She was. She pulled her fingers back as if she had been burned.

"You did a good job," he told her, tying off the bandage.

"Because everything is intact?" she said caustically.

"I do appreciate that. But then, you wouldn't have dared do me injury, I'm certain."

"Don't be so certain."

A soft, husky chuckle escaped him. "Some day, I promise, I'll make it all worth your while."

"What does that mean?"

"Why, we'll have to wait and see, won't we?"

"Don't hold your breath, Captain Slater. And besides—" she widened her eyes with a feigned and sizzling innocence "—I'm just a child, remember? The McCahy brat."

She started to turn away. He caught her arm and pulled her back. She almost protested, but he moved with a curious gentleness, lifting a fallen tendril of hair, smoothing it. And his eyes moved over her again, over the rise of her breasts beneath the lace of her bodice, to her flushed cheeks, to the curve of her form where she knelt by his feet.

"Well, brat, it was a long war. I think that, maybe, you've begun to grow up."

"I had no choice," she said, and she was suddenly afraid that she would start to cry. She gritted her teeth and swallowed the tears harshly. She felt his eyes upon her, reading her thoughts and her mind and her heart.

"I was very sorry about your Captain Ellsworth, Shannon," he said. "I know what it did to you. But be careful. If you're not, you'll have scars on your soul, like Cole did when the jayhawkers killed his wife."

"Malachi, don't—"

"All right, Miss McCahy, I won't talk about sacred territory." He smiled, a devilish smile, taunting her, leading her away from the memory of pain. "You are maturing, and nicely. Thank you, Shannon." He paused, his eyes searching her, his smile deepening with a sensual curve to his lips. She thought that he was going to say something else, but he repeated himself. "Thank you, you did a good job. Your touch was gentle, nearly tender."

"I told you—"

His knuckles brushed her cheek. "Definitely growing up," he murmured softly.

She didn't know what to say. It should have been something scathing, yet she didn't feel that way at all, not at that moment. She just felt, curiously, as if she wanted to be held. As if she wanted to burst into tears and be assured that yes, indeed, the war was over, and peace had come. She wanted to feel his arms around her, the heat of his whisper as he caressed her tenderly and assured her that all was well.

But she had no chance to respond at all.

For at that moment, the quiet of the night beyond the stables was shattered. The thunder of hoofbeats sounded just outside, loud, staccato, a drumroll that promised some new portent of danger. Even through the closed door, she could feel the beat she knew well.

Shannon rose quickly, the blood draining from her face.

"Riders, Malachi! Riders coming to the house!"

As if in answer to her worried exclamation, she heard a faint scream of horror from the house. Shannon ran to the door, wrenching it open. The scream came again. Shrill now, then higher and higher.

"Kristin!" Shannon cried. "It's—it's Kristin! Oh, my God, it's Kristin!"

"Wait!" Malachi called.

Shannon barely heard him. Horses had come galloping down upon the ranch again. Numerous horses. The sound of those hoofbeats told her that the uneasy peace that had so briefly settled over the ranch would now be shattered once again.

She started to run.

"Shannon!" Malachi thundered.

She ignored him, unaware that he was behind her, swearing, raging that she should stop.

"Damned fool brat!" he called. "Wait!"

She didn't wait. She burst into the night, staring at the house. In the glow of the light from the house she could see twenty or so horses ranged before the porch. Most of them still carried their riders. Only a few of the men had dismounted.

"No!" Shannon breathed, but even as she ran, she saw her sister. A tall husky man with unruly dark whiskers was coming out of the house with Kristin tossed over his shoulder.

Kristin was dressed for dinner, too, in a soft blue brocade that matched the color of her eyes. Her hair had been pinned in a neat coil, but now it streamed down the giant's back, like a lost ray of sunshine.

Stunned, Shannon stopped and stared in horror.

"I've got her!" the man said sharply. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

"What about Slater?" someone asked.

Shannon couldn't hear the reply, but her heart seemed to freeze over. If Cole wasn't gone, then he was dead. If there was a single breath left in his body, the burly man wouldn't have his hands on Kristin.

Kristin was screaming and fighting furiously as the man walked hurriedly to his horse. Kristin bit him, hard.

He slapped her in return, harder. Swearing. Then he tossed a dazed Kristin onto his horse, and mounted behind her.

"No!" Shannon shrieked, and she started to run in a panic toward the house once again. She leaped one of the paddock fences in a shortcut to the house. She had to stop them. She had to save her sister.

Her feet flew over the Missouri dust, and her heart thundered. She had no thought but to reach the man before he could ride away with her sister. In terror, she thought only to throw herself at the man in a whirlwind of fury.

Suddenly, she was, in truth, flying. Hurtling through the air by the force of some rock-hard power behind her, and falling facedown into the red dust at her feet. Stunned, she inhaled, and dirt filled her lungs. Dizzy and gasping, she fought against the force now crawling over her, holding her tight. Panic seized her. It was one of the men, one of them…

"Stop it, Shannon!"

No! It was Malachi again. Damn Malachi. He was holding her down, holding her prisoner, when the men were about to ride away, ride away with Kristin…

"Let me go, you fool!"

He was lying over her, the length of his body flat on hers, hard and heavy. His chest lay on her back, and his hands were flat upon hers, pinning them down. She could barely raise her head to see.

She could only feel the tension and heat of his whisper as he leaned low against her in warning.

"You fool! You're not—"

"Damn you! Get off of me! He has my sister!" She couldn't even begin to fight; she couldn't twist away from him.

"Shannon! He has twenty armed men! And you're running after him without so much as a big stick!"

"He has—"

"Shut up!" One of his hands eased from hers, but only to clamp over her mouth. He kept them down, almost flat upon the earth. A trough lay before them. It hid them from view, Shannon realized, while they could still see the men and the house two hundred yards away.

"He has Kristin!" Malachi agreed. "And if you go any closer, he's going to have you, too! And if you don't shut up, he'll be after the two of us. We could try shooting down twenty men between us without killing your sister in the fire, but we'd still need our weapons—those wood and steel things back in the hay—to do it with!"

She went still, ceasing to struggle against him.

"My only hope is to follow them. Carefully," he said hoarsely. He eased his hand from her mouth. He did not lift his weight from hers, but pinned her there with him with a sure pressure.

She hated him for it.

But he was right. She had no weapon. She had panicked, and she had run off with nothing, and she could do nothing to help Kristin.

She would only be abducted, too.

"No!" she whispered bleakly, for the horses were moving. The men were all mounted, and the horses were beginning to move away.

With the same speed and thunder, they were racing away, into the night.

And red Missouri dust rose in an eerie fog against the darkness of the night…

And slowly, slowly settled.

CHAPTER THREE

When the horses were gone, Malachi quickly stood and reached down for Shannon. She would have ignored his hand and risen on her own, but he didn't give her a chance. All the while, he kept his eyes fixed on the house. As soon as she was standing, he dropped her hands to start limping for the porch. He climbed over the paddock fence.

"Where are you going?" Shannon demanded, following him.

He didn't seem to hear her. He kept walking.

"Malachi!" Shannon snapped. He stopped and looked back at her as if she was a momentary distraction—like a buzzing fly. "Malachi! We have to get guns and horses; we have to ride after them. You're wasting time! Where are you going!"

"I'm going to the house," he said flatly. "Excuse me." He started walking again.

She ran after him and caught his elbow, wrenching him around to face her. Stunned, frightened and furious, she accosted him. "What? You're going to the house. Just like that. Sure, we've got all the time in the world! Let's take a rest. Can I get you dinner, maybe? A drink? A cool mint julep, or something stronger? What the hell is the matter with you? Those men are riding away with my sister!"

"I know that, Shannon. I—"

"You son of a bitch! You Rebel…coward! Good God, I wish to hell that you were Cole! He rode in here all alone


and cleaned up a small army on his own! You didn't even fire a shot. You yellow-bellied piece of white trash—"

"That's it!" He stepped back, and his arm snaked out. He caught her wrist and held her in a bruising grip, speaking with biting rage. "I'm damned sorry that Cole isn't here, Miss McCahy. And I'm damned sorry that I didn't have the time to dig through the hay to find my gun or your gun or even my saber. If I had had my gun, I probably could have killed a few of them before they gunned me down. So I'm real, real sorry that I don't feel like dying like a fool just to appease your definition of courage. And, Miss McCahy—" he paused for a breath "—as for Cole, I really, honest to God can't tell you just how much I'd like to see his face. And that, to tell the truth, is what I'm trying to do right now. Those men are riding away with your sister. Well, my brother was in that house, and I—"