“Shea, don’t let him come between us.He’s a convicted thief.”
“What are you, Papa?”Shea hadn’t meant to use the word.It just slipped out, and she realized she had already been thinking of him that way.
“A man who wants his daughter,” he answered simply, and nothing else he could have said would have struck her so poignantly.
The letter.
I love you.
The words she had said to Rafe.Her mother’s words to Jack Randall.
She put her fists to her ears, as if to block out any more sounds.And then she whirled out of the room, out of the house, and down to the barn.She had to leave.She had to escape all the voices.She even wanted to outrun herself.
There was no one in the barn.In the past few weeks she had watched men saddle a horse, and she knew she could do it.She saddled the most tranquil-looking of the horses.She didn’t care that she was wearing a skirt.She didn’t care about anything but getting away.
She buckled the cinch of the saddle and forced the bit into the horse’s mouth, then led the horse outside.There was no one in sight.The few remaining hands were apparently still out.
She heard a shout and saw her father lean against the front door of the ranch house.“Shea, no!”
But another voice was louder.The one inside her head, which told her to find some kind of rest, some kind of peace, to sort out the warring emotions.
She swung up onto the saddle, her dress riding high on her thighs, and her knees nudged the horse.Its sudden reaction surprised her, and she held on for dear life as the horse spurted into an uncontrolled gallop.
Jack Randall wasn’t dead.The words kept repeating themselves in Rafe’s brain.He didn’t know how he felt about that.
For a brief time, before he knew Randall lived, Rafe had felt something like relief.It was over.Clint and the others could go on with their own lives.He would continue to track down McClary, and then …
Christ, what then?
He had lived these past ten years with only one purpose in mind: exacting revenge and, if possible, clearing his name.He had never thought ahead.Now he wondered what was ahead if he did succeed.Emptiness.Loneliness.
He hadn’t realized what loneliness really was until Shea Randall had left, until he’d had some knowledge of how it felt to be touched with warmth and tenderness.
How was she?
Had Randall charmed her as he had charmed too many others?She had been ready to be charmed.She had wanted a father so badly; it had shone in those eyes of hers.
Clint had ridden back up the night he had taken Shea home and had told him about Shea’s lies, the way she had tried to protect Rafe, protect them all.How long would that last in the comfort of the Circle R?
Why had McClary shot Randall?Tried to kill him?
Clint knew that McClary had done it.McClary had been at the ranch house when Randall had returned from a three-day absence.Since Clint knew none of Rafe’s men had shot Randall, it left only McClary.But Clint hadn’t been able to convince the sheriff of that.Posses would be combing these mountains.
Restless beyond tolerance, Rafe decided to start his own hunt for McClary.His business with Randall would have to wait.McClary would have left the Circle R in a hurry.Without supplies.He would have to steal them now, and the miners were still easy pickings.Some had banded together for safety, but others were just too independent and guarded their claims with fierce possessiveness, regardless of how little gold they found.
In addition to those miners who worked the creeks and streams, there were still those who sought yet another vein in abandoned mine shafts picked clean.Those abandoned shafts would make fine hiding places for someone like McClary.They dotted the area, and Rafe concentrated his search on them.
Rafe had found nothing in the four days he’d been looking.He’d once seen the posse moving below him, and he had quietly backed away and ridden in the opposite direction.
Rafe knew he was looking for a needle in a haystack, but he simply couldn’t sit and wait any longer.He’d go mad if he did.He returned to the cabin each night in the event there was any message for him from Clint, Ben, or any of the others.Abner, who seemed content enough there with the crumbs Rafe left, would always creep out and welcome him, begging for an affectionate touch.And Rafe would remember Shea’s delight with Abner, with the cub.
Today he tried to dismiss memories of her as, once again, he scoured the mountainside.His horse tied behind a thick clump of berry bushes, he skirted the ridges of the steep mountain gulch, looking below at the stream where several miners still panned for gold.He wished he had a spyglass, but he didn’t.
His gaze stopped roaming for a moment, fixed on a bush below him.It seemed to move, but there was no wind stirring this day.The sky was cloudless, the sun bright, the air still and dry.Farther on down the mountain sat a miner’s cabin.There was a figure standing in the creek, obviously panning for gold.A rifle lay on the ground nearby.
Rafe turned his gaze back to the moving bush.A glint of silver shone among the dull green leaves.Someone was there, someone who was also watching.
Could he be this damn lucky for once?
