Leslie was determined that she would not respond to his kiss. He had tricked her again. Lied to her, laughed at her, held her up to public ridicule. What had Jennie thought? Knowing everything?
But the hard pressure of his lips, burning into hers, pressing her mouth open, forcing her head back…her anger was dissolving into heat, her body coming alive, as if his touch stripped away her protective covering—leaving her exposed to him, to his hands, his lips, his will…
No fair! How could she ever get an accounting from him for his outrageous actions when fear for his safety left her so needy for him? He kissed her endlessly, until she forgot everything except her love for him.
He relinquished her lips. Panting, she pressed her face into his shoulder and felt the scar tissue from the injury he had received the last night she was his captive. She kissed him there, breathing the warm, manly fragrance into her nostrils.
So many memories…They crowded into her head, blinding her. She could see him on the corn husk mattress in the small hut after she had taken the bullet out of his shoulder—unconscious, with his face turned away from her, the sturdy column of his neck tempting her. How could a man so strong, so enduring, look so vulnerable?
She had reached out to smooth that tawny thatch of silver-streaked flaxen hair off his forehead and ended by pressing her lips there. Finally, losing all control, she had held him blindly, helplessly, until he stirred.
A vision of his lean form hanging limply between Younger’s men as Younger pounded his face into raw meat, brought a helpless groan from deep in her throat. He’d had tinges of those bruises in jail…
And yet he had let Younger go.
She hadn’t expected to see Ward again after the jail. Certainly not dressed in the height of fashion, framed against the sumptuous background of the Kincaids’ sala grande, looking negligently at ease while her heart pounded so loudly she feared she would shake apart from it.
Remembering the confused impulses of fear and pride she’d felt, seeing him beside the fireplace, across the library, a prisoner, she’d thought, a warrior disarmed and waiting to be executed…only to find out he was Jennie’s brother—why hadn’t she guessed? She’d had clues. The way Jennie couldn’t quite bring herself to turn loose his hand. Jennie’s instant recovery so soon after her brother’s death. Chane’s look of rapt pride and happiness when Ward and Jennie danced together. She’d been blind.
But he helped blind her. The unselfconscious way he held Jennie in his arms that day…She could see herself. Heavens! How foolish she must have seemed to him, going to the house on Barton Street, asking him to give Jennie up.
It had been bitterness in his husky voice when he taunted her: “I only care about myself. That’s what you said. Why should I deprive myself of a choice female like Jenn?”
When she tried to leave, he stopped her with that look in his blue eyes and the warm pressure of his hand on her arm. In her extremity she had called him an animal, accusing him of any vile thing she could think of, and that strange light flared in his eyes, darkening and then lightening the blue before he said, “I want you.” By the time his hand tangled in her hair, pulling her close for that terrible, punishing kiss, everything inside her was collapsing: pride, stubbornness, courage.
But…she hadn’t been honest with him either, had she? Maybe if she’d told him why she went to Buckeye…Later, up at the mountain cabin, if she had admitted she was afraid to go back to Phoenix…
She jerked away from him, as far away as she could get in the steely circle of his arms.
“Now what is it?” he asked, recognizing the look in her defiant green eyes.
“You could have told me a week ago that neither one of us was in any real danger of hanging.”
“Not me. I didn’t believe it. In case you don’t remember me, I’m the one with no excess of trust.”
“You could have told me you were a ranger.”
“To what purpose? When things don’t work out, people have a way of conveniently forgetting their promises. Stanton is a practical politician. If the mob chose to believe Summers and Younger over me, he wouldn’t have had the guts to tell them I was working for him…I didn’t know what to expect when I got here. They could just as easily have been waiting to hang me.”
“You didn’t know?”
“On my sister’s honor,” he said solemnly.
“Jennie’s your sister?”
“All my life…”
“There was no girl at Buckeye?”
“Only you.”
“Why didn’t you come here right away? Didn’t you want to know if everything worked out?”
“Desperately. Unfortunately I wanted us to survive more. I thought a week would give things a chance to settle.”
She gazed out the window, remembering the low, deliberately expressionless tone of his husky voice the day he told her about Simone and his friend Snake. No, he wouldn’t have an excess of trust that all those angry townspeople would believe him just because he was innocent.
“How did John King find you?”
“Someone wrote a letter to the sheriff in Dodge City, describing and naming me. King said he had guessed years ago that Ward Cantrell was really Peter Van Vleet…He had asked the sheriff to keep an ear open for word of me.”
“Tim…”
“What?” Ward asked, frowning.
“Tim may have been the one…”
Ward’s lips tightened. “Could be. We’ll never know.” He was silent a moment. “I’m glad this worked out for Doug and Dusty and the rest of the men who agreed to help me. Stanton was so pleased he pardoned all of us.” Leslie murmured her agreement, and they fell silent.
Sounds filtered into her consciousness. Two birds were arguing back and forth in short, raucous spurts of sound. She heard voices outside, in the garden. A horse whinnied and another answered. A dog barked.
“Cantrell?”
“Yeah?” Did she detect wariness in his reply?
“I love you.” Her voice sounded taut, strangled, not like her. He held her away from him and saw the tears streaming down her lovely cheeks. Her eyes were dark, the pupils dilated, welling with new tears.
“Leslie, Jesus…” He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly, feeling hers and his own pain keenly. She sobbed against his shoulder, her arms moving up to cling around his neck. “Leslie, love, please don’t cry…Hey, I can’t stand it when you cry…I love you. Don’t cry…Everything is going to work out.”
She was trembling uncontrollably. “I was so mean to you! You were so brave…You could have been killed. You could have died.”
“It’s all right now. Hush. I love you.”
“I never trusted you. I was going to let him shoot you…I almost did…”
“But you didn’t. When it mattered, you came through for me.”
She kissed him softly, breathing him in.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “We’ll find some way for you to make this up to me.”
“Ohhh! You are incorrigible. Now that I know your type…” she began threateningly.
“It won’t help. I trick you every time.”
She laughed, her tears forgotten. “I might get smarter as I get older.”
“Lord, I hope not,” he growled ruefully.
“But then I would have to, wouldn’t I?”
Laughing, he cut her off with the only weapon he had, kissing her into forgetfulness. He undressed her and came into her slowly, groaning her name.
“Leslie…I love you so…”
She held him close, reveling in the sensations of love: his husky voice murmuring love words, his body dissolving into hers, her bones melting into fiery liquid. She couldn’t remember hating him, only loving him. And she would do it all again for him. For this.
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