“Yep. Nobody come around ‘til ‘bout a hour ago when yore bodyguard rode in, Monte said.”
She froze in the act of tossing her bag over the tailgate.
“He’s already here?”
“Yeah. Monte’s been here all night.”
“You know I don’t mean Monte!”
Her pulse and her mind both quickened. Cole had said he’d start from town at dawn, but he had come early. Suddenly, she realized that she needed a minute to prepare herself to see him again, which was a completely silly thought. She hurried back to the fire.
“Where is he now?”
“Who, Monte?”
“No! I mean …”
Then she caught Cookie’s sly look and bit her tongue. He’d love nothing better than to tease her about Cole every step of the way to Texas.
“Mighty handsome man, that bodyguard o’ yourn.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” she lied. “I hired him for his reputation, not his looks.”
“Mm, hmm.”
“Cookie. Where is he now?”
“Lookin’ over the remuda. He only brung one horse with him.”
“That’s all right. The one thing we have plenty of is horses.”
Her heart was beating extra hard as she turned and went toward the chuck wagon. It was the whole excitement of this morning, that was all. This was the most significant day of her life so far. That and the surprise Cole was already here, that was all.
She took one of the tin cups from the fold-down table and carried it to the coffeepot hanging over the fire. Cookie tilted the pot with a long stick to fill it.
“This here’s real six-shooter coffee,” he said, as he said every time he ever made coffee. “I dropped mine into it awhile ago, and it floated just fine.”
To please him, she chuckled at the old saw he’d repeated a hundred times. She started to say something else, while she watched him push the bacon aside and begin breaking eggs into the skillet and scrambling them, but she kept forgetting what it was. Cole McCord was already here.
“Come an’ git it, boys, before I throw it out,” Cookie yelled.
Aurora turned to see the men coming toward them. Cole was in the middle of the small bunch, and just a glimpse of him made her pulse quicken even more. That loose, sure set of his wide shoulders, that panther’s prowl of his were both unmistakable, even though he was backlit by the rising sun so she couldn’t see his face.
Monte and Frank flanked him while Skeeter hobbled along in front, and, as she watched, he said something that made them laugh—the low rumble of his voice and their appreciative chuckles floated to her on the northerly breeze. Well. Mr. Charming. Certainly different behavior than when he met her for the first time.
Unbidden, the feel of his hard-muscled arms around her and of the rock of his chest pressing against her breasts flooded through her. She must forget about that, must get it out of her system. He was a hired hand, she was his employer, no matter what he thought about making the decisions.
A sudden fear struck her.
Was he the sneaky kind? Here he was, at the herd before she was, looking over the remuda and picking his mount and becoming one of the boys. Buddying up to them. Was that to swing them to his side in case he and she ever had a serious difference of opinion?
She made herself take slow sips of her coffee and stood up very straight as befitted the boss of the outfit.
“I see you all have met,” she said when they walked into the circle around the fire. “As he’s probably told you, I’ve hired Mr. McCord to be my bodyguard on the trail.”
“Yes’m,” Frank said, and touched his hat brim.
“We met,” Monte said, with the same gesture, and Skeeter nodded, briefly removing his battered felt.
“You men needn’t tip your hats to me—we’re on the trail now,” she said awkwardly, knowing how sensitive they were to criticism but needing them to see her in her new role. “We’ll be working too hard to worry about manners, so treat me as you would a man trail boss.”
The three cowboys went to the chuck wagon for their coffee cups without replying. Damn it! Just having Cole watching was making her stiff and artificial with her own men. And her heart was still hammering.
He strolled toward her with that cavalier walk of his, looking her up and down with his hot, dark eyes.
“It’ll be hard for them to see you as a man,” he drawled. “I’d say downright impossible.”
Her anger flared like a struck match.
“Nobody asked you,” she snapped. “And don’t look at me that way.”
“How? As a man?”
“No!” she said, trying to keep her voice low so no one but him would hear. “As a woman! I told you on the street in Pueblo you couldn’t intimidate me that way, and you can’t.”
“I don’t have any intention of intimidating you, Aurora,” he said.
His gaze wouldn’t let hers go.
“Oh, yes, you do …”
The men came closer, drifting toward the fire for coffee.
“I’m just happy that you’re here among us, Miss Aurora,” Cole said, loud enough for them and Cookie, too, to hear him, “and we’ve still got hot food and coffee.”
He gave her that crooked grin of his.
“We’ve been about half-scared that you’d come flying in here in your buggy and drive right through the middle of the fire, scatter our bacon and biscuits from hell to breakfast.”
All the cowboys burst out laughing, delighted as always with a bit of hoo-rawing, no matter who was the butt of the joke. They flashed quick, appraising glances at her.
That was one of the unwritten, unbreakable rules of the cowboy life. Anybody in their company had to be able to take teasing in good humor, as well as dish it out. If not, they rawhided the sensitive soul until he left the outfit or learned to laugh with them. And hadn’t she just told them to treat her like a man?
Fury choked her, fed by fear. He was already starting it, already forming sides, boys against girl, trying to make her look silly and incompetent. She opened her mouth to give him a royal dressing-down, no matter what the men thought, but then she managed to bite her tongue.
“It is breakfast,” she said, forcing a sarcastic sweetness into her tone, “so it can’t be scattered from hell to breakfast. How about hell to Texas?”
That brought more laughter than it deserved and inspired the others to join in.
“We circled the wagons to protect the fire and told Lonnie to whistle like a mockingbird to warn us when you passed the herd,” Cookie said.
“Yeah, and we saddled our horses before we ate or even took a gulp of Arbuckle’s, in case we’d need to jump on ‘em to chase you down and stop a runaway,” Skeeter said.
The laughter grew louder, and she felt the stiffness begin to leave her. The men were all right again, they were accepting her as one of them, the feeling in the outfit was relaxed and back to normal.
She took a long, deep breath and gave Cole a big smile, then turned to the others.
“That’s why I came in here on foot instead of driving,” she said to Skeeter. “I didn’t want to cause a distraction that’d take you all away from your work.”
They all laughed again, and Frank looked up from pouring his coffee.
“Yeah, I reckon she ain’t gonna be no diff’rent from all the rest of the high saltys we ever rode for,” he drawled. “I never seen a foreman or a trail boss yet that didn’t worry from can-see to can’t-see that we might git distracted from our work.”
That brought the most laughter of all and sealed her place in their estimation. At least, until she had to pick the right crossing of the first river or decide where to bed down in dry country.
But the tension thrumming along her nerves lessened a lot. At least Frank had said out loud that she was the boss.
Cookie winked at her and gestured for the men to get their plates and come to the fire to fill them.
“Sit down now and eat your breakfast, Miss Aurora,”
he said, holding out a plate he had filled for her. “Won’t be no eggs on your plate tomorry mornin’ or no other mornin’ from here on out, so git ‘em while you can.”
She went to accept her food from the old man who had clucked over her since childhood. At noon she would make sure to serve herself like everyone else, but now was no time to make a point of that. Now she would quit while she was ahead.
But the minute they moved out and she was alone on scout with him, she would set Cole McCord straight. It wasn’t his job to hoo-raw her in front of the men.
She turned her back on him then and walked to an upended bucket near the chuck wagon to sit down. For this moment, she needed to enjoy a little peace so she could eat—if that were possible, with her so excited and perturbed—what might be her only hot meal until supper, depending on how fractious the cattle were once they strung them out on the trail.
The cattle, the trail. That was what she should be thinking about, that and how to get a rein on Cole McCord. Once that was done, she ought to forget about him and anything he might say. She ought to forget the strange phenomenon that made her want him to hold her again and want to slap his face at the very same time.
An instant later he stood beside her with his breakfast in one hand and his coffee cup in the other. She glanced up and met his straight, dark look, and she felt that twinge again.
“You’ll do,” he said.
He sat on his haunches and put his coffee on the ground as the other men were doing near the fire. Heartily, he began to eat.
“I don’t recall asking you to sit down,” she said, “nor do I recall asking for your opinion of me.
“You don’t have to,” he said cheerfully. “The boss says we’re on the trail now, we’ll be working too hard to worry about manners.”
She felt her cheeks flame as her anger came rushing back. It took every bit of control she had not to shout at him.
“Mocking everything I say and do is not part of your job,” she said tightly.
“Mocking?”
He widened his eyes and arranged his face into an expression of purest innocence. “I’m not mocking you, Aurora. Not now and not before. I’m only trying to help.”
“Well, you have a mighty strange way of going about it,” she snapped, desperately trying to hold on to her temper. “I want to talk to you about that charming little performance you gave in front of the men.”
He took a bite of biscuit and eyed her thoughtfully.
“It wasn’t a performance, I was sincerely trying to stir up some fun,” he said.
“Trying to stir up some support for yourself, you mean.”
The deliberate puzzlement in his look became genuine.
“Aurora,” he drawled, “you’ve got me buffaloed. Help me out a little.”
“I’ll put it to you straight as an arrow,” she snapped. “You can stop trying to undermine my authority or ride out right now. Is that clear?”
“As mud.”
He understood her, though. His eyes took on a glint of mischief.
“I’ve heard all my life about how women can change their minds fast as a pitching horse can shed a greenhorn,” he said, thoughtfully sipping his coffee, “but you’ve gotta take the prize. I would’ve sworn you begged me on bended knee to take this job not much more than twenty-four hours ago.”
“I never begged you for anything on bended knee and I never will,” she said passionately.
He shrugged, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Came pretty close, in my estimation.”
“Your estimation and your judgment are not the ones that run this drive,” she said. “Mine are. So quit trying to buddy up with my hands so you’ll have their support if you should start trying to do my job instead of your own.”
He raised his eyebrows in the most infuriating, sardonic way imaginable.
“That’s one of your pronouncements, like that one on the street in Pueblo City, that I’m gonna have to take under consideration,” he drawled, “ ‘til I get it figured out.”
He held her gaze with his while he ate another bite of bacon.
“Sounds like you’re mighty distrustful, though, just on first impression, you understand. You’re the same woman called me a man of honor, though—am I right?”
“You’re a man,” she said. “That means you think you’re always right and you think you always have to control everything. I’ve never known one who didn’t.”
He raised his dark brows again.
“You must think all men are alike.”
“In many ways—in most ways—they are. And I’ll never be under the thumb of another one, so don’t be trying to take control of this drive.”
A flash of anger showed in his eyes. Good. It was about time he took her seriously.
But he stayed very cool, and that made her want to slap his face for sure.
“Aurora, Aurora,” he said, shaking his head in mock sorrow, “I don’t know how you can trust me with your life and still be so suspicious of my motives.”
“All men want to run everything, no matter what,” she said, through gritted teeth. “If Papa had listened to me about his investments, he might’ve kept his ranch and his life.”
“You’re a smart woman,” Cole said, to her surprise. “Think. If you want to be anything more than Pretty Little Miss Flying B Ranch on this drive, you’ll have to be accepted as the boss, which is what you were trying to tell them when they tipped their hats to the lady. Cowboys don’t follow bosses who don’t know what they’re doing, it’s just that simple, no matter what gender you are. A trail boss works his … or her … way up from riding drag, whether or not his daddy owns the cows.”
She stared at him.
“I own them,” she cried, furious, “not my daddy. I saved them and the horses when he was putting mortgages on everything in sight. And I know what I’m doing. I can figure out for myself how to trail them!”
“Good for you.”
He began eating in earnest, as if there were nothing more to say.
She took a long, deep breath to cool down. If he could stay unruffled, so could she. If she didn’t, he would always have the advantage over her.
Forcing some food down, she thought about it.
“So you’re saying you weren’t trying to take away my authority, that you were only hoo-rawing me to make me one of the boys?” she said, and drank some of her coffee.
He smiled beatifically.
“You did very well once you caught on,” he said. “It didn’t assure your men that you know what you’re doing but it did prove you could hold your head and your temper.”
That remark made it flare again.
“Well, I’m just happy as a hog in acorns that you approve of at least one thing about me,” she snapped.
“Oh, I approve of many, many things about you,” he drawled, capturing her again with his dark chocolate eyes. “Want me to list them?”
His hot gaze roamed her whole person.
Desire flared in the core of her, made her lips tingle and her breasts go hard at his leisurely perusal.
“No! I don’t!”
“Why not?”
She lifted her plate and stood up, stretching to her full height, squaring her shoulders.
“Because we both have jobs to do! Will you just keep your mind on yours? God knows, I have enough to worry about with you … and … the boys …”
He stood, too, so suddenly she took a step backward.
“Damn it, will you stop that?”
His tone was furious, disgusted, downright dangerous. He kept it low, bending over her so no one else could hear.
“If I have to take over this drive, I’ll do it by a gun and a gag in your misguided mouth, Miss Benton, not by some sneaking childish conspiracy with your trail hands. Your suspicions are on the wrong man. You’d better put ‘em on Skeeter and realize I’m on your side.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“In Pueblo City I came across your
old buddy, Lloyd Gates, a time or two—I wanted to know him by sight.”
“Very professional of you,” she said sardonically.
“I am a professional. You listen to me. Your man Skeeter’s been powwowing with Gates. I saw ‘em together twice, thick as thieves.”
She frowned up at him, trying to think, trying to make that make sense.
“Gates is always in a powwow,” she said. “He’s got a flapping jaw. He talks to everybody.”
Cole shook his head.
“This was more than that. Those boys know each other well, and they were making medicine.”
Her anger came back, tinged with an eerie fear born of the surety in his tone.
“Look, Cole, you’re imagining things. My men are loyal—why, they’re my family—and I’d trust every one of them with my life.”
“Don’t. Watch your back.”
“That’s your job.”
“Pleasant as it would be to have your charming company every minute of every day, there’ll be times when, for privacy’s sake, you’re out of my sight. Watch your back.”
“You watch your mouth. These men have ridden together for a lot of years and they wouldn’t take kindly to such talk about Skeeter.”
He looked down at her with a pitying expression that told her how foolish, how naive she was.
“If you don’t know I have more sense than that, then why the hell did you hire me?”
He turned on his heel and strode away, threw his plate and cup in the wreck pan, and went for his horse.
Aurora couldn’t move from that spot because of the cold chill in her blood.
Cole had been trying to size Skeeter up. He hadn’t been trying to get the men on his side for some mythical future argument between her and him. He’d been trying to protect her, nothing more. Even though she didn’t believe Skeeter would be disloyal, she knew now that Cole believed it.
He would also believe that her mind was unhinged, since she’d accused him of such a ridiculous thing so alien to every impression she’d had of him. It was true she should’ve known better. She did know better, and she had since the moment they’d met. She had just let her first-morning-on-the-trail jitters carry her away—that was why she had temporarily lost her judgment.
The Renegades: Cole Page 5
