The Loner (6 page)

She wanted to touch the pulse beating hard in the side of his throat.

“But what really made my decision,” she blurted, “was how handsome you are.”

Surprised, he glanced at her and the blood rose to flush his skin even darker. He looked suddenly shy as a boy. It was so endearing that she lifted her head and kissed him.

Right on the mouth. She put her hand on the back of his neck and kissed him before she even had a scrap of a thought about what she was doing.

He froze, as if he were as surprised at her action as she was, then he dropped the tin pitcher, clattering, into the pan on the floor and held her head exactly there so she couldn't move.

Not that she wanted to. His mouth was hot and
sweet and the taste of him spread through her like a fire.

What had she done? What was this?

This was kissing a man, which she had never done before.

This was a man kissing her back. How could she have known that it held such power?

But soon she realized there was more. At first it was a light kiss as she'd begun it. His lips were soft and gentle, as if fearing to hurt her, but then he held her closer, sliding one big hand beneath her wounded shoulder to support it, and he deepened the kiss until it grew stronger somehow, much stronger, and he trailed the tip of his tongue along the seam of her lips, demanding entry.

The heat in her blood deepened, too. Her lips were burning so beneath his that she couldn't have denied him even if she had tried.

His mouth tasted of honey and spices and coffee and there was a mastery in it that made her want more.

But she couldn't stand any more because this was such an assault on her senses, such a scent of Black Fox, clean and masculine in her nostrils, such a feel of hard muscles beneath her palm, such a sound of his sweet breath and the safe, close sensation of the way he clasped her close to him. She clung to him.

A slow yearning began somewhere in the cen
ter of her, not just in her body but also in her mind. A need for this to go on and on, a wish that she could always stay here, just here, in the strong circle of his arms.

This taste of what might have been would only make what had to be that much worse to bear.

Hard as it was to do, she turned her head and broke the kiss.

She opened her eyes and looked into his dark ones, waiting for her. They were glazed with the aftermath of the kiss and it made her heart beat even faster to know that she had this kissing power over him, too. He looked exactly the way she felt.

Cat couldn't help letting her gaze drift to his mouth again. His marvelous mouth.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered through lips that were aching to kiss his again. “I didn't mean to start something like that.”

He still hadn't put her back down on the bed.

“What
did
you mean to start?” he asked, with the ghost of a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth.

His delicious mouth.

It was her turn to blush.

“I…I didn't…don't know. I…never had done it before.”

Quick regret flashed in his eyes and stayed there.

Her dripping hair pinged water onto the pitcher.

“I'm the one who's sorry,” he said harshly. “You're just a kid. I won't take advantage of you. It won't happen again.”

Apparently he realized for the first time that he was still holding her and he turned her around lengthwise on the bed to lay her down.

“The towel,” she cried. “My hair! Don't get the pillows wet.”

He reached for it and wrapped it around her head. Finally, way too soon, he let her go. She sank back into the pillow.

It won't happen again.

His jaw set, he went down on his haunches to mop up the water from the floor with another towel.

She felt as weak as when she'd first come to after being shot—that moment when she'd first seen him bending over her.

She felt hot inside, still, from his kiss and everything that it did to her.

She felt cold as if she'd waked from a nightmare all alone in one of her hideouts with the echo of those words in her ears, the words,
It won't happen again.

Which made no sense whatsoever, considering that she'd come to that same conclusion or she would never have had the strength to stop kissing
him when she did. He was a lawman. She was an outlaw.

He was going to take her to jail. To the hangman. She was his prisoner.

But what was pulsing on her own tongue, still savoring the taste of him, was
Please let it happen again.

He was gathering up the wet towel and the pan of water and the pitcher, getting ready to take them all into the kitchen, his wide shoulders set as hard as his jaw. Clearly, he was blaming himself for this new, wild desire that she could still feel vibrating in the air between them.

“You need to rest,” he said gruffly, as he stood up and turned to go.

Suddenly, she couldn't let him.

“Will you come back and dry my hair some?” she asked. “I can't use my wounded shoulder—I can't raise both my arms.”

“In a while,” he said.

Tiredness tried to take her while he went outside to throw the soapy water out and refill the pitcher but she didn't want sleep. She wanted Black Fox.

The thought went through her like the blade of a knife. If that were true, she was in bad trouble.

Maybe it was that she didn't want him to look so grim and feel so guilty. She liked it when he smiled.

Things might as well be pleasant between
them. They would be each other's only company for several days to come.

It would take that long for her to regain strength enough to escape. When she managed to get her freedom again, she'd forget all about that kiss.

And so would he. There was no use in him taking things so seriously.

She was dozing when Black Fox returned and came to the bed. Even though she looked up at him, he dried her hair without saying a word.

His hands on her felt so right, even through the towel. When he took it away, she shook her head to spread her hair out over the pillow so that it would dry.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Rest now,” he said.

“First I need to tell you something so your head won't get too big for your hat,” she said, her old impishness coming over her for the first time in ages. “What I meant about you being handsome is that you are, compared to Hudson Becker.”

He stared at her.

“Compared to
Hudson Becker?
”

“Yes,” she said, “you know how he has that little bitty head, like a chicken. Behind his back, his men call him ‘chicken head.'”

The beginnings of amusement sparked in his dark eyes. Then it grew and he grinned. When she laughed, so did he.

“Thanks,” he said wryly. “That makes me feel a lot better. I was getting scared you'd be embarrassing me with compliments all the time.”

“No,” she said, using her eyes and her voice to make him—and herself—know she really meant it. “Don't worry, Black Fox. It won't happen again.”

He stood there by the side of the bed for a heartbeat or two, looking down at her with a face she couldn't read.

It won't happen again.

Finally, he touched her hair, lightly, where it spilled over her shoulder. A curl caught around his finger and clung to it as he pulled his hand away.

 

That night, long past midnight, Black Fox lay awake. His whole body thrummed as if he'd never sleep again, because Cathleen lay in the bed beside him. He was on top of the covers, yes, but that didn't help any.

It was the kiss that had done him in, which was truly stupid. She herself had told him that she hadn't known what she was doing and even if she had, it didn't mean a thing.

Except that now he wanted another one.

Restless to the point of walking the floor, he rolled off the bed and paced to the open window. He wanted to leap through it and run from here to Muskrat and Sally's place and back. He needed to
run until he dropped, wet with sweat and tired to the bone.

Even then, though, he'd be longing to reach out and roll Cathleen into his arms, desperate with the desire to taste her again. He felt his mouth curve in a smile as he stared out into the night.

To taste her and to laugh with her. No one had been silly or laughed with him for ages. He wanted that almost as much as he wanted to kiss her.

He had been lonely for a long, long time. Maybe all his life.

That thought hit him like he'd been pole-axed.

Well, too damn bad, Vann. You've been a lawman for a long time, too, and you'll go on being one. It's your life.

He should have taken her straight to Aunt Sally's and damn the consequences. He should have never let himself be alone with her.

She was a very young woman. He was twenty-seven years old.

She was an outlaw, a killer. He was a Lighthorseman, a captain.

He turned on his heel and strode out of the room. If he so much as looked at her, sleeping there in his bed with the moonlight streaming in to fall across her, he would not be able to resist touching her again.

C
at woke with a start from her nap—a restless doze too light to be really called sleep. The air was too hot and too still to breathe, much less be able to sleep. She sat straight up and swung her bare feet off the bed, pulling her shirt away from her sweaty skin.

Her wound didn't hurt so much as it had the first couple of days she was here. Sitting up, even using her left hand to fan her shirt tail, didn't pain her shoulder nearly so much as it had. It was still sore and achy, very sore very deep inside, but the sharp, stabbing pain had turned into a dull, slow one.

And, for the first time since she'd been shot, she
didn't feel dizzy when she stood up. She stayed still for a minute, waiting for the swirling feeling to come to her head, but it didn't. She started for the door.

Cat marveled at how fast her strength was coming back. Black Fox urged water on her all the time to help rebuild her blood supply and he'd been feeding her soups he made from cured venison and hams, wild onions, and cattail roots which tasted like potatoes. He always had meats hanging in his smokehouse, he told her, and supplies of flour and meal and other staples in his kitchen because he never knew when he'd end up at home for a few days.

Besides the food, she'd been sleeping more than she ever had in her life. Every afternoon she took a long nap while Black Fox stayed outside doing chores at the barn. So far, Willie and his friends must've kept their mouths shut, because no one had come around and it had been just the two of them for several days. She wasn't sure, but she thought about a week had passed since they'd been at the cabin.

Pushing her hair back from her hot face, she left the bedroom and walked across the small parlor to the front door of the cabin. A person could hardly breathe inside the house, the air was so heavy and close.

She pushed open the screened door and stepped
out onto the porch. It wasn't much better out there.

“You didn't sleep long,” Black Fox said.

She turned toward the low, rich sound of his voice, something deep inside her already reaching for him, making her feel shaky all over. Today, instead of being at the barn doing chores, he sat on the shady end of the porch hunched over a small table littered with tools and pots of color, feathers and bits of leather, doing something that absorbed him completely. He had spoken without looking up.

Cat walked the short distance to him while taking in the surprising sight of such a big man bent so intently over all those little objects. Was it some kind of game?

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Painting,” he said.

She was close enough now to see what he had in his hands.

“On a
feather
?”

She leaned over to see better. He was, indeed, daubing paint on a large white feather whose color changed to speckles and then a shaded warm brown at the tip. On the wider, solid-white part, he had painted two horses running through a field of grass. Each horse was no bigger than his thumb-nail.

He didn't answer, just laid down his brush and picked up an awl to use on the tiny spots of orange paint he had just applied. Before her eyes, they be
came infinitesimal flowers scattered among the shades of green grasses. Black Fox cocked his head and looked at them critically while he wiped off the tip of the awl with a rag.

Then he picked up the feather and held it for her to see.

“Do you know them?” he asked.

The horses were a yellow one and a taller gray, galloping single file through a grassy meadow, heads up proudly, manes and tails flying like flags.

“Little Dunny and your Ghost,” she said, in amazement.

He even had the black points on Ghost's legs come to exactly the right height.

“Whoever heard of painting a picture on a
feather
?” he said wryly, voicing her exact thought.

“Is that what everybody says when they see this?” she asked.

“Nobody sees it,” he said, picking up a brush and dipping it into a pot, beginning to concentrate on adding some trees to the edges of his imaginary meadow. “Only Aunt Sally and Uncle Muskrat and Willie ever saw one—and that was when I first started doing it.”

A knife-edge of recognition sliced through her that brought a quick pleasure. Black Fox didn't show his surprising creations to just anybody. This was a secret he was sharing with her.

“When was that?” she asked.

“When I was ten. When I first went to live with them,” he said.

When his parents were killed. As hers had been murdered, too. But, for the first time, the past seemed long gone and dead. It had no power to touch this moment.

A sudden breeze rustled the leaves on the trees bending over the house and Cat lifted her hair off her neck with both hands. The slight coolness caressed her skin. Time stood still. Nothing existed besides this quiet homeplace nestled deep in the wooded hills.

Black Fox's hands moved with small, sure gestures. He didn't look at her. He was focused on his creation.

“It looks tedious to do,” she said.

“No-o,” he said, slowly, as if thinking about that, “it's making a new world. Like a dream.”

She smiled at his intensity.

“Looks like a nightmare to me,” she said, teasing him. “Have you noticed you've set us afoot? How come we're not riding them?”

That made him glance up at her, as she had hoped it would, and they shared a grin.

“I'm no good at painting people,” he said. “Don't worry, these two horses love us. They'll come if we whistle.”

“I don't think so,” she said. “They look too happy to be free running in that meadow.”

“But we're right there in the trees, waiting for
them in the woods,” he said, still not breaking the look that held their gazes locked. “And we're going to step out and offer them some wild apples.”

“I thought you said they'd come because they love us,” she said.

His eyes twinkled.

“It never hurts to have a backup plan,” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

They couldn't look away from each other.

Black Fox's broad shoulders called to her hands and his shiny hair glinted blue-black when a glimmer of sunlight passed over it. But it was his mouth, his beautiful mouth, that filled her with the most longing.

What would happen if they kissed again? Would it only make her want more kisses with an even deeper longing than the one she had been feeling?

His kiss had wakened her to the secret magic that could exist between a man and a woman. Her whole body was awake now. Black Fox was right here, so close she could smell his light sweat and his coppery skin.

“Cathleen,” he said.

At that moment, she thought he was going to reach for her, pull her head down and kiss her. She saw it all in his eyes—the desire, the intent, the urge to move toward her—as he let his gaze drift down from her eyes to linger on her lips.

Then he went very still and shook his head, as if
telling himself not to do it. As if he had made the same vow she had made to herself after he had washed her hair and they had shared that soul-shaking kiss. She had sworn not to let that happen again and he must have done the same.

So she took a step back from his small worktable and leaned against the porch post. She lifted her head to draw in a long, ragged breath.

“Do you smell the storm?” he asked, tearing his gaze from her face to go back to his work. “There's one coming.”

He made one more dabbing of green paint and then began to clean his brushes.

A stronger breeze rose and swirled the yard dust at the foot of the steps. A storm was coming and she had shelter. She even had company.

But her limbs were trembling and her insides felt hollowed out. Would this be the way she would feel forever, if she couldn't have Black Fox's kiss?

“I like storms,” she said. “Let's sit out here in the swing and watch it.”

He gave her a slanted glance as he began cleaning up his mess.

“What if it brings a dancing devil? A tornado?”

She grinned at him and spoke before she thought.

“Then I'll jump into your lap and hang onto you,” she said playfully. “Will you save me from blowing away?”

He looked her up and down.

“You're fattening up right nicely,” he said. “I'd judge you're too heavy to blow away.”

“I'd judge you'd better get in the house right now and latch the door before I take my heavy revenge for that remark,” she said, pretending to advance on him.

He held out the painted feather as if in defense.

“Take this in and put it on the mantel to dry, will you?” he said. “Otherwise, it'll catch dust in the paint. I'll bring the rest of this mess.”

Carefully, they transferred the feather from his hand to hers. Their fingers brushed together, and she could not have said which one of them caused them to linger.

And she did not know which one of them caused them to part.

Somehow, then, he was propping the door open with his foot so he could move the rest of his things into the house and she was holding the shining feather up against the blue-gray sky, watching the tiny horses running through the grass and flowers with their heads held high. She had to think about it, she had to think about anything but touching Black Fox again.

“What kind of feather is this?” she asked, as she followed him into the room.

“An eagle feather,” he said. “I picked it up over on the mountain.”

She let it go reluctantly, savoring the feel, how
ever spare, of his fingers skimming hers. He noticed.

They gazed at each other for a long, slow heartbeat.

Finally, she turned away, went back outside on the porch, walked to the swing, and sat down. She was attracted to him on a level somewhere deep inside her where even words couldn't go.

Already, she longed for him to be beside her. She wished he would sit down, put his arm around her, and kiss her.

Yet she didn't. If she had one grain of sense left in her addled head, she didn't wish it.

That would only stir up the longing that had tormented her since the first kiss. Since he had taught her to want—no, to need—another one.

When he came out and sat down in a chair, though, instead of beside her in the swing, it was frustration instead of relief that filled her until she thought her skin would burst. He was watching the sky. The least he could do was talk to her.

“How did you ever think about painting on a feather?” she asked.

He shrugged, as if to say he didn't know.

“Eagle feathers are sacred, so I always gathered the ones I found. And I didn't have anything else to paint on.”

“How did you know you
could
paint?” she asked.

“A traveling artist came through Sequoyah,” he
said. “I watched him paint my grandfather in his turban and I knew that I could do that, too.”

But Black Fox kept looking at the sky instead of at her. Once she might have thought that he, too, was just wanting to stay away from the specters of the past, but now she knew that it was this terrible yearning that made him turn away.

She knew. She understood. If he turned right now and looked at her the way he had done when he sat at his worktable, she would leap up and run to him, throw herself into his lap, into his arms. She was becoming totally shameless now.

A blast of cooler wind sent the dust flying high and the squirrels scurrying into their nests in the trees. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

“Look at the sky,” he said finally, nodding toward the southwest where the clouds were building faster than the eye could watch them. “Do you want to change your mind and go inside?”

Cat glanced at the sky, then turned to watch it. She shook her head.

“I can stay here as long as you can,” she said.

If only she could. If only they both could stay here as long as they wanted. Her heart twisted in her chest as thoughts of the future came roaring into it. She was Black Fox's
captive
. She mustn't let him capture her feelings, too. She mustn't let herself want to be close to him, ever again.

 

Late on the afternoon of the next day, just before sunset, Black Fox left the house to turn the horses out for the night. It was a still evening, close and humid, with everything about it promising yet another storm.

He stood in the doorway of the barn for awhile to look at the sky. Clouds banked dark in the southwest, all right, but they didn't seem to be moving much and the horses had been housed up all day. Being stalled day and night wasn't natural for them and he hated to do it, especially considering that it might be a useless precaution since the dun had been seen already.

They whinnied at him. They wanted out.

Finally he turned and went to unlatch the stalls. He'd let them run free until he could tell what the weather would do. The last thing he wanted was for them to get hurt in a storm and not be able to travel, because he intended to hit the trail at dawn.

They needed to get moving before word got out and curiosity seekers arrived. He'd decided to go ahead and use the dun horse because trading it for a different one might arouse more suspicion than would a girl riding it when everyone still believed that The Cat was a boy. And, incredibly, there was another, even more urgent need to get going: he was beginning to think of Cathleen as someone to take care of instead of someone to take to jail.

He had to get her out of his house and off his
hands and out of his mind as soon as was humanly possible.

As soon as the stall doors swung open, both horses left the barn at a fast trot, heads up, smelling the air. Once in the pasture, they bucked and ran and kicked up their heels. Few things were as exciting as a change in the weather.

Black Fox watched them for a few minutes, then he turned to the work of cleaning their stalls. He forced his thoughts onto the packs he had readied for the trip to Fort Smith. The medicines he would carry in case Cathleen's wound should begin bleeding again should be sufficient. They had plenty of food to take and he had enough grain to give the horses some each evening.