Only You (9 page)

Eve couldn’t see the stone maze, but she sensed it just over the horizon, an end to the mountainous terrain that had begun in Canyon City and had continued for hundreds of miles.

The stone maze was a land of awesome dryness where no rivers flowed except after storms, and then only briefly. Yet at the bottom of the deepest canyon was a river so mighty that it was like death itself; none who crossed its boundaries returned to speak of what lay on the other side.

Eve wanted to ask Reno how such a thing could
be, but did not. She would ask for nothing from him that wasn’t part of the devil’s bargain they had struck.

And the thought of having to keep that bargain—of giving herself to a man who thought her a liar and a cheat—was like ice congealing in her soul.

Surely Reno can’t keep on believing that. The more we’re together, the more he must see that I’m not what he thinks I am.

As Reno had all through the day, he turned and checked the back trail. At first Eve had thought it was concern that she would cut and run that kept Reno so alert. Gradually she had realized it was something else entirely.

They were being followed. Eve sensed that at the same instinctive level as she sensed the woman-hunger in Reno whenever he looked at her.

She wondered if Reno was like her, remembering the two rods touching, clinging, joined by secret currents, shimmering with unknown possibilities. She had never felt anything like it in her life.

Throughout the long hours on the trail, the memory haunted Eve. Each time it returned, it sent frissons of wonder and excitement through her, undermining her anger at Reno.

How could she be angry at a man whose very flesh and soul matched hers?

He felt it as clearly as I did.

He can’t believe I’m no better than my cheap red dress.

Surely he understands. He just too mule-stubborn to admit he was wrong about me.

The thought was as alluring to Eve as the possibility of Spanish gold somewhere ahead in the
wilderness, hidden from all other people, waiting to be discovered by whoever was brave or foolish enough to risk the dangerous stone maze.

“W
AIT
here.”

Reno said no more. Nor did he need to.

Eve reined in her tired mount, took the lead rope of Shaggy One, and watched Reno leave without asking where he was going or why. She simply sat on her horse and waited for his return with a patience that came from exhaustion. Around her, the last colors of the day drained from the sky, leaving twilight behind.

It was full dark when Reno reappeared as silently as a wraith. The Shaggies and the dun were too busy cropping the scant grass to bother calling a greeting to their trail mate. The blue roan felt the same way about wasting energy on ceremony; as soon as Reno allowed, she fell to grazing with the hunger of a mustang that had grown up rustling its own feed.

Reno waited for Eve to ask where he had been and why. When she didn’t, his mouth tightened with irritation.

“Are you going to sulk all night, too?” he asked.

“Why do you care what a liar, a cheat, and a saloon girl does?” Eve asked wearily.

She pretended not to hear the word Reno hissed beneath his breath as he dismounted. He began unsaddling Darlin’ with quick, angry motions. After he upended the saddle on the ground to let the fleece dry, he turned to face Eve with his fists on his lean hips.

“Beats me why women get upset when a man calls them what they are,” he said bluntly.

Eve was too tired to be polite, much less cautious.

“I can understand how a rude, blind, stubborn, cold-blooded lecher like you might feel that way,” she said.

There was a taut, electric silence while she dismounted.

And then Reno laughed.

“Sheathe your claws,
gata
. You’re safe from me tonight.”

Eve gave him a wary, sideways look.

“I may be lecherous,” he said dryly, “but I’m not a fool. As long as Slater is on my trail, I’m not going to get caught with my pants undone.”

Eve told herself she wasn’t disappointed that she would get none of Reno’s disturbing, compelling touch that night—or any night soon. It was better that way.

Only one thing a man wants from a woman, make no mistake about it. Once you give him that, you better be married, or he’ll go off down the trail and find another foolish girl to spread her legs in the name of love.

Yet even the echoes of Donna Lyon’s bitter advice couldn’t keep Eve from seeing Reno with his nephew, smiling and gentle, and with his sister. The love in him had been strong enough to touch.

Eve wanted to touch it. She wanted to make with Reno the home she had always dreamed of, the safe haven from a world that didn’t care whether she lived or died, and the babies no one could take from her arms and send away.

The realization of how deeply and in how many ways she yearned for Reno frightened Eve. Unlike the Spanish needles, she wasn’t made of iron. They weren’t hurt by the eerie currents that joined them. She doubted that she would be so lucky if
she gave in to her complex, unexpected hunger for Reno.

Eve dismounted in a rush. As she stood and flipped the stirrup up over the saddle horn, Reno’s arm went around her waist, pulling her close. Suddenly she felt the muscular length of his body molded against her from shoulder blades to thighs. A hard ridge of flesh pressed against her hips.

“Cold-blooded is the last thing I am,” Reno said. “Especially with you around to keep me hot.”

First his mustache teased her sensitive ear, then the lip of his tongue, then the edges of his teeth. The restraint of the caresses was at odds with his heavy arousal.

The combination of intense masculine hunger and equally intense self-control was both disarming and compelling to Eve. She had never known a strong man who had exercised any restraint when it came to taking what he wanted.

Except Reno.

Maybe the longer he’s with me, the more he sees I’m net a saloon girl to be bought and sold on a man’s whim.

The idea was profoundly alluring. Eve wanted Reno to look at her and see a woman he could trust and respect, a woman he could build a home with, have children with, share a life with.

A woman he could love.

Maybe when he sees that I keep my word, too, he’ll look at me with more than desire.
Eve thought yearningly.
Maybe and maybe and maybe…

If I don’t try, I’ll never know.

Table stakes. Five-card draw. A royal heart flush or a bushed heart flush.

Ante up or get out of the game.

As Reno felt the subtle softening of Eve’s body, both hunger and relief swept through him. He
hadn’t meant for her to overhear his conversation with Caleb. Nor had he meant to hurt her by rubbing Caleb’s nose in the fact that Eve wasn’t the sweet country innocent she appeared to be. But Caleb hadn’t left Reno any other choice.

“Does this mean Slater is far enough back that you’re not worried about being, er, distracted?” Eve asked.

“No,” Reno admitted reluctantly, releasing her. “I’m afraid we’ll have to have a cold camp tonight, in more ways than one.”

“Is Slater that close?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Lord, how could he be? After a day on the trail like we had, even our shadows were complaining about following us.”

Reno’s smile gleamed in the moonlight.

“How did he know where to find us after he lost my trail out of Canyon City?” she asked.

“There aren’t that many ways over the Great Divide.”

Eve sighed. “I guess the country isn’t as empty of people as it looks.”

“Oh, it’s empty, all right. I’ve gone months at a time in the high country without seeing a soul. Just the crossroads and passes get kind of crowded.”

“Not to mention human nature,” Eve said, stretching.

“What?”

“Even if we took a hard way over the Great Divide, if Crooked Bear has a woman who’s also keeping company with one of Caleb’s riders, Slater would find out real quick where I’d been.”

“That’s the way I figured it,” Reno said. “We’ve got an edge, though.”

“What?”

“The mustangs. Most of Slater’s boys are riding Tennessee horses.”

“Those horses beat everything on four legs in Canyon City,” Eve pointed out.

Reno’s grin was as hard as his voice.

“We’re not in Canyon City anymore. Our mustangs are going to walk Slater’s Tennessee horses right into the ground.”

B
Y
day Reno rode with the rifle across his saddle. By night he and Eve slept with the mustangs picketed around their remote, hidden campsites. As a further precaution, he scattered dried branches along the obvious approaches to the campsites.

Several times a day Reno would send Eve and the packhorses on ahead while he backtracked along the trail to a high point. There he would dismount, pull out his spyglass, and study the land they had ridden over.

Only twice did he catch sight of Slater. The first time he had six men with him. The second time he had fifteen.

Reno collapsed the spyglass, mounted, and cantered quickly to catch up with Eve and the packhorses. At the sound of hoofbeats, she turned. He saw the golden flash of her eyes beneath her hat brim and the intense honey color of her hair beneath the hot August sun. He also saw the subtle
lines that fatigue and worry had drawn around her curving lips.

When Reno reined in beside Eve, the temptation to lean over and taste once more her subtle blend of salt and sweet and heat almost overwhelmed his control. He scowled savagely at his own growing, unruly hunger for the girl from the Gold Dust saloon.

“Are they closer?” Eve asked anxiously, looking at Reno’s grim face.

“No.”

She licked her dry lips.

Eyes like green crystal followed the tip of her tongue.

“Are they falling back?” she asked hopefully.

“No.”

Her mouth curved down. “I guess those Tennessee horses are tougher than you thought.”

“We’re not in the desert yet.”

Eve made a startled sound and looked at the surrounding land. They were riding down a long, troughlike valley that was bracketed for its entire length by two flat-topped ridges. So little vegetation grew on the ridges that their layered stone bodies showed clearly through the scattered brush and piñon. As a result, the ridges took on a dappled sandy color that owed more to stone than to plants.

“Are you sure we aren’t in the desert?” Eve asked. “It’s so dry.”

Reno looked at her in disbelief.

“Dry? What do you think that is?” he demanded, pointing.

She looked beyond his hand. Winding down the center of the valley was a ribbon of water that was more brown than blue, and so narrow a horse would have to work to get all four feet wet at the same time when crossing it.

“That,” Eve said, “is a poor excuse for a creek. More sand than water.”

With a wry grin, Reno took off his hat, wiped his forehead on his sleeve, and resettled his hat.

“By the time you see that much water again, you’ll think it’s God’s own river,” he promised.

Dubiously Eve looked at the thin, dirty ribbon of water coiling through the dry valley.

“Really?” she asked.

“If we find the shortcut, yes. Otherwise, we’ll see a river that owes more to hell than to God.”

“Rio Colorado?”

Reno nodded. “I’ve known a lot of men who like wild country, but I’ve never known a man to cross the Colorado where it runs through the bottom of the stone maze, and come back to tell the tale.”

A sideways glance at Reno convinced Eve that he wasn’t teasing her. But then, it was too hot and dusty for anyone to have any energy left for teasing.

Even Reno was feeling the heat. The sleeves of his faded blue chambray shirt were rolled up, and the collar was open for several buttons. Sweat glittered like tiny diamonds in the thicket of black hair revealed by the half-undone shirt. Three days on the trail had left a thick, black stubble of beard that made his smile savage rather than reassuring.

No one looking at Reno now would have been misled into thinking him anything but what he was—a hard man with a reputation for coming out on the winning end of gunfights.

Yet despite Reno’s threatening appearance and the currents of sensual tension that coiled invisibly between herself and him, Eve had never slept more securely than she had in the past few days.

For the first time since she could remember, she was not the one who had to sleep lightly, listening
for every noise, ready to grab whatever weapon was at hand and defend those who were weaker than she was from whatever predator was prowling the night beyond the campfire or cheap hotel room.

Being able to depend on someone else was such a simple thing, yet the realization that she could depend on Reno kept rippling through Eve like currents through a river, changing old certainties.

Reno saw Eve take in a breath and let it out, then do it again as though breathing deeply were a luxury.

“Looks like the thought of going dry doesn’t bother you,” he said.

“What? Oh.” She smiled slightly. “It’s not that. I was just thinking how nice it is to sleep through the night without worrying.”

“About what?”

“About a bully or a lecher trapping one of the younger kids in bed at the orphanage, or about outlaws stumbling over the Lyons’ campsite.” Eve shrugged. “That sort of thing.”

Reno frowned. “Did much of that happen?”

“Bullies and lechers?”

He nodded curtly.

“They learned to leave me alone after a while. But the younger kids…” Eve’s voice faded. “I did what I could. It was never enough.”

“Was old man Lyon a lecher?”

“Not at all. He was kind and gentle, but…”

“Not much good in a fight,” Reno said, finishing Eve’s sentence.

“I didn’t expect him to be.”

Reno’s eyes narrowed in surprise. “Why? Was he a coward?”

It was Eve’s turn to be surprised.

“No. He was simply kind. He wasn’t as quick
or hard or strong or mean as most men are. He was too…civilized.”

“He should have lived back East,” Reno muttered.

“He did. But when his hands started slowing down, and Donna was too old to distract men with her looks, they had to come to the West. People out here were more easily entertained.”

“Especially once they bought you off the orphan train and taught you to ‘distract’ the men and deal the cards,” Reno said roughly.

Eve’s mouth thinned, but there was no point in denying it.

“Yes,” she said. “They lived much better after they had me.”

Reno’s expression told Eve that he had little sympathy to spare for the Lyons’ difficulty in making a living.

She hesitated, then spoke again, trying to make him understand that the Lyons hadn’t been vicious or cruel to her.

“I didn’t like what they made me do,” Eve said slowly, “but it was better than the orphanage. The Lyons were kind.”

“There’s a word for men like Don Lyon, and it sure as hell isn’t
kind
.”

Reno lifted the reins and cantered on ahead before Eve could answer. He didn’t trust himself to listen to her defending her whoremaster.

He was kind and gentle.

Yet no matter how quickly Reno rode, he couldn’t leave behind the sound of Eve’s voice, for it echoed within the angry silence of his mind.

They lived much better after they had me.

I didn’t like what they made me do.

He was kind.

The thought of Eve being so lonely that she welcomed
the smallest crumbs of human decency and called it kindness disturbed Reno in ways that he couldn’t name. He could only accept them as he accepted other things he didn’t understand, such as his desire to protect a saloon girl who had been carefully taught to lie, cheat, and “distract” men.

A girl who trusted him so much that she had slept better in the past few days than she had in years.

I was just thinking how nice it is to sleep through the night without worrying.

Reno knew the thought of giving the girl from the Gold Dust saloon that kind of peace shouldn’t touch him.

But it did.

T
HE
mountains receded behind Reno and Eve like a cool blue tide, leaving nothing but the memory of heights where water danced in crystal beauty and trees crowded so closely together that a horse couldn’t walk between. There was plenty of room for horses in the dry washes and on the spare plateau tops where the two of them rode now. There was nothing but room for miles and miles.

“Look!” Eve said.

As she spoke, she reached across the small space between her horse and Reno’s, grabbed his right arm, and pointed.

“There.”

Reno stared beyond Eve’s fingertip and saw only tawny, curving outcrops of sandstone, like the bones of the land itself pushing up through the thin skin of earth.

“What?” he asked.

“Over there,” Eve insisted. “Can’t you see it?
Those stone buildings. Is that one of the ruins you talked about?”

After a moment, Reno understood.

“Those aren’t ruins,” he said. “They’re just layers of sandstone shaped by wind and storms.”

Eve started to argue, then thought better of it. When Reno had first told her that they would be riding through whole valleys where no creek drained the highlands and no water collected in the lowlands, she had thought that he was teasing her.

He hadn’t been. There were such valleys. She had seen them, ridden through them, tasted their sun-struck dust on her tongue. She was riding in one of them now.

For Eve, the transformed land was a constant source of wonder. In all the years she had read the journal of Cristóbal Leon, she had never truly understood what it must have been like for the Spanish explorers to ride out into the unknown desert, following rivers that grew smaller and smaller until they disappeared entirely, leaving only thirst behind.

Nor had she imagined what it would be like to look a hundred miles in all directions at once, and see not one creek, not one pond, not one lush promise of shade and water to ease a thirst as big as the dry land itself.

Yet even more than the lack of water, Eve was astonished by the naked, multicolored, fantastically shaped rocks that rose out of the land. Taller than any building she had ever seen, drawn in shades of rust and cream and gold, the massive, seamless stone formations fascinated her.

Sometimes they resembled sleeping beasts. Sometimes they resembled mushrooms. And sometimes
, like now, they resembled the picture she had once seen of a Gothic cathedral with flying buttresses of solid stone.

Reno stood in the stirrups and looked over his shoulder. The mountains were no more than a dark blue blot against the horizon. He could have covered them with his hand. The long, dry valleys he had led the way through offered few chances of concealment, whether for him or for the men who pursued him.

Yet since dawn Reno had seen nothing move over the face of the land but cloud shadows, and very few of those.

“Looks like Slater’s horses finally gave up,” Eve said, staring out over their back trail.

Reno made a sound that could have meant anything.

“Does that mean we can camp early?” Eve asked hopefully.

He looked at her and smiled.

“Depends,” he said.

“On what?”

“On whether that spring Cal’s daddy marked is still flowing. If it is, we’ll fill up the canteens and make camp a few miles away.”

“Miles?” Eve said, hoping she had heard wrong.

“Miles. In dry land, only a fool or an army camps next to water.”

She thought about it and sighed.

“I see,” Eve said unhappily. “Camping by water would be like camping in the center of a crossroads.”

Reno nodded.

“How far is the spring?” she asked.

“A few hours.”

When Eve was silent, Reno glanced aside at her. Despite the hard miles on the trail, she looked good
to him. The shine of her hair was undiminished, her color was high, and the quickness of her mind hadn’t changed.

Even more pleasing to Reno, Eve shared his fascination with the austere land. Her questions showed it, as did her long silences while she studied the layers of stone he pointed out, trying to imagine the forces that had built them.

“How big is the spring?” she asked.

“What did you have in mind?”

“A bath.”

The thought of getting Eve naked in a pool of water had a rapid, pronounced effect on Reno’s body. With a silent curse he forced his thoughts away from the memory of her nipples drawn taut and shiny from the searching caresses of his mouth.

Reno tried very hard not to think about Eve in that way at all. It was too damned distracting. He was a man of unusual self-control, yet he had very nearly reached for her at dawn that morning, and to hell with worrying about the outlaws on their trail.

“You might get a basin bath out of the spring,” he said evenly.

The purring sound of pleasure Eve made did nothing to decrease Reno’s sensual awareness of her.

“Is it at the end of this valley?” Eve asked.

“This isn’t a valley. It’s the top of a mesa.”

She looked at Reno, then at their back trail.

“Looks like a valley to me,” she said.

“Only if you come at it from this direction,” he said. “You come at it from the desert, you have no doubt. It’s like climbing up onto a big, broad step, then another and then another until you come to foothills and then real mountains.”

Eve closed her eyes, recalling the maps from the journals, thinking of how different the land had looked to her than it had to the Spanish, who often were approaching from a different direction than she and Reno took.

“That’s why they called it Mesa Verde,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“The Spanish. They first saw the mesa when they were in the desert. And compared to the desert, the mesa was as green as grass.”

Reno took off his hat, resettled it, and looked over at Eve with a smile.

“That’s been bothering you for days, hasn’t it?” he asked.

“Not anymore,” she said with satisfaction.

“The Spanish might have been fools for gold, but they weren’t crazy. What something looks like depends on how you come at it, that’s all.”

“Even red dresses?” Eve asked.

The instant the words left her mouth, Eve regretted them.

“You just never give up, do you?” Reno asked coolly. “Well, I’ve got bad news for you. Neither do I.”

For a long time after that, nothing broke the silence but the sound of hooves striking the ground in a rhythm so familiar, it was like a heartbeat, unnoticed unless it changed suddenly.