13. Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

I sa awoke from a deep slumber to the jangle of a gun belt. She was naked beneath the hotel sheets, her back exposed to cold air, her hair a mess on the pillows. A fully dressed Junior stood beside the bed, and he watched her with an expression that was both possessive and admiring. Morning light inched into the room through the bottom of the door, and the bedside lamp illuminated what the crack of light couldn't.

"Where are you going?" she asked huskily, pushing her hair out of her eyes with a forearm.

"To saddle the horses and get the bounty from the sheriff." Junior stepped forward, knees against the bed, and let his knuckles drift from the top of her spine to where the sheet lay halfway down her back. "Want to meet at that place we rode past a couple of blocks over for some breakfast?"

His touch stirred memories of the night before. Junior, wiping her clean with a rough hotel washcloth. The way he'd neglected his bedroll to climb back into bed and pull her to him. Naked, they had talked into the early morning hours, blanketed in the kind of darkness that made truths slip out easily. She'd fallen asleep wondering if he'd suffer amnesia by daybreak.

From the way he looked at her now, he hadn't.

A lock of tawny hair falling over studious eyes, Junior bent over and smoothed his palm over the dip of her lower back to the curve of her bottom beneath the sheets.

"I'll meet you there for breakfast," Isa whispered, thoroughly bewitched.

Using her buttock to brace himself, he leaned down for a kiss.

She twisted away, burying her face in the pillow. "Not until I clean my teeth." The words were muffled.

"Get over here," he growled in her ear. Tugging and rolling her with persistent hands, he claimed the lips she'd clamped shut. He pulled away, smiling. "There. That wasn't so bad."

She swept her hair from her eyes again, glaring. Junior's gaze traveled down to her breasts, exposed from their activities. It was the first time he'd seen them in full light.

Impossibly blue eyes met hers, his smile gone. The pad of his thumb journeyed from Isa's cheekbone to the line of her jaw. "You're so damned beautiful."

This time, when he kissed her, she didn't fight him. She wrapped her arms sinuously around his neck, moaning when his warm palms covered the breasts he'd found "so damned beautiful." Minutes—or hours—later, he departed with the utmost reluctance.

For a long time, Isa lay in stunned silence.

TOO RESTLESS TO wait for him at the restaurant as promised, Isa hitched Mirage and Red beside the large gray gelding in front of Bryan's police department. She entered the brick building in clean travel clothes, her skin glowing and hair combed into an elegant updo.

The deputy from yesterday was only too happy to point the way to the sheriff's office. "They just went back," the man eagerly supplied.

"Thank you."

Isa walked confidently down the corridor to an office whose door was partially open. An engraved plate read "Sheriff" in bold letters, and her hand was poised to knock when she heard the elevated nature of the voices inside. A man was conversing loudly, his tone cold and decidedly hostile. Isa lowered her fist. She made to turn away, thinking the deputy had been mistaken about Junior's presence there, when a smattering of words halted her feet.

"…talking big for a Ranger with a dishonorable discharge under his belt—"

Isa's heart skipped a beat.

"The conditions of my release are paid and have been since summer." Junior's voice was stiff. Isa imagined him standing, tall and unbending, in the face of judgment. "I don't work for a fraction anymore, and I'd like to be compensated in full like every other bounty hunter."

The sheriff said something scathing, and Isa strained to hear it.

Junior's words were hot on the heels of that. "Bounty hunters make a lawman's job easier, so I reckon you should thank 'em, not cuss 'em. The poster for Jonesie is on your desk; give me what's owed, and I'll be on my way."

"We're in a depression, son," the sheriff sneered, wholly disgusted. "There ain't any money."

"That so?" Anger sharpened the edge of Junior's tone, and for the first time, Isa wished self-control upon a person other than herself.

"Yep."

"Then our business here is done."

She didn't wait to hear more. Her feet flew down the hallway as though they had sprouted wings. She didn't bother telling the surprised deputy goodbye. Only when the white oak door with its etched glass window had closed behind her did she stop to catch her breath.

Dishonorably discharged? Conditions of his release?

The door she'd just exited swung violently open behind her, so she ducked, pretending to check Mirage's fetlock.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Junior snapped.

Schooling her face, Isa straightened, then shot a surprised glance over her shoulder. "I thought I'd meet you here instead of the restaurant."

"Well, we came to Bryan for nothin'. The sheriff won't pay a dime because of the depression." His stride was long and angry, and when he brusquely untied Champion, the gelding's ears twitched nervously. Junior mounted his horse and wheeled him around.

Isa unhitched the remaining animals and followed behind on Mirage, glancing from Junior's rock-like fists around Champion's reins to his granite jaw. Thinking back, he had never specifically claimed to still be a Texas Ranger, but it was still a lie by omission. Her suspicions that he was being followed felt more sinister now. Without the protection of any sort of military or police force, Junior was a far easier target. And those brothers he'd tracked down and caught? It hadn't been a Texas Ranger operation recovering fugitives; he had bounty-hunted them.

Unable to think on an empty stomach, Isa reached into her bag for a sliver of beef jerky.

Junior's raptor gaze turned on her. "What are you doing?"

Jerky halfway to her mouth, she said, "I assumed we weren't stopping anywhere to eat—"

"Since when have you ever forgone food in town for trail grub?"

Since five minutes ago. "There is no point wasting our remaining money—"

"I'm not hurting for money," Junior fumed. "We'll use some of what we sold the livery nag for. We're stopping at the diner. Might as well get a hot one before we leave."

Isa shrugged and tucked her jerky away. She observed the rigid line of his back and chewed the inside of her cheek. How long ago had he been dishonorably discharged? Why hadn't he said anything to her in all the times she'd mentioned it?

And what had he done?

JUNIOR KEPT HIS feelings to himself during the day-long journey to the farther side of Huntsville. By the time they set up camp, he was sweating bullets.

He was a fraud. His years of bounty hunting for the state had come to a close, and the quagmire of ill-kept secrets was surfacing. One after the other, they rose from scummy depths like bloated corpses in a mill pond.

Isa had confided in him her secrets, and the guilt that he couldn't do the same ate him up. The last time he'd spoken the mortifying truth was when he'd testified in court. Captain Havelard had sat on a courtroom chair, his face pained. Disappointed. It was Havelard's good word that had saved Junior's neck from stretching at the end of a noose, and a sympathetic judge had kept him out of prison. A miner with a vein of pure gold on his plot didn't have Junior's luck.

Still, he had wanted to die.

The weight of wanting to end it all had been crushing, his mind immured beneath a never-ending landslide of faults, one that replenished itself no matter how many times he freed a portion of himself. The fear that his family would discover the truth kept him from home, and his stays were short and sporadic when he did visit. His nephews grew like weeds and forgot him. Ben looked more worried with every visit. Father was livid by his constant absence, lighting into his son at every opportunity Junior deigned to drop by. The old man had to know by now; he was too nosey. Too self-important. One letter to Havelard, and the company would answer every question. The incident was withheld from the papers, but every Ranger knew. Sheriffs at every police department knew the stipulations of his release. Two years of bounty hunting for the state and only receiving twenty-five percent of the profit had been his punishment for being a murdering traitor. A traitor whose oaths were as worthless as stones thrown down a dry well.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Snapping out of his musing, Junior looked up from scraping dirt and rocks from Champion's hooves. Isa had made silent trips back and forth with their packs to the fire, a reversal of their normal duties. Beneath her brown hat—grimy now from sweat and filth accumulated on the trail—Isa's dirty-blonde hair had unraveled from its elegant updo. Her eyes were gilded jade today.

"What's got you so quiet?" she pressed.

He needed to tell someone. It felt like he was drowning, his thrashing face held down inches from the surface by his own hand.

Tell her.

Speaking as though from a long, narrow tunnel, he said, "Nothing."

The words, the admission, remained lodged in his throat, rooting him to the spot. Isa pursed her lips introspectively, nodded, and walked away. Her heavy hair sagged from its pins, swaying against her back like a pendulum. Tick-tock.

He curried the animals, stalling. More time. He needed more time. The warmth from the mule's and horses' hides soothed him. The flex of big lungs blowing sweet breath into his face steadied his hands. Finished with the animals, he hobbled them and let them graze on leads. Near the fire, his bedroll was already laid out, his saddle propped at one end. An opened can of beans sat on a bed of coals next to a camp-sized dutch oven emitting hints of crispy cornpone. Gratitude assuaged his frayed nerves. Junior hadn't traveled with anyone on the trail since his discharge, and while the solitude had healed parts of him, it had taken with it the ease of companionship. He remembered standing in Miss Pickney's little apartment, dreading the prospect of being on the trail with Isa. He'd just known she'd be difficult. Complaining. A chatterbox with too much in her head that needed to come out.

Junior had forgotten what a good student she'd been. How quickly she'd taken to hunting, training horses, and herding cattle. All the things that took skill, concentration, and long stretches of quiet. Most of their journey was held in companionable silence. It surprised him when he found himself thinking of things to say or do to make her talk. To hear an opinion or fact that made his mouth drop open or his belly hurt from laughing.

"Supper is ready." Isa's voice was husky from fatigue, and he watched her guiltily, hungrily, as she ran the tortoiseshell comb through her loose hair. The ends reached the curve of her waist, pale and shining in the firelight.

They ate in silence, one that lacked the companionship he'd grown accustomed to. He sensed that she wanted to speak, that her words itched to come out, but her fine brows were set in a stern position over her eyes, her fingertips running over her lips the way she did when pondering something.

"I'll clean up," he said to break the void of silence. He took the plates and pan and scraped them out. Rinsed them. Fighting the urge to crumple the tin camp plates into tiny metal pieces, he strode back to the fire. Isa was already lying down, her back to the fire…and to his bedroll. "What are you doing?" It came out like a condemnation.

Isa didn't deign to look at him. "Going to sleep."

Last night, they had slept wrapped in each other's arms. Each time that he'd woken up at the small movements she'd made in slumber, he'd gripped her tighter. There had been no bad dreams, no waking up dreading another day. If he could fall asleep with her in his arms every night, he could face the light of any day. Such sissified reflections used to make him retch. Panic set in now because it rang true.

"Get up," he heard himself say, hands shaking.

"What?" Isa sent a baleful look at him from the corner of her eye.

He didn't repeat himself. Junior closed the distance between them, bent over, and lifted her—bedroll and all—from the ground. Ignoring the outraged squawks from her blankets, he carried her around the fire and plunked her beside his bedroll. While she sputtered and struggled within the confines of her bedding, Junior shoved his boots off and wrapped his legs and arms around her squirming figure.

She wriggled. "What in God's name are you doing?"

"Holding you." It was muttered into her mussed hair.

"Oh." Incrementally, Isa stopped struggling. Her body relaxed in his hold. He loosened the vise of his legs around her but kept his arms tight, pulling her as closely as he could, face buried in the crook of her neck. "Why?"

Why was he holding her? Because he couldn't damned well breathe without her, that's why.

"Because I want to, I reckon," he said.

"You always do what you want?"

"If I did what I wanted, we'd have to stand in front of a preacher come Saturday, your brother's rifle shoving a dent into my backbone." Breathing her in, he let himself imagine it, just for a moment. Isa standing in a confection of ivory, glaring daggers at him through a veil. Sweat would drip from every gland. Their glacier-cold feet would be itching to run.

Isa squirmed again, but closer. "That would be horrid."

"I know."

"Imagine your mother's reaction." She giggled, then suggested slyly, "We could do what we want and not get married. No one has to know."

His body responded predictably, and he swatted the lumpy area of blankets where her rear end dwelled. " I would know."

"Just once?" Warm lips touched his hand, his wrist. Instead of rousing him further, the soft kisses stabbed directly into his heart.

"I can't. It can't be more than this. You're my best friend's sister. I couldn't live with myself."

"And I couldn't live with myself if we don't."

The edge of teasing in her voice made his lips curve up despite himself. "Guess you'll just have to die."

The fire flared brighter with her laughter. Above them, the night sky was a smooth backdrop of velvet with billions of stars like sparkling diamonds scattered within it. It was warm enough that their breath didn't steam from their lips like chimney smoke, but it was cold enough that the tip of his chilled nose against her neck made her jump.

"It can be a secret," she said, no longer laughing.

He stiffened. "I don't want to keep any more secrets."

Isa's mind was working again; he could feel it against his forehead like a piston. "I didn't know you had secrets. You must be good at keeping them."

"How about I tell you one." He pressed his lips against the fragrant skin beneath her nape, afraid his heart would burst, it was pounding so hard. "I was dishonorably discharged from the Texas Rangers."

The fire popped and crackled in the wake of this sudden announcement, and he sensed her churning thoughts through the centimeter of space separating his head from hers.

"What happened?" she finally asked, carefully subdued.

Another fire flared behind his closed lids. One from the past. For hours, thick, black, and acrid smoke had boiled from it. The smell had lingered on his clothes for days in a jail cell until he was allowed to bathe and change. "I did something very bad."

Delicately callused fingers ran along the length of his forearm, drifting gently through the pale dusting of hair. "Surely it couldn't be so bad. Get two toes out of line, and they drop people like a hot potato."

Junior pressed his forehead tighter against the crown of her skull, eyes shut tight.

Isa pretended he wasn't bowing her neck uncomfortably forward. "Want to know what I've done?" He didn't answer. Couldn't answer. "One time, Mr. Corner made me so angry that I allowed him to believe he'd lost half his personal investments. I let him sweat for a week—"

"I killed six other Rangers in cold blood," Junior interrupted. His tone was emotionless, his palms clammy, his heartbeat swift.

Against him, Isa felt like an ice sculpture. When the thread of silence between them threatened to snap, she whispered, "Why?"

Grimacing into the safety of her hair, he shook his head. "It doesn't matter why. All that matters is that I killed them. And one of them…he was my friend Randal's little brother."