As far as he knew, Señora Fuentes and her daughter didn’t even know his missing partner’s name.
It was different, though, with some of the longtime ranch hands, the ones who’d been around from the beginning of The Crippled B. Fortunately, two of the old-timers, Diego and Hector, only knew enough English to order a halfway decent meal in an Abilene cafe. But then there was Tater Latham. The lanky Kansan not only spoke English, but spoke it at such length and at such great volume that people were always telling him to shut up. Tater, when he returned, could be a problem.
The obvious solution, of course, was sending Emily back to her home in Mississippi. And during a long night with hardly any sleep, John had decided to do just that. Send the beautiful Miss Russell back to Russell County where she belonged.
But not yet.
Dios, not just yet.
Although he had fallen in love with his Emmy’s words on paper, it had only taken him moments to realize that those words had been a perfect reflection of the flesh-and-blood woman. She was as bright as she was beautiful. As kind as she was fair.
She was a lady through and through, and yet far more sensuous than he’d ever have believed with her full lips and her direct blue gaze. Her accent reminded him of Price, but his partner’s voice had been salted with sarcasm while Emily’s flowed like the sweetest clover honey.
And lady that she was, she’d given him not the slightest indication that the color of his skin offended her or his accent grated on her ears or his lack of proper parentage affected her at all. She seemed oblivious to any difference.
Last evening John had even caught himself studying her calm expression and thinking that maybe it didn’t matter to his Emmy one bit that he wasn’t a blue-eyed, fair-haired, fine-blooded gentleman like Price. But, of course, it had to matter. How could it not? Miss Emily Russell of Russell County, Mississippi, was just too kind and too polite, too much of a lady, to allow her disdain and her distaste to show.
“You’re a damned fool,” John muttered to himself. “Loco. Estupido.”
He swore again as he jerked open the center drawer of the desk, withdrawing a sheet of paper to make a list of supplies they’d be needing soon for The Crippled B. Maybe, he hoped, tallying pounds of flour and salt and chicken feed, and figuring yards of hemp rope and muslin and wire would take his mind off the woman who was sleeping nearby in Señora Fuentes’s bed.
He’d only managed to write a few items on the page when he heard her honey voice.
“Good morning, John.”
She seemed to float into the front room, her blue silk wrapper whisking about her legs and her golden hair spilling over her shoulders like warm morning sunshine. Then she stood still, staring at the desktop.
“Oh, you’re busy writing. I’m so sorry, John. I didn’t intend to interrupt you.”
“No. It’s all right. You’re not interrupting at all. I was just…”
The words stuck in his throat all of a sudden when he looked down at the list and the dark, distinctive penmanship there. Had she seen it? With a flick of his wrist, he turned the telltale paper over.
“This can wait,” he told her, putting down the pen and rising from his chair.
Emily continued to stare at the desk, though, with a wistful slant to her mouth and an odd, distracted light in her eyes.
“I was just thinking about Price,” she said almost dreamily. “I imagine this is where he sits when he composes letters, isn’t it?” She gestured to the chair John had just left.
He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
She moved forward then, reached for the steel pen he’d only just put down, and held it delicately, as if it might break from a mere touch.
“You must think me very silly to be so sentimental about an inanimate object like this. It’s just…” She clutched the pen tighter. Her eyes shone with tears. “When do you think Price will be returning from Kansas? Will it be days? Weeks?”
“I don’t know.” Never, he longed to say. Jamas.
Under the golden shawl of her hair, John could see her delicate shoulders slump a fraction. He ached to take her in his arms, to comfort her. He had to clench his fists to keep his hands from reaching out. She was so fragile just then, so pale and vulnerable, and he thought of how Price had described the Southern belles he claimed to know so well. Gardenias, he’d called them. Touch them and they bruise.
Emily put the pen down with exquisite care, sighed, and then turned to him, attempting to smile.
“Well, enough of that. Nobody likes a sad and weepy female for a guest, do they? I’ll try to be better company, John. I promise. Now, don’t let me take up any more of your time. I don’t want to keep you from your work.”
He shrugged again. “There’s not so much of that this time of year.”
He wished there were. He wished he had a ton of work to distract him. A score of horses to be broken. A hundred mavericks to be branded. A thousand back-breaking chores. Anything to put some distance between himself and this woman. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. Distance.
“I was planning to ride out today and check on a few of the line shacks,” he said. “To see if they need repairs.”
Emily was gazing at him so intently now, such bright curiosity shining in her eyes, that he found himself uttering words he’d never intended.
“You could come along if you want. With me, I mean. See some of the ranch.”
Then, before he could take the invitation back, Emily’s whole face fairly glowed. “Oh, I’d love that,” she said. “I’ll hurry and get dressed.”
Emily surveyed as much of herself as possible in the little mirror that hung between Señora Fuentes’s wooden crucifix and a candle sconce. She’d laced her corset as loosely as she could before putting on her lightest gabardine dress. She looked healthy and plump, she decided, rather than three, nearly four months pregnant. And she was looking forward to her excursion around The Crippled B.
“Best bring some extra belongings,” John had told her, and when she’d raised an eyebrow, he had added, “This is Texas. We may not make it back tonight.”
She had simply nodded in agreement, and now she wondered why the prospect of overnighting in the wilds with a near stranger—half Indian, at that—didn’t bother her in the least. Quite the contrary as a matter of fact. She was looking forward to seeing as much as possible of Price’s ranch and, somewhere deep inside her, in some curious little corner, she was looking forward to being with John Bandera, listening to his deep, Spanish-accented voice, stingy though he was with it, and looking into his dark amber eyes.
“Why, Emily Russell, you shameless hussy!”
She grinned at her own reflection in the mirror, thinking that being out West had already stripped her of more than a few constraints of polite society. There was the loose corset, of course, but that was a necessity in her condition. But she had also brushed out her hair and pulled it back with a blue ribbon, something she never would have done back home. Nor would she have found herself so drawn to
