Beauty and the Bounty Hunter (8 page)

She pulled the peasant blouse over her head and shoved it into the case without seeming to care that she’d just bared herself to him as if he were her ancient, half-blind grandmother.

“Hell,” Cat muttered.

“Problem?” he murmured, thrilled when his voice came out sounding as bored as if she’d just appeared.

She cast him a quick, irritated glance.
Good.
Why should only one of them want to punch something?

“What did you do with my clothes?”

“Tossed them into the flames.”

“Thought so.” She frowned and shifted toward the entrance of the tent.

Every movement made her breasts shake and caused the erection he’d just tamed to whisper. When she presented him with her back, the ripples of muscle beneath skin caused it to snarl.

“Here.” He rooted through the case, then tossed the costume he’d worn in Abilene in her direction.

The clothes fell across her bare feet. She bent, her hair nearly touching the ground, then sliding up her body, the ends caressing her nipples as he had.

Alexi moved to the decanter of wine and poured himself more than usual, drank it, then poured more than usual again. Why was she undressing in front of him as if he were a relative and not her…what? He’d once been her lover.

No. Alexi sipped from the glass, staring at the canvas in front of him and trying to ignore the rustles of cloth and the scent of her that drifted from the other side of the room. Love had had nothing to do with it. He’d been her teacher, her partner, her savior. But the only man she would ever love was dead.

Alexi knew very little about Cat’s past. She revealed as much of herself to others as he did. Of course, he was adept at reading people, at taking each word or one tiny, accidental phrase and piecing them into something more.

He still didn’t know much. Both her names. That she had loved and lost. That she would have her vengeance. Or die trying.

They worked well together. Neither one of them had any problem taking what was freely offered and moving on. They were easily able to slip into the skin of others. Probably because their own skin was not something they enjoyed wearing for very long. However, because Alexi had been too close to dying too many times, he had decided that all he wanted was to live. Apparently, Cat’s dance with death had made her long for it.

He turned. The sight of her wearing his pants and his hat, feet still bare and impossibly white against the dirt floor of the tent, with his shirt hanging open to reveal the creamy weight of her breasts made every curse word he’d learned in a dozen different languages flutter through his head.

She glanced up, lifting a length of moss-green cloth. He vaguely recalled buying it for some woman—what had been her name?—then tossing it into a bag when he had to leave town in a hurry without ever seeing her again.

“May I use this?”

He nodded, unable to speak as she shrugged off the shirt, then began to wrap the material around and around her breasts, crushing them, hiding them from both him and the world.

Alexi lifted his glass and drained what was left.

“Boots,” she muttered, staring at her dust-covered toes. “You didn’t burn those, did you?”

“Of course not.” Boots were expensive and hard to come by. Besides—

He glanced at his feet, then at hers. She could roll up the cuffs of his pants, use a rope around the waist, cover the billowing shirt with an equally billowing coat, but his boots would fall right off her feet.

“I’m not going to sleep with you, Alexi.”

His gaze on her breasts, or where her breasts lay
flattened beneath the shirt and the green cotton, he lifted his eyes and allowed his lips to curve in mockery. “No?”

Cat muttered a curse. She knew him so well. By saying that, she’d only made certain he’d stop at nothing until she did.

“No,” she said firmly.

He nodded, then considered the decanter of wine, turning the glass in his hand and wondering how it had gotten so empty.

“Did something happen after I left?”

The concern in her voice made him set down the glass. “My heart broke,
mon ami.
”

“You don’t have a heart.”

He placed a palm against his chest. “You wound me.”

“Your heart’s on the other side.”

He dropped his hand and shrugged. “You left, and we moved on. Now you are back, and we must do the same.”

Mikhail loomed in the doorway. Cat started. She had obviously not heard him approach. Despite his size, very few heard Mikhail coming before he was already there.

“Gotta pack the tent,” Mikhail said.

“Everything else is ready?” Mikhail nodded. “The posse?”

“Gone.”

Alexi released an impatient huff. Talking with Mikhail could give anyone a headache. He answered only the question that was posed and nothing more. A good habit, in truth, less trouble that way. But it could be maddening at times.

“Gone where?”

“Away.”

Alexi rubbed his forehead, and Cat stepped in. “They didn’t ride off, then follow their back trail, did they?”

Understanding spread over the big man’s face like the sun spreading over the earth at dawn. “No, Miss Cathy. They were tryin’ to figger out how you…I mean, she…I mean—” His mouth kept working, but no more words came out.

“I understand,” Cat said. “They believed our charade.”

Alexi snorted.
Who wouldn’t?
He’d once pretended to be an eighty-year-old Frenchwoman, and everyone had offered their seats and called him
Madame
. Cat was almost that good. She was definitely accomplished enough to have fooled the posse.

“They did,” Mikhail agreed. “I followed ’em a piece and listened. They kept a-goin’. Ain’t gonna sneak up on us and make me—” He stopped, clamping his lips together before glancing at Alexi.

“Bring Cat’s boots,” Alexi ordered. “I tossed them into her wagon.”

Mikhail disappeared much faster than a man of his size should have been able to.

“Why do you make him?” Cat asked.

“
They
make him.”

“The only person who can convince Mikhail to do anything is you.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“You don’t tell Mikhail who to get rid of and how?”

“Why would I?”

Cat gave a muffled half shriek, half gurgle and pulled on her hair as if she would go mad. Alexi stifled a smirk. He could be as annoying as Mikhail when he wanted to be.

“Why don’t you do your own dirty work?” Cat asked.

Alexi’s smile faded. “If I could,
il mio dolce,
I would.”

He walked out of the tent as memories flickered. Once dirty work had been his specialty.

The report of a gun made him flinch. But the sound was only in his mind; it probably always would be.

Mikhail approached with Cat’s boots and held them out. Alexi shook his head. He wasn’t going back in.

“I’ll meet you in Brooks,” he said, a town so close to the Missouri/Kansas border Alexi wasn’t sure to which state it belonged. They had passed through not long ago, and Alexi had thought it would be a good place to perform a particular dodge. Right now, he really needed one. Only when he was pretending to be someone else could Alexi forget who he had been.

“Brooks,” Mikhail repeated; then his face brightened. “I remember.”

“Good.” Alexi mounted his horse, saddled and waiting as promised, and galloped out of camp.

When the thunder of hooves rose from outside, Cat cursed and bolted for the exit. She emerged just in time to watch the dust kicked up by the horse fade away on the evening wind.

“Where’s the fire?” Cat murmured.

“Ain’t no fire, Miss Cathy.” Mikhail sniffed—once, twice—then shook his head. “None a’tall.”

“Where’s he going?”

“We’ll catch up.” Mikhail patted her with a huge yet gentle hand. “Don’t worry. I can follow a field mouse ’cross the prairie in a cyclone. Even Alexi can’t get away from me.”

Cat considered climbing into her wagon and striking out on her own. But that would mean leaving Mikhail alone. She wasn’t sure she could do that. And Alexi—damn him—knew it.

“Here’s your boots, Miss Cathy. I cleaned ’em.”
Mikhail’s face crumpled. “But they wouldn’t shine up nohow.”

She accepted the footwear. “The shine went out of these a long time ago, Mikhail.” The shine had gone out of a lot of things a long time ago.

Cat shoved her feet into her boots, then crossed to the wagon, but her horses weren’t in the traces. Instead, they stood saddled and packed a few feet away.

“What’s going on?” she asked just as Mikhail pulled the center pole of the tent. The canvas descended through the night like the wings of a great white bird.

Mikhail stepped free an instant before he would have been trapped beneath, then began to yank up the stakes. Cat followed, collecting them. “We’re leaving the wagons?”

“Have to. Alexi took a horse.”

“You’d already saddled and packed them before he took one,” she pointed out.

Mikhail grinned. “You’re so smart, Miss Cathy.”

Cat narrowed her eyes. Alexi had obviously told him to saddle the horses, leave the wagons, and tell her as little as possible. What was he up to?

“We can’t travel with wagons now that the law knows about ’em.” Mikhail handed her the last stake.

“You said the posse wasn’t coming back.”

“Not now.” He began to fold the tent into smaller and smaller lengths. “But later…” He stood, lifting the thick canvas into his arms as if it were no heavier than the swaddled child it resembled. “Who knows? Might not be that posse who comes. Could be another from a town we can’t hardly recall. You know Alexi.”

She did. He changed modes of travel as often as he changed clothes. It was why he was still alive, free, and plying his trade. When people went looking for him, he was no longer the man they had seen.

“’Sides…” Mikhail continued as he strode toward the pack animal. “For the dodge we’re gonna do next, we need to split up.”

“Dodge?” She hurried after him. “What are you talking about?”

He secured the tent to the horse. “Alexi’s doin’ the advance.”

“Advance,” Cat repeated with a very bad feeling.

Mikhail cast her an indulgent glance. “You ain’t been gone that long that ye fergot, did ya?” He patted her hand. “’S okay. I kin explain. Alexi goes into town afore us. Finds out what we need to know so’s we can do the dodge.”

“I never agreed to that.”

Confusion flickered in his gray eyes. “You said you’d travel with us.”

“That’s right.
Travel.
To Denver City.”

“But…but…the dodge is what we do.”

Cat tilted her head. “How long have you been doing it?”

“Long’s I can recall.”

“Just you and Alexi?”

“Well…” He blinked at her. “Sometimes we had you.”

“Anyone else?”

Mikhail turned away, hunched his shoulders, and began to rub his head. “Mebe.”

Cat frowned. She’d never heard this before. Of course, she’d never asked. Before, she’d just been trying to find a reason to keep breathing.

“How long have you known Alexi?”

“Long as I can recall,” Mikhail repeated.

“Is his name really Alexi?”

“Sometimes.”

Cat gave up. Did it matter how long they’d known
each other? Who they’d traveled with? Even what they’d done? All that mattered was that they could help her find
him.
If she had to run a few double crosses along the way, so be it. She’d done worse.

Two days later, Cat and Mikhail approached a midsized Western town. She’d never been here before. She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. No one should recognize her—not that anyone ever had—but she was also walking in blind. One thing Alexi had been adamant about was reconnaissance. Always know the layout. Always have an escape route. Lack of preparation led to discovery. Or worse.

She was certain Alexi had a plan. According to Mikhail, the two of them had passed through here before, and Alexi had told Mikhail the town would be perfect for one of their favorite performances. However, in this dodge she wouldn’t hear the details until she was already there.

She didn’t like it. But then Alexi hadn’t asked her what she liked before he’d taken off in the night like—

Cat’s lips tightened.

Like she had.

Cat flicked a glance at the sign posted on the outskirts of town.
Brooks, Missouri—Founded 1845
had been carved into the wooden plank.

Cat just wanted to ride hard for Denver City and finish what she’d started. That she was riding into Brooks, Missouri, on a Tuesday afternoon in July, made her mad as a hornet and ready to sting. However, any emotions but the ones necessary to her masquerade could get them caught.

Since Katriona Capezzi, the greatest medium in all of Italy, knew what would happen before it did, she had no reason for anger, for fear, for anything but calm. Cat
enjoyed playing Katriona; she’d done it several times before.

Trust Alexi to pick a well-worn and familiar dodge to get Cat back in the game. What she wasn’t quite sure of was why he wanted her back in.

She’d dressed for the part, donning the peasant skirt she’d worn for the posse, but instead of the low-necked blouse, she wore a black shirtwaist and a black hat with a veil. Signora Capezzi communed with the spirits while behind that veil. Only if she remained hidden from the eyes of the world would they continue to speak.

Alexi’s idea—and a good one. The more mystery surrounding the signora, the better.

Cat entered town slowly at the busiest time of the day so everyone could scrutinize her, become curious, begin to talk among themselves. She would take a room at the hotel, and she would wait. If Alexi had done his job right—and when hadn’t he?—telling his tale of the medium he’d seen in the last settlement, a woman who knew so much, who would tell them all about it…for a price, then the people would come to her.

Cat rode through Brooks, but no one seemed to care. No one whispered. No one pointed. No one followed her. Instead, they all murmured and stared at the east end of town.

Their behavior made Cat uneasy, but now that she was here, she had little choice but to follow the plan. So she sat in her room throughout the stifling afternoon, with Mikhail parked in the hall. He would inform every arrival that the signora was conversing with the spirits and would be unavailable for readings until the following day. This not only increased her prestige, but gave Alexi time to slip in and tell her everything he’d learned about everyone.