Explaining Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  Victoria said, "Three?" And she felt suddenly ill.

  Was that why his mother had vanished?

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Three? Laramie hadn't fully absorbed that part of the sheriff's boast before Victoria questioned it. Poppa, Phil... and who?

  Then Ward said, 'You think your sister killed herself?"

  And with slow loathing, Laramie understood. Maybe not Victoria's sigh of relief. Maybe not how Alden Wright spun in their direction, blanching.

  But he understood the evil that was Bram Ward. He knew it in himself. Maybe it was just a matter of degree.

  Reluctantly, Laramie let go of Victoria.

  "Oh, Ross," she protested, reaching for his arm, but he dodged her touch. He could not touch her goodness and ever know, for sure, just how deep his own evil went.

  "She went to Sheriff Howe about our rustling," continued Ward with desperate sadism as Laramie stepped nearer him. "Said she had proof. But Howe was a pard of my pa's. So we waited 'til your ma was at the jail—"

  Laramie reached behind his head and unknotted his oversized silk bandanna which cowboys wore against dust and weather.

  "—and we rode over to that stinkin' cabin of your'n—"

  Laramie began to flip the dark cloth into a loose coil.

  "—and we strung the bitch up, same as her pa," gloated Ward. "I done in three of you Bohunks, damn you! Whether you put me on trial or you murder me right here can't never even us up. / won."

  Then Laramie struck, looping and tightening the cloth around Ward's neck in one smooth movement. "Like this?" he rasped into the man's ear. "Is this how you won?"

  Ward tried to hold his smile, but within moments his lips had parted in an attempt to draw air. Still, he gasped the word "Yeah."

  It was easy, easy as Laramie remembered. He wanted this man dead. He had the ability to do it. He cinched the scarf tighter around the man's neck, tried not to imagine his once-pretty sister fighting for her life, her baby's life. "You think she felt like this?"

  An odd, abrasive sound began to stutter out of the sheriff's mouth. His wide eyes bulged; his face reddened. He dropped to his knees, his arms beginning to yank against the cuffs, but Laramie just kneeled right beside him. He felt the man shudder, his ugly life fighting to continue even now. Life was tenacious, after all. Even bound and helpless. Even as dark a life as this.

  And Ross respected that.

  In a quick move, as Ward's eyes rolled up in his head, Laramie dug his fingers between the silk noose and the man's throat and yanked it loose. He scooted back from his own horror, on his butt, as the sheriff crumpled to the ground, pants soiled, hands still cuffed behind him. Only then, drawing his knees under him, did he really look at the filth this man was.

  So that's what winning looked like, was it?

  Ward could have it.

  "If you don't want a trial," he warned, beginning to shake, "find someone else to kill you."

  And he stood. His heart raced; his head spun. History had almost repeated itself—but with Laramie in the role of Boris Ward. It wasn't self-defense this time, only vengeance. And vengeance wasn't enough.

  He wouldn't let a Ward make him kill again.

  Laramie looked down and saw that his hands only felt like they were shaking. Then he looked at Victoria— I didn 't kill him!

  And his heart sank.

  She stood, her hands covering her mouth, staring in horror at the unconscious sheriff—and Alden Wright was clutching her shoulders with white fingers, as if protecting her from Laramie. And she let him.

  There was something between the two of them after all.

  Laramie should never have started feeling again, because that realization almost destroyed him. When Vic lowered her hands to say, "Oh, Ross," he couldn't bear to hear what would surely be a lengthy explanation, so he turned away and focused on just doing what he had to do to get her home.

  Careful, closed, he made sure their captives were gagged. He hitched the rustlers' horses to a lead rope and made Alden Wright help him hoist the tied men, one at a time, into their saddles.

  Wright kept sneaking glances of building fury toward him, the whole time. Was he jealous that Ross had called Victoria "sweetheart," or angry that Ross had helped bring such ugliness into Vic's world? Only when the unsightly heap that was the sheriff groaned back to muffled consciousness did Wright finally say, 'You had him!"

  Ross squinted at him, confused. "What?"

  "You could have killed him!" Wright's voice cracked. 'You're a killer—"

  "Alden!" protested Victoria sharply from where she was packing weapons into a saddlebag. She called him Alden.

  "—why didn't you kill the son of a bitch?"

  Wright wanted Laramie to kill the sheriff? Laramie shook his head, disgusted. "That's what he wanted."

  And Victoria was there. But that wasn't a good enough excuse, even if she weren't involved with Wright.

  "Then don't tie the bastard onto his horse; drag him behind it!" Wright insisted. "Damn it, Laurence, he killed your sister; how can you let him get away with jail time?"

  "Alden," warned Victoria again.

  Laramie just shook his head and left the two of them, went to throw sand on the rustlers' fire. Something tickled at his awareness again, and he eyed the arroyo for danger, then conceded that it wasn't that sort of instinct. This was more what Victoria would call puzzle pieces.

  The area looked clear, the horses calm, the bad men tied. Whatever it was could just remain a puzzle for now. The ruin of two months' worth of dreams sufficiently distracted him.

  Laramie felt Victoria's gaze on him once, her confused gray eyes begging him to speak, to react, to do something. He wasn't sure what. Likely something to do with talking, something beyond his capabilities. When he returned from dousing the campfire, she and Wright were arguing by the horses. So the man wasn't just wealthy and presumably respectable—he had words, too. So what?

  That's why it surprised him when Victoria turned away from Wright and asked him, Laramie, "May I ride behind you?"

  Laramie looked at her gelding, still wearing her padded sidesaddle. The horse didn't seem hurt. When Victoria put an insistent hand on his arm, the sensation flashed through him like standing too near to a lightning strike. He closed his eyes against it. He could not do this, not here, not today. If he started feeling it all now . . .

  "Please?" she insisted, as if he could deny her anything. "I don't want to ride alone."

  So Laramie offered his hand and boosted her onto Blackie, glad his bullet wounds had finally healed. Her skirts rode up on her legs as she straddled the horse, behind the saddle's cande. She wore high, soft-leather shoes with little bone buttons that traced die curve of her ankle. Her stockings were knitted in an intriguing, zigzag weave that stretched for her calf.

  Laramie mounted, careful not to kick her. While he found his stirrups, he felt Victoria draw one side of his split-tailed duster into place, and stiffened. It seemed so proprietary, so right. Then she wrapped her arms around his waist. Her bosom and jaw pressed against his back through his duster, and he realized what a bad call this had been. He could hardly help feeling her, this way! And if he began to allow one sensation, God knew where it would end. Hope?

  Hope was more dangerous than firearms.

  Not surprisingly, Wright protested. "Really, Miss Garrison! That's hardly proper." God pity any beau of Victoria's who presumed he could direct her behavior.

  But she'd said Wright wasn't her beau.

  "I'll move onto Huckleberry before we reach town,"

  Vic assured them both, her tone cross. "For now, I am riding with Ross."

  "Ross?" challenged Alden.

  Instead of arguing, she said, "I want to go home." So they rode out.

  Laramie tried to ignore the sensation of Vic's fingers across his abdomen and ribs. Her words seemed to vibrate into his spine when she asked, "Where will we take them?" Then she shifted behind him, perhaps to eye their prisoners. "Considering that we
've captured the sheriff and the deputy, who watches them in jail?"

  Don't. Feel. Anything. Ross carefully shrugged.

  "And we left the cattle," she noted, leaning a different direction. Every time she moved, her hands gripped another bit of him, warm and sure. "Will they be all right until someone fetches them? They won't get too hungry in there, will they?"

  She paused after that question. Since Wright said nothing, Laramie assured her, "No."

  "Good." She squeezed him a little more tightly, resting her cheek against his back, and he felt something anyway. A falter in his reserve. A cracking in his guard. It was all that the blows from this day—Julije's murder, Wright's interest—needed to gain a fingerhold.

  He took a deep breath, struggled to regain his balance against the eddying, swirling emotions in him. Then Vic cried, "OH!" and he nearly leapt out of the saddle.

  "What?"

  "We have to go back!"

  Ross reined in Blackie, called "Whoa" to the train of horses following him and Wright, and twisted in his saddle to better see Victoria. "Why?"

  Her hands slid innocently down to his hips, and he definitely felt that. "My camera," she explained, eyes pleading. "I dropped my camera when Deputy Franklin captured me. We have to go back for it!"

  Wright made a frustrated sound. "For God's sake, I'll buy you a new camera! Could we just get this day done with?"

  Victoria glared at him. Then she turned her bright gaze to Laramie. "But I took photographs," she pleaded. "Pictures of the rustlers blotting brands."

  Sheriff Ward, though tied and gagged, turn to glare silent accusations at his deputy.

  Laramie stared down at her. She'd put herself at risk to take photographs of the rustlers? Was she a lunatic1?

  If so, she was a lunatic with what might be important evidence, assuming photographs were admissible in court. She was exactly the kind of lunatic he had figured her for, both at Hole-in-the-Wall and Stuart MacCallum's sheep ranch. And she was a lunatic asking him, not Alden Wright, for help.

  "Please let's go back?" With him turned back in his saddle and her leaning around to better meet his gaze—with her hands still on his hips, fingers brushing the crease where his dungarees folded onto his thigh—the moment felt almost intimate.

  Ross looked at Alden Wright. "Cover them."

  "Me?" Wright's surprise hardly inspired confidence.

  Ross stared him down. "Do not get close to them."

  Then he reined Blackie back in the direction they'd come. Just him and Victoria Garrison.

  He wondered if she knew how tightly she was holding him.

  He didn't kill the sheriff, Victoria reminded herself. And the sheriff even murdered Julie. Surely Alden—

  But she wasn't sure. That's why telling Ross posed such a risk. Staying silent, though, risked no less than his trust. Ross had kept his promise and come back, at the best possible time. He'd saved her from a fate she feared to imagine. How could she not trust him?

  "Ross?" Victoria bowed her head so that her forehead touched his spine, through his long, black duster. Like praying. He filled her arms, her heart, every dream she had.

  If that didn't deserve prayer, what did?

  He did not say What? But she felt his interest in the shifting tensions of his body against hers.

  "I have to tell you something. I don't want to tell you, because I'm afraid of how you'll react. But as long as I'm afraid of how you'll react, then it's not right to pursue anything further, and I've got to pursue this further. Sensible or not, I've got to. So I have to tell you."

  He tensed beneath her hands, so taut that he almost vibrated with it. But he also managed to say, low and raspy, "Go on."

  "It's just that, after you left, I realized ..." She felt like a traitor, even to hesitate. "I realized that you wanted to know who seduced Julie in order to get revenge. Didn't you?"

  It felt like hugging a tree, all hard muscle and hardened heart. 'Yes," he admitted.

  So much for explaining that away. "But you decided not to."

  He hesitated before admitting, 'Yes."

  See? She took a deep breath of him. "Because of me."

  He said nothing.

  "Well, I'm going to ask you to do that again. I mean, to not do anything. Because of me. I—" Oh God. If she were wrong, and got Alden Wright killed, how would she live with herself?

  But if she let her need for proof get in the way of what her heart already knew, insulted him with her distrust, how could she live without him? She loved Ross. Beyond words, beyond reason. She loved his support when Kitty was hurt. She loved his protection when they surprised the stranger by the creek, when he rescued her today. She loved his wounded heart and his steady spirit.

  So she told him. "I want you not to hurt Alden."

  Now it felt like hugging a rock. He said nothing. His only movements were the tiny adjustments in his arms and legs as he guided the horse to retrace the route of her capture.

  Victoria considered asking him to promise before she said anything more. That would be safer for Alden. But it would also be manipulative; she would never know his real decision unless he had full freedom to kill Julie's lover.

  He didn't kill the sheriff, though. Ward deserved punishment for what he'd done to Julie, far more than Alden did, but Ross hadn't executed the man himself. He was good.

  "You should know that after you left. . . ," she began—then recognized a rock formation. "There!"

  Ross's body jumped beneath her hands. Feeling cowardly to welcome the distraction, she quickly slid off Blackie's rump and hurried to the base of the rocks, searching through undergrowth. It had to be here. She knew this was the place—

  Ah! With a cry of triumph, she lifted her prize by its leather strap. "Here it is!" she exclaimed happily, turning back to Ross. "We've got proof—"

  But she stopped at the sight of his blank face.

  Nothing about how he'd schooled his features hinted at emotion. His brows, his mouth, how he held his head as he watched her seemed more indifferent than the first time she ever saw him. But the brightness in his deep-set eyes, behind his indifference, and the pallor of his dark face shook her.

  She saw the pain behind the mask. "What's wrong?"

  He looked sharply away, so that she had only a profile of sharp nose, angled jaw, high cheek. A muscle in his throat twitched, giving him away, and she stepped to his side, reached up to touch his leg. "Ross, what's wrong?"

  He shook his head, reached down to lift her back up onto the horse.

  She backed away from his hand. "No. I'm not going until you tell me what's wrong."

  He glared at her then, and his dark, greenish eyes were bright. Bright with agony. Bright with accusation. Bright with despair. He swallowed and managed to say, "I'll go."

  What? She wished she understood. It felt cruel, after his obvious effort, to ask him for even more words, but she had to know. "Go where?"

  He glared.

  "Go to town without me?" she tried as she looped the camera up over her shoulder. Maybe if she gave him options—

  But he just looked angrier.

  "Go ... ?" Where else was there? "Back to die arroyo, to let the cattle loose?"

  He tipped his head back, turned his face to a glimpse of sky through the trees. When he parted his lips, an almost inhuman cry shuddered out of him.

  She'd never heard anything so hurt as that cry. Somehow, it shook with every bit of ugliness—lynch mobs, and dead girls, and murderers; range wars and self-defense and missing mothers—that had tried to destroy him. As die pain of it washed past her, through her, she wondered if anyone else could have endured as long as he had and not want to commit murder.

  Then, as if he'd cleared a dam, he talked—leaning out of his Texas saddle to bend over her, throwing the words at her like rocks. "I'll go away, Victoria. From here. You can have your Alden Wright, your—your cattle fortunes, and—and all his educated words. If you want them, take them. Just get your beautiful butt back up on this go
ddamned horse and let me bring you home first, all right? I want..."

  He looked sharply away then, and muttered the last of it. "I just want to see you safely home."

  She stared up at him, speechless. Not because he'd taken the Lord's name in vain. Not even because of how many words he'd strung together. Because he believed—

  "You think I want Alden Wright?"

  He peeked quickly back at her, dark eyes wary. "You—"

  "Alden Wright?" she repeated. "If you could see my list of why I would never seriously consider Alden Wright, even you could not say that with a straight face. How could you think I would want Alden Wright?"

  Ross searched her face, as if for a hint that she was lying. About this?

  "Get down here," she told him.

  'You don't want me to hurt him," he reminded her, an accusation. "You said you want to pursue it further."

  Clearly, words would not work for this. "Ross Laurence, you get off that horse right now."

  He seemed reluctant now, as if she would attack him.

  Wise man. "If you love me," she warned, "you'll get off that horse."

  To her delight, Ross slowly lifted his leg over Blackie's rump and dismounted. Then he turned to face her, all planes and hardness and walls. Walls against her. Walls against his own feelings. Walls against all their possibilities.

  But he got off the horse.

  She stepped up against him, reached for the back of his neck, and drew his head down to where, on tiptoes, she could just barely kiss him. "I love you, too."

  It felt wonderful, kissing him again. It felt right. But the fact that he didn't move his mouth against hers— that she was the only one doing the kissing—left something to be desired.

  "I don't understand." But he said it leaning toward her. He didn't straighten to where she could not reach his mouth again.

  Since he was at least cooperating that far, she wrapped her arms around his middle instead. She liked that better because she could slide her arms inside his duster and pull herself more tightly against his shirt—feel his ribs against her breasts, brace her skirted leg against his own. He'd come back to her, and they loved each other, and when she kissed him this time, he kissed her back.