Mystic Cowboy(48)

Shit, it was working too. Damn intruding zippers. She was going to pull him right over the edge. “Jesse’s not exactly capable of handling a stick shift right now. I took his truck. Like when you get your...supplies.”

Moving with what he prayed was steady deliberation, she took another step in and then placed a single hand right over his pounding heart. Her eyelashes fluttered as she gave him the kind of look that would bring him to his knees in broad daylight. “And where did you get that kind of money?”

He couldn’t help it. The duffel hit the ground and he had one hand on her neck, the other around her waist, and she was right where she belonged. “Somebody bought a bag,” he whispered as he kissed her ruby lips. Right where she belonged. And, as she nipped at his lower lip, it was painfully, wonderfully obvious that she knew it too.

Everything that had been wrong with the world for the last five days was suddenly right. Five days without seeing her had been five of the longest days of his life. Five days with no one challenging him every step of the way, no one to spar with, no one who brought so much light into his life to look forward to. Five days that made six years seem like a three-day weekend. Five days that had been the longest decade of his life. And suddenly, with her back where she belonged, he wanted time to slow even more, so he’d never have to let go of her. He never wanted to let go of her.

Until he heard the twig snap. His head shot up so fast that Madeline didn’t have time to release her hold on him. She nipped a hole into his lower lip as a dark figure stepped out from behind a van on the other side of the road.

Not again, he thought.

But it was different this time. Without the blinding flash of light, even Madeline could see that Nobody Bodine was watching them. She spun around with a much smaller squeak this time and jammed her hands onto her hips with enough force that Rebel was afraid she’d bruise herself. “Nobody! Stop sneaking up on us!”

Rebel smiled again. Nobody hadn’t had to tell him she’d given him hell when he’d finally left Rebel Monday afternoon. Nobody snapped his hat off his head as he nodded to her. “My apologies, ma’am.” Then he looked to Rebel.

He knew what the man wanted. He’d known Nobody for a long time, and had gotten something like good at reading him. “She got it all ready to go out in the mail tomorrow.”

Nobody crushed his hat to his chest. It was as much of a tell as he had. “Much obliged, ma’am. I’ll watch the clinic tonight, then.”

Madeline took an agitated step toward him, and Nobody took a parallel step back.

“You’ll what?”

Nobody shot him a pained look, his jaw clenching and unclenching. Rebel shrugged his shoulders. Yeah, he thought, whatcha gonna do about her?

“Ma’am, I’ll guard the clinic. It wasn’t easy to get those things. I don’t want nothing to happen to them.”

Wow. Another three sentences. Something about Madeline made the normally silent man downright chatty.

This fact didn’t seem to impress her, though. She jutted out her chin and said, “You mean, you aren’t coming to dinner? I thought everyone was coming to dinner?” in the same kind of voice she used when another whatever-it-was broke on her. Rebel decided that was just the way she talked when reality didn’t meet her high expectations. Which threw him right back over into worried about dinner.

Well, he wasn’t the only one worried about dinner, although Nobody would never admit to it. “Your groceries are still in the back of the truck. Parked behind the shed. Extra carrots,” Rebel added. Nobody’s horses were the most important things in his life.

Madeline elbowed him in the ribs. “You should come to dinner, Nobody. The clinic will be fine.”

“Ma’am.” Nobody took a deep breath. “Two of my horses died. And they shot me,” he added, almost as an afterthought. No doubt about it, the dead horses were the more important of the two events. “I’ll be at the clinic, just to be safe.” And then he stepped back into the shadows. Rebel knew no one else would see him, no one else would even know Nobody had been here. Just Madeline. Whether he liked it or not, Nobody had to trust her too.

“Wait. Nobody, wait!” Despite her call, he didn’t reappear.

But that didn’t mean he was gone. “He’s listening,” Rebel whispered in her ear, savoring the way one of her curls danced over his nose. “Go on.”

Madeline nodded. She just took it all in stride. Just another night on the rez, and she could deal. Suddenly, Rebel knew it was high time to get her up to see Albert. “Can you leave me a list of what was wrong with your horses? What were their symptoms?”