by Stacy Reid
“That there is my brother’s boy, and I promise you he is going home.” Abraham seemed contemplative. “Now from everything I’ve figured, you were the last person to see my brother alive, Mrs. Hardin. I’ll let the boy stay with you till he’s a little older if you tell me what happened to my God damn brother.”
Joshua stirred, and all eyes settled on him. “The baby is no kin of yours. He’s my son. And Benjamin Hardin is dead,” Joshua said flatly.
From under his thick brows, Abraham’s eyes were like blue ice. “Yer lying,” he snarled, his hands tightening reflexively on his rifle.
Not every man could so easily stand before someone who held a rifle on them. Joshua was a man who never rode without caution and one who trusted his instincts more than logic. And he knew he could draw his six-shooters and take out Hardin before he could pull back his hammer.
“Your brother sold his wife to clear his debts, and then beat her without mercy afterward. I killed him.”
“You killed my brother, for disciplining his own wife?”
“I killed your brother because he objected to me stopping him from hurting a lady. He lost the fight.”
"She was his damn wife; he could do whatever he wanted with her."
Joshua had nothing to say to that. “Bethany?”
“Yes, Joshua?”
“Go inside now, sweetheart.”
The man beside Abraham, a skinny man who seemed rawhide tough, his eyes shifted with cruelty and lust. Joshua recognized him, Billy Perritt and he was accounted a dangerous man to tangle with. Billy spat tobacco in the grass, drew his gun. “She ain’t going—”
Joshua’s knife flew from his hand and buried itself in the man’s wrist. With a bellow he dropped his gun, gripping his wrist trying to stem the blood. He would never use that gun hand again, and Joshua figured he shouldn’t, not if he was willing to draw down on a woman.
Several rifles cocked, the sounds echoing from various places, behind a bale of hay, the door of the bunkhouse, the roof of the bunkhouse. He assessed that at least six workers had positioned themselves to lend their arms in the possible fight to come.
Abraham said nothing of the show of strength from the ranch hands. They were not overt in their actions, many lingered with their hands hanging loosely at their sides. The few who had rifles seemed ready and able to defend the Whispering Creek. Still, they were outnumbered by Abraham and his outlaws.
The closing of the door told him Beth had retreated inside. “You came huntin’ for your brother. He’s in Liberty, buried behind the stables. Bethany is no longer your concern, and neither is my son. If you want your revenge for the killing of your brother, have at it.” The men on the horses seemed a bit uneasy with his acceptance of a fight, one that might lead to his death. It wasn’t that Joshua was fine with the idea of dying, not when he had a woman to woo, and a son. But he’d never backed down from bullies. There was only one language men like Abraham understood and it was a language Joshua spoke—one of ruthlessness and violence.
“We can fight it out now, or you can live another day to fight again,” he said mildly. “If we fight now, you’ll be the first man I’ll be killing, Abraham Hardin. The choice is yours.”
Then they stared at each other.
“Did you shoot my brother in the back?”
"I do not need to dry-gulch a man. He came at me with a knife. The rest is history.”
“My brother had the reputation of being the best knife fighter this side of Mississippi. I never figured someone would take him in a fight.”
Joshua made no reply, allowing the icy ruthlessness that flowed through his veins more often than he would like, to show in his eyes.
Abraham tipped his hat. “Another day,” he murmured, and in his eyes, Joshua saw the threat and the promise he would be back.
His left-hand man, a large-boned man with a scar on his face, glanced at Abraham and then back at Joshua. “We’ll be coming back for the whore.” He grinned, a taunting, ugly kind of a grin. “And we’ll be bucking between those purty legs of hers soon.”
The man apparently wanted to elicit a reaction, for he had straightened in the saddle, his hands resting atop his six shooters. He was primed to draw, and he figured he had the advantage. “And I’ll be the first between them.”
A shot sounded, ripping a hole in the man’s left ear. He screamed, grabbing his ears and blood ran down his neck. The horses shied, and a few whispers floated on the air.
If I ain’t seen it, I wouldn’t believe it.
I never saw his hand move
Fastest draw I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen mite plenty.
Joshua had drawn and re-holstered his gun as he was accustomed to doing when making a statement. And the message was well received, but to ensure the overconfident fool got it through his thick skull, he added, “You’ll be the second man I’ll be killing.”
Abraham looked at the man who sat frozen in his saddle clutching his ear, then back at Joshua. In his eyes, there was a bite of fear, grudging respect, and excitement. Joshua had known many men on the trails like him. They’d see him draw, and fever would build inside them to challenge him, to say they had bested him. He could see that fever rising in Abraham now, and Joshua waited, tempted to pull the trigger and end it. But he had never killed a man who hadn’t drawn on him, and he wasn’t about to start now.
“Take your trash with you,” he said flatly.
A skinny lad rode over and slapped the man across the face. Then they turned and rode away. It wouldn’t be the last of it, and in his gut, he knew of one man who would return, Abraham Hardin.
Joshua nodded to the few men who had stood with him, turned and went up the porch steps. The door opened, and Beth framed the doorway, the shotgun held loosely in her hand. She was pale, her eyes looking at the receding dust cloud.
Her gaze collided with his, and in them, he spied a tangle of emotions he did not understand. As if nature itself sensed the tension arching between them, thunder rumbled above the low hills, and lightning played across the sky. She turned and walked away, he followed closing the door behind him and strolled behind her as she climbed the stairs and entered her bedroom. He hesitated briefly, then crossed the threshold, closing the door.
“Grayson is with Sheridan and Elijah,” she said, resting the shotgun on the sofa, as she turned to face him.
“If you ever disobey me like that again and place yourself in danger I’ll—”
She gave him a withering look. “You’ll what? Beat me?”
That drew him up. “Of course not.”
She folded her arms across her waist. “I wasn’t in any danger…not with you there.”
Her faith shook him, even as it heated something inside of him. He walked over, gripped her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “If a fight had broken out, you would have been in the line of fire. My concentration was shot to hell the second you came outside, and with men like those, I needed my wits about me.”
“Understood.” Then she slapped his hand away from her chin, none too gentle. She was fierce, yet so achingly sweet and soft.
Silence pounded between them. He was sharply aware of Beth and that they were now alone, in a bedroom. The violence had been sudden and chilling, as was the way of the west, and now she trembled in reaction.
“It’s nothing,” he finally said. “They came, and it’s over.”
“Nothing?” she snapped. “It is normal to face down a dozen men with guns, and it is normal to shoot one and knife the other? Abraham Hardin is hunting me…and now...” Her voice broke with fear and anger. “Now he is threatening to take my son because he believes Grayson is a Hardin. I must leave this place at once and disappear.”
Her expression revealed her every emotion and thought. Something in her quiet despair offended Joshua. “I can take care of my own,” he said flatly. “And Grayson is mine.”
Abraham Hardin would come again. Men like him did not give up, not when they fancied their pride had been wounded, or when their reputatio
n as the most dangerous had been threatened. He would not give up while there was still a chance, and he had the men to help him take her and their son. Joshua could take the fight to him, ride into town at dawn, find the boarding-house or hotel he stayed at and draw him out. The battle would be vicious and bloody, and there was a chance he would not make it. But he would take Abraham with him. That solution rode through his gut like a bad ale. Now he had something to fight for that he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving defenseless. Or he could take him in the room silently before he even knew what hit him.
She jabbed him in the chest. “This is not about you proving how tough and lawless you are, Joshua. I was just there. I saw you…I saw you shoot a man without any mercy because he called me a wh... whore.”
“That man will live,” he pointed out.
“Violence needn’t have happened. They were just empty words.”
The sweet scent of her was too close, and he was beginning to think about things he shouldn’t think about. At least not right now.
“They weren’t empty words.” They had forced him to show his hand and revealed that she mattered, that she was a weakness. And now they knew just how dangerous he was. The next time they would be fools not to be more prepared.
“They wanted to measure how I felt about you, to assess how much of a prey you are and your level of protection. They were deliberate in their actions, and I was just as deliberate in my response. A threat against you is a threat against me. If Abraham Hardin is gunning for you and our son, he needs to understand he will have to get through me first. Just now they understood just how much I’ll tolerate.”
He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed and drew her down onto his lap. His heart tumbled in his chest when she sat on his thigh and looped her hands around his neck.
Her big brown eyes stared at him solemnly. “Here is too lawless. Back home if you kill a man, you are tried, and if found guilty, then you are hanged. If it is self-defense, you would be released. But here…Joshua, there are no consequences, it’s accepted.”
“We have laws here, Beth. And I respect the law. But there are times when we must act outside of the law to defend those we love. And that man there…that was self-protection. I’ve never killed a man who didn’t gun for me or didn’t deserve it.”
“You maimed two men just now and were ready to kill one for calling me…for calling me a whore. Don’t you see how uncivilized that is?”
“I should have killed him for implying they would rape you, and for meaning it. But they’ll think hard about even thinking about you now.”
In her eyes, he saw the question about her husband.
“And while Benjamin Hardin hadn’t gunned for me, I would have been the lowest form of a man if I had allowed him to live, only to abuse you again.” Joshua had always lived his life according to his own conscience, instilled in him by the most honorable man he knew, his father August Kincaid. "And I would do it again, even if he hadn't come at me with a goddamn knife."
She swallowed. “I didn’t thank you.”
A breathless silence blanketed the room. “What?”
A sweet, tentative smile curved her lips. “Thank you, Joshua, for saving me from Benjamin Hardin. I have always known that if you hadn’t come back, he would have killed me that night. Thank you for saving me and thank you for Grayson.”
She had a look in her eyes that touched something way down inside of him. He kissed her. He couldn’t help the need that burrowed down into his heart to taste her again. She parted her lips, and her tongue swept out to meet his. Heat rose between them, swift and incendiary. He twisted with her and lowered her onto the bed, nudging her legs wide with his, and settling his weight between them. A dangerous need rode Joshua, and he had to fight the temptation to slake his lust in her body.
Maybe he had been too eager, too rough, but she stiffened under him, panting. With a muttered curse, he pushed away from her, raking his fingers through his hair. Then he glanced down at where she lay on the bed. Her cheeks flushed with desire, eyes sparkling, yet there was also cool caution. As if she did not understand what was between them.
Joshua hardly understood it either. He saw a lot of the country. He had ridden the trails in Oregon, Kansas, Deadwood, his only company had been his saddle, his horse, and his guns. He’d once found solace in lonely campfires, rough valleys, and challenging trails as he learned how to conquer the savagery of the land. He’d once found joy in the long mournful howl of a wolf, the cries of the mountain lions, the cold chill of the breaking dawn, but now…now he found that all in her taste, and the careful hunger she stared at him with.
He wanted her as he wanted nothing else in this world. Nothing in her background had prepared her for him, or for the harshness of life on the frontier. The vileness she had gotten at the hand of Benjamin Hardin would have easily made Beth hanker for the civility of the east.
What could he offer her if she stayed? Now he groped for words and could find none, for he was a man of few words, given to expressing himself in action. “I’ll try another way,” he said gruffly.
She sat up, pushing a wisp of hair behind her ear. “What?”
There was a time a man had to kill and times when he did not need to. Joshua would try to ensure his future conflicts fell into the “not need” category. Beth made him want to be different, softer perhaps when he knew it was the most dangerous thing he could do living in the west. “I’ll shoot them in the knees instead of in the heart. Or maybe not shoot at all.”
Her eyes went wide. “You’d do that?”
He caught her face between his hands and kissed her, tenderly. “For you.”
“Joshua—”
He kissed her again, over and over until she was quaking in his arms. Until his cock was hard and painful, and he was desperate to be inside her. He reluctantly took his lips from hers. “The Triple K ranch is in the heart of Colorado, in the prospering town of Bravo. Our spread is three times the size of the WC, and we own thousands of acres.”
Her finger stilled, and her beautiful eyes widened. “We?”
“Ma, my father, Elijah, and Noah. And our sister.”
She inhaled. “You have a sister?”
“Jenny’s eighteen, draws a gun almost as fast as I do, and some days forgets that she is a lady, but you’ll like her.”
He drew her between his open legs. “There the blue-green countryside is lush, the grass well-watered, and the meadows more beautiful than any I ever saw. The days can be filled with demanding work, for the Triple K have cattle, we have mines, and we are in the timber trade. But there are also days that are long and lazy, days where we have dances, and picnics in the glen, the nights are painted with starlight, the air redolent with juniper and pine, jasmine and honeysuckle.”
“You have a way with words, Joshua Kincaid,” she said softly, her eyes shining with something hot and potent. “But I suspect you’ve deliberately omitted the scents of horses, pigs, and cow dung to lead me astray.”
He chuckled, then kissed her again, and she responded with shivering sensuality.
“There’s a Stage line from Bravo to Kansas, where you can take the train from there to Boston. If you stay for a few weeks with me on the Triple K, and you do not like it, I’ll take you east myself.”
“I—”
He kissed her again, and she laughed against his mouth.
“Aren’t you going to stop kissing me so I can answer?” Her question was muffled, and instead of releasing her lips, he kissed her deeper, wetter, hoping to brand her with the compelling need rising inside of him for her.
Ah, God, she tastes so damn sweet.
He was harder and hungrier than he could ever remember being in his life. Hell, he had never been so desperate for a woman.
“You are driving me senseless,” she moaned. “I cannot think when you touch me so.”
“Don’t think,” he muttered, pressing quick, hot kisses to her lips. “Just feel with me, sweetheart, just for a few minutes.
”
The soft moan of surrender hit Joshua’s gut like a hot pleasurable slide of whiskey. Their tongues tangled, and he tasted her over and over until she climbed to sit astride on his lap, sitting on the hard ridge of his erection.
She pulled his shirt from his pants, and pushed her hands underneath, coasting her hands over his muscles. It felt as if the hottest of fire had touched him. He shuddered from the exquisite pleasure of her warm, soft hands on his chest.
“I know you’re wet. So wet for me, Bethany.”
Joshua palmed her buttocks and settled her even harder against his throbbing hardness. A man could only be so strong. He couldn’t help but lift against her, to grip her hips and move her slowly but hard over the throbbing length of his cock. He felt the tension slowly invade her limbs, and he ruthlessly forced himself to gentle his touch. He wanted to lie her down on the bed then love her until she screamed for more and promised to stay and give him a chance. They pulled apart, her forehead pressed against his.
“Are you afraid of me?”
He couldn’t bear it if she said yes. It was hard for him to comprehend why, it simply mattered, a hell of a lot.
There lingered a hint of mystery, of feminine knowledge in the slow smile she gave him. “I am afraid of how you make me feel, that’s all.”
Though her lips smiled, there were shadows and wounds in her eyes. He had never been the kind to force a woman to any life she did not want, and he wasn’t about to start now. He buried his face in her hair and held on to her. Her muscles lost their tension, and she relaxed in his embrace. The feel of her against his chest, that was all he wanted at this moment. And then maybe later, he would see about getting her away from Abraham Hardin and escorting her east.
Chapter 8
Beth peered down at Joshua, torn by a strange mixture of feelings. He made her feel comforted in some indefinable way, but also threatened. She did not know who she was with this man, a simple touch and she had lost all sense of herself. And this was not the first time he had elicited such a reaction within her. That night at the saloon in Liberty…heat flushed through her body as the wicked memories rose in her thoughts. Even now the touch of his fingers against her hips sent pleasure quaking through her body.
