Explaining Herself Read online

  And she did start talking.

  "I wasn't mistaken!" insisted Victoria, circling Ross Laramie to see his face. 'You are a nice man."

  Nobody could say those things to Kitty, the way he had, if he weren't deeply decent.

  "Don't count on it," he warned, his expression blank.

  "I'm not counting on anything, I'm just..." Following my instincts. Justifying my earlier behavior. "I'm trying to understand you."

  "Don't."

  She folded her arms. "I try to understand everything, Ross Laramie. You're not likely to be an exception. Still, I... I shouldn't have said what I did earlier. I didn't mean to herd you anywhere you didn't mean to go. I just thought I should be, well, clear on what I expected." She felt herself blush. "Or what I should expect, anyhow."

  He didn't say anything.

  "I'm sorry for getting angry over it," she added.

  He shrugged one shoulder, as if to say he didn't care. The tension in his back said differently.

  "I was upset at myself, too," she continued doggedly.

  "For thinking I'd misread you. And then you were so nice to Kitty, upstairs, and I knew I hadn't misread you at all. You are a nice man. So something else must be going on, and I didn't give you a chance to explain, and I'm sorry for that. Everything—" For a moment she almost lost her train of thought, under remembrances of him holding her, kissing her, whispering in her ear. Everything, for sure. "Everything else aside, you've become a friend, and I want to help."

  He said nothing, so she put a hand on his tight, taut arm. "I want to help with whatever's got you trapped."

  "Like Kitty helped the stallion?" he demanded.

  His anger confused her more than his words. "What?"

  "She heard us talk about putting it down, so she tried to set it free. That's why she was in the corral. Helping."

  Victoria blinked up at him, stunned by his insight. Of course! Why else would well-behaved Kitty do something so strictly forbidden as to climb into the stallion's corral, unless she thought she had no choice?

  She felt embarrassed that she hadn't figured it out herself. "She wanted to save it."

  "And in appreciation, it tried to kill her."

  Critters that get trapped turn mean. His description of the stallion had given her chills. Now—she didn't know why—she got chills again. They hurt so bad inside that they don't know anything else but to hurt other critters.

  "And you saved her," she reminded him.

  "Pembroke's the one who killed it."

  But she wouldn't let him duck that. "And you're the one who heard it first. You're the one who shot it the fastest—you kept it from hurting her more. You saved her."

  When Ross closed his eyes, as if fighting something, it looked strangely as though he were praying. His words came out low and tight. "I am fast for a reason."

  That made her look at his gun, solid against his dark thigh—and suddenly it wasn't there anymore.

  Vic blinked, startled. In one smooth movement of his hand and his hips, Ross had skimmed the weapon from its holster and pointed it toward a tree behind the house. In another flex of his arm and flick of his wrist, he dropped it neatly back into the holster, as if he'd never moved.

  "Golly," she breathed.

  "I am fast," he repeated bitterly, "for a reason."

  "I haven't seen anything that fast since Mr. Cody came to lunch. But Papa told him to put his piece away." Buffalo Bill had done so, too. Her parents felt strongly about using weapons as tools, not entertainment.

  Ross scowled at her reaction. "That wasn't fast." He lifted his foot onto a nearby stump, long enough to tie strings from his holster around the inside of his thigh. Then he stood again. "This is faster."

  This time he didn't move his hips. She didn't even see the gun go from holster to hand—one moment he was standing still, the next moment he was aiming at the woodshed.

  Then he rolled it back into its holster.

  Then—like magic—it was back in his hand.

  "This part," he told her evenly, spinning the pistol backward, then forward over his hand, then finally into the holster, "is just show. Because I've had time to practice."

  "Like Buffalo Bill," she told him.

  "Like a man who is too familiar with guns," he corrected her. "This is why I cannot court you."

  What? "Because you know guns?"

  "Because nice men don't generally know guns this well." As if to prove his point, he drew the revolver again, popped its cylinder, and dropped the bullets into his palm, one-two-three-four-five. They clinked together like hard candy. "Nice men don't have the leisure to learn this."

  Then he pocketed the bullets and really started to play—fast draws, backward draws, tossing and twirling the revolver from hand to hand. Every now and then he stopped and pointed the weapon toward something—a tree, a stump, a boulder. Never at her. Never once at a living thing.

  He was a good man. Maybe he just didn't realize it. "Lawmen know guns," she reminded him.

  His cheek went tight, his ghost smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "A badge doesn't make a man good."

  "And a gun doesn't make a man bad."

  He shook his head, fed the bullets back into the revolver, and returned it to its holster. Then he reached under his thigh and undid the strings. He looked sulky, as if his show hadn't accomplished what he'd meant it to.

  Victoria decided that a little courage was in order. "So you're some kind of gunslinger," she accepted, low. "That's probably a good thing for a range detective. And maybe ... maybe it's a good thing that you don't want to court me, too. But I meant what I said. You've become a good friend, to my family and to me. So if something's wrong, if you've got some kind of trouble, I want to help."

  'You don't just want to help," he accused, bitter and resigned at the same time. "You want to understand."

  And he was right. So she nodded.

  Ross closed his eyes, his lashes sooty on his high cheeks, and again he looked as if he were praying. He looked like he was praying hard. And when he opened his eyes, he looked as if God hadn't answered.

  He nodded as if a decision had been made—even if it was, somehow, one that would damn him.

  "Maybe you can help me, at that."

  Chapter Fourteen

  His best chance at controlling how much she learned was to tell her himself. To tell her some part of it, anyway, and to pray that she never learned the rest.

  Glancing to make sure they were alone, Laramie headed toward a sheltering brace of quaking aspen, not far behind the house. Victoria paused only to whistle boyishly for the dog, then followed. So did Duchess, loping around the corner of the house to join them.

  "It's night," she explained needlessly. "I promised."

  And unlike him, she kept her promises.

  Laramie reminded himself that, in all likelihood, the man he hunted was no Garrison. He could still avenge Julie, and Victoria could still help him—if only he could manage the words. He watched her wrap her arms around a tree trunk and pillow her cheek against it. Even in the shadows of mountain dusk, he could see the shine in her eyes, the curve of her face. She wanted to help, and she was beautiful.

  "I made a promise too," he confessed over the whispering of the leaves. "Long ago. And I need . . ."

  But the words wouldn't squeeze out of him, not even for her. He looked down, discouraged.

  "What kind of promise?" prompted Victoria—but how could he answer? / promised to kill someone.

  She considered him, worrying her lower lip. Then she tried, "To whom did you make the promise?"

  Which gave him an idea. "A boy," he responded— not honestly enough to face her while he spoke the words, but far more honestly than he'd feared.

  "From around here?"

  "Once. He was . .. sent to Texas."

  "Which is where you met him," she guessed. And he did lose track of the boy he'd been, sometime between jail and Texas, while turning into the man he'd become. So maybe they'd met.


  "Well. . ." Victoria leaned back, hanging from the tree trunk, as if stretching into so enjoyable an activity as asking questions. "Does he have a name?"

  "A foreign one," admitted Ross, low. "Lauranovic."

  "Lor-ah-no-vitch," she repeated carefully, and it startled him to hear the name out loud. His family had been the Laurences for so long, before the lynchings. They'd only become Lauranovic again when they became outcasts.

  He nodded and made himself speak what he hoped, tonight, would be the worst. "Folks say they were rustlers."

  She straightened. "The rustlers Papa mentioned today?"

  Laramie nodded, startled by how quickly she'd pieced that together, afraid she would suddenly guess the rest. YOU are a Lauranovic, Ross-alias-Laramie! YOU are a rustler!

  "But—" Victoria cocked her head. "He was just a boy?"

  He sank carefully into a low, cowboy crouch and picked up a twig to poke at the ground between his boots. "He was twelve when his father and brother were lynched."

  "Lynched!"

  'Your father kept the posse from hanging him too." Yet another reason to spare Jacob Garrison. 'Your mother hired the lawyer who got him sent to Texas instead of to prison."

  "Which is where you met him," she finished mistakenly, clearly absorbing all this. "Oh my."

  Laramie crouched there and said nothing. He expected the worst when Victoria bent down beside him. Cowboys could hold that easy crouch for an hour at a time. Ladies, from sheer modesty, weren't so good at it. She didn't try; she just swept her skirts aside and kneeled in the dirt.

  Now he couldn't look away without being rude.

  "It wasn't a regular ranch, was it?" she asked solemnly. "If he was sent there instead of prison, it must have been some kind of. . ."

  "A boy's ranch," he admitted, knowing she would grasp the judicial overtones of that euphemism. It had been one of the earlier models for what were called reform schools.

  "That's why you haven't told anybody about your connection to him," she guessed—and he realized his mistake. Even trying to hide his delinquent childhood, he'd somehow confessed it to her! And yet...

  He felt confused to see nothing but sympathy in Victoria's shadowed gaze. Concerned sympathy. For once, Victoria Garrison did not ask something.

  She did not ask why he'd been at a boys' ranch. He felt certain she wanted to know. That was how Victoria gauged trust, after all. Intimacy. Secrets.

  But she also respected his privacy. So all she asked was "What did you promise him? This rustler boy?"

  At that moment, he thought her the finest woman he'd ever met—a woman whose eyes he dared not meet for this part. "His older sister pointed the lynch mob to them," he admitted, keeping his voice desperately even. "She was in love with a local rancher, and confessed her father's hideout. That rancher betrayed them all. Then he abandoned her, and she hanged herself."

  Even when Victoria gasped, he did not look at her.

  "That's when folks learned she was with child," he finished, ugliness on top of ugliness. "And the boy—"

  "Lauranovic," she said, and again the name tickled down his spine like a ghost of memory—or identity.

  "He believed his family was innocent. He—" Laramie swallowed. "He claimed that the Wards were rustling their cattle, and his father and brother only stole them back. His only purpose—hope—was ..."

  How could he ask this of her?

  But now that he'd told this much, how could he not?

  "He had to know who betrayed them. Someone in Sheridan seduced, then abandoned his sister, destroyed their family, and he must—he needed to know who."

  "And you promised to help him find out?"

  "I—" How could he explain that part? "Yes."

  Only when Victoria said nothing did he slide his gaze warily back toward her. She was fidgeting with a heart-shaped leaf in her lap, her dark brows drawn together in concentration. When she lifted her eyes, he wasn't prepared for the demand in them. "So that's what you've really been after, all along."

  He stared, trapped. He hadn't thought of that.

  "You didn't come to Sheridan for work, even as a range detective," she continued, piecing it together even as she spoke. 'You came here to uncover an old injustice."

  For once, he could not hide behind ambiguity. He nodded, watched her shadowed face, and awaited the worst.

  Instead, she nodded, then cocked her head again. "But you're a very good range detective."

  Confused, Laramie sat back in the dirt. He doubted he could hold his balance if the conversation kept going like this. Every time he thought she would make an accusation, see his dark truths, she somehow managed to praise him instead. He was a good range detective?

  Only Victoria. Only his sweet, hopeful Victoria.

  "Only for the same reason I'm good with a gun," he warned her, his voice an uneven rasp.

  "Well, I'm good at detecting other things," she assured him. "And if this happened some time ago— when was it?"

  "Eighteen eighty-eight."

  "Well, then maybe folks won't be so touchy about discussing it with me," she continued easily.

  He stared at her. She meant it? She would help?

  "Or maybe folks won't remember it at all," he said.

  She dismissed such pessimism with a wave of her hand. "A scandal like that? They'll remember. Especially the man who was to blame. Anyway, it never hurts to ask."

  He almost smiled again. Almost. "Yes, Victoria," he insisted quietly. Using her first name felt intimate, stolen. "It can hurt. At the very least, it can hurt reputations."

  And at the most, for the man he was after, it could hurt far, far more.

  "Don't worry so much. I'll try to keep people's names out of it as much as possible. The past is past, right?"

  He stared at her and thought, The past is everything.

  "I'll say I'm curious because of the rustling," she continued, warming to her ruse. "And really, Ross, since I'm curious about everything, people might not get suspicious at all. Once we find out who misused that poor immigrant girl, you can send word to the boy—"

  Then she paused, frowned. "I guess her brother's not a boy anymore, is he?"

  Laramie said nothing. In the woods behind them, an owl hooted, coyotes called. The aspen leaves whispered warnings.

  "Well, send word to your friend anyway. And you'll have kept your promise. All right?"

  It wasn't all right. She didn't know what he meant to do with that information. His promise had not been simply to learn who misused Julije. His promise had been to avenge her. As desperately as he needed to do that, even now, he also knew that many people would think him wrong for it—including, he suspected, Victoria Garrison.

  If she discovered what he had not, finally found him the name he needed, he would have used her to help him commit murder. She might forgive him for spending time in a reform school, but she would never forgive him for that.

  He wasn't sure he could, either.

  Victoria didn't tell even her best friend everything she'd learned from Ross Laramie. Especially not what she'd learned about Ross Laramie.

  She didn't mention that he'd spent time at a boy's ranch, because Evangeline would wonder why—and Vic hated to admit that, like with his wounds, she hadn't asked. When Ross trusted her, wholly trusted her, he would confess the rest on his own.

  Wouldn't he?

  She didn't tell Evangeline that Ross was a faster draw than Buffalo Bill Cody, since Evangeline already thought of Ross as dangerous. Evangeline had to be wrong there, too. Ross had saved Kitty's life. He'd held Victoria, quiet and strong, when she'd desperately needed holding. After they'd separated on the trail, he'd caught up with her just as he'd promised to, and later that night he'd even recounted what little he'd seen of the rustlers he'd followed.

  Ross was a good man. She knew it, felt it, even if she couldn't prove it.

  So Victoria summoned unusual reserve in what to reveal to Evangeline about Ross Laramie. And even there, her friend did not app
rove.

  "Where were your folks when he told you all this?" asked Evangeline as they both sat in the back of the Herald office during Victoria's noon break, flipping through newspapers from 1888. Mr. Day had gone up stairs to take his meal with his wife; that usually meant a long lunch.

  Together, die girls had gotten as far as October and found nothing about a lynching. The continued lack of proof made Victoria uncomfortable, but, well, maybe Ross or his friend had been mistaken about the year. Or maybe the lynchings had happened in December.

  He hadn't lied to her.

  "My parents were upstairs with Kitty. Stuart had gone home by then. Collier was on the porch with Laurel, and Thaddeas was in the parlor with Mariah and the others."

  Evangeline did not look up, but her thin, pale brows drew together. "And you were behind the house together?"

  Oh. Now Vic knew why she'd asked. "Duchess was there. And we sat under some trees and talked, is all." They'd done nothing more that night, at least. No matter how solid Ross's hand had felt when he'd helped her to her feet afterward, the barest flicker of his eyes revealing that he was still healing from. .. from what? No matter how tall and warm he'd felt beside her before he let her go. And then the thirsty way he'd stared at her, his head tucked as if to better see her eyes ...

  Well, they'd done no more than that at the Lorelei. He had refused to court her, after all. And she did have a father, brother, and brother-in-law dangerously close.

  Evangeline said nothing, just turned pages.

  "You're starting to remind me of Audra," teased Vic.

  "Audra's a proper young lady." Evangeline said that as a compliment, almost wistful.

  "Or of Thaddeas," added Victoria. "Overprotective. You know, you should come to dinner with us while I'm staying in town." Papa was running his ranch from the Lorelei for at least a week, while Mama tended Kitty. Victoria, because of her job, had temporarily moved into their in-town house with her older brother until her parents returned to their own ranch. "I only wish you could spend the night. The house seems very empty without my parents or my sisters there."