Early Dawn (18 page)

“Then do what has to be done. You’ve been on a horse for over thirty hours. You’ve been brutalized. Your body has needs, and right now, one of them is sleep. We can’t make a bad situation better by catching pneumonia.” He turned his hand despite her grip on it and enclosed her smaller fingers in his. “I could touch you anywhere I want. Am I?”

“No,” she replied, hating herself for the squeak in her voice.

“Why do you suppose that is?”

Tears burned her eyes. She squeezed them tightly closed. “Because you don’t want to?”

“Exactly. We need to stay warm. You need to rest. Until I get you somewhere safe, you’re my responsibility. How will your brothers feel if I let you freeze to death? It’s colder out here than a whore’s tits in a snow-storm.” He muttered something under his breath and in a louder voice said, “
Damn
it. Every time I open my mouth, I stick my foot in it.”

He ran his thumb over her clenched knuckles, and the tears in Eden’s eyes spilled over onto her icy cheeks, feeling hot against her skin.

His voice still thick, he added, “I’ve spent three years alone, Eden, with only Smoky and Herman for company. The few times I rode with a posse, the other men were as rough around the edges as I was.” He fell silent. “I haven’t rubbed elbows with polite folks for way too long. I don’t mean to sound like I was raised in a barn.”

“I’ve spent five days with monsters,” she replied, her voice shaking. “I don’t mean to be difficult, but I’d rather go without sleep than do
this
.”

“Your druthers don’t play into it.” He released an exasperated sigh and suddenly sat up. “Okay, fine, you win. There’s more than one way to tree a coon.”

She turned onto her back to stare incredulously up at him. With abrupt, frustrated jerks, he removed his jacket and flung it over her.

“
No
,” she protested. “You’ll freeze without a coat.”

“I’ll stay by the fire and be fine.” He circled the pit and hunkered down. “Now, do me a big favor and go to sleep.”

Wincing at the pain that danced over her ribs, Eden pushed to a sitting position. Now that he’d shed the jacket, she noticed that he’d changed into clean clothes and looked as if he’d taken a bath. Just the thought of getting in that icy water made her shiver more convulsively. To the left of the fire, he had erected a makeshift rack where wet jeans, a shirt, underwear, and socks had been hung to dry.

“I can’t take your coat, Matthew. I felt guilty enough about hogging the bedroll.”

“No choice. You can’t sleep alone and you can’t sleep with me. Maybe you’ll be able to stay warm with the extra jacket. I can catch a few winks and be fine, but you’ve
got
to get some rest.”

She knew he was right. She was beyond exhausted. “I appreciate the gesture, truly I do, but I can’t take your coat.”

“I
gave
you the coat. Remember the rule. You’re to do what I say when I say it, and I’m telling you to go to sleep.”

Eden sighed. “All right,
you
win. We can sleep together.”

“You just said—”

“Forget what I said. I won’t sleep a wink knowing that you have no jacket.”

In the firelight, his incredibly blue eyes glinted like sapphires as he regarded her. “I won’t take liberties,” he finally said.

“I pray not.”

“I’ve never forced myself on a woman in my life, and I’m sure as hell not about to start now.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just—” She broke off, searched for a way to explain, and in the doing, finally understood how frustrating it must be for him when he wanted to communicate a thought and couldn’t. “I can’t get them out of my head. The Sebastians, I mean. And when . . . when you touch me, even in impersonal places, I feel frantic.”

He nodded his understanding and stared into the fire with a thoughtful frown. When he returned his gaze to her, he said, “Think of it this way. If I wanted to rape you, what’s stopping me?”

Eden could only gape at him.

“You sure as hell couldn’t stop me,” he went on. “One second to pin you, three seconds to jerk those britches off, no contest.” Propping an elbow on a bent knee, he rubbed a hand over his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Son of a
bitch
. I just did it again. If my mother was here, she’d wash my mouth out with soap.”

Eden had a hysterical urge to laugh, a telltale sign that she truly was exhausted beyond all measure. Oddly, though, he had accomplished his goal with the bungled attempt to reassure her. She felt a little better. He was a strong man, could overpower her without half trying, and had had countless opportunities to do so if that had been his intent.

“Come to bed, Matthew.”

He pushed slowly erect, looking nearly as weary as she felt. “You sure? I’ve lost sleep before and lived through it.”

Pushing back a wave of apprehension, Eden patted a spot beside her. He retraced his steps around the fire pit, lifted the blanket, and joined her on the pallet. She rolled onto her side with her back to him, bracing herself for the weight of his arm around her. When it came, she flinched in spite of herself.

“You okay?” he asked huskily.

“No, but I’ll live through it.” Eden gulped and opened her eyes to stare blankly at the fire, willing herself to drift away into memories as she had so many times during her five days with the Sebastians, only she couldn’t quite manage it. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t touch me anyplace private.”

He curled his hand over the throbbing place on her ribs, turned his face into her hair, and said, “You’ve got my word on it.”

Eden still couldn’t relax. Visions of what the Sebastians had done to her ricocheted through her mind. She gulped and tried to control a shudder that ran the full length of her body.

“I know you aren’t much for conversation, Matthew, but could you talk to me for a while?”

“About what?” His voice rang with incredulity. “The whole idea here is to fall asleep.”

“I know. I just need . . . a distraction so I can relax.”

“A distraction?” His hand shifted slightly, and she jerked. “Easy,” he whispered, using the same gentling tone that he’d employed with the abused bay gelding earlier that day. “What kind of distraction? I’m not a storyteller.”

Eden didn’t care what he said. “I just need you to talk. About anything. Tell me about Oregon. I’ve seen photographs, but I’ve never actually been there.”

Silence. Finally he offered, “It’s pretty there.”

She waited expectantly, but he said nothing more. Another crazy urge to laugh came over her. He hadn’t lied. Words came very hard for him. “That’s all you can say?”

“There are lots of trees.”

“What kind?”

“Ponderosa pine.”

Her eyes tried to drift closed and she blinked to stay awake, still too skittish to lower her guard completely. “Are there mountains?”

“Yeah, the Cascades.”

Getting him to talk was as difficult as trying to scratch her own back. “Are they big mountains?”

“Yeah.”

“What do they look like?”

“Like mountains.”

Eden smiled sleepily. “Is there any snow on them?”

“Yeah, a lot of snow, even in summer. You can see them from the Lazy J.”

“Is that the name of your family’s farm?”

“It’s a ranch, and yes, that’s its name.” He shifted to get closer to her, pressing his bony knees against the backs of hers. Eden stiffened at the more intimate contact. His scent surrounded her, a pleasant blend of clean skin, male muskiness, and faint traces of soap. “Never could figure out why my father named it that. Nothing about raising horses and cattle is lazy. We worked our asses off from dawn to dark, and then some.”

Finally, he had volunteered a tidbit of information. “Who’s
we
?”

“My pa, my brothers, and me.”

“How many brothers do you have?”

“Eden, we
have
to get some sleep. We can’t dawdle here tomorrow so you can rest up. The Sebastians would be on our asses like bears after honey.”

“I know.” Eden realized that she’d finally stopped shivering. Heat emanated from his big body, which was surrounding hers like a cozy blanket. “Just a little longer, Matthew, and then I’ll shut up. How many brothers?”

“Three. Hoyt, Zedediah, and Gareth. I’m the oldest.”

“Any sisters?”

“Breanna, Caira, and Dacey. Why does it
matter
?”

“It doesn’t. I just need to hear your voice.” Her eyes tried to close again. This time she didn’t fight it. “Tell me about the Lazy J.”

“Not much to tell. Just a ranch.”

“Where is it in Oregon?”

“On the eastern side in the high desert. Pa found a grassy little valley with a running stream that keeps the meadows green and pretty. There’s a lot of timberland around it for free-range grazing.”

She could hear the yearning in his voice and blinked her eyes back open to say, “You miss it.”

“Not as much as I used to.”

“Will you go back after you’ve caught up with the Sebastians?”

“No. Nothing left for me there but sad memories.”

Eden couldn’t imagine never going home to see her family. “Where will you go then?”

“Not sure. Montana, maybe. It’s damned pretty country, lots of elbow room. I’ll find work. Save my money.”

“So you can start your own ranch?”

“All I’m good at is running cattle and raising horses.”

“What kind of cattle will you run?”

Eden never heard his reply. Between one breath and the next, she dropped like a pebble into a black pool of exhaustion.

 

Eden awakened in the morning to the delicious smell of frying meat. To her surprise, the sun was already rising. She pushed up on an elbow and rubbed her eyes, then focused on Matthew, who was hunkered at the opposite side of the fire, the pinkish light of dawn playing like fireflies on his tousled dark hair. Though she couldn’t be certain, the strands looked slightly damp, making her wonder if he’d already been to the stream to wash up.

“You should have wakened me. I can’t be lolling around in bed all morning.”

“I don’t think the Sebastians have come in behind us yet, and you needed a good night’s rest.” At her bewildered look, he added, “Think of the circle we made as a racetrack. The horses all start at the same point, but the faster ones leave the slow ones behind. If the faster ones get enough of a lead, they eventually circle around and come in behind their competitors.
We
have a hell of a jump on the gang, so now I’m almost certain we’re behind them, not the other way around.”

Eden could picture a racetrack, and what he said made sense. “You must think I’m hopelessly obtuse.”

It was his turn to look perplexed. “Dumb, you mean?” He shook his head. “You’re not dumb, Eden, only exhausted.”

Even after a bath and wearing fresh clothing, he had a lean, rugged look about him, but this morning, Eden found it more appealing than frightening. Studying his burnished countenance, she found herself wishing he would shave so she could see the rest of his face. She suspected that without the whiskers, he would be extremely handsome, with strong, masculine features.

Her boots had dried overnight. She struggled to pull them on over the bulky wool socks, which was no easy task and made her ribs feel afire with pain. When she finished fastening the footwear, she took a moment to catch her breath.

“My teeth feel as if they’ve grown a fur coat,” she blurted.

He chuckled. “Want to borrow my boar-bristle toothbrush?”

“You carry a toothbrush?”

He narrowed an eye at her. “Of course. How else would I keep my teeth clean?” He returned his attention to the frying pan. “I know using someone else’s toothbrush sounds nasty, but you could clean it with some whiskey.”

Eden was in no position to be picky. “Thank you. I may take you up on the offer. I’ve never gone six days without brushing my teeth or taking a bath in my whole life.”

He flashed her a crooked grin. “When we make camp tonight, maybe we’ll have time for you to get a good scrub. For now, you ready for a hodgepodge breakfast?”

Taking care not to jostle her ribs, which felt as tender this morning as they had yesterday, she turned onto her knees to roll up the blanket and pallet. He was full of odd terms to describe the trail rations he tossed together. “What exactly is a hodgepodge breakfast?”

“A little of this and a little of that. I don’t want to fire a gun for fear the sound will carry, so I rigged up a spear this morning, using a long branch and my hunting knife. I got us a rabbit, a squirrel, and some frogs.” He cut her a questioning glance. “You won’t turn up your nose at frog legs, will you?”

Though Eden hadn’t kept a running count, she felt fairly certain she’d never heard him string that many sentences together without being prompted. “Not as long as they aren’t hopping in the pan.”

“Truth is, they’re actually pretty tasty, and I make sure they’re all hopped out before I serve them.” He gave a frog leg a prod with the fork as if to prove his point. “My Livvy was a finicky eater, and fussy about what she cooked. If I wanted frog legs, I had to fix them myself, so I got plenty of practice.”

Eden heard a trace of sadness in his voice, and his use of the word
was
told her that the woman Livvy was probably dead. “She was your wife?”

He nodded. Then, as if he feared she might urge him to talk about her, he said, “I was serious about your being welcome to use my toothbrush. Anytime you want it, just holler, and I’ll get it out of the pack.”

“I’ll wait until after I’ve eaten.” She angled her head to look into the frying pan. “My goodness, that’s a lot of meat.”

“What we don’t eat now, we can have for lunch. I don’t know about you, but I get sick-to-death tired of eating jerky three times a day.”

“Amen. I liked jerky a week ago, but now the longer I chew, the bigger it seems to get.”