Chapter 3 #2
This morning he’d handed her a pair of boy’s pants and shirt.
“We’re going riding over a mountain, Miss Randall. If you’ve never ridden sidesaddle before, I don’t advise it now,” he added, looking at her skirt.
A becoming blush colored her cheeks as she apparently debated proprieties.
“I won’t take you if you don’t use good sense,” he said, and she’d hurried back to her room, the clothes clutched tightly to her. No complaints, no exclamations of horror. He liked that. He didn’t want to like it, but he did.
During their last stop, he’d watched her carefully as she untied a case from her saddle and opened it, taking out a pad and leaning against a tree as she sketched.
He wondered what she was sketching, but he didn’t ask.
He wanted to keep conversation at a minimum.
He took the opportunity to place a stone under one of the mare’s shoes.
That was an hour ago. She would start limping anytime now, and he would take Miss Randall on his own horse.
She would realize damn soon they were not going where she thought they were going.
They had nearly reached the turnoff to the cabin when the mare started to limp.
“Mr. Smith.”
He turned, knowing what he would see.
He dismounted and went to the mare, picking up the hoof from the ground and giving it a superficial look. “You’ll have to ride with me, Miss Randall.”
Her eyes widened, and he noted a flicker of apprehension. He held out his hand, and she hesitated, making him wonder whether she suspected something. But then why should she?
She finally took his hand and slid off the mare. He mounted and helped her up behind him. A mile later he left the trail and turned into the woods. “A shorter way,” he explained.
Her arms tightened as they climbed upward. For a novice she was doing well.
And then they stopped. He took off his bandanna and turned around in the saddle. “I’m sorry, miss, but I’m going to have to blindfold you.”
Her body went rigid, and she swallowed. “I won’t hurt you,” he said, “but this is … necessary.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to. We’re just taking a small detour.”
“You don’t work for my father.” It was an accusation, not a question.
He didn’t say anything, just tied the bandanna around her eyes. “Now keep your arms around me,” he said. “It’s a steep ride.”
“If I don’t?” The voice trembled just a little.
“I’ll tie them there.”
She was silent, and he took that for assent. “You won’t be hurt,” he said again.
“Then why …?”
“Good reasons, Miss Randall. Now you just hang on.”
Shea didn’t know how she stayed so still, except she was too frightened to do anything else.
It seemed she had been riding behind Ben Smith for hours. She had no idea where they were, even if she could escape.
Think! Dear God, think!
His gun. He wore a gun on his hip, as did every man she’d seen in Casey Springs. If she could reach down and grab it …
And then what? She had no idea how to fire one.
She tried to contain the shudder that ran through her. She wouldn’t show him she was afraid. But why did he want her? Where was he taking her? She could think of only one reason, and yet he didn’t seem the type for rape.
Good reasons, he’d said.
What kind of good reasons?
Her father. Ben Smith had heard her say Jack Randall was her father.
According to everything she’d heard in Denver and Casey Springs, he was a respected man, a good man who’d given money to build a school and church. Everyone seemed to like him.
Money then? Ransom? The clerk at the ticket office had said there were outlaws in this area.
Her throat tightened. Why had she been such a fool? Why had she accepted this too-convenient offer?
Because she’d been so expectant. So eager. So stubbornly determined to get to the Circle R Ranch.
And now she would bring trouble to the man she’d wanted to impress. If that was what Ben Smith had in mind. Or was it something uglier?
She suddenly didn’t want to touch the man in front of her. Her hands started to slide from around his waist.
“Put them back.” The voice was rough. “Clasp them together. And don’t even think about the gun.”
Or else …
The unsaid words hung between them.
“You won’t like being tied.”
Her hands clasped around him. This way, with her hands free, she still had a chance to escape.
She didn’t know how long they continued to ride. She ached all over now, her muscles sore from riding on the backbone of his horse, her body stiff with tension.
They finally came to a stop, and she let go of him, expecting another order, but none came.
He lifted her down to the ground, and she reached for the blindfold, frantically tearing it off, just as two men came out of a log cabin.
“What the hell?” she heard the tall one say in a deep, harsh voice.
Her eyes were riveted on him. It was a familiar face, one she could never forget. It was the face she had studied in the newspaper clipping.
He was older. Harder. But undeniably he was the man who had betrayed his country and stolen from it.
The man her father had sent to prison.
It was the face of Rafferty Tyler!
Fear had been building in Shea for the past few hours. Now that fear turned to terror, something she’d never felt before. Her already unsteady legs threatened to give way, and she found her hand going to the saddle for support.
But she couldn’t keep her gaze from the man’s face. It was an artist’s dream—or a captive’s nightmare. His eyes were a vivid blue-green, like clean water playing over white sand, and his thick sandy hair seemed brushed with gold dust. Nothing else about him was poetic, though.
His face seemed carved from rock. Lines etched away from his eyes, and she knew they weren’t caused by laughter but by harder, unpleasant emotions.
None of the features—the eyes, the mouth, the jaw—gave anything away as he studied her with cool indifference.
He turned to Ben. “Why in the hell did you bring her here?” His voice sounded hoarse, almost rusty.
“She says she’s Randall’s daughter.”
Like a fly caught in a spider’s web, Shea watched, fascinated, as the man closed his eyes for a moment, as if trying to digest a particularly difficult piece of information, and then opened them.
He studied her closely, but with no definable difference in expression, and she wondered whether that granite face was capable of revealing anything. “He doesn’t have a daughter,” he finally said in that rusty whisper.
Ben shrugged. “She said she was. She was trying to get to Rushton. I thought it was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Shea hated being talked about as if she weren’t there, like an object of curiosity rather than a person. But she stayed silent, still transfixed by the face that came as close to stone as one could.
The blue-green eyes turned back to her. “How can you be Randall’s daughter?”
“The usual way, I imagine,” she said, surprising herself with the tart reply.
“You’re a liar.” The accusation was stinging, like the sharp crack of a whip.
Shea stiffened. She didn’t lie. She had never lied. Her mother hadn’t permitted lies. But then, she thought with sudden bleakness, her mother had told the biggest one of all. She thought about defending herself and then stayed silent. She owed this man no explanation, no answer.
Ben stepped forward as if to give protection, but she couldn’t trust him. He had brought her here.
Shea looked at the man next to Tyler. He looked a little like Ben Smith, and she wondered whether they could be brothers. He also looked more approachable than Tyler. But then almost anyone would.
“I … I don’t know what you want, but I have some money.…” A revealing quaver was in her voice.
“What’s your name?” the man next to Tyler said.
Shea didn’t know what to say. She didn’t exactly know who she was, not anymore, or what these people wanted with the man she believed to be her father.
She wasn’t sure she knew anything anymore.
But that was something she wasn’t going to admit.
She couldn’t show weakness, not to Tyler.
He would jump on weakness, use it. Her only defense was a show of strength, no matter how difficult it was, how much she had to hide the tremors that shook her.
She balled her fists to keep the shaking from showing.
“Damnation,” Tyler said. “Who in hell are you?” His voice held a hint of impatience.
Shea’s chin went up.
“Why did you say you were Randall’s daughter? Or are you one of his whores?” There was contempt in his voice, and Shea knew an anger she’d never known before. He was judging her father. He was judging her.
She was grateful when her anger exploded, eclipsing the fear. “What right have you to ask anything?”
“Oh, you know who I am?” Softness crept into his voice, a softness that she sensed was deceptive.
But she couldn’t stop. She was too angry to be cautious, too angry to be afraid. She wouldn’t be afraid of a man who betrayed his country during war. “A traitor,” she said unwisely.
He fairly purred as he moved toward her. “Your … father tell you that?”
There was something menacing in the graceful way he walked. She stepped back, but the horse prevented no more than a few inches retreat.
She tried to jerk her gaze away from his eyes, which seemed to impale her. “You have no right—”
“I have every right, if you are who you say you are.” He stopped in front of her, and she had the impression of barely contained anger.
She was tall, but she felt inconsequential in front of him.
He was several inches over six feet, and his cotton shirt and denim trousers did nothing to hide a very hard, lean body.
But it was the cold austereness of his face that really was intimidating.
Intimidating and, in some primitive way, mesmerizing.
She felt shivers snake up and down her back.