Authors: Johanna Lindsey
D
amian had seen nothing wrong with their sharing a bed. Casey had insisted she preferred the floor. It still hadn’t helped.
There was just something about being behind a closed door with him, in a bedroom too small for one person, let alone two, that she couldn’t handle. She had finally forced herself to remain still long enough for him to fall asleep, then had left the room to bed down in the lean-to that the hotel supplied for the guests’ horses. There, crammed in a corner next to Old Sam, she’d gone right to sleep.
Which was very annoying when she thought about it the next morning. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t already slept near the man. But being on the trail, with a campfire between them and other things to be concerned about, including keeping her senses primed for the unexpected, just wasn’t the same. The safety of that hotel room had given her nothing to think about but him. And some of the things she had thought about were quite embarrassing to recall in the bright light of day.
She had actually wondered what it would be like to be kissed by Damian. She had wondered if his hair would be as soft to the touch as it looked, what it would feel like to run her hands over such wide shoulders. She had even imagined him holding her in those strong arms of his and had broken out in a sweat from the picture it conjured up in her mind.
The embarrassment came when she saw him in the morning and got the impression that she usually did—that those piercing eyes of his could read her mind. For him to be aware of the things she had been thinking about him would have been far too mortifying.
But he barely gave her a glance when he joined her behind the hotel. She’d been all ready with the excuse of wanting to guard the horses because they weren’t bedded down in a proper stable, but it proved unnecessary. He apparently hadn’t even noticed that she hadn’t slept in the room last night. He just assumed that she’d gotten up and come down sooner than he.
They did not get an early start as she’d hoped they would. She had expected there would be some teaching to do to get Damian mounted on the pinto, but she hadn’t realized it would be so difficult.
He couldn’t relax. He was too hesitant in taking control of the animal. The pinto sensed that and took complete advantage. Here was a creature, after all, that he could intimidate into staying off his back, and the pinto gave it his best shot.
It was too bad there was such a huge weight difference between her and Damian, or they
might have been able to fool the pinto into settling down. She’d had to test him first with her saddle, since there hadn’t been one available here to purchase. And the idea of putting Damian on a saddleless mount was purely ludicrous, so until they found one to buy, he was going to have to use hers.
But Casey would have had to test the pinto either way, simply because some animals balked at anything they weren’t accustomed to, and new saddles fell into that group. And he’d ridden fine under her control. It was just Damian’s weight that had him sidestepping and bucking as if he’d never been ridden before.
She had to give Damian credit, though. He didn’t stop trying, despite landing in the dirt four times. He did waste an inordinate amount of time dusting himself off, thoroughly, each time, but Casey gritted her teeth over that, refraining from mentioning that he would likely be eating more dust before they were done.
The man surely wasn’t suited for trail riding. He seemed to despise the slightest bit of dirt on him, but he’d have to get used to it. She’d tried to talk him into buying more suitable clothes yesterday, at the very least a decent riding hat, but he had insisted his fancy New York duds would do him just fine. And they would, as long as he didn’t mind sunburn, burrs, and snags in his fine woolens from every little bush they passed too close to. Of course, she had a feeling he would mind, tremendously. She’d hate to see what would happen if he ever broke out in a sweat. Actually, that might be quite entertaining.
After the pinto finally figured out that he wasn’t going to win the battle, they set out. But it was a long day on the trail, or seemed much longer than it really was, since Casey had gotten little sleep in the night. She was forced to keep the pace slow, just to keep Damian in the saddle. She had little difficulty riding without one herself, had done it many times in her youth. But that had been for rides of a short duration. For long rides like this, it became a strain on her muscles.
They stopped in the early afternoon for Damian’s sake. Having purchased bakery goods before leaving the depot settlement, they could have continued on, eating in the saddle, but Casey figured he could use the break. In fact, he groaned when she said it was time to move on again.
That evening, however, he surprised her by offering to do the hunting for their dinner, if shots being fired wouldn’t matter. She was damned tempted to say shots would matter. She felt like eating meat, after all, and knew darned well he wouldn’t be bringing any back if he went to do the hunting. But he’d had such a lousy day that she didn’t have the heart to point out that he didn’t know the first thing about hunting and should leave it to someone who did.
She resigned herself to eating beans and biscuits and got them started. The real surprise came when Damian returned a half hour later with a wild turkey large enough to feed them for several days. After the mental scoffing Casey had done, she thought he’d just gotten lucky,
especially since she’d heard only one shot.
She said as much as she took the bird and started preparing it. “That was quite a lucky shot.”
“Actually, there wasn’t much luck involved,” he replied nonchalantly.
Casey raised a black brow. “It walked right up to you so you couldn’t possibly miss?”
“No, it was far enough away that I wasn’t quite sure what it was.”
Casey was reminded of the tall tales told in the bunkhouse at home and said, “Sure it was.”
It wasn’t at all hard to mistake her skepticism, which was probably why Damian suggested, “Perhaps a demonstration is in order.”
She wasn’t a bit concerned with his being embarrassed now. “By all means,” she said, and pointed at a likely target some forty feet away.
Damian aimed, fired, and hit it. Casey blinked, then pointed out another target. He hit that one squarely, too. After the third, she gave up.
“Okay, I’m impressed.”
Damian raised a brow this time. “Just impressed?”
“Damn impressed,” Casey mumbled.
He chuckled and joined her by the fire. “Your expression was priceless, Casey, but perhaps I should mention that I was class champion of rifle marksmanship in college. I also used to hunt with my father.”
“Where? In your backyard? You don’t ride, or didn’t, prior to today.”
“We’d take the train up north to the hunting lodge, and yes, we did our hunting on foot.”
Casey said no more, disgruntled. Her opinion of him had altered so suddenly and so drastically. But now she had to allow that he could probably take care of himself in most dangerous situations. He’d helped her well enough with those bungling stage robbers, after all. And she had to wonder just how many wounds those young train robbers had ridden away with. He could have killed them, with as accurate an aim as he had, no doubt of that, yet no bodies had been left behind. His “they deserve to die” had obviously been said only in anger, not because he meant it.
He was still too citified to belong out here. Nothing had changed about that. He still stood out like a sore thumb. But she supposed she could stop worrying about his chances for survival. With a horse and that rifle, he could manage on his own.
She continued preparing their meal, doing her best to ignore him. Yet she wasn’t unaware of his close scrutiny. If he was waiting for more praise for his newly revealed shooting skill, he’d have a very long wait. But that wasn’t what was on his mind, apparently.
“I hate to say it, Casey, but do you know you look like a girl? Have you tried growing a beard or mustache?”
After a moment of mental groaning, she said, “That’d be kind of hard to do.”
“Why?”
“Because I am a girl.”
She ducked her head, embarrassed no end by his horrified look. She hadn’t had to admit it. She couldn’t imagine why she did. And the
shocked silence that followed had her squirming until she couldn’t stand it anymore and glanced back at him—to find him staring at her chest, so hard, it was obvious he was trying to see through her poncho.
“There ain’t much to them, but they’re there,” Casey managed to say without blushing, then felt it prudent to add, “And don’t even think about asking to see proof. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
His eyes moved slowly back up to her face, scanning each part of it as if he’d never seen her before, and in fact, that was the case. His expression was intense, and then it changed abruptly as his emotions took precedence over his shock. What remained gave Casey pause.
He was angry, no doubt about it.
“
H
ow dare you be a girl?”
The idiocy of that question showed exactly how furious Damian was. Casey had expected some surprise, but not this serious anger now visible in every line of his body.
“I don’t think I had much choice in the matter.” She was pointing out the obvious.
“You know what I meant! You deliberately deceived me,” he growled accusingly.
“No. Now
that
I didn’t do. I just didn’t correct any conclusions you drew on your own. And you never asked. But don’t feel bad. It’s the same conclusion most folks come to about me.”
“I’m not most folks, I’m the man who is traveling with you, and I can’t believe how inappropriate this is. We even slept in the same bedroom!”
“Actually—I slept out back with the horses last night,” Casey admitted.
But she wished that she had mentioned it that morning when he replied sarcastically, “Sure you did.”
She frowned then, trying to figure out exactly why he was so livid. She settled on his word “inappropriate.” Was that his problem? Did he think she had relatives who were going to arrive with shotguns in hand and force him to the altar because they’d spent a little time in a bedroom together? Not that that
couldn’t
happen, but it wouldn’t, and maybe she ought to mention that.
“I hope you’re not under the mistaken opinion that my not being chaperoned means we’d have to do something ridiculous like get married. We’re nearing the turn of the century, Damian. Consequences like that—”
“Still apply and you know it!”
She cringed at the level of his shouting. “Well, not in this part of the country—at least not when no one but the two folks involved know about it. If you’ll just set your anger aside for a moment and think about it, you’ll realize that
no one
knows you’ve been traveling with a woman.”
“Woman? I would hardly call you that, kid,” he said derisively.
That stung, since Casey had considered herself a woman for the past three years. And this was beginning to remind her of the argument with her father, which was about to set her off. She made one more attempt at reasoning with him before that happened.
“The point I was trying to make to you, Damian, is no harm has been done, so you have no call getting upset like this. Just because I’m a—female—doesn’t alter our working relationship in any way.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
She raised a questioning brow. “Oh? And how is that, when it doesn’t change what I’m capable of or why you hired me? I’m still one of the best trackers around, thanks to my father’s teaching.”
“Father? Oh, so now you miraculously have known parents as well? And I suppose a real name, rather than one you
claim
is unknown to you?”
He
would
have to bring that up, she grumbled to herself, but to him she explained, “Lying about my name had nothing to do with deceiving you.”
“Excuse me? Since that’s exactly what it did, I fail to see—”
“I don’t give
anyone
my real name, Damian, because my father is likely searching for me, and I don’t want to be found yet. And don’t bother asking why. It’s personal. But the easiest way to keep my whereabouts unknown is for the folks I meet not to know who I really am, and rather than use a false name, I simply claim I don’t know it.”
“And pretend to be a boy.”
“No, that I don’t do. If my short hair, height, and skinniness give that impression, it’s not my fault folks jump to that conclusion.”
“Let’s not forget your clothes.”
“The clothes I wear are necessary for trail riding,” she told him. “But I have never once claimed to be a boy. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have admitted to being a girl just now, would I?”
“Why the hell did you?”
“Because I
don’t
lie about it.”
“You should have, Casey.”
“Why? It’s not going to change the way I deal with you. And it shouldn’t change the way you treat me. So why are you making such a fuss about it?”
“You are a
girl
.”
“So what?”
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair before he said, “If you think that doesn’t make a huge difference, then you haven’t much sense for a female.”
She stiffened. “I hope that doesn’t mean what it sounds like, but just in case it does, maybe I should warn you that men have been known to get hurt if they trifle with me.”
“That doesn’t exactly solve the problem.”
“
What
problem? You can’t actually be interested in me in that way.”
“Can’t I?”
She leaped to her feet, drew her gun, and aimed it straight at his chest. “So get uninterested, Damian.”
“You aren’t going to shoot me.”
“You don’t really want to count on that, do you?”
He stared at her, hard. She stared right back without blinking or wavering in her aim.
He finally looked at the gun and said, “Put it away. I’ll keep to my side of the fire—for now.”
That didn’t exactly reassure her, but since she didn’t
want
to shoot him, she did as he suggested and sat back down. However, she didn’t change her inscrutable expression, nor did she take her eyes off him.
After a painfully long minute passed in si
lence, with them both still staring, he said, “The bird is burning.”
“So do something about it. Where is it written that I have to do all the cooking?”
“Probably in the book that mentions that I don’t know how to cook.”
She blinked. And then she relaxed. If he could say something like that, then they were most likely done with the fight, such as it was—for now.
But just to make sure, she said, “I’m getting some sleep right after we eat. You should do the same. If we’re going to reach the next town before nightfall tomorrow, we’ll need an early start as well as a little hard riding. Think you’ll be able to handle a faster pace?”
“I’ll do what I have to do. I always have.”
The words were agreeable enough, but the tone was still a tad disgruntled. However, Casey wasn’t going to press her luck by instigating any more conversation. Hopefully, a night’s sleep would give Damian a better perspective on the situation. She doubted it would help her, though, to forget that the man had indicated an interest in her.
She wasn’t going to get any sleep at all, again, for thinking about that.