Child Bride (6 page)

Once she’d negotiated the last button and let her sweater fall open, she looked up at him. A radiant flush was creeping up her neck, and it was also wending downward, setting fire to her ample breasts. But it was the sparkle of apprehension in her eyes that caught hold of Chase’s imagination and twisted it inside out.

With her burnished hair and blue eyes, she looked like an exotic moth who’d wandered into a spider’s web and was trying to figure out what the big bad spider was going to do next. The whisper of alarm in her gaze, the excited quiver in her breathing, dealt a devastating blow to Chase’s willpower. They aroused him even more than the lush innocence of her body. What was worse, she’d obviously aroused herself as well.

“I guess I’d better take off my jeans,” she said, her voice catching slightly as she touched her fingers to her thigh. There was a hesitance in her manner that implied she was waiting for something. ... His response? The shimmer of her breasts as she breathed, the question still trembling on her parted lips, all suggested that she would do whatever he told her to do, that she awaited his bidding.

Chase’s mind shouted an answer
. Tell her to get her sweet butt out of those jeans and onto the cot behind her. Then give her exactly what her baby-blue eyes have been asking for. A joyride she will never forget.
The raunchy thought hit him with the sudden impact of a kidney punch.

“Was that a yes?” She began to tug down the jeans.

The moment of truth, Chase thought. If he let all hell break loose and acted on his impulses, he would undoubtedly feel a whole lot better afterward. And from the look of her, she would too. But would she let it go at that? Or would she see their lovemaking as some kind of commitment on his part? The very fact that he had to ask the question made it too big a risk. But then again, if he had to stand there and watch her drop her jeans without touching her, he was going to blow out like an overinflated tire.

“Hold it,” he said, stopping her before the jeans could reach her hips. “I’m calling a time-out. In fact, I’m getting out of here while both of us are still vertical.”

He wheeled and headed for the door. “I’ll be on the front porch. You can hand your clothes out when you’re done. And leave that shift thing on, for God’s sake.”

Annie watched, startled, as he slammed the door behind him. He’d certainly picked an odd time to make an exit. Her lack of experience in such matters left her a little bewildered, but she was burning up with curiosity. A faint smile blossomed as she stared at his escape route, the closed door. Had she actually run Chase Beaudine off? Was that possible? She hoped it was her fatal allure that had done it, rather than something else, such as the possibility that he didn’t find her attractive, or Lord forbid, that he had some personal hang-up about sex.

Neither seemed likely since he’d wanted to make love to her earlier. But even then his behavior had been odd. He’d stopped in the middle of kissing her, insisting they were rushing things. She’d already sensed that he didn’t have much use for women, especially a woman claiming to be his wife, but that alone couldn’t account for his strange actions.

Annie’s quandary increased as she glanced down. Half-dressed, she was startlingly sexy. What was the man’s problem? Sex? Women? Annie Wells? Or all three?

Outside on the porch Chase waited impatiently for Annie to hand out the clothes. His only problem at that moment was putting some distance between himself and the frustrating female in his cabin. Maybe then he could get his blood pressure normalized and his brain “reoxygenated” before he became permanently addled. Given some thinking time, he told himself, a man could handle any woman, even one combat-trained in a convent.

“I’m still waiting for those clothes, Missy,” he called, giving the door a kick.

“ ‘All good things come to those who wait,’ ” she muttered a moment later as she handed out her jeans and sweater. “Happy?” she asked, plunking her tennis shoes on top of the pile and shutting the door with a sharp crack.

Happy?
As he stared at the clothes, his mind scrolled image after lurid image of the woman who no longer wore them. No, happy wasn’t the H-word that came to mind.

A flash of light bounced off Chase’s side mirror, drawing his attention from the highway ahead. He slowed the Bronco, glanced over his shoulder, and glimpsed furtive movement out in the pasturelands. He cranked the steering wheel hard and spun the Bronco into a 180-degree turn.

Gunning the four-wheel-drive vehicle, he drove it over the runoff ditch on the side of the road, then negotiated an obstacle course of underbrush and small trees as he sped toward the McAffrey ranch’s lower pasture. Cattle thieves had been hitting the local ranches he provided security for, but these weren’t penny-ante operators like Bad Luck Jack. This was a slick, big-time operation. Over the last few weeks they’d got away with several hundred head without leaving a trace.

Another flash of light caught Chase’s eye as he spotted a lone figure some three hundred feet away, hunkered down next to a stretch of barbed-wire fence. Chase’s savage desire to catch the bastards who’d been eluding him made him fearless—and reckless.

As the Bronco broke through the trees onto the open range, the man saw Chase and reared up. The rustler snarled an obscenity, then broke and ran. Chase hit the brakes and slammed out of the Bronco even before it had stopped moving. Bullwhip in hand, he sprinted in hot pursuit. By the time he’d gained enough ground to use the whip, his lungs were burning for air.

The man glanced over his shoulder as Chase closed in. With a roar of rage he heaved something sharp and metallic at Chase. Chase swerved as the glinting missile sliced open his shirtsleeve without tearing any flesh. A wire cutter, he realized, not a knife.

Chase shook out the fourteen-foot rawhide thong, bringing it up and back in one fluid, lethal arc of motion. He put the end of the whip exactly where he wanted it, around the slimy bastard’s ankles. The man lurched forward, and Chase flipped the whip handle to his left hand. As he pulled the rawhide tight, he reached for the pump-action twelve-gauge he’d slung over his shoulder. He cocked the shotgun with one hand, a trick he’d learned in the military, and jammed the gun butt up against his shoulder as he approached the grounded man. “Who are you?” Chase demanded. “And what are you doing on McAffrey property?”

“I work here!” the man screamed, thrusting out an arm as though warding off demons. “I was riding fence, that’s all.”

Chase held him at bay, taking in the man’s wiry, sweat-slicked features and wild-eyed fear. “Mending fences, my ass. Why the hell did you run?”

“Who wouldn’t run with a maniac like you chasing him?” the man said, rubbing a grimy shirtsleeve over his dripping brow. “If you don’t believe I work here, ask the foreman. He hired me yesterday.”

Chase didn’t like anything about the situation. He could smell a liar, and this bastard stank like hell on housecleaning day. He shook some slack into the whip and motioned the man to his feet. “Let’s go have a talk with your foreman.”

“Come here, Shadow,” said Annie, trying to coax the Border collie away from his post by the cabin door, where he’d been waiting ever since his master left. The dog regarded her with wary disapproval, as though he were holding her responsible for his master’s disappearance at the very least, and perhaps for any number of other things.

Glancing around the cabin, Annie shivered a little at its austerity. A large stone fireplace dominated the main room, and the few pieces of furniture Chase had were of sturdy white pine. Other than a couple of rifles hanging above the fireplace, there was nothing on the walls—no pictures, no curtains on the windows, no touches of color anywhere to alleviate the grayish expanse of unfinished wood. The place had all the severity of a monastery and none of the charm, she decided.

For some reason Shadow chose that moment to break his vigil. As Annie crossed the room to take a closer look at the kitchen area, the dog fell in behind her, sniffing at her legs and bare feet. Annie let him inspect her until he seemed satisfied, then reached down to stroke the silky black hair on his muzzle.

The cabin’s kitchen was a little homier than the rest of the place, she noticed. A blue metal coffeepot with white speckles sat on a two-burner wood stove, and a red checkered oilcloth covered the small dinette table. The kerosene lanterns hanging from wall spikes made her think of scenes she’d read in her father’s western novels, of winter storms when the snow heaped up to the eaves of a cabin’s roof.

Shadow brushed her leg, seeking her attention, and his cool, wet nose startled a chuckle out of her. “Aren’t you a friendly fella all of a sudden,” she said, scratching the white patch on his head. The dog whimpered softly, and she crouched impulsively to give him a hug, surprised at the welling of emotion she felt. It was bittersweet and yet soft at the edges, an odd kind of yearning that seemed to concentrate in her arms, moving her to hug him tighter. She nuzzled into his ruff a moment and then released him, laughing as he began to lick her face. He was quivering with affection, and it was the first warmth Annie had experienced since she’d started her desperate journey. Lord, it felt good to have someone want her around. It felt almost like coming home. Or what she imagined that would be like. She’d never had anything resembling a normal home life.

Her eyes were misty as she sat on the floor next to the dog and surveyed the cabin again. If only the place weren’t so cold and forbidding. It wasn’t at all the house she’d been seeing in her mind all these years. She’d envisioned it as a picturesque log cabin with a tiny kitchen all fixed up with yellow curtains and ruffled seat cushions, a shaft of morning sunlight drifting through the window, warming a knotty-pine breakfast nook.

And of course she’d imagined herself in that kitchen, cooking up a mess of ham and eggs for breakfast. And the man of the house? Her cowboy lover? She closed her eyes, remembering the sweetest part of the dream for her. He would be out back splitting logs for firewood, probably shirtless and sweat-sheened, working up an appetite. After he’d washed up, he would want to steal a kiss, of course, and probably something more, but she would remind him that his sunny-side-up eggs were getting cold.

“I sure got it wrong, didn’t I, Shadow?” She leaned into the dog’s furry warmth for comfort as another lonely kind of aching flared up inside her. “This place isn’t at all what I expected. And neither is he.”

Shadow whimpered sympathetically and nuzzled her face.

“Thanks,” she told the dog, smiling sadly as she accepted his condolences. “It’s sweet of you to want to help, but the problem is bigger than both of us, I’m afraid. Your master doesn’t seem to remember me. Or maybe he doesn’t want to.”

She drew the dog close again, warding off the panic that was stirring inside her. What would she do if Chase refused to help her? She couldn’t throw herself on the mercy of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. She’d heard all the horror stories about illegal aliens being held in compounds for months, then shipped like cattle back to wherever they’d come from. And even if the stories weren’t true, she almost certainly wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the country if she couldn’t prove her citizenship.

A chill washed over her like an icy bath of water. Sent back to Costa Brava? After the nightmares of the last five years? She released the dog and pushed to her feet, fighting a wave of dizziness that crested so suddenly it threatened to drag her under. “I can’t let that happen, Shadow. No one’s going to send me back there.”

Chilled through to the marrow, she made it over to the cot and pulled the quilt coverlet around her. How long had it been since she’d eaten? Hours? Days, maybe? She was losing track of time again. Everything was blurring together. A seductive kind of lethargy was seeping through her muscles and bones, dragging her down into the sweet oblivion of sleep. The sheer weight of it had overwhelmed her before. She’d slept in parks and bus terminals, drugged by exhaustion. She supposed it was a variation on the fainting spells, but she couldn’t let herself give in to the heaviness now. She had to stay awake, stay focused. She had to find a solution to her problem.

“What am I going to do?” she said, as the dog came over to sit before her. He looked up at her eagerly, but his huge brown eyes were so sad and sympathetic, they filled her with despair. Finally he rested his muzzle in her lap, and it seemed as if the two of them sat that way for a long time.

Consummation?
The word came to her in a burst as she huddled in the threadbare quilt material. It created such a shimmering explosion of awareness inside her that she felt as if the reference must have been sent to her through some kind of divine intervention.

“Consummation,” she murmured aloud, testing the word’s susurration on her tongue, and getting a sense of its deeper significance as she let the awareness take on meaning and shape. Suddenly she knew what had to be done. She knew!

With a quick smile she glanced up. “Thank you.”

Shadow’s tail was wagging so hard by that time, it shook his whole body. Annie scratched his ruff, excitement growing inside her, reviving her. “You know it, too, don’t you, Shadow? You understand that I’m going to have to seduce your master. There’s no other way.”

Her heart began to pound recklessly as she considered the possibilities. Seduce Chase Beaudine? Could it be done? Was there a woman alive who could bend that iron man’s will and make him want her enough to succumb? Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but something inside her needed to believe that making love would help Chase to remember their bond. He couldn’t pretend she meant nothing to him once he’d made love to her, could he? He couldn’t pretend she didn’t exist.

Shadow began to whimper eagerly, and Annie realized she’d stopped stroking him in her preoccupation. “This isn’t going to be easy,” she said. “How do you seduce a man who refuses to be in the same room with you?”

Beyond Chase’s obvious reluctance, she herself had a major handicap when it came to undertakings like seduction and consummation. She had no experience with men. None! At a time when most girls were learning to flirt, she had been teaching Indian children to read and write Spanish in a convent school. If she’d aroused Chase while undressing, that was a lucky accident. She wouldn’t know how to seduce a man if he gave her step-by-step instructions, and Chase Beaudine didn’t seem likely to do that.