“Have you seen a doctor?” she asked.
“Nothing a doc could do. Doreen’s mama put wool on it.”
“Wool?”
“Old Spanish custom. It’s supposed to make the swelling go down.”
“Doesn’t look like it worked very well,” Jeannie muttered.
“No? You should have seen it before the yarn.”
She hid a chuckle in the puppy’s fur. She allowed a few seconds to pass before saying, “I see you have your pickup back.”
“Yup. And surprise, surprise, no drugs inside it.”
Jeannie didn’t answer, but had to wonder how Nando Gallegos’s face might be looking that hot August afternoon.
If Jeannie had thought dinners at Rancho Milagro rollicky before, those nights were deadly stodgy compared with the night Chance returned bringing Doreen and her mother, Anna, with him.
Doreen and Anna both talked at once and in decibels loud enough to shake the dishes on the table. They spoke in a jumbled mix of southwestern jargon and twang, English and Spanish that left Jeannie breathless with wonder.
Anna engaged Dulce in a rapid-fire grilling that left the girl grinning and talking more than Jeannie had ever heard. Doreen teased Pablo and made his face flush dark red, and José giggled at whatever she’d said in Spanish.
Chance was somewhat quiet. A smile lingered in his hazel-green eyes, and more often than not, Jeannie would look across the table at him to find his bruised face turned in her direction, studying her, his lips curved in a crooked grin and an expression on his battered face she could only interpret as tender.
The puppies barked and whined from the makeshift pen the children had rigged on the front porch. Anna urged the party to ignore the pups while Dulce kept looking at the door in parental agitation.
Juanita hustled in with platter after platter of tamales, tacos and some kind of fried pastry confection dusted with powdered sugar.
In the midst of all the chaos, the warmth, the noise, Jeannie felt truly at home for the first time in two years, in some ways more at home than she’d ever felt in her life.
When, at a cheery demand from Doreen, Dulce and José disappeared into the kitchen with Juanita after the meal to help wash the dishes and Anna took the men outside to check on the cattle and the puppies and to have a cigar, she said with a wink, Jeannie was left alone with Doreen.
Doreen refused a second cup of coffee but helped herself to a glass of wine from the buffet table. “I don’t have to drive home.” She giggled and sat down. “The look on your face, Jeannie. I swear, you’re lucky you didn’t take up crime for a living. I’m not staying here. Pablo is taking Mama and me home a little bit later.”
Jeannie felt heat stinging her cheeks. “I wasn’t thinking that. You know we would love to have you stay. We have plenty of room.”
Doreen scooted her chair, flanking Jeannie’s, a bit closer. “That’s sweet. Really. I can see why everybody’s so happy around this place. That girl of yours, Dulce? She’s gonna be a looker one of these days. She’s got it bad for Chance, doesn’t she? And your little boy, I wish mine would learn some quiet lessons from him.
“Anyway, Geo—he’s my second husband—he’s got a job interview in the morning and has to have the kids home tonight so he’ll be able to get dressed without a hassle in the morning. As if I don’t every day of the week. Chihuahua. That’s my new way of swearing. The kids and I have a deal, we have to chip a quarter into the pot every time we swear. So far, they’ve got ten dollars on me. So I’m using other words now. I’ve got to be home by the time he drops off the kids or he’ll panic. That’s what he does best.
“So, what do you think of Chance?”
Jeannie almost choked over her coffee. “He’s been like a saint,” she said.
“We talking about the same man? Chance Salazar?”
Jeannie smiled and nodded.
“Okay. If you say so. But what I wanna know is, are you in love with him yet?”
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable or anything. I’m not out for him. Every woman falls for him. ’Cept me. And that’s only because I’m in love with someone else—Ted Peters over at the federal marshal’s office. Have you met him yet? No? Well, when you do, you’ll see why I’m crazy about him. Delicioso.” Doreen kissed her fingertips and sent the kiss into the air.
Jeannie didn’t have a clue how to respond to that, so she didn’t try. She needn’t have worried. Doreen wasn’t expecting an answer.
“Chance tell you how he got those black eyes?”
“No,” Jeannie said.
“But you asked, right?”
Jeannie felt herself blush.
“’Course you did. I knew you would. You’re a woman, right? He told me you wouldn’t say a word about it. Shows him. Well, anyway, he got them fighting Rudy Martinez. Chance told me Rudy came out here one day, right?”
Jeannie felt like a marionette, nodding when Doreen nodded. “The day of the fire.”
“That’s him. Rudy’s a distant cousin of my cousin Nando, but on his mama’s side. And he’s a cousin of El Patron on his papa’s.” Doreen’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know anything I’m talking about do you?”
“Rudy’s the sheriff’s cousin and the cousin of someone named El Patron?” Jeannie asked.
“You know what I think?” Doreen asked her, leaning even closer, resting her plentiful breasts on one of her folded forearms. “I think Chance must be in love with you. I’ve known him since we were kids, and me, I’ve never known him to go fight someone for some cattle before. A relative, yes. Even a horse, okay. But not for a bunch of cows. And never over a woman. Not Chance. And you know what else? He sure wouldn’t be fighting Rudy Martinez for them. Rudy fights dirty. He and a bunch of his guys jumped Chance outside Salvio’s garage two days ago.”
“What?” Jeannie asked, startled.
Doreen groaned. “I’ll tell you something, the way Chance was slinging Rudy’s name all over town, he was asking for a meeting with Rudy, if you know what I mean.” She laughed and reached out a hand to pat Jeannie’s. “And let me tell you something, okay? If you think Chance looks bad, you should see Rudy and his boys. Hijolé! I don’t think they’ll be bothering you anytime again soon. Me, I think El Patron might back off, too. What do you think?”
Jeannie thought Doreen had been right earlier—she had no idea what the woman was talking about. Her heart was still thundering in her chest after Doreen’s comment that Chance Salazar might be in love with her. And that Rudy Martinez and his boys had jumped Chance outside a garage. She stalled, echoing Doreen’s words. “Do you think so?”
“Oh, sure. Who wants to go mess around with a woman’s ranch if she’s got a big strong cowboy like Chance to watch out for her? Right? Everybody’s talking about it. Annie’s even taking bets over at the café.”
“Bets?” Jeannie asked faintly. “On what?”
“There’s three things, actually. One, is El Patron going to retaliate? She’s taking two-to-one odds on that one. And two, is Chance Salazar a captured man?” Doreen gave Jeannie another pat on her arm. “And tr s, is Nando right that Rancho Milagro is haunted?”
“Haunted?”
“Me, I bet no on the first and yes on the second two. So I’m counting on you, because I put up five dollars. That’s a week’s lunch money for the kids—I get a subsidy. So, if you don’t mind giving me some help, I surely would thank you for it.”
Jeannie didn’t know whether to laugh or walk away from the table in utter confusion. “How am I supposed to help?” she asked.
“You give me the inside story. I place another couple of bets at Annie’s. The kids have free lunch a whole semester. So what do you say?” Doreen asked. “You gonna nab him? Chance, I mean.”
Jeannie gave up and laughed.
Doreen beamed at her. “There, I knew you would be a good sport. Want me to place a bet for you, too?”
Jeannie couldn’t help it. She laughed a
ll the harder.
On the veranda, watching Anna and Pablo walking together in the distance, Chance stood in the open French door to the dining room. His fists were curled as he listened to Doreen’s babble. Fighting Rudy and his gang had been easier than standing outside this door listening to Doreen. He wanted to tell Jeannie that Doreen wasn’t usually like that, that she’d obviously had a snoot full. And he wanted to gather Doreen up and take her to Ted Peters’s house and deposit her on the doorstep. And he wanted to crawl into the nearest hole and stay there for a century or two. Just as he was steeling himself to enter the dining room to interrupt the dreadful diatribe, he heard the unfamiliar sound of Jeannie’s laughter ripple through the open door.
Her laughter played on his skin like a fine hand on a guitar, creating a delicate, haunting melody that danced over him. And when she began to laugh harder, a rich, hearty contralto that somehow suited her as perfectly as flowers matched summer, he felt something inside him snap. God, he wanted her. It couldn’t be less complicated than that. He just wanted her.
Chapter 8
P ablo assisted a much inebriated and giggling Doreen and her very sober but laughing mother to Chance’s pickup.
Although nowhere as intoxicated, a still chuckling Jeannie hugged both women and invited them back as soon as they could possibly make it out that far.
Chance couldn’t help but smile when Doreen said Jeannie could bet on it, and all three women started laughing again. And he chuckled as Doreen hung out the window of his pickup waving frantically and shouting a hundred invitations to come to her mama’s house, or pleas for Jeannie to allow her to bring her mama out there again or to take her children as boarders.
Jeannie stepped against him, lifting her hand in farewell. She rested her shoulder against his. In a lifetime of having people try to couple him with another—with women pulling every trick in the book from having their mothers drop by his mother’s house with coffee cake, to calling him telling him they were thinking of knitting booties—he’d never had anyone merely lean against him unconsciously. And unknowingly make them a couple.
His arm felt heavy as he lifted it to wrap around her, heavy with portent, with meaning, and yet it seemed a reflex. She stayed where she was against his chest, then lowered her head to his collarbone, one of her slender hands sliding behind his back to hook a thumb into his belt, the other still waving in the cool August night air, though her guests couldn’t possibly see her anymore.
He drew her closer, cradling her beneath his arm, enfolding her in his embrace. Now. Tell her now, he told himself. Tell her you’ve been lying to her and are here only for a job, but not the job she thinks you’re doing.
The truck’s taillights grew smaller as they disappeared down the road.
“I like Doreen,” Jeannie said, and lowered the hand she’d been waving to his chest. “She’s crazy, but I really like her.”
“I’m glad,” he murmured against her hair. And he pressed a kiss against the red curly silk.
She sighed, ran her hand to his chin and caressed him softly, almost playfully. Then he felt her slowly stiffen, as if waking from a dream. As if just then realizing who he was. That he was Chance and not someone else. He’d never felt so slapped in his entire life.
“Jeannie?” he asked, lifting his hand to her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping from his embrace. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not, and you said that. But I don’t understand why. What are you sorry about?”
“I just…I can’t…” She raised a hand as though it held the answers he sought.
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t do this,” she said, and waved her hand again, as though this encompassed the two of them, the ranch and all the stars above. “Please don’t ask me to explain. I just can’t. I can’t even talk about it, okay?”
Chance wanted to tell her it wasn’t okay, that she owed him some kind of explanation. That he wanted her so damned badly he actually ached with the longing.
He wanted to shout at her that he’d fought Rudy Martinez for her sake. And he’d brought her damned cattle home. He’d been through hell and back just for her. For her to…what? To want him because of it? What kind of a crazy need was that?
The unfairness of making demands, any demands, given his lies to her, his determination to ride out of there when her troubles were solved, stopped him cold.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “But I won’t press it.”
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s the way we’d better leave it.”
“Fine.”
“I’m sorry, Chance,” she said. But she didn’t look sorry, she only looked troubled.
He wanted to reach for her, knowing she’d feel how right they were together, but he couldn’t in the face of her withdrawal. Wouldn’t in the face of his need for freedom.
But he was still angry. “Good night then, ma’am.” He tipped his hat in an abrupt dismissal and brushed past her. Frustration measured his footsteps. A sense of having acted the cad dogged his shadow. A desire to turn around, march back and sweep her into his arms and kiss her senseless made him swear aloud in self-disgust.
What kind of a man was he? A normal healthy man, for sure, with all a normal healthy male’s wants and needs. But Jeannie wasn’t the kind of woman a man took for a night’s pleasure and rode away from with a smile on his lips. She was the kind a man took home, for God’s sake, to introduce to his crazy family. She was the kind of woman a man built sunporches for, took day jobs for, settled down for.
And he wasn’t that kind of a man. He was a federal marshal, a rogue, an independent rider who went his own way at the end of a job and left the pretty ranch owner in the fading sunlight.
And that was the biggest bunch of baloney he’d ever spouted to himself in his whole vagabond life.
But it didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t a man with any inclination to settle down and stay in one place with one woman. His mind conjured up that dream image of Jeannie lying back on green grass, her puppy jumping around her.
His steps slowed.
He pictured her arm thrown over her head, her curling hair strewn across the thick grass, her blue eyes unclouded and shining with happiness. She turned her head and smiled at him. A welcoming smile.
The night seemed to shimmer around him. He drew to a halt and stood there, wrestling with himself, fighting both the need to turn around and the urge to disappear into the safety of the bunkhouse.
He heard the front door of the hacienda close and, the decision lifted from him, he turned. The veranda, empty except for the sleeping puppies, was bathed in the soft yellow glow of the dining room lights. Within seconds, even that was gone.
“Ah, Jeannie. I’m sorry, too,” he whispered.
Jeannie felt as if she was underwater as she watched José performing a host of tricks astride Doreen’s horse, Tequila, while Chance assisted a much-changed Dulce in the saddling of Diablo. Everything happened in slow motion and was weighted down with early morning sunlight and adult tension.
She hadn’t slept much the night before, between hearing David’s cautionary warnings and replaying the moment Chance’s bruised lips tightened and he tipped his hat at her and walked away as if she had slapped him.
How could she possibly explain the desire she felt for him, the guilt she had for wanting him at all and the fear that threatened to overwhelm her every time she let her mind travel as far as kissing him? She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of getting too close to another person, no matter how much she might crave it. She’d happily laid her heart bare with David and with her baby, Angela. She’d held nothing back, kept no secret hiding place in her heart or in her soul. And when David had taken Angela out that cold, December morning, he’d unwittingly promised to be right back. It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t been allowed to live up to that promise. He wasn’t to blame for some idiot careening into their car, killing them both. But fault didn’t mean anything when
his widow’s soul had been shattered, her heart torn asunder and her sanity left in jeopardy.
And it wasn’t Chance’s fault she couldn’t give in to the desire to have a man hold her again, to have him touch her, warm her, steal her away from her ever-present loss. She couldn’t possibly begin to explain why she didn’t dare let herself trust so deeply again, why she wouldn’t open herself to the kind of agony such trust could bring.
“How am I supposed to be able to get the girth tight?” Dulce was asking Chance. “I’m not a muscle man like you.”
Jeannie felt the girl’s tone pull her from her heavy thoughts. It was definitely sultry rather than sullen. She suddenly realized Dulce had dispensed with every piercing, and her makeup was subdued, almost fresh looking. Her clothing, while decidedly different for Dulce, was nothing less than markedly seductive. She wore a short, formfitting tank top that scarcely came below her braless breasts. Her jeans appeared painted on.
Doreen had warned her, and Jeannie had witnessed the subtle signs before that Dulce had a crush on Chance. As Doreen had remarked, who didn’t…with the possible exception of Doreen.
Jeannie sighed. She’d have to say something to Dulce. But what? How, without destroying the precious rapport they were beginning to establish? The time certainly wasn’t the present, and never in front of Chance. That would be the ultimate disaster.
“Are you riding this morning, señora?” Chance asked her, his hat shading his green eyes.
Dulce interjected before Jeannie could answer. “She doesn’t like horses the way we do, Chance.” She stepped closer to the man and deliberately flicked his chest with freshly painted nails.
Chance seemed unaware of the effect he was having on the girl—but he seemed equally oblivious to the storm the girl was trying to wreak on him.
Jeannie hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until she saw him turn from Dulce and check the saddle girth again, then bend and cup his hands to heft the girl onto Diablo’s back.
Dulce clutched Chance’s shoulder as he tossed her into the saddle. She didn’t let go until he handed her the reins and stepped back. “Thank you. You make me feel like I could fly.” She purred the words at him.
Cowboy Under Cover Page 12
