Noelle

by Diana Palmer

  Mrs. Dunn held on to her even more firmly. “Courage, child,” she said.

  “But—”

  “Courage,” the older woman repeated. “He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

  Sims reached up and caught Jared’s arm as he fastened the gun belt. “Man, don’t do it. It’s suicide.” Sims gasped. “Did you see him draw? My God, he beat me!”

  “As slow as you are, no damned wonder,” Jared said in a clipped voice as he jerked away from Sims’s hand and buckled the gun belt low around his lean hips. He tied the long strings around his powerful thigh, checked the pistol, and shifted the holster until the tip of the gun was slanted just slightly forward and the butt of the Colt .45 was within smooth, easy reach. “Hold these.” He tossed his round-rimmed reading glasses onto Sims’s chest and shucked his jacket off, tossing that into Sims’s hands as well.

  Then he moved beyond Sims, toward Garmon, every step calculated, straight. His eyes never blinked, never wavered. People nearby moved back. Noelle clung to Mrs. Dunn, watching with horror. She wanted to scream. When Sims had gone down, her stomach had begun to churn. Sims was very quick, but that burly man had moved without even appearing to. Jared would have no chance. What was he doing? Where were the city police? Why didn’t they come?

  “You sure you know which end of that gun to point, lawyer?” Garmon taunted loudly.

  Jared stopped a few yards from him. He smiled coolly. “Oh, I think I can figure it out.” His hand dropped slowly to his side and hung there, waiting. His posture altered just slightly, just enough to make a couple of old-timers in the crowd go tense. But Garmon didn’t seem to see the significance of that, or the way Jared’s blue eyes stared straight at him, unblinking. He nodded slowly toward Garmon, who was barely ten feet from him. “Fill your hand, Garmon.”

  Garmon was surprised at the man’s grit. But anyone could wear a gun. He shot his hand down to his gun butt with grinning confidence. But as fast as he was, before he had the pistol halfway out of the holster, his gun hand shattered under Jared’s first shot. The pistol fell from Garmon’s hand with a thud as it hit the dust. A second after it landed, one bullet hit it, then another, spinning it out of Garmon’s reach. Garmon stared at Jared Dunn dumbly, with a dropped jaw, holding his bleeding hand and struggling through waves of pain and shock to understand what had just happened to him.

  Noelle, like the rest of the spectators, gasped when she realized what had happened. Her tame lawyer husband had just outdrawn a gunman. Moreover, he’d placed a shot right through the man’s hand instead of his guts. The skill required for both actions wasn’t lost on her, or on anyone close to her.

  Jared held his pistol leveled at his waist, dark smoke rising from the barrel, and he started walking, straight toward Garmon. His steely blue eyes were as cold as winter skies, and death was in them—it was in every step he took.

  The walk as well as his expression were familiar to men who had lived in wild country. The lawyer was no city dude. He kept coming, and Garmon felt panic against all reason as he advanced with that cool, even stride that looked as if it would prevail against the very fires of hell.

  “No!” Garmon burst out as Jared reached him. He gritted his teeth against the pain and fell to his knees. “No, man. It’ll be cold-blooded murder!” he pleaded. “Look, there are witnesses,” he added, his eyes casting desperately around him in hopes that they might save him.

  But still Jared kept coming. He sent a bullet into the dirt between Garmon’s splayed knees; the other man jumped violently.

  “You robbed Marlowe and framed Clark for it.” Jared stopped right in front of him with the pistol aimed from the waist, right at Garmon’s belly. His voice was calm, deep, relentless. It held cold authority, as lethal a weapon as the one in his hand. “Tell them.”

  “I never did—”

  Jared cocked the pistol. The eyes that met Garmon’s were as cold as the steel of the metal. They were a killer’s eyes, and Garmon had realized it almost too late. The man wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. It was right there, in those pale, glittering icy blue eyes.

  “All right, I did it,” he said, loud enough for bystanders to hear. “I did it! I wanted that foreman’s job and Beale was going to give it to that old black man. I needed some money, anyway, so I took it from Marlowe and blamed Clark for it. What the hell did Beale want to offer him that job for? I should have got that job. No filthy black boy’s going to order me around at my own job!” He caught his breath, because Jared still hadn’t lowered the pistol barrel. “All right, I confessed. I told you the truth. Now, you—you put that thing down!”

  Jared smiled cruelly. “What’s the matter, Garmon?” he taunted softly. “Are you only brave with men you can bully with that gun?”

  He looked straight into Garmon’s eyes, furious at the man’s lie. Clark could have died for it. The gun was still leveled at Garmon’s guts. Jared hesitated for an instant. Then he pulled the trigger.

  Garmon cried out sharply and flinched, anticipating the shock of a bullet. But there was only the click of an empty chamber. He shivered in reaction, the pain in his shattered hand forgotten in the stark terror of the moment. His heartbeat was shaking his shirt.

  Jared laughed coldly as he slowly pulled bullets from the gun belt around his lean hips and slid five bullets back into the empty chambers with steady, deft hands. “Only a greenhorn fills all six chambers, or had you forgotten that the hammer always rests on an empty one? Sims fired once, I fired four shots. The last chamber was empty. I didn’t have a bullet left.” He gazed at the man on the ground with utter contempt. “You wouldn’t have lasted a week on the border,” he added harshly.

  Still watching the man, he clicked the loaded cylinder in place and spun the pistol back into the holster with a flourish that wasn’t lost on anyone watching. A young police officer who had been standing nearby quickly arrested Garmon and pulled him to his feet, to take him away, with a respectful glance toward Jared. It was obvious to the bystanders that he had no plans to disarm that lawyer.

  Noelle thought she might faint. She was dizzy, and she leaned on Andrew for support. He was trembling, too, and when she looked up at him, his face was stark white. Beside her, Mrs. Dunn was stoic, whispering a prayerful thanks.

  Jared slipped off the gun belt and tossed it on the ground beside Sims, retrieving his jacket and the glasses. Sims was closer than the spectators, close enough to see Jared Dunn’s ice blue eyes and feel the residue of violence that was still in him. He was fresh out of swaggering bravado. He shivered.

  “Are you nervous about pistols, Sims?” Jared drawled sarcastically when he saw the downed man’s apprehensive expression. “Why? You’re a real gunman, aren’t you?”

  He stood up and walked slowly away. Sims didn’t move at once, not for several long seconds. Jared was several yards away before he remembered that he’d been shot and his leg was bleeding.

  Mrs. Dunn went toward her grandson, with Noelle and Andrew right behind her, but Noelle noticed that she hesitated visibly to touch him or even go very close. “Jared, are you all right?” Mrs. Dunn asked nervously.

  He was trying to deal with the aftermath of the violence, the tension. He could barely get his breath—and he knew that tremors were running through his powerful body. All around him, people were backing away. His eyes were still terrible. He hadn’t killed anyone, though. He hadn’t killed. But he would have…

  Noelle alone wasn’t afraid. She went very close. Her eyes sought Jared’s bravely; she laid a gloved hand delicately over his heart where the jacket hung open. “Jared,” she said softly. “Are you all right?”

  He looked down at her without recognition for a few seconds. Then his features hardened and he seemed to go rigid.

  Her hand pressed closer. “It’s over,” she whispered. “It’s over now.”

  He took a long, heavy breath
and let it out. His clouded eyes began to clear, like crystal. They searched hers, narrowing. “I told you to stay the hell at home!” he bit off, furiously.

  She understood without being told that he was still in the grip of the violence. “I know you did,” she replied.

  Andrew had her by the hand now and he was obviously nervous about his stepbrother, too. “You, uh…you shot him,” he faltered. His face was stark white under his blond hair. His voice shook.

  Jared hadn’t missed the way he was holding Noelle’s hand. He was more jealous than he’d ever been in his life, but he couldn’t say a word. Noelle had made her choice. It wasn’t Andrew’s fault that she loved him. People couldn’t love to order. “Take Noelle and my grandmother home,” he said evenly.

  Andrew swallowed. “Yes, of course. I’ll do that immediately.” His eyes went from Jared to Sims, who was being helped up by two bystanders, and then to the retreating figure of Garmon in the uniformed policeman’s grasp. “They were both very, very fast,” Andrew remarked.

  “Fast is no good unless you’re accurate with it,” Jared said. His glittering pale blue eyes met Andrew’s and he laughed coldly. “I’ve killed men who were a hell of a lot faster with a pistol than Garmon. He was damned lucky I didn’t kill him.”

  “You didn’t learn that in New York,” Andrew persisted. It was a question.

  “No. I didn’t.” Jared’s chin lifted. “Before I went East to study law, I was a gunman in Kansas, and then I was a Texas Ranger down on the border,” Jared replied, enjoying Andrew’s discomfiture. “A man never forgets how to kill. But you wouldn’t know, would you? The only thing you ever killed during the war was time, sitting behind your damned desk in the Philippines!”

  Andrew had to swallow down a retort. Jared wasn’t quite controlled even now, and the sight of his stoic stepbrother out of control made him very nervous. He was suddenly a stranger, and those unblinking ice blue eyes frightened Andrew.

  “I’ll get the women to safety,” he said in a whisper.

  “Yes, you do that,” Jared snapped.

  Andrew took Mrs. Dunn’s arm and then Noelle’s, but Noelle pulled away from him and walked back to Jared.

  He stared at her with the same cold, unseeing eyes. “Go home,” he said shortly. “There’s nothing for you here.”

  “I’ll go in a minute,” she promised, because she knew what he was telling her—that he didn’t care for her. She nodded toward the crowd and stepped a little closer, so that only he could hear her. “You’ve frightened them,” she whispered. “You have to stop looking so ferocious, or some of the women may faint,” she added, trying to lighten that terrible somberness about his lean face.

  He looked around him, and then he realized what she was doing. Her action seemed to bring the spectators back to their senses. People stopped looking at Jared as if he were a museum exhibit and they began moving normally about their business again. The apprehension was still there, but it was tempered with compassion as the pretty young woman clung to her husband with such fierce loyalty.

  Her soft hand calmed him a little, but the wildness was still in him. He wanted to knock Andrew to his knees.

  Even as he entertained the thought, Noelle’s soft, gloved hand contracted on his arm. “Are you coming home with us now?” she asked, because her courage was just about to fade away and leave her shaking. She hadn’t felt well at all this week, and she was a bit nauseated even now. It would be a shame to spoil her courageous image by fainting at his feet. Jared had come so close to death. She didn’t know how she’d kept from screaming.

  “I can’t leave yet,” he told her. He searched her eyes. “I’m going to get the prosecutor and go over to see the judge. Garmon will have to stand trial, but I don’t think the judge will want to hold Clark. Too many witnesses heard Garmon confess.”

  Jared’s narrow eyes looked into Noelle’s. He hadn’t expected her reaction to what she’d seen.

  “You aren’t afraid of me,” he said curiously.

  “That’s right.”

  “Garmon was,” he replied. “So were Sims and Andrew—even my grandmother.”

  “I know.”

  He looked down at her over his wire-rimmed reading glasses. He didn’t ask why, but his eyes did.

  She sighed heavily. Her gloved hand reached up toward his face and she touched his lean cheek lightly. “You may find me irritating, and I may annoy you greatly, but I’ve never been afraid of you,” she said simply. “I was very proud, Jared. You made him tell the truth. And you never backed down an inch.” Her eyes were full of wonder, of pride.

  His were confused. That didn’t explain why she wasn’t repulsed by what she had seen, by knowing the truth about him.

  “Didn’t you hear what I told Andrew?” he asked quietly. “I was a gunman, Noelle. I killed men. For a while, I was even wanted by the law.”

  “Then how did you become a Texas Ranger?”

  “I helped them capture a worse man than I was, and found myself wearing a badge on the border,” he said. His chest rose and fell harshly. “Noelle, there was a woman. I killed for her. I killed an innocent man, because she accused him.”

  Her eyes didn’t waver. She didn’t flinch. She knew about the woman, or a little about her. It was amazing that she’d had to find out about her husband on the streets of Fort Worth. This was what he’d meant last night, that he hadn’t told her the truth about his past. But why should he have? He didn’t love her.

  She’d been living in a fool’s paradise, hoping for his heart, for his ardor at least. But he’d refused her bed last night, and he’d even said flatly that they had no future together. Now, in the aftermath of the shooting, it seemed very much as though he’d been telling her last night that he didn’t want her anymore, at all. That was why he’d apologized and acted as if he was saying goodbye. He had been saying goodbye.

  “Did you hear me?” he demanded.

  She nodded. She was more miserable than she’d ever been. He didn’t love her. He didn’t want her.

  “Then say something!” he growled.

  “What would you have me say, Jared?” she asked quietly. She managed a wan smile. “I knew your life had been a violent one when you told me you’d been a lawman, and in the military. Today was unexpected,” she added tautly, “but it changes nothing. It changes nothing at all,” she said wearily.

  “I know that, far too well,” he replied, with a cold glance toward Andrew. He moved away from her. “I have to see the judge,” he added curtly.

  She sighed as she searched Jared’s hard, cold eyes. “I wish…” she whispered huskily, her face contorted with sadness.

  “You wish what?” he demanded.

  “Noelle,” Andrew interrupted suddenly, hesitating a few yards away with Mrs. Dunn’s arm in his hand, “do come on.” He was going to be late for his discussion with Mr. Beale; his whole future depended on it.

  She glanced toward him, frowned, and then looked back at Jared. “I’ll be right there, Andrew,” she said.

  Jared smiled without humor. “By all means, go with him,” he told her, bristling with bad temper as he stared past her at his posturing, strutting stepbrother. Even through his anger, it amused him that Andrew didn’t come one step closer, still intimidated by him. “There’s really nothing more for us to say to each other,” he added coolly, searching her face. “Now, go home.”

  “That’s a very good idea, Jared,” she returned, wounded to the bone. “I really think I should do exactly that.”

  She turned on her heel and went to Andrew, eagerly taking the arm he offered. Jared didn’t try to stop her. He watched her go, seething with jealousy and uncertainty. Damn Andrew!

  Unaware that Jared had totally misread her new relationship with Andrew, Noelle walked back down the street with a firm step. It was just as well that he didn�
�t question where home was; she was on her way to her uncle in Galveston, but he wouldn’t find that out just yet. Ironically, Fort Worth now held many more terrors for her than Galveston and the past.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ANDREW NO SOONER got the women home than he grabbed his hat and gloves and prepared to leave for Miss Beale’s house.

  He barely stopped to say goodbye, doffing his derby hat. For a minute he was the old, dashing Andrew of whom Noelle had once been so fond, his lips smiling under his blond mustache.

  “I’m sorry to rush, but this is very important to me,” he told Noelle. “I hope to hear that Mr. Beale has given his consent for me to court Jennifer.” He looked briefly shamefaced. “I’ve been a cad to you, Noelle,” he added gently. “And I’m truly sorry. But things have gone well for you, haven’t they? I mean, Jared is wealthy, you’ll always be provided for…”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, without much enthusiasm. “I’m very happy for you, too, Andrew,” Noelle said, and meant it.

  “I had no idea that Jared—” He stopped. “He isn’t what he appears to be, is he? I never knew him at all.”

  “None of us did,” Noelle replied sadly.

  “You aren’t afraid of him?” he asked, and he looked worried.

  She smiled. “No, Andrew. I’ve never been afraid of him. He’s been kind to me.”

  “Kinder than I’ve been,” he agreed. “It would serve me right if Miss Beale loathed me. But she feels just as I do. Her father was reluctant before this trial came up, but it seems that his regard for my stepbrother has turned the tide in my favor. I must be careful to keep in his good graces.”

  “I wish you well,” she told him.

  “And I wish you well. We’ll truly be relatives now,” he said, with a gentle smile.

  “So we will,” she said dully, and all the while she was hearing Jared’s deep voice talking about giving her back her freedom.

  He held out a lean hand. “Shall we be friends, if you can forgive me? I’ve seen myself as I truly am. I only hope that I can change enough to make Jennifer proud to be my wife.”