Jessi put her fingers to her lips and cut loose with a piercing whistle that should have broken their eardrums—probably would have, too, if they hadn't all been so thickheaded.
"No! You boys are gonna listen to what I have to say if I have to hold you at gunpoint to make you do it! Now get this straight. I am in love with Lash Monroe. Have been ever since the day he first set foot on the Texas Brand. I wanted him, and I set about the business of getting him. If you doubt that, boys, just think about it for a minute. I always get what I want, don't I?" She glared at each of them in turn, but only paused a second, because if they started in again she'd never shut them up. "I seduced Lash, not the other way around. And I'm not one bit ashamed of it, either. He told me right from the start not to fall for him, but I did it anyway. He doesn't know about this baby, and I don't want him to know until I'm damned good and ready to tell him. You understand me? You keep your big fat mouths shut."
Then she turned to Ben. "And yes, I'm okay. I'm just fine."
Ben nodded, big and gentle and accepting. "I'm glad, honey. But I'm gonna have to kick your boyfriend's ass for this."
Jessi rolled her eyes as her brothers all started talking at once, voices raised as they described what they were going to do to Lash in the most colorful terms possible. They swore and ranted and hollered. She sidled away from them, all the way up to that pretty new shiny red pickup truck, and peeked in to see the keys dangling from the switch. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw her brothers standing in a huddle the Dallas Cowboys would have been proud of, each one trying to top the other's threats. She opened the door and climbed behind the wheel. She closed the windows, secured the locks, released the emergency brake, slipped the shift into first, then depressed the clutch. All systems go.
She twisted the key. As soon as the motor came to life, her brothers turned like one collective testosterone-enhanced male entity. She waved and popped the clutch as they all surged forward. But it was too late. She pulled it into second gear, then glanced in the rearview mirror and smiled at the distance the big lugs chased her before giving up. She faced front again, flicking on the headlights and shifting up another gear.
She could have taken the keys to her old pickup, leaving them stranded. It would have been intensely satisfying to think of them having to hoof it back to the border and use a phone to call Chelsea. Imagine them trying to explain that their little sister had stolen their big manly truck and left them high and dry. Ah, it was almost too good. But she'd denied herself the pleasure of that. She'd left them the keys. Because she had a feeling Lash was going to need a little bit more help than she could give him. So it was necessary for the boys to follow her on her journey south.
She turned on the radio and hoped this little town was far enough away to give her brothers plenty of time to cool down. One thing was for sure, she was going to have plenty of time to kill, waiting for them to catch up to her in that slowpoke of a truck. Which was good, in a way, because she was starved. Nice that she finally had her appetite back. Must be all this excitement.
* * *
Chapter 12
« ^ »
Lash had been holed up in the sleazy hotel for just about as long as he could stand, and no Federales had shown up yet. Zane was in a little cantina a few yards down the dirt track that passed for a road in this hole-in-the-wall town. Pueblo Bonito, indeed. If ever there had been a misnomer…
A good portion of Garrett's herd of prime beef stock—and those of many of his neighbors—were a bit farther down, penned up in open-air corrals and waiting for the morning shift to show up to slaughter them. Seven a.m. was when the workers would arrive to begin their gruesome task, or so Lash had been told when he asked around in stammering, very bad Spanish. That gave him barely four hours, and it wasn't going to be enough time.
He had to do something. He couldn't just keep on waiting for help to arrive. He'd scoped out the slaughterhouse yard, and seen men sorely in need of bathtubs and razor blades standing around the cattle pens holding rifles. He figured if he even got close, they'd use them.
The town was obviously poverty-stricken. Buildings were in tumbledown condition; brown water flowed from the faucets, when they chose to spew any at all. More interesting was the rat poison strategically placed underneath the sink. The few vehicles in town looked as if they were held together with coat hangers and baling twine. Broken windows were patched with large pieces of cardboard. The place reeked of despair.
But, hell, he couldn't sit around here much longer. He couldn't stand to. All he could think about was getting back to Texas. To the ranch. To Jessi.
And it had just started to occur to him that maybe he'd been wrong when he told her he wasn't a settling-down kind of guy. At first, he'd only thought he should marry her because it was the right thing to do, but then she'd gone and turned him down, and it had made him think. Long and hard. Hell, he'd been disappointed when she refused him. And when he pondered that feeling, he'd realized that if he'd only been proposing out of guilt or a sense of duty, then he'd have been relieved. But he hadn't been relieved at all. In fact, he'd been pretty crushed. He'd told himself he wasn't, but that had been bull. All he'd been doing since then was trying to think of how to talk her into changing her mind. Into saying yes. Into being his wife.
Being his wife. God, the phrase whispering through his brain made him feel warm and soft inside.
So the question remained—why? If it wasn't guilt or remorse—if suddenly the idea of jumping into his old car and heading for a new town and a new adventure seemed like a nightmare instead of a thrill—then why?
Damn. Could he actually be … in love?
Seemed beyond his wildest imaginings.
He settled down in a rickety chair behind the filthy window in his hotel room, watching the cantina's entrance through the hole where the glass was broken, because it was the only part he could see through. There was little activity in the streets, but the cantina was busy. Men staggered in and out. Rough-sounding Spanish and deep laughter spilled into the street. He watched it all, and pondered his feelings about Jessi Brand for a long while.
And then he leaped out of the chair so fast that it clattered to the floor behind him. He stared, aghast, out the window, rubbed his eyes and stared again. Because the girl he'd been thinking about had materialized right before his eyes. She was sauntering down that dusty road in a pair of straight-legged jeans that hugged her where they shouldn't, and tall slender boots that reached almost to her knees. She wore one of those sexy ribbed tank tops, glaring white, the ones that were made for a man, but did incredible things on a woman. Over it was a plaid flannel shirt, lightweight, unbuttoned and gaping, sleeves rolled to the elbows. She wore a hat, a Stetson like his, only hers was a soft brown felt that made the red in her hair look even prettier.
She was eating a fajita about a foot long as she walked, and she was looking around—probably for him, he figured.
He heard the wolf whistle, saw her stop and turn her head toward the cantina's swinging doors. She turned so fast that her short auburn hair kept swinging even after her head had come to a stop. He could see it brushing her shoulders in the shadow of her hat.
Lash pulled his handgun and, without taking his eyes off the street below, checked to see that it was fully loaded.
The swinging doors of the cantina flung outward and his nemesis, Zane, staggered out, said something obnoxious to Jessi and gripped her forearm. Jessi smashed what was left of her fajita into his leering face, and he laughed as he swiped it off.
The bastard. He pulled her inside. Lash whirled and ran, as fast as he could out of his room and down the hall. His booted feet landed so hard that chunks of plaster jarred loose from the walls as he passed. He slammed down the stairs, skipping the lowest one—the one with the missing board—so as not to break a leg, and headed out of the hotel. He could hear the cantina's radio blasting from here. A cloud of dust followed him across the road, and he burst into the noisy Mexican bar, pistol drawn and r
eady, to see Zane on a stool, with Jessi on his lap. She had a big, heavy beer glass in her hand, and Zane was telling her to be sociable and drink with him.
"Get your filthy hands off her, Zane."
Someone stopped the music. The laughter and talk in the place died a beat later.
Zane blinked a little drunkenly, finally located Lash's eyes, squinted at the gun and laughed. He waved a hand around the bar to the patrons there. "Mi hermano," he sang out. Then to Lash he said, "Little brother, these are my friends. They love me, because I bring jobs to their impoverished little town. I could run for mayor here and win. So I suggest you put that gun down before you upset them."
Lash glanced around at the men. They were all wearing ponchos and beards. The stench of body odor and stale beer and cigarette smoke surrounded him. And the glare of hatred flashed from their eyes. Then he looked at Jessi, and her eyes were so beautiful and big and sparkling. And not scared. Not at all scared. She looked … excited. There was a twinkle in those brown eyes of hers. Mischief. Devilment. The hellion was planning something.
He sent her a message with his eyes, silently telling her to stay still, and not draw any undue attention to herself. He didn't want her getting hurt. She smiled very slightly at him, as if to say, "Yeah, right."
Swallowing hard, Lash faced his worst enemy again. "If they like you so much, Zane," he said, "they'll sit still and keep out of this. Otherwise, they'll see you with a big hole in your head."
"I don't think so, amigo."
Jessi yelled, "Behind you, Lash!"
It was too late, though. The blow to the head took him by surprise, and as he staggered sideways, the gun was yanked out of his hand and tossed out into the street. The man who'd hit him loomed over him, and Lash pretended to cower, then hooked one leg behind the guy's feet and swept them right out from under him. Someone else jumped in front of him even as he got to his feet, but Lash came up swinging.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Jessi bring her giant beer mug down on top of Zane's head. Glass shattered, beer splashed and spilled, and Zane was bleeding. Zane gaped at her in disbelief, but only until she jabbed her elbow into his belly, hopped out of his lap, picked up a bar stool and swung it at him like a baseball bat.
The bartender ducked as a chair sailed over his head to smash the mirror that hung on the wall behind him. Then about eight guys jumped on Lash at once. But for some reason, they didn't stay long. He'd been holding his own, but, if truth be told, he had been getting pretty winded, ducking all those blows and taking a punch or two every now and then. He closed his hand around the neck of a bottle and broke it over one head. While that attacker sank to the floor, he turned with the broken bottle to face another. But before he could blink, a big hand closed on the guy's shoulder, spun him around and plowed a fist into his face with a teeth-shattering crunch.
Lash frowned and looked up at the owner of that beefy fist. Garrett looked back at him. Only he wasn't smiling. In fact, he looked as if he were planning to knock Lash's teeth out next.
What the hell—?
Another guy leaped on Lash from behind then, so he had to turn around and tend to business. But damn, Garrett had looked meaner than a bear with a toothache just now. What the hell was wrong with him?
Lash ducked as a small round table sailed past. It hit the guy he was fighting right in the chin. He crouched low and made his way back toward the bar, where he'd last seen Jessi, worrying about her being in the middle of the riot that had broken out. He had to stay low to avoid flying bottles, glasses, furniture and the occasional body sailing past. One guy got hurled right through the front window, landing on his back in the street. Damn fool got up and dived right back in again, swearing a blue streak in his native tongue and uttering some kind of battle cry.
He stepped on something soft that grunted in response. "Excuse me, pal," he muttered, and stepped over the body on the floor. Someone blocked his path, and a fist came toward his face. Lash grabbed the first thing he could close his hand on, and brought it up like a shield. Turned out to be somebody's dinner plate, and it smashed to bits. The owner of the fist howled and clutched his bleeding knuckles. Lash punched him in the nose and kept on going. And then he saw her.
Jessi Brand was using an upturned table for cover, ducking behind it. Every time one of Zane's guys walked close enough to her, she popped up like some demonic jack-in-the-box and rapped him over the head with a full bottle of liquor. Seemed she had a cache of them back there. Lash made his way toward her, and when he got within reach she popped up again, bottle in hand, ready to add him to that pile of bodies lying in an unconscious, liquor-soaked heap all around her little battle station. Fortunately, he'd expected it, and he caught her wrist before the bottle could connect with his skull. "It's me, Jess."
"You big jerk, I oughtta clobber you anyway!"
He frowned, confused, but she twisted her hand around to grip his arm and yanked him behind the table with her, pulling him down low, so that they were both kneeling in the dubious safety provided by the toppled table.
She glared at him for a full minute, and then her face softened. "Damn, I'm glad to see you," she muttered, and she snapped her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth.
Lash's arms slipped right around her waist, and he held her close, tasted those lips, and loved every second of it. The noise of the brawl faded, and a buzz of longing filled his head instead. He didn't want to stop kissing her. Not ever.
But he did, after a long moment. And he lifted his head in time to see a glass pitcher flying toward her. He pulled her out of its path and watched it crash to the floor. Then he shook his head. "Jessi, what the hell are you doing here?"
"What the hell am I doing here? Hell, Lash, you care to tell me how you were planning to get out of this mess on your own?"
"I wasn't planning to get into this mess on my own, you little hellion! You really think I'd have walked into a bar full of drunken men who see Zane as their hero if I hadn't seen the bastard yank you in here first?"
She blinked. "You saw that?"
"Sure I saw that."
"And you only came charging in here because of that?"
"Well, hell, Jessi, I couldn't just leave you here."
"And you knew all hell was going to break loose and that you'd be facing twenty-to-one odds?"
"I kinda figured."
She smiled. Then she slid her arms around his neck and she pressed her lips to his all over again. Man, she was going to kill him with kisses if she kept it up. She kissed him thoroughly, so thoroughly that it made his head swim and his gut clench and a sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead. And he thought he must have been a damn fool not to have been working his tail off to sweep this lady off her feet from day one.
A body sailed over the table and hit him on the way to the floor, jarring him away from Jessi's lips. And he looked into her eyes, and opened his mouth to say the words he'd been afraid to utter to any woman, ever. "Jessi, I—"
A whistle pierced the noise of the battle, and a pair of gunshots caused the combatants to cease and desist. Lash looked up to see what looked like a small army of Mexican police, shouting in Spanish and heavily accented English and hauling men to their feet and out the door.
Damn. They were arresting Jessi's brothers right along with everyone else. He had to do something.
But as he got up, one of the officers gripped his shoulder, and slapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.
Jessi couldn't believe her eyes. One by one, her brothers were hauled out the door by Mexican police, and so was Lash. While she was totally ignored.
She stepped outside, walked right up to the nearest uniformed man, a handsome, olive-skinned Don Juan with a cute mustache. She tapped his shoulder. "Hey. Why aren't you arresting me?"
He smiled charmingly down at her. "You are too pretty to be in jail, chica. Go home now."
"Now wait just a corn-shuckin' minute, here. I was fighting just the same as they were! Hell, I'm the on
e who started it. You have to arrest me! You can't not arrest me just because I'm a woman."
He shook his head, grinning indulgently. "You Americans! You make me to laugh." And he did laugh, and she thought that in about a minute he was going to ruffle her hair.
Then she peeked through the windows of the van where the guys had been installed and saw her brothers, all of them, looking at Lash as if he were a steak and they were a pack of hungry pit bulls. She tapped Don Juan again. "You can't put them all in the same cell, okay? See that one, the one they're all glaring at? He ought to be in a cell by himself."
"Why, pretty one? Is he a prince? A king?"
"No, but if they're alone with him, he's gonna be a dead man."
The officer frowned, then shrugged. "Women worry too much. Our space, it is small. You stop worrying now, and go home." And he turned and climbed behind the wheel. Then he blew her a kiss, sent her a wink and drove away.
Jessi stomped her foot and shouted after him. "Chauvinist pig!"
Lash didn't claim his handgun when the officer showed it to him and asked if it was his. He figured he'd get in less trouble that way. Then he allowed himself to be led to a cell in the back of the crumbling structure that passed for a jail in this town. He was shoved inside an adobe room with a barred door, where Garrett, Ben, Wes and Elliot Brand all sat on benches. None of them said a word. None of them grinned. All of them looked suddenly meaner than a pack of junkyard dogs on the hottest day in July, and for one brief moment, he thought longingly of his childhood with the preacher and his houseful of bullies.
"Hey, guys," he said.
They said nothing.
"I really owe you for coming down here like this. I'd have been dog meat in that cantina if you hadn't showed up when you did."
Garrett got up, nice and slow. Elliot reached up to grab his arm, but Garrett shook him off and stepped forward.
The Baddest Virgin in Texas Page 18
