She sagged against Cactus. How could she not have guessed?
Because, she thought, staring at the ground, he had been right. Since she hadn’t dared hope that someone like Luther would be interested in someone like her, she’d made herself think of him as her father’s business associate, and as a friend. Not as a possible suitor. After Pa married Lola, she’d turned her gaze to younger men, and she had not seen Luther.
And now it was too late.
Raising her head, she looked toward the observers’ camp. Both Ward and Luther were standing near the coffeepot, but it was Luther she saw.
He was taller than Ward, and ten years older. He never thrust himself forward, never bragged about his accomplishments, which were considerable. He was unfailingly thoughtful and kind, considerate and fair. Respected by all who knew him. Les usually thought of him as retiring, but that wasn’t entirely true.
It had been Luther who pulled Ward away from her and hit him in the mouth the night everyone had seen Ward strike her. Luther who had restrained Dal on at least two occasions that Les could recall.
Suddenly she remembered Prince Charming coming into her tent to hold her hand and whisper words of love. Had she dreamed that incident, or had it been…
Despair washed over her in a wave of blackness, and she stumbled against Cactus’s side, blinking at tears.
She wished Freddy hadn’t told her.
Riding flank position was a hundred times better than riding drag, Freddy decided, enjoying the morning. When she thought of Charlie and Peach eating dust and trying to nudge Mouse and Brownie into keeping up with the herd, she laughed out loud. But she missed Les. Except for the times when Dal circled the herd, she rode alone all day.
Thinking about Dal took the edge off of her good mood. And of course she thought about him morning, noon, and night. It hurt and annoyed her that he hadn’t referred even once to their night together in Fort Worth. Nor had he attempted to touch her or kiss her again.
Looking ahead, she fixed her gaze on his back. He was easy to spot as he rode the tallest in the saddle and wore his hat at a jaunty, arrogant angle.
As she did a dozen times a day, she tried to figure out why he seemed to be avoiding her. He knew she had gone unwillingly to the hotel; therefore, he might reasonably suppose that he had discharged his duty, that was the end of it, and that’s what she preferred. Maybe that was it.
On the other hand, he had to know that the night in Fort Worth had been the most thrilling experience in her life, had to sense that she wanted to be with him.
Or maybe he’d looked beyond Abilene and saw himself riding toward Montana, where she didn’t want to go, and imagined her boarding a train for San Francisco, where he didn’t want to go. At no point did their futures intersect.
Without a future, theirs could only be a relationship of brief duration. But no decent woman entered into an affair knowing that was all it could ever be, and she was Joe Roark’s daughter, a decent woman. She was also a woman on fire with desire, and there was the dilemma.
Looking ahead through the light haze of dust that existed even on flank, she remembered his hard-muscled body and his mouth crushing hers and the warm texture of his skin. She remembered his rippling flat stomach and his hands and his tongue on her body and…
“Stop this,” she muttered sharply.
Squinting, she spotted the chuck wagon and the observers’ wagons up ahead. In the distance, she saw Alex out on the range hooking up cow pies. Alex had wandered far from camp, undoubtedly because the cooks with the outfits ahead of theirs had already stripped the ground of dried pies closer in.
Then she saw something that she didn’t at first recognize as trouble. Five men suddenly appeared, galloping up out of a deep gully. Still not alarmed, Freddy watched them speeding toward her and the herd. She hoped they had the sense to rein in, hoped they knew better than to charge the herd and risk startling the beeves.
When she saw them pull up bandannas to cover their faces and draw their pistols, she sucked in a sharp breath. Instantly she stiffened, and her hand dropped to the six-shooter at her waist. But she stopped in a panic of indecision. If she fired a warning shot to alert the other drovers, the sound of the shot would stampede the herd.
The decision became irrelevant when one of the men shot at her. The bullet whizzed past Freddy’s ear, close enough that she heard the whine and felt a streak of heat. She had a second to snap a glance over her shoulder and see one of the beeves drop, then the stampede began.