The Master Fiddler Part 3

Pivoting sharply, Jacquie tilted her head challengingly to one side. "I can't think of a thing you could possibly want to discuss with me. I know you don't intend to apologize for your rudeness yesterday." But there was a questioning lift to her voice on the last statement.

"No, I'm not going to apologize," he answered smoothly.

Her lips tightened and she spun toward the door. "Then we can't have anything to talk about."

If he had apologized, she discovered, she had the eerie feeling she would have completely succ.u.mbed to his dangerous attraction.

The gift-shop door she yanked open wouldn't slam shut. It was held by his strong hand. She might not want to hear what Choya Barnett wanted to say to her, but he was definitely following her with the intention that she should.

In the shop, she stopped, searching impatiently for the exit door to the cemetery. A strong hand impersonally took hold of her elbow and guided her to the right.

"This way," he told her.

Aware of the curious and interested looks from the clerk and other tourists as they made their way to the exit door, Jacquie tried to ease the look of displeasure from her face. Outdoors, they had traveled several paces before his hand fell away.

Taking deep, calming breaths, Jacquie resolved to remain as composed and controlled as he was and as indifferent to his presence as he was to hers. At a strolling pace, she started wandering among the tombstone markers, the wind-and-sand-smoothed rocks making an uneven path for her feet. Sage and cactus and twisting, gnarled bushes grew rampant in the graveyard, nearly obscuring some markers.

The emptiness of the surrounding countryside stretched away from the rocky hill where the remains of the Western frontiersmen lay. The land appeared barren and virtually unmarked by the pa.s.sage of time and civilization. The ghosts of Apache warriors walked the distant mountains that rose into the blue sky.

Shielding her eyes with a hand against the climbing angle of the morning sun, Jacquie studied the mountain-crested horizon. Choya Barnett was standing behind her and slightly to her right. An inner radar seemed to pinpoint his location when her peripheral vision failed to see him.

"The Dragoon Mountains," he informed her, obviously following the direction of her gaze.

"That's where your ranch is, isn't it?" Her gaze ran the length of the mountains, her interest increased in spite of a silent effort to deny it.

"Robbie told you?"

"Yes." Jacquie glanced over her shoulder to bring the impa.s.sive face into her vision. His measured look was difficult to hold. She turned the rest of the way around, pretending an interest in a plain wooden cross at the head of a rocky grave. "As a matter of fact he did tell me."

"It's Robbie I wanted to talk to you about."

"Oh?" Aquamarine eyes darted coolly to the gold mask of his watchful gaze. "What about Robbie?"

"He's going to be spending the day in town again. Tombstone is too small for the two of you not to meet sometime."

"And?" Jacquie prodded, finding a seething anger beginning to build.

"And I would prefer that you don't encourage him to become more friendly," he stated.

"What am I supposed to do?" she challenged him icily. "Tell him to get lost?"

"I'm certain someone like you can push him casually away without resorting to deliberate cruelty." There was a faintly contemptuous curl of his upper lip.

"Someone like me?" Jacquie arched an eyebrow in his direction. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Miss Grey, that combination of corn silk hair, turquoise eyes and a curving figure is sure to have brought you a string of admirers, some wanted and some not." Cynical mockery edged his low voice. "You undoubtedly have had a great deal of experience in tactfully telling an unwanted admirer to get lost. A little boy should be easy to handle."

"Why should I?" she shrugged, moving nonchalantly on to the next rock-mounded grave. "I mean other than the fact you obviously don't like me."

His jaw tightened. "My son has the painful habit of forming pa.s.sionately intense attachments to people, especially strangers. He expects them to feel the same. When they leave, as you will some time tomorrow, he finds it impossible to understand why he's been rejected."

"I don't think I believe you, Mr. Barnett," Jacquie declared boldly. "At least, not totally. Robbie doesn't strike me as the type of child to go running around falling in love with strangers indiscriminately."

"He discriminates," Choya answered tautly, a vague cryptic note in his words.

For a moment she could only look at him curiously, trying to fathom the strange reply. Then the reason dawned on her. She should have guessed it before, but he had caught her off guard.

"Robbie only chooses blond-haired girls," Jacquie said softly, waiting for a sign to flicker across the strong face to indicate that she had guessed correctly. She couldn't be certain, but she thought his expression hardened. "Do I resemble his mother very much?" Her eyes gleamed brightly as they unflinchingly held the piercing alertness of his.

Surprisingly Choya was the first to look away. His slashing male profile was sharply defined by the blueness of the sky. Yet he didn't seem disturbed or disconcerted by her guess.

"Robbie obviously told you about Rosemary, too," he said thinly.

"He didn't mention his mother's name." An intense curiosity swept over Jacquie, surging through her veins with an overwhelming desire to find out how much she looked like Choya Barnett's late wife. "Am I very much like her?" she repeated.

Again the full brunt of his topaz-bright gaze was focused on her, skimming her features in quick a.s.sessment. Jacquie discovered she was holding her breath. A protest welled inside that she could look like anyone but herself.

"No," he denied in a quiet but emphatic voice. His attention shifted to a strand of pale, golden hair, which had fallen forward across her breast, and which contrasted with the lightweight blouse that was the same brilliant turquoise color as her eyes. "Your hair is the same shade of moonbeams trapped in a mountain pool," he murmured almost absently. His gaze was hard when it slashed back to her face. "But the comparison ends there. My wife had brown eyes and freckles sprinkled across her nose. She was small and delicately built, but every inch a tomboy. None of those descriptions would fit you."

"I quite agree," Jacquie answered, taking a deep breath and turning away. She had always been quite proud of her medium height and her slender, if definitely curvaceous, figure. He made them sound like a handicap. While she liked the outdoors, she found inside activities just as enjoyable.

"Unfortunately Robbie was too young when Rosemary was killed for him to have any memories of her. To him she's a beautiful blond woman in a photograph," Choya Barnett added in the same controlled even tone.

"Killed? How?" The question was out before Jacquie considered the wisdom of probing deeper into his personal life.

"A car accident not that it really concerns you." There was a slight shake of her head in apology. "I'm sorry."

"For prying, or that my wife is dead?"

Jacquie tensed. He was baiting her, trying to put her in her place. He would find she wasn't as malleable as he would like.

"For neither," she tilted her chin defiantly. "I wasn't conscious of prying, and only in an abstract way could I truthfully be sorry your wife died."

Choya smiled without humor. "Then why apologize?"

She didn't actually know why she had apologized. It had been an instinctive reaction. To admit that would only prompt further mockery from him. She had to bluff her way through.

"If I'm sorry about anything," Jacquie said slowly, considering her words as she issued them, "then it's the fact that Robbie is trying to transfer his need for a mother's love to me. I can't be blamed for that and I don't think it's fair that you should."

"I don't blame you." Choya stood before her, his bland expression unchanging as if carved in granite. "I'm merely asking you not to encourage him."

"Haven't you become tired of running around warning any strange blonde to stay away from your son?" She forced a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt to her lips. "What Robbie is really seeking is the gentleness of a woman. With only you and his grandfather for family, he's surrounded by men. The solution is simple I would have thought you would have solved it by now. Why don't you get married again, Mr. Barnett? Then you wouldn't be placing me or you in this awkward position."

A hard sound almost like laughter came from his throat. "Are you advocating that I marry someone simply to provide female companionship for my son?" Jacquie had no intention of falling into the trap he had set. Her eyes danced with subdued mischief.

"I'm sure you would derive some compensation out of the arrangement as well as Robbie."

"You make marriage sound very cold and calculating. Is that the way you see it?" Choya countered with a watchful narrowing of his gaze.

"No." In her mind, Jacquie pictured the marriage of her parents, an unusual combination of endearing friendship, combustible personalities and ready laughter. "That isn't my idea of marriage at all, but I thought it might be yours."

"Did you now?" A thumb hooked itself through a belt loop in an aloofly challenging manner. "And what is your idea of marriage?"

There was a complacent shimmer in her aquamarine eyes. "That, Mr. Barnett, is between me and the man I marry, whenever he comes along."

The hard line of his mouth curved into a cold, sardonic smile. "What is your policy in the meantime, Miss Grey? To love them all?" The gold fire of his gaze burned over the jutting roundness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "You can't land every man who walks by."

Again Jacquie felt a surge of antagonism. It was on the tip of her tongue to inform him that going braless was the fashion, but she checked the impulse. Using her long fingernails, she raked the silken silver screen of her hair away from her face and cast him a deliberately provocative glance.

"No, but you can try," she murmured, and turned away, but not before she noticed the flash of disgust.

Inwardly she shrugged that it didn't matter. From the moment they had met, Choya Barnett had condemned her as a tramp, so it would be useless to try to convince him otherwise. Besides, there was little excitement in this isolated town, so she might as well make some of her own. She'd be leaving in the morning.

With an exaggerated sway of her hips, she picked her way along the wind-and-sand-eroded rocks that formed the path at the foot of the graves. There was a scattering of Chinese names on the headstones. Others were marked with a name and a date and the starkly simple epitaph Killed by Indians. Only one drew a shudder from Jacquie. It was the grave of a man who had known the swift and not always sure justice of the frontier West and was Hanged by Mistake.

At the tombstones of the Clantons and the McLaurys, Jacquie read the inscription with surprise, then instinctively she turned to the man who silently followed her.

She asked him for an explanation.

"It says they were murdered. Weren't they killed in a gunfight at the OK Corral?" she questioned.

"Yes." A sun-browned hand cupped a match flame to his cigarette, protecting the fire from the teasing breeze. "But the Clantons were very popular in Tombstone. The same can't be said for Wyatt Earp and his brothers. For a while there was considerable question whether it was a fair fight."

"Was it?" Jacquie tipped her head to the side curiously.

"It depends on whether you were talking to one of the Clantons's friends or an Earp supporter." Choya exhaled a cloud of smoke, pinching the match between his fingers. "The general consensus now seems to be that it was."

As she digested the information, Jacquie moved toward the entrance to the gift shop. The long, cylindrical stalks of a cactus plant caught her attention and she paused beside it.

Its wayward growth resembled a pincushion, minus the cushion.

"What kind of a cactus is this?" Her lashes veiled the dancing gleam in her eyes.

"An ocotillo," Choya answered, p.r.o.nouncing the double / sound as a y. The faint narrowing of his eyes revealed that he had guessed she had been wondering if it was the cactus of his namesake. "The fence separating the parking lot from the cemetery is made from the stalks of the ocotillo. It was a common practice years ago to make solid stick corrals from the ocotillo because of the absence of lumber in this desert region."

"It doesn't look very substantial," Jacquie mused, studying the parking-lot fence.

"The thorns are just about as effective as barbed wire."

"I suppose so," she agreed, and walked on. "You still haven't given me your answer, Miss Grey." He reached around her and opened the door to the gift shop.

For an instant, the carved male features were close to her own face and Jacquie's heart turned over. A searing fire flashed through her veins. The impulse again returned with instinctive swiftness to feel the hard pressure of his mouth against her own.

This time she didn't give in to the desire as she had done the last time. The totally elemental reaction she had to him whenever he was near unnerved her.

"What answer?" The blankness was not deliberate. Jacquie was gaining time for her senses to recover so she could think clearly.

The clerk in the gift shop glanced up when they entered. Choya smiled thinly and nodded, a flicker of impatience in his tawny gaze. There was no one else in the shop and Jacquie guessed by his silence that he didn't want the clerk overhearing their conversation.

His hand firmly grasped her elbow and escorted her out the door to the parking lot, releasing her immediately. Her skin tingled where his fingers had made their imprint.

"I asked that you wouldn't encourage my son, and I want your answer that you won't," Choya demanded calmly as they paused beside the jeep.

Her tongue ran thoughtfully over the whiteness of her teeth. The indifferent set of his expression prodded her into a boldness that bordered on rashness. She was not accustomed to being spurned.

"What would you do if I don't give you the answer you want?" she challenged with a sweep of her lashes.

There was a faint distension in his nostrils, but no other outward display of emotion. "What is your answer?" Choya Barnett refused to acknowledge her question.

The temptation was there to let him wonder, to ignore his question as he had ignored hers. It would anger him, she knew. If he became angry enough, he might... With an impatient toss of her silvery blond hair, she looked away from the pinning fascination of his tawny gold gaze, dangerously compelling.

"If I see Robbie, I'll be polite and friendly," she declared. Her turquoise green eyes snapped back to his face, irritated that she was so attracted to the man as to desire his anger rather than his indifference. "But I a.s.sure you I will make it clear that I'm leaving tomorrow so clear that it will be just short of the point of bluntness. Does that satisfy you?"

There was a glitter of lazy satisfaction in his eyes. "Yes, it does. Would you like a lift back to your motel?"

Jacquie pursed her lips together, wishing to deny his offer, but the painful memory of the sharp gravel on the roadside insisted that logically she must accept.

"If I wouldn't be taking you out of your way," she agreed with a saccharine smile.

Now that Choya Barnett had received the answer he wanted, he didn't appear to think it was necessary to maintain a conversation. The ride was short and Jacquie kept her attention diverted from the man behind the wheel. But she couldn't ignore the virility emanating from the muscularly firm body of the driver. Only when he had let her out in front of her motel room did she allow her eyes to watch him, and then it was from the window of her room.

For nearly two hours, she alternately paced the confines of the small room and lounged on the bed. Her restlessness increased with each ticking second until she felt she would scream if she stayed in the room another minute.

The subconscious decision not to appear in town at all was cast aside. So it would displease Choya Barnett if she ran into his son in town so what? She had not promised that she wouldn't see Robbie, only that she wouldn't encourage his friendship. There was no need to voluntarily condemn herself into making a prison out of her motel room.

Sliding her rose-shaded sungla.s.ses onto her nose, she picked up her oversized leather bag and walked out, locking the door behind her. With a map from the motel room pointing out the buildings of historical significance, she wandered along the old streets, pausing in front of some buildings and entering others that were open.

Once she saw Robbie aimlessly hobbling along the board sidewalk and she darted into a building before he saw her. Truthfully she would have welcomed the company of the small boy perhaps because she recognized the wild, impetuous streak within Robbie that had prompted him to ride a bull calf. It was a trait she shared with him, that and the occasional loneliness of being an only child.

Late in the afternoon the rumblings of her stomach reminded Jacquie that she hadn't eaten since breakfast. The painted sign of a restaurant beckoned her down Allen Street, and she was nearly at the door when she heard the thumping of a pair of crutches behind her.. "Jacquie!" Robbie's voice called her name eagerly. "Wait!"

Biting her lip, she started to ignore him, then realized it was useless. He was too close. Fixing a bland smile on her face, she stopped and pivoted around.

"h.e.l.lo, Robbie," she greeted him politely, but taking care not to sound too warm. "How are you today?"

"Fine. I was beginning to think I wouldn't see you today. Where have you been?"

"In my motel room mostly," Jacquie lied.

"What were you doing there?" Pale brown eyes rounded curiously.

"Resting. I have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow," keeping to her promise that she would make it clear to the boy that she was leaving.