McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [126]
John drove the wagon in behind them, and Lorelei looked back over one shoulder to see the point riders traveling about a hundred yards back. The herd was a bellowing sprawl of hide and horns, seeming to go on forever and raising plenty of dust.
“Won’t we slow them down?” she asked Melina, wiping off her cheese with the sleeve of her shirt. “Riding at the front like this?”
“You want to be in back?” Melina retorted. “Where the Comanches could pick us off and nobody’d even know we were gone?”
Lorelei hadn’t thought of that; she’d been too busy hating Holt McKettrick for using her and then casting her aside like an old boot. She shook her head and forced herself to finish off the food, trail dust and all. As unpalatable as it was, she needed the sustenance.
Half an hour later, she worked up the nerve to start another conversation. “Why didn’t you wake me up this morning?” she asked Melina. John might have heard the question, but he gave no sign of it. Just looked straight ahead and kept the team moving, the reins resting easily in his gloved hands. The dog, riding in the back with the supplies, perked his ears up, as though he found the topic to be of interest.
“I figured Holt would have done that,” Melina said, after mulling things over for a while.
Lorelei wilted inside. So everyone knew she’d squandered her virtue last night. Maybe they’d even heard her carrying on while Holt pleasured her. She could avoid most of them now, but when they stopped to make camp, she’d have to face at least some of those cowboys. She’d see the reflection of a fallen woman in their eyes.
She wished she could just topple off that mule and let the herd trample her, but she was either too brave or too cowardly—no telling which—to do that. So she just rode, miserable, ashamed and furious, all of a piece.
She took off her hat, let her hair tumble to her waist and reached back with both hands to gather and plait it. Melina handed over a little strip of rawhide to serve as a tie, but she didn’t say anything.
She’d been partially right, Melina had, Lorelei conceded, about how things would turn out between Holt and herself, but at least Melina wasn’t gloating. At the moment, Lorelei had to be content with small favors.
The sun was brutal, and even with the brim of her hat shading her face, Lorelei felt her nose and cheeks burning. Her milky skin had always been a secret vanity with her; now, even that was in jeopardy.
The herd traveled with excruciating slowness, and it was long past noon when Holt sent Rafe and the Captain back to ride on either side of the wagon.
“These horses are goin’ to give out if we don’t let ’em rest pretty soon,” John called to Rafe.
“There’s a stream up ahead,” Rafe shouted back. “Maybe two miles from here. Holt says we’ll have an hour, and then get moving again. Keep going until dark.”
John nodded, adjusted his sweat-banded hat.
Melina shifted uncomfortably on the seat, and even Sorrowful began to prowl back and forth among the crates and rifles and bags of beans in the back of the wagon.
Lorelei yearned to stop, to feel solid ground under her feet and drink all the water she could hold. At the same time, she dreaded it.
The two miles Rafe had mentioned felt like twenty, but finally the stream came into view, a shimmering ribbon of cool, sparkling blue snaking through acres of dry, sparse grass. Lorelei kept riding until John finally hauled back on the reins and yelled, “Whoa!” to the team.
John helped Melina down, as soon as he’d set the brake lever and walked around behind the wagon, and his motions were so solicitous that Lorelei was worried. What if Melina’s baby was coming? Maybe it was time— Lorelei didn’t know—and maybe it was too early.
She dismounted, approached her friend, who was pressing both hands into the small of her back.
“Melina,” she whispered. “Are you—is it—?”
Melina laughed and patted her arm. “No, Lorelei. I’m just tired, that’s all. I got spoiled, sleeping in that featherbed at Heddy’s, and back there at Reynosa, too.” The word bed snapped