“No, I can’t let you do that.” His iron-hard grip tightened around her as he braced them against a renewed gust.
Glory sucked in an alarmed breath. This danger was real, and her options were meager. She couldn’t best him in a physical struggle. She wasn’t about to make an excuse to go back inside, where only she and Biddy would be at this man’s mercy. She therefore had to get to the bunkhouse, where other men, hopefully Riley among them, would be. As soon as the gust subsided, Glory pointed to the bunkhouse, signaling she was ready to make a dash for it.
“Then let’s go,” he called out, gripping her arm as he directed her steps to the ground. Frightened lest he carry her off, never to be seen again, Glory exhaled only when she realized the tall, squarely built stranger was indeed leading her to the bunkhouse office door. A man of his word, he opened the door, handed her in, and closed it behind them.
After the howling wind and the banging shutters and barn doors, the cramped and cluttered office was quiet. Too quiet. Filled with dust motes and leather tack and carelessly stacked papers atop a small desk, it was otherwise empty. Of men. Of help. Then so be it—she was on her own. Despite her fear-weakened knees wobbling with each step, Glory crossed the room to stand behind the desk. Not much of a barrier, but it made her feel better.
She turned to her escort, noting with relief that he’d stayed by the door. He ran a big, thick-fingered hand through his hair and smiled at her. “That’s some wind, ma’am.”
Struck by his rough, craggy appearance, and contrasting it with his straightforward actions, Glory barely managed a nod of acknowledgment for his words. She reached up and smoothed her completely undone and knotted hair from her line of vision. She had to get ahold of herself, had to quit jumping at every noise, at every—The man was watching her. Not simply looking at her, but watching her. Like a wolf did its prey before it roused itself for the kill.
Show no fear, Glory. Lifting her chin a notch, mustering all the authority she could, she said, “I’m Glory Lawless. This ranch is mine and my sisters’. You must be one of the hands Mr. Thorne hired last evening.”
The man grinned at her, showing big, square teeth. “Yes, ma’am. Name’s Carter Brown.”
Glory nodded, didn’t know what to say next. So she busied her hands with straightening piles of invoices on Smiley’s desk. There was something else about this man. The way he talked. His voice. That’s it. Glory raised her head, saw he hadn’t moved, and called herself glad for that. “You’re not from around here, are you, Mr. Brown?”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I’m from back east.”
Back east. Where Mama’s family is. Wariness shot through Glory, tightening her throat. “I see. Where back east?”
“A small town outside of Boston. You probably never heard of it.”
Boston? Mama’s family lives in Boston. And Hannah’s there. “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Brown.” Be calm, Glory. Think. If he’s one of the murderers, he’d lie about where he was from. Wouldn’t he?
Mr. Brown smiled, narrowing his dark eyes. “Yes, ma’am. A long way from home. But we all have our reasons.”
Glory swallowed and nodded. “That’s true.” And realized she had no idea what to do or say next. The silence stretched out.
Carter Brown abruptly ended it. “I didn’t know I’d be working for a woman. I thought Mr. Thorne was in charge here.”
“Mr. Thorne is not in charge here. I am.” Then it suddenly occurred to her that if she didn’t like this man, she could fire him. Her fear remolded itself into angry authority, rendering her capable of looking him in the eye and informing him, “I’ll be giving the orders, and you’ll be following them, like every other drover here. If it’s a problem for you, you’re free to ride out under the same gate you rode in under.”
Mr. Brown held up a big hand. “Easy now, little filly. I didn’t say it was a problem. I just said I didn’t know. In fact”—he raked his gaze up and down her—“I’m beginning to think it might be a most pleasing experience.”
Glory’s hands fisted at her sides as her heartbeat picked up speed. “Perhaps, Mr. Brown, you’d be better off to—”
The door from the bunkhouse into the office opened. Glory jerked toward the sound. In stepped Riley—Thank you, God—and, right behind him, a short man of slight build who pulled up short when Riley stopped suddenly. “Glory! What’re you doing out here?” He then caught sight of the new man. “Brown, where’ve you been? I was looking for you.”
Carter Brown smoothed out his hungry expression. “Sorry, boss—no, that’s not right, is it? Seems Miss Lawless is the boss. Leastwise, that’s what she was just telling me. I’m supposed to be following her orders. Not yours.”
Silence met Carter Brown’s words. Riley settled his brown-eyed, questioning gaze on Glory. She raised her chin in defiance of the heat blooming on her suddenly warm cheeks. She’d meant only to make a strong point with the new hand—and she had, but perhaps she’d gone over the top a bit.
Riley’s unreadable gaze shamed Glory. She barely stopped herself from looking down at her shoes. Ever the same Riley, though, he kept his thoughts to himself and said, “As long as you’re out here, Miss Lawless, this is your other new hand, Abel Justice.” He then stepped aside, bringing into view the beak-nosed stranger behind him.
Riley’d called her Miss Lawless. She’d hear about this later. Ready to look at anyone but Riley right now, Glory focused on Mr. Justice. Grinning and deferential, the gap-toothed drifter tipped his battered old felt hat to her. Now, this man she liked. All but chirping, Glory acknowledged his greeting. “Pleased to have you on the place.”
“Yes, ma’am, and it’s right proud I am to make your acquaintance. I have a heap of respect for the Lawless name. And I count myself proud to be one of your drovers. I’ll work hard and do a good job for you, ma’am.”
Glory turned a genuine smile on him. “I can’t ask for more than that from a man, Mr. Justice.” Sobering, she turned to Carter Brown. “Nor will I.”
She’d no more than chilled the air with that before the door behind Carter Brown flew open. He jumped out of the way as it banged against the wall. Glory raised her arms protectively against an intruding blast of cold air. As if possessed of a mischievous will of its own, a whirlwind lifted and scattered the random stacks of invoices, adding them to the spiraling dance of dry leaves and twigs captured in its energy.
Also blowing into the cramped office was a sputtering, cussing Sourdough. Using both hands, the camp cook wrenched the door away from the wall, slammed it closed, and held it there until he was apparently satisfied that the wind would obey him and stay outside. Only then did he turn and rub his hands together. “That wind is so fierce that Ah’ll swear and be damned if Ah didn’t just see a hen out yonder lay the same egg twice.”
His felt hat secured to his head and mashed down over his ears by his bandanna, which he’d knotted under his chin—giving himself the appearance of a bonneted and incredibly ugly old woman in need of a shave—Sourdough glared out his displeasure with the nature of Nature. His gaze then lit on Glory. “There you are. What you doin’ out here, Miz Glory?”
Stooping to retrieve yet another invoice from the floor, and taking those handed to her by Riley and the two new men, Glory straightened up, hands and invoices held at her waist. “I have every right to be out here, Sourdough. And if you don’t think so, just look to see who signs the drafts to pay these.” She held up a fistful of bills and shook them.
Riley stepped in between her and the old cook’s defiantly puckering mouth. “I need to speak with Miss Lawless, Sourdough.”
“Well, so do I, boy. Ah just come from the main house, lookin’ for her. Miss Biddy said she seen her bein’ all but carried out here by some big varmint of a man.” He sized up Carter Brown. “Ah reckon that’d be you.” He then went on with his story. “Miz Biddy said, from what she could see, Miz Glory here didn’t look none too pleased to be in his company. So what with all the recent t
roubles, Ah thought it best if Ah made sure she hadn’t come to no harm.”
The air thickened at the end of this remarkably long speech for Sourdough. Glory shifted her gaze from the cook to Riley. He studied her a moment, as if sorting out events, and then turned his head to glare at Carter Brown. “The main house? You want to explain what you were doing over there when I sent you out to the horse barn?”
Carter Brown shifted his weight and hitched at his belt. A gunbelt, Glory noticed. “I thought I saw something.”
Riley narrowed his eyes, mirroring the skepticism he voiced. “You saw something? Maybe Miss Lawless here? I’ll say this one time, Brown—stay away from the main house. And especially stay away from Miss Lawless.”
Carter Brown turned his lip up in what some might call a grin, and others a sneer. His black eyes alight with challenge, he looked from Riley to Glory and then back to Riley. “I will, if she says so. She’s the boss lady. And the way I hear it, she’s the one should be giving orders.”
Glory’s heart plummeted to her feet. Riley might be the one standing in the middle, but she was the one in the hard place. Four sets of male eyes stared at her, waited for her comeback. She had no choice. Caught like this, there was only one answer she could give. And it would seal Riley’s place here and extend his authority over Lawless concerns.
Exhaling her reluctance, and not liking this one bit more than she knew the Lawless hands would when they heard about it, Glory stated, “Mr. Thorne acts on my behalf, Mr. Brown. You’ll take your orders from him.”
Chapter 7
The heated flames behind her in the great room’s fireplace were nothing compared to Glory’s flare of temper. She stopped her pacing and turned to Riley. “The man is dangerous. I don’t like him. I was this close to firing him when you came in. Why did you hire that Carter Brown? Better yet, why did you hire either one of them? Mr. Justice seems fine, but still, you’re the one who told me I should be letting men go, not taking on more over the winter.”
Riley shrugged. “Turns out you were right and I was wrong. You do need more men. This winter’s going to be a hard one—just look at the thickness of the horses’ coats. Smiley let go too many hands after the fall drive. All I did was make up for his mistake.”
“His mistake?” Loyalty to the longtime Lawless foreman pricked Glory into defending him. “Smiley doesn’t make such mistakes.”
Riley firmed his lips into a straight line. “He did this time.”
She narrowed her eyes, but decided to let it go for now. Mr. Rankin and Riley both had burrs under their saddle blankets where the other one was concerned. “All right, say he did and he was wrong. But until ten minutes ago, out in Smiley’s office, you didn’t have the authority to hire anyone.”
Seated on the oversized brown-leather couch that faced the stone fireplace behind her, Riley crossed his legs, resting an ankle atop his opposite knee, stared at her, and didn’t say a word. In the silence, Glory could hear Biddy puttering around in the kitchen.
Glory huffed out her breath. This being “in charge” was a rough business. No wonder Papa always seemed to rage around in a temper, with Mama right on his heels and calming him. “Out there, Riley,”—Glory pointed in the direction of the foreman’s office—“I was forced to acknowledge that you have a say in Lawless matters. You saw Sourdough’s face when you told him to settle in those two new men. The rest of my hands aren’t going to be any happier to take orders from you, either. Why, I’ll be lucky if any of them stays on now.”
“They’ll stay.”
She met his patient, knowing stare. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because they’re loyal to the Lawless brand. Have been for years. This place is their home. And you’re their family.”
His words pierced through to her heart, evaporating her anger. The terrible weight of her new responsibility further weighed her down. Not sure that she was, after all, equal to this task of preserving the Lawless ranch, Glory looked down at her feet. “So many people are counting on me, Riley. And I don’t know what to do half the time. Sometimes I wish someone would come along and take this burden from me.”
Riley’s quiet words brought her head up. “There’s no one but you, Glory.”
She nodded. “I know, and that scares me.” Another thought occurred to her. She put it to Riley. “But you don’t have to be here. And yet you are. There’s nothing keeping you here. And yet you stay. Why?”
Riley uncrossed his legs and scooted forward to the cushion’s edge. “I’ve got my reasons.” Pausing for a moment, he then went on in a mellower tone. “Don’t doubt yourself, Glory. That’s the worst thing you can do. That’s when you start making your biggest mistakes. Just decide and act on it, right or wrong. If it’s wrong, just learn from it and go on.” He looked down at the woven carpet under his feet, ran a hand through his black hair and again focused on her. “You need to think like a man.”
Glory blinked. “And how do I do that?”
Riley’s expression softened, smoothing out the worry lines in his forehead and around his mouth. “In some ways, you already do. You’re doing a good job here, better than you realize. I’m surprised, but I guess I shouldn’t be. To me, you’re still that shy little girl in pigtails with an apron over her dress who used to hide from me. I keep forgetting you’re a … grown woman now.”
Glory knotted her fingers together at her waist and concentrated on forcing out words she knew she shouldn’t say but couldn’t stop. “I wasn’t sure that you’d noticed.”
A light sparked in Riley’s brown eyes. His black-fringed lids lowered a fraction. “I’ve noticed.”
Feeling suddenly as shy as the girl he remembered, Glory all but whispered, “I’ve noticed you, too.”
Riley chuckled. “I guess you have.”
Heat burst upon Glory’s cheeks. He meant last night, her seeing him without his clothes on. She glanced at him from under her lowered lids. “I liked what I saw.”
Riley sobered and lay back against the cushions, his fingers laced over his abdomen, his knees spread apart. Looking like a lolling panther, he stared up at the ceiling. His Adam’s apple bobbed under the taut skin of his muscled neck. “You’re playing with fire, Glory.”
She had no idea how to respond to that. So she didn’t. Riley rolled his head until he sighted on her. “You know what that means?”
Glory shook her head, felt a length of her wind-tossed hair fall forward over her shoulder. “No,” was all she could mumble out as she looked away from him to the brightly patterned Cherokee blanket hanging on the room’s far wall.
“Yes, you do. Every grown woman knows.”
With a jerk of her head, Glory was again staring into his assessing brown eyes. “I do not know what you’re getting at, Riley Thorne.”
A lazy, taunting grin, showing white and even teeth, emphasized his grand good looks. “Come here and I’ll show you.”
Shocked, and yet wildly curious, Glory raised her chin and didn’t move one step closer. “I will not.”
Still grinning, Riley shrugged his broad shoulders. “Suit yourself.”
That did it. Glory stomped over to him and, leaning over, smacked his arm. “Do you know how hard it is to talk to you?”
Riley suddenly jerked forward and, with a swiftness that left her gasping, grabbed her and pulled her onto the sofa and under him in one smooth movement. His arms closed around her, cradled her, did anything but reassure and comfort her. “Then quit talking to me,” he advised, looking down into her eyes. “Kiss me instead. Or am I hard to kiss, too?”
Her heart pounding, her eyes widening, his weight pressing into her from her chest to her toes, Glory could only stare up at him and shake her head. Riley’s intensifying stare quickened a sharp thrill of desire in the vee of her legs. His hardness against her … down there—even through the thickness of their clothes—only excited her more. It was all so horribly, wonderfully forbidden.
“You’re all I can think about, Glory. I’v
e been wanting to get you like this since the day Jacey left and I saw you standing on the verandah with Biddy. It shocked the hell out of me, seeing you after all that time.” Glaring at her as if she’d done something wrong, Riley lowered his head and captured her mouth.
Glory made no pretense of protesting. She wanted this, too. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pressed him to her, instinctively arching into him. Which seemed to be what he wanted, judging by the low-pitched noises in his throat. His growl of need fed Glory’s desire. She answered with a gasp of her own and opened her mouth to the hungry plundering of his.
Not even caring that her clothes were twisted, that her hair was tangled, that she was pinned under him, and more than willing to let him go farther, Glory clutched spasmodically at his thick, dark, and waving hair. She smoothed her hands over his cheeks, needing more, wanting to feel more of him but unable to because his weight trapped her. Only she didn’t feel trapped. She felt secure, safe … wanton.
Riley broke their kiss only seconds before Glory was sure she’d faint dead away from rampant desire and a lack of air. Breathing in gasping pants that matched his, she clutched helplessly at him, even as he reared back to look down at her. In the reflected firelight, with an errant lock of almost-black hair falling over his wide brow, Riley’s high cheekbones stood out in sharp relief, emphasizing the dark hollows under them. His expression remained wholly intent on her. Glory’s heart fluttered, skipped a beat.
Then Riley’s husky voice captivated her attention. “That first day I got here, you said you didn’t have these feelings for me. But we both know you were lying. I want you … in the way a man wants a woman. And now I know you feel the same way. It’s killing me, sleeping two doors down from you. I burn up at night with wanting you. I can’t sleep, I can’t think. Let me come to you, Glory. Tonight. To your room.”
Seasons of Glory Page 10