«One left.»

As Jessica straightened and turned toward the remaining trunk, she was hauled up short by a yank on her braid. She glanced over her shoulder. The last third of her hair vanished into the locked trunk. She wrapped her hands around the braid and pulled. Nothing happened. She pulled harder. The hair remained firmly caught. She yanked and then yanked again, but stayed tethered to the trunk.

«Blast and blazes! I’ll have to unlock the confounded thing and do it all over again.»

Then Jessica discovered she couldn’t reach the key ring she had left on the bedside table. Nor could she drag the trunk closer. Pushing seemed to have a better effect. Shoving, panting, Jessica alternated between shoulder and hands as she inched the stubborn trunk closer to the bedside table. One of the trunk’s brassbound corners caught on an irregularity in the wood floor. No matter how she pushed, the trunk didn’t move.

The thought of Wolfe coming in the room and finding her prisoner to one of her own surly trunks gave Jessica a desperate surge of strength. She shoved repeatedly against the top edge of the trunk, trying to jostle it free.

Without warning, the heavy trunk tipped up and rolled over, taking Jessica with it, yanking her off her feet. She gave a startled shriek as she went head over heels and landed on the floor in a tangle of soft blue cloth.

An instant later the door to the suite banged open. Wolfe stood in the doorway looking as dangerous as the long knife in his hand. The steel blade was a stark contrast to his well-cut, dark wool suit and white linen shirt.

«Jessi? Where are you?»

She grimaced but knew there was no escape. «Over here.»

Wolfe stepped into the suite. He glanced in the direction of her voice, saw an upside-down trunk and a tangle of blue cloth, creamy lingerie, and dainty blue shoes. In three long strides he was next to her.

«Are you all right?»

«Just ducky,» she said through her teeth.

«What are you doing on the floor?»

«Packing.»

Wolfe raised black eyebrows. «It’s easier if the trunk is right side up.»

«Bloody hell.»

Wolfe’s eyes followed Jessica’s long red braid to the point where it disappeared into the trunk. He started to say something, but was laughing too hard to speak.

Normally, the sound of his laughter made Jessica smile, but not this time. This time flags of anger and humiliation burned on her cheeks.

«Lord, if you could only see yourself, like a turtle in a net…» Laughter took Wolfe’s voice again.

Jessica lay on the floor and thought longingly of the case and the weapons inside. Unfortunately, they were as out of reach as the key to the padlock.

Snickering, Wolfe sheathed his knife before he reached for Jessica. He took her braid and pulled gently, then with more force. It made no difference. She was well and truly caught.

«The key,» she said distinctly, «is on the bedside table.»

«Don’t go away, elf. I’ll be right back.»

The thought of Jessica going anywhere on her short tether set off another spate of laughter in Wolfe. It seemed like a long time until he sat on his heels next to her and started fitting keys in the lock to find the right one. The fact that he kept laughing at unexpected intervals slowed down the process of freeing her quite a bit.

The third time Wolfe leaned against the trunk, all but helpless with laughter, Jessica snatched the keys from his fingers and opened the padlock herself. She still wasn’t free. She couldn’t open the trunk while it was upside-down. Nor could she right it. She could, however, push her laughing husband over.

And she did.

Still laughing, Wolfe caught himself with feline ease and came to his feet by the trunk. He righted the trunk, pried open the lid, and pulled out the length of red hair.

«Yours, I believe,» he murmured, handing Jessica the braid.

She grabbed it with fingers that shook, wishing the braid was Wolfe’s throat. The look in his eyes told her that he knew just what she was thinking.

«You’re welcome,» he said gravely.

Not trusting herself, Jessica turned and slammed the trunk lid down, locked it once more, and went to the sixth trunk. When she opened it, she saw that it was packed right to the top with curling irons, clothes brushes, flatirons, tissue paper, linens, toiletries…

«Oh, no,» Jessica breathed.

Wolfe took a breath that kept dissolving into laughter. «Problems?»

«I’m missing a trunk.»

He counted the trunks with a lazy, raking glance. Six. «They’re all here.»

«They can’t be.»

«Why?»

«I haven’t packed my riding clothes and all the trunks are full.»

Wolfe shook his head. «Somehow I’m not surprised. Hand me some of that tissue paper.»

«Why?»

«I’ll help you pack.»

«What does tissue paper have to do with packing?» she asked.

Wolfe shot a sideways glance at Jessica. «Tissue paper keeps out the wrinkles.»

«Wrinkles?»

«The things you take out of clothes with a flatiron.»

She blinked. «You do?»

«No.Youdo. Ironing is a wife’s duty. So is washing, drying, and folding the clothes.»

«What is the husband doing all the while the wife is at work?»

«Getting things dirty again.»

«A truly taxing duty,» she said sardonically.

Wolfe’s smile faded. «Any time you want to go back to being Lady JessicaCharteris, complete with maids and footmen to do your bidding, let me know.»

«Do hold your breath waiting, my lord. It will make the time so much more pleasant — for both of us!»

2

Jessica moved sleepily and burrowed closer to the warmth that held the cold dawn at bay.

«For God’s sake,» Wolfe muttered.

The weight of her against his usual morning arousal was altogether too hot. When small hands slid beneath his coat to reach the warmth of his body, his heartbeat speeded. Without waking, she tucked her face against his neck and sighed.

Wolfe closed his eyes, but it didn’t help. Nothing could shut out the memory of Jessica’s creamy, pink-tipped breasts rising from the ruins of her peignoir. Before that moment, he had never permitted himself to think of his redheaded elf as anything but a child.

Now Wolfe could think of little else but the womanly shape of her breasts.

He had suffered the torments of the damned every time Jessica dozed off on the endless stage ride. Invariably, the stage’s erratic motions would threaten to send her to the floor. Invariably, he caught her, supported her, then finally cradled her across his lap while she slept, her breath tangling softly with his. Invariably, he found himself wanting her with an urgency that infuriated him, for he knew she didn’t want him in return.

And even if she had, he would not take her. She was the wrong wife for him. No amount of desire could change that.

Yet the warmth of Jessica’s breath against Wolfe’s mouth as he turned his face to her went to his head like wine. The softness of her breasts begged for his hands to cup and caress them. The sweet weight of her hips against his aroused flesh was a torment he both savored and prayed would end soon.

Jessica murmured and nuzzled against Wolfe sleepily, knowing only that he was warmth and the world was cold. The brush of her lips against his skin sent a painful shaft of need through his body.

«Wake up, damn it,» Wolfe said beneath his breath. «I’m not a feather bed for your ladyship’s convenience.»

When Jessica made a protesting sound and clung more tightly, Wolfe’s arms pulled her closer despite his better judgment. He searched her face, telling himself it was the gray dawn rather than exhaustion that had drained the radiance from Jessica’s skin and put shadows under her eyes.

But he knew it wasn’t simply a trick of the light. Stage travel was hard on grown men. For a young woman who was used tocossetting, travel by stage was an endurance contest she couldn’t hope to win.

Damn it, Jessi. Why won’t you give up and go back where you belong?

Yet even as Wolfe formed the thought, he was smoothing back Jessica’s hair from her face with a gentleness he was helpless to combat. She looked like fine porcelain, defenseless against a world more harshly made than she was.

With no warning, Jessica’s eyes opened and looked full into Wolfe’s. Even the dawn couldn’t conceal her shock at finding herself held so intimately.

«W-Wolfe?»

With more speed than gentleness, Wolfe set Jessica on the bench seat opposite him, yanked his hat down over his eyes, and ignored her. Shortly, he was asleep.

Dazed by her own fitful sleep, stunned by awakening in Wolfe’s arms when she had fallen asleep slumped in a hard, drafty corner of the seat, Jessica simply stared at her husband and tried to remember where she was, and why. Finally she opened the side curtain in an effort to orient herself.

Dawn was simply another, lesser shade of darkness spreading across the sky. In all directions, the land was flat, bleak, and featureless but for the icy ruts that marked the stage road. No smoke lifted into the sky, announcing man’s presence. No fences marked off pastures. No roads led to distant houses or farms.

At first, the lack of trees and habitation fascinated Jessica, but after a time the unbroken monotony of the landscape numbed her as much as the cold wind pouring through gaps in the side curtains.

Jessica braced herself against the uncomfortable seat and fought to stay upright. Since they’d left St. Joseph, time had been a blur to her. She couldn’t remember whether she had been traveling three days or five or fifty-five. Hours and days ran together without anything to separate them, for Wolfe had insisted that they travel constantly, sleeping upright, getting down from the stage only to use the privy when the horses were changed at one of the miserable stations that dotted the long route west.

Other passengers came and went at various stops, and ate or slept in the low, rudely built stage stations. Jessica and Wolfe did not. He brought her food to her and they ate inside the stage, where they also slept. At least the past night had been spent in privacy, for no other passengers had chosen to endure frigid hours on the stage. But the result of the relentless travel was to make Jessica feel as though she had been born into the jostling, jouncing, pounding stagecoach box and would die in the same place.

She hoped it would be soon.

Wearily, Jessica stretched and rubbed her aching neck. With cold hands, she took down her hair and attempted to brush and braid it into submission. Wolfe’s stinging comments about girls who were too useless to comb their own hair had rankled deeply, as did the memory of his laughter when he had found her long braid trapped in the trunk.

By the time Jessica had managed to make two uneven braids and pin them in a coil on her head, the stagecoach began slowing. With a flurry of shouts and curses, the driver pulled the horses to a halt alongside a crude sod building that appeared, at best, uninviting. Despite that, Jessica looked forward to the stop as a break in the punishing ride.

Wolfe woke and stretched. His long, powerful arms and wide shoulders seemed to fill the interior of the stage. The necessity of completing the journey to Denver without spending a night in any of the station houses had eaten into even Wolfe’s endurance. At least Jessica assumed it had. It certainly had shortened his temper to a hair’s breadth.

Yet Wolfe showed no sign of discomfort. He climbed down from the stage with the muscular grace that was as much a part of him as his high cheekbones and blue-black eyes. Jessica both admired and resented the resilience of her husband’s body. She felt like a carpet after a spring beating.

Nonetheless, Jessica smiled cheerfully at Wolfe when he glanced her way, for she was determined not to lose her temper with him again. No man wanted to live with a shrew, and to be fair, Wolfe hadn’t even had the chance to choose his wife. It was up to Jessica to be unfailingly sweet, gentle, and pleasant to be around. Then Wolfe would be less irritable, less difficult, and more like the wonderful companion of Jessica’s memories.

When Wolfe turned and held out his hand for Jessica, she leaned on his strength in a distinctly unladylike manner as she descended stiffly.

«A lovely morning, is it not?» Jessica asked, smiling into the teeth of a cold wind.

Wolfe grunted.