California Caress

Her shoulders stiffened as she sent him an indignant glare. “You never said who you were.”

“Then why didn’t you ask?” Luke phrased the question in such an innocently boyish way that Hope wanted to throttle him on the spot.

“I did ask,” she informed her brother haughtily. An angry glare told Luke to keep his big mouth shut. Her next words were aimed directly at the man she now knew to be Drake Frazier. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Why the hell should I?” Frazier raged, wincing when his fingers found the center of the bruise on his chin. “You burst into my room in the middle of the night drunker than a skunk—and fully armed, I might add—collapse in my arms, then refuse to tell me who you are, why you came, or who sent you. What the hell did you expect me to think?”

Hope hadn’t looked at it quite that way before, and she damn well wasn’t about to waste time looking at it that way now. She raised her chin high, in what she hoped was a daunting manner. “I expected you to believe me when I said I had the wrong room,” she rep

lied tightly.

Frazier’s gaze flickered between the two dark heads, eventually settling on Hope. If she had thought to see a measure of intimidation in those eyes when he noted her brother’s towering size and girth, she was sorely disappointed. “Your friend here says you had the right room.”

“And how was I supposed to know that?” she fairly screamed. Her temper was getting the better of her, but at that moment she didn’t care. “You don’t exactly fit the description I was given.”

“Description?” Frazier’s eyes narrowed to thin, sea-green slits as his voice hardened with caution. The hand that had been rubbing his jaw dropped to his side. “What description? Who gave it to you and why?”

She sighed in annoyance. All this bantering was getting them nowhere. She was no closer to obtaining his help now than she had been when she’d first set foot in this room. Although she was sorely tempted to push his anger to its limits, to feed his suspicions, whatever they were, she hesitated. His cooperation was needed desperately, and with a man as conceited, as arrogant, and as exceedingly suspicious as this one was proving to be, angering him would be no incentive. Perhaps a different tactic was in order.

“Well?” His expression told her that he had no intention of letting either Bennett leave until he had the answers he wanted. “Who sent you?”

“My father,” she said, holding her aggravation in check with a firm hand. “Didn’t I already tell you that?”

“You did. And I still don’t believe you.”

“Listen, Frazier, my sister may be a lot of things, but she ain’t no liar,” Luke interceded. Wrapping a hulking arm around his sister’s shoulders, he steered her away from the door. “Come on, Hope, let’s go home. We don’t need this guys help anyway. I can handle things myself.”

“No, you can’t,” she insisted, stopping her brother just as he was about to close the door. “If you could, I wouldn’t be here. Oh, Luke, please don’t look so sad,” she pleaded, as her brother’s crestfallen gaze dropped to the floor. Lord, but she hated it when her brother’s lower lip trembled that way. It pulled at her heartstrings, and she had a feeling he knew it.

“You don’t trust me,“ he pouted, his big foot drawing circles in the dust on the floorboards. “Why don’t you just say it? You don’t think I can beat the Swede, do you?”

“If you’re talking about the Swedes who set up camp on the edge of town, then you’d better listen to her. She’s right,” a deep voice interjected from behind them. The two Bennetts turned to see Frazier regarding them thoughtfully. A trace of suspicion still lurked in his eyes, but it had lessened. “That is what this is all about, I take it?”

“Yes,” she replied, deciding she might as well tell him the truth now that she knew who he was. At this point, the odds of getting this man to fight in her brother’s place were almost as great as their chance of striking it rich in the mines that bordered this pitiful little town.

Drake nodded, and his expression took the form of a man busy fitting the last piece into a jigsaw puzzle. He rubbed his jaw again, his eyes never leaving Hope. “Tell your friend to leave. He can go downstairs and fetch me a piece of beef to put on this bruise while you tell me what you came here for.”

“Tell him yourself,” she snapped, angry that he would treat her brother like the slab of meat he was referring to. “He isn’t deaf.”

But Frazier was no longer looker at her. He’d completely dismissed them as he bent to retrieve his glass from beside the recently vacated chair. The bottle of gin was scooped up from the floor.

Her gaze shifted between Frazier, as he splashed some of the clear liquid in the glass, and her brother, who was regarding the reputed gunslinger with open confusion. It was that innocent, guiltless look in Luke’s eyes that prompted her into a decision. “You heard him,” she said to Luke, who stared at her as though viewing a total stranger. She nudged him in the direction of the stairs. “Go ahead,” she prodded. “I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know,” he stalled, obviously not pleased with the prospect of leaving his sister in such untrustworthy hands. He lowered his voice, nodding toward Frazier. “I don’t trust him, Hope. What if he does us dirty? What if he takes our money, then doesn’t come through?”

“He won’t,” she said firmly, “because I won’t let him.” She gave her brother another shove. “Now go on. Off with you, you big lug. And don’t hurry back. It could take me a while to convince him.”

“What if you can’t?”

“That’s my problem, and I’ll deal with it when and if it comes up. You just go and get him the piece of beef. Hopefully, by the time you come back I’ll have him convinced.” She gave her brother’s arm another shove. “Go on.”

Squaring her shoulders, she stepped back into the room and closed the door. She could hear her brother’s feet shuffling as he hesitated in the hall, and for a second she didn’t think he would obey her any more now than he had in the past. She was wrong. Like an obedient little boy’s, his footsteps could soon be heard trailing down the hall.

“You’ll have me convinced of what?” Frazier asked. He had moved to the window and was staring broodingly through the smudged pane as he nursed his drink. The bottle hung limply from his other hand as he unconsciously swirled the liquid inside.

So, Frazier was not as oblivious to their conversation as he would have liked her to think. Good. She let that knowledge sink in as she tried to overlook the fact that he hadn’t bothered to turn toward her as he spoke. It was an annoying lack of manners, and to a strictly raised southerner, an insult of grave proportions.

Forcing a charming smile to her lips, she chose to ignore the man’s disgraceful lack of courtesy. Keeping a strained note from the husky timbre of her voice was not as easily managed. “It would seem we’ve gotten off to a bad start, Mister Frazier. Shall we begin again?” With one hand behind her back, balled into a tight fist, she extended the other for a handshake.