Riley's Sleeping Beauty

by Sherryl Woods

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t want to upset her. I can have someone else here with her by the end of the day.”

  Apparently unaware of Riley’s need for an escape, the doctor shook his head. “Unnecessary, I think. Whatever your differences, she seems to respond to you. She just needs more time, Mr. Walker. Time and rest. Healing cannot be put on such a rigid timetable.”

  Riley didn’t buy that. Those sounded like the words of a man who didn’t have a clue what the real explanation for Abby’s unconsciousness was. “Can’t you do something to hurry things along?” he asked, no longer worried about insulting the doctor. “Maybe it’s time we transferred her back to the States to another specialist.”

  Even as he said it, he realized it was the perfect solution to his problem. With Abby back in Phoenix, there would be all sorts of people around to maintain this bedside vigil. He could take off, running as he always had from commitment. He could go without feeling as if he were abandoning her. Already he was ready to renege on his promise to be there for her always, he thought with a certain amount of self-disgust. That was just further proof that he was a lousy bet. Always for him rarely lasted more than a few hours.

  “What about Phoenix?” he suggested to the doctor. “We could find a neurologist there, get her the best care. Maybe it’s time for a second opinion.”

  The doctor appeared to take no offense. “That can be arranged if you wish,” he said.

  He spoke in that unruffled manner that usually soothed Riley just as it was intended to do. Today, however, it only proved damnably irritating. He was about to tell him to make the arrangements, when the doctor held up a cautioning hand.

  “I assure you it isn’t necessary, Mr. Walker. She will recover in her own time here as well as there. You cannot rush such things.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?” Riley snapped.

  The doctor met his gaze evenly. “Do you have some place more important you must be?”

  There were a dozen answers Riley could have given, jobs that were waiting, but more important than Abby’s recovery? No, none of them were more important than that. He sighed.

  “No,” he said at last.

  “Then wait, Mr. Walker,” the doctor told him quietly. “We can wait. And you can keep talking to her.”

  “How do I know she can even hear me?”

  “Maybe she can, maybe she can’t,” he said bluntly, an edge of impatience in his voice that possibly came from having had to give the same answer so often. “But we’re monitoring her vital signs and she seems calmer when she hears your voice. It is clearly important that she knows you are still here by her side. She seems reassured by that.”

  For the first time in the past ten terrible days, Riley felt a vague stirring of hope. When he had dared, he had thought as much himself. If he had the power to soothe her, perhaps she was no longer quite so furious about his high-handed plans to send her back to Arizona. Perhaps she was even ready and willing to go, now that she’d had a little firsthand experience with danger.

  They would talk about it, he vowed. He wouldn’t be quite so high-handed. Abby would be reasonable. He almost chuckled at the unlikelihood of that. Still, they could try to work out a satisfactory compromise. At the moment he had no idea what that might be.

  The doctor leaned over the bed again, lifted her eyelids and shone his tiny flashlight into Abigail’s blue eyes, then nodded in satisfaction.

  “Talk, Mr. Riley,” he advised one last time and left.

  * * *

  Abigail awoke to a blinding light shining in her eyes. The sun! Such a brilliant light could only be the sun, she thought with delight.

  It was hot as blazes...and dry, she determined with some delight. No salty air. No draining humidity. No rolling deck beneath her. She realized with a sense of amazement that she must be back on land, and more astonishing yet, back in the desert. Dear heaven, was it possible?

  She blinked hard, then gazed around her. Sure enough, miles of glaringly brilliant, hard, dry ground lay spread out for as far as she could see in every direction.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” she murmured. Captain Walker had apparently performed a miracle and gotten her back home after all. He had let her go.

  Too bad, she thought for one obviously crazy instant. On some very basic and feminine level she had been drawn to his seductive ways. She suspected she would always regret that they had never made love. His provocative caresses had held such heavenly promise.

  And, at first anyway, she had been equally captivated by his promises of adventure and untold riches. She had meant to tell him that the moment she awoke. He deserved to know how tempted she had been by him and all he had offered.

  But, in the end, those things weren’t what mattered, she reminded herself. Not really. There was something essential that had been missing from their relationship: respect. They could not have survived for long without it. It seemed she was doomed to meeting men who didn’t respect her wishes or her intelligence or her strength.

  Oddly enough, though, it seemed that Captain Walker had respected at least one of her wishes. He had taken her at her word and sent her back to Arizona as she’d pleaded with him to do. Despite a tiny, lingering sense of regret, she told herself she should be grateful that in that, at least, he had been a man of his word.

  There was no question in her mind that it was just as well that he hadn’t allowed her to stay. His pirate’s life seemed glamorous on the surface, but she suspected that waging bloody skirmishes over gold and silver, and a few bolts of lush fabrics and bottles of wine, would quickly pall. It didn’t strike her as the most sensible way to spend a lifetime.

  Besides that, she hadn’t been exactly thrilled by his rolling ship and certainly not by his filthy associates. Just the thought of Blackhearted John Higgins made her shudder. She and the captain would surely have battled wits over his choice of shipmates in time.

  And she would, no doubt, have been demanding a tamer existence eventually, perhaps even children. He would have been chafing at her pleas. Passion or not, it would have been no life at all.

  No, this was better. Give her the desert and her independence any day. She told herself she could manage the loneliness. After all, she had had years of practice, ever since being abandoned once before by someone very dear to her.

  She drew in a deep breath of the dry, clean air. She might miss her dashing pirate, might miss the wicked sensations he had stirred in her, but indeed, it was surprisingly good to be home, after all. If she couldn’t find a man who would treat her as an equal, then she might as well be here, where she could make her own way, surrounded by people who loved her, even if they didn’t totally understand her.

  With a sense of satisfaction, she glanced around at the blooming cacti and dry tumbleweed. Through her clothes—a bright red silk dress that was cut in an astonishingly immodest style—she could feel the blazing intensity of the sun. It was all wonderfully familiar. Well, everything except the dress. Where that had come from didn’t bear thinking about. She would get rid of it the first chance she had. She glanced down at the revealing cut of it and grinned suddenly. Maybe she would just push it to the back of a closet, a memento from an incredible journey.

  A second glance around her proved more disconcerting than her revealing dress. As far as the eye could see there were only those cacti, that tumbleweed and an enormous amount of deeply rutted, dry, flat ground. Something about her surroundings was terribly, terribly wrong.

  Abby studied the distant horizon with a growing sense of dismay. Where were the familiar buildings of downtown Phoenix? Where, for that matter, were the wide, paved stretches of road? The passing cars? And why was it so terribly silent? The only sound at all seemed to be the distant howl of a coyote. The scene, which only moments before had seemed so promising, took on a bizarre, otherworldly quality that sent a chill racing down her spine.

  None of the explanations that came to mind made any sense. Was this not the West
at all? Was it possible she was in the Sahara? Or some other desert? Given some of the other things that had happened to her lately, she could very well turn up playing nursemaid to Cleopatra.

  More likely, though, Captain Walker had whisked her back to Arizona, only to miss Phoenix entirely. On the one hand, it hardly seemed possible that anyone could make such a mistake. On the other, she recalled that she had questioned his knowledge of geography. But surely a man who could navigate open stretches of ocean by the stars couldn’t have gone so terribly awry looking at an AAA map. Or could he?

  Like it or not that appeared to be just what he’d done. Of all of the possible explanations, she preferred that one. She really wanted to be in Arizona. It meant that sooner or later, she could make her way to the city where she’d grown up. It was just a matter of time and ingenuity.

  And water, she admitted with some reluctance. How long could she possibly survive this far from anywhere without it? With the sun barely up in the east, the heat was moderate, but in a few short hours she knew it would be blistering hot and there wasn’t a sign of water anywhere in sight. No ocean. No lake. Not even some trickle of a stream.

  Suddenly, before she could figure out exactly how desperate her plight might be, the silence was broken most dramatically. She heard the unexpected thunder of hooves, followed by what sounded like screams of terror. She was torn between gut-wrenching fear and heart-stopping anticipation. Help might be just over the horizon. Or she might be about to come face-to-face with an even more terrible fate.

  She scrambled about looking for a place to hide until she could determine which it was to be, but there were none. The descriptive term wide open spaces hadn’t been applied to the West for no reason.

  Listening hard, she could tell the horses were getting closer, the screams louder. Then she heard yet another noise, this one impossible to identify.

  With her heart in her throat, she kept her gaze intent on the horizon until, at last, a stagecoach appeared, bouncing wildly over the rutted ground, its wheels in grave danger of ripping loose and sending the already-panicked occupants flying. The team of horses pulling it was galloping out of control, as if the very demons of hell were after them.

  A stagecoach! Surely that was not possible. Abby blinked hard and looked again, certain her vision was playing another of its ridiculous, impossible tricks on her.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t appear to be the case. The stagecoach, pulled by that team of terrified, runaway horses, was, in fact, bearing straight down on her. The reins flapped free. The driver slouched to one side. Clearly he would be no help at all.

  As the stagecoach drew closer and closer, Abby could practically taste the dust, could practically feel her body being crushed beneath those pounding hooves.

  Nearly paralyzed with fear, she pitched herself out of their path in the nick of time, oblivious to the heated ground that seared her bare skin and to the jagged rocks that left her cut and bruised. The stagecoach thundered past. It was only as it passed that she noticed that the driver’s chest was drenched with blood.

  Releasing the breath she’d been holding, she closed her eyes in relief over her narrow escape, only to hear more horses pounding in her direction.

  Daring a look, she detected the probable cause of the near accident. Two horsemen firing six-shooters were racing hell-for-leather after the stagecoach. A robbery! She had escaped a life of piracy, only to be caught in the middle of a damned stagecoach robbery.

  Fear clogged her throat as she tried to make herself invisible against the dried ground. Unfortunately, a 110-pound woman wearing a tattered, bright red dress with a daringly low bodice tended to stand out like a sore thumb against all that desert brown.

  The first two riders barreled past. But a third man on horseback swooped down, reined in his horse and eyed her with evident fascination. Dark eyes raked over her in a way that made her blood run cold. Those eyes were all she could see of a face otherwise shielded by a red bandanna. They seemed hauntingly familiar. Her heart thudded dully as she contemplated where or when she might have seen those evil eyes before.

  “My, my, my, looks like I’m the one who found the secret treasure this time,” he said in a low, gravelly voice that was anything but reassuring. “If it’s not pretty little Miss Abigail from the Golden Nugget Saloon. You’re a long way from home, little song-bird.”

  Abby almost laughed in his face. Her a songbird? Not likely. The choir at her church only accepted her out of a sense of Christian charity. She knew enough to keep her mouth tightly shut on the high notes. Unfortunately, this cowboy looked convinced he’d run across some saloon’s headline act. She had a hunch, too, that his Miss Abigail did not confine herself to singing at the Golden Nugget. He was already reaching for her, a lascivious glint in his eyes.

  Not again, she thought in dismay. Hadn’t she been through enough for one lifetime? Or perhaps several?

  Abigail struggled to her bare feet and took off running. Unfortunately the ground was burning hot, hard and littered with pebbles that might as well have been boulders. The surface was far too painful for fast progress. Still, she ran on, stumbling, her breath coming in gasps, fighting to ignore the burns and cuts to her throbbing feet.

  The cowboy dismounted, a taunting smile on his face as he gave chase. With his long legs and booted feet, he had no trouble with the rough terrain. The pursuit was over almost before it began.

  He snagged her around the waist and hauled her against his hard body, laughing all the while.

  The laughter died as Abby scratched at his face, drawing blood.

  “Hell, woman, give it a rest. There’s no point in acting like you’re some prim little innocent.”

  She scraped her fingernails down his cheek again. “Let go of me, you dirty, rotten son of a bitch!”

  He clasped her wrists tightly and held them above her head. Abby aimed a knee at his groin, but he dodged the blow.

  “Damn, woman, settle down.”

  “Never!” She twisted sharply and broke free for the space of a heartbeat, only to be hauled back into a steel embrace.

  Oblivious to the pain, oblivious to everything except the need to break free, she fought and scratched. She had not come through so much in her struggle to get back home only to give up now.

  An image of Riley gave her renewed strength. She could practically hear his voice encouraging her as she worked one arm loose, drew back and slugged her captor with all her might.

  The blow took him by surprise and he staggered briefly, then seized her again, his expression ugly, his eyes mean.

  In that instant, Abby realized that she was lost. She also knew that she would never give up, not to this terrible man, not as long as she had a single breath to spare for a struggle. He might inevitably win in the end, but he would know that he had met his match.

  She had not lived with two brothers, she had not grown up at Riley’s side without learning a thing or two about brawling. She would use every single dirty tactic she could recall.

  The thought of Riley, surviving far worse than this at the hands of unknown enemies, gave her strength for one last valiant battle. She kicked and cursed and screamed, spurred on by her captor’s hoots of derisive laughter.

  She fought, because there could be no excuse for giving up. Riley had taught her that.

  Riley.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  She was fighting like a She-devil, Riley thought, as he struggled to calm Abby. Whatever torment she had been dreaming this time had terrified her. He knew as he held her that no matter how desperate he was to leave, he couldn’t go as long as she seemed to be having these nightmarish dreams. For all he knew she was remembering the attack that had sent her to the hospital, the attack he should have been there to prevent. He vowed then and there to find the men who’d hurt her and see that they paid for what they’d done.

  “Hey, Abby, it’s me,” he soothed as she tried to break free of his embrace. For once the sound of his voice had no effect. It was as
if she couldn’t hear him. She continued to struggle as if for her life.

  Manuel, allowed out of his bed for the first time since Jared had brought him to the hospital, watched the scene with obvious dismay. His darkly tanned forehead was creased with worry, his brown eyes wide with concern.

  “It is like she is fighting the bandidos once again,” he said. “Like she remembers.”

  “So she did fight them,” Riley said. “I thought as much.”

  “Like a cat,” Manuel confirmed proudly, a faint suggestion of a grin on his lips as he gazed down at the still-restless Abby. “They will never forget her, that is for sure. The worst of them will surely have a scar the length of his cheek because of her.”

  The grim satisfaction in his eyes died. He turned to look at Riley, his expression filled with concern. “She will recover, s;aai?”

  “So the doctor claims.”

  The old guide crossed himself. “I will say many prayers for her.” He shot a look of irritation at Riley. “She would never have done anything so foolish if it were not for you. You drove her away.”

  “You can’t accuse me of anything I haven’t already accused myself of doing,” Riley responded wearily.

  Manuel gave a curt nod of satisfaction. “When she is well, you will tell her so?”

  “I will tell her.”

  “You will not try to send her home?”

  Riley balked at that. “Manuel, she belongs back in Phoenix, where she will be safe.”

  The old man waved off the explanation. “You are not man enough to keep her safe when she is with you?” he taunted deliberately.

  Riley scowled at him. “That’s a low blow.”

  “But it is the real question, is it not? Either you believe in yourself or you do not. It is clear to me that Se;atnorita Abby believes in you. She wants only to stay by your side. It is not so very much, I think.”