Judith E French (24 page)

She knew she shouldn’t let him get around her with a
few sweet words, but it was hard to resist him when he lay naked beside her. “Did you find anything?”

“Tracks of two horses and two men. It doesn’t prove anything.” He pulled her into his arms. “I care about you, Caity.”

The thrill of his touch made her giddy. “I know you do.”

He kissed her tenderly.

“If you start that, neither of us will get any sleep tonight.”

“I know.”

“You’re bad,” she teased.

“Wicked,” he murmured lazily. “That’s what I want. Can you be wicked for me, darlin’?”

His long, powerful fingers kneaded out the sore spots of her shoulders and upper back. It felt so good that Caitlin sighed with pleasure and curled her legs around his. They’d have to have it out once and for all about his bossy ways, but this wasn’t the time. “Don’t stop,” she whispered. “That blasted mule gets rougher every time I ride her.”

“Be patient, sweetheart. Gabe’s working the mare for you. When she’s ready, her gait will be like sittin’ in a rockin’ chair.” He nuzzled her throat and then kissed her full on the mouth.

Caitlin’s fingers strayed to Shane’s bare chest; he brushed the curve of her breast, and she made a contented sound deep in her throat.

She lifted her face to meet his kiss. Strange how they fitted so perfectly, how it seemed the most natural thing in the world to savor the taste and smell of him, to caress with her tongue and teeth … to feel such joy in his embrace.

Shane pulled her on top of him as desire shot through him with the intensity of a lightning bolt. His swollen shaft throbbed with readiness. “Caity, Caity,” he murmured. He
couldn’t keep his hands off her. Her skin was soft and sweet; her scent drove him wild.

No woman had ever been so eager, so willing to give of herself. He could hardly get through the days for thinking of her. Each night was a new wonder, and no matter how many times they made love, he only wanted her more.

The thought that she’d once lain in another man’s arms like this taunted him, and he pushed it away. Past was past; she was all his now.

She moved against him, brushing her body against him, letting her unbound hair trail over his face and chest. He buried his face in her warm, silken breasts and drew the hard nipples between his lips, then suckled until she whimpered and rubbed against his rock-hard phallus with her moist cleft.

He could stand it no more. With a cry of eagerness, he seized her hips and lifted her high so that he slid into her depths.

Having Caity on top and in control was a new sensation. And when he finally felt her reach a climax, his excitement was at such a pitch that his own release came hard and fast.

And later he held her in the crook of his arm and kissed her a dozen times and then a second dozen, and whispered sweet words into her ears until she fell asleep.

It was nearly dusk, and a light rain was falling. The sky was an ugly gray, and mist seeped up from the hollows to paint the landscape in ghostly hues
.

Shane could hear Caity, Justice, and the baby ahead of him, but he couldn’t see them. Derry’s voice pealed out, a rainbow of tingling laughter amid the somber, muffled thud of his horse’s hooves and the dull creak of saddle leather
.

“Wait up!” Shane shouted. “Caity, wait! I’m coming!” He dug his heels into his mount’s sides, but instead of quickening his stride, the animal slowed his pace and flung up his head
.

“Cherokee? What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. But when he looked down, it wasn’t Cherokee under him. He was riding Big Earl Thompson’s stallion, Natchez
.

And then he remembered. He’d insisted that Caity ride his buckskin
.

Caity’s and the children’s voices had nearly faded in the pearly haze. Shane felt a stark uneasiness settle over him. His breathing quickened, and he began to sweat despite the cool, damp air
.

“Caity!” he called again
.

No answer
.

He listened but heard no sound except the steady tread of Natchez’s feet and the drip of water off the overhanging tree branches
.

Suddenly, without warning, the air rumbled. Not the far-off crack of thunder, but a grinding din that seemed to rise out of the earth beneath him
.

Shane cried out and slashed Natchez with the ends of the leather reins. The stallion bolted forward out of the mist and into a clearing beside a nearly dry gully
.

Ahead, halfway across the ancient creek bed, Shane saw Caitlin on Cherokee. Derry rode in front of her, and Justice walked beside them leading his pinto pony. “Hey!” Shane called. “Come back!”

Caity twisted in the saddle and waved. She was smiling, but she made no effort to halt the horse
.

Then the ground quivered again. As Shane watched in horror, a flood of water surged down the dry riverbed, churning tree trunks, mud, and the swollen carcasses of cattle into a wall of destruction twenty feet high
.

“Caity!” he screamed
.

His warning came too late. First they were there, standing in the dust of an old arroyo course, and then there was only a sea of brown, tumbling water
.

Shane spurred his horse into the flood, but Natchez’s forelegs folded under him. The animal pitched headlong into the maelstrom, thrashed wildly, and went under. The black’s head thrust up, his eyes rolled white, and he whinnied frantically. Water streamed from the stallion’s nostrils as he tried to reach the safety of the bank. But before he could find his footing, an uprooted tree smashed into his head. He gave up the struggle and was washed away with the others
.

Shane ran down the edge of the sluice calling Caitlin’s name. Amid the swirl and crash of the deluge, he spied a flash of color. Caity’s dress? Heedless of his own safety, he plunged into the torrent and tried to swim to the spot where he thought she might be, but the tide of mud and water was too strong. It bore him up, tossing him like a seed pod in the March wind and flinging him up on the far bank
.

Wet, exhausted, and cold, he searched the creek bank for them, running, staggering, and finally crawling on numbed hands and knees. And at last he saw a still form sprawled at the water’s edge
.

“Caity?” he said. “Darlin’.” But when he turned the lifeless body over, he stared into Cerise’s accusing eyes
.

“You killed me!” she rasped. “You killed me, and you’ll be the death of her as well. …”

“No,” Shane protested. “Cerise, I—”

“What did you say?” Caitlin murmured.

Shane jerked away, feeling the give of the mattress under him and the warmth of Caity’s breath on his cheek. “Nothin’,” he grated.

“Cerise, you said Cerise.” Caity pushed herself up on one elbow. “I heard you say her name.”

His heart was hammering; his sweat-soaked skin was cold and clammy. “A dream. Just a dream.”

“You’re dreaming about her?” she accused.

“I can’t help what I dream about.”

“No, maybe you can’t.” She stiffened and turned her back on him.

He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t—”

“Leave me alone. Go back to sleep. Maybe you’ll dream about her again.”

Shane flopped down on his back, but he couldn’t shut his eyes without seeing the wall of water crashing down on her and the children, or without picturing Cerise’s dead eyes. For more than an hour he lay awake, then slowly eased from their bed.

Old demons rose to haunt him as he pulled on his trousers and his boots. Grabbing a shirt and his rifle, he slipped from the room and went downstairs and out of the house.

He tried to tell himself that it was just a dream. Only Indians and the superstitious believed in such things.

His uncle and cousin had died in a spring flood, and he had nearly drowned with them. It wasn’t his fault, and the dream didn’t mean that something bad was going to happen to Caity and his family.

Shane didn’t need to think twice to know what Mary would say about it. She would believe it was a sign of coming danger—maybe even death.

Shane had always believed in what he could see and hear and touch, but he wasn’t a fool. He had faith in Justice’s instincts. If the boy said someone had been watching him and Caity, then it was probably true.

He hadn’t told Caity that the horses who’d left the tracks he and Gabe had found were shod. That meant that they weren’t Indian horses. In spite of what Rachel said
about Thompson losses, suspicion pointed to someone on their spread. And that meant Beau or Nate, maybe both.

He had to find out who was raiding Kilronan and put an end to it. And if he had to kill Big Earl’s son in the process, it would mean a shooting war with the Thompsons.

He should send Caity and the child away, before it was too late. Shane didn’t mind risking his own life. But in spite of what they’d done to each other, and regardless of whether they could live together as man and wife, he would always love Caity. And her life would be too high a price to pay for Kilronan.

December wind tore at the barn door and sent dust devils spinning across the stable floor as Shane led his horse inside and closed it tightly behind him. Several stablemates nickered a greeting to the buckskin, and Cherokee blew softly through his lips in reply.

Shane yanked off his hat and smacked it sharply against his thigh to knock the snow off before it melted and ran down his back. He was cold and his bad knee was stiff. Damn if a man didn’t start feeling his age early on a cold December morning, he thought.

He’d been up before dawn after a relatively decent night’s sleep. The weather had been so foul the night before that neither he nor Gabe had bothered to stand guard. It was going to be a rotten winter. He could smell it the same way he could smell the storm rolling down out of the north country.

“Too nasty for outlaws,” he murmured to his horse. Damn straight too foul out for Beau Thompson to be up to mischief. There had been no trouble for weeks, and Shane had begun to hope that whoever had targeted Kilronan had moved on.

Snow had been falling since midnight—not serious snow, just large, hard dry flakes accompanied by a sudden drop in temperature. November had been warmer than normal, except for a bitter spell in the middle of the
month, but a bear Gabe had shot was fatter than normal, and his fur was thick and shaggy.

“Bad winter,” Mary had predicted when she’d seen and felt the pelt. “Raccoon and beaver have heavy coat, too. Bad winter. Best you hunt meat quick.”

Not one to argue with Mary unnecessarily, Shane had hunted. He and Gabe had brought in deer and ducks and geese. He’d traded a young oxen for three pigs, and he’d slaughtered the hogs as well. The women had been busy for days, curing and salting hams, making sausage and scrapple, and straining and boiling down lard.

Preserving the meat for winter was heavy, tiring work, and Shane was surprised to see that his wife did her share without complaint. If Caity was inexperienced at such tasks, Mary was an old hand. The Osage woman was so valuable that he’d made no protest when she’d insisted that they needed another girl to help with the chores.

Actually, Caity and Mary had taken Urika in while he was away trading for the hogs. He’d come home to find a strange Indian girl standing over a pot of boiling water in the yard, plucking feathers from a wild goose. When he’d asked who she was, the startled wench had dropped the bird, let out a shriek, and run into the kitchen to hide behind Mary.

“Urika good worker,” Mary had informed him. “Osage woman strong.”

Urika didn’t look as if she were strong or a woman to Shane. Urika’s rail-thin face was scarred with pockmarks, and her undeveloped girl-child body seemed too frail to pull her own weight.

“I can’t afford to hire more help,” he’d said firmly. “Feed her for a day or two, and send her on her way back to her family.”

Mary had smiled and shifted her pipe from one corner
of her mouth to the other. “No pay,” she clarified. “Urika work for food.”

The Indian lass had stared at him with huge, frightened eyes, and Caitlin had looked anxious.

“Please, Shane,” she’d said. “The girl is an orphan and half starved. Someone has treated her badly, and she has no place to go. Mary says that Urika walked for three days to get here. Surely we can manage another plate at the table. It wouldn’t be right to turn her away. Not when there’s so much to be done.”

“Mary told you,” he’d grumbled.

God knew the girl looked needy enough, he reasoned, but Kilronan was their livelihood. They’d none of them survive if he took in every beggar that wandered in. “Why can’t this Urika speak for herself?” he’d asked.

Caity had a ready answer for him as usual. “Urika doesn’t speak English. Just Osage. But Mary and Gabe know Osage. Isn’t that lucky?”

In the end he’d relented and let Urika stay. If the Indian girl had asked for wages, he couldn’t have kept her on. His coin box was empty. Anything that they needed between now and the time he delivered his stock to Fort Independence in the spring, they’d have to do without.

Shane shook his head as he led Cherokee toward the nearest empty stall. Women. Once they put their heads together and started to scheme against him, a man didn’t have the chance of an apple in a hog pen.

The barn was dark and shadowy with the windows and doors battened down, but it was a lot warmer than outside. Scents of drying hay, oiled leather, and horses filled Shane’s head, and he let the day’s worries slide off his shoulders.

He’d come a long way for an Irish boy with holes in the soles of his brogans. He had a willing wife in his bed,
land of his own, and a son. And unless he’d guessed wrong, Caity had been stirring up some of her soda bread for the noon meal.

Then the faint sound of something scraping against the boards overhead broke through his reverie. As his head snapped up, a few stems of hay sifted through the cracks and drifted past his face.

Instantly wary, Shane tensed and released his horse’s bridle. Cherokee trotted on, nosing up to a stablemate before shoving open the stall door with his head.