Adrienne deWolfe (29 page)

Wes knelt in front of her, rocking back on his heels. He steeled himself against the pressing urge to comfort her with touches, as he had earlier, after the shooting. Her face still looked pale against the honeyed length of her waist-long braid, and the hollows beneath her eyes were shadowed by unshed tears.

For her to come alone to him in the middle of the night, she must have been badly shaken by the shootout.

The way she'd shooed him off with her usual stiff-backed practicality, he'd figured she'd gotten over the ordeal within a minute or two of the smoke's clearing. At the time, he'd marveled that she could be so nonchalant, but then he'd hoped it was a good sign, indicating she might just as quickly get over his confession.

"You're not alone anymore, Rorie," he said gently, "and neither is Shae. I told you my guns are for your protection. I told Hannibal Dukker, too, but I reckon Creed just had to find out the hard way."

She grew even paler. "Wes, you shouldn't have. You don't know what Hannibal's capable of, and with his badge to protect him—"

"He won't be wearing that badge for long. Not if I have my way."

Panic stole across her features. "What do you mean? You're not going to—to—"

"Shoot him like the cur dog he is?" He indulged in a wan smile. "I can't say the thought hasn't crossed my mind a time or two. But no, I don't put myself above the law. I told you I'm square, Rorie. And well..." He sighed, trying to keep the disappointment from his voice. "I was kind of hoping you believed me."

"I do," she said quickly, a spot of color returning to her cheeks. "It's just that I don't want... I mean, you could be..."

Her swallow was audible. For a moment, her eyes became so bright and luminous, he wondered how she managed to stave off the fresh onslaught of tears.

"Wes, please promise me you won't cross him. You could wind up dead, and I couldn't bear that... knowing it was because of me," she added tremulously.

His heart turned over, filling him with a giddy, tingly elation. Her plea was the sweetest thing he'd ever heard. An angel's song couldn't have lifted his spirits half as high.

"Now Rorie, don't you go worrying about me," he said, his voice gruff with pleasure. "I'm more than a match for that two-legged cockroach."

"No!"

She grabbed his shoulders. The strength in her hands surprised him, but what stunned him even more was the stark, wild terror he saw in her eyes.

"Don't talk crazy! Don't go gunning for him! He'll shoot you in the back a surely as night turns to day. Leave him to someone who knows about killing and bushwhacking. Leave him to one of his own kind—one of those awful, hateful Rangers."

Wes sucked in his breath. If she'd hit his head with a hammer, she couldn't have laid him so low.

"Rorie..." Easing free of her grasp, he gently returned her hands to her lap. "Why don't you like Rangers?"

She looked at him as if he were daft. "Because they're cold-blooded, and vicious, and dishonest, and—"

He held up his hand, fending off the words that slammed into his gut like blows. "Hold on a minute. I think you're confusing Rangers with bounty hunters. Or maybe even with the scum they bring in."

She gave a watery sniff. "As far as I'm concerned, there isn't much difference. They're all killers. And none of them has the morals of a scalawag."

He stiffened. He couldn't help it. He wasn't proud that he'd snuffed out a few men's lives, but he'd never killed a man who hadn't drawn on him first. Ever. "Those are pretty strong accusations. Do you have some evidence to back them up?"

She blinked incredulously at him. "Of course I do. I don't spread idle gossip."

"Well..." His heart kicked hard, but he had to know. Curiosity had been burning in his gut like a hot brick ever since she'd first denounced the Ranger force. "Let's hear it."

Her chin rose a notch, trembled, then sank again, falling nearly to her chest. "It's not easy for me to talk about," she admitted finally, knotting her fingers and averting her eyes. "It involves Topher. And Topher's mother, Christine."

He held his tongue and waited out her silence.

"She was barely eighteen," she began, more bitterly this time. "She was only a child; she didn't know any better! But that—that ranging lothario, Bill Malone, knew. He knew, and he didn't care."

"Was Christine some relation of yours?"

"No." She drew a steadying breath. "You'd think she was, wouldn't you, the way I carry on so? I guess I act this way because"—she smiled mirthlessly—"the first time I met Jarrod, I was only eighteen. And more naive than a babe. If I'd known Christine, maybe I could have helped her. God knows, I would have stopped her. She had her whole life ahead of her, and it breaks my heart to think that she... that she gave up the way she did."

Something noxious curled inside Wes's stomach. "Gave up?" he repeated uneasily. "What do you mean?"

Rorie's jaw grew harder. "Since Christine came from a good family, they put pressure on Malone to marry her. He promised he would, but his captain got wind of the affair—those Rangers all stick together, you know—and a team of them arrived with urgent orders for Malone to ride to San Antonio.

"A year or so passed. A peddler man rode into town one spring and started talking about the things he'd seen in Bexar County. He told Christine he'd met a Ranger there named Bill Malone, and that this Malone had a wife and a brand new son. I guess the humiliation must have been too much for Christine, because that night..." Rorie's voice trailed off, and she shuddered. "That night, she shot herself."

"Jesus," Wes choked.

"That law-abiding Ranger killed Christine as surely as if he'd put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger."

Wes ran rough fingers through his hair. "Maybe Malone didn't know—"

"About Topher?" Rorie's laugh was short and harsh. "Why else do you think he rode out of town like the devil's own pitchfork was prodding him? But you know what the worst part is?" She raised her eyes to his, and a single, silvery tear spilled down her cheek. "He denied up and down that Topher was his son. He wanted nothing to do with the boy. Christine's relatives were too humiliated by the scandal to want Topher either, so they packed him off to an orphanage. And—"

Her voice broke. He slipped a hand over hers, trying to ignore his guilt when her fingers wrapped around his, trying not to feel like the cowardly bastard he was as his long overdue confession shriveled up and dried on his tongue.

"And I would have died to give life to that child," she whispered hoarsely. "To any child. I—I can't have sons, Wes. Or daughters. That's why Jarrod left me."

The words tumbled out in an anguished rush, stunning Rorie as much as they'd clearly shocked Wes. She had never meant to reveal her shameful affliction, certainly not to a man who would never consider marrying her.

When she saw his wide-eyed amazement, she couldn't bear to watch what might follow: pity, revulsion, contempt. Ethan's forthright discomfort she'd been able to endure. He was her suitor, and he deserved to know he wasn't courting any bargain. But Wes...

Oh, God, why did it hurt so much to realize he would never look at her again with hunger in his eyes?

"Rorie—"

She choked on a sob, unable to listen to the platitudes he would surely use to fill the awkward moment. Turning blindly, she tried to rise, to grope past her tears to the door, but his arms pulled her back, sealing her in a hard, fierce embrace that left her aching for more.

"Don't go," he said in a strangely thickened whisper. "Don't push me away."

"But I—"

"Shh." He caught her chin, urging her eyes to meet his. Some dark, pained emotion glistened there, one that looked surprisingly close to sorrow. "There's no way I'm letting you walk out that door to do your hurting alone."

She blinked as tears blurred his image. She had never expected him to care, much less understand, and a flood of feeling broke its dam, crashing through her in breakers of grief. First her resistance crumbled, then her knees. He swept her up, carrying her as effortlessly as if she were a doll made of rags.

Lowering her to his bedroll, he cradled her on his lap, rocking her as she clung to his neck. He let her tears spill in salty rivulets to the hollow of his throat, his big hands kneading the knotted muscles of her back.

She wasn't sure when her braid unraveled, or when his fingers began sliding through the weighty mass of her hair. She knew only that the gentle repetitions of his strokes were bringing her a comfort she hadn't known since early childhood.

They were bringing her something else too. As her tears dried, new feelings pooled in the secret places of her body. He pushed a strand of hair from her forehead. The touch of his fingers was followed by the lingering whisper of his breath. Slowly, hesitantly, his head lowered. He pressed his lips to her temple in a feather-soft kiss. She felt her heart leap as his other arm tightened, gathering her closer. When his lips touched the ticklish hollow of her ear, shivers tiptoed down her spine, leaving her shaken, breathless.

His palm skimmed her side, slowing almost wistfully as it brushed the exposed curve of her breast. His heart—or perhaps it was hers—leaped hard against her ribs, and when his cheek grazed hers, leaving a trace of moisture there, she dared to turn her head and gaze at him. She saw then the proof of what she'd suspected all along.

He'd shed a tear or two with her.

In that fraction of time, with his gaze so full of caring, some soul part of her stirred. It grew and expanded, bridging their worlds of books and guns, age and background, to bind their hearts in faith and trust. It was the most profoundly moving, spiritual moment she'd ever known.

Until he kissed her.

Wes filled his mouth with the taste of her, like a man hungering for sweetness. He'd known pain before, but nothing like the torment that had ripped up Rorie and clawed at his innards as if it were his own. He couldn't bear to think how she'd suffered, and he wished fervently that he'd found her first, loved her first; that he'd spared her from that selfish bastard, Sinclair.

Although Wes knew he could never replace what God had taken from her, he had the burning, irrational need to try. He wanted to pleasure her, take her hurt away, fill her with ecstatic joy. Nothing else mattered to him. Nothing.

"Rorie," he murmured, "I want you so."

And he did. He always had. The reason why Jarrod Sinclair had not mattered little to Wes.

He heard her breath catch, and he slanted his mouth across hers, coaxing her, possessing her, needing her to feel the same explosive desire that smoked through his veins, melting the rock-hard core of his restraint. He wanted to see the same hunger that he'd seen in her eyes when he'd kissed her beneath the magnolia tree, when she'd forgotten all her rational excuses, her heartaches, her fears.

Still, he sensed the battle raging deep inside her, the struggle between everything she believed and everything she wanted. He steeled himself to patience. If he could make her feel safe, then she would stay. That's what he hoped. He knew he could please her if she'd let him. He'd had a thorough education in making female bodies hum. Those other women had been just as well schooled, though, master teachers who'd graduated hundreds of students. He knew Rorie wouldn't give herself lightly to a man, and he never wanted her to regret this night, if she should choose to become his lover.

"You're so beautiful," he whispered, catching her face and gazing reverently into her misty eyes. He wanted her to know he spoke the truth.

When fresh tears glistened on her lashes, though, a knife twisted in his gut.

"H-how could I be?" Her voice was plaintive, cracking with self-doubt. "I'm so big and gangly and—"

Her protests trailed off, and her eyes grew impossibly round when he dragged her hand to the full, potent proof of his desire.

"Never doubt for an instant that I want you the way you are," he said, hoarse with what seemed like a lifetime of waiting to have this frightfully honest, heartbreakingly vulnerable woman. "I don't much like picking up a sweetheart or setting her on a tree stump so I can kiss her. You're just the right size for me, Rorie. All of me," he added huskily.

His words recalled to Rorie's mind forbidden, secret fantasies, and she shivered irrepressibly, a tingly sensation that danced through her limbs. In the flames that were his eyes, an elemental yearning burned, holding her as helplessly captive as the hand that wouldn't set hers free.

He raised it to his lips. It quaked uncontrollably, from a sense of anticipation rather than any enfeebled cry of virtue. When his tongue slid between her fingers, tickling the sensitive skin there, she tried to rally her wits, to sever them from the heating furnace of her body. But the echo of forgotten need was too insistent, like a siren's call luring her to the sinful shores of no return.

"Touch me, Rorie," he urged, his words threading through her on a raspy ribbon of desire. "Touch me like you did before."

He trailed her moistened fingers across his angled scar and down his chest. His flesh looked like amber in the lamplight and felt like velvet against her skin. She needed no further coaxing to map the corded ridges and taut, hard planes of his torso.

He shrugged with feral grace, letting his gingham shirt fall from his broad shoulders, and it spilled across her thighs. His hand slipped beneath it, a prowling weight of squeezing, kneading textures that she couldn't see or control. His probing was the most unsettling enticement she had known. She squeezed her eyes closed against her guilt even though bloomers still protected her, and she trusted him to stop if she begged to be freed.