“Miss Rose!” Patrick’s Irish brogue sounded sharp as a razor. “Where are you?”
Thorn rolled away from her, tugging his pants up while pulling her skirt down. She fumbled with the buttons on her dress.
“Miss Rose?” Patrick’s boots stomped across the wooden floor.
“Don’t!” Thorn and Rose exclaimed together, and the boots paused.
“What’s going on in there?”
Patrick sounded mean enough to tangle with a cougar, but Thorn bobbed up, brushing the straw from his hair. “Nothing, sir.”
Looking up at Thorn, Rose despaired. His shirt was in a tangle, his Levi’s were buttoned wrong, his face was red and scared and frustrated. He looked just like what he was — a young cowboy who’d been interrupted during his roll in the hay.
Patrick’s explosion proved it. “Ye worthless young half-wit, what have ye been doing with Miss Rose?”
Frantic, Rose added her protestation to Thorn’s. “Nothing, Patrick.”
“Nothing? Then how come ye’re staying out of sight? Haven’t got yerself buttoned up yet?”
She withered with embarrassment, trying harder to get her buttons closed.
Thorn said, “Don’t you talk to her like that! She didn’t do anything. I did it.”
“I never doubted that for a moment. Ye’re nothing but a hoodlum, a no-good half-pint thief and skirt-chaser who’s been after Miss Rose like a stallion in rut.”
“Oh, yeah?” Thorn stepped out of the stall. “My mama says you’ve got quite a story in your background, too, so who’re you to judge me?”
Rose heard the crack, saw Thorn fly backward and hit the stable wall. She cried out as Patrick yelled, “Brat!”
He stomped out of the stable and she ran to Thorn. A bruise puffed his lip and blood trickled out of his mouth. He sat immobile, staring at the empty doorway.
“Let me get you a wet rag,” she said.
But he pushed her away and stood.
She was unsure of his mood, but she knew she didn’t like the savage fury that gathered on his features. “Thorn?”
“Brat?” he muttered. “Hoodlum? Thief?”
“He didn’t mean it, Thorn. He’s been like an uncle to me, and he—”
“Doesn’t think I’m good enough for you. I know what he thinks. What everybody thinks.” He wiped blood off his chin with the back of his hand, and his gaze fell on her father’s best tooled-leather saddle.
“Thorn?” She scrambled to her feet. “Don’t do that.”
He laughed, a harsh and reckless sound. “How do you know what I’m going to do? You think you know so much about me, but you didn’t know I was a hoodlum, did you? A thief, like he said.”
“You don’t steal things — especially not a saddle that’s worth more than any horse in the stable.”
He turned on her, grabbed her arms, and shook her. “I have. I’ve stolen corn out of the fields and pies off a windowsill.”
“Thorn!” She was shocked. As shocked as if he’d confessed to cattle rustling. “Stealing is wrong!”
Perversely pleased, he said, “And one time I stole a book from the traveling teacher.”
“Oh, Thorn.” She covered her ears, not wanting to hear more. “How could you?”
“It’s so damn dull here, Rosie. So damned” — he went and lifted the saddle off the sawhorse — “dull.”
“Please.” She stepped toward him, palm extended. “Please, Thorn.”
“That’s what you said in there.” He jerked his head toward the stall, and repeated, “Please, Thorn. Please. But that was before you knew I was a … a half-pint skirt-chaser.” He weighed the saddle in his hand and looked at her with a crooked smile. “Someday you’re going to be mine. No matter what I do or what I am, you’re going to be mine, and proud of it.”
“Don’t take it.”
He looked at the saddle as if he didn’t know what it was, then at her. “Mine.”
CHAPTER FOUR
On that long ago day, Thorn hadn’t meant the saddle, but he hadn’t returned it, so Rose had done what had to be done. She had turned him over to the sheriff and testified at the trial that sent him to jail.
The fact that his mother had testified that she’d found the saddle in his room — that his own mother had helped send him to prison — meant nothing to Rose. Rose felt totally responsible for his incarceration, and she hadn’t been able to look the woman in the eye since.
She’d done what was right, but at a cost that sometimes seemed too great. When she was alone at night, or when she saw her friends’ children, or when she caught sight of a man who stood with a kind of insolence …
No, she wouldn’t think about Thorn now. No strange horse stood in the empty stall. No strong male body waited to renew acquaintances in the hay.
Odd, that she’d let Thorn spook her so.
She turned to hang up the brushes, and jerked back from the broad male figure that blocked the entrance of the stall. The blood raced in her veins, and if she’d been the screaming type, she’d have let loose a loud one.
Then he spoke, and she felt only foolish.
“Miss Rose? Did I startle ye?”
“Patrick.” She half-laughed, half-gasped. “Yes, you did! You should have made some noise.”
“Same as normal, Miss Rose, but ye were muttering something about spooks and didn’t hear me.”
Rose blushed, glad of the darkness. But she didn’t need light to see the bandy-legged son of Ireland who tended her ranch. She knew every line and angle of Patrick O’Brien, keeper of her horses, foreman of the ranch, gambler par excellence. As a man of fifty, he had left Ireland and everything he had there and taken a ship to Galveston. From there he’d found his way to the Corey Ranch where he’d worked for the last twenty years.
Now, as Patrick pulled a lucifer from his shirt pocket and scraped it across the sandpaper, she said, “I sold Starbright tonight.”
The lucifer flared with fire, and its rotten-egg smell filled the air. Patrick stared at her, his sagging, hound-dog face astonished. When the match had burned down to his fingers, he gave a pithy oath, blew it out, and stomped it into the floor. “Ye sold me darlin’ filly?”
“To Sonny for Sue Ellen.” Lighting the lantern herself, Rose fixed him in the beam. “For four hundred and fifty dollars.”
She gloated as Patrick staggered back, clasping his hands at his breast. “Four hundred and fifty dollars? From that skinflint?”
“There’s one way around Sonny, and that’s to tell him Royal Lewis bought a horse for his wife.”
“But he didn’t!” Realizing he might not know the whole story, Patrick asked, “Did he?”
“No, but when Ana Marie Lewis gets done with him, he will.”
Patrick cackled. “Ye’re a wicked one, ye are, and I’ve long tried to teach ye the way of such dealing.” He cocked his head, his bright eyes gleaming. “But I thought ye’d said ‘twas dishonest to tempt people by appealing to their envy.”
Feeling abashed and uncomfortable, she confessed, “Actually, it was Sue Ellen who did it. I tried — I really did, but I couldn’t think of a story to tell Sonny that would make him buy that horse.”
“No, ye’ll never get the way of it. Ye’re too honest for yer own good, ye are.” He grinned. “But I’ll raise a glass to Sue Ellen when next I’m in Fort Davis.”
“You do that, for now we can put up the stable before the first norther comes through,” she said with satisfaction. “I’ll order the lumber and call the neighbors, and we’ll have a barn raising. Nobody can steal those horses once they’re padlocked inside.”
“Mother of God. That’s the truth. I hadn’t realized.” Patrick scrubbed his fingers through his thick, gray hair and tugged the ends. The pain seemed to wake him, for he gave her a hug. “That’ll be a relief, for sure, for sure. Think we’ll be for doing it by Christmas?”
“I think we’ll be doing it next week. Now that the train comes through, we can get the lumber right away.”<
br />
Patrick nodded sagely. “Ye’ve been looking tired lately. Have ye been keeping vigil for this bastard—”
“Don’t swear.”
“—for this horse thief?”
“Just occasionally. Just at night when I can’t sleep, anyway. You can’t watch all the time, Patrick. I worry about you.”
She did worry about him, more than she could say. When her father had been alive, Patrick had had to keep his drinking and gambling under control. Now he staggered more often than she liked to see, and he often came back from Fort Davis all sad and bedraggled. The burden of watching for horse thieves and doing a good portion of the work had aged Patrick. Yet regardless of his faults, she couldn’t forget his loyalty. When her parents died, he’d put his whole faith in her, refusing to seek greener pastures. In staying, he took the biggest gamble of his life — that her success would provide for his livelihood.
No one had been prouder or more astonished when she’d sold her first four-year-olds, last spring, for two hundred fifty dollars apiece. Now, with Sonny’s disdain for Patrick still pealing in her mind, she added, “You taught me to ride, you taught me to love horses, and you’ve given me the benefit of all your experience in fine Irish stables. I don’t say it often enough, but you’re my dearest friend in the world. You know that.”
She guessed he was embarrassed by her affection, for he ducked his head and shuffled through the straw toward the exit. “Did ye count the horses outside?”
She accepted his change of subject. “They’re all here.”
“They were all here when I went to bed, too. Maybe I scared that bas— that horse thief away last week when I chased after him. Maybe I wounded him when I shot.”
Closing Goliath into his stall and taking the lantern, she kept her voice even. “I hope he dies of lead poisoning.”
“Lost eleven good horses to that” — he paused significantly — “horse thief, and he’s not satisfied yet. I’ve started sleeping in the hayloft, Miss Rose, to keep an eye on the stable.”
“But he hasn’t stolen from the stable,” she said automatically.
“The best horses are in the stable.” Patrick jerked his thumb toward Goliath and Starbright. “And a clever thief can pick any lock. He’ll come around, I wager, but I’ll be after him straight off. Ye can count on it.”
“Don’t chase him,” Rose said, feeling cold with the threat to her prizes. “Shoot him where he stands.”
“Miss Rose!” Patrick protested, sounding sincerely shocked. “A lady should never think such violent thoughts.”
“This lady—” She broke off, struck by the vision of Thorn falling, shot, dripping blood, dying.
A shudder rattled her, and Patrick said, “See? Ye don’t mean it.”
Straightening her shoulders, she said, “But I do. Better to shoot a horse thief than to hang him.”
Now Patrick shuddered. “Hanging’s a cruel way to die, Miss Rose.”
“Yes.” They stepped outside and strolled to the corral, and Patrick draped himself over the rail while she stood erect and unsupported. Unable to help herself, she again counted the horses, then gave in to her appalling curiosity. “What did this horse thief look like, when you saw him?”
Watching the horses with a keen eye, Patrick ignored her query at first. “I think Lady Hypatia ought to be bred to Goliath next. With their lines, the foal will be a handsome thing.” Then he rolled a cigarette, licked the paper, and lit it with another lucifer. “Couldn’t tell what that villain looked like. He was on horseback, fleeing from me.”
Fidgeting with the five-foot length of thin hair rope hanging on the post, she demanded, “Short or tall? Thin or fat?”
“Tall, with broad shoulders. A cowboy, probably, by the way he sat the saddle.”
“A good horseman?”
“Born in the saddle. He wore a dark hat and he smiled at me, like he was taunting me.” Patrick warmed to his subject, and lowered his voice dramatically. “Even in the dark, I could see the flash of his teeth.”
It was a description that fit a hundred men in Presidio County.
And a description that fit Thorn.
She had to warn Patrick. She didn’t want to, for Patrick knew a good sight too much about her and Thorn and their early, silly passion, but it wouldn’t be fair if she didn’t. Abruptly, she said, “Thorn is back.”
Patrick almost swallowed his cigarette. “The Maxwell boy? Here?”
“He was at the dance tonight.” Lowering her gaze, she watched her hands as they formed a noose with the end of the rope. “I wondered if he was our horse thief.”
“No, I’d heard rumors he—” Patrick stopped. “How long has he been back?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. He sidestepped the question.”
“I’m surprised he hasn’t visited ye here yet.”
Rose glanced at the house, and thrust the rope into her capacious apron pocket.
“Ye did send him to prison, Miss Rose, and him thinking ye were so sweet on him, ye’d let him take what he wished. And he does have a history of thieving.” Patrick puffed until the cigarette tip glowed, then blew a lungful of smoke across the corral. “Stealing the horses, heh?” He nodded. “Ye might have a point, Miss Rose. Ye might have a point.”
“I know,” Rose said sadly. She bade Patrick goodnight and, feet dragging, made her way to the house. It didn’t welcome her as the stable had. It hadn’t been more than a place to stay since her parents died — a spinster’s home, a barren place.
But tonight it seemed different, almost as if a fresh breeze had blown through and wiped the musty air away. She lifted the lantern and glanced around, trying to put her finger on the difference, but nothing was out of place. Nothing, except … the hair lifted on the back of her head.
Her bedroom door. Her inner sanctum. The place where she dreamed a girl’s dreams and wept a woman’s tears. She never closed it, yet now it was shut tight. Moving toward it, she clasped the doorknob in her hand and felt the vibration, the presence of a foreign being.
She almost backed away, but nothing could make a coward of Rose Laura Corey. Prepared to fight, she flung open the door.
The door bounced against the wall, rousing the figure that rested on her bed.
“Rosie, darlin’, you don’t have to be so rambunctious,” Thorn rebuked her, pushing his dark hat back off his eyes. “I would have woken up for you regardless.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Grim, frustrated, and trembling, Rose stared at Thorn. “What are you doing here?”
His long figure covered the bed from headboard to footboard. His broad shoulders obliterated the pillow. “Why, Rose, you’re whispering again. You got a cold or a sore throat?”
“Patrick is out there, and I don’t want him to know you’re in my bedroom.”
“Ah, you’ve still got Patrick, do you?” Thorn’s face twisted. “Is he as nosy as ever?”
“Yes. So,” — she pointed toward the window — “get out.”
He pouted. “You sure are unfriendly considering the favor I just did you.”
“Favor?” Remembering the dance and the gossip that would result, her voice rose, but he lifted his finger to his lips. Dropping her voice again, she repeated, “Favor? What favor?”
“I rode all the way here to protect you.”
“You followed right behind me?”
“No, I stayed back a ways. Didn’t think you’d want me intruding on your fun.”
“What fun?” she demanded.
“Riding so wild and fierce, like a goddess in some pagan tale.” Lifting his head from the pillow, he tossed his Stetson aside and ruffled his dark hair. “You really need a breastplate and a Viking helmet with horns. That’d scare the wolves off your track.”
She recalled her own heady excitement. The knowledge that she’d been observed left her feeling raw and exposed. “I have no doubt it would take something more substantial than a breastplate and horns to dislodge the largest wolf.”
“You
mean me?” His wide eyes and tangled hair might have looked innocent and boyish on another man. But on the hard-bitten, rough Thorn, they signified only danger. “Why, I’m not a wolf. I’m a gentleman. I couldn’t let a lady such as yourself come so many miles alone. There are ruffians and thieves out there. Desperate men who would seek to strip you of your dearest possession.”
In her mind, Goliath reared up, slashing his hooves as he fought to avoid capture. “And what is that?”
He blinked in feigned astonishment. “Why, your virtue, of course. You do still have your virtue?”
She wanted desperately to give a scathing retort, but before she could articulate a word, he nodded. “But of course you still have your virtue. That’s obvious to every man who danced with you tonight.”
“But you—” she stopped.
“Yes. I was the only man who danced with you tonight.” Propping one pointed boot on the other, he studied the pattern stitched into the leather. “But then, you were the only woman I danced with.”
“No!” she cried. “You didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“You didn’t make me the talk of the county by ignoring every other woman—”
“I wouldn’t say I ignored them.”
“—practically undressing me on the dance floor—”
“Your clothes were restrictive.”
“—then leaving as soon as I left.”
He turned a sad, lovelorn expression to her. “Did you think I could dance with anyone else after I danced with you — the most beautiful woman there? Why, compared to you, those other women could charge to haunt a house.”
With a muffled groan, she flounced away, and her train swept the floor with satisfying elegance. Perhaps the dress was old, but it made her feel stylish and womanly — and that ignited her temper. Why should she feel any different, merely because Thorn was watching her?
“You seem mighty put out, Rosie, and I would think you’d be ecstatic,” Thorn said. “Didn’t you sell a horse called Starbright to Sonny Pogue for a vastly inflated price?”
The man could ruffle her feathers without even half trying. “That horse is worth every cent. She’s a combination of the best Irish racing horses and the toughest wild Texas horses, and she’ll make Sue Ellen a superb mount.”
Wild Texas Rose Page 3