Of Men And Angels

She must have heard his hunger pangs, because she was holding back a smile. “If you’re not hungry, I’ll put the rest out for the birds.”

“Finish it,” he said. “You haven’t eaten for two days.”

She shook her head. “You’re a lousy cook. I don’t want it.”

She was dangling the can in front of him like bait, and she looked as if she’d die if he didn’t eat something. His stomach rumbled even more loudly, and she smiled. “Please, Jake. I really can’t eat any more.”

His name rolled gently from her lips, and he liked it.

“All right then.” He reached across the fire and took the can in his bare hand. The metal was cool now, but still warm where her fingers had been. As the angel picked up the baby, he polished off the meal in four bites and poured coffee.

Charlie was squeaking like a kitten, and Jake washed down an unfamiliar lump of worry with the dregs from the pot. “Is he all right?”

“Just hungry. Can you hand me the canteen?”

He picked up the flask, stretched his arm as far as it would go and he handed it to her. She took it in both hands, tore off a piece of the petticoat, twisted it into a teat, and soaked it with water. Tickling the baby’s chin, she slipped the cotton into his mouth.

“With a little luck, he’ll figure this out,” she said.

The baby’s lips moved in that birdlike way, and he started to suck. Jake breathed a sigh of relief.

As Charlie’s jaws worked the makeshift nipple, Alex rocked him. “He’s fairly big for a newborn.”

Jake looked doubtful. He’d seen plucked chickens with more meat on their bones. Curiosity loosened his tongue and he sat higher against the saddle.

“Isn’t it kind of crazy for a woman to be traveling when she’s so far along?”

“It is, but she didn’t have much choice. She was stuck in Leadville for weeks because of the bridge being out over the gorge. If the train had been running, we would have reached Grand Junction a month ago.”

“Do you know anything about her?”

“Only that her last name was Smith and that she was a widow from Chicago. She mentioned starting a restaurant with her sister in California, but we talked mostly about the weather and the miserable ride. She seemed like a very private person.

“Being a widow named Smith sounds pretty convenient to me,” Jake said.

“I thought so, too.”

Charlie started fussing, and Alex dipped the cotton in the canteen. The baby made tiny sucking sounds, and the angel started humming, a lullaby he recognized in some hidden depth of his soul. The sun was gone, and in the firelight he watched the baby fall asleep in her arms.

Her eyelids were drooping too, and he kicked himself for noticing the thick lashes that shadowed her eyes. With thoughts of warmth and sweetness nipping at him, Jake stood up and spread his bedroll near the fire. “You and Charlie can have the blanket.”

“I’m not cold.” She pulled the baby closer and scooted against a rock.

Jake dropped the blanket over her shoulders, but she shrugged it off. He glared at her. She was making things more difficult than they had to be. “You’re either stupid or a liar. Which is it?”

“I’m too polite for my own good.”

“Then you’re both.”

She grinned at him, and he saw both truth and humor in her eyes. “Actually, I’m neither, but you’re still wet and I’m dry enough to be comfortable by the fire.”

He left the blanket lying in the dirt. For a man who didn’t have a considerate bone in his body, he was acting like a fool. He should have taken the blanket, gotten his whiskey from the saddlebag and concentrated on forgetting the past two days, but this woman made him irritable.

“You like to argue, don’t you?” he finally said.

“It’s a family trait.” Her eyes darkened. “How soon before we get to Grand Junction?”

“A day or so.”

“I’m already a month later than I wanted to be.”

“What’s waiting for you?”

“Family,” she said. “My parents. I haven’t seen them in five years.”

The baby was quiet, and Alex was on the verge of sleep. In less than a minute her head rolled forward and her breathing blended into the deep rhythms of the night. He spread the slicker on the ground and urged her down so that she was on her side with Charlie cradled in her arms, then he covered them both with the blanket.

As for himself, he had other ways to keep warm. Crouching by his gear, he pulled the whiskey flask out of the saddlebag. It was half-empty, but it was enough to help him sleep.

Behind him, the angel rustled beneath the blanket. Smoke from the fire wafted to his nose. Lowering the flask, he turned to make sure she hadn’t rolled too close to the coals. Still curled around the baby, she was staring at him as if he’d grown two heads. A nightmarish fear beamed in her eyes. No matter how thirsty he was, she looked like she needed it more.

“Do you want a swallow? It’ll help you sleep.”

“No, thank you.” She closed her eyes and blew out a lungful of air. He could almost see her measuring her next breath, taking it in, and forcing the fear out with it, until she went back to sleep.

The flask dangled in his hand as he breathed in the night air and its peculiar mix of smoke and emptiness. The baby cooed at her side, and a familiar stone shifted in his gut. He would have given ten years of his life, hell, all twenty-five years, just for five minutes of that kind of peace.

The flask grew warm from the heat of his hands. He had never cared for the taste of stale whiskey, and the dregs had been cooking for two days now. He heard the angel sigh in her sleep, saw her feet twitch, imagined her dreams of a fiery red desert and a baby being born.

And then he had thoughts of his own, of the crimes he’d committed, of Lettie, and his brother Gabe, of the last night in Flat Rock. He had been close to vomiting for two days now, and he knew if he took even a swallow of the warm liquor his guts would spill at his feet. He’d shame himself in front of her, and she’d be on her feet in a heartbeat, holding his head while he puked up his guts.

He couldn’t bear the thought of the angel hearing him vomit, so he put the whiskey back in his saddlebag and walked into the darkness. Stopping at a boulder silhouetted by the moon, he rolled a cigarette, slipped it between his lips and struck a match.

The tip glowed and faded, an orange flower blooming in the darkness, too bright to be real and too beautiful to last.

Chapter Three

She was dreaming of cicadas chanting on a summer night, but the rattle in her ears wasn’t quite right. It stopped and started while cicadas made a noise that never ended. The crickets got louder as the night lengthened and they always sounded far away. This rattle was too close to be a dream, then she heard the click of a rifle, the baby’s sudden wail and a man’s low voice.

“Hold still, Alex, real still.”

Something slithered over her feet. Her eyelids flew open and she saw Jake Malone’s dirty boots planted three feet away from her face.

“Don’t move, honey.”

Dear God, how could she hold still with a rattler rippling over her feet? The baby was wailing now. Only the bundling kept him from thrashing and attracting the snake. His red face was next to hers, but she didn’t dare move. The rattling stopped, and the silence was more frightening than the hiss of its tail.

“He might leave, so stay still. He’s looking kind of bored right now.”

Was that supposed to make her feel better?

“I can’t shoot him from this angle so I’m going to move behind you. This fella is as good as dead. He’ll make a nice band for the hat I’m going to buy for you.”

Her legs were shaking, and her jaw throbbed. Tears squeezed out of her eyes, and she looked down without moving her head. The snake studied the baby with its slitted eyes. Its flat head swiveled, and she wondered if snakes could hear, and if the baby’s wails would make it strike.

Fresh terror pulsed through her. She would die, the baby would die, or Jake Malone would save them both.

“He’ll be tasty for breakfast once I nail him,” the outlaw said.

The man was out of his mind.

“They taste like chicken.”

Her stomach lurched. Hot tears streaked her face.

Sssss…Sssss…Sssss…

Jake’s shadow touched the coils. “I’m going to shoot on three.”

He raised the rifle and took a step. “One…”

The baby kicked inside the bunting.

“Two…”

The snake’s fangs glistened in the sun.

“Three.”

The rifle blasted hot metal. The snake lunged for its prey, and Alex flung herself in front of the baby. Razor-sharp fangs sliced through her arm. Blood and bits of the snake spattered her face and hands.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!”

Charlie’s mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear him cry. Her sleeve was in shreds and covered with blood. She struggled to her knees. The snake was a bloody rope at her side, and Jake Malone was in front of her, pulling on her arm, ripping at the red cotton sticking to her skin.

He was talking, but she couldn’t hear him. She wanted to tell him everything would all right, that the snake was dead, but she couldn’t force the words out of her throat. She could barely breathe, and when he ripped the sleeve up to her elbow, she saw two red gashes where the rattler’s fangs had ripped her skin.

“Alex? Can you hear me?”

He was shouting, but she could barely make out the words. Not trusting her voice, she nodded to him.

He had a knife in his hand. It was short, with the sharpest silver blade she had ever seen, and his eyes were glued to her forearm where the red streaks were oozing blood. The knife shifted in his fingers.

“No!”

She tried to pull her arm away, but he had a firm grip on her elbow. The blade sliced into her flesh just above the two gashes, and a second later he was sucking the blood. He spat one mouthful on the ground, then two more. With a jerk of his hand, he tore the rest of the sleeve, made a tourniquet and twisted it just above the bite.

Wiping her blood away from his mouth, he grabbed her elbow and squeezed. “Talk to me, Alex. Does your whole arm hurt or just where it’s bleeding?”

“Just—just the bite.”

“Does your arm tingle? Is it going numb?”

She was trembling with pain and terror, but she managed to shake her head.

“Here’s the situation, honey. I don’t think the snake shot you full of venom. Those were scratches, not puncture marks. I had to cut you, though. I had to be sure.”

His eyes were as wide as hers. If the snake had shot its venom, she would die, and no amount of hope or letting of blood would stop the progress of the poison.

She blinked and saw her father’s face. She tasted ripe peaches and her mother’s homemade jam. Charlie’s wail pierced the silence, and Jake’s breath rasped as he pressed his fingers against her throat and felt her racing pulse.

A sob exploded from her chest. Regrets buzzed in her mind like insects with ugly black wings and she couldn’t swat them away. Her body was a shadow, empty and gray, but her vision sharpened and she saw the bright beauty of the arid plateau. Her ears pounded with the vastness of the silent earth. There was so much of life she had missed, so much she hadn’t tasted, touched, understood.

“I don’t want to die,” she said, choking on the dryness of her own mouth. A thunderous tremor traveled from her toes to her scalp. Her whole body shook with it, except for her injured arm being held steady in Jake’s strong hands.

“Can you still feel your fingers?” His eyes were the brightest blue. She hadn’t noticed that until now.

“My—my arm doesn’t hurt—except for the bite.”

“Are you sick? Can you breathe?”

She sucked in air and nodded. “I hear Charlie.”

“He can wait a minute.”

She saw the baby kicking on the blanket. As faint as his wail seemed to her ears, it was distinct, as welcome as the first strains of a symphony. Jake let go of her arm and went to the saddlebag. The buckle flashed in the sun, and he came back with the flask and one of his own shirts.

“Sit back,” he said. “This is going to hurt.”

She leaned against the boulder and stuck her arm out as if she were a child with a skinned elbow. Sweat beaded on her face, and she gritted her teeth against the speckled light spinning through her head. Closing her eyes, she clutched at Jake’s sleeve to steady herself. He rested her bloody arm on top of his, cupping her elbow and trapping her fingers between his chest and biceps.

He splashed alcohol over the wound, and she shrieked. She thought of her mother blowing on her skinned knees, then she felt soft cotton on her torn flesh and the heat of his hand. The wound stung terribly, but she was breathing more easily.

“We’ll wrap it up, and then we’re gonna beat all hell for Grand Junction,” Jake said. He sliced the shirt with his knife, wrapped her arm as tight as she could stand and tied the ends. “You stay still while I pack up.”

His eyes were full of a glassy blue light, and Alex knew that hers were just as watery. He wrapped the baby in a fresh petticoat and tucked him in the crook of her good arm. Then he rolled up the blanket and the slicker, kicked sand in the ashes of the fire and vanished behind a boulder.

She figured it was nature calling, but then she heard a low moan, a single cuss word, and the sound of a man losing his breakfast and his pride. She wanted to go to him, but her legs were too weak. It struck her then that some things were private, and this was one of them.

When he came back, he took a swig of water and spat it on the ground. Taking Charlie in the crook of his arm, he pulled her up with his other hand. He didn’t let go, and she didn’t want him to.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I’m just shaken up.”

“Can you ride?’

The bay was tethered to a scraggly juniper on the other side of the campsite. It was a foot taller than she remembered and twice as skittish. She worried even more when it curled its lips and snorted at her.

“He’s not as mean as he looks,” Jake said, tugging on her good arm.

Her feet refused to budge. “He doesn’t like me.”

“It doesn’t matter what he likes. I’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

Something ornery and hysterical took root just below her ribs, and she shook her head. “I want to walk.”

“You want to what?”

“I’m going to walk to Grand Junction.”

“Okay,” he drawled. “I’ll take Charlie, and you can meet us in town. How’s that sound?”

“That sounds good.”

“I’ll even wait around and buy you supper when you get there. That should be in about a week, that is if you don’t fall in a ditch and break a leg, or die of thirst, or starvation. And don’t forget bobcats and rats. You know about rattlers, but coyotes can get mean, too.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“You’ve got outlaws and Indians to consider, and then there’s sunstroke. You’ll have to sleep during the day and walk at night. It gets pretty dark, but there should be a full moon in a few days.”

“Anything else I should worry about?”

“Scorpions. Tarantulas are just big hairy spiders, but scorpions sting like hell. Now centipedes are downright cute.”

Laughter bubbled in her throat. The entire situation was beyond all reason, beyond anything she had ever imagined. She was sobbing and laughing at the same time, and Jake was grinning like a man who had wrestled a bear and won. His eyes glowed, and she saw that in spite of his toughness, he liked to laugh.

In her most formal voice, Alex said, “Considering the tarantulas, I suppose I’ll take my chances with your horse, Mr. Malone.”

“A wise decision, Miss Merritt.”

With a bold-as-brass smile, he slipped his hand around her waist and pulled her to his side. His body was warm and strong against hers, and with a tiny smile, she said, “I feel better.”

His fingers cupped her waist, and somehow she knew that everything would be all right.

But it wasn’t all right. Pressure built deep in her chest, and something wild and insane took root low in her belly. The trembling came back with an energy of its own. Maybe the snake had left its mark. Maybe that was why her legs went weak and she couldn’t breathe.

Maybe it was the snake, and not the shimmering light in Jake Malone’s eyes, the sheltering wing of his arm and the parting of his lips. Slowly, like a drop of rain trailing down a leaf, he lowered his mouth an inch closer to hers. Closing her eyes, Alex faced the certainty she was about to be kissed and acknowledged the truth that she wanted him to do it.

Only she couldn’t possibly want that. She was engaged to Thomas. Jake Malone and his shimmering eyes and soft lips had no place in her life, but he was already kissing her and she couldn’t pull away.

Kissing him was unthinkable. A betrayal, a lie, and she couldn’t do it. Except her lips had come alive, and she shivered as his tongue grazed them. The kiss was tender, searching, like Charlie’s rosebud mouth looking for his mother’s breast.

Her hand flew to his chest and she felt the beat of his heart. A soft hum rippled through him as he eased his tongue past her lips. She had never kissed a man like this before, never felt his need mixing with her own. The strange and glorious closeness of his soul made her tremble, and she liked it.

But it had to be a lie, an aberration borne of fright and danger. She loved Thomas. He needed her. She had no right to kiss an outlaw in the desert. She had no interest in kissing him, and yet a small squeak, a tender cry of need, escaped from her throat.

Jake pulled her closer, and she wanted to laugh and dance and touch the sun, to feel the hardness of his muscles and the coarseness of his beard. She wanted to pour herself into him, to fill the hidden corners of his soul, and so with the morning air on her face and the sun blazing across the plain, with her aching body daring her to do it, she filled the hot emptiness of his mouth with her breath.

The moment turned both tender and fierce. His free hand traveled down her spine, past her waist, down to the small of her back, and a notch lower. His fingertips drew a slow circle that deepened with each turn of his wrist.

When he touched her bottom, she gasped. He hesitated, but she couldn’t force a single word past her lips and so he went on kissing her. His tongue dove deeper, his lips became hungrier. Everything about this man was confident now, and in a rush of hot, wet panic, she planted her hands on his chest and pushed.

“What the—”

He staggered backward, struggling to keep his balance with the baby cradled in one arm. Charlie shrieked, and Jake landed on his backside like a rodeo clown.

He glanced at the baby, tucked the cloth over its head, then rose to his full height and squinted at her. Rimmed with purple shadows, his eyes seemed wise and all-knowing, scarred by life’s battles and experienced with its pleasures.

“Jeez, Alex, what did you think I was going to do? It was just a kiss.” His voice softened. “It’s just nature.”

Shaking her head and close to tears, she held up her hands to stop him. “I’m not an idiot. I know exactly what it is. And it isn’t an excuse for what I just did.”

His blue gaze pinned her to the spot. “You wanted to kiss me. You want to prove you’re alive and kick death in the teeth. Whorehouses always fill up after a gunfight.”

What in the world was she supposed to say to that? That she had never needed to kick death in the teeth before now, that everything in her world was orderly and simple, because she worked very hard to keep it that way?

Or should she tell him that until now, she had never lost her mind while kissing a man; that her insides felt like warm milk and she could still taste the salt of him on her tongue? Alex bit her lip. She had to keep the moment in perspective.

“Frankly, Mr. Malone, I just made an embarrassing mistake. You see, I’m engaged to a man in Philadelphia, and well, I—uh—”

“You just got carried away.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Whatever you say.” He shrugged as he held out the baby. “Here, you take him. I’ll check on the horse.”

For some reason, his opinion mattered, at least for today, and Alex followed him to the bay. “My fiancé’s name is Thomas Hunnicutt. We work together. With children.”

Jake fiddled with a stirrup. “Is that so?”

“He’s kind and thoughtful. We’ve known each other for years, and when his wife died, it seemed right to get married. She was my best friend.”

The desert air hurt her lungs, as if it were too thin to support a human life, and she took a deeper breath. He glanced at her, and a fleeting shadow passed over his face.

“Thomas Hunnicutt is a lucky man, Miss Merritt. I apologize for my earlier indiscretion.” His manners were impeccable, his voice as sincere as a prayer, but something about the tilt of his head made Alex tremble all the more.

The horse fidgeted next to her, but she no longer cared. She would have climbed on a kicking mule to get away from this man. But what would she do with this terrible ache? This desire to touch his face? Even now her heart felt swollen with a need to taste more than the desert air, to feel more than the heat of the earth rising through the soles of her shoes.

There’s more to life, Alex, so much more….

Her father’s words came at her like a forgotten promise and a strange realization seized her heart. Not once had she been hungry or thirsty, in need of clean clothes, or desirous of a man’s kiss. Until the stage crashed in that torrent of muddy water, she hadn’t felt fear. Until the snake bite, she hadn’t felt pain. And until Jake kissed her, she hadn’t tasted desire.

Standing by the bay, with her arm wrapped in his shirt, with her sunburned skin stinging from the salt of her own perspiration, Alex felt her nerves rippling like grass in the wind. Did misery really sharpen a person’s senses? Did sugar taste sweeter after a mouthful of sand? She had to hope so. What else could explain the trembling in her bones?

Jake Malone saw it all in her eyes, and she could only pray the heat pulsing in her veins was nothing more than shock, an illusion, something that wouldn’t last, because her feelings for this man turned her well-planned future into a wasteland.

She belonged in Philadelphia. She belonged anywhere but here. And that meant she had to push back the glittering mirage of passion and see the true dryness of the desert.

Jake had heard of people going insane on the Colorado Plateau, and Alexandra Merritt had as much cause as the next person. It gave him a reason to be charitable, but temporary insanity was no excuse for bad manners. She hadn’t said a word since he lifted her onto the saddle, and he didn’t take kindly to being shoved on his butt.

Between the baby’s hungry wail and the fact he hadn’t had a drink for two days, Jake was brimming with indignation. They had a half day’s ride ahead of them, and as long as Alex wasn’t in desperate need of a doctor, he was grateful for the chance to sort through his thoughts.

At the very least she owed him an apology, but if the truth be told, he wanted a lot more than that. The angel made him hungry for things he’d never had, simple things like respect and a clean bed, and dangerous things like her body, and even her trust.

There wasn’t much in his life that made Jake proud, but killing the snake with a perfect shot was one of them. Wishing the snake would slither back to its nest but knowing it wouldn’t, he’d grabbed the Winchester and aimed. Instinct had forced the snake to strike, just as a piece of Jake’s own nature, a piece he had either forgotten or wasn’t sure he had, made protecting Alex and the baby as necessary as breathing.

An hour had passed since that moment, and they had all been amazingly lucky. Lancing the bite had been the most awful thing he had ever done. He would never forget the terror in her eyes or the taste of her blood.

Nor would the softness of her lips fade from his memory anytime soon. She had to be the luckiest person he had ever known, and the most pitiful at the same time. How could Thomas Hunnicutt look at himself in the mirror, when it was as plain as the desert sun that Alexandra Merritt didn’t know the first thing about kissing a man?