Nan Ryan (9 page)

He didn’t.

He threw back his head and smiled to himself. Raider picked up the pace, his heartbeat quickening like that of the man on his back. The breeze stiffened and Kurt’s smile broadened. He bent his dark head forward, closed his eyes, and allowed the fingers of wind to play through his thick black hair.

When he raised his head and opened his eyes, he saw her.

Helen was in the vegetable garden at the end of a long row of green peas. She wasn’t stooping to the vines, although the apron she clutched with one hand held her gathered bounty.

Kurt drew rein and silently watched her.

She stood as still as a statue, gazing into the rapidly rising sun. The wind had caught the skirts of her gray work dress. The faded fabric pressed against the gentle feminine curves and billowed out around her slender body. Her pale golden hair was knotted atop her head and shining with fiery highlights.

Her face was in profile and for an instant it was unbearably sad. A wave of deep tenderness and compassion washed over Kurt.

He felt his heart kick against his naked ribs. Like a sudden blow to the solar plexus it struck him that this sad young woman had known far too little happiness. She was hardly more than a girl, yet she had no one to look after her. No husband. No family. Nobody.

Her fragile beauty was wasted. Hers should have been a carefree life filled with elegant gowns and fancy parties and summer picnics. Leisurely carriage rides in the country and moonlight kisses and heated passion.

Instead it was nothing more than survival. A harsh, struggling existence of threadbare clothes and back-breaking work and home-cooked meals. Bumpy wagons trips to town and solitary evenings and long, lonely nights.

Unaware she was being observed, Helen finally sighed, slowly sank to her knees, and continued with her task.

Drawn to her, Kurt quietly urged Raider forward.

Helen was bent over the English peas, snipping off the tender green pods and dropping them into her gathered-up apron. She heard the horse’s hooves striking the ground. Her back stiffened. She raised her head and slowly turned it. She saw him.

Silhouetted against the pale dawn, he was less than fifty feet away.

He opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing. Nor did she. They silently stared at each other for a long, tense moment, he astride the stallion, she kneeling below.

Her breath curiously short, Helen cautiously eyed the dark, bare-chested man atop the enormous sorrel stallion. He didn’t urge the horse forward, nor did he dismount. He sat there easily in the worn military saddle, his hand careless on the reins, his haunting forest-green eyes resting squarely on her.

Anxiously clutching the filled apron, Helen slowly rose to her feet. She could feel an odd excitement beginning to build in her. An almost imperceptible step took her closer to him. She didn’t realize she had moved.

Kurt did.

He drew a quick breath and immediately nudged the responsive Raider with his knees. The stallion moved forward. Helen watched as the looming pair came closer.

She stood unmoving as if she were in some kind of strange trance. Her wide blue eyes focused fully on Kurt’s darkly handsome face, she didn’t reprimand him when he guided his big steed off the path and into her carefully tended garden.

Tender vines crunched under heavy hooves as horse and rider approached. Helen never noticed the destruction. The Yankee’s intent so intrigued her, he had her undivided attention.

What did he want? What was he going to do? To her? With her?

Her heart beginning to throb with a bizarre mixture of fear and anticipation, she watched him closely as he bore steadily down on her.

The fleeting thought occurred that the big, powerful stallion and the dark man astride him were much alike. Both had the same offhand grace of movement, the same lean, rippling muscles, the same half-sleepy, half-hawk keen eyes. The same potency and power to thrill and please. Or frighten and conquer.

Kurt unhurriedly walked Raider toward Helen.

Helen stayed exactly as she was, unable to make herself retreat or advance.

Kurt reached her.

He looked down at her upturned face. Still neither spoke. Mesmerized by those forest-green eyes that held an expression she didn’t understand, Helen couldn’t look away.

After several heartbeats, Kurt abruptly leaned from his saddle and took firm hold of Helen’s narrow waist. Throat gone dry, eyes locked with his, she thoughtlessly released her clutched apron and put her hands atop his bare, broad shoulders.

The carefully picked peas spilled forgotten to the ground.

Kurt smiled and lifted her from the ground as easily as if she were a small child. With cool authority he sat her sideways across the saddle before him. Still holding her questioning gaze, he reached down to her full, twisted skirts.

He flipped the cumbersome skirts and petticoat up over her knees, turned her forward, and urged a long, shapely leg over the horse’s neck. When she was seated comfortably astride, he put the big beast in motion, never bothering to lower her raised dress.

Helen didn’t bother either.

Nor did she object when—trotting down the path toward the northern pasture—Kurt reached up and withdrew the pins from her knotted hair. Instead she shook her head about, sending the locks cascading down around her shoulders like rippling falls of gold.

She didn’t hear the sharp intake of air from the man in whose arms she was enclosed. Nor did she know that it took all of Kurt’s practiced powers of self-restraint to keep from burying his face in all that fragrant golden silkiness. When his ally the wind tossed a long shimmering strand against his cheek, Kurt’s bare belly contracted and he turned his face inward to inhale deeply.

In moments Raider had left the path, the garden, and the orchard behind and had reached the large tree-rimmed pasture. Without warning, the big stallion burst through the open gate and into a fast, ground-eating gallop. Caught off guard, Helen was slammed forcefully back against Kurt’s hard chest. She laughed in startled surprise, half attempted to lever herself up, and felt the strong imprisoning band of his muscular arm slide around her waist to press her back in place against him.

She didn’t try again.

She realized that she didn’t actually want to move away from the welcome security of that sun-darkened arm. The stallion was racing so fast the ground flashed by below. Helen had never been atop a mount that moved so swiftly. A creature that could run with such heart-stopping speed.

It was alarming. It was dangerous. It was thrilling.

As the stallion thundered around the pasture, Helen’s back was pressed closely against Kurt’s broad chest. So close, the amazing warmth of his smooth bare skin seeped right through the thin fabric of her dress, enveloping her, but pleasantly so. She caught the scent of his heated flesh, so clean, so pleasing, so uniquely male. She anxiously inhaled and her lids almost closed over her shining blue eyes.

Strange as it was, she somehow felt gloriously safe and sheltered in this stranger’s masterful embrace. It was as if the cold, threatening world and all that was in it could not touch her, harm her.

Helen deliberately closed her mind to everything save the stolen pleasure of the moment. She laughed delightedly as the Gulf wind stung her pale cheeks, whipped her unbound hair about her head, and pressed her dress against her shoulders and breasts. Her skirts were carried higher, billowing up around her knees, exposing glimpses of her stockinged legs.

She didn’t care.

She laughed all the more loudly.

So did the man behind her.

Kurt laughed into the strands of silky golden hair tickling his face and his fancy. Charmed by Helen’s sweet, unexpected surrender to the simple joy of the impromptu dawn ride, he savored the sound of her laughter even as he laughed with her.

It was such a lovely, feminine, heartwarming laugh. A golden, full-bodied laugh that divulged so much of the real woman hidden beneath the usual stiff exterior. A woman who laughed with the open, good-natured abandon of this golden-haired widow was surely warm, caring, uninhibited. A sensual, passionate woman who had once known how to live life to the fullest, to love deeply and with all her heart. Her gay, musical laugh assured him that she’d not completely forgotten how to do either. She was simply a bit rusty, as was he.

He hadn’t done much laughing himself of late. Or living. Or loving.

Their eyes shining with pleasure, the pair raced the wind around the large tree-lined pasture. They were behaving like a couple of carefree children, as indeed they were for these few stolen moments. The joyous sounds of their foolish frolic mingled with the thunder of sharp hooves glancing on packed earth and the jingle of stirrups and the blowing bellows of Raider’s powerful pumping lungs.

Helen was half afraid the wild, dangerous ride would continue indefinitely. And half afraid it wouldn’t. The well-reasoned, thoughtful side of her silently cried out for the dark Yankee to pull up on the big stallion, to bring him to a halt and lower her to the safety of the ground.

But her foolish, giddy, more daring side quietly pleaded with him to do just the opposite. With every pounding beat of her heart she mutely begged him to race on and on. To never stop the stallion. To go on holding her pressed against his muscled chest for eternity. To keep his long arm wrapped tightly around her. Forever and ever.

The man holding her in his protective embrace received the message as clearly as if she had spoken into his ear. Her slender pressing body transmitted her every desire and Kurt couldn’t have been more pleased. His own desire was much the same. He too longed to ride forever, fast and free, with this golden-haired woman wrapped in his arms.

His morning rides were always a pleasure, but nothing compared with this one. Never half so thrilling. His heart thundered in his naked chest. He felt vitally alive, as if his blood were pumping and surging forcefully through his veins and out to every part of his body so that he tingled from head to toe.

On they rode.

The sun moved quickly up into the summer sky, its heat already growing fierce. Not nearly as fierce as the heat generated by two pressing, straining bodies atop a racing stallion. Raider’s big, sleek body was wet with sweat. Kurt’s bare back and long arms glistened with perspiration. Helen’s fair face and throat were dotted with beads of moisture.

In their exhilaration, they never noticed the heat or discomfort.

But, just as stallion, man, and woman were having the time of their lives, Kurt Northway made a careless blunder. His arm tightening possessively around Helen’s waist, he laughed and allowed his thoughts to surface.

“Ah, Mrs. Courtney,” he shouted into the wind, “tell me true. Isn’t this the proper way to watch the sun rise?”

Helen stiffened immediately.

Reality intruded with the sound of his deep, masculine voice reminding her who she was, who he was.

Without a word she let him know that their ride was at its end. Cursing himself for breaking the beautiful spell, Kurt dutifully drew rein.

Flushed and hot and breathing almost as hard as the winded Raider, they headed back to where they had begun. There Kurt gently lowered Helen to her feet and, smiling tentatively, started to dismount.

She stopped him.

The minute her feet touched the ground, Helen came fully to her senses. She threw up her hand in a halting, defensive gesture. The bright smile had left her flushed face. Her high brow was creased. Inwardly she shuddered. What had prompted such rash behavior? What on earth could she have been thinking?

“The sun’s grown hot,” Kurt said softly from atop the horse. “I suggest you wait until sunset to finish gathering the peas.”

Helen looked at him sharply. His thick, too-long jet hair was in wild disarray and falling into his eyes. His naked torso gleamed wetly in the hot morning sunlight. Diamond drops of perspiration glittered in the crisp black hair covering his muscled chest.

The sight of him looming above, half naked, totally relaxed and in control, annoyed Helen. While he was quite obviously unaffected by the shared intimacy of their ride, her knees were weak. She felt half faint and trembly. Cold and hot at once.

“Captain Northway,” she snapped irritably, “what prompts you to make suggestions to me? I regard any such advice as tactless and unnecessary. May I remind you that I’ve been running this farm alone for years. I don’t need an interfering Yankee to tell me what I should or should not do.” Helen’s hands went to her hips. “I am in command here, not you. You may be a captain, Captain, but on this particular piece of property I’m in charge. I am not interested in your suggestions, proposals, or ideas as to how I should operate this farm. Do you understand me?”

“Sure,” he said, wondering what had brought about such an overdone outburst.

“The proper reply, Captain, is ‘Yes, Mrs. Courtney.’”

Half amused, half angry, Kurt said, “Yes, Mrs. Courtney.”

“That’s better. Now we both have work to do,” Helen reminded him, her blue eyes snapping.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“After you’ve finished with the day’s plowing, you’re to begin digging a drainage ditch for the stock pond. Think you can handle that?”

“May I respectfully remind the dubious lady boss that I have had considerable experience digging trenches.”

Helen’s jaw tightened. Her blue eyes narrowed. “I’m sure you have, Captain. Trenches from which to fire at unsuspecting Confederate soldiers!”

Chapter Eleven

H
elen anxiously shoved her tangled, windblown hair out of her eyes—eyes that snapped with open hostility. She whirled away and marched off, anxious to put as much distance between Kurt and herself as possible.

Kurt watched her go, quietly analyzing her inflexible attitude toward him. He knew her resentment was not of him personally, but of the hated foe which he embodied. His conquering army had made her a widow, had spread destruction, had impoverished families. And now the defeated South was forced to live under Yankee rule. Mobile was an occupied city.