When The Heart Beckons (33 page)

“I have to warn him.” Annabel clutched
Brett’s shirt in shaking fingers. “My God, they plan to murder him,
to shoot him in the back! What if we hadn’t been here, what if we
hadn’t heard?”

“Well, we did. Come on, I’ll tell Conchita
what’s happening. Then you or Cade get word to her about what we do
next—send a message with Tomas. Don’t worry, Annabel,” he added, as
she pressed her hands in anguish to her white cheeks. “We’ll get
the best of them before this is all over.”

Neither of them heard the rustle of the
bushes behind them as they hurried back toward the hacienda. Nor
did they hear the slow, deliberate footsteps that followed.

* * *

When they crossed the terrace once more and
entered the parlor, Lowry was ushering his guests into supper.

“Come on, folks, help yourselves! We’ve been
roasting that big old steer in the barbecue pit all night! There’s
tamales and enchiladas and refried beans for everyone,” he boomed
with all the congeniality of a snake oil salesman. “Right this way,
and help yourselves.”

Men, women, and children thronged toward the
rear of the house where huge doors led out to the flower-festooned
courtyard where tables groaned beneath heaping platters of spicy
food.

Annabel fought the crowd as she desperately
scanned it for some sign of Cade.

Brett grabbed her arm. “There’re Adelaide
and Conchita.” She followed his gaze to an arched doorway that
opened into a hall. The two women stood arm in arm well back from
the throng, watching the guests proceed into supper. “Maybe I
should help you find Cade first ...”

“No, go quickly,” Annabel urged. “Let them
know what’s happening. Don’t worry about me, I’ll find Cade!”

A moment later, she felt a hand on her
shoulder and whirled around. She gasped in relief as she saw that
Cade McCallum had found her.

“What’s wrong?” He looked alarmed by her
paleness and by the way she nearly sagged against him in relief.
“Has something happened to you ...”

“It’s not me. It’s what they’re planning to
do to you. Cade, we must slip away—upstairs—where we can talk. I’ll
go first and find an empty bedroom or something. You follow me—but
please, come quickly.”

She forced herself to walk slowly,
inconspicuously, toward the huge staircase which branched off the
main hallway of the hacienda. As she neared the head of the stairs,
the din below faded. Swiftly, she glanced up and down the wide
spacious hall, lit by dozens of candles placed in brass sconces at
well-measured intervals.

She ducked into the first room she reached.
It appeared to be a guest bedroom, since when she turned up the
lamp on the nightstand, there were no personal mementos to be
found—not upon the carved oak bureau or the nightstand, nor were
there any garments or personal items lying about. The room was
large and airy, however, with lovely crisp peach draperies at the
open window, and matching peach and ivory appointments, from the
coverlet on the bed to the upholstery of the dainty pair of chairs
beside a decorative oriental screen. Another time, Annabel might
have admired Lowry’s obviously sophisticated taste: the serene
French landscapes depicted in the paintings that graced the peach
and white papered walls, or the large Aubusson rug upon the
polished wood floor, but at this moment she was too anxious to take
in much of anything, other than that her own reflection in the
cheval mirror over the bureau shimmered back at her, pale and
ghostly.

“Don’t look so worried,” Cade McCallum said
from the doorway.

Annabel nearly jumped out of her skin. As it
was, she dropped her reticule to the floor.

She ran to him and pulled him into the room,
shutting the door behind him. “Brett and I overheard their plan,”
she said, trying to stay calm and in control of her emotions,
trying to remember that in emergency situations it was best to talk
slow and think fast. But gazing at Cade, so heartbreakingly
handsome in his black silk shirt and dark trousers, his expression
so cool and his demeanor so calm, she felt waves of fear for him
wash over her.

What if something went wrong? What if he
were shot and killed this very evening and she would never have the
chance to tell him ...

What? What was it she had to tell Cade
McCallum?

“I reckon you’d best tell me what you
heard,” he said smoothly, his brows lifting in surprise at her
obvious distress. “Then maybe we can devise an even better plan of
our own.”

So she repeated the conversation that had
taken place out by the barn, but instead of appearing alarmed at
her disclosure, he grinned.

“Nice work. You just might make a decent
private investigator yet.”

“This isn’t a joking matter,” she exclaimed
in frustration. “Don’t you understand that these people want to
murder you? They’re not interested in any kind of a fair fight. I
don’t see how ...”

“I’ll tell you how.”

He led her to the bed and pushed her down so
that she was seated on the edge of it, then he sat beside her.
Immediately he realized this was a mistake.

She was too close. And she looked too
utterly lovely. And the bed was too softly inviting.

The concern in her wan face twisted at his
heart as few things before ever had. She was worried, worried about
him, as she had been that night in Silver Junction.

He wasn’t used to it. Hadn’t ever looked for
it or wanted it, but now that he was here in this large quiet room
with Annabel Brannigan looking so damned distraught because someone
wanted to shoot him in the back, he had to admit that he didn’t
exactly mind her caring about him.

But something about her was bothering him.
He reached out, he couldn’t help it ...

“Cade McCallum,” she gasped, grabbing his
hand. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Your hair’s too pretty to be all wrapped up
like that so tight. It’s not right to hide so much of it.”

He had tugged out one hairpin before she’d
stopped him, and a thick taffy ringlet had sprung free to dangle
saucily over her eye. His grin widened at the adorable expression
of outrage and amazement on her face.

“How can you think about my hair at a time
like this?”

Then, without conscious thought, some devil
of mischief long dormant in him made him reach out with the other
hand and like lightning he tugged a second pin out from the
chignon, freeing still another curl.

“Stop this right now,” Annabel fairly
screeched, and made a grab for his other hand. But he burst out
laughing, and easily seized both of her hands in one of his.

“You spoil all my fun, Miss Brannigan.”

“Fun! I’ll give you fun. How about three men
shooting you in the back? Is that enough fun for you?”

But as she tried to wrench her hands free,
they both lost their balance and rolled sideways together onto the
bed. His laughter rumbled deep from his chest. Cade didn’t remember
the last time he’d laughed like that.

“Now we’re having fun, Miss Brannigan,” he
chuckled, and before she even realized it he had pinned her beneath
him, her hands caught above her head, and one of his powerful legs
draped across both of hers.

“I’ve a good mind to pull out all those
damned pins,” he threatened. “Such beautiful hair should be free,
like the wildflowers, like the meadow larks, like the ...”

“Don’t you dare! Cade McCallum, if I didn’t
know better I’d think you were drunk!”

He grinned down at her. But suddenly his
expression grew sober, the black eyes hardening to marble. “Maybe I
am ... but not on liquor,” he muttered. Damn. What was she doing to
him? “I’m drunk on something else even more potent. More
dangerous,” he continued, his gaze suddenly fiercely intent on her
wide eyes, and parted lips, then shifting down to the ivory mounds
of her breasts above the décolleté of her gown.

“Annabel,” he demanded tautly, “why do you
have to be so damned beautiful?”

She stopped struggling to free herself and
stared back at him, dumbfounded. “You ... think I’m beautiful?”

“Too damned beautiful.” Suddenly, he caught
her mouth in a kiss that was so rough, it was almost savage. Her
lips trembled beneath the heat and violence of that kiss and she
released him reluctantly as he pulled away. “I’ve thought so from
the first time I saw you in Justice.”

“You have ...?”

“When you told me that gentlemen don’t crash
into ladies with whom they’re not acquainted. Annabel, if you only
knew ...”

“Knew what, Cade?” she whispered, still
dizzy from that bruising kiss, swept up in a wildfire of sensations
that started somewhere deep between her thighs and raced upward to
set her breasts aflame as they strained against her chemise. She
hardly dared to breathe. His lean face was only inches from hers,
his fingers had now released her hands and were tugging out
additional pins from her hair. She gasped as he began to kiss her
again, hot, deliberate kisses that scorched her cheeks, her lips,
the fragile skin of her eyelids. And then he nipped at her
throat.

“If you only knew the hell I went through
when I thought you were betrothed to Brett. When I thought I was
honor bound to stay away from you,” he muttered grimly. “And all
the time I wanted you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone or anything
in my life.” Suddenly he yanked her up, close and hard against his
muscled chest, his mouth stilling her gasp as he kissed her with
possessive ruthlessness.

Now she really couldn’t breathe. His tongue
thrust into the softness of her mouth and awakened her own to
battle. Liquid pleasure burst through her as she breathed in the
sage and cedar scent of him, lost herself in the warm male taste of
him, delighted in his sure overwhelming strength.

Her heart was racing so fast it would leave
a train far behind. She was certain he must feel it pounding
against his own, hammering along as if at any moment it would
burst. His exploring hands were touching her in places no man had
ever touched, setting fire to places that had never before even
smoldered. Her arms encircled his neck and she pulled him closer
with a little moaning sound of pleasure deep in her throat.

“Brett and I—” she tried to explain in a
low, tremulous voice, but he cut her off, his hands gripping her
arms like manacles, his eyes glinting into hers with fierce
purpose.

“I don’t want to hear
one word
about you and my brother. I care about him, whether or not he
believes it, but he’s not the man for you.”

Annabel had reached the same conclusion
herself, out there by the corrals when Brett had kissed her. But
incredulity filled her at the thought that Cade McCallum should say
the same thing she’d been thinking ever since she’d pulled back
from Brett’s kiss.

“Why ... do you say that?” she asked softly,
wonderingly, gazing into his eyes as if searching for the secrets
locked inside his soul.

“Because of
this
,” he told her, his
fingers tightening on her hair, forcing her face close to his. He
drew her to him and brought his lips down on hers once more in a
fierce, demanding kiss that sent golden flames shooting through
her. The world tilted and spun as he crushed her down upon the bed
again, his powerful limbs imprisoning her.

“And this,” he growled, his hands touching
her breasts, making her gasp with stunned delight. “Because of
everything we feel when we’re together. Because you can’t deny it
any more than I can, sweetheart.”

And then they were somehow entwined, and all
the kisses they’d kept bottled up during their days on the trail
together poured out, wild and pure and demanding, like a torrent of
driving rain, washing away everything in its path. Cade buried his
face in the luxuriant satin of her hair, as caught up as she in a
frenzy of emotion, and his hand boldly cupped her breast as he’d
yearned to do since the very first time he’d touched her.

“Cade,” she breathed, in pleasure and in
shock as his fingers tore at the pearl buttons at the front of her
gown.

“You’d better not be saying you want me to
stop,” he warned softly, his mouth warm against hers.

“No,” she whispered back, writhing against
him. “I want you to know that ... Cade!”

She panted as he sprang the last button free
and with one smooth movement slid the gown off her shoulders, down
her arms, and wriggled it toward her hips.

“Go on,” he said.

“That’s what I wanted to say to you ...
go on
.” A chuckle sounded deep in his throat.

“Oh, Cade, I have to confess to you ... I
don’t know exactly what I’m doing ... Mr. Perkins and Mr. Reed and
Mr. Connely never did anything like this ... or that ...”

“They better not have,” he growled against
her ear.

A laugh bubbled from her, quickly stifled by
a kiss so devouring and intense that she drank it in like wine.
Such sweet heat was flowing through her, pulsing, building ...

Her dress was off and she was wearing only
her chemise as she worked frantically at his shirt. Annabel had no
thought of modesty, no hesitation. Tender feelings and blinding
sensations were all stirred up inside her, filling her up with
needs she hadn’t even known existed before, needs she’d never
experienced with Brett or with anyone else.

Only with Cade McCallum. And Roy Steele.

Beneath her chemise her breasts tingled at
the things his hands were doing to them, and her nipples hardened
into taut rose peaks that ached beneath his stroking thumbs. She
shivered as he held her still and rained down quick warm kisses
across her throat. Then his mouth moved lower, and captured her
tormented nipple, his tongue circling it, teasing it until Annabel
clutched at his hair and willed herself not to scream.

Suddenly there was a knock upon the
door.

Cade McCallum lifted his head from her
breast. “Shit.”