The Stealth Commandos Trilogy (10 page)

“How did she do it?” Annie asked again.

He picked up the glass of wine, watching the rich pink rays of sunlight penetrate its amber depths before he looked up and met her waiting gaze. “She let me think I was seducing her.”

T
HE
A
PPALOOSA NICKERED SOFTLY
as Chase adjusted the cinch on his saddle. He slapped the big horse gently on the flank, caught hold of the reins, and was about to swing himself into the saddle when he heard Annie calling his name.

“Chase!”

He turned to see her descending the front porch steps, holding his bullwhip. “I thought you might need this,” she called out, hurrying toward the small corral where Chase kept Smoke and his two other horses, both mares.

She arrived breathless and seeming pleased with herself that she’d caught him. Chase took the whip from her and nodded his thanks, aware that her hair was all astray and her eyes misty. She looked as if she’d just rolled out of bed, which was probably true. She’d been asleep on the cot when he’d left the house a half hour earlier. He’d noticed then that the quilt had slipped off her, but he’d judiciously decided to leave it where it lay on the floor. He’d also noticed the way she slept—curled up like a kitten.

It was two days after she’d made him the
fiambre
dinner, and now, as she stood there, gazing up at him expectantly, he couldn’t avoid noticing several other things about her, including the fact that she had nothing on under her unbuttoned cardigan sweater but the shift she wore night, day, and in the shower. “ ‘Virtue is its own reward’?” he said, reading the words stitched into the thin fabric covering her breasts.

She glanced down. “Oh, yes, that. It means—”

“I know what it means.”

She looked up and held his gaze for several seconds, something Chase wasn’t used to having people do. Men and women alike usually flinched from his stare—or at least had the decency to look uneasy—and it almost gave him a chill when she didn’t. She spoke at last, but typically, what she said wasn’t what he’d expected to hear at that moment.

“Can I go with you today. Chase?” she asked. “Just this once.” She indicated the roan mare in the corral behind them. “Fire and I are already friends, and I won’t get in the way.”

She’d asked to go with him almost every day, but Chase had refused categorically, for many reasons. The only thing that kept him from saying no immediately this time was his collie, Shadow. The dog had parked himself next to Annie, and he was whimpering softly, as if to say he was on Annie’s side.

“Sorry, Red,” Chase said. “I’m riding security on the McAffrey ranch today. If anything came up, I wouldn’t know what to do with you.”

Hardening himself against her crestfallen expression, Chase swung onto his horse, whistled for the dog, and started off. It wasn’t until he reached the edge of the clearing that he realized Shadow wasn’t trotting alongside him. He pulled the Appaloosa to a halt and twisted around, surprised to see the Border collie still sitting next to Annie. The two of them looked like a couple of characters in a Norman Rockwell sketch.

“Come on, boy!” Chase called over his shoulder, but Shadow didn’t move. Chase tipped up his Stetson and glared at the two of them. “What are you doing to the dog?” he yelled to Annie.

She shrugged as though to say “Nothing.”

Chase called the dog again, several times, but Shadow remained statuelike. Baffled, Chase brought his horse around and started toward the troublesome pair, coming to a halt maybe twenty feet away from them.

“I think Shadow’s trying to say we’re a team,” said Annie, patting the dog’s head. “If you want one of us, you take us both.”

“That’s blackmail,” Chase muttered, unable to keep the incredulity from his voice. He reached automatically for the thin strip of rawhide that secured the whip to the saddle horn—and then wondered what the hell he was doing. A man didn’t crack the whip at Norman Rockwell characters. Not unless he was Simon Legree.

He stared at the two of them a long time, willing lightning to strike where it would do the most good. But the sky never even clouded over, and finally he conceded that Annie Wells probably had God on her side too. The woman didn’t fight fair.

“Aw, the hell with it,” he said abruptly. “Go on inside and get your clothes on. But if anything goes wrong on this trip, it’s your butt in the sling, Missy.”

A short time later they were riding out, just one big, happy family. Only now it reminded Chase of a full-fledged Norman Rockwell painting where Mom and the pooch were alight with secret pleasure, Dad looked disgruntled, and all three of them knew why. Even the horses seemed to be in on the joke.

Chase tried to convince himself he was doing the right thing in letting Annie come along, but it was no easy task. Finally he decided it might be worth the trouble of having her in tow if it kept her busy and got her mind off that seduction business she’d been preoccupied with lately. She’d been asking him leading questions about men and women and sex, never flirtatiously, more with the intent concentration of someone determined to learn.

But Chase needn’t have worried about Annie at that moment. She was busy, indeed. She’d never been on a horse before, and Chase had given her only a few cursory instructions. He’d told her to sit the horse like a fork, her body being the handle, her legs the tines. With that in mind, she was doing her best to imitate a kitchen utensil, but it felt strange and awkward having such a huge thing moving beneath her. She felt like a salad fork on a big piece of steak.

At least she got the hang of the horse’s gait quickly enough, and soon she was swaying comfortably in the saddle, aware of a sense of accomplishment as she enjoyed the scenery. The Wyoming foothills were vastly different from a tropical rain forest where the vegetation was lush and chokingly thick. Here, slender-limbed aspens, willows, and birches rustled gracefully in the same breezes that swept the verdant meadows and tousled the apple-green pasture grass. It was all so glorious and inspiring to the soul. I could love it here, she thought.

Even Shadow seemed energized by the bright, sunny day. He was as full of mischief as a puppy, chasing butterflies and racing around the horses, barking. Annie glanced at Chase occasionally for any sign that he might be loosening up a little too. But he remained silent and remote until Shadow made the mistake of sticking his nose in a prickly pear cactus and jumping back with a surprised yelp. Hearing Chase’s low, husky laughter, Annie glanced at him, and their eyes connected for a moment.

Annie felt as though she’d been jolted by an open current of electricity as he held her gaze. The natural sensuality in his smile took her breath away, and without realizing she’d done it, she drew her horse to a stop, watching him and the Appaloosa pull away from her. With his dusty black Stetson tilted low and his buckskin vest stretched tight across his shoulders, he cut a powerful figure on the huge animal. Watching him made Annie feel desperately strange inside. Loose and warm. Meltingly warm.

Chase glanced over his shoulder. “Coming, Missy?”

Annie felt a tug in her stomach, as though he’d yanked a tether that was connected to her vital parts. She wasn’t sure she liked him calling her Missy when he’d first done it. But she was beginning to like it now. Yes, indeed.

By the time they reached the east pasture of the McAffrey ranch. Chase was back to business, warning Annie to keep her horse under control, and ordering Shadow to stop his cavorting. “Longhorns can be unpredictable,” he said, pointing out the herd that grazed the rolling grasslands that stretched before them. “We don’t want to spook them and start a stampede.”

As they rode just outside the fenced area, Annie noticed that Chase kept one hand casually resting on the wooden handle of his whip, much the way a gunslinger’s hand might hover near his holster. Finally curiosity made her ask a question that had been at the back of her mind ever since she’d met him.

“Why do you use a bullwhip, Chase? It’s such an unusual weapon.”

“It gets the job done with less damage,” he explained, smiling mysteriously. “For example, I can disarm a man without killing him ... or undress a woman without touching her.”

Annie stopped her horse again. She stared at him in astonishment, a fine trembling in her fingertips as they pulled the reins taut. “I don’t believe you.”

“About disarming a man?” He reined in his horse and turned to look at her. “Or undressing a woman?”

“That part—the woman.” She’d actually seen him disarm a man in Costa Brava, so she couldn’t question that.

“Want a demonstration?”

“No!”

But Chase was already pulling the coiled whip off the horn of his saddle and urging his horse across the path they’d just traveled toward an unfenced, flower-filled meadow. Annie followed him reluctantly, aware that he was putting some distance between them and the herd.

He flicked the whip out behind him as he rode, letting the braided-leather thong trail on the ground like a loose rope. But the snakelike rawhide didn’t sound like a rope as he suddenly swung it up in a powerful, fluid arc and cracked it in the air.

The whining snap electrified Annie. It was so sharp and riveting to the nerves, she wanted to gasp. Black lightning, she thought. He could claim the thing was harmless all he wanted, but it seemed downright deadly to her. At least she could be thankful for one thing. He wasn’t demonstrating on her!

Just beyond Chase and the snorting Appaloosa, a patch of wild daisies swayed in the breeze, their delicate white petals fluttering. Annie watched, reluctantly fascinated as Chase drew the whip back again. Please let him put it away now, she thought. Instead, he swung the thong up in another stunning, recoiling arc of motion.

His second throw amazed her even more than the first one had. The whip reared back like a cobra about to strike, then flashed low to the ground, zinging toward its target. With surgical precision it snapped one of the daisies clean, severing the flower’s stem at its base. Annie watched in mute wonderment as he swung off the horse and picked up the flower, turning back to her. His eyes were dark and sexy, charged with erotic undercurrents.

“You like flowers?” he asked.

She shook her head, an instinctive reaction that had nothing to do with whether or not she liked flowers. It just seemed the wisest response under the circumstances.

He walked to her anyway and offered her the daisy. “It’ll look better in your hair than mine,” he said.

Annie took it automatically, tucking it above her ear and mustering a smile. Anything to keep the man with the whip happy.

“Do you want to get down?” he asked. “Stretch your legs?”

She wasn’t at all sure what she wanted to do, but somehow being on solid ground sounded reassuring. “You’re very good with that thing,” she said rather belatedly as she allowed him to help her off the horse. “The whip, I mean.”

She swung her leg over the saddle and slid toward the ground, facing him, silently thrilling to the feel of his hands on her waist as he caught her and set her down. Their clothing brushed as he held her that way for a moment before releasing her. All she had to do was stand still, and she would be closer to him than she’d been all week! And exactly where she’d always wanted to be.
So stand still, Annie,
she told herself.

“My, it’s warm today, isn’t it?” she said, aware of the moisture at the back of her collar. Without glancing up, she inched out from between him and the horse, a hot spot if ever there was one. “I’m actually damp after all that riding.”

He’d loaned her one of his old cotton shirts, shrunk from years of washing, and she was wearing it under her open cardigan sweater. She busied herself getting out of the sweater, tying it around her waist, and then fanning herself with her hand as she glanced up at him. “Don’t you think it’s warm?”

He regarded her silently. Beneath his tilted Stetson his eyes were smoky-black and faintly intrigued. Was that his getting-down-to-it look? she wondered, feeling herself flush and grow even warmer. Why in the world was she suddenly acting like a schoolgirl with a crush? Now of all times?

“You probably ought to be wearing a hat out here in all this direct sunshine,” he said, taking off his Stetson and raking back his wavy black hair. “You’re getting a burn, Missy.”

He popped the Stetson on her head, and if it hadn’t been for the volume of her hair, the hat would have dropped to her nose. Feeling a little silly, she adjusted it while he knelt to pick up the whip.

“This thing seems to be making you nervous,” he said as he coiled the rawhide thong. “Maybe you ought to learn how to use it.”

“No, thank you.” She did not want to touch that whip. Annie had never been so sure of anything in her life. His prowess with the weapon had unnerved her, no doubt about it. But it was more than that. The fear she felt seemed almost instinctive, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if it had something to do with the whip’s physical similarity to the poisonous reptiles of the rain forest. She’d never got used to the coiled menace of a jungle snake, either on the forest floor or high in the trees.

“I think I’ll take your suggestion and stretch my legs,” she said, her voice softening to the hushed tone she’d used in the convent. “Here, you can have this back.” She handed him the hat and turned away from his questioning gaze, walking deeper into the meadow.

“I could show you how to crack a whip in no time at all.”

“No ... ”

He was silent a moment, and then his husky voice caught her, caressed her. “It’s no good running away from things, Annie. They always catch up to you, one way or another.”

“I’m not running,” she said. “I’m walking.”

Her heart was pounding with a strange and dizzying force as she made a pretense of being enraptured by the wildflowers that created a rainbowlike panorama in the meadow’s green velvet carpet. “Aren’t they lovely!” she exclaimed, heading for a patch of columbines that fanned out alongside the daisies.

“Annie.”

He called her name in a way that made her freeze in the act of kneeling to look at flowers.

“What’s wrong,” he asked.