Page 31 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
Then she did something that paralyzed him. She studied his frown for a minute before she leaned forward, patted his hand, and gave him a dazzling smile. “Gracias,Uncle Ty.”
“Oh hell, I’m hungry too,” he said gruffly, irritated that the word “uncle” had struck with such impact. He’d been thinking of her as his niece, why should it surprise him that she would call him uncle?
He didn’t figure it out until they were midway through breakfast. Referring to her as his niece was something of a cheat; in his mind he struggled with a lifetime habit of hating the Barrancas family, and of having let his father’s intolerance of Mexicans sink barbs in his mind. But her “uncle” was honest and heartfelt; she unquestioningly accepted him as part of her family.
Ty hadn’t often experienced shame, so he didn’t immediately identify the discomfiting pressure pushing at the inside of his chest.
Jenny was wild with frustration.
She heard the nearest church bells peal nine times before a maid finally appeared to tidy the room and empty the chamber pot and discovered Jenny tied to the chair. The maid screamed and ran out of the room. Before the manager arrived to cut Jenny free the bells had sounded ten o’clock, and she lost more precious time while she persuaded the anxious manager that she didn’t want trouble any more than he did; they didn’t need to report the incident to anyone. All she wanted was to get the hell out of here and find Sanders and the kid.
By the time she burst out of the hotel doors and rushed into the street, the sun blazed hot overhead and she was sweating profusely and approaching panic. She didn’t think Sanders had taken the northbound train, but the northbound had departed an hour ago, and now she couldn’t be certain.
She had to pin her hopes on her belief that Sanders would go to the corrals. If she was too late and had missed him, she didn’t know what she would do next.
As she trotted toward the edge of town, she reviewed her reasoning. Sanders had indicated that he would take Graciela on the train, so that meant he planned to leave by horse. Except, he didn’t have a horse.
She had watched every passenger emerging from the train last evening, looking for Luis or Chulo, and she knew the cowboy had not been among them. He must have jumped off at the last minute.
But he must have had a horse in Verde Flores as horseback was the only way to reach the no-name village from the depot. Considering how a man felt about a good horse, he would have brought his horse with him on the train. But he wouldn’t have had time to fetch it from the boxcars and still follow her and the kid back to the hotel.
Therefore, he now needed to buy another horse. And, therefore, sometime today he would show up at the corrals, probably sooner rather than later. As he’d want to leave Durango as quickly as possible, she figured buying a horse would be his first order of the day. The inevitable conclusion? Sanders had bought a horse hours ago, and she had missed him.
Damn. Biting her lips, she increased her pace to a run. By the time she reached the corrals her throat burned for air and daggers pierced her side. Already street traffic was thinning for siesta. Cursing, she fell against a tree trunk to rest and catch her breath, grateful for a spot of shade. When she could breathe without pain, she lifted her eyes toward the dust swirling above the animal pens.
She didn’t immediately spot the cowboy and didn’t expect to, but her gaze flew like a magnet to a splash of deep maroon. Relief sagged through her body, turning her muscles to straw. Thank heaven for whatever had delayed them.
Narrowing her eyes and peering through a haze of dust, she focused on Graciela. The kid was wearing a new riding outfit. And her hair was pinned up all proper and ladylike. She waited beside a pair of stuffed saddlebags, little gloved hands patiently clasped at her waist.
A humorless grin thinned Jenny’s lips. Now she knew why the cowboy was late getting to the corrals, and she knew how he had spent his morning. Shopping. His aggravation, and she knew the kid well enough to guess the shopping excursion had not gone smoothly, was her gain. Good, and thank God.
After tugging her hat down to conceal her eyes and pulling the poncho away from her breasts, she slouched toward the enclosure farthest from the cowboy and Graciela.
She, too, needed to buy a horse.
They didn’t ride out of Durango until almost four o’clock, by which time Ty was as restless as a herd before a storm. Everything had taken longer than he’d figured. She’d had to try things on at the apparel store, a seemingly endless process, and then a seamstress had been summoned, which ate up more time. Next came footwear, an item he hadn’t considered, and the trying on and taking off and switching of tassels and discussion of colors. Through it all, he’d shifted from boot to boot, glaring pointedly at his pocket watch, which didn’t expedite the shopping excursion by a single minute.
Following the purchase of undergarments, an experience he never wanted to repeat, they stopped to eat again although he wasn’t sure why since Graciela mostly played with her food, sampling tiny bites between chatting happily about her new clothing. The food she had begged for stayed on her plate.
The time lost at the corrals was his fault. He’d insisted that she ride the horse he selected for her before he put down the purchase money. Then he’d had to buy saddles and wait while her stirrups were cut to size. This after a long discussion wherein Graciela insisted on a lady’s sidesaddle, and he insisted on a regular. He had eventually prevailed, but she hadn’t spoken to him since. Her silence irritated the bejesus out of him.
Grinding his teeth, he turned his head to glare at her. Immediately a long sigh emptied the air from his lungs. She looked so tiny and fragile seated atop the large mare that visions of disaster spun through his mind. She could fall off and break an arm or a leg. The horse might throw her, and she could break her neck and die. The mare could stumble and fall and crush her. He didn’t know if the mare was easily spooked, but he could imagine it running off with the child and…
Well, damn it. Ty gave his head an irritated shake. He wasn’t a man to borrow trouble, so why was he doing it now?
In fact, he didn’t need to borrow, he had trouble enough already. She’d claimed that she knew how to ride, but that was only partially true. She knew how to stay on top of a horse as long as the horse walked. The one time the horse had broken into a trot, she had screamed and clamped onto the pommel, utterly terrified.
“Graciela,” he said, moving his gelding up beside the mare, “we need to pick up the pace or it’s going to take about twenty years for us to reach the border.” At the present rate, she’d need that corset before they rode into California, and he’d be an old man.
She looked at him, then deigned to answer. “I’ve never been on a horse all by myself. Well, I have, but one of my cousins led it or walked along beside me.”
Even though he’d quickly realized that her idea of being able to ride differed vastly from his thoughts on the subject, hearing her admission soured his disposition. He considered the problem for the next mile.
“Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll sell your horse, and you’ll ride behind me.”
“You said this was my horse! You said I could ride her all by myself. That’s what you promised!” Tears swam in her eyes.
My God, he had made her cry. Horrified, Ty watched the late-afternoon sun glisten in the water welling behind her lashes. The shock of it stunned him. He had made this tiny creature cry.
