Outlaw (10 page)

"But I saw you fall down! Oh,
Mason...I—"

He winced. "I was ducking gunfire," he said,
glancing behind her at the still-halted stagecoach. A group of male
passengers had disembarked, and they were headed straight for him
and Amelia.

"—I thought you were shot or wounded or in
trouble," she went on, oblivious to the trouble gathering right
behind him as she probed his shoulder, his chest, and then his arm
for injuries. Apparently unsatisfied, she rose on tiptoes to press
her hand against his jaw, turning his head for a closer inspection.
"I had to save you."

Mason scowled and captured her wrist,
stopping her. "Trouble?" he interrupted. "You're worried that I'm
in trouble?" Hell, she was responsible for a good portion of his
troubles herself.

Her hand began to tremble within his grasp.
Amelia's blue eyes darkened with concern beneath her tangle of
curly bangs. "Well, well, yes, I—"

Of course I was worried
, her
expression said.

"You should've stayed on the stage," he said
again. "You've got no idea the kind of trouble I'm in." He looked
past Amelia's shoulder into the faces of the advancing stagecoach
passengers. A hanging crowd if ever he'd seen one.

His gaze shifted back to her. She looked
perplexed; beneath their dusting of smudged black dirt, her
eyebrows dipped lower and her mouth pulled into an oval of
confusion.

Mason gave her a nasty, mean-tempered smile.
If not for Miss Fancy Pants, he'd already be on his way to Tucson
by now to reclaim his son. Instead, he was about to face a roadside
lynch mob.

Worse, he could've been rid of her, too—and
gotten to Ben twice as quickly. If only she'd stayed on the
stagecoach. Why in the hell had she run to a man she believed was
an outlaw?

His original estimation had been correct,
Mason decided. She was addled somehow. Any woman with a lick of
sense would've abandoned him the first chance she got.

Frowning, he shoved Amelia behind him,
shielding her with his body as the crowd came nearer. "Curly Top,"
he said, "welcome to my necktie party."

"Goodness, I thought they'd kill him for
certain," said the plump little woman seated to the left of Amelia
on the stagecoach. She fussed with the dainty wrist strap of her
beaded reticule and eyed Amelia again. "Honestly, we couldn't very
well let the menfolk do
that
, now could we?"

"Oh, no!" cried the woman on Amelia's right,
a dowager with piled-high, fancy hair and a righteous expression.
The three of them jounced together as the stagecoach passed over a
particularly bumpy spot in the road, then righted themselves again.
On the vehicle's opposite bench, all four men in their party sat
crammed like sardines with their arms crossed tight over their
chests. All, that is, save one man.

The opposing camps glared at each other
across the space dividing them.

"A nasty, distasteful business," opined the
plump lady, dabbing delicately at her nose with an embroidered
handkerchief. The linen square appeared to have seen much hard
use.

"Deserved to hang," muttered the man who'd
been shooting at Mason. He was, Amelia had learned, the dowager's
husband.

"Yeah," agreed another man with a hard look
at the outlaw.

"Why, that would have been cold-blooded
murder!" cried the dowager, her nostrils flaring slightly. "Isn't
that right, Miss O'Malley?"

Her tone dared Amelia to disagree. Even
knowing it would likely ease the dissension that made the air feel
heavy and hard to breathe if she did speak out, Amelia nodded
instead. With these women's help—and the stagecoach driver's
inexplicable assistance—she'd persuaded the male passengers not to
strike down the outlaw where he stood. No amount of peaceful
coexistence was worth a man's life.

With Amelia's allegiance duly confirmed on
the side of womankind, the other ladies carried on their discussion
in lively, gossiping tones. Amelia felt too sick at heart to join
in. Her concern for Mason had gotten the better of her, had
compelled her to run off the stagecoach to help him—and now look at
the fix they were in.

Alive but madder than she'd ever seen him,
the outlaw emanated hostility from the seat directly opposite her.
He was the only man with his arms uncrossed, but that wasn't his
posture by choice.

He was bound hand-to-foot in anything the
male passengers had been able to dredge up. A hank of rope secured
his wrists in front of him, and a leather bridle twined securely
around his booted ankles. More rope, combined with two pairs of red
suspenders and a length of chain, strapped his arms to his sides
with a series of horizontal bindings. Even for a man with Mason's
strength, it would be impossible to break free of so many
restraints.

If not for the gentleman's necktie stuffed
part way in his mouth and tied at the back of his head, she felt
sure Mason would've given her a piece of his mind long before
now.

"I'm sorry," she mouthed silently to him.
She'd really only meant to help. When she'd seen him fall into the
cactus-strewn dirt, every bit of common sense she possessed had
fled.

He glared at her over the paisley-printed
necktie that kept him from speaking. Then he...growled.

"Goodness!" shrieked the lady beside Amelia.
"He is barbaric, isn't he?"

Barbaric
. Amelia recalled accusing
him of the same thing—and the memory of his answering kiss made her
cheeks flush hotly.

"I—I'm just glad we were able to persuade
the gentlemen here to let justice take its course," she said,
choked with the mixture of remembered excitement and embarrassment
that flooded her.

Trying her best to ignore the predatory
gleam in Mason's eye—obviously he remembered the private moment
they'd shared, too—Amelia added, "I'm certain everything will be
set right once we reach Tucson."

And once they did reach Tucson, Amelia
thought, turning her mind toward a safer topic, she had a wealth of
work to do. She'd already reserved a room at one of the town's
finest hotels. From there she planned to tour the city, delivering
J.G. O'Malley and Sons book orders and taking as many new ones as
she could secure before it was time to return to the States. After
she and Mason went their separate ways, she'd have to put this
whole unfortunate incident straight out of her mind and get
started.

It's not a woman's place to conduct
business
. Mason had said that to her only this morning, his
words an uncanny echo of her father's business philosophy. Perhaps
they believed that, Amelia mused, gazing unseeing out the
stagecoach window. Or perhaps it was her abilities they
doubted.

After all, her father and brothers routinely
did business with women—widows, mostly, running their husbands'
shops. Amelia refused to believe the only females possessed of
ambition and business acumen were those whose husbands had gone on
to their heavenly rewards. What possible advantage could widowhood
confer? And yet they were allowed to engage in trade
unmolested.

Only one explanation seemed possible. Her
father believed her incompetent, untrustworthy...lacking,
somehow.

She'd prove him wrong, Amelia vowed. She
stared at the satchels beneath her feet, but in her mind's eye it
was her father's face she saw. To see his face alight with fatherly
pride had been her goal for as long as she could remember. Finally,
finally, she had the means to make her hopes a reality.

Determined despite the troubles she found
herself in now, Amelia grabbed the handle of the heaviest satchel
and hefted it onto her lap. She'd refresh her knowledge of the book
orders to be delivered, and be that much more prepared when she
reached Tucson.

The satchel locks appeared intact, even
after the harsh treatment they'd received over the past few days.
One was a bit scraped from the miner's attempts to pry it open, but
otherwise secure. Trying to cheer herself with a quiet, hummed
tune, Amelia slipped her finger inside the neckline of her dress,
feeling for the thin gold chain on which she'd strung the key to
the locked satchels for safekeeping.

It wasn't there.

Frowning, Amelia pushed her forefinger a bit
lower. Perhaps it had slid aside—the chain and key were always
there. She'd chosen that hiding place specifically for its
security. A sense of alarm tightened her stomach, and she swabbed
her finger quickly to the other side of her neck. The key wasn't
there.

The next note of her tune died in her
throat. How would she deliver her book orders if she couldn't
unlock her J.G. O'Malley & Sons satchels? How would she pay for
food and her room at the Palace Hotel, with all her money locked
away? A burgeoning sense of despair tightened her throat as she
glanced down at the filthy pink rag that passed for her pink
Polonaise dress. How would she even change clothes? She could
hardly represent her father's company dressed like this!

A questioning noise from Mason's direction
made her look up. He'd been watching her. His eyebrows lifted, but
beneath their overly innocent arch, Amelia recognized a familiar
gleam. It was the same light that filled her brothers' eyes
whenever she'd fallen unwarily into one of their pranks.
Instinctively, she straightened against the back of the
leather-upholstered bench, looking around her as she tried in vain
to spot the joke.

"Mmm—mmm?" came Mason's rumbled inquiry.

She paused, having spotted nothing. "What?
What are you trying to say?"

His reply was a nod toward her satchel.
Could he possibly know where the key was?

"Do you know what I'm looking for?" she
asked him, desperation pushing the question from her lips in spite
of the disapproving stares of her fellow passengers. This was no
time for pranks or propriety. She had to have that key.

Mason made another indistinguishable
sound.

"Can you tell me where it is?" she asked,
leaning toward him. He remained silent, but above the gag his dark
eyes twinkled at her, warm with amusement. She'd have appreciated
it more, had she not been the subject of his good humor.

"Do you really think it's safe to speak with
him, Miss O'Malley?" asked the plump lady to her left. "He appears
quite dangerous to me."

He did to Amelia, too. Without his hat, the
outlaw's thick coffee-colored hair stuck up in aggressive little
shafts, and his jaw looked bristly with beard stubble. His broad,
muscular body dwarfed those of the men seated beside him. They'd
removed his rifle and gun belt, but rather than mellowing his
demeanor, the weapons' absence only made Mason's natural strength
seem twice as prominent. He looked like he could take apart a man
with his bare hands—and enjoy the diversion.

"He—he won't hurt me," Amelia said. Her
fingers fairly itched to remove the gag and hear what the outlaw
had to say, but she didn't dare. Doubtless she'd have a bigger
earful than she'd bargained for.

More importantly, she still hoped to keep
their fellow passengers from realizing they were together. What if
they believed she was the poet bandit's accomplice, and locked her
in jail, too?

"Wave your arms," she begged Mason. "Maybe I
can guess."

Muffled masculine laughter came from behind
the gag.

Amelia felt like shrieking aloud in
frustration. Tapping her fingernails against her smooth rubber
cloth satchel, she narrowed her eyes at Mason and considered her
options. He couldn't speak unless she ungagged him—and she doubted
the other passengers would allow that. And he refused to cooperate
by giving her visual clues. Perhaps she could search his person for
the key! He was helpless. How would he stop her?

She lowered her satchel to the floor, her
heartbeat coming faster as she rose to her feet. The stupefied
stares of the other passengers made her knees feel wobbly as she
crossed the small distance to the outlaw's seat. She stopped when
her skirts brushed his knees. Sucking in a deep breath to bolster
her courage, she shifted her concentration wholly onto Mason.

"This is your last chance," she told him,
wishing her voice sounded stronger, surer, than it did. Bracing her
arms on the seat back behind him, Amelia leaned slightly over him
in an attempt to keep their conversation private. "If you know what
I want," she said slowly, "please give it to me. Now."

She wouldn't have thought it possible, but
behind the gag, Mason's grin grew wider. His gaze dropped to her
wilted pink bodice and lower, an intimate sweep that somehow made
her feel hot and cold at once. She should have been insulted,
Amelia knew—but somehow she didn't have the will to manage it.

His eyes met hers again. The playfulness
that had filled his gaze before vanished, replaced with a hunger so
intense she felt it sweep through her like a physical force. Barely
leashed, it called to some part of her Amelia had never recognized
before. Her breath left her. Mesmerized, she swayed almost
imperceptibly closer.

"Mason?" she whispered.

"Good heavens, Miss O'Malley!" cried the
dowager, startling Amelia so badly that she nearly toppled into
Mason's lap.

"Get away from that man," the older woman
commanded. "What on earth is he supposed to give you?"

"Well," she stammered, at a loss to explain,
"I, ahh..."

"I think she's in cahoots with him,"
interrupted the dowager's husband, the same weasel-faced man who'd
been shooting at Mason. He leveled his shifty-eyed, suspicious gaze
on Amelia. "Ain't that right, missy?"

"No! I—" Her face turned, automatically,
toward the outlaw. He gave her a hard look, his brown eyes burning
with some message she couldn't decipher. What was he trying to tell
her?

"I'm no outlaw," she cried, turning to
address her likeliest allies—the women. "My—my stagecoach left me
at the roadside by mistake, that's all, and I, I...." Her voice
trailed away. They didn't believe her, Amelia could tell. She tried
another approach. "I didn't even know him before yesterday!"