He reached inside his vest to pull out a letter he had stuffed in a pocket there. He literally shoved the letter in Marian’s face.
“This is how I knew where to find you, Laton, and having not found you where you were
supposed to be, I’ve spent every day since tracking you down.”
There was definitely some censure in those words, and even worse in the tone. He was put out, extremely, that he’d had to go to a lot more trouble to fetch them than he should have had to. Marian found herself blushing even though it wasn’t her fault that they hadn’t been in Galveston as they should have been. But he was even more put out over her accusation. Well, that had been the whole point, hadn’t it? To have him dislike her and, thus, ignore her henceforth.
The letter was the one that Albert Bridges had sent to their aunt. Of course, Marian hadn’t doubted he was who he said he was. She hadn’t needed proof.
But she pretended to be satisfied with the proof he offered and with a sniff and a shove of her
spectacles more tightly to the top of her nose, she said primly, “Very good. I’m glad we are in capable hands,” and she walked away.
It was probably his annoyance that made him say to her back, “Capable? No, just my hands.” At least, she hoped it was just his annoyance.
Chapter 7
CHAD DIDN’T HAVE TO make that run so fast. There’d been six hours of daylight left and the next town with a stage depot in it could have been reached before dark at a normal pace. But the horses were fresh, and he was still angry, so they arrived an hour before nightfall. He took the rest of his anger out on the depot employee who tried to get out of supplying them with a regular driver at no extra cost, and even wanted to keep the coach they already had in their possession. Not likely. The way Chad saw it, the sisters were owed a free ride all the way to Trenton as compensation for the ordeal the last driver had put them through.
The ladies were put up in a hotel for the night—a decent one. At least he heard no complaints from them. Which hadn’t been the case for most of the day. The ride he’d given them had produced a heck of a lot of screaming from inside the coach, which he’d ignored. Probably all from that schoolmarmish spinster with the overactive imagination.
Three whiskeys later in the nearest saloon, and he finally stopped grinding his teeth. He still wasn’t happy. He was stuck with women, not girls, and three of them. He should have asked for clarification from Red before he set out. He shouldn’t have just taken her remark about “girls” to be an accurate description of her nieces. He should have said, “hell no,” to doing her this favor, but unfortunately, it was too late for shoulds and shouldn’ts.
It had been bad enough when he’d thought he’d be traveling with children all the way back to the ranch, but most of the children he knew were well behaved, and he’d expected no trouble from them. Women, on the other hand, could be nothing but trouble, and from what he’d seen of these sisters so far, the “could be” was a definite “would be.”
Still he should have figured out sooner that the Laton girls were women, especially after he’d had to track them down. But having it set in his mind that they were too young to be a bother kept him from wondering over the remarks he’d heard about them along the way, and not once were they actually called “women” to his recollection. “Those gals were in a terrible hurry,” and “The girls wouldn’t listen to reason,” and “Those little ladies left the train faster’n harlots leaving a church,” didn’t exactly point out that they were females who might draw his prurient interest.
Might? ‘Hell! That Amanda was as pretty as a picture. Blond hair in a light golden shade and done up to frame her oval face with fashionable curls and ringlets that suited her perfectly. A pert little nose, rose-colored cheeks, a soft chin, and the most luscious lips he’d seen in a long time. And dark blue hat sparkled like polished gems, surrounded by thick black lashes a bit smudged from the heat, indicating they probably weren’t naturally black, but still, the kind of eyes a man could get happily lost in.
If that wasn’t enough, she also had an eye-catching figure a man could drool over. Plump breasts, a trim waist, gently rounded hips, and she wasn’t too tall, not much more than a half foot shorter than he, which was rather ideal to his way of thinking.
Her snappishness upon meeting him was understandable. She’d been abandoned in a near ghost town, had suffered through a train robbery before that, and Lord knew what else. For a gently reared lady, the West could be a harsh place, and she’d already experienced more than a fair share of the harsher side. The least he could do was get her to the Twisting Barb without further incident.
As for her sister, the schoolmarmish spinster — with those horrid spectacles she wore, he really couldn’t think of her any other way. That wasn’t kind, but after the insult she’d dealt him, he had no kind thoughts for her.
They were as different as night and day, so much so that if you didn’t know it, you’d never guess they were sisters. Both blond, yes, both blue-eyed and nicely shaped, but the resemblance stopped there.
Marian was obviously the older of the two, and probably made bitter over her spinsterish state. She was probably jealous of Amanda because her younger sister had gotten all the good looks in the family. She wore her hair in an ugly bun and pulled back so severely it was probably as painful as. it looked. She held herself stiffly, stomped about like a man, and had been dressed in dull dun gray.
She might be able to pretty herself up some if she tried, but then again, with those spectacles that gave her a bug-eyed look, she probably figured there wasn’t much point in trying. She was the kind of gal that if she set her sights on a man, he’d be running in the opposite direction real quick. The less he thought of her, the better.
The next morning just after dawn they rode out. The ladies weren’t too happy about leaving at such an early hour, but it was necessary to reach the next depot before nightfall. At least they were back on the regular stage route, so there should be extra depots along the way between towns for changing the horses and feeding the passengers, and if not, at least there would be designated areas for rest stops.
The driver didn’t seem worried about it, though he admitted he’d never driven the route toward Trenton. Will Candles was a crusty individual in his late forties, hair gone to gray early, long handlebar mustache he was right proud of. He’d been driving stagecoaches for about ten years, and mule trains before that, so he knew his job well.
Two days later, Chad had another unpleasant run-in with the spinster. They stopped around midday at one of the better-run depots. It had a stable, a restaurant, offered a wide variety of trade goods, and even had lodgings in case of inclement weather.
The weather had remained good, and was growing a little cooler the farther they traveled northwest. The team was changed while they had lunch. There was a slight delay in leaving though because one of the fresh horses lost a shoe as it was led out to be hitched up. Since the depot only serviced one route, it only kept six horses on hand, so the shoe needed to be refitted if they wanted the fresh horse.
Chad had tried to keep his distance from the ladies as much as possible, if for no other reason than he was attracted to Amanda Laton and traveling, with its attendant discomforts, wasn’t a good time for romantic notions. When she was at her new home and settled in, he would decide whether to act on that attraction. So he took his meals with Will, rather than with the ladies, and rode half of each day up on the coach with him, and the other half on his horse, but never inside the stage. Amanda and the maid, Ella Mae, had already boarded the coach when the horse lost his shoe, and elected to wait inside it. Marian had been purchasing something in the general store and, unaware of the delay, probably thinking she was holding up their departure, came running out to the coach and ran right into Chad’s back.
He thought nothing of it. She was a very clumsy woman, always bumping into things—and people. He simply moved out of her way. But she seemed all flustered by the accident and e
ven seemed about to apologize, but then must have changed her mind. How the hell she could end up blaming him for it he couldn’t guess, but she did.
“You tried to trip me, didn’t you? And it’s not the first time. Is it something you developed as a child? Picking on other children with weaknesses? A very mean thing to do. Outgrow it!”
Chad wasn’t just surprised at her accusation. He was so incredulous at being blamed by her for something that she knew was her fault, he was rendered speechless. And having insulted him thoroughly for the second time, she then yanked her skirt back away from him, as if it were in danger of getting contaminated, and flounced off.
He almost yanked her back. He even started to reach for her. A good shaking might be just what she needed. But he stopped himself. The ridiculous ideas that got into her head weren’t worth wasting his time over. The trouble was, his time was wasted anyway, in mulling over just how infuriating that female was.
The stage robbers who stopped the coach a couple hours down the road couldn’t have known it wasn’t a good time to hold him up. There were two of them, each gripping pistols in both hands. One actually looked like a girl behind the mask, or a very young boy, short and skinny as all heck. The other, their spokesman, was a big brute of a man.
The call was given to lay down arms and throw out all valuables. Chad, riding up on the driver’s seat with Will at the time, didn’t oblige. Will did, and quickly. He’d been through countless robberies on his job and had a firm personal policy that he wasn’t paid enough to risk his life trying to protect what was in other people’s pockets. Chad might have felt the same way, if the spinster hadn’t got on his bad side again that day.
Rifle already in hand, since it had been cradled in his lap, he said, “I’m not in a good mood. If you have a lick of sense, that should tell you that you really don’t want to mess with me today. If I have to shoot, I’ll be shooting to kill. So why don’t you think about that for a moment, then get the hell out of here.”
It was probably a little more than even odds that bullets could have started flying right then. Robbers were known to take such chances, and these two already had their weapons at the ready, while only Chad was now armed to oppose them. But they weren’t likely to know that there were only women in the coach, so they had to consider that more weapons might be brought into the equation.
However, with Will laying down his weapon as ordered, at that precise moment they only had Chad to deal with. One rifle was all it would take, though, with good aim. The question was then, did they think they might be better and faster? Only they knew how good they were.
There was a brief spat of whispered conversation between the two, then some swearing. Chad patiently waited it out. He’d almost been hoping they wouldn’t back down. But while he wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet through the big fellow, he drew the line at shooting teenagers or female desperadoes, whichever the kid was. So he was somewhat relieved when the short one kicked the dirt, then hightailed it into the brush where their horses were staked. The big guy backed away more slowly, but in another moment, he was gone from sight as well. Chad still waited, alert, and didn’t relax until he heard their horses galloping away.
“That was real stupid,” Will grumbled as he retrieved his gun from the floorboard and shoved it back in his holster. “There’s usually a few more hiding on the sides, ready for any opposition.”
“Usually didn’t apply here, now did it?” Chad replied with a shrug.
“No, but you sure as hell didn’t know that. Just pure luck that it was only them two. Why I’ve seen o many bullets flying at a coach once, the dang wheel was shot off. And that time, only two of the robbers made themselves visible as well, but it turned out there were six in all.”
“Maybe you need to find a new job.”
“Maybe I do,” Will agreed with a snort. “But in the meantime, why’n’t you get yourself in a better mood so you don’t go getting me killed.”
Chad figured out was just nervous tension shooting its mouth off, so he didn’t take offense. But when the same nervous tension came at him from a different direction, he sure as hell did.
She shot out of the coach, her face red with fury, and started shouting at him, “Don’t you ever put us in jeopardy like that again. You—we could’ve been killed! A few trunks of clothes and money aren’t worth human lives!”
He plays the hero and gets his head chewed off. It was the last straw. He jumped down from the coach, grabbed the spinster by her arm, and dragged her a good twenty yards away before he stopped, and snarled, “I’ve a hankering to shake you until you rattle.
Say one more word, and I just might. That was a controlled situation, Missy. If I didn’t already have my hands on my rifle, it might have gone differently. And if you hadn’t already riled me with your silly accusations, it might have gone differently as well. So maybe you should consider keeping your mouth shut from now on, and you might just arrive at the Twisting Barb in one piece.”
He left her there to go check on Amanda. She was probably still frightened, might need comforting. He opened the coach door to find Ella Mae’s calm eyes on him—nothing seemed to ruffle the Latons’ maid, and Amanda fast asleep. The little beauty had slept through the whole thing.
Chapter 8
MARIAN WAS IN THE very pits of the doldrums. She wasn’t used to making such a complete fool of herself, and doing it deliberately. Granted she would usually start out with any new acquaintance, at least any that might have a chance of becoming a friend or a suitor, by giving them a bad first impression of herself, just enough for them to mark her down as not worth knowing.
This was her safety tactic, to make sure right from the start that her sister wouldn’t get jealous. And she’d been doing it for so long that it was automatic on her part.
She’d made that effort with Chad Kinkaid the day he’d found them. Accusing him of nefarious deeds, when she’d had no doubt he was there to rescue them, should have been enough. He’d been obviously insulted and avoided her ever since, wouldn’t talk to her, wouldn’t even look in her general direction. The perfect results. She just hadn’t counted on the effect he would have on her.
There was no getting around it, she liked him—too much. The initial attraction she’d felt toward him didn’t diminish with his cold shoulders as it should have. She found herself thinking about him constantly, listening for the sound of his voice, trying to catch glimpses of him when he rode beside the coach, everything she shouldn’t have been doing, but she just couldn’t seem to help herself.
Amanda hadn’t noticed her interest in Chad yet because she was consumed with her own discomfort. But if she thought for even a second that Marian liked him, she’d put herself out to win him for herself, not to keep him, of course, but just to spite Marian.
So it wasn’t that Marian needed to reinforce Chad’s dislike of her. He already disliked her just fine. It was that she needed to burn her own bridges more thoroughly, to make sure that there was absolutely no possibility, ever, that he could be hers. Because even if she lost her last bit of sense and let him know that she liked him, she knew she couldn’t compete with her sister over him.
Amanda would use every trick in the book to get what she wanted. If what she wanted was a man, she’d even sleep with him, even if only once, just to get him thoroughly devoted to her. She’d done it before, and made sure that Marian knew about it, if it happened to be a man Marian had shown some interest in. So until Amanda was married and had moved somewhere far away from her, she couldn’t begin to think of getting married herself.
So she’d made a fool of herself, again, and now she was miserable with embarrassment because of it. And it wasn’t even intentional this time. Bumping into Chad that afternoon had been no more than an accident. But finding herself about to apologize for it had set off alarm bells in her head. She didn’t want him to think she was just clumsy. That wasn’t a bad enough trait to prompt extreme dislike. Another unwarranted accusation was, though.
br /> But she could have at least been a little more inventive. Charging him with being mean to children was beyond ridiculous. It just showed how utterly flustered she’d been, finding herself in such close proximity to him that she couldn’t even think straight.
She would have thought she couldn’t get more embarrassed. But lo and behold, he faces a little danger during that aborted stage robbery, and she loses all common sense. She wasn’t even sure what was worse, experiencing fear for him or behaving like an idiot because of it.
Definite doldrums. Then to find herself eating dinner with him that night of all nights, when high color was rising up her cheeks every few minutes, when she couldn’t stop thinking about her silly behavior. But there was no help for it, at least not that night. The town was small, there was only the one eating establishment in the single hotel, and only one table left empty in it, and the dining room was closing—the cook already gone home—so she couldn’t make some excuse, then come back to eat later, and neither could he.
At least they weren’t served a round of the usual long-winded complaints from Amanda with the meal. She’d slept through the entire robbery that day, so hadn’t had to experience any worry over it, had only been told about it afterward, when they were halfway to the next town, and was actually in a somewhat good mood because of it. And Amanda in a good mood meant flirtation with every man within her sights.
Marian found the food tasteless, could barely swallow it. She had so many mixed feelings stirred up that her head began to ache. It was one thing to know what could happen and quite another to sit there and watch Amanda gain Chad’s rapt attention. Even poor Will Candles got utterly flustered by Amanda’s smiles. It made Marian sick to her stomach.
The headache was a good excuse to leave, and she took it. So what if she went to sleep hungry. She’d be lucky if she could sleep at all.
No one but Ella Mae really heard her make the excuse or noticed her leaving, she did such a good job of making herself ignorable. She found her way to the room she’d be sharing with her sister and their maid, even though the light had burned out in the hall. She was too miserable to light the lamp in the room, either. She just released her hair from the tight bun, tossed her spectacles on the nearest table, dropped her dress to the floor, and crawled under the covers on the bed to nurse her misery.