Wyoming Tough (15 page)

He relaxed then. He took the money in his hands and looked at it with pure fascination. He'd done so many things, tried so hard, to get enough to get out of this county alive. Now he had the means. All he had to do was leave, now….

“Were you followed?” he asked her at once.

She shook her head. “I made them promise.”

He was thinking, planning, plotting. The money would buy him a cheap car, and clothes and food. He could run to Montana, where he had other friends who would hide him. He could get away.

He turned back to her and picked up the shotgun. For an instant, her heart shivered as she wondered if he'd kill her now that she'd given him the cash.

“I won't hurt you,” he said in an awkward way. “I just want to get away. I can't go back to jail. I can't be locked up.” He stared at the money. “I hit my mother with a tire iron,” he recalled in a far
away, shocked tone. “I never meant to hurt her. I never meant to hurt anybody. I get these rages. I go blind mad and I can't control it. I can't help myself.” He closed his eyes. “Maybe I'd be better off dead, you know? I wouldn't hurt anybody else. Poor old Mallory…he was kind to me once, gave me a helping hand because Tank asked him to, after we got out of military service. Tank was my friend. I lied to him. I told him I was framed.” He sighed. “I wasn't framed. I meant to kill the man. I've done terrible things. Things I never wanted to do.” He looked at her. “But I can't let them take me alive, you understand? I can't be locked up.”

She grimaced. “If you gave yourself up, maybe they could get a psychologist who could help you….”

“I killed a man,” he reminded her. “And kidnapped another one. That means feds will come in. They'll track me all the way to hell. I can get away for a while. But in the end, the feds will hunt me down. I knew one, once. He was like a bulldog. Wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, just hunted until he found the man he was looking for. A lot of them are like that.” He took the other biscuit and the thermos of coffee. “Thanks,” he said. “For the food and coffee. For the money.” He hesitated. “For listening. Nobody ever really listened to me except my wife. I beat her….” He groaned. “God knows why she didn't leave me. I never deserved her. She got cancer. They said she knew she had it
and she wouldn't get treatment. I knew why. She loved me but she couldn't go on living with me, and she couldn't leave me. Damn me! I don't deserve to live!”

“That's not for you to say,” she told him. “Life is a gift.”

He swallowed, hard. He looked at her with eyes that were already dead. “My mama knew there was something wrong with me when I was little. She said so. But she had too much pride to tell anybody. Thought it was like saying there was something wrong with her. I could never learn nothing, you know? I quit school because they made fun of me. I saw words backward.”

She went closer, totally unafraid. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

He ground his teeth together. “I'm sorry I got you involved in this. Wasn't your problem. Mallory's a half mile down the trail,” he said after a minute, “off to the right, in some bushes. He'll be hard to find, because I didn't want him found.”

“I'll find him,” she said with certainty.

He started to the door, hesitated, looked back at her. “Damn, he's a lucky man!” he said through his teeth. He closed the door and melted into the night.

 

M
ORIE DIDN'T WASTE
a minute. She rushed out, mounted the horse and turned him down the
narrow trail that she knew from weeks of riding fence. Mallory was out there somewhere, getting soaked in this cold rain. God knew how long he'd been tied up. He would certainly need some sort of medical attention. It was almost freezing, unseasonably cold. She felt her heartbeat shaking her as she worried about not being able to find him. She could call for help, but if Joe was still around and watching, he might think she'd sold him out and he might try to kill Mallory and her in revenge. She didn't dare take the risk.

She rode down the path for what she judged was a half mile, and she dismounted, tied her horse to a tree and started beating through the underbrush. But she found nothing. What if Joe had lied? What if he'd really killed Mallory, and she was going to stumble over his body instead of the living, breathing man? She felt terror rise in her throat like bile.

Maybe she'd misjudged the distance. Maybe it was farther away!

She mounted again and rode a little ways. Somewhere there was a sound, an odd sound, like a crack of thunder. But it was just drizzle. There was no storm. She shrugged it off. She was upset and hearing things. She dismounted and started searching off the path again. It was slow going. She could hardly see her hand in front of her face, and the flashlight was acting funny. She
searched again and again, but she found nothing. There were trees, all around, but none with a man tied to it.

“Damn,” she muttered, frantic to find Mallory. What if Bascomb had lied? What if he'd killed Mallory and dumped his body someplace else? If a man could kill, couldn't he lie, too?

She swallowed, hard, and fought tears. She had to think positively. Joe wasn't lying. Mallory was alive. He was somewhere around here. And she was going to find him! She had to find him. She had no life left without him.

She rode a few more yards, dismounted and searched off the path again. But, again, she found nothing. She repeated the exercise, over and over again, fearful that she might get careless and miss him. She could get help when it turned light, but that might be too late…!

She went down the path to a turn in the road, dismounted and walked through the underbrush. The glow of the flashlight began to give off a dull yellow light. She'd forgotten to change the batteries! She shook it and hit it, hoping the impact might prop it up for a few more precious minutes, but it didn't. Even as she watched, the light began to fade.

“Oh, damn!” she wailed to herself. “And I haven't got any spare batteries. Of all the stupid things to do!”

There was a sound. She stopped. She listened. Rain was getting louder on the leaves, but there was some muffled sound. Her heart soared.

 

“M
ALLORY!” SHE CALLED
. Damn Joe, she wasn't going to let Mal die because she was afraid to raise her voice.

The muffled sound came again, louder, to her right.

She broke through the bushes wildly, blindly, not caring if they tore her skin, if they ruined her clothing, if they broke bones. She trampled over dead limbs, through patchy weeds, toward a thicket where tall pine trees were growing.

“Mallory!” she called again.

“Here.” His voice was muffled and bone-tired and heavy.

She pushed away some brush that had been piled up around a tree. And there was Mallory. Bareheaded, pale, tied to the tree with his arms behind him, sitting. He was soaking wet. His face was bruised. He looked worn to the bone. But when he saw Morie, his eyes were so brilliant with feeling that she caught her breath.

She managed to untie the bandanna that Joe had used to gag him with.

He coughed. “Got anything to drink?” he asked huskily. “Haven't had water for a day and a half….”

“No,” she groaned. “I'm so sorry!” She thought
with anguish of the thermos of coffee she'd given Joe Bascomb.

“I'll get you loose,” she choked out. She got around the tree and tried to untie the bonds, but the nylon rope was wet and it wouldn't budge.

“Pocketknife. Left pocket.”

She dug in his pocket for it, her face close to his as she worked.

His dry mouth brushed across her cheek. “Beautiful, brave girl,” he whispered. “So…proud of you.”

Tears ran down her cheeks with the rain. She bent and put her mouth against his, hard. “I love you,” she whispered. “I don't care about the past.”

He managed a smile. “I love you, too, baby.”

Her heart soared. “You do?” she exclaimed. “Oh, Mal!” She bent and kissed him again with helpless longing.

“I'm not complaining. But think you might cut me loose anytime soon?” he murmured. “My hands have gone to sleep.”

“Oh, dear!”

She ran around the tree, opened the knife and went to work on the bonds. His hands were white. The circulation ran back into them when he was free and he groaned at the pain.

“Can you stand up?” she asked, concerned.

He tried and slumped back down. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Legs gone to sleep, too.”

He was obviously suffering from exposure and God knows what other sort of injuries that Joe had inflicted on him.

“I'll get help,” she said at once, and pulled out her cell phone.

Lights flashed around her as men came forward. “Miss Brannt?” someone called.

She gasped. “Yes!”

A tall, dark-haired man came into view. He was wearing jeans and a buckskin jacket. He had long black hair in a ponytail and a grim expression. “I'm Ty Harding. I work for Dane Lassiter.”

“Hiya, Harding,” Mallory managed. “Good to see you on the job.”

“I can outtrack any of these feds,” he teased the other two men, “so I volunteered to help search for you. Hey, Jameson, can you bring a Jeep up here?”

“Sure. Be right back.”

There were running footsteps.

Harding knelt beside him. “I don't think you're going to be able to ride a horse back,” he guessed.

“Probably not,” Mallory agreed hoarsely. “Have you got any water?”

“I have,” one of the feds said, and tossed a bottle to Harding, who handed it, opened, to Mallory. It was painful to Morie to watch how thirstily he drank it, choked and drank again.

“God, that's so sweet!” Mallory exclaimed when he'd drained the bottle. “I've been tied
here for almost two days. Thought I'd die, sure. Then an angel came walking up and saved me,” he added, smiling at Morie. “My own personal guardian angel.”

“I gave Joe Bascomb a pouch with cash,” she told Harding. “I spoke to the sheriff about it before I came up here, so he knows. I can't tell you which direction Joe took. It was raining….”

Harding's expression in the light of his flashlight was grim. “There's no need to concern yourself with that now.”

“Have you caught him?” she exclaimed. “Already?”

“No,” he said quietly. “We found him. Sitting up against a tree about half a mile away. Stone dead.”

She caught her breath. Cold chills ran up and down her arms. That odd, high-pitched crack of thunder she thought she'd heard. A gunshot? “Dead?” She faltered.

He nodded. “Self-inflicted gunshot wound. He left a note.” He pulled it out of his pocket. “He addressed it to you, Miss Brannt.”

With trembling hands, she opened the dirty piece of paper. It was stained with blood. Joe's blood. It was only a few lines of scribbled writing.

She burst into tears.

Mallory pulled her close and held her, despite the pain in his arms from being in such a restrained position. “It's all right. It's all over.”

“Poor man,” she choked out.

“He chose his life, Miss Brannt,” Harding told her quietly.

“But he didn't,” she said through tears. “He had a learning disability and all sorts of psychological problems. But he didn't get help because his mother thought they'd say there was something wrong with her, too.”

“Good Lord,” Mallory said heavily. “If only we'd known.”

“We all have a purpose,” Morie said again.

“Yes, we do,” Harding said, surprisingly. “People weave themselves into the fabric of our lives for reasons we sometimes never understand. But there is a purpose to everything. Even Bascomb's suicide.”

“At least his mother didn't live to see him come to this end,” Mallory said. He tilted up Morie's wet face. “And speaking of family, we'd better start making telephone calls. My brothers must be out
of their minds, to say nothing of your mother and brother and your vicious, rabid father….”

“He isn't vicious. You'll learn to love him,” she assured him.

“Think so?” Harding mused, pursing his lips. “I've met your father. And I have serious doubts about that.”

She chuckled. “You don't know him. I do.”

“My loss, I'm sure,” Harding conceded. He looked up as the Jeep arrived. “Let's get you to the hospital, Mr. Kirk. You'll need to be checked out.”

“Hospital? I'm not going to any damned hospital!” he burst out as they helped him into the Jeep.

“Yes, you are,” Morie told him firmly. “Now sit back and shut up. We're saving you.”

He gave her a blank stare. And then he chuckled. “Okay, boss,” he drawled. “Whatever you say.”

“You just remember that, and we'll get along famously.” She batted her long lashes at him and grinned.

T
ANK AND
C
ANE MET THEM
at the emergency room. They hugged their pale, worn brother and choked up at the thought of how close he'd come to death.

“You let her come out after me alone,” Mallory accused them.

“You can thrash us when you're better. Honest, we'll break you a pine limb,” Cane promised.

Tank grinned. “But look what she did. She saved you.”

Morie beamed. “Yes, I did,” she agreed. “Despite the best efforts of my brother and mother and father and your brothers and Darby.”

“We're all relieved,” Cane said, smiling at her. “But she did what none of us could have done. Bascomb would have shot us on sight….”

There was a commotion in the hall followed by angry footsteps and a loud voice.

“Dad!” Morie exclaimed, because she recognized that voice.

King Brannt stormed into the examination room with flashing black eyes, trailed by a hospital clerk and a resident.

“Oh, Dad!” Morie ran and hugged him close. “I'm okay. It's all right!”

“Where is he?” They could hear Shelby's voice in the hall.

“Just follow the trail of bodies,” Cort answered with a laugh.

“Mom! Cort! What are you doing here?” she exclaimed, hugging them, too.

“We were ten minutes behind you,” King said, “but we couldn't get anybody to tell us anything, and they—” he pointed at Cane and Tank “—wouldn't answer their damned phones. I had to yell at a detective and a sheriff to find out anything!”

“You shouldn't yell at people. It's undignified,” Shelby said gently.

He glared at her. “It's justified when you're scared to death that your daughter's been killed!”

The resident and the hospital clerk belatedly understood King's rampage. They smiled and left. The resident was back in a minute, however, to check out Mallory.

“Exposure, dehydration, some evidence of bruising on the ribs and a dislocated shoulder, but the tests don't reveal any broken bones or internal injuries,” he told them. “You were very lucky, Mr. Kirk. Far luckier than your assailant. They've just taken him to the local hospital for an autopsy.”

“What?” King exclaimed.

“Killed himself,” the resident explained. He looked at Morie and shook his head. “If my wife had done what you did tonight, I'd have eaten her alive verbally before I hugged her to death. Does foolhardy behavior run in your family?”

“Yes, it does!” Shelby volunteered, pointing toward her husband and her son.

“Well, Mr. Kirk will be all right,” the resident said with a smile. “He just needs rest and something for pain and a little patching up. We'll take care of that right now.”

“Patching up,” Mallory muttered. “It's just some cuts. I get worse than this doing ranch work every day.”

“Me, too,” King agreed, approaching him with his hands in his pockets. “Got kicked by a bull two days ago and had to have stitches.”

“I got stepped on by one last week,” Mallory said. “Damned things do it deliberately.”

King stared at him. “You'd better be good to her.”

“I will,” Mallory replied quietly.

“You bet he will,” Tank seconded. “Or we'll make him divorce her and I'll marry her and be good to her.”

“She can marry me if she decides to get rid of him.” Cane jerked his thumb toward Mallory. “I still have most of my own teeth and I can do the tango,” he claimed with a straight face, because
he'd heard from Mallory about Morie's fascination with the dance.

“I'm learning,” Mallory protested. “It takes time. I need somebody to teach me.”

Morie pursed her lips. “I think I'm up to that.”

Mallory's dark eyes twinkled. “I think I'll learn even faster if you teach me. And there are a few things I can teach you, too.”

“There are?” she asked, with mock fascination.

“Yes. Like how not to go riding off into the dark looking for escaped convicts!” he burst out. “What if he'd killed you?”

“Then I guess you'd have to find somebody else to teach you how to tango,” she said simply.

Mallory let out an exasperated sigh.

“See?” King asked him. “Now you know how it's going to be. I've put up with it since she was old enough to stamp her foot at me and say no. It's your turn now.”

Morie just laughed.

 

S
HE DIDN'T GO HOME
with her family. She moved into the big house at the Kirk ranch, into her own room, and Mallory bought her a beautiful set of rings, but emeralds instead of rubies. He wasn't duplicating the Fortune 500 heir's offering, he assured her. They were engaged although he'd never actually asked her to marry him. Shelby was help
ing with invitations. The ceremony would be held at the ranch in Texas.

The night before they flew back, Mallory held her in his lap in the recliner in the living room, after his brothers had discreetly gone to bed. He kissed her hungrily.

“I'm starving,” he groaned as his hands found their way under her flimsy blouse and molded the soft skin. “I've never been so hungry in all my life.”

She smiled under the warm press of his mouth. “Me, either.”

“But we're going to wait anyway.”

She laughed. “Yes.”

He lifted his head. He was breathing hard. “Remind me again why we're going to do that, when nobody else does?”

“Just because the whole world's doing it, doesn't make it right in the view of people of faith,” she replied simply. “I want a wedding night. A real one. Not an after-the-fact one that just comes after the wedding ceremony. I want oceans of lace in the gown I choose, the excitement of the ceremony and the reception, and the anticipation of how wonderful it's going to be during the night ahead. There's only one first time. Mine is going to be exactly the way I want it. Period.”

He sighed. “Principles are very cumbersome sometimes.”

She leaned forward and nibbled his lower lip. “You'll be happy you waited.”

“Are you sure about that?” he mused.

She nodded. “Positively.”

“All right. I'll have a cold shower and a colder beer and go to bed.”

“Good man.”

He made a face. “Not willingly.”

“You're a good man,” she disagreed. “And I'll be very proud to be your wife.”

He smiled. “My beautiful Morena,” he whispered. “Married to the ugliest tough man in Wyoming.”

“Liar,” she chided. “You're the most gorgeous man alive to me.”

His eyebrows arched. “Me?”

“You. It isn't the way you look that makes you gorgeous. It's the man you are.”

He flushed.

She grinned. She kissed him again and got to her feet. “We leave first thing in the morning. Mavie and Darby have to come, too, you know.”

“They know, too. They're packed already.”

She was somber for a moment. “I'm really sorry about Gelly. They say she'll probably do twenty years if they convict her.”

“I'm sorry I blamed you,” he replied, hugging her close. He sighed. “I had a close call there. She really had me with blinders on.”

“You woke up in time, though. That's what counts.”

“I suppose it does.”

 

T
HE WEDDING WAS THE BIGGEST
event Branntville could remember since Shelby Kane married King Brannt. The guest list was incredible. It included famous movie stars and television newsmen, sports stars, politicians and even European royalty.

Daryl was on the guest list. He had come by earlier to congratulate them, and to tell Morena he was happy for her. He hadn't been offended that Morena sent the rings back instead of returning them herself, especially when he knew what she'd risked to save Mallory's life. He was just happy that she was safe.

However, he added ruefully, now that he was no longer engaged, his enthusiastic parents were once again offering him as an entrée to any eligible young woman. He was resigned, he told her, to being hunted. But who knew, they might find him someone really nice. Like his friend Morena. Mallory stood by, not very patiently, while they spoke. But Daryl shook hands with him and after a few minutes, they were all smiling.

As they settled into the wedding ceremony, Morena, in a designer gown that one of Shelby's former colleagues had made up for her, was radiant and so much in love that she seemed to glow.
Her black hair, festooned with pale white pearl flowers, was loose around her shoulders under a veil of illusion with pearl highlights that covered her face. Her gown was traditional, with puff sleeves and a keyhole neckline, a long train…and it was accented with imported Belgian lace. Her jewelry was some of the finer pieces from her mother's collection along with a borrowed jeweled hair clasp from her shy maid of honor, Odalie Everett, who walked down the aisle tall and proud on the arm of Cane Kirk to stand with Mallory, pointedly ignoring Cort Brannt along the way.

The organ sounded the “Wedding March” as Morena walked slowly down the aisle of the ranch chapel to Mallory Kirk, who was standing at the altar with both his brothers as best man. She carried a bouquet of white and yellow roses tied with yellow ribbon. She looked at Mallory and almost tripped at the expression in his dark, loving eyes.
What a long way we've come,
she thought.

She looked up at him and the rest of the ceremony went by so quickly that she almost missed it. She let him put the ring on her finger, said the appropriate words and peered up at her new husband as he lifted the fingertip veil from her face and saw her for the first time as a wife. It was an old, beautiful tradition that both had looked forward to, in a time when tradition was routinely trampled and ridiculed by the world at large.

“My beautiful wife,” he whispered, and smiled as he bent to kiss her with tender reverence.

She kissed him back, sighing as if she had the world in her arms. And she did.

The reception was fun. They fed each other cake, posed for pictures for the press and the photographer who was documenting the wedding, and danced to the live orchestra playing contemporary tunes.

“What a long way we've come,” Mallory murmured into her ear as he waltzed her around the room.

“Funny, I was thinking that when we were standing at the altar,” she exclaimed.

“Reading each other's minds already,” he teased.

She nodded. Her eyes searched his. The electricity between them arced like a live current. She caught her breath at the intensity of feeling there.

“Not yet,” she whispered.

He nodded, but his eyes never left hers. “Not yet.”

 

T
WO LONG HOURS LATER
, they climbed into the limousine that was taking them to San Antonio, where they were spending their wedding night. The next day, they were off to the Caribbean, to a private island owned by a friend who was loaning them his estate for a week. It would be a dream honeymoon. Nothing to do but learn about each
other and lie in the sun. Morena was looking forward to it.

They checked in to the suite Mallory had reserved. The bellboy was tipped. The door was locked. The phone was unplugged. Mallory took Morena by the waist and looked into her eyes for so long that she gasped with the feeling that passed between them.

He reached out with a long forefinger and traced a path around a nipple which quickly became erect. She gasped.

“I've dreamed about this for weeks,” he whispered.

She nodded, breathless. “So have I.”

He bent and nuzzled his nose against hers. The pressure of his finger increased, teasing and withdrawing. “You made me wait,” he whispered with patient amusement. “Now I'm going to make you wait.”

His mouth opened on hers. He kissed her slowly, with a mastery she was only just beginning to recognize. His big hands were deft and sure as he peeled her out of the exquisite dress and the slip and bra underneath. He kissed his way down her trembling body to her panty line as he eased the last flimsy scraps of clothing from her. His mouth opened on her flat belly and she cried out as his hands moved lower.

He let her go long enough to turn down the
bedcovers. He lifted her, kissed her tenderly and laid her on the cool sheets. His eyes made a meal of her nudity as his hands went to his coat. He removed it, and then the tie. He dropped them onto a chair and smiled as his hands worked buttons on his shirt to disclose a broad, muscular chest covered with thick, curling black hair.

She thought about how that was going to feel against her bare breasts and she moved, helpless, on the sheets, shivering a little at the intensity of his gaze.

He chuckled softly. “Anticipation is fun,” he murmured.

“Says you,” she teased, breathless.

He removed his shoes and socks, his belt, his trousers. Then, slowly, the black boxer shorts he fancied.

She stared at him with red cheeks. She'd seen photographs. Most women had, at some point, even if it was only by looking over a classmate's shoulder at a magazine. But she hadn't dreamed that men looked so, so…

As she looked, he began to swell from the pleasure of her rapt gaze, and she did gasp.

He eased down beside her on the bed. “As you might have guessed,” he whispered in a voice gone husky with desire, “I'm a little better endowed than most men. But I won't hurt you. I promise.”

“I'm not afraid.”

“Bosh.” His mouth smoothed over her firm, pretty little breasts. “Of course you are. It's the first time.”

“Of course I am,” she agreed huskily. “You don't mind…?”

He lifted his head and looked at her with open shock. “What?”

“I read this article,” she said. “Some men said they wouldn't touch a virgin because they didn't want to have to worry about complications…”

“They did?” His hand slid down her belly and he smiled as she tried to withdraw when he touched her. “Easy,” he whispered. “This is part of it. Don't be embarrassed. It's natural, what you're feeling.”