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“I—I cannot.” She would not let him see how uncertain she felt about sleeping out in the open. Next to a man. Most of all, she could not confess that her stiff denim jeans chafed the inside of her thighs, despite the liniment Fernanda had rubbed on earlier. Or that her sunburned neck smarted under her shirt collar. She needed to be free of anything that rubbed her skin.
“Like hell,” he muttered. The next thing she knew he had yanked her up like a sack of meal and dumped her onto the blanket closest to the fire pit.
“Ouch!”
He knelt next to her. “I’ll take off your boots so you won’t have to stretch. Give me your foot.” He turned his back, straddled her leg and began pulling off the leather boots.
How humiliating! With her foot in his control she could not wriggle away from him. Oh, she felt so out of place in the West. So incompetent. She hated not knowing how to do something as simple as taking off her own boots.
But the relief she felt when her boot came off overcame her urge to complain. Bliss! She flexed her toes and closed her eyes with pleasure.
“I think my boots are too small,” she said. “My heels are rubbed raw.”
“Not too small,” he countered. “They’re too big. That’s why they rub.” He took her foot in both hands and stripped off her sock.
“Blisters,” he muttered. “Hot damn.”
“Well it isn’t my fault,” she blurted out. “You were the one who insisted on horses. And boots.”
“Yeah, I did. Stop complaining. You’re alive, aren’t you?”
“Well!” She had never met a man so bad tempered and prone to give orders. She’d bet he’d been at least a colonel in the Rebel army. Maybe even a general.
“Fernanda,” he said over his shoulder to her companion. “You have an extra pair of socks with you?”
“Si. I have extra.” She rummaged in the small canvas bag he had allowed them and pulled out another bulky pair of boy’s socks.
“Your boots fit okay, señora?” he asked.
“Sí.” To demonstrate Fernanda executed a few dance steps, snapping her fingers over her head. “Fine boots, señor. Gracias.”
Caroline’s mouth fell open. She had never, ever seen Fernanda dance. Or even walk fast. Even in Texas, when Mama had hired the Mexican woman as a nurse, she had been the epitome of decorum. What had come over her?
That man, Rivera, had come over her, that’s what. Caroline sensed some unspoken connection between Rivera and Fernanda, but she could not imagine what it was. He was at least ten years Fernanda’s junior, and unless he preferred older women...
How reprehensible! The man was surely taking advantage of her friend.
She tried to yank her foot away, but his big hands held her fast. He massaged her toes, then her arch, and finally drew on the extra sock. Then he picked up her other foot and pulled off the leather boot.
“Tomorrow I’ll help you get your boots back on,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice.
“There is absolutely no need,” she protested. “I have been capable of dressing myself since I was three years old.”
“Did you wear Western boots when you were three years old?”
She flinched. “Certainly not. I wore dresses, like any proper young girl.”
Without a word he dropped her foot, folded the boot tops over and slapped them down next to her saddle. “Good night, Miss MacFarlane. Use your boots for a pillow.”
“Good night? How am I supposed to sleep with just one blanket and a smelly pair of boots?”
He towered over her, then squatted on his haunches down to her level. “You sleep any way you like, Miss MacFarlane. You roll yourself up in the blanket, like a pancake. Personally, I prefer using my saddle as a pillow, but you suit yourself.”
She glared up at him. “I most certainly will not roll myself—”
He said nothing, just straightened to his full height and looked down at her. His eyes did strange things to her equilibrium.
“What if I get cold during the night?”
“You won’t. It’s the middle of the summer. Stays hot all night.”
“Oh.” Again she stuffed down the unwelcome feeling of incompetence. She should have deduced that about the weather.
“Do not worry, mi corazón, you will be close to the fire.”
Caroline bit her lip, hunkered down on the blanket, and pulled both corners up around her. Roll over like a pancake? How did one accomplish that?
She rolled to her left and felt the muscles in her back clench. She reversed direction, but the blanket wouldn’t cover her completely.
All at once the blanket was yanked out from under her and a hand settled on her backside. “Like this.” He tucked one edge under her back and rolled her over twice. The blanket snugged up tight around her body.
“Just like a tortilla,” Fernanda chortled. “Mi hija, pretend you are the molé sauce.”
In the next moment he slid his palm under her neck and stuffed her folded boots underneath her head. She clamped her jaw tight shut and watched Fernanda toe off her boots and roll herself up in her own blanket.
Rivera did the same. She noticed he had positioned both herself and Fernanda next to the fire; he slept on the outside.
Well, at least that was gentlemanly.
* * *
Hawk listened to the quiet breathing of the two women and hoped he’d dropped enough dry wood into the fire pit to last the night. Not that they’d need the warmth, but the flames would keep away predators. He drew in a careful breath. Coyotes, maybe. Not men.
He’d scouted the area around the camp and found no tracks but Red’s and those of the two mares. Maybe Fernanda was wrong about someone trying to kill Miss MacFarlane.
He closed his eyes and tried not to remember how Caroline MacFarlane looked with her shirt half-unbuttoned. A song sparrow twittered among the branches of a nearby alder. Funny how a bird’s singing could fill a man full of questions about his life. He wondered if his deathbed reflections about the decisions he’d made in his life would make it all clear someday. Then he snorted. He’d save his deathbed confession for when the time came.
He opened his eyes and looked up at the fat silver globe of a moon floating above the trees. Suddenly something startled the bird into silence, and the hair on his neck rose. He hadn’t heard a horse. Hadn’t heard a single footstep. Very slowly he sat up and reached for his rifle.
A shadow glided behind a thick pine trunk and he thumbed back the hammer. What would a man on foot be doing twenty miles from the nearest town? Maybe a renegade Indian, looking for food?
Or it might be that someone had trailed them, left his mount a mile or so back and sneaked up on the camp.
He got to his feet and crept forward toward the tree. If it was a man intent on harming someone, he’d bet that someone was not himself. Those who held grudges against him he’d left back in Texas, and besides, too much time had passed since his Ranger days. A Mescalero would have caught up with him by now.
He walked to within arm’s length of the pine, dug a pebble from his shirt pocket and tossed it off to one side. Nothing, not even an indrawn breath. He chanced a deliberately noisy step onto a dry twig. Still nothing. Then he moved so he could see what was behind the trunk.
Nothing but moonlight and tall trees. Either his imagination was working too hard or he was getting jumpy with two females on his hands. Or...
Then he heard the far-off thud of hoofbeats, and his blood ran cold. Someone had been here. On foot, and so quiet there hadn’t been even a warning nicker from the horses. He should have heard something. Anything. God, was he getting old?
He released the hammer, stalked back into camp and dropped the Winchester next to his bedroll.
“Señor?”
“It was nothing, Fernanda. Go back to sleep.”
“You lie, my friend. I hear the horse, too.”
“You’ve got good ears, señora.”
“Ay, that is true.” There was a long pause and then the Mexican woman’s soft voice spoke again. “I have learned to listen, señor.”
Hawk didn’t sleep. He didn’t even try, just lay awake with his thoughts and his doubts and his fears. Not for himself, but for the spirited, headstrong crusader who slept a short distance away from him. She was a damn fool of a woman, sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.
But he’d agreed to protect her, and he would. Stealthily he moved his bedroll as close to hers as he could get without waking her.
Tomorrow he’d teach her how to shoot his revolver.
* * *
“Señora, can you fire a pistol?”
“Sí.”
“A pistol!” Caroline spluttered.
“Sí. I carry a pistola always in my pocket.”
“What?” Her voice rose an octave. “Fernanda, you never told me that.”
“You never ask, mi corazón. Besides, I never tell you lots of things.”
Caroline struggled to her feet and immediately regretted it. Her legs felt stiff as new sofa springs. Nevertheless, she marched over to Fernanda, who sat placidly beside the fire pit eating the last of the biscuits. Before she could confront the Mexican woman, Rivera laid his big hand on Caroline’s shoulder and spun her toward him so fast it made her dizzy.
“There’s something I want to show you before we get started.”
“Oh? And what is that, Mr. Rivera? How to take off my boots, perhaps?”
A smile flickered. The first hint of any humor in the taciturn sheriff and a welcome change from that smoldering anger in his green eyes and the perpetual frown he wore. My goodness, what a sourpuss he was. He’d be nice-looking if his face were not so scrunched up.
“Nothing to do with boots,” he said in that maddeningly calm voice of his. Didn’t he ever get excited about anything? Even Fernanda’s impromptu fandango last night hadn’t cracked his impassive expression. He must have been a superb soldier in the War, imperturbable as a sphinx under fire.
She sniffed. “Well, what is it? Show me and let us be on our way. I have a speaking engagement in Gillette Springs this evening.”
He shot her a look. “I want you to learn to use a revolver.”
She sucked in a breath. “I beg your pardon? What on earth for?” The very thought of putting her hand on a firearm sent a shudder up her spine. Did women out West actually do such brazen things?
“For protection.”
“Yours or mine? No well-bred lady handles firearms.”
“No well-bred lady travels out West lighting fires under half the population without knowing how to protect herself.”
“Lighting fires? Well, I should hope so. For your information, Mr. Rivera, ‘lighting fires’ is going to be the salvation of womankind.”
He said nothing, just took hold of her upper arm and propelled her away from the fire. Fernanda fled to the stream with the empty tin cups and the coffeepot.
He slid his revolver out of the holster on his hip, spilled the chambered bullets into his palm and thrust the weapon at her, holding it by the blued steel barrel. She knocked it out of his hand onto the ground.
His eyes narrowed into glittery emerald slits. “Pick it up,” he ordered.
“I can’t. I am too stiff to bend over.”
“Then you shouldn’t have dropped the gun. I said pick it up.” He put one hand at her waist and the other at her back and jackknifed her body. She groaned through gritted teeth.
“Pick it up,” he repeated.
She scrabbled on the ground and managed to grab the long barrel, but it was heavier than she expected. She couldn’t lift it with one hand.
“Use two hands,” he ordered.
She pushed the weapon toward her other hand and grasped the handle.
“Now straighten up.” He bit the words out like firecrackers going off.
“You got me doubled over like this,” she said. “You can get me to straighten up.”
Too late she realized her mistake. He slapped one hand on her midsection, grasped her shoulder with the other and yanked her upright.
Her muscles screamed and she wanted to weep with frustration. She thought about stamping her foot onto his toe, but she knew she couldn’t lift it high enough.
“Now,” he instructed, positioning her hand on the gun. “Fold your fingers around the butt and slip your forefinger onto the trigger.” He laid his hand over hers and curled her fingers over the handle. She couldn’t hold up the weight, and the barrel drooped toward the ground.
“You right-handed?” When she nodded, he grabbed her left hand and pressed her fingers on the opposite side. “Hold it steady.”
“I am trying! It is too heavy for a woman.”
“Not too heavy for a crusader,” he said drily.
She glanced into his face. “You think I am a crusader?”
“Hell, yes.” He stepped behind her, brought both hands around her body and rested them under her forearms to steady her grip.
She didn’t like the feel of him at her back. Or the warmth of his arms around hers. Or anything. He smelled of leather and wood smoke and sweat. Well, she acknowledged, she probably smelled the same. He didn’t seem to mind, because he moved his jaw right up against her hair.
“Breathe in,” he said. “Now breathe out.”
