Desert Dreams by Deborah Cox Read Free Book Online Page A

contents on the bed,
trying not to think of the past. She had enough to worry about in the present.
    She picked up a folded piece of paper, a letter from her
father. He'd written it to her in Natchez while she was in Baton Rouge, but he
had never gotten around to posting it. She'd only found it after the funeral.
She couldn't bear to look at it. The pain of his death was too fresh still, so
she stuffed it back inside the pouch and went on to the next item, a small
bottle of perfume. Uncorking the bottle, she held it beneath her nose.
    "Jasmine," Borden McKenna had said. "It suits
you, Anne. Lovely, delicate, but strong."
    A growl rumbled up from her throat. She might shed a tear now
and then over her father's death, but she'd be damned if Borden McKenna would
ever make her cry again. She placed the bottle on the bedside table and
returned the rest of her possessions to the pouch, all except her money.
    She'd been hoarding money and hiding it from her father all
her life. If she had not, they surely would have starved to death. She had
managed to save a small nest egg, most of which she had been forced to use in
Baton Rouge to support herself and later in Natchez to support both of them.
But she still had most of the silver and gold her father had won that last
night. She'd left the folding money behind. Confederate money was hardly worth
the paper it was printed on. Silver and gold, now that was a different story.
Harder to carry, true, but silver and gold would always hold their value.
    She knew how much money she had left. She'd counted it
earlier in the evening after she ate a modest dinner in the hotel restaurant.
Even so, she counted it again. "Thirty-six dollars," she said aloud
when she'd finished counting, thirty-six dollars and whatever she had in her
reticule. She'd started out with much more than that, but there had been so
many men to bribe just to get across the border into Texas.
    Thirty-six dollars wasn't going to last long, not when a
stagecoach ride from San Antonio to Ubiquitous cost ten dollars. She didn't
have nearly enough money to go back to New Orleans, even if she wanted to.
    There weren't many things she could do to earn a living. She
could sew, but she hated sewing almost as much as she hated being poor.
    The only other skill she possessed was gambling, and she
would only stoop that low once she exhausted all other options. But did she
really have options? Or had she already exhausted them?
    A million dollars in gold. The words of
the Mexican haunted her. She'd tried all day to forget them. She'd told herself
she didn't want the gold, she would be perfectly happy with a simple life with
her mother's sister.
    But that wasn't to be. Marguerite Tremaine was dead. And Anne
had nothing. As always she would have to rely on herself. If she wanted that
house, and she wanted it desperately, she would have to have money. In fact, if
she wanted to live, she would have to have
money.
    It is hidden in a small church in the town of Concepción,
near Chihuahua. Mexico. No one could find it if they did not know already where
it was.
    Where on earth was Concepción, Mexico? How far? How would she
ever get there? Defeat settled heavy on her heart. She couldn't do this alone.
The only person in Texas she knew by name was Rafe Montalvo, a professional
killer. She could never ask him for help. Could she?
    She blinked wearily. Her eyelids were heavy, and suddenly she
wanted to sleep and not wake up for two days.
    Her hand closed around the perfume bottle on the bedside
table, and she carried it across the room to the open window. The sky had begun
turning pink and soon the sun would be high overhead. If she allowed herself to
fall asleep now, she wouldn't wake up until late afternoon, and she needed to
be at the bank when it opened this morning.
    Leaning out the window, she dropped the perfume bottle. It
shattered on the wooden sidewalk below her window and she smiled with
satisfaction. Why she had kept it for so long, she