by Maren Smith
And still Cullen held her and rocked her, his work-rough hand nothing but gentle as he caressed the tangles of her long black hair. She never wanted it to happen, but she simply wasn’t strong enough to keep her head up. Somehow, it came to rest upon the rock of his shoulder.
“It’s all right,” was all he said, but he had no way of understanding how wrong he was and she was just so tired. She hadn’t the strength to stop him from turning her wounded hand over upon her knee, picking up his knife, and continuing once more to pluck the cactus needles until they were gone.
Chapter Seven
Cullen was standing at the stove when Garrett eventually came back to the house. He heard the front door open, heard the shift in volume of the rain pattering against the porch and felt the gust of cooler air brushing over the back of his neck. “Where you been?” he asked, without turning around.
“Takes time to mend a saddle,” Garrett replied, kicking mud off his boots. Coming all the way inside, he closed the door. “Rode out to check the cattle, too.”
“Yeah?” A fork in one hand and towel in the other, Cullen stared into the pan of spitting and popping eggs.
“Found two more with the cough, so I put ‘em down.”
Cullen acknowledged him with a grunt, mentally adjusting the ranch’s tally even as he continued to cook their supper. The reduction in their herd, however, was no longer his top priority.
“You planning to serve those eggs?” Garrett finally asked, startling Cullen because he hadn’t realized his brother had snuck all the way up to his elbow.
Attention snapping back to the stove, Cullen grabbed the pan off the heat, shaking by way of stirring, but it was well past too late to save the eggs. Swearing, he turned in a full circle looking for a plate only to realize his brother had picked it up.
“Move,” Garrett said, usurping control of the pan, the fork and the stove.
“It’s my turn to cook,” Cullen grumbled. “I’m cooking.”
“You’re burning,” Garrett corrected. “I’m hungry, but I ain’t eating char two nights in a row. There ought to be a law against that kind of abuse.” Scraping the burnt eggs onto a plate, he sniffed the pan, and then bent to check each of the four oven doors before he found the biscuits Cullen had also forgotten. He dashed the smoking pan outside and left it on the front porch for the rain to extinguish. “Where is she?” he asked on his way back to the stove.
“Uh…” Cullen had to think about it. “Bed, I think.”
“You think?”
“She started feeling poorly about noon, so I put her to bed.”
Garrett snorted. “Feeling poorly,” he echoed. “Never heard a hot butt referred to quite like that.”
Frowning, Cullen did not correct Garrett’s mistaken assumption. Chin should have been whipped. He’d had every intention of doing it. That had been Garrett’s saddle she’d cut, his mare and their colt she’d set loose for anyone to steal, and no matter how he looked at it, it felt just and right that Chin should pay for her misbehaviors with, at the very least, a sore sitter. And yet, if he had it to do a hundred times over again, he just didn’t think he could make himself ignore what he’d seen on her face as she’d broken down before him. He’d never seen another human being quite so defeated, and during his run in the military he had seen many a defeated man. White men. Indian men… renegades and warriors all, staring back at him down the length of his rifle with the same hollow emptiness inside them.
He knew that emptiness. It was a feeling he’d thought he’d left far, far in his past and yet, seeing it rise up to replace everything else in Chin’s eyes had brought it all rushing back. Her anger he could handle. Her rage, he could take it. The beating fury of her fists drumming hard against him were nothing to him but the fluttering of moth’s wings against a wall. But in that split second when her breathing had changed and her eyes had widened and her pupils had dilated smaller than pinheads in the panicked blackness of her stare—that was when he’d seen it: despair. Absolute hopelessness. And God forgive them both, but he knew that feeling too. Knew it like the weight of a gun in his hand, fired powder in his nose, the cries of the damned and the dying echoing in his ears, memories and dreams.
For just that split second when she looked at him, really looked at him, for just that fraction in time, Cullen could have sworn her eyes spoke to him. Help me.
Help me.
Every stretch of nerve, muscle and sinew had ached to respond. He couldn’t stop himself. He’d had to reach for her, touch and hold her, try his damnedest to soothe away that despair, though God knew he’d yet to soothe away his own. And when she’d suddenly gone limp against him, her head on his shoulder, her injured hand so small and bloody and unmoving in his, that was when he’d known. It wasn’t some coincidence that brought him to that particular part of his land, to stand in just the right place at just the right moment for him to save her from the flood. It had been fate. Pure cosmic miracle. Sure as she was running, as sure as someone bad was chasing her, he’d been meant to do it. Not because of who he was, but because of what he was: just another struggling rancher to the people of Culpepper Cove, a military-honed killer of rebel savages so far beyond redemption that he couldn’t even begin to repent, but under the sun-browned skin of him, still bigger, meaner and infinitely badder than whatever was haunting Chin’s tiny bare footsteps.
“We need to lock down tonight,” Cullen said quietly. “Best keep our guns close too.”
Still trying to scrape burnt egg out of the bottom of the pan, Garrett smirked. “Mad as I am about the horses and the saddle—and I am; mad, I mean; madder than a boiled hen, in fact—but I’m not so convinced shooting her is the way we oughta handle this.” Garrett gradually lost his smirk when Cullen didn’t react. “All right, you either need to dust off your sense of humor or you need to tell me what you think’s going on.”
“I don’t know. Yet.” Cullen stared out the nearest kitchen window at a night that was black as black could be, without moon or stars peeking through the clouds. The constant drum of the rain mingled with the snap and crackle of logs both in the stove and in the hearth of the formal sitting room.
“What do you suspect then?” Garrett turned his attention to the same window. For a moment, he was silent, listening to nothing more threatening than the pattering of the rain. “You think someone’s going to come visiting? In this?”
Cullen didn’t know. He might be overreacting; it had been years since he’d left military service behind and he was still jumping at shadows.
Yeah, his subconscious whispered, but sometimes those shadows were real. Like that night way back when he and Garrett had first claimed this homestead and were still building this house, when he’d awakened to find five Indian braves in full battle dress sitting—just sitting—opposite of his and Garrett’s bedrolls. That had been a very tense good morning cup of coffee, but that was what this felt like. It felt like facing down a big, black unknown. He felt tight all the way down into his gut. The only difference between then and now was his certainty that this particular unknown would not be as peacefully satisfied with gifts of maple-smoked bacon and four or five blankets.
“One of us needs to be awake at all times,” Cullen said, disregarding his brother’s question.
All done pretending to cook now, Garrett set everything aside. He faced Cullen slowly, wiping his hands on the towel, with no trace of a smile anywhere about his normally jovial face. “What exactly did she tell you? Because you know she might have been spinning yarns to keep from getting whupped.”
Cullen shook his head, just once. “I didn’t whip her.”
Garrett stared at him, and for a moment didn’t move. “You didn’t?” he echoed.
“Not yet.”
“Not yet,” Garrett said, in the same flat tone.
It was the tone that eventually caught Cullen’s attention, dragging it out of the dark of his suspicions and back into the here and now. “Strap’s hanging on the wall by my bed. She’s go
t it coming and she knows it. I just haven’t done it yet.”
Hands on his hips, obviously struggling to hold on to his calm, Garrett asked, “Why not?”
“I don’t know,” Cullen shot back. “Maybe because I figured she’d hurt herself enough for one night, I didn’t need to be an ass by adding on.”
For the first time in a very long time, Cullen watched as Garrett’s temper flared. “Then she started getting sick, so you put her in your room.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know she hasn’t escaped again? Maybe this time, she’ll cut both our saddles, starting with the strap you left hanging right there in her reach.”
“She can’t get out of bed to get at it.”
Garrett snorted. “You could break both her legs, and I’ll bet that one would find a way.”
“No,” Cullen said, frowning. “I mean she can’t get out of bed.”
He snorted again, even more derisively, but then stopped. He looked at Cullen, head cocked to one side before dropping the towel on the table. Stepping past Cullen, Garrett dropped the loft ladder into the middle of the sitting room and then climbed it. He raised the hatch far enough to stick his head through. He was laughing when he came back down. “You tied her to your bed? Mom would be so disappointed in you.”
Cullen frowned. “She’d have said a helluva lot more if I’d let her run off in this. Or shit, left her where I found her.”
Garrett raised both hands, both chuckling and surrendering as he returned to the stove. “Go. Deal with it. I’ll make dinner.”
Deal with it. Cullen’s frown deepened. He had only the vaguest idea of what to do at this point. That was the problem. Casting the loft ladder a fearsome glare, he went to the study and instead of staring aimlessly out the kitchen window, he found himself staring out a different one. Bigger and meaner he might be, but wasn’t military any more. He didn’t have troops to support either an advance, entrap or withstand a siege. He felt unprepared.
He wasn’t even sure he believed in fate. The one thing he did believe, though, was that leaving her in the condition he’d found her would have been tantamount to putting his pistol to her temple and pulling the trigger. This was a countryside full of promise and potential, but it was not forgiving of even the smallest mistake. Chin could fight him and deny it all she wanted, but she would never have made it to San Francisco. She never would have survived the Indians, the outlaws, or the terrain.
Bringing her back had been the decent thing to do. An act of kindness, really. The only act of kindness he’d been inclined to offer, particularly given what she’d done to his property. No, kindness had been the farthest thing from his mind from the moment he’d found his horses gone. He’d gone after her for no reason other than vengeance at that point—right up until he’d seen her sitting in the muddy water, nursing a bloody hand and an even bloodier knee. Seeing her hurt hadn’t softened him. Rather, it had felt justified. Every bit as justified as the whipping he would have given her… If only she hadn’t fallen apart.
She’d felt good in his arms.
He really shouldn’t think about that, but he could no more stop those memories from coming than he could stop himself from pulling her tiny body onto his lap. Chin had triggered him in ways Cullen never knew he was vulnerable to. He didn’t want to, but he could still feel the way it had felt to rock her in his lap. He could still feel the dampness of her tears, though they’d long since dried from his shirt and the side of his neck. Standing at the window in his study, he could still smell the way she had smelled—the earthy, muddy, bloody, wet-horse smell that had almost completely overwhelmed the softer, fainter scent of her hair and skin, and heaven help him, but his lips still tingled from the damn-near brotherly kiss he’d pressed on the top of her head.
And then he’d taken her straight upstairs to his bed and, with a length of coarse rope, tied her wrists to the bedposts.
Whatever softening she’d experienced after having been held, rocked, and comforted by him, had dissipated out of the dark pools of her eyes as if it had never existed.
“Because I can’t trust you to stay where I put you,” he’d said, and at the time, he’d felt entirely justified in both word and deed. She hadn’t fought him, not the slightest little bit, but the look she’d given him… He’d fired six-irons less lethal than that glare.
Good thing she was tied up. Hands to opposite bedposts, far enough apart that she couldn’t lean over and use her teeth to loosen the knots. He’d been very careful about that.
Almost as careful as he’d been not to let her see how it had affected him to see her like that, back propped up on a small mountain of his pillows, dressed in one of his shirts because it was the driest thing he could find to cover her with. It hadn’t fit well. Buttoned all the way up, it still hung off her tiny caramel-colored shoulder, and how a woman so small could have legs that went all the way up like that… hell, he just didn’t know. He’d covered her with a blanket, tucking it in all around just as fast as he could, but already that image had burned into his brain along with that of her small but perfect breasts.
Haunted? Hell, at this point he was all but possessed! Perfect breasts. Perfect legs. Perfect body tied to his bed. Beneath him. The curves of her soft, brown bottom filling up his hands as he spread her open and settled himself between, his hips rocking into the cradle of hers, dipping into the hot wet readiness of a woman’s most yielding flesh.
“Eggs are ready,” Garrett said, appearing in the open doorway. How long he’d been there, Cullen wasn’t sure, but the narrow-eyed and slightly bemused smirk he wore said it had been long enough to suspect the direction of Cullen’s misbehaving thoughts. “You want me to take some up to…” He gestured with a look toward the ceiling.
“No.” Hoping Garrett wouldn’t notice the swiftness of that refusal, Cullen pulled his scattered self together. “No, I’ll do it.”
His smirk grew; he’d noticed. “I’ll load the rifles, then. Just in case.” Pushing out of the doorway, Garrett moved out of the way. “Oh, and Cul? You might want to take care of that before you head upstairs.”
Following the direction of his brother’s meaningful nod, Cullen looked down. The front of his jeans was a tent of visible deprivation no well-bred young lady should ever have to confront outside her loving husband’s company.
Cullen swore.
* * * * *
For all that it was a prison, the bed was soft and warm. Mad as she was, Chin couldn’t deny that he’d done his best to make sure she was comfortable. Bored half out of her mind, maybe. Regretting every decision she’d made from the moment she’d followed her mother’s command to run right up until this moment, absolutely. She hurt, too… everywhere. Her ankle was killing her; her knee was only marginally better. Her thigh felt the best of all and her hand, the worst. The bandages (although fine when he’d first wrapped) were now so tight that her fingers throbbed. It felt on fire. Her whole arm burned, all the way up to her shoulder.
But, at least the bed was comfortable.
Chin stared at the ceiling, listening to the rain and the sound of heavy footsteps clumping back and forth across the lower floor. Earlier she had heard the low indecipherable rumbling of Cullen and his brother talking, but that had stopped. How much of what they’d had to say had been about her, she didn’t know, but she suspected she’d find out just as soon as someone came up the loft ladder. She wasn’t looking forward to it. She already knew what was coming. Her gaze drifted to the cut length of saddle strap Cullen had hung on the wall just above her. When a man did that, a girl pretty well knew exactly how her night was bound to go. Chin couldn’t even argue with her impending sentence. She deserved it. She had been so stupid, but worst of all, she knew if given the chance, she would be just that stupid all over again.
And again and again, if she had to. She couldn’t stay here. Every minute she lay staring at the unchanging ceiling, all she could feel—apart from the minor agonies of her wounded body—was the imminenc
e of Quan Ji coming closer.
Run, her mother had said. But the fact was, she couldn’t even crawl. At this point, she could barely roll over without help and without crying out. She was done. She had found her limit, and what a bitter, painful pill that was to swallow. She was as helpless as a newborn and there was nothing she could do about it.
Hell, she couldn’t even squat over the chamber pot by herself.
Great. Now she had to pee.
Chin closed her eyes, her throat tightening against all the most impossible of choices: Either she would need to call out and beg someone to come untie and then help her, or she was going to have to wet the bed. She was still trying to decide which would be the least humiliating when heavy steps began to climb the ladder.
As if she were a guest, he paused to knock on the hatch before pushing it all the way open.
“Evening,” Cullen said as he bent to accept the glass and plate Garrett must have been waiting to hand him. Setting the glass on the floor beside him and juggling the plate one-handed, he climbed the rest of the way up into the room. Then he stood there, staring at her the way he tended to, with no discernible expression on an otherwise grim face.
As if she somehow embarrassed him, he dropped his gaze and cleared his throat. Dropping the hatch to give them privacy, he picked up the glass and ventured close enough to sit down beside her. “Thirsty?”