McCrory's Lady (4 page)

      
Ever since his scalper days, Colin McCrory had honed a keen sense of wariness. He could awaken from the deepest sleep if a twig snapped within forty yards. And he never relaxed without a weapon within reach. As soon as the doorknob began to turn, he bolted up out of the tub, splashing water across the floor as he reached for his Peacemaker.

      
Maggie had thought Colin McCrory was the most striking man she had ever seen—clothed. But, oh my, naked, dripping across her carpet, he was magnificent. His hand closed over his gun with one lithe unbroken motion and he whirled to face her, the weapon cocked and aimed straight at her heart. Water ran down his body in glistening rivulets, clinging lovingly to the long smooth muscles that corded his hard frame.

      
Her mouth was as dry as his body was wet. As he uncocked the Colt, she struggled to find her voice and unstick her tongue from the back of her teeth. “Are you always this friendly, or do places like mine make you especially nervous?” She was proud of her smooth delivery.

      
“Nothing against your place. It's just my way,” he replied, replacing his gun in the holster hanging on a wall hook.

      
Maggie walked nonchalantly over to the bed and placed the clean linens on the mattress.

      
By the time she turned around, Colin had a towel wrapped around his hips. “It's not as if I haven't already seen the elephant, Mr. McCrory,” some imp made her say.

      
A smile hovered around the corner of his generously chiseled mouth. “Yes, Miss Worthington, I do imagine you have.” He was amazed when a faint pink flush stained her creamy skin, running from the rounded neckline of her gown and climbing into her cheeks.

      
Maggie could feel the heat and fought an outraged sense of acute embarrassment. “What is it about you, Scotty, that brings out the schoolgirl in me, I wonder?” she asked breathlessly, not really expecting him to answer.

      
Colin studied her quiet sense of wounded dignity with surprise. “I should be the one who's embarrassed, Sassenach, not you.” Something compelled him to take a step closer to her.

      
She fought the urge to step closer to him. And lost. Before Maggie knew what she was doing, she was standing directly in front of him. She could feel his heat, and desperately wanted to run her fingers through the wet hair on that hard, beautiful chest. Up close she could see a few faint traces of gray sprinkled through the hair and raised her hands, letting her fingertips lightly graze it, disturbing the beads of water. “Like silver dust,” she murmured.

      
“Just another reminder I've turned forty,” he replied. His voice was deeper, thicker now.

      
She watched, fascinated as the droplets raced down toward the thirsty towel. Never in all her years with men—and that was long ago, so very long ago—had Maggie ever wanted to touch, to taste, to savor a male body as she did now. “You...you make me feel things I never dreamed...” She stopped, looking up into his eyes, which studied her with a lustful, cynical light. Of course he did not believe her. Why should he? She was a whore, a madam who ran a fancy house.

      
Before she could move away, Lupe appeared at the door. “Oh,
Señor
Colin. I have come to make the bed.” One glance at her mistress standing next to the tall naked stranger made her break into a surprised grin and say, “
Mil pardones,
I thought you were done with your bath. I will come back later.” She vanished down the hall.

      
Maggie took the moment to regroup and clear her head. Stepping away from Colin, she reached for another towel from the neat stack beside the tub and thrust it at him. “I really must speak to Lupe about her initiative in moving the bathing facilities around.”

      
“It was all my fault. I insisted on carrying the tub in here so I wouldn't be disturbed.”

      
“And were you...disturbed, Scotty?”

      
“You know damned well I was, Sassenach.” The grooves around his mouth deepened in a scowl.

      
“Not too disturbed to join me for dinner tonight, I hope? The food our private cook prepares is much better than the hot Mexican dishes served to our patrons.” Maggie found herself holding her breath, uncertain of what he might reply, wanting desperately to spend the evening with him.

      
He inclined his head courteously. “I'd be honored, Miss Worthington.”

* * * *

      
“That's the best meal I've eaten since the last time I was in San Francisco,” Colin said, wiping his mouth with a snowy linen napkin. “Where did you get the oysters?”

      
“Bart has them brought in from the coast by fast horses, packed in ice.”

      
“Must cost a fortune,” he said, his eyes scanning the room with all its bookshelves.

      
“You can borrow anything you like for bedtime reading,” she said with a smile. “As to the cost of all this”—she swept her hand over the elegant table and the lavishly appointed office—“while the mines were booming, Bart did really well—even better after he took me on to supervise the girls.”

      
“I take it you own a share of the establishment?”

      
“Half.” Her voice held a mixture of pride and defensiveness. Wanting to change the subject, Maggie asked, “You're a Scot who has traveled halfway around the world. From Aberdeen to San Francisco. Sounds as if you're pretty successful yourself.”

      
He shrugged. “I've dabbled in a few things...all of it for...” His voice grew quiet and he stared down into the dregs of the fine port as if looking for answers to the disaster that had overtaken them.

      
“All of it's for your daughter,” she supplied. “Want to talk about it? Sometimes it helps.”

      
He looked up into her clear dark blue eyes and found them filled with empathy.

      
“Maybe I know a little of what you're feeling.”

      
“Maybe you do,” he said slowly. “Eden has been my whole reason for living since Elizabeth died. She's the image of her mother, blonde and small, delicate, but spunky and bright. She inherited everything from her mother but the color of her eyes. She's engaged to a prominent attorney in Prescott. One day, I hope to see her presiding over the governor's mansion as first lady of the territory.”

      
“Pretty grand ambitions. Most men keep those for sons. How long since your wife died?” Somehow she knew it was not recent.

      
“Fourteen years. She died trying to give me that son and heir,” he said bitterly. “I'd trade everything I own to have her back. Eden's all the heir I need.”

      
“And so, you never remarried.”

      
“I don't want another woman's death on my conscience,” he said hollowly.

      
“And no one could ever take Elizabeth's place.” For a man to love a woman that way was beyond anything Maggie could imagine. Her father had scarcely seemed to notice when her mother died during an influenza epidemic. Except for the funeral, he never missed a day at the mercantile. Nor did he pay more than scant attention to Maggie or her sisters. “My mother died when I was six. I grew up in boarding schools.”

      
He heard the pain in her voice and smiled sadly. “That explains your formidable education.” He wondered what had led a woman of good family to this kind of life, but did not pry.

      
“Oh, my education was polished up quite a bit more by Bartley Wellington Fletcher. He's a remittance man. Son of a baronet. I learned to watercolor and embroider at the ladies' academies in Boston. Bart taught me to love Shakespeare and Cervantes. What about you? Did some tough old Scots schoolmaster teach you to read by applying the hickory rod?”

      
He flushed slightly. “No. I never learned to do more than sign my name before I came to America. Elizabeth, she taught me to read and write, to reach for a whole world that was out there. Things, ideas, places I'd never imagined.”

      
Maggie knew his wife could not have taught him all that much in the few years they'd had together. “You must've kept on reading and learning ever since she gave you your start.”

      
“I have collected quite a library. At first, I started with children's books, reading to Eden. She learned so quickly, just like a little sponge, soaking up everything she heard.” A look of anguish filled his eyes, darkening them as he clutched the cut crystal port glass in both hands. “I should never have left her alone, not after I caught Lazlo at the ranch house that day.”

      
Maggie paused a beat, considered what she was about to say, then went ahead and said it. “When you find her...what do you plan to do?”

      
His head jerked up. “Kill the bastards who did this to her, then take her home.”

      
“It may not be that easy.” She hesitated, feeling his eyes studying her, hooded and inscrutable. “What I mean is, she'll need another woman to be there for her. Lazlo and his partner, they've hurt her—not just physically nearly as much as hurt her mind, her spirit. A girl brought up gently, an innocent raised to be a lady, she'll need to confide in another woman. Not even you—her own father—will be able to help her through this. I know. I've had young women come to me before—raped, abused. They heal, Colin, but it takes time and someone who's been there herself to understand.”

      
He stood up angrily. “What do you propose? To treat her like one of your
girls
? Like she's ruined? Offer her a job?”

      
Maggie felt the pain claw at her with jagged talons. Why did this man, this stranger, have the power to hurt her so quickly, so easily? “Of course not. I'm only offering to go along and be there for her, another woman to confide in. She won't talk to you.”

      
He sank back onto the chair and put his head in his hands. “Forgive me. I...I didn't intend to say that. I guess I've been pushing the thoughts of what she must be going through from my mind.” His head rose abruptly. “Dear God! What if she's pregnant?” He swore an anguished oath.

      
“I can prevent it. I've done it before. It's quite safe as long as conception is this early. I learned a lot more about treating unwanted pregnancies than the so-called doctors I've known. Most of it from Indian medicine women.”

      
“I've heard the Indians have ways...” He sighed. “Please God, let it not be necessary...to kill a child.” He shuddered.

      
She reached out her hand and touched his fist as he clenched the edge of the table. “It isn't like that. A woman just has a heavy monthly and it's over. She never even knows if she was breeding."

      
Colin felt her cool fingertips graze his wrist and looked at her hand. Slim and elegant with long tapered nails, buffed but not enameled. A lady's hands. But Maggie Worthington was no longer a lady. What had happened to send her down the long road from Boston to Sonora? “You couldn't harm a child, could you?”

      
She looked away, her haunted eyes unable to meet his.

      
“I'm sorry, Sassenach. I didn't mean to reopen old wounds,” he said gently. “I guess they never really completely go away. Just heal over on the outside and still ache within.”
Or fester, like your own
.

      
Whether by an act of will or the sheen of unshed tears, her eyes brightened. “It all happened a long time ago. I've learned to live in the present and hope for the future.” An idea suddenly caught her off guard. An idea so bold and outrageous she forced it aside to consider later in her lonely bed. “What we have to think of now is Eden. Emilio should be back soon.”

      
“Do you really think his friends will find them?” Colin's face was masked, expressionless, as if he dared not hope—or dared not refuse to hope.

      
“They'll find them. Question is, are
they
looking to find
you
?”

      
“You mean did they kidnap Eden to lure me here? That's the same idea Wolf had.” Colin shrugged. “I have political enemies in Prescott and Tucson, even Washington, I guess. It's possible, but it doesn't change what I have to do.”

      
His expression was carved from granite. Maggie shivered thinking of what would happen when he came face to face with Judd Lazlo.

* * * *

      
The Indian returned late the next day. Wolf, having spent the intervening twenty-four hours in the company of Maggie's girls, looked satiated and rested, but Colin had done little but toss in fitful sleep and pace the cantina floor until his boots wore a pathway across it.

      
“What did your men learn?” McCrory asked as soon as the little Indian walked through the door.

      
“In my office, Emilio,” Maggie said crisply. She headed upstairs, expecting the men to follow her.

      
As soon as they were seated around her desk, Emilio outlined what he had learned in rapid Spanish. “There is a deep canyon north of the Saddlehorn, just below a creek that runs into the Saint Michael River.”

      
“I know the place. Bart and I once looked at a mining claim up by Saddlehorn Mountain.”

      
“We did not go in, but I talked with several men who graze their sheep across that stretch of the creek. They showed us hoof prints in the mud—marked just as you described your horses,
Don
Colin.”

      
Maggie raised an eyebrow at Emilio's formal address for McCrory. There was an inbred aura of power about the Scot, something few men are born with and most never acquire.