Kid Calhoun (15 page)

“What on earth are you doing?”

Jake looked up to see Anabeth at the door with a tray of food.

“I’m getting dressed.” He methodically buttoned up the front of the Levi’s. He tried to put his weight
on his bad leg, and bit back a groan as it collapsed under him. He swore under his breath, tried again, and failed again. He clenched his teeth in frustration. “Hell and the devil.”

Anabeth set the tray of food on a table just inside the door and crossed to help lift Jake’s feet back onto the mattress. “You need to be in bed.”

Jake noticed she hadn’t been the least bit clumsy, and had, in fact, moved with speed and grace. Of course she had those spectacles slid down her nose so she could see over them.

“Why not give yourself a day of rest?” she said, fixing him with a stern look.

“I don’t have a day,” Jake retorted. He had to find Kid Calhoun and locate Sam’s gold. “Bring that tray over here. I’m hungry.”

Anabeth glared at him.

Jake stared right back at Anabeth, who quickly shoved her spectacles back up her nose to hide her eyes. He watched her closely and realized that now she couldn’t see a thing. She hit the footboard of the bed with her knee on the way past and muttered something he couldn’t quite make out.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I wish you’d stop asking that!”

“You keep running into things. Are you sure those spectacles are right for you?” He watched closely and was rewarded by the color skating up her cheeks.

“They’re fine,” she said. But she set the tray down on the edge of his lap instead of the middle. Jake grabbed for it, but his own reflexes weren’t in too good shape. He watched in resignation as it slid off the bed and landed on the floor with a crash of crockery.

“Son of a—”

This time Anabeth caught herself, but it was all the confirmation Jake needed for his growing suspicion.
He reached out and snatched the spectacles from her face. “Maybe you’d be able to see better if you try it this way for a while.”

Anabeth blinked her eyes, amazed at how clear everything had suddenly become. “But I need my spectacles to—”

“Do you?” Jake demanded.

“I …”

Jake’s eyes narrowed as he examined’s Anabeth’s features. Was this the same person he had seen in the cave? He already knew the eyes were the same. The height was right, and the lean body, too. Anabeth had the same hollowed cheeks, the same baby-smooth face, the small straight nose. He found a wide mouth, lips not too thin. And the hair, what he could see of it, was the same crow-wing black. By God, it
was
the same person!

“You’re Kid Calhoun!”

“No!”

“Yes, you are.”

Anabeth bolted for the door, but Jake somehow managed to catch hold of her skirt and held on.

“Let me go!” she hissed.

He slipped his feet off the bed and used her skirt to reel her in between his legs. Then he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back down onto his lap. “Not before I get some answers,
Kid
.”

Anabeth yelped as she lost her balance and fell back on top of him. They both lay there on the bed for a moment stunned. When Anabeth tried to pull free, Jake rolled her under him and used his greater weight to hold her down.

Anabeth’s one thought was escape. Jake Kearney was a lawman. She was an outlaw. He would turn her in for the reward. He would see that she hanged. She wanted to scream her fury at getting caught. But she was all too aware of the tenants in the surrounding
rooms, and of Frau Schmidt downstairs in the kitchen. She was utterly, desperately silent as she hit and bit and kicked at the Ranger in her efforts to win free of him.

Her kerchief came off in the fracas and two thick silky braids fell free. Jake twisted one around his hand to hold her still.

“Settle down!” he hissed. Jake was no more anxious than Anabeth to be discovered. Because it had dawned on him, as he felt her woman’s body beneath him, that he didn’t want Anabeth Smith to end up at the end of a rope. Which was where Kid Calhoun belonged.

But Jake had learned long ago that sympathy for an outlaw was a misplaced emotion. He reminded himself of the taunts Kid Calhoun had thrown at the outlaw called Grier. Whatever he thought of Anabeth Smith, Kid Calhoun had held a deadly weapon on a man and threatened to shoot him in the knees, crippling him for life.

He had to remember that the soft female in his arms had stood there watching while Sam was murdered.

“Get—off—me!” Anabeth said through gritted teeth.

“This is the only way I can be sure you won’t run off,” Jake said. “You’re not going anywhere, so you might as well stop fighting and answer my questions.”

Abruptly, Anabeth relaxed beneath him. He thought he heard her mutter “Son of a bitch.” She was panting and her eyes were wide and wary, but she was no longer resisting him.

“That’s better. Now, I want some answers. Where’s the gold that was stolen from Sam Chandler.”

“I don’t know!”

“You expect me to believe that? Try again,
Kid
. Where’s the gold?”

“I don’t know. Booth hid it before he died. I suppose it’s somewhere in the valley—”

“What valley?” Jake interrupted.

“Treasure Valley, where my uncle and I lived.”

“Where is this valley?”

“None of your business.” The valley was her refuge. Once she told a lawman where it was, once its location was no longer a secret, it would be a refuge no more. “I’m sorry about your friend getting killed.”

Jake sneered. “It’s a little late for regrets. If you’re really sorry, you’ll tell me where to find Sam’s gold.”

Anabeth swallowed hard. “I don’t know where the gold is.”

“You can take me to that valley of yours and help me hunt for it.”

“No.”

“You don’t have much choice,
Kid
. Either you take me there, or I’ll turn you over to the law in Santa Fe and you can rot in jail while I find it myself.”

“Jail?”

“Until you hang for Sam Chandler’s murder.”

Anabeth stared up at Jake. The look in his gray eyes was ruthless, determined. She didn’t see that she had any choice except to give in to his demands. At least for the moment.

She heaved a sigh of defeat. “All right. I’ll take you to the valley.”

“And help me hunt for the gold.”

“I’ve already told you I will! Now can I get up?”

“Not quite yet. There are a couple of other things we’d better get settled first.”

“Like what?”

When Anabeth looked into Jake’s eyes, she realized they had darkened to a smoky gray. His nostrils were flared, and there was a tautness about his mouth. She
recognized the signs because she had seen them on Wolf’s face.
Desire
. But her reaction to Jake wasn’t at all the same as it had been with Wolf. Jake’s gaze made her body feel tense all over. There was a sensual stirring in her belly, a tightness laced with pleasure.

“You have to let me up,” she said.

“Not quite yet.” Jake’s hand tightened in her hair. “You’re quite a beautiful woman, Anabeth. Or is that an alias, too?”

“It’s my name.” Anabeth couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Her eyelids dropped to conceal her uncertainty.

“I find you very desirable, Anabeth.” He had the hard ridge beneath his jeans to prove it.

Anabeth swallowed hard. “Is this going to be part of my punishment for your friend’s death?”

“What?”

“Raping me.”

“It wouldn’t be rape, Anabeth.”

“I don’t want you.”

His hand tightened in her hair. “Don’t you?”

Anabeth couldn’t turn her head away because of the hold Jake had on her hair, but she closed her eyes to shut out the fierce gray eyes that demanded the shameful truth from her. There was no denying her arousal. She wanted him, all right. But she figured she ought to give him fair warning.

“I’m a virgin,” she said.

Jake grimaced. Hell and the devil! He wanted the woman beneath him like a house afire, wanted to thrust inside her hard and deep, until he exorcised the need that churned inside him. But he sure didn’t want the complications that came with seducing a virgin. Especially a virgin
outlaw
.

Jake untangled his hand from Anabeth’s braid and levered himself to his knees. Slowly, painfully, he got
onto his feet, then used the bedpost to keep him steady.

Anabeth sat up on the bed and hugged her knees to her chest, eyeing Jake warily. “Are you turning me in?”

“Eventually.”

Anabeth clenched her teeth in an attempt to stop her chin from quivering. “What does that mean?”

Jake limped across the room to the chest where his gunbelt had been left and buckled it on. “It means we’re going to stay close enough to use the same toothpick until that gold is found.” Jake paused. “If you want to remain a virgin, don’t even hint that you want things otherwise.”

“Why you—” Anabeth spluttered as she came flying off the bed to stand spread-legged across from him. “
I’m
not the one can’t keep his hands to himself!”

“When I woke up you had your hands all over me!”

Anabeth flushed painfully, because while he was exaggerating about that moment, she was nevertheless guilty of touching him. She quickly changed the subject.

“What about the Calhoun Gang? Are you going after them?”

“From what I heard, you’re the one who knows where Sam’s gold is tucked away.”

“Look, the same man who killed your brother-in-law shot my uncle Booth in the back. The rest of the gang each put a bullet in him. I intend to see that they pay for what they did.”

Jake noted the ferocity of her voice, the ruthlessness of her expression, and reminded himself that he had better not underestimate the woman standing before him.

He made a vow not to think of her as Anabeth Calhoun. Anabeth was much too soft a name for the woman he had just heard swear vengeance on the
Calhoun Gang. He would have problems being hard-nosed to a woman named Anabeth. It was a lot easier to call her Kid—and treat her like the outlaw she was.

“I’m afraid your days of hunting down the Calhoun Gang are over, Kid. I’ve got other priorities right now.”

“I told you I don’t know anything about the gold!”

“Your uncle never said anything to you about it?”

“Nothing!” Unless you counted the two words Booth had spoken as he lay dying. But she didn’t even understand what they meant herself, so what use would they be to Jake Kearney?

Jake’s mouth thinned. “Maybe it’ll come back to you in time. Until I find that gold, you’ll stay where I can keep an eye on you. Do you have anything to wear that’s better for riding astride than the getup you have on?”

Anabeth looked down at the frumpy clothing that had been meant to conceal her figure. “I have my Levi’s.”

Jake shook his head. “With the
WANTED
poster out on Kid Calhoun it’ll be less trouble if you stay dressed as a woman. If what you say is true, Wat Rankin will be as anxious to find you—and that gold—as I am. Disguising you as a woman isn’t a bad idea. But you need something you can wear to ride a horse. I guess we’re going to have to go shopping.”

Anabeth could see Jake had just agreed to do something he considered a distasteful labor.

“One more thing,” Jake said. “Did I imagine that Apache I saw at the cave?”

“No.”

Jake arched a brow. “What is he to you?”

It occurred to Anabeth that Jake’s tone of voice had a lot in common with Wolf’s when he had asked the same question about Jake. “Wolf is my friend. We met
when we were children in the valley where I grew up.”

“Any chance your Apache friend will come after us?”

“Wolf? Why would he?”

“You tell me. He’s your friend.”

Anabeth thought of Wolf’s coldness toward her in the cave. He wouldn’t come after her. He would be glad she was gone. “Wolf won’t bother us.”

“All right. It’s time we got out of here. You just stay right where you are while I finish getting dressed. I’ll leave a note for Eulalie telling her who you really are and where we’re headed.”

Anabeth frowned, but she didn’t argue.

Jake would have welcomed the contest. The Kid wasn’t the only one unhappy with the situation. Jake was stuck with the girl until they found the gold. Somewhere along the trail Wat Rankin was bound to be waiting, watching for Kid Calhoun. Jake shuddered to think what would happen to Anabeth if the outlaws, or some bounty hunter with a
WANTED
poster, got hold of her. He would just have to make sure that didn’t happen.

Anabeth fingered the Wedgwood blue silk taffeta dress. It was exquisitely soft, and she would have given her eyeteeth to have it.

Jake arched a brow and said, “That wouldn’t be very practical on the trail.”

“But it’s very beautiful, don’t you agree,” Anabeth said wistfully.

Jake cocked his head and examined the garment displayed in the window of Miss Tuttle’s dress shop. He tried to imagine Anabeth in the gown. It was difficult because the dress fit the top half of the mannequin like a second skin, giving it generous breasts and a tiny waist. The bottom half of the dress was gathered and draped to hide as much as the top half revealed.