“You didn’t ask to get snakebit, either, and if I had come along in the first place, none of this would have happened. Don’t worry about it.” He started to set her down, but again she clung to his neck, almost like a child. He thought about all the times when he was a little boy when he would have welcomed someone’s strong arms to hold him and tell him everything was all right, that he would be protected and safe.
He sat down himself then, keeping her in his arms. “Randy, I don’t want you to be embarrassed or afraid or sorry, all right? It isn’t like you to cry, and I know it’s just because of what you’ve been through and because you’re so sick.” He stroked her hair. “In a few days you’ll feel a lot better and doing everything on your own. Hell, I’ve seen it all and done it all. Don’t be embarrassed to let me help you.”
“I still can’t believe you’re here,” she sobbed, clinging to his shirt. “You meant it, didn’t you, about taking me to Nevada?”
“I meant it.”
“I won’t be afraid at all if I’m with you.”
You’re getting in way too deep, Jake Harkner, he told himself. Jake looked into her blue-gray eyes, his heart aching at the gaunt look of her too-thin face, the tears on her cheeks. He gently wiped at them with his fingers. “I told you I meant it about getting you to Nevada,” he repeated. “Just don’t cry, Randy. I can’t stand to hear a woman crying.”
She forced a weak smile through her tears. “I’m trying to stop,” she told him. “I just hate to cry. Did you ever…feel like there was so much…to cry about that you might as well…not bother crying at all?”
He grinned. “Most of my life.”
She saw the sadness behind the smile. Yes, he did know what she meant. Who would understand better than a man who had been through what he had? She wanted to tell him again that she loved him, but she suspected that if she did, now that she was fully awake, his mood just might change on her again, as had happened so often back at the cabin. The old defenses would rise, and the spell would be broken.
As though he read her thoughts, he suddenly scooted her back into her own bedroll. “I’d better get those potatoes cooking,” he said, quickly turning away.
No, Jake, she thought. You aren’t ready to hear those three words. Not yet. A woman had to be careful with a man like Jake, but then it was a long way to Nevada. For now she just had to be grateful he had found her at all. Again fate had brought them together, as though it was all meant to be. Maybe Jake didn’t realize that yet, but she did. God was moving to change Jake Harkner’s life, and she was all part of his plan.
***
The next month was spent following the regular route west, easy to identify from twenty-five years of emigration to California and Oregon, from discarded debris and old campsites. The horizon seemed endless, and never had Miranda felt so insignificant, a tiny moving dot on the vast, open plains. Her foot slowly healed to the point where she could wear a shoe again and could dress and ride up front in the wagon seat. Although she still limped a little, it felt good to be so close to normal again.
With Jake at her side, she felt stronger and surer than ever, safe and protected. He had stopped at a fort and purchased two oxen, since Outlaw and his packhorse were really not meant to be wagon horses. The daily work had been hard on them, and Jake knew they would never make it all the way to Nevada. Miranda grinned at the memory of an experienced driver at the fort showing Jake how to guide oxen. With oxen, a man had to walk beside them, goading them along with a switch. She supposed Jake had never dreamed he would be doing such a thing, and it warmed her heart that he was grudgingly trudging along like some common settler just to get her to Nevada. On horseback, he could be much farther ahead by now, but he did not complain.
She wondered if he ever wished it was true that she was his wife. That was what he had told the men at the fort, and the group of prospectors who had passed them on horseback yesterday. He did it to protect her, knowing what most men would think about a single woman traveling alone with a man.
That man had been as respectful as he could be, other than his cussing. Miranda thought how, if they could never be anything else, they were certainly good friends by now. Jake was learning to trust her, learning not to be so defensive, learning to laugh. He was always looking out for her, had even had a wheelwright and blacksmith at the fort work together to make some curved iron bars that could be bolted to the wagon so that it could be covered with canvas to keep everything inside dry in case of rain. He had taken a great risk staying around the fort as long as they had, considering the fact that soldiers were there, men who would have arrested him in a moment if they knew who he really was. He wore just one of his revolvers at his side, kept his rifle and shotgun, as well as her own rifle and his spare revolver, under the wagon seat.
The days were spent covering as many miles as humans and animals could stand, and so far there had been no major mishaps. Jake preferred not to hitch up with a bigger wagon train. He felt they could make better time on their own and he didn’t want to take the risk of being recognized. Once they reached Nevada, he figured there wasn’t much chance anyone would know who he was. In the meantime, he was sticking to the name Jake Turner.
Miranda didn’t mind the two of them traveling alone. She reasoned she should be missing the company of other women, should be afraid with just one man for protection; but she found she enjoyed just being with Jake, and she trusted in his skills and his unique survival experience to keep them safe. She had never been happier, and she knew she was in love, whether Jake Harkner realized it or not. Nothing had been said about it, and she knew Jake was doing everything he could to avoid the subject, pretending he was just taking her to Nevada because he “owed her”; but she had not missed the hint of pride and possessiveness in his voice when he had told other men she was his wife, and she was sure it was not all an act. Did he really think he could take her to her destination and then just leave her there and go on alone?
“Storm’s coming,” he called out then.
“I see it,” she answered. She watched the dark clouds billowing toward them from the western horizon. So far they had been blessed with beautiful weather, but men at the fort had warned them how fast a storm could sweep over the plains, and now she realized they were right. She had never seen clouds move so fast.
“Get under the canvas!” Jake shouted. He headed the oxen into a gully just ahead, where the wagon and animals could drop down just enough to at least be more sheltered from the suddenly cold wind that began whipping at them. Rain joined the wind as Jake hurriedly climbed into the wagon from the front seat. “Close the back flap and I’ll get this one,” he told Miranda, uncurling the front flap and letting it down. He secured it with rawhide strips at the corners, and wind and rain began pelting the canvas from the outside. “Damn good thing we had this canvas put on back at that fort,” he told her, taking a cheroot from his shirt pocket.
“Yes,” Miranda answered, moving near him to take her shawl from where it lay on top of her trunk. She wrapped it around her shoulders and shivered, noticing then that his shirt was wet. “You should get out of that wet shirt and put something dry on.”
He lit the cheroot and took a drag. “I’m fine.” He removed his leather hat and set it on the trunk, then leaned back against a pile of blankets. “Actually, I don’t mind an excuse to stop for a while. Hell, it will be dark in another hour anyway. Maybe we’ll just camp right here.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, and Miranda watched him, realizing this was the first time he had had cause to get into the wagon with her when it was closed. At night she had slept inside with the canvas down, while he slept outside under the wagon. She dressed and undressed inside, he outside. The wagon had been like her own little dwelling, the outdoors had been his. It disturbed her in ways that it shouldn’t to have him in the small enclosure with her. His virility seemed to fill the wagon, making her suddenly feel almost uncom
fortably aware that he was a man and she was a woman, more aware of how she had not minded being thought of as his wife. For three years now she had buried old needs and desires.
She found it hard to stop looking at him. Because he was sitting there with his eyes closed, she could study him freely. She liked watching him, liked the square jaw and high cheekbones, the full lips and the shadow of a beard. She liked his thick, dark hair, the way it lay in gentle waves and softly graced the collar of his shirt.
Jake suddenly opened his eyes, and she quickly looked away, feeling her cheeks going hot at being caught staring. Thunder suddenly exploded, and the wagon jerked a little as the restless oxen balked at the storm. “Might be safer if I unhitched them,” Jake told her. “If I leave them yoked together, they can’t go so far that I couldn’t find them again.”
“Jake, it’s pouring out there!”
“I don’t like the thought that they could start dragging this wagon around.” He put his cheroot into a tin cup and untied one corner of the canvas, quickly moving outside, glad himself for an excuse to get out of the wagon for a moment. Did she know what it did to him, being confined so close to her, catching her staring at him? She had never mentioned what she had told him that first day he rescued her. Had she forgotten, or was she just afraid to say it again?
Thank God she had let it go. He didn’t want to have to tell her she was crazy to love him. He didn’t even want to know if it was true. It would hurt too much, because he couldn’t possibly return that love. That would mean bringing her into his life, and there was no future there, only danger.
He worked quickly to unhitch the team, then climbed back inside, where Miranda waited with a towel. “Get your shirt off,” she told him. “I won’t take no for an answer this time. It was blistering hot all day and now it’s suddenly almost cold. You’ll get sick.”
He took the towel and rubbed his wet hair with it. “Damn, what a downpour,” he said, trying to position himself so that his boots did not soil anything inside. “Sorry to get your things wet.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just don’t go and get sick on me.”
“Hell, I’ve been a lot wetter than this. I’ve kept right on traveling on Outlaw in worse weather. Speaking of Outlaw, take a look out back there and make sure the horses are still tied to the wagon.”
Miranda looked to see the animals standing in the pouring rain. “They’re still there, poor things.”
“They’ll be all right. A spring rain won’t hurt them.”
“Well, it’s not exactly what could be called a gentle spring rain.”
Jake grinned. “Agreed.” He picked up the cheroot and tried to light it with a match from his shirt pocket, but the match had no spark. “Damn. My matches got wet.”
“Here. I have some.” Miranda moved near him to open the precious trunk that seemed to carry whatever they needed. Jake began unbuttoning his shirt while she searched for the matches. He wondered at how a woman could look so pretty after riding day after day in a wagon across the hot plains, unable to always bathe the way she would like, or do her hair or wear any color on her lips. He had seen plenty of painted women, shared the bed of many, but this small woman with no makeup and her hair brushed back into a plain tail at the neck, dressed in a light blue calico dress and worn high-button shoes, was the most beautiful he had ever set eyes on.
He got his shirt off and Miranda turned with the matches. She lit one and he leaned forward. She held it for him, and as he drew on the cheroot he met her eyes, eyes that told him things he did not want to hear aloud. God, he wanted her, and that was the hell of it. No, the real hell was knowing by her eyes that she wanted him too. If he were an ordinary man who led an ordinary life, he would pursue that want, and he would know how to love a woman like Miranda Hayes.
He decided he had to find a way to make her stop looking at him the way he had caught her looking at him earlier. There was one thing he could do. It just might make her find him revolting, but then that was probably best. It would be easier if she would look at him with horror or animosity than with that look of loneliness and longing.
“I need a dry shirt,” he told her. “My gear is behind you.”
Miranda closed the trunk and turned to his saddlebags, taking out a dark blue shirt. “It needs to be pressed,” she told him, handing it out.
Jake laughed lightly. “I don’t think anybody out here gives a damn.”
Miranda watched him pull on the shirt and begin buttoning it. She had seen that broad chest and those muscled arms before, when she had nursed him. Now seeing him bare-chested gave her a different feeling, stirred in her a terrible lust that almost startled her. She didn’t just love Jake Harkner, this outlaw to whom no woman of her morals and values should give a second thought; she also wanted him…physically. She moved into her own corner and picked up another one of his shirts, one that needed mending that she had not been able to finish the night before. “I might as well get this shirt done,” she said, jumping slightly again when thunder cracked overhead. “No sense just sitting here wasting time.”
Jake put his head back again, closing his eyes and listening to the storm, remembering another storm, one that hit on a night he would never forget. Should he tell her? He knew she was wondering, and what better way to make her hate him than to tell her the truth? The storm only brought it all back more vividly anyway. Thunder clapped again, and he could hear the gun going off at the same time. He could see the look of astonishment on his father’s face.
He waited a moment longer, another crash of thunder making him wince and put a hand to his forehead.
“Jake? What’s wrong?”
He ran his hand through his hair. “Where’s the whiskey I bought back at that fort?” He saw her hesitate, knew what she was thinking. Giving whiskey to an ailing man was one thing, but it was something completely different when given to a perfectly healthy man with a notorious reputation. “Don’t worry. I don’t react to whiskey like my pa used to,” he told her, “although he didn’t need alcohol to bring out the worst in him.”
Miranda watched him a moment longer, then nodded toward the pile of blankets. “You’re leaning against it—in the crate under those blankets.”
Jake turned to search, grinning to himself at the realization she must have put it out of sight in hopes he would forget he had it. He removed a flask from the crate and uncorked it, turning back around and taking a swallow. He let it burn its way down his throat and into his stomach. He seldom drank much, hated the memories of what whiskey did to his father, how mean it made him. Still, right now it gave him the added courage he needed to shock Miranda Hayes out of any feelings she might have for him. He did not need or want to talk about this, but if it would take the light out of Miranda Hayes’s eyes when she looked at him, it would be worth the telling.
He lowered the bottle, staring at it for a moment, taking another drag on the cheroot. “I killed him,” he told her.
Miranda frowned, taking her gaze from her sewing and meeting his eyes. “Killed whom?”
Jake held her eyes, giving her his darkest, meanest look. “My pa! I shot him dead. What do you think of that?” To his frustration and amazement, he saw no shock, no animosity, no horror. He saw only a strange sorrow.
“I know,” she answered. “I’m sorry, Jake.”
He just stared at her a moment, astounded at her reply, suddenly angry with her. “What the hell do you mean, you know! And you’re sorry? I didn’t tell you in order to get your damn pity!” He let out a nervous laugh. “Jesus, woman, what the hell is the matter with you?”
Miranda put down the sewing. “You expected me to be surprised? After all, that always has been the rumor. After what you told me back at the cabin, I had no doubt it was true. What I’m sorry about is you must have had good cause, which means your father must have been doing something terrible to you or to someone you loved. What did he do, J
ake? Does it have something to do with Santana?”
He rolled his eyes and took another swallow of whiskey. “You’re incredible, you know that? What the hell kind of a man kills his own pa?”
“A desperate one, and I’m betting he wasn’t a man at all. He was probably still a boy, and sometimes that same boy comes charging out of the man, fighting, angry, defending himself, refusing to have feelings because he might hurt again, and he doesn’t want to hurt. He’s afraid—”
“Shut up!” He wanted her to flinch, but she didn’t. Damn her! Damn slip of a woman! “Maybe what I ought to do is show you just how much of a man I really am!” he deliberately snarled. He turned and crammed the whiskey back into the crate, then dropped the cheroot back into the tin cup. He began unbuckling his gun belt.
Miranda truly wondered if she had gone too far this time. The man hated it when someone saw through the outer meanness to his vulnerability. It made him furious, and a furious Jake Harkner might not be as safe as she had supposed. Had she trusted too much?
He tossed the gun belt aside, and before Miranda could react, he lunged at her and grasped her arms tightly, painfully. Her eyes widened, and she dropped her sewing when he lifted and moved her like a rag doll, pushing her against the blankets against which he had himself been resting. “I want you, Randy Hayes,” he snarled. “What do you think of that?”
Miranda drew in her breath and faced him boldly. “I think that whatever you want to do to me, you will. After all, you’re stronger than I am. Just don’t take me like your father would take a woman, Jake. And don’t do it just to try to scare me off, because you can’t. I love you, Jake Harkner, and you damn well know it! You’d never hurt me!” Unwanted tears suddenly filled her eyes, and she felt his grip relax. He massaged her arms for a moment.
“Damn you, woman,” he said softly then. “How do you know me that well?” He leaned closer, kissed her eyes, licked at her tears, found her mouth and licked at that too. Miranda found that her instinctive response to him was powerful, as though it was always supposed to be this way. She closed her eyes and met his tongue, letting him slake his own between her lips in a kiss more delicious than any kiss Mack had ever given her. Had she just been too young then to fully enjoy a man? Or perhaps she had just been too long without. She only knew this felt more wonderful than anything she had ever experienced.
Outlaw Hearts Page 16
