Explaining Herself (6 page)

"Almost," assured Vic, fumbling behind her back at the strings of her printer's smock. Then she had a clever idea
—her favorite kind. "Thad, have you met
Mr. Laramie? Papa hired him this week."

Mr. Laramie's dark eyes had found Thaddeas as soon as he came in, but they narrowed at the name. He unfolded from his chair, his gaze never leaving Vic's brother.

"Thaddeas Garrison?" he asked quietly.

When he stepped forward, spurs jingling, Laramie stood taller than Vic's brother. But Thad was clearly older. Her half brother by her father's first marriage, Thad had been an adult for nearly as long as Victoria could remember.

"Do I know you?" Her brother shook Laramie's hand, but both men seemed unusually wary.
"Laramie?"

Laramie said, "No."

Vic shifted her hips a little, to get a better grip on her knotted apron-strings, as she spun her plan. "Perhaps we should ride back to the Circle-T together. Since we're going the same way."

Thaddeas shrugged and nodded. Some days, her own brilliance thrilled her.

"I'll clear my things." Laramie, his gaze sliding from her to her brother, turned to the cabinets.

"I'll help you!" Victoria bounced slightly in her struggle with the knots. "It's my job!"

At least it was when she wanted to see what someone had been reading! But Laramie ignored her request, turning his back to effectively hide which drawers he was opening.

Desperate, Victoria looked toward the type case. "Evangeline, could you ... ?" But nobody was there.

"She slipped out while we were talking," explained Thaddeas. Turning Victoria around by the shoulders, he began to work at her knots himself. "Unusual girl, your friend. Stand still."

She's madly in love with you, you blind oaf.
But that was yet another secret Victoria must never reveal
—not to
either of them. Thad was a respected lawyer with political ambitions who hardly remembered Evangeline's name, except to be polite. And Evangeline, for all her efforts at propriety, came from the wrong side of the railroad tracks.

Wyoming was too old-fashioned to see past that. So were the male Garrisons. Vic's only comfort was that Evangeline understood; that was why she'd left.

"Stop wiggling," scolded Thaddeas. "There."

And she was free. But Mr. Laramie had already collected his black hat from the now-clear table, and Victoria had lost her chance to learn more about the mysterious stranger. For now.

The ride home would provide another lovely opportunity. And it would even be safe. And proper!

Her big brother would be there.

Then again, when Thaddeas held a handkerchief in front of her face and said "Stick out your tongue," then wiped a black smear off her cheek, she had to wonder if that was really a blessing.

Could this be the man who'd seduced and abandoned
Julie
, who'd destroyed his family?

The heir to one of the oldest ranches in the Powder River Basin, Thaddeas Garrison would have been about nineteen or twenty years old at the time
—certainly old enough to ruin a girl. He had money, and he wasn't bad-looking.

His body humming with revived memories, Laramie felt particularly conscious of the rifle scabbard hanging off his saddle, heavy with his Winchester; the Bowie knife in his boot; the holdout derringer strapped to his good arm, under his shirt. If this man deserved to die, Laramie had no doubt of his ability to send him to hell.

But Laramie was also aware of the rifle stowed under the Garrison buggy's seat
—and the lady perched
upon it next to her brother, acting like this was a picnic.

Worse, he couldn't remember if Thaddeas Garrison had even been in town at the time of the murders, much less been secretly courting his sister. Laramie wondered how
—besides physical threat—a fellow went about getting that information.

"Mr. Laramie," Miss Victoria announced pleasantly to her brother, "says he likes trains."

Laramie squinted at her, startled, but Thaddeas seemed to take it as some kind of conversational cue.

"That so?" he asked, glancing across from his view of his harness horse's rump.

Laramie didn't care about trains. What he really wanted to know was what Garrison had been doing in 1888.

Flat-out asking seemed less than circumspect.

"He was curious about when the railroad came through Sheridan," continued Victoria brightly, as if she had an endless supply of words to do her bidding. Then she teased Ross with a smile. "Though he won't tell me why."

"Exciting time," agreed Garrison. Only then did Laramie recognize the glimpse of opportunity Miss Garrison had just given him.

"You were in Sheridan in '92?" he asked, casual-like.

"Yep. That's the year after I graduated college."

College.
One more reason Thaddeas Garrison sat there in the buggy, and Laramie rode a cow pony.

"Thaddeas went to William and Mary, in Virginia," explained Victoria. "Now he's a lawyer. Do
you
have a preferred profession, Mr. Laramie?"

The lawyer elbowed his sister lightly in the side.

"Not lawyering," noted Laramie dryly.
A lawyer?
And the sheriff's name was
Ward?
Had
all
his family enemies gone into law enforcement?

But if Garrison had been away at school before '92, likely he'd left
Julie
alone. Right?

"That must take some time," Laramie noted
—then regretted the attempt. The words sounded foolish in his mouth, even when he tried to clarify. "College."

"Five years, in all," agreed Garrison, clucking at his carriage horse. That put him in Virginia in '88.
One down.
"It sure seemed longer, though."

"It
was
longer," insisted Victoria. "I was a baby when you left home, and I was nine when you came back to stay!"

Thaddeas grinned at her. Only when the expression star
tl
ed him did Laramie realize how strongly the lawyer, though brown-haired and clean-shaven, resembled his cat
tl
e-baron father. Rumor was, Old Man Garrison never smiled.

He felt suddenly relieved not to have to kill Thaddeas.

"Victoria should go to college herself," teased the lawyer. "She's got the mind for it."

"Nine years old," she repeated firmly.

"Don't forget, I quit for a while," her brother reminded her. "During that bad stretch after the Die-Up."

The Die-Up. The bad winter of '86-'87.

Thaddeas Garrison might have been in town long enough to woo Laramie's sister after all, damn it.

He should know better than to ever feel relieved.

"Have you heard of the Die-Up, Mr. Laramie?" asked Victoria. He wanted to reply that, hell, folks in South America had heard of it. But he didn't. She continued. 'You never did say if you're really from Texas, like your saddle. You don't
talk
like you're from the South."

"Vic," warned Thad. Then he added to Laramie, "Please excuse my sister. She's nosy with everyone."

She was that. And she was good at it.

"I was just making conversation," the girl defended, as if folks had ridden her about it before. Laramie reckoned they probably had. Out west, an overzealous curiosity could be a shooting offense. For men, anyhow. But ladies . . .

Miss Garrison turned and faced Laramie, almost as a dare. "If I was prying, I apologize."

She didn't add
so there.
It was implied. Laramie found his cheek tensing in a hint of a smile again. "No need," he assured her, the words sliding out almost effortlessly. "I admire how easily you do it."

Her eyes widened at his unexpected response, and he looked quickly away, across the rolling foothills, past a heavily wooded creek line and then into the mountains. He was starting to form an idea, and it troubled him. Deeply.

But she
was
damned good. Here he rode, within spitting distance of a man who might have destroyed his family, and he couldn't learn a thing. It was Victoria who had clarified that Thaddeas may have been in Sheridan in '88
—and she hadn't even known it was information Laramie needed!

How well might she ask questions if she knew what she was looking for?
I'm very good at finding things,
she'd said.

People even expected it of her!

When Laramie slid his gaze back to the buggy, she was watching him with bright gray eyes, a smile twisting her lips. She seemed to sit up straighter after his praise. "Thank you."

You 're welcome.
But that momentary ease with words had deserted him, so he ducked his head, touched his hat brim.

Thaddeas Garrison groaned. "Don't encourage her."

Now it was the lawyer's sister who did the elbowing.

Laramie's gelding tossed his head and snorted at
some flies that were hovering near its face. The sun felt hot on his shoulders, and the air tasted dry and dusty
—another reason he'd learned to keep his mouth closed. But maybe his best reason was that the last time he'd told a woman a secret—even a woman who meant well, a woman he could trust—she'd gotten their poppa and brother killed.

No.

Laramie concentrated on how the straps of his holdout were rubbing his bare arm, under his shirt, and on the nearness of his rifle. His bullet wounds hurt, pulsing and sticky even after so easy a day as this. But no matter what he focused on, he could not ignore the teasing between Thaddeas and Victoria Garrison. They weren't quite bickering, weren't quite laughing. But their easy affection made him ache as badly as his injuries.

He resolved then and there to spend as little time around the Garrisons as possible. It wouldn't make the killing of either the son or the father any easier, should his quest come to that. Nor would involving Victoria.

Yet he liked hearing her chatter along the ride, until they rode into sight of the Circle-T spread itself. The white farmhouse, with its flowers and porch swing, still looked like nothing bad ever happened there.

Maybe it hadn't. Maybe that's why Victoria asked questions so easily. Maybe she'd never gotten an answer that threatened to tear her life apart.

When they reached the stables, Laramie was particularly careful in his dismount, in unsaddling Blackie, lest anyone notice his stiffness. He longed to go to the nearby creek and just lie in it like he had in the Blue Creek, outside Hole-in-the-Wall, letting the cool of the water draw the fever out of his hurting body. He was so distracted by that p
rospect, while he gave the geld
ing a rough once-over, that he almost forgot Victoria Garrison until she started toward the house
—right past him.

She didn't look at all hot or stiff; in fact, she looked as cool as he imagined the creek would feel. Her lively step swung the skirt of her pale-blue dress, offering glimpses of white kid shoes. White!

They matched her ruffle-edged parasol.

He figured she would pass him with little more than a nod, but instead she slowed her step. "I hope you found what you were looking for at the
Herald
office."

He stared at her, with her bright face and her unruly, upswept hair, and he no longer knew if he had or not.

Before he knew it, the quiet words slid right out of him. "Where can we talk?"

Maybe he was hoping to scare her off. But rather than give him a cutting glare and march away, Miss Garrison blinked, then sank to one knee fussing with her shoe.

There didn't look to be anything wrong with her shoe. But he liked this view of how her hair clung to her damp neck. He admired the curve of her spine.

"There's a big rock by the creek," she said, low, without looking up at hi
m. "In a willow grove. Nate Daw
son knows where. Be there after supper."

Then she finished dusting the nonexistent speck from her shoe and stood. Or started to. Her air of intrigue suffered when she stepped on her hem and almost fell.

Laramie caught her arm, and she caught his. She even
felt
clean and cool. And soft, impossibly soft.

He quickly let her go, but it wasn't soon enough for her not to notice the holdout under his sleeve. He could tell from the way the hidden derringer jammed
into his arm as surely as how her gray eyes widened up into his.

Now she knew he'd been armed all day.

When she hurried away toward her safe, neat house, he wondered if she would meet him now, after all.

And he wondered which he would really prefer.

Chapter Five