Winter Fire (9 page)

“I believe you,” Sarah whispered.

He nodded. “Good. I don't want any falsehood between us.”

“Why does it matter?” she asked with faint anger. “You're just one more wild creature that came over my doorstep wounded and will leave as soon as it can.”

“Ute didn't leave.”

“You sound like that worries you.”

“It should. Healing is a kind of…magic.”

For the space of several heartbeats Sarah stared into Case's eyes, eyes that now were the color of the first, fragile green of spring. But it was a spring that would never come for him.

He didn't want it.

He shunned life the way most men shunned death.

The smile she gave him then was as painful as her thoughts.

“Don't let it worry you,” she said. “I'm not a witch cackling over a cauldron of toads. I'm just a widow who learned the hard way how to deal with cuts, breaks, and bullet wounds.”

The tension in his face changed. Few people would
have noticed it. Fewer still would have guessed that it was his way of smiling.

“No toads, huh?” he asked.

“Not a one.”

“Takes a load off my mind.”

With a reluctance he didn't show, he stopped stroking her hair, turned away, and gathered himself to resume the painful circuits of the cabin.

Sarah turned with Case, acting as a second crutch.

He hesitated, then accepted her help.

“I'm not speaking for Lola's salves, mind you,” she said with determined lightness. “There might be an occasional snake in her medicines. Or in her stews, for that matter.”

“Big Lola.” He shook his head. “How did you end up with that old wh—er, sporting lady?”

“She came down the bluff about a month after I found Ute nearly shot to death in the Fingers of Dawn.”

“Never heard of them.”

She shrugged. “They're not on any army map. I named them. There are so many stone shapes out there, I have to name them to keep track of where I've looked for treasure and where I haven't.”

Awkwardly Case moved around the cabin, forcing himself to listen to what Sarah was saying. It helped to take his mind off the heat surging through his blood.

“I think you've had enough,” she said. “You look strained.”

He simply shook his head. It wasn't pain that was thinning his lips. It was raw hunger.

Her right arm was around his waist. Her fingers were flexed against the naked skin above his loincloth. Her right side—breast, hip, and thigh—pressed against him with each step as she helped him keep his balance.

Every motion of his body reminded Case of the surprisingly soft curves hidden beneath Sarah's rough clothing.

Is she doing it on purpose?
he asked silently, savagely.

A swift look at her face told him that she had no idea of what her closeness was doing to him.

For a widow she's damned naive
.

Or maybe she meant just what she said. She wants a big brother, not a lover
.

“Careful,” she said.

“How did Lola know Ute was here?” Case asked, determined to keep his mind on something else.

“She followed rumors of his death back to here. Then she found out he wasn't dead. She has stayed ever since.”

“Because Ute stayed?”

Sarah nodded. Her loose hair slid over his bare skin like a lover's caress.

His breath came in hard.

“Do you know Ute's reputation?” he muttered.

“I can guess,” she said. “Chances are he wasn't a church deacon.”

“You can go to the bank with that.”

“Are you hunting him?” she asked bluntly.

“Why would I?”

“Bounty money.”

“Is that what you think?” Case asked in a cold tone. “That I came here hunting bounties?”

“On Ute? No.”

Case grunted. “That's another truth you can go to the bank on.”

“But the Culpeppers have a lot of bounty money on their narrow heads,” Sarah said.

“I would hunt them for free.”

“Why?”

He didn't answer.

She didn't ask again.

Silently they made a few more turns around the cabin. His skin seemed very warm beneath her hand.

“Don't you think you should rest now?” she asked anxiously. “You're getting overheated.”

Overheated
, he thought grimly.
That's one way of putting it. Downright hot and bothered would be another
.

Randy as an elk in rut would be closest to the truth
.

Case didn't like it. At all. If his sexuality had indeed come back to stay, it would be damned inconvenient for him.

Especially with the gentle, sharp-tongued widow so close by.

“Let go of me,” he said through his teeth. “I can walk alone.”

“Don't talk nonsense.”

“I'm not.”

“Of course you are,” she retorted. “If you fall, I'll have to wash you all over again. You could take a chill or—or something.”

Case give Sarah a sideways look. Her cheeks were pink with more than the effort of helping him lurch around the cabin.

The dream of sweet release that had haunted him at odd times during the past week returned in a rush.

Maybe it wasn't a dream
.

“Watch it!” she said, bracing herself.

Swearing, he dropped the rifle and caught himself with both hands against the cabin wall. She ended up between him and the rough planks.

“Oof,” she said. “You're heavy.”

“You're soft. Too soft. Damnation, I didn't want this!”

He made a rough, hungry sound as he lowered his mouth. Her lips were deep rose, glistening. They were parted with the same surprise that widened her eyes.

If Sarah's first kiss had been tender and searing, her second was deep, hot, and overwhelming. She couldn't breathe for the weight of Case pressed against her body. She couldn't speak for the thrusting of his tongue against hers, filling her mouth.

She couldn't even move to push him away.

Grimly she set herself to endure him as she had learned to endure her husband.

If only Case weren't so big that way
, she thought,
it wouldn't be so bad
.

And if he were gentle
…

With a muffled sound, Case curbed his violent, unexpected hunger. When he lifted his head, he saw that her skin was pale and her lips were rubbed red from the force of his kiss. Her pupils had dilated until there was little left but darkness rimmed with silver.

She looked like a frightened girl rather than a woman interested in passion.

“I'm sorry,” he said, thoroughly disgusted with himself. “You took me by surprise.”

“I t-took you!” she asked in disbelief. “I didn't do one darned thing!”

He closed his eyes so that he wouldn't have to see the shadows and accusation in hers.

“I bruised your mouth,” he said in a low voice. “That's never happened before. I've never been rough with a woman, even back when I wanted them.”

His eyes opened, but they were no longer glittering with passion. Slowly he lowered his head again.

Sarah drew a startled, half-fearful breath. It came out in a ragged sigh of surprise when the tip of his tongue began tracing a warm, tender path around her lips. This was the gentle kiss she remembered, the one that made her stomach dip and her nerve endings shimmer.

“Case?” she whispered.

“It's all right. Just an apology. Nothing more…”

His teeth nibbled gently around the same path his tongue had taken.

“Does that hurt?” he asked.

She shook her head. The motion brushed her lips over his. When she felt his whole body clench in response, she drew back so quickly that her head knocked against the cabin wall.

“Easy,” he said. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

“But I—” she began, only to be stopped by the turmoil in his brilliant eyes. “Case? I—I don't—”

“Hell, I know you don't want me. Can't say as I blame you. I wouldn't want a lover who had no more manners than a grizzly.”

With that, he pushed away from her.

Dazed, uncertain, caught between tenderness and fear, Sarah watched him as he balanced one-handed against the wall. Awkwardly he retrieved the rifle he had been using as a crutch. He turned to face her, leaning against the rifle butt.

When she moved to help him back to the bed, he stopped her with a look.

The gentleness and regret and hunger in his eyes was gone. Clear ice would have had more emotion.

“I haven't even wanted a woman since the end of the war,” he said flatly. “But I want you, Sarah Kennedy.”

“I—I—”

“Don't worry that I'll force myself on you. I won't. You have my word on that.”

After a moment, she nodded. If he had been that kind of man, he would have done it already.

“I believe you,” she said softly.

“Then believe this,” he said, his voice as distant as his eyes. “I hate wanting you. It means not as much of me died as I'd hoped.”

“
T
he sweat
lodge will do him good,” Ute said.

“Sweating is good for what ails a man.”

Without answering, Sarah threw more grain to the chickens that were squawking and squabbling around her feet.

The fowl ignored a plate of supper scraps she had placed in a nearby willow thicket. Ghost, a half-wild herding dog that had adopted the chickens when he wasn't watching goats for Lola, lurked in the willows.

Like most of the creatures on Lost River ranch, Ghost had arrived more dead than alive. Like Ute, the dog had decided to stay.

“Sarah?” Conner asked.

“I'm thinking.”

But she wasn't. Not really. She was looking a few feet beyond the chickens, where Lost River ran clear and clean over a bed that was made of solid stone and gravel bars whose dominant color was rust-red.

The chickens' preferred roosting area was in the cottonwoods and willows lining the water course. Every year she lost a few chicks or full-grown birds to coyotes and hawks. She would have lost a lot more if it weren't for Ghost.

Someday I'll have enough money to build a proper coop for the chickens
, she thought.

She fished in the bucket for a bit more corn. The kernels were smooth and hard and cold, like small river pebbles. In the rich, slanting sunlight the corn glowed in shades of red and blue, white and gold.

Indian corn, grown on the fertile floodplain of the creek. Squash and beans grew there as well, but corn had been especially abundant this year. She was using it to fatten the chickens against the winter chill.

“What about it?” Conner asked again.

She tossed out more corn without answering.

“You can't keep Case cooped up forever,” her brother insisted. “The chickens have more freedom than he does.”

“More clothes, too,” Ute muttered.

“There's frost on the ground,” she said with exaggerated patience.

“Usually is, this time of year,” Ute said.

“It's been barely three weeks since you brought Case here more dead than alive,” she said pointedly.

“Damned sure looks lively now,” Ute said. “Jumpy as a flea. Man's got cabin fever, sure enough.”

“C'mon, sis. Lola is up on the rim and the Culpeppers haven't been sniffing around since Case shot Parnell in the a—er, rump.”

“Fine shootin',” Ute said to no one in particular. “Really fine. Could have used that boy in my younger days.”

Sarah grimaced.

His answering grin revealed strong, tobacco-stained teeth.

“Don't worry that pretty head none about them Spring Canyon trash coming back to bother you,” Ute said. “They're scared of leaving camp.”

“I doubt that,” she said.

“Every time they leave, something happens,” Conner said, looking at the sky.

“Even when they don't, bad luck comes calling anywise,” Ute added. “Hear them boys lost a passel of bullets. Them cartridges just up and hit the trail all by theirselves.”

Conner snickered.

Sarah gave Ute a sideways look. His straight gray hair, narrow dark eyes, and high cheekbones should have belonged to a prophet or a priest.

Instead they belonged to an old outlaw who would kick over a beehive just to enjoy the hullabaloo that followed.

“If you must bait the Culpeppers,” she said to him, “don't take Conner with you.”

Ute looked down at his dusty moccasins. Only Sarah had the ability to make him feel sheepish. He was convinced that she was a gray-eyed angel of mercy put on earth to remind sinners like himself of what goodness was.

As far as he was concerned, there could have been no other reason that she would have saved his worthless life.

“Yes'm,” he said.

“I mean that, Ute.”

“Yes'm.”

“But sis, they're—” Conner began.

“Hush,” she interrupted. “You listen to me, both of you. Stay away from Spring Canyon.”

“But they're hunting Hal's treasure,” Conner said. “Really hunting it, quartering the canyons the way you do.”

A chill of anxiety went through Sarah.

That Spanish silver is Conner's future
, she thought.
I have to find it first
.

Abruptly she scattered the rest of the corn on the ground. Then she turned away from the bustling, pecking chickens and headed back for the cabin with long strides.

The men followed at a quickstep.

“Sis?”

“Let the outlaws hunt,” she said. “They won't find the treasure. They don't know the canyons like I do.”

There was more hope than certainty in her voice. Since the Culpeppers and Moody's Breeds had come to the wilderness of stone buttes and mazelike canyons, her treasure hunting time had been reduced to a few stolen hours.

Since Case had come into her care, she hadn't found time to look for treasure at all. Between nursing him, keeping an eye on Conner and Ute, and taking care of her normal chores, she had enough work for three women.

“Any eggs?” she asked Conner.

“Six fresh. Some others that will be chicks.”

“They won't make it through the winter. You should have been gathering eggs for us to eat instead of playing pranks on outlaws.”

“Ghost will watch out for those chicks better than any mother hen,” Conner said.

Sarah gave her brother a look that he ignored. In silence they approached the cabin.

“What about it?” he asked her after a moment.

“What about what?” she asked.

“Case,” Conner said, disgusted. “It will do him good.”

“No.”

“Oh, c'mon, don't be a—”

“No,” she interrupted flatly.

“Why don't you ask me?” Case said. “I'm of age.”

She made a startled sound and spun toward the cabin.

Case was standing in the doorway, fully clothed from hat to boots. A six-gun was holstered around his lean hips. There wasn't a crutch in sight.

He looked dangerous.

“You found your clothes,” she said weakly.

It was the only thing she could think of to say.

“Thank you for cleaning and mending them,” he said. “I can barely find where the bullet holes were.”

“You're welcome. But if you do what Conner and Ute want, you won't need them.”

“No man needs bullet holes,” Case said dryly.

Conner laughed, then coughed to conceal it.

She flushed. Since that tangled moment when Case had plastered her against the cabin wall and frightened her with his blunt male hunger—and then apologized in a way that made her tingle just to remember it—he had treated her as if he were the blood kin she had asked for.

I need an older brother like you. Want to adopt me?

Sometimes she was grateful for his casual manner. Most often, she was irritated without knowing why.

Yet, when he thought she was too busy changing his bandages to notice, he had a way of giving her a veiled look that made her cheeks burn.

Just as they were burning now.

What's wrong with me?
she asked herself angrily.
I asked for an older brother and I got it. Teasing and all
.

Hallelujah
.

Yet somehow she didn't feeling like rejoicing.

“I was referring to your clothes,” she said remotely, “not bullet holes.”

“Are you planning on stealing them again?” Case asked, his face expressionless. “If so, I have to warn you I wouldn't take kindly to it.”

“Where's your crutch?” she asked.

“In the fire.”

“For the love of God,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Fine. Go to the sweat lodge with Conner and Ute. Turn the color of a lobster and keel over on your furry face!”

Thoughtfully Case ran a big hand over his cheeks and tried to remember the last time he had shaved.

Must have been Hunter and Elyssa's wedding
, he decided.

“I broke my shaving mirror,” he said.

Case looked from Ute to Conner.

No help there. Neither one of them had enough chin fur to be worth a razor. Nor were there any windows in the cabin to use as a makeshift mirror.

He looked at Sarah.

“I don't have a mirror,” she said. “Neither does Lola.”

“How do you get your hair braided so neatly?”

“Practice.”

He didn't ask about Lola. As far as he could tell, Lola braided her hair when she washed it, which wasn't very often.

“What did your husband do?” Case asked.

“She used to shave him,” Conner said.

Speculatively Sarah looked at Case's thick pelt.

“I'd wear out a razor on you,” she said.

“I'll hone it,” he said.

She shrugged. “It's your hide.”

“I'm not worried. You'll patch up whatever you cut and fuss over me like a mother hen in the bargain.”

Something in his tone suggested that he liked having her fussing over him.

She looked away from him, afraid that her cheeks were warming again.

First he says that he hates wanting me
, she thought.
Then he acts like he can't wait to have my hands on him again
.

Or is he just being a teasing big brother again?

Men are such annoying, unpredictable creatures. It's a wonder mothers don't just drown all of them at birth
.

“Let me by, please,” Sarah said in a tight voice. “I have a hawk that's overdue to be set free.”

When she went through the doorway, Case moved aside, but more slowly than she expected. She bumped solidly into him.

“I'm sorry,” she said, trying to step aside.

Her shoulders thumped against the door frame. There was barely room for her to breathe.

“Heavens, there's a lot of you,” she muttered.

The corners of his eyes crinkled a bit.

An instant later Case startled Sarah by lifting her ca
sually and setting her inside the cabin. Instinctively she braced her hands against his shoulders as he lifted. The flexed power of his muscles did odd things to her stomach and nerve endings.

It wasn't fear. Sarah was sure of it.

She knew what fearing a man felt like.

“There's just enough of you,” he said too softly for anyone else to overhear.

He released her with a slow movement of his hands that was just short of a caress. Then he turned to the other males.

“Sarah's right,” he said. “I'm not up to a sweat lodge and a dip in a cold creek just yet.”

Conner opened his mouth to argue.

Ute was faster.

“Good,” he said. “Stand guard on Sarah. She's got less sense than a chicken when she's watching a hawk fly.”

“A whole troop of soldiers and a brass band could march up behind her and she wouldn't notice.” Conner agreed.

“That's not true,” she said.

“Huh,” Ute said.

Her brother laughed.

“I rode a green-broke mustang bucking and pawing toward her, making enough noise to raise the dead,” Conner said to Case, “and when she looked away from the hawk, she jumped like I'd popped up out of the ground under her feet.”

“You're lucky she didn't shoot you,” Case said.

“That was before those sons of—” Conner began.

Sarah stiffened.

“—er, that trash moved into Spring Canyon,” he amended. “We weren't toting guns all the time.”

Case looked at the younger man. He was wearing a holster filled with a big old Colt Dragoon percussion model six-shooter. Case noticed the gun had been altered
to take metal cartridges. He had little doubt that Ute was the gunsmith who made the change.

I hope Conner is half as good with that belt gun as he thinks he is
, Case thought.
Otherwise he'll bite off a bigger chunk of Culpepper than he and Ute can chew
.

“I'll take care of your sister for you,” he said, looking over Sarah's head.

Oddly unwilling, Conner looked at her.

“Sis?”

“Go sweat yourself foolish,” she said. “I'll be fine.”

Still her brother hesitated. He gave Case a look that was surprisingly adult in its measuring quality.

“She'll be safe,” Case said evenly. “You have my word on that.”

Conner looked at him again, then nodded. He and Ute headed toward the sweat lodge, which was about two hundred yards away. The small building was close to a deep pool that had been gouged out of bedrock during seasonal floods.

Several times on the way to the sweat lodge, Conner looked back over his shoulder.

Each time Sarah waved.

Finally her brother vanished around a bend in the creek.

“He's very protective of you,” Case said.

Her expression changed. She didn't like to think about why Conner had such an adult concern for his sister. Twice he had found her huddled around herself after one of Hal's drunken sprees.

There hadn't been a third time.

“He's a good boy,” she said.

“He's man-sized.”

“He's fifteen.”

“Old enough to kill,” Case said.

She looked at him. What she saw in his eyes made her wish that she had kept on watching her brother.

“Is that how old you were when you went to war?” she asked against her better judgment.

“Yes.”

Nothing about his manner encouraged pursuing the subject, yet she couldn't let it drop.

“Alone?” she asked.

“No. I dragged my older brother Hunter along with me.”

“Did he—is he—”

“Hunter survived,” Case said curtly. “His family didn't.”

“You sound like you blame yourself.”

“I do.”

“You were just a boy.”

He looked at her with eyes that were older than winter and much less inviting.

“Should I saddle Cricket for this expedition,” he asked, “or do you just release the hawk around here?”