Branded

by Vivian Vaughan

  Whole and happy. When the aftershocks that rocked her body subsided, she lifted herself above him and twisted her fingers in the curly hair on his chest. She felt his heart thrash against her hand. “Now are you sorry I came?” she teased lightly.

  “I was never sorry you came, Jace.”

  “You weren’t very welcoming.”

  “I don’t have much to welcome you to. Nothing except danger and hardship.”

  “Hardship, I’m used to. The danger, we’ll get used to, if we have to. I’ll still place my money on Hardin and Hunter.”

  He grinned. “Me, too.” Her hair fell in a flaxen curtain around his face. He lifted his hands and sifted his fingers through it, still unable to believe that his dream had actually come true. “At best all we can hope for is cowboy wages. That isn’t—”

  She stopped him with her lips to his. Drawing back mere inches, she grinned, “Lucky you learned to ride.”

  But he was the lucky one. Lucky beyond anything he could ever have imagined. “I never told you about my wildest dreams,” he mumbled, kissing little biting nibbles to her hovering face.

  “Maybe I don’t want to hear about them.”

  He shifted her until she lay length upon length on top of him. He was on fire for her again. So quickly. So soon. “Trust me, Jace. You do.” He adjusted her hips to accommodate his burgeoning body. She moved against him seductively.

  “Was I better then or now?”

  “Then or now?” He pretended to contemplate the matter, when in fact all he could think about was her, her body on top of his. “Let’s just say it’s like comparing my memories of the starlit sky to the real thing.”

  She kissed him, lips open, wet and ready. “This is the real thing?”

  “It doesn’t get any more real,” he mumbled against her lips. But he could not entirely shuck the seriousness of their situation. “I was prepared to live with the dream to protect you from learning about Drummond’s deceit.”

  “You would never have gotten away.”

  “Not with Hunter on my side…or yours.”

  “Our side,” she said. “But I wouldn’t have let you leave me. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know, Jace. Drummond is pretty important to you.”

  She just smiled, satisfied, and he felt the glow from her love light up his heart. “I hope you don’t have to choose.”

  “I’ve already chosen you.”

  “Ah, Jace. I don’t want you to ever regret this.”

  “How could I regret it? I love you too much.”

  And then she did it. With her callused fingers, she pushed aside his hair and traced the scar.

  He shuddered.

  “Does it hurt?”

  The tenderness in her blue eyes brought a lump to his throat and he couldn’t answer. He shook his head. Finally, though, he had to ask. “Did you ask Hunter?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why?”

  She placed a tender kiss on his lips. “Because I know what it means.”

  “You do, huh?”

  She traced the scar. “It looks like the letter T.” She recalled her original impression of the scar. T for Trevor. T for Traitor. She looked him in the eye, felt lost there and so very loved.

  “T,” she said again. “For Together. You and me, Trevor. Together, forever.”

  When he still looked unconvinced, she added, “We may never know the truth, unless Abbie or Tommy confesses, but I know you didn’t kill Ana Bowdrie. I know you didn’t fight with her. Why would you have?” She kissed him again. “How could you have?”

  “I love you, Jace,” he said when he could find his voice. Then he grinned. “I might as well go whole hog and ask you to marry me, huh?”

  “Or I’ll ask you. And this time I won’t take no for an answer. Not even if Hunter objected.”

  Epilogue

  August 20, 1895

  Concordia Cemetery

  The Kimbles joined other mourners at Concordia Cemetery at four in the afternoon.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Jacy whispered against Trevor’s chest.

  “Live by the gun, die by the gun,” he returned quietly.

  “But he was a good man.”

  “Wes Hardin was a man, Jace. Some good in him, some bad. More of one than the other, depending on who you talk to.”

  “He will always have a place in my heart,” she replied. “He helped me when no one else would.”

  “And a place in mine,” Trevor admitted. “I might still be running scared if he hadn’t been able to get that pardon through.”

  “We would be running scared,” she said. “Together.”

  He smiled wanly against her head. “Together. If you’ve taught me nothing else in the last week, it’s that I’m no longer me, I’m we.”

  “Not like that,” she insisted. But for the life of her Jacy couldn’t think of one instance when they needed separate identities. Oh, the time would come. Certainly. She would never be a clinging vine.

  But never would she feel whole again without Trevor.

  “Aunt Jacy?” Little Carter stood between Jacy and Mari, a fist clutching each of their skirts.

  She smiled down at him, a finger to her lip.

  “I liked Mr. Hardin.”

  “We all did, darling.”

  “I hate that old mean constable.”

  “No, Carter. Constable Selman did what he had to do. He’s the law. We can’t fault him for shooting Mr. Hardin.” She hoped the child lived many more years before he learned that Wes Hardin had been shot in the back by the irate constable. She hoped he lived many more years before he learned how many men Wes Hardin had sent to their graves. Down the line Todd stood beside Hunter, and further down, Sophie held Drummond by an arm.

  Jacy smiled. Drummond and Trevor at opposite ends of the family. They probably always would be. But now that Drummond had learned the limits she and Hunter would be pushed, he seemed resolved to the inevitable. At least he had been civil to Trevor since they returned to El Paso.

  “He hasn’t tried to beat me with that damned walking stick,” was the way Trevor put it. Jacy hoped things would improve with time. But mostly, she was glad to have Trevor by her side. Love was a powerful feeling. She knew now her heart wouldn’t burst from it, but it did seem to expand at odd moments. Like now.

  And like when Wes Hardin and Hunter came out to Hueco Tanks to tell them about Tommy Guest’s confession.

  “So what do you say now?” Hunter quizzed Trevor. “Ready to head into Texas and set up ranching?”

  Trevor found Jacy’s gaze before he replied, and her stomach still went weak recalling the look in his brown eyes.

  “What’ll Drummond say about that?” Trevor wanted to know.

  Before Jacy could respond, Hunter did. “We’ve already put it to him.” He winked at Jacy, then turned to Trevor. “Saying you agree, you and I are taking our families into Texas. If Drummond wants to come he can. If not, we’ll go without him.”

  “It’ll take a coon’s age to save up enough cowhand wages to buy another ranch.”

  “We’ll do it. I’ve spent the last five years itching to get in some good, hard work.”

  “Me, too,” Trevor said. Then he turned the subject to their earlier plight. “Did anyone ever find out who ordered your execution, after Drummond signed away everything he had to keep you from hanging?”

  “Tommy got scared,” Hunter explained. “Least that’s what he admitted to. He got his father to pull some political strings. Someone in the Governor’s office, no one’s claiming the deed, wrote an official letter to the warden demanding that my execution be scheduled.”

  “That’s when he turned you loose,” Jacy mused, reaching for Trevor’s hand. He squeezed her hand and looked long and hard into Hunter’s eyes.

  “Damn that was close. If the warden had been one iota less honest, or compassionate, you would have hanged, and me along with you.”

  “Enough,” Jacy said finally. “
I can’t listen to this anymore.” She pulled Trevor and Hunter into her arms. “All that matters is that we have a chance to start over.”

  With or without Papa, she thought, we’re a family. But deep in her heart, she hoped Drummond would come around.

  When they returned to El Paso a week later, the entire family stood behind Trevor, like Mari had promised. Trevor and Hunter were the center of attention, sitting with the children crawling all over them, and Mari and Jacy hovering near. Sophie said it best.

  “With Papa and Uncle Trevor home we’re a family again.”

  Little Carter jumped when the first shovel of sod hit the wooden casket, bringing Jacy back to the present. Hunter reached across Mari and picked up the boy. Jacy turned her face into Trevor’s shoulder.

  “We all have to die, sweetheart,” he soothed. “Hardin knew it better than most.”

  “That’s the grave he bought for you,” she explained. “He wired us in Arizona that you were buried here in Concordia Cemetery.”

  She felt his arm tighten around her shoulder. “Come on,” he urged. “It’s over, I’m ready to get out of here.”

  Arm in arm, they walked back up the hill, past the Jewish Cemetery and the Chinese Cemetery and came out on Copia Street. At the stage station, he said, “Run and pack a bag for overnight.”

  “What?”

  “Damn, Jace, I thought you were willing to go anywhere with me.”

  “I am. I mean, I just wanted to know where.”

  “The Grand Central Hotel. I’ve engaged us a room for tonight.”

  “Tonight. We’re not married. They’ll never let us in there.”

  “Oh, yes they will.” He took her in his arms. “Mari couldn’t quite swing the church, but the padre agreed to meet us up on Mount Franklin after sunset.”

  Her eyes widened. “Sunset?”

  “An evening wedding. With a sky full of stars overhead. The most appropriate I could think of for you, sweetheart.”

  Overwhelmed by more sheer happiness than she had ever expected to feel again, she tried to throw her arms around his neck, but he held her back.

  “Hold on a minute.” He dug into his pocket, withdrew the lapis-studded cross, and fastened it around her neck.

  “You fixed it,” she said, when the words that were in her heart stuck in her throat.

  “Figured you might want to wear it to our wedding. Since I don’t have a ring to give you. It’ll take time to save up—”

  She stopped him with a finger laid tenderly across his lips. “I love you, Trevor. I’ll never stop trying to make up to you for what Papa did.”

  “There’s nothing to make up for, Jace.” He moved his lips to hers, held them there, so close tingles raced down her spine. “You’ve made my wildest dreams come true.”

  As if to prove his point, he kissed her, full and wet and sensuously. Shamelessly, boldly, she wanted him now. She knew she always would. But the family was coming up the hill, so she drew away mere inches.

  “Your wildest dreams are just beginning, Trevor Fallon.”

  Author’s Note

  I beg your forgiveness for bending a few facts to fit my fiction. Readers familiar with El Paso history will know that by 1895 the trolleys were no longer drawn by mules named Mandy, and Señor Silverio Escontrias did not begin ranching at Hueco Tanks until 1898.

  El Paso has an exciting, interesting, and colorful history. I hope each of you may find time to visit, either in person or vicariously through more reading. And don’t miss a trip up Mount Franklin at night. It is truly one of the most beautiful and romantic sights in the world.

  More from Vivian Vaughan

  Branded

  El Paso, Texas. 1895. Five years ago, life as Jacy Kimble knew it ended with a scandal that sent her brother Hunter and his best friend Trevor Fallon to Yuma Prison for murder. The scandal cost her family their Arizona Ranch, ruined her father’s political career and took his sanity, leaving the Kimble family in shambles. Once the belle of Arizona society, Jacy Kimble was haughty and flirtatious—her favorite target: Trevor Fallon. Her father called him a hired hand.

  Now Trevor has shown up at her door, escaped from prison, or as he tries to make her believe: he was freed in the middle of the night with one order—clear her brother’s name and keep him from hanging.

  For five years she has hated Trevor. How can she believe him now? Yet, how can she not help him try to prove her brother’s innocence? It’s a hard choice for Jacy: believe the man who ruined her life, or throw away any hope for her family’s future. Complicating everything, Trevor is the same handsome, no-account cowhand who once romanced her. And Jacy had loved him. Now she feels that powerful attraction returning. How can she spend time with him? How can she not?

  No Place for a Lady

  When Madolyn Sinclair, Secretary of the Boston Woman Suffrage Society, steps off the train in Buckhorn, Texas, she doesn’t know there is a right and wrong side of the tracks. Madolyn has come to this god-forsaken land with three purposes: to find her runaway brother Morley, secure her inheritance, and return to Boston to organize a Center for Women’s Rights. What she had not expected to find in this windswept land—or anywhere—was love: Madolyn Sinclair has dedicated herself to teaching submissive women from all walks of life that they don’t need men.

  Then she meets Tyler Grant, her brother’s erstwhile business partner, who offers to take her to Morley’s ranch. She reluctantly accepts, and Tyler takes her on a wagon ride she will never forget. But Tyler has an ulterior motive, and he’s caught a tantalizing woman in his web of deceit.

  Reluctant Enemies

  New Mexico Territory, 1879. Will Radnor has never stopped looking for Charles Martin Kane, the man who murdered his father back in Philadelphia. Following the first good lead he’s had in years, Will accepts a position with a law firm in Santa Fé. In Chimayo, a golden-haired cowgirl, ‘dressed like Billy the Kid and smelling of horse sweat’ climbs into the stagecoach and changes his life forever. Then he learns her name.

  Priscilla McCain has realized her dream to become the best danged cowgirl in New Mexico Territory, following in the boot steps of her beloved father, Charlie McCain. In Chimayo she climbs into the stage and trips over the flimsy black boots of a greenhorn lawyer. He is tall, though, and handsome. Silk shirts and perfume spring to mind. Then she realizes what he is—a greenhorn.

  Soon, however, even wild horses can’t keep them apart. Will passes every ‘greenhorn’ test Priscilla poses and proves himself a quick learner. Before she knows it, Priscilla has donned that silk shirt, lacy chemise, and spritzes on her mother’s perfume.

  As Will’s love for Priscilla grows, he knows that the time will come when she must choose between him and her father, and either choice will be disastrous for all of them. He has never seen a family as close. But can he forego bringing Charles Martin Kane to justice, even for the woman he loves?

  A Wish to Build a Dream On

  Reese Catlin is determined to get his herd from Texas to Kansas ahead of the rush. An excellent chuck wagon cook is essential to the cattle drive, and after tasting the delectable lemon pies at the café in town, he knows he’s found the perfect man for the job in 'Andy' Dushane.

  Only as it turns out, Andie Dushane is actually a woman, and he knows the rest of the cowboys won’t stand for it. But after she proves her culinary skills can’t be matched—or resisted—she joins the camp on the trail to Kansas.

  Before long, Andie’s delicious cuisine wins over the stomachs of the cowboys, but it’s the warmth of her passionate embrace that wins over the heart of Reese.

  Storms Never Last

  Eager to flea Indianola, Texas and the violent blood feud between her own family and the neighboring Suttons, Lindsey Mae Burnett makes the desperate decision to work as a shady lady to fund her escape.

  March Sutton is in Indianola with one mission—murder. In an effort to relax, he pays Miss Fancy's House of Fanciful Delights a visit where he is paired with the beautiful, innoce
nt Lindsey.

  As a fierce storm descends upon the city, both March and Lindsey find themselves in danger of being swept away by not only the harsh winds, but by each other as well. Will their love survive the dangers of the vicious storm and the looming threat of Jeb Taylor, only to be destroyed when Lindsey learns that March is one of the very Suttons she’s running from?

  Sweetheart of the Rodeo

  Caterina Raminerz, daughter of a ranch cook, wanted nothing more than to marry her oldest friend Monte Ballou. But the morning after he proposes, he disappears, along with Caterina’s hope for a future with true love.

  Six years later, Monte has returned, determined to ride a dangerous stallion in the Fourth of July Rodeo. Still deeply in love with her childhood sweetheart, Caterina vows to do whatever necessary to stop Monte from riding the ferocious horse—and maybe save his life.

  But even as buried feelings and forgotten promises find their way back to the surface, Monte is promised to someone else. Will Monte and Caterina find their way back to each other before their love is extinguished forever?

  Tremaynes of Apache Wells

  Chance of a Lifetime

  Fort Davis, Department of Texas, 1868. Sabrina Bolton lives with an omnipresent feeling of guilt: her twin sister’s death when the girls were five left their mother in a perpetual state of melancholy. Now, fourteen years later, everything Sabrina does brings the admonishment “Proper young ladies don’t...”

  Sabrina wants more. She wants to treat people at the post hospital; she wants to work at her father’s off-base mercantile with her friend, Rosa Ramírez; and she wants romance. Then her mother makes the ultimate choice—a suitor for Sabrina. Sabrina cannot summon one romantic feeing for Captain Lon Jasper. Indeed, he criticizes her behavior as much as her mother does.

  Then the man called Tremayne rides onto the base and straight into Sabrina’s heart. Tremayne was reared by Apaches after his parents were murdered by unknown assailants, and he considers himself an outcast in both worlds. To him, all white-eyes women are witless. As if to prove the point, he almost runs down a fiery-haired woman who has wandered into the street and tripped on her skirts. He helps her stand, and from that moment they find no peace unless they are together. As their love grows, Tremayne knows he must leave Sabrina. Together she would be an outcast, too.