wedding day!”
“I’m sure Creighton could explain everything to your satisfaction, if you would only give him the chance.”
Lorelei rolled her eyes. “What excuse could he possibly give? I saw him with another woman!”
The judge tried again, saturating his words with saintly patience. “A man of Creighton’s sophistication—”
“To hell with sophistication!” Lorelei burst out. “What about loyalty, Father? What about common decency? How can you expect me to bind myself to a man who would betray me so brazenly on our wedding day—or any other?”
Her father sat back in his chair, tenting his chubby fingers under his chin. She’d seen that expression on his face a hundred times—in a courtroom, it meant a death sentence was about to be handed down. “Do you know what I think, Lorelei? I think you want to be a spinster. How many suitors have you rejected in the last ten years?”
Sudden tears throbbed behind Lorelei’s eyes, but she would not shed them. Not in her father’s presence. She braced herself for what she knew was coming and held her tongue. He wasn’t expecting an answer anyway, and wouldn’t leave space for one.
“Michael Chandler has been in his grave for almost a decade,” he said. “It’s time you stopped waiting for him to come back.”
One tear escaped and trickled down Lorelei’s over-heated cheek. Dropped to her bodice. “You hated Michael,” she whispered. “You were relieved that he died.”
“He was weak,” the judge said, quietly relentless. “You would have tired of him within a year and come weeping to me to get you out of the marriage.”
“When,” Lorelei countered, “have I ever ‘come weeping’ to you over anything?”
A muscle twitched in the judge’s jaw. “Creighton is your chance to have a home of your own, and a family. I know you want those things. If you persist in this—this tantrum of yours, you will be alone for the rest of your life.”
A chill quivered in the pit of Lorelei’s stomach. “Better alone, with my self-respect intact, than alone in a marriage with a man who doesn’t love me enough to be faithful.”
The judge gave a derisive snort. “Love? Come now, Lorelei. You aren’t a stupid woman. Love is for story-books and road-show melodramas. Marriage is an alliance, and sentiment has no place in it. Pull yourself together. Put on one of your ball gowns and let’s get on with this.”
Lorelei shook her head, momentarily unable to speak.
“Then I guess I have no choice,” the judge said, with a dolorous shake of his own head. “If you persist in this foolishness, I will have to send you away. Perhaps even to an asylum.” He frowned, studying her pensively. “I fear you are not quite sane.”
Lorelei’s knees threatened to give out. Though she’d never heard this particular threat before, she knew it wasn’t an idle one. Her father had the power and the means to lock her up in some sanitarium; it would be a matter of signing a few documents. He’d sent Jim Mason’s troublesome wife off to one of those places with the air of a man doing a simple favor for a friend, and there had been others, too.
“I see I’ve gotten your attention,” the judge said, a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. Then, more gently, he added, “Go to Creighton now. Make things right. I shall expect you at the church at six o’clock, as planned, ready to go through with the wedding.”
Lorelei pushed away from the door, stiffening her spine once again. “Then you will be disappointed,” she said calmly. She turned the knob, pulled the great panel open.
“If you step over that threshold,” her father warned, “there will be no turning back. Just remember that.”
Lorelei hesitated a moment, then rushed out. She was so intent on packing her things and laying plans to escape before the judge sent her away to some madhouse that she didn’t see the man standing in the entryway until she collided with him.
“Lorelei!” her father roared, from inside his study.
“Looks like I came at a bad time,” said Holt Cavanagh.
HOLT STEADIED the hellcat by gripping her slender shoulders in his hands. She’d changed clothes since their encounter, as he had, but her ebony hair still smelled faintly of burning wedding dress.
“Holt McKettrick,” he said by way of introduction when she looked up at him, blinking cornflower-blue eyes in a vain effort to hide a sheen of tears. Her lashes were thick, even darker than her hair, and her lips…
Well, never mind her lips.
“I thought your name was Cavanagh,” she said.
“I didn’t say that, Gabe did. I went by it once.”
She raised a finely shaped eyebrow. “Neither here nor there,” she said crisply. Then, in a demanding tone of voice, “What do you want?”
She didn’t try to pull away, though. Nor, he reflected, with detached interest, was he particularly interested in releasing her. Curious, he thought.
“Actually,” Holt said, reluctantly letting his hands fall to his sides, “I came to see your father.”
“God help you,” Lorelei said, and, pushing past him, rushed up the broad, curving stairway.
This, Holt thought idly, was some hacienda.
“I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance, Mr. McKettrick,” observed a masculine voice from somewhere on Holt’s right. “Are you a friend of my daughter’s? If so, perhaps you can reason with her.”
Judge Fellows stood in the doorway of what was probably his office. He was around sixty, with shrewd eyes, mutton-chop whiskers and a well-fitted suit. Somewhere upstairs a door slammed, and Fellows flinched.
Holt didn’t bother to put out his hand. “I never met your daughter before today,” he said forthrightly. “I’m here about Gabe Navarro.”
Fellows’s mouth tightened. “The Indian.”
Holt did some tightening of his own, but it was all inside, out of the judge’s sight. “The Texas Ranger,” he said.
The other man shrugged. “I’m afraid Mr. Navarro’s past glories, whatever they might be, were rendered meaningless by the murder of a settler and his wife. He butchered them with a Bowie knife and then stole their horses.”
“He didn’t kill anybody,” Holt maintained. “Or steal any horses.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion, Mr. McKettrick,” Fellows said, with false regret. “However, as I said, your friend has determined his own fate. The knife used to cut those poor souls to ribbons was his, and the horses were found penned up outside that lean-to he calls a home.”
Holt didn’t bother to argue. He knew conviction when he butted heads with it. Evidently, Judge Fellows was as unreasonable and ill-tempered as his daughter. “Who represented him? During the trial, I mean?”
“Creighton
