She was right. And they were just barely in time. Joe Buford was dying.
Jacey went quietly to sit in the bedside chair that his wife, a sad-faced, weary old woman, directed her to. The finely stitched and stuffed seat cushion retained a warmth that told her Alma Buford had been sitting here herself. For a long while.
Unsure how to proceed, Jacey pivoted to look over her shoulder to Zant’s quietly serious expression. With a nod of his head, he encouraged her to speak. Jacey turned again to look down at the poor sight that was Joe. He lay thin and wasting, but clean and neat, on a bed obviously kept fresh with loving hands. His eyes were closed.
Jacey turned to Alma, a rounded little woman with a gray bun atop her head and a white apron over her neatly patched skirt. “I don’t want to disturb him. Is he asleep?”
Alma nodded. “Most likely. He sleeps a lot nowadays. Seems like livin’ just wears him out. But go ahead—wake him up and talk to him. It won’t hurt him none. I ’spect he’ll soon enough be restin’ a long, long time.”
With a heavy heart and sympathy clouding her eyes, Jacey smiled at Alma. The old woman’s chin began to quiver. She turned away. “I ’spect you’uns would like a bite to eat. I’ll see to it while you’re talkin’. Just don’t wear him out too much, if’n you can help it.”
“We won’t,” Jacey assured her. “But please don’t fuss on our account. You don’t have to—”
“I’d like to, if’n you don’t mind. We … me and Joe … we don’t see too many folks. No one much to talk to, ’ceptin’ each other.” With that, she turned away, walked to a tall cupboard, and began quietly pulling dishes out.
Jacey looked from the older woman’s solid form to Zant. He hovered just inside the doorway, his Stetson respectfully removed and held in front of him. He now came to stand beside her. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. Jacey momentarily covered his hand with hers and then turned back to Joe. Reluctant to cause the balding old man any undue suffering, she stuck her hand out and took his. His warm skin was sallow, dry, and felt paper-thin. “Mr. Buford? Can you hear me?”
Thin, veined eyelids opened to reveal brown eyes, the whites of which swam in yellow. Joe blinked a time or two and ran his tongue over cracking lips. Then he looked squarely at Jacey and up at Zant. “I knew you’d come,” he rasped out. “You both look … like your daddies.”
Not sure he was lucid, Jacey turned in confusion to Zant. He swallowed and said, “He knows who we are. Ask him, Jacey. It’s what you came for.”
Jacey nodded and turned again to Joe. “Mr. Buford, I need to—”
“Call me Joe. Everyone does.”
Jacey managed a smile for him. “Okay, Joe. We need to know about our fathers.”
The sick old man closed his eyes. “I know,” came his whispery voice. His eyelids fluttered open. He blinked and shifted his long, thin legs under his covers. “It ain’t pretty … what I have to say.”
Her heart thumping, Jacey quickly assured him, “We know. We’ve been told some of it.”
“Good,” Joe mouthed. Then, “Your daddy’s dead, ain’t he? That’s why you’re here.”
A deep breath caught in her chest. “How’d you know?” Her voice was no more than the whisper that was Joe’s.
“Right now … I’m closer … to him than I am you. And I know.”
Exhaling shuddering breaths, smelling the meat Alma was frying, and hearing Zant shift his weight behind her, Jacey asked, “What do you know?”
“I know why … your daddy killed his.” He looked up at Zant. “Sit down, young fella. Sit. On the bed. It’s okay. I want … I want you to listen good.”
Zant sat and said, “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Joe then launched into his story, telling it like he’d been rehearsing for years what he would say when this day came. “It was years ago. We was all younger then, full of mischief. J. C. was … was our leader. Didn’t nobody question his say-so. Best of our lot, he was. The Kid was the only one … on the outs with J. C. Only one. See, boy, your daddy didn’t … take care of you and your mama … like J. C. thought he should. J. C. was already a daddy twice over. And he wanted … out of the outlaw life. We all felt the same. ’Cepting the Kid.”
Joe stopped talking when Alma came over to tilt his skeletal head up and give him a drink. “Here, old man, take you some of this.” Joe’s hands, big knuckled, long fingered, and shaky, cupped his wife’s as he drank in little sips and swallowed with obvious difficulty. When he indicated he’d had his fill, Alma handed the cup to Jacey. “Give him some every now and then.”
Jacey looked at the cup’s contents. It wasn’t water, but a milky liquid. “What is it?”
“Something an old Navajo woman showed me how to prepare. Just give it to him every now and then. Little sips, now.” Alma rubbed her hand tenderly over Joe’s balding pate and then walked across the adobe to the tiny kitchen area. Rich aromas now wafted throughout the warm, close space.
After a moment, after a deep and sudden breath, as if he’d given in to his fate, Joe turned his head on his pillow to stare unblinkingly at Jacey. For one alarmed moment she thought he was dead, but he breathed again and picked up his tale. “That day … the Kid took off from the hideout … in a fierce mood. He was pretty riled up at our talk of disbanding. Said he’d … show us how a real outlaw acted. A hot-blooded Spaniard, that one. That afternoon, he came back to brag about … how he’d already begun his life as a … lone desperado. Said we was all a bunch of … cowards. J. C. listened to about all he was goin’ to. Stepped up to the Kid … and told him to explain hisself.”
Jacey tensed. Here it was. She just barely stopped her impulse to cover her ears. Beside her, on her left, Zant sat up straighter on the bed. Jacey gripped the cup of medicine in her lap so fiercely her knuckles turned white.
“Plain awful … what the Kid had done. Plain awful. J. C. was fit to be tied. So was the rest of us.”
Zant broke in, his voice soft and hoarse. “What’d the Kid do, Joe?”
Jacey wanted more than anything to turn to Zant and hold his hand through this next part. But her own dread at what Joe had to say kept her rigid in her chair.
Joe stared at Zant for a moment. “Hard words for me … to this day. What he done ain’t no … reflection on the man you are, son. You … remember that. Seems the Kid had robbed and … killed a young family. They was all alone and making their way … by wagon to Californy. He caught ’em in … Apache Pass and killed ’em. Took their few valuables. Left ’em for dead. ’Ceptin’ the baby girl.”
“Baby girl?” A dawning suspicion rooted in Jacey’s heart. “What baby girl, Joe? What was her name?”
Joe turned his jaundiced gaze to Jacey. “Don’t know. Never did hear.” He then resumed his tale. “J. C. done what any of us … would’ve done in his place. Our gang … never picked on hard-workin’ folks. Never killed no one who didn’t deserve it. Just robbed trains or banks. And only a few of those. Never was as bad as we thought we was.”
Another grimace, or smile, contorted Joe’s features. “’Ceptin’ for the Kid. Always was a bad sort. Only tolerated him ’cause … to cut him out meant we’d have to … dodge his tryin’ to kill us … in revenge. J. C. figured he could … control the Kid better … if’n he knew where he was.”
“What happened then, Joe?” Jacey prompted, suddenly anxious to have the story completed, wanting as much to spare Joe as to get to the end of this painful chapter in all their lives.
No more than a wrinkle under his covers, Joe slowly edged his big hands together until they met in his lap. He folded them together. “J. C. got into … a fight with the Kid. They went at it pretty heavy. The Kid just kept makin’ it worse. Bragged ’bout leavin’ that girl-baby … out in Apache Pass. Alone and squallin’. J. C.’d finally heard all he wanted to, I s’pose, and before any of us seen it comin’… he called the Kid out.”
Zant pushed to his feet, diverting Jacey’s attention to himself. He put his Stetson back on and crossed to the open doorway. He stood looking out at the desert landscape. Taking in his rigid stance, his broad back, and his intense quiet, Jacey frowned her of sympathy. She made a movement to get up but, turning in her chair, caught Alma staring at her.
The old woman shook her head, her expression seeming to say there was nothing anyone could do to spare Zant the next few minutes. Jacey sagged in her chair and turned back to Joe, only to realize he’d kept on talking.
“… an’ I believe this was just what … the Kid’d been wantin’ all along. A piece of J. C. Shoulda knowed better. J. C. was the … fastest gun out West … in his day. Never seen quicker. Before you could say … pass the potatoes, the Kid went down. Still managed to clear leather … and take a shot at J. C. as he fell. He missed, but J. C. finished him off with a second bullet.”
“Son of a bitch,” Zant said from the doorway. He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. Jacey stood up.
“Leave him be. He’s a man now. Got to get through this on his own.”
Jacey stared at Alma through a waterfall of standing tears. “But he—I can’t—”
The gray-haired woman wiped her hands on her apron. “Yes you can. If you love him, you can.”
How did she know? Then Jacey heard her own thought. She hadn’t denied to herself that she loved him. She’d only wondered how Alma knew. Could it be? Was her love written on her face? Could Zant see it? Jacey sat down heavily, staring straight ahead. But when Joe raised his feeble, shaking hand, she sprang to and gave him a few halting sips from the cup she held.
“Thank you, girl.” He laid his head back against his many pillows, swallowed, and closed his eyes. After a moment, he opened his eyes, looked right at Jacey, and said, “You’re the baby, aren’t you? You’re Jacey.”
Jacey automatically shook her head. “No. I’m the middle girl. Glory’s the baby.”
Joe held her gaze. “Glory.” He said the name as if praising the Lord. “Is that … what your mama named her?”
Not as confused as she should be, and fearing why that was so, Jacey nodded. “Yeah. Glory. Glory Bea. Mama said ‘Another girl. Well, glory be.’ And the name stuck.”
Joe smiled with a radiance not of this world. “I like that. But you are the youngest Lawless. You know that, don’t you?”
Jacey looked down, turning the cup around and around in her lap. “I think so, Joe.”
Joe then went on with his story as if he and Jacey’d never had their quiet little conversation. “After … shootin’ the Kid, your daddy mounted up and … lit out. Thought he wasn’t comin’ back. But he did. Had that baby girl with him. She was real quiet like … like she knowed she was okay now. Or maybe … she was just all cried out. But anyways, J. C. stopped back by the hideout—it wasn’t more’n a few miles from Apache Pass—and told us all … to go on home. It was over.”
Just then, the door opened. Her heart racing, Jacey pivoted to see Zant standing there. Wordlessly, he took off his Stetson, held her gaze, his own expression unreadable, and came to sit at the end of the bed again. Jacey continued to stare at him, and him at her, until Joe spoke.
“We done buried the Kid and … and said some words over him. Then J. C. dismounted, handed me the baby—purtiest … little thing I ever saw—and went by hisself to the grave. He took his hat off … and knelt on one knee by the Kid’s … resting place. And spoke in a low voice over him a few minutes.
“Then he got up, put his hat back on … took the baby from me … and said he was going to … the squaws at a close-by village … and see what they could tell him about feeding … the young’un on his way home. He said he was going by Tucson way one last time, too. And then home. Tucked that … baby up in his arm and shook our hands. Said our goodbyes … and he mounted and rode off. Never did see no more of him. No, never did.”
Jacey took a deep breath. And heard Zant do the same thing. Then, Joe added, “Finest man … I ever met, J. C. Lawless was. The finest. Man of honor and principle … for all his outlaw ways. Had a code, he did … and held every one of us to it … whilst we rode with him. Never did hurt me none to know him. No, never did.”
Jacey couldn’t look away from Joe Buford, not even when he closed his eyes and turned his head to the rough adobe wall. In her heart, she felt a certain kinship with him. Almost as if they’d gone through the same things together. In a way they had, she supposed. So very saddened by it all, she turned to look at Zant. His head was down, his gaze on his hands as he restlessly turned his Stetson around and around by its stiff brim.
Perhaps feeling her gaze on him, he looked up. His black eyes reflected the torment in his soul. “My father was a rotten son of a bitch.”
Tears for Zant, for his father and hers, for his mother and hers, threatened to track down Jacey’s cheeks. She blinked them back. But had no words for him.
* * *
After lunch, after thanking Joe, after chatting with Alma, Jacey and Zant mounted up.
“Where’re you’uns headed from here?” Alma shaded her eyes from the sun and squinted up at Jacey atop Knight.
Jacey started to answer, but then closed her mouth. She realized she was at the end of the trail with still no clues about the silver spur and the portrait of Ardis. She looked to Zant, whose Stetson-shaded eyes kept their secrets, and then she turned back to Alma. “I don’t rightly know. I guess back to Tucson.”
“Tucson? I’d think you’d head for Mexico.”
Creaking saddle leather next to her told Jacey that Zant was paying close attention. As was she. “Why Mexico, Alma?”
“Because that’s where them other three men was from.”
“What three men? When?” Zant’s sharp tone drew Jacey’s and Alma’s attention.
Alma shrugged. “Oh, less than two months ago, I suppose. They came around—big, ugly, mean-lookin’ men—wantin’ to ask questions of Joe.”
Almost afraid to hear the answer, Jacey asked, “And did they?”
“No. I wouldn’t let ’em inside, wouldn’t let ’em bother Joe. He was havin’ one of his spells then. Still haven’t told him about them three. Seems they wanted to get real mean with me about not lettin’ ’em in. But right over atop that ridge there”—she pointed to a sharp jut of rock not thirty yards away—“some of them Apache showed themselves. Stayed real quiet and still, but them men didn’t want no truck with ’em. They left peaceable enough.”
Happy that Alma and Joe hadn’t been hurt, but still frustrated to be so close and yet so far, Jacey plied her further. “Alma, this could be important. Did the men ever say what they wanted?”
“Oh, yes. I let ’em ask me their questions.” She wiped her hands on her apron and swiped its tail end over her brow. “They wanted to know where your daddy had settled. I told ’em all I knowed was up in No Man’s Land somewheres. And they showed me one of them silver spurs that the Lawless Gang wore. I recognized it right off. One of ’em—a man with almost no color to his eyes—said it was the Kid’s. Well, that was curious enough. But I b’lieve the most curious thing they kept concernin’ themselves with was that baby girl Joe just told you about. Said they was lookin’ for her special.”
Afraid she was going to be ill, Jacey put a hand to her stomach. She turned to Zant, hearing the panic in her own voice. “They didn’t want me at all. It’s Glory. They’re after Glory, Zant. Oh, my God, they’re after Glory.”
As he stared at her, Zant’s expression became predatory, vengeful. “Don Rafael.” With sharp movements, he turned his horse to the southeast and put his spurs to it. The stallion responded with a burst of speed that left Jacey fighting the grunting Knight for control and left Alma choking on the dust.
Alma coughed and signaled to Jacey. “Go after him, girl. Go.”
* * *
Had Knight not been as swift and powerful as he was, Jacey might never have caught up to Zant. But, hot on his dust-raising trail, she nearly rode Knight right over him late that afternoon as the gelding blazed around a turn in a rocky slope shouldering a sluggish river. Who would’ve thought the out-law’d be bent over, his butt to them, and occupied with picking up good-sized rocks? With only inches to spare, Jacey and Knight thundered by Zant.
At the last possible second, he straightened up, turned, and froze. Wide-eyed and mouth agape, he dropped the rocks and dove out of the way. His momentum sent him rolling and cussing over the rocky shore and into the muddy water. At the water’s edge, and splashed by Zant’s antics, Old Blood was startled and reared, pawing the air and bellowing his rage.
By the time Jacey reined in Knight and turned him around, Zant was up, dripping, and making for her. Flecks of blood marked his face and hands where he’d rolled over the unforgiving rocks. Swallowing hard, Jacey figured that running him down had done nothing to improve his mood, judging by his red-faced, evil-eyed expression.
Pointing stiff-armed at her, his every step a calculated one, he glared at her. “Get down off that damned nag. I’m going to whip your butt, just like I promised.”
Using her legs to control Knight, Jacey backed him up. Zant kept coming. “Back off, Chapelo. I didn’t mean no harm. I didn’t even know you were there.”
Zant never slowed down. “Get down. Or I’ll pull you down.”
Jacey made Knight sidestep when the outlaw lunged at her. “I mean it. Back off. I said I was sorry.”
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be, Jacey Lawless.” He lunged again for her, trying to capture her by her waist.
Knight snorted and lowered his head, using it as a battering ram as he charged Zant. Jacey reined in the stiff-legged gelding at the last second. “He’ll do it, too, outlaw. Leave me be. I’m warning you.”
“Get down off that devil right now. We’ve got some talking to do.”
Still edging Knight back, Jacey called out, “Talk? You don’t want to talk. You want to fight. What’s eating at you, Chapelo?”
As if her words were a solid barrier, Zant stopped short, his arms at his sides. Breathing hard, he stared at her. He swiped his wet sleeve across his brow. Then he bent forward from the waist to rest his hands on his bent knees. His head hung between his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Jacey. I’m just so damned sorry. First my father. And now Don Rafael.”
Hurting for him and for herself, Jacey reined Knight to a stand and dismounted, all the while keeping her troubled gaze on Zant. Almost absently, and out of sheer habit, she looped and tied the reins’ ends loosely over her saddle’s pommel, allowing enough length for her horse to stretch his neck down to drink. She then hit Knight on his rump. The winded gelding needed no further provocation to head for the water.
After Knight passed in front of her, Jacey hesitated only a second before walking over to Zant. Stopping beside him, close enough to touch him, she watched the water dripping off him onto the desert ground. His breathing was labored. She put her hand out to touch him, but then withdrew it. She opened her mouth two or three times to say something, but each time changed her mind about what she wanted to say. And so, said nothing.
After a moment or two of quiet, marked only by a hawk crying out overhead and the scamper of a big lizard fleeing from one bush to another, Zant straightened up. He didn’t look at her, but directed his gaze to the razor-edged cliff of the rocky slope about fifty yards from the water. “Shooting him would be too good for the old son of a bitch.”
Jacey sucked in her bottom lip, bit at it, and then let out her breath. “You mean Don Rafael?”
Soaking wet, still staring upward, and putting his hands to his waist, Zant nodded. “Yeah. I had no idea, Jacey. You have to believe me.”
Jacey nodded, drinking in his strong-jawed profile. “I do.”
As if he hadn’t heard her, he went on. “I was in prison for five years. I didn’t have any idea. But now, a lot of things are coming clear and clean. A lot of things at Cielo Azul. I couldn’t figure out what the men were talking about, about me being the true jefe. But now? I think I understand.”
“What’s a ‘hef-eh’?”
Zant turned to Jacey, eyeing her as if he’d really been talking to the cliff and she’d just popped up here next to him. “It means ‘chief’. Or ‘boss’.”
Jacey nodded. “Oh.” Then, looking around her, remembering what she’d seen him doing when she came around the bend, she looked up at him. “What were you doing with all those rocks just now? And why’d you take out so fast from the Buford place? Were you trying to lose me?”
“No. I just lost my temper. Got too mad at Don Rafael to sit still any longer.” Zant then quirked up a corner of his mouth. And darned if his expression, didn’t turn … well, sheepish. Jacey frowned up at him, trying to ignore the damp lock of black hair that fell over his forehead, giving him a wicked yet playful look. “The rocks … I was throwing ’em.”
“Throwing ’em? At what?”
He chuckled to himself, and then raised his hand as if to tug at his Stetson. Only, it wasn’t on his head. He looked around and then turned toward the water. Jacey followed his long-legged strides, stopping a ways from the shore’s edge. But Zant didn’t. Already wet, he stopped long enough to tug his boots off and throw them at the water’s edge. He then waded in about knee-deep and caught his Stetson as it floated by. From the middle of the current, he called out, “I was throwing them at anything that moved. And some things that didn’t.”
Watching him slog back out, shaking his hat and reshaping the black felt as best he could, Jacey persisted. “Why?”
He waited until he’d walked up the incline to where she stood before he answered her. “Because I was mad. Still am.” With that, he put his dripping hat on his head and undid his gunbelt. Examining his Colt, he shook his head and frowned. “Damned gun is soaked through. I’ll have to spend the evening cleaning it.” He then looked over at her. “Get my boots, will you?”
Involved in their conversation, and eyeing his every movement, Jacey obediently fetched them, dropping them at his feet when he indicated she should do so. Zant tossed his gunbelt down atop them. Jacey brushed her hands together and dried them on her skirt. “Who’re you mad at—besides me? Don Rafael?”
Zant nodded as he began unbuttoning his chambray shirt. “Yep.”
Her gaze locking on his moving hands as they opened his shirt, Jacey finally remembered to ask, “What are you going to do about him?”
Zant tugged the sodden shirt over his head, turned it right side out, and headed farther inland. “Bring that stuff there.”
Suddenly put out with his ordering her around, Jacey made no move to obey as she watched his retreating back. He stopped in front of a thorny bush that fronted a nearly horizontal slab of outthrust rock. Marking the angle of the sun, he placed his shirt on the bush so it could catch the day’s last warming rays.
He then turned as if expecting her to be right behind him. Jacey watched him as he spotted her at the water’s edge. She put her hands to her waist, and waited. Zant shook his head. “Please? Please bring them here. Is that better?”
Well, some. Jacey scooped up the dripping items and trod heavily to the man. “Here.” She dumped them in his waiting arms.
“Thanks.” He slung his gunbelt over his shoulder, removed his Stetson to set it atop the bush, and then upended his boots, shaking out the last drops of water. He positioned them on the ground, at the base of the bush and angled up on the toes to catch the sun inside them. Only then did he stand up and resume their discussion. “What’d you ask me a minute ago?”
Jacey had to think about it. “Oh, yeah. I asked you what you were going to do about Don Rafael.”
“Ahh. Don Rafael. Maybe kill him, if I have to.”
“Kill him? Your own grandfather? Zant, you can’t do that.”
He began opening the button-fly front of his denims. His combination-suit-covered chest and biceps bulged with his hands’ motions. “Why can’t I?”
As if just realizing the man was undressing in front of her, when he began skinning the heavy denim fabric over his hips, Jacey backed up and looked down to study her boots. The fire on her cheeks could heat up the surrounding desert. “Because you wouldn’t be … any better than he is, if you did.”
“Who says I am anyway?”
His words brought her head up. But his state of undress caught her reply in her throat. His denims were now laid out next to his shirt and hat. His gunbelt still rode his shoulder. And he, himself, stood before her in his soaked white underdrawers. The wet fabric, stretching from his neck to his ankles, left nothing underneath to the imagination. Nothing. Drawing in a shocked breath, she spun around. “Put some danged clothes on, Chapelo.”
“I intend to,” he drawled to her back. “But first I’ve got to get out of these wet ones. And it’s your fault they’re wet. Once I peel off my drawers, I’ll go get my dry clothes out of my saddlebags.”
Jacey spun to her right, heading for the man’s stallion. “I’ll go get them. You … stay right here. And cover yourself or something.”
His chuckle followed her a few steps before he called out, “Think you can get Sangre to let you that close to him?”
Over her shoulder, Jacey called back, “Either he’ll let me, or Old Blood will run with blood.”
The words were barely out of her mouth before she was tackled around the waist by a big, warm, and wet somebody, and carried under his arm like a sack of flour toward the water. Her slouch hat went one way, her Colt another, her long braid swung wildly in her face … and she went sputtering into the water with that danged war-whooping Chapelo.
Screaming, fighting, kicking, cussing, Jacey nevertheless ended up being tossed like a carcass into the deepest part of the muddy river. Skidding along the slippery rocks on her bottom, she grabbed for handholds, found none, and sat hard on her backside. The sluggish current was still strong enough to nearly roll her over and dunk her.
Maddened beyond rage, Jacey fumbled for and finally found a toehold—and her sheathed knife. Gripping it in her fist, she rose up out of the water like an avenging goddess and looked everywhere for Chapelo. Or tried to. Water streamed into her eyes. She coughed hoarsely. Cussed loudly. Made screeching, enraged sounds and called out for his blood. “Where are you, Chapelo? Show yourself, you big coward! I dare you!”
She was again grabbed from behind and pushed down in the water. Squawking like a wet hen, she snarled and tried to turn around in the now churning current. But couldn’t. Cursing at her heavy, water-filled boots, she stumbled to a stand and—had her knife wrenched out of her hand and sent flying onto the shore. It hit with a metallic clunk among the rocks. Her lips pulled back over her teeth in a snarl, she launched herself at the big target that was the laughing Chapelo.
The big skunk handled her easily. He held her wrists and … that was about all he had to do. She was too weighted down with wet clothes and brimming boots to do much more than scream at him. “What the hell did you do that for, you mangy coyote? Let me go. I mean it! Right now.”
“Or you’ll what?”
Locked in his grip, as tight and effective as handcuffs, Jacey seethed and glared and tried to come up with an appropriately dire threat. “Or I’ll … skin you alive. And your horse. That’s what.”
“Ewww, please don’t. I’m really scared now.”
Jacey froze for a moment, staring up into his mocking face. “What in the living hell has gotten into you, Chapelo? Why’d you dunk me like that? What if I couldn’t swim? What then?”
“The water’s only knee-deep. You couldn’t drown.”
Jacey looked down at the water. Knee-deep to him. Mid-thigh to her. And back up at him. “You didn’t tell me the why of it.”
“I thought you needed a little cooling down.”
“Me? You’re the one who was hot and mad.”
“Yeah. And you’re the one who was just hot.”
“What?”
“I saw the way you were looking at me.”
“What?” Was that the only word left to her, she had to wonder.
He let go of her wrists. “Go ahead, deny it. You want me.”
“Want you?” Jacey lowered her arms and put her hands to her waist, carrying on their conversation as if they stood in a drawing room and not in the middle of a muddy river out in the godforsaken desert of the Arizona Territory. “You think I want you? Hell, maybe the sheriffs in four states want you. But not me.”
The sun glinted off his smiling face, brightening his black eyes and white teeth. Even his growth of beard shone bluish along his jaw. The big, muscled outlaw dared to reach out and gently knuckle her nose. “Liar.”
Jacey glared up at him. “Kiss my ass, Chapelo.”
A grin of pure evil, one that would surely delight Satan’s soul, spread across his face, even crinkling the skin at the corners of his eyes. Right there in the water, he began unbuttoning his combination suit. “Sweetheart, you read my mind.”