by Tess LeSue
Luke turned to examine her. “You don’t have to be responsible for everything, you know. Let me handle it.”
Alex gritted her teeth. Let him handle it. As far as she could see he wasn’t handling it particularly well, not if the Gradys were right out there, God knows how close . . .
“You seem pretty sure they’d want to come after you,” Luke remarked. “I thought they were looking for your sister.”
Alex felt like Cranky Bob had just kicked her in the stomach. How the hell did he know about any sister? She tried to keep her expression blank, aware that he was studying her. “What sister?”
“Victoria told me.” His voice was gentle, but Alex felt like he’d slapped her.
“She told you?” He knew she was a girl? Well, why had he waited so long to say so?
“She told me your sister left you to run east,” he said. He sounded disgusted.
“Yes,” Alex said numbly, her mind racing. So, he didn’t know? She chewed on her lip. Victoria must have told him the story they’d worked out.
“I think it’s high time you told me what those Gradys want from you, runt.”
“They want their gold back,” Alex said miserably. She didn’t mention the bonds. She’d burned most of them anyway.
“Your sister stole it?”
Alex nodded, flushing with shame. It sounded awful, laid bare like that. “But you don’t understand. They stole from us first,” she said fiercely. “They took everything we had. Because Silas . . . Silas wanted . . .” She trailed off. She could hardly tell him what Silas wanted, could she?
“Is that their gold you’ve been spending?”
Alex nodded again, unable to meet his eye.
“You reckon they’ll leave off if you give it back?”
“We’ve spent it,” Alex said numbly.
“On the horse,” he sighed.
“Yes.”
“Well, they’ve got the horse, so I reckon that’s a fair deal.” He looked depressed at the thought of the Gradys keeping the stallion.
“Gideon won’t stop until he’s got her too,” Alex said, her voice hoarse. Me. He won’t stop until he has me. “You don’t know Gideon.”
“Well, she ain’t here, is she?”
No, Alex thought, looking down at her soiled overalls. Alexandra Barratt had gone, and in her place was a skinny boy.
“Leave it with me, runt,” Luke said calmly. “We’ll have those Gradys strung up for horse theft, and then you won’t have to worry anymore.”
“You said the stallion was theirs by rights,” Alex reminded him glumly.
“Maybe so. But Isis wasn’t. It’s a hanging offense to steal a man’s horse, and the moment they laid hands on my horse, they made a date with the rope.” He began to whistle and Alex felt a mite better.
They rode along for a piece. Alex gradually relaxed, soothed by the bulk of him beside her. Luke Slater had a comforting way of making her feel safe.
“That O’Brien girl is making eyes at you again,” he drawled, when he finished whistling his latest tune.
She thought this might be the ideal time to ask Victoria’s question for her. That would sure as hell distract him. The last thing she wanted to talk about was Jane O’Brien. “Do you have a sweetheart?” she blurted, determined to get him off the subject.
“What?” Luke was completely taken aback.
“Well, just speaking of making eyes at people,” Alex said clumsily, blindly staring straight ahead, once again glad the dirt hid her blushes. “Do you have a sweetheart?”
He grinned. “Sure, I have a sweetheart.” He meant Amelia Harding, but all of a sudden his mind filled with a vision of Beatrice in that green gown, dancing under the lanterns in the town square of Independence.
Alex’s stomach twisted. “Really?”
“Really.”
She didn’t want to hear any more but she couldn’t help herself. “What does she look like?”
Golden hair. The slightest hint of a cleft in a stubborn little chin. And eyes the color of a rainstorm . . . Luke cleared his throat. “She’s pretty.”
Of course she is, Alex thought glumly. Luke could have any girl he wanted.
“She has brown eyes,” Luke continued, struggling to call Amelia’s eyes to mind. All he could see were gray eyes swirling like smoke.
“Oh.” Alex felt sick.
“And dark hair.” Beatrice’s hair had shone with streaks the color of shiny gold coins. And it curled. Unconsciously, Luke reached into his pocket, and his fingers brushed against the battered petals of a cloth rose. “Dark,” he repeated, louder than he intended to. Ripe, swelling curves, as smooth as silk, pressing against him until his pulse raced, until he was wild . . . hell. Luke scowled. He couldn’t do this to himself. She was out of his life for good. There was no point in torturing himself.
“She’s a tiny little thing,” he told Alex, banishing Beatrice from his thoughts and trying to force his memory of Amelia to take concrete form. “Slight. Slender. Why, I reckon her waist would fit between my hands.”
Alex blanched. And then she burned with shame. What must he have thought of her that night at Dolly’s? She was everything his sweetheart wasn’t. Alex felt something inside her die as she realized that she must have imagined the admiration in his face and the desire in his eyes. He’d made love to her because she was convenient. Because he was used to having any woman he wanted. Luke Slater thought all he had to do was look at a woman and she’d fall at his feet.
Alex’s jaw clenched. Well, not any more. This was one woman Luke Slater would never have.
In the back of the wagon, Victoria had to bite down on her fist to contain her joy. Brown eyes, dark hair, slight and slender. She knew it!
He did love her!
20
WELL, FORT KEARNEY sure was a disappointment. Alex took in the small, rough settlement by the side of the shining river and tried not to feel too deflated. After all, it wasn’t like she was a city girl. Her small square of Mississippi had only been settled for a decade or so; it was far from completely civilized. And yet, at least back home there were plantations, and towns, and trade along the river. The land out here seemed so empty. The fort looked insignificant against the huge spread of land and the indifferent flow of the river. It was like a fleabite on an old hide.
Alex wondered what Oregon would be like. Even emptier, she supposed, suppressing a sigh.
“Let Adam handle the mules,” Luke said, trotting over on Delilah and extending his hand to hoist her up behind him. “You’re coming into town with me.”
They’d made camp just upriver from the smudge of a town and Alex had immediately set to the chores. She was hot and she was tired. If she sat down she’d never get back up again.
“Why?” Alex eyed Luke’s proffered hand skeptically, suspecting she was being roped into more work.
“I’ve a mind to buy us steak for dinner.”
“Steak?”
“Well, a cow.”
Alex winced. “And you want help butchering it.” Lord, she hated butchery. It was hard, messy work.
“Come on.” Luke snapped his fingers at her.
“I’m not your slave, you know.” Alex glared up at him.
“What’s going on here?” Victoria asked, gliding over to smile up at Luke.
“He wants me to go into town with him, but I’m not going.”
“I’ll go,” Victoria volunteered.
“Yeah, take Victoria.”
Luke gave Alex a warning look.
“I’ll have the coals hot for when you get back with dinner,” Alex told him with a facile smile.
“Dinner?” Victoria looked back and forth between them.
“I need Alex to help me butcher a cow.”
Victoria pulled a face and stepped away.
Luke snappe
d his fingers again.
“And you can quit that,” Alex told him. “I’m not your horse either.”
“Would you get up here, you ornery runt?”
Alex ignored him and set off on foot.
“Alex doesn’t like horses,” Victoria explained. “Her—I mean, his—father was killed when his horse took a fall.” She blushed, hoping Luke hadn’t noticed her slip.
“A man can’t get far in this world if he’s scared of horses,” Luke observed, urging Delilah after the runt.
Alex screamed as a strong arm seized her around the middle and hauled her into the saddle. “Let me go!”
Luke ignored her and kicked Delilah into a trot. Alex almost flopped off the saddle, until Luke pulled her upright. She squealed and clutched at the pommel. She hated the jarring gait; she felt like she would plummet to the ground at any minute—and the ground looked like an awfully long way down.
“And you say you’re sixteen?” Luke said dubiously.
“Nearly seventeen,” she managed to gather her wits enough to remind him. It barely felt like a lie anymore.
“Bet you were in the church choir back home.”
She tilted her head to look up at him, but at that precise moment Delilah stepped up the pace and Alex felt a surge of panic; she had to return her full attention to maintaining her seat. “What do you mean by that?” she asked suspiciously when her heart had calmed again. She knew there had to be an insult there somewhere.
“Don’t choirs like boy sopranos?”
“I’m a contralto,” Alex told him primly.
“You’ll be a tenor any day now, I’m sure.” She could hear the laughter in his voice.
“I’m aiming for bass,” she snapped.
Luke looked down at the top of the battered brown hat. The runt sure was prickly. He was as bad as Luke’s brother Matt.
And he sure as hell didn’t know how to ride, Luke thought with disgust, watching the way the boy flapped bonelessly in the saddle, colliding with the horse at every step. He’d be black-and-blue by the time he dismounted. “Tomorrow I’ll start teaching you how to sit a horse.”
“No thanks,” Alex said swiftly.
“What on earth were you going to do with that Arab if you weren’t going to ride him?”
Alex chose to ignore him. Which proved to be impossible.
* * *
• • •
WHEN IT CAME time to butcher the animal the wretched man started disrobing again. He was certainly proving to be an exhibitionist. Worse, he seemed to expect Alex to follow suit!
“You’ll get blood all over you,” Luke warned, as he hung his shirt on a fence post and lifted the skinning knife.
“It’ll wash out,” Alex said stubbornly.
They were working in a dusty paddock owned by the captain who’d sold them the cow. Alex observed the captain’s two daughters taking a stroll along the riverbank, just in time to catch Luke’s display. She tried to ignore them as she rolled up her sleeves and helped him with the business at hand. They lapsed into a companionable silence as they worked.
“What happened to your pa?” Luke’s question came out of the blue, and blindsided Alex. All the breath was gone from her lungs as the grief hit her again.
“Which one?” she asked softly, feeling the sting of tears. She blinked them away and concentrated on her task. “My real pa, or my foster pa?”
“Victoria said there was an accident with a horse?”
She tensed at the undercurrent of sympathy. “That was my real pa. I was just a kid. We’d come to Mississippi because he had a dream about working the land, but he was killed a couple of months after we arrived.”
“I’m sorry.”
Alex tried to shrug it off. “He wasn’t cut out for it. He was trying to pull up tree stumps when it happened. The horse shied, he fell. I was the one who found him. Ma had sent me out with his lunch pail.”
Luke paused, his gaze fixed on Alex. He could see the brittleness in the runt’s expression. “And your ma?”
“She was pregnant when he died. Had the baby four months later and got childbed fever. Adam’s parents took us in, me and the baby, but the baby died before she was one. We woke up one morning and she was just gone. Lying there all still and peaceful; it was hard to believe she’d ever drawn breath.”
“But now you have Adam and Victoria.”
Alex looked up, startled. Briefly she met his coal-black gaze. But then he was back at work, tactfully giving her a chance to collect herself. “Yes,” she agreed. “They’re my family now. They’re both orphans, like me.”
“Victoria’s not Adam’s blood either?”
“No. Ma and Pa Spar—um, Alexander, were given to taking in strays.” She took a deep breath, feeling it was time to broach an awkward subject, but not sure how to continue. “Luke?”
“Yeah?” He stood and wiped the back of his arm across his brow, mopping away the perspiration. Over his shoulder Alex could see the captain’s daughters giggling to one another.
“About Victoria . . .”
“What about her?”
“Be careful of her feelings.” Alex looked down at her bloody hands. “I think . . . I think she thinks you’re more serious than you are.”
“Don’t they all,” Luke sighed. Alex felt her stomach twist. “Don’t worry, runt, I’ll treat her like the lady she is. And you”—he gave Alex a wink—“you better treat that O’Brien girl like the lady she should be.”
* * *
• • •
ONCE THE BUTCHERING was done and the mess cleared up, Alex and Luke headed for the water pump. “One of these days you’re going to have to take a bath,” Luke observed, noticing that Alex was only scrubbing her hands and arms, “or you’ll stink to the heavens.” He eyed her clothes too. The new blood splatters had merely added to the layers of filth. “I’d be giving your overalls a wash while you’re at it.”
“Oh, Mr. Slater,” the captain’s wife called, emerging from the house, “I thought these might come in handy.” She offered them a cake of soap and two clean towels. “And we’d be mighty glad if you’d join us for a pot of tea. It’s the least we can do after you’ve so kindly given us dinner for the table tonight. I’ve made a chocolate cake, if you’d care for a piece.”
“You’re kind, but it’s really not necessary. It was my pleasure, ma’am, after your husband sold us the cow at such a reasonable price.”
“Of course it’s not necessary,” the captain’s wife fussed, and Alex could see her daughters peering through the window and giggling, “but we so rarely get visitors. You wouldn’t disappoint us, would you?”
“In that case, ma’am, we’d be honored.”
“Rarely get visitors,” Alex grumbled after the kitchen door had clicked closed behind the captain’s wife. “They’re on the trail, aren’t they? I reckon they get a constant stream of visitors.”
Luke laughed.
“We both know we’re only getting chocolate cake so those girls can ogle you.”
“Nothing wrong with that, runt,” Luke said cheerfully, tossing Alex a towel. “We can ogle them right back. They looked like mighty pretty girls from what I saw.”
“You saw them watching us? You are an exhibitionist.”
“And you, runt, are a regular thundercloud. Lighten up a little. The meaning of life can be found in a pretty girl’s smile.”
Alex scowled at his back as she followed him into the kitchen. “What would your sweetheart think?”
“What she don’t know won’t hurt her.”
Damn it. The runt wasn’t just a thundercloud, he was a veritable downpour. Now he was thinking of Beatrice again. Which was ridiculous. Amelia was the woman he’d always planned to marry, and Amelia had never soured his enjoyment of a pretty woman. But now his head was full of Beatrice and the captain’s daughters just
didn’t look so pretty anymore. The younger one had a stingy mouth; it wasn’t full and ripe like other mouths he’d known, and her lips were pale, not the rich red of summer strawberries. And the older one’s eyes were a faded blue, without the slightest trace of stormy gray . . .
Hell. Luke tried his best to be charming, but his heart just wasn’t in it. He was glad when they took their leave. He filled the saddlebags with their packages, and was surprised when he turned to find the runt just standing there.
“I don’t know how to get up,” Alex admitted, with no small measure of chagrin.
“Lesson one,” Luke announced. “Put your foot in the stirrup and get on. Not that foot. You’ll end up facing her rear end. That’s the one.”
Alex gasped when she felt his hands against her buttocks, giving her a push up. She almost went sailing right over the horse. Glory, it was a long way down! She didn’t like it up here by herself, not one bit. It was a great relief when Luke joined her. At least it was until she realized that this time she’d be riding behind him, and there was no pommel. The only thing to hold on to was him. Even worse, the snug saddle had her groin pressed hard against his buttocks, and her thighs hugging his.
She resigned herself to the inevitable and held on for dear life. And, despite herself, she found she began to enjoy the experience. She felt safer this time. It was something to do with the solid bulk of him—like holding on to a mountain—and the way she could feel his thighs guiding Delilah. After a while she relaxed against him, and let herself inhale his masculine scent. Oh, he was warm in her arms. Alex sighed. This trip to Oregon was going to be pure torture.
Alex didn’t miss the jealousy in Victoria’s eyes when they cantered into camp. She left her sister for Luke to handle and disappeared into the wagon to change out of her bloody clothes. She’d just have time to wash them in the river before dinner, she guessed.
She met Lucinda Crawford and Ilse Ulrich by the riverside. Both had their washboards out and their sleeves rolled up. “Oh, aren’t you a good lad helping Luke,” Lucinda clucked, her red hands beckoning Alex closer. “Here, let me take those for you and wash the blood out.”