Diablo (10 page)

Kane settled into a routine, hating every minute of it but considering it necessary. He couldn't afford to be different, not with Nat Thompson's eyes on him. So he drank more than he should, played poker nightly, even visited Rosita's one more evening with the same result as before.

Kane rode several afternoons, avoiding his usual morning rides because he didn't want to see Nicole. She was simply too dangerous to him. He made his rides seem as innocent as possible, never going toward the cliffs but always looking for a way out.

No matter how many times he went over the problem in his mind, it came down to the same solution. The kid. Robin Thompson had to know something of value. He'd decided Nicky wasn't the answer. She was too wary. But Robin—Robin was just waiting to be milked. Kane hadn't been able to force himself to act on that knowledge yet, but he would. He had to. Time was running out.

After nights of playing poker with the other residents of Sanctuary, he'd decided they knew less than he did, and cared nothing about knowing more. That lack of curiosity made it even more dangerous to ask questions; he had assumed others would also want to know where they were, curiosity being a natural part of him. But it seemed enough to the other guests that they were safe and had all the vices important to them available.

In the afternoons, he was eager to escape. Escape the town that was little more than a mirage, the men who turned his stomach, the knowledge that he had to do something that went against every grain of decency he had.

He kneed the gray into a gallop. He hadn't named the horse; he'd stopped naming horses during the war. Too many died. If you named them, they were friends and it hurt worse.

The gray was his temporarily. It had been given to him by Masters, and it was a damn good horse. His own horse had disappeared into the hills when he was taken by the Texas authorities.

Ten years, and he was back to borrowed things: borrowed horse, borrowed clothes, borrowed money.

Borrowed time.

He rode alongside the creek, wondering where it went through the hills. It had been hot and dry this summer, and the creek was shallow. He dismounted and watered his horse, then leaned against a tree. Davy increasingly invaded his thoughts now. They used to go fishing together when they were only a couple of tadpoles. Sometimes he'd walked over to Davy's house; there was always food there, and sometimes it was the only food he got that day. His disappearances always meant a beating, but they were worth a full belly and a few hours away from hatred.

When his father died, Davy's family took him in, and Davy became Kane's brother in all the ways that mattered. But Kane had never forgotten that he didn't really belong. That was one reason he'd enlisted in the Confederate Army. Another was the anger he had toward his father, an anger that his father's death hadn't erased.

That anger had died in the inferno of war. Kane soon discovered it held no adventure and offered no place to hide from his past. The closeness of death, of dying, only made the past more real. And battle did strange things to men. Some became better for it, some worse. Some took comfort in camaraderie, others became loners, afraid of loss.

He'd been one of those who pulled away from people. Afraid to care. Afraid to love. Afraid to feel. He'd wanted to die himself after the first big battle, when he'd seen a field full of dying and dead men, heard the calls for help, and been unable to do anything. He'd tried to steel himself then against caring, had succeeded to some degree until that day at Shiloh when Ben Masters's weak plea had reached him.

God damn it all, he couldn't afford that kind of weakness. Not then, not now. It was time to get to work, to do what he'd set out to do today. Another step toward damnation.

He took a folding knife from a pocket inside the custom-made boots Ben Masters had given him. Kane looked carefully for exactly the right tree and finally found a thick cottonwood. He selected a sturdy branch and started cutting.

For several days, Nicky used her brother as an excuse to stay inside the house at the times she usually chose to ride. Her uncle didn't say anything, although she knew he was studying her with more than his usual interest.

She still didn't know why he'd invited Kane O'Brien to supper a week earlier, but the implications worried her. She knew exactly how devious—and ruthless—he could be. She didn't like Kane O'Brien—she kept telling herself that—but neither did she want anything to happen to him on her account.

On the sixth day after O'Brien's visit, she almost went riding during the early morning hours, and not entirely because she wanted the morning air. Her body and her thoughts both betrayed her. They kept reaching toward something she knew could destroy her. Only sheer willpower had kept her in the house. Kane O'Brien was a charlatan, a man obviously used to getting what he wanted, and he didn't mind how. Yet she found herself shivering every time she thought of his touch, the finger that had wandered over her cheek. He had known exactly what he was doing, even as he'd turned away from her. He'd made her want, then mocked that yearning.

Still, she wanted to see him. Wanted to see whether that touch would create those same trembling feelings …

Hell's bells. She threw a pan down on the floor. She'd been making pies as if there were no tomorrow, and Robin was in glutton's heaven. She was always seized by a frenzy of activity when she was angry or sad or lonely. And now she admitted to all three.

She was staring at the offending pan when a knock came at the door.

She brushed her flour-coated hands on her trousers and went to open it, going still with surprise when she stood face to face with the unwanted subject of her thoughts. He looked just as startled, as though he hadn't expected her. That irritated her. Everything, in fact, irritated her, particularly her racing pulse. O'Brien smiled, that strangely endearing twist of lips, made unique by the crook of the scar, and held out something in his hands.

“A perch,” he said in response to her puzzlement. “For … Diablo.” The mouth crooked even further in wry amusement.

She was so mesmerized by the smile that it took a moment to understand. The hawk!

“Will you give it to him?” he said, and Nicky realized she was still standing in front of the door, barring him from the interior.

She opened it a little wider. “Robin would probably like to get it himself,” she said. “He's been asking about you. My uncle thought it best he stay in bed a few more days, but …”

“Wounds heal fast in a boy.”

“Did yours?” She hadn't meant to prolong the conversation, to ask more questions when the last one she asked on the hill had turned him cold.

“Not fast enough,” he said, but this time his eyes didn't freeze. They were watching her instead, and the gray seemed to be smoldering. Heat reached out from him, singeing her. She stepped back as if she could avoid the flames, but they went with her, darting through her body, settling in the core of her.

He stepped back, as if he too wanted to escape those sudden fires, but his eyes remained on hers, and she felt fixed by them, nailed in place by the dark gray, burning intensity.

“Sis?”

Robin's voice jarred her from paralysis, the sense of being consumed alive. She wiped her hands again on her trousers and moved from the door. “Mr. O'Brien brought you something.” She didn't look at her brother. She didn't want to see the light in his eyes, didn't want him to see the pained confusion in hers.

“Diablo,” he said, and Nicky didn't miss the excitement in his voice.

As she hurried to the kitchen, she heard his low, deep voice. “I brought you a perch for the hawk. It's the first step in training him. First the perch, then your hand. You'll need a heavy glove.”

“Come see him.” Robin's voice was so eager it hurt her.

Diablo would leave in a few days, like they all did. He would also die, like they all did. A month. A year. But he would die young. A bullet. A rope. She would read it in a newspaper or hear it from one of her uncle's acquaintances. She wished the thought weren't so painful. There was so much strength and energy and arrogance in Kane O'Brien; it was nearly impossible to think of him dead.

She sniffed the aroma from the stove and checked the two pies in the oven. Bent over the open oven door, she welcomed the heat that rushed out to overwhelm the other heat inside her. Almost blindly, she reached for another piece of wood to place in the bottom of the stove. A flicker of flame from the stove reached out, igniting the sleeve of her shirt. She screamed as the flame crept up. In the next second, the door burst open, and she was being thrown to the floor, her body smothered by a larger, heavier one.

Pain mixed with awareness. Her arm felt on fire, though she saw that the flames were gone, leaving black singed cloth and a reddened arm. She couldn't stop the whimper that was part pain, part fear.

“It's all right.” His voice was low and soothing. He rolled off her, ignoring obvious burns of his own and knelt next to her, his hands gently running over her arm. “Not too bad,” he said.

Nicky reveled in his care, in the safety and comfort of that confident voice. She hadn't been touched with such gentleness since her mother died. She looked at his hand, the small blisters already forming where his hand had smothered the flames on her shirt.

“Nicky?” Her brother's voice was frantic. “What can I do?”

“Andy,” she said. “Get Andy. Hurry.”

Her gaze hadn't moved from her rescuer, but she heard Robin's racing footsteps. “Thank you,” she said in a wavery voice she couldn't quite control. “You're hurt.”

“Darlin', I've had a lot worse.” He spoke the words lightly, but pain flitted across his face as he moved slightly. “I think we'd better get some water on those burns.”

He stood and offered her his good hand. She took it, feeling the strength in it. Then she noticed his gaze had dropped, and she looked down. Her shirt was partly off, the sleeve tattered. She wore a camisole underneath, but it had slipped slightly, showing the swell of one of her breasts and outlining the other. They weren't large. Lemon size, she'd always thought, compared to the women at Rosita's who sported ones of more melon proportions. There had been no one to talk to about such things, and she wasn't sure which was normal—lemons or melons.

She felt herself growing hot again under O'Brien's intense regard. She'd blushed more around him in the past month than in her whole life. She tried to pull her shirt back together, wincing at the pain any movement of her arm caused.

“You shouldn't hide such a pretty body,” he said lazily, as if he weren't feeling any pain at all.

“My uncle …”

His gray eyes, which had been warm and comforting, changed suddenly. Although he didn't move, she could feel his withdrawal, see that curtain fall over his eyes. He turned away, toward the sink, and with his gun hand used the pump to draw water. “Come here,” he said, but the warmth in his voice was gone. It was an order, impersonally made.

She wanted to rebel against it. But his lips were clenched tight, his jaw set. His dark hair was wet with sweat, and she knew he was hurting.

Nicky moved over to him, allowed him to take her arm and hold it under the pump. The water felt good on the now-throbbing burns. She finally pulled her hand away, and took his burned arm, guiding it under the water as gently as he had hers. She looked up at his face, and saw a number of emotions dart over it before he schooled his expression into blankness. There was a second of vulnerability. No more than that. An instant of recognition between them. Raw need exchanged. Need that had nothing to do with the more sensual feelings she'd experienced before.

“The kitchen.” Nicky heard Robin's voice. Then Robin, her uncle and Andy crowded into the kitchen, and Kane O'Brien stepped away from her.

“What happened?” her uncle asked, even as Andy took her arm to study the burns.

“Mr.… O'Brien was burned, too, worse than I was,” she said. “He smothered the flames. Look to him first.”

Andy nodded and stepped toward Diablo.

“No,” Kane said impatiently, almost angrily. “I'm all right. Just give me some salve and I'll go to the hotel.”

Andy shook his head. “Take off your shirt.”

Kane did so reluctantly. It was only then that Nicky noticed the extensive raw, red splotches across his back, and she realized he must have hit the side of the stove as he'd pushed her to the floor. “Dear God,” she whispered as Andy studied the burns. He had to be in agony.

Andy shook his head as he looked at Kane's back. “Those burns could get infected if they're not treated. You need someone looking after them.”

“Damn it, I can do it myself.” O'Brien's voice was low but emphatic.

“You can't reach your own back,” Andy retorted reasonably.

“Do I have to get Mitch in here and tie you down?” Nat interceded, glaring at Kane. “You're not leaving till Andy gets through with you. You can bunk in Robin's room.”

“Damn it,” O'Brien exploded. “I don't … need …”

Nicky heard the sudden waver in his voice, saw him reach for a chair to steady himself. Then in an act of pure will that left her speechless, she saw him literally shake the weakness away. He straightened, obviously prepared to do more battle.

“Go get Mitch,” Nat Thompson told an avidly watching Robin. “And you'll have to go through me to leave,” he told Kane O'Brien. “I don't take debts lightly, and I owe you for my niece.”

“You owe me nothing,” Kane said, his eyes angry. But he didn't try to move. Nicky felt chilled by his cold rage though she didn't understand it. “I'm sorry,” she said. “It was … my fault.”

For the briefest moment, his eyes softened. Then he shrugged. “I'll stay if you take care of Miss Thompson first.”