Child Bride Page 4

  Chase shrugged. “I’ve been on a four-day stakeout, I’m fresh out of supplies, and you look like you could use some food. I was thinking about going into town to stock up, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what to do with you.”

  “Take me with you?”

  She looked so hopeful. Chase almost wished he could. “Nope, that won’t work.” He’d purposely kept a low profile on his visits to town because he didn’t want to give the locals reason to get curious about him. A female stranger riding shotgun in his Jeep was sure to draw attention.

  “Why don’t you get some rest,” he suggested. “There’s a shower if you want to take one.”

  “Oh, yes!” she said, an imploring quiver in her voice. “A shower? That would be heaven.”

  Chase had an involuntary flash of Annie Wells stripping and stepping into his makeshift shower. After their close encounter moments before, he knew better than to let his imagination take off in the direction of her shedding clothes. She was incredibly responsive, and he was no saint, especially where willing women were concerned. And yet, despite his concerted effort to banish it, the forbidden mental glimpse of her lithe, naked body created a hot spot in the pit of his stomach and raised goose bumps on his arms. It also gave him an idea.

  “Take off your clothes, Annie.”

  “What?”

  He tipped the shotgun barrel toward the ripped-out knee of her jeans. “Those dungarees, your sweater and shoes—take them off.”

  “Why?”

  “You won’t be needing them in the shower.”

  She brought a hand to her chest protectively. “Yes, I will,” she insisted. “In the convent we always bathed in our clothing—at the very least, our shifts. Nudity wasn’t considered proper.”

  Chase didn’t know whether to chuckle or groan. She really was one for the record books. Not ten minutes ago she’d been ready to make babies with him. Now she wouldn’t even take off her tennis shoes.

  “Okay, then,” he said, demonstrating what he thought was remarkable patience. “Take off everything but your shift, whatever that is.”

  “What are you going to do?” she demanded, backing away from him as though he were some kind of psycho or rapist.

  “Nothing like what you’re thinking,” he assured her. “I only want to make sure you stick around until I get back.”

  “I won’t go anywhere, I promise.”

  In Chase’s line of work promises were about as useful as rats in a bunkhouse. And unlike Bad Luck Jack, Annie Wells had proved to be totally unpredictable. No, until he’d had an opportunity to check out her story and find out exactly who she was, he didn’t want her going anywhere or talking to anyone. He could just see the tabloid headlines if those sharks got hold of her. FORMER PENTAGON HERO STASHES AWAY CHILD BRIDE. Even the local papers would have a field day with that.

  Back in their glory days, when Chase and his former partners were rescuing POWs and terrorists’ hostages, they’d been made celebrities by the press. The media dubbed them “the Stealth Commandos” for their unorthodox methods of liberating American citizens, and the public’s response promptly made heroes out of them.

  Since the three men were single and eligible, the paparazzi stalked them, hungry for news of their personal lives. Chase himself had been relatively free of the limelight since he’d retired to the wilds of Wyoming, but his former partners were still big news. Johnny Starhawk was a brilliant and controversial civil-rights lawyer, and Geoff Dias continued to run recovery missions.

  No, Chase couldn’t take the risk of letting Annie out of his sight until he knew what she was up to. He had the feeling she was an undetonated minefield, just waiting for someone to tread on her.

  “Chase—” Her voice was hushed again, as though she’d been caught whispering during a church sermon. “I thought of something. What about the other two men, your partners? Why don’t you contact them? They could tell you who I am.”

  His partners? She had to mean Johnny and Geoff. “How do you know them?” he asked.

  Her blue eyes were sparkling with anticipation, as though she’d found the solution to all their problems. “We met with them on the way to the border, don’t you remember? It was part of the plan, to discuss strategy. They’d found the scientists, and you’d found me. I even remember Johnny joking that you had the best deal.”

  Chase wondered why he hadn’t thought of it. He didn’t recall the meeting, but his partners had mentioned it briefly when they’d visited him in the hospital. They’d said very little about the girl, but Chase had assumed it was because of the tragic way she’d died. Later on, since no official agency had been able to find any record of her, the incident was pretty much swept under the rug.

  The whole episode had left a bad taste in Chase’s mouth. It had prompted his decision to retire, and then, in a dominolike reaction, that decision created a misunderstanding between him, Johnny, and Geoff. He hadn’t seen either of his partners in over four years.

  “I’m sure they’d remember me, if they saw me.”

  Annie’s voice broke into his thoughts, soft and eager. “They had an Indian guide with them,” she went on. “Only no one could understand him, so I interpreted. ... ”

  Chase studied her as she recounted the story, searching her guileless features for any sign of deceit. The eagerness in her expression tugged at him, and he had to remind himself forcibly that the situation had been reversed only moments before. But she did have a way about her that made him want to abandon all his concerns, brave any danger, and gallop full tilt to her rescue. She was a land mine, he realized. And he was the idiot about to tread on her.

  “At the very least they could verify who I am,” she pressed. “Then would you believe me?”

  “Maybe ... ” He drew up the barrel of the gun as he spoke, letting it point lazily in the vicinity of her thighs. A smile, faintly bemused, drifted over his face as he considered her flushed cheeks and the quick rise and fall of her breasts. She was an eyeful when she was excited. Obedience, modesty, trust, and submission, he thought, remembering the list of virtues she’d mentioned. He would soon know which, if any, Annie Wells had learned.

  “But that isn’t our immediate problem, is it?” he said, lowering his voice intentionally as he nodded toward her ragged sweater. “Come on now, Miss Annie. Don’t make me have to do it for you. Take off those clothes.”

  Three

  “GO AHEAD THEN,” Annie said softly, dropping her clenched hand to her side. “Shoot me where I stand. Because I’m not going to undress at gunpoint. Not for you. Not for any man.”

  The words felt good as Annie said them, as sure and steady as she could ever have wanted them to be. But she’d barely had a chance to savor her potent declaration when she realized her misstep. She’d forgotten to take into account his reaction.

  The look that crossed Chase’s face at that moment would have given a corpse cause for concern. A corner of his mouth curled back in disbelief, and his black eyes narrowed to shimmering slits. Anthracite, she thought, aware that she’d finally come up with an apt description of his eyes. At the moment they looked hotter than the coals of hell.

  “You’ve got it wrong, Red,” he said. “I wasn’t giving you a choice. Either you do the honors or I’ll do them for you.”

  Annie’s heart was beating hard enough to knock her to the floor, but she held his gaze without flinching. “Pull the trigger then,” she said, raising her hands. “Shoot me and have it over with.”

  He shifted the gun, and Annie gasped. But instead of raising it to his shoulder, he dropped the weapon to his side, resting the butt end on the floor like a soldier on guard duty. “You’re sure about that, Missy? You’re willing to die?”

  She gave him the nod every cowboy understands, just the slightest inclination of her head. She could tell by his expression that he’d cocked an eyebrow, although she couldn’t actually see because everything above his hellfire eyes was covered by his low-riding Stetson.

  “Woul
d you like last rites?” His voice had gone dry as the dust coating his cowboy boots. “I’m not a priest, but I could hose you down or something.”

  Annie breathed a little easier at his sardonic tone. At least he hadn’t put a bullet through her. Yet. “Last rites won’t be necessary,” she informed him quietly, lowering her hands. “I’m not actually Catholic. My parents were Episcopalians, I think. They never exactly declared themselves one way or the other, but they were quite progressive in their beliefs. My dad even brought in a local witch doctor as a consultant on occasion, to make our patients feel at home—”

  “Annie!” He slammed the gun butt against the floor, and Annie started as though he’d shot the thing. All traces of amusement had vanished from his features. “Quit stalling and ditch those clothes, dammit.”

  Dizziness swamped her as she shook her head. “No! Not at gunpoint.”

  “Is this gun pointing at you, Missy?”

  He did have her there, she realized. It was a technicality, but he had met her demand. He’d bent a little, and gut instinct told her that bending didn’t come easily to Chase Beaudine. Still it galled her that he felt it necessary to take such extreme measures.

  “Oh, all right,” she said finally, impatience overriding her principles. “But this is so unnecessary. Where would I be going after traveling thousands of miles to find you?”

  She yanked up her sweater and shift, and began to unsnap her jeans. “Go outside, will you?” she said, waving him toward the door. “Since you’re leaving anyway I’ll hand the clothes out when I’m done.”

  Chase caught himself about to turn toward the door and stopped short. Damn, if she didn’t have a bossy mouth on her. Of all the virtues she’d been taught, apparently obedience hadn’t had the slightest effect. “Watch the sass,” he said, shooting her a black stare. “Or I’ll have you peel down to the skin.”

  “I was planning to.” Her eyes held a flash of defiance, but her voice revealed a soft, husky quaver he would have called seductive in another woman.

  He watched in taut silence as she worked open the metal snap of her jeans and began to inch down the zipper, releasing the tiny teeth one notch at a time. She was either stalling again or deliberately taking her time to torture him. Whichever it was, she had a natural talent for annoying him.

  “You want me to finish that for you,” he warned, his hand tightening on the gun barrel, “just keep it up.”

  She drew the zipper down angrily, exposing a triangle of pink skin. As she dug her thumbs inside the waistband of her jeans and began to pull them down, Chase felt an odd clutch of sensation in his stomach. She wasn’t wearing underwear! He was going to be seeing a lot more pink skin any minute now.

  But instead of taking off the jeans, she left them hanging open, riding the rise of her slender hipbones, provocatively unzipped. And then, seemingly unmindful of Chase, she began to concentrate on unbuttoning her sweater.

  Chase was anything but unmindful. It was one of the most riveting sights he’d ever been audience to. As her fingers worked open the tiny buttons, revealing creamy flesh and the promise of shivering female curves, he felt muscles deep inside him grab and yank tight, as if he’d been lassoed and jerked off his feet.

  Sweet God in heaven. What was she doing? A striptease? The woman was fresh out of a convent, by her own account. “Annie, what are you—”

  “I’m almost done,” she assured him, working diligently on the last of the buttons.

  It looked as though she had on some kind of flimsy cotton camisole underneath the sweater, but that was it as far as Chase could see. Nothing else under there but the lush softness of a woman’s body. Her full breasts were being crowded by her efforts to undress, and the result was an abundance of peekaboo cleavage.

  Chase winced at the explosive surge of energy in his groin. Did she have any idea what she was doing to him? In another damn minute he was going to have to excuse himself.

  She looked up, her expression suffused with something that he might have called innocence if he hadn’t been getting suspicious about her motives.

  “Am I going fast enough for you?” she asked.

  She was going just fast enough to make him wonder if a man had ever been put out of his misery because of unrequited lust. If you’ve got a problem now, cowboy, he thought sardonically, what are you going to do when she’s naked? It was a moot question. He would never last that long.

  Once she’d negotiated the last button and let her sweater fall open, she looked up at him. A radiant flush was creeping up her neck, and it was also wending downward, setting fire to her ample breasts. But it was the sparkle of apprehension in her eyes that caught hold of Chase’s imagination and twisted it inside out.

  With her burnished hair and blue eyes, she looked like an exotic moth who’d wandered into a spider’s web and was trying to figure out what the big bad spider was going to do next. The whisper of alarm in her gaze, the excited quiver in her breathing, dealt a devastating blow to Chase’s willpower. They aroused him even more than the lush innocence of her body. What was worse, she’d obviously aroused herself as well.

  “I guess I’d better take off my jeans,” she said, her voice catching slightly as she touched her fingers to her thigh. There was a hesitance in her manner that implied she was waiting for something. ... His response? The shimmer of her breasts as she breathed, the question still trembling on her parted lips, all suggested that she would do whatever he told her to do, that she awaited his bidding.

  Chase’s mind shouted an answer. Tell her to get her sweet butt out of those jeans and onto the cot behind her. Then give her exactly what her baby-blue eyes have been asking for. A joyride she will never forget. The raunchy thought hit him with the sudden impact of a kidney punch.

  “Was that a yes?” She began to tug down the jeans.

  The moment of truth, Chase thought. If he let all hell break loose and acted on his impulses, he would undoubtedly feel a whole lot better afterward. And from the look of her, she would too. But would she let it go at that? Or would she see their lovemaking as some kind of commitment on his part? The very fact that he had to ask the question made it too big a risk. But then again, if he had to stand there and watch her drop her jeans without touching her, he was going to blow out like an overinflated tire.

  “Hold it,” he said, stopping her before the jeans could reach her hips. “I’m calling a time-out. In fact, I’m getting out of here while both of us are still vertical.”

  He wheeled and headed for the door. “I’ll be on the front porch. You can hand your clothes out when you’re done. And leave that shift thing on, for God’s sake.”

  Annie watched, startled, as he slammed the door behind him. He’d certainly picked an odd time to make an exit. Her lack of experience in such matters left her a little bewildered, but she was burning up with curiosity. A faint smile blossomed as she stared at his escape route, the closed door. Had she actually run Chase Beaudine off? Was that possible? She hoped it was her fatal allure that had done it, rather than something else, such as the possibility that he didn’t find her attractive, or Lord forbid, that he had some personal hang-up about sex.

  Neither seemed likely since he’d wanted to make love to her earlier. But even then his behavior had been odd. He’d stopped in the middle of kissing her, insisting they were rushing things. She’d already sensed that he didn’t have much use for women, especially a woman claiming to be his wife, but that alone couldn’t account for his strange actions.

  Annie’s quandary increased as she glanced down. Half-dressed, she was startlingly sexy. What was the man’s problem? Sex? Women? Annie Wells? Or all three?

  Outside on the porch Chase waited impatiently for Annie to hand out the clothes. His only problem at that moment was putting some distance between himself and the frustrating female in his cabin. Maybe then he could get his blood pressure normalized and his brain “reoxygenated” before he became permanently addled. Given some thinking time, he told himself, a man
could handle any woman, even one combat-trained in a convent.

  “I’m still waiting for those clothes, Missy,” he called, giving the door a kick.

  “ ‘All good things come to those who wait,’ ” she muttered a moment later as she handed out her jeans and sweater. “Happy?” she asked, plunking her tennis shoes on top of the pile and shutting the door with a sharp crack.

  Happy? As he stared at the clothes, his mind scrolled image after lurid image of the woman who no longer wore them. No, happy wasn’t the H-word that came to mind.

  A flash of light bounced off Chase’s side mirror, drawing his attention from the highway ahead. He slowed the Bronco, glanced over his shoulder, and glimpsed furtive movement out in the pasturelands. He cranked the steering wheel hard and spun the Bronco into a 180-degree turn.

  Gunning the four-wheel-drive vehicle, he drove it over the runoff ditch on the side of the road, then negotiated an obstacle course of underbrush and small trees as he sped toward the McAffrey ranch’s lower pasture. Cattle thieves had been hitting the local ranches he provided security for, but these weren’t penny-ante operators like Bad Luck Jack. This was a slick, big-time operation. Over the last few weeks they’d got away with several hundred head without leaving a trace.

  Another flash of light caught Chase’s eye as he spotted a lone figure some three hundred feet away, hunkered down next to a stretch of barbed-wire fence. Chase’s savage desire to catch the bastards who’d been eluding him made him fearless—and reckless.

  As the Bronco broke through the trees onto the open range, the man saw Chase and reared up. The rustler snarled an obscenity, then broke and ran. Chase hit the brakes and slammed out of the Bronco even before it had stopped moving. Bullwhip in hand, he sprinted in hot pursuit. By the time he’d gained enough ground to use the whip, his lungs were burning for air.

  The man glanced over his shoulder as Chase closed in. With a roar of rage he heaved something sharp and metallic at Chase. Chase swerved as the glinting missile sliced open his shirtsleeve without tearing any flesh. A wire cutter, he realized, not a knife.