Once an Outlaw Read online

  In her discouraged state she couldn’t deny marrying David would help still the wagging tongues that gossiped she had killed Harry in order to keep for herself the gold mine he had supposedly found.

  She only wished that Harry had discovered gold. A lot of gold. The small poke filled with tiny nuggets she had discovered hidden in his bedroll had paid for his burying costs and given rise to the whispers.

  If she wasn’t in such a desperate situation, she believed she would have smiled just thinking about the speculation in Silas Beeson’s eyes every time she took courage in hand to go into his mercantile to trade her eggs. He kept expecting her to purchase additional foodstuffs with gold.

  This time she wouldn’t disappoint him. With a silent prayer asking the Lord for forgiveness, she worked her wedding band from her finger. Clutching it tightly, she closed her eyes.

  If she was going to sell it, she should use the money to buy passage back to her brother. The best solution to her problem of trying to keep the ranch going.

  But Jessie found she had a deep well of stubbornness. She wasn’t ready to give up all she had to claim as her own.

  The Lord would provide. The thought forced her eyes open. “He already has,” she whispered, thinking of the small gifts she had been finding. True, she had also lost some items or a chicken or two, and more than a few eggs. But her unseen and unknown benefactor had provided her with fresh fish, rabbit, even venison.

  The stubborn spirit that had gotten her into this brine barrel revived. Somehow she’d find a way.

  Deeply engrossed in thought, Jessie jumped when she realized someone or something was thumping on the far outside wall of the cabin.

  With the thought of her benefactor’s gifts in mind, she wasn’t unduly alarmed as she rose and went to the door. Bolting it had become habit after she’d found a rattlesnake warming itself on the hearth rug. She lifted the heavy bolt and set it aside.

  Jessie caught herself pausing with her hand on the latch. Shaking off the momentary warning pang, she opened the door.

  “Oh, my Lord!” The words were a whisper of sound. She sucked in a sharp, frightened breath. She pressed one hand to her chest. Instinctively her startled gaze searched the clearing in front of the cabin before coming to rest on the bundle on her doorstep.

  If this was her benefactor’s idea of a gift, Jessie didn’t want it.

  The very last thing she needed in her life was a man. A wounded man, at that!

  From his vantage point on top of the shed roof, Kenny nodded with satisfaction. He slid backward and dropped to the ground.

  “Tole you, Marty. She’s so taken aback, the widow woman’s cryin’ with joy. Now she’s got herself a man.”

  Chapter Two

  Logan didn’t want to open his eyes. Opening his eyes, moving, any acknowledgment that he was awake would swing wide the door to pain. More pain than the dull, throbbing ache pulsing through his body. Waking up would act as a whetstone honing an edge to pain until it was knife keen.

  But there were scents that drew him. Faint, almost elusive. He thought he could smell sunshine and clean, soft linen. Damn foolish thought, but he was a man who liked his comforts and he’d been too long without them.

  Tempted to discover if he was dreaming, he opened his eyes and closed them immediately. He’d been right about the pain. He waited until the edge was off, then opened his eyes cautiously this time. No unwise moves, he warned himself, that razor edge is just waiting for you.

  The little he could see alerted him that he didn’t know where the hell he was. The last time he remembered his eyes being open, a blazing ball of sunlight had blinded him.

  Instinct that he was safe, at least for now, eased the flare of panic. He was in a clean bed, with a soft pillow beneath his drumming head.

  He sure wasn’t in heaven, or he wouldn’t be hurting. Couldn’t be in hell. Santo swore the devil would hold a fiesta for him when he arrived there. So he concluded he was alive. Alive with someone caring for him.

  Who?

  It was a question Logan needed answered. He knew he wasn’t with the gang. Monte was the only one who knew what clean meant.

  This much thought built the throbbing aches in his body and sent him close to the edge where he couldn’t control the pain.

  He forced himself to be calm, closing his eyes, and willed the tension to leave his body as he lay perfectly still. Struggling for answers wasn’t going to do him a bit of good. Rest would help him. A simple order for him to follow.

  Despite his effort, his thoughts returned to the moment he’d been shot. At his side, his hand curled tightly as if still gripping the reins and the thick, coarse mane of his gelding for a flat-out run. Behind a gauzy mind curtain, the blur of passing land and voices wavered out of reach.

  Logan did remember a blow to the skull that set off a whorl of bursting colors before his eyes. And he felt again that stomach-dropping sensation of falling. He’d blacked out.

  And that blackness beguiled him again.

  He fought it off. He couldn’t afford to rest easy, despite the pain, despite an instinctive need to heal his beaten body. He had to find out where he was, and who played Good Samaritan.

  The feather tick cushioning his body bespoke softness. Anything soft brought instant association with anything female.

  He should be so lucky. He denied it. He wanted to keep on denying it. After all, how could a woman move him?

  He tried to gauge the size of the cabin. Wide-beam rafters laced the ceiling. Nothing strange, nothing at all unusual. Didn’t tell him a damn thing. He’d have to move his head to see more. His body and will clashed over the pain that would cause.

  He wrinkled his nose, sniffing the air. Sure smelled like chicken soup. Enticed, he had no choice. Eyes slowly opened, and he eased his head to the side. A burst of loud pounding came from inside his skull.

  Logan blinked, looked, then blinked again. He wished for the strength to lift his hand to rub his eyes. A futile thought. Moving his head had cost him, in spades.

  A blur of sunshine caught his attention. But it was the damnedest sun he’d ever seen. Sunshine didn’t rise from the floor in the craziest bell-shaped curves. Sunshine—sure as he lay helpless as a pea on a hot skillet—didn’t sway to and fro.

  He was as parched as a dried-up mud hole and couldn’t call out. The totally helpless feeling brought a rapid anger. Marshaling his formidable will, he started to sit up. An unwise move. The drum in his head was banging away and its resounding echo lanced through him to take up residence in his shoulder. The room dipped and swirled. With one foot he felt the bareness of the other. At least someone had taken off his boots before putting him to bed. Why that mattered, he didn’t know.

  He moaned and laid his head back on the pillow.

  “Thank the Lord! You’re awake!”

  Sunshine had a voice. Sunshine moved toward him. Maybe he had died and gone to heaven and this was an angel of mercy coming to his side.

  Her next words disabused him of that foolish notion.

  “Quick, before you pass out again, tell me who you are and where you belong. I’ll ride into town and get a telegram off so someone can come and get you.”

  Hell, he’d never expected to be welcomed to the pearly gates, but he sure hadn’t figured on getting thrown out if he ever made it up that far. Some angel this was turning out to be.

  “Lo—” He stopped himself, fighting against the waves of pain. He couldn’t tell her who he was. He couldn’t trust anyone. There wasn’t a speck of moisture in his mouth. Dragging his hand up, he didn’t stifle the moans, but motioned toward his mouth. He had to close his eyes against the bobbing of her head.

  “Thirsty? Of course you are. Stay right there.”

  If he’d had the strength, Logan would have cussed her. As if he could move…What the hell had he gotten himself into this time? It had all the earmarks of a vinegar crock and he the one being pickled.

  She was back before he formed more thoughts. He forg
ave her his uncharitable thought the moment cool water touched his dry lips. He swallowed every drop greedily then fell back against the pillow with a deep sigh.

  “Better?” Jessie asked. “Can you talk now?”

  Logan decided his charity had been misplaced. She wasn’t an angel but a harpy. He kept his eyes closed. But he couldn’t rid his mind of the image that she was all sunshine. It was the hair. Parted in the middle, pulled back from her face, there was just enough to show him the tawny color of a mountain lion’s coat. Her bright yellow gown put sunshine in his head. The effort to think expended his strength, and left him hurting and exhausted. If he ignored her long enough maybe she’d go away.

  “Don’t drift off again,” Jessie warned in a disgruntled voice. Her sweeping gaze over his long, supine body brought back her first thought about him. He was built like a whip, long, lean, tough and lethal.

  “Surely you can manage to tell me your name? Or where you’re from? What happened to you?” Thoroughly vexed when he didn’t respond, she chewed her bottom lip.

  She had to stop herself from reaching out to brush the damn curling strands of his dark brown, almost black hair away from his forehead. She’d done her share of petting and touching while she cleaned his wound. And she’d spent a good deal of time studying the fierce line of his nose and jaw, trying to determine why she found him attractive when those roughly cut features suggested a harsh, ruthless nature.

  “It wasn’t much of a guess on my part to figure out that you’d been shot and robbed.” She watched him for any betraying signs. “Thing is, I’ve had time to wonder if you were being robbed or doing the robbing.” She nearly pounced at the flicker of his eyelids.

  “I see,” she drawled in a honey-thick voice, “that I’ve finally gained your attention.”

  The man made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a groan. A response for sure, but not the one she had hoped for.

  “You’ve been in my bed all night,” she offered helpfully. “Don’t you want to know who I am?” Her softly voiced questions elicited another flicker of his lids. “I won’t hurt you. Don’t be concerned that you’re in any danger.”

  Watching him as closely as she was, Jessie saw his fingers relax. Mentally she backed off from questioning him further. She’d been harsh to push him now.

  But she couldn’t escape the need to have him gone.

  “Would you like some chicken soup? It’s almost ready.”

  Logan, to his mortification, suddenly discovered he had another, more pressing need to attend. One of his bleary eyes opened, squinting as he focused on the woman. Neither an angel nor a harpy, he’d decided in the past few minutes.

  But how was he to convey his need to her? He just couldn’t ask. He couldn’t get up and he sure as hell—

  “Something’s wrong! Oh, dear. Is the pain worse? I only had my headache powder to give you. Would you like another? Are you thirsty again?”

  No response but that one bloodshot eye staring up at her. She nibbled her lip, deep in thought.

  “We must figure out a way for you to communicate with me, since you can’t speak. Or won’t,” she added, shooting him a suspicious, narrow-eyed glare.

  “If you can open and close that eye, we’ll use that. Open is yes and closed means no. Think you can manage?”

  Logan didn’t close his eye. His head was clearing, at least to where the pounding receded to a dull ache, but his shoulder didn’t bear thinking about. His Good Samaritan was rather tall for a woman. Her features were rather plain taken one by one. The apron she wore helped define her lush figure. She didn’t appear to be a woman who needed headache powders…but what did he know?

  And if she persisted in asking these ridiculous questions about his head hurting, or the pillow being too hard, by the time she got farther down his body she wouldn’t have to ask what was wrong.

  “You got a pot?”

  The rusty growl startled Jessie. She was in the act of leaning closer, and straightened with a militant gleam in her eye.

  “So, you can talk. Well, to answer you, of course I’ve got a pot. I said I was cooking, didn’t I?”

  “An empty one.”

  “An empty one,” she repeated. Her gaze flew down to the crease of his thighs. She swallowed. “An empty one,” she repeated again, diving beneath the bed and coming up with the chamber pot. “One empty pot.”

  And she fled.

  “Come back here!” As a demand, Logan knew it lacked something. A little force, a whole lot of loud. She was a harpy, bent on torturing him. How the hell was he going to use the damn pot without help?

  Jessie ran all the way to the corral. Embarrassed didn’t begin to cover what she felt. Guilt wormed its way into her thoughts. She shouldn’t have run off like a sixteen-year-old virgin who didn’t know that a wounded man would use a chamber pot. He’d hurt himself. Lord!

  Flinging one arm on the pole fence of the corral, Jessie buried her face in the crook of her elbow. She was not a cruel woman. She truly wasn’t. But now that the first flush of embarrassment was passing, she admitted she’d been wrong to leave him alone. If she had any backbone she’d march right back into her cabin and face her unwanted boarder. She should apologize, and while she was at it, think of some reason beyond impropriety that had sent her fleeing like a ninny.

  Feeling a nudge against her arm, Jessie reached out with her free hand. “Oh, Adorabelle, I’ve made a muddle of this.”

  The swaybacked mare’s thick lips and velvet-soft muzzle pressed against her arm.

  “I know you’re not concerned. But I am. I’m the one who has to go back inside and face him.” A gentle nip of teeth forced Jessie to look up. Stroking the mare’s white-blazed face, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, darling, there’s no sugar left.”

  The decrepit old mare greeted this news with a snort, her ears flicking back and forth. Jessie smiled. Her horse almost appeared to be waiting for confirmation of what was said.

  “We are in poor straits, Adorabelle.” A glance behind her reminded Jessie that a decent amount of time had passed. Sooner or later, she had to go back inside the cabin.

  After wiping her hands on her apron, Jessie patted the mare once more, then executed a sharp turn on her heels.

  “This is my cabin. I have nothing to apologize for. He is here on my sufferance. And I am an independent woman who no longer accounts to anyone for my behavior.”

  She repeated her reminders all the way inside.

  Finding her unwanted houseguest facedown on the floor next to her bed sent a sharp pang of guilt through her.

  Jessie ran to his side and dropped to the floor. Smoothing his hair away from his face, she pleaded with him to speak to her.

  He was clammy to her touch and white about the mouth. Guilt pangs drove deeper. “Forgive me. Please forgive me. I’m going to help you back to bed,” she murmured, heartsick that her embarrassment had caused him additional pain.

  She was almost afraid to touch the bandage she had made for his shoulder. The only other place for her hand was his bare skin. Jessie had avoided looking at the dark, curling hair on his chest earlier. But she couldn’t avoid looking and touching him now.

  “Be brave,” she muttered, unsure if she meant it for him or herself.

  Logan gave a brief thought to pretending that he’d blacked out again. But her contrite tone, combined with the gentle stroking of her hand and the fact that he’d attempted to struggle back to bed alone, forced his eyes open.

  “I’m alive. It was touch and go—”

  “Mister!” Jessie snatched her hand away from him.

  He ignored her even as he realized how she had taken his words. “I survived.”

  “I may not.”

  Logan peered up at the tart-as-green-berries pursed lips. Now he understood.

  “You’re one of those.”

  “One of what?” she demanded.

  “Ain’t had much truck with men.”

  “If you are implying that I’m a dour spin
ster, mister, you’re wrong. I’m a missus. See?” Jessie stuck her left hand in his face. “That ring is a symbol that a man found me worthy of marriage, mister. And since you find yourself in the position of being dependent upon my good graces, best be careful of what you say to me.”

  “Right, ma’am. Your husband…er…is he around?”

  “No. That should be obvious. And having this conversation on the floor is ridiculous. Up you go.”

  For all that she spoke with a tart tongue, her hands were very gentle as she slid one of his arms over her shoulder, and wrapped her own arm around his narrow waist.

  Logan managed to grunt his way to his knees. She seemed to understand what the effort cost him, for she made no move to push him.

  He breathed deeply, gathering up the last reserves of his strength. Once again, without speaking, she appeared to know that he was ready for the final move.

  Jessie’s hands slid on his sweat-damp skin. His chest labored with every breath he drew and her own was none too steady. She braced her legs to make the last move to get him into bed. He was heavy despite his whipcord-lean appearance.

  She realized that she was still leaning over him, and slowly straightened. Arching her back, she rubbed the small of her back, feeling the pull of muscles.

  “We made it.”

  Logan, feeling like a fish that had been tossed from a stream and flopped about without oxygen for too long, merely moved one finger. It was all he was capable of doing at the moment.

  Shoving the loose tendrils of hair that had come free from her coil, Jessie realized the damp spots beneath her arms showed. Mortified, although she didn’t understand why since his eyes were closed, she locked her arms down at her sides to hide the dampness.

  Her position was awkward as she leaned over and studied his bandaged shoulder. “Thank goodness you didn’t cause it to bleed again. Though,” she mused, more to herself, “I put enough pine tar—”

  “Pine tar? You put pine tar on me?” Logan’s teeth came together with a snap. “Lady,” he went on without opening his eyes, “I’m not some damn tree you’re getting ready to graft. I’m a damn man.” Jeez, was she blind?