“I know that you’ve spent your entire life in the Enclave, curing human diseases.”
“Looking for cures, yes.” She began to walk after the last wagon. “It’s a very slow process.”
“And you’ve been happy inside your laboratory?” Timon asked, falling in behind her with Lazarus in tow.
She stopped abruptly and met his gaze. “We don’t know each other very well, Mr. Timon, but I don’t imagine that my happiness can be of much concern to you.”
“You value learning for its own sake.”
She pushed her hair away from her face, leaving a smudge of dirt across her temple. It only enhanced her beauty. “You speak as if the desire to learn is a freakish aberration,” she said.
He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Easy,” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t,” she said in an offhand manner that was far from convincing.
He brought Lazarus to stand beside her. “We’re falling farther behind.” He stretched out his hand. “Ride with me.”
High color flooded her cheeks again, but when he looked into her eyes, he knew it wasn’t from fear. He felt a jolt of awareness spark between them.
The feeling passed in an instant, but Timon knew in that instant everything had changed. Now he could hear the rapid beat of her heart, sense the blood pumping through veins and arteries; he felt drawn to her in a way he never had before, not even when he’d first met her. And she stared at him as if she had never seen his face, her tongue darting out to wet her lips, her eyes wide with sudden realization.
He was certain Jamie had never been with any man. But she was overwhelmed by feelings her rational mind clearly didn’t comprehend. Yet her body knew the truth, on a very primal level that had nothing to do with logic. She was just beginning to grasp what it told her.
And she was fighting that knowledge with every scrap of determination she possessed.
Perhaps that was why she took his hand, let him pull her up behind him into the saddle and put her arms around his waist as he urged Lazarus into a gentle canter. She had something to prove to herself.
Timon could guess what it was. She had set herself the task of observing, of remaining objective. Any strong emotion—fear, anger, desire most of all—interfered with that task.
As they rode, Timon felt her breath on the nape of his neck, the press of her breasts against his back, the roundness of her thighs rocking behind his. He could smell her hair and her skin and her clothing, a rich mélange of intoxicating scents it was impossible to ignore.
He slowed Lazarus as they caught up to Jamie’s mount, who nickered and tossed his head in greeting. Timon helped Jamie dismount and watched her climb into the saddle.
“You do that very well,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice perfectly steady. “The technique isn’t so difficult to learn, once you understand it.”
“And what do you do when you can’t understand something?”
“I keep working until I do.”
Timon wondered if she’d put so much effort into learning the joys of lovemaking. It would be another new world for her to explore, and the man who guided her through that world...
Would not be him. Jamie had far more sense than he did. He had no business lusting after a woman under his band’s care, especially not one who might have some kind of obligation to another man.
Even an arrogant bastard like Cahill.
“Thank you,” she said, calling him back to himself.
“For what?” he asked, keeping Lazarus well away from her mount as they rode side by side.
“For what you did last night. For making sure I was all right.”
He looked straight ahead, ignoring the dust rising from the track ahead of them. “It’s my business,” he said.
“But I was afraid.”
“You can’t be brave without fear.”
“You speak as if you know what that feels like.”
The conversation was becoming too personal for Timon’s liking. He began to pull ahead.
“Don’t fall behind again,” he called over his shoulder.
If she answered, he didn’t hear. He kicked Lazarus into a gallop and shot forward along the column, past Parks and Cahill and up to the Rider who had taken the lead. Orpheus glanced at Timon, raised his eyebrows, and waited companionably for Timon to fall in beside him.
“Trouble with the humans?” he asked.
Timon schooled his features. “Nothing we can’t handle,” he said.
Orpheus tossed long blond hair out of his eyes. “It’s true that I’ve never seen you have any difficulties with women before.”
With a brief laugh, Timon scratched Lazarus between the ears. “If you’re referring to Parks’s goddaughter, you’ve lost your mind.”
“She is rather beautiful, if you like the quiet type,” he said. “Which, come to think of it, you usually don’t.”
Timon wanted nothing more but to set off on a hard ride well ahead of the column, just to clear his mind and feel the freedom of nothing but open space before him. “The problem with Ms. McCullough,” he said, “is that she’s inexperienced enough to be reckless with her own safety.”
“Ah.” Orpheus nodded as if he understood everything perfectly. “Well, we knew what we were getting into.”
“I’ve seen no sign that any of them guessed that the raiders were our own people in disguise,” Timon said.
“Why should they?” Orpheus glanced over his shoulder. “We needed a way of learning their secrets, and now they think they owe us their lives. They’ll be that much more cooperative.”
“It’ll have to be done very carefully,” Timon said, a bitter taste in his mouth.
“I’ve already spoken to most of the people in the delegation, and a few look promising. But if you have a rapport with the McCullough girl, you should exploit it. Especially if she is so inexperienced.”
Timon wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t like it,” he said. “Cassius never told us who hired us to spy on these people. That isn’t what we do, Orpheus.”
“I know.” Orpheus shrugged. “Our first mission is to get these humans safely to New Mexico. If the San Francisco delegation means some harm to the Conclave, it’s bound to become obvious over the next two months.”
“The fate of the Conclave isn’t our business.”
“We’re Riders. We don’t take sides. But we can’t pretend that a permanent peace won’t affect us.”
“If it happens, there’s no point in worrying about it.”
“And there’s the Timon I know. I was beginning to think you’d turned into Cassius.”
“He can have the leadership as long as we have our freedom.”
“But we still have our duty,” Orpheus said.
Timon wheeled Lazarus around. “We’ll make camp in two hours. I’ll send Bardas ahead to meet the three who are rejoining us.”
He rode back the way he’d come, Orpheus’s words echoing in his head. If you have a rapport with the girl, you should exploit it.
His duty. If he chose to exploit the intense attraction between him and Jamie, he would be turning her