The thief was right, but Cricket was too stubborn to admit it. Besides, the three wolves hadn’t left much of the animal to butcher. Rip had warned her when she’d brought the wolves home that someday she’d have to kill them. She’d take them deep into Comanchería and leave them, Cricket vowed, before she’d do that. For now, she wasn’t going to let the stranger get the better of her.
“The scavengers can have what’s left of the stag. Start walking, horse thief. I’m giving the orders now.”
“For now, Brava,” he conceded, his voice husky again.
Cricket tensed at the implied threat, and the unspoken promise that had unaccountably caused her nipples to peak. Before she could retort that he was unarmed and helpless and totally in her power, the tall, mysterious stranger turned his back on her and sauntered away.
Cricket nudged her horse into a trot, vexed and apprehensive when she belatedly realized how naturally he’d taken the lead—and how naturally she’d followed after him.
Chapter 2
WITHIN AN HOUR AFTER THEY’D LEFT THE POND, Cricket acknowledged that the trip back to Three Oaks wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d anticipated. A not-altogether-unexpected complication had arisen.
“Of all the days for this to happen,” she muttered.
Her face blanched white with the effort to conquer a fierce abdominal contraction. Tight-lipped, she fought the pain, as she fought all it represented. The woman’s curse. The female miseries. The monthly reminder she was not her father’s son.
Cricket wanted to curl up somewhere in a tight ball to ease her cramping muscles, but to do so she needed to be home. She increased the pace as much as she dared, forcing the broad-shouldered, lean-hipped horse thief into a steady jog that proved he was in as good shape as he appeared to be. After running for several miles, a fine sheen of sweat had built up on his skin, but Cricket noticed he wasn’t even winded. Meanwhile, she was sitting her horse doubled over like some stove-up cripple. How infuriating to be female!
Cricket felt another powerful cramp rise and crest across her abdomen. She wanted to whimper, to sob, to scream, but controlled the air trapped in her lungs by pulling her lips flat and thin and then exhaling in a controlled sigh. Before the muscles had a chance to clench again, she turned resignedly and pulled a fragile silver flask from her saddlebag. She stared at the delicately etched container, which had been Bay’s present to her on her fourteenth birthday, then opened it and drank long and deep of its contents. Cricket welcomed the burning in her throat and the blessed relief the whiskey promised from the pain of being a woman.
Bay had been watching Cricket’s facial contortions for the past half hour, but it was the sight of the whiskey flask that spurred her to close the distance between them so they could talk without being overheard by the thief.
“Are you all right, Cricket?”
“I’m fine,” she spat.
“Oh, my. It is the monthly miseries. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Hell’s bells! Just let me suffer in peace.”
Cricket glared at the thief, who’d turned to see why she’d raised her voice. “What are you staring at? Get moving!”
When the thief resumed his steady jog, Bay whispered, “I only want to help. Surely I—”
“Can you make the miseries go away?” Cricket hissed.
“No.”
“Then you can’t help.”
“All right, Cricket. But if you think of anything I can do, let me know.”
Bay kneed her horse, leaving Cricket by herself again.
Cricket shook her head in disgust at her short temper. Every month she tried to be stoic about the female miseries. And every month she failed. It was her helplessness in the face of nature’s inevitable claim on her body for a few days each month that left her so frustrated. Bay only wanted to help. Make that, Bay always wanted to help.
In fact, it was Bay who’d come to her rescue the first time she’d gotten the female miseries, when she was thirteen. She’d been curled up in bed, buried under a quilt, with a horrible bellyache, when Bay had heard her moaning and come into the room.
“What’s wrong, Cricket?” Bay had asked.
“I’m dying,” she’d responded. “I’m bleeding . . . there’s blood . . .”
“I’ll get Sloan.”
Cricket could smile now at her ignorance. It hadn’t been so funny then. Her mother had died when she was born, and Rip kept no women in the household. Somehow, Sloan had known what was happening. Sloan knew everything. However, Sloan found the pain during her own monthly courses bearable, and believing Cricket’s to be the same, she’d merely advised, “It’s only a little bellyache once a month. You don’t have much choice except to get used to it.”
When Cricket had opened her mouth to argue, Sloan had added for good measure, “There’s only one way I know to stop it.” She had then proceeded to explain in graphic, somewhat-appalling detail how Cricket could avoid the miseries for a while by allowing a man to spill his seed in her, thus making a baby, which would stop the monthly courses. “Of course, Rip may know something I don’t. I’ve never talked to him about this. You’re welcome to ask.”
Cricket hadn’t known quite what to do. Lying down under some man was out of the question as far as she was concerned. And although it was tempting to ask Rip if he knew a way to stop the pain, she’d never remind him she was a girl by confronting him with a female problem. So, she’d wound herself into a fetal curl in bed and endured, whimpering under the covers like some poor, wounded animal.
Unable to bear her sister’s distress, Bay had finally suggested Cricket turn to liquid spirits for relief. It was also Bay who’d stolen into Rip’s plantation office in the dead of night to procure a bottle of his finest Irish whiskey. A cup had become two cups and the surcease of pain had finally come only with alcoholic oblivion. That was the first time.
Now, once a month, Cricket just got rip-roaring drunk. The binge lasted one day, or two, depending upon the severity of the cramps, which often started before the bleeding began. When she passed out cold in the barn, or on the great leather chair in Rip’s office, or under the spreading, moss-covered branches of the majestic live oak out back, Rip threw her over his shoulder and hauled her upstairs to bed. It had become almost a ritual. If her father recognized the regularity of her alcoholic excesses, he never mentioned it, and Cricket never felt the need to make excuses. She was what she was—and it was the only way she knew to cope with the monthly agony.
Cricket moaned out loud, then bit her lip when the stranger dropped back to run beside her, still surrounded by the three wolves. He eyed her speculatively.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
“Thought I heard you moaning.”
“Hasn’t been a man yet heard a moan from my lips, horse thief.”
“Is that some sort of challenge?”
Before Cricket could hurl a sufficiently sarcastic response, another cramp seized her, and she gasped aloud.
The stranger reached for the reins and stopped her horse. “What’s the matter with you?”
Cricket bent over and pressed the heels of both hands against her abdomen as hard as she could to counter the cramping muscles inside. As she juggled her flask, its pungent contents spilled out on her buckskins.
The horse thief stepped closer. He sniffed once, then sniffed again.
When Cricket turned her head, her eyes met the look of utter disbelief and disgust on the face of the thief before he blurted incredulously, “You’re drunk!”
The rebuke hit Cricket like a slap in the face. She opened her mouth to make excuses and snapped it shut again. How dare he condemn something he knew nothing about! And there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to tell some perfect stranger she was dealing with a female problem.
“You’re an idiot to be drinking in Comanche country. The Comanches aren’t known for their tolerance of foolish mistakes.”
It took a moment for the stranger’s critici
sm to sink in. When it did, Cricket exploded like an overripe melon.
“Look, you long-nosed, shaggy-haired excuse for crow-bait! I don’t know what hole you crawled out of, but I’ve been dealing with the Comanches my whole life—”
“All sixteen years of it,” he interrupted patronizingly.
“Seventeen years. And no Tennessee toad—”
“I’m Texan.” He said it softly, and there was both pride and menace in the single word. “And no brat in buckskins—”
“Texan?” she sneered. “The noises I’ve heard out of you are straight from the Tennessee hills or my name isn’t Creighton Stewart.”
“That’s enough, Cricket.” Bay had perceived the flush that always appeared on her sister’s face before she really lost her temper. It was frightening to contemplate the possible results of Cricket’s growing drunkenness. Bay wasn’t looking forward to dealing with their captive by herself. But, as usual, Cricket ignored her warning.
“Don’t you worry, horse thief. I’ll get you to your hanging safe and sound.”
Cricket shouted an order to Rogue, who growled at the stranger and nipped at his heels. The man shot Cricket a condescending glance before he once more paced out in front of her, panting like the wolves who loped beside him, pink tongues lolling from their mouths.
With whiskey-blurred eyes, Cricket scanned the oakstudded plains, but she never saw the changing terrain, never felt the sun beating down upon her, never smelled the wildflowers in bloom nor heard the gentle plodding of her horse. She’d turned all her senses inward. The horse thief had called her a brat in buckskins. She’d thought that kind of name-calling couldn’t bother her anymore. In truth, she hadn’t let such insults bother her for a long, long time . . . not since Amber Kuykendall’s ninth birthday party.
Even at the tender age of eight, Cricket had known she was different from other girls. She didn’t wear dresses, and she always rode astride. She was talkative with adults but tongue-tied around other children. But Amber Kuykendall seemed not to care. She always made Cricket feel at ease on those occasions when Rip visited Sam Kuykendall on business.
So when Cricket received a written invitation to Amber Kuykendall’s ninth birthday party that told her to “be sure to wear a dress,” she’d hugged the parchment close and made plans to do exactly that. The only problem was, Cricket didn’t own a dress.
She’d sought out Rip in the fields, where he sat on a sleek horse and surveyed the furrows planted with the spring crop of cotton.
“Amber Kuykendall invited me to her birthday party,” she began.
“Oh? Are you planning to go?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I wondered what you have in common with a bunch of sissyish girls, is all,” Rip said.
Cricket’s heart began to thrum a little faster.
“Amber’s not a sissy,” she defended. “And we’re going to have cake and punch and play games and such.”
“What kind of games?” Rip challenged. “Things you can play in dresses, I bet.”
“Well, yes. Amber asked me to wear a dress and I—”
Rip hooted with laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“The thought of you in a dress,” Rip said with a chortle of glee. “Imagine how much material it’d take to cover those legs of yours. Pants’re much more practical for a long-legged filly like you.”
Cricket’s face flushed with embarrassment. Determined, she continued, “I have to wear a dress. Amber said so, and Bay said she’d make me one if you’d buy the cloth. So will you?” Cricket waited anxiously for Rip’s reply.
“I’m surprised at you, Cricket, letting somebody else do your thinking for you. You go to that party, but you go in what you want to wear. Don’t let Amber Kuykendall be the one to tell you what to do.”
Even at eight years of age, the need for Rip’s approval was great—so great that Cricket went to Amber Kuykendall’s birthday party in a buckskin shirt and trousers. She got no farther than the porch before Amber caught her.
“Hurry up and get your dress out of your saddlebag and change,” Amber urged. “You’re the last to arrive. Everyone else is here.”
“I . . . I didn’t bring a dress,” Cricket blurted.
“But why not?”
“I . . . I . . .” It was hard for Cricket to answer because the reason she wasn’t in a dress was that Rip hadn’t wanted her to wear one. Cricket would never have admitted even to herself that her father told her what to do. She made her own decisions.
“She didn’t bring a dress because she’d rather wear boys’ clothes. In fact, she’d rather be a boy,” Felicia Myers inserted, trooping out onto the porch, followed by the other nine girls who’d been invited to the party. “No boys are allowed at this party. So why don’t you go home.”
“I’m not a boy,” Cricket replied belligerantly, noting the hand-hidden smirks of the other femininely dressed girls.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Felicia taunted, spreading the folds of her dainty satin dress. She eyeballed Cricket up and down, then turned disdainfully and pranced away toward the porch swing.
Cricket had never been cut quite so obviously before, or with such a large audience, and responded impulsively by grabbing Felicia’s sleeve to turn her around. Unfortunately, the shoulder seam of the satin dress couldn’t withstand the strain. With an ominous rip, it tore free.
Felicia whirled on Cricket with a vengeance, screeching, “Now look what you’ve done. Why don’t you go back home where you belong, you freak!”
Cricket stood stunned for only a moment before she grabbed a hank of Felicia’s curly black hair and shouted, “You take that back right now!”
“I won’t take it back, ’cause it’s true,” Felicia screamed. “My ma says you’re growin’ up a boy in a girl’s body. She says you’re a freak of nature. Freak! Freak!”
“Stop! Wait! Don’t do this,” Amber cried frantically.
“Take it all back, or I’ll give you a black eye,” Cricket warned in a voice choked with rage and pain.
“Just you try it,” Felicia spat, swinging a fist.
Cricket dodged, and the small, pointed knuckles aimed at her eye landed on her mouth instead, cutting her lip and sending a trickle of blood down her chin. At the same time, her own fist swung round smack dab into Felicia’s right eye, knocking Felicia completely off her feet.
Three of the girls rushed to help Felicia get back up, while Cricket looked daggers at the rest, several of whom had started to weep, daring them to say anything.
Amber’s hysterical screaming brought her mother on the run.
“You little heathen! Look what you’ve done,” Martha Kuykendall accused, grabbing Cricket by the shoulders and shaking her until her teeth rattled. Realizing at last exactly whom she held, Martha suddenly released Cricket, who stumbled away a step or two.
Cricket was in shock. Dazed. Disbelieving. Defensive. It wasn’t her fault. Felicia had only gotten what she had coming to her. Cricket wasn’t a freak. She wasn’t. Just because she didn’t want to wear some old frilly dress was no reason to call her a freak. Felicia wore pants, too, sometimes. She couldn’t deny it. So why was Cricket a freak because she’d worn buckskins to a birthday party? It was all a big mistake.
Cricket’s mouth was dry of spittle, yet she turned and tried to croak an explanation to Amber anyway. “Amber, I—”
Amber burst into tears. “How could you do this, Cricket? I thought you were my friend. You’ve ruined my birthday party. I’ll never forgive you. Never. Get out! Go home! I never want to see you again.”
Cricket pleaded with her eyes, but she wasn’t about to beg. She stared at the other girls until there wasn’t a one without her gaze focused on the shiny toes of her shoes. Then she spat on the porch at Felicia Myers’s feet, and left. She didn’t need any of them.
But she missed playing with Amber Kuykendall.
And she never got invited to another birthday party.
After that,
she’d built walls to protect herself. She never let what other people said about anything she decided to do bother her. She drew her confidence solely from Rip’s approval.
So why had this horse thief’s scorn suddenly mattered?
Cricket’s eyes gradually focused again on the man in front of her, trying to remember the look on his face when she’d caught him at the pond. Fiery eyes, full of pride, anger, and a little surprise, then taunting, teasing, burning with some unknown emotion. What color were his eyes? When she couldn’t remember, Cricket felt a momentary panic, followed by a relaxation of her entire body. With the recess of memory, perhaps the awful implications of the day’s events would begin to fade as well.
She was determined to forget the warmth of that Tennessee horse thief’s lips upon her throat and mouth. Even as she fought to deny the past hours, her fingertips found their way to her swollen lips in wonder.
A man had kissed her.
To acknowledge the rightness of that kiss meant a denial of her entire existence. It would turn her world upside down. And Cricket liked her life exactly the way it was. She knew what was expected from her. Rip had made no pretense about what he wanted from his daughters, and Cricket had tried hard to be everything her father had wished for in a son. She was an expert shot. She could ride like the wind. She could break a wild bronc and track better than an Indian. She always strived to win and never settled for second best. And even though it was the part of her life she liked the least, she knew when to plant cotton and when to pick it. In actual fact, she’d never failed at anything she set her mind to do, and she was ready to try anything once.
But not kissing. Or touching. Or being female.
She’d played the role Rip had given her for too long and knew it too well to want to give it up now. No one was going to start changing her life around, especially not some too-big-for-his-britches horse thief. Cricket groaned at the thought of Rip ever finding out that, momentarily at least, the horse thief had gotten the better of her. She could have argued the thief was stronger, and bigger, and oh, so clever. But excuses didn’t work with Rip. Cricket groaned again. Damn that horse thief.
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