by Pam Crooks
The judge left his desk to pour himself another drink.
“She’s gone to see her mother,” he said, his tone filled with disgust.
Trig emitted a sound of mocking derision. “Her mother.”
Chandler pinned him with a harsh gaze. “You fail to see the significance in that, don’t you?”
He seemed on the edge, his desperation a volatile thing. Trig watched him coolly.
“My daughter never knew she existed until she saw this damn letter.” He glared at the paper with such blazing fury, the thing could have burst into flame.
“Spare me the details, Chandler.”
“You will listen to me.” He moved closer, the words hissing through his teeth. “So you will understand what I’m asking of you.”
Trig’s lip curled. But he said nothing.
“I first met her mother when she worked the Red Light District back in the ‘70’s.” His ice blue gaze clawed at Trig, dared him to listen to his past. And dared him not to. “She was a whore. My favorite, at the time.”
So his precious daughter’s mother had been a prostitute. Trig refrained from showing his amusement. “She would’ve been with scores of men. How did you know the child was yours?”
“I had exclusive rights to her, that’s how. And paid her well for the privilege. When Belle found herself pregnant, I refused to have a child of mine raised by a woman . . . of her caliber.” He gulped another swig of whiskey. “After my daughter was born, I sent Belle to Mexico. I haven’t seen her since.”
Disgust welled within Trig at the agony the woman must’ve endured at being forced to leave her daughter behind, the humiliation she would’ve felt from being spurned and banished from the country.
“Then, two days ago, I received this.” Chandler glowered at the paper on his desk. “She’s in prison serving a life term. She dying, and she wants to see Carleigh again. One last time.”
A life term in prison. Ugly realization of what Chandler had done left Trig stunned. “You manipulated the law against her, didn’t you? To keep her out of her daughter’s life. Just as you manipulated the law against my father and me.”
“Shut up, Mathison.”
Chandler made no attempt to defend himself against the accusation. And Trig knew, then, it was true.
“Carleigh found the letter this morning,” Chandler went on. “I forbade her to go to Mexico. When I returned home this evening, she was gone.”
She was his weakness, Trig realized. The one and only thing that made the son of a bitch human.
He deserved the fear, the pain of losing her. He deserved to hurt.
“I want you to bring her back, Mathison.”
Trig lifted his hooded gaze. “Go to hell, Chandler.”
The judge’s chin jerked up. His cold eyes narrowed. He stepped to his desk and eased into the leather chair, then steepled his fingers thoughtfully.
“Your father would be most disappointed to learn you’ve refused me,” he said.
Trig’s senses hurtled to life.
“Leave my father out of this.” The warning rumbled from the depths of his chest.
“That’s impossible.”
“Where is he?” Trig demanded. Fear flickered within him, swirled with the fury he kept tightly reined. Chandler had promised safety and protection for Seth Mathison the night Trig had been arrested at the Palace Hotel. Stricken by Nathaniel’s death, at his failure to protect him, Trig had been frantic for his father’s welfare.
The judge had promised, and Trig had believed him.
“Do you really think I would tell you, given the present circumstances?” A smile haunted the tight set of Chandler’s mouth.
The rage bubbled and spewed and exploded within Trig. In one vengeful lunge, he grasped the judge’s shirtfront, and though the breadth of the massive desk separated them, Trig hauled the justice from his chair.
“He’s a sick, old man.” His chest heaved from the fury. “You hurt him, I’ll kill you. You hear me?”
“Let him go, Mathison!” Kenner yelled. The harsh metal of the police chief’s revolver rammed into Trig’s temple. The gun’s hammer clicked back. “I’ll shoot you dead. I swear it!”
Whiskey had ravaged his father’s liver; the rheumatism plagued his joints. Had Chandler thrown him out into the damp cold of the San Francisco winter? How would Pa survive? Trig’s heart pounded.
“Don’t be stupid. Frank will shoot,” Chandler snapped. Though disdain dripped in his tone, he didn’t move beneath Trig’s iron-fast grip. “Your father has already lost one son. Think how he’d feel losing two.”
The challenge hung in the air and spun inside Trig’s brain. He didn’t trust Chandler. Not anymore. Not ever again.
But he was right. Seth Mathison had lost his wife, his home and land. He’d lost Nathaniel.
Losing Trig would destroy him.
Heaving a vehement curse, Trig released the judge with a shove that hurtled him back into his seat. The leather chair rocked from the force.
“I’ll find your daughter,” he ground out. “And while I’m gone, my father had best lack for nothing. Nothing, you hear me?”
Chandler gestured to the police chief. “Back off, Frank. He’ll behave now.”
The lawman eased away but kept his weapon trained close on Trig. Chandler stood, tugged on his crushed shirtfront, and speared Trig with a frosty glance. “We have a deal, then, Mathison. My daughter for your father.”
Trig fumed, his silence his agreement. The judge leaned over and pulled open a desk drawer. He withdrew a thick envelope and tossed it toward Trig.
“Cash,” he said. “My daughter is accustomed to the finest in life. If necessary, I’ll wire you more.”
To hell with what his spoiled and pampered daughter was accustomed to. Trig vowed he wouldn’t make life easy for her, not for what she was costing him.
“I’ll need a fast horse,” he said. “The best around.”
Chandler nodded. “Anything else?”
“The letter from her mother.”
The judge eyed the folded missive still on his desk with obvious distaste. He handed the paper to Trig.
Trig slipped both the letter and the envelope of money into his shirt pocket. “One more thing.”
Chandler waited.
“When I return, my father and I walk away free men. You or your henchmen will never bother us again.” But Trig intended to even the score. Somehow, some way, Judge Chandler would pay the price for Nathaniel’s death. “We have a deal, remember, Your Honor?” Trig’s voice taunted him, baited him with the words he’d just spoken. “Your daughter for my father. Refuse me, and everything’s off.”
The judge’s features hardened. “Don’t push me, boy.”
“What’ll it be?”
The raw desperation Trig had seen earlier in Chandler’s features returned. The justice exchanged a quick glance with Kenner.
“You’ll be a free man, Mathison. Just bring my daughter back,” he said finally.
Impatience lashed through Trig. He could hardly wait to find her, to bring her back and drop her in an unceremonious heap at Chandler’s feet.
And to see his father again. To take care of him, as he should be doing now, this minute. Trig strode toward the door; his hand gripped the gold knob.
“Mathison.”
Trig halted at the judge’s voice.
“How will you know how to find her?” he asked, his tone rough with challenge. With thinly-veiled concern.
Annoyance flared through Trig that he asked the question now, after the deal had been squared between them. “I’ve learned a few tricks over the years.”
“Perhaps my daughter’s portrait would make your search easier.”
Trig turned to face him. Chandler pointed toward the wall behind his desk, to the artist’s depiction of a young woman, painted in rich-hued oils and so life-like she could have reached out and touched him.
Carleigh Chandler. She riveted him where he stood.
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sp; He estimated her age to be about twenty. Tresses of vibrant mahogany had been upswept into a stylish coiffure. She held her chin at a regal angle, and her bearing hinted at a grace that belied her years. His stare crept downward, past the delicate lace-trimmed sleeves clinging to her smooth shoulders, to the dipping neckline that revealed the creamy, rounded curves of her breasts. His pulse fell into a moment of irregular rhythm.
“The portrait is recent. Done only this past fall,” her father said. “The likeness is superb.”
Trig dragged his gaze away, refusing to let it linger over the deep sapphire fabric flowing over her narrow waist and hips. Instead, he forced his scrutiny upward, back to her face, and committed the visage to memory.
It wouldn’t be difficult to remember her. Not the full mouth that hinted at a pout, as if she wearied of the artist’s time with her. Not the high-patrician cheekbones, delicate and pinkened with a blush. And not the eyes, heavy-lashed and as ice blue as her father’s.
Judge Reginald P. Chandler’s daughter. There could be no doubt he sired this woman with eyes so much like his own, and Trig despised her no less than him, for no other reason than she carried his blood in her veins.
He swore, his hand gripping the doorknob hard in his determination. He would make short work of finding her. He would bring her back to San Francisco and this godforsaken mansion with all its trappings from ill-begotten wealth.
And he would take Seth Mathison, the father he’d shunned for too many years, to find happiness in a new life somewhere else.
“No harm had best come to her while she’s in your care,” Chandler said softly, as if he sensed Trig’s contempt for her. “Heed my warning well, or you’ll pay the price for ignoring it.”
Trig’s gaze slammed into the judge’s. Saying nothing, promising nothing, he strode from the office and slammed the door shut behind him.
Chapter 2
“Visalia, ladies and gentlemen!”
The Wells Fargo driver yelled down to them from his position on the stagecoach’s box, identifying the remote California town where Carleigh Chandler and her fellow passengers would spend the night. The six-horse team slowed to a stop in front of the Central Hotel. The driver braked the rig, jumped down and opened the coach’s door.
Carleigh was the first to emerge and survey her surroundings. There wasn’t much to the town, but after three ten-hour days of grueling travel, she was grateful for any opportunity to remove herself from the crowded stagecoach and stretch her aching body.
The prospect of sleeping in a real bed, of bathing in hot water and eating her fill of decent food might have compelled her to drool if she’d not been so bone-weary tired.
She studied the hotel. Two stories high and dressed in a fresh coat of white-wash, the sprawling structure appeared to offer numerous rooms to rent, and she gazed with growing anticipation at the row of lace-curtained windows lining the second level.
A far cry from where she’d slept the past two nights--stagecoach relay stations where she’d had to swallow her pride and sleep on hard, wooden bunks next to perfect strangers and where she’d forced herself to eat food hardly fit for human consumption.
“Move along, Miss.” The driver--whose name Carleigh learned was Emerson--planted his large, grubby hand to her back and nudged her roughly aside. “You ain’t the only passenger who wants to have himself a good look around. Going to be dark soon. We don’t have time to waste.”
Carleigh shot him her most quelling look, but the man never even noticed. Not that she could ever hope to instill a shred of manners in him or even a notion of the proper way to speak to a lady. He was twice her size and tough as cowhide.
But he had unerring skill in maneuvering the massive stagecoach over the rough California roads at breakneck speed while keeping the vehicle and its sixteen passengers intact. For that, he inspired her respect. And silence.
From within the protective circle of her arms, Spencer, her pet Maltese, wiggled and whined, and she set him down onto the dirt street. Given the congestion of horses and rigs, she kept a firm hold on his leash.
“You’re getting hungry, aren’t you?” she murmured, rubbing the white fur behind his ears. “That makes two of us. You’ve been so good today, do you know that?”
The little dog was her pride and joy, a gift from Luann upon her graduation from finishing school two years ago. Luann had been her governess since birth, and just thinking of the petite Asian woman who’d raised her and loved her as the mother she never had incited a rush of conflicting emotion through Carleigh.
Correction. She did have a mother. She’d always had a mother. But he—her father—had denied them each other, and she would never forgive him for it.
Shoving aside the bitter thoughts, she straightened to stand off to one side while Spencer barked and scampered in the freedom his leash allowed. She watched her fellow passengers alight from the coach, one after the other. After the interior of the rig had emptied, five men dismounted from their seats on top of the coach.
The very top. Carleigh shuddered. She was glad she’d not been assigned there. She couldn’t think of anything more uncomfortable. Or dangerous.
The other passengers seemed to take it all in stride, however, and Carleigh conceded her flight from the wealth and comfort of her San Francisco home was fast proving to be a learning experience of a different side of life, one that required more endurance than she’d ever thought.
But she would endure it. The rigors of her journey to Mexico would be well worth any discomfort when she met her mother for the first time.
At last, the passengers meandered into the hotel, and the driver had a moment alone. She stepped toward him and touched his sleeve. “Excuse me. Are you familiar with this hotel?”
“The Central?” Beneath his bushy brows, Emerson’s glance darted toward the building only a few yards away. “It’s one of my regular stops.”
“Then you would know if there’s a ladies entrance I might use?”
The bushy brows shot up. “Ladies entrance?” He threw his head back and guffawed. “Miss, here in Visalia, folks figure one entrance works as good as any, and ladies can get through them hotel doors the same as the men.” His laughter died, and he eyed her with a hint of censure. “Reckon someone as highfalutin’ as you might be used to somethin’ more fancy. You headin’ to Mexico?”
Her chin lifted. She resented his impression of her as ‘highfaluting’. “I am.”
“Well, it’s best you know the rest of the trip ain’t going to be easy. Downright hard, in fact. Nobody’s going to hold your hand and pamper you along the way.”
“I do not expect to be ‘pampered’, sir.” The tilt of her chin raised even higher.
“You eat what the rest of us eats. You sleep where you can find room. None of it’ll be fancy. Reckon the Central is about as nice as you’ll get ‘til you get to Mexico and maybe not even then. If that ain’t good enough for you, then you’d better turn tail and head right back to ‘Frisco.”
For the life of her, Carleigh couldn’t understand why the man was scolding her when she was only acting like a proper lady should by using the correct hotel entrance.
“I quite understand, sir,” she sniffed.
She’d never traveled alone before, but she’d traveled many times with Luann, and even on the occasions when her father accompanied them, she always used the ladies entrance.
In the hotels that provided them, of course. Carleigh realized perhaps she’d been unusually fortunate in her travels, that her father’s wealth had gifted her with luxuries she’d up to now taken for granted.
Well, no more. The crotchety stagecoach driver had enlightened her to the ways of the norm, and she’d not forget them from now on.
“Run along, Miss. And don’t forget to be ready by six in the morning. We ain’t waiting for you if you ain’t here on time.” He tossed her satchel to the ground and turned to converse with one of the coach’s guards.
He’d effectively dismissed her,
and she swallowed down the humiliation of it. There were numerous questions she longed to ask of him, questions concerning the direction of their journey and how many more days it might take. And would he consider taking a barrel of cool water along to quench their thirsts? The dust raised by the team of horses was abominable. If nothing else, perhaps plenty of fresh fruit to munch on in the hours between station stops.
But, of course, she asked none of those questions. Instead, she scooped Spencer up in one hand and her satchel in the other, and entered the hotel.
The crush of bodies in the lobby startled her. She didn’t know there would be so many people. Raising up on tiptoe, she peered over the sea of Stetsons and bolers and determined the location of the desk where she could secure a room. She set her sights on the clerk and worked her way over, dodging shoulders and elbows, her ears filling with the din of mainly-male voices, until she found herself in a very slow-moving line.
She set the satchel down and shifted her hold on Spencer. An irrational tension simmered within her, but she drew in a long, calming breath and blew it out again.
Finally, her turn came at the desk. “I’d like a room, please.”
“Don’t have one. We’re full up.” The clerk didn’t stray from his notations in the hotel Registry.
“What do you mean, you don’t have one?” Aghast, Carleigh stared at him. “But you must!”
For the first time, his pencil stopped, and he peered at her through the thick lenses of his spectacles. “I don’t. You with the Wells Fargo?”
“Yes, I am.” A flicker of hope stirred.
His mouth pursed. “The other passengers took what was left. You’re too late.”
“Too late?” The hope died. She gaped at him, dismay building in leaps and bounds that she dallied to talk to the driver about a ladies entrance, now appallingly frivolous in light of her need for someplace to stay. “But what shall I do?”
“Know anyone in town you might stay with?”
“No, not at all. I’ve never been here before.”
He shrugged. “Well, you might be able to sleep in the stagecoach office. It’s right next door. No privacy for you, though, and you’ll be sharing with the driver and his crew.”