The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda

Chapter 6

Johnny Bronco didn’t carry a gun.

That was one of the conclusions Lauren came to after a thorough search of his saddlebags and bedroll. Left hobbled and alone, she’d wasted perhaps a minute feeling sorry for herself, after which she’d gotten down to business. The first order of which was to find herself some sort of weapon. If she could find one, something she could hide away, she’d bide her time…

He hadn’t had a gun on him when he’d left the tent, she’d swear to that. Because where would he have hidden it? In those Levis that hugged his hips and thighs like skin, or under the faded blue shirt, washed so thin it allowed the subtle sculpting of the muscles in his back to show through?

An ankle holster, perhaps? But she’d watched him pull on his boots, and hadn’t seen any evidence of such a thing.

So, if he had a gun, a weapon of any kind, she reasoned, it must be here among his things.

The search hadn’t taken long; how many hiding places did a tent offer? Which was a good thing, Lauren thought, considering how hard it was to navigate even the short distance from her sleeping bag to his. With her ankles cuffed together she had to improvise a sort of crablike movement, scuttling on her side while attempting to keep the insides of her knees from touching each other. It wasn’t pretty, and she worked up a good sweat, but it got the job done.

The first thing she did was roll out his bedroll, which, unlike her puffy zippered modern sleeping bag, consisted of a thin waterproof pad and a single woolen blanket that, even with the added bulk of the poncho, would roll up tightly enough to tie onto the back of a saddle. She took the pad, blanket and poncho, one at a time, and shook them. That netted her nothing but some golden dust motes to swirl in the shafts of sunlight that were just stabbing through the pine trees.

Next, she hitched herself onto the blanket, gingerly pulled the saddlebags across her lap, unbuckled the flaps and dumped all the contents onto the blanket beside her. She wasn’t careful; so what if he knew? Serve him right for leaving her.

One by one she explored and returned each item to the saddlebags. First the clothing: several pairs of socks, rolled into hard little bundles; two pairs of plain white briefs; one plain white T-shirt, an extra pair of jeans and two more long-sleeved cotton shirts; two large bandanna-type handkerchiefs. All these, which were very clean and neatly rolled, she shook out and then carefully rerolled-except for one of the shirts. Some unforeseen impulse made her bring it to her face, bury her nose in the soft folds and inhale the clean-laundry smells of strong detergent and desert sunshine.

Yes, she thought, as her breath caught, that was part of the scent she remembered, dancing with him. Indefinably stirred, she hurriedly wadded up the shirt and stuffed it back into the bag.

From the odds and ends on the blanket beside her, she picked out a bar of soap wrapped in a clean washcloth. It was green with whitish streaks in it and had been about half used up. She held that to her nose, as well, prepared this time for the jolt of recognition. It smelled faintly herbal.

Yes-that’s part of it, too. He’d smelled so good-of soap and clean laundry, desert sunshine and new sweat, traces of horse and a hint of tobacco smoke from the bar.

She paused, frowning. Something about that seemed wrong. Something… But she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

And then a crow began to squawk indignantly somewhere in the pine trees, reminding her of the task at hand and the passing of time. She stuffed the remaining items back into the saddlebag-the soap once again wrapped in its washcloth, a toothbrush and battery-operated shaver, a plastic-bristled hairbrush.

Finally, only one last item remained. She hesitated, then reached for it, picked it up and held it in her hands. Turned it over, felt the smooth texture of old leather with her fingertips. His wallet, slightly curved, molded to the shape of the masculine buttock against which it normally rested. Did she only imagine that it felt warm, almost as if it had only just come from that intimate contact?

No, she thought. I can’t. It’s unconscionable. It couldn’t possibly conceal a weapon. There’s no earthly reason for me to look in his wallet.

But all’s fair in love and war-and this was definitely war!

With her heart thumping, she opened the wallet. And found herself staring at an Arizona driver’s license. How weird to think of Johnny Bronco with a driver’s license! She associated him with horses, and getting tossed out of a saloon on his backside, and Gil McCullough saying to his men, “See he gets home.”

John Bracco. So that was his name. Not Johnny Bronco, after all. And no surprise there. It was such a theatrical name, come to think of it, not a real name at all.

How weird it felt, strangely disorienting, sobering, to see the man summarized like this-like his clothes, all rolled into one neat package. To Lauren, raised by society’s rules, educated to believe in its conventions, trained in the practice of law, this commonly accepted proof of identity seemed like a verification of his humanness. It made him real, finally. Not only that, it made him ordinary. Not the Indian mystic on horseback, the cowboy charmer in the honky-tonk bar. Not a misguided revolutionary quoting the Declaration of Independence, or heartless kidnapper. Only a human being. A man named John Bracco.

There were credit cards in that same name-American Express and a VISA that was also an ATM card-and a discount card for a supermarket. A social-security card. And tucked away out of sight behind an expired hunting license, a tattered military ID. Forty-seven dollars in cash and two folded-up credit-card receipts for gasoline-and a single photograph.

It was a black-and-white snapshot, old, the corners softened and bent, of a man and a boy. The man was narrow-hipped and barrel-chested and had the broad cheekbones and faintly Asiatic features of the Apache. He wore dark jeans and a long-sleeved dark Western-style shirt, with a lighter-colored bandanna tied around his neck, and a light-colored straw cowboy hat with the brim rolled almost to a point in front. He was smiling, and he faced the camera with a cocky impatient air, as if he was only humoring the photographer for that one moment, no more. Come on, take the picture already. One hand rested on the head of a boy, probably six or seven, with thick straight black hair chopped short but defying discipline. The child had fierce dark eyes and a shy sweet smile.

Half-breed. The word flashed unwanted into her mind, shaming her. It was a hateful term, as bad as any of the ethnic slurs she’d been taught all her life to loathe and reject, but in spite of that, she couldn’t make it go away. Half-breed.

All right, since it wouldn’t leave her alone, she would think about it, plunge into the enigma that was John Bracco.

He was half Apache, half white-she already knew that. For some reason-and at that moment she couldn’t think why-she’d just assumed it was his father who was white, his mother Apache. But the man in the photograph was almost certainly Bronco’s father, the drunk who had died in a car crash, according to Gil McCullough, when Bronco was twelve. Probably, Lauren mused, it was his mother who had been the photographer, indulged by her menfolk out of love and familial obligation. Lauren had seen the same smiles, fixed and long-suffering, on her own father’s and brother’s faces.

Where was his mother now? McCullough hadn’t mentioned her. So what had become of her? As she stared down at the photograph in her hands, Lauren was seized by a certainty that the answer to that question was somehow important.

“Find what you were looking for?”

She started violently and uttered a sharp swear word, one her own prim-and-proper mother would never have tolerated but still one of the most satisfying available. Instinctively, she had flattened the photo against her chest as if to hide it from view. I won’t apologize, she thought. I won’t.

“Dammit, you scared me.” She glared indignantly at Bronco, crouched in the tent opening with a cardboard box balanced on one knee. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”

“Looks to me like maybe I should,” he said mildly as he set the box to one side, clearing the way for his own entry. He rose but had to duck his head as he came through the opening.

Lauren followed him with her eyes, heart thumping, primed for battle.

But he barely glanced her way and didn’t acknowledge the photograph at all. Instead, he crouched beside the box once more and began taking things out of it, one by one. His movements were unhurried, businesslike. Did she only imagine the unnatural stillness, as if he held himself, his temper, his emotions, even his life force, under a tight rein? The thought sent pulses of excitement through her, and her heart, already beating hard and fast, seemed to thunder in her ears.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Her voice came with less force behind it than she might have wished. Trying to recapture her bravado, she shoved her feet belligerently toward him and waggled them back and forth.

He did glance at her cuffed ankles finally, then, taking his time, let his gaze travel upward from there until it reached her face. A shiver rippled over her skin, as if his fingers had made that slow journey rather than his eyes.

The tilt of his warlike eyebrows was sardonic. “I didn’t forget. I’m thinking maybe I ought to leave ’em on you, considering…” He nodded toward the saddlebags still draped across her thighs.

“What did you expect me to do?” she snapped. “Sit here and twiddle my thumbs?”

To her surprise he gave a soft grunt of laughter. “You’re pretty mouthy for a prisoner of war, you know that?”

Her laugh was a sarcastic echo of his. “Oh. A prisoner of war. Is that what I am? Okay, if that’s the case, I demand the rights to which I am entitled under the Geneva Convention. Food, medical attention, access to sanitary facilities, humane treatment…” She ticked them off, one by one, on her fingers.

Without comment, he handed her an insulated mug with a lid, set one aside for himself, then took the saddlebags from her lap and placed them just out of her reach. There was no expression whatsoever on his face as he picked up his wallet from the blanket beside her and held out his hand for the photograph.

She hesitated, curiously reluctant to give it up. Instead of doing so immediately, she turned it so he could see it and touched the image of the boy with the tip of her fore-finger. “This is you, isn’t it?” Without waiting for his reply, she moved her finger until it rested on the man’s dark shirt. “And this is your father?”

“That’s him.” Bronco’s voice, like his face, held no expression. Long straight lashes veiled his eyes as he took the photo from her and returned it to its place in the wallet, closed the wallet and slipped it back into the saddlebags.

That done, he took a key from his pocket and made an imperious gesture with it toward her ankles. “Let’s have ’em.”

She shifted her feet and, as he bent over them, felt her skin prickle with awareness-in anticipation of his touch.

But in less than an instant she felt the tension on her ankles released and he was already moving away from her, tucking the cuffs into his back pocket. She murmured, “Thank you,” with exaggerated courtesy as her pulse slowly returned to normal.

“What was his name?” This she managed in a casual conversational manner as she picked up her coffee.

Bronco was once again occupied with taking things out of the box and didn’t look up, so she was surprised when he answered, “John.” And after a moment added, “He was Big John, I was Johnny.”

Lauren acknowledged that with a vague sound while removing the mug’s screw-on lid. Then for a moment she said nothing at all but simply sat gazing at what she’d uncovered. It smelled like strong coffee, but it was the color of caramel. Could it be? It was. Cream. She took a cautious sip. And sugar.

The mug and its contents wavered and disappeared in a haze of unexpected tears. She wanted to hurl the whole thing at him. How dare he remember! How dare he be kind! And what was she supposed to do, thank him? She wanted to hate him. She had to hate him. Didn’t she? He was her kidnapper! What did it say about her if she began to like him?

Casting about in the emotional jungle that had taken the place of her brain, looking for any distraction, she came once more to the photograph. His mother. Ask him about his mother.

Before she could, Bronco’s voice penetrated the humming in her ears. She blinked him into focus and barked testily. “What?”

He was crouched before her, balanced on one knee with a first-aid kit in one hand, a foil-covered plate in the other. “I said, which do you want first, food or medical attention?”

Grudgingly, she took the plate and lifted an edge of the foil. A spicy aroma invaded her nostrils, making her mouth water and her stomach growl. She decided the wounds could wait.

It occurred to her that she was about to share a meal with a man, in a tent, while wearing nothing but underpants and a sweatshirt, and that normally her mental response to that would have been, so what? She was as covered as she’d ever be at a public pool or a trip to the beach. In college she’d lived for two semesters in a coed dorm where, according to her best recollection, she’d consumed large quantities of pizza in the company of members of the opposite sex while dressed pretty much as she was right now. Besides, Bronco didn’t appear to care one way or the other about the way she was dressed, so why should she?

And if all that was so, why did she still feel so…bare?

The only possible conclusion she could come to was that the awareness was all on her part. Probably residual effects of that appalling attraction she’d felt when she’d first danced with him in Smoky Joe’s Bar and Grill. And hadn’t she known then that he was bad news? Hadn’t she told herself that charming Johnny Bronco was the last man on earth she should have anything to do with if she knew what was good for her? The embers of that traitorous flame needed to be smothered once and for all.

“This looks like a good place to start,” she said, peeling back the foil to reveal four plump tortilla rolls. She picked one up and bit into a greasy and utterly delicious mixture of scrambled eggs and sausage. She chewed with her eyes closed, trying not to croon, then nudged the plate in Bronco’s direction. “Have some-they’re good,” she murmured graciously.

Yes, she thought, that’s much better. Hating him was too dangerous. Too…passionate. She’d read that all passions were related to one another, and that there was only a fine line separating hate from…other things. Maybe it would be better to think of him as…what? Brother? Uncle? Priest? Eunuch?

Bronco felt a frown building inside him as he watched his prisoner devour the sausage-and-egg burrito. Dammit, he wished he knew what she was thinking; she looked way too pleased with herself for his liking. The way she kept humming and moaning over her food, licking the grease off her fingers and wiping her lips with the back of her hand. Reminded him of something his grandmother Rose used to say: “You know the food’s good when people sing to it.”

He didn’t think the burritos were all that good. It was more like she was making a show of it for his benefit. And that gleam in her eyes that looked so much like laughter…it just didn’t seem to him that a hostage, POW or whatever, ought to be enjoying herself quite so much. What was going on in that fertile brain of hers? He reminded himself again that he’d do well not to underestimate her.

“That was good,” she said with a replete sigh as she dropped the last bite of tortilla back onto the plate and wiped her fingers on the front of her…of his sweatshirt. “Now let’s have that medical attention.”

Bronco hurriedly swallowed his last bite of burrito and wiped his fingers on his pants, then reached for the first-aid kit. “Sure you want to do this?” He gave her a mocking look. “So soon after eating? You’re not gonna throw up, are you?”

He didn’t know what made him keep needling her. Especially as, based on the way she’d managed to keep those sores a secret from him yesterday, she probably had a higher pain threshold than most of the tough guys he knew. He supposed he was just trying to get a rise out of her, get her mad at him again-though why that was he didn’t know, either.

Anyway, if that had been his intent, it didn’t work. Lauren smiled serenely at him and murmured, “I have a pretty strong stomach. What’ve you got in there?” She leaned closer, peering over his arm with exaggerated interest as he opened the box of medical supplies.

He scowled at its contents. He wished she wouldn’t get so close. His heart was pounding again. “Ointment or spray?”

“Oh…ointment, I think. Don’t you?”

What did she think he was-a damn doctor? He thrust the tube at her and concentrated on the search for sterile gauze pads and adhesive tape. After a moment he looked up and saw that she was just sitting there, holding the tube of ointment and biting her lip. “Well,” he growled, “are you gonna do it, or you want me to?”

She exhaled in a rush and handed the tube to him. “I think maybe you’d better do it.” And then she leaned back on her hands and let her legs fall naturally apart, feet almost together, knees slightly bent. Without any reluctance at all. Completely relaxed, or so it seemed to him.

And what had become of that awareness, that shyness he’d found so erotic such a short time ago? It shamed him to admit there was a part of him that now missed it and wanted it back.

As for him, he felt like an adolescent boy confronting his first nude female body. His pulse pounded in his ears, his tongue felt too big for his mouth, and his breath seemed composed of cotton wool. The musky scent of her woman’s body made his head swim.

Though the sweatshirt she wore-his sweatshirt-was long on her and covered her to below her hips, the feminine secrets just beneath its edge seemed the more tantalizing for being hidden from his view. He could only imagine the drape of velvety skin over pelvic bones, soft mound delicately cushioned with curls…

What he could see was more than enough to overload his senses. The skin on her inner thighs was pearl-white, almost translucent, like the insides of some shells; the faint dusting of pale hair along their tops was like a furring of gold dust. He could imagine how soft they must be, what they would feel like brushing against his cheek, sliding like warm silk over his lips, like oil melting on his tongue…

He leaned toward her, and his long hair fell forward over his shoulder and brushed against her thigh. He stared at it-black on white.

Her fingers closed around his wrist.

The effect that had on him was nothing at all like what it should have been, would have been if any other prisoner in his charge had done such a thing. Under similar circumstances, any other prisoner would, in the blink of an eye, have found himself facedown on the floor of the tent with his wrist pinned between his shoulder blades and Bronco’s knee in the small of his back. Instead, Bronco felt as though he’d just taken a jolt from a high-voltage electrical prod-tingly all over and weak as a baby.

He stared down at her fingers-her strong horsewoman’s fingers, her somewhat grubby, not at all delicate but some how altogether feminine fingers-wrapped around his bony olive-toned masculine wrist. His throat closed; he couldn’t speak.

“Wait.” Obviously she wasn’t similarly handicapped, although her voice did sound breathless, as if she’d had to run to catch him. And as if the voice had issued them a direct order, his eyes snapped to her face.

“What?” he barked, angry with himself, angry with her.

“I was just thinking…before you do that, what I’d really like to do-and I guess this comes under the heading of sanitary facilities-what I really need to do, is bathe.”

“Bathe?” He uttered it like a word in an alien tongue. All his powers of reason were focused on her eyes, which were so bright they seemed colorless to him, like light reflecting on deep water.

“As in wash? Shower? I assume you must have some sort of provision for cleanliness in this camp?” Her voice was dry, sardonic.

But Bronco noticed that her fingers were still wrapped around his wrist. Now that the initial shock had passed, they felt warm, incredibly good. A sweet forbidden pleasure.

Regret and self-discipline made a knot in his chest as he shook himself free of her-literally and figuratively. “The men bathe in the creek-the one in the meadow. That’s if they bathe at all. This is a survival training camp, not Club Med.” He jerked his head toward the five-gallon plastic bucket. “For you, there’s plenty of water in the spring.”

“Uh-huh.” He could see her putting it together, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Her shoulders rose, then fell as she drew and exhaled a breath. “I don’t suppose you could warm-”

“Not a chance. You bathe cold or not at all.”

“But,” she protested, “that water must be like ice!” The resentful glare she gave him filled him with a prickly sense of relief. He was comfortable with her anger.

Once more in control, he said placidly, “I suppose if you want, you could draw a bucketful now and set it in the sun. It’d probably be warm enough by tonight.”

“Gee, thanks,” she muttered scathingly. She managed to stand up with surprising grace, considering the location of her sore spots and the fact that she was trying to keep the sweatshirt pulled down over the parts of herself she didn’t want him to see. He was starting to wonder about that on-again off-again modesty of hers.

“I am not putting clothes on this body until I’ve had a bath. I haven’t had a bath in two days. I’m dirty, I’m itchy, and I stink.” As she said that she was stomping angrily, if a bit stiffly, across the tent to where she’d left her things. She scooped up her saddlebags and the bucket and turned to face him, standing very straight, chin up and head high. There was a patch of bright pink on each cheek, and her eyes blazed fire.

It struck Bronco then-even with raw sores on her legs, his baggy sweatshirt hanging halfway to her knees and her hair all over the place the way she’d slept on it-that Lauren Brown was probably the most magnificent-looking woman he’d ever seen.

“Well?” she said, imperious as the queen of Sheba. “Since I’m not allowed to ‘set one foot outside this tent’ without you, would you be so kind as to accompany me to the latrine?”

“Sarcasm isn’t becoming in a woman,” Bronco said conversationally. “Did you know that?” He held the tent flap open and made an exaggerated gesture, waving her through. “After you, Your Highness.” She stalked past him, head high, and he decided it wouldn’t be wise to chuckle.

He did, however, comment on the fact that she was barefooted. That got him a dirty look-an unwise move on her part, since in that one moment when she wasn’t watching where she was putting her feet, she stepped down hard on a pinecone.

“Want me to carry you?” Bronco inquired helpfully over Lauren’s hiss of pain.

Her reply was a furious mutter that included, among the more repeatable words, “Over my dead body!” This time he did allow himself the gut-relaxing luxury of laughter.

Outside the blanket-enclosed latrine, she halted and shoved the bucket at him, narrowly missing hitting him in the chest with it. “If it’s not too much to ask,” she simpered with nauseating sweetness.

“Ma’am,” Bronco responded earnestly, “I’d be happy to go and get you some water, but if I do, I’m gonna have to ask you for your clothes.”

“What?”

“I’ll just take that off your hands right now.” And he lifted her saddlebags from her arm and transferred them to his own shoulder. “You can go on inside and take off your shirt and toss it out to me. Soon as I have it, I’ll be on my way.”

She was staring at him openmouthed, and from the looks of her eyes, she was about ready to self-combust. He gazed placidly back at her. She whispered, “That’s outrageous.”

He shrugged. “Up to you. It’s either that or we take a hike up there together. I just figured you’d rather not do that, with your sore butt and bare feet, but if you’d rather…”

She gave him a look that would have killed him dead where he stood, if she’d had any witching powers in her at all. Then she lifted the blanket and with an angry flounce disappeared behind it. A moment later his sweatshirt came sailing over the top of the enclosure.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said as he reached up and snagged it. “I’ll be back quick as I can.”

He truly meant that. Because he knew it wasn’t going to take her long to figure out-if she hadn’t already-that all she really needed to do if she wanted to make a run for it was wrap one of those blankets around her, go on back to the tent and help herself to some of his clothes. He was gambling on her being too smart to try it, but with women, you never knew.

Inside the latrine, Lauren crouched in her underpants, shivering in the shady early-morning chill and seething with fury. Boiling mad on the inside, goose bumps on the outside. I hope he dies, she thought with much grinding of teeth. I hope he falls in the damn spring and drowns.

She didn’t mean it. Even the thought made her feel panicky-lonely and frightened. Arrogant and odious as Bronco was, without him where would she be? A picture flashed into her mind, of Ron Masters’s cold eyes and cruel smile; she could still feel his fingers pressing into the flesh of her upper arm. She looked down and her stomach turned as she saw the bluish-purple marks those fingers had left on her skin. She shivered again, and this time the cold went clear through to her heart.

She began to feel terribly alone, there in the shade of tall pine trees. It was quiet. Too quiet… The kind of quiet that made what sounds there were-the occasional bird’s call or squirrel’s chatter-stand out with crystal clarity by contrast. Now and then a breeze stirred the trees, bringing with it distant sounds-men’s voices, calling to one another, laughing; ambiguous clanks and thuds; the shrill ripple of a horse’s whinny. It seemed to her that Bronco had been gone a very long time.

Lauren paced. She couldn’t sit-with nothing to pad it, the closed lid of the portable toilet was too hard for her sore bottom.

She thought of her family-her dad, and Dixie, who had to be the best stepmom anybody’d ever had-and how much she loved them and how worried they must be. She wondered what they were doing to get her back, and whether anyone else even knew she was missing. She won dered if they’d told Ethan, busy with his summer college classes out in California, or Aunt Lucy and Uncle Luke and her cousins, Rose Ellen and Eric, back on the farm in western Iowa, or Uncle Wood and Aunt Chris and their kids in Sioux City. And Aunt Gwen, nearly a hundred now and fragile as blown glass, whom Dixie called the Family Treasure.

She wondered who would have the task of informing her mother, out there in her two-million-dollar house in California that had missed by an eyelash falling into the Pacific Ocean during the last El Niño. It had been a long time since she’d thought of her mother. Remembering her now made her think of Bronco’s mother, and how she hadn’t had a chance to ask him about her. She would, though, when he came back.

Right on cue she heard the faint crunch of footsteps on pine needles. Her heart gave a lurch. Hating the breathlessness of fear in her voice, she called out, “Bronco-is that you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Horrible man-he sounded amused.

Clutching an edge of the blanket to her chin, Lauren peered around it. “About time,” she said sourly. She’d never let him know how glad she was to see him.

“Stopped off at the tent-thought you could use this.” And he thrust something at her-a bundle made up of a towel with the corners tied together. She hesitated, then took it from him and untied the knot. Inside was the green soap, still wrapped in its washcloth, and one of the breakfast coffee mugs. “For dipping,” Bronco explained with the casualness that comes from personal experience. “If you pour it over you, you don’t dirty the whole bucketful.”

Staring down at the bundle, she nodded, too confused by the mixture of gratitude and resentment inside her to speak.

After a long and strangely tense moment, Bronco set the bucket filled with crystal-clear water inside the enclosure, swung her saddlebags off his shoulder and dropped them on the pine needles beside it. Then he turned and walked away.

He’d just about made it back to the tent when she let out the first screech. He paused, listened, then walked on, smiling and shaking his head. He wouldn’t have thought such a well-brought-up lady lawyer would even know such words.