His jaw hardened, his gaze narrowed. "You're just full of questions all of a sudden, aren't you, Miss Lennox?"
It was on the tip of Amanda's tongue to deny it, but she couldn't. It wasn't that she wanted answers so much as she wanted—needed, craved—the sound of his voice.
She craved the feel of his touch, too, though that was one depravation Amanda thought she'd better get used to. Jake had made it clear he wouldn't be touching her in the near future. Pity. She had a very unladylike urge to feel his hands on her again. And an even more unladylike urge to put her hands on him.
"I want to know, Jake," she said finally.
"Do you?" His gaze slid back to her, stabbing into hers. "Do you really? You'd better be damn sure, lady. Because I might not give the answer you want to hear."
Amanda hesitated, then nodded. "I'll take my chances. Where are you going after you buy our supplies?"
"To the first saloon I stumble into."
Well, that wasn't so bad, Amanda thought. In fact, it was a perfectly normal thing to do... for a man.
"To get a drink?" she asked, wondering why she hadn't thought of it before. Her father had often drank when he was angry. Brandy, if she recalled correctly. She almost laughed at the image that popped into her mind. Somehow, she couldn't see Jake sipping brandy from a cut-glass snifter. Whiskey was more his style. And she doubted he'd sip it so much as chug large, numbing quantities straight from the bottle.
"Yeah, a drink," Jake murmured, and nodded. His tone was low, edgy. "Among other things."
Amanda's heart fluttered. Her cheeks went pale, and her fingers tightened around the gun. "What other things?"
He trained his gaze on the mountainous horizon. Cruel words formed an acidic lump in his throat; there was no swallowing them back. Amanda's betrayal still festered inside him, demanding he lash out. The urge to hurt her the way she had hurt him had been brewing for three days too long already. It could no longer be suppressed. "What do you think, Miss Lennox? What, besides a good stiff drink, can a man buy in a saloon? Hmmm, I wonder...?"
Amanda didn't. While she may have spent years locked away in Miss Henry's Academy, she wasn't dead. Even proper young women were aware of what went on in the questionable establishments where men gathered to drink. She'd heard that the "saloons" out here in the untamed west were twice as bad as their more refined, Bostonian counterparts.
Men visited places like that to get drunk and drown their troubles, if only for a little while... and to buy the favors of a warm, willing woman. What Amanda didn't know—couldn't begin to understand—was why the idea that Jake would want to do both hurt her so deeply. She felt as though he'd just sliced her heart to ribbons.
It puzzled Jake that hurting this woman didn't feel better than it did. In fact, it felt incredibly lousy. He felt lousy. And cold. And cruel.
It didn't matter that he'd purposely struck out at her in the only manner he trusted himself to do it; with words. It didn't matter that, after hurting him so badly, it was only fair she be hurt in return. No, it should have, but none of that made a bit of difference. What did matter—and mattered far too much—was the deep, physical ache that twisted in his gut when he saw the disillusionment and pain swimming in her huge green eyes.
Dammit! He'd said those words to hurt her, to prove beyond a doubt that Amanda Lennox had no hold over him. He realized now that it might be a good idea if he carried through on the threat. Maybe another woman, bought and paid to please, was just what he needed to wipe all traces of this one out of his mind.
It was a long shot. If he were a gambler, he wouldn't have bet heavily on it... because there was a good chance it wasn't going to work. But, hell, he could at least give it a damn good try. He was desperate enough to do anything, anything at all, if it meant getting Amanda out of his mind, out of his blood, out of his... Goddammit, out of his heart, a place she had no right to be. A place he had no right to let her be.
"There's a hotel a quarter mile up the road," he said suddenly, harshly. "It's run by a woman named Mulligrew. Think you can find it on your own?"
Amanda stiffened. Was he that anxious to get to his saloon, she wondered with a sudden surge of temper. Her mood was reflected in her tone. "I'm not a complete incompetent, Mr. Chandler. I think I can find the place myself." She paused. "I take it you won't be coming with me?"
He shook his head. "We'll ride out at dawn. Make sure you're ready, because if you aren't, I'll leave without you."
Amanda remembered Jake's reluctance to go to the cabin, and her original assumption on why he wouldn't go there with her. The suspicion that had gnawed at her then returned in force.
Would he sleep in his bed alone?
"Very well," she said, her voice cracking only slightly. No tears clouded her eyes. Amanda knew, because she had the devil's own time blinking them back.
She was in the process of flicking the reins—she had to get away from him; she would rather die than let Jake see her cry—when his fingers snaked out, looping around her wrist. His grip was light but insistent, his fingers warm, thick, and calloused.
A bolt of sensation shot from where their flesh touched all the way up her arm, and a wave of desire poured through her. Like a hot steel band, passion, longing, and... something else, something stronger... banded around her heart, squeezing so tightly she could barely breathe.
"Amanda," Jake said, leaning toward her. For once, the sharp edge of anger had been ironed from his voice. She hardly noticed. What she did notice was that this was the first time in three days he'd called her Amanda... and that she enjoyed the sound of her name on his tongue immensely. "You do know how to use that thing?"
"What thing?" she asked vaguely, and looked at him. His gaze was lowered, hooded by thick, sooty lashes. The copper skin stretched over his cheeks had an unusual, ruddy undertone.
Amanda didn't have to see his eyes to know what he was looking at. He was staring at the pistol now resting atop her lap. No, she corrected as a warm tingle washed over her, he was staring at her lap, not the gun, and not the trembling fingers fisted around it. His gaze was hot and intent.
"The gun," he elaborated. "Do you know how to use it, or was that another lie?"