Bride of the Wolf (19 page)

Except you couldn’t burn what wasn’t there. And never would be again.

Taking the sling from Lucia, he helped Rachel ease it over her head, then lifted Gordie and tucked him inside. Heath’s fingers brushed her bodice, and she gasped. He clenched his teeth and went to mount Apache.

They started toward the creek, Heath in front. His human ears tried to stretch behind him to catch the creak of her saddle, the clop of Jericho’s hooves, every little sound she made and breath she took. The smell of her, sharp in his nostrils, made his cock so hard that it was almost painful to sit in the saddle.

Rachel caught up, riding beside him but far enough away so they couldn’t touch by accident. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“About seven miles west of here there’s a bend in the creek with a stand of oaks for shade. Think you can ride that far?”

“Of course I can.” She bent her head to smile at Gordie. “Isn’t that so, little one?”

Setting his jaw, Heath pulled ahead again. They rode the first few miles along the creek in uncomfortable silence, broken only by Rachel’s quiet chatter to Gordie, pointing out this bird or that scurrying lizard. Heath could see how interested she was in everything she saw. She gave a little cry of surprise when a jackrabbit bounded across the trail ahead of them, and listened intently to a meadowlark’s call.

He’d been telling himself from the beginning that a woman like her couldn’t find anything to like in a place so brown and hot and barren. But he was beginning to wonder if he’d been wrong.

No future, no past
. That was what he had to keep on remembering.

An hour after they’d left the house, Heath called a stop for rest. He dismounted, took Gordie from Rachel and held the baby in the crook of one arm as he helped Rachel down, catching her around the waist as she climbed out of the saddle. He heard her suck in her breath and hold it until she was firmly on her feet and reaching for Gordie.

“You need to drink and stretch your legs,” Heath said, letting Gordie go as soon as he was safely in Rachel’s arms. “If you’re hungry—”

“I’m not, thank you.” She made a fuss over Gordie’s blankets. “I believe that Gordie would like a drink from his bottle.”

Angry again for no reason at all, Heath took the bottle out of the saddlebags and gave it to Rachel. She looked along the bank of the creek, picked out a rock big and flat enough to sit on and set about feeding Gordie. She acted as if Heath wasn’t there, humming under her breath, and kicking at small rocks and pebbles with the toe of her boot.

Heath crouched a little distance away, not even trying to ignore her. He’d given up trying to figure out when she’d stopped being plain to him and started to be beautiful, or when he’d begun to think she could be the kind of woman who could love someone else more than herself. She and Gordie together were something whole and perfect, like a circle that could only be broken if someone else stepped into it.

He’s my son
. But that was just a bunch of words that Heath still didn’t understand. Just like he still didn’t know how to be a father. Or a—

Heath saw the scorpion scuttling from underneath the rock the second after Rachel kicked the stone aside. She didn’t notice the creature climbing onto her boot until Heath was beside her, snatching her and Gordie off the ground and sweeping the scorpion away.

Rachel let out a
woof
of surprise and stiffened in his arms, turning her body as if to shield Gordie from his touch. “What do you think you’re—”

“Don’t move.” Heath let her go and looked for the scorpion. It had disappeared, but he had a good idea where it had gone. He turned the nearest rock over with the toe of his boot. The ugly thing snapped up its tail, and he stomped down hard. Rachel gasped.

“Never kick things over out here,” he said harshly. “You don’t know what you might stir up.”

“Is that a…?”

“Scorpion.”

He turned around just in time to see her legs start to give out. He grabbed her again, circling her and Gordie in his arms. She shook her head frantically.

“Take Gordie. I’m not sure I can—”

“Hold on.” He whistled sharply to Apache, who moved within his reach, and untied his bedroll with one hand. He shook it out, tossed it on a bare patch of ground and eased Rachel down, making sure she had the baby secure before he let go. She was trembling so hard that he thought she might shake right out of her clothes. Gordie’s face was all bunched up in confusion.

Heath crouched beside them. “Ain’t nothin’ to be scared of now,” he said gruffly.

The sound she made wasn’t exactly crying, but it wasn’t laughing, either. “It…it could have—”

“No one out here ever died of a scorpion sting,” he said. “It would have hurt, maybe swelled up a little, but it couldn’t have stung through your boot anyway.”

She stared at him, all dark eyes in a white face, rocking Gordie back and forth, back and forth. “My boot?” she echoed, as if what he’d said hadn’t made any sense. “It could have stung Gordie!”

Only if he’d been blind and deaf, but he could see that Rachel wasn’t listening to reason. She wasn’t scared for herself. She was thinking of what could have happened to the baby. Because of
her
.

“Listen, Rachel,” he said in the kind of voice he would have used with a badly spooked horse. “It ain’t your fault. You didn’t know—”

“Take him!” She held Gordie out to him, the tears running down her cheeks. “I can’t…I almost—”

“Hush.” He knelt in front of her and took her in his arms again, the baby snug between them. “It ain’t your fault, Rachel,” he repeated.

The sobs came tearing out of her throat like a sickness he had no power to heal. Her fingers bit into his arm, and she pressed her face into his shoulder. Gordie started to cry, and all Heath could think about was keeping them both safe in his arms as long as they needed him, even if he had to hold them for the rest of his life.

Sometime later—he didn’t know how long—Apache bumped his shoulder and nibbled on his ear. He came to his senses again. Rachel and Gordie had stopped crying. Gordie was settled in a cradle made by his chest and Rachel’s arm. Rachel’s fingers were still caught in
his shirtsleeve, and her head was still tucked into the hollow of his shoulder. They were so quiet he wondered if somehow they’d cried themselves to sleep.

He eased away just enough so he could see Rachel’s face. She stirred, her hand slipping away from his arm. Her eyes were red and puffy, and there were creases in her face where it had rested against his vest. She met his gaze, too exhausted to be wary or afraid or ashamed.

“I think Gordie’s asleep,” Heath said.

She looked down at the baby, and for a second Heath thought she was going to smile. Instead, she leaned away and wedged her arms under Gordie so she could hold him. Heath had no choice but to let them go. It was like dropping through a scaffold at the end of a noose.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.” All proper again, but humble and sad and weary. “You…you should take Gordie now.”

He dropped back onto his heels, every muscle stiff and sore, a fist-size rock in his throat. “He’s where he belongs.”

Her hair, which had come loose sometime during her panic, fell across her face like a ripple of black velvet. “Don’t you see? I’m not fit to care for him. I’m not—”

“You ain’t perfect? Is that it, Rachel?”

He hadn’t meant the words to be gentle, and she didn’t take them that way. She stared at him through her hair while Gordie kept right on sleeping in her arms.

“You said you cared about him,” Heath said. “Carin’ don’t mean givin’ up when times get hard, or just because you made a mistake.” He leaned toward her, holding her with his eyes. “You always run away when you think you ain’t good enough?”

The paleness of her skin gave way to hot color. “You don’t know,” she whispered. “You have no i—” She
closed her eyes and touched Gordie’s cheek with hers. “No. I don’t always run away.”

Heath let out his breath and was about to stand up when he smelled human sweat and horseflesh downwind. He turned back to Rachel immediately and offered her his hand. She took it, cradling the baby close with her other arm.

Charlie Wood came around the willow thicket on the other bank, whistling softly. He reined in his horse at the edge of the water, looking surprised to see them.

“Mrs. McCarrick,” he called, touching his hat brim. “Mr. Renshaw. Didn’t know you was here.”

Heath lowered his head. “What’re you doing here, Charlie?”

“I was just on my way to check on a calf I saw limpin’ yesterday out by Blue Spring,” he said. He studied Rachel curiously. “Is somethin’ wrong, Mr. Renshaw?”

“No. I been teachin’ Mrs. McCarrick to ride.”

“I saw that back at the house.” Charlie showed dark, crooked teeth. “You’re turnin’ out to be a mighty fine rider, Mrs. McCarrick.”

Rachel smiled without much enthusiasm. “Thank you, Mr. Wood.”

“Well, I best be gettin’ on my way, then.” Charlie nodded to Rachel, turned his horse around and rode back the way he had come.

Heath stared after him. Charlie couldn’t have seen anything that had happened or Heath would have smelled him long before. Once or twice Joey had been able to sneak up on him, but that was a rare event. Even so, he found himself bristling and inclined to ride after Charlie to…

What? Ask him if he was following them?

He shook his head sharply. “We’d best be movin’ on,” he said to Rachel.

She turned her head slowly, taking in the creek and the horses and the open range. “Perhaps we should go back.”

“Is that what you want?”

Brushing her hair out of her face with a work-roughened hand, she steadied Gordie and moved to rise. “No,” she said. “I would like to go on.”

Heath didn’t know why that felt like a victory. He should have wanted her to be scared, let her think that the Pecos was a deadly place no sane female would want to live in.

But he’d lost that chance. He’d lost a lot of chances, and he would go on losing them if he let himself keep on thinking that what Rachel felt should make a difference in anything he was going to do.

He’s where he belongs
. The words had come out of his mouth as if someone else had said them. He’d made it sound as if he wanted her to keep Gordie forever.

He was just as much a son of a bitch as Sean had ever been.

“I’m going to lift you into the saddle,” he said. “You just hold on to Gordie.”

Rachel fixed up the sling while Heath shook out the blanket and rolled it up again. Then he put his hands around her waist and lifted her and the baby into the saddle. If she was surprised at how easy it was, she didn’t show it. She squared her shoulders and looked straight ahead. They finished the second half of the trip without another word between them.

Three-Oak Bend was one of the prettiest places along the creek, close to one of the springs that fed into
it. Birds chittered among the leaves, and quail scattered as the horses approached. Small animals rustled the slender branches of the willows crowded on the bank. A blue heron spread its wide wings and lurched into ungainly flight. The ground along the bank was trampled, but there was no other sign of cattle. And no sign that any human being had been this way recently.

Heath led Rachel down the gentle slope to the shade under the trees. He dismounted, helped her down—careful to let her go as soon as he could—and untied the blanket roll and small crate he’d brought for Gordie to sleep in.

“He still asleep?” he asked her as she stood gazing at the clear water and the silvery fish darting near the surface.

She stroked her fingertip across Gordie’s forehead. “Yes. I think perhaps the commotion exhausted him.”

Heath set down the crate and rolled out the blanket. “You need to drink.”

The way she looked over the ground told Heath she wasn’t done worrying yet. “No scorpions here,” he said. “It’s safe.”

With a soft sigh she knelt beside the crate and laid Gordie in it, tucking the blankets around him. He didn’t even move. Heath filled his canteen with water from the creek, gave it to Rachel and unsaddled the horses.

After laying the saddlebags in the short grass beside the blanket, Heath went down to the creek and pretended to examine the hoofprints around it. When he went back, Rachel was sitting on the blanket, examining the cold fried chicken, biscuits and little cake Maurice had sent along.

“I believe Maurice should have been a chef for some wealthy French nobleman,” she said in a high, light voice. “I wonder what brought him to Texas.”

“Same thing that brings a lot of folks,” Heath said, leaning against the tree farthest away from her. “He wanted a life where nothin’ was holdin’ him back or fencin’ him in.”

She looked out across the creek. “It does seem as if nothing could ever enclose this country.”

“They already got bob-wire fences some places east of the Pecos,” he said, “but the cowmen around here don’t favor the Devil’s Rope.”

“I think I understand why.” She smoothed her skirts over her legs.

“Do you?”

Hellfire
. The last thing he wanted was to let loose more trouble between them, and asking her that kind of question was the worst kind of trouble. He turned his back on her, hoping she wouldn’t answer.

“One builds one’s own fences,” she murmured so quietly he knew he wasn’t meant to hear.

He should have left it at that. But he remembered her tears, the hurt in her eyes, the pain she had finally let him see. The feel of her sobbing into his shoulder, clinging to him, as if he could save her.

“You broke out of yours,” he said. “All them jobs, that world that made you small. You traded ’em in for somethin’ bigger.”

Leaves rattled in a little puff of wind. Heath could hear Rachel’s breathing, soft and fast.

“I never spoke about my previous employment,” she said.

Not to
him
. He could say that Jed had told him, but all of a sudden he was sick of lying.

“I found your letters,” he said.

He expected her to be mad, maybe storm at him in
that schoolteacher way of hers. But she kept sitting where she was, staring at her hands folded on her skirts.