MARINA WASN’T SURE what to make of Jack Cameron.
They had been on the trail together now for over a week and he had hardly said two words to her. She could see that he was by nature a taciturn man, but sometimes she sensed that he was attracted to her, only to have her intuition undercut by the way he ignored her.
Maybe he disapproved of how she had married Clark in return for his promise to help her find the gold and get her daughter back. Cameron probably saw her as an opportunistic harlot ready to offer her body to any man who might help her get what she wanted. He must think her no better than the fallen angels swarming around every brothel and cantina on the border, little better than the shapely young blonde at the boarding house in Contention City, whom Marina had seen enter Cameron’s room late that Sunday morning.
Every time she thought of Cameron—and she’d found herself thinking of him more and more—she thought of that girl. The memory of her entering Cameron’s room was annoying, but she wasn’t sure why. She guessed she must be jealous, but that would mean she felt something for Cameron, and that could not be.
She hadn’t felt an attraction for any man since she had been fourteen and fallen in love with a handsome, young vaquero who’d worked for her father. He’d been too shy, and too afraid of her father, to approach her. She’d never felt anything more than mild disdain for any man she’d met since the Apaches had attacked her family’s rancho. She’d been sixteen then.
Four years later, here she was, riding in search of gold and freedom for her daughter. That was all that mattered to her … Wasn’t it?
Cameron and Going were scouting ahead. Hotchkiss and Jimmy Bronco rode point while Clark paced Marina at a steady walk, every hour or so taking a pull from one of his brandy bottles.
Clouds were building in the west, and the breeze smelled faintly of wet sage and rain. They would have a damp night, Marina feared. But the water basins upon which they relied would be fresh, making tomorrow’s travel easier on the horses and mules.
She was staring thoughtfully at three hawks or vultures—it was hard to tell from this distance—circling off the right side of the trail when she heard horses approaching. Cameron and Going were returning from up the trail, their lathered horses blowing, heads sagging.
Going’s horse was favoring its right front hoof. When the Mexican had brought the mount to a halt, he climbed down and lifted the hoof in question.
“Shoe’s shot,” he said to Cameron. “I’ll have to hammer it back on until I can get another one forged.”
Cameron nodded. “There’s a cave about two miles northeast, up a little canyon,” he told the group. “Why don’t you rest while I go take a look?”
“Can I ride with you, Mr. Cameron?” Marina asked.
She wanted only to leave the trail for a while, to do a little exploring like she’d done back on her father’s rancho. Adrian looked at her and wrinkled his brow disapprovingly, but before her husband could say anything, Cameron replied, “As long as you stay close.”
Not casting another glance at her husband, for fear of what he might see in her eyes, Marina spurred the black and followed Cameron up the trail.
They rode single file, not saying anything. Cameron swung his buckskin toward the northeast, following a shallow cut through chalky buttes spiked with several different types of cactus and low-growing juniper. A few gnarled post oaks and willows lined the trail, growing in number as the riders wound through the cut and into a ravine opening between two granite monoliths.
A quarter mile up the ravine, a cave opened on their right—a large crescent worn away by millennia of wind and rain. Large slabs of orange sandstone hooded the entrance.
A freshening wind, heavy with the odor of desert rain, blew down the ravine, giving Marina a chill and a sudden sense of the antiquity of the place. It was the kind of poignant feeling—raw, innocent, and breathtaking in its fleeting power—she hadn’t felt since she was a child.
Cameron dismounted, handed her his reins, and told her to wait. She watched him climb the sandy embankment to the cave, where he peered cautiously around—looking for what, Marina wasn’t sure. But it was obvious he knew this wild country in all its moods, had identified many of its dangers.
He was a strong, powerful man—half-wild, like his desert-born mustang—and Marina felt unsure of herself around him. At the same time he made her feel safe. Even out here, in this wild no-man’s-land, he made her feel safer than she’d felt in years.
He walked beyond the cave, then turned and started back. As he walked toward her, stepping around boulders and avoiding cacti, he caught her staring at him. She did not turn away. Something would not let her turn away.
He came on, glancing at the ground occasionally to consider the trail, but mostly keeping his eyes on hers. His face was expressionless but his eyes were grave.
He approached her and stopped, his sweaty buckskin tunic sticking to his broad, muscled chest which rose and fell as he breathed. Small lines spoked around the greenness of his eyes. Dropping her gaze, she stared at the Colt pistol on his hip and the big, horn-handled bowie in a broad, sun-faded leather sheath.
He poked his hat back, revealing a clean sweep of tan forehead, and reached out to her with his right hand.
She offered him his horse’s reins but he took her hand instead, tugging gently. Her heart quickened and her breath grew shallow. Her knees weakened as she threw her right leg over the horn of her saddle and slid slowly down, his hand holding hers for balance.
Standing there before him, smelling the sweat-and-horse-and-leather smell of him, her head coming up to just below his chin, she could not look up. Her ears were ringing and she felt suddenly deathly afraid of this man. But then she realized that the fear was not of him so much as of herself, of the passion she felt stirring deep within her, threatening to bubble to the surface.
Casually, with both sun-darkened, thick-callused hands, he swept her hair back from her face. With the index finger of his right hand he gently lifted her chin until their eyes met.
He bent down and kissed her, softly at first. Then, as he wrapped his heavy, sweat-damp arms around her, pulling her roughly to him, his mouth opened as it pressed against hers.
She felt as though she’d been struck by lightning. Reacting to the passion she felt, she threw her arms around him and returned his kiss with equal fervor, running her hands over his shoulders and down his back.
Then, breathlessly, she struggled out of his grip and pushed him away. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, her mind swirling, her ears still ringing, heart pounding.
Marina turned quickly and mounted her horse. Not waiting for Cameron, she spurred the black down the trail, toward her waiting husband. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her heart was breaking and she did not know why. All she knew was that she suddenly felt afraid, sad, and very confused.
She needed to be alone.
She turned off the trail, into a slight cleft in the hills, and dismounted. She sat on the talus-scarred hillside, reins in her hands, and put her head down on her knees and cried.
Cameron stood frozen, watching Marina gallop away.
“You goddamn moron,” he said to himself.
He kicked a rock and cursed again. What the hell was he doing, anyway, kissing another man’s wife? Scared the hell out of her too, it looked like. She probably thought he was going to rape her.
But he hadn’t been able to help it. When he’d seen the way she was looking at him—her smoky dark eyes, her black hair hanging across her shoulders—he’d felt possessed, driven to her as though he were a piece of driftwood in a raging rapids.
He hadn’t been able to help himself.
Well, now he’d better help himself. When she got back to the group and told her husband what he’d done, Clark would probably try to shoot him, and Cameron could not blame the man.
So here’s what your damn life has led to, he thought. Getting shot by an angry husband whose wife you tried to maul.
There wasn’t much he could do but face the music, so he cussed again, mounted his horse, and started off down the trail, feeling as guilty as a schoolboy on his way home to his parents with an angry note from his teacher.
But when he rejoined the others, who were resting their horses and mules in some brush, Marina wasn’t there.
“Where’s your wife?” he asked Clark, a little sheepishly.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Clark said, rising from where he’d been sitting, half a piece of jerky in his hand.
Cameron jerked his horse around and was about to spur the buckskin back up the trail when Marina appeared, cantering around a butte. Cameron exhaled slowly with relief, squinting at her. She rode up and stopped, looking a little pale but forcing a smile.
“Sorry,” she said. “I had to take a side trip … to answer a call of nature.”
Clark erupted in a fit of coughing. When it subsided he swallowed several times and rasped, “Good God, I almost had a stroke,” he said, grabbing and uncorking his bottle. “I thought Indians had gotten you.”
“I am sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten anyone,” Marina said, sliding her gaze from him to Cameron, then turning sharply away.
“The cave looks good,” Cameron said to the group. “Let’s head out.”
He glanced at Hotchkiss, who grinned knowingly. Cameron turned away from him and headed up the trail.
Marina fell in beside him. “I am sorry,” she said softly.
“No, I’m sorry,” he said, not looking at her. “I was out of line.”
“No, you were not.”
Behind them, just out of earshot, Clark watched them closely.
He had suspected that some feeling, a mutual attraction, was growing between his wife and Cameron, but he couldn’t explain why. He couldn’t pin his hunch on anything conclusive—maybe it was just the way Cameron had been trying so hard to ignore her, or the way Marina turned shy whenever Cameron was in the vicinity. He’d tried to ignore it, because he knew he was prone to irrational jealousy and that Cameron was just the sort of man who brought it out in him.
But when Cameron had ridden up, Clark had seen something wrong in his eyes. Something had happened between them. Something emotional. He could see it now in Marina, as well. It was no call of nature that had waylaid her.
Or was it? Maybe that’s really all it was, and Clark was just feeling those old defensive feelings he’d grown up with, the sense that he did not quite measure up to others, the sense that, because his father had always paved his way and made things as easy as he could for his only son, that others saw the weakness in Adrian’s eyes and did not respect him.
That’s why he had wanted Marina. A woman like that—strong, intelligent, beautiful—might bring him the respect and admiration he so craved. Winning a woman like that—never mind that he’d won her in poker, something no one need ever know—was akin to winning a war.
Now he saw in Marina’s eyes what he’d been wanting to see since he’d first laid eyes on her; only, the warmth in her gaze was not for him. It was for Cameron.
And the powerful, passionate feelings he’d sensed in Cameron were the feelings Clark wanted to feel for Marina, but didn’t. He’d never been able to give himself, heart and mind, to a woman. He suspected that this, too, had something to do with his father’s own relentless wariness of others.
Perversely, Clark didn’t want anyone else loving Marina, either. He wished now they’d never met Jack Cameron. Because no matter how much the thought appalled him, Clark was going to have to kill the man.