Arizona Embrace
Authors: Leigh Greenwood
FRAMED BY LOVE
“There’s not a man on this ranch who believes you’re guilty.”
“They’ve all been wonderful, but there’s not one of them who believes a pretty woman
can
commit a crime.”
“An investigation would cost a lot of money. If you have it, why are you wasting your time with me? You ought to hire a professional.”
“How do I know he wouldn’t turn against me? No one seems able to stand up to that judge.”
“How do you know I could?
She looked directly into his eyes. “I just do.”
Trinity hadn’t expected that. It caused the knot which had been in his stomach for several days to tighten with a jerk.
“You don’t know that. I could be a bounty hunter or a sheriff’s deputy, or even a private investigator.”
Her gaze didn’t falter. “You could, but you’re not.”
| Other books by | Jake |
| Leigh Greenwood: | Ward |
| | Buck |
| The Reluctant Bride | Drew |
| The Independent Bride | Sean |
| Colorado Bride | Chet |
| Rebel Enchantress | A Texan’s Honor |
| Scarlet Sunset, Silver Nights | Matt |
| The Captain’s Caress | Pete |
| Seductive Wager | Texas Tender |
| Sweet Temptation | Luke |
| Wicked Wyoming Nights | The Mavericks |
| Wyoming Wildfire | Texas Loving |
| | |
| The Night Riders series: | The Seven Brides series: |
| Texas Homecoming | Rose |
| Texas Bride | Fern |
| Born to Love | Iris |
| Someone Like You | Laurel |
| Daisy | |
| Violet | |
| Lily | |
| The Cowboys series: |
Arizona
Embrace
Leigh
Greenwood
Copyright © 1993, 2011 Leigh Greenwood
Contents
Arizona, 1878
.
“Just a few more weeks, and another murderer will hang.”
Trinity lowered his field glasses. He spoke the words into the wind, something he did a lot more these days. Hangmen didn’t have friends.
Not that Trinity Smith was a hangman … but he felt like one. It wasn’t a feeling he liked, but he had become aware of it over the last few years. During the past month it had settled over him like a duck fog, obscuring his vision and making him wonder what lay ahead.
Never before in thirteen years of tracking down convicted killers and returning them to justice had he doubted the justice of what he did. Murderers had to be punished. They couldn’t be allowed to flout the judgment of society, or decent men and women wouldn’t be safe.
Still the uneasy feeling nagged at his conscience.
Trinity reminded himself that entire towns had turned out to thank him. They had tried to give him money, make him their sheriff, give him cows and land so he would settle nearby and continue to protect them, but he never accepted a reward. Knowing he had brought a murderer to justice had been all the reward he wanted.
Trinity raised his field glasses and surveyed the scene below him once again.
Mountain Valley ranch lay snuggled between two low ridges in Arizona’s Verde River valley. Through the mountainside scattering of pines, fir and spruce, their top-knots waving in the breeze, he glimpsed several meadows covered in the pinkish purple of an abundant wildflower. Everywhere grass grew to a height and thickness that testified to a winter of heavy snow and a spring of generous rains.
The valley lay quiet below him. Something whispered this was a place where men lived together peacefully and in harmony with nature. It felt like a place where a man could spend his life the way he wanted, without the pressures of the outside world, without having to deal with the evil in people.
Yet, he knew his feelings betrayed him. Evil had brought him to this unspoiled valley. Evil clothed in innocence, beauty, and tranquility. He would hunt it down just as he had so many times before.
Still, the feeling wouldn’t leave him, the presentiment that he, rather than the person he hunted, posed the greater danger. At first, unable to figure out what bothered him, he had shrugged it off. Now he could no longer ignore it. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, but the feeling grew stronger every time he looked at the valley.
Why?
He couldn’t doubt the justice of his mission. The killer had been caught virtually in the act. A jury sat in judgment and returned a verdict of guilty. The judge had pronounced the sentence of death by hanging. No one doubted the guilt of the killer or the justice of the verdict.
Then why did he feel so uneasy? All he had to do was do his job and move on.
But there was something different this time. The killer was a woman, and she had murdered her husband.
The muted footfall of an approaching horse caused Victoria Davidge to look up from the bed of yellow poppies she was transplanting. Visitors to her uncle’s ranch were so rare she didn’t stop to remember she was alone until a man riding a powerful dark bay gelding came into view.
A stranger!
A stab of fear caused her heart to skip a beat; a vein in her temple began to throb. She felt her body tense. She took a deep bream to help herself relax. It didn’t work. Her fingers clenched into tight fists, breaking the delicate plant she held in her hand. Even as she discarded the ruined flower, she remained helplessly in the grip of suffocating anxiety.
Victoria hated to feel this way, but she had to be wary of strangers. Her life depended on it.
Would she ever be able to hear the sound of approaching hoofbeats without tensing with fear? Or look into the face of a stranger without caring if he knew her name? Would she ever be able to live her life without worrying that the next day, or the next visitor, might destroy everything?
Yet, for the first time she could remember, the familiar wave of nausea didn’t rise in her throat. Neither did she feel the need to hide behind the trellis of a newly leafed climbing rose her uncle had given her two years earlier. She brushed the loose, moist soil from her fingers. Rather than allow her hands to clutch at the heavy material of her skirt, she clasped them in front of her.
Victoria took a step forward to get a better view. Instinctively she reached up to pull the wide brim of her straw hat farther down over her eyes. Her hand slowed, then paused, her fingers not yet touching the brim.
This man was different.
Don’t be silly. You can’t tell anything about a man just by watching him ride a horse
.
But she could.
He approached with a lazy assurance that could have come only from years of matching his skills against all comers, a confidence as apparent in his posture as in his unhurried pace. Even though she’d been constantly warned her safety depended upon no one knowing the location of her hiding place, Victoria felt irresistibly drawn to this cool, self-confident man.
As she started forward, she detected the sound of a second horse. Turning toward a stand of pines which grew along the ridge behind the ranch, she saw Buc Stringer, her uncle’s foreman, ride out of the trees and head toward the bunkhouse. He would ride between her and the stranger. He would talk to the man and see what he wanted. There would be no need for her to reveal her presence.
Buc would be angry if she did.
It had been such a long time since Victoria had talked with anyone from outside the ranch, but she reluctantly decided to stay in her garden. Buc and her uncle had risked their lives to bring her to Arizona. They had organized the ranch around her safety. She couldn’t ignore all their precautions for nothing more than a brief chat with a passerby.
She stepped back into her garden. She still had a dozen wild iris to set out. Maybe he would be gone by the time she was done, and perhaps temptation would be gone, too.