Avenging Angel

She realized Mike was talking and tried to get her mind back on track. When he paused, she took the opportunity to get away. “I’m going to hit the shower. I have one more appointment at six o’clock. Let’s give Silver Bells the rest of the day off. Would you mind saddling Corky for the student and Majordomo for me?”

“Sure thing, they’ll be ready when you are.”

Elle emerged back into the sunshine. Her muddy clothes had begun to dry, which made walking a stiff-legged affair. As she started up the slope to her cabin, she thought about how great a shower would feel.

And then—well, she had to figure out a way to get rid of her adopted father, a man she’d nicknamed the judge when he took a seat on the Butter Gulch County bench a few years earlier. What did he want? Hadn’t they hurt each other enough the last time they quarreled?

She heard a door bang shut and turned to find Peg striding up the gentle rise toward her, cigarette smoke circling her head. She wore an expression Elle had never seen before.

“Need to talk to you,” Peg said, taking the cigarette from her mouth, flicking it to the ground and thoroughly grinding it out with her boot.

“What’s wrong?”

“You,” Peg said, expelling the last of the smoke. “You’re what’s wrong.”

“I don’t understand—”

“What in tarnation do you think you’re doing?”

Somewhat startled, Elle blinked a couple of times and said, “You mean asking Alazandro for a job?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I guess I’m moving on. I told you I wouldn’t stay for long when I took this job.”

“Moving on, is that what you call it?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll stay here long enough to help you hire someone else.”

“You might not be here long enough to find me a replacement,” Peg said. Looking at the ground, she shook her head in an almost defeated way.

“Mike is really good with people as well as horses,” Elle said gently. “Let him take over.”

Peg’s gaze flew back to her face. “You think it’s the damn job I’m worried about? The job is just part of it. The way you acted with that man—the way you came on to him. I never in my life thought you were that kind of girl.”

Elle murmured, “It’s not how it looks, Peg.”

“I’ll tell you how it looks,” Peg said. “It looks like you’re either a scheming gold digger or a stupid little tart. Either which way, that man will eat you for breakfast and spit you out. I bet he’s older than your own father!”

Elle’s hands bunched at her sides. She had to fight to control her temper as she said, “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you? All that bastard wants is to get into your pants, you do know that, don’t you? And you all but gave him an engraved invitation.”

“You are not my mother,” Elle said, voice trembling.

“No, and right now, I’m glad I’m not.”

Elle turned on her heels and stalked up the hillside, leaving Peg in her wake.

She’d been so caught up in herself she hadn’t stopped to fully consider what her behavior would look like to those on the sidelines. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see the screen door slam behind Peg.

Drat. Was everyone she knew going to end up angry with her?

It’s not too late, her subconscious whispered. You can walk away right now.

But she couldn’t.

She couldn’t live anymore with her nightmares, couldn’t bear the thought that Alazandro remained free to roam the earth while her family lay long dead in their graves. Besides, she’d promised her grandfather she’d find the truth and, if need be, exact revenge.

The sun seemed to dart behind the high clouds as Alazandro’s image loomed in her mind. The dark, empty eyes. The crooked nose. The cruel lips. Arrogance dripping out of every pore as he toyed with Peg, toyed with her.

And then there was Alazandro’s bodyguard, Pete, a man who looked as dangerous as Alazandro, perhaps more so for it didn’t appear he had Alazandro’s ego to fog his vision. Pete might not admit he’d die for Alazandro but there wasn’t a doubt in Elle’s mind he would kill for him.

Desperate to get into the hot shower and stop her bone-rattling shakes, she unlocked the door and stripped on the way to the bathroom. She stood under the hot water for a long time, eyes closed, hands propped on the tile walls, head hung, caught in the aftershock of her audaciousness.

ELLE MEDINA didn’t lock her door.

Stupid.

Pete frowned for a second because if there was one thing Elle didn’t strike him as it was stupid. Reckless, absolutely, but not stupid.

He could hear the shower running—made a nice way to keep track of Elle while he had a quick look around. All he had to do was keep his mind on his job and off visions of her all wet and soapy.

The few pieces of furniture in the place looked like castoffs from Peg Stiles’ house down the slope. A line of clothes and boots strung across the floor from the doorway to the closed bathroom door sounded the only note of discord in the otherwise orderly space.

He tossed her place quickly and thoroughly, searching drawers, closets, behind mirrors, under the bed. As the cabin was little more than a studio apartment, it didn’t take long.

The first conclusion he reached was that the woman had fewer clothes and shoes than any other woman he’d ever known. Heavy on jeans and T-shirts, boots and knee-high socks. Even her nightgown was white cotton. Nothing sexy about it except if you stopped to think what it might look like flowing around Elle’s curves.

Enough of that. But still, he’d been married once in his dim youth to a strawberry blonde whose closet rod sagged in the middle.

The last woman he’d cared about was another type altogether. She’d maintained a working wardrobe toward the end. Big on thigh-high boots and halter tops and tiny shorts that showed more than she ever understood. Showed malnutrition. Showed neglect. Showed the absence of rounded flesh and ripe possibility.

Drugs will do that to a woman. Whisper in her ear, tell her she’s gorgeous while robbing her blind.

He hung Elle’s gown back on the hook beside the one holding up a blue terry cloth robe. He found her purse on a shelf in the closet. Identity matched, checkbook in her name, nice photo on her driver’s license, made her look sixteen years old. According to the data, she was actually twenty-five and wore contact lenses. He hadn’t noticed them when he peered into her big brown eyes.

Still holding her purse, he gazed through the window and got his first troubling sensation about Elle. Okay, that wasn’t true, she’d been troubling him ever since he laid eyes on her.

His contact had verified her father was a judge in some hole-in-the-wall town in Arizona. Raised on a small ranch. Mother dead. Only other living relatives a smattering of cousins, two aging aunts in New Jersey and a grandfather with terminal cancer. She’d graduated with a degree in public relations, applied for and been accepted to graduate school, dropped out to live with her ailing grandfather. Then she’d suddenly left his bedside to come to Nevada and take a low-paying job giving riding lessons to little girls.

Odd. But not criminal.

He suddenly realized the shower had stopped.

Elle’s voice came next, low and serious. “Drop my purse, put your hands in the air and turn around slowly.”

He did as she asked.