Give Me A Texas Ranger (27 page)

The ride back took longer than Laney had planned. The cross path was blocked by fun-making members of the McGinty Club, a group of lawyers, bankers, and other businessmen who had struck up a rousing march from the waterworks and were headed up El Paso Street, the city’s main thoroughfare. They drove a buckboard adorned with signs that read
BARBEQUED BURRO MEAT AND ICE WATER
, items that would be for sale for the upcoming boxing match. Laney half expected to see Judge Townsend and Dannell among them. Both were active in the club and took great pleasure in having their turns at firing off the cannon on top of McGinty Hill to announce upcoming civic festivities.

“Looks like the town’s gearing up for trouble tonight.” Thomas motioned toward two of the officials who were sitting atop a hay bale inside the wagon, trying to pour whiskey into two glasses. “It’s not even noon and they’ve already started celebrating.”

“The fight won’t happen tonight,” Laney announced, shaking her head at the men’s foolishness. “They’ll be wishing they had saved that for another time.”

“You seem sure of that.”

Thomas’s eyes focused intently on her now, and Laney realized too late that she had disclosed information that she shouldn’t have. He was too sharp not to pick up on her mistake. She thought fast. “I mean…well, you saw Mr. Maher’s eyes yourself. He couldn’t possibly fight tonight.”

“Tell me what you know about the fight, Laney.”

“I told you I can’t tell—”

“You said you couldn’t tell me about what Maher ordered.” The eyes of a man intent on his mission stared at her, waiting. “We’re talking about two different things.”

Grateful that the revelers had finally passed, Laney pressed down on the pedals and deliberately rode ahead of the Ranger so she didn’t have to meet his gaze. “I don’t know anything other than what’s been in the paper,” she said over her shoulder. “Surely nothing to inspire all this suspicion.”

“You didn’t grow up here, did you?” he asked, catching up with her.

Thomas changed the subject so abruptly she wondered where this line of questioning was leading. Her mind raced to think of reasons the truth might work against her, but it didn’t come up with any. So she answered him forthrightly. “My mother visited Kentucky. She met my father there and they married. He worked as a horse breeder for the O’Grady family and I grew up on their place. So I guess you’d say I’m from the East, but my heart is here in Texas.”

The Ranger took a moment before continuing. “So you fell in love with one of the brothers, I take it. The wrong one, in Dannell O’Grady’s opinion, from what I heard last night.”

He’d heard more than she’d wanted him to. She had meant merely to have the Rangers rescue her if Dannell got out of line. “I married his older brother, Marc.”

“Is that what brought you to El Paso?”

That and a dozen other reasons, she remembered. “He was ill and needed a drier climate.”

“His brother came with you?”

Laney pedaled harder, making Thomas urge the horse into a trot to keep up. “Not in the beginning. We had some wonderful years together.”
Two miserable years since.
“He showed up at Marc’s funeral to offer me marriage. I refused. He always assumed I would marry him instead of Marc because Marc was so much older than I, but Dannell never stood a chance. It didn’t matter that Marc had already been married once. He was the better man. Dannell never accepted that I preferred someone else over him, even if it was his own brother. When I refused to marry him after Marc’s death, he convinced a judge that he was the proper guardian for Gideon.”

She didn’t say how Dannell had gone about defaming her to the judge. That was too much hurt to deal with anymore. Frustration and anger caused bile to rise in Laney’s stomach, but she willed it away. She would not let Dannell make her feel threatened anymore. She had the means to win Gideon and that’s where her mind needed to focus now. The future, not the past.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Laney. If there’s anything I can do to help you with the boy, just call on me.”

Sincerity filled his tone. She liked that about him. One of the
many
things she had begun to find appealing about Thomas Longbow. Though she was exasperated by his persistence, she also respected that same determination. She could understand the need to follow something through. She’d been forced to be careful and calculating in her efforts to regain custody of Gideon since her husband’s death. She’d let nothing sway her from her goal—not lack of money, not hard work, not a man who refused to keep his hands to himself. To ask Thomas to do less in a job that he had been assigned to do would have made him less of a Ranger. His persistence might aggravate her, but she couldn’t fault him for being the man that he was.

“Just don’t get in the way of what I need to do,” she said quietly, her legs pedaling to punctuate her determination. “It’s been a long, hard road to get him back.” The first year had been the hardest, growing accustomed to not hearing Marc’s and Gideon’s playful banter in the shop as they all worked together to make it a success. Marc had been so proud to set up shop and pass down his saddle-making skills to his son. Gideon was more than a worshipful son, eager to show his incredible eye for detail and handiwork. As much as Marc had taught her his skills, Gideon promised to far outshine Laney.

“Marc was my best friend,” she whispered. How could a total stranger understand what she felt? Yet Thomas didn’t seem such a stranger anymore, and the need to tell someone just what Marc had meant to her bubbled over. “Living with the grief of losing a man like Marc has been nothing but hell on earth. He wasn’t afraid to let me grow. I didn’t just have to be his wife, a pretty thing on a man’s arm.”

She couldn’t stop herself. The grief kept coming, pouring out of her in a rush of emotion that had lain dormant too long. “But do you know what it’s like, losing a child you’ve come to love as your own? It’s almost more than I can bear some nights. I lie awake listening for Gideon. The sound of his prayers as he said them before he went to bed. The gentle ‘thank you’ when I finished tucking him in. The sigh of relief when I told him that I would sit with him until the thunder and lightning rumbled away. All of that and a thousand memories more have haunted my nights.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. “I finally understand how much Marc must have felt when he lost Sarah to childbirth. Only I lost
two
people I cared for.”

Though Marc had never given Laney his true heart, she’d been happy to spend her life with such a good man. Their affection for each other had been growing and promised to one day become more, if she had been patient enough. But death was an impatient mistress and had taken him before they’d had a chance to become more than two people who had married to give each other companionship and to raise Gideon with two parents.

Laney braked and took her hand off the handlebar for a moment to wipe her eyes. Thomas reached out and grabbed the bicycle to steady it, forcing her to stop pedaling. She sensed his eyes focused on her but she couldn’t meet his gaze, knowing she would lose her composure altogether if she stared into the intense gray depths. Instead, she focused her attention on his nice strong hand circling the handlebar. Always curious about people’s hands, she held a particular interest in the way certain professionals required different shapes and lengths of fingers to handle a task adeptly. Now that she’d seen Pete Maher’s boxing fists, Laney was even more aware of the strength of Thomas Longbow’s solid grip. A grip that might have possibly killed a man before, for all she knew. A Ranger’s firm, trustworthy hold.

“I’m going to be late,” she whispered, gently nudging him and taking command of the bicycle.

She was surprised when he let go and said, “I’ll meet you at the shop.”

He reined his horse away and rode ahead.

Laney wished she could just veer and take the day off, but she couldn’t. Judge Townsend would be there any moment to get the papers started, and she couldn’t afford the day away from the leather. If Thomas was good as his word about really paying for the saddle, then it would take every bit of her time to get the saddle and boxing gloves done on time. She wished now that she hadn’t told him how long it would take to complete the saddle, but he had seemed so insistent about having it done quickly. She suspected his rush had everything to do with when he felt the fight would occur.

When she arrived at the shop, Thomas stood at the hitching post waiting for her. He had already tethered his mount, and extended a hand to help her off the bicycle. He remained quiet for a moment, but his eyes softened in compassion as he said, “Thank you for sharing your story with me, Laney. I know that had to be hard for you. I thought you might want some time alone for those last few streets.”

His thoughtfulness touched her heart as surely as his hand gathered hers to help her off the bicycle. Her stomach tightened as the warmth of his touch enveloped her. Looking into those intriguing gray eyes filled with compassion and understanding, it hit Laney with a force so stunning that she felt herself lean into him.

She knew now why she’d opened up to Thomas.

She could fall in love with him.

Like she had hoped to do with Marc.

Their gazes locked. Thomas gently urged her inside the shop, not bothering to close the door behind them. His gaze lowered to her mouth, lingered, then raised to rest on her again. He smiled and carried her hand upward, brushing her knuckles with his lips. “Laney, I’m going to kiss you.”

Her pulse hammered. Trying to ignore it, she failed. “I know.”

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, running his thumb over the pulse at her wrist.

To her dismay, it beat faster and even more erratically than the moment before, and she found herself impatient for the taste of him. “Thomas.” She whispered his name in a heated rush.

He cupped her face in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes; then, ever so exquisitely, he lowered his lips to hers.

His lips were more skilled than his hands—firm, yet soft and warm. He took his time, gently urging her to yield to his masterful manipulation of her senses. She sighed as he tantalized her to open her mouth and allow him to deepen the kiss with a gentle sweep of his tongue. She gave in to the sensations swirling like warm eddies in her bloodstream, igniting heat in their wake. It was only a kiss. An impossible kiss that somehow answered every unasked question she had about passion…until now. Until Thomas.

Reason whispered for her to stop, that she was heading into trouble, that she hadn’t thought things out clearly. But for once, she wanted nothing more than to be impulsive, to enjoy what she felt and not question it to death. Laney wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, meeting his tongue with hers in a hungry lick and parry that made her eager for more. A torrent of heat hotter than a windstorm over the desert flared between them, setting his skin ablaze beneath her fingertips, radiating through the cloth of his shirt. His lips blazed a trail of kisses down her neck, making her gasp with the sheer want of him. She moaned as the sound of her name exited his lips in a rush of heat at the valley where her throat ended. Her fingers curled into the soft, silky black hair at the nape of his neck, urging him closer still. Longing for more, every nerve ending in her body tingled with anticipation.

The iron band of his arm pulled her closer, as if he couldn’t get enough of the feel of her. She sensed his desperation to have no clothes between them, for she felt it too. Laney arched toward him, pressing her breasts against him, wanting more, afraid she would never know the true depth of the glorious feelings his touch had ignited within her. All reason insisted that she hold back, to withstand the sensual onslaught of his lips, but something other than good sense gave a strangled moan within her and she gave herself completely to his kiss, their tongues equal contenders in a tantalizing tangle.

Someone cleared his throat. Laney blinked away the haze that had enveloped her, suddenly aware once more of her surroundings. It took her a moment to realize that the masculine sound had not come from Thomas, rather from Judge Townsend, who stood in the doorway. To complete her dismay, Dannell was with him!

The heartbeat that had been thundering in her pulse felt as if it raced to sink into her feet. She pushed away from the wall of Thomas’s chest, trying to straighten her hair, wipe the kiss off her lips, and find some reasonable explanation for her actions.

What am I doing? What must they be thinking?
Dannell would use this public display against her to prove her unfit, and she could blame no one but herself. Yet she’d never known such desire as when Thomas had touched her. Not even with Marc. She’d never dreamed that a single touch could set her soul on fire as if it were a match struck aflame. She’d thrown caution to the wind, wanting nothing more than to make mad, sweet love to Thomas right there in her shop, and with no conscious thought as to who might come in. She’d known the Ranger little more than twenty-four hours and wanted to rip his clothes off.

If she couldn’t get her feelings under control, what would they be doing by the time she finished the saddle?

“This won’t happen again,” she insisted aloud, not sure if she was trying to reassure the men, Thomas, or herself.

“It was only a kiss.” Amusement filled Thomas’s tone. “Don’t look so devastated.”

“It looked a good deal more than that.” Dannell’s red handlebar mustache puffed as he spoke, a slow flush of anger creeping up his neck to match his ruddy cheeks. “Did it to you, Judge Townsend?”

“We’ll wait for you out here, Mrs. O’Grady”—the judge graciously did not take her brother-in-law’s bait—“while you say your
good-byes
to your friend.”

For once, her brother-in-law was right. That had been a lot more than a kiss to Laney. How could she have responded to Thomas so wantonly? “Thank you, Judge. I won’t keep you waiting.”

“Remember, we’re busy men.” Dannell gave her a warning look, then took a step backward when Thomas moved closer to him. “Don’t take too long.”

“She’ll take as long as she needs.” Thomas shot him a deadly glare that sent a shiver down Laney’s spine. Dannell nearly stumbled over his fancy cane as he backed out of the door.

“I thought so.” Thomas laughed. “A man like that’s all jaw and no jugular.”

He strolled back to Laney, and when she realized he was going to kiss her again, she stepped backward, throwing up her hands to ward him away. But Thomas would have none of it. He grabbed her hands, pulled her to him and wrapped them around his waist, kissing her quick and hard.

He finally let her go, but his gaze remained locked with hers. “Whatever hold that man thinks he still has on you, Laney, we’ll handle…together. Just like we’re going to handle whatever this is that’s stirring up between you and me. You’re attracted to me”—he traced a finger down her cheek and tapped her upper lip—“and I’m sure as hell attracted to you.” His voice became whisper soft. “That brother-in-law of yours can bank on one thing…nothing will stop me from seeing where it’s going to lead us.”

She sucked in a deep breath as he left her arms, moved outside, and mounted his horse. As he rode away, the sight of him sitting powerfully and masterfully in his saddle thrilled her. Sleek, hard muscles, well-accustomed to handling whatever came their way, formed the man who had laid claim to her senses. She closed her eyes and swore to herself, knowing that the voice that had whispered to tread cautiously around the Ranger ever since she met him, now lay in the silent ashes of her will.

Thomas Longbow wasn’t a man who made promises lightly and she was a woman who had yearned to know a man’s burn.