Lone Star Lonely (12 page)

Her arms twined around his neck, and she
parted her lips. He tasted good. So good and sweet and familiar.
She didn’t want to stop. Feeding him from her lips, drinking from
his, absorbing his body heat along with his breath. She didn’t ever
want to stop.

A soft nicker made its way to her senses. She
ignored it, lost in feeling. She’d dreamed of being in these arms
again. So tight around her, strong but tender. The way they’d
always been. She kept kissing him, her fingers creeping up into his
hair.

Adam lifted his head, dragged in a ragged
breath. Kirsten opened her eyes and saw the color in his face and
the fire in his eyes. He wanted her.

The nicker came again. This time she looked
toward it, maybe because she needed to look away from Adam’s eyes
and the heat and intensity she saw in them.

One of the horses stood just behind Adam. It
tapped a forefoot on the ground and blew its impatience.

“What…how did she…?”

Frowning, Adam turned. The second horse stood
only a few yards behind the first. Adam looked beyond them and
shook his head. “Wes,” he said.

“What?”

“Look. The barn door’s closed. I didn’t do
that.” Then he glanced at the matched pair of spotted horses again.
“And those saddlebags are bulging now.”

They moved forward, Adam speaking softly to
the horses, stroking them, before moving around to open a bag and
paw through it. “Blankets, matches. A change of clothes for each of
us.”

Kirsten was busy looking through one of the
bags on the other horse. “Food, coffee, tin cups…”

“There’s a note,” Adam said.

Kirsten turned to watch him pull the rolled
bit of paper from the thong that held it in place.

Then he read aloud. “‘Midnight. Thompson
Gorge. I’ll be alone. Elliot.’” Adam’s brows met, then rose high.
“Elliot?”

“I don’t…what was Elliot doing here?” Kirsten
glanced back toward the barn in search of Adam’s youngest brother,
but saw no one.

“Must have come by to check on the mares for
Wes.” Adam shook his head. “He’s been doing that once in a while
the past couple of weeks. Several are due to foal, and if Wes and
Taylor both have to be out for the day, Elliot pops in to make sure
the mares are okay.” He shook his head. “Damn kid,” he
muttered.

Kirsten sent him a look. “Your brother’s
almost twenty-five, Adam. He’s hardly a kid.”

“He’ll always be a kid.”

She shrugged. “Well, for a kid, he sure is
trying to look out for his older brother, isn’t he?” she asked with
a nod toward the supplies.

“Yeah, and now he’s going to go sticking his
nose into a mess of trouble.”

Kirsten gripped the pommel and pulled herself
into the saddle. “Just like his older brother.”

He glanced at her, shook his head, then
mounted his own horse. “If he thinks I’m going to show up for this
midnight rendezvous, he’s nuts.”

“What if he knows something, Adam? What if
he’s coming to warn us about something?”

Adam nudged the horse forward, and Kirsten’s
fell into step close beside it. Adam sighed, deep in thought, but
didn’t answer.

They rode across the meadows, and when they
reached a gate in the fence, Adam climbed down and opened it,
waited while she rode through, then closed it again before mounting
up. She had no idea where they were heading. Away. Just away, she
thought. And the relief that thought brought with it was like a
fresh breeze on a hot day.

“You shouldn’t be coming with me,” she said
after a while.

“I thought we already settled that.” They
paused near a stream, and the horses bent to drink.

“That kiss back there didn’t settle anything.
That was just….”

“Just what?” He eyed her sharply.

She gave her head a staccato shake. “Just
nerves. Fear. I don’t know, just the situation.”

He tilted his head very slightly. “You think
that’s all it was, do you?’’

Kirsten nodded. “It didn’t mean
anything.”

“It meant we still want each other, Kirsty.
It meant that hasn’t changed.”

The horses stopped drinking, and they started
forward again, picking their way through the thinning grass,
stepping carefully over the occasional patch of rocky ground.

“Nothing can happen between us, Adam. Too
much has changed. We can never go back.”

“You’re right,” he said. “We can only go
forward.”

He kicked his horse into a run. Kirsten sat
very still for a moment. Adam could be as stubborn as a rusted bolt
when he got his mind made up about something. But she had to stop
this thing in its tracks. She had to make it clear to him, once and
for all. She couldn’t let him fall for her again, only to smash his
heart to dust when she told him the truth.

So why not just tell him now? Wouldn’t that
make everything easier? He’d hate you, probably turn and walk away,
and you wouldn’t have to worry about hurting him later. So why not
just tell him the truth and let the poor man go?

She knew why. Even though she hated like hell
to admit it, she knew damned well why. Tonight they would be alone
together, in hiding, in whatever place he planned to take them.
Tonight they would be alone, and maybe he would try to make love to
her.

And maybe she wanted him to.

Adam was going to get to the truth. Because
it was killing him not to know. Dammit, he’d spent all this time
hating her, blaming her, and now he was busy hating and blaming
himself. If he’d done what it was looking more and more as if he
had—walked out on the woman he’d claimed to love just when she’d
needed him most—damn, how was he supposed to live with that? If
he’d stayed, if he’d held on to his temper and confronted her then
and there, could he have prevented everything that had happened to
her since? The two years of hell that bastard Cowan had apparently
put her through? The marriage that never should have been?

My God, had she really been forced into
it?

And if so, then how?

Adam was going to get the answers. He’d
damned well been patient long enough. And maybe he’d wronged her,
and maybe he’d been a little too ready to believe the worst, but
Kirsten owed him. Kirsten Armstrong Cowan was going to tell him the
truth. She had to.

Not knowing was eating him alive.

He took her to the only place he could think
of where she would be safe. Away from town, away from civilization,
from comfort and manners and pretense…away from the makeup and hair
spray and clothes that had become her armor. He took her into the
barren, rocky hell the locals called “the Badlands.” A place where
there was nothing but jagged rock, hard-packed, desert-dry earth,
and raw, brutal honesty.

He was careful, guiding his horse over grit
and stone. There might be one person he could think of who would be
capable of tracking them, as little sign as they’d left in their
wake. But his baby sister, Jessi, was on vacation with her
family.

They picked their way deeper into the
wilderness until Adam chose a spot. A high, level bluff with enough
boulders for cover and a good view of anyone coming up on them from
any direction. Not all that far from Thompson Gorge, either, just
in case he decided to meet Elliot there tonight.

He still hadn’t made up his mind about
that.

“We’ll camp here,” he said, drawing his mount
to a halt, getting off, beginning to undo the straps holding the
saddlebags in place. “There’s a patch of grass over here for the
horses and a small water hole just down beyond those rocks.”

He slid the weighty bags off, set them on a
flat-topped boulder and began undoing the cinch. Then he glanced
up, because Kirsten was still sitting astride her horse. She
frowned at him, the sun slanting on her face and a breeze lifting
her hair.

“I still think it would be best to ride for
the border.”

Adam swallowed his instinctive urge to tell
her that she was wrong. She wouldn’t react well to being told she
was wrong. She never had.

“Look, it’s your life. Your decision.” He let
go of the straps. “If you want me to help you make it to Mexico, I
will.”

“You will.” She repeated it flatly.

“You know I will.” He met her eyes, held them
for a brief moment, then looked away. “But I’d ask you to give my
way a chance first. If it looks like it’s not gonna work, we’re
outta here.”

She sat still, just looking down at him. Then
Mystic tossed her mane and danced impatiently, but Kirsten moved
with the animal without even thinking about it. Never swayed. She’d
always been great with horses.

“So you have some kind of a plan, then,” she
said, eyes narrow. “I should have known. You always have a
plan.”

“Yeah, well, you caught me on an off day this
time, Kirsten. I don’t have a clue. Just a vague notion that we
could probably hide out by day and do some snooping around by
night. See if we can turn up some evidence as to who really did
this and why they’re setting you up to take the fall.”

“We won’t find anything.”

“Not if we don’t try, we won’t.”

Kirsten sighed. Adam watched the rise and
fall of her chest. The play of light on her hair and its flash in
her eyes. Something knotted in his gut. His hands clenched at his
sides, maybe because it was the only way to keep them there. Okay,
so he wasn’t over her after all. He’d pretty much shot the theory
that he ever had been all to hell. And he knew he was headed for
serious trouble here, which was why he had to know the whole story.
Why she’d left him. Why she’d married a bastard like Cowan. The
whole truth. He needed to know just where he stood with her. Before
it was too late. Because he was in danger of getting his heart
smashed to bits by Kirsten all over again, and he damned well
wasn’t planning to let that happen.

“We snoop tonight?” she asked him.

“No. Tonight we lie low. They’ll be looking.
Tomorrow night we’ll slip back into town. They’ll all think we’re
long gone by then.”

“And if we don’t find anything?”

“Then we try again the next night,” he said,
watching her face.

“No, we don’t. We head to Mexico. Or one of
us does, anyway. The other one goes home and says whatever he has
to to keep his butt out of jail.”

Adam sighed. “It’s going to be tough to make
any progress in just one night, Kirsty.”

“It’s that or nothing, Adam. I’ve got no
reason to hang around waiting for someone to slap a life sentence
on me. Or worse.”

“I’m not going to let that happen. And you’ve
got every reason to hang around.”

“You can’t stop it from happening. And you’re
wrong. I’d be long gone by now if not for….” She didn’t finish. She
didn’t have to.

If not for you, that was what she’d been
about to say. No reason to hang around, huh? Well, maybe those
words would have been more convincing if she hadn’t still been
here. Even now, getting down off her horse and removing its saddle
and blanket.

Adam nodded, satisfied she must have some
reason to hang around or she would be riding hard due south right
now. He let the horses locate the grass on their own, then gathered
up some dry wood for a fire. He was pretty sure he was the reason.
He probably shouldn’t be thinking that way. But he liked thinking
that way, dammit. And after the way she’d responded to his kiss
back there….

He remembered, tasting those lips in his mind
and wanting to do it all over again.

“You think that’s a good idea?” she
asked.

“It’s probably a terrible idea,” he said.
Then he saw her frowning at him and at the fire he was about to
light. She was hunkered nearby, unpacking the saddlebags, taking
inventory, but she’d paused to stare at him. “Oh, you mean the
fire?”

She nodded.

“It’s not dark yet. No one will spot the
flames if we keep it small. And wood this seasoned isn’t gonna make
much smoke. We’ll need to douse it before dark, though.”

“Makes sense. You’re not bad at this stuff,
for a city boy.”

“I’ve never,
ever
been a city boy,
hon.”

“Not even when you were there?”

“Nope.” He hunkered beside the fire he’d
laid, struck a match to some tinder and watched it flare up. “To
tell you the truth, I hated it.”

“Then why did you stay?” She sat on a
rolled-up blanket to watch the fire take hold.

Adam looked at her. “I told the family it was
a great career opportunity. That I loved the big money, the fast
life.”

One side of her mouth pulled into a small,
brief smile. “They believe you?”

“Nah. They said it was ‘cause I couldn’t
stand to be in the same town with you and Cowan.” Adam caught her
eyes with his and held them fast. “I never admitted it, but they
were right.”

She rose fast, paced away uneasily, didn’t
look at him. He stayed where he was, poking the burgeoning fire
with a stick, watching her, waiting for a reply.

“I’m going to take the horses down to that
watering hole for a drink,” she said, and she hurried away.

Avoiding the subject. Well, hell, Adam
thought, she couldn’t keep it up all night. Sooner or later she
would talk to him. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Not this time.