High Mountain Drifter

by Jillian Hart

  "Over and done with. He's locked up in Milo's jail. You're safe."

  "My family is safe." Gratitude and something far more powerful surged through her, beating in her veins, filling her heart. Ernest was caught. In jail. He couldn’t hurt anyone else, not ever again and she was free of him. Free! She felt ready to burst with relief and elation, felt ready to jump to the moon and back all in one leap. She wanted to laugh, she wanted to dance a highland jig (and she wasn't even Scottish).

  And all because of Zane. She wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him tight--Hold on there, she told herself. Hugging the man would be a grave mistake. She still hadn't forgotten the last time she'd touched him. Better to keep her hands firmly clasped together in front of her, fingers laced, so she wouldn't be tempted. She beamed up at him instead, unable to rein in her heart. "Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

  "No problem." He glanced down at his toes, blushed a little. "It's my job."

  "It's a great deal more than that. You sir, have my eternal gratitude." She pulled the door open wider. She really could hug him, kiss him, give him the deed to the house. He looked terribly cold standing there, frozen and snowy, exhaustion lining his handsome face. He had to be miserable, and her heart twisted in sympathy. "Come in and warm up. You look as though you could use a good thawing out."

  "Nope, don't want to trouble you." He reeled back a step, becoming nothing but shadow. "I was about to head over to the bunkhouse and grab an hour or two of sleep until breakfast."

  "That's ridiculous. You should eat first, then sleep. Honestly." Did the man always have to be so tough? "How can you sleep on an empty stomach? I've got the fire started. It won't take but a few minutes to fix you a meal. C'mon, you're letting in all the cold. Hurry up."

  "I suppose I can stay." He glanced around, passed through the threshold. "There's just the two of us, right?"

  He was shy, she realized, not knowing why that touched her.

  "For now," she said, taking a few more precise steps back, determined to keep proper distance between them. Maybe that would help cool her feelings. "If we're quiet and don't wake them, my sisters will sleep until sunrise."

  "We got a little time, then." Zane took off his hat, which looked frozen stiff. Peeled off his gloves and tried undoing his buttons, but they were too iced over. "Think I need to thaw some first."

  "Here, the fire is putting out some heat." She tossed two small logs into the oven and gestured for him to take her place. "You look like you were snowed on."

  "First rained on and then iced on, before the snow." Ruefully, he almost grinned again. That suggestion of a quirk in the corners of his mouth was quite dashing.

  If only she could stop her heart from giving a pitter pat. Best to focus on the job at hand. Measuring out coffee, putting it on to boil, hunting down a fry pan, remembering how to make scrambled eggs (her mind was a little jittery). "I just can't believe you did it. In hardly any time at all. My aunt has had her hired hands combing the mountainside. The sheriff and his deputies were searching too."

  "I know what to look for, I've been doing this so long. After a while, you learn how men on the run think. They need the basics. Shelter, food, water. You learn how they try to hide their tracks and their presence."

  "How long have you been doing this?" She opened a crock and began counting out teaspoons of ground coffee.

  "Too long." He held out his bare hands to the heat radiating out the open oven door. Orange flames danced and licked, the heat scorched his hands. Least he wasn't frostbitten. "I started when I was twenty-three. Been doing it for ten years now."

  "That's a long time." She moved like grace, with the unconscious splendor of a dancer, settling the coffeepot onto the stove. "It must be something you like."

  "I don't know about that." Like had nothing to do with it. "More of an aptitude."

  "Did you do a lot of hunting when you were growing up?" Innocent, unaware of the kind of man she was alone with, she whirled away from him, her blue skirts swishing around her ankles. "I mean, when you weren't in the orphanage, but with your pa."

  Pa. Funny that mention of him should come up. Zane grimaced. That was sign enough to remember his place, not to get caught up in her hospitality and think there was something more in it. He cleared his throat. "I did learn to hunt from him. How to handle a gun, how to read tracks, how to move through the woods without making a sound."

  "Interesting." Her back was to him, measuring out ingredients. Maybe for pancakes. Her dark hair was down, shimmering in the light of the lamp she'd just lit, cascading down her slender back, drawing his gaze to the nip of her tiny waist, the span of her delicate shoulders. Everything about her was china doll dear, but she was unaware of it as she reached for a measuring cup and measured away. "The cowboys are good at tracking, really good from what I've heard, and they would lose the trail every time. Milo did too."

  "Milo is a good sheriff, and I've talked with some of the men guarding you. They're good at what they do too. Hunting a criminal is a different kind of tracking, that's all." Warmer now, he knelt down to add more wood to the fire. The greedy flames gobbled up the cedar the instant he placed it into the stove's belly.

  He considered saying more about his past. He wasn't one to lie, and withholding the truth was a sort of lie, but how would it make Verbena feel? He glanced over his shoulder, watched her zip across the kitchen, as sweetly as a songbird.

  "Have you ever thought about doing something else?" she asked in that friendly way of hers, just making conversation. She reached for the brass ring in the floor and gave it a tug. "Maybe something where you didn't have to work all night on a mountain in the snow."

  "I can't say that's the best part of my job." He stood up, spotted a pot holder on the counter and used it to close the stove door. "Working through the night without sleep isn't either."

  "You could be a lawman like Milo." She disappeared into the cellar below. "It seems to me like he puts in some long days, but he only has to spend nights up on a mountain in the snow once every now and then."

  "I've tried being a lawman." The reminder was like a knife in his chest. He pried the buttons loose on his newly thawed coat. "Didn't work."

  "Why not?" She rose back into sight, her rich blue gaze latching onto his, luminous with that caring way she looked at everyone. He had to remind himself of that. That caring he saw in those sapphire depths wasn't about him.

  Never had been, never would be. That was like a blade too, cutting deep. "Oh, I don't settle in one place well. I've got a wandering soul. I do better drifting from place to place."

  He shrugged out of his coat, swallowed hard, trying to hide that particular pain. If he kept moving, his past couldn’t catch up to him. He wouldn't have to catch up with himself.

  "Oh, you can't be tied down." She nodded as if it all made sense to her. "You're one of those free spirits."

  "I don't know about free, maybe restless." He grabbed the brass ring before she could and lowered the trap door for her. She smelled good, like ripe strawberries, like sunshine streaming through newly budding trees. A beat began thumping in his chest, a combination of his pulse kicking up at being so near to her--kissing close--and a wild wish thrashing its way alive.

  She sure was nice. The kind of sweet, kind, funny woman a man would give up anything to have. He'd give his life to protect hers. He was drawn to her, no doubt about that, and it was wrong. She was not for him. Never could be.

  That didn't stop him from feeling. Feeling. Huh, he thought, heading to hang up his coat. That was new.

  "See, I'm the opposite." She spread the bundle she carried on the counter--eggs, bacon, buttermilk. "I like to be settled."

  "Not surprised by that." He left his coat on a hook, stayed on this side of the kitchen, making sure a lot of distance was between them. Maybe that would help. "Women usually like to put down roots."

  "I lived in the same shanty all my life, until my parents passed away." She laid a strip of bacon out in a
fry pan, unaware of the picture she made. Silken strands of brown, red and gold curling around the porcelain curves of her face, the smile that stayed in the corners of her mouth when she spoke, domestic sweetness.

  If he had a kitchen, he'd want her in it. That was a fact he couldn’t deny.

  "Oh, the medical bills." She rolled her eyes, chatting away as if they were best friends, working around the bacon strips already in the pan to fit in one more slice. "All of us were sick. Iris had a very bad case, we almost lost her. Rose and I were the least sick, so we took care of everyone else, but there was medicine to buy and the doctor to pay. No one could work for a while, so there went what little savings we had and we plunged deep into debt."

  "I'm sorry for that." A strange thing was happening right behind his sternum. Like a flicker, more feelings came to life, sympathy for her, the desire to protect her, tenderness for her.

  "It was tough, we didn't know how we could make it through the grief." Apparently satisfied with her arranging of the bacon slices, she turned to the bowl on the counter and went back to measuring. "We couldn't hold onto the shanty. We were so far behind in our rent, we were evicted. So we went from boardinghouse to boardinghouse for the next few years, never staying long in one place. Until we landed in Mrs. O'Laughlin's place, and it was safe and clean. We liked living there, even if we were all squished into one room."

  "That's quite a story." He knew he shouldn't let himself be drawn in like this. He'd be smart to leave, just walk out the door, start walking in the frigid wintry air until his heart went cold again, lifeless, the way he liked it. Instead, he took a step forward, toward her. "Something tells me you've left a lot out."

  "Well, I worked as a seamstress, but I don't think you want to hear about my job." She flashed him a cute little grin, as if she knew good and well what he was asking about. Apparently she didn't want to share her hardships.

  He got that. Sharing very personal stories would only bring them closer. That wasn't what he wanted either--except that it was. He wanted to close the distance between them any way he could. He wanted to know about the good times and the bad that had made her who she was.

  But he did not have that right. A man like him, a woman like her. That was a recipe for disaster. Why couldn’t his heart understand that?

  "Here, coffee's ready." She circled around the counter, a practical ironware mug in hand. "If you decide you need sweetening up, the sugar bowl's on the table."

  "Black's fine." He could feel his mouth quirking up in the corners farther than it ever had. At least in recent memory. He took the cup, his fingers brushed her much smaller ones, and the impact rocked him like a lasso to the soul.

  Chapter Twelve

  What was happening to her? Verbena released her hold on the coffee cup, her skin tingling where they'd touched. Breathless, dizzy, she meant to move away from the man towering over her, but her feet refused to move. Maybe because she was riveted by him, by the tenderness unmistakable in his gray eyes, resonating in his deep voice.

  "Thanks," he said, but he didn't move away either. He reached the short distance to the table and set the mug down, his gaze never leaving hers. "I'm glad you're here in this house. You don't have to work anymore. You're taken care of here. You can set down those roots you want."

  "Right." She winced a little, at the reminder of how different they were. She was roots, he was freedom. She couldn't begin to explain why she was wishing. "Living here is like a dream. Or it will be now, because of you."

  "Glad I could help." He towered over her, dominating the room, dominating her senses, becoming everything. Invincible might and gentle tenderness. He reached out, shoved a bouncing curl out of her eyes. "Anytime you need help, you let me know. I'd cross the continent on foot, walking every step of the way, just to come help you."

  His words got to her, burrowed in deep. Her eyes stung. It mattered that he felt this too, that he cared. Even if it wasn't what she wanted and that it wasn't meant to last, caring mattered. Living with your heart. She'd almost forgotten that. She'd almost let Ernest take that from her. She blinked until her vision wasn't blurry anymore. "That's a lot of walking."

  "Luckily, I have two horses." The corners of his mouth edged upward. "So it was a figure of speech."

  "I knew that. Careful there, you almost really smiled."

  "I'll be more careful." He folded the lock of hair behind her ear, ran the pad of his thumb back along her jaw line, tracing it. His eyes darkened. "Being caught smiling could damage my reputation."

  "Right." She felt shivery and buoyant, as if her feet weren't touching the ground at all, as if gravity had lost all effect. "Because you're a big, bad bounty hunter."

  "You bet, I am." His thumb traced the curve of her chin, lingering there, stroking in slow, slow circles, feather light. His gaze pinned hers, holding her captive. She was powerless to move, her pulse tripping through her veins, both a little scared at feeling so connected to him and thrilled at the same time.

  He eased in, slanting slowly over her, giving her time to escape, to stop him, to voice her objections. The question in his gaze, the soft tenderness there, amazed her. She'd never seen anything like it. She'd never met any man like him and she cared, really cared. It was impossible to try and stop it. When he left town for good, she wanted to remember this moment. And his kiss.

  His lips slanted over hers in a tentative brush. Light, fleeting, and returning to claim. This was a kiss. She felt the caress of his mouth fitting to hers, the heat of him, the wish. His hands came up to cradle her face, framing it, making it more than a kiss.

  It was like the end of a fairy tale, the way happily-ever-after felt. Her toes curled, her fingers wrapped around his wrists, holding on, holding him in place, never wanting to let this end--this moment where her heart felt so full, just brimming full.

  As if he felt it too, he broke away with a gasp that was half groan, half regret and pulled her against his chest, folding his iron-strong arms around her. She clung to him, tears in her eyes, blown away. Nothing in her life had been as emotionally powerful. She could hear his heart thumping, matching the rhythm of her own.

  "Verbena?" Rose called, footsteps padding toward the upstairs landing. "Is that bacon I smell?"

  "The bacon." Yikes, she'd forgotten about it. It was probably on fire by now. Zane released his hold on her, stepped back and reached for his coffee cup, blushing.

  No kidding. She was blushing too.

  "Yes, this is bacon. I'm in shock, you actually started breakfast on your own." Rose bounding into view, buttoning her housecoat. She spotted the man in the kitchen and her jaw dropped. "Oh, Mr. Reed. I didn't know you were here."

  "Came to give you the good news." He sipped his coffee, his cheeks still pink. He squared his shoulders, like a man unaffected.

  She wasn't fooled. Feeling changed, feeling all twisted up inside, she skedaddled over to the stove and began flipping the bacon. Fortunately it hadn't burst into flames, it was only really, really crispy on one side.

  "You ladies are safer," he said as Rose flew down the rest of the stairs, hand on the banister. "Craddock is in jail. I'm going to eat, rest and gear up. Then I'm going on the hunt for the second man."

  "The accomplice." Rose hopped off the last step and into the kitchen, overjoyed. "That's wonderful, that's amazing, oh, you are our favorite guy. We love you. No wonder Verbena is cooking for you. I'll help. What you need, sir, is blueberry pancakes, not just plain pancakes."

  "Already planning on it," Verbena said, gesturing toward the bowl awaiting buttermilk and berries. Her heart stopped at the sight of the man, studying her over the rim of his cup. His kiss tingled like a brand on her lips. Unforgettable.

  As if he was thinking the same thing, he smiled at her over the top of his cup. Smiled. Fully, completely, one hundred percent.

  He took her breath away. He had dimples. Who knew?

  "I'll have to take breakfast to go," he said, draining his cup. "I don't have time to waste sitting down
for a meal. I need to get back on the job. Pronto."

  "I'll pack it up for you," she promised, smiling, elbowing her sister aside so she could be the one to finish mixing the pancakes for him. Her heart had never been so bright.

  * * *

  Magnolia McPhee stood at the big kitchen window, watching the big bounty hunter on his equally big horse, ride through the backyard out of sight. The sun was hiding behind thick gunmetal clouds, drizzling rain. It made the day dreary, but the kitchen cozy and cheerful. It was a day to celebrate. Ernest was in jail. Ha! Right where he belonged.

  "Poor Mr. Reed. We packed up a lot of food. Not just for him, but for at least six people, maybe more." Rose carried the platter loaded with blueberry pancakes to the round oak table in the breakfast nook. "I don't think he can eat all that, but he didn't protest. He looked a tad on the bashful side, which is interesting since he doesn't look like the bashful type."

  "I know, puzzling, right?" Magnolia shook her head, drew her attention away from the window and remembered she was holding the coffeepot. She just couldn't remember being this happy, not in ages. "Mr. Reed is awesome. To think we don't have to worry about Ernest anymore."

  "Not ever again. It's finally over." Daisy sighed with relief as she scooted scrambled eggs around in the skillet. "It's been a long road with that man. We've been through so much. It's almost hard to believe we've really reached the end."

  "There will probably be a trial." Iris plunked the last of the silverware around the table, fussing knives and forks and spoons into place. "But he's no longer free. He can't hurt us anymore. Especially you, Verbena."

  "Oh, I wasn't so worried about me." Verbena scooped up the pitcher of milk and whisked it over to the table. "I'm not scared of him anymore, or at least not the way he wants me to be. Maybe because I caught a glimpse of the real him. He's a bully and he's a coward. Not a real man at all."