Texas Lily (29 page)

Another shot rang out, sending the gray gelding skittering nervously, but Cade had his target located now. Smoke drifted from behind Ollie's barn, and Cade swung to the side of the horse, Indian style, out of the attacker's range as he spurred it on.

People were pouring out of the buildings in the previously sleepy town. Gunshots on a Saturday night were to be expected, but midday and midweek called for explanations. Several of the men were saddling up, and Cade prayed they had the sense to cover the wagon. He didn't have the time to linger and find out.

By the time he reached the barn, the sniper had fled. Ollie ran out from the store, and Cade cast a suspicious glare toward him, dismounting to investigate the spot where he was certain the man had stood just moments before. The air reeked of gunpowder, and close inspection turned up a carelessly lost bullet. Gazing at the trampled grass and mud, Cade tossed it in his hand, then looked at Ollie's feet.

Ollie wore ill-fitting leather shoes, as most men in this country did if they weren't wearing moccasins. Cade looked again at the distinct heel print in the dirt. Boots were nigh onto impossible to find unless one came from Mexico City and had money to throw around. The sniper had worn boots.

"What happened?" Ollie demanded, clutching his shotgun, his gaze drifting nervously to the woods beyond the barn.

Cade glanced back to the wagon where Lily and the children waited. Men were surrounding it, and even Roy was riding back now that the shooting had stopped. Cade gave the other man an angry look. "I could ask you that, but since the fool was too far away to do any damage, I'll let it go this time. But if anything should happen to Lily and the children, I'll be back."

Mounting the gray, Cade left the other man furiously standing in the mud. Ollie hadn't done it, but Cade ventured to guess a certain friend of Ollie's had. Damn. He had thought he was ahead of the game this time.

Lily looked worried, but she had the sense to keep quiet while the men around them asked excited questions. Serena was crying and Juanita rocked her, crooning quietly while the men badgered Cade.

"Probably a kid shooting rabbits," Cade dismissed the episode disinterestedly. "The range was too far for anything else."

There seemed to be some reluctance to accept that, and several of the men rode over to the barn to see for themselves, but the excitement was over and there was little to be done. Several gave Cade suspicious glances and the murmur of "Indian" was heard more than once as they talked among themselves, but with Lily present, nothing else could be said.

Lily took a weeping Serena into her arms, and Cade tied his horse to the back of the wagon, climbing up beside Lily to handle the oxen. He sent Roy on his pony an anxious glance, but the boy was safer if he could ride away from the slow-moving wagon.

"You did right, boy," he told the child. "Think you can do the same if we're further down the road?"

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Roy nodded nervously. "Yes, sir. Do you think they'll come again?"

So the boy hadn't accepted his explanation either. Sending the wagon rolling away from the spectators, Cade spoke reassuringly. "Nope. We scared them off. But you never know when something else might come up. I want you to be ready."

"Yes, sir!" Roy danced his pony a little farther from the wagon, making a show of watching the surrounding countryside.

Unimpressed, Lily waited until Serena had calmed to ask, "Who was it?"

"I can't say for certain, but stay away from Ollie's friend Ricardo." There was no point in insulting Lily's intelligence with anything less than the truth. She needed to know who their enemies were, although Cade feared she wouldn't like the explanations.

Lily had a dozen questions, but she had learned from Cade's taciturnity. Holding Serena curled in her lap, with Juanita murmuring Spanish imprecations behind them, Lily had the sense to hold her tongue until they were home.

Roy, unfortunately, couldn't be counted on to do the same. At the first sign of the cabin he yelled and sent his pony into a gallop. By the time the wagon arrived in the yard, Travis and Ephraim were stumbling out of the cabin carrying every weapon that had come to hand, and their questions were curt and angry.

"Roy, take your horse back to the barn and tell Abraham to come get the animals." Cade climbed out, took Serena, and helped Lily down. Travis had already rounded the wagon and lifted a still shaken Juanita from the back. He held the small maid briefly, as her legs seemed about to give out from under her, and then released her when she shook herself free.

As Juanita fled to the safety of four walls, Travis confronted Lily and Cade. "Roy said you were attacked." He gave Lily a look of concern, but she was pulling her old woolen pelisse around herself and Serena and heading for the cabin to get out of the cold February wind.

Cade shrugged his shoulders. Muttering,
"De nada,"
he followed Lily. The shopping expedition he had hoped would lighten her heart had become an even greater wall between them.

Lily took coffee from the fire and poured a mug for Cade and another for herself, lingering in the warmth as the men entered. She felt Cade's towering presence as he picked up the mug, but she couldn't turn to him in the company of others. She wasn't certain she should turn to him at all. She knew very little about this man she had taken for her husband. Others had warned her, but she had been entranced by a flute and a dance and a seductive touch. Now she and her family might have to pay for her foolishness.

"Were you attacked or not?" Exasperated, Ephraim stamped into the cabin, setting the shotgun aside.

"Rabbit hunters," Cade offered, sipping at his coffee.

"Hogwash," Travis concluded, not putting his rifle down. "Juanita is shaking like a leaf. Roy can't get two words out in one direction, and Lily looks as if she's seen a ghost. You could at least offer her a chair, you know."

"I know where the chairs are," Lily snapped. "I can look after myself."

The challenge was thrown and Cade reluctantly took it up. Pulling a chair to the fire, he pushed Lily into it. She sank into it surprisingly easily, and Cade cursed his inadequacy when it came to gentlewomen. Lily was so strong that he managed to forget that she hadn't been brought up as he had been and that the child drew strength from her.

"If they weren't rabbit hunters, then they only meant to scare us. There isn't a rifle made that could have reached us from that distance."

Ephraim grunted and reached for the jug. "So you do have something to say. I was beginning to wonder."

"I do, when anyone's willing to listen," Cade conceded. Still not looking directly at Lily, he rested his hand at her nape. She stiffened, but then relaxed as he did no more than knead the muscles there. He needed to know she was on his side. It had never been important to have someone with him before, but he wanted it now.

"We're listening." Finally setting the rifle aside, Travis took a chair at the table and, resting his feet on another, sat back and waited expectantly.

Cade hesitated. He had only speculation to go on. It seemed foolish to mention it, but remembering he needed to leave for Bexar shortly, he overcame his reluctance.

"It could be nothing. It could have been rabbit hunters. If so, the hunter wore boots."

That meant nothing to the two men who had just come from back East where boots were readily available. They stared at him expectantly.

"Spanish boots, with heels." Cade emptied his mug and set it aside. Juanita filled it, and he realized she was listening as closely as the men. "I don't know any men around here who wear anything that expensive or hard to find."

"But you know someone from somewhere else." Lily spoke softly, finally looking at him. The blue of her eyes was as wintry as the skies outside, but Cade didn't think the cold was for him. The murder he read there was more for the man who had endangered her family. Cade rested his hand on the chair back, not daring to touch her when all he longed to do was take her in his arms. It weakened a man to think that way, and he resisted.

"There is a man who thinks he has reason to hate me. He has never tried to kill me before. I think the shots were just a warning, part of his plan. He stirs up trouble like winds breed storms." He didn't say the man might have shot Jim to make it look like an Indian attack when Cade was the most obvious Indian in the area. The strategy had worked well once before, but the explanation wouldn't make things better.

"Who is the bastard? We'll find him and take care of him." Travis was practically on his feet before Cade shook his head and motioned him back.

"You plan to talk him into behaving?" Cade asked wryly. Cade heard Lily's inelegant response to this insult, but Travis seemed to take it in stride. Sometimes he almost liked the slick-talking salesman. "We can't touch him. He's a Mexican who has gained some authority with Austin and the settlers. He is supposed to be working with the council."

"Ricardo," Lily said softly.

"Ricardo de Suela, he calls himself now, but he is not a de Suela. My father's first wife was a widow. He is her son."

"So why does he hate you?" Growing interested now, Travis put his feet up again and smiled widely at Juanita as she refilled his cup and offered him a plate of corn pone.

"He hated my mother. She refused to marry him, even after she returned to Bexar after leaving my father. It is a family matter. I do not wish to drag others into it. I only tell you to warn you. I must go into Bexar, and I would not leave you unprepared."

Lily shoved back her chair and jumped to her feet, knocking the chair over as she glared at Cade. "Leave us? Some friend of yours shoots at my family and you talk about leaving? Do you plan to join those suicidal idiots at the Alamo?"

"Lily..." Travis and her father both rose to their feet, but Lily only had eyes for Cade. He met her glare with the same stoic facade he had used the day they met.

"There is something I must do there. I know nothing of white men's wars, but for a few hundred men to stand against an army of thousands is the work of either fools or great heroes. I cannot help them either way. My business takes me beyond those walls."

"And I suppose I have no right to ask what that business is? I am only your wife, after all."

"This is business between myself and one other man. I have already told you more than should be said."

"How can you do this?" Lily whispered, so furious she did not dare speak louder.

"I can do this because you do not need me here. You have told me yourself that you can stand on your own. You have a father and friends here. You will be safe with them."

But would he be safe without her? Anguish tore through Lily as she met the implacable look in Cade's eyes. He wasn't going to give an inch. She hated him as much now as she had ever hated anyone.

"You're right, I don't need you. I don't need anybody. The whole lot of you can go to Bexar. I'm going to take a nap."

Lily walked out, leaving the room behind her crackling with unspoken emotions.

Neither Ephraim nor Travis said anything as Cade took the back door toward the barn. The cabin was too small for all of them. Newlyweds ought to be allowed their spats in private. This, however, had the makings of something more than a lovers' quarrel.

* * *

Cade returned in time for supper, but Lily wasn't speaking to him. She had already fed the children and sent them off to bed. She helped set the food on the table, then filled her plate and took it to join Juanita at the fire.

Ephraim and Travis raised a protest, but Cade said nothing. She was telling him he was treating her as a servant and not an equal. He did not know how to tell her that he felt it was the other way around, that he should be the one sitting by the fire. He had done nothing yet to earn his place at the table. But to earn it he had to leave her.

When Ephraim and Travis gave him furious looks, Cade sighed and picked up his plate. Crossing to the fire, he set the plate down on the shelf he had just built and with a nod of his head sent a worried Juanita to his place at the table. Instead of sitting on Juanita's unstable stool, he sat cross-legged at Lily's feet and used the stool for a table.

Lily tried to ignore him, but it was like trying to ignore a mountain sitting at her feet. Cade's black hair gleamed in the firelight, and she knew the fire was too warm for him when he rolled back his sleeves, and she could see the sheen of perspiration on his bronzed arms. It was his own fault. He had no one to blame but himself. She hadn't asked him to sit there.

When it came down to it, she hadn't asked him to marry her. He could take himself to San Antonio any time he liked and stay, for all she cared. It wasn't as if their marriage meant anything more than a name for the child and maybe an occasional tumble in bed.

Lily knew pregnancy was the reason for the tears in her eyes. She was a practical woman and had done the practical thing by marrying the father of her child. She had no reason to expect more, and she shouldn't be surprised or disappointed when she didn't receive it.

But the nights they had spent together in that bed had given her a different impression. Lily didn't have to stretch her imagination far to remember how it felt to lie beneath him, to feel the pulse of his body inside hers, to know the tensing of his muscles as he strained against her in the heat of passion. And then there was afterwards, when he held her and murmured against her ear and stroked her breasts and the place where their child grew. She wouldn't think about afterwards. That was what had given her the false notion that she meant something to him.