Promises Keep (The Promise Series) (9 page)

“I most certainly do not!”

“Yes, you do.”

She managed to swat his hands away from her torso, but they just slipped around the back of her neck and started massaging the stiff muscles there.

“Because you hate to be touched so much, short of dying, your answer to my question would always be the same.”

“If you understand me so well, you should know what you’re doing now is annoying me greatly.” She tugged at his wrist with her hand. “Please.”

“Okay.”

To her horror, he took off his blue cotton shirt. He took his packet of makings out of the pocket and tossed them on the wagon bed. He held the shirt up, turned it this way and that, and a wry smile touched his mouth. “Not much left worth saving after that fight.”

Mara swallowed and managed a choked agreement. She stared in fascinated horror as the muscles on his chest and arms bunched and then relaxed as he tore the shirt in half. Above his left nipple, two bloody half circles where she’d bitten him stood out clearly. She glanced over the tail of the wagon and saw nothing but green grass and leafed out trees. Oh God, they were miles from anywhere!

She couldn’t fight, so she did the next best thing. She started talking.

“Did I remember to thank you for saving me back in town?”

“Nope. I think you’ve been a tad remiss in the manners department.”

Rip!

Mara jumped as the shirt divided into fourths. “Well, thank you. Do you know how much further it is to Doc’s?”

He picked up a section and she couldn’t take her eyes off his hands as they diminished the blue cotton into four-inch wide strips. “Yup.”

She looked down the muddy stretch of road as it snaked across the plain and disappeared into the horizon. “How far?”

“We’ve a fair piece to go yet.”

Which told her nothing. He had five or six of the strips in his hands as he hunkered down beside her. They looked about the right size to act as bonds. She clutched the neck of her dress with one hand. The other slid across the mattress in search of a weapon. At this point, she’d settle for a piece of straw. Her heart slammed against her ribs. For the life of her, she couldn’t think of anywhere to take this conversation that would distract him from his purpose.

“You might want to close your eyes for this,” he said as the mattress sank beneath his weight.

She set her teeth against the fear building in her gut. She braced her heels into the mattress and prepared to fight. “I don’t think so.”

“Well,” he said, reaching for her, “it might make it easier for you to pretend it isn’t happening.”

She looked down her nose at him, waiting for that moment when he’d be off balance. “I don’t think there’s enough pretending in the world for me to do that.”

“I think you should give it a try.”

The blanket was whisked away. She felt so vulnerable lying there in her brown dress, she might as well have been naked. Though she didn’t think it possible, her muscles bunched tighter. Bile rose to her throat. Her hand clutched harder at the neck of her dress. It gave her a feeling of confidence to hold onto something, even if it was only brown wool.

“I’ll get even with you for this.”

He didn’t even have the decency to look away as he said, “I’ll allow where you might be mad and a bit uncomfortable, but seeing as I’ll be as gentle as I can, I don’t really see the need for getting even.”

No, she acknowledged silently as he dropped the strips onto her belly and reached for her hands, a man wouldn’t see the need. They didn’t see the harm in venting their lust where they would. As long as the woman was alive afterwards, they regarded their actions as harmless. He took her other wrist in his hand and removed it from its death grip on the neck of her dress. The wagon creaked and dipped as his weight shifted. For a second, his shadow blocked the setting sun. The loss of heat radiated all the way to her soul.

“This will go a lot easier if you cooperate.” He grunted as her knee collided with his side. “Because it’s happening, whether you want it to or not. You’ll feel a lot better when I’m done.”

She closed her eyes. Only a man would think this made a woman feel better. She counted to ten and battled with her rage. When she opened her eyes, she discovered his nose within easy reach. Her reaction was pure reflex. She punched him there as hard as she could. Unfortunately, it wasn’t hard enough because he shifted at the same moment and her blow glanced off rather than landing solidly. Still, she managed to dislodge a few curses from his complacency.

He sat back on his haunches, his hand cupping his nose. “What in hell did you do that for? Isn’t there a lick of sense in your head?” He pulled his hand away from his injury and checked for blood. “If we don’t get those ribs bound, the next bump could send one through your lung!”

Mara felt like a fool as fear converted to sickening humiliation. “Well, why didn’t you tell me that’s what you were doing?”

He gingerly fingered his nose. “I thought it was obvious. Why in hell else would I tear up my shirt?”

Her gaze skittered away from his. Heat crept into her cheeks, but she held her tongue. If he didn’t know, she certainly wasn’t going to give him ideas.

There was a long silence during which Mara stared at the buckboard and Cougar stared at the distant mountains. They stood tall, immobile, their tops rising above the shadows cast by the setting sun. He took three deep breaths before looking down at Mara Kincaid. The strips of blue resting on her stomach caught his attention. They looked so harmless curled there, it was hard to believe they could panic anyone. But they had. And so had he. He fingered the bite marks on his chest.

Damn, this wasn’t going well.

The silence stretched awkwardly on, and from the set of Mara’s mouth, she had no intention of breaking it. He guessed he had to, the same way he had to bind those ribs.

“The road only gets worse from here on out.”

“I’ll be fine.”

He sighed. “You can say that fifty times over, but saying it’s not going to make it a reality.”

“I’ll risk it.”

Damn, the woman was stubborn. “Well, I won’t.” He reached for the front of her dress. Her hands intercepted his. Her fingers wrapped themselves like manacles around his wrists. The panic in her eyes belied the anger in her voice.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m unbuttoning your dress.”

“If I thought my dress needed unbuttoning, I’d do it myself.”

“That’s why I’m doing it.” Her hands tugged at his but he managed to get the top button free anyway. “Because you and I see this matter differently.”

She started beating at him, an ineffectual pummeling that he knew had to hurt her a lot more than it hurt him. “Please calm down, Miss Kincaid.”

He might as well have been talking to himself. By the time the hollow in her throat was exposed, she was beyond reason. One look into her face told him it wasn’t him she was fighting. She was locked in the past, twisting and turning, her breath wheezing in and out, catching now and then with pain. If he didn’t get her under control soon, she damn well might put a rib through her lung. Damn, and he hadn’t done anything more than loosen her collar!

He figured the most effective method of holding her still would be to straddle her hips. He did that and discovered very little of his weight was required to keep them from moving. Unfortunately, immobilizing her hips had the effect of causing her to wrench her torso this way and that. A trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth told him she’d bitten through her lip. He caught her shoulders in his hands and gradually added pressure until he could hold them immobile against the mattress. He shook his head. Here was a pretty pickle. He had her still, but he needed another set of hands if he expected to wrap her ribs.

“Miss Kincaid, please quiet down. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to wrap your ribs.”

She spat at him. He should have expected it, but he’d been holding onto the hope that she’d find her reason. He wiped his cheek with his shoulder. Her knee came up and connected with his back. He grunted and debated sitting on her harder and wrapping his feet over her shins, but he didn’t have the heart. She was scared, and he was at fault. If putting a few bruises on his body helped, the least he could do was allow it.

He sighed and tried one more time. He stroked smooth, comforting circles on her shoulder with his thumbs as he said, “I’m not going to hurt you, Angel.”

She twisted her head and tried to sink those sharp white teeth into his wrist. “Ah, you’re not going to make this easy for us, are you?”

He supposed he could take her wild thrashing as an answer. Holding her down with one hand on the sharp edge of her collarbone, he reached into the saddlebags he’d hung over the side of the wagon, and pulled out the bottle of laudanum he’d carried ever since he’d had to set a man’s leg with no anesthetic. He slipped the spoon out of the tie off the side. He laid it on the wagon bed.

He popped the cork with his teeth and filled the spoon. While she lay quivering beneath his hold, he slid his hand up until it cupped her chin. His fingers spread easily from one side of her jaw to the other. While he applied pressure to open her mouth, he made a mental note to halve the dosage Doc had said it would take to down a grown man. It took three spluttering tries before he got a sparse amount down her throat. He waited until she calmed before he experimentally slipped off her hips. She moaned as if lost without his weight.

“Miss Kincaid? Mara?”

She didn’t so much as twitch. He checked her pulse. It was steady, and her color was fine. Those were the two things Doc said to check besides her breathing. He reached up and tugged on her arms. Nothing. He breathed a sigh of relief and eased her hands down to the mattress above her head. So far so good.

He moved the pile of material off her stomach and onto the wagon bed beside him. When he touched the buttons on her dress, she moaned and turned her head. He paused. “Shhh, Angel. You’re safe. Everything’s all right.”

Some trust must have lingered beneath all the bitterness of the last two months, because she took him at his word and went back to her dreams. However, the minute his fingers started fumbling with her bodice, she started fussing and her hands manacled themselves to his wrists again. When he took his hands away, she sighed and relaxed. He frowned. This wasn’t going to work in any conventional manner, he could see. He took his Bowie knife out of its sheath. The blade was damned near as long as her torso.

“Angel, I want you to hold very still.”

She moaned and he guessed that was as close to a “yes” as he could expect. Holding one of the buttons between his fingers, he pulled the fabric away from her body. Gingerly, he slid the knife between the coarse material and her skin. It wasn’t as if he’d never used the thing before, it was just that he’d never used it on someone so fragile.

As material parted with a rasping hiss beneath the blade, he felt a bone-deep satisfaction. Every button that popped into the air to land with a soft thud on the wagon floor deepened his satisfaction. If he never saw that ugly brown dress again, he’d dance a jig. Especially when he saw what lay beneath. Creamy white flesh kissed with rose. Whoever had given Mara that drab creation should have been shot. He touched a red spot on her neck where the material had chafed her skin. With a bit more vigor, he sliced through the rest of the dress. A smile touched his lips. Just let her try to repair that!

With the exception of pantaloons, she was bare. He let that knowledge seep in. Damn! Not one of the town’s “good women” had even seen fit to outfit her with the most basic of clothes a decent woman required. It was appalling. Almost as appalling as the painful thinness of her body. He couldn’t even get interested in the sight of her breasts because he was too distracted by the nubs of her chest bones poking up between them.

He reached for the blanket. He pictured her as he so often saw her, walking through the town, head held high, shoulders back, pride etched into every line of her body. The blanket bunched into a ball as his fingers curled into a fist. Damn them all!

He slowly released his grip on the blanket. It fell on her chest, reminding him that he had the woman practically bare-assed naked in the middle of the road. He shook his head and restored her modesty by rearranging the material over her torso in a way that wouldn’t hinder his work.

He sat back on his heels and took a moment to assess the damage. Where the cowboy’s punch had landed was easy to detect. The flesh was already turning purple. He probed the area with his fingertips. He didn’t think anything was broken, but he didn’t know. She was so damned fragile looking. He wrapped her ribs and pulled the covering down over her unconscious body.

He touched his finger to her cheek. It was warm, the approaching night not yet having had a chance to steal the kiss of the sun. “It’s going to be all right, Angel. From here on out, you’re going to be safe.”

If it was the last thing he ever did, he was going to fulfill that vow. A smart man just didn’t walk away from the kind of spirit this woman had.

He checked the sky. Pink chased blue as dusk made its entrance. They’d wasted a lot of time, first by trying to avoid the ruts in the makeshift road and then in wrapping her ribs. There was no way they’d make it to Doc’s by dark. Not even if he could get his horse to do anything but express his indignation at being in a harness. He grabbed his makings and climbed back into the seat. He pulled an oil lamp out from beneath it, and hung it high on the pole set vertically into the front of the wagon. He rolled a cigarette, lit it, then reached over, lifted the mantle and lit the lamp. Warm yellow light spilled over the seat and the barely discernible road. It would have to do until the moon came up. He slapped the reigns against Flame Dancer’s rump. The horse leapt into the traces and for all of ten feet, they made good time. Then Dancer remembered his dignity and slowed to a disgruntled walk. Cougar sighed, flicked the ash off his cigarette, and let the horse have his way. As long as they were making progress, he wasn’t going to quibble about how. He’d fought all the pointless battles he cared to for one day. Right now, he’d settle for some peace.