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“I don’t need you to tell me to breathe.”
Her bravado sparked a tug of admiration. The woman might be scared, but she wasn’t going to let him know it. The best way to deal with her so that she didn’t run screaming into the forest was to establish a rapport with her. Which meant he would have to learn more about her. He had to foster a degree of trust in this Eastern woman, because both their lives might come down to her obeying his orders without question. But he knew she wasn’t ready to hear that he was the temporary mayor of Trinity Falls and owned a bank. She’d think he was lying and become even more difficult to deal with.
“Why are you traveling alone?”
“You don’t recall?”
Her vivid green eyes looked.bewildered and, he thought with repugnance, filled with pity. Hell, she was back to treating him like a half-wit.
“Recall what?”
“I—I already explained that the wagon master was unwilling to slow his pace. And remember my books? The ones you wanted to leave behind at the fort—that large wooden structure with the big gate?”
He gritted his teeth so hard that his already aching jaw shot new waves of pam through his skull. “I meant, why were you alone in the first place? Most women travel west with their parents or husbands.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Parents are the people who give birth and raise you. A husband is a man a woman marries when she’s ready to start a family. A family—”
“I get your message.” Flags of scarlet decorated her cheeks.
Satisfaction warmed him. It was time Miss Amory understood how it felt to be treated like a simpleton.
“And?” he prompted.
“And what?” she snapped.
Logan realized he wasn’t making much headway in establishing a bond of trust between them, but at least she didn’t look as if she were in imminent danger of fainting.
“Why are you traveling alone?”
“It didn’t start out that way.” Her vibrant green eyes looked into the distance. “I was to make the trip with another family. Their oldest son was going to manage the team. At the last moment, however, their plans changed.”
Her explanation told him little. “Why did you decide to leave your home in the first place?”
Victoria’s already flushed face turned a brighter shade of pink. Logan sensed his question had struck a deep chord.
She was lying. That caught him off guard. She didn’t look like the kind of woman to prevaricate about anything. “And your parents let you go?”
“They. accepted my decision.”
There were a lot of things she wasn’t telling him. He sensed that leaving home had been painful for her.
“And your husband?” He was baiting her now, and he knew it.
She puffed up like a furious little red-feathered bird.
“I do not have a husband.”
“Fiancé?”
“That is hardly any of your business, Mr. Youngblood.”
“Call me Logan,” he commanded softly. “I intend to call you Victoria. It’s only fair I allow you the same privilege.”
She blinked at him. She’d done that before when something he said surprised her. The very feminine gesture appeared to be her way of getting her bearings.
“How do you know my first name?”
“You must have written it in every book you own.”
“Oh.” She studied him gravely. “Under the circumstances, I suppose it would be foolish not to be on a firstname basis.”
Such a well-bred, reluctant concession.
He liked the way her lips shaped her words—so precisely, so daintily. They were inviting lips—shaped with delicate fullness. Despite her mouth’s soft beauty, she didn’t look like the kind of woman to invite a kiss. Instead, she projected a directness that dared a man to cross the boundaries she’d set.
He pulled his gaze from hers before he did something totally asinine, like find out how those delectable lips tasted.
“Well, Victoria, what’s your answer?”
“My—my answer?”
“Are you engaged, married or widowed?”
Has any man been able to break through that formidable facade of yours?
“Mr. Young—”
“Logan,” he corrected firmly.
“Logan, ours is strictly a temporary association, and as I stated before, there’s no reason for you to know whether or not there’s someone. special in my life.”
“When this is over, suppose a man shows up, claiming you belong to him, and he demands to know what happened between us?”
“First of all, no such person exists.” Exasperation laced her cultured voice. “Second, the only thing that’s going to happen is that we’re going to reach Trinity Falls alive.”
It was hard to accept that the woman next to him was bound to no man. It was obvious from her independent manner that she felt no need to justify her single state. He tried to guess her age, which was no easy accomplishment.
A frown scrunched her lips. Her delicately proportioned chin was thrust at a disapproving angle. Her lashes were a golden red, reflecting the same tawny highlights that burnished her bound hair. She might have been eighteen, but her bearing was that of someone older, maybe twenty-four or twenty-six.
He scowled. She had no business being on her own, in the Idaho Territory or anywhere else. She was too attractive not to have a father, brother or husband watching over her. She was also too headstrong to be left to her own devices. Her present situation proved that. Good Lord, what if Windham had left a real hardened criminal locked up in the stockade? Victoria would have freed him and then been at the brute’s mercy.
His scowl deepened. For her own good, she needed to learn that a lone woman couldn’t go traipsing across the country as she pleased. Logan realized his sense of outraged possessiveness was illogical. Yet he couldn’t seem to help himself.
It had been this same sense of heretofore-unacknowledged protectiveness that resulted in his accepting Madison Earley as his ward. When a prospector showed up at the bank with the story that a white girl was living with the Shoshones, Logan had taken it upon himself to ride to Night Wolf’s camp and retrieve her. It had turned out that Madison’s mother had died a long time ago, and the child had been raised by her father, who’d been working a small gold claim.
Bushwhackers had murdered the man for his small cache of gold dust. Night Wolf’s tribe had sheltered Madison for a while, but dearly her place was with her own people. Logan could easily have sent her to an orphanage in the East, yet something within him had balked at casting her adrift in the world.
He shook his head. It was hard to believe he’d lived thirty years without knowing he had this lamentable streak of sentimentality coursing through his veins. It had been this same latent sense of caring, no doubt, that sent him to the fort to deliver Night Wolfs warning about the attack.
And now he was saddled with a woman who cherished her collection of rare books more than she valued her own life. She was wrong if she thought he’d yielded to her insistence to keep them. Tonight, when she was asleep, he meant to lighten the load the oxen were struggling with to get over the next small rise. By the time they reached Trinity Falls, she would be lucky to have one book left.
He leveled a hard glance at her. All right, maybe he would be selective. He’d let her keep Cooper’s ridiculously romantic yarn about the Mohicans. Louisa May Alcott was going to go, though. Little Women was a new novel and could be purchased at any bookshop.
His dark mood was appeased by the knowledge that the domineering woman would ultimately be put in her place. Logan visualized their arrival in town. He could see Victoria marching him off to the sheriff’s office, all self-righteous and determined to have him get his just punishments. It would be a pleasure to watch the entirely too smug woman discover that her prisoner was none other than the acting mayor and the president of Trinity Falls’s largest bank, along with a dozen other financial institutions.
He decided watching her eat crow would be the most satisfying thing he’d done in a long time. When the oxen seemed to hesitate cresting the next pine-covered slope, Logan reached for the whip to offer them a little encouragement.
His thoughts turned from Victoria to their immediate destination, a small tributary feeding into the Ruby River. They should reach it before dark. Once there, he might believe they had a chance of making it to town alive. They would be in Night Wolfs domain, and that much closer to keeping their scalps.
She’s not a complainer.
Logan’s mind again filled itself with thoughts about Victoria Amory. One way or another, he decided, he’d find out why she’d left Boston and what she planned to do in Trinity Falls.
Everything about her manner bespoke Eastern refinement.
There wasn’t a single reason for her to be running loose in the Idaho Territory. He knew one thing for sure; she wouldn’t be looking for work at Jubilee Joe’s or any of the other saloons dotting Main Street.
A grin caught him by surprise as he visualized the prim and proper Victoria Amory serving drinks at a local saloon. She’d probably present each glass of whiskey with a linen napkin and a severe warning about the moral dangers of intemperance.
The image of Victoria in a spangled red gown rose fully blown in Logan’s mind. The dress was low-cut, and short enough to show her knees. Her perky little breasts would be all but spilling out of the tight-fitting bodice and her ankles would be trim and well shaped. There would be a scattering of golden freckles across her creamy flesh, he was certain. Surely those impudent little spots wouldn’t stop at the high collar of her conservative green dress.
Logan swallowed, trying to curb his runaway imaginings. He couldn’t believe he was sitting next to this prissymannered female, seeing her in a flashy outfit that she’d probably rather be shot in than be seen wearing. It was the time he’d spent in the stockade, he assured himself, that was making his mind play tricks on him. That, and the fact that it had been a while since he’d been able to keep company with one of Trinity Falls’s cheerfully irreverent fancy women. Ever since Madison had become part of his life several months ago, he’d been reluctant to pursue his usual nighttime encounters with Cherry, Jasmine, or any of the other gals who didn’t demand a wedding ring in exchange for their favors.
That was definitely going to change when he returned to town. He would find a way to pick up the threads of his former life without tarnishing Madison’s world. Either that, or he was going to become a menace to decent women, because, like it or not, all he could do was think carnal thoughts about Victoria’s sensuously shaped mouth and her tidy little breasts and her gently flared hips and—
Lord, he was losing his mind. There was nothing the least bit appealing about the prudish woman. And he was going to keep repeating that small lie to himself all the way home.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_4fd72069-a7fd-5459-886a-a7f47aed73ad)
Slashes of twilight stalked the day’s waning brightness. Restless shadows scuttled beyond the ever-shrinking horizon, disappearing into gaping holes of blackness. Unpredictable crosscurrents of chilling breezes cut through Victoria’s clothing. She shivered, glancing uneasily about.
When Logan finally brought their team to a halt, night’s rapid descent had transformed the mood of the dense pine woods to one of danger.
“Well, we’re here.”
“Wh-where’s here?” That the question came out in a dazed squeak didn’t surprise her.
It required a spurt of determination for her not to scoot across the seat and draw closer to Logan. She was startled by the need to seek comfort from a near stranger, especially this intimidating one. Her self-sufficiency was a trait she’d always taken pride in. Yet tonight, in this alien landscape, she battled the urge to reach out and touch Logan’s sleeve, to reassure herself that she wasn’t alone in this isolated stretch of timberland.
Valiantly she subdued the treacherous weakness. He might not be the despicable criminal she’d originally thought, but it wouldn’t be wise to become too familiar with him. It had been drilled into her since girlhood that distinct barriers must be maintained between herself and any member of the opposite sex.
The one occasion when she’d violated that stricture had been when she tried to aid Horace Threadgill in his battle against a homicidal bee. Look where that innocent act had landed her! In the middle of a wilderness, in the company of a man who’d entered her life under the most suspect circumstances!
Logan stepped down from the wagon. “This is where we will spend the night.”
She squinted into the thickening darkness. Just beyond the oxen’s shifting feet, she made out the outline of a narrow stream cutting across the nearly invisible trail they’d been following.
“I’ll unhitch the team so they can drink,” he went on to say. “We’ll be on the move again at first light.”
He was back to issuing orders. Victoria was too sore and tired, though, to make an issue of that fact. All she wanted was to stretch out on a blanket under the wagon.
She climbed down, painfully aware of the numbed but tender portion of her anatomy that had endured the jarring slap of the lurching wagon seat for their seemingly endless day of travel. Her thigh muscles trembled, and for a moment she wasn’t sure her legs would support her. It was because of the relentless pace he’d set and the rough terrain they’d covered that she was feeling so battered.
She stood beside a broad-spoked wheel, shivering as the rising mountain wind buffeted her. She knew she ought to do something useful, like find the extra pan biscuits she’d made the night before, at the fort. Her mind seemed incapable of provoking her body to movement, however.
“Victoria?”
She started. Had Logan already finished freeing the oxen so that they could drink? Surely she hadn’t been idle that long.
“What?”
She raised her head and tried to focus her blurred vision on the towering figure that had materialized before her.
“You look dead on your feet.”
She was too tired to take offense at his blunt remark. How could one argue with the truth?
“I’ll be all right. Just give me a minute.”
The mumbled request floated from her lips while she continued to stand in a stupor, knowing she should be doing something, but lacking the energy to decide what that something was.
A pair of strong hands settled on her weary shoulders. “I know I pushed us hard today, Victoria.”
She wanted to shrug off the unexpected gentleness of his tone, just as she wanted to shrug off the weight of his firm touch. She was incapable of doing either. The concern that laced his deep voice pierced a vulnerable spot within her. A sting of moisture filled her eyes. His hands massaged her sore shoulder muscles in slow, steady circles.
She tried to stand straight. She’d come this far alone. She was a resilient woman who didn’t need the respect of her parents, the loyalty of her sister or the association of friends. And she certainly didn’t need this man to offer comfort.
To Victoria’s horror, she felt the burning sensation of tears that would not be denied. The hot wetness welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks in emotional rivers of release. Somehow her face became pressed against Logan’s shirt.
She hated breaking down. She wanted to be strong. Besides, he was her prisoner. If anyone should be weeping, it was him. The more she struggled to subdue her tears, however, the freer they fell. His palms stroked her back. She felt as if she’d found shelter from a fierce mountain storm within the arms of this menacing stranger.
Which wouldn’t do at all, the logical side of her mind pointed out. As the flow of tears ebbed, that inner voice grew louder. She sought to extricate herself from his surprisingly tender embrace. That was what her mind instructed her to do, anyway. Her body seemed to have ideas of its own, however, and she couldn’t quite seem to pull free.
He held her with more than the indisputable strength of his arms. He held her with the silent solace another human being could transmit to another. The powerful cadence of his heartbeat kept time with a mysterious rhythm that soothed her ragged sense of control. His earthy, manly scent permeated her senses.
The feeling that she was close to experiencing something rare, something meaningful, momentarily drifted through her numbed thoughts before dissipating into the night air.
With a final, and this time successful, lunge for selfmastery, Victoria eased herself from Logan’s hold. As before, when he’d assisted her from the wagon, she thought she detected the smallest hesitation on his part before he released her.
“I’m sorry. I can’t think what came over me.”
Glaringly aware that Logan’s shirtfront had been drenched by her tearful assault, she braced herself for the words that would reveal his male superiority at her deplorable weakness.
In a like circumstance, her father would have been coldly contemptuous of her feminine frailty. Though, when she was growing up, she’d never known for certain whether her father’s disdainful attitude toward any form of human weakness was because he was a judge and therefore immune to sentiment, or because it went against his nature to view with patience any female shortcoming.
“It’s my fault,” Logan shocked her by saying. “I drove us pretty hard. What you need is food and a good night’s sleep.”
“Those chokecherries didn’t go very far.” She took a surreptitious swipe at her eyes, striving to compose herself.
A huge yawn came from nowhere, overwhelming her. She pushed back the hair that had fallen into her eyes. Her fingers brushed her sunbonnet’s wide brim, and she reached up to jerk it off. “Did you think to bring the extra pan biscuits from last night?”
