Issued to the Bride One Marine (Brides of Chance Creek Book 4)

by Cora Seton

  Heading over to the pool table, she met up with a couple of men she’d known all her life and beat the pants off them, which put her in a much better mood. A couple of beers didn’t hurt, either. More than once, she noticed a trio of men looking her way while she played. Strangers grouped by the bar. Lena wondered who they were. The older one kept his eye on her. The younger two—twins by the looks of it—turned to try to get the bartender’s attention.

  Lena forgot about them when she bent to take her next shot. She won again and wasn’t surprised when her competitors said they planned to call it a night. It was early still, but Lena figured she should, too. Plenty of work waiting for her tomorrow, after all.

  Before she could put away her cue stick, however, one of the twins she’d noticed plunked a stack of quarters on the edge of the table.

  “Name’s Harley,” he said. “That’s Ray.” He nodded at his brother, approaching with three beers in his hands.

  Lena looked from one to the other.

  “Yeah, we’re twins,” Ray said in a backcountry drawl that wasn’t local. Southern, most likely. He was blond, like his brother. The same light blue eyes. Same weak chin and stocky frame.

  “You boys aren’t from around here.”

  “No, ma’am,” Harley said. “We’re hoping you’re up for a game. Too boring to play each other.”

  She hesitated.

  “Come on, we don’t know anyone else,” Harley said. “We bought you a beer.” He nodded to the extra bottle in Ray’s hand. Ray held it out to her.

  “What about your friend?” She nodded toward the older man, still nursing a drink at the bar.

  “That’s our uncle. Forget about him. I want a game.”

  What the hell, she decided. One more couldn’t hurt, and she pitied these young men who looked to be kept on a short leash by their uncle. They were young, twenty-two or twenty-three at least. More boys then men. She could keep them in line.

  She took the beer, set it aside, racked up the balls for a new game and got ready to break.

  “What brings you to town?” She indicated that Harley could start, but he motioned for her to do so.

  “Opportunity,” Ray said, drawing out each syllable separately.

  His brother nudged him.

  “What kind of opportunity?” Lena asked.

  “The money-making kind. What else?” Ray said.

  “Ignore my brother. He talks too much,” Harley said. “We’re thinking about settling down in these parts. Right now we’re just checking it out. How about you? What do you do in town?”

  “I’m a rancher.”

  She liked the way that sounded. She was a rancher—and would continue to be unless the General screwed things up for her.

  “A rancher, huh? Little thing like you?” Harley said.

  Lena ignored his attempt to rile her and make her miss her shot. She broke and landed three balls in pockets.

  Harley straightened. Whistled. “Guess you can play.”

  “Guess so.” It felt good to show some prowess around men, even if they were little more than kids. With a few drinks inside her and a few games won already, her earlier fears were gone. To hell with Logan, she decided. She didn’t have to be bigger and stronger than him to kick him off her property once and for all.

  “Seems to me a woman needs help running a ranch, though. You got a husband?”

  “Hell, no.” She sank another ball. And then another.

  Ray snickered. “You a man-hater?”

  Lena missed her shot and felt her temper rise. She straightened up.

  “She’s not a man-hater.” Harley edged her aside and lined up his cue to put a ball in a corner pocket. “She’s a woman who knows her own mind.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Lena agreed, but her heart sank as Harley made two more shots in rapid succession. He’d be hard to beat.

  “I bet the right man could find a way to partner with you,” Harley said.

  Lena couldn’t say why she thought of Logan. She didn’t want to partner with him. She wanted to run her ranch, clean and easy. And Harley was trying to throw her off again. She couldn’t let him if she wanted to win this game.

  Harley missed his shot, and Lena stepped up to the table.

  “What kind of opportunity did you say you were in town for?” she asked. Was it her imagination, or did Harley hesitate?

  “We’re all about horses, me and Ray,” he finally said. “We’re looking for breeding stock. A stallion, in particular. Heard there are some good ones for sale in town. But don’t go spreading that around. People will jack up the price on us.”

  Lena relaxed. “Jamie Lassiter’s the man to talk to about that.”

  “Lassiter, huh? We’ll follow up on that.” But he didn’t seem too enthusiastic.

  “Don’t you have horses? Thought you said you were a rancher,” Ray asked.

  “I am a rancher. I’ve got horses. Everyone in Chance Creek has horses just about. That doesn’t make us breeders. Like I said, you should talk to Jamie Lassiter about that.” She took another shot.

  “I’m not interested in his horses. I’m interested in yours. Any of ’em any good?” Ray pressed.

  She scanned the table. Let the angles play out in her head. “Hell, yeah. I’ve got a stallion that puts the rest to shame in Chance Creek County.”

  It was a familiar boast—she’d made it plenty of times before—but she caught the look that passed between the brothers and wished she’d kept her mouth shut. What had they been communicating to each other? She looked Ray over again. He was young but maybe not quite as harmless as she’d first thought. She needed to be careful; strangers kept showing up in town and causing them problems.

  “Little lady, you sure know your way around a pool table,” Harley said. Lena looked him over, too, and relaxed again. She was being paranoid. Harley wasn’t a criminal. He was just a kid trying to chat up a woman.

  A woman way out of his league.

  Lena sank the last ball. “You got that right.” Her pride at taking the table diminished quickly when Ray stepped up and took the cue from Harley’s hand. Damn it, she was done with these two.

  “My turn.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s time for me to—”

  “Chicken.”

  Lena swore under her breath. “Rack ’em up, and let’s play.”

  Chapter Four

  ‡

  “I think it’s time for me to head to town,” Logan said when the clock struck nine and Lena hadn’t returned yet.

  “She’ll come home eventually,” Cass told him. They were seated in the living room, Cass working on the ranch’s accounts. “I’m sure she’s just having dinner with a friend.” She paused for a moment and lay a hand on her belly with a small smile.

  Logan dropped the magazine he wasn’t reading and stood up. “Could use a change of scenery.”

  Sadie looked up from where she’d been tapping the keys of her cell phone. “She’s at the Dancing Boot. Monopolizing the pool table. According to Caitlyn Warren,” she added in answer to Cass’s upraised eyebrow.

  “I wouldn’t mind a game of pool,” Logan said.

  “Good luck. Lena’s pretty damn good,” Brian said. He was seated near Cass, reading on a tablet. In fact, everyone was bent over some gadget or other. The scene stood in stark contrast to the hundred-year-old plus architecture of the farmhouse.

  Once in town, it didn’t take Logan long to find the Dancing Boot, and when he opened the door, music spilled out around him. Patrons lined the long bar and sat at small tables around the edges of a sizable dance floor filled with couples dancing to canned music; there was no band on stage tonight.

  He spotted the pool table in back and saw Lena bent over it, taking her shot. Two men stood near her, one holding a pool cue in his hand, the other leaning against a nearby wall.

  Twins, if he wasn’t mistaken. The one standing behind her was checking out Lena’s ass while she took her shot. He didn’t like the look of ei
ther of them. They didn’t look like cowboys, though they were dressed much the same as the other men in the bar. They held themselves differently, Logan thought. They were hard around the edges. Brittle. And both of them kept glancing toward an older man leaning against the bar.

  Logan shoved his way through the crowd, grateful most patrons backed out of the way when they saw him coming. He didn’t want men ogling Lena.

  Didn’t like the way she was avoiding him, either.

  He fished quarters out of his pocket as he went and slapped them down on the rim of the table when he reached it.

  “Next game,” he said.

  “Clear off. I’ve got next game,” the man leaning against the wall told him.

  Lena glanced up. Was that relief he saw in her eyes?

  “I already beat you, Harley,” she told the leaning man. “And I’m about to beat Ray, here. This man wants to lose his money, too, he’s welcome to try.”

  Logan followed her lead. If she didn’t want these men to know they were together, he could play along. For now.

  True to her word, Lena made her shots and took the win. Ray couldn’t hide his anger.

  Harley was staring at the older man again, who finished his drink, set his glass on the bar and straightened. He nodded, and Harley nudged Ray.

  “We’ll see you around,” he told Lena. “I’d like to get a look at that stallion of yours sometime.”

  Lena shrugged. “I’m pretty busy.” She turned to Logan. “Ready to lose, big guy?”

  “Ready to play,” he countered. Harley looked like he had more to say, but after meeting Logan’s gaze he shrugged and left. Ray’s shoulders were stiff as he walked away. The older man ushered them out of the bar. Logan watched them go, curious about the relationship between the three men. He waited until they were gone before turning to Lena. “Friends of yours?”

  “Like hell.” She put her cue back in the rack.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Going home.”

  “What about our game?”

  “You weren’t serious about that, were you? You know I’d kick your ass.”

  Logan stepped up to her, happy again to have the advantage of height and bulk. He made a big show of looking down at her. “I’d like to see you try.”

  With growl, Lena grabbed the cue stick again, and for a second he thought she’d take a swing at him. Instead, she said, “Rack ’em and let’s get this over with.”

  Logan racked the balls. Lena took the break. She pocketed a striped ball first, and another one, then missed a shot she really should have made. Were her hands shaking? She was far angrier than she should be at his joking around, Logan thought.

  “Do you know the older guy those idiots were with? The one holding up the bar?”

  Lena turned to look right where the man had been sitting. When she noticed he was gone, she shrugged. “I don’t know any of them. Never seen them before. Harley said he’s their uncle.”

  “Wonder why they’re in town.”

  “They said something about horse breeding. Wanted to know if I had any horses for sale.”

  It still didn’t add up to Logan’s way of thinking, and he resolved to keep an eye on the twins and their uncle. It would be too easy to suspect every man who came sniffing around Lena, but trouble seemed to come at Two Willows pretty regularly. Strangers needed watching. It was just how things had to be.

  Thinking about the trouble that plagued Two Willows led Logan to think about the last man Lena had dated. Scott had hit Lena, then had attacked her and her sisters when they blew up the drugs he and his friends had been storing on their ranch.

  Logan sank two of the solid balls handily. Did a fancy trick to sink another one, but when he tried to repeat it for a fourth ball, he missed. He’d been remembering the way Lena had fought him in the barn. The desperate look in her eye. He’d been kidding around earlier when he urged her to play this game, but even playful intimidation might reduce his chances with Lena. Maybe he needed to romance her instead.

  Lena sank one, then another, then a third. She edged around the table to make an easy shot into a corner pocket.

  “Let’s make this interesting.” Logan blocked her way when she tried to skirt the table to make her next shot. “You sink this ball, we go home.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “You dance with me. Just one song,” he added when she visibly bristled.

  Lena rolled her eyes. “Come on, cowboy—”

  “Don’t think you can make the shot?”

  “For God’s sake.” Lena nudged him aside with an air of exasperation. Lined up her shot—

  And missed.

  Lena stayed where she was, flabbergasted at what she’d just done. She could have sunk that shot in her sleep.

  She’d rushed it—that was the problem. Logan had riled her, and she’d rushed it.

  But he’d think she missed it deliberately.

  “Come on, baby girl,” he said, taking the cue stick from her hand and putting it away. “Let’s get to it.”

  “Stop calling me that.” Lena’s mind raced as he led her to the dance floor, where a crooning love song she’d always hated played over the loudspeakers. Other couples swayed to the music, some of them impossibly close, starting something they’d finish later at home—in bed.

  “Stop calling you baby girl? It’s just a pet name. It means I like you.”

  The idiot was grinning. He loved the fact he was making her mad, didn’t he? More than one woman on the dance floor was watching them, envy clear in their expressions. She knew why. Logan smiling was devastating. He set her heart thumping, her pulse thrumming. This close, he smelled good. All woodsy and manly, with an undertone of something that twisted her insides into a knot of wanting—

  “Well, I don’t like you,” she declared.

  “I bet you do. Just a little bit. In spite of everything you’re telling yourself about me. I’m like a puppy dog with muddy paws. You want to be mad, but I’m too darn cute to swat.” Logan took her hand in his, placed his other one on her hip and began to sway.

  “Oh, I can swat, believe me.” But picturing Logan as a puppy did make her see the ridiculous side of the situation. She was overreacting to his messing around. As usual. Logan wasn’t like Ray and Harley. He wasn’t a stranger anymore, and he wasn’t dangerous. The stupid man was incorrigible. Unstoppable when he wanted something.

  Did he want… her?

  She stopped moving. Logan shifted his stance, pulled her in closer and kept going, dragging her feet over the floor.

  She stumbled and caught up. “In case you haven’t noticed; I’m not some rag doll you can drag around,” she told him.

  “Nope, you’re a real, live woman, so start dancing, or I’ll pick you up and do it for you.”

  Jesus. He’d do it, too.

  Lena began to move with him.

  “That’s better. This isn’t so bad, is it?”

  He tugged her in tighter until all Lena could do was reluctantly rest her head against his shoulder and let him sway with her. His cotton shirt was smooth against her cheek, and she could hear his heart beat, a strong, steady pulse. By all accounts, she should have been panicking. Lashing out with all her strength to get out of his embrace. Why wasn’t she?

  Lena couldn’t answer that. Maybe the drinks were keeping her in a mellow mood. Besides, it was just one dance, she reminded herself. She’d danced with lots of men. It didn’t mean anything.

  Still, she was aware of his hand resting on her hip, the other at the small of her back. His chin touching the top of her head. When was the last time a man had held her like this?

  She shifted again, trying to create more space between them. Logan held her in place.

  “For God’s sake, relax. It’s just a dance, and it will be over soon enough.”

  Unexpectedly, disappointment flooded her, leaving Lena reeling. She couldn’t be disappointed about the dance ending. She didn’t want to dance with Logan. This feeling was si
mply… tiredness. She was worn out. Or something.

  She couldn’t be… enjoying herself.

  Lena closed her eyes.

  This was wrong.

  This whole night was wrong. She tried to draw back again.

  Everything had been wrong since—well, since she’d been born.

  Wrong gender. Wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong father—

  Nothing was right with her life—and she had little faith it ever would be.

  “Hey, we’re dancing, not getting ready for war,” Logan said. Was that frustration in his voice? He sounded as if he wished she was enjoying herself. And he wasn’t letting go.

  Lena tried to relax.

  “That’s better. Who taught you to play pool?”

  “Jed Henderson,” Lena said, giving in to the situation. “He was the overseer at Two Willows before my mother died. He was a real man.” She remembered the way he’d taken her seriously—the only man who ever had, as far as she was concerned. He was courteous to all the women on the ranch, but he’d been almost a grandfather to her. Back then, the General was already gone a lot, making his career with the Army. When he came home, he and Jed got on well together, but it was Jed who’d heaped praise on Lena in a way the General never did.

  “He must have been good at it.”

  “He’s good at everything.”

  “You keep in touch with him?”

  Lena turned her head. “No.”

  Logan didn’t push the line of questioning, and she was grateful for that. She was ashamed of the way she’d treated Jed. Furious at his defection, as she’d seen it, before her mother’s death, she’d refused to speak to him after he retired. The next overseer, and the next and the next, didn’t see any value in a young teenage girl’s opinions—not like Jed had.

  She’d been shunted aside—displaced.

  Just like Logan would try to—

  “Quit fighting me.” Logan’s voice was low against her hair. When his breath whispered against her ear, Lena shivered and held her breath as a strand of desire coiled within her.

  Where had that come from?

  She was done with men. She didn’t want Logan.

  It was this stupid dance. Being close to Logan—breathing in his scent—had knocked her off balance. And she was done with it.