The Girl with the Golden Spurs (26 page)

“You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

“Not really.”

She saw the pain in his eyes. Then she rolled on her side and traced the pattern of moonlight on his sheet. “Where were you when I was thrown and Star galloped into that pond?” Her voice was casual, but her heart was thundering.

She felt him shudder violently. Then he grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back against him so that she faced him in the dark.

“Do you think I tried to kill you?” His fierce whisper cut her like a knife. “Is that what you think?”

“I simply asked you a question. Where were you?”

Pushing her away, he heaved himself off the bed. She watched him move across the darkness to the window. He lifted the blinds and peered out as if he were straining to see something, he couldn’t see. Then he snapped the blinds shut.

“You don’t know, do you?” she accused softly, switching on the lamp to study him more closely.

He grabbed his jeans off the floor and yanked them on. His jerky movements were hostile. Sliding his feet into a pair of leather loafers, he picked his shirt up off a chair and thrust his arms into it.

“Answer me,” she said. “Your silence is scaring me.”

“No!” He whirled. “All right? Are you satisfied?
I don’t
know!
And it’s killing me because I don’t! I don’t know why my plane went down, either! I blame myself for Mia, too! For Vanilla being motherless! For not remembering them! For being alive even! For loving you. But, God help me, I can’t change any of it!”

His passionate outburst surprised her, touched her. “Oh, Cole, don’t torture yourself like that.”

“I don’t want your fake sympathy. You started this. Why didn’t I die, too? I remember the storm and an explosion and the plane suddenly spiraling downward. I remember being upside down in that wreckage underwater and barely conscious. I had a concussion and my leg was broken, but I remember unbuckling Mia’s seat belt and dragging her out of the plane. But that’s all I remember. I don’t know if she was dead or alive, or if I let her drown. The next thing I knew I was lying on a shrimper’s deck. His mouth was on mine and suddenly I was spitting water in his sunburned face. I didn’t know where I was or how I got there. I didn’t ask about Mia once. I didn’t remember there was a woman in the plane,
much less my wife, until your mother started asking me about her. Why the hell am I alive? Why me?”

“You just are.”

“I lose time, okay? And I hate it! The doctors don’t know why, and they can’t seem to do anything about it. None of the medicines they’ve given me do any damn good. But I want you to know that if I had anything to do with what happened to you in the brush or to Star or even to Cherry, I don’t want to be alive. Understand?”

“You’re not a monster. I know you’re not. Don’t torment yourself by thinking like that.”

When she got up to comfort him, he backed away from her.

“No. You started this, remember.”

“Cole, come back to bed.” She held out her hand to him.

“You should leave the ranch until we find out what’s really going on. I don’t want to hurt you…
accidentally
.”

“You won’t.”

“I don’t know that, and neither do you.”

He ran out of the room and the door slammed behind him.

The instant he was gone, she felt hurt and wanted him back. Not that she was sorry she’d asked her questions. She was changing, willing to face things, willing to demand answers, determined not to be a people-pleaser every minute of her life. She thought about her uncle B.B. and aunt Mona. Nothing was what it seemed.

Wearily she began picking up her own clothes. A few minutes later, back in the safety of her own bedroom, Lizzy stripped again.

Too nervous to sleep, she eased herself into her big claw tub and took a long bubble bath hoping it would relax her. It broke her heart that Cole doubted himself so much he thought he might be capable of monstrous acts.

She couldn’t leave the ranch. Why couldn’t he see that she
wanted to be a full-fledged person in her own right, and that to do that she had to stay? If she really was next on some murderer’s hit list, she had to lure the real killer into the open for Cole’s sake as well as her own.

How she loved him! How different he was than the bitter man he’d been when she’d first fallen in love with. And yet, she’d loved him then, too. She felt selfish about her feelings now, as if she had a right to them—to him. She couldn’t leave and risk losing him.

It wasn’t entirely pleasant to want him as she did. She ached to be near him all the time. She felt vulnerable and overly emotional.

Their relationship was long and complicated. They’d dated each other from the time they’d met until she’d graduated from college. He used to drive up to College Station on the weekends, when she’d attended A&M University. They’d been together every holiday when she’d come home. She sank underwater in the tub. When she emerged, she toweled her face off. Lying back and closing her eyes, her mind flashed back to the afternoon when she’d broken up with Cole—after her father had finally convinced her that all Cole Knight would ever want from any Kemble—even her—was revenge.

Like the other times he’d tried to name all the reasons why she shouldn’t be with Cole, her father had chosen his words carefully. “Your precious Mr. Knight can’t live with the loss of Black Oaks Ranch. Hell, girl, maybe I couldn’t live with it, either, if I was him. But mark my words—he doesn’t love you. He feels dispossessed and humiliated.”

“He does, too, love me.”

“No. He’s just using you to recoup his family’s fortune and to restore the Knight name.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“Just ask him the next time you’re with him. Unless you’re scared to.”

“I’m not scared. I know Cole. I don’t have to ask him!”

But later, when she’d met Cole at the ruins of the old Knight headquarters where they went sometimes to make love on a blanket in one of the deserted rooms, she’d refused to go into his waiting arms. Maybe her daddy’s words had finally worn her down. Maybe she wanted to put an end to his bad-mouthing Cole once and for all. Whatever the reason, that day she’d attacked. “My daddy said you wanted me because of the Golden Spurs. Is that true?”

“No, darlin’,” but he hadn’t met her gaze.

“Look at me. What did you want that first day when Pájaro ran away and you saved me?”

He hadn’t answered.

She’d swallowed. “Oh, God. You wanted the ranch.”

“Darlin’, you’ve got to understand. I’d just buried my father. I blamed your father for his death. Back then…”

“Back then, what?”

“All right. I was born wanting everything that had been ours. Then my daddy threw what was left away. Lizzy, I grew up on stories about how all of it should have been mine.”

“You used me.”

“I love you.”

“No, you love the ranch.” She’d hesitated. “Which do you love more—me or the land?”

“What the hell kind of question is that? That’s like asking me if I’d rather eat or breathe when I have to do both to live.”

“Choose. Let’s leave this place and go away together. To a big city. We’ll never come back.”

His dark face went white. “This is all I know. This is who I am. But I want you with me, always. This is the generation where we’ll make things right between our two families.”

When he’d reached for her, she’d run. From him, from her
father, from the ranch, from everything and everybody, who made her feel like she wasn’t anything without the grand Kemble name.

For a long time after that it had seemed vitally important to be more than just a Kemble. She’d fled to New York, vowing that the next man she loved was going to love her—just her.

Ironically, Cole had left, too. Probably because he hadn’t seen a way to get what he really wanted with her gone.

Only he’d made good and she hadn’t. When he’d returned, he’d wasted no time in marrying Mia.

The water was cold when Lizzy stood up and got out of the tub.

Was Cole really so different now than he had been then? She thought so. Did he truly love her?

She wanted to believe he did. But, deep down was she really sure? She was willing to die for him, and yet she wasn’t willing to marry him.

Joanne’s hands froze when she touched the tangled satin slip in her drawer.

Someone had been in her room and gone through her things.

The slip fell through her fingers. For a long time she stood motionless over her open lingerie drawer. She was tidy to a fault. Tonight her lacy bras were scrambled with her panties and slips, all of which should have been neatly folded.

She would have to remind Sy’rai not to put her things away, that she would do it. But how strange that Sy’rai would forget when she never had before.

Joanne began to dig underneath the silky undergarments and then went utterly still as a second shattering realization dawned.

Electra’s journal was gone.

Her clean lingerie was neatly stacked on top her dresser, as always, where Sy’rai had left them. Sy’rai had not done this.

Someone else had invaded her privacy and stolen the journal.

Her blackmailer?

Why?

Lizzy heard the blasts from Sam’s and Cole’s rifles long before she reached the skeet range. She was licking the top off a chocolate ice-cream cone as she stepped out of the brush into the open just as a clay pigeon arced against a clear blue sky. Cole’s rifle tracked it for mere seconds before he pulled the trigger and blew it to bits.

“Good shot,” Sam said as clay sprinkled onto the brown grass.

“Your turn,” Cole challenged.

Sam blasted several clay pigeons in rapid succession. Lizzy wasn’t surprised. Sam had always been an expert shot.

“I remember when we used to ride around in Daddy’s pickup in the evenings with Hawk and Walker and Mia. You used to shoot everything that moved—skunks, raccoons, coyotes, even cute little bunny rabbits,” she said.

Sam laughed. “You used to cry, too. Except when I killed rattlers. We tried our best to toughen her up, Cole. We really did.”

“Didn’t work, though,” Cole said, his voice gentle.

“That’s about to change,” she retorted crisply. “Cole, I came out here today because I want you to teach me to shoot.”

He drew a deep breath. Suddenly she knew he was remembering their quarrel last night.

“I thought you hated guns,” Sam said, oblivious to the undercurrents between them.

“You used to say they were a necessary evil. So did Daddy. Maybe I’m just taking you at your word.”

When Cole started to hand her his gun, she shook her head. “No. I want to practice with my revolver. I got it down out of my closet. I found several boxes of bullets, too.”

“What do you intend to shoot with that?” Sam asked when she pulled it out of her jacket pocket.

There was a long silence.

“I’m not rightly sure,” she said, holding her cone awkwardly while spinning the empty cylinder at the same time. “Whatever gets in my way, I guess.” She didn’t mean that. She didn’t want to shoot anybody or anything—ever.

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you it’s dangerous to carry a gun in your pocket?” Sam said.

“Especially when you’re gobbling ice-cream cones?” Cole added.

“Lots of things are dangerous. But they are more dangerous if you don’t face them.” She took another long lick of chocolate and smiled when she caught Cole watching her with that special gleam in his eyes. Oh, if only she was as brave or felt as playful as she pretended.

Sam lifted his brows. “You’re changing—fast.”

“All right then,” Cole replied. “We’ll get some empty soda cans and drive to the pond. Nothing like shooting cans in a pond to improve your aim with a revolver. You wanna come along, Sam?”

“Sure. But I’ll join you later. I have a couple of phone calls to make. You two have fun.”

“Always,” Cole said under his breath, grinning at her as he leaned down close enough to kiss her.

“Want a lick?” She held the cone up to his lips, but he drew back.

“Tease,” she whispered, glancing up at his chiseled lips with way too much hunger.

“Can’t have you getting too conceited about your power over me,” he murmured. “You’re not as irresistible as you think.”

“Just ’cause you had me last night.” She hesitated. “Cole, I’m sorry about last night.”

“Me, too.” He grabbed her and kissed her hard.

She laughed. “See, I am, too, irresistible.”

He grabbed her cone and painted the tip of her nose with it lightly.

“Cole!”

“You shouldn’t have pushed it,” he said. “A man can only resist so much. Chocolate ice cream looks mighty tempting all of a sudden.”

She laughed again, and he kissed her again so thoroughly she tingled all the way to her toes. Then he grabbed her cone and bit off the top.

Cole drove to the far side of the pond where the brush and grass were blackened by fire, and she was reminded anew of the mysterious accidents and the murders—and why she was practicing her shooting.

“We need the wind on our backs,” he said as he threw the cans out.

She smiled, understanding when they began to float away from them.

“Don’t shoot until I tell you,” he said.

“You’re the boss.”

“Out here, maybe. If I was really the boss, you’d marry me.”

She felt her pulse flutter with illogical longing. “Don’t…”

She turned away and began to fire rapidly. Her first three shots missed, but the ripples in the pond showed her that each succeeding shot hit closer to the can than the one before. Her last three bullets sank the two cans. Hitting what she aimed at scared her a little.

“Not bad,” he muttered, clearly impressed. “For a girl.”

“For a beginner,” she corrected.

“Are you ever going to trust me?” he said, taking the revolver and showing her how to reload it.

“I trust you,” she murmured.

“But just so far,” he said, handing the pistol back to her. “Not enough to marry me.”

“We’re having an affair. Why can’t that be enough now?”

She took aim just as Sam’s blue truck rumbled over the bridge.

“Hold your fire,” Cole said, placing his hand on top the barrel of her pistol and lowering it as the truck roared up to them.