As she twirled with Gunnar slowly around the dance floor, Ella saw Dirk and Ben standing near the punch bowl. Hovering around the two young men were a half dozen of the region’s wealthiest debutantes, along with their mothers. Not only were Ben and Dirk handsome enough to warrant such unblinking feminine attention, but mothers with marriage-age daughters viewed the Stenacci and Van Gild family fortunes the same way mountain lions viewed defenseless fawns.
“You seem distracted, my dear,” Gunnar commented, his voice barely rising above the orchestra. “You’re not still angry with my son, are you?”
Ella shook her head, sending curled ringlets of honey-blonde hair dancing at her temples. “No, I’m not still angry with Dirk.”
“He means well. He’s just being protective, that’s all.”
“I can take care of myself,” Ella replied automatically. After a moment of consideration, she blushed a little. “That’s pretty bold talk, isn’t it? I shouldn’t be arrogant. There’ve been Indian uprisings and gunfights among the hired hands, and Lord knows what all else in the territory. Men born with a gun in their hand who think themselves invincible find themselves shot to pieces in the middle of Main Street
. It must have sounded a little silly for me to be speaking like I’d know what to do if I came face-to-face with the cattle rustlers.”
“That’s all right,” Gunnar said in an avuncular tone that implied endless forgiveness. “Anyone who knew Arno Thompson would understand his little girl being spirited. God knows Arno never took a step backward for anyone.” He smiled and gave his head a shake. “He could be a very stubborn man when he got his hackles up.”
“He was a good man, wasn’t he?”
“One of the best. And with you being his only child, you’re very much like he was, my dear. Just like your father in so many ways.”
Ella glanced in the direction of the punch bowl once more and was a bit disheartened when she saw Marian Ludgaard place her palm on Ben’s chest as she spoke to him. The contact of feminine hand to masculine chest was fleeting, but Ella knew it wasn’t at all innocent. Not even a little innocent.
She felt a lightning bolt of jealousy go through her, and for an instant, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, fighting against an emotion that was not characteristic. What difference did it make who her friend slept with? Marian had already discovered the orgasmic pleasures that Dirk van Gild had to offer, so why not find out whether Ben Stenacci was similarly gifted in the sensual arts?
Ella told herself that it made no difference if Marian seduced Ben. But what did make a difference was whether or not she was lying to herself, and this was a question she couldn’t readily answer.
The waltz ended. And though there were several young men hovering around, Ella made it clear to anyone watching that she wasn’t interested in young men by taking Gunnar’s proffered arm. She seldom had the opportunity to spend much time with him and Antonio, so she appreciated every minute when they were together.
“Let’s get some punch, and then I’ll turn you over to Antonio.” Gunnar smiled down at Ella and patted the back of her hand. “He’ll get cranky with me if I get to dance more with you than he does.” His pupils suggested he was not entirely sober but still in complete control of his faculties.
Penny Peterson, a young woman with the delicate features of the high-born and a tongue as poisonous as rattlesnake venom, was at the punch bowl, smiling fetchingly at Ben as he filled her crystal cup. Standing behind Penny was her mother, Madeline. Ella had heard rumors that Madeline didn’t think much of any woman who rode astride a horse instead of properly riding sidesaddle. Everyone knew the jab was directed at Ella.
“Can I get you a glass?” Ben asked Ella as she approached, his teeth glimmering white in a smiling, suntanned face. She could understand why so many women found themselves vulnerable to his potent charms.
Penny’s smile vanished instantly. Madeline’s dark eyes took on a glittery hardness, and the hatred in them was only thinly disguised. Though Ella tried to tell herself it probably meant nothing, she enjoyed the fact that she’d received a much more enthusiastic smile from Ben than he’d given to either Penny or Madeline.
“I’d appreciate that very much,” Ella replied, letting her gaze linger on Ben’s for a moment longer than necessary. If Madeline thought she could intimidate Ella with a nasty look, she was foolishly underestimating her opponent. To twist the knife a little, she added, “You’re always so thoughtful, Ben.”
As Ben picked up a crystal cup and began filling it, Gunnar said, “I’ll go see where Antonio is. You’ll be fine here with Ben.”
Afterward, Ella couldn’t say why she had done it. Perhaps it was just the nastiness she saw in Madeline’s eyes. But for whatever reason, when Ben handed Ella her glass, she let her fingertips brush lightly over the back of his hand. When their eyes met, it was he who looked away first.
“It seems I congratulated you so long ago on your engagement,” Madeline said, causing all eyes to turn toward her. “What is it, do you suppose, that keeps that Tim of yours from nailing down a date for the wedding?”
Vicious bitch, you know damn well that I’m the one who won’t set a wedding date! Ella thought, though she wisely kept such words to herself.
Penny’s eyes widened as though a thought had surprised her. “But you really are engaged, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Ella replied, forcing a smile to her lips and a lightness to her tone that she did not feel. “It’s just that Tim and I are both very busy people, and sometimes it’s difficult to arrange things.”
“Yes. I’m sure he loves you very much. But still, being a widow, I wonder if that gives him reason to pause.” Her words came out almost without inflection, and her expression suggested there was something distasteful about a woman unable to get her fiancé to walk down the aisle.
Ella wished now that she’d never taken up Madeline’s unspoken challenge. After all, Penny was young and single, and there was no reason in the world that her mother shouldn’t try to get her married to a young man like Ben Stenacci.
Forcing herself to appear calm, Ella took a swallow of punch and realized instantly that it was spiked with alcohol. She wasn’t usually one for liquor, but tonight it seemed heaven-sent.
“Engaged to be married?” Ben said quietly, his chocolaty gaze narrowing on Ella. “Until the dreaded day there’s a ring on your finger, you give hope to miserable romantics like myself that we might win your heart.”
Ella inhaled deeply and was just about to ask if everyone would kindly change the topic of discussion when Ben spoke and nearly dropped her to her knees in surprise.
“How about that? In a ballroom crowded with the loveliest ladies in the land, here you are, a widow at twenty-two, and the most beautiful woman in the room.”
Penny gasped before showing limited self-control by holding her breath. Madeline dropped her crystal cup. It smashed to pieces on the floor of Italian marble, spraying red, vodka-laced punch in every direction under the compass, staining her white muslin gown as well as her daughter’s.
Turning her icy gaze on Ella, Madeline said, “Come on, Penny. Let’s get a damp cloth on these stains before they set.” To Ben, in a tone colored with flirtation, she said, “We’ll see you again in just a few minutes.”
When left in comparative solitude with Ben, Ella said, “Thank you for the compliment. And thank you even more for coming to my rescue. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d pulled a knife.”
“Madeline Peterson is a bitch,” Ben replied under his breath. “Don’t give her a second thought. She’s not worth it.”
Ella caught something in Ben’s tone, an undercurrent of animosity that had been there long before this day. On a hunch, she asked, “Tell me the truth. Did you sleep with Madeline Peterson?”
It was clear that Ben wasn’t inclined to speak of his sexual successes, even if his lovers rather obviously made no effort to keep secrets. Ben’s reticence surprised Ella because she thought he
, like so many men, would want to brag about conquests. Apparently, Ben wasn’t quite as callow as she first suspected, and this pleased her more than she would admit.
“Be honest with me,” Ella prodded. “After all, I’m just a widow engaged to be married for a second time, so I get very little entertainment these days.”
Ben grinned. “The way you look, you should have plenty of entertainment. But to answer your question, yes, I have slept with Madeline. Not with Penny, though.” A shudder went through him as though the very thought of sex with Penny was abhorrent. “One day, some young man with more money than sense is going to marry Penny, never for a second realizing that part of his husbandly duties will include satisfying his new mother-in-law as well as his bride.”
Ella put a hand to her mouth as her eyes widened in shock. “You can’t be serious!”
“Oh, believe me, I’m quite serious.” He bent low so that his lips were an inch from Ella’s ear. She was intensely aware of his masculinity and his nearness. “It all happened last summer. Madeline made it very clear that she was going to test for herself every beau she thought might make a good husband for her daughter. And those tests would continue after the marriage ceremony.” He straightened and looked down into Ella’s eyes. “Penny doesn’t know, of course. And I believe Madeline thought she was sweetening the pot by including herself in the deal. When she said that, I realized I had to get the hell away from both mother and daughter and stay away. Permanently.”
What would it be like, Ella asked herself, to be in such extreme demand as a lover? It had been more than a year since Tim touched her. Sometimes she wondered if it was her fault that he’d stopped trying to seduce her, and she felt guilty in a vague, unsettling way. Most of the time, whenever her thoughts began drifting toward such unpleasant topics, she went to the office, opened her ledger, and concentrated on all that was necessary to profitably run the T-3 Ranch.
“I wasn’t lying, Ella,” Ben said quietly. “You really are the loveliest woman in the room. Without exception.”
Ella looked away. She was unaccustomed to receiving compliments from men so to receive them now from Ben was embarrassing. Her body, however, reacted quite differently. Ella felt a distinct tingling in her clitoris that she had not experienced in more months than she cared to count, and her nipples tightened.
“Think about what I’ve said, Ella. Every word of it’s true.”
Ben walked away without a backward glance, but the sound of his words echoed long afterward in Ella’s mind.
Chapter Two
It was an hour before dawn when Ella was saddling up her favorite mare. Queenie was a strong, spirited, extremely intelligent four-year-old Appaloosa that Ella trained herself. In her saddlebags she had several cans of pork and beans, extra cartridges for her Winchester rifle, one complete change of clothing, two apples for Queenie, one hundred dollars in gold coin, her father’s brass telescoping spyglass, and a map of the surrounding countryside detailing the land and buildings owned by the T-3 Ranch.
Ella overheard Dirk say that he’d meet Ben at his ranch at sunrise. If she hurried, she would be there by the time Ben arrived. She wouldn’t confront them, just follow from a safe distance.
Before mounting, Ella went through a mental checklist. Did she lock up the ranch ledgers in the safe? Yes, she was certain of it. What about the bank draft book? It had gone in the safe, right on top of the ledger. Along with the letter she’d left on her desk, ambiguously stating she had to go to Fargo on a business matter that couldn’t be avoided, she left two bank drafts, each for one hundred dollars, for Tim and Rosamond. Considering that one hundred dollars was more than two months’ salary for the hard-working men who tended to the herds of T-3 cattle and horses, the sum seemed sufficient to hold her fiancé and mother over for a couple days. Besides, it wasn’t like she’d ever asked Tim to help her run the ranch. Once he became her fiancé, pretty much at her mother’s instance, he simply usurped certain duties, and Ella had never said he couldn’t.
But if the money wasn’t enough, and Ella knew she would get grief from both of them the minute she returned to the ranch, she really didn’t give a damn.
* * * *
Dirk eased back on the reins, and his gelding stopped. It had been a long day, and both horse and rider were looking forward to making camp for the night.
“Going to be dark soon,” Ben said, coming up beside Dirk. “Sundown in an hour. Maybe a few minutes more.”
“Look here.” Dirk pointed toward a muddy spot on the grassy banks of the Crooked Crow Creek. “That’s where one hundred head of prime Hereford cattle crossed the river.”
“Yeah. So?”
“But the rest of the herd went south, staying west of the river.”
“So this is where the rustlers cut the herd.” He whistled softly. “Damned impressive, my friend.”
He pushed his flat-crowned black Stetson back on his head, then reached into his saddlebags. “It’s too dark to follow them tonight. Let’s get into some trees and set up camp, and tomorrow we’ll see where those tracks lead.” He pulled a bottle of whiskey from his bag, removed the cork, and took a swallow before handing the bottle over to Ben. “You know who we need for this? Blue, that’s who.”
Blue Sun Rising was a half-breed Blackfoot who worked at various times as a hunter for the Army and Cavalry, as a hunting guide for wealthy businessmen from the East who wanted trophy-sized elk and mule deer heads to send to their taxidermists, and as a tracker for posses in search of killers. Having been shunned by both his mother’s tribe and white society, Blue lived by himself in a lodge near the wild, mountainous western edge of the territory. At twenty-eight, he was only a few years older than Ben and Dirk, who had known him since his middle teen years, when their fathers first hired him to track down a man who thought killing the wife he no longer loved was more humane than simply abandoning her.
Ben handed the bottle back, and when their gazes met, Ben winked. “Look at the tracks on the riverbank again,” Ben said quietly. “Keep looking and don’t look away.”
“Where are they?” A chill went through Dirk.
“Behind us and to the right. I’ve had the feeling that we were being followed for a while now, but I never had anything more than just a hunch.”
Dirk sighed, and his shoulders slumped. “I thought you seemed kind of distracted.”
“You were so busy tracking, I figured I’d better watch our backs.”
“How many?” Dirk asked. The fact that he hadn’t an inkling he was being followed rankled his nerves mightily. His best friend never failed to impress him.
“Hard to say.”
Dirk took another sip of whiskey, fighting hard to not look around. He tucked the bottle back into his saddlebags and asked, “This seems to be your play. Where do you want to spring it?”
“Not out here in the open. About a quarter mile down there’s a copse of trees. A great place to set up camp and an even better place to set a trap.”
“Lead the way, my friend. At least one of us has a head on his shoulders.”
Ben chuckled softly. “Bothers the hell out of you whenever I figure out something before you, doesn’t it?”
“Right down to my socks.”
“Glad to hear it because that’s just the way I feel whenever you’ve got the answer that I don’t.”
Dirk felt better after that. Not a lot better but a little better.
* * * *
Ben chose his position carefully. He was on the low limb of a tree overlooking the one trail that lead through the copse of trees near the Crooked Crow Creek. His back was pressed tightly to the trunk of the tree to prevent a silhouette. Whoever was following him had little choice but to take the trail if they were to get closer to where Dirk had already made the campfire and was slowly and rather noisily setting up camp. Dirk’s noisiness was intentional. For the trap to work, Ben needed it to appear as though they weren’t alerted to having been followed. The hunted had become the hunter. Every
nerve in Ben’s body was alert.
Darkness descended swiftly. With sketchy clouds blocking a half-moon, only slivers of pale light made it through the leaves.
Ben waited silently, but he didn’t wait patiently. The logical part of his brain told him that inaction was more often than not just as important as taking action, but the emotional part of him screamed to take action now.
He started to test, yet again, the knife in the sheath on his gun belt at his left hip. Ben stopped himself. He’d already tested the razor-sharp bone-handled knife four times, and he knew it wouldn’t get stuck if he needed to pull it. The knife slipped out of the tooled leather sheath as smoothly as if it were greased. The Colt in the holster on his right hip still had the leather thong security loop over the hammer, so when he made his jump he wouldn’t find himself reaching for his revolver only to discover it had fallen out. Still, he itched to silently draw his sensitive fingertips over the holster’s loop, just to make sure one more time.
“My Bonny lies over the ocean...my Bonny...”
Ben smiled. Dirk was a terrible singer, but he was a good actor. His words, drifting through the trees, had a distinct slur to them. Ben knew his friend was completely sober, but pretending he was getting drunk might fool whoever was following them into being less wary.
Ella's Desire Page 2
