Ashes and Memories (8 page)

“I won’t be bought or charmed or intimidated, Mr. MacBride. Everyone has the right to live where they choose, isn’t that what you said?”

He laughed. “That is correct, but --"

“I choose here,” she said. Let him argue with that.

“Then perhaps you should learn to abide by the rules of your new home.”

“Rules you impose! Last time I looked it was a free country. I’ve dealt with men like you before. You think you’re powerful and clever, but underneath it all you’re just a coward using control to hide your fears." She was immediately sorry for her careless words. His eyes took on that hard, soulless darkness she’d seen before, and his face went completely rigid. If ever a man had looked more sinister than Reece MacBride did in that moment, she couldn’t imagine it.

 “Are you finished?” he asked.

He leaned insolently against the desk beside her, regarding her with an unnatural calmness that reminded her far too much of a rattler just before it strikes. The dangerous glint in his cold eyes belied his casual stance and made her wonder belatedly if she’d gone too far.

“I certainly hope you don’t plan to print any more slanderous allegations against any of the citizens of this town in your paper,” he said.

Emma stuffed her hands in her coat pockets to keep from fidgeting. “What I print is none of your business, Mr. MacBride.”

“And what gives you the right to have your views plastered on paper and call it news?” he asked quietly. “Perhaps you think because you own a printing press you’re a journalist and your opinions are news whereas mine are self-serving. Well, I could have another printing press here in two weeks. As a matter of fact, maybe I’ll print my own newspaper and give you a little competition.”

She’d never been particularly reckless, but Emma found herself ignoring the voice of caution screaming inside her and meeting his challenge with defiance. “Why not? That way you could slant the news anyway you want. In fact, you could call it the MacBride Gazette.”

 Reece laughed, further infuriating her. “Or maybe I’ll just shut your paper down. We got along well enough without a paper.”

“You’ll have a fight on your hands,” Emma said, struggling to keep her voice from faltering.

“Well, Miss Parker,” he said, his gaze caressing her body with a slow, thorough perusal that left her quivering with reaction in its wake. He moved closer, his expression cunningly seductive, his voice unabashedly intimate. “I do enjoy a good fight. But you should know that I never lose.”

Emma swallowed hard, forcing herself to speak, even though her voice came out an unsteady whisper. “I have nothing left to lose. Can you say the same?”

“Do not push me, Miss Parker,” he warned, his eyes as hard as marble. “I am sure you have much more to lose than you might realize. Now, you can print your little paper and play at challenging me. In fact, it might prove amusing. But I have a vision for this town, and I do not intend to let anything or anyone stand in my way.”

“Are you threatening me, Mr. MacBride?” Her voice was steady but her heart was lodged in her throat.

“Certainly not." Somehow the sincerity in his voice didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Please forgive me if I gave you that impression. I was merely stating a fact.”

Emma gazed at him, mesmerized, transfixed by his erotic male power and the dark menace in his amber eyes.

 “You don’t intend to try and stand in my way, do you?” he asked, his voice a silken whisper. “What could you possibly hope to gain?”

Instinct told her to leave this place, not just this room but this town, to go somewhere else, even if she had to leave everything she owned behind and take the next stagecoach out of town. But she wasn’t about to give up like her father had. She’d sacrificed too much, worked too damned hard to let a self-important dictator like Reece MacBride defeat her.

Well, maybe she wasn’t ready to surrender, but she could at least maintain her dignity.

Expelling the breath she’d been holding for the last several seconds, she backed away. Without a word, she turned and strode toward the door.

“I had the undertaker put a marker on your father’s grave,” he said.

Emma whirled around to find that he had taken a seat behind his crude pine desk. She read the disapproval in his eyes, and her chin went up in response.

“I thought you would want to know,” he went on when she didn’t answer. “That should make it easier to find the grave when you visit.”

Emma’s heart tightened. Reece MacBride was very good at using a person’s vulnerabilities against them. She’d have to watch her back. “Who said I was going to visit?”

 “He was your father,” Reece said, his mouth twisting in an expression of disgust. “How can you be --"

“You know nothing about me or my father." She moved away from the door to advance on him. “You have no idea what it’s like to live from hand to mouth, to have all your hopes and dreams trampled.... The hardest decision you’ve ever had to make was which fancy white shirt to wear.”

“Judge not, Miss Parker,” he said with a scowl. “You do not know me well enough to make that kind of statement.”

“I know your kind.”

He leaned back in his chair, regarding her through narrowed eyes. “Is that so? And just what has your vast experience taught you about men like me, Miss Parker?”

“That you think your money can buy anything. You think you’re a little better than the rest of us.”

“Please, go on,” he urged, his voice flat and toneless.

“That’s your home, isn’t it?” she accused, her gaze focused on the painting on the wall. It depicted a tremendous white antebellum house with Greek columns all around. A verandah below and a balcony above encircled the palatial structure. She’d never seen anything so grand in all her life, not even among the wealthiest planters in Tennessee.

“Was my home,” he corrected.

 “Just as I thought,” she said triumphantly, ignoring the spark of curiosity that made her want him to elaborate on that simple declaration. “Any man as arrogant and self-absorbed as you would have to come from some kind of royalty, and that’s just what you wealthy southern planters consider yourselves to be -- royalty. You live in your luxurious homes, looking down your noses at those you consider beneath you. And now that the war has destroyed your empire, you act like exiled nobility, waiting for the chance to reclaim your lost kingdom. What could you possibly know about suffering or --”

“More than you can ever imagine, Miss Parker.”

Emma recoiled from the fierce glint in his eyes. They glowed with a dreadful darkness the depths of which terrified her.

“My father fought in a war started by men like you,” she pressed on. “He slept in filth and marched through mud and blood and killed men he had no quarrel with, all to preserve a way of life he was never privileged to enjoy.”

“You are correct,” he said, his quiet, steely voice shivering down her spine. “I know nothing about your father or your life. But neither do you know anything about me or my life, and I will thank you to remember that.”

 “Oh, I can guess,” Emma countered, driven by memories of how the war had destroyed her father, heedlessly ignoring the dark fury that shone in his eyes and the ominous tightening of his jaw beneath his beard. “Let’s see, you lived on a plantation that belonged to your father and his father and his father before him. You had servants to do your bidding day and night. You attended a university and you never had to work a day in your life. And when it came time to go to war, your family arranged an officer’s commission for you so you wouldn’t have to get your hands dirty.”

Slowly Reece came to his feet, his gaze never leaving hers. Emma recoiled from the fierce glint in his eyes as he moved toward her like a lion stalking its prey.

“I have had to fight for everything I have,” he said, his voice softly trembling with the effort at control.

Emma heard the breath escape her lips, felt the heat of his private hell reach out to her through his desolate eyes and wondered at its cause. What could have produced such a barren, soulless chasm in a man?

“My father,” he continued with a hint of bitterness, “came out of the mountains of South Carolina one day and tore fifty square miles of raw land from the wilderness and turned it into a thriving plantation. He taught me all he knew about how to take what you want and how to hold onto it. He never took anything he had for granted.”

Emma’s heart quivered as the urge to flee, to run as far and as fast as she could, pulsed through her. But how could she run when she couldn’t even move?

 “He died at Shiloh. You are right about one thing,” he told her. “I fought in the war like your father. I was a major in the 43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry under John Mosby. We were partisan rangers operating behind enemy lines, so don’t try to tell me about war, Miss Parker.”

She backed away from him, from the barely controlled rage in his expression and the rigid tension that vibrated through his body.

“I know what it’s like to sit in a dark encampment, unable to risk a fire because the enemy is so close you can hear the rattle of their dishes at dinner,” he went on. “I know what it’s like to wade through mud and muck and blood. And I know what it’s like to watch friends and comrades torn to pieces before my very eyes by cannon and rifle and bayonet. And I know what it’s like to be stripped of everything so that all you have left is your dignity and your --"

The crack of gunfire rent the tension in the air. Emma nearly screamed, rendered immobile by the fear that pulsed through her.

Another volley of gunfire came from downstairs. Instinctively, she searched the room for a place to hide, her gaze coming to rest on Reece. The desolate, tormented darkness was gone from his eyes, replaced by a cold, determined fury. The fire of battle lit his face as he grabbed his revolver.

Her journalist’s curiosity surfaced, and Emma took a step to follow him as he rushed past her. She’d seen him handle two dangerous situations already. There was no reason to believe he couldn’t handle this one as well.

 But before she could take another step, he turned to face her, the cold menace in his expression stealing her breath.

“Stay here!" he commanded sharply.

“But I want to --"

“I said stay here.”

She nearly protested, but the violence in his eyes stopped her. In that instant she understood the source of his power. She only had to look into those eyes to know that given the situation, the man before her was capable of anything. Without another word, he cocked his pistol and rushed from the room.

CHAPTER FOUR

A red haze of fury blurred the edges of Reece’s vision and the boundaries of his restraint. His heart pounding, he stepped out of the office and walked across the landing to the stairs. He took several deep breaths, struggling to regain a degree of control, trying to concentrate on whatever awaited him downstairs instead of the woman in his office and the things she’d nearly goaded him into admitting, things he’d sworn never to mention again, never to even think about again.

It was no use. Wave after wave of fury, new and remembered, crashed over him as if a dam had broken and nothing stood between him and the raging torrent it had held back until now.

In the barroom below, men wrestled, shouting and cursing, crashing into furniture and overturning glasses and bottles. The noise pounded inside his head like a dissonant drum.

Two men lay on the floor, their blank, lifeless eyes staring sightless at the ceiling, their bodies broken and bleeding. With shocking clarity, those strangers suddenly became familiar faces, young men barely out of the schoolroom, dead now, their gray uniforms soaked with blood.

A cold, gray mist dampened the leaden air. The smell of wet earth and death filled his senses as grief and anger possessed him.

“They walked into a trap, Major,” the lieutenant told him.

“Any survivors?" Reece asked, his voice carefully unemotional.

“Just Corporal Prescott,” came the answer.

Reece shook his head to obliterate the image, gasping for breath as he beat down the memory and focused again. He grasped the pistol tightly and clenched his jaw, forcing himself back to the present.

Stanton and Grady managed to capture a man and slam him back against the bar. They held the stranger between them, each grasping an arm while the man struggled to break free.

Reece fired his pistol in the air and the crowd turned as one to face him, their expressions ranging from surprise to anger to annoyance.

“What the hell is going on here?" Reece demanded

A cacophony of voices bombarded him as everyone tried to explain at once.

“Wait a minute!" Reece shouted, holding up a hand for silence as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

His whole body shook with rage. Focus, he told himself. This is reality, this is what matters. One moment of distraction could cost a man his life, how well he’d learned that lesson.

Emma Parker had called him a coward. She’d challenged him as few people would have dared. And the hell of it was if she were a man, he’d have beaten her senseless or had her run out of town or both by now.

“Stanton!" he shouted, turning his fury on his most trusted man. “What happened?”

Reece moved closer, his gaze never leaving the captured outlaw’s eyes. The outlaw didn’t look away, and Reece recognized the madness in his eyes. The man before him liked to kill and would do so without hesitation. His stare challenged Reece and pushed his fury dangerously close to the breaking point. He’d been challenged enough for one night.

“This saddle tramp come in here with his friend there looking for trouble,” Stanton explained.

The explanation did nothing to dispel Reece’s irritation. Damn it, he shouldn’t have to get involved in these incessant brawls, shouldn’t have to handle everything personally. And he never should have let Miss Parker get to him the way she had. She had no idea who he was, what his life had been like. Her opinion meant nothing to him -- less than nothing.

“What am I paying you men for if you can’t even handle a minor altercation?" Reece asked tautly. What good was a leader if his men were incompetent?