearly impossible. More than once her broken leg tapped against a trunk or branch and she’d stiffen and cry out as if someone was sticking a knife into her. Or smashing her broken leg. Her arms were tight around his neck, her face buried against his neck. He could tell how much pain she was feeling by how tightly she pressed her head against him.

Mitch had carried more than one woman in his arms, mostly to a warm soft bed, but none had felt like this one. There were no soft curves, no creamy flesh. This girl was hard and pointy. Hell, he could feel the bones of her spine against his arm. She’d been living alone for eight months, through what was no doubt a difficult winter, slowly starving to death.

And she didn’t smell like any woman he’d ever held either. There was no sweet perfume, no floral scent. She didn’t smell bad, just different. Like clean dirt heating up on a summer day. He nearly laughed out loud at that thought. Imagine telling a woman she smelled like dirt and trying to convince her it was a compliment.

Despite her slight weight, she was getting heavier with every step he took. Just when he thought he’d have to set her down, he saw a tiny building not twenty yards away. A man could walk right by that small cabin without even knowing it was there. “I see it. Almost there.” He was looking at the cabin so he didn’t see the branch lying across his path. His boot got caught and he started going down, knowing there was nothing he could do.