Her Lone Protector (Historical Western Romance)

by Pam Crooks

  It’d been a short night. Seemed Creed had no sooner closed his eyes before sunshine poked through the thin curtains to wake him again.

  At least he couldn’t hear any more crying from Gina’s room. Sometime before dawn, she must’ve fallen asleep from pure exhaustion. He frowned at the thought, but he knew the rest would help her feel better. A new day tended to improve one’s outlook on life.

  She’d need to eat, too. Same as he did. Neither of them had had supper last night, and the growl in Creed’s belly told him breakfast was a need he couldn’t ignore.

  He rose, found some water in a pitcher, soap in his saddlebags, and gave himself a good wash. After donning a set of clean clothes, he headed straight to the kitchen to see what he could find to eat.

  Which wasn’t much.

  A little coffee, a half loaf of bread, a few eggs. One large potato. But his interest caught on a pair of sausage links, wrapped in paper.

  He set to work cooking it all up without feeling the least bit contrite for taking the liberty. It was plain to see Gina and her mother ate like birds. Maybe that was the only way they could afford to eat, but Creed intended to change that with a trip to the grocer to give their shelves a good restocking. He’d make sure to heap Gina’s plate this morning, too, and see that she ate every bite.

  He stood at the stove and turned the sausages frying in the skillet. Just as he was about to add the chopped potato, her bedroom door opened, and she stepped out.

  She was wearing a different dress, navy blue with little pale flowers all over it. Nicer than the one she wore to work. No shoes, though, and her long, sable hair was undone. The way it gleamed and hung thick on her shoulders told him she’d just brushed it.

  “You stay, I see,” she said.

  His gaze dragged from her hair. Her eyes were puffy, rimmed in red. From her glower, she felt less than friendly this morning.

  “I said I would,” he said carefully.

  “You should not be here. All the apartments will talk about the man Gina Briganti kept last night.”

  “Let ’em.”

  She made a sound of exasperation, swept past him with a huff and soaked a washcloth from the water left in the pitcher. Barely an arm’s length separated the stove from the table, and she bumped into him on the way back. Without bothering to excuse herself, she pulled out a chair at the table and dropped into it.

  “That is easy for you to say. You do not know Mrs. Sortino.” She propped her bare feet on the opposite chair, tilted her head back and laid the washcloth over her eyes with a weary moan.

  Her moan stirred his sympathy. “Don’t think I care to, either.”

  “Or my neighbors,” Gina went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “If one of them see you, they are very quick to report me.”

  “Surrounded by busybodies, are you?”

  She clucked her tongue. “They want my apartment.”

  His glance swept their cramped quarters. “Your apartment?”

  “The window.”

  Creed struggled to follow her logic. “Not all of them have one?”

  “No.” She sighed, as if he were being obtuse. “Only the front do. The rear do not. Mama and I are fortunate to get this one.”

  He couldn’t imagine being confined in a place like this without being able to see the outdoors. He’d always preferred wide open spaces and plenty of fresh air, which came from being raised on a ranch, he supposed. One of the few things he and Pa ever agreed on when it came to the home place—the benefits of living there.

  Her explanation made it easier to comprehend her concern about his staying with her. Vindictive neighbors would make anyone’s life uncomfortable. Didn’t change things, though. He had no intention of leaving until he was sure she was strong enough to be on her own.

  He placed each sausage on a plate and made room in the skillet for the eggs. “I’m not going to apologize for being here.”

  “She will raise my rent.”

  “Greedy, too, is she?”

  Gina groaned. “Very.”

  He knew ways to keep greedy people happy and cooperative, thanks to the army, and he dismissed the Sortino woman from his mind. He divided the potatoes between the plates, slid an egg onto each and brought both to the table.

  “Let’s eat,” he said.

  He added silverware, cups steaming with coffee, and still she didn’t move. He reached out and plucked the washcloth off her face.

  “Gina.”

  Her eyes opened. “What?”

  She looked so innocently annoyed, he had to work hard to hide his amusement.

  “Were you napping under there?” he asked.

  She frowned. “I am not awake all the way yet.”

  “Put the fork in your hand,” he said.

  “I want coffee.” She brought her feet down to the floor and sat straighter in the chair. He slid the cup closer, and she went for it.

  Silence fell between them. Her expression turned brooding, and she sipped the hot brew slowly as she stared out the sunny window, slight furrows between her dark brows. Creed let her do the thinking she needed to do.

  He took advantage of it to watch her, his attention held by the exotic shape of her face in the morning light. The slight hook on the bridge of her nose, the delicate jut to her chin, the slender column of her neck, half hidden by the silken mass of sable hair hanging loose against her shoulders and back.

  Hair meant to slide long and free through a man’s fingers.

  The blood flickered in his veins. She fascinated him in ways he didn’t bother to comprehend, a woman hauntingly beautiful, passionate in love, in anguish. Proud and vibrant.

  A woman he wasn’t likely to forget for a good long while after he left American shores.

  Finally, she set the cup down and picked up her fork.

  “I had a visione in my sleep,” she said.

  She appeared preoccupied. He suspected she was still thinking about it.

  “Want to tell me what it was?” he asked.

  She fiddled with her fork, which, he noted, had yet to scoop up any breakfast.

  “My visione shows Mama in a dark place, far away. I cannot reach her, but I try many times. She talks to me, very clear. She is afraid, not for herself, but for me. When I wake up, I feel the evil that makes her afraid. But I also feel she is alive.”

  Creed had never put much stock in the supernatural. As a soldier, he’d learned to trust the solid facts of reality along with skill and gut instinct. Anything less could result in death, his own or someone else’s. Her vision didn’t make much sense, anyway, since her mother was more of a victim of the arson than Gina, who had escaped it.

  “I go to Mass this morning,” she said suddenly.

  He shifted thoughts with her. His glance drifted over her dress. Her best, he suspected. The reason she wore it.

  “To pray to the Madonna,” she added.

  He nodded respectfully. Tried to remember the last time he stepped into a church.

  “I ask her to help me find my mother.” She finally speared a small piece of the sausage and slipped it neatly into her mouth. “I ask her how to find the Sokolov brothers, too.”

  The evil in her vision.

  “Leave that to the police, Gina,” he said sharply.

  “I do not trust the police.”

  “They’re a hell of a lot more qualified to track down men capable of arson than you are.”

  “I do not have the money to pay the police to do what I need them to do.”

  His mind worked to fathom her thinking. “You don’t have to pay them to do anything. It’s their job to protect citizens.”

  “I cannot trust them.”

  “If a crime has been committed, they have the ability to solve it. You don’t.”

  “But they do nothing because I am only a poor immigrant from Sicily. Then I do not find Mama, eh? The Sokolovs go unpunished. I trust only myself to do these things.”

  He thought of all the countries he’d been to in the past six
years. Fragile governments plagued by treason, assassinations, revolt. Governments desperate for reform who needed the United States military to help them because they couldn’t depend on their own. They hired mercenaries—men like himself—for the tactics, the skills, they’d learned to infiltrate secret societies hell-bent on overthrowing them one way or another.

  Oppressors of the innocent. Betrayers of the people. Unfortunately, they came in all levels of government, a fact of life from the first day of history.

  Still, he chafed at her jaded outlook. “You think our police are corrupt?”

  She hesitated. “Maybe not all. But some.”

  “In this country, it’s an honorable thing to serve the citizens.”

  Her dark eyebrow arched. “What? You do not know about corrupt lawyers? Politicians?”

  “I know about them.”

  “They want only power and riches. They do not care about honor. They care only about the money they can make.”

  “A few,” he conceded.

  “In my country, Sicily, it is everywhere.” She scooped potatoes onto her fork and lifted them to her mouth.

  “The Mafioso,” he said.

  “Yes.” Her expression melded into sad bitterness. “They hurt many with their greed.”

  He regarded her. “Have they hurt you, Gina?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  She took a breath, let it out again. “My father is once a shoemaker. Very talented. He repairs the shoes, but mostly he loves to make them. The quality of the leather, his workmanship, the styles, he makes them magnificent.”

  Creed waited, drawn in by the story she was ready to tell.

  “People come from many miles to buy his shoes. Even the Mafioso. They see Papa’s business grow, and they want some of his money, too.”

  “Yes,” he murmured. They would.

  “But Papa does not want to give them what he works hard to earn. He refuses to pay them. Then one day, he receives a letter.” She swallowed, the fear in her still real. “From the Black Hand.”

  Creed knew about them, too. The secret group that demanded money by sending notes, unsigned but imprinted with an inked handprint of the sender. Those that didn’t comply risked harassment and murder, not only to themselves but to loved ones.

  “We cannot ask the police to help. They are too afraid, or maybe they are part of the Mafioso. The corruption, the bribery, it is everywhere. Even as high up as Premier Giolitti in Italy.”

  No wonder she mistrusted the police. Hell of a shame it was, too, when most of them in America were as honest as the day they were born.

  “Papa does everything he can to protect Mama and me, but he cannot protect himself. The Mafioso—they hurt him so he cannot make shoes ever again. He loses his business. Soon, he gets sick. Four years ago, he dies.”

  “I’m sorry,” Creed said and meant it.

  She toyed with the last of the potatoes left on her plate. “Mama and I are very sad, very unhappy. We love Sicily, but we must leave. We do not want to be afraid anymore. So we use the money we have left to come to America. For Papa, we want to succeed here.”

  Again, Creed’s glance took in the tiny apartment, the over-worn furnishings. Working six days a week at the shirtwaist factory hadn’t done much for her success that he could see.

  She fell silent, but her throat moved, as if she fought a welling of despair. “And now maybe I fail.”

  The despair cut through him. “At what?”

  Her dark eyes filled with moisture. “If I do not find Mama, if my visione is a—how you say?—a mistake, I cannot afford to live without her. I am very alone. I become very poor. I cannot pay my rent, and then where do I go? I lose everything.” She swiped miserably at a recalcitrant tear. “I lose my dream, too.”

  His fist clenched to keep from taking her into his arms and soothing all that needed soothing in her. “What dream?”

  “To own a dressmaker shop.” She sniffled. “For three years, Mama and I save for it.”

  An ambitious undertaking, for sure, even for one with considerably more wealth. “You like to make dresses, then.”

  “Very much.”

  “Want to tell me about that, too?”

  She hesitated, as if she debated whether she should. Then, she nodded.

  “It is better that I show you.” She stood and entered her bedroom. In moments, she returned with a sheaf of papers. He swept aside their plates to make room on the table. “These are my designs.”

  One after another, she pulled sketches from the pile. With each one, her worries seemed to fade, and she became more animated. Her slender finger pointed at sleeves, necklines, billowing skirts. Her descriptions were precise, her voice breathless, her vision of fabrics vivid and real.

  And Creed was impressed. He’d never claim to be an expert on women’s gowns, but Gina’s designs were as good, if not better, than those he’d seen in Collette’s shop only yesterday.

  “Do you design the shirtwaists, too?” he asked. “Seems to me it’d be a place for you to start.”

  Her black eyes rolled. “There is nothing to the blouse. Even Mr. Silverstein does not design them. He adds a tuck here or a ribbon there, but he only copies the ones very popular in New York.” She gathered the sketches, carefully layering them into a neat pile. “Then he brags to the salesmen how special his shirtwaists are.”

  Creed rubbed his chin. “Once they’re sold, your factory makes them and ships them out to department stores.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Thousands every season. The shirtwaists, I mean.”

  “Silverstein is a rich man, then?”

  She sniffed. “He keeps most of the money for himself because he does not pay his seamstresses a decent wage.” She glanced at the clock and gasped. “Oh, the time! Mass starts soon, and I am not ready!”

  Creed stood. “I’ll do the dishes. You finish getting dressed.”

  She snatched the sheaf of sketches and hurried to her bedroom.

  He watched her go. He’d been fascinated by the glimpse she’d given him into her life and troubled by the fears that haunted her. She’d had a tough time of it, for sure. And now, with her mother unaccounted for…

  He collected the plates and wondered how long it would be before she’d be happy again.

  Chapter Eight

  Gina finished pinning her hair into a topknot and used Mama’s hand mirror for a quick inspection of the results, turning her head back and forth to make sure she didn’t miss any strands. She hadn’t, but her scrutiny lingered in the glass.

  Her eyes weren’t as red anymore. And there was a little color to her cheeks. She had Creed to thank for that, and the breakfast he’d made her eat. She felt stronger with a hot meal in her stomach. Less miserable. Better able to face the day and learn what she could about her mother.

  She set the mirror aside. Still, it wasn’t like her to talk so much about her past. Or her future. Never had she told the story about Papa to anyone, not even Sebastian. Except for her mother, she hadn’t shared her dream or showed her sketches to anyone, either.

  With Creed, it’d been easy. He’d been interested, concerned… incredibly strong when she felt weak and lost.

  Her thoughts drifted backward to how his tawny eyes had been bold, intense, never leaving her face. When he looked at her like that, making her feel like she wasn’t at all alone, well, she couldn’t stop herself from talking so much.

  But she couldn’t spend any more time thinking about him, she reminded herself firmly. She must rush to church, and she put on her hat with more speed than style, then grabbed her coat from its hook.

  She hurried into the kitchen. Creed had just finished drying the last of the dishes, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows. Thick veins corded his forearms, darkened by the sun and roughened by a sprinkling of burnished gold hairs. Again, she thought of his power, how he overwhelmed her tiny apartment. A man of the world, this one. Unlike any she had known before.

  He glanc
ed up at her approach. His gaze drifted over her, slow and appraising, from the hair piled onto her head to the toe of her shoes. And back up again. For the life of her, she couldn’t move. She didn’t think of her need to get to Mass on time; instead, she wondered what rolled through his mind while he looked at her like this.

  And how it would feel to be touched by him.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured.

  She curled her fingers to keep from fussing with her pins again. She didn’t know if he spoke of the way she twisted her hair or the dress she wore or something else. “Thank you. This dress, it is not new, and the hat is not, either, but—”

  “Doesn’t matter. You still look beautiful.”

  He left her flustered and unable to think of another thing to say. He strode toward her, lithe and masculine, and she was sure he intended to touch her, after all.

  He merely took her coat and held it open. “Is your church far?”

  She tried not to feel disappointed he didn’t. “About six blocks or so.”

  She slipped her arms into the sleeves and turned back toward him, busying herself with the buttons.

  “It’ll be faster to take my horse.”

  Gina bit her lip at the prospect of sitting so close to him again. “Maybe.”

  He gathered his saddlebags and met her at the door. She’d remembered to bring the extra key hidden in her drawer and made sure it was safe in her coat pocket. Now, there’d be no need for him to pick her lock like a common thief.

  Not that he’d be coming home with her again.

  She quickly negated the thought that he would. He had a life of his own. She didn’t need him in hers anymore, now that the worst of the fire was over. She must go on without him, and she intended to tell him as much. After they arrived at the church, anyway, since he made it clear he would take her there.

  They left the apartment, and with Creed right behind her, she descended the steep, narrow stairs with as much haste as she dared. A baby squalled somewhere below them, and the sound grew louder the closer they approached the ground level; the musty air gave way to the smells of bacon frying and coffee boiling.

  Once on the main level, eager to make her escape, Gina headed toward the front door. But the one to the apartment closest to that, the one she dreaded most, suddenly burst open.