Runaway (6 page)

She was startled to discover herself suddenly in his arms, pulled back against him as he addressed the others. “I want this goddamned game over with!” He lowered his voice again and his words were for her ears alone. “Sit in the chair, or you’ll be sitting in my lap!”

Tears stung her eyes. Panic seized her for a moment. No! This was not
her
life!

She grit her teeth down hard. And she sat. She had no choice.

The fourth man at the table, the handsome young man Marie had mentioned with the sandy hair and warm green eyes, set a hand on hers. McKenzie frowned at him in warning, but the man still offered her a wry grin. “It will be all right, miss. It will.”

“We’re still playing the damned game, Robert!” McKenzie snapped.

He sat, too, those ebony eyes of his on the Frenchman now across the table. “The girl is the wager. Fine. I’ve been called on my hand. Here it is.”

He laid out his cards. Tara felt her heart leap as she stared at them. A three, a four, a five, a six …

And a seven.

They didn’t look very good to her. Oh, God, this was ridiculous! She wasn’t even sure who she wanted to win the hand. What was going to happen if the Frenchman beat McKenzie? At least McKenzie had mentioned that she might not be wanted!

But she had been set down as the wager against a three-hundred-dollar bet.

What if
none
of these men wanted to believe her, that she served tables here and no more? Nothing that she had to say seemed to mean anything to them. Maybe Eastwood had hired her because he knew that there would eventually be an occasion like this.

The Frenchman swore violently, throwing his cards down. Tara’s heart leapt again. He had three aces, a king, and a ten.

Who the hell had won this thing? Seconds ticked by in silence. She wanted to scream.

“Mine again,” McKenzie said at last, very softly. “I think this time, Jack, the game is over!”

“Mais, oui!
The game is over!” the Frenchman cried furiously.

Tara screamed, shrieking out in warning as she jumped away from the table. The Frenchman was pulling out a weapon, a pistol. And he was aiming it straight at McKenzie’s heart, at a distance of no more than three feet.

But the Frenchman’s weapon never fired. McKenzie moved like a cobra, more swiftly than the eye. Even as she blinked, he was on his feet, reaching to a sheath at his ankle and hurtling a blade like a streak of silver across the distance between himself and the Frenchman.

The knife hit the top of the Frenchman’s hand. He screamed with pain.

The Frenchman’s hand was pinned to the table with the knife. His pistol, freed from his injured hand, went flying across the wood to land with a thud against the wall.

The Frenchman looked furiously from his hand to McKenzie. “You should be arrested!”

“And you should be dead,” he said flatly. “You meant to shoot me down in cold blood, and every man here witnessed the attempt.”

“You cheated. You should have been shot! And if it weren’t for this little whore—”

“How dare you—” Tara began furiously, but neither man was paying her any heed at the moment.

“I’d have
still
been faster than you,” McKenzie interrupted him sharply.

“Swamp-loving bastard!” the Frenchman said.

McKenzie stood quickly, wresting his knife from the table and the Frenchman’s hand. Smiling Jack screamed out with a cry of pain, then fell silent, nursing his injured hand as McKenzie leaned low against him and spoke softly. “I’ve never cheated in my life,
mon ami
. And you know that. You should be dead. Be grateful I left you alive.”

“You’re still the fool, the loser, McKenzie! What woman is worth three hundred dollars?”

“This one!” McKenzie snapped. Tara was stunned to discover his long, powerful fingers winding around her wrist, drawing her to his side. Jesu! She shouldn’t have been standing there, gaping! She should have been making a swift disappearance, slipping away while she’d had the chance!

“You make sure your friend Eastwood knows that she’s made three hundred dollars for him this evening. And
you make damned sure he knows why she’s gone,” McKenzie continued.

He started walking out with long strides, dragging Tara with him. She tried to hang back, desperate to convince him that she couldn’t go anywhere with him. He didn’t allow her to stop. He was far too powerful a man for her to break his hold. She couldn’t just scream within the tawdry little tavern—Eastwood would come running over to strip her himself for three hundred dollars. No help there.…

No help from anywhere.

Everyone in the tavern had gone silent at the outbreak of the fight.

And now everyone was staring at the two of them. Eastwood was watching them, apparently delighted that she’d be paying off part of one of his debts.

“I’d say she’s well worth three hundred!” a drunk suddenly bellowed.

She flushed silently, furiously tugging to free her hand. Jarrett didn’t release her. He knew her cloak. He lifted it from the peg where she had hung it when she’d come in, barely breaking his stride. At the entryway he finally paused, sweeping it over her shoulders.

“Wait! I can’t—”

“Come on. Let’s get out of here!”

And for a moment his near ebony gaze touched hers and the curve of a smile just lifted the corners of his mouth. His whisper came close to her lips, sending little shivers of fire to dance down her spine. “You little fool! Run with it. You’re mine for the night! Freedom from this hellhole.”

But at what price?

Scream!
she thought, panic finding a renewed life within her.
Scream and scream.…

But there would be no one to heed her. If a cry of
desperation escaped her, no one would give a damn, no one at all.

He was pulling her along once again. McKenzie. The black Irishman with the searing eyes and the touch of steel.

Dragging her with him into the night.

His night.

I
n seconds they were outside in the cool New Orleans streets, surrounded by wrought iron and the scent of flowers, with only a faint odor beneath of the river and the wharf rats.

Tara tugged hard upon her hand once again, fighting to remain calm, to reason with the man. “Mr. McKenzie, you’ve got to understand. I can’t really be a payment in a game. I had nothing to do with any of that, I’ve never seen that horrible man before in my life.”

He wasn’t responding. He was just walking down the street—still dragging her along.

She jerked back furiously.

“Damn you, I’m not—”

He stopped beneath a streetlamp, swinging around to study her. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing in a place like that, then?”

She was astounded by the question. He sounded just like her older brother at that moment.

“Trying to make some money,” she said irritably.

“Oh, Jesu!” he muttered.

“Not like that!” she defended herself, seeing the way his mind was turning. He didn’t believe her! If he had perhaps begun to believe her before, he certainly didn’t now.

“I need money! I was trying to make legitimate money!”

He lifted her hand suddenly, running his thumb over her flesh, cocking a brow at the smoothness of it. “I see. You don’t come from any, right?”

“Any what?”

“Money!” he snapped.

She tore free, staring at him.

“I was trying to make a few honest dollars and nothing more!”

“At Eastwood’s?”

“I heard that it was a respectable place—”

“More respectable than some of the more perverted whorehouses!” he retorted harshly. He continued in a blunt vein. “Eastwood, at least, never expects his girls to entertain two or three at a time.”

She paled. “But—”

“Jesu, can you really be so naive?”

“Yes! I suppose so!” she cried out. “I was trying to work honestly for the money.”

“Well,” he said softly, black eyes sweeping her, “you’ll be making an honest dollar tonight.”

She gasped, paling. “I told you—”

“That you serve tables. Fine. You can serve a table elsewhere. Just not here!”

What in God’s name did he mean? She remembered the German card player’s comment about serving on a table or a floor. Oh, God!

He turned from her and started walking. He had let her go, she realized with amazement. She thought about turning around to run. It might be very foolish. He would surely report her to Eastwood. Or else he would just catch her. She had no doubts about his ability to do so.

She didn’t believe that he’d let her go so easily, and to
her own surprise she found herself running after him, catching his arm and causing him to spin around again. She released him immediately and asked nervously, “What do you mean?”

He stared at her. He smiled suddenly, a slow, curious smile. “You’re supposed to be worth three hundred dollars. That’s quite a sum.”

“Where are we going?”

“My rooms.”

No, they weren’t. She didn’t dare wonder about his exact intentions anymore, or spend any more time ruing the fact that he probably had the power to catch her. Foolish or not, she had to take her chances trying to run.

And actually, she was getting good at running. Very good. Maybe she could even escape a man like this one.

She had let him go. He turned and started walking again. She stood dead still and shivered, watching him.

“Come on!” he called to her.

Not on his life! This was it, now or never.

She turned in a flurry of speed and motion and started down an alleyway that led toward the river. She ran like a rabbit, her heart pounding, her feet flying.

To her dismay she burst out on the same street from which she had just come. Eastwood’s street. She came to a swift halt, flattening herself against the raw wood of one of the alleyway’s shanty buildings. At first she was just irritated with herself, certain that she could slip back into the shadows of the night.

Then she gasped, her heart slamming against her chest.

And then it seemed to stop dead with pure horror. She recognized the two men entering the front door of Eastwood’s place.

They’d been sent for her. They must have followed
her trail to Eastwood’s. And they’d probably offer Eastwood anything to get her.

Oh, God!

An absolute, horrible panic seized her. She turned and ran blindly, trying to double her speed as she became aware that she was being followed. The men had been told at Eastwood’s that she was somewhere out in the night! Had she been seen? Heard? She didn’t know. But they were in pursuit now. Footsteps fell after her own, echoing, pounding in the darkness and cool of the night. She ran harder.

The night air stung her eyes. She was gasping for breath. Her heart beat cruelly. The darkness seemed to be closing in on her. How long could she run? Oh, God, it was over, over.…

She rounded a corner and burst out onto a dock. Tall buildings rose to one side. The dark, muddy Mississippi stretched into oblivion at the end of it.

She could hear the men shouting out to one another in their pursuit of her.

She would never let them catch her. Never. She would die first.

She didn’t care where the dock led, if it were into oblivion or not.

She started to run again, blindly, into the darkness.

Suddenly a hand shot out. She started to scream as an arm came around her, sweeping her off her feet. The hand settled over her mouth and she heard a harsh whisper. “Shut up! It’s me.”

McKenzie. Dear God, it was McKenzie!

Her heart continued to beat like wildfire. He pulled her into the shadowed darkness of the narrow alley she hadn’t seen until he swept her there. His hand lifted from her mouth. She could feel his body heat, the rise and fall of his chest, the vital tension of the man. He
turned her around. She saw a glistening reflection in his eyes and the flash of his teeth reflected by what dim moonlight combated the darkness. She could scarcely breathe. A trembling raced through her as he held her, staring demandingly into her eyes.

“Who are they?” he barked sharply.

Her eyes widened. McKenzie had been right behind her all along. He’d seen the men—and he’d seen her panic because of them. “I don’t know—” she lied.

“The men following you. Who are they?”

“I don’t know!”

“The hell you don’t, and why the hell did you run from
me?
” he demanded curtly.

“I thought that you would force me.”

“I wouldn’t think of forcing a whore.”

“But I’m not—”

He sighed with aggravation. “I didn’t intend to force you into anything—no matter what you are or aren’t! I was going to try to give you a decent dinner and some breathing space before letting you go back to that rat hole, if that was your choice.”

“You could have just said so—” she began furiously.

“But now you can’t go back there, can you?” he interrupted.

She clenched down hard on her teeth. “No,” she said flatly. “I can’t go back.” He was so close. She could feel his warmth and the fine texture of his coat brushing her hands. He smelled good, clean like soap with just a touch of cologne, whiskey and leather mingling in. He was not just the most intriguing man she’d ever seen, he also seemed to be the most powerful. And perhaps the hardest, she thought. He expected answers, he set his hands upon what he wanted, and took it. His black eyes demanded everything. And yet …

He could be merciful, she thought.

When mercy was warranted. He was probably also capable of being entirely ruthless when mercy was not warranted. Just how would he see her situation?

It didn’t matter. The past was over, and it was hers alone. She would never tell him.…

“Why?” he demanded.

She shook her head. In the darkness his head cocked. He was studying her. She was certain that he could see her in the night far better than she could see him. He knew the darkness, he was accustomed to it and comfortable with it.

She closed her eyes briefly. She was certain that she was safe at the moment too. He was very tall, very strong, and quick as a whip, she had seen that. She was certainly blocked from view by his height and the breadth of his shoulders.