Stacey Kayne Read online

  “Are you cold?” Jed asked, his lips returning to hers. She shivered against the length of his body.

  “No!” she snapped. “I’m burning up!”

  Jed laughed as he trailed kisses down her throat. “You haven’t even begun to burn.”

  “Jed, why won’t you—” She cried out as his tongue flicked over the filling peak of her nipple, stinging her with pleasure.

  “Is that what you’re wanting, sweetheart?”

  Her reply was a strangled moan as he took her into the warmth of his mouth. Taking his time, he treated her other breast to the same sweet torture.

  Beyond exhaustion, Rachell didn’t know how much more she could stand. Jed showed no sign of relenting as his lips again moved down her body.

  “Have I neglected anything else?” he asked, kissing her belly. He lifted his head, flashing a dark smile that caused a whimper to rise from her throat as fire pooled deep in her abdomen.

  “I thought so,” he said, his lips returning to her skin.

  Oh, dear Lord. Rachell was certain she’d not survive another deep caress like the one she’d experienced in the hot spring. “Jed?”

  But Jed just trailed kisses down her leg, his hands curving around her hips as his lips caressed her inner thigh. Rachell suddenly realized his intent.

  “Jed! I don’t think—”

  “Don’t think. Just feel.”

  Rachell found she had no choice. He took her body in a gliding caress that stripped away her mind, the earth, the stars. She twisted and turned, crying out in mindless abandon as the night sky shattered around her, again and again, splintering the stars in a shimmering array of wild sensation.

  When he finally released her from the thrall of ecstasy, she slipped from a state of hysteria to one of heavy slumber, soothed by the rich sound of Jed’s voice, hypnotized by the silver glow of his eyes, lulled by the heavy beat of his heart.

  When Rachell woke, she was inside the cabin, cradled in Jed’s arms. “Jed?” she whispered, too sated to hold her eyes open for more than a second.

  “Go back to sleep, sugar. I’m only putting you to bed.”

  “I fell asleep?”

  His deep throaty laugh vibrated through the tingling cells of her body. “Honey, you’ve been asleep for near an hour. I just didn’t have the strength to carry you back to the cabin ’til now, and it was getting damn cold outside. You did a good job on this cabin,” he said as he laid her on the bed. “You more than deserve to sleep in a clean bed.”

  “You’re going to stay with me, aren’t you?” she asked, latching her arms around his neck.

  “If you want me to,” he said, lifting her back into his arms.

  “I don’t ever want to leave your arms.”

  He positioned her so that she lay mostly on top of him with her head resting against his shoulder. Her legs rubbed over his buckskin pants, but his chest was gloriously bare.

  She sighed with contentment as he spread a blanket over them, loving the feel of her skin against his. “I’m so tired,” she whispered, combing a hand over his chest.

  “Go back to sleep,” he said, his hand stroking her back. “I’ll hold you.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered as she drifted back into the deep haze of sleep. “I love you, Jed.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  A storm of emotions was brewing inside Rachell. Her mood fluctuating between rage and despair, she stared into the pot of lightly simmering stew. It had been two days since Jed set her ablaze under a moonlit sky then cradled her against his warm skin as she slept.

  He’d not touched her since.

  Rachell opened the door to the woodstove and inspected the low fire Jed had stoked when he’d come into the cabin, just before dawn. Trying her hand at stew today, she’d decided a smaller fire would keep the steaming broth of meat and potatoes from becoming a pot of smoking coals.

  Though she didn’t know why she bothered. Jed had eaten an equally detestable meal the night before without saying a damn word. He’d dusted the concoction with his dried peppers then run off to the shed before she could even take her seat, just as he’d done the night before that.

  She latched the stove shut and she dunked the wooden spoon into her stew. The little time he’d spent inside the cabin he avoided her like the plague, without so much as brushing her sleeve. Last night her temper had snapped—she’d raged at him for a solid half hour, and he’d barely muttered a word before going to bunk down in the stable—again. Each time she caught his gaze, she could see the shadows haunting his silver eyes.

  There was no mystery as to what had brought those shadows. Although she’d been half asleep, she remembered pondering the sudden tension in his body immediately after her proclamation of love, and now thought he may have even mumbled a curse.

  Tears hazed her eyes as she gently stirred their supper.

  Her love was obviously not well received and certainly not reciprocated. But he did care for her—he’d admitted as much. Which didn’t account for much when she loved him clear down to her soul.

  Dear God, what was she going to do? She had such little time left alone with him. And he was wasting it by brooding!

  She started at a knock on the door. Fear nettled up her spine as she glanced over. A dark figure was clearly visible through cracks in the rotted wood. Jed didn’t usually come back before noon, and always warned her with one of his whistling birdcalls.

  The door rattled again, and Rachell was certain it wasn’t Jed. Silently, she walked toward the table, where she’d laid her loaded rifle.

  “Miss Nightingale?” said a whispered voice. “You in there?”

  “Juniper?” she answered, stunned by the young male voice.

  “Yes, ma’am. Please don’t be frightened. I’ve come alone. I’ve come to warn you.”

  The rifle tucked under her arm, Rachell unbarred the door and pulled it open, her gaze sweeping the empty yard before she glanced up at the pale blue eyes peering down at her from behind a thick swath of blond hair.

  Juniper flashed a broad grin, revealing the sweetness she’d come to know in him, and relief broke from her chest in a deep sigh. “June, how did you get here?”

  “Carefully. I’m sure glad to see you’re in good health, Miss Nightingale.”

  She cringed at the mention of her stage name. “June, my name is Rachell.”

  “Oh,” he said thoughtfully, then smiled as he batted a tuft of hair from his eyes, which settled right back over his forehead as before. “You look like a Rachell.”

  She smiled, thinking he looked like he needed a haircut, and a meal. His clothes hung from his spindly frame, making her wonder if he’d eaten at all since she’d last seen him. “You should come on inside.”

  She backed into the cabin, but June made no move to enter. His sky-blue eyes stared down at her in pure wonder.

  “June? Do you want to come in?”

  His young face hardened, as she knew it could. She’d known Juniper for well over two months before she’d seen his lips even hint at a grin, and knew too well that the boy had been given little reason in his lifetime to smile. The evening she’d watched Juniper’s uncle goad another man into calling June out for a gunfight, then forced June into the road to face down a man more than twice his age, she’d been terrified for the tall youth. She had wondered how such a young man could possess the hardness she saw in his blue eyes as he gave the one warning he’d given to so many others.

  “Mister, I don’t want to kill you.”

  But June did, just as he’d outdrawn all the other fools who’d taken his uncle’s bet. His uncle had walked back into the saloon with a grin and a fistful of money, leaving June to slip back into the shadows, the pain in his expression so tangible, Rachell had felt it clear to her heart.

  “Miss Rachell,” Juniper said in a firm tone, “you ought not to trust folks so easily. I could be scouting for Maxwell for all you know.”

  Reflexively, her grip shifted on the rifle. “Is Maxwell in Nevada
?”

  June’s sharp gaze didn’t miss her movement on the gun. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, his eyes on the rifle. “But he’s still a good ways off.”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” she sighed. She grabbed June’s sleeve and yanked him over the threshold. “Sit,” she instructed, pulling out a chair.

  He obediently slumped into it. “I wasn’t sure how you’d take me showing up after that mess in Lake’s Crossing. I sure didn’t want to take you back to Sumner.”

  “I know, June. You’ve always been as sweet and harmless to me as a springtime daisy. I appreciated you going along to look out for me like you did.”

  His lips twitched with a shy grin as he swatted again at his hair. Rachell turned away from him to retrieve Jed’s shears, thinking she could fix his vision problem in a matter of seconds.

  “That’s why I’m here, to help you get home. I came to warn Mr. Doulan about the— Miss Rachell?” his voice squeaked as she smoothed her hand under the veil of blond hair draping over his forehead and eyes.

  “Keep talking, June. You can’t even see past this thick mat of hair.”

  Juniper groaned and shifted in his seat. “Don’t go makin’ me look like a schoolboy,” he whined. “I got a hard enough time bein’ the age I am!”

  “Hush,” she ordered. With a few snips of blond hair she cleared his field of vision. “Much better,” she said, thinking he looked quite handsome.

  Juniper scowled as red tinged his high cheekbones.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  His eyes widened in disbelief. “I gotta go! I jus’ wanted to pass on the information that Maxwell is coming.”

  Rachell gripped his bony shoulder as he started to jump to his feet. “Not until you eat.”

  “I sure don’t want to be here when Doulan gets back,” he protested.

  “He rode out at dawn to check the canyons. He doesn’t usually come back until late in the day.”

  “He checks on you throughout the day, Miss Rachell. I know ’cause I’ve been tryin’ to get to you for two days now.”

  “He does? You have?” Both surprised her.

  “Yes ma’am. Aside from one narrow passage, you can’t get in here from the north unless you climb the mountainside and that’s just what I did. I watched him check the canyons yesterday. This morning, after he rode out, I scaled down this side of the cliff.”

  Rachell blanched. “June, it’s a straight drop-off!”

  “Sure looks like it, don’t it,” he said with a grin. “There was just enough of a grade and cracks to keep my footing. I’d rather scale a straight cliff than face Doulan again. Folks in Weaver had plenty of stories to tell about him. They was callin’ him the Shadow Stalker ’cause if he was on your trail, he’d creep up on ya like your own shadow and you’d not have a chance in he—ah—heaven.”

  Rachell smiled as he blushed at his near slipup.

  “If all them stories are true,” Juniper continued, “he’s bound to know I’ve been in this canyon.”

  “Damn straight I will.”

  Rachell jumped at the sound of Jed’s harsh voice. His large frame filled the doorway, his revolver aimed steadily at Juniper’s narrow chest.

  Juniper stood, slowly lifting his hands into the air.

  “Jed, put that away!” Rachell demanded, realizing the true danger before her. June was young, but he was alive because he had outdrawn every man who’d ever called him out. There had been far too many. “Juniper came here to help, not to pose a threat.”

  “Glad to hear it, honey,” Jed said, his hard gaze never wavering from the boy. “Juniper, with this being a cordial visit and all, perhaps you wouldn’t mind tossing those guns this way.”

  “Not at all,” he said, his guns clunking onto the floor.

  Jed collected the twin revolvers, noting the pearl hilts. Both guns were polished to a shine. “Put your hands down, boy, and reclaim your seat.” Juniper sat down as Jed holstered his own gun and closed the door behind him. “Rachell, I believe you offered the young man some stew.”

  Jed strode toward Juniper. The boy sat still as a statue as Jed reached out and flicked a few pieces of hair from the front of his shirt. “So, you came here to help, did ya?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, holding his gaze with unblinking eyes.

  “Jed—”

  “Honey, don’t keep the boy waitin’,” he interrupted. “No reason we can’t talk over a bowl of stew, huh, Juniper?”

  “No, sir,” Juniper agreed in a dull tone.

  Juniper’s long, bony presence bothered Jed far more than it should have. The fact that none of the aggression he was feeling had a damn thing to do with Sumner and everything to do with seeing Rachell’s hands threaded through the kid’s blond hair made him mad as hell. He’d never been jealous over a woman a day in his life. But damn the whole of creation! He’d never seen Rachell doting over someone else.

  He knew he couldn’t have her, but he hadn’t planned on being around when men began paying her calls. Although, Juniper wasn’t quite yet a man.

  “Have you spotted Sumner?” Juniper asked, his cold blue eyes staring straight at Jed as Rachell placed a bowl in front of him.

  “Yesterday morning,” Jed answered.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Rachell demanded, placing his bowl onto the table with considerable force.

  “No sense in worrying you. They’re not close. In fact, they appear to be lost. Yet you found the canyon two days back without a speck of trouble,” he said to Juniper.

  Juniper’s expression gaped. “You knew?”

  A chill seized Rachell’s spine at the sight of Jed’s cold smile. This was the man who’d taken her from the saloon.

  “Relax, sugar. I’m not going to harm your young suitor,” Jed drawled in a cynical tone. “Eat up, son,” he instructed.

  Juniper glanced skeptically at Rachell. “Miss Rachell, I don’t want to take your chair. I’m the one imposing on your noontime meal.”

  “She’s got a seat right here.” Jed reached out, wrapping his hands around Rachell’s waist as he pulled her down onto his thigh. Exactly where she belonged—not doting over some smooth-faced golden boy. He flashed a thin smile at Rachell’s expression of surprise. Her lips quickly stretched into a confident grin.

  Hell. He was jealous of a snot-nose kid, and she knew it!

  Dear God. She smells of lilac.

  The sweet fragrance swirled through his nostrils, spawning a flood of memories that hardened his body in a rush. Rachell reached up and tucked a wedge of long hair behind his ear, and his heart thudded hard against his chest. She shifted against him, showing no objection to being in his arms, and fully taking advantage of his weakness.

  The sound of metal scraping metal drew him away from the lure of her green eyes. Jed watched in amazement as the boy shoveled bite after bite of Rachell’s stew into his mouth, finishing the bowl without coming up for a breath.

  Jed glanced at his own bowl. Just by sight, he could see that the large chunks of potatoes weren’t but half cooked. He shifted his gaze back to Rachell who seemed just as bewildered by the boy’s gusto.

  “That was mighty fine stew,” Juniper said with a grin, his glazed blue eyes fixed on Rachell. “Thank you, Miss Rachell.”

  Hell, if the kid could stomach it, so could he.

  After one bite, Jed knew the kid had to be sweet on Rachell. He’d bitten into apples that were softer than the raw potatoes crunching under his teeth. The pot of broth setting on the stove surely contained more salt than the ocean. He forced a few more bites before admitting defeat and dropping his spoon.

  “Honey, why don’t you serve up some more stew for our guest,” he suggested, easing Rachell up as he stood. He quickly poured himself a cup of coffee. Taking mercy on the kid, Jed placed a cup in front of him, but he didn’t get the gushing smile Juniper gave Rachell when she served him more of her stew.

  “So, just how did you find this canyon so easily?” Jed inquired as he reclaimed hi
s seat.

  “I followed the directions Sam gave me,” Juniper said between bites. “Sumner thought it was a trap and found his own scouts.”

  Jed grinned. He’d bet his ranch that one of Sumner’s scouts happened to be a large Ute by the name of Running Bear. He’d seen the party of men weaving through canyons in round-about circles. They were being led by someone who knew what they were doing.

  “I’m wondering why you felt compelled to jump lines and take the risk of warning Miss Nightingale.”

  Rachell glared at his amused smile as she came up beside him, but that didn’t keep her from sliding her sweet little backside right back onto his thigh.

  “Miss Nightingale was always real nice to me,” Juniper said quickly.

  Rachell slapped a hand against the table. “My name is Rachell.”

  Juniper’s wide, apologetic eyes snapped toward her. “Oh, that’s right. Sorry, Miss Rachell.”

  “If Miss Nightingale was so nice,” continued Jed, “why were you helping to drag her back to Missouri when you knew she’d be in danger? Her friend Titus had already been killed.”

  “I swear I had nothin’ to do with his death.” Juniper’s imploring eyes moved between Jed and Rachell. “I liked Titus. He did a fine job of protectin’ Miss Ni—uh, Miss Rachell, from the drunks who tried to hound her after her shows. I was real sorry about his death, but damn happy when I heard she’d left town. Then Maxwell said he was sending Stewart after her and, well… I fretted for Miss Rachell’s safety. Maxwell said she weren’t to be touched or roughed up none, but I knew how Stewart was with the other women. My uncle wudn’t know no better, so I insisted on goin’ along.”

  “One of those men was your uncle?” Jed asked, feeling a deep sense of dread. Dear God. Had he orphaned this kid?

  “Unfortunately,” Juniper snarled, his eyes freezing over. “Don’t go rousin’ your conscience over me. You just saved me from stayin’ up nights figurin’ how I’d kill him myself.”

  Jed saw the sorrow in Rachell’s expression and figured the boy had endured a good deal of pain at the hands of the man he’d shot down in Weaver. “And what are you planning to do now?” Jed asked.