WANTED (A Transported Through Time book) (5 page)

Hand gripping the saddle horn, she turned more fully toward him, parted her lips.

Please, oh please, let this happen! Let him kiss her, devour her senses with his mouth. He leaned forward. Her breath caught.

His gaze snapped back to hers, his arm pulled her close, and within an angel’s whisper, he answered Samantha’s prayer. He slowly touched his lips to hers, gently at first. She responded in kind, forcing herself not to rush and to follow his lead. He pressed and suckled, inhaling through his nose like he was drinking her in.

Her belly quivered.

She opened her mouth to his soft tongue, and as he tasted her, a tiny moan escaped her. He paused. She stiffened and opened her eyes. His were open, too, and regarding her curiously.  Samantha swore to suppress all future sounds of pleasure. She didn’t want this to end. She shut her eyes. He kissed her again, deeper, lips pressing, mouth suckling. She opened fully to him, as his tongue stroked and teased, until her body sang with hungry pleasure.

In one deft, effortless move, he lifted her and straddled her over his lap. Cold air tickled her thighs. She suddenly faced him, all without breaking the press of his mouth on hers.

Im-freaking-pressive.

Samantha gasped at the remarkable difference her new position made. All that gleaming muscle there for the taking, but she couldn’t dare. Could she? Her hands shook. She made fists at her thighs. He cupped her cheek and pulled her close by her lower back. So possessively that her confidence rose. She put her hands on his chest. So hard, but soft, too.

His tongue explored her lips. His kiss deepened, making her dizzy as her hands roved over his pecs, up his neck, and down the deep ripples of waist to his jeans. She paused at the top button, then continued past, over his hips, covering his thighs, ever aware of what she was not touching. Yet.

She pressed her hips closer, shocked at her body’s throb. If she was eager and hot, he was collected and cool. The cowboy cupped her face, ran his fingers into her hair. He kissed her in an intense, drawn-out fashion, slowing her, tempering her fever.

His mouth moved over her cheek, to her ear, where he suckled and nipped her lobe. Tickling fingers trailed down her belly, landing lower, feeding the ache building there.

“Who are you?” he whispered against her skin.

The horse shifted beneath them. Handsome held her steady. She fumbled with the button of his jeans, catching her nail. His hands covered hers, stopping her. The world suspended. He went very still.

Samantha opened her eyes. The world had not, in fact, disappeared. Neither had he. The shadowed green of his eyes had darkened with passion. What he wanted showed on every feature, from his heavy-lidded gaze to his clenching jaw.

He looked away, glanced around.

The bad dudes he’d protected her from. She’d forgotten them entirely, threat and all. What did this man do to her?

She also looked around, unsure of what she was looking for, but feeling like she should, and wanting to do anything to return his attention to her. She parted her lips.

“Don’t speak,” he whispered, nudging the horse into motion.

They were leaving? Her hopes began to plummet.

Her stranger stiffened slightly. The horse under them shifted, beginning to walk. Samantha straightened, looking up to see what was wrong.

“Someone’s coming,” he said and kissed the tip of her nose.

Oh, no! Here she’d been swept away by the heady effects of his kiss, and she might still be in danger. In another easy motion, he flipped her up and facing outward once again. He adjusted under her and if she had wondered about his reaction to her she no longer needed to. She felt it. Too bad fear and adrenaline ha
d
bathed all that heat in cold. She corrected her skirt and forced a keen sense of sadness at bay.

He was trying to protect her, and all she wanted to do was pout? She scolded herself and listened for what he had heard. The stream, the crickets. Someone was coming, after all, and that took precedence over silly romantic notions. Uh-oh. Was that a
heavy footstep
, or her imagination?

“Hold on tight.” Handsome steered his mount out of the cover of trees and kicked the horse into a hard gallop. Samantha’s bones jarred. They bounced together, riding down another hillside, and he held her close with one arm.

All she could envision were greasy, sweaty, heavily mustached men chasing them on horseback. Crap. Why was he out camping with “bad men”? Who was really to say he, himself, was not, to some degree, a bad man? And what were three bad men doing out in the middle of nowhere, anyway?

Camping? Hunting? Camping.

Why would they chase anyone down simply for leaving camp? Something about this whole situation was off, and she got pissed at herself for not sensing it sooner. It was as if she’d just now awakened from her sleepwalk, after a dream. Like he was the dream.

“Who are they?” Samantha called out over the thunder of hooves. “Why are we running from them?”

“Like I said before, you don’t want to know.” He heeled the horse again. “They don’t know about you yet. I mean on keeping it that way.”

“But why would they chase you down?” She tried not to yell too loudly. “Are you their ride or something? Did you take something from them?”

Please, don’t let him be some sort of thief. Let him be a good, decent kind of guy with some seriously bad taste in friends. Not a creep. Not a mistake.

“They think I’ve left them. Or might think worse. Look, it doesn’t matter now. I’ll have to leave you at the base, come up, and cut them off. You’ll be safe.”

Fine with her. What did it matter whom he hung out with, or camped with? It wasn’t like she would ever see him again. A pang went through her. Best knee-knocking kiss of her entire life, and she’d never see him again.

Charles would have a field day over the Freudian implications this bizarre night tied in to her dad’s death.

They reached the base, and he drew the horse to a stop. He slid off and pulled her to follow. She winced when her bare feet hit hard earth. She looked around. No car. No truck.

No SUV.

Surely, “leave you at the base” didn’t mean here, as in leave her here to walk the rest of the way home. Where was here? What cowboy hero would rescue her, kiss her senseless, only to drop her off to walk home? Barefoot!

The men couldn’t be that dangerous. Or faster than a car. Could they?

She stared at him, anger itching up her skin. He cupped her face in his hands, apology bright in his eyes. Her anger washed away. Who could get angry with a man who looked at her like she was a miracle?

He planted a kiss on her lips, fierce and quick, pointed, and said, “Winnemucca.”

He climbed back into the saddle and might’ve tipped his hat, if he’d had one. Tears threatened Samantha’s eyes, but she blinked them back. She had absolutely no reason in the world to cry. None. This is what she’d wanted. To go home. Albeit, in a warm car instead of after a warm good-bye. She bit down, waved, and turned the way he had pointed.

She forced herself not to look back at the image that went with the fading hoofbeats. The first tear sprang free, and then another. Never had she cried so much as she had this night. First her father, and now this. All of it was that damned whiskey’s fault.

She vowed never to drink it again. As soon as she got back, she would pour it out, dump the whole thing down the drain, and flush it. She’d sell that damned outlaw’s stupid paraphernalia and forget it all.

Wait.

Sell it? Of course! Why didn’t she think of it before? Let her father’s blind obsession pay for her tuition. She could be done with all of it.

The funeral, her dad, her feet. Handsome. All of it.

If thinking these things didn’t make her feel any better, doing them certainly would.

~~~

Chapter Five

In all Samantha’s imaginings (and she’d had a few), this was not one of them. Some fancy, New York-style auction house, maybe, or a hip art gallery. Possibly even a collector coming out of his hermit lifestyle and a dusty library, with shelves lined with books on the Old West.

Not this.

The high ceiling, short windows, and animal heads mounted on the wall reminded her of her high school prom at the Elks lodge. The place smelled like it, too. Perfumed oldness. The thin, red brick-colored carpeting did little to mask the concrete floor. Her heels clacked when she walked on it. The wood-lined wall seams didn’t perfectly line up with each other.

Still, once she finally decided to actually sell the items, she’d searched the internet as thoroughly as she could for weeks. This appeared to be her most attractive option, unless she went through the internet. Not her preference. The owner of this local auction house had assured her he knew the kind of client she would require. And he seemed to know the history of Jesse Kincaid—
Antiques Roadshow
style.

“Hello?” she called out.

This was the place. She would sell her father’s past and turn them into her future. Standing in the
foyer, waiting for the proprietor
, a teensy bit of guilt niggled at her. The hostage exchange.

The past for her future.

Charles was right. Unless she planned on finding the mythical treasures herself, they needed some cash. They’d celebrate over shots once she got paid.

She found a button on a wall with a sticky note. “Buzz for service.”

She did.

“How can I help you?” A woman’s voice echoed out of the box.

“Yes, hi. I emailed about the ‘Wanted’ poster?”

Silence.

“Are you pressing the button? I can’t hear you unless you press when you talk, hon.”

Samantha tried again. “I’m here with the Jesse Kincaid poster?”

Like a silly girl with a crush, she had stopped in a nearby Staples and photocopied the map and poster. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t care if the originals stayed with her, but the map and poster were still, in a way, hers. After her dream, seeing the face on the poster, she had analyzed it over and over again.

“Wanted? Oh, the Kincaid treasure hunter?”

Charles was right. Her father’s death, coupled with the symbol of their estrangement, and her handsome rescuer had manifested from blah, blah, blah. Funny how disappointed she’d felt knowing that Jesse couldn’t be real. “Yes.”

He looked far hotter in her dream than on paper. It was Jesse, nonetheless. So she still could look at him and fantasize. She still could hold onto the map and keep the notes her father had made on the back. Someday, she might see it as a memento. He had loved the hunt. And maybe one day, she wouldn’t resent all that mystery.

“Gimme five, hon.”

The further she explored her idea to sell her inheritance, the more sentimental she grew over it, and over her father’s bequeathing it to her. At least she could have proof he really had loved her, original or not. And she’d have a law degree. That was the thing to remember. Samantha exhaled a loud breath and walked in a circle before getting the poster out of her purse again.

God, he was handsome. If only he were real and not a criminal, or dead a hundred-plus years now.

Or the reason her father had ignored her most of her life.

She let herself have the small crush. Why not? Even if he wasn’t real. Even if his face reminded her of a father who forgot to parent his daughter or mourn his wife. Even if it was textbook denial and projection.

“He was a looker, wasn’t he?”

Startled, Samantha peered up at the big-haired, forty-something shop owner and rolled up the parchment. Samantha had expected a man.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said, “for a bank robber.”

“Oh, I’d say that’s part of the attraction. Big guns, guts, and fury all wrapped up in a gentleman’s smile.” The woman sighed. “In his day, if I’d come across a man like that, I’d have made him mine, outlaw or not.”

“Yes, well. ...”

“They don’t make men like that anymore,” she said, oblivious to her customer’s discomfort. “If they did, I wouldn’t be standing here single and talking to you. I’d be in bed.”

Samantha swallowed a gasp.

“They were your dad’s things, you said?”

She nodded. “He passed away.”

“You poor, poor thing.” The woman wrapped her in a tight hug. Carla smelled a little like a fresh cigarette and a lot like Chantilly.

Samantha didn’t want this woman’s sympathy. She wanted her expedient help in selling these things, before she became more attached and changed her mind. University of San Diego’s  admissions office would soon call in its marker. She stepped back, feeling awkward. “Thanks, I, um, corresponded with—”

“Me. I’m Carla. Oh, you thought I was a man. I can see it in your eyes. That C.S. stuff is just for business. I can’t prove myself in email, but in person, I’m a pistol.”

Samantha imagined her as a madam in some mid-level brothel, sitting in a window, leaning over a balcony, calling out to Jesse Kincaid as he raced out of town, bags of loot in hand and gunshots singing after him.