Gideon, Robin - Desire of the Phantom [Ecstasy in the Old West] (Siren Publishing Classic) (14 page)

Both his tone and words irked Pamela. She opened her
eyes, coming back to reality instantly, leaving her fantasy world where nothing existed but her body and Phantom’s
hands.

“Tomorrow, Darwell starts paying his men for the month.
I thought I’d take his money.”

Phantom’s lips curled below the mask. “Just like that? Y
ou thought you’d take the gold, eh? Well, Jonathon Darwell
thought the same thing. That’s why he hired those two
men out there, the ones who very nearly caught you.”

This was not the conversation she wanted to have with him. She felt invincible, daring, and terribly sexy. She did
not want to be made to feel like a fool.

“It was you they heard, not me.”

“You would have walked right into them if it weren’t
for me.”

Pamela turned her back to Phantom. “I’m not going to argue with you,” she said over her shoulder, continuing to keep
her voice down. She knew full well that voices carried
across the country at night. How far was she from where
she’d tethered her horse?

“No, you’re not going to argue with me. You’re going
to go home and wait for me there.”

The words kept Pamela in place. So he wasn’t as immune
to her as he tried to make her think! She was proud that
she could affect him so strongly, though she wasn’t at
all certain it was something she should take pride in. She sensed that Phantom had no difficulty getting women to go
to bed with him and that he wasn’t terribly pleased with
himself for wanting her as much as he did.

She turned very slowly to face him. “Are you telling
me what to do?”

“Yes.”

As much as she wanted to be in Phantom’s arms again, she didn’t want to
simply comply with
orders. Not even if the man issuing those orders was dangerous and ter
ribly attractive and also just happened to be the best kisser she could imagine.

“You’ve got me confused with some other woman,”
Pamela said flatly, the passion he had sparked moments ear
lier extinguished in an instant. “I don’t take orders. Not from you. Not from any man.”

She turned and began walking.

“Where are you going?” Phantom asked.

“To get my horse. If this isn’t the right way to approach
the payroll office, there must be some better way.”

“Wait, we’ll take my horse.”

Phantom got in the saddle, and Pamela, watching the way he
moved, admired his grace and power. Clearly, he was a
man who’d spent much time on horseback. Suddenly, she remembered that he had told her to go home and wait for
him there.

Who was he?

Tossing his cape to the side, he extended a hand down to her. She took it, slipped her foot into the stirrup, and then
mounted his horse. Her arms eased around Phantom’s waist,
though she knew it was dangerous for her to touch him.

“My mare is over there about a half mile,” Pamela said,
pointing.

They traveled in silence, Pamela dealing with personal
thoughts and private demons. Pamela was distinctly aware of
the heat of his body. Touching her, it warmed her blood.

Was he angry with her for having cast him aside when
they had been in Whitetail Creek? she wondered.

He had given her extraordinary pleasure with his hands
and his kisses, making her climax with such force that the orgasmic contractions had almost been painful. She had not reciprocated in kind. He had asked her to untie her chemise so that he might kiss her breasts, and she had refused him that, too. But why had he insisted
she
be the one to untie the chemise? His hands had proved sufficiently skilled to accomplish such a mundane task. Why had he insisted she do it?

“Stop thinking about it,” Phantom said then.

A hot flush of embarrassment went through Pamela. Could
he actually read her thoughts? Did he really know she
recalled every second of the excitement that had been hers
when he’d kissed her too-responsive, traitorous body?

“Thinking about what?” she asked, trying to sound in
nocent but sounding guilty as sin.

“About stealing the payroll. You’ll never get away with
it.”

Pamela breathed a sigh of relief. The Midnight Phantom
wasn’t as perceptive as she thought he was. She was grate
ful for that, for she now was able to think of him as fallible
and far more human. This prompted her to once again consider her original goal for the evening, which was to hit
Jonathon Darwell where he would feel it the most, by stealing
his money.

“We’ll see,” she said after a moment.

“Stealing is a mighty poor way of making a living.”

“I told you it’s not for myself.” She clenched her teeth for a moment. “I hate it that you doubt me.”

When they reached Pamela’s mare, she quickly dismounted
from Phantom’s stallion. She needed to think more clearly
than she could when he was close to her. Whenever silence
had stretched out between them, her thoughts had headed
in a decidedly sensual direction, and that was a situation she did not appreciate.

“Go home,” Phantom said softly, the two words tinged with anger. “You’ll only get yourself in trouble if you try to break in there. Let me do it. I’ll get the payroll, and I’ll bring it to you.”

Pamela sensed that, in his true identity, Phantom was a man
accustomed to giving orders and having them followed.

“Why do that?” she asked, her hands on her hips
.
“If you steal the money, you should keep it for yourself.”

“You really gave the money away, didn’t you?”

Pamela was shocked. “Yes,” she said after a moment.
“I told you I wasn’t stealing it for myself.”

“I guess I should have believed you.” Phantom grinned then beneath his mask. “I’ve been helping people on the sly, too.”

“You, too?” Pamela muttered softly. “We seem to be working toward the same goal.
Wouldn’t we be helping each other if we worked together?”

The statement was a shocking one for Pamela to make.
She’d always been taught by her brother that the only person she should trust was herself, that if she took a partner,
she’d end up getting cheated in one way or another. Jedediah always worked alone, and in whatever endeavors
Pamela pursued, he warned that she would do well to follow
his example.

“No.”

The single-word denial shocked and irritated Pamela. She changed tactics instantly.

“Fine. I’ll work alone.” She tossed a leg over the back of her mare and eased into the saddle, muttering, “I work best alone anyway.”

“You’re
not
going after Darwell,
damn it!
”

“You’re
not
going to tell me what to do,
damn it!
”

“Are you always this stubborn?”

She shrugged. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

“Then I suppose the only way I have any hope of keeping you out of trouble is to keep you with me,” he said, shaking his head slowly
. He looked heavenward. “How did this happen to me?”

Hearing the words coming from his own mouth was
surprising. He’d always felt that compromise, at the very
least, was partial failure.

Pamela smiled at him. “Perfect. Now how are we going
to break into Darwell Cattle #3? There’s a lot of money in
there just waiting for us.”

* * * *

The more Phantom thought about it, the worse it seemed.
Having Pamela with him was bad enough. Having Darwell’s
guards on duty made it even worse.

And what if the payroll money wasn’t in that office, as
Pamela had predicted it would be?

“You’ve got doubts,” Pamela said softly. “I can see it in
the set of your mouth.”

Phantom smiled wryly. She was an extraordinarily per
ceptive woman in some ways, but in others, she seemed
so daft it was confounding.

“Of course I’ve got doubts,” he at last replied
. “I like
to plan my moves in advance. Mistakes are made when
you’re forced to act in a hurry, without knowing all the
facts. In case you’ve forgotten, what we’re thinking of
doing—”

“What we
are going to
do.”

“—is anything but well thought out.”

They were moving into position on the bluff so that
they would be looking down on Darwell Cattle #3. Pamela had
been in favor of simply moving in a crescent direction
around the guards and then going s
traight to the payroll office, entering through a window.
A little voice inside Phantom’s head, however, had warned
him that danger waited at the end of that particular trail.

So they had circled wide around the payroll office and
its surrounding buildings. Tethering their horses far from the encampment, now they were standing at the treacher
ous Fugina Bluff, looking down at the buildings.

“What do you think?” Pamela asked, looking at the roofs
of the buildings. She couldn’t see any guards positioned on them, but then she hadn’t spotted the two sentries stationed in the scrub grass either. So now she sought Phantom’s opinion.

He remained silent. He didn’t know what he thought. The payroll office was down to his left, and it would be
easy enough to move slowly and quietly down the bluff.
Once inside the building, there was the safe to open. Darwell
had chosen a Barns & Bradley safe for the mansion, and
he probably had one here, too. Phantom was reasonably certain he could open it, knowing the single flaw in the safe’s
design.

So why, when he should feel confident, was that little voice of warning refusing to quiet down?

He squinted into the darkness, searching the shadows
and moonlight below, struggling to see the danger his in
stincts and intuition told him was there. The pale yellow light that came from the few lamps glowing within the bunkhouses offered little help. The faint, warm evening
breeze carried the occasional sounds of laughter and revelry coming from those cowhands who had already made
it to the bunkhouse and were waiting for sunrise to get their pay.

In addition to the two sentries hidden in the scrub grass
outside of camp, Phantom could see two more—one on the roof and one on the ground—outside what looked like an auxiliary bunkhouse. No guards stood outside the payroll
office…and that just didn’t make any sense, not if that
was where Darwell was keeping the money until it could be
distributed the following day.