Sagebrush Bride (10 page)

“Sure you don’t want a lift?” he asked, watching
with ill-concealed amusement as she irritably swatted the chin-high buffalo
grass out of her way. They didn’t have much further to go, but suddenly he
couldn’t wait to see her expression when they happened along town.

“Thanks, but no thanks, Mr. McKenzie—I’ve
had quite enough of you, as it is!”

His shoulders shook with mirth. He’d never
understood how a woman could nurse her anger so long. “Cutter,” he asserted,
his lips curling faintly.

“Mr.
McKenzie!”
Elizabeth shot back through clenched teeth.

With every hot mile, her temper grew more foul.
The morning gray of the sky had turned to a cloudless blue, and the sun shone
down without mercy.

He shook his head in censure, his lips quivering
slightly with laughter. “Now, now, Doc, ain’t no call to be so rude. Just
thought you might like t’ ride, is all. You’ve been on your feet—”
Scanning the puffy blue heavens, he guessed at the time—”oh... a good
hour and a half at least.”

Didn’t she
know it!

Coupled with the fall she’d had, the walk was
nearly killing Elizabeth’s poor limbs. Her face flushed with anger as she
turned to glare up at him.

“Mr. McKenzie, why would I get on that horse with
you? So you can manhandle me again? Why should I trust you?” she asked without
turning.

Cutter had the good graces to flush.

Hell, he’d forgotten what she’d awakened to, and
felt suddenly like a kid who’d gotten caught with his fingers in the proverbial
cookie jar. He scowled, completely at a loss for words. He wasn’t in the habit
of squeezing women’s limbs while they slept, but he didn’t know how to tell her
so. And he hadn’t touched anything of any importance—not really, just a
leg, and an arm or two, he reasoned. He’d just wanted to be sure that she had
enough meat on her bones… for the journey. She seemed so scrawny.

The minutes stretched by as he contemplated how to
get around her anger, but any way he looked at it, she had a right to it, and
so in the end he decided just to drop the subject. “Suit yourself,” he
relented.

Elizabeth gave him a puzzled frown.

There had been a long enough stretch of silence
between them at this point that she’d somehow managed to forget what they’d
been talking about.

Suit
herself?

What in creation did the man mean by that remark?
Suit herself?
Nothing about this
miserable outing suited her in the least! Had she missed something? She’d been
so lost in her own musings that she’d shut him out completely... almost
completely. She was only too aware of the fact that he was right behind her,
his horse trotting at a snail’s pace. The way that he watched her unnerved the
dickens out of her!

He came alongside her suddenly, leaning forward in
the saddle, his forearm resting upon the saddle horn, his smile knowing and
crooked as he offered her the almost forgotten slice of jerky. Elizabeth hadn’t
realized how hungry she was until he waved it in front of her, but her mouth
began to water in anticipation. Still, she eyed the strip of meat as though it
were a pit viper he were proffering. Her stomach grumbled in protest when she
didn’t immediately reach out to take it, and she glanced up through her lashes,
wondering anxiously if he’d heard.

She found him still smiling—curse him to
high heaven and back! Oh, she despised him! Heaven help her, she did! Elizabeth,
who had never despised anyone as long as she’d lived—not even her mother
for leaving—really and truly despised him!

Giving him her most lethal scowl, she kept
marching, but he seemed completely unaffected by her dismissal, and that made
her all the more irate. How dare he be so nonchalant when she was ready to
burst with fury!

Why should she starve herself only to spite him?

Feeling his presence beside her like a thorn in
her side, she turned, snatching the jerky from his still-outstretched hand.
Shoving it angrily into her mouth, she ripped a slice from it as though it were
his head and she were snapping it off. Rage as she’d never known before
spiraled through her, making her vision darken at the edges.

If he laughed... if he so much as uttered a single
inconsiderate, heartless chuckle at her surrender...

A hundred terrible words lay teetering on the tip
of her tongue as she plodded onward, alternately ripping off and chewing her
jerky. How she managed to contain them was beyond her, but she did, though her
breast filled with mute anger. Had she been a mite bigger, she might have
yanked him down from the saddle to meet her fists. As it was, that notion
seemed so ridiculous that she merely cursed him under her breath. It wouldn’t
be long, she told herself firmly, before she’d be rid of him. And then, as far
as she was concerned, she never needed to set eyes on the man again!

Though why did that notion seem to bother her? It
shouldn’t bother her at all! She should be jumping for joy over the prospect...
and she would, indeed, the moment she set eyes on Sioux Falls.

She glanced back over her shoulder, catching his
arrogant grin—curse the man! Looking down, she noted, not for the first
time, that her poor clothes were covered with grass seed and stained with dirt.
Her torn hem dragged the ground behind her. She supposed she looked a sight.
Ignoring the “whys” of her caring over that fact, she pondered what people
would think of her, dirty as she was and being followed by a grinning idiot to
boot?

Would they
think the worst?

To her consternation, Cutter began to whistle, and
though it was a fine, clear tune, it didn’t even begin to improve her mood.
Rather, it grated on her nerves.

Of course
they would think the worst!

The odd tune was familiar, but she couldn’t place
it, and it provoked her.

Desperately she tried to ignore him.

She couldn’t wait to get home and bathe, and it
was that thought with which she consoled herself: a bath... How wonderful it
would be to sink into a warm tub of water.

A great believer in cleanliness, Elizabeth loved
her baths and had ordered a tremendous porcelain tub from the catalog, one of
the very few luxuries she’d ever afforded herself. There was just something
about treating so much infirmity that made one want to soak a lifetime in soap
and water. Besides, as much dusty ground as she covered making house calls, a
bath was almost always necessary at the end of the day.

It helped her to forget. Forget that her dear
father was no longer around to hum her to sleep at night. For a while, after
her mother had gone, she had been afraid of the silence. Not the dark so much,
because that in itself was never so terrifying. It was rather soothing, really.
Only the silence had terrified her, because in the silence she was alone. So Papa
would sit in his own room, one door down, and hum to himself. She’d never asked
him to, but he’d done so nonetheless. For her. Because he’d known—to
reassure her that he was still there.

Cutter’s whistling pierced her thoughts, and again
she concentrated on that bath—that warm, cleansing bath.

Her father, too, had believed in cleanliness, and
she was thoroughly convinced, though there was no real medical evidence to
substantiate the claim, that cleanliness was an integral part of any cure. She
always cleaned her instruments in strong water. Truth to tell, it was the only
thing whiskey was good for—besides getting decent folks into trouble.

This morning
was a very good example for the record.

She surveyed the landscape, fretting. Nothing!
Nothing at all seemed familiar to her! Surely she’d made enough house calls
outside of town that she should know the area by now? But to her dismay, she
found that she didn’t recognize a single thing. Not one thing!

Of course, she reminded herself, worrying at her
lower lip, it was hard to see much for the tall grass. Grassland was grassland,
after all, and there wasn’t much different about any one stretch of it to
distinguish it from the next. Right?

Yes, of course, that was what it was. She nodded,
as though to settle her fears. And so it was a complete shock to find herself
suddenly staring at a gathering of blurry, nondescript, and very unfamiliar
buildings in the immediate distance. Her first reaction was to reach for her
spectacles. Finding them gone was her undoing. Her eyes widened in alarm. How
could she have been so absorbed in her thoughts that she wouldn’t have noticed
her spectacles were missing? Halting abruptly, she whirled to face Cutter,
hands on her hips.

“Where are they?”

Cutter came up beside her, his brow lifting in
response to her question. “Where’s what?”

“My spectacles!”

“Took you long enough to notice they were gone,
don’t y’ think?”

Elizabeth ignored his goading. What business was
it of his anyway? She turned her palm up impatiently, certain that Cutter had
her spectacles somewhere on his person, and silently pleading with him to give
them back.

There was an odd glitter in his eyes as he stared
at her hand. Then his gaze flicked up to her eyes, considering her. They were
so dark, and fixed on her so intently, that for an interminable moment
Elizabeth felt as though he were looking straight into her soul, searching out
every dark corner to reveal it.

Feeling unsure of herself, she withdrew her hand
slightly. The moment was excruciating. She felt utterly bared to his scrutiny,
as though he knew all of her secrets somehow, every fear, every last little
ache in her heart. More than that even, she once again had the notion the man
pitied her, and a strange pang nearly overcame her outrage. Nearly.

A quiver passed down her spine, breaking the
spell. “Well?” she asked. Unnerved, she watched as he turned from her finally
and reached into the saddlebag, retrieving her bent frames. Without speaking,
she accepted them from him, quickly placed them upon the bridge of her nose,
then turned back to the cluster of buildings in the distance, fully expecting
them to have reconfigured themselves somehow. The images only became sharper,
more distinct, and her shock was audible. She gave a startled little cry.

She pointed at the buildings. “What is that?”

Cutter lifted the brim of his hat slightly, his
brows rising as he peered speculatively at the structures in question. “Why,”
he drawled with distinct mockery, his gaze immediately reverting to hers,
“can’t be too sure, Miz Bowcock, but seems to be a town.” His mouth lifted
slightly at the corners, yet lift it did, and Elizabeth had suddenly reached
her breaking point.

“Not Sioux Falls, it isn’t!”

“Never said it was.”

“But you... you did say... and I-I thought...” Torn
between anger and embarrassment, she groaned, and her cheeks began to heat
again. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!” she cried out in frustration. “Why
didn’t you say something? You knew I was walking in the wrong direction!”

To her alarm, he began to chuckle, and then to
laugh outright, and suddenly Elizabeth couldn’t help herself. She flung herself
at him, snatching him by the arm and yanking downward with all her might.

Never had anyone infuriated her so!

To her discredit, he barely budged from the
saddle. Instead, with his free arm he clutched at his side, hooting all the
louder as she pulled in vain on his other arm. Crying out in frustration,
Elizabeth pounded his thigh.

His laughter slowing to chuckles, Cutter tried to
seize Elizabeth’s wrists, to save his leg from any more injury. But in her
fury, Elizabeth was quicker, and he took two cuffs on the hand he’d held out as
a buffer.

Without warning, she found herself hoisted from
the ground, onto his mount. One arm imprisoned her while he simply sat there
and laughed into her flyaway mass of hair—another thing she hadn’t
noticed! Just how had her hair managed to come loose from its braid? Though as
soon as she considered it, she knew, and her cheeks burned brighter at the very
thought of the liberties he had taken with her. Good night! What else might he
have done without her knowledge? And how dare he make fun of her! She wiggled,
to no avail, trying for the second time in the same day to free herself from
his merciless hold.

“Heathen savage!” she accused him, mindless with
fury now. With her hands trapped by his embrace, she had no alternative but to
use her teeth to gain her freedom. She lunged at his neck, like a viper, but
the shock of his warm male flesh on her tongue made her suddenly bolt backward
in alarm. Or maybe it was Cutter’s quick reaction that pulled her away from
him. Elizabeth wasn’t quite certain. All she knew was that he tasted of salt,
smelled purely of man, a scent so mind-jarring that her body quickened wildly
in response. It startled her so much that she simply sat, staring at him in
utter bewilderment.

As he heard the words Elizabeth flung at him,
Cutter’s mirth ceased abruptly, and his eyes narrowed upon the mouth that had
nearly taken a chunk from his neck.

Foremost in his mind was the brief kiss he had
stolen the night before. And then his mind focused on that key word.

Stolen.

She’d never have given it freely. He made the
mistake of looking up, into her eyes, and a familiar twisting began in his gut.
Elizabeth was looking at him, through spectacles aslant, as though he were a
two-headed rodent. He’d felt the stab of prejudice many times before, but that
she should stoop to flinging insults caused long-buried scars to rip and burn.
His anger flared.

Why had he thought she would be any different? How
could he have allowed himself to forget? Because she was Jo’s friend? He damned
well should have known better. And it shouldn’t bother him. But it did. Because
for the first time in a long time, he’d allowed himself to forget, to feel easy
with someone. He’d let down his guard.