Frontier Woman (13 page)

“Then you’ll come with us to get it,” Oscar said, grabbing her by the arm, leaving her little choice but to follow after the two men. As soon as they reached the end of the alley, Cricket made her break for freedom. She wrenched her arm from Oscar’s grasp and raced for the cantina door. She never made it. The same club that had rescued her now made her captive, and Cricket sank senseless to the ground.

“Why did you do that?” Oscar hissed.

“She would have raised the pueblo against us. I had no choice.”

“What do we do now?”

“We take her with us, of course. We’ll take our pleasure when she awakens.”

At that moment, there was a commotion at the cantina door. Oscar and Clemencio each grasped one of Cricket’s arms and hauled her unconscious body upright, holding her in the darker shadows next to the wall. They waited until the reeling patron had wandered farther down the otherwise-abandoned street before they put their plan into action. Oscar held Cricket while Clemencio retrieved their horses and Cricket’s pinto.

“Once I get mounted, hand the girl up to me,” Clemencio said.

“Why can’t I carry the girl?”

“When we get out of the village you can have her as much as you please. Right now, we’d better get out of here.”

Clemencio’s warning didn’t come a moment too soon. For as Oscar put the girl in his arms, he heard a commanding “Hey! What are you doing there?”

Creed could hardly believe his eyes. The two Mexicans weren’t helping Cricket, they were kidnapping her! And she appeared to be hurt. Creed cursed himself up one side and down the other. He should’ve known better than to leave Cricket alone in the cantina. Sure she was headstrong and spoiled, but she was still just a girl—and an attractive one at that. That thought set his heart to pounding. The two men could have no good in mind, and Cricket was helpless to defend herself. Damn Rip Stewart and his ridiculous ideas for raising his daughters!

Creed didn’t think to raise an alarm. There wasn’t time. He needed to follow and follow quickly. He grabbed the nearest horse at the hitching rail and mounted up. He was on the heels of the kidnappers in moments.

Oscar and Clemencio exchanged heated words of accusation against one another for the fix in which they found themselves, but they kept their horses galloping on over the moonlit plains.

“Let the girl go, or you’re dead men!”

In Creed’s howled warning, Clemencio recognized a way to escape the irate man’s pursuit. He merely obeyed Creed’s order and literally let Cricket go. She fell from the galloping horse in a tangled heap, and Creed barely managed to stop his mount before he trampled her. He was off his horse in seconds and kneeling next to Cricket. His hands ran over her body in a flurry of anxiety, trying to determine whether anything was broken.

At Cricket’s groan he snapped, “Lie still till I see if your neck is broken.”

“They stole my money and they took Valor,” she mumbled.

“They almost stole
you
, you idiot. To hell with the money and the horse.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

Creed had never thought he’d be grateful that Cricket drank, but he knew no other reason than her loose-jointed drunkenness that she hadn’t broken every bone in her body in the fall.

“My head hurts.”

Creed lifted her into his arms. “You must have hit it when they dumped you.”

“No, one of those bandidos clubbed me.”

Creed was feeling distinctly murderous toward the two Mexicans, and he looked up with thoughts of what he’d do when he caught them. First he had to get Cricket safely back to Three Oaks.

Nausea churned in Cricket’s belly. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Creed laid her on the ground again and held her head while she emptied her stomach. He gave her his bandanna to wipe her mouth, then lifted her in his arms.

“Come, Brava,” he said softly. “It’s time to take you home.”

Cricket felt awful. And she felt wonderful. Creed’s strong arms surrounded her shoulders and knees and held her close to his body. Next to her ear she could hear the powerful beat of his heart. He shifted her in his arms as he mounted his horse, then shifted her again when he was in the saddle, until her buttocks rested across his thigh. He’d come to help her . . . and he didn’t even like her very much. She knew that because of the way he acted with her . . . always yelling . . . always criticizing . . . always telling her what to do. Cricket drifted off to sleep imagining that Creed was kissing her brow. How silly! He didn’t even like her.

Creed nuzzled Cricket’s forehead with his nose and chin. He let his lips chase across her brow. He clutched her tightly to his chest, thinking how close he’d come to losing
his
woman
—and not even to the Comanches. He enjoyed the pleasure of holding her for half the distance back to Three Oaks. Then he forced his thoughts to consideration of the immediate problem at hand. What was he going to do with Cricket when he got her home?

He could picture himself knocking on the front door of the Stewart house in the middle of the night, and when Rip answered, saying, “Here’s your daughter. I rescued her from kidnappers. She’s all right except for a bump on the head and a few bruises.” He wouldn’t do it. If Rip Stewart had cared what happened to Cricket, he wouldn’t have left her alone in the cantina all evening. Creed knew Bay would take care of Cricket, but he couldn’t think of a way to reach her without going through Rip.

By the time he reached the bachelors’ quarters at Three Oaks he’d convinced himself he should be the one to take care of her. Creed purposely refused to consider what Cricket would think about his solicitous concern for her well-being. She was too young to know what was good for her.

And you do?
a voice inside him asked.

Yes
, he answered. At least he wouldn’t manipulate her the way Rip did, the way his father had manipulated him. He knew how you did things to please, to be loved, to be wanted. He also knew that no matter how much you did, it was never enough. They always wanted more. If he could help Cricket learn that lesson before he left Three Oaks, he was doing her a favor. She’d be able to escape the bonds of parental love and duty by which Rip held her in such an unnatural role.

Bay hadn’t treated the bachelors’ quarters to the same elegant makeover as the main house. Creed carried Cricket to the bedroom on the left at the end of the main hall. The door stood open, and the feather bed had been turned down invitingly by one of the Negroes who were ever ready to serve on the plantation. A candle on the functional dresser beside the bed warmed the room with its cheery glow.

Creed started to lay Cricket on the clean sheets, then changed his mind. She was wearing the same dusty, sweaty buckskins she’d worn to compete in the
días de toros.
He lay her on the quilt folded at the foot of the bed and unlaced her moccasins.

Cricket became vaguely aware she was in a bed and that someone was untying her clothing.

“Hurry up, Bay, I’m tired,” she grumbled. Then she wiggled around until she’d pulled off her buckskin shirt. She shoved Creed’s hands out of the way and pulled off her breeches, as well.

Creed smiled in amusement when he saw the dainty chemise with its pink bow tied between her breasts and the lacy white pantalettes that Cricket wore under the hardy buckskins. The amused smile became more strained the longer Creed looked, for he could also see the dark outline of her nipples through the chemise, and the darker triangle at the apex of her long legs. Creed clenched his teeth as tightly as he clenched his fists. Unfortunately, there were also other things tightening over which he had no control.

Creed knew he had to get Cricket covered more decently, and fast. So, although Cricket seemed perfectly satisfied to lie where she was, Creed shifted her so her head lay on a pillow and slipped her delectable body under the sheets. Then the full force of what he’d done hit him.

He’d just tucked Creighton Stewart into his own bed.

“Sleep tight, Brava,” Creed whispered in her ear.

Cricket swatted at the noise, as though batting at a fly, and caught Creed square on the nose.

He grabbed his nose and stood in the same motion. So much for romance. She was drunk. She was hurt. She was asleep.

But he was no gentleman, and he wanted her.

Creed strode to the simple ladder-back chair in the corner and flung himself into the rawhide seat, staring morosely at the four-poster that was centered in the room. What was the matter with him? He’d had no business bringing the girl here. He should have given her back to her father. Rip had created this ambivalent creature. Let him cope with her. Creed merely felt sorry for the girl, that was all.

So how did he explain the urgent messages from his body that spoke of so much more? He couldn’t, and he didn’t want to try, at least not tonight. He was tired, and it was a big bed, so he needn’t even get near the girl. Besides, it wasn’t as though anyone was going to fight him tomorrow over Cricket’s honor. Rip had made that issue quite clear in the barn. No, the one person who cared at all about Cricket’s honor was the one person who was as likely to take it as he was to keep it safe.

Creed rose, pantherlike, and reached for the rawhide tie on his beaded buckskin shirt. He’d lie down next to her, but he wouldn’t touch her, he’d just sleep. Tomorrow he’d begin educating her about the feminine wants and needs of which she was so ignorant . . . and the demands of manipulating fathers like Rip Stewart with which she was entirely too familiar.

During the night, Cricket woke feeling strangled by her underclothes. So she tore them off.

During the night, Creed woke feeling the need to hold Cricket. So he pulled her into his arms.

In the morning, all hell broke loose.

Chapter 9

WHEN CRICKET FIRST WOKE SHE WAS DISORIENTED, but thought it the result of the whiskey she’d drunk the night before. The ceiling wavered, and the four corners looked cockeyed. Nor did the bed feel right. It was softer. Or was it harder? The pillow was softer, the bed was harder, she determined. The objects outlined by the gray haze that comes before dawn were unfamiliar. For instance, what was making the sheets bunch up like that? Cricket stared at the shapeless lump across from her in stunned shock as the truth hit home. Not only was she not in her own room, but someone else was in the bed with her!

At that moment Creed shifted so he was lying flat on his back, his profile etched against the predawn light. It took mere seconds for Cricket to identify her companion.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Creed squinted one eyelid open and stared sleepily at Cricket. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Cricket bolted from the bed, then realized her state of undress and scooted back under the covers.

“I’m naked!” she shrieked.

“So am I, but you don’t hear me squawking like a turkey at Thanksgiving. You’re going to wake up everyone on Three Oaks if you don’t quiet down.”

Cricket tried to calm a racing heart, tried to steady a trembling hand, tried to swallow over a throat thick with unshed tears. She pulled her knees up to her chest and pressed her balled fists into her eyes, breathing deeply. She was in control. She
never
cried.

The last thing she remembered clearly was walking toward Valor with Oscar and Clemencio. Then everything was pretty much blank. She didn’t really want to know what had gone on after that because it was too easy to conclude that “you know what” had happened here last night. And she didn’t think she could face Creed knowing he’d done “it” to her. She railed at the fates that had made her female. It was so awful to know a man could do “that” to her, and do “it” without her even knowing.

Cricket’s emotions ranged quickly from dismay to disgust to high dudgeon. She’d make sure Creed paid the consequences for the past evening, all right. But how did one avenge oneself for such a wrong? It was clear she was going to have to think seriously on the matter. She couldn’t help voicing her very first thoughts.

“Rip will
kill
me,” she gritted out. “After he kills you, of course.”

Creed laughed and rolled onto his stomach, resting his chin on his palm. “Ah, Brava, you are such a delight.”

He thought she looked wonderful, flushed and wide-eyed, with portions of her braid falling loose around her face and the sheet pulled primly up to her neck.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” she said, her voice now steady, despite the tornado whirling inside, waiting to spin free. “When Rip finds out what you forced me to do, your life won’t be worth an old hat.”

“What I forced you to do?”

“I assume you’ve had your way with me. At least, I feel bruised enough to believe more went on in this bed last night than sleeping.” Cricket examined several large bruises on her arms and held the sheet out, wincing as she investigated a sore spot on her ribs.

Creed fought another laugh. “You’ve been reading too many lurid novels. Those aren’t passion bruises. In case you’ve forgotten, you were dropped like a sack of potatoes off a galloping horse last night.”

“I was?” One of the Mexicans had hit her on the head, she remembered. The sensation of falling, the memory of being sick, of Creed offering her his bandanna, flashed behind her eyes. Cricket began to feel hopeful inside. Maybe “it” hadn’t happened after all. “How did I end up here?”

“I saw you being kidnapped and came after you. When I shouted out for the two riders to stop, they dropped you. I didn’t want to wake up the household, so I brought you here to the bachelors’ quarters.”

“And undressed me.”

“Yes. I undressed you.”

Cricket found herself caught by Creed’s gaze. His eyes stroked her lazily, making her skin tingle beneath the thin covering of sheet, so she almost forgot her train of thought.

She swallowed and said, “And then you did . . . ‘it.’ ”

Creed sat up in bed facing Cricket. The sheet dropped so it lay at the base of his hips. “It?”

“You know . . . ‘it,’ ” Cricket said, irritated with him for being obtuse and with herself for ogling his navel and the line of hair leading down from it to what she knew lay under the sheet.

Creed didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Cricket’s attitude toward making love shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did. He wondered what she’d do if she believed she’d really done “it.” Shoot him? Go into hiding? How would she react when forced to face the fact she was a woman?

His curiosity was so great he replied, “I never had to use force on you last night. You were very cooperative.” He spoke nothing less than the truth. Let her make of it what she would.

Cricket remained silent for a moment. She had a headache and an upset stomach. There was a knot the size of a rock on her head and the rest of her body boasted bruises. There existed a faint memory of Creed’s mouth feathering over her brow, but nothing else. Oh, dear God. She’d become a woman last night, but she couldn’t remember a damned thing about it.

Creed watched Cricket’s mobile features run through a dozen different emotions, but he was unprepared for the terse question she voiced.

“Did I enjoy myself?”

“You mean you don’t remember?”

Cricket was in no mood for Creed’s teasing. “Just answer my question.”

In for a penny, in for a pound,
he thought.

“Immensely,” he replied.

Cricket squeezed her eyes shut and breathed deeply. The first and only time she’d ever been with a man and she’d missed it all. She hadn’t been forced. She’d been willing. She’d even enjoyed herself—
immensely
. She couldn’t blame Creed for what he’d done, under the circumstances. It wouldn’t be fair. And above all things, Cricket prided herself on being fair. She shoved the covers away and swung her feet onto the floor.

“I suppose if I enjoyed myself
immensely
there isn’t much of me you haven’t seen, so modesty between us is ridiculous.”

Creed sucked in his breath when Cricket straightened up after leaving the bed. The shadowy glimpse he’d had of her when she’d first awakened was tempting, but dawn had become daylight, and Cricket without a stitch of clothes was a feast for the senses. High, full breasts with rosy nipples, a hand-span waist, curved hipbones separated by the taut belly he’d held under his splayed hand last night, the triangle of dark, curly hair, her nest of femininity. And everywhere, all over, red raw scrapes and purple and black bruises.

She was beautiful.

He was torn between a multitude of feelings: guilt that he’d left her with the impression she’d lost her virginity; disbelief that she was apparently going to ignore making love to him last night as though it had never happened; sympathy for the obvious pain of her aches and bruises; and passion. . . .

Creed waged a futile war with his body as Cricket matter-of-factly donned her clothing. She pursed her lips ruefully at the torn chemise and pantalettes, muttering, “You must have been in one hell of a hurry.”

Creed had the grace to blush. He couldn’t let her go on thinking he’d made love with her, when the most he’d done was hold her in his arms. The memory of how he’d woken during the night, with one hand on Cricket’s taut belly and the other cupping a breast, her buttocks spooned into his groin, made him so hard he brought his knees up under the covers to protect what little innocence she supposedly had left.

“I don’t know how your underclothes got torn,” he protested. “I didn’t do it.”

“And I did?” She shook her head and clucked her tongue disgustedly. “Just because this happened once, you better not try doing ‘it’ again. Or else.”

“Or else what?” Creed challenged.

Cricket hesitated. Or else what? What could she do? You hung a man for stealing horses. And rape, well, you could hang a man for that, too. But what could you do if the woman was willing, and enjoyed herself
immensely
?

“Just don’t try anything, or you’ll find out,” she threatened finally.

Creed had to swallow before he could speak again, since Cricket leaned over to step into her buckskins, and her full breasts pressed lovingly into the cotton sheets. He managed, “It’s your own fault, you know. All I did was rescue you from those two Mexican kidnappers. I couldn’t very well knock on your father’s door in the middle of the night with his unconscious daughter in my arms, could I?”

“Couldn’t you?” Cricket speared Creed with her gaze. What she saw was that same hunger she’d seen in the barn. Didn’t the man ever think of anything except his stomach? “We’d better get going or breakfast will be gone before we get there. I want to get an early start after those two bandidos.”

Creed was so busy watching Cricket lace her breasts into her buckskin shirt that what she’d said didn’t sink in for a moment. When it did, he still wasn’t sure he’d heard her right.

“You’re planning to go after the two fellows who stole your money?”

“When Rip hears what happened, I won’t have any choice. I got robbed. My horse got stolen. I even spent the night in a man’s bed. A pretty rotten evening, if you ask me. Of course, if I can get out of your bedroom before Rip finds out I’m here, maybe we can save your skin. But I’m in for a whipping unless I can get back what was taken from me.”

“Rip would
whip
you?”

Cricket’s lips screwed into a disarming grin. “It usually hurts him more than it does me. You should see his face when . . . Anyway, his leather lessons are so memorable they don’t usually need to be repeated.”

“He
beats
you?” Creed repeated, aghast. “You’re a girl!”

“I guess after last night, there can’t be much mistake about that,” she admitted ruefully. “Are you coming?”

She was fully dressed, ready to leave, and Creed was still sitting naked in the bed with the sheet pulled up to his waist.

“Wait,” he said. “I want to explain what happened last night.”

“Don’t bother. I’m not interested.”

“Look, Brava—”

“I said it doesn’t matter,” she interrupted. “I’ve got more important things to do today than listen to you recite the lurid details of an evening—”

“But there aren’t any—”

“No. Don’t explain
anything
. Just keep your mouth shut about last night, do you hear? And maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to forget it ever happened.” Of course that was going to be no problem, Cricket thought. She’d have to remember it first in order to forget it.

Creed bubbled inside with anger. He didn’t know when he’d ever been so furious with another human being. If she would only let him finish a sentence she wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting something that had never happened. But she kept interrupting. So be it. If she was determined not to let him tell the truth, then she could learn to live with the lie.

“Creed?” The sound of Bay’s voice startled them both.

“Hell’s bells! I knew this would happen. We’re in here, Bay,” Cricket called out.

Bay approached the bedroom door apprehensively, afraid of what she’d find. When she entered the room she discovered Creed sitting in the large bed with the sheets pulled up to his waist. He was obviously unclothed beneath the covers. Cricket stood next to the bed. She wore her buckskins, but Bay saw her underthings in a heap on the floor beside her. She blushed and stammered, “I was worried when you didn’t show up last night. I thought Creed . . .”

“Your instincts were right, as usual,” Cricket said. “Creed took very good care of me. In fact, he even shared his bed with me last night.”

“I’m sure Creed did nothing—”

Cricket’s harsh laugh stopped Bay. “What you see is—” She paused dramatically. “What you see, Bay, is exactly what it looks like.”

“Oh, my.”

“And now, if nobody minds, I’m going to get some breakfast.”

Cricket turned on her heel and, Creed noted with a shaking head,
stalked
from the bedroom. If her walk was any indication, the events of the evening hadn’t been at all devastating to her self-confidence.

“I . . . I . . .” Bay couldn’t get out anything that sounded vaguely like the apology she felt she owed for butting in where she wasn’t wanted or needed, but she’d been so worried about Cricket and . . . She should have known Cricket would land on her feet. She always did, no matter what the situation. However, this was certainly a unique set of circumstances—especially for Cricket. “I’m sorry,” she finally blurted out.

“No need to be. I’ll admit the evidence is pretty damning, but nothing happened here last night.”

“It didn’t?”

“Not that Cricket would let me get a word in edgewise to explain that to her.”

Bay grinned.

It was the first time Creed had seen her face light up like that, and he found himself grinning back at her.

“So Cricket thinks—”

“The worst,” Creed finished ruefully.

“Sometimes Cricket can be a real pain in the—” Bay put her hand over her mouth, aghast at what she’d been about to say in front of the Ranger. Five years in Boston had gone a long way toward improving her speech, but there were times when the first twelve years of her life came back to her with a vengeance. “Very stubborn,” she finished primly.