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Authors: Elizabeth Lowell

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“The mine,” Eve said. “The Lyons’ gold mine.”

“Spanish treasure?”

“Yes!”

Reno shrugged and bent toward Eve again.

“I already won that, remember?” he asked.

“Just the journal. It’s no good to you without the symbols,” she said quickly.

He paused, watching her through narrowed eyes. She might have been eager for his kisses earlier, but now she was eager only to be free of his touch.

Abruptly Reno removed his hand from Eve. He was damned if he would allow himself to be teased into wanting a girl more than she wanted him. That was the kind of mistake a smart man never made more than once.

“What symbols?” he asked skeptically.

“The ones Don Lyon’s ancestor carved along the trail to mark dead ends and dangers and gold and everything else that would help.”

Slowly Reno moved back, giving Eve more room. But he was careful not to get beyond arm’s reach of her. He had seen Eve move. She had an unsettling speed, every bit as fast as a cat.

“All right,
gata
, talk to me about Spanish gold.”

“My name is Eve, not cat,” she said.

She grabbed the camisole that Reno had tossed aside and yanked it on.

“Eve, huh? Somehow I’m not surprised. Well, my name isn’t Adam, so don’t try feeding me any apples.”

“Your loss, not mine,” she muttered. “I’m told my apple pie is the best to be found west of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon line, and maybe south of it as well.”

Hurriedly Eve fastened the camisole with fingers that were unusually clumsy. She knew she had just had a narrow escape.

And she was grateful that gunfighters kept their word.

“I’m more interested in gold than I am in apple pie,” Reno retorted. “Remember?”

He stroked Eve’s thigh. The action was both a caress and a threat.

“Don Lyon was the descendant of Spanish gentry,” Eve said quickly.

Then she looked from Reno’s hand to his eyes, plainly reminding him of their bargain. Slowly he lifted his hand.

“One of his forebears had a license from the king to explore for metals in New Mexico,” Eve said. “Another ancestor was an officer assigned to guard a gold mine run by a Jesuit priest.”

“Jesuit, not Franciscan?”

“No. It was before the Spanish king threw the Jesuits out of the New World.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“The journal’s first entry is dated in the fifteen-fifties or eighties,” Eve said. “It’s hard to tell. The ink is faded and the page is torn.”

When Eve didn’t say anything else immediately, Reno’s hand went to her belly. He spread his fingers wide, almost spanning her hipbones.

Her breath came in with a rushing sound. It was as though he were measuring the space for a baby to grow.

“Go on,” Reno said.

He knew his voice was too deep, too husky, but there was nothing he could do about it, any more than he could control the heavy running of his desire, no matter how foolish he knew it was to want the calculating little saloon girl.

The heat from her body was like a drug seeping through his skin and being absorbed into his blood, making it harder with each heartbeat to remember that she was just one more girl out to get whatever she could by using her body as a lure.

Then Reno realized that Eve had said nothing more. He looked up and saw her watching him with yellow cat’s eyes.

“Going back on your word so quickly?” Eve asked.

Angrily Reno lifted his hand.

“I think it must be 1580,” Eve said.

“More like 1867,” Reno retorted.

“What?”

Without answering, Reno looked at the frail cotton of the camisole, which served only to heighten rather than to conceal the allure of Eve’s breasts.

“Reno?”

When he looked up, Eve was afraid she had lost the dangerous game she was playing. Reno’s eyes were a pale green, and they burned.

“It’s 1867,” he said, “summer, we’re on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, and I’m trying to decide if I want to hear any more fairy tales about Spanish gold before I take what I won in a card game.”

“It’s not a fairy tale! It’s all in the journal. There was a Captain Leon and someone called Sosa.”

“Sosa?”

“Yes,” Eve said quickly. “Gaspar de Sosa. And a Jesuit Priest. And a handful of soldiers.”

Through a screen of thick brown eyelashes, she watched Reno warily, praying that he believed her.

“I’m listening,” he said. “Not real patiently, mind you, but I’m listening.”

What Reno didn’t say was that he was listening very carefully. He had tried to retrace the trail of the Espejo and Sosa expeditions more than once. Both expeditions had found gold and silver mines that had yielded vast wealth.

And all of their mines had been “lost” before their riches ran out.

“Sosa and Leon were given license to find and develop mines for the king,” Eve said, frowning as she tried to remember all that she had learned from the Lyons and the old journal. “The expedition went north all the way to the land of the Yutahs.”

“Today we call them Utes,” Reno said.

“Sosa followed Espejo, who was the one who gave the land the name of New Mexico,” she said hurriedly. “And he was the one who called the routes leading out of all the mines and back to Mexico the Old Spanish Trail.”

“Nice of them to write in English so you could figure all this out,” Reno said sardonically.

“What do you mean?” Eve asked, giving him a quick glance. “They wrote in Spanish. Funny Spanish. If s the very devil to puzzle out.”

Reno’s head lifted sharply. Eve’s words, rather than her body, finally had his full attention.

“You can read the old Spanish writings?” he asked.

“Don taught me how before his eyes got too bad to make out the words. I would read them to him,
and he would try to remember what his father had said about those passages, and his grandfather, too.”

“Family tales. Fairy tales. Same difference.”

Eve ignored the interruption. “Then I’d write down what Don remembered in the journal’s margins.”

“Couldn’t he write?”

“Not for the past few years. His hands were too knotted up.”

Unconsciously Eve laced her own slender fingers together, remembering the pain the old couple suffered in cold weather. Donna’s hands had been little better than her husband’s.

“I guess they spent too many winters in gold camps where there was more whiskey than firewood,” she said huskily.

“All right, Eve Lyon. Keep talking.”

“My name isn’t Lyon. They were my employers, not my blood relatives.”

Reno had caught the change in Eve’s voice and the subtle tension in her body. He wondered if she was lying.

“Employers?” he asked.

“They…” Eve looked away.

Reno waited.

“They bought me off an orphan train in Denver five years ago,” she said in a low voice.

Even as Reno opened his mouth to make a sarcastic remark about the futility of tugging on his heartstrings with sad stories, he realized that Eve could easily be telling the truth. The Lyons could indeed have bought her from an orphan train as though she were a side of bacon.

It wouldn’t have been the first time such a thing had happened. Reno had heard many other such stories. Some of the orphans found good homes.
Most didn’t. They were worked, and worked hard, by homesteaders or townspeople who had no cash to hire help, but had enough food to spare for another mouth.

Slowly Reno nodded. “Makes sense. Bet their hands had started to go bad.”

“They could barely shuffle, much less deal cards. Especially Don.”

“Were they cardsharps?”

Eve closed her eyes for an instant, remembering her shame and fear the first time she had been caught cheating. She had been fourteen and so nervous, the cards had scattered all over when she shuffled. In picking the cards up, one of the men noticed the slight roughness that marked aces, kings, and queens.

“They were gamblers,” Eve said tonelessly.

“Cheats.”

Her eyelids flinched. “Sometimes.”

“When they thought they could get away with it,” Reno said, not bothering to hide his contempt.

“No,” Eve said in a soft voice. “Only when they had to. Most of the time the other players were too drunk to notice what cards they were holding, much less what they were dealt.”

“So the nice old couple taught you how to colddeck and bottom-deal,” Reno said.

“They also taught me how to speak and read Spanish, how to ride any horse I could get my hands on, how to cook and sew and—”

“Cheat at cards,” he finished. “I’ll bet they taught you a lot of other things, too. How much did they charge for a few hours with you?”

Nothing in Reno’s voice or expression revealed the anger that churned in his gut at the thought of Eve’s beautiful body being bought by any drifter
with a handful of change and a hard need filling his jeans.

“What?” Eve asked.

“How much did your
employers
charge a man to get under your skirt?”

For an instant Eve was too shocked to speak. Her hand flashed out so quickly that only a few men would have been able to counter the blow.

Reno was one of them, but it was a near thing. Just before her palm would have connected with his cheek, he caught her wrist and flattened her out on the bedroll beneath him in the same violent motion.

“Don’t try that again,” he said harshly. “I know all about wide-eyed little hussies who slap a man when he suggests they’re anything less than a lady. The next time you lift a hand to me, I won’t be a gentleman about it.”

Eve made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. “Gentleman? You? No gentleman would force himself on a lady!”

“But then, you’re not a lady,” Reno said. “You’re something that was bought off an orphan train and sold whenever a man was interested enough to hand over a dollar.”

“No man,
ever
, paid for anything from me.”

“You just gave your, uh, favors away?” Reno suggested ironically. “And the men were so grateful, they left a little present on the bedside table, is that it?”

“No man ever got under my skirt, with or without paying,” Eve said icily.

Reno rolled aside, freeing Eve. Before she could move away, his hand settled at the apex of her thighs, where a bronze thicket guarded her sultry core.

“Not true,
gata.
I’ve been under your skirt, and I’m a man.”

“Go to hell, gunfighter,” Eve said through clenched teeth, her voice steady despite the tears of shame and rage in her eyes.

Reno saw only the rage. It occurred to him that he would be wise not to turn his back on his little saloon girl until she cooled off. Eve was quick, very quick, and at the moment she looked fully capable of picking up the shotgun and emptying both barrels into him.

“Mad enough to kill, aren’t you?” he asked sardonically. “Well, don’t worry. Nobody ever died of it. Now, talk.”

Eve watched Reno through glittering golden slits. He lifted one black eyebrow.

“If you don’t feel like talking,” he said, “I can find something else for that quick little tongue of yours to do.”

“S
OSA
found gold,” Eve said, her voice vibrating with anger. “He paid the King’s Quinto and bribed the other officials and kept the truth about the mines to himself.”

Reno looked away from Eve’s flushed cheeks and pale lips, feeling something close to shame for pushing her so hard. Then he cursed himself for feeling anything at all for the saloon girl who had done her best to get him killed while she stole everything in sight and ran to safety.

“What was the truth about the mines?” Reno asked roughly.

“All of them weren’t listed for the tax collectors. The silver mines, yes, and the turquoise mine and even two of the gold mines. But not the third one. That one he kept to himself.”

“Go on.”

Though Reno wasn’t looking at Eve any longer, she thought he sounded truly interested for the
first time. She drew a discreet, relieved breath and kept talking.

“Only Leon’s eldest son knew about the secret gold mine, and then that son’s eldest son, and so on until the journal came into Don Lyon’s hands at the turn of the century,” Eve said. “By then, Spain was long gone from the West, the Leon name had become Lyon, and they spoke English rather than Spanish.”

Reno turned back to look at Eve, drawn by the shifting emotions in her voice.

“If there’s a gold mine in the family,” he asked, “why was Don Lyon making his living cheating at cards?”

“About a hundred years ago, they lost the mines,” Eve said simply.

“A hundred years. Was that when the Jesuits were thrown out?”

Eve nodded.

“The family was closely tied to the Jesuits,” she continued. “They had enough advance warning to bury the gold that had been smelted but not shipped. They covered over all signs of the mine and fled east across the mountains. They didn’t stop running until they came to the English colonies.”

“Didn’t any Leon ever try to find the gold they had left behind?” Reno asked.

“Don’s great-grandfather did, and his grandfather, and then his father. They never came back.” Eve shrugged. “Don always wanted the gold mine, but he didn’t want to die for it.”

“Smart man.”

She smiled sadly. “In some ways. He was far too gentle for this world, though.”

“A gentle cheater?” Reno asked ironically.

“Why do you think he cheated? It was the only way he had any chance at all against men like you.”

“A gambler who’s that bad at cards should find another profession.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Eve retorted. “Don was a small man. He didn’t have the strength to fight with his fists, the speed to fight with a gun, or the greed to be a good cardsharp. He was a kind man rather than a strong one.

“But he was good to Donna and to me, even through we were weaker than he was. That’s more than I can say of the big men I’ve met!”

One of Reno’s black eyebrows rose. “I suppose if you had been cheating
for
rather than against me, I might feel more kindly toward you myself.”

Eve’s smile was as small and cold as the spring hidden against the cliff.

“You don’t understand, gunfighter.”

“Don’t bet on it, saloon girl.”

She tossed her head, sending her deep gold hair cascading over her shoulders.

“I thought you were different from Raleigh King, but you’re not,” she said. “You haven’t the least idea what it’s like to make your way in a world that is stronger, harder, and more cruel than you could ever be.”

“You won’t get into my good graces by comparing me to the likes of Raleigh King.”

“I’m not trying to get into your good graces.”

“You’d better start.”

Eve took one look at Reno and bit back the angry words that were crowding her tongue.

There was no gentleness now in Reno’s eyes or in the line of his mouth. He was dead angry. When he spoke again, his voice was as cold and remote as his ice green eyes.

“Be grateful Raleigh needed killing,” Reno said flatly. “If you had set me up to kill a country boy, I’d have let Slater have you. You wouldn’t have liked that. Slater isn’t one of those kind men you so favor.”

“He can’t be any worse than Raleigh King,” Eve said bleakly, remembering the night she had come back late from one of Canyon City’s saloons and discovered what Raleigh had done to the Lyons. “No one could be worse than him.”

“Slater has a reputation with women that’s too sordid to repeat—even to a saloon girl who cheats at cards.”

“Did Slater ever torture an old man who had tried to sell a gold ring to pay for medicine for his dying wife?” Eve asked tightly. “Did Slater ever pull the truth from an old man one fingernail at a time while his wife watched helplessly? And after the man was dead, did Slater ever take his knife to an old, dying woman and…”

Eve’s voice crumbled into silence. She clenched her fists and fought for self-control.

“What are you saying?” Reno asked in a low voice.

“Raleigh King tortured Don Lyon to death while he dragged out the truth about where the emerald ring was hidden, and the journal with the treasure map. Donna tried to stop Raleigh, but the wasting disease had left her too weak even to lift her derringer.”

Reno’s eyes narrowed. “So that’s how Raleigh knew about the map.”

Eve nodded tightly. “When Raleigh was finished with Don, he turned on Donna.”

“Why? Didn’t Raleigh believe her husband had told the truth?”

“Raleigh didn’t care,” Eve said bitterly. “He just wanted…”

Her voice dried up into a painful silence. No matter how many times she swallowed, she couldn’t force out words to describe what Raleigh had done to Donna Lyon.

“Don’t,” Reno said.

He put his palm gently over Eve’s lips, sealing in the bitter words she was trying to speak.

“I guess he and Slater were well matched after all,” Reno said softly.

Eve grabbed Reno’s hand, but not to push him away.

“’Tell me,” she said urgently. “You killed Raleigh King, didn’t you?”

Reno nodded.

She let out a long breath and whispered, “Thank you. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to do it.”

All gentleness vanished from Reno’s expression.

“Is that why you set me up?” he demanded.

“I didn’t set you up. Not in the cold way you mean.”

“But you saw the chance and you took it.”

Eve’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”

“And then you grabbed the pot and ran.”

“Yes.”

“Leaving me to die.”

“No!”

Reno made a sound that was too hard to be a laugh.

“We came closer that time,
gata.
We almost had it.”

“What?”

“The truth.”

“The truth is, I saved your life,” Eve retorted.

“Saved it?” Reno demanded. “Girl, you did your best to get me killed!”

“When I didn’t hear any shooting—” she began.

“Disappointed?” he interrupted.

“I turned back to see what had happened,” she said, ignoring his interruption. “Then Raleigh drew and you shot him, and a man called Steamer pulled his gun to shoot you in the back. I shot him first.”

Unexpectedly, Reno laughed.

“You’re good,
gata
. Really good. The wide eyes and the earnest, trembling mouth are first-class.”

“But—”

“Save those lips for something better than lying,” Reno said, bending over Eve once more.

“I shot Steamer!” she protested.

“Uh-huh. But you were aiming for me. That’s why you turned back. You wanted to be dead sure I wouldn’t follow you to collect my winnings.”

“No. That’s not the way it was. I—”

“Give up the game,” Reno said curtly. “You’re trying my patience.”

“Why won’t you believe me?”

“Because a man who believes a liar, a cheat, and a saloon girl is more of a fool than Reno Moran is.”

His fingers closed around Eve’s thigh once more. And once more she wasn’t able to break away from his touch.

“I’m not a liar,” she said hotly, “and I hate being so weak that I have to cheat, and I was a bond servant with no choice about what kind of work I did or where I did it or what I wore while I did it!”

Eve’s voice shook with anger as she continued, not letting Reno interrupt.

“But you believe only the worst about me,” she said, “so you should have no trouble believing
this—my biggest regret about yesterday is not letting Steamer shoot you in the back!”

Surprise loosened Reno’s grip for an instant. It was all Eve needed. She jerked from beneath his hand with a speed that startled him.

She stood, taking a blanket with her. With hands that showed a fine trembling, she wrapped the blanket around herself, concealing everything of her body but the hot flags of anger and humiliation burning on her cheeks.

Reno considered taking the blanket away from Eve. He had liked looking at the satin curves and velvet shadows beneath the old, thin cotton fabric of her underwear. Her anger both surprised and intrigued him. Women who were caught in lies usually became all soft and wary and eager to make amends.

But not the girl called Evening Star. Her eyes were measuring him for a shroud.

Wryly Reno admitted to himself that whatever else he could say about Eve—and none of it good— she had grit. He admired that in men, women, and horses.

“Don’t be so quick off the mark,” Reno drawled. “I might just get up and ride out of here, leaving you for Slater.”

Eve hid the shaft of fear that went through her at the thought of Jericho Slater.

“Pity you didn’t shoot him, too” she said beneath her breath.

Reno heard. His ears were as acute as his hands were quick.

“I’m not a hired killer.”

Her eyes narrowed warily at the flatness of Reno’s voice. “I know.”

His cold green glance searched her face for a long moment before he nodded.

“See that you remember it,” he said curtly. “Don’t ever set me up as an executioner again.”

She nodded.

Reno came to his feet in an unhurried, graceful movement that reminded Eve of the cat he accused her of being.

“Get dressed,” he said. “We can talk about the Lyons’ mine while you cook breakfast.”

Reno paused. “You do know how to cook, don’t you?”

“Of course. Every girl can.”

He smiled, remembering a certain redheaded British aristocrat who hadn’t been able to boil water when she married Wolfe Lonetree.

“Not every girl,” Reno said.

The gentle amusement in his smile fascinated Eve. It was as unexpected as a hot day in winter.

“Who was she?” Eve asked before she could think better of it.

“Who?”

“The girl who couldn’t cook.”

“A British lady. Prettiest thing a man ever did see. Hair like fire and eyes like aquamarines.”

Eve told herself that the feeling snaking through her couldn’t be jealousy.

“What happened?” she asked offhandedly.

“What do you mean?”

“If she was that fetching, why didn’t you marry her?”

Reno stretched and looked down at Eve from his much greater height.

She didn’t back up an inch. She simply stood and waited for the answer to her question as though there were no difference in size or strength between herself and the man who could have broken her like a dry twig.

In that, Eve reminded Reno of Jessica and Willow
. The realization made him frown. Neither Jessica nor Willow was the kind of girl to cheat, steal, or work in a saloon.

“Wouldn’t the pretty aristocrat have a gunman like you?” Eve persisted.

“I’m not a gunman. I’m a prospector. But that’s not why Jessi wouldn’t have me.”

“She liked gentlemen?” Eve guessed.

To conceal his irritation, Reno grabbed his hat and pulled it down over his unruly black hair.

“I
am
a gentleman.”

Eve looked from the crown of Reno’s black hat to the worn fleece-lined leather jacket that came to his hips. His pants were dark and had seen hard use. His boots were the same. He wore blunted brass cavalry spurs. Their metal had been so long without polish that they no longer were the least bit shiny.

Nothing about Reno gleamed or flashed, and that included the butt of the six-gun he wore. The holster was the same; it had been oiled for use rather than for looks. The bullets, however, were quite clean.

In all, Reno didn’t appear to be a gentleman. He looked every bit the dangerous gunfighter Eve knew him to be, a man drawn in shades of darkness rather than light.

Except for his eyes. They were the vivid green of early spring leaves, as clear and perfect as cut crystal against the sun-darkened skin of his face.

But a person had to be close to Reno to discover the light in his eyes. She doubted that many people got that close.

Or wanted to.

“Jessi is married to one of my best friends,” Reno said flatly. “Otherwise, I’d have been happy to try my hand at courting.”

“’Courting.’”

Eve looked at the tangled bedroll where she had known her first taste of passion.

“Is that what you call it?” she asked dryly.

“Courting is for a woman you want to make your wife. That—” Reno jerked his thumb at the bedroll “—was a little rolling around before breakfast with a saloon girl.”

The blood left Eve’s face. She couldn’t think of anything to say except the kind of words that would give Reno a lower opinion of her than he already had. Silently she turned to her saddlebags, grabbed a shirt and a pair of jeans, and started walking away.

Reno’s hand shot out with startling speed, grabbing her arm.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

“Even saloon girls need privacy.”

“Tough. I don’t trust you out of my sight.”

“Then I’ll just have to pee in your boots, won’t I?” she asked sweetly.

For an instant Reno looked shocked. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

Eve jerked free of his fingers and stalked off into the nearby forest as Reno’s words followed her.

“Don’t be long,
gata
, or I’ll come hunting you—barefoot.”

W
HEN
Reno came back from the forest with more dry wood, he looked approvingly at the small, hot, nearly invisible fire Eve had made. Woodsmoke from the hat-sized fire drifted no more than a few feet into the air before it dissipated.

BOOK: Only You
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