Only in My Arms by Jo Goodman Read Free Book Online Page B

them to go unaccompanied through a single dance, especially when their fathers were taking notice. Even eighty-year-old Florence Gardner did not want for partners. The interest shown her was in part because she was shockingly free with her opinions and always engaged in lively conversation, and in part because she was the widowed mother of Fort Union's commander.
    Although all the women were sought as partners, one particular woman enjoyed a surfeit of attention and accepted it as her due. Her presence was suffered by the officers' wives and despised by the officers' daughters. Florence Gardner was the only one who found amusement from her presence at the fort, though she kept it to herself.
    Anna Leigh Hamilton bore the stamp of Eastern sophistication that none of the other women in the room could rival, except perhaps the general's mother who didn't care to. It was not that the wives and daughters hadn't once enjoyed the same well-mannered polish Miss Hamilton wore as regally as elbow-length gloves, it was simply that the heat and hardships of the Arizona Territory, the daily threats of raids and uprisings, had worn away the pretenses and conventions. Practicalities were more important considerations in this harsh environment than polish.
    Anna Leigh Hamilton didn't expect to stay at the desert fort long enough to lose the radiance and refinement that drew so many covert glances in her direction. She looked forward to returning to San Francisco, then to Washington, with her widowed father. She would play hostess for him again, attend the theater and the opera, and choose from among the most advantageous of the invitations for dinner parties and carriage rides. She would entertain congressmen and judges and generals, sometimes in the parlor or dining room of their grand Washington home, sometimes in the even more intimate surroundings of her grand bed.
    * * *
    Ryder McKay casually flicked a cigarette into the dirt when he heard someone approaching. Turning, he leaned negligently against the wagon wheel he had been inspecting moments earlier. The woman's silhouette was outlined by the bright candlelight coming from the officers' hall behind her. Ryder recognized her immediately and his wary, guarded features faded. The posture that had looked relaxed now actually became so.
    "Don't you have enough partners in there?" he asked. His raised chin indicated the hall. "You're not going to insist on making me do a two-step with you?"
    Florence Gardner laughed gleefully. "And get my toes trampled in three different places? I don't think I'll risk that." She leaned a little heavily on her ebony cane as she came closer to the wagon and didn't offer any resistance when Ryder picked her up by the waist and set her on the back of the wagon bed. It was very like him to notice her discomfort and act to relieve it. Looking at him carefully, his strong features handsomely carved by star shine and firelight, Florence was moved to sigh. She tapped him on the chest with the curved handle of her cane. "If I were forty years younger..."
    Ryder smiled at that. "You'd still be old enough to be my big sister."
    "Ill-mannered lout," she said pleasantly. She made it sound like a term of endearment. "Why aren't you inside filling dance cards?"
    He didn't answer, turning to his inspection of the wagon again. It was a bone of contention between them, and Florence Gardner knew precisely how he felt. He wasn't an officer. That covered his end of the argument as far as he was concerned. Given the opportunity, the general's mother would have pointed out that neither was Ryder regular Army. He had never been an enlisted man. Though he preferred to think of himself as a scout, he was much more of a special agent, contracted by the Army for very particular assignments. He had as much right to be in that room as the senator from Massachusetts, the prospectors from the Holland Mines, or the surveyors from the Office of Land Management.
    "Humph," Florence snorted