He tried to keep his head, but it was a near thing. "I keep telling myself that if I let you come to me, the reward will be sweeter. I frightened you off once..."
He squeezed her and then let her go.
She was looking at him strangely as they gathered up their reins and prepared to go.
"What?"
She shook her head.
A look that curious couldn't go unnoticed. "Tell me." He hadn’t meant to sound demanding. Or maybe he had.
"I can't decide whether I should be charmed or offended. You sounded like you were wooing an unbroken colt."
He couldn't help laughing, because once again, she'd managed to surprise him.
"Be charmed," he called out to her as he kicked his stallion into a canter.
He had a woman to protect, and he meant to do it right.
11
It was hot the next day and Breanna had insisted on extra breaks for the horses.
She was constantly on the lookout for Scar-face. His friend hadn't checked in the night before, and no one seemed to know where he was. Out of the fifteen competitors left, Scar-face had been there, bunking down in the church building.
Her head was pounding. Maybe from squinting into the harsh sunlight.
Neither Breanna or Adam had been able to locate the race master. Someone said he'd gone ahead to set up the finish line in Chicago, but no one was quite sure. He'd left an assistant to check in the racers, but the pimpled boy was barely eighteen and had been no help when she and Adam had tried to report what had happened out on that slope.
Adam had gone for the sheriff next, only to find the man and his deputies out hunting a bank robber who'd been through a day earlier.
Adam had not been happy when he'd returned to the livery to report it.
They'd bedded down with their horses again, and she'd been so exhausted there had been no conversation before she'd nodded off.
I keep telling myself that if I let you come to me, the reward will be sweeter.Adam's words from yesterday had played in her mind over and over through the course of the morning.
She joked with him about being treated like a horse he wanted to break, but really, she was charmed. He was considerate, not trying to push his own feelings on her, though she knew he still hoped she'd decide to return home with him.
She'd begun to hope for herself that he would return to Bear Creek with her.
She'd felt off all morning. A little shaky. A strange buzz beneath her skin. If she didn't know better, she'd think a seizure was imminent. But she hadn't had one in almost four years. That letter from Millie—Breanna would never call the womanmother—had said the seizures should stop when Breanna reached her majority. Maxwell had confirmed it, citing numerous case studies of individuals with seizures only when they were children.
But the foreboding feeling remained.
By noon, the feeling worsened.
She had to get off the horse. And she had to get rid of Adam. He couldn't see her in the throes of a seizure.
She's got a demon inside her.She ain't all right in the head.Someone with a condition like hers shouldn't be in the classroom. Voices from her childhood clamored in her mind, and she only knew one thing. If Adam saw her having a seizure, whatever attraction he felt for her would disappear completely.
And though a few days ago, she thought that was what she wanted, now she couldn't bear it.
While occasionally the seizures surprised her, she sometimes had an intuition in the few moments before. Like now.
She prayed for deliverance, like she had so many times before. And knew that it wasn't coming.
She reined in near a copse of trees. It was the only shelter on this vast stretch of plain, and she hoped it would be enough to hide her from Adam.
