Once an Outlaw

by Raine Cantrell

  “The one of us being me. What the hell are we standing here jawing about, then? Let’s go.”

  “Ty—”

  He glanced at his older brother and slipped the thong on his holster. Settling the belt a little lower, Ty then canted his hat brim forward. “This is one time I’m gonna enjoy this unwanted reputation.”

  Conner followed him, and despite his worry about Logan, he noticed the change in Ty’s walk, the way his brother carried himself. When Ty paused before the bat-wing doors and Conner saw his face in the spilling light from the saloon, he had the strangest feeling that he didn’t know him at all. What Conner did know was that he didn’t want to be the man who crossed Ty’s path right now.

  It frustrated him all to hell to be the one who waited outside. Waited with his gun drawn, ready to roll through the door firing if need be.

  But the minutes ticked by, and there was no alarm, no shots. Conner could feel his muscles tensing with every passing moment. What the devil was Ty doing?

  But more importantly, was Logan inside?

  When his nerves were stretched to breaking, Conner fought the temptation to walk inside. It was a good thing, too, as Ty walked out, grabbed his arm and hustled back down the street.

  “He was there, all right. We missed him. But he left with a mixed breed named Billy Jack. According to the woman, they headed west out of town.”

  “West? Why would Logan—”

  “I don’t know, Conner. That’s all she knew. That and the fact that he made the breed walk. Seems he recovered his own horse from the man, tied his hands behind his back, left him in his boots and union suit and took him out of town.”

  Conner shoved his hat back and slumped against the wall of the building. “There’s nothing out there.”

  “He’s alive. Logan’s nobody’s fool. He wouldn’t ride out blindly. My guess is that he knows where he’s going. Taking this Billy Jack with him was just insurance.”

  “That leaves us to sit here and wait and give him time to get set up. Then we’ll ride up to the Silver Belt. I’ve got my own kind of welcoming party in mind for the next robbery.”

  “You sit and wait here. Me, I’m gonna keep a promise. We’re not that far from Apache Junction. I can ride up and back in a day. I’ve got to at least try to find Greg’s sister. I’ve never broken my word to a friend before.”

  “I won’t wait here, Ty. Com’on, we’ll make camp and ride out first light. I wouldn’t be any good waiting.”

  “None of us are,” Ty said, walking alongside his brother to their horses.

  Mounted, they rode north, silent but having parallel thoughts each refused to voice so as not to add to the worry of the other.

  Where was Logan?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jessie, plagued with a restlessness that did not abate but only increased as the moon disappeared behind a bank of clouds, slipped outside where her pacing would not disturb the sleeping boys.

  She wrapped her shawl around her and huddled on the bench with her bare feet tucked beneath the hem of her nightgown.

  All day her thoughts had been fixed on Logan, which was not unusual, but there was an added edge of tension that refused to leave her. She longed to have someone that she could talk to about her feelings for him. She had believed the desire to see him, hear him, touch and kiss him again would lessen as the days passed. She needed to believe it.

  But tonight she had come to terms with her feelings.

  Logan had asked for her trust.

  Jessie had given that to him and more. Logan wasn’t going to leave her thoughts and give her any peace. He had made a place for himself in her heart.

  Every argument that she marshaled against him, all the suspicions she harbored, paled against the blazing intensity of her need to be with him.

  There was an old proverb that kept running through her thoughts: what is woven by reason is by passion undone.

  But she knew, despite every effort she made to deny it, that there was more than passion involved.

  Yet she feared to name it.

  To give name to what she felt would allow the more sensible side of herself to ridicule the idea that she could have these strong feelings for a man she barely knew.

  She denied that part. She knew Logan. She knew what he made her feel—pretty and strong and young, so very foolishly young.

  She remembered his whisper in the dark that night that he had shown her the woman she could be. How many times had he asked to feel her smile against his lips? Teasing her when she understood it was a game and played coy. Telling her he loved her smile, while she yearned to hear him murmur that he loved her.

  There, she had silently said the word. Love. It was totally impossible. You couldn’t love someone so suddenly, so deeply.

  But a picture came to mind of herself reading a letter from her brother when Greg had written that he had met the woman who would be his wife, the only one he would ever love. Two weeks later Greg and Livia had been married. Jessie recalled her hastily written advice begging her brother to wait, to be sure.

  And she didn’t know any two people who were more in love with each other than those two.

  So much for her practical nature and beliefs.

  As memory stirred, an older one came to mind, that of her parents. They had met at a church social, and following an intense courtship that set tongues wagging, they, too, had married within weeks of meeting.

  Where had her dreams of finding such a love gone?

  Buried beneath the lost youth, and the folly of marrying in haste to the wrong man.

  Giving herself a mental shake to rid herself of the nagging little voice, Jessie rose and paced the hard-packed earth in front of her cabin. So, what good did it do to name what she felt for Logan? She had no way of finding him. And even if she did, he might not return her feelings.

  Adorabelle snorted and Jessie stopped her pacing, turned, then lifted her head. The moon, with a pearl-like luminance, broke from behind the dark bank of clouds and revealed the mare poking her head over the pole fence of the corral. Her whinny had a strange effect on Jessie. She thought it sounded lonely, as lonely as she felt.

  Jessie dismissed the tiny ripple of fear that streaked down her back. It was only some animal, and not a dangerous one or Adorabelle wouldn’t be repeating a sound as if she were calling whatever was out there.

  But Jessie couldn’t remember her mare ever doing this. And you’ve never been out in the middle of the night, either.

  When the noise was returned, Jessie stood stock-still. Her heartbeat was suddenly faster, and a small heat raced through her body. She was afraid to turn around, afraid that her need would make her see what wasn’t there, what couldn’t possibly be there.

  From the darkness came his whisper. “Jessie?”

  And she didn’t dare deny her heart’s desire. She turned and ran toward the rider coming down the slope, heedless of the stones beneath her bare feet, heedless of any danger as she rushed, the way her blood rushed through her, to the lover the night had returned to her.

  Seeing him draped in light and shadow, Jessie stopped her headlong flight. The doubts fled the moment she beheld him and heard her name whispered from his lips. She knew if he came to her a hundred times out of the darkness she would welcome him, for she felt alive again. Like a wild, raging current, emotions swept over her, then she was moving toward him.

  Logan caught her up in his powerful arms, his lips finding hers in a hungry kiss as he settled her across his thighs. The added weight sent the horse into a sidestepping dance, but a hard press of his knees stilled the animal.

  One hand caught in the loose single braid of her hair to hold her head, the other cradled the small of her back as he lost himself in a kiss that was more than her lips parting and hungering against his mouth. It was all of her, coming up tight against him, generous with her total response, until he felt enveloped with the sweet, heated press of Jessie’s body.

  It wasn’t enough. This would never be
enough.

  Jessie’s fingers clung to his leather-clad shoulders, knowing the ache of her own buried hunger. His teeth and tongue played over her mouth, making her cry out, utterly defenseless against the need he called from her.

  Hammer blows of desire thudded inside him. The tiny hungry sounds she made snapped whatever control he had left. His mouth took all she offered with an almost savage intensity. With a muffled groan, he felt the force of his kiss bend her back over his arm, and she held him tight, the supple molding of her body to his sending fire licking his insides.

  She trembled against him like a leaf caught in a windstorm. Her kiss more than matched the passion unleashed in his. Jessie felt as if she were drowning in a swirl of fevered darkness and Logan was the only one who could save her.

  With a vicious curse, Logan tore his lips from hers as the restive moves of the horse threatened to topple them to the ground.

  He drew her up against his chest, burying his face against the soft warmth of her neck. “Jess, I swear, I feel like I found a part of me that’s been missing.”

  Jessie was too overcome to speak. She wrapped her arms around him, her fingers tunneling through his thick, silky hair. He’d lost his hat in the first few moments, and if she had ever thought to keep claim on her heart, Jessie realized she had lost that, as well.

  “I need to set you down,” he murmured, trailing kisses along the curve of her neck until he found the softer prey of her earlobe. He smiled, recalling how sensitive Jessie was, and teased her with his lips and teeth and tongue while he teased himself as well, for as the fever spread inside her, it ensnared him.

  “Jess,” he whispered. “Jess, this is crazy. I shouldn’t have come here now.”

  “I thought I was dreaming—”

  “I was going crazy missing you. Crazy with thinking that you wouldn’t want me to come back, that you couldn’t forgive me for leaving you the way I did.” He lifted his head. He touched her cheeks with his fingertips. “Mostly I couldn’t believe that you might feel what I do for you.”

  His look was challenging. His voice held a low-pitched timbre of sensuality that stroked her. “Yes.” Her lips curved into an uncertain smile while she battled the tears that burned her eyes. “Yes, all that and more.”

  Logan gathered her close, feeling a peace the like of which he had never known steal through him.

  “I dreamed of you,” Jessie confessed in a soft voice. “I prayed that you would come back to me.”

  “Is that what you’re doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  She jerked back from him, and the horse, having had enough, started to rear. Logan quickly controlled the animal and, with a short laugh, set Jessie down on the ground, then dismounted.

  The moonlight caught on the silver buckle of his belt and Jessie stared at it for a moment, then backed away. She had seen that buckle or one just like it on the man called Billy Jack in Silas’s store.

  But she didn’t question him about the buckle. “The horse tied to the saddle, that’s the one I bought for you, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. A fine horse, Jessie. I wouldn’t mind having stock like—”

  “And this other one?” she asked, gesturing to the horse he had ridden. “It’s yours, isn’t it? This is the one that was stolen from you?”

  There was an edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before, and he had noted the distance she put between them. Alert to the direction of her questions, Logan tensed.

  “The horse is mine, Jessie. I raised him from birth. I don’t part easily with anything that I claim as mine, unless I want to give it away.” He dropped the reins he held, ground tying the horse.

  From the corral came Adorabelle’s whinny. Logan slapped his horse’s rump. “Go on, boy. Pay the little lady some attention.”

  “She’s too old—”

  “He’s a gelding, Jess. And I don’t know of any animal that won’t seek its own kind.”

  “Perhaps when the urge to mate comes, then the male usually takes off.”

  “Is that why you think I’ve come back here?”

  “No. I didn’t mean—” She broke off, pulling her shawl tight around her.

  “Jess, I swear it must be a trick of the moonlight, but you’re blushing.”

  “I don’t blush.”

  “Coloring up as pink as a desert flower—”

  “Stay right where you are, Logan. I won’t let you distract me. I refuse to allow it. If you got your horse back, then you found the men who left you to die.”

  “One of them.” His hands curled at his sides. He took a deep breath, then released it. “Don’t be afraid of me, Jessie. I couldn’t stand the thought that you are. I would never hurt you. And I didn’t kill him. I sure as hell wanted—”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  A cynical smile curved his lips. “It’s about the only thing that you didn’t ask me.”

  “That’s not true. I haven’t asked you where you’ve been.” Or a hundred other questions that have plagued me. Did you miss me? Did you get hurt facing him? Are you staying? That one she wanted to ask, wanted an answer to.

  “Jess?” He took a step toward her, and when she stood her ground, almost as if she challenged him to come to her, Logan wasted no time in coming to stand before her. But he didn’t touch her. He didn’t trust himself not to brush her very real concerns aside by sweeping her up into his arms and kissing her senseless, back into the heated welcome he had received.

  “I want you to know that you can ask me anything you want.”

  She studied his chiseled features, imagining that she could see how tired he was. The lock of hair that fell over his forehead tempted her hand. Jessie resisted the urge and the need to touch him.

  “Anything?”

  “Whatever it is that’s keeping you away from me.”

  “Who are you, Logan?”

  There was truth, and then there was truth. “I’m the man who came back looking for the other half of himself. The other half that matters, the one who’s full of hope and love and a smile that turns my middle to something close to jelly.”

  “Logan—”

  “No. You asked, and I’m answering. I’m the man who still needs to ask for your trust a while longer. Then, and only then, will I finish answering your question.”

  “I see,” she murmured, looking off to the side. “I have a feeling there was something missing. A few words about when I come back—”

  “Jess—”

  “No. I do see.”

  “Do you, Jess? Do you really understand?”

  The earnest plea in his voice invited her to look at him again. There was something different about him, more than the clothing that, while not new, wasn’t the same as he had worn.

  “You may have a little mule in you, Logan. I’m not running, am I?”

  It had been so much to hope for that her answer sank in very slowly. But when it did, a deep smile of sheer masculine satisfaction creased his lips.

  “Oh, Jess. My sweet, sassy Jessie. You may wish you had run while you still had the chance.”

  Jessie gave him back a smile that was every bit as satisfied, and danced away from him. “I’ve regretted a few things in my life, Logan, but not one moment that I’ve spent with you.”

  He went after her with laughter, and caught her close, stealing the joy of her smile with his lips.

  From inside the cabin Marty, who no matter how hard he strained to see above the sill couldn’t, demanded an accounting from Kenny, who easily reached it.

  “What’s he doing? Com’on, Kenny, tell me. Tell me.”

  “Keep your voice down. Do ya want them to hear? They’re kissin’. What else?” Twisting away from the window, Kenny pulled Marty into the other room, where their whispers wouldn’t be overheard. “I swear, he comes ridin’ in this late an’ I figured for sure we’d see some real excitement, an’ all he can do is kiss her.”

  “Maybe he brought us a present, Kenny. Do ya think so?”

  �
��I don’t know ’bout us. But Miz Jessie’s sure act-in’ like he brung her one. Bet they wouldn’t be smoochin’ so much if they knew what we did.”

  “I told you we shoulda told Miz Jessie. She won’t like finding out those men are up there. We shoulda told, Kenny. We shoulda—”

  “Tell you what. Let’s get dressed. We’ll fix up the beddin’ jus’ like we were still sleepin’ an’ go up there. If they’re still in the shack, we’ll run down an’ get Logan. He’ll know what to do.”

  “We’ll get caught.”

  “You can stay.” Kenny stripped off the nightshirt that Jessie insisted he wear like a proper young man and grabbed up his clothes.

  “Baby,” he taunted Marty.

  “Ain’t.”

  “Are too.” Kenny shoved his shirt into his pants.

  Marty scrambled to pull off his nightshirt and get dressed. “Wait for me. Miz Jessie’s sure to tan me if she finds you gone.”

  “Com’on, slowpoke.” Kenny went to the window again and saw that Logan had taken the saddles from his horses and turned the animals into the corral. He didn’t see them at first, but a closer look showed them standing together just inside the shed.

  “Hurry up. We can get out the door without them seein’ us.”

  “You sure about this, Kenny? Miz Jessie—”

  “If you’re scared, stay here. Be lookin’ like a fool iffen I tell them to go up there an’ there ain’t no one around.” But for all his brave talk, Kenny climbed up on the chair and took down his father’s shotgun and the box of shells that Jessie had put there for safekeeping.

  Marty, not to be outdone, shoved his slingshot into his back pocket and checked the front pants pocket for his collection of small round stones that he was never without.

  Kenny opened the door just wide enough for them to slip out. He took hold of Marty’s hand, leading him away from the shed and into the brush that would bring them out well beyond the cabin and the henhouse. He didn’t want the old rooster squawking. The bright moonlight made finding their way easier, and while Kenny wouldn’t admit it to Marty, also made him feel braver.