Children of Destiny Books 4-6 (Texas: Children of Destiny Book 10)

by Ann Major

  Tad jerked his head out of the water and banged it into the faucet—hard. "Ouch! Damn it! What?"

  Mrs. B., Felicity Binkum, by name, Tad's housekeeper, was well over sixty and had gray hair that looked like she trimmed it with tin snips. Mrs. B. had a forceful, dominating, poor-me personality and was always at outs with her long-suffering husband, Mr. B., the best damned foreman Tad had ever had.

  Mr. B. was the only reason everyone on the station was forced to endure the lazy, whiny domination of the incessantly complaining Mrs. B. He was the only reason Tad had endured the sloppy condition of his house for years, as well as the thinly veiled insults Mrs. B. assaulted everyone with—including him.

  Every time any new violence occurred she always eyed Tad and muttered to herself just loud enough so he'd be sure to hear, "A real man would do something."

  "Boss, you wouldn't know Mrs. B.," Ned taunted. "She's as sweet as sugar. None of her two-edged barbs today."

  "I don't believe it." Tad was gingerly rubbing the lump on his wet head.

  "Believe it, mate. Doctor knows how to handle her."

  Damn right, Bancroft could handle her. They were two of a kind—both man-haters from way back.

  Tad snorted belligerently, but Ned wasn't one for taking hints. "Mrs. B.'s mopped every floor. Stripped and waxed them. Scrubbed the walls. Washed everything in the house—sheets, drapes, rugs. Got the jackaroos helping her. Says she’s tired of putting up with your filth.”

  “My filth?”

  “You wouldn't know the place. She's cooking up some meat pies. Best-smelling pies! Doctor's a damned good vet, too."

  "You haven't turned her loose on the livestock?" This was a yell. He tossed his towel on his bed and yanked on his shirt.

  "No, but she sure cured Dane's dog. Wheeler fell into the cattle dip and got himself snakebit last week. The wound was starting to fester. If she hadn't treated him, he would have died for sure. The boys and Lizzie sure would've been brokenhearted."

  Wheeler, a Queensland Heeler, was a great favorite on the station.

  "You ought to see how she is with Lizzie."

  "Damn. I don't want to see it."

  "Doctor's the busiest gal I ever saw."

  She damn sure was.

  "Hey..." Ned's speculative gaze swept from his boss to the girlie picture of the half-naked blonde that had taunted Tad all night. "That looks likes her, don't it, boss?" Ned's white grin became a leer in his plump, dark face.

  Jealous rage washed through Tad as his own gaze followed Ned's. How dare Ned think dirty of his Jess. It was all Tad could do to keep from going after Ned's thick, sunburned throat with his bare hands. Instead, Jackson's violence found another outlet.

  "Damn it," his deep voice boomed. "What the hell do you blokes hang filthy trash like that on the wall for?" With a single, fluid leap of fury, Tad lunged across the narrow room, ripped the paper from the wall, tore it to bits and threw it into the garbage can. He grew aware of his men's lean, dark faces—hard, set, yet intently curious as they watched him, read him—before they averted their gazes to the rude plank flooring.

  Afraid of what he might do or say next, he flung the screen door open and strode outside into the thick dust, flies and suffocating heat.

  The door banged; he heard their snickers behind him.

  "Now what the hell got into him?"

  "It don't take no genius to figure that one out, Ned."

  There were guffaws and laughter.

  "The doc's one hell of a woman. Nothing like the other one."

  "The boss has met his match for once, and it don't seem as if he likes it none too much."

  The boss damn sure didn't. Beneath the darkness of his tan, Tad whitened. The smell of livestock was suddenly overpowering. The liquor churned in his belly like acid. The wooden planks of the unswept porch flooring seemed to swim. He felt a hot, nauseous sensation crawl up his esophagus and he had to grab the railing for support.

  "Damn them. Damn them all."

  Slowly his weakness ebbed, and after it had, Tad felt like going back inside and using his fists to teach them all a thing or two about what he didn't like too much.

  Instead he slammed down the wooden stairs and stepped onto the rocky earth. Brawling with his men was not the thing to do. Especially since the only crime they'd committed was speaking the truth.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Tad reached in his pocket for a cigarette. When he didn’t find a pack, he remembered he’d quit. Hell, Jess would probably drive him back to that fatal habit within a week.

  He had known it would be a mistake to bring Jess here. He just hadn't known how quickly she would take over, how quickly she would challenge his dominion over his own world. Over his own men. Worst of all—his dominion over himself.

  She got to him worse out here.

  Maybe it was because everyone but him seemed to think she belonged.

  *

  Tad refused to let himself be driven out of his house forever. So that night he came in for supper. His intention was to get down to business with Ian, sell the place and ignore her.

  But her presence was everywhere.

  He was a stranger in his own home.

  The house was sparkling. So was Mrs. B. The tin-snip hairdo was wavy and almost becoming. For the first time in years, she seemed almost happy with Mr. B. Tad found the contented older couple in one of the screened courtyard gardens, sitting beneath the tamarind trees drinking grog together. He left them before they saw him and went in search of Ian.

  Jess was in the kitchen.

  Tad meant to stride past the open door and avoid her, but the aroma of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and lemon meringue pie was too much for him. Damn her. Why was she so good at everything that mattered to him?

  His boots made hollow sounds on the cool terra-cotta tiles as he stepped inside and then leaned back against the door jamb. He was hot and dirty, a grim, angry male presence in the neat domesticity of her kitchen. He knew he smelled of dust and the animals he'd been vaccinating. He could still taste the whiskey on his breath from last night.

  She looked up from her cookbook, smiled quirkily at him, and said, "Hi, there."

  Just "Hi, there," bold as brass, after what she'd put him through. But his heart filled with a wild, thrilling joy.

  "Where's Lizzie?" Tad demanded gruffly.

  "In her room reading. I got down a book about dinosaurs."

  "Oh."

  “I forgot how much I love to cook. I usually don’t have the time for it.”

  No, she was too busy saving the world and poking her nose in other folks’ business.

  Still, his intense blue gaze couldn't get enough of Jess. She looked fresh and quite glamorous in Deirdre's riding clothes. She'd probably slept like a baby last night—without him. Beneath a lacy white apron, she was dressed in exquisitely cut cream-cord jodhpurs, elastic-sided riding boots and a clingy, red silk shirt.

  A searing pleasure coursed through him.

  "I missed you," she said as she put down her spatula, undid her apron and came across the kitchen into his arms.

  He felt her trembling, and he was tongue-tied at the beauty of her.

  For years he had lived in this house, but never until this moment had it felt like home.

  He buried his face against the sweet-smelling satin of her throat. His arms closed around her. "Oh, dear God," he said hungrily, defeatedly. "I'm lost. Truly lost."

  For years he had blamed Jess for all that had gone wrong between them. But the blame was as much his as hers—for not seeing the truth, for not wanting to see.

  "That's exactly the way I felt—all night," she whispered.

  "I missed you," he admitted.

  "I missed you, too. Why didn't you come to me?"

  "Because..." His large brown hands ruffled her hair. "Because I was too cussed stubborn."

  He knew he would never rule her, just as he knew he could never stop trying. They would always have their battles. But in that moment he didn't ca
re. She was precious to him. He had to have her at his side. He wanted to please her—in everything.

  "Hell. I shouldn't be touching you. Not till I've taken a shower. I'm the only dirty thing in this whole blasted house."

  He started to pull away, but she wouldn't let him.

  "Just hold me," she begged softly. “Remember…my taste in men runs to Neanderthals.”

  His finger traced the sensitive skin from her jaw to her chin and then back, a caress that tantalized them both. He could feel her pulse throbbing.

  She licked her lips.

  And then he kissed her.

  In that moment he knew that as long as she was with him, he could never sell Jackson Downs. It was no longer a million acres of drought-stricken desert plagued by perpetual violence. It was his home. Hers, too. And he was going to do what she wanted. He would fight for it because she wanted him to.

  Even if it cost him everything.

  But he was going to fight for it his way.

  Not hers.

  Thirteen

  The three of them were alone in Jackson's tiny office. A thick, noxious spiral of smoke rose from Ian's cigar that he had set down in the ashtray.

  "What do you mean—you're not going to sell?" Ian's voice was as violent as a rapier, slicing through the hostile silence.

  Jess coughed lightly and fanned the smoke away.

  The best supper Tad had eaten in years was over and Mrs. B. could be heard in the distant kitchen doing the dishes, for once without complaining.

  Ian, Tad and Jess were glaring at one another across Tad's desk, which was stacked high with legal documents.

  Tad leaned slowly back in his cracked leather chair. "Hey, hey. Easy, Ian." Tad took a long sip on his beer. "You're just my lawyer, remember? I make the decisions governing Jackson Downs."

  Ian shot a telling glance toward Jess. His low voice got nasty. "Not all—apparently."

  The jeering masculine insult ripped through Tad like a bullet just as Ian had known it would.

  Bull's-eye, you bastard. There had always been some barely understood, male rivalry lurking just beneath the surface in his relationship with Ian.

  Not by the flicker of an eyelash did Tad let the gray-haired man know his slight had hit the mark. Slowly Tad tipped his chair forward and set his beer bottle square in the center of the most important, perfectly-typed document so that it ringed it. He said only, but with more stubborn determination than before, "I never wanted to sell. That was your idea."

  "Nothing's changed since you decided."

  Tad reached across the desk, lifted a legal paper, looked at it, considered the months of tedious negotiation that had gone into drafting all the documents, and then flipped it airily toward the wastebasket. He picked up Ian's cigar and stubbed it out in the ashtray.

  Ian lifted his bushy black brows.

  "Nasty habit—smoking," Tad murmured. “Don’t do it in my house.”

  Ian laughed. "You smoke. You never cared before."

  "I quit." He hadn't made up his mind on that issue until that instant.

  "That your idea or...your doctor's?"

  "What does it matter, as long as it's a good one?"

  Tad took Jess's hand in his and turned it over and thoughtfully studied the smooth, pale, delicate fingers intertwined with his larger, darker, callused ones.

  His icy blue gaze met Ian's. "You're wrong, McBain, about nothing having changed. Everything's changed. I'm not fighting this thing alone anymore."

  Jess's fingers wound more tightly into his.

  Ian sprang to his feet. "I wasted a trip. Like I said, it'll cost you."

  "It always does."

  "I only hope you won't be sorry."

  Tad attempted a thin smile. "Thanks for the concern." After Ian got up and left the room, Tad took Jess's hand, slowly brought it to his lips and kissed it.

  *

  It was nearly four in the morning when Noelle's panicked call came over the radio.

  Jackson woke up slowly, not aware at first that it was the radio that had broken through the layers of his unconsciousness. Jess lay beside him. He caught the faint scent of her skin—that lingering fragrance of orange blossoms. He felt her breasts pressed into his side.

  They had made love for hours and fallen asleep together in a blissful stupor of exhaustion—a dangerous thing to do under the circumstances. He felt drugged. He wanted to stay beside her forever.

  And yet he felt the danger. Nearer than ever before.

  He got out of bed, careful not to disturb her, and went to the radio.

  Noelle's voice was so soft, and the transmission so filled with static, that he could barely make her out.

  "Granger's gone crazy. Jackson Downs, do you read me?"

  She sounded terrified. Either Noelle was the best damned actress he'd ever heard, or someone was really after her.

  Tad flipped the switch and mumbled something to reassure her.

  "Granger's got a gun. Please..."

  The sound of a beautiful woman crying out in the night for his help was impossible to ignore.

  It was a trap! Jackson felt it in his gut. Before he could think through what he wanted to do, he heard Jess behind him, flipping the switch again, speaking into the mike.

  "Jackson Downs to Martin Reach. Stay calm. We're coming to save you. Over."

  Tad whirled, his anger instant and fierce. As always, Jess was taking over. This was no medical emergency. This was his kind of emergency.

  Through the red mist of his anger he could barely see Jess's pale face, stricken with fear and alarm. "Why did you tell her that?"

  "You can't just leave her out there all alone!"

  "What if she's lying?"

  Jess flinched. "What if she isn't?"

  His vision cleared and although Jess's beautiful face was half in shadow, he saw her for what she was, a frightened woman, pleading for him to help another. And yet he saw her courage, too.

  His expression softened. He reached for her and pulled her closer. Mere inches separated their bodies. She wore only that diaphanous, floating nightgown. Her extravagant, voluptuous breasts were clearly revealed. He could feel the heat emanating from her skin. He remembered the way she made his body pulse with passion. She wanted him to help Noelle—Noelle, whom he'd never trusted.

  A heavy sigh broke from him, and he paused before answering. "I'm going, then," he said grudgingly. "If that's what you want."

  Dark, gold-flecked eyes were shining now as they met his. "Thank you."

  "But you're staying."

  Her fingers tightened reflexively on his arm. "Jackson...please...I want to help you."

  "We're doing this my way—for once." He stared at her long and hard. "This could be dangerous. Very dangerous. I need you to look after Lizzie for me."

  "Okay."

  Nothing was ever that simple with her. "Do you really mean that?"

  Her eyes shone trustingly, obediently. She nodded.

  He was filled with immense male satisfaction. This was the way he wanted her, docile, sweetly doing things his way. "I love you," he said gently. "You're much too precious for me to risk."

  "I love you, too." Tenderly she touched his unshaven cheek. "Even now when you're impossibly macho."

  He touched her lightly, lifted her chin. Then he kissed her until they both began to tremble. "Oh, Jess..." He murmured her name with a sigh of regret. He didn't want to leave her, but he unwrapped his arms from her warm, lush body and set her away from him. "Promise you're going to stay here and keep Lizzie safe for me. And that's an order."

  "Aye. Aye." She gave him a mock salute.

  "We're doing this my way."

  “Of course.”

  A funny kind of smile came over her face. Tad was so stunned and pleased that for once she'd agreed to obey him that he didn't think to distrust it.

  Not till hours after he and his men and his two planes were already at Martin Reach did he distrust it. Not till he'd been shot at. Not till he'd freed a ter
rorized Noelle from the attic where she'd been handcuffed to a pipe and a time bomb. Not till he'd defused the bomb and was chasing Granger down with one of Granger's own Jeeps did Tad remember Jess's funny, crooked smile. Only then did he know to distrust it.

  And then it was too late.

  After setting Noelle free and leaving her at Martin Reach, Tad and his men and their Abo trackers chased Granger, their Jeeps making sweeping, zigzag patterns across an endless bleak landscape of night desert. The moon was a sliver, but the Southern Cross was blazing. The two wildly jouncing vehicles raced bumper-to-bumper. Twice Granger had tried to trick Tad into running over the side of a cliff.

  Panicking, Granger tried to blast Tad's tire with his gun when Tad rammed him in the rear. Granger's Jeep swerved too sharply, and his tires went over an embankment. The vehicle flipped end-over-end, and Granger wound up pinned beneath the roo bar.

  The acrid scent of burning upholstery and oil filled Tad's nostrils as he got out of his own Jeep and strode warily, shotgun in hand, toward the upside-down Jeep.

  "Pull me out," Granger screamed hoarsely from beneath the torn canvas tatters of the roof.

  Tad was breathing hard from the chase. His shirt was wet with sweat; his face black with grime. He wiped his sleeve across his brow. The first shell of lethal buckshot made a hollow sound as he racked it into the chamber. "I'll show you the same mercy you would have shown Noelle if we hadn't gotten here in time. The same mercy you showed when you set my stables on fire and damn near killed MacKay."

  "For God's sake, mate," Granger yelled, "it wasn't me. I didn't want any part of that. I never wanted to hurt Noelle. But she kept snooping around."

  Tad kicked a rock with the toe of his boot and sent it skittering past Granger's face. "Then who?"

  "Help me, please."

  "Tell me, and I'll tell Ned and the boys to pull you free."

  Granger was a weakling—city-bred. He had always been a coward. His face contorted in fear.

  "Tell me or you'll fry to death the way Holt did. Did you kill him, too?"

  "My own brother, dear God! No!" Bitter, hopeless tears were in his choked voice.

  Tad swaggered up to the Jeep, leaned down and grabbed Granger by the throat and squeezed his larynx hard until Granger began to choke. "No use blubbering like a baby. Talk if you're going to. The fire's almost to the fuel tank. I'm not sticking around to get myself and my men blown apart."