Читать книгу Montana Man - Jillian Hart - Страница 8

“R elax.” Trey handed the menus to the waiter, who hurried away with their order. “The train’s pulling out. That no-good hired gun could have scouted the cars and climbed right back onto that platform. He could be wiring ahead to his cohorts that you weren’t on this train.”

He’d meant to comfort her, but the worry lines slashed deep in her brow remained. “Or maybe he did see me. Maybe he’s just biding his time—”

“No, men like that don’t like to wait. He would have tried to get you off the train before it started to roll.”

“Then I have a lot to be thankful for.” Her voice wobbled, and above the tinkle of silverware and the clinking of china, her gratefulness rang like the sweetest vibrato, rich and rare. “You kept him from finding me. You kept me safe.”

“It was nothing.”

“It was everything.” Her eyes darkened and she looked away, ready to change the subject.

Josie leaned close, asking Miranda to retie Baby Beth’s bonnet strings. With a gentle smile, one that chased the anxiety from her eyes and softened the stark set to a face too beautiful to be so afraid, Miranda tied the tiny ribbons into a plump bow.

There was an innate kindness in her that shone like the first brush of dawn, like new light upon a dark land. Pure and true, she was the kind of woman a man prayed for.

Not that he was in the market for a wife, no sir, he was busy enough with his work. He’d given love a try once and it hadn’t been to his liking. He didn’t have the time for a woman’s demands, no matter how fine the woman. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate one.

“He must be a real jackass.” Trey thanked the waiter who returned with a hot pot of steeping tea.

“Who?” Miranda reached for the gleaming pot.

“Your fiancé.” He scooped up the dainty gold-rimmed cup for her to fill. “You mentioned him, remember?”

“I hoped you might forget all about that.” She poured, but the stream of fragrant tea that spilled into his china cup wasn’t steady or even.

“Did I mention in addition to all my other attributes that I have an excellent memory?”

“You’re also conceited. Another flaw.” A hint of a smile tugged at the tight line of her mouth, but when she lifted the teapot, his cup full to the brim, she miscalculated and hot liquid plopped onto the back of his hand.

He jerked back, tea sloshing over the rim and onto his other hand. He cursed mildly, the burns hot and stinging. He set the cup in its saucer, already nearly full with spilled tea, and reached for his napkin.

She was faster. Heat stained her face as she dabbed at the mess. “I can’t believe I was so clumsy. Are you hurt?”

“Not a bit. Nothing lasting, anyway.”

“This time I didn’t do it, Uncle Trey.” Josie, pleased because she excelled at spilling drinks at the table, clapped her hands. For an instant she looked more like the little girl he remembered, eyes bright and sparkling, the smallest pleasure alight on her pixie face.

For a moment, it was as if the past had returned, that Madeline could be alive and well, and this child’s heart whole. His chest tightened as the moment passed. The train rattled, shuddering against the steep slope as they climbed in elevation. The gladness drained from Josie’s face and she climbed into his lap, quiet and subdued.

Miranda noticed as she added cream and sugar to her own cup, took Josie’s vacant seat between them, and offered the girl a sip. Trey’s heart squeezed a little tighter. He was grateful to this woman, a stranger, who’d taken the time to comfort a frightened little girl.

He wondered what road lay ahead for him and Josie. He didn’t think he could keep her, despite his sister’s wishes. There was so much he couldn’t give a child, even though he wanted to.

The waiter arrived with their first course, steaming clam chowder garnished with bits of green onion and tiny oyster-shaped crackers. Their server had the foresight to bring a small bowl of those special crackers just for Josie.

“I hate to admit it, but you were right.” Miranda dipped her spoon into the thick chowder. “He is a jackass.”

Oh, yes, the fiancé. “He would have to be to let a pretty lady like you run off on him.”

“I never said—”

“Did I mention I also read minds?” His dark eyes glimmered, full of mischief. “Just another one of my many talents—”

“Flaws, you mean.” She startled when the door opened at the end of the elegant car.

A well-dressed man, distinguished in a black suit, stepped inside, and she relaxed. “Lewis wasn’t the man I thought he was.”

“Ah, the real truth of love relationships.” Trey scooted Josie closer to the table, so reaching the bowl of crackers wasn’t such a long stretch for her. “One day the fantasy wears off, and you’re left with reality—a plain man with flaws and failures, not some shining hero of your heart.”

“Now you think you’re an expert on a woman’s love life, is that it?”

“Well, I have observed quite a few situations—”

“It’s not like that.” Irritation sliced through her, and she frowned at him. It was her experience in life that men took a very cynical view of love, and it bothered her to no end, as if women were made to love and care for others but did not deserve great affection and esteem in return. “Lewis is an awful man. He’s charming and—”

“Debonair and dashing?” Trey cocked one brow, attempting to tease her away from her anger.

Well, she wasn’t about to be cajoled out of anything. “Yes, that’s right. He thinks he’s handsome and intelligent and so very fine, but he’s the worst sort of man.”

“Just like me?” Trey’s brow crooked higher.

Oh, she would not grin. She wouldn’t. “As a matter of fact, he’s exactly like you.”

“Surely a man any beautiful woman ought to run screaming away from.” He might be humoring her, but the light in his eyes was fading, as if he sensed what she was about to say.

She pushed aside her soup, no longer hungry. The man, who’d stepped into the car earlier, settled into the table behind her. Aware, she lowered her voice. “I did run away screaming.”

Her palms prickled and every muscle in her body began to quake. The pleasant dining car faded away until memory dominated her senses. She saw again the parlor’s drapes pulled tight against the midday sun and smelled the fragrance of freshly blooming roses.

She closed her eyes, hoping to stop the memory, but she still heard the click of the big double doors closing, locking her in with the man she’d given her heart to. She’d escaped him before he could rape her, but he’d blackened both her eyes, and when she’d leaped out the window running, she’d believed her father would protect her.

But Father only handed her back to Lewis, his words destroying every illusion she’d had about her life.

“I’m sorry he hurt you.” Trey’s words rumbled low like thunder, as powerful as a storm, more comforting than any man’s voice had the right to be. “Is there—”

“No.” She stopped him before he could offer more than she could endure. She didn’t want to go back, she didn’t want to dwell on what could never be changed. Or remember more of that day, of what she could not face again.

“I’m fine, really. I got away before he could take from me what no man should have by force. I—” Her voice wobbled, and she hated it. She hated that he could coax secrets and wounds from her heart with such ease.

“He’s the one after you?” A muscle jumped in Trey’s jaw, and there was no longer even a glimmer of humor. His gaze was as harsh as any bounty hunter’s and twice as determined.

She shook her head. “My father. He’s a powerful man. He’s dead set on this marriage. Lewis is his protégé, a young doctor he’s groomed in his own image. He wants him for a son-in-law.”

“Your father thinks so little of you, his own daughter?” Trey’s words came low, but his anger boomed.

“My father is a man just like you.” She lifted one brow and waited. “Charming, debonair…”

“Aw, but he obviously lacks my kinder nature toward the fairer sex.”

“Obviously.” She almost smiled, their gazes latching together.

She felt it like light to her soul. She saw past the dark brown of his eyes into a deeper place, where his concern gathered with a quiet strength she’d known in no other man. A strength of character and heart, not of brawn and force. Her hand trembled, and she was glad she wasn’t holding the spoon, because she would have dropped it.

The train jerked, breaking the motion, and the renewed howl of the storm slammed into the north side of the car with inhuman force. Josie cried out, tears rising, the trauma of the wreck and losing her parents stark against the other passengers’ gasps of concern.

The brief smile was gone, the fears of an orphaned and injured girl returned. Trey wrapped his arms around the girl, holding her close, reassuring her. The door at the end of the car banged open and the bounty hunter strolled in.

Fear ran like ice water through her veins, and Miranda eased from her chair. She knew Trey was armed, but he was holding a child. There would be no confrontation, no risk to Josie or anyone else in the car. There would be no gunfight, no bullets firing wild.

The hired gun’s gaze fastened on her and she felt the impact, cold and lethal, as cutting as a blizzard’s wind. The train shuddered again, doubling the sound of Josie’s cries. Trey, busy with the child, hadn’t noticed the man behind him, and maybe it would stay that way.

She took a quick breath, gathered her courage and stood from the seat.

“I need to excuse myself,” she whispered, so he would think she was headed to the water closet. It was better to repay him this way for his kindness. She wanted him safe. After all, he had Josie to protect.

She’d never wanted her freedom to come at the price of anyone else coming to harm. Her days of dreaming dreams and wishing on first-stars-of-the-night were past. There was no sense in running. She would give herself up before the bounty hunter decided to fire his gun again.

As if reading her mind, the ruffian slipped one gun from his holster, the smooth glide of steel against leather lost in the noisy car. Cocked, then aimed.

Her chest felt so tight, it was impossible to breathe. She couldn’t let Trey face down an armed man. She couldn’t! Her knees wobbled and her throat was dry, but she managed to keep breathing and put one uncertain foot in front of the other.

“Hold on a minute.” A man’s voice—it wasn’t Trey’s—boomed with heated fury and cold threat. The well-dressed man seated at the adjacent table now towered behind her, gun drawn, his aim steady on the threatening man. “I’m a Pinkerton agent, and she is my quarry. Back down, bounty hunter, if you value your life.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Miranda saw Trey set Josie in a vacant seat. He rose, a man of might who stole her breath and made her heart stammer. He wrapped his hand around the Colt’s handle and drew, standing between her and the bounty hunter, as strong as legend, as powerful as myth.

She did not doubt that he would protect her. But it wasn’t protection she needed.

It was her freedom.

It was all she wanted.

“Put down the gun, bounty hunter.” Trey nodded toward a neighboring table, where diners turned with gasps and exclamations. This was not the kind of behavior they expected to see in their first-class dining car.

Miranda took one step toward the door, afraid to draw attention to herself but longing—how she longed—to escape.

“We’re being robbed!” one woman cried, her hand flying to cover the flickering diamonds at her throat, more gemstones flashing on her fingers.

Cries of fear and outrage exploded like dynamite in a tunnel. Miranda ran. Chaos reigned as the men in the car banded together against the bounty hunter, whose shouts for her to stop were drowned by the cries of outraged women. Above it all Trey’s voice lifted, in control, determined to keep his word.

At the threshold, Miranda risked one glance back. Josie sat at the table, hugging Baby Beth tight, tears glimmering like stars. There was no time to say goodbye, not if she wanted to escape. And it tore at her heart that all she could offer the girl now was a wink and a wave. Then she was gone, dashing through the door.

A flimsy roof overhead hardly protected her from the force of the blizzard as she pushed open the door that led into the first-class cars.

She hurried through them, not knowing if another Pinkerton agent could be watching. Heart pounding, she hurried down the aisle as the train bucked and groaned. The blizzard outside was worsening.

Where should she go? She couldn’t jump. They were in the middle of the Rockies and there were no more stops, not with the way the train was creeping along, at least not for a long while.

As she pushed open the door at the front of the car, a man in the back stood, pulling his well-cut jacket over the gleaming handle of a revolver. Heavens, there were more of them.

She slammed the door shut and stood facing the sleeping cars. No, she wasn’t likely to escape in here. Besides, she’d rather not be captured by an armed man within reach of an empty bed. Not after what she’d learned of human nature.

She faced the ice-cold wind that sliced right through her. Sandlike pellets of ice scoured her, stinging her face and unprotected hands as she gasped for breath. The bitter, vicious wind drove the air right out of her lungs. Lord, if she jumped she wouldn’t survive ten minutes in this.

But the door behind her was kicked open and a man filled the threshold, dark and deadly, the nose of his gun swinging toward her. She would not go back, not on her life.

But what should she do? She wouldn’t let him catch her. She wouldn’t. She climbed up the waist-high steel barrier. The wind battered her face and the snowy banks whipped by at an alarming rate.

Jump? No, it was far too dangerous. But surely there was a way…

Inspiration struck. As fast as she could, she swept off her bonnet and, on a prayer, leaped out into the storm.

“Miranda! Come back.” Josie’s wail brought Trey around as he tried to stop the Pinkerton agent from taking off after Miranda.

“I’m in my perfect legal rights,” the man bit out as he shoved past Trey.

“Did that young lady do something wrong?” the woman with the diamonds wondered, as the security guard barreled into the car and Trey scooped Josie out of her seat.

“Miranda left. And w-we d-didn’t even get to f-finish the crackers.” The girl buried her face in his neck, holding on with all her strength.

Trey could feel her need, and he knew all that Miranda had done for them, for no reason other than her caring heart. She loved children—it had shone in her eyes as bright as the apology when she’d fled the car.

She’d made the decision to leave his side, when he could have protected her, damn it. He kicked open the door and bounded down the aisle of the next car, the news of the supposed robber buzzing in the air. He didn’t see Miranda, so he kept going. She wasn’t in the next car, but up ahead, the door slammed shut. A bad, bad feeling curled around his spine, and he started to run.

“I’m scared, Uncle Trey,” Josie whispered against his neck. “Where’s Miranda?”

Alone and afraid and needing my help. He couldn’t explain why, but he knew she had no one else. It was his job, he’d spent many years helping women who slipped into his clinic on the run from their husbands, unable to pay for the broken bones he set and splinted or the lacerations to their head and face he stitched.

Maybe it was because as a very small boy he’d seen his own mother treated this way during her second marriage. Finally his stepfather had had enough of Trey and sent him to an orphanage. The horror and shame still lived with him, that his mother had endured a hellish existence in order to provide a home and meals for her children. As if by helping a woman with fear in her eyes and a man on her trail, he could make a difference now.

No, it was more than that this time. Miranda wasn’t a stranger who’d knocked at his office door. She’d shown him a part of her he’d forgotten existed in this world sometimes without hope and mercy. In a world where a little girl as sweet as Josie could lose her parents. In a world where people grew ill and died and he could do nothing to save them.

He wanted to know he could make a difference somehow, make a small piece of the world right again for a woman with gentle eyes and a smile as bright as an angel’s. It didn’t hurt that she’d been the first woman in a long time to make him feel every inch a man and forget his profession, to feel need and excitement and warmth.

He knocked the door open and nearly collided with a man in the small passageway between the first-class cars. The Pinkerton agent.

“She jumped. I saw her hit the snowbank.” The same agent he’d overpowered in the dining car shouted to be heard above the howling wind. “That’s why we were quietly following her. Why we didn’t want a scene. Now she’s dead, and there goes my damn bonus.”

She’d jumped? She’d been so desperate that she’d choose death? I failed her. Trey’s stomach turned, and he laid a hand on Josie’s back, keeping her safe in the shelter beneath his chin.

Emotion twisted through him, a mix of fury and grief so sharp he didn’t think he could control it. It quaked through him and he fisted his hands, gritted his teeth. Josie needed him. He couldn’t go leaping out into that storm. Yet every part of him screamed to do it.

It killed him to turn around and seek the shelter of the snug passenger car, safe from harm and the weather. Conversations littered the air. He paid no attention as he slumped into the first seat he came to, no longer able to stand. His knees shook, his legs shook, even his arms were trembling. He couldn’t believe she was gone. Just like that, she would choose death over relying on him—on anyone—for help.

He bowed his head as the storm outside the train worsened, forcing them to a slow crawl. There was speculation if they would have enough speed to crest the mountain peak, or if they were in danger of crashing, just as the train had done last month.

Josie’s locket caught the light, and he lifted it from the front of her wool dress, felt the light weight and warmth in his hand. Filled with a mother’s love, Miranda had said.

And he’d failed to protect her.