Gideon, Robin - Desire of the Phantom [Ecstasy in the Old West] (Siren Publishing Classic) (38 page)

“Keep the boys close to home,” Garrett told the ranch hand as he accepted the reins for the trailing horse. “I don’t want the Midnight Phantom thinking he can steal
our
payroll.”

The cowboy’s eyes grew big and round. “Do you really
think he would come here?” The idea of losing his monthly salary was clearly a frightening one.

“Never can tell. You just never can tell,” Garrett said,
tapping his boot heels to the horse’s ribs.

He felt a little guilty for putting fear in the cowboy’s heart. He had no doubt that, on his early morning return, he would see men with rifles standing guard at the gate and on the rooftops of the bunkhouses.

* * * *

Pamela peered out the window, careful not to move the
curtain. She was watching Jedediah ride away. When he
disappeared into the distant trees, a great weight was lifted
from her shoulders.

Her brother had been acting strangely lately, asking pe
culiar questions, coming and going at the oddest times and for the strangest intervals. There was no one in the world she knew as well as Jedediah, but he had become a stranger to her.

For the first time in her life, his presence had begun to
get on her nerves, and Pamela knew exactly what had brought
about this change in her: she wanted to ride. She had tasted
the excitement of attacking the evil of Jonathon Darwell, and
she wanted to know that sense of accomplishment again.
She would be
acting,
she would be taking steps toward a
goal, rather than simply staying at the cabin, lamenting the fact that Garrett Randolph wasn’t the man she wanted
him to be. Doing
something
was better than doing
nothing.

From beneath the bed, Pamela removed the items she had
recently purchased at the dry-goods store in town. The
cotton shirt, cut for a man, was the deepest shade of navy blue. Pamela had told the clerk the gift was a present for her brother, though the man didn’t care much one way or an
other. At the same time, using her meager funds, Pamela had
purchased a large kerchief, also in a dark blue color. The scarf would hide her golden hair. She couldn’t ever
be
the
Midnight Phantom, but she had learned lessons from him,
lessons she would not forget. She would never again be
noticed because her blonde hair reflected the moonlight.

Pamela went back to the kitchen table, where her revolver
and holster waited. She’d already cleaned the revolver
twice, just to give herself something to do while waiting
for Jedediah to leave. All was ready to strike out at
Jonathon Darwell once again.

She was just tucking the overlong tails of the man’s
shirt into the waistband of her Levi’s when she heard the
pounding of a horse’s hooves outside. Pamela’s heart leaped
in her chest. Her first thought was that Jedediah had re
turned. Somehow, he had figured out what she was up to,
and rather than riding off to see his secret sweetheart in Whitetail Creek, he’d been waiting in the trees, hiding until this
very moment so that he could catch her red-handed.

She began unbuttoning the shirt, not wanting to lie to
her brother about it. She was just about to rush to her bedroom when something struck her as distinctly out of the ordinary. Stopping in her tracks, she could not fully
realize what was wrong.

She listened to the sounds outside her door and recog
nized that more than one horse had come to a stop in front
of her cabin. She rushed to the table, pulled the Colt from
its holster, and went back to the window.

“I don’t believe it,” she whispered, spying Garrett
dressed in black trousers and a black jacket. Though his shirt was white, Pamela knew that in his saddlebags was a
black shirt, cape, and mask, plus the holster and revolver, which would complete his transformation into the Mid
night Phantom.

“Pamela, damn it, get out here!” Garrett called out, even
before he’d dismounted.

She waited just long enough to complete buttoning her
shirt before rushing outside. She knew the anger she heard in his
voice was for theatrical purposes only. If anything, he was angry with himself for being unable to stay
away from her, and this knowledge made her tingle inside.

“Good evening, Phantom,” she said, her face shining with
love and triumph.

“That’s pretty funny. The one person in the world who
knows I’m the Midnight Phantom is the very person I most wish didn’t
know.”

“At least I’m in exclusive company,” Pamela said, stifling the urge to throw herself into Garrett’s arms. “What brings
you here this evening?”

“You know very well what it is,” Garrett said, turning
his back on Pamela to unstrap the blanket roll from the back
of his saddle.

“Actually, I don’t. I thought you weren’t talking to me anymore.”

“I’m not talking
sense
to you anymore because you’re too daft and headstrong to listen,” Garrett replied, his back still turned to her.

Pamela clenched inside at the insult but fought against the
urge to respond. After all, she had dished out her fair share
of insults to Garrett, so she had to be strong enough to take a few herself.

“I’ve got something for you,” Garrett stated as he walked
past her onto the porch and into her home.

Pamela rushed quickly in behind him, no different from
any other woman in the world expecting a gift from her lover, enormously pleased that he’d been thinking of her
even when they were apart. Garrett still hadn’t kissed her
since his arrival, though, so she forced the smile from her
lips. Gifts be damned; she wanted his kisses.

“Whatever you’re bringing isn’t what I want,” she said as he stepped up to the small table. She placed his
hands on her hips defiantly as Garrett looked at her, clearly
shocked by her declaration.

“How do you know? You haven’t even seen it yet.”

“I don’t care. It’s not what I want.”

Garrett glared at her. “Has anyone ever told you how
frustrating you are?”

“Yes. You have. Several times, in fact.” She stepped forward slowly, closing the distance that separated them. Garrett saw the expression i
n her soft green eyes turning from feigned anger
to burgeoning passion. “But I don’t always leave you feel
ing frustrated, do I?”

Garrett couldn’t keep the grin from his lips. “No, not
always. Just most of the time. Now tell me what it is you really want,” he said, though he had a pretty good idea of
what it might be.

“A kiss, for starters. Then a pleasant howdy-do would
be nice.” Pamela touched the tip of Garrett’s chin with her
forefinger and let her fingertip glide slowly down his throat. She could feel his pulse, and she could almost
guarantee it was racing faster than he would have
liked under the circumstances. “Aren’t lovers supposed to
kiss when they’ve been apart?”

Fleetingly, across the surface of her mind, she ques
tioned her description of their relationship. She was in
love with him, and she’d shared her body and her passion
with him. Whether Garrett was in love with her was still
unanswered. Did she really dare find out? If he were not,
it would be devastating.

“You’re absolutely right,” Garrett replied.

The kiss was soft initially until, after a second or two
of tenderness, their passions heightened. Garrett’s arms went
around Pamela, pulling her in close, forcing her curvaceous
body to conform to his.

She waited for the tip of his tongue to touch her lips before parting them. Then, accepting his tongue into her mouth, she purred contentedly. Whenever she kissed
Garrett this way, so deeply and intimately, her passion sky
rocketed, turning spontaneously from warm to super
heated, from hot to volcanic. She raised a knee to slide it
along the outside of his thigh, her upward progress
stopped only when her knee bumped against the underside
of Garrett’s holster. She thrilled when his hand slid down her backside to squeeze her buns firmly, forcing her pelvis to press intimately against the rapidly swelling bulge in his trousers.

“My god you e-excite me,” Pamela stammered when the kiss had finally ended.

The interior of the cabin was quite dark. She had every intention of leading Garrett straight to her bedroom, but he
went to the kitchen table.

“You were going out tonight, weren’t you?” he said,
lighting the lamp that illuminated her holster and revolver.

Pamela hesitated. She wanted to lie about her preparations
for another raid on Jonathon Darwell’s overstuffed coffers.

“Well?” he asked, setting his blanket roll on the table.

Pamela squared her shoulders. She resented having to defend her actions to Garrett. “Yes,” she said steadily. “I was
just getting ready when I heard you riding up.”

He turned to face her. “I figured as much,” he said as
a slow smile spread across his face, making his dark eyes s
hine in the way Pamela liked so much. “That’s why I brought
this with me.” He tapped the blanket roll with a finger.

“What is it?”

“Find out for yourself.”

Pamela walked to the table, perplexed and just a
little worried. She unrolled the blanket carefully to reveal a cylindrical roll of black silk. When she picked it up, the silk unrolled farther, allowing a smaller piece of silk to fall to the wooden floor.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You can’t tell? Granted, I’m not much of a seamstress,
but I thought I did a reasonable job of it, under the circumstances.”

On closer inspection, Pamela noticed the rough stitches along the edge of the cloth, which was accompanied by a tie and collar. And on the floor lay, not a black-silk kerchief, but a mask.

“My own mask and cape!” Pamela exclaimed with delight.

It wasn’t so much the gifts that pleased her as Garrett’s intent. He was assuring her that she could be her own
woman, make decisions for herself. However stubborn he
might be initially, he did see the light eventually!

The most beautiful gown in the world would not have
pleased Pamela as much as the simple, primitively constructed cape and mask.

“I had to guess at the length,” Garrett explained as she brought the cape over her shoulders. “I had mine made in San Francisco by a Chinese tailor who knew enough
not to ask too many questions. Naturally he was paid well
for his silence.”