Explaining Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  But he was still hesitant. Controlled.

  "I don't—" he protested, and when she tried to kiss him a third time, he actually straightened away from her. Well, away from her mouth. She was affixed to the front of him. "Please, Victoria," he protested, his voice caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Please talk to me."

  "I don't want Alden Wright," she confirmed, craning her head up to keep looking at him. He'd tipped his face sharply down to look at her, too.

  "Then why would I want to hurt him?"

  "Because . . ." Oh dear. But if she could trust him with anything, she had to trust him with this, no matter what Alden had begged. "Because I was wrong about his age. Alden was sixteen when Julie was fifteen. Ross, he's her sweetheart."

  Ross stood very still within her embrace, staring down at her, expression blank. "He what?"

  "That's what I found out, after you left. He's the one who brought flowers to her grave, and he bribed the undertaker to add that line from "Clementine" to her tombstone. He swears he loved her, and he didn't know about the child, and he never knew she tried to see him after the lynchings. And I believe him. So I'm asking you not to do anything to him, because you're a good man and because if you do now it will be partly my fault for telling you. But I had to tell you. I—I have to trust you, and I do, even with this. Or else it's not really love at all, and it must be. I don't want you to go anywhere. And if you have to go, I want to come with you. So that's what—"

  "Victoria," interrupted Ross softly.

  At least he was blinking again. She balanced on the very tip of her tiptoes, trying to get closer to the face bent above her, and wished she were even a little taller. "What, Ross?"

  He kissed her.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Alden Wright seduced Julie?

  After eleven years, that simple answer shattered into a rock slide of further questions. Victoria didn't want him taking vengeance, but she also believed Wright's overdue claim of love. Last time Laramie checked, true love did not impregnate, betray, and abandon. His own responsibility to Julije's memory had kept him alive, had brought him to Sheridan. And yet.. .

  He'd come to Sheridan for a different reason this time.

  Victoria didn't want Alden Wright?

  Two worlds dragged at him, promises from his past, dreams for his future, equally complicated. But Wright wasn't here and Victoria was, saying his name, lifting her earnest face toward his—and she wanted him.

  She loved him.

  Laramie covered her beautiful, sweet mouth with his own and chose her, worshiped her with his kiss.

  Her affection tasted—felt—so delicious that he trembled with it. She really wanted him!

  He felt such relief, gratitude, such joy that he laughed into her mouth.

  She drew back, startled. Then she laughed too.

  "Sorry," he whispered, ducking his head.

  "I love your smile," she said, and caught his cheek with one soft hand and guided his mouth back down to hers. "Thank you, Ross. Thank you."

  "Thank you?" he asked in blissful confusion, just before their lips met. Thank you for his smile}

  Then he was kissing her again while she sighed, "Uh-huh" against him, and his thoughts began to stutter.

  She wants to—

  We'll be—

  He couldn't finish the thoughts for fear of jinxing them. This sort of thing didn't happen in his world. But he'd pushed that world aside; he did not want it. He preferred to stake a claim in hers. Because she allowed someone as unworthy as him in, he would love her forever.

  When she hugged him, she'd slid her hands inside his duster to do it. One of her hands drifted down his denim-covered spine, then the small of his back, then past his belt and onto a less proper venue, and her wanting to stay with him awoke erotic possibilities as well. He had not intended to think of her that way. Carnally. She was his sweet Victoria. And yet he no longer felt merely itchy under her blessedly curious hands. He felt downright hot.

  Lifting her into his arms, even as they kissed, Laramie took awkward steps until a tree scraped the back of the hand cupping her head. Then he slowly slid her down his aroused body, pressing himself into her buttoned-up, petticoated softness. He slid his tongue into her hot, willing mouth. She parted her lips wider for him, let her head fall back—a move that lifted her jacketed breasts generously up and into his ribs.

  "Uh-huh," she either repeated or encouraged, muffled and happy. Her hands found his butt again, under his coattails, and all of his hard-won control couldn't keep his body from pushing greedily against hers where he'd braced her against the tree. To tell by her sigh, she didn't seem to mind.

  She loved him? The truth of that was a blanket around them, wrapping them together, sheltering what they did here. He thrust deeper with his tongue, and she drank him in, her breath catching in little whimpers.

  He combed his fingers through her thick, curly hair and drew his hands over her shoulders, down the round softness of her arms in their coat sleeves, his thumbs testing even less decent curves. So hot. Suddenly frustrated that his tongue could not bring closure to the matter, he slid his kisses from her mouth, across her jaw, down her cinnamon-scented neck. She released his rear end to reach up and pull off his hat, drop it somewhere, then dig her fingers in his hair as if to insist that he continue kissing her there. When he trailed kisses down her throat, then to the collar of her coat, she let him do that, too.

  Drugged with pleasure, with satisfaction—with sheer, blinding hope—he could barely think enough to wonder if it was possible to undo buttons with his teeth.

  "Oh, Ross," Victoria sighed, squirming against his need of her. "Oh—keep doing that."

  He slid a hand off her arm and directly onto her breast, round and firm and tempting even through too much material, and she arched eagerly into him. "And that!"

  His fingers began to dig into the serge of her riding coat, but somehow he forced them to close into a fist instead. He would not tear her clothes. He would not, must not be violent to her in any way.

  Ever.

  Just in case, he turned his face into the welcome shelter of her shoulder, gasping for breath.

  'You'll marry me?" he pleaded, desperate. This was more than he should ever do with a woman he would not marry, probably not with a woman he hadn't already married. He'd never known anything as blissful as this, just this, and oh, God, he had to be sure.

  When Victoria blew out her breath, he felt it feather across the back of his hair. 'You don't think I would go away with you and not get married, do you? Now kiss me."

  Demanding, wasn't she? He loved that about her. He loved everything about her. If she was willing to marry him, it was only because she'd given him reason to change.

  He even straightened, resting the crown of his head against the tree trunk, over hers, and said it. "Victoria, I love you. Beyond life. Beyond . . . beyond anything."

  She ran her hands up and down his chest, somehow admiring, but ducked her head into his chest.

  "I love you, too," she said to his heart. "I wouldn't go away with you without that, either."

  Either. . . ? Confused, but happily so, he stared down at her dark, now-wild curls and felt his own smile stretch his mouth, uncertain on his face. He should practice. He might end up smiling around her a great deal.

  Then she looked back up at him, somehow petulant, and reached up for his face. "Ross," she insisted, drawing his face invitingly back to her bosom. It had to be the roundest, most fetching, most glorious bosom he'd ever seen, much less touched, even under layers of her wine-colored coat.

  She would be his. Even her bosom.

  But she deserved better than to have him doing anything about it at this point in their engagement.

  Their engagement!

  So he tried to kiss her again instead—and then had to turn his head back into her shoulder.

  "What's wrong?" she demanded, her cross tone exacerbating the problem.

  He tipped his face to hers. "I
cannot kiss you," he confessed, his words uneven. "I cannot stop smiling."

  "But I love your smile," she reminded him with teasing solemnity, touching the bend of his cheek with curious fingers, seeming to savor even his beard stubble. "You need to smile more."

  "I love you, Victoria," he repeated, just to prove that he could say it more than once, just to see her delight upon hearing it. "But I am not taking you away with me."

  Her eyes narrowed dangerously, so he hurried to add, "I am staying with you. I won't take you away from your family, or your town, or your newspaper. I am finished with running. Somehow I'll stay, unless—" Damn. This part came harder, particularly with the fear that crept back. But didn't she say they had to trust each other? "Unless I get jail time for breaking my parole. But it... if you still wanted me after that. .."

  Her lower lip began to tremble before she caught it between her teeth. Her eyes, searching his, glittered suspiciously, and his gut clenched up. She had not realized he might yet be in trouble with the law. Of course, she wouldn't wait for him to serve time. She deserved so much better.

  Then her lower lip escaped into the brightest smile yet, and she threw her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest. "Thank you," she said again, even if it was muffled, then drew back, still in his arms. "For being willing to do that. That has to be the nicest present anyone's ever given me! Of course, Thaddeas will keep you out of jail," she insisted. "But even if he didn't, I would visit you every day. We could do a jail-house interview! You could introduce me to the other prisoners, and I could write about their stories too, but I'm sure yours would be the best."

  He stared down at her and knew he wasn't dead only because he would not deserve the heaven of having Victoria Garrison love him. "It would have the best ending," he whispered.

  Suddenly her eyes widened. "Ross! There's a bounty!"

  His gut clenched tighter. "On me?"

  She laughed. "On the rustlers. The Sheridan Cattleman's Association gave themselves an official name just to raise the reward. Personally, I don't think Al-den should get an even split, since you did all the work, but—" Her mouth opened in realization. "Al-den!"

  He might end up confused around her a great deal, as well. He doubted he would mind. "Alden?"

  "How long have we been here? He must think I lost my camera in Colorado! And him all alone with that awful sheriff, knowing he killed Julie, and worrying about you—Ross, we need to tell him it's all right!"

  He shook his head, lost. And in love. "All right?"

  She kissed his jaw, rolling her eyes at his thickness. "That you forgive him for being Julie's lover."

  Julie's lover? He blinked down at her, trying to fit that thought into the wonder that had been his world for the last ten or fifteen minutes. The puzzle piece did not match, so he looked at the information without trying to fit it anywhere, and he remembered. "Alden was Julie’s lover."

  Victoria, in the circle of his arms, said, "I told you. Sixteen years old. Undertaker. Flowers."

  He ached not to leave this world for that one. But staring down at where he held her in the loose circle of his arms, he knew he had no choice. "Yes," he agreed. "Of course you told me. I just.. . forgot."

  She widened her eyes. 'You forgot?"

  The man he'd hunted for so many years had a face at last—Alden Wright's face—and Laramie had no idea what to do about it. Wait, he guessed. Wait, and think, and see. And love Victoria. "I was distracted."

  Before he could lean down to kiss her again, she'd reclaimed her own lower lip between her teeth, and her brows had drawn together. "But it's all right," she prompted him. "Because now you know Sheriff Ward is the one who killed her."

  "After Wright led him to us in the first place," he reminded her—and felt the first stirrings of uncertainty when Victoria stopped talking. She'd been afraid to tell him, he remembered, almost too late. She would feel responsible if anything happened to the son of a bitch. It hurt, to think that she still thought that of him. It hurt that she didn't realize she'd become far more important than any vendetta. "I won't kill him, if that's what you're afraid of."

  "I didn't say you would." She pressed her lips together, as if trying to understand—but what? What was there to grasp? He seduced my sister. He led a lynch mob to us. He abandoned her during the worst days of her life.

  Did she want him to forgive the bastard? If so, then there existed one thing he might not be able to do after all, even for her. That frightened him. Couldn't she still love him, even if he hated Alden Wright to his dying breath?

  Isn 't it enough that I don't kill him f

  They both startled at a single gunshot from the direction where they'd left Alden Wright.

  Suddenly Laramie's two worlds blurred yet again.

  Victoria flinched at the familiar report. Alien!

  "Stay here," instructed Ross, striding toward Blackie. "I'll see what happened."

  She dodged ahead of him and boosted herself up and across his saddle, on her stomach. "No!"

  "Victoria!"

  She had to struggle to get her leg up and over Blackie's rump, weighted down in a riding skirt like it was. "You said that you wouldn't leave me!" There! She had a leg on either side and sat up.

  "That didn't mean I would carry you into gunfire!"

  But she grabbed onto his saddle's cantle and hung on, warning him with her eyes that he would have to fight to make her get down. Ross groaned, deep and heartfelt—and mounted in front of her. She wrapped her arms around his slim waist and held on while he urged his horse ahead, in the direction where they'd left Julie's lover. She felt glad to have something, someone to hold. If the sheriff had killed Alden, while she and Ross were misbehaving in the woods ...

  Ross reined Blackie to a stop before they'd quite reached the clearing where they'd left the others. Dismounting, he reached for her. She slid off the horse and into his arms as if she belonged there—even if he did then set her aside, behind a tree. With an ominous whoosh, he drew his rifle from its scabbard. "Wright!" he called loudly after taking several deliberate steps away from her.

  Her heart clutched to realize that he was drawing off any possible gunfire. He didn't want her to be hurt. Oh, she did love him. He wasn't a murderer. Why should it matter whether he believed her about Alden?

  She hated that it mattered—and she sank against the tree, with relief, when Alden called, "Laurence? It's safe. We just had a little ... trouble."

  "Good," called Ross. But he was drawing his pistol at the same time. One-handed, he popped the cylinder, spun it to check for bullets, snapped it back in— all while walking back to her—then gave it to her. The weapon seemed to float in his hand. When it reached her hand, the reality of its weight and bulk almost made her drop it. "Watch from here."

  But— "He said it's safe."

  He shrugged one shoulder, a gesture she finally placed as vaguely European. "They put a gun to his head, he might lie. I love you."

  What? But before she could protest, even reassure him that she loved him back, he called, "I'm coming out," and strode into the clearing.

  Victoria waited, terrified, for more gunfire. Sheriff Ward certainly did seem to want Ross dead, after all. Every second drew her tighter, until Ross called, "Victoria, it's safe. Just try not to look."

  She could imagine Alden lying to save his life. Not Ross; never Ross. So she led Blackie into the clearing, where Alden stood alone and Ross was carefully catching hold of a spooked, riderless horse's saddle. Only after looking twice for some sign of trouble did Victoria realize that the horse wasn't riderless at all—and why it was spooked.

  She pressed a hand to her mouth, hard, while her nausea rose in proportion to her slow comprehension.

  Sheriff Ward hung half off the mount to which he was still tied. His mouth was still gagged with Ross's black bandanna. His arms, still cuffed behind him, hung at an awkward, upside-down angle.

  "It was self-defense," said Alden numbly while Ross cut the body loose so that it
could slide to the ground. "It was."

  He wasn't holding the gun they'd left with him. It lay in the grass beside him.

  "Self-defense," he repeated, and she turned back to stare at Sheriff Ward. Ross, kneeling beside the body with one hand on his neck, met Alden's eyes and shook his head. Alden had killed him.

  He was still wearing the handcuffs she'd put on him. The key was still in her pocket!

  A slow cry began, deep in her, and she pressed her hand harder against her mouth, making a fist to keep it all in. She didn't want to be around guns anymore. She didn't want to be around dead people. She didn't want to notice that the horse must have been spooked for several minutes, because Sheriff Ward's head—

  The cry came out of her anyway, and Ross glanced sharply up. "I said don't look!" he commanded, more sharply than he'd ever spoken to her, but she couldn't turn away.

  She had to know things, even now. She had to know the grim ease with which Ross wrapped the corpse in the picnic blanket, then tied it onto the horse. She had to see the way he paused to look over their other three prisoners, in case one of them had been hurt. She had to watch him pick up Alden's gun and, instead of giving it back, unload it and slide it into a saddlebag. He'd had to learn all of that, she thought. What kind of a life had Ross lived, that he'd had to learn all of that?

  She forgot she was even holding his pistol until he came to her, took it from her hands, and seated it gently back into his holster. His head was down the whole time. Only after she said nothing did he slant his gaze up at her and his green-brown eyes, through his dark lashes, seemed naked. "I'm sorry you had to see that," he apologized.

  She said, "I'm not."

  At least now she knew what she must try to make up for.

  Laramie asked Victoria to ride her own horse, with her own sidesaddle, the rest of the way into town. Considering that their little parade now included a corpse, he figured they could use all the respectability they could get. Not that he meant to use her for that respectability. When they reached town, he sent her to the telegraph office not just to wire for a marshal from nearby Big Horn, but so that she wouldn't have to ride the gauntlet of Main Street with him, Wright, and the rustlers.