Without a word she stripped off the poncho and draped it over his back, then bent down and crawled on all fours into the sturdy little canvas shelter.
Brand watched her and gave up trying to swallow. Suzannah was surprising. Unsettlingly surprising.
He made quick work of feeding both horses a handful of dry oats, tied them to a thick pine branch and covered them as best he could with the poncho. Then he took a deep breath and crawled into the tent after Suzannah.
Chapter Fourteen
Suzannah scrunched herself up in one corner of the tiny tent, her knees tight against her chest.
“You won’t be able to sleep sitting up like that,” Brand said. He’d flattened himself out on the blankets, but she saw instantly there wasn’t enough room for them both.
He turned onto his side and patted the space next to him.
She couldn’t. She simply couldn’t. Mama would simply die if she saw her now.
“Come on, lie down,” he said, his voice tired. “I’m not gonna attack you. Isn’t room enough.”
A strangled laugh escaped her. Then she sniffled once and very, very gingerly stretched out beside him, making sure no part of her touched any part of him.
“Sure is small quarters,” he mused.
She said nothing.
“We’re both wet and tired and hungry, but at least we’re dry,” he said. “Sort of.”
“Where is your saddlebag?” she asked. “I saw you toss it in here, but I don’t see it.”
“It’s underneath me. Why?”
“Supper. You mentioned biscuits and—”
“Not gonna be many biscuits.”
“Jerky,” she finished. “I’m starving.”
They devoured the six remaining dry, crumbly biscuits and the jerky rounds Brand sliced off with his pocketknife and washed it down with water from his canteen while the rain plop-plopped onto the canvas over their heads in steady, rhythmic patterns.
They didn’t talk. Little by little it grew dark outside and the forest around them fell silent except for the sound of the rain. The wind picked up, swishing through the tree branches like a chorus of hisses.
Brand closed his eyes. Despite being jammed in here together like two tinned sardines, he felt oddly content. It wasn’t a bad way to spend a rainy night, lying next to an intriguing woman. Damn, he hoped it wasn’t going to snow. Wouldn’t be unusual, this high up in the Bitterroots. And if it did...well, he guessed they’d eat some more jerky.
“I like listening to the rain,” she said suddenly. “It’s peaceful when it rains.”
“No battles when it’s raining,” Brand said.
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Back home it meant we’d have chicken for supper. Before the war, that is. During the war we ate parched corn and a few scrawny quail our overseer killed.”
“Rain for me means riding on patrol at all hours of the day and night and watching the tracks I’d been following disappear in the mud.”
Again she said nothing, just lay beside him, listening.
“What about when you were young?”
“When I was young rain meant finding a stable or a barn to sleep in.”
“You had no home then?”
“Nope.”
“We surely had different childhoods,” she said.
Brand noticed her bent knee was touching his thigh and wondered if she realized it. Probably not.
“You ever wonder whether you wanted the life you were born into? Servants and fine china and lace curtains on the windows?”
“Even poor people have curtains on their windows, Brand. And no, I never wondered about it, not until I started off with the wagon train in Missouri. Actually, even then Mr. Monroe took such good care of me I never wondered too much about anything. I never thought about such things until you and I started riding west together.”
“You sorry?”
She waited a long, long time before answering. Just when his nerves were beginning to fray, she spoke. “No,” she said. “I am not sorry. I have learned a great deal, and—” she hesitated, and his nerves stretched taut again “—and I am not sorry that I met you.”
Her voice was beginning to sound drowsy. With any luck she’d drop off to sleep and he could shift his weight off his aching shoulder.
“Brand?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you warm?”
“Yeah.”
“Then could you put your arm around me? I’m getting cold.”
Oh, hell, yes he’d put his arm around her. He rolled toward her, slid one arm under her shoulders and pulled her flush against him. She gave a sleepy little sigh and snuggled her head under his chin.
“Suzannah?”
“Hmm?”
“Are we friends or enemies?”
“Friends, I think. Even though we don’t get along sometimes, we are friends. I think so, anyway. Do you think so?”
He didn’t know what the answer to that was. But he sure wished he had some whiskey hidden in a flask somewhere to help him think about it.
* * *
Somewhere around midnight, he guessed, Suzannah gave a soft sigh and wriggled even closer to his rigid body. Made him feel almost poetic inside, something that might be described as sweet agony. He wrapped both arms around her, rested his lips against her hair and finally let himself drift off to sleep.
At first light he woke with a start to find her propped up on one elbow, staring down into his face with eyes that were soft as moss.
“I watched you while you were sleeping,” she said.
He’d watched her, too, in the long, dark hours before she’d moved smack up against him. She looked beautiful. And sweet, like a child.
He took a careful breath. “Yeah? Do I snore?”
“No, you do not.” Then her face changed and a little frown wrinkled her forehead. “Do I?”
“No. You talk in your sleep, though.”
Her impossibly green eyes widened. “Oh, land sakes alive, what did I say?”
“Nuthin’ much. Something about your momma and some about this John you’re so all-fired up to see.”
“Wh-what about John? What did I say?”
Brand would be damned if he’d tell her. What she’d uttered was a bunch of noes and something about her horse.
“You said, ‘Good evening, John. Welcome to Marlborough.’”
“That’s our plantation. I guess I was remembering back when he visited. It seems like eons ago.”
“The rain’s stopped,” he said to change the subject. “Hear the birds? Chickadees and sparrows.”
She cocked her head to listen. He loved hearing birds sing in the morning. Even dead tired after a long patrol, if he woke up to a meadowlark or some chattering finches he didn’t feel as lonely as he sometimes did. Sometimes, after days of nothing but hard riding and drunken talk at night, he felt so empty inside he ached. He’d never known what it was he was missing.
Until now.
“Suzannah, let’s crawl on out of here and get going. We’ve got almost four days’ hard traveling between here and Fort Klamath.”
“Ye-es,” she said slowly. But she didn’t move.
“Suzannah?”
All at once she bent her head and brushed her lips over his. “Brand, there’s something I want you to know.”
He reached to the back of her neck and held her there, an inch from his mouth. “What is it?”
“Even with all your rough edges—and they are very rough indeed by Southern standards—I think that you are a fine man. A wonderful man, in fact. My papa would have liked you.”
God, he wanted to kiss her so bad his arm shook. “You know, you’re gonna waste yourself on your lieutenant. Next time he kisses you, I want you to remember this.”
He pulled her head down to his and kissed her long and hard. Then he did it again, softer and even longer. She made him weak with yearning and hard with wanting. Four more days of this and he’d be nothing but a shell of himself.
Wh
en he released her, she gave him a long, puzzled look and scooted backward out of the tent. He lay there another full minute, feeling dazed and hungry, and then he followed her out into the wintry sunshine.
She’d disappeared behind a bush. He allowed a few minutes before he went to check the horses.
When she reappeared her face was dripping wet. “There’s rainwater everywhere,” she announced. “Little pools under those leafy shrubs, what are they called?
“Salal. You can eat the berries.”
She grinned at him and clapped on her hat. “I already did.”
He strode off to tend to the horses, and when he returned she had rolled up their blankets and dismantled the tent and folded it up. Lord God, she was an unusual woman. Surprising. Resilient. Adventurous. And, oh, she was desirable as hell.
Suzannah spent all morning on the trail thinking about Brandon Wyler. Why did kissing him make her feel all shaky and happy inside? She had kissed John only twice, once when he proposed and again when he’d ridden away from the plantation, but neither kiss had felt anything like Brand’s.
She puzzled over it as she rode, and by noon, when the horses were struggling up the last steep switchback before reaching the top of the mountain, she had sorted it all out.
She was attracted to him. More than attracted. When he smiled at her, her breath came short, and when he shouted at her she wanted to crawl behind a rock and hide. But when he just rode along ahead of her, as he was doing now, she could study him, the tall frame and broad shoulders, the wide-brimmed hat he never took off except when he slept, the easy, loose-jointed way he moved with his horse. His voice, all rumbly when he was tired. And the look he sometimes got in his gray eyes, as if waiting for something.
And the exquisite, trembly feel of his mouth on hers. That she mulled over more than anything.
But remember, Suzannah Cumberland, you are already spoken for.
“Dismount,” Brand suddenly ordered. “Stretch your muscles. And look at the view from up here.”
She scrambled off her mare and gazed past him. From the top of the mountain, forested hills and green valleys seemed to roll on forever. Oh, it was lovely!
“This is beautiful country,” she breathed.
“See that river down there? We’ll be crossing it today.”
Suzannah stared at the silvery ribbon winding through a flat green valley below them. “That is beautiful, too.”
“You might not think so when we reach it. Probably swollen because of the rain.”
Before she could question him, he’d started on down the other side. Whistling.
* * *
The three men halted and drew their horses into a circle. “That her?”
“Yeah. Looks diff’rent in them jeans, but that’s her, all right.”
“She carry the money on her?”
“Nah. Too heavy. Prob’ly in that saddlebag.”
“She sure ain’t headin’ to Texas, like that feller said. They’re headin’ west.”
“Thought the guy you shot was dead, Shorty. The man with her looks suspiciously like him.”
“Guess I only winged him, Red. Coulda’ sworn—”
“Aw, ferget it. We’ve got her in our sights now. Just a matter of getting the drop on ’em.”
“And getting our hands on that money.”
The man called Red scratched his bristly chin. “So, what do we do now?”
“Follow ’em. Wait fer a chance to...you know, get our hands on the woman, and then...”
“And then what? We gonna kidnap her?”
“Maybe.”
“What about the guy ridin’ with her?”
“Well, hell, Red, you shot ’im once, now you’re gonna get a second chance.”
* * *
Brand reined up on the riverbank and sat studying the situation. Swollen wasn’t even half-accurate. What had been a lazy, meandering river when he’d returned from Marcy’s funeral a little while ago was now a raging froth of brown-green water with crosscurrents and swirling eddies that swept along small logs.
He’d seen it like this before. It usually took two or three days for the water to recede, but he didn’t have two or three days. He had to get Suzannah to Fort Klamath intact before he lost his head and jumped her while she lay beside him some night.
He’d never ravished a woman before, especially not a virgin who was engaged to another man. But the truth was he didn’t trust himself to wait another two or three extra days, and nights, for the Snake River to drop to its normal level. He’d look for a place where they could get two horses across.
After riding along the bank two miles in each direction, he found it. Wasn’t pretty, but it looked possible.
“Can you swim?”
She shot him a frowning look. “N-no.”
Brand swore under his breath. Couldn’t cook. Couldn’t shoot. Couldn’t swim. She didn’t belong out here in the West; she belonged down south on a plantation where life was slow and easy and servants did everything.
“We’re gonna ride our horses into the water, and when it gets deep enough they’ll start to swim. All you have to do is hold on tight and let the horse do the work.”
Her face looked white and drawn with fear.
“Think you can do that?” he asked.
First she shook her head, then after a moment she nodded and tried to smile. “A-all right. I suppose I can do that.”
Brand groaned. For damn sure she didn’t want to. “Suzannah, as long as you don’t lose your nerve, you’ll be safe.”
“I w-will not lose my nerve,” she said. “I promise.”
He couldn’t look at her. “I’ll go in ahead of you. You follow exactly where my horse goes, you got that?”
She nodded and grabbed her reins in a death grip.
Brand started down the bank and splashed into the river.
Chapter Fifteen
Suzannah kept her eyes on Brand’s black horse as it moved forward into the raging water, gripped the reins tight and urged her mare to follow. With each step the water grew deeper and deeper, tumbling around the animal’s legs, then rising to its hindquarters. The urge to shut her eyes and pray was overwhelming.
When the roiling water reached her knees, she felt the mare stop all motion, and suddenly she realized it was floating. No, she thought in amazement, it was swimming! At least, she prayed it was swimming. The river swirled over her thighs, and she held tight to the reins and tried desperately to remember what else Brand had said.
He was ahead of her. She must have cried out because he twisted in the saddle to look back at her. “Grab onto the mane,” he shouted.
She kept hold of the reins but bent forward and dug her fingers into the mare’s coarse neck hair. All at once one of her boots slipped out of the stirrup, and the next thing she knew she started to tilt.
“Brand!” she screamed.
Before she could draw breath she felt the icy water close over her head. She clawed her way up until her head broke the surface, and then Brand was there, hoisting her up out of the river and onto his lap.
With his reins in one hand he wrapped his other arm around her, and she clung to his safe, solid body.
“Think I ripped your shirt,” he shouted.
“What?” His horse was swimming along toward the opposite bank, and she saw that Brand had hold of her mare’s reins and was pulling it along beside them.
“Your shirt,” he yelled over the sound of the rushing river. “I grabbed the neck of your shirt to haul you out. Think it ripped.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she screamed near his ear.
“Does matter. I paid for it!”
She couldn’t suppress a choked laugh, and all at once they were sloshing out of the river and clambering up the bank onto solid ground. He dropped both sets of reins, slid her off his lap onto the ground and dismounted.
She was so jelly-legged she couldn’t stand. Brand grasped her shoulders to steady her. “You okay, Suzannah?”
�
�Yes, but I can’t seem to stand up.”
He scooped her up into his arms and carried her across a marshy flat to an expanse of gray-green sorrel and tule grass.
“I’ll build a fire. You need to get out of those wet things.”
“Out here?” She stared at him. “But it—it’s so flat. Someone might see me!”
He had to laugh. “Which would you rather be, embarrassed or down with pneumonia?”
He had to scout a ways in ever-widening circles before he found wood, and even then the branches were spindly and not too dry. When he returned to Suzannah, she was shaking with cold and her teeth were chattering.
“Strip,” he ordered.
“Oh, but—”
“You want to die of pneumonia? I said strip!”
She turned her back and began unbuttoning her shirt, then unbuckled her jeans. By the time she’d pared down to her underthings he had a fire going.
He rustled one of his clean shirts out of his saddlebag.
“Put this on.”
“Y-yes, s-sir.” She buttoned his shirt up to her chin and managed to wriggle out of her wet camisole and drawers. The shirt came down below her butt, but he turned his back anyway.
“Don’t put the socks on yet,” he said over his shoulder. “Gotta dry out your boots first.”
He undid his bedroll and wrapped her up in a dry blanket, sat her down on a log by the fire and went to look for some sticks to prop her boots on. Finally he squatted down on his haunches in front of her.
“Getting warm?”
She nodded and tugged the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Brand, you are soaking wet, too.”
“Not too much. My jeans’ll dry out and I’ll prop my boots next to yours.”
She looked up, her face pinched. “What are we going to do now?”
“Now? Sit here until we’re dry, then we move on.”
“Could we stay here? Pitch your tent and—”
“Nope.” He’d be damned if he’d risk another night scrunched up next to her in his tiny little tent.
“But—”
“No.”
Both sets of boots started to steam. Brand tried to calculate how long it would take to get them reasonably dry and how many hours of daylight they had left. Boots first, he figured.
Dreaming of a Western Christmas: His Christmas BelleThe Cowboy of Christmas PastSnowbound with the Cowboy Page 8
