Til Death Do Us Part

by Beverly Barton

  When he returned to the ranch, he turned Washington over to one of the stable hands instead of caring for the Appaloosa himself as he usually did. No point waiting any longer to confront Joanna.

  He found her and Elena sitting on the front porch of the converted bunkhouse, both of them swaying back and forth in the rockers. Hesitating at the foot of the steps, he looked up at Elena.

  “Where have you been?” his sister asked. “You rode off in a big hurry.”

  He glanced at Joanna; she stared down at her hands resting in her lap. Where was her fiery spirit? he wondered. Her face was too pale. She was too quiet. And she hadn’t looked at him.

  “I needed some time alone. To think.”

  “Lieutenant George called,” Elena said. “The policeman from Virginia—”

  “You’ve already told me who he is,” J.T. said. “Did he have any updated information on Plott?”

  Elena shook her head. “No. He pretty much just repeated what Mrs. Beaumont had told Joanna earlier when she called.”

  J.T. walked up the steps, stopping beside his sister. He placed his hand on her shoulder. “I need to talk to Joanna. Alone.”

  “Why alone?” Elena asked. “She needs me here. I don’t want to leave her—”

  “It’s all right,” Joanna said. “You go on home. I’ll be fine. Really.”

  Elena stood, then pointed her finger in her brother’s face. “Don’t you dare be anything but gentle and understanding. Do you hear me?”

  “I’ll do my very best.” But would his best be good enough? He might be able to manage understanding, at least up to a point. But he didn’t know much about being gentle. There had been very little gentleness in his life and few occasions when he’d been called upon to show any tenderness. J.T. wasn’t sure there was a gentle side to his nature.

  Turning around, Elena bent over and hugged Joanna. “I’ll do anything you need for me to do to help you through this.” She squeezed J.T.’s arm as she passed him and walked down the steps and into the yard.

  “Why don’t we go inside,” J.T. said. “It’ll be more private.”

  “Why do we need privacy?” Still, Joanna stared down at her hands, avoiding making eye contact with him. “If I stay on the ranch, we won’t be able to keep this a secret. Everyone will have to know.”

  “Fine.” J.T. shrugged, then sat down in the rocker his sister had just vacated. “Do you or do you not want me to take charge of this situation?”

  Joanna sighed. “Elena says that you’re the very best at what you do—at being a bodyguard.”

  “I’ve spent years protecting people.”

  “I’ll arrange with my mother to transfer whatever funds are necessary to cover your expenses.” Joanna lifted her hands out of her lap and gripped the rocker’s arms.

  “I’ll be here at the ranch another week anyway, so there’ll be no charge.” J.T. removed his Stetson, crossed his legs and perched his hat on his knee. “If you want me to stay on after my vacation, we can discuss my fee then.”

  “You’ll stay on and take this assignment yourself?”

  “If that’s what you want.” She looked so fragile, so vulnerable and helpless sitting there in the rocker, her small, delicate hands clutching the rocker’s arms, her body wound as tight as a bowstring. “Or if you’d prefer, I can have one of the Dundee agency’s best men fly out and take over the assignment.”

  “Elena wants you to be my bodyguard.”

  “What do you want, Jo?”

  She raised her head, tilted her chin and stared him directly in the eye. “I want none of this to have happened. I want to go back five years and erase the past.”

  “Yeah, well…that’s not possible, is it? All I can do is try to keep you safe now, in the present.” J.T. wished he’d been around in the past to protect her. Scum like this Lenny Plott would never have touched Joanna, because if he had, J.T. would have personally annihilated him.

  “Look, I’ll be honest with you.” Joanna released her death grip on the chair arms and stood, striding to the edge of the porch. She kept her back to J.T. “Before the—” she swallowed “—rape, I was fairly trusting and thought the world really was a wonderful place. My life had been almost perfect. I grew up as the only child of wealthy, successful parents, both of whom loved me. After I graduated from college, with a degree in art, I got a job at a small art museum in Richmond. I met and fell in love with an up-and-coming young lawyer in my father’s law office and we became engaged. The only unhappy time in my life was when my father died of a heart attack about a year before…before the rape.”

  “What happened to your fiancé?” J.T. lifted his Stetson off his knee, stood and placed the hat on his head.

  “I’m getting to that.”

  He walked up behind her, close, a hairbreadth away, but not touching. “Go on.”

  She tensed when she realized he was so close—so close she could feel the heat emanating from his big, powerful body. “The rape and what happened afterward changed me forever. Despite counseling, despite moving away and starting a new life out here in Trinidad, despite everything I’ve done to get over what happened to me, I’ve never been able to trust anyone easily again.”

  “I can understand how you might feel that way, at least for a while.”

  “Not just for a while.” She wished he wasn’t standing so close, wished she didn’t have the almost-overwhelming urge to turn around and ask him to hold her in his arms. “After I was raped, my fiancé had a difficult time dealing with what had happened to me. When I needed him most—needed his love and support—he walked out on me.”

  “The bastard!” J.T. clasped her shoulders gently. Dear God, she was sprung so tight she was close to the breaking point. He was afraid that if she broke, she would fly into a million pieces. “You’re better off without him, honey.”

  “Yes, I know.” She wished J.T. hadn’t touched her. Wished that his touch wasn’t so firm and yet so gentle. Wished that his touch didn’t make her want to lean back against his chest and have him surround her with his strong arms. “But Todd’s desertion only made things worse for me. If I couldn’t trust the man who had professed to love me, who had asked me to be his wife, who could I ever trust?”

  “You can trust me, Jo.” J.T. ran his big hands from her shoulders to her elbows and back up again, soothing her, his touch strong, gentle and nonthreatening. “Trust me with your life.”

  She shivered in his arms, the involuntary movement relieving some of the tension coiled so tightly inside her. More than anything, she wanted to trust J.T., but she wasn’t sure she could.

  “I don’t want you to have another bodyguard sent from Atlanta.” She leaned backward, allowing her body to just barely touch his. “I want you to stay in Trinidad and…I want you to protect me, J.T.” She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I promise that I’ll try to trust you.”

  J.T. lowered his head, bringing his lips close to her ear. “And I promise I’ll do everything possible to earn your trust.”

  Closing her eyes, Joanna pressed her shoulders into his chest, tilting her head back to rest against him. “I’m scared. I’m very scared.”

  “I’ll keep you safe,” he vowed. “We’ll stay here on the ranch and I’ll make certain someone is with you at all times, until Plott is captured and sent back to prison.”

  “But what if—”

  “If by some chance he finds out where you are and comes after you before he’s caught, then I’ll stay at your side night and day. And if he comes near you, I’ll kill him.”

  “Oh, J.T., you can’t imagine what it was like for me that night.” Opening her eyes, she glanced over at his big hand caressing her arm. “And afterward…at the trial, when…when I had to tell all about what he’d done to me.”

  “Hush, honey. Don’t talk about it. Don’t remember.” Dear God in heaven, he didn’t think he could bear to hear any of the details. Knowing only the basic facts was enough to make him crazy. Learning that some sick per
vert had forced himself on Joanna made J.T. want to hunt the bastard down and castrate him.

  “It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t! Maybe I should have fought harder. Maybe I should have just let him slit my throat with his knife.” Tremors racked Joanna’s body. “Todd blamed me. He—he thought I could have prevented it, somehow. He couldn’t even bear to look at me—afterward. That made me feel as dirty as I had right after the rape.”

  “Any man who truly loved a woman would never blame her,” J.T. said. “What happened to you was Lenny Plott’s fault. His and no one else’s. I promise you that if it’s necessary, I’ll move heaven and earth to make sure he never hurts you again.”

  Breathing in the sweet, clean scent of Joanna, J.T. buried his face in her hair that hung loosely about her neck. He kissed her on the temple, then wrapped his arms around her and held her close against his chest. She didn’t resist. They stood there on her porch for a long time, J.T.’s arms draped around her, cocooning her from the world. Protectively. Caringly. Possessively.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JOANNA WASN’T SURE what had been the most difficult adjustment in the five days since her mother’s phone call. Having to deal with painful memories and haunting fears she had thought were long since buried was a challenge she felt she was strong enough to handle. Losing a great deal of her privacy and freedom annoyed her greatly. She wasn’t used to the ranch hands paying much attention to her, at least not since she’d first moved into the bunkhouse three years ago. Now, J.T. had a revolving shift of men keeping an eye on her. She certainly wasn’t accustomed to someone knowing her whereabouts twenty-four hours a day. She’d been told she couldn’t leave the ranch without an escort. She couldn’t even go horseback riding on the ranch without one of the hands going with her. Elena and Alex had been wonderful—sympathetic, caring and understanding. The caring and understanding she appreciated; the sympathy she could do without. She felt sorry enough for herself without being weighed down by other people’s pity.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about J.T. knowing everything concerning her past. Relieved mostly, she guessed, but a little apprehensive, too. When he’d held her in his arms on the front porch and promised to keep her safe, he had said and done all the right things. Oddly enough, he’d been gentle and kind and supportive. She’d been so sure he would react the way her ex-fiancé had; that he would assume the worst about her. Todd certainly had. But J.T. wasn’t Todd McAllister. The two men had absolutely nothing in common. Todd was a seventh-generation Southern gentleman; cultured, refined and, she realized now, an elitist snob. He would have been revolted by Annabelle and Benjamin’s love affair. He never would have understood. Todd hadn’t approved of “fornicating” outside one’s own social circle.

  Joanna laughed aloud. How could she have been in love with Todd? Pretty-boy Todd, with all his money and good breeding, had been shallow, conceited and selfish. She supposed she’d been drawn to him because they had seemed to have so much in common, her background being very similar to his. He was a fourth-generation lawyer, and her father had been one of the most respected lawyers in Virginia. Todd’s uncle was a state senator and so was her mother. She and Todd had had numerous friends in common. In fact, that was how they’d met. A fraternity brother of Todd’s had been dating Joanna’s cousin, Diane.

  Dammit! She hadn’t thought much about Todd since she’d moved to New Mexico. After months of mourning his desertion five years ago, she had finally realized she was better off without him. Now, here she was, tormented not only by memories of her rapist, but by memories of her ex-fiancé’s callous rejection.

  Joanna jerked the piece of ninety-pound Saunders paper from the tray of water. Holding the piece by the edges, she shook off the surplus water and laid it on a drawing board, then dried her hands on her smock and stuck the edges of the paper down with strips of brown paper tape. Reaching into her pocket, she retrieved the thumbtacks and promptly stuck one in each taped end.

  She needed to stretch several pieces and have them ready for the three watercolors she had been commissioned to paint for a dealer in Santa Fe. Last week she had stretched the canvases for her two commissioned oil paintings, one of which already had a buyer.

  She hadn’t painted at all in the past few days. Instead, she’d busied herself with preparations for work, done some in-depth housecleaning, rewatched a dozen videocassettes—her favorite musicals from the thirties and forties—and read Annabelle Beaumont’s diary through, from beginning to end.

  When she had planned to visit the reservation to escape J.T., she had thought she could do enough sketches to foster some new ideas for the commissioned works. She wanted to try something different from her usual landscapes and portraits of the Navajo in typical settings. She had wanted to capture something of the Navajo spirit that had eluded her in her earlier work. No matter how diligently she tried, she couldn’t seem to see past the surface, into the soul of New Mexico and the proud Navajo, the way her great-grandmother had done. But then, Annabelle had not focused her attention on a whole nation of people, but only on one man. A man she had loved as no other. It had been Benjamin Greymountain’s spirit she had captured in her heart and then transformed the essence of her feelings into the words written in her diary.

  But Joanna’s trip to the reservation had been canceled. J.T. had said it was best to postpone any and all excursions for the time being. She knew he meant until Lenny Plott had been apprehended.

  Slumping down in the overstuffed tan, green and apricot plaid chair, Joanna picked up her sketch pad from the hand-carved pine table to her right. In the early-dawn hours these past five mornings, when she’d been unable to sleep, she had told herself she should be painting, should be accomplishing something. Instead, she’d retreated to her sketch pad, using her charcoal pencils to fill page after page with hastily rendered images of J. T. Blackwood. In some sketches he wore his Stetson, in others his head was bare. Many were half-finished profiles, most from his right side, but several from the left, depicting his sinister-looking eye patch.

  Flipping through the pad, she stopped and glared at the sketch she’d done this morning. This charcoal rendering was different from all the others. This was John Thomas Blackwood, rugged, hard, unsmiling. Neither white man nor Native American. Only primitive male.

  She slapped the pad closed, then threw it on the floor at her feet. What ever had possessed her to fill half the sketch pad with drawings of J.T.? What would he think if he saw them? He might get the wrong idea and assume she—

  No! She did not feel anything for J.T., except maybe gratitude. She was exceedingly thankful that he was in charge of keeping her safe; that if necessary, he would become her personal bodyguard. She prayed the necessity would never arise, that the authorities would arrest Lenny Plott and return him to prison before he was able to find her. Or Claire. Or Libby.

  The second week of J.T.’s vacation would end soon, but he had promised to stay on at the ranch. Even though she had seen him only at a distance the past few days, she felt reassured by his presence. She knew that he was keeping close tabs on her and taking every precaution for her safety.

  But there seemed to be no immediate danger. No one knew where Lenny Plott was. He could still be in Virginia. Or he could already be in New Mexico. Or he could have gone to Missouri to hunt down Claire Andrews. Or he could somehow have discovered Libby Felton’s whereabouts. Only God knew what slimy rock that monster had crawled under.

  No, there was no immediate danger from Lenny Plott, a man the authorities couldn’t find. Joanna’s only immediate danger came from her ridiculous thoughts of J. T. Blackwood. She was confused and overly emotional, her nerves strung to the breaking point. That’s why I’m thinking the way I am, she decided. All right, so he’d been tender and understanding about the rape. And he had made a promise her heart wanted to believe he would keep—that he would protect her from all harm. Still, that was no reason for her to start thinking of him as some knight in shining armor, as a man equal to his gre
at-grandfather, a man capable of fulfilling her romantic dreams.

  The loud knock on the front door startled her. She jumped, then her body stiffened. Don’t react this way, she told herself. She had to stop thinking every bump, every creak, every unexpected sound might be Lenny Plott. The man would hardly come to her door and knock, would he?

  The knocking continued, then ceased abruptly. “Joanna? Are you all right?” J.T. called to her.

  She opened her mouth to answer, but only a quivering squeak came out. Her mind issued orders, but her body didn’t respond.

  “Joanna!”

  By the time she had convinced herself she could move, that her legs could actually hold her weight and walk across the living room, J.T. had used the spare key she’d given him to unlock her door. He stormed into her house, scanning the huge expanse of combined living and dining areas. She met him in the middle of the room. He glared at her, then reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  She knew he wanted to shake her, and realized how much control he was exerting to keep from doing just that.

  “Why the hell didn’t you answer me?” He squeezed her shoulders, then released her.

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay. What do you want? Why did you stop by?”

  “I came by to see if you’d like to take a ride with me,” he said. “You haven’t been off the ranch in five days. I thought maybe you’d enjoy an outing.”

  “Oh, I see. Was this Elena’s idea? Did she tell you that I’ve been complaining about feeling hemmed in?”

  J.T. grinned—a half smile, really, not showing any teeth. “She mentioned you were used to coming and going as you pleased, to taking off for hours at a time to sketch or paint.” Joanna nodded.

  “Elena fixed a picnic basket,” J.T. said. “Sandwiches. A thermos of iced tea. That sort of stuff.” He glanced at Joanna, taking note of her appearance. “Have you been in your gown all day?”