Free Arizona Embrace by Leigh Greenwood Page A

Jeb for one hour to realize I had made a mistake. Only problem is, there’s no way for a girl to escape her mistakes. A boy can go West, but what can a girl do?”

Chapter Five
     
    “Run away and become an actress,” Trinity answered, his devil-may-care smile banishing the solemnity of their discussion. “With that glorious head of red hair and your wonderful skin, men would pay to see you even if you had a stammer and a squint.”
    Victoria nearly choked on a gurgle of laughter. It was just as well—it helped to disguise her extreme pleasure at Trinity’s modest compliment. She felt herself grow warm about the face; something fluttered in her stomach; her nerve endings were suddenly alive and sending messages at a frantic rate.
    “I could see a stammer. It might be thought affecting, but surely not a squint.”
    “A squint. They would all think you were winking at them.”
    “Are men so susceptible to a wink?”
    “They are when a woman like you does the winking.”
    Victoria longed to have Trinity explain to her why her winks would be so entrancing, but she knew that would be indulging in pure vanity. With a considerable effort, she compelled herself to forego that pleasure, but the effort brought forth a sigh of regret.
    “Unfortunately I didn’t have your bold vision. I reached the conclusion I had no way out.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I didn’t do anything. It was done for me, though it nearly cost me my life.”
    “Do you know who murdered your husband?”
    “No. Everybody was around, but nobody was there.”
    The sound of a rider coming toward them along the trail distracted Trinity’s attention. He thought nothing of it until he saw Victoria tense and grow pale. She pulled her horse off the trail and into the shadow of a large boulder. Seconds later Buc rounded a bend up ahead, and Trinity watched Victoria visibly relax.
    The men of Mountain Valley Ranch weren’t the only ones wary of strangers.
    “What are you doing over this way?” Victoria asked. “I thought you were at the other end of the valley.”
    “I came to ride home with you. We can’t have Trinity hogging all your time. Pretty soon hell start to think it’s his right, and the rest of us won’t get so much as a smile.”
    “I don’t think Mr. Smith is particularly anxious to monopolize my company. I even had to take him to task for not talking to me. There were times when I thought he’d forgotten I was here.”
    “He’d have to be dead to do that,” Buc said. “There’s not a man who’s ever set eyes on you who isn’t counting the minutes until hell see you again.”
    Trinity dropped back to allow them to ride abreast. After a few minutes he didn’t even hear Buc’s fulsome compliments. He had wanted to hear Victoria’s version of what happened that night, and he cursed the jealous temperament that made Buc ride thirty miles across the valley for a thirty minute ride home with Victoria.
    He was also extremely angry at himself for mentioning Queenie. He had told himself it didn’t matter any more. He hadn’t spoken of her to a living soul since his father’s death.
    Now, in one brief, unanticipated conversation, the bitterness and anger came spurting to the surface. But worse than that, he had been so weak as to tell it to someone else. To another woman .
    In all the years since it happened, he’d never lost control. What kind of hold did this woman have over him? He’d never manage to fulfill his mission if he didn’t get his response to Victoria under control.
    Or cut it off altogether.
    “Tell me about the places you’ve been,” Victoria asked.
    They were on their way home after another long day and had stopped at one of Victoria’s favorite spots, an outcropping of rock which afforded them a view up and down the length of the valley.
    They stood side by side, next to their horses, not looking at each other—that would have been too dangerous—but at the distant mountains. In the pristine mountain