Rain Shadow(22)

Almost ashamed, he released her abruptly and stepped back. Rain Shadow  wilted onto the nearest chair. He had to turn away from her gaping  shirt, her glistening, swollen lips and the unguarded look in her eyes.  Silence filled the room, yawning uncomfortably between them. What was he  allowing to happen? "Will you be all right?"

"Yes-" she tried to say and had to start over. "Yes."

"I'll do whatever I can to help you keep him from finding out. Do you think he'll be back?"

"I don't know," she whispered, deeply affected by his touch, his kiss.  Did he think she behaved that way with all men? Was he disgusted?  Judging her?

He headed for the door.

"Anton?"

He looked over his shoulder. She'd buttoned her shirt.

He hadn't known he was capable of feeling those things. What had begun  as consolation and comfort had snowballed into passion and desire  neither of them was prepared for. "Keep your eyes open."

She nodded and he was gone.

* * *

Frustrated, Miguel left his mount in a copse, sidled up a bank and  pulled a spyglass from his jacket. Nearly half an hour passed before the  tall man loped down the porch stairs.

Miguel seethed.

The farmer was a complication he had not anticipated. The old Indian he  could have handled. The old Rain Shadow he could have handled. This Rain  Shadow, this self-assured spitfire, was not the same sixteen-year-old  girl he had seduced aboard the Nebraska. This woman was more than he had  expected-or wanted.                       
       
           



       

And the man? Was he the reason she had stayed in Pennsylvania? Neubauer  exuded a possessive attitude as though he were. It could not hurt to  know what he was up against. He collapsed the spyglass and made his way  to his horse. He would go to Butler for his things, change clothes and  pick up food to last a few days. He swung into his saddle, urged the  animal forward and surveyed the landscape. He searched out a good place  to camp unobserved, then headed for town.

He should be back before sundown.

* * *

"All right, Slade. I've decided you can stay in the house as long as you're welcomed."

"Aw-right!" Her son whooped and bounced a good eight inches above the bed.

"Calm down before you hurt yourself."

He settled himself beneath the covers, his excitement barely contained.  "How about you, Ma? Are you still going to stay here with me?"

She smoothed the shirt she had folded and placed it on the bureau. She  had planned to move out to her lodge tonight, but Miguel's appearance  had changed her mind. Slade wanted to stay in the house, and it was the  safest place for him. Yesterday she would have thought nothing of  sleeping in her lodge, leaving Slade in the house, but now she didn't  want to separate herself from him, especially all night. Even the  thought of Two Feathers sleeping alone terrified her. She would tell him  of the danger, and perhaps he could be persuaded to sleep inside. "Yes,  I'll stay with you."

"Good. What's for supper?"

"How about a hot, thick stew?"

"Uh-huh! Will you ask Nikolaus to come up?"

Minutes later, Nikolaus pounded up the stairs. "What'd she say?"

"We're staying in the house."

"Aw-right!"

"What's she doing now?"

"She has some rabbits to skin. I want to watch her."

Slade threw back the coverlet. "What do you wanna do that for?"

"I dunno. Just do." Nikolaus rubbed his toe repeatedly into a crack in the wood floor.

"Well, I got something better for you to watch."

"What?" He scrambled onto the foot of the bed.

Slade tossed back the remaining covers, exposing his splinted leg. He  tugged the oversize shirt he wore up his thigh and unwound raveled  strips of bandaging.

"What are you doin'?"

"You'll see." He found the end of another strip at his knee and removed  it the same way. A third at his ankle came off, and the splint fell  away, still in two fairly solid pieces. His narrow leg was white and  wrinkled, the skin dry-looking.

"Oh, ugh!" Nikolaus screwed his freckled face into a grimace.

"It's okay. Watch this." Supporting himself with slender arms, Slade  scooted to the bed's edge and balanced on his good leg. The other he  touched tentatively on the floor. Reaching for the footboard, he took a  few limping steps away from, then back to, the mattress.

"Gosh!" Nikolaus stared in awe. "Does your mama-"

"'Course she don't know, and we ain't gonna tell her."

Nikolaus plopped back on the bed and smiled at the ceiling. "'Course we ain't."

* * *

Rain Shadow adjusted the blanket beneath her head for the hundredth  time. For the last half hour she'd been thinking of the pile of pillows  on the bed above her. Slade didn't need all of them.

In the inky darkness, she crept around the foot of the bed. Pillow in  hand, she paused, stilled by unmistakable sounds coming from outside,  though the windows were closed and the curtains pulled. The horses in  the barn were restless, the chickens setting up a squawk in the pen. A  fox or a stray dog perhaps.

Her heart beat double time. She hadn't been able to convince Two Feathers to sleep in the house. Miguel could be out there.

Silently, she slipped into her trousers and shirt and buckled on her  holster. Grabbing a coat from the back of a chair, she tiptoed from the  room.

Dark cloud cover obscured the moon. She could barely see her breath in  front of her face. She allowed her eyes time to adjust and surveyed the  dooryard, peering toward the shadows near the outbuildings. She reached  the barn door, and her pony whinnied a greeting. "Easy, Jack," she  whispered. "What's the matter, boy?" She slid into the stall and calmed  him with a soft nicker in his ear.                       
       
           



       

Anton's massive bay bobbed his head. Rain Shadow climbed over the rail  and scrubbed his forehead with her knuckles. "Shush, now, General." The  other horses calmed at her touch, too. She peered carefully into each  stall and checked the opposite side around the grain bins.

A noise came from the direction of the tack room.

Slowly, cautiously, she made her way toward the doorway. Even the barely  audible sound of hay beneath her boots was deafening to her ears. Rain  Shadow eased her revolver from its holster and held it ready, inching  toward the doorway.

Outside the tack room, she flattened herself against the rough-hewn wall  and strained for any sound. Her heartbeat. Her breath. Nothing.

Holding her breath, she slipped through the doorway and flattened  herself against the wall on the other side, the barrel of the gun poised  into the air next to her cheek. In the pitch black, hair rose on her  arms and neck. She wasn't alone. Her sixth sense was acute, her hearing  keen. To her right another person breathed. Someone taller.

Heart pounding, she waited. The other person, still as stone, obviously  knew she was there. Perhaps he didn't know who she was. If Miguel was  night prowling, what would he be doing in the barn?

All at once, the person lunged-not toward the door as if to escape, but  directly toward her-and she took a sideways leap. A rock-hard body  struck her and knocked her off her feet, the gun skittering across the  floorboards. A hand spanned her throat easily, cutting off her breath,  and superior weight crushed her hips and legs.

The other hand groped at her shirtfront and closed over her breast.  Immediately, the heavy body stilled. He had to feel her heart thudding.  She needed to breathe. The hand molded her breast in quizzical  palpation.

"Rain Shadow?"

Relief washed through her. Anton! She tried to nod.

He released her throat, and she sucked in a grateful whoosh of air. The  hand at her breast withdrew. He sat at her hip. "You scared ten years  off my life."

"M-me?" she rasped, lying flat on her back staring into the darkness.  She slapped at him with a limp wrist. "Seems to me you had the upper  hand! How-" She coughed. "How do you think I feel?"

A low rumble met her ears. He was laughing! "You felt pretty good to me."

She pulled herself to a sitting position and kicked him in the darkness.

He laughed outright. "I got the surprise of my life when I learned the prowler was so...curvy."

She felt herself flush, imagined for a moment the shock he experienced  when he'd discovered she wasn't who he'd been expecting. She managed a  chuckle. "Who did you think I was?"

"Who did you think I was?"

The question sobered her quickly. "Why did you come out here?"

"I heard the animals."

"Do you think there's someone out there?"

"Not now. I checked all around before coming to the barn. Just as I got inside I heard you at the door and ducked in here."