The Wedding Ransom Page 16

  No regrets, she’d told him. Well, she had kept that promise. At this particular moment, she was feeling all kinds of different emotions, but regret wasn’t one of them.

  Rafe Malone, I’m glad it was you.

  In that moment, it was the one thing—the only thing—she could say for certain. Her mind was mired in confusion as she quietly donned her clothing. Whereas the need for comfort had brought her to this room hours before, now the need to escape sent her tiptoeing across the wooden floor toward the door. Cautiously, she turned the knob. The click of the latch sounded loud as cracking thunder to her ears. Please don’t wake up, she thought, glancing back over her shoulder at Rafe. She couldn’t face him now.

  She wasn’t certain she could face herself.

  Soundlessly, she pulled the door open. She slipped out into the darkened hallway and pushed it shut behind her. Standing frozen, she listened for signs of stirring elsewhere in the hotel. All quiet, thank heavens.

  Maggie returned to her own room, but at the doorway she paused. Her thoughts were all jumbled, her emotions a wreck. As much as she wished to escape to the forgetfulness of sleep, she knew the effort would be useless. She might as well take a walk and think her troubles through. Or at least make the attempt.

  As she stepped from the hotel, nighttime wrapped around her like a moonlit sea. The light dew moistened her feet. She breathed deeply of the magnolia—scented air and exhaled in a trembling sigh. “Well, St. John?” she asked herself softly. “Which subject do you want to tackle first? Rafe Malone or Andrew Montgomery?”

  A rueful smile twisted her lips. Considering she’d already tackled Rafe, so to speak, perhaps she should begin with him.

  Maggie walked toward Papa Ben’s rose garden, trading the perfume of the magnolia for that of the tea rose. She sat on the wooden bench and propped her feet atop a rock. She wiggled her toes and recalled how at one point during the second time he’d loved her, Rafe had kissed them one by one.

  Maggie felt her cheeks warm at the thought. She’d acted the brazen hussy tonight in seeking out his bed. Her classmates at Mount Glazier School for Young Ladies would be completely scandalized. Maggie was scandalized, and she’d had a more progressive upbringing than most.

  She couldn’t believe she’d actually gone through with it. She’d acted on instinct, not thought. What was it about Rafe that caused her to do that? Despite what had happened—or almost happened—in the Caribbean cave, she never would have guessed she’d go to him the first night back at Bliss.

  Of course, she never would have guessed she would need comforting so much, either.

  Maggie lifted her head and gazed toward the moon. She exhaled a heartfelt sigh. How was she supposed to feel? Somehow, she didn’t expect most brazen hussies felt embarrassed. Maggie did, and her embarrassment dismayed her.

  She was the granddaughter of pirates, not some simpering Southern miss. She’d chosen Rafe Malone to be her lover. She’d pursued him, seduced him. Sought comfort in his arms. So why did the memory of it make heat flush her cheeks?

  Was she ashamed of what she’d done? Should she be ashamed? At school they had preached the religion of commitment. She didn’t want that, did she?

  Well if she did, she’d made a mistake in choosing Gentleman Rafe Malone, adventurer extraordinaire.

  But it hadn’t been a mistake. Making love with Rafe had been the most glorious experience of her life. He’d made her feel beautiful. He’d made her feel like a woman. He’d made her feel wanted, and she’d needed to feel that tonight, needed it like never before.

  Because her parents hadn’t wanted her. Her father and her mother had given her away.

  Maggie pushed off the bench and resumed walking. And what of Rafe? Had he truly wanted her, or had he simply slaked his lust? Did it matter?

  It mattered. It shouldn’t, but it did.

  Maggie’s pace sped up. She left the rose garden and headed down toward the lake, ignoring the ache in her knee and the occasional sting of stone and stick beneath her bare feet. She was so confused. What did she want from Rafe? Comfort, diversion from her problems, life experience? He’d given her all that. Why should it matter why he had done it?

  Because to her peculiar, self-defined sense of morality, motives made all the difference. She’d used him, true, for comfort and escape, and for that perhaps she probably should feel shame. But in her defense, she’d brought more to his bed than her needs. She’d brought caring and respect and true, honest desire. And what of love?

  No. She couldn’t think of that. She wouldn’t think of that. Nothing had changed. She still wanted peace and tedium. She wouldn’t love an adventuring man.

  But deep in her heart a little voice whispered, Maybe it’s too late, Maggie. Maybe you already do.

  Anger flared inside her. He wasn’t a man she could love. She stopped her march abruptly and glared back toward the hotel, toward the dark window of Rafe Malone’s bedroom. He wasn’t an adventurer. He was a coward. This very night he had refused her grandfathers’ request for help. How could she forget that? How could she ignore his betrayal?

  Because despite what he said, if Rafe Malone cared for her at all—if she mattered to him at all—he’d have granted her papas’ request. Instead he was leaving Lake Bliss.

  And to her despair, she had the sneaking suspicion he’d be taking a little piece of her heart with him.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Rafe woke up alone.

  He sat up in bed, gazed at the indentation of the pillow beside him, and two thoughts occurred almost simultaneously. First, he didn’t like waking up by himself when he’d fallen asleep entwined with Maggie, and second, he should probably count himself lucky to wake up at all.

  Gus may have given him tacit instructions to have his way with his granddaughter, but Rafe didn’t want to think about the other buccaneers’ reactions. Especially Snake’s.

  Rafe swung his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his palm across his whiskered neck. He hoped his own razor would do the shaving today and not a pirate’s cutlass.

  As a precautionary measure, he armed himself with his Texas Paterson revolver before making his way from his room. He halfway expected to find a lynch mob of four gray-haired raiders waiting for him. Instead, the hotel was quiet but for the faint scratch of pen against paper coming from Barlow Hill’s suite of rooms. Rafe stepped toward the sound, then stopped in the doorway. His fingers itched to draw his gun.

  Hill looked up from the paper before him and slowly set down his pen. “Ah, Mr. Malone. Isn’t this handy. I intended to seek you out this morning.” He gestured toward a chair opposite the desk. “Please, come have a seat.”

  All in all, Rafe would rather have eaten dirt than have visited with Hill, but he’d been a bounder himself long enough to know the importance of sizing up one’s enemy. This blackguard thought to blackmail Maggie into marriage. Well, he has another thing coming. Rafe crossed the room, took a seat, and waited for the other man to speak.

  Hill flourished a faith-peddler smile. “I understand your business is horses.”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re a mustanger?”

  “Nope. We breed horses to sell to the rangers. That and a racer or two. I own Brown Baggage.” Rafe waited for the spark of envy and admiration he normally saw in other men’s expressions when he mentioned the quarter-miler’s name, but Hill’s remained politely disinterested.

  “I see,” he replied, obviously not seeing at all.

  Hill’s failure to recognize the name of the fastest racehorse in Texas added to Rafe’s disgust. Every self—respecting Texian knew his horses. Along with being a scoundrel, Hill was an embarrassment. Maggie deserved much better.

  Rafe knew that already, of course, and somewhere between midnight and morning, when she lay sleeping so sweetly beside him, he’d decided to help her get what she deserved.

  Without robbing her father, that is. Rafe would dance a waltz in a rattlesnake pit before he’d break his word to Luke. Thank g
oodness he had another way to help her and those crusty corsairs.

  He stretched out in his chair and crossed his boots at the ankles, his mouth twisting in a lopsided grin. Part of the fun of solving Maggie’s problem would be getting rid of the trouble named Barlow Hill. “So, are you in the market for horses? Is that why you wanted to speak with me?”

  “Not precisely. Allow me to be blunt, Mr. Malone.” Hill cleared his throat. “I was told you are visiting Hotel Bliss to do some horse trading with Scovall and his friends. How that ties in with your decision to tag along on Miss St. John’s trip to New Orleans, I fail to see. That aside, you must be aware that I, not Scovall, own the hotel. I’m certain you’ll appreciate that I can no longer offer you unlimited hospitality.”

  Rafe leaned forward and flipped open the wooden humidor on Hill’s desk. He extracted a cigar, stuck it into his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully on the end for a full minute. “Are you kicking me out?”

  “I would not put it in quite so crass a manner, but yes, I guess I am.”

  “You’re in luck, then,” Rafe said around the end of his cigar. Pushing slowly to his feet, he added, “I was planning on leaving today, anyway, so I won’t have to tell you no.” Hill’s eyes rounded in surprise.

  Rafe removed the cigar from his mouth and placed both hands on the desktop. He leaned forward, pinning the scoundrel with his best I’m-a-dangerous—criminal gaze, and drawled, “Let me give you a little piece of advice. Before I took up ranching, I was both a lawyer and a thief. Those particular professions provided me the skills to get what I want and protect what I have—legally or otherwise. Now, you might have wrangled a deed on this bit of land, but you don’t own the people on it. So listen to me when I tell you to step with care around Miss St. John.”

  “Are you threatening me, Mr. Malone?”

  “No. I’m telling you you’ll live a much longer and healthier life if you keep those lips of yours to yourself.”

  Hill wisely and fearfully shrank back in his chair. Rafe turned his back and moved to leave the room. At the doorway, the bravely whining sound of the other man’s voice made him pause.

  “The lady and I have an understanding! I shall touch her however I wish, and you won’t be here to stop me.”

  Rafe glanced back over his shoulder. “Have you ever taken a real close look at Snake MacKenzie’s cutlass? You could use the shadow of the blade to shave with.” With that farewell, he quit the room and left the hotel.

  Spring had slipped into summer during his trip to the Caribbean, and despite the early morning hour, the day was already hot and muggy. Rafe broke into a sweat the minute he stepped outside. The weather didn’t improve his mood at all, and he was still stewing about Hill when he finally caught up with Maggie a good fifteen minutes later.

  She and her pirate crew once again battled their way around their version of a golf course. Rafe watched her line up over her ball. When she waggled her hips he froze midstep, gripped by a fierce surge of desire.

  “One look at her and I’m hard as a horseshoe,” he muttered beneath his breath. He’d have thought last night would have taken the edge off, but no. Today he wanted her more than ever before.

  Having previously learned his lesson, Rafe waited for Maggie to finish her shot before advancing toward the group. He approached the grandfathers with a fair amount of trepidation, keeping his hands positioned to make a defensive draw should it become necessary. But other than a razor look from Gus, the marauders betrayed no sign of knowing where and how their beloved granddaughter had spent her night. And Maggie, well, she wouldn’t look at him.

  Rafe didn’t like that any better than waking up alone.

  He sidled up beside her. “Good morning.”

  She didn’t reply, leaving that up to Lucky, who turned a fierce glower toward him and snapped, “There is nothing good about this morning, so shut yer trap.”

  Must have hit one into the lake, Rafe thought.

  Without giving him so much as a glance, Maggie marched away from Rafe, headed for her ball. He watched her, irritated and annoyed, until he realized what likely put the starch in her step.

  Maggie was embarrassed. That had to be it. And such an emotion wouldn’t sit well on the shoulders of a strong woman like her.

  Rafe could have kicked himself. He should have waited until they were alone to approach her. Maggie would have dealt better with the normal morning—after awkwardness without an audience of overprotective grandfathers.

  He looped his thumbs around his belt loops and sighed, wondering if heading back to the hotel now would improve matters or only make them worse. While he pondered the problem, Gus meandered up beside him and lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Maggie seems happy enough this morning.”

  Rafe almost tripped over his own feet at that. He looked around to make certain they weren’t being overheard, then gestured toward the woman currently chastising the bushy-tailed squirrel who had dared to dart across her path. “This is happy?”

  “This is normal. Yesterday’s revelations were hard for her to swallow, and temper helps to get them down. She’s not heartbroken, though. In fact, she may just be stronger than ever. I reckon we have you to thank for that.”

  Rafe didn’t quite know how to answer him. This was the closest he’d ever come to having a father thank him for taking his daughter’s virginity. “Uh, my pleasure.”

  Gus wrenched his eyes closed. “I don’t want the details, Malone. This isn’t easy for me, you know.”

  Rafe hadn’t been sure. This entire situation was as strange as a sidesaddle on a sow. “What about the others? Do they…?”

  Gus’s mouth lifted in a sneer. “You weren’t gelded right after breakfast, were you?”

  They didn’t know. Rafe breathed a little easier as the band of tension surrounding his lungs released. Not that he was afraid of the pirates or anything like that. He simply wished to avoid any unpleasantness. Maggie didn’t need it, and come to think of it, neither did he.

  Up ahead, Snake drew his knife and with one fast slash hacked off the limb of a dogwood blocking his shot. Rafe sucked in a breath. Maybe the pirates worried him just a little, after all. He cleared his throat. “Has she said anything today about what she learned last night? About Montgomery, I mean?”

  Gus slowly shook his head. “Not a word. We’ve talked about it among us, though. Ben is convinced she’ll go to Andrew at Triumph. Maybe not immediately, but soon. We have less than two months until Hill’s deadline to buy the hotel. She’ll want to save Lake Bliss for our sakes. We just want to be sure it’s available for her. Hill is a squirrelly son of a flounder, and we don’t trust him not to deny Maggie’s access to Bliss water just for the halibut.”

  Rafe was momentarily distracted by the combination of animal and fish in the old salt’s speech. Just for the halibut? A light dawned. Just for the hell of it. Oh. “Do you think Montgomery will provide the funds needed to meet Hill’s price?”

  “Yeah,” Gus said, his lips twisting in a bittersweet grin. “Drew visited us not long after we settled at Lake Bliss. Tried to take her away from us. That’s when we told him about her illness. Judging by his reaction, I feel certain he’ll protect her now. He’ll give her enough of the treasure to buy back Hotel Bliss and secure her access to the water.”

  “What did he do?”

  “This, among other things,” Gus said, pointing to the scar on his face. “He decided to quit the fight to make her leave Bliss so that she could have the treatment she needed. But before he left, he swore he’d make us pay. He promised us that someday he’d cause us to lose what we valued most of all. When we told Maggie the truth, well, I reckon Drew got his wish. We hurt her bad.”

  “It’s true you hurt Maggie, but you didn’t lose her. She has forgiven you. She wouldn’t play golf with you otherwise.”

  The pirate’s tired expression crinkled into a smile. “Yeah, you’re right about that, Malone. She’s some kind of woman, isn’t she?”

  Damn ri
ght she was. And Gus only knew the half of it. Rafe rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you really believe that if Montgomery steps in and saves the day he’ll try to keep y’all separated?”

  Gus’s smile faded. He cleared his throat and nodded. “One thing about Andrew: when he gives his word, he keeps it. The two of you are alike that way.”

  Not caring for the comparison, Rafe scowled and asked a question that had occurred to him last night while Maggie was sleeping. “About Montgomery. Could he and Hill be partners in this scheme to take Hotel Bliss away from you?”

  “I never even thought of that.” Gus’s gray eyes went hard as steel as he considered the question. “I don’t know, Malone. Drew has a mean streak in him, for certain, but a plan like this would have taken years to set up. You should have seen what Maggie went through trying to fight our case in the courts. Poor thing wore herself down and had the worst spell she’s had in years. To think Andrew would cause his own flesh and blood so much hurt, well, it’s hard for a man to fathom.”

  Rafe scowled. “He didn’t care about hurting her when he left her on a beach, now did he?”

  “That was different. He couldn’t think straight. Abigail hurt him so badly, and the two—Maggie and she—were all tied up together in his mind.”

  “Are you defending what he did? I can’t believe you, Gus. I thought you hated Montgomery.”

  “I do. I did. Well, clam it.” He yanked a bandanna from his pocket and dragged it across his perspiring face. “I don’t know what I think except that matters aren’t always black and white. Sometimes a man has to massage the gray with his brain a bit before he can figure out what’s right and what’s not.”

  With the idea of a connection between Montgomery and Hill rumbling around Rafe’s mind, Rafe asked, “Is Montgomery the type of man who would want his daughter to marry water barrel scum like Barlow Hill?”

  Gus drew up short and speared him with a look. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

  “Never mind.” Rafe had a hunch that telling the pirates about Hill’s nefarious plan might put a plow to a field best left untilled. Knowing Maggie, if she’d kept the information to herself this long, she had good reason. Rafe wanted to know about that and a whole lot more. Awkwardness or no, the time had come for him to share a little conversation with the lady.