Merline Lovelace (2 page)

“Get…off…me!”

“Keep down, I said!”

He hooked a thigh over her flailing legs, pinioned her arms at her sides. Dizzy and now distinctly faint, Suzanne pushed out a desperate plea.

“Get…off.
Please!
I can’t…breathe!”

The spots had become a whirling kaleidoscope of scarlet and black when the weight finally rolled off Suzanne’s limp form. She lay sprawled in the dirt, her mouth popping open and closed like that of a landed trout.

“Miss! Miss, are you all right?”

She dragged in several precious gulps of air before raising her head. Her hat tilted crazily over her eyes, its decorative quail feathers tickling her chin. With a shaky hand, she shoved it back into place and met the worried gaze of the youthful prospector.

“I’m…a…bit…winded.”

The big, gawky boy reached down anxiously. “Grab holt of my hand and I’ll help you up.”

She struggled to her feet, still shaken but recovering swiftly. Pulling in another deep breath, she looked up just in time to see the red-and-gold-painted coach disappear around a bend in the road. Big Nose Parrott and his cohorts galloped after it in wild pursuit.

Only then did Suzanne’s whirling mind comprehend what had happened. That idiot of a wrangler had sparked a shoot-out and spooked the horses. Either the driver hadn’t been able to halt them, or he’d decided to take advantage of the situation and make a run for it.

Biting back the unladylike curse that leapt to her
lips, she righted her hat, dusted her gloved hands down the front of her skirt and managed a wobbly smile for her protector.

“You have my gratitude, sir, for shielding me the way you did.”

A furious blush started at the open neck of his rough-spun shirt and rushed into his cheeks. “I, uh, er…”

“What’s your name?”

Dragging off his round-brimmed brown hat, he clutched it between hands the size of small plows. His face glowed beet red beneath a thatch of gold-bright hair.

“Mathias, ma’am, Mathias Butts. My mam and pa call me Matt. But you needn’t be thankin’ me. It weren’t me what jumped on you.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No, ma’am.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “It was Mr. Sloan.”

“Mr. Sloan?”

She glanced beyond the boy to the two men some yards away. The rotund traveling salesman was vigorously brushing off his pea-green suit. Sloan was dusting himself off as well. A series of sharp whacks filled the air as he slapped his hat against his vest and shirt. His hair, Suzanne noted, was thick and unruly and every bit as black as the prickly whiskers on his unshaven cheeks.

As much as it pained Suzanne to be indebted to
a man like Sloan, he
had
thrown himself on top of her, after all. Pulling out the silver filigree stickpin that anchored her hat, she repositioned the feathery confection and stabbed the lethal sixteen-inch pin back through the heavy, upswept mass of her honey-brown hair. After a quick swipe of her cheeks with her handkerchief, she was ready to express her appreciation.

To her consternation, Sloan had apparently decided no expressions of any sort were required. Without so much as a word to her or the other two passengers, he’d turned on his heel and was striding back down the road they’d just traveled.

W
ell, for pity’s sake!

Folding her arms across her dust-streaked bodice, Suzanne called out to the departing gunman.

“Mr. Sloan!”

He didn’t turn, didn’t so much as check his long-limbed stride.

Annoyed now, she infused her voice with a hint of the steely command her stepfather used so effectively with his troops. “Mr. Sloan! I should like a word with you, if you please.”

The imperious call caught his attention. He swung around, his eyes unfriendly under the brim of his flat-crowned black hat.

“And if I don’t please?”

She ignored his rudeness. “May I inquire where you’re going?”

The scornful glance he aimed her way said she
could have figured that out by herself if she’d put half a mind to it.

“Back to the last stage stop.”

“But that must be a good four or five miles.”

“I make it closer to six.”

Putting up a hand to shield her eyes, Suzanne squinted through the shimmering heat at the road behind Sloan. Narrow and rutted, the dirt track cut across shallow gullies, over undulating hills and around the buttes that jutted up out of the prairie grasses like great red boils. The Laramie Mountains formed a purple smudge against the far horizon. Already dusted with snow, Laramie Peak towered above the rest. A few puffy clouds dropped gray shadows on the grass, and a hawk circled the otherwise empty skies. There wasn’t a curl of smoke to be seen, and certainly no sight of the sod shanty that constituted Ten Mile Station.

Suzanne spun back around. The Cheyenne-Deadwood stage road ran along the eastern edge of Wyoming Territory and on up into the rugged Black Hills of Dakota Territory. The hills were some distance yet, with many miles of rolling, windswept prairie yet to cross before they reached the rocky crags and deep gulches of Dakota.

Her destination lay to the north, where the Arapaho camped at a bend of the Cheyenne River. The need to reach her old friend pulled at Suzanne with urgent fingers. With every instinct she possessed,
she knew that Bright Water must cross the barrier between red and white now, before it was too late. She had to reach the Arapaho camp on the Cheyenne River before Bright Water’s band began its march to the Shoshone Reservation far to the west, had to convince her friend to take the other path that had been offered her. Suzanne hated to delay her journey. Hated even more the thought of retracing her way south, when her destination lay to the north. Frowning, she swung back to Sloan.

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait here until help arrives?”

“You can do whatever strikes your fancy, lady.”

“Really, Mr. Sloan, you know very well there’s greater safety in numbers. Surely you don’t intend to just walk off and leave the three of us to fend for ourselves.”

His gaze shifted from Suzanne to the other two men. “They’re not my responsibility. Neither,” he added with a careless shrug, “are you.”

“If you feel that way, perhaps you’ll explain why you shoved me into the dirt and covered my body with yours?”

His mouth twisted. In another man, that sardonic half curve might have been mistaken for a smile. On Sloan, it didn’t come close.

“I wasn’t being noble, if that’s what’s buzzing around under those feathers. I tend to get nervous
when bullets start flying, and just wanted you out of my line of fire.”

“I see,” she said in a tone of polite disbelief.

“I don’t think you do. The fact is, your rump hit me square in the chest when you tumbled off the step. You took me down with you.”

“I see,” she said again, more stiffly this time.

A nasty glint entered his eyes. “You might look like a good gust of wind would blow you halfway across the plains, lady, but you pack a decent weight under that bustle of yours.”

His deliberately provocative remarks didn’t faze Suzanne. Before going back East to school, she’d spent most of her youth at a succession of frontier army posts. The experience had exposed her to all manner of men, from rough-and-tumble troopers to the homesteaders, gold seekers, gamblers and railroaders who pushed westward to claim the continent. She’d long ago learned to recognize this particular species of rogue male. Sloan was the type wise men went out of their way to avoid and fools were fascinated by.

Suzanne was no fool. Nor was she particularly intimidated by Black Jack Sloan. She decided it was time to apprise him of that fact.

“If you think to discompose me with your crude comments about my person,” she said coolly, “your aim is off the mark.”

The glint disappeared. His expression went as
flat and cold as a tombstone. “My aim is never off the mark.”

“Do, please, spare me these dramatics. They neither frighten nor impress me.”

Hooking his thumbs in his gun belt, Sloan rocked back on his heels. His iron-gray eyes made a slow descent from her hat to her hem. Just as slowly, they rode back up again, pausing for what Suzanne considered an unnecessarily prolonged time in the vicinity of her bosom.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a tongue on you, lady?”

“Yes, any number of people. And you may stop referring to me as ‘lady’ in that sneering way. My name is Suzanne Bonneaux.
Miss
Bonneaux, if you please.”

Christ Almighty! Just listen to her! Jack couldn’t quite believe he was standing under a hot sun, bandying words with a dab of a female in bent quail feathers and a high-collared blouse buttoned clear up to her ears. Did she think poking her chin up in the air like that would take him down a peg?

Jack had never backed down from a challenge in his life, but chances are he would have walked away from this one if his blood hadn’t still been pumping from the bungled robbery attempt and subsequent shoot-out. Unhooking his thumbs, he sauntered forward.

“Well,
Miss
Bonneaux, I don’t give two hoots in hell whether you’re impressed or not, but you’d be smart to be afraid.”

Damned if her chin didn’t tip up another notch.

“Of you?”

“Of me.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but—oh!”

Quick as a sidewinder, Jack whipped an arm around her waist. One tug tumbled her against his chest.

A puff of trail dust billowed up between them, along with a tantalizing whiff of lavender, starched linen and female. He could feel the ribs of her corset under her layers of clothing. Feel, too, the soft breasts plumped against his chest.

He expected her to screech or claw at his face or even faint. He
didn’t
expect the flash of curiosity that brightened her doe-brown eyes before an expression of polite boredom blanked them.

“Really, Mr. Sloan, you’re becoming rather tedious.”

Tedious? Folks had hung any number of labels on Jack over the years, but this was the first time anyone had ever dished that one out.

“Maybe I should liven things up a bit.”

His smile mocking, he tightened his arm. She tilted back to avoid more intimate contact between her shirtfront and his chest. The movement canted
her hips against his, with results as unexpected to him as they were startling.

Heat fired in his belly, hot and swift and fierce. In two beats of his heart, he went hard.

Christ! He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said she packed some weight under her bustle. Despite her small size and delicate appearance, she carried a potent set of curves. Damned if she didn’t fit against him exactly the way a woman should.

She stared up at him, her eyes wide, her mouth pursed tight as a prune. Her lips were so close, so damned close. For an insane moment Jack actually considered dipping his head and taking a taste of her.

She must have read his intent in his eyes. Red surged into her cheeks. Anger had her stiffening up like a poker in his arms. Jack had just about decided the game was over when she slipped a hand into her skirt pocket. The sixth sense that had saved his life more times than he could count tensed his muscles. He knew what was coming, could have prevented it by grabbing her wrist and twisting it up behind her back. Instead, he merely smiled when she shoved a good inch of steel into his ribs.

Their eyes locked, his steely gray, hers a warm brown flecked with gold, like cinnamon sticks dipped in honey. He didn’t see fear in them, only a combination of determination and disdain.

“I wonder if you have the guts to pull the trigger,” he mused.

“You’ll find out if you don’t release me in the next five seconds.”

He was tempted. Damn, he was tempted! He could wrestle the gun away from her easy enough. She’d fight him, but she wouldn’t struggle for long. He wasn’t the only one whose blood was pumping. He’d seen the flash of surprise in her eyes, the all-too-brief curiosity. She’d wanted to taste forbidden fruit. Had thought about it for a second or two. Just long enough to stir up a fire in Jack and send hunger knifing into his gut.

He hadn’t felt that kind of hunger in a long, long time. He shouldn’t be feeling it now. Not with this woman, anyway. Hell, not with any woman. A man who pulled on his boots each morning fully prepared to hear harps or smell brimstone by nightfall had no business standing in an empty road like this, with no cover, while he contemplated kissing Miss Suzanne Bonneaux all to hell and back.

Stupid, Sloan. Real stupid.

His only consolation was that he’d made his point. The woman would think twice before she issued another mocking challenge.

Or so he thought until he released her.

Uncocking the neat little pearl-handled Remington, she slipped the derringer back into her skirt pocket. Two spots of color rode high in her cheeks,
but her voice was as cool as summer ice. “Have you quite finished making an ass of yourself, Mr. Sloan?”

She didn’t ruffle easy. He’d give her that.

“Near about,” he drawled.

“Good.”

With a flounce of her lace-trimmed petticoats, she turned to the two men observing the proceedings with slack jaws.

“Mr. Butts, have you a weapon on your person?”

The youthful farmer-turned-prospector gulped. “No, ma’am.”

“How about you, Mr….?”

“Greenleaf,” the salesman supplied. With a nervous glance at Sloan, he tipped his dust-covered bowler. “Benjamin Greenleaf, at your service, Miss Bonneaux.”

“Are you armed, Mr. Greenleaf?”

“No, ma’am, I’m not. All I carry on my travels is my case of goods.”

“Then I’d better take the point.” She swung back to Jack, all brisk business now. “The Colt strapped to your thigh carries considerably more firepower than my Remington, Mr. Sloan. I suggest you bring up the rear, in case your friends do decide to return.”

“I don’t call Parrott and his band of cutthroats my friends.”

“Do you not? Parrott certainly seemed to count you among his boon companions.”

Chin high, she swept past him and started down the dirt track.

Suzanne set a brisk pace, but was soon silently cursing her goatskin half boots. Cut in the latest style, they were designed to display a lady’s high arches and dainty toes. They were
not
designed for traipsing across the prairie.

She would have traded her shoes and every piece of the fashionable wardrobe she’d brought back from Philadelphia for some well-worn riding boots and a split-legged buckskin riding skirt. And a hat! A decent hat to shield her eyes and face! Her little puff of feathers might have come right from one of Goody’s Fashion plates, but what Suzanne needed was the shovel-brimmed cavalry cap she’d worn as a child.

Her pinched toes and unshaded eyes didn’t bother her half as much as the irritating way her thoughts kept returning to Jack Sloan, however. The man annoyed her intensely, and fascinated her completely. Really, when he’d narrowed his eyes and advanced on her with such deliberation, her heart had thumped quite painfully. And when he’d swept her into his arms….

Honesty compelled her to admit that he’d given her plenty of opportunity to retreat. Yet her in
stincts had shouted at her to stand her ground, that the only way to deal with a man like Black Jack Sloan was to meet him head-to-head. Or in this case, she thought with a little shiver, belly-to-belly.

The shivery sensation puzzled her almost as much as the man who’d caused it. Granted, he was handsome as sin, but Suzanne knew enough to judge a man by his actions, not the set of his shoulders. Unfortunately, Sloan’s actions during their brief association gave her no clear measure by which to judge him. She didn’t believe his assertion that he was just trying to get her out of his line of fire when he yanked her off the stage step. If that was indeed the case, he needn’t have thrown himself on top of her.

On the other hand, there was his reputation to consider. And the fact that he’d fully intended to walk off and leave his three fellow passengers stranded on the open prairie. He hadn’t liked being taken to task for that, she thought, or having his actions questioned.

Which brought her back to that moment in the middle of the road, when she’d looked up into his gray eyes and seen herself reflected in them. Another shiver danced down Suzanne’s spine, followed immediately by a ripple of irritation. Really, she didn’t understand this fascination with the man. Or the thrill that had raced through her when she’d thought he intended to kiss her.

She’d been kissed before. A rather respectable number of times, as a matter of fact. A banker’s son back East had coaxed her out into the moonlight on several occasions. Lieutenant Carruthers, who claimed to have fallen instantly under Suzanne’s spell when she’d rejoined her parents at Fort Russell a few weeks ago, had proven himself quite adept in that department, as well.

But none of those
boys
had sparked anything close to the heat that jumped along her nerves when she’d looked up into Sloan’s glittering gray eyes. Something deep inside her told Suzanne his kiss would be different from any she’d ever experienced.

A wild need to touch the fire, to taste the danger, had raced through her. For an instant, just an instant, she’d teetered on the edge. Common sense had pulled her back. Yet common sense didn’t account for the sting of regret she still couldn’t shake. Tipping her feathers down another few degrees to shade her face from the burning sun as best she could, Suzanne plodded along.