Only Love (17 page)

“How did the digging go?” Shannon asked.

Whip grunted. “Worse than yesterday, better than tomorrow.”

She tried to think of something encouraging to say. She couldn’t. Fear for her own future was too strong. Yet if she talked about that, Whip would think she was building a cage for him, nailing him to the floor of her dreams while his own dreams called to him from the other side of the bars.

“I’m not going to find gold in Rifle Sight,” Whip said bluntly. “Not tomorrow. Not the day after. Not ever.”

Shannon stumbled, then righted her balance before Whip could touch her.

“There are other claims,” she said through pale lips.

“You said Rifle Sight was the best one.”

“Maybe I was wrong.”

“Maybe. But I’ve got a better idea.”

“What? Jump somebody’s claim?” she asked bitterly.

“I’ll leave that to the Culpeppers, and I’ll leave
robbing trains and banks to the James brothers.”

Shannon smiled despite her unhappiness about the lack of gold on Silent John’s claims.

“What’s your idea?” she asked.

“The only real safety for a girl like you is in a nice town with picket fences around the houses and church bells ringing and a good, settled man for a husband. But—”

“I don’t want to marry,” she interrupted curtly.

“—there’s no place like that in Colorado Territory,” Whip continued.

“Thank God,” Shannon muttered.

Whip ignored her. As he spoke, his original enthusiasm for the idea of sending Shannon to live with Caleb and Willow returned in full force.

“The next safest place for you would be Cal’s ranch,” Whip said firmly.

Shannon cut a sideways look at Whip and said not one word.

“The ranch lies beyond those peaks,” Whip said, pointing to the west, “about a day’s ride from your cabin on a good horse in good weather. Two days if you take Razorback. Four if you walk.”

“And no time at all if you stay home,” Shannon pointed out pleasantly.

Whip kept talking as though she hadn’t said a word.

“Cal and Willy—my sister, remember?”

“Cal is your sister? I thought he was a man.”

Whip shot Shannon a glittering glance.

She gave it right back.

“Willow is my sister. Caleb is her husband.” Whip spoke slowly and clearly, as though to the town drunk. “They have a little boy and are expecting another baby before too long. All she has
for help is Pig Iron’s wife, and she only speaks Ute.”

“They should send to Canyon City. Or Denver. Or maybe one of your other widows would want the job. I don’t.”

Whip made a frustrated sound and raked his fingers through his hair, dislodging his hat. He caught it with careless ease and pulled it firmly back into place. He wished his temper were as easy to get hold of and keep in hand.

“They wouldn’t treat you like hired help,” Whip said carefully. “You would be like…family.”

“After my step-aunt, I’d rather be treated like hired help,” Shannon said.

“Damn it! All I meant was you would have a safe place to live with good people around you and kids to enjoy and—”

“Their home, their children,” Shannon said tightly, “Thank you, no. I’d rather have my own home and my own children to love.”

The thought of Shannon having another man’s children sent raw rage through Whip. The sheer violence of his reaction shocked him. He locked his jaw against the reckless words crowding his throat.

What business of mine is it whose kids she has
, Whip asked himself savagely,
as long as they aren’t mine?

The rational, reasonable, logical question did nothing to cool Whip’s elemental rage. Teeth clenched, he turned away from the girl who could trigger his temper—and his body—as no one else ever had.

That’s the end of it
, Whip told himself.
Time to pull up stakes and find another sunrise before she has me so hog-tied I can’t even move.

But first I have to see that the stubborn little witch is safe, whether she likes it or not.

Without a word Whip turned away from Shannon and strode toward his own camp.

Shannon let out a long breath, took in another one, and looked at her hands. They were trembling slightly. She knew she had come very close to making Whip lose his temper entirely.

But she didn’t know what she had done to cause it.

“I wish you could talk, Prettyface. You’re a male. Maybe you could tell me what I did.”

The big, brindle hound nudged Shannon’s hand. He didn’t know what was wrong with his mistress, but he sensed something was.

“I thanked him very politely for his offer of a place in his sister’s house,” Shannon pointed out.

Prettyface’s tongue lolled as he panted softly.

“Well, maybe not very politely,” she conceded, “but I certainly wasn’t rude. Not nearly as rude as he was.”

The hound cocked his head to one side, ears erect, looking as though he were about to speak to Shannon.

“If only you could talk.” She sighed deeply. “But you can’t. So I guess I’ll have to ask Whip why he got so furious when I said I wanted a home and children of my own. It’s not like I was asking him to provide either one.”

Unsettled, torn between anger and hurt, Shannon walked after Whip.

But when she got to his campsite, all her questions fled. Whip was quickly, efficiently, packing up his belongings.

No! Oh, Whip, don’t leave me yet.

Shannon’s short fingernails bit into her palms as she tried to stem the tears burning against her eyelids.

I won’t cry. I knew it was coming. I just didn’t think it would be like this. In anger.

Shannon started to speak, then thought better of it. She couldn’t trust her voice not to reveal her hidden tears. Silently she turned away and went to her own campsite.

By the time Shannon heard Whip’s big gray horse walking toward her campfire, she could trust herself to speak. Whip pulled the horse to a stop and dismounted without a word.

“Leaving?” she asked him evenly.

“I told you I was.”

“Yes.”

Shannon looked at her hands, took a deep, secret breath to calm herself, and smiled up at Whip.

“Thank you for all you’ve done, Whip. If you ever come back through here—oh, that’s right. You never chase the same sunrise twice.” She made a vague, jerky gesture with her right hand. “Well, thank you. Are you certain you won’t take some pay? You’ve done so much and I do have a bit of gold left.”

Whip looked at Shannon’s pale face and trembling hands and wanted to comfort her and shake her at the same time. Silently he stalked past her and began packing up her camp.

“What are you doing?” Shannon asked after a minute.

“What does it look like?”

The tone of Whip’s voice made Shannon flinch.

“It looks like you’re packing my gear,” she said.

“Do tell.”

Whip rammed some dried food into a burlap bag and looked around for more.

There wasn’t any.

That, too, irritated him. It reminded him of just
how close to the edge Shannon had been before he came along, and how close to the edge she would soon be after he left.

Unless she took a job with Willow.

“Why are you packing my gear?” Shannon asked distinctly.

“Because you’re coming with me.”

Shannon’s eyes closed.
I refuse to lose my temper over a yondering man who can’t see love when it’s right in front of him.

When Shannon’s eyes opened, they were as furious as Whip’s. But her words weren’t. They were well chosen, spoken in a low voice, and very distinct.

“You weren’t listening very well,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere except up to Rifle Sight to dig for gold.”

“Oh? You going to eat grass while you dig?”

Shannon blinked. “No.”

“Then you better ride as far as your cabin with me. There aren’t enough supplies left up here to keep even a stubborn little idiot of a girl alive.”

“Don’t worry. There’s no ‘stubborn little idiot of a girl’ around to eat the supplies. There is, however, a thick-shouldered, thickheaded blind man with the appetite and disposition of a starving grizzly who—”

Abruptly Shannon remembered that she had promised herself not to lose her temper with this stubborn, blind mule of a man.

“There are enough supplies for a day of digging,” she said with false calm.

Whip looked at the cloud-seething sky and then back to Shannon.

“By this time tomorrow, it will be storming fit to drown Noah,” he said. “A smart little girl would
get her rump moving down the hill to shelter.”

“A smart little girl wouldn’t be up here—”

“Amen.”

“—with a rock-stubborn blind man!”

“Pack up,” was all Whip said.

Shannon didn’t move.

With a savage curse Whip turned to her.

“You calling me stubborn,” he said coldly, “is like the pot yelling at the kettle for being black.”

“Do I sense agreement on the subject of your stubbornness?”

“Right now we couldn’t agree on water being wet, but that doesn’t change the facts. There’s no gold in Rifle Sight. There’s a storm coming. There aren’t enough supplies to see you through the storm.”

Shannon wanted to dispute Whip’s words, but she knew he was right. She had been so busy playing with Prettyface and arguing with Whip that she hadn’t bothered to look at the sky.

She came to her feet in a graceful movement that belied her ragged men’s clothing.

“Fine,” Shannon said grudgingly. “I’ll ride with you as far as my cabin.”

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“Don’t worry, yondering man.”

Despite their mutual ill temper, Whip and Shannon worked side by side breaking the camp, understanding what must be done without discussion.

By the time Crowbait was packed and Razorback was saddled, much of Shannon’s anger had bled away into a numbing kind of sadness. She doubted it was the same for Whip. His face was still set and his eyes were still narrowed as he swung into Sugarfoot’s saddle.

Prettyface ranged out around the horses and mule as they took to the vague trail down the mountain. The trip to the cabin was accomplished swiftly and in a silence that made Shannon’s heart ache. Not until they were at the cabin door did Whip speak.

“Gather up some supplies while I check Crowbait. He’s walking kind of light on his left fore-foot.”

Shannon dismounted and went into the cabin. There weren’t many supplies left, but she didn’t grudge a mouthful of them to Whip. He had bought the food, after all, and shot the game. She had done nothing but cook and eat.

She packed all but one day’s worth of her supplies into a burlap bag and carried it out to Whip. He tied the bag onto Crowbait’s pack with a few rawhide strings.

“All set?” he asked.

Numbly Shannon nodded.

Whip swung up into the saddle and looked down at Shannon. The pain in her was almost tangible.

“Hey, honey girl,” Whip said gently, tilting her chin up to him with his left hand. “Turn that smile right side up. People as stubborn and hot-blooded as we are will argue from time to time. Nothing wrong with that.”

Shannon gave Whip a trembling smile. She brushed her lips over the soft surface of his riding glove.

“Thank you,” she said in a low voice.

“For what?”

“Not riding off in anger. I…I don’t think I could have endured it…not knowing where you
were, knowing only that you were angry when you left.”

For an instant Whip could only think how good it would have felt if Shannon’s lips had been against his skin instead of his glove. Then the implications of her words sank in.

“You’ll know where I am,” he said flatly. “You’re coming with me.”

Hope flared like lightning across Shannon’s soul.

“I am?” she asked.

“Bet on it.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Cal’s ranch, just like I said.”

Shannon closed her eyes and fought against the desire to take whatever Whip offered, just so long as she could be with him.

“No, thank you just the same,” Shannon said quietly. “I’ve got claims to work and Cherokee to look after and game to hunt and—”

“
Judas H. Priest, you do know how to push a man.”

“—Prettyface wouldn’t do well with strangers,” Shannon finished in the same quiet voice. “I’m staying here, where I belong.”

Whip looked down at the slender, determined girl. He couldn’t help admiring her spirit even as it infuriated him.

“What’s to keep me from picking you up, tying you to that old mule, and taking you wherever I want?” Whip asked.

“Common sense.”

Whip hesitated, then let air hiss out between his teeth.

“You’re going to fight me every step of the way, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I’m not going anywhere with you, so I can’t very well fight you every step of the way, can I?”

Shannon never even saw Whip move. Suddenly a hard arm was around her and she was jerked off her feet. Whip held her against his body with an ease that angered her even as it set her blood on fire.

It set his blood on fire, too. She could see it in the sudden dilation of his pupils, feel it in the hard tension of his body, taste it in the hot kiss that left her shaking and clinging to him, whispering her foolish love for a yondering man.

“It won’t work,” Whip said roughly, hating him-self and the girl who watched him with love in her eyes. “I won’t stay here. I won’t love you.”

“I never asked—”

“The hell you didn’t,” he interrupted savagely.

Whip put Shannon’s feet back on the ground so quickly that she staggered. He jerked the packhorse’s lead rope off Sugarfoot’s saddle horn, freeing Crowbait.

“I want you like hell on fire, but I won’t give up my soul to have you. That’s what love is, honey girl. Giving up your soul.”

He backed Sugarfoot away from Shannon, spun the horse on its hocks, and set out across the meadow at a fast canter.

“Whip!” Shannon called. “I didn’t—I really didn’t mean to ask for your love!”

Nothing came back to her but the fading drumroll of Sugarfoot’s hooves.

Only when Whip was out of sight did Shannon notice that he had left his pack animal and all the supplies with her. She stared at Crowbait’s patient brown eyes and fought not to cry out against the sadness that was sweeping over her like a cold wind.