THE OUTLAW BRIDE Page 4

  "But you're both okay?"

  Elliot nodded. Esmeralda, hesitantly, nodded as well.

  "Well, I still think you're both shaken up. Poor thing, nearly getting run down by my lunatic brother." Jessi stroked Esmeralda's hair and shook her head. "Let's get you back to the house, clean you up and … and…" She was eyeing Esmeralda's dress again now. "My goodness, that's quite an … unusual outfit."

  "Is it?" Esmeralda didn't think so. The woman was dressed much like the men … who had to be her brothers. The resemblance was too strong to be missed. But she didn't look like the same Jenny Brand Esmeralda had known. She had kind eyes, a soft, smooth-skinned face.

  "She was on her way to a … a costume party," Elliot said quickly. "Right, Esmeralda?"

  Esmeralda looked at him, saying nothing.

  "Listen," Elliot went on. "She's pretty shaken up. Jessi, let me take your pickup and drive her back to the ranch, okay? You can pile in with the boys."

  Jessi eyed her brother, then slanted a perceptive gaze at Esmeralda. "Well, shoot, I guess. Just don't wreck it like you did yours, Elliot, or I'll kick your tail all the way to the Texas Brand. And then I'll make you buy me a new one." She put her hands on her hips, grinning at her brother expectantly. When he said nothing, her smile died, and she frowned. "What, no comeback? Nothing about how it would take ten clunkers like mine to live up to a new one?"

  Elliot tugged his gaze from Esmeralda's to glance at his sister. "What?"

  "Nothing," she said, looking from one of them to the other again and again, a frown knitting her brow. "Never mind. I'll see you at the ranch."

  Elliot nodded, taking Esmeralda's hand and guiding her toward the odd metal carriage that waited at the roadside, while his family looked on curiously. When they were out of earshot, he leaned close. "We can't tell them what really happened. Where you … really come from."

  "Why not?" she asked, staring up at him. He had the bluest eyes … kind eyes. And his face lacked the harshness of Eldon's, she saw that now.

  "Well, because they'd never believe it, for one thing. Look, all we have to do is act normal until we have a chance to … to figure out what we're going to do next. Okay?"

  Looking around her, she glimpsed the town in the distance. It was different. The road was hard … and black. Like stone. And there were ropelike things strung from towering poles, stretching endlessly in either direction. Carriages without horses moved this way and that. "I am not so certain I know what normal is, Elliot Brand. This … this is not my world."

  "I know just how you feel."

  She met his eyes and knew he did. He'd been in her very position only a short while ago. How it could be true, she could not imagine. But there was no doubt it was. "I am afraid," she said.

  "I know. Tell you the truth, so'm I." He reached up to open a door. "Come on, get in. We'll figure it out as we go, all right?"

  She eyed the machine. Its seats looked soft, but it was foreign to her. "Is it safe?" As she asked the question, she eyed the other one, its front crushed against the large tree.

  "I promise, you'll be safe," Elliot said. "We'll go very slowly. It'll be just fine."

  She looked at him, doubting his words, but not his intent. "All right." She climbed in. But as soon as Elliot made the machine begin to move, she thought she was going to be sick.

  "Are you sure Elliot was okay?" Garrett asked. He was driving his pickup, which, thankfully, had a back seat, because Wes, Adam, Ben and Jessi were all crammed in with him.

  "Sure," Jessi said. "Just a little bump on his head was all." She frowned through the windshield at her old clunker of a pickup, just ahead. "Gotta wonder, though."

  "Yeah. Gotta wonder." Garrett looked down at his speedometer. The needle hovered between twenty and twenty-five miles per hour. Sighing, he settled back in his seat and resolved to endure the slow, slow trip back to the Texas Brand.

  Elliot watched her. She clutched her stomach for most of the trip, staring out the window with wide, frightened eyes. Gasping and pointing every now and then at such mundane things as the neon Budweiser sign in the window of La Cucharacha and a tractor putting along slightly slower than they were.

  As Elliot looked on, she spotted a couple of teenagers with big hair and short skirts and too much makeup, and she muttered in Spanish, crossing herself as she did.

  Scared. Poor thing was scared witless.

  "Look, it has to be that pendant of yours," he told her. "And if it is, it can get you back where you came from just as easily as it got you here."

  She turned to stare at him. "And if it does, what will I return to, Elliot Brand? Your murdering brothers and their gallows?"

  "Those were not my brothers." His lips thinned as he thought it over. "Must have been … my ancestors."

  She sniffed indignantly, but she wasn't fooling him a bit. She was more scared than she was mad. No matter how she might try to hide it.

  "I cannot stay here, and I cannot go back. The legends told in my family about the pendant were lies!"

  "Legends?" Elliot eyed her, but kept track of his speed, too. He was determined to go slow. Not upset her. "What legends?"

  She waved a hand with an expressive snap of her wrist. "Foolish tales. They don't matter."

  "They might. Tell me." They were leaving the town behind them now and heading away from it, toward the ranch. A five-minute trip that was going to take them at least twenty minutes.

  She sighed, looking away from him to the rolling fields beyond the roadside. "It was said the skull had powers. That much must have been true, I suppose. But my family believed it was created by some ancient mystical race, and that its task was to set our world right when things went wrong. To restore human beings to their proper place and time." She shook her head. "All it has done for me is take me away from all I know and love."

  "Didn't seem to me like there was much to love about it."

  Her head swung around, eyes and nostrils flaring at once. "There was my land. My father's land. My home. I went there to take it back from those who stole it away. And now thanks to this stupid…" She reached to her throat, but stopped speaking when her palm flattened to her chest. Looking down fast, she sucked in a breath. "Dios! It is gone! The pendant is gone!"

  Elliot swore, barely resisting the urge to slam his foot on the brake pedal. Then he calmed himself, gave his head a shake and wondered why it was suddenly such an effort to keep his legendary cool. "All right, it's all right. It probably fell off back there in all the excitement." And his brother was going to skin him alive if he didn't find it, he added silently. Shoot. "We'll go back and look for it. But later, okay?"

  "Why later? We should go now, before someone else finds it and takes it for their own, no?"

  "No one's gonna find it. Look, it's gonna look mighty odd to the family if we go rushing back there now. And I still think it's best we don't tell them any of this." She eyed him, doubt about his wisdom blatantly plain in her face. "They'd think we were both insane," he told her. "They'd probably drag us off to some headshrinker somewhere for treatment."

  "Headshrinker?" For just a second she looked terrified.

  "That's just an expression. I meant a doctor for crazy people. A psychiatrist. You understand?"

  "No. I understand none of this."

  "Look, just follow my lead. Play along with me on this. Here, we're almost home." He nodded ahead at the sprawling ranch that was just coming into view.

  Esmeralda looked, and then she went very still. "This … is your home?"

  He allowed a small smile. "Yep. Finest ranch in the great state of Texas. We call it the Texas Brand."

  He waited for her reply. Waited, fully expecting her to make some comment about the beauty of his home, the way most people did the first time they set eyes on it. Instead, he only heard a low hissing sound, like a snake about to strike, and when he looked at her, he saw utter fury in her eyes.

  "You are right, Señor Brand. It is the finest ranch in all of Texas. But it is not your
s."

  "Huh?"

  "This is my land! Your thieving family stole it from my father. I came to this town to take it back, only to face your murdering brothers and their tricks. I nearly died to get this land back from you, and I tell you now, Elliot Brand, I do not care what time this is. It is still my land. And I will have it back. On my father's memory, I vow it!"

  As she spoke, the pickup rolled underneath the arches of the Texas Brand, and Elliot stopped it in the driveway, right in front of the house. He just sat there, staring at her.

  She was breathing hard, her face flushed from her recent rush of emotions. They seemed to surge and wane in her like waves on the ocean. She sure wasn't level, or steady as a rock, the way he was.

  "I don't know what to say to you," he said at last, speaking slowly, softly. "Esmeralda, this ranch has been in my family for over a hundred years."

  The anger left her face, and her lips parted. "A … a hundred years? Is that how far I have come?"

  He nodded. "Almost a hundred and twenty."

  Her eyes closed, but he'd seen the moisture gathering in them before, and he saw it again now, squeezing through to glisten on her dark lashes. "My aunt Maria … my little cousins… Oh. Oh, all gone. All of them gone…" Her voice was a tortured whisper now. With trembling hands she fumbled with the door, got it opened and half climbed, half fell out of the truck. Then she stood on the ground, looking around, at the house, the stable, the barn. The horses in one pasture and cattle in another, more distant one. Elliot got out and walked around the pickup to stand beside her.

  "I know it's a lot to deal with, all at once. Just take it easy. Take your time. Try not to … Esmeralda?"

  She didn't seem to be hearing him at all, and then he heard the sound that was so familiar he hadn't even noticed it at first. It was the mosquito-like hum of a very small airplane. And as the craft passed overhead, he saw it, saw Esmeralda's neck arch as she tipped her head back. Only … she kept right on going.

  He caught her before she hit the ground. Passed out cold, she was limp as he gathered her up into his arms and carried her toward the house.

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  « ^ »

  Elliot did his best to ignore the questions of a half dozen concerned Brands as he carried Esmeralda straight through the parlor and up the stairs to his bedroom, but ignoring his well-meaning siblings had never been what Elliot would call easy. Still, they did back off and remained at the foot of the stairs while he carried the lady up.

  She was small. Tough to tell that with the layers of torn, dirty skirts and God only knew what underneath, but she was light in his arms. He took her into his bedroom, lowered her onto the neatly made bed, and then sat down on its edge to pat her face a few times.

  Lord, but she was a pretty thing. Especially when her blazing black eyes with their boiling emotions were closed. Just soft paintbrush lashes resting on her cheeks now. No scowling, doubting, wary expression. Soft coppery skin, full lips.

  He caught himself licking his, and stopped it. "Wake up, Esmeralda. Come on, you fainted, but it's okay now. Wake up." He patted her cheek again.

  Her lashes fluttered twice, and then her eyes opened, and so did her mouth. She took one look at him and cut loose with an earsplitting shriek. Elliot clapped his hand over her mouth, but not fast enough. The thundering of booted feet told him that much. Then the door burst open and Garrett stood there looking mean as a bear with a toothache. "What the hell are you doin' to her, Elliot?"

  "Elliot?" the woman echoed, and then she relaxed again, nodding. "Oh, sí, Elliot. I forgot."

  "That's okay," Elliot said. "You're entitled, after all this." He looked at his brother, who was frowning and studying Esmeralda as if he were wondering about her mental state. "She's just a little disoriented, is all," Elliot told him. "Just give us a minute, okay?"

  Even as Garrett nodded, his wife, diminutive Chelsea, was shoving past him and coming into the room. "No, we're not giving you a minute," she said. For a little thing, she sure had taken over as ramrod of this spread. "The boys filled me in—or rather, they told me as much as you told them, which is not the whole story. Is it, Elliot?"

  Elliot did his best to look puzzled. "Gee, Chelse, I don't know what you mean."

  She narrowed her eyes on him, but her face softened when she turned to the woman in the bed. "You poor thing. Are you sure you weren't hurt in the accident?"

  "I am fine."

  Tilting her head to one side, Chelsea said, "Well, you don't look fine. You look like you just had the scare of your life." Leaning over the bed, crowding between where Elliot sat and Esmeralda lay, Chelsea cupped the girl's chin, turning her face to one side. "And what about this bruise, hmm?" And as she asked, she sent Elliot a scowl.

  "Oh, Elliot did not do this. It was another man. He—"

  She stopped when Chelsea went white, and her eyes widened. "A man did that to you?" she asked, her voice dangerously soft. Elliot knew damned good and well about Chelsea's hot buttons; men who beat up on women were the hottest. And for good reason. Now his sister-in-law was good and riled. "Who was he?" she asked. "Tell me his name, and I'll have Garrett find him and lock him up."

  Esmeralda's eyes sought Elliot's. He gave her a very slight shake of his head, side to side. "I don't … know his name. But … it will not happen again. Of this I am certain."

  Chelsea shook her head. "Unless you killed the son of a bitch, I don't know how you can be."

  Esmeralda's eyes widened, shot to Elliot's. He put a finger to his lips.

  "Anyway, it's over. And I understand if you're not ready to talk about it yet. But whatever happened to you, you're safe here."

  "Safe." Esmeralda repeated the word as if trying it out for the first time.

  Elliot thought Chelsea was getting choked up at this point. She no doubt thought she had a runaway battered woman on her hands. And, in a way, she did. She just had no idea how far Esmeralda had actually run.

  "Oh, I know that's tough to believe." Chelsea went on. "It was for me, too. There was a time when I thought no place was safe, and that no man could be trusted. But believe me, no one will lay a finger on you here. You can trust me on that. Whoever hurt you would have to get through a solid wall of overprotective Brand men to do it. And if … if you need a place to stay for a while … well, you couldn't have picked a better one."

  Esmeralda tilted her head, studying Chelsea closely, oddly, as if she'd never seen her like before. "I … thank you."

  "And if you decide you want to talk," Chelsea went on, "you just come to me, okay? I'm good at listening."

  She was, too, Elliot thought. A full-blown psychologist now, with her degree in hand. Chelsea counseled battered women, helped them heal. She was damn good at what she did. Though he would be willing to bet that if she heard Esmeralda's story, she would find herself at a loss.

  "For now, though, I'll bet you'd like a bath and a change of clothes, wouldn't you? Make you feel like a new woman."

  Looking down at her tattered, stained clothes, Esmeralda nodded. "Sí. That would be wonderful."

  "I'll get it running, then." Chelsea got up, patting Esmeralda's hand, and headed for the bathroom.

  But as soon as she opened the door Esmeralda was sitting up, peering inside at the tub and fixtures, and when Chelsea snapped on the light, Esmeralda clapped a hand over her mouth to prevent a squeak of surprise. The look on her face, though, as she stared wide-eyed at the light coming from the bathroom, was obvious. She looked ready to spring at any second from the bed and either run for the hills or rush in for a closer look—as if that hand over her mouth were all that was holding her down.

  "Chelsea?" Elliot was on his feet, taking Chelsea's arm and tugging her from the room as fast as possible. "Why don't you go find some clothes and let me run that bath, huh? I can, uh … I can take care of … you know, the water."

  Chelsea turned in the doorway, frowning at him. "What is wrong with you, anyway? You're acting so…" Then she
slid her gaze past him to the woman who was already creeping out of bed, peering into the bathroom like Alice getting her first glimpse of Wonderland. "Oooooh," Chelsea said. "Oh, so it's like that, is it?"

  "Like what?" But Chelsea was already turning to stroll away, her step almost bouncy. "Chelsea? Hey, I don't know what you're thinking, but if it's what I think you're thinking then … ah, hell." She was beyond hearing him, anyway. Women! They all had one-track minds.

  With a frustrated sigh, Elliot went back into the bedroom to see to his charge. His responsibility now, he supposed. Hell, she didn't have anyone else to guide her through life in the twentieth century.

  Esmeralda had located the wall switch, and was flipping it on and off and on again, her eyes on the light fixture in the bathroom ceiling.

  "It's an electric light," Elliot explained. "Every home has it nowadays. And running water, too. Hot and cold. I guess this is all new to you, huh?"

  She nodded, turning her attention now to the gleaming bathroom, and the bathtub and the toilet. She pointed at the latter. "What's this?"

  "It is like an outhouse. Look." Elliot lifted the lid, and as she watched, he flushed it so she could see the water swirl and go down.

  A long sigh came floating from her. Then she turned. "And this is a bathtub?"

  "Yeah. You just flip this lever here, and that keeps the water in. Then you turn it on, like this." He cranked the nobs. "Hot, cold. Feel."

  Esmeralda put her hands under the water, feeling it grow warmer and cooler, and nodding excitedly. She didn't look angry or suspicious or scared now. She looked like an excited child, and her eyes sparkled. She even smiled, and when he looked up and saw the transformation of her face when she did, he almost fell into the tub.

  Shaking himself, he went on. "So you just adjust it to the temperature you want and let it fill. When you're done, flip the lever, and the water goes down the drain."

  "Amazing," she whispered. "This … world of yours … is so different." Meeting his eyes, she seemed to be searching them.