Rachel Donnelly (24 page)

“There, you see. Then you know how tremendously pleased and eager she is to help. There’s nothing to worry about.” There was nothing so satisfying as planning a big party. “By the time you and Holt return, we’ll have it all arranged.”

He rolled his eyes toward the Waterford chandelier. “I knew this would happen. I should never have let Roscoe talk me into taking you there. By the time the two of you get through, I’ll hardly know the place.”

Christie didn’t attempt to disguise her pleasure. Ellie had indeed mentioned a few subtle improvements to the house, and Christie wholeheartedly agreed, but as a guest it wasn’t her place to interfere.

However, the engagement party would prove the perfect opportunity to cozy the house to her standards.

After all, they’d be doing him a favor.

He could hardly object to a few subtle changes.

• • •

Billy pressed his knuckles against his temple and gritted his teeth, huddling deeper into his bedroll.

Dammit!

His head just wouldn’t stop pounding. The searing pain ran up from his neck clear through to his scalp. It felt as though his head might blow clear off. His headaches had got real regular and more frequent since that bounty hunter, Randall, started doggin’ their trail. Like a blue tick hound, he wouldn’t let up. Every place they went he was right behind.

First it was that skinny yellow haired whore in Virginia City who gave them away. He might have known she’d blab. Her lips never stopped flappin’ from the moment he shoved his way through her bedroom door. Even with her backside in the air and her face pressed against the pillow, she never shut her big yap.

Trustin’ that old prospector was their next mistake. A body that stunk that bad was bound to behave overly sociable with strangers. Weren’t no other way to get news, when you smelled riper than a shithouse in July. He should have shot the mangy varmint after he took his puny bag of gold dust.

Damn Hank!

If he hadn’t been such a horny bastard! Raping Randall’s wife when they robbed that stage — makin’ her scream and scream until his head wanted to explode. He’d had no choice but to shoot her just to shut her up. Now Hank was dead and he and Cecil were runnin’ for their lives.

Well, no more.

He’d had enough of runnin’.

To hell with no coffee and cold beans!

He was startin’ a fire.

He wrestled his way out of his bedroll with a low snarl. If Randall and his Indian friend showed their face, he’d put one right between their eyes. But first he was goin’ to fry up what was left of that bacon before it turned rancid. Then he was going to have himself a cup of strong coffee.

“What? What is it?” Cecil struggled out of his bedroll to sit up. “Did you hear something?”

“Get me some kindling.” Billy began searching through his saddlebags for the matches. He felt better already. The pain in his head was beginning to ease. His mind had returned to its cold reasoning self. Yes indeedy, things were about to change. He turned around with a match in one hand to find Cecil clutching a handful of pine needles and a few spindly twigs. “That ain’t enough to light a firefly’s ass. Get somethin’ bigger.”

“You said no fires.” Cecil’s mouth hung opened for a moment, then he clamped it shut and frowned. “Ain’t you worried they’ll see the smoke?”

“Nope.”

“But I thought you said —

“Forget what I said. We’re havin’ us some eats, then headin’ for Sacramento.”

“Sacramento?” Cecil’s green eyes got wide. “What would we want to go and do that for? If Maggie clamps eyes on you, she’ll see you hanged for sure.”

“Maggie never saw me kill that whore of hers. Besides I paid her good to keep her trap shut.”

“That don’t mean she will,” Cecil squealed. “I don’t like it! Why take the chance?”

“Randall has a ranch there, don’t he?”

“That’s what I heard.”

Billy struck the match against a rock. Sparks flew up igniting the twigs. When the flames began to lick up the pine needles, he sat back on his haunches, smiling grimly into the flames. “Get that bag of coffee, then start slicin’ the bacon. I need a full belly to think.”

He could hear Cecil’s nervous shuffle behind him. “What are you thinkin’ on?”

“How to kill me a bounty hunter.”

“Marry her?” Nat slashed Holt a scornful glance. “No.” After riding all day, he wasn’t in the mood for conversation, especially when it involved reconciliation with his father. He stuffed the letter back into his saddlebag, then set about unfastening the cinch around Diablo’s girth.

“It seems to me you wouldn’t keep looking at that letter if you weren’t considering it.”

“Did it ever cross your mind that it might not be the same letter?”

Holt gave a snort of disbelief, then resumed hobbling his horse.

“It’s a letter from my Aunt Carolyn, if you must know.”

Holt’s only answer was a grunt.

“I suppose you’re busting a gut to know what it says, so I might as well tell you.”

Holt placed both hands on the horn of his saddle, lifting an inquiring brow.

“She suggests that if I were already married or betrothed my father would abandon his plan that I marry this lady. Can you believe that?” Aunt Carolyn was only trying to help. Nonetheless, the entire situation had become intolerable. “I’m surprised one of them hasn’t mailed me a ring by now.”

“Not a bad idea.” Holt chuckled.

“Of course it’s a bad idea! One way or the other I’m being shoved down the aisle. What does she expect me to do, propose to the first woman I see? Apparently she’s forgotten how isolated we are out here. Most of the women in Sacramento are already married, or whores. Any single woman coming west is snapped up before she steps off the stage.”

Holt grinned over the back of his horse. “Miss Wallace isn’t married.”

Nat’s blood went hot before he spotted the devilish glint in Holt’s eye. “She’s an Easterner! And as soon as it’s safe she’s going right back where she came from.”

“Why don’t you just write your father and tell him you’re married — stop their meddling once and for all.”

“I’m not lying to make his life easier.”

Holt chuckled, tipping his hat with the back of his knuckles. “Yup, that might be too easy, and you were never one for making things easy. I do believe you like being contrary.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means disagreeable.”

“I know what the word means, you jackass.”

Holt threw back his head and laughed — a deep belly laugh. “I might just as well take a nap before I start fixing up supper,” he said, dropping his saddle beneath a cottonwood by the river. “Maybe you’ll be in a better temper when I wake up.”

Nat heaved Diablo’s saddle from his back. Not likely. Not after reading that letter. He’d carried it around in his saddlebag for weeks, reluctant to break the wax seal, for fear it might be a plea from Aunt Carolyn on his father’s behalf, or worse, her begging him to come home for a visit.

Instead, she’d taken his side.

But that wasn’t surprising. She’d run interference between him and his father since his mother died when he was twelve. And she’d done a damn fine job of it until he’d married Heather.

But the war had made him bitter and the loss of his best friend even more so. Aunt Carolyn’s gentle urgings for him to see his father’s point of view fell on deaf ears. The more his father opposed him, the greater his resolve became to keep the promise he’d made to his dying friend.

If his father had only allowed him to handle it his way, instead of interfering, things might have turned out different.

It had been five years since he’d seen his family, and though he missed them, he couldn’t leave the hunt for the Everetts. No doubt Aunt Carolyn thought it an excuse not to see his father. And though that may have been true once, it wasn’t now. The pain of their disagreement had dulled. Oh, he still resented his father’s meddling, but Nat missed the old cantankerous fox, worrying over his state of health.

But he couldn’t go home — not now.

Not when they were so close.

Nat hobbled Diablo on the other side of cottonwood, then rolled up his sleeves to set about scrubbing away the day’s dust in the river.

An image of Christie standing by the lake flashed through his brain — dripping wet — luxurious mane of hair flowing over her shoulders all the way down to her trim hips. But it was her legs he remembers most — so long — so slender. He knew that memory so well — had gone over it in his mind so many times, he could sit down and paint a picture.

But it could never tell the whole truth — how her skin was as soft and smooth, like a butterfly’s wing, and how the little green flecks in her golden eyes sparked when she turned angry, or aroused.

He splashed his face with water.

Damn!

As if it wasn’t bad enough he saw her every night when he closed his eyes, now she was popping into his head any moment of the day. He was used to being haunted, just not by the living. The best thing to do was to keep busy — keep moving.

By the time Holt woke from his nap, Nat had a fire crackling and was busy laying out bacon in the skillet.

When Holt returned from his wash in the river the bacon was curled up, sizzling in the pan.

“I’d kill for a steak right now.” Holt hunkered down next to him on a log by the fire.

“Morena cooks the best steak of any woman I know. But I’d trade a peach pie for one of her steaks.”

Holt gave a loud hoot of laughter. “You wouldn’t share a peach pie with anyone, let alone trade one.”

“I might share this bacon with you, if you can shut the hell up.”

“Real testy tonight, aren’t ya?”

“You’re damn right I am.” Nat rose from his haunches, thrusting the fork he’d been flipping the bacon with at Holt. “Here, you’d better do this. I’m liable to burn it and then I’ll have to listen to you whine all the way to Sacramento.”

Holt smiled as he grabbed the fork from his hand. “That would be a change wouldn’t it?” He began scraping under the pieces that were sticking with steady concentration. “I don’t know why you’re getting yourself all worked up. We don’t know they’re headed for the ranch.”

Nat stared at the mountains in the distance, listening to the evening breeze weave its way through the pines on the ridge behind them. They were headed there alright — he felt it in his gut. He and Holt should have kept on riding. But without food or rest they wouldn’t last long.

“They’re only half a day ahead.” Holt said, flicking the bacon onto their plates. The stale bread he pulled from a canvas bag landed against the tin with a thunk. “I figure we’ll catch up to them by noon.”

Nat consumed his meal standing.

The sun sank over the horizon like a blazing orange coal.

After, Holt strode to the river to do the washing up.

Nat sat by the fire and cleaned his gun.

• • •

Christie woke to the sound of a wounded screech.

She bounced to her feet, forgetting her white silk wrapper at the end of the bed, racing from her bedchamber wearing only her chemise.

Another cry directed her toward the bedchamber at the end of the hall. It was the one Inez had occupied last night, as Christie had felt it best she sleep at the big house instead of her parent’s cottage, so that she and Ellie might assist in her toilette for the fiesta.

When Christie entered the green papered room, Inez was standing by the wardrobe clutching her white lace gown, her liquid brown eyes haunted with grief. “Look! It is ruined!” she wailed. “That creature has ruined my gown.”

“What creature?”

“That creature!”

Christie’s gaze shifted in the direction of Inez’s accusing finger. A small brown swallow crouched at the foot of the wardrobe blinking in innocence, seeming unconcerned with the havoc he’d wreaked. “However did you get in here?” Christie scooped him up in the palm of her hand, then carried him to the opened window to set him free.

He glided to a low branch of the oak, then hopped his way down to his nest, announcing to the rest of the family with happy chirps that he was home.

“There, he’s gone.” Christie turned back around to find Inez staring at her open-mouthed, her black eyes as large as olives.

“My sister had a canary once. He was a brilliant escape artist. We called him the Comte, after the Comte of Monte Cristo.”

“Did he poop on your gowns?” Inez’s lip quivered. “If so, you should have wrung his neck like a chicken.”

“Oh dear, let me see.” Christie examined the garment. “I’m sure it can be cleaned.”

Inez held the gown out with her head turned away as though she could not bear to look at it. “There, look, right on the middle of the bow.” She collapsed into the embroidered-backed armchair and moaned. “It is a sign — an omen. My marriage will be
mierda
!”

“Nonsense!” Christie did her best to control her laughter. “It’s only a drop. It will scrub right out.”

The firm clop of Morena’s footfalls sounded down the hall.

“Mama!” Inez flew from the chair. “She will know what to do.” A babbling high-pitched stream of Spanish followed.

Christie held the lace gown high like a shield to cover her near naked condition, fearing if Inez didn’t draw breath soon the young girl would swoon from lack of air.

“It’s only a small spot,” Christie said as Morena hustled into the room. She was about to lay it across the bed for Morena to examine, but snatched it back up when she saw who appeared in the doorway next.

Nat tilted his head as though considering the gown. But his gaze touched her bare arms and legs as well, lingering shamelessly on the latter before returning to her face. “Hmm, quite beautiful.”

Christie went hot.

A fury of fireworks sparked at her core, radiating straight to her cheeks. A cool morning breeze blew through the half open window, but she could barely breathe. The sight of Nat leaning so relaxed in the doorway after weeks of wondering if he were alive or dead didn’t seem real.

But there he was — as big and bright as day. He must have stopped at the lake for a swim before coming to the house; the dark curls grazing his collar coiled in damp disarray about his neck. There was no sign of trail dust on his blue shirt or his snug-fitted black trousers.