by Jodi Thomas
Before she could pursue that unhappy thought, Preacher Malone walked in. Tess warned her groom with a subtle elbow to the ribs. “Just say the right words to earn your money.”
The wedding ceremony was mercifully short. Preacher Malone delivered long, windy sermons in Sunday service, but this being a Tuesday, the preacher seemed to have his mind more on getting back to his carpentry business than running off at the mouth about the sanctity and responsibilities of marriage. Good thing, Tess reflected, because the longer she stood in that church with what’s-his-name, the more the man swayed beside her. The groom had taken on a tinge of green, and the church had begun to smell like a still. If the preacher hadn’t been in such a hurry, he might have noticed such things.
But more important, if the ceremony had dragged on much more than five minutes, Tess herself might have showed a yellow streak and run. Her stomach began to turn somersaults, and the palms of her hands broke out in sweat. Should she back out before the words were spoken? Could she back out?
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Preacher Malone declared.
Too late. The deed was done, for better or worse.
Slow, insolent clapping from the rear of the church made Tess’s heart jump. In unison with Rosie, Glory, and Miguel, she turned.
“Congratulations, Tessie girl.”
Looking like a greenhorn in a fancy suit and slicked-back hair, her brother leaned against the frame of the open church doorway, applauding sarcastically.
“You finally caught yourself a husband, did you? How lucky for you.”
His grin told Tess her luck had just stepped in a cow pie.
Chapter Two
JOSH RANSOM COULDN’T remember a time when he’d felt quite so lousy. Of course, right at the moment, his memory didn’t work all that well. Neither did his stomach, his legs, or his tongue; and his eyes still slipped in and out of focus. A pounding headache hammered his brain, and every muscle in his body screamed for mercy.
Liquor and he didn’t get along. Never had. Never would. Why hadn’t he remembered that when he’d tried to drown his sorrows in a bottle? Liquor could numb the brain for a while, but when those nerves woke up again, there was hell to pay. Except that hell couldn’t be anywhere near as bad as this. He lay back in the tub of hot water and contemplated drowning himself—until a cheerful voice walked in on the legs of a short, plump woman with clear blue eyes and a sympathetic smile.
“Soaked some of the whiskey out, have you?”
A blush heated his face hotter than the bathwater as he sank lower beneath concealing suds. At least he hoped the suds concealed.
The woman laughed. “Don’t worry, muchacho. You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen so often I’m plumb bored.” But her eyes twinkled. “Though I’ve got to say, you’re less boring than most.”
“You aren’t . . . you aren’t—”
“I’m Rosie.” She laughed. “You thought maybe I was the one standing beside you in front of Preacher Malone? Ha! You really were in a fog, weren’t you?” She took a scrub brush from a nail above the sink and advanced toward the tub. Josh, not a man accustomed to feeling helpless, felt mighty helpless right then.
“Wait. What’re you—”
“You need a good scrub, my friend. Tess—that’s your wife, by the way—she don’t allow liquor in the house, and you’re just about as potent as a bottle of pure whiskey. Some of that stink has to come off.”
“Wait a minute, lady!” As Rosie applied the stiff brush to his back, Josh flailed, sending water sloshing onto the kitchen floor. Rosie didn’t seem to mind the soaking. “Hey! Ouch! Give me that!” He managed to grab the bristled weapon from her hand. “I can scrub myself, missus. Could I have some privacy here?”
“A touchy one, ain’t ya?” But she chuckled good-naturedly. “Just see that you scrub good. I’ll just put a few more sticks of wood in the stove before I leave and then you can have your precious privacy.”
Josh did make good use of the scrub brush once the woman had left. He wished he could scrub away the last few days—hell, the last few weeks!—along with the dirt and clinging smell of whiskey. Maybe if he’d had those weeks to live over again, he could have kept David away from that poker game, or managed to lay hands on the entire six hundred dollars to settle David’s marker, or at least not gotten tanked in the Bird Cage. His memory at this moment struggled with a whiskey-induced fog, but to Josh’s best recollection he’d up and married some woman—not the lady with the scrub brush, he gathered—for a sum that would put him over the top for David’s debt. That sort of lamebrain stunt just about put him on a level with his idiot brother, or maybe even below. He had already had one foot in a mule pile, and now had the other foot in as well. Smart of him. Josh thought upon David’s foolishness with a bit more sympathy. Blockheadedness apparently ran in the Ransom blood.
He looked around him, his brain clearing a bit as some of the fogginess dissolved into the warm water. A wood stove pumped out heat against the March chill. Pots hung from a rack—nothing fancy, strictly utilitarian. A chipped metal worktable doubled as a dining table, with benches pushed beneath on either side. A colorful rag rug—the only touch of decoration he could see—covered part of the smooth clay floor.
The curtain between the kitchen and the rest of the house brushed aside to admit another visitor, this one walking on four legs. A rough-coated gray dog about the size of a good-sized coyote regarded him with confident, measuring eyes. One ear stood up, the other flopped down, but the dog didn’t lose any dignity to his lopsided looks.
“You’re not the one I married, are you?” Josh asked miserably.
The dog’s look changed to sympathy, and it padded over to give Josh’s wet arm a lick.
“Friendly, aren’t you? Want to answer a few questions? Like what the hell am I doing here?” Josh wrinkled his brow in a frown, then grimaced with the pain such an effort caused. Thinking hurt. Frowning hurt. Everything hurt. He dimly remembered the ride from town in a poorly sprung wagon. At the time, climbing into the wagon and heading for somewhere seemed a reasonable thing to do, but wasn’t he supposed to hightail it out of town, money in hand, after the ceremony? So why was he sitting in an unfamiliar kitchen in a tin washtub scrubbing himself raw and talking to a dog?
TESS wore a path on the clay floor in front of the fireplace with her pacing. “Dadgummit! Everything was just hunky-dory until Sean showed up. I hate that grin of his. It’s his gotcha grin. He knows exactly what I’m up to.”
Rosie rocked in the chair next to the fireplace, her hands full of mending. “I’m not surprised, Tessie. He’s your brother. You two think alike.”
“We’re nothing alike!”
But they were, in a way. They had grown up together, helped each other, ratted on each other, made trouble with each other—until Sean got fed up with the Diamond T, and with their father, and took off for California to find his fortune.
“Maybe you’re right,” Tess admitted with a sigh. “Sean was as stubborn about getting away from the ranch as I was about staying. He knows damned well that I’d hitch myself up with a rattlesnake if it would let me keep the Diamond T. The question is, can he do anything about it other than complain?”
Rosie shook her head. “You’ve done what Colin wanted you to do, Tessie. I still don’t know if it’s what you should have done, but it’s done.”
“Yeah, but Bartlett—that braying mule—he might side with Sean no matter what. After all, when has the law ever favored a woman over a man? Bartlett said right to my face he thought the will was stupid—not because I had to get married, but because I’d get the Diamond T at all. Never mind that Sean took off. Never mind that he gave our daddy nothing but grief. To a man’s way of thinking, having cojones automatically makes a person stronger, smarter, and just plain better than anyone burdened with breasts.”
“Tess! A lady doesn’t talk that way.”
“I’m not a lady, I’m a cowboy. And I’m the best dadgummed cowboy for miles around.”
Rosie’s lips tightened in disapproval, but Tess didn’t care. She could almost feel the steam coming out of her ears.
“Damn it all, anyway!” she growled to herself. She could think of only one solution to the problem of Sean, and she didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. “Why doesn’t that sorry sot I married climb out of the tub and come out where a person can talk to him?”
“I don’t think he feels so good,” Rosie opined.
“I don’t care how he feels. I need to tell him the way things stand before he makes any plans to spend my money.”
Tess’s patience, never her long suit, wore out in a few more minutes of pacing. What’s-his-name had been lounging in the washtub long enough to drown a whale, and she didn’t intend to cool her heels waiting for his lazy butt to get out of the bath.
“You about through in there, cowboy? ’Cause we need to talk.”
The reply sounded grumpy and mostly unintelligible.
“Okay then, fella. I’ll come to you.”
Ignoring Rosie’s squeak of a warning, Tess pushed through the curtain, ripe with indignation. Her groom sat in the tin washtub surrounded by dirty gray water that covered him from midchest down, except for his bare knees, which stuck up like two bald islands rising from a sea of soap scum. He appeared to be carrying on a conversation with Rojo, the best damned cattle dog west of the Rockies. Rojo regularly got above himself, though, trying to run the ranch and everyone on it. Typical male.
“Rojo, git!” Tess tapped the dog with a toe. “Get outside and do something useful, you mangy cur.”
Rojo got, and the man in the tub sank deeper into the water. “Hellfire! Can’t a man have a shred of privacy from you women?”
“Not in this house. But don’t worry about it. You won’t be here long enough for it to matter.”
Queer that the sot didn’t look like a man who poisoned himself with liquor. Broad shoulders stretched from one side of the washtub to the other, and below the shoulders, hard muscle slabbed his chest. Silver hair shot with black plastered his skull, and dark eyes, clear now of alcohol’s haze, regarded her suspiciously.
Sitting in that tub all scrubbed and bright-eyed, he didn’t look as old as Tess had figured, even with the silver hair. His mustache, and an admirable mustache it was, showed darker than the thick thatch on his head. Maybe the fellow was middle age. Maybe even a sliver younger than middle age. He boasted prime muscle, hardened by work. How had he slipped far enough down to climb into a whiskey bottle?
At her interested perusal, the man reached for his hat on the table beside the tub and clapped it between his thighs.
The man had nothing to hide that interested Tess in the least. “You’ve been washing long enough to shrivel up like a pea,” she complained.
“That woman took my clothes.”
“That woman? Rosie? You could’a yelled.”
“Okay. I’m yelling.”
“Okay.” She measured him with her eyes. He would fit well enough into Colin McCabe’s clothes. “I’ll get you something,” she promised, “as soon as we talk.”
“How about you get me something now?”
“Don’t get pushy.” She grinned, not about to give up an advantage. “You’re in no position.”
He glared, but she just let the glare bounce off her. A man sitting in scummy water with bony knees sticking up like pink pimples had to work harder than that to be intimidating.
He gave up with a sigh, closed his eyes, and sank deeper into the water. “Okay, then talk.”
“You and I made a deal.”
“Yeah. I seem to remember it included something about me riding out of town three hundred dollars richer.”
“You’ll get your money.”
“Good. You know, lady, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for taking advantage of a man who’s stumble-down drunk.”
She folded her arms across her chest and chided, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for getting stumble-down drunk.”
“Yeah.” He grimaced. “Well, I’m paying the price. And speaking of prices, if you get me my clothes and my money, I’ll be out of your hair quicker than you can blink. When you get your annulment, or divorce, or whatever, just let me know.”
“That’s what we need to talk about.” Here Tess felt less certain of her ground, and he seemed to sense it, because his eyes narrowed suspiciously. The eyes changed color with his mood, Tess noted. When he was drunk, the eyes had been muddy green. Now they looked almost gray—steel, knife-edged gray, and so sharp they managed to stab clear through to her conscience.
Tess liked to deal straight up and honest with people. If Colin McCabe hadn’t been such a sneaky old coot . . . but no. She wasn’t stiffing the guy, Tess told herself. Adding a few conditions after the fact, out of dire necessity, simply made good sense in this case.
“Okay, cowboy, here’s the deal. I had to get married or this ranch”—she gestured grandly to indicate the house, barns, grassy range, and the San Pedro River that flowed through it and made the pasture so rich—“goes to my lazy jackass brother. I told you this.”
The eyes didn’t get any less sharp.
“But, you see, I don’t need some man coming in here and unpacking his bags like the place belonged to him, so I found someone willing to make a deal. Marry me, and leave. You.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“I’m a hell of a long way from being crazy.”
“If my brain hadn’t been pickled, I would’ve hightailed it out of that saloon so fast all you would have seen is my dust.”
“Well, your brain was pickled. And don’t worry about your money. I’m keeping the bargain. A McCabe always keeps a bargain.”
“Glad to hear it. So just bring me some clothes and my money, and I’ll go. And I could use the loan of a horse, too.”
The fool just wasn’t getting this. Tess sighed. “That squinty-eyed fellow who showed up in the church with the half-baked grin on his face was my brother, Sean. And he knows something isn’t straight here. If he gets wind that we’re not hitched for real and proper, he’ll go squealing to lawyer Bartlett like the pig he is, and Bartlett will take his side, because he’s a pig too.”
Her groom’s eyes narrowed. “And why should I be concerned about this?”
She threw up her hands. Could it be more obvious? “Because I married you to keep this ranch! What good is wasting three hundred good dollars and going through this nonsense if I lose the ranch anyway? You’ve gotta stick around a few days and make this look real, just until Sean goes back to his hole in California. How hard could that be?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched as he gritted his teeth. “Listen, lady, I don’t have a lot of time to hang around here playing house. You have a problem with your brother? Well, I have problems of my own. And three hundred dollars will help solve them. So keep your bargain, give me what you owe me, and I’ll be on my way. Now.”
She tried to be patient. “You’re not being reasonable.”
“I’m being reasonable for the first time in two days, because I’m sober for the first time in two days.” He exhaled a frustrated sigh, which deflated him enough to make his shoulders sink below the water. “I can’t believe I actually married you.”
That stung. “Hey. Lots of guys would be glad to marry me!”
“Then why didn’t you get one of them?”
“Because I don’t want a permanent husband. Don’t you ever listen?” Her patience threatened to wear thin. “I don’t see that asking you to park yourself here for a few days is expecting so much. After all, you are getting three hundred dollars.”
“So you keep promising.”
He lifted one arm from the water and draped it along the rim of the tub. His fingers had crinkled from the water, but other than that little detail, that arm was remarkably muscled, sprinkled with black hair plastered against sun-bronzed skin. Tess felt a flush turn her own skin warm. She’d seen her daddy in the tub often enough, and Sean too befor
e he left. But the sight of them in the wet altogether had never made her feel hot and dizzy. Tess wondered if Rosie had stoked up the stove too hot.
“Listen, wife.” The emphasis he put on the word made it a mockery. “I’m going to get out of this tub and find some clothes if I have to parade naked in front of everyone on this godforsaken ranch. Then I’m going to walk back into town, if I have to, to catch a stage out of here. So if you don’t want your maidenly modesty outraged, I suggest you get the hell out of here and get my money. Because I’m going to be one unhappy cowboy if you welsh. And you don’t want to see me unhappy.”
His voice had risen in volume, but Tess knew a bluff when she saw one, so she just chuckled smugly, confident that she held all the cards. Then he rose up. Water cascaded from slabs of muscle and ran in streams that outlined every sinew. And everything else. Her eyes widened and an involuntary gasp escaped her mouth.
Her face more fiery than Rosie’s stove, Tess whirled around and squinched her eyes shut, as if she could erase the sight imprinted on her unwilling brain. “I’ll get you some clothes,” she choked out, struggling to regain at least one finger of the upper hand. “But you can wait for your money until I have the deed to this ranch in my hand. So I’d just think about sticking around for a few days, cowboy, because you don’t want to see me unhappy either. Trust me on that.”
With a flourish she didn’t quite feel, she marched out of the kitchen, sweeping the curtain closed behind her. The cussing that followed her out made her almost smile.
JOSH furiously rubbed himself dry with the towel that had been draped across one of the kitchen benches. Damned but that woman had more cojones than most men he knew. What kind of creature was she, anyway? She dressed like a man, talked like a man, swaggered like a man—and apparently had no trouble in outsmarting this particular man. This sorry state of affairs could convince him to never touch liquor again. He couldn’t believe he’d been drunk enough and downright stupid enough to do this to himself.
