Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance)

by Matthews, Devon

  The smell of coffee coaxed her fully awake. She draped the cover around her bare shoulders and sat on the side of the bed. Rane was nowhere in sight.

  Streaks of dried blood smeared the insides of her thighs. She stared at it and traced a fingertip over the tender skin. The smudges were all that remained of lost innocence, once preciously guarded, a treasure she had discarded all too easily when it suited her.

  Fallen. Soiled goods. The denigrating words reared up like phantom vipers and hissed at her. She shook her head. No. She wouldn’t listen. She didn’t feel the least bit soiled. If anything, she felt reborn. She had given herself to the only man she’d ever wanted... the man she loved.

  Angel’s hand flew to her mouth. Dear God in heaven!

  At some point during the past several days, her vision of her future had changed. She no longer saw herself standing in some grand ballroom surrounded by a throng of admiring beaux, the sons of cattle barons. She no longer saw her father standing on the sidelines, beaming with pride. Now, her thoughts of going home all included Rane somewhere in the picture.

  How could that be? She’d fallen in love with a man who not only had a disreputable past, he also, almost certainly, had no future. Even if her father didn’t shoot him on sight, he’d never accept Rane. He’d disown her before that happened. She’d spent two long, grueling years in New York, learning to behave like a proper lady, only to return to Texas and commit the one act the gossips had always accused her of—being a wanton woman.

  Her father would be furious. Devastated. How could she face him? How could she not? If it came to a choice, her father’s respect or Rane, which would she choose?

  She shook her head. Getting ahead of herself only borrowed grief. Somehow, during the past eight days, she’d lost her heart to Rane Mantorres. That didn’t mean he felt the same. To a man such as he, she was probably nothing more than another conquest. A conquest easily won, she realized. She’d practically thrown herself at him.

  Her breath hitched as the pressure around her heart increased to a poignant ache. Sitting there on the side of the bed, trying to second-guess him would get her nowhere. There was only one way to find out.

  Fortified with strong coffee and dressed in the scant peasant clothes—which Rane had evidently hung to dry on the rope stretched across the room—Angel walked out of the adobe nearly an hour later. With her hair swept up and pinned into a neat coil around the crown of her head, she hoped she more closely resembled the civilized woman who had boarded the train in New York nearly three weeks ago.

  Outside, the night’s storm had lain to rest the dust and sand. Sunlight streamed through the trees, shifting dappled patches of light and darkness over the ground. The air smelled fresh and sweet. Her little paint mare and Pago, the name she now knew Rane called his big stallion, stood in the corrals, chewing contentedly on rations of grain. The stallion’s owner was nowhere in sight.

  Footprints showed up plainly in the freshly washed sand. They milled at the corrals, then led toward the creek. Angel followed. With each step, her nerves thrummed. The thought of facing Rane in the bare light of day after the intimacy they’d shared made her want to turn tail and run. But she had to know where she stood.

  The narrow stream ran swollen and muddy with floodwater. Following the tracks, Angel paralleled the rushing water southward. Limber willows bordered the banks, dripping moisture from their trailing branches. The tracks led her to another stand of cottonwoods.

  In the midst of the trees, a weathered slab of stone marked a solitary grave. Rane stood beside the narrow mound with his hat in his hands, his dark head bowed, solemn and respectful.

  Angel halted. Her first impulse urged her to turn around and go back. She felt like an intruder. Yet, curiosity rooted her to the spot. She leaned against a tree trunk, dug her nails into the rough bark, and focused on the name carved into the headstone.

  Maria Mantorres.

  Angel stared at the name until it blurred before her eyes. An ominous fog crept over her and blotted the cheery sunlight. Had Rane abandoned her in his bed to commune with a dead woman who shared his name? The sorrowful droop of his proud head was unmistakable.

  She pulled her stinging fingers away from the tree and pressed her back to it instead. Jealousy washed over her in sickening waves. She squeezed her eyes closed for a brief instant and tried to will it away. When she opened them again and looked at him, he settled the hat over his head and started toward her.

  He’d seen her.

  Her heart lurched like a wild thing and sent heat racing into her face. A Peeping Tom caught in the act. That’s what she felt like. When he neared her, she drew a deep, steadying breath and pushed away from the tree.

  “Good morning.” He sounded so brusque.

  “Morning,” she murmured.

  His features were etched in granite, as cold and remote as the stone marker in the distance. He had closed himself to her again, allowing her to see nothing. She thought she’d broken through some of his barriers, and now it looked as though he’d put them all solidly back in place. She hadn’t known what to expect, but the hard-eyed man before her in no way resembled the warm, passionate lover whose bed she had shared.

  “Were you looking for me?”

  Again, he sounded so cold. The threat of tears stung her eyes. She sucked in another deep, strengthening breath and stiffened her spine. She would not allow him to see her cry.

  “Yes, and I’m sorry I disturbed you,” she said, following his example of cold formality. “Had I known you were busy with your devotions, I wouldn’t have followed you.”

  A muscle in his jaw knotted. He continued to glare at her. “Go back to the house, Angel.”

  She narrowed her eyes. His hostile treatment flew in the face of everything she had hoped for and expected. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why you’re so angry.”

  His expression darkened, as if a shadow moved over his features. “How did you expect me to feel,” he demanded, “after the fast one you pulled on me last night?”

  The question wasn’t what she expected. She clutched her arms against her waist. “Wh-what are you talking about? What fast one?”

  He leaned nearer and looked directly into her eyes. Flashing anger and cold darkness bored into her. His look both scorched her and chilled her to her very marrow. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?”

  That’s what he was angry about? “I didn’t think it mattered?”

  A soft, incredulous laugh burst from his lips. “You didn’t think it mattered?” He straightened and laughed again. Shaking his head, he shifted to a hipshot stance, but she knew the relaxed pose was a lie. “It mattered,” he said. “I’m not in the habit of seducing niñas.”

  The fine hair covering her arms stood on end as if a frigid wind blew through the trees. After the intimacy they’d shared during the night, how dare he call her a child.

  “You think I’m a child?” Her voice trembled, and she hated betraying even that small sign of weakness. She wanted to grab him and shake him, make him look at her with a spark of tender recognition, instead of the indifferent eyes of a stranger. “I’m a grown woman, Rane, and I know my own mind. Besides, that’s not the way it happened, and you know it.”

  “No, that’s not the way it happened,” he agreed. A sneer curved his lips. “What did you hope to gain, Angel?”

  She held his level gaze, seething, while his words pelted her, shredded her heart into a million tiny pieces.

  “Did you think I would let you go if you offered up your precious, lily-white virtue to me?”

  If he’d drawn his gun and shot her, she wouldn’t have been more appalled. Reflex brought her hand up. Without thinking, she slammed it against the rigid plane of his cheek. The resounding crack and the sting in her fingers startled her. She gasped and retreated a hasty step.

  She had finally broken his cold restraint. Exposed reaction leapt to his face. He looked... wounded? And if she didn’t know better, she would
almost swear the haunted look in his eyes resulted from fear. But that was impossible. She had seen him look into the hideous face of death itself and betray no emotion.

  With only a flicker from his dark eyes and a hardening of his mouth to warn her, he reached out and captured her arm. Forcing it down to her side, he levered her resistant body closer.

  “What do you want from me?”

  Your love. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  She might as well wish for the moon. Obviously, his actions last night hadn’t been motivated by anything beyond his physical needs. She’d been a fool to think otherwise. But she couldn’t let him see her devastation. She wouldn’t be able to bear that humiliation. Somehow, she had to make him believe her behavior had been just as cold-hearted and calculated as his.

  Squaring back her shoulders, she lifted her chin and assumed the guise of the haughty society demoiselle, just as Aunt Nelda had taught her. “Why would I want anything from someone like you?”

  The barest twitch of a rigid muscle in his cheek betrayed that she had pricked his defensive armor. “That’s not strictly true,” she amended. “I did want something from you, and I got it...last night.”

  With that, she wrenched her arm from his grasp and whirled past him, presenting him with a properly stiff back as she stalked away.

  His hand snaked out and wrapped around her arm once more, stopping her dead. He stepped in front of her. When she refused to look at him, he placed his fingers beneath her chin and forced it up.

  “Why did you do it, Angel? Why me?” he asked. “Why didn’t you save it for your wedding night?”

  “I’m twenty years old, Rane. Maybe I got tired of ‘saving it’!” She stepped back, distancing herself from the disturbing power of his touch. “If it was such an issue, why didn’t you just back off?”

  “¡Cristo! woman! I’m only human. I’ve thought of little except getting my hands on you since the first moment I saw you.”

  So... there it was. Spoken in plain words. He had lusted for her body and nothing more.

  Angel turned her back on him and resumed her angry retreat, praying he wouldn’t try to stop her again lest he see the scalding tears streaming down her cheeks.

  This time he let her go.

  Rane watched Angel disappear among the cottonwoods, admiring her more than ever.

  She hadn’t tried to corner him, hadn’t demanded that he return her “favor” tit for tat. No hysterics or accusations. Angel Clayton was some kind of rare woman, which made her words sting even more.

  Why would I want anything from someone like you?

  Someone like you...

  He was a mongrel caught between two races, considered dangerous by the Anglos who, for the most part, resented his very existence. Angel wasn’t the first gringa who had believed herself superior, then invited him into her bed on the sly. Those other women had used him as much as he had used them. For the thrill of sleeping with someone outside their social status, someone forbidden. The danger seemed to spice up the sex for them. He had been only too happy to feed their fantasies and play the role of the hot Hispanic lover.

  This time, he felt no satisfaction with his conquest.

  Angel was no world-wise strumpet. She had sacrificed her virginity for him, and he was at a loss to know why, no matter what she claimed. What had happened between them last night went beyond casual sex. The words “making love” flitted through his mind. He resisted the thought. In fact, it scared the hell out of him.

  He pulled off his hat and raked back his hair with an unsteady hand. “What the hell have I done?”

  ****

  Angel, chilled and shivering, stood in the open doorway with her arms hugged tightly beneath her breasts. Water streamed from the edge of the thatched roof and spattered on the muddy ground in front of her feet. Fine mist settled over her face and muslin clad arms. Still, she was reluctant to move. The soft hush of the steadily falling rain soothed her, but the new wounds inflicted on her heart still ached.

  Outside, the corralled horses had blurred to gray ghosts beneath the new deluge.

  Behind her, Rane straddled one of the benches at the table. The smell of gun oil hung heavy in the still, thick air, overpowering even the smoking wood blazing on the hearth.

  The inclement weather had forced them both indoors, but the chasm that had opened between them that morning seemed wider than ever.

  She signed and braced a shoulder against the wooden door frame.

  The day her father sent her away had marked a turning point in her life. She had vowed she would never be hurt that badly again. The two years she’d spent in the east should have matured her, hardened her. But the old pain was still there, as raw as ever.

  Rane had assumed he knew all about her that he needed and hadn’t even bothered to ask. He’d believed the lies he’d heard. That fact galled her the most. He didn’t know the first thing about her. How could he understand the loneliness of growing into a woman, isolated and friendless, except for the company of a bunch of crude cowhands?

  She could well imagine the stories he’d heard. The vile gossip and outright lies. Because she’d worn britches and rode with her father’s men, vulgar rumors had circulated. Her father had shielded her from the worst of it, but she knew the gossips had assumed she also allowed her father’s cowhands the use of her body.

  Rane’s shocked expression at finding her still untouched flickered through her mind like a recurring vision. She had hoped the past would no longer affect her, that time and distance had laid it to rest, but it hadn’t.

  In the end, she was still the same lonely girl she’d always been, desperately grasping for love that was forever held beyond her reach. First by her father, and now Rane.

  The ultimate irony of that hit her hard. She ached with it, a hollow pain that thrummed from within and settled deep in her heart. The threat of more tears burned her eyes. She turned her face up to the cooling mist, refusing to give in to them again.

  “Evil unto him,” she murmured, “who thinks evil.”

  “Did you say something?”

  The words were softly spoken, casual. Resolved, she turned and found him with his elbows carelessly propped on the table. In one hand, he held his pistol, broken down for cleaning. In the other dangled a slender metal rod with an oily rag tightly wrapped around the end. When she didn’t answer, he lifted his head and looked at her.

  “No,” she said.

  “Oh.” He returned his attention to the weapon in his hands. “I thought I heard you say something.”

  She shrugged, though he didn’t see. “Talking to myself, perhaps.”

  “Bad habit,” he said.

  He lifted the gun to catch the pale light filtering through the door and squinted down the barrel. Totally absorbed, it seemed. She knew the image would stay with her forever. Weapon in hand, what went through his mind during idle moments such as this? Did he think of himself as a killer, or an avenging angel?

  Did it really matter? Watching him manipulate his precious gun was a jolting reminder of who he was. What he was. She’d been the worst kind of fool to imagine he might be something more.

  The nerve-racking silence expanded, filled with nothing but the soft rush of falling rain and the occasional scrape and click of metal sliding against metal. Drawn despite herself, Angel crossed to the table and sat on the bench opposite him. He reassembled the Peacemaker and loaded it. His movements wasted nothing and, as always, his hands fascinated her. His long, beautiful fingers could have belonged to an artist, a healer—or a gentleman. Last night they had stroked her body with the same loving care he now gave to his damned gun.

  She hated the comparison. Worst of all, she hated knowing she held no more significance to him than the object in his hand, and still she longed to reach across the table and touch him.

  But she didn’t. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  His silence frustrated her more now than ever. Pulling in a deep breath, she finally braved the ques
tion that had been eating at her all day.

  “Who was Maria Mantorres?”

  He kept running the oily rag over the surface of the Colt and appeared solely focused on polishing it to a high shine. “My mother,” he replied at last.

  Hard on the heels of overwhelming relief, shame flooded Angel. Unwelcome heat splashed into her cheeks. She’d been jealous of his mother. “I—I’m sorry.”

  One corner of his mouth twitched briefly, as if she’d touched a nerve. But she couldn’t let it go that easily.

  “How long has she been...gone?”

  He expelled a heavy breath and deliberately laid the pistol atop the table. “Too long,” he said. “Twelve years. I was fourteen when she died.”

  His hesitation warned her. His mother’s death wasn’t something he normally talked about. Nor did he wish to now. At least he’d answered her and satisfied her curiosity. In doing so, he’d revealed more about himself within the past nine seconds than he had during the past nine days. Odd to think of him as being only twenty-six years old.

  He shifted on the bench and looked at her.

  She remembered the first time she’d seen him, and again that day at the base of the rockslide. She’d thought his eyes dull and lifeless. That he was a man who viewed the world from an empty vessel because he’d lost his soul. How wrong she’d been. A whole array of emotions warred within their dark depths. Now, she understood that he held his pain inside, carefully disguised.

  “At least you have memories of your mother,” she blurted. More than anything she wanted to take his mind from whatever had put that haunted look in his eyes. She ached for him, and she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to feel anything where he was concerned. “I don’t even remember mine. She died when I was just a baby. All I have of her is one photograph. Just one flat, cold image. It stands on the mantle above the fireplace in the parlor.”

  She fell silent as sharp regret stabbed her. Her mother’s photograph. Her beautiful, picture perfect mother posing for the photographer in her striped silk dress of unknown color. Sitting with her stylishly coifed blond head held high, and her black lace gloved hands folded primly in her lap. Her final wish in life had been for Angel’s future. She’d wanted her daughter to be a fine lady, like herself.