by Mary McBride
They were in the middle of nowhere with only scrub and dust, a weary horse and a hot blind sun for witnesses. She was his for the taking. And Gideon Summerfield, brute, hard and hot and wanting her, let her go.
His teeth were clenched so hard he could barely form the words. “Don’t worry, bright eyes. You’re not my type.” It wasn’t so far from the truth, after all. The women in his life had been whores for the most part, professional or not so professional. There had been a lady or two along the way, more curious than amorous, more interested in bedding a notorious thief than making love to a man. Not like this lady, though. Young as she was, her quality ran deep. More quality than he could handle at the moment.
When he eased his hand from her hair, Honey straightened up and smoothed the folds of her skirt, keeping her head down to hide the hot flush that had spread like wildfire over her cheeks. “I should hope not,” she snapped. “And I’d like an answer to my question. About where we’re going. And when you plan to let me go.”
The sooner the better, she thought. For one heart-stopping moment, she had thought he was going to kiss her. But then he didn’t, and rather than relief, Honey had felt a vague and bewildering disappointment. She didn’t want this desperado to kiss her. Most assuredly she didn’t.
She raised her chin and gave him the most scathing look she could muster. “When do you plan to let me go?”
His mouth hooked into a lazy grin and he lifted their joined wrists. “Let you go? Hell, I thought I was your prisoner, bright eyes.”
“That isn’t very funny, Mr. Summerfield.”
“Gideon,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
He shrugged. “Look. Why not call me by my Christian name as long as we’re going to be cuffed together for a while.” He slanted a meaningful glance toward their wrists. “And you might as well tell me your name while we’re at it. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense keeping up such niceties when we’re going to have to be answering nature’s—”
“Edwina,” she said sharply, cutting him off.
An odd smile touched his lips. “Doesn’t suit you.”
“Neither do you, Mr. Summerfield.”
He hung his head in mock surrender, and as he did a lock of hair fell across his forehead. For the first time, Honey noticed its rich color. Nutmeg? No. More like cinnamon. It looked warm and spicy where it curled over the collar of his shirt. There were glints of gold wherever the sun touched it.
“Edwina,” he murmured now, making the name sound antique, if not downright crotchety. “You got a better last name?”
Still contemplating his hair, Honey was about to reply with the truth, but suddenly and thankfully refrained. If he knew she was the daughter of the owner of Logan Savings and Loan, there was no telling what this desperado would do. Even if he did have spice-colored hair and such an engaging, lopsided little grin. “Cassidy,” she said.
He lifted a finely shaped hand to touch the brim of his hat. It was a gesture Honey found most men performed awkwardly, like gawky little boys. But this outlaw managed it with the ease and grace of a man who had spent his past few years in a palace rather than a prison.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Edwina Cassidy. We’d best get on our way now.” He slid his gaze toward the shrubs. “You sure you don’t have to...”
“I’m quite sure, Mr. Summer—”
“Gideon,” he corrected as he swept her up into his arms and carried her toward the grazing horse.
After he settled behind her, Honey angled her head over her shoulder. “You never did tell me where we were headed, Mr...um, Gideon.”
He slid an arm around her waist, fanning his fingers out on her midriff. “Didn’t I?” He urged the big horse forward with a nudge of his heels, then added with a deep-throated chuckle, “Fancy that.”
* * *
“We need a room.” Gideon’s voice was a low rumble as he approached the desk clerk. Miss Edwina Cassidy slept soundly in his arms while he attempted to keep his own right hand as well as hers hidden in the folds of her skirts.
The gangly young clerk eyed him blandly, suppressing a yawn. “You and the missus?”
“That’s right.”
The boy let out a knowing little snort, coupled with a wink. Since the small hotel on the main street of Cerrillos was the front half of a dance hall, Gideon suspected the kid had seen women taken up to rooms every which way—awake, asleep, alive or dead drunk.
“That’ll be four dollars, in advance,” the boy told him now.
Gideon shifted the little bank clerk’s deadweight so he could dig into his pocket. “Here’s five,” he said, flipping a gold coin onto the counter. “Make sure we get some hot water and clean towels.”
“Yeah. Sure thing.” The boy pushed a brass key toward him. “Up those stairs and down the hall on the right,” he said, angling his head in that direction.
“Dance hall stay open all night?” Gideon asked him.
The boy looked at the sleeping female, shifted his gaze back to Gideon’s face, then winked again. “All night. All morning. All the liquor you can tuck away. All the women you can—”
Gideon cut him off. “You want me to sign a register or something?”
“Dad-blast, I almost forgot.” The boy dipped a bent-tipped pen in an inkwell and passed it, dribbling, across the stained counter. “Just scribble anything,” he mumbled. “It don’t matter.”
Slowly, with his left hand while balancing his sleeping cuff-mate on one hip, Gideon printed his name, then turned the book so the boy could read it. “How’s that?”
“Yeah. Sure.” The boy’s bored, half-open eyes skimmed the page, then widened and bulged. “Its fine, Mr. Summerfield.” His throat crackled as he attempted to swallow. “It’s just fine, sir. I’ll be sure and get those clean towels for you. Hot water, too. Anything else I can do for you, sir?”
“Nope. Towels and water will do fine. Much obliged.” Gideon shifted the soft burden in his arms, then headed up the stairs, all the while feeling the boy’s amazed gaze on his back. Five years in prison, he thought, hadn’t dimmed his reputation all that much. Good thing, too. He was going to need every bit of it to accomplish what he had to do.
The room was small and spare and no doubt flyspecked, but to Gideon’s eyes anything with four walls and a bed was sheer heaven compared to iron bars and a wooden pallet. He closed the door with his foot, then lowered the sleeping woman onto the mattress.
She didn’t wake, but Gideon hadn’t expected her to. The ride from Santa Fe had been long and hard. Twelve hours in the saddle under a relentless sun. He’d offered her his hat, but she had refused with a proud stiffening of her shoulders and a cluck of her tongue that told him pretty clearly where she thought he could put his hat. She had ignored him for the most part, staring ahead, stewing, fretting, plotting Lord only knew what as her teeth worried her lower lip.
By moonrise, though, she hadn’t been able to fight exhaustion anymore, and her proud chin had dipped wearily onto the high-buttoned bodice of her dress. Gideon had tucked her head onto his shoulder and pressed his cheek to the soft fall of her hair, easing back on the reins and slowing the big roan to a lullaby walk. He wasn’t in such a hurry for cold revenge that he couldn’t savor the warmth of Miss Edwina Cassidy for a quiet little while.
He sat beside her now, watching as the light from a three-quarter moon glossed the dark tangle of her hair. With his free hand, he reached to smooth it away from her sunburned face, thinking maybe he could scare up some vinegar to take some of the sting out of that delicate skin. Lord knew his own was smarting from the harsh New Mexico sun.
Sighing, he reached in the pocket of his shirt and withdrew a quill toothpick. While his mouth twitched in a grin, it took him all of a minute to jimmy the lock on his half of the cuffs. It took him a tad longer, though, to wrestle the limp lady out of her rumpled dress.
“Stupid,” he muttered softly as he felt the dampness of her underskirts. Damn stubborn female would have let
her insides explode rather than lose her confounded dignity. Only total exhaustion and sleep had finally relieved her.
With a gruff curse, Gideon proceeded to strip her of the wet underthings. He swore again when he discovered she wore a combination. Corsets and drawers came off easy, but these damn one-piece garments were hell on a man in a hurry, or one with a decent purpose and trembling fingers such as his were now while they worked the buttons down the front then slipped the soft cotton from her shoulders.
Moonlight silvered the pale skin beneath his fingertips and gleamed in the deep valley between her lovely breasts. Their crests bloomed like roses in a night garden. As he beheld her, Gideon realized he wasn’t breathing. His mouth had gone dry as sand, and his hands had clenched into tight fists as his leaden, shuttered gaze failed to respond to his wish to turn away. His lips moved soundlessly, once again damning the banker for planting this innocent flower in his path. It was more than a sane man could stand.
Almost more. Gideon stood up and stared at the wall as he whisked the garment from her hips and legs and tossed it into the sodden pile beside the bed. He folded her gently into the bed linens then and raised her arm to clamp his half of the cuff onto the iron bedpost.
“Sleep tight, Miss Edwina Cassidy,” he murmured. He gathered up her clothes and walked softly out of the room.
* * *
The string band stuttered in the middle of its tune when Gideon pushed through the batwing doors into the dance hall. He felt the keen appraisal of every eye in the smoky room, and he heard the telling shift in the rhythm of everyone’s breathing, the way voices stilled a second, then softly rose again as he crossed to the bar.
A perverse pride welled in the back of his throat, and his gut tugged a little as he thought of so many other rooms he had entered with his cousins—with Jesse and Frank and Dwight. The young desk clerk had done his job just right. The word had been spread. The name of Gideon Summerfield had gotten around. And its magic was still there. But it wasn’t magic, as Gideon well knew. It was fear that was rippling through the room. It was the rush from the wings of the angel of death.
“Name your poison, Summerfield,” the bearded bartender said.
Gideon leaned an elbow on the carved sweep of walnut and lifted a boot onto the rail. “Rye, if you’ve got it, otherwise anything’ll do.”
As the barman turned to retrieve a glass from the wall behind him, Gideon surveyed the dimly lit room. A dozen men. A sprinkle of whores, including the one who was sashaying toward him now.
“You’re a hell of a long way from Clay County,” she purred, fitting her hip against his, slipping her fingers between the buttons of his shirt.
“You, too, darlin’, judging from the sound of you.” Gideon immediately recognized the flat border state drawl. He tried to ignore her inquisitive little hand as it traced over his belly. He tried and failed to ignore the tightening in his groin.
“Born and bred in Liberty,” she said. “How ‘bout you?”
“Colton.”
“Never heard of it.”
Gideon’s mouth twitched. “It wasn’t much, even before the Yankees burned it. I’m looking for somebody from home. Maybe you can help me.”
“Maybe.” She slipped a button on his midriff to allow her hand freer, warmer access.
Gideon reached back for the glass on the bar top, tilted his head and downed the liquor in a single swallow. He tapped the empty glass on the counter, raising an eyebrow to signal a refill. “And one for the lady,” he drawled, returning his gaze to the painted, fine-handed redhead.
“Who’re you looking for, honey?” she asked him, angling her blue-lidded eyes up to his. “Other than me, of course.”
“My wife,” he said in a low, level tone.
The redhead blinked. “Word is you’ve got one of those upstairs right now.”
Word, thought Gideon, traveled fast. Good. “I’m looking for my first wife. The one who walked out on me.” He narrowed his gaze on the whore’s curious face. “With Dwight Samuel. You know him?”
Her expression seemed to melt. Only two bright dabs of rouge remained to color her suddenly pallid face. Her red mouth opened, hung slack for a moment, then snapped closed.
Gideon sipped his drink. That was answer enough for him, he thought. “Dwight get to Cerrillos often, does he?”
She eased her hand from his shirt and took a small step back. “I don’t know nothin’. I don’t want to know nothin’.”
He caught her wrist in an iron grip. “Tell him I’m looking for him.” His lips sliced into a grin. “Do that for me, sugar, will you? Tell my cousin I’m looking to join up with him again.”
Chapter Three
Honey woke slowly. Like a lazy fish, a languid swimmer rising to the surface of warm, dark water. At first she thought she was back at school in St. Louis, but then she remembered her long train ride back to New Mexico. This wasn’t her room, though. She wasn’t home. Where in the world...? Then her mind broke through the murky barriers to reality.
“Oh, Lord!” She moved to sit up, but steel clinked on iron, and the metal cuff bit into her wrist. “Hell and damnation,” she muttered.
Unable to sit up, she lay there, taking bleak inventory of her situation. The last thing she remembered was staring ahead at the rough, moonlit contours of the hills, trying to ignore the dull ache in her bladder, trying desperately to stay awake. Obviously, she thought now, she hadn’t. The ache was gone, and she shuddered to even think about that. She shuddered, too, at the feel of the scratchy linens against her skin.
Gideon Summerfield had left her—naked as a jaybird—cuffed to the bedpost. The idea of that desperado taking off her clothes was enough to set her blood boiling, but even worse at the moment was the thought that he had escaped with the bank’s money.
Lifting her head, Honey searched the moonlit room, then breathed a small sigh of relief when she saw the canvas sack leaning against the washstand. Thank heavens. If the money was still here, she still had a fighting chance to get it back for the bank. But her sense of relief was fleeting. If the money was still here, then so was Gideon Summerfield. And she was hooked to the bed like a fish on a line. A naked fish at that.
Jerking on the steel cuff did nothing but hurt her already bruised wrist. With her free hand, Honey tossed the covers off, then clambered up on her knees. If that damn bandit had opened his half of the cuffs, then surely there was a way...
A key scraped and turned in the lock on the door. Honey dived beneath the covers just as light from the hall wedged into the room. She held her breath while the door clicked closed and the bolt shot home.
Her wildly pounding heart was crowding the breath from her lungs now. She made a fist of her free hand beneath the covers. If he so much as touched her, she thought, she’d claw his eyes out. She’d rip his flesh with her teeth. She’d...
The sound of water splashing into the washbasin sidetracked her panicky thoughts. Then came the soft rustle of fabric, followed by more splashing. Honey opened one eye and peeked over the covers.
The moon seemed to sculpt his broad, wet shoulders and cast in dark pewter the cords of his neck. Silvered water streaked down his ropy arms. He shook his head, sending quick beads of diamond water into the air. As he started to turn, Honey caught a glimpse of the hard-carved muscles on his chest before she squeezed her eyes closed again. She didn’t dare let him know she was awake. No telling what he might do. Worse, she’d die of shame if he knew she’d been watching him with such outright curiosity.
She swallowed, then gritted her teeth, hoping he hadn’t heard the dry contraction of her throat, which had sounded loud as a thunderclap to her.
She heard the clink of his belt buckle, the pull of leather against cloth, and the dull thud of his heavy holster settling against the bedpost. The mattress dipped under his weight then, and Honey held her breath. She lay so still she could feel her heart crashing against her ribs.
Gideon exhaled wearily as he pulled off his boots and l
et them drop on the floor. The sponge bath hadn’t done much to clean up his mood, but it beat being hosed off with icy water once a week. He hated being dirty almost as much as he hated being locked in a cage. What he wanted, he thought, was a hot bath in a big copper tub where he could sink to his chin, breathe in the rising steam, close his eyes and let every muscle and nerve relax.
A bed was the next best thing. Although sharing it with the little bank teller wasn’t his idea of the perfect way to relax. Maybe he should have spent an hour or two with one of the girls downstairs, he thought now, just to take the edge off. But it hadn’t seemed worth it at the time. Their dull eyes dispelled the promises of their warm hands.
Anyway, right now sleep was nearly as compelling as loving. Good God, he was tired. Sighing roughly, he eased back on the mattress and closed his eyes.
“Don’t you come one inch closer or I’ll scream. I swear I will.”
Eyes still closed, Gideon grinned. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“Just try it and see.”
He levered up on one elbow, gazing down at her stubborn little mouth, the moonfire burning in her eyes. “Is that an invitation, Miss Cassidy?”
Her eyes widened fearfully, but her voice stayed level and brave. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“You’re right,” he growled as he lowered himself back onto the mattress. “Go to sleep, bright eyes. You’re safe.”
Honey rattled the chain hooked to the iron bedstead. “You don’t expect me to sleep like this, do you?” she hissed.
“Hush.”
She rattled the chain once more, and kept up the racket until Gideon rose with a muted curse. Five years in prison had made him remember only the fair part of the fair sex; he’d clean forgotten how irritating they could be without half trying. And this one was trying. He retrieved the quill pick from his shirt pocket, jimmied the lock, then clamped the steel bracelet over his left wrist and clicked it closed. “Happy now?”
