Miranda Jarrett - Gift Of The Heart

“No,” she gasped as she tried to scramble away on her hands and knees. “Dear God, no! ”

She saw the white fur of the wolf’s underbelly as he whirled through the air, a blur as white against the black sky as the snow she lay upon. The scream she knew was her own, shrill with fear. But the sharp crack of the rifle’s shot made no sense, not even when the wolf dropped lifeless to the snow before her. No sense, she thought, her heart pounding wildly as she crouched on the snow, it made no sense at all.

“Are you hurt, Rachel?” Jamie pulled her to her feet, his voice harsh from concern and strain. “Look at me, lass. Are you hurt?”

She stared at him, uncomprehending, her eyes still wide with terror and her breath coming in short little gasps. Her braid had come unraveled, her hair hanging half-loose around her face, and when she lifted her hand to brush it back he saw the raw scrape across her knuckles where she’d fallen on the ice. But nothing worse, thank God.

He glanced again at the lifeless body of the wolf, then slung his rifle on its strap across his back and set his hands gently on her shoulders. “You’ll be fine, Rachel,” he said, forcing her to look at him and listen. “The animal’s dead, and can’t harm you.”

“Yes,” she said hoarsely, nodding her head even as she searched his face for reassurance. “Yes, I’m quite fine. Quite.”

It was Jamie Ryder, of course, Jamie who had saved her. With the light from the open door behind him, his face was dark in shadow, but she would have recognized his voice anywhere. And who else, really, could it have been?

Yet even as she realized what he’d done, she wished it hadn’t been so. She wanted to be like all the other women in her family, her grandmother and her mother and her older sisters. She wanted to be strong, independent, able to take care of herself and Billy, and this winter, before this man had come, she’d thought she was. But then she remembered how the wolf had sprung toward her, and she didn’t feel very strong or brave at all. What she felt was weak and weepy, and if he said one more kind word to her she knew she’d shatter at his feet.

Instead she drew away from him, smoothing her hair from her face as if her fingers still did not shake, and bent to pick up her musket.

“It misfired, you know,” she explained, almost grudgingly, as she peered at the flintlock, poking the bits of snow away from it. “Else I would have made the shot myself.”

“True enough. But ‘twas a good thing my rifle didn’t suffer the same ill.”

Frowning, she glanced up at him without raising her chin. “How far were you from—from me?”

“Not far.” He shrugged carelessly, but Rachel saw how he favored the wounded shoulder. “I’d just stepped outside the house.”

“That’s forty paces, and in the dark, too.” She was impressed, as much by his modesty as by what he’d done. She’d never known another man who’d have been able to resist such an opportunity to boast. “You said you could shoot the seeds from an apple, and you weren’t bragging.”

She heard his smile without seeing it. “That old wolfs a sight bigger than an apple.”

For the first time Rachel forced herself to look at the dead animal. The sky was beginning to pale with dawn, and the gray shape of the wolf was clear against the snow, framed by the darker puddle of its own blood. Only luck and Jamie had saved her from lying there instead, stiffening on the snow, in the blood. She looked, and could not look away, any more than she could stop the trembling that suddenly racked her or the tears that blurred her eyes, and this time when Jamie reached for her, she crumpled against him, her musket slipping forgotten from her hand.

“There now, lass, I told you you’d be fine,” he murmured as he folded his arms around her. “I’ll grant you it was a close thing, but you’ll be fine.”

And she was fine, thought Jamie, fine and soft to hold against his chest, the way he’d known she would be. Her hair slid like silk across his wrists as she pressed her cheek against the fringed yoke of his linen Ranger’s shirt, her hands curled loosely together like a child’s. He’d heard once that the fringe was meant to draw rain away from a man’s shoulders, to scatter the drops where they’d shake away. Would they work the same way now, he wondered, to draw away a woman’s tears?

Instinctively he tightened his arms around her and she burrowed closer. The image of her bravely swinging the musket at the wolf was burned forever in his consciousness, along with the sickening lurch he’d felt deep inside when he’d realized what it would take to save her. And he’d done it; he hadn’t failed her. But he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had turned to him like this, and he longed to give her the comfort she needed. Aye, that was all, comfort, to ease her fears like a brother or a friend.

Like hell that was all, he thought wretchedly, as if he could ignore her womanly scent or the soft warmth of her breasts pressed against him. Like hell was exactly what it was. He’d warned her not to trust him. Why the devil hadn’t she listened?

“I thought—thought I was going to die,” said Rachel raggedly, hiccuping with her sobs. “I thought everything was—was going to end, and I was so seared, and—and oh, I’m such—such a silly coward! ”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Oh, hush, that’s nonsense. Whatever else you are, Rachel Lindsey, you’re no coward.”

“No?” Her voice squeaked upward, and she pulled back to look at him, but not so far that she’d be free of his embrace. Furiously she dashed at her tears with the back of her fist. “Then why—why else am I crying so?”

“Because you’re wise enough to know you’re mortal,” he said as he gently traced his fingers along her cheek, her face so close to his. “Frightening thought, that. Because you know how sweet life can be.”

He kissed her then, and she didn’t stop him. The wolf, and the gun misfiring, and now Jamie’s lips on hers—none of it was real. Swiftly she parted her lips for his, swaying into him as she let herself become lost in his kiss. This was the sweetness he’d spoken of, the dizzying richness of pleasure and life that she hadn’t wanted to abandon.

Her palms flattened against his chest, pressing against his shirt to feel the steady beating of his heart. She was glad his was steady, for her own was racing like a rabbit across a meadow. The taste of him, the maleness of his desire, stole her breath away and made her limbs turn to butter. His hands slid lower, following the curve from her waist to her hips, and she shuddered as he pulled her closer against his long, hard body.

Yet she wanted this; no, she needed it, more than she’d realized was possible. This fire of a man’s kiss on an icy morning and the heady security of his arms around her proved that she wasn’t alone, that someone cared whether she died or lived.

The same pleasures she’d once believed she’d find with William. With her husband.

With a shudder she shoved herself back, tucking her wayward hands beneath her arms. “I didn’t mean anything by that,” she said with a swift, ragged urgency. “Nothing, you understand?”

He didn’t move to reclaim her again, instead standing impossibly still before her. “Nothing at all?”

“Nothing,” she declared, the lie so great she nearly winced.

“Then that’s a great pity,” he said softly. “Because I did.”

She prayed the same half-light that masked his expression would hide her own guilty flush, as well. “That’s—that’s not possible.”

“Aye, it is.” He turned away and went to prod the dead wolf with his toe. “Kissing you could never be meaningless, Rachel Lindsey. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. Nor, I think, would you.”