Branded

by Vivian Vaughan

“They won’t.”

  “How can you be sure? The corner of Overland and Durango is well lighted.”

  “I’ll keep this sombrero pulled low and hope Mandy isn’t late.” He chanced a glance and found Jacy soberly contemplating his attire. It further unsettled him, a fact he wouldn’t have thought possible. “You will recognize the nag?” he quizzed.

  “Mandy?”

  He painstakingly repeated Todd’s instructions. “The trolley we’re to take is pulled by a mule called Mandy.”

  Jacy began to laugh, at what he didn’t know, but the sound was like music. It drifted on the night breeze, thrummed his senses, left him lightheaded and witless.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked when she continued to laugh, harder and harder.

  Instead of answering, she stumbled around, laughing, holding her sides. When Trevor caught her arm, her head snapped up. Tears ran in wet rivers down her cheeks.

  Her laughter stopped in a choking sob. Even through the coarse serape, he felt her flinch. “What’s got into you?”

  “Mandy?” She laughed again, but her eyes weren’t laughing now. She looked at him with something akin to terror.

  “Mandy,” he repeated sternly. “Didn’t you hear Todd?”

  “I heard him, it’s just that…” She shrugged and he decided she was quite possibly the most irresistible woman the Man Upstairs ever created. Irresistible and dangerous, for it.

  “Every trolley mule in town is called Mandy,” she explained at last.

  “Son of a bitch.” Trevor released her. Removing his sombrero, he swiped a hand through his hair. “How will we know which trolley to take?”

  “We’ll know.”

  “Damn, Jace. You followed me down here, knowing we would have the devil of a time locating the right trolley.”

  “No, we won’t.”

  “Haven’t you got a speck of sense? We can’t stand around on a street corner all night. You said it yourself, these hills are crawling with Selman’s men. Hell, some fool down there might start shooting at me, and you might get hit. Yet you followed me like…”

  His words drifted off. His mother’s countenance flashed through his despair, her weary face, her frail health, her undying dedication to his drifting, bastard father. Were all women slaves to men? Sheep who followed the flock over a cliff if that’s where the male led?

  “Damnit, Jace. Why did you follow me?” One side of his brain argued for sanity. Jacy Kimble wasn’t like his mother. She was strong, independent, spit-in-your-eye cocky. Or she had been five years ago.

  Time and circumstances, the other side argued, broke the best of women. Time and circumstances dictated by men. But Jacy wasn’t like that. Damn! “Why didn’t you go home when I told you to?”

  She frowned, obviously not understanding his fluctuating emotions. Hell, he didn’t understand them, either. But he understood submissiveness. And here it stood, eager and full-bodied, beside him. Silent and submissive. No, he thought. Not Jace. Not submissive. The stars shone down on her, outlining the bulky clothing and broad-brimmed hat, under which she had stuffed that glorious flaxen hair. She looked up at him from beneath her hat brim, those magnificent lapis eyes black in the night.

  “You can’t seem to make up your stupid mind,” she retorted. “First you tell Mari—”

  “Mari! What the hell has Mari got to do with it?”

  “She said—”

  “Leave Mari the hell out of this, Jace.”

  “What has happened to you? You always were contentious, but at least you used to make sense. They must have bashed you on the head one too many times in prison.”

  He tossed his head to the night sky, struggling to calm his inner turmoil. “Go home, Jace.” She exploded.

  “In your dreams!”

  His dreams! Damnation, his dreams were the problem. Didn’t she know anything?

  “You said you needed me to save Hunter,” she said acidly. “I’m going with you for that reason and that reason alone. Don’t fool yourself it’s for anything else.”

  Damned if she wasn’t the most impossible woman! He grabbed her, intending only to make his point, to persuade her to go home. But before he knew what he was doing, he had jerked her to his chest by both arms. And before he stopped to think, his lips touched hers, ground against hers, and something inside him broke. He wasn’t a violent man, but the kiss he gave Jacy was pure punishment, fierce and cold. That’s the way it began, a crushing of lips and teeth and tongue, tight fists gripping her arms. Punishment. He would teach her to follow him. Or any man.

  But the sizzling touch of her skin, the wet heat of her mouth soon warmed the numbing cold that had taken hold of him. Cold fear.

  What the hell had she done to him? Suddenly he felt whole again, sane again, safe again. Her lips, her body, her warmth. With her in his arms, he might make it out of this jungle of fear.

  He drew her closer, his arms slipped around her, his lips softened…

  She jerked free. She was mad as a hornet.

  “Don’t ever do that again.” Then she hauled off and slapped him hard across the mouth.

  Startled, he saw the anger in her eyes, anger, followed by tears. “Just when I began to trust you!” she cried.

  Trevor stood, stunned. His anger had evaporated, and in its place spread fear of a different kind. Fear of what he had lost, destroyed, violated.

  While he stared at her, wondering how to repair the damage, she startled him further by lifting her hands to his face. Mesmerized, he felt her tender hand cup the jaw she slapped.

  Just before her lips touched his, she whispered, “Let me teach you how to kiss a woman, Trevor.” Her lips opened over his, soft and wet and sensual. He stood like one of those wooden Indians that merchants put out on the boardwalk here and there, while she kissed him with every bit as much passion as in his dreams.

  But this was real life and he was a real man, nothing wooden about him, as he gave way to her seduction, here in the moonlight, in the starlight, with Selman’s men scouring the hills and a mule named Mandy waiting at the corner of Overland and Durango and Jacy Kimble acting every bit as if she were in love with him.

  And here in the moonlight, he couldn’t summon even a smidgen of fear.

  When they paused for breath, she was grinning.

  “Jace, I’m—”

  She stopped him with a finger to his lips. “Next time you want to kiss me, do it before things build up.”

  He shook his head, marveling at the way they were able to read each other’s needs. Fortunately, she couldn’t see deeper, to the aching, loving core of him.

  Fortunately, he could see that she didn’t feel it, too.

  “There,” she said, pecking him one last kiss. “Lesson number one is out of the way. Let’s go save Hunter.”

  Nine

  Lesson number one, huh? Well, it wasn’t out of the way. Not by a long shot, but Trevor figured with the arduous journey ahead of them, if Jacy thought so, well and good. Her kiss, sweet, passionate, and spontaneously given, confirmed what his body had been telling him all along. The insidious yearning in his gut would not be quelled by a kiss or two.

  In other ways, though, her kiss and his rough treatment that precipitated it cleared Trevor’s mind. As clearly as he saw the stars overhead, he saw himself, his fears and resentments. He didn’t resent Jacy because she was like his mother. Jacy Kimble would never be like his mother.

  Jacy was her own person, strong, independent, cocksure of herself. He didn’t resent Jacy—he was scared as hell of her. Of what she could mean to him, if he let down his guard.

  The possibility that this free-spirited woman already meant far too much surfaced and was quickly squelched. Mari’s claim was outrageous and untrue. It had momentarily boggled his mind, but like the damnable dream that harassed and teased him, it was pure fantasy. Of course, it would be a cold day in hell when the fire-in-the-belly want of her quit burning in his gut. He guessed he would take that to his grave.

  “Th
e Chinese underground wasn’t what I expected,” Jacy was saying. They had ridden out of Juárez in the black of night accompanied by two armed vaqueros.

  “Why,” Trevor teased, his horse close beside hers, “because it wasn’t underground?”

  “I thought we would be shuttled through at least one smoky opium den.”

  He laughed. “One whiff would have you so drunk you couldn’t ride that horse.” The thought of Jacy drunk distracted him. Jacy drunk would likely be Jacy hot and passionate.

  They rode four abreast, Trevor and Jacy flanked on either side by the armed vaqueros who met them at the shack where the Mandy-pulled trolley deposited them across the Río Grande in Juárez, México. They left immediately, riding hell-bent through northern Mexico, roughly paralleling the United States border.

  It was the same route Trevor had taken when he left Arizona for El Paso a few days earlier. Even chaperoned by gunslingers, it was an infinitely more pleasurable ride with Jacy at his side.

  “They look like the men I’ve been warning Todd against,” she whispered before they set out. “Now we’re riding off into the night with them, into a foreign country.” She didn’t sound all that frightened.

  “Your trusty friend Wes Hardin sent them,” Trevor reminded her. He was tempted to think Jacy’s confidence had something to do with him, with their being together, but he knew her enthusiasm was more likely brought about by their destination.

  She was going home. Even sneaking in under the cover of darkness, protected by gunfighters, Jacy Kimble was returning home, and Trevor knew her well enough to realize what that meant.

  The soft black night settled around them, while their horses’ hooves thundered across the land. Nighttime and horses and Jacy were as comfortable and familiar a feeling, Trevor realized, as any memory in his life. He told her so.

  “It’s good to be back in the saddle.” She met his gaze directly. Moonlight glinted from her eyes, turning them more agate than lapis. “Lucky you learned how to ride.” Here in the dark, he could imagine the old Jacy. Teasing. Challenging. He could play her game.

  “Lucky I didn’t die trying, after you almost got me pitched off in that bog.”

  Trevor had arrived at the Diamond K looking for work, having never ridden a horse more than a handful of times in his life. Certainly he had never sat a saddle from sunup to sundown, doing work he would have had trouble doing on foot—cutting, pinning, lassoing.

  Jack Fallon drove only mules, which Trevor rode from time to time. After leaving his father he worked in the mines from California to Colorado. One day he’d had enough, enough of being underground, enough of breathing soot-filled black air, enough of going nowhere. So he decided to become a cowboy. He had a lot to learn.

  “I can’t think about that day without laughing.” Jacy’s laughter spilled over him like soft moonlight. “You were the first man I’d ever seen almost tossed into a bog.”

  “How many had you sneaked up on and spooked their horses?” he queried, trying to sound chagrined but falling short.

  The way she cocked her head told the story. She had removed the sombrero after they left town and her hair shown like silver in the moonlight.

  “I could’ve been swallowed up in that bog along with the mossyhorn I was after,” he grunted. “Would have been, too, if Hunter hadn’t come along.”

  She turned her profile to him, stared over the heads of their galloping horses. At first he didn’t note the change in her.

  “You were laughing too hard to throw me a rope,” he continued. “Not that you would have, mind you. Thankfully Hunter was there to save my life.”

  Her head snapped around. Their gazes locked. And there it was, the same old angry condemnation.

  “I didn’t run out on him, damnit.”

  “Not two weeks ago,” she agreed.

  “Not five years ago, either. I intend to prove that to you if I have to die trying.”

  And he would, too. She knew that determination; she felt it, shared it. They were so much alike—charging hell with a bucket of water, grabbing hold of a problem and not letting go until it thundered. All the clichés fit, not just Trevor, but her, them.

  They were so much alike she couldn’t not believe him. Deep inside, where it hurt, she knew he was innocent. And that tore her in two. She dared not admit it, not aloud, certainly not to him. For if Trevor was innocent, who else but Hunter could have killed Ana Bowdrie?

  Allowing brief stops to eat and catch a few winks of sleep, it took them two days and two nights hard riding to reach their destination on the Arizona border—the Agua Dulce Mountains west of Lukeville, putting them a day’s ride south of the Diamond K.

  The armed vaqueros left them at the border. It was nearly midnight of the third night out.

  “Want to camp here or ride?” Trevor inquired. At his tender, understanding tone, she almost cried.

  “Ride,” she said. “Maybe we can make the ranch by daylight.” The ranch. Inside her, elation vied with fear resulting in a flood of nostalgia she hadn’t been prepared to face.

  She had made it home. The thrill could not be suppressed. Regardless of the pledge Papa made, regardless that Tom Guest now lived at the Diamond K, regardless that she had sneaked in under the cover of darkness, protected by gunslingers from Mexico and that her mission was clandestine—she was back.

  Excitement welled and threatened to explode inside her. The cool night air was perfumed with sweet desert scents—cholla, ocotillo, and a bouquet of summer wildflowers. Riding beside Trevor beneath the towering Agua Dulces, the shapes of her beloved Arizona loomed like black shadows in the moonlight. Broad mesas, jagged cliffs, cacti of every possible size and description.

  “Your honor guard,” Trevor remarked lightly beside her, indicating the giant saguaros that rose from the desert floor around them.

  She hadn’t realized she shared so much of her life with this man, or that he would remember her telling him about the saguaros. As a child she pretended they were armed men, protectors. Now, like Trevor said, the giant cacti stood at attention around them.

  “We may need them,” she murmured.

  Toward daylight Trevor persuaded her to stop a while, eat the last of the cold tortillas and chorizo Mari had packed and rest.

  The latter, of course, was impossible. She was so alive with being home, seeing the ranch again, she felt like a colony of ants had taken up residence inside her.

  It was midday by the time they arrived at the hill overlooking the Diamond K from the west. Jacy’s breath caught at the sight of the valley she had always considered the most beautiful place on earth. Why had she taken it for granted?

  Below her the sprawling ranch house stood in a shade of cottonwoods, oaks, and eucalyptus. Built of native stone, some of it laid by her father’s own hands, it was the only home she had ever known. She was born in that house. Grew up playing and working in the surrounding outbuildings—barn, corral, smokehouse, spring house. All built of similar weathered rock, they looked part and parcel with the land.

  Tears dimmed Jacy’s vision. Heady impatience swept her. Impatience to get down there. In the valley. In the house. In her old room. To throw her arms around Mama Dee. But when she urged her mount forward, Trevor stopped her.

  “Whoa, Jace. We can’t just ride in.”

  “Why the hell not?” she snapped. She had never been one to accept the word no easily. Especially when it concerned something that burned in her belly. “It’s my home.”

  “Someone else is living there,” he said. “We may not be welcome.”

  “Not welcome? Tom Guest is Papa’s friend.”

  “Was,” he intoned, increasing her ire.

  When she tried to sink spurs, he caught her reins. “Listen, Jace. We’ve got to be careful. We don’t know who’s behind all this. Who set me free? Yancy warned me against someone, remember? ‘…if they don’t get you first.’ Who the hell are they?”

  “Tom has to be on our side.”

  “Yours mayb
e, but not mine.”

  She considered this. Of course he was right. Why else had he brought her along? “Maybe,” she admitted grudgingly. “But if I can’t see him, how can I talk to him? I’ve been in contact with Tom all this time.”

  “Sure, Jace. You didn’t even know he lived here until I told you.”

  While part of her understood, most of her was riled. Not necessarily at Trevor. At the situation. But Trevor was here, waiting to be pounced on. “Damnit, Trevor, I’ve known Tom Guest all my life. He was present at my birth. I almost married his son.”

  Trevor’s head whipped around. His gaze found hers. “Why the hell didn’t you? Maybe you would have listened to him.”

  “I’m supposed to listen to you?” she returned. “Is that what you’re saying? I’m certainly not married to you.”

  The words stunned them both. After a long, tense moment Trevor jerked the reins sharply around, hissing, “I knew there was something I forgot to be grateful for!”

  Jacy counted to ten. “Wait.”

  He drew rein but didn’t turn. She watched his shoulders bunch, his head droop. He was dead tired and so was she. Too tired to fight him.

  “You’re right.” She guided her horse up the rocky trail toward him. “We don’t know what’s going on down there. Guess I was too anxious to get ho—”

  When she bit off the word, his head came up. His anger was gone, too. She saw that in a minute. His warm gaze, tired but intense, fired her deep inside. To cap it off, he winked.

  “Come on, Miss Fancy Pants. I’ll take you home.”

  Thirty minutes later, they were hunkered among a jumble of boulders at the bottom of a gorge behind the smokehouse, their horses tethered in the shade of a mesquite tree several yards back. To their right was the barn and corral, to their left the spring house. It sat atop a spring that fed one of the tributaries of the Gila River and provided water for the entire valley.

  Squatted on her heels, with Trevor crouched behind her, Jacy’s emotions welled and soared—joy and sadness, hope and fear, anger and trepidation. Everything was so familiar she might have just walked out the back door. But she hadn’t. For five years she had lived in a world so different from this it could have been on another planet.