Читать книгу Lone Wolf's Woman - Carol Finch, Carol Finch - Страница 11

T hey barely had time to duck before a bullet whistled past the place where her head had been. The second shot sailed over Lone Wolf’s shoulder—missing him by mere inches.

But he found out what he wanted to know.

The sniper wasn’t working alone. The second shot had come from a different location in the thick grass that lined the winding creek.

Lone Wolf slapped Julia’s horse on the rump, then dug in his heels to send his mount racing back in the direction they had come. Two minutes later they emerged from the creek. Julia looked a mite bewildered. He figured it was the first time someone had taken potshots at her.

It was not his first time. He had been a target more times than he cared to count.

“Sol has finally lost his grasp on reality,” she said, and gulped. “He was serious when he said that he wanted to wipe the Preston name off the face of the earth. Doesn’t he realize that he’s going to turn his own daughter against him when she learns the truth?”

“Lesson number two,” Lone Wolf murmured as he circled behind a rolling hill for protection. “Do not jump to conclusions. We don’t have proof that either ambush is tied to your feud with Griffin, no matter how much you might want them to be.”

Julia gnashed her teeth. “Easy for you to give him the benefit of the doubt, but not for me. Your brother wasn’t warned away from his true love and he didn’t get shot. Nor have you been battling rustlers since your father’s death. This is another example of Sol trying to make our lives miserable so we’ll give up, sell out to him and move away.

“And why are you defending him?” She huffed. “Because you’ve developed an interest in Maggie?”

Lone Wolf gaped at her in astonishment. “Where in the hell did that come from?”

“Are you saying that you don’t find her attractive?” Julia demanded. “That would make you the first man I’ve met who doesn’t.”

Obviously getting shot at had rattled Julia more than she realized. This incident was reminiscent of the nightmare that left Adam bedridden. Suddenly she was spouting comments without thinking first, because her emotions were all over the place again.

“Of course I think Maggie is attractive.” Lone Wolf chuckled and shook his raven head. “But if you’re under the impression that I’m interested in her then you’re wrong.”

“Am I?” she challenged.

“Yes, you are,” he insisted.

He shifted uneasily on horseback and looked away. Julia frowned at his peculiar behavior and wished she knew exactly what he was thinking. But Vince Lone Wolf was a master of self-disciplined stares that gave away none of his emotions.

“There’s something you need to know.” He took a deep breath, which made his broad chest expand noticeably. “Sol Griffin is my uncle and Maggie is my first cousin,” he said in a hurried rush.

Her mouth dropped open and her eyes popped. “Your what?”

Julia had no idea what she had expected him to say, but that wasn’t even on the list! Well, that explained a lot. No wonder he was reluctant to pin the shooting on Sol.

She suddenly recalled that Lone Wolf had refused her request for help until after he learned that Sol was involved. Alarm flared inside her. “What is this? Some kind of double cross? Are you working with the snipers?”

She recoiled from him, staring at him as if he were a dangerous threat rather than a trusted ally. Her first thought was that he meant to kill her where she sat, and then claim that someone else had attacked her.

Just what was in this for him? she wondered suspiciously. Partial ownership in her ranch after she and Adam were dead?

The frightening realization that this was a trap and that Lone Wolf was part of the conspiracy sent adrenaline pumping through her veins. For one wild moment Julia wondered if the reason Lone Wolf had volunteered to accompany Maggie home last night was so he could consult privately with Sol.

Dear God, she thought frantically. They were in cahoots and she had blundered headlong into disaster.

Instinct demanded that she run for her life before Lone Wolf grabbed his pistol and aimed it at her. Frightened, Julia took off like a rocket, using the technique of sprawling atop her horse to reduce her chances of being shot.

“Damn it, Julia,” he growled as he chased after her.

She cursed him back as she rode hell-for-leather toward the safety of home. He intended to betray her, she thought mutinously. The one man she thought was different from the rest of his gender. The one man who aroused her interest without trying. The man she had decided to pretend was her husband. The first man she wasn’t averse to having underfoot because she actually liked and respected him.

Curse it, she would never trust her judgment of men again!

Julia scowled when she heard the thunder of hooves close behind her. Swift as her mount was, it was no match for the powerful black-and-white paint gelding and its exceptionally skilled rider. Julia shrieked in alarm when Lone Wolf clamped his hand around her forearm. Before she could fight back he snatched her off her horse while at full canter and she found herself suspended in midair momentarily.

Her breath gushed from her lips when he clutched her against his muscular body. Julia squirmed defiantly while he forced her to straddle his thighs. She stared at the traitor face-to-face and wished him a fast trip to perdition.

“Simmer down,” he snapped as he reined his pinto to a walk.

“Like hell I will!” She spit the words at him and struggled valiantly for release—for all the good it did.

“Didn’t I just get through telling you not to jump to conclusions? Lesson number two, remember?”

Her gaze filleted him and he reciprocated in kind. She decided that when Lone Wolf was irate he could be very intimidating. He looked ominous and foreboding, just as he had last night when he’d yanked her off her horse and followed her to the ground to lay a knife at her throat.

The mistaken sense of security and comfort that she felt when she was with him shattered in the face of his thunderous scowl and the unyielding hold he had on her. The man certainly made a frightening enemy, she decided.

Julia knew she was as good as dead, because Lone Wolf had to be in a league with Sol. Her bitter neighbor was going to win this feud and his gun-toting nephew would make sure of it.

“You tricked me,” she said furiously. “You used me. And when you kill me I will find a way to come back and haunt you for the rest of your days—”

To her astounded amazement he angled his head and kissed her. To shut her up, no doubt. He couldn’t use his hand to cover her mouth because both arms were clamped around her waist to hold her still. So he kissed her. Hard.

Stole her breath out of her lungs was more accurate.

He crushed her so tightly against him that she couldn’t move. He kept on devouring her lips—and any woman with a lick of sense in her head would have continued to resist. Instead she melted against his powerful body and focused on the tantalizing taste of him, the unexpected pleasure that unfurled inside her.

She blamed her impulsive response on the emotional carousel her life had become. Plus, no man had ever dared to grab her and kiss her breathless, for fear of offending her and losing the potential meal ticket she represented. But Lone Wolf was nothing if not bold and daring and she had witnessed several examples of those dominant traits during their short acquaintance.

When he finally allowed her to come up for air she swore her eyes had crossed and he had robbed her of the ability to speak and think straight. She simply stared at him—at his sensuous mouth, to be specific—and wondered why she wanted him to kiss her like that again.

Obviously she had gone crazy. It was the only explanation for wanting to kiss a man who had turned out to be her worst enemy.

“Don’t make me do that again, Julia,” he growled at her.

Something fragile and unfamiliar that had just burst to life inside her—some unique sensation she couldn’t adequately identify—died a quick death. He was letting her know straight away that he had only kissed her to silence her…and nothing more. It wasn’t personal.

Curse the man! He was crushing to her feminine pride.

When he lifted his hand to curl it around her throat she wondered if he had decided to choke her instead of shoot her. But his fingers didn’t close viciously around her windpipe. He simply tilted her head back so he could stare her squarely in the eyes.

“Are you listening now?” he asked gruffly. “No thinking allowed. No presumptions, either, wildcat. Just listen.”

“Answer one question first,” she muttered rebelliously. “Do you plan to kill me when you’re through talking? If so, I want to have the last word instead of hearing your lies.”

Lone Wolf sighed audibly. A handful did not begin to describe this high-strung, headstrong woman. She was sassy and defiant and kissing her into silence had been a bad idea.

He had enjoyed it too damn much.

He had been afraid that would be the case.

Sure enough, one taste of her and he had wanted much more. He had been a little rough and greedy and he sincerely regretted that. But she was completely mistaken if she thought that was the kiss of a man who wanted her dead.

What he wanted was to have her beneath him, to be inside her…and if she couldn’t feel his arousal then she wasn’t paying attention.

And damn it, this was not a good time for him to discover that his reaction to Julia was not something easily controlled or ignored.

“I’m not trying to kill you, although you’re going to manage that feat by yourself if you go haring off like you tried to do earlier,” he snapped, angry with himself for being so vulnerable to this woman. He had spent years teaching himself to be invincible. And poof! This five-foot-nothing female got to him in every way imaginable. “I’m trying to keep you alive, but you have to cooperate!”

Her reply was a disbelieving snort.

“If you think I have an allegiance to my uncle then you are very much mistaken.” He nudged his horse forward to retrieve Julia’s mount, which had stopped to graze a few yards away.

He deposited her on her horse. “I didn’t tell you about my kinship to the Griffins right off because I figured you would overreact.” He stared meaningfully at her. “The way you are overacting now.”

“So you waited until I actually began to trust you,” she accused harshly. “And here I thought you were different from other men. Obviously you’re all the same—devious and manipulative.”

Lone Wolf hadn’t intended to go into detail about his history with Sol, but Julia was staring at him with those luminous green eyes that reflected hurt, betrayal and indignation. He couldn’t bear that, not from her.

Sappy fool that he had suddenly become, he longed to see the look of trust and approval again. It had made him feel good about himself, made him feel worthy of respect. Now he felt as if he had lost something precious and unique and he instinctively struggled to regain whatever it was about Julia that lured him to her against his will.

Whatever the hell it was, he was glad that he had the good sense not to examine it too closely.

“My mother was Sol’s younger sister. Her name was Isabella,” he elaborated as he rode toward the barn. “She was captured by a Southern Cheyenne raiding party when she was sixteen.”

“Your mother was Sol’s sister?” She stared owlishly at him, as if having trouble accepting the notion.

“Yes,” he affirmed solemnly. “My father became intrigued by my mother and he took her as his wife. She adopted his culture and made a place for herself with the Cheyenne. I believe that she was happy with him.”

Julia listened intently, apparently waiting for him to continue. He was relieved to note that she had set aside her anger and frustration—temporarily at least.

“One winter, when George Custer was just a colonel, trying to make a name for himself as a soldier, he attacked our encampment on the Washita River in Indian Territory,” Lone Wolf informed her. “He massacred our people, women and children included. First I watched my father and Chief Black Kettle die, then my mother, who wasn’t far behind because she had found a safe hiding place for me in the underbrush.”

Julia’s heart went out to Lone Wolf. She knew how it felt to watch someone you loved being shot down. But she could only begin to imagine the extent of anguish he had suffered. The nightmare of watching his family and friends being murdered must have been devastating.

“I’m sure what you felt was even more horrible than the feelings that bombarded me after losing my father, only four years after Mama’s passing,” she murmured. “I was angry, lost and disoriented. I fiercely denied the scandalous report of Papa’s secret liaison with Rachel Griffin because it felt like a betrayal to my mother.”

“Grief makes you say and feel crazy things,” Lone Wolf agreed. “It’s hard to know what you’re supposed to feel.”

Julia gave a self-deprecating smirk. “It definitely made me go a little crazy. I tried to outrun everything by throwing myself into duties on the ranch. I was willing to try anything, no matter how dangerous or unladylike. Anything to keep my mind occupied and hold all those hounding emotions at bay.”

Lone Wolf nodded in understanding as he stared into the distance, as if looking through a portal in time. Julia saw his jaw clench, noticed his fist knot around the reins. Although he usually appeared calm and unflappable she could tell that the tragedy of his youth still affected him deeply.

“My mother survived her wounds for a few hours after the soldiers rode away.” His voice was brisk and clipped. “She insisted that I leave the reservation and make use of the fact that she had taught me to speak fluent English and that I was half white.

“I wasn’t sure that I wanted to abandon my people and the only way of life I understood,” he admitted. “But I had lost all family ties in that brutal massacre. I got to thinking that anywhere had to be better than living in that valley of death and walking over those graves.”

His mouth twisted in bitter irony. “At least Custer paid dearly for his unprovoked attack on our camp. The surviving Cheyenne put a curse on him and chanted to the guiding spirits to give them revenge. To this day our people swear it was that curse that led Custer into disaster at the hands of the Sioux and the Northern Cheyenne at the Battle of Little Bighorn.”

“Where did you go after the massacre?” Julia asked gently. “You couldn’t have been but a young teenager when this happened.”

“I was fourteen,” he reported. “My mother made me promise that I would find her brother in Kansas and ask him to take me in. It was her dying wish that I unite with her white family and make a fresh new start in life.”

Julia watched his countenance change to an expression of resentment and torment. She knew what he was going to say even before he told her what happened. “Sol rejected you.”

He nodded stiffly. “I went to him, carrying the heart-shaped necklace my mother always wore as proof of my ancestry. I told my uncle that my mother had died trying to protect me and that she sent me to him for help.”

Lone Wolf scoffed sourly. “Sol was outraged that I had the nerve to show my face on his ranch. He shouted me off his property and told me not to come back. He said he wanted nothing to do with ‘the spawn of a savage.’ He swore that if I tried to make contact with him, his wife or his infant daughter that I would end up dead like the rest of my clan.”

Julia reached out to comfort him, as he had comforted her in her hour of need. She wasn’t sure he even noticed her hand folding consolingly around his rigid forearm.

“I had no choice but to live off the land like a scavenger,” he went on bitterly. “Without my training with the Cheyenne I would have starved to death. I didn’t want to go back to the confinement of the reservation. I couldn’t bear to come face-to-face with the grief and torment all over again, either.”

His expression turned as hard as granite. “I survived like a wild animal, if only to infuriate and defy Sol Griffin with my very existence. For those first three years I lived for no other purpose than to show Sol that he could deny me, but I was out there somewhere, waiting for the right moment to make his life as miserable as he made mine.”

Julia groaned inwardly at the thought of a young boy growing up so alone, alienated and cruelly discarded.

“I trained myself to be tough and competent enough with every weapon so I could withstand the ridicule and defend myself when I reentered white society.”

He laughed humorlessly as he glanced at Julia. “The irony of all this is that instead of heading west I decided to headquarter in this particular area. When I came here eight years ago, Dodge City was a fledgling town that had sprung up around the buffalo-hide business.

“Criminals showed up to rob and swindle traders and merchants and I was sent to track them down. I made plenty of money because business was brisk. But deep down inside I knew the reason I set up camp here was to let Sol know that I was never so far away that he could forget I existed. I wanted to be the ever-present thorn in his side.”

Julia smiled faintly. She could understand Lone Wolf’s need to prove himself to the world—to Sol in particular. He never wanted Sol to forget the injustice and rejection.