Blue Dalton

by Tara Janzen

  Walker mulled over his options for about half a minute, long enough to flex the fingers of his right hand, readying them. Then he made his move, smoothly and quickly, encircling her knife hand and jerking her off the couch and across his lap.

  She landed with a surprised gasp of pain, her eyelids fluttering closed. She bit down on her lower lip, that tempting lower lip, making him regret the force he’d used.

  Blue felt the contrition she’d hoped for lighten his grip, and she took immediate advantage of his mistake. With a twist of her wrist she tossed the knife into her bandaged hand and had the blade back at his throat. A very masculine, very bronze throat, she realized, her gaze flicking upward to a beard-stubbled square jaw. She dared look no further, not with her knife pressing into his skin. If the tracker was dumb enough to move, or even breathe too hard, the razor-edged blade would slice through him like butter on a hot day. She’d been careful with him up to now, but she refused to take responsibility for his next action.

  Smart man, she thought a second later. The tracker had decided to stop breathing altogether. The artery in his neck pulsed regardless, but Blue had deliberately not touched him there.

  “Mister, I’m tired of fooling with you,” she said, holding him at bay and slowly easing herself off his lap. She had to get out of there, away from him and back up into the mountains to safety before the law came down on her.

  “The feeling is mutual,” Walker muttered, raising both hands shoulder high and letting her go, but only as far as suited him. When she was halfway to her feet, he lashed out with his leg and tumbled her onto her back. Before she could move, he was on top of her, crushing her to the floor and holding both of her wrists with his hands. Guilt assailed him again. She was so small beneath him. But not helpless, he grimly reminded himself as he struggled to restrain her.

  Blue tossed her head and twisted her body, cursing him to hell and back. The breath whooshed out of her lungs as he shifted his weight. She gasped and squeezed her eyes shut against the increased pressure. Lights danced behind her closed lids. Please, God, don’t let me faint, she prayed, even as she swore her vengeance.

  Tight-jawed, Walker let her wear herself down, listening to her scorching tirade of cussing and wondering when she’d run out of steam. He lifted her arms above her head and gripped both wrists in his right hand. He disarmed her with his left, noting the incredible delicacy of her bones with a confused lift of his brow. His one hand easily encompassed both of hers, just as he’d thought. What kind of woman was she, he wondered, to be so small yet so damn strong?

  “Quiet down or you’ll wake the dog,” he told her, low on patience with her highly specialized vocabulary and the squirming body reminding him of what he’d been trying to forget.

  “Trap,” she gasped the name, turning her head toward the animal lying motionless near the fire. Reflected flames drew his gaze to the fragile curve of her jaw and the delicate protrusion of her collarbone beneath her shirt. His mental wandering was short-lived. Dark, almost black, eyes flashed back to him. Her sweet mouth twisted into a snarl. “What did you do to him? If you hurt him, I’ll kill you. I swear I will.” She jerked her arms, and he tightened his grip.

  “I haven’t touched him”—he paused and swore softly when she tried to knee him in the groin. He sat heavier on her, holding her still—“but I’m sure that won’t keep you from coming up with a reason to cut me if you get the chance.”

  “You’re hurting me,” she said, moaning, fluttering her eyes closed with all the melodrama of a two-bit actress.

  Walker didn’t doubt it, but he wasn’t about to fall into the same trap twice. Of course he couldn’t sit on her all night either. His glance fell to her belt, and not caring what she thought, he reached down and undid the buckle. “Lift your hips.”

  Her eyes flew open, startled and wary. Her skin paled beneath her tan, making her eyes seem darker than the night. “I’ll kill you, you son of a motherless polecat. You low-down, worse than a—”

  “Hush, Blue. I’m not going to rape you. But I’m not going to let you run around here trying to do me in at every opportunity either.” He unthreaded the belt from one side of her jeans. “Lift up,” he ordered. When she didn’t budge, he wrapped his hand around the waist of her jeans and roughly rolled her onto her side. Then he finished pulling the belt free.

  Silently seething, Blue felt the leather wrap around her wrists, tighter and tighter, until he was satisfied and finished binding her with a knot. If he thought tying her up would subdue her, he was in for a rude awakening, but one she’d deliver on her own terms. He’d won the last two skirmishes; she couldn’t afford to lose the third. Conserve your energy, she told herself. Breathe slowly.

  Walker eased off of her, unbuckling his own belt one-handed and watching her for signs of a fight. He noted the narrowing of her eyes and knew what she was thinking. “You don’t need to look at me like that. I already told you I’m not interested. There are plenty of women around willing to give it away free without me having to fight you.” He didn’t know what else to say to reassure her, but he tried lying. “You’re not exactly the type who drives a man crazy with lust.”

  She knew that without him telling her, and she hated him just a little bit more, and a little bit more when he trussed her ankles with his belt. With one large hand he pushed her legs to the floor. She never had a chance to kick him.

  “You bastard,” she hissed as he cinched the belt tighter.

  “You’ll get no argument on that point,” he said, rising from the floor and hauling her with him. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, and for the first time Blue became aware of him as a man and not solely as her enemy. He was big, well over six feet. Mile-wide shoulders and a broad chest dwarfed her as the tracker swung her up into his arms and brought her eye-level with a face that made her heart stop for a single beat. Her reaction alarmed her even more than his looks and the close way he held her. She dug a hasty retreat into anger.

  “Put me down!”

  “When I get where I’m going,” he replied.

  Blue twisted, and his arms tightened like a vise. Light-brown eyes shot through with flecks of gold and green held her gaze with relentless purpose. He spoke very softly in warning. “Don’t keep pushing me, Blue. I haven’t decided what to do with you yet.”

  “Who are you?” she demanded, unsure of what he meant and unnerved by the deep huskiness of his voice. Big men usually had voices to match, but this giant seemed to be trying to fool her with a gentleness she didn’t feel in the belts tied around her limbs.

  “Walker Evans.” He strode over to the couch and unceremoniously dumped her in the corner. “Are you hungry?”

  She ignored his question with one of her own. “And who is Walker Evans?” she asked with a sneer, trying to avoid staring at his long legs and the muscles revealed by the worn denim of his jeans. But he hadn’t backed away from the couch, and the sheer size of him filled her line of vision.

  Her question threw Walker for a minute, but it would be just like old man Dalton to never mention the Evans name. He didn’t like talking about his failures either. “I’m the man the law hired to track you down,” he said, offering her the simplest explanation.

  Blue forced her gaze to raise past his thighs, button fly, and empty belt loops. A slow blush crept up her cheeks as she met his eyes once more. “Took you long enough,” she said with a trifle less acidity on her tongue than she’d wanted.

  “You’re good,” he agreed with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “But I’m better.”

  Blue refrained from replying to the obvious. Her “fight-or-flight” systems were shutting down one by one, making her more aware of her surroundings and almost painfully aware of the man towering over her. She could just imagine what kind of woman it took to drive him crazy with lust; the poor dumb thing would probably have to be at least as pretty as he was, and feminine to the point of pure helplessness. He could have them—all of them, she added grudgingly—as long as he left h
er alone, or better yet, let her go.

  Her eyes flicked over him again, her mouth curling in distaste. She didn’t even like long hair on herself, let alone on a man. And his was definitely on the long side, like tawny silk, sweeping back from his face and lying on the collar of his faded aqua shirt. Giving him his due, she found no fault with the body beneath the shirt. He was big and strong. Too strong by her reckoning, she thought, remembering the rock-hard feel of him when he’d had her on the floor. His thighs had been like a denim-sheathed vise when he’d straddled her hips. He’d picked her up with arms thickly corded with muscle as if she weighed nothing. She didn’t have a chance against him on the brawn side of the battle.

  His eyes left a lot to be desired, though. They were too golden to be brown, and too brown to be anything else. Amber, she guessed they called the color, or hazel. She called it unsettling, the same thing she called the way he was watching her, as if he could see further than her skin. While she was mentally on the subject of his looks, she decided his jaw was too wide, his cheekbones were too sculpted, his mouth too sensual for a real man, especially the expressive curve of the upper lip when it hinted at a smile—as it did now.

  “Are you hungry?” he repeated his earlier question.

  “I can’t eat like this.” She lifted her bound wrists with a defiant air even as she wondered about the last, unexpected turn of her thoughts. True, he was better looking than most, but Blue had never been one to be swayed by a man’s looks, and his manhandling left her no reason to start now—soul-searching eyes, rugged beauty or not.

  “You’ll figure it out if you’re hungry enough.” He bent down and picked up her packet.

  “That belongs to me,” she warned him.

  “And you belong to me.” He faced her with unreadable shadows in his eyes, dark shadows heightened by the wings of his eyebrows and the thickness of his lashes.

  “I don’t belong to anybody,” she retorted, lifting her chin and leveling him with a lethal glare, which he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Tonight you do, Blue,” he said, his voice gravelly rough and silky soft at the same time. “You’re mine until I call the cops.”

  “So call the damn cops.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” He rolled the packet over in his large, weathered hand, seeming to forget her existence.

  Gold fever. She saw it in his eyes, in the tender touch of his fingers on the leather. She knew what they’d all made of her father’s last words, and the thought brought a smug smile to her lips. Walker Evans was no better than all the others who’d tried to steal her inheritance; he didn’t even know what he was looking for.

  As he hefted the bound leather package the cuff rode up on his arm, and Blue caught a glint of metal and stone. He had a ketoh wrapped around his wrist, the broad bands of silver shining against his bronzed skin. For a moment she held her breath, stopped breathing, her gaze fixed on the wide rectangle of silver and the turquoise stone a good three inches in length and two in width. He wore the piece as a bracelet, attached to four connected rolls of silver instead of to leather, but it was Navajo, and it was old, the age attested to by the greenish cast of the stone and the simple workmanship of the ketoh itself. The bracelet part was newer, the work of a contemporary artisan, and realizing it lowered her sudden distress. The ketoh wasn’t part of her inheritance.

  In truth, she doubted if it could have belonged to many people besides Walker Evans. The piece was large, rough, masculine, and it required a man to match, a man with more than a hint of wildness in him despite the genetically refined planes of his face, a man with the confidence to wear his hair too long and the ability to cut through her defenses with even a casual glance—a man she needed to escape.

  She sat quietly, marshaling her strength while he unfolded the soft leather flaps. At the last second he cast her a quick, possibly guilty, glance with his strange amber eyes. Then he opened the packet.

  “What in the hell is this?” he demanded, the guilt replaced by a steely edge of anger.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Innocence never had a sweeter mouth or a more demure tone.

  “This is what I’m talking about.” He held a yellowed sheet of paper in his hand, letting the leather packet drop to the floor. “You didn’t risk your life in Lake Agnes for a piece of paper. A blank piece of paper.”

  “I didn’t risk my life in Agnes, period.” Who did he think he was talking to? Some idiot who didn’t know how to take care of herself?

  “If you believe that, then you’re not as smart as I’ve been giving you credit for being. Dammit,” he said, slapping the paper on his thigh.

  “Don’t!” Blue gasped, her hands automatically reaching out. “Don’t do—Stop!” she said again when the paper crinkled in his fist.

  Walker’s gaze fell to the paper, then lifted to meet her eyes. “Why, Blue?” he asked, tilting his head in question, his voice dangerously soft again. “There’s nothing on it.”

  “It’s . . . it’s old. That’s all; it’s old.”

  The flush in her cheeks, a pale flood of pink under fawn-colored skin, told him she was lying. He looked at the paper and still saw nothing.”

  But there had to be something.

  Lightning flashed nearby, crackling through the night and sending an electric blue-white glow through the south-side window. Walker glanced up reflexively, then back at the paper. There had to be something.

  Thunder rumbled in behind the lightning and seemed to roll right up to the cabin’s walls, shaking them with the power of sound. Blue shivered and held her breath, watching confusion cross his face and slowly turn to understanding. She swallowed hard. “Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think so,” he muttered, walking over to the fireplace. He held the paper up, and she saw a corner of his mouth lift. He looked over his shoulder at her. A length, of tawny hair fell forward, and he pushed it back with his hand. “Crude,” he said, the curve of his mouth spreading into a slow, easy grin, “but effective.”

  Blue felt herself blush at his smile, as she was sure a thousand women had done before her, and her anger increased. He was too damn sure of himself. “You’ve got nothing without me.”

  “We’ll see.” He walked over to a desk on the other side of the fireplace and flattened the paper on the top. Wax writing, he thought with a shake of his head, scribbling a pencil back and forth across the yellowed sheet. Each revealed letter and number increased his excitement—and his confusion. When he got to the bottom of the page, he silently conceded a point in her favor. He had nothing. “What does this mean?” he asked, not raising his gaze from the paper.

  “How should I know? I haven’t seen it.” Damn him, she thought, using his distraction to work the belt off her ankles. Her whole body hurt, every square inch. She had blisters on top of blisters, and after wrestling around on the floor, probably bruises on top of bruises.

  She stopped for a second and shook her head, trying to free her mind from exhaustion, then continued working. When her legs were free, she stretched and tugged on the belt around her wrists. It gave, but not enough. Her chin dropped to her chest. She needed more time. She needed a hot meal and the two nights of sleep he’d stolen from her. “Read it to me, and I’ll see what I can make of it.”

  Read it to me, and see what I can make of it? What was she up to now? Walker glanced over his shoulder and found her struggling with her bonds. Lord, he thought with a quiet sigh. The woman just didn’t know when to quit.

  He watched her in silence for a couple of seconds, more curious than worried about what she’d do when she got free. The guns were in the kitchen, and he had quicker access to them than she did. He’d brought the knife with him to the desk. She’d come up with something, though, something he wouldn’t like. He didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  “They’re directions of some sort,” he said. She bit down on her lower lip, and he saw her straining, twisting her shoulders for leverage against the belt. “
A few of the letters are broken where the wax fell off.”

  “That’s your fault,” she muttered. “You shouldn’t have crunched it up.”

  His money was on Blue. Any belt, any knot, would give under that kind of relentless attack. “I think if a person knew where the starting point was, they could figure out the rest of it.” She stopped her struggles, and he quickly glanced down at the paper, not wanting her to know he was aware of what she was doing. For some reason he wanted her to think she had a chance. He didn’t want to crush her minor victory until he had to.

  “What are you talking about?”

  So he was right, he thought. “We both know what I’m talking about. Dalton’s treasure.” He used the common term so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding:

  “At least you know who it belongs to,” she snapped.

  “It belongs to whoever finds it,” he countered. “No other claim will stand up in a court of law.” And it belonged to him by right of inheritance; he wouldn’t accept any other claim. If someone other than Blue had been after it, he’d have stopped them too.

  “Better men than you have tried.” Her snide tone broke into his thoughts and brought his head around. “And they’ve all failed. I’m the only person who even has a chance.”

  “Because you know the starting point?”

  “Because I knew my father.” She inadvertently rose to her feet.

  Walker held her gaze until she realized what she’d done. Then he spoke to her in that unsettlingly soft voice. “There are no better men than me, Blue, and you’re not going to find anything without me, without this.” He lifted the paper with the tips of his fingers and let it fall back to the desk.

  Blue was so mad, she could spit. He’d provoked her into losing her advantage. “You bastard!”

  “We’ve already discussed my parentage . . . and had moved on to yours. What did your father tell you?” An edge of steel underlay his gentle tone.