«Don Lyon was the descendant of Spanish gentry,» Eve said quickly.
Then she looked from Reno’s hand to his eyes, plainly reminding him of their bargain. Slowly he lifted his hand.
«One of his forebears had a license from the king to explore for metals in New Mexico,» Eve said. «Another ancestor was an officer assigned to guard a gold mine run by a Jesuit priest.»
«Jesuit, not Franciscan?»
«No. It was before the Spanish king threw the Jesuits out of the New World.»
«That was a long time ago.»
«The journal’s first entry is dated in the fifteen-fifties or eighties,» Eve said. «It’s hard to tell. The ink is faded and the page is torn.»
When Eve didn’t say anything else immediately, Reno’s hand went to her belly. He spread his fingers wide, almost spanning her hipbones.
Her breath came in with a rushing sound. It was as though he were measuring the space for a baby to grow.
«Go on,» Reno said.
He knew his voice was too deep, too husky, but there was nothing he could do about it, any more than he could control the heavy running of his desire, no matter how foolish he knew it was to want the calculating little saloon girl.
The heat from her body was like a drug seeping through his skin and being absorbed into his blood, making it harder with each heartbeat to remember that she was just one more girl out to get whatever she could by using her body as a lure.
Then Reno realized that Eve had said nothing more. He looked up and saw her watching him with yellow cat’s eyes.
«Going back on your word so quickly?» Eve asked.
Angrily Reno lifted his hand.
«I think it must be 1580,» Eve said.
«More like 1867,» Reno retorted.
«What?»
Without answering, Reno looked at the frail cotton of the camisole, which served only to heighten rather than to conceal the allure of Eve’s breasts.
«Reno?»
When he looked up, Eve was afraid she had lost the dangerous game she was playing. Reno’s eyes were a pale green, and they burned.
«It’s 1867,» he said, «summer, we’re on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, and I’m trying to decide if I want to hear any more fairy tales about Spanish gold before I take what I won in a card game.»
«It’s not a fairy tale! It’s all in the journal. There was a Captain Leon and someone called Sosa.»
«Sosa?»
«Yes,» Eve said quickly. «Gaspar de Sosa. And a Jesuit Priest. And a handful of soldiers.»
Through a screen of thick brown eyelashes, she watched Reno warily, praying that he believed her.
«I’m listening,» he said. «Not real patiently, mind you, but I’m listening.»
What Reno didn’t say was that he was listening very carefully. He had tried to retrace the trail of the Espejo and Sosa expeditions more than once. Both expeditions had found gold and silver mines that had yielded vast wealth.
And all of their mines had been «lost» before their riches ran out.
«Sosa and Leon were given license to find and develop mines for the king,» Eve said, frowning as she tried to remember all that she had learned from the Lyons and the old journal. «The expedition went north all the way to the land of the Yutahs.»
«Today we call them Utes,» Reno said.
«Sosa followed Espejo, who was the one who gave the land the name of New Mexico,» she said hurriedly. «And he was the one who called the routes leading out of all the mines and back to Mexico the Old Spanish Trail.»
«Nice of them to write in English so you could figure all this out,» Reno said sardonically.
«What do you mean?» Eve asked, giving him a quick glance. «They wrote in Spanish. Funny Spanish. If s the very devil to puzzle out.»
Reno’s head lifted sharply. Eve’s words, rather than her body, finally had his full attention.
«You can read the old Spanish writings?» he asked.
«Don taught me how before his eyes got too bad to make out the words. I would read them to him, and he would try to remember what his father had said about those passages, and his grandfather, too.»
«Family tales. Fairy tales. Same difference.»
Eve ignored the interruption. «Then I’d write down what Don remembered in the journal’s margins.»
«Couldn’t he write?»
«Not for the past few years. His hands were too knotted up.»
Unconsciously Eve laced her own slender fingers together, remembering the pain the old couple suffered in cold weather. Donna’s hands had been little better than her husband’s.
«I guess they spent too many winters in gold camps where there was more whiskey than firewood,» she said huskily.
«All right, Eve Lyon. Keep talking.»
«My name isn’t Lyon. They were my employers, not my blood relatives.»
Reno had caught the change in Eve’s voice and the subtle tension in her body. He wondered if she was lying.
«Employers?» he asked.
«They…» Eve looked away.
Reno waited.
«They bought me off an orphan train in Denver five years ago,» she said in a low voice.
Even as Reno opened his mouth to make a sarcastic remark about the futility of tugging on his heartstrings with sad stories, he realized that Eve could easily be telling the truth. The Lyons could indeed have bought her from an orphan train as though she were a side of bacon.
It wouldn’t have been the first time such a thing had happened. Reno had heard many other such stories. Some of the orphans found good homes. Most didn’t. They were worked, and worked hard, by homesteaders or townspeople who had no cash to hire help, but had enough food to spare for another mouth.
Slowly Reno nodded. «Makes sense. Bet their hands had started to go bad.»
«They could barely shuffle, much less deal cards. Especially Don.»
«Were they cardsharps?»
Eve closed her eyes for an instant, remembering her shame and fear the first time she had been caught cheating. She had been fourteen and so nervous, the cards had scattered all over when she shuffled. In picking the cards up, one of the men noticed the slight roughness that marked aces, kings, and queens.
«They were gamblers,» Eve said tonelessly.
«Cheats.»
Her eyelids flinched. «Sometimes.»
«When they thought they could get away with it,» Reno said, not bothering to hide his contempt.
«No,» Eve said in a soft voice. «Only when they had to. Most of the time the other players were too drunk to notice what cards they were holding, much less what they were dealt.»
«So the nice old couple taught you how to colddeck and bottom-deal,» Reno said.
«They also taught me how to speak and read Spanish, how to ride any horse I could get my hands on, how to cook and sew and —»
«Cheat at cards,» he finished. «I’ll bet they taught you a lot of other things, too. How much did they charge for a few hours with you?»
Nothing in Reno’s voice or expression revealed the anger that churned in his gut at the thought of Eve’s beautiful body being bought by any drifter with a handful of change and a hard need filling his jeans.
«What?» Eve asked.
«How much did youremployerscharge a man to get under your skirt?»
For an instant Eve was too shocked to speak. Her hand flashed out so quickly that only a few men would have been able to counter the blow.
Reno was one of them, but it was a near thing. Just before her palm would have connected with his cheek, he caught her wrist and flattened her out on the bedroll beneath him in the same violent motion.
«Don’t try that again,» he said harshly. «I know all about wide-eyed little hussies who slap a man when he suggests they’re anything less than a lady. The next time you lift a hand to me, I won’t be a gentleman about it.»
Eve made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. «Gentleman? You? No gentleman would force himself on a lady!»