The Loner (15 page)

Or maybe the reason she was shaky and obsessed with danger was because so much was riding on what she might hear.

Yeah. It's your life at stake, Cat.

Finally, after an age of creeping through the roughly built addition to the main structure, she stood plastered in the corner at the doorless opening to the tavern. It was one step up from where she was and it had a wooden plank floor.

She was on the front side of the long building now, keeping out of the spilling light that fell the
other way. However, in spite of being in the shadows she was fully visible to anyone coming from the direction she had come. For the first time, she noticed that there was also an opening at the end of the hallway, a crooked rectangle filled only with the night.

Pray God no one came in that way.

Her teeth tried to chatter but she set her jaw against them. It couldn't be helped; there was nothing more than shadows to hide her and she couldn't hear from any farther away.

After listening for a minute, though, her heart sank. Somebody called, “Possum, pour me another one.”

A different voice told a card player, “Show your hand.”

Her heart sank. There were several occasional voices, even a hum of conversation, but Becker and his men weren't distinguishable. She had risked all this danger for nothing.

Weak with desperation, she sank back against the wall.

“I'm havin' the sideboards of the wagon reinforced,” someone said.

Through the wall. She was hearing this voice through the
outside
wall, which was made of poorly covered pine slats.

“So when we set the ambush, some of us will be hidin' in the wagon bed?”

Wagon. Becker was having a wagon built.

The first voice answered. “Yeah. And the rest'll be scattered in the woods along the edge of the road.”

She knew that voice, almost. No, she
did
know it! It was Becker's rough way of talking, only in a quiet tone, not in a yell the way it had been at the cave that night she'd been shot.

Instinctively, Cat turned her head and pressed her ear hard against the rough wall.

“What about a couple of men on the bluff?” another man asked.

“Yeah,” Becker said. “One on the ledge on the east side and the west one on the lookout rock to give us the heads up.”

“Seven of us can do it,” another voice said. “They likely won't be more than a driver and two outriders with the shipment.”

“Right,” Becker said. “And Glass and a couple of his men to accept it and take it on into Sequoyah.”

There was a buzz of conversation that was too low for Cat to catch many words, then Becker spoke again.

“Whaddya think, boys?” he said.

“I think Tassel Glass is gonna burn this Nation down huntin' fer The Cat,” someone answered.

“That's
only
if he's not there for th' ambush,” Becker said. “If he is, he better not get out of the gap alive or
I'll
be huntin'
y'all
.”

“We'll git 'im, Boss.”

“Yeah. He ain't takin' over all the damn Cherokee whiskey trade and gittin' away with it.”

“He'll wish he never started no blood feud.”

Dear Lord. Becker and his men were on the
front porch
. She could've heard them better if she'd stayed outside in the yard and never risked coming into Possum's building at all!

Somebody scraped a chair against the floor just inside the tavern end of the huge room that included the store and the pawnshop that were some of Possum's many enterprises. Cat shrank back into her corner as far as she could, but whoever got up apparently went the other way.

Fear surged through her anyhow. If she was caught, everybody in the place would gather around, including Becker. They were talking blood feud here, and she would bet anything, even her precious Little Dun, that when Glass's killing happened it would be signed with the mark of The Cat.

Becker would have to have her dead or keep her with him to prevent her having an alibi. The law and Glass's men would all be after her once the deed was done.

A chill burst into her blood and flowed deep into her bones.

She wasn't used to this—being a pawn in someone else's game. What she was used to, what she
wanted, was to be invisible again and unknown. Unnoticed.

Free and alone.

Except for Black Fox. Sudden longing for him tugged at her heart, tried to pull her away from the wall and out of this place.

Stubbornly, she fought it and stayed where she was. The only person she could depend on was herself and this was her chance to find out even more about Becker's plans.

“How much whiskey do you expect it to be, Boss?”

Becker answered, she could hear the rumble of his voice but his words were too low to make out.

“Hey, what the
hell
?”

Those words were crystal clear and they were
not
outside the building.

Cat whirled around to see a man standing in the open doorway at the end of the long hall, staggering a little and reaching to the wall for support. His other hand fumbled at his side and came up with a handgun.

She could see him outlined against the moonlit night as he made slow progress toward her, waving his weapon.

“Somebody there?” he called, looking straight at her, hiding in the shadows. “Martin, that you?”

For the space of two heartbeats, she froze.

Run, run, run! Get out of here or it's all over! He'll
shoot. With a drunk's crazy luck, he might hit what he's aiming for.

Still she couldn't move. She would have to run right toward him.

If only Black Fox…

You can't let him be right about this. You told him you could come in here and not get caught. He'll never let you out of his sight again.

Her little voice of truth was browbeating her.

But somewhere, in another part of her, was an even stronger feeling.

Get to Black Fox and everything will be all right. All you have to do is get to Black Fox.

She bolted almost before she knew her feet would move. As she ran, she watched for the door of the storeroom in the dark and held her hands out in front of her so she wouldn't miss it.

It was farther than she'd thought and the drunk wasn't more than an arm's length from her when she found the line of light again—this time from the moon and starlight coming in the window. He fired and the blast of the gun roared in her ears.

She plunged through the doorway, rushed into the room and bumped into a stack of boxes. When she drew back, she knocked into a barrel.

“Wait just a minute, you thievin' son of a bitch!” the drunk yelled.

Then he was in the room with her, slamming her against the door.

“Who are you?” he called. “Hey, Marty? Wait a
minute!
”

Cathleen made it to the window. She barked her shin and rammed a splinter into the heel of her hand, but she threw her leg over the windowsill and bent her body over it to fall out into the night, shoving with her other foot as if to push herself as far away from the building as she could. With a thud, she landed on her side in the dirt, already damp with dew.

Before she could even absorb the shock, she was scratching and scrambling for purchase and, finally, after what seemed ages, hit her feet running. She didn't dare call out for Black Fox, but surely he would see her.

“Marty!” the drunk roared, from the open window behind her. “Wait. You owe me five dollars, you little skunk!”

He must've had two guns. He started shooting and the reports seemed to go on forever, but it may have been only the five rounds that would have been left in the six-shooter.

Once, she heard the zing of the bullet, and once again, something hit a rock or a tree somewhere behind her and ricocheted. He could be a hundred percent accurate, drunk or sober, she didn't know.

She wanted to look back, for her own protection, to see if he had roused the whole population of Possum's tavern and store but she didn't dare
slow enough for that. And she didn't dare take her eyes off the way before her. She could see fairly well in the moonlit places but in the shadows it was black as pitch.

She ran full out in spite of that, pursued by far more than the gunshots of a staggering drunk who'd mistaken her for somebody else. Now that she knew what it was to take a bullet, she had a sudden conviction that she wouldn't be able to survive that again.

That was stupid. She wasn't afraid of pain. She knew she could take it.

But the night was closing in around her and it didn't feel friendly, as it usually did. It felt like a strange, faraway place she didn't know. A foreign place where she was alone.

All she knew for sure was that the trees were the only real cover she could find. She had to concentrate on getting to them, even if they were filled with an even deeper blackness.

When she reached the pines, she stayed at the edge of them and started a big circle around Possum's place to head for the cove where she and Black Fox had left the horses. That way, if Becker or anybody else from Possum's came out to chase her, she could run into the woods and hide.

She stopped once, just for one deep breath, and looked back, searching fast for a glimpse of Black Fox more than for pursuers, but she saw nothing.
Her heart was beating hard enough to smother her and she tried to slow it with her mind but she couldn't.

Where was he standing watch for her? Why wasn't he here on this side of the building where she'd gone in the window?

He would meet her at the horses, though. Surely he would head back there.

She cast one more longing look at the moonlit grassy space behind the store, willing every shadow to be him. He wasn't here. She had no sign of him. She had to get back to the cove.

“Marty, you're a high-ridge rider and a no-good thief,” the drunk man yelled. “I aim to get that five dollars back and I'm takin' it out of your worthless hide.”

Forcing her feet to move and her head to turn to watch where she was going, she began to run again. For distraction from the fear that was tearing at her lungs, she forced her mind to work.

He sounded so clear he must be hanging half out the window she'd jumped through. Judging from his condition, who would've thought he could navigate through that dark, cluttered room?

Maybe nobody would pay any attention to him because he was drunk.

What an irony that she had taken all that risk and snuck into Possum's place when she didn't have to! She could've heard much, much more of what Becker and his men were saying if she'd
have hidden under the porch or in the bushes that grew alongside it.

But distractions could only hold her for so long. She didn't even care about any of that.

Where had Black Fox been all this time? Where was he now?

Had Possum or some of his lawbreaking customers come across Black Fox somehow? He could be lying helpless right this minute, hit over the head. Or worse.

It could be that she should be retracing her steps and going back to find him.

Her legs went weak with the longing to see him and know he was all right. But really, she just wanted to hear him say that
she
was all right.

She tried to put all her energy on running and watching where she was going but the new fear was sapping her in spite of her best efforts.
Fear
was what was pursuing her. It was as if all the risks she had taken so lightly in the last months had come back to haunt her now.

Had getting shot done this to her?

Taking in a great gulp of air, she veered around a mulberry bush to go behind Possum's log smokehouse and ran into the moonlight again. She felt it on her back, marking her, making her vulnerable, and she half-expected the slam of a bullet between her shoulders.

A horrible realization chilled her: What it came down to was that she was losing her nerve.

Even though she had escaped detection again, she was more scared than when she'd first gone in at that window.

Because, somehow, she had come to depend on Black Fox. She had become accustomed to having him ride with her. She couldn't believe she had let that happen, but it had.

If she could only find Black Fox, everything would be all right.

H
alfway to the cove, when Cat had made it as far as the east end of Possum's place, something reached out and snatched her by the hair. She fought free with the pure, terror-stricken panic beating in her blood like a clarion call. She was too scared to scream, too shocked to think. Instinctively she whirled in a circle and tore herself loose. Sharp pain from the bramble bush's scratches on her hands and hysterical relief from knowing it wasn't a person who had hold of her both went stinging through her from her skin to her bones.

She jammed the heel of her hand to her mouth and ran on, sucking away the pain, flaring her
nostrils to get the air she needed to go even faster. All she had to do was get to Black Fox.

It was too late, she was too far gone to think, when she burst into the cove. She startled the horses. They shied and snorted and pulled back on their tie ropes to roll their eyes at her but when she slowed—her enervated legs were collapsing under her—they knew her and settled again.

For an instant, for one, impossible-to-breathe, impossible-to-accept instant, she couldn't see him. She couldn't find him and she whirled around, straining her eyes to search the whole of the grassy circle bound by trees on the one half and the creek on the other.

Then, like a miracle, when she turned back from the cold sparkle of the faraway stars on the water, Black Fox was there.

Thank God in heaven, Black Fox was there.

He stepped out into the shifting moonlight.

The world was spinning; Black Fox stood in the middle of it, solid as an oak tree, and he was all she had to cling to. With a yearning cry and the last of her strength, she threw herself at him.

He caught her in his arms and she wrapped herself around him, burrowing her head into his chest.

“I couldn't find you,” she said, in a tiny voice. “Where were you, Black Fox?”

“Watching your back,” he said. “Since I couldn't catch you.”

That made her look up but she didn't loosen her hold on him.

“I didn't see you.”

“I didn't aim to be seen.”

“Did anybody follow me?”

“No. Your drunk came on out to the front porch, hunting for help, as soon as he ran out of ammunition but they all told him to sit down and sober up.”

She smiled and her eyes caught the starlight.

“Thank the Good Lord,” she said.

Then she dropped her head and burrowed into him again.

“I knew you wouldn't leave me,” she muttered, in a barely discernible whisper.

A hot happiness went through him with the words. She trusted him. She depended on him.

She melded herself to him as if she planned never to separate again. Well, he wasn't going to push her away.

She'd been scared half to death, poor kid.

Kid.

The word rang false in his head. This was no child he held in his arms. From the minute he had opened her blouse that first night he'd caught up with her, from the instant he'd known that this was no boy, he had tried to tell himself that she was a girl.

She wasn't. Cathleen O'Sullivan was a grown woman. A brave woman, with strength and grit.
Tonight, and yesterday, and many, many times before then, she had dared to take risks that many a man would not have the courage to take.

No matter her age in years, she was a woman, a very unusual woman. A woman he could fall in love with if he wasn't very, very careful.

But right now, he wasn't holding her because he wanted her, he was holding her only because she was so scared. She had just escaped from a dangerous situation and she was needing comfort. He clasped her tighter against him and tucked her head underneath his chin. He buried his face against the cloth covering her hair and held her there.

Black Fox thought, for a long moment, that it was only Cat trembling. He really believed that the poor girl was shaking so hard that he could feel the quake of her panic in his own bones. She needed to lie down. She needed to breathe deeply and take in the fact that she was safe.

However, when he grabbed up the saddle blankets and carried her across to the grassy, brush-hidden spot by the creek, he found that his own legs had gone weak from the fear he had been trying not to admit. It had hit him in the gut when he heard the first shots and it still held him in its grip.

His imagination kept bringing back the sight of her lying in that pool of her own blood the first time he'd seen her. It would've torn him up bad to find her like that again.

Finally, to his great relief, he made it to the pretty spot by the creek and managed to kneel and lay her down without dropping her and without his knees buckling. He'd never been so glad of anything in his life.

Until she clung to him so fiercely that he had no choice but to go down with her.

It brought him an inordinate pleasure that she wouldn't let him go. Vaguely, he wondered at why he needed that—after all, he was a lawman and given to protecting people all the time.

But that was the Nation as a whole, not one person. At that moment, the realization that she depended on him to save her from her fear was somehow more moving to him than any satisfaction he'd ever taken from his job. It was even stronger than his sensual attraction to her.

Until she thrust her fingers into his hair and lifted her face to find his mouth with hers.

Her kiss was urgent and trembly as she was, but relentless, too—desperate for comfort and seeking warmth. He couldn't have resisted it for more than the one heartbeat if his life had depended on it.

It melted him deep into the dew-damp grass and he gathered her closer. And closer. He did it in spite of the fact that her lips seared through him with the truth: he was already too far gone in his need for her.

Their kisses quickly grew wet and wild and so passionate that his blood ran hot.

He must stop this. He must break this kiss that would lead them both to perdition. She had started it and he had to stop it.

But his treacherous arms only pulled her closer and his tongue laved hers, then explored her mouth as eagerly as if he'd never tasted sweet before. Sweet
or
spicy.

She was both. And she pressed against him as surely as if she knew she'd been created just to fit into his arms. Her small, soft shape fit into his big, hard one to send such a sensuous arousal all through his body that he let himself go ahead and fall into the kiss with a passion that made his head dizzy and his pulse wild.

Her tongue answered his in a true, purposeful challenge and desire swept through him faster than the creek could run. Faster than his blood could carry it.

Stronger than his heart could beat.

Deeper than he could control and keep this whole encounter to only a kiss.

He had better put a stop to it now. She didn't know what she was doing. She'd just been scared out of her wits, she was clinging to him out of fear, and one thing had led to another. That was all.

Except that he knew it wasn't. They both remembered exactly how to kiss the other.

She shifted her mouth and let her arms fall loose and warm around his neck with such trust
that he felt the weakness take him again. He ought to stop this now. His heart was drifting closer and closer to that terrible danger of caring too much for her. Wasn't he already desperate to protect her, when he should be only concerned with her outlawry and with justice?

But his arms wouldn't move, they wouldn't let her go.

And his lips couldn't leave the full, luscious feast that hers offered him. He ravished her mouth with slow, sensuous strokes, and every thought he'd had faded away.

She moaned and let herself sink against him, melted into him while her mouth turned to hot honey. Lifting one arm with a slow, lazy gesture, she traced her fingertips along the side of his neck. They trailed fire.

He was the one shivering now.

His hands knew exactly what they wanted and they moved with a slow, steady purpose that wouldn't be denied: he had to caress her before he let her go. He pushed off the dark bandana she had tied over her head and brushed her hair back from her face. His hand lingered, lost in the springy, silky curls that twined around his fingers to hold him there.

Without breaking the kiss, he angled his mouth to ravish hers more deeply. She hesitated only for an instant, then responded with her tongue, her
lips, her teeth with a passion that set his nostrils flaring. The light, tantalizing woman-scent of her filled his whole body.

He ran his hand down her side, memorizing the shape of her.

Her nipples hardened against his chest where her soft flesh already tortured him. Without breaking the kiss, he pulled back enough to slip his hand inside her shirt and cup her breast.

Yes. She was a perfect handful as he'd known she would be, an exactly right fit for the palm of his hand.

She went still as he held her. She gasped as he caressed her hard nipple with his thumb.

Cat tore her mouth free.

For one, flying second he thought she would put a stop to this and save them.

His hand went still on her breast. But he couldn't make it leave her.

“Don't stop,” she said.

Then, shameless and unafraid, she lay back on her elbows, smiling at him.

His blood roared in his ears. The moonlight poured cream onto her skin and the stars threw fire into her hair while her eyes went huge and luminous, dark with the night shadows and the wonder of it all.

Desire slammed into him like a freight train. Desperately, he reached for power over himself. Power over her.

Power to separate them.

He was Black Fox Vann and if he made love with Cathleen O'Sullivan, he would never be the same again.

He was a Lighthorseman and that was his life and he couldn't make love with an outlaw and let her take it all away.

Hadn't he felt he would die if he couldn't kiss her again?

So then, Vann, how can you make love with her and then take her to jail?

But that wasn't even the most hell of it. She was young and she was trembling more since she had felt the touch of his hand on her and she was a fine person and…

“No,” he said huskily, “you don't know what you're doing, Cathleen.”

Her eyes widened with hurt.

“Well, I'm trying to learn, Black Fox.”

He smiled, then scowled to try to hide it.

“You've never…you're a virgin.”

“Yes,” she said, her full lips pouting, “but I thought I was doing all right so far.”

Could that be a tear shining? Had he made her cry?

“I'm sorry, Cathleen, but I would hate myself if…”

She encircled his wrist with her fingers that couldn't quite reach around it and held his hand where it was.

“We don't either one know how long we'll be alive,” she said, narrowing her eyes in that way she had when she was being truly stubborn, “and I don't know how long I'll be out of jail.”

She sat up, then, reached to touch his face with her other hand, and looked at him in a way she'd never done before.

“Listen to me, Black Fox. Right this minute, I'm alive and I'm free…sort of. I'm not going to waste that. I want as much of life as I can get.”

It cut his heart to ribbons but it made him smile, too. He did not know why, but he couldn't help but smile at her.

“You don't even know what you're talking about,” he said, surprised that he was unable to make his voice more than a hoarse rasp.

“Then why don't you just go right on ahead and show me?” she whispered.

She reached around to his back and pulled the tail of his shirt out of his jeans.

“You were making a good start on my education,” she said, and finally let go of his wrist to slide both her hands up under his shirt.

She ran her small palms slowly, slowly, up his spine and over the muscles of his shoulders.

The freight train turned around, roared back and hit him again.

He grabbed her, folded her into his arms and held her closer than ever as he rolled over onto his back to lift her out of the wet grass. Sinking into it
himself, oblivious to the damp, heedless of everything but the feather weight of her body lying along his length and the high, firm magic of her breasts calling to him again.

“I see you brought the saddle blankets,” she whispered into his ear just before she nipped at it. “What did you have in mind?”

He followed the shape of her with his hands, pulled the tail of her shirt out of her jeans in turn, and stroked the satin skin at the small of her back.

“Making you a dry bed to sleep on,” he said.

“I'm not aiming on sleeping,” she said.

“Well, then,” he said, and kissed the tip of her nose, “in that case, we don't want the night to go to waste.”

“No, we don't,” she said, in that decisive way that always tickled him. “I reckon you better go on with my lesson.”

She was right. They could both be dead by morning. And sometimes life surprised a person in a good way. Maybe it would turn out that he wouldn't have to take her to jail, after all.

Those were his last thoughts that were even halfway logical or sensible. Cathleen was kissing him again, along the line of his jaw this time, then down the side of his neck.

“I reckon you don't need any lessons,” he murmured. “It all comes natural to you.”

He slid his hands underneath her jeans and caressed her small, naked hips. She whimpered
deep in her throat and dug her nails into his shoulders. When she pulled back his shirt and kissed the hollow of his neck, then trailed her tongue up it, he began to undress her in earnest.

Somehow, they got naked and onto the blankets, so tangled up in each other, legs and arms so intertwined, that Black Fox couldn't tell them apart. He didn't want to. All he wanted was to keep his mouth on hers and her hands on him.

Shivers and sparks of desire danced all over his skin. She was shockingly, instinctively, sensual and she moved beneath him as if they'd been together many times. He held back as long as he could. He suckled both her breasts and left a trail of kisses from between them all the way up her throat to her sweet, lush mouth.