The Outlaw and the Lady (12 page)

“So you have sisters?” she asked eagerly.

“Two. Heather and Crystal, both younger.” She angled her head thoughtfully. “Actually, I have a third sister who is older. Mary Ellen. My mother
gave birth to her out of wedlock, and a very nice couple adopted her.”

“Your mother told you of this shameful thing she did?” Juanita asked, clearly in shock.

“She never considered it shameful. She was seventeen, and loved the man, but he went off to war. When her daughter was born, she did what she thought was best. But I grew up always knowing that Mary Ellen was my sister. As a matter of fact, she married a duke.”

“A duke?”

Angela shook her head. She was jumping from topic to topic, trying to establish a friendship in such a short time. “In England, men of rank carry titles—”

“I know about the peerage.”

Now it was Angela’s turn to be stunned. “You do?”

“
Sí
. Lee explained it to us. He is fascinated with England and its history.”

“Really? I would have thought he’d be fascinated with Spain or Mexico.”

“Oh, he is. He knows everything.”

Except how to escape the memories that haunted him. She rolled her palm over one of the smooth-skinned tomatoes in her lap. Her curiosity about Lee seemed to know no bounds. She’d promised not to ask anything about him, and here she was prodding for tidbits of information. “He doesn’t seem to sleep much.”

“He has bad dreams. They are much worse since we moved here. They shame him.”

“He’s ashamed of his dreams, but proud that he murdered a man?”

Juanita put her hand over Angela’s. It was such a small, delicate hand. “Oh, no,
señorita
, he is not proud that he killed a man.”

“That’s not the impression I got. He was practically bragging about his actions.”

“He only pretends because he thinks it makes him…I cannot think of the word to explain…tough.”

She was having a difficult time reconciling what she knew of the legend with what she was learning of the man.

“Where is he now?”

“He took Miguel to the barn to look at his cat.”

“I’d like to talk to him. Can you take me?”

“You will not tell him what I told you, will you?”

She squeezed Juanita’s hand in reassurance. “Of course not. I just want to assure him that I will leave after the party. I don’t want Miguel’s birthday tainted with Lee’s bad mood.”

Juanita removed the tomatoes from Angela’s lap. “I need to finish gathering the vegetables for supper, but Alejandro can take you. Alejandro!”

She heard his footsteps growing nearer. “How long has he been watching us?”

“A while. He is very protective.”

“And he doesn’t like me.”

“But he will not hurt you.”

She hadn’t thought he would. She couldn’t deny that she’d been terrified when Lee had first grabbed her outside the bank, but after they’d
made their initial stop to rest the horses, her fears had ebbed. She’d never stopped wanting to be free of them, but she’d no longer been afraid. Even now, she felt remarkably safe.

“Alejandro, will you take Angela to the barn?”

“Why?” he asked curtly.

“I want to speak to Lee,” Angela answered, rising to her feet.

“Perhaps he does not want to speak to you.”

“Are you going to escort me or not?”

“If he wanted you in the barn, he would have invited you to join him.”

“Fine.” She dusted off her hands. “I’ll just take myself.”

She allowed the furrows between the rows to guide her out of the garden.

“Alejandro! Take her,” Juanita ordered.

With a low growl, he grabbed her arm and propelled her forward. Short tempers obviously ran in this family.

“I’m not a dog to be led around,” she informed him.

“You are much worse,” he assured her, his grip tightening. “He should never have brought you here.”

“You’re bruising me.”

His hold loosened and his steps slowed. “My apologies,
señorita
.”

“I’m not a danger to you or your family,” she told him.

“You will get him killed.”

Nearby, someone chopped wood with a steady rhythm. Someone turned the creaking handle of a
bucket at a well. She understood now why Lee had referred to this place as home. With the exception of the isolation, life here was no different than anywhere else.

Alejandro came to an abrupt halt and released her. “We are at the barn. I leave it to you to find him.”

She heard his retreat. “Alejandro?” He stopped. “I won’t do anything to endanger him.”

“I fear your promises come too late,
señorita
.”

His footsteps faded, leaving Angela forlorn. She didn’t want to feel that whatever destiny befell Lee was her doing. He’d chosen a life of crime long before he knew her; she hadn’t directed his journey.

Cautiously testing each step with the pointed toe of her shoe before moving forward, she inched her way into the barn. Juanita’s clothing was not nearly as confining as Angela’s had been, and she thought if she were able to glimpse her reflection in the mirror, she’d decide the shoes looked out of place, but she’d never been one to go barefoot.

The sun had warmed her face, but now cooler air welcomed her along with the odor of straw and animals. She envisioned the barn, large and cavernous. Dust motes tickled her nose. When her sight had died, it seemed as though every other sense had burst to life. Nearby, a horse sounded as though it was blowing air past its quivering lips. In the distance, she heard the muted voices of Lee and Miguel.

The last thing she had ever expected of an out
law was to discover that he possessed a profound loyalty to family. What had happened that caused him to take a life? He couldn’t claim self-defense. He’d shot the man in the back. A cowardly action. Yet Lee Raven seemed anything but a coward.

She allowed their voices to guide her. She detected the throaty mewling of a cat warning away intruders.

“Can you count the kittens, Miguel?” Lee asked.

“One, two, three, four.”

“Good.”

“When can I hold them?”

“Not until I say.”

“When will you say?”

“When the mama cat tells me.”

Their voices traveled upward to reach her ears, and she imagined Lee hunkered inside the stall, Miguel squatting beside him, mirroring his actions. The boy’s voice held so much admiration for his older brother that it was obvious he would never consider disobeying any command Lee gave. But then, that was true for all his brothers. He commanded them as though he’d been born to lead. A shame he’d decided to lead a band of outlaws instead of a community.

“Did it hurt Hector to have babies?” Miguel asked.

Hector
? Angela wondered why he would think the male cat would be in pain when it was the female who suffered?

“
Sí
, that is the way of birthing,” Lee said quietly.

Lee’s answer completely baffled her. Trust a man to make it sound as though he did all the work.

“Did it hurt my mama when I was born?”

Angela held her breath. How could a man ever explain—?

“
Sí
. As I said, it is the way of things, but, oh, Miguel…when I put you in her arms for the first time…her smile…it was beautiful, the most beautiful smile that I have ever seen.”

Angela stepped closer, drawn by the love resounding not only in Lee’s words, but in his voice…and something that went beyond love.

“
Señorita
! You are here! We have babies!” Miguel exclaimed before taking her hand. “Come see!”

She heard Lee’s knees pop and knew she’d guessed correctly. He’d been crouching.

“She will have to wait to see, Miguel, until she can touch them.”

“Can I tell Juanita?” the child asked.

“
Sí
.”

His rapidly retreating footsteps alerted her that all was forgotten except the news he had to impart.

“You were there when he was born?” she asked softly.

“Is that strange?”

“Most parents don’t want their children around.”

“I was not a child when he was born.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I guess you weren’t. Was your father there as well?”

“No.”

“Where was he?”

“He was not available.” He took her arm. “Come. I’m certain Hector is tired of having an audience.”

“Hector is the female cat?”

“
Sí
. Some things are difficult to explain to a child.”

Humor laced his voice, and she imaged him smiling wryly. How she wished that in her mind she could create a true vision of him, but just as she could not “see” the kittens until the cat allowed her to touch them, so she could not “see” Lee until he trusted her.

“I
don’t believe it!” Jorge roared, before tossing his cards onto the center of the table.

With Miguel curled up in his lap asleep, Lee watched the exchange from the sofa, Juanita beside him. With a fierce scowl marring what otherwise was a darkly handsome face, Alejandro sat in a nearby chair. Jorge, Eduardo, and Roberto had been trying to beat Angela at poker for more than two hours. Although she insisted the brothers utter the name of each card shown, since she was not dealing the cards, Lee couldn’t determine how she could be cheating.

“She seems to have a knack for remembering what has been played,” Lee mused.

“What else has she memorized?” Alejandro asked in a low voice. “The layout of the house?
The land? She could describe too many things that would give away our location.”

“You worry too much.” Besides, they did not own the land. They could easily leave, would have to leave if the Mexican government discovered them here.

“What have you told her?” Alejandro asked.

“Very little.”

“For her that is probably enough.”

“Do you remember what it was like to trust someone outside the family?” Lee asked.

“
Sí
.” Alejandro stood. “And I remember what it was like to watch the soil soak up our blood.”

Lee sighed as Alejandro stormed out the front door.

“What troubles Alejandro?” Roberto asked, looking up.

Lee shrugged. “Who knows with Alejandro?”

His brothers cast furtive glances at each other before turning their attention back to the cards they held. How could Angela not know what they looked like? They were Mexican through and through, their heritage reflected in their chiseled features. What did she want to do? Touch her fingers to their faces? His gut clenched at the thought of them experiencing what he so desperately wanted: her caresses, and more, her love.

But love was lost to him. All that remained was retribution and it was slow in coming. Whenever Shelby placed money in a bank, Lee removed it. His plan had been to exact his revenge by crippling Shelby financially. He had heard that Shelby
was hurting, but not to the extent Lee wanted, the degree to which he deserved to suffer.

“You should play with them,” Juanita said softly. “You could beat her.”

“When she gets cocky, maybe then I will join them.”

“I do not think she will get cocky,” Juanita told him. “She is very nice, Lee. I am glad she will stay a few more days.”

Because like Miguel, Juanita had no friends. She had been but twelve the night that their parents died. She contented herself with keeping house and caring for her brothers, but surely a day would come when she would crave a family of her own, a husband. She would require a very special man. Unfortunately, Lee doubted that a man with enough patience and understanding existed. “You should go to town with Roberto tomorrow.”

She shook her head and stared at her hands folded on her lap. “I like it here.”

“You can come back, Juanita. It would just be for the day.”

“I need to watch Miguel.”

“I would watch him.”

“I do not want to go. Please do not make me go,” she whispered.

Slipping his arm around her shoulders, he hated the way she stiffened, but still he drew her near and pressed a kiss to her temple. “I will not force you to go. I just want you to be happy.”

“I am happy. I like it here. We are safe.”

But for how long? What would happen if he
could not shake the next set of hunters? He would never lead them here intentionally…

“That’s it! I am through,” Jorge exclaimed. “I don’t know how you do it,
señorita
, but you do cheat.”

Smiling and sweeping her hand around the table, she gathered the cards. When she had them all together, she shuffled with one hand, palmed the deck, cut it, and stacked it—while her other hand remained in her lap. “Now, why would you think that?” she asked, cockily. “Another round?”

Lee eased Miguel onto Juanita’s lap. “She is going to put us in the poorhouse.” He stood and sauntered across the room. “
Querida
, go for a walk with me before you take all my brothers’ hard-earned money.”

She lifted her face, her attention honing in on him. It was remarkable the way it seemed that she was looking at him. She scoffed. “Hard-earned? I know exactly how hard-earned it is.”

His brothers gave him knowing smiles and smirks. He wrapped his hand around her arm and drew her to her feet. “There is a lot you do not know,
querida
. Perhaps I am the man to teach you.”

Angela couldn’t recall ever walking with a man’s rough palm pressed against hers, his fingers threaded through hers. She had followed Lee through the house and into the yard, trying to concentrate on the number of steps, the twists, the turns, but his scent of horses and leather had distracted her as much as the roughness of his
palm against hers. She imagined him as a rancher instead of a man with a bounty on his head. She couldn’t envision him being anything but successful.

More than was wise, she enjoyed the sensation of belonging—or at least the sensation of belonging with this man at this moment in time. He could never be a permanent part of her life nor she a part of his. They were worlds apart. She respected the law, and he seemed to believe it was meant to be broken.

Yet his brothers hadn’t cheated when they’d played cards with her. Otherwise they wouldn’t have lost every hand. Initially, she’d worried that they’d realize a card was missing from the deck, but she’d quickly determined that they didn’t have a knack for remembering the cards that had been played.

In silence, with nothing but the creatures of the night to serenade them, she and Lee continued their trek, distancing themselves from the house, the barn, and the corral.

“What were you doing walking through town the night we robbed the bank?” he asked.

She tightened her hold on his hand. “I like to stroll at night. The air is different, calmer, quieter. And I don’t—” She released a soft chuckle.

“You don’t what?”

She smiled and turned her head toward him. “I don’t usually bump into people at night.”

“I haven’t noticed you bumping into things.”

She shrugged. “I haven’t had much chance to explore. Usually when I’m in a new place, I end
up with a lot of bruises. But in Fortune, I know every street, every building, the exact number of steps that will take me to the general store, or the boardinghouse, or my father’s saloon. I like to slip into the shadows and listen to the noises inside. I can see everything clearly. The bar that my grandfather used to polish until it shined. The crystal chandelier that my father moved from my mother’s bedroom to the front of the saloon the day after he won the building from my grandfather. He’d promised to order a new one so my mother could have it back…but he never did. I think because it reminds him of the time when they lived in the saloon. Now every room in their house has a chandelier.”

“Your house sounds like a fancy place,” he said.

She gnawed on her lip. How to explain? “It’s a beautiful house. It rings of laughter and tears. Smiles keep it warm more than the fires within the hearths. It’s filled with so much love.” She hesitated before reaching out to rub his arm. “Your house is like that. I hadn’t expected it to be.”

“It is not as it once was.”

The tall grass caught on her skirt as she inhaled the lingering scent of flowers in bloom.

“So you go out at night to listen to the sounds in a saloon?” he prodded.

“It’s more than that. When I press my ear to the window, I can see everyone. The cowboys, the farmers, the merchants, the gamblers…but they’re always the same people. People who visited the saloon when I was twelve, but they haven’t aged in all these years. Sometimes, I want
to walk through the saloon and touch their faces, discover new ones, recognize old ones, ask them what color their hair is now. The things I don’t touch again never change…and the things I’ve never touched…I don’t know what they look like.”

“It bothers you not knowing what everyone looks like.”

“It’s like living in a cave, isolated. I live in the darkness, but my life can be more than shadows.”

“I cannot see you living in shadows. You have fought me, insulted me, stood up to me…slept in my arms.”

The last was said in a low, sensual voice that sent desire curling throughout her. He stopped walking. Her heart pounded with her acute awareness of him.

“If my brothers will allow it, you may touch their faces. Juanita’s, too.”

“But not yours.”

“No, not mine.”

Disappointment reeled through her. He released her hand, and she heard his knees pop. She knelt beside him, taking a deep breath to stay the tears. She couldn’t recall ever wanting anything as desperately as she wanted his trust, unless it was his love, but she knew that she couldn’t possess true love without trust. If he wouldn’t entrust her with his appearance, how could he possibly trust her with his heart? An odor assailed her, not unpleasant, but unexpected. Lowing of cattle echoed around her.

“There are cattle out there,” she said, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.

“
Sí
.”

Now that she’d turned her attention away from him, she could detect the clack of horns hitting, hooves stomping the ground. “A lot of cattle.”

“Two thousand head.”

She was taken aback by the pride reflected in his voice, the pride she’d often heard in cowboys’ voices when they sauntered into the saloon to take a breather before herding the cattle farther north. “Your cattle?”

“My brothers’.”

“They’re ranchers?”

“You sound surprised. This family has always been ranchers. Our father. His father before him. Shelby destroyed our home, but he could not rob us of our past. We saved what cattle we could from our father’s range—those that were not slaughtered. The rest we gathered where we could, if they belonged to no one. We have bred some. Building the herd. Next spring, they will drive the cattle up to the rail yards in Fort Worth.”

She heard the longing in his voice. They would take the cattle while he was relegated to stay behind because he couldn’t risk being captured or endangering them.

He hadn’t mentioned that they used the stolen money to purchase livestock. “If you don’t buy cattle, what do you do with the money you steal?”

She could sense his hesitation, his unwillingness to tell her. She wanted something from him, a corner of trust. “You spend it on women?”

“No.”

She didn’t know why there was a touch of humor in his voice. “Liquor? Gambling?”

“I do not spend it.”

“You’re just hoarding it away, then—”

“No.”

She released a sigh of frustration. “Why can’t you ever give me a straightforward answer? Why do you have to be secretive with every aspect of your life?”

He wrapped his hand around hers, lifted it slightly, and placed the most tender of kisses on the tips of her fingers. His soft lips formed the perfect frame for the heat of his mouth. His warm breath skimmed over her knuckles, sending shivers of pleasure rippling through her.

“I will tell you a secret, but you must swear that you will never tell a soul,” he demanded.

Joy spiraled through her with the thought of one secret revealed. In time, perhaps he would share others, including the mystery of his appearance. “I promise.”

“I have never told anyone this.”

Holding her breath, she tightened her fingers around his. “You can trust me.”

He kissed her fingers again. “When I was a boy…a very, very young boy, like Miguel…I imagined that an angel visited me.”

“An angel?” she whispered.

“
Sí
. The sun would shine in her hair, and she
would smile at me. I loved this angel, but then one day, she stopped coming. For a long time, I thought I had done something wrong, something to make her angry—or worse, sad. Then one day, I realized that I had simply grown too old, and the angel had always been only in my imagination. But she had seemed so real.”

“Imaginary friends are like that.” She experienced an incredible sense of kinship, could understand completely how a child might confuse reality with make-believe. She’d done it enough times herself. “When I was a child, I had a friend called Dastardly Pete. Whenever my mother caught me doing something that I shouldn’t do, I’d tell her that Dastardly Pete had made me do it.” Her heart tightened with a memory. “When I awoke from being sick for so long, and the world was still dark, and my father explained that it would remain dark, Dastardly Pete was the only friend who treated me like I hadn’t changed. To everyone else, I was suddenly fragile.”

He kissed her hand again, and she sensed that he was desperately fighting to hold himself in check, to keep the kiss warm when he wanted it to be scorching. “You are not fragile, but delicate in the ways of a woman. You have such strength, such courage. You would not break easily. Juanita…Juanita is fragile. If a man treated her as I treated you that first night, she would have curled into a ball and died.” His voice carried a ragged edge, a vulnerability she never would have suspected he possessed. “I do not know what to do for her.”

She wanted to comfort him beyond reason, this man she knew she should loathe, this man who caressed her hand as though it were an object of marvel. “You love her. That’s obvious. Sometimes that’s enough.”

“In this case it’s
not
enough. That night haunts her, more than any of us. She was so young. Only twelve. She cannot forget it.”

She desperately wanted to reach out and touch him, offer him the compassion of her caress. “It haunts you too.”

“I choose not to forget. That is the difference.”

With his fingers still threaded through hers, she brought his hand to her mouth and kissed the back of his hand. She would have sworn she felt a tremor ripple through him. “Tell me what happened that night,” she urged softly, wanting, needing to know his past so she could understand him.

“It is not a pretty story,
querida
.”

She craved a glimpse into his soul, but knew he would tell her nothing if she confessed that. “All I’m asking for, Lee, is a glimmer of light in my darkness.”