Читать книгу Wyoming Renegade - Susan Amarillas - Страница 9

Alexandria Gibson stood in the elegant parlor of her Nob Hill home. She pushed back the curtain covering the double French doors, and the delicate white lace brushed butterfly soft against her hand. The night was ink black, the barest beginnings of fog drifted up from the bay.

“I’ll be leaving in the morning.” She didn’t look at her father, who was seated five feet away on one of two matching love seats. She could practically feel his icy gaze boring into her. “Eddie will be here bright and early.”

“What do you mean, Eddie?” her father demanded, his baritone voice seeming to fill the. highceilinged room.

Alexandria looked at him along the line of her shoulder. Even at fifty her father was a fine figure of a man—tall and lean, his brown hair graying, but thick enough to make a younger man envious.

“New evening clothes?” she asked, ignoring his question. She didn’t want to get into another long discussion. They’d been going around and around about her trip since Monday, when she’d announced her plan.

“Yes,” he muttered, momentarily distracted. “I’m playing poker with Strickland later at the club.” Anger sparked quicksilver bright in his blue eyes. “Never mind my clothes.”

She sighed inwardly. Well, if he was intent on being stubborn, she could be equally stubborn. She was her father’s daughter, after all, and that gave her more than a fair amount of hardheadedness.

“What’s Eddie got to do with this?” her father grumbled.

“He’s going along.”

“As what, your chaperon? Ha! If I can’t keep tight reins on you, then Eddie sure as hell can’t.”

“Don’t be difficult.”

“Me? I’m not the one who’s being difficult.” He shook his finger at her in a way that made her feel like a child, which she wasn’t, not at twenty-five. That short temper of hers was moving up the scale faster than mercury on a July day.

“I need help, with the horses and such.” She gritted her teeth to keep her voice calm.

Her father scowled. “This is going to give the gossips enough grist to fuel the rumor mill for months, maybe years.”

“Yes, I’m sure it will. Just as I’m sure they will blithely overlook the fact that Eddie is only eighteen, my first cousin, and has enough freckles sprinkled across his face to make him look tan even in winter.”

“And you don’t care a whit what’s said, do you?”

“No, not a whit.” She’d been her own person since, well, all her life and she saw no reason to change now. “You, of all people,” she told him, in what she hoped was a reassuring tone, “shouldn’t worry about me.”

“But I do. More than I want to, dammit.” He surged to his feet and paced—marched actually—across the room, until he practically slammed into the upright grand.

He faced her, one hand braced on the top edge of the gleaming mahogany, the other curled into a fist at hi side.

“It’s no use, Alexandria.” He had a granite-hard expression that said he wasn’t going to be put off. She braced for the fight.

He continued. “Letting you go off to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts was one thing. But how the hell you ever talked me into letting you go to Paris to study that damn painting business…” He shook his head again. “But no more. Do you hear me? No more. You should be settled, married. I want grandchildren.”

Muscles down her back tensed in reflexive response. Not again! If she had a dollar for every time they’d had this discussion in the past six years, she could finance her own trip back to Europe instead of having to rely on his financing.

With resignation, she steeled herself to try to explain one more time. “Papa, you are too conventional, and I’m too stubborn to be someone’s submissive little wife.”

It wasn’t the marriage part she objected to, it was the submissive part she couldn’t get past.

She dropped down onto the side chair, the pale green silk upholstery smooth and cool against her skin. A shiver prickled over her shoulders.

Her father’s voice carried across the room to her.

“How do you know you couldn’t be someone’s wife, missy?” She heard him moving closer. “Good Lord, Alex, men have been turning up on the doorstep since you were sixteen. You’ve never given any of them half a chance.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him headed for the small walnut table on the far wall that held an array of crystal decanters with an assortment of whiskey and bourbon.

He tossed the stopper down with a clunk and snatched up a glass. He sloshed the Irish whiskey into the cut crystal. It spilled over the top and over his hand and he quickly held it away from him, letting it drip onto the carpet.

He sipped the drink down a quarter inch.

“If your mother had lived…she would have made certain you were settled.” He took a hefty swallow.

Alex faced him, the love seat like a defensive wall between them. “Please, please don’t worry about me. The world doesn’t begin and end with marriage. I do fine on my own.”

“For now, but I’m thinking of later. What about when you’re forty or fifty or… ?” He took another drink. “I think you’re too picky, Alexandria. What about Ned?”

“Your precious Ned is only interested in himself and his blossoming career with your bank.”

He regarded her through narrowed eyes. “‘My precious Ned,’ as you call him, is a man with ambition. It’s usually considered an attribute.”

“Yes, I know about ambition, only in women it’s considered a failing. I have no interest in marrying just to be Ned Hager’s stepping-stone to success. He’s going to have to earn that by himself. I have my own plans.”

“To be an artist.” His tone was skeptical. “Do you know how many successful artists there are in the world? Damn few, and even fewer women artists.”

“Then there’s room for one. I’m leaving tomorrow for Wyoming. My plans are made.”

He glared at her.

She glared back. Finally, wanting to end this, she said, “I’m going to see Davy while I’m there. Don’t you think he’s been exiled long enough?”

“Your brother is not exiled. You make it sound like he’s in Siberia. I simply sent him to our bank in Gunlock.”

She knelt on the love seat, her fingers curving over the smooth wood trim. “Papa, please. He’s learned his lesson, I’m sure.”

“Well, it’ll be a miracle if he has. As I recall, his habits included public drunkenness, gambling, staying out all hours… and let’s not forget the women. David’s only nineteen. At the rate he was going, I doubted he’d live to see twenty.”

There was a hitch in his voice, a crack that expressed his feeling more accurately than his words. It was that little crack that quelled her temper. “I know,” she told him softly, sincerely.

Tears threatened, and she blinked them back. “I know you love Davy. Just as I know you love me.”

His chin dropped to his chest for a moment, and she wondered what he was thinking?

Drink in hand, he moved to the other love seat. They faced each other across the small expanse. Elbows on knees, he said simply, “David doesn’t make loving him easy.”

With a feeling of deéjà vu, she leaned forward, touching his sleeve with her hand. “I know he’s been difficult, but he means well.”

She missed her brother terribly and loved him unconditionally. “You miss him, too, don’t you?”

“I miss him.”

His voice was husky, and far away—as far away as Wyoming. “It’s time,” she told him firmly, confidently, maybe a little more confidently than she felt. She’d failed to stand by Davy once, but never again.

“Yes,” he said, and sighed. “Tell him to come home.”

She let out the breath she’d been holding. “I’ll make it my personal mission to take care of him until he gets settled, until I leave for Paris.”

“Thanks,” he said absently, his gaze still focused on the dancing flames.

“Now that that’s settled, I’d better get to bed. I’ve got an early start in the morning.”

She hadn’t taken three steps when—

“Hold on there, missy. Thought you had me, didn’t you?”

I was so close to making a clean getaway, she thought.

“Assumed all this talk about your brother would make me forget about that blasted contest and about your trip, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t think you’d forgotten. But I’m done talking.”

“By that I guess you mean you can run off to Wyoming and I’m supposed to give my stamp of approval? I’m supposed to pay the bills for this fiasco.”

She needed up-front money, his money. She’d used the last of her savings to pay the fee. The entry form had been mailed and accepted. Everything was in place, but it all hinged on her ability to make this trip.

“Two months,” she coaxed.

“You don’t need a career.”

“I’m an artist.”

“It was supposed to be a hobby,” he retaliated from his love seat.

“It’s an occupation.”

“It’s futile.”

“It’s exciting and challenging.” This time she took an aggressive step in his direction. “This is not some whim, Papa. I’ve been working hard in Paris. It took me a long time to find my place, my style. I’ve already shown two paintings in an exhibit and—”

“Two paintings! In all these years!” He raked his hand through his hair. “You call that success?”

“I call that a start. It’s more than I’ve been able to do here. I have to go back. You’ve said you won’t support me any longer, and I accept that. This contest money will let me make it on my own. I have to go. I have to.”

She wanted him to understand how she felt, the urgency that drove her, the excitement that filled her every time she made a painting, captured a feeling, a bit of herself on canvas. “Two months is all I’m asking.”

Uncertainty flashed in his eyes, and she gave him what she hoped was her best, most imploring smile, the one that had been letting her get her own way most of her life.

“I’ll be back by August.”

He shook his head, but he was vacillating, she could tell. “But all alone…”

“I won’t be alone. I’ll have Eddie.”

That head shake was getting more adamant.

“All I’m asking is for you to trust me, to understand. I’m not asking you to do it for me, just don’t stop me.” Very softly, she entreated, “Please.”

Heart pounding, she waited for the decision that would determine her future. She wondered for the first time what she would do if he refused. Would she give up painting? Would she try to find the money somewhere else? There was nowhere else to turn and there was a deadline rushing at her. Who knew when she’d have another opportunity like this?

Panic prickled along nerves already tight with anticipation. “Papa, I have to—”

“All right.”

“What?” she repeated, not certain she’d heard the words she’d waited for. “What did you say?”

“I said all right. On one—”

“Thank you!” She hurled herself in his direction, threw her arms around his neck and kissed his beardroughened cheek.’ “You won’t regret this!”

“One condition.” He tugged at her arms and set her away from him. His expression was executioner serious.

“Condition?” Dread coiled and swirled in her stomach like acid. She stepped back, her heel catching on her hem and making her more off balance than she already was.

“I’ll let you go on this trip. I’ll fund your expedition on the condition that when you don’t win this contest, you will give up this art business and allow me to find a suitable husband for you.”

“You can’t be serious?”

“I’m very serious.”

“You’d force me into a marriage?”

“Not force. Encourage.”

“But I…”

“What’s the matter, Alexandria, aren’t you willing to play the long shot? I’m giving you what you wanted. Have you changed your mind? Aren’t so sure you’ll win?”

She pulled herself up to her full height. “It’s a deal.”

“I want your word, Alexandria,” Jack Gibson said. “You will honor this arrangement. No arguments later. This contract is not renegotiable.”

Knowing her whole future was riding on the outcome, she said, “I agree.”