He studied her stiff back as she marched. She sure as cuss looked like a woman who thought she knew where she was going; those feet of hers never faltered once.
Maybe she was just plain contrary, he decided.
“Sure you don’t want a lift?” he asked, watching with ill-concealed amusement as she irritably swatted the chin-high buffalo grass out of her way. They didn’t have much further to go, but suddenly he couldn’t wait to see her expression when they happened along town.
“Thanks, but no thanks, Mr. McKenzie—I’ve had quite enough of you, as it is!”
His shoulders shook with mirth. He’d never understood how a woman could nurse her anger so long. “Cutter,” he asserted, his lips curling faintly.
“Mr. McKenzie!”Elizabeth shot back through clenched teeth.
With every hot mile, her temper grew more foul. The morning gray of the sky had turned to a cloudless blue, and the sun shone down without mercy.
He shook his head in censure, his lips quivering slightly with laughter. “Now, now, Doc, ain’t no call to be so rude. Just thought you might like t’ ride, is all. You’ve been on your feet—” Scanning the puffy blue heavens, he guessed at the time—”oh... a good hour and a half at least.”
Didn’t she know it!
Coupled with the fall she’d had, the walk was nearly killing Elizabeth’s poor limbs. Her face flushed with anger as she turned to glare up at him.
“Mr. McKenzie, why would I get on that horse with you? So you can manhandle me again? Why should I trust you?” she asked without turning.
Cutter had the good graces to flush.
Hell, he’d forgotten what she’d awakened to, and felt suddenly like a kid who’d gotten caught with his fingers in the proverbial cookie jar. He scowled, completely at a loss for words. He wasn’t in the habit of squeezing women’s limbs while they slept, but he didn’t know how to tell her so. And he hadn’t touched anything of any importance—not really, just a leg, and an arm or two, he reasoned. He’d just wanted to be sure that she had enough meat on her bones… for the journey. She seemed so scrawny.
The minutes stretched by as he contemplated how to get around her anger, but any way he looked at it, she had a right to it, and so in the end he decided just to drop the subject. “Suit yourself,” he relented.
Elizabeth gave him a puzzled frown.
There had been a long enough stretch of silence between them at this point that she’d somehow managed to forget what they’d been talking about.
Suit herself?
What in creation did the man mean by that remark?Suit herself?Nothing about this miserable outing suited her in the least! Had she missed something? She’d been so lost in her own musings that she’d shut him out completely... almost completely. She was only too aware of the fact that he was right behind her, his horse trotting at a snail’s pace. The way that he watched her unnerved the dickens out of her!
He came alongside her suddenly, leaning forward in the saddle, his forearm resting upon the saddle horn, his smile knowing and crooked as he offered her the almost forgotten slice of jerky. Elizabeth hadn’t realized how hungry she was until he waved it in front of her, but her mouth began to water in anticipation. Still, she eyed the strip of meat as though it were a pit viper he were proffering. Her stomach grumbled in protest when she didn’t immediately reach out to take it, and she glanced up through her lashes, wondering anxiously if he’d heard.
She found him still smiling—curse him to high heaven and back! Oh, she despised him! Heaven help her, she did! Elizabeth, who had never despised anyone as long as she’d lived—not even her mother for leaving—really and truly despised him!
Giving him her most lethal scowl, she kept marching, but he seemed completely unaffected by her dismissal, and that made her all the more irate. How dare he be so nonchalant when she was ready to burst with fury!
Why should she starve herself only to spite him?
Feeling his presence beside her like a thorn in her side, she turned, snatching the jerky from his still-outstretched hand. Shoving it angrily into her mouth, she ripped a slice from it as though it were his head and she were snapping it off. Rage as she’d never known before spiraled through her, making her vision darken at the edges.
If he laughed... if he so much as uttered a single inconsiderate, heartless chuckle at her surrender...
A hundred terrible words lay teetering on the tip of her tongue as she plodded onward, alternately ripping off and chewing her jerky. How she managed to contain them was beyond her, but she did, though her breast filled with mute anger. Had she been a mite bigger, she might have yanked him down from the saddle to meet her fists. As it was, that notion seemed so ridiculous that she merely cursed him under her breath. It wouldn’t be long, she told herself firmly, before she’d be rid of him. And then, as far as she was concerned, she never needed to set eyes on the man again!
Though why did that notion seem to bother her? It shouldn’t bother her at all! She should be jumping for joy over the prospect... and she would, indeed, the moment she set eyes on Sioux Falls.
She glanced back over her shoulder, catching his arrogant grin—curse the man! Looking down, she noted, not for the first time, that her poor clothes were covered with grass seed and stained with dirt. Her torn hem dragged the ground behind her. She supposed she looked a sight. Ignoring the “whys” of her caring over that fact, she pondered what people would think of her, dirty as she was and being followed by a grinning idiot to boot?
Would they think the worst?
To her consternation, Cutter began to whistle, and though it was a fine, clear tune, it didn’t even begin to improve her mood. Rather, it grated on her nerves.
Of course they would think the worst!
