Banner O'Brien (24 page)

As she progressed, slowly, uncertainly, up the treacherous face of that mountain, Banner Corbin wondered if she wasn’t making a disasterous mistake. Suppose she found Adam and his woman and her suspicions became wounding realities?

Suppose there was a cozy cabin, with smoke billowing from its chimney and snow trimming its windows? Suppose there were children playing in the dooryard?

Banner shook herself. Adam had said there was no woman—repeatedly. But he was obviously keeping a secret, not only from his wife but from everyone else, too, and she had to know what it was.

Annoyance and a sting to her pride gave Banner the strength to go on. She had told Adam about Sean and her first marriage, however belatedly. Why was he refusing to shed any sort of light on this mystery of his own?

In the dense woods to Banner’s right, an owl hooted, and something scampered through the thorny blackberry vines along the trail, startling the little mare, causing it to dance and throw back its head. A new snow began to fall, slowly filling the hoofprints and the tracks of Adam’s rig.

Banner was cold. And scared.

What if it turned out that she wasn’t following Adam at all, but some mountain man or miner? What if she froze to death and no one ever found her body?

In the distance, an unseen creature emitted a chilling, keening sort of cry. The mare grew very nervous, her eyes rolling, her teeth on the bridle bit.

“Easy,” pleaded Banner, who was no rider as it was and every bit as frightened as the horse. “Easy, now . . .”

The beast was in no state to be mollified. In a sudden burst of high spirit, it reared, flinging its stunned passenger into a thicket of nettles and hazelnut bushes.
Before Banner could get free of the thorns and whiplike vines and scramble to her feet, the horse was trotting back down the mountain, its reins dragging on the ground.

“Stop!” Banner screamed, hopelessly, her breath making a white cone in the frigid air.

The horse ran on, of course, and Banner wedged her hands into the deep pockets of Adam’s old coat. “Dogmeat!” she yelled after it.

Now, the woods seemed more oppressive than ever. It was almost as though the giant Douglas firs took one step nearer every time she blinked her eyes.

Banner looked up the mountain, then down, trying to decide which way to go. Her hand closed over something in the pocket of the coat and she drew it out, needing some small task to keep her panic under control.

The item was a business card: “Miss Lou, Room 4. Silver Shadow. Always a gentle welcome.”

Banner sat down on a snow-covered tree stump and cried without shame. The snow fell faster and harder and the trail gradually became smooth. Sniffling, the doctor prepared herself for certain death.

Nearer now, the beast that had frightened her horse away gave a shrieklike growl.

Banner would be torn to quivering, bloody shreds; she just knew it. The creature was coming closer and closer and, whatever it was, it meant to make a meal of her.

She squared her shoulders and waited as bravely as she could.

One hour passed, and then another. The temperature had fallen, and the snow was so dense that Banner couldn’t see more than a few feet. It would certainly be a mercy if she froze before the animal reached her—

“O’Brien?”

Death must be very close now; Banner was hearing Adam’s voice, feeling the strength of his arms beneath
her knees and under her back. Euphoria, that was it. She’d read that people felt euphoria when they were about to die of exposure.

“God damn it, O’Brien,” snapped the voice of her final fantasy. “If you die on me, I’ll never forgive you!”

It was so real, this death-dream. Banner could feel the roughness of a heavy coat against one cheek, smell the scent that was Adam’s alone. There was even a jostling motion, a sensation of being carried.

But then there was nothing.

*  *  *

Heaven. Somehow, Banner had bypassed the flames of hell and the darkness of purgatory and been admitted to heaven.

She was warm, so warm, and cosseted in something soft. “I’m divorced,” she said, to the nearest angel, who was a vague and shifting shape beside her.

The answering chuckle was oddly familiar and too gruff and sensual to be divine.

Banner’s hazed vision cleared at last, and she gasped. Beside her, looking haggard and more than a little annoyed, stood Adam. She was lying in a bed, completely naked, and there were quilts draped over her in smothering layers.

“Where—”

“Be quiet.”

Adam went to a flickering fireplace nearby, brought back a mug of something hot and sweetly fragrant.

The brew was a mixture of coffee, sugar, and rum, and Banner lifted her head to sip it, Adam holding the cup.

“You were following me, weren’t you, O’Brien?” he drawled, in a voice that was at once tender and demonic.

Banner fell back to her pillows; it was too hard to hold her head up. Tears rose up in her eyelashes, slid down her face in stinging trails. So there
was
a cabin.
And Adam obviously knew his way around the place, felt at home.

“Is this your bed?” she whispered.

“It belongs to a friend of mine. Sleep, O’Brien. We can talk later.”

“Where is she?”

An exasperated sound echoed in the warm room. “Who?”

“Your—your friend.” Banner’s eyes closed, weighted by her weariness. The covers were being tucked beneath her chin, the mattress shifted as Adam sat down on the bed.

Suddenly, Banner was cold again.

“Sleep, damn it,” Adam rasped.

“I can’t—too—c-cold—”

There was a thumping sound—boots striking the floor? Banner didn’t know.

But then Adam was beneath the covers, beside her. He was fully clothed and warm, so wonderfully warm.

Though she was comforted, physically, Banner wept within herself. This was Adam’s bed, that woman’s bed.

She didn’t belong here.

*  *  *

The snow was deep and still coming down. Adam Corbin frowned, took another draught from his coffee cup, and cursed the blizzard that might well force him to betray a secret he had literally guarded with his life.

O’Brien stirred in the bed on the other side of the cabin. She would awaken soon, fit again, after her long rest, and start asking questions.

Adam thought of how she’d scared him the day before and regretted his promise not to treat her as a child. At the moment, he would like nothing better than to drag her across his knee and raise blisters on her bare backside.

He smiled. Well, maybe there was
one
thing he’d like better.

Adam took a step toward the bed and stopped himself. This was no time for passion—Banner had nearly died the day before. Thank God, she hadn’t, he thought.

He went back to the window and studied the ceaseless snow, wishing there was some way to get word down the mountain that both he and Banner were safe, wondering if it was really warm out in the shed, as Lulani assured him it was.

*  *  *

Banner opened her eyes. The interior of the cabin was filled with shifting shadows and the scent of something savory cooking.

She yawned. “Adam?”

The voice that answered was feminine. “He is with—he is not here. You will eat?”

Banner’s heart wedged itself into her throat and pulsed there. She could make out, though just barely, the slender figure standing at a tiny stove across the room. “You are his woman,” she said, in a lifeless voice.

There was a hesitant silence before the answer came. “Yes.”

Banner wanted to die. He’d lied. Adam had
lied.
“I am Adam’s wife,” she said woodenly, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them.

“Yes.” The woman drew nearer. “Adam has spoken of you.”

Adam has spoken of you.
The words were uttered so flatly, without rancor or indignation of any kind. Didn’t the woman care? Was she so much in love with Adam that the betrayal didn’t matter?

Banner ached. It was entirely possible. Hurt as she was, she herself had yet to entertain the idea of leaving Adam. “This is your bed?” she muttered, overwhelmed by her pain and yet inviting more.

“Yes. You are hungry?”

Banner studied her husband’s mistress; she was tall and probably Indian—her hair and skin looked dark—but given the poor light, she could discern little more. “No—thank you.”

“You will love him?” the woman asked, in a peculiar, flat cadence. “You will treat Adam well, always?”

Treat him well? If he’d been there, the reprehensible scoundrel, Banner would have clawed his eyes out of his head. She burst into loud, unceremonious tears.

The woman patted her shoulder.
“Mesatchie
—much bad to hurt so much. Sleep, eat. Tomorrow, go back to town.”

Having said these mysterious things, the woman moved about the cabin, gathering things, stoking the fire on the hearth, humming as though she had not been put out of her bed by her lover’s wife.

Finally, she brought a wooden bowl brimming with stew to the bedside, extending it with both hands.

“I can’t eat,” Banner informed her, grinding her forehead into her upraised knees.

“Need to eat.”

“No.”

There was a soft clatter—Adam’s woman had set the bowl on the floorboards beside the bed—and then Banner was alone. The winter wind howled around the sturdy walls of the cabin and rattled the windows.

She tried to get out of bed, found that she was weaker than she’d thought, and fell back to the mattress. How many times had Adam betrayed her, here, beneath these very covers?

A cry of mingled pain and rage rippled itself from Banner’s throat just as the cabin door opened and Adam came in, carrying firewood in his arms.

“What’s the matter, O’Brien?”

Banner shrieked again, bent to grasp the bowl of stew, and flung it at him. “Liar!” she screamed. “You filthy
liar!”

He seemed unperturbed by the attack, and he strode toward the fireplace and dropped the wood on the stone hearth. “What are you talking about?”

“Your woman! She was just here”—a great shudder rocked Banner Corbin—“you bastard—you bastard—”

Adam came to her, caught her bare shoulders in weather-chilled hands, shook her hard. “Stop it, O’Brien! You don’t understand!”

Banner began to laugh, convulsively, hysterically, like a madwoman she’d seen in a hospital once. “I
saw
her—I talked to her—”

“O’Brien!”

The maniacal laughter turned to raw, soul-splintering sobs. “I hate you, Adam. I hate you!”

Banner had expected anger, denials, anything but what actually happened. Adam drew her very close, held her. “No,” he pleaded, “No.”

She struggled in his arms, at once repulsed and drawn. “Let me go—don’t touch me—”

Adam refused to release her. “That was Lulani that you saw,” he said softly, reasonably. “I told you that this cabin belonged to a friend of mine, and it does. It’s Lulani’s.”

“Your mistress!” Banner burst out, into the Adam-scented woolen of his heavy coat.

“No. My
friend.”

“Friend!”

“Yes.”

“I despise you. Let go of me—don’t ever touch me again!”

“Take a deep breath, O’Brien, and stop being such a barley brain. Do you think I’d be stupid enough to bring you here if Lulani was my woman?”

Banner quivered. She didn’t know what to think about anything anymore. She could only feel, and what she felt was raw, ceaseless pain.

“It w-was too far down the mountain and I was
f-freezing. What else could you do, besides bring me here?”

He made no answer, but he pressed Banner back into the bed, and that, in itself, seemed to be a reply.

“Where will she sleep, with me in here?” Banner demanded, sniffling.

“There’s a stove in the shed—she’s staying there.”

“How accommodating of her!”

Adam drew away from the bed. “I’ll get you another bowl of stew,” he said, with hard-won patience.

“I won’t eat it!”

“Yes, you will,” he replied flatly. There was a rattling sound, the clink of a kettle lid, the click of a wooden spoon.

“Are you ashamed of Lulani? Is that why you keep your visits to her such a secret?”

Even in the dim, dim light, Banner could see his shoulders tense. “Of course I’m not ashamed. She’s a good friend—one of the best I’ve ever had.”

“Then why don’t you talk about her?”

Silence.

“Adam.”

He came to the bedside again, thrust a spoonful of stew into Banner’s gaping mouth. She spat it at him.

Adam caught her jaw in a hard grasp, forced it open. “Do that again, O’Brien,” he rasped, “and promise or no promise, I will drag you out of that bed and paddle you within an inch of your stubborn, suspicious little life!”

The next time the spoon came to her mouth, Banner ate. She had to. But she didn’t have to be cordial about it.

“Does she satisfy you?”

Adam’s face was taut, wan in the light of the dancing fire. “Did Sean Malloy satisfy you?” he retorted.

The words struck Banner with the impact of a physical blow. Tears smarted in her eyes and fury ran
wild in her veins, heating her blood. “Yes!” she lied, wanting to hurt Adam the way he had hurt her.

Adam closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, they were the eyes of a cruel stranger. “And he taught you well, didn’t he? I suppose I should be grateful to good old Sean.”

The room swayed with the force of Banner’s anger; her heart leaped and her eyes flared and her hand came up to strike his face.

But Adam caught her wrist in a harsh grip and stayed her. “Don’t,” he warned in a low, gruff voice.

And then he forced Banner to eat every last smidgeon of the stew in her bowl, bite by bile-raising bite.

Much later, when he joined her in the bed, naked and strong, she turned away from him with an eloquent flouncing motion.

Adam wrenched her back. “Lulani is not my woman,” he seethed. “You are. And you will,
by God,
behave as such!”

Banner gathered the spittle in her mouth and spewed it at him.

With terrifying speed, he was upon her. His hands held her wrists, stretching them above her head, his thighs were like granite upon hers. His ink-blue eyes glittered and his teeth were bared, like those of a beast pushed to fury.