They would only be on the trail a little while, Ash tried to tell herself. She would only have to endure MacQuade's surly temper a short time.
Why did it suddenly seem as if that time would be more grueling than any penance old Father O'Hara could have devised?
A fleeting memory of her dream taunted her—silver eyes, warm, vulnerable, words so sweet they had pierced her very heart.
The lump in Ash's throat knotted tighter still, hated tears clinging to her lashes.
Even in a dream she should have known better than to succumb to seductive words, to eyes burning with need, lips warm, persuasive.
Hadn't she done so with Timothy Kearny many years ago? A lifetime ago, filled with dreams long surrendered. Of a man's arms cradling her, a man's deep, loving laughter, a future filled with a home and children.
She winced inwardly at the remembered pain, the scar from that disastrous night in the dew-sweet Irish hills burning afresh.
She had lost so much, hurling herself heart-first into passions she had not understood. She had lost her innocence, lost that wild freedom with which she had lavished the world with her affections.
In some ways, she had lost herself.
But she had the children now, a precious, miraculous gift. It was more than she had dared hope for in those desolate days after Kearny's duplicity.
More than she dared dream of.
It was enough.
Why then did she keep remembering the fire in Garret's kiss, the yearning? Her skin burning beneath hard, callused hands. The man had been drunk, for heaven's sake! An insolent, inebriated oaf. And yet his touch, his mouth upon hers had stirred her in a way Timothy Kearny's awkward groping never had.
He was an enigma, Garret MacQuade. An intriguing one.
And perhaps the most dangerous temptation Ashleen had ever known.
Chapter Eight
The wagon swayed monotonously in the blazing heat, waves of light shimmering upward toward a blindingly blue sky. Ash held the bullwhip loosely in one hand, cracking it at intervals above the plodding animals' heads. Her palms no longer blistered, toughened at last with calluses beneath the leather's constant friction. And she rarely managed to clip herself with the lash any more.
She wished that her emotions regarding Garret MacQuade were as easy to master. But they flashed out at odd times, stinging her as unexpectedly as the bite of the whip had during those first awkward days after the wagon had left West Port.
Ash peered beneath the brim of her blue-sprigged sunbonnet and strained to see him, a dark silhouette at the crest of a hill some three hundred yards away. He sat astride a paint gelding. Solitary. Silent. As closed off from the world in his way as little Meggie Kearny was in hers.
If someone had told Ash that it was possible for a man to travel alone while guiding a wagonful of children, she would have laughed at the mere thought. But the two weeks they had spent on the trail had changed her view.
Garret MacQuade had spoken more words in their disastrous five-minute interlude in the Double Eagle than he had in the past weeks. His only communication had been gruff syllables snapped out in those rare times he deigned to draw near the wagon—usually to criticize her driving, her care of the oxen, or the grindingly slow pace.
The man had been nothing but consistent in his obnoxious behavior. She should have been glad that he was keeping his distance and wasn't spoiling the children's appetites by glowering at them over dinner.
She would have been.
Except for those rare moments when he thought no one was looking. Those times when she would catch him watching Renny with a kind of understanding, or regarding plucky Liam with empathy, or following Meggie's dark head with an almost palpable pain.
A hot breeze blew gritty dust across Ashleen's face. She swiped it away, her eyes still fixed on that distant figure who was engrossed in what looked to be a piece of paper propped before him in the saddle.
"You gettin' tired, Sister Ash?"
The voice behind her shoulder made Ashleen start, and she turned to see Renny, his face shaded with concern as he climbed from the back of the wagon onto the seat beside her. "Thought I might spell you for a while up here. Let you climb down and stretch your legs with the others."
Ash flashed him a grateful smile, her gaze turning to where Shevonne and Liam gamboled like puppies, oblivious to the heat, the dust, and Garret MacQuade's foul disposition. Meggie wandered even further ahead than the other two, poring over the faint wagon tracks as if in search of treasure.
Ash felt the familiar stirring of depression at the sight of the wisp of a child in sunflower yellow, a perfect angel with a stunningly beautiful face and empty, empty eyes—eyes that seemed to fix upon Garret MacQuade almost as often as Ashleen's own. It was strange, the little girl's fascination with the rough-talking, ill-tempered MacQuade. Always before Meggie had flinched and cowered when confronted with loud voices or anger. But she seemed to regard Garret with a kind of quiet acceptance tinged with puzzlement, and more than a little awe. An odd combination, but one that Ashleen would capitalize upon, if only she could think how.
"Well, do you want to?" Renny interrupted her musings. "Want to walk awhile, I mean?"
