Johanna Lindsey - Angel

Cassie bit her lip, frowning at the letter. She’d saved the worst for last — how to convince her mother not to rush down here to save her “baby” from another catastrophe of her own making. Deviously. She’d invite her.

I know you were just exaggerating when you said you’d come down here with an army, but you are welcome to come if you don’t mind traveling in the middle of winter. I’m sure Papa won’t mind if you pay us a visit. Of course, the trouble here will be over before you could manage to get here, so he might wonder at your reason for coming. You don’t suppose he might think you were interested in a reconciliation, do you?

Cassie decided to end the letter right there. She knew her mother well, and after reading that last question, Catherine Stuart would most likely rip the letter up and toss it into the nearest fire. She could also imagine her mother’s verbal response to the question. “Reconcile with that faithless whoremonger? When I’m dead and buried, and you can tell him I said so!”

Cassie had been telling him or telling her what the other had to say for as long as she could remember. If there was no one around to relay their conversations through, would they break down and speak to each other? No. One or the other of them — depending on which one was the most determined to say something— would search until he or she found someone who would speak for them.

Cassie pushed herself away from the desk, stretching, and then looked down at Marabelle. “At least that’s one worry out of the way — for the moment,” she told the cat. “Now if the Peacemaker would just show up to solve the other, we might be able to stay until spring as planned.”

She was putting all her hopes in her grandpa’s friend, but she had good reason to do so. Once she’d seen him say a few words to a man who was in a murderous rage, and he had him laughing within five minutes. His talent for soothing folks was incredible, and he’d need all of that talent for the animosity she’d stirred up.

The Double C Ranch wasn’t hard to locate. If you rode due north out of town as directed, you sort of ran into it. But it wasn’t what Angel had been expecting. This far south, most ranchers took a cue from their Mexican neighbors and built the Spanish-style adobe houses that helped to ward off the worst of the summer heat.

What Angel rode up to was a two-story wooden house of mansion size in a design more common in the Northwest. A half-dozen steps led up to a porch that surrounded the lower floor and was wide enough to accommodate chairs, rockers, and even a two-seater wooden swing in each corner. A balcony with double doors that opened onto it from what he assumed were bedrooms circled the second floor of the house and shaded the porch below.

The house seemed vaguely familiar to him, as if he’d seen it before, though he’d never come this far south before. The outbuildings, or what he’d seen of them before he got this close, were spread out behind the main house, so that twenty feet from the front of the house, you couldn’t tell that this was a working ranch. Even the carriage drawn up in front was more like the fancy rigs you’d see in a large city than the smaller buckboards favored in the country.

Angel got no farther than that twenty feet when the front door opened and a black cat the size of a mountain lion was suddenly loping in his direction. He had no time to wonder where the hell it had come from — it was inconceivable that it had come from inside the house— before he was fighting to control his terrified mount and reach for his gun at the same time.

He hadn’t quite reached his gun before his hat flew off his head to the accompaniment of a shot, and he heard, “Don’t even think about it, mister.”

Angel had only seconds to make up his mind as his eyes went to the speaker to find a woman with a gun trained on him, then back to the cat, which had been somewhat arrested by the shot and wasn’t coming at him quite so quickly now. But it was still coming, and his horse was getting desperate, sidestepping, wildly tossing its head, and finally rearing up on its hind legs.

While he was fighting to keep his seat— he was damned if he was going to face that enormous animal on the ground — the woman spoke again, one word. When his horse had all four hooves back on the ground, he saw that the cat had stopped and was just sitting there now, not five feet away, looking up at him with large yellow eyes.

Marabelle, she’d said, in a tone meant to be obeyed. He hadn’t heard her wrong. Marabelle… and he did something he never did, something he couldn’t afford to do in his line of work. He got mad and showed it.

“Lady, if you don’t get that animal out of my sight immediately,” he gritted out in what was by force of habit a very moderate tone, “I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

She seemed to take exception to that, probably because she was the one holding the gun — still trained on him. “You aren’t in a position to—”

What happened took only seconds, Angel palming his gun and sending off one shot that knocked the weapon from her hand, her cry of “Son of a bitch!” as she shook her stinging fingers, the cat snarling, loudly, in response to her cry, and Angel’s horse starting to buck wildly in response to the cat’s snarl. Angel ended up in the dirt this time, the horse lit out for the next county, and the now hissing cat was no more than a foot away from him before she said it again, that one word that stopped the feline immediately. Marabelle.

He had a mind to shoot it anyway. He had a mind to shoot her, too. He couldn’t remember when he’d been so out of control of his emotions. An idiot could surmise that the cat, whatever it was, belonged to her. A pet. It had to be a pet to obey her like that. And she’d let it out to terrify his horse, terrify him, too, he didn’t doubt.

Even as angry as he was, and realizing that the cat had to be tame, or somewhat tame, he still had considerable courage to take his eyes off an animal that size that was sitting no more than a foot away, especially with him down on the ground with it, the two of them eyeball-to-eyeball. But he did it, found her again, still up on the porch, and narrowed his eyes on her.

She’d managed to retrieve her gun and was holding it in her other hand, the hand with the sore fingers squeezed between her arm and her side. It was doubtful the gun would shoot now without a visit to a gunsmith first, but she didn’t seem to think of that and was pointing the damn thing at him again.

“I’ll tell you right now that my aim’s as good as yours, mister, but I won’t have to shoot you. You move that weapon you’re holding even a quarter inch in my direction, and Marabelle will tear you to pieces.”

Whether she could hit what she aimed at was debatable. Shooting his hat off could have been deliberate, just to get his attention, or she could have been trying to kill him and missed. The second threat he didn’t doubt, however. But she had to be afraid of him to issue a double threat like that. Well, she’d seen what he was capable of. He’d disarmed her when she’d had her gun pointed right at him and his had still been holstered. And she had good reason to fear him right now, as angry as he was.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m putting my gun away with this thing breathing down my neck.” They could have had a standoff at that point, neither willing to budge an inch. In fact, several long moments of silence passed before Angel decided he’d rather get rid of the cat, so he added grudgingly, “Call it off, lady, and maybe we’ll talk.”

Her chin rose a notch. “There won’t be any talking, since you’ll be leaving. And you can tell them they had no reason to bring in a fast gun.”

“They?”

“Whichever of them hired you.”

“No one hired me, lady. Lewis Pickens sent me to—”

“Well, for God’s sake,” she cut in, and lowered her weapon. “Why didn’t you say so to begin with?” And then: “Marabelle, come here, baby. He’s harmless.”

This had to be the first time Angel had ever been called harmless since he’d reached manhood. He didn’t take exception to it. He waited to see if the animal would obey, and damned if the large head didn’t swing around to look at the woman, then the long, sleek body slowly followed as the cat ambled across the yard and went up the steps. Angel let out a sigh, but he didn’t put his gun away until the feline was inside the house.

“You can go back to the kitchen, Maria,” the woman said to someone just inside the door, adding before she closed it, “Do you actually know how to shoot that rifle?”

Angel cringed. He’d had another gun trained on him and hadn’t even sensed it. He was getting careless. No, his senses had all been attuned to that monstrous black animal and that idiot woman on the porch — please, God, don’t let her be Cassandra Stuart.

She was coming down the steps toward him now. For the first time he noticed her fancy attire, a long black coat with fur trimming over ice-blue lace at her throat, and five layers of blue pleated ruffles in the skirt, which was seen only from her knees to her toes. A small beaver hat was perched at a jaunty angle on dark brown hair. Citified clothes, to be sure, but the incongruity of the outfit was that she wore a gun holster on the outside of the coat.

She slipped the gun into that holster just before she held out her hand to him. “I’m Cassandra Stuart. Will Mr. Pickens be arriving soon?”

Angel ignored the hand, unsure what she expected him to do with it. There was even a smile that came with it, as if she hadn’t shot at him, sent that man-eating cat after him, and run off his horse. He ignored the smile, too.