EIGHT

Kane was worried for her life, fighting the overwhelming urge to kill her husband, not to mention the almost unbearable need he had to hold her. Yet he stood there actually suppressing a smile at her spitfire of a tirade.

His lips quirked up no matter how he tried to keep them flat. “Thank you for caring about me.”

Her eyes widened as he’d known they would, he was half disappointed that smoke didn’t pour from her lovely freckled nose.

“Care?” she sputtered. “Of course I care! What do you take me for? Someone’s trying to kill me and you run off, and I don’t know if you’ve gotten hurt, or maybe you decided to leave or—” In the span of a heartbeat he watched her go from blazing fury to the brink of tears. He reached for her but her palm flattened on his chest, keeping the slight but important space between them.

She sniffed, and her bottom lip trembled as she looked up at him, fury still somehow burning brightly in her glassy eyes. “Dammit, now I’m crying again, and I swore last night I wouldn’t do that anymore.”

Her shoulders jerked as she sniffed, and all Kane’s good intentions flew out the window. “Come here,” he whispered, pulling her taut frame against his chest. He pushed the fingers of one hand through her wild red curls, cupping her head, forcing it gently but firmly to his chest. He wrapped his other arm around her waist.

If she’d remained hard and unyielding, resisted him for even a minute, he’d have been able to regroup and let her go. But in the next instant, she relaxed. She didn’t cry or sob as he’d expected. She huddled against him, an occasional tremor racking her shoulders, not holding him or otherwise encouraging him, using his arms as a shelter from her internal storm as she slowly pieced together her control.

He damned himself for the bastard he was that she could continue to maintain grace under incredible pressure, while he’d caved in to his base desires on the first sight of tears. Because while she took a well-deserved time-out, he burned with a need to take her, to pull her underneath him and bury himself in her fire and light. Again. And again.

He felt her draw herself together and move slightly away from him. He let his hands drop, then he fell heavily into a chair, not caring if it splintered under his weight, hoping like hell she’d been too preoccupied to notice the state he’d been in. Was still in.

She sat across from him, resting her elbows on the table. “You found something last night.” She didn’t make it a question so he didn’t bother answering her. “Do we need to get out of here for a while? Is that why you suggested the picnic?”

He looked up, letting his respect for her shine in his eyes. “Little sun, when you pull yourself together, you don’t waste time.”

She sucked in a small breath. “I don’t have much to waste, do I?”

He exhaled harshly, flattening his palms on the scarred table. “I don’t know. And to answer your other question, yeah, if we’re going to talk, I’d like to do it where I can keep an eye on the place.”

“Okay. Give me a few minutes to pack something.” The look on her face as she cast a glance at the cabinets told him eating wasn’t high on her preferred agenda at the moment. But she stood and started gathering things anyway.

“Just like that?”

She turned back to him, her expression leaving no doubt she understood what he’d asked. “Just like that.”

Knowing he should stay seated didn’t keep him from rising and crossing the small room. He came to stand behind her, wanting to touch her again but somehow finding enough strength at the last second not to. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure your faith in me isn’t misplaced.”

She paused for a split second, then reached for the wooden bowl holding several shiny red apples. “I know.”

Two words. Entrusting him with the most precious thing she had to risk; her life. He vowed then and there not to lose control again, no matter the temptation, to do whatever it took to free her of the monster she’d married then get the hell out of her life and let her get on with rebuilding it. Because no matter how badly he was tempted to try and keep her with him, he had nothing to offer her and even less of a reason to give her hope that that fact would ever change.

“Is it safe to climb the rocks above the spring?”

Her words jerked him to the present. Steeling his resolve, he focused completely on the events of the evening ahead. “The barn will block us until we get into the trees a bit farther up.”

“And getting past the barn?”

Her voice was remarkably even, but he didn’t miss the light trembling in her fingers as she stuffed a box of crackers into the basket.

“Clear.” For now, anyway.

She turned suddenly, surprising him into complete stillness. “Is that how you got this?” she asked, gently touching the skin next to the gash he’d forgotten about.

He hadn’t expected his resolve to be tested so quickly nor so strongly, especially with something as innocent as concern for a little scratch. He forced himself to withstand her soft touch as if it were some sort of test he had to pass before he could go on. It took far more will than he’d thought he had left. “Yeah. I’ll stop and clean it out at the spring, okay, Nightingale?”

She smiled. “Okay, Rambo.”

She might as well have cleaned out his wound with the salt in the stoneware cellar sitting on the counter. The pain would have been easier to withstand than dealing with the simple yet complex gift of her caring and easy humor at a time when he couldn’t tell her how much they meant to him.

Loose rocks skittered down the path behind them as they made the last turn. Kane held a branch out of the way and motioned for Annie to pass him. The track was old and narrow and required concentration, a sprained ankle being the least of the consequences if they didn’t.

Kane grimaced as he watched Annie’s jeans tighten across her trim backside as she bent and used her hands to pull herself up onto the rocky ledge. He was damn lucky he hadn’t broken his neck.

He maneuvered carefully around her, and in a short time cleared a small area of rubble and mountain debris, then stood back as she spread the blanket.

He let her go about unpacking, knowing she was no more eager to eat than he was, but wanting to put off for a few more moments their inevitable discussion.

“Why don’t you start while I get this together.”

He should have known she wouldn’t play it by his rules. He supposed he should be grateful she hadn’t followed him earlier, but he couldn’t lie to himself that the rush he’d felt when she’d come down the hall toward him had been one of relief.

“Where did you go last night?”

He swallowed a sigh. “I decided to take Sky Dancer out for a while. I needed to think.”

She nodded, and he was glad there would be no pretense of misunderstanding between them.

“Isn’t that dangerous? Taking a horse out in the dark?”

“Depends on the horse. But I was going someplace familiar. She never forgets a trail.”

“Familiar?”

“The stream.”

Again she nodded, and he wondered if she was remembering their fishing expedition.

“Did you … come to any decisions?”

“My intention had been to think through all you’d said and come up with a plan of action.” Not to mention take a nice long dip to keep me from coming back, on my knees if necessary, and crawling right into bed after you, he added silently.

“But?”

“The moon chose an opportune moment to stop playing hide-and-seek, and I noticed something on the ground.” He dropped the stick he’d been using to draw patterns in the rock dust and looked up at her. “Tracks. A man, about six feet. Thin, I’d say.”

Her eyes widened. “You could tell all of that from a few footprints? In the dark?”

“You’d be surprised what the size and pressure of a print reveals. I went back up on foot this morning and scouted around. I found some tire tracks, small tread, probably a rental car, sedan anyway. They were at the last wide bend in the road down the mountain. I followed the foot tracks from there to the stream.”

“Anything … closer?”

“No.”

She took a small breath and turned back to the basket. After staring at it for a moment as if trying to remember what she was doing, she shifted on her heels and gave up all pretense of laying out a picnic lunch.

“But if whoever it was found the stream, then he must know about the ranch.”

“Could be a fisherman looking for an unspoiled stream.”

“Driving a sedan? Not likely around here. Besides, most sportsmen stop in at Dobs’s store. I don’t think he’d have sent anyone up here. I think he suspects I’m not here for a pleasure trip.”

“He sent me.”

Her eyes met his, all soft and brown—and scared. “I know. And I’m sorry, Kane. Sorry I got you involved in this.”

“Don’t, Annie. I got myself involved.”

“What did …? Did Dobs say something that made you decide to come here?”

“No,” he answered, feeling like a lying bastard even though it was the truth. But it was all the truth he could give her. For now. Maybe for always. He’d have to rely on his actions speaking for him. It was the only way she’d trust him enough to let him get the job done. After that, it didn’t make much difference what she thought of him. The result would be the same. She’d go her way, and he his.

She studied him for a moment, and he found himself praying she didn’t probe that point much further, he wasn’t sure he had any capacity left to tell her an outright lie.

“Well, now that you know the entire story, I won’t hold you to your promise.” She held up a hand to forestall his interruption. “I know you honor your word. But I’m releasing you from it. You had no way of knowing you’d be risking your life.”

He felt her lean forward when he shifted his gaze to the rustic tableau of the ranch spread out below them. He tightened his resolve to remain still if she touched him, but wasn’t able to actually move away and eliminate the possibility.

“Besides,” she went on, mercifully keeping her hands to herself, “Matt should be home soon. He’ll help. He has all kinds of contacts. If anyone—”

She broke off on a swift intake of breath as Kane shot to his knees before her. He grabbed her shoulders.

“You don’t have the luxury of waiting anymore, Annie. I’m all you’ve got.”

He hated the cold fear that filled her wide eyes with an intensity that rocked him. He wanted to erase forever that hunted look. Prey. Dobs’s description of her flicked through his mind. Not if he could help it.

“I can’t let you—”

“You don’t have a choice, Annie.” His grip gentled, and he absently let his hands run down her arms. Twining his large blunt fingers through her smaller, more slender ones, he squeezed gently. “I want to get this guy, too, Annie. It’s personal now.”

Understanding dawned in her eyes. “I can imagine how hard it is for you, finding out about this group and knowing who’s responsible for perpetuating that sort of garbage. But Hawk, he’s dangerous. I didn’t get to hear much, but even what I did hear was enough to convince me that they are well organized and not hurting for money. Or power.” She grasped his forearms. “Let Matt help me with this. It’s not your crusade.”

A million emotions crowded his brain, not the least of which was the way his heart dropped to his knees each time she called him Hawk. He didn’t bother to elaborate on the reasons this situation had become personal to him. Her assumption wasn’t wrong, just not completely right.

“I agree that Matt would be a welcome sight right now, but he’s not here and someone else is. In the meantime, we can’t just sit here and wait like sitting ducks.”

He watched as she fought down the fear that had become an instinctive part of her life, her gaze skittering away as the fear began to win.

Kane’s pulse pounded with fury at his inability to put an immediate end to her terror.

“I’ll have to leave here,” she whispered. She lifted her eyes to his. “I … I don’t know where to go. And how will Matt find me?”

“Annie—”

“No, Kane. You’ve done enough. I’ll figure something out. No!” she repeated when he tried to cut in. “You’ve alerted me to the danger here, but now you have to go. I know how angry you must be, how insulted by what Sam’s involved in. But it’s precisely because of his beliefs that I think you should go.”

“I can handle Sam.”

“You don’t know him.”

Kane flinched, feeling again the twist of pain in his gut for having to continue evading the issue of his damning connection to Sam Perkins.

“If he’s not worried about killing me, he sure won’t think twice about killing you,” she stated evenly.

“And I said I was willing to take that chance. I won’t leave you here.”

Fire lit the depths of her brown eyes. “Why?” she asked, her voice anguished. “And don’t give me all that stuff about being the kind of man who can’t walk away. Damn your honor and damn your integrity!” she choked out. “I’m barely able to manage here, wondering from one minute to the next when Sam or one of his pals will track me down.” She turned pleading eyes to him. “I can’t worry about you too.”

Kane wondered if a person could hear his heart break. “So don’t,” he said quietly, wishing more than anything he was worth her anguish and concern. Especially given the harsh truth that all he was liable to do was add to it. “Let me worry about me.”

“I don’t think I have that choice. Not anymore.” Almost to herself, she added, “I’m not sure I ever did.”

Kane swore under his breath, his control so close to shattering, he trembled with the effort to piece the ragged edges back together. This was alien territory for him, having someone be truly concerned about him, and frankly, it was scary as hell.

“Little sun,” he whispered, his tone rough. “Don’t waste that precious energy on me. I’ve taken care of myself for so long, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

A sad smile lit the corners of her mouth. “That’s right, the man with the empty soul. Your black mu’gua. If there was ever a soul worth caring about, it is yours, Eyes of the Hawk.”

Kane’s control snapped like a fine wire tightened past all endurance. Her solemn avowal unleashed a response in him that was elemental, primitive. He untangled one hand from hers, barely registering the tremors in his fingers as he threaded them into her tangle of curls until he could grip her head.

Slowly, so slowly he could feel each complete second tick by, he tilted her head back. Spending his last shred of sanity, he searched her eyes for … what? Uncertainty? Fear? Yes, anything to keep him from answering the need that had spiraled out of control the moment she’d spoken his Shoshone name.

It wasn’t there.

All he found, amazingly, impossibly, was a need that matched his own. He lowered his head, the blood rushing through his veins, becoming a tangible feeling. He watched the pulse under the soft skin of her temple match his own internal rhythm.

“Stop me.” His lips touched hers.

“No.” And she lifted her mouth to his.

The first taste of her sweet, warm breath stilled him for the space of a heartbeat. Then she ran the tip of her tongue over his lower lip, and he lost it.

With a rumbling sound that originated deep in his chest, he wrapped his arm around her waist. He slid his other hand down to her nape as he shifted his mouth and deepened the kiss.

She tasted better, sweeter, wilder than even his most tortured fantasies. He pushed his tongue past her soft, wet lips, seeking her tongue, twining with it, drinking from it. The pleasure was so intense, it was almost painful. Then she touched him, framed his face with her hands, slid her fingers into his hair. She slowly worked her fingers against his scalp, she pushed the leather strip holding his hair downward then off. His sanity followed the same path.

“Little sun,” he said against her cheek as he pulled in air. No longer consciously guiding his actions, he trailed his lips across her cheek, then down the side of her neck.

“Yes,” she responded, arching into him.

His hips bucked forward, his action completely instinctive. He trailed his mouth over the hot surface of her skin, testing the softness of her earlobe with his teeth. He rimmed her ear with his tongue, whispering to her in his own language, knowing from her immediate response that even that was no barrier to how completely she understood him.

She let her hands drop to his shoulders, clinging there for a minute, the sweet bite of her short nails through his T-shirt, making him feel alive. Wildly alive.

He pulled her shirt loose, suddenly overwhelmed with the need to feel her bare skin under his hand. He let his fingers climb the ridge of her spine, memorizing each and every deceptively fragile bone, until the bunching of her shirt prevented him from going farther.

Consumed by the need to explore, frustrated at this flimsy obstruction, he acted on instinct. With a quick yank the woven fabric gave, and he pulled until the shirt split in two as cleanly as if he’d unzipped it.

He heard her gasp as the air touched her bare back. He swiftly moved his lips from her ear and swallowed the soft sound into his mouth. He kissed her deeply, relentlessly, while his hands took their time mapping the fine muscles that flexed underneath her skin as she writhed in his embrace.

The sound of fabric ripping and the air hitting his own suddenly bare back hit him like a cold shock. But instead of dousing the fire, it fanned it to a white heat. It quickly became a contest to see who could rip the clothes from the other first.

Her shirt flew seconds before his, and when the burgeoning tips of her breasts kissed his chest, he lost any and all capacity to breathe. He stilled completely, wanting to savor this heady rush, to freeze the sensation in time until it was forever a part of his sensory memory.

He heard nothing beyond the pounding of his heart and the harsh gasp of their combined efforts to draw in much-needed air. In that moment, their gazes locked again. Kane felt an instant of fear at the sudden tidal wave of feelings that crashed against his heart.

He couldn’t move, could barely breathe. He didn’t care. She took one of his hands in hers and raised it to her lips. She turned it over then lowered her gaze to study it. She dipped her head and brushed a light kiss over one knuckle, then another, and another. Then she found each scar, and he knew there were many, and kissed them too. Only when she’d found and healed with her own fiery brand every visible scar, did she take his hand and lower it, laying it against her heart. She held it tightly as if in fear he might yank it back.

And it took will he’d never dreamed he still possessed not to do so. Her gift to him was unbearable—and incredibly, wrenchingly unacceptable.

He’d thought nothing could penetrate the haze of desire he’d been in, nothing except burying himself to the hilt inside her until stopping no longer mattered.

A strange burning made him press his eyelids shut, breaking the formidable bond she’d tried to forge. “You can’t do this.” His voice was so hoarse, it was barely intelligible.

“I did. I would again.”

“It’s wrong.” He barely swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. Of all the deceptions, this lie to himself became the harshest to endure.

“Look at me.”

He obeyed her soft plea instantly. This was his punishment, he thought. Looking into her eyes, eyes that pledged things he never dared hoped for.

Even now. Especially now.

“This isn’t … It’s the hardest … thing …” He wrapped his arms around her, tucking her against his chest, steeling himself for the further punishment of enduring the feel of her bare torso pressed to his. He buried his face in her hair, having to spare himself the torture of looking at her while he spoke, knowing it was cowardly.

“I’d give anything … anything to make things different.”

“Different? Than what?”

He dragged air into his lungs and forced the words out. “Than this, than—”

“I know the timing is horrible,” she broke in, her words raspy. “I wish it were different too.”

“That’s only part of it, Annie.” He paused for a moment. “You don’t love him anymore, you told me that.”

He felt her tense and damned himself for thrusting the ugly specter of Sam Perkins between them, but there was no help for it.

“I don’t.” She tilted her head back, and he looked down into her worried gaze. “There is nothing left for me there.”

“You’re running scared, Annie. And rightfully so.” He stared hard at her, willing her to understand, to accept what he was trying to tell her. “But I’m not your answer.”

Color washed into her cheeks, and she tried to pull away from him, flailing one arm out to grope for at least a remnant of her shirt as if her nakedness had suddenly become a point of shame.

Anger flared in him at her obvious misinterpretation, anger at himself for being so callous, anger at her for not having a stronger sense of self-worth. And a rage that was palpable for the bastard who had robbed her of that.

He pulled her around, held her arms tightly in his hands. “You … are … everything … Everything any man could want, little sun. Never doubt that.”

Her shoulders straightened as she locked her gaze with his. “Any man? I don’t want any man.” She wrenched her arms from his grasp and grabbed at her shirt. She yanked it on so the rip was in the front, swiftly tying it into a knot below her breasts.

Kane couldn’t have moved if she’d thrown a lit stick of dynamite at him. She was magnificent. A true glimpse of the fiery nature that lay beneath the shell of fear and doubt that she’d been forced to adopt in order to survive.

“You say my doubts about myself aren’t warranted. Did it ever occur to you that your doubts about yourself aren’t either?”

Kane shot to his feet in one fluid motion. He was so close, a deep breath would have caused his chest to touch hers. “I know what I have to offer you, Annie. Nothing. Less than nothing. Certainly not what you deserve.”

“Since when did I lose the right to be my own judge?”

“Since the night you discovered your husband is a racist,” he shot back, hating himself for his harshness. “When you get out of this, when you can put this—him—behind you, then you can be your own judge. But I know that when you finally have that choice, that your choice will not be me.”

The fist she’d pressed against her lips during his speech dropped away. Kane had expected tears, yelling, screaming, at the very least an argument. So he was totally unprepared for her choked sound of relief, much less the tentative smile that curved her lips.

She shifted forward, closing the yawning quarter-inch gap between them. “Is that what this is all about? I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out. It’s my fault, I suppose, for not making it clear.”

She’d caught him so off guard, he could almost ignore the tiny electric shocks the brush of her body against his had ignited. Almost. She looked … confident. That’s what you wanted, right? his inner voice taunted him. Yeah, right. He swallowed hard. Twice. “Mak—” He cleared his throat. “Making what clear?”

“Let me ask you something?”

Giving up completely any hope of regaining control of the conversation, he responded on a pained note. “Sure, why the hell not?”

“If I was free to choose any man I wanted …”

Uh-oh. “Yes?” was all he managed to get out.

“Would you at least give me—us—a chance?” She faltered for a brief moment, and he wondered if his reaction was so obvious. “If I chose you?” she finished on a whisper.

Why was she doing this? “It’s a moot point, Annie.”

She placed her fingertips on his lips and shook her head. “Hawk, I was engaged. But I’m not—and never have been—married.”

“That can’t be … Sam—”

“Was my fiancé,” she finished.

“You … lived together?”

He looked shell-shocked. Given what he’d believed, she shouldn’t be surprised. But there was something else under the surface of confusion: A trace more disbelief than she’d thought to see.

“Yes. He sort of swept me off my feet, he can be very focused when he wants something.” Like her, dead. She shuddered. Shaking that off, she added, “But it was sort of overwhelming and … I won’t lie and say I wasn’t flattered or influenced by all the attention. By his seeming sincerity.” She felt her skin burn. “But I wouldn’t commit to a wedding date right away. I could barely breathe, much less … Anyway, about three months before this happened, Sam finally convinced me to move in with him. He was pushing me to quit my job too. He wanted to give me the chance to see how the house staff was run. Let me learn the ropes, so to speak, of what’s expected of a bank president’s wife.”

She saw the question in his eyes. Part of her felt relieved that he wasn’t demanding to know the gritty details, that he respected her past as being her business and not part of what was between them.

There was another part of her, though, the part that had seen how vulnerable this tough man was, how little he trusted others with even the smallest piece of himself. She suspected she’d been given more than most. That part of her wanted to tell him, show him, how special a man he was. And not stop until he believed it.

The choice was taken from her when a high-piercing whinny ripped through the peaceful late-afternoon air.