Explaining Herself Page 6

  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?"

  "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 abo
ut 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 upward, so it moved the dark hair that 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 afterward? 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 mother, sitting quietly in a comfortable 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.