A Lady of the West Read online

  Garnet smiled, a slow movement of his mouth that didn’t ease the cold ruthlessness of his eyes. “Don’t matter how fast a man is if you’re behind him.”

  Bullfrog lifted the glass again. “That’s true,” he said.

  The sunlight streaked across the tiles in the foyer, nothing like the night when the shadowed nightmare had taken place. But when the heavy front door opened and the shadow of someone’s head and torso spilled across the tiles, something flashed in Jake’s head. It was exactly as it had been the night he’d looked down and seen his father’s body sprawled on the floor.

  Blood drummed in his temples. He stood frozen just outside the library door, his face twisting as the hot tide of hate consumed him. There, to the left of the stairs, was where his mother had lain with her face bruised and distorted by McLain’s fist, where he had raped her while her husband’s body lay only a few feet away. Her blood and brains had pooled on those tiles.

  God damn McLain’s soul to roast in hell! If he even had a soul.

  He and Ben had watched him die, but they hadn’t won. McLain still lived within these walls, within the home he’d fouled with his presence. His flesh and blood still lived in Victoria’s body. The sight of her now, as she cast the shadow that had awakened Jake’s memories, enraged him all the more.

  She had been feeling well enough lately to get out of the house; the vomiting was gradually easing. Autumn was coming, and coming soon. It was September, and the aspens were golden.

  She closed the door and stood still for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the light in the house. There was no movement to attract her attention, no sound, but suddenly the hair on the back of her neck raised up as a sense of menace chilled her. She jerked her head around and saw Jake.

  His face was a twisted mask of hate, his eyes like green coals.

  In that split second of recognition, she was terrified. He looked as if he wanted to tear her apart with his bare hands. Without thought, obeying some wild instinct, she ran.

  Jake started, pulling his mind from the past as she bolted up the stairs. He started moving toward the steps, his warning call sharp. “Victoria! Watch the steps!”

  By some miracle she didn’t stumble. When the wave of dizziness hit her, she managed to grasp the banister with both hands and hold herself upright. Her vision wavered, then began to fade. She could hear him coming up the stairs at a run, his boots thudding, and she tried to haul herself up another step, but her legs were too heavy and wouldn’t obey. With a dull sense of alarm and astonishment, she felt her body begin to sag and could do nothing to stop it.

  Then steely arms were around her, arms that she remembered sometimes in her dreams that left tears on her face when she awoke. As the darkness became absolute, she wondered why he had caught her.

  Jake swung her limp body up in his arms, sweat breaking out on his face at how close she had come to falling. She was in a dead faint, her head lolling back over his arm. He opened his mouth to yell for Emma or Carmita, but shut it as quickly as the impulse came. Victoria was his wife; he’d take care of her. He’d seen enough unconscious men to know how to handle a simple faint.

  She didn’t feel any heavier now than she had three months before. Just the feel of her in his arms struck him with a sharp, nostalgic pleasure, piercing and bittersweet. It shouldn’t have been so long since he had held her; the chasm between them shouldn’t have been so wide and deep and unbridgeable.

  He started to carry her into their—his—bedroom, but changed his mind and went into hers; she would be less alarmed when she woke up if she wasn’t in his bed. She showed no signs of reviving even when he placed her on the bed, and with growing concern he unfastened her skirt, then the light blue shirtwaist that was buttoned high under her chin.

  He could feel the warmth of her soft skin, and the parting edges of the blouse revealed the pulse beating gently at the base of her throat. His own pulse began to throb.

  “Victoria, wake up,” he murmured, stroking the hair back from her face. She still didn’t stir. He lifted her skirt enough to remove her shoes, then took the pillow from beneath her head and slid it under her feet, slim and delicate in her white cotton stockings. His pulse beat faster.

  She was his; her body was his. He put his hand on her stomach, searching for evidence of the life that had torn their marriage apart. Her belly was smooth and as flat as ever.

  His brows snapped together. How far along did a woman have to be before her pregnancy began showing? The way he figured it, she should be more than four months along, certainly enough to be showing. But then, some women didn’t get as big as others; he’d seen some who looked huge and some who didn’t look very big the day they delivered. Maybe her clothing was disguising her shape.

  He tossed her skirt up, his hand delving beneath the froth of petticoats, finding her cotton-covered thighs and sliding upward to her belly. She was warm and flat.

  Her eyelids fluttered and struggled open. “Jake?” she murmured.

  He leaned over her. “You fainted, but you’re all right,” he said in a low voice.

  “I thought you were going to kill me.” The words were a little slurred as she struggled to push the last remnants of unconsciousness away. She blinked her eyes and focused on his face. She saw no sign now of the intense hatred that had sent her running for her life, and in confusion she wondered if she’d been imagining things.

  “No. Not ever.” Jake’s heart began beating heavily as he watched her. Her lips were soft and trembling slightly. Her wall of hostility was down; she was weak and disoriented. Before she could resurrect her anger he bent and covered her mouth with his, a muffled sound of pleasure coming from deep in his throat.

  He used the pressure of his mouth to open her lips and slipped his tongue into her. A dizzying surge of delight went through him as he felt her arms lift and slide around his neck. He gathered her to him, deepening the kiss.

  She had wanted him for so long, craved him for so long, that her whirling senses fastened on what he was doing. The taste of his mouth kept her from dying of thirst, his hands fed her in other ways. She moaned at the feel of his rough palm on her sensitive breasts, sliding inside both blouse and chemise and cupping the naked globes, then lifting them free of their cloth restraints. He left her mouth, his lips sliding down her throat and chest to close over one extended nipple.

  The feeling was so electrifying that she almost shot off the bed. Her breasts were so tender that she could barely tolerate the pressure of her clothing, and his hot mouth fastening on her nipple was a maddening mixture of pain and pleasure.

  She couldn’t bear it. Tears sprang to her eyes and she pushed against his shoulders. “You’re hurting me,” she choked.

  He lifted his head, his green eyes dark with passion. “Hurting you?” he repeated hoarsely.

  “Yes … my breasts are sore. The baby—”

  He drew back. The evidence of the child growing within her was here, in the larger swell of her breasts, the darkening of the nipples, the increased delicate blue veining running just under the creamy satin skin.

  She scrambled off the bed on the other side and stood with her back to him as she restored chemise, shirtwaist, and skirt to their proper positions. “Thank you for catching me,” she said in a tight voice.

  He remembered what she’d said when she had first regained consciousness; she had thought he was going to kill her, and she had run from him in terror. God, what had they done to each other?

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.” His own voice was gruff. “Be careful from now on going up or down the stairs.”

  “Yes. I will.”

  She was too slender. He watched her for several days, trying to handle his uneasiness. He counted the days just as she had told him to do, and tried to figure how far along she would have to have been before she knew she was pregnant. A month? Two months? He just didn’t know, but he thought surely she would have been showing by now. On the other hand, if he had gotten her pregnant immediately,