Page 34 of West Wind

Gil nodded his head. “Then you’re a lucky man.”

He emptied another glass as soon as Gil filled it, then turned away from the ignorant man. Lucky?

“Ellie!” he called to the dark-haired girl, who smiled and hurried across the room to him. When she stood directly in front of him he lifted her face by the chin and looked into her eyes. Gray eyes. Very nice, very pretty. But he wished they were dark brown.

“Let’s go upstairs, darlin’.” He grinned at her; she tilted her head to one side and batted her eyelashes.

She took his arm and led him to the stairs. “Ellie and Shelley. Shelley and Ellie.” She giggled and bumped her hip against his as they climbed the stairs, her arm wrapped possessively through his. “Isn’t that cute?”

“Adorable, darlin’,” he agreed unenthusiastically. Annie was not his responsibility. Charles Castleton had promised to take good care of her, and he would.

“You know,” Ellie squeaked, “you could stay with me all night. It’ll cost a little extra…”

“Huh?” He looked down at her upturned face. “Oh, yeah. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

It hadn’t been his fault Annie was a virgin. He never would’ve touched her if he’d known. Never.

That was a lie, and he knew it. He’d wanted her too bad. Hell, he still did.

“I missed you so much, Shelley,” Ellie cooed. She said that to every customer who walked up these stairs with her whether it had been a year or a month or a couple of days, he knew it and didn’t much care. That was the beauty of a relationship like this. He could come and go as he pleased, and never feel a moment of regret. Ellie would be happy to see him if he came back tomorrow or six months from now, and if he decided never to come back, she wouldn’t miss him.

Ellie would never try to kick him in the balls, and she’d never accuse him of deserting her.

She’d never look up at him with tears in her eyes, and she’d certainly never tell him, with her heart in her voice, how beautiful the night sky was.

Ellie pulled him to her door and pushed it open. “Here we are,” she said in a sultry voice that promised a night he wouldn’t forget.

“I can’t do it,” he whispered, not believing the words as they came out of his mouth. “I can’t leave her there.”

Ellie’s smile faded quickly. “What are you talking about?”

He spun away, a smile growing as his doubts melted away. With an anxious bounce in his step he descended the stairs much more quickly than he’d climbed them.

“Can’t leave who where?” Ellie shouted harshly from the top of the stairs. “You sonofabitch, where do you think you’re going?”

He raised his hands, palms upward in total supplication. “Goddamn San Francisco,” he shouted before he spun back around and strode through the swinging doors.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As friendly as Suzanne and the other members of the wagon train were, there were times Annabelle was pointedly reminded that she was an outsider. When the party rolled to a stop in the afternoon, the couples talked about plans for the next day. Suzanne’s hand often clasped Charles’s, their heads close together as they discussed the day’s events. Tate and Elizabeth Manley were almost inseparable, and managed to distance themselves from the others as often as possible. Sometimes Annabelle caught them looking at one another so lovingly she felt like an intruder. A jealous one.

Even the Butlers sat together, though Jim did almost all the talking. He gave his wife none of the attention or loving looks that passed between the other married couples, looks that made her feel more alone than she ever had.

She wandered away from the camp, not so far that she couldn’t see or hear her fellow travelers, but at a distance that allowed her to breathe a bit easier, and to feel less like an interloper. She sat at the crest of a hill and looked west, at tomorrow’s trail before her. There wasn’t much to see, nothing but tall grass and rolling hills and the quiet, dusty trail they’d follow in the morning. The landscape was desolate, but somehow beautiful. Wild, but willing to be tamed. Open, as vast and endless as the blue skies above her.

She leaned back in the grass and studied white, fluffy clouds that drifted across the azure sky. They danced, driven by a gentle wind, their shapes changing rapidly as she searched for the faces and animals and scattered images that formed and quickly changed. No matter how hard she tried to drive thoughts of Shelley from her mind, he was always there. Had he ever rested with his head upon his saddle and watched the clouds drift by? It was the sort of thing she could imagine him doing, when he was in one of his mellower moods.

“Do you like boys?”

She sat up fast, startled, and turned to look at Penny, the child who’d delivered that strange question. The little girl wore a frown. Over her shoulder Annabelle saw Charlie and Little Jim playing roughly, wrestling on the ground in a game that obviously excluded girls.

“Well.” She patted the ground at her side, and Penny obediently sat. “Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. What about you?”

Penny nodded solemnly. “Me, too. Sometimes boys are mean.” She turned a tragic face to Annabelle. “Do you have any kids?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t.”