Child Bride (7 page)

“ ‘Where there’s a will,’ ” she said, abbreviating another of the proverbs she’d picked up from the sisters. Actually, Sister Maria Innocentia’s advice had usually been a bit wordier. “Action must necessarily follow resolution if goals are to be achieved,” the venerable mother superior was fond of saying.

Annie glanced up suddenly, searching the cabin with her gaze. Chase had mentioned a shower, hadn’t he? She’d always done her best thinking in the convent’s makeshift shower, and she badly wanted to get reacquainted with some warm water and a bar of soap. It had been so long.

Rising stiffly to her feet, she tugged at the short cotton shift that had once come down to her calves and was the regulation undergarment in the convent. After years of trying to tuck the voluminous thing into her jeans, she’d simply whacked most of the bottom off one day, much to the sisters’ dismay. So as not to further offend their sensibilities, she’d left intact the words embroidered in pink thread across the bodice:
VIRTUE IS ITS OWN REWARD.

She found the shower in a closet-sized bathroom off the hallway. The floor was wooden slats spaced wide for drainage, and the rusty shower head looked as if Chase had stolen it off the nozzle end of a hose. Not what she’d hoped for, but nothing could have dissuaded her from the prospect of cleaning up.

She turned on the tap and then jumped back with a startled cry as an icy jet of water hit her. It took several minutes for it to warm up, but when it did, she stepped into the stinging spray with great relief, shift and all.

It was heaven, pure bliss, she decided, scrubbing herself with a bar of gritty soap that smelled so strongly of lye it stung her nostrils. “Cleanliness and godliness,” she murmured. “However that one goes.”

Turning in the shower spray, luxuriating in its pounding heat, she could have stood forever in the soapy, steaming cocoon. But all the years of convent living and the impoverishment of her circumstances made her feel a little guilty about indulging herself now. She glanced down at her water-soaked shift and felt a pang of despair as she ducked her head under the spray. Was virtue really its own reward? she wondered, soaping her hair. And what chance did a woman with a platitude embroidered on her underwear have of seducing an unwilling man?

The black Ford Bronco’s chassis bounced against taut springs, its engine snarling as Chase geared down and swerved to avoid a darting ground squirrel. The gravel access road that led to his cabin had ruts the size of small open graves and a pitch too steep for anything but a rugged four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Grocery bags Chase had forgotten to secure toppled over in the backseat as the Jeep jolted up the hill. There went the eggs, he thought, glancing in his rearview mirror. They’d be scrambled before he got back to his place. But he didn’t bother to slow down. A blazing sunset had drenched the craggy mountain peaks ahead of him in coppery oranges and reds, which meant he had less than a half hour to get home before dark.

The slimy character Chase had apprehended on the McAffrey spread had turned out to be telling the truth. He was a newly hired hand, according to the foreman, who assured Chase the man had been sent out to mend fences.

Something about the situation still stank as far as Chase was concerned, but he’d let it go, apologized to the man for roughing him up, and headed into Painted Pony to pick up supplies. Then, before he’d left town, he’d tried to contact his former partners by telephone and hadn’t been able to reach either of them. Johnny Starhawk was arguing an important case before the Federal District Appeals Court, and Geoff Dias was on a top-secret mission somewhere in the Middle East.

Chase had left urgent messages for both of them. He’d even used an old code word to alert them that his life depended on their quick response. They might not appreciate his tactics when they found out what was actually going on. But hell, it
was
his life at stake. He had a woman claiming legal rights to his bed and board, to his personhood!

He didn’t like anything about the predicament with Annie Wells. And he especially didn’t like the fact that he was in such a hurry to get back to her. Actually it wasn’t Annie he was in a hurry over, he told himself. It wasn’t the woman herself who had him worked up. It was all the emotional baggage she brought with her. She was a threat to his way of life, to his very peace of mind. He had to get things under control.

Not a second later, he had a graphic mental flash of the striptease she’d done in his living room, and he nearly veered off the road. He hit the brakes and brought the Jeep to a stop that sent gravel flying like shrapnel. A vein throbbed in his forehead as his own black eyes flashed hotly from the rearview mirror. Who are you kidding, you dumb ass? It’s not the predicament you’re hurrying back to. It’s
her
.

The crimson sky was swathed in deep purple velvet by the time Chase pulled up to his cabin. Like a plush theater curtain dropping, it blotted out the footlights of the fallen sun. Unaware of the spectacular beauty around him, uncaring, Chase reached over the backseat and scooped up the grocery bags.

He thought he’d prepared himself for any eventuality when he nudged open the cabin door with his foot. He’d imagined her sound asleep on the cot, curled up like a kitten. Or long gone with all his possessions. He’d even imagined her staring down the barrel of a gun at him. But it had never occurred to him that she might be standing in the bathroom doorway naked and dripping wet.

“What the hell?” It was a moment before he realized she wasn’t totally naked. She had on that flimsy, sliplike thing, but sopping wet, the material might as well have been invisible. Patches of it clung to her breasts and hugged the slender lines of her body in ways that were indescribably sweet, and unspeakably lewd.

Chase felt as though he’d been hit by a truck in high gear. She aroused feelings in him that were both carnal and impossibly innocent. She took him back to his teenage years. She made him yearn for young love. She made him remember the wet dreams and every dirty movie he’d ever seen—or wanted to see.

Set the groceries down, cowboy. Before you drop them.

He deposited the bags on the table by the cot, but nothing had changed when he turned back to her. She was still standing there, dripping all over his hardwood floor and staring at him like a wood nymph caught emerging from some magic pool. “Annie, what the hell—”

“I took a shower,” she said, stating the obvious. She shifted her weight, a barely discernible movement that hung the diaphanous material over her thighs and hipbones like cellophane wrap, revealing a reddish delta of hair. Strawberries and cream, Chase thought, struck by the contrast of her ginger hair and her porcelain skin tones.

He could feel his breathing quicken as he stared at her. He could feel muscles responding and heat gathering. Luckily there was something stopping him from making wild love to her right there on the floor in a pool of water. It was the total incongruity of the situation.

The woman standing across the room from him didn’t seen unduly embarrassed by having been caught naked, and yet she couldn’t have had much experience with men if what she’d told him about the convent was true. She hadn’t even been allowed to shower in the nude.

Sweet God, he thought. Could he actually have made love to her on that mission? If he’d been delirious, he wouldn’t have known what he was doing, but still, she hadn’t been much more than a child. She looked like a child even now with her damp copper-colored ringlets, cameo complexion, and grave, trusting expression.

“Get yourself dry, Annie,” he said abruptly. “And get some clothes on.”

“I don’t have any clothes,” she said. “You took them.”

So he had. Chase glanced at his blue chambray shirt. A moment later he’d pulled off the shirt and was tossing it to her. “You can wear this,” he said. “I’m going to put the groceries away.”

The shirt dropped at her feet, and she stared down at it for a long time, but she made no attempt to pick it up. “I have a better idea,” she said at last, her voice soft and trembling. “You could make love to me.”

C
HASE FROZE WHERE
he stood. He knew what he’d heard, but he didn’t want to believe it. And yet the sparkle of fear in her eyes could as easily have been excitement. If he’d had a choice, he would have called a halt to the proceedings right there. But it was already too late for that. His blood pressure was on the rise. His stomach muscles grabbed, and an odd thrill sank deep into the muscles of his legs as he stared at her.

“Put on the shirt, Missy,” he said, furious with her. And with himself.

She shook her head, looking more like a frightened, defiant child than a woman who wanted to make love. Chase grabbed the quilt off the cot, strode over to her, and draped it around her shoulders.

“Is there something wrong with me?” she asked, her voice strangely faint, her eyes sparkling with tears. “Am I too ugly? Too skinny?”

Chase told himself to let go of the blanket, to release her at once. Instead, his hands curled into fists, and the material tautened in his grip. “No, you’re not ugly, Annie. A little skinny maybe, but that’s not the problem.”

He caught the clean, damp scent of her hair as she swayed toward him, the freshness of her skin. Her breasts bounced and strained against the wet fabric, her nipples hardening. And even as Chase ordered himself to let go of her, to back off, he knew it was too late to stop.

“You really want me to make love to you, Annie Wells?” he said, his voice going dry with desire. “You’re bound and determined that’s what you want?”

“Yes. That’s what I want. ... ”

Annie left the last word whispered and dangling. She caught hold of his arms and tilted her head up, as though waiting to be kissed. Chase was aware of something slightly off-kilter in the focus of her eyes, and her smile was charmingly askew, but to a man with his overheated sensibilities, those signals registered as one thing only—dazed passion.

She obviously wanted to be kissed, but with the quilt tangled up in his grip and her clinging to him so urgently, it took some negotiating. She murmured unintelligibly as their bodies touched. Their lips brushed tentatively at first, and then, as the kiss deepened to something wild and breathless, she let out a soft, shocked moan, her eyes fluttered closed, and her body went suddenly, meltingly limp.

“Annie?” Chase caught her by the arms as she sank toward the floor.

“Oops,” she murmured. “Sorry ... ”

Chase braced her on her feet and held her at arm’s length, studying her pale features and drooping eyelids. He’d had some interesting responses to his advances over the years. He’d been slapped a few times, even kneed once, but nobody had fainted on him. What was it with this woman? He had half a mind to release her and let her fold up like an accordion. He might have done it, too, if she hadn’t looked so deathly pale.

“Annie,” he said, his voice harsh. “What seems to be the problem here?”

“No problem,” she said, swaying in his hold. “Blood chemistry, I think—drop in glucose ... haven’t eaten.”

He didn’t doubt her last statement, but he still wasn’t convinced about the fainting-spell business. There was one way to find out, of course. “Can you stand up?”

She opened her dreamy blue eyes and nodded slowly.

“You mean it? Because once I let go, you’re on your own.”

Her response was another slow-motion nod, which Chase decided to take as a yes. He released her, unprepared as she actually sagged to the floor in a graceful heap.

Well, she wasn’t faking it. With a taut sigh and a slow head shake, Chase stared down at her soft, crumpled form, wondering what he was going to do with her. With her arm flung out to her side, she looked fragile and very much abandoned, like an old-fashioned doll that some careless youngster had grown tired of and tossed away.

There was something about the woman lying at his feet, Chase realized, that caused bittersweet feelings to grow in him. Something almost heartbreaking written in her odd, delicate features, perhaps even in her nature. “Oh, Miss Annie,” he said, his voice suddenly low and grating, “why do I have the feeling you’re going to be the undoing of us both?”

She stirred as he knelt to pick her up. “Chase?” she said, rousing in his arms as he carried her to the cot.

“Easy does it.” He settled her on the small bed and pulled the quilt snugly around her, hushing her as she tried to convince him that she was fine. “What you need is some food, Missy. How long since you’ve had a decent meal?”

Annie didn’t have the energy to answer him, or to argue with him, for that matter. She could hardly keep her eyes open, much less try to persuade him that she really did want to make love with him, however unlikely that might appear. She’d known this day of reckoning was coming. A body could only endure so much punishment, and she’d pushed hers unmercifully.

She was pleasantly aware of Chase’s touch as he patted her legs dry with the quilt material. He had a surprisingly gentle way for a hardened bounty hunter, and she was beginning to wish he would never stop tending to her needs when the cot creaked mournfully and he rose, leaving her.

“Here’s a clean shirt,” he said, returning a moment later. “You can put it on when you’re feeling a little stronger.”

She opened her eyes, managing a nod as he laid a faded chambray shirt next to her. The wariness in his expression had been replaced by something friendlier, something that could almost have been mistaken for tenderness as he looked down at her.

Annie felt a welling of emotion that expanded oddly in her throat. “Chase, I’m sorry. I thought ... I didn’t know I’d be causing all this trouble.”

“No trouble,” he said. “I think I can feed you without putting myself out too much.”

He touched a forefinger to her face, just a fleeting stroke of kindness, but the gesture sent a rush of longing through Annie that was sharp and poignant. Some tiny blaze that had been kindling in her breast all those years flared higher, reaching out for his life-giving tenderness as though it were oxygen. Tears stung at her eyelids as she quickly squeezed them shut, uttering the only words she could manage: “Thank you.”