Outlaw for Christmas (9781101573020) (4 page)

In the warmth of the barn, Annabelle nickered a welcome. Ruth had left the mare only an hour before, but the horse was used to secret night rides. Ruth often took Annabelle out when she needed to be free of her father's stifling expectations, which she never seemed able to meet.

Ruth mounted her horse and raced back into the snow-shrouded night.

* * *

Shots. Mayhem.

Shouting. Dying.

Horses galloping. Bullets flying. Bodies falling.

Just hold on.

Noah was hot; then he was cold. He hurt everywhere, then nowhere at all. The lack frightened him more than the pain had, and he swam through a dark river of nothing toward a shore of bright light and shining agony.

Keep going. Have to hide. Somewhere safe. Find peace.

Peace.

“Ruth?”

The sound of his own voice, hoarse and dry, broke Noah free of the dragging current and tossed him amid waves of torment. His moan made him flinch, and the movement sent him back under the dark water to his memories of her.

Pixie face, fairy eyes, flame in her hair. Throughout the hardships, the brutality, and the lies, the recollection of Ruth had been a comforting, constant presence.

His favorite memory of her was at the train station, as she searched for him. He'd known even then how to dissolve into a crowd, had learned that talent young in order to survive. He'd honed it to perfection since then. He could now melt into the flat planes of Kansas or the hills of Missouri as easily as he'd disappeared on the streets of New York. Men like Noah could survive anywhere.

As he drifted on the current, the childish image of Ruth altered. She had become a woman grown, different in many ways but in many others just the same.

Over the years he'd said her name in his sleep often enough to make a whole lot of women angry. But it had never been the way they'd thought. To Noah, Ruth was peace of the soul and love unconditional, the only person who saw him as more than he could ever be.

Because of that he'd stayed away so she'd never know how low he'd sunk. But in his darkest hour he'd returned to her, and if he wasn't careful, she'd discover everything. Then the only dream he'd ever kept alive—that Ruth would always see him as her hero—would be as dead as all the men he'd called friends up to a few days ago.

Noah awoke. Pain swamped him, caused the room to waver, made it difficult to think. Where was he? What had awakened him? Where the hell were his guns?

His vision cleared, and every question fled. Framed in the half-open doorway, the body of a woman touched by firelight. Shadows shrouded her face; the echo of darkness pulled all color from his sight. She wore nothing but a chemise—white fabric against skin of pearl, dark hair tumbling down, caressing her shoulders, her back, the slope of her neck, brushing the ample mounds of her breasts.

She lifted the skirt, placed her heel on a chair, then ran a cloth down one calf and up the thigh. A sigh of pleasure, and his mouth went drier than before. His lips burned. His mouth ached.

Water trickled, the fire snapped, and the washcloth skidded up her arm, across her chest, then down into the valley between her breasts, over one to the other, a caress to the hardening tips.

When she bent to pick up her dress, the spike of her hip revealed a boyish frame at odds with the womanly weight of her breasts and the shapely stretch of her leg.

Lifting her arms, she pulled the garment over her head, and the muscles in her shoulders bunched and released, the ripple of skin and the shift of bone stunning within the firelight. She appeared strong for one so slight. As the dress puffed and settled around her, she pushed back her hair, revealing the pointed chin he knew so well.

As Noah slid back into the river of darkness, he knew for certain he was nigh on to dying. That would be the only excuse for dreaming of Ruth as if she were like any other woman in the world.

Ruth shut the stove. Her dress had quickly become ashes and warmed the room while she washed and changed.

Upon entering the farmhouse, she'd immediately checked Noah, uttering a quick prayer of thanks that he still breathed. Though a bit too hot for her liking, his color had improved and buoyed her hope.

She had not found blood anywhere but on her dress and at one forgotten slash along her wrist. She'd rubbed her thumb over the mark, and as she did so, she could have sworn she'd heard Noah call her name. But when she pushed his door open partway, he still slept.

So she tossed her dress into the fire and washed whatever her chemise did not cover, afraid she'd discover other slashes of blood where she least expected them and uncertain how she'd react if she did. As she washed, she remembered the rasp of his voice, the slide of her fingers against his skin, the strength of him despite the weakness, and she shivered with new, frightening sensations she could not put a name to.

In the few short hours since Noah had fallen into Ruth's arms, a lot of things had changed. Most of them inside her.

Gathering strips of cloth she'd salvaged from her ruined dress and a bowl of tepid water that had warmed while she bathed, Ruth took them into Noah's room.

He'd tossed the blankets to the floor and twisted so that the bedsheet was down about his thighs. She hadn't removed his pants, only his boots. Ruth bit her lip. He'd no doubt rest better if he weren't wearing bloody trousers.

She struggled and pulled, yanked and shifted, until she managed to remove the pants, discovering nothing but Noah beneath the stained material. Before she tugged the sheet up over his hips, she saw he was a large man in more ways than one.

Her face went as hot as a sun-warmed rock. Where had that thought come from? She'd
never
seen a man naked. For all she knew, he was small, but she doubted it. Though sheltered and innocent, she knew a few things. She knew what went where. And
that
would not fit where it was supposed to go.

She shook her head at the thought—one she'd never had before. The image shocked her, but it also fascinated her. Just as he did.

His face flushed, hair damp with sweat, his skin was no doubt aflame. How could she be thinking about the strength and size of Noah's body while he lay in the grip of a fever?

Ruth sat in the chair she'd left at the head of his bed, plunged her sweaty palms into the bowl of cooler water, then drenched a strip of fabric and bathed his face, his neck, his chest.

As she ran the cloth over his body, she discovered scars of many shapes and sizes: a slice along his ribs, a puckered band on his arm, a thin slash at his side that ran around and disappeared onto his back. What had he been doing in the years he'd been away?

Time slowed. The world had shrunk to this house, this room, this bed. Although she should be bathing him, suddenly she was touching him.

As she cupped his chin, his beard scraped her palm. His pulse thudded strong and alive against her fingertips. When she smoothed her fingers down his neck, his hair brushed the back of her arm. As she ran her hand across his chest, the flat discs of his nipples peaked and hardened.

Her love for Noah had been pure and untouched, something she held deep inside, a secret and a promise. But in the space of an instant, while touching him like this, her childish adoration and hero worship became something new. Or perhaps it became something as ancient as man and woman.

She'd wondered if she could feel anything beyond friendship, if passion was possible for her. Now she knew.

She kissed his forehead. The heat of fever burned her lips as a different kind of heat scalded lower and deeper. She wanted to touch his scars, taste his skin, feel all of him against all of her.

So when she lifted her head and caught the glint of his eyes in the lamplight, she didn't move because she could barely breathe.

Their faces were so close that his heat brushed her cheeks. His hair smelled like snow sifting across the prairie. From his body arose the scent of wildness, of danger, of him.

His eyes too bright, the fever unleashed. She wanted him to say her name, to prove that he knew whose waist he caressed, whose breasts he cupped, whose heart he caused to race.

But he said nothing, only put his hot mouth on hers and used it in ways her silly virginal mind could never have imagined.

Chapter Three

Noah dreamed again. This time, instead of seeing Ruth in her chemise, running her hands up her legs, over her breasts, down her hips, he had those breasts in his hands, and they were soft and firm and ripe. Just as her mouth, though untutored, was willing and her hands were eager, fluttering over his chest, tracing his scars, flicking his nipples, making him hard and hot.

He felt on fire from the inside out, as if he might explode if he did not take her here and now.

What a dream.

Since it
was
a dream, he curled one of those small, clever hands around him. She didn't recoil but eagerly accepted the rhythm he taught. Tighten, then release; soothe, then smooth.

This was insane. Fever had ruined his mind. How could something so salacious feel so good and so right?

Because this wasn't real. He couldn't truly be touching his precious Ruth in ways he'd kill any other man for even thinking about.

But the edge he perched upon seemed real enough. His body thrummed with need, screaming for completion, almost there. Not so fast. He stilled her hand, drew it back to his chest, captured her mouth and tasted her again and again.

She met the thrusts of his tongue with her own. His dream woman learned fast. Funny, but she tasted like tea. He loathed tea. But who was he to argue with the best dream he'd ever had?

“Oh, Noah.” Her mouth left his, moved over his chin, along to his neck. “I never knew it could be like this.”

Neither had he. But dreams
should
outshine reality. Otherwise what good were they?

Her hair cascaded over his belly. Her palm cupped his hip and slid down his thigh. The dream just got better and better.

She smelled of lilac soap. Now that made sense. He'd also dreamed of her bathing, and the memory of creamy skin in the firelight made him groan.

She stilled, shifted, and her hand bumped his belly. Pain flared. There should be no pain in a dream world.

Noah's eyes shot open. This was no dream. There was a woman in his bed—and no clothes on his body.

“Noah? I hurt you. I'm sorry. Noah?”

Her hair shrouded her face as her hands fluttered over his skin. Attempting to soothe, she did anything but.

With a sickening dip in his gut came the realization of what he had done. His body didn't care. It just kept shouting for more as her scent aroused him; her touch enticed him, even as her identity horrified him.

“Ah, hell!”

Noah grabbed Ruth's wrists and held them away. Her startled eyes flew to his; confusion darkened their depths. His gaze wandered over her—from finger-tousled hair, past ravished lips, to loose and gaping bodice.

He closed his eyes, shocked at himself. Fever was no excuse. Impending death be damned.

He'd put his foul mouth on Ruth's sweet lips, scraped her perfect skin with his rough beard, pawed her untouched breasts with his bloodstained hands, and forced her soft palm to close and release around his hardened—He moaned in self-disgust.

“Noah?”

Ruth tugged on her wrists, and he let her go. Immediately, she cupped his face and kissed his brow.

“Ruth, stop.” He pushed her away and tugged the sheet over his lap.

“What's the matter?”

The genuine confusion in her voice caused him to look at her. She didn't appear shocked or ill. She hadn't even adjusted her dress; so he did it for her.

His fingers trembled on the buttons, and she smiled as if he were a child and put her hands over his. This only served to press his knuckles against her breasts, and the erection he'd just begun to lose came thundering back.

He was depraved. But then that should be news to no one.

Yanking his hands from beneath hers, Noah shifted until Ruth's hip no longer rubbed against his. She frowned at the withdrawal.

“I'm sorry, Ruth. Forgive me.”

“For what?”

“What the hell do you think?” he shouted, exhausted, exasperated, disgusted with himself.

She jumped at the volume and the tone. He had to remember this was Ruth, his gentle angel, unaware. She was not used to rough men, loud voices, grasping hands, ravening lips. But if that was true, why wasn't she having hysterics instead of gazing at him as if she wanted to kiss him all over again?

He was dreaming bigger now than he had been while asleep. Because Ruth would no more want to kiss him than she'd want to fuck him.

He used the crudeness to remind him of who he was, who she was. Only fever could have made him forget the truth. If Ruth knew what he'd done, she would have let him die at her feet.

“I was dreaming,” he explained. “I didn't mean to kiss you.” A lie of sorts. While he'd been in the dream world, he'd wanted to do everything he could think of twice—including kiss her. “I should never have touched you like that.”

Her face fell. “You didn't know it was me?”

“No.” Lie, lie, lie again. He'd known; he just hadn't been able to believe what he was feeling, who he was touching, the fact that he wanted her in such a way and that she seemed to want him, too.

“I was out of my head.” That much was the truth.

“If you'd known it was me, you'd never have given me my first real kiss?” Ruth touched her lips with trembling fingers.

Noah winced.
Idiot! Clod! Pig!
What had he done? Ruined her first sweet kiss with his seeking, thrusting tongue, hard, ravaging mouth, and huge, bruising hands.

“You would never have let me touch you,” she continued.

“Of course not!” Horror harshened his voice. He'd most likely scarred her for life with his rough embrace.

“That's too bad,” she murmured. “I quite enjoyed it.”

Noah gaped, then narrowed his eyes, suspicious. “You're not upset? You're not angry?”

“Well, of course I am!” She stood and put her hands on her hips, staring down at him with flushed cheeks. That was more like it. “What woman wouldn't be angry to be kissed like that and then discover you were kissing someone else.”

He blinked, uncertain if he'd understood her. “Kissed how?”

“As if there was no one else in the world but you and me. As if nothing mattered but that kiss and this moment.” She sighed. “For a first kiss, I'd have to say you gave me a good one.”

Noah rubbed his aching forehead. “Took, more like.”

“Give, take.” She shrugged. “Isn't that what kissing is all about? I'm twenty years old, and I've never been kissed on the mouth by a man. I'm glad that man was you, Noah, even if you didn't mean for the woman to be me.”

Her smile was so sad, Noah nearly admitted the truth, until she picked up the bowl of water and some strips of cloth that appeared familiar. “Isn't that the same material as the dress you had on earlier?”

She looked at the rags in her hands. “Same dress.”

“You tore it up? Why?”

“There were bloodstains on it and I couldn't explain those away, so I burned it. But I kept enough for rags and bandages.”

He cursed himself. A few hours in his presence and she was burning her dress and lying to her family.

“I'll leave as soon as I'm able.”

She nearly dropped the bowl. Water sloshed onto the floor. “No! You need to regain your strength.”

“That won't take long, thanks to you.”

“You lost a lot of blood.”

“I've lost more. I'll be all right in a few days.”

“There's no reason for you to run off.” She went very still, her face drawn and white. “Unless there's somewhere you have to be. Are you married? Will your wife be worried for you?”

Noah almost laughed. His life left no room for anyone but himself, no women but those he paid. Women like those forgot a man the second he left their bed. Women like Ruth remembered a man forever, it seemed.

“No wife,” he answered. “Nowhere to be but away from here.”

“Why can't you stay? My mother died shortly after I came here, but my father would love to meet you.” Somehow Noah doubted that. “If you have nowhere else to go, you could live in Kelly Creek. It's a nice town.”

“What would I do here, Ruth?”

“The same thing you've been doing.”

Somehow he doubted that, too.

She left the room, and he heard her toss the water outside, then cross the kitchen before reentering the bedroom to sit upon the chair at his side.

“Where did you go from here? Who took you in?” She folded her hands in her lap. The calm pose did not reflect the anguish in her eyes. “Why didn't you come back?”

He'd known she'd ask these questions if he lived long enough to answer them. But he'd been too pained and feverish to prepare a reply. Perhaps the truth, or part of it, was best.

“A farmer took me west. Several days' ride. I was to work for him until I was eighteen.”

“You were eighteen seven years ago.”

“I can count.”

A slight tightening of her lips was Ruth's only reaction. “I waited at the train station every single year.”

“I thought it best if you didn't see me again.”

“Best for whom?”

“You.” He moved his hands, indicating the bed, his wound, everything. “Look what happened the first time I stepped back into your life.”

“Who shot you, Noah, and why?”

“I don't know who shot me.” There the truth ended. “I have no idea why. The rest of Kansas isn't Kelly Creek. There are men out there such as you could never imagine. Men who'll do whatever they please for no reason at all.”

Noah knew men like that very well. On occasion he was one of them.

The room wavered and spun. Weariness washed over him, and he laid his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

“What have you been doing since you left the farm?”

Even though her cool, soft hand stroked his brow, proving she hovered near, Ruth's voice seemed to come from a long way off. He should tell her not to touch him like that, but he couldn't quite manage it.

“Didn't say I left.” His voice had slurred. “Said I
could
have at eighteen.”

“Then you're still farming? Do you like it?”

“Always hated it.”

“Do something else then. Do it here.”

He didn't answer. Couldn't. The glide of her fingertips soothed him into a quiet, restful sleep where not a dream awaited. Not a single memory of blood and death, no whisper of pain and fever. Not even the image of alabaster skin, silken breasts, or warm, soothing lips on his own.

Nothing there but peace and safety, a thread of happiness. But then those things had always been more of a dream to Noah than anything else.

* * *

As Christmas Eve became Christmas, Ruth's gift slept on and on—a healing rest, no longer an unconscious slump. Noah was out of danger, yet Ruth remained, running her hands through his hair, touching his face, holding his hand. He never moved.

Perhaps she had not heard him murmur her name in his sleep; he certainly didn't do so now. But their kiss, the embrace, had changed things—no matter that he had not meant it. Ruth had, and she could never go back to the way things had been. Even if Noah left, she would always remember what it had been like to be touched by him, and she did not think she could bear to be touched by any other man.

Love was so much more than she could ever have imagined. In her girlish heart love had been warmth and safety. But in the space of an hour she'd learned that love could be heat and danger, too.

Because what she felt for Noah
was
dangerous. As her father had said, love could destroy her. She knew that as instinctively as she knew Noah did not love her. At least not yet.

His horror at touching her as a man touches a woman proved he saw her as a child and not a woman grown. But he cared for her; she could see it in his eyes. He trusted her or he would never have come to her when he was hurt. Noah needed her now. Ruth would make certain he always did.

Once he'd saved her, and despite the intervening years, she still belonged to him. Now she had saved Noah. How would she convince him that he belonged with her?

She needed time to show him she was all grown up and he was the only man for her. Just as she was the only woman for him. Time to show him that Kelly Creek could be a home—for him and for her. For them.

He'd spoken of leaving, but she had a few days. She just wasn't sure what to do.

Snow scratched the window, reminding Ruth that time had passed. She had to go back home.

After bundling herself against the cold, Ruth looked in on Noah once more. Even with the dark ghost of a beard on his face, he appeared younger asleep. She touched her chin where his beard had chafed as his mouth had taken, then given to, hers.

Determination flowed through her. She'd do whatever she had to do to feel his mouth against hers again. Even follow him to the end of the earth—or the borders of Kansas.

Ruth shrugged. Most folks thought the two were the very same place.

***

For Robert Kelly, Christmas was interminable. Because his Cora had adored Christmas.

A whiff of evergreen brought back images of her. The flicker of candles made him remember how the fire had played in her long blonde hair. The scent of cookies caused him to see her laughing face, with flour on her nose, to remember how the frosting had tasted on her lips.

He'd allowed Christmas to continue almost as it had when she was alive. To do otherwise would only invite pity, even scorn, from people who knew him. But one thing he'd been unable to bear was the reading of that blasted poem she'd adored. That he had banned from this house.

In truth, every day was interminable, and the nights were worse. Eight years since his wife had died. Twelve since he'd last seen his daughter.

Robert glanced at Ruth over the chessboard. Twelve years since he'd seen his real daughter.

“Your move, Ruth.” His voice was sharper than he'd meant for it to be. It usually was whenever he dealt with Ruth.