Colorado Bride

by Leigh Greenwood

  Lucas didn’t know how long it took him to reach the road, but he seemed to be moving in slow motion, every second like a lifetime. He could see Carrie hanging on to the leader’s bridle, being bounced like a rag doll, and he knew she wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. Ordinarily her weight would have slowed the horses down, but these brutes were accustomed to pulling a stagecoach loaded with up to six people; one tiny female was a burden they hardly noticed, and they were racing at a full gallop. If she lost her grip on the bridle, she could fall under the horses’ hooves or down the mountainside into the rock-strewn ravine.

  Suddenly Lucas saw he was not going to be able to intercept the wild-eyed dun mustang that was catapulting Carrie down the road as if she were no more than a bothersome fly, and he realized Carrie could die. A horrible vision of her mangled and bleeding body flashed through his mind, and a terrible fear took hold that spurred him to superhuman effort. With one final, agonizing explosion of energy, he threw himself into the air, desperately reaching for the harness of the second horse. Miraculously his fingers closed around the straps on the sweat-flecked gray and he felt the leather bite deep into the flesh of his hands as he was jerked forward along with the galloping horses. Desperately calling upon every reserve of his strength, Lucas fought to reach the gray’s halter; only by pulling his head down could he slow the fear-crazed horse.

  Throw your heels forward and dig in,” he yelled to Carrie as he seized the gray’s bridle. Putting his whole weight on the horse’s head, Lucas threw his legs in front of him and dug his heels in to force the gray’s head down. The excruciatingly painful jarring on his legs threatened to tear bone from sinew and to wrench his shoulders from their sockets, but he doggedly pitted his straining muscles against those of the powerful animal; it was the only way he could save Carrie.

  Try as she might, Carrie could not move her legs, but she followed Lucas’s example and put all her weight on the dun’s head. The drag on the two horses slowed them down and caused the others to slue around and become entangled in the traces. Within moments the team had come to halt, hopelessly tangled in their own harnesses. In a flash Lucas was at Carrie’s side, his white face showing none of his usual lazy unconcern.

  “My God, you could have been killed!” he said, prying her paralyzed fingers loose from their hold on the bridle; as part of the same motion, as though it were the natural thing to do, he wrapped Carrie in a crushing embrace. One bleeding hand pressed her head tightly against his heaving chest, and for a few soul-wrenching seconds, Carrie was conscious of nothing but his racing, pounding heart. “Are you hurt?” Lucas asked, staring intently into her face as though by so doing he could tell if any part of her were injured.

  “No,” Carrie tried to assure him. “A little jarred perhaps, definitely petrified with fear, but unhurt.”

  Lucas took a deep breath to calm his pulsating senses. He had not stopped to think when the horses bolted; he had just acted. Gradually he became aware of the way he was holding Carrie and realized he had lost control of his emotions; if he didn’t get himself under control before the people running toward them saw what he was doing, they were going to guess far more than he wished anyone to know.

  “Are you certain?” he said, releasing her and stepping back.

  “I’m fine,” Carrie said, trying to convince her legs to support her without his assistance. “Or I will be as soon as I get my breath.” She didn’t know whether she was more stunned by her close brush with death or the look of near torment she had seen in Lucas’s gleaming silver-gray eyes just before he enfolded her in his fierce embrace. She could still feel his arms locked around her, immobilizing her against his hard, sinewy body, and the memory of that moment made her feel as dizzy as if she’d been spinning in circles.

  Jerry raced up to them, his breath labored from the exertion of running at top speed. “I thought you were a goner, ma’am,” he gasped, admiration making his eyes gleam like water in the bright sun. “I never saw anything so brave in my life.”

  “Or foolhardy,” Lucas said. Reaction had set in, and a look of blazing anger flared in his eyes. “You may be a heroine now, but blind stupid luck is the only reason you’re not dead. Why in hell didn’t you have the good sense to let go? You could have been killed.”

  Carrie was too dazed to be angry. Her heart was beating so hard she could hardly breathe, God knows she couldn’t think, and she struggled to regain her equilibrium. She hadn’t stopped to think when she held on to the horses. At first there didn’t seem to be any reason to let go, and then she couldn’t let go. Everything had happened too fast.

  And now Lucas was furious, was actually scolding her as if he cared what happened, and this after he had made it clear she couldn’t depend on him. Well, she wouldn’t be treated like this, not by him or any other man, and especially not in front of Jerry Blake and a stagecoach full of goggling strangers. The station was her responsibility, these were her customers, and she would not be shouted at by some wrangler as if she were a common female.

  “I had to hold on to them, Mr. Barrow, or they would have gotten away. I don’t have a replacement team, something I think you were supposed to correct. Besides, they could have been injured, and then they wouldn’t be any use to me or the company. I don’t think the owners would consider that taking proper care of their property.”

  Carrie’s words caused the flames in Lucas’s eyes to flare higher and his lips to compress into a thin line. He and Jerry finished untangling the harnesses, and Carrie stepped forward to lead the team back toward the station.

  Lucas put a curb rein on his temper. After all, what this woman did was none of his business. It was her husband who ought to be rampaging about, threatening to wring her lovely neck. He kept the team between them, hoping they could somehow block the magnetic force which seemed to pull him to her side.

  The company doesn’t expect you to take such a risk on their behalf,” Lucas assured her with what Carrie thought was a good deal too much presumption. What did he know about what the company would do? He had probably never even seen the company headquarters, much less talked to one of the owners. And she certainly wasn’t going to allow a temporary employee to be the arbitrator of her conduct.

  “Nonetheless, all company property is my responsibility and I don’t intend to lose any of it.” Suddenly, she was amused rather than angered by his look of tightly contained fury. “What would you have had me do, let them run off?” she asked, her goading smile irritating Lucas still further.

  Lucas would have given half his inheritance to tell her what he wanted, but he was stymied. As only a wrangler, he couldn’t advise her on how to run the station, but neither could he say what he wanted to in front of Jerry; he couldn’t say it anyway because she was a married woman, and he felt his botded-up anger building up steam during the walk back to the station until it boiled over. Striking out like an angry animal, he turned on the two men who had left the breakfast table early, each of whom had a shotgun in hand.

  “Are you the fools who fired those shots?” he demanded, unleashing the full force of his considerable fury on them.

  “We were just trying out these guns to see which one we liked better,” one man explained.

  “If you’re a fair sample of the kind of settlers coming West, God help the rest of us. Any fool knows not to go firing shotguns around people, and even a damned fool knows not to shoot anything around half-wild horses. Put those away before you hurt yourselves, and don’t take them out until you’re at least a mile from any human target.”

  “Now look here,” said one man, “we’re right sorry we caused the little lady any trouble, and I do apologize, but you’ve got no right to talk to me like—”

  Lucas reached the man in three strides. “Give me that shotgun.”

  “I’ll be damned if I will. It’s mine and I—” A single, swift movement of Lucas’s fist, too rapid for anyone to see, and the man was on the ground. Lucas picked up the dropped shotgun, took out the shells
, and broke it down. Then he turned to the second man. “Give me yours.” The man handed over his shotgun without hesitation. Lucas emptied it and broke it down too. He put the shells in his pocket and handed the disassembled shotguns to Jerry Blake. “You can give them back whenever they get where they’re going. And don’t either of you come around here again with a gun unless you want me to use it on you.”

  The man on the ground picked himself up slowly, rubbing his jaw, anger strong in his face. “You’ll hear about this. I’m going to file a complaint against you when I get to Denver, with the company and with the sheriff.”

  “You can talk to anybody you like,” Lucas replied, regaining some of his indifference. “Just don’t show your face around here again.”

  He then helped Jerry hitch up the new team. There was a good deal of muttering among the passengers, but none of them wanted to test Lucas’s temper too far, and they boarded the stage without any further trouble.

  “Come on. I’ll help you unharness the horses,” Lucas said to Carrie after the stage pulled out. He started for the barn, and Carrie followed a little behind.

  As she calmed down, she realized more clearly what a chance she had taken holding on to the runaway team. It didn’t take much imagination to realize she could have been badly trampled, even killed. But she was even more surprised by Lucas’s outburst. She had known from the first that any concern he may have had for the horses was overpowered by his worry over her. She had never had any doubt in her mind that he was furious with the men because they had endangered her life. This thrilled her, but her response frightened her. She felt as if she wanted to fling caution to the winds, to ask him to put into words all the things she had seen in his eyes and heard in the loud hammering of his heart, but her common sense, her determination to never again allow anyone but herself to control her life, made her lag a safe distance behind.

  At least she thought it was safe until she realized she was walking on the same side of the horses as he was, directly behind him. That was a bad mistake. She had a close-up view of his lean, sinuous body, and all thought of control was forgotten. She had already admitted the attractiveness of his powerful shoulders and torso, but her judgment was wholly suspended by the riveting effect of his backside; powerful thighs encased in skin-tight jeans, rounded buttocks slowly undulating as he walked, heavily muscled shoulders threatening to burst from his shirt, and tendrils of moist black hair on the nape of his neck all combined to overwhelm her senses.

  “Don’t you think you were a little too rough on those men?” she made herself say as she closed her eyes against the mesmerizing vision. She would never learn to run this station successfully if one good look at a man’s backside could turn her mind to mush. They certainly can’t have much of an opinion of your manners, and they didn’t mean any harm.”

  “I can’t think of anything more dangerous out here than a stupid person full of good intentions.” He didn’t turn back to face her, just tossed his words over his shoulder. “Nor do I give a damn about good manners. Neither would have done you any good if you’d been thrown under their hooves. They’ll either kill themselves or someone else.”

  “You seem to have a pretty low opinion of other people, Mr. Barrow. Is it limited to females, Easterners, or does it apply to everybody?”

  “I take people as I find them,” Lucas replied. He had brought the horses to a halt and was beginning to strip the harness from their backs. “I don’t find them any more stupid in the East than in the West. I certainly don’t find women any more stupid than men, but Easterners are used to a very different kind of life, and they have to learn quickly when they come out here, or somebody pays. People like those two won’t learn because they’re not interested and they’re not observant. If they don’t settle in some town soon, they’ll be dead or broke within the year. Everything out here is half wild, ma’am, the people, the horses, the country. Much of it will never be tamed, so you have to learn to live with it, adapt to its rules. They’ll never see that, but you will. You’re different.”

  Carrie’s heart beat a little fester. Maybe he didn’t think so badly of her after all, even though he clearly considered her as ignorant of the West as the worst neophyte.

  “You’re smart and you’ve got guts. You’ve also got a way with people. Being a woman, and a mighty pretty one at that, is a big help. You’ll do fine someday—you’d do okay if you were as plain as that Amazon you’ve got in the kitchen—but this is the wrong place and the wrong situation.”

  “What do you mean?” Carrie asked, her friendly feelings toward him evaporating.

  Lucas had kept his head down and a horse between them as he stripped the harness off the horses, but now he came around the leader and faced Carrie with a disconcertingly cold gaze. “Two things. You’re a woman trying to do a man’s job, and you’re a woman alone in a country where no female is safe without a man.” Carrie began to get angry. “I don’t mean to take anything away from what you’ve done,” Lucas continued. “You can turn out a first-rate dinner and the inside of the station is so clean it looks spanking new, but this is the second time a stage has come in and you’ve had trouble with the horses. You might have been able to handle those two idiots with the shotguns, but you won’t be able to handle the saddle bums or renegades that might come through, and that’ll end up causing the station no end of trouble.”

  Carrie was so angry she knew she shouldn’t answer him. She knew from experience with her father and brothers that when she was this angry, she always made things worse. But she spoke anyway.

  “I was under the impression that I was supposed to take care of them because they were my customers riding my line, but then maybe I’m mistaken. Suppose you tell me what you think I ought to do, you being so well versed in the ways of the West.”

  Lucas directed his penetrating glance at her. Carrie’s face was innocent of mockery or derision, yet he was certain her heart contained plenty of both. Oh hell, it couldn’t be helped. The sooner she went back to her husband, the sooner he could get her out of his mind. Just look at her. She was such a tiny little thing he had an overwhelming urge to wrap her safely in his arms. Her face was tilted up now as she squared off against him, her eyes bright with anger, her lips tightly pursed with determination. No matter, he wanted to kiss them anyway. He wanted to touch her flame-spotted cheeks, caress her rigid shoulders until she relaxed into his embrace. Even here, in the cold thin air of a Colorado mountain morning, he felt himself burning with an inflamed heat, fired with a need to touch her hair, to bury his face in the lavender scent that always hung faintly around her.

  But she’s married, a strident voice shouted in his head. She has a husband; she’s beyond your reach forever. Lucas’s senses bucked wildly against the constraints they felt coming, but he knew he had to get himself under control or he would do something unforgivable.

  “I’ve already told you what I think you ought to do.”

  That was yesterday. I was hoping you had changed your mind since then.”

  It had changed all right, but it wasn’t anything he was going to tell her about, and it wouldn’t do him any good if he could. He found himself irresistibly drawn to the tiny sprite of a woman who had more fire in her little finger than most women had in their whole body, a woman who had the courage to take on a man’s job in a man’s world, to hang on despite setbacks, a woman who faced him without the slightest tendency to swoon over his looks or hang on his sage, male-oriented advice. Staying around her was like sticking his head into a lynx’s den. He knew he would be torn to ribbons, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  “I think you ought to go back to Denver, or wherever it was you left your husband, and head back East,” he said, steeling himself against the agonizing thought of never seeing her again. This country has a way of destroying any beauty not its own, and I’d hate to see you looking like an old woman before your time.”

  “Thank you for your concern, but I didn’t invite your opinion on my person,” Carr
ie told him frigidly.

  “It’s hard not to think of your person when it’s right in front of me.” Carrie couldn’t fail to catch the look that was much more than appreciation of the female form, and she didn’t know whether she felt drawn to him or repelled because of it. He had stepped closer, and she felt intimidated. She wanted to step back, but she didn’t dare. He might think she was afraid of him, or even worse, that she agreed with him.

  “Nevertheless, I would appreciate it if we could keep our relations on a business basis.”

  “Ma’am, we don’t have any relations, and we aren’t going to have any business either.”

  “You call me ma’am one more time, and I’m going to brain you,” Carrie said, suddenly furious. He was too sure of himself, too certain he had the answer to everything. “I’m a person, a real person like you, not some china doll to be put on a shelf and admired when there’s nothing more important to do.” That wasn’t what she’d meant to say, and the changing light in his eye prompted a feeling of panic. Suddenly things were getting on a personal basis, and she didn’t want that. “I intend to stay here and be a success,” she said, trying to sound as impersonal as she could. “I would appreciate it if you would help me with the horses, but if not, I’ll manage to deal with them myself?’

  “Like you have so far?” So much for her thinking he might have taken a personal interest in her.

  “Mr. Barrow, if you’re determined to make me dislike you, you can spare yourself any further effort. I thought when you threw Mr. Riggins into the horse trough you were a gentleman, but I see you’re just another one of these bigoted males who thinks females are good for nothing but cooking, cleaning, and having babies.”

  “I never said that was all—”

  “No, but your actions have,” Carrie declared, ruthlessly interrupting him. “Of course you don’t have to help me if you don’t want to, but—”