by Carol Finch
She gasped in dismay when she did so and spotted the overturned coach beside the road—which was quickly turning into mud. From her vantage point she could see three masked riders circling the coach like vultures, exchanging gunfire with the stage driver and guard, who were crouched beside the wheels. Her first impulse was to race downhill and provide aid and comfort for the passengers trapped in the upended coach. But Cale’s constant warnings had finally soaked in like the rain beating down on her.
She knew Cale was down there somewhere, lurking like a shadow, fearless in his intent to apprehend the robbers who’d attacked the stage. Her need to protect and assist Cale spurred her into action before she had time to reconsider. It was pure instinct that put her in motion and kept her there.
With a wild whoop that would’ve done any self-respecting Indian warrior proud, Hanna snapped the reins and sent the horses stampeding downhill. Despite the rumble of thunder, she gained the three thieves’ attention as they converged to confiscate the strongbox that had tumbled into the grass. Hanna didn’t cease yelling and squawking, just pulled the wagon to a halt and bounded to her feet to flap her arms in protest.
While Hanna was drawing attention to herself, Cale was cursing the air black-and-blue. Hadn’t he taught that woman anything? It was her duty to remain safe while he concentrated on neutralizing the threat to the coach. Although he admired her courage in the face of danger, and her attempt to provide a distraction for him, he did not need a distraction. He’d handled three-to-one odds more times than he could count. Apparently she didn’t trust him to do his job efficiently. Either that or she was a daredevil at heart and only now had the opportunity to expose that alarming trait.
“Skeet.” Cale thrust his wet arm toward the masked bandit who circled north. The dog plunged through the thicket, took off at a dead run and made a flying leap at the rider. The startled horse reared, upending the bandit, who’d trained his pistol on Hanna. When the rider cart-wheeled off his horse and hit the ground with a thud and a splash, Skeet attacked his gun hand.
Cale was already on the move to blindside the bandit who’d made the mistake of riding near his hiding place in the underbrush. Cale had the unsuspecting man disarmed and sprawled on his back in nothing flat. Gunfire zinged over his head and he reflexively dropped to the ground and rolled toward the protection of the upturned coach.
“Damn glad to see you, Elliot,” the driver murmured as he took the last bandit’s measure down the sight of his rifle.
Cale was glad to note that the stage driver was a fair shot. He winged the bandit’s right arm, causing the man to teeter sideways. Cale vaulted to his feet the moment the bandit attempted to shift his pistol to his left hand. Before the hombre could fire off a shot, Cale jerked on his injured arm, sent him facedown on the road and left him howling in pain.
Cale cursed mightily when Hanna raced the wagon downhill, the wheels skidding precariously in the mud. He nearly suffered heart seizure before she regained control and prevented the speeding vehicle from overturning.
Leaving the driver and guard in charge of the captives, Cale headed straight for her, intent on biting her head off for refusing to follow his precise orders, and for scaring him witless.
“Thank God you’re all right,” she said as she bounded from the seat.
Before he could fire off one word of criticism, she gave him a swift kiss on the lips, then raced toward the coach to check on the passengers. Resigned to postponing his lecture on avoiding unnecessary risks that could get her damn fool head blown off, Cale tramped after her.
Two disheveled heads popped from the door as Hanna crouched atop the overturned coach. “Is everyone okay?” she asked.
“As good as can be expected,” a thin, mustached passenger replied. “Here, take the child. She’s frightened and she sustained a few bumps and bruises.”
Hanna cuddled the whimpering three-year-old girl close and nuzzled her pale cheek. “Shh, it’s okay, sweetheart. We’ll have your mama out of there in a moment. Cale will see to it, don’t you worry.”
Cale found himself immobilized by the touching scene of Hanna—looking like a drowned rat, with her hair draped over her soggy shoulders like a mop—comforting the shaken child. Her innate kindness and concern for others never failed to impress him. The woman definitely had a heart of twenty-four karat gold.
Reminded of her previous comment about a man’s value being measured by his service to others—or something to that effect—Cale hunkered on the stage and began to hoist up the passengers. One by one he pulled them out into the pouring rain and inspected them for injury. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with the woman who flung her arms around his neck and thanked him about a dozen times for saving her and her little girl from certain death. While the woman clung to him he shot Hanna an uneasy glance, afraid she’d think he was enjoying being hugged by another female.
She grinned impishly at him. “It seems I’ve married a man whom other women just can’t keep their hands off. I suppose I’ll have to get used to it.”
When the little girl wailed for her mama, the woman released Cale abruptly and gathered her distraught daughter into her sheltering arms. “I’m eternally indebted to you,” she said over her shoulder. “My husband is stationed at Fort Griffin in Texas. We’re on our way to rejoin him. If you ever pass by the fort you’ll be most welcome in our home. Thank you so much for your help.”
While Hanna assisted mother and daughter to the ground, Cale inspected the coach. Fortunately, there appeared to be no serious damage that would impede travel. After Cale restrained the prisoners, he assisted the driver, guard and passengers in uprighting the vehicle. Within fifteen minutes the entourage was under way to the small stage station located five miles south.
After Cale had tied the prisoners in the wagon bed, he climbed aboard and stared at Hanna from beneath jutting brows. “Don’t ever do that again,” he growled at her.
She cocked her head and met his thunderous scowl. “I was trying to provide a distraction,” she pointed out.
“Don’t care. You go around scaring ten years off my life every few days and I won’t live long enough to reach Texas.”
She touched his arm and smiled one of those magical smiles that had the power to boil him down to mush. Damn it, he was annoyed at her, but her touch always soothed the savage beast growling inside him.
“I do appreciate your concern, but it’s not my nature to sit back and watch when you need my help,” she told him. “We’re in this together and you need to remember that.”
Cale sighed in resignation as he headed for the stage station. He tried to recall if he’d ever won an argument against this willful female he’d married. He was sorry to say that he didn’t think he had.
Hanna was well pleased with the outcome of their evening adventure. She’d aided in thwarting a stage holdup and Cale hadn’t bitten her head off—well, not completely. Her need to be useful had been satisfied once again, and she reminded herself that she’d done more living in a week than she’d done in twenty years beneath her father’s domineering control.
She’d also had time to give considerable thought to the embarrassing tantrum she’d thrown at Bennigan’s Trading Post. She was more than a little annoyed at herself for allowing her feelings to be hurt so easily. It was just that she was hypersensitive about the intimacy she’d shared with Cale. But perhaps the moment had been special for him, too. After all, he’d never made love to a wife before. That would make their night together different than his nights with Millie and the other women who had shared his bed.
Hanna told herself not to analyze that monumental night to death. She should simply accept the erotic pleasure for what it was. Cale had insisted that it was different for him, and she should leave it at that. Besides, he wasn’t the kind of man who gushed sentimentality and offered permanent commitments. He couldn’t. Not in his dangerous line of work. She could understand why he lived in the moment and didn’t look too far into the future. His world c
onsisted of day-to-day survival.
Scooping up her yarn and knitting needles, Hanna headed downstairs to the stage station’s dining hall to join the passengers. Cale had left an hour earlier to ensure the root cellar that served as an improvised jail for the bandits was secured. He’d also informed her that he needed to speak to one of his former colleagues who operated a ranch six miles west of the station. While Cale was making arrangements to have the bandits delivered to the deputy marshals at Bennigan’s, Hanna decided to try her hand at knitting.
Mary Watkins, whose daughter Hanna had pulled from the overturned coach, had offered knitting instructions while the passengers lounged near the fireplace. Mary, Hanna noted, was exceptionally skilled at knitting. Her needles clacked and moved like extensions of her hands while she knitted a dainty shawl for her daughter, Elaina. Mary never slipped a stitch.
Hanna, however, had to apply profound concentration to learn the basic techniques that came so easily to Mary. The brown afghan Hanna was knitting for Skeet to use as a mat looked like Swiss cheese—with holes all over it. Hanna told herself she’d get better with practice. Skeet certainly wouldn’t object to sleeping on the lopsided mat. Besides, it was the thought that counted, wasn’t it?
Hanna was finally getting the hang of knitting when Elaina yawned and snuggled up to her mother. After Mary strode off to tuck the child in bed, Hanna worked with the needles until her fingers cramped and her eyes threatened to slam shut.
Cale still hadn’t returned, even after the last of the stage passengers retired to their sleeping quarters. Determined to wait up for her husband, Hanna tucked away the needles and yarn and ventured outside for a breath of fresh air.
Fog enshrouded the station and barn. Steady drips plunked off the eaves as Hanna wandered aimlessly around the compound. She glanced sideways when she heard the clip-clop of hooves. Her heart all but melted when Cale, mounted on his pinto gelding, materialized from the fog in the glowing light cast by the lantern that hung outside the barn.
Even dripping wet the man was a magnificent sight to behold. To some, perhaps, he was the vulture of doom who rode for Parker. A dangerous man to be avoided. To Hanna, he was the epitome of what a man should be: strong, capable, fearless and reliable. She’d seen him in action often enough and he’d never failed to impress her. Rough-edged and rugged though he was, he’d been amazingly tender and gentle when he introduced her to passion.
Desire gnawed at Hanna as she clung to the shadows and watched Cale dismount, then lead his horse to the barn. She was astounded by her overwhelming need to be with him again. Suddenly it didn’t matter whether their shared passion was the same or different than he’d experienced with other women. All that mattered was that she was compelled to be one with him, to revisit that incredible space out of time when she’d felt alive and free and totally uninhibited in his arms.
It dawned on Hanna as she walked toward the barn that freedom wasn’t to be found in a particular place in a specific part of the country. It was a feeling that dwelled inside oneself. Cale Elliot had provided her with that unique feeling and she longed to return the favor. Somehow, she promised herself as she strode through the heavy fog, she was going to learn to pleasure her husband the same way he’d pleasured her. And she wasn’t going to let pride and vanity get in her way again.
Hanna veered around the corner of the barn—and found herself hauled against the solid wall of a man’s chest. This time the cold steel of a dagger lay against her throat before she had time to react.
“Damn it, Magnolia,” an annoyed voice muttered next to her ear. “What are you doing out here? You should be in bed by now.”
Cale released her immediately. She pivoted to face him and glided her hands over his wet shirt. “You’re right. I should be in bed,” she told him saucily. “But I didn’t want to go to bed without you in it.”
She raised up on tiptoe to press her lips to his, and found herself hoisted off the ground, her feet dangling in midair. He kissed her hungrily, greedily, and she kissed him back with the same fervent impatience. Need plowed through her as he crushed her against his body and all but devoured her.
The gentleness he’d displayed the first time was nonexistent. But she realized she didn’t mind all that much. His impatience indicated that he wanted her to the same mindless degree that she wanted him. If he decided to lay her down in the straw and take her, right where they were, she wouldn’t have voiced a single complaint. But her hard-as-nails marshal of a husband suddenly transformed into a gentleman. He scooped her up in his arms and made a beeline for the station.
“Not out here. Not with you, Mags,” he said in a raspy voice. “The first thing I’m buying, when we reach Cromwell, is the biggest, softest feather bed to be found. That’s what you deserve.”
Hanna snickered as he set her on the porch. “My, I have married well, haven’t I? I have a husband who places my comfort above all else—”
She barely had time to complete the teasing comment before Cale clutched her hand and nearly dragged her up the steps in his haste for privacy. A blush exploded on her cheeks when the stage owner—a wiry little man with frizzy gray hair—glanced up from where he sat in his rocker, warming himself by the fire. He grinned wryly as his gaze bounced back and forth between her and Cale.
Hanna decided she didn’t care if the proprietor knew why they were in an all-fired rush to reach their room. If her legs were longer she would have been the one tugging Cale up the steps.
Skeet, who’d followed at their heels, nearly got his hind section smashed when Cale hurriedly shut the bedroom door. The dog yelped and scurried to lie down at the foot of the bed. Hanna tugged impatiently at the lacing of Cale’s shirt and he yanked her shirt over her head, making no attempt to conceal his pleasure at feasting his hungry eyes on her afterward.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he murmured huskily. “If that offends you, Mags, I’m sorry. But you are.”
“From you, I’ll take it as a compliment,” she said as she pushed her breeches off her hips and let them drop into a pool at her ankles.
Cale looked his fill at this vision of unrivaled beauty. He wanted his hands on every inch of her satiny skin and he wanted his hands on her now, this very minute. He’d spent the past few days practicing honorable restraint, but he’d run clean out of willpower when she’d showed up in the barn and kissed him as if she were dying for a taste of him.
Damn, what this woman did to him should be declared illegal in all thirty-eight states of the nation. She assaulted his senses with her taste, her touch, her scent and the alluring sight of her luscious body. She robbed him of breath, repeatedly. She stole one corner after another of his carefully guarded heart, and she was absolute murder on his self-control. Definitely criminal, he decided.
“Teach me to pleasure you the way you pleasured me,” she rasped as her nails raked over his bare chest. “Do you like this?”
Her sensuous lips whispered over his male nipples, and heat pulsed through every fiber of his being. Cale braced his back against the wall and dragged in an unsteady breath when her featherlight kisses trailed over his belly.
“Yeah, I like it, a lot,” he managed to answer—just barely.
“What about this?”
Her splayed hand glided along the waistband of his breeches. When her fingers skimmed over the buckskin that covered his throbbing length Cale fought to drag air into his lungs. “Hanna…”
“Do you?” she persisted, caressing him boldly.
“Yeah, but—”
“I want my turn with you,” she insisted when he tried to grab her adventurous hand. “I want you to know how it feels to be so hopelessly out of control that you don’t care if there’s a tomorrow or a day after. The same way I didn’t care because I couldn’t see beyond the pleasure of your touch.”
He’d made her feel like that? Her honesty and the thoughts she expressed pleased him immensely. But he didn’t have time to dwell on that because she’d released him from his bre
eches and folded her hand around his aroused flesh. Cale went weak in the knees when she measured him from base to tip with the pad of her thumb. When she knelt before him and her lips grazed his most sensitive flesh, he swallowed a howl of unholy torment. The woman was killing him—and he was savoring every moment of her intimate touch.
Over and over again, she stroked him, tasted him, teased him with teeth and tongue. Again he reminded himself that her hidden talents as a natural-born seductress were unequaled. Desire, hot and intense, pelted him like gunfire. His pulse hammered in his ears and his runaway heart slammed against his ribs—and stuck there.
“Enough, Hanna,” he muttered between clenched teeth.
“Not nearly enough,” she murmured against his aching flesh. “You’re still standing. You’re always the last man standing but, in only this, I want to see you fall.”
His breath hitched when she took him into her mouth again and suckled him. He was dying here—one erotic moment at a time—and he had to stop her before his self-control abandoned him completely. He was clinging desperately to that thought when she urged him into the straight-back chair that he’d situated beside the door as reinforcement for the flimsy lock. Still holding him in her hand, she reached down to peel off his boots and breeches.
Cale glanced down to see her blond hair shimmering like moonbeams in the lantern light that filtered through the window. When she crouched between his legs and bent her head to tease him with lips and fingertips, hot chills shot up and down his spine. Need billowed like a wildfire inside him.
He wasn’t going to last, and the thought of not having his hands on Hanna, not unleashing the passion he’d called from her that first night, was intolerable to him. If he didn’t act now he was going to discover the full meaning of hopeless surrender, and that was something he’d never encountered in his life.
Cale twisted his hands in her hair and tugged her upward. Although she still held him in her hand, his mouth came down on hers in an all-consuming kiss that testified to his frantic need for her.
