How to Lasso a Cowboy

by Jodi Thomas

  His knee brushed hers and she felt as if she were in the way of a prairie brush fire. Her body reacted in new ways. Hot and greedy, and aching with longing.

  His gaze hadn’t left her. “You were saying you could have stopped the horse,” he said.

  Of course she wouldn’t have been able to do that, and he knew it. He wanted her to say it. He wanted her to admit she would probably be dead if he had not assisted her.

  Why had he stopped to help someone he obviously regarded as an enemy?

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He shrugged. “I was coming back to your ranch to fetch my sister. You didn’t tell me she was there.” His voice had turned cold and accusing. Despite the heat, a chill ran through her.

  There was no sense in denying the obvious. Everyone in town knew she was caring for Marilee Sinclair. “I wasn’t sure you were who you said you were. She’s had a very bad—”

  “The people in town, or what is left of them, will vouch for me,” he said. A muscle moved in his throat.

  “Your friends?” she asked.

  “My friends wouldn’t attack ladies or children. Or old men. I can’t speak for yours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged again. That was obviously his gesture of choice.

  “Your brother has already attacked—” She stopped. “You don’t look anything like him.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “Only posters,” she said.

  “He has my father’s dark coloring. I inherited my mother’s. Marilee? Is she still a little towhead?”

  She nodded. “Gold hair and light blue eyes.”

  “Like my brother then. You said he attacked someone? You?”

  “I’m not sure who it was. It’s just said . . .”

  “You believe everything that’s said?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Lady, you and your father are being used,” he said wearily. “You don’t belong here. You had no business riding alone out here when so many resent what you and your father represent. It was a damn fool thing to do.”

  Her back stiffened. “I thanked you. You can go now.”

  His lips curled at the edges but it wasn’t a smile. “And if they come back?”

  “I have a shotgun with me.”

  “You really think you can use it when the buggy is rocking all over the road?”

  “I am a very good shot.”

  He shook his head in disgust.

  “I don’t need you,” she said. Then added a bit sheepishly, “Now.”

  “We are going back to the ranch,” he replied. “I want to see my sister. I can get Marilee, then you can do whatever in the hell you want to do. I would suggest, though, that you do not travel alone.”

  “I’m not going to the ranch,” she said stubbornly. “I am going into town to see—”

  “Some of your father’s friends? Delaney, for instance?”

  He was right on the mark. Not Delaney, but the judge. A friend of Delaney’s. About how to keep this man’s sister away from him. Her face was hot and she knew it was flooding with color. She suspected he probably knew exactly what she was thinking.

  His eyes bored into her. “Lady, after I get my sister, I don’t care where in the hell you go.”

  “Please,” she said. “Wait. She—Marilee—is fragile.”

  “Fragile?”

  “She didn’t talk for months after your father was . . . after he died. Trini had stayed on the ranch and looked after her, but even she couldn’t get Marilee to talk. She just sat in a chair and rocked.” Elizabeth hesitated, then continued, “Then Trini died and she withdrew even more. But lately, she’s been making progress. Until . . .”

  He waited, his dark blue eyes wary.

  “Until today when she heard the shots again. After you left, I went to her room. She was huddled in a corner, completely terrified.”

  Anguish crossed his face and her heartbeat accelerated, pounding harder. Maybe he would leave his sister with her. . . .

  But he stiffened. “Any court, even a Yankee one, will give her to me,” he said.

  She had been going to seek help to try to stop that eventuality. She didn’t want to say that. “Why did you help me?”

  “I recognized the buggy. It belongs to the Sinclairs,” he said. “I thought Marilee might be inside.”

  “You must have seen I was alone before you risked your life.”

  “I don’t like men who pick on someone weaker,” he said curtly. “The odds were all wrong.”

  “And if they had been more even?”

  Ignoring the question, he clicked the reins and managed a smooth come-around. Ornery obeyed without so much as a protest. She had never seen the horse respond so readily. She silently thought very bad things about the horse.

  She tried one last time. “I really must go into town.”

  “Not now. Not until I see my sister. If you hadn’t been silent this morning—”

  “Your sister feels safe for the first time in months,” she interrupted fiercely, desperately. “Don’t take her now. Let her get used to you first,” she pleaded with him.

  His gaze studied her for a very long moment. “Sorry, lady. I’ve waited almost five years to see my family. Your father and friends have taken everything else I have. You aren’t going to takes what’s remaining of the Sinclairs as well.”

  “What . . . where would you take her?”

  His eyes were just as cold as before. “It is none of your affair, Miss McGuire.”

  All the gratitude she’d felt for her rescue seeped away. She wished the attraction would, as well, but it remained strong and compelling deep inside her.

  Did he feel it as well?

  Of course not. She was not physically well favored. She knew that. She was taller than most men, with a body not blessed with curves. Her best feature was her eyes, and even they were a curse because they always revealed what she thought.

  He, on the other hand . . .

  Don’t even think about it, she told herself as he guided Ornery into a trot in the direction of the ranch. He would not find Marilee there.

  Should she tell him where she was? What would happen when they reached the ranch and he discovered she wasn’t there? She looked at him, at the uncompromising jut of his jaw, the muscle that moved in his throat, the intensity in the line of his body as he so easily asked Ornery to do what the accursed horse wouldn’t do for her.

  Could she keep Marilee at the Findleys’? But he would learn his sister’s location soon enough. There were no secrets in Canaan. The fact that he had already been on his way back to get his sister proved that.

  If he really cared about Marilee . . .

  One look at the hard, cold visage made her wonder. She could lie with her silence. But her conscience wouldn’t let her. No matter his motives, he had probably just saved her life. He had seen that she was alone before he made that dangerous jump. He had risked his life for hers.

  “She’s not there,” she said.

  He turned back to her. “Then where?”

  “Promise me first you will give her time to get used to you.”

  His right hand tightened around the reins. “What if she wants to go with me?” he asked.

  “Then . . . she can go.” The words hurt far more than she’d anticipated.

  Only now did she fully realize the loneliness she would feel if she lost the child. “She needs a lot of attention,” she said. “And patience. She saw your father killed,” she said. “And your brother wounded. She’s still terrified of riders.” She looked up at him. “She will be terrified of you.”

  The muscle in his cheek flexed again. “She would get to know me soon enough.”

  “Where would you take her?” She held her breath for the answer.

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t look at her. His face looked as if it were carved from granite. Control was in every movement of his body.

  “Mr. Sinclair . . . ?”

  His head
turned then and he faced her. “It is none of your concern.”

  “But it is. I love her and—”

  “Love?” he said, arching an eyebrow. “You associate with those who killed her father and benefitted from his death. Damned strange love to my way of thinking.”

  The chill in his eyes changed to ice. The more she looked, the less she saw of what she felt Marilee needed: compassion, warmth, gentleness, love. Yet he was her brother.

  Conscience warred with her heart and finally won. “She’s at the Findley ranch.”

  His brows knitted together. “Findley.”

  “The ranch eight miles west of us.”

  “The Taylors’? Jack’s ranch?”

  She saw the sudden comprehension in his eyes. “Another profiteer,” he said in his soft, biting manner.

  “They are good people.”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he made a clicking sound. Ornery immediately speeded up.

  She clutched the side of the buggy. She didn’t want to be bounced against him. She didn’t want to feel the same sparks she’d felt before. He was despicable. He didn’t care about his sister. He only cared about using her as part of the war he was still fighting.

  The war was over.

  She suspected for him another stage was just beginning.

  Chapter Four

  TENSION STRETCHED BETWEEN them like tightly strung wire.

  Seth wanted to race the buggy toward his sister but the woman’s words echoed in his mind. Fragile. Nightmares. Fear.

  The thought that he might hurt Marilee stabbed him deeper than any bayonet could. Did he really have the right to take her from a place where she felt safe?

  One fact came hammering at him. His sister had been at the ranch when he had ridden up. Had she been hiding in fear?

  Because of him.

  Because of Delaney, whose men had killed her father in front of her.

  And because of the McGuires, who’d had a role in Delaney’s scheme.

  Damn it, why hadn’t the woman just said Marilee was there?

  He looked away, afraid he would say something or do something he would regret.

  “Tell me more about her,” he demanded, still struggling to control his anger.

  “She’s smart and pretty. And tenderhearted. She’s always bringing in wounded creatures.”

  “And now she’s wounded herself.” His voice was a whisper. He was barely aware of saying the words. They hurt too much.

  His need to return home had been the only thing that had saved him after watching his brothers die. Fury replaced that need when he’d discovered his father dead, his brother gone, and his sister missing.

  That coursing anger had been barely controlled as he suffered through the time it took for a bath and shave. He knew they were necessary—otherwise he’d realized he would frighten anyone, especially a young child who had no clear memory of him.

  He had nursed his anger as he had traveled down the road back to the ranch. He had felt it building to a crescendo inside. And then he had heard the shots and the yells. . . .

  He had immediately recognized the rebel cry. Abe had said that lawlessness was rampant. The federal authorities blamed the chaos on the Texans who were returning from the war. They were being accused of raiding ranches, stealing cattle, and even of murder. One of those being blamed was his brother Dillon.

  But when he saw the woman in the buggy, he knew that Dillon was not among the masked men. Seth hadn’t seen him in almost five years but he remembered his brother as the softhearted member of the family. He might attack McGuire but never a lone woman.

  Nor could he imagine any of his boyhood friends doing so.

  And there was the matter of the rebel cry. That would surely bring the army. Why would anyone be so foolish as to advertise a lost cause?

  Unless someone was trying to shift blame.

  The thought came quickly to his mind. Abe had hinted that someone else was behind the lawlessness.

  He wished he had seen more of her attackers, but they had been masked in addition to wearing hats that covered the color of their hair. Their horses had included two bays, a sorrel, and a chestnut. He filed the information in his mind.

  After riding in silence for a long time, he looked at his companion. “I don’t know your name.”

  “Elizabeth. Sarah Elizabeth McGuire.” The woman’s shy smile transformed the plain, blunt face with the upturned nose. It came alive, as did her eyes, and an unwanted, unbidden jolt of lust rocked him.

  He tried to dismiss it. It was only because he hadn’t been close to a woman in years, not since the early years of the war when young officers had been eagerly sought guests in southern homes. But then came months of marching, of bitter battles, of land laid to waste. And finally imprisonment where he either froze in the winter or suffered hot humid summers, both with too little food and too much sickness.

  Seth told himself she was the enemy. She and her father had taken something not theirs without a thought for those who had lived and died for the acres.

  “You said she was fragile. How fragile?”

  “She has nightmares. She’s terrified of strangers. Especially men in uniform.”

  He wanted to say he wasn’t a stranger, but he knew he would be to his sister. She’d just started toddling when he last saw her.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. His hands tightened around the reins. He knew the anguish he’d felt in seeing his brothers die. He couldn’t even imagine how his sister had felt when her father—their father—was killed in front of her.

  “Were you there?”

  “No. We came . . . not long after. A . . . friend told us there was good land to be had.”

  “Delaney?”

  She stared at him. “How . . . ?”

  “News travels fast. A lot of people are unhappy with your ‘friend.’ ”

  “It wasn’t him,” she said defensively. “And he’s not my friend.”

  “Your father’s friend, then.”

  “The property was going to be sold,” she said. “Someone would have bought it.”

  He couldn’t really argue with that. The ranches and farms had been sold for the taxes, a fraction of what the properties were worth. Still, he couldn’t resist a comment. “He had to know what was happening, that it was little more than theft.”

  Her face flushed and her lips firmed into a tight line.

  Only a small twinge of guilt bit at him. She was at least complicit with the theft of his family’s land. “How did Marilee come to live with you?” he asked, hungry to know more.

  “There didn’t seem to be anyone else.”

  He turned and looked at her. Really looked at her.

  There didn’t seem to be anyone else.

  The words were worse than the thrust of a sword would have been. He should have been there. God knew his family needed him more than a lost cause had.

  “And my brother? Dillon?” He already knew from Abe but he wanted her to tell him.

  “I have never seen him,” she said. “I just know he’s an outlaw.”

  “I understand he was trying to defend my father,” he said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “You didn’t tell Marilee about me today?”

  “I wasn’t sure you were who you said you were. Everyone said you were dead.”

  “Wishful thinking?”

  She flushed. “You had not returned when the others did, and you looked . . .”

  “Like I hadn’t had a bath in weeks,” he said. “I hadn’t. I was in a Yankee prison since May of last year. I caught some fever—I was in a hospital another month after my release. Then I had to make my way mostly on foot, stopping occasionally to try to earn enough money for food. It didn’t matter. I was coming home.”

  The last words were bitter. Biting.

  “And now?” she asked softly.

  “I plan to claim what’s mine,” he said, “and find out who killed my father. God help anyone who get
s in the way.”

  He turned down the road leading to what used to be the Taylor ranch, the home of his best friend, Jack. He too had disappeared in the maelstrom of war.

  Two children were playing with a puppy at the front of the house. They looked up as the buggy approached. One was a dark-haired boy, the other a pretty girl with golden hair and blue eyes. She looked at the carriage, then saw him and ran for the front door.

  His heart dropped at his sister’s obvious panic.

  “You are a stranger to her,” the McGuire woman said.

  He remembered what he had told her. He wouldn’t take his sister by force. But could he really leave her with a man who had stolen his family’s land, an opportunist? A thief, to his way of thinking.

  He stopped the buggy and stepped down. It was automatic to him that he go around to the other side and help her step down. He grasped her fingers and heat raced through him.

  The startled look on her face told him she’d experienced the same unwanted current.

  Nothing could be more foolish. He intended to get her off his land. He would take his sister and find his brother and right all the wrongs. She had no place in that picture.

  “I’ll be back,” she said. “Stay here.” She walked rapidly to the adobe ranch house before he could object.

  He wanted to go after her, but Elizabeth’s words lingered in his mind. She is fragile. As much as he wanted Marilee, he couldn’t bear causing her more pain.

  And he had promised. Not promised exactly but agreed to be patient.

  He would get everything. His sister. His family’s land. His brother’s freedom.

  No matter the cost.

  ELIZABETH found Marilee in the kitchen and stooped to give her a hug.

  “It’s all right, sweetpea,” she said. “The man with me . . . he’s your brother.”

  She shook her head. “Not Dillon.”

  “Another brother. You heard your father talk about Seth?”

  Marilee looked up with wide eyes. “Seth is dead. Father said so.”

  “He didn’t die.”

  “Then why has he been gone?”

  “He couldn’t come back until now. He was hurt.”

  “Hurt?”

  “Sick,” Elizabeth said. “But now he is home and he wants to see you.” She couldn’t bear to say the words, He wants to take you. Marilee shivered in her arms. “Is he the man who came this morning?”