Explaining Herself (8 page)

"No." Whether he was protecting his secrets or her world, Laramie wasn't sure. Likely himself. But he'd brought the trouble here; he had to deal with it. "I'll visit the Red Light."

He'd be meeting Lonny there anyway.

The way Victoria lit up, like he was doing her a grand favor, pained him. So did the relief with which she said, "Oh, good! Once we know more, then I can better decide how much to tell Papa."

Laramie climbed out of the creek, water sloshing off him and out his boots, and hoped she told Papa nothing. He did not need outraged fathers distracting him from his real job here in Sheridan, and he was already risking it. He'd kept the lady out after dark.

"I'll walk you back," he offered reluctantly, glancing in the direction Lonny had gone.

"Well, as far as the rock, anyway," she agreed, taking several squelching steps up the path that paralleled the creek. When Laramie started wetly after her, she slowed down so that he practically had to walk beside her.

Not that this was a hardship.

"But we can't go in yet," she continued, grasping her skirts to flap them a little, shaking some of the water out. "We aren't at all finished."

He tried not to stare at the quick little glimpses of her high-shoed ankles as he thought,
We aren't?

"You still haven't told me why you asked me to meet you," she continued happily. "Why
did
you, Ross Laramie?"

Ross. He began to ache again, somewhere deep that
he didn't want to know about. Meeting her had been a bad idea. He'd drawn on her. He'd put her face-to-face with a train robber. Now he was lying to her about the Red Light Saloon.

And because she called him Ross, it suddenly mattered.

She stopped walking, so suddenly that Laramie almost bumped into her. Staring down into her shadowed face, he remembered what she'd felt like pressed against him, more intimately than either of the gals he'd known sinfully, and he felt guilty for such common thoughts, too. Why had he asked to meet her?

"I forget," he lied, and felt like a damned idiot.

He feared she saw his lie, but all she said was, "Since we're here, then, will you answer a question for me?"

He shrugged one shoulder, wary. He owed her.

"Why would a stock detective spend the day looking through old newspapers?"

To his relief, he could answer that with marginal honesty. "Been rustling here before."

Victoria Garrison clapped her hands together. "I
knew
you were a range detective! I just
knew
it!" And he recalled again just how good she was at finding things out.

Good enough to not just be helpful.

She was good enough at it to be dangerous. To both of them.

Chapter Six

"Just a cowboy tracking rustlers," said Ross Laramie, sounding defensive.

But Victoria knew better, just as she knew he could not have forgotten why he asked her to meet him . . . which made the real reason all the more intriguing. "That means there
are
rustlers!"

Anyway, a range detective was more than that, a cowboy whose
purpose
was to track down rustlers. Though the term was sometimes used for hired guns, a real range detective was practically a lawman. And meeting a
lawman
by the creek wasn't so bad. "You were reading about old rustlers?"

He shrugged that one shoulder again. "Folks involved once ..."

Might still be involved! That was smart thinking. "You mean some rustlers from before are still around? They aren't arrested, or dead, or run out of town?"

He stared at her in the darkness, and she guessed
that meant yes. Rustlers from the past might still be walking the streets of Sheridan!

Life surely had gotten interesting since he rode in.

"Do you think that man by the creek was a rustler?" She shuddered to thin
k that, and felt glad that Lara
mie had been beside her
—well, in front of her—the whole time. Considering that it was dark, she felt glad he still was.

"No." He sounded vaguely angry. "He wasn't the type."

"There's a type? Tell me how to recognize a rustler, then, please? Maybe I can help you."

He shook his head and started walking again, his spurs jangling with each step, so she followed. Light from the rising half-moon bounced off the creek and lit them from two sides. She found herself noticing Laramie's denim-clad backside.

She guessed she should think of him as Ross now, after how she'd clung to him earlier.

It should seem strange to admire
that part
of a man. Maybe she just felt ready to admire all of him, after this evening, and that's just the part she was facing. He was tall, after all. And his dungarees were still drying.

When he reached the big rock, where they'd meant to meet in the first place, he sank onto it and she decided the front half of him was fairly admirable, too. Then, hitching one foot up so that his tapering fingers could reach the top of his wet boot, Ross drew his long knife from it and distractedly began to dry it on his sleeve.

Dangerous.

Victoria leaned back against a tree while he chewed over whatever he'd gotten riled about, happy to watch. "When do you suppose they'll meet?"

His lashes lifted as he looked up at her again.

She persisted. "The rustler and the ranch hand?"

"He was no rustler." Oh no. Not the
type.

"Likely tomorrow night," she guessed. "Maybe the night after. They'll need time to make arrangements, won't they?"

He shrugged.

"You'll tell me what you find out, won't you?"

"Shouldn't involve you," he insisted, looking right at her with those haunted eyes.

"I want to help. And I'll be curious whether you tell me or not. Maybe if you
do,
I'll get in your way less."

His troubled gaze sank back to the knife, which he was caring for like a boy would fuss over a favorite toy.

Victoria went over to the rock and propped her elbows on it, then leaned over her arms to be closer to him. It felt right, being closer to this man . . . maybe because of the safety being
close
to him had already carried, just this evening. "And if you tell me what you're doing, I'll tell you what I'm doing, and maybe you can help keep me from putting myself in danger."

Goodness, but that was one big knife.

Ross was looking at her again, somehow reluctantly.

"I don't put myself in danger on purpose, you know," she insisted
—almost by rote, considering how often she'd had to explain it to her father, her mother, her older brother, her sisters. Her brothers-in-law. Her teachers. Her editor, Mr. Day. "I just want to know things."

"To write about them?" he challenged.

"Partly. But I've had to know things long before I worked for the paper. I need to know because, well. . ."

Did he really want to hear this? He was watching her as if he did, so she forced herself to consider it.

"It's almost like it hurts, not knowing something," she tried explaining, pressing a fist to her chest. "In here. Not book learning; if that were it, then I would want to go to college like Thad. But the things I want
to know aren't about far-off lands or scientific inventions or even books. The things I want to know are about people, and what they're doing, and why they're doing it."

At least he wasn't caressing his knife anymore, though he hadn't put it away. He'd drawn his knees up, where he could drape his forearms across them, and continued to watch her as if what she had to say really mattered.

For once.

She reached down and fidgeted with her skirt, though it and her petticoats were finally starting to dry. "Some secrets seem to hurt people. Have you ever noticed that? Not like us meeting here," she added quickly, when his cheek worked in that way she'd begun to think of as a ghost smile. "Big secrets, about
important
things. Like the bad times Thad mentioned, after the Die-Up. I was only five or six, but I remember sensing things had happened that we weren't allowed to even know, much less talk about."

Ross Laramie's eyes narrowed, and again she thought:
Dangerous.
But she had to be wrong. Why would her father hire a dangerous man?

She didn't know how to explain those bad times, not without revealing things about her family she oughtn't. The secrets weren't about the blow to the ranch. The Great Plains may have lost seventy-five percent of their cattle in the Die-Up, but the Circle-T, which had already started stocking in extra hay, survived better than many. No, the secrets had more to do with the dead baby.

Vic had known what her mother's round tummy meant. She'd recognized the grown-ups' panic in one word,
early.
Since she'd never met her impossibly tiny, dead baby brother, she didn't really mourn him. But she'd felt the grief that poured from
both her parents, even from Thaddeas,
home from school.
She'd
watched her father tirelessly carrying firewood out near the big elm tree, in sight of the new house, so he could build a bonfire. When she asked, Thad explained that they had to thaw the ground to dig a grave, and she'd understood that, too.

It had been the months afterward, when spring came and the carnage of the blizzards was cleared, which frightened her. Her mother still kept crying, through her chores and over her daughters, until Papa seemed drawn with worry. Every time Vic had asked Thaddeas or her older sisters what was wrong, they'd say not to ask. Sometimes she would ask Mama, who said, /
can't tell you. It's just something inside me. I can't explain.

Vic thought of that stretch as the Big Silence, and it had scared her. Things hadn't gotten noticeably better until shortly before Mama's tummy started to swell with Kitty. By then, Vic was secret-shy.

Maybe she thought that if she could have helped Mama explain, things wouldn't have gotten so bad. But she'd hated secrets like that ever since.

Laramie
—Ross—was still sitting there on the rock, knife dangling forgotten from one long hand, waiting.

"That wasn't a good time," she simplified, and lit on something she
could
tell. "Or when my oldest sister, Mariah, took up with a sheep farmer. They met, courted, and got engaged before anyone knew about it, even me. That hurt my father something awful. Well... that, and Stuart MacCallum being a
sheep farmer,
but still. Secrets like that never seem to do any good."

"No," agreed Ross.

"It's as if. . ." Victoria sank onto her folded arms so that she half lay on the rock, her chin resting on her fists, although her feet were still on the ground. "As if keeping secrets, the
big
secrets, is an insult. It means you don't trust people."

Ross let out a sharp breath, almost a snort. "Some folks oughtn't be trusted."

"Maybe not with your money, or your horse, or your daughters. But everyone should be trusted with the truth
—especially about politicians, and laws, and government, which is why I love the newspaper so much. Otherwise, how do you know who people are, what they're really after? You can only see who people really are if you have all the information. Otherwise, you just see make-believe."

Ross searched her face with his dark, deep eyes.

"Especially people you
should
be able to trust," she added, remembering Mariah. "People you love."

Love? Suddenly she wished she didn't talk so much. Ross still hadn't confessed why he'd wanted to meet her. Vic felt tempted to hide her face. Instead, she watched his.

"Yes." He agreed that simply, and suddenly she liked him. A lot.

It felt warm, and tingly, and exciting, and it made her want to smile. And blush. Now she looked down, in case he could read her eyes, and said, "That's why I want to help you. If someone's stealing other people's cattle, then folks should know about it. Not just my father. Everyone."

It felt like a vote of trust, if strangely off topic, when Ross said, "Is Bram Ward the sheriff?"

Letting her help made her like him, too. "Oh, yes. Last five or six years, not that I think very highly of him. Do you think
he
knows anything about the rustlers?"

He quirked his mouth, shrugged that one shoulder. "What about Hayden Nelson?"