Arizona Embrace (10 page)

Trinity hadn’t expected that. It caused the knot which had been in his stomach for several days to tighten with a jerk.

“You don’t know that. I could be a bounty hunter or a sheriffs deputy, or even a private investigator.”

Her gaze didn’t falter. “You could, but you’re not.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“I’m just as sure as I could be of anybody else.”

Trinity felt desperate. He didn’t want to refuse. But worse than that was the feeling he was somehow betraying her, that he had become a Judas rather than a Paul.

“What would your uncle and Buc say?”

“They wouldn’t have to know. This would be between you and me.”

The words were like an electric shock. He had scrupulously avoided any thoughts involving just the two of them. He couldn’t do that any longer, the vision was too sweet.

“Why me?”

She came a step closer.

“I like you. There’s a kind of kinship between us.” Victoria looked a little uncomfortable about being so direct, but not embarrassed. “You’re different from Buc and my uncle. I haven’t figured out what it is just yet, but I tend to trust people I like. People I’m attracted to.”

Trinity swallowed hard. For three days he had struggled to control his growing attraction to Victoria. She probably liked him for no other reason than he was someone new to talk to. Only reminding himself it would be insane to become involved with a woman who was about to be hanged for murder had enabled him to maintain his control. … A control her last words shattered.

Of all the futile things, he wanted to protect her: a woman surrounded by a small army sworn to defend her with their life’s blood, and he wanted to protect her. But they only protected her body. Not one of them had taken the time to get to know the woman inside. That made him feel protective.

“Being attracted to me isn’t the same thing as liking me.”

He had to touch her. He couldn’t stand here any longer and wonder what it would feel like to brush her cheek with his fingers.

“You mean I can’t be attracted to you or like you in a general way?”

Her cheek felt soft. There was a firmness to her flesh, but it dimpled beneath his touch. He twisted his finger around one of the errant locks which clustered about her face. He barely resisted the impulse to run his fingers through her hair.

“Not when it’s between a man and a woman.”

Victoria leaned closer and tilted her face up to his. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but her lips and her deep blue eyes. Victoria pressed ever so slightly against his hand. “Are you saying there’s something sexual in my feeling for you?”

What was he doing? He couldn’t afford to let an emotional bond develop between them. The scars would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Trinity snatched his hand back like it had been burned. He’d met several direct women before, but never one who would ask such a question. And the fact that it could be coming from this gorgeous redhead made it even more difficult to believe.

“Ma’am, I’d never say a thing like that.”

“Don’t call me ma’am, and don’t avoid the question.”

“Okay, if you insist, no. I don’t think you can be attracted to me without it being sexual as well.”

Boy, wouldn’t Buc love to hear him say that! He’d probably blow a hole right through him.

“Why?”

“Because I can’t be attracted to you without feeling hot as hell.”

Damnation! He could have sworn he saw a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. Why did women always feel they had to humble a man? Couldn’t they just like him in an ordinary way?

Can you like her in an ordinary way?
That was a foolish question. Only Buc could like Victoria in an ordinary way, like a stallion pursuing a mare because instinct told him to.

“Are you telling me I excite you?” Victoria asked, coming so close he could almost feel her body heat.

“Didn’t you expect I would?”

“No.”

She may have been around men most of her life, but she obviously didn’t understand her effect on them. He had to get the conversation on another track, or he’d get himself thrown out before nightfall.

Trinity stepped back. “I think it’s time we started back. This discussion is headed in the wrong direction.” He took a good grip on the saddle and started to put his foot in the stirrup.

Victoria didn’t move. “Why haven’t you said something?”

The woman was determined to get him shot. Had she been so protected she didn’t know how she affected boys like Red or men like himself?

“You’re a beautiful, desirable woman, ma’am, and I wouldn’t mind the opportunity to tell you how much I appreciate your kind of beauty. However, I’m nothing but a cowhand, and every man on this ranch is just waiting for me to make a wrong move. Reminds me of a week I spent in a small gold mining town in Colorado several years back. I didn’t find any gold, but I did find out I could live without a woman better than I could live with holes in my hide.”

“I don’t believe you scare that easily.” She took a step toward him. Trinity stood his ground.

“It’s not a question of being scared. It’s a question of common sense. And honor.” Desperation made Trinity add, “A man doesn’t jump another man’s claim.”

Victoria stepped back, her eyes flashing fire. “What a disgusting thing to say. I’m a woman, not a piece of property. Besides, I don’t belong to Buc.”

“You’d better tell him that. He and your uncle seem to think you’re going to marry him any minute now.”

“I like Buc, but I feel more strongly attracted to you than I do to him.”

Hell! Why did she have to go and say that just when he’d gotten his gumption back. He had met half the famous “ladies” of the West. He’d loved a few, he’d left them all. Yet, he’d been brought to his knees by little more than a pair of lovely blue eyes, some unmanageable locks of titian hair, an irresistible laugh, and a relentless desire to turn him inside out. Not to mention the candor to tell him she liked him more than the man she was supposed to marry.

If it were possible, that admission seemed to shock Victoria more than Trinity.

“Why?” asked Trinity.

“I didn’t mean that like it sounds.” Victoria seemed to be searching for words to blunt the impact of what she had just said. “It’s just that Buc wants to own me. That suffocates a woman. You seem more interested in discovering what I’m really like. I like that.”

Trinity gripped the saddle as though it were his lifeline. He had to get himself in hand. He needed something to block her view of the swelling bulge in his jeans.

“Why?”

“Don’t you know any other word?” Victoria asked, exasperated. “I don’t know why. Maybe you don’t have to understand why to be attracted to someone. Maybe it’s just there the moment you set eyes on them.”

“You’re a beautiful woman,” Trinity said, keeping his hold on the saddle. “A man would have to be unnatural not to feel attracted to you.”

“I didn’t mean like that,” she said, annoyed. “I meant a special kind of attraction, the kind you have when you want to know more about a person. It’s a desire to be with him, to share yourself with him as much as you want him to share himself with you. It causes thoughts of him to pop into your head all the time. It keeps you wondering what he’s doing, what he’s thinking. Surely it’s happened to you before.”

“You mean the way it happened with your husband?”

He couldn’t have checked her intensity more if he’d thrown a bucket of water in her face. She turned away from him and looked out over the valley once more.

“No, I don’t. I was sixteen years old, and my father was dying. Something had to be done about my future. Dad picked out a rich, handsome young man and asked me if I thought I’d like to marry him. He was twenty-one, charming, and devil-may-care. I thought he was wonderful, and I said yes. I knew I was supposed to. Only after I married Jeb did I realize the kind of hell I’d wandered into.”

Trinity could visualize Victoria as a helpless young wife terrorized by her drunken husband, and a dangerous feeling of sympathy welled up inside him. Much too dangerous when they were standing this close.

“I don’t think we ought to think too much on this attraction stuff,” Trinity said. He wondered if he’d be able to take his own advice.

Victoria spun around to face him. “Why?”

“I thought you didn’t like that word.”

“It’s precisely the one I want. Why?”

Trinity knew the best thing for him to do was mount up and head back to the ranch. He shouldn’t even wait to see if she followed. Leaving her to find her own way home wouldn’t get him into half the trouble answering that question would. He was a fool to have let things get this far. He was slipping. His nerve wasn’t what it used to be.

“Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, I fell in love with you.”

“Could you?”

“Ma’am, any man would find it hard not to fall in love with a woman who looks like you.”

“I didn’t say anything about my looks,” Victoria corrected. “I said
me”

Why couldn’t she ask questions like “Do you like my hair this way?” or “Isn’t this a pretty dress?” He could handle those without endangering his hide and his soul.

Trinity concentrated on keeping his hands on the saddle.

“I don’t really know you, ma’am, but I don’t imagine it would be too hard. Anyway, I’ve wandered away from my point. Suppose a cowpoke like myself was to come wandering in here and fall head over heels in love with you. Your uncle and Buc would put a stop to that before you could take a deep breath.”

“Suppose I were to fall in love with the cowpoke?”

Any cowpoke worth his salt would move heaven and earth to make her his wife. That’s what he’d do. It’s what Red would do. But he couldn’t tell her that.

“It wouldn’t make any difference. They still wouldn’t have any part of it.”

“Even if I told them I loved him, that I’d never love anybody else?”

Her eyes had never looked as blue, as sincere. Trinity wondered if Jeb might not have been as thoroughly bewitched by his young wife.

“Especially if you said that.”

“What if I were willing to run away with him?”

She was relentless.

“He wouldn’t do that, not if he loved you.”

“Why?”

“Growing fonder of that word all the time, aren’t you?”

“Don’t stall.”

She came closer, but Trinity had managed to keep his horse between them. She looked at him across the saddle.

“Because a cowpoke wouldn’t have anything to offer a woman like you.”

“All I would want would be the cowpoke.”

“He would want to give you the world. It would kill him not to. It would be worse than turning his back on you.”

“How stupid.” Her exasperation was unmistakable. “Only a man would think of leaving a woman just because he couldn’t give her things she might not even want.”

“Not
a
woman, Victoria.
You.”

“It wouldn’t matter. A woman wouldn’t think like that. As long as she were with the man she loved, nothing else would matter.”

Trinity found it difficult to doubt her. Yet he could never quite forget she had been found with the gun in her hand.

“Not all women are like that. Some of them want what a man can give them more than they want the man.”

“But if a man
really
loved a woman, he could tell the difference.”

He wondered if she had looked at Jeb like this. If so, the poor man never had a chance. Not even alcohol could make him indifferent to such a woman.

“Not always. Love can do terrible things to a man’s judgment”

“I don’t imagine it could affect yours any longer.”

“Not as much as it once did”

“But it can still affect it a little?”

“When it’s combined with an aching physical need, yes, too much.”

“Are you aching?”

Trinity felt his temperature rise about ten degrees.

“Ma’am, that’s an unfair question. How can I be this close to you and not feel the need?”

“A man
needs
a woman, but he
aches
for a certain woman.”

“How do you know that?”

“A woman feels the same way.”

Trinity’s grip on the saddle tightened until his knuckles turned white. If he didn’t head this conversation in a different direction, she would pick his defenses apart. She was twisting him around her fingers, just like Queenie.

“One dung you don’t do is throw yourself at a man. He might get the wrong idea,” Trinity cautioned.

“Suppose he had the right idea.”

“Another dung, you don’t tease a man with what he can’t have.”

“How do you know you can’t have anything? You haven’t asked,” Victoria parried.

“Ma’am, you got things in the wrong order. A woman like you had better know exactly what she’s offering before she lets a man know she’s interested. Once he knows she’s available, he makes the decisions.”