Tanners' Angel

by Jenny Penn

  TANNERS’ ANGEL

  The Jenny Penn Collection

  Jenny Penn

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  TANNERS’ ANGEL

  Copyright © 2010 by Jenny Penn

  E-book ISBN: 1-60601-813-2

  First E-book Publication: February 2010

  Cover design and inside illustration by Sophia

  All art, illustration and logo copyright © 2010 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

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  DEDICATION

  To my Nana.

  TANNERS’ ANGEL

  JENNY PENN

  Copyright © 2010

  Chapter 1

  Wyoming Territory, 1868

  “They came out of South Pass City and basically ran right over us.”

  Mike Tanner watched the amber liquid slosh up the sides of the whiskey bottle as it banged down on the table in front of him. Richard Carol leaned in over the bottle, returning only half what it had been when Mike handed it off.

  “I’m telling you, it’s damn lucky they didn’t run off with Mary Anne.” With a side glance at the woman washing rags out in the kitchen sink, Richard’s tone dropped even lower. “You know what they would have done to her.”

  Marty Carol stretched an arm out over the table to wrench the whiskey from his older brother’s hand. His eyes hardened and narrowed on the woman, Marty’s gaze showed the same naked fear as his brother’s. “She doesn’t belong out here.”

  “I do, too!”

  That instant sharp retort drew Mike’s gaze back toward the woman he’d been doing his best to avoid looking at. Tiny, with a sea of chocolate curls rolling down her back, Mary Anne didn’t even bother to look up or over at her brother.

  Mary Anne Winters was the youngest and only girl in a long line of Carol boys. A widow, and therefore available, didn’t change what Mike knew about the girl. He knew quite a lot.

  She was the sweetest thing a man could ever know. A man could die in peace, just fading away listening to her voice. When she died, she’d be seeing to God’s meals herself. That’s how divine her cooking was.

  Mike heard it all listening throughout the long, lonely nights spent mired in the muck of war as Richard had gone on about his angel. There had been some things Richard obviously failed to recall. Like Mary Anne didn’t take well to being told what to do.

  In the few short hours he’d known the woman, Mike already figured that one out.

  “You do not! You belong back east where it’s safe.” Marty hollered back.

  That had her little chin turning over her shoulder. “And you belong in the barn with the rest of the dogs.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She’s here now.” Richard cut into the argument. “And if we go after the Willis gang with her in tow…”

  It would be too dangerous to take the woman with them. Sure as shit the last thing Mike wanted was Mary Anne fouling up his hunt. “Don’t worry over it, Richard. She can stay here and look after Malcolm.”

  Mike’s youngest brother, Malcolm, took a bullet just that afternoon when the Willis gang tore through the ranch. They didn’t pause shooting at anything in their way. Mike had gotten pissed at Malcolm for going and getting hit.

  He had to fool around with his brother’s injury instead of chasing down some revenge. A straight through shot in the side, it had been more bluster and blood than anything, though Malcolm took to his bed with nothing but complaints.

  When the Carol brothers rode into the ranch with their sister in tow, he’d been more than glad to dump Malcolm’s whining ass on the woman. Even better, he’d have at least two Carol brothers at his side when he caught up to the raiders.

  Three against ten were better odds than one against ten. It would only be better if Richard counted as one of the other two. “You going to ride out with me in the morning, right? Leave one of them,” Mike nodded toward Richard’s two younger brothers, “to sit on the woman.”

  “I do not need to be sat on, Mr. Tanner.”

  Richard smirked at Mike for drawing that reprisal. “You should be thanking the man for offering you a roof, Mary Anne, not being rude because he’s stating the obvious.”

  “If you’d just taken me into South Pass I could have just sat on myself. Believe it or not, Richard, I can mind after myself very well.”

  Marty shared Richard’s rolled-eye response to that. The brothers’ gazes locked on the motion. They shared something silently, a moment of knowing, and Mike immediately understood what they were feeling.

  All those nights spent dreaming of being anywhere but at war, he dreamed about Mary Anne, too. He just never actually thought she’d look like Richard said, but he hadn’t lied.

  Mary Anne Winters did look like a fallen angel. Her body, soft and delicate, made a man think of only sin. That’s why Mike didn’t look in her direction. He’d be thankful not to spend too much time around that kind of temptation.

  “I’m real sorry your brother got shot.” Richard sighed, apparently deciding to ignore Mary Anne all together.

  “Eh.” Mike rolled up one shoulder at that. “It was clean through, Richard. It couldn’t be a nicer shot to tak
e if you had to take one. I imagine the hard part will be keeping Malcolm in bed resting for the next few days.”

  “I hope you’re right about that.” Richard’s lips pursed before releasing a breath. “You never know with a bullet wound. It get’s infected—”

  “It’ll be fine. Malcolm’s been shot before and in a lot worse places.”

  “Still, he’ll want to keep it clean and tend to it. With the kind of dirty work you guys do, he won’t be of much help setting up for the winter.”

  “The winter is a long way off.”

  “You never know. It’s getting to be that time of year. A storm could just blow in and close down the passes.”

  “I am aware of the unpredictable nature of the weather, Richard. What I don’t understand is your point?”

  “I can answer that.”

  She really did have a sweet, soft, slightly husky voice with a certain feminine clarity. Mike never knew what Richard meant by that comment, but he got it now. As alluring as it was, Richard still stiffened up in annoyance. “Mary Anne.”

  “See, Mr. Tanner.” She crept up on them when he wasn’t looking, and now she loomed way too close. “My brother is trying to seed the idea that your brother is so sick that he could need a doctor, but by then, the passes will be closed due to snow.”

  Hovering right over the side of his chair, Mary Anne rained the sweet scent and warmth of woman down over him. She smelled like roses, and Mike didn’t have any business noticing that.

  “Once he’s sold you on that idea, he’s going to get you to see that the most reasonable solution would be to take your brother down to South Pass.”

  Wearing a dress a size too big for her frame didn’t help hide the bounce and sway of her soft curves. Mike swallowed and glared at the wall over her shoulder, intent on ignoring the woman all together.

  “Having me and Malcolm down there will work better for him once he gets his furs back because then he can still stuff me on a train to send me off to find a husb—”

  “Enough, Mary Anne.”

  Richard didn’t get that growl out fast enough because Mike knew what she’d been about to say. Husband. Richard wanted a husband for Mary Anne.

  “What?” She turned on Richard, leaving Mike to finally take a breath.

  “I said enough.”

  “Why? Why should I listen to you? Everybody here knows that if it hadn’t been for those raiders riding off with all the pelts, you’d already have me pointed toward Cheyenne and the train back east. Don’t deny it.”

  That had Richard coming out of his chair. “I ain’t gonna deny it.”

  “Even though you know I don’t want to go.”

  “Even though,” Richard spat back, “you don’t belong here.”

  “I do, too!” She went all the way onto her tip toes to shout at his chin. “I may be little and a woman, but that doesn’t mean I’m not strong enough to survive out here.”

  “You just don’t understand, Mary Anne. You don’t understand what those men would do to you.”

  Mike had a sick feeling that was true. She didn’t look like an angel just because her beauty blinded a man. That glow came from some inner innocence that just shined right through her.

  There might be all the strength in the world vibrating in those muscles, and all the determination shining in those amazing violet eyes. None of that changed the fact that Mary Anne was soft and gentle.

  Not a woman, but a lady. Richard could dress Mary Anne up in ugly, worn, oversized clothes all he wanted. He could drag her through the mud and rain until her hair frizzed and went wild. Hard work could chafe her soft hands red, sleepless nights could weather into dark smudges under her eyes, but none of it would change the fact that Mary Anne was a lady.

  A lady didn’t have any business being out in the wilderness, especially when she’s not surrounded by her own kin.

  “You just don’t understand, Mary Anne. You can’t stay.”

  Desperation sounded in Richard’s voice, but it didn’t soften the woman any. With a huff, she stormed back to the sink to snatch up the basket of rags she’d been working on. She paused only for a second before she came back, glaring down every man at the table,

  “Say what you will, Richard. I have more important things to attend to now. If you’ll excuse me, I want to make sure Mr. Tanner’s brother didn’t pull his stitches out.”

  Just like that, she dismissed them all. The regal way she managed to make retreat almost brought a grin to Mike’s lips. She had grit and the smarts to know a losing side when she was on it. That wouldn’t make her cry defeat, though. Richard might have won the argument, but the war still lived on. Mike could sense that clearly.

  “She’s going to end up raped and killed.” Marty let out a sigh as he reached for the whiskey bottle again, only to get it snatched from his grasp by Richard.

  “I think maybe you had enough. Why don’t you take Eric down to the barn and make sure everything is ready for the ride out in the morning?”

  Eric, the second youngest in the line of Carol kids, rose at that command. The quietest in the bunch, he finally used his voice.

  “Mike’s going to be making that ride with us. Right, Richard? You’ll be staying behind with Mary Anne?”

  “Better to leave you.” Marty snorted. “Richard’s our best tracker, even better than Big Mike here.”

  “Will the two of you just go on and get,” Richard snapped. Settling back into his seat, he took the whiskey bottle with him and well out of Marty’s reach.

  “Why ain’t you answering the question?” Marty shot back.

  “Because there ain’t no need to answer. Mary Anne is our sister, just like Big Mike here is a brother. We’re all kin in this cabin.”

  Marty snorted at that and rose to his feet. Shuffling around Mike’s seat, Marty followed Eric toward the back door. Only Eric cleared right out through it with his coat and hat in hand. Marty paused to glare back at Mike.

  “We ain’t all kin in this cabin.”

  “Go on, Marty,” Richard barked over his shoulder. “And you going to be sleeping down there tonight, so don’t bother coming back.”

  Mike’s gaze locked on Richard’s the second the back door snapped out the cool breeze that had been cutting through the kitchen. Snatching the whiskey from his friend, Mike laid it out as blunt as he could.

  “I ain’t marrying your sister.”

  “She ain’t my sister.”

  Mike smirked at that as he poured out his own measure of whiskey. “That don’t change the fact that I ain’t marrying her.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.” Richard snatched the bottle back to clink it against his own glass.

  “But you are about to ask me to stay behind, right?”

  Richard banged the bottle down for a second time that night. His glare rolled over Mike to grind into the wall. Mike saw Richard trying to stare straight through the pine planks as if to see the woman on the other side.

  “It’s been hell, Mike. I mean absolute hell. Six weeks of being trapped in the woods with that woman. Do you know how hard it is to hold back, to hide everything from her and continue to be nothing but a brother?”

  Mike could well imagine. That’s why he didn’t want to get trapped in the cabin for the next couple of weeks having to live through that same nightmare. “Why don’t you just tell her?”

  That had Richard’s gaze snapping back to his. “Tell her what? That she ain’t really a Carol? That her mama wasn’t really her mama or that the daddy she loved and idolized isn’t really the man who fathered her? What good is that going to do?”

  “Well, she loves you like a brother, maybe—”

  “Maybe what?” Richard grunted over the rim of his glass. “You got a sister. What would you do if she turned to you one day and said she wasn’t your sister and she wanted to be your wife?”

  Mike scowled at Richard for putting that nasty thought in his head. “Don’t be sick.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to avoi
d. It doesn’t matter how I feel or Marty feels or any of the rest of them. It matters how she feels.”

  Mike considered that for a moment before washing away Richard’s sick suggestion with a large gulp of whiskey. Nodding over the burn of the alcohol, Mike didn’t need a map to see Richard’s point.

  “I get that. If it’s that bad, Richard, you should have taken her into South Pass and let Eric sit on her. At least in town, he’d have distractions.”

  “I can’t take her into South Pass.” Richard straightened up with that statement, and fresh anger cut his words into hard bits. “And neither can you. Even if that brother of yours gets sick enough to have to be taken down to the valley, you got to leave her behind, Mike.”

  “You talking like you think you gonna leave me behind, Richard,” Mike shot back. “And that ain’t gonna happen, either.”

  “Fine.” Richard cut him off with a wave of his glass. “Say I stay with your brother and Mary Anne here. What you think is going to happen?”

  Mike’s gaze narrowed on Richard’s growl. “What are you threatening?”

  “I’m not threatening. I’m saying. Malcolm’s going to be up and back at it in a day, maybe two? You tell me, Mike, your brother ever met a woman he didn’t like?”

  No, and Mike hadn’t actually thought that angle through. Richard had, and that put the piece in why he wanted them in South Pass. Mary Anne’s theory left him thinking something else totally.

  “That’s right.” Richard nodded. “And you think he’s going to mind after me? You really want me to have to beat him when he’s already been shot?”

  Not really, because Mike would hate for Richard to accidentally kill Malcolm. Then Mike would hate to have to intentionally kill Richard. This would leave Mary Anne unprotected, and given his honor, he’d have to marry her. Marrying her would be hell though given she’d probably hate him for killing her brother.