Child Bride (2 page)

Chase deposited her on a quilt-covered cot in the front room and, remembering the holster strapped to his thigh, freed the rawhide ties and laid the sawed-off shotgun on a wooden table next to the cot. Without bothering to remove his hat or his coat, he pulled up one of the log cabin’s few pieces of furniture, a cane rocker, and settled himself into it.

In a situation like this a man needed some thinking time.

He rested a booted foot on his knee, sinking down in the chair until the back of the rocker caught his Stetson and tilted it forward. His dust-covered cowboy boot was about eye level, and without thinking twice, Chase used the boot’s silver tip as a gunsight, zeroing in on the woman’s dirt-smudged face and windblown hair. Who was she? he wondered, trying to recall if he knew her from somewhere. Or if he’d ever seen her before. She didn’t ring any bells. Certainly not wedding bells.

He smiled faintly, not quite sure what it was about the woman that amused him. She was a tiny little thing. Plain, too, if what he could see of her features under the sweat and trail grime was any indication. Nope, his unexpected houseguest wasn’t likely to win any beauty contests. And yet there was something undeniably appealing about her flyaway hair and her slightly off-kilter features. Her nose had a little bend at the bridge, and her full mouth was set tautly, even in repose, as though she hadn’t yet completed her quest, whatever it was.

“What do you suppose she wants with us, Shadow?” Chase murmured as the collie wandered over, presenting his neck to be scratched. As Chase obliged the dog, he had a sudden, disturbing thought. She could be another reporter looking for the inside story on “Chase Beaudine, reluctant hero.” It wouldn’t be the first time one of those tabloid sharks had tried to flush him out. But none of them had gone to this much trouble, he reminded himself, smiling at the irony of a rag reporter risking sunstroke and rattlesnakes for the sake of a story.

Chase was contemplating the woman’s ragged jeans and her torn cardigan sweater when she stirred and croaked out a word he could barely hear.

“What is it?” he asked, sitting forward.

“Water—”

“Yeah, sure thing.” Peeling his long, rangy frame out of the low chair. Chase headed across the room to the kitchen sink and pulled a glass from an unfinished pine cabinet. He hadn’t bought the three-room cabin with gracious living in mind. He’d just wanted a place to escape to at the time, and he hadn’t seen the need for anything beyond the basics—a bedroom, a bathroom and a living room and kitchen. Not a place a woman could get excited about, he imagined.

He filled the glass to the brim with crystal-clear mountain-spring water, returned to the cot, and sat alongside her.

“Say when,” he said, holding the glass to her lips as she attempted to lift her head. Chase saw immediately that she needed help, and he slipped his hand into the silky hair at her nape, propping her up so she could drink. For reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom, he found it incredibly sexy to have a vulnerable woman sipping from one of his glasses, taking the cool, sweet spring water he offered.

Good God, he thought, he was going to need a cold shower if he kept this up. Next he’d be having erotic fantasies about soothing her fevered brow and taking her temperature.

She nodded when she’d had her fill. “Thank you,” she said, gazing up at him with eyes so unflinchingly blue, they made him want to grab an extra breath. As she rested her head on the pillow, a rivulet of water made a tiny trail through the dirt on her chin.

Chase nodded, wondering why in the hell he couldn’t think of what to ask her first. Who
was
this perplexing woman? Where had she come from? He had a couple other very pertinent questions he needed to ask her. But instead he heard himself saying, “Want me to clean some of that dirt off your face?”

“Yes, please.”

Yes, please,
Chase thought. She had a sweet way of putting that. He pulled the red handkerchief from around his neck, dipped the end of it into the glass of water, and began carefully to wipe the grime from her face. After a moment of his gentle strokes she closed her eyes, and even that innocent response sent a strange laser of desire through him.

Please, God, he thought, as he worked his way down toward the shell-pink fullness of her lips, don’t let her open her mouth until I’m done. Not even to talk. It didn’t seem right for a plain little thing like her to have such a sensual mouth.

His wrist brushed against her faded pink cardigan sweater as he worked, drawing his attention to its severe lines and old-fashioned collar. The sweater was buttoned fastidiously all the way to the top, and it looked tight enough at the neckline to cut off her oxygen. No wonder she’d fainted.

“Can you breathe okay?” he asked, feeling foolish as he lifted the edge of her collar. “Would you like me to loosen this up?”

“Yes ... ” She said the word softly, and without opening her eyes. “I would like that.”

Chase set the water glass down on the table and drew in a protracted breath as he began to work free the buttons of her sweater. He had three of them undone and was wondering how much farther he ought to go when she opened her eyes and looked up at him. She seemed to be taking him in, noticing things for the first time.

“Do you always wear your hat and coat in the house?” she asked.

Somehow it wasn’t the question he’d expected. And neither was the inquisitive expression that animated her features. The corner of his mouth twitched, more a bemused grimace than a smile as he started to shoulder out of the duster coat, then stopped himself. He was uncomfortably aware that he wasn’t behaving like himself, and that she had him at a disadvantage in some inexplicable way. “Depends,” he said, drawing the coat back on.

“Depends on what?”

“The weather indoors.” He intended his brusque tone to discourage conversation on such a topic. But some women didn’t know when to quit, Chase reminded himself as she blinked up at him, all blue eyes and curiosity. She looked as fragile as an abandoned child, and taking care of her forced a gentleness out of him that was alien—especially since his work demanded the gut instincts and lightning-quick reflexes of a hired gun. Even now the same ruthlessly competitive male drive that had always impelled him to take risks other men shrank from was telling him to quit playing wet nurse—and take control of the situation.

“Weather in here seems fine,” she murmured.

“Am I imagining things, Missy, or are you pretty anxious to get my clothes off?”

She blushed slightly, but it was the graceful way her dark eyelashes swept up and her eyes turned to liquid that mystified and enchanted Chase. He could feel the pit of his stomach going soft and the area south of it going drum-taut.

Somewhere in the logic centers of his brain, an emotional traffic signal was flashing steadily,
PROCEED WITH CAUTION
, it was telling him.
SHARP CURVES AND SOFT SHOULDERS AHEAD
. But Chase couldn’t drag himself away from her shimmering gaze long enough to pay much attention to it. His heart was pounding, and his throat was as parched as the dry stream bed where he’d met her. Take control? He couldn’t have found his own butt in an outhouse.

Enough of this,
he told himself.

He bent over her, fumbling to redo the button he’d been working on, and then he rose abruptly and yanked off his hat. The Stetson sailed through the air like a Frisbee and landed on the kitchen table. The duster coat took wing and ended up in a heap on the floor next to the table.

“All right,” he said, drawing in a breath as he turned back to her dangerous gaze. “I want to know what’s going on here. Who are you?”

“Annie Wells,” she said without hesitation.

The name didn’t strike Chase as familiar, but the way she was looking at him, with such unwavering certainty in her expression, made him ask, “Am I supposed to know you, Annie Wells?”

“Yes. Most definitely. You married me five years ago.”

“
Married
you? What kind of nonsense is that, woman?” Obviously she wasn’t playing with a full deck. But the last part of her statement couldn’t be dismissed quite so easily. Five years ago? “I wasn’t even in this country five years ago,” he said. “I was—”

“In Central America.” She finished the sentence for him, then added in a voice that wavered slightly, “You were on a recovery mission for the Pentagon in Costa Brava, and I was one of the Americans you rescued.”

Chase felt as though he’d been blindsided. Memory rocketed him back to a time and place he’d made a concerted effort to forget. The mission in Costa Brava had been a nightmare for him personally. He and his partners in the recovery operation, Johnny Starhawk and Geoff Dias, had been sent to the tiny Central American republic to liberate several American scientists trapped during a rebel insurrection. Once inside the country, they’d split up, trying to locate the Americans. The only survivor he had found was a teenage girl hiding in a bombed-out convent. Tragically he hadn’t been able to get her out of the country alive. She’d been killed in a car accident on the way to the border. And he, too, had nearly been killed.

“You’ve got the wrong man,” he said harshly, trying to shut off the disturbing wash of memories and the surge of mixed emotions accompanying them. Disbelief, anger, guilt, welled up in him. Who the hell was this woman?

“No, it was you—Charles Beaudine. The man who rescued me had your face, your eyes. He called himself Chase. He even used a bullwhip. Oh,
please,
you must remember! I was hiding in a convent near San Luis when you found me. I’d been there a month, ever since my parents were killed by guerrillas.” Her voice cracked slightly, as if it was difficult for her to continue. “I remember every detail. You were wounded in a fight with one of the rebels. He had me in his rifle sights, and you took the gun out of his hands with your bullwhip. He pulled a knife, remember? He cut you.”

Chase felt a spark of pain from the scar on his leg where the knife blade had caught him. His heart was thundering as he walked to the door and swung it open, breathing in hot, pine-sharpened summer air and struggling to make sense of the situation. There had to be a logical explanation, but try as he could to come up with something, only one answer made sense. Who, besides a muckraking reporter, would have any interest in bringing up the Costa Brava mission? And who else would know the details? She must have got her information from newspaper reports, sketchy as they were.

“Why won’t you believe me?” she said, a hurt quality to her voice. “I’m telling the truth.”

He turned back to look at her and saw that she’d lifted herself up with some effort and was resting her shoulder against the log wall of the cabin. Her eyes were expectant and fearful, but they were also suffused with another emotion that tugged at him. Desperation. She was pleading for something, but what was it? Recognition? What did she want from him? With a massive effort of will he hardened himself against the vulnerability that drenched her blue gaze like a summer shower.

“I’m telling the truth, too, Annie Wells. As sure as I’m standing here, I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

She couldn’t be who she said she was, Chase told himself. That girl was dead, God help her. Dead with her blood on
his
hands. He’d been the one driving when the jeep had gone off the embankment. He searched his memory for an image of the teenager, anything he could use to prove to himself that this women couldn’t be her. But all he got were fuzzy shapes and outlines. The high fever and bouts of delirium he’d suffered during the mission had impaired his memory—and undoubtedly his judgment. The car wreck had finished the job, leaving him with nothing but occasional flashbacks that were too stark, yet fleeting, to understand.

He had told Annie Wells the truth, but not the whole truth. He couldn’t remember the young woman whose life he’d saved, and then destroyed. He couldn’t even remember her name.

“I’ll prove it to you then,” she said, almost defiantly. “Ask me anything, anything at all.”

“I intend to ask you plenty,” Chase assured her. He didn’t make a habit of terrorizing vulnerable women, but he was going to get some honest answers, even if he had to put the fear of God into her. He’d been working for the Cattlemen’s Association since he’d settled in Wyoming, and he’d flushed out plenty of cattle thieves and horse rustlers in that time, even put a couple of them away, in self-defense. He could sure as hell handle one tiny female.

“Keep talking,” he said quietly, taking his shotgun from its holster. He rubbed the barrel across the leg of his jeans as though the metal needed polishing. It was a casual move, even offhand, but the gun took on a presence all its own in that small, still room. “And make it a damn good story.”

Annie Wells couldn’t seem to breathe deeply enough to fill her lungs. She’d had some fearful premonitions about what might happen if and when she found Chase Beaudine, but never this. Never that he wouldn’t believe her. He didn’t even appear to remember her, which seemed impossible to her. How could he have forgotten what they’d been through together? The hell ... the
heaven.
She would never be able to escape the memories, no matter how long she lived, or how far she traveled. Her only safe course now was to stick to the facts, to relate exactly what had happened.

“Your wound turned bad,” she told him, severely curbing the emotion she felt. “Infections are deadly in a subtropical climate. You could have died of the fever alone, so I took you to a priest—”

“For what? Last rites?”

“This priest had been a
curandero
—a Spanish medicine man—before he converted. He knew how to use medicinal herbs and plants. He gave you an infusion of
arbuto
roots for the fever, and then he made an antibiotic salve out of jungle fungi and lichens for your wound. When you didn’t respond, he lit candles and prayed to the saints.”

“Nothing like a fallback plan,” Chase said dryly.

“Don’t be so quick to scoff. You’re alive.” She hesitated, fingering the collar of her sweater uneasily. “He offered to help me, too, since I had no papers and no way to prove I was an American citizen. As a priest, he had access to certain kinds of documentation.”