Once the words would have made her glow, but now Lacey found them unsettling. As soon as the pies were finished, she led the men into the front sala to enjoy their brandy and cigars. A restlessness overtook her, and she left the house.
Chapter 12
Lacey stared at the moon’s brilliant reflection on the still waters of the pond. She leaned against the trunk of a cottonwood tree and felt the sultry air wrap itself around her. Captain Chase’s warnings presented a new threat to the Reina, and she found herself wishing that Rafe were there to shoulder the burden of making decisions.
The admission was not an easy one for her to make. The enforced rest Maggie had insisted upon had left Lacey with too much time to think. Rafe centered in every thought she had. She missed him. She wanted him as a woman who knew this man was worthy of her love, of her trust.
But at what price would she have her desire? Rafe would demand total surrender, not only of herself but of the Reina. With a sharp sigh she sat upon the sparse grass and closed her eyes. Sy would call her weak for allowing herself the temptation to dream that Rafe could want both her strength and her softness.
But for these few peaceful moments she gave in to the clamor of memories that brought back the feel of Rafe’s mouth taking hers. And she trembled to recall the flood of wild passion that exploded between them. The snap of dry twigs behind her brought her out of her reverie.
“I had a feeling you would be here, Lacey,” Curt said, pushing aside the low-hanging branches.
She resented his intrusion, but more, resented his reminder that she had shared this spot with him on too many nights, first talking, then exploring her newly awakened senses. She shifted slightly when he sat down.
Curt didn’t speak. His memories were carrying him back to the nights Lacey drove him wild with her innocence and half-promised surrender in this very spot. But he had claimed her for his own and would have kept her if she had not left on a trail drive. When she returned, she refused to resume their relationship. His hand clenched the earth when he recalled the begging desperation that made him threaten her into marrying him. It was a mistake, a bad one, for she had only laughed when he said he would tell Sy.
His teeth grated together, and his ears rang with her words: “Tell him, Curt. He won’t force me to marry you. Sy taught me to think like a man, and they don’t pay for their pleasures. Women do, but I can’t be a woman and keep the Reina.”
He forced himself to release the tension and the past and reached out for her hand.
Lacey couldn’t help compare the smoothness of his hand with Rafe’s callused ones. But she knew Curt never did anything without a reason. He had sought her out, so there was no point in waiting to find out why.
“You want something, Curt, so tell me.”
“So cold. I remember how warm you can be. Lacey, I love you. I’m willing to wait for you to love me again, but I want to marry you now. Can you sit here and not remember what it was like between us?”
“I wasn’t thinking about us. If you must know, I was thinking about Rafe.”
For an instant he crushed her slender fingers in his grip, then released her hand. “He’s a man who hasn’t a shred of decency in him, Lacey. A man who’s not worth a moment of your time.”
Lacey rose to her knees and half turned toward him. “If you know something about Rafe, tell me. Either that or stop hinting at having secrets about him!”
He grabbed her arms, pulling her toward him. “I can’t take any more of you defending him. I’m the one who loves you.” His mouth closed over hers, demanding the passion that he once taught her. He had caught her off-balance, and she fell heavily against his chest, her cry muffled by his lips.
Lacey tore her mouth free. “Curt, stop! My side. You’re hurting me.”
“I never meant to hurt you, Lacey. Here, let me help you up.” He came to his feet swiftly and lifted her to stand beside him. “You don’t know how crazy you make me.”
“I can’t help that. You were going to tell me about Rafe. If not, I’ll say good night.”
“You want to know about him? Well, you will. Meet me in the office, Lacey.”
She watched him stride away, and she was besieged by a sudden chill. She had never seen Curt in a rage before, but his voice had been that of a man ready to kill. But as she hurried to the office, her thoughts were not on Curt but on Rafe.
What was Curt going to tell her about him?
The lamps were out in the sala, so Lacey assumed that Maggie had seen to rooms for Captain Chase and his private. She left the office door open and lit the lamp on the desk and then several others so that the room was brightly lit. She wanted no intimate setting for whatever Curt had in mind.
He walked in and handed her a sheaf of papers. “Sit down and read these and then tell me you will still defend Rafe Parrish.”
Lacey sat behind the desk and had to pull the lamp closer as she labored over the cramped handwriting. Time slipped away, several pages had to be reread, and she forgot that Curt sat across from her, drinking and watching her.
And watch her he did. He saw the tears that raced down her cheeks and knew he had been right to make her read all the information that Sy Garrett had ordered to be gathered about his son. If Rafe Parrish had been here to face Lacey, Curt felt his triumph would have been complete. And when she was done, staring blindly across the room at him, he rose.
“You have questions?”
“Is all this true, Curt? Are you positive there’s no mistake?”
He avoided her pleading gaze. His hate had built to a point where he wouldn’t deny it if he could. Yet his voice betrayed nothing of his feelings. “I would spare you pain if I could, but I didn’t make this up. I didn’t take it upon myself to search this information out. Judge Walker had this report, ordered and paid for by Sy. The judge knew what kind of a man Parrish was before he brought him here.” With his hands jammed into his pants pockets, he paced the floor in his best courtroom manner. “I will admit that I’ve withheld this from you, but I did it so that we could all give Parrish a chance. Every man deserves a fresh start, but Lacey,” he pleaded, leaning over the desk, “I couldn’t allow you to go on blindly trusting him without knowing his past.”
Lacey was shaking as she stood up and pushed the chair back. She couldn’t look at Curt. “Will you leave this with me? Rafe has a right to know about this. He has the right to explain it.”
He came to her side, gently turning her toward him. “Lacey, just think what this means. I could use this to put him away so that he can never harm anyone. And you would have the Reina once I got rid of him.”
She heard Curt but dismissed his words for those that were seared on her mind. Inside a raw ache spread into pain. She didn’t want to believe what she had read—she didn’t want to think that Rafe had been using her.
“Lacey, haven’t you listened to me? Love, don’t shut me out. Need me again, please. Let me help you.”
Without thought she responded to his plea and rested her head against his shoulder. Her throat was dry, and tears blurred her eyes with a burning intensity. And a tiny voice whispered that she had to give Rafe a chance to tell his side. When Curt once again whispered his plea to let him help her, Lacey roused herself to push him away.
“I can’t make a decision now. You’ll have to wait. I need time, Curt.”
He stood unmoving as she left him. Realization dawned that he had made a terrible mistake in underestimating her feelings for Rafe Parrish. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of being the man to rid her of a partner and hand the Reina to her. And he knew Lacey once her mind was set on a course of action. The last four years had taught him patience. He could only withdraw and rethink his plans.
Lacey never heard him leave. She stood in Rafe’s room, crushing his shirt in her hands, willing Rafe’s return to tell her his d
amning past was all a lie. The woman’s softness that had begun to bloom inside her folded its tender petals inwardly, protecting all that made her vulnerable to Rafe.
Maggie greeted the overcast morning with a feeling of unease that Rafe had not yet returned. She managed a smile when Fletcher told her that Curt had not stayed the night.
“Gone for good, I hope,” she grumbled, aware that the presence of Captain Chase and the private eating stacks of hotcakes kept her from talking. Evan joined them before they were finished, asking for Lacey.
“Plum tuckered out,” Maggie answered. “Shouldn’t have been out of bed so soon.” Her bustling about did not encourage any further questions. Once they were gone, she checked on Lacey and quietly closed the door when she found her sleeping.
Bo James was waiting for her in the courtyard before the kitchen door. “How’s she doin’?”
“Better. I’m glad to find her restin’.”
“Maggie, maybe it ain’t my business, but I had trouble sleepin’ last night and came out here. Curt was in the office with Lacey for a long while. When she come out, I think she was cryin’. Don’t know what’s all goin’ on, but I don’t take a cotton to Blaine bein’ ‘round her.”
“Well, you ain’t the only one, Bo. I could’ve sliced his tongue to jerky-size strips when he started mouthin’ off ’bout Rafe. He’s a good man. Like Fletcher said.”
“Ain’t had much truck with him like you two, an’ I got some doubts. Jus’ don’t want anythin’ hurtin’ Lacey. I feel like you and Fletcher, havin’ watched her grow. Love that girl like she’s mine.”
“Don’t need to be tellin’ me that, Bo. But my bones tell me that Rafe and Lacey are gonna face trouble worse than we saw in the old days. You mark my words if it ain’t so.”
Bo remembered those very words when Luke rode in a few hours later with the news that Mertson had been pinned down by gunfire while the small gather he had made of yearlings were run off.
Fletcher had gone into town, and Maggie didn’t have the heart to tell Lacey, so it was up to Bo.
He found her seated by the edge of the stone pool, trailing her hand listlessly in the water. She was so lost in thought that Bo had to shake her shoulder to gain her attention. Her hazel eyes were dulled with pain, and he wondered again what had happened with Curt last night. For a lost moment Lacey reminded him of her mother, and his gut twisted.
But her eyes lost their dullness as he quickly told her what had happened. And the threat to the Reina made her cast aside her personal worries.
“Have the boys saddle me a horse, the black this time. I’ll be a few minutes.”
“You can’t ride with your wound. Tell me what you want done and I’ll go.”
“You’re leg isn’t healed yet. Saddle my horse. I have to go.”
There wasn’t a man who faced Lacey Garrett, holding aloft a coiled rope in her gloved hand, that remembered she was a woman. Her voice was cold and her eyes spit fury as she offered a two hundred dollar bonus to the first man who hanged one of the rustlers. And when she was done, she motioned Luke to her side as she dismounted.
“Since Rafe isn’t here, Luke, I want you to take over posting the men. Set them up on the highest land points around the herd. They’re to keep a fire burning high all night, and if anyone spots these mangy bastards, they can smother their fire. One or two men can keep watch from below. Everyone is exhausted, but this way we might have a chance to catch them.”
“It might work. God knows the men could use some rest.”
“It better work, Luke. I don’t want to hear of another hide touched on my range again!” She swung back into the saddle and was surprised when Luke stopped her.
“You’re riding back to the house?”
“No. The night I was shot, there were things I wanted to check. I’m going there now.”
Luke met the grim determination in her eyes with a hardened stare of his own. He had promised Rafe he would keep watch over her. “You can’t ride out alone.”
“Remember who you’re talking to, Luke. I don’t take orders, I give them.”
“I ain’t forgettin’. But that army captain told us what’s happenin’. You ain’t never been near Comanche. I have and that’s why you ain’t ridin’ alone.”
“Well, if that’s true, then you should know that the good captain didn’t realize that but for one raid, they didn’t take scalps.”
Lacey had caught him and caught him good, Luke admitted to himself. It had bothered him, too, but he hadn’t thought to point it out. “Well, if it ain’t the Indians, it’s some renegade band. You can’t go alone.”
“Ragweed,” she called out, raising herself high in the saddle. “Ragweed, you’re riding with me.” Glancing down at Luke, she added, “Satisfied?”
“Not much. Just be careful.”
Rafe was bone-weary, pushing himself and his horse to the limit of their endurance. He glanced back at the two Rangers accompanying him, satisfied that the judge had been right; they both had the look of down-on-their-luck cowpunchers. Rafe also knew they were both skilled with their guns and neither man was a fool. Matt McCabe, the older of the two, met his look with a grim smile.
“How much farther, Rafe?” he asked with a gruff voice that matched his face. There was a hardness to him, bore out by the scar that jagged down his cheek, the depth of his brown eyes that revealed nothing of his thoughts, and the rigid set of his body.
“We’re on the edge of Darcy land now,” he answered, drawing rein on the top of a small rise. He pushed his hat back and scanned the terrain below. If his memory served, he was near the canyons that Lacey had wanted to check out the night she was shot. A few hours more would not matter. “We’ll take a look here before we ride on.”
Hank Peters, the other Ranger, took a long swallow from his canteen. He was, Rafe decided, one of the most quiet men he had run across, but his eyes missed little. His slight build shifted in his saddle, and he pointed to the cloud of dust rising behind a lone rider heading for them.
They watched for a few moments, and then Rafe swore. He knew that black mare. And her rider. He wasn’t about to answer questions about the two men with him and ordered them to wait while he rode down to April.
He urged his horse through a thick swatch of gramma grass, and his annoyance grew in light of April’s warm smile. “Lose your way, Rafe? You’re riding on Darcy land again. Or are you still looking for whoever shot Lacey?” She nudged her mare against his horse so that he was forced to move at a walk with her.
“In light of that, why are you riding alone? Or are you sure that they wouldn’t shoot you?”
“Don’t accuse my father of trying to kill a woman!” April slid from her saddle and dropped the reins as she stepped up to a flat rock shelf. She removed her hat and shook her hair until the blond curls tumbled like a cloud of gold dust around her shoulders. Determined to wipe that amused smile from Rafe’s lips, she sat down and leaned back on her elbows, aware of the provocative pose she offered.
Rafe was no longer smiling. The soft blue cotton shirt pulled taut across her generous breasts, and her eyes glittered with invitation. He knew the moment she spotted the two men waiting above and dismounted to forestall her questions. The tip of his boot nudged her hip, and he leaned forward. “April, you’re a lot of woman, but not for me.”
Her eyes widened in shock. How dare he! Why only last night Ward Farel had told her she was a woman men would kill for. Since he now worked for her father, April knew she could use his hate for Rafe, but she wasn’t about to let Rafe get away with insulting her! She lunged for his face.
Rafe grabbed her shoulders, shoving her flat against the rock. “Lacey’s the only woman I want. If you’re looking to cause trouble, I’ll give you more’n you can handle. And tell your father that if he lied to me, I’ll come gunning for him.”
&nb
sp; April barely swallowed her cry. Her gaze shifted past his broad shoulders and when she quickly looked back into his furious eyes, her smile was gloating. “Explain this to her.”
“What?” But even as he asked, Rafe looked up. “Lacey.”
She was up on the ridge above them. He could feel the heat of her gaze pinning him.
And for a moment Lacey did just that. She stared down at April sprawled beneath Rafe and felt the bile rise in her throat. With a cry she yanked her horse around and rode away.
For a stunned minute more Rafe remained as he was. He released April and backed away from her as if she were something vile. “I know you couldn’t have planned this, that’s all that’s keeping you alive right now.”
“You tore my shirt!”
“Don’t be running to your father with any lies. I won’t get railroaded by a woman again. Try it, April, and you’ll wish to hell you’d never set eyes on me.” He mounted and waved the two men down to join him. It was easy to believe that Lacey could be behind the rustlings when he was away from her. But he knew with a gut-wrenching certainty that Lacey would count what she saw as betrayal. And as if she had been next to him, touching him and looking into his eyes, Rafe swore that feeling of betrayal had come not from his partner, but from a woman. His fury faded to be replaced by a sense of despair that he would be once again defending himself.
Defending him were words Lacey silently echoed as she rode with a mindless rage and outdistanced Ragweed. Sy had been right; thinking like a woman, feeling like one, left her weak, and Rafe had used that weakness. But he would never do it again.
She was still repeating that vow when morning came with a light cool breeze and sun-streaked shadows. Once dressed, Lacey checked on Rafe’s room, but nothing had been touched.
“Damn coward!” she muttered. Absently rubbing her side, she joined Maggie and Fletcher for breakfast.
“You can march right back to bed, girl. Runnin’ off, gone half the night, too. I swear, Lacey, you’re lookin’ to kill yourself tryin’ to catch these polecats.”
Western Winds Page 14