Sierra Bride Read online

  “If I am, it’s from looking at you.”

  She smiled at the pretty flattery. The man was a born charmer. For the first time, she considered what a picture they made in the alley, huddled together like sweethearts at a church picnic.

  She tried to draw her hand back, but he captured it and planted a kiss on her gloved palm. She could not even feel his lips, but the thrill of his action made her stomach flutter. He did not stop at that but found the pulse point just between the edge of her glove and her sleeve and kissed her there.

  Kate gasped and their eyes met, locked. She noticed the small gold speckles in his wide brown eyes and decided they looked more like amber flecked with mica.

  After the bump on the head he’d suffered, she could not find fault. It made people funny. She had seen a neighbor boy fall from his back steps and for two days he wept at the drop of a hat. He was a brave boy, too, and not prone to tears.

  “You saved my life,” he whispered.

  She laughed. “I could not even save your wallet.”

  He released her and patted his coat where his wallet should have been.

  She withdrew her hand, chagrined that she did not ask him to release her and only withdrew now because he had recalled his losses. The man was distracting, to say the least. It was almost as if she was the one who had been struck on the head. Kate wondered if he could sense the wild beating of her heart.

  “I’m sorry about your money.”

  He lifted a hand in dismissal. “More where that came from.”

  How very cavalier, she thought, for a man who had nearly worn through the knees of his trousers, but she kept silent on that matter. Perhaps he had drunk most of his pay before he was waylaid.

  “Is your head aching?”

  He closed his eyes a moment and nodded. “Stomach is bad, too. Feels kind of whoopsy.” His eyes met hers. “Might be just ’cause you’re sitting with me.”

  She laughed. “You are a devil.”

  “And you’re an angel.”

  Kate returned his smile, feeling her heart beating in her throat. What was going on here?

  He was mooning after her. She knew she needed to squash this immediately. She didn’t encourage gentleman callers and saw no point in beginning a journey she had no desire to complete. Instead, she filled her days with her responsibilities at her aunt’s boardinghouse, the piecework she took in and seeing to her sister’s needs. God willing, things could continue on as they had.

  Before she could set him straight, he made an effort to rise, reaching his knees and wobbling badly.

  “Oh, careful now.” She clutched his arm, keeping him steady.

  “Everything’s spinning.” He leaned heavily against her, pressing one hand to his head. “Did I kiss you?”

  She gasped, hoping he would not recall that.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m right out of my head.”

  “Accepted.”

  They were silent a moment and then he said. “But you kissed me back, didn’t you?”

  She made an uncomfortable sound in her throat and nodded. “You rather took me by surprise.”

  She had never been kissed like that and certainly never responded in that way. Something about this man heated her skin like August sunshine.

  His smile faded as his gaze grew more intent. The look he gave her stopped her breathing. For just a moment she thought she should run. But that was foolish. He was injured, surely he was no threat. But those eyes said otherwise.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I’m going to kiss you again.”

  Chapter Two

  I t took the howling cry of a man to stir Sam Pickett from that kiss. He drew back to find his angel leaning heavily against his chest, her face tipped back and her mouth still moist. He knew he would never forget that sight for as long as he lived. He had to fight the impulse to gather her up in his arms and run off with her. How had she managed to do that with just the pressing together of their lips?

  She blinked up at him and then cocked her head, becoming aware of the shrieks and curses. She drew back and they turned in unison in the direction of the approaching caterwaul.

  A burly man, with arms like ham hocks dragged a bleeding, limping man by the collar of his ragged coat. Sam recognized the wounded man as one of the two who had waylaid him and rose to face them. He swayed dangerously. It was only by the quick bracing of the woman, now at his side, that he kept from pitching forward. Somehow she managed to keep him on his feet by clutching his waist. As he stood with one arm draped across her shoulders, he felt dizzy and sick as a drunkard on Sunday morning.

  “Cork that pie hole,” growled the man’s keeper. He spotted them now and grinned, shaking the man by the collar like a terrier shaking a rat. “Caught one!”

  The “one” in question screamed again and gripped his leg with both hands.

  The thief lifted a bloody index finger, aiming it at the woman. “She shot me! That one! Her!”

  At this, his captor cuffed him on the back of his head, sending his prisoner’s greasy black hat careening to the ground.

  “Ought to get a medal, you ask me.”

  Sam blinked at the woman. “You shot him?”

  She eased away and he managed to retain his balance.

  “I ordered him to unhand you first,” she said.

  He could only stare in wonder. All he could remember was waking to see one of the two thieves attacking this woman an instant before he’d landed a solid punch to the man’s jaw. Then two other men barreled past and his mind went fuzzy again.

  Sam assumed that the burly man had done the damage. Another thought hit him, a more disturbing notion. Were they a couple, these two?

  He addressed the grinning man. “Do you know each other?”

  “Screamed, she did. And me and Lans come a-running.” He craned his neck. “Where is he?”

  The bleeding man continued to howl.

  “Shut up,” shouted his captor. Then he turned to her. “Where’s my brother?”

  “After the authorities.”

  He nodded his approval. “Best get to the street.” He addressed Sam. “Can you walk?”

  Sam was clammy and weak, but he nodded. The dull throbbing in his head grew into a slamming sledgehammer of a headache. Now he knew exactly how one of his metal mining spikes must feel after driving. He thought his eyes might pop from their sockets by the force of the blood pounding behind them.

  She came to him again, wrapping her small, strong arm around his waist and propping him up like solid timber in a collapsing mine shaft.

  He recalled something then, her lifting her weapon. The glint of silver and then the barrel flash. That was when the other man attacked her.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Nobody.”

  She got him out of the alley. The emergence of the wounded man, protesting his innocence, began to draw a crowd.

  The next few minutes were a blur. He recalled her face, someone laying him in a wagon. There were police. He told them there were three of them, two men and a woman. The next thing he knew they were lifting him onto a canvas stretcher and through a wide doorway.

  “Easy now,” said a young man with a gaunt and florid face.

  “Where is she?”

  “Who, sir?”

  “The woman who saved me.”

  “You came in alone, mister.”

  Had he dreamed the whole thing?

  The lights all about him receded until he was left with only a shrinking circle of light. He’d fallen down a well. The light went before the sounds, but finally those vanished, as well.

  Since leaving the hospital, Sam’s mood had gone from bad to worse. At the knock on his chamber door, he lifted the knife beside the washstand and turned.

  “Jessup, I’ll slit your throat, I swear.”

  “Not if I slit yours first,” came the curt reply.

  Sam relaxed his shoulders and he grinned. It was not his irritat
ing butler but Cole, his best friend—his only friend. Sam wasn’t good at friendships. He’d learned long ago that you couldn’t rely on folks. Most of them gave too little and expected far too much. Cole Ellis was an exception, allowing Sam to keep some distance without taking offense.

  Cole’s arrival was the first good thing to happen since he’d blacked out in the woman’s arms. Who was she? He had to find her. It was the reason he was shaving when he should be in bed nursing his headache.

  Cole opened the door and glared at Sam, who lowered the knife and lifted the towel to wipe the patches of foam off his clean-shaven face.

  “Passed your man on the stairs running like his hair was on fire.” Cole thumped the newspaper against his thigh as he glanced back down the hall. After a moment he returned his attention to Sam. “What’d he do this time?”

  “He wanted to shave me, like I’m some kind of invalid.” Sam threw the towel onto the washstand. He didn’t like the man sneaking around like a weasel after a ground squirrel. His frustration boiled over.

  “Is it his business what kin I got? Is it?”

  Cole said nothing to this, but his eyebrows lifted a moment. His friend knew little about Sam’s past, and had taken the hint when Sam had failed to mention anything more than his place of origin. Nobody knew about his childhood and that’s the way it was and would continue to be.

  “Maybe he was just trying to strike up a conversation.”

  That hadn’t even occurred to Sam. Maybe he’d overreacted. “He’s a noisy pain in my ass.”

  Cole’s scowl did not lift as he glanced about the room. “One of the richest men in Sacramento.” His tone dripped with disapproval. “When are you going to buy some proper furnishings?”

  Sam looked at the washstand with the fancy marble top that had come all the way from Vermont. It was more costly than anything he’d ever owned. A china pitcher and matching basin done up with pictures painted in blue all around the outside sat on the surface. Next he glanced at the bare mattress, goose-down pillow and coarse wool blanket. Maybe he should have a chair or two.

  “I got a bed. What the hell else do I need in a bedroom?”

  “Curtains, for starters. No wonder you don’t bring any women here.”

  “I don’t have them here because I don’t want them here. Women are like dandelions—they take root anyplace and are near impossible to get rid of.” It was at that moment that Sam recalled that right before his accident he’d left Cole waiting in the bar when he stepped outside with the woman he’d just met. It did occur to him that his friend’s foul mood might have more to do with his disappearance than with window curtains.

  The woman had been a bad choice, since she obviously had been bait and he had snapped at her like a hungry catfish. She was just his type, buxom and brunette. Served him right that she tried to split his head open before she’d fled the scene. He rubbed the lump and glanced at Cole.

  “Sorry about last night.”

  Cole’s mouth remained in a thin grim line. “Thought you said you’d be right back.”

  Sam lifted a hand in contrition. “Sorry.”

  Cole blew out his breath in a sound of disapproval. Cole had been happily married for over ten years, owned a lumber mill and was co-owner of the mine that sprang from the claim Cole had bought and Sam had worked when Cole was too bereaved to do much but drink and brawl. Funny him disapproving of Sam doing the same thing.

  Only Sam wasn’t grieving over a woman. His scars went back further than that.

  Sam just couldn’t keep down his cynicism over Cole’s happy marriage. He kept waiting for things to fall apart but they never had. Since surviving two winter rescues up Broadner Pass and a trial for horse theft, his friend had led a charmed existence.

  Cole kept trying to get Sam to visit more often but all the kids made Sam uncomfortable. It was so different from what he recalled of childhood.

  Cole moved, with a grace that belied his size, stopping at the open window and peering out. “What was her name?”

  “Never got it.” Sam dropped his gaze. “It was a setup.” He glanced up and saw the muscles in Cole’s mouth tighten. “Two fellers tried to jump her in the alley, so I dragged the girl behind me to face them. You’ll appreciate this part. The next I know, I’m lying on my back and I hear a gunshot.”

  “She shot you?”

  “Blackjack, I think.” Sam turned his head, pushing his hair out of the way to reveal the lump. Cole stepped closer and a growl escaped him. Sam faced his friend. “Now I see a second woman, a real beauty, fighting with a man over a silver gun. She shot his partner right through the thigh. Anyway, I punched him.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Sam recalled the satin of her lips, the sweet taste of the deep recesses of her mouth and the passion that he’d only dreamed of, all of it there before him for just an instant. He wanted more.

  “Don’t remember.”

  Cole’s eyes narrowed. “Like hell.”

  Sam couldn’t keep the smile from his lips.

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “Never said.”

  “Do you remember my name?” asked Cole.

  “What?”

  “Because, I’m wondering why you didn’t mention it at the hospital.” Cole thumped the paper against his open palm now.

  How had he found out so quickly? The answer came a moment later when Cole tossed the newspaper on Sam’s bed revealing the headline, Elijah S. Pickett Hospitalized After Attack.

  “You should have sent someone for me. My God, Sam, you can afford the best doctors, the best of everything now.”

  He knew that in his head, but he remembered who he really was, down beneath the gold veneer. Deep below, he was still that unwanted kid who’d do whatever it took to survive. That, at least, had not changed.

  But last night he’d tasted something better and he wanted more.

  “I need to find her.”

  “Who?”

  “The one with the derringer. The one with the bullocks to walk into that alley.”

  “Women don’t have bullocks and how do you know she wasn’t one of them?”

  He’d seen her in that alley, a thrilling combination of fury and terror. No one was that good an actress.

  “She wasn’t.”

  Sam knew he sounded defensive and Cole gave him a wary look. They hadn’t fought since the death of Cole’s first wife, after the wagons had gotten bogged down in that blizzard. They’d tried walking out from Broadner Pass, but when Cole’s wife had laid down to die, Cole had, too. Sam had heard him promise to go back for their daughter and so, well, it hadn’t come to blows, but only because they were already too weak for that. Sam squeezed his eyes shut, forcing the memory down deep and hoping that this time it would stay there forever, but he knew it wouldn’t. “I’m sorry.”

  “You know what she was doing in that alley?”

  “Nope.”

  “She know who you are?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’ll change things.”

  It always did. Men wanted to be him and the women, well, they just wanted him. He was one of the richest men in Sacramento and owned the richest mine in California. Money allowed him to take what he wanted and not feel guilty about it afterward. It also kept him clear of snags, like marriages.

  Cole waited while Sam finished dressing. “You give any thought to the Central Pacific?” Last night, Cole had proposed closing the pass and putting a railroad up over the mountain.

  He had. That and the woman had been all he had thought of. He stared at Cole, reading the hopeful, eager expression.

  “It’ll work,” Cole said. “With your backing, it’ll go.”

  Closing that pass would be the achievement of a lifetime. Maybe attacking that mountain with steel rails would fill that dark, cold pit that still ate at him. Since surviving the ordeal, he had been throwing himself at those mountains. Robbing her of her wealth and burrowing through her like a cancer. But to reach right up
over the top of her and set down a railroad track, that was grabbing the she-bitch by the horns, by God.

  “Yes,” Sam said with a conviction that surprised him. He was completely ready to throw everything he had at the Sierras, unfeeling bitch that she was.

  Cole’s face lit up with delight. “I’ll set up a meeting of potential investors at the Sterling Hotel. You’ll be there at two o’clock, right?”

  That would give him the morning to find her. He drew on his coat, aiming for the door. “Sure.”

  “Newspapermen are waiting in front.”

  “Guess we go out the back.”

  “Where to?” asked Cole.

  “The police.”

  “That can wait.”

  No, it couldn’t. He wanted her address, now.

  Sam waited as a police officer wrote out the address for a Katherine Wells on the back of a calling card, using a bottle of blue ink and a pen that skipped. Sam nodded his thanks and departed, feeling hopeful for the first time in months.

  He easily found the address in a respectable but shabby part of town. He grinned at the sign before the premises. It read: Mrs. Maguire’s Boardinghouse. If Miss Wells was a resident within, she was most likely unencumbered.

  That suited him fine, because families unsettled him and he didn’t fancy trifling with a married woman.

  He had dressed in one of his new suits. It was Cole’s idea to buy them, saying that potential stockholders would be more likely to fork over their money to a man who looked important. He tugged at the stiff collar. The railroad venture would necessitate more investors than he had ever needed for the mine.

  If he had his way, he’d build the damn thing alone, but that wasn’t possible. It was his misfortune that what he wanted most in the world would require him to wear a necktie.

  He mounted the steps and stood, hat in hand, upon boards that needed shellacking. Large window boxes of white flowers lined the railings, making the dilapidated house seem more inviting.

  Sam lowered his head to gather himself, trying to think of what to say to Miss Wells. Never before had he worried about making impressions. If a woman didn’t care for the cut of his coat or the color of his eyes, he moved on. That happened less and less often as his fortunes changed. He had not approached a proper lady in ages, though he’d lost count of the ones who had approached him. Suddenly he found himself wanting something that he might not have the good fortune to possess. Perhaps that accounted for why his heart slapped against his ribs like a live trout tossed in the bottom of a rowboat. He didn’t like the old feeling of helplessness creeping inside him like poison.