by Jodi Thomas
Tess stuck her head out from beneath the blankets. “What business?”
“Just you get up and find out. And don’t be too long about it.”
Tess grumbled as she rolled out of bed, pulled on clean jeans and a cotton shirt, and quickly plaited her hair into one long braid. She couldn’t think of a thing she needed to take care of in the kitchen, except maybe grabbing some breakfast. What had Rosie all stirred up this morning?
She found out when she walked into the kitchen to find Josh sitting at the table. At the sight of him, her dreams hit her smack in the chest and nearly stopped her breath.
She greeted him normally, even though heat climbed into her face. “Ransom.”
“Tess.”
His expression looked a bit grim. And at his feet lay a small carpetbag that belonged to Miguel. What was this? After last night, he couldn’t still be . . . still be—
“I’m leaving this morning, Tess.”
Her heart nearly stopped. “Leaving?”
“I told you I would go at the end of two more days. Two days is up.”
Right. But he would change his mind if Tess told him she wanted him to be a real husband, that he could be master—well, assistant master—of the Diamond T. Any man’s head would turn at a precious gift like the Diamond T.
Rosie stood by the stove, plump arms crossed over her chest, regarding Tess with a “what are you going to do now?” expression.
“Rosie, git!” Tess didn’t intend to make this bargain in front of witnesses.
Rosie got, but not without sending Tess a look over her shoulder. She pulled the curtain closed behind her, leaving Tess and Josh alone. Tess started talking before she lost her nerve.
“I know you said two days, but things have changed. I don’t think it would be a bad idea for you to stay. I mean, at first I thought you were a sot and a bum, but you’re not. You’re steady, and you’re good with horses, and you know cattle. And . . . and I don’t mind your company. Not at all. I figure we’re already married, so that’s out of the way. You might as well stay.”
He replied with an awkward silence, and the muscle at the hinge of his jaw twitched. Tess tried to tell herself that he was overwhelmed by his good fortune, but her heart sank.
“You could run things right along with me,” she said. “This is a fine ranch, with good people. It’s a better life than, well, whatever . . .”
Tess stared at the toe of her boot, wanting to take back her babbling. She sounded stupid, saying all the wrong things. But what did a girl say to a man to get him to stay?
The crease between his brows deepened. “Tess—”
“Last night . . .” She couldn’t let him start. Somehow, he had to understand. “Last night you did great. And we . . . we . . .” Did she actually need to mention the kiss? The kiss she had started and he had finished, that had turned into two kisses, then three, and then a silence that had seemed heavy with affection, or maybe something more urgent than mere affection.
“Tess . . .” He sighed. “Last night . . . I took advantage of you. I apologize.”
He took advantage of her?
“I can’t stay, Tess. I have a place of my own, over by Arrivaca, and I sure as hell need to get back to it. I’ll come back and make sure you get that deed of yours, and then we can talk about this. And if you want, you can just forget the money. I’ll get what I need somewhere else.”
A lead weight descended on Tess’s stomach. She thought she might actually throw up. The money. He cared about the money, not the Diamond T. Not her. Of course. How could she have forgotten about their bargain? Josh Ransom had married her for money, had stayed at the ranch day after day, because of the money.
The lead weight started to heat, to bubble, to boil, firing her blood and sending color racing into her cheeks.
“I’ll get your goddamned money.”
He followed her to the jar where she kept her cash, and when she turned around, he stood so close that she nearly slammed into him. With a forceful push, she knocked him backwards. “Go ahead and leave.” She stuffed a roll of bills into his shirt pocket. “And don’t do me any favors by coming back. I can take care of myself. I can take care of my ranch, and my own business. And I don’t the hell need you!”
Then she fled the room before he could see the tears gathering in her eyes.
Chapter Five
JOSH SAT BACK hard onto the stony ground, his clothes as well as his hands—and one long smear on his cheek—grimy with blood and muck. He exhaled a deep sigh, every bit as exhausted as the cow that had just given birth, but also content in the day, the blue sky, the warm spring air, and the satisfaction of being where he wanted to be and doing what he wanted to do.
Only one thing wasn’t quite right in his life, and that was something he didn’t want to think about right then. He was too tired, and his mind wasn’t up to the task of Tess McCabe.
No, he wouldn’t think about her.
The cow lumbered to her feet, and Josh did the same. The bull calf, eyes blinking at the world he had just been launched into, uttered a wondering bleat.
“Okay, kid.” Josh rubbed the newborn’s slimy neck with rough affection. “Let’s get you on your feet.”
He gave the wobbly little creature a hand at getting all four feet beneath him, then nodded in satisfaction as the little fellow instinctively went for the chow wagon. Birth never failed to leave him in awe. It was a wondrous thing to behold.
Some men, a bothersome inner voice nagged, got to watch their own babies open eyes to their first view of the world. Men with wives. Men with families. Men who didn’t have to face an empty house at the end of each day.
But the Double R ranch house wasn’t empty, even though David had hightailed off to look for gold in Colorado. Marguerita, chubby and amiable, cooked, cleaned, and tried to ride herd on every part of his life. Eight hired hands lived in the bunkhouse only a hundred feet from the house, and more often than not, they tromped through the Double R kitchen, begging an extra roll or piece of pie from Rita or stopping in the main room to talk about this cow or that horse or the rustlers who liked to heist a few beeves and then hop over the border to Mexico.
No, Josh didn’t lack for people in his life. He had plenty of people.
But not the right person, the annoying voice insisted. Josh did his best to ignore it.
He left the cow and her new son to themselves and led his horse the short distance to a tank just over the rise. The little man-made depression trapped rainwater for the cattle—when the weather blessed them with rain. Today the tank stood full. The storm two weeks ago that had trapped the Diamond T cows had been followed by smaller rains that filled the depression and turned the landscape spring green.
The green of Tess McCabe’s eyes.
Damn! He wasn’t going to think about her. Josh stripped off his filthy shirt and dunked himself into the water, head, shoulders, and chest. The cold, clean shock felt good. This was probably the same cold rainwater that had fallen from the sky two weeks ago when they had struggled to save those blockheaded beeves. Images crowded his mind. Tess with her hair drenched and hanging in her face. Tess plunging into the water, fearless of danger. Tess leaning over and kissing him, a wet, aromatic dog in between them.
Kissing him . . . What a kiss that had been. It had inspired him to throw away all gentlemanly instinct and take full advantage of her momentary weakness. What a kiss indeed. It had heated his blood all through the night and convinced him that he had to leave then, right then, or get so deeply entangled with that astonishing, surprising, engaging woman that he would never break free.
Had he truly broken free? Did he really want to break free?
Josh groaned and dunked himself again. Surely enough cold water would bring him back to his senses.
But later that night Tess crept back into his thoughts as he sat in front of the fireplace mending a shirt by the light of a kerosene lamp. Rita came in from the kitchen, where she had been washing the supper dishes. Eve
n with his eyes on the torn seam of the shirt he felt her disapproving frown.
“If you would get yourself a wife like most men you wouldn’t have to do that, Señor Ransom.”
He had a wife. Sort of. But not really.
“What do I need with a wife when you’re the best cook north of the Mexican border, Rita?”
“Ha! Excuses! You are just like your father, may he rest in peace! The Ransom men don’t grow from boys to men. You, and Señor David, and your father. When a boy grows to a man, he takes a good wife, raises a family.”
Josh gave up and put the shirt aside. “Rita, my father had a wife, in case you didn’t notice. She’s living in Tucson with my sister.”
“You see!” She waved a chubby finger in his direction. “What woman did he choose? A boy’s dream, your mother is, not a man’s. Soft and beautiful, fit only for decorating some rich man’s arm. It is no wonder that she wilted like a flower here. A ranching man must choose wisely—a real woman, not a flower.”
“Marguerita . . .” He always called her by her full name when she annoyed him. Not that annoying him bothered her a bit. She seemed to think of it as her duty. “Why the lecture?”
She shrugged. “The place is very lonely right now. Señor David is gone.”
“He’ll be back when he gets tired of looking for gold.”
“But not to stay. And you, señor, have had your face dragging on the ground since you came home.”
“I have not.”
“You should be happy. You have the cattle back, don’t you? My man Carlos says the calving has started, and everything is well. So I think to myself, why does Señor Joshua frown all the time and bark at his people like an angry dog?”
“I do not frown all the time, and I only bark when barking is needed.”
She answered with an indignant “Hmph! You live an unnatural life, señor. Man was not meant by the Almighty to live without a wife.”
“Only women think that,” he shot back.
She dismissed that with a wave. “Boy, that’s what you are. A boy. You Ransoms never grow up.” On that sour observation, she donned her shawl, grabbed up the shirt he had been mending, and marched out to join her husband, Carlos, the foreman, in the little house they shared. “I will take care of the shirt,” she groused, “because you do not have a wife as you should. So the rest of us must suffer. Hmph.”
Josh had to smile as Rita banged the door behind her. The lecture rang familiar, because he got one at least once a month. Rita wanted children to fuss over. Hers were grown and gone, so now she wanted his.
If Marguerita knew he was legally hitched, she would dance with glee—until she met Tess, that is. Tess McCabe sure as hell wouldn’t be caught dead mending any man’s shirt. Josh would be willing to bet on it. And he doubted Tess could bake a pie or make fluffy biscuits.
But she could ride as if she were born on a horse. She could throw a rope over a set of horns or snag a steer’s foot in a single toss. Flooding rivers didn’t faze her. Cold and wet didn’t stop her. She feared nothing—except losing her home and her way of life, and maybe being laughed at by people who didn’t understand her worth.
No one who really knew Tess McCabe would laugh at her, Josh reflected. She marched to a different drum, perhaps, but along that march she had become a special sort of woman. Strong, proud, undaunted by things that sent most women into a tizzy. But when she took off those work clothes and got dressed up like a woman, run for cover, because Tess could knock a man’s socks right off his feet.
Or kiss his lips right off his face. Tess McCabe kissed like an angel. No, not an angel, she kissed like a woman. A hell of a woman.
A woman who would likely shoot him if she saw him again, considering the way he had left. By now she would have remembered why she didn’t want a man messing up her life. And she sure as hell wouldn’t want to leave her precious Diamond T to be his wife for real, even if he asked her.
But then, there had been that kiss. . . .
MIGUEL scraped the mud from his boots before he came into the house, where Tess was helping Rosie put dinner on the table. The aroma of Rosie’s beef stew mingled with the warm scent of freshly baked bread, and Miguel inhaled appreciatively.
“You look like a drowned rat,” Tess commented.
“You didn’t look much better an hour ago,” Rosie reminded Tess.
Tess, Miguel, and Luis had spent most of the day beating the brush looking for mired cattle. Tess had come in early to look over the accounts. Her freshly braided hair still dripped water down the back of her shirt.
“Can’t complain about the rain,” Miguel said. “The way the cows are dropping calves, we’ll need the good pasture this summer.”
“You’ll never hear me complain about rain,” Tess agreed. “Not in this country. Even if it does make more work.” She smiled. “Even if it does make you—and me too—look like something that the high water swept in.”
She put a tureen of stew on the table as Miguel sat in his accustomed spot. “Where’s the others?”
“In the bunkhouse, cleaning up. Henry’s been cleaning the barn all day, and he smells worse than a cow. And you can’t see Luis for the mud. Compared to those hombres, I look dressed for company. And speaking of company, Don Sebastian de Moros will be along any day now, I’m thinking. I heard in town yesterday that he’s bringing another herd of those long-legged Spanish horses he breeds. I was thinking we could pick up a few from him this year. Improve the mustang blood in what we’re turning out.”
“He always wants a lot of money,” Tess said, tucking into her plate of stew.
“Worth it,” Miguel replied.
“Maybe. We can think about it when he shows up.” Normally, Tess loved an evening of talk about horseflesh, cattle, and plans for the future of the Diamond T, but lately she couldn’t maintain much interest. She still loved the land, loved the ranch, but her former single-minded concentration had disappeared. Her mood had been gloomy as the gray spring skies.
A week later, the sun shone brightly from a clear blue sky and wildflowers perfumed the warm spring air, but Tess’s mood hadn’t improved. It dropped yet another notch as the familiar figure of her brother, Sean, rode down the road toward the house.
“Just what I need,” she muttered to Rosie. They were busy hanging wash on a line strung between the main house and the little house on the other side of the courtyard.
“Have patience, Tessie girl. He is family.”
“Which means we’re stuck with him for life,” Tess grumbled. “Joy.”
Sean rode up to the courtyard wall and grinned at Tess. “Howdy, Sis. How’s life treating you?”
“Thought you’d be headed back to California by now,” Tess grumbled. “Heard that old Maisie at the hotel threatened to take a broom to you unless you paid your bill.”
“A minor misunderstanding,” Sean said. “We worked it out.”
Tess knew that Sean had been hanging around town talking to lawyer Bartlett. She’d had reports from the men that her brother spied on the ranch as well, probably trying to see if her so-called husband was still here. Tess had grown so weary of this deception she could spit, preferably hitting both Sean and lawyer Bartlett with the same effort.
“You’re looking good, Tess. Marriage must agree with you.”
“Right,” Tess snapped. “I’m sure you mean that.”
“Mind if I stay and chat awhile?”
“I could stop you?”
He just smiled.
While Sean put his horse in the barn, Tess thought furiously about what she would do. If he had been slinking around as the men said, he probably knew that Josh was gone.
With more violence than necessary, she snapped a wet shirt into the breeze with a sharp cracking sound. Had it connected with someone’s backside, the wet material would have delivered an attention-getting sting. She could think of several backsides that would be good targets.
“Miguel is waving from the casita,” Rosie told her. “He w
ants you to come.”
“Later,” Tess groused. “First I have to send Sean packing. Somehow.”
Sean ambled through the courtyard gate, picked up a bedsheet, and helped Tess pin it on the clothesline. “I don’t see your husband about. What’s his name?”
“Joshua.” Joshua Ransom. She wouldn’t forget the name again. Not ever, as much as she might try.
“Haven’t seen him in town, either.”
Tess kept her mouth shut. Lying made a person tired, and she didn’t have the energy for it.
“I found out a thing or two about your husband. Want to hear?”
“I doubt you know anything I don’t,” Tess said through clenched teeth. “After all, we are married.”
They picked up another wet sheet. “Did you know he has a big spread over by Arrivaca?”
“So?”
“And his brother, the fool, gambled away their entire herd of beeves? Ransom came to town because he had a friend at the bank. Tried to hit him up for a loan to get his cattle back.”
So that was why he had wanted her three hundred dollars. That was why he had been desperate enough to marry her. Tess could understand a man—or a woman—going to any lengths to save a ranch. Look at what she had done. Too bad her scheme seemed doomed to fail, thanks to Sean and that lizard Bartlett.
She hoped Josh Ransom had gotten his beeves back.
“Tess!” This from Miguel, impatiently beckoning from the doorway of the little house. Tess ignored him. Whatever it was, she could take care of it later.
“Are you two gonna pin up that sheet or stand there staring at each other like two bad-ass dogs?” Rosie complained.
Stiff-jawed, Tess draped the sheet over the line. Sean sighed unhappily. “Tess, listen, will you?”
“I got ears.”
“This isn’t anywhere near a real marriage you got with this Ransom fellow. You know it. I know it. And it won’t be hard to prove to Bartlett, who’s got the judge wrapped around his finger, anyway, if it comes to that. But hell, I don’t want this ranch. To me it’s just a hunk of dirt and sand that’s full of bad memories.”
