Skye Read online

  She was sitting cross-legged on the ground, tickling their noses with blades of grass and delighting in their amusement, when Megan came splashing across the creek, riding her small brown-and-white pinto mare, Speckles. A slender, vibrantly energetic redhead, Megan was Skye’s confidant, and the two of them, the children of feuding brothers, had all but grown up together back in Virginia on their grandparents’ prosperous farm. Unlike Bridget and Christy, who got along most of the time but rarely sought out each other’s company—and that alone was an improvement, considering the way they’d scrapped as children—Megan and Skye were best friends as well as cousins. The two of them often panned for gold together, and Megan had used her share of the proceeds to buy Speckles.

  Letting the mare’s reins dangle, Megan plopped down in the grass and hoisted Gideon onto her lap.

  “I had to get away,” she confided in a dramatic whisper, as though her elder sister might hear her from way over there, on the other side of the water, up the hill and inside the house Trace and Zachary and their friends had made of an old Indian lodge with a room added on just for Megan. “Christy’s in a pet.” Megan brushed a wisp of copper-penny hair back from her forehead, and her green eyes sparkled with mingled love and irritation. “I declare, ever since she lost her waist, she’s been impossible. We’ll all be glad when that baby comes.” Christy and Zachary’s first child was due soon, any day, in fact, and while Skye knew they were both thrilled, it was also true that pregnancy didn’t seem to do a lot for Christy’s disposition. Zachary was the only one who could really manage her, and he’d been away a lot lately, with a posse, trying to track down whoever was robbing the freight wagons and stagecoaches between Virginia City and Primrose Creek.

  “Bridget was like that,” Skye confided. “Cranky, I mean. Last time she was expecting. It’ll pass.”

  Megan sighed heavily. “I suppose,” she said, and then lay back on the cushiony ground and held Gideon up with both hands, causing him to chortle with slobbery good cheer. “She still insists that I go to normal school and earn my teaching certificate so I can always have ‘security.’ ” Rebecca, wanting to share in her brother’s adventures, tugged at Megan’s sleeve until she got a turn, too. “Why can’t Christy understand that things are different now that we’re finally safe, the four of us?” She paused and sighed in a typically theatrical manner. “I’ve grown up and changed my mind about a lot of things. I want to be a stage actress—that’s so much more exciting, don’t you think, than teaching school?”

  They often commiserated, Skye and Megan, being great friends; sometimes Bridget was the object of their frustration, but more often it was Christy. Skye felt especially charitable toward her elder cousin that day, though in truth it worried her a little, for she seemed to know Megan less and less these days. The rest of the family thought her fascination with the stage would pass, but Skye feared it wouldn’t.

  “She wants you to have a good life, that’s all. What’s so terrible about going to normal school, anyway? If you get tired of performing, you’ll have that to fall back on.”

  Megan sat up, sprigs of grass caught in her gleaming hair, and held Rebecca on her lap, while Skye held Gideon. Noah, meanwhile, climbed deftly into the lower limbs of a nearby tree. “I don’t want to learn another thing,” she said in a familiar tone of determination. “At least, not about reading and writing and arithmetic. I want to travel all over the world, acting in plays, wearing splendid, sweeping gowns of velvet and silk, with hoods and tassels, and then come back to Primrose Creek, build a grand house on my share of the land, and live out the rest of my days in glorious notoriety.” She lowered her voice. “ ‘She was once an actress,’ people will say. I might even write my memoirs.”

  “Don’t you want a husband?” Skye asked, though the question was rhetorical because she knew the answer. Skye had business interests of her own to pursue, of course, but she craved a home and a family too and found it hard to comprehend that Megan had decided upon an entirely different path, especially since the two of them had wanted the same things for most of their lives. Skye got a lonely feeling just thinking of the changes in her closest friend.

  “Perhaps,” Megan relented, though grudgingly, “but not for a long, long time. He’d have to be older, with a great deal of money. An admirer, maybe, from my days on the stage.”

  Skye smiled. Megan was fond of Caleb Strand, a good-looking, dark-haired young man, employed as a sawyer with Jake Vigil’s timber company, but he was only one of several suitors, and Megan treated all of them with affectionate disinterest. “What about your property? Surely you don’t want to leave it.” The McQuarrys were Irish at their roots, and love of the land was a part of them, body and spirit, like the penchant for horses and the willingness to put up a fight when one was called for.

  Megan flushed slightly and brushed Rebecca’s downy blond curls with her chin. “It’ll be here when I get back, I reckon,” she said. Her spring-green eyes, inherited from their beautiful grandmother, turned somber. “What about you, Skye? You’d like to marry, I know you would. And you could have a husband like that”—she snapped her fingers for emphasis—“if you weren’t mooning over Jake Vigil all the time.”

  That morning’s encounter with Mr. Vigil had all but convinced Skye that what she’d thought was love for him had probably been a mere infatuation. Still, trying not to think about him was like trying not to breathe, not to let her heart beat. Knowing she’d idealized him, in the privacy of her thoughts since that night he’d rescued her at the dance, from a mere and fallible man into some kind of noble personage didn’t lessen the strength of her emotions at all. “I’m not doing any such thing,” she protested.

  Megan merely smiled.

  “I’m not,” Skye insisted. But she was—wasn’t she? Great Zeus and Jupiter, she wasn’t sure of much of anything anymore.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” Megan said. “Why don’t you just rope him in and hog-tie him and be done with it? He’s surely over his feelings for Christy by now. After all, it’s been more than a year.”

  To Megan, and usually to Skye, too, a year was just shy of forever. That was one of the reasons Megan resisted going away to normal school and Skye wanted to start living like a grown woman. After all, she was eighteen. Lots of women had several children by that age.

  Skye sighed. “That’s just the trouble. I’m not so sure he is over her. The way he talks, McQuarry is another word for obstinate.”

  Megan shrugged. In the town of Primrose Creek, the male population far outnumbered the female, and a pretty young woman could have her pick of husbands. Megan had often pointed out that fact to Skye, forever trying to play the matchmaker. “I don’t suppose you noticed,” she said, “but Mr. Kincaid was quite taken with you.” Megan had introduced her to the shy lumberjack, a newcomer to Primrose Creek, after church the Sunday before. “You could do worse, you know. He’s thirty, and his teeth are excellent. You did notice his teeth?”

  Skye giggled. “You make him sound like a horse up for auction. How are his feet? Maybe I should get him by the shin and lift one up, just to make sure he’s really sturdy.”

  “Good teeth are not to be sneezed at,” Megan said.

  “I should hope not,” Skye agreed.

  Megan laughed and pretended to strike her a blow to the shoulder. This started a rough-and-tumble free-for-all, and soon all of them, babies, Noah, Megan, and Skye, were engaged in a lively mock wrestling match.

  “Lord-a-mercy,” boomed a familiar female voice, and everyone stopped to look up at Caney Blue. “What is all this carryin’ on about?” the tall woman demanded, her dark eyes flashing with good humor. Caney had worked for the McQuarry family as a free woman, back in Virginia, along with her late husband, Titus. When Christy and Megan traveled west to claim their shares of the inheritance, Caney accompanied them. She’d been with them ever since, although she had plans to marry one Mr. Malcolm Hicks one day soon. Although obviously fond of her, Mr. Hicks had proven himself to be a
hard man to wrestle down.

  “Is Christy still in a snit?” Megan asked, getting to her feet. She was holding Rebecca with an easy grace that said she would be a good mother one day, whether she thought so at present or not. “I’m not going home until she’s over it, if she is.”

  “She’s laborin’ to push out that baby,” Caney said. “I was hopin’ Trace would be around, so I could send him out lookin’ for the marshal. It ain’t gonna be long.”

  “Trace is in town,” Skye said.

  “Zounds!” Megan gasped at almost the same time, and her face went so pale that all her freckles seemed to pop out on little springs. “I’ll go and fetch him right this moment!” With that, she thrust little Rebecca at Skye, gathered up Speckles’ reins, and mounted in a single smooth motion. All of Gideon McQuarry’s granddaughters were accomplished horsewomen. He’d seen to that, teaching them all to ride as soon as they could cling to a saddle horn.

  Before anyone could even say good-bye, Megan and the mare were splashing across the creek and up the opposite bank, disappearing into the trees.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Skye asked quietly of Caney. Instinctively, she’d gathered the twins and Noah close to her skirts, as though there were a storm approaching.

  “You just say some prayers,” Caney replied, unruffled. “I’ll head on back. I reckon she’ll be wanting me close by, Miss Christy will.”

  Skye nodded. Her throat felt thick, and she wanted to weep, though her emotions were rooted in happiness, not sorrow. To her, the birth of a child was the greatest possible miracle; she’d imagined herself bearing Mr. Vigil’s babies a thousand times, for all the good pretending did. Well, it was time she got over that foolishness, wasn’t it, and moved on.

  “You’ll send word if you need something?”

  Caney was already headed back across the rustic footbridge Trace had constructed by binding several logs together to span the creek. “You’ll hear me holler out if I do,” she said.

  Jake Vigil stood in his great, elaborate, empty house, gazing out the window at the naked flower gardens and trying to work out what had gone wrong between himself and Skye McQuarry. He was shy, it was true, but he was normally a persuasive man, able to make others see reason, even if they tended toward the hot-headed side, the way she did.

  The faintest, most grudging of smiles curved his mouth as he remembered Skye standing there before him, arms akimbo, guarding her patch of ground. She was young, but she was pretty, and she was nubile. He remembered clearly how beautiful, how downright womanly, she’d been that night last fall at the dance, and because of that, he was able to see past her shapeless clothes and sloppy hat. Getting by her willful nature would take a little more doing.

  They were at an impasse, he and the lovely Miss McQuarry. Sooner or later, someone would have to give in, and it damned well wasn’t going to be him. One way or the other, he’d get what he wanted—with just one notable exception, he always had.

  If he couldn’t persuade Skye to sell him the timber rights he needed, he was bound to lose everything. He thrust a hand through his hair. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d started over; at thirty-four years of age, Jake had taken his share of hard knocks and then some, and he knew he could survive just about anything. That didn’t mean he relished the idea.

  After some time had passed, he turned from the window and sank into the richly upholstered leather chair behind his broad mahogany desk. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, thinking about Christy McQuarry—now Mrs. Zachary Shaw. The image of her had kept him awake nights for the better part of three months, and he’d consumed a river of whiskey in a vain effort to put her out of his mind. Now, all of a sudden, he couldn’t quite recall what she looked like. His thoughts kept straying back to Skye, with her chestnut hair and flashing, intelligent brown eyes. She was infuriating; that was why he couldn’t get her out of his mind, he decided. She reminded him a little of Amanda.

  Amanda. Now, there was a lady he would just as soon never think of again. The last time he’d seen her, she’d shot him in the shoulder with a derringer and left him to bleed to death. Though she’d taken the opportunity to clean out his cash box before leaving, of course.

  He smiled again. He sure did know how to pick his women. First Amanda, trouble on two very shapely legs but good at pretense, and after her, Christy, who’d lured him to the altar and then abandoned him there to take up with Zachary Shaw. His smile faded. He’d made up his mind on that rainy, dismal occasion of his thwarted marriage that he’d guard his heart from then on and content himself with the attentions of the sporting ladies, over at the Golden Garter and Diamond Lil’s, and he meant to abide by the decision.

  Whether he wanted to or not.

  Chapter

  2

  Y ou could marry her,” Malcolm Hicks said, sounding just as calm as if he’d suggested a sensible course of action. “Miss Skye, I mean.”

  Jake leaned against the framework of his office door, one arm braced at shoulder level, one thumb pressed against his chin. It was a stance he often assumed when he was flummoxed—which was more and more often, it seemed. His gaze sliced to Hicks, who was behind the desk, going over a ledger book. “I’d sooner court a prickly cactus than that woman. Besides, she probably wouldn’t have me.”

  Malcolm wiped his pen thoughtfully and then laid it down on the blotter. A black man, born a slave on some steamy plantation in Georgia, he’d managed to get himself educated by hook and by crook, and because Caney Blue had come along and set about courting him first thing, he considered himself an expert on matters of the heart. “You’re not only a damn fool,” he said easily, “you’re blind, too. That girl thinks you pull the moon behind you on a string. Everybody knows it but you.”

  A fist clenched around Jake’s stomach, eased off again. He wanted to believe Malcolm, and, at one and the same time, he didn’t want to. “She’s a McQuarry,” he said, as though that put the whole matter to rest. For him it did, to a large degree, though he could already tell that Malcolm wasn’t going to accommodate him by agreeing.

  Malcolm smiled and took up his pen again, pretending to ruminate. “That she surely is. They’re thoroughbreds, them McQuarry women, and that’s a fact. Miss Skye’s strong and proud—she marries a weak man, she’s going to be downright miserable to the end of her days, and so is he. Now, on the other hand, if she were to marry a fine, substantial feller such as you—”

  “Forget it,” Jake snapped. He was fresh out of patience, having used up a fair amount earlier in the day in the skirmish with that little troublemaker. He thrust himself away from the door frame. Away from the thought of being married to Skye McQuarry, with her lively intelligence, her fierce determination, her womanly body, and all the enticing mysteries of her spirit. He pointed to the open ledger. “You just keep your mind on the books. And while you’re at it, find me a way to meet those notes of mine without supplying ten thousand railroad ties first.”

  Malcolm’s smile went dark, a shadow falling across cold ground. “Ain’t no way to do that,” he said.

  Jake sighed and left the room. He’d go back to the mill and work until his muscles hurt enough to take his thoughts off this new, strange soreness in the region of his heart, or better yet, maybe he’d take another crack at finding that bay stallion.

  Skye lay on her belly in the high grass blanketing the ridge, watching as the magnificent stallion stood, head high, mane dancing against his sleek neck. He was long-legged and solid through the chest, built to outrun the wind. She smiled, but a little sadly. It was almost a travesty to capture such a splendid animal and break him to ride. Provided, of course, that he could be caught. Sometimes, watching him, Skye thought he wasn’t real at all but an illusion, the mirage of a dream.

  He raised his head and turned toward her, probably catching her scent on the breeze. For a long moment, they simply gazed at each other. Then, offering a loud whinny, as if in friendly challenge, he turned and loped away, disappearing into a t
ree-lined draw like a spirit.

  Skye lingered there, in the spot where she’d crushed the grass, for a long while after he’d gone. It was something of a shock when she came to herself and realized that she’d stopped thinking about the stallion at some point, and Jake Vigil had sneaked into her mind instead.

  She rolled over onto her back and gazed up at a blue and cloudless sky. She oughtn’t to tarry. Christy had given birth to a baby boy the night before, and her husband, Zachary, still hadn’t returned. Skye had promised to spell Caney and Megan for a while and sit with Christy and the new baby.

  It would be hours until nightfall, but the moon was visible, transparent as cheesecloth, and she wondered if there would be any use in wishing on it. She’d already tried talking to stars, all to no avail. Jake might want the timber growing on her land, but beyond that, he’d probably never given her a thought.

  She sighed, plucked a blade of grass, and clasped it lightly between her teeth. She supposed she could trade the timber for a wedding ring and hope Jake would come to love her in time, as such men, in such marriages, often came to love their wives, and vice versa, but the mere idea chafed her pride raw. It would be bad enough if he accepted such a proposal; if he were to turn her down, she’d be too mortified to set foot in the town of Primrose Creek ever again.

  The sound of a wagon, echoing from below, distracted her from her musings; she sat up and turned in the opposite direction, squinting to make out the team of mules and the rig, lumbering along the narrow trail. A load of freight, probably bound for the general store or Mr. Vigil’s lumber mill. He was forever sending to San Francisco or Denver or even Chicago for some fancy piece of equipment.

  Skye blinked. She could make out Mr. Harriman’s bulky shape, there in the wagon box, the reins clasped in his meaty hands. Beside him, a little boy sat clutching the hard board seat, white-knuckled, his brown hair gleaming in the sun. Even from far away, she could tell that the child was skinny and pale, and an ache of sympathy burrowed deep into an inner wall of her heart.