The Gunslinger’s Untamed Bride (8 page)

Regi stayed close beside her, holding up surprisingly well. Rigid in his saddle, he hadn’t uttered a single complaint. Too often Lily’s gaze strayed to the span of Juniper’s shoulders. Knowing who he was should have stamped out any frivolous attraction. But it didn’t.

Every time he glanced back, tagging her with those pale blue eyes, her body was crowded by an awareness she’d never felt in the presence of any man. She kept remembering the smiling face she’d awakened to at the lumber camp, his warm, throaty laughter. Ribbons of heat twisted up from low in her belly as nerve endings she’d never been aware of shimmered to full life.

She shifted in the saddle, not at all comfortable with her body’s reaction.

Juniper slowed in front of her. His gaze tracked the setting sun before moving across the dirt, short grass and surrounding trees. He stepped down from his saddle.

“We’re stopping for the night.”

Lily reined in beside him. “I beg your pardon?”

A quick glance didn’t show a homestead anywhere in sight. Lily stood in the stirrups, ignoring the ache in her thighs as her gaze swept across the land. She saw nothing but miles of rolling hills and massive oak trees casting shadows across the tall spring grasses.

“You said we were going to a ranch.”

“We are.” Juniper began releasing the ties holding a pack behind his saddle. “But as you can see, the sun is about to set.”

“And you expect us to stop and just…
sleep on the ground?
”

“That’s generally how it works, Miss Palmer. Unless you have a tent tucked into another hidden pocket on that skirt.” He turned away to place his gear on the ground, and she swore she saw a spark of amusement in his gaze. “Be thankful it isn’t raining.”

Beside her, Reginald groaned as he stepped down from a stirrup. Their cunning sheriff knew quite well they were not accustomed to enduring such long rides or sleeping out in the open.

“You did this on purpose,”
she said.

Juniper looked up from the saddle he’d set next to his pack. “Did
what
on purpose?”

“Dragged us off into the wilderness when we could have spent the night in The Grove.”

“I’ll take the ground over The Grove,” said Reginald, busily releasing his saddle. “I haven’t forgotten their lack of hospitality.”

“But he knew we’d be left out in the open come nightfall.”

“My only intention was to get you out of that town before tempers flared up again, and to ride as far as possible before sunset. We’ve made good time so far. I apologize if our progress poses an inconvenience to tonight’s sleeping arrangements, but every hour of riding counts when you’re tracking bandits.”

She glanced toward north, the direction they’d been riding the past hour. A deep yearning to believe him warred with a persistent distrust. “Will they keep riding through the night?”

“Not unless they plan to kill their horses and go the next forty miles on foot.”

“Forty miles?”
The thought of another full day of heavy riding intensified the ache in her muscles and the burning of blisters beneath her leather gloves.

“Yes, ma’am. I like a warm, soft bed as much as the next man. I’ve been without sleep for nearly three solid days. When we reach my family’s ranch tomorrow afternoon, you won’t find anyone more appreciative of a warm meal, a hot bath and a clean bed.”

“By tomorrow afternoon I won’t be interested in clean beds and warm baths. I’m not planning a weekend stay on your foster parents’ ranch. I want to recover my money and get back to The Grove. Are you certain the thieves are headed this way?”

He stepped up to her horse and began uncinching her saddle. “You were standing right beside me when Emma told us where they were headed.”

“I wouldn’t know one flat-topped ridge from another or where to find them. Why didn’t you tell me it was a two-day ride?”

He shot her an annoyed glance as he folded the cinch over her saddle. “Had we started out in the morning, a full day’s ride would get us to the Double D. We didn’t start out in the morning. I haven’t misled you.”

“You sent us off alone for a reason. We have every right to know what’s going on with this investigation. What did you discuss with Günter you didn’t want us to hear?”

“What exactly do you think I’m hiding from you?”

“How should I know? For all I know, you could be leading us in the opposite direction. Manipulation is a skill you’ve mastered. You’re a man of many faces, Mr. Barns, using each facade to bend people to your will.”

He tossed her saddle aside and strode toward her, his hands on his lean hips, just behind the pearl grips of his guns. “The hell I am.”

“Oh, please. You know what you’re doing. I was practically simpering in your hands inside that jail cell, and
I don’t simper!
”

His eyebrows shot up, his eyes alight with mirth. “Is that a fact?”

“Until I found out who you really are,” she amended. “At which point you became an overbearing brute. Neither of which was the compassionate man I saw in the Donnelly home, or the hardened killer who stood before me outside that livery.”

His shoulders shifted. “What can I say? I’m a complex sort of man.”

“You’re cunning is what you are, I’ll give you that.”

“Glad to hear you have some faith in me.”

“
Faith?
How can I possibly have faith in the man who killed my parents and stole my life!”

“I’ve been trying to
save
your life all afternoon! I’ll recover your stolen money and get you back where you belong as soon as possible.”

“Where I belong?” Rage flared, narrowing her gaze. “I own L. P. Carrington Lumber. The camp is now
my
property. If you believe your manhandling will put me in my place, you can think again.”

“I apologized for—”

“I decide where I belong!” Lily shouted over him. She shoved her windblown hair away from her face and tugged at the shoulder of her waistcoat now hanging near her elbow. “I may be scuffed and blistered, which I’m sure delights you no end, but I’m staying in these hills until I’ve secured my lumber camp!”

Golden eyebrows pinched inward. “Why would you assume I’d enjoy your displeasure?”

“Because of
what you are.
”

Juniper stared into eyes seething with contempt. Her continuous accusations chipped away at his pride. “I’ll assume you’re not referring to my being a sheriff.”

“No, I am not!”

“Well, then. Of course you’d assume I’d take advantage of grieving widows, bind you up to be abducted, then send you riding all over the countryside just for the hell of it. Why did you insist on coming with me when you clearly don’t trust me to protect you, much less uphold the law?”

“Do you really think I’d put the future of this company in the hands of a gunslinger? Am I supposed to assume a man who once killed for sport somehow has morals? Seems to me a man of your character and uncanny charm would seek out a position of power and seclusion,
just as you have.
It happens to be the misfortune of Pine Ridge that you chose them.”

Her quick, precise depiction of his character stripped away the barrier he tried to keep between his pride and the past. The frustration winding inside him snapped.

He was so damn tired of living like this. He was sick to death of running.
And from what?
Someone like Lily, a daughter seeking revenge for a life he’d taken? Juniper couldn’t blame her—he’d admired Red Palmer, until he’d found himself caught between the red-haired giant and death. Once again, he’d dodged death and saved his own life, but at what cost?

Lily Palmer embodied the truth he tried to deny, the guilt that hammered at his conscience. When he looked at her, he saw the wave of pain and anger his choice to live had caused. Had the outcome been different that evening, he’d have left this world without causing a ripple of hurt. No one would have mourned the loss of his life.

A chill slid through his soul, the swift drain of emotion leaving nothing inside him but an empty void.

Had he just stood still his foster parents wouldn’t have to shield their children from the danger he’d brought into their lives. Lily wouldn’t be standing before him filled with rage and despair.

Who was he to stand in the way of true justice?

He lifted a gun from his holster and held it out to her.

Lily’s green eyes surged wide. “Wh-what are—”

“You came here to kill me.” He thrust the grip into her hand.
“Get on with it.”

She took a step back, but Juniper advanced on her, wrapping her hand around the gun. “It’s what you’ve been waiting for, Lily. To shoot me. To avenge your father.”

“I came to shoot the man who gunned my father down in cold blood!”

Juniper splayed his hands. “You found him.”

Lily glanced down at the pearl grip, cold against her palm, and wanted to believe she had. “I can’t shoot the sheriff of Pine Ridge, now can I?”

“You fired me.” Juniper plucked the tin star from his vest and tossed it into the dirt at her feet. “I’m nothing but a heartless gunfighter with a bullet overdue.”

His blank expression and unblinking eyes put a chill beneath her skin. “You’re still a lawman.”

“Don’t go changing your story, Miss Palmer. I’m a killer, a deceiver, a defiler of good women. Now’s your chance to balance out this world.”

“Sheriff Barns…” Panic swelling inside her, she glanced past him to Reginald, watching wide-eyed a few yards away.

“Might as well call me June.” He reached out and dragged her hand up until the revolver pressed against the front of his shirt. “I can’t outrun the past, Lily. You can solve all our problems.”

The intensity of his steady gaze frightened her. Tears pricked at her eyes. Her hands trembled beneath his. She tried to lower the gun but his grip held fast.

Staring into eyes as vast and empty as a summer sky, she felt the life-draining grief tugging at his soul, cold fingers reaching into her chest. She’d seen the same malady prey on her mother—the empty distance in her mother’s gaze as Lily had watched her soul dry up, leaving only pain and exhaustion to ravage her last days.

“Just pull the trigger, Lily.”

“Stop it!”
She jerked her hands down, away from his hold.

The gun bucked in her grip, the blast ringing in her ears. Juniper’s face twisted with pain. He curled forward and reached for his leg.

“Son of a bitch!”

Horrified by the smoking hole in Juniper’s boot, Lily dropped the pistol.

“Y
ou shot me!”

“You told me to!” Lily shouted back.

“To
kill
me, not
maim
me!” Gritting his teeth, Juniper dropped onto his butt and tugged at his boot. Hard language fell from his mouth as his boot slid off.

Lily’s breath stalled at the sight of his torn and bloody stocking. He peeled away the cotton, revealing a bloody trench running down the outside of his foot and a good nick out of the flesh at the base.

Air hissed through Juniper’s teeth as he dabbed the gash with the crumpled stocking.

“It’s little more than a scratch,” she said, relieved to see all five of his long toes still intact.

Juniper glanced up, his sky-blue eyes snapping with anger. “It burns like hell! You prefer torture to a quick death, is that it?”

“If you didn’t want to get shot, you shouldn’t have shoved a loaded gun into my hands!”

“She has a point,” Reginald said, watching the entire exchange from a safe distance. “Lily’s the last person I would hand a loaded pistol.”

“Reginald!” she said, completely insulted.

“Your temper isn’t a secret, dearest.” He walked toward them, pulled his silver flask from his jacket and held it out to Juniper. “You need this more than I.”

“Thanks.”

“This is hardly a time for him to be hindered by drink,” she insisted.

Juniper glowered at her as he unscrewed the cap, then leaned over his foot. Air hissed through his teeth as he drizzled a clear stream over the trail of blood.

Lily cringed, knowing it must sting. She’d never have guessed he’d use the alcohol for his wound.

“Reg, can you grab a clean bandanna from my left saddlebag?”

Reginald rushed toward the saddles piled near a tree and quickly retrieved the red bandanna.

Lily watched silently as Juniper tied the fabric around his foot. Blood instantly darkened the cloth. He pulled on his soiled stocking and carefully slid his foot back into his boot, gritting his teeth the whole time.

She hadn’t meant to shoot him. Yet once again he’d caused a calamity and made her appear to be the one at fault!

He stood and limped toward the horses. He gathered all three by the reins and started walking toward the trees. “There’s coffee in my pack and water in my canteen. If either of you manage to start a fire, keep it small. Those men are probably on lookout. We don’t want to send up smoke signals to give away our location.”

“Where are you going?” Lily called after him.

“To find some supper before you change your mind and decide to roast me over a fire.” He limped into the dense cluster of oak trees, leaving her alone amid the seemingly tranquil chirping of birds—

“Lily?”

—had it not been for Regi standing stiffly behind her.

“Don’t,” she said, refusing to face him. “I’m truly not in the mood to be lectured.”

“I’d say you’re in need of far more than a lecture.”

Warily, she turned toward her cousin, knowing he had every right to be furious with her. His disheveled state increased the lump of regret swelling inside her chest. The hair usually slicked back against his scalp draped down each side of his narrow face like black curtains.

“I knew coming up here was crazy business,” he snapped. “It was never about surveying the camp.
You knew he was up at that camp.
”

“I didn’t know he was the sheriff,” she said with exasperation. “How could I have guessed a gunfighter would be a sheriff?”

“What does that matter? Have you lost your senses?”

Quite possibly.

“How could you come up here to face the man you believed to have shot your father and
not tell me?
”

“He
did
shoot my father, and I never intended for you to come along.”

“When have I ever left your side?” Regi demanded.

The answer to his question stripped her defensiveness. Whether it was a quarrel with the family or problem with their company, she could always count on Regi. He was always there to back her up. But this was different. This had nothing to do with the Carringtons.

He sat heavily onto the ground beside their supplies. “You should have told me,” he insisted.

Exhausted, she sank down beside him. Yes, she supposed she should have.

“How could you keep something like that from me, Lily?”

She strapped her arms around her raised knees, reluctant to answer him. “You’d have tried to stop me.”

He blew out a breath and leaned against the tree. “Considering today’s events, I’d have been right to do so.”

She shook her head. “I would have come. I had to.”

“Yes, but if you had discussed your intentions with me, we may have derived a better approach at least, a plan of action. You may be ruthless in business, but you’re hardly barbaric enough to simply walk up to a man and shoot him. Had you actually brought a gun I would…”

Lily cringed; heat rushed to her cheeks.

Regi’s eyes shot wide. “You brought a gun?
Lily,
what were you thinking?”

Juniper had stated her thoughts quite clearly. She’d wanted to confront a killer she believed was long overdue for a bullet. It had never occurred to her that Juniper Barns could be anyone other than the remorseless outlaw she’d created in her mind.

She hadn’t anticipated a cunning sheriff willing to put his own life in danger to fix a mess she’d created. She hadn’t expected to be so affected by his warm smile or devastated by a grief she sensed ran as deep as her own.

I don’t really know anything about him.
She only knew he wasn’t anything like she’d envisioned.

Why should any of that matter? Her father was dead, and Juniper was still wreaking havoc on her life.

Although…if Juniper was to be believed, she’d also never truly known her own father. When she got right down to it, she wasn’t so certain she knew herself.
Lily Palmer.

When had her true name become so insignificant, foreign to her own ears?

I never wanted to be a Carrington
—yet her nerves rattled each time Juniper spoke her birth name. She no longer recognized herself.

The faces of Emma Donnelly and her children surfaced in her mind. An entire town hated her. Had she really caused them all such hardship?

Notices won’t buy much at a mercantile, Miss Carrington.

She shut her eyes, her mind spinning in a tangle of confusion. Juniper was causing her to doubt
everything!

Fighting the burn in her eyes, she forced herself to take deep calming breaths. She couldn’t fall apart. She’d dragged Regi into this. And Mr. Dobbs…She had to set this right.

After a few moments she realized she was trembling from more than anxiety. She glanced up at the sun descending through the trees. They needed a fire. Soon it would be too dark to find wood.

She pushed up. “Help me by gathering up some firewood.”

She crouched beside Juniper’s supplies. Opening what appeared to be a canvas bag, she discovered it was a tarpaulin wrapped around a long dark coat and cooking supplies. A leather strap held a small coffeepot and tin cup inside an equally battered tin plate. Releasing the leather, she removed the cup, pulled the lid off the pot and found a box of matches inside a small strainer.

“Where do you expect me to find firewood?” asked Reginald.

“On the ground.” She tucked the matches into her skirt pocket and glanced up at Regi. He hadn’t moved. His blank expression reminded her that he’d likely never scavenged for firewood in his life. “Don’t suppose you know how to make coffee?”

“Of course I do,” he said, slowly getting to his feet. “I call for a servant or stroll down to a coffee shop.”

That settled that. She set the tin and coffeepot aside. She didn’t care to drink coffee, much less know how to make the bitter brew. She frequently made her own hot chocolate—the thought made her stomach cramp with craving and hunger. Her chocolate and silver pot were tucked into her trunk up at the camp.

A howl called out from the distant darkness already blanketing the east. The hollow bark renewed several times before fading into the twilight.

Song dogs,
Daddy would say,
calling up the moon.

The memory sent a chill over her skin.

“Lily,” Regi whispered. His wide eyes shifted side to side as though he expected a coyote to jump out at them. “There are
wolves
out here.”

“Coyotes,” she corrected, a smile breaking free. “They’re a long ways off.”

“It didn’t sound a long way off,” Regi protested. “Barns shouldn’t have left us here unarmed!”

“You’re wearing a gun, Regi.”

He glanced down, seeming surprised to find the holstered revolver riding low on his hips. “Good grief. Any attempt to fire that thing would likely leave me in the same condition as our sheriff.”

Laughter shook her chest, easing the strain on her body, and her spirits. What would she do without Regi?

“Come on,” she said, hooking her arm through his. “We’ll find some firewood together.”

A short while later she struck one of Juniper’s matches and touched the flame to the dried grasses she’d pressed into tight clumps.

“You’ve done this before,” said Reginald. He sat cross-legged on the other side of the small fire pit, his waist now free of the gun she’d tucked into Mr. Dobbs’s old saddlebag.

“It’s been ages.” Her father had been adamant about teaching her skills of basic survival—starting a fire, hunting game, firing a gun. Holding her hair back, she blew on the twinkling embers racing across blades of grass, the soft crackle of brush giving way to ribbons of fire beneath carefully placed branches.

“My God.”

She glanced up. Regi watched her with wide eyes and a wry grin.

“What?” she asked.

“I just remembered what you looked like when you first came to San Francisco. Some kind of
wild thing.
”

“I did not.”

“You don’t remember?”

She remembered being miserable, frightened and homesick. No one had asked her if she wanted to be carted across the country to California. Men in dark suits had merely shown up and taken her, depositing her with relatives no more familiar to her than the tall buildings and noisy streets surrounding her aunt’s massive house. She’d only wanted out, to return to the security of her home on the meadow in the tranquil mountains she loved, to the parents she desperately missed.

“You were like the wolves pacing their cages at the zoo,” said Regi.

“I was
mad.
”

“You were vicious.”

They’d all treated her as though she truly were some zoo exhibit. The mere memory tightened her jaw with anger, resentment washing through her. Relatives had come by to gape at her, spewing their rude remarks, spoken as freely as though discussing the weather: “Poor dear Rose, seduced by a treacherous rogue. What a waste her life had been.”

Lily’s urge to flee had been like a fever in her blood. She’d tried countless times, only to be caught by a servant or policeman on the streets and dragged back to Aunt Iris’s mansion. The snap of her aunt’s hand fan echoed through her mind, followed by her harping orders to correct her speech, straighten her posture, use the proper spoon…

The old crone.

Lily’s mother had been far younger than her brother and two sisters. Rose had been the only one of the three daughters to bear a child. It wasn’t a wonder. Iris and Camilla were every bit as sour as her mother had been sweet. Lily had a hard time believing any man could love the wilted widows, or that the two sisters had ever taken pleasure in anything other than their own meanness and terrorizing their house staff. Her old uncle Alder and his four grown children were equally unpleasant. They’d all had their plans for her—to marry her off to a suitor of their choice so they could squander away the remaining quarter of the Carrington inheritance.

Lily had taken refuge in the mansion libraries and her schoolbooks as she’d prepared for the day she would come of age and spoil all their plans; daily doldrums were dispelled only by visits from Reginald. “So you’re the blooming abomination,” he’d said the first time he had stopped in unannounced, dropping into the overstuffed chair beside her, a dog-eared copy of some fictional fantasy under his arm. “They say you were raised by wolves, you know? I read a story once about a wolfboy, a fascinating tale. Would you like to hear it?” She’d denied his offer, and he’d told her anyhow.

“You were never frightened of me,” she said, grinning at the memory.

“Yes, well, you know what they say? Misery loves company. You were the only creature more miserable than I.”

Neither of them had been able to find an ounce of solace around the family, which likely forged their bond in friendship and business. In a lot of ways her relationship with Reginald was easy, comfortable, predictable.

“You’re my best friend.”

“I’m your only friend, Lil, and you don’t even trust
me.
”

“Yes, I do.”

A side glance conveyed his disbelief.

“This didn’t involve you, Regi.”

“Didn’t involve me? Then why am I sitting here in the dirt?”

“I just meant that it had to do with me, my life before…before becoming a Carrington.”

Hearing those words unsettled her.

“You’ve always been a Carrington, Lily.”

No, she hadn’t. She used to be a Palmer. Like a dark spot on the family tree, the Carringtons had done their best to stamp out every trace of her father’s existence.

“Did you know my father?” she asked. Regi had been about five when her mother had left home.

“No. I never saw much of Aunt Rose. But the family story is legend. Aunt Rose running off in the middle of the night with her ‘outlaw lover.’ The scandal kept the parlors humming for years.”

“Just because my father wasn’t born to wealth did not make him an outlaw.”

“Perhaps, though he did heist one of the most sought-after heiresses on the marriage market.”

“My mother loved him.”

Regi shrugged and began drawing shapes in the dirt with a stick. “She must have. She gave up everything to run off with him. From what I’d heard, she lived in squalor.”