Recalling Granny's tiny stature and the great, hulking bodies of her father and growing brothers, Tess laughed into the night. No, Granny never took any guff from the men in her family, especially her own son and grandsons.
"If you're gonna lay there and laugh and play with that animal all night, I'm gonna move my bedroll off somewhere I can get some sleep."
Tess turned on her side and cupped her hand under her head. "I thought you were already asleep," she said to Stone.
"Do I sound like I'm asleep?"
"No. In fact, you sound more awake than you have all day. At least now you're talking instead of grumping out grunts. I thought maybe you'd gone mute."
"Ain't had nothin' to say."
"I noticed. How could I not?"
"I didn't plan any company on this trip, so don't expect me to act like we're having a polite conversation at an all-day tea party. I've got things on my mind."
"Why won't you discuss them with me? Don't you think it would be easier if you share your worries?"
"Talkin' about things doesn't solve problems. A man's gotta get out and take some action — use his own brains and muscles to find a solution."
"His," Tess emphasized. "I don't suppose that it ever occurred to you that a woman might have something to add that might help you find a way out of a problem. Especially a woman you claim to love."
"Claim to!?" Stone surged to a sitting position and glared across the fire. "You listen to me, Tess Foster! I'm not about to play mind games with you in this relationship. If you doubt my feelings just because I want to protect you and take care of you...."
"And just what do you call the way you've been acting all day, if not a mind game? You've treated me like a naughty child you'd really like to take over your knee and spank. You've been trying to get me angry enough with you to I turn around and go home."
"Which is where you should've stayed," Stone gritted. "Hell." He laid back down and clasped his fingers behind his head as he stared up at the sky. "Maybe a spankin' would've been easier."
"Wanna try to do it now?" Tess drawled.
"No," Stone denied. "You know damned well what would happen if I came over there and laid a hand on you right now."
A shiver of desire crawled over Tess when Stone turned his head and looked over at her. Reflected flames from the firelight danced in his hooded eyes, mirroring the banked passion she'd been fighting ever since this morning.
"If there's been any mind game playin' on my part, darlin'," Stone murmured, "it's been a game of self preservation. You know darned well I want to make love to you — strip you down until there's not an inch of you I can't touch or kiss. Fill myself with you and fill you with me. But that's one step I'm not prepared to take."
"Why not?" Tess whispered.
"Damn it, you know why. With everything else going on, we haven't had a chance to figure out whether or not we'll be able to make a life together. Or whether you're gonna disappear one day right in front of me."
"There've been chances for us to talk about that, Stone. We just haven't done it. We've been trying to ignore it and cherish every minute we do have together. Why do you think I wouldn't stay behind when you left the ranch?"
"How come you always have to be so darned right?" Stone tore his eyes away and leaned back again on his bedroll.
"Do you want to talk about it now?"
"No!" Stone softened his voice and pointed at the sky. "Look. That star there."
Tess glanced overhead, where another shooting star cascaded across the sky. This one — with a reddish tint — streaked across the black, moonless night in a curve, instead of plummeting to the earth and winking out. She smiled and closed her eyes to make a wish. When she opened her eyes again, the star was gone.
"Whee!" Angela called to Michael. "This is fun!"
"Uh...Angie, honey." Michael searched in his robe pocket until he found the cigar stub and clamped it in the side of his mouth. "Honey, you supposed to learn the slower moves before you go faster."
"But why? You said earlier there wasn't anything up here to worry about hitting."
"Yeah, but....Look out! There's a shooting star!"
"Oh, it's too bright! I can't see!" Angela let go of the steering wheel and covered her eyes with her hands.
With a lurch, Michael reached over and grabbed the wheel, spinning the car out of the path of the star. The car looped upward, barely missing the meteorite as its flames died and it disintegrated in the earth's atmosphere.
Michael wiped away the sheen of sweat on his forehead from the close brush with the meteorite's heat and mentally switched the ignition key to off. The car glided to a stop. He spit out the end of the cigar stub he had bitten off and watched Angela tentatively lower her hands and glance at him.
"I forgot," she whispered. "I'm supposed to always keep my hands on the wheel."
Michael threw back his head and roared with laughter. Chortling unrestrainedly, he pointed a finger at Angela, then at the sky.
"You...I...I jumped over there like...." He wheezed to a stop and glanced at Angela's amazed face. "Like I thought we...we'd really be k...killed if that star hit us," he choked out.
Angela giggled. Michael snickered. Both of them whooped with laughter for a full minute before they could control themselves.
Finally, Angela took a deep breath and grabbed the steering wheel again. "When I was learning to ride, my daddy made me get right back on that pony after it threw me. Shall we continue, Michael?"
Michael groaned under his breath, but he switched the engine back on. The car responded with a smooth purr.
"Just a second," he said to Angela as she pushed in the clutch and reached for the gearshift.
Michael conjured up another cigar butt, clamped it in his mouth, and reached down to grab the edges of the bucket seat beneath his rump.
"O.K.," he mumbled. "Tess is finally asleep down there, so maybe we can go a little farther this time. Wonder if it's easier to fly around on the moon, where there isn't any gravity?"
"I've never tried it," Angela responded. She tromped the gas feed and popped the clutch.
"Did you catch that wish Tess made?" she called a second later as the car zoomed upward.
Michael nodded and gave up trying to capture his flying sleeves. "Yeah, but that's gonna be up to Mr. G. We're guardian angels, not genies."
The angels were back in place the next morning long before Tess opened her eyes. They watched in apprehension as Tess sat up and glanced over at the empty space on the other side of the fire.
Tess surged to her feet and stared around in the dim, pre-dawn light. So he'd left her, figured she would give up and go back to the ranch. She should have anticipated that. Good grief. Had he taken her horse?
Her eyes found a darker gray shape in the morning mist rising from the ground, and Tess sighed with relief when the gelding raised its head and nickered to her. Lonesome stood up and stretched, then sat down and cocked a leg to scratch his neck.
"Uh oh," Tess told the dog. "You missed your bath this week, didn't you, and now you've picked up fleas. Well, you'll just have to put up with them today. I'll give you a bath this evening, after we camp again. Right now, you've got a job to do in a little while."
Tess leisurely stretched the kinks from her muscles, then squatted to dig in her backpack. She stuck the granola bar in her shirt pocket and made a necessary trip into the bushes. Ten minutes later, she urged the gray gelding after Lonesome's wagging tail as he snuffled at the ground and followed the tracks left by Stone's horse.
"Traitor," Stone grumbled from his vantage point at the top of the ridge where he sat. Darn that dog.
He gave a sigh of resignation and urged his horse out from the stand of cottonwoods. Waiting until Tess glanced up and shaded her eyes against the rising sun so she could see him, he nudged his heels on the horse's flanks and turned it around.
Tess loosened her reins and the gray gelding leapt into a frisky canter. She shook her head, auburn tresses swir
ling behind her as she passed Lonesome and took the lead. As soon as she caught up to Stone, she pulled the gelding down into a sedate walk and reached into her shirt pocket.
"Want half?" she asked as she tore the wrapping off the granola bar and broke it in two.
"What is it?"
"A breakfast bar. The fire was cold, so I don't guess you fixed yourself anything to eat this morning."
"I've got some jerky in my saddlebags."
"O.K." Tess took a bite of the bar, crunching it with her teeth. "Ummmm," she murmured. "This one's got raisins and chocolate drops."
Stone swallowed against the moisture in his mouth and stared resolutely ahead. Feeling something nudge his arm, he glanced down to see Tess's palm extended, the other half of her breakfast bar lying in her hand.
He gave in and reached for the raisin-studded bar, fully expecting Tess to make a snide comment. Instead, she brushed her hand against her denim-clad leg and leaned back in the saddle to tilt her face up to the sun.
"It's going to be a beautiful day," she said. "I hope it's a little cooler than yesterday, though. I've got a sunburn on my nose."
"Don't you have a hat?"
"Oh. Yeah, I do." Tess turned in the saddle and zipped open one of the outside pockets on the backpack tied behind her saddle. She pulled out a blue baseball cap and plopped it on her head. Turning to Stone, she peered out from beneath the bill of the cap.
"Thanks. I forgot I had this with me."
"Who's the Cowboys?" Stone asked.
"Who's the Cowboys? Why, they're America's team," Tess said in a saucy voice. "I had one of my old friends from law school send me this cap all the way from Texas. Just because I live in New York doesn't mean I don't know a good football team when I see one. 'Course you can't tell New Yorkers that. I almost got thrown out of the bar during the Super Bowl game this year against Buffalo."
"What the heck's football?"
For the next hour, Tess explained the finer points of the only sports game she had ever had an interest in to Stone. Baseball, she informed him, was about as exciting as watching grass grow. But now football....
In the middle of explaining a Hail Mary pass to Stone, Tess suddenly swallowed her words and gasped in astonishment when they rode onto the top of a ridge. Down below them, spread out in a multitude of roan, palomino, black and white and various shades of brown, grazed a herd of horses. Several colts frolicked among the herd, but for the most part the horses grazed on a carpet of knee-high grass.
Stone and Tess both immediately reined their horses around and disappeared beneath the ridge top.
"Do you think they saw us?" Tess whispered as she slid to the ground.
"The wind was in our favor," Stone said as he joined her. "You did pretty good. You got out of there in a hurry before they spotted us."
"Thank you, kind sir."
***
Chapter 25
After tethering their horses, Stone and Tess crept back up to the ridge. Lonesome, seeming to understand the necessity for caution, crawled up beside Tess and watched the herd below with pricked ears. While Tess scratched behind the dog's ear, she studied the horses spread out on the valley floor.
"Look how beautiful they are," she whispered to Stone. "Doesn't it seem a shame to capture them?"
"A wild horse doesn't have nearly as romantic a life as you'd think," Stone told her in a quiet voice. "The ones we manage to send to the Army post will be well cared for."
"We? Can I take that to mean you're actually going to let me help?"
"Since you're sticking around like a burr on my horse's tail, I might as well make use of you. But this is one time you better do just like I tell you. That stallion's not gonna give up his mares easy."
"Oh, look how beautiful he is!" Tess breathed out a sigh as the snow-white stallion reared and pawed the air. He dropped back to earth, then began a sweeping circle around his herd.
"He's getting ready to move them out," Stone said.
"Shouldn't we do something about catching them?" Tess asked with a gasp.
When she started to scoot back down the hill, Stone stopped her with a stern look.
"Stay quiet, darn it! What do you think we could do right now? Ride down there shouting and screaming and scatter them all over creation? How many horses do you think we'd get that way?"
"But...but they're leaving!" Tess glanced up to see Stone shaking his head, a look of barely concealed intolerance on his face. "Well then, what are we going to do?"
"You, Miss Greenhorn, are going to do — like I said — exactly what I tell you to. Wild horse herds travel in a circle, even most of the time when they're being chased. But I don't think this herd will move far from that valley. This late in the summer a lot of range is dried up. There's good grass here and that stream down there has plenty of water."
"I see," Tess mused. "They'll probably come back here tomorrow to graze."
"Early tomorrow. Probably even before dawn. Then they'll leave again about this time, so they can keep on the move. We'll have to be ready for them. We won't get two chances at this herd, because I know that stallion. He's been on this range for years, and he's damned smart. That's how he's managed to hold onto a herd that large."
"Look! Oh, Stone, look!"
Tess pointed at the herd, which was now strung out along the valley floor as it followed a lead, paint mare. The white stallion, not satisfied yet with the speed of his herd, swept back and forth in the rear, nipping and snorting at the slower mares with colts.
"Yeah, they're pretty," Stone said.
"No. I mean, sure they are. But look at that black horse on the edge of the herd."
Stone immediately saw which horse Tess meant. Slightly larger than most of the other mares, the black mare effortlessly kept pace with the herd.
"She's not from wild stock," Stone said. "The stallion must have stolen her from someone's ranch."
"She looks like Sateen," Tess said with a sigh.
"Who the heck's Sateen?"
"My mare back at the stable. She probably wonders what's happened to me, although I hadn't been able to take her out as much as I wanted to this past summer."
"Too busy with your social life, huh?" Stone said with a frown.
"That and my career," Tess admitted. "That case I was handling had me working sixty or more hours a week, and even most weekends, since I had to keep up with the other cases I couldn't foist off on one of the younger attorneys."
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that. Women shouldn't be attorneys. They've got no business tryin' to get killers or robbers off — standing up in court defendin' that slime."
The white stallion disappeared over a far ridge as Tess turned her furious green eyes on Stone. "For your information, Mr. Chisum, if it weren't for attorneys, there'd be a heck of a lot more injustice than there already is in this world! How many people do you know who are smart enough to to defend themselves in court? To read the laws and make sure their rights aren't being violated? And I'm not a criminal attorney — I'm a corporate lawyer!"
"Maybe they ought to simplify the laws, then," Stone growled. "And I don't see what the difference is — a damned lawyer is a damned lawyer! Why didn't you tell me before that day in the bedroom what you did for a living?"
"You never asked!" Try as she might, Tess couldn't come up with anything stronger than that inane comment. Her anger blazed higher. Good grief, was her mind already stagnating? She'd always been good at thinking on her feet — giving as good as she got when another attorney played devil's advocate with her while they discussed a case.
"Just what exactly have you got against lawyers?" she spat at Stone, her eyes narrowed dangerously.
"I saw men I knew were guilty walk out of a courtroom more than once while I was sheriff down in Texas — men I'd arrested myself and knew had done the crime. All I could do was wait until they pulled something else and haul their asses back to jail again. The next time I got them, it was usually for a hell of a lot worse crime t
han they'd committed the first time. Once...."
Stone bit off his words and turned away. "Come on. We've got work to do before those horses come back."
Tess grabbed his arm when Stone started to stand. "Stone, wait. Finish what you were going to say." She studied his hooded eyes, catching a glimmer of pain in the brown depths. "Please," she added in a softer voice.
Stone took a deep breath and stared past Tess, his gaze unfocused. "She was just a whore. That's what they said, just a whore. Her name was Polly, and she worked one of the saloons. One of her...her...."
"Tricks," Tess supplied.
"Tricks?"
"Uh...that's what they're called back where I come from. The men who pay for a prostitute's service. Tricks or johns."
"One of her customers," Stone continued, "decided an hour wasn't enough for him. He snuck out down the back stairway with Polly and took her out to the bunkhouse on the ranch where he worked. The guy who owned the saloon was pissed off as hell when he found her gone, since he didn't figure he'd ever get paid for that time. So he came into my office hollering that one of his girls had been kidnapped.
"By the time I got out there, almost every one of those six cowboys had had a turn. Polly was half out of her mind with pain, and bleeding all over the place."
"Oh my God." Tess covered her mouth, fighting the rising gorge in her stomach.
"After I got Polly to the doc, I took a couple deputies back out there and hauled them all in. 'Course at their trial, they all claimed she'd been willing. Their fancy pants lawyer convinced the jury that a whore couldn't be raped and they all walked."
"And P...Polly?"
"Hell, her mind was gone. She sat up on the witness stand like a zombie, and they finally sent her to some institution. Later on, the ringleader of the bunch made a try for a rancher's daughter he ran across out riding the range one day. But the rancher was just over the hill and he heard her scream. He killed the son of a bitch — gut shot him and watched him die before he looped his rope around the man's feet and drug him into town to my office."
Forever Angels Page 21
