“But you’ll be back.”
“I’ll try to come back.”
Her mouth creased in a wonderful smile. “Then you’ll stay?”
Kane swallowed hard. “For a while.”
She studied his face, the smile disappearing. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
Kane shrugged. “A lot of things can happen. Pictures of my face are all over the place, and it’s too damned distinctive.”
Her eyes looked puzzled, and he knew she hadn’t accepted the explanation. “If I know your uncle,” he said, “Andy will have our horses saddled and ready.”
“Is that it?” she asked with sudden insight. “Did Uncle Nat say anything about me? He isn’t forcing you …?” Her voice trailed off as a stricken look permeated her eyes.
“No one forces me to do anything,” Kane said. Which was a lie. Everyone seemed to be forcing him to do something, all of which went against every instinct he had. But for once he was glad he had lied. Her eyes cleared slightly, only a small spark of doubt remaining.
He wanted to lean over and touch her, to wipe away that doubt, to bring the mischief back into her eyes. He had just started to reach out his hand when Robin bounded back in the room, the hawk on his wrist.
“See,” he said. “I’ve already trained him to sit on my wrist. He eats from my fist. He’ll be able to fly in no time.”
“And go back home to the cliffs,” Kane said.
Robin nodded eagerly. He had transferred his desire from keeping the bird to teaching it to fly and hunt. He had a new purpose now, and Kane realized that at least part of it stemmed from a wish to please Kane. The other part—the best part—was finally having a goal of his own.
His eyes met Nicky’s, and she smiled. He remembered her saying how she had raised Robin almost by herself. He knew how worried she’d been about his attraction to gunfighters.
“Let’s go,” he said, unable to meet her eyes any longer, and the three of them walked over to the stable, where Andy had two horses saddled. Kane quickly saddled his own gray. Only once did the blacksmith glance toward Kane, and it was a worried look. Kane knew in his bones that the blacksmith smelled trouble.
The three of them trotted out of the stable, Nicky carrying a basket of food. Robin and his horse exuberantly moved ahead, as Kane and Nicky rode more leisurely.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for giving him the hawk. I haven’t seen him so interested in anything since he lost our dog.”
“He’s a natural with animals,” Kane said. “He would make a good horse doctor.”
“If I could get him away from this valley,” Nicky said wistfully, and he knew then what she’d hinted at but never said: She, too, wanted to leave Sanctuary.
Her face suddenly flushed, and he knew she was reminded that he’d just said that he’d decided to stay. Once again, pain drove through him. She had been willing to stay for him, to give up whatever dreams she’d had of leaving. He made a vow to himself then. No matter what happened to him, he would make sure Robin and Nicky did leave. He still had people back in Texas who owed him, and he would do something he’d never done before: call in a debt.
But the day was too fine to worry. The sun was bright and the sky too blue to describe. They stopped at what Kane now considered Nicky’s hill. He watched Robin slide down from his horse, the young hawk still on his arm. For the next hour, Kane worked with Robin as they patiently tried to teach the hawk to take short jumps, moving a piece of meat farther away each time. One foot, two feet. It needed to gain strength and confidence before it could fly.
Kane turned around frequently and looked at Nicky. She seemed very content sitting and watching. The sun sent shimmers of gold through the light brown hair and a warm breeze ruffled it like so many fingers. Even in the shirt and trousers, she looked incredibly feminine. And desirable.
When the hawk tired, Robin put the bird on a small branch that served as a perch, and the three of them opened the package of food Juanita had prepared. Bread and cheese and chicken, and a bottle of very fine wine. Nat Thompson was reinforcing his offer, making sure that Kane knew exactly what Sanctuary had to offer. The wine might as well have been poison.
But Kane kept his voice light as he and Robin discussed the hawk and the next steps in its training. Kane promised to help fashion a lure. When the hawk was strong enough, Robin would throw the lure and hope the hawk would go after it.
Despite all his worry, Kane enjoyed the day. It was one of the few really pleasant days he’d had since before the war. He enjoyed Robin and was warmed by Nicky’s presence. For a few hours, he allowed himself to forget everything else.
It was only when they started to leave that he thought about how few the hours had been, how few days he had left with her. When would Sanctuary’s guide return? Three days? Four? And then he would leave for Gooden and try to make the deal with Masters. If he couldn’t convince Masters to give him more time, he wasn’t sure whether Masters would allow him to return. And if he was allowed to come back, exactly what he would do?
When he helped Nicky into the saddle, she looked down at him. “Thank you for a wonderful day.”
It had been a wonderful day. He only hoped that she could remember it this way.
Kane started losing at the poker table that night. He didn’t try to lose. His luck just seemed to ebb away.
Hildebrand was sitting at the table. So were Curry and Parker. And one other man he hadn’t met yet.
“Been busy, I noticed,” Hildebrand said.
“Yeah,” Curry echoed, a sneer on his lips. “We keep seeing you with Thompson’s niece. How do you manage that?”
Kane shrugged. “Right place at the right time.”
“When you planning to leave?” Hildebrand asked.
“I thought no one asked questions here,” Kane said as he dealt a new hand.
Hildebrand chortled. “No need to answer. I was just wondering about that little job I mentioned.”
“You’ll have to find someone else,” Kane said. “I have other business.”
“Couldn’t have anything to do with Sanctuary?”
Kane stared at him with unblinking eyes. In a minute, the man’s own gaze fell. “Just asking.”
“It’s your bet,” Kane said.
The game went on, but Kane felt everyone’s eyes on him, not only at the table but throughout the saloon. He was losing, and badly, and he hated that. He always hated to lose, but he particularly hated losing to Hildebrand and his friends. By the end of the night, he was down five hundred dollars. His only satisfaction was that he still had fifteen hundred he’d won in earlier games, and the stake had come from Marshal Masters. He hoped the son of a bitch was wondering where in the hell his money was. He hoped like hell Masters was worried sick his pet dog wouldn’t return home.
Kane lost the next two hands and called it a night.
Gooden, Texas
Ben Masters ran a comb through his hair and put on the leather vest. Mary May said she would be free tonight. He’d asked about Sunday—tomorrow—but the brightness had left her eyes and she’d looked away as she shook her head. Later, someone told him she always disappeared on Sunday. A man? He hadn’t liked the jealous resentment that explanation birthed. She was a saloon woman. Why should he care?
He found his hat, jammed it on his head, and left for the Blazing Star, trying not to wonder what he wanted most: Mary May or information.
Mary May tried to concentrate on listening to the cow-poke next to her. But her mind was like a pit of hot coals. Whenever she leapfrogged one, she landed on another.
The note from Mrs. Culworthy was burning straight through her dress. The woman could no longer take care of Sarah Ann. She was leaving for Boston at the end of the month to care for her ill brother.
Mary May didn’t know what to do. It had taken a long time to find someone she could trust to take care of her daughter. Mrs. Culworthy was one of very few “good” women who would agree to take the child of a fallen woman.
And she did want Sarah Ann raised to be respectable.
She was also determined that her little girl would never be sent to an orphanage, as she herself had been. Mary May figured that if she hadn’t been so starved for love, she might not have run away with Ian Hamilton. She might have seen past the handsome face and pretentions to the weak character behind them.
Sarah Ann was the light of Mary May’s life, the one pure thing that made her life mean something. She would have loved having her daughter live with her, but it simply wasn’t possible. She couldn’t raise the child in the back of a saloon, and she had no other occupation.
What to do? She would go to Cove Springs on Sunday as she always did. Perhaps Mrs. Culworthy would have some suggestions. She would miss seeing Ben, but nothing was more important than Sarah Ann. Nothing.
Her mind was still jumping between her daughter and Ben when he sauntered in with a deceptively lazy smile on his lips. He was anything but lazy, particularly in bed. She only wished she knew more about him, that he talked more. Most men couldn’t stop talking, but she had to pry every word out of Ben Smith.
She smiled at him and was trying to figure out how she could leave the man who had just bought her a drink when she saw another familiar face—that of the thin, dangerous-looking man who had been asking about Calico. That man’s attention had also gone right to Ben, searching his features as if they were familiar to him. She remembered the ugly stranger from months ago, when he and his brother had been looking for someone to guide them to Sanctuary. Yancy, that was it. She remembered the name, the reputation. Where was the other one?
She didn’t like the way he was looking at Ben. She didn’t like it at all.
She almost gulped her drink, thanked the cowboy who had bought it with a few tactful words and a reminder that her job required her to move around. She gave a sign to the bartender for another drink and walked over to Ben’s table. “Want company, cowboy?”
Ben looked a little surprised. “If you’re it,” he said, a slow smile forming in his eyes. She had not thought him particularly handsome the first time he’d walked into the Blazing Star. He’d been, in fact, rather ordinary-looking, with light brown hair and blue eyes. The only distinguishing feature had been a catlike alertness.
She sat down, waited until the bartender brought them both a drink, and then leaned over. “A man’s been studying you ever since you walked in. He was looking at you yesterday, too.”
Ben’s eyes didn’t flicker. “What does he look like?”
“He’s over in the corner: thin, ugly.”
Ben nodded, but his eyes didn’t seem to move. Mary May was becoming more and more suspicious that he was a lawman. She had to wonder what he would do if he knew she was connected, even in a small way, to Sanctuary. She could go to prison, and then what would happen to Sarah Ann?
He was watching her, and suddenly she had the strange feeling he knew every thought in her head.
They hadn’t discussed Sanctuary since that one time when he’d asked about Calico and said that he had a friend in Sanctuary. It was as if they both had silently agreed not to mention the place again.
She was worried, though. Worried about Yancy, whom she knew was a gunfighter with a fearsome reputation. Ben Smith looked like he could take care of himself, but Yancy had the look of a backshooter.
“Do you know who he is?” Ben asked.
“Don’t you?” she retorted. He would if he was who she thought he was. She hated the game. Neither wanted to admit how much instinct they had about the other.
He shook his head negatively.
“John Yancy,” she said. “And he’s mean as a devil.”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know the man except by reputation.”
“He looks like he knows you. Be careful.”
“I think he’s just looking at you,” Ben said. “And mad as hell that it’s me with you.” He hadn’t moved his head one bit, yet somehow he had taken note, catalogued and discarded the threat.
“No,” she said sharply, sharper than she intended. “He’s seen you before. He just doesn’t know where. I’ve seen that look before.”
“You’re imagining things,” Ben said. “I’ll miss you Sunday.”
She didn’t like the way he’d changed the subject and she knew he didn’t believe what he’d said for a minute. There was a slight awareness in his body movement, like a wild stallion who sniffed danger.
She bit her lip. “Me too, but I have to make a little trip.”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, and Mary May felt unexpected pain. She’d been in control of her life for a long time, choosing the men and choosing the times, but she was losing that control. She wanted to be with Ben Smith. She wanted to be with him now, tonight, Sunday. She didn’t think beyond that. She wasn’t the kind of woman a man married, not any longer.
Suddenly, she didn’t want him to think there was another man. She wanted him to think well of her, and that hadn’t been important for a long time.
“I’m going to see my daughter,” she said, one of her hands clawing into a fist in her lap. She waited for him to laugh.
He didn’t. His light blue eyes almost smiled. “Is she as pretty as you?”
“I hope not,” she said. “All it ever got me is trouble.”
He ignored that comment. “Where is she?”
“A little town twenty miles from here.”
“How old is she?” He seemed curiously intense.
“Three,” Mary May said, and she heard the softening in her own voice. She’d never told anyone about Sarah Ann before, not here in the saloon. She’d been afraid they would use it in some way. When she’d discovered she was pregnant two weeks after her husband died, the owner of the Blazing Star had provided funds for her to go away until the baby was born. She’d returned to repay him, then stayed. But neither of them had ever told anyone about Sarah Ann. That was her own secret, her own treasure.
Why was she telling this man?
“Can I go with you?” His question was so unexpected she was stunned for a moment.
It was a long ride, more than twenty miles each way. She usually left at daybreak on horseback because a buggy would take too long. It was a killing ride for both her and her horse.
She looked at Ben Smith from under her lashes, trying to understand him. She didn’t, at all. He seemed to be waiting for something, somebody, yet he was willing to spend an entire day on horseback.
“If you wish,” she said. “It’s a long ride.”
A shadow crossed his face for a moment, then disappeared. “When do you want to leave?”
“At daybreak,” she said, then catching the saloon owner’s signal, she stood. She gave Ben one last, long look, and turned away.
That had been a damn fool thing to do, Ben told himself as he finished his second drink by himself. The words had popped out of his mouth before he could stop them. There had been something so wistful in her face. And sad. Totally unlike the smart-talking, laughing woman he had come to like.
He tried to justify that impulse: Maybe she would talk more about Sanctuary. But then his conscience stepped in: What if Kane O’Brien came looking for him? Hell, he’d been waiting nearly six weeks now. One day wouldn’t matter.
Chapter Fourteen
Time seemed to rush by like a flock of geese heading south for the winter.
Nicky watched just such a flock as the sun rose in the eastern sky. It was early, way early, for geese to be heading south, and she wondered whether their migration meant an early winter. She had hoped Kane would join her this morning, but he hadn’t. Not this morning nor any of the others. Six now since the night they’d made love.
She knew he was avoiding her. She also knew he would be leaving tomorrow. Her uncle had said he’d finally agreed to stay at Sanctuary after he took care of some personal business. The guide, Calico, had returned the previous night with a new guest. He would need a day’s rest, and then be ready for the return trip.
Her uncle
was sure that Kane would be coming back. Nicky wasn’t so sure. For one thing, the whole state of Texas was after him. Besides that, he seemed to be hiding something. There was a part of him she could never quite reach; it scared her, that secretive man inside the facade.
She had watched him with Robin. Even his smile held secrets. It never seemed heartfelt, though she didn’t think it deliberately false. There was an emptiness about him, a loneliness that no one else seemed to see. Her uncle was pleased—no, more than pleased. He seemed happier about the prospect of Kane O’Brien joining him than he had been about anything or anyone in a number of years. And Robin was tagging along with Kane at every opportunity.
She wondered why they didn’t see what she did: the despair. Why? What haunted him? The question ate at her.
Though they were seldom alone now, she saw him often, several times a day, particularly now that her uncle invited him to supper every night. Kane spent every afternoon with Robin and the hawk. Sometimes she would go with them, but yesterday she’d declined. She couldn’t stand being so close to him, being touched by him as he helped her on and off a saddle, and feeling him draw back.
Every day—every moment—she felt him inching further and further away.
Ironically, her feelings for him grew each day. She tried not to love him, but she couldn’t keep her pulse from racing nor her heart from tumbling every time she saw him. She loved watching him with Robin in particular. He never talked down to her brother as so many of the guests did; instead he spurred Robin’s interest in animals, in the life around him. He never romanticized gunfighting or bragged about exploits. And to her everlasting shame, she had watched him after he left the house. He sometimes went to the saloon, sometimes to the hotel, sometimes to the livery, but she didn’t see him go to Rosita’s again.
When he went to the livery, he would ride out moments later, racing his horse like a bat out of hell.
Tonight, if he went, she was determined to go after him. It might be her last chance to see him alone, to feel his hands on her, to know the magic of his kiss. She’d thought she would have more time, but he would be gone tomorrow, and she had only a few hours left to convince him to come back. Not only for her sake, she told herself, but for her uncle’s and Robin’s as well.
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