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“Talk to the lawyer.” Rafael coughed weakly. He rubbed a hand across his sternum. “Hell. That hurts.”
“If you were going to die, you’d be unconscious by now,” Daniel said firmly. He held out the carrot that should make any man look forward to the future. “And you’re going to get married soon.”
“Fine.” Rafael grabbed his sleeve. “You’ll have to occupy her...’til this heals.”
Thinking of the near kiss, Daniel groaned. “I can’t do that.”
“You have to.”
There were a lot of things Daniel had to do: take the horses into the hills, get their mother on board with the new story that Rafael was a sot, get the rifle out of the wagon before Anna fetched it.
They couldn’t take a chance on her looking into the paddock and recognizing the two horses they’d been riding this morning, but spending more time with her was a bad idea. “I’ll supposedly be tracking the thieves tomorrow.”
“Tell her I’m tracking, too.” Rafael rubbed his chest again. “Then I can spend the day...recovering.”
Which would make Daniel have to deceive her again. He had done nothing but lie to Anna since he’d first met her. Still, pretending Rafael had gone out to track would buy him time to heal. Daniel ignored the sour taste in his mouth at the thought of more falsehoods. “Fine. I’ll get Ma to occupy her.”
“Ma’s loco. You.”
Daniel didn’t see the point in arguing any longer. “Right now I have to take her my rifle that you dropped. You have to get better so you can buy me a new one.”
Rafe flashed his teeth in a way that probably would have been an annoying grin if he weren’t in pain. “Go. Tell Ma to check on me through there.” He pointed to the room’s side door.
If Madre was constantly checking on Rafael, nursing him—and she would—he couldn’t expect her to distract Anna for long. Daniel blew out an exasperated hiss. “You better heal fast.”
After unhitching the team and putting them in the corral for the night, Daniel retrieved his rifle from the wagon.
When he entered the main room, his mother greeted him with a round of complaints about Anna turning up her nose at the food she’d been cooking all day. Hell, if his mother took a disliking to Anna, getting her to keep Anna busy wouldn’t work. “I’m sure she’s just tired, Madre. I’m hungry. I’ll eat it soon.”
He spent the next few minutes explaining why Rafael was a drinker.
“No, not ever!” his mother said emphatically.
Which was doing it a little brown, because Rafael did occasionally drink to excess. But Daniel didn’t want to spend the night arguing with her. “This is a good thing, Ma. A better pretense than him having a wound in the same place as the robber.”
Madre twisted her mouth. “No. I will never say this about my Rafael.”
Of course not. Daniel added the coup de grâce. “Rafe thinks it’s a good idea. Then he can make Anna believe she is saving him from drinking.” Or had his mother forgotten why she wanted the marriage in the first place? Their mother hoped settling down would cure Rafe’s increasingly dangerous recklessness, and Daniel hoped for that, too. That was why he’d gone along with the scheme to get his brother a bride. And if Rafe thought an Anglo bride sitting next to him in district court would help them get the title to his land affirmed, then that was good enough for him. “You should go around and check on Rafe. He’s having trouble breathing.”
“He would never drink so much he falls down. He is a good man. You never should have let him behave so foolishly. You should have warned him they will think him a robber instead of stopping the stagecoach for him to see his bride.”
Daniel walked out on his mother’s rant. He’d probably hear it worse when he returned. But first he needed to get Anna settled in and asleep before he took out the “stolen” horses.
He was tempted to remove the rest of the rounds from the repeating rifle; instead, he carried his gun with the three remaining rounds to Anna. He had to soothe her. The last thing they needed was her looking for excuses to leave. At least if they kept her on the ranch, she couldn’t tell anyone if she recognized them.
But the longer Rafe went before showing improvement, the more likely it was that she would put two and two together. Right now Rafe could barely stand—couldn’t without something to lean against. He’d never succeed in hiding the gunshot wound from Anna. Preventing her from learning the truth fell squarely on his shoulders.
She sat on her bed, the door open to the night. A nightgown lay on the bed beside her. His heart thumped oddly at the sight. Her hair was down and plaited into a long braid, which she tied with a ribbon as he watched. He wanted to unravel it and let the molten strands slide through his fingers, across his body, splay it out on his pillow.
Her gaze jerked up, and he was caught staring and thinking things he had no business thinking. She stood and crossed the room.
“Sorry it took so long. Had to put the animals in the corral.” Not to mention settling Rafe and filling in his mother. He thrust out the sack he held.
Her eyebrows rose; then her gaze lifted to his face and she took the cloth bag, testing the weight. “Ammunition?”
“Almonds.” Well, at least she realized the gun was useless without bullets and powder. “In case you’re hungry. I grow them,” he said lamely.
She scowled and reached out her other hand, but at least she didn’t toss the almonds in his face. “The rifle, if you please.”
He didn’t pass her the rifle. “There are still rounds in it. You will be careful.”
She glared at him. “I do know how to handle a firearm, or was that not clear?”
He sighed. “Would it make any difference if I told you that I was going to tell Rafe that you didn’t want him to know you shot the robber?” He had intended to tell him that. “I just hadn’t gotten to it yet.”
Her eyes opened, but then her mouth pursed. “Well, you wasted no time at all in telling him I had shot a man.”
He couldn’t tell her that Rafael knew from the minute she’d pulled the trigger. “It wouldn’t be good for him to be caught unaware, but I’m sure he would have been happy to pretend he didn’t know for your sake.”
“So you were encouraging him to lie to me.” She glared at him.
Daniel looked around for an escape route. Bad enough he had to lie, but to have to lie to make himself look like a tattletale was just wonderful. He seemed to be doing the opposite of soothing. “Not exactly, just not bring it up until you were ready to talk to him.”
“Since he already knows I can shoot, I might as well keep the rifle.” She tugged it away. “Thank you, Mr. Werner, and good night.”
Daniel held back a groan. But for Rafael bringing up the shooting, he might have been able to reclaim the gun with little problem. Now he was going to have to make it to San Francisco and try and buy another one before any of the hands realized his new rifle was missing and the robbers had left behind one amazingly similar to his.
She reached for the door to shut it.
He put his hand out and stopped it. Then he wondered what the hell he was doing. He certainly was not going to kiss her to soothe her ruffled feathers. “I know you’ve had a difficult arrival, and we haven’t been as welcoming as we should have been, but we’re glad you’re here safe and sound.”
“Really? Because it seems to me that I am very much an afterthought or perhaps an inconvenience.”
“You are mistaken—”
“Please, don’t lie to me. I don’t like it.”
“I’m not lying to you.” But he was, and his protest sounded insincere. He wished he wasn’t lying to her or could find a better way to dissemble. “Or at least I was not trying to. It has been a bad day for all of us.”
“Mr. Werner, I have a gun in my hand, and I’m very short on patience. Now, good night.”
He couldn’t help it—he laughed. He could have the gun out of her hands before she could get a round chambered. Life with her on the ranch was bound to get interesting. “You are nothing like your letters.”
She blanched. “How could you know that?”
He shouldn’t have said that, and his ears grew hot. “Rafael read them to us.”
After all, there was nothing in them that couldn’t have been read out loud. Actually, he’d read the letters to Rafael, but that didn’t matter. Once he’d told Rafe she met the requirement of being fair—or more particularly looking distinctly Anglo, Rafael had picked her from the respondents. Why, Daniel didn’t know. She’d seemed snobbish and uptight in the letters. He hadn’t really understood why she appealed to Rafe, especially since Daniel had never shown him her picture, but she was nothing like he’d expected.
“Well, then, I’m sorry to have disappointed you,” she said stiffly and shut the door.
