Just After Midnight: Historical Romance Read online

  “I’ll remove mine if you remove yours,” she murmured.

  His treacherous body responded to the images that flickered through his treacherous mind at those words. As he straddled her waist, the weight of her breasts rested against his legs, warm and round, no doubt smooth and soft and white. He hadn’t had a woman since …

  He lifted the knife from her throat and rolled to his feet.

  She sat up, eyeing his long hair—still Phelan red, but now shot through with silver. “I see the hair of fire. But why do they call you White Ghost?”

  “Né-néevá’eve?” he demanded. Who are you?

  She didn’t answer. Why would she? How could she?

  The wind whispered, Kill her, and while the wind had been his only friend ever since he’d come here, this time he didn’t listen.

  The first men who’d crept close in the night had planned to capture him and put him on display—five cents to see the White Ghost. If he caused too much trouble, they would kill him and sell glimpses of his body until the smell got too bad.

  The wind had told him just what to do.

  The next group had been searching for the first; they had similar ideas. The wind’s answer had not changed.

  Next came the law—a sheriff, two marshals, a detective. A whisper warned that if they found him, he would have to go back. He was not going back.

  After that, the bounty hunters trickled in. None of them were smarter than the wind.

  So why did he now ignore those whispers that had been his only companion, his best counsel? Perhaps it was the way that she smelled.

  Nevertheless, she had to go. If not from this earth, at least from these hills.

  He clasped his knife tighter, lifted it higher, and gave her a menacing glare. She rolled her eyes, and he gaped. He’d dispatched all intruders, yet this woman—Yankee from the sound of her voice—not only pulled her own knife but mocked him with word and deed, invading his territory, alone, as if she had no fear of the White Ghost With Hair of Fire. Perhaps she was insane.

  Like him.

  She got to her feet; her head reached only to the middle of his chest. She was so tiny he stifled the ridiculous urge to ruffle her hair like a child.

  “My name is Rose Varner.” She offered her hand. He stared at it as if it were the mouth of a rattler open to strike.

  She reached forward; he stepped back. Exasperation puffed between dewy lips, and she snatched his hand, pumped it up and down. On her palm, she had calluses. He wondered why.

  “It’s polite, when someone offers her name, to offer yours in return.”

  Polite? He snorted. Where did she think she was? A drawing room in New York City?

  “I know that you understand me.”

  He was tempted to spin about and disappear into the rock formations. She’d never find him. Except she’d come this far; she’d hornswoggled him by pretending to sleep, and she didn’t seem the type to leave without getting what she wanted.

  Whatever the hell that was.

  “Shall we try again?” she asked, sounding like his mother when she’d been trying to teach him his sums.

  “I’m Rose Varner, and you are?”

  He opened his mouth, shut it again, glanced to the left then to the right. “Ná-néehove—”

  It was only when she said, “English” that he realized he’d spoken in Cheyenne. “And don’t give me any of that White Ghost nonsense. Tell me the name your mother gave you.”

  Her words, coming so soon on the heels of the first time he’d thought of his mother in years, made his eyes burn.

  His mother. What he wouldn’t give to hear her voice once more.

  “If you give me your name,” she wheedled, “I’ll tell you what I want.”

  He very nearly told her that he didn’t care what she wanted; he just wanted her to go. But he was curious, and as he hadn’t been for nearly as long as he’d been here, he indulged both himself and her.

  “Luke,” he said, then cleared a throat as dry as the Smoky Hills. “Luke Phelan.”

  Her smile dazzled like the stars above. He had definitely been too long without a woman.

  “Irish,” she said, her gaze brushing his hair. “T’ be sure.”

  He would have smiled himself, if he remembered how.

  “What I want from you, Luke Phelan, is for you to take my daughter back from the Cheyenne.”

  And suddenly …

  Luke couldn’t stop laughing.