Arizona Embrace by Leigh Greenwood Page A

futures I wouldn’t have any time or energy left to worry about claiming land, surveying homesteads, and planting a flower garden big enough for a whole village. My uncle has organized his whole life around my protection, but he won’t let me do anything to pay him back.”
    Trinity saw sadness in her eyes. The kind that stays until it becomes a permanent part of one’s dunking and one’s life.
    “But things didn’t work out the way I expected, so I’ve had to think of something else to keep me busy.” She appeared to take a deep breath and shrug her worries from her shoulders before she stood up. “I have to get back to work. I’ll never get this ridge done if I sit around talking all day.”
    She worked him just as hard as if he’d been riding the trails. By the time he had hauled her equipment over several miles of mountainside, climbed over boulders bigger than the house he’d been born in, scrambled up and down ravines, even climbed a tree, Trinity was ready to head home. He had a much greater respect for the men who surveyed the seemingly trackless miles of the West.
    He also had a much greater respect for Victoria.
    He had better make his move soon. If today was any example, the more he learned about Victoria, the harder it would be to take her back to Texas. He had never gotten to know his victims before. There had been no need … and no desire.
    This time things were different.
    Whatever kind of woman lived inside that beautiful, desirable shell, it was a very different woman from the one he’d expected when she stepped out of her flower garden. It didn’t bother him that he was strongly attracted to her. He’d have been worried about himself if he hadn’t been. By any standards, Victoria was a lovely woman, and he had always had a weakness for beautiful women.
    But there was something more about Victoria, something about her character which had gotten in his craw and wouldn’t let him go. She had been characterized as a cruel, selfish woman. Yet instead of complaining about the work she had to do, she looked for things to keep herself occupied. She chafed under the restrictions that were imposed upon her, a captivity nearly as confining as the one from which she had escaped; yet she tried to make sure her frustrations and irritations didn’t worry her uncle and Buc. She denied having committed the killing that made it impossible for her to lead a normal life, yet she seemed reconciled to spending the rest of her life in this valley.
    There were too many contradictions, but he did understand one thing. Whatever reasons she’d had to murder her husband, they weren’t what he’d been led to believe.
    A bountiful and delicious dinner awaited them when they returned.
    “Now you know all this talk about my cooking and cleaning is just fiction,” Victoria admitted when Trinity looked at her, a question in his eyes. “Ramon and Anita do it better than I ever would. And they like it.”
    Two diminutive Mexicans grinned at Trinity.
    “You could try reading,” Trinity suggested.
    “I’m not much of a scholar. I like to read newspapers, and I’d love to have some magazines with pictures of the latest fashions or stories about what people are doing these days, but I’m easily bored and much too restless to sit still.” She laughed. “I even tried embroidery. You only have to look at this tablecloth to understand why Uncle Grant was glad I gave it up.”
    “And quilt making,” Buc added.
    “Wouldn’t you know I’d be terrible at the only practical things I know how to do. I like to sketch, but nobody can tell what I’ve drawn.”
    Grant Davidge looked uncomfortable. “I’ve told you over and over, I have no eye for art.”
    “But you’re perfectly capable of telling when a tree doesn’t look like a tree.”
    “You can ride out with me whenever you like,” Buc said.
    “And be treated like a fragile flower by every man on the place,” Victoria said, her mouth compressed in annoyance.