Lauren heard the low mumblings of several voices before Kurt closed the door and returned to his place at the table.
“I told them to wait in the stable. They’ll gather in there and… ready themselves.”
Parker nodded, satisfied. His cold blue eyes flashed in anticipation. His look was predatory. Lauren shivered despite the warm, muggy air.
She looked at her husband, unable to continue the pretense of eating. He was dressed like a vaquero. The red scarf he had been wearing the day he kissed her in the shelter of the boulders was tied negligently around his throat. He usually wore formal attire for dinner in Coronado, but she had been too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice this incongruity before now. She knew he felt her eyes on him, but he refused to meet them.
Carson’s normally hearty appetite had waned and he sat sipping his wine. Olivia ate calmly, as though the interruption had never happened. Kurt leaned back in his chair indolently, studying Lauren. He seemed unaffected by the tension around the table.
“How… how long before we know something, Jared? I mean, how long will it take?” Carson asked nervously.
Jared shrugged and took a long swallow of whiskey.
“You have a big night ahead of you, Jared. I’d lay off the whiskey if I were you,” Parker said.
Jared fixed a golden stare on him, then tipped the glass to his lips once again. Parker’s face flooded with anger, which purpled the veins in his nose and cheeks.
“Send us word when the plan has gone into effect. Carson and I will be eager to know what is happening.” Olivia’s face was shining. She might well have been talking about a Mardi Gras ball. To Lauren, her eagerness to destroy was obscene.
“Well, never put off until tomorrow what you can do today, or something to that effect,” Kurt said lightly, rising from the table and going to the window. “Looks like they’re all here. It’s a good thing you don’t live in the center of town, Lockett. People might wonder what the hell was going on.”
Parker, Olivia, and Carson stood, pushing their chairs back and moving toward the door. Except for Lauren, Jared was the last one to rise. He did so slowly, deliberately. His Colt, in its holster, lay against his hip. A leather cord tied around his thigh held it secure. He wasn’t entering a harmless shooting match. His gun was loaded and primed for a deadly purpose.
Lauren was out of the chair in a flash, her former sluggishness forgotten. She placed herself between Jared and the door, grabbing his forearms with her slender fingers.
Breathlessly but incisively, she said, “Jared, I beg you, don’t be a part of this thing. Please.” His face was cold, implacable
, his eyes impenetrable. When he didn’t speak, she went on, “Think, Jared! Think of Rudy and his family.”
“Rudy is a fool,” he lashed out. “He wants to solve things peacefully. He thinks everything Ben ever said is chiseled in stone, but I’ve learned that Ben could be wrong. He was certainly wrong about you and me and this ‘grand love’ between us.”
The barb hit home and she floundered, aware of the others listening to their dialogue. She tightened her grip on him. “I believe in you, Jared. Once, just a few weeks ago, you asked me to trust you—”
“You heard only what you wanted to hear. I also strongly hinted that you’d do well to accept things as they are and to keep your moralistic opinions to yourself. Apparently you don’t take hints too well. I don’t give a damn whether you trust or approve of me. I do as I please.”
She wanted to scream in frustration. “Do you realize how this might jeopardize your future… our future?”
His eyes darted to the interested witnesses behind her, then came back to her face. His lips curled mockingly. “Our future? We have no future, Lauren. You know what your future with us is. When you have fulfilled your part of the bargain, you’re gone. A lot richer, but gone. Do you now regret selling yourself so cheaply? What do you want? More money?”
Lauren swallowed the congestion in her throat. She stuttered as she tried to speak. “At… at Keypoint, you… we… it was… different.”
He laughed at her mirthlessly, his face ugly in its contempt. “Do you think because I’ve slept with you that things have changed between us? That I’ve developed an ‘attachment’ to you?” He snorted derisively. “You were a pretty good lover once you learned how. And you were handy. What did you expect me to do? You were the only warm body available in a snowstorm. If you place any more importance on my bedding you than that, you’re even more stupid than I thought.”
Her disillusionment turned to pain, then to anger. “Not too stupid to see you for what you really are. I placed far too much faith in you, Jared Lockett. I thought you were growing up, becoming the kind of son your father deserved, the kind of husband I wanted.” She paused and gulped for air. “Now I see that you’re as avaricious, as cruel as they are. Jared, I—” She wanted to tell him that she loved him, to beg him not to do this thing. Instead, she said, “I curse you to perdition if you do this thing.”
“Then to hell I shall go.” He laughed again as he shoved her away from him and shouted, “Let’s go,” to Kurt and Parker.
His words struck her like physical blows. The breath had literally been knocked out of her. She heard the shouts and thudding of horses’ hooves as a score of men mounted and rode out of the stableyard. She stood rooted to the spot, oblivious to everything except the constricting pain around her heart.
Carson came up behind her and touched her shoulder solicitously. “Jared’s a little keyed up, Lauren. He spouts off things he doesn’t really mean.”
His kindness penetrated the protective shell she had drawn around herself. It was strange, but she wasn’t humiliated or embarrassed that they had heard what Jared said to her. Her wounds went too deep to be bothered by superficial lacerations.
She felt only the desolate loss. They had shared something beautiful and the product of that sharing lay sleeping in her womb. She touched her stomach as if to reassure herself that his words hadn’t ripped the seed out of her body. Scalding tears rolled down her cheeks as she was ravaged by despair.
Passing Olivia on her way out of the room, she met the smug, triumphant face of her mother-in-law fully. Lauren wondered at the hate that so consumed her that she sought to destroy those she supposedly loved. Maria had once said that Olivia was a sad, lonely woman. Lauren thought she was most likely right. In spite of her aversion, she felt a moment of pity for Olivia. The woman was incapable of real love. Her destructive selfishness wouldn’t permit it.
Olivia must have perceived her thought, for her emerald eyes narrowed with loathing. Lauren knew then that she had scored a small victory over this domineering woman. That knowledge emboldened her as she swept past Olivia and went up the stairs.