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She didn’t breathe. He paused, again motionless, soundless, and yet he stood as if every muscle poised at the ready to respond to some invisible enemy. His scream erupted, blood chilling and eerie. And then in an explosion of movement, he lunged at the tree, legs arcing, arms firing. With fists and feet he beat into the bark, spun, then jumped in a frenzied attack, punctuating each blow with a low, guttural shout that seemed to bring a surge of power to each strike.
Willie watched in horror, expecting blood to be streaming from his hands, legs and feet. But there was none. The man was crazy. Still, as Willie watched, her horror became fascination. There was a mystical beauty to his movements, something she couldn’t comprehend or define. He was more animal than human, more mysterious than the wolf, more dangerous.
Willie drew the rifle against her chest. She took one step back. A twig cracked beneath her boot. She froze.
Devlin spun toward her and went instantly still. Hell’s fire blazed in his eyes. His chest barely moved with his breaths. Fists clenched against his thighs. Arm muscles popped. His legs braced wide, gripped and taut, ready to strike again.
In that moment, he was everything wild and hungry and beautiful that Willie could have ever imagined. And he was all male, his masculinity so blatantly displayed by his skinmolding britches she felt her legs turn to water and the blood rush in her ears. The rifle slipped from her hands.
He moved toward her with great powerful strides and all she could see was the sun reflected in his eyes and the curl of his lip, like that of a ravenous wolf. She whirled, tripped and felt the ground tip under her feet.
Chapter Four (#ulink_3fe633b7-7ef1-5b08-9d58-f74f5521f4e9)
Sloan caught her arm and lifted her back against him. “There’s nothing to fear here, Wilhelmina. Except your gun, and it’s on the ground. Can you stand?”
She spun around in a whirl of coppery curls that fell to her hips. “Of course, I can stand,” she snapped, shoving up her chin just to make certain he could see the determination in her eyes. His touch had obviously driven the fear out of her. She took one step back, then another, blinking as if she didn’t know what to do with her eyes. Skittish, not naive. The broken heart had no choice but to cloak itself in a thick wall of defense. As he watched her draw the black dog close against the side of her leg, he wondered if she had good reason to hate all men, or fear them.
“I heard you howling. I thought you were calling to the wolves. But you weren’t.”
He felt an unexpected surge of satisfaction. She was more curious than afraid. “Wolves howl to confuse an enemy.”
She glanced at the tree. “Is that what you were doing?”
“It’s called a kiai.” He watched her lips move in silent repetition. Perhaps she could understand what others never could. Maybe she would see beyond labeling him a madman and a peculiarity. “The kiai brings power to a blow and can confuse an assailant.”
“What assailant?”
Sloan inclined his head at the tree and watched her. “My imaginary opponent.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You were fighting a tree.”
“I could spend an entire lifetime perfecting my movements and mental awareness fighting that tree. I’ve fought many before, straw pads before that, even wet sand.”
“That’s why your hands don’t bleed.” She watched him extend his fingers along his thighs. “Do all men fight trees in England?”
“None that I’ve known.”
“It’s like an art form.”
“As much as any other.”
“You could kill someone with your hands.”
He looked into her eyes and saw a spark of suspicion flare. “I never have.”
“But you would.”
“The way of the empty hand is not to kill, but to defend, even to the death.”
“The empty hand. You mean, no gun.”
“No weapon.”
“That’s unheard-of here. Everyone carries a gun.”
“That’s why everyone needs to. I’ve never felt a need to prove that I can fight. I still believe disputes can be solved peaceably. Many battles are won without firing a single bullet.”
“Not here.”
“Not even in England.” He watched a bird soar high overhead. “It’s always better to walk away from trouble, even if it’s the tougher course.”
“Trouble inevitably follows.”
“Then you deal with it, efficiently.” His gaze rested on her. “You’re not satisfied.”
“I’m never satisfied.”
“I believe it. Maybe you wish to learn.”
Her face lit with the wonder of a child untainted by grief or despair. In an instant, the defenses vanished. He felt something twist in his belly, a pain and longing so deep his breath caught.
“You can teach me to move like you do?” she asked.
“Not in one day, or a year. It’s part of the ancient ancestral heritage of an island race in the Orient, based on the teachings of the monks that live in the mountains in a place called Ryukyu.”
“You were born there?”
His fists flexed. “I’ve never been to Ryukyu. To become a fighting master, I had to be put to a test of courage.” He paused, watching her. “I learned from Azato. He’s a great master. My father saw him demonstrate his skills for royalty in the Orient when he traveled there over twenty years ago. He brought Azato back with him to England.”
“Your father traveled so far.”
“My father was a vagabond, in search of a higher meaning to his life.” He paused and felt the silence press in around him. The sun inched up over the stand of trees to the east, promising heat to chase away the morning chill. Promising so much where the eye could see forever over a sea of grass to the east, enough to stir a man from his grief. A heavy weight compressed in his chest, still, no matter what he did to ease it. He glanced at her, and in her eyes he saw dwindling hope, forgotten dreams and promises broken.
“A higher meaning.” She snorted and glanced out over the horizon and the majesty of dawn. Her face remained impassive, unmoved save for the caustic twist of her lips. “You can’t find it in a mine, though you can’t tell folks that. I guess we’re all looking for it somewhere. Aren’t you?” She looked up at him as the breeze played through her hair and the sun turned her eyes the gold-green of a cat.
Heat washed over Sloan, a deep heat that fired his blood and plunged directly to his loins. Never in his life had he been so profoundly aware of a female in the basest, most physical sense. When he looked at Willie, when she looked at him, the barriers dissolved between mind and body, and his desires became his needs and his obsession.
“I’ve been looking for it all my life.” He stared at her, his arms suddenly aching to protect her, as much from broken dreams as from himself. He took a step, involuntarily reached for her, and she drew back, one hand going to the base of her throat in an instinctive gesture of defense.
“Don’t,” she said, low, husky.
He went completely still. “I won’t”
“That’s what Brant said.”
“Then he was a fool to jeopardize your trust.”
“He didn’t want my trust, Devlin.”
“Twice the fool.”
“No, he was a master. I was the fool.”
A knot tightened in Sloan’s chest He’d never known possessiveness, or a sudden need to crush a man he’d never met. “Wilhelmina—”
“I’ll get your breakfast,” she said, bending to pick up her rifle. She drew it close and looked at him as if she weren’t beyond using it. “Shirts are required at the table.” She seemed to swallow. “And—normal pants.”
He cocked his head. “As you wish.”
Her face hardened. “You’ll never know what I wish, Devlin.”
He watched her walk all the way back to the house, the black dog loping at her side. In the rosy sunlight her hair rippled like a shimmering length of watered silk and her hips moved with an age-old female sway. But beneath the soft, womanly exterior lay a soul touched by grief and hardened by far more than one man’s broken promises.
Within strength is found weakness, within hardness, softness. Azato had often spoken of alternating forces being indestructible, inexhaustible. In contradicting one another they complimented. And captivated.
Before he turned to head toward the house, he took a path that led deeper into the woods, toward the faint murmur of water washing over rock.
“Ya look like that teacher fella came around ‘bout a year ago,” Gramps said, glancing up when Devlin’s shiny-toed shoes scraped on the kitchen floorboards. Willie kept her eyes glued to the list she was writing of “things needed.” The list was long. Two of those crisp bills would buy enough to fill three wagons. A second ago she couldn’t write fast enough. Now, suddenly, her mind was blank.
His footfalls seemed to shake the house. She stared at her list and her mind fogged with the image of Devlin coming out of the woods a short time ago, his hair and skin glistening with water, his pants plastered to his thighs and hips. From the kitchen window she’d watched him walk through the field, even after the onions started to burn in the skillet.
The stream lay at least a mile back of the woods, in a deep ravine that fed down from the foothills over several treacherous waterfalls. Unless a man knew the terrain well, he’d never know where to find it. So how had Devlin?
Gramps’s chair scraped. “Remember that gussied-up teacher-fella, Willie-girl?”
Willie muttered something and stared at her list, trying her very best not to notice the tangy scent that had swept into the room along with Devlin. Beneath her elbow the table trembled as Devlin scooted his chair close.
“Yep,” Gramps continued. “He came into town drivin’ his oxen by shouting Greek and Latin phraseology. Least everyone said it was Greek and Latin. Course, any man what can quote a few phrases of an unknown language is qualified to be a schoolmaster in my book. Got a hatful collected on his first pass around, more than enough to build a schoolhouse.”
“An enterprising fellow,” Devlin rumbled. “I take it he was a fraud.”
“I reckon he might have been. Kept a quart of whiskey and a leather quirt in his desk. Course, the whiskey was strictly for him. The quirt was for the students. He disappeared the day after the mine blew. Some folks think he had something to do with it, even if he could speak Greek and Latin.”
“The mine was sabotaged?”
Willie blinked at her list and felt every muscle tense.
Gramps snorted. “Some folks ‘round here would believe anything, Devlin. Just depends on the day.”
“What do you believe?”
Willie slanted her eyes up at Gramps. He stared at the table, then shrugged. “She just blew. There was enough powder charges down there to blow a hole clean through the mountains. They were risking their lives for weeks to tunnel through rock and found no sign of color anywhere. They’d been warned, but they didn’t listen.” His voice dipped low and deep. “Damned fool never did listen, ‘specially to reason. Always sayin’ his big strike was behind the next rock.”
“Some become as much obsessed by the hunt as by the prize.”
Willie glanced at Devlin and instantly wished she hadn’t. He was watching her as if he knew she’d look up at that precise moment, and suddenly she knew the innuendo she imagined in his words was real. Damn, but she should never have told him anything about Brant. What was it about him that tempted her to forget that he was a stranger, and quite possibly, the enemy?
The enemy. It was hard to imagine him capable of anything dastardly dressed as he was in a high-collared white linen shirt and lemon-colored kid gloves. His Prince Albert coat and trousers were of a rich mahogany brown, and his lemon-colored waistcoat was embroidered with lilies of the valley, red rosebuds and violets.
She’d never seen anything like it. On any other man the ensemble would have looked ridiculous. But on Devlin, the clothes draped with a stylish elegance that in some odd way accentuated his dark masculinity.
Willie was completely baffled, especially when she felt his stare penetrate clear to her thoughts. She stuck her nose in her list and wished he’d finish up and be on his way.
“My boy was restless,” Gramps muttered into his coffee. “Some even say a bit flighty in his imaginings.”
“Pa wasn’t crazy, Gramps,” Willie said, distinctly uncomfortable with Gramps discussing her pa with Devlin. She angled Gramps a meaningful look and gently reminded him, “The horses need tended.”
Without even glancing at her, he leaned over his coffee and regarded Devlin from beneath shaggy brows. “Packed us all up one day and said we were goin’ on a merry outing on the frontier. Had a helluva farm in Illinois with a fancy parlor and a shiny buggy and nice dishes for Vera, his wife. Fine woman. He was a veteran cavalry commander in the war, a damned hero. He could have just sat on his porch and enjoyed his life. Vera even had a maid.”
Willie scooted back her chair. “I think we’d best get to the horses now, Gramps.”
“But one day, ‘bout ten years ago, he told me and Vera and the four boys to just pack it all up an’ head out. That first night we had supper served on a clothed table with champagne. That was for Vera. After that she never had any more champagne. Willie-girl was barely old enough to remember.”
“I remember,” Willie muttered, pocketing her unfinished list. “I was nine.”
“With two pigtails down to her butt.”
Devlin had stopped eating and was watching her. Resisting the urge to squirm, she regarded Gramps from beneath ominous brows. “Ready, Gramps? I’ve got to get to town early.”
“You go on.”
Willie set her teeth. “I need you to come with me.”
“You never needed an old man’s help before, Willie-girl. I’m sure J. D. Harkness will be more than happy to help you load up the wagon. Ain’t nobody in the Silver Spur this early.”
Devlin’s chair scraped against the floorboards and he surged to his full height so suddenly Willie’s breath caught. “I’ll accompany her,” he said. “I’m going to town myself.”
Willie thrust out her jaw. “That’s not—”
“If you say so,” Gramps said to Devlin.
“It’s no trouble.”
Damn them both for behaving as if she weren’t there.
“Watch yourself, Devlin,” Gramps said as Devlin settled a tall black silk hat on his head. “The fingers of low-life gunmen get itchy at the sight of a stovepipe.”
“I didn’t know Prosperity Gulch had any low-life gunmen.”
“Never can tell anymore. I seen decent fellas turn low-life awful fast when times are hard.”
“Yes, I suppose they can.” Devlin drew up and held a hand for Willie to precede him out the door.
Determined not to let her exasperation show, Willie strode out of the kitchen one pace ahead of Devlin, muttering over her shoulder, “I’m riding on the wagon alone.”
“As you wish,” he murmured. “I’ll saddle my horse.”
She thought she felt the heat of his breath on her neck and scooted quickly ahead and into the heat of the day before the shivers again whispered over her skin.
