Forever And A Day

“I’m not afraid of you.”

His gaze jerked up to her face and the remnants of his smile disappeared. “You should be,” he ground out from between clenched teeth, thinking if she had even a glimmer of the fire blazing in him right now this little girl would run screaming from the bank, whether he held a gun on her or not.

“Well, I’m not.” What she feared right now was facing her father’s rage when he discovered his bank had been robbed while his daughter was in it. If she had ever hoped to impress him with her responsibility, this incident would dash those hopes irreparably. He’d never let her even visit the bank again, much less work in it.

Damnation! She wanted to reach across the counter and just choke this desperado for the way he was messing up her plans and her life. Her hands clenched into fists at the thought, and then Honey realized she was still wearing half of the wrist cuffs. The legal half. Jewelry for a thief. Now, if only...

Kenneth Crane came out of the office, lugging a large canvas bag by its leather handles. “Here...here it is,” he said as he shuffled toward Summerfield on the public side of the counter.

Ignoring the gun, Honey scurried around the counter. Then, just as Gideon Summerfield extended his hand for the bag, Honey reached out and clamped the empty cuff around his wrist. At the sound of the click, her eyes blazed victoriously and her mouth settled into a smug line.

“Oh, Lord,” breathed Kenneth Crane, appearing to wither inside his suit.

Honey flicked the teller a disdainful look. She had expected that from the fainthearted wretch. From Gideon Summerfield, on the other hand, she expected curses and a battle royal with fists and fingernails and feet. She stiffened her body in preparation.

He did curse—a soft, almost whispered expletive that seemed more prayer than oath—and then he shook his head just before his free arm circled Honey and he hoisted her onto his hip.

“Put me down,” she shrieked. “Kenneth, for God’s sake, don’t just stand there gawking. Do something.”

“Oh, Lord,” the teller moaned. “I don’t know what to do.”

It was Gideon Summerfield who answered him with a growl. “I’ll tell you what to do, fella. You tell your boss to be a whole lot more careful about who he invites to his parties.”

Then, with the money bag in one hand and a flailing Honey in the other, he walked out the door.

Chapter Two

“Here now. You drink this, Miz Kate. It’ll put them roses back in your cheeks.”

Kate Logan gave Isaac Goodman a weak but grateful smile as she took the proffered glass, then drained it.

“Better?” Isaac raised a grizzled eyebrow, watching her shiver slightly after swallowing the brandy.

She nodded. “What are we going to do, Isaac?” she asked the bear-size former slave, who had been her husband’s partner on the Santa Fe Trail as well as her own dear and trusted friend for so many years. “What in the world are we going to do?”

Kenneth Crane had come and gone from the rambling adobe house just off the plaza. The bank teller—chalk faced and trembling on the verge of tears—had told them of Honey’s return and her unplanned involvement in the planned robbery. But the news that had left Kate pale and weak had had the opposite effect on her husband. Race had exploded. His curses had thundered through the house, and even now the pounding of his footsteps and the sound of slamming drawers and doors shook the oak floors and the thick adobe walls.

“We ain’t going to do anything,” Isaac answered, angling his head toward the hallway in the direction of Race’s resounding curses. “‘Neath all that thunderation, I suspect Horace is working out a plan. He’ll get her back, Miz Kate. You know he will.”

Kate’s hands fluttered in her lap. “I’m so frightened for her, Isaac. She’s out there all alone.”

The black man eased himself into the chair beside hers. He sighed as he reached out his one good arm to pat Kate’s trembling hand. “Well, now, she ain’t exactly alone, is she?”

Kate threw a dark glance at the beamed ceiling. “I almost wish she were. Whatever was that child thinking, leaving school without permission and then clamping herself to an outlaw like Gideon Summerfield?”

“She wasn’t thinking.” Race Logan’s voice reverberated off the thick walls of the parlor as he stomped across the threshold. “Your daughter hasn’t used her head once in her life as far as I can tell. It’s the Cassidy influence on her. Goddamn moon-faced people who couldn’t find their way out of a privy without a map and a torch.”

Isaac Goodman grinned and settled back in his chair. The mere mention of the Cassidy name always guaranteed a good ten minutes of fireworks between Race Logan and his wife. Twenty years ago in Leavenworth, Kansas, a pregnant Kate had married Ned Cassidy in desperation when she believed Race Logan had abandoned her. It never seemed to matter that the sickly, round-faced storekeeper had died before Kate’s child was born or that she’d never loved him anyway. Truth and logic never seemed to count for much when Race got heated up. Nothing could light a fire under him like the name Cassidy. And nothing could light up Miz Kate like Race. Isaac looked at her now—anticipating her fiery reaction. He wasn’t disappointed.

Her green eyes flashed like emeralds. “Your daughter inherited the Cassidy fortune, Race, not the Cassidy blood. It’s your hot blood that runs through her veins and your hard head on her shoulders. If she quit her schooling and clamped herself onto some cutthroat you hired to rob your bank, the Cassidys have nothing to do with it. Honey’s pure Logan.” She paused only long enough to catch her breath. “And just what do you think you’re doing, strapping on that gun?”

Race glared at her, then gave his belt a yank to settle the holster against his thigh. “What does it look like, Kate?” he muttered as he bent to tie the leg strap.

“It looks like you’re leaving me again.” Kate’s voice quivered and tears brimmed in her eyes.

Race straightened up from anchoring his sidearm. For a second his big hands hung helplessly at his sides. “Katie.” His voice was gentle now. “Look at me, love.”

Her lids lifted to find warmth and solace in his lake-colored gaze.

“I won’t be gone long. I promise you.” He bent on one knee and grasped her fidgeting hand, then pressed it to his lips. “Only long enough to find her and bring her back.”

“Don’t go alone,” she pleaded. “Can’t you organize a posse? Since Summerfield is supposed to have robbed the bank...”

Race’s mouth tautened.

“Too many eager guns in a posse,” Isaac said. “Horace’ll do fine by himself, Miz Kate. Besides, there ain’t no stopping him now. Leastways nothing comes to mind.”

“That’s right, partner,” Race said, straightening up and shooting the old man a hard look. “Can I count on you staying put and keeping an eye on Kate and the boys for me?”

Isaac grinned. “I’m getting too old to go traipsing off after you, Horace. But you might want to remember that you ain’t getting any younger neither. You’re carrying about twenty years that convict ain’t even seen yet.”

“He took off with my daughter, Isaac.”

The older man slowly raised an eyebrow. “From what that pale, shaky teller of yours observed, Horace, didn’t sound like the man had much choice.”

Kate rose from her chair and moved close to her husband. Touching his arm, she could feel the tension that hardened his muscular frame. It didn’t matter what Isaac said. Race was done listening. Rage and determination emanated from his body like pure heat, and she knew from experience that the combination made her husband a dangerous man. In twenty years, his hair had silvered some and his face had a few more weather marks, but his temper was still a fearsome thing. Gideon Summerfield, God help him, wouldn’t be the first man Race Logan had killed.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Honey chastised herself for the hundredth time. Dumber than a post. That was what she should have cuffed him to. A post. A rail. Something permanent rather than five and a half feet of portable female. Gideon Summerfield had carried her out of the bank, then had slung her up onto his saddle like a sack of potatoes, swinging himself up behind her and jamming his heels into his big roan gelding. They’d been riding hard ever since. Two hours. Maybe three. Honey wasn’t sure. Her sole certainty was her own damn blasted stupidity. That, and the outlaw’s hot breath on the nape of her neck and his iron grip around her middle.

She had spent the first hour screaming and cursing and railing over her shoulder at him, catching glimpses of the hard set of his mouth and the steely cast in his gray eyes. The outlaw remained silent, soaking up her ravings like a sponge. After that—hoarse, exhausted, expecting at any moment to be yanked from the saddle then flung to the ground and raped—Honey settled into a grim and wary silence as Santa Fe fell farther and farther behind them. Ahead there was nothing but sky and sage-dotted hills.

And it was so damn hot, Honey thought she might melt like a stick of butter. After two years in St. Louis she had forgotten just how fiercely a June sun could blaze in the territory. It wasn’t helping any, either, having a man’s chest—as hard and hot as a stovetop—rubbing against her shoulder blades and his breath like the blast of a furnace on her neck.

“Stupid,” she hissed, this time out loud.

Gideon Summerfield’s hand twitched on her rib cage. His other hand pulled back on the reins. “Yup,” he said as he slid to the ground, jerking her right hand along with his.

All of Honey’s senses sharpened in self-defense. “Stop it. What do you think you’re doing?” she squealed as he hauled her down from the tall horse.

“Answering nature’s call.” He began walking toward a low-growing juniper, towing Honey along at arm’s length.

“You’re not,” she said. “I mean, you...you can’t.”

Gideon Summerfield continued toward the bush. “Lady, I can and I am.”

“But we’re...I’m...there’s no privacy,” she wailed.

He halted. “You should have thought of that before you decided to be my Siamese twin, sweetheart.” Saying that, Gideon Summerfield reached to unbutton his fly.

Honey twisted her head in the opposite direction, closed her eyes and her ears as well. She had been prepared to deal with rape, with a violent assault on her person. But not this. It was an assault on sheer decency. Mortified, her face burning, she began babbling.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid. What was I thinking? That you’d just hand back the money and accompany me to the sheriff’s office? What a dolt. What a fool. I’d have been better off if you’d just shot me. Left me for dead on the damn bank floor. Or cut my arm off and left me for the buzzards ten miles back. I’d have been better off—”

“Are you done?” he drawled.

Honey blinked. “Oh! Are you?”

He buttoned his pants. “Your turn, sweetheart.”

“I should think not,” she said with a sniff.

“Suit yourself.” He started back toward the horse with Honey stumbling in his wake.

But this time it was Honey who halted, digging her heels into the dry ground, resisting the pull on her wrist. “I demand to know where you’re taking me, Mr. Summerfield. Where, and what your intentions are.”

Gideon gritted his teeth. His intentions, for chrissake! For the past couple hours his intentions had been at war with his baser instincts as he held this lush package of female in his arms, as he breathed in the sweet, clean scent of her hair and made himself dizzy contemplating the delicate shape of her ear and the pale, smooth curve of her neck. He looked into the blue-green defiance of her eyes. Then he reeled her in by flexing his arm.

Honey collided with the toes of his boots, the solid wall of his chest. “Don’t,” she snapped, trying to twist away.

“Don’t what?” Gideon’s lips just brushed the crown of her head. “Don’t breathe in your woman scent? Don’t touch you? What?” He slid his fingers into the wealth of her hair, then clenched a fistful of the dark silk, pulling back, tilting her face to meet his. “Don’t kiss you?”

Honey stiffened beneath his gaze. “Don’t act like a brute, Mr. Summerfield.”

His eyes roved slowly over her face—saw the spark of fear in her eyes, the hectic color on her cheeks, the defiant twist of her sensuous mouth. This brute, he thought, hadn’t touched another human being in five years except to give or receive punches, except to clap his hand on the hard shoulder of a convict in front of him to shuffle down a corridor in lockstep. He’d felt the cold stone floor of his cell, the icy metal of his cage, the sting of leather, the clout of wood. And this brute was dazed now, dizzy with the touch and smell and sight of sweet flesh and moist lips. He didn’t want to possess her so much as blanket himself in the softness of her, lose himself in the womanliness and purity of her, warm himself in her essential fire.

They were in the middle of nowhere with only scrub and dust, a weary horse and a hot blind sun for witnesses. She was his for the taking. And Gideon Summerfield, brute, hard and hot and wanting her, let her go.

His teeth were clenched so hard he could barely form the words. “Don’t worry, bright eyes. You’re not my type.” It wasn’t so far from the truth, after all. The women in his life had been whores for the most part, professional or not so professional. There had been a lady or two along the way, more curious than amorous, more interested in bedding a notorious thief than making love to a man. Not like this lady, though. Young as she was, her quality ran deep. More quality than he could handle at the moment.

When he eased his hand from her hair, Honey straightened up and smoothed the folds of her skirt, keeping her head down to hide the hot flush that had spread like wildfire over her cheeks. “I should hope not,” she snapped. “And I’d like an answer to my question. About where we’re going. And when you plan to let me go.”

The sooner the better, she thought. For one heart-stopping moment, she had thought he was going to kiss her. But then he didn’t, and rather than relief, Honey had felt a vague and bewildering disappointment. She didn’t want this desperado to kiss her. Most assuredly she didn’t.

She raised her chin and gave him the most scathing look she could muster. “When do you plan to let me go?”

His mouth hooked into a lazy grin and he lifted their joined wrists. “Let you go? Hell, I thought I was your prisoner, bright eyes.”

“That isn’t very funny, Mr. Summerfield.”

“Gideon,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

He shrugged. “Look. Why not call me by my Christian name as long as we’re going to be cuffed together for a while.” He slanted a meaningful glance toward their wrists. “And you might as well tell me your name while we’re at it. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense keeping up such niceties when we’re going to have to be answering nature’s—”

“Edwina,” she said sharply, cutting him off.

An odd smile touched his lips. “Doesn’t suit you.”

“Neither do you, Mr. Summerfield.”

He hung his head in mock surrender, and as he did a lock of hair fell across his forehead. For the first time, Honey noticed its rich color. Nutmeg? No. More like cinnamon. It looked warm and spicy where it curled over the collar of his shirt. There were glints of gold wherever the sun touched it.

“Edwina,” he murmured now, making the name sound antique, if not downright crotchety. “You got a better last name?”

Still contemplating his hair, Honey was about to reply with the truth, but suddenly and thankfully refrained. If he knew she was the daughter of the owner of Logan Savings and Loan, there was no telling what this desperado would do. Even if he did have spice-colored hair and such an engaging, lopsided little grin. “Cassidy,” she said.

He lifted a finely shaped hand to touch the brim of his hat. It was a gesture Honey found most men performed awkwardly, like gawky little boys. But this outlaw managed it with the ease and grace of a man who had spent his past few years in a palace rather than a prison.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Edwina Cassidy. We’d best get on our way now.” He slid his gaze toward the shrubs. “You sure you don’t have to...”

“I’m quite sure, Mr. Summer—”

“Gideon,” he corrected as he swept her up into his arms and carried her toward the grazing horse.

After he settled behind her, Honey angled her head over her shoulder. “You never did tell me where we were headed, Mr...um, Gideon.”

He slid an arm around her waist, fanning his fingers out on her midriff. “Didn’t I?” He urged the big horse forward with a nudge of his heels, then added with a deep-throated chuckle, “Fancy that.”

* * *

“We need a room.” Gideon’s voice was a low rumble as he approached the desk clerk. Miss Edwina Cassidy slept soundly in his arms while he attempted to keep his own right hand as well as hers hidden in the folds of her skirts.

The gangly young clerk eyed him blandly, suppressing a yawn. “You and the missus?”

“That’s right.”

The boy let out a knowing little snort, coupled with a wink. Since the small hotel on the main street of Cerrillos was the front half of a dance hall, Gideon suspected the kid had seen women taken up to rooms every which way—awake, asleep, alive or dead drunk.

“That’ll be four dollars, in advance,” the boy told him now.

Gideon shifted the little bank clerk’s deadweight so he could dig into his pocket. “Here’s five,” he said, flipping a gold coin onto the counter. “Make sure we get some hot water and clean towels.”

“Yeah. Sure thing.” The boy pushed a brass key toward him. “Up those stairs and down the hall on the right,” he said, angling his head in that direction.

“Dance hall stay open all night?” Gideon asked him.

The boy looked at the sleeping female, shifted his gaze back to Gideon’s face, then winked again. “All night. All morning. All the liquor you can tuck away. All the women you can—”

Gideon cut him off. “You want me to sign a register or something?”

“Dad-blast, I almost forgot.” The boy dipped a bent-tipped pen in an inkwell and passed it, dribbling, across the stained counter. “Just scribble anything,” he mumbled. “It don’t matter.”

Slowly, with his left hand while balancing his sleeping cuff-mate on one hip, Gideon printed his name, then turned the book so the boy could read it. “How’s that?”

“Yeah. Sure.” The boy’s bored, half-open eyes skimmed the page, then widened and bulged. “Its fine, Mr. Summerfield.” His throat crackled as he attempted to swallow. “It’s just fine, sir. I’ll be sure and get those clean towels for you. Hot water, too. Anything else I can do for you, sir?”

“Nope. Towels and water will do fine. Much obliged.” Gideon shifted the soft burden in his arms, then headed up the stairs, all the while feeling the boy’s amazed gaze on his back. Five years in prison, he thought, hadn’t dimmed his reputation all that much. Good thing, too. He was going to need every bit of it to accomplish what he had to do.

The room was small and spare and no doubt flyspecked, but to Gideon’s eyes anything with four walls and a bed was sheer heaven compared to iron bars and a wooden pallet. He closed the door with his foot, then lowered the sleeping woman onto the mattress.

She didn’t wake, but Gideon hadn’t expected her to. The ride from Santa Fe had been long and hard. Twelve hours in the saddle under a relentless sun. He’d offered her his hat, but she had refused with a proud stiffening of her shoulders and a cluck of her tongue that told him pretty clearly where she thought he could put his hat. She had ignored him for the most part, staring ahead, stewing, fretting, plotting Lord only knew what as her teeth worried her lower lip.

By moonrise, though, she hadn’t been able to fight exhaustion anymore, and her proud chin had dipped wearily onto the high-buttoned bodice of her dress. Gideon had tucked her head onto his shoulder and pressed his cheek to the soft fall of her hair, easing back on the reins and slowing the big roan to a lullaby walk. He wasn’t in such a hurry for cold revenge that he couldn’t savor the warmth of Miss Edwina Cassidy for a quiet little while.

He sat beside her now, watching as the light from a three-quarter moon glossed the dark tangle of her hair. With his free hand, he reached to smooth it away from her sunburned face, thinking maybe he could scare up some vinegar to take some of the sting out of that delicate skin. Lord knew his own was smarting from the harsh New Mexico sun.

Sighing, he reached in the pocket of his shirt and withdrew a quill toothpick. While his mouth twitched in a grin, it took him all of a minute to jimmy the lock on his half of the cuffs. It took him a tad longer, though, to wrestle the limp lady out of her rumpled dress.

“Stupid,” he muttered softly as he felt the dampness of her underskirts. Damn stubborn female would have let her insides explode rather than lose her confounded dignity. Only total exhaustion and sleep had finally relieved her.

With a gruff curse, Gideon proceeded to strip her of the wet underthings. He swore again when he discovered she wore a combination. Corsets and drawers came off easy, but these damn one-piece garments were hell on a man in a hurry, or one with a decent purpose and trembling fingers such as his were now while they worked the buttons down the front then slipped the soft cotton from her shoulders.

Moonlight silvered the pale skin beneath his fingertips and gleamed in the deep valley between her lovely breasts. Their crests bloomed like roses in a night garden. As he beheld her, Gideon realized he wasn’t breathing. His mouth had gone dry as sand, and his hands had clenched into tight fists as his leaden, shuttered gaze failed to respond to his wish to turn away. His lips moved soundlessly, once again damning the banker for planting this innocent flower in his path. It was more than a sane man could stand.

Almost more. Gideon stood up and stared at the wall as he whisked the garment from her hips and legs and tossed it into the sodden pile beside the bed. He folded her gently into the bed linens then and raised her arm to clamp his half of the cuff onto the iron bedpost.

“Sleep tight, Miss Edwina Cassidy,” he murmured. He gathered up her clothes and walked softly out of the room.

* * *

The string band stuttered in the middle of its tune when Gideon pushed through the batwing doors into the dance hall. He felt the keen appraisal of every eye in the smoky room, and he heard the telling shift in the rhythm of everyone’s breathing, the way voices stilled a second, then softly rose again as he crossed to the bar.

A perverse pride welled in the back of his throat, and his gut tugged a little as he thought of so many other rooms he had entered with his cousins—with Jesse and Frank and Dwight. The young desk clerk had done his job just right. The word had been spread. The name of Gideon Summerfield had gotten around. And its magic was still there. But it wasn’t magic, as Gideon well knew. It was fear that was rippling through the room. It was the rush from the wings of the angel of death.

“Name your poison, Summerfield,” the bearded bartender said.

Gideon leaned an elbow on the carved sweep of walnut and lifted a boot onto the rail. “Rye, if you’ve got it, otherwise anything’ll do.”

As the barman turned to retrieve a glass from the wall behind him, Gideon surveyed the dimly lit room. A dozen men. A sprinkle of whores, including the one who was sashaying toward him now.

“You’re a hell of a long way from Clay County,” she purred, fitting her hip against his, slipping her fingers between the buttons of his shirt.

“You, too, darlin’, judging from the sound of you.” Gideon immediately recognized the flat border state drawl. He tried to ignore her inquisitive little hand as it traced over his belly. He tried and failed to ignore the tightening in his groin.

“Born and bred in Liberty,” she said. “How ‘bout you?”