Texas Bride: A Bitter Creek Novel

by Joan Johnston

  “So this is all my fault?” he said incredulously.

  “If the shoe fits, wear it!”

  “Cats don’t belong in the house. They belong in the barn chasing mice.”

  “We have mice in the house, too,” she retorted.

  “Since when?”

  “Saw one myself,” Slim interjected as he rolled himself through the kitchen doorway. “Sent your wife jumpin’ onto a kitchen chair, then went out through a hole in the floor.”

  “So there!” Miranda said, crossing her arms and glaring at him.

  Jake shot a Medusa look at Slim. It didn’t work. “Since when do you take her side?”

  “Since I saw a mouse in the kitchen,” the old man said with a grin. “Better get movin’. Gettin’ darker every minute.”

  Jake turned his back on the two of them and stomped out of the house. And realized just how close the sun was to falling below the horizon. In a while, stars would provide some light, but the moon wouldn’t rise for hours.

  As soon as it got dark, snakes would be out hunting for a meal, along with owls and wolves. If the kid bothered a Texas Longhorn, he could expect to get himself gored or trampled into dust. This was no place to be out running around unarmed and on foot.

  Jake muttered every bad word he could think of as he saddled up a buckskin named, of course, Buck. “Come on, horse,” he said as he mounted. “Let’s go find the kid.”

  Jake looked left along the fence that framed Three Oaks, then right, toward the road that led back toward San Antonio, branching off to Lion’s Dare—now Bitter Creek—along the way.

  “If I was a kid running away, Buck, I’d head back to the city. Let’s go check it out.”

  Jake didn’t hurry. He looked for footprints in the last of the light before the sun disappeared entirely. He found them along the dusty road heading back to San Antonio. The boy had been gone several hours without food or water or matches or a weapon of any kind, or even a coat to keep away the April evening chill. Nick must be feeling pretty lonesome—and damned scared—by now.

  Jake realized the kid might have been smart enough not to walk too far from home. On the other hand, he might have been mad enough to move fast and keep going. Jake hoped the kid was smart. This really was no place for a kid of ten, who was ignorant of the dangers that abounded, to be running around alone.

  A couple of hours later, Jake still hadn’t caught up to Nick. He worried that the kid might have left the road. If he had, it might be a very long night. If he had, Jake might never find him. Alive anyway. Someday he might stumble across Nick’s bones, picked clean. Otherwise, he might never know what had happened to the boy.

  He’d been shouting Nick’s name for the past hour, hoping against hope that the boy would hear him. He was getting hoarse. And feeling guilty. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so hard on him.

  Every time Jake had that thought, he remembered how his own father had raised him. Mistakes were punished immediately and harshly. There was no room for blunders in the West. Even kids had to be responsible—all day, every day. He wouldn’t be doing Nick any favors if he didn’t hold him to the same high standards to which Jake’s father had held him.

  He just hoped the kid lived long enough to learn his lesson.

  “Nick!” he shouted. “Nick! Where are you? Your sister’s worried. Nick! Answer me. Nick!”

  There was no answer.

  He searched another hour but had no luck. The moon was up and he could see almost like it was day. There was no sign of Nick, not even any footprints. The kid had probably made those tracks on the road and then doubled back and come in from one of the shacks while Jake was out here on a wild-goose chase. He should probably turn around and head back.

  Except, what if the kid was still out here? Alone. Scared to death. In mortal danger.

  His throat hurt, but he kept calling, kept hoping the boy would answer. Then he heard a faint cry from his left. “Nick? Is that you?”

  The cry came again. It was a moan, really.

  Jake moved slowly, carefully, watching for predators—animal and human—lurking in the darkness. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and he saw a patch of white under a mesquite tree near the road. The boy’s shirt, he thought.

  He kept his horse moving, but all the while his eyes roamed left and right. He listened intently for any sound that didn’t belong. Something—or someone—had injured the boy. He didn’t want to end up a victim, too.

  He didn’t approach Nick directly. He rode around and came from behind him, watching for an ambush. When he was sure there was no threat, he called out softly, “Nick?”

  The boy was sitting on the ground, his back against the mesquite. “I’m hurt,” he said in a faint voice.

  Jake dismounted and hurriedly crossed the few feet to Nick. “What happened?”

  “I was resting here in the shade and something bit me.” He held up his left hand, which was swollen.

  “Was it a snake? Did you hear rattling beforehand?” Jake asked anxiously.

  Nick shook his head. “A spider of some kind. Only it didn’t look like a spider exactly. It had a stinger on its tail.”

  “Scorpion,” Jake said.

  “I was just going to rest here and then walk back,” Nick said. “I must have fallen asleep.”

  Or he’d had an uncommon reaction to the scorpion’s venom and was too weak to stand, Jake thought. “When the scorpion stung you, how did it feel?”

  The kid shrugged. “I don’t know. How should it feel?”

  “Like you’d been stung by a bee or a wasp.”

  “I’ve never been stung by a bee or a wasp.”

  The result of living in a city full of buildings instead of trees and grass and flowers, Jake thought. He took the kid’s hand in his and examined the bite in the moonlight. A scorpion’s sting might be painful, but the venom wasn’t strong enough to cause more than temporary pain—unless someone was allergic to the venom.

  It looked like Nick was having a stronger reaction to the bite than normal. He was breathing heavily, and he was certainly lethargic. Better get him back to the house and get some baking soda on that bite.

  Jake leaned down and picked the boy up in his arms, surprised at how light Nick still was, even after all the pancakes he’d eaten.

  “I can walk,” Nick protested. But his arms went around Jake’s neck and his head lolled onto Jake’s shoulder.

  “Don’t worry,” Jake said soothingly. “I’ve got you, son.”

  Jake bit his lip, expecting Nick to protest his use of the word “son.”

  It was a sign of what bad shape the boy was in that he just circled his hands tighter around Jake’s neck.

  When he got back to his horse, Jake pulled Nick’s hands free and placed him in the saddle. Then he settled himself on the horse’s rump behind the saddle, with his arms around Nick’s chest to hold him upright. He could hear—and feel—just how hard the boy was breathing.

  Jake gave his mount a kick and said, “Let’s go home, Buck.”

  Nick tried sitting upright, but it was obviously a struggle.

  “It’s all right to lean on me, son,” Jake said quietly.

  Nick tensed, and Jake realized he’d unconsciously used that word again.

  After an endless moment, the boy’s small back leaned trustingly against Jake’s broad chest.

  Jake let out a quiet sigh of relief and asked, “Where were you headed?”

  “Away from you.”

  Jake’s heart sank. It was fatigue, not acceptance, that had caused the boy to relax in his arms. The kid still didn’t want anything to do with him.

  Then Nick said, “The more I walked, the more I realized you were right, Jake. And I was wrong.”

  Jake tightened his arm around the slender boy. “It takes a big man to admit that.”

  “Yeah, well, I also figured I’d rather eat pancakes than whatever I can find on the trail for breakfast,” the boy said flippantly.

  Jake found himself laugh
ing at the kid’s cheek. “I’ll see if I can get your sister to make you some for supper.”

  “I wish I was already grown up,” he said wistfully.

  “Why is that?”

  “If I were grown, I could go wherever I want and do whatever I want and people couldn’t boss me around.”

  “There are always people to tell you what they think you should do,” Jake said cynically. “Where would you go, by the way, if you could go anywhere?”

  “Back to Chicago to get my sisters out of that hellhole Miss Birch calls an orphanage. I’d do almost anything to rescue them from the clutches of that fat old biddy.”

  Jake thought the boy was confused, that the scorpion bite had affected his reasoning, which was a bad thing, if it was true. The pain and symptoms of a scorpion sting were usually gone pretty quick. Jake was worried that Nick’s reaction seemed far worse than normal.

  “Your sister’s already escaped from Miss Birch,” he told the boy gently.

  “Not Miranda,” the boy said petulantly. “I mean my sisters Hannah and Hetty and Josie.”

  Jake felt faint. “You left three sisters behind?”

  “Yeah. Miranda was hoping you’d have a house big enough for all of us, but you don’t. That’s why she wants you to rebuild what’s been burnt, so there’ll be room for all six of us.”

  “All six of you,” Jake murmured, remembering how Miranda had slipped up in the barn and mentioned the number of children that her mother had birthed. It appeared all six were alive and well, although three had been left behind in Chicago.

  He felt like the fool she’d called him more than once. He’d been congratulating himself on having the perfect wife. She was far from perfect. Miranda Wentworth Creed was a liar and a conniver and a cheat.

  Jake supposed that was the problem with putting any woman on a pedestal. It was damned hard to keep her up there for very long before she fell off.

  “What’s Miranda planning to do about your sisters, now that there’s no room at Three Oaks for the rest of the family?” Jake asked.

  “Oh, Miranda wrote a letter, telling them they’ll have to wait. I don’t think she’s figured out how to mail it though, without you finding out.”

  “I see,” Jake said. Did the boy realize what he was revealing?

  The kid just kept talking. “Hannah and Hetty will stay until they turn eighteen—that’s one more year. Poor Josie’s only sixteen. Miss Birch hates her, because Josie’s so smart. She reads a lot. That place’ll be hell on earth, once Josie’s there all by herself.”

  Jake felt sorry for the lot of them, but he was also aggrieved at his wife for keeping their existence a secret from him and for conspiring to bring them to Texas without his knowledge.

  He would have been glad to help, if only she’d asked. Didn’t she know how much he cared for her? Obviously not, if she was keeping secrets—like the existence of three more sisters—from him.

  Jake realized he might lose Miranda even if he never had sex with her. She might decide to move out and set up housekeeping with the rest of her family. All of his self-denial would have been in vain.

  He didn’t need much of an excuse to do what he’d been wanting to do from the first night he’d spent in bed with his wife. He’d been at the end of his tether for far too long. After he got Nick fed and doctored and tucked in for the night, he was going to make love to his wife.

  And he was going to enjoy every minute of it. He wasn’t going to think once about the risk to her, or how devastated he would be if something happened to her.

  Then he’d ask her exactly how she planned to rescue her sisters, since he hadn’t turned out to be as rich a fool as she’d hoped, and just see what his wife had to say.

  Miranda noticed Jake was acting strangely when he returned to the house with Nick in tow, but she was so grateful he’d found Nick, and that Nick seemed to be recovering so well from his adventure, that she didn’t ask what was troubling him.

  Now that the house was quiet, her husband had come into their bedroom and started undressing. That was odd in the extreme. Since her failed seduction, he’d been sleeping—and therefore undressing—in the barn. There had been no chance of either one seeing the other in dishabille.

  She stared at him warily from the bed, where she sat under the covers in her nightgown, wondering what had caused this change. “Are you all right?”

  “Aside from being hungry, I’m fine.”

  “I kept your dinner warm. I could get it for you now, if you like,” she said, starting to shove the covers aside.

  “Stay where you are.” He met her inquiring gaze and said, “I’m hungry for something else right now.”

  “Really? What is that?”

  “You.”

  Miranda gaped. “Oh.” What did he mean? Was he, at long last, going to make love to her? “Have you changed your mind?”

  He nodded.

  It was the curtness of the nod that made her feel anxious. Maybe he was as nervous about what was to come as she was. Although, she didn’t think anyone could be as nervous as she was.

  “What changed your mind?” she asked.

  “Let’s not spend time talking that we could spend doing things that are far more enjoyable,” he said as he crossed to the bed.

  Jake’s chest and feet were bare. His belt was gone, as well, but he hadn’t taken off his Levi’s. The jeans hung low, revealing sharp hipbones. She couldn’t take her eyes off the dark line of hair that began at his navel and disappeared beneath the metal buttons that held his fly closed.

  The part of his body beneath his fly seemed to grow before her astonished eyes, pressing against the fabric, creating a very visible, very male outline.

  Jake’s face suddenly blocked her view, looming over her as he sat on the side of the bed. “I want you, Miranda,” he said in a husky voice. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I laid eyes on you.”

  They were heady words. “I …” She swallowed over the sudden knot in her throat and managed to croak, “I want you, too, Jake.”

  “Good.”

  There was something in his voice, something not quite … right. She closed her eyes as he lowered his head and waited for his kiss.

  Miranda was expecting tenderness. She was expecting the same gentle exploration that had begun their aborted attempt at lovemaking. She wasn’t prepared for the sudden thrust of Jake’s tongue or the resulting sensation that exploded in her belly and worked its way up to her breasts and throat, setting her body on fire. She met his tongue thrust with one of her own as her hands clutched at whatever part of him she could reach.

  He made a low, guttural sound before he reached for the tie of her nightgown and yanked it free. He reached inside with both hands to hold her naked breasts, but the gown was still in his way. He roughly shoved it off her shoulders and jerked it down to her waist.

  Miranda should have felt abashed. But it was excitement, not shame, that she felt as Jake perused her naked body. She wondered fleetingly why he’d changed his mind, why he no longer seemed concerned about getting her pregnant.

  What he did next pushed every rational thought away.

  She came willingly as he pulled her into his embrace, her naked breasts crushed against his naked chest. As he pressed fervent kisses to her throat, she bent her head to kiss his throat in return.

  He tasted salty. And he smelled of hard-working man, an acrid scent that was not at all unpleasant.

  He sucked on her flesh, and she heard a grating sound of pleasure come from deep in her throat. She’d been resisting the urge to bite him, but her teeth nipped in response to the pleasure and pain of what he was doing with his mouth.

  He pulled away to look into her face, and she stared up into his glittering, heavy-lidded eyes. She barely had time to wonder what the look in his eyes meant before he lowered his mouth to her breast and took her nipple in his mouth.

  “Ahhhh,” she moaned.

  She didn’t know what to do with herself. She was caught up in
the exquisite pleasure Jake was creating as he touched her in places she couldn’t have imagined allowing a man to touch.

  But she needed to touch as well.

  Jake groaned as her hand slid along his hip all the way to his inner thigh.

  “My God, girl. What are you doing?”

  “You don’t like it?” Miranda started to pull her hand away, but he caught it and held it where it was.

  “I like it too much.”

  She didn’t understand what he meant. “Should I stop?”

  He gave a harsh laugh. “No. Don’t stop.”

  She let her fingertips slide higher, toward that part of him that was particularly male. She watched as his eyes squeezed closed.

  A moment later he’d laid her flat and was pushing her knees apart. She caught a glimpse of him and thought there was no way he would ever fit! She panicked.

  One of his hands was caught in her hair while the other had moved down between her legs.

  “Shh,” he said. “Easy, love. Easy now.”

  His voice was soothing, coaxing, and she relaxed enough to gaze up into his eyes, which still held that strange, glittery look. His hands were warm on her, and she felt embarrassed to realize she was wet down there.

  When she glanced away, he said, “That’s the way it’s supposed to be, girl. It’s how your body readies itself for mine.”

  “Oh,” she said meekly, turning to meet his dark-eyed gaze.

  His features were taut, his jaw tight. He didn’t look much like he was enjoying himself. She reached up to put a hand on his cheek. He pressed his face against her hand and closed his eyes as though he needed her touch as much as she needed his.

  For a moment anyway. Then his eyes flashed open and he focused his dark eyes on her and his lips flattened.

  She felt confused by his contrary behavior. And aroused by what he was doing with his hand. And frightened of what was to come.

  Her eyes widened as he began to touch a part of her he hadn’t touched before. “Oh,” she said in surprise. “Oh, that feels good.”

  She reached for his shoulders to hold on, as her body began to move under his hand. She arched her hips upward and felt male flesh.