Secondhand Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  Jeb divested her of her hastily donned clothes, a garment at a time, without lifting his mouth from hers. He found her breasts unerringly, weighing them in his hands, chafing the nipples with the sides of his thumbs.

  She moaned, heard and felt the sound echo off the back of his throat. Her arms found their way around his neck, seemingly of their own accord.

  Before their marriage, they’d made love often, and wildly, but this was the first time they’d been together as man and wife, and, for Chloe at least, that made the event sacred, despite her certainty that a wiser woman would have refrained.

  Jeb came up for air, and his eyes smiled down into hers. He didn’t ask if she wanted to change her mind; he knew her too well for that. Chloe never did anything she didn’t want to do, on some level, and this was no exception. She was reeling with desire, and with a need to match Jeb’s own, but she was under no illusion that she’d been coerced or even persuaded. For all her passion, her mind was clear as water from some hidden, sacred spring.

  He wrapped a tendril of her hair around his finger. “I do believe you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.

  She laid her hands against his chest, lightly, and felt his nipples tighten under her palms. His arousal pressed against her belly, making her dizzy with promise. “Just how many have you seen,” she asked softly, “since the last time we were together?” It was a dangerous question, put to a man like Jeb, but the answer was vital.

  “None,” he replied, without hesitation. And she believed him.

  “That must have been difficult,” she said.

  He went to the bed, sat down on its edge, drawing her with him. His hands cupping her bottom, he leaned forward, touched her navel with the tip of his tongue. “Worse than difficult,” he muttered.

  Chloe trembled, let her head fall back in a sort of victorious surrender. “You surely had opportunities,” she said, her breath catching. She felt his lips on her right hipbone, then her left, light and warm.

  He chuckled against her, sent fire racing beneath her flesh. “A few,” he admitted, “but my heart wasn’t in it.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about your heart,” she replied. “Anyway, I’m not at all sure you even have one.”

  This time he laughed. Simultaneously, he pulled her down onto his lap, facing him, and eased inside her.

  Sensation took her over, completely. She gasped in exultation, tangled her fingers in his hair.

  He delved deeper. Groaned. It was a homecoming sort of sound, a seeking of sanction and solace, part relief, part anticipation.

  Chloe gave a soft cry, trembling at the beginning of an ecstasy she knew would soon consume her, consume them both.

  He found her breast with his mouth, took her nipple hungrily.

  A muffled shout burst from her throat.

  “Don’t yell, Chloe,” he teased, on his way to ravish the other breast. “It will draw more attention than my singing.”

  She bit down hard on her lower lip and made a desperate, soblike sound as he continued to enjoy her.

  And then he began to move, raising her, lowering her, along the length of his shaft. Her eyes rolled back, she locked her thighs around his hips, and rode straight into the fire.

  She lay askew on the bed, arms flung back, fingers still loosely curled around the rails of the headboard, hair blazing against the moon-washed white of the pillow. Spent, she slept, this angel temptress, and Jeb watched her for a long time, wishing he didn’t have to leave.

  The moon was already thinning, though, turning transparent, and dawn would not be long in coming. He had sung his way past Chloe’s door, loved his way into her bed, but if his horse was still tied outside when the town woke up, somebody was sure to notice. The results would be disastrous for Chloe.

  With a sigh of regret, Jeb stood, gathered his clothes off the floor, got into them. He was tucking in his shirt when Chloe opened her eyes.

  “You’re going,” she said simply.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Get up and latch the door when I’m gone.”

  She stretched, made a little crooning sound that tightened his groin. “All right,” she agreed sleepily.

  If only she were always that compliant. In another few hours, though, she’d probably be cursing his name. He buckled on his gun belt. “I mean it, Chloe,” he warned. “Don’t go back to sleep until you’ve seen to the door.”

  She batted her lashes at him. “Yes, Mr. McKettrick,” she said sweetly, and with a coyness that made him want to strip down and crawl right back into bed.

  He went to the front window, drew aside the curtains. The street was empty. “It feels strange,” he said, “sneaking out of here like we’ve done something wrong.”

  The bedsprings creaked, and when he turned, she was sitting up, propped against the pillows, the covers drawn to the upper curves of her breasts. She was brazenly beautiful, even in the predawn light, and might as easily have been a courtesan in some foreign palace instead of a schoolmarm in Indian Rock. “I need this job, Jeb,” she said. “Right now, it’s all I’ve got.”

  He wanted to contradict her, but the fact was, she was right. He had little to offer her, besides space in his room at the ranch and the pitiful wages he earned punching cattle and breaking horses to ride. No big house, like the one Rafe had built for Emmeline, across the creek from the home place. No horses or bank accounts to hand over, like Kade. They’d gotten those things by their own efforts, his brothers had, for the ways of Angus McKettrick were old-fashioned ones. He believed in thrift and hard work.

  It was ironic as hell, realizing he couldn’t have Chloe, didn’t deserve her, after what they’d shared in the night. Maybe that was why he said what he did, the way he did.

  “Too bad we’re not married,” he told her. “You would have made a lively wife.”

  Silence buzzed behind him, and there was mayhem brewing in it.

  He stepped out onto the small porch, smiled sadly when he heard something, probably a vase or a china plate, shatter against the door.

  The ride back to the Triple M seemed longer than usual, and it was lonesome as hell.

  20

  Concepcion sat up in bed, holding the small, fitful bundle in both arms. She looked serene to Angus, if tired, a Spanish Madonna with her braid coming undone, her face and eyes glowing.

  “How does it feel, Angus McKettrick,” she asked quietly, “to be a new father again, after so many years?”

  He hadn’t slept a wink, and he needed to shave. “Damned odd,” he admitted. He’d never had a way with words, and Concepcion knew it. She wouldn’t expect him to spout poetry. He rubbed his chin and smiled. “But good.”

  She laughed softly. “It was an exciting night,” she said.

  He nodded his agreement. “You made sure of that.” He glanced at the window, saw the dawn shining there, pink and gold and fresh as a new-minted coin. “While I was waiting for our little gal there to make her appearance,” he reflected, “I put the fear of God into those boys of mine.”

  “Angus,” Concepcion said warily, opening the bodice of the nightgown to let the child suckle. Something stirred inside Angus, then resolved into weary contentment. “What have you done now?”

  “Rafe made some smart remark about having to wait for little Kate to grow up before I made a decision about who would run the ranch, and I just couldn’t let it pass. I told them I might give the place to Holt, lock, stock, and barrel, since he was the first one to give me a grandchild.”

  “You didn’t,” Concepcion scolded, but gently.

  “I did,” Angus replied, with relish. He chuckled at the memory. “You should have seen their faces. Like as not, all three of them sired a baby last night, soon as they got their women alone.”

  A pretty flush lit Concepcion’s flawless complexion. “Angus,” she protested.

  “Kade and Mandy couldn’t seem to see anything but each other, when they went back upstairs to their room. Same with Rafe and Emmeline—they practicall
y ran out of here, making for their own place. And Jeb—” Angus paused, smiled again. “Jeb headed straight for the barn, saddled a horse, and rode out. Like as not, he spent the night in town, with Chloe.”

  Concepcion made a soft clucking sound with her tongue, stroking the baby’s downy head with one tender hand. “You are impossible, Angus McKettrick. You think every man is like you.”

  “I wouldn’t know about every man,” Angus said. “But I do know my sons.” He stopped, speculating. “It’d be a hell of a thing if all three of my daughters-in-law got pregnant at the same time, wouldn’t it? Sure make the race to win the ranch more interesting.”

  Concepcion’s dark eyes were troubled. “When will you learn, Angus? It is wrong to set your own children against each other. I will not let you do that with Kate.”

  His chair creaked as he rose, went to the window. The lamps were lit in the bunkhouse, and there was smoke curling from the chimney. The Triple M was stirring, getting ready for a new day. He felt the same quiet excitement at the prospect that he always had. “I had to do it, Concepcion,” he said. “The three of them were too damned comfortable. Spoiled. Their mother never let me lay a hand on them, but they were prime candidates for the woodshed all the time they were growing up. If I’d taken the strap to them a few times, they’d have been fit to run this place long before now.”

  “Their mother was right,” Concepcion maintained, as he’d known she would. They’d had similar conversations before. “They’re fine men, Angus. All of them.”

  He nodded, but he had reservations. Rafe and Kade were well married, and they were a credit to the ranch. Ran it better than he ever had, if the truth be told. But Jeb, now—Jeb was still a worry. He’d found the right woman, but Angus wondered if he knew what to do with her, besides roll in the hay whenever he got the chance. One day, he claimed he was married. The next, he swore up and down he’d been hornswoggled. He wouldn’t bring Chloe to live at the ranch, where she belonged, but he couldn’t seem to stay away from her, either.

  She’d be the making of him, Chloe would. Or the breaking.

  “I admit that I worry about them myself,” Concepcion said. “I ask myself, what will happen next? They all want this ranch—it is their birthright. They did not know Holt existed until a year ago, and they do not trust him. He feels the same way about them. Rafe, Jeb, and Kade are all hot-tempered, and there is no telling what Holt might do if they push him into a corner.”

  Angus wasn’t accustomed to being wrong about much of anything. Just then, though, looking out that window at the land he’d fought so hard to get and hold, he wondered if there wasn’t a first time for everything.

  21

  Lizzie Cavanagh tried not to think too much about the shootings, when the bad man robbed the stagecoach, and the long night she’d spent being scared, but it crept into her mind if she didn’t concentrate real hard. She cried when she was alone, and she had bad dreams even when she was awake.

  She was certain of very few things, being only ten years old, after all, and in a new place, with a stranger for a father, but she knew for sure that she missed her mama, and her aunt Geneva, too. And she knew she didn’t like the lady.

  Her name was Sue Ellen, but she insisted on being called “Miss Caruthers,” like she was a teacher or something. She had one of those sharp-edged faces, and quick little eyes, always watching for an offense, but that wasn’t really why Lizzie disliked her. It was because she’d heard them talking in the kitchen at the Circle C, her papa and Miss Caruthers, not an hour after they arrived the night before.

  “I agreed to keep house for you,” Miss Caruthers had said, in a withering voice, “but I didn’t bargain for a child getting underfoot.”

  Lizzie’s heart had practically stopped, hearing that from her hiding place in the hallway. She was lonesome, and still scared, and she kept thinking about the blood all over the ground and worrying that the masked man would come after her, some dark night, and shoot her dead.

  “Lizzie is my daughter,” Holt had answered, his voice low and honed to a fine edge. “If you don’t want to look after her, then I guess you’d better pack your bags. They’ll have that stagecoach back on the road by tomorrow.” That had made Lizzie feel a little better, but then Miss Caruthers spoke again.

  “I thought we were getting married.”

  Lizzie felt the same chill she had when Roberto Vasquez spilled his lemonade down her back last summer at the church picnic. She wanted a mother, all right, but she’d hoped for a nice, pretty one. Somebody like Becky, at the hotel maybe, or Miss Emmeline.

  “I never promised you that, Sue Ellen.”

  Right then, Miss Caruthers commenced to crying, and she was loud about it, too. “You McKettricks are all alike,” she wailed. “Drag a woman halfway across the country, trifle with her feelings, then just turn her out.”

  Holt’s reply was cold. “First of all, you asked for this job. Second, I am not a McKettrick, and third, I did not ‘trifle’ with you or anybody else.”

  Lizzie wondered at his tone, wondered if he’d turn her out one day, if she crossed him. She thought of Jeb, who’d smiled at her and let her ride in front of him on his horse, said she could call him “Uncle,” and she wanted to ask her papa what was so bad about being a McKettrick. The big, white-haired man she’d met in town—Angus—he’d said he was her grandfather, and she ought to come straight to him if she ever had a problem. He was a McKettrick.

  Where, exactly, was his house? Could she walk there, or would she have to get one of the cowboys to take her?

  She’d been pondering those questions when suddenly the kitchen door had popped open, and Miss Caruthers was right there, her nose and eyes all red, her mouth pinched up like a tobacco sack with the string pulled tight.

  “Well!” she’d crowed. “A little snoop!”

  Horrified, Lizzie had pressed herself back against the wall of the corridor, wishing she could melt right into it. For one terrible moment, she thought Miss Caruthers meant to slap her. In the whole of Lizzie’s life, nobody had ever laid a hand on her in anger.

  But then her papa was there, big as her grandfather, and just as strong. “Leave her alone, Sue Ellen,” he’d said.

  Lizzie had been hard put not to slide right down the wall. She’d hurried away, locked herself in her room, and refused to come out even when her papa knocked on the door, later on, and asked if she was all right. She’d hardly slept that night, either, between listening for the outlaw and fearing that Miss Caruthers would come into her room, yank her right out of bed to box her ears, and tell her she’d spoiled all her plans.

  Lizzie might have been a kid, but she knew when she’d gotten in the way of something.

  Now, it was morning, and she hadn’t seen the outlaw, but Miss Caruthers was on the porch, with all her bags and bundles, and there was a buckboard right in front of the house, hitched up and ready to go. A cowboy held the reins, staring straight ahead, with his hat pulled low over his eyes. Lizzie got a peculiar, trembly feeling in the pit of her stomach, just looking at him.

  “You’ll regret this, Holt Cavanagh,” Miss Caruthers said stiffly, as Lizzie’s papa helped her into the wagon.

  “I doubt it,” Holt replied, though he had his back to Lizzie, and she couldn’t see his face. She wished she could have, because then she might know if Miss Caruthers was right. Regret was something she’d learned to recognize, having seen it in her mother’s eyes so often.

  Miss Caruthers squirmed on the wagon seat and looked like she wanted to clobber Lizzie’s papa over the head with her parasol, but in the end, she didn’t. She elbowed the cowboy driver, and he started the team going.

  They hadn’t even gotten to the big gate that said

  CIRCLE C across the top when a rider came in, from the other direction, tipped his hat to the travelers, and made for the house.

  Lizzie’s spirits rose when she recognized the man. “Uncle Jeb!” she cried, and bounded down the steps to run out and meet him.
<
br />   He grinned at her, though he looked a little peaked. She hoped he wasn’t sick or something. “Morning, Miss Lizzie,” he said.

  Holt walked up behind her, laid his hands on her shoulders. There was no friendliness in his voice when he greeted her uncle, and she didn’t have to look back to know he wasn’t smiling.

  “Now what am I supposed to have done?” he asked. He sounded like a man who’d been falsely accused one too many times and held a sore grievance because of it.

  Jeb’s grin held steady. “I don’t reckon you had anything whatsoever to do with this,” he said, swinging a leg over the horse’s neck and jumping to the ground. “Pa figured you ought to know, though I can’t rightly say why.” He patted Lizzie on the head, something she wouldn’t have tolerated from anyone else; but he was looking straight into Holt’s face, and even though he was still smiling with his mouth, his eyes were somber. “You’ve got a baby sister.”

  22

  Holt hooked his thumbs under his gun belt and shifted on his feet, holding Jeb’s gaze with his own. There was a ruckus from the corral, but he didn’t let it distract him from the subject at hand. “I suppose I’m expected to put in an appearance.”

  Jeb shrugged. “Your choice.”

  Holt tightened his grasp on Lizzie’s shoulders, then let go, afraid he’d hurt her. “Concepcion’s been good to me,” he said, begrudging every word. “I’ll be there.”

  Jeb’s attention had strayed to the corral, and the demon spawn he saw there. “That’s quite a horse,” he said.

  Holt sighed. Because of that paint stud, three of his best men were laid up with broken bones. If the animal hadn’t been so valuable, practically perfect in its conformation, he’d have turned it out to run wild, like it was born to do. “He’s first cousin to Lucifer himself,” he admitted.

  “That so?” Jeb said, still watching the fracas. He’d looked downcast when he rode up, for all his ready grin, but there was something different in his face now, a narrow-eyed speculation. “Anybody ride him yet?”

  Holt would have lied if his daughter hadn’t been standing right there, listening to everything like it was gospel. He reckoned the least he could do was set a decent example, whether it went against the grain or not.