Christmas for Ransom (3 page)

Deep down she grinned. Even thinking the word “hell” had her doomed to perdition in Granny’s eyes, and she’d just done it twice. Her heart twisted in confusion. She loathed Granny while loving the old woman with her whole heart. She longed for her life of freedom in Pleasure Stakes yet longed for justice for the Stony Brook at the same time, longed to be there to see it done.

Ah. Too much to think on as she trudged to the livery. Big Ben Chavez had yet to lock up for the night, eager as his pocketbook was for any and all latecomers. In truth, his eyes lit up like a Christmas candle in anticipation of the tip she was bound to leave him.

“Here to see ’Walker?” the blacksmith asked as she found the stall. “My boy Benjie got him rode today in your behalf.”

“Thanks to both of you.” Eliza handed the blacksmith two bits for his son, hoping he didn’t think her neglectful of her fine mount. “I just can’t believe how busy the schoolroom keeps me these days.”

“You need help with your pageant tomorrow night?” Ben asked kindly, and she knew he meant it.

She shook her head, and the hood of her burnoose fell to her back. “Thanks, but no. All set. Beth Ellison’s decided to loan us her newborn for the nativity display.”

“But isn’t it a
niña
? A girl?”

“Yes indeed. But in swaddling clothes, who can tell?” They both laughed. “Colonel Sam Bastion of the railroad construction crew has constructed a most sturdy manger. He has assured us both of its safety. Ben?” Eliza reckoned this the right time for a parent consultation.

“
Si
, Miz Eliza?” His big gnarled hand tightened over a hammer.

“I’d really like it if Benjie returned to school. He has a fine brain.”

The blacksmith sighed. “He’s no longer a small boy,
senorita
. He makes good money with Colonel Bastion.”

Eliza’s spirits fell. The age of thirteen years wasn’t the time to make a grown-up decision. Children needed guidance, and Ben was a sensible man. She wanted to make the push for the boy’s education, but from the shadows emerged someone so tall, so broad, so silent she wondered if she’d entered a dream. Pinching herself, she lost interest in everything except seeing what the stranger looked like in the lantern light. Brawny stalwart men were nothing new in a railroad town or on the ranch, but she never minded a good view.

Her breath caught so hard her sore rib tweaked. He was magnificent. The big-brimmed hat and flowing duster reckoned him a wrangler of some sort coming in from the range. Although he needed a bath and truly looked the worse for wear, she didn’t mind one single bit. The scruffy cheeks, the long rag-taggle coat, even the scent of masculine sweat were far more her style than the slick-haired dandies and overdressed fops she’d met at Boston cotillions.

“This here’s Ransom,” Ben said helpfully.

As he moved closer, the stranger removed his hat and tucked it under his arm with a polite half-nod. For a long luscious moment, eyes the color of manly liquor covered her with a mouth-watering gaze. Golden-brown hair touched the mountains of his shoulders like sunlight at dawn across the Guadalupe Mountains.

Air left her lungs. A slow burn started at the top of her spine, simmering at her breasts and pounding with fire at her womanly notch. Her nipples ached for his firm lips, her flesh desperate for the days’ worth of roughness adorning cheekbones carved like crags and valleys. She had to hold her hand still to keep her fingers from caressing the deep etches of his face.

Eliza couldn’t move as she stared up at him, aching and eager. Oh, she was no stranger to fine-looking cowpokes and no simpering virgin to boot. Twice, to spite Granny, she’d lain with a hearty, handsome ’hand from Desolation but found the first time dreadful. So dreadful truth to tell, she’d been persuaded to try again a month later after she hadn’t turned up with child. Again, not so good. So what had brought on this urgent longing for a man she didn’t know?

Not knowing what else to do, she held out her hand, organizing her trembling lips. “How do you do, Mr. Ransom.”

“No mister, ma’am. Ransom’ll do.”

“Here’s Miz Eliza,” Ben said. “Our schoolmarm.”

Eliza silently thanked Ben for letting Ransom know she was unattached. Married women didn’t teach school.

Slowly he removed his gloves and pocketed them, his gaze never leaving her face. In spite of the cold, heat rushed down from her head to weaken her knees. When their fingers met, her toes exploded. “Where are you from, Ransom?” she managed.

“Sweetcream,” he said without hesitation, his voice low, mysterious, barely hearable. She liked it.

“Why, I’ve got kin there. Luetta Lodge.”

He stiffened at her words, from the cold most likely, and put his hat back on. “Good night now, Miz Eliza.”

The way he said her name, slow, low…why, she’d not be able to sleep well tonight.

If at all.

Some of it might be jitters due to the pageant, but more was the skittering up and down her spine brought on by his gaze wafting over her like a velvet hand. Her breasts tingled as she imagined his fingers caressing them.

He tipped his hat. From the outdoors look of him, he was likely a wrangler or a drover. Maybe a bounty hunter. No. The strong chin bespoke the law. She reckoned him a Marshal or a Ranger. Someday soon she’d know for sure.

“‘Night, Ransom.”

****

Outside, Ransom kicked a hitching post, full of too many sensations to feel any single one. Just hearing her say his name almost brought him to his knees. The woman from the boardinghouse steps whom he’d wanted to meet, bowing and kissing her hand, had instead beheld him before her looking and smelling just like what he was, a rank filthy outlaw.

Up close, he’d just about drowned in her blueberry eyes. Damned if she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and the schoolteacher to boot. His heart still pittered in his chest, cock twitching down below. Then his blood pounded, and it had nothing to do with desire. Or his learnin’.

Sweetcream? She had kin there? Was he itching to get his neck stretched? Hell and damnation both.

Heck and tarnation. Lust fled as Canyon Jack Ransom left the stables. If he was becoming respectable, he needed to watch his mouth and his brain before letting cusses fly like snowflakes on the wind. Learn new vocabulary to impress the ’marm he intended to hire to tutor him, and improve up his manners to charm her. Truth to tell, she’d just now seen him at his worst.

As he hustled to the trading post for new duds, he damned himself again. Well, darned. Sweatcream? It had been easy on a moment’s notice to call up the sound of a town he’d admired while traversing along its outskirts before Thanksgiving, but Ahab had taught him better than that. You needed a plan in your head well before nosy folks got to you. Incognito meant you never got recognized anyplace, anywhere, in any way. Left no hints that could trip you up. Ransom should have recalled these Lone Star folk knew everybody for five hundred miles or more in every which way.

He needed to find some other fake place to be from, and fast, a whole new story to tell if he intended to stick around Pleasure Stakes. And after devouring Eliza with his eyes back there, he intended to do just that whether she took him on as pupil or not. His real name, he didn’t mind using now. Every wanted poster he’d seen for years simply said Canyon and after he’d shaved off his bushy moustache last month, the likenesses bore no similarity to him.

But his christened name only reminded him of his gram-maw and the pickle he’d gotten himself into because of her. His heart smacked hard in his rib-box with grief this time. He’d not only let her down, but he missed her.

Heck and tarnation. Cold wind crawled up his sleeves. A gold eagle flashing in his palm, he dashed into the trading post just as the proprietor hung up the closed sign.

“‘Course Miss Letha May’s got room at the boardinghouse,” the old man said when Ransom inquired.

“How do you know?”

“I’m sweet on her.”

Sweet on her. For some tomfool reason, Ransom liked the silly words.

“She sweet on you back?” he asked.

“Yep. Tells me everything.”

So he’d know about Eliza, if she was attached. Ransom ached to ask but held his tongue, remembering the warning he’d just given himself. Tonight, he’d keep his flask empty and his brain clear. He’d concoct a sensible background for himself inside the boundaries of a decent boardinghouse.

He laughed out loud.

He’d been itching for a harlot and a bordello for weeks and weeks and now found himself hankering after a schoolmarm in a boardinghouse built for regular folks.

Chapter Three

Dawn blasted his eyes through the flimsy curtains, but Ransom had no wish to leave the confines of a warm soft bed strewn with big pillows instead of tumbleweeds. Miss Letha May had indeed had room for him at her inn. For the first time in six weeks, he hadn’t shivered until daybreak even though he was naked between the sheets.

Only thing missing was the warm soft body of a woman, and that need brought instantly to mind Eliza of the schoolhouse. He wondered if his wiles could ever get her to bed without a ring on her finger. He doubted it and blasted himself with shame for entertaining such demeaning thoughts. First off, Eliza was his neighbor. Miss Letha May had told him so herself, also that she was unattached. Second, his first impression of her had been that of the Madonna. No need to send himself deeper into hell.

He recalled his vow to behave, to be respectable and leapt out of bed. He dressed and grumbled at the stiff new duds he’d bought last night. Family style breakfast meant he’d likely meet up with Eliza downstairs eating with the rest of the lodgers. Likely they could share a cup of Arbuckle’s even if she had some namby-pamby female appetite and refused downright wholesome food in favor of her figure.

Ah, that figure. He needed to check it out without a burnoose hiding it. In his dreams, her body was perfection itself.

He scrambled downstairs, and there she sat, back to him at the dining table. His heart hammered like he ran on foot from the law. Last night her hair had been scraped into a knot at her neck, but this morning the shining brown waves spread across her back. His fingers itched to wind up the tresses and something else stirred, not just deep down in his crotch. Something else just as deep in his brain. Some recollection from some other time and place befuddled him.

“Miz Eliza?” he said politely, thanking the Lord even in his unreligious ways for the empty chair on her left. “Might I join you this fine morning?”

The voice he heard coming forward from his speaking chords almost startled him, so unfamiliar was its hoarseness. But he hadn’t gone sick. No fever, nothing stuffed up, no coughing, no aches or pains other than his consarned wrist. Her eyelids fluttered as if she liked the sound, and the scent of spring flowers overran the bacon, making his mouth water.

“Of course, Ransom.” Eliza smiled at him, so beautiful he choked down a gasp.

For a flash, a memory of something else warred with his nose, but he couldn’t waste time filling his senses with anything but her splendor. It might be an everyday brown calico, but in his eyes, it might well have been a ball gown.

“I hope you slept well,” she said as he scraped the chair legs across the floor as he sat down.

Didn’t seem quite proper, a lady speaking of the bedroom, but her eyes were bright and guileless.

“That I did,” he said at the same time she raised a prim little teacup to her lips, all china and purple pansies. He stiffened and realized she noticed. Heck and tarnation, Gram-maw used to drink from something like that. Only had two cups left from a tea set her pa gave her at her wedding.

Guilt and affection both swamped his shoulders.

“Are you all right?” Eliza asked as she passed him a platter of fried potatoes.

“Yep.” He might as well tell the truth much as he dared and fudge the rest. Keep him less likely to trip up later on. “My gram-maw had a cup like that. Brought me a cozy memory just now. She’s been gone a long while.”

Something cracked in his croaky voice, and he reckoned it had touched her heart.

“I’m so sorry.” Eliza said, plump lips dipping sadly in a way that made him desperate to kiss them. “She meant a great deal to you, I think.”

“She raised me up.” He dumped a big spoonful on his plate. “Folks passed before I could remember a single whit about them.”

“In Sweetcream?”

He nodded. “Sweetcream. Mississippi, that is. Near Eel Creek.” All he had to do was say Eel instead of Fish. All the other details could stay the same. Mississippi and Missouri started the same way on his tongue. He’d have a chance to fix up any slips with a cough or throat-clear.

“Ah. You have other kinfolk there?” Her eyelids lowered as if her breakfast was the most interesting thing in the world, and he reckoned she was really asking if he had a wife.

“Nope. All alone.”

She looked at him straight on. “We have things in common, then. I lost my parents long ago, too. And my granny raised me.” Then she let out a sorry little chuckle. “She means a great deal to me, of course, but we don’t get on very well. She wanted me to wed up by now with a rich dandy in the East.”

Hearing words like her wedding up with some rich dandy riled him somehow.

“Excuse me.” Eliza reached across him for the sugar bowl, and that mystery scent niggled in his nose again. For a flash, he hoped he smelled sweeter now than he had last night when they met.

An old cuss across the table yelped, “How’s that pageant of yourn coming along, Miz Eliza?”

“Very well, Amos. Thanks. It’s tonight. I hope you’ll make it.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Need any help setting up? Colonel Bastion’d likely let me…”

“I’ll be giving Miz Eliza any help she needs,” Ransom said so quick his brain hadn’t even thought the words first. He tossed a glare around the table in a dare.

“Why, thank you, Amos, for your offer.” Eliza’s smile grabbed the breath from his gut. “But Ransom here. He’s all I need.”