Beloved Outcast (11 page)

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth—that I didn’t like the odds between him and those who’d followed him.”

“And he believed you?”

“I’m still alive, so he must have.”

“But what made him accept the word of a white man, when he and his people had just killed a dozen who’d tried to hunt him down as if he were some kind of wild animal?”

“I doubt I’ll ever know the answer to that. But I can tell you this, there’s something about his eyes that makes a person think he might be able to read a man’s thoughts.”

“Goodness, Logan, that’s a most amazing story. Why, I’d wager you could write a book about your Western experiences and thousands of people would want to read it.”

“Trust you to think of something like that.”

“Don’t dismiss the idea out of hand.” Her fingers tightened their fragile pressure upon his sleeve. “My acquaintances back east are fascinated by tales of the West. You could become as famous as Hawkeye, the intrepid frontiersman created by James Fenimore Cooper.”

Two thoughts struck Logan. First, if Victoria’s palm stayed on his arm one moment longer, he was going to do something reckless—like press her down upon the blanket and have another sampling of her lips. Only this time he was going to make damned sure he found out what she tasted like.

His second came in the form of a question. How had the woman come by her peculiar fascination with books? He decided it was safer to investigate the latter puzzle, rather than discover what a real openmouthed kiss would feel like.

“Is that why you came west? Because of all the stories you’ve read in those books of yours?”

She gave him an incredulous look.

Why wasn’t he surprised that logical reasoning proved useless when trying to understand Victoria? There was nothing logical about her or her cometlike entry into his world. In that way, she reminded him of Madison. The tomboyish girl had also swept into his life with the spectacular flourish of a shooting star streaking across the night sky.

“What a fanciful idea, Logan.”

That she reminded him of a shooting star?
With her flashing green eyes and fiery red hair, she sparkled brightly enough to be compared to such a heavenly creation.

“I came west for the most practical of reasons. I was offered employment.”

“Doing what?”

Again the image of Victoria in a red spangled dress sneaked into Logan’s mind. It was a ridiculous picture. The Bostonian miss sitting next to him would probably prefer death by hanging to donning a dancehall gal’s glittery rigging.

“Martin Pritchert hired me to tutor a young woman by the name of Madison Earley.”

Logan stopped breathing. He heard a strange pounding in his ears. It was a familiar sound. It had always preceded that deathless moment just before the bugle sounded the charge into battle. In those cataclysmic seconds prior to chaos, Logan had always thought he felt fate breathing down his neck.

That was how he felt now, as if there had been a subtle shifting in the universe and fate was directing its ominous attention to Logan Youngblood.

“I know Pritchert.” The words didn’t come easily.

Of all the qualified women in the country, had his friend hired someone from
Boston?
Logan’s lips thinned. Martin knew better than anyone how much Logan loathed his hometown and the kind of rigid adherence to rules it forced upon its residents.

There was nothing rigid about Victoria Amory, some deviant part of his brain insisted on pointing out. Her body was as soft and supple as a sleek cat’s.

“Then perhaps you know Mr. Pritchert’s employer, the one whose ward I’m going to instruct.”

“What’s his name?” Logan asked, realizing that for some reason Martin had not disclosed it to Victoria. If he had, she would have recognized it when Logan told her who he was in the stockade.

“It’s the oddest thing, but now that I reflect upon it, Mr. Pritchert failed to mention it to me. I can’t imagine why.”

Logan could. The name Logan Youngblood was a tainted one in proper Boston society. Obviously, if Martin planned on hiring a member of the town’s elite circles, he wouldn’t have informed the applicant that her would-be employer was the same man who’d left his fiancée standing at the altar on his wedding day.

For the first time since the morning he’d ridden out of Boston, Logan felt a twinge of guilt at the way he’d broken off with Robeena. But he’d been so furious by her betrayal that he exacted his revenge and salvaged his pride in the most primitively satisfactory way he could find. Since then, he had made it a rule never to casually discuss his family, his brother or any of the happenings in Boston with Martin. And up until he’d employed Victoria, his friend had honored Logan’s avoidance of anything to do with his hometown. Logan had always supposed that, with him out of the picture, Burke and Robeena had married.

“I guess it isn’t important,” Victoria said. “I’ll find out soon enough who he is when we arrive in Trinity Falls.”

“That you will.”

Tell her, it’s you…

He slid her a penetrating glance. She was gazing into the distance. He followed the direction of her stare. A shooting star fell from the heavens, leaving a trail of shimmering shards scattered across the night firmament.

Victoria gasped. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful.”

His attention was no longer focused on the distant distraction. “Neither have I.”

“It’s amazing how many more stars you can see out west.

Goodness, at home I don’t remember the sky being as crowded.”

He’d noticed the same thing when he first arrived in Trinity Falls. They drifted into a companionable silence.

He wasn’t going to tell her who he was.

Victoria hadn’t connected the name Logan Youngblood with her hometown because she was unaware of any connection between him and Boston.

She already thought he was a common felon. She would be more than ready to believe he was also the kind of man who would abandon his bride at the altar. Of course, he
was
exactly that kind of man, but Robeena had gotten what she deserved.

What was the harm of enjoying Victoria’s company for a few more days without providing her with new reasons to look down her aristocratic nose at him? Those days would give him the opportunity to decide whether she was competent to instruct Madison.

He knew damned well
that
was a lie.

Victoria Amory had already proven her mettle. She had character, intelligence, and spirit. She was a lady down to her little black walking boots. Martin had done a hell of a job in hiring the indomitable Miss Amory. Even if she was from Boston.

“The fire’s almost out,” she said, smothering a yawn.

She was right. Only a few smoldering bits of wood still burned. The wind had picked up, and she’d moved even closer to him, no doubt in search of warmth.

“I wish it wasn’t so windy.”

He fought the temptation to put his arm around her and draw her even closer. “Why is that?”

“I was waiting for it to get dark so I could wash off in the river,” she said shyly.

Logan thought of Victoria wet and naked. His body immediately hardened.

“You’d freeze out there tonight.” His voice was as gritty as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of gravelly sand from the river bottom.

She got to her feet. He immediately missed the contact of her palm upon his sleeve.

“The first thing I’m going to do when we reach Trinity Falls is take a long hot bath.”

He pictured her in a big porcelain tub and no longer noticed the chilling breeze.

“We might as well call it a night,” he said, trying to rid his mind of the image of Victoria’s sleek little body sitting in a tub full of scented bubbles. Damned if those bubbles didn’t slide off her pink-tipped breasts. Even though it was only his imagination that was fueling his forbidden thoughts, Logan had a hard time scrambling to his feet.

Sometimes a man’s imagination was more invigorating than the real thing. Only, with Victoria, Logan was sure that wasn’t true. Not when he found himself aroused by just thinking about the soft curves he’d already held against him.

“Do you think it’s going to rain?”

Victoria’s question had him looking at the sky again. The stars were disappearing under a covering of thick black clouds that the wind chased overhead.

“It might. We better get our bedding laid out under the wagon.”

For the next few minutes, they worked together, securing their campsite. The wind continued to gain momentum, and by the time they were in their pallets beneath the wagon, it felt as if a major storm was brewing.

He heard Victoria’s teeth chattering next to him. He knew it was dangerous to even contemplate drawing her into his arms to warm her up.

“Come here,” he said roughly, raising the edge of his blanket. “You’ll freeze if you stay where you are.”

You’re a fool,
came the inner voice he recognized as his conscience.
You’re not going to be able to get a wink of sleep if this woman shares your bed
again.

Victoria scooted to him and slipped beneath his blanket. He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Her cold, trembling body lay stiffly next to him. He bit down an oath and pulled her the rest of the way into his embrace. She continued to shake. He found himself stroking her back.

“Relax,” he ordered gruffly. “You’re not afraid of a piddly little storm, are you?”

“Nooo…”

Maybe you should be afraid of me.

Even though it might have an element of truth, he disliked the thought. He wanted Victoria to start trusting him before she found out anything more about him. And, just maybe, he wanted to start trusting himself again.

Logan made a vow. For once, he was going to consider someone else’s needs before his own. When he deserted Robeena, it had been a selfish act designed to salvage his pride.

But the woman in his arms had done no wrong. In fact, she’d saved his life. His gut-wrenching attraction to her was something he had to fight. Because, Victoria was the one woman in the territory he could not seduce or allow himself to be innocently seduced by, even though her subtle femininity was the most seductive lure he’d ever tried to steel himself against.

Not that he’d often been required to exercise restraint where an available woman was involved. Until this juncture, the only woman he’d been drawn to this strongly was Robeena Stockard. That attraction had demolished his reasoning ability to such an extent that he asked the amoral woman to marry him.

Since that unmitigated disaster, he’d scrupulously avoided any involvement with the feminine sex that might result in
a similar derailment of his common sense. He held in his arms a woman who tempted him to violate the cold-blooded promise he’d made to himself six years ago to enjoy only the most superficial alliance with any female—to be more specific, a
carnal
alliance.

But Victoria had come west to instruct Madison. A peculiar set of circumstances had brought the young girl under his protection, and it was up to him to see that she was shielded from any taint of scandal. He didn’t know where this heretofore-unrecognized streak of protectiveness had come from. But, even as he resented the unfamiliar need to safeguard Madison, he could not fight it. She had endured a life of hardships up until this point, and Logan would be damned if he caused her any further trials.

When Victoria Amory arrived in Trinity Falls, she would do so with a spotless reputation. Which, even if he continued to resist his attraction to her, would be no easy feat. Because of his own less-than-sterling behavior with the town’s fancy women, there were bound to be gossips titillated that he and Victoria had spent days and nights alone on the trail. Martin’s wife would be one of them.

Logan might be sophisticated enough to act as if nothing of an intimate nature had happened between himself and Victoria, but her wholesome features would broadcast to the world that he’d broken down the barriers of her innocence, barriers like the one that allowed her to blithely snuggle into his embrace, as if they were children rather than passionate adults.

No, if he was to yield to the temptation to make love to her, afterward she would no doubt blush and stammer and demand marriage to right the horrible wrong he’d inflicted upon her.

A particularly violent gust of wind rocked the wagon, and she squirmed more closely against him. Sweat beaded his brow. At the moment, marriage didn’t sound nearly as painful as the frustrated state that gripped him.

His hands moved slowly over her. When he reached the outline of her buttocks, covered by her dress, he squeezed softly.

“Logan!”

His chin rested against the crown of her head. He felt her outraged gasp against his throat.

He smiled. “Hmm?”

“Wh-what do you think you’re doing?”

“Just trying to keep you warm.”

“I—I’m warm enough. There’s no need to…to pinch

me.”

“It was hardly a pinch. I would call it more of a squeeze.”

“Well, whatever you call it, don’t do it again.”

He didn’t answer. It occurred to him that he’d taken for granted her sweet compliance if he should weaken and pass the bounds of propriety.

As he continued to hold her, he reflected that Victoria might not be his simply for the taking. She had a stubborn resolve that suggested a man would have to woo her mind and her heart if he was going to successfully avail himself of her sweetly formed body.

He thought he might be just the one to succeed where others had failed.

But was he willing to pay the price?

V
ictoria’s trembling had little to do with the winds that whipped across her and Logan. Goodness, she still couldn’t believe how shockingly pleasant it had felt to have his large palms cup her bottom and gently squeeze her. Whatever had he been thinking, to take such a bold liberty?

Her cheek was plastered against his chest, and she heard the steady beating of his heart in her ear. Last night, she’d been so exhausted she slept through the remarkable intimacy of lying against him. Tonight, sleep was the last thing on her mind.

It amazed her how much heat Logan generated. She felt as if she were anchored against a hot furnace. His broad hands were draped respectably against the middle of her back. She was turned into him, with her palm resting against his belt buckle. One of her legs lay cradled between his, just as one of his strong limbs had insinuated itself between her skirts.

She’d never felt more protected, or more rawly exposed. Wherever her body rubbed against his—and there were so many places of contact—his hard heat pressed through her clothing.

Her heart pounded as if she just run a great distance. His masculine scent carried with it traces of leather, camp smoke, and an earthy muskiness that made her surprisingly
conscious of her femininity. She felt soft everywhere he wasn’t.

She burrowed the tip of her nose into the fabric of his shirt. She wanted to fix his unique smell in her memory, so that, years from now, she would be able to recall it with absolute clarity. The foolishness of the act was not lost upon her. She decided, this once, to be foolish.

“What are you doing, Victoria?”

Memorizing you…

“My nose had an itch. I was just scratching it.”

Goodness, she did feel as if she had a terrible itch. And it seemed to cover her entire body. She hadn’t felt this squirmy since she’d been eight and infected with the chicken pox.

She sighed. “Do you think it’s going to rain?”

“Probably.”

She twisted again, trying to accomplish the impossible—to get comfortable, and get closer to him, too. “If it does rain, will the stream overflow?”

“We’re camped on high ground. If it starts to flood, the water will fall off on the downhill side.”

She wriggled again. “You’re very smart, Logan.”

“I never thought I’d hear you say that to me,” came his droll voice from the darkness.

She flushed and raised her hand from its resting place on his belt buckle. Her nervous fingers strolled up his shirtfront. “Did you learn about these mountains from the Indians?”

One of Logan’s hands gripped her wandering fingertips.

“Don’t do that,” he instructed in a virtual growl.

“I’m sorry. Are your ribs still tender?”

There was a marked hesitation before he answered. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” she reminded him when another moment passed without him speaking.

“I learned everything I know about this forest during the time I lived with Night Wolf’s people.”

“How did that come about? When did you meet him again?”

“Victoria, we need to rest. We’re going to be up early.”

He sounded so much like a chiding parent that she smiled.

“How can anyone sleep with the wind howling like a demented wolf?”
And with you holding me so closely that it’s hard to know where I end and you begin?

“Just close your eyes and try.”

She lowered her eyelids and waited. Nothing happened. “When I was little and unable to drift off to sleep, our housekeeper would give me warm milk to drink.”

“We’re fresh out of cold or warm milk, Victoria.”

Again his autocratic manner made her feel about ten.

She shifted against him, stretching the leg that lay between both of his. “There’s no need to be rude.”

“Dammit, Victoria. Hold still.”

She bit her lip. It was ridiculous to allow his testiness to hurt her feelings. Obviously, he wasn’t experiencing the suppressed excitement she felt in sharing his bed. His callused palm still gripped her free hand. She tried to jerk it loose.

“If you would let go of me, maybe I’d be able to get comfortable.”

He finally released her. “Whatever it takes for you to settle down, do it.”

No longer sounding parentlike, his tone was as rough and mean as if she’d done him a grievous wrong. Drawing her leg from its sandwiched position, she rolled onto her other side. With her back pressed firmly against him, she rested her cheek against her curved arm. The position was hardly comfortable, but at least she wasn’t draped all over him. She felt him turn, also, putting his back to her. Their bottoms bumped.

He uttered another low-voiced oath as he switched to his other side and succeeded in taking the entire blanket with him, leaving Victoria exposed to the biting wind. She refused
to complain, and scrunched into a tight, protective ball.

He shifted again, spreading the blanket while he curled around her. Now her bottom was pushed into his groin. His arms came around her, linked just below her breasts. Surely the position had to be uncomfortable for him.

She felt disoriented and oddly dissatisfied, but there was no way she could manage even the tiniest wiggle. Her backside was pressed so tightly against Logan that there was no free space in which to maneuver. And she was still awake enough to recite every poem she’d ever memorized.

“This isn’t going to work, Logan,” she said, after several excruciating moments of enforced paralysis.

“What isn’t?”

“Us sleeping together.”

“And why is that?” he inquired in a lazy drawl that made her stomach flutter.

“Because you’re squeezing me so tightly I can’t breathe.”

The pressure of his embrace eased marginally, and his hands massaged her midriff. “I’m barely touching you.”

At his alarming caress, her insides trembled. “Stop that.”

At least he didn’t ask her what it was she wanted him to cease doing. Instead, he continued to idly rest his palms just beneath her bosom. Goodness, if he raised his hands a fraction of an inch, they would—

”Try counting sheep,” came his rough-edged suggestion. “That’s what I’m doing.”

“Is it working?”

Another furious blast of wind roared over and beneath the wagon. “Not exactly.”

“As long as we’re both awake, I don’t understand why we can’t talk about your experiences with Night Wolf.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re stubborn, Victoria?”

“Just my mother and my father,” she mused idly. “Oh, and my sister, along with a few close friends. My grandparents might have alluded to it a time or two, I suppose. The
Reverend Golly made reference to it on several occasions, and my teachers at finishing school were inclined to lecture upon the subject, but other than that, no one has really dwelled upon the point.”

“I see.”

“Besides, I would rather think of it as determination rather than simple stubbornness.”

“The difference being?”

“There’s an enormous difference,” she felt compelled to explain. “Stubbornness is a failure to listen to reason. Determination is a sign of character. It’s what drove Columbus to persevere in crossing the ocean and enabled George Washington to lead his men to victory against the tyranny of King George. It’s what enabled Abraham Lincoln to save the Union.”

“Determination?” Logan repeated dryly.

“Exactly!” she agreed with satisfaction.

Needing something to occupy her hands, she began to idly brush her fingertips against the backs of his wrists, which lay joined across her midriff. The springy texture of the hair dusting his skin felt oddly compelling. “Oh, some people might call it fortitude or even pluck. But, whatever it is, it’s certainly more than simple stubbornness.”

“I doubt there’s anything simple about you, Victoria.”

She warmed to what she viewed as a compliment. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he responded gravely.

She missed hearing the sound of his heartbeat, but it was pleasant to have his deeply pitched voice rumble through her.

“So, when did you meet Night Wolf the second time?”

Logan’s laughter embraced her. It made no sense, but she found herself smiling again.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Nothing. Everything.”

“Oh, well, that’s clear enough.”

“As clear as anything else in our crazy lives,” he said with a sigh.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m a grown man, and you’re a grown woman, but it sounds as if you want me to tell you a bedtime story.”

Her smile deepened. She couldn’t imagine anything more incongruous than Logan Youngblood reciting a bedtime story.

Picturing the rugged man with a toddler nestled upon his lap was beyond her ability to imagine. And yet there was something sweetly poignant about the thought of this tough Westerner subjecting himself to a young child’s needs.

“Since there’s no warm milk,” she teased lightly, “I very well might need a story if I’m to fall asleep.”

He tucked the corners of the blanket more snugly around her. The casual movement made her stop running her fingertips across his arms. When his hands returned to their former resting place, they seemed higher than before. Without a tape measure, she had no way of knowing for sure, of course. But it seemed that a smaller distance now separated his hands from the underside of her breasts. Her fingers resumed their restless stroking.

“Anything to settle you down,” came his husky voice.

Anything?
Of course, a kiss would hardly settle her down, but she found herself thinking about it. Had it been only this morning that he brushed his mouth against her startled lips? It seemed a lifetime ago. She firmly put all thoughts of the kiss from her mind. Or, at any rate, she tried to.

“The second time I ran into Night Wolf was the next spring. News reached us of a wagon train that had been attacked by Indians. The men in town rode out to investigate.”

“Isn’t that something the military would handle?”

“The fort hadn’t been built yet. It was the assault on the wagon train that led to the cavalry being dispatched to this part of the territory and Fort Brockton being constructed.”

“Were there survivors?”

“Quite a few. It turned out that only a small band of renegades took part in the ambush.”

“I wonder when peace will finally come,” Victoria mused. “Imagine what it would be likeif everyone could get along.”

“It must be what the preachers call heaven. It’s going to be interesting how the Almighty works everything out behind those pearly gates of his so the angels get along.”

“Goodness, Logan, what a peculiar thing to say.”

“Do you suppose the Indian angels will beat tom-toms instead of strumming harps?” Logan inquired, amusement lacing his tone.

A startled giggle escaped Victoria. It sprang from visualizing angels with exotic headdresses and beaded moccasins. But the more she contemplated the image, the more she liked it.

“There’s no way to know what heaven is going to be like until we get there,” she pointed out.

“And you’re thinking I’ll never find out.”

“Thank goodness, mere mortals don’t decide who gets in and who doesn’t.”

“Such a diplomatic answer.”

There was no way of mistaking the sarcasm that edged his words.

“Please continue with your story about your second encounter with Night Wolf,” she instructed for her own peace of mind.

“I like it when you say please.”

The husky timbre of Logan’s tone so shook Victoria that she felt it in her toes and her stomach. “I’ll endeavor to say it more often, then.”

He drew her closer. She felt the hardened bulge of his masculinity and wondered if that was a natural occurrence for him every time he assumed a reclining position.

Perhaps all men’s bodies behaved in a like fashion. She sighed, wishing she wasn’t so ignorant about the ins and
outs of male anatomy. What a pity that women didn’t have the opportunity to discover such facts about men from books, where one wouldn’t be unduly influenced by the powerful currents of awareness that a close proximity with the masculine form seemed to induce.

“I was a greenhorn when I came west.”

“Where did you come from?” she asked curiously. It seemed that everything he told her had a way of spawning more questions.

“The East,” he said vaguely. “That afternoon, a group of us were following tracks left by the renegades. When we reached the hills, we separated. It wasn’t far from here that I stopped to refill my canteen at this stream. When I turned around, I was facing Night Wolf. He was on horseback, I was on foot. My rifle was secured on my horse and I hadn’t taken to weanng my Colt yet.”

“You must have been terrified,” she said sympathetically.

“Victoria, men are never terrified,” he corrected firmly. “That’s something that happens only to women.”

“Don’t be silly. All humans are subject to trepidation, and that certainly includes men. Go on with your story.”

“Not before we clear this up, honey.”

She sucked in a breath. He’d called her “honey” again. Somehow, with the wind and darkness roiling about them, the endearment wasn’t repugnant. “Logan, it’s all right to admit you were frightened when you faced an Indian without a weapon to defend yourself. Even Hawkeye was afraid from time to time.”

“Who the devil is this Hawkeye person you keep mentioning?”

“Oh, you know, the brave scout who protected Cora and her sister Alice from Magua.”

“How can you call him brave and frightened at the same time?”

“As I stated before, the terror would come upon him occasionally, when he feared an imminent attack from Magua.”

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Magua. Who is he?”

“He was the villainous savage who wanted revenge against General Munro.”

“You’re talking about characters from one of those books of yours, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Of course,” he repeated in a tone of disgust. “Well, real men don’t behave like characters in books.”

“Some do,” she protested, not willing to hear him disparage her heroes.

“Real
men,” he continued, clearly unaffected by her defense, “avoid certain words like the plague.”