California Caress

by Rebecca Sinclair

  “And then?” she asked softly.

  “And then I met you.” The arm around her shoulder tightened. “I’m close now, sunshine. So close I can taste it.”

  Hope squirmed, and Drake immediately loosened his grip. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with me. I don’t have influential friends in Boston, or anywhere else for that matter. And no money. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be too much help.”

  “Not in that way, true,” he said, scratching his jaw thoughtfully. “But you have grace, elegance, and a beauty most women only dream of.”

  Hope wasn’t entirely sure she believed his sweet words, but she let it pass. A dark eyebrow cocked high in her forehead. “So?”

  His fingertips tapped the pert turn of her nose. “So, I have a proposition for you.”

  “A proposition?” She stiffened, her dark eyes shimmering with suspicion. “What kind of proposition?”

  “How much money would it take to pay the back taxes on your place in Virginia and rebuild your house?”

  “I don’t know,” she stated flatly, her eyes narrow and cautious, “but it would be a lot. The house was completely destroyed, and no matter how hard I worked, it would take more than myself to get the fields cultivated again. All the servants we had were sold to pay what we could. A few stayed after we left, but I guess they’ve probably moved on by now.”

  “How much?”

  She settled on the most outrageous sum that sprang to mind. “Ten thousand dollars.”

  Drake gave a low whistle and pulled a reluctant Hope back to his side when she tried to move away. “And what would you be willing to do to get your land back, sunshine? How far would you be willing to go?”

  “I wouldn’t do anything illegal, if that’s what you mean,” she said tersely. “I’d rather work and earn the money. At least that way I’d have the satisfaction of knowing I rebuilt everything myself.”

  A low, mirthless chuckle rumbled in his throat. “Do you have any idea how long it would take you to earn that kind of money? Don’t forget, you’d have to pay your living expenses while you’re working. That in itself can mean major expenditures. Even if you could get a job that pays—and there aren’t too many around for a woman—it could take you damn near the rest of your life to save ten thousand dollars.”

  “I know that. What are you getting at?”

  “You hired me once. Now I want to hire you. It’s a job, strictly business, of course.”

  Hope clutched the bedroll to her chest and sat up. Suddenly, the feel of his warm, supple flesh pressing intimately against her was a distraction she couldn’t afford. “To do what?”

  “To be my wife.”

  “You want to marry me?” she gasped, her dark eyes widening in surprise.

  “No,” he said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. He was watching her closely, gauging each emotion as it flickered across her finely honed features. “I want to hire you to pretend you’re my wife. I want you to come with me to Boston and play the part of the devoted wife to the hilt. If you do your job well, when I’m done with my brother and his wife I’ll personally return you to Virginia and buy back your estate, lock, stock and barrel.” His gaze darkened. “What you do with the rest of your life is your concern. I won’t interfere.”

  He wants to by my favors, use me, then cast me aside like a piece of rubbish!

  Humiliation boiled in Hope’s blood. Never could she remember feeling so insulted. The urge to slap his arrogant face was second only to the urge to grab his Colt from where he’d carelessly tossed it to the floor, and shoot him straight through the heart—if he had one! As for her own heart, it felt as though it were being brutally wrenched in two. She might have expected callous treatment from this man, but to have the reality of it so carelessly flung in her face was ten times worse than the nagging doubts she’d harbored before.

  She gritted her teeth and glared at him with an intensity that went far beyond loathing. “If I agree, what proof do I have that you’ll keep your end of the bargain?” she asked tightly, refusing to look at him.

  “I showed up at your damn fight in Thirsty Gulch, didn’t I?” he countered dryly. “That should prove that I’m a man of my word.” His expression hardened. “I’ll pay you. Never doubt it. I may be a gunslinger and a rogue in your eyes, but I’m no liar.”

  Hope nodded briskly. If this was the only way she was going to get back her land she might as well bite her tongue and do it. At least she’d have something to call her own when all this was over. Small compensation, true, but it wasn’t as though she had much choice.

  “All right,” she agreed through thin, tight lips. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do it.” Glaring at Drake, she inched away, bringing the bedroll with her and adding, “I’m warning you, cross me on this and whatever you have in mind for your brother and his wife will seem like child’s play compared to what I’ll do to you when I find you. And I will find you, gunslinger. I’ll hunt you down like a dog if I have to, but I’ll see that you pay me.”

  “Do your job and it’ll never come to that.”

  It was the last thing he said before rolling onto his side, leaving Hope to brood in silence.

  The urge to lash out was strong, but suppressed. With steely Bennett determination, she resolved to see this nasty job through to the end. And when it was over, when she had the money to buy back Lake’s Edge, she’d never have to lay eyes on Drake Frazier again.

  Good riddance, she thought as she plopped to the floor and clutched the blanket beneath her chin. Now, if she could just convince her heart to believe what her head was telling her... not an easy feat when her soul felt severed in two.

  A tear trickled down her cheek, splashing on the floor and mixing with the dust there. Gritting her teeth, she swiped it away, determined not to cry. She wouldn’t give Drake Frazier the satisfaction of seeing just how badly he’d hurt her. Instead, she concentrated on willing her body to relax. As a distraction, she focused on the gentle rhythm of Drake’s breaths. He seemed to fall asleep immediately. Soon, his soft, familiar snore filled the air.

  Hope tossed and turned, toying with the idea of waking Drake up, just for spite. But she couldn’t face him yet, she needed time for his startling “proposition” to sink in. Time to mull it all over and somehow come to terms with the idea of pretending to be this cold-hearted gunslinger’s wife. Her thoughts churned as she struggled to put her warring emotions into perspective. While she was hurt that he could use her so callously, she also felt a traitorous shiver of delight at the prospect of being so close to him. This latter feeling was quickly squelched.

  With a restless sigh, she rolled onto her back. The floor made a hard bed; it was even more uncomfortable without Drake’s warmth. Hope was used to the feel of him snuggling against her in the night, used to his soft snore stirring the curls that framed her brow. But as much as she missed the reassurance of his flesh against hers, she didn’t seek him out. She had her pride!

  The firelight danced across the grimy ceiling beams. It was as good a place to focus her concentration as any. And that was when she heard it.

  “Angelique?” The voice was sleep-softened and muffled, almost lost to the rain pelting against the window.

  She tensed, the muscles in her body coiling tight, although she didn’t move. Her breathing slowed and weakened as she strained to hear every whisper of sound. Above the rain, wind, and the crackling flames in the hearth, a pang of doubt ran through her. Had she heard him call out Angelique’s name in his sleep, or was her tortured imagination playing cruel tricks on her?

  Her hands fisted the bedroll as her gaze snapped to the side, in time to see Drake roll onto his back. One sun-kissed arm was flung lazily over his eyes.

  “Angelique!” This time, there was no mistaking Drake’s voice, or the name he called out.

  Hope sucked in a quick breath and tried to ignore the stab of betrayal that knifed through her. But the pain ran too deep, its intensity was too stunning to deny. Swallowing hard, s
he buried her face beneath the bedroll.

  I thought I’d lost you, sunshine. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life. With the memory of those words came the first sliver of rage. Instead of pushing the feeling away, Hope clung to the thread of anger. It wasn’t easy, but by applying a little Bennett determination, she managed to funnel her pain into boiling fury. It helped.

  Her jaw hardened as she lowered the bedroll to glare at the handsome, sleeping face of the man beside her.

  The rotten bastard! She had believed him. No, she hadn’t just believed him, she’d welcomed his admission with open arms. But it hadn’t been an admission of affection, Hope fumed, it had been his way of securing an agreement from her—an agreement that would see her pretending to be his wife. For some reason Drake needed her to get back at Charles and Angelique, and he would stop at nothing to secure her loyalty, even if it meant hinting at an affection he didn’t feel. An affection he reserved for “the only woman he could ever love.”

  Damn him! No matter what Angelique had done, Drake still loved her. Why else would he call out her name in his sleep? Why else would he hire a woman to play his wife? Of course he didn’t want to marry Hope. He wanted to be free for Angelique once Charles was ruined!

  Stunned by the thoughts churning through her head, Hope rolled to a sit. The blanket fell in lumpy folds to her waist. She didn’t retrieve it.

  I’ll go with him to Boston, she decided abruptly, firmly. Whatever it took to get Drake’s precious business back and ruin his brother, she would do. Then, when this whole damn mess was over, she’d take the money he’d promised, with interest, and go home to Lake’s Edge, where it was safe, leaving Drake to his precious Angelique. They deserved each other!

  With that decided, she pulled the bedroll high, crept as far away from Drake’s sleeping form as she could and still keep warm, then plopped back down on the floor. But she didn’t sleep. Not for a long, long time.

  Chapter 13

  The robin’s-egg-blue sky was cloudless, broken only by the golden ball of sun that warmed the hard-packed ground. Up ahead, wide open plains stretched as far as the eye could see, an unwelcome, barren expanse, interrupted sporadically by clumps of thick prairie grass and an occasional gnarled mesquite tree. To the right was the Platte River, a long, winding ribbon that had the look and taste of gurgling mud.

  The California Trail twisted toward a hill which spanned the distant horizon. The hill looked to be rich, cast-iron blue. With the dappled gray moving beneath her, Hope attributed the illusion to the position of the late afternoon sun, coupled with distance.

  As had been the case for the last week, the widely traveled stretch was littered with graves. Ahead and behind, old grave sites blended with new, the total too numerous to count. The tally increased wherever the cholera epidemic had run rampant through a wagon trains, then decreased as the disease tapered off. In a vicious circle, the course would repeat itself every few miles.

  Hope had long since abandoned the habit of reading the crudely chiseled crosses or carefully etched stones used as markers for some of the fresher mounds. Her heart went out to the families who, upon reaching their destination of California or the Oregon Territory, came back to reclaim the remains of their kin. The chance of finding any specific grave among so many was slim. As Drake had curtly pointed out scarcely two days before, such luck was the exception, not the rule.

  She repressed a shudder as his words lingered hauntingly in her mind. “If the Indians don’t dig up the bodies, the wild coyotes will. Some of the ones buried under rocks stand a chance of surviving. A minimal chance. The coyotes’ll probably leave them alone. The Indians aren’t so easily fooled.”

  With each passing mile, Hope began to think the term “coyote hole” would be more appropriate here than in the mines she’d left behind. In three weeks’ time they had passed more clawed out holes in the ground than she cared to remember. Most were empty, although a few still bore the scattered remains of sun-bleached bones. It was a grim sight, one made even more disheartrending when the marker declared the body inside the pit as that of a child.

  Hope swallowed hard and pushed the depressing thoughts aside. The dappled gray swayed beneath her and she leaned low over its sinewy back. Her heels nudged the mare forward, but the horse’s gait barely increased. Lazy easily earned the nickname she’d been given, Hope thought derisively, as she willed the gray to a swifter pace. Her attempt to outstrip Frazier’s darker, more accomplished mount was almost comical.

  The mare took her own sweet time, but eventually Lazy responded to the insistent prodding, as though she could actually hear the words that were silently screamed at her. Gradually, the pace quickened. The distance between Hope and Drake shortened, but even the gray’s best was not enough. The second Drake had seen what she was about, he’d urged his own mount faster. The distance widened until it was too great for Lazy’s sluggish sprint to close.

  Raising her hand in good-natured defeat, Hope slowed the horse to a canter, then reined Lazy in. The horse whickered, shaking her speckled head from side to side. “Easy, girl,” she crooned. Holding the reins firm in one hand, she patted the silky mane with the other.

  Drake fell back alongside the gray. Grudgingly, Hope had to admit how perfectly he held his seat atop the jet black mustang, back rigid, head straight, knees tightly gripping the winded stallion’s sinewy ribs. A boyish grin split his face, and the shock of the expression made it all the more endearing. The sea-green eyes sparkled with delight beneath the shadows of his hat as the large hands expertly reined the horse in.

  Since the morning they had buried Tubbs behind the deserted shack, nearly six weeks before, she had rarely seen him crack a smile, aside from a derisive chuckle or sarcastic grin. But this reaction was instinctive, putting to good use the tiny lines that shot from his eyes; lines that indicated a man who had at one time been given to laughter. In spite of herself, she enjoyed the sight.

  “Giving up so soon, sunshine?” he asked, as he pushed back his hat and mopped the sweat from his brow. “Or did you want to race best two out of three?”

  “Trade horses with me and then we’ll see who gives up,” she countered contritely. But she couldn’t help the grin that tugged at her lips. Her dark eyes shimmered with challenge as her gaze touched on the pitch black animal beneath him. “What’s the matter, gunslinger, afraid you’ll lose?”

  Chuckling, he pushed the hat low on his brow, once again casting the upper portion of his face in enticingly vague shadows. “I’m afraid you’ll kill yourself.”

  “I’ve ridden mounts that would make that nag of yours look like a plow horse.” She nodded to the half-wild mustang. “Back in Virginia we had an entire stable full of them.”

  “Is that a fact?” Drake’s glance was filled with barely concealed amusement.

  “That’s a fact.”

  The smirk was back in place as he dragged a hand over the stubbly line of his cheek. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you don’t like poor old Lazy here.” He reached out and patted the gray’s sweat-lathered side.

  She fingered the reins as her horse sidestepped the black. She eyed Drake’s mount. “Lazy’s fine,” she evaded, “if you’re on your way to the market. Raven has more speed. Even an untrained eye could see that.”

  The saddle squeaked as she shifted her weight. Cupping her hand over her eyes to shield out the blinding sun, she looked back over the rough terrain stretching endlessly behind them. The scattered imprints of horses’ hooves were the only indication that they had passed. Soon, the light, warm breeze would cover even those.

  “How far do you think we’ve come?” she asked wistfully, her attention averting to Drake. “And how much farther do we have to go?”

  “Not far. Another week, maybe two, and we should be in Missouri. From there, we’ll head due north and catch the first train going to Boston. With luck, we’ll reach the coast before the first snow flies.”

  "And if we can’t?”

&nbs
p; Drake shrugged, a heartbreaking smile curling his lips. “Then we get wet. Won’t be the first time.”

  Hope nodded absently. She hesitated, nibbling her lower lip in indecision. “I—I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I’d like to know what you plan to do once we get to Boston. Are you going to bring formal charges up against your brother?”

  Drake’s good humor faded as quickly as it had come. His jaw hardened, his expression melting until it was perfectly blank. “Do you think I should?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head. “No. No matter what he is, no matter what awful things he’s done, he’s still your brother, Drake. You can’t forget that.”

  “Shouldn’t you be lecturing Charles on the loyalty due ‘family’?” he drawled sarcastically. “Or have you forgotten that it was my dear, sweet brother who hired Tubbs to hunt me down and kill me in the first place?”

  “I haven’t forgotten, but you can’t be positive your brother was behind that. Who’s to say Tubbs didn’t lose some money to you in a card game, then hunt you down to take the losses out of your hide?”

  Drake’s fingers snaked out and wrapped around her wrist. With a quick tug, he pulled her close, until their faces were barely a hand’sbreadth apart. It was all she could do to keep from tumbling out of the saddle as Lazy sidestepped the black with growing agitation.

  “I’m to say,” he growled angrily, his breath kissing her upturned face. “If Tubbs had played hands across a table from me, I’d remember it. I’m not stupid enough to think it was mere coincidence that he traveled all the way from Boston and just happened to show up in the same mining town I was in—three times. It seems awful peculiar that shots were taken at my head the second that man showed his ugly face. He followed me from camp to camp. I sat back and watched him. Why the hell do you think I was so suspicious of you the night you showed up drunk in my room? I thought you were in cahoots with him, and I wasn’t letting you out until I was damn sure you weren’t. No, it wasn’t coincidence that it was Tubbs’s bullet that landed in your shoulder, even though it was meant for me. And you’d be a damn fool to think it was.” He laughed a derisive, merciless sound. “How can you sit here and defend the man who almost killed you?”