Unbound Pursuit

by Lindsay McKenna

  Tal was prepared for the big Texas cowboy to crunch the bones in her hand, but to her surprise, he had a very gentle grip instead. She could see a lot of Wyatt in his father’s deeply weathered, darkly tanned face. She liked Hank’s gray eyes, which Wyatt had inherited. And they both shared the same brown hair with the same military-short haircut. No question that Wyatt was the spitting image of his larger-than-life cowboy father.

  Mattie was the first of Wyatt’s siblings to step forward, gripping Tal’s hand between her own. She looked a lot like her mother, Daisy, with the same red hair and green eyes. She was tall, nearly as tall as Tal, as well as slender and graceful. “Hi, Tal, so nice to meet you! We could hardly wait for you two to come for a visit.”

  “Thanks, Mattie. It’s nice to meet you,” Tal murmured, admiring the woman’s hair, which was caught up in a ponytail. Mattie had worn a black wool dress and a camel-hair coat over it, with makeup and gold earrings. To Tal, she looked like a professional; Wyatt had told Tal that she was a kindergarten teacher in Van Horn. She was pretty, with a riot of freckles across her cheeks and nose.

  Mattie released her and stepped aside.

  “Hi, Tal, I’m Cathy. Welcome to Texas!” She flung her arms around Tal, being careful not to throw her off balance because of her ankle injury.

  Tal loved Cathy’s enthusiasm, hugging her back. She had her father’s brown hair and gray eyes and was within an inch of Tal’s height. She was in a cowboy shirt, jeans, and boots. Her hair, which was cut short, just below her ears, was covered with a black baseball cap. As Tal released her, she said, “Thanks for the warm welcome.” Cathy had Daisy’s oval face, high cheekbones, and wide, soft mouth.

  The last sibling came forward. He stuck out his hand to her. “Hey, Tal, I’m Jake. And just ignore this older brother of mine. I might be the so-called baby of the family, but I pull my weight around here, too.” He grinned, shaking her hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Jake. Thanks for having us.”

  “Oh,” Wyatt deadpanned, “my itty-bitty little brother had nothing to do with or say about us coming home to meet everyone.” He winked over in Jake’s direction.

  Jake chortled and stepped aside so that they could walk through the gate and into the terminal. “Get over yourself, Wyatt.”

  Tal could see there was lots of friendly banter and good-natured competition between Wyatt and Jake, but it was all done in good fun, and they weren’t mean or rude with one another. Jake was dressed like Cathy. He wore a very old denim jacket and a brown baseball cap on his head with the words “Rocking L Ranch” embroidered on the front of it. He had a pair of leather gloves stuffed in the back pocket of his jeans. She saw that his and Cathy’s cowboy boots, although clean, were old, scuffed, and well worn. Jake had black hair in the same short haircut as his father and brother, and gray eyes. Seeing them all together, there was no question that they were all family.

  The copilot of the Delos jet placed their four bags near the gate for them. Wyatt thanked him. Hank picked up two bags and Jake took the other two. Wyatt led Tal through the gate, and they followed the family into the terminal and then outside to the parking lot across the street.

  Daisy came up on Tal’s right, her hand light upon her upper arm. “Are you okay, Tal? Wyatt was tellin’ us you suffered a really bad set of broken bones in your ankle.”

  “I’m fine, Daisy.” Tal wished her limp would stop garnering so much attention. Everyone had to slow their normal stride by half to walk with her, and it about killed Tal. She was used to being strong and whipcord vital.

  “Considering the breaks,” Wyatt told his mom, “Tal’s made tremendous progress since last June, when it happened.”

  Daisy made soft clucking sounds of sympathy with her tongue. “Will you be able to walk okay someday, Tal?”

  “I’d better,” she said, partially smiling but meaning it.

  “Her bone doc said a year,” Wyatt told his mom. “It’s only been six months since it happened. Tal is like me: she’s always in a hurry.”

  Daisy’s red brows rose and she smiled up at Tal. “Well then! I’d say you’re ahead of schedule, wouldn’t you?”

  “Some days,” Tal admitted, “I think I’m progressing well. And then there are those days when I feel like I’ve regressed. I get bummed out when I think my ankle should be doing better than it is, like today.” She gestured down at the special boot she had to wear.

  Wyatt liked his mother’s way of supporting Tal positively. He saw Tal relax a little more. He knew she hated drawing awareness to herself. She was, after all, a sniper by training; it was their job to hide out in plain sight. Garnering attention was not something she liked to do. Tal was low-key, preferring to blend into the background in the eyes of the world, and she liked it that way. He did, too, which was just another reason to love her. She was an introvert by nature. Wyatt would have called himself part introvert and part extrovert. It was easier for him to be around a lot of people without being drained by it like Tal often was.

  Patting Tal’s arm, Daisy said, “Well, no worries, child. My grandmother Bell was an herbalist. She raised a brood of nine children on nothin’ but herbs, because back in her day we had no doctor hereabouts. The only time she saw one was when the doctor rode the circuit into this part of Texas, which was twice a year. The rest of the time, if one of her kids got sick, she used herbs. My grandma left the family an herbal recipe book. I know there’s one in there for broken bones, swelling, and bruises. You might want to try it.”

  Jake dropped back next to his mother, his hands full of their luggage. “I can certify that Gram Bell’s herbs work. Did Wyatt tell you about the time I busted up my right lower arm riding a mean bronc at our local rodeo?”

  “No,” Tal said, smiling over at Jake.

  “Figures.” He gave Wyatt a dark look. Wyatt grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “I busted both bones in my right forearm. I got sent to the ER here in Van Horn, and Mom drove in from our ranch with our gram’s jar of ointment for swelling and bruising.” Jake looked over at his mother. “Too bad you weren’t in the ER with us, Tal. World War Three broke out between that young resident Dr. John and my mom here. She insisted that she be allowed to slather that ointment over the break. And Dr. John said it was foolish and wouldn’t work. He wanted to give me some drug to bring down the swelling instead.”

  Jake’s handsome grin widened. “There was a sayin’ on all the roadways at the borders of our state: ‘Don’t Mess with Texas.’ Well, it was pretty obvious that sounded threatening to people who were visiting Texas, and someone up in the publicity department in the state government finally got that and took those signs down. They put out kinder ‘Welcome to Texas’ signs after that. But”—he raised his black brows, his gray eyes glinting—“we still use our own twist on that saying: ‘Don’t mess with Daisy.’”

  The siblings all laughed, bobbing their heads. They stopped at a dark gray Chevy Suburban, and Jake opened up the rear of it. “Dr. John found out that ‘Don’t Mess with Daisy’ meant exactly that. She slapped his hand away from my arm and told him to git.”

  Mattie laughed, helping Jake put the luggage in the rear of the Suburban. “I had just come into Jake’s cubicle in the ER when I saw my mom slap the doctor’s hand away from Jake’s arm. You should have seen the shock on his face. Our mom can be a mama grizzly bear when it comes to protecting one of her kids.”

  Tal grinned and stood aside as Hank loaded the last two pieces of luggage. “Did the ointment work, Jake?”

  “Oh, for sure it did. Mom came over, snarling and growling, placing herself between me and the traumatized doc, and slathered up my arm where the breaks were at under the skin. She then turned and told the doc to put a removable cast on it. He did exactly as she ordered.”

  “Yes,” Mattie chortled, giving Tal a merry look. “He was white-faced. Like someone had slapped him up alongside the head or something. As you can see, our mom may only be five feet two inches tall, but when she gets protective of her ch
ildren? She might as well be eight feet!”

  The whole family tittered, nodding their heads in agreement.

  Daisy patted Tal’s arm. “Well, come on, child, let’s get you settled in the Suburban. Jake is taking Cathy and Mattie with him in his Chevy pickup truck. They’ll be following us back to the ranch.”

  *

  “Do you like my old room?” Wyatt asked Tal as he threw their four pieces of luggage onto his antique full bed. It had a brass head- and footboard that had been recently polished. Wyatt would have bet anything that his mother had done it.

  Tal looked around. The two-story adobe brick home was huge and square, sitting out in the middle of a flat plain, with the Guadalupe Mountains rising north of the spread. “Cozy,” she murmured, running her fingertips over the large, light tan exposed bricks, which had been handmade with mud and straw a hundred years ago. Wyatt’s room was up on the second floor, at the south end of the home. His parents’ bedroom was on the first floor. The other three bedrooms, plus two bathrooms, comprised the second floor.

  Wyatt smiled a little. There were two dressers in the room, and he opened the top drawer of an antique oak one, starting to place Tal’s lingerie, socks, and long-sleeved tees in it. “Look around. Snoop. Maybe you’ll discover something new about me.”

  She smiled in return and saw all the GI Joe figurines on one oak shelf on the wall. On another shelf were military toys such as combat jets, an Abrams tank, an Apache combat helo, and other model aircraft. “It looks like you were planning on going into the military since you were a kid,” she murmured. Tal noticed books on another shelf. She saw Ernest Hemingway novels, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and others. That was serious reading for a young boy. “Did you understand what you read?” she asked, pointing to the hardback books.

  Looking up, Wyatt nodded his head. “My family is a bunch of book readers by nature. There’s a secondhand bookstore in town. My dad would take all us kids over there on a Saturday afternoon, and we’d troll through the tables full of books. I was always drawn to action and adventure books. I was eight and bought the five Hemingway books for a dollar with the allowance money I’d earned. I had treasures in my hands,” he said, meeting her smile.

  “That’s pretty hefty reading for an eight-year-old,” she murmured, touching the spine of For Whom the Bell Tolls.

  Wyatt quickly emptied the suitcase, shutting it up and placing it beneath his bed. “Yeah, my dad warned me about that. They weren’t kids’ books.”

  “What did you get out of this one?” Tal pulled out another Hemingway book, holding it up so he could see the title.

  “Oh, that one,” he groused, setting Tal’s second piece of luggage up on his bed and opening it. “It’s a love story between an ambulance driver and a nurse. Have you read it?”

  “Yes, when I was fourteen.”

  He quirked an eyebrow, amusement in his expression. “Kinda young for that sort of heavy reading, weren’t you?”

  Her lips curved upward as she settled it back on the shelf. “I cried at the end of it.”

  “Yeah, to lose the person you love is hell,” Wyatt grunted, giving her a more than meaningful look. “Finding you out there on that ridge, with those trees looking like strewn toothpicks that had been tossed up in the air and fallen all round you, didn’t exactly make my day, either.”

  “No, but I don’t remember any of it, thank God,” she said. Wyatt was quick and efficient, placing her jeans, sweaters, and other shirts neatly into the two top drawers of the other dresser. “What are you doing? Why don’t you put all my clothes in one dresser, Wyatt?”

  He straightened and came over to where she stood by the shelf. Sliding his arms around her waist, gently drawing her against him, his rasped against her temple, “Because I don’t want you have to crouch or kneel down with that ankle of yours, the way that it is right now, that’s why.”

  Her heart filled with love for the man. He was so sensitive and aware, but she knew a lot of that was probably ingrained in him by the SEALs. He’d been trained to pay close attention to all details. She lifted her chin, meeting and pressing her lips against his mouth. The door to his room was closed, so she knew she could be affectionate with him up to a point. Hearing Wyatt growl, that reverberation going through his powerful chest, her breasts tingling at the vibration, nipples puckering, Tal slid her lips against his. Breathing changing, feeling her lower body come online like it always did any time they kissed or touched one another in a loving way, Tal surrendered to his tall, strong form. He would hold her. He wouldn’t let her slip out of his embrace. Wyatt was like a rock wall: unmoving, stable. Forever.

  Drowning in the heat of his mouth, feeling his heartbeat rise beneath her breasts, his hands feathering up and down her back, cupping her cheeks, pulling her firmly against him, she moaned. His cock was thick and hard against the zipper of his jeans. Juices were spilling down through her channel, and she made a low sound of pleasure as his tongue slowly tangled with hers.

  Rubbing against her pelvis, he growled as his hands held her prisoner in the most delicious of ways.

  There was a light knock at Wyatt’s bedroom door.

  Dazed, Tal eased away from him. He gave her a look of apology.

  “To be continued later,” he promised thickly, releasing her but keeping his hand on her arm to make sure she was stable after the hot, burning kiss that had ignited between them.

  Tal stepped back, feeling dampness gathering between her thighs. “You’re such a tease, cowboy,” she whispered, grinning at him as he went to answer the door.

  “You’ll find out just how much of one I am,” he promised her, his gray eyes stormy with lust.

  CHAPTER 2

  Tal loved the Lockwoods’ huge L-shaped kitchen. It had a long, rectangular oak table, a shiny patina on it indicating it had probably been in the family for the hundred years since their house had been built. Daisy, Mattie, and Cathy were in the kitchen, and when Tal tried to offer her help, they all told her to go sit down at the table. Okay, orders were orders. She saw Wyatt grin a little as he pulled out one of the oak chairs for her. On each seat was a colorful quilted pad. Tal thanked him and sat down next to him.

  “Mom gets persnickety about who’s in her kitchen,” Wyatt admitted, folding his hands.

  “I’d be an elephant in the room if I tried to help them,” Tal admitted. “But I had to ask. That’s only good manners.”

  “It is,” he agreed with a nod. “And I know my mother appreciates your thoughtfulness. But you don’t need one of those fillies in there stepping on that boot of yours by mistake, do you?” He raised one brow.

  Giving him a sour look, Tal muttered unhappily, “No . . .”

  He leaned back and placed his arm across the back of Tal’s chair. “Hey, we’re on vacation, darlin’, start acting like it, huh?” he teased her unmercifully.

  Tal agreed that she’d had that coming. “Okay, I’ll try.” She wasn’t taking good care of herself, as she should have been doing.

  The table had been set to perfection with cut-glass salt and pepper shakers, quilted placemats, glasses that Tal thought might be at least from the 1940s. The silver flatware, which had a delicate floral design on the handles, had been lovingly polished. The whole house was like a time capsule as far as Tal was concerned. She was a bit of an antique lover, and in the living room she had spotted a piano that had to be from around 1900, hand-carved oak rockers, plus a green velvet settee that was surely from the late 1800s. She was dying to talk to Daisy about all the furniture because she loved the layers of history in their home. It was as if each generation who lived there had added some thoughtful pieces of furniture or décor for the next generation to use and enjoy.

  “I really like your home, Wyatt. I love that it has so many antiques in it.”

  He chuckled. “Thank God you aren’t calling me an antique yet.”

  Tal burst out laughing.

  All the women in the kitchen turned their heads i
n unison, as if they’d rehearsed the move a hundred times before.

  “Oh,” Wyatt drawled to them, “the woman I’m gonna marry is callin’ me an antique like what we have in our house here, Mom.”

  Heat shot into Tal’s cheeks. She gasped, giving Wyatt an incredulous look. “I did not!” she protested loudly, giving him a severe, reproachful stare.

  Wyatt gave her that boyish, innocent look he always did when he was up to no good.

  Daisy chortled, drying her hands at the sink. “You gotta watch Wyatt, Tal. He’ll box you into a corner like a good quarter horse will corner a cow.”

  Giving Tal a smug look, Wyatt said, “But you love me anyway? Antique or not?”

  Tal gave him a dirty look. “You know I do. You are such an adversarial person!”

  Mattie crowed. “Oh, yes he is! You should have grown up with him, Tal. He used to pull all kinds of pranks on Cathy and me just so he could hear us squeal.”

  Cathy, who was closest, wearing a red apron around her waist, picked up a long wooden spoon, waving it warningly in Wyatt’s direction. “Tal, I think what I’m going to do is go to Hickman’s Hardware Store in Van Horn before you leave. You’re going to need one of these to whop that guy of yours alongside the head from time to time when he starts being an unmerciful pest. Stop it before it starts.”

  Wyatt sat up, his grin widening enormously, his delighted gaze on his sister. “Hey, Cat, are you gonna tie it up with a red ribbon for her?”

  That brought a howl out of the other two women.

  Cathy blushed red. “Ohh, okay, I get it. Gloves off. Fair enough. The war is on.” She waved the spoon menacingly in his direction again.

  Tal didn’t know what to think. Daisy and Mattie were bent over laughing so hard they were crying. Cathy looked absolutely embarrassed. She heard Wyatt next to her, chuckling indulgently, a big, satisfied cat smile all over his face, like he’d just stolen all the cream. He looked at her with feigned innocence she knew he didn’t have.