Señora Fuentes’s chickens squawked and scattered when the mud wagon clattered into the yard. In the corral, the horses came to the near rail to sniff the changing currents in the air and to investigate the newcomers. But none was so curious as John Bandera as he stood leaning against a porch rail, arms crossed over his chest and his right leg cocked in a casual pose that belied the turmoil in his gut and the panic in his brain.
He had decided to lie. If he knew anything, he knew that much. He would tell the woman—his beloved Emmy—that Price was still away in Abilene, that his return was uncertain. Beyond that, he hadn’t the slightest notion what he’d say or do.
But the lie was a good enough place to start. It was the only place. Later, when he was able to think more clearly, he would figure out how to construct a tangled web around it. Right now all he could do was stare stupefied at the woman in the back of the wagon.
She was here! She was real! He couldn’t quite believe it.
She was his treasured carte de visite come to lovely life. Her hair was more golden, more glorious than he’d ever thought to imagine. Her eyes were round and deep and beautiful as cornflowers. Her skin was as pale and luminous as dawn.
Six or seven years had passed since the image he treasured had been captured, and those years had added a sensuous fullness to her mouth that hadn’t been there before, as well as a healthy, feminine roundness to the rest of her. Emily Russell was more beautiful than John had ever dared dream, and for a minute he found himself wishing she had turned out ugly or deformed in a way that had been disguised in her photograph. He damned her again for being beautiful.
“Hey, you,” the driver called from his seat on the wagon. “This woman is looking for The Crippled B Ranch.”
“She’s found it,” John said, slowly straightening up and heading down the porch steps, his gaze fixed on Emily the way a compass fixes on north while he tried to maintain a neutral expression. It wasn’t easy, pretending he didn’t recognize the love of his life, ignoring the heartbeats that were about to hammer a hole right through the front of his shirt.
“Then you’re McDaniel?” the driver asked.
“No. I’m…”
“John Bandera,” Emily called happily, leaning out the mud wagon’s open window. “I’d know you anywhere, I believe, from Price’s description.”
When she extended a white gloved hand toward him, John felt his own hand drawn to hers like filings to a magnet.
“I’m Emily Russell,” she said. “From Russell County, Mississippi. Perhaps Price has mentioned me?”
John nodded. Then, suddenly aware that he had held her hand too long for a mere hello, he let go and stepped back.
“I know he isn’t expecting me.” She was looking around the ranch now, her blue eyes sparkling with delight.
“Price isn’t here.”
He might as well have said that Price was dead for the way the delight dulled in her eyes and the happiness drained from her expression.
She sat back. “Wh-where…?”
“In Abilene.”
“Abilene?” The way she said it the Kansas cow town sounded distant as a planet. “And when…?”
“I don’t expect him back for quite some time, Miss Russell.”
“I see.”
No, she didn’t see at all, Emily thought. Disappointment was fairly crushing her, squeezing her heart and turning her brain into a tight, aching knot. “I’ve come so far. Such a long way.” Her own voice sounded even farther away.
“You staying or going, lady?” the driver asked impatiently. “If you’re going back to Corpus, it’ll cost you triple, seeing as how it’s gonna be dark pretty soon.”
Emily didn’t answer. Staying? Going? She barely understood the meaning of the words, much less how they pertained to her. Dark? Was it? She felt numb all of a sudden, and dumb. For a moment she wondered if a sunstroke had robbed her of her ability to speak and to move.
The driver was angled around in his seat, staring at her, his eyes mere slits beneath his twisted brows. John Bandera was staring at her, too, but there was no reading his dark face. He might as well have been a cigar store Indian with rigid, wooden lips and deep, expressionless eyes.
“Well?” the driver snapped. “What’s it going to be, lady? You staying or going? I ain’t got all day.” He tapped a restless boot on the floorboards.
“She’s staying.”
Now, with a scowl carved deeply into his face, John Bandera reached for her valise, then the carpetbags and the big steamer trunk, and finally—not quite so roughly—for Emily herself.
“Come on,” he said, his big hands circling her waist, lifting her up and out and setting her down before she was even aware that she was moving.
“How much does she owe you?” he asked the driver.
“Already paid for the one-way trip,” the man replied.
“Fine.” Having said that, Bandera slapped the haunch of the horse closest to him. “So long, then,” he said, stepping back and drawing Emily with him as the wagon took off with such a lurch that the driver nearly pitched backward over his wooden seat.
They stood there a moment, the two of them, in the tan cloud of dust the horses had kicked up, watching the mud wagon bumping wildly away while the driver tried to hold on to his hat and the reins.
Go? Stay? Emily really hadn’t made up her mind yet, but here she was anyway. She wondered if the driver would hear her if she called him back.
But just then, without a word, Price’s scowling partner picked up her valise and wedged it under one arm before he collected her heavy trunk and both carpetbags. Still silent, he turned and headed toward the house with all of her worldly possessions.
Emily, obviously unwelcome, followed slowly in John Bandera’s wake.
“You’ll be comfortable in here. For now, anyway.” John dropped the carpetbags on Señora Fuentes’s quilt-covered bed. “My housekeeper and her daughter are off in Mexico for a while,” he said, then quickly corrected himself. “Our housekeeper, I mean.”
“That would be Mrs. Fuentes,” she said, standing in the doorway. “Price has written me about her. About her chickens and her garden and her daughter, Lupe.” She laughed softly. “Why, I almost feel as if I’ve met them both.”
Still with his back to her, John closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. Dios. This wasn’t going to work. His brain was already dizzy from trying to keep things straight and his tongue was tangling around every word he spoke.
He should have sent her away. He should have paid the damned driver his triple fare and had him take the woman back to Corpus Christi. He should have said, “Price McDaniel’s gone, lady. Long gone. Chances are good he’s dead. Your trip was for naught. Adios.” That, after all, was the truth.
“It was kind of you to let me stay, Mr. Bandera.”
She was right behind him now, so close that if he turned he could take her in his arms the way he’d longed to do, ached to do, year after year, night after night after night.
When he did turn, she stepped back, obviously uncomfortable, perhaps even afraid. He was a stranger, after all. He wasn’t Price.
“You’re probably hungry, Miss Russell,” he said. “I’ll fix us something to eat.”
“That would be wonderful.” She was