Wyoming Renegade. Susan Amarillas

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       Chapter One

      Alexandria Gibson stood in the elegant parlor of her Nob Hill home. She pushed back the curtain covering the double French doors, and the delicate white lace brushed butterfly soft against her hand. The night was ink black, the barest beginnings of fog drifted up from the bay.

      “I’ll be leaving in the morning.” She didn’t look at her father, who was seated five feet away on one of two matching love seats. She could practically feel his icy gaze boring into her. “Eddie will be here bright and early.”

      “What do you mean, Eddie?” her father demanded, his baritone voice seeming to fill the. highceilinged room.

      Alexandria looked at him along the line of her shoulder. Even at fifty her father was a fine figure of a man—tall and lean, his brown hair graying, but thick enough to make a younger man envious.

      “New evening clothes?” she asked, ignoring his question. She didn’t want to get into another long discussion. They’d been going around and around about her trip since Monday, when she’d announced her plan.

      “Yes,” he muttered, momentarily distracted. “I’m playing poker with Strickland later at the club.” Anger sparked quicksilver bright in his blue eyes. “Never mind my clothes.”

      She sighed inwardly. Well, if he was intent on being stubborn, she could be equally stubborn. She was her father’s daughter, after all, and that gave her more than a fair amount of hardheadedness.

      “What’s Eddie got to do with this?” her father grumbled.

      “He’s going along.”

      “As what, your chaperon? Ha! If I can’t keep tight reins on you, then Eddie sure as hell can’t.”

      “Don’t be difficult.”

      “Me? I’m not the one who’s being difficult.” He shook his finger at her in a way that made her feel like a child, which she wasn’t, not at twenty-five. That short temper of hers was moving up the scale faster than mercury on a July day.

      “I need help, with the horses and such.” She gritted her teeth to keep her voice calm.

      Her father scowled. “This is going to give the gossips enough grist to fuel the rumor mill for months, maybe years.”

      “Yes, I’m sure it will. Just as I’m sure they will blithely overlook the fact that Eddie is only eighteen, my first cousin, and has enough freckles sprinkled across his face to make him look tan even in winter.”

      “And you don’t care a whit what’s said, do you?”

      “No, not a whit.” She’d been her own person since, well, all her life and she saw no reason to change now. “You, of all people,” she told him, in what she hoped was a reassuring tone, “shouldn’t worry about me.”

      “But I do. More than I want to, dammit.” He surged to his feet and paced—marched actually—across the room, until he practically slammed into the upright grand.

      He faced her, one hand braced on the top edge of the gleaming mahogany, the other curled into a fist at hi side.

      “It’s no use, Alexandria.” He had a granite-hard expression that said he wasn’t going to be put off. She braced for the fight.

      He continued. “Letting you go off to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts was one thing. But how the hell you ever talked me into letting you go to Paris to study that damn painting business…” He shook his head again. “But no more. Do you hear me? No more. You should be settled, married. I want grandchildren.”

      Muscles down her back tensed in reflexive response. Not again! If she had a dollar for every time they’d had this discussion in the past six years, she could finance her own trip back to Europe instead of having to rely on his financing.

      With resignation, she steeled herself to try to explain one more time. “Papa, you are too conventional, and I’m too stubborn to be someone’s submissive little wife.”

      It wasn’t the marriage part she objected to, it was the submissive part she couldn’t get past.

      She dropped down onto the side chair, the pale green silk upholstery smooth and cool against her skin. A shiver prickled over her shoulders.

      Her father’s voice carried across the room to her.

      “How do you know you couldn’t be someone’s wife, missy?” She heard him moving closer. “Good Lord, Alex, men have been turning up on the doorstep since you were sixteen. You’ve never given any of them half a chance.”

      Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him headed for the small walnut table on the far wall that held an array of crystal decanters with an assortment of whiskey and bourbon.

      He tossed the stopper down with a clunk and snatched up a glass. He sloshed the Irish whiskey into the cut crystal. It spilled over the top and over his hand and he quickly held it away from him, letting it drip onto the carpet.

      He sipped the drink down a quarter inch.

      “If your mother had lived…she would have made certain you were settled.” He took a hefty swallow.

      Alex faced him, the love seat like a defensive wall between them. “Please, please don’t worry about me. The world doesn’t begin and end with marriage. I do fine on my own.”

      “For now, but I’m thinking of later. What about when you’re forty or fifty or… ?” He took another drink. “I think you’re too picky, Alexandria. What about Ned?”

      “Your precious Ned is only interested in himself and his blossoming career with your bank.”

      He regarded her through narrowed eyes. “‘My precious Ned,’ as you call him, is a man with ambition. It’s usually considered an attribute.”

      “Yes, СКАЧАТЬ