One-Click Buy: September 2010 Harlequin Blaze

by Lori Wilde

  Sam might not be a killer, but Archie Smith didn’t seem to have such scruples, especially if he thought Jared was a threat to her.

  That he could do nothing at the moment was as agonizing as the wound. He was a restless man by nature. He’d harnessed his restlessness when he’d married Sarah, but the fact that he went to war and left her in the care of his brother was proof he hadn’t completely adapted to life as a farmer.

  When he’d gazed at those graves, he’d sworn he would get the murdering sons of bitches. After he’d accomplished that goal, he went after other murderers, a mission that was strengthened when Emma was killed in the stagecoach robbery.

  Killed by Cal Thornton.

  The search for killers, most especially Thornton, became his reason for living, the only way he could lessen the guilt he felt for not protecting his wife and child. He hadn’t kept them safe, but, by God, he would protect other families, other women and children.

  And that meant bringing Thornton to justice.

  He closed his eyes. Tried to think of Sarah when they were first married, of her ready smile. Instead it curled up into Sam’s challenging one.

  He closed his eyes and pulled against the chain until it cut into his wrist. He wanted it to hurt. He wanted to be reminded he was a prisoner, not a suitor.

  Remember Sarah.

  She’d made it clear from the beginning what she wanted. A family to care for. A big family. From the moment he’d carried her over the threshold of the house he’d built for her, she’d tried to be the best wife in Kansas.

  He tried to remember what he’d been like before the war. Before his family had been brutally murdered. He couldn’t. They were two different people. He couldn’t recall when he’d last really laughed. When he’d felt a moment of happiness.

  Oh, he took pleasure in a sunny day, a crisp wind, or a field of wildflowers. He even took momentary physical pleasure with a woman. But actual happiness? He didn’t know what the word meant any longer.

  So why had he felt tugs of…bemusement whenever he engaged in a battle of wits with Samantha? Why did he look forward to each encounter when she was part of everything he’d fought against these past ten years? His heart certainly wasn’t involved. It couldn’t be, and yet it seemed to beat more erratically when she was with him.

  He’d just been too long without a woman, he told himself. Nothing else. Especially when she was devoted to the man who epitomized everything he hated.

  SAMANTHA COULDN’T WAIT for Archie any longer.

  She went back upstairs. She would get Mac into that bed, no matter what it took. Then she would go out and look for Archie and Burley. The marshal would be safe enough.

  Dawg was still lying next to Mac, safeguarding him just as she’d asked.

  Though Dawg was gentle with her, he could be fierce when protecting his family and his territory. He had scars from an encounter with a bear that had threatened her, and he’d almost killed a miner who’d attacked her. That was why she’d been so startled with the way he’d given his approval to the marshal. Dawg hadn’t sensed danger, and he usually did.

  She tried not to think of the marshal, of the amusement in his eyes as he suggested a card game, or the knowledge that she was tempted. More than tempted.

  Mac was awake, trying to get up on his own. She should have known he would, and returned quicker rather than loitering with the marshal. She’d been afraid of hurting Mac even more by trying to lift him.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll help. We can do it together.”

  He ignored her offer. “Archie isn’t here?”

  “No.”

  “What’s going…on, Sam?” he asked. His gaze bored into her with the same intensity the marshal’s had. “Something…sure as hell is. I know when you two are hiding something.”

  She couldn’t lie. He knew her too well.

  “Let me get you in bed first.”

  “No.” The word was sharp and belied the paleness of his face. “I want to hear it…now.”

  She wanted to tell him about the marshal, but she feared he would try to go downstairs to confront the man. She reverted back to what she’d said before. “I’m just worried about that rancher.”

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds. “I’m not letting you get involved in this. You and Archie leave. Find Reese. He can bring some help. I’ll stay in the mine.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “Go,” he said. “If you…give a damn about me, you’ll go….”

  She sat down next to him and put his good hand in hers. “You’ve known me most of my life. You really think I could ever be happy, knowing I left you behind?” She looked him straight in the eye. “Would you leave me?”

  It was a question he didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. And they both knew it.

  “Come on,” she said, her heart breaking to see him so helpless. “Let’s get you back on the bed. The more strength you gain, the better we’ll all be.” He took her hand with his good one and got to his knees, then she put an arm around him and with a huge effort lifted him to the edge of the bed. He fell back on the mattress, and she lifted his feet up then sat down herself. Her breath came fast. Mac was a big man, and he was a lot weaker than the marshal.

  Mac was sweaty from the exertion and his body was still too warm. Blood stained the bandage on his hand.

  She’d been no more than ten minutes with the marshal but looking at Mac now, she realized she shouldn’t have stayed even that long. What was it about the marshal that made her forget her responsibilities? Especially to Mac?

  Mac’s blue eyes were filled with pain, though she sensed it wasn’t physical but the agony of not being able to protect her. “I’m going to bring you something to eat,” she said. “And I’m going to sit and watch you eat every bite. We’ll get out of here before anyone comes. You’ll have that ranch.”

  “The money?” he said.

  She knew he meant the funds he’d gotten for the gold. Nearly two thousand dollars. “Safe,” she said. “It’s in your saddlebags.”

  “You take it,” he said. “If anyone comes, you take it and get out.” He gave her a forced smile. “Promise me.” His hand tightened around hers. “My life isn’t worth anything if you’re hurt. And one of these days, you’re going to find someone…”

  Her thoughts went instantly to the marshal. She rejected the idea just as quickly, couldn’t even understand why it entered her head. He was without joy, without compassion, without understanding. He’d turned justice into vengeance. And yet…maybe there was a saving grace somewhere. Maybe under that lawman’s badge was a heart. She meant to find it.

  And she might have to kill him.

  “What is it, Sam?” Mac asked.

  “I…I just wish you’d married my mother.”

  “’Twas not for lack of wanting,” he said, and a wistful look came into his eyes. “Were it not for the price on my head, I would have married her several times over. I just couldn’t do that to her, and it was a mistake to keep you with me and make you a party to the constant danger.”

  “You never told me why,” she said. “What… Why are you wanted?”

  His gaze met hers and his eyes were full of regret. “You should…know who…what I was.”

  “I know you hired out your gun,” she said.

  He sighed. “I told myself the federal government owed it to me.”

  She didn’t say anything. He’d never talked about his past. Like the marshal.

  She was doing it again. Linking the two. Comparing the two.

  “You know my family was killed during the war,” he said slowly. “I never told you how. My father and brother were killed in battle, my sister was raped by Yankee troops and killed herself.” He took a deep breath. His voice shook with emotion. “My mother moved in with another family, but died, mostly of a broken heart, I was told. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I was captured and held in Elmira Prison. It was a hellhole.”

  He stopped for a moment as if revisitin
g the memories. She waited, spellbound. Mac had never told her this before, only that he’d fought in the war.

  “The north claimed Andersonville was a crime, but so was Elmira. Half of us died. The other half starved and nearly perished from the cold. There was barely enough food, and the yard was nothing more than a putrid swamp that spread disease. When I finally reached home after the war, nothing was left. No family. The land had been confiscated.” He looked at her. “I headed west with some friends, all of us carrying a load full of rage. War is one thing. Rape and murder another.”

  His voice was growing weaker. The memories were exhausting him. She wanted to hear more. She wanted an answer to her question. She wanted to hear words that would prove the marshal wrong.

  It didn’t matter, though. She loved Mac, regardless. She would protect him with everything in her.

  He fell against the pillow. The rest of his story would have to wait.

  The marshal said Mac had killed a woman. She hadn’t believed it then and she didn’t believe it now. She remembered how Mac had become her mother’s protector after Pa died, and how he looked after the soiled doves, as well. They were all a bit in love with him, but he’d had no eyes for anyone but her mother. Even at eleven, she’d known that. He’d become a fixture in her world, disappearing from time to time on some job, but always returning with a gift for both her mother and herself. She still had most of them, including a jeweled locket he’d given her mother that had a painted miniature of Sam inside.

  He closed his eyes, and she knew he was finished talking.

  She studied Mac. There had never been any man-and-woman feelings between them. He was too much a father to her.

  She went to the window. Still no Archie in the distance, and it was late afternoon. He should be back. Could something have happened to him? Had the hired killers overtaken him and Jake and Ike? It shouldn’t happen. They could see the approaching riders from far enough away that they could come back and help get Mac to the mine.

  Should she ride out to check on Archie? She was growing increasingly worried about him.

  If she left again, would the marshal make more noise and alert Mac? She truly couldn’t figure how the marshal could get loose, and Mac had exerted himself into exhaustion.

  Maybe she should check on the marshal first. She grabbed a deck of cards from the supply they had under the bar and unlocked his doors.

  He was awake, his eyes cool and guarded. The only time she hadn’t seen them like that was when he talked about his wife, Sarah. She couldn’t forget the pain with which each word was spoken, the grief that had frozen all other emotions. He turned toward her, and from the sudden jerk of his body, she knew the wound must still hurt like blazes. She sometimes forgot about his injured leg because he seemed to ignore it.

  She put the deck on his bed beside the book. “I haven’t read that one,” she said, and couldn’t keep a note of longing from her voice. “What is it about?”

  He shrugged. “Redemption,” he finally said.

  Redemption. She liked that. Something in his eyes told her that wasn’t the whole story. Maybe Mac had read it. She would ask him.

  “Will you play that game of poker?” he asked.

  “No. Solitaire will have to do now.”

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  For some reason, she really didn’t believe him. He wanted to annoy her with demands.

  Still, she was tempted. She was always tempted by him. It was becoming a curse.

  But worry over Archie won out. “Later,” she said, then turned and left before she fell under his spell again.

  11

  THE RAIN SLACKENED. There was still a drizzle, but the torrents were gone. Still, the creek would be near impassable for the next few days. The trail along the bottom of the pass would be slippery, as well. It was difficult for horses to navigate the path at the best of times.

  One thing she knew. Archie should have been back by now.

  She should have gone instead of him. Archie could have more easily taken supplies to the cave.

  Where was he?

  She saddled her horse and headed out. Anything could have happened to him.

  It was good to get away from the saloon, from the marshal and her compulsion to cross swords with him, and, God help her, to feel her body against his. Shivers—warm and tingling—ran through her at the remembrance. She was pulled by competing loyalties. A man she had loved like a father, and a man who was showing her how to be a woman.

  She reached the trail that twisted through the pass. She didn’t take it but turned onto a barely visible path that ran to the top of the pass. During the Civil War, miners kept watch up there. The gold was abundant then, and miners made weekly trips out with gold and back with supplies. There had been fears of Confederate raiders, and the camp kept sentries posted above.

  Her horse stumbled once, then she saw two figures, one on a horse and one on a mule. She waited for them to reach her.

  Archie’s face was flushed. From the clenched expression of his mouth, she knew his legs were aching. His eyebrows lifted as she neared.

  “Thought you were taking care of Mac,” he said.

  She moved her horse next to his as they started down the hill. “He fell. I got him up on the bed and he’s all right, but I was worried about you. It was such a long time….”

  “Guess I shoulda thought about that,” he said. “Jake and I started talking and decided to get a small surprise ready for anyone coming up that pass. It took longer than I thought.”

  “Surprise?” She looked at Burley, who grinned from ear to ear.

  “Boulders,” he replied proudly. “We piled rocks and boulders above the pass. Me and Jake and Ike and Archie. If the marshal ain’t lying and a posse comes after Mac, we’ll let them rocks go and block the pass.”

  “Then they will know we’re here.”

  “Could be,” Archie said, “but maybe not. It’s been raining for several days. Rocks and gravel are loose. If no one sees Jake or Ike, they may think it’s just a natural rock slide.”

  “Are there enough rocks to actually block the trail?” she asked dubiously.

  “Get some of them big boulders going, and they’re gonna carry a hell of a lot of dirt and rock down with them. They won’t be able to clear it without dynamite.”

  Sam thought there were a lot of ifs in the plan.

  He saw her hesitation. “Sam, they might have a tracker with them. If so, they would find the mine pretty quick, and we’d be trapped. Even if the slide doesn’t completely block the pass, it will slow them down enough that Jake and Ike can pick them off.”

  “I can help.”

  “It practically killed you to shoot that marshal fella. I ain’t gonna add any more to that load.”

  Maybe he wouldn’t, but she would. And she wasn’t sure she liked the plan. They would still be confined to the valley until the stream became passable. It was clear, though, that Archie didn’t relish the idea of being trapped. She didn’t, either.

  “I should have been here to help,” she said.

  “You’re doing enough,” he insisted. “But I don’t like leaving that marshal alone. He could start hollering, and Mac would do his best to git down there.”

  Sam didn’t think the marshal was the hollering type. He was more of a plotter. He would be lying there trying to figure a way to outsmart them.

  And she had been worried about Archie. She knew Burley wouldn’t be much help if they had a problem.

  She averted her face from Archie. They had been together so long that he often knew what she was thinking before she thought it, even if it was something he disagreed with. He was better at it than Mac and Reese, who always saw the best in her.

  How would Archie feel if he realized she was so…distracted by the marshal?

  “How’s the marshal?” he asked suddenly, confirming her suspicion.

  “Restless,” she said. “He’s not a man content to do nothing, even with that leg. He…doesn’t se
em to mind pain.”

  “He minds it all right,” Archie said. “He just chooses not to let his enemies see it.” He eyed her. “I asked you before if he tried anything.”

  It was a question more than a statement.

  “No,” she lied. “It’s just…disquieting to have him so near Mac.”

  She paused. “Jake’s going to stay up there?” she asked, wanting to change the subject.

  “Ike, too. They decided to stay together. If they see anyone coming, one of them can start the rock slide while the other warns us. Burley will take food and water up to them.”

  She nodded. They had a plan. With luck, they wouldn’t have to use it.

  JARED STARED at the cards in front of him. He’d won again, but then he was playing against himself. It was a mindless activity, something to keep him occupied. There was the book, but he seemed to have lost his taste for it.

  Javet. The obsessed policeman. Damn it to hell. Jared wasn’t anything like him.

  Javet was a loner, too.

  Jared had definitely become one. It was easier that way. No one to worry about. No one to be responsible for. No guilt to ride with him other than what was already ingrained in him.

  Maybe he hadn’t realized the toll it had taken on him.

  Lord Almighty, but he was tired of being alone. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about it before, but Sam’s loyalty to the outlaw made him realize how very empty his life was. No one would give a damn if he died here in a bad-luck town.

  His boss might be temporarily inconvenienced, but Jared knew he’d always been an irritant to the marshal service. He’d been told more than once that he pushed independence too far.

  But the loneliness he felt now ran deep and painful. Perhaps it had been the open affection between Sam and Archie, or the obviously strong ties between the three: Sam, Archie and MacDonald. She loved with her heart and soul, and he’d felt nothing for years. Even facing Sam in the street, he had felt no fear. He’d had damn little to lose.