tornado on the platform, before she plopped down in a heap of skirts and started chewing on a nail, muttering to herself as if Marcus weren’t there.
He stood silently, watching the way the afternoon sun warmed her hair, wondering what it would look like unpinned and spilling over her shoulders like a yellow shawl, imagining the delicacy of those shoulders, the perfect paleness of the skin, the…
“Did you miss the train, too?”
Her plaintive question brought him out of his reverie and put an end to his foolish, misdirected thoughts. “Yep,” he said. “Looks like we’re in the same boat, so to speak.”
She looked up at him, shading her glorious green eyes against the sun, pondering him with her brow furrowed and the tip of her pink tongue passing over her lower lip. No doubt she was wondering if she could trust him. For a minute she reminded Marcus of a lost little girl, rather than a pampered and spoiled runaway heiress. His heart gave an extra and very peculiar thump, and he suddenly felt like fighting a grizzly bear on her behalf, or stopping a train by throwing his body across the tracks. Doing all those foolish and heroic things he would have done so gladly for Sarabeth all those years ago.
“Help me,” she said. “I’ll pay you.”
Pay him? Marcus’s heart gave a tiny pop, like a soap bubble. Pay him!
“Help me catch up with the train,” she said. “Then, when I retrieve my luggage, I’ll reward you handsomely.”
He shouldn’t be so put out, he told himself. Or so confoundedly disappointed by her offer. After all, money and handsome rewards were what this was all about, weren’t they? He wanted to be paid—and paid well, too, dammit—didn’t he?
“You might try a simple thank-you,” he growled.
“Then you will help me?” She scuttled up from the platform and looked up into his face eagerly, holding her breath while she awaited his reply.
Marcus made her wait, just because he felt cussed and mean and bruised, even though he had every intention of helping her, of sticking to little Miss Amanda Grenville like glue from here on out.
“Say please.”
Those big green eyes blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said say please. You know, that little word that often accompanies requests.” He arched an eyebrow. “Surely you’ve heard it before, even if you haven’t used it yourself, brat.”
Her mouth formed an astonished and perfect little O then, and her eyes flashed.
“Say it,” he coaxed.
When her mouth finally closed, her teeth were clenched so hard she could barely get the word out. “Pi-please.”
“That’s better.” Marcus grinned and stepped closer to her. Just then the breeze shifted, blowing up dust and cinders from the track, along with a powerful fragrance that seemed to emanate from Miss Amanda Grenville herself. He sniffed, baffled for a moment. The rich women he’d known—a few over the years, and far less rich than Amanda—had smelled like exotic flowers, jasmine and tuberose and lily of the valley, or like musky she-cats in hot jungles. But this woman suddenly smelled like… like…
Still baffled, he sniffed again, then took a half step back, eying her suspiciously. “What the hell is that?”
“What is what?”
“That smell. That perfume you’re wearing.”
Her chin lifted imperiously. “It’s vanilla, if you must know. I think it’s rather nice. Fresh. And…and wholesome.”
“Wholesome, huh? You smell like a damn cake.”
“I’d suggest that you cease breathing, sir, but since I’m in need of your assistance…”
Marcus shook his head. He’d have to stay downwind of her, that was for sure. Or see that she got a bath. “All right. You wait here while I wire ahead to the next station and have them pull your luggage off the train.” He started toward the depot door. “Wait a minute. I’ll need to know what it looks like, this valise of yours. Any identification on it?”
“It’s a brown alligator satchel with double handles and the initials A.G. in gold on one side.”
“A.G.?”
She blinked, flummoxed for a second by her admission, before the runaway heiress recovered her wits and called out, “Yes. A.G. A as in Alice and G as in…as in Green. Alice Green.”
“Right.” Well, she was fairly quick on her feet, he thought. He would’ve preferred a slower-witted bounty. “You’re sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she snapped.
Marcus touched the brim of his hat, giving her an encouraging little salute from the door. Little Alice Green would probably need it, since she wasn’t going to be seeing that monogrammed suitcase again in the foreseeable future. Nor would she be traveling in the style to which she was accustomed. Nor would she be smelling like a rich, rich rose.
Inside the depot, he walked right past the telegrapher to the counter, where he used most of his remaining cash to buy two tickets on the next westbound stage.
The crowded stagecoach was another new experience for Amanda. She thought she rather liked it. Well, except for the stifling heat and the cramped quarters and more dust than she’d ever dreamed existed, all of which combined to intensify the now cloying scent of vanilla that she had tried so hard to rub off at the depot after being compared to bakery goods.
She and Marcus—he’d introduced himself at last, saying, “Well, Miss Alice Green, I go by Marcus Quicksilver"—had been the last ones to board the stage, and as a consequence they hadn’t been able to sit together, which irritated Amanda at first, but now was pleasing her enormously, because it allowed her to look long and hard at the handsome man who had offered her his assistance, albeit grudgingly. Well, she could hardly expect eastern gallantry from such a rugged-looking, gunbeltwearing, unshaven westerner, she reminded herself.
The minute they settled into their opposite seats, Marcus had tipped his hat down and, to all appearances, fallen fast asleep. Amanda perused what she could see of his face—the dark whiskers shadowing his cheeks and jaw, the hard curve of his mouth, which hardly slackened in sleep, the sculpted tip of his nose. Her gaze kept drifting lower, to the place where the button was missing on his chambray shirt, where a hint of soft, dark hair showed through the open placket between the edges of his leather vest.
Each time she peeked, a little curl of longing unfurled in the pit of her stomach. That, too, was a sensation she’d never felt before, but then, she’d never seen a man’s bare chest before, either. She wondered if Angus was similarly furry, and rather hoped so. Not that it mattered. Not one whit. Only…
“Sorry if I’m crowding you, honey. It’s these wide shoulders of mine, you know. They don’t make coaches for fellas built like me.”
