Wild Roses (7 page)

Harrigan sighed mournfully and shook his head. “I but try to make our time together a little more pleasant. I offer the hand of friendship, and you bite it off.”

“My heart bleeds for you.”

When he grinned, Ella felt her heart skip. The man was dangerously handsome and her attraction to him was getting completely out of control. She knew that was one reason she resented his feigned amiability. Her mind knew it was only a game he played, but her heart softened at his every smile and greedily accepted his every practiced compliment. Worse, she kept recalling the kiss he had stolen. Suddenly, she remembered something else about that kiss. Harrigan had been all pretty smiles and sweet words then too. A rush of angry suspicion swiftly, and she feared briefly, killed all her attraction for him.

“Oh no,” she said as she quickly stood up. “No, you don't. I won't stumble into that trap.”

“What trap?”

“The let's be nice and talk sweet until Ella gets so stupid she lets you maul her trap.”

“Maul you?” It was only the memory of how completely and warmly she had responded to his kiss that kept Harrigan from being deeply offended. “I had not realized that you viewed simple courtesy from a man as a prelude to seduction.”

“Why shouldn't I? It usually is.” She picked up her carpetbag and stepped toward the dressing screen in the far corner of the room. “I suppose you intend to stay in this room with me, whether I wish your company or not.”

“You suppose correctly,” he replied as he poured himself a little more of the brandy.

“It does not concern you at all that you are destroying my reputation, does it?”

“Ella, I think we both know that, fair or not, your reputation was destroyed when you ran away to live with your aunt.” He spoke in a gentle tone, honestly sympathizing with the injustice of such attitudes. “Now, which side of the bed do you want?”

“Excuse me? You mean to share that bed with me?” Ella was not really surprised, but hoped that a display of shock and maidenly outrage might work to change his mind.

“Yes. Since I left Philadelphia I have had only one night of complete rest in a decent bed. I may not get another until I return to the city. There is nothing you can say or do that will keep me from enjoying my half of that bed.”

“Cad.”

Ella stepped behind the screen, set her bag down, and pulled out her nightgown. For a moment, she considered sleeping in her clothes, but only for a moment. The nightgown was prim, made of a heavy white cotton, and covered as much of her as any gown she owned. She only had two gowns with her and she did not want to add to the wear they would be suffering by sleeping in them.

As she stripped down to her pantaloons, carefully putting her clothes away, and then slipping into her nightgown, she wondered if it was wise to be so immodest in front of Harrigan. He had shown a few distinct signs of a budding desire for her. Few men saw a woman all prepared for bed unless they were married or lovers. It could be something men found very enticing and the last thing she wanted to give Harrigan was an invitation. Although, she mused as she looked down at herself, her slim form completely obscured by the voluminous nightgown, she did not think she looked very enticing.

The more she considered the matter, the more she decided she was being foolish. Every instinct told her that she did not have to worry about Harrigan, that he was a man who understood the word no. She smiled crookedly when she admitted that the danger was not in Harrigan's desire for her, but in hers for him. He would honor a no, but there was a good chance that she would forget to say it. The kiss they had shared had shown her that her desire for the man was not easily controlled. She shook her head, took a deep breath to steady herself, and stepped out from behind the screen.

Harrigan watched Ella as she walked to the bed and slipped beneath the covers. The sudden rush of desire he felt for her both disconcerted him and made him want to smile. In the large, crisp, white nightgown, with her hair lightly braided, she looked like a young girl. He decided that it was the intimacy of the attire that stirred him, for
adorable
was not usually something that fired his blood.

What disturbed him was the strength of his desire for her. He had always prided himself on the control he had over his emotions. That control was hard to grasp when Ella Carson was around. The kiss they had shared had moved him in ways he had never experienced before. It had roused feelings he was not familiar with and made the ones he had thought himself familiar with so much more intense and complicated. It was difficult to look at Ella's sweet face and her big green eyes and think of her as dangerous, but Harrigan knew he had to.

After finishing his drink, Harrigan put their supper dishes on the tray and set it outside their door. He then checked the doors and windows to be sure that everything was locked up tightly. Turning his back on Ella, he undid his trousers and slipped the key into a little pocket in his drawers where he often hid some extra money. He smiled faintly when he thought that, if she managed to find the key, they would probably be engaged in an activity that would keep her from escaping anyway, at least until he had time to regain his senses. In fact, if her delicate little hand was wandering in that area, he would probably be willing to hand her the key just as long as she did not leave too soon.

He sat on the bed, hesitated a moment, then stripped down to his drawers. He carefully set his clothes on the chair next to the bed and slid under the covers. Harrigan briefly considered using the manacles to secure Ella to the bed, but decided there was no need. She could not get out of the room without the key and he would certainly know it if she took that away from him. There was no way to get out of the window and it would take time for her to pick the lock. A little smile touched his lips as he glanced at her stiff back. There was also the very alert pair of youths he had hired to watch for her. She might still try to escape, but he was confident she would not get very far. Crossing his arms beneath his head, he decided he could rest easy for at least one night.

When Ella shifted slightly on her side of the bed, one of her small feet fleetingly brushing against his leg, he grimaced. His body's reaction to that light, innocent touch was swift and fierce. He wanted her a lot more than he had realized. There was a good chance that having her so close yet so untouchable would prove to steal a lot of the rest he needed. He closed his eyes, took several slow, deep breaths, and tried very hard to convince himself that he was alone.

 

 

Ella murmured her pleasure and curled her body around the hard warmth she had bumped up against. The sunlight pouring in the window was trying to force her eyes open, but she ignored it. Beneath her cheek was smooth skin and around her shoulders was a comfortable weight that inspired a sense of security. It was not until she felt lightly calloused fingers stroke her cheek that she woke up enough to realize the precarious position she was in. Sometime during the night she had turned to Harrigan, either seeking out his heat or giving in to the attraction she fought so hard to deny when she was awake. Although it could prove to be embarrassing, her biggest problem was that she had no inclination to move.

When Harrigan threaded his long fingers into her hair and started to turn her face up to his, Ella knew what was going to happen. The smart thing to do would be to break free of his light hold and get out of bed as swiftly as she could. She caught the warm look in his grey eyes as he lowered his mouth to hers, felt her body respond, and decided she would be stupid for just a little while.

She had received a few kisses in her short life, stolen and freely given, some inexperienced or tentative and some very nice, but none like Harrigan's. The feel of his mouth against hers sent a thrilling warmth throughout her body. She welcomed his touch, the way he moved his big hands over her back. When he prodded at her lips with his tongue, she willingly parted them, shuddering as he stroked the sensitive inside of her mouth. It was not until he brushed his thumbs against the sides of her breasts that she began to come to her senses. The feelings that tore through her were so sharp, so exciting, they were frightening. She muttered a sharp “no” against his mouth and abruptly pulled away.

“No,” she reiterated the word more clearly, as she got out of the bed.

“It didn't feel much like a no to me,” Harrigan said a little harshly as he sat up and finger-combed his hair, frustration a hard knot inside of him.

“I don't care what you felt. You should just pay very close attention to what is said, and this time it was no. God, I can't believe I allowed you to kiss me again, that I was behaving so cozily with the man who's taking me to my death. What was I thinking of?”

Harrigan grew furious, tired of being accused of aiding Harold in her murder. “Probably of trying to seduce me.”

“Seduce you? Are you actually daring to accuse me of trying to seduce
you?
” Ella could not believe what she was hearing.

“Yes, seduce me. If that is your newest plan of escape, you've got to do a hell of a lot better than you just did.”

Even as the words left his mouth, Harrigan wanted them back. They were not only unkind, they were unfair. The tight look on her face and the way all the color had fled her cheeks told him he had hurt her and he felt ashamed of himself.

“Ella,” he whispered, afraid he had irredeemably offended her. “Say something.”

“I was just thinking that, after I kill Harold, I believe I will come looking for you.”

Anger and hurt had formed a solid, painful knot in Ella's stomach. All the while she and Harrigan had packed up their belongings, eaten breakfast, and walked to where he had stabled their horses, she had not once spoken to the man. She had barely even looked at him. Even George had been made to pay for Harrigan's insult. She had exchanged only the barest of cool pleasantries with the man and he too had fallen silent.

She knew it was more than the pain inflicted by Harrigan's words that troubled her. The fact that his angry accusation had hurt her at all, let alone so deeply, was a cause for concern. So was the fact that she could still feel the warmth of his kiss, and, worse, knew she would greedily accept another without much hesitation. Beneath all of her pain and fury was a need that refused to be ignored or pushed aside by common sense and pride.

When Harrigan reached for her bag she jerked her hand away so fast, in a blatant attempt to avoid his touch, that the bag almost fell to the ground. Harrigan looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. Ella supposed it was a good sign that he was aware of how badly he had behaved, but she was still too hurt to be cheered by that. She just prayed that he thought her cold silence was born of a deep sense of insult and nothing else. The last thing she wished him to be aware of was how much he had hurt her.

Suddenly she realized that Harrigan was as immersed in his own thoughts as she had just been. He was not paying any attention to her, busily saddling his horse and pointedly avoiding her gaze. George was still at the far end of the stable settling accounts with the owner. There was a clear path to her saddled horse and a very good chance she could be in the saddle and riding away before either man was fully aware of what she was doing. Ella then realized that she was wasting precious time thinking about it and made her move. She ran to her horse and threw herself into the saddle.

Harrigan proved to be far more alert than she had thought. He cursed even as he turned and reached for her. Ella kicked him in the face and he stumbled backward into his horse. As she rode out of the stable, spurring her little mare to a fast trot the minute she was clear of the building, she was a little stunned by the violence the man stirred in her. She then smiled to herself as she admitted that she had not kicked him solely to expedite her escape, but also in payment for his cruel words. A quick glance behind her revealed that she had not stopped Harrigan for long either, for he was just emerging from the stable. She concentrated on getting out of town without hurting anyone and prayed that she could maintain the small lead she had.

 

 

“What the hell happened?” demanded George as he rode up next to Harrigan.

“What does it look like?” Harrigan replied, yelling to be heard over the horses. “I wasn't paying attention and she got away from me again. And I'm getting damned sick of being kicked in the face.”

George said nothing and Harrigan was glad of it. He did not want to try to explain things, especially not while they were chasing Ella. It still astounded him that he had said those harsh things to her. For one brief moment he had allowed his frustration and mistrust to control his mouth. One minute he was holding a passionate Ella who, quite rightly, had put a stop to their impromptu and very improper lovemaking. Then, with a few cutting words, he had turned her into a block of ice, a cold, furious woman who was doing a very good job of pretending that he did not even exist.

The moment they cleared the edge of town, Ella spurred her horse into a full gallop and Harrigan cursed as he did the same. It was not going to be easy to catch her. Her little mare was as swift as their horses and Ella had the lead. Harrigan soon realized that they could ride their horses to death if something did not change. The only way he could think of to bring about that change was to scare Ella into stopping.

 

 

Ella screeched with surprise when she heard a shot. A bullet hit the ground in front of her and her horse faltered slightly. She looked behind her and was stunned to see Harrigan aiming a rifle at her. Since he and George had stopped chasing her, she reined her horse to a halt and turned to look at them.

“Harold won't pay you for a corpse,” she yelled, unable to believe that Harrigan was trying to shoot her.

“According to you, dead is just how he wants you,” Harrigan called back.

That caused Ella a start, but she quickly shook aside a sudden attack of unthinking fear. Harrigan did not believe her tale of deceit and attempted murder. He was still sure that Harold was just trying to get his errant niece to come back to the family nest. And, no matter how furious she was with him, she simply could not believe Harrigan would hurt her, at least not physically. That left her wondering just what he was shooting at. She started to turn her horse, intending to go on her way, when he fired another shot. This one came very close to her increasingly nervous mare's hooves.

“Stop that!” she demanded. “You're scaring her.”

“You're being particularly slow-witted this morning. I would have thought you'd have guessed my plan by now.”

“Well, let's just accept that I haven't yet realized what depths you will sink to for your blood money and that you'll have to tell me what your grand plan is.”

He found it a little amusing that he preferred her insults to her cold silence. “You see, I began to realize that we could keep this race going until our horses dropped, you never getting away and me never catching you. So, I came up with a solution to this rapidly moving stand-off.”

“And I'm not going to like it one little bit, am I?”

“Nope. You stop running or I will shoot your horse.” Harrigan prayed she would believe his threat, no matter how insulting that would be, or that she at least had enough doubts about him that she would not want to gamble with the life of her mare.

Ella gaped at him, not wanting to believe him, yet not sure she could trust her own judgment. Although she had been sure that he would have no qualms about seducing her, she had never thought that he could speak to her so cruelly. That miscalculation now left her unsure. Louise and all the young men at the ranch would never think of shooting a horse except under the most dire of circumstances, but Harrigan was from the city. He could well be capable of such a thing.

She considered the matter for only a moment longer as she patted the mare on the neck then began to slowly ride toward Harrigan. Polly was a good little mare and Ella could not bring herself to gamble the horse's life on the hope that Harrigan's threat was a toothless one.

Surrender was not as hard as it might have been, either. She knew she had had little chance of escape, that she had not had enough of a lead to elude him. The chase probably would have ended with their horses' exhaustion and no winner. In fact, Harrigan would have won in the end, she thought sullenly. Without a horse, she would have had to run and she was very sure that she could never have outrun the man. When he reached out and took her reins, she cursed him, ignoring his feigned look of shock.

“Well, we have already covered more miles than I had wanted to ...” Harrigan said as he turned them around and headed back east.

“Oh, shut up,” she grumbled, deciding that she did not have to be a good loser.

Harrigan ignored her, and continued, “. . . all of it in the wrong direction. So I believe we will probably not get much further than the next town today. Sure you're not still trying to delay us in the vain hope that your aunt will catch up?”

“The thought never crossed my mind.”

Ella was a little chagrined that it had not, but Harrigan did not have to know that. It was a small, unexpected gain, however, and it cheered her a little. She was not even sure if she had really been thinking of escape, at least not of escaping Harold. Her only clear plan had been to get away from Harrigan, from the hurt he had dealt her while she had still tingled from his warm kisses. From the way he was talking, he did not know that, simply thought it was just another of her many escape attempts. She was relieved, for she did not want the man to know what power he had over her.

The fact that they were going to another town began to worry her. A town meant a hotel, for they were springing up along the railroad lines like weeds, and Harrigan was staying very close to the railroad tracks at the moment. And a hotel meant that she and Harrigan would be sharing a room again, probably a bed too.

Still stinging from his insult, Ella felt confident that she could resist his charms. The problem would come if he apologized and convinced her that he was sincerely contrite. She fully understood how one could say terrible things when angry, hurtful things that one did not really mean. Ella also knew that her stiff resistance of the moment would fade like smoke on a windy day if Harrigan apologized with skill and sincerity.

And then, she decided, she would be in deep trouble. She wanted him, badly. It was definitely a strong, almost blinding, carnal need, but there was so much more, and that more was what made it so hard to resist. Ella knew it was also what made it dangerous. There was no doubt in her mind that, if she gave in to the lust she felt, she would give in to all the other feelings churning inside of her. Once those feelings were given free rein, she would never be able to pull them back. The tragedy would be that she would be giving her heart to a man who, knowingly or unknowingly, was going to give her to a killer.

 

 

Ella grimaced, wincing slightly as she eased her weary body into a chair near the window. Just as Harrigan had said they would, they had reached the next town and stopped for the night. The morning's race had exhausted the horses and them. Although there were several hours of daylight left, no one had wanted to go any farther.

As before, Harrigan had rented two rooms side by side, ordered a bath for her and left her alone. While her bath had been prepared, she had checked the doors and window only to find them all locked. She had also spied a couple of young boys below the window who were obviously watching out for her. Harrigan had probably hired them so that he and George could go to the barber's down the street, she decided. She strongly suspected that he had done the same thing the last time they had stopped, for he had been surprisingly clean and refreshed when he had returned to the room, yet she had never seen him wash up or change his clothes.

When Ella heard the key turn in the lock, she wondered if she should have prepared herself to try another escape instead of sitting around sulking. The door swung open and Harrigan stood just outside until he saw her, then stepped in and locked the door. Ella decided it was just as well that she had not made the effort. It was clear that she could not try the same trick twice on Harrigan. After so many failures, she was also feeling somewhat defeated, weary of trying to save herself time and time again only to keep drawing closer to Harold.

It was not until they were done with their meal and Harrigan had poured them each a brandy that he actually caught and held her gaze. Ella tensed, wondering what he intended to say, and praying she was not going to be dealt any more hard blows. The conversation since he had entered the room had consisted mostly of Harrigan attempting to draw her out of her cold silence and her responding with no more than an angry glare or an uninviting mumble. She was not sure she wanted to change that, then told herself not to be so timid. There was always the chance he would apologize. She was also sure she could not remain cold and quiet all the way to Philadelphia.

“Ella, I think we need to talk,” Harrigan said, his tone of voice calm with a hint of reticence.

“Really? I'm not sure we have anything to say to each other, Mr. Mahoney.”

He released one brief, dry laugh. “Now I am certain we need to talk. That's the most you've said to me since this morning and it was so cold I'm damned surprised there isn't snow upon the table.” He reached across the table and took her hand in his, holding on tightly when she tried to pull away. “I'm sorry, Ella.”

“About what?” She stopped trying to escape his touch, but struggled against softening toward him too quickly. One little
I'm sorry
was not enough.

“Don't play stupid, Ella. Strange, that coy ignorance that can be so attractive in some women is just annoying in you.”

Ella blinked, wondering why she was so pleased with his words, for they hardly sounded like a compliment. “You are a true silver-tongued devil, aren't you?”

“Ella, the moment those words left my mouth this morning I wanted them back.”

“They should never have been in your mind waiting to be said.”

Her words were little more than a soft hiss, but Harrigan welcomed that show of fury. He knew he could deal with her anger far more easily than he could her cold silence. There was a small chance Ella was not the forgiving sort, but he needed to at least try for absolution. As long as she had refused to speak to him, he had not had any opportunity to plead his case. Harrigan just prayed that he could convince her of his sincerity.

“No, they should not have been there. They were indeed ill-thought as well as ill-said. Even though I knew you had every right to tell me no, I did not receive it well. I wanted to continue, Ella, and I grew angry when you put a stop to it.” He sighed. “Eleanor's betrayal, and the behavior of other women I have known, has left me with a mistrustful nature.”

“Ah, so, yet again, you condemn a whole group for the actions of a few.”

He grimaced and nodded. “I know, and that's unfair. I have known some very good women too, but, fair or not, betrayal often leaves a stronger mark, twisting the way one feels things or views people and incidents.”

“I have not betrayed you.”

“No. Kicked me in the face, hit me over the head, and constantly tried to run away, but, no, you've never betrayed me.”

“You think I'm a liar, though.” She could tell by the pained look on his face that, despite his contrite demeanor and the honesty of his apology, he was still not ready to believe her claims about Harold.