When The Heart Beckons (24 page)

Astonishment slammed through him. She wanted
to protect
him
. He couldn’t quite comprehend it. A variety
of emotions bombarded him: amazement, wonder, amusement, and a kind
of awe. No one had ever wanted to protect him from anything before.
People wanted to hire him, to pay him to put his life on the line
to protect them or their property, to watch him square off against
their enemies and win but ...
protect him?

His hands captured her wrists and tightened
around them without his even realizing it. “I’m touched, Miss
Brannigan, but you shouldn’t have done that.” He spoke gently, and
gave her a weary smile. But his blood was heating up as he studied
the pertly enchanting face before him, and he lost himself in those
earnest, soul-searching gray-green eyes. “I’m going to have to face
Red Cobb sooner rather than later, and it would have been better to
get it over with.”

“Maybe you won’t have to,” she breathed. She
moistened her lips, and he resisted the impulse to stare at the
full, sensuous lower lip. “Maybe we’ll find Brett and convince him
to head home before Red Cobb has time to retrace his footsteps and
catch up to us. Maybe—”

“Maybe I should just go on over to the local
saloons and the other hotel in town and see if I can find Mr. Cobb
right now.”

“No!”

“Yes.” He let go of her deliberately and
stepped back. It took all of his self-control to move away from
her, to keep his tone level and his expression careless as she
stared at him with raw panic which wrenched strangely at his
heart.

“Have a little faith in me, Annabel.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do this, but if you
must, I’m going with you.”

“The hell you are.”

She dodged past him and grabbed up her
reticule. When she started to march toward the door, he grasped her
arm, took the reticule from her, and tossed it onto the bed.

“If Cobb sees the two of us together, he’ll
know that story you gave him was phony and that you and I are
working together. Then, supposing he does kill me, where will that
leave you? And Brett? Cobb’ll be on to your trick, and you’ll have
to answer to him, and that puts Brett in more danger. No, this way,
if something happens to me, and I’m not saying it will, Cobb won’t
know that you bamboozled him—he’ll ride on to Prescott in the
morning just like you planned—assuming he bought your story—and
you’ll have a nice head start. So you’re staying here and that’s
that.”

It made sense. She hated it, but it made
perfect, indisputable sense. She nodded miserably and watched him
stride to the door. How could he look so calm, so nonchalant? A
lump of fear choked her throat.

“Steele.”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

He laughed, and suddenly the familiar harsh
glinting light was back in his eyes. Even his stance was different:
alert, all concentrated energy and tension, a sharp-eyed menace
radiating from his powerful shoulders down to his lean, muscular
thighs.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,
sweetheart. I’ll be back.”

And he was gone, the door closing quietly
behind him.

* * *

Annabel paced back and forth across the
threadbare carpet. She turned up the lamp, picked up her derringer,
set it down again. She watched from her window, saw him cross the
street, and enter the Half Moon Saloon. Her heart seemed ready to
burst into a thousand pieces.

If anyone can outdraw Red Cobb, Steele
can
, she told herself. She remembered the ease and swiftness
with which he handled his guns, how he had cut down the Hart
brothers and those cutthroats in the brakes. But this time, facing
Red Cobb, felt different.

You know him now. You care about him.
That’s the difference
.

It seemed an eternity since he had entered
the saloon. She braced herself for gunfire, for the doors to fling
open and Steele and Cobb to plunge out, facing each other in the
darkened street. When at last the doors did part and his tall,
broad-shouldered figure emerged alone and strode up the moonlit
street, she gasped with relief. But a moment later she lost him in
the shadows and whirled away from the window in frustration,
wondering with cold sinking fear if she would ever see him
again.

The moments dragged by. There was no sound
from the street, only the occasional whinny of a horse, and now and
then blaring piano music and drunken laughter floating in from the
various saloons. Annabel went to the yellow-quilted bed and sank
down upon it. Her legs felt too weak to hold her. She clutched the
pillow to her chest, her fingers digging into the lumpy softness as
she said a silent prayer and stared at the unmoving curtains.

And waited.

* * *

The knock came nearly an hour later.

She threw open the door and saw him leaning
nonchalantly against the frame.

“No dice. Looks like Cobb made tracks right
after you sold him on your story. I checked every saloon and hotel.
He’s gone.”

“Oh, thank God.” Relief wreathed her face.
Her knees felt weak as she reached out impulsively and grasped his
hand, dragging him into the softly lit room. “I’m ... so glad. You
have no idea how worried I’ve been!”

Steele stared down at her slender fingers,
wrapped tightly around his. Then she saw his glance slide past her,
to the bureau, and knew he was looking at the photograph of
Brett.

Slowly, deliberately, he pulled his hand
free. “Well, now you can tuck yourself into bed and get a good
night’s sleep.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she murmured, suddenly
flustered. “I certainly can. And I will. I’ll do just that.” The
danger was over. Steele was fine.
Stop behaving so
foolishly
. Suddenly mortified at her own excessive joy in
seeing him, Annabel covered it with a brisk little shrug, then
stepped back, putting an extra safe little space between them. “I
remember that we’re leaving at first light,” she said quickly.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be ready.”

“You’d better be or I’ll have to ride
without you.” The warning glance he threw her was cool and
impersonal. He was already turning away, she noticed, with a heavy
heart. “Let me know if you change your mind about going in the
morning. I have a hunch things are about to start happening fast as
thunder and lightning, and when they do, it won’t be pretty.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

He tipped his hat to her, a mocking gesture
that made her ache inside. An empty coldness stole over her. There
was a wall between them again, a fortress-thick, impenetrable wall.
The knowledge left her desolate.

She closed the door and leaned against it,
searching for the reason she felt this way. She should be thinking
about Brett, about what she would say to him, how she would talk
him into going back with her, and whether or not he might finally
realize how much they belonged together.

They did belong together. She’d always known
that. Now it was time for Brett to realize it too.

So why was she thinking of Roy Steele as she
brushed her hair? Why did his cold, handsome image swim vividly
into her mind as she turned down the lamp and crawled into bed in
the darkness. Why did she shiver and long for ... for what?

His touch? His kiss? His slow, weary
smile?

You’re tired
, she told herself.
No, exhausted. And confused. Don’t think about it anymore
tonight.

Yet she lay in the bed and stared at the
shadows on the ceiling, trying to drown out the whispering voices
in her heart.

T
he canyons
shimmered with heat. Squinting up at the cobalt sky, Annabel
thought that never before had any sky looked as big and bright and
vibrant as the one stretching over the glorious red sandstone mesas
of New Mexico.

It was midafternoon and they’d been riding
hard since dawn. But as she and Steele plunged up the road that the
blacksmith in Skull Creek had said led to the Rivers ranch, a
strange exhilaration flowed through her.

Annabel had lost track of how many days
they’d been traveling. She only knew that the land was beautiful
and fierce, with its striking desert cacti, its white and purple
sage, its mesquite and yucca. At sunset the scattered mountain
ranges loomed like giant purple ghosts rising out of a mystical
dream. By daylight, sun, sky, plains, and mesa formed an
ever-changing landscape that took her breath away. A strange sense
of destiny had overtaken her, and at this moment was more powerful
than ever. She would find Brett—and it would be today. Within the
hour. He was guarding the Rivers ranch at the end of this road, and
she would actually see him before the day was done.

The journey with Steele had been strained
ever since Silver Junction. The gunslinger had withdrawn in every
way, treating her like a stranger. He spoke only when it was
necessary to communicate something to her about the trail, or the
weather, or when they would make camp. But he avoided looking at
her, and touching her, and even when they camped for the night and
settled down to supper at the same campfire, he kept all
conversation to a minimum and by his very aloofness forced her to
do the same.

Annabel wished she could read his mind. But
his impenetrable mask of detachment was firmly in place and she’d
found no way to breach it during any of the long, hard-riding days.
Even at night, when the stars bloomed like icy white flowers in a
sky of midnight blue, and the mountains loomed like dark foreboding
giants all around them, and the land rustled with badgers and
snakes and coyotes, wild things hunting their prey beneath the
ghostly moon, he removed his bedroll as far from hers as the camp
would allow, offered a curt “good night” and plopped his hat over
his face before Annabel could do more than murmur a reply.

Silence. Coldness. An empty companionship
like that of strangers sharing a train was all that lay between
them as they rode long hours and days into the heart of New
Mexico.

Yet, every time they accidentally touched,
when his hand brushed hers as they passed a pan of biscuits back
and forth, or when she stumbled into him, as she had once while
gathering twigs for the campfire, a hot current seemed to leap
between them.

This distance, this polite estrangement, was
much preferable, she told herself. Close contact with Roy Steele
was too much like tampering with fireworks—and besides, it made her
feel guilty—guilty about Brett, and the love she’d nourished for
years and years. It also made her feel as if she was not
concentrating enough on her assignment for Mr. Stevenson. She
needed to think, to be alert, and sensible and professional. If
she’d let herself, she could have given her senses over to the
breathtaking panorama of rugged New Mexican countryside, to the
sweet kiss of the wind as it rippled along the mesas, and the cool
beauty of the moon sailing overhead as she and Roy Steele shared
quiet nights under the stars. She could have exulted in the
magnificent beauty that enveloped her, in the awe inspired by her
surroundings, and in the companionship, however distant, of the
enigmatic man who shared her days and nights—but she did not let
herself. She kept forcing her thoughts ahead, to Brett, and to Ross
McCallum, trying in vain to work out the pieces of the puzzle.

“There it is.” Steele halted the bay on a
slight rise overlooking the sage green valley. Set far back beneath
twin mesas, an adobe dwelling seemed to rise out of the earth. It
was flanked by several outbuildings and corrals, and looked to be a
large and comfortable ranch. “Pretty isolated,” Steele commented.
“And it looks unprotected. Wonder why someone wants it so bad the
owner had to hire outside men to keep it safe.”

“And where are the men doing that?” Annabel
asked anxiously. “Where’s Brett?”

Steele was scanning the countryside, his
gaze studying the nooks and crannies of the tall rocks that formed
a ledge overhanging the road. He spoke to Annabel in a low tone.
“If it were me, I’d be hiding up there in those rocks somewhere,
waiting to pick off anyone making an approach to the ranch. Let’s
ride on down and see what happens.”

“Wait a minute.” She straightened her
sombrero. “I’m not sure I like this plan. What if they shoot first
and ask what our business is later?”

“Then we’d better hope they miss.”

He spurred the bay forward down a steep,
stony path following the contour of the rise, and Annabel followed,
her gaze trained uneasily on the gray crevices above. Steele was a
cautious man, she acknowledged to herself, and shrewd in the ways
of this untamed territory. If he felt it safe to continue, she knew
she should trust his judgment, but the unnerving sensation that she
was being watched prickled her skin and made her glad that she had
an extra rifle at her side. The fine hairs on the back of her neck
rose as she and Steele trotted beneath a particularly thick
overhang of rocks, and for a moment, the sun was blotted out.

Then a shot rang across the towering
boulders, echoing like cannon fire.

“Hold it right there! Don’t move or you’re
dead! We’ve got you covered!”

Steele yanked Dickens up short. Annabel did
the same with Sunrise, her heart in her throat.

But she wasn’t fearful now. She was joyous,
for she would recognize that voice anywhere. It was thicker,
hoarser, than she remembered, but it was the same. It was Brett’s
voice.

A shaggy-haired, dark-garbed figure emerged
from behind the rock directly above them. He had a rifle trained on
Steele as he clambered down, all the while keeping the gun leveled.
His hat shadowed his face, but Annabel could make out the familiar
lean shape of the jaw, now covered with dark stubble.

Roy Steele had obeyed the summons to remain
still. He waited, watching, as Brett clambered lower, finally
halting on a rock just above where the horses had paused.