Desperate Hearts (33 page)

She heard him murmuring to her as he lay
beneath her, while he let her seek her pleasure with his body. The
pressure continued to build, winding tighter and tighter, until
with a final stroke he pushed her into a oblivion of excruciating
sensation. Spasms of pleasure wracked her with the swiftness of
wing beats.

Unable to delay his own release another
moment, he rolled her onto her back again. Cradling her head in his
hands, he plunged into her with fast, pounding thrusts as he sought
to relieve the heavy ache in his belly and groin.

Seeking her mouth, he took her with a fierce
kiss equaled his need. "Kyla," he ground out. Her name was ripped
from him as she became a part of the rapid, white-hot pulsations
that convulsed him as his climax tore through his body.

After, they lay entwined, their bodies
cooling while a peaceful languor stole over Jace. Making love to
Kyla on the floor of a shack or in a stable wasn’t ideal—she
deserved far better. But if his luck held, if he lived long enough
to be able to reflect back on his life, these two nights would be
the sweetest he had ever known.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

After weeks on the road, the captivity of
Jim Porter’s barn made Kyla edgy. She cooked and helped with chores
close to the yard, but there weren’t enough things to do to keep
her busy for long. She would have liked to ride the range, but Jace
wouldn’t permit her to wander too far in case one of the Vigilance
Union should spot her. It was a good bet any one of them would see
through her disguise.

Jim’s wife had died several years earlier
and his daughters were married and gone, so there were no other
women for her to talk to.

Jace, on the other hand, seemed unaffected
by the inactivity. He filled his hours polishing the Henry and
cleaning his guns, or tending the horses.

She wasn’t used to so much free time.
Although she’d always yearned for the trappings of her gender she’d
never wanted to sit for hours and sew a fine seam. She was
accustomed to working. Her restlessness stemmed not only from
boredom, but also from anticipation of events to come. They’d
reached Blakely, but she wasn’t home yet.

Even worse, though, sitting around left her
with nothing to do but think. After all of this was over, she’d go
back to the ranch, to the same life she’d had before Hardesty
returned. The problem was that she was a different person from the
one who had stolen away under the cover of night with a dead man’s
instructions to find a bounty hunter. She had fallen in love with
her rescuer, and now when she pictured her life at the ranch, she
had trouble envisioning it alone.

But Jace was right—he wouldn’t make a
rancher. His skills lay in his talent for reading men’s hearts, not
the land. He was different from Hank in that respect, and there
were not a lot of occupations that called for such an ability. Her
own heart ached when she thought of seeing him ride away for the
last time. And since she had little to do, she thought of it often
enough, adding to her sense of impending doom.

On the third afternoon of idleness, Kyla
found Jace at the corral. She paced back and forth in front of him
as he held Juniper’s hoof in his hands and searched for rocks. The
sun cast a halo of red and gold on the crown of his dark,
downturned head, and made the hair on his lean forearms sparkle.
His faded blue shirt stretched across his shoulders, hinting at the
muscle she knew lay underneath. He was beautiful to look at, even
performing such a mundane task.

She kicked a rock into the fence post,
making the horse twitch. Then sighing heavily, she paced some
more.

Finally Jace glanced up. “Jesus, Kyla, go
find something to do. You’re scaring the horse.”

“
There isn’t anything left
to do around here,” she crabbed impatiently. “How long are we going
to wait before we go after Hardesty?”

Dropping Juniper’s hoof, he shook his head
and chuckled. “You would have been a lousy bounty hunter. Waiting
and watching have a lot to do with capturing outlaws.”

She frowned. “But if we wait too long, he’s
bound to find out that we’re in town. We’ll lose the advantage of
surprise.”

“
Yeah, I want him to know.”
He said this as if it were the most obvious course of
action.

She stopped pacing and stared at him. “God,
why? He’ll just lie in wait for us.”

“
At first he will. But how
long can a man keep that up without going crazy? He’ll never know
exactly when I’ll be there. Will it be at sunrise or sometime in
the afternoon? Will I face him in the street or sneak into the
house in the middle of the night and shove a gun barrel up his
nose?” Idly he patted Juniper’s neck. “I’ll have the advantage, all
right. He’ll just get more and more hotheaded. And hotheads make
mistakes.”

“
Well, what
are
we going to do?” she
asked.

“
Kyla, there isn’t any ‘we’
about this. When I decide the time is right to confront Tom
Hardesty, you’ll wait here.”

“
No!” she protested. She
never once thought that she would be left behind. “You have to take
me with you.”

His blue gaze turned flinty. “The hell I do.
I work alone. Anyway, I don’t want to have to worry about watching
your back and mine, too. This isn’t a church picnic we’re planning,
you know.”

Hot blood suffused her face. “Don’t you talk
down to me now, Jace Rankin. I didn’t travel all those miles to
find you, and get shot and kidnapped just to sit back at the end
and miss seeing Hardesty get what he deserves!”

He shrugged and picked up Juniper’s other
foreleg. “You’ll just have to trust me to do the job you hired to
do,” he said, effectively ending the debate and the
conversation.

Unable to answer him, Kyla lapsed into hurt,
angry silence. He had pointedly reminded her that, first and
foremost, theirs was a business deal, and that whatever else had
taken place between them did not affect him.

Well, so be it, then, she thought. She had
the right see what her money was paying for.

And if it meant watching Jace as closely as
Hardesty was watching him, that was what she’d do.

* * *

Jace watched Kyla stalk to the barn in the
afternoon sun. Her nose was up so high he wondered how she’d see
where she was going. And her hips swayed slightly under her jeans,
although he supposed she didn’t realize that.

Picking up a horse brush, he stroked
Juniper’s coat. The reason he gave her for stalling Tom Hardesty
was legitimate one. But not the only one. The longer he delayed,
the more time he would have with Kyla before he had to tell her
good-bye. When the day came that he had to ride away from her, it
would be the hardest thing he’d ever done.

He pulled the brush through Juniper’s mane
with smooth strokes while his thoughts strayed to Kyla.

He had told her that he didn’t think he was
capable of caring for anyone, and he’d believed his own words at
the time. The old man had seen to that, somehow honing in on the
part of Jace’s boyhood heart that felt compassion, affection, and
love, and beating it until it was wiped clean of all emotion.

But Kyla—he shook his head, stunned when he
thought about it. She had revived him with a touch, with respect
that was not earned through fear, and with love. And like a
drought-dry plant waiting for rain, his heart had responded.

What would he do with these newfound
feelings, though? Too bad he couldn’t stick around to see what
might have been. He leaned both arms on Juniper’s back and gazed at
the mountains in the distance.

Too bad he couldn’t tell her he loved
her.

* * *

Tom Hardesty sat at the kitchen table,
checking the rounds in his Colt and his shotgun with quick, jerky
movements. He’d done it earlier today. Twice. He would soon be
doing it again.

After that, he would go to each window in
the house to check the yard for any sign of trespassers. He would
spend a half hour at each one, staring at the yard with gritty
eyes. He’d done that many times today, too. And last night.
Yesterday. Waiting. Watching.

He’d given up on sleeping, but hell, he
didn’t want to be caught napping when Jace Rankin decided come.
That would be rude, wouldn’t it? A high little laugh escaped him at
the thought. Anyway, if he slept he’d just have those dreams again,
the ones about an eight-foot-tall bounty hunter, an angel of death
who had reached Blakely, despite all the men Tom had sent to defeat
him.

So far Tom had managed to
elude Luke Jory, but he knew that he must have heard the news: Jace
Rankin was on his way. Although it wouldn’t matter after he killed
the bounty hunter. Jory would be satisfied with that. And Tom knew
he could do it—he was
only
the man who could do it. He just had to be
ready.

He brought out the Colt again to check
it.

Jace Rankin was coming.

Pouring himself another drink, Tom pushed a
dirty dish out of his way to make room on the tabletop. The place
was a mess—that worthless Mayella had stopped coming by almost a
week ago, just after he received that string of teeth in the mail.
She must known that Rankin was on his way, too.

The hell with her. The angel of death was
coming, he was bringing the woman with him, red-haired and
high-hipped. He touched the scar on his face with a hand that shook
ever so slightly. He’d even the score then.

When he got the woman.

* * *

Jace sat on the edge of an empty water
trough, stitching his stirrup. The late October sun felt good on
shoulders, especially the one that bore the year-old scar. He knew
that Kyla was watching him. He almost laughed—she was smart and
strong, but not nearly enough to fool him. And since she didn’t
have enough to do to keep her busy, her scrutiny was even more
noticeable.

She trailed him to the corral and sat
outside when he sat outside. Whenever he went near the horse, she
sidled over and made small talk. He was on the verge of asking if
she’d like to come to the outhouse with him.

But the time was upon him—he would have to
act. He had strung Hardesty along for several days. Based on what
Kyla had told him about the man, he ought have achieved just the
right measure of jumpy anxiety by now. Enough to be sloppy, and
maybe dangerous too. No matter. He forced the heavy, curved needle
through the leather.

Everything he’d heard about Tom Hardesty
told him that the man was a blue-ribbon bastard. But it didn’t
matter. He’d faced sons of bitches of all stripes and types. And
taking on this one would give him grim pleasure—this was for
Kyla.

* * *

The sun was a yellow-white ball on the
horizon when Kyla finished slapping together a meal of biscuits and
gravy. Since Jim Porter hadn’t returned yet, she set just two
plates at the table and dished up supper. It wasn’t fancy, but it
beat some of the things she and Jace had eaten on the trail all
those days.

She paused at the kitchen window with the
silverware clutched in her hand. The evening at McGuires’s in Baker
City seemed like a lifetime ago now. The butter yellow gown and all
of its matching accessories lay at the bottom of a mountain ravine,
probably buried under snow and ice. She touched the locket,
grateful that she had been wearing it that day. Memories sometimes
faded—her mother’s image was dim and indistinct now after so many
years. But when Jace was gone, she would have the locket to
remember him by. Whether he thought of her after they parted, she
would never know.

Turning away from the window with a sigh,
she went to the door to call him to supper. Beyond the screen door,
the yard was quiet and lonesome in the autumn sunset—with Jim and
his crew gone, she felt as if she were the only one here.

“
Jace!” she called.
“Supper!”

She went back to the stove and lifted a
stove lid to throw in another stick of wood. It was nearly
November, and even in this warm ranch kitchen, she could feel a
chill gathering.

She walked to the door again. “Jace!”

In the empty yard, not even a bird twittered
in the silence, no horse nickered, no chicken clucked. And Kyla’s
heart froze. She pushed open the screen door raced outside to the
barn.

There she found Juniper and Jim Porter’s
wagon. But Jace’s gelding was gone.

“
Damn you, Jace!” she
cursed, her voice quivering with tears that gathered in her throat.
He’d left her behind. He’d really done it.

Saddling Juniper took twice as long as it
should have—anger and haste made her clumsy. When she finally
accomplished the job, she mounted the horse and hunching low over
the pommel, galloped out of the barn. Oddly, there was no question
about direction she would take. Jace could have decided to track
Hardesty anywhere, but like a pin on a compass, she turned the
horse toward her home. That was the place where they would face
off. She sensed it—she could envision it.

Tom Hardesty was about to meet Jace Rankin
and a Henry rifle.

* * *

Jace crept up to the Springer ranch house,
sliding behind the sunset shadows for concealment. Glancing at the
sky, he imagined that Kyla was just now discovering that he had
gone. After watching her habits for a day or so, he realized that
he would be able to slip away right before any meal. It had been so
simple he almost felt sorry for tricking her. But it was for her
own good as well as his. If she were here, he would have to worry
about her safety. She would just be a distraction, and if things
were to go wrong, Hardesty could use her as a hostage.

Finding the ranch hadn’t been difficult.
Kyla had spoken of it often enough to give him sufficient clues as
to its location. It was just as she had described it, two miles
outside of town, a beautiful spot that was part rolling green
hills, part rangeland scrub, situated on a low rise next to a
creek.