Fortunately, it was not a long ride. Even so, Laura’s bottom was feeling abused by the time he brought the animal to a halt in front of a shadowy building.
“Is this your house?” she asked, hating the uncertain, tremulous sound of her voice.
“Hmm,” he murmured, in what she had to assume was assent. He stood in the stirrups, and Laura inhaled sharply when his body dragged against hers as he dismounted. “Now I’ll help you down,” he said.
Before she could respond, he raised his hands to her waist and lifted her from the saddle. Her feet made contact with the earth, and her legs buckled. She was forced to hang onto him to keep from falling. The next instant she was swept off her feet again and into his arms.
“You’re the most falling-down female I ever came across,” he said, striding to the front door. “You got some sort of affliction or something?”
“Of course not,” she answered, glaring at him—to little effect, since he couldn’t see her expression in the dark. “It’s just that... well, I’ve never been on a horse before,” she blurted out. “It’s left me feeling—”
“Never been on a horse?” he said, his voice sharp with surprise.
“Well, no,” she said defensively. “Riding isn’t an everyday occurrence for most people back East, you know.”
Her explanation stopped him in his tracks. ‘‘You’re from back East?”
“Yes,” she said. “You can put me down now.”
“In a minute.” Stepping to the door, and nearly crushing her against it, he shifted around until he could grasp the latch, lift it, and push the door open.
A door latch? Laura mused. How quaint.
“Where back East?” he asked, moving inside. He set her on her feet just inside the door.
“Pennsylvania,” Laura told him absently, locking her knees to insure against falling again. “You can let me go, I’m all right now.” She glanced around and saw ... nothing. The darkness was complete. Afraid to move, she pleaded, “Could you please turn on a light? It’s darker in here than in that darned hole in the ground.”
“Stay put,” he advised her, his boots scraping against the floor as he moved away from her.
A moment later Laura blinked as another scraping noise was followed by the flare of a match. Her eyes widened as he held the flame to a wick inside an oil table lamp.
No electricity? she thought, probing her memory to recall if she had noticed electric lines strung along the rutted dirt road leading to the ghost town. She hadn’t.
Bemused by the idea of a person living in the back of beyond without the basic amenities, she watched as he lit two more lamps.
“Incredible,” she murmured. “Simple but incredible.”
“What?” Straightening, he turned to her, his face and body bathed in light. Seeing him banished all coherent thoughts but one from her mind.
Her rescuer was one breathtaking sight to behold, even taller than she had first thought, whipcord lean, and handsome in a rough-hewn way.
“Name’s Jake Wilder,” he said, eyeing her narrowly. “I own all the land around here. Do you have a name?”
His taunting voice snapped Laura out of her introspection.
“Well, of course I have a name,” she said, bristling as she stepped boldly forward, her right hand extended. “I’m Laura Brand, and I want to thank you again for rescuing me from that cavern, Mr.... May I call you Jake?”
Though he hesitated, slanting a wary look at her hand, he finally reached out to engulf it within his own. “Uh, sure, if you like. May I call you Laura?”
“Certainly,” she said briskly, withdrawing her suddenly warm and tingling hand. “I... ah, guess I can consider myself pretty lucky you happened along when you did,” she rushed on, feeling odd, disoriented by the intimate sensations that had spread up her arm to her shoulder and down, permeating her entire being. “If you hadn’t come along,” she babbled on, “I might have had to spend the night down in that dank hole.”
“The night?” His dark, naturally arched eyebrows inched up his forehead, and a distinctly sardonic smile accented his hard, masculine mouth. “You may have had to spend one helluva lot more than one night down there ... Laura.”
“What do you mean?” She frowned as she cast a quick look around her. Even with the three lamps lit, the interior “of the room was shadowy. But the light was sufficient for her to note the sparse furnishings, the rustic appearance.
“It might have been days before I had reason to ride out to that section.” His harsh voice captured her wandering attention. “I don’t often go out to that... hole,”
Her frown deepened at the emphasis he had placed on his last word, and she felt sick knowing she had been right to think she could have died. She stumbled to a ladder-backed wooden chair she had noticed during her brief perusal of the room.
“You gonna fall down again?” he asked, sounding both impatient and disgusted.
“No!” she snapped, tossing him a fulminating look. “I’m going to sit down. If you don’t mind,” she added, sinking onto the chair without waiting for permission,
He shrugged, bringing his shoulder and chest muscles into rippling play, and causing her breath to catch at his casual motion.
“Don’t mind at all,” he said dryly. “Save me from having to pick you up again.”
“How very gallant of you.” She began to feel downright put upon by his attitude.
“Never claimed to be gallant,” he retorted. “You’re the trespasser here ... remember?”
“Well, I do again beg your pardon,” she returned with feigned sweetness. “But I didn’t try to fall into that damn hole, you know.”
“Didn’t you?” he shot back. “What were you doing poking around there?”
Suddenly the effects of her experience overwhelmed her, and her fatigued body sagged in the hard chair. It required a supreme effort to reply. ‘Trying to get to a flowering plant on the other side of it,” she finally answered.
His eyebrows made a return trip up his forehead. “A plant? Don’t make the mistake of taking me for a fool... Laura. Who sent you here?”
“Nobody sent me.” She frowned, wondering what in hell she had gotten herself into.
“How did you get here?”
“A Cherokee.”
“You came with an Indian?”
“Only the four-wheeled variety,” she said, waging an inner fight to remain upright in the chair.
“Huh?”
His expression of baffled consternation was comical, except that Laura wasn’t laughing.
Weariness placed her far beyond seeing the humor in his obvious confusion.
“My vehicle, four-wheel drive and all. You know?” she said tiredly. “It’s a Jeep Cherokee. It’s red. You probably missed seeing it in the darkness.” She sighed, making a vague motion with her hand. “I parked it a few hills back, near that ghost town.”
But her explanation seemed to increase his confusion, and suspicion blazed from his glittering dark eyes.
“Jeep? Red?” he repeated, shaking his head as if to clear his muddled thoughts.
His action distracted her, drawing her attention, and her unwilling admiration, to his dark hair. It was long and a bit shaggy, but deeply waved and lustrous, with russet strands gleaming in the flickering light. Her fingers itched to delve into those dark locks.
The impulse startled her, for she couldn’t recall ever having experienced anything like it before. The sad truth was, she had long ago accepted that she was not a sensuous person. Unlike most of her female friends, she simply never noticed male attributes like terrific hair, fantastic eyes, great pectorals, or heaven forbid, slim, tight buns.
“Answer me, dammit!”
Distracted by her unprecedented reaction to the allure of his hair, not to mention his other equally impressive features, Laura gasped and nearly leaped from the chair at his impatient demand.
“You don’t have to shout!” she yelled right back at him. “What was the question, anyway?”
Jake looked about ready to explode, but he managed to keep his voice even by speaking through his gritted teeth. “I asked you what ghost town?”
She grimaced; she couldn’t recall another ghost town in the vicinity on the map. “How many are there?”
“Not a damn one that I know of,” he said, his voice hard with absolute certainty.
“Oh, come on,” she said, sure he was amusing himself at her expense, and past the point of tolerating his apparently skewed sense of humor, “You know full well that I’m referring to that old mining town a couple of hills west of here.”
“Old mining town?” he repeated, scowling. “You mean Sage Flats?”
“Yes, that’s it,” she said, suddenly remembering the name of the town in the guidebook and on the map. “Sage Flats.”
Once again his narrowed eyes glittered with suspicion. “Sage Flats ain’t old, and it sure as hell ain’t a ghost town. I wish it was.”
That did it. Laura had heard enough. “Look, Mr. Wilder, I’m too tired to play your funny little game ... whatever it is. I’m exhausted, I’m hungry, but more than anything else, I’m parched. I emptied my canteen hours ago.”
Though Jake had frowned at her remark about him playing games, her subsequent complaints wiped the frown from his face and galvanized him into action.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were thirsty?” he growled, striding to a doorway set into the far wall. “You don’t fool around with thirst out here.”
“I don’t fool around with thirst anywhere,” she retorted, too weary to make an issue of it. But it didn’t matter; Jake Wilder wasn’t listening. In fact he was no longer in the same room. He had disappeared through the far doorway.
Laura’s eyelids were already drifting closed when seconds later he strode back carrying a tumbler of water and a thick slice of bread.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, heaving a sigh. “That tastes so good.” She raised the cup to her lips again, starting when his strong fingers curled around her wrist.
“Slowly,” he cautioned. “Eat some bread.”
She heaved another sigh of dwindling patience. “Look, I know all about dehydration and all that, but I wasn’t even in the sun down there.” Despite her protests, she took a bite of crusty bread. “Mmmm, this is good.” She took another bite. “Tastes like homemade bread.”
“It is bread.” He stared at her, confused. “What did you expect it to taste like?”
“Certainly not like home-baked.” She took another bite, her teeth crunching through the crust. “Oh, yummy, I haven’t had bread this good in …” She broke off, her brows crinkling in consternation. “Come to think of it, I’ve never had bread this good before.”
“They don’t make good bread back East?”
“No way.” She washed the bread down with a sip of water. “Mass-produced bread is pretty tasteless.” Her eyes widened at a sudden thought. “Did you bake this?”
He shook his head. “No, I brought it back with me from Virginia City.”
“You were in Virginia City?” she asked impolitely around the bread she was happily munching.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I told you you were lucky. If I hadn’t been lookin’ for my damn horse, I wouldn’t have been near that... er, hole,” he said, starting for the other room. “Finish the bread while I fix you something hot to eat.”
“Horse? What horse?” she asked, still chewing.
“That damned bay that keeps breaking out of the lean-to,” he stated from the other room.
Well, that certainly clears that up, Laura thought, shaking her head and beginning to feel a definite empathy for Alice, who had also stumbled into a hole in the ground. The difference was, Jake Wilder was no engaging, fuzzy white rabbit.
The bread was gone. Laura unabashedly licked her fingers before draining the last of the water from the cup. The food and drink had revived her somewhat, and the weak-kneed, light-headed feeling had dissipated.
The call of nature, and sounds of activity from the other room, drew her to her feet. She stood still for a moment, testing her equilibrium. When the room didn’t spin and her body remained steady, she smiled confidently and followed in Jake’s path.
She took one step into the room and stopped dead, her confidence ebbing as she glanced around her.
The room, obviously the kitchen—of sorts—was small, but that wasn’t what had brought Laura to an abrupt halt. Her own kitchen in her townhouse in Philadelphia was even smaller, but compact loaded with every convenience. This kitchen was anything but compact, and didn’t possess a single convenience.
If the other room was rustic, this one was positively primitive. Feeling a renewed sense of disorientation, Laura gazed slowly around the room, beginning with her taciturn host.
Jake stood with his back to her at a wood-burning stove the likes of which Laura had seen only in museums. It was squat, pot-bellied, black, and ugly. Three lids, approximately six inches in diameter, were set into the flat stovetop. With a long-handled metal spoon, Jake stirred the contents of a large black iron frying pan that sat atop one of the lids. On another lid was a smaller pan, and the steam rising from it carried the aroma of cooking ham. A blue agate coffeepot on the third lid puffed the scent of coffee from its spout.
Laura’s stomach growled in anticipation.
“It’ll be ready in a few minutes,” Jake said, not bothering to turn to look at her.
“Thank you.” She made a face at his back in response to the embarrassment she felt at his hearing her body’s noisy demand for food. Then, feeling foolish for the childish reaction she glanced away from him.
The few other objects in the room looked as ancient as the stove. There was a metal sink with one spigot. One? Laura mused, frowning at the certainty that it was a cold-water tap. Primitive indeed.
From the sink her gaze drifted to the only pieces of furniture, a table and two chairs, both made of wood, and not too expertly at that. But it wasn’t the crude table and uncomfortable-looking chairs that caught Laura’s attention, or the tin plates and utensils set beside them. It was a well-worn broad leather belt, complete with a holster that sheathed a wood-handled, long-barreled pistol, lying on a folded newspaper at the end of the table nearest Jake.
In truth, it wasn’t the gun itself that surprised Laura; she knew that Westerners armed themselves with both rifles and handguns, especially those living and working in desolate areas. It was the type of gun. She could identify it even in its holster, because it was unique. An illustrated book about handguns in Laura’s library featured a picture of it—an experimental seven-shot open-top .44 and single action Army Peacemaker.
The strange thing was, the gun had been produced in the 1860s, and this particular weapon, though it had obviously been used, didn’t look over a hundred years old.
Laura was staring at the gun, pondering whether Jake had any idea of how valuable the pistol must be, when another, more immediate problem made itself felt.
“Uh... Jake, would you direct me to the bathroom, please?”
“Bathroom?” He turned, frowning.
“Yes, please. Nature calls, you know,” she said, smiling.
“Huh?”
She smothered a sigh. The man was so attractive; it was a pity he was proving rather dim,
“The facilities,” she said, ditching subtlety for bluntness. “I’ve got to go... and soon.”
“Oh.” His frown turned into an impatient scowl.
“Why didn’t you say so? It’s out back.” He cocked his head, indicating the back door.
Out back? Laura repeated to herself, making a beeline for the door. Why would anyone... Her thought splintered as she bolted through the door into the chill night air... and complete darkness. Damn, she fumed, she should have brought a—
“You might need this,” Jake drawled from behind her, one arm extended over her shoulder, a lantern handle dangling from his long fingers.
“But where is it?”
“Straight ahead, you can’t miss it.”
Grabbing the lantern, she strode forward. After a few yards she came to another abrupt stop, appalled at the sight of a narrow boxlike structure illuminated by the flickering lantern light. An air hole in the shape of a quarter moon was carved into the door.
Staring at the outhouse in disbelief, Laura felt her stomach tighten at the stench. At any other time, nothing could have compelled her to enter this offensive excuse for a bathroom. But this was not any other time, and unless she made use of it...
Gritting her teeth, she lifted the rusted metal latch and swung open the door.
Fortunately, by the time she reentered the kitchen, the roiling sensation in her stomach had mercifully ceased.
“Good timing.” Jake shot a half-smile at her. “Grub’s ready. Grab a seat.”
“I need to wash up first.”
“There’s the sink.” He motioned with his head. “Soap’s in the dish on the draining board.”
She crossed to the sink, turned the spigot handle, and thrust her hands into the trickling water. As she had suspected, it was cold.
“I suppose there’s no hot water,” she said, reaching for the soap.
“You suppose correctly, but if you want to wait, I’ll heat some for you.”
“Never mind.” She wondered why he hadn’t thought to heat the water while she was outside. “I’ll rough it with cold water this time.”
“Rough it?” He snorted. “At least there’s water running into the house. Most folks don’t have that.”
“Really?” Drying her hands on a coarse towel from the draining board, she turned to give him a startled look.
“Yeah, really,” he mocked her. “Fact is none of the shacks in town have it.”
“None of the shacks in what town?” she asked, puzzled as she watched him turn from the stove, the large frying pan in one hand, the long-handled spoon in the other.
“Sage Flats, o’ course,” he replied, spooning scrambled eggs and fried potatoes onto the tin plates. “Ain’t no other towns nearby.”
Laura felt an uneasy skittering down her spine. Ignoring it, she forced a laugh; it sounded phony, even to her own ears.
“You’re pulling my leg... right?”
He had crossed to dump the big pan into the sink, and was in the process of lifting the smaller pan from the stove lid. Her question made him pause, the pan suspended in mid-air as he stared at her in evident bafflement.
‘‘Why would I josh you about that?” he asked, his tone questioning her common sense.
“Because both you and I know that Sage Hats is nothing more than a ghost town,” she retorted, insulted by his tone and manner.
“Uh-huh.” He shook his head. “Sit down and dig in,” he said in a gentling tone, putting the ham on their plates. “You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten.”
She began to argue, but the combined smells of potatoes, ham, and eggs wiped all thoughts from her beleaguered mind. Without another murmur, she slipped onto the chair he indicated with a nod. Picking up a crudely made fork, she began to dig into the eggs, but hesitated when he shot a sharp, disapproving look at her.
“What?” she asked, shifting a puzzled glance from her plate to his stern expression.
“We didn’t say grace.”
Grace? She felt a surge of warmth for this seemingly hard, emotionless man. Jake Wilder, who, gun close at hand as he sat down at the table, insisted on saying grace over his meal. How utterly charming,
“Sorry,” she murmured, lowering her head to hide her smile as she laid the fork on the table and folded her hands above her plate.
“Thank you, Lord, for the abundance of your bounty,” he said. “Amen.”
“Amen,” she echoed demurely, then picked up her fork once more to attack her food.
Consuming his own meal, Jake watched Laura with open interest as she cleaned her plate down to the last smidgen of egg, ham, and potato. Finally, cradling her chipped crockery cup in her hands, she sat back to enjoy her coffee.
“Better?” he asked blandly.
“Much,” she admitted, sighing in satisfaction. “Thank you. You’re a pretty good cook.”
“Or else you were that hungry,” he drawled, moving his shoulders in one of those muscle-rippling, sense-stirring shrugs.
“Well, whichever, it tasted great.”
“Are you ready to talk now?”
“Sure, if you want to.” She frowned at the sudden tension in his expression. “What do you want to talk about?”
“You could begin with the truth.”
“The truth?” Her frown deepened. “What are you implying? I told you the truth.”
In a flicker, his expression changed from tense to skeptical. “Uh-huh.” One dark brow shot into a high arch. “You came here from back East with a red Cherokee, and just happened to stumble into that hole while trying to get to a wildflower. Have I got that right?”
“Exactly.”
“Bullshit.” The lightning change in his expression was frightening.
Laura felt hard pressed to keep from jumping from the chair and running back into the hills. The man looked positively lethal. Forcing herself to remain seated and calm, she drew a deep breath.
“Whether or not you choose to believe me, I have told you nothing but the absolute truth,” she said, somehow managing to keep her voice steady.
“And the reason you came out here from the East,” he said in a tone of patent disbelief, “was to collect plants?”
“Yes,” she said, then scrupulously qualified, “well, that and the fact that I’ve always felt an affinity for the Western mystique.”
“The Western mystique?” His expression went blank with incomprehension.
Where has this guy been? Laura wondered, then immediately answered her own question. He’s been out here, in the hills of Nevada, as wild as the plant life.
“You know,” she said, waving one hand vaguely. “The essence, the ambience of the place.”
Now he looked at her as if she were to be feared. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about, lady,” he said. “You’re gonna have to do better.”
Laura’s patience finally snapped. “I wanted to see the West, so I came out here!”
“With an Indian.”
“No!” she shouted. “A Cherokee, a red Jeep Cherokee!”
“A Cherokee Indian is red.”
“It’s not an Indian. It’s not human!” Her voice had grown so shrill from frustration that it startled her. Yet she continued, nearly screaming at him, “It’s a machine, an automobile ... with four-wheel drive.”
His expression questioned her sanity.
She was beginning to have doubts on that score herself. “Look, Jake, what’s the big deal, anyway?” she went on in a more reasonable tone. “So I fell into that hole ... so what? I meant no harm.”
“So you say,” he bit off. “I just don’t happen to believe you.” His stare drilled into her, giving Laura the uncomfortable sensation that he was trying to see into her soul. “I believe you were sent here, either to poke around on your own, or to distract me while whoever hired you searched those hills for the mine entrance.” His eyes slitted, and his expression was granite-like, shrewd. “I figured someone had grown suspicious when I picked up strange tracks at the base of that hill. Maybe I was followed once when I went to check on the mine, and didn’t know it.”
‘Tracks? Suspicious?” She shook her head, totally lost. “Suspicious of what?”
“You know damn well what.” Anger frayed his tone. “Suspicious of that hill,” he blurted out— unintentionally, she was sure. “And the big deal, as you call it, is that whoever it is is looking for gold.”
Laura’s eyes popped open so wide she could feel the strain.
“There’s gold there... ?”
“So you do know,” he stated, his expression one of utter self-disgust.
“But I don’t know,” she protested. “How could I? I only arrived today.” She frowned in concentration. “Besides, I understood that the little gold that was in these hills was exhausted by the miners who built that ghost town back there.”
“Dammit, woman, I told you there is no ghost town in these parts,” he barked. “Sage Flats is still full of those greedy, grubby castoffs and passel of outlaws, hanging around for the last of the pickin’s.” His full mouth curled into an unattractive sneer. “But I expect the filthy place will be a ghost town before too long, since the pickin’s have just about run out.”
Where in hell was the White Rabbit when a girl needed him? Laura thought, somewhat hysterically. For as normal as Jake Wilder looked, she feared she was dealing with a real nut case.
Mustering every ounce of fortitude she possessed, she managed to maintain a facade of composure, deciding to play along with him.
“So there are still miners living in Sage Flats, mining the surrounding hills?”
“You can quit the playactin’,” he grumbled. “You know as well as I do that there are.” A tiny, self-satisfied smile kicked up the corners of his tight lips. “That is, all except my hills, my mine. They don’t know about that.” His eyes narrowed and he gave her another piercing stare. “At least, up until a week or so ago, I thought they didn’t know about it.”
“I didn’t tell anyone! I swear I did not know about the mine.”
“Let’s start again,” he said, obviously not believing a word she said. “Why are you here?”
“I told you,” she said, her low tone conveying her weariness. “I’ve always been interested in the Old West, and I wanted to see if there was anything left of it.”
“The Old West?” The look he gave her said volumes, the pages of which Laura did not want to read.
“Yes, you know, the west of the 1800s,” she felt compelled to explain.
“Lady, I warned you about taking me for a fool,” he snapped. “This is the 1800s!” he shouted. “Eighteen-sixty, to be exact!”