"He's in Texas, Kit. A town called San Carlos."
"You knew where he was all this time and you didn't tell me? How could you do this?"
Veronica ignored Kit's temper and took a sip of tea. "Really, my dear, you never asked me."
"I didn't think I had to!"
"The reason you're so angry is because he wrote me instead of you."
Kit wanted to slap her, but, as usual, Veronica was right. "And I'm sure you've been sending him all sorts of seductive messages."
Veronica smiled. "Unfortunately not. This was his way of keeping in touch with you. He knew if anything was really wrong, I'd tell him."
Kit felt sick. "So he knows about Beth, but he still won't come back."
Veronica sighed. "No, Kit, he doesn't know about her, and I'm not certain I did the right thing by not telling him. But I decided it wasn't my news to share. I couldn't bear to see either of you hurt any more than you have been."
Her anger forgotten, Kit pressed Veronica. "Please. Tell me everything you know."
"The first few months he traveled the riverboats and lived on what he won at the poker tables. Then he moved on to Texas and rode shotgun for one of the stagecoach lines. A beastly job, in my opinion. For a while he herded cattle. And now he's running a gambling palace in San Carlos."
Kit ached as she listened. The old patterns of Cain's life were repeating themselves.
He was drifting.
21
Kit reached Texas the second week of November. It was a long journey, made all the more arduous by the fact that she hadn't traveled alone.
The uninhabited space of Texas was a surprise to her. It was so different from South Carolina-the flat east Texas prairie and then the rougher country farther inland, where twisting trees grew from jagged rocks and tumbleweed chased across the harsh, hilly terrain. She was told that the canyons flooded when it rained, sometimes washing away entire herds of cattle, and that in the summer, the sun baked the earth until it hardened and cracked. Yet there was something about the land that appealed to her. Perhaps the challenge it posed.
Still, the closer she came to San Carlos, the more uncertain she became about what she'd done. She had precious responsibilities now, yet she'd left the familiar behind to search for a man who'd never said he loved her.
As she climbed the wooden steps that led to the Yellow Rose Gambling Palace, her stomach twisted into tight, painful knots. She'd hardly been able to eat for days, and this morning not even the mouthwatering smells that drifted up from the dining room of the nearby Ranchers Hotel had been able to tempt her. She'd dallied while she dressed, fixing her hair one way and then another, changing outfits several times, and even remembering to check for any unfastened buttons or hooks that might have escaped her notice.
She'd finally decided to wear her dove-gray dress with the soft rose piping. It was the same outfit she'd worn on her return to Risen Glory. She'd even added the matching hat and veiled her face. It comforted her somehow, the illusion that she was starting over again. But the dress fit differently now, clinging tighter to her breasts as a reminder that nothing remained the same.
Her gloved hand trembled slightly as she reached for the swinging door that led into the saloon. For a moment she hesitated, and then she pushed hard against it and stepped inside.
She'd learned that the Yellow Rose was the best and most expensive salon in San Carlos. It had red-and-gold wallpaper and a crystal chandelier. An ornately carved mahogany bar ran the length of the room, and behind it hung a portrait of a reclining nude woman with titian curls and a yellow rose caught between her teeth. She'd been painted against a map of Texas, so that the top of her head rested near Texarkana and her feet curled along the Rio Grande. The portrait gave Kit a renewed kick of courage. The woman reminded her of Veronica.
It wasn't quite noon, and only a few men sat inside. One by one, they stopped talking and turned to study her. Even though they couldn't see her features clearly.
her dress and her bearing indicated she wasn't a woman who belonged inside a saloon, even the elegant Yellow Rose.
The bartender cleared his throat nervously. "Can I help you, ma'am?"
"I'd like to see Baron Cain."
He glanced uncertainly toward a flight of curving stairs at the back and then down at the glass he was polishing. "There's no one here by that name."
Kit walked past him and made her way toward the stairs.
The man dashed around the edge of the bar. "Hey! You can't go up there!"
"Watch me." Kit didn't slacken her pace. "And if you don't want me invading the wrong room, maybe you should tell me exactly where I can find Mr. Cain."
The bartender was a giant of a man, with a barrel chest and arms like ham hocks. He was accustomed to dealing with drunken cowboys and gunslingers out to make a reputation for themselves, but he was helpless in the face of a woman who was so obviously a lady. "Last room on the left," he mumbled. "And there's gonna be hell to pay."
"Thank you." Kit climbed the stairs like a queen, shoulders back and head held high. She hoped none of the men watching could guess just how frightened she was.
The woman's name was Ernestine Agnes Jones, but to the men at the Yellow Rose, she was simply Red River Ruby. Like most people who had come West, Ruby had buried her past along with her name and never once looked back.
Despite powders, creams, and carefully rouged lips, Ruby looked older than her twenty-eight years. She'd lived hard, and it showed. Still, she was an attractive woman with rich chestnut hair and breasts like pillows. Until recently, little had come easy for her, but all that had changed with the convenient death of her last lover. Now she found herself the owner of the Yellow Rose and the most sought-after woman in San Carlos-sought after, that is, by every man except the one she wanted for herself.
She pouted as she looked across the bedroom at him. He was tucking a linen shirt into a pair of black broadcloth trousers that fit him just closely enough to renew her determination. "But you said you'd take me for a ride in my new buggy. Why not today?"
"I have things to do, Ruby," he said curtly.
She leaned slightly forward so that the neck of her red, ruffled dressing gown fell farther open, but he didn't seem to notice. "Anybody would think you was the boss around here instead of me. What do you have to do that's so important it can't wait?"
When he didn't answer her, she decided not to press him. She'd done that once before, and she wouldn't make that mistake again. Instead, as she walked around the bed toward him, she wished she could break the unwritten rule of the West and ask about his past.
She suspected there was a price on his head. That would account for the air of danger that was as much a part of him as the set of his jaw. He was as good with his fists as he was with a gun, and the hard, empty look in his eyes gave her a chill just looking at them. However, he could read, and that didn't fit with being a man on the run.
One thing for sure, he wasn't a womanizer. He didn't seem to notice that there wasn't a woman in San Carlos who wouldn't lift her petticoats for him if she got the chance. Ruby had been trying to get into his bed ever since she'd hired him to help her run the Yellow Rose. So far, she hadn't been successful, but he was about the handsomest man she'd ever seen, and she wasn't going to give up yet.
She stopped in front of him and put one hand over his belt buckle and another against his chest. She ignored the knock at the door to slip her fingers inside his shirt. "I could be real nice to you if you'd give me the chance."
She wasn't aware that the door had opened until he lifted his head and looked past her. Impatiently she turned to see who'd interrupted them.
The pain hit Kit in a wave. She saw the scene before her in separate pieces-a gaudy, red, ruffled dressing gown, large white breasts, a brightly painted mouth open in indignation. And then she saw nothing but her husband.