The Outlaw

by JoAnn Ross

  But that had been desperation. This was reality.

  He knew she had to be exhausted. Still, better to be exhausted, Wolfe reminded himself, than dead.

  The sun was sinking below the jagged mountain peak to the west in a blazing display of crimson and gold. As dusk settled over the land, spreading deep purple shadows, Noel decided that things had gone on long enough.

  She didn't care if the entire U.S. Cavalry caught up with her, not that she'd caught so much as a glimpse of any pursuers. She'd worry about being captured—and, heaven help her, hanged— when and if the occasion presented itself. Right now, she was getting down from the back of this horse while she could still move a muscle in her aching body.

  Before she could insist that she could not ride another moment, Wolfe reined in his horse. "We'll stop now."

  "So soon?" she asked with atypical sarcasm. Princess Noel Giraudeau de Montacroix was never sarcastic. Never!

  Wolfe shrugged, vaguely irritated at the way he found himself enjoying her acid tone. The fancy lady's fragile blond looks might give the impression of sugar and spice, but down deep, where it counted, she had a steel core.

  Just like him.

  "You could have stayed back at Belle's. Upstairs, where you belonged," he said pointedly.

  "I belong with you."

  That earned a weary sigh as he dismounted and walked a few feet away, lay on top of a low rise and trained a pair of field glasses on the vast valley.

  "Do you see anyone?" she asked.

  "No." He took another quick perusal, then, not wanting to chance that a stray glint of polished lens would betray their presence, he stood up and returned the field glasses to his saddlebag.

  When she began to dismount, afraid she'd become hopelessly tangled in the voluminous skirts, Wolf caught her around the waist and lifted her easily to the ground.

  It was then that she discovered her legs had about as much consistency as water. "Thank you."

  She continued to hold on to his upper arms, afraid she'd embarrass herself by crumbling into a pile of red silk if forced to stand on her own.

  Beneath her fingertips, the muscles in his arms felt like boulders. She would not have guessed that a man who earned his living writing could have been so fit. So hard.

  Wolfe didn't say anything. Instead, he was looking down into her face with those brooding dark eyes that had the power to stop her breath in her lungs.

  They stood there for a long suspended moment, close together, his firm thighs crushing the front of her dress, his long dark fingers creating a scorching heat at her waist, him looking down at her, her looking up at him.

  Unnerved, she managed to drag her gaze from his. It was then she saw it. A bright red stain on the shoulder of his shirt.

  "You've been shot!"

  He shrugged, feeling the tug of sensitive flesh as he did so. "It's nothing."

  "Don't be so ridiculously macho." Always feeling more at ease when she was in charge of a situation, Noel placed her hands on her satin-clad hips. "Take off your shirt."

  Wolfe smirked to keep her from seeing that the concern he sensed beneath her feminine determination made him uncomfortable. "I like a lady who takes the direct approach." He unbuttoned the shirt and tossed it onto a nearby stump. "Want me to get rid of the pants, too?"

  If it weren't for that flinch of pain he'd tried so hard to conceal, Noel would have hated him for behaving so crudely. It also took all her concentration not to be distracted by the hard copper wall of his chest.

  "That won't be necessary," she answered mildly. The blood had dried into a brown crust, making it impossible to see what she was dealing with. Taking the canteen, she began pouring water over the wound.

  "You waste too much of that and you're going to get real thirsty, real soon," Wolfe said, thinking of the vast miles of high desert they'd cross before reaching sanctuary.

  "Surely we can get more from the river," she said calmly. "Besides, I need to see what type of wound we're dealing with."

  "Have a lot of experience with bullet wounds, do you?" Wolfe wouldn't have been surprised if there'd been a few shots exchanged by drunken cowhands on a Saturday night over such a woman.

  "Not that much… All right," she admitted, intimidated by his unblinking, steady stare. "None at all. But I've taken Red Cross training."

  When that only earned an arched, questioning eyebrow, she elaborated. "First aid. It's a basic level of healing."

  She began breathing easier when she was able to see the wound more clearly. "The bullet seems to have only grazed the flesh."

  He glanced uncaringly at the furrow that had been carved through his skin. He'd had worse. Much, much worse.

  "I told you it was nothing."

  "True. But if you'd been wrong, you would have missed the opportunity to say I told you so. Because you would have been dead."

  "Everyone dies. Sooner or later."

  "True. But personally, I'd prefer later." She was about to hand him back his shirt, when she gasped at the sight of the raised flesh running down the front of his forearm. "What's that?"

  He glanced down at the thick bands of scar tissue he'd forgotten about. "A little souvenir from a youthful tussle with a bear."

  "A bear?"

  He saw the horror move in waves across her face and realized that she was seeing him not as the writer of all those popular western books, but as a primitive, violent savage.

  "We had a dispute over territory."

  "Who won?"

  "If I'd lost, I wouldn't be standing here with you today." He'd killed the mean-tempered bear, but it had cost him months of recuperation. That he'd managed to do so with only a knife had gained him a measure of fame among the Dineh, but that meant little to him now. During his thirty-some winters on this earth, he had seen far worse things than a bear claw.

  She glanced around, more concerned about the idea of wild animals than of the posse that was undoubtedly after them. "Do you think there might be bears around here?"

  "Might well be." He shrugged. "Probably some wolves, too. But don't worry, sweetheart, I'll keep them from eating you up."

  Her strange day had been an unsettling experience. Noel was exhausted. And sore. Not being in the best of moods, the careless endearment rankled. "My name is not sweetheart. It's Noel."

  He shrugged. "Whatever you want."

  It was his experience that fancy women tended to change names about as often as they changed towns. This time next month she'd probably be Sassy Sally. Or Diamond Doll.

  Although, now that he thought about it, she'd chosen well. The name, bringing up thoughts of sleigh bells, crystal snowflakes and the rich mulled wine he'd been introduced to in London, definitely fit.

  Her nerves stretched. Tangled. Twisted into painful knots.

  That familiar look she'd seen in his eyes—upstairs in the Road to Ruin—returned. His harsh lips quirked in a faint, almost self-mocking smile as he caught her chin between his fingers.

  Her body was vividly aware of his nearness, responding to it in instinctively feminine ways as old as time. Warming. Softening. Feeling as rooted to the spot as the towering cottonwood trees that lined the river-bank, Noel held her breath and waited.

  His harshly cut mouth was within a whisper of hers. She could feel his breath, warm and enticing, on her lips. She drew in a ragged breath intended to calm. It didn't.

  Suddenly, without any warning to either one of them, emotions she'd reined in for too long—wild, confusing, distressing feelings—broke free inside Noel. And she burst into tears.

  6

  "What the hell?" Wolfe's head jerked back and he let go of her as if he'd been burned.

  "It's nothing." She turned away and covered her face in her hands. "Really." Having always been the family conciliator, even now, after all she'd been through, as distraught as she was, Noel's instincts were to try to smooth over this latest disaster. "It's just that everything's so confusing," she said through her sob. "And you've been d-d-dragging me
through these woods all day, and I'm hungry and tired and I d-d-don't know what I'm doing here, and—"

  "The only reason you're here with me is because you went off half-cocked and shot Black Jack Clayton," Wolfe told her gruffly. like most men, he was impatient with things he couldn't control. And a female's tears definitely fit that undesirable category. "It's not exactly like I was looking to be slowed down by some damn fancy woman! Hell, we'll be lucky if either one of us escapes the hangman now."

  "I'm not a fancy woman! Or a whore, or a prostitute, or a soiled dove, or any other euphemism you may prefer to use!"

  She whirled back, her hair swirling around her bare shoulders with the sudden movement. Her bottom lip trembling, a torrent of tears began streaming down her face.

  How dare he be angry at her? It wasn't as if she'd asked to come to nineteenth-century Arizona Territory! And she certainty hadn't begged him to take her to the Road to Ruin. But it wouldn't have mattered, anyway, she suspected, because this entire sequence of events had been set in motion when she'd first opened her sister's invitation.

  Possibly even before that. Something, after all, had made Chantal choose that particular woodcut for her invitation.

  "And as for shooting that horrid Black Jack person, I was trying to save your miserable life, Wolfe Longwalker, though Lord knows why. I should have just let him murder you right there in Belle's kitchen."

  She drew in a deep ragged breath as she wiped furiously at her tears with the back of her hands. "And, just for the record, I'll have you know, that gunfights and hangings might be part of your normal frontier life, but the only thing I've ever shot at in my life were clay pigeons with my brother, Burke, back home in Montacroix. And I've certainly never—ever—killed a man!"

  Her voice went up on a ragged wail as a new flood of tears burst forth. She, Her Serene Highness, Princess Noel, a common, garden-variety murderer. It didn't matter that she was trying to save Wolfe. The ugly truth was, she'd willingly taken the life of another human being.

  "I can understand how you may have found the experience unpleasant," he agreed with a calm that caused her own emotions to flare even higher. And hotter. "Although, believe me, sweetheart—"

  "My name is Noel!" That she was shrieking at him was as unbelievable as everything else that had occurred.

  His nod was curt. Brusque. Acknowledging her point without conceding an inch. "Believe me, Noel, there isn't a person alive, including Black Jack's mother, who'll miss him. He was a cold-blooded, low-life son of a bitch who'd just as soon shoot a man—or beat up a woman—as look at them."

  "Still, he was a human being." She closed her eyes in an attempt to block out the memory of that fatal blood staining the front of the man's shirt. "Who's dead because of me."

  "That's true enough, so far as it goes." Wolfe doubted anyone would show up at the graveyard to mourn the gunslinger. "But why blame me? I don't recall asking you to pull that trigger."

  Noel wondered yet again how it was that he could remain so disgustingly calm when she was so horribly rattled. "I suppose I should have let you die?"

  His eyes turned hard as stones. "You should have let me handle things. In my own way."

  "Your way was about to get you a one-way ticket to boot hill."

  Prepared for a scathing response, Noel was stunned when he suddenly threw back his head and laughed. A rich deep sound that warmed her unwilling heart and strummed innumerable chords deep inside her.

  Embarrassed, needy, not to mention still terribly upset, she folded her arms across the crimson bodice of her dress and turned away again, looking out over the swiftly flowing waters of Whiskey River.

  "Excuse me if I don't find dying very humorous," she said stiffly.

  Wolfe cursed inwardly, wondering how on earth she had survived this long on her own in the rough-and-tumble world she'd chosen for herself, while seemingly remaining so damn sensitive. Once again, it crossed his mind that she wasn't like any whore he'd ever met.

  "I didn't intend to insult you," he said. "It's just that part about boot hill sounded an awful lot like something out of a dime novel."

  The suppressed laughter in his tone only irked her more. "We can't all be internationally famous writers."

  "True." He found himself enjoying the bite of sarcasm edging her tone, preferring it to female tears any day.

  He came up behind her and ran his palms across her bare shoulders. "Would it make you feel any better if I told you how much I appreciate your noble gesture?"

  "Perhaps." She shook her head, trying to ignore the pleasure his massaging fingers were creating as they eased the knots out of her neck muscles. "It's just that it's all so difficult to take in. I keep trying to remind myself that only yesterday I was in Montacroix—"

  "Impossible." He turned her around and looked down at her uplifted face, searching the depths of her eyes for some sign of a head injury. "That is a journey of several weeks."

  "Not if you fly."

  "Fly?" If she hadn't injured her brain in that accident, she was definitely addled, he decided. "like that?" He pointed up at a red-tailed hawk that was flying wide lazy circles in the sky.

  "Not exactly. I flew in a plane," she qualified.

  "A plane." His tone was flat and absolutely disbelieving. She may as well have told him she'd donned a pair of gilt wings and gone soaring around the sun.

  Noel sighed, deciding not to even mention the Wright brothers at this point in their conversation. "It's a bit like a train. With wings."

  "Ah." He nodded. "Of course. A plane. So much more convenient than crossing the sea by ship," he said dryly. "I take it your home is in Montacroix?"

  "Yes." Pleased that he'd recognized the name of her country, Noel allowed herself to believe that perhaps he would believe her outlandish story, after all. "My family rules Montacroix."

  And had since a long-dead Giraudeau relative had purchased the Alpine principality from the French shortly after Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign. With the treasury nearly depleted from having financed all those wars, the French government had sold off parcels of land to various noblemen.

  She was as mad as a horse who'd gotten into a patch of locoweed, he thought. "I suppose that would make you a princess." Although his face remained expressionless, she could detect the sarcasm in his tone. A sarcasm, she decided, for now, to ignore.

  "That's right. My sister Chantal, is also a princess. And my brother is regent."

  "I met the regent of Montacroix last year," he informed her. "After a visit to Paris. And unless your parents spaced their children fifty years apart, there is no way that old man, Prince Leon, could be your brother."

  "Well, of course he's not my brother," Noel agreed immediately. "My brother is Prince Burke. Well, actually, if you insist on getting technical, I suppose you'd have to say he's my half brother. You see, my father, Prince Eduard, had been married before, but his wife, Princess Clea, went insane, and had to be institutionalized—"

  "It appears insanity runs in the family."

  Noel gave him a hurt, disapproving look, then continued, "Anyway, my papa met maman, who was an American movie star from California—"

  "A star?" First, flying. Now, constellations. Wolfe wondered if the so-called princess had been spending a bit too much time in opium dens.

  "A star is like an actress. Only bigger. More famous. My sister-in-law, Sabrina, is also an actress."

  "And a princess, as well, I suppose?"

  "Well, yes, but not by birth. She married my brother, which automatically makes her a princess, even if she is an American. From Tennessee."

  "Sabrina the Confederate princess," he drawled. "This is becoming more and more fascinating."

  This time, she would have had to be deaf to miss the blatant disbelief in his deep mocking voice. Noel sighed, realizing that she wasn't going about this at all the right way. Because every time she tried to explain how she'd come to be here, in this place, at this time, she'd get sidetracked and he'd never understand
that she'd traveled a hundred years to save his life.

  The thing to do, she decided, garnering as much of her characteristic practicality as possible under these outlandish circumstances, was to start at the beginning. With the invitation.

  "I recently received an invitation," she said. "From my sister."

  "The princess Chantal."

  "Yes. She's an artist and the invitation was to a gallery showing in Washington, D.C."

  "I thought your family was from Montacroix."

  "We are." She exhaled a long frustrated sigh. "But Chantal lives with her husband in Washington. He used to guard the president," she said with a measure of family pride.

  "Better and better." She had some imagination. He'd give her that. "So you received an invitation from your princess sister who lives in Washington where her husband guards presidents."

  That wasn't exactly right, since Caine had resigned from the presidential security detail and had established a private security firm before proposing to Chantal, but determined to remain on track, Noel merely nodded.

  Wolfe arched a dark eyebrow. "Was this before or after you flew here from Montacroix in the flying train?"

  "Before. And it wasn't a train. I told you, it was an airplane. An Air France jet, actually, but that's not important right now, because if you don't let me tell this in my own way, we're going to be here a very long time."

  "We're going to be here all night however you tell your story." Putting his hand against her back, he led her to a secluded spot beneath an outcrop.

  Although it was spring, nights in the Arizona high country could be cold. Wolfe took the time to gather some wood and make a fire.

  He also extracted some dried venison from his saddlebag. "Here. It is undoubtedly not what you are accustomed to dining on in your palace, but it is all I have."

  "Thank you." The meat was tough. And basically tasteless. But it soothed the hunger pangs.

  As she ate—quickly, as if she'd been starving—Wolfe pulled some tobacco from his suede pouch, poured it into a cigarette paper, rolled it up, struck a match with his thumbnail and lit it.