They stood apart, uncertain, then Alba made a low, soothing sound and they hugged each other tightly. Davis handed Alba into the wagon with exquisite care and a reddening neck.
Rachel waved a final time when the wagon rolled under the distant sign that proclaimed “Natchez,” then turned to the house.
* * * *
Jim Henderson quit as foreman two weeks after Gordon’s funeral. He was going into business with his brother-in-law in Cheyenne, he said. Rachel suspected he didn’t want to work for a woman. Especially not on such a troubled spread.
She promoted Bob Chapman without hesitation. But that didn’t stop cowhands from quitting singly, in pairs or, one memorable day, by the quartet.
Gordon’s creditors allowed almost three weeks before they presented demands. She stalled them as best she could. She’d written to ask Arnold Brett in Montana to sell Gordon’s holdings there.
She was trying to lease the house at Natchez, which Gordon had built as close as possible to Chelico. She couldn’t sell without selling some—or all—of the land around it, and that would be a last resort. But a lease could bring income.
The herd might yet produce income if the roundup about to begin should show winter had not been quite as disastrous as feared. The trouble was with so few hands, she couldn’t mount roundup crews to cover all the range. In the end, she sent only Joe-Max to the roundup district north of them, the one Nick would be involved in, with orders to hold Circle T and Lazy W head until another crew freed up to trail them to home range.
“Done that before,” Joe-Max said, fingering his mustache. “Looks like we’re back where we started year before last, when you and Shag had us bringing the herd home half at a time, before Davis and Henry and Nick joined up.”
Back where they’d been when Nick first rode onto the Circle T? No, she would never be there again. And whether she was glad or not, she truly didn’t know.
* * * *
“Somebody’s coming!”
Hard to tell which of the cowhands gave the shout amid the milling cattle rounded up this morning and now waiting their turn, none too patiently, at the branding iron.
Rachel put her palm on the cantle and twisted to look over Dandy’s rump to dust showing on the western horizon. Not a plume like a single rider kicked up, but a wide, thick cloud.
“I’ll go see what it is,” Rachel told Bob Chapman, his eyes trained in the same direction.
“Maybe I should send somebody with you.”
“You can’t spare anybody. Besides, there’s no need.” She patted the rifle in the holder Shag had made and smiled reassuringly. She wheeled Dandy and trotted off.
She’d thought Shag overprotective, but at least he’d given her credit for her skill. Some of these men acted as if she were an exotic species landed in their midst.
Most days Rachel was in the saddle as long as light lasted, and it lasted a little longer each day. She checked on the roundups, even did a bit of roping, though her hands, pampered these past months, would take toughening before she could be a real help. But she thought it important for the men who remained to see she was there, with them. They’d get used to her eventually.
Still, she was the most expendable of the crew that had started in predawn chill to round up head and now branded as this spring day heated to midsummer.
Here at the western tip of Circle T territory, the land rolled steadily toward the mountains. The folds blocked her view of what raised the dust that grew larger against the blue horizon, until she topped a ridge and saw a stream of cattle cresting the next ridge. As she watched, they started down the opposite slope. They were being led on a beeline for Natchez home range.
Her heart beat faster and her mouth felt as dry as if she’d swallowed some of that dust they churned up.
A rider appeared on the far ridge, a lean silhouette on a wiry black horse.
Nick.
As if he’d felt her gaze, he turned his head for a handful of heartbeats, then he returned his attention to the cattle. It was stupid to feel he’d turned away from her. It wasn’t as if they could really even see each other. He’d simply appeared as a small figure on a ridge, and she couldn’t have been any more to him.
She slapped the reins against her canvas-covered legs, setting Dandy sidling. The important thing was the herd coming down that slope, and the hope that it bore Circle T or Lazy W brand. She pressed her heels to Dandy’s sides.
When she was within a hundred yards of the lead steer, Nick rode out to her. But if she’d expected much from him in the way of words, she was disappointed.
“Take the point. These hands don’t know the land.”
Sweat stains rimmed his hat. Dust and sweat created a muddy rivulet racing down the side of his throat. His clothes, his skin, even his dark hair had a layer of pale dust that said he’d ridden some time behind the herd.
Her eyes stung at the sight of him as if the dust and grit had swirled into them.
He started to wheel Brujo, but her shout stopped him. “Hey! Are these mine?”
One side of his mouth lifted as he looked at her over his shoulder. “I wouldn’t be bringing you mine.”
“But where—”
“They’re all branded up. Keep ‘em going slow,” he ordered, as if she didn’t know a thing about moving a herd. “Don’t want to run any more beef off them than’s already gone.”
She didn’t see him again until they’d reached the broad, level area where Bob Chapman and the others were branding. She spotted Joe-Max and sent him on to tell Bob what was happening, then she started turning the herd to settle it far enough away that these branded cattle wouldn’t mix with the others.
Nick’s hands had it under control when she spotted him talking to one of them. Nick watched her approach from under the brim of his hat, until she was nearly close enough to read the expression in those black eyes. Then he looked away. She saw him give a nod, then the other man peeled off with a tip of his hat to her as she brought Dandy to a stop by Brujo’s shoulder.
“Where’d you find them?” she demanded, continuing their exchange as if there’d been no interruption of more than an hour’s work. Cattle generally drifted south with the cold, so she’d never expected this many head to be north of Circle T’s range.
“A few on the range. Most holed up in that canyon off Stone Creek. Kept ‘em sheltered from the worst weather.”
“Why’d you bring them? Joe-Max must have told you—”
“He told me. This seemed neighborly.”
“More than neighborly. Thank you.” The words came out stiff, from a throat thick with the threat of an ambush of tears.
He nodded, not looking at her.
“How’d your herd winter, Nick?” she asked, glad of a neutral topic.
“We did okay.”
“Okay?” she probed. “That’s all you’re going to say about your experiment this winter?”
She caught the gleam of his eyes between slitted lids as he looked at her, then away. Another time, she thought, and he might have grinned a little. “We had some drift with the weather like always, so we won’t have a full count till all the roundups are over, but . . .”
“But you have an idea.”
“Yeah. We lost some, but the core of the herd came through.”
She released a breath. “That’s better than most around here. I suppose Joe-Max told you what happened here.” He gave no answer, but she knew the cowhand would have seen no reason to hold anything back from Nick. Joe-Max had nothing special at stake, like his pride or his heart. “I hear the KD got hit even harder.”
He dipped his head. “Their hands said at roundup that carcasses were so thick at one bend of Pleasant Creek, the water dammed up.”
The silence at that image unified them.
“Overton and Sprewell lit out before winter half finished, saying what cattle’d be left wouldn’t be worth throwing a rope over. Dunn lost other men, too. Just wish,” Nick added under his breath, “I’d known they wer
e for hire.”
“You’d have hired them on as hands?”
His herd wouldn’t mean cash until he sold some head, and that wouldn’t be until fall. For the first time, Rachel wondered about the hands he had bringing in her cattle.
“No, but I might’ve paid for some information.”
“Where’d you get these men?”
“Soldiers whose enlistment ended last month up in Montana. They’re Texas boys, and didn’t mind picking up a little extra for the trip home by taking a hand with the roundup.”
“I wish I’d thought of that. I can’t afford to hire on many for the full season, but I sure could have used them for roundup.”
“If you still need help, ask ‘em. They’re not keeping to any schedule.”
“I might do that. Tha—”
“Mrs. Wood!”
Bob’s call pulled her away to decide where to turn these cattle loose. Too many head in one area would graze it out in no time.
When she turned back, Nick had gone.
She caught a glimpse of black against the fresh green of a distant slope, and recognized Brujo carrying his rider at an easy pace, away from her.
For a moment she simply watched.
Spurring Dandy was not a conscious decision. But when he started moving, she made no move to hold him. From a walk, through the trot into a lope, Dandy accelerated easily, and Rachel praised him with voice and hands.
Still, she wasn’t sure they would catch the tough little black horse until nearly half an hour later.
Nick had to know someone trailed him. Probably knew who, too. But he didn’t stop to wait, didn’t alter his pace. She could feel anger welling inside her, the irritation with him that had always been so close to the surface in his first months on the Circle T. She welcomed it, as she welcomed the renewed calluses on her hands. Like them, the anger protected an inner tenderness she couldn’t afford now that she had two ranches to try to save.
She was tired of hurting, tired of wondering. She was going to have it out with Nick. Right now.
“I’ll rope you if I have to, Dusaq,” she shouted.
Brujo stopped abruptly, and turned. In response, she slowed Dandy to a walk.
Nick waited until she was near enough that his voice was no louder than conversational. “There’s not a tree in sight, where would you hang me from after you’d roped me?”
His grimness caught her off balance, cooling her anger some. “Hang you? I wanted to thank you.”
“You did.” He stared at her, relentless.
“I intend to talk to you, Nick.”
His lips parted but before he could refuse, she added softly, “Please.”
His mouth snapped closed, and his eyes rested on Dandy, heated from the pursuit. “There’s a shack over the next line of hills. There’s water. Shade for the horses.”
“Okay.”
He turned Brujo and led the way. They didn’t speak as they rubbed down the horses and gave them water, then washed up themselves.
When they finished, Nick jerked his head toward the humble log shack. “A couple chairs inside.”
After the brightness of the sky, the shack appeared a dark cave at first. Then Rachel’s eyes adjusted and she saw the old stone fireplace, two plain chairs, a rough bedstead and a crate used as a table.
The fireplace she remembered, but the rest was new.
“This used to be deserted,” she said.
“I fixed it up for shelter during the winter. We’re on my land now.”
“I didn’t mean any wrong had been done,” she said, exasperated.
He shrugged and propped his shoulders against the stone chimney. “You followed me all that way to talk about some gold-crazy fool’s deserted shack?”
Emotions tumbled through her. Longing, regret, remembered passion. Those were always there whenever Nick crept through the defenses of her mind or heart. Two other emotions rose to the top now. Hot anger, but also a great sadness.
“Are you ever going to stop punishing me? And our son?”
“Now you say he is my son?” His low voice was silken danger.
“You know he is. You’ve always known.”
“He bears another man’s name.”
“He bears your name—John.”
He went still, retreating behind the stark mask he so often wore. It fired her anger as nothing he could have said would have. She crossed the room and battered at his chest with her fists, wishing she could break that mask forever.
“Damn you. Nick Dusaq, you left! What did you expect of me?”
“Nothing. I expect nothing.”
She swung at him, full out, aiming for his jaw, wanting to hurt him. His hand clamped around her wrist like a manacle. They glared at each other for three long heartbeats.
Then, in words that seemed wrenched from him, he rasped, “I hoped you would believe in me.”
“Believe in you? You never let me close enough to believe in you. You never let me even know you. You’re like this land. You make it so hard to know you, to understand you, and then you punish anyone who doesn’t.”
He released her, but remained close enough to touch, a single step away from pressing against each other. Neither took the step.
Silence came between them. But it was like the silence on the range, made up of a thousand tiny whispers—the wind of the past, the thud of a heartbeat, the rustle of a hope.
Absently, she rubbed her wrist.
“You left me,” she said. This time quietly, wearily. “I did the best I could for your child. For our son.”
Under his breath he muttered what she suspected was a curse. Still, she wasn’t prepared when he trapped her upper arms in his hands and drew her up to meet his eyes. “If I’d asked you to come away with me, that day in the stable at Natchez, to come be my wife and have our child together—would you have done that?”
Her heart nearly stopped at the longing and almost desperate hope that surfaced for an instant in his eyes. But she could not give him a lie.
“No. Gordon was a good man. I couldn’t have done that to him.” She wasn’t aware of tears slipping down her face until she felt the saltiness on her lips. His face, which had hardened into familiar, stark lines at her first word, softened, shifting, giving her a glance of the man who had shown her the ways of physical love and had given her a child. “But I would have wanted to.”
Chapter Nineteen
He caught a tear with the pad of his thumb, and knew, even as he lifted his hand to do it, that he was lost.
A phrase of Spanish, half curse, half prayer, escaped him. Then there was nothing else but Rachel.
He took her face between his palms, absorbing her tears into his skin. He slid his fingers into her hair to cup her skull and tilt her head. He took her mouth without subtlety or patience. He possessed it, thrusting his tongue between her pliant lips with near desperation.
And when she met him with a kiss as open and hungry, he was beyond desperation.
Unable to breathe, they broke apart at last. Her breasts rose and fell with the same urgent need that he felt. He kissed down her throat, opening buttons on her plain shirt to touch his lips to that flesh. He lifted his head, and met her eyes, looking for an answer.
He had it.
One arm across her back, the other cupping her buttocks wrapped her to him. With their mouths mating as avidly as their bodies longed to, he swung her around and brought them both down on the bed, absorbing the brunt of his weight on his arms and knees, but allowing enough to fall on her to press into her warm curves.
Leather of boots, horn of buttons, cloth of shirt and bodice, all became hindrances to the driving need to touch and feel.
Her hands were on him, sliding along his flesh the way he’d remembered, dreamed. His hands were stroking the butter smoothness of her bare shoulder.
He slipped his fingers under the neck of her chemise, and trailed along the upper slope of her breast, then lower. With his fingertips, he explored the new shape and
texture of her nipple. It peaked against his slight touch and she gasped.
Bowing his back, he pushed the chemise down and put his mouth over her nipple, circling it with his tongue, once, twice, three times, before drawing on it strongly.
She gasped again, and he felt her moving under him.
“Nick . . . Nick, I can’t breathe.”
He lifted his head and saw she was reaching to the front of her corset, fingers scrabbling with the hooks.
“I want to—I have to move.”
She didn’t lace as tightly as many women, but still it constricted. And her desire to be free of it, to move and touch fired him like nothing else.
He took a side in each hand and yanked it open, a ping of metal on wood announcing at least some of the closures had not withstood such rough handling. She arched as he jerked it from beneath her and flung it aside, rapidly followed by the rest of her clothes and his own.
He knelt above her, between her parted legs, her body open to him.
“You belong to me.”
She rose, reaching to cup her hands around him, with a touch so hot his head jerked back in ecstasy. She kissed under his upraised chin, then along his jawline.
“We belong together,” she whispered.
He knew he should fight her, knew she was wrong. But her gentle, tormenting hands were guiding him to her and he could no more resist than he could stop breathing.
He felt the sweet, moist heat of her welcoming him, and he stopped trying.
He grasped her hands as he thrust into her, driving her to the sad mattress with his force. He held her hands above her head as he withdrew and drove into her again.
“So tight . . .”
Somehow he no longer pinned her hands, but their fingers twined together, gripping as her hips rose to meet his deep, heavy thrusts. Her legs wrapped around his, and her body moved with him.
“Rachel—Rachel.”
He lifted his head and their eyes locked. Then he raised himself higher without withdrawing, and he looked at where they were joined.
The tightening and fullness in his groin became an exultant pain that burned at his eyes. The need to move erupted in him, driving him hard. She met him.
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