by Carol Finch
Maybe he should follow Ludy, who had ridden off an hour earlier to spend the night in Possum Grove, he mused as he lathered himself up with soap. Ludy had struck off to scratch an itch. For damn sure Nate’s itches were acting up, compliments of his frustrated fascination for Rachel, who treated him as if he had contracted the plague and should be cautiously avoided.
After paddling around in midstream to exercise his strained muscles, Nate came ashore to dress. He grabbed the new pistol he had purchased before leaving Crossville. Then he walked toward camp. He wasn’t surprised to see Doc propped up against a tree, guzzling a drink from a bottle of nostrum labeled Female Remedy. Specifically Adapted for Female Constitution. Whatever that meant.
“I’m so sorry, Margie,” Doc mumbled pitifully as he stared skyward. “I should’ve been there.”
“Come on, Doc.” Nate grabbed him by the scruff of his jacket and hauled him on to his wobbly legs.
“Leave me alone.” Doc nearly threw himself to the ground in his effort to wrest loose of Nate’s grasp.
Nate held him fast. “The storm is going to hit in about five minutes.” To confirm his prediction a blast of cold wind swept through the campsite and lightning streaked across the gloomy sky. “You’ll get struck and explode because of your high alcohol content.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Doc. “I’m in hell.”
“No, you aren’t. I’ve been there. This isn’t it.”
When Doc tried to take another sip, Nate snatched the bottle from his hand.
“Hey!”
“Get in the wagon,” Nate commanded sternly. He glanced this way and that. “Where’s Rachel?”
“Dunno. Haven’t seen her.”
“Couldn’t see her if you tried,” he said under his breath as he hustled Doc to the back of the wagon.
“Maybe she’s wandering around on foot in men’s clothes. Same as she was when I found her,” Doc slurred out.
Nate frowned curiously at that tidbit of information. “When was this?”
“Three or four weeks ago. Don’t recall for sure.”
Nate boosted Doc into the wagon. He tumbled against the pallet he had rolled up to save space. With an audible sigh, and a last call to the mysterious woman named Margie, Doc sagged into inebriated oblivion.
Nate glanced around, then bellowed, “Rachel!”
The howling wind drowned him out.
He pulled himself onto the seat to guide the horses and wagon down the grassy knoll that offered better protection from the wind. Leaving Doc to sleep off his most recent bout with his fifty-proof elixirs, Nate strode off to locate Rachel. Why he bothered he didn’t know. She had told him countless times that she could take care of herself. For the most part, she could—and he admired that about her.
A high-pitched shriek carried in the wind and put Nate on instant alert. He jogged toward the sound, greatly relieved that jarring his ribs wasn’t as painful as it had been the past few days. Another yelp caught his attention and he veered west to skirt the bushes along the clear-water stream. When he heard an inhuman snort and squeal, he lurched around to scan the underbrush.
There was a wild pig hereabouts but he had yet to see it.
“Rachel! Where are you?” he called out loudly.
“Be careful!” she called back. “The boar charged at me twice. Those tusks will rip skin from bone!”
The underbrush off to his right rustled and another grunting snort erupted. The last thing Nate needed was to go head-to-head with a vicious wild boar when he couldn’t move with his usual agility. He took off toward the sound of Rachel’s voice, then stumbled to a halt when he saw her standing waist-deep in the stream.
The sight of her silky flesh glistening with water droplets and her bare breasts exposed to his masculine gaze paralyzed him. She yelped in embarrassment, covered herself, then sank neck-deep. But the water was so clear that he could still see her all too well. He swore the titillating image of her lush body would be branded forever on his brain.
A man never forgot some things.
This was one of them.
“Watch out behind you!” Rachel yelled at him.
The thud of hooves and the angry snort put him into motion. Nate dashed into the water to avoid being attacked, but the boar charged after him. Before the vicious beast came too close, Nate grabbed his pistol. When the hoary brute lowered his tusks and charged forward, Nate was forced to shoot it. The boar’s stocky legs buckled and its head submerged in water. It lay there, unmoving in knee-deep water.
“I thought I was going to have to do the same thing,” Rachel said from behind him. “I tried to come ashore to get my pistol but he came after me. He didn’t back off until I was in the water. Crazy as he was acting, I was afraid he had rabies.”
Nate wanted to look over his shoulder, but he forced himself to scan the area to locate Rachel’s clothing and pistol. When thunder boomed overhead, he reminded himself that being in the water when lightning struck could get a man killed quicker than a cantankerous-boar attack.
“We need to take cover.” He swerved around the dead boar to retrieve her clothing. Already raindrops splattered the water’s surface, sending out ripples in all directions.
“Promise me that you won’t turn around,” Rachel demanded as he strode toward her discarded garments.
“Why not? Turnabout is fair play. You’ve seen me naked.”
“Not on purpose. Besides, you’ve seen enough of me already,” she mumbled.
No, he hadn’t. He was afraid that the tempting glimpse he’d had earlier was going to drive him crazy. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d seen—and touched—every luscious inch of her shapely body.
Nate doubled at the waist to pick up her discarded clothes and weapon. Then he held them at arm’s length so she could walk up—naked—behind him to cover her shapely nude body and deprive him of the very thing he wanted to see most.
She dressed hurriedly in her breeches and white blouse. “Where’s Doc?”
“I stuffed him in the back of the wagon and moved it downhill to provide more protection…. Who is Margie?” he asked, staring straight ahead, although the man in him was shouting at him to take a peek.
“I don’t know. He mentions her name when he’s drinking heavily. I’ve asked him before but he’s closemouthed.”
“Sort of like you.”
“There, all dressed,” she declared, ignoring his remark.
Nate half turned to see the white blouse clinging enticingly to her wet skin. Rain splattered around them and her blouse became more transparent by the second. Desire hit him—hard—below the belt.
This is what visual torment feels like, he mused as he grabbed her hand and barreled through the underbrush to return to camp.
The sky opened up and they became drenched in less than a minute. Nate ducked reflexively when a lightning bolt struck a tree on the other side of the stream. A flash of light burst in front of his eyes and the loud boom shook the earth.
Dragging Rachel along behind him, Nate raced as fast as his injuries allowed to reach the wagon. The fierce wind whipped around them as they crawled beneath the wagon to wait out the storm.
“So much for a cleansing bath,” Rachel grumbled as she surveyed her mud-splattered clothing.
“And so much for a hot meal.” Nate inclined his wet head toward the smoke rising from the doused fire.
“That leaves canned beans and peaches. I’ll fetch them.”
Rachel crawled toward the back of the wagon, then pulled herself to her feet to rummage through the supplies. Sure enough, Doc had passed out. He’d sprawled among the bottles and satchels stacked in the wagon bed.
“Doc is oblivious to the storm,” she reported as she propped herself on her elbows beneath the wagon. “I swear, if he doesn’t stop drinking those cure-alls, he is going to kill the only good friend I have left.”
“You’ve got me,” Nate reminded her.
She didn’t change expression as she opened a can of
beans, then handed it to him.
Nate leaned over to thank her with a kiss. “The beans aren’t going to appease the hunger gnawing at me,” he murmured.
When he raised his head, she frowned disapprovingly.
“Nectar of the gods,” he insisted as he accepted the can of food.
“I’d call beans the staple of life, not the nectar of the gods,” she disagreed.
He stared steadily at her. “I was talking about you.” Then he leaned forward and kissed her again.
“This is a bad idea, Nate,” she murmured, shying away.
“It feels good to me. Not kissing you is impossible…”
Rachel’s resistance melted into a puddle when his sensuous lips skimmed ever so gently over her mouth. Damn it, this man tempted her but he possessed the power to hurt her—if she allowed him to get too close, if she allowed herself to care too much. Before long, she wouldn’t want him to leave—and she knew he was leaving soon. He was headed to the very last place on earth she wanted to go, too.
Her breath sighed out of her as his arm glided around her waist to draw her sensitized body familiarly against his. She hadn’t realized that she’d draped her arm over his shoulder until her fingers speared into his thick auburn hair.
“You’ve been driving me crazy for the better part of a week,” he said as he spread a row of moist kisses down her throat.
She didn’t tell him that she couldn’t get him off her mind. She didn’t dare arm him with that knowledge. Men always left, no matter how much women cared for them. Nate was no different. He was only interested in a moment of pleasurable diversion.
Even knowing that, suddenly Rachel didn’t care about what tomorrow held, as long as she could be with Nate tonight. He made her want things that she had never wanted before from a man.
The reckless thought made her arch wantonly toward him. When his hand cupped her breasts she didn’t protest, only enjoyed the sensations he aroused in her. He unbuttoned her blouse to brush his thumb over her beaded nipples and another jolt of pleasure sizzled through her. He looked into her eyes, holding her gaze while the back of his hand drifted from one aching crest to the other. She wondered if he could read the helpless surrender in her expression. He must have, she decided, because he smiled at her before he angled his head down to draw her nipple into his mouth and suckle her.
Rachel gasped as burning pleasure seared her body and scorched the very core of her being. She shivered with forbidden delight when he nipped playfully at her with his teeth. His hand was on the move again, drifting back and forth across her belly before it dipped beneath the waistband of her breeches.
She forgot to breathe when he touched her intimately. Desire and need, unlike anything she had ever experienced, cascaded over her, washing away every cautious inhibition she relied on when it came to the wiles of men. When Nate traced her damp flesh with his fingertips, then withdrew his hand to brush the evidence of her desire for him over her nipple, she moaned at the intimacy between them. Then, when he bent his head to taste the feminine essence he’d brushed over her breast, she trembled in maddening torment.
As if he hadn’t set her on fire enough already, he trailed his hand downward again to unfasten her breeches, granting himself free access to her body. He cupped her mound, rubbed his thumb against the sensitive nub between her legs and left her groaning in desperate need.
Rain poured off the wagon and rivulets of water trickled across the grass, but Rachel barely noticed because Nate’s erotic seduction was burning her alive. When he glided his finger inside her, she arched toward him in shameless abandon. Then he twisted away to skim his lips over her belly, while stroking her repeatedly, maddeningly.
“Nate—?” she whispered breathlessly as his warm lips drifted over her inner thigh, circling ever closer to where she burned the hottest, where she ached the most for him.
“I won’t hurt you. I promise,” he murmured against her sensitive flesh.
Yes, you will. You can promise me the moon, but you’ll leave me behind and I’ll be tormented by the memory of forbidden pleasure as long as I live, she thought.
Then suddenly she couldn’t think at all, didn’t care if there was a tomorrow or the day after. There was only tonight and the incredible sensations he summoned from her.
He flicked at her with his tongue and stroked her gently with his hands. Pleasure intensified with each erotic glide of his fingertip. Each intimate kiss made her want to scream his name and urge him to take away the wild ache that threatened to consume her. Sweet mercy! Rachel swore she couldn’t tolerate another second of the exotic torture. She was burning alive and Nate kept fanning the flame with his intimate kisses and caresses.
She gasped in astonishment when her body practically came apart at the seams. Unfamiliar spasms of indescribable pleasure ricocheted through her. Rachel clutched frantically at him, pulling him above her, feeling him hard and eager beneath the fabric of his breeches that separated them.
“I want you like hell blazing,” he growled against the curve of her neck. “But if you don’t want me, too, tell me now. In another minute I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop—”
A lightning bolt crackled above them and thunder boomed like a cannon. The horses, still hitched to the wagon, lunged forward, leaving them exposed to the downpour.
Rachel fumbled to fasten herself into her clothes as Nate rolled to his feet to reassure the jittery horses. She wondered if the roar of thunder was a sign from the Cheyenne gods, warning her to come to her senses before she passed the point of no return and lived to regret her recklessness—as her grandmother and mother had.
Despite the soaking rain, her body was still on fire. Rachel bounded to her feet to help Nate unfasten the harnesses, then tether the horses. When their arms collided while they worked hurriedly, Rachel glanced into his intense blue eyes, which reflected the flash of lightning that streaked across the sky.
“Rachel—”
She pressed her forefinger to his full lips to shush him, then shook her head. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. She was too vulnerable to him, too aroused by unprecedented feelings and sensations. No matter what he said, it would be wrong. She just wanted the moment to pass, even if the memory of the astonishing intimacy between them would remain with her until the end of time.
When Nate crawled beneath the wagon to wait out the storm, Rachel walked over to a tree and sank down. Knees drawn up to her chest, her arms encircling her legs, she closed her eyes and begged for sleep to take her away from the lingering sensations that hummed through her body. Nate had aroused her. He had pleasured her in ways she had never experienced, yet she was oddly dissatisfied, as if she had been deprived.
She wanted more, needed all he could offer. But if she shared her body with him completely she was afraid that she would want to keep him with her forever. Rachel was realistic enough to know that she had to keep moving while Nate settled in Dodge City.
“This is what ill-fated attraction feels like,” she muttered under her breath.
Forbidden. That described Nate Montgomery perfectly. There was one man on earth she wanted—and she couldn’t have him. The grim realization seemed to fit with the never-ending struggles that were her life.
“It rained,” Doc said the next morning when he thrust his tousled blond head from the back of the wagon to look around. “When did that happen?”
Rachel expelled a tired sigh. She hadn’t had much sleep and it made her cranky. Doc, on the other hand, had fallen into a stupor and slept through the storm.
Rising, she worked the kinks from her neck and back—the result of sleeping propped up against a tree trunk. She plucked at her wet clothing, then glanced around discreetly to locate Nate but he was nowhere to be seen.
After last night’s steamy tryst, she wasn’t sure how she would react when their eyes met. Nate knew her body better than she did. If he made one teasing remark…Well, she wasn’t sure what she’d say or do since she was feeling awkward and
embarrassed.
“Morning,” Nate said as he appeared from the bushes. He smiled at Rachel and his azure-blue eyes swept possessively over her, making her blush furiously. However, he didn’t say a word about her reckless abandon or behavior as if she were his midnight conquest. His respectful consideration made her want to hug the stuffing out of him.
Doc climbed down from the wagon, scrubbed his hands over his face, then squinted at his surroundings. “Since the firewood is wet, we’ll grab some hardtack and head to our next destination. We might even stay at the hotel in Possum Grove.”
While Nate ambled over to fetch the horses, Rachel grabbed dry clothing from the covered wagon. When she returned from changing clothes in the bushes, Nate approached her. She tensed, wondering if this was when he planned to taunt her about the passion that had blown up between them like last night’s storm. Again, his intense gaze roamed over her, knowing exactly what was beneath her breeches and blouse. Yet, he didn’t voice a humiliating comment.
“I went down to the creek earlier,” he said. “I removed the wild pig carcass from the water. If you want to bathe I’ll make sure Doc gives you time before we leave.”
“Thank you, but I’m fine,” she said as nonchalantly as she knew how. “That was considerate of you not to contaminate the water supply for the next travelers.”
He turned away, paused, then glanced over his shoulder at her. “One more thing, Rachel.”
There was always one more thing with Nate. “What’s that?”
“I wanted you so badly last night that I didn’t get much sleep. I’m not expecting my condition to improve during the day. If I become out of sorts that’ll be why. Just thought you needed to know that keeping my hands off you is taking all the noble self-restraint I have left.”
When he walked off, Rachel battled a yearning so intense that it frightened her. And very little frightened her these days…except for her ill-fated feelings for this blue-eyed, incredibly handsome ex-lawman.
Chapter Six
Adolph Turner swaggered into Grantham Boutique. He smiled pleasantly when the two women, who were talking to Jennifer Grantham, glanced at him. Mrs. Grantham inclined her blond head ever so slightly to acknowledge his presence.
