A Marriage Deal With The Outlaw
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“Probably not,” she agreed. He watched her, a hint of a smile still curving his lips. She felt herself blushing even though she couldn’t figure out why she would, or why her skin felt sensitive wherever his gaze touched. “Still, in the future, I’d appreciate it if you ask for a moment of my time. It’s disconcerting to find you in my room.”
He didn’t reply right away. Instead, he kept watching her with those eyes that were as intense as they were teasing. “I need your promise not to speak to anyone about what happened on the train. Don’t mention the name Reyes. If the man I’m looking for is in the area, I’d rather he not know that I’m here and looking for him. It’d be best if the wedding guests don’t know about that part of my life.”
“But that man, Bennett, mentioned that he’d hurt your friend. Given him that nasty scar on his face. What did he mean by that?”
Castillo stared at her as he shook his head. “That’s not my story to tell.”
Despite her curiosity, that seemed fair. He’d explained the incident on the train and that was all she was entitled to know. “If that’s the entirety of the story, then why do you have someone stationed in my father’s room ready to harm him at your signal?”
He surprised her by smiling broadly, and it transformed his already-handsome face into something breathtaking. Gone was the edge of darkness and the tension. He was relaxed and looked like a man lounging in his bedroom before turning in. She imagined him with a snifter of brandy, smiling at her and talking before they retired to their bed for the evening and...dear Lord, she was losing her grip on reality.
“I lied to you about that. I couldn’t think of another way to make you listen to me. I’m sorry.” He leaned forward then, his forearms on his knees as the smile fell from his lips and his eyes implored her for her cooperation. “I need you to promise me that you won’t tell anyone what happened.”
She’d never been so relieved to have been lied to. Caroline opened her mouth to assure him that she’d never tell anyone. It wasn’t her place to gossip, and besides that, it sounded like it’d be safer for everyone if the man Castillo was hunting wasn’t on the loose. The sooner he was found the better. But then she struck on an idea that made even more sense.
She sat in stunned silence as the plan formed in her mind. It was a bit devious, but her parents had pushed this upon her. What choice had they left her with? Marry someone she barely knew, which could very well ruin the rest of her life? No, this would be better.
“Carolina?” That name spoken in a whisper in his deep, raspy voice made butterflies take flight in her belly. The fluttering of their dainty wings sent ripples of awareness out along her nerve endings. He said the name using the Spanish pronunciation. Caroleena. She quite liked it. “Your promise.”
Licking her dry lips, she said, “Perhaps we could trade. My silence for your cooperation.” Her pulse beat like the wings of a hummingbird against her wrists.
Castillo sat up straight, and his jaw tightened as his hands moved to rest on his thighs. He was clearly unhappy that she’d make any sort of demand on him. Caroline actually did feel a little twinge of guilt, but she managed to squash it down when she remembered the alternative was marriage.
“What sort of cooperation?” he asked.
“Would you allow me to explain a bit about myself before I tell you?” At his curt nod, she continued, “My father is a physician. He has a small practice in Boston and runs a clinic that serves some of the poorer areas of the city. He’s also on the board of a hospital. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been fascinated by his work. I thought his ability to heal was otherworldly, until I grew up enough to understand there was a whole area of study behind it.”
She smiled at the memory of herself as a child, amazed when he’d taken the wrappings off the arm of one of the servants’ children. The little boy had broken it in a fall from a tree, and Caroline had been sure it’d come out of the wrappings bent and misshapen. But the forearm had been perfectly straight, and she’d been convinced her father was a sorcerer.
“I’ve spent countless hours with him, years observing him work with patients. I worked as his assistant for a few years and have seen patients with minor ailments on my own. I’ve known my entire life that I want to be a physician, too. Thankfully, I have that chance. I’ve been admitted to Boston University’s medical school, and I’m scheduled to start in September.”
He’d been watching her solemnly as she spoke, but now he sat back, relaxing again, though his brow was furrowed. No doubt he was wondering what any of this had to do with him. He rubbed his fingers over his mouth, his fingertips settling on his chin where she could see the beginnings of a bit of stubble. “Congratulations.”
He didn’t say anything else, but Caroline let out a breath, only just realizing that she’d been waiting for him to laugh at her, or worse. Most people looked at her with mild amusement when she told them of her plan to become a physician, as if she were a child they were humoring. Sometimes they went on to lecture her on a woman’s duty being in the home.
“Thank you. Unfortunately, my plan has hit a snag.” She took a deep breath and swallowed against the unexpected well of emotion in her throat. The pain of betrayal was so new and raw that she still found it difficult to talk about.
“The problem is that my parents have decided that they want me to marry first. I’m their only child. I think they’d probably given up hope of ever having a child, so when I came along they indulged me. Or so I’ve been told.”
Her friends had been slowly getting engaged, one by one, over the past few years. Most of her extended family fell into the group that believed she should be engaged, too, now that she was approaching twenty-two.
“My father has had some health issues recently, and my mother has never been in good health. I think they’re worried that if I go off to medical school without being married, then they won’t be around to see me properly wed and taken care of.” She blinked against the tears that welled in her eyes. Aunt Prudie had tried to convince her that that was the reason, that her parents only had her best interests at heart, but it hadn’t sunk in until now.
He took in a breath through his nose, shifting again to rest his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward, his intense gaze holding hers. “Don’t you want to get married, have a family?”
She bristled. It wasn’t the first time that someone had questioned her, and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t seem to accept the question as anything other than an attack on her. As if she couldn’t somehow follow her dream of helping people and become a wife and mother. “Of course, but not now. Not yet.” She did want that. She wanted a husband who danced with her and held her hand as they read the newspaper. She wanted babies with chubby little hands and soft skin.
But if she was honest, the question prodded a deeper bruise. Most of the men she met seemed to be put off by her ambition. What if no man wanted to marry her after medical school? What if that was the reason her parents wanted her married off?
She swallowed past that ache in her throat and looked away from him. She’d seen the beginning of interest in Castillo’s eyes when he’d looked at her on the train, and then again tonight. He found her attractive. She didn’t want to see that interest change now that he knew the truth about her.
The seconds passed, ticked off by the clock on the mantel above the fireplace, and he didn’t say anything. With every bit of will she possessed, she forced herself to meet his gaze. It didn’t matter what he thought of her. It wasn’t as if that little flirtation on the train meant anything.
His expression was unchanged, though, and unreadable. Finally, he said, “You admit that you do want to be married, so why not marry before medical school?”
“It’s not that easy. For one, it would require me to find a husband who is supportive of my choice. You can’t imagine how difficult that is. For two, I don’t know of a man I’d want to marry or who’d be interested in marrying me. Not in the next few months.”
He smiled then, and his gaze flicked over her features and down to her bosom and even lower to touch on her hips. She blushed at his scrutiny. Her face burned hotter when his gaze moved back up to hers and she could see that he appreciated what he saw. His eyes were a deeper green, somehow, and his smile...she couldn’t describe it. It wasn’t lecherous, like the men she sometimes passed in the street in the shabbier parts of town. It was admiring, appreciative, the way one might look upon a much-revered—friend? No, not a friend. It was too intimate for that. A lover?
Her body came alive at the thought, just as it had begun to come to life when he’d had his arms around her. Her heartbeat fluttered, and something pulsed dangerously low in her belly. Somehow, she became even more aware of his presence across from her. His powerful frame radiated heat.
“I won’t believe that you don’t have suitors.” Something about the way he said that, with that hint of an accent and with such certainty, had her squirming in her chair.
“Well, I haven’t.” She stared at her recently buffed fingernails because she couldn’t hold his gaze anymore. “That’s why I need your help.”
“Oh?” He seemed only mildly interested now, and she couldn’t fathom what he must be thinking.
Taking a deep breath to steel her nerves, she said, “I’ll keep quiet about who you are, about what I saw on the train, but I need you to compromise me.”
Chapter Four
Castillo took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. It didn’t help though, because even across the distance he could smell the lavender on her skin. The scent was still on him from when he’d held her against him. His gaze went to her lush mouth, and he imagined how soft her pink lips would feel as they opened beneath his. He closed his eyes before he could imagine anything more, but he only saw her disheveled. All of that golden hair down around her waist, her creamy skin flushed with need.
He’d been attracted to her on the train because she was pretty and kept her wits about her when she’d faced death. He’d admired her then. But this woman...this woman was all of that and more. She stood up for herself, she challenged him and she did it all while making him imagine how great it would feel to have all of that energy focused on him. She was so different from what he’d thought he wanted in a woman, but all he could imagine was how explosive they could be in bed. His eyes shot open and he had to look away from her, but he couldn’t banish the thoughts.
“I’m not in the habit of compromising innocents, Miss Hartford.” She was an innocent, and she wouldn’t welcome what he had in mind.
She was silent, and he finally looked back at her, curious as to her thoughts. She stared at him pensively, her head tilted to the side. He couldn’t tell if she knew the direction of his thoughts, but he couldn’t stop his gaze from drifting down to her soft lips.
“No, I suppose you aren’t, Mr. Rey—Mr. Jameson.” She didn’t look away, even though she blushed, and he knew she felt the attraction between them. Her heated gaze held his for far longer than was appropriate. But, hell, he was in her bedroom, alone, late at night. They’d passed appropriate a long time ago.
“I’m sorry.” She blinked, looking down at her hands clasped in her lap. “I don’t mean to stare, it’s just that... I know this sounds silly, but I feel that I can trust you. I know that I met you on a train while you chased a man with a gun, and now you’re asking me not to reveal your alternate identity or why you’re looking for that man, but—” she laughed “—I do. I look into your eyes and I trust that you are a man of honor.”
He clenched his teeth and swallowed the bitter taste on the back of his tongue. He’d been a man of honor once, but that was long ago. There was too much blood on his hands to ever claim to be honorable again. He hadn’t even been completely truthful with her. Yes, his name was Reyes and he was searching for the man who’d murdered his grandfather. However, he’d conveniently left out the list of crimes he’d committed in that search and the fact that he and his men had somehow become a band of notorious outlaws.
The Reyes Brothers. The papers called them a gang. Castillo had never thought of them in that way. There’d even been a drawing in one of the papers once. Castillo, Hunter and Zane had been drawn with kerchiefs over the lower halves of their faces as they faced down a sheriff. The shoot-out had never happened, though the artist had captured Zane’s scar perfectly. But that was back in Texas, and far away from Montana Territory, where his identity was still secret. Castillo hoped like hell he could keep it that way. Her silence could help ensure that.
He didn’t know why he felt the need to warn her away from him, but he found himself saying, “You should take care in placing your trust. You don’t know me.”
“I don’t,” she agreed. “But I know people, Mr. Jameson. And I know you find me pleasing.” Even in the dim lamplight he could see the blush that rose to her cheeks again. “I know that...that you’ve thought about compromising me, and yet you don’t. Why?”
He shifted again, finding her candor unsettling. “You don’t mince your words, do you?”
She chewed her bottom lip and her eyes shifted across the room toward the cold fireplace. “I’m told it’s a flaw.”
Something twisted deep in his gut. “You’re not flawed from what I can see.”
She smiled, but it seemed sad and hollow, and it slipped away before he was ready for it to go. She met his eyes again with her startlingly direct gaze. “Thank you. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get to sleep. As you can imagine, I have a few things to think over.” She started to rise, but he leaned forward, holding out a hand, though he stopped just short of touching her.
“Wait. I’m afraid I can’t leave until I have your promise to keep silent.”
“And I’m afraid I can’t give it to you. I need to go to medical school, and it appears I can’t do that until I’m either wed or so ruined that no man will want to marry me.”
“You can’t mean that. Even if I were to do as you ask, you’ve said yourself that you want to be married one day. Don’t you think the scandal will follow you for years? Don’t you think that it could ruin your ability to marry in the future?”
She smiled at him then, like he was a simpleton who clearly didn’t understand her argument. “No, I’m not worried in the least. You see, the man I’ll eventually marry won’t care. I don’t plan to marry one of those gentlemen who trots out to our fund-raisers, gives a pretty speech, pledges a donation and then returns to his parties and the theater. I plan to marry a physician or perhaps a professor. Someone scholarly who won’t care for gossip and who’ll listen to me when I explain the circumstances of my being compromised.”
Castillo leaned back in his chair and raked a hand through his hair. Not that he’d ever put himself in the running as a contender for her hand, but had he, she had just shot down all hope. He wasn’t the least bit scholarly. She deserved someone exactly like the man she described. Someone who would listen to her and honor her. “I hope you find such a man, but I imagine that he would prefer it had you chosen not to compromise yourself.”
She shrugged. “Is that your position? Would you prefer your future wife—I’m assuming you’re not married?” At his nod, she continued, “Would you prefer your future wife chaste and pure and all of that?”
“I haven’t thought much on marriage.” But that was another lie to add to the growing list he’d already told her. He thought of marriage more than he wanted to admit.
In his youth, growing up on his grandfather’s hacienda, there’d been a small village nearby. At the ranch’s peak they’d employed so many of the villagers to help with the cattle that they’d built quarters to house them all. His grandfather had even built a chapel, and a priest had lived there year round.
Castillo couldn’t say that he was very religious now. He still prayed sometimes, but he hadn’t attended Mass in years and couldn’t recall when he’d made his last confession. He’d seen his mother married in that chapel to her second husband—with some not-so-subtle persuasion from his grandfather, since her first husband hadn’t been dead—and Castillo had taken it for granted that he’d be married there, as well.
In that life that seemed so far removed from who he was now, he’d been taught that women should be obedient and keep themselves chaste for their future husbands. But he’d also been taught that to take a life was a sin. He couldn’t very well expect a wife who was virtuous when he only had a tarnished soul to offer in return. “I suppose you’re right. It wouldn’t matter so much. I’d assume she had her reasons.”
She adjusted the prim little spectacles perched on her nose before crossing her arms over her chest and narrowing her gaze at him. “And yet you still won’t compromise me, even though you know it’s for my own good? That it’s what I want?”
He shook his head, as much from the need to deny her as the need to deny himself. Something about her—he couldn’t quite put his finger on why he was so drawn to her—made him want to say yes. “I wouldn’t steal from your husband.”
That infuriated her. Anger burned from her eyes as she sat up straighter, gripping the arms of the chair. He had to fight not to smile at how it transformed her beauty from prim and elegant to fiery and almost wild. Dios mio, he wanted to see her wild, to see her lose control of that fire she kept carefully subdued. And he wanted her beneath him when it happened. She was beautiful. She was strength. She was all the things he wanted and admired.
“My virtue doesn’t belong to my husband. It belongs to me. I can do with it what I like.”
He inclined his head in a minor concession. “As you wish. My answer is still the same.”
“Have you considered that it’s possible to compromise me without actually taking my virtue? We could simply arrange to have someone see us in an embrace. It needn’t be very dramatic.”
He hadn’t thought of that at all. Probably because he’d been too busy imagining the act of compromising her. “No, but I wouldn’t insult your honor in any way.”
She wanted to scream at him. He could tell from the way she jerked her head to the side, her jaw clenched tight, and he was tempted to push her until she lost her grip on her restraint. What would she look like raging at him? And, just as quickly, he was back to imagining his tongue on her body, his hands wrapped in that gorgeous hair as she bucked beneath him.
Mierda, he needed to stop. His blood was already starting to rush south, tightening his trousers.
“Fine, then we have nothing more to discuss. Get out.”
Castillo felt the first stirring of panic and his shoulders tensed. He’d been too soft with her, letting her think this was her choice instead of his demand. He kept his voice calm, and didn’t move at all. He’d played enough hands of poker to know not to show his hand. “I could play the role of suitor. Would that help?” He had no right offering to associate his name with hers in any way, but he felt compelled to offer some compromise. It wasn’t right that she wouldn’t be able to continue her education.
Her widened gaze jerked back to his. She was clearly as surprised by the offer as he was. She began to shake her head, but then stopped and a smile spread across her face. It nearly stole his breath away. “Yes! Yes, that’s perfect. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. It’s even better than compromise.”
She rose to her feet to pace the length of her room as if she was working out all the details in her head. She practically glowed with excitement, and Castillo shifted in his chair, uneasy with the direction of her thoughts. He’d meant to only discourage other suitors with his attention while she was at the wedding. It had been a paltry compromise, but the only one he could think up. He was actually worried about what wild scheme she’d come up with.
Finally she turned to face him, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. “I have the most wonderful idea. This is what we’ll do.” The smile on her face was so enchanting that he didn’t bother to interrupt her. “You become my suitor for the week. We’ll convince my father that we’ve fallen madly in love. He may disapprove at first, because you’re not from Boston, but I know he’ll come around. Then, after Hunter and Emmy’s wedding, you’ll propose.”
Castillo shook his head emphatically at that, but she kept on talking.
“I’ll accept and we’ll put on the charade of a gloriously happy couple. You’ll voice your support that I be allowed to go to school. We won’t be able to wed until the autumn in Boston—it’ll take weeks and weeks to plan such an affair. By that point, my parents will have to let me attend classes or I’ll risk losing my place. Then, once the semester is under way, we break off the engagement. We’ll have to come up with a compelling reason for that. Something that doesn’t reflect too unfavorably on either of us.”
She adjusted her glasses and resumed her pacing. “I’m sure by that time I can convince them that I must continue my studies. I may have to concede to searching for a suitable husband while I attend, but that’s preferable to not going at all.”
She’d walked all the way to the corner of the room, but she turned then, beaming at him. “Thank you so much for suggesting this, Mr. Jameson. It’s absolutely the perfect solution.”
She looked so hopeful that he hated to disappoint her, but there was no way he was agreeing to this farce. “That is not what I suggested. I’d be willing to agree for the week, up until the wedding, but after that I’m afraid I have to go.”
Depending on the leads Zane found in Helena, Castillo might even need to leave before the wedding to follow up on Derringer’s location. He’d make sure to be back for the wedding, but the possibility that the man was nearby was something that couldn’t be ignored. He didn’t have time for what she wanted.
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