“I heard of them. Hank Wailins was hanged just a few months ago.”
He handed her a biscuit layered with salt pork and a tin cup filled with near-black coffee. An oily swirl covered the top, but she took it with appreciation anyhow. After the sleepless night she’d passed, she’d take any kind of perk-me-up.
“That’s right.” She took a healthy swig and relished the warmth that spiraled down her chest. “As sick as he was, Father was still part of the posse that brought him in.”
“You’re awfully proud of your father, aren’t you?” He shoved nearly half his biscuit in his mouth.
“Why wouldn’t I be? He’s a good man.” She took a much smaller nibble off her breakfast and chewed. “How about you? Aren’t you proud of your family?”
He stood and tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire. “Hurry up with your food. I’d like to get back on the road soon.” He strode to the far side of the clearing and began checking up on the horses.
Maggie stayed where she was, sipping away at her coffee. She hadn’t missed his avoidance. It wasn’t the first time he’d ducked saying something about his family.
She wasn’t completely dense. That not everyone had as wonderful a home life as hers was something she couldn’t help but notice over the years. But she’d never met anyone who flat out refused to talk about their past. She wondered what Collier had done to cause such a complete rift.
She sucked down the last bit of her coffee and shoved the last quarter of her biscuit in her mouth.
No matter. Collier was no business of hers, and he never would be.
Around midday, they came to the Brazos River. The approach wasn’t bad, with softly sloping sides covered in knee-high grass. White-tipped rapids splashed down the course, the runoff of late spring snow melts higher up in the mountains.
Levering up with her cuffed hands on the saddle horn, Maggie stood in her stirrups. The rushing water continued as far as she could see to the south, and at least to the sharp bank to the north.
“I need my reins,” she said to Collier’s back.
He and his gelding were a few feet ahead of her, courtesy of her leads being tied to his saddle. He swept his hat off his head and ruffled a hand through his hair. “No, I think it’ll be fine.”
“Collier, be serious.”
He set his hat back on his head and tugged the brim down before twisting in his saddle to look at her. “I am. I crossed right around here on the way out. We’ll head up that bank and you’ll see it’s much slower.”
She shook her head, but didn’t have any choice but to follow when he clucked to his horse and set off. A half mile up the riverbank, they stopped again. The water level looked a little better, but not by much. Though no white frothed, the water rolled swiftly. Trepidation roiled in her belly with almost the same churning speed.
“Collier, I’m not asking for that much. I’ll still have the handcuffs on.”
“It’ll be fine.” He untied her leads from his rifle loop and for half a second, Maggie thought he’d come to his senses.
She should have known better.
He wrapped the leads around a loose fist, with his own reins. “We’ll be across in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
She was considerably more than half tempted to hop down and walk across. But belly-high water on a horse would be chest high on her. With the handcuffs on her wrists, it’d be even more foolish than the possible trouble she faced mounted on her horse.
Sandie craned her head back and blinked one glassy brown eye at Maggie. She patted her neck and crooned quietly. “It’ll be okay, darling. Just follow the idiotic man the best you can.”
“I heard that,” Collier said.
A deep breath helped her soldier on. “I’ve no doubt of that.”
At least he let the horses pick their way across the riverbed. Brown water licked at Maggie’s boot heels. Three fourths across, she’d just about decided they’d make it safely when Sandie put a hoof down wrong and stumbled. Maggie lost her seat and slipped to the left. She caught herself with an ankle around the back edge of the saddle.
Sandie yanked against the reins Collier still held. When she found herself trapped, the poor horse panicked. Whinnying full force, she reared back. The leather reins flew, but Maggie didn’t have a chance in hell at catching them with her hands bound. All she did was slide further off the saddle. She hooked the handcuffs around the saddle horn and wedged her ankle under the back edge of the saddle. The water might not be deep enough to go over her head, but the force would be plenty to drag her down.
Plus, there was that little problem of not knowing how to swim.
“Goddamn it, Collier,” she screamed.
He spit out a curse fouler than any she’d even dreamed of saying, and then there was a loud splash from somewhere to her side. She didn’t dare look. Her blood pounded with fear and her vision went gray. She shook her head to clear it. This was no time to faint.
Sandie stumbled again, this time going up to her withers in the churning. The water closed over Maggie’s head and burned when she accidentally took a breath.
Strong hands gripped her hips. He was shouting something, but the words were dandelion fluff on the wind, gone before she could make sense of them. She sputtered and coughed when Sandie found her footing and dragged Maggie up again.
Collier pried her boot out from its death grip on the saddle and lifted her wrists off the horn. For one terrifying breath she fell free of anything, then he had hold of her once again. She wound her fingers in his soaked shirtfront. Her feet found no purchase—the riverbed was every bit as deep as it had looked from the bank.
She wrapped one leg about Collier’s hip and dug her nails into his chest.
Free of her awkward burden, Sandie swam away.
“Swim, damn you,” he shouted.
She only clutched him tighter. “I can’t.”
He shook his head and flicked his hair out of his eyes. “Of course. Of course you can’t. That makes perfect sense.” He flipped her about, until her back pressed against his chest. His arm banded her ribs in a painful pinch across her already burning chest and he began swimming them to shore. “Just kick.”
She obeyed, desperate to do anything she could to help them out of danger.
“Not like that,” he snapped. “Up and down.”
She changed the way she was kicking and they sped along much more quickly. Still, it seemed an eternity until Collier’s feet hit ground and he adjusted his grip from her ribs to her waist. Her toes found rocks a moment later, and they staggered out together.
They flopped down on the bank, Collier panting at her side. Her breath sawed painfully in and out of her lungs, and her entire body shivered with the certainty death had come calling. The sun beat down on them, but a breeze scattered goose bumps over her skin. She used her still-bound hands to sluice water from her face.
She coughed and turned her head to spit muddy river water into the grass. “Is this where I get to tell you I told you so?” Her voice was raw and hoarse and her throat burned.
After a long pause, he laughed, a rough, underused sound. “Yes. Yes, it most certainly is.”
She tried to lift her head but it had suddenly become entirely too weighty for her neck. “Good…Glad you finally saw sense.”
He sat up. Looming over her, his shadowy silhouette blocked out the sun. “Damn, Maggie, I’m sorry.”
She wiped her shaky hands over her face. There was a small possibility that not all the water on her cheeks came from the river. She sniffled. “’S all right. All’s well that ends well, I suppose.”
He ran a hand over his head, leaving tracks in hair darkened to brown by the water. “It’ll end well enough if we find the horses.”
Another cough racked her. “As long as she’s not injured, Sandie won’t be far.”
“Jameson as well.”
She squinched her eyes against the corona of light surrounding him. “Jameson? Your horse is named Jameson?”
He shrugged. “It seemed as good a name as any. I bought a bottle of Jameson and when I came round I’d apparently won him in a hand of poker. So it was either Jameson or Straight Flush.”
Pushing to a seated position proved nigh on impossible. Her stomach muscles were too weak and she couldn’t use her hands after all. He grabbed her by the shoulders and helped her up.
His black vest hung open, his shirt near transparent from its dousing. Every nook and cranny of his solid body became an enticing shadow of suggestion. His bottom ribs arched over a flat stomach bisected by muscle. The intimate view was shocking in a way that sent her insides fluttering and made her even more lightheaded.
Her lungs took another tumble in her chest as she looked down at herself, afraid of what she’d find. But though her own shirt was see-through at the shoulders, her corset and chemise protected her from too much embarrassment. She plucked the sodden cloth away from her torso anyhow.
“Between the two choices, Collier, I will grudgingly admit Jameson is the better selection.”
“I think you can call me Dean by now. Especially considering what we just survived together.”
She slanted a look at him though she kept her face turned down. The embarrassment she’d avoided a moment ago inexplicably assaulted her now, heating her cheeks and making her ears tingle. “Don’t you mean considering what
you
just put us through?”
His mouth loosened into that near-smile he’d shown before and his eyes warmed from ice blue to something similar to the sky just after dawn. “Yes. What I just put us through. I’m a man who can accept when he’s wrong.”
The first full-blown grin since this entire ordeal started spread across her face. “In that case, I suppose I can bend enough to call you Dean.”
“Good.” He pushed to his feet to assist her in rising.
She put her hands in his and with his help almost leaped to her feet. He held her steady at the shoulders when she swayed, even while he managed to avoid making a production out of the assistance.
“It’s not often I meet a man who can admit his faults,” she said, intending to get her mind off the swimming in her head. “I sense a woman’s hand in that.”
His jaw firmed into a blade-sharp line and his lips flattened until they’d nearly disappeared. He dropped her faster than a lit coal. She bobbled again, but this time he didn’t even try to catch her. She stumbled and saved herself.
“Let’s find those horses,” he said, and abruptly turned to start down the bank.
“Anyone ever told you being rude was one of those faults?” she called at his rapidly retreating back.
What kind of cactus patch had she stumbled into? They almost seemed to be getting along for a moment, before he’d shuttered down once more. She turned over her words as she slogged through the high grass after him. Right before he’d gotten that stick back up his arse, she’d said something about a woman’s influence in his life.
She used her forearm to push wet hair out of her face as she watched him scan the surrounding area for their horses.
So the man had a weakness when it came to some woman. Maggie smiled.
She’d nettle the man until she weaseled the truth out of him.
After all, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do.
Dean wandered about the outer edge of the campsite collecting kindling, careful to keep Maggie within eyesight at all times. As he bent to add another stick to the small armful he already carried, he admitted he was brooding. As much as he hated to admit it, there was really no other word.
They’d found Jameson and Sandie with little trouble. The problem had come after he’d stripped them of blankets, bags and saddles and inspected the supplies. His ammunition was fine, having been tightly wrapped in oilcloth, and their spare clothing had required only spreading out on low-hanging branches to dry. But the biscuits were soggy, crumbled knots of uselessness. Worse than that, the coffee had been soaked through. The package of jerky and salted pork had simply fucking disappeared.
It was all his fault. After all, he’d been the one to pack in the morning. He must have failed to buckle Maggie’s saddlebag.
As soon as they’d laid everything out to dry, he found tracks leading to a herd of deer grazing in another clearing. A six-point buck and three fat does, one of which had wandered near the woods. To add insult to injury, he’d missed the shot and scattered them all. He’d try again around dusk, but until then they’d have to tough it out.
The nearest town was only a day and a half down the trail, though he’d hoped to avoid it all together. Mason was the last place in the world he’d prefer to resupply. Hell, it was the last place in the world he’d like to even pass within a hundred miles of, but the most direct route to Fresh Springs went right by.
But even his dread at returning to Mason wasn’t the worst part. He’d nearly gotten Maggie killed with his bullheaded stubbornness.
He eased behind the shadow of an oak tree and slipped Maggie’s photograph from the pocket of his vest. Though damp at the edges, it had survived the river well enough. The face in the tintype was five times as cheerful as the solemn-eyed waif drying herself by the fire. But he’d finally seen that tip-tilted smile—of all times—when they’d beached themselves on the riverbank. He’d nearly drowned her and she repaid him in grins. She was either a borderline simpleton or the most resilient woman he’d ever known.
He shoved the picture back in his pocket and bent to pick up another stick before returning to the fire. Resilient or not, incredibly kissable or not, she was a criminal. If he was to pick up the reins of his lawman’s life again, he damn well couldn’t allow sympathy for a thief because she responded to his kiss with recklessness. Or because he’d love to lay her out naked under the bright sun and lick her from her delicate, arched eyebrows all the way down to her slender ankles.
He fed a slim stick of wood into the fire. It nibbled and licked at the wood until flames spat up from the tip. He tossed it in.
Maggie sat across the fire, tidying herself the best she could. Dark waves curled about her shoulders as she drew her hair forward to work at it with a silver comb. The look she tossed him had the decided flavor of a smirk.
“Finding something amusing?”
She worked at a knot. “Am I taking my life in my hands if I say yes?”
Maybe. “Of course not.”
She made a little humming noise in the back of her throat and flicked her gaze away for a moment. He had the disconcerting idea she hid mean-spirited laughter.
“For a man who makes a living hunting, that was not the most stellar exhibition I’ve ever witnessed.”
He ground his boot heel into the soft, sandy earth. “I make my living hunting men, not deer.” Plus, he’d never been particularly skilled with a long gun. His brothers had ridden him about it without mercy. A pistol had always been his preferred weapon.
“Uh-huh.” Her hair now a silky-smooth fall, she set down the comb and stretched her hands out toward the fire. The day had been warm enough, but they both still wore damp clothing that clung to their skin. On Maggie, it looked disturbingly alluring, skimming her slight curves in a distracting manner. He was a damned perverted man for wishing a corset and chemise didn’t conceal his prisoner from view.
She twisted her shoulders to present more of her hair to the fire and fluffed the dark mass. Surely she didn’t mean that sideways glance to seem so flirtatious. He was out of practice when it came to dealing with ladies.
“You know,” she said, “Father taught me to shoot when I was little. Me and Robert both. Robert got so good that Father took him along when he went hunting the Wailins.”
“Considering I didn’t hear the name Bullock attached to their capture, I find myself wondering how that went.”
Her features folded down in unhappiness. “Not well. It was the one Robert died at.”
“Sorry.” The word rasped his throat with its unfamiliarity. He hadn’t said it to a soul in so long.
She shook her head in a dismissal. “I’m not talking of it with
you.
”
As he watched, she visibly stuffed down her feelings. She wiped away her smile and tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear. But if she wanted to play as if there were nothing wrong, it meant nothing to him, either. He rested an elbow against the saddle behind him and leaned back. “And you suppose you could do better at fetching us a deer?”
Her eyes went wide as she sat up straighter. “I more than just think it. I’m certain I could.”
He leveled a steady look at her. In his experience, women were queens of the homestead. They could cook, clean and provide safe haven for the men in their life, and do it with a juggling skill that made the process look effortless when it was anything but. To hunt and kill? Annie would have fallen over in a dead faint before she’d take a “sweet, poor doe’s” life, and his mother was the same. Of course, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t dress it and cook it into a delicious stew before a man had a chance to blink.
“I’d like to see you try,” he said.
“Good.” She gave a decisive nod. “It’s a bet.”
He sat up, his wet shirt pulling across his back. “Whoa, now. I didn’t agree to a bet.”
“Why not?” A single, taunting eyebrow rose. “What have you got to lose?”
“Perhaps the thought of letting you roam around with a weapon doesn’t inspire me with confidence.”
She waved her hands in a negligent gesture. “I haven’t tried to kill you, just escape. And I’ve promised not to do that anymore. If anything, you’re worried about being shown up by a mere girl.”
A shock of amusement rippled through him, but he didn’t smile. “You’re no girl.”
“I’m glad you recognize that.” She dropped her gaze and fanned her hair before the heat of the fire again. “Shall we set terms?”
He leaned back against his saddle again. A soft wind shuffled across his damp sleeves, raising goose bumps. “I haven’t agreed to the bet.”
“You will. Let’s say if I fail, I’ll dress the deer you eventually kill, and cook and clean it as well.”
“And if you win?”
She waggled her fingers. Sunshine gleamed off the silvered, steel handcuffs. “Why, you take these off.”
He could work with that. He’d begun to feel guilty about keeping the handcuffs on her anyhow, especially after the disaster crossing the river. Her escape wasn’t much of a concern either; he’d run her down in short order. After all, she had no more food.
He stuck out his hand. “It’s a deal.”
“I figured as much.” She put her hand in his. A curious spark lit up his skin at the contact. Her hand was small, soft and her bones worryingly delicate. For all her bravado, he could crush her without much effort.
He only hoped he didn’t come to regret this.
An hour after dusk, Maggie sprawled out on her bedroll and waved her hands in the air. Just because she could.
“My, that feels good,” she said.
Elbows deep in the deer that hung by its back heels from a tree branch, Dean muttered.
She propped herself up on an elbow. One elbow. It was marvelous. She could still feel the weight of the handcuffs on her wrists, but only in a tingling, closely remembered sort of way. “What was that?” she called. “I didn’t quite hear you.”
He leaned around the side of the deer. “It’s probably better that way.”
“If you say so.” She stretched her arms wide, feeling the pull and tug of her shoulder muscles protesting. “By the by, I prefer my dinner roasted, if you don’t mind.”
Sweat dampened his temples and turned his hair brown at the edges. “That’s a damned good thing, considering it’s about all that’s possible right now.”
“I am nothing if not accommodating.” She flopped onto her back and folded her hands behind her head. Her mother would have found the nearest willow branch for a spanking if she’d seen, but Maggie couldn’t bring herself to care. “One shot. I didn’t do too badly for myself, if I dare say so.”
“You’re nothing if not modest,” he said.
She wrinkled her nose at the echo of her earlier words. “I do believe you’re just jealous.”
“The day I’m jealous of you is the day I hang up my spurs and lie down to die.”
His rejoinder sounded rather more dire than she’d the energy to deal with at the moment. She craned her neck to see him on the other side of his work, but his face revealed nothing of temper. Instead, his lips were that temptingly delicate shape she so seldom saw. She shook her head to clear out her aberrant thoughts. Consorting with the enemy was unacceptable.
Even if his possessive kiss sometimes transcended memory and made her lips tingle anew.
She stared up at the darkening sky above the treetops. “Perhaps you should hang up your spurs after all, and leave the bounty hunting to me.” She crossed her boots at the ankle.
He didn’t respond. She sat up, baffled and disturbed to realize how used to their sparring she’d become. The cords of his neck stood out in stark relief and his mouth had gone flat. Again. “Should I take your silence as agreement?” She cocked her fingers into a gun and pulled the imaginary trigger. “Bang, you’re dead.”
He stood up, sending the fallen log he’d been sitting on flying. A large slab of meat dangled from one hand, and he held his sharp knife in the other. He wore only his shirt, with the black vest hanging open over top, and he’d turned his shirtsleeves up, exposing his thick forearms. Blood coated his hands and the edge of his blade. One drop slid to the forest floor.
Maggie pulled her knees in tight and wrapped her arms about them. She bit her lower lip to still its trembling. But he only dropped the meat into a waiting pan and took his knife to the creek. At the edge, he knelt and plunged his arms in up to his elbows.
“It’s not the same,” he said, so quiet his voice barely carried over the soft rush of the water and the wind that shushed through the trees.
He washed his hands methodically, scrubbing between each finger and picking under his nails with the tip of his blade. Then he turned toward her. His eyes were too pale to see in the darkening night.
“It’s not the same, killing an animal and killing a man.”
She gulped. Cold terror wiggled under her skin, turning her organs to ice. “I didn’t imagine it was.”
“If you’ve half a shred of honor left in your soul, you have to kill a man looking him straight in the eyes. If you’re lucky, he dies instantly and you only have to watch his eyes dull as his soul leaves his body.” He bent his head and scrubbed at his hands again, though surely no trace of the deer’s blood remained by now. She wondered what else he saw still staining his skin. “If I’m not lucky, I see them realize they’re dying.”
She tightened her arms so much her knees ground into her muscles. “But you’ve always kept to fair fights, right?” She had no idea why she was so confident he had, but there it was. It might have been the way he’d refused to hurt her, even when she fought like a wounded mountain lion for her freedom and had no compunctions about injuring him.
“Do you think that matters? When their soul goes, a sliver of your own goes with it, fair fight or no.” A bitter smile twisted his mouth and his shoulders ratcheted as tight as a bowstring. He stood and dragged his hands down his pants to dry them. “Besides, no. I’ve made a bad kill. That’s how Masterson found me. I was in jail.”
Her head jerked up off her knees. “What?”
He hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and rocked back on his heels as he stared across the water at the moss-covered trees. “I confronted a man who didn’t have a bounty on him.”
“And you just drew on him?”
“No. But when I told him I was taking him in anyhow and we’d let the sheriff sort it out, he pulled on me. I wasn’t about to go toes up.”
She blew out a gusty breath and rubbed her tingling shins trough her trousers. “Of course you weren’t. That’s different.”
He went back to the fire and the cooking utensils, shaking his head the whole way. “Not really. Not when it actually matters. But here’s hoping you never find out the difference.”