“Hello, dear.” Aunt Lucy smiled and presented her cheek for a kiss. She never kissed back, but she expected Blake to perform the ritual.
She was dark and petite, her English heritage from her mother completely overwhelmed by that from her Spanish father. At forty-one, she still looked remarkably like the old portrait of her older sister, Sarah Renard, that had been painted when Blake’s parents were newly married. If Lucinda had turned out to be meaner than a snake, Blake still would have loved her, if for no other reason than she looked so much like his mother. And he, except for size, resembled both of the women.
“Hello, Aunt Lucy.” Blake pressed his lips to her soft cheek, wishing…wishing. Wishing that just once, she would kiss him back, hug him, touch his face. Anything to show she cared.
Fool. He squared his shoulders and let go of the stupid dream. “Glad you got my wire and could meet me. Wade,” he added with a nod to his cousin.
“Hey, pard.” Wade gave him a slap on the back that was considerably heartier than necessary.
“Your train leaves again in thirty minutes,” Phillip reminded him. “We better get you fed.”
“Yes,” Lucy said, leading the way into the restaurant. “We wouldn’t want you to miss your train. You’re going all the way to Florida?”
Wade ground his teeth and watched as his parents fawned over his cousin. It was always the same when Blake came home, like the Prodigal Son, when the bastard wasn’t even theirs.
Oh, Wade knew Blake would disagree that they fawned. He knew Blake felt like an outsider, like his aunt and uncle merely tolerated his presence.
Wade’s perspective was just the opposite. To him, eaten alive by jealousy he would never admit even to himself, Blake had always been the Golden Boy. The best rider, the best shot, the best hand around the ranch. The best at everything he did. Blake even always got the prettiest girls without even trying. He’d sailed through West Point easier than Wade had struggled through grammar school. And when Blake left the Army next spring, as he’d just confirmed he would do, he would take possession of Tres Colinas while Wade was reduced to working for Phillip. Phillip had no intention of retiring and turning the ranch over to Wade.
Then Wade remembered that Blake was on his way to Florida, and he relaxed. There was one thing Blake hadn’t been able to get, the one thing he’d wanted more than anything else in the world. Geronimo. Now he’d lost his chance. How that must gall him.
Good ol’ Blake was going to lose the next thing he wanted, too. Wade was going to see to it that Blake never got his hands on Tres Colinas. By all rights, it should be Wade’s ranch. He’d been the one to go in and clean up years of neglect. Lucien Renard had abandoned the ranch before Blake was born. It was Wade’s hands that had blistered as he’d swung the hammer to make the barn and corral serviceable. Wade’s nerves that had stretched taut every time Geronimo raided in the area. Wade’s sweat that had poured down his face and body while keeping banditos from across the border at bay. It was Wade’s cattle that fed off the range. Even if they were stolen.
No, he wasn’t willing to simply step back and let Blake leave him with nothing but the hind teat this time.
Near the restaurant door, Hank leaned against the wall. Wade gave him a nod and watched him walk out to set their plans in motion. No, Blake wouldn’t be taking over Tres Colinas. The bastard wouldn’t even be making it to Florida, much less all the way back to Arizona.
For the first time in weeks, Wade felt an honest-to-God smile spread across his face.
It was well after dark and the train was chugging southeast toward El Paso when the porter came through to make up the beds. In the third pair of seats from the back, on the left side of the elegant sleeping car, Blake breathed a sigh of relief. Once tucked up in bed behind the curtains, Jessica Colton would be out of his sight. Maybe when she quit trying to draw him into conversation, he could get some peace.
She had tried to get him to tell her about the people he’d had supper with in Deming. She had asked where he was from, how long he’d been in the Army, any number of useless questions. He’d met each one with a glare in hopes of discouraging her. He didn’t want to get chummy with her, but it seemed she had other plans.
Well, she could just forget it. He didn’t want to chat. He didn’t want anything to do with a white woman who preferred half-breeds and Apaches to white men.
He wished the damn porter would have started at this end of the car. How slow was the bastard, anyway? Blake wanted Miss Jessica Colton out of his sight.
If he couldn’t see her fine-boned, graceful hands, maybe he could forget the way they had reached for that damn half-breed. If he couldn’t see the shape of her breasts beneath her form-fitting tweed jacket, maybe he could forget the way they had heaved in outrage over the one called Fire Seeker. If he couldn’t see those expressive gray eyes, maybe he could forget the way they had filled with tears as that bastard had been dragged aboard the train.
If he couldn’t see her pale rose lips, maybe he could stop wondering what they tasted like.
With a silent curse, Blake clenched his jaw and stared at the dusty toe of his own boot.
Finally, the porter reached the seats directly behind Blake. He would be there to make up their bunks in a few minutes. Blake allowed himself to relax.
“I’ll take the upper berth if you don’t mind,” Miss Colton said.
Angry at the way her soft voice slid through him like cool water down a parched throat, furious that he wanted her despite knowing what kind of woman she was, and damn good and pissed off that he knew, given half a chance, he could probably like her, all Blake could manage was a sharp nod.
“Excuse me?” Jessie blinked and cocked her head, hiding her pleasure that he had actually responded.
Sometime during the evening she had decided—heaven only knew why—that she wanted this man to like her. It was a stupid wish. Perhaps even a dangerous one. When it came to the subject of Apaches, she and the captain would always stand on opposite sides.
Despite that, despite the way he’d treated her at Bowie and the animosity radiating from him like waves of heat from the desert floor at noon, there was a certain look now and then in his eyes that made her feel something she’d never felt before. Made her feel…like a woman.
Funny, but she’d thought of herself as a woman for a long time. Yet what he made her feel had nothing to do with age or responsibility or growing up. It had to do with being feminine to his masculine. Woman to his man.
How he managed to create such feelings in her when he so obviously disliked her was a puzzle.
In all likelihood, such a response to any stranger, much less a man like Captain Renard, should probably unsettle her, at the very least. Instead, it intrigued her.
She wondered what he looked like when he really smiled. His eyes would crinkle at the corners; his lips would curve. What would his laugh sound like?
If all he could do was glare at her, she might never find out. And she wanted so badly to know. The situation called for desperate measures. If he wouldn’t be friendly on his own, she would badger him into it. “I believe you nodded. Was that an agreement?”
He stared at her blankly. “What?”
“That nod,” she said. “It seemed to be in the affirmative. You know, up and down? But I can hardly credit it, since I’m sure you didn’t mean to respond to my statement at all, let alone agree with anything I might suggest. I believe the movement you meant to make was side to side. That would have been a negative motion, indicating you did not agree that I should have the upper berth.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
Jessie moved her lips, repeating his words to herself and counting them off on her fingers. She smiled. “Seven whole words. Better than I’d hoped for.” Then she sobered. “Of course, I was hoping for an actual sentence, and technically speaking, what you said was a question. Do you suppose that counts?”
“Let me guess. You were out too long in the sun this mor
ning.”
“Ooo! Better and better. Two more sentences! Or was that last one another question?”
“Miss Colton—”
“Jessica,” she corrected.
At his narrow look, she rushed on. “My name is Jessica. Since we’re going to be traveling together clear across the country, and since you insist on sitting with me, perhaps we could be less formal? Actually, my friends and family call me Jessie. What should I call you?”
“Miss Colton—”
Jessie laughed. “I can’t call you Miss Colton, honestly I can’t.”
Blake tried. He really did try to keep from laughing, but he couldn’t quite manage it.
Jessie stared in awe. It started with a slight jerk of his broad shoulders. His eyes narrowed; little lines fanned out from the corners. His mouth pursed, taunting her with the fullness of his lips. His chest heaved. Then his lips parted, and sound came out. Laughter. Full and deep throated. A sound so infectious she could do no less than laugh with him.
It didn’t last long, but when the laughter ended, he was no longer scowling at her. His lips formed a rueful smile, and he shook his head. “Do you always get your way?” His question could have been insulting, but his pleasant, curious tone indicated genuine interest.
Jessie chuckled. “As a matter of fact, I nearly always do.”
The porter stopped beside their seats. “Make your beds up for you folks?”
Blake gave the man a nod. “The lady prefers the upper berth.”
Blake lowered himself to his bunk and listened to the creak of the bed above him as Miss Jessica—Jessie—Colton settled in. His pulse pounded at the thought of her only three feet above him, squirming out of her clothes in the tight confines of the berth. What he wouldn’t give to help her.
Damn. With thoughts like that he’d never get to sleep. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the rhythm of the train, the swaying and jostling of the car. He didn’t come close to dozing off until the sounds from above him ceased, indicating Jessie Colton had settled for the night.
Then it got worse, because his imagination took off. Was her skin as soft as it looked? Softer, probably. Especially in…places. Places he vowed she would one day show him.
He could have touched her, could have put his hand on her waist, felt her hand in his. But when she’d turned to climb to the upper berth, he had wisely kept his hands behind his back and let the porter help her.
Now his hands ached at the lost opportunity.
Why he was so obsessed with this particular woman, he didn’t know, and he didn’t waste time worrying about it. Not when the mere thought of her could make his heart pound with the rhythm of the clacking wheels.
He wondered if her lips would tremble the first time he kissed her.
Son of a bitch. He wasn’t going to kiss her, even if she had managed to make him laugh. He wanted nothing to do with a woman who preferred Apaches to white men.
Blake spent considerable time trying to forget the sound of her soft laughter, the look of it in her eyes. Finally he managed to doze, but woke later when the train stopped at El Paso around midnight. From what he could hear from behind his curtain, at least two passengers got off, a bag of mail was tossed aboard, and the engine took on water. A few minutes later the train jolted into motion once more and chugged on through the night.
In the last car before the caboose, a stock car, there were supposed to be only six horses, all of them belonging to passengers. Instead, there were eleven. The riders for the extra five mounts could conceivably be considered passengers, as they were aboard the train, but they hadn’t purchased tickets, and no one knew they were there.
Wade Sinclair struck a match and lit the lantern with a low flame. “All right, let’s go over it one more time.”
“We know our parts,” Hank said.
Wade stared at him until Hank relented.
“Hell. All right. There’s a Wells Fargo agent in the express car directly behind the locomotive. If Wells Fargo’s on board, there’s money. An hour out of El Paso, which means—” Hank pulled his watch out of his pocket and checked the time. “—in another fifteen minutes, I climb out, run along the top of the train like a damn squirrel in a tree, and uncouple the express car from the engine.”
Wade shot Pete a hard look.
“I follow him. When the locomotive’s gone and the cars roll to a stop, me an’ Hank bust into the express car.”
“An’ as soon as the cars start to slow, you an’ Sven work your way through, robbin’ the passengers,” Burt added, “while I get the horses out and ready to ride.”
Wade fought a sneer. Holding the horses was about all Burt was good for, but then, if nothing else, the kid was loyal. “We do it fast, no unnecessary shooting, and we’re gone. We split up and make our way back up the trail to Lordsburg, where we’ll meet in three days to split up our haul. Any questions?”
Hank shook his head. As testy as Sinclair had been all day, none of them would dare ask questions. Hank had never seen Wade this worked up. Wade was as jumpy as a june bug on a hot skillet, and on the ragged edge of blowing the whole deal. It had to do with that cousin of his, Renard, being on the train. Wade had some kind of nasty surprise for the captain. As Hank understood things, Renard was the reason for this trip—the heist was just a coverup.
“It’s time.” Wade put out the light. “Let’s go.”
The slowing of the train woke Blake. Damn. Had they made Sierra Blanca already? He felt like he hadn’t slept more than ten minutes. Stifling a groan, he rolled over onto his back. It didn’t matter if they’d made Sierra Blanca or not. It was still the middle of the goddamn night.
The door at the end of the car opened. Probably the porter coming or going, or a passenger getting off or maybe just stepping onto the platform for a breath of fresh air. None of Blake’s business. He didn’t care.
But as he tried to go back to sleep, something tugged at his mind. Something…wrong. Out of place.
No, not out of place. Missing. Something was missing.
The train whistle. If they were coming into a depot, the engineer would blow the whistle. No such sound pierced the night. In fact, all he heard was the ever slowing of wheels on rails.
Then a gasp, a muffled oath. A curse. Boots on the floor. Spurs jingling.
The hair on the back of Blake’s neck stood on end. With a sickening feeling in his gut, he instinctively knew something was damn good and wrong. He reached for his gun.
He wasn’t fast enough. Before he had it out of the holster, the curtain parted, spilling light into his eyes from the lamp hanging from the ceiling outside his bunk.
“I wouldn’t do that, mister,” said an accented voice. German, maybe Swedish. Blake wasn’t sure which.
What he was sure of, was the gun pointed directly between his eyes.
A second man joined the first and peered in. They wore their hats low. Bandannas covered everything below their eyes. A holdup. A goddamn holdup.
“Well, well,” the second man said, his voice slightly muffled by the bandanna.
A creak came from the upper berth. Stay still, Jessica Colton, Blake silently warned. Don’t move.
But Jessie heard the deep voices in the sudden quiet. The quiet that was too deep. No clacking of wheels, no chugging of the hard-working engine. Her bed wasn’t swaying. The small green hammock rigged above her to hold her belongings hung perfectly still. What the devil was going on?
She raised up on one elbow and peered out the gap between the curtains. Directly into surprised blue eyes. And the man’s eyes were all she could see. His head was covered by a hat, and the rest of his face by a dusty bandanna.
His face is covered by a bandanna?
Jessie’s mouth went dry. Sakes alive, the train was being robbed!
Instinct told her to curl up into a tight little ball against the wall and hope the man would go away. But Jessie hadn’t curled up into a tight little ball to hide since she was four years old and a litter of puppies tri
ed to lick her to death. She’d been giggling the whole time. She’d never felt less like giggling in her entire life than she did right now.
Cautiously, being as quiet as possible, Jessie slid her hand into her handbag. The sound of her skin moving across the rough cotton sheet seemed abnormally loud.
She gripped the smooth pearl handle of her derringer. Before she could pull the tiny two-shot pistol from her handbag, the man yanked the curtains open with a square, dirty hand. “By heavens, boss, look what we got here,” came his accented voice.
There was a second man, she realized, and he was pointing a gun directly into the berth beneath her. With his thumb, he pulled back the hammer. He was going to shoot the captain!
“No!” With the hand holding the derringer, Jessie swung at the gunman’s head. Her gun went off. Blood spurted from the bandit’s ear.
The man jerked and bellowed as his own gun fired, so close upon Jessie’s accidental shot that the two explosions sounded almost as one.
Jessie and at least two other women screamed.
Gunsmoke hung thick and acrid in the air.
“Son of a bitch!” The man with the bleeding ear reached into the berth, grabbed Jessie by the hair, and yanked hard. She tumbled out, knocking both men to the floor. Her head struck the edge of the berth across the aisle. One of the bandits’ knees bruised her hip, while her knee rammed into the floor. Her pistol flew from her grasp and skittered down the aisle, far out of reach.
Disoriented, hurting, dazed, her struggles to free herself from the grip on her hair were ineffectual. The second man, the one—oh, God, the one who shot the captain!—jerked her upright and thrust her toward the other man—the foreign sounding one. She reached out to catch herself against his shoulders, but caught only his bandanna instead. It pulled free from his face and fell to drape around his neck.
She stared, and he stared back a long moment before he realized his mask was gone.
“Son of a bitch,” the other one muttered, keeping a hand pressed over his bleeding ear. “Cover your damn face!”
Apache-Colton Series Page 113