River to Cross, A (15 page)

Jake brushed aside a flare of annoyance.

Carl this. And Carl that
.

His fingers tightened on the reins.

He couldn’t care less what kind of music Carl Evans had liked. Jake guided the buggy into the center of the road, away from the ruts, and searched for something else to talk about other than her dead husband.

Forget Carl Evans
.

Bad idea. Evans was part of her past, part of her. Not talking about him would be a mistake. Jake had been in the Cavalry, and he knew better. Knowing your enemy was half the battle.

“Tell me about Carl,” he said. His voice had a tight, tucked-in sound that surprised him.

“What do you want to know?”

Everything
. “What was he like?” he asked smoothly, then steeled himself for the answer.

“Wonderful. Always in a good mood.” The answer bubbled up. “One of those people who wake up in the morning whistling. Handsome, smart. Everybody liked him.”

So how do I make you forget him?

“He was a towhead, like you.”

Jake nodded. “You told me.”
Twice
.

She gazed out the window for a moment, then turned and looked at him, the dimple in her cheek lighting her face. “In some ways, you remind me of him.”

His stomach knotted. That was the
last
thing he wanted to hear.

“Too bad you and Carl never met. I think you two would have gotten on well.”

Not likely
. They were both Cavalry. They would’ve fought over her like two stallions. Truth was, if he’d known her before she married Evans, he would have done everything he could to steal her from him. And one way or another, he would have.

He slid her another glance and smiled to himself.

He was still going to.

He threaded their buggy
in ahead of two others stopped in front of the Grand Hotel. The hotel took up nearly the whole block, rising four stories, the tallest building in El Paso. As soon as they stopped, an attendant stepped up, opened Elizabeth’s door, and helped her down to the sidewalk.

Jake exited his side, and another attendant drove the buggy off to the Grand’s own livery for their customers. Jake walked around to meet Elizabeth.

The Grand was the most luxurious hotel this side of San Antonio. He’d been here several times, the last time with Lloyd Madison the evening before they left to meet Ricardo Romero in Mexico. It had quietly elegant dining rooms, a dance floor, and a broad open promenade for walking along the riverside.

Following her into the hotel, Jake studied the dark-haired lady in lavender linen and high-heeled sandals rustling ahead of him. She’d caught her dark hair into thick braids coiled over each ear. Beautiful. He liked her hair like that.

Back straight, skirt swinging, Elizabeth ascended the carpeted stairway to the restaurant deck.

Beautiful little back.

Beautiful little everything.

Upstairs, he noticed other men turn their heads, sneaking glances at her as the steward escorted them to their table. In one way, that pleased him. In another, it did not.

He cupped her elbow possessively and guided her across the dining room. “Watch your step—the floor’s uneven,” he said. It wasn’t. It was dead level.

Models of sailing ships hung on the walls. Their table was in a private corner with a heavy-looking brass porthole overlooking the Rio Grande. A blood-red sunset lit up the sky. Even the river looked rosy.

Elizabeth turned from the window back to Jake and the low hum of voices around them. “This is delightful, as nice as any place in Washington,” she said. “This town is growing so fast. I can hardly wait to get started with the paper.”

She sounded confident, positive, a woman who knew what she wanted. Or didn’t want. And at the moment, he suspected, what she didn’t want was him. Eyes narrowed, Jake leaned back in his chair. She was a challenge, all right.

For his twelfth birthday, his stepfather had given him a horse of his own, a wild young filly no one could get near. She’d tossed her head and bucked him off every time he got in the saddle. Bruised and sore, his wrist in a cast—she’d also kicked him—he kept climbing onto her back. It took him a month of chasing and yelling at her, but one day she’d finally let him sit on her.

Jake studied the pretty dark-haired woman across the table and made small, damp rings on the tablecloth with his water glass. His mind turned, making comparisons. Elizabeth was a little like that filly—arching her neck and rolling her eyes and running away from him.

Easy girl
.
Easy now
. Mentally he picked up a rope and halter and started after her.

A minute later, he set his glass down and looked over. “Do you have any other brothers or sisters?”

She shook her head. “Lloyd was my only brother. How about you?”

He eased his breath out. About time she showed some interest in him. “No brothers or sisters. My stepfather had a small herd of milk cows and sold to the townspeople.”

Masculine Texas charm oozed from every pore, smooth as banana cream. No pressure on the lady, but no escape, either. Elizabeth set the topic of conversation, and Jake picked up on it. Just knowing what he was doing and why gave him an advantage he didn’t hesitate to use.

He entertained her, kept her amused, drawling one funny little tale after another.

When he was five years old, he told her, he dropped caterpillars down a neighbor girl’s pinafore, and his mother spanked him. At nine, he threw eggs at the preacher’s dog when it growled at him, and his mother spanked him again.

As a boy growing up, he was on the small side. Because he read better than even the older boys, they singled him out to pick on. He started carrying a garter snake in his pocket. At the first sign of trouble from one of the older boys, he yanked his snake out and dangled it in the bully’s face. The yellow-striped snake, whipping back and forth in the air, had its mouth wide open and snapping—all worked up from being carried around in Jake’s pocket all day. The bigger boys left Jake and his crawly friend alone.

Elizabeth broke out laughing and leaned forward. A delightful laugh, soft and throaty. She should do that more often. Relieved, he watched her unwind, realizing she was also drawing
him
out. The back of his neck warmed. He hadn’t revealed himself like this to a woman in years.

“Why did you join the Army?” she asked.

He wondered when she’d get around to that. “I joined mainly to get away from home. When I was fifteen I told my stepfather I wanted to go to college. He threw me up against the house, a regular occurrence with him. Said I didn’t need more education to milk cows. I ran away that night and joined the Army the next day.”

What Jake didn’t tell her was what followed a few weeks later. During barracks inspection one day, they found a copy of Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
hidden beneath his shirts. The sergeant confiscated the book.

A week later, they hit him with a bunch of tests. A month after that, they called him in to ask him if he would like to go to Officers’ Training School.

Jake said he would, glad for the opportunity.

It was hard. He was younger than everyone else at the school but had been warned to keep quiet about it. The instructors were tough and so were the courses. He studied far into the night. When he graduated, he’d lost twenty pounds and was in the worst physical shape of his life. But it was the best thing he ever did for his Army career. Officer training taught him things about responsibility for others and leadership, about himself as a man that changed him forever.

“You could have been out long ago,” Elizabeth said. “Why did you stay in?”

He composed his thoughts before he answered. The truth was that, for him, the Army was fun. And somewhere along the line, he discovered how much he loved his country. When parade drums rolled and the flag went by, he still got chills. He gazed across the table at Elizabeth and hid a smile.

Tell her that, and she’ll run for the nearest door.

Instead, he hung his arm casually across the chair beside him and gave her a safe answer. “Staying in the Army keeps me out of the dairy business.”

The waiter came and took their order from a French menu—a grilled salmon for him, a shrimp Newburg for her.

“And Chardonnay for madame,” he finished in French, smiling. “I’ll pass on the wine,
merci
.”

She glanced up. “You speak French?”

“No more than necessary. The Army sent me to school.”

Elizabeth recited to herself all the good, sound reasons for avoiding men like Jake. While it wasn’t the Army, Rangers were quasi-military, and the work just as dangerous.

In spite of that, Captain Jake Nelson was fun to be with. He could always make her laugh, even in Mexico when she was under great stress.

And then the roses today.
“Boo-ful, like you,”
he’d said. Her cheeks heated just thinking about it. She hugged the words in her mind and looked down at her wine. It had been a long time since any man told her she was beautiful. A man didn’t do that unless he was interested. She took a long sip of her wine and considered the possibility that for the first time in a long time,
she
was interested. But a Ranger officer?

She sighed.

Unfortunately, yes.

She closed both hands around her glass, tightly. A shudder chased through her. This gray-eyed, slow-talking man did crazy things to her insides. He was making her question everything she’d told herself about men the last three years.

This must not happen.

He was too much like Carl.

She finished her wine in silence and gazed at Jake’s face. He had a square jaw with a deeply cleft chin. She could almost imagine her fingernail tracing the tiny trench, probing it.

Heat slid down her neck.
What is
wrong
with me?

She blinked across at the man with the cute chin and cleared her throat.

Smiling, she set her glass down. “I went to the hospital today to see a nurse friend, and on the way I ran into one of our writers at the paper. I’d met him two years before but didn’t recognize him. Fortunately, his memory was better than mine, and he stopped me to say hello. He’s doing a piece on military food and taking a survey out at the fort of the foods soldiers like best.”

Jake broke off a piece of roll and buttered it.

She glanced at the man in the tan corduroy jacket. He had the expression of a man who knew where he was going.

Despite the nice manners, he looked tough. She couldn’t quite tell why, but perhaps it was the way he wore his hair, a little long, curling at the back of his neck.

Her gaze slipped to the fingers buttering the roll. His fingers were rather graceful for a man. Golden blond hairs curled from the shirt cuffs under the jacket and dusted the backs of his hands. His nails, she noted, were cut short, dull and natural looking. She hated shiny fingernails on men.

“I told him I’d talk to you about military food. It’ll be good publicity for the fort. He’s already interviewed two Fort Bliss cooks,” she said.

“Glad to help. What do you need from me?”

“A few of your favorites. What do Rangers like to eat?”

“Depends on what they’re doing. Riding for hours is physically draining. If they have to cook outside, our cooks use a lot of sausage, bacon, chops—things that cook fast and are filling. Rice, potatoes, and always end the meal with something sweet.”

“Sounds like they’re treated pretty well.”

“Ranging and soldiering are hard work, and also lonely.”

“And dangerous,” she added.

“Sometimes. It’s pretty boring a lot of the time. Which is why food is important. Cooks know that. The Army and the Rangers are family to their men, and family takes care of its own.”

She busied herself with her shrimp, then looked up, her fork poised. “I don’t know as I believe George—the writer doing the story—but he said a cook at the fort told him hungry Rangers will eat anything. Cooked or raw. Alive or dead.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “He said Rangers even eat snakes.”