Crossings (2 page)

“Come here,” he commanded in a voice icy and exact.

Foreboding numbed her legs. In the cast of firelight, he did intimidate her. His eyes were hooded, the nostrils of his hawkish nose flared and distrusting. Hair the color of pitch was wind-ruffled around his
plaid collar. The lines of his rugged face were not put there by the emotions of love and pride; they looked to be the scars of battle.

She walked forward, trying to swallow her fear, but it was as thick as dough. A tremor shook her voice when she said, “It's me, Helena Gray. I've waited on you in the store. . . .” His consuming stare was so unnerving, she momentarily lost her train of thought. “I helped you with your purchases. You know my father. . . .”

Carrigan's brows drew together in a withdrawn expression as he studied her briefly but didn't answer. Removing the cigarette stub from his lips, he flicked it into the fire. “Does August know where you are?”

“No.”

“Then go home.”

She let his comment pass, though the intensity of his gaze had her pulse spinning. “My father doesn't know where I am because he's dead.”

Carrigan was silent, his face stony. The dog snapped his jaws, his sharp teeth biting at the breeze. Carrigan moved his gaze on the animal. “Obsi, lie down.”

Helena's arms were tingling. “May I lower my hands?” she asked.

Grumbling, he turned away, and she took his dismissal as a yes. He set his revolver on the table and picked up a long-handled spoon to stir a shallow pan of beans. Afterward, he adjusted the skewer. When he turned toward her, the sharpness in his eyes waned to disbelief. “How did it happen?”

“He was murdered in our store five days ago.” Wetting her lips, she continued with a sadness in her tone she was unable to mask. “Our cash box was taken with not enough in it worth killing for.” The horror of the scene haunted her sleep and tortured her waking hours, and she thanked God it had been she and not Emilie who had discovered their father's body.

A distilled silence feathered the campfire's smoke before meat drippings hit the flames. Carrigan flinched when loud pops erupted, sending a shower of embers over the sooty containment rocks. He sat quiet and erect, his steely expression diminishing somewhat with the sparks in the wet grass. “Have you eaten?”

“I'm not hungry, thank you.”

He removed his meal, fixing a plate for the dog and himself. Then Carrigan proceeded to eat, using a fork and knife. His manners were cultured, unlike those of the old sourdough miners who sat in front of the Metropolitan Saloon. Taking intermittent swigs of liquor, Carrigan consumed his modest dinner and acted as if she weren't there watching.

Helena's leather-laced ankles grew tired from standing on the slant, but she hadn't been offered a seat. Not that there was an extra one. On first glance, there had appeared to be no back to the lean-to. Now she could see that the rear wall was the side of a crude cabin. And on closer inspection, the squat table held a coffee grinder and jars for making sassafras bars, a tobacco pouch, and an assortment of spice tins and oil vials.

“Is anyone searching for the man responsible?” Carrigan's inquiry broke her perusal.

“There is no law or sheriff in Genoa. We're a provisional part of the Nevada Territory. Mr. Van Sickle, our justice of the peace, and Mr. Doyle, our undertaker, are the few men holding legal professions.”

“So nothing is being done?”

“I gave my account to Mr. Davis, the deputy postmaster, and to Judge Kimball, but he can't do anything without a suspect.”

“Nothing is being done,” Carrigan muttered in a caustic tone.

Helena grew perturbed. He made it sound as if she didn't care. “What else can I do?” she asked bitterly.
“There are no witnesses.” Her voice clogged with tears she refused to spend. “If I could track the outlaw myself, I would.”

Carrigan set his plate aside and stared into the firelight as if the flame beckoned. Lifting the bottle, he took a long swallow, then held out his hand. “A drink will help. Whiskey can be a good cure when there is no visible blood on your wound.”

“I don't believe so,” she returned, tightening the shawl more closely about her shoulders. “You can't drown your sorrows. They know how to swim.”

He apparently didn't appreciate her caution, for he grew as touchy as gunpowder. “What do you want?”

Girding herself with courage, she said, “I want to offer you a trade.”

“For more horses?”

“No.”

A suspicious line formed at the corner of his mouth. “A trade for what, then?”

She stalled, trying to entice him with the rewards. “You'd be able to select merchandise at the store. Tobacco and liquor. Supplies when you need them. Dry goods. Kerosene. Anything you desire at no cost.”

“Everything has a price,” he insisted with a sharp edge of cynicism. “What do I have to give you?”

She braced herself for his reaction. “Your name.”

“My name?”

“Yes.”

“My name isn't worth shit.”

Her voice faded to a hushed stillness. “It is to me.”

“How so?”

“I would like use of it. In marriage.” She took a deep breath and tried to relax. “Our marriage.”

*  *  *

The taste of whiskey went sour in Carrigan's mouth. Resting the bottle's end on his leather-clad thigh, he grew intoxicated by his anger. The emotion stabbed at his normally disguised pride. Hostility
rushed through him to slip like a greased key into the lock of his resentment.

He didn't like being played for a fool.

At first he hadn't known who she was. The fragrance of crushed violets on her skirts had confused him. He associated the smell of coffee, gun oil, and cheese with her voice. But then he'd recognized the distinctive female scent that was hers alone and had been able to place her. The rose vinegar perfuming her hair had entered him like sweet breath into his lungs.

Ignoring her, he willed her to leave him alone, hoping his silence was louder than the words warring inside his head. Seconds passed. He felt her unwavering gaze on him. Blue. Her eyes were blue and soft and pleading. In that instant he hated her for evoking something within the barren shell of his heart.

“Leave,” he mumbled.

“Not yet.”

He underestimated her fearlessness. She wouldn't go away.

“My offer is honest. If you become my husband, I'd trade whatever you needed in the store.”

Glaring at her, he mentally sifted the rubbish she tossed. He could barely contain his smirk when he found a flaw in her strategy. “As your lawful husband, I would
own
everything in the store.”

His satisfaction was enhanced when she nervously bit her lip. “Yes . . . you would. But I was hoping I'd be able to keep running things as they are. I didn't think you'd have any interest in—”

“Suppose I did?” he countered sharply.

“Then we would discuss those arrangements.”

He cocked his brow with growing distrust. The transparency of her remark grated on him. Her eagerness to please thinned his forbearance. “There
is
a price. What am I really worth to you?”

“Protection,” she said simply and without pause.
“People are afraid of you. If I were your wife, they would be afraid of me, too.”

Surprise engulfed him. “Am I so crazy to them?” he mused aloud. “I hadn't realized.” Stuffing the cork on his whiskey, he put the bottle away.

She wrung her hands together, disregarding his mocking statement. “Nothing need change in our lives. We'd go on the way we have, except we'd share your name. And my house.”

Carrigan stared hard, showing no reaction to her proposal. “No.”

“Things between us wouldn't be permanent. Just for—”

“No.”

She was clearly at her wits' end, her eyes a mirror of desperation. Firelight played across her pale face and danced through her golden hair, which had been confined in a diamond-patterned net. Her features were dainty, but the suggestion of a wholesome figure lay beneath her shawl.

“You don't understand the severity of the situation,” she rushed. “They've cut me off. I didn't think they would go that far, but they have.”

He struck a match and lit a cigarette, then stood so that she could have his seat. “Sit down. You keep shifting on your feet and it bothers me.”

The thick lashes shadowing her cheeks flew up. After a moment's hesitation, she moved toward the crate. The fullness of her skirt brushed against him as she passed. His lids came down swiftly over his eyes, and he sucked in his breath. His senses leapt to life from the heat of her body. It had been years since he'd been this close to a woman. He wondered if she was as soft as he remembered a female to be. If her mouth would burn from his kisses. He could almost taste the dew of violets clinging to her skin, yet his lips had not touched hers.

Blinking, he focused his gaze. An intense longing
flared through him. He didn't want to feel desire for her, but couldn't suppress its potent surge through his veins. Even Obsi was curious about her. The dog sniffed her fingers as she sat. She tried to appear brave but hid her hands in the volume of her dress, out of Obsi's reach. The narrow-striped skirt fanned around her ankles, which were attired in practical shoes. He saw her, and yet he didn't. For the woman he was acquainted with in the store would never have come. She was reserved. A thinker who, like himself, didn't say much. Or perhaps it was just to him she spared few words.

“Why have you really come?” he asked, drawing smoke from his cigarette and exhaling into the same wind kicking the soft curls at her temple.

“I told you. It's business. Ours wouldn't be a marriage in the true sense.” She looked downward and murmured, “I didn't think you'd have any interest in consummating—”

“You don't think a lot of me,” he interrupted in a patronizing voice that made her flinch. “You strip me of my interests, then you strip me of my manhood—practically in one breath. What would you say if I wanted to take you to my bed? Would we discuss those arrangements also?”

Raising her chin, she parted her lips. He watched the slim column of her throat as she swallowed. “I was hoping you wouldn't . . . but . . .”

“You're doing nothing short of selling yourself to me like a common whore. And for what?” The strength of his voice made the fire shoot sparks. “The nothing cost of my worthless name.”

“It's not worthless to me,” she rallied. “The name Carrigan commands respect and fear.”

His brows arched. “Are you afraid of me?”

“No.”

“You're not telling me the truth. I, too, am a liar. So I can recognize the face. What aren't you telling me?”

She lifted her wrist and pressed fingertips to her
forehead as if her head were a ripe melon splitting wide open. “If I don't marry, I'll have to give up the relay station.”

“So marry,” he said noncommittally. “I'm sure there are plenty of men you can choose from.”

Her hand lowered. “But none that would make them cower in their boots if they dared treat me the way they are now!”

“Them, their, and they,” he quipped. “A clandestine trio?”

“No. The business owners who have seen fit to inform me two women cannot operate a Pony Express post.” Her clarion voice broke. “Since my father died, I have been refused service. I have two horses that need shoeing, but none of the three blacksmiths will shoe them. Mr. Lewis at the hay yard is demanding payment on our account, or he won't give me hay. I already went to his competitor, but he denied me credit.”

“What happened to the man who tends your stock?”

“Eliazer.”

Carrigan nodded.

“Eliazer doesn't care about his pay as long as he's fed and housed.”

“Marry him.”

Aghast, she blurted, “He's nearly sixty and already married. Besides, he hasn't the strength or reputation to slight them.” Fatigue softened her posture. “They've banded together to shut me out. If I don't have properly shod horses and feed, I'll have to give up everything. What galls me most is, they're right. Emilie and I can't do it alone. I need to hire help, but if I don't have the revenue from the Express, I can't afford to pay a salary.”

As Carrigan puffed on his cigarette, his thoughts clouded with the gray smoke in the air. He reflected on private memories, treasures that he kept safeguarded in his mind where they could not be stolen.
Terrible regrets assailed him, and he vowed not to make the same mistakes as he had in the past. No amount of convincing on the woman's part would change his answer.

“I won't be treated in the same manner as those men ridicule the Indians.” The determination marking her words splintered his musings. “They can't take away what my father worked so hard for.” Her face was flushed but proud. “I have never had to humble myself in such a way as I am to you. But I am asking you to marry me.”

He took one last drag before snapping the butt into the fire. “I'm not a rescuer. I can't help you.”

She sat in silence, her mouth as pale as her cheeks. The misery surrounding her was so acute, he felt it as a physical pain. A stab of guilt buried itself to the hilt in his chest. He had to do something, say something, to make her leave, or else he would  . . .

“Go home,” he told her.

Standing, she straightened her shoulders and cleared her throat. “You're right. You are
not
the man who can help me.”

She walked away with stiff dignity, Obsi trotting after her.

“Obsi!” Carrigan growled. “Come!”

The dog stopped but didn't yield to his master's command. He slowly sat on his haunches and watched the woman vanish into the dark woods.

Carrigan cursed and kicked the dog's empty plate. The tin made a loud clatter as it bounced off a rock. Obsi ran to the other side of the cabin, out of Carrigan's view. He didn't like losing his temper. When he was alone, he rarely, if ever, did so.