Explaining Herself (9 page)

"Nelson . . ." Victoria considered die name, pushing back up off the rock a little. "Oh! Him. He sold out and moved back east a long time back, not long before the railroad. The Triple-Bar bought up his land,
and Mama said they would've had to pay a lot more if they'd known about the railroad."

"Wrights still own the Triple-Bar?"

That, she thought, was an odd way to phrase it. Did they
still
own the Triple-Bar? They'd owned it all along!

"Sure they do. Colonel Wright, and his wife, and their son and daughter. I don't much like them, either," she admitted. "Colonel Wright hired a range detecti
—I mean, a gunman to run my brother-in-law out of town. The sheep farmer, you know. But the Wrights wouldn't rustle cattle."

Ross sat still, considering.

"They have plenty," she assured him.

Scowling down at his knife, he asked, "Ever hear tell of a local family named Laurence?"

Laurence. She shook her head. "Should I have?"

He finally returned the knife to his boot. "They were lynched as rustlers some time back."

OH!
She pushed all the way off the rock, standing straight again. "That's awful! But they couldn't be involved now, if they were lynched. Accomplices, maybe."

"Or ghosts." Ross slid off the rock beside her.

Right beside her. Almost like when he'd been standing between her and a suspected bad man. His nearness felt warm and safe. He smelled good, like leather and herbal salve.

He'd listened to her.

Somewhere off in the distance, a coyote yip-yipped at the moon, as if to agree about ghosts. Victoria stepped just a little closer to Ross
—even if she'd spent her whole life hearing coyotes at night. Even if she knew what little cowards coyotes were.

It seemed as good a reason as any.

He stiffened beside her. 'You ..." Then he swallowed. "Best get inside, where it's safe."

She looked up at him and nodded, not about to go inside yet. She was enjoying this excited, warm, tingly feeling of being close to the range detective far too much. "Is that all you wanted to know? Ross?"

He had to tip his head downward to see her, they were standing so close. As ever, the movement seemed graceful, cautious, contained. "For now."

"You'll tell me if you have more questions?"

He nodded slowly.

"Promise?"

"No." Wonderingly, he lifted his fingers to her lips. His fingertips felt soft, oh so careful. His gaze searched her face as he whispered, "I can't promise you anything."

"Will you promise to try, then? Please?" She felt like shivering, and not from wet petticoats. It suddenly seemed more important than rustlers or bad men.

To her relief, Ross nodded. Only when she spread her hand on his arm
—to catch her balance, to catch her breath, to feel his hidden gun—did she realize that he was shaking too. A fine, almost imperceptible trembling. She had to know.

"If you asked me out here to kiss me . . . I'll let you."

His eyes, lingering on hers, seemed so very sad.
Haunted.
Like the rustler ghosts. "I shouldn't," he said.

So
she
kissed
him.

Her mouth felt even softer against his lips than it had under his fingertips, and Laramie sank into that softness like he would into rest, peace, sanctuary. He breathed her in, savored her breath on him
—and closed his hands into two fists, desperate not to do more.

Until this moment, he'd never fully understood the appeal of kissing. The few times he'd tried it
—

No. He wouldn't think of paid women around her again. This was nothing like those frenzied preambles
to embarrassment and release. This was a preamble to nothing.

Victoria Garrison's kiss was whole and holy, a completion unto itself. And in only a moment, it was gone.

She dropped back onto her heels, and only then did Laramie realize how Vic had drawn herself up high enough to reach him by pulling on his arms; he hadn't even felt pain under his shoulder bandage. She looked up at him now, somehow awed and confused and . . . thinking.

Always thinking. "That's not right," she said softly, the smooth skin between her eyebrows creasing.

"No," he murmured, his senses swirling like the creek. "I..." Then he registered what she said. "It isn't?"

But of course it wasn't. Her world was safe; his was dangerous. He'd done enough tonight without kissing her.

"It was nice," she rushed to assure him, ducking her head. "I... liked it. But that's how my parents kiss when we're watching." Did she know how they kissed when she
wasn 't
watching? "I thought. . ."

Laramie could not have guessed what she'd thought if she'd turned his own gun on him. That she drew her hands down his arms, onto his fists, didn't go far in helping him piece anything together.

'You're shaking." She pulled gently at his curled fingers, until his palms opened for her. She didn't look up
—all he saw of her was her curly dark hair—when she asked, "Didn't
you
like it? Should... should I apologize?"

Her
apologize? "I liked it," he whispered honestly.

Only then did she tip her face up, her palms pressing into his, and she smiled. Laramie found himself staring into bright eyes, an angel's face, soft lips
— pure beauty.

"You did?" she asked, shy and pleased at the same time. "Oh, good."

Then he took a quick step back from her, before he forgot himself again. What were they doing?

"You need to go home now," he told her. He winced inwardly at the pain that glanced across her expression then. But of course she wouldn't leave it at that.

"Why? What's wrong? You said you liked it." She took a step forward.

He took a step back. "Shouldn't have."

Her eyes widened with dismay he would rather have not seen. "Are you
married?"

The idea
startled
him enough to not back away any farther. "No!"

"Well, thank goodness for that!" She poked out her lower lip and blew a heavy breath upwa
rd, so it moved the dark hair th
at fell across her forehead. "Are you
engaged
to be married?"

He shook his head. Of course not.

She smiled then, teasing. "Are you a priest?"

Laramie stared at her.

Victoria folded her arms, which had the effect
— fortunate or unfortunate—of plumping her bosom beneath that prim blue calico of hers. He ought not be noticing, but could not look away. "Then I don't understand. Don't you like
me?"

He did not know how to answer so primed a question as that, except with more truth. "Yes. Now go home."

"Why?"

Because I am not a good man. Because you would not like my world. Because I vowed to kill somebody, and he might end up being someone you love.

Her family had troubles the year of the lynching; she'd said so herself. And why
had
Mrs. Garrison concerned herself
with
an immigrant
boy's welfare after
ward? Had she spent her money from guilt about her son? Her husband?

'You're keeping secrets," Victoria accused. "That means you don't trust me."

But he
couldn't
trust her
—any more than he'd been able to trust Julije. And he'd known Julije so much better. She'd been family.

'You cannot trust me, either," he reminded her.

"Oh." She blinked. "Well, then. I guess that's that." And, gathering her oddly wrinkled, drying skirts up around her white-shoed ankles, she squelched out of the clearing.

Laramie ached, but not because of his wounds. He wished she hadn't kissed him, because now he knew what it tasted like. He wasn't sure he could stand a lesser woman's mouth against his again. It would seem blasphemous.

He felt startled, hopeful, worried
—more reactions than he could ever have corralled—when Victoria Garrison spun on him and demanded, 'You'll tell me what you find out about the Red Light, though, won't you?"

The woman had a mind like a Texas Ranger's. Maybe that's why it was getting increasingly hard to lie to her.

That, and the kiss. And her calling him Ross.

"If I can." It would not be a matter of what he would know, after all. Just what he dared tell her.

She nodded. "Meet me here on Friday, then."

And foolishly, he nodded. After that kiss, he might agree to meet her in hell, if she told him to, even with her angry at him.

Actually, he felt safer with her angry at him.

So he saw it as unfortunate when she stopped scowling and lifted her chin. "Thank you for standing between me and that stranger, Ross."

But any man worth his salt would have done that much. She hadn't had to kiss him for it.

Ross Laramie stood and watched the trees where she vanished up the path for far longer than he probably should have. Then he left for the Red Light Saloon in Sheridan
—to meet up with one of the Wilcox train robbers.

The train robber who'd saved his life.

Chapter Seven

Victoria left her damp shoes and stockings on the mud porch, then padded barefoot into the parlor where the rest of her family was comfortably settled. Most of them, anyway.

She was used to Thaddeas living away in town. But in the last two years, Mariah and then Laurel had moved out too. It felt odd sometimes to see just her parents, Audra, Kitty, and Elise. It felt even odder, with the memory of Ross Laramie's kiss on her lips. And yet this was still home.

The room smelled of floor wax and fresh-cut flowers, as usual. Her weathered father still kept busy; tonight, he had leather traces in his lap. Her younger sisters amused themselves with their own pursuits, Audra with a book, Kitty practicing scales on the piano, Elise playing with her dolls and their newest dog, Duchess. And her m
other, sitting quietly in a com
fortable chair toward the edge of the room, was somehow the center of it.

Despite having borne six children
—seven, counting the baby buried under the elm—Elizabeth Garrison had thus far retained her dark-haired beauty and her tenaciously pleasant ways amid the hardness of the frontier. Mama loved the niceties of life, the iced lemonade and the electric lights and the cut flowers, almost as much as she clearly loved her husband. Papa, thought Victoria, would give her the world if he could—and had come pretty close to doing so.

But just because he accepted Elizabeth's progressive ways did not mean he tolerated them in his daughters. "Throw a shoe, Victoria Rose?" he asked.

"No, sir. Just got them wet." Victoria sat on the settee beside Audra, so she'd appear better-behaved by association. "So what are you reading tonight, Audie?"

"It isn't a dime novel. You wouldn't like it."

"Hard on footwear," noted Papa, looking back at the leather in his lap. He was fixing a bridle, Victoria decided.

"Yes, sir," she said. "Just water, though." Only when she noticed him slant a gaze toward her mother did she realize a lecture was coming.

"It's late for you to be out alone," noted Mama, who was sewing lace onto a piece of pink silk.

Victoria sat up, unwilling to argue with her parents
—especially in front of her sisters—but somewhat affronted. True, she hadn't exactly been behaving herself out by the creek. But she wasn't in school anymore. If she were a boy—

"Of course, you're practically a grown woman," added her mother before Victoria worked herself into a froth. "And you're gainfully employed. You
should
have more freedoms than the younger girls. But
y
ou're our daughter, and we worry, all the same."

Mama's eyes danced slightly when she said "we worry," so Victoria knew that
we
was mainly her father. She glanced back toward Papa, but he was scowling down at the broken bridle
—and listening intently.

'Yes, ma'am," Vic said.

'Your father and I discussed it," added Mama, still smiling at her sewing. "I was all for barring your windows and locking you in the house, not letting you leave without an armed escort at all times, but your father thought that was a little extreme."

Papa looked up from the bridle to stare at his wife, as if to protest that neither of them had said any such thing.