Liz Ireland (19 page)

“No,” she lied, telling herself to have a little backbone.

“I told your daughter that I came all the way back to Annsboro just to dance with her, and now is the perfect opportunity.”

Her father beamed with pleasure. “So that’s it!” he exclaimed, turning a scolding voice on her. “You
have
been cultivating a little romance for yourself here in town.”

“I have not!” Cecilia cried, horrified.

Pendergast winked at her. “Everyone’s bound to find out sometime, sweetheart.”

The blood drained from her face. Why was he saying these things in front of her father? She’d never hear the end of it!

Of course, maybe that’s precisely why he was saying these things in front of her father....

“You’re sick,” she told him, “you can’t dance.”

He extended his hand for her to take, his eyes glistening challengingly. “Try me.”

When Cecilia hesitated, Silas moved forward to join their hands together. “By all means, you young people go dance your hearts out.”

“But—”

It was too late. Tugged toward the dance floor—dance dirt was a more apt description—by Pendergast, and pushed in the same direction by her father, Cecilia felt helpless against the forceful tide pulling her into the arms of this dark stranger.

“B
uttering up my father will get you nowhere,” Cecilia said icily as she attempted to shuffle her feet to the tune being played. One firm hand held her waist, pulling her close to him. Too close. All this time she had been trying to avoid him, and now she was in his arms, with the approving gazes of her father and the whole town pinned on her.

Pendergast, his eyes almost a glistening black in the weak light, smiled down lazily at her. “But maybe it will convince you I’m not a complete villain.”

She laughed bitingly. “Heavens, no. To everyone here you’re practically a living legend.”

“To everyone except you?”

“Except me,” she agreed.

“What am I to you?”

“A headache.”

“Maybe if you got to know me a little better, you’d change your opinion.”

“Isn’t bamboozling an entire town enough for you?” she asked impatiently. “Do you have to make a fool of me, too?”

“You’re the one I care most about.”

She sent him a cynical look. “Care most about getting out of your hair, you mean.”

“I certainly couldn’t get you out of my mind.”

The way he was looking at her made her suspect that maybe he was telling the truth. Her heartbeat sped at a pace that was out of sync with the gentle refrain of the song. Did he really care for her, even after all she had done to sabotage him?

“And from what I’ve heard, you were having a hard time forgetting about me while I was gone.”

That Dolly! “Of course I was—nobody would talk about anything else!”

He laughed lightly, and leaned closer to whisper, “Dolly insists you were pining.”

She noted that his grip firmed so they were locked into a closer stance. “Pining!” she said, thinking for the first time that that was exactly the word for how she had felt. But it wouldn’t do to let him know that. “In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t darkened your door much lately.”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“That’s right.”

“Because you’re afraid you care for me.”

“That’s ridiculous.” She attempted to push away from the solid wall of his chest.

He held her tight, and a smile played across his lips. “Then why do you blush like crazy every time we look at each other across Dolly’s table?”

“Who says I do?” Cecilia snapped.

“You’re blushing now.”

Lord help her, she was. This man had her all turned around. She knew he wasn’t who he said he was, but the mystery of his identity just served to attract her to him all the more. She had tried to get rid of him, but that always backfired. Attempting not to think about him this past week had also failed. The only thing she’d been successful at was not letting herself be caught alone with the man—yet here she was, dancing way too close to him, in full view of everybody. And loving it....

Mostly. Suspicion was a hard thing to part with. “You accused me once before of falling in love with you.”

“And you see, I was right.”

She grunted in frustration as he twirled her in a tight little circle. “For a man who was at death’s door just last week, you certainly are light on your feet.”

“Thank you.” He sent her a mock bow. “I owe my resiliency to you.”

“To me?”

“Looking forward to this dance was the reason behind my speedy recovery.”

“Lucky that masked man didn’t shoot you in the foot.”

“I would have found a way.”

“Are you so determined to win me over?”

He bent closer. “Are you so determined to resist?”

“I...I—” Was she? Their faces were inches apart; with only the slightest of movements he could have captured her lips in a kiss. She half expected him to, but instead of trying again to push away, she waited expectantly, watching what he would do.

It felt as though time was suspended. If her feet were moving at all, she wasn’t aware of it, and if the fiddle and mouth harp were playing, she didn’t hear them. She couldn’t tell whether every citizen in Annsboro was at this moment observing Pendergast seducing her right there in front of the schoolhouse, and witnessing that she didn’t seem to mind his forwardness one tiny bit....

“I have an announcement to make!”

The loud voice of her father broke through the sensual fog in Cecilia’s brain, and she turned her head to where he stood, not ten feet away. She attempted to pull away from Pendergast’s grip, but he held her fast.

The crowd quieted for her father, and suddenly she noticed Dolly standing next to him, looking extremely pretty in Cecilia’s dress, with Buck shuffling his feet behind her. “Now I’m sure you’ve all heard about the upcoming nuptials between Buck and Dolly,” Summertree began.

“Dolly ain’t exactly kept it a secret!”

Everyone laughed, especially when Dolly’s cheeks turned bright pink.

“It’s gonna take place day after tomorrow at the Summertree ranch, at two o’clock. Now I expect to see every face here tonight at the ranch on Sunday.”

“Especially Buck’s!” somebody yelled from the back of the crowd, and everyone laughed and clapped.

“Let’s have a dance for Buck and Dolly!” Silas suggested.

Chin poised over his fiddle, Charlie looked at Toby, and by some silent arrangement, the two of them burst into a raucous reel.

Cecilia felt jolted by the change in tempo—she had expected another romantic song for the lovebirds, not the lively tune that sounded in her ears. She attempted to move, and realized Pendergast was still holding her as if they were dancing intimately and slow. She dared a glance into those eyes, and found herself being drawn once again into the desire she read in them.

“I’m afraid we’re out of pace with the rest of the world,” she told him, tugging to free her right hand, which was clasped within his rough larger one.

“Would you like to walk for a bit?”

The question tantalized her. She envisioned them, arm in arm, strolling down a field, maybe out by Dolly’s house, just them and the stars and the moonlight. Perhaps they would stop, and he would take her in his arms, even closer than they were now, and he would finally kiss her again.

And if we were alone, I probably wouldn’t have stopped with a kiss.

Mustering the strength of ten Cecilias, she freed herself from his embrace. “No,” she said.

“Talk?”

Her face felt feverish, and now that she was on her own, her legs seemed as if they might not be able to hold her. She had to calm down, to think, to spend some time alone. Alone, by herself!

Unfortunately, this was not a night for solitude. She looked across the crowd, and her stomach grumbled, reminding her that she had missed most of the picnic grazing while changing her clothes. “I’m hungry,” she told him.

His eyebrows lifted high into his forehead. “Hungry?” Apparently, food wasn’t uppermost in his thoughts at the moment.

“Uh-huh.” Suddenly, she thought of a way to finagle some time to herself to simmer down. “If you could manage to find something, I’m sure we could find a secluded spot to talk...”

A smile spread across his face. “One dinner, coming up.” He sent her a little salute, spun and went off in search of eats.

For her part, Cecilia turned and sped quickly in the opposite direction. But she didn’t make it far.

“Hey, Cecilia, long time no see!”

Jim Brennan, a rangy fellow with a shock of red hair who had been working for her father since Cecilia could remember, spotted her racing through the crowd. He captured her arm and swung her around in a playful jig. “You’ve become a regular city girl, Cici.”

Cecilia laughed with the spry ranch hand, who she could tell was already lightly sauced. Just seeing him settled her thoughts as effectively as any lonely brooding would have. “I don’t suppose Clara packed enough for leftovers, did she?”

“C’mon over. There’s sure to be plenty of vittles wandering somewheres about. I guess Clara knew you’d be coming.”

They ambled over to the center of a group of hands from the ranch. Cecilia had forgotten how she missed the camaraderie of the men who lived and worked on the ranch with her. The ragtag bunch of men, who were uncomfortable socializing anywhere outside of a campfire or Grady’s saloon, clapped her on the back and greeted her with loud protests that she’d gone and gotten too big for her britches.

“And don’t forget, I can still remember when you wore britches!” Abel Scott yelled over the other men.

Cecilia blushed. “Abe, you’ve been hitting the hooch, haven’t you?”

He held up an unlabeled bottle of rotgut and smiled. “Want some?”

“Have you forgotten? I’m supposed to be a lady.” She postured her body into an elegant, nose-upturned tableau for the men, who laughed appreciatively. It was a relief to be around people she could act silly with and not care, and a bigger relief to get her mind off Pendergast, though her eyes turned often to scan the crowd in search of him.

“What happened, Cici, did Buck throw you over for Dolly?”

Cecilia leaned against a tree and laughed lightly. This was one point on which she could honestly lose gracefully. “He threw me over, all right. Don’t I look brokenhearted?”

Jim regarded her with a dead-on gaze. “Judging from what I saw of your dancing just now, I’d say you look like your heart’s set on someone else entirely.”

She immediately felt her skin redden in a telltale blush and pushed herself away from the tree. “Can’t a girl go to a dance once a year and actually try to enjoy herself without people spreading rumors?”

Old Pitt Wilson spat out some tobacco juice and smiled broadly. “Last time I danced with a woman that close, we ended up married by the next afternoon.

“You’re lucky Clara wasn’t here to see you, Cici. She’d be all over you trying to find out something wrong with this new fellow you’re in love with.”

“I’m not in love with him,” Cecilia said. A few men laughed chidingly, which only made her flush all the more. “I’m not,” she insisted.

“She might be telling the truth,” Hank guessed. “I only saw the schoolteacher making googly eyes at her. Could be that he’s the one in love!”

“Some man in love!” Cecilia said with a scoff. “He said he’d get me something to eat, but he’s certainly taking his time.”

“Probably because he’s in a daze,” Pitt conjectured. “I reckon you probably didn’t notice, Cici, seeing’s how you was so busy trying not to look lovesick, but that fiddler wasn’t playing a waltz.”

The men cracked up all over again, and Cecilia folded her arms across her chest, quickly tiring of all the ribbing. So much for camaraderie, she thought. So much for settling her conflicting thoughts. “Don’t you all have anything better to do than poke fun at people’s dancing?”

“Heck, no, that’s what we come here for!”

Other men cackled in assent. But if they truly came for the dramatics—official and otherwise—their evening hadn’t even begun to warm up yet. When Cecilia turned casually to look for Pendergast, she saw him coming toward her...on the heels of her father.

Her very angry-looking father. “Cecilia Summertree, you’ve got some explaining to do!”

Behind him, Pendergast, holding up a piece of chocolate cake in one hand, shrugged innocently as if he had absolutely no idea what her father was so worked up about. But Cecilia was skeptical. The man must have done something to make her father this furious.

“What is it?” she asked in a soothing voice, taking her father’s arm.

He shrugged away and bobbed on his toes, his arms akimbo. “Don’t play the innocent with me, Cecilia. I know all about what you’ve been up to!”

Suddenly, Cecilia felt very alone. Pendergast, no matter how he’d instigated all of this, was shut out of the argument now by her father’s turned back. And the semicircle of men from the ranch, knowing the temper of Silas Summertree all too well, backed in unison until they were a safe distance away.

Cecilia sighed to herself as she stood nose to nose with him. “What did I do this time?”

“You’ve shamed yourself, and me, for the last time!”

Having Pendergast see her father upbraid her this way was too humiliating. “Daddy, please keep your voice down.”

Using a slightly lower tone, he wagged a finger in her face and raged, “I knew better than to let you out on your own again, after New Orleans. And your aunts in Memphis warned me that you would seek out any kind of trouble that didn’t come to you first.”

Cecilia couldn’t help glancing at Pendergast. His eyes were cast down, staring intently at the icing on the chocolate cake he’d brought. She smirked. Secretly, he was savoring every moment.

“But never in my life,” Silas continued, “
never
would I have thought you would pull a stunt like this.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Cecilia huffed, anxious to get this battle over with. “What have I done now?”

Her father lifted his chin imperiously. “You have shamed the family name!”

Cecilia rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Again? How?”

“I’ve just heard that you’ve been working at Dolly’s.”

Was that all? After the big buildup, she’d been expecting something much worse.

Her gaze darted toward Pendergast again. He shuffled his foot in the dirt—a sure sign of culpability. “What if I have?”

Her father colored a fresh shade of crimson and fairly shook with rage. “I’ll tell you what! No daughter of mine is going to run around town working like a mule—”

“You always said work was good,” Cecilia protested.

“
Ladies’
work!” he yelled. “I didn’t send you to a finishing school in New Orleans so you could come back and do people’s wash!”

“I’d think you’d be proud that I was earning my keep.”

“There are plenty of things to do around the ranch,” her father said, “as you’ll have ample opportunity to find out.”

The blood drained from her face. That was her worst nightmare. The ranch was nearly an hour’s ride from town. What would she do there, and how would she ever get her job back? Worse, she would never see Dolly or Pendergast or—

She looked up at Pendergast as understanding began to dawn. Pendergast. She’d told him that buttering up her father would do no good—but oh, it obviously had! He’d led her on just until he’d had the opportunity to talk to him. What a little idiot she’d been!