Free River Song by Sharon Ihle

Cole at the edge near a stand of Palo Verde trees. He was piling stones on the outlaw's grave.
    After dragging her fingers through sleep-tangled hair, she approached him. "Why didn't you wake me? I should have helped you bury the viper."
    Wiping the perspiration from his brow with his sleeve, Cole turned to face her. She was even more beautiful this morning than she'd been in the moonlight, her sleep-drugged eyes languid and seductively stunning. Wheeling around, Cole resumed piling rocks on the fresh mound of earth before he trusted himself to answer her.
    "I thought you'd seen enough of his ugly face. You needed the rest."
    Again she sensed a coolness in his attitude. Puzzled, Sunny circled the grave and began piling rocks across from him.
    "You said we would talk this morning." She heaved a large stone onto the center of the grave, then brought her hands to her hips. "If you will spare me the blarney, I would like to know what I did to raise your ire so."
    With a heavy sigh, Cole reached into his shirt pocket for his tobacco pouch. As he loosened the drawstring, he wondered how he could explain his feelings without hurting hers, skip over the "blarney" as she'd put it and ... blarney ? Cole's upper lip curled in amusement as he thought of the Irish phrases scattered throughout her speech, not to mention the string of curses she'd spat at him during their struggle the night before.
    Striking a match to his cigarette, he cocked a suspicious blond brow. "I'll be happy to dispense with the blarney if you will."
    Sunny lifted her chin. "I will not be handing you any."
    "Good." He took a deep drag and blew a long stream of smoke down to the outlaw's grave. "How does a young woman of Pima extraction happen to be so full of Irish expressions?"
    "Oh," she laughed lightly, "that."
    Stalling, Sunny began to carve a series of circular figures in the sand with the toe of her boot. Should she tell him everything? Could he really be trusted with the truth? Before the outlaw had come upon them, her suspicions about Cole had nearly vanished, and now that their moments of terror were behind them, the last little nagging doubts seemed to be dissolving as well. Maybe if she told him everything, he might even be able to help her. Maybe if she—But an impatient Cole sliced into her thoughts.
    "All right. If you don't want to explain that, perhaps you'd like to shed some light on your midnight attack on me." He rubbed his aching shoulder where the knife had pierced his skin. "You know, when I woke up and saw you at the business end of my gun, I actually thought you were trying to kill me."
    "I was," she admitted, remembering the struggle and how close she'd come to slitting his throat.
    "You were?" Stunned, Cole lifted his brows. "Why? All I did was try to help you. Why would you want to kill me for that?"
    Suddenly remorseful, Sunny lowered her lashes. "I thought you were someone else. I was following a trail from Yuma."
    "You followed me all the way from Yuma? Why?"
    Sunny's heart constricted at this. Had she been wrong about his innocence, made another mistake? Until now, she'd only guessed he'd been in her homeland. Still able to hope that he could not have been involved in her mother's murder, she became the interrogator.
    "I followed two riders from Yuma. Men whose horses bore the same prints as yours."
    Cole shrugged. "I rode out alone. As for the prints, I suppose other ranches have horseshoes made in about the same way." He took a deep drag on his cigarette and tried to make sense out of all she'd told him. "Why were you on my trail?"
    "I told you. I am looking for two men. One of them has a nasty wound on his right leg. When I came into your camp, I saw you were limping."
    With a short laugh, Cole said, "You'd limp too if you were stupid enough to sit on a Gila monster. Damn thing chewed through my jeans and started working on my leg before I could get his teeth pried apart with my gun barrel."
    "You have been bitten by a Gila