Wyoming Widow

This is for you, my sweet one, she thought, cradling the bulge of her unborn child between her hands. The danger, the deceit, all of it. All for you…

“You’ve got some tall explaining to do, lady.”

The masculine voice, so deep it was almost a growl, caused Cassandra’s pulse to jerk as if she’d been dropped in her sleep. When she turned her head in the direction of the voice, she saw the man sitting a scant pace from the bed, his rangy body overflowing the wooden rocker where he sat. His eyes were the color and hardness of cast iron, his hair as black as an Indian’s. His grim, aloof face might have been handsome had it contained a modicum of warmth or humor. It did not.

She remembered him now—sitting bareback, like a warrior, on his buckskin horse, dust swirling around him as he blocked her way, demanding to know her business. She had not liked his manner then. She liked it no better now.

“What have you done with my rig?” she demanded, struggling to sit up.

“First you drink. Then we talk.” He rose to his feet, picked up a tall pewter mug from the table beside the bed and tilted the rim to her mouth. The water inside was clean and cold, and Cassandra was bone-dry. Seizing the mug, she tipped it upward, gulping frantically as she spilled water into her parched throat.

“Whoa, there.” He clasped her wrist, forcing her to lower the mug. “Take it slow, or you’ll make yourself sick. Do you understand?” When she nodded, he released her and eased back into the chair.

Cassandra wiped her mouth with the back of her free hand. Her eyes glanced furtively around the small room. Its whitewashed walls were bare except for a tanned, painted buckskin hanging opposite the closed door. The only other furnishings were a washstand with a china pitcher and basin, a small side table next to the bed and the leather-backed rocker where the stranger sat, watching her every move. She emptied the mug in measured sips, then placed it on the side table.

“I asked you about my rig,” she said.

“Your wagon broke an axle on the way in.” His voice was brittle and strangely cold. “What’s left of it is still in the road, waiting to be chopped up and hauled to the woodshed for kindling. As for that bag of bones you call a mule he’s in the corral stuffing his belly with hay and oats—probably eaten more than he’s worth already.”

Cassandra masked a surge of relief. She had grown attached to the surly old mule, her sole companion for the past six days. And even the news about the wagon was good. It lessened the chance that this self-appointed guardian of the Tolliver Ranch would simply show her the road and send her back the way she’d come.

“I suppose I should thank you,” she said cautiously.

“You can thank me by answering my questions.”

“Which you have yet to ask me,” Cassandra retorted. “For that matter, you haven’t even introduced yourself. Do you work for the Tollivers?”

His eyes regarded her coldly. “Ryan didn’t tell you about his family?”

Cassandra felt her heart drop. He was trying to trap her already, this grim, raw-edged man who had “enemy” written all over him. If she allowed him to outmaneuver her, she might just as well be back in Laramie fending off Seamus Hawkins.

Only then did it hit her that he had mentioned Ryan—speaking as if he already knew the story she’d planned to tell. Dear heaven, how could that be? Had he read her mind, or—

Her hand crept to her throat, fingers groping for the locket with Jake’s picture inside.

“Are you looking for this?”

She saw the locket, then, dangling from his clenched fist. His narrowed eyes cut into her like flints. It would be difficult to lie to such a man, Cassandra thought. But that was exactly what she planned to do—had to do for the sake of her child.

“Give me my locket,” she said. “You had no right to take it from me.”

“I have the right to know what’s going on here,” he retorted. “When was the last time you saw my brother?”

“Your brother?” She blinked dazedly at the looming figure.

“I’ll wager you don’t even know my name. Do you?” he challenged her.

Cassandra shook her head, mentally cursing herself for having missed this vital scrap of information.

“It’s Morgan. Morgan Tolliver,” he snarled. “Now answer my question. When did you see him last?”

“In—in Cheyenne—last November.” Cassandra stammered out the half-truth she’d gleaned from a clerk at the Union Pacific Hotel, who recalled that Ryan had paid him a generous tip to carry his bags to the depot, where he’d boarded the train for Cheyenne. Now, too late, she realized she should have tried to learn more about the Tolliver family. The newspaper article had mentioned nothing about a brother, only a father. And this forbidding man, with his black hair and mahogany skin, bore no resemblance to the laughing, golden-eyed Ryan.

Cassandra’s heart sank lower. What else had she failed to learn? How could she cover herself long enough to play the single trump she held?

“Ryan didn’t talk much about his family,” she said, feeling the ugly weight as she crossed deeper into falsehood. “I…had the feeling there were things he didn’t want me to know. But nothing would have made any difference. I was in love. And so was he—or so I thought at the time.” Cassandra lowered her eyes artfully, writhing with self-disgust. “I fear your brother took advantage of me, Mr. Tolliver. He left Cheyenne without even saying goodbye, and I never heard from him again.”

The man’s expressive mouth scowled. His obsidian gaze never left her as he reached into his deerskin vest and drew out the battered newspaper page that Cassandra had kept in the pocket of her canvas duster. Slowly he unfolded it, taking his time before he thrust it toward her.

“So you saw this and decided to pay us a visit, did you, Miss—”

“Riley,” she said, giving her maiden name. “Cassandra Riley. And yes, that’s what happened. I don’t know if Ryan’s alive or dead, but I thought it right that this child be born here, among his family. Besides—” she cast him what she hoped was a poignant glance “—I had nowhere else to go.”

“Very touching.” His mouth twitched contemptuously. “Let me give you my own version of your story, Miss Riley. My brother liked his women, all right, but he liked them ripe and experienced, with no hidden snares. He would never have taken advantage of someone like…you.”

“But he—”

“Let me finish. I don’t believe you even knew my brother—at least not well enough to be carrying his child. Under circumstances that are none of my concern, you found yourself with child, saw the newspaper story and decided to take advantage of a grieving family.” His dark eyes probed her soul, searching out the lies, the deceit.

“What about the locket?” Cassandra protested. “You saw the picture yourself.”

“A photograph glued into a piece of cheap jewelry doesn’t prove a thing,” he snapped. “Tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.”

Cassandra forced herself to meet those accusing eyes. Ryan Tolliver’s brother had seen through her subterfuge. He had her dead to rights. Maybe if she confessed now he would let her stay. Surely a large ranch like this could use one more cook, laundress or housekeeper.

But no—his pitiless gaze told her she had already carried her gamble too far. If she told this man the truth, he would put her on the road himself, or, worse, have her arrested for fraud. She had no choice except to continue the dangerous game, no choice except to play the one trump card that remained to her.

Cassandra dropped her gaze to her where her hands lay clasped protectively over the roundness of her belly. Slowly, deliberately, she gathered her resolve. When she looked up again, her eyes were clear, and when she spoke, her voice was as calm as a frozen lake.

“Ryan had a scar,” she said, “a jagged white scar, running like a streak of lightning up the inside of his left thigh. He came by it, as I recall, at the age of fourteen when he was gored by a bull elk he’d wounded with his first rifle.”

Silence hung leaden in the small room as Morgan Tolliver rose to his feet and stood over Cassandra’s bed. His wind-burnished features might as well have been chiseled from stone. But even he could not mask the emotions that flickered in those anthracite eyes.

Had she reached him? Had the information she’d taken precious time to buy from Yvette, the youngest and prettiest of Flossie’s girls, been worth the price of her grandmother’s garnet earrings? Cassandra’s future, and the future of her child, hung on the outcome of the next few seconds.

Scarcely daring to breathe, she watched his face and waited.

Chapter Three

Her eyes were the color of violets in a spring meadow. Gazing down into their too-innocent depths, Morgan had to force himself to believe this child-woman was lying. Damnation, she had to be lying! It wasn’t like Ryan to get mixed up with such a creature. He’d preferred his women ripe and voluptuous. Cassandra Riley was all eyes and freckles and wild red hair, with barely enough body to contain the child she carried. Even if they’d been acquainted in Cheyenne, Morgan couldn’t imagine his brother would have given her a second glance.

Unless, against all odds, Ryan had fallen in love with her…

But no, even that didn’t make sense. Ryan had a wild streak, but he was decent at heart. If he’d cared for the girl, he would never have run out on her.

She was lying through her pretty little teeth. That’s all there was to it.

But how in blazes, then, did she know about the scar?