Gideon, Robin - Desire of the Phantom [Ecstasy in the Old West] (Siren Publishing Classic) (33 page)

“Who is
they
?” Garrett asked, glancing over at Pamela.
He ran his palm lightly up her leg beneath the skirt of her
blue-green satin gown.
He touched her through her stockings then ran his finger
along the narrow patch of flesh above her stocking top. “Your legs are perfect, by the way.”

“The moneyed folks of Whitetail Creek. They’ll say I corrupted
you.” The thought brought a laugh from Pamela. “Imagine
that, me corrupting you!”

Even Garrett had to laugh at the absurdity of that notion.

“Do you really care what those people think of you?”

Pamela studied him for a moment before answering. “Not really. They’re important to me only because they are im
portant to you. They’re your people.”

“No, they’re not,” Garrett said quietly.

There was little conviction in his voice because he knew
she had spoken the painful truth. Those people were his
people—with their gossiping, their backstabbing, machi
nations and manipulations, double-dealing and blatant
lies—and he knew how to play their games with the best
of them.

“Not all of them are bad,” Pamela said, propping herself
up on an elbow, until the effort became too great and she
reclined again on the seat. Besides, she liked having her
legs over Garrett’s lap and his hand running lightly, casually
over her. “I did meet a few people who were kind to me.”

“Money doesn’t necessarily make a person evil, you know.”

“Yes, I know that,” Pamela replied, aware of her own preju
dices, though not confident of overcoming them.

Unspoken questions faced her and Garrett. Difficult
questions that could not be avoided forever. But she wasn’t
going to be concerned with forever, just with this night.

What will happen next? she wondered. Individually
and together, they were dedicated to bringing Jonathon Darwell to justice, dedicated to seeing that he did not continue to profit from his criminality. But how long could they continue to fight him? Darwell was too powerful. He
was, after all, trying to hire her brother to kill the Midnight
Phantom. And Garrett had said he would not allow Pamela to continue her crusade against Darwell. Nonetheless, she would not stop—not for Garrett, not for anyone. She refused to allow any man to make such an important decision about her life for her.

Garrett began to button his shirt, and Pamela raised her foot,
stopping his progress with the toe of her kidskin slipper.

“Don’t,” she ordered. “I enjoy looking at your chest.” She thrust her foot inside Garrett’s shirt to rub his chest
and ribs with it. He smiled at her, clearly finding her open
ness surprising. “Why
don’t you take your shirt off instead? Take it off for me,”
she said, mimicking an earlier order to her from the Mid
night Phantom.

“Just my shirt?” Garrett asked, a single eyebrow raised
mockingly.

“That will do for starters.”

Garrett grinned, but he continued buttoning his shirt,
pushing Pamela’s feet out of his lap when she continued to
thwart his efforts.

“Stop it now,” he said, his grin widening. “The last
thing I need is a discussion
with your brother on the sanctity of your virtue. He’s got a reputation with guns that—”

“Is as renowned as your reputation with women?” Pamela
cut in. There was a hint of anger beneath the lightness of her tone. She could not forget that Garrett was her first and
only lover, but she was not his first, second, or even third. And she probably wasn’t his last.

“My reputation is inflated, and your brother has the corpses
to prove his.”

Feeling just a little threatened, as though her family
honor had somehow been put on trial by this lawyer, Pamela
said a bit softly, defensively, “He’s never killed an honest
man. You should know that.”

Garrett patted Pamela’s leg, looking at her for a beat without
saying anything. “Yes, I know that. He’s a good and honest
man, and the things he does—the men he goes after and brings in—they deserve whatever happens to them. It’s
because he’s an honest man that I agreed to represent him
awhile back. He was being cheated by politicians in Cold Ridge,
and that just didn’t seem right to me.”

“Justice is important to you, isn’t it? It’s why you be
came the Midnight Phantom.”

Garrett nodded. “I didn’t actually become the Midnight
Phantom,” he said, grinning just a little at the feebleness of
his excuse. “I sort of adopted the role, as an actor does.”

“What made you think of it? Anything specific?”

“I’ve been fighting with Jonathon Darwell for years. Since I became a lawyer. Maybe even longer than that. Some of the battles he’s been victorious, and some I’ve won. But it wasn’t until I started working on the hospital, and saw that bastard worming his way into the project, that I re
alized how truly dangerous he is. He puts on a pretty face,
like stage makeup, and then people don’t realize how sadistic and dangerous he is. I’ve seen how he’s been able to manipulate the entire legal system, twisting it upside down until even I don’t have any faith in it, and it’s what I’ve dedicated my life to. That’s why I became the Midnight Phantom.”

Garrett shook his shoulders and looked toward the heavens, taking in a single deep breath, holding it for a second
then exhaling slowly. It wasn’t until he was visibly relaxed, had
released his anger toward Jonathon Darwell, that he looked to Pamela again.

“Why did you decide Jonathon Darwell needed to be taken
down a notch or two?” he asked.

“First, I should tell you that Richard Darwell has put a ten
thousand dollar bounty on your head. He’s tried to hire Jedediah to go after you, but Jedediah hasn’t given him an answer yet.”

“Ten thousand dollars? That’s a lot of money.”

“If Jedediah takes the job—”

“Don’t think of that now,” Garrett cut in, feigning indif
ference to the information he’d just heard. He patted Pamela’s
leg and asked, “Tell me, why are you out to take Darwell
down?”

Pamela closed her eyes. She had a much more personal reason for hating Jonathon Darwell, though she wasn’t at all
certain she could tell her story without breaking into tears.

“Come on, I’ve been honest with you,” Garrett prodded. “But if the answer is too painful…”

“It’s nothing that he did to me personally,” Pamela began,
speaking slowly and clearly, looking at the stars overhead
as the carriage rolled slowly down the narrow road toward
her house. “The thing about Darwell that’s so dangerous is
his money and what he does with it. Many years ago, I
had a cousin who never could quite match up with the rest of the Bragg family. He wasn’t a bad child, really,
just a little slow. One of Darwell’s hired men offered him
money to take part in a bank robbery. Jonathon Darwell was
behind the whole thing, of course. He was the one who
had planned it all. He needed this particular bank de
stroyed so that he could take over. Anyway, the robbery didn’t exactly go as planned. My cousin was caught, and
he made a deal with the sheriff. He gave him the names
of the men who had robbed the bank with him. Those
men were eventually caught and put in jail. Vigilantes dragged them out of their cells on the very first night and
hung them all in the town square.”

“And then what happened?” he asked. “Though I’m not at all certain I want to know the answer.”

“Stupid, sadistic pride. The brothers of the hanged men
came after my cousin’s family, looking for revenge. My
mother, father, a brother, and a sister were visiting them at the time. Jedediah and I were in town buying provisions.”

“And the mob got its revenge,” Garrett said, hoping to
finish the story so that Pamela wouldn’t have to.

“Yes, they did. They set fire to the house, shooting everyone who rushed out. My entire family was killed.”

“And that’s why Jedediah became a bounty hunter,” Garrett said. “
And why you hate rich people as much as you do.”

They traveled the remainder of the way back to Pamela’s cabin in silence, each mulling over private thoughts and fears. Garrett had rearranged his clothing so that he looked
nearly as impeccable as he had when he’d come to pick her up, Pamela noted, with a smile. It wasn’t really himself he was worried about but her reputation with Jedediah.

“My brother really isn’t the cold-blooded killer the townsfolk say he is,” Pamela said, keeping her voice down as Garrett reined in the carriage horse. She didn’t want to
awaken Jedediah, and it rather surprised her that he wasn’t
standing at the doorway already.

“I know he’s not,” Garrett replied.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back,” Pamela said, rushing into
the cabin to tell Jedediah that she had returned home safe
and sound. She also wanted a few minutes of pri
vacy with Garrett provided her overly protective older brother would
be so kind.

She lit the candle on the small kitchen table and carried
it around the cabin with her, looking for her brother. He
was nowhere to be found. On her pillow was a single sheet
of paper. Written in Jedediah’s sloppy handwriting, the note said he had decided to accept Jonathon Darwell’s offer to hunt
the Midnight Phantom. It added that he was leaving imme
diately for Juniper Junction, where the Phantom was rumored to have a hideout and would return in two or three days.

Pamela felt she had been struck in the stomach. She could
hardly breathe. She placed a hand against the bedroom
wall to support herself.

Her worst fears had come true. Her brother—her
deadly, dangerous brother—was hunting her lover. There
was nothing she could do to stop Jedediah now.

“Pamela, are you all right in there?” Garrett called out, stand
ing in the doorway.

For an instant, she thought of burning her brother’s let
ter, as if by destroying it, she would also destroy the mean
ing and intent in the words. But this wasn’t a problem that would go away if she simply didn’t look at it. What Garrett
Randolph did not know, in this instance, could very likely
get him killed. And then where would she be? What would she have besides anger if something happened to
Garrett, her precious and passionate Phantom?

“Pamela?”

She could hear the worry in his voice this time. “Come
in, Garrett. There’s something I’ve got to show you,” she
said. She thought the Fates must surely be very angry
with her to treat her so cruelly, doing this to her at the
end of an evening in which she and Garrett—not she and
the Phantom—had finally become lovers, and he’d taken her
to yet another level of ecstasy.