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.

Chapter 7

He waited for her, pacing in the dappled shade in front of the tent where he could keep an eye on the blanketed enclosure, and using every ounce of willpower he could muster to keep himself from thinking about what was going on inside it.

He tried, instead, to think about what might be happening right now down there at the ranch, where the full forces of the federal government had one feisty little Irish lady holed up and surrounded, but that wasn’t much better. Thinking about that made him feel stirred up inside-nothing he could quite pin down, just out of sorts. Like a horse with cockleburrs in his tail. He tried telling himself it was the FBI that was making him so edgy-couldn’t trust those guys not to make a mess of things. But in his heart he knew he didn’t really trust his own people any better, and besides, what was bothering him went a whole lot deeper and was a lot more complicated than interagency rivalry. It had more to do with things like honor, loyalty and duty. The problem was, it wasn’t all that clear to him just now exactly where his lay, and whether in fact a couple of those might be coming into direct conflict with each other.

About one duty, though, he had no doubts whatsoever. He watched, outwardly relaxed, inwardly alert as she came toward him, picking her way barefoot across the pine-needle carpet, mindful, this time, of those lurking cones. She had her winter-grass hair twisted and tucked into a loose knot of some sort that clung to the nape of her neck in defiance of gravity, and her skin looked rosy and wholesome as a child’s.

And again he knew that peculiar sensation inside, that unfamiliar sense of awe.

“Feelin’ better?” he asked without expression.

Lauren grumpily muttered something about “freezing to death” as she brushed past him and into the tent. But there was sparkle in her eyes and an uncertain tilt about her lips, a kind of wariness, he thought, as if she was trying hard not to let on how good she felt.

He chuckled, because he knew firsthand how exhilarating a wash in ice-cold spring water could be. And then, of course, there was the way her cold-hardened nipples poked out sharp and clear against the material of her T-shirt, leaving him to imagine the firm round breast-shape underneath, and to think again those forbidden thoughts about how nicely they’d fill up his hands. He’d caught a whiff of the green-apple shampoo she’d used, and for just a moment, like a gust of a freshening breeze blowing through him, he felt what it would be like to hold her in his arms at that moment, with her body cool and soft and sweet as rain upon his skin. And then…to feel her grow soft and warm and pliant beneath him, like fine leather in the sun…

After she’d recovered from her bath and gotten herself dressed and her sores doctored and bandaged, Bronco took her with him down to the corral to see to the horses. He chose to take her there the long way around, through the timber and over the saddleback ridge, avoiding the cabin and the clearing, as well as the woods nearby where the men had their bivouacs. The way he saw it, the less those guys saw of his “prisoner,” the better.

Walking along with her through the woods, stepping in and out of sunshine, stirring up hot summery smells of pine sap and pollen dust, he couldn’t help but think again how enjoyable it might be to be doing so under different circumstances. Very different circumstances.

Ah, but it was only in his mind. And only for a moment. John Bracco was well aware that he had a job to do, one that to anyone other than an ex-army ranger might have seemed on the edge of impossible. His job was to keep this woman safe-keep her alive, if it came down to that-and somehow do that without letting her or anyone else know he was on her side. He couldn’t even let himself be too nice to her, lest she or McCullough start getting ideas.

Getting ideas. That was something he’d better not do, either. Because the truth was, even if things had been different, even if there had been no Sons of Liberty, no kidnapping, no cover to protect at all costs, the likes of Lauren Brown were not for him. A yellow-haired, pale-skinned, freckle-faced white woman, well-educated and from a nice well-to-do family, would never steal his heart away.

No, sir. For Bronco knew from hard experience that if he ever was foolish enough to give his heart to such a woman, she would surely break it.

He was aware of her, though, there was no denying that, in all the ways he was usually aware in the presence of an exceptionally beautiful woman, plus a few that were new to him.

He was aware, for example, of her quietness-which he’d noticed yesterday, too, on the ride from McCullough’s ranch. This was new to him because in his experience, beautiful women were seldom quiet. Even when they weren’t actually speaking, there was just something about them, something in the way they moved, the way they held themselves, a certain electrical current that seemed to telegraph, Look! Look at me! He was well aware that Lauren’s silence might have had something to do with the fact that she was mad at him again, but he didn’t think so. In Bronco’s experience, there were few things louder in this world than the silent treatment from a beautiful woman.

No. This woman’s quietness was different. Bronco had been raised among a people who appreciate the beauty and purpose of silence, and who see no reason to fill it with speech unless there is something that needs to be said. In adulthood he’d learned that most white people are afraid of silence. In the presence of others they try to vanquish it with meaningless conversation; alone they use almost any means to hold it at bay. Radio, TV, stereo headphones and if nothing else is available, their own bodies-tapping toes, cracking knuckles, clearing throats, whistling.

But not this woman; she seemed perfectly at ease with her own silence and his. He found that most interesting.

Lauren’s thoughts were anything but quiet. So many were crowding her mind, demanding attention, that she had to be very still and devote all her concentration just to listening if she wanted to sort them out.

She thought how good it felt to be clean again. And warm. And she thought how odd it was to feel good about anything at all, under the circumstances.

But she did feel good, amazingly good-with soothing ointment and gauze pads protecting her sore places, the sun hot between her shoulder blades, the fragrant crunch of pine needles under her feet and the breeze drying her hair in soft wisps that tickled her cheeks and forehead. It was beautiful here on this wooded ridge, looking down on a meadow dotted with wildflowers and threaded by a creek that reflected the sky like a bit of blue ribbon dropped on the lawn and forgotten.

It was hard to remember that she was where she was because she’d been abducted by violent and dangerous men bent on political blackmail, at the very least. Hard to remember that she was a prisoner of the man walking so companionably beside her, and that things could easily turn very bad for her if all didn’t go as her captors wished.

But she didn’t feel like a prisoner, at least not right now. She didn’t feel endangered. And that, she realized, was probably because her jailer wasn’t acting at all like a jailer. He wasn’t holding her or restricting her in any way, wasn’t touching her at all, or even looking at her. He just seemed relaxed and easy in her company-as he’d been yesterday, she remembered, on the ride up here.

But then, of course, he could afford to feel easy. He knew she wouldn’t attempt to run or fight him. She’d have to be an idiot to try when she knew he’d only catch and overpower her with humiliating dispatch.

She thought about that. The reminder of her powerlessness should have made her angry all over again, but confusingly it didn’t. Instead, she found herself thinking about his quietness, the fact that he didn’t talk unless he had something he needed to say. It was oddly comfortable, she found, to be with someone who didn’t seem to mind silence.

She slid her eyes sideways under the cover of her lashes to look at her companion without being observed doing so. Her heart gave a lurch and immediately she thought, What, are you out of your mind? Comfortable? Johnny Bronco?

She suddenly saw herself walking beside some exotic untamed creature-a black panther, perhaps, or a mustang stallion-something sleek, dangerous and in no way hers to control. His body moved with the fluid grace and oiled-spring precision of a wild predator. His long black hair hung loose on his back and lifted lazily in the breeze, caught the sun and struck it back in sparks of blue fire, like the wings of a blackbird in flight. Beneath the brim of his Stetson, flawless skin gleamed like the hide of a healthy animal.

Comfortable? Johnny Bronco was about as comfortable as a summer monsoon-and, she thought, as predictable.

“Something on your mind?” Between the high hard wedges of cheekbones and the angry sweep of eyebrows, black eyes glittered at her with the uncompromising fierceness of Genghis Khan.