Caine's Reckoning (9 page)

They did—he did—but as much as he admired Desi’s courage, he wasn’t about to marry her. Although the thought wasn’t as distasteful as it should have been. “Marriage is a forever thing, Padre.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not a forever kind of man.”

“Then perhaps it’s time you changed.”

“Might be too late in the day for that miracle.”

“Are you going back on your promise?”

This time Caine cut a glance at Desi. She was staring at the smiling gambler with resigned horror, sure Caine would go back on his word to the priest and to her. Jesus, he wanted to walk Chaser over there and kick those damn shiny teeth down the gambling bastard’s throat just for looking at her. “No.”

“Without my approval this marriage can’t take place,” the gambler piped up, clearly looking to shorten his life.

A shotgun cocked on Caine’s right. “Then give it.” Sam’s was short and to the point.

He didn’t give his approval, but he shut up, which was all the same to Caine.

Caine clucked his tongue, guiding Chaser to where Desi stood. He holstered the rifle and motioned for her to hold up her hands. He pulled his knife from his boot top and cut through her bonds. “A woman shouldn’t get married with her hands tied.”

“I don’t want to marry.”

Neither did he, but neither of them had much of a choice. Forced by circumstance and honor, there was only one path for both of them. “Would you rather stay here?”

“No.”

“Then we get hitched.”

He waited for the priest to reach them. His robes flapped around his legs in the breeze. He should have looked ridiculous, womanly in the garb, but he didn’t. He looked what he was. A man at peace with his life and the choices he’d made. Caine envied him. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt calm.

Since the day the Mexican army had slaughtered their entire town, shouting
“death”
as they’d murdered men, women and children alike, he’d been consumed with a rage for justice that wouldn’t let him rest. The same rage flowed over him now as the men he’d mentally marked gathered together, voices rising and falling in an angry cadence, occasionally punctuating their frustration with sharp gestures. His finger ached on the trigger of his revolver. It’d be so easy to take them out. To save everyone the expense of a trial for what they’d done to Desi. So very easy to make them suffer.

“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”

Caine didn’t take his eyes off the men, controlling Chaser’s impatient prance with a light touch on the reins. “This time, Padre, the good Lord is going to have to get in line.”

D
esi huddled deeper into the warmth of her borrowed coat. She pulled the collar up against her cheeks and watched as Caine hunkered down beside the saddlebags and fished something out of the depths. Firelight flicked shadows over his big form, elongating his silhouette into the deeper gloom between the rocks. Making him more than he was, but more distant, too….

“You hungry?”

The question was tossed over his shoulder.

“I’m fine.”

He paused. The glance he cast her was knowing. “I seriously doubt that.”

The shame of that burned to her soul. There weren’t words strong enough to cut him down. She lifted her chin and pulled the cold around her, letting it seep into the well that wedged permanently in her soul. “Nevertheless, it’s true.”

He took his big knife out of its sheath. The rasp of metal on leather was loud. He opened the packet on the ground. Firelight caught in the blade and reflected back as he brought it down. He took the food and held it out to her. “It’s not too tasty, but it will fill the hole in your gut.”

She looked at the handful of dried meat, then back up at him. It was going to take a lot more than jerky to fill the hole in her. She let go of the edge of the coat, watching his hands as she reached for the meal. Watching for any sign of meanness. She was hungry, but not hungry enough to be stupid. She stopped halfway there. Caught between hunger and wariness.

Around them there was only darkness. Just she and Caine trapped in this intimate insubstantial circle of light. Tracker and Sam had gone back to town to get her things. She’d told them it wasn’t necessary, but they’d insisted on some notion that a woman needed her things about her. Maybe a woman did, but her things had been stripped from her long ago, and all she had now was her pride, determination and…her husband. Caine’s fingers twitched and she jerked her hand back.

She took a breath, eyes locked on his hand. Beyond that twitch of his fingers, he didn’t move.

“You’d do better to watch my eyes.”

The low, drawled comment was as startling as the twitch of those fingers.

She clutched at the neck of the coat again, watching his hand, her heart beating too fast to breathe right. “What?”

“If you want a heads-up when I’m about to turn ornery, you’d do better to watch my eyes.”

She had to look then. Caine was watching, no expression on his face, no discernible indication of what he was thinking. Just watching her as if she were some sort of puzzle he intended to figure out. She hated the way that made her feel. Helpless, stupid, easy prey. She snatched the food from his hand, almost whimpering with the stress as her fingers touched his, expecting him to grab her wrist as she grabbed the food. He didn’t move, and his hand stayed where it was even after she had tucked her hand back into the shelter of her body. She forced a normal tone. “What good would it do me to watch your eyes when it’s your hand I’m worried about?”

“It’d give you that split-second warning that could make the difference between life and death.” He waved to the food in her hand with the knife before going back to the chunk and cutting off another piece. “Eat.”

Her throat was so dry she didn’t think she could work up the spit to swallow, so she just sat there, huddled by the fire and waited for Caine to turn his attention to something else. She waited in vain. He brought the meat to his mouth and took a bite, revealing strong white teeth and the hint of a smile. He motioned to the food pressed into her middle. “It’s not going to soften up no matter how hard you squeeze it.”

She wasn’t just squeezing the meat, she had a death grip on it. And he was right. It wasn’t softening up. Feeling like a fool, she brought it to her mouth. She took a bite, chewing it. It was tough and grainy and sat like sand in her dry mouth. There was no way she could swallow it. She chewed until her jaws tired, and it still didn’t soften.

Caine turned away. Shadows from the fire stretched like dark flames up over his shoulders, blending into the deeper shadow cast by the brim of his hat. He was a very powerful man. She remembered how he’d held off the town, how comfortable he’d been in enforcing his will. Fighting him over food she needed wasn’t a battle in which she wanted to engage him. She glanced down and chewed more.

A canteen appeared in her line of vision. “This might help.”

She took it carefully, but without the hesitation of before, which made her feel better. She hadn’t become a total coward.

The water was cool and fresh. He must have refilled it before the others left, because not at any point since had she been left alone. The meat softened, and she swallowed. Her stomach rumbled with eagerness as the small bit of food landed. Caine’s laugh hit her pride like a blow.

“Been a long time since I heard anyone’s stomach get excited about jerky.” The humor in his words didn’t linger in his expression. His mouth was set in a straight line and his eyes narrowed. Worse, they were back to studying her in that way that made her throat close. She brought the jerky back to her lap. “I can’t eat with you watching me.”

She expected him to argue or to spit out a “Tough.” She did not expect him, after a brief pause, to hand her his piece of jerky and to turn his attention to the tiny fire. “I don’t want your food.”

“There’s more coming.”

But not for a while. “I can wait.”

“Gypsy, there’s not enough meat on your bones to wait five minutes, let alone an hour.”

Despite the fact she didn’t care what he thought, it stung that he saw her as scrawny. “I’ve always been lean.”

He turned back. “Maybe so, but now you’re in need of fattening up.”

For the slaughter.
The phrase cut through her mind. “It’s not your problem.”

“You’re my wife. Everything about you is my problem.”

“We’re not really married.”

She suddenly had his full attention. “Sweetheart, I made a promise to the padre and to God. It doesn’t get more married than that.”

“I meant you don’t have to stay married. You can get rid of me anytime.”

“Really? And here I thought we were hitched for life.”

She gripped the meat so hard, her short nails cut through the tough strings. “They’re not going to let me go.”

“Uh-huh.” He indicated the barely touched meal. “Your stomach will be happier if you eat that rather than play with it.”

“They’ll come after me.”

He took the canteen from her hand and took a swig. She watched his throat work over the edge of the poncho. Watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down. Where was his worry? He had to be worried. “James and his friends are not nice people.”

He handed the canteen back to her. When she took it, his hand came up under her chin, tapping the bottom, bringing her gaze up.

“One of these days I want you to tell me how ‘not nice’ they were.”

She shook her head. She would never tell anyone how it was.

He continued as if she hadn’t denied him. “But for now, you just need to know that they are no longer a threat to you.”

She bit her lip. She couldn’t believe that, either. James, Bryan and Carl had enjoyed having her at their disposal too much to just let her be spirited away. And they thought too much of themselves not to take it personally that she had been. Still, Caine had risked his life for her. She owed him at least a warning. “They’ll kill you.”

Unbelievably, he smiled. A genuine smile full of amusement. “They’re welcome to try.”

He didn’t understand. “They won’t be up front about it.”

He dropped his hand from her chin. “Never thought they would be.”

God, he was arrogant. “If you let me go, they’ll leave you alone.”

He picked up a stick and snapped it in two. “If I let you go, you’d have no protection.”

“I could hide.”

“Sweetheart, no matter where you ran, men would find you and you’d be back in bed.”

“I don’t want a man.”

He added small sticks to the tiny fire. “I don’t remember mentioning that you’d be there willingly.”

He fed the fire another stick.

“I won’t be taken again.”

“On that we agree. My wife stays with me.”

He was really stuck on the wife thing. It obviously meant more to him than it did to her.

“I wish you could forget that we married.”

His gaze traveled slowly down her body before taking an equally slow trip back up. She knew she looked like hell, and knew he couldn’t see a thing through the bulky coat, but she still felt like she was standing before him naked, with no secrets and no protection.

“That’s not something I have any interest in forgetting.”

He wanted her sexually. No doubt he relished the fact that she was at his disposal, probably even expected her to just lie back and spread her legs so he could take his pleasure. She glared at him, anger serving as her friend, giving her the strength to say, “I’ll fight you.”

His eyebrow kicked up. “Did you fight them?”

With everything she’d had, which hadn’t amounted to anything in the long run. “Yes.”

His head canted to the side. “Did it do you any good?”

Up until they’d tied her, it had. “No.”

He handed her back the canteen and placed his fingers under the back of her other hand, pushing the food to her mouth. His voice was incredibly gentle when he asked, “Then what makes you think I’m going to be worried about you fighting me?”

Nothing. Nothing at all. She sank her teeth into the meat, gnawing on the realization that what she thought or wanted didn’t matter here any more than it had mattered anywhere else. And with each chew, she was aware of how he watched her. The food coalesced in a hard lump in her mouth. Caine passed her the canteen. She didn’t lift it to her mouth. There was just no way she could swallow anything with his words sashaying through her head. She turned and spat the food into the dirt. His sigh brought her right back around again.

“I can see I’m going to have to change my ways around you if I don’t want you wasting away.”

“You don’t like skinny women?”

“What I like or don’t like is immaterial. I’m married.” He motioned to the food in her hand. “You going to eat that?”

Was he planning on making her? “I couldn’t.”

“Because I made you mad?”

What did he want? A yes? A no? She settled on a shrug.

He took the food from her hand and wrapped it up. It seemed to take him forever to put it away in the saddlebags, though his movements were smooth and efficient. It was just her own sense of time that was off-kilter. A twig snapped in the darkness beyond the small circle of light. Her heart leapt in her throat.