Wild Burn (7 page)

He’d started thinking of her as Moira, and not
Miss Tully
, over the course of the day. When he had come upon the clearing where he had first met her, her name simply popped into his head, though that wasn’t much of a surprise. He’d stared at the spot where he’d needed to steady her, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. There wasn’t much to her, and his palms had felt large and ungainly where they gripped her slim upper arms. She’d been soft and so easy to sink his fingers into, and he wished now that he hadn’t let go. Almost as much as he wished he’d never shot her.

He had trekked past the trunks of tall evergreens and gray-barked cottonwoods until he came to the outermost edge of a small Indian encampment. It was a simple matter to remain hidden in the scrubby foliage and watch what was obviously Walking Bear’s tribe go about their daily business. The smell of tanning hides and campfire smoke filled his lungs as he crouched back on his heels and studied them.

He wondered why she cared so much about these Cheyenne. Death came as easy to one man as to another, and this land was rife with death and strife. The Sand Creek Massacre from November the year before had left the settlers in Colorado Territory angry and confused, but the murder of so many native women and children hadn’t deterred the white man’s fears in the least. And the retaliating violence in the Platte valley… It was no wonder that Indians in the territory were reviled and considered a scourge akin to smallpox, pressing men with Del’s particular skill set into the service of a government trying to reassure its terrified people.

The only folks he’d seen take issue with his work were men and women of the cloth, but Moira didn’t appear to be the religious type. Not with her saucy mouth and assessing eyes.

But as he had watched Walking Bear’s tribe move quietly, happily, about their settlement, Del was gripped by a need to ask her why. Why, why, why, and then maybe he’d know who she was and how she came to be in Red Creek and
why
she hovered in his mind like a damn wraith. There was no reason for her to be so firmly and immediately entrenched beneath his skin, the memory of her a wracking cough he couldn’t shake. He barely knew her. He didn’t want to know her. He shouldn’t want to know her.

Yet he did.

Observing what appeared to be six Cheyenne children of various ages playing together and running about had made him think about the children Moira was likely running herd on at the schoolhouse that day. In his few stolen moments with her since his arrival, he’d gleaned that she was a compassionate woman and averse to violence. As a man whose life was defined by violence, both done toward him and meted out to others, she was a foreign entity. Even the women he’d known back home were more than a little bloodthirsty.

Moira wasn’t a shrinking violet by any means. She’d handled her own injury with aplomb, and not only that, had rushed toward an injured Indian with no thought for her own safety. It made her brave and stupid at the same time, and Del suspected he admired that backbone of hers, more than was healthy for the sake of his sanity.

He wasn’t staying in Red Creek. She was a woman who, aside from the location of her cabin, reeked of propriety—if propriety had a sharp tongue and a quick frown and thousands upon thousands of countable freckles, that is. The Moira Tullys of the world required proper attention, like courting, and Del knew next to nothing about courting. He’d considered himself too young to seek out a wife when he lived on his family’s plantation, leaving the female company he sought out, for purposes of recreation, solidly on the more tarnished side of propriety. And damn, he’d liked it that way. Preferred it, even. The brothels of Savannah welcomed him with open arms, and before the war, he’d gladly fallen into those lush, oftentimes expensive limbs with nary a thought.

It had been so long since he’d had sex that the ache had grown dull. It wasn’t an insistent need so much as it was a remembered longing for physical release, one that his hand could fairly easily take care of when the time arose. Some of the soldiers he’d fought alongside had let lust follow immediately on the heels of violence, but Del had never been such a man. Death and destruction, and the adrenaline brought on by wartime, dampened his desires.

He’d been thankful for it.

But he wasn’t staying in Red Creek, and even if Moira Tully intrigued him, what conscience he had left wouldn’t allow him to start something with such a woman. Each time he thought of her, it was like a hot poker to the dead mass of his hardened emotions, and such an uncomfortable feeling that it had led him here, to the Ruby Saloon, where he waited for his whiskey to do its job and freeze him inside again.

In the mirror over the bar, he observed the patrons of the saloon drinking and carousing. There were more people here than he’d figured inhabited Red Creek, and he realized many of the miners must make camp outside the town. No wonder so many businesses were thriving in such a small locale.

A comically dandyish man in a bowler hat sat at a piano in the corner where a whore lounged against the instrument’s side, smiling sensually down at the pianist. She was a lush, dark-haired thing, with her curves encased in a vibrantly blue satin corset. As he sat at the counter and studied her reflection in the mirror, he watched her painted mouth open and a husky, heated singing voice emerged, lifting lazily in bawdy song. He liked her voice, liked her looks, and, judging from the expanse of creamy flesh exposed to the gazes of every one of the saloon’s occupants, she’d likely take his government money and lead him upstairs to a room.

That would be a good idea. He should definitely do that.

Still, he hesitated over tossing back the rest of his drink.

“Hey,” slurred the voice at his back again. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.” A finger poked sharply into his shoulder. “Turn around, turncoat.”

Del froze, whiskey and woman forgotten, not facing his patently drunk accuser. “Careful what you say, friend.”

A snort. “I ain’t your friend. ’Cause I know who you are.” The words came out tauntingly singsong. “So turn ’round, damn it.” He hiccupped.

Turning on the stool was easy, Del having left his long coat at the boardinghouse due to the warm evening Red Creek was enjoying. It afforded him quicker, cleaner access to the gun at his hip, which might come in handy. Especially if this fool brought up the word
turncoat
again. “Can I help you?”

“Not unless—” The drunk paused to let a low belch escape out the side of his mouth. “Not unless you’re leaving town.”

“’Fraid not. Not today, anyway.”

The man was fairly short, but stocky to the point where Del couldn’t discern if he had a neck between his balding head and his wide shoulders. His clothes were worn and gray, and a bright red handkerchief peeked messily out of the placket of his shirt, between two buttons. With a craggy face, dark, squinted eyes and pale skin, he looked much as Del assumed a miner to look. The man probably swung heavy tools for hours per day—his thick musculature certainly hinted so.

Good thing Del had his pistol. Just in case things got complicated.

The drunk lifted a mug of some dark beverage to his mouth and took a long, sloppy gulp. “Read about you, y’know. In the papers. You fuckin’ ran away after Sherman slaughtered your men. All but you.”

Del’s body felt strange. Tense and stiff. “I know what happened.” This fool didn’t.

But the man appeared not to hear him. “Your company…” He made a wet sound with his tongue, probably meant to simulate the ugly squish of death. “And it wasn’t even winter yet, right? Fuckin’ war didn’t end ’til May, deserter.”

Teeth clenched, Del fought for control over his flexing fists. “You fight for the Confederate Army,
friend
?”

The miner swayed where he stood as he shook his head. “Nah. Came out here for gold and missed the whole damn thing. But”—another hiccup—“it don’t matter if I’d worn blue or gray. Deserters still rank lower than cow shit. And then to…” He swayed again but managed to square his shoulders somehow and firm his jaw, unaware of the rage he was inspiring. “And then to start doing the Yankees’ bidding ’bout them savages?” He spat at Del’s boots.

Del snapped. All thoughts of using his gun faded as he lunged for the shorter, drunker man. His fist flew, connecting solidly with the miner’s cheekbone, but the man shook off the blow and grabbed for Del’s waist. The momentum took them both to the floor, Del landing squarely on his back as the man fell heavily atop him.

Scrambling to his knees, the miner backhanded him, snapping Del’s head to the side, and before he could bring his elbows up to jab his opponent’s vulnerable kidneys, the man’s ale mug smashed down on Del’s temple. Glass sliced into his skin, and he felt the hot slide of blood as it trickled down his cheek.

Thinking himself victorious, the man struggled to his feet with a rowdy yell, and that was his last mistake of the evening. Del dove forward to yank the miner’s legs out from under him, and as the miner fell with an “Oof!” to his back, Del knelt over him and gripped the front of his shirt, delivering one brain-scrambling punch, then another.

Just before the third, he yanked the man’s face toward his. “My past is my past, and not open for discussion. Especially considering I’m here to save your drunk ass from a bunch of scalpers. We clear?”

The man nodded, eyes glazed with pain.

“Good.” He landed the final blow on the miner’s temple, rendering the man unconscious. As he stood, heart racing and lungs heaving, he noticed the saloon had gone silent. Even the pianist and the whore in blue had ceased their performance to watch him in nervous question.

Reaching for the whiskey he’d abandoned on the counter, he tossed it back and sighed at the familiar, smoky burn as it warmed his gullet. He nodded to the patrons of the Ruby Saloon and strode through the swinging doors, out into the night air enveloping the boardwalk.

He stopped short at the sight of a wide-eyed Moira Tully, whose pretty pink mouth hung slightly open as she stared at him. “Mr. Crawford,” she breathed, hands twisting in the dark green fabric of her full skirt. Then she bit her bottom lip and swallowed audibly.

His pulse pounded in his ears. He’d been wrong before, absolutely wrong. In this case, violence absolutely begat lust. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to throw her over his shoulder and haul her back to his room.

“Miss Tully.” He barely managed the greeting, closing his eyes briefly as he leaned against a post in order to block out the sight of her, though there wasn’t anything provocative in the least about her attire.

It was just her.
She
provoked him.

“You’re bleeding.”

He opened his eyes and drank her in. For some reason, she was better, more intoxicating than the whiskey he’d downed seconds earlier. “I am.” He knew it, could feel it. His head throbbed painfully.

“Quite a lot, actually.”

He grunted, not knowing what to say to that. He should go clean up, he knew he should, but he wanted to stand here a bit longer and stare at her, provocative little thing that she was.

She cleared her throat. “I liked your right hook.”

At that moment, his hat, lost inside during the fight, came sailing over the top of the swinging doors and fell neatly between them. And thank God he had something new to stare at, because at those five short words from her cheekily grinning mouth, he’d already started reaching for her.

Propriety be damned.

Chapter Nine

“You have a choice here, Mr. Crawford.” Moira strove for a reasonable tone, but it was difficult, with her pulse jumping after the display of brawn she’d just witnessed. “You can either come to my cabin or take me to your room.”

“
What?
” he rasped, his eyes widening perceptibly as he leaned against the newel post outside the saloon. His chest rose and fell heavily with each harsh breath he inhaled.

“I said, you can either— Oh. Oh.” That had sounded…not as she intended. Heat climbed into her cheeks. “What I meant was, someone needs to see to your face, and it might as well be me. So…” she swallowed around the lump that had formed in her throat, “…it’s your decision where I tend you.” And she
would
tend him. If she could count one good thing from the war, it was that it had taught her how to fix up a body nearly as well as a trained physician. In the hospital in Boston, she’d turned tending into an art, though that art was sorely out of practice here in Red Creek.

The way he looked at her took the starch right out of her knees. Sometime during the fight he’d lost the hat that had just sailed over the doors, and hanks of dark hair fell haphazardly over his brow and into his eyes, but that didn’t stop him from penetrating her with an assessing green gaze designed to almost make her reconsider her initial statement and wish she
had
meant what he took from her offer. Almost.

She stood close enough to him on the boardwalk that she could feel the heat coming off him in palpable waves. The faint scent of sweat, of male exertion, hung between them in the cool mountain air.

Nervousness had her shifting impatiently, uncomfortable with her undeniable awareness of him. Unable to help herself, she reached forward and brushed the hair away from his forehead, and his sweat dampened her fingertips from where she accidentally touched his skin. She heard him suck in a breath at the unintentional caress, but he did nothing to stop her from combing the strands back with her fingers. His hair was thick and surprisingly soft, for all that it was a tangled mess after being under his hat all day, and she did it. She actually did what she wanted to do, with no worry of repercussion or threat to her safety.

She fisted her hand in the dark mass, fingers clenched at the back of his head, trapping his big, powerful self with a single hand.

And he
moaned
.

Oh, God, he moaned, and she could feel the shudder that rippled down his spine, originating from where she held him still. Without thinking, she took a step toward him, until the tips of her breasts brushed against his chest. With his every sharp inhalation, his torso met and melded with hers, only to dance teasingly away when he exhaled again. Touch, and release. Touch, and release. They stood together in silence as it grew ever darker around them, or so it seemed, their eyes locked and searching.