Lone Star Lonely (27 page)

Continue reading for an excerpt from the next
book in The Texas Brands,

The Outlaw Bride.

Quinn, Texas, 1881

Esmeralda Maria Conchita Montoya glared at
the smug banker across his desk. “This is not right,” she said, all
too aware of the odds against her. She was a woman, she was
Mexican, and her accent was as touched by her heritage as was the
color of her skin. And this banker was a Brand. Allen Brand, whose
entire outlaw family was now squatting on Esmeralda’s land. “My
father was tricked. The ranch rightfully belongs to me.”

The banker, handsome and dressed in clothing
so new it practically gleamed, checked his pocket watch as if he
was bored. He irritated her, looking so suave and elegant and
well-bred, not a hair out of place, when she knew perfectly well he
was little more than scum.

All the Brands were scum.

“It’s all perfectly legal, little lady,” he
drawled. “Right there in front of you in black and white.” He
glanced down at the stack of papers he’d placed in front of her,
tapped them with a forefinger for emphasis, then lifted his brows
and his gaze as one. “You
can
read, can’t you?”

“
Si.
I can read. It is all very clear,
in black and white, as you say. Your bank made a loan to my father.
You gave him three years to pay. There are still six months
left.”

“My bank made a loan to your father, and that
ranch was his collateral. You do know what collateral is?” She only
narrowed her eyes on him. He went on. “And it does say, on page two
of this agreement, that I have the right to demand the full amount
should your father be unable to meet his quarterly obligations to
this bank.”

“You gave him your word that would not
happen. He told me so himself.”

The man shrugged, leaning back in his leather
chair, arms folded behind his head. “Maybe he lied.”

Esmeralda rose from her chair as if she’d
been shot out of it and slammed her palms flat on the gleaming
surface of the desk as she leaned towards him. “My father never
lied in his life.”

Allen Brand’s brows rose again. He sat
straighter in his chair, and she had the satisfaction of seeing the
slightest hint of alarm flash in his eyes. He straightened his bolo
tie, cleared his throat. “Nonetheless, I’m only bound by what is
written in that contract, and there is no promise not to foreclose
in there. Only my right to do so, should he be late in meeting his
obligation. He
did
miss his last payment, after all.”

“Because his cattle were rustled on the way
to market—by your two outlaw brothers and their gang of
cutthroats!”

Again the banker shrugged. “That’s no fault
of mine.”

She pounded a fist on his desk so hard that
the ornate kerosene lamp that sat there seemed to jump. “Do you
think I am stupid,
Seño
r Brand? Eh? You put them up to it.
It gave you the excuse you needed to steal my father’s land from
him!”

Brand’s gaze dipped to the lower left drawer.
She’d noticed it move in that direction several times before, and
was sharp enough to realize he likely kept a gun in there. If he
reached for it, she would slit his throat before he could thumb the
hammer back.

“I did not
steal
anything.” His
well-manicured, callus-free hand inched closer to that drawer.
Esmeralda’s own hand—smaller, but quicker, she thought—moved
lightly over her skirts, and underneath them she felt the handle of
the blade she wore strapped to her thigh.

“I took possession by legal means, and if
your father was here, he would tell you so,” Allen Brand went on.
“But since he saw fit to go into hiding somewhere, sending his
little girl to tend to his affairs—’’

“My father is dead.” She stated it flatly,
stepping away from the desk and turning her back on the man,
refusing to let him see her pain. But she was not stupid enough to
lose sight of him, even then, lest she feel the burn of a coward’s
bullet in her back just as her father had. Instead, she paced to
the window, as if to look outside. In the thick glass, she kept his
reflection in plain sight. She almost hoped he
would
go for
the gun. Her fingers itched to close around the hilt of her blade
as she drove it into his gut.

But that would be wrong. With a free hand,
she caressed the pendant she wore, and thought of her father and
all the things he had taught her. Long ago, when she’d been a
little girl, she’d told him she was in love for the first time with
a boy she’d known all her life. Eldon Brand. This banker’s youngest
brother.

Luis Montoya had just nodded thoughtfully,
silent for a long moment, and then he said, “This you must
remember, little one. There is nothing more important than family.”
She could almost hear his voice again now. “For a woman to love a
man, she must love his family, too. And they must love her. For a
woman marries not just the man, but his family, as well.”

She remembered nodding slowly.
“Si,
this I know. You have told me this before.”

“He comes from a bad family, little one,” her
father told her seriously. “Once, there was a chance the Brand
children would grow up well. But when their parents died, that
chance died with them. They did not stick together, but scattered,
and most of them—all of them, I fear—went bad. No family.” He shook
his head slowly, sadly.

Imagine her beloved father feeling sorry for
the bastards who had killed him. Imagine
her
having ever
been attracted to one of them. She shook off the memory, tried to
focus on the present. She’d been away from home for a long time,
but nothing looked so very different.

The dusty streets of Quinn were busy. Women
in long skirts and bonnets carried baskets or tugged children to
and fro. Buggies and buckboards passed slowly, raising dust clouds
in their wake. A man sat in a chair outside the saloon across the
way, his feet propped up on the boardwalk’s rail.

“I...didn’t know your father had died,” the
banker said, and for once she thought there might be the ring of
truth in his words. Again she fingered the pendant she wore: a
small quartz crystal, cut into the shape of a skull by unknown
hands, centuries ago. It had been in her family for many, many
generations. Some claimed it had magical powers—that it was
supposed to restore balance to mankind, to restore its holder to
her proper place in the scheme of things. It had been given to her
by her father, just before he died.

“Surely your brothers Waylon and Blake told
you that one of their filthy gang shot my father when he tried to
stop them from stealing his cattle, no?” She turned slowly to study
his face.

“I’d heard he was wounded.”

She nodded.
“Si.
Wounded. He sent for
me. Pedro, Father’s most trusted hand, took the fastest horse from
our stables and came for me in Mexico. Pedro told me what you and
your family had done, and he brought me back home, where I should
have been all along. I held my father’s hand as he lay dying of
blood poisoning,
Señor
Brand.”

Allen Brand braced one hand on the back of
his chair, his head lowering slightly. “I’m sorry for your loss,
Esmeralda.”

“Are you?”

“Of course I am. For heaven’s sakes, I’ve
known you since we were both knee-high to a yearling calf. But
surely you can see this is over now. Your father is gone, and any
claim he thought he had to the ranch is gone with him. You’d best
forget about all of this and go back home to Mexico.”

She shook her head. “You have known me so
long, and yet you know me so little. I was only visiting my aunt in
Mexico. My
home
is on my father’s ranch, where I was born
and raised, Allen Brand. He may be gone, but rest assured I am
here. And I am staying here until I avenge my father’s murder and
reclaim what is rightfully mine.”

He locked eyes with her. She did not flinch,
and it was he who looked away first. “You’ve been away a long time,
Esmeralda. Years. Your father sent you south for your own good, you
know.”

“
Si.
I had no mother to help him raise
me. He wanted me to have the finer things, to learn to be a lady,
to learn manners and wear dresses.”

Allen nodded slowly. “And it looks as if
those lessons took. You’ve grown into a beautiful young woman.”

“He also sent me away so that I would be
beyond the reach of men like you and your brothers,” she told him.
“Do not be fooled by these pretty skirts, Allen Brand. I have not
changed so much from the girl who could outrun you, outride you,
and outfight you.”

He sighed, lifting a brow and tilting his
head. “Maybe you haven’t changed all that much, Esmeralda, but
things around here have. You don’t even know what you’re up
against.”

“Oh, I know exactly what I’m up against. A
liar and a thief. The only difference between you and your outlaw
brothers is that you wear a fancy suit, and a quill pen is your
weapon. If you refuse to give the land back to me now, I will go to
the sheriff and ask him to place Waylon and Blake Brand under
arrest for the murder of my father.”

Allen Brand smiled very slowly. “The
sheriff’s office is right where it always was,” he said, nodding
toward the window that faced the street. “You go right ahead and
file those charges.”

“Do you think I will not do it?”

“I don’t care what you do. I’ve tried to be
kind to you, Esmeralda, for old times’ sake, but you won’t listen
to a thing I tell you. So do what you will. Now, if you don’t mind,
I have a business to run.” He strode across the office, opened the
door. “Run along, like a good girl.”

“You will be sorry for this, Allen Brand!”
She stomped out and slammed the door behind her, marching through
the bank and cussing in Spanish all the way. She’d worn her best
dress, bought new boots, even captured her wild, unruly mass of
black curls beneath a fancy French bonnet. She had thought that if
she’d looked like a lady, the way her aunt had taught her, she
might be treated with a scrap of respect, perhaps even taken
seriously. Instead, she’d been treated like a minor nuisance. But
what did she expect from a thieving Brand? They were all alike.
They didn’t care about the black-velvet piping that lined the edges
of her cropped jacket, or the white blouse with its frilly collar
underneath.

She stepped from the boardwalk down into the
rutted edge of the street, only to jump back again as she was
nearly run down by a careening wagon. “Gol’dern woman! Watch where
you’re goin’!” the driver shouted, shaking his fist at her.

She shook her own fist and shrieked back at
him in her native tongue. Only to go silent when she felt eyes on
her. Every person in town had stopped what they were doing to turn
and stare at her vulgar display. And their expressions said what
they thought of her. She’d barely been back in town two full days,
and already most of the residents knew of her mission. To take her
land back from the Brands. Why they all were against her from that
moment on, was beyond her. She eyed them all, spat on the ground,
picked up her skirts and petticoats, and stomped across the street.
There she mounted the boardwalk again and strode right up to the
sheriff’s office. But the moment she flung the door open, she
understood the banker’s arrogance.

For yet another Brand sat at
this
desk. His scuffed boots were propped up on the dull, worn wood, and
there was a silver star pinned to his chest. The giant, hulking,
snake-eyed firstborn of them all, Garrison Brand.

“Well now, if it isn’t that spitfire I hear
has come to town for revenge.” His boots clomped to the floor, and
he sat straighter in his chair. “No luck at the bank, I take it,
Esmeralda? So what brings you to my office?”

Her throat suddenly dry, she rasped,
“Y-your... office?”