Teresa Bodwell

by Loving Miranda

  “O’Reilly sent a message to me in town. I didn’t know who he was, of course. But his message said he had information about what happened to my brother.” Ben turned to speak over his shoulder. “He told me he could prove Thad and Mercy were cheating Jonathan.”

  “And you believed him? He’s . . . he’s an ass!”

  “I know that!” Ben snapped. “I refused to get involved with his scheme unless he gave me real proof.” He hesitated for a moment. “I promised to pay them fifty dollars for evidence that proved his accusations.”

  “And the cattle would be proof?”

  “I told them not to do anything illegal.”

  “You mean you knew they were going to try and take the cattle?”

  “I didn’t! How could I know that?”

  “You just said they were going to try something illegal.”

  He turned Lightning in a tight circle and went back to face Miranda. “You’re not listening to me!” Ben glared at her. “I suspected they might try something like this, and I urged them not to do it. They don’t work for me, and they certainly don’t follow my orders.”

  “You could have warned us.” Miranda pushed her hat back off her head so she could look Ben directly in the eye. “Someone might have been killed.”

  Ben let his eyes drop to Lightning’s gray and white mane. A man had died. Ben’s stomach had been churning for hours. Not that he regretted shooting the sorry bastard. It was the knowledge that the son of a bitch had nearly killed Miranda that had Ben’s innards working themselves into knots.

  “You’re right. I . . . I should have said something to Thad. I . . .” He gazed into her eyes for a long moment. “If I’d known you would be in danger—”

  Miranda turned away from his gaze. Then not wanting him to think she was hiding her scar, she looked back at him, letting him see her whole face again.

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said.

  “Ain’t no call for you to be apologizin’.”

  “If I did or said anything to cause O’Reilly to—”

  “O’Reilly’s a fool. Goin’ after cattle while we’re brandin’. Why not go after the cows we weren’t watching?”

  “My guess is that he planned to take some of the freshly branded stock and show that they didn’t have the Lansing brand.”

  Miranda laughed. “Did you see the brands they were usin’?”

  Ben shook his head. With all the shooting he’d completely forgotten to check on the cattle at all.

  “Thad helped Jonathan design his own brand—Circle J. The men were usin’ the Circle J iron on half the cattle.”

  “So the brands wouldn’t be proof of anything. . . . Then what did they hope to prove?”

  “Who knows how O’Reilly’s mind works. Maybe he thought if he did some shootin’ you’d . . . take the boy. Get him away from this dangerous country.”

  “Maybe he just wanted to hurt you?” Ben turned again to look into Miranda’s eyes. “Most of them were after the cattle, but it looked like . . .”

  Miranda felt a chill creep up her spine. “O’Reilly has sworn to get even with Mercy. Killin’ me would . . .”

  “They weren’t after the cattle. They were after you—”

  “And Thad.”

  Ben nodded. “He couldn’t convince me to take Jonathan away. Now he’s found another way to attack her.”

  “He’s not going to get away with it.” Miranda spoke through gritted teeth.

  Ben stared up the mountain. “It’s not far now to the camp. Don’t forget your promise. We’re only observing.”

  Miranda pulled her Colt, then let it slip back into the holster at her side. “I’ll be observing, but if they start the shootin’, I’ll be happy to be the one to finish O’Reilly.”

  “We’re going to stay close to the tree line for cover. We’ll go in, see what we can, and get out. If they see us and if they start shooting—no heroics!” He pointed a finger at Miranda. “I want to see O’Reilly come to justice, but not at the cost of your life.” When his words didn’t seem to have much impact on her, he added, “Think about your family.”

  He could almost see Miranda thinking through his words before she nodded.

  “I ain’t afraid of dyin’, but I don’t reckon it’s my time quite yet.”

  With those words they turned their horses and continued up the mountain in silence. A quarter of an hour later, Ben pulled Lightning to a stop. “The mining camp is beyond the next rise,” Ben whispered.

  They went over the rise. Ben pulled into the trees beside the road, and Miranda pulled up alongside him. She hadn’t been to this particular mining camp, but she recognized the usual assembly of oil cloth tents and ramshackle wooden buildings. Everything that was needed to keep body and soul alive thrown together overnight as a gold or silver strike was found, or sometimes if a precious metal was merely suspected.

  “Where’s O’Reilly’s tent?”

  “Down this way.” Ben turned where a road created by the pounding of hooves and feet meandered between two rows of tents. “But we’re not getting close enough for them to see—” Ben pulled Lightning up short.

  “What?” Miranda stopped next to Ben.

  “Hellfire and damnation,” Ben whispered. “Their tent was there.” Ben pointed to an empty space in the middle of the crowded row. “Damn!”

  Miranda saw the likely cause of Ben’s cursing in an open space fifty yards down the road. Two small calves were roasting on a spit over an open fire, while men gathered around for a celebration. Miranda wondered what kind of price O’Reilly had gotten for the cows.

  “They find any gold or silver here?” she asked.

  “One of O’Reilly’s men told me it was a rich silver strike.”

  Miranda took in a deep breath. “Most likely they got a good price for the calves, then.”

  A few drops of rain wet her cheek so she pulled her hat back up onto her head.

  “Let’s see if they’re ours.”

  They rode through the camp, keeping an eye out for O’Reilly and his men. It didn’t take them long to find out from one of the miners that O’Reilly had sold the calves before leaving.

  “He made enough money selling his claim here to buy these cows and head to Texas,” one miner said.

  “Says he’s gonna build up a cattle ranch,” a toothless man added. “Tired of diggin’, he was.”

  “Can’t blame him for that!” the first miner said, and several men joined in laughing over the joke.

  The rain was coming down in fat drops now, causing a general round of cursing from the gathered men.

  “Come on,” Miranda said, “let’s get out of this rain.”

  Ben followed Miranda as the horses picked their way down the steep, rocky trail. The rain grew harder, pelting at his hat and soaking into his woolen jacket. They’d reached the main road before the driving rain turned to pounding hail.

  Miranda led Ben into a copse of trees for a moment to escape the pummeling. She looked through the branches up to the sky. “Don’t look like this is gonna let up any time soon.”

  “It’s near an hour to the house, but I know a shelter close by.”

  Ben nodded. “Shelter sounds good to me,” he shouted over the sound of hail pounding earth, rock, and trees.

  Miranda led them out of the trees but kept to the edge of the road where there was some protection from the hail. After a few minutes, she turned Princess to follow a narrow trail back up the mountain. Ben could see the small cabin braced among the rocks on the hillside. They settled the horses on the downwind side of the cabin, working quickly to remove their saddles. Both Ben and Miranda were soaked by the time they made it inside and closed the door behind them.

  Ben was impressed as he closed the tight-fitting door. The small cabin was sound and very dry inside. Miranda immediately went to work to start a fire in the stone fireplace on the back wall. There was a small pile of dry wood on the stone hearth. Ben tried to recall whether he’d seen any more wood outside.

>   There was sufficient light from the two glass windows, though Ben noticed a good supply of tallow candles on the shelf above the fireplace. The sparsely furnished room held a small table with three upended crates that served as chairs around it, a large wooden chest under one window, and a chest of drawers next to a narrow bed.

  “Who lives here?”

  “No one,” Miranda said. “We built this cabin for shelter should anyone find themselves in a situation like this one. Cowboys’ll sometimes stay here for a few days at a time when they come up to watch the cattle in the summer.”

  Ben wasn’t sure whether that made him feel better. Suddenly, the room seemed too small to share with her. There wasn’t much he could do about it. It was a long way to the ranch house and even further to town. Even if he were willing to ride for hours through this hail, he wasn’t going to leave Miranda alone here. Not when there was any chance O’Reilly could still be around.

  Miranda looked over her shoulder at him. “There’s a wood box outside. Would you bring firewood in before you take off your coat?”

  Ben nodded and made his way back into the storm. He held his arm over his face to shield it from the hail, which was a goodly size and stung as the wind drove it at him. He gathered an armload of wood quickly and made his way back to the door. Miranda held the door open for him and closed it behind him. The small fire she’d set was blazing. Ben dropped the wood onto the pile and pulled off his soaked jacket, brushing hail from it. Miranda had already taken off her own jacket; it was hanging from a peg that protruded from the stone wall of the fireplace. Ben found another peg for his coat, then stood shivering a few feet away from her.

  “This ain’t no time to be shy, I reckon,” Miranda said, though she made no move to remove any more of her clothing. “There’s plenty of blankets in that chest.” She pointed with her chin. “I reckon we both should take off our wet clothes and wrap up in blankets before we catch our death.”

  “Yes,” Ben said, “that seems wise.” Yet he couldn’t help feeling terribly foolish for being in this enclosed space with that delicate body and his lusty thoughts.

  They dug through the chest, releasing the spicy aroma of cedar that had woven its way into the blankets nestled inside. The scent reminded Miranda of walking through the woods on a fresh spring day. She opened her mouth to remark as much to Ben, but he had gathered his blankets and rushed away to the far corner of the room with his back to her.

  The sight of him pulling his wet shirt over his head, baring those proud shoulders, rendered Miranda speechless. There was a small scar under his right shoulder blade; otherwise, his back was perfect—not smooth, but sleek and muscled. She swallowed hard and turned back to the blanket chest, closed the lid and walked away from the window to pull off her own clothes, careful to keep her eyes away from Ben.

  “Tell me when it’s safe to turn around,” Ben said, with a slight tremor in his voice.

  Miranda smiled, thinking of all that masculinity suffering as much as she was. At least they could share this misery—they dare not allow themselves closer contact. That would be a mistake. Stupid. If she was ever going to have a husband and family, she had better learn to control her impulses. She bent forward so that her hair fell in front of her and she wrung the moisture out of it, then combed her fingers through it, as though that would do any good. As soon as her hair was dry, it would curl every which way.

  She pulled a small blanket around her waist, tying it to make a kind of skirt. She wrapped a second blanket around her shoulders, trying various methods of covering her chest until she finally found a way to wrap the blanket and tie it over one shoulder in an imitation of a Greek toga she’d seen pictured in one of Mercy’s books. “I’m covered,” she said, smoothing the blanket over her chest to be certain.

  He was bending to retrieve his wet clothes off the floor and she caught a glimpse of his bare calves. More than a glimpse, since she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off them. Up until that moment Miranda had not considered men’s legs to be very different from her own willowy limbs. Ben’s, however, were thicker, with a distinctive shape that tapered down to his ankles. As he bent forward, the muscles rippled, seeming to invite a woman’s touch.

  She managed to look away as he straightened and turned to face her. As they worked together to string a line across one corner of the room and hang their clothes to dry, a little thought prickled in the back of Miranda’s mind. She’d come to think of herself as an experienced woman. After all, she’d shared kisses with several men and a bed with one of those men. Yet, she had to admit, no kiss had ever touched her as deeply as Ben’s did. No man had ever made her want him the way she wanted Ben at this moment. The memory of his kisses stirred a wanting deep inside her. Miranda longed to persuade Ben to kiss her now. Except that she couldn’t bear the thought of him rejecting her again.

  Miranda threw her outer garments over the line first, then felt her cheeks flame as she hung her chemise and pantaloons. She stepped away from the dripping clothing and straight into Ben’s chest. He caught her arms to keep her from tumbling but lost his blanket in the process.

  “Are you all right?” he asked as he pulled the blanket back up in front of him.

  For a few beats of her heart Miranda forgot to breathe. She swallowed hard as Ben pulled the wool covering around him, leaving those shoulders bare and stunning for the whole world to see, or at least for Miranda to examine in detail. She licked her lips, but her tongue was so dry it made no difference. Breathe. It’s not like you’ve never seen a man’s chest before. Only the ones she’d seen had been fat and sloppy, or so thin the ribs had shown through. Ben’s chest had a light layer of brown fur over amazing cords that called for her fingers to touch, though she managed to stop herself. Just above his right breast she observed a great gash that had been stitched together.

  “Is that from the war, too?” The words slipped out before she could catch them.

  Ben nodded. “And this.” He showed her a scar on his right arm. “And that’s as much as I’m willing to say about the war.”

  “I understand.” She looked away. It wasn’t so much that she was interested in the war, though she was curious about Ben’s experiences; mostly she hoped for a distraction that would keep her mind away from the man’s delicious body. Miranda sucked in a breath. “There might be the fixin’s for coffee, or . . . tea.”

  “Something hot would be . . .” Ben smiled and she wondered whether any tea would warm her so much. He cleared his throat. “We need to get warm. I’ll build up the fire.”

  Miranda found a pot, filled it with water from her canteen, and set it over the fire to heat while she searched the cupboard.

  “No coffee, I’m afraid.” She kept up a cheery commentary on her search, hoping to keep her mind occupied with trivialities. Anything rather than . . . Oh my. Her eyes wandered over to where he squatted in front of the fire with his seat stretched against the blanket, nice and round and, she suspected, as firm as his arms, legs, and chest. Damn, the man is a distraction!

  She needed some air. Looking around, she found a bucket. “I’ll set this outside to collect rain water. In case we need it later.” She set out the bucket, clear of the eaves, and dashed back inside the door before her blankets soaked through. For a moment, she stood in the doorway watching the sky. The storm clouds looked as fierce as ever.

  Back inside, she set about taking an inventory of the supplies on hand. “There’s tea and some canned beans. Oh, and corn flour, bakin’ soda and there’s some jerked meat and . . . ”

  “We’re only here until the hail stops.”

  “It’s turned to rain now, but still driving hard. Look out the window. I’m afraid we could be stuck here for hours.” Maybe all night, Lord help them. “Likely it’ll clear before dark,” she said, though there was little hope of that occurring. She spooned some leaves into cups and poured hot water into them. “My sister makes this tea with herbs that grow wild hereabouts. One day I’m gonna have to find out what she
puts in it. It always tastes good, not bitter . . . and it’ll warm you for certain.”

  She handed Ben a hot mug.

  “You’re shivering.” He put a hand over her shoulder and she felt heat radiate through her. “Here.” He set his cup on the small table and pulled a huge pelt out of the chest. “What is this?” He held the pelt up in front of him. “Bear?”

  “Looks like a black bear.”

  “Come.” He spread the pelt on the floor in front of the hearth. “Sit close to the fire.”

  She stood on the thick fur, folded her legs under her, and sat, careful not to disrupt her blankets. He handed her a thick porcelain mug and she wrapped her icy fingers carefully around it, feeling the warmth soak through her hands. Then he draped a blanket over her shoulders. She looked up at his bare chest pink with cold, his nipples erect, and she felt the response in her own breasts. This was not a good idea.

  He rummaged through the drawers and came back wearing a shirt that had been made for a smaller man. The sleeves ended three inches above his wrists, the buttons threatened to burst, and the shoulders looked as though they would rip with the slightest movement. She couldn’t help herself—she laughed.

  Miranda’s giggle sounded a clear melody like a brook splashing over rocks under the summer sun. The light of the sun reflecting off the water added harmony to the song as the shine of her eyes danced with her laughter. Ben found himself smiling again in spite of himself. It seemed when he was with Miranda, all he wanted was to smile.

  And touch her.

  He fled to the table and sat on one of the crates.

  “You’ll freeze over there.”

  “I’m fine,” Ben lied.

  “I didn’t mean to make fun.”

  Ben peered over his cup at her, allowing the warmth of the steam to cover his face as he breathed in the pungent aroma of the herbs.

  “You do look silly in that shirt, I’m afraid.”

  Ben looked down at the cotton plaid shirt. It kept him decently covered, but was otherwise not the sort of thing he’d be likely to wear. He shrugged as best he could within the tight confines of the garment.