by Maren Smith
Riding herd on stampeding cattle would have been easier than trying to rein in his wild-running lust. That Chin looked just as dazed did wonders for his masculine pride and Cullen couldn’t quite bite back the crooked smile that tickled at the corners of his mouth.
“I’ll get him laid, don’t worry,” he promised her, then teased, “I don’t suppose you have a sister back at that bawdy house of yours, do you?”
It wasn’t until well after nightfall that he finally figured out exactly what he’d said to make her eyes shutter the way they did. By then, he could have kicked his own ass for being that stupid.
From here on, he really ought to leave the joking to Garrett. He just wasn’t any good at it.
Chapter Eleven
Scooping water into her palms, Chin let it dribble out again over her discolored knee. It looked awful. Not just bruised now, but sliced in three places, the wound had been packed with a mixture of herbs that looked like dirt and stank like witch hazel. She wrinkled her nose. Her mother would be appalled. But then, her mother would have been appalled by a good many things she’d done these last few years. Looking back on it all now, she could barely stand to be in her own skin.
“Ready for a refill?” Garrett asked, coming out of his study. He came through the kitchen to remove a tin bucket of steaming water from the stovetop and replace it with another cooler one, before sidling up beside the tub to carefully pour the heated water in around her.
Tub… ha! What she was sitting in was little more than a tin bucket itself and, small as she was, she only managed it with her knees drawn up and hugged in tight. How the brothers bathed, she had no idea.
“How’s that feel?” Garrett asked, once half the hot water had been dispensed.
Chin nodded and scooped up another handful of water, dribbling it over her knee again. Back when this had first started, she’d been a little embarrassed about bathing in front of him. They had no modesty screen, but being as it was only the two of them, she supposed they hadn’t needed one until now. And anyway, Garrett only wandered through the kitchen now and again to check the water’s temperature and ask if she was ready for him to help her out again. She wasn’t. She hadn’t even washed her hair yet. She was just… sitting here, hugging her knees and occasionally picking at her wounds. She poked the tender scabs on her hand, wishing for the umpteenth time now that she had that little pouch of mint herbs currently languishing in the mud with everything else she owned.
“I’d leave that be, if I were you,” Garrett said, dipping his hand in the water to check the temperature near her feet. “If we have to ask the Indians back again, we’ll probably have to bribe them with something more valuable than a hog. Since you are the only thing we have that’s more valuable, well, unless you’re curious to know how a squaw lives, I suggest you let all that wacky medicine stuff do whatever it’s going to.”
“I’m going to get infected,” Chin grumbled, poking at her hand. It looked worse than her knee as far as the bruising went, but with more cuts—eighteen, in all. Her knuckles felt stiff when she flexed her fingers and yet, despite the “dirtiness” of the herbs, the punctures did look to be healing. A wrap in bah zhi lian-soaked bandages and a belly full of turtle broth would have healed her faster, she was sure, but penniless women on the run could hardly afford to be picky. The look Garrett gave her said as much, too.
“No, you were infected,” he said with an easy cheerfulness that didn’t seem forced, despite the steely glint creeping into his blue eyes. “Trust me, you are a helluva lot better off now and we both know who you can thank for that, don’t we? And yet, here we are and where is he?” Garrett shrugged, his smile unwavering as he answered his own question. Yet his eyes still stabbed at her, all that unspoken accusation hitting like a board stuck through with nails. “I don’t know what he said to piss you off and I really don’t care what you said to make him storm out the way he did, but my brother saved your life. He saved it when he pulled you out of the wash. He saved it again when he went after your stubborn ass. After, I might add, you stole his horse, set the rest of our horses to running loose, and destroyed a perfectly good and rather costly saddle. And when he found you hurt, what did he do? Why, he brought you home again, saving your life repeatedly over a period of days in which he barely slept because he was too worried you were going to die if he closed his eyes more than a second or two. But you know what, Chinny girl?” Hunkering down beside her, Garrett leveled that hard-eyed smile directly on her. “He didn’t just save your life; he risked his own. I could have lost my brother because of you. You may not care about that, oh but I do. I don’t rightly know what’s chasing you, but I know you’re scared and I am more than willing to stand at Cullen’s side between you and whatever’s dogging your trail. But I promise you this, Chen Chin, if what you do costs me my brother, the only one you’ll ever have to worry about chasing you after that… will be me. How’s that dog hunt for you?”
Unable to hold his stare, Chin dropped her gaze to her knees. She locked her teeth together when burst after microburst of frustration made her want to snap back and tell him exactly what was chasing her and why he could make all the veiled threats he wanted to. She had looked death in the eyes. She had been touched by it, tasted it, stayed one step ahead of it for so long that she was incapable of being afraid of anything as…as…as small as him! Yes, that was exactly what she’d tell him. She’d tell him he was small!
Except, she couldn’t make herself say it. Already the insult tasted like ash in her mouth, because he was right. He was justified in everything he’d said and not only was she wrong, but she was ashamed. It grew weighted in her chest. Like a lump of hard coal, impossible to breathe or swallow around. Unable even to speak, Chin nodded instead. “I understand.”
“Wonderful!” His eyes remained hard, but his smile broadened into a grin. It might even have been genuine. With Garrett it was hard to tell. “So glad we could have this little chat. Are you pruned enough, or would you like more hot water?”
“I’m fine,” she meant to say, but when she opened her mouth, what came out instead was, “I didn’t mean to shout at him. Seems all I’m capable of doing anymore are things I don’t mean to.”
For the first time all morning, that hard glint in the depths of his blue eyes softened. Still hunkered beside her, he folded his hands between his knees. He sighed through his nose. “I know it.” He studied her while she stared fixed at the loose herbs floating in the water around her. “So, what are you gonna do about it?”
“He wants me to stay,” she offered, not knowing why she bothered to say so out loud. It made her sound vulnerable, and she hated that. She hated that she felt that way even more.
Garrett nodded. “I know it. And for the record, I’m not opposed. In the few days you’ve been here, he’s smiled twice. I ain’t gonna tell you how long it’s been since he’s had cause to be happy, but none of that makes no never mind if you don’t like him back.”
Apart from a mountain of regret, Chin didn’t know what she felt. No, that wasn’t true. She felt tired. Tired of running; tired of being scared. She wanted to say no one had done for her the kind of kindness that Cullen (and even Garrett) had, but that wasn’t exactly true. Madame Jewel had been kind. So had Nettie, Gabe and the other gems, not that she had trusted it. She hadn’t trusted anything in so long, she felt hollow now because of it. She was tired of being alone and scared, and tired. She was tired of looking over her shoulder, of jumping at every unknown sound in the dark at night. Of laying with legs splayed between the sweating, humping bodies of men whose faces she never looked at and didn’t want to remember.
“He doesn’t know anything about me,” she said, staring hard at a dark spot on the side of the tub.
“You don’t know anything about him,” Garrett countered. “That’s what courtings for and long Sunday suppers full of laughing, talking and fried chicken. And even longer winter nights, cuddled up together, sharing a quilt and body heat. And I do mean the two
of you. I wake up once more gettin’ spooned by him, and either he’s sleeping on the floor from here on or one of us is getting gelded. Just saying.”
Chin laughed, though honestly, she felt more like crying. “But what if I stay—”
“And it doesn’t work?” he finished for her. He shrugged. “Then you’ll know you gave it a shot, but it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe what you ought to be wondering is what if you leave and spend the rest of your life never knowing if both your budding affections might not have grown into something stronger, if only you’d let it.”
A long lock of straight black hair fell over her shoulder, brushing her cheek as it slipped down to dip in the water. Without thinking, Chin tucked it back behind her ear. It was hard not to feel Cullen’s touch when she did that. Her skin wanted to make it his. She hugged her knees tighter, hiding from Garrett how her nipples stiffened into peaks, begging for kisses she shouldn’t have wanted, didn’t deserve, and had never felt from Cullen anyway.
Garrett was right about one thing, though: his brother was a decent man. What’s more, when she looked around this place, she could almost see herself here. Cooking dinners at that stove, sitting at the table with them, sweeping the floor… Sleeping in Cullen’s bed, beside him… Not sleeping in Cullen’s bed, beneath him. With his hands touching her face and combing through her hair. The heat of his belly pressed to hers. The solid muscle of his thighs braced between hers as his hips moved in cadence with hers.
His was the only face she could imagine herself ever wanting to look at, hovered over her in the darkness.
But fast on the heels of that fantasy came a less pleasant one. One of her standing on the front porch, watching Cullen and Garrett as they stepped out to meet Quan Ji, just before he cut them open with his sword. Like his father had done to hers.
If she left, maybe Garrett was right, maybe she would always wonder what might have been. But if she stayed, and Cullen died for it, what was she going to do then?
Her stomach churned, a sickly sensation that tasted like bile in the back of her throat. She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t. Never again.
* * * * *
He was such an idiot. Cullen urged his horse up the next hilly rise, so irritated with himself that he could hardly sit still in the saddle. He should have kept his mouth shut. If he had, who knew where that kiss could have ended up? Instead of clopping along on the back of Nico, maybe he’d right now be helping Chin in her bath. Soaping up her small, smooth back. Losing the soap in the water so he’d have no choice but to go fishing about for the slippery thing. Oh, he’d try to be a gentleman about it, but the devil in him couldn’t help imagining all the things he could have brushed up against in his quest to find it. The curve of her hip. The flush swell of her bottom. He shifted in his saddle to ease the pressure of his stiffening cock and his horse, already reading too much into his agitation, tried to turn for home.
Cullen steered the impatient stallion back toward the wash. He couldn’t see it yet, but he could hear it, and by that, mostly what he could hear were the chorus of frogs and crickets making ample use of the unexpected bounty of water. It was a cacophony of chirping and croaking that told him long before he crested the next grassy hill that finding a crossing place over the flood would be difficult, if not still impossible. The thick mud that he’d pulled Chin out of had settled, leaving what anyone unfamiliar with the topography might see as a river—twenty feet across at its narrowest, but only a foot or two lower than the plateau of either bank. If forced to guess, it was probably deeper than he was tall and still so swift in current that nothing short of suicidal tendencies would have him risking a swim across. Especially considering the debris field that lined both banks at least three feet wide. Everywhere he looked, he saw sticks, tree branches, the massive trunks of trees felled from further up in the mountains, and cactus bumps poking out of thick blankets of dead grass that also hid god only knew what else underneath.
No. No way was he going to risk crossing here, but from past floods he knew if he followed the wash about six miles, the relatively narrow trench became a wide, flat plateau. The water there would be less than two feet and more like a lake than a stream. If he avoided the mouth of the wash, there would be little current and he might cross there with much less risk.
Tomorrow, Cullen decided, frowning at the swift running water. Tomorrow he would go to Culpepper and talk to the bank.
Drawing the reins through his gloved hands, Cullen was about to turn Nico for home when he heard a distant shout. Shifting in his saddle, he stared out over the wash, one hand automatically finding the grip of his pistol when he saw the riders spurring their horses in his direction. They couldn’t cross here any more than he could, but the speed at which they were coming toward him, he wasn’t sure if they knew the dangerous wash was there. He threw up a warning hand, but even as he did so, the lead rider drew his horse up along the far grassy edge. His men followed suit, with only one pacing so recklessly near the bank’s sharp drop that Cullen, hand still on his gun, called out, “Watch that edge, friend!”
But the man, an Asian like Chin but dressed in a fine grey suit that probably cost more than all of Cullen’s clothes put together, had already noticed and was nudging his horse to retreat.
“Who are you?” the lead rider shouted across the water.
“Who are you?” Cullen shot back, fingers flexing on the revolver’s grip.
Taking his hat off, the leader swiped his coat sleeve across his forehead before shifting his coat far enough aside to expose the silvery glint of a lawman’s badge. “Jeb Justice, Sheriff out of Culpepper Cove. This here is Gabe Vasquez, part owner at the Red Petticoat.” He gestured to the dark-skinned man on the horse nearest to his.
Cullen locked on him. Gabe: the source of Chin’s nightmares, faceless no longer. Cullen burned every discernable feature of the Mexican man’s face into his memory.
“Is this Masterson property we’re on?” the sheriff asked.
“Drake,” Cullen corrected. It took every ounce of will he had to force his gaze back to the sheriff’s. “Masterson’s two miles further north.”
Turning in his saddle, the sheriff and Gabe conferred. What they said, Cullen was too far away to hear, but he could tell by the way Gabe kept shifting in his saddle that he was itching to do something. He nodded once, and Sheriff Justice turned back to him.
“We’re searching for a woman,” he called out. “A China girl, went missing a couple nights back. Now, we don’t think it was foul play, but she’s got lots of folk worried about her.”
Gabe looked at him. Cullen stared back.
“Have you seen her?” Jeb waved his hand in a kind of fluttering shrug before it slapped down against his travel-dusty thigh. “She maybe pass this way?”
Cullen indicated to the wash. “Nobody’s passing this way. Not unless she walks on water.”
It wasn’t a lie. Not exactly. It was just an avoidance of the whole truth, not that Cullen had to work very hard at salving his non-protesting conscience.
The well-dressed Oriental turned to say something to two other foreigners, albeit men dressed in black. All three separated from the main group of riders to trail along the wash’s edge, staring intently over at his side.
“Maybe she passed through a few days back?” the sheriff continued. “It was the first night of the storm that she disappeared. Maybe you saw her then?”
“Sheriff,” Cullen said, keeping one eye on the Orientals and trying his best not to sound irritated. “This wash started flooding the minute it started raining in the mountains, and that was long before the storm hit us here.” The first Oriental pointed across the water and Cullen felt his temper fray. “You try crossing,” he snapped at them, “and you’re gonna die! Now, that’s a fact.”
Both Sheriff Justice and Gabe swiveled around far enough to follow Cullen’s frown. They looked across the wash to where the man was pointing. When the whole group of riders turned to follow their lead, Cullen shifted his
frowning attention. What were they looking at? All he saw were trees, brush, and thick mats of dead and rotting grass tangled among the cactus and sticks. The foreigner kept pointing, seemingly indicating a fallen tree—one of half a dozen wedged into the muddy back, stuck fast despite the constant pressure of the current rushing against and over it. That alone should have shown them how dangerous it was to cross. Why were they still staring?
“What is that?” The sheriff shielded his eyes from the sun with both hands.
“It’s hers,” Gabe finally answered. That Cullen could hear him at all as softly as he’d said it was only half as shocking as what he actually said.
Cullen got off his horse. He approached the partially submerged trunk, searching but seeing nothing but water, mud and flood debris.
“There,” the sheriff directed. “Tangled in the root ball.”
Damn. Was this the same tree he’d plucked Chin off of? The similarities in the length and jutting position of each broken branch tickled at the back of Cullen’s memory. Trusting Nico to stay put, he walked along the bank, but the tree was jutting out at such an angle that he simply could not see anything hidden in the jumble of twisted, broken roots.
One cautious step at a time, he lowered himself down the steep embankment, sliding in the mud and slipping the last eight inches or so until his boots hit the unyielding tree trunk. This was the part that was submerged, only by about an inch but it was enough for him to feel the strength of the water rushing over his boots.
“Careful,” Gabe called.
“Yeah, fuck you,” Cullen muttered under his breath. Finding his balance and the best footing possible, he crept down the trunk, finding better traction once he was out of the water and onto dryer portions of the tree. It took him eight feet out toward the center of the wash, but even when he reached the tangle of broken roots, it wasn’t until he braced himself against securer handholds and leaned well out that he saw it—knotted folds of dark cloth sticking partially out of the water. Chin’s bundle. Her belongings.
