The Girl with the Golden Gun

by Ann Major

  “You could rest here. There’s a bed.”

  She laughed, but not lightly as before. The atmosphere was different suddenly—charged.

  Without another word, she went to the door. He opened it, intending to follow her.

  She held up her hand. “You know how I hate goodbyes.”

  “But this isn’t—”

  “No. Of course not.” She smiled ever so tenderly. “We’ll see each other soon. I’ll call you…tonight as soon as I get home.”

  Then why was her voice so strange and sad?

  It was over. She was ending their affair before it had hardly begun.

  “Joanne—”

  “Don’t worry so—”

  “Why are you going?” he whispered, frantic to change her mind.

  “Because I love you.”

  “Don’t then!”

  “I can’t explain. Don’t ask me to. We’ve got to stop this—before we’re in too deep.”

  “We already are,” he thought, but it was too late.

  She was gone.

  It was a picture-perfect spring morning. Sunlight filtered through the mesquite trees and the cottonwood that shaded the new barn as Mia brushed and talked soothingly to Renegade, the troubled gelding, a thickset sorrel, Cole had bought on a whim two weeks ago. Except for Gus, who was lurking just out of sight somewhere in the trees, watching the barn, she was alone.

  “Why did you buy him?” she’d asked Cole as Kinky had unloaded Renegade from the horse trailer.

  “This beautiful beast was on his way to the slaughterhouse,” Kinky had said. “Cole’s gotten softhearted.”

  Despite his narrow escape, the gelding had exuded such quiet confidence when he’d stared into Mia’s eyes before he was led to the barn. She’d thought of Shabol.

  “I thought you said this horse was crazy,” she’d said. “He doesn’t look crazy.”

  “Just you try to ride him,” Cole had muttered, stroking the animal.

  “He rolls over on them,” Kinky had said. “Or slams them into a railing.”

  “Somebody must’ve abused you mighty bad,” Mia had murmured to the big darling.

  He’d become her pet project. Every morning and afternoon she brought him a coffee can full of oats and then slipped a hackamore on him when he was done eating and led him about the corral for half an hour or more. By the third morning he’d been standing at the gate waiting for her.

  Wing Nut usually followed Mia to the barn, dog tags jingling, toenails scraping wildly on the concrete floor of the barn while he dashed about eating some oats, too, and, unfortunately, gobbling any horse apples he managed to find.

  Now Renegade was her soul mate. The tacit understanding and affection they shared were truly remarkable. Not that she’d ridden him.

  She loved getting up early and working with him and then all the other horses in the barn. She’d pick up any stray rocks she found in the barn so they wouldn’t break up the horses’ feet.

  When she was done in the barn, she always felt stronger. Slowly, surely, with their help, she was getting past Mexico. This morning while she’d been sweeping and feeding everybody and mucking their stalls, she’d seen a spotted fawn and its mother, and an armadillo and a jackrabbit on the edge of the lawn. Such sightings rooted her in her real life. This was home, where she belonged. Mexico was a bad dream. One day soon, she’d feel safe again.

  The day was heating up. Glancing at her watch she realized it was time for Vanilla to get up and have her breakfast. Quickly Mia put the brushes away and led Renegade outside the barn so he could roam and explore. She removed the halter and stepped back. Hesitating, he gave her a long look, which she took to be both affectionate and euphoric. Then with a final goodbye snicker, he turned. After pawing the earth, he exploded, racing away on galloping hooves toward the trees where the deer had been.

  Laughing, she packed up her things, closed the door to the tack room and then headed to get her purse, which she’d left by the sink.

  The moment she stepped into the little room, she stopped, her attention caught by a splash of red beside her purse. For a second she rocked back on her heels. Then she saw that it was a beautiful rose; a single, long-stemmed, bloodred rose.

  Puzzled and yet enchanted, and somewhat worried, she ran to it and picked it up and twirled it beneath her nose. Wondering about the identity of her mysterious admirer, she went to the doorway and stared at the trees where Renegade had vanished.

  The horse was gone. If Gus were out there, he was invisible. The wind sighed in the oak trees, and she wondered who her secret admirer was.

  Indecision and procrastination were driving Shanghai crazy. It was shortly after eleven, and he was in a lousy mood as he drove down the ranch road with all his windows open.

  What to do? What to say? How to approach her? What would she do?

  The air was balmy now, but it would get hot later in the afternoon. He’d rolled up his sleeves. He’d thought he’d hate everything about being back in Spur County and was surprised how much he liked the feel of the wind in his hair just as he liked the dry scent of the grass and cacti and the earthier smells of cattle and horses. Odd, he didn’t long for the scent of pine.

  Shanghai had been staying at a cheap roadside motel outside Chaparral for the past three days and nights and he still hadn’t worked up his nerve to confront Mia.

  Today. He punched her cell-phone number into his cell and put his phone to his ear. But, hell, no sooner had it started ringing than he flipped his phone shut—again. Maybe he needed to ride the back roads a while longer, thinking about his past, and about his future, too. Thinking about her.

  A man didn’t have much time on earth, so he couldn’t afford to waste it. What the hell did he want to do with the rest of his life?

  What really mattered? Fame? Fortune? Cheap thrills and cheap women who made a man feel momentarily alive?

  Or just settling down to a comfortable, ordinary life with somebody special you got a real kick out of being with? A relationship like that would take work. He’d have to reveal himself. He couldn’t hide.

  When he was a kid, he’d been a smart-ass with all the answers. He’d wanted to be somebody. He’d wanted his name to mean something, the way the Kemble name meant something if only to the rodeo crowd. Back then he’d been determined on hating all Kembles forever—even Mia.

  Well, he wasn’t a kid anymore, and the notions that had served him then weren’t working all that well now. Hate was a mighty poor companion.

  Hardly knowing what he did, he made first one turn and then a few more. Before he knew it he hit the blacktop road that wound through unimproved pastures to Black Oaks. Its hard surface was cracked and laced with tall weeds. Nobody came this way much anymore. In some places the asphalt was no more than a broken path that cut through the dense thickets of mesquite and live oak and huisache. As he observed the ranch land he’d once worked, he saw that thousands of mesquite-choked acres needed to be chained.

  Black Oaks didn’t really matter to the Kembles. Caesar had just wanted the Knights gone and Black Oaks forgotten. So, he’d let it go wild.

  Well, Caesar was the one who was gone now. Death and time damn sure had a way of leveling things. Cole was in charge now.

  Shanghai rounded the last bend. When he saw the ancient Knight homestead, which had once served as the headquarters for a vast ranch that had taken a century to build and far less than that to crumble into nothing, he stopped.

  The house was dark. It looked lost and as shapeless as a shadow in the pools of purple beneath the trees. At least when his mother had been here, she’d had red gardenias and purple petunias in the window boxes this time of year. She would have had baskets dripping with plump ferns hanging from every eve, too.

  Just looking at the sagging roofline knotted his stomach. If something wasn’t done, the place would fall down upon itself in a few years. Frowning, he hit the gas again and drove closer, but when he braked again in front of the one-story, frame house, a
peculiar kind of dread filled him. For a second or two he became the lost, frightened little boy who’d grown up here. Then he shook himself.

  It was funny how the place seemed to have shrunk since he’d left. Away on the road, he’d remembered it bigger.

  He stared at the unpainted, warped boards for quite a spell before he worked up the guts to open his door and climb out.

  After his mother had gone, he’d felt so small here, so ashamed. The Kemble name had been so big it had dwarfed him. Maybe things would have been different if his mother hadn’t run off. But his daddy had gotten a whole lot meaner after she’d left. All Shanghai had wanted during the last years he’d lived here was to escape.

  Why hadn’t she taken Cole and him with her? That question had tortured him for years. Deep down he was still afraid to really love a woman.

  Even though Shanghai wanted nothing to do with the house and its pain or his mother’s betrayal, he felt this place in his bones as he felt no other place he’d ever visited. Maybe he had unfinished business here.

  Staring at the drooping porch, he remembered how his mother used to swing him on the porch swing. She’d had the prettiest voice, and he’d sung along with her. His favorite song had been “You Are My Sunshine.”

  He’d never been able to carry a tune, so he’d probably sounded like a lunatic, but, oh, how merrily she’d clapped when she’d praised him.

  A brunette with blue eyes, she’d been so sweet, too sweet for his daddy, he supposed. Shanghai remembered her soft voice in the darkness, too, when she used to whisper goodnight to Cole and him. When she’d run off, he’d lain in his bed and had closed his eyes and had pretended he heard her voice saying good-night to him. Then one night, he’d forgotten how she’d sounded. Oh, how he’d cried then.

  A breeze gusted through the trees, causing a shutter to bang around back. He felt a sharp stab of loneliness as he climbed the steps.

  He didn’t need this. He had no business here. He should have stayed away forever. Maybe he would have if John Hart hadn’t called him and told him about the hit out on Mia’s life. Then Wolf had told him about two hit men who’d attacked him.

  As he opened the sagging screen door and let himself inside, Shanghai’s gut clenched. His footsteps sounded hollow as he stomped about, but the three tiny bedrooms and the small bath were just as he remembered them.

  Not that he wanted to remember the nights he’d cowered under his bed when their daddy had brought home a woman and the two of them had hit the bottle. Shanghai had hated the loud sounds from that bedroom, the bed banging against the thin wall.

  When he’d been sober, his daddy had been as quiet as a scared bird. In town he’d been easygoing with everybody and always ready for a game of cards. But Shanghai had never trusted the quiet weakling or the easygoing man everybody else knew. He’d always known the mean drunk was there, just waiting to come out—at least when it was just the two of them.

  Shanghai remembered the last time he’d seen his father and the words that had kept him away all these years, even after his father had died.

  You’re not mine!

  Your mother married me with a no good bastard in her belly.

  Shanghai had really felt like a nobody when his father had screamed that. Was it true? Did it matter anymore?

  Shanghai was still lost in his thoughts a few minutes later, when he heard an engine being revved outside before the driver turned it off. Looking out, he saw a woman get out of a bright red pickup. She was wearing a pink T-shirt and tight jeans that hugged her butt in all the right places. She had long red hair that rippled halfway down her back. In the distance he saw another pickup stop. A man with white hair was watching her.

  It was Mia.

  Cole had told him they’d hired a bodyguard.

  Conflicting emotions crowded his mind—pleasure, a visceral thrill, fear, protectiveness. Hell, Shanghai still didn’t know what he’d say to her.

  When she opened the back door of her pickup, she waved to her bodyguard. Then she freed a little girl, who was also wearing a pink T-shirt, from her car seat. The child wriggled to get loose.

  “House,” Vanilla shouted, running forward, pointing.

  When Shanghai strode outside, the little girl turned back and held out her hands to Mia, who swiftly picked her up. Then she ducked her head, hiding from Shanghai.

  “She’s shy,” said Mia, whose smile was almost as shy. “She’s barely used to me.”

  Suddenly he was so glad to see them he felt like an utter fool. What the hell had taken him so long? Even so, his jaw went taut, and he couldn’t seem to smile.

  Mia was beautiful with the sunlight filtering through the trees and gleaming in her bright hair. He’d never seen anybody so beautiful in his whole life. His chest tightened painfully.

  “Hello, Vanilla,” he murmured, trying to sound casual as he descended the stairs.

  “I heard you’d come home,” Mia said. “I kept think ing—”

  She probably thought he was a complete idiot.

  “I’ve been meaning to come by.”

  “Shouldn’t you be at some big name rodeo?”

  “I used to think so.” In spite of himself he grinned. As if in response, her face softened, too. “I used to think I should be anywhere else,” he said.

  “But you’re here. Why?”

  “You heard anything from your friend Morales lately?” He tensed again as he wondered if she’d slept with the bastard.

  She went paler. “You still with that girl you drove off with?”

  “Abigail?” He shook his head. “We broke up. A few days ago.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Well, I didn’t see how I could come back here and leave her wonderin’. She took it real hard. I hurt her pretty bad. I’m sorry about that. But I guess some things can’t be helped.” He nodded toward the pick up. “Your bodyguard?”

  “Gus.”

  Mia’s eyes tugged at him, lured him. He swallowed the bait and moved in closer. Vanilla peeped over her mother’s shoulder and shot him a flirtatious glance. When he smiled, she buried her face against her mother’s plump bosom again. Lucky her.

  The kid with her elfin ears and bright blue eyes was cute. Really cute. Much cuter than in her pictures. And she’d grown.

  “When you didn’t call, I figured you weren’t ever coming back,” Mia said, bouncing Vanilla on her hip. Her voice was pleasant enough, but her pretty, whiskey-colored eyes were haunted.

  He sighed and shifted his weight from one booted foot to the other. “Well, I’m here now.”

  “Why?”

  “When I heard Morales was loose, I was on my way to Nebraska,” he said. “At some point I just did a U-turn and headed here. Hell, I don’t know why I do half the things I do. That’s why I get in so much trouble.”

  Mia’s smile was slow and warm, and it did funny things to Shanghai’s insides. He felt all mixed up.

  “I didn’t sleep with him. I told you that already.”

  “Right.” His throat felt so tight he could barely swallow. “I’ve tried to quit thinking about you and Morales.” His gaze drifted over her. “But Cole said he called you.”

  “Once.”

  For a long time they just stood there. “Okay.” He fought to get a grip.

  When Vanilla peeked at him again, he smiled. Vanilla laughed, causing the tension between Mia and him to ease.

  “I stopped at one of those great big toy stores and bought her a present,” he began, his voice gentle. “I didn’t know what she’d like, so I just got her somethin’ that struck me.”

  He loped past Mia to his car and pulled a stuffed white-and-black dog out of the back.

  “Why, that’s precious,” Mia said when he held it up.

  Vanilla squealed in delight.

  “Look what I’ve got, little darlin’,” he said, bending close to Vanilla and waving the stuffed toy so that its ears flopped as he pretended to play peep-eye. “It’s a dog. His name is Spot.”

/>   “What do dogs say, Vanilla?” Mia asked.

  Vanilla’s head popped up. When she saw the dog again, she broke into a slow grin. “Arf! Arf!”

  The stuffed dog had a huge black-and-white head with enormous dark eyes.

  Mia bit her lip. “He does look a little like our Spot.”

  “Only cuter.” Shanghai heaved in a deep breath. “I bought him because we both loved that mutt so damn much.”

  Mia’s sparkling eyes were lifted to his as Vanilla held out her hand to take the stuffed dog. “Mine!”

  “Yes, little darlin’. He’s all yours.”

  When Shanghai handed her the stuffed toy, she wrapped her arms around it and laid her head on top of its head. “Arf!”

  Shanghai stared past them. “When I left, I made a pact with myself I was never coming back here. Not for anything.”

  “And now?”

  His gaze fell on Vanilla. “I’ll stay until this Morales situation is sorted out. That’s for sure. As for the rest, we’ll take it one day at a time.” He paused. “I think for starters, you and me—we need to talk.”

  Vanilla began to kick and wriggle to get down.

  “Talking is not so easy when she’s around. She’s never still a minute.”

  “When?”

  “You hungry?” she murmured.

  “What?”

  “It’s lunchtime at the Golden Spurs. Sy’rai has cooked fried chicken and all the stuff that goes with it.”

  “Cream gravy?”

  “And mashed potatoes. Green beans and iced tea, too. Oh, and a salad. She always makes a fresh green salad out of her garden.”

  “Pie!” Vanilla chirped, grinning bashfully up at Shanghai.

  “Cherry pie today,” Mia said. “Vanilla likes to sit in her chair and eat.”

  “Chair! Eat!” Vanilla chirped, pointing to the truck.

  “Mia, I brought you something, too.” Shanghai felt his face get hot.

  Quickly, in order to get the embarrassing moment over with, he pulled a box of chocolates in a golden box out of his truck and gave it to her.

  “Aw, hell,” he said. “Might as well go for broke.” He grabbed a long-stemmed, bloodred rose off his seat and handed it to her, too.