by Tess LeSue
“Clothes,” Calla said cheerfully. “She couldn’t leave them behind.”
Emma knew it was ridiculous to haul a wagonful of gowns with her, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to part with them. She loved her gowns. At first, she’d planned to take just one or two, but then there was the trouble of choosing between them. It was like choosing a favorite child. Besides, she’d earned those gowns, and she’d be damned if she’d leave them.
“They’re worth a lot of money,” Emma defended herself when Deathrider looked incredulous. “Do you have any idea what a yard of silk costs?”
“And what do two nuns need with silk?”
She scowled at him. She wasn’t planning on staying a nun.
“Can Micah here borrow one of your fancy dresses?” Deathrider asked, yanking open one of the trunks.
“Not that one!” Emma yelped when he pulled out her favorite pink.
“It’s got to be something Hec and his cronies will recognize from a distance. Something flashy.” Deathrider held up the gaudy gown.
Emma scowled. Goddamn it. “Fine. Take the pink.”
Deathrider tossed the pink dress to Micah, who was looking increasingly appalled. “You want me to do what?” he kept saying. Deathrider ignored him.
“How do you make your hair that orange color?” Deathrider asked Emma.
Orange! It had taken her hours to get this color! “It’s red.”
“You really should put your coif back on,” Calla scolded her. “You’re too recognizable without it.”
“It’s too hot,” Emma growled, her gaze fixed on her beautiful pink dress, which was scrunched up in Micah’s sweaty paw.
“I don’t look like no whore,” Micah sounded surly as all hell.
Emma looked him up and down. “He really doesn’t,” she agreed.
“He’ll pass from a distance. Especially if we make his hair that orange color.”
“Over my dead body.” Micah’s hand went to his glossy black hair.
“Just put a hat on him,” Emma said. “I’ve got a pink bonnet in that hatbox over there.” She’d never liked the bonnet much. It didn’t have nearly enough trim.
“Orange hair would be better.”
“We could make a wig,” Calla suggested. “She was thinking about cutting it all off anyway.” She eyed Emma’s hennaed hair. “I could sew a swatch of it to the bonnet, so it falls down his back. Then Micah could just take it off whenever he wanted.”
“Damn it, Nate. I haven’t agreed to any of this.” Micah had the pink dress in one fist and the tail of his long shining hair in his other.
“But you will,” Deathrider told his friend calmly. “And I would do the same for you.”
“I’d never ask you to!”
“It makes sense for Seline and Deathrider to ride together,” Deathrider repeated patiently. “And we might as well kill two birds with one stone. The whore and the outlaw. It will make a good book for Miss Archer.” His ice-blue eyes glinted. “We’ll dress Micah up like Seline. We’ll make a spectacle of ourselves as we leave Mariposa tomorrow, so when the posses come through, the whole town will be talking about it. We’ll leave a clear trail they can follow and lead them well away from you.”
“You want two posses on our trail?” Micah was looking peaky.
“Are two worse than one?” Deathrider shrugged. “One man or a hundred men, what does it matter when the purpose is the same? One man can shoot you just as dead as ten.”
“You’re not making me feel any better.”
Deathrider gave him a quick grin. “Don’t worry, it won’t be for long. Deathrider and the whore will come to a quick end.”
“You’re still not making me feel any better.”
Deathrider’s gaze grew sly as it slid over Emma’s hennaed locks. “We’re going to slip into the Apacheria, and our little whore is going to find herself scalped by the Apaches. We can leave the hair for them to find. Maybe bits of the dress too.”
“Apaches!” Micah sounded horrified.
“My dress!” Emma sounded even more horrified.
Deathrider laughed. “Imagine it. Kennedy Voss, Hec Boehm and all those witless white men blundering into the Apacheria. They won’t walk out alive.”
“Yes, but what about us? Who says we’ll be able to walk out alive?”
Deathrider didn’t look concerned. “They’ll find evidence of our deaths, and that will be the end of the hunt. And when the Apaches find them, that will be the end of them. Problems solved.”
“When these Apaches kill Deathrider, will he stay dead? Or is he going to rise up like last time?” Micah asked sourly. “Because there’ll only be another posse if you pop back up again. And while I swore to be your brother, I’m about done with posses.”
“I’m the Ghost of the Trails,” Deathrider said. “Ghosts can’t die.”
“Now he’s believing his own press,” Micah grumbled to the whores.
“Fine,” Emma sighed, “if we’re going to do this, let’s hurry up and do it.” As she handed her luggage into the wagon, she cursed Hec Boehm. Not only was she losing her house on the bay, she was losing her pink gown, and now her hair. What did it even matter if this Slater brother was good-looking, she thought grumpily, when all he’d see when he looked at her was a bald, sweaty nun.
* * *
• • •
“HOLY HELL.”
“You can’t say that anymore,” Calla scolded her. “You’re a nun, remember? You have to practice, so when people are around, you won’t slip up.”
Emma barely heard her. Her gaze was riveted to the man at the washbasin in the yard below. She leaned through the window to get a better look. Dear God. There was only one person it could be. From behind, with his shirt off, he was the spitting image of Luke Slater. He had shoulders like sandstone cliffs, with skin the color of caramel. The muscles in his back bunched as he washed. Thick dark hair, exactly the color of Luke’s, curled damply at the cords of his neck. Drops of water ran down his spine, between the flexing muscles. He was hypnotic. And she wasn’t the only one to notice what a fine figure he cut. She saw Ella’s girls gathering in the yard to watch him at his bath. He was standing in the lee of the stable, washing himself from the tin laundry tub. The sun was setting, long hot bars of it falling dusty through the gaps in the buildings. Shadows stretched across the yard, and the air was heavy and lazy. It was so still, Emma could hear every splash of the water in the laundry tub.
She was at the open window of Ella’s office, trying to dry her hair. Calla had demanded that she wash it, so Micah would at least have a clean wig. The problem was, they didn’t have a lot of time, and her hair took forever to dry. Watching Tom Slater at his bath was a surefire way to dry her off though, she thought witlessly; she was hotter’n a Dutch oven right now.
“Your hair is so much brighter when it’s clean,” Calla was saying as she fussed through the desk drawers, looking for scissors. “And it looked like a rat’s nest. What would Micah have thought?”
Emma didn’t think Micah would give a toss if the hair was clean or dirty. But Calla was right that cleaning it brought out the color. It was screamingly red. It would be visible from a mile away, which was exactly what Deathrider needed. So she’d suffered through the soaping and the pain of the comb yanking through her tangles. And then she’d taken her place at the window to dry off and had seen him.
“If you have to swear,” Calla suggested, “say Madre de Dios.”
“Madre de Dios,” Emma repeated numbly, as the man who looked like Luke Slater tipped a cup of water over his head. The water shone gold in the sunset, and his back was chased with slick bronze. Droplets glittered. Oh my God, she’d forgotten how beautiful he was.
“Holy hell!” Calla had finally seen him too.
“You can’t say that anymore.” Emma couldn’t resist need
ling her.
“Who is that?”
“That, I believe,” she said, her voice thick with admiration, “is the real Tom Slater.”
He put her so in mind of Luke that Emma had a sudden shock when the man turned to face them. This man was very clearly not Luke Slater. The resemblance was there, but . . . How was it even possible? . . . This man put Luke to shame. Where Luke had been thickly muscled, this man was leaner, more defined. The gold-lit water etched the rippling hard length of his body, outlining each and every muscle as it flexed. She’d had no idea that a man could even have so many muscles in him.
“Madre de Dios.” There was genuine reverence in Emma’s voice as she drank in the sight of him. He pushed the wet hair back from his face. Oh. My. God. That face. Lean cheeked, hard jawed, it was all glorious golden planes and angles. Black stubble only served to outline its hard perfection.
“God have mercy,” Calla breathed.
They watched breathlessly as he finished his ablutions and dried off, running a thin towel over his chest, pausing to rub the whorls of dark hair between his nipples. Emma had the urge to go down and help him.
She felt a stab of jealousy as she realized one of Ella’s girls had the same urge. It was one of the young ones, a pretty little fresh-faced girl. She all but skipped across the yard with a bigger, more useful towel. Her voice drifted clearly up to the open window.
“Do you need a hand?” the young whore asked, a giggle in her voice.
“Lucky cow,” Calla sighed.
They watched as Tom took the towel, although he refused the help.
“We’re going with him?” Calla was almost pushing Emma out the way as she tried to keep Tom Slater in her line of sight. Emma shivered as she realized it was true: they were going to be out on the trail with this man. Alone. With this beautiful, burnished man, who looked like Luke Slater, only—How was it possible?—even better. Suddenly, going to Mexico didn’t seem so bad . . .
At least until she remembered that she was going to be a nun. She scowled as she watched the pretty young whore below bat her eyelashes and giggle. No man was going to look twice at her in the stinky old black habit. Unless it was to ask her to pray for him.
“I ain’t never seen a man that beautiful,” Calla marveled. “Although ‘beautiful’ doesn’t seem the right word. He’s better than beautiful.”
They both made disappointed noises as Tom Slater pulled his shirt on, covering up all those lovely muscles.
“I bet she doesn’t even charge him,” Calla said enviously. “I wouldn’t if I were her.”
“You would if you were working for me,” Emma told her sharply, but mostly out of habit. Calla’s words had struck her like a splash of cold water. It was a reminder of who she was.
Of course, it didn’t matter if she was a nun when he met her. Because if she wasn’t a nun, she was a whore. Even though years had passed, the memory of Luke’s shock, of his horror, was suddenly as fresh as if she’d seen it yesterday. It had never occurred to him that their time together was anything more than a transaction. He had meant the world to her, but for him, she had been just another night’s entertainment. If she hadn’t been available, he would have slept with another. And he had. She was just a body to him. The rest had been her imagination.
So, who cared if she was a nun? If she wasn’t wearing the habit, a man like Tom Slater wouldn’t even see her. All he’d see would be the bright hair and the makeup, the fancy underwear and the naked legs. All he would want from a woman like her was a poke. And then he might toss her an extra coin after he was finished, if she was lucky. Better to be invisible in the sweaty black habit than to face that again.
She felt the old sour shame. She must have lost her mind, thinking a man like Luke Slater would see anything but a whore when he looked at her. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Did you find the scissors?” she asked abruptly. “We’re running out of time.” She stole a glance at her reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall. What did a nun need with all that glorious hair? She pushed aside the pang of regret. She wanted to get rid of the henna anyway, she reminded herself. And the hair would grow back.
And when all of this was over, she would crawl out of the nun’s habit, grow back her own hair and be someone entirely new. Someone who wasn’t a nun and wasn’t a whore.
It was as easy as a snake shedding its skin.
Wasn’t it?
4
“WHAT DO YOU mean you’re not coming?” This day could just go to hell. Tom pressed the heels of his hands into his gritty eyes. He hadn’t managed to sleep. He’d lain on the whore’s bed in the hot room, his mind chewing at problems. Eventually, he’d given up in disgust and gone and washed up. He’d laundered his filthy clothes and then himself. But not even the cold water refreshed him.
“We talked about this,” he implored Deathrider. “You said you were coming to Mexico.”
“No,” the damn fool said, as he slid into his fringed buckskin shirt, “I don’t believe I did.”
“You said we were riding out tonight!”
“I did say that.”
The madman was making himself more conspicuous, Tom realized, as he watched Deathrider lace his buckskin collar and reach for a black-tipped eagle feather to knot into his loose hair. Earlier, he’d been dressed more or less like a white man. Now he looked like he’d ridden straight off the plains.
“You’re supposed to be in hiding,” Tom snapped at him.
“I will be. Eventually.” His fingers made deft work of the knot and the feather thrust jauntily from his shining hair. He pulled a couple of locks back and knotted them below the feather, keeping his hair from his face. It made his features seem more angular. Harder.
“And where are you going to hide, dressed like that?”
Deathrider ignored him and turned his attention to his saddlebags.
Tom had found him in the loft of the stable, out behind the whorehouse, where he’d taken advantage of the quiet to organize his baggage and prepare for the journey. Or so Tom had assumed.
“Nate!” Tom tried to keep his voice even. “Just talk straight. Tell me what’s going on.”
Deathrider paused over his saddlebags and sighed. “There are these nuns . . .” he said slowly.
Nuns! Now Tom had heard everything. He listened in disbelief as his friend told him an outlandish tale about two beleaguered nuns who needed to get to Mexico. It was utterly ridiculous and made no sense at all.
“Why in hell would a man like Hec Boehm be hunting a pair of nuns?” Tom had been running cattle up to the goldfields for a couple of years and knew enough about Hec Boehm to know that he wasn’t a man prone to socializing with nuns.
“How should I know?” Deathrider had turned back to his bags. “They asked me to help them, so I’m helping them.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Since when are you a Good Samaritan?” Forget Hec Boehm and nuns, Deathrider and nuns made no sense.
Deathrider shrugged. “I’m not completely heartless. You try looking into a nun’s big eyes and turning her aside.”
Tom planned to do just that. He wasn’t about to go dragging a pair of nuns halfway across the territory, especially not down through Apache country and into the heart of Mexico. He had his own problems, without adding nuns to them.
“It ain’t safe for them to be with me,” he protested hotly. “Not when people think I’m you. You’re putting their lives in danger.”
“Go by another name for a while and it won’t be a problem.”
“I like my name.” Tom wanted to kick something. “Besides, people know me down south. Changing my name would do jackshit.”
“They’re safer with you than they are alone.”
“Why don’t you take them?” he demanded, feeling belligerent. Deathrider was more trouble than he was worth, he thought chur
lishly. He should have left him for the posse to find. “Why get me to do it?”
“Because, as you’re so fond of pointing out, I have a posse on my tail.”
“So do they. Seems like you’re a good match.”
“You got sour since I saw you last,” Deathrider said mildly.
Tom turned away to hide the fact that Deathrider’s words had hit their mark. He had grown sour. Sour and tired and restless to the bone. Nothing made him happy anymore. Not being at home, not being on the trail. And the reason for it was something he was so ashamed of, he could barely face it.
He was in love with his brother’s wife.
It was a sad, messed-up kind of love. It was pointless and hopeless: Alex didn’t care for him; she was madly in love with Luke. Like so many other women, he thought tiredly. Women melted over Luke. But Luke only melted over one woman, and that woman was Alex.
And how could he not? She was perfect. Beautiful, sassy, smart, kind, funny. She brightened every room she entered. It was hell to share a house with her and to watch her and Luke together. But leaving made Tom no happier. When he was away, he felt like he had a hole through the middle of him, like the funnel of a tornado, pulling all the sunshine out of the day with shocking force.
He’d thought it would get easier after Luke had married Alex. He’d thought his feelings would fall into line. But if anything, they got worse. Even after his nieces were born, even when it was clear that Luke and Alex were blissfully happy, every passing year made Tom’s feelings more powerful and more painful.
“I came here to help you,” Tom told Deathrider, pushing away thoughts of Alex, and pretending he hadn’t heard the sour comment, “not some damn nuns.”
“This will help me.”
Tom had walked into that one. He scowled.
“It won’t be so bad,” Deathrider reassured him. “I’ve traveled with one of them before, and she’s no trouble at all. She won’t complain or slow you up. She’s an old hand on the trail. And she’s a great cook.”
