Tracker's Sin

He moved his hand from behind his back, watching her expression as the weapon came into view. It didn’t change. Just because the knife had been out of sight didn’t mean it had been out of mind.

“Sorry about the knife. I forgot.” Hell, now there was a calming thing to tell a terrified woman. He looked toward the house. Still no one coming. Very slowly he reached down and slid the knife back into its sheath, attempting a smile.

“It’s just your luck to get scared out of your bloomers by a man who doesn’t know what to do with your fears.”

He didn’t really think she heard him, which was probably a good thing. He was pretty sure decent men didn’t refer to a woman’s bloomers. Tia would have had his head if she’d heard, because lord knows, she’d tried to teach him better. Sometimes he just had a hard time remembering the rules.

Ari didn’t respond to his smile or his words. She just kept staring at the knife in its sheath, still screaming in rasping pants of soundless terror.

Time to try something else. Grasping the knife between his forefinger and thumb, Tracker made a big production of removing it. She stopped breathing altogether. Holding his hand as far away from his side as he could, he reached back and set it on a ledge behind him.

“It’s okay, ma’am. No one’s going to hurt you.” Least of all him. How could anyone hurt a woman like that? Tracker had had the same thought when he’d first seen Desi huddled in Caine’s coat over a year ago, wearing her fear like a second skin. Now, looking at Ari, he experienced it all over again. She was so delicately formed, she made him think of fine china. The kind a man was afraid to touch, but felt compelled to because the sheer fragility of it demanded cherishing. Protecting. Because what it represented was what kept every man hoping.

He stepped to the left, away from the knife.

Ari’s focus switched from the blade to his face. Tracker debated trying another smile, but as wild as he must look to her, all dark and scarred, he opted for remaining expressionless. At least she’d stopped screaming.

As she panted for breath, he had a chance to study her more closely. Each angle of her face was cut with precision, the fine grain of her skin reflecting the sun like cream, the blue of her eyes shining with the brightness of a summer sky. Her lips were plump and soft and as silky looking as a rose petal. He remembered a poem he’d read once where the author compared his love to a red, red rose. Ari was like that. A beautiful flower that flourished no matter how much shit had been thrown at her. He might never know how much, but the Moraleses had started her healing, and being at Hell’s Eight would finish it. There was no judgment there, just acceptance. A lot of lost souls came to Hell’s Eight and found peace. Ari would, too. She had a sister and a niece to love her. A family waiting to claim her. All Tracker had to do was get her there.

Looking into her terrified eyes, he remembered that silent scream that couldn’t find a voice, imprisoning her in a memory from which he couldn’t save her. Tracker wanted to promise her that he’d hunt down the men who’d done this to her, and make them pay. But Caine had already made that promise and Hell’s Eight had already fulfilled it. That left her with a stranger’s word on something she likely wouldn’t believe. Not that Tracker didn’t think she wouldn’t appreciate knowing it someday. Just not today.

“Ma’am.” Where the hell was Vincente and his wife? “I don’t have the knife anymore. And my gun belt is clear over there by your feet.”

She blinked. For a heartbeat Tracker thought he saw sanity in Ari’s eyes. She licked her lips. Her gaze locked with his and then went to the gun belt.

He read her intent before she dived, but he wasn’t fast enough to catch her before she got her hands around the pistol. If his reflexes had been a hair slower, he wouldn’t have gotten there in time to stop her from blowing his brains out. He caught her hand, gun belt and all, letting their momentum roll them over, taking as much of the force of the fall on his shoulder as he could.

“Let go. Those guns have a hair trigger.”

She sank her teeth into the back of his hand. He swore and held on. One wrong move and she’d kill them both.

“Dammit! Let go!” What she lacked in muscle she made up for in wiggle. It was all he could do to keep her finger off the trigger. He pressed her down into the dirt, using more and more of his weight until she went limp beneath him.

“Ma’am?”

Ari didn’t respond. Tracker carefully removed the pistol and gun belt from her grip. She didn’t fight. He stood. She continued to lie in the dirt at his feet.

He’d thought it odd that she didn’t have scars from her ordeal. She did. He’d only been able to see what was uncovered. And all it had taken to bring them out was one fool, half-naked Indian reaching for his knife. Hell.

You’re ugly enough to scare a bad woman decent.

Once again his father had been proved right. The older Tracker got, the more he began to accept that the insults his dad had tossed out in Tracker’s youth were actually truths he’d been too stubborn to accept. The proof lay prostrate on the ground at his feet.

It wasn’t right that Ari lay in the dirt like trash thrown aside. Looking at her there, her skirt hiked around her thighs, her beautiful blond hair a tangle around her shoulders, he grimaced. It was easier than it should be to imagine her time with the Comancheros, to envision the hell she’d been through. They’d probably walked away from her, leaving her just like that when their lust was spent. Left her to rot in the devastation of her soul, this woman who had been created to be cherished.

Tracker wasn’t any different from the Comancheros. Faced with Ari’s reaction, faced with his own demons, he wanted to walk away, too. Instead, he found himself kneeling, sliding his hand beneath her head, lifting her to his chest.

“It’s going to be all right, Ari. I promise.”

Her hair smelled like sweet flowers and heaven, her skin like vanilla and spice. Innocence and passion, a hint of who she might have been if she hadn’t been stolen, raped, sold. Looking toward the house, making sure no one watched, Tracker rested his forehead against hers.

“A lot of people have been looking for you a long time, little one.”

No one harder than him, for reasons he didn’t understand, except that he was driven. He took a napkin from where it had fallen and wiped at the smudge of dirt on her cheek. It felt right to be the one caring for her. Goddammit, he was losing his mind. This was dangerous. She was dangerous. It had to stop. Now.

“Goddammit, Vincente, I know you can hear me. Get out here.”

In Tracker’s experience, women in a swoon didn’t stay out long, and he didn’t want to trigger another bout of hysteria when she woke in his arms, en route to the house. So he sat there and held her, and pretended that he could make it all right, while he gave her a minute or two to come back to herself. After all she’d been through, she deserved that minute. And it was the only thing he could give her.

The screen door slammed. Vincente and a plump woman hurried out of the house. As soon as they reached Tracker’s side, Vincente was apologizing and the woman was fussing. Tracker handed Ari over to Josefina and glared at her husband. “Why?”

“I did not think she would have such a reaction. She has been doing so well lately.”

“She’s not your daughter.”

Vincente shook his head. “Our daughter died in childbirth. Our hearts were so empty, and then we found this one and it was another chance.”

A second chance to love. Not many got them. “So you loved her so much you sent her out here to be scared out of her wits?”

“No. I know who you are, Ranger.” Vincente took the napkin, wetted it and handed it to his wife. “There was no danger to her.”

“Just to her sanity.”

“Yes, but we hoped…” The old man sighed. “She is such a good daughter, a good mother. It is only when the bad times haunt her that this happens.”

Tracker’s breath caught. “Mother?”

“She was pregnant when we found her.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“It has not been easy.”

“She loves the child?”

“With all her heart.”

How the hell could Ari love a child who had to remind her of the hell she’d survived?

Josefina looked up as Ari moaned. “She’s waking. You should leave.”

“I can’t.”

“You must.”

Tracker looked at Ari. He’d promised to bring her home, no matter how he found her, sane or crazy. “Not without her.”

Chapter Three

They settled on a compromise. Tracker retreated to the barn, and the Moraleses took Ari to the house. He watched as she stumbled between them up the path, clearly disoriented, yet trusting the older couple in a way that suggested they’d done this many times before. As they made their way to the back door, Josefina kept her body between Ari and Tracker. She tossed wary looks over her shoulder at him as she shielded Ari protectively. What was more interesting, though, were the glares she shot her husband. Obviously, the woman blamed Vincente for the incident, which reinforced Tracker’s own sense of being set up. Shoving his hat on his head, he swore and closed the barn door. He hoped the old woman gave the old man hell and indigestion.

An hour later, Tracker sat on the bed in the small but comfortable bedroom at the front of the barn, still stewing. The old one owed him an explanation. The vague excuse he’d tossed out at the washhouse wasn’t going to cut it. Tracker disliked being anyone’s pawn. He disliked people who tried to manipulate him.

The Ari he’d met at the wash shed was the woman he’d been expecting to find—traumatized by her experiences, tortured by her memories, rekindling her past in everyday events. A woman broken by tragedy. He’d thought he’d prepared himself for the reaction she might have to his appearance. After all, her attackers had been men like him. Men who wore their violent history in their eyes, on their skin and in their dress. Men who killed as easily as they laughed. Men who did what they wanted and to hell with the consequences. But Tracker could have avoided seeing that woman if Vincente had handled the introduction differently. Why the hell had the old man forced the issue? Had he wanted Ari to fear Tracker?

He grabbed his pistol from his gun belt where it hung by the head of the bed. Grains of sand clung to the metal. Desi said there was a difference between him and the Comancheros, and maybe there was. He wasn’t one to prey on the weak, but he’d done things in the name of revenge that would scare her curly hair straight and take the look of respect from her eyes. Things that kept him taking bigger and more dangerous bounties, because they took him to places where he was comfortable, places where there was no right and wrong, just a man’s ability to come out on top in a fight.

Tracker yanked his saddlebags toward him. He was very good at coming out on top.

Lately, the line between an outlaw and himself had been growing vague in his mind. As the years passed, killing had become easier in some ways, yet harder in others. Tracker could still pull the trigger, but it bothered him more that whenever such a deed was done, justified or not, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Right was right and wrong was wrong; that’s the way it was out here. The way it had always been. So why wasn’t he comfortable settling with that anymore? Why did every bounty he took now involve a moral debate inside himself if it went sour? Why was it getting harder to live with pulling the trigger? Why was he now seeing the faces of the men he killed, reliving the battles at night when he should be sleeping? Shit. Tracker was who he was. Better than he could have been, not as good as he should have been. He was an Ochoa. Outlaw, killer, bounty hunter, Texas Ranger.

He tugged his cleaning kit out of a saddlebag. The smell of gun oil blended with the scents of hay and cow as he opened the oiled leather wrap. All familiar, all comforting. He took another breath, seeking the edge that the familiar gave him against the anger seething inside.

Laying the cleaning rod aside along with the rags, he began disassembling the gun. It was a daily ritual and as soothing as the scents around him. It was also necessary. Dirty guns misfired. Misfires on the other guy’s part were a good thing. Misfires on his end of the battle were dead-before-his-time bad.

The outer barn door opened. He could tell from the sound of footsteps crossing the floor that the owner was small. He could tell from the swish of skirts that the owner of those footsteps was female. Josefina with his breakfast, no doubt.

“I’m in my room,” he called out.

It was as natural as breathing to prop his rifle across his lap just in case. It was rare that a woman came to his room intent on murder, but it had happened a time or two. Such occurrences tended to make a man wary. And he’d seen the anger in Josefina’s eyes. Clearly, she wasn’t ready to give up her daughter, though apparently Vincente was. The why of that was a puzzle to be solved. As was how they knew Ari’s name. A woman with no past would nave no name.

There was no response. Maybe Josefina didn’t speak English. “Estoy en mi quarto.”

The footsteps halted just outside his door.

The hair on the back of his neck stirred. A tingle went down his spine. “You can come in. I’m decent.”

Metal rattled against china. Whoever was outside his door was nervous. He cocked the hammer on the rifle.

“Come in.”

The door swung open.

“Hello.” The distinct Eastern tones gave away the identity of who stood in the door. Ari. Tracker tilted the rifle downward and slowly replaced the hammer as shock ricocheted through him. He blew out a breath.

Ari stood in the doorway, a napkin-covered tray in her hand. She was the last person he expected to see. Tracker stood and leaned the rifle against the wall. He took off his hat. “Hello.”

The tray rattled. Ari licked her lips. Her gaze didn’t meet his, and her voice shook along with the tray. “I wanted to bring you your breakfast.”

She was lying.

“Why?”

She blinked and licked her lips again. The plates again rattled on the tray. He took a step forward and removed his breakfast from her grasp.

He smiled. “My stomach might cut my throat if a second breakfast lands on the ground.”

Her gaze flicked to his before retreating back to the floor. Shit, it was always a mistake to smile.

“I’m sorry.”

It was a common statement, expected even, considering what had happened. He hated hearing it from her. As he placed the tray on the small pine dresser to the right of the door, he took the opportunity to study Ari from the corner of his eye. She wore a pink calico-print skirt, with a white, buttoned-down blouse. Nothing was out of place. Every button was buttoned; her shirt was evenly tucked inside the waistband. Her shoes were freshly polished. It was almost as if, through impeccable grooming, she’d tried to erase the craziness of earlier. Hell, she’d even managed to tame the intriguing wildness of her hair, corralling it into a neat braid, coiled up in a tight bun anchored at the base of her neck.

A few rebellious tendrils tickled her nape, bringing his eye to the long, elegant line of her throat and the daintiness of her ears. He didn’t normally notice a woman’s ears, but Ari’s were cute, with lobes that just begged to be nibbled. His gaze naturally traveled down the side of her neck, following a tempting path to the pulse beating in the hollow of her throat. He wanted to sprinkle kisses along that path, touch that too-fast pulse with his tongue, take her in his arms and promise her again that everything would be all right. Son of a bitch, what was it about the woman that made him think in terms of suicidal acts? He wasn’t some sort of knight in shining armor. He was a fucking outlaw turned lawman. No better than he had to be in any situation. He had nothing to give a woman like her.

Tracker straightened. Ari’s glance cut to the rifle, to his face, then his hands. He knew how they looked to her. Sun darkened and scarred, they were as ugly as his visage. About the time the urge to tuck them out of sight got overwhelming, she looked away. Even her embarrassed blush was pretty.

“My parents told me…”

The flush on her cheeks became fiery. He waited for her to continue. She cleared her throat and smoothed her palms down her skirt. He wondered if they were sweating. She tried again.

“My parents said I had an…episode with you.”

Her uneasiness was rubbing off on him. He took a step back toward the bed, giving her some room to breathe. “That’s one way to put it.”

She kept giving the pistol wary glances. “Did I hurt you?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re wiggly but not lethal.”

She went still, blinked. He could almost see the wheels turning in her mind, see her searching for a memory. Saw the moment she gave up searching. “Oh, good.”

He could let it go or bring it out in the open. He opted for the latter. “You don’t remember what happened?”

She shook her head. Her gaze left his and her lip slid between her teeth. She looked very young right then. Too young and too innocent to have been through what he knew she had. “No.”

“Did Vincente and Josefina fill you in?”

Her hands, which had been smoothing her skirt, now clutched it. “No. They used to try, but I’d go craz…” She shook her head, took a breath and started over. “I’m sorry. I thought I was getting better.”

“This has been going on awhile?”

“Yes.”

“How often?”

This time when she looked at him, it was with resentment. With a snap, she shook out her skirt. As if snapping material snapped her spine into place, she stood up straight and looked him dead in the eye. This was the Ari who haunted his dreams.

“I owe you an apology, Mr. Ochoa, not an explanation.”

“Sorry. I kind of take it personal like when a pretty woman tries to shoot me.”

The color left her face and she swayed. He grabbed her arm. Christ, she didn’t have enough bulk to keep his fingers from meeting.

“I tried to shoot you?” she whispered.

“Whispering doesn’t change the fact.”

Her fingers touched his. “I won’t faint.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“It’s just a shock.” She licked her lips. “Hearing what I do when I get like that.”

He studied the paleness of her cheeks, the shadows darkening her blue eyes. He considered saying something outrageous just to get the blush back.

“You really don’t remember what you do, do you?”

“No.”

He released her arm. “That has got to be as scary as he—heck.”

Her right hand moved to cover the spot he’d touched. To remove or to hold on to the sensation? Tracker shook his head, disgusted with himself for the weakness that had him hoping it was the latter.

“It can be.”

“And that’s your explanation?”

She shrugged and gathered handfuls of her skirt with her fingers, gathering her composure as she did so. She was obviously humiliated. “I’m sorry I behaved oddly, and I’m sorry if it scared you.”

The last was said in a rush. She turned on her heel and headed out the door.

“I wasn’t scared,” he called after her. Ari could leave him many ways, angry, happy, but not humiliated.

Her footsteps stopped. There was a swish of skirts as she turned, and then the sound of her footsteps coming back. And damned if they didn’t sound angry. She stopped in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. He wondered if she would still stand that way if she knew how uncertain it made her appear. Maybe she wouldn’t even care. Compared to crazy, uncertainty was quite a step up.

“You weren’t?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“I could say because you were scared enough for the both of us.”

Her eyelids lowered. At her left temple, a curl was working loose, he noted absently. “But you won’t.”

It was an order. A rather intriguing one, considering how scared she’d been before.

“No, I won’t.”

“Then why weren’t you afraid?”

He gave her the truth. “Because I’m one mean son of a bitch.”

She didn’t blink at the curse or the declaration. “I see.”

Did she? He doubted it. He waved her to the lone chair in the room. “So now that I’ve come clean, why don’t you?”

“About what?”

About how she’d ended up here. About how she’d kept her name. About how in a part of the state where lawlessness was rampant and blond women were money on the hoof, she existed peacefully with only an old man for protection.

“How about starting with how long you’ve been here.”

“A little over a year. Ever since my husband was murdered.”

Pretending nonchalance he didn’t feel, Tracker slid the tray off the dresser and onto his lap. There were beans, rice, scrambled eggs sausages and tortillas on the plate. He forked a bit of each into a tortilla. “You were there?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

She licked her lips again, leaving them moist and shiny. They were redder and more swollen than before, as if she’d been chewing on them. They would look just like that after a man’s kiss. His kiss, Tracker admitted to himself. No matter that she wasn’t for him, he wanted Ari like hell on fire. Just another one of life’s little jokes.

Straightening her skirt around her legs, Ari took one of those deep breaths he’d learned meant she was struggling for composure. The breath pressed her small breasts up against the cotton of her bodice. It was too easy for Tracker to imagine what they’d look like naked. He wondered if her nipples would be pale or dark, or maybe as red as her lips. He liked the thought of them being red from his attentions.

He mentally shook himself. He was little more than an animal. A woman like Ari would never look twice at a man like him, even before the events of the last two years. And after? Shit. She’d run like hell.

His cock couldn’t care less what his brain said, however. It responded to her in a purely primitive manner, swelling and stretching to life.

Ari motioned to the tray in his lap. “Your food is getting cold.”

“You avoiding my question?”

“What if I am?”

He took a chance that pretending disinterest would make her comfortable. “Then I’ll rein in my curiosity and stop asking.”

For a moment he wasn’t certain it would work. She crossed her ankles left over right. And then right over left. She licked her lips. Checked her bun. Sighed and then said, “I don’t know what happened.”

“You don’t remember?”

She shook her head and looked away. “I had a blow to my skull. I can’t remember anything before I opened my eyes and saw Vincente and Josefina looking down at me.”

That was convenient for the Moraleses. Tracker folded the tortilla around the contents. “Not even your husband?”

He took a bite of the tortilla. She shot him a glare. “I’m not crazy!”

He chewed and swallowed. “I didn’t say you were.”

She frowned and bit her lip. Her teeth were very white against the ruby-red flesh. If she kept biting her lips like that they were going to be raw. “Only a crazy woman couldn’t remember her husband.”

It was just a whisper, but it contained so much pain. He wanted to reach out and hold her, and tell her it was a blessing she couldn’t remember, a gift she should hold on to, because the truth was too horrible to be borne. Instead, he took another bite, chewed and swallowed, before saying, “Head wounds can be tricky.”

“That’s what the doctor said.”

“At least you have your child.”

Her whole expression softened. “Yes.”

Tracker set the tray aside. “How old is your baby?”

“Six months. He’s just beginning to crawl.”

The last of Tracker’s hunger left him. Six months was too old. Ari would have had to have gotten pregnant when she was with the Comancheros.