The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1)

by Barbara Ankrum

  Grace watched the ease with which Reese conversed with these simple people, his fluency with the language and the friendliness he managed when he was not on his guard. She picked up enough words here and there to gather that their talk was predominantly political. Sentiment in Zimapan, Reese told her, leaned heavily in favor of the rebel cause. Juan's brother, Guillermo, fought beside Juarez, and Marta and her husband were hungry for word of the struggle. Reese told them what little he knew.

  His casual mention of the Americano Jake Scully brought nods of recollection from several in the Gonzales family. Reese didn't press them too hard, especially when Juan mentioned another name—Dominguez. She'd never heard that name before, but Reese apparently had. She felt him go tense beside her.

  A short time later, however, the conversation took a turn toward Reese and Grace. Though she understood little of what was being said, his eyes flashed to hers with the old heat when Marta made a sly comment directed at her. Nor did Grace understand the reply he gave her, but the implication was clear enough to make heat rise to her cheeks.

  Grace leaned close to Reese. "What did she say?"

  "She said you are built for making babies. And"—even Reese had the good grace to color then—"she said I should get to work."

  Grace nearly choked on her tortilla. After a moment, she smiled up at him wickedly. "And did you tell her you already had?"

  His humor faded and he regarded her soberly. "She thinks we're married."

  "Did you tell her that?"

  "I didn't have to," Reese replied, fully aware of the implications of that statement. It was difficult to hide the heat that leapt between them at the smallest look or touch. Harder still to rein in his compulsion to gaze at her when her attention turned elsewhere.

  She tore off another bite of tortilla and threaded her arm through his teasingly. "Hmm. Is it so obvious that we're mad for each other?"

  Smiling casually at Juan, who didn't understand a word of English, he sent her a look of warning. "Grace."

  "Yes, dearest?"

  His gaze took in the horde of Gonzales children surrounding them. "They're watching your every move."

  "I know," she sighed a little wistfully, smiling at Marta, who turned back to make more of the flat bread rounds. The playful teasing went out of her voice. "Aren't they wonderful? Look at them, ten children, all of them smiling and happy, with so little. But apparently they have something more precious than money."

  A muscle tensed in Reese's jaw as if he knew what was coming.

  "They have each other," she said at last. "Isn't that nice?"

  It was nearly noon by the time they finished their meal and getting too hot to cook. Marta and her husband Juan presented Grace with a colorful shawl woven on their own looms—for which they flatly refused payment—and a plentiful supply of tortillas and beans, then sent them on their way. Grace waved as they pulled away in the gig Reese had bought from them. She watched until the Gonzales children stopped chasing them, until they faded into the desert behind them.

  Reese drove silently, his face impassive, his thoughts impenetrable. The heavy scent of creosote and sage mingled with the heated air. Grace watched the high desert speed by in a blur of yellows and greens. Her thoughts turned to Luke and Brew and all the things that might have been—and all the things that still might be. She said a prayer for them both, and another for her and Reese. Then, she did the only thing she could think of to keep from crying in earnest—she pulled out her notebook and began to write.

  * * *

  By the afternoon of the second day of brain-addling heat on the high desert, the rut-filled track to Querétaro had jolted their insides to mush and coated their outsides with a fine layer of dust. Reese had to admit, as he watched her sleep, that Grace hadn't complained once. In fact, he could hardly recall her complaining once since they'd started. She's a scrapper, he thought, with what must be at least a drop of Gaelic pluck in her. Admiration mingled with the less honorable emotions she stirred in him as he watched her.

  What they'd shared the last few days had been beyond anything he could comprehend. It took merely a look or a touch to ignite the blaze inside him all over again. God in heaven, she was like a thirst he couldn't quench. He couldn't get enough of her, but he knew their time was nearly up. This game of theirs was over. Except, for him, it had never been a game. For him, it had been his last chance.

  He took a deep breath before he woke her. She'd fallen asleep somehow, head tilted at an awkward angle against the rig's collapsible leather canopy. It had been a constant battle to tamp down the powerful urge to take her in his arms and tell her that he'd find a way to work it out for them. That maybe there was hope for them, and he'd been wrong.

  But he wasn't. The more he turned the issue over in his mind—backward, forward, inside out—the more convinced he became that his conclusion was the only one that made sense. They were different as light and shadow. As incompatible as grease and flame. He was a poor Irish nobody, born to this life. She was a lady who deserved better than a man whose only talents were a fast gun and an uncanny knack for staying alive.

  Aye, she deserved more. So much more. Yet, incredibly, she seemed to recognize no lack in him. It was that dogged faith of hers that had gotten him this far. He couldn't explain it, but she made him want more from himself than he ever had before. But even as he contemplated reform, he couldn't imagine how to begin, or even if he had it in him. He'd balanced on the edge of destruction for so long, it had seemed like living to him.

  Until she came along.

  He pulled the hack to a stop and gave her a gentle nudge. "Grace?"

  She mumbled something in her sleep. Reese felt his stomach tighten. God, even coated in dust she was beautiful. He reined in the impulse to reach out and brush his fingers against her cheek.

  "Grace."

  "Hunhh?" She straightened abruptly in her seat and squinted at the brilliant swath of vermillion splashed across the sky.

  "We'll stop here for the night."

  "But it's not night yet," she argued, rubbing her eyes. "We can go farther."

  "I think you've had enough for today. We'll reach the city tomorrow. We might as well be rested."

  "Tomorrow?" Wrenched from sleep as she'd been, her uncensored expression seemed a mixture of hope and dread. "Can't we go tonight?"

  He shook his head. "In less than an hour it will be dark. Besides, I have something I want to show you."

  Helping her down from the carriage, he led her twenty feet away, around a thick hedge of desert willows, heavy with pale, orchid-like blooms, and a pair of fragrant smoke trees, enshrouded in lush purple blossoms. Grace looked at them in wonder. "Ohhh." She reached down to touch the beaded lavender bloom of a tamarisk bush. "It's lovely here."

  "Wait," he told her. "It gets better." He pushed aside the bushes to reveal a scene that nearly rendered Grace speechless. A spring-fed pool of sparkling water lay hidden there amidst the rushes. The sunset cast the water in rippling golden light.

  She nearly laughed aloud, dipping her hand in the cool water and sending a splash across the pool. "I think I've died and gone to heaven. How did you know it was here?"

  "When you've traveled the desert as much as I have, you learn to recognize the signs. Feel like a bath?"

  She grinned irrepressibly. "Is that a joke?"

  "I'll take that as a yes." He glanced around the pond briefly. "Well, then, I'll... uh, give you some privacy."

  Disappointment flashed in her blue eyes before she smiled brightly. "All right."

  Withdrawing his knife from its sheath, he dug into the soil around a small bush, hacking out a piece of root. He tossed it to her. "Soap plant. Rub it between your hands. It works almost as well as the real thing."

  She nodded and he disappeared through the hedge of bushes in the direction of the hack.

  Setting the squishy root down on a sun-warmed rock, she swallowed hard, loosening the braid that fell over her shoulder. Reese was right to pull away, s
he told herself, unbuttoning the cuffs on her sleeves. After all, he'd spoken no words of love or tomorrow, nor had she asked for any. In truth, she had no idea of his feelings for her. There were moments when he looked at her so tenderly she imagined he must love her. And others when he held himself so apart from her, she wondered if he cared at all. Trying to read a man like Reese was like trying to interpret the expression of the Great Sphinx of Egypt. It had all been a fantasy, like a fairy tale without a happy ending.

  She stripped off her top and undid the ties on her skirt, letting it fall to the ground. Tomorrow, they would reach Querétaro and Luke. Reese would put her and all of this behind him. If she was very, very lucky, so would she.

  Rolling down her torn stockings, she laid them carefully beside her dress. With a furtive look around, she stripped off the rest of her underthings, corset, camisole, and pantalets, and laid them on the ground, too.

  She waded into the cool spring with a sigh. The water closed over her hips, her breasts, her shoulders. Taking a deep breath, she disappeared below the surface, swam a few strokes, relishing the silken whisper of the water against her bare skin.

  As children, she and Luke had often gone swimming in the pond on their farm back in Virginia, often with only a few more clothes on than this. Those had been happy times—before their parents had been killed. After that, she and Luke had grown even closer. Except for Brew, Luke was all she had. The thought of losing him to Maximilian's firing squad sent a shaft of agony through her heart. She couldn't lose him. She wouldn't. Someday, she and Luke would swim in the pond in Front Royal again. She silently promised Luke that.

  Reaching up to the rock, she felt for the soap plant root. A hand closed over hers. She gasped in surprise, then smiled up at the man silhouetted by the setting sun.

  "I thought you wanted to give me some privacy," she said, raking the hair from her eyes.

  A gun glinted from the man's other hand and with slow, deliberate menace, he cocked it. "Pri-vacy?" said a voice distinctly not Reese's. "Oh, no, señorita." He gestured with the tip of his gun. "Quiero ver mas. I want to see more."

  * * *

  Reese's pulse staggered at the sound of Grace's terrified scream. He threw down the harness he'd just removed from Maximo and stumbled toward the pond, yanking his gun from its holster. His heart pounded wildly as his imagination filled in what he didn't know. With a thudding sense of doom, it occurred to him that the spring was a watering hole not only for humans, but for animals as well. Snakes, coyotes, even big cats frequented places like that. A shudder went through him. Why had he left her alone?

  Gun ready, he plunged through the shrubbery surrounding the pond only to find a different sort of animal altogether facing Grace with a gun pointed at her head. Reese skidded to a stop, leveling his own gun at the man. The scruffy-faced hombre's eyes widened for a moment in surprise, then he grinned at him through a thick, unkempt mustache. A gunbelt rested lazily around his hips, and bandoliers filled with cartridges crisscrossed his chest.

  "Buenas tardes, amigo," he greeted in an almost friendly manner as he held the gun steady at her head. In water up to her chin, Grace's terrified gaze slid to Reese.

  "Drop your gun," Reese told him, "or I'll shoot you where you stand."

  "But not before I kill her first, yes?" the man replied in heavily accented English. A sly grin split his face.

  Reese contemplated shouting at Grace to duck under the water to give him a moment to blow the bastard's head off. But the man might have time to kill her before she could respond. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  "What is it you want?" Reese demanded.

  "Me?" The hombre shrugged. "I am a man of few wants." He gestured toward Grace with a leer and a slight lift of his pistol. "Pues, son excepciones. But perhaps it is I who should ask what you want, gringo."

  Reese frowned, sincerely confused now. "What are you talking about?"

  "Put down your gun, señor."

  Reese's pulse echoed in his ears. "Let her go first. Look, whatever it is you want, deal with me. Leave her out of it."

  The man shook his head as if he were dealing with a child. "You don't seem to understand, amigo. You have no choice."

  Grace's eyes widened and she sucked in a breath. Too late, Reese caught the flash of movement to his right only the instant before an excruciating pain exploded in his head. As he felt the ground disappear beneath him and he plunged toward the sinking darkness, he heard Grace scream his name. His last conscious thought was that he'd finally succeeded in failing her completely.

  Chapter 19

  Through a thick fog, Reese struggled to focus on the sound of voices in the hazy distance. The thudding pain in his head made it difficult to concentrate. Somewhere, behind his eyelids, a flickering light illuminated the darkness. "He is alive?" a female voice asked in Spanish.

  "More or less," a man's voice answered.

  Even in his state of confusion, the man's amused tone irritated Reese. More or less. At least he wasn't dead, he realized with some relief. That had been his first guess. He lay curled on his side. His hands were behind his back, and from the sharp pain that bit into his wrists when he attempted to move them, he assumed he was bound.

  "You hit him too hard, Miguel," the woman accused. "We will get nothing from him like this."

  "But, Magdalena, you told me to hit him," the man wheedled.

  "I said hit, Miguel," she said patiently, "not bash." When she got no reply, she sighed and spoke to someone else in rapid-fire Spanish that went too fast for Reese's groggy mind to interpret.

  Pain lobbed back and forth inside his head like a ricocheting bullet. He let out an involuntary groan. He tried to pry open his eyes, but the sound of Grace's voice stopped him. There was an edge of hysteria to it.

  "If you've killed him, you'll be sorry! I'll have the U.S. government down here so fast it'll make your head spin, and they'll put each and every one of you—"

  "Gag her!" the other woman's voice demanded.

  "—behind bars!" Grace continued. "If you think you can just go around whacking people on the—" The rest descended into a muffled grunt of outrage.

  He almost smiled with relief. Grace. She sounded unhurt and as mouthy as ever. She was a scrapper, all right. He recalled the taunting words she'd endured as a girl. "Long on opinion—" And quite adequately long on everything else, he amended. Not the least of which was loyalty.

  With an effort he opened his eyes, searching her out. She wavered into focus from her spot propped beneath a mesquite. She was fully dressed, thank God. Whoever had knocked him out had tied and gagged her. She was wriggling furiously until she saw him watching her. Then her eyes went wide.

  "Rrrmm-phh!" she yelled.

  A gun cocked near his ear. He blinked hard and looked up at the person on the other end of the gun. A beautiful dark-haired woman returned his stare. Magdalena? The name suited her, he thought a little groggily. There was a winsome look about her face that the bandoliers across her chest adamantly belied.

  Half of her thick black hair was stuffed under a broad-brimmed sombrero. Like the dozen or so men who hovered around the fire behind her, she wore wide chaps, heavy leather coveralls that shielded her legs from the spines of the jumping cholla and prickly pear common in the high desert.

  "Como estas, señor?" the woman asked with a smile. Then in perfect English, "How you are feeling?"

  "I'd feel a lot better without a pistol growing out of my ear."

  "All in good time. Primero, gringo, tell us why you are here."

  He fired another look at Grace. "If you've hurt her, I'll—"

  "Her pride only has been bruised, señor. But no harm has come to her from my men. That, I can promise."

  For some reason, he believed her. He lowered his aching head to the ground with a sigh of relief.

  "You have not answered me, gringo. Why are you here?"

  "I could ask the same question."

  She traced his cheekbone with the tip of her pi
stol. "So handsome to be such a fool. Do you know where you are?"

  He couldn't see the pool, but could still smell the fragrant blooms of the smoke tree. They couldn't have taken him far. "I have no idea. Do you?"

  She tossed a laugh back at her men. "You are in our campamento. How you say...? Digs? And we don't like strangers here."

  He moistened his lips. "Perhaps you should post a No Trespassing sign."

  She arched an eyebrow. "Why have you come?"

  "Look," he said tiredly, "whatever your business, we have no intention of interfering. We're on our way to Querétaro. The señorita just wanted a bath."

  "Rrrummph-phm!" Grace emoted emphatically.

  The dark-haired woman's eyes went wide. "Ah-hah! Querétaro!" She turned to the others and said in Spanish, "Did I not tell you, amigos?" Returning to Reese, she prodded, "Why do you go there?"

  "None of your bloody business."

  "You are un espia perhaps? A spy for the emperor Maximiliano? Did Miramon send you to find us?"

  "Who?"

  "El General Miramon—the Austrian fool's lapdog!" She turned and spat into the dirt. "You pretend not to know him?"

  "This is ridiculous," Reese muttered.

  "You are not the first, amigo. There is a high price on the heads of all guerrilleros. Perhaps it is this you seek, no?"

  So they were Juarez's guerillas. At least something was starting to make sense now. "No," he answered flatly, losing all patience. "Look, I'm not after money, or any of your men. My name is Donovan. Reese Donovan. I don't know who you think I am, but—"

  A collective gasp went up from the nearby men. One clattered his spoon against his plate of beans.

  Magdalena gaped at him. "Reese Don-o-van?" she echoed, going pale as the moon. "El Reese Don-o-van? Of Texas?"

  "Yes."

  Her eyes widened. "The gunfighter? The man who saved the life of our beloved Benito Juarez from the bullet of an assassin?"

  He glanced uncomfortably at Grace, whose eyes widened with astonishment. "Something like that."

  "Dios! Why did you not say this?"