by Maren Smith
She didn’t want his eggs. She didn’t want anything but to leave. Frustration bubbled up alongside the resentment.
“I’d sooner choke than eat from the hand of a gwailo!” Skirts snapping out behind her, she stormed from the kitchen, out of the house, and was almost to the porch before Cullen gave chase. His heavier footsteps sounded like low rumbles of thunder. A good two feet taller than she, with a leg-span to match, she hadn’t yet reached the porch steps when he caught her arm. Cool drops of rain pelted her cheek and back as she whipped around to confront him. He inclined his head, seemingly more curious than angry, but Chin wasn’t in any mood for either. She slapped a hand against his chest, ready to shove, twist, yank, whatever she had to do to free herself, but he stopped everything with little more than his finger pointing sternly just off the tip of her nose.
“That’s the second time you’ve called me that,” he said, head cocked, no smile anywhere about his lips and only the slightest hint warning in the depths of his storm-cloud eyes. “Now, I don’t know what that means—”
Her shoulders squared. “White devil!” she spat.
He pursed his lips, as if he were tasting the word. “Didn’t much care for it when I didn’t know what it meant. Can’t say as I’ve warmed to the word now that I do. What I will say is this: I’ve been a decent—”
She snorted.
“—and courteous—”
She barked another hard laugh directly into his face.
“—host since you’ve been here,” Cullen continued through gritted teeth. “But you’re pushing your luck faster than green grass shoots through a goose, and I’m not going to take much more of it. So, unless you’re wanting a reminder on how exactly it felt to have to eat standing up, I suggest you get your butt back in the house and stop being such a pain in my ass.”
The top of her head only came up to the middle of his chest, but that didn’t stop her from almost stepping on his toes when she squared off against him. She leaned in, putting her face directly into his. “You can’t keep me here against my will.”
“Lady, you ain’t pleasant enough for me to want to keep, period. But since you mentioned it, the hell I can’t.”
She twisted her wrist and yanked, winning her freedom for all of the two seconds it took him to seize her by both arms now. With both his hands. They were so big, his fingers overlapped and the width of their span was almost even with the whole of her upper arms.
“Now I see it.” His frown deepened. “You weren’t being reckless last night. You’re always bat-shit crazy.”
“Let. Go,” Chin said through gritted teeth. She twisted, but he kept his grip.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s one hell of a storm goin’ on.”
She stared out into the rain, through a veritable waterfall pouring off all edges of the roof. It was with both surprise and shame that she suddenly realized she was trembling. She told herself it was because she was so angry, but deep inside her, an icy kernel of desperation had taken root and it was growing fast. For just a moment, she forgot she was standing on the Drakes’s porch. Instead, she was on the rail of the ship that had brought her out of China, staring out over that vast stretch of ocean—not ahead, like the other passengers were, but behind—terrified any minute that she would see the sails of another ship in pursuit of hers. Quan Ji’s ship. The puddles filling up the yard seemed every bit as vast and unnavigable as the sea had been. They were slowing her down. Ji would find her again, it was only a matter of time.
“I have things.” She fought to control her trembling, to stamp it down deep and hide it away before Cullen noticed it. “I have to get them.”
“Your things,” he emphasized, “are gone. Hard and bitter as it may be, that’s a fact. Here’s another one: If you think you’re gonna walk out of here in that—” He stabbed an accusatory finger at the uncaring weather. “—you should know that wash that nearly killed us last night will continue to run for as long as it rains, not just here, but in the mountains too. Right now it’s a fast-running river of mud and debris. In a storm like this, you could trail it twenty miles without finding a safe place to cross. You can’t go back to Culpepper and you sure ain’t going to San Fran, because there’s at least two more washes that I know about cutting the prairie between us and them.”
Cold unlike anything she’d ever felt sank its needle-like teeth into her gut. He was lying. He had to be.
“There’s a bridge,” she argued.
“Where?” he demanded.
“Somewhere. There has to be at least one!” She tried again to twist out of his grip, but stopped with a gasp when he gave her a not-so-gentle shake. Just one, and once he had her attention, he stopped.
“Ain’t nobody built a bridge over those washes, because it does no good. Every time it storms, they carve new directions to run in. Do you understand me? You can’t bridge something that doesn’t stay put. I guarantee, until this rain stops and the water recedes, there ain’t nobody going to Culpepper Cove or San Francisco, or anywhere else. Not from this direction, and ain’t nobody from anyplace else gonna be making their way out as far as here, neither.” Whether it was because he could feel her trembling or perhaps because he saw through her to the desperation she was trying so hard to hide, his tone softened. So did his hold on her arms. Letting her go, he stepped back a pace. “Come inside. Have some eggs.” He gestured at the house. “It ain’t much, but it’s warm and dry. And like it or not, you’re my guest until the storm passes. Once it does, I promise I’ll make sure you get back to Culpepper Cove. It ain’t San Fran—” The look he gave her suggested he still wasn’t buying that part of her story and, though she told herself she didn’t care what he believed, that stung because, really, it was the only part of her story that had been the truth. “—but seeing as you have no horse, no shoes and no luggage, that seems a might out of reach now anyway.”
That stung even worse, because that was true too. Not only was San Francisco out of her reach, everywhere was out of her reach. But so was Culpepper Cove. She couldn’t go forward; she absolutely could not go back. Try though she did to hold onto it, her anger and frustration both just… slipped away. She deflated, which made her trembling all the more obvious, especially in her hands. She clenched her fists, tucking them into the folds of her skirt to hide her weakness, but she knew Cullen had already seen when she met his steady grey stare once more.
In a blink, his gaze returned to hers. She held her head a little higher, all but daring him, but he wasn’t willing to be baited. Stepping back, he pushed open the front door, holding it for her. “Come inside,” he said again, once more cool, calm and civil. “Maybe, if you know your way around a kitchen and are feeling up to it, you could help by making the biscuits.”
For a long time, Chin stood on the porch, sporadic raindrops still tapping at the back of her head, the back of her dress. Already the weight of the water was building in the back of her skirts. If he thought she was considering his offer, she didn’t correct him, but eggs and biscuits were the farthest from her mind. She was thinking about the traversability of washes that changed directions with each storm and about which side of the one that had nearly killed her Quan Ji might even now be riding on. She could all but see him, wet in his saddle with raindrops falling off the end of his nose and cold black gaze searching for signs of her passing in the waterlogged ground and through the gray haziness of the hard-falling rain. She was thinking about nightfall and how long it would be before Cullen and Garrett took themselves to bed. She wondered how many horses they had in their barn and whether she could find her way back to the wash. If she waited to leave until right before dawn, she’d have a better chance at possibly spotting her things without anyone spotting her. She even thought about the other washes, the ones supposedly blocking her way to San Francisco, but what she kept thinking was: No flood went on forever. If she followed it far enough and if she was careful, eventually, she would find a way across.
By the time the
rains stopped and Ji picked up her trail, she could potentially be in San Francisco and from there, boats and coaches went literally everywhere. Mexico, Canada, Alaska, New York… If she could get to San Fran, she could disappear. Once again—if only for a little while—she would be safe.
Still holding the door, Cullen asked, “You coming?”
Oh yes. Chin thought about a lot of things, none of which had anything to do with breakfast. And yet, when she finally could move, all she did was pick up her skirts and sweep past him into the house. She had a plan in mind and no regrets at all about what she knew she had to do.
As soon as she reached San Francisco, maybe she’d be able to send Cullen his horse back. Maybe, she’d send him a little money too. Then it wouldn’t be as if she’d stolen from him. Not really.
She wondered if Cullen would see the difference.
She wondered why she cared.
Chapter Five
Seated at the kitchen table with his head in his hand, Cullen tapped the open ledger with the tip of his pencil. He’d long since run the numbers, but he wasn’t thinking about them anymore. He should have been, but no matter how hard he tried to apply himself, his thoughts kept returning time and again to the problem of Chin. Not that she in and of herself was a problem, but her breasts certainly were. They wouldn’t get out of his mind. Pert, rounding gently over the top of her corset, barely covered by her chemise; a proper little mouthful. His watered. He swallowed, his lips tingling in an attempt to feel the tightening buds of her nipples already tightening for his hungry kiss.
He’d been cooped up on this ranch too long, which was part of his problem. That Chin had ripped her dress open to prove how grown up she was, was his second.
God, those breasts. He rubbed his mouth, his palm rasping over a day’s whisker-growth. Shaking his head, as if he could throw off his thoughts as easily as a dog shaking off water, he tried to focus on his work. He touched the ledger, but he already knew the tally by heart. Seventeen. Out of two hundred head, seventeen was all the cattle he had left. How many of those were healthy? That was the next question, not that it mattered. The answer staring back at him remained the same: Seventeen was not a self-sustaining breeding population and he’d sunk every extra penny they’d had into that prize bull. They had nothing left. Nothing. Except, perhaps the house and land, and that was already mortgaged.
A quiet step creaked the floorboards of his bedroom upstairs. Cullen looked up, tracking Chin’s movements as she crept from the bed to the window directly over his head.
She really was creeping, too. He didn’t need to see her to know the difference between normal, carefree footsteps and the tiptoe of someone trying not to be heard. It was the fourth time since he’d been sitting here that she’d gone to that particular window. She had two to choose from; having gazed out it often enough himself, Cullen knew the view she kept returning to. It was the road back to Culpepper Cove. He wondered who she was looking for.
He wondered who she was running from.
“How bad is it?”
Cullen jumped, snapping his gaze off the ceiling to the doorway where his brother had, as if by magic, silently appeared. Hoping he didn’t look as guilty as he felt, Cullen closed the ledger. He shrugged, more a gesture of helplessness than uncertainty.
“We’re done,” he said simply. “Unless you’ve got money I don’t know about squirreled away, I don’t see how we’re going to come back from this.”
Stepping out of the doorway, Garrett took the chair opposite of Cullen at the table. As he sat, he pulled the ledger to him and opened it again. “I’ve fifteen dollars hidden in my socks. You’re welcome to it if you think it’ll help.”
“It won’t.” He didn’t need to say that. He knew by Garrett’s face as he reviewed each neat line of entries that his brother already knew. Ever the optimist, however, Garrett didn’t give up any easier than Cullen (driven more by sheer stubbornness than hope) did.
“You said the same thing at Briar Creek.”
“I was right about Briar Creek,” Cullen told him. “A straight fuck-up from start to finish.”
“But we lived through it,” Garrett reminded. “You were sure we wouldn’t, but we did and we can make it through this too.”
“This isn’t Briar Creek,” Cullen said stiffly.
“No, it’s not,” his brother agreed. “And that’s good. It means there’s a helluva lot less Indians. Before we flat give up, let’s talk to the bank again. That’s all I’m saying.”
Flopping back in his chair, Cullen rubbed his face with both hands. “We still owe four hundred dollars from the last loan.”
“This place is worth more than four hundred dollars,” Garrett interrupted. For once, he wasn’t smiling. “You know that, and so do they.”
“You want me to walk in there with my hat in my hands—”
“We’ll lose this place just as fast by doing nothing.”
“We got no cattle—”
“We’ve got some. It’s enough to—”
“The ones we’ve got are sick,” Cullen snapped, more harshly than he’d intended, though it did stop Garrett’s protests. Another creak from upstairs made both men look up. Unwilling to share this conversation with their guest, Cullen lowered his voice. “We’ve only got us a limited number of facts and none of them are open for debate. We’ve got seventeen head left and we’re going to have to put them all down.”
“Ah, they ain’t all sick,” Garrett scoffed, flopping back in his seat, hands dropping to his lap in disgust.
“But those that are, are dying, and those that aren’t showing signs or coughing could still be carrying. We can’t even consider re-mortgaging this place or buying another hundred head, if that many, until we make damn sure we’re not bringing them here just to watch them die! That means, we’ve got to put down our herd—every one of them; don’t shake your head at me—we’ve got to burn the bodies and everything in and around the barn, and we’ve got to fire the ground. And that’s all before we go begging another thousand dollars from the bank so we can ride down to Texas and drive us back a fresh start!”
“If that’s even possible,” Garrett muttered in agreement. He sighed, rubbing his face with both hands. Another creak of floorboards. They followed Chin’s path back to the bed. Lowering his voice now too, Garrett gestured to the ceiling. “What do we do about…” He let the sentence hang.
“She’d leave right now if I let her.” Cullen shook his head. “I’m not turning her out in this.”
“There’s going to be talk.”
“I know it.”
“Unchaperoned woman. Staying all alone out in the middle of nowhere with two unmarried men.”
“If she were worried about appearances,” Cullen said, “she wouldn’t have ridden out in the middle of the night, without a chaperone, without luggage. Hell, without even a proper coat.”
“Think she’s running?”
For the first time, Cullen cracked the smallest of smiles. “Oh, I know she is. God knows, I’ve been running long enough to recognize it when I see it in someone else.”
“What from, do you think?” his younger brother softly asked.
Shaking his head again, Cullen watched the ceiling, tapping his fingers on the table. “I have no idea. But if it’s trouble following her, let’s hope it doesn’t decide she’s worth chasing all the way out here.
* * * * *
Dinner that night was beef and beans, served alongside a hell of a lot of awkward silence. Halfway through cooking, Chin came down out of her voluntary seclusion in the loft. Without a word, she put herself to work first making cornbread, then sweeping the floor, and finally, setting the table for three. It was Cullen’s day to cook and so he spent the entire time she was there, unable to leave the stove and, because he couldn’t get away from her, unable to stop himself from staring.
He tried not to be obvious about it. He tried even harder to banish the haunting image of her ripping her dress open to show him those damn-
near perfect breasts. Up until yesterday, he’d always considered this house to be plenty big enough. He and Garrett had built it knowing they would both be living here, possibly each with his own family sometime further down the road, and they’d designed the place with that in mind. It was two story and it was large, with the lower floor arranged with all the common areas—kitchen, both formal and private sitting rooms, a study for each of them—and the upper floor divided in half between Cullen’s and Garrett’s bedrooms, with two extra bonus rooms for babies, when and if the time ever came. All that would have to come later, however. They’d run out of both money and lumber before they could put in a decent staircase, but since each bedroom was accessed through a ladder and hatch anyway, that hadn’t bothered either brother much. Cullen’s was in the formal sitting room; Garrett’s was located in his study. Even after they put in the staircase, those hatches were built to remain. After so many years of fighting, the need to always have two avenues of escape had become permanently ingrained in both men.
Roomy as it was, especially compared with some of the other ranches in the county, with Chin tripping quietly around underfoot, somehow the house seemed smaller. The kitchen, especially.
He could smell her. It wasn’t even her, really, that he could smell. Rather, it was the soap she’d used to wash up before coming down. His soap. He knew that smell very well, but on her it was a completely different aroma. It was maddening. Frankly, he couldn’t decide which was worse. Her in that torn, dirty dress, with the two missing buttons down the front to serve as his constant reminder of—he really, really had to stop thinking about “the incident.” Or her as she was dressed right now, in a pair of Garrett’s castoff trousers, the tan fabric both loose and yet alluringly contoured to the curves of her very shapely backside, and a simple white shirt that did nothing whatsoever to hide the bounce of those mouthwatering breasts.