Teddy spared her horse. The big paint pony Bullet had caught and broken for her two years before was a frisky mare who would have liked testing the wind, but Teddy purposely kept to a trot on the horse she called Dune.
She wasn’t slowing the pace because she wanted Rhys to catch up. She didn’t care if he did or not. Preferred that he didn’t, she swore as she slowed Dune a little more. The Frenchman would be more trouble than he was worth. Probably couldn’t shoot either. And he didn’t care what happened to the Gamble Line as long as he got his money.
Wending past the scattered sentries of saguaro and the legions of cholla cactus lining the roadbed, Teddy pulled her hat low on her forehead and rode on. She had been dreading the day one of the big Concord coaches would fail to roll in. All she could do now was hope the trouble was a busted wheel or at worst an axle, because if there had been a bona fide holdup and a payroll was lost, it was only a matter of time before she would lose the whole business. Wells Fargo wouldn’t stay with her after that. Cabe Northrop had been plain as day about her standing with the company.
She was up to her hatband in debt and trouble, and close to ruin. She felt akin to the prey a white-rumped shrike had just plucked from the desert floor. Shortly the airborne shrike would swoop low again and impale its unlucky victim on a cactus thorn. She watched the bird dive for the kill and somehow, miraculously, the tiny animal in its grasp wrenched free and fell the short distance to the ground—spared this once, from destruction.
Teddy hoped she would be as lucky—that nothing disastrous had happened to Rope or Strong Bill or the stage, that she and the stage line were not, as it appeared, only a swoop away from devastation.
Without thinking about it she twisted in the saddle and looked down the guttered road for Rhys. No rider was in sight against a backdrop of barren, scattered hills. She wondered if he’d had a change of heart or, more likely, had been unable to ride the stallion she had told the Ansley boys to saddle for him. Teddy sighed wearily and rode on. She hadn’t actually expected more of Rhys Delmar than that he would fall by the wayside at the first obstacle.
The first change station was fifteen miles out of Wishbone on a stretch where there was no water except from the station’s well. Porter Landau, a lean and desert-baked stock-tender, manned that station alone. Porter had been a prospector, but he had given up the uncertainty of picking and panning, and now had a regular forty-dollar-a-month draw from the Gamble Line. He worked alone because he was closest in to town. Most other stations along the line had two keepers.
Bullet rode out and gave Porter a hand about twice a week and did the same for the first station east of Wishbone. Teddy was about halfway to Porter’s when she heard the rapid beat of hooves behind her. She reined Dune in and, involuntarily holding her breath, stared back at a rider galloping her way. She recognized Demon and presumed the rider to be Rhys. Only someone unaccustomed to the desert would be punishing a mount like that.
He pulled Demon to a stop once he was abreast of her.
“You trying to kill that horse?” she shouted.
Rhys shot Teddy an amused glance. The day’s heat was still mild and the stallion was pulling at the bit. He’d enjoyed the run and wanted to keep going. Both Teddy and Rhys could see that Demon wasn’t spent in the least. “I am trying to catch a fool,” Rhys said.
“You had him before you left,” Teddy came back. “That horse needs a breather. We’ll ride slow on to the station and let’s hope we find the stage made it that far. If it didn’t, the horses can drink and rest a few minutes before we head out.” She held her jaw tight as she gave him a censorious look, and tried hard not to let show that she was glad to see him. “Did you think to bring a canteen?”
“There’s one on the saddle.” Rhys held the canteen high, smiled, and patted the rolled blanket behind him. “And a bedroll, too,” he said.
“You might need it,” she said indifferently, giving the paint a gentle nudge with her heels. “I see you got yourself a gun. What can you do with it?”
Rhys moved the bay alongside her horse and looked over at Teddy. “The usual things a man can do with his gun.” His grin was one-sided, infuriating.
Teddy’s face flushed and her eyes flashed. “Not a damned thing worth getting excited about then,” she said, and urged the paint a length ahead of his mount.
Rhys caught up to her again. “You sound as if you do not like men so much and yet it is with men you choose to spend your time,” he said.
“I like men fine,” she replied, “as long as they stick to business instead of skirt chasing.”
“A little amour is good for the heart, Teddy.”
The horses were close. He reached over and softly stroked her arm. She snatched it away from him.
“Now that’s what I mean,” she said angrily. “Some men don’t know what to do with their hands.”
“I do, I assure you,” he said silkily.
“You can save the assurances and the pawing for that saloon sweetie. Or for Justine Blalock. I hear she’s gone soft on you.”
“Mademoiselle Justine is lovely but a bit young for me. I prefer a woman with—”
“I do not care to hear about your taste in women.” Scowling at him she reached into one of her breast pockets, couldn’t find what she expected and cursed. Switching the reins to the other hand, she fumbled about in the other pocket.
“If you need help—”
She looked sourly into his eyes as she lit up a long slender cheroot and began smoking. “I don’t need your help or your pawing or your kisses. Thank you.”
“You liked my kisses well enough when we were kissing,” he insisted. “But afterwards, well, Teddy, don’t you think you overplayed the offended virgin part?”
Teddy threw the newly lit cheroot away. She had promised Felicity long ago to give up the habit and until lately hadn’t been bothered by the urge to resume smoking them. She thought she could blame Rhys Delmar for that too. She glared at him hotly. “What in holy hell makes you think I’m a virgin?”
“Aren’t you?”
She gave her head a toss. “No. I had a lover once.”
He eyed her surreptitiously. “Once?”
“Once was enough,” she said flatly.
“That I do not believe. Making love is like tasting a superb wine. One swallow is never enough.”
“It was for me.”
“Then you had the wrong lover. He was, perhaps, too young, too inexperienced.”
“He wasn’t young and he wasn’t inexperienced. In fact, he was like you in a lot of ways,” Teddy said and scowled at him. “Not that he looked much like you.” Jace was fair-haired and had big brown eyes, pretty eyes. “What I meant about him being like you was that he was good-looking, too. He had women, like flies to honey, chasing after him—he’d had plenty.”
“Of flies?”
“Of women, dammit!” She stared furiously at him. “But in Wishbone he only had eyes for me.”
“In that we are alike,” Rhys teased.
“Like hell,” Teddy responded. “Anyway, I was impressionable and downright silly at nineteen. He’d been courting me on the sly and I’d been thinking I was the luckiest girl in town. Well, like I said I was silly back then. Anyway, one spring night I slipped out and met him down at the river thinking I was about to experience paradise, sublime ecstasy.”
“What happened?”
She huffed. “Nothing. Ecstasy turned out to be a lot of hard breathing, smelly sweat and sand in my hair.”
“You are saying you did not make love.”
“I am saying he was mighty quick on the draw. It was all over faster than a sneeze and I said if that’s all there is to it I can live without it.”
“There is more to it, Teddy.”
“You say so. He did too, but I learned fast that men are mostly talk and disappointment.”
With effort Rhys let the comment slide. “You did not see this lover again? This Jace?”
“No. He was a gunfighter. He went and got himself shot down in Tombstone about a month later. So,” she said flatly, “I reckon he wasn’t always quick on the draw.”
Rhys had a peculiar mix of emotions. He felt a fierce, burning swell of anger that another man had made love to Teddy, though he had never been particular about a woman’s past before. He also felt a groundswell of relief that it had not been Teddy who had shot the inept fellow. There was one other emotion, too, suspicion that she had made up the whole story just to annoy him.
And she had annoyed him.
“This happened long ago,” he said. “Surely since there has been a man who made you feel a special stirring in your heart, whose embrace you desired.”
A hint of color spread over Teddy’s face. “Nope,” she said.
“The truth, Teddy,” Rhys insisted, recalling unquestionably that she had responded to his kisses, had yielded to his touch. “When I held you, kissed you, you desired me. Is it not true?”
She gritted her teeth and stiffened and decided on the spot that she wouldn’t admit what he had said was true even though it was. “It is not. I never wanted to kiss you. I think I made that plain afterwards,” she said. “So don’t go thinking there was anything to it but you acting the stud. I felt nothing but disgust.”
Disgust? He thought not. But he was willing to concede the point at the moment. The time would come when she would admit he was right.
***
The horses tied outside the corral wore harness. Not a good sign. The stage was nowhere to be seen.
“Port!” Teddy called loudly as they approached the adobe station.
Porter Landau, white-haired and wearing denim pants tucked into knee-high black boots, stepped from behind the station house with his rifle ready.
“That you Teddy?” He put up a hand to shade his eyes and stared at the approaching pair. “Who’s that with you?”
“It’s me!” Teddy confirmed. “And the Frenchman Bullet told you about. You seen the stage?”
Porter lowered his rifle. “I’m plumb worried,” he said. “It ain’t never been this late. And with Rope and Strong Bill on the run—Well, it don’t bode no good.”
“You could be right.” Teddy rode up close to the well and dismounted. Not wanting either of the men to see how upset she was, she pulled her hat low and led her horse over to a trough by the well and let the animal drink from the water that had been drawn for the stage team. “I’m worried, too,” she said after a minute. “That’s why I’m out here.”
Rhys dismounted next to Teddy. He stuck out a hand to Porter, who by then had walked over to the well. He introduced himself.
“You helpin’ Teddy?” the station keeper asked.
“I am attempting to,” Rhys responded. “Although she seems convinced she does not need me.”
“Well keep an eye on her anyway,” Porter admonished. “She’s the type to leap before she looks and I ain’t so certain what you two are goin’ to find to leap into out there.”
Teddy gave Porter a sharp look but let him speak his mind. “What can you spare from the larder, Port?” she asked. “We might need more victuals than I brought along.”
“Got plenty of jerky and you’re welcome to it,” the old man responded. “An’ there’s beans and coffee and a slab of bacon. Help yourself.”
Teddy got the supplies while Rhys filled extra canteens. Ten minutes later they had mounted and were riding off. Teddy remained pensive. Rhys respected her need for quiet. They were an hour’s ride out of the station when the stallion’s ears flicked back and the big muscles on his withers quivered. The mare snorted uneasily as Teddy guided her along the stage road where it cut through an outcropping of boulders higher than the rooftops in Wishbone. Rhys’s keen eyes searched the wayside but could discern nothing that should alarm the horses. A scaly Gila lizard lay motionless on a flat, sun-heated rock to his left. Off to his right a speckle-backed chaparral cock searched among the stones for a meal.
Neither should have upset the horses, but something had. Their keen senses detected a threat that Rhys’s more civilized ones could not find.
“Can you see anything out there?” he asked Teddy.
She had stiffened in her seat and looked as skittish as the horses. Rhys saw her hand start to slide slowly toward her gun.
“Could be a snake, or a coyote, or a man,” she said softly. “Anything could hide in those rocks. And you’d best be ready for a fast ride once whatever it is shows itself.”
Rhys regretted he hadn’t had time to test the Colt he’d bought from Penrod. He could only hope it was as dependable as the storekeeper had said—and that, if necessary, it would save his and Teddy’s lives.
He drew it a few minutes later when Teddy abruptly stopped her horse and pointed at the ground. In the hardscrabble and sand of the roadbed were a strange assortment of tracks. Horses had stood and stamped and it looked as if a wheeled conveyance had slid to a stop then cut a deep swath in the ground as it turned about. Bootprints littered the ground, too.
Teddy voiced what both of them feared. “Riders stopped the stage here,” she said unevenly. “A holdup.”
Gun in hand, she swung off the paint and began examining the ground, dropping to her knees when she came to a spot where the sand bore a dark unnatural stain. Rhys remained mounted, keeping a wary eye on the road and the rocks. He had his gun ready should anything move. But the desert seemed to have grown abnormally quiet and the small creatures which had been ignoring the riders were suddenly out of sight. The sense of dread he felt was like a fist in his midriff.
***
Teddy tested the damp sand between her thumb and forefinger.
“Blood?” he asked.
“Looks like it,” she said, rubbing her hand clean in the loose sand. “But whose? A road agent’s or one of my men?” Without remounting she began to slowly circle out from where the disturbance had occurred. “And I’m wondering why the stage went back once whatever happened here was over. Porter’s station is closest from here. The sensible thing would have been to keep going.”
“Mount up,” Rhys told her. “If that blood was still damp it hasn’t been there long. We cannot be far behind the stage and those who stopped it.”
Teddy nodded and started toward her horse, but when she caught the reins and tried to mount, the paint began backing off. “We’re too damned close,” she said, stretching out a hand to stroke and soothe the nervous horse. “Dune’s caught a scent and it’s spooked her.” She looked around anxiously, seeing nothing but rocks, stretches of sand and clumps of spiky ocotillo. “But whether it’s man or beast...”
“Man,” Rhys said quietly. “About thirty yards back in the rocks.”
“Armed?”
Teddy swung into the saddle and tried to spot the hombre, but either Rhys had imagined seeing him or the man had ducked out of sight. Skeptical that any of the bandits would have hung around after robbing the stage, Teddy, nevertheless, looked everywhere, even across the road where the landscape was nearly identical. Rhys, who had kept his eyes on the spot where he’d first seen a man poke his head above a rock, now saw a glint as the sun reflected off metal.
“He is armed.” Swiftly sliding off the stallion, Rhys pulled Teddy from her mount and into the cover of the rocks. At the same moment a rifle shot whizzed past and cut the crown off the upraised arm of a saguaro. A second shot chipped rock off the small boulder that shielded them. A spray of shots followed, chiseling the boulder on both sides and peppering Rhys and Teddy with chips of stone.
“Over there.” Teddy nodded toward a monstrous rock cut through the center by a narrow fissure. “He can’t see us in there.”
In unison they dove across the exposed ground. Rhys pushed Teddy into the crevice, then plunged in after her. They wound up face to face, thigh to thigh. Both were breathless and excited in a space scarcely big enough for one body. Teddy was backed against the wall of rock where the fissure ended, squirming so wildly that Rhys nearly forgot what had driven them to cover. In that moment he smiled maddeningly down at Teddy. “Cozy,” he said.
Teddy, already tingling where he touched her, reacted with fury and gave him a violent shove that sent him reeling out into the line of fire. A bullet immediately tore through the brim of his hat and sent it flying like a flushed quail. Teddy’s outrage died in the face of nearly getting Rhys killed. Hurriedly rectifying the situation, she grabbed him by the shirt front and jerked him back into the crevice. “In, dammit! In!” she cried.
She pulled until he was plastered against her and both of them were wedged like driven pegs into the vein of the rock. They were crushed together as if they were engaged in an intimate act. Rhys felt the fiery heat in Teddy’s flesh, the rapid, anxious beat of her heart, the sharp rise and fall of her shapely breasts.
“Any further in, Teddy my sweet,” he said softly, insolently, not quite forgetting—in spite of his body’s fast and fierce response to her—that she had nearly gotten him killed, “and I’ll have to marry you.”
The tumescent male part of him, hard as the stone at her back, pressed hotly against her and made his meaning all too clear. An inconceivable heat sped through her. For an instant she forgot the danger, her awareness solely, insanely concentrated on the pressure of his body against hers, on the thrill of knowing he desired her. But that instant passed and lucidity returned quickly.
Cursing like a mule driver, Teddy bucked like a bronco to back away but all that exertion only wedged them closer together. Finally she stopped, her breath coming in irregular, agitated pants. “Damned randy...French bastard!” She gasped. “If I could get this gun...clear. I’d shoot you myself.”
“I would die happy,” he whispered and, catching her tightly by the shoulders, bent down and kissed the top of her head. “Now hold still,” he ordered, “while I get turned around or else people will spend the next century staring at our bones and speculating on what we were doing in this fissure when we got ourselves shot to death.”
The turning was an exercise in sensuality. Each carnal part of Rhys’s aroused body was rubbing against a quivering part of Teddy’s. What enraged her most about the ordeal was that her body had made a liar of her. Only hours before, she had been telling Rhys he’d be wasting his time trying to bed her. But here she was erotically tantalized by the feel of him, and appalled that there was no way to keep him from being aware of her body’s instant ardent reaction. Her nipples, pressed into his back, were hard as pebbles and ached from the pleasurable contact. Her breath rasped out like steam against his neck.
“Don’t get any idea I like being stuck to you,” she hissed. “I don’t.” A telltale quiver ran through her as the lie passed her lips. “You make me want to retch.”
“I can tell,” he retorted. “But restrain yourself, my sweet. We are in danger if you have forgotten. I can see the gunman if he approaches and he must, to get a clear shot, but I am not so sure we were wise to choose this hiding place, pleasant as it’s been,” he added.
“Ohh, you bas—” Teddy pounded his back with her fists.
“Whoa! Stop that!”
“Not until I break something,” she came back.
He could not stop her furious pummeling and so, dodging blows he chanced to look up and see that the fissure widened above their heads. With a bit of bracing and a boost he could climb up high and surprise their attacker. If she let him.
Having gotten her legs tangled with his, which only heightened her agony, Teddy stopped striking him.
“Merci,” Rhys said gratefully. “With your help I see a way to outsmart the gunman.”
“How?” she asked sheepishly, remembering their predicament and now, too late, ashamed of her outburst. “What do you want me to do?”
Pressing one leg and one arm against each side of the fissure Rhys began slowly edging his way up. “Give me a hand.” He looked back at her when no boost was forthcoming. “Or would you rather stay the night here?”
Teddy swore at him and, placing her hands on his firm buttocks, gave him a rough shove up. “Move,” she said. “Maybe he’ll blast your head off.”
He did not.
The gunman had been firing lucky but blind. Sometime earlier he had acquired a wound to the head that had poured blood over his face and made his vision fuzzy. His features were indistinguishable. The man was feeling his way along the rocks guided by the low hum of voices. He did not see Rhys perched on the boulder. He did put up as much fight as any man Rhys had ever encountered.
Rhys was upon the gunman with one leap, fortunately knocking his weapon from his hand but it was as if he had landed on the shoulders of an enraged bull. The gunman swore and roared like a madman and if his injuries had impaired his strength, it was hard for Rhys to tell.
“Murderin’ bastard!” the man shouted. “You won’t finish me off easy!” Spinning around, cursing, he clawed at Rhys and when he failed to shake him off, flung himself hard against a rock.
Rhys had to jump clear or be crushed. The gunman swung around again as Rhys landed and lunged in for the fight. He was quick with his elbows and with his fists and had pelted Rhys with hard blows before Rhys got a good hit in. Rhys felt no remorse at kicking the man’s feet from beneath him, not until the man spotted his lost weapon in the dust.
The gunman rolled over and fired two shots. One whizzed by Rhys’s head. A second thudded into the ground. Rhys flung himself at the man before he could fire again. The whole of Rhys’s weight went into a blow to his opponent’s jaw. The blow split the skin over Rhys’s knuckles and racked his shoulder with pain, but only brought a grunt of outrage from his desperate adversary.
By then Teddy was out in the open, her gun drawn and aimed, her angry eyes on Rhys as he savagely kicked the man’s gun from his hand. His own gun hung in the holster at his side.
“If you’re not going to use that Peacemaker, why did you get it?” Teddy demanded. Cursing a streak, she advanced on the gunman Rhys held, committed to shooting him or scaring him to death. Before she did either, a jolt ran through her body and all the color drained from her face.
“Teddy? Sacré bleu! What—” Rhys feared she had been shot, but there had been no sound of gunfire.
“Good God!” Teddy cried. She was inches from firing at the struggling gunman when she saw through the blood and filth. “It’s Rope!”