Outlaw (31 page)

He pinned Juana beneath his darkened gaze.
"Can I leave Amy here with you? They won't be looking for—"

"Leave me here?" Shock propelled Amelia from
the bed. Frantically she snatched for a quilt to cover herself
with, wrapping it around her torso with both hands.

"I'm not a...a
parcel
to be passed
from hand to hand at your will, Mason Kincaid," she said, marching
toward him with the ends of the quilt slipping from the bed and
trailing behind her. "I'm going with you."

"The hell you are."

He looked down at her, all hard, unrelenting
man. His hat brim shadowed his face, and between that darkness and
his day's growth of beard, suddenly Mason looked a stranger to her.
Not the man who'd held her so tenderly last night. Not the man in
whose eyes she'd glimpsed a love she'd never expected to find.

Not the man she wanted facing a posse's
drawn guns and promises of frontier justice.

"Then...then why can't you just hide from
them?" she cried, waving her hand that wasn't holding up the
blanket. She stepped nearer, frustration and fear coiling in her
stomach. "Why do you have to go? Why?"

Her voice broke on the words, threatened
tears Amelia didn't want to shed. Weeping wouldn't change his mind.
Not when it was this Mason, this cold, determined Mason, who stood
before her.

"Surely James and Juana can hide you here!"
she cried, her voice muffled as she scooped up her chemise and
pantalets from the floor and threw them onto the bed. She was going
with him no matter what he said—else hiding with him wherever they
could.

She snatched her dress from the
ladder-backed straight chair and threw it down, too. "They're your
friends, they'll want to help—"

"Enough." His jaw tightened, as did his hand
on her arm, stopping her from getting dressed. With Amelia's
cooperation assured for the moment, he glanced over his shoulder at
Juana. An unspoken question passed between them.

She nodded. "We'll watch over her until you
return," she said. She tried to smile at Amelia, and failed.

"Godspeed, Mason." Sniffling, Juana buried
her hands in her apron and left, her shoulders squared for the task
ahead of her.

He couldn't separate them now, Amelia vowed.
She meant to stay with him, and she would. What kind of woman would
desert the man she loved when he needed her?

She sat on the bed and hastily pulled her
pantalets on, shielded from view behind the blanket. Raising it
higher, she struggled to get her chemise over her head without
uncovering herself completely.

"I'll wait for you outside,
amigo
,"
said Manuel.

She heard his long, impatient strides toward
the door, and popped her head out from beneath the blanket just as
he paused with one hand on the thick door frame.

"You'll be needing somebody to cover your
back against those
bastardos
," he said with a wolfish grin.
"I'll go with you for as long as it takes."

"Thank you," Mason said, nodding his assent
as he watched Manuel leave.

His expression revealed nothing of his
thoughts, and Amelia couldn't stop to guess at them—not if she
meant to leave with him.

Mason moved toward her, stopped her
flustered attempts to fasten the chemise he'd torn from her last
night, and pulled her upright against him.

He captured her face in both hands and
tilted it upward to meet his gaze. "Amy, I have to go."

She lifted her chin higher. "I'll go with
you. I'm almost dress—"

"No." He stopped her when she tried to turn
in his arms and pick up her dress from the bed. "You have to stay
here."

With a sound of frustration Amelia pressed
her hands to his chest, wanting more than anything to make him
stay. She searched her mind for something that might convince him,
yet beneath her palm Mason's body quivered like a tightly strung
wire. Eager. He was eager to be gone, even if it might separate
them forever. Her hopes sank.

"Please don't go!" she cried, past caring if
anyone heard her—past caring that she was begging him not to leave
her. She clenched a fistful of his shirt and buried her face in the
warm curve just beneath his collarbone, trying to swallow past the
tightening in her throat. Why wouldn't he listen to her?

"Just hide!" she said. "Or—or, surrender.
You're not responsible for what happened to your wife. Just tell
them, and I'm sure—"

"No." His arms swept to her waist, held her.
"Men like that don't want explanations, Curly Top. They want the
bounty for bringing in an outlaw, plain and simple."

"But—"

"And if I stop to explain, I won't reach Ben
in time."

Ben.
His son
. Amelia slumped against
his chest as defeat seeped through her, cold enough that she might
never feel warm again. How could she ask him to stay, when it might
cost him the thing that mattered to him most?

She couldn't.

Mason's hands raised to her neck, and his
touch felt so familiar, so strong and warm she thought she might
weep from wanting it. Her throat ached with unshed tears. She
hardly dared raise her head to look at him, lest he see them
shining in her eyes, too. How could he be leaving now, when they'd
shared so much?

"Kiss me goodbye," he whispered, his thumbs
stroking beneath her chin to urge her face upward. Tears spilled
onto her cheeks, and Amelia felt them slide cold and wet toward her
ears. She sniffled.

"No," she croaked. Her fingers tightened on
his shirtfront as she shook her head. "No, I won't say
goodbye."

His mouth tensed. Mason's hands stilled,
then moved away from her face. Brushed past her neck. After a
moment's pause, he lowered them to his sides, not touching her at
all. The loss of him sharpened the ache inside her, and foretold
every day's loss from this instant on.

"Goodbye, Curly Top," he whispered
hoarsely.

"No!" Amelia lurched toward him, wrapped
both arms around his middle, not caring when her chemise gaped open
and her blanket dropped to the floor. Anything, anything to keep
him with her. She looked up at him, at his dark eyes and stern-set
jaw and his arms still not around her, and felt her heart splinter
at the proof of how easily Mason could leave her behind.

"Please, don't go," she whispered, unable to
force anything more past her constricted throat. "
Please
don't—"

"Every moment I stay, everyone here is in
greater danger," he said harshly. "In danger because of me."

Raising both hands to her temples, he swept
her hair back, digging his knuckles into her scalp. He forced her
head up to meet his gaze, and she could no sooner look away than
she could stop loving him.

"Every moment I stay,
you're
in
greater danger," Mason said, giving each word painful emphasis as
his hold tightened on her hair. A tremor passed through him, making
the muscles in his throat knot and release.

His eyes closed. "I'm leaving."

He released her, opening his eyes again.
Resignation had turned them bleak, colder than she'd ever seen
them. She truly couldn't stop him. Desperate, Amelia raised herself
on tiptoes and smashed her mouth against his.

He responded with the kiss she'd longed for,
a kiss that echoed all they'd shared. Leaving, leaving...the
knowledge that this kiss might well be their last sweetened it
nearly past bearing, made her tremble as Mason's arms swept around
her and held her tightly. His tongue stroked hers, delving deeper,
and the pressure of his mouth on hers was everything she hungered
for. He tasted of tears, her tears, and just as she began to
believe she'd convinced him to stay, Mason ended the kiss and
stepped away from her.

She wanted to grab him, to make him admit he
cared—or at least that he regretted leaving, that he'd be back for
her. His steely posture and distant eyes told her his leave-taking
had already begun. Pride stiffened Amelia's spine even as she
swiped away tears, blinking to hide the new ones that followed. A
painful lump rose in her throat, making speech difficult.

"Be safe, Mason." Even her lips wobbled with
the words, and she endeavored to sound brave to him. Clearing her
throat for the task, she let her gaze wander to his eyes again, and
regretted it when she glimpsed the impatience there. "I—I'll wait
for you."

His fingers touched her lips. The ghost of a
smile touched his. "Don't worry, Curly Top. I'm too mean to be
captured for long," he said.

"
Amigo
!" came Manuel's voice, muffled
by its journey inside through the thick adobe walls.

Mason closed his eyes and swallowed hard.
"
Miñuto
!"

He turned, his hands going by rote to his
gun belt. In the doorway he paused. In his eyes she saw the weight
of the man he'd become, of the outlaw's destiny he'd been cast
into, and the knowledge of all he'd suffered softened her
heart.

"I love you," Amelia whispered.

He looked at her a long moment, his
expression inscrutable.

"That's why I'm leaving," Mason finally
answered.

Before she could reply, he was gone.

Chapter Twenty-One

"He will return for you, you know."

Juana's words, so confidently given, made
hope flare inside Amelia like a newly lit candle. The doubt that
had plagued her since Mason's leaving doused it just as quickly.
She plunged her hands into the bread dough she was kneading for
Juana and gave it a vigorous push.

"Unless he...he..." Struggling over the
words, she flipped the dough and sent white puffs of flour drifting
over the tabletop. Her stomach knotted with unspoken worries.

Unless he can't.

Unless he's captured.

Killed.

She couldn't say her fears aloud without
redoubling them, without fearing she might inadvertently make them
come true. Some superstitious part of her wished mightily to
pretend Mason was invulnerable, however impossible a wish that was.
The rest of her knew exactly how precarious one life was—his wife's
death was proof enough of that.

Innocent or not, in the west a man accused
was only as safe as the marksmanship of the posse chasing him was
poor.

With every hour that passed without the
clatter of Mason's horse in the stage station's courtyard, Amelia's
fears grew. Her ears strained at every hoof beat, every noisy
stagecoach arrival. Her heart thrilled to the sound of every male
voice that drifted through the loosely latched shutters—until she
realized the voice wasn't Mason's.

"If anything happens, we will know of it
soon enough," Juana said. "James went to Tucson as soon as he
heard. If I know my husband, he's giving the lawmen there a
'bleeding earful,' right now. He'd ride back to tell us if they
brought Mason in."

She rolled her dark eyes and added a handful
of the onion she'd chopped to the pork stew simmering on the
stovetop, then wiped her hands clean. "Besides, you know as well as
I do, that man is too ornery to be locked up. The sheriff might set
him free just to spare himself the trouble."

Amelia smiled faintly at that, imagining
Mason hulking into the Tucson jail, all bared teeth and bad temper.
She
wouldn't like to be the one to try and lock up Mason
Kincaid. He'd already escaped from one sheriff's pursuit and
another's jail cell—but could he manage it a third time?

"Everyone in these parts knows Mason," Juana
went on in her melodious, Spanish-accented voice. Her gaze traveled
a competent, practiced arc from the bubbling, chile-scented stew to
the floury dough beneath Amelia's hands to the woodpile beside the
stove. "This will all get straightened out, one way or the
other."

She stooped to add more wood to the stove
fire, keeping busy as she'd seemed prone to do since Manuel had
returned with news of the posse this morning. But Amelia quit
kneading, staring at the mound of dough without really seeing it.
She wished she had Juana's faith, and her ability to work steadily
amidst troubles rather than flounder beneath them. More than that,
she wished she had Juana's knowledge of all that had happened in
Mason's life before.

Now she might never have the chance to hear
it from him.

The bread dough blurred into the plank
tabletop beneath it as her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears.
Blaming them on the fresh onions, Amelia sniffed them away, then
blinked and resumed kneading.

Maybe if she found out
how
he came to
be a wanted man, she could still help Mason somehow. It seemed
every new enlightenment that arose only sparked a new question.

"If everyone knows Mason, knows he couldn't
have been responsible for his wife's death," she asked slowly,
"then how was he ever accused? How did he lose his son?"

She flipped over the springy,
yeasty-smelling dough and went on kneading, mindful of Juana's
speculative glance her way.

And determined not to let her see how much
the explanation might mean.

"You want to know if I believe he is
guilty."

Juana's blunt statement stripped Amelia of
her assumed nonchalance. Her fingers sank mindlessly into the bread
dough. "No! No, that's not what I meant at all!"

She darted a glance at Juana and found her
standing with both arms crossed over her chest, eyeing Amelia with
something that came very near hostility.

"Do
you
believe he's guilty?" Juana
asked.

"I believe he feels responsible." She turned
the dough and pushed the floury heels of her hands into it,
thinking about it some more. "And responsible for the loss of his
son."

"Ha!" Juana frowned, hefted a split mesquite
branch, and shoved it into the stove fire with far more force than
seemed necessary. "That's what those brothers of Ellen's wanted him
to believe. They came out here, all fancy men from the States, and
snatched poor Ben away before Mason could even sober up from
Ellen's funeral."