Breathless(22)

“I have. I met him before he and Mr. Fontaine rode off. He seems like a nice enough man. His stallion’s sweet on your Arizona. Saw them courting earlier this morning. You might want to start thinking about names for a foal.”

Portia went still.

He laughed. “Don’t look so shocked. She was bound to find her a fella sooner or later.”

Portia knew he was right, but . . . She shook herself free of the thought. “I brought her a treat.”

“You go ahead. I’ll be in the tack room if you need me.”

He walked away with the slow easy stride that all cowboys seemed to have and she whistled between her fingers for her mare. The Appaloosa came galloping to the fence and Portia hugged her neck affectionately. “Brought you something.”

The mare took a bite out the apple Portia held. “I hear you’re being courted. Are you sure you’re ready for motherhood?”

There was no answer of course. Portia couldn’t imagine her lovely mare heavy with a foal but knew nature would run its course. Her thoughts slid to Kent and wondered what nature had in store for her. Hastily backing away from that, she watched Arizona for a few moments longer then left her to play while she went to her office to look over the duty roster tied to the hotel’s soon-to-arrive guests.



As Kent and Rhine rode across the desert, Kent asked. “So tell me about Tucson. What’s it like here?”

“Much sleepier than Virginia City,” Rhine replied. “It’s growing though, now that the Southern Pacific has come to town. Politically, lots of shenanigans.”

“You involved?”

“Behind the scenes.”

“Because of what happened in Virginia City.”

“Yes. I’m not putting Eddy and the girls in harm’s way ever again. Portia had nightmares for months about that mob.”

Kent had been with them that night. He’d helped Rhine and Jim Dade hastily pack the family’s essentials into the wagon they’d escaped in only a few minutes before the mob arrived. On horseback, he’d fled, too, but only far enough to watch from a safe distance as the men of Virginia City set fire to the Fontaine home, Rhine’s saloon, and Eddy’s new diner. That Portia had experienced nightmares from the cowardly deed added to the lingering embers of rage he still carried inside. Escaping with little more than his life and the women he loved had to have made Rhine seek a new direction. For those in Virginia City’s Colored community the atmosphere after the fires had been tense. Because Rhine was beyond reach, threats were made against those who’d remained behind. Men like Kent’s father were confronted and roughed up, but when Rhine and his banker half brother, Andrew, began taking financial revenge, the bigots suddenly found themselves too busy scrambling to keep their homes and business out of foreclosure to further exhibit their hate and disdain. “How are you and the family treated here?”

Rhine shrugged. “Not bad. Everyone is too busy looking over their shoulders for the Apaches still up in the mountains to worry too much about race. Many Mexicans live here of course and Chinese, too, because of the railroads.”

They entered the town proper a short while later. As they slowly rode down the main street, they passed myriad shops and saloons and, yes, it was much smaller than Virginia City. They rode past the large Cathedral of St. Augustine with its adjacent convent, and Rhine related that some of the streets like Pennington and Jackson were named after men who’d been killed in Apache attacks. There were quite a few people of various races on the wooden walks and a decent number of riders and wagons in the street. Kent was surprised to see a river on the edge of town and the stand of orchards fronting it.

“Apples,” Rhine explained.



Kent was still pondering the oddness of apples in the desert as Rhine reined his mount to a halt in front of a small adobe home. “This is where the Landrys live.”

They tied up their mounts, walked to the door, and knocked. Once inside, Kent was introduced to Old Man Blanchard’s daughter, Missy Landry, a short buxom woman with very large teeth. She nodded a greeting and introduced her accountant, a tall balding man named Alistair Gerber.

“Do you have the bank draft?” she asked Rhine.

“I do.”

Any grief her watery blue eyes may have held for her father was elbowed aside by a flash of eager greed.

“And the ledgers,” Rhine added, handing them to her.

“And I have the deed,” she said. “Shall we get down to business?”

Gerber looked startled. “Mrs. Landry, my advice is to let me take a day or two to look over the books to make sure everything is sound. After all, that’s why you hired me.”

She waved him off. “Only reason I hired you was to appease my husband, Charlie, but since he had to leave for St. Louis yesterday to see about his sainted mother, I’ve decided I don’t need your advice. Portia’s been the only person handling the books, Mr. Fontaine?”

Rhine nodded.

The accountant stared. “Portia? Is she a woman?”

Rhine replied coolly, “Yes.”

Missy said, “She went to Oberlin. Smart as a whip and more honest than the sun in the sky. Here’s the deed, Rhine.”

Rhine took the papers, read through them slowly, and said, “This looks fine, Missy.”

“Good.”