His hot gaze slid over her chest and she folded her arms, unmoved by the playful action that always served as a precursor to such torrents of pleasure. He was up to something. Every instinct she possessed screamed with it.
“You don’t have to work with Quanto today.” He gripped her hip lightly.
She nodded once. “You said that already.” Her suspicious nature kicked in. “Oh, I have to work with Wyatt?” She knew he and Wyatt were friends and the men shared some kind of respect, but she didn’t think the other man cared for her overmuch. His tone was always brusque and, when he watched her, she got the sense he waited for her to make a mistake.
“No,” William shook his head slowly. “Not Wyatt.” His lashes dipped down, hiding the beautiful blue eyes from her briefly before they swept up and his gaze locked with hers.
Her heart tripped. “They want us to work together again?”
Another nod, but he didn’t hide his troubled expression.
“Don’t you want to work with me?” His reaction puzzled her. Curling his fingers against her side, he coaxed her back against him.
“I don’t mind working with you, but I’m not thrilled with why they want me to train you today.”
So far, neither Quanto nor Wyatt commented on the change in her relationship with William, at least not to her. She suspected that, if they disapproved, neither was related to her and thereby had no standing to object. Here, on the mountain so far removed from society it should only matter what she and William felt. “Why do they want you to train with me?”
“Not with you, darling.” A warning hid in the words. “They want me to train you today.”
“Oh.” Like her, William had come here to learn, but this was the first time she would work with him exclusively. “I don’t mind. Why you specifically?”
Conflict reflected in his eyes. “I can’t tell you. I want to tell you, but Quanto asked me not to. At least not immediately.”
Understanding swept through her. It didn’t matter why the others wanted him to keep it a secret; it bothered him that they had. Loving him even more for worrying, she kissed his jaw. “It will be fine. I trust you.”
His expression tensed at the reminder, the complete opposite effect than she’d attempted. Tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, he kissed her lightly and rolled out of bed. She feasted her gaze on the way his muscles rippled down his back and over the length of his hip to his rear. He dragged on his denim britches and left the buttons undone at the top while he retrieved his discarded shirt.
“Go ahead and get some more sleep. I’ll make a breakfast you can warm and then I have to do some chores at the barn. We’ll start a little later.” The distance unnerved her—the quiet wasn’t him and no smile kissed his eyes or curved his lips—as though he retreated right before her eyes.
“Hey,” she called him as he reached for the door. “I trust you remember?”
“Maybe today you shouldn’t.” With those cryptic words, he slipped out of her room and the door closed behind him. All traces of sleep vanished and hurt nibbled at her.
Why shouldn’t she trust him? What had they asked him to do?
Kid, Purgatory
“You don’t have to like it,” Quanto had told him. “But you might very well be the only one who can get through to her. She trusts you as she does not trust us.”
“And I can make her feel fear.” Kid hadn’t let the shaman’s statement blind him to the real reason behind their request.
“Kid,” Wyatt said from his position next to the door. Evelyn had gone to the bathhouse and despite the implicit invitation in her gaze, he’d been forced to sit and listen to their plan. “It’s not about hurting her. It’s never about hurting any one, but do you remember what I said about pain?”
“We learn from pain. Pain teaches us, it motivates.” His pain had definitely done that once he’d been able to wade out from the quagmire of too many emotions in his head. It was one thing to confront his own pain, to grapple it by the horns and wrestle it out, and another to ask him to inflict it on Evelyn. “She trusts me and you want me to abuse her trust.”
“No.” Quanto clenched his hand and the wrinkles in his face deepened as he leaned forward. His cool eyes had turned milkier in the months since Kid arrived, while the sharpness in them hadn’t diminished, he seemed frailer. “We want you to use your abilities to help tame hers. To help her confront what she refuses to see. You cannot tell me she isn’t suppressing pain and loss. She has yet to grieve, not in all the months she has been here. She circumvented it first by fleeing and focusing all of her energy on coming to the mountain. Once here, she has focused all of her efforts to training her gift to continue her pursuit of revenge.”
Wyatt tapped the table. “And now she’s losing herself in her feelings for you, continuing to bury that grief as deep as she can. You’ve had your gift attack you, you’ve run from your grief and tried to bury it—you can outrun it for a while, but sooner or later…”
“…it catches up.” Kid had finished the sentence for him. It didn’t matter that Kid had agreed with both of them, hearing Wyatt say it aloud had made it real. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he had struggled with the need to yell at them for even planting the idea in his mind. Evelyn’s quest for vengeance was far from abandoned. Though she had rarely discussed it, he’d sensed it in her and heard the undertone in the questions she asked. And despite sharing a bed for weeks, that which had driven her remained.
But she loved him. Her love was so damn beautiful, so clean—so fierce. If he did what they asked of him… “No,” he’d said. “We find another way.”
That conversation happened the week before. Yesterday, Kid spent the afternoon watching Evelyn ‘practice’ with Quanto. She’d been unaware of his presence, but the coolness he’d sensed in her worried him. It hadn’t been confidence. It was lack of any concern for her own safety, particularly when Quanto asked her conjure a bear—again.
The one she’d called had been enormous and it had been furious, rising up on its hind legs. Its roar raised all the hairs on Kid’s body and, for the barest moment, he’d felt the flicker inside Evelyn, a candle mark of fear. When Quanto told her to dismiss it, she’d choked.
When the great beast dropped to its four legs and charged them, Kid’s world tilted sideways. Then the bear flung away, bones snapping, and Wyatt stepped out. Kid wanted to weep with relief. Across the gulf, Evelyn’s sputtered excuses terrified him even more than the bear had and, when Kid’s gaze clashed with Wyatt’s, he’d nodded.
She controlled her reactions in everything, her rational mind a thing of utter beauty, but that same intelligence kept her from answering her more primal instincts in every area, save one.
Me.
Kid closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. His soul was in turmoil at what he planned to do. He’d made breakfast and left the house after telling both Quanto and Wyatt to stay away. Wyatt agreed, but would remain within earshot in case Evelyn’s gift spun out of control.
Leaving her soft and pleasured earlier that morning had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. When he heard her hum coming down the path toward him, he swallowed back his regrets. What he was about to do would hurt her, but if they were right, it would also ultimately help her and possibly save her life.
God help him if they were wrong, though, because he didn’t know if she’d be able to forgive him. Ever.
No amount of preparation could harden his heart against the warm smile lighting up her face as she followed the last curve in the path. They weren’t by the lake today or near the barn. Instead, Wyatt suggested the storehouses. The slant-roofed buildings occupied a hidden little valley a good fifteen-minute walk from Quanto’s house, buried behind a thick covering of trees. If one didn’t know where they were, they would be difficult to locate.
Evelyn didn’t slow until she faced him, her impudent look lit by a mischievous smile. “So, you’re training me far away from the house and any prying eyes?”
“All right.” She tilted her head. Severe plaits pulled her hair back from her face. He didn’t care for the braid, preferring the lush weight of her silky hair loose, freed so he could sink his fingers into it. Then again, this exercise meant he couldn’t touch her. She’d rolled up the sleeves of her button down shirt, as if it were too big for her deceptively delicate frame, and it took him a moment to recognize it as one of his. An odd tightness fisted his heart. The excess fabric of the top tucked into a worn pair of denim britches, likely Scarlett’s.
They’d brought Evelyn cloth from their supply run, but she didn’t know much about sewing and, while Kid could wield a needle, he knew less than nothing about making a dress. So the cloth sat and waited until they could find a dressmaker for her…
“William?” Hesitation marked her question. He’d been silent for too long.
“We need to work on a couple of things and I need to ask you some questions.” He licked his lips.
“All right. What do you need to know?” Her immediate compliance twisted the vise around his heart, but he held firm to the course…for now.
“Evelyn, I’m sorry but I need you to tell me about the day your father died.” He maintained vigilance on his shields. He’d thinned them out enough to take her emotional temperature, but dangerous spikes in her could trigger his shields to collapse so he had to walk a fine line.
The playfulness in her expression sobered and she glanced down at her boots. “Why do we have to talk about that? You were there when I told the story.”
“I was, but we’ve talked about me a great deal and we need to talk more about you. We need to talk about what happened.” I know I said you shouldn’t trust me, darling, but please do this. Let it out.
Guarded eyes lifted to stare at him and some of the color drained from her face. The hurt simmered deep beneath the surface, but she cut it off ruthlessly and it vanished as if it never existed. The stranglehold of her control terrified Kid. How much had she suppressed? How long before the stifled emotions burst from the containment of the box she’d packed it in and it overwhelmed her?
She cleared her throat and blew out a long breath. “It was winter and it was cold.” The nearly flat monotone, utterly un-Evelyn, rocked him. “The first day we arrived in Lawrence, a black man named Mr. Lewis came to my father for help. Daddy was a judge and we traveled through the territory to hear various cases on his circuit. Mr. Lewis had a note guaranteeing his freedom and, but the territory is not officially incorporated as a state yet and because of the Compromise of 1850, Mr. Lewis’ freedom was an actual question. Particularly because Ethan Harlow, the son of Mr. Lewis’ alleged owner, was on hand to contest Mr. Lewis’ claim—though his intention was clearly recapture and repatriation, not court settlement.”
The way she dispensed the utterly factual information in cool, rational tones amped up Kid’s concern. Her expression barely rippled and her eyes iced. She didn’t even look at him. Beckoning her along, he began to walk and she completed the chilling tale, hesitating only when she arrived at the part where the mob gathered outside the courthouse.
When her voice stumbled, he clenched his fists to keep from reaching out to her. Her lower lip trembled and then clamped tight. Dammit, Evelyn, let it out. If she started on her own, if she made even the glimmer of an attempt, he could chuck Wyatt and Quanto’s plan and hold her through the storm.
But he couldn’t stand idly by and do nothing. “Shh, breathe.”
She halted and he paused, hope burgeoning in him at her white-knuckled fists and watery eyes. Even as hope began to take flight, she forced out a hard breath, her tears evaporated, and her hands unclenched.
“The tea house owner’s son ushered me out into the street. He didn’t want the crowd to take out their disdain for Daddy’s decision on his mother’s shop. To her credit, she didn’t want me to be sent out alone to face the hostile mob.”
Anger kindled in Kid. If he ever got his hands on that tea shop owner’s son, he’d make damn sure he understood one never shoved a lady out the door to face anything alone. Coward. But he kept his expression as neutral as he could manage. “Did the crowd scare you?” He threw her a lifeline and prayed she’d grab it.
“I suppose it must have…” With those words, she sank his last hope. Divorcing herself utterly from the experience, she continued to recite the events up until the moment she found herself at the end of the alley. They resumed walking. Kid angled their path between the storehouse buildings, the illusion of the alleys not lost on him.
At the corner, he paused and she stopped next to him. Forgive me… Reaching over, he touched his hand to her shoulder and his shields wavered, but he’d already begun lowering them. The placid surface of her was so alien and unlike his Evelyn that his fear ratcheted up another notch. He buried his fear for her for now; he’d face it when this was done. Compartmentalizing his emotions was not a new idea for him. In fact, it turned out to be frighteningly simple after his years of experience.
She leaned into the contact and he found the grief, curled into a tight ball, crouched and hidden beneath the smooth surface. Does she even know it’s here? Or what she’s done?
“Do I need to tell you the rest?” Not even the monotone could disguise the plea in her question.
“No,” he soothed, easing his way toward her constricted grief. Heart breaking for her, he pulled away the latch like taking the cork out of a bottle, and braced himself for the storm. “Show me.”
The world shimmered and fear punched through his shields, shredding them. Grief and rage sprayed like shrapnel. It threatened to rock him back on his heels, to take him down in with the tidal force, but he locked his body against the rapids and refused to budge. It crashed against him, splintered, so he muted the backlash as it reached for her and tightened his grip on her shoulder.
Ahead of them, the world shimmered and five men surged into being. He saw it all—the rear of the court house, a man who looked enough like Evelyn that he had to be her father, another man stepping in front of him sporting a marshal’s star and while he couldn’t quite make out their shouts, he could read body language.
Evelyn trembled next to him, a mass of seething indecision. Did she dare go out? A woman’s presence might stymy the anger and give the men an excuse to back down, but she was her father’s daughter and, if their threatening postures were not grandstanding, they might use her to hurt him. She didn’t know what to do and her fear clawed her soul. She stuffed a hand against her mouth to stifle a scream. The crack of a gun, a single shot, exploded the silence. The marshal lunged forward and a second shot rent the air. The sound echoed so sharply, Kid couldn’t suppress a jerk of surprise.
Every sound around him muted and the world narrowed to a sharp focus. Evelyn’s father fell, blood blooming like a red flower against his chest. Rage—unforgiving, unrelenting, unmerciful rage—exploded from Evelyn and the sheer force of it took Kid to his knees as she collapsed. The biggest damn beast he’d ever seen lunged forward and streaked toward the men. It seized one of them, ripping the man nearly in half.
His screams turned the air jagged before gurgling into nothing. The other four opened fire, raining bullets down on the creature and it collapsed with a shuddering breath, one part of the bloodied, dead man still in its jaws. The four men looked at Evelyn. Since all four faced him, he tried to memorize their faces and it took everything in him not to lash out because, while they were ‘real’ in the sense that she’d given them life, they weren’t the ones who murdered her father. He fought to cling to reality, because Evelyn couldn’t. The men stared at her then fled.
Kid went cold. They’d seen her. He saw the recognition dawn in their expressions and the quick, fearful looks they shot the animal. They’d seen her.
They knew.
Every instinct in him went on alert. They knew what she’d done.
If they weren’t hunti
ng her now, they would be. Fighting through his instinct to protect, he looked at her. Tears streaked her face and her mouth hung open in a soundless scream. The grief and rage poured off her in a violent flood, bursting the banks and smashing everything in its path.
Wading through the torrent, he let it spill into him, draining it away from her and refusing to allow her to pull it back in and stuff into that box. The agony radiating from her heart threatened to eviscerate him, but he kept plowing forward and finally managed to wrench her around to face him. “I’m here,” he told her, locking gazes and, when she only stared blindly at him, he jerked her forward to kiss her.
Hard.
He pulled away the overwhelming force of her grief and rage and poured back in his affection, his need, and his strength. He buoyed her, dragged up from the depths until she could gasp for air and when she leaned away from him, he released her mouth but held her gaze—a gaze filled with torturous knowledge.
“I killed him,” she whispered and the tears fell to streak her cheeks. “Oh my God, I killed someone.”
She tried to pull away again, but he held onto her and kept her in his arms, wrapping her up and holding her as she sobbed. “Let it out,” he told her, not bothering to hold back the tears sliding down his own face. He couldn’t help, but weep for her. She’d been so damn strong, that she’d blocked this.
She’d blocked it and it would have killed her.
“Let it out,” he repeated. “I’m here.” Thank God, she held on. She held on and she cried.
ACT III
Chapter 21
Evelyn, The Mountain
Even the hot cup of tea couldn’t warm the cold frosting her system. She’d been in some kind of automatic state since William brought her back to the house. She hadn’t fought him when he carried her up to the room or when he held her for hours while she cried. The sobs shook her until she’d wrung every last tear out and she could think again—rationally review her actions and her choices. The men moved around, talking in quiet tones, preparing a meal, and William slid a plate of food in front of her.
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