The Bounty Hunter's Heart

by Jillian Hart

  "Who is Brant and why is he after you?"

  He stayed silent, and his footstep that should have rung quietly against the floor boards was a whisper. What was this man, a master of silence and stealth, of unanswered questions and gentle of heart?

  "We will stay only as long as necessary. I'll be gone when the storm breaks." His words came out of the dark, as if the shadows themselves had spoken and not the man who was invisible to the eye and just as silent.

  What would happen then? Saydee padded around the dog who sat watching the man, panting relaxed, and big brown eyes full of adoration for the man. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in the chill radiating through the windows and doorways and padded to a stop in the archway to see if the man was real or just a myth, a made up idea of a legend.

  He seemed real enough as he knelt at his son's side, tugging up the blanket to the sleeping child's chin. The lamplight found the side of his lean face, accentuating the finely carved angle of his high cheekbones and the dark stubble on his jaw.

  "You never told me your name, stranger."

  "My name? It isn't important. I ought to be out of here by morning. The weather just has to cooperate." His shadowed eyes met hers, hard to read but uncompromising.

  Yes, the man was hard to read, but there was kindness in him too. Saydee had sensed it in his gaze when he'd held out her chair at the table, and she'd witnessed it in his butter-rum baritone when he'd been concerned about her fear of him. "Well, I can call you, Hey You, I suppose, if I have to call you something."

  "That will work, but take my word of advice and forget you ever saw me." His big hands fisted, hands that could fire a gun also looked gentle somehow.

  Saydee knew she was only imagining it. No bounty hunter was kind and gentle, at least, not a man who handled a gun and a capture the way he did. "What about your son? Do you want me to forget I saw him as well?"

  "Jack would be better off if you did."

  "How do you do your job with a child going from outlaw to outlaw, territory to territory?"

  "It really isn't easy, surely you can see why." His words were gently spoken and patient, but she heard the unmistakable sadness. "Thank you for taking us in and for what you've done in taking care of him. I promise you this. I am just passing through, and tomorrow I should be just a faint memory to you."

  "You will not be easy to forget. I can't say I've had too many of these experiences before. Never has a bounty hunter stumbled upon my property."

  "True. Then maybe this will be more memorable than I think." The hard line of sculpted mouth tugged up in the corners. "I have a problem I need solved. Where do you keep your bandages?"

  "I'll get them."

  "I can do it. Just point me in the right direction." He came closer into the reach of the light, golden on the shade of his skin and highlighting the bright, fresh crimson stain the once white bandage had become. Whew, he had a fine looking chest and abdomen, as firm and as ridged as a washboard.

  Saydee whipped her eyes upward, which wasn't easy, only to see that his rugged, stone-hard face had turned gray. "You had better sit down. I don't want you falling down and re-injuring yourself. It looks as if you've done enough damage to your stitches already."

  "I have work to do."

  "It doesn't matter. This is my house, so you will do as I ask. Please."

  He may be twice her size and he towered over her, radiating pure male might and iron strength. Beneath his bare skin caressed by the lamp's glow, fit and ridged muscles were attractive and powerful. He looked one hundred percent like an outlaw, but he acted like law enforcement. He was more likable and tougher than the local sheriff and all his deputies combined.

  Moments ticked by as his forehead frowned in thought and the lamp's flame flickered, tossing him in shadowed darkness once again. He was more impression now, uncompromising, and he lifted his chin higher, letting his unsmiling mouth turn into a frown.

  "I would appreciate a little help, thank you." He eased down into the nearest chair, his face twisted with pain.

  Help, he would get. A bounty hunter. That truth was beginning to sink in. A man who hunted outlaws, why, he would have to be tough as nails. No wonder he looked the way he did. She couldn't stop her hands from trembling as she opened the kitchen drawer and pulled out a strip of muslin.

  Something told her that no one had taken care of the bounty hunter in a good long while. Her heart twisted in sympathy. How lonely that must be, and how much it must hurt. She knew a little something about that.

  I'll take care of you for now, even if you leave come morning. That's what she would do, she vowed. Maybe she could ease someone else's loneliness and soften their hardship.

  But as she unrolled the soft strip of muslin, she thought of the boy tucked safely asleep on the sofa and hoped he had sweet dreams. What must his life be on the trail with his father? Her heart caught, remembering the wary-eyed boy who'd stood so quietly in the kitchen with tears silent on his cheeks when his father had stumbled and then fallen unconscious into the kitchen.

  She glanced over at the man. Danger emanated from him like dark from the night. She set the medicinal bottle of whiskey on the table at his elbow and a thick bottomed glass down next to it. She turned to fill the basin with hot water and the butter-rum richness of his baritone followed her and rumbled over her like a tangible caress.

  "I was sorry to hear about your husband." He watched her with measured eyes. "I'm glad you had someone in your family to help you, even if you had to leave Missouri to come here."

  She nearly tripped over her own feet. Fumbling with surprise, she set the basin down on the table with a clunk. "How did you know I don't have my husband? And about my family here?"

  "I didn't flatter myself that you might remember me. Our paths crossed once for bit and we didn't know each other. Are you sure that I don't look a little familiar?"

  "No, not at all."

  "Maybe if you look at me long enough it will spur your memory, Saydee?"

  "How do you know my name? I never told it to you." She drew a cushioned chair over beside him and her knee bumped his hard, broad one. Something that felt like fright but was hot like attraction zinged through her.

  What was it about the man? The lamplight seemed to adore him, caressing his wide shoulders and powerful chest, and her eyes fastened there, following the hard lines and ridges of muscle and strength. Her fingertips tingled as she wondered how hard he would feel if she just ran her fingertips across him like she hadn't yet dared.

  I'm lonely, that's why I'm feeling this way. It had little to do with her ability to control herself. Any woman would feel the same, any one at all. He was simply too handsome, that was the clear explanation and rationale as to why she felt this way. It was all his fault for looking so good. She grabbed the scissors and snipped the blood-soaked bandages away from beneath his ribs.

  "I'm walking around your house not exactly decent. Sorry to embarrass you." His hand brushed hers as he unwound the bandage himself, leaving her to notice the splendor of his half-nakedness. She watched his throat work as he unbuttoned his denims. "I'm hoping you can forgive me."

  "I don't see how I can. You took the liberty of bleeding all over your shirt and now it's on your trousers. I'm not sure how I'll ever forgive you."

  "You're teasing me, right?"

  "Right. I don't see that you had any other option."

  "I noticed that you didn't complain."

  Heat washed over her face. It wasn't like he was completely naked, right? It was just his chest and stomach. Then air caught sideways in her windpipe when he bowed his head and pushed back the waistband of his trousers and gave them a tug downward to better see what was hiding down beneath. She could plainly see the waistband of his under drawers, and not only that, the curve of his bare hip bone.

  She whirled around, blinking with shock, feeling her face burn red with embarrassment. "I didn't know you were going to do that."

  "I've got blood dripping down all
over me. If I pay you well in cash when I leave, can you launder my clothes? I know you've rinsed my things out. This shirt is mostly dry from hanging next to the cook stove."

  She risked a look over her shoulder. He was pressing the long muslin strip directly over his wound, and her stomach balled up tight, a little sick. It wasn't easy looking upon his injury. It seeped blood steadily, but at least the stitches still held the edges of the red, inflamed skin together. "Uh, yes, I definitely can wash your clothes."

  "Good, thank you kindly. I just have to wrap this up tight and I should stop bleeding all over the place. You're a good amateur nurse."

  "It's my first attempt, and if I have any say in it, my only attempt. Believe me, I'm no medical professional but I did my best for you. I learned a few things as a schoolteacher long ago. You have to be prepared for anything, and you never can begin to foresee what you might have to do or learn to do. I've never done stitches, but I've had broken bones, a dislocated thumb, a pencil stuck up a bully's nose and a snowball freeze to someone's hand. I'm nervous, that's why I'm talking too much."

  "It happens to me, too."

  "Why do you seem familiar to me?"

  "That's because I'm someone you knew as a kid." He wound the muslin roll another revolution around his torso to make a decent bandage. "You are going to remember me. Just think of your brother."

  "You're one of his friends, aren't you?" She knew her voice sounded strained. She'd been too physically close to him and even as she stepped back, the sight of his naked hip and all his half-naked glory affected her.

  He smelled of winter ice, northern snow-laced wind, and thunder, not to mention warm clean man, and it was a pleasing combination that made her pulse kick thick and lava-like in her veins and made him less dangerous seeming as she leaned back against the wall.

  His scent seemed to fill her head and she couldn't get over the effect of it or the way her heartbeat drummed behind her sternum. He pulled a thick envelope from his trousers, pushed his chair back and slowly stood, trembling, and she bit back the inclination to offer him something hot to drink or eat. He did not look as if he could stomach it or keep it down.

  Her heartbeat galloped like a frightened horse outrunning a speeding train, and she didn't want to trust the sound of her voice anyway. What if she sounded breathy? Needy? In want of sexual pleasuring? All his bare skin and rugged handsomeness was affecting her.

  "Thank you, Saydee." He limped toward the parlor where his son slept, leaving her by her lonesome in the glow of lamplight, feeling strangely energized, desiring and sadly bereft for him.

  She knew nothing about his life, aside from the son he had and that he wore no wedding ring on his left hand, so how did she know he was so sad? The man was trouble, and she'd be best figuring out when he had known her brother.

  Was it before her Carson passed away? Or in the years when she'd been grieving and dull to life and to what was going on around her, unable to participate fully? Some of that time was still a blur of heartache before it cleared and life limped along, if not normal, then closer to what it had been before she'd ever met him.

  Then again, he'd said as a child, huh? Well, the bounty hunter was a mystery. When she looked in on him after drawing the water for a small wash, he was hardly anything more than a shadow at his son's side, asleep on the floor, a part of the darkness. She couldn't make out anything but the faintest shape of him in the unlit room, yet she could feel him, as if by heart, feel his presence, his protection, and his unrelenting devotion to his child.

  Arms empty, she tiptoed to take the trousers he'd left for her on the arm of the overstuffed chair. He'd pulled the afghan from the back of the divan and covered up with it. He might get cool there since he was so far from the only fire in the house, in the cookstove, but she reversed her steps and followed the light toward the warmth where she hoped she would stop shivering and somehow felt she'd left a small part of her heart in the room behind her.

  She must know him from long ago. She left it a mystery as she warmed herself at the stove. The experience of meeting him today (or meeting him again) stuck with her and her body thrummed both with fear and with attraction, too darn much attraction.

  This first blizzard of the season blew more cold into the house and more shadow into her heart. She felt the darkness of the September night wrap around her like a blanket and she felt desolate once more. Too alone, and with no real way to move past the fact that she could not simply marry for convenience. Not when she'd once had love and been the affection of someone's heart and the apple of his eye, at least, that's how the marriage had been. Not perfect, but good.

  She knew it was pointless to hope and so she had stopped many years ago and quietly went on about her life. Right now, at this moment, it was to wash the bounty hunter's laundry, for whatever small amount of money, or coins, he could afford to leave her with. The night raged on around her, as if heartless.

  * * *

  The cruel storm whirled across the Dakota plains surrounding him, a hundred grains of sharp snow scrubbing his face. Hurting and freezing him, he shivered in the inclement wind. He was running out of time. He must get Jack to her, to Saydee. He had to find a way to do it fast.

  Winn's eyes blinked open. The blizzard howled, but no cold touch his face, which surprised him. Ice scrubbed the outside walls, instead of battering him. He was safe, and now that had been just a dream. Whew. He was relieved to be beneath a warm afghan in a safe room. And Jack was with him.

  Then he sensed her presence in the dark shadows of the parlor. It was Saydee. He breathed in that powder-soft scent that made a woman, a combination of her skin, her soap, her sweetness and the brighter scents of a woman's life. He listened to the rustle of her skirts and the light careful pad of her step, which must have woken him.

  She waltzed through the kitchen like music, effortless and like a single strain of melody, and he stiffened when she came too close. The tray she carried rattled slightly as she slipped it onto the small table where the lamplight burned. The mantel clock chimed, patiently counting off two chimes, sending surprise straight through him in waves. He scrubbed his eyes with his knuckles to clear them of sleepiness. "I can't believe I slept so long."

  5

  "It's been more than several hours. You must be cold and uncomfortable on that floor, but your son is breathing better, more quietly. He looks like he's doing better, as long as he continues to rest and no bad fever sets in." Her voice was a dulcet whisper so she wouldn't wake Jack. "How are you feeling?"

  "Not terrible, considering I'm worse for the wear."

  "You've lost so much blood with all your activity after I stitched you up, I don't know how you're still moving around. You should sit still, eat and then go back to sleep. You might want to leave at first light, but you can't if you aren't strong enough or the blizzard is still blowing."

  "I shouldn't have fallen asleep at all. Or I would have bedded down in the kitchen on that feather mattress. It was very comfortable and I'm sore as Hades from snoozing on that cold floor."

  "That's the first sensible thing I've heard you say. Maybe you want to be even more sensible and think about the weather. It isn't safe to travel if this storm is still blowing come morning. I'm guessing the temperature is around minus five degrees or so. You can't survive for long in that. No wonder Jack fell ill, and it will grow colder if the storm continues to blow."

  "What would you do if I overstayed my welcome?"

  "I would toss you out in the cold."

  "You can't pick me up, a little slip of a pretty woman like you."

  "True, which means you'll have to stay, and don't you even attempt to charm me."

  "I'm incapable of being charming, I assure you, pretty lady. There's nothing here but charmless drab dullness."

  "That is just what I was going to say," she quipped. "So much so, that I swear I'll never forget you. You are utterly memorable, bounty hunter."

  "That isn't my intention and I can't say it's safe for you if I
stay beyond dawn. The man after me is a tough outlaw and he's almost unstoppable, certainly not a blizzard."

  "Why is he after you? What did you do to him? Threaten to bring him in?" She met his shadowed eyes, chin up, an independent woman sad to be on her own. He knew that from speaking with her brother.

  Lamplight spilled across the threshold between the rooms to shine in her blond curls and reveal the wariness in her eyes. Still figuring on not trusting him too much, which is why she hadn't slept a wink through the night so far.

  "That's my business," he told her, careful to pitch his voice to be kind. "The less you know, the better for you."

  "It's easy to guess that you've come upon hard times, but you're not someone on the edge of the law. You're not some drifter passing through Blue Sky County. You're a man of skill. You can shoot better than anyone I've ever heard of."

  "I won't comment, but I'm here for Jack. Only he matters." He took a step closer, wishing he could avoid the light.

  Pain kept him in the shadows, a part of the dark. He reeled from the agony washing through his left side and speared down to his hip. He'd been hurt worse than this more than once, but never so far away from home and never under such conditions. There was no going back, and he felt remorseful over that. He'd loved his life in South Hill, Dakota Territory.

  She said nothing for a moment, and the silence stretched between them like a bough ready to break. Fear darkened her blue eyes. He disliked that he'd put fear in her life, in her heart and in her opinion of him. He hated looking at her and seeing the man, on the edge of society, he'd become.

  He cleared his throat. "I'm grateful to you, Saydee, I'm never going to hurt you. I'm glad for your help, especially for my son."

  "What kind of father are you? I would never be outside in this weather with a child." The soft words felt like curiosity but cut his conscience like a serrated knife, precise and deep. "Not that it's my business, I just am concerned for him."