by Janzen, Tara
She knew what drugs he’d been given, and he should be waking in a state of weakness and confusion. Instead he looked like the picture of health. It was disconcerting to realize she’d waited the rest of the afternoon and part of the night for him to wake, only to find that when the moment arose, she wasn’t prepared to deal with him.
He laughed again, and the soft, deep sound rolled over her like a heat wave. She’d never seen anything like him—an animal as fresh and beautiful as God’s new day, uncoiling from sleep with grace, supple muscles stretching, his smile spreading.
His thick-as-sin lashes were still fanned across his cheeks, though, and that bothered her. Not being able to open his eyes must be an aftereffect she hadn’t been told about. He didn’t seem distressed by the hindrance, far from it. The way he laughed made her think he was as content as a cat, in love with the night whether he could see it or not. His laughter made her feel that she’d missed something wonderful, that the hours, and the moonlight, and the clouds slipping across the sky knew a particular mystery they had shared only with him.
She could believe a woman would shoot him for walking away from her bed. He was magnificent.
She moved slightly to redistribute the weight of the pitcher, then froze as he stilled on the bed, every muscle tensed, every sense alert. He was a predator readying for the kill. The only movement was the beat of his pulse, showing in the veins outlined against the hard curves of his arms. His eyes hadn’t opened, but she felt as if he were staring right through her to where her heart had suddenly stopped.
In the next instant his countenance changed. He cocked his head, sending a fall of hair sliding across his chest. A look of confusion drew the winged curves of his eyebrows closer together.
“Woman?” he asked, his voice a husky counterpart to the easiness of his laughter.
She hadn’t given him a clue, not one. She’d done nothing but stand in the doorway, and yet he knew. For a second the thought that Carolina might have been right about his magical powers crossed her mind. Just as quickly, she dismissed the idea. He was a bounty hunter with a dragon tattoo. Nothing more—and nothing less.
“Yes,” she said, tightening her hold on the pitcher, hoping her answer would keep him from coming off the bed. She’d been going in and out of his room all evening. It hadn’t occurred to her that she might need protection from him.
“But not Shulan,” he said, sounding surprised but not disappointed.
“No.”
“Where is she?”
“Gone.”
It seemed to be the answer he expected.
“So you are the new ‘she.’ My new keeper?”
Sugar nodded, despite his confusing statement. Then she realized her mistake and spoke. “Yes.”
A smile eased across his mouth. He came up on his elbows, looking for all the world as if he were assessing her. “And what are your plans for me, island woman?”
His tone suggested a world of possibilities Sugar wasn’t about to entertain, not with him looking so incredibly at home in her bed.
“Shulan left another man,” she said in warning.
His smile retreated into wryness. “The ancient one? Jen Ch’eng?”
“He hasn’t introduced himself, but yes, he is very old.”
“It’s Jen,” he said, this time sounding disappointed but not surprised. With a sigh, he relaxed back onto the bed. “Better Jen than Sher Chang, though. That steroided bastard hurt me one too many times.”
She felt a flash of anger at his words. She’d sensed the huge man’s cruelty. Shulan lived in the kind of world where men like Sher Chang were necessary, but Sugar would not have allowed him to stay on her island.
“Do you have anything to drink?” her patient asked. “I’m thirsty.”
She glanced down at the full pitcher. Maybe he was a magic man.
Eyeing him carefully, she walked over to the bedside table and reached for a glass. Before she could lift it off the table, his hand snaked around her wrist and closed tightly. The water pitcher dropped from her other hand, landing hard on the table and splashing water on the cloth. Sugar gasped, more at the suddenness of his attack than at any pain he was inflicting.
“Don’t scream,” he said, pushing himself up with his free hand and swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
“There’s no one to scream for,” she gritted out between her teeth, furious with herself for having been caught, and by a blind man at that. She tested his grip with a quick jerk of her arm. He jerked back, coming to his feet and bringing her flush up against his body.
Her heart stopped a second time.
They were standing toe-to-toe, his knees meeting her thighs, his chest rising and falling in front of her nose. He was taller than she’d thought, more powerful —and more dangerous.
“No one?” he asked. “On the whole island?”
She wasn’t going to answer. He’d find out the truth soon enough.
“What about Jen? Or are you as much his prisoner as I am?” he asked, his voice silky and arrogant. His victory over her had been quick and all too easy. “I don’t know what he’d do to you, but I’m sure he’d love to have an excuse to stick another needle in me.”
“You were drugged for your own protection.” She repeated the words she’d been told, though had it been up to her, she would have found another way to control him.
“At least you’ve got part of it right,” he said.
A gull’s screech shattered the quietness of the night, and the man holding her reacted with the speed of a lightning strike, tightening his grip on her and whirling toward the sound in a half crouch. His hair moved in a silken wave to slide down his back. They stood motionless for the space of a breath. When he straightened and turned to her again, she was face-to-face with the dragon.
Startled, she attempted a retreat, but Jackson’s hand held her firm, keeping her within the dragon’s domain.
The creature’s emerald-green eyes regarded her with remarkable possessiveness from across the tawny expanse of her captor’s chest, but whether the dragon possessed him or wanted to possess her, she couldn’t tell. She only felt the power of the lifelike image gracing the man’s body from his left shoulder down to his waist. Wings held the creature aloft. Green-and-blue scales arced along its serpentine spine. Flames licked from the beast’s mouth, both red and gold, warming the skin above where the man’s heart lay.
Dragon fire, Sugar thought, wondering at the heat such a creature could bring forth, wondering about the man who could contain it.
“You’re smaller than I thought,” he said, his grip loosening the barest of degrees.
The softer sound of his voice brought her gaze up to his, and her breath caught in her throat. He had opened his eyes. They were the color of the dragon’s, but warmer, much warmer, with amber highlights and streaks of a darker brown. His thumb caressed the inside of her wrist, and her pulse leaped into overdrive.
Jackson let his gaze trail over the woman’s face, and the confusion he’d felt upon waking returned. She was very unusual looking, intriguing, almost familiar. The shape of her face was feminine, a delicate heart, but her features were more childlike, rounded and less defined, suggesting an innocence he found surprising in an accomplice of Sun Shulan’s.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, feeling a need to reassure her. Her skin was flawless, a golden peach color divinely designed to complement the sun-bleached blond of her hair. She was either an angel or the embodiment of a fantasy. He couldn’t decide which, but there was an otherworldliness about her, something untamed reflected in the pale crystalline depths of her eyes. He’d never seen eyes like hers. They were more silver than gray.
“No. You won’t hurt me,” she agreed. “And if you let me go now, I won’t hurt you.”
So much for innocence, he thought, but he didn’t let her go.
“Are you so dangerous?” he asked, one dark eyebrow lifting.
“I can be,” she said without hesitation, the gen
tle lilt of her voice belying her words.
He couldn’t resist smiling. “I’ve been known to be dangerous myself, and I’ve got at least eighty pounds on you.”
“Then I guess I’ll just have to take my chances.” Sugar was bluffing. She couldn’t overpower him, not in her wildest dreams—but a bluff was all she had. Shulan had told her to hold this man, and hold him she would, and make sure he came to no harm. Nothing else had ever been asked in return for the second chance Shulan had given her. She would not fail.
Jackson’s smile faded. She was serious. Damn serious. He looked down at her narrow shoulders and her slight build, at the small hand in his, and admitted he knew a couple of ways a one-hundred-and-ten-pound woman could render him helpless, but he doubted if she had anything pleasurably sexual on her mind.
Too bad. He lifted his free hand to touch her hair. Slowly, he ran his fingers through the soft blond mass framing her face and curling around her ears. She wasn’t pretty. Pretty was too bland a word to describe her sensual appeal and the contradiction of the fragility of her body when measured against the strength of her conviction. She had no lush curves to entice a man, yet Jackson was enticed—surprisingly, thoroughly.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
A dusky rose color blossomed in her cheeks, but her gaze didn’t waver for an instant. “Sugar,” she said. “Sugar Caine.”
Anyone would have grinned at that, including Jackson, except his gaze had drifted to her lips as she’d spoken. When she’d said Sugar, all he could imagine was how incredibly sweet her mouth would taste.
* * * * * *
Read on for an excerpt from A Piece of Heaven.
A Piece of Heaven
One
Travis Cayou dropped his saddle on the floor, then dropped his backside into one of the molded plastic chairs lining the wall of the Laramie, Wyoming, bus station. Damn. He hurt everywhere, bad in the places he hadn’t broken, and worse in the places he had.
Rain poured down on the white cinder-block building, streaking the outside of a picture window that framed a muddy Second Street and not much else. Looking around, Travis didn’t think the dusty posters tacked to the other three walls gave the wet view much of a run for its money, not at first glance. But he was close to home, and that’s what counted. The only thing that counted.
Inhaling deeply and moving in slow motion, he organized himself into the chair. The spurs on his boots jangled a backdrop to his low groan as he stretched his legs out. He took it easy on his right knee, not stretching it too much, just enough to ease a kink or two. The next time some damn bronc decided to kiss the fence, he was getting off first. He swore he would, whether he’d lasted the eight seconds needed to score or not.
Worse yet, he hadn’t done any better on his bull ride. That animal had wanted to eat him. He thought he’d ridden every kind of bull that had ever been seen. He’d had them buck and spin so tight, they made their own whirlwind. He’d had them crash beneath him, or worse, try to climb out of the bucking chute with him on their back. But he’d never seen anything like Mad Jack. The next time that particular bovine’s number came up with his, he was walking away. He swore he was. They could have his entry fee.
Thinking of which, where in the hell had that clown got off to just before Mad Jack decided to make an hors d’oeuvre out of him? Wasn’t that part of what he laid his money down for? For some bullfighting clown to be out there when he dropped his bull rope?
“Heroes,” he muttered, wincing at a new pang. Every time some rodeo got a write-up in some newspaper, there was always the same damn headline: “Clowns—Heroes of the Rodeo,” or “Clowns—A Bull Rider’s Best Friend.”
Travis wasn’t buying it today. Oh, he’d admit most of them were the hottest things on two legs. Most every time he’d bailed off a bull, one of them had been there to make sure he got out of the arena with all his parts in place. But this last clown had taken one look at old Mad Jack and seen a man-eater. He’d aced Travis in the brains department and kept himself just out of helping distance.
A hero? he thought. Try the cowboy on the back of the raging, bucking beast. The man with the resin smoking on his glove. The man spurring an animal already so fired up he was spitting flames.
The man with more guts than brains. Wasn’t that what James had always said?
A wry smile lifted a corner of Travis’s mouth. He settled back in the chair and pulled his hat low over his eyes, using his left hand and trying not to jostle his right arm.
He should have been a roper. That’s what James had always said. Sure, ropers got hurt sometimes, but more often than not they didn’t get stomped all over creation.
His left hand dropped back onto his thigh, making a print in the dust turned to mud on his jeans. Lord, he was tired. He was getting too old to have his tail end kicked by rough stock. He was getting too old to be following the rodeo circuit with only half his heart in it. He made enough to pay expenses and keep his checkbook from rolling over in a dead faint, and that was about it.
His wrist hurt like hell. The doctor had given him some pain pills, real good stuff. But how many times could a man break the same damn wrist in the same damn place and expect it not to hurt all the time, mended or not?
Probably not many, Travis decided, digging in his shirt pocket for another painkiller. At least it was a clean break this time. He swallowed the pill dry, too tired to get up and fight the rain for a can of pop from the machine outside.
He was finished. He swore he was. It was time for him to go home. Hell, it was long past time for him to go home. He’d done eight years of penance. He was tired of running from James’s memories and his own guilt.
James was the one who’d married Beth Ann. He was the one who’d brought her up to their ranch on the Colorado side of the Colorado-Wyoming border. He was the one who had left her alone day after day, and sometimes night after night, while he wheeled and dealed. All Travis had done was try to help her over the rough spots, and if he’d wanted to do more, well, he hadn’t done nearly as much as she’d begged him to do.
But the past was over. It was time for him to go home and lay claim to his half of the Cayou Land and Cattle Company. Ranching was a way of life, and Travis wanted his life back, the life he’d been born to live. He missed the scent of sage on the evening breeze. He missed watching the sun sliding into the Rockies. He missed the quiet. The same quiet that had driven Beth Ann to acts of desperation.
She’d hated it all, the wild silence waiting outside the confines of the ranch buildings, the snowcapped peaks penning her in. It was a hell of a life for a woman, but his mother had done it. Hell, lots of women could do it, if their men took care.
One thing he knew for sure, the Cayou Land and Cattle Company needed a woman’s touch. He’d stopped by three years ago when he’d known James would be at the National Western Stock Show, and the house had looked run-down and worn-out, not at all like home, not at all the way his mother had kept it. Even Beth Ann had done better. Shoat, one of the old-timers at the ranch, had told him then that he ought to come home, that the ranch needed him.
Well, he was coming home now, busted up, road weary, and saddle sore.
Hell, he could use a woman’s touch, Travis thought. He shifted in his chair and grimaced against the pain. Someone sweet and willing, soft and well rounded. Someone warm. Someone with good hands.
He slid farther down, resting his head on the back of the chair and holding on to his casted right forearm. Yeah, someone with good hands.
He smiled as he closed his eyes and readjusted his hat against the weak gray light coming in through the window. Woman, hell. What he needed was sleep. Shoat had said it would take him at least an hour, maybe two, to get to the bus station from the ranch. Then he’d be heading home to stay. Providing James didn’t try to kick him back out again.
Travis let out a weary sigh. If James did try, he was going to find a fight on his hands, and not one of those knock-down, drag-out, wrestle-in-the-dirt
kind of fights they’d had over Beth Ann eight years ago. He’d backed off then, because of a guilt he still wasn’t sure was his to bear. He wasn’t backing off this time, not an inch.
He needed to go home, and he’d do whatever he had to, whatever it took to get him there and make it stick. Nobody or nothing was going to stop him.
* * *
Callie Michael fought her way through the storm into the bus station, slamming the door behind her and shutting out the wind-whipped rain. She stood on the old beige carpet, dripping one puddle beneath her boots and another one a few inches out, where the rain ran down and off the rolled brim of her hat.
The storm was quickening up, threatening to turn into one of the year’s best, especially up north and in the mountain ranges to the west. Luckily, she was heading southwest, back to Colorado, back to the Cayou Land and Cattle Company, she and James’s little brother.
She wiped a palm up her cheek and shook the water off her fingers, her gaze steady on the lone occupant of the waiting area. He didn’t look all that little.
Six foot plus of cowboy lay sprawled over a short bank of chairs, one arm flung out like a rag doll’s, the other cradled close to his chest in a sling and a cast. Long legs, a hard-sided suitcase, an Association saddle, and a rigging bag draped with the fanciest chaps Callie had ever seen took up a good third of the floor space on the customer side of the counter. It wasn’t Travis Cayou’s white and gold chaps with the silver lightning bolts that held her gaze, though.
His jeans had been split from ankle to hip on his right leg, and the first aid tape that was supposed to hold them together was giving up with the wet and the dirt. As a rule, cowboys didn’t go around showing off their legs, and Callie figured Travis Cayou didn’t either. His leg was a color closer to the white bandage wrapped around his knee than it was to the darkly tanned skin of his large, square hands.
