Authors: Robin Gideon
Garrett watched her retreating figure, wanting desper
ately to get an answer from her yet not wanting Jedediah
to get involved. He knew how protective of her Pamela’s brother was, and he was healthily cautious of how Jed
ediah would react to learning of what he, in the guise of the Midnight Phantom, had done with Pamela.
The business with Jedediah was conducted, Garrett ex
plaining that it really hadn’t been any trouble to ride to the
cabin to deliver the bank draft to his client. Jedediah Bragg
had little formal education, but he suspected there was
something more behind this act than a business courtesy.
“Who’s the gal you’ve got in town?” Garrett asked. There
was three fingers’ worth of fine Kentucky sour mash whiskey
in his cup now instead of coffee.
Jedediah grinned. “Can’t understand at all what she
sees in me, but she sees something. We’ve got to keep it
all quiet though. You know what the folks in Whitetail Creek
think of bounty hunters.”
“To tell you the truth, they don’t think much of lawyers,
either.”
Jedediah grinned even more. “Maybe not. But mothers
tell their daughters to marry a lawyer. They don’t tell them
to run off and marry some bounty hunter, now, do they?”
They laughed again and raised their cups in a silent
toast. Garrett decided he liked Jedediah more than he’d pre
viously thought, and he hoped that whatever happened
between himself and Pamela wouldn’t change his relationship
with him.
“I don’t mean to rush you along…” Jedediah left the
sentence unfinished.
“I’ve got to be running,” Garrett said, taking the hint,
annoyed that he’d have to leave without getting the answer he wanted from Pamela. In truth, he wanted much more from
her than just her consent to go to the dance with him, but
that was an issue he hadn’t yet completely resolved.
An instinct told Garrett that he should be seen in public
with Pamela. He couldn’t say why he felt this way. To
balance their secret relationship, hidden in shadows and
darkness, behind masks and separate identities? He just
didn’t know. But he wanted the whole world to see him
with Pamela Bragg at his side, and he was willing to move
heaven and earth and thumb his nose at Whitetail Creek society
to accomplish this feat.
Garrett and Jedediah shook hands once more.
“What’s your hurry? You seem jumpy as a cat.”
Jedediah grinned. “I bought a gold necklace for my sweetheart. The sooner I give her the necklace, the sooner I can find out if she’s just maybe thinking about marriage.”
“And you’d rather not have your sister adding her two cents worth.”
“She can complicate matters.”
“Garrett…”
Garrett turned quickly toward the sound. Pamela was stand
ing at the edge of the cabin, leaning against it with apparent nonchalance, though the set of her mouth and the
look in her jade-green eyes suggested she was not feeling
casual.
“Hello,” he replied, suddenly unable to think of any
thing to say.
“I can’t go to the dance with you.”
His heart sank. “Why not? It’s just a dance.”
He saw the anger—that damnable anger always so near
the surface with her—spring forth again. “It’s just another dance to you, Garrett, but not to me. I don’t have the fancy
clothes to go to your kind of dance.”
Pamela turned and walked away, disappearing around the
corner of the cabin. Garrett rushed after her, reaching out to take her arm. She pulled out of his grasp, spinning to face him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down into her lovely face, wanting to take her into his arms, knowing that she’d fight
him like a wildcat if he tried. “I didn’t understand. I just didn’t think—”
“That’s right,” Pamela cut in fiercely. “You just didn’t think.”
These weren’t easy words to swallow, not for a man
who had graduated second in his law class and was considered by friends and enemies alike as extremely in
telligent. But they were true.
“We don’t have to be enemies,” he said.
“Of course we do.” Pamela raised her hands in protest then brought them down to slap her thighs. “Don’t you understand anything at all? You’re a man, and I’m a
woman; you’re rich, and I’m poor. Good Lord! We’re
natu
ral
enemies!”
Now it was Garrett’s turn to shake his head slowly in disgust and to look sharply at Pamela. “We’re not natural enemies. What makes us enemies is your narrow sense of right and wrong, your bias.”
“Me? Biased? It’s your
society
that won’t accept me.”
“And you won’t accept me,” Garrett shot back, his anger rising. “The knife cuts both ways. You’re the monster you
hate, railing against biases of others, then letting your own
thoughtless resentments rule your life and dictate your actions.”
He turned on his heel, heading toward his horse before
he said any more to the young woman who’d infuriated him so.
But she rushed after him, taking his arm and forcing
him to face her. When he looked down at her, a rush went
through Garrett. How lovely she was, faintly flushed, young,
and vibrantly alive! Powerful memories came over him as
he recalled the subtle expressions that had played across her face while they’d made love.
“I’m sorry,” Pamela said. “And believe me, I’m not very good at apologies.”
He acted without thinking. The sincerity in her voice
made him forget their differences. He bent low and kissed
her lips, softly at first and then with a bit more pressure,
a little more desire. His arms wound around her waist, and
he pulled her closer to once again feel the firm, tantalizing
warmth of her breasts pressing against his chest. And
when the tip of his tongue touched her lips and they parted just slightly to allow partial entrance, Garrett’s passion burst
into flame within his heart.
Pamela was stunned that Garrett Randolph had kissed her.
She closed her eyes…and at that moment, with her eyes
closed, her body and her senses told her what her eyes
had not seen. The society lawyer in the exquisitely fash
ionable charcoal-gray suit was also the enigmatic Mid
night Phantom, who wore a Colt at his hip, a mask over his
eyes, and a black cape to keep him hidden in shadow.
When the kiss finally ended, Pamela took a step away, a
hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. Garrett Randolph was the Midnight Phantom! Her head was spinning. Everything she’d ever thought she knew about humanity, about society, was now in question. Her eyes studied Garrett. This was the Midnight Phantom—the mysterious masked man she’d shared her passion with!
Jedediah stepped around the corner of the cabin, a strange look on his face. “What are you two doing over here? Garrett, I thought you’d be gone by now.”
“I’m just leaving,” he said coldly.
After kissing Pamela, he’d looked into her eyes, and the horror and shock he’d seen in their green depths was un
mistakable. He didn’t choose to wait around to hear what she thought of him—it was written in that look. She was
disgusted that he, a rich lawyer, had kissed her.
He rushed to his big white gelding and climbed into the saddle. “Jedediah, you stay out of trouble now,” he said, turning his horse around to ride off.
“Garrett, wait.” Pamela called out. She walked over and placed a hand lightly on the toe of Garrett’s boot as he sat in the saddle. She tried to smile up at him. “I’d go to the dance with you, but I just don’t have the proper clothes. And even if I did, those society types would never accept me. That’s the way it is. I’m sorry. I’d feel out of place.”
“Sure,” Garrett said. He wanted to ask Pamela how she
could be brave enough to sneak into Jonathon Darwell’s bed
room to steal his money but not brave enough to go to a
dance where some privileged young women might look
down their noses at her.
Garrett rode off, wondering whether the differences that separated him from Pamela would always be as insurmount
able as they now seemed.
As Garrett rode off in one direction, another rider was
approaching from the south, his horse moving at an easy
pace. Pamela welcomed the newcomer at first because he
drew Jedediah’s attention away from her. She didn’t want
her brother asking what she and Garrett had been talking
about at the side of the cabin.
Her brother had never considered the possibility that she and the sophisticated lawyer, Garrett Randolph, might be kissing, that a man of Garrett’s wealth and style would be physically drawn to her. Jedediah had always
been very protective of his younger sister, especially after
the murders of their parents and siblings. Jedediah and
Pamela being the only family left, they had developed a bond
that had grown and strengthened over the years…
though there was still much about her that he knew noth
ing of.
“What’s
he
doing here?” Jedediah murmured, squinting
at the rider heading their way.
Pamela looked at the man. She could make out a figure,
but it was still too far away to recognize.
“Who is it?” she asked finally, curiosity getting the
better of her. Her brother’s superior eyesight annoyed her.
“Richard Darwell.”
Cold, raw fear jolted Pamela, painful as a bucket of ice water poured over her after a steaming bath.
He’s coming to have me arrested,
she thought. She struggled against the impulse to rush into the cabin to
retrieve her double-barreled shotgun. Jedediah had short
ened the barrels on it with a hacksaw. It could stop man or beast within a range of thirty yards.
But if Richard Darwell was coming to arrest her, where was the sheriff? Richard certainly wouldn’t come alone, knowing how protective and dangerous Jedediah was.
“Are you all right?” her brother asked then. He’d been looking at his sister’s profile, watching the blood draining
from her face.
“Me? Sure, I’m fine,” Pamela replied glibly. She stepped
onto the porch, turning her back to her brother. “I haven’t
got time to stand around here doing nothing. I’ll have some good jackrabbit stew going in no time.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be around long enough to eat. There’s something in town I’ve got to do.”
Pamela turned and grinned at her brother. “I’ll just bet there’s something in Whitetail Creek you’ve got to do, and I’ll be polite enough to not ask her name.”