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“Oh, God! Oh, God!”
Charlie’s mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear him cry. Her sleeve was in shreds and covered with blood. She struggled to her knees. The snake was a bloody rope at her side, and Jake Malone was in front of her, pulling on her arm, ripping at the red cotton sticking to her skin.
He was talking, but she couldn’t hear him. She wanted to tell him everything would all right, that the snake was dead, but she couldn’t force the words out of her throat. She could barely breathe, and when he ripped the sleeve up to her elbow, she saw two red gashes where the rattler’s fangs had ripped her skin.
“Alex? Can you hear me?”
He was shouting, but she could barely make out the words. Not trusting her voice, she nodded to him.
He had a knife in his hand. It was short, with the sharpest silver blade she had ever seen, and his eyes were glued to her forearm where the red streaks were oozing blood. The knife shifted in his fingers.
“No!”
She tried to pull her arm away, but he had a firm grip on her elbow. The blade sliced into her flesh just above the two gashes, and a second later he was sucking the blood. He spat one mouthful on the ground, then two more. With a jerk of his hand, he tore the rest of the sleeve, made a tourniquet and twisted it just above the bite.
Wiping her blood away from his mouth, he grabbed her elbow and squeezed. “Talk to me, Alex. Does your whole arm hurt or just where it’s bleeding?”
“Just—just the bite.”
“Does your arm tingle? Is it going numb?”
She was trembling with pain and terror, but she managed to shake her head.
“Here’s the situation, honey. I don’t think the snake shot you full of venom. Those were scratches, not puncture marks. I had to cut you, though. I had to be sure.”
His eyes were as wide as hers. If the snake had shot its venom, she would die, and no amount of hope or letting of blood would stop the progress of the poison.
She blinked and saw her father’s face. She tasted ripe peaches and her mother’s homemade jam. Charlie’s wail pierced the silence, and Jake’s breath rasped as he pressed his fingers against her throat and felt her racing pulse.
A sob exploded from her chest. Regrets buzzed in her mind like insects with ugly black wings and she couldn’t swat them away. Her body was a shadow, empty and gray, but her vision sharpened and she saw the bright beauty of the arid plateau. Her ears pounded with the vastness of the silent earth. There was so much of life she had missed, so much she hadn’t tasted, touched, understood.
“I don’t want to die,” she said, choking on the dryness of her own mouth. A thunderous tremor traveled from her toes to her scalp. Her whole body shook with it, except for her injured arm being held steady in Jake’s strong hands.
“Can you still feel your fingers?” His eyes were the brightest blue. She hadn’t noticed that until now.
“My—my arm doesn’t hurt—except for the bite.”
“Are you sick? Can you breathe?”
She sucked in air and nodded. “I hear Charlie.”
“He can wait a minute.”
She saw the baby kicking on the blanket. As faint as his wail seemed to her ears, it was distinct, as welcome as the first strains of a symphony. Jake let go of her arm and went to the saddlebag. The buckle flashed in the sun, and he came back with the flask and one of his own shirts.
“Sit back,” he said. “This is going to hurt.”
She leaned against the boulder and stuck her arm out as if she were a child with a skinned elbow. Sweat beaded on her face, and she gritted her teeth against the speckled light spinning through her head. Closing her eyes, she clutched at Jake’s sleeve to steady herself. He rested her bloody arm on top of his, cupping her elbow and trapping her fingers between his chest and biceps.
He splashed alcohol over the wound, and she shrieked. She thought of her mother blowing on her skinned knees, then she felt soft cotton on her torn flesh and the heat of his hand. The wound stung terribly, but she was breathing more easily.
“We’ll wrap it up, and then we’re gonna beat all hell for Grand Junction,” Jake said. He sliced the shirt with his knife, wrapped her arm as tight as she could stand and tied the ends. “You stay still while I pack up.”
His eyes were full of a glassy blue light, and Alex knew that hers were just as watery. He wrapped the baby in a fresh petticoat and tucked him in the crook of her good arm. Then he rolled up the blanket and the slicker, kicked sand in the ashes of the fire and vanished behind a boulder.
She figured it was nature calling, but then she heard a low moan, a single cuss word, and the sound of a man losing his breakfast and his pride. She wanted to go to him, but her legs were too weak. It struck her then that some things were private, and this was one of them.
When he came back, he took a swig of water and spat it on the ground. Taking Charlie in the crook of his arm, he pulled her up with his other hand. He didn’t let go, and she didn’t want him to.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m just shaken up.”
“Can you ride?’
The bay was tethered to a scraggly juniper on the other side of the campsite. It was a foot taller than she remembered and twice as skittish. She worried even more when it curled its lips and snorted at her.
“He’s not as mean as he looks,” Jake said, tugging on her good arm.
Her feet refused to budge. “He doesn’t like me.”
“It doesn’t matter what he likes. I’ve got to get you to a doctor.”
Something ornery and hysterical took root just below her ribs, and she shook her head. “I want to walk.”
“You want to what?”
“I’m going to walk to Grand Junction.”
“Okay,” he drawled. “I’ll take Charlie, and you can meet us in town. How’s that sound?”
“That sounds good.”
“I’ll even wait around and buy you supper when you get there. That should be in about a week, that is if you don’t fall in a ditch and break a leg, or die of thirst, or starvation. And don’t forget bobcats and rats. You know about rattlers, but coyotes can get mean, too.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“You’ve got outlaws and Indians to consider, and then there’s sunstroke. You’ll have to sleep during the day and walk at night. It gets pretty dark, but there should be a full moon in a few days.”
“Anything else I should worry about?”
“Scorpions. Tarantulas are just big hairy spiders, but scorpions sting like hell. Now centipedes are downright cute.”
Laughter bubbled in her throat. The entire situation was beyond all reason, beyond anything she had ever imagined. She was sobbing and laughing at the same time, and Jake was grinning like a man who had wrestled a bear and won. His eyes glowed, and she saw that in spite of his toughness, he liked to laugh.
In her most formal voice, Alex said, “Considering the tarantulas, I suppose I’ll take my chances with your horse, Mr. Malone.”
“A wise decision, Miss Merritt.”
With a bold-as-brass smile, he slipped his hand around her waist and pulled her to his side. His body was warm and strong against hers, and with a tiny smile, she said, “I feel better.”
His fingers cupped her waist, and somehow she knew that everything would be all right.
But it wasn’t all right. Pressure built deep in her chest, and something wild and insane took root low in her belly. The trembling came back with an energy of its own. Maybe the snake had left its mark. Maybe that was why her legs went weak and she couldn’t breathe.
Maybe it was the snake, and not the shimmering light in Jake Malone’s eyes, the sheltering wing of his arm and the parting of his lips. Slowly, like a drop of rain trailing down a leaf, he lowered his mouth an inch closer to hers. Closing her eyes, Alex faced the certainty she was about to be kissed and acknowledged the truth that she wanted him to do it.
Only she couldn’t possibly want that. She was engaged to Thomas. Jake Malone and his shimmering eyes and soft lips had no place in her life, but he was already kissing her and she couldn’t pull away.
Kissing him was unthinkable. A betrayal, a lie, and she couldn’t do it. Except her lips had come alive, and she shivered as his tongue grazed them. The kiss was tender, searching, like Charlie’s rosebud mouth looking for his mother’s breast.
Her hand flew to his chest and she felt the beat of his heart. A soft hum rippled through him as he eased his tongue past her lips. She had never kissed a man like this before, never felt his need mixing with her own. The strange and glorious closeness of his soul made her tremble, and she liked it.
But it had to be a lie, an aberration borne of fright and danger. She loved Thomas. He needed her. She had no right to kiss an outlaw in the desert. She had no interest in kissing him, and yet a small squeak, a tender cry of need, escaped from her throat.
Jake pulled her closer, and she wanted to laugh and dance and touch the sun, to feel the hardness of his muscles and the coarseness of his beard. She wanted to pour herself into him, to fill the hidden corners of his soul, and so with the morning air on her face and the sun blazing across the plain, with her aching body daring her to do it, she filled the hot emptiness of his mouth with her breath.
The moment turned both tender and fierce. His free hand traveled down her spine, past her waist, down to the small of her back, and a notch lower. His fingertips drew a slow circle that deepened with each turn of his wrist.
When he touched her bottom, she gasped. He hesitated, but she couldn’t force a single word past her lips and so he went on kissing her. His tongue dove deeper, his lips became hungrier. Everything about this man was confident now, and in a rush of hot, wet panic, she planted her hands on his chest and pushed.
“What the—”
He staggered backward, struggling to keep his balance with the baby cradled in one arm. Charlie shrieked, and Jake landed on his backside like a rodeo clown.
He glanced at the baby, tucked the cloth over its head, then rose to his full height and squinted at her. Rimmed with purple shadows, his eyes seemed wise and all-knowing, scarred by life’s battles and experienced with its pleasures.
“Jeez, Alex, what did you think I was going to do? It was just a kiss.” His voice softened. “It’s just nature.”
Shaking her head and close to tears, she held up her hands to stop him. “I’m not an idiot. I know exactly what it is. And it isn’t an excuse for what I just did.”
His blue gaze pinned her to the spot. “You wanted to kiss me. You want to prove you’re alive and kick death in the teeth. Whorehouses always fill up after a gunfight.”
What in the world was she supposed to say to that? That she had never needed to kick death in the teeth before now, that everything in her world was orderly and simple, because she worked very hard to keep it that way?
Or should she tell him that until now, she had never lost her mind while kissing a man; that her insides felt like warm milk and she could still taste the salt of him on her tongue? Alex bit her lip. She had to keep the moment in perspective.
“Frankly, Mr. Malone, I just made an embarrassing mistake. You see, I’m engaged to a man in Philadelphia, and well, I—uh—”
“You just got carried away.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Whatever you say.” He shrugged as he held out the baby. “Here, you take him. I’ll check on the horse.”
For some reason, his opinion mattered, at least for today, and Alex followed him to the bay. “My fiancе’s name is Thomas Hunnicutt. We work together. With children.”
Jake fiddled with a stirrup. “Is that so?”
“He’s kind and thoughtful. We’ve known each other for years, and when his wife died, it seemed right to get married. She was my best friend.”
The desert air hurt her lungs, as if it were too thin to support a human life, and she took a deeper breath. He glanced at her, and a fleeting shadow passed over his face.
“Thomas Hunnicutt is a lucky man, Miss Merritt. I apologize for my earlier indiscretion.” His manners were impeccable, his voice as sincere as a prayer, but something about the tilt of his head made Alex tremble all the more.
The horse fidgeted next to her, but she no longer cared. She would have climbed on a kicking mule to get away from this man. But what would she do with this terrible ache? This desire to touch his face? Even now her heart felt swollen with a need to taste more than the desert air, to feel more than the heat of the earth rising through the soles of her shoes.
There’s more to life, Alex, so much more….
Her father’s words came at her like a forgotten promise and a strange realization seized her heart. Not once had she been hungry or thirsty, in need of clean clothes, or desirous of a man’s kiss. Until the stage crashed in that torrent of muddy water, she hadn’t felt fear. Until the snake bite, she hadn’t felt pain. And until Jake kissed her, she hadn’t tasted desire.
Standing by the bay, with her arm wrapped in his shirt, with her sunburned skin stinging from the salt of her own perspiration, Alex felt her nerves rippling like grass in the wind. Did misery really sharpen a person’s senses? Did sugar taste sweeter after a mouthful of sand? She had to hope so. What else could explain the trembling in her bones?
Jake Malone saw it all in her eyes, and she could only pray the heat pulsing in her veins was nothing more than shock, an illusion, something that wouldn’t last, because her feelings for this man turned her well-planned future into a wasteland.
She belonged in Philadelphia. She belonged anywhere but here. And that meant she had to push back the glittering mirage of passion and see the true dryness of the desert.
Jake had heard of people going insane on the Colorado Plateau, and Alexandra Merritt had as much cause as the next person. It gave him a reason to be charitable, but temporary insanity was no excuse for bad manners. She hadn’t said a word since he lifted her onto the saddle, and he didn’t take kindly to being shoved on his butt.
Between the baby’s hungry wail and the fact he hadn’t had a drink for two days, Jake was brimming with indignation. They had a half day’s ride ahead of them, and as long as Alex wasn’t in desperate need of a doctor, he was grateful for the chance to sort through his thoughts.
At the very least she owed him an apology, but if the truth be told, he wanted a lot more than that. The angel made him hungry for things he’d never had, simple things like respect and a clean bed, and dangerous things like her body, and even her trust.
There wasn’t much in his life that made Jake proud, but killing the snake with a perfect shot was one of them. Wishing the snake would slither back to its nest but knowing it wouldn’t, he’d grabbed the Winchester and aimed. Instinct had forced the snake to strike, just as a piece of Jake’s own nature, a piece he had either forgotten or wasn’t sure he had, made protecting Alex and the baby as necessary as breathing.
An hour had passed since that moment, and they had all been amazingly lucky. Lancing the bite had been the most awful thing he had ever done. He would never forget the terror in her eyes or the taste of her blood.
Nor would the softness of her lips fade from his memory anytime soon. She had to be the luckiest person he had ever known, and the most pitiful at the same time. How could Thomas Hunnicutt look at himself in the mirror, when it was as plain as the desert sun that Alexandra Merritt didn’t know the first thing about kissing a man?
Jake didn’t understand men who treated women as if they were merely useful, like an extra right arm or a hot-water bottle for their beds. He knew from experience that something wondrous happened when the right man and the right woman got naked together.
He had been nineteen years old and not fully grown when a widow hired him to work her ranch for the summer. By July his muscles were hard and he was sharing her bed. She was close to thirty, but he would have married her if she hadn’t sent him away.
Leaving her cut him to the bone. The widow liked having him in her bed, but she didn’t want him in her life. A few months later, she’d pushed him away like a bum calf, and he remembered the taste of snow as he rode away.
And then there was Lettie Abbott. He’d broken all of the rules when he’d taken her to bed.
“You’ve got to pay for it or marry it,” his brother Gabe used to say, but Jake had done neither with Lettie. It had been nothing more than meeting a man’s need. Not once had he imagined she would conceive a child.
With spots drifting like flies in his field of vision, Jake had to admit there was more than one way to ruin a woman’s life. He had nothing on Thomas Hunnicutt when it came to using a woman. He had spent one night with Lettie for the pleasure of it. It wasn’t even worth remembering, except for the baby she’d conceived.
With the angel pressed against his thighs, the memory of Lettie’s pregnant belly tweaked what was left of his conscience. Never mind that she had invited herself into his bed. He had taken less than she had to give, and Jake knew in his gut how it felt to be treated as less than the person he wanted to be. Gabe did it to him all the time.
You worthless piece of trash. What makes you think you belong in school? You’ll never get it right, little brother. Smart kids read books. Dumb ones shovel shit.”
For a while, he had read them anyway.
Ma would die if she saw you puking like that….
