The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1)

by Barbara Ankrum

  Reese narrowed a look at her. "Personal?"

  "Very personal. I ask the question." She saw the battle wage behind his eyes.

  "All right. You answer first. What is it you see in him?"

  Grace swallowed hard and paid close scrutiny to the frayed hem of her sleeve. "Security."

  For a long moment, he just stared at her. "That's it? Security?"

  She nodded. "I don't mean that I don't care for him. I do. He's been kind to me and patient. Edgar Buchanan is probably my last hope to make a good marriage. He's honest as the day is long, has a solid future, and he's willing to overlook my, well, shortcomings."

  Reese frowned. "Which are?"

  "Family, for one. My parents are both dead, and I'm afraid that while Brew has been wonderful to us, he's not as acceptable a guardian as some would have preferred."

  "But no one else stepped up to take the job."

  "That's true, I'm afraid."

  She could feel his eyes roving over her, penetrating where she'd never wanted anyone before to go. It was almost as though he could see through her.

  "You said for one thing," he pressed. "What's the other?"

  Grace stared down at the glassy water parting in the boat's wake. "I suppose I've always been a little, uh, different. Never quite fit in any way with the social register in Front Royal. For some reason, people—men, actually—always thought me a bit eccentric. Edgar, he doesn't seem to mind terribly that I'm not pretty—"

  "Ah, Grace."

  "—or that I tend to babble when I get nervous, or that sometimes I'm clumsy. Nor does he hold my writing against me. As long as I keep it a secret."

  His hand tightened on the rudder until his knuckles went white. "A secret? Why would he ask that of you?"

  "You don't understand."

  "You're right. I don't."

  "Ladies don't write books. They rarely read them, in his opinion, unless they concern cooking. Ladies do petit point, or tatt, or raise babies. They sit in circles half the day and gossip. That's proper, acceptable. But," she said, "it's not me."

  "Thank God for that."

  She stared at the stain of mud on the sleeve of her dress. "Things are quite different back in Virginia, Reese. It's not like here."

  "Is that what you want?"

  "What I want?" It was the first time she'd seriously considered that question. "It's all I know."

  "Knew," Reese corrected with a lift of one dark eyebrow. "I doubt your fancy Virginia ladies would have a good thing to say about us."

  Glancing up sharply at him, she wondered if he was aware he'd used the word us as easily as he did his curses. "I'm quite certain, in fact, they'd find a few choice words for it. And Edgar, well, he would never approve."

  "Do you care?"

  Her smile turned a little wicked. "Not a bit."

  "You've done well, princess. Better than most would have."

  Something warm and unexpected churned inside her. "Do you mean that, Reese?"

  "Aye." He stared upriver, his expression suddenly distant.

  Breaking the lengthening silence between them, she said, "All right. That's my answer. Now it's your turn."

  Reese turned a look on her that was half dread, half resignation. "Let 'er rip."

  As she chewed on her thumbnail, contemplating her question, Reese thought he'd never seen her look more appealing. No, he amended, appealing didn't quite cover it. What pumped through him at this moment as she chose her personal weapon of destruction was desire: hot, hungry, heedless desire. His gaze slid over her face; her skin, her mouth, the guileless look her eyes took on when she was lost in thought.

  Nothing—not the dire warnings he'd given himself about her, or the certainty that any union with Grace Turner would only lead to misery—could stem the heart-thudding, gut-level reaction he had whenever she was near him. The things she'd told him only intensified that reaction. He wanted to draw her close and tell her not to listen to that bastard, Edgar, who camouflaged contempt with love.

  At last, Grace turned to him, her expression decided. "All right. What made you leave the Texas Rangers and turn to living by the gun?"

  A muscle flexed in his jaw. "That's two questions."

  "But it was only one sentence," she parried, holding up her index finger.

  Reese's hair fell in his eyes as he stared at the deck, shaking his head. "That's very good, Grace. You should have been a Philadelphia lawyer. All right." He stared at the water for a good minute before he answered. "I left because the Rangers weren't what I thought they were, and I use a gun because I'm better at it than I've been at anything else in my life."

  Her fingers worked the parasol, turning it, turning it. He knew well enough that answer wouldn't do.

  "So," she said thoughtfully, "the Rangers didn't live up to your high standards, and—"

  "It had nothing to do with standards, Grace. Stop trying to make me something I'm not."

  "Something made you leave."

  "Aye. There was a rope involved, and I fancied keeping my neck out of it."

  Her mouth fell open. "They were going to hang you, too?"

  The laugh he gave was without humor. "It does seem to be a pattern, doesn't it?"

  "But why?"

  He ground his back teeth together. "For shooting a fellow Ranger"—he paused meaningfully—"in the back. Close your mouth, Grace, you're catching bugs."

  Her teeth clacked shut and the parasol went still. "But you didn't do it." It wasn't a question, but a statement of unquestioned faith.

  She blushed as he looked up at her in disbelief. "What makes you so sure?"

  "Because you wouldn't shoot a defenseless man in the back."

  "Oh, he wasn't defenseless. And it wasn't in the back, exactly. But I did kill him—a man I'd called my friend." Reese shoved a few more pieces of wood through the feed door of the engine.

  "Why?" she asked again.

  It was a question he'd asked himself, over and over through the years. He'd never come up with a satisfactory answer. Perhaps because there was none.

  "Because," Reese began, "he pulled a gun on me. Because he was a fool, because I had no other choice." Grace waited for him to go on, letting the steady chug of the engine drone between them.

  "It happened before the war. There was a small town near the Mexican border—Tres Rios. Mexicans, mostly. Quiet. They broke no laws, bothered no one. But they made one fatal mistake—they allowed a man named Burk Maddock among them." Reese looked off upriver, remembering.

  "Summer was just turning to autumn then. It was hot. Very, very hot, as I recall. We had a posse of twenty-three after him. We'd been riding hard for six days and six nights. We cornered him there in Tres Rios. Before we could get him, one of the townsmen got brave and shot one of ours. A popular fellow. Shot him down in cold blood.

  "Something snapped. The man I told you about, Jake Scully, and a few others went crazy, killing any Mexican they could fire a gun at. It spread like a wildfire among the men, and soon nearly all had joined in. A few vented their anger on women."

  "Dear God," Grace murmured.

  Reese shook his head at the memory. "The locals weren't prepared, weren't well armed enough for an assault like that. I thought it was wrong, what we were doing, but before long I had no choice but to defend myself with a gun, just like the rest."

  "Go on," Grace prodded.

  Cradling his head in his hands, he did. "I was looking for cover when I came upon John Malchamp, an old friend. He was"—he faltered on the painful memory—"accosting a young woman. She was screaming. I yelled out to him to stop, but he wouldn't. I tried to tell him that wouldn't fix anything, but he was past listening. I started to drag him off her, but he twisted around and pulled a gun on me. In the moment, I thought he meant to kill me. I shot first."

  Fingers steepled over her mouth, she shook her head. "You did the only thing you could."

  "Even if John's gun hadn't been empty—which it was—Jake Scully claimed to be a witness. He didn't see
it that way. Nor did the others. And after years of looking back on it, I don't honestly know myself. But with half of that pueblo lyin' massacred in the street, they wanted t' hang me for murder."

  Reese's hand shook as he took the rudder again. "Jake swore it had been cold-blooded on my part. They took me back in irons to Austin to decide it. Meanwhile, Scully ran off with my wife, Adriana, who didn't take kindly to the scandal I'd caused or to the idea that my smeared reputation might rub off on her."

  "Oh, Reese."

  "Anyway," he finished, shaking off the memory like an old, unwanted coat, "you asked for it. That's it."

  "Wait," she said, leaning forward on the rail. "You can't just leave it at that. You have to tell me what happened."

  He blanked his face of emotions, but his jaw grew hard. "As you can see, I didn't hang. Not for lack of trying on Jake's part. But his unholy alliance with my late and faithless wife cost him a bit of his credibility. And I suppose, in hindsight, they didn't want the whole ugly truth about the massacre to come out. They thought it best to drum me out of the service and to strip me of what little honor I had left."

  He looked up at her and shrugged. "End of story. I lived happily ever after as a gun for hire. That's where you came in, I believe."

  She stared at him, putting it all together at last. "And that's why Deke Sanders called you a back-shooter that night, and why no one would help you in the cantina, isn't it? And why you've been looking for Jake Scully all these years, to kill him for what he did to you."

  Reese couldn't look at her, knowing what he'd see. It had been only a matter of time before she came to understand what a pariah he was and had been for so long, until the trust in her eyes was replaced with a look of disgust. He stared upriver, as silent as the powerful current sliding past the bow. The wind, like the memories, stung his eyes, and he slammed them shut hard against both.

  "You didn't deserve that, Reese," she said in a stricken voice that carried over the sound of the engine. "She was a fool."

  Before he could react to her words, the engine clanged with a metallic ka-chunn-ng! and the boat lurched. Reese slammed against the starboard side, the rail meeting his right cheek with a sharp thwack. Stars exploded in his head and radiated across his face like a flush of heat. He fought for control of the rudder that had jerked free from his hand. The engine shuddered into a ka-putt-ka-putt-thunk-thunk rhythm.

  Then it fell absolutely silent.

  Reese stared at the engine from Hades and felt the warm trickle of something running down his neck. He reached up to touch it. He winced and his finger came back bloody. "Ah, crap," he muttered. "That's just—"

  A conspicuous silence behind him made him turn. Grace's lonely parasol rocked back and forth on the deck.

  Reese stared at it in dumb silence, trying to grasp what he already knew in his gut. Oh no. "Grace—?"

  His gaze jerked to the river.

  "Grace!"

  He leaned over the rail, straining in the sinking light for a glimpse of anything moving. Downstream, forty feet and gaining, like a bobbing coconut, he spotted her. Her arm came out of the water, clutching at nothing but air.

  Then she disappeared.

  Chapter 17

  The river sluiced past Reese's body as he cut through the water in desperate, clawing strokes.

  He couldn't see her. Where are you?

  As fast as he swam, the river tugged her farther away, or down. He didn't even know if she knew how to swim. But with the weight of her skirts tugging at her...

  Why hadn't he insisted that she get off that edge? Why hadn't he wrapped his arms around her and held her tight? Not a sound. Not a splash, not even a good-bye. It's your fault, your fault, your fault, the litany repeated inside his head.

  Losing her this way was unthinkable.

  Reaching the point where he'd last seen her seconds ago, he stopped, turning in every direction. His breath scraped against his aching throat. Nothing. Nothing!

  He dove below the surface, trying to see through the murky water. He searched until his lungs were fit to burst, then exploded to the surface. "Grace!" he screamed again. "

  Ten feet away, he heard a gasp. He whirled to see her, blue eyes frantic as they disappeared yet again below the surface. Mindlessly, he plunged toward her, then dove beneath the surface. The water closed around him like a blot of ink. His hand swept the river around him desperately. Dear God, don't let her die!

  Grace, where are you?

  Then his hand connected with something solid—her arm. His fist closed around the unresisting limb and he yanked her to him, dragging her upward toward the dying light.

  With a final kick, they broke the surface. Clutched against his chest, Grace gasped for air, choking and coughing the water from her lungs. With her hair in tangles across her face, she let her head fall backward on his shoulder.

  "Thank God," he murmured against her hair. "Thank God."

  With his open hand, he swept the hair away from her face. Grace moaned and rolled her head sideways, taking in great gulps of air. He pressed his face against her cheek, holding her close as he held them aloft in the water. The slow burn of relief crawled over him, and he closed his eyes against the cool skin of her cheek.

  "You're all right now, princess. I've got you."

  "R-Reeeese," she wailed, turning in his arms and holding him tightly as he treaded water for them both.

  "I'm here. I thought I'd lost you. Easy, now."

  Coughing up river water, she struggled to get her breath. He could only hold her close, absorbing the sweetness of her breasts rising and falling against his chest, allowing himself a moment to convince himself she was really alive.

  "My d-dress," she sputtered. "I c-can swim, but it pulled me d-down. I was so scared."

  "You scared me," he told her breathlessly, looping her arms around his neck so she was on his back. "Don't let go."

  She laughed shakily at the unnecessity of that warning.

  The shoreline was only thirty feet away, and when they reached it, they tumbled onto the bank, falling on their knees to the grassy edge.

  Grace flopped onto her back, her trembling arms outspread, staring up at the darkening sky. If she didn't feel so close to tears, she'd laugh at the sight of the faint stars appearing above them. How close she'd come to never seeing them again, or inhaling the sweet, wonderful scent of the air, or feeling the earth beneath her fingernails; but most of all, she would have missed the tender, almost desperate look in Reese Donovan's eyes right now as he watched her as if he couldn't get enough of her.

  Droplets of water splashed down on her from the ends of his soaked hair as he leaned over her. He reached down, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. "In all my livelong life..." he said, still breathing heavily."Don't you ever do that to me again."

  Unable to look at him, Grace said, "I didn't do it on purpose. Really, I didn't."

  "I know." Bending his head low, he covered her mouth with his in a heated, smoldering kiss. His tongue slid over the seam of her lips. No thought was required to welcome his intrusion with an artless dart of her tongue against the arched curve of his upper lip. His breathing quickened. He pressed her backward against the grassy bank, covering her trembling limbs with his own. His hand dragged downward, settling at the curve of her waist. Reese's long fingers splayed against her ribs, drawing her more firmly against him. His lips were hot and cold at once, she thought, and he tasted of the river and vaguely of tobacco as they slanted against hers.

  But more, it was the taste of Reese himself that settled low in her belly, warming the chill of fear that had struck her to the core. She clung to his shoulders as if they were the only tether still holding her to earth.

  Then, on a groan, he ended it. Cursing under his breath, Reese pushed up and away from her, his gaze darting downriver. Their boat was drifting slowly backward with the current. Already it was disappearing around a bend in the waterway.

  "Oh!" Grace gasped as she caught sight of it.
r />   "Stay put," Reese told her. "And don't get near the water, understand?"

  "But wait!"

  "Don't move, y' hear?" Reese took off running down the bank. The current, though not wild, was swift, and had taken the boat nearly a quarter mile by the time he caught it. When he was two rods ahead of the blasted thing, he dove in, parting the streak of moonlight spilling across the water. It took only minutes to reach the boat and capture the towline that hung over the side. It took longer to struggle against the current toward the bank, tugging the boat behind him.

  Once there, he tied the boat to a rock and dropped, exhausted, onto his hands and knees. He was winded as a blown-out horse. Was nothing going to go right on this bloody trip? he wondered, hanging his head between his splayed hands. Nearly losing the boat was bad enough, but it paled beside almost losing Grace. He'd come a heartbeat away from doing just that.

  Grace.

  He'd left her a quarter of a mile back—alone. A panicky feeling prickled him. Where that woman was concerned, anything could happen.

  With an urgency that sprang from some perverse need to protect her, he started back upriver, stumbling over hidden roots obscured by the falling dusk. He wasn't sure why he was hurrying. If he knew Grace, she'd do exactly what he'd told her not to do and meet him halfway.

  Or worse, he thought as he got farther with no sign of her, she'd wandered off course and gotten herself lost. He peered into the gloom, searching for a glimpse of her stumbling toward him.

  "Grace?" he called out.

  Only the steady racket of the crickets answered him. His heart lurched. He should have started a fire, brought a torch. Despite the half-moon rising in the black velvet dome above him, he could hardly see a blasted thing.

  Cupping his hands around his mouth as he walked, he shouted, "Grace!"

  The bank looked the same here as it did fifty feet behind him. Dark. The Moctezuma was marked by shrub-sheltered coves and odd little bends that seemed to make little geographic sense. Where had he left her, and why didn't she answer him?

  Finally, he stopped and listened. The river lapped at the muddy shore with a steady rhythm; an owl hooted a mournful chord in the distance with the crickets keeping time; and the faint but distinct rustling of dried cane came from somewhere to his left. He stumbled toward the sound.