Cowboys 08 - Luke (34 page)

"Don't gunfighters get married?"

"Most die young. There's always some stupid kid gunning for a quick reputation. If he kills someone like Luke, he becomes a feared gunhand overnight."

"Will Luke tell me he likes me?" Valeria asked.

"Not unless you force it out of him." Mrs. Brightman dumped a dustpan full of broken crockery into a bucket and began to sweep up some more.

"How can I do that?" Valeria began to gather and stack the plates the way she saw the girls doing it. It was a novel experience. She'd never removed a used plate in her entire life.

Mrs. Brightman looked up from the floor. "Take those plates into the kitchen, girls, and fix some hot, soapy water. This floor needs a good mopping. You'll be on A the trail alone with him for several days," Mrs. Brightman said after her girls left the room. "You can get to him then."

"How?"

"Don't you know anything about men?" Mrs. Bright man asked.

"I know a great deal," Valeria replied, affronted. "I've helped my uncle entertain at parties and-"

"I'm not talking about parties, girl. I'm talking about seduction."

"I've always been warned to be on my guard to keep men from seducing me."

"You would ordinarily, but you'll practically have to hogtie Luke if you want him to marry you."

"Forgive me for disagreeing with you, but I have every reason to believe Luke has known a great many women."

Mrs. Brightman laughed. "He practically has to fight them off. But you're different."

"I don't understand."

"What did they teach you in that country of yours?"

"Nothing that has been of any use since I arrived in America," Valeria replied with some asperity.

"Those other women didn't mean a thing to Luke. He could bed 'em and leave 'em without a second thought. You're different. He hasn't laid a hand on you, yet he nearly killed Fred for putting his hand on your leg."

"Which means he like me?"

"Yes."

"So he ought to want to tell me so."

"No. It means he'll do everything he can to keep you from knowing."

"I think you must make men different in this country. I don't understand them at all."

"It's just Western men. Luke knows you're a danger to his independence, his image of himself as a hard nut to crack."

Valeria felt herself losing the sense of the conversation. "Do you mean he thinks telling a woman he's attracted to her, that he loves her, makes him less of a man?"

"Yes. That's exactly what I mean."

"But that's crazy." She was learning to talk like Mrs. Brightman.

"Of course it's crazy, but that's men all over. There's not a sensible woman in the world who'd do half the things they do. But you wouldn't want them sane. That would take away half the fun."

Valeria was fairly certain she didn't agree with that

sentiment, but she let it pass. She was more concerned with learning how she could prompt Luke to reveal the true nature and extent of his feelings for her. "So what am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to use his body against him."

The twins returned with two mops and a bucket of soapy water. "Make sure you get the hallway, too," their mother said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they got gravy on the front porch." She suddenly burst out laughing. "You could have knocked me over with a feather when Luke pitched himself across that table. I didn't believe my own eyes." She shook her head and picked up her bucket. "Come into the kitchen. I don't want long ears to hear what I have to say."

"Oh, Mama!" the girls said in unison, but their mother only smiled and preceded Valeria to the kitchen.

"Men like Luke Attmore have more willpower than is good for them," she said as she set the bucket of broken crockery on, the back porch. "When it's a matter of their honor, you can't move them at all. You can torture them, and they won't budge. But when it comes to women, they're made of clay. It may take a little doing to undermine the foundation, but once you do that, the tower comes tumbling down in a hurry."

Valeria thought she understood, but she needed clarification. "How do I go about undermining his foundation?"

"Get close to him. That ought to be easy to do when you're out there by yourselves." She shivered. "I'd be so close to him he'd think I was his second skin."

Valeria understood that. "I've been that close, and all he said was not to let myself get caught alone with a man I didn't know."

Mrs. Brightman frowned. "That's downright discouraging. He might be harder to crack than I thought. Still, he did try to kill Fred for you."

He had killed Otto, but he'd done that to protect his reputation. Could he have attacked Fred for the same reason? If so, she had no chance at all.

"You've got to get him to kiss you," Mrs. Brightman said. "As pretty as you are, that shouldn't be hard." "He's already kissed me."

Mrs. Brightman's interest flared. "When?"

"When he was proving to me that going off with a strange man was very dangerous.

"Hmmmm. I'm not sure how to take that."

Valeria was sure. Luke was so uninterested he could kiss her and not be tempted to do anything more.

"On the whole, I think that's a good sign, though it's liable to make it still harder to break through his barriers."

"I don't see how that's possible." Valeria didn't need discouragement. She had enough of that already.

"I'm working on the assumption he's really hooked," Mrs. Brightman said, "that he can't stand the thought of another man touching you. He scared you to make you wary of other men while letting you know you could trust him."

"Wouldn't it be easier just to tell me?"

"Nothing is ever easy for men like Luke. You've got to keep picking at their defenses until they defeat themselves. How brazen are you?"

Valeria had never been asked a question like that. She didn't know what to answer.

"Are you bold enough to kiss him first?" Mrs. Brightman asked.

"I don't know."

"Make him take you in his arms?"

"How do I do that?"

"Girl, if I have to explain everything to you, you don't deserve Luke. That man is hiding out, but behind the wall he's built is a man just begging to be loved."

Suddenly Valeria understood. She'd been placed behind a wall, too. Only she'd never been told about the possibility of love. She didn't know any more than Luke what to do about it. She was just as afraid of failure, of rejection. She'd hidden behind her role as a princess all her life because a princess wasn't supposed to feel, to love, to care. She was just supposed to do her job.

That was Luke. He had to preserve his reputation as the roughest, toughest gunman in the West. He felt locked into his role, unable to find a way out. She would have felt exactly the same if she'd stayed in Belgravia. When she'd been exiled, all the barriers and restraints came tumbling down, and she had to become a new person. That was what she had to do for Luke, knock him so far out of his rut, he could never go back to it again.

She had to destroy his reputation.

"You've figured it out."

"What?" Valeria asked.

"You're grinning."

Valeria hadn't been aware of her expression, just the feeling of relief that she finally knew what to do.

"Don't tell me what it is," Mrs. Brightman said. "I'll answer your questions if you've got any, but it's better you don't tell anybody."

"That's okay. You can't help me now. This is something I have to figure out on my own."

They had been back in the saddle for most of the day. Luke asked Valeria at least once every hour if she was tired, if she wanted to rest, but she always insisted they go on. He'd stopped twice anyway. He hadn't forgotten

Mrs. Brightman saying Valeria didn't want him to think badly of her.

After the way he'd attacked Fred Dample, he was surprised everybody didn't know he was about to go crazy keeping his distance. It didn't help that every time he looked back, she smiled invitingly. If the trail hadn't become too narrow to ride two abreast, he'd have been jumping out of his saddle hours ago. He knew he needed women more frequently than most men, but never before had his craving come so close to tearing him apart.

When it came time to stop for the night, he wouldn't be able to escape looking at her. Temptation would stare him in the face every minute until she crawled into her bedroll. Even then he'd know she was just an arm's length away, that all he had to do was reach out and...

"This looks like a good place to stop for the night," he said, desperate to keep from completing the image. He could have found a better spot, but not without getting closer to the mining town a few miles over the ridge. He didn't want Valeria to know it was there any more than he wanted the townsfolk to know Valeria was here.

He dismounted and led both horses to a spot with a sparse covering of grass. Valeria remained in the saddle, waiting for him to lift her down. Feeling particularly vulnerable, he would have moved away immediately after helping her down, but she clung to him.

"My legs are a little unsteady. Let me hold on to your arm a minute or two."

Instead she put his arm around her waist and leaned against him. He didn't dare release her, but his body chose that moment to betray him. In about thirty seconds it was going to be obvious to anyone who wasn't blind just what was on his mind.

"I thought you said you didn't need any rest," he said.

"I don't. I just need a couple of minutes to get my muscles used to bearing my weight."

She hadn't needed to do that before. He forced himself to think of what he would fix to eat, of looking under rocks for snakes and scorpions. He even tried to decide whether the horses could find enough food in the clearing or whether he would need to move them during the night.

"You're very quiet," she said.

"I'm thinking."

"You do a lot of that."

"There are a lot of things to think about." Even more to avoid thinking about.

"My muscles are awfully tight. Do you think you could massage them like you did before?"

His temperature shot up about five degrees. While she was staying at Mrs. Brightman's house, he had forgotten how difficult it was to be alone with her.

"Try walking around the camp. That ought to loosen you up."

She looked hurt. He longed to tell her he wasn't rejecting her, just restraining himself, but he didn't dare put that into words. If he once voiced his weakness, he'd have no reason to hold onto his pride. Without that, he didn't know if he could control himself.

"I will. But if I'm still stiff ..."

She left her sentence unfinished, but he had no trouble filling in the missing words. Luke busied himself unsaddling the horses, building the fire, making coffee, frying a piece of ham he'd gotten from Mrs. Brightman. "Time to eat," he called when everything was done.

Valeria had been walking in circles around the campsite, smiling at him every time he looked up. He felt like a complete coward, but he finally kept his gaze on his' work. Valeria came up to the campfire, but she didn't sit down.

"You'll have to help me," she said. "I'm so stiff I'm afraid I might fall."

She didn't look stiff to him. She looked supple and so damned enticing he could hardly keep his breathing and heartbeat from escalating further.

Her hand was warm, her skin soft, her touch gentle. He wanted to pull her to him and kiss her until he lost himself so deeply in his need for her, he could forget his iron will, his fear that she would never be able to give him the love he needed. He told himself he ought to give in long enough to prove to himself there was no hope. Then maybe he could treat her like any other woman.

But he knew he would never forget her.

"Thank you," she said when she was seated. He handed her a plate of food. "I know I'm a lot of trouble," she said as she took it. "You're probably can't wait to hand me over to Rudolf."

"I don't think you ought to marry Rudolf." The words were out before he could shut them off. "Why not?"

He'd already put his foot in it. There was no reason to refuse to answer. "I tore up the contract, so you're free to do what you want, go where you like, marry a man of your own choosing."

She put a bite of ham in her mouth and chewed slowly. "I'm not going to marry Rudolf," she said after she swallowed. His expression must have told her he was surprised. "I decided that at Mrs. Brightman's. But I don't know where to go, what to do, how to find a man I can trust to help me. Would you consider the job?"

His thoughts were in chaos. Every possibility he'd tried so hard to deny was now alive and well. "You can't trust me."