Matt (The Cowboys)

by Leigh Greenwood

  POSSIBLY NAKED

  Ellen heard the soft sound of clothes dropping to the floor and had to try very hard not to picture Matt standing naked in the dark. Just the thought of it caused her to swallow hard.

  She felt the bed sag under Matt’s weight, and her breath caught. Had he had time to take off his long underwear and put on a nightshirt? The possibility that he had gotten into bed naked was too nerve-wracking to consider.

  “Anything you want to tell me about today?” he asked.

  “Like what?” She didn’t know where to begin. She was married. She’d promised to help him adopt Orin and protect Toby. She’d committed herself to sleep next to him. She didn’t know if she could survive that. Next to sharing his bed, everything else seemed easy.

  “I know you didn’t want to marry me,” Matt said. “I want to make being here easier.”

  The sincerity in his voice touched her. She knew he had to be as uncomfortable as she was.

  “We’ll get along all right. It’ll just take a little time to adjust,” she answered.

  She heard him turn, felt the mattress move as he shifted position. He must have put his back to her. She wanted to reach out and be sure but didn’t dare. If she touched him, he’d probably think she wanted a whole lot more. Still, she had to know. She couldn’t go to sleep if he was facing her, maybe staring at her while she slept. It was hard enough knowing he lay just a few inches away, possibly naked.

  The Cowboys series by Leigh Greenwood:

  JAKE

  WARD

  BUCK

  CHET

  SEAN

  PETE

  DREW

  LUKE

  The Seven Brides series:

  ROSE

  FERN

  IRIS

  LAUREL

  DAISY

  VIOLET

  LILY

  To every child who has suffered abuse and had nowhere to turn.

  Copyright © 2000, 2011 Leigh Greenwood

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  THE FAMILY OF

  JAKE MAXWELL AND ISABELLE DAVENPORT

  (m. 1866):

  Eden Maxwell b. 1868

  Ward Dillon m. Marina Scott 1861

  Tanner b. 1862

  Mason b. 1869

  Lee b. 1872

  Conway b. 1874

  Webb b. 1875

  Buck Hobson (Maxwell) m. Hannah Grossek 1872

  Wesley b. 1874

  Elsa b. 1877

  Drew Townsend m. Cole Benton 1874

  Celeste b. 1879

  Christine b. 1881

  Clair b. 1884

  Sean O’Ryan m. Pearl Belladonna (Agnes Satterwaite) 1876

  Elise b. 1866 (Pearl’s daughter by previous marriage)

  Kevin b. 1877

  Flint b. 1878

  Jason b. 1880

  Chet Attmore (Maxwell) m. Melody Jordan 1880

  Jake Maxwell II (Max) b. 1882

  Nick b. 1884

  Matt Haskins m. Ellen Donovan 1883

  Toby b. 1858 (adopted)

  Orin b. 1872 (adopted)

  Noah b. 1878 (adopted)

  Tess b. 1881 (adopted)

  Pete Jernigan m. Anne Thompson 1886

  Luke Attmore m. Valencia Badenburg 1887

  Bret Nolan

  Will Attmore

  Night Hawk

  Zeke

  Chapter One

  Texas Hill Country, 1883

  “You’ve got to get married,” Isabelle Maxwell told Matt Haskins. “If you don’t, they’ll take these boys from you.”

  They were seated in Matt’s ranch house kitchen. A household of men didn’t need a parlor. A wide hall separated the kitchen from two bedrooms. He had no curtains at the windows, no fancy tablecloths, no upholstered chairs. Everything was plain, every surface as clear as possible. He and the boys had to keep the house clean. They didn’t want anything to make the job more difficult.

  “You can’t get married,” Toby nearly shouted. “Every woman in that town hates me.” The vehemence of his answer, coupled with the anger in his face, told Matt that Toby feared an outsider even more than he disliked the idea of a woman in their all-male household.

  “They don’t hate you,” Isabelle said. “They’re just afraid your handsome face will turn their young daughters’ heads.”

  “I can’t help it if they like me better than the white boys.”

  Toby was only sixteen, but he was already six feet tall, dark, and so handsome young girls fluttered like a covey of doves when he rode into town. His arrival had prompted more than one mother to remember a “pot left on the stove” that required that she and her daughter rush home to tend. The town mothers objected to Toby’s Mexican blood, his lack of prospects, and that his mother had given birth to him without the benefit of marriage.

  “I haven’t seen you trying to keep your distance,” Isabelle observed, an edge to her voice.

  “You can’t expect me to spend all my time with horses and cows.”

  “As much as they don’t like him hanging around their daughters, it’s Orin they’re determined to take,” Isabelle said to Matt, referring to the slight blond boy sitting silently next to Matt.

  “They were happy enough for me to take him a year ago,” Matt said.

  “His grandfather hadn’t left him a small fortune then,” Isabelle pointed out.

  “So money makes him worth the trouble?”

  “Don’t be a fool. You know there’s nobody but you interested in these boys for their own sakes.”

  Matt had been in the little town of Bandera two years ago when the sheriff was about to put Toby in jail. Instead, Matt hired him to work on his new ranch. Not everybody was happy with that arrangement, but they were glad to get Toby out of town.

  Orin was another matter.

  Several families had volunteered to take the orphaned nine-year-old after his parents’ tragic death. But when the money from the sale of his parents’ property ran out, the family that had taken him in discovered they really didn’t have room for a boy who was constantly in trouble. Traumatized by the death of his parents, thrust into an unsympathetic foster home, then kicked out, Orin had been volatile and uncooperative when he arrived at the ranch. It had taken Matt close to a year to break through the barriers of his anger and hurt. The past three months had been good. Toby and Orin had begun to treat each other as friends and the ranch as their home.

  When Orin’s grandfather died and left the boy a large inheritance, the family that had turned him out started agitating for his return. It was unlikely anyone would have listened if the Reverend Wilbur Sears hadn’t announced that Matt was an unsuitable guardian because he wasn’t married. He claimed that a young boy needed the warm, humanizing care of a mother figure.

  “They can have my money,” Orin said. “I just want to stay here.”

  Matt put his hand on Orin’s shoulder. The boy’s thin body worr
ied him. An eleven-year-old child should weigh more, but in the last month Orin hadn’t eaten more than a few mouthfuls before he pushed his plate away.

  “I’ll run away,” Orin said.

  “That’s stupid,” Toby said. “Where would you go?”

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Matt said, “and nobody’s taking him away.”

  “Then you’ll have to get married,” Isabelle said. “That damned preacher has stirred up everybody from here to San Antonio. Have you thought of anybody you could ask?”

  Isabelle had reached her fortieth birthday, but she still looked vibrant and beautiful. It was no wonder Jake still acted like a newlywed after all these years. Maybe her own wedded bliss was the reason she thought marriage was the answer to practically everything. Matt had discarded the possibility of marriage without serious consideration. No woman would marry him once they knew his secret. And he’d have to tell. It wasn’t something he could keep from a wife. “There’s got to be another way.”

  “Maybe,” Isabelle said, “but I can’t think of one that will settle the issue for good. This is no time for half measures, Matt. You’re facing pure greed on one side and self-righteous indignation on the other, not to mention a little fear that some of them might end up with a dark-skinned grandbaby.”

  “If I have to, I’ll take the boys and leave,” Matt said.

  “That’s not what Jake and I want.”

  “You’ll lose all the money you put into his place,” Toby pointed out.

  “Money’s not a problem,” Isabelle said. “Jake and I can—”

  “I’m not taking your money.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  Matt didn’t have an answer yet. “Do you want me to get married?” he asked the boys.

  “This isn’t a group decision,” Isabelle said. “We’re talking about your wife.”

  “And their surrogate mother. I can’t make a decision like that without knowing how they feel.”

  Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I don’t know why I keep trying. Where’s your common sense?”

  Matt smiled. “You’re always complaining that Will hasn’t a lick of sense. Why should his brother have any?”

  Isabelle’s harrumph indicated that she would have a great deal to say on that subject if she had the time. “You have brains enough if you’d use them, but there’s no use talking to you when it comes to these boys.”

  “Would it have been any use talking to you about us?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  Seventeen years earlier she’d talked Jake into adopting eleven orphans she’d pulled from the teeth of indifference and abuse. There was no one she wouldn’t have taken on to protect her boys, and they all knew it.

  “Do you want Matt to get married?” Isabelle asked Toby.

  “No. Women cause trouble.”

  “How about you?” she asked Orin.

  “Will it mean I can stay here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I guess it’s okay.”

  “Marriage would be good for you as well as the boys,” Isabelle said to Matt. “You spend too much time alone.”

  “I have the boys.”

  “If you want to put an end to this business once and for all, get married and adopt them.”

  “Nobody’s adopting me,” Toby said.

  “You can adopt me,” Orin said.

  “Okay, we’ve settled that,” Isabelle said.

  “The vote is split.”

  “You cast the deciding vote. What is it going to be?”

  Matt had never seriously considered marriage. No, that wasn’t entirely true. He thought of it often and dismissed it. He liked women, but he was uncomfortable around them. He never knew what to say. But that wasn’t the real reason he couldn’t get married.

  His parents had died when he was nine, and he and his younger brother, Will, had gone to live with their uncle. For three years their uncle had sexually abused Matt. Nearly any physical contact brought up some memory of the pain and humiliation, the feeling of being sordid and foul. It would be cruel to marry any woman knowing he couldn’t perform as a husband. He counted himself lucky to be able to provide for two boys who needed a home and a friend. He was as close to having a family and being happy as he expected to be.

  Now that damned preacher was determined to take it away.

  The only way he could imagine marriage working for him would be as a business arrangement. There would be no pretense of emotional involvement, no physical relationship. They would look on each other as business partners.

  That way no one would be hurt when the breakup came.

  Matt didn’t know any woman who would accept such an arrangement. Women saw marriage as a lifetime commitment. They expected love and devotion. Matt could provide that, but it was the passion, the unblemished character, and a past that wouldn’t threaten their safety that he couldn’t provide. “I guess I have to consider it.”

  Isabelle sighed. “You’re finally being sensible. Is there anybody you’d like to marry?”

  Matt didn’t know why he should suddenly feel flushed. But if things had been different… Well, they weren’t, and there was no use thinking about it.

  “Matt don’t like women,” Toby said. “He won’t even speak to them.”

  “Doesn’t like women,” Isabelle corrected. “And there’s somebody he’d like to speak to,” she said, a slow smile spreading across her face as she watched Matt with eagle-eyed intensity. “He blushed.”

  “I didn’t see it,” Toby said.

  “Me neither,” added Orin.

  “Who is she?” Isabelle asked.

  “It better not be that schoolteacher,” Toby said. “I’ll leave the minute she sets foot on this place.”

  “It’s not the schoolteacher,” Isabelle said, watching Matt carefully. “What about Eugenia Applegate?”

  Bandera was a small town, the county sparsely settled. There weren’t more than a dozen single women of marriageable age. It didn’t take Isabelle long to reach the end of her list.

  “That just leaves those two women who work at the saloon,” Toby said.

  “Is that right?” Isabelle asked.

  Matt didn’t answer.

  “Which one is it?” Toby asked.

  “It shouldn’t be either one of them,” Isabelle said. “If you think you’re in hot water now … It is one of those women. Don’t bother denying it. I can see it in your face.”

  “I don’t see nothing,” Orin said.

  “It’s got to be Ellen!” Toby exclaimed as his face split with a wide grin. “She’s got a body like—”

  “You will not speak of any woman’s appearance as though you were describing a horse,” Isabelle said, turning a quelling look on Toby. “Is the boy correct?” she asked Matt. “Are you interested in Ellen?”

  “I’m not interested in any woman,” Matt said. “But I’d have to be blind not to think Ellen attractive.”

  “You know what people say about her?”

  “Everybody knows,” Toby said, grinning like any sixteen-year-old boy over a salacious story. “She—”

  “She didn’t do it,” Isabelle declared. “I worked for a man like Patrick Lowell. When he tried his tricks on me, I scratched his face and called for his wife. Ellen is a respectable woman forced into a dubious profession because of a man’s brutish nature and a woman’s jealousy. She’ll make a good wife and companion, as well as help you bring up these boys.”

  “I don’t need no bringing up,” Toby said.

  “You especially,” Isabelle said. “And it’s any bringing up. Matt, did you hear me?”

  He’d heard her. He’d thought of Ellen from time to time. Outside of the fact that she was beautiful—what man could forget those pouty lips just begging to be kissed, her glossy black hair and haughty stance—she’d been caught in the same kind of web as Matt. Only her shame was public.

  “She’s got those two kids of that young woman who died a few m
onths ago,” Isabelle said. “With your penchant for taking in strays—”

  “I ain’t no stray!” Toby announced.

  “—she’s exactly the right person, especially if she knows anything about grammar.”

  Matt had enjoyed thinking about Ellen now and then. It was a daydream he could indulge in when his physical needs pressed him hard, but marriage would put an end to that. All the guiltless pleasures, the secret fantasies, would be replaced by cold reality. She would be around all the time, wanting and demanding. She would probably expect him to make love to her. Just the thought of being touched brought back the nausea that had overcome him every time his uncle touched him. But if marriage would protect the boys, he’d do it. He’d figure out how to handle the physical part later.

  One thing worried him. Everyone agreed Ellen was beautiful. They also agreed she was hard as stone. She would flash a brittle smile, but her eyes warned men to keep their distance. The boys needed warmth, love, understanding, and support. He didn’t know if Ellen could provide that, but there was only one way to find out. “Okay. I’ll talk to her.”

  Ellen Donovan slammed the glass down on the bar so hard it broke. The sound of shattering glass caused the men in the saloon to fall silent. They all looked her way. “That’s nothing but children getting up to harmless mischief,” she said, glaring at the sheriff. She tried to ignore the anger churning inside her, to speak in a level voice rather than shout. “They just scattered the chickens. They didn’t kill them.”

  “They’ve got into trouble before,” the sheriff reminded her, easing onto the stool right across from her.

  “Nothing any different from half the kids in this town.”

  She wished he hadn’t come to the saloon to make this complaint. It would be all over town before supper. Even though it was a slow afternoon, the few regulars would quickly spread the word. Ellen’s gaze took in the large room packed with tables for men to drink and gamble, and the bar stacked with plenty of glasses to fill up during the long evenings when she served her customers and tried to avoid their wandering hands. She couldn’t do anything about their eyes … or their thoughts.