Last Chance

by Jill Marie Landis

  "Would you mind telling me what that was all about?"

  Rachel opened her fan and slowly waved it to cool her face. They turned a corner, strolling past a huge urn filled with a vibrant mix of cascading red geraniums and white petunias.

  "One of my former students showed up on the Fourth of July and asked me to dance in front of the entire town. Your mother heard about it, and the very next day she and Stuart Senior were at my door."

  "Who is this illustrious former student of yours? Should I take it he's some sort of rogue, the subject of Mary Margaret's latest poetic triumph?"

  "His name is Lane Cassidy. I'm not sure you've ever heard of him…"

  He appeared thoughtful. "Is he related to Chase Cassidy?"

  She nodded. "His nephew. Lane left town ten years ago."

  Robert paused beside a particularly beautiful yellow rose, cupped it in his hand as he bent at the waist and buried his nose in the center of the bloom. When he straightened, he smiled with an easy, aristocratic air that Stuart had never possessed. "That's the trouble with being away so often. I've lost touch with local gossip."

  "Lane's made quite a name for himself, and not just here in Montana. He has never mentioned anything about his life. He's apparently drifted from town to town."

  She folded the fan and let it drop to dangle from the tasseled cord around her wrist. Reciting Lane's circumstances somehow made her feel as foolish as she had the night Ty told her about the dance hall floozy's corset.

  Had she truly been so insecure, so needy for attention that she had been willing to risk her reputation, to become the object of the whole town's censure and ridicule? She must have been momentarily out of her mind to let Lane Cassidy try to convince her that there was something magnetic between them, something that couldn't be denied. And yet when she was in his arms…

  Robert called her back from her thoughts. "You don't seriously feel anything for this man, do you, Rachel? If he was your student, he must be quite a bit younger."

  She was thankful for the darkness as a blush spread across her cheeks. "Only four years younger, and no, I don't feel anything out of the ordinary toward him."

  The minute the words were out, she knew she was lying. Her feelings for Lane Cassidy were so confused at the moment she didn't think she could put them into words. She prayed Robert hadn't heard the false note in her voice.

  They paused beside the expansive white trellised gazebo that Loretta had built in the gardens. From here they could view the entire front of the house, with its twin turrets, its cupolas and its porte cochere.

  Five-foot-tall stone lions guarded the entrance gate in the iron fence. The house was made of the finest woods, and there was a fireplace in every room. The McKennas had spared no expense.

  The sound of laughter and voices created a drone of conversation that floated out on the night breeze. The fragrance of the heady blossoms in the garden combined in an exotic potpourri of scents. Rachel did not notice Robert had stepped closer until he took her hand.

  "I want you to know that I'm always willing to help you in any way that I can," he said.

  She stared at their entwined fingers, then up into his intent dark eyes, wishing she felt a rush of the warmth, even an ounce of what she experienced whenever Lane touched her.

  "Thank you, Robert," she said, knowing his offer was sincere.

  For a moment she wondered what her life would have been like had she married Robert instead of his brother. She would still have the elder McKennas to deal with, but she knew that unlike her husband, Robert took no delight in sparring with his father at every turn. He simply removed himself from his parents' proximity and followed his heart.

  "You're a beautiful woman, Rachel," he whispered. "A woman any man would be proud to call his own. Don't throw your life or your good name away on a handsome scoundrel, no matter how titillating becoming involved with a dangerous man might seem at the moment."

  "I'm not involved with him," she said in protest, wishing he hadn't stumbled so close to the truth.

  "Rachel, look at me," he demanded.

  Startled, Rachel looked up. When she lifted her chin, he cupped it in his hand and lowered his lips to hers before she knew what he was about. She didn't attempt to pull away or keep him from stealing a kiss. The temptation to compare his expertise with Lane's was too great to resist. She forced herself to relax, to savor the moment and see if Robert's kiss had the same affect on her as Lane's.

  His lips were tentative, where Lane's had been forceful, yet Lane's kiss possessed an underlying gentleness that was so unlike the man himself. She closed her eyes, waiting for Robert to deepen his kiss, but aside from tracing the seam of her lips with his tongue, he did little to encourage a response. Compared with Lane's, this kiss was just a touch more than brotherly. Perhaps Robert meant it that way, or perhaps he was simply being careful not to frighten her.

  In either case, the kiss was a disappointment. Robert might be sophisticated, wealthy and well educated—everything that Lane was not—but his kiss held no lightning. Nor did it evoke any response other than embarrassment after the initial surprise.

  "My brother was a fool," he said softly, stepping back without relinquishing her hand.

  So I've been told, she thought, his words calling to mind what Lane had so recently said.

  "I need my fan," she said softly, searching for a way to put space between them. The request forced him to let go of her hand. Snapping the fan open, Rachel used it to cool the blush of embarrassment that singed her cheeks. Robert took her elbow and began to escort her back to the house.

  "Don't forget what I said, Rachel. I'm more than willing to step in whenever you need me. Just say the word. I know how hard it is to deal with my parents."

  "I often remind myself that they are only acting in what they feel is Ty's best interest. They are his grandparents, after all." She glanced back up at the house.

  "Please think about what I've said. Stuart's been gone a year now, so I don't feel it's too crass of me to let you know that I've always admired you from afar. I would be more than willing to set you up in a place of your own in New Orleans—you and Ty both, of course. I would love to show you the world if you'd let me."

  His offer of so much more than friendship shook her composure. With her mind on everything but where she was going, Rachel stubbed the toe of her shoe on a stepping-stone. Robert's hand was there to catch her before she could fall.

  When they reached the porch, Loretta McKenna was standing in the shadows. Enough light spilled out from the wide double doors to cast her stern features into relief. Afraid her mother-in-law had witnessed their intimate exchange, Rachel glanced back at the garden. To her relief, she could not see beyond the shadows that shrouded the pathway.

  Loretta stepped toward the veranda railing. "It would be nice, Robert, if you would spend a little time with the guests who have come to see you."

  "I'm here now, Mother," he told her flatly.

  "I see that. Would you mind letting me speak to Rachel alone?"

  He glanced over at Rachel, and at her nod of acquiescence stepped across the piazza and entered the house. Expecting a dressing-down for having monopolized Robert's time, Rachel braced herself, but instead Loretta said, "I know you insist on returning to town tonight, but since Martha has already put Ty to sleep upstairs, I was hoping you would let him spend the night with us."

  Her initial reaction was to say no, but then Rachel caught herself. The McKennas had more than enough staff, including Martha, a pert young Irish maid who was always happy to entertain Ty. Rachel hoped a brief respite alone might give her the time she needed to sort out her emotions and the intensity of her feelings for Lane.

  "Actually, that is a wonderful idea. I know how much you look forward to Ty's company, and it's been a while since he's stayed with you. He'll enjoy the time with his uncle, I'm sure."

  It was hard for Loretta to hide her surprise over Rachel's easy agreement. For once the woman was rendered nearly sp
eechless. "Well then…"

  "I'll be out to get him late tomorrow afternoon."

  "You'll have dinner with us," Loretta said.

  Just once, Rachel wished, the woman would ask instead of demand. "Fine," she said, not wanting to enter into an argument over nothing. "I'll see you tomorrow."

  Robert stopped just inside the now empty music room and paused before the tall gilt mirror to admire the cut of his coat and smooth his perfectly tapered hair back over his ear.

  Wooing his brother's widow might not prove as easy a task as he had assumed. He had given her a year's grace period, counting on the fact that his mother was a stickler for propriety and that his amiable sister-in-law would have to follow Loretta's dictates and hold to mourning customs for at least this long. What he hadn't counted on was coming back to discover Rachel had been entertaining someone—especially an enterprising young gunslinger. It seemed so unlike her. Stuart had once confided in him that sleeping with Rachel was like bedding a cold fish.

  His father's belly laughter mingled with that of the other men and drifted in from the next room. Robert frowned, wondering how they could share the same blood and be so different. No matter how much land and cattle his father amassed, he'd never be anything but what he was—a crude, unsophisticated rancher who got what he wanted either by slapping his competitors on the back and offering them fine brandy and a good cigar now and again, or by bullying and threatening them into seeing things his way.

  The old man and Stuart had been alike in more than looks. His brother had actually enjoyed being sheriff of a backwater town. It had made Stuart feel like more of a man to pin on a tin star and thwart Stuart Senior and Loretta's carefully laid plans for him.

  Robert reached into his coat pocket for a cigar and the fancy gold scissors no bigger than the palm of his hand that he used for trimming the carefully rolled tobacco. He snipped the end of the cigar, pocketed the scissors and then reached for a match as he thought of Lane Cassidy again. The man probably didn't want Rachel any more than he did. She was undoubtedly merely a means to an end… but what did Cassidy want? He couldn't know the money Ty inherited would not be handed over to the boy until he came of age, so perhaps he was after money. Still, Cassidy might be pursuing Rachel for some other reason.

  Early that evening, shortly before the first of the guests had arrived, one of the boys delivering last-minute foodstuffs from town had left a note for Robert. When he'd asked where it originated, the boy could only tell him he'd been summoned by the bartender at the Last Chance Saloon to pick up and deliver the missive.

  The note was from Lane Cassidy. Until this evening, Robert had had no notion who Cassidy was or why the man would propose a meeting that, in his words, "would be mutually beneficial to both of us."

  Robert had had no intention of meeting with the gunman at the appointed location tomorrow—not until Cassidy's name came up again in connection with Rachel. Perhaps Cassidy wanted to meet with him and try to convince him, as the business representative of the McKenna family, that for a price he would ride out of Rachel's life.

  Even though Rachel had protested that the relationship was innocent, his forthright sister-in-law was not a good liar. Anything but. Cassidy's request couldn't be ignored.

  There was something going on between Rachel and Lane Cassidy that was more than friendship, something that had to be dealt with immediately—especially if Cassidy stood in the way of his own plans to sweep Rachel off her feet and persuade her to marry him.

  Robert glanced in the mirror again, watched his lips pull on the Havana cigar before he formed them into a perfect circle and blew out a series of concentric rings of blue-white smoke. He would have Rachel, not out of any sense of desire, but because it was the only way short of murdering his brother's son that he could one day gain control of the entire McKenna estate.

  In need of a drink, he headed for the library, where the men were assembled. If he was lucky he might pick up more information on the man he now most definitely planned to meet tomorrow.

  * * *

  Chapter Nine

  Somewhere in the nearby pines that covered the foothills, a jay cried out shrilly, taunting another bird, rousing Lane out of the lumpy, narrow bed beneath the old window in the one-room shack used by Chase Cassidy's line riders. Naked to the waist, Lane raked his fingers through his hair, yawning with loud gusto before he stretched both arms high overhead, then adjusted the weight of the gun belt slung around his hips.

  As he crossed the room to light the wood stove in the corner, he glanced up at a beam of sunlight streaming through the ceiling and decided that mending the roof might be a better way to pass the morning than watching the clock in anticipation of the meeting he had arranged with Robert McKenna.

  Except for a few amenities, like the new woodstove and a plank floor, the old line shack at the Trail's End was much the same as when Lane had seen it last. The iron-framed bed sagged, the blankets smelled musty and the shelves of canned goods were covered with a good coat of dust. Yet he preferred it to staying in Chase and Eva's fine new home.

  The door on the stove squealed in protest when he opened it. Tossing some splinters of pine into the gaping hole, he struck a match and coaxed the dry tinder to a small blaze before adding larger pieces of wood. As he set out to make a pot of coffee, his thoughts drifted to Rachel, to her buttery colored kitchen, where she was no doubt having coffee herself. He could almost smell the fragrant aroma of fresh bread and see Rachel in her silk wrapper, seated at the table, smiling and laughing with Delphie and Ty.

  He knew it was none of his business what Rachel Albright McKenna might be wearing or what she looked like of a morning, but still he couldn't get her off his mind.

  His stomach grumbled. He glanced toward the shelf of canned goods and, deciding on peaches, ambled over to the end of the room, took a can down off the shelf and blew the dust off the top. As he cut a jagged hole around the lid with a pocketknife, he tried to stop focusing on Rachel and instead think about Robert McKenna, the Agency's second Bandit suspect.

  After he'd learned of Robert's return from Rachel, he went to the saloon and had a drink with Erlene, who informed him she had turned in McKenna's name. He was a frequent visitor at the saloon who was in and out of the state with regularity. Upon delving, she'd discovered that many of McKenna's quick exits coincided with the Bandit train robberies.

  She told him that Stuart McKenna's brother had supposedly amassed a fortune of his own, some of it made from investing family money, the rest from his New Orleans businesses.

  Lane wondered what a man's motive for theft might be when he had been born to wealth and stood to inherit half of one of the biggest spreads in the state. On the surface there appeared to be no reason other than greed, unless Robert McKenna's business dealings were not as successful as everyone thought. Lane concluded that perhaps it was the challenge; he knew firsthand that some men fed on danger.

  He told Erlene that he had come to Last Chance to prove his uncle's innocence. From everything he had learned from Ramon and the other Trail's End hands, nothing would cause Chase to jeopardize his future with Eva and the children. The Cassidys' fancy new house had cost a pretty penny, far more than Chase could have earned running cattle on such a small spread, but Ramon had assured him the extra money came from money Eva had inherited.

  After talking with Erlene, with no hard information to go on, Lane had decided that he would not waste time trailing McKenna, but would try to lure him into an admission of guilt. He penned a note inviting Robert to meet him at a spot not far from the line shack on the northeast corner of the Trail's End where it bordered McKenna land. Erlene was to see that it was delivered to the McKenna ranch during the get-together last night.

  If McKenna actually decided to show up, Lane would openly confront him with his suspicions and let the man deny the charge. Lane would then demand a cut of the action to assure his silence. His reputation as a gunman spoke for itself, but he was willing to talk over terms of his
employment—terms that McKenna, if indeed he was the Gentleman Bandit, couldn't afford to refuse. Once McKenna agreed, Lane would contact Boyd Johnson and set up a sting operation that would catch McKenna red-handed.

  He hadn't an inkling of what to expect from today's encounter, but if it came to gunplay, Lane didn't doubt the outcome. He was determined it wouldn't come to that. He would need more than a dead body to hand over to Boyd Johnson as proof of his uncle's innocence.

  The canned peaches were slick and sugary, pale in comparison to biting into a fresh, juicy peach. He tipped up the tin plate and slurped the juice, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The sun was well up. Bright summer light barged into the small room and highlighted the dust motes floating on the still, warm air.

  After the coffee boiled, he let the fire burn low as he poured himself a second cup. He walked back to the bed to stew over his coffee, wondering if he had pushed Rachel too far yesterday. She hadn't outright denied that there was something volatile between them, something that threatened to ignite and scar them both, but she had sent him away without an answer.

  Driven by the sight of her standing there in her black lace undergarments, he hadn't thought of the repercussions of his actions when he'd carried her to the bed. A woman like Rachel wasn't one to be toyed with. Nor was she one to make demands, but the man who wanted Rachel McKenna would have to be willing to offer her fidelity and marriage, as well as the ability to provide for her and the boy.

  Even if he thought he could settle down, even if he told her his reputation no longer fit him, that he was a Pinkerton who made a good honest wage, would she settle for life with an undercover operative? A man who was on the road all the time was probably not her idea of a suitable husband and father. Besides, it would be impossible to perpetuate the legendary notoriety he had acquired if anyone found out he was a married man with a wife and kid and a cozy little house in Last Chance, Montana.

  There was no denying he had himself in a bind again. As he stood up and stepped away from the edge of the bed, the rusted springs protested with a whine. Lane picked up the tin plate and headed outside, intent on dunking his dishes, as well as himself, in the nearby stream. Maybe the cold water would clear his head.