Gideon, Robin - Desire of the Phantom [Ecstasy in the Old West] (Siren Publishing Classic) (12 page)

“Don’t press me on this one,” Garrett said with mild censure,
though he immediately realized that would only whet
Paul’s curiosity and make it that much more difficult to
get off the subject.

“The sun was up before you got home. Now if a woman
gave you the slip, and you still don’t get home until
Gretchen was making breakfast, it seems to me you must
have found another woman to soothe your bruised heart.”
His grin was wider now. “I’m your brother. You can tell me.”

Garrett smiled then, though his heart was still heavy.
“Being my brother makes you the
last
person I’d tell. She
was nothing special, so just worry about your own love life.”

“I enjoy thinking about yours.”

Paul continued talking, but Garrett had stopped listening.
He was thinking about Pamela, reliving all the moments they’d shared in their too-brief time together. Was she thinking about him? What was her opinion of him after what he’d done to her? Rather, what was her opinion of the Midnight Phantom after his attempted seduction?

Garrett sipped his whiskey, enjoying the burn of the am
ber liquid as it went down his throat. He had given Pamela every single dollar he’d taken
from Jonathon Darwell’s safe. Had he tried to buy her good graces?

That ludicrous thought nearly made Garrett laugh out
loud. He barely knew Pamela, but the notion that her sexual
favors might be for sale stretched the boundaries of every
thing he’d learned about human behavior.

Paul rose from his chair, deposited his empty glass on
the sterling-silver serving tray in the corner and, exiting
the office, said, “Get her out from under your skin quick,
little brother, so we can get back to work.”

Alone at last and happy for it, Garrett closed his eyes.
He recalled vividly how Pamela had responded to his kisses.
She was not a woman who had been kissed often. He’d been able to tell that almost the first time their lips met.

Certainly he’d realized it the first time he explored her
mouth with his tongue. She’d been shocked initially. Then,
once she had a better understanding of what was happen
ing, she’d blossomed, coming to life under his deeply probing kisses.

And when at last she’d found the curiosity or courage or passion to thrust her tongue between his lips and deep into
his mouth, Garrett’s hunger for her had turned ravenous.

Even thinking about Pamela caused Garrett’s cock to awaken from its slumber. Immediately, he cursed him
self—and Pamela as well—damning himself for wanting her
as much as he did, and her for leaving his passion unre
quited. She was a thief, after all. Certainly not much time
would go by before she was arrested or caught by
Jonathon Darwell, and then her corpse would be found in the prairie
.

Any lawyer with political aspirations would be a mind
less fool to spend more than two seconds thinking about
the future of a thief, no matter how gorgeous she happened
to be, no matter how statuesque her body, no matter how full and
firm her breasts.

To prove to himself that Pamela Bragg was just a thief, he would ride out at night and watch her house. He
doubted she really intended to give the stolen money away,
but he’d give her the opportunity to prove her innocence.
If he uncovered her guilt, however, then he could turn his
back on her without feeling that he’d abandoned her.

With savage determination, he pushed Pamela out of his
thoughts, to concentrate on problems he had some control
over.

H
ow much longer could the Midnight Phantom continue
to fight Jonathon Darwell?

Garrett had spent countless hours planning every move
in each raid on one of Jonathon Darwell’s business operations
in Whitetail Creek. Such care had enabled him to continue his raids. But clearly Pamela hadn’t planned her moves. Garrett
was astonished that she’d been able to crawl over the stone
wall without being seen, but he was certain it would have been impossible for her to elude the guards upon leaving the
Darwell compound.

He was thinking about her again.

“Damn her,” he said through clenched teeth, bolting
to his feet.

He wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to get her out
of his mind, but he was going to—and soon.

As he straightened his necktie, he went through a mental
list of women who were more than willing to attract his attention and keep it through a long and passionate night.
As he thought about them, it surprised him that none seemed particularly enticing. In one way or another, all
of Garrett’s lovers paled when compared to Pamela Bragg.

He left the room, angry with himself.

* * * *

“What the hell do you mean you thought somebody
was on the roof?” Jonathon Darwell asked, contempt icing
each word.

The guard’s eyes were shifting right and left, apparently
too afraid to look into Jonathon Darwell’s eyes.

“Well?” Darwell demanded, still sitting in a chair behind
his desk.

“I can’t be sure. I thought I saw something in the
shadows. It was dark, though, and when me and the boys gave the roof a real good look, we didn’t see nothin’.”

Darwell’s gaze went from the guard to his son, Mi
chael. The head guard had already been fired then tossed
into the street with a broken nose and several cracked ribs
so that everyone would know the price paid for failing to carry out Jonathon Darwell’s orders.

“What do you think, Michael? Should we keep him on
or give him the same treatment we gave his boss?”

The gunman blanched, but he did not back down, nor did
he beg for mercy. His courage, not easy to find in those of
his element, turned the winds of fate in his direction.

“Let’s keep him around,” Michael decided. “He’s the only one who saw anything at all, and he knows what
happens when hired guns allow thieves to steal from us.”

Jonathon nodded slowly, pleased with his son’s deci
sion. He had been grooming Michael to, one day, take over
the reins of the family’s legal and illegal business ventures.
Lately he was pleased with the leadership qualities Michael had been demonstrating. Earlier that day, his son had personally supervised the beating given to the head
guard. He had even been the one whose fist had shattered
the hog-tied man’s nose.

When the gunman left the room, Jonathon looked at his son, shaking his head slowly. “The Midnight Phantom
had to have gone through all our bedrooms last night. He opened my safe, took the cash, then closed it up again as
pretty as you please.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw, the only outward sign of the rage boiling inside him. “He entered my home during
a huge celebration, went here, there, and everywhere. Af
ter he’d gotten what he came for, he left without ever being
seen. He’s called the Midnight Phantom, but I want to call him a dead man.”

He picked up an expensive, ivory-handled pen from his
desk and snapped it in half.

“I want him done away with, Michael. Now. Tonight. Tomorrow at the latest. I don’t care about the money. I can make more. What I can’t afford to lose is my well-earned reputation. Everyone must know that to cross Jonathon Darwell is to commit suicide. I don’t want anyone thinking for even a second that I’m vulnerable, that I can
be robbed.” He forced his tone to sound calm as he battled with the seething hatred that boiled inside him. “The
newspapers make that damn Midnight Phantom sound like a ghost.”

Michael said quietly, “I own one of the writers for
The
Whitetail Creek Star.
I’ll get him to pen some stories about Phantom
that’ll change the way people think of him. I’ll have him
painted as an atheist, or a drunkard, or maybe a rapist.”

Jonathon nodded, liking the way Michael’s mind worked.

“Do that. And double the guards here. The thought of that Phantom touching your mother’s portrait makes me ill, I tell you.
The Midnight Phantom must die!”

* * * *

By sundown, Pamela had decided to whom the two thousand dollars stolen from Jonathon Darwell’s safe should go.
All she had to do now was ride out and place the money where the beneficiaries would find it. Her anonymity would remain intact.

Three families, all injured by Darwell’s greed, would re
ceive the money. Five hundred dollars for the Sanders family, and the same for the Beaumonts. And that left a
thousand dollars for the Pellmans. They would receive
more because they had been most damaged by Jonathon
Darwell and because they had the largest family. The thou
sand dollars would give them a new start in life, a chance
to pick up stakes and move somewhere far away from Darwell and his conniving offspring.

The difficult decisions having been made, Pamela should have been ready to ride. After all, it would take a fifteen-
mile circuit to deliver the money to these families in one night. That meant she’d have to take advantage of all the
dark hours if she wanted to get some sleep eventually.

But she wasn’t dressed for riding. She was still in the same old thin cotton dress she’d put on that afternoon when she’d awakened from a fitful slumber.

On the bed were her Levi’s, fresh and clean from the laundering she’d given them that day. Beside them was
the single white cotton nightgown she owned but seldom
wore. The lovely gown had been a gift from her brother
the previous summer, when, wistfully, she had remarked
that she didn’t own anything that was pretty and feminine.

And it was pretty and feminine. No getting around that.
Jedediah wasn’t much of a romantic, so he’d had the woman at the seamstress shop pick out the gown. Ankle
length, with lace trim at the wrists and cuffs and a scooped
neckline, it was soft and white and beautiful.

How many times had she worn it in the past year?
Three? Her birthday. New Year’s Eve. Wasn’t there one
other time? She couldn’t remember exactly when.

Why should she wear something so pretty when there
was no man to see her in it? At least, not the right man. Her brother didn’t count, though she loved him dearly. It
didn’t seem right that she should have received such a gift
from a brother instead of from a husband or beau.

These thoughts, so strange for her to ponder, had kept her in the small cabin and had delayed her preparations for her philanthropic mission.

What if the Midnight Phantom decided to visit? He’d arrive at midnight, true to his name, wouldn’t he? He knew
Pamela’s identity, she’d discovered. When he’d caught her in
Jonathon Darwell’s bedroom, it had taken him a second or
two, but then he’d recognized her. At some time or other,
she
had
to have been introduced to him when he wasn’t wearing the mask over his eyes. But no matter how long she thought about it, she couldn’t picture any man she knew disguised as the mysterious—and much too attractive—Midnight Phantom.