Only 03 - Only You

trembled, and she wanted to scream.
    “Why do men want only one thing from a woman?” she asked angrily.
    “Honesty?” Reno retorted. “Damned if I know. I don’t think it’s in a woman to be honest.”
    “And I don’t think it’s in a man not to take what he wants and then walk away without a thought to what he’s done!”
    “What did you have in mind—marriage?”
    Reno’s sardonic question was like a whip.
    Eve opened her mouth, but no words came out. Pain rippled through her as she realized Reno was right. She wanted a man to love her enough to build a life with her. But she was too smart to speak about love with the gunfighter whose nakedly aroused body gleamed in the moonlight.
    “I want a man to care for me,” Eve said finally.
    “That’s what I thought,” Reno said. “Your comfort and to hell with his.”
    “That’s not what I meant!”
    “Horseshit.”
    “I was talking about being loved,” she said passionately, “not about being kept like a princess on a satin cushion!”
    Hastily Eve backed up as Reno stood and began fastening his pants with angry, abrupt motions. He cursed steadily, disgusted with himself and with the saloon girl who could make him ache like no other woman ever had.
    “No matter how hard you get me,” Reno said in a savage voice, “you won’t make me beg for the cold chains of marriage.”
    Reno reached down, swept up his six-gun, and spun its cylinder to check the load. His words were like the gun itself, cold, hard, unrelenting.
    “Women sell themselves into marriage the same way whores sell their bodies for an hour at a time,” Reno said. “Women never just give themselves out of love to a man who has promised them nothing in return but his own love.”
    “Is that how it was with Willow and Caleb?” Eve challenged.
    Reno’s mouth shifted into a cold smile. “They’re the exception that proves Reno’s Golden Rule.”
    He holstered the gun with a single smooth motionand looked at her. The bleak expression on his face made her shiver.
    “What rule?” Eve asked, knowing as she spoke that she wouldn’t like the answer.
    She was right.
    “You can’t count on women,” Reno said, “but you can count on gold.”

11
    B EFORE dawn was more than a vague promise along the eastern horizon, Reno and Eve were on the trail. All morning he divided his attention between the landscape and the journals. He hadn’t spoken two words to Eve since he had told her about his own version of the Golden Rule.
    By noon, Eve was becoming tired of her one-sided conversations with the lineback dun. The two Shaggies weren’t any better. In fact, they were worse. They wouldn’t so much as flick an ear in her direction when she spoke to them.
    “Part mule, just like he is,” Eve said clearly.
    If Reno heard—and she was sure he had—he didn’t even bother to look in her direction. He just kept opening first one journal, then the other, bracing the books on his thigh while he tried to find something.
    “Can I help?” Eve asked finally.
    Reno shook his head without looking up.
    Another mile went by with no change except thatReno stopped long enough to get out his spyglass and take a good look at the land ahead and behind. Then he collapsed the glass and urged Darlin’ forward.
    In the days past, the silence of the trail hadn’t bothered Eve at all. In fact, she had found it peaceful. It gave her as much time as she wanted to look at the colorful, ever-changing rock formations and imagine how they had come to be as they were.
    This morning was different. Reno’s silence goaded Eve in a way she didn’t understand.
    “Are we lost?” Eve asked finally.
    Reno didn’t answer.
    “Now who’s sulking?” she muttered.
    “Dry up, saloon girl. I’m just looking for a way around that.”
    Eve looked beyond Reno’s finger and saw nothing but another dry watercourse winding down to another notch in the land, one more step in what she privately called God’s Staircase down to the bottom of the stone maze of canyons.
    “We’ve gone through worse,” she said.
    “The back of my neck itches.”
    “Maybe I didn’t get off all the soap.”
    Reno turned and looked at her with glittering green eyes. “Are you offering to try again?”
    “Your throat in one hand and a razor in the other?” Eve asked sweetly. “Don’t tempt me, gunfighter.”
    Reno looked at the girl who last night had been a summer storm, wild and sultry. Just the memory of it made his blood run