Explaining Herself (28 page)

Fast. That was him.

Maybe he shouldn't even have told her that much.

"Victoria, there are two men dead at my hands tonight."

"That," Victoria said, "was self-defense."

"It's still killing."

She drew back from him, just far enough to study his face
—what little she could see of it by that one streetlamp. Now she would know what he really was.

Then she said, "Oh, Ross, I'm so sorry." And she kissed him.

He was so stunned, he could not move his mouth against her kiss. He simply stared until she drew back. Then he demanded,
"You're
sorry?"

"That must have been terrible." She stroked his hair back from his collar, drew her soft thumb over his injured cheek, kissed the corner of his mouth. "You poor thing."

Poor thing?
"I killed them," he repeated.

"No," she insisted with a loyal nod. "They killed themselves. They just used you as their weapon."

At that, something deep in the recesses of his heart cracked and split open and let out too much, all at once. Out poured his grief at the killings
—tonight, and twelve years ago, and three others through the years between. Out flowed his guilt. Out rushed his certainty that he could have done something else, been something else, if only he'd tried harder.

If only he hadn't taken up with outlaws. If only he hadn't run off from the boys' ranch in a futile search for his mother. If only he hadn't told Julie their poppa's plans in the first place.

It all shuddered up from him, filling his chest, burning at his eyes, closing his throat. He turned his face quickly into her softness, hiding from what he felt, what he trembled with the need to do.

Gunslingers don't cry.

But dear God, why had he become what he was?

He didn't cry
—didn't breathe, didn't move, but at
least didn't cry. Still, Victoria held him and murmured sweet, blissful lies. "It's all right, Ross. It wasn't fair, but it's not your fault. It's all right, darling. It's all right."

But she only knew about tonight, only knew what little he'd told her. Even sinking under grief and guilt and
feeling
—more feeling than he'd endured in years—Laramie knew better.

More of it was his fault than not. Nothing would be okay.

But Victoria saying so gave him a few more blissful moments of imagining that maybe, maybe it could be.

At first Victoria thought Ross would cry, but he didn't. He'd been forced to kill two men. He
should
cry.

But although he closed his eyes against some great pain, and pressed his face into her bodice, until he was as much in her lap as she was in his, he did not.

Poor, rugged, bottled-up man.

She petted his hair, kissed his forehead, told him it was all right
—it had to be, didn't it? Then, afraid that her attention just made him feel worse, she began to talk about other things.

"I heard you tonight," she admitted. "I was outside the jail and I heard Thaddeas tell you to leave. That's why I came here. I thought
—I'm not sure why, but I hoped you might stop here. I'm glad you did."

He began to breathe again, a little more regularly. "You were outside the jail?"

"Earlier, I asked Thaddeas about Julie Lauranovic, and he barely remembers her," she continued. She loved his hair, so black, so sleek
—even wet. Especially wet. "He remembers the family. He said their name was Laurence, which now
th
at I think of it, the paper said something about too. But he doesn't know who Julie’s sweetheart could have been."

Ross rolled more fully onto his back, looking up at
her from where his head was now cradled on
her
lap, and he seemed ... shaken. Worn. And somehow, tragically amused.

"Believe him, Victoria," he said, raising a hand up to her shoulder and fingering a wet hank of
her
hair. The side of his wrist pressed against her breast. She liked it. "Believe the best of your brother."

She rolled her eyes, but was careful not to move her body. She liked her body where it was. "I'm not just believing the best of him, Ross Laramie. I may be angry with him, after the way he talked to you
—and to me earlier, when he asked questions about why / was asking questions. You know, I'm afraid he's read more into our friendship than . . ."

It suddenly occurred to her how late it was for them to be alone. Much less together. Much less with Ross pillowing his head in her lap, his hand in her hair and his wrist on her bosom. Were anybody to see them like this, he would have to marry her or the scandal would linger for years. Even if they married, it would linger for months.

He looked amused
—for Ross—and she touched his lips with her fingers, trying to draw them up farther at the corners. "Or perhaps not," she whispered. She'd never come close to feeling this way about any of her other friends.

"Perhaps he's simply a very clever brother," he agreed, just as softly, and withdrew his hand.

Her breast ached where he'd touched her.

With a deep, determined breath, she made herself ask the one thing she didn't want confirmed
—but something she knew so deeply,
not
confirming it would eat away at her. "Oh, Ross, do you really have to leave?"

He closed his eyes, hints of hidden pain flashing across his face, and she realized it wasn't just words he shared with her. She felt honored, suddenly, to
have been privy to so much about Ross Laramie.

'You do, don't you?" she asked.

He sat up then, much though she wanted him to lie with his head in her lap forever. He drew a knee up so that he could lean closer to her, and he took one of her hands in his own.

Their hands were almost dry. At some point, the rain must have stopped.

"I don't belong here," he told her.

'You could."

"I've never been a range detective before."

"Well, you're a good one."

He smiled a little then, his lips quirking even without help from her fingers, and he slowly leaned close enough to kiss her. His lips were firm, warm, adoring. Oh, she did like being adored. "At best," he conceded, "I
was
a good range detective."

She remembered then that he'd been fired.

"And someone's trying to kill you here," she admitted reluctantly.

"Which endangers whoever I'm near," he agreed. He spread her palm flat, then opened his hand and pressed it to hers. No fists. "The only reason I have to stay is you. And even you . . ."

She shifted her hand slightly, so that her fingers could curl between his and hang on. "Even I what?"

He whispered something that sounded like, "Just seeing make-believe."

She cocked her head, confused. "What?"

Ross searched her face
—for what? Then he leaned in and kissed her, longer and harder and more desperate than before. She found herself sinking into him, pressing against him, melding with his mouth, wanting him to never stop kissing her like this.

But he did stop. He levered her gently back into balance with a hand on her shoulder, his eyes somehow wild, and he rasped out the desperate words,

"Even you wouldn't want me if you knew my real name was Laurence."

For a slow, stupid moment, while her lips throbbed and her body felt cold from not being snuggled closer to his, she thought:
Lawrence Laramie?

Then other bits of information, settling so cleanly into place in a puzzle she hadn't even known she'd been working, began to force their truth onto her.
Ross Laurence.

Except...

She looked at the tombstones beside him, trying to make out the names in the dark of night, but he answered for her.

"Originally it was Lauranovic," he told her. "I was born Drazen Lauranovic, and then I was Ross Laurence. I have been lying to you, and all of that and more is why I cannot stay."

Chapter Twenty

Victoria looked from the tombstone back to him, and she didn't appear angry yet. She still seemed confused.

Give her time.

Still, Laramie took advantage of her momentary silence. "I did not want you to know," he admitted shamefully. "Ever. The more I saw you, the more I wanted you to think I was . . ."
Anybody else.
But it was not that easy. "I wanted to be the man you see when you look at me. But I am not, and it was selfish of me not to let you know that. At least your father and your brother
—"

Victoria raised a hand to silence him, pulling her other hand free from his grasp. "My
family
knows?"

He'd expected anger at the lies, the rustling, the killing. He hadn't thought of this. "What?"

'You told my family and you didn't tell me?"

She sat fully back from him now, her eyes bright,
her shoulders high. He would have laughed if it weren't for her pain
—if it weren't for remembering how Victoria felt about secrets.

"No. I told nobody." He captured her hand again between both of his, tried to make her understand at least this. "Until you."

"But you said . . ."

"They guessed," he insisted. "Your father recognized me and told your brother. I only learned it tonight."

She stared, her brow furrowed, as if silen
tl
y begging him to make
thi
s right. He knew he could not, but he had to try. He owed her that much. No, he owed her more. But this, he could give.

"I've been Laramie for years," he explained. "I was not lying about that. Not quite."

That sounded inadequate, even to him, which is why she star
tle
d him so when she finished, 'You just did not tell the entire truth."

She understood?

He squinted at her, not believing it. She understood?

She repeated, 'You're Drazen Lauranovic?"

He nodded, ready for the worst
—and yet somehow, desperately relieved to have it done with. Anything she said now, be it soothing or angry, she finally said to him. For a few minutes at least, whoever he really was got to spend time with her. "I was."

'You used to live here?"

He nodded.

"And the Wards stole your family's cattie, and your family stole them back?"

He nodded. He couldn't ask her to say what came next, so he did it for her. "And Victoria, I killed Boris Ward."

"After he killed your fa
th
er and brother in front of you. Oh, Ross." She wove her fingers through his
again, holding his hand tighter, then looked up in confusion. "I mean . . ."

She actually cared what to call him? "Ross," he pleaded. "Hardly anybody called me Drazen until after .. ."

"After the lynchings. And the trial."

He nodded.

Her head came up at another realization. "Julie was your sister." He heard how she Anglicized the name, and he loved her. "Oh, Ross, no wonder you want to find who deserted her."

Betrayed her.
But now was not the time to pursue that argument. If he did not finish this now, he would never again have the chance, much less the nerve.

"They sent me to a boys' ranch in Texas, on parole, but I ran away. As I grew, I took ranching jobs. That's where I met other outlaws."

She whispered, "And you went bad."

He could not correct her
—except, perhaps, her faith he'd not been bad already.

She considered him solemnly. "Did you really rustle cat
tl
e?"

"Depending on my boss."
Ride for the brand.
That was the cowboy code.

"Bank robbery?" At least for that, he could shake his head. "Train robbery?"

"Just the rustling," he insisted. "But if folks were shooting at us, I shot back. I've likely killed men since '88, Victoria. Maybe as many as three
—I wasn't the only one shooting, but maybe that many. I've done that."

She chewed her lower lip in thought. "Lawmen?"

He shook his head.

"Innocent bystanders? Feuds? Were you threatening people?"

"It was range wars. Men were hired to move ca
ttl
e and shoot at us. We were hired to move cat
tle
back
and shoot at them. It
—" He let go of her hand, so she would not have to take it back herself. "It paid well."

She frowned at her empty hand. "Who's we?"

He wasn't about to start naming names, even for her.