Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (16 page)

      
Just as he was about to give in to the temptation, the sound of footsteps and men's voices echoed from down the hall—coming this way! “Quick, into the other room,” he whispered, shoving her through the open door. Taking a seat on the corner of the heavy cherry wood conference table, he straightened his clothes and smoothed back his hair, draping one arm casually across his thigh to conceal the telltale bulge in his trousers.

      
Cain was able to get rid of the two half-drunken mercantile owners with a minimum of fuss once he pointed out to them that the mayor's suite, to which they'd been invited for drinks, was at the opposite end of the hallway. As soon as they ambled out the door, he quickly closed it, then pulled open the other door, where Alexa was hiding.

      
She was gone. The French windows leading onto the outside balcony were open, the lace curtains blowing softly in the night breeze. One swift glance up and down the long porch indicated that she had made good her escape from him. It was no doubt for the best. If they'd made love there on the floor she would have hated him afterward. Already he knew the arrogant stubborn little chit well enough to be certain of that.

      
“I should be grateful,” he muttered to himself, combing his fingers through his hair in frustration. “She'd probably have run crying to Jubal.” The minute he said the words aloud, he knew they weren't true. Alexa was too proud to admit that she'd succumbed to passion, least of all with a man like him—and too honest to lie about her own complicity in the act.

      
“Princess Alexa, what will happen to you now?” he wondered as he closed the French windows and retraced his steps back into the conference room. Powell was certainly going to break off the deal with MacKenzie. After the firestorm of tittering gossip that swept the ballroom tonight, the Indian-hating Central Pacific chief would see no other option. Perhaps not least of all because Alexa's name had been linked to Cain's own. That for sure would disgust the aristocratic Andrew Powell. And weak-livered little Larry would go along with whatever his father said.

      
Would Jubal send her packing back to St. Louis? Cain doubted it. The old man was too stubborn to bow to gossip. But then he might be moved to protect his granddaughter from further hurt by sending her away, perhaps even to the East Coast or Europe. It was that protectiveness that had backfired tonight. The old man should have warned the girl what she would be up against this evening—Christ, as if she could be oblivious to the backbiting! Anyway, it was no concern of his.

      
Then why did it eat at him so fiercely? He could still see the tears she tried to hide glistening in her aquamarine eyes, feel her trembling in his arms. He'd found her alone in the dark but not the way he'd described to her. He knew she was no intruder because he'd seen her wandering down the hallway like a lost soul and followed her. When she stepped inside the dark, deserted room he knew she wanted to be alone—but was powerless to grant her wish.

      
From the moment he saw her gliding across the floor in Larry's arms, a vision in silk and pearls, he had ached to hold her again. “Forget her, Cain. She's nothing but trouble for a man like you,” he chastised himself as he walked down the long deserted corridor leading back to the mezzanine. There was a lot of work to do before the night ended.

      
But the idea nagging in the back of his mind would not let him alone. The day MacKenzie had commissioned him to search for his granddaughter, he had first thought of it, then dismissed it as crazy, a pie-in-the-sky dream. When he saw her emerging from the stream at Leather Shirt's camp, it recurred with sudden impact, for she was a beauty, not the homely spinster he'd imagined. He knew the chances of keeping secret what had happened to her were slim and he also knew what Andrew Powell would do when he learned the truth.

      
This is your golden opportunity to take something away from the bastard—something he's too stupid to value.

      
But it was not so simple as that. Jubal might fire him for his temerity. Even if the old man agreed, Alexa might spit in his face.
Alexa
. She was dangerous, very dangerous. He desired her too much. That gave her power to wound him in ways that he had never even let himself imagine before. But she was the key to it all—to destroying Powell and achieving everything he had dreamed of since he had been a boy in Enoch's classroom.

      
Cain walked down the wide marble stairs and began another discreet sweep of the ballroom, looking for potential trouble. As the night grew late, guests often drank too much, resulting in fisticuffs. Occasionally an uninvited visitor tried to steal some man's money clip or woman's jewelry. This was as much a part of his job as controlling brawling track workers or negotiating with hostile Indians along the trail.

      
He was tired of living by his fists and his guns, tired of risking his life, tired of working for wages—albeit in recent years the wages had been damn good. He wanted what the men at the top had—the powerful, independent rich white men who built railroads and empires. But those men were risk-takers. None—not Powell, not MacKenzie—got where they were without risk.

      
If he didn't take the risk, he would never be given another chance like this. Would the price of his dream be too high?

      
“There's only one way to find out.”

Chapter Eight

      
“But Father, she's beautiful and innocent—I can sense—”

      
“You couldn't sense a polecat if it sprayed a whole damn prayer meeting!” Andrew Powell spat out contemptuously. “You're thinking with what's between your legs, not what's between your ears.”

      
Lawrence reddened at the crudity. ‘That's not true.”

      
Andrew's lethal blue stare skewered his son, who instantly backed off.

      
“What I mean is...Alexa was quite forthcoming about the whole ghastly experience. She assured me that the savages didn't abuse her—they only wanted to trade her for guns.”

      
“Which
Cain
so handily supplied. In the most unlikely event those bucks didn't use her, do you suppose he would pass up the opportunity?”

      
Lawrence shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. The tight collar of his silk shirt was constricting his breathing and the superfine jacket he wore was growing warmer by the minute. A damp sheen of perspiration dotted his flushed face. Unclenching his hands from their white-knuckled grip on the bar in his father's office, he took a calming breath. “Do you think he really hates me that much?”

      
Andrew snorted dismissively as he poured himself a late-night libation. “Youµ scarcely matter to him. But he damn well hates
me
that much.” He jerked loose the black silk tie at his throat and took a deep swallow of the fine, aged cognac.

      
“This is all going to be horribly embarrassing after the ball tonight. Everyone there expected that we'd announce our engagement. Alexa will be—”

      
“The hell with Alexa!” Powell slammed down his glass furiously. “When my agents first reported that the girl had been taken by Indians, then brought to MacKenzie by Cain, I hoped it was all a mistake. Damn, I wanted that entree to MacKenzie’s camp. Inside information about the Union Pacific would have been useful, quite useful...” He took another swallow of cognac and stared into the amber liquid pensively. “The gossip tonight spread across that ballroom like wildfire. Even that silly chit of a girl must've heard something. She looked pale as a ghost by the end of the night. She's ruined in our circles. I will not have the Powell name linked to a woman soiled by savages. For all we know she could be carrying Cain's bastard in her belly.”

      
Lawrence paled, sucking in his breath.

      
“Never even thought of that, did you? A redskin bastard for your firstborn heir.”

      
Lawrence's shoulders slumped dejectedly. “Well, I suppose there's nothing else to do. I'll have to—”

      
“You will do nothing. I will inform MacKenzie the marriage is off. That wily old fox thought he could bluff his way through this mess with me none the wiser.”

      
“His mistake,” Lawrence said softly.

      
“Yes, his mistake, indeed,” his father echoed, savoring his last swallow from the cut-crystal glass. “No help for it, we shall just have to rely on other expedients to see that the Central Pacific wins the race across Utah.”

* * * *

      
After receiving Powell's tersely worded message that morning, Jubal had fumed and stormed, cursing Andrew Powell and his spineless son, the Central Pacific Railroad, the Cheyenne Indians and the gossiping old biddies of Denver. He had been awkwardly solicitous in explaining the broken engagement to Roxanna, assuring her that everything would turn out all right in the end. But Roxanna knew better. The whispers, the pointed stares, the men who leered knowingly and the women who held their skirts away from contamination when they passed her on the street, none of that would ever go away.

      
A hysterical burble of laughter choked her. Here she was, Alexa Hunt, Indian captive in Wyoming, faced with the same social stigma she had endured as Roxanna Fallon, Federal spy in Missouri. The irony of the situation did not escape her. She had expected Jubal to make prompt arrangements to send her packing, but the old Scot surprised her. He did not suggest that she should run and hide. Rather the opposite. He was fighting mad and ready to take a stand. If she had the courage to stay with him and hold her head up proudly, the two of them would face down the gossips.

      
She had done that for five years. At least now she would not be alone. Jubal's wealth and power were a considerable deterrent to the sort of persecution she had suffered before. She refused to dwell on what would happen if he learned she was an impostor. What would happen if he knew she would have let Cain take her on the floor last night like some harlot? If they had not been interrupted... She shook off the thought, terrified of where it would lead. Her first reaction to the news of the broken engagement had been a heady sense of relief. In spite of liking Larry Powell—or perhaps because she did—Roxanna had not wanted to marry him. But if that relief stemmed from her attraction to Cain, she was three times a fool.

      
He wanted only one thing—her body, and even that only in passing. He had made clear that he did not love her. In fact, he bitterly resented the hold their mutual attraction had on him. A man like him was the very last sort she could rely upon, the last she should ever care for.

      
I don 't care for him. I’ll never love any man.
She repeated her vow to herself stubbornly. Still her wayward thoughts turned to Cain irresistibly. He would soon hear that she was free, if he did not already know. Might he...?

      
“No! I'll be damned if I sit around like a whipped puppy waiting on the high and mighty Mr. Cain to come riding up to save me,” she gritted out. As if he would. Denver, nouveau riche and newly respectable, waited outside her window. She would not hide indoors on a beautiful day. Let the fine folks of the city gossip about her to their hearts' content. Miss Alexa Hunt was going for a ride!

* * * *

      
Cain walked into MacKenzie's suite, his usual cool, self-confident manner in place. He had been taught as a boy living with his mother's people to conceal his fear, learned the lesson doubly well after moving into the white world. Now he would see how good a bluff he could run. He was about to take the risk of his life. Sweat trickling down between his shoulder blades reminded him of that. The next few moments would make him or break him.

      
Jubal looked up from the mountain of papers on the table serving as his desk, waving Cain to have a seat. “How are the gun crews working out? You never did give me that report before we left Cheyenne.”

      
Cain eased into the chair and stretched out his long legs, shrugging. “Kennedy at least has his squad hitting the target half the time. Davie's men can be ready to fight off an Indian attack in two minutes flat, but Wiley couldn't organize a pissing contest in a brewery. He's hopeless. I told him I was giving O'Mara charge of their group. He's a galvanized Yankee who knows how to lead men.”

      
Jubal harrumphed. “I find it difficult to trust a man who'd trade sides in a war, but I'll defer to yer judgment.”

      
That's a good start,
Cain thought, pleased as he leaned forward in his chair. “I didn't come here to talk about gun crews, Jubal.”

      
MacKenzie put down the timber contract he was about to hand Cain and studied him. “What's put a bur under yer blanket, then?”

      
“I know Powell's backed out of your deal and the wedding is off.”

      
“So will everyone between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean by this afternoon,” the old man said sourly, waiting to see where this would lead. He was suddenly very interested.
Let him play out his hand...

      
“The scandal has ruined Alexa. Are you sending her back East?” He knew MacKenzie never ran from a fight.

      
“No.”

      
“No white man who knows she's been a captive will touch her, Jubal,” Cain said baldly. “You've lived out here long enough to know that's true.”

      
“Aye. Even if it isna' a thing against the purr lass.”