Page 40 of The Promise of Jenny Jones

In the morning, nearly thirty people accompanied them to the railroad tracks.

Although the train steamed past every day, it seldom stopped; therefore, the villagers made a festive event of the occasion.

Women wrapped themselves in their best rebozos, and the men wore starched white shirts and embroidered sombreros.

While Ty and Jenny’s horses were being loaded into a boxcar, a boy ran alongside the train holding an armadillo up for passengers to see.

Women sold husk-wrapped tamales through the train windows and tortillas folded around hot chorizo.

Someone strummed a guitar, and two men danced around their sombreros, puffs of dust following the rowels on their spurs.

Once the horses were loaded, Ty led Jenny and Graciela into one of the middle cars and found seats for them and a place to store their saddlebags.

“I hate the train,” Graciela stated. “It’s hot and it smells bad.” Making a face, she shoved a chicken off the end of the bench seat. “When will we get there?”

Jenny used the end of a newly bought shawl to fan her face. The air was stifling and stank of roosters and dogs and greasy food and old sweat. “You don’t even know where ‘there’ is,” she said, looking out the window at the villagers waving at the faces peering back from inside the train.

Before he sat down, Ty scrutinized their fellow passengers.

Most were women and children. Two old men sat together at the rear of the car, three men appeared to be traveling with their families.

They looked hot and uncomfortable, but not dangerous.

No one displayed more than a cursory interest in the new arrivals.

Once the train got under way, he leaned to pull up the window against the soot and cinders that flew inside and speckled the clothing Jenny had purchased from Senora Armijo.

Beneath a grey shawl she wore a white blouse tucked into a faded blue skirt.

The clothing was worn, but clean and pressed, and attracted less attention than her trousers and poncho would have.

Graciela’s new clothing was similar; both wore untrimmed straw hats.

“You look beautiful,” he said, smiling at them after settling his lanky frame on the hard wooden seat.

Graciela returned his smile and patted the thick bun pinned on her small neck. Jenny glared, then returned her gaze to the window.

She’d been strangely subdued this morning, tossing him quick glances that he couldn’t read, hastily looking away when he caught her studying him. He suspected she was remembering last night, just as he was.

Lighting a cigar, Ty smoked and watched the desert roll past the streaked window. Occasionally the horizon revealed glimpses of distant mountains, but largely the short grass and dry shrubs pocking the Central Plateau offered little distraction.

His thoughts drifted from the hot light of day to feverish moonlight kisses. He didn’t regret kissing her. Considering the level of tension between them, kissing had been inevitable.

What had surprised him most was Jenny’s innocence.

She was a tough, skeptical woman who had lived an unconventional life.

He doubted there was much that she hadn’t seen, hadn’t experienced.

As a result, she had learned to place a distance between herself and others, had learned to shield her emotions and the central kernel that was herself.

She was a loner, asking nothing, expecting little.

But when it came to lovemaking, Jenny Jones was a babe in the woods, as vulnerable as an adolescent. Drawing on his cigar, he studied the clean firm line of her profile.

Even before he led her outside the shack, he had sensed that she would surrender.

There was no guile in her, no coyness. In the seduction arena, she possessed no defense; she wore her emotions like a beacon pointing the way.

Her wide eyes and trembling lips had informed him that she would follow where he led.

Instinctively, he understood that Jenny had been taken, but never wooed or seduced.

She’d experienced sex, but not lovemaking.

He would have wagered his horse that she’d never been fully aroused before last night.

The question raised by the light of day was why hadn’t he pressed his advantage? God knows she had been willing, as wildly and wonderfully responsive as any woman he had known. Fully aroused, she had been ready and eager to give herself, so why had he pulled up short?

Frowning, he listened to the ratchety click of the wheels and the din reverberating inside the car. The squawk of chickens, the cries of children, the sawing buzz of conversation.

God knew he’d wanted her, had been hungry for her.

His desire had been powerful enough that he’d ached for hours afterward.

Even now, sweat slicked his brow at the memory of her heavy breasts resting on top of his hands.

He didn’t dare let himself recall how she’d twisted her hips against him, wild and uncontrolled, hot with promise.

Leaning over his knees, he crushed his cigar under his bootheel, then pulled the scarf from his neck and blotted sweat from his throat and face. When he saw her watching, he commented defensively, “It’s like a Turkish bathhouse in here.”

“You ever been in a Turkish bathhouse?”

“Once. In San Francisco.”

“What is a Turkish bathhouse?” Graciela asked. She sat next to Jenny, as prim and proper as a tiny school-marm, her hands folded in her lap, her spine straight against the seat.

Today he saw Robert in Graciela’s eyes, in her chin, in the curious way she tilted her head.

He also recognized an echo of his mother, his father, perhaps himself.

He wondered what old man Barrancas would see in this child, the thought surprising him.

Would Don Antonio see Marguarita in the shape of Graciela’s mouth?

When he noted the child’s aristocratic carriage, would he rediscover the wife he had buried? Would he glimpse himself?

Ty flexed his shoulders in an effort to find a comfortable spot against the hard wooden back of the seat bench. Cigar smoke circled his head, expelled by a man sitting directly behind him.

“The train’s going to stop at Verde Flores in about three hours,” he said quietly, looking at Jenny. She met his gaze and pressed her lips together. “Maybe we should talk about that.”

“What’s a Turkish bathhouse?” Graciela asked again.

“People go there to take baths,” Jenny snapped. Shifting on the seat, she adjusted her shawl, letting Ty see the pistol shoved in her waistband. He also saw the shape of her breasts curving beneath gathers of thin material. Christ. She had breasts to haunt a man’s dreams.

“I figure the cousins are going to have someone checking every northbound that rolls through.”

The first time he’d seen her, he had thought she was attractive in an untraditional, rawboned sort of way. The memory now impressed him as strange. It seemed impossible that he could have overlooked her beauty.

Her mouth was wide and firm, the lower lip lushly full.

Coppery brows capped eyes as blue as a summer sky, fringed by thick, pale lashes.

Her face and throat were tanned, but that no longer seemed unusual.

Instead, the rose and gold tones enhanced her vitality and the richness of her coloring.

Although he’d grown accustomed to her short hair, he could imagine it long, flowing down her back like a sheet of silken flame.

“Sanders?” She glared at him. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Are you listening?”

Graciela elbowed her in the ribs. “You said hell.”

“Sorry.” She rolled her eyes, then narrowed them into a squint. “What are you thinking about?”

There was so much accusation and warning in the question that he almost laughed. The sudden color in her cheeks confirmed that she had guessed his thoughts.

“We need a plan,” he said, speaking to her mouth. She raised a hand and covered her lips, the self-conscious gesture making him smile. The warning in her stare didn’t mask a flash of helplessness opening at the back of her eyes.

Suddenly he understood why he hadn’t pressed his advantage last night. He didn’t want her feeling helpless or confused, not this particular woman.

The night she had left him hog-tied in the desert with his nose in the dirt, he had sworn that he would find her point of vulnerability and use it to punish her.

Well, he’d found her soft spot, and he’d proved that he could level her with seductive words and a little tenderness.

It surprised and irritated him to discover that he was loath to do so.

He wanted her helpless from a point of strength, not helpless from ignorance.

He wanted her to surrender to him, not merely to skill and experience.

“You make me feel crazy inside,” he said softly, staring at her.

Sunlight slanted through the dirty window turning her eyes almost translucent.

A light sheen of perspiration lay on her flushed face like dew.

It continually surprised him how different she could look from day to day, from minute to minute.

“She makes me feel loco, too,” Graciela said happily. Hero worship shone in her eyes and the pleasure of a shared opinion. Startled, Ty frowned at her, then looked back at Jenny.

She clasped her hands in her lap so tightly that the knuckles turned white. “We need to stop thinking about—other things—and devise a plan,” she said tightly, speaking through clenched teeth.

“Can you stop thinking about—other things?” he asked. He sure as hell couldn’t.

“What other things?” Graciela demanded, looking back and forth between them.

“Nothing important,” Jenny said sharply, her cheeks turning crimson.

Ty laughed softly. He would conquer her helplessness kiss by kiss. Though he suspected he would live to regret it, he would teach her who controlled events between men and women. When she understood her power, that’s when her surrender would be the sweetest.