Reluctant Enemies Read online

  Reluctant Enemies

  Vivian Vaughan

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1995 by Jane Vaughan

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition June 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-850-7

  Also by Vivian Vaughan

  A Wish to Build a Dream On

  Storms Never Last

  Sweetheart of the Rodeo

  Branded

  No Place for a Lady

  The Texas Star Trilogy

  Texas Gamble

  Texas Dawn

  Texas Gold

  Silver Creek Stories

  Heart’s Desire

  Texas Twilight

  Runaway Passion

  Sweet Texas Nights

  Jarrett Family Sagas

  Sweet Autumn Surrender

  Silver Surrender

  Sunrise Surrender

  Secret Surrender

  Tremaynes of Apache Wells Series

  Chance of a Lifetime

  Catch a Wild Heart

  To Andra and Vonnie

  My Sisters—My Friends

  Prologue

  Philadelphia, 1856

  “’Evening, Mr. Seth.” Young William Radnor hailed the elderly night watchman who paddle-footed around the street corner just as the family’s carriage pulled up to the arched red awning that stretched from the Radnor Building to the curb.

  “’Evening, Master William,” the old man replied.

  “Run fetch your father, William,” Ann Radnor told her son. “And don’t tarry. The Murphys are waiting.”

  Years later Will Radnor marveled that the only thing he couldn’t recall about that cold misty evening was the reason the Murphys were waiting. Everything else had been graphically etched into the fabric of his ten-year-old brain.

  He’d been wearing short black pants, knee-high socks, and new shoes. He recalled looking down at his shoes after he entered the door opened for him by the night watchman. Mud.

  “Your father’s working late, is he, Master William?” Seth, the night watchman, was a jovial sort. William had known him all his life. “Must have a big case comin’ up in court.”

  “Yes, sir. ’Night, sir.” Inside the marble and brass lobby, William knelt, spit on a finger, and rubbed mud off the toe of one black patent-leather shoe.

  Years later he still remembered the sound made by the rigid soles of his new shoes slapping against the marble floor, echoing through the cavernous interior of the building in which his father and grandfather and his great-grandfather before them had practiced law. William took the stairs with extra care. He trailed an open palm along the brass banister, pivoting on his slick soles at the landing, continuing to the next level.

  Outside the glass-paneled door to his father’s suite of offices, he paused to tug up his socks; his new shoes ate them at the heels. Swirling gold letters were etched into the frosted door pane: Radnor, Radnor, & Kane, Attorneys at Law. William remembered when the door had read: Radnor, Radnor, & Radnor. It had remained so for years after his great-grandfather’s death. William wondered when they would get around to removing the name of Charles Martin Kane, his father’s Harvard roommate, the first lawyer outside the family ever admitted to the firm. Just last week Charles Kane resigned; William still recalled his parents’ bitter words over the affair.

  They probably wouldn’t leave Charles Kane’s name on the door any longer than necessary. They should have saved the other pane; the one that read: Radnor, Radnor, & Radnor. When they replaced the glass this time, maybe they would leave space for his own name—William Penn Radnor IV. The fact that he would practice law in these offices had never been in question.

  That he would not do so with his father, however, soon became all too apparent. Inside the spacious offices of the most prestigious law firm in the City of Brotherly Love, William found everything in disarray. For a moment he stood as though glued to the spot. Wide-eyed, he gazed from overturned chairs to files strewn across the wine red carpet. An unfamiliar sense of foreboding crept up his spine. His heart began to pound. He peered down the long hall.

  A man’s arm…a gray pinstripe sleeve…His father!

  William moved. Racing through the outer office, he jumped over a toppled chair, waded through piles of paper and books, and knelt beside his father, who lay sprawled in the hallway outside Charles Kane’s vacated office. Blood pooled in a black circle beneath him.

  William reached forward; his hand hovered above the still body. Except for the fixed stare in his lifeless brown eyes, his father might have been asleep.

  “Father?” The word choked out; William felt his own heart beat in heavy thuds, constricting his throat. “Father, wake up.”

  He experienced a strange sensation, as though his voice and his brain operated from separate bodies. His brain knew that his father would not awaken to his call, no matter that his gray pinstripe suit was unrumpled, that his brown hair was slicked to the side, unmussed, that his white collar was crisp and pristine.

  A vivid ink-stain of red blood dried on the starched white shirt. It had run down his father’s side, exited again, and formed a black circle beneath him. Already the stench of blood rose from the wool carpet.

  Although his stomach had begun to tumble, William could not tear himself from his father’s side. Looking closely, he saw where the bullet entered through a small tear in his father’s jacket. Then he noticed the gun in his father’s hand—one of a matched pair of engraved pearl-handled Colt Pocket Dragoons presented to Charles Kane at last year’s Independence Day celebration. The pistols had been the award for winning the sharpshooters’ contest. Charles Kane always won the sharpshooters’ contest.

  The sight of the pistol grasped in his father’s lifeless hand brought William to his feet.

  His father had been murdered!

  By whom? Terror froze William in place. Was the criminal even now lurking somewhere in this suite of offices? Although his heart raced, his feet seemed rooted to the floor. Like a marionette, he turned his head this way and that. Everything was scattered—papers, books, files. Inside Charles Kane’s office, the polished oak case for the matching pair of Colts stood open, velvet-lined like a coffin, he thought. Like an empty coffin.

  William sprang to life. Clutching the pistol to his chest, he raced from the offices. By the time he reached the carriage where his mother waited, tears streamed down his face. His father was dead.

  Shot to death.

  The police came, investigated, pronounced the motive for the killing to have been robbery, and took the pearl-handled pistol from William.

  “When we find that matching gun, we’ll have the murderer,” the captain explained. “Then we’ll return the pistols to you, son.”

  The hearse arrived. Men in gray suits covered his father with a white sheet and carried him away. William stood on the curb beside his weeping mother. Together they watched draft horses pull the hearse bearing his father’s body down the street.

  “Don’t cry, Mother,” William soothed. “If the police don’t find Father’s murderer, I’ll do it.”

  Spanish Creek Ranch, New Mexico Territory, 1870

  Creeping t
oward the corral, Priscilla McCain squinted against the dazzling reflection of a steadily rising sun. She shivered in the crisp air coming off distant mountains and hurried through patches of ground fog that tickled her bare feet. Arriving at her destination, she slung her blond pigtails over her shoulders and cast a furtive glance back the way she’d come—to the sprawling adobe house where her mother prepared breakfast, to the closer adobe barn where her father fed his saddle horses and Uncle Sog milked Tequila, their Jersey cow.

  So far, so good. No one had seen her. Yet. From beneath her flowing cotton nightgown, she withdrew an old pistol she’d found in her father’s trunk the day before.

  Supporting her right arm with her left hand like she’d seen her father do, she took deliberate aim at the first of five empty tomato cans she’d lined up on the far side of the corral fence. She squinted along the barrel and pulled the trigger.

  Even though it was a small gun, its repercussion jolted her. She steadied herself, took aim, and fired again. And again. And again. None of her five shots hit a target, but two came close.

  “What in thunderation d’you think you’re doing, Miss Priss?”

  Priscilla reloaded the pistol, ignoring her father, who stomped toward her from the barn. Before he reached her, she repeated her shots. This time she hit one can.

  Charlie McCain waited until she finished then jerked her around by the shoulders. He took the pistol from her hand. “Where’d you get this old thing?” His voice was gruff.

  Priscilla regarded him solemnly. He was already dressed for the day’s work—with heavy brown duck britches stuffed into knee-high, work-scarred boots, covered by a pair of worn leather chaps. His leather vest topped a blue chambray shirt, the only concession Priscilla had ever known him to make to her mother’s attempts at sprucing up his attire. Priscilla could hear them now.

  “Blue brings out the color of your eyes, dear,” her mother would say.

  “Hell, Kate, d’you think those ol’ cows are gonna give a damn what color my eyes are when I stick that brandin’ iron to ’em?” her father would reply.

  Her mother was like that, always trying to make her father into a gentleman—and Priscilla into a lady. But her mother was right about the blue shirt bringing out the color of his eyes. Leveled on her now, they were as vivid a blue as the sky on a clear summer day.

  They didn’t intimidate Priscilla, though. She returned his glare with a matching pair of blue eyes, even though her neck had to stretch to meet his gaze. “You know where, Pa. In that old trunk in the barn—with all that old iron junk.”

  Charlie removed his sweat-stained Stetson and ran a callused hand through dark, wiry hair. “Artifacts,” he corrected, “not junk. And you’re to stay out of that trunk, young lady.” He frowned at the small pistol. “This is no toy. I won’t have you using—”

  “A man’s gotta learn to shoot, Pa.” She watched his mouth twitch, but he didn’t laugh at her. Pa never laughed at her, not even when she knew he wanted to, like now.

  “Dadburnit, sugar. You’re not a man. You’re a ten-year-old girl. Your mama’ll have my hide for this. And yours, too.”

  “She expects me to learn to protect myself. She told me so.”

  “Protect yourself, yes. But she won’t cotton to you takin’ target practice. Learn to load and fire a gun, for protection. That’s what she meant. Not target practice. Your mama expects you to be a lady. And so do I.”

  Priscilla shook her blond pigtails. “What you need on this ranch is a son.”

  Charlie’s expression softened. “No, sugar, what I need is a daughter just like you. A daughter who’ll grow up to be a lady like her mama.”

  “I’ll never be a lady like mama. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world. You always say so. And the best cook, and the best seamstress, and the best—”

  “And you’re the spittin’ image of her. Don’t I always say that, too? Look at this head of golden hair. You’ll look just like your mama one day, mark my word. And you’ll learn the rest. We aim to see to that.”

  Priscilla rammed fists to her hips. “I’m not going back East to school.”

  Sighing, Charlie held up his hands in defense. “The sisters in Santa Fé told your mama about a good girls’ school in St. Louis. That’s not too far away now, is it?”

  Priscilla concentrated on the four cans still standing on the fence. She took the pistol from her father and began to reload it. When he tried to stop her, she pulled away. “I’m not going, Pa.”

  “You will if I say so.”

  Priscilla took aim, steadied her arm, and hit the first can. A thrill tickled her insides. The repercussion wasn’t as strong this time. Of course, she’d learned to brace herself against it.

  “Miss Priss.”

  Priscilla fired again, hit the second can. And the third.

  “Miss Priss, you look at me.”

  She missed the fourth, frowned at it, then cast a stern look at her father. Along with his blue eyes, she had inherited a strong stubborn streak, or so her mother claimed. “I told you not to call me that.”

  The absurdity of the situation struck Charlie like a fist to the gut—his beloved, headstrong young daughter sneaking off to the corral at dawn in her ruffled nightgown, demanding to be treated like a man, and taking target practice with a pistol he should have thrown away years ago.

  Exasperated with both Priscilla and himself, he reached to embrace her, but she backed away. He stared down at the top of her head, at her hair the color of young corn silk. It would one day be as thick and golden as Kate’s. But Priscilla’s pigtails were lopsided and irregular, and her part meandered down her head with as many crooks and turns as the Pecos River. She wouldn’t hear of her mother combing her hair. Kate said she’d learn, to give her rope.

  But Priscilla didn’t want to learn. Somehow she’d managed to get it in her head that Charlie was sorry she wasn’t a son. He must have done something to give her that idea, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think what. Sure, it had come as a blow that after Priscilla’s birth, Kate hadn’t been able to conceive again. But that meant they had more love to give Priscilla.

  And love her he did. The older she got the more she looked like her mother and the prouder Charlie was of her. It would hurt to send her away to school, but Kate wanted it. And Charlie wanted what Kate wanted. They both wanted Priscilla to have all the advantages they could provide—which meant she had to learn to behave like a lady.

  Priscilla didn’t want that, either. Charlie recognized the problem—she was afraid of not measuring up to her mother, so she took the opposite tack. Kate said Priscilla had been born a tomboy, and there was nothing they could do about it until the right young man showed up. Then Priscilla would take on the role of a lady too fast to suit either of them.

  “Until that time she’s better off in britches,” Kate argued. “I expect her to behave like a lady, but the less feminine she looks, the better.”

  Kate had good reason to want Priscilla to mask her femininity. At fifteen Kate had been assaulted by a stepbrother. With Charlie’s love and help her wounds had healed, but he knew she harbored fears for their daughter.

  Charlie had fears, too, fears of sending Priscilla away to school. He worried that she would have trouble fitting into an all-female society, unless she began taking an interest in more feminine things. If this morning was an indication, that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

  Why, she hadn’t even put on a dress in two years, and she’d worn that one only once. Later, when Charlie asked, she claimed it was too small. To no avail he had argued that her mother could easily let it out—or sew another.

  “You’ll make a fine lady, sugar,” he assured her now. “Just like your mama—”

  Priscilla glowered at him. “I’ve never heard you call Uncle Crockett sugar.”

  In spite of the situation, Charlie smiled at the thought of calling his crusty old foreman sugar or anything akin to it.

  “Or Uncle Sog.”

/>   “No, Miss Priss, I’ve never called Crockett or Ol’ Soggy Bottoms sugar. Even if you are only ten, I think you’re smart enough to figure out the difference.”

  Priscilla elevated her chin to an angle that would have befitted the First Lady of the United States of America. “Then don’t call me sugar, either.”

  Charlie stared dumfounded at his gangly yet proud young daughter.

  “All right, Miss Priss, if that’s what you want.”

  “And don’t call me Miss Priss.”

  “Now, sug—” Removing his Stetson again, Charlie slapped it against his thigh. He glimpsed Crockett and Ol’ Sog standing in the barn door, pretending to mind their own business. Seems Priscilla’s gunshots had called all hands. Before he could think of a response, Priscilla added,

  “Call me Jake.”

  “Jake?”

  “Tell mama you can hire a tutor, if it’ll make her happy. But I’m not going off to try to become a lady. I’d rather work at something I can do. Like being a cowboy.”

  Without another word Priscilla clutched the pistol to her chest and stomped toward the house, her proud little chin jutting toward the tier of mountains that encircled Spanish Creek Ranch. She left Charlie with no illusions that she intended to join her mother in the kitchen or would take up sewing.

  Nearer the house stood Joaquín, son of the Apache woman Nalin; he also watched Priscilla’s progress, his face an emotionless mask. Not quite a year separated the two, with Joaquín being the younger. Charlie turned his attention back to his daughter.

  Jake? Where in hell had she come up with such an outlandish demand? Yet, wouldn’t it be a whole lot simpler as she grew to womanhood in this wild country if all hands considered her one of the boys?

  One

  New Mexico Territory, 1879

  “Sorry to tell you this, Miss Jake, but Ol’ Sog here ain’t goin’ nowhere no time soon. A broke femur’s a mighty dangerous thing.”