Jacey's Reckless Heart

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  At the last possible second, he straightened up, turned, and froze. Wide-eyed and mouth agape, he dropped the rocks and dove out of the way. His momentum sent him rolling and cussing over the rocky shore and into the muddy water. At the water’s edge, and splashed by Zant’s antics, Old Blood was startled and reared, pawing the air and bellowing his rage.

  By the time Jacey reined in Knight and turned him around, Zant was up, dripping, and making for her. Flecks of blood marked his face and hands where he’d rolled over the unforgiving rocks. Swallowing hard, Jacey figured that running him down had done nothing to improve his mood, judging by his red-faced, evil-eyed expression.

  Pointing stiff-armed at her, his every step a calculated one, he glared at her. “Get down off that damned nag. I’m going to whip your butt, just like I promised.”

  Using her legs to control Knight, Jacey backed him up. Zant kept coming. “Back off, Chapelo. I didn’t mean no harm. I didn’t even know you were there.”

  Zant never slowed down. “Get down. Or I’ll pull you down.”

  Jacey made Knight sidestep when the outlaw lunged at her. “I mean it. Back off. I said I was sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as you’re going to be, Jacey Lawless.” He lunged again for her, trying to capture her by her waist.

  Knight snorted and lowered his head, using it as a battering ram as he charged Zant. Jacey reined in the stiff-legged gelding at the last second. “He’ll do it, too, outlaw. Leave me be. I’m warning you.”

  “Get down off that devil right now. We’ve got some talking to do.”

  Still edging Knight back, Jacey called out, “Talk? You don’t want to talk. You want to fight. What’s eating at you, Chapelo?”

  As if her words were a solid barrier, Zant stopped short, his arms at his sides. Breathing hard, he stared at her. He swiped his wet sleeve across his brow. Then he bent forward from the waist to rest his hands on his bent knees. His head hung between his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Jacey. I’m just so damned sorry. First my father. And now Don Rafael.”

  Hurting for him and for herself, Jacey reined Knight to a stand and dismounted, all the while keeping her troubled gaze on Zant. Almost absently, and out of sheer habit, she looped and tied the reins’ ends loosely over her saddle’s pommel, allowing enough length for her horse to stretch his neck down to drink. She then hit Knight on his rump. The winded gelding needed no further provocation to head for the water.

  After Knight passed in front of her, Jacey hesitated only a second before walking over to Zant. Stopping beside him, close enough to touch him, she watched the water dripping off him onto the desert ground. His breathing was labored. She put her hand out to touch him, but then withdrew it. She opened her mouth two or three times to say something, but each time changed her mind about what she wanted to say. And so, said nothing.

  After a moment or two of quiet, marked only by a hawk crying out overhead and the scamper of a big lizard fleeing from one bush to another, Zant straightened up. He didn’t look at her, but directed his gaze to the razor-edged cliff of the rocky slope about fifty yards from the water. “Shooting him would be too good for the old son of a bitch.”

  Jacey sucked in her bottom lip, bit at it, and then let out her breath. “You mean Don Rafael?”

  Soaking wet, still staring upward, and putting his hands to his waist, Zant nodded. “Yeah. I had no idea, Jacey. You have to believe me.”

  Jacey nodded, drinking in his strong-jawed profile. “I do.”

  As if he hadn’t heard her, he went on. “I was in prison for five years. I didn’t have any idea. But now, a lot of things are coming clear and clean. A lot of things at Cielo Azul. I couldn’t figure out what the men were talking about, about me being the true jefe. But now? I think I understand.”

  “What’s a ‘hef-eh’?”

  Zant turned to Jacey, eyeing her as if he’d really been talking to the cliff and she’d just popped up here next to him. “It means ‘chief’. Or ‘boss’.”

  Jacey nodded. “Oh.” Then, looking around her, remembering what she’d seen him doing when she came around the bend, she looked up at him. “What were you doing with all those rocks just now? And why’d you take out so fast from the Buford place? Were you trying to lose me?”

  “No. I just lost my temper. Got too mad at Don Rafael to sit still any longer.” Zant then quirked up a corner of his mouth. And darned if his expression, didn’t turn … well, sheepish. Jacey frowned up at him, trying to ignore the damp lock of black hair that fell over his forehead, giving him a wicked yet playful look. “The rocks … I was throwing ’em.”

  “Throwing ’em? At what?”

  He chuckled to himself, and then raised his hand as if to tug at his Stetson. Only, it wasn’t on his head. He looked around and then turned toward the water. Jacey followed his long-legged strides, stopping a ways from the shore’s edge. But Zant didn’t. Already wet, he stopped long enough to tug his boots off and throw them at the water’s edge. He then waded in about knee-deep and caught his Stetson as it floated by. From the middle of the current, he called out, “I was throwing them at anything that moved. And some things that didn’t.”

  Watching him slog back out, shaking his hat and reshaping the black felt as best he could, Jacey persisted. “Why?”

  He waited until he’d walked up the incline to where she stood before he answered her. “Because I was mad. Still am.” With that, he put his dripping hat on his head and undid his gunbelt. Examining his Colt, he shook his head and frowned. “Damned gun is soaked through. I’ll have to spend the evening cleaning it.” He then looked over at her. “Get my boots, will you?”

  Involved in their conversation, and eyeing his every movement, Jacey obediently fetched them, dropping them at his feet when he indicated she should do so. Zant tossed his gunbelt down atop them. Jacey brushed her hands together and dried them on her skirt. “Who’re you mad at—besides me? Don Rafael?”

  Zant nodded as he began unbuttoning his chambray shirt. “Yep.”

  Her gaze locking on his moving hands as they opened his shirt, Jacey finally remembered to ask, “What are you going to do about him?”

  Zant tugged the sodden shirt over his head, turned it right side out, and headed farther inland. “Bring that stuff there.”

  Suddenly put out with his ordering her around, Jacey made no move to obey as she watched his retreating back. He stopped in front of a thorny bush that fronted a nearly horizontal slab of outthrust rock. Marking the angle of the sun, he placed his shirt on the bush so it could catch the day’s last warming rays.

  He then turned as if expecting her to be right behind him. Jacey watched him as he spotted her at the water’s edge. She put her hands to her waist, and waited. Zant shook his head. “Please? Please bring them here. Is that better?”

  Well, some. Jacey scooped up the dripping items and trod heavily to the man. “Here.” She dumped them in his waiting arms.

  “Thanks.” He slung his gunbelt over his shoulder, removed his Stetson to set it atop the bush, and then upended his boots, shaking out the last drops of water. He positioned them on the ground, at the base of the bush and angled up on the toes to catch the sun inside them. Only then did he stand up and resume their discussion. “What’d you ask me a minute ago?”

  Jacey had to think about it. “Oh, yeah. I asked you what you were going to do about Don Rafael.”

  “Ahh. Don Rafael. Maybe kill him, if I have to.”

  “Kill him? Your own grandfather? Zant, you can’t do that.”

  He began opening the button-fly front of his denims. His combination-suit-covered chest and biceps bulged with his hands’ motions. “Why can’t I?”

  As if just realizing the man was undressing in front of her, when he began skinning the heavy denim fabric over his hips, Jacey backed up and looked down to study her boots. The fire on her cheeks could heat up the surrounding desert. “Because you wouldn’t be … any better than he is, if you did.”

  “Who says I am any
way?”

  His words brought her head up. But his state of undress caught her reply in her throat. His denims were now laid out next to his shirt and hat. His gunbelt still rode his shoulder. And he, himself, stood before her in his soaked white underdrawers. The wet fabric, stretching from his neck to his ankles, left nothing underneath to the imagination. Nothing. Drawing in a shocked breath, she spun around. “Put some danged clothes on, Chapelo.”

  “I intend to,” he drawled to her back. “But first I’ve got to get out of these wet ones. And it’s your fault they’re wet. Once I peel off my drawers, I’ll go get my dry clothes out of my saddlebags.”

  Jacey spun to her right, heading for the man’s stallion. “I’ll go get them. You … stay right here. And cover yourself or something.”

  His chuckle followed her a few steps before he called out, “Think you can get Sangre to let you that close to him?”

  Over her shoulder, Jacey called back, “Either he’ll let me, or Old Blood will run with blood.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth before she was tackled around the waist by a big, warm, and wet somebody, and carried under his arm like a sack of flour toward the water. Her slouch hat went one way, her Colt another, her long braid swung wildly in her face … and she went sputtering into the water with that danged war-whooping Chapelo.

  Screaming, fighting, kicking, cussing, Jacey nevertheless ended up being tossed like a carcass into the deepest part of the muddy river. Skidding along the slippery rocks on her bottom, she grabbed for handholds, found none, and sat hard on her backside. The sluggish current was still strong enough to nearly roll her over and dunk her.

  Maddened beyond rage, Jacey fumbled for and finally found a toehold—and her sheathed knife. Gripping it in her fist, she rose up out of the water like an avenging goddess and looked everywhere for Chapelo. Or tried to. Water streamed into her eyes. She coughed hoarsely. Cussed loudly. Made screeching, enraged sounds and called out for his blood. “Where are you, Chapelo? Show yourself, you big coward! I dare you!”

  She was again grabbed from behind and pushed down in the water. Squawking like a wet hen, she snarled and tried to turn around in the now churning current. But couldn’t. Cursing at her heavy, water-filled boots, she stumbled to a stand and—had her knife wrenched out of her hand and sent flying onto the shore. It hit with a metallic clunk among the rocks. Her lips pulled back over her teeth in a snarl, she launched herself at the big target that was the laughing Chapelo.

  The big skunk handled her easily. He held her wrists and … that was about all he had to do. She was too weighted down with wet clothes and brimming boots to do much more than scream at him. “What the hell did you do that for, you mangy coyote? Let me go. I mean it! Right now.”

  “Or you’ll what?”

  Locked in his grip, as tight and effective as handcuffs, Jacey seethed and glared and tried to come up with an appropriately dire threat. “Or I’ll … skin you alive. And your horse. That’s what.”

  “Ewww, please don’t. I’m really scared now.”

  Jacey froze for a moment, staring up into his mocking face. “What in the living hell has gotten into you, Chapelo? Why’d you dunk me like that? What if I couldn’t swim? What then?”

  “The water’s only knee-deep. You couldn’t drown.”

  Jacey looked down at the water. Knee-deep to him. Mid-thigh to her. And back up at him. “You didn’t tell me the why of it.”

  “I thought you needed a little cooling down.”

  “Me? You’re the one who was hot and mad.”

  “Yeah. And you’re the one who was just hot.”

  “What?”

  “I saw the way you were looking at me.”

  “What?” Was that the only word left to her, she had to wonder.

  He let go of her wrists. “Go ahead, deny it. You want me.”

  “Want you?” Jacey lowered her arms and put her hands to her waist, carrying on their conversation as if they stood in a drawing room and not in the middle of a muddy river out in the godforsaken desert of the Arizona Territory. “You think I want you? Hell, maybe the sheriffs in four states want you. But not me.”

  The sun glinted off his smiling face, brightening his black eyes and white teeth. Even his growth of beard shone bluish along his jaw. The big, muscled outlaw dared to reach out and gently knuckle her nose. “Liar.”

  Jacey glared up at him. “Kiss my ass, Chapelo.”

  A grin of pure evil, one that would surely delight Satan’s soul, spread across his face, even crinkling the skin at the corners of his eyes. Right there in the water, he began unbuttoning his combination suit. “Sweetheart, you read my mind.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jacey began backing upriver. Not only did she have to face him down, her hands outstretched as if to ward him off, but she had to fight the current, which wanted to push her into him. “Don’t even think it, Zant.”

  “Oh, so now it’s Zant?” His angled chin and slanting eyes made him pretty scary. And unpredictable. But her choices were either to watch his face … or stare at his muscled chest and the crisp sprinkling of hairs revealed there by his partially unbuttoned combination-suit.

  Jacey swallowed—about a pint of muddy river—and brazened it out. “Zant. Chapelo. Outlaw. Gunslinger. Take your pick.”

  “How about lover?”

  “Never.”

  “Never’s a long time, Jacey.”

  “Not long enough, outlaw.” How come the danged current didn’t seem to bother his big-bodied self? He walked—barefooted—through the water as if he were tramping booted through wooded undergrowth.

  Aware that he was gaining on her inch by inch, and knowing that all he had to do was reach out to take hold of her, aware that he was toying with her in a purely seductive way, Jacey tensed and her teeth began to chatter. She clamped down on her back teeth until she could control her clacking jaw and cried out, “Knock it off, Zant. I’m soaking wet and freezing.”

  His black-eyed, ornery gaze slipped to her chest and then flicked back up to her face. “I know. You’ll be warm enough soon.”

  Knowing and yet not knowing what that meant, but realizing her female instincts were alive and screaming—for him—Jacey feinted right and then left. She wanted with all her might to put some distance between them. If she could just get him out of this water, maybe he’d calm down and quit—Zant abruptly snaked out his right hand and grasped her arm. She gasped and drew her arms up in a defensive posture.

  “Quick. But not quick enough, Jacey. Come here.”

  “No.” She wriggled in his grasp, but to no avail.

  Despite her sodden, sagging clothes and drooping boots, Zant easily lifted her in his arms and carried her to the shore. Despite the warmth of the day, the warmth of the water, and the heat of Zant’s body, Jacey shivered as her skin bumped with gooseflesh. “What…?” She flicked her tongue over her lips and tried again. “What are you going to do?”

  Setting her on her squishy feet, he said, “Nothing.” Then as he walked away, he called back over his shoulder. “Now we’re even.”

  Watching his departing back, avoiding looking below his waist, Jacey stood frozen on the rocks, hugging herself. Now we’re even? What the heck does that mean?

  * * *

  That evening, sitting on his side of the campfire, Zant eyed Jacey on her side. Seated with her legs bent to one side, her head angled away from him, and with her now dry hair thrown forward over her shoulder, she was braiding her black and silky waterfall. Zant swiped his hand in agitation down his mouth and chin, fuming about how she had no idea what the sight did to him. But even before he knew he was going to say it, he heard himself at the same time she did. “Leave it down. Don’t braid it.”

  Her fingers stopped. She looked up at him. The leaping flames between them, separating them, threatening to burn them if they got too close, lit and shadowed her doe eyes and unsmiling mouth. “Why?”

  Zant swallowed. Because all that black silk flowin
g through my fingers would—He shrugged. “No special reason.”

  She cocked her head at an angle and arched her brows. “You okay, Zant?”

  Zant. She’d been calling him that since this afternoon. Since he’d damned near lost control and ripped her clothes off her to—“Yeah. And you?”

  She shrugged, lowering her hands from her half-braided hair. With every movement of hers, the loose braid began to unravel … right along with Zant’s control. “I’m fine. No worse for having been dunked a couple times.”

  Zant started to chuckle, bit it back, and looked down at his bedroll. He stayed like that until the urge to laugh passed. When he looked up, he saw that apparently she’d never looked away from him. His heart leaped, but he said, calmly enough, “Tell me what you think about what Joe and Alma said.”

  Jacey huffed out her breath, as if it were painful to do so, and drew herself up on her bent legs, resting her hands lightly on her skirt-covered thighs. “Which part?”

  “Any of it.” I just want to watch you talk. I just want to look at you.

  As if she weren’t quite aware she was doing it—although Zant was … to the point of painful discomfort—Jacey repeatedly ran her fingers through the length of her hair, further unbraiding it and combing the shiny, dark fall all at the same time. “I guess the part I’m most upset about is finding out that Glory’s not—” Her fingers stilled. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t even say it. It might be the truth, but I can’t accept Glory as anything but blood kin. As anything but my baby sister.”

  Zant watched her, saying nothing. This was hers to deal with. It didn’t involve him. Finally, she opened her eyes and gazed into the fire. “Glory’s not my real sister,” she intoned, as if the fire had hypnotized her into the admission.