A Lady of the West Read online

  “Of course,” McLain snapped.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I’ll tell you what the problem is,” Garnet said, stepping closer. “The problem is you killing two of our oldest hands. Pledger and Charlie Guest had been with the ranch for years.”

  Jake smiled. It was the same expression Victoria had seen just before he’d killed Pledger. “I could always make it three,” he suggested in a silky tone.

  “That’s enough damn killing!” McLain yelled. “Back off, Garnet. It riles me to lose Pledger, but I sure as hell don’t want my two best men killing each other over him.”

  “Sure, boss.” Garnet stepped back, but his expression remained hate-filled.

  Jake wasn’t surprised that Garnet had backed off so easily; face-to-face wasn’t his style.

  McLain put on his best smile. “The party tonight will be just the thing to make you ladies forget about this,” he said. “The governor can’t wait to meet you, since word’s out that I have the three prettiest women in the territory. Every man in Santa Fe will be trying to dance with you tonight.”

  Victoria seized desperately on that excuse. “My goodness, I’d forgotten about the party! We’ll have to hurry. Run along, gentlemen—” She made little shooing gestures with her hands. “Oh, Major, could you have the hotel send up hot water to both rooms?”

  “Of course, my dear.” He patted her on the cheek. “Dress up in your fanciest dress—give these yokels something to gawk at.”

  When the three women were alone again, Victoria visibly sagged. “I don’t know if I can bear even the thought of a party,” she said in a stifled voice. “Dear God.” But she forced herself to straighten and took deep breaths to compose herself. “I suppose we’ll have to go and make the best of it. Celia, dear, are you all right?”

  “Yes.” Celia looked unusually grave, but her dark blue eyes were steady. “Jake had to kill him, to protect us. I’m not sorry.”

  Victoria felt sick. Yes, Jake had killed to protect, but had he done it for Emma and Celia, or to conceal his own indiscretion with Victoria?

  There was a hardness in him that terrified her, yet she was inexplicably drawn to him. Try as she might to avoid him, fate kept twisting their lives together, forcing them to share sordid secrets that created an unwilling intimacy between them, and now they were sharing lies.

  Yet she had stood in his arms and let him kiss her in a way so improper and shattering that she could scarcely bear to think about it. She was another man’s wife! To do what she had done had been betrayal, but at the time she had gloried in it. She had enjoyed the scent and taste of him, the feel of his strongly muscled body against her, thrilled to the power of his arms.

  She had even dreamed of him. And that was, perhaps, an even greater betrayal.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Victoria excused herself and sought out the ladies’ convenience, needing to get away just for a moment from the chatter and social smiles, and from the unexpectedly harrowing nearness of blue uniforms. It was silly, because the war had been over for a year, and in the meantime she had certainly become used to the sight of blue uniforms on the streets of Augusta. But never before had she been required to meet Union soldiers socially. She had no hate for them and wasn’t bitter, as so many Southerners were, but when the first Union officer had bowed over her hand, she had felt afraid, as if they were still foes. The soldiers certainly did nothing to calm her already frayed nerves.

  She had used rigid control to survive the evening. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of the gaping hole in Pledger’s chest, the ugliness of death, the boneless sprawl. Nor had she let herself remember the vile things he had said or the chilling way Jake had smiled. Most of all, she had blocked from her mind the hot, endless moments she had spent in his arms. It shouldn’t have happened and must never happen again. She had to forget it forever.

  The hallway was deserted, and though two lamps illuminated it for the benefit of the guests, the light seemed dim, absorbed by the rich but rather dark patterns of the wallpaper and carpeting. She longingly thought of the simple white walls and clear, uncluttered lines of the hacienda. If she enjoyed her marriage half as much as she did that house, she would have been very happy indeed.

  The convenience was at the back of the house. As she passed an open doorway, it was filled with a dark, massive figure. She was startled but not frightened, merely thinking it another guest. An arm stretched out of the shadows and grabbed her, jerked her into the room, and only then did she become alarmed. She inhaled jerkily to scream, and the man clapped his hand over her mouth.

  “Damn it, don’t scream,” he muttered.

  The simple recognition of his voice twanged at her nerves. She jerked her head away from his hand. “What are you doing? You shouldn’t be in here! How did you get in?”

  “I’m here because the Major doesn’t go anywhere without backup. I’ve been walking around outside, keeping an eye on things. This door was open, and I could see in through the window. From the parade of ladies going up and down the hall, it didn’t take much brain to figure out where they were going.”

  “So you sneaked in the back door?”

  “Crawled in the window.”

  “And grabbed the first woman who came by?” She was incensed and thought she might still scream. He hadn’t let go of her; his fingers were still hooked around her waist, and the way he was holding her so close made her uneasy.

  “No, I waited for you.” He let go of her and walked to the open door, which he eased shut without even a click. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  Without the light coming from the hallway, the room at first seemed totally dark. She moved closer to the windows, both to put some distance between them and to see better. She lifted her chin. “What do we have to talk about?”

  “Pledger.”

  She flinched a little at the name. “You killed him. What more is there to say?”

  “Plenty. Don’t let your high-nosed conscience push you into confessing. Pledger was dirt. He murdered and raped, and enjoyed it.”

  “Like you enjoyed killing him?”

  He was silent a moment, then gave a low, harsh laugh as he moved toward her, into the light from the windows. “Yeah, I enjoyed it. I felt like I was doing a good deed.”

  Victoria clenched her hands. “You killed him to keep him from telling the Major that you were in my room. You shouldn’t have been in there at all; it’s my fault a man is dead, and I lied to hide why he was shot.”

  “Not much else you could do.”

  “Is a life, even his, so cheap? What could have happened if you hadn’t shot him, if he had told? You’d have been fired and the Major would have been angry with me, but that would have been his right—”

  “Wake up,” he snapped, still keeping his voice low. “This isn’t about a job! McLain would have told Garnet to get rid of me, and he wouldn’t mean just throw me off of the ranch. But even if he didn’t kill me, if he just fired me, where would that leave you? Where would it leave your little sister?”

  “Celia?” Victoria stared up at him, trying to see his features in the faint light.

  “If I’m gone, who’ll keep Garnet away from the girl?”

  She hadn’t thought of that. She felt dizzy, as if she had almost walked off a cliff and seen it just in time. Good or bad, and for his own reasons, Jake Roper was the only protection Celia had—or, come to that, she herself had. He had killed to protect them. But why? She didn’t delude herself that he cared anything about her; how could he? He didn’t know her. True, he had kissed her, but she was learning that didn’t necessarily mean anything to a man.

  Whatever she saw in his cold green eyes, she was certain it wasn’t tenderness. His reasons for protecting them were his own. She felt as if she were being used, but she couldn’t see how. She had no power, no influence for him to hope to exploit.

  She inhaled. “I won’t say anything,” she said, her tone stifled.

  “Just make sure you don�