Intimate Strangers (Eclipse Heat Book 2) (2 page)

”I’ve had enough, Ambrose,” she lashed back at his contempt.  I won’t be treated like an idiot. You hide ranch business from me, criticize my friends and accuse me of wanton behavior. You’ve become a petty, small-minded, arrogant boor, even by Texas standards.”

His eyes glittered and he took a threatening step toward her. ”I suppose in Boston, the land of the mighty aristocrat, it’s considered narrow-minded of a man to expect his wife to keep her skirts down for anyone but him. Here in Texas, we don’t play that game.”

Lucy fisted her hands, controlling her need to pummel him. “So we are at the real crux of the issue. I can’t use
my
money to start
my
horse project because
you
have chosen to believe incomprehensible gossip about me.”

“I didn’t say I believed it,” he growled. “But if you’d keep your rump at home where it belongs, there’d be nothing for the gossips to chew on.”

“Last night, you reeked jealousy and snarled like an animal guarding his territory, making it clear you don’t trust me even when I’m in your sight. By your actions you publicly confirmed the lies.”

“Is that right?” Quincy had the nerve to defend his behavior. “You smiled, simpered, batted your eyes and with skirts flying, whirled around the floor with every cowboy who asked. You think you didn’t give the old tabbies in town something to talk about? It was a mistake to go to the Eclipse social and it will be a cold day in hell when it happens again.”

Silently she turned and walked to the tack room, gathered her gear and carried her sidesaddle to Starlight’s stall. Tacked up and ready to mount, she led her horse to the wooden block near where Quincy waited. “You are very naïve if you think hiding me from Eclipse citizens will stop gossip.”

“Goddammit, Lucy, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times—that contraption is dangerous. If you’re determined to take a ride to cool down, use a decent saddle. ” Ridiculous as it was, he replaced one harangue with another.

She ignored his warning, refusing even to glance his way. Once seated, she rode toward the open door. He grabbed Starlight’s reins, pulling her to a stop. “Stay on Quince land and don’t ride far,” he ordered her. “Get your pouting done quick and come home.”

“I will go where I want to go and do what I want to do. You can be certain of that, Ambrose Quince.” Her last words to him were a promise to herself as well. Lucy nudged her heels into Starlight’s sides and her mare lunged forward, ripping the reins from Quincy’s grip.”

Cursing himself for a fool, Ambrose watched Lucy ride off.

“Any other time but now, Lucy.” He groaned, remembering her look when he’d delivered the bad news. It didn’t matter. Right now it was impossible. Luce didn’t understand. She didn’t have an ounce of business sense and Ambrose didn’t have time to explain that her money couldn’t buy time and right now he didn’t have time to help her start her equine program.

She’d been furious about the stock cancellation, ready to scratch his eyes out. But it had been her reputation at the core of the quarrel.

Ambrose took his hat off, beating it against his leg in frustration before setting it back on his head. Hell, he knew she wasn’t a loose woman, but some of her hoyden antics had opened the door for the vindictive in Eclipse. They were busy blackening her character and she was preparing to hand them the paintbrush to finish the job.

Lucy Quince’s headstrong ways had always been talked about, but recently, the gossip had gotten ugly. He didn’t believe it, she’d seemed oblivious to the rumors, and he’d tried to ignore the talk, figuring it would go away.

Last night, he’d taken her to the town social, planning to prove they were a happy couple. That blew up in his face when it seemed as if every cowboy in the state lined up for a dance, with Lucy more than ready to oblige. He’d had enough, exiting the party early and fighting with her all the way home.

I love her so goddamned much, but dammit I can’t ever get the words to come out right.
He’d sought her out in the barn, needing to end the strife and get things back on track. But after their loving, instead of explaining why he’d cancelled the horse order and revealing the bind the Double-Q was in, he’d let the conversation spiral into another argument.

Lucy was right. He did keep her ignorant of ranch business.
Her money had always been a sore point between them. Quincy didn’t want her worrying about his ability to take care of her so he kept his own council, shielding her from trouble when it reared its head.

He grimaced.
Trouble? It’s like the devil’s hit us with everything possible all at once. Which should I tell her first? About the note coming due at the bank, rustlers stealing me blind, neighboring ranchers ready to fight the Double-Q over water rights and Lucy…

Disgusted with his own behavior, he faced the truth.
She thinks I’m an arrogant boor. Maybe I am.
For eight years he’d been trying to prove to himself he was good enough for Lucy. He’d apologize when she got back and they’d talk.

* * * * *

When Lucy didn’t return by supper, Ambrose went out looking for her. A dark sky promised rain but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d disregarded the signs of an imminent storm.

He rode first to the area around the bluff where she usually went to watch the wild horses. The wind swept through carrying an unexpectedly ferocious downpour, leaving behind red dirt churning in muddy puddles of water.

More worried by the moment, he ducked into Hamilton’s cabin, but when he found no sign of Lucy there, he remounted and rode to Eclipse, his fear increasing with every beat of his heart.

She wasn’t in town and apparently hadn’t been there. He was frantic by the time he rode back onto the Double-Q, sending the entire ranch crew out searching through the storm. But any tracks they might have followed were wiped out in the rain.

It was days before Ambrose let the men resume cattle work. At first he believed she must have been thrown from that damn sidesaddle and carried off by some wild animal. Doggedly, he rode over his land and the area around Eclipse, sure that somehow he’d find her.

But after a week, doubt set in.  Neither Lucy nor her horse had been found. No one claimed knowledge of her whereabouts, but everyone had an opinion about where she’d gone.

People looked at him obliquely and stepped aside, and he overheard half conversations when he went to Bailey’s Mercantile. Part of each usually contained the phrase, “Saw her taking an interest in that stranger.”

He listened to the whispers, trying not to believe she’d run off with another man. Finally, he stayed away from town, burying himself in Double-Q work and leaving his brother, Hamilton, to make the trip to Eclipse when supplies were needed. Three weeks after Lucy’s disappearance, the bills started rolling in for her last purchases.

Hamilton came back from town enraged. “She timed things right to make it bad for us, that’s for sure. Luce is gone but her bills sure aren’t. I went in the Mercantile to pick up supplies and got handed a tick for the bath fixtures you’ve got sitting upstairs.”

Ambrose didn’t want to hear about the damned bath fixtures. He and Lucy had already fought to a standstill over the expense of piping water to the house. “Load ’em up and take ’em back.”

“Wish I could.” Hamilton’s words were grim. “Owen Bailey decided to stop playing at sheriff long enough to insert himself into store business. He says we took delivery and Comfort can’t take ’em back.”

Ambrose was too numb from continuing shocks to register more surprise, but it was unusual for Bailey even to visit the Mercantile. He left the work of running the store to his wife, Comfort.

Hamilton drank deep from his coffee as if looking for strength. “I went across to the bank to find out what was up. Pauley says Lucy emptied her account the day she left and now he’s frozen her incoming assets, levying payment for goods received from the Double-Q funds.”

Ambrose wanted to deny what he heard. Not once since she’d been gone had Pauley stepped forward and offered that information. As impossible as it seemed to Ambrose, Lucy had taken her money and left her family.
Me—she left me.

He tried to shrug off the mix of rage and grief, focusing on Hamilton’s alarm. “How much?” Ambrose asked. “How much will it cost to make good on my bills?”

“Goddamn her sorry hide. Those aren’t your bills.” Hamilton believed firmly that Lucy had run off with another man and he didn’t bother to conceal his loathing for his sister-in-law. When Ambrose shook his head wearily, Hamilton told him the extent of the disaster.

“If we don’t get a handle on this, we’ll be wiped out.”

“We’ll sell half our breeding stock with the rest of the herd. With the inside information you culled for us, we’ll get our beef to market first and get the best price possible from the military procurement officer.” Almost grateful to have something to focus on other than Lucy’s flight, Ambrose plotted their course in clipped tones.

“After we pay Pauley’s bank note, Lucy’s shopping bills and tighten our belts, we’ll get through this. We’ve managed to get through everything else—we’ll weather this storm too.”

But the storm had just begun and went downhill from there. They lost more cattle to rustlers before they got the herd to market and by the time they paid the drovers, the loan and the bills, the brothers had to lay off most of the ranch hands. They couldn’t afford Lucy’s housekeeper and Mrs. Carmichael had to go.

Over the winter, Ambrose and Hamilton split the work of six men and his son, eight-year-old Alex, got a head start on becoming a man. His daughter Brody cried a lot, asking constantly when Mama was coming home. She spent ten hours of her fifth birthday riding double with Ambrose while he rounded up steers.

Hamilton brought home the second set of gossip circulating the next spring. “Now there’s a rumor making the rounds that the two of you had a big fight and you killed her and buried her someplace on Double-Q land.”

“Lucy’s not dead,” Ambrose said with conviction. At first he expected her to ride in, announcing she’d been hiding to teach him a lesson. Finally he accepted what he’d always dreaded—she’d run off from the rough life he’d given her.

Every day she stayed away, her absence froze another part of his heart. Ambrose tried to make up for her loss to his children, swallowing her bitter betrayal and pretending to them he believed her dead.

But at night, he lay alone in their marriage bed, dreading the day when her scent would be completely gone from her pillow, remembering the last time he’d held her in his arms, and counting ahead—numbering the years ’til the kids would be grown and he’d be free to quit living.

1877—Buffalo Creek, Texas

Exhausted and depressed, Quincy Smith wrinkled her nose and blew a strand of hair from her eyes. Her head and back hurt something awful. She’d spent the night before tossing and turning, fleeing unknown demons that shoved through her daytime defenses to wreak havoc in her dreams. Before dawn, she’d finally given up on sleep and climbed out of bed to begin the daily routine of baking fresh biscuits and bread for the breakfast crowd.

“Whew-ee, Quincy, it sure is hot in here.” Roberta came through the swinging door, fanning herself with the white lawn handkerchief she always carried. “It’s halfway through morning. Why do you still have that oven going?”

Quincy’s brow glistened with perspiration and the heat from the baking rolls wrapped her in steamy suffocation. Impatiently she brushed at the lock of hair and frowned at her partner. “Do we do this for you to practice your social skills or to make money?”

Roberta made an impish
moue
at Quincy’s wry question and rolled her eyes.

Patiently, Quincy explained business to her partner in the Robin’s Nest Café. “It’s easy to pinch off some of the dough to make cinnamon rolls. It cranks up the heat in the kitchen some, but since it never cools down much anyway, and fixing food for cowboys is our business, stop complaining.”

It amazed Quincy how Roberta could overlook the part of restauranting that called for cooking. She stopped talking and fanned herself with her apron, absently rubbing her thin scar.

“Is your head hurting?” Roberta’s voice was anxious. It seemed as if every time Quincy’s scar ached something bad happened.

She shrugged away Roberta’s superstitious forebodings. “No, go on back into the dining room. One in this little space augments the heat. Two makes it downright unbearable.” It was one of the reasons she’d chosen her role as cook. No one bothered her for long in the hot kitchen.

As soon as Roberta went back to the table area, Quincy retrieved the cinnamon rolls and set them on the counter. She was spreading a dollop of butter on the top of each when the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining area slammed open and Roberta darted back in.

“That man’s out there again, Quincy. Just like yesterday.” She frowned. “He bought a cup of coffee and he seems like he’s waiting for something.”

Yesterday the big man had taken one of the tables at midday and because of his size and scary looks, Roberta had done no more than fuss about him. He’d sipped coffee all afternoon, finally ordering a slice of pie last night.

The Robin’s Nest had lost money because of him. The tables were small and crowded together. The restaurant could make a profit only if it was filled with people eating breakfast, lunch and supper.

Irritated, Quincy slapped the bacon into the skillet after she dumped the hot rolls out of the pan and onto a tray. She made it a point to stay out of the serving area where the rough drovers and saddlebums came in to eat. Roberta managed the dining room so Quincy could be left alone.

Even scarred as she was, ’til she’d learned to protect herself, she’d been bothered by overly friendly men. With her aversion to males, cooking in the back room of the Robin’s Nest Café was almost an ideal place for her. If the work hadn’t started before sunrise and ended after dark settled over the town’s one street, it would have been perfect.

“Tell him you need the table,” Quincy ordered Roberta grimly.

Her partner was a shrewd businesswoman who flirted with the mostly male customers and kept them coming back for her engaging smiles and chatter as much as for the food. But if a man didn’t respond to her wiles, she didn’t know what to do with him.

“He’s scary.” Roberta stood inside the kitchen fidgeting with a towel, waiting for her partner to make him go away.

Frustrated, Quincy slammed the cooking spatula on the stove and wiped her hands on her apron. She was in no mood to put up with a stranger’s bullying. She didn’t have much use for people in general and avoided proximity to men in particular, so her tepid mood plummeted to plain bad.

Scooting the skillet to the back of the cooktop she said, “Watch the bacon.” Even as she said it, Quincy grimaced, knowing that the only thing Roberta knew about cooking was how to dress the table pretty.

She scraped her hair back, tucking the brown strands behind her ears, emphasizing her scar. “I’m not afraid of him. I’m scary too.”

Quincy pushed through the door into the dining area and heard the raucous morning crowd grow quiet. Since her trips to the front were rare and brief, they watched in surprise, waiting to see what had drawn her from the kitchen. Before she could lose her steam, she crossed to the table where the stranger sat.

“You’ll have to order breakfast or give up your table.” It seemed a reasonable request but the man didn’t budge.

Instead he raked his gaze up and down her body, lingering on her face. His glance flickered over the scar but he didn’t flinch back or avert his eyes like most folks.

“When did you learn to cook?” he asked in a voice filled with contempt, as though he knew her.

During the past three years, Quincy had braced her share of pushy cowboys, and he was no different. She answered accordingly, “Information is two bits. If that’s all you want, we need the table.”

She turned to leave but he grabbed her wrist as she heard coins hit the floor. “That’s for the information. Now sit.”

Maybe the others in the room couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it was obvious from the quiet that they were trying. Quincy hesitated. She was not someone who shared her business with the world and a public disturbance was not to her liking. Then again, she wasn’t one to let a man tell her what to do either.

Her hand was in her apron pocket and the silence of the room was loud enough for him and the rest of the customers to hear the click when she pulled back the hammer of her gun. She didn’t leave home without it—ever.

“Let go my arm, mister,” she warned, pointing the gun in her pocket at him.

It was all she had to say to have three big cowboys rear up out of their seats and start toward the table. Quincy wasn’t a woman who needed or wanted tending. But the fierce gaze of the man holding her arm made her glad she had backup.

As far as she could remember, she’d only shot one man, and that time the sheriff had hauled him away bleeding, with half his earlobe gone. She hadn’t been accosted since.

It figured that this miscreant, not being from Buffalo Creek, was ignorant of her history. It also appeared he was ready to see if she knew how to use the gun nestled in her hand.

Smoke drifted from the kitchen. The bacon had gone the way of all food-fixing involving Roberta. Seeing it, Quincy jerked her arm, trying to get free, but there was no give in the man who was hanging on like a bulldog with a bone.

“I don’t have time now for talk. Come back tonight after we close if you’ve a mind to get my recipes. Other than that, I don’t know anything that would be of interest to you.”

It all went to hell right after she said that. He moved a lot faster than a big man should and caught her flat-footed and ill-prepared as she turned toward the kitchen. Grabbing her around the waist, he took charge of her apron and her six-shooter at the same time he palmed his sidearm, aiming at the drovers who’d thought to rescue her.

“Ease on back there, boys. This is a family matter.”

Clearly the man was deranged. “I don’t have any family,” she told him.

He dropped his hold on her and she spun around, backing away from him toward the kitchen. Without hesitation, he pulled a tintype out of his vest pocket and stalked after her, shoving a picture in front of her face. It was a man, woman and two children—one boy and one girl. The man looked a lot like the belligerent cowboy pestering her, but it was the woman who stole her breath.

Dressed in finery such as Quincy couldn’t remember ever wearing, the voluptuous lady smiled brightly as though she owned the world and those who ran it for her. Quincy stared at an image of her younger self, minus scars and age.

The little boy looked just like the man in the picture. The little girl was plump, with a smile mimicking the woman’s.

“That’s my brother, Ambrose—your husband in case you’ve forgotten—with you and your children, Alexander McKenna and Ambrosia Cordelia Quince. Remember the family you left when you ran off, Lucille?”

Quincy’s hand automatically lifted to finger her throbbing scar. When her hair was combed just so, she could disguise the worst of it on her face, but her neck and collarbone were beyond denial.

The mark, scored in a deep line, ran down her skin like a brand. When the Buffalo Creek sheriff had found her, she’d been naked and crawling on hands and knees through the red dirt and sand, out of her head with pain and close to dead from the infected wound and other degradations done to her body.

Hiram had admitted later he’d thought he heard an animal moaning and was set on putting it out of its misery. Instead, he’d found a savagely assaulted woman who’d been left for dead. He’d carried her into Buffalo Creek, not expecting her to live ’til morning. Even unconscious, she’d been mumbling “Quincy” over and over.

When the fever broke and the cuts and bruises healed, she was left with a scar zigzagging from her hairline, down her neck, across her collarbone and lower, where it joined the puckered burn on her breast. Over time, the scar gradually changed from an angry red to a smooth, glossy white.

She had nothing but the ugly souvenirs left from her ordeal—no memory of who she was or why someone had tortured her and abandoned her in the desert. Three years later, she still didn’t know who she’d once been. The scars remained a constant reminder that someone had once intended to kill her.

Her head hurt, the scar throbbing painfully as she stared at the tintype. She wanted to grab the picture out of the cowboy’s hand and retreat to the kitchen where she could study it. But he wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it back in his pocket.

Surviving in Buffalo Creek, she’d lived a hardscrabble existence and avoided talking to men, but she had a lot of questions that needed answering and would have to make an exception in this case. Despite the obvious similarities between her and the woman in the tintype, Quincy said doubtfully, “The people in this picture look like they have money. I don’t think it’s me.”

“Get what you need. We’re traveling,” he told her gruffly, ignoring her opinion.

”Mister, you’ve got the wrong woman. Why would I be cooking for a bunch of drovers and cowboys if I had a man and a family to fix for?” But even as Quincy spoke, she acknowledged the obvious to herself.
My past has finally found me.

Just then, Sheriff Potter came through the front door. Since he was a personal friend of Roberta’s and said he liked the Robin’s Nest cinnamon rolls better than any he’d ever had before, Quincy had been expecting him, even before the glowering stranger showed up. The sheriff stopped, pushing the brim of his hat higher on his forehead and blocking the door. “What call you got to be botherin’ Miz Smith?” he asked without preliminaries.

Quincy relaxed. Hiram was a brute of a man, and as big as the stranger seemed, Hiram still had him in height and weight.

The presence of the law didn’t seem to fluster the cowboy any. He nodded and said, “Figured someone would run get you. I have a policy. Never tell a story twice if once’ll do. This
lady
is my brother’s wife. I’ve come to fetch her home.” When he took the picture from his pocket again, Quincy wanted to grab it for herself. But he handed it to the sheriff.

Hiram accepted it, looking from the tintype to Quincy, comparing the two. Some of the breakfast crowd abandoned their food to shoulder close to the sheriff, trying to get a glimpse of what he stared at.

“If what you say is true, why didn’t your brother fetch his own wife?” he finally asked.

The cowboy pulled a handbill out of his pocket and handed the folded parchment to Hiram.

The sheriff read it and frowned. “But this says he’s scheduled to hang this Friday. That’s just three days from now.”

“Yep, and I thank you for reminding me that time’s short. We have to be back in Eclipse by Friday morning to stop it.”

Hiram folded the paper and handed it back. “It says when and where, but the handbill don’t say who he killed. Maybe you can tell me.”

“Her. She lit out three years back and left him to take care of their young’uns as well as our ranch. By spring, stories were circulating that he’d murdered her and buried her somewhere.”

The cowboy scowled at Quincy. “We figured
she
started the rumors to leave trouble behind her. There was a mighty big dustup at the time. I’m surprised you folks didn’t hear about it, Buffalo Creek not being that far from Eclipse. Why didn’t you let someone know she was here?”

Quincy’s combination of fear and shame had kept her hidden most of the time. Hiram had offered to put out a poster reporting her discovery, but she’d refused. Having survived her attempted murder, she’d chosen to trust no one but her rescuers—the Buffalo Creek sheriff and Roberta Harris.

Hiram didn’t explain, eyeing the stranger suspiciously and asking instead, “If your brother’s wife has been missing for three years, how come they just now decided to hang him?”