Lorraine Heath (9 page)

But he had hurt her once. He wouldn’t risk doing it again. She deserved a man whose heart wasn’t tethered to the past.

She’d never find a man like that if she continued to live here alone. What had the bastard who murdered her family done to her? Austin knew he hadn’t raped her but he had made her do something that haunted her. Dee had been right when she told him that not all prisons came with walls. Austin deeply wished he possessed the key that would set Loree free from the past.

She sighed and snuggled closer against him. He was tempted to stay here all day, just holding her, listening to the little noises she made, enjoying the scent of flowers that was part of her, but he knew himself well enough to know his resistance was weakening.

And if he made love to her again, he’d have to stay. The first time, a shared need for comfort had propelled them. The guilt still gnawed at him, but in some strange way, he could justify walking away. But if his needs alone drove him to bury himself deeply inside her …

He pressed his lips to her temple. He needed to be gone by nightfall.

Loree watched Austin work as though the hounds of hell nipped at his heels. The planks of wood fell to the ground with a steady rhythm. And with each thud, she knew he was that much closer to leaving.

Near dusk, they stood and watched the glowing embers slowly die. Loree wrapped her arms around her middle. “I should have done this a long time ago.” She turned and met his gaze. “Thank you.”

He touched her cheek. Smiling wryly, he dropped his hand to his side. “You had a bit of soot on your cheek. Thought I could clean it off, but I just made it worse. Seems to be a habit of mine where you’re concerned.”

“Guess a bath is in order then.”

He tapped his hat against his thigh. “Not for me. Not tonight.”

He strode past her to the porch. Her heart tightened as he lifted his saddle and with long sure strides, approached the stallion.

“Surely, you’ll want to eat before you leave,” she said even though she knew the longer he stayed, the harder it would be to watch him go.

“I’ll get something in town.”

She wrung her hands together. “It’ll be midnight before you get there.”

“I’ll find something.” He cinched the saddle and dropped the stirrup. He slung the saddlebags over the horse’s rump.

“Promise me you’ll have a doctor look at your back.”

He stilled. “I’m not worth your worry, Loree.”

“Promise me,” she repeated obstinately.

He glanced over his shoulder and smiled, the first genuine smile she’d seen cross his face, and it very nearly stole her breath away. She wished he’d given it to her at noon instead of in the fading twilight where it would be nothing but a shadowed memory.

“I promise,” he said.

“You keep your promises, don’t you?”

“Every one I’ve ever made.”

“Then promise me that you’ll take care of yourself as well.”

“Only if you promise to do the same.”

She nodded, her throat constricting with all that remained unsaid. How could she have been intimate with a man and not know how to tell him everything that she wanted him to know?

“Think about moving to town,” he said quietly.

“I can’t.”

“A woman like you deserves more than memories in her life—”

“You need to get going before it gets much darker,” she whispered, the tears stinging the backs of her eyes.

“When I’m finished with my business in Austin, I could stop back by here—”

“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “It’d be best if you didn’t.”

“I’m going to worry about you, Sugar,” he said in a low voice as though he wasn’t comfortable admitting his concern.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him.

He gave a brusque nod and, with one lithe movement, swung up into his saddle. “If you need to get in touch with me—for any reason—I’ll be staying at the Driskill Hotel.”

“That’s a fancy hotel.”

“So I hear.”

He touched the tip of his finger to the brim of his hat. “Miss Grant, you are without a doubt, the sweetest woman I’ve ever known.”

He sent his black stallion into a gallop.

Loree watched until he disappeared in the fading twilight. Then she dropped to her knees and wept. He was wrong. A woman like her didn’t deserve more than memories in her life.

She deserved to hang.

Austin walked the streets of the state capital wondering just what in the hell he thought he was doing. His tracking experience was limited to finding cow dung over the plains of West Texas. Dallas had taught him to use a rifle, gun, and knife but even those skills were useless here. He’d left his gun in his saddlebag in his room at the hotel.

He’d arrived near midnight, anxious to register for a room and bed down for the night. He’d been bone weary and had expected to fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

But the pillow didn’t smell like the one that graced Loree’s bed. As comfortable as the bed was, it didn’t have the one thing he wanted: a tiny lady who had somehow managed to slip beneath the gates that surrounded his heart.

It was ludicrous to care for her as much as he did after knowing her such a short time, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Every time he heard soft laughter, he turned to see if it was hers. When he passed women on the street, he compared them to the woman who had tended his wound—and he found them all lacking. None carried her guileless smile. None walked without pretense. He couldn’t see bare toes, smudged cheeks, or golden eyes filled with tears.

And he wanted what he couldn’t have: to see those eyes filled with happiness. But even the thought of going to her had no place in his heart when he had nothing to offer her. He’d only bring her more pain until he cleared his name. If he took her to Leighton, she’d have to endure the suspicious stares that followed his every step. The shadow of his past would touch her, and he couldn’t stand the thought. With that realization, his determination to find Boyd McQueen’s killer increased.

He walked through the doors of a saloon and began to feel more in his element. Saloons didn’t differ that much from town to town.

Wiping a glass, the bartender raised a dark brow. “What can I do for you?”

Austin tilted his head toward the sign above the bar that boasted
BARTON SPRINGS HIGH GRADE WHISKIES.

“I’ll take a whiskey.”

The bartender smiled. “Good choice.”

He poured the amber brew into a glass and set it in front of Austin. Austin leaned forward, placed his elbows on the counter, and wrapped his hands around the glass. “You get a lot of business in here?”

The bartender nodded. “At night mostly. Not that much during the day.”

“Could you get word out that I’m paying fifty dollars to anyone who knows anything about a man named Boyd McQueen?”

The bartender sucked one end of his mustache into the corner of his mouth and began to chew, his eyes narrowing in thought. “Other fella’s paying five hundred.”

Austin’s stomach tightened into a hard ball. “What fella?”

The bartender nodded toward the back. “The fella at that table in the corner.”

Austin turned and studied the man sitting at a distant table. Dressed in a black jacket and red brocade vest, he reminded Austin of a gambler. His fingers nimbly set one card after another on the table.

“Just sits there and plays cards by himself all day,” the bartender offered.

“I’ll take the bottle of whiskey,” Austin said as he laid down his money and grabbed the neck of the bottle along with his glass. He ambled across the hardwood floor, his spurs jangling. He found comfort in the sound he’d been without for five years. “Hear you’re looking for information on Boyd McQueen.”

The man raised his eyes from the cards, pinning Austin with his dark gaze. “Yep.”

“Found out anything so far?”

“Nope.”

Not appreciating the man’s brief answers, Austin tethered his temper. “Five hundred dollars is a lot of money—”

“Ain’t coming out of my pocket.”

Suspicion lurked in the back of Austin’s mind. “Whose pocket is it coming out of?”

“Your brother’s.” With the toe of his boot, the man shoved a chair away from the table. “Have a seat.”

“You’re the detective Dallas hired?”

“Yep.”

Cautiously Austin settled into the chair. “How did you know who I was?”

“You’ve got your brother’s eyes.”

Austin released a breath of disgust. “No wonder you haven’t located the person who murdered Boyd. Dallas has brown eyes.” He leaned forward, opening his eyes wide. “Mine are blue.”

“They’re shaped the same, and they both show a man of little patience. You’ve got his thick brows, his square chin, and a jaw that tightens when you’re angry.” With one hand, he swept up the cards spread over the table and rearranged them with a quiet shuffle. “And you walk like a man who just spent five years in prison and doesn’t know if he can trust anyone.”

Austin downed his whiskey, refilled his glass, and poured the amber liquid into the empty glass resting beside the man’s arm. He didn’t particularly like that the man had summed him up so easily and precisely. Between the town folk actually thinking him capable of murder and Becky’s betrayal, he’d lost a great deal of his faith in his fellow man. Although Loree’s touch had certainly made him want to believe in the worth of people. “Dallas didn’t tell me your name.”

“Wylan Alexander.”

“What brought you to this town?”

“Your brother sent me a telegram.”

Austin leaned forward. “What do you think of my theory that Boyd meant this town and not me when he wrote ‘Austin’ in the dirt?”

Wylan slapped the cards down on the table and swallowed all the whiskey in his glass before meeting Austin’s gaze. “I’m here, ain’t I?”

“But you think it’s hogwash.”

Wylan shook his head and patiently began laying the cards one face up, six face down. “I’ll admit when I got your brother’s telegram telling me what you thought, I laughed out loud, but I’m as desperate as you are and just as angry. It’s never taken me more than six weeks to solve a case. This one’s been hanging around too long and it’s ruining my reputation, not to mention being hard on my pride. If McQueen hadn’t written your name in the dirt, I’d say he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and some drifter got lucky.”

Austin rubbed his hands up and down his face. “But he did write my name. Damn, I wish my parents had been living in Galveston when I was born.”

Wylan chuckled. “Yep, might have saved us all some grief.”

Austin took a sip of the whiskey. “You haven’t learned anything at all?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“So what do we do?”

Wylan began to turn up cards and rearrange the ones on the table. “We wait.”

Waiting had never been Austin’s strong suit. He had thought prison guards had beat patience into him, but now that he was once again his own man—no longer a slave of the state—impatience had become his companion.

He had spent three days walking the streets, talking to people in saloons. The seedier the saloon, the more hopeful he had been that he would glean some information. Although Boyd McQueen had appeared upstanding to many in the community, he had possessed a darker side that curdled Austin’s gut. He had to admit that it didn’t bother him that the man had come to an untimely end. His only regret was that he had been the one to pay for it.

He had hoped by now that he would have had a glimmer of information. He walked past the post office and approached the Griedenweiss stables. He had a need to ride fast and hard over the hills, to feel Black Thunder’s hooves pounding the ground beneath him, taking him away from an elusive quest toward … an unknown future.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a slight movement and shifted his gaze. A boy no older than seven was pulling a wooden wagon along the boardwalk. A sign hung over the side of the wagon.

PUPYS
4
SALE

2
BITS

Austin changed directions, ambled across the street, and easily caught up with the boy. “What you got here?” he asked.

The boy ground to a halt and furrowed his brow. “Don’t you read?”

Austin smiled. “Yeah, I do. What kind of dogs are these?”

Confusion filled the boy’s brown eyes as he swiped his nose with his sleeve. “The kind that’s got four legs and a tail.”

Smothering a grin, Austin hunkered down beside the wagon. The boy obviously didn’t know a lot about breeding. Austin peered at the two puppies tumbling over each other. The tiny brown and white one caught his fancy. He scooped it up and studied it from all angles.

“That one’s a boy,” the child told him.

“Yeah, I can see that. How big was his mama?”

The boy held his hand level with his waist. “ ‘Bout this big.”

“Think he’ll be a good hunting dog?”

The boy nodded his head briskly. Austin figured he didn’t know if the dog would be good at hunting, but he needed to get rid of him. The puppy squirmed, yipped, and gnawed on his thumb. A fighter. He liked that. “I’ll take this one.”

“The other’s one better,” the boy said.

“Why is that?”

“On account of the other one’s a girl. If you git her, some day you can git more dogs that won’t cost you nothing.”

Grinning, Austin unfolded his body and reached into his pocket for a quarter. “I only need one.”

He handed the silver coin to the boy. “Don’t spend it all in one place,” Austin said, tucking the dog beneath his arm.

Feeling more content than he had in days, Austin ambled to the livery and had one of the workers saddle Black Thunder. He mounted the horse and settled the dog into the crook of his thigh. Then he turned the stallion west and prodded him into an easy lope.

He reached his destination just as the sun began to paint its farewell across the sky. It had been a long time since he’d thought of the sunset as anything but the sun going down, yet he almost imagined he heard the fiery ball announcing the end of its daily journey.

His heart pounding as the weathered house came into view, he brought Black Thunder to a walk. He saw Loree sitting on the porch, her elbows on her knees, her chin cradled in her palms as she gazed into the distance. Her braid was draped over her shoulder, the bottom curling near her waist. As though sensing his presence, she straightened and looked in his direction. Slowly, she rose to her feet, a tentative smile playing across her lips. “Hello.”