Behind the Shield

by Sheryl Lynn

  She flipped her wet braid. Where the shirt was damp it cooled her, but the shoulders and collar were dry, where she needed cooling the most. Abrasions burned her inner thighs. If she believed his words for a second, she’d be lost. She walked faster.

  “Damn it, Madeline! Stop!”

  “If I don’t? You’ll shoot me?”

  She had trekked twenty feet before it hit her that all she heard was the clop-clopping of Rosie’s hooves.

  Rigid as a child’s stick-figure drawing, Carson stood on the trail. He had pulled off the sunglasses. Naked pain marked his eyes and mouth. She gasped and covered her wretched mouth with her hand.

  “Oh, my God, I didn’t mean that,” she whispered.

  He licked his lips. His broad chest rose and fell.

  Why not just throw stones at him, she wondered in bitter disgust. Stab him in the gut. Bust his kneecaps. It couldn’t hurt worse than what she had said. She dropped the reins. Rosie stretched her head longingly toward the barn. Unable to muster a shield against pain, Madeline limped down the trail.

  Carson looked away. His throat worked and his lips were so tight they were pale.

  Tears rose anew, as appalling as they were confusing. She willed Carson to look at her, to forgive her. He stared into the distance.

  She touched his arm. He shivered like a horse shaking a fly. “Please, I didn’t mean that. Please believe me. I don’t want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you. That’s why I have to leave. I do care about you. I care about you more than I ever thought possible and I can’t stand the idea of harming you.”

  “Do you know what the worst thing is about shooting your father?” he said so softly she had to hold her breath to hear him. “It was how much I wanted him dead. I didn’t hesitate to draw down on him. Didn’t feel a twinge about pulling the trigger. Even if he hadn’t been pointing a rifle at me, even if he’d been on the ground with handcuffs on his wrists and shackles on his legs, I’d have shot him. That’s what I have to look at in the mirror.” He looked at her and frowned. “Why are you crying?”

  She used the flats of both hands to scrub away hot tears. “I never cry.” Her throat ached worse than her burning feet. “I wish I’d never come here. I wish none of this had ever happened.”

  “No more than me. I’m getting tired of beating myself up for all the things I should have done.”

  “What could you have done?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I should have been paying attention. I should have known Frank had come back.” His gaze went distant. “I could have put up a better fence to keep the damned goats from wandering. I’m the one who told Jill to hire Billy to help her with the animals.”

  “I thought you said Jill adored Billy?”

  He shrugged again and scuffed his boot in the dirt. “Well, yeah. We couldn’t have kids so she sort of adopted him. I suppose he’d have helped her whether I paid him or not.” He lifted a hand as if to touch her, and hesitated. “It’s all useless. Nothing I do will ever change the past. I do know one thing that can change right now.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose to stop a fresh rise of tears. “What’s that?”

  “You can stop acting like any of this is your fault. You can stop accusing me of blaming you for what you did. I don’t blame you for anything. Not for him, not for the Harrigan boys burning your place or Judy Green acting like a nitwit. I’m helping you because you need help and I can give it. I care about you.”

  She sat on a boulder and lifted a foot onto her lap. She picked gravel from the sole. “I’m not used to having people care about me. After what Judy said, it really hit hard how impossible this situation is. Nothing will be right until I’m gone.” Wincing, she plucked a thorn from her instep and rubbed the stinging spot with her thumb. “If I find the money, it’s over. Case closed, I’m out of here. I will accept the reward money. Not because I want to, but because I have to.”

  He tucked the glasses into his shirt pocket and took a seat on a boulder across the trail from her. The creek was singing and so were the birds. Saddle leather squeaked when Rosie shifted.

  “So that’s what you want,” he said. “To get away from me.”

  His flat comment broke her heart. She plucked at the damp shirt. She smelled like waterlogged weeds. “It’s what I need to do.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  She waited for the “but.” The longer she waited the more she believed.

  He wanted her.

  She didn’t know what to do with the knowledge. No one had ever wanted her before, not without some huge strings attached. The only strings involved with Carson were those that had latched into her heart, filling her with a yearning so sweet and powerful sometimes she dropped what she was doing and let the feeling rush through her. She could not ignore her feelings for him or shut them away and pretend they didn’t exist. His bluntness made it impossible for her act as if he meant anything else.

  Chapter Twelve

  Madeline did not know how long she and Carson sat on opposite sides of the narrow trail. Long enough to realize she wanted his forgiveness and goodwill. She felt terrible about scaring him. It was strange having someone care enough to worry about her absence, but here it was.

  And then to get mad and throw a tantrum like a thwarted kid. All it had gained her were torn-up feet and Carson looking as if she’d kicked him in the belly.

  She crossed the trail and settled both hands on his shoulders. His eyes took her breath away. She could die happy if his eyes were the last thing she saw.

  “Please accept my apology. I didn’t think.” She smoothed wayward hair off his forehead. “Where’s your hat?”

  “In the car.” He settled his hands on her hips, resting them lightly.

  She kissed him. A quick and tender kiss giving him no opportunity to either kiss her back or rebuff her. “Do you accept my apology?”

  “I’m real mad about you taking off.” His eyes softened and so did his mouth.

  She kissed him again, lingering over the salty sweetness of his lips. He smelled of shaving cream. She drew back a few inches until his eyes came into focus. “Still mad?”

  His fingers tightened over her hips. Shivers of pure pleasure rippled through her midsection and down her thighs. “A little,” he said. “Your pants are wet.”

  “I know. It feels icky.” She cupped both sides of his face and kissed him. This time he kissed her back, softly and luxuriously slow. Kissing him was a tall glass of ice water on a hot day. It was spring rain and expensive chocolate and unexpected music rolled into one. He tugged her hips, drawing her closer, but she resisted. “I don’t want to mess up your uniform.”

  His pupils dilated, drawing her in, coaxing her away from reality and into the realm where only he existed. She knew they had no future. She could not stay. He could not turn his back on his entire life. And yet, the sky was a perfect turquoise bowl above them and the creek sang a seductive song and he smelled so good and, for a while at least, their troubles were far away.

  She stepped away. He tried to draw her back, but when she began unbuttoning her shirt, his efforts halted. One eyebrow arched and she adored the way he did that. He watched her fingers with intense fascination. The damp chambray squeaked faintly as she pulled the buttons free.

  This was wrong on so many levels, but she refused to heed reason. Refused to care about the afterward, or the before. She watched him watch her and took great pleasure when she slipped the shirt off her shoulders, baring her torso, and his lips parted to release an appreciative sigh.

  He raised a hand. Her muscles tensed in anticipation. Her breasts ached for his touch. He touched the scar that arced over her belly under her ribs.

  “How?” he asked.

  She didn’t want to bother with the old story about her mother losing her temper and swiping Madeline across the belly with a hot iron. “I don’t know,” she said. “It happened when I was too little to remember.”

  He touched the locket where it hung s
quarely between her breasts. Heat tingled just under the skin. “This?”

  “Ugly, isn’t it?”

  “Not really, just odd.”

  She wasn’t going to say her father had made it. Her father didn’t belong in this place. She dangled the shirt from a finger. “I need to rinse my shirt.” She headed for the stream. Alive with the sensation of her hips rolling, knowing he watched, her skin flushed as much with happiness as with the feel of the sun.

  He walked across dried weeds and gravel, crunching them. She grinned. He wasn’t so silent of step now. At the creek’s edge, she wrestled free the metal button on her jeans and tugged down the zipper. She wanted to do a graceful striptease, but wet denim precluded grace. She counted herself lucky for managing to not fall on her face.

  His breathing was rough, a sexy melody. She got the jeans legs turned right side out and draped them over a bush. She pulled off her panties and crouched to rinse them and the shirt in the clean running water.

  “Madeline,” Carson whispered. “What are you doing to me?”

  Making you forget, she thought, for a few moments anyway. She took her time laying out the panties and shirt on the bush. She never looked at him, but imagined his hot stare, imagined his arousal and how much he wanted her. She waded into the water. It was shallower here than it was downstream and faster moving. It surprised her the water didn’t bubble and steam from the heat flowing off her naked body. She cupped water and slathered it over her right thigh, washing away clinging sand. She rinsed her left leg, then her arms and her neck and ended by lowering herself into a crouch to wash off her backside, allowing her hands to linger, letting him know without saying so that his hands belonged right there.

  He made a low, groaning noise. She turned around slowly, her body full and light at the same time, everything centered in erotic longing. She waded toward him.

  He breathed hard; his eyes shone with hunger. She took his right hand in both of hers and raised it to her lips. She kissed each finger and one by one folded them into his palm until only his index finger was straight. She directed that finger to her breast. Her nipples were hard, erect and his touch was electric. Her eyes rolled back and her breath rattled from her throat.

  He murmured something, half curse and half savage moan, and snatched her to him, crushing her naked body, thrilling her with his strength. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he caught her bottom with both hands, lifting her clean off the ground. His utility belt ground against her pubic bone, as arousing as it was painful. He kissed her hard, his mouth hot and wet and hungry. He carried her to an outcrop of sandstone and sat her on a rock. She was so wet and heated her hip joints shuddered. The wind-polished stone was sun-baked and deliciously rough against her backside. She leaned back on her elbows.

  “Take off the belt,” she said.

  He obeyed as if it never occurred to him to refuse. He set the belt on the ground. She lifted her right foot to his chest and tapped him with a toe. His eyes glazed. He licked his lips and his nostrils flared. She ordered him to unbutton his shirt. He did that, too.

  “No bullet-proof vest, Mr. Policeman?”

  “Only wear it on patrol.”

  “It wouldn’t save you anyway.”

  She sat up and undid his trousers. He trembled at her touch. She pushed his trousers and boxers to his knees.

  “You sit,” she said, not with command but open need.

  He sat on the very edge of the rock and she straddled his lap. He caught her shoulders, his eyes dark with desire, drinking in her body. She pushed up his T-shirt, revealing his hard, lean belly and muscular chest. She was so ready for him she ached all over, but he made her sit still while he explored her breasts. She was fire, he was fuel and if he didn’t touch her right now she was going to die.

  Finally he slipped a hand between her legs and cupped her. She tried to tell him that was perfect, wonderful, beautiful, but all she could manage was a husky, “Oh, oh, oh…Carson, oh…” Release came suddenly, blessedly, an explosion of voluptuous waves rocking her head to toe, blinding her to the sun. He lifted her atop his erection, fitting her to his body as if some cosmic force created them specifically for each other. She clutched his arms and rode the wildness within until he caught her to him in a crushing embrace and covered her mouth with his. His muscles tensed. She kissed and kissed him, delighting in the way his entire body shuddered and rocked.

  He stilled. She slid kisses over his cheek. Through heavy eyes, she studied his face, so handsome it hurt to look at him, and felt rather proud of the dazed satisfaction in his eyes.

  Reality refused to stay away. One knee burned from scraping against rock. Sharp gravel poked her feet. She ran her hands over his chest, savoring the sensation of hairs tickling her palms. She tugged down his T-shirt. She pulled from his lap and stood. What had been so sexy only moments before was now undignified. She bit back the urge to laugh.

  “Madeline,” he whispered, melting her with his sleepy grin. “I’m on duty, sweetheart.”

  “Oh yeah, and you do your duty so well.” Her legs were rubbery and she had to concentrate on every step. She retrieved the panties from the bush. The thin nylon was dry. The shirt was not and putting it on raised goose bumps.

  “Rosie?”

  The mare was gone. Apparently the noon sun and a pair of humans too enamored with each other to pay heed were enough for her to break training. With his trousers up and his shirttails flapping, Carson jogged up the trail, calling for the horse. Madeline slapped dirt off her feet then struggled into the damp jeans. She ran after Carson.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” she cried each time she stepped on a rock or sharp twig. She caught up to Carson on the far side of a juniper clump.

  Away in the distance, her head high to keep from stepping on the trailing reins, Rosie trotted toward home.

  “Rotten old fleabag.”

  “I’m sorry,” Madeline said.

  “Did you loosen her saddle?”

  “No.”

  “She’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll go after her.”

  He raked back his hair. “Barefoot? Your boots are on the saddle. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home in the cruiser.” He extended a hand. “She’ll beat us there.”

  He had gorgeous hands, elegant in their muscularity. Tender hands. Clever hands. She was going to miss his hands very much. Shyness overwhelmed her. What had before seemed so perfect and right, now struck her as brazen. She wondered what he was thinking. She didn’t want to know. Pretending not to notice his waiting hand, she limped down the trail.

  Halfway back to the ruined house, Carson asked, “Want me to carry you?”

  “No-ow!” She balanced on one foot and plucked a sticker from her heel.

  Carson tucked in his shirt and carried his utility belt slung over one shoulder. His expression was mellow, as if at any moment he might start whistling. She, on the other hand, turned into one big aching, burning, stinging pair of feet. Soft as a city girl, she thought in disgust.

  Carson tugged her braid. “Not much to be said for stubborn pride. Wait.”

  She stepped into a patch of shade. Carson buckled the belt, checked the snap fastener on the gun holster and crooked a finger.

  “I’m too big for you to carry me all the way to the road,” she said.

  “You’re half my size. Now come on.”

  She wanted to refuse, but her feet begged for relief. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he cradled her in his arms. Such closeness was as painful as it was sweet. She had to say goodbye, somehow, before her weakness for him turned her completely stupid.

  He kissed her forehead. “If I tell you something, promise not to laugh?”

  “Why would I laugh?” A piñon branch slapped her shoulder. She snuggled into his neck.

  “’Cause it’s not…I don’t know, manly.”

  He could dress out in full drag and still be manly. “What is it?”

  “Before you, Jill was the only one.”

  She
lifted her head and tried to see his eyes. He focused on the trail. Sweat trickled from his brow. “Only one what?”

  “Woman. Lovemaking.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “You promised not to laugh.”

  “I’m not laughing. I’m amazed.” She refused to tally her sexual partners. She couldn’t call them lovers or call what they’d done lovemaking. It was expediency, or loneliness, or gratitude, or lust, but never love. Carson was different. She didn’t love him, she couldn’t love him, but what had just happened was more than sex.

  “Jill and I knew each other from childhood. She was always the one for me. In high school and college we broke up a few times, tried dating others, but no other girl was Jill.”

  He could have chopped off her arms with a machete and it couldn’t hurt worse. No other girl was Jill. Madeline wasn’t Jill. Never would be, never could be. His meaning couldn’t be clearer if he put up a neon sign. His heart would forever belong to his late wife.

  AS CARSON PREDICTED Rosie waited at home. If he’d been thinking, he’d have warned Madeline to tie the horse to a branch. Patience had never been the mare’s virtue. He peeked at Madeline and warmed with desire.

  She was so beautiful with that perfectly sculpted face and lovely eyes. He wanted to loosen her braid and indulge in all that long, black silky hair. He parked the cruiser in front of the house.

  He was on duty and no matter how much he wanted to sweep Madeline upstairs for round two, he could not do it. He had to go back to town, back to the station, back to reality.

  “I’ll slip on some sandals and take care of Rosie,” she said.

  “She can get to water. She’ll hold. There’s a reason I came home.”

  She gave him a wary look. Even as a cop, always on the lookout for trouble, he didn’t expect abuse and heartbreak from every person he met. He wanted her trust.

  “It’s good news, for once. Sort of. Let’s go on inside.”

  In the kitchen, she stood with her hands on her hips, frowning at the Dumb Stuff box and the other box filled with art supplies and beads. She chewed a corner of her lip.