Chapter 17
Ben left the following morning after tending Rafe’s wound, and for two days Rafe felt very much like the snarling bear that was still prowling outside the cabin.
He was too weak to go fishing, too restless to stay quiet.
He tended to the young cub, tried to curry the horse before giving up in disgust when his arm rebelled.
He was so damned weak, and he hated that fact.
At least, Shea hadn’t played nursemaid to him. He’d managed to care for his wound himself. He didn’t think he could tolerate Shea Randall’s touch, not after his bitter words that night several days ago. He had revealed all too much then, and he was thoroughly disgusted with himself for doing so.
And thoroughly disgusted with the way his head felt after drinking Ben’s whiskey, homemade by one of the miners Ben called friend and strong as the Devil.
He’d not drunk that much since the night after his release from prison, when he and Ben had gotten thoroughly drank.
The aftermath wasn’t worth the momentary oblivion, and he didn’t want oblivion, dammit.
He wanted to remember everything. He needed to remember everything.
Every lonely, godforsaken day in prison, every look of revulsion when a stranger, even convicts, saw his scar.
He needed to feel the waves of hate, the way his stomach knotted when he thought of Randall, by God.
He shouldn’t need reminders, but the damn woman was eating into his consciousness like locusts through a cornfield.
She even made him feel guilty for doing what needed to be done. He didn’t need guilt. He already had enough anger to fill every nook and cranny of his being.
Shea Randall, however, was difficult to ignore.
He found it impossible now to put her in her place as his captive.
Things had inevitably changed. If she’d ever had any fear of him, she didn’t now.
He saw that readily enough. They had become partners of sorts days earlier when she had tended him, and together they had tended the small bear cub.
He still locked her in the cabin at night, sleeping outside the window after that first night in the stable, but it was more a reminder himself that she was captive to his captor rather than fear she might escape.
He wished he knew what she was thinking. Her eyes were watchful, questioning, but not afraid.
Christ, if only the physical attraction between them weren’t so strong, so damnably obvious, even to Ben. Rafe didn’t understand it, couldn’t accept it, not with Randall’s daughter, but there it was. Even with his arm hurting like hell, he wanted her.
The tension between them rose steadily after Ben left. He had been a safety valve of sorts, a buffer between them, but once he rode out, the level of pressure between Rafe and Shea rose and boiled, threatening to explode again. Rafe knew he had to do something, but damned if he knew what.
He could only watch her, try to keep his frustration to a controllable level. He’d even tried to read a book.
Reading had been his only escape in prison. Since his release he had asked Ben to buy any book he happened to find and had collected a very small library, which, until Shea Randall’s invasion, had engaged him when he wasn’t wandering in the woods, exploring his freedom.
Words made him forget. Words freed him, momentarily, from bitterness.
But they didn’t have their usual magic today, the third day since Ben left. Rafe felt strong enough to go fishing this morning. The wound had stopped seeping, and for the first time he could move it without agonizing pain.
He looked up as the door to the cabin opened, and Shea came outside with her sketchpad.
She was wearing a very simple blue gingham dress that deepened the blue in her eyes; her hair was not braided but pulled back and tied with a ribbon.
She sat down on the tree stump with Abner on her lap.
She kept looking down at the mouse, and he knew she was drawing it.
A charming picture, he thought, trying unsuccessfully to color it with the cynicism and bitterness that had been his longtime companions.
Where in the hell was the she-bear? It had provided a distraction during the past few days, but it disappeared this morning after sniffing the cub once more and finding it better.
A few more days, Rafe thought, and the cub would be able to return to the woods.
It was already moving better, learning to balance on its three good legs. He had high hopes for the injured leg.
He supposed the cub was sleeping now. It had consumed all of the crackers, except for a few held back for Abner, and the canned goods were being swiftly depleted by Rafe and Shea. Something had to be done about finding food.
Ben should return sometime this afternoon.
Clint had ridden up yesterday to check on Rafe and to tell him Randall had disappeared the day earlier, saying merely that he was going up into the mountains on a hunting trip.
Clint had thought he might be trying to track Rafe, but Randall was not known for tracking skills, and Clint doubted anyone could find this valley.
Randall, Clint reported, had said nothing about the daughter, and had been tense and unusually uncommunicative.
There was something else, Clint had said. Another miner had been found dead. Apparently killed a few days ago. There was a meeting called in Rushton tonight.
Ben was mingling with the miners, trying to bring them together for protection rather than to form a vigilante committee that might mistakenly go after Rafe’s outlaw band, which they believed responsible for all the troubles in the area south of Casey Springs.
A third piece of news was more welcome. Men were leaving the Circle R. They’d not been paid in months now, and only a few drovers remained to guard what was left of Randall’s herd.
All of that was said outside Shea’s hearing.
“McClary?” Rafe had asked.
“He was gone again the night the second miner was killed,” Clint said. “Unfortunately, he left when I was in Rushton, so I couldn’t follow him.”
“Randall has to be involved,” Rafe said.
Clint shrugged. “Could be.” He darted a look at the cabin. “How’s the girl?”
Rafe winced. The question should be, how was he with the girl around? Godawful.
“That bad?” Clint tried a smile, but it didn’t work. Ben had chortled about the all-too-obvious attraction between Rafe and Shea Randall, but Clint hurt for them. He hurt for himself. He knew only too well now how it felt to want someone he couldn’t have.
“I’ve been thinking about letting her go,” Rafe said quietly.
Clint just looked at him.
“I don’t think she would say anything.…”
“Think? Or know?” Clint asked, and Rafe knew it was Clint’s life he would be gambling with, Clint’s and Ben’s, not his. Clint was gently reminding him of that fact.
“Christ, I don’t know anything any longer,” Rafe said with defeat.
“We’re close, Rafe.”
“But what about those miners?” Rafe said. “I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“We don’t know Randall’s responsible.”
“The hell we don’t.”
Clint hesitated a moment. “He might have changed, Rafe.”
“Hell, he’s always been damn good at covering his tracks.”
Clint nodded. He’d never had any doubts about Rate’s story, not after he’d backtracked Randall’s past. Still, Jack Randall had been a fair boss. A good one. None of it made sense.”
After Clint had left, Rafe felt more alone than he’d had in his life, even in prison.
And now … An attractive, smart, warm woman was only a few feet away, and he could do nothing about the raw sexual hunger that ate at his insides, or the fierce, unexpected need for something soft in a life that had never known softness.
Her touches in the cabin, when she’d tended his wound, had nearly been his undoing.
And those tears. Those damnable tears the other night. The tears for him.
He had to stay away, and that kind of loneliness was so much sharper, so much more painful, than that which came from actually being physically alone.
How much longer could he endure it?
He had managed admirably the last few days, but then he’d been ill and weak. Now his strength—and desire—were returning at breakneck speed, and he wasn’t sure he could handle his growing need for her.
As if she knew exactly what he was thinking, Shea looked up at him. “You promised to take me back to the pool,” she said. She tilted her head askance, the gesture becoming endearingly familiar.
Rafe knew it was unwise being close to her. But she had asked for little in the past few days.
“The cub?” he asked, wanting an excuse to deny her request.
Her expression softened. “Sleeping off his dinner.”
“The irritated mother is still out there,” he commented.
“I think she trusts us.”
He stared at her. “Don’t ever believe that, Miss Randall. That she-bear is a wild animal. So is the cub. They’re both unpredictable.”
“I’m getting used to unpredictability,” Shea snapped back, irritated at his use of “Miss Randall.” Whenever she thought they were reaching some kind of understanding, he started snarling again. He made the she-bear look cuddly.
“You don’t know the half of it, Miss Randall. So don’t bait me.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” she said recklessly. “I thought I was asking you to keep a promise.”
“Outlaws don’t keep promises.”
“No?” she retorted. “I thought it was just to women. Or Randalls.”
He tried to scald her with his eyes, but she just glared back, ripping him with his own words.
“Didn’t anyone teach you not to play with fire?”
“Who started it?” she demanded, incensed at his attitude, his hostility, during the past three days. She’d felt as if she were walking on eggshells, that her belief in him had been thrown back in her face, that …
Rafe felt the side of his mouth twitching suddenly. Shea’s face was set with determination, those blue-gray eyes luminous with something he couldn’t, didn’t want to, understand.
He looked down at his hand to remind himself to stay away from her.