by Jill Gregory
To the north and west stretched the desert, but nearer at hand gleamed the tall forms of stately oaks and fragrant pines on the hillsides overlooking the meadow. How entrancing was that meadow, she thought, gasping with pleasure at the sight of it below. A sea of dark green brightened with vivid flowers—Annabel felt she could gaze upon it forever and wish for nothing more.
Rugged splendor and open simple beauty were spread before her—and Roy Steele stood quietly by her side.
“It’s paradise,” she breathed.
“That’s why I picked it.” He gave her a quick, piercing glance. “Struck me as the prettiest spot on earth.”
“It is. Oh, it is.” Annabel bobbed her head in agreement and stared in delight as two jackrabbits raced across the dark grass and disappeared behind an aspen.
“You live here then?” she asked after a moment, not wishing to pry but wanting to learn more about him, even though she sensed he would close down if she appeared too curious.
She actually held her breath, wondering if he would refuse to answer at all, but to her relief, he did.
“No, Miss Brannigan, actually I don’t live anywhere, except on the trail. But I like knowing I have this place to come to every once in a while. It’s sort of like a home, I guess, or at least the closest I’ll ever come to one.” Steele watched the last shimmering rays of light gild her lively face, which was so earnestly absorbed in his words. The amber rays turned her riotous mass of curls into ripples of fire. He wanted to stretch out his hand and touch the soft curls, but restrained himself, wondering at the same time why he was telling her so much. It was more than he’d ever told any other human being, but something was pushing him, driving him to share this with her—not only this place, which was so special to him, but also something of what he always kept locked inside. “At one point I actually thought of building a ranch here,” he continued, amazed to hear himself speaking, “but ... I don’t think I’m meant to settle down in any one place.”
“Why not?” she asked softly, and the concern in her voice tore unexpectedly at his insides. Why did this woman give a damn about him? He didn’t want her to. It was wrong. It was futile. For both of them.
He straightened his shoulders and answered her with his customary nonchalance. “It’s not in the cards.”
“Well,” Annabel said slowly, lifting one graceful hand to encompass all of the spectacular scene surrounding them, “if you were going to pick one spot to settle down, I can’t think of anyplace more perfect.”
He said nothing more, and Annabel suspected that whatever urge had prompted him to open up to her, even a tiny bit, had been firmly quelled.
“When I was a little girl,” she ventured, edging just a little closer to him, “I used to play in the McCallum garden and at the time I thought it was the most beautiful spot on earth. All the lovely flowers, the hedges trimmed so elegantly, the lawn so perfect, like emerald green velvet.” She laughed. “I used to pretend I was a princess and I’d sit on the carved stone bench and survey my kingdom—the statues and the flowers and all the frogs and fish in the pond were my subjects.”
“You played at the McCallum house when you were a little girl?” His gaze was suddenly sharp on her face. “Were you a neighbor?”
She shook her head, smiling, “My aunt was the cook. I lived there with her—we shared a most cozy little room in the servants’ wing.”
“Gertie was your aunt?”
“How do you know Gertie?” Annabel stared at him. To her astonishment, Roy Steele, cool and collected gunslinger, flushed like a schoolboy caught putting a toad in the teacher’s desk.
“Brett mentioned her, I reckon,” he murmured and kicked at a pebble with his boot.
“That’s rather strange. She passed away several years ago—why would Brett bring up her name to a total stranger?”
“He was telling me a story about some dinner party or another when he was a kid ... look, this isn’t important,” Steele told her roughly. “Saving Brett from Red Cobb is.”
Annabel nodded, but continued to ponder him curiously, sensing his sudden tension as he deliberately changed the subject. If she didn’t know better, she’d think Roy Steele was hiding something. But what?
Nothing irked at Annabel more than unanswered questions. Ever since she was a child, puzzles and mysteries had fascinated her, and she couldn’t rest until she had solved them, even if it drove Aunt Gertie and Brett crazy. But Roy Steele was the biggest mystery she had ever encountered. One moment he might kiss her, displaying a fierce tenderness no one would ever suspect, but the next he’d shut her out of his thoughts and plans completely.
She seated herself on a hump-shaped boulder and thought over his explanation while Steele busied himself rolling and lighting a cigarette. All the while she watched him like a hawk. “How long ago did you see Brett and how long ago did he do this favor for you?” she asked. “Was it recently, after he ran away from home, or have you known him a long time? And what was the favor? Why are you in his debt?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Miss Brannigan,” he commented dryly. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were a Pinkerton detective.”
Annabel nearly slid off the boulder, but braced her hands on the rock just in time.
“They’re innocent enough questions,” she retorted, her eyes sparkling with defiance. “And as Brett’s fiancée, it’s my right ...”
“Yeah, yeah, I reckon it is. But I don’t much like ‘em.” His expression was grim in the advancing darkness. Those words—Brett’s fiancée—summoned up an irritation he couldn’t explain. Or control. “Can’t you just once keep quiet and stop pestering me? Damnation, I never met a more tiresome woman.”
Stung, Annabel gave a strangled cry.
“Tiresome?” she squeaked, jumping off the boulder in fury. “Mr. Roy Steele, let me tell you about tiresome!” She plucked the cigarette from between his lips, enraged by the nonchalant way he was smoking it and regarding her from beneath the brim of his hat. She threw the cigarette down on the ground and stomped it with her foot. Only with great effort did she manage to restrain herself from snatching the hat off his head and tossing it down the slope. “I’ve dealt with some pretty high-handed, arrogant men in my life,” she stormed, “but you are the worst. Worse even than Mr. Ross McCallum—and that’s saying quite a bit,” she added scathingly. She stomped the cigarette one more time, feeling triumphantly satisfied as his eyes narrowed.
Anger made Annabel’s gray-green eyes glitter like fairy lights in the gathering darkness. Steele was glaring at her in astounded silence, as if he’d never seen a woman lose her temper before. This goaded her even more. “You promised to talk to me and give me some straight answers tonight, but as always you’re weaseling out of it! Well, I won’t let you. Are you just a liar, Mr. Steele? A liar and a killer? Maybe you just want to catch up with Brett to kill him after all—maybe you’re hoping I’ll lead you straight to him so that you can do your dirty little killing. But I won’t. Damn you to hell, I won’t!”
Steele grasped her wrist as her voice rose higher and higher.
“I won’t let you hurt him!” she cried, trying to break free and failing. “And I won’t stop badgering you until you tell me where we’re headed! Maybe you’re used to women who keep their mouths closed and don’t argue or think or even talk. But I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect the people I love, and if you think I’m going to fall for your plan to track and kill Brett ...”
“That’s enough.” His face was like granite, as cold as the cliff faces towering over the valley. His fingers bit into her wrist. “If I were a killer, I reckon I would’ve left you to fend for yourself with those gentlemen back there on the rim,” he said in a low, hard tone. “But I didn’t, Miss Brannigan. I didn’t. I came back and saved your hide. Or did you forget?”
His quiet, deadly voice pierced the fury that had consumed her. She felt sanity rushing back. No, she hadn’t forgotten. Well, maybe she had—just for a moment. But
the truth was, she owed him her life.
His eyes gleamed fiercely into hers, and beneath that harsh gaze, her wild rage faded to burning mortification. Annabel drew a deep, ragged breath. Get control of yourself, she thought desperately. She struggled to calm her roiling emotions. That ridiculous outburst wasn’t very professional, she told herself, forcing back tears. And losing her temper wasn’t going to get her anywhere. But oh, he had called her tiresome. The word had cut her to the quick. Obviously, Roy Steele didn’t feel an attraction for her after all—she had been totally wrong about that. He detested her.
She fought back the urge to weep. Don’t you dare, she admonished herself, and stiffened her back, though her lips quivered.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, her voice only a little shaky. To her horror, tears still burned behind her eyelids, and frantically, she blinked them back, hoping he hadn’t noticed in the encroaching darkness. “I haven’t forgotten what you did. You saved me from those horrid men. Which makes me believe in you—at least, I want to believe in you.” Her tone gathered strength. And a kind of hushed softness. She lifted bright, wistful eyes to his face, suddenly yearning with all her heart to understand more about this contradictory and unfathomable man.
“Everything I’ve seen about you since then, the way you’ve taken care of me, your consideration ... even your appreciation of this beautiful spot, convinces me that you’re not at all like the man you would like everyone to think you are. I think you’re a good man, an honorable man.” She rushed on imploringly as his mouth tightened into a scowl. “I don’t know why you want people to think you’re some kind of a monster and to be terrified of you, but ... I’m not.”
With that, a laugh trembled from her lips. “I guess if I was, I wouldn’t have stomped on your cigarette. That could have been mighty dangerous.”
“It still might be.”
“No, I don’t think so.” She grinned saucily at him. The tension and the storm were over. “You don’t frighten me, Mr. Steele,” she informed him, “so you’d best give in and answer all my questions. Because I am very persistent, and yes, I can be very tiresome, and if you want any peace at all ...”
She let her voice trail off deliberately, and studied his reaction. To her amusement, Roy Steele gritted his teeth and looked like he wanted to strangle her. But instead he let go of her wrist and shook his head in defeat.
“You win,” he groaned. “I’ll talk. Just stop pestering me. What do you want to know?”
With the setting of the sun, the air had cooled rapidly, and now rippled down in breezy waves from the mountains, wafting through the fluttering leaves. But despite the chill, Annabel basked in the warmth of victory.
She took Steele’s hand and led him to the boulder, taking a seat beside him as an owl hooted from one of the trees. “To begin with, when and how did you meet Brett?”
Never before had he met such a doggedly tenacious woman, Steele reflected as her skirts brushed against his trousers and the sweet fragrance of her hair floated through the night. Or a more fascinating one. He controlled the impulse to seize her slender form in his arms and make her forget all about Brett McCallum once and for all.
Honor, he thought bitterly, that quality she so firmly believed he possessed, forbade it. He felt sweat break out across his back as he tried to ignore the flowery scent and delicacy of her. Concentrate, Steele told himself desperately. Concentrate on telling her what she wants to know .and then you can get the hell away from her.
“I met Brett a few weeks back,” he said, shifting slightly to put more space between them. Anything to diminish temptation. “You know the Hart brothers, the ones I shot back in Justice?”
She nodded, intensely aware of his hard, rugged form only a hand’s breadth away, of his eyes glinting in the milky light of the moon. “Yes,” she murmured. “How could I forget?”
“Apparently they had planned to ambush me near the New Mexico border. Your Brett heard them talking about it while he was playing cards in a saloon one night, and a day or two later, he and I happened to cross paths.” He took a deep breath. It didn’t feel right lying to her, but he wasn’t ready to tell her the truth. Not yet.
“He was a decent kid,” Steele went on, warming to his story. “He beat me and a few other hombres at poker—and after the game, he took me aside and told me what he’d heard.”
Annabel’s hands moved to her throat as Steele paused. “Go on,” she whispered.
“I thanked him for the tip and bought him a drink. The next day he went his way and I went mine. The ambush wouldn’t have worked anyhow, because I had business in the opposite direction from where the Harts thought I was headed, but I appreciated the warning.”
“It’s just like Brett. He’s such a fine person ... but ...” She hesitated before asking the question. Go on. You need to know. “Was he drinking a great deal?” Desperately, Annabel searched Steele’s face. “Did he seen drunk?”
“Why?”
She told him what Polly had said. Steele frowned. “Didn’t seem to be,” he muttered rather hurriedly, and suddenly stood up and wheeled away from her, pacing across the crest of the rise. “I don’t like the sound of this.”
“Neither do I. Brett was never the type to drink much liquor—I’ve never, ever seen him inebriated. It made me think that something must be very wrong.... Did he mention anything about his father ... about trouble at home? You see, I must find out why he ran away.”
“Funny you should ask a question like that.” Steele spun back toward her and Annabel was startled by the raw savagery in his face. “You say you grew up at the McCallum house, so you must know what kind of a man Ross McCallum is.”
“Well, yes ...”
“Then it only stands to reason why the boy left—any grown man with half an ounce of self-respect would hightail it out from under that old bastard’s shadow first chance he got.”
Annabel shook her head, dazed by his vehemence. “You sound like you hate Ross McCallum. How do you know so much about him?”
“I read the newspapers. Everyone in these United States knows about the great Ross “McCallum’s wheelings and dealings,”
“So Brett didn’t actually tell you it was because of his father?” she asked quickly.
He started to answer, then suddenly shook his head and clamped his lips together. “No, Brett didn’t tell me that. And unlike you, I don’t need to know his reasons. But I owe him a favor. And since word has spread throughout the territory that Red Cobb is gunning for him, it seems the only way I can repay him is to find him before Cobb does and give him a hand. I’d take you along for the ride,” he added, stepping closer, “but where I’m headed isn’t safe for a woman.”
“Where exactly are you headed?”
“First Silver Junction—you’ll stay there. Then, maybe New Mexico.”
“Don’t underestimate me, Mr. Steele,” she shot back, rising to confront him. “I have no intention of giving up what I’ve set out to do. Brett means much more to me than he does to you, and nothing is going to stop me from finding him.”
“Are you just plain mule-headed—or are you loco? Or do you really love him that much?”
Annabel flinched at the hardness of his tone. Deep blue darkness shrouded the entire valley and all the buttes and mountains. It was a peaceful darkness, but as she stared into Roy Steele’s eyes, she felt anything but peaceful. There was a strange lump in her throat. Steele had spoken those words as if he didn’t believe in love, had never known it, couldn’t imagine it. As if love was something that didn’t exist in the world he knew, a world of guns and blood and death.
For a moment she tried to picture Brett’s face and couldn’t. Dismay ripped through her. She closed her eyes for an instant, and thought hard, and then there he was—the image of the young boy she’d known so well flashing reassuringly into her mind, dark-haired, long-limbed, with that wiry build and quick, buoyant smile that could charm bark off a tree.
She’d loved Brett all her life. A
dored him, admired him, delighted in her time with him. She wanted nothing more than to win his heart and spend the rest of her life with him.
“Yes,” she whispered, opening her eyes. “I love him that much.”
Roy Steele’s whole body tightened. She couldn’t decipher the expression that flickered over his face for a moment, but when it had passed, his features were as stony and arrogantly set as they had been that day she’d first encountered him in Justice in the hotel. It sent a shiver through her.
“Time we went back,” he said curtly, and turned toward the cabin.
“Does this mean you’ll let me come along with you?” Moving cautiously through the darkness alongside him, Annabel was relieved when Steele took her good arm in his and guided her down the slope. But his touch was not warm and intimate; his fingers felt like bands of iron.
“What if I don’t?” he asked, his words sharp, slicing like a razor through the night.
“Then I’ll have to follow you.”
They reached the cabin door. He turned and gazed down into her face, illuminated by cold white moonlight which flowed like mist over her delicate features.
“I’ll be damned if you wouldn’t,” he swore softly. “You’d follow me to hell and back, I reckon.”
“I reckon.” She lifted her chin, a slight, stubborn gesture, but at the same time she unconsciously softened it with a smile.
Steele felt his insides twist up like a rope full of knots. “Then I reckon I’ve no choice,” he managed to growl, hoping he sounded properly gruff.
He did. Annabel noted his displeasure with a twinge of unexplainable disappointment. So he was truly disgusted by the notion that he’d be stuck with her a while longer. For some reason, this realization filled her with gloom. Why should it matter? Only Brett is important, she reminded herself. Yet she couldn’t shake her lowered spirits even when the kerosene lantern was glowing cozily in the cabin, or when Steele had built a roaring fire against the night chill.
