Authors: Leigh Greenwood
Chapter Four
Valeria fought the call to wake up. It was winter, snow piled deep outside her window, and she was warm and cozy in her bed. She didn't want to get up and dress in a cold room. She didn't want to eat breakfast with her governess telling her not to gobble and to chew every mouthful thirty-two times.
"Go away," she mumbled. "I don't want to do my lessons."
She liked history and art, but she had math and natural science today. Her tutor made her seek nature where it could be found. That usually meant woods and swamps. She always came home wet and dirty.
Valeria felt her covers being stripped away. She opened her eyes to see Luke Attmore standing next to her bed.
"You've got exactly ten seconds to get out of bed and one minute to get dressed," he said, his eyes glinting hard as blue steel, his jaw rigid enough to support an entire building. "If you can't manage it in that time, I'll do it for you."
Valeria looked wildly about the room before she remembered she was in the tiny town of Bonner in the Arizona Territory and there were no footmen or armed soldiers to come to her aid, just her maid who was now cowering in the corner and looking frightened out of her wits.
"What are you doing in my room?" Valeria demanded. She reached automatically for something to cover herself, but Like had thrown all the bedding onto the floor.
"It'll soon be time to leave," Luke said.
Except for a solitary lamp, the room was in virtual darkness. Not a single ray of light entered through the windows. "It's still dark outside. Nobody travels in the middle of the night."
Luke reached out, took hold of her hand, and dragged her to the edge of the bed. "You do if you want me to take you to Rudolf. What do you want to wear? I'll find it."
"Don't touch my clothes!" she cried.
Luke paid no attention. He pulled one dress after another from the wardrobe and tossed each aside.
"Dozens of dresses and not a single sensible one. Stand up.
When shock prevented her from moving, he pulled her to her feet. "You're about five feet, four inches tall."
"Five-five," she corrected.
He put his hands around her waist. Before she could recover from the shock of having him touch her, he moved his hands up to her breasts. She froze, paralyzed, unable to move. No man had ever dared touch her. He would have died before the firing squad.
"Not bad," Luke said half to himself before his hands
moved down to run over her hips and buttocks. Valeria managed to recover herself enough to fling his hands away.
"I'll have you shot for this," she declared.
"Relax. I'm not trying to take advantage of you. I needed to take your measurements for a dress." "I have plenty of dresses."
"None that won't give you heat stroke." He looked at her as if noticing for the first time that she was practically naked. "If you're going to stand here winding yourself up like a corkscrew, you might as well put something on." A knock sounded on the door. "That'll be your breakfast," Luke said. He picked up a sheet from the floor. "Wrap this around you. I don't want the cook to drop the tray."
"No one is allowed in my bedroom until my maid has finished dressing me."
"You'll have to get over that," Luke said as he crossed the room and opened the door. "There won't be much privacy on the trail."
Looking as stunned as Valeria felt, the chef entered the room, his gaze glued to the floor. Pants under a nightshirt indicated he'd been yanked out of bed and thrust directly into the kitchen.
"You've got one hour to dress, eat, and pack everything you mean to take," Luke said.
"It will take me longer than that to dress."
She felt pinned to the wall by Luke's gaze. "You leave this room in an hour with or without clothes on your back. What you haven't packed stays behind."
"Where are you going?" she demanded when he turned and walked through the open doorway.
"To see that the rest of the lazy fools in your entourage haven't gone to sleep standing up."
Valeria fought off the stupor that threatened to swallow her. "I will not be hauled around like a sack of turnips. You're fired."
Luke crossed the room in the space of a single breath, his face, taut and angry, only inches from Valeria's. "We played that game once. Now you've got me whether you want me or not."
"I don't want you," Valeria said.
But she spoke to ambient air. Luke had left the room. She heard the sound of his boots on the stairs.
For a moment no one moved. Valeria felt weak, powerless. The chef stared at his feet, the breakfast tray still in his grasp. Elvira might as well have been a statue. She hadn't moved-or breathed, as far as Valeria could tellwhile Luke had been in the room.
Then the enormity of what had happened swept over her. Luke had invaded her bedchamber, stripped the covers from her, and dragged her from the bed in her nightgown. He'd emptied half her wardrobe and strewn her clothes over the floor. But worst of all, he'd put his hands all over her as though he was studying the conformation of a horse he was about to buy. She checked the desire to hurl damning epithets down the stairs after him. She stifled the yearning to scream in helpless frustration.
"Don't stand there like a dolt," she snapped at Elvira. "Everything must be ready in an hour. Everything."
Elvira shuddered and came to life. "I locked the door," she said. "I don't know how he got in."
"There's nothing we can do about that now," Valeria said. "Just start packing."
"But you're not dressed."
"Forget me. My possessions are more important. All I have in the world-everything that can make life bearable in this wilderness-is with me. I don't want to leave any of it behind. Put that tray down," she said to the chef. "Find Otto and Hans and send them to me immediately."
"You can't see them dressed like that," Elvira protested.
"Luke has seen me like this," Valeria snapped. "Nothing can be worse than that."
But by the time Hans arrived, she had put on a dress and gotten the worst tangles out of her hair. She didn't look like a royal princess, but she wasn't half naked.
Hans looked as though he been dragged out of bed, aimed at his clothes, and thrust into the hall.
"I'm terribly sorry, your highness. I never-"
"What's done is done," Valeria said, cutting off his almost tearful apology. "I want you and Otto to make sure everything I brought is packed in one of the wagons and ready to go."
"The wagons are loaded," Hans said. "We're waiting only for your personal belongings."
Valeria didn't understand. Her possessions filled several train cars.
"He had men working all night," Hans said. "He said if he'd waited for us, it would be December before we got started."
"What men?" Valeria asked. There were no men in her entourage other than Otto, Hans, the chef, and his helpers.
"He emptied a saloon of miners and offered them free drinks if they didn't break anything."
Valeria thought of the priceless heirlooms she'd brought from Europe and her skin crawled. If he and his ruffians had ruined anything-well, she didn't know what she'd do, but she'd think of something. Her ancestors were famous for their dirty tricks. She must have inherited some of their ability.
Luke frowned at the six wagons lined up in the middle of the street, each loaded with enough stuff to furnish a house. He glanced at the sky, which was beginning to turn gray just above the horizon. The sun would be up in fifteen minutes. He wanted to be out of town before the residents began to stir out of doors.
The heavily loaded wagons cut tracks into the packed dirt of the street. It would be worse in the desert, impossible on ground softened by rain. Dishes. China. Flatware. It didn't matter what you called it, it was plates, cups, and saucers, literally thousands of them, packed in crates and barrels. The land above the Mogollon Rim was practically deserted. Valeria wouldn't find anyone to sit down at her table but rough cowboys who'd rather eat off a tin plate than one painted by hand and decorated in gold.
Then there was the furniture. He'd ordered most of it stored in Bonner. She had brought enough to furnish a small palace. He supposed that's what she expected to do with it. Instead she'd find a rough log house. She wouldn't have a staff of servants to clean and polish her silver, dust the priceless ornamental clocks, mirrors, statues, and whatever else she considered a necessary part of her life. She certainly wouldn't find any use for heavy dresses made to be worn in stone palaces in a cold climate. She should have gone to Canada, not Arizona!
She was either a stupid woman or very ill informed. Either way, she was remarkably stubborn. And he'd obligated himself to protect her!
He was the one who was remarkably stupid, and he couldn't blame it on any lack of information. He'd known what he was getting into from the moment she walked into that hotel room. He should have gotten on his horse and ridden as far and as fast as he could after she fired him. Instead he'd let an absurd little man convince him he'd forfeit his honor if he deserted this princess.
Princess! Who the hell did she think she was? Someone should have told her most Americans had left Europe to get away from that kind of nonsense. Nobody would consider her special just because some ancestor a thousand years ago had conquered the people in a tiny corner of Europe and set himself up as king. They were more likely to ostracize her.
Then there were the horses. Beautiful, hot-blooded horses. Why hadn't someone told her she might as well have dangled gold before a bunch of thieves!
Sandoval joined Luke. "You'll never get them wagons through the desert if it rains," he said.
"I'm more worried about her horses."
"You should be," Sandoval agreed. "They've been attracting attention ever since they arrived. And not the best kind, either."
Knowing that did nothing to improve Luke's mood.
"Everybody knows you haven't hired guards," Sandoval said. "They've been talking about it all morning. I give you two days before you're ambushed."
Out of the corner of his eye, Luke saw two horsemen appear around the corner of the bank. They paused, looked up and down the street, then turned their horses toward Luke's caravan.
"Maybe," Luke said, his mood lightening considerably, "but my chances just improved."
"You've decided to leave the horses here?"
Sandoval's expression lightened so much, Luke wondered if his friend had designs on Valeria's priceless mounts.
"See them?" Luke said, motioning with his head. "They're worth a dozen gunmen."
"Who are they?" Sandoval asked.
"You might say they're my brothers."
"The hell I would," Sandoval replied. "I ain't blind. One's a half-breed and the other is black."
"We were adopted."
Sandoval grinned. "And all this time I thought you was brought up by a mountain lion."
"I was sired by a mad coyote and nursed by a rabid bitch," Luke muttered. "A mountain lion would have been better."
Luke's irritation increased. He rarely spoke about his adopted family, but he
never
mentioned his true parents. He had done his best to erase all memory of them from his mind. It irritated him that he was so riled up about Valeria he'd spoken without thinking.
Which was another problem. He wasn't thinking clearly these days. He usually avoided jobs involving women. He liked clean, neat jobs he could walk away from without having to look over his shoulder. Nothing about women was easy. There was always some kind of complication. He'd only accepted this job because of the money. He'd considered the princess only a small part of the job. More fool he.
Still, that didn't account for his staying after he'd been fired. Otto had even paid him for his time and inconvenience. Yet despite Valeria's objections and the insanity of carrying so much useless stuff through the desert, Luke felt obligated to honor his promise.
He hoped honor had been the deciding factor. He didn't want his decision to have anything to do with Valeria.
"I wouldn't turn my back on them for five seconds," Sandoval said.
"You shouldn't," Luke said. "Zeke can kill you in two seconds. Hawk can do it in one."
Sandoval shuddered. "And you grew up sharing a bunkhouse with those two?"
"And seven others, including my real brother."
"It's a good thing you had somebody to watch your back."
Chet had always watched Luke's back. He'd become a gunfighter so he could continue looking after his younger brother. But Chet had given up guns seven years ago, gotten married, gone back to Texas, and bought himself a ranch next to Jake and Isabelle's place. Last Luke heard, Chet had two boys and Melody was expecting again. Luke hadn't seen his brother's kids. Respectable women didn't want a man like him around. He couldn't fault them for that. He didn't think much of respectable women, either.