Explaining Herself (2 page)

Ask questions, he reckoned. Talk to people. But
—

A light knock at the bunkhouse door caught him by surprise. He spun, dropping the end of a bandage to flare his left hand
—then clenched a fist to keep from going for his revolver when he saw who peeked in the doorway.

A girl. No ... a
lady.

"Oh!" Seeing that he wasn't wholly dressed, she
spun away and covered her eyes. "Golly. I should have waited for you to say 'come in.' "

Laramie didn't know how to answer that, so instead he quickly finished binding his shoulder, using his teeth to hold one end of the bandage as he tightened the knot with the other. A lady shouldn't be here at all.

This had to be one of the daughters. He could tell that much by the cut and yoke of her yellow calico dress and the ruffled white apron she wore over it. She'd tied the apron in a big bow, the ends of which trailed down from her waist like rivulets of water, running into and out of the bright folds of her skirt. He could tell by the neat way she wore her hair up, despite the dark-brown curls of hair that trickled across her ears and the bare nape of her neck. Laramie had seen nice girls before
—bosses' daughters, or hired girls—but never this close. Proper married women, yes, but not young ladies. He sure hadn't spoken to them.

And even if he were better with words, he felt odd
— his throat tight, his skin prickly—-just looking at this girl's neck. She looked so ...
clean!

"I brought some salves," spoke the lady toward the door, and lifted a pail with one hand. "And some of my mother's soup. I wasn't sure what was wrong with you."

What was wrong. . .
He pushed his arms back into the sleeves of his union suit, started fumbling buttons into place. When his gaze drifted downward again, to where the lady's apron ties dipped in and out of her skirt's flounces, even more of him felt tight and prickly. It embarrassed him.

The last thing Laramie was, was clean.

The lady peeked over her shoulder, her eyes quick, her lashes dark. Fingers still on his union suit, Laramie felt himself flush to be caught staring.

"Aren't you going to put on your shirt?" she prompted. "I can hardly ask you questions like that."

Questions?
At least that explained why she would have wanted to help him. Laramie scooped a clean shirt out of his saddlebag, tugged it on
—and missed his sleeve on the first try. "What questions?"

"Are you decent?" She'd turned away again.

"No." He was still tucking.

She started talking anyway.

"Well, first off, I was going to ask if you were all right. I saw how stiffly you moved, like maybe you'd hurt yourself. That's why I brought the salves and the soup. Here." She put the pail on a shelf by the doorway.

He guessed he should thank her, except that she had no business in the bunkhouse. Even
he
knew that much.

"Then I figured on asking your name," she continued, still speaking toward the door as Laramie finished tucking. "Since Papa didn't tell me that. I'm Victoria Garrison, by the way. Sometimes my family calls me Vic."

When he still said nothing, she peeked over her shoulder again. Luckily, this time he was decent.

Fully dressed, anyhow.

She turned to face him. "So what's your name?"

"Laramie." Some folks knew it for an alias as soon as they heard it. All Victoria Garrison said was, "What's your first name?"

He didn't like this. He didn't like the risk of being alone with the boss's daughter. He didn't like that she'd seen his bandages
—so much for hiding his injuries from Garrison. He didn't like how odd he felt at the sight of her skirt's flare or her bare neck, and he didn't like anything distracting him from what he'd come here to do.

Even if he wasn't quite sure how to do it.

He'd given her a handle to hang on him. She was rude to demand more. And yet, when she smiled with encouragement, he couldn't drum up enough energy for annoyance. All his energy was going into the prickly, tight feelings.

The lady had pretty eyes. Gray, if the shadows of the bunkhouse weren't fooling him. Laramie liked how her lips turned when she ducked her head to slant a smile up at him, as if to be less threatening that way.

Not that a little thing like her had to duck.

"Some
—" He cleared his throat. "Some folks call me Ross." It had once been Draz, but his parents wanted him to sound American. Since almost before he could remember, he'd been Ross—except sometimes to his momma. Draz had died years ago, not long after his father, his brother, his sister. It was Laramie who stood there with water dripping off his hair and onto the collar and shoulders of his shirt.

"Pleased to meet you, Ross Laramie," said Miss Garrison brightly. Unsure how to answer her, he just nodded. They shouldn't be here together, but since she blocked the door, he wasn't sure how to get out. . . unless it was to dive through one of the bunkhouse's six windows.

Stalling, he strapped on his gunbelt. Normally he would check his rounds, but it seemed unnecessarily threatening in front of a lady.

"Welcome to the Circle-T," she went on cheerfully. "I've already guessed that Papa hired you. Is it because of the rustlers?"

Laramie squinted at her. She knew about the rustlers?

"I saw the steer," she explained, while he slid a knife into his boot. "At first I couldn't understand why you and Papa would pen it, since it looks fine
—not sick, anyway. Then I noticed the brand. I
think
it's a brand. It almost looks like the steer had a Circle-T and
doesn't anymore, although how a person would erase a brand I have no idea. I'd think a rustler would just put a new brand over the old one. Though really, what design would fit over a Circle-T? If it were just a bar, that would be one thing, though I guess that's why not many ranchers use just a bar. But a T is uneven already, and when you put it in a circle ..." She shook her head. "But this isn't even that. It's like it's erased. That's what I can't figure out."

Laramie wasn't staring at the gentle flare of the lady's skirt anymore, or even other, less proper curves. He found himself watching her mouth. He'd never heard so many words come so quickly out of one mouth.

She widened her pretty gray eyes, and he guessed she'd meant that last to be a question. His brain lurched back into motion like a spurred horse.

"Blotted," he offered.

She blinked. "Pardon?"

Laramie swallowed. Now she wanted an explanation
—about changing brands? He should have said nothing at all. But she cocked her head and looked so interested . . .

"Brand 'em through a piece of wool blanket," he explained. "Wet one. Blots over the old brand."

"Really?" She considered that. "It's not particularly convincing, is it?"

It was when
he
did it. Likely this rustler got interrupted, or distracted. Nobody who regularly botched a job like the one on that steer could be doing enough damage that Jacob Garrison would hire himself a range detective.

Laramie wouldn't have said all that even if he could, though. Neither did he offer that any brand could be changed by a man skilled enough with a running iron, who was hungry enough for easy cash. Heck, he could think of three possible counterfeits for Circle-T right
off. But it was better that people not know the extent of his education on the topic.

"I should leave," he said, pushing his belongings into the chest at the foot of the bare bunk, hoping she would head out first. Not that he really needed this job. But he preferred to stay in one piece until he did what he'd come to do
—and Jacob Garrison didn't seem the type to tolerate a man philandering with his daughters.

"Don't forget the salves," she offered. Drawing a mason jar of what looked like soup from the pail beside her, she then offered die pail to him.

Laramie risked stepping closer to her, long enough to take the pail and add it to his chest of belongings, then shut the lid. It was a rare ranch hand who would poke into another man's things. Short-lived, too.

"Got to head out to work, huh?" she asked, stepping outside. But she waited for him, holding the door open. "What is it you're doing for Papa, anyhow?"

He picked up his rifle. "Working."

She narrowed her eyes at his cryptic answer, though with apparent good humor. "Well, I hope you enjoy it here. It's probably pretty different from Texas."

He stopped beside her and narrowed his eyes down at her.
Texas'?
She was wrong
—but disarmingly close.

She smiled delightedly up at him, as if he'd greeted her announcement with praise instead of suspicion. 'You've got a Texas saddle," she explained. "Not that you couldn't have bought it off someone, but your hat has a Mexican look to it, too. And your spurs. Definitely Spanish."

It occurred to Laramie that Victoria Garrison saw a lot more than she should. The pretty little lady might prove dangerous, and not just to his composure.

It didn't help th
at he could smell her, she stood so close. She smelled as clean and warm as she looked, like cinnamon and Chinese-laundry soap. Maybe this
was why men made such a fuss about women. Since it was usually about whores, Laramie had never fully understood the draw. Money bought little more than a brief pleasure that hardly seemed worth the smell, sweat, and embarrassment. Now, standing this close to a neat, shiny-haired lady who'
d even smiled at him, he wondere
d if some fellows pretended that instead of a whore, they were with ...

His body felt more than tight, and he had to get away from this particular lady,
now!

He wasn't clean. He wasn't decent. And there was still the chance he might have to kill her father.

"Stay away from me, Miss Garrison," he warned, and her upturned eyes widened. He noticed again just how small she seemed beside him, the top of her head barely reaching his breastbone, and yet how curvy she was. He didn't like that she looked scared of him, even if it
would
keep her away.

But he didn't like a lot of things. "Please."

"Oh." She blinked, regaining her composure so quickly that it unnerved him. He was armed, and a stranger ... and a killer. She should probably be at least a
little
scared. "I'll try. My apologies for intruding. Here."

He suddenly found a jar of soup in his left hand.

"Good day, Mr. Laramie," said Miss Garrison, and
— glancing both ways as if to make sure nobody had seen her here—she strode away, her skirt swinging with her enthusiasm.

She took her soap-and-cinnamon smell with her.

Laramie felt unnerved
—and strangely relieved that she'd not called him Ross.

Chapter Two

"Then he said to stay away from him," complained Victoria three days later, typesetting at the
Sheridan Herald.
Her friend Evangeline Taylor, reading Vic's editor's story, passed over metal type from a partitioned case. Vic slid the letters into an open-sided composing stick, holding them in place with her thumb. Whenever she finished a line of type, she transferred it into the press's chase, or frame. "Flat out. Except for the please."

And after I brought him soup.

Evangeline glanced nervously toward the newspaper's owner and editor, Mr. L. E. Day, clacking away on his typewriting machine across the room. He often allowed Evangeline to help, as long as she used the back door. He said it gave Victoria someone to talk to who wasn't him. Evangeline took that to mean he did not like his and Victoria's conversations, but slim, pale Evangeline worried too much.

"He was fascinating, though," Vic remembered. "Not Mr. Day
—he can't hear us anyway. Mr. Laramie." Even without the wounds, which she hadn't mentioned, the man would have intrigued her. Something about his taut stillness put her in mind of the air before a storm.

Evangeline turned her silent concern to Victoria.

"Not that kind of fascinating," insisted Vic with a laugh, pausing to make sure a
he
wasn't
near
b
efore she continued adding on letters to form the word
Robbers.

Not that Ross Laramie wasn't handsome, in his tall, black-haired,
dangerous
way. His face had seemed to be all angles, from the sweep of his eyebrows to his sharp nose and long jaw. His mouth had looked hard, set. And his hooded eyes . . . Well, if eyes were the window to one's soul, Victoria wasn't sure she should open those windows. She had a feeling they led to a haunted place.