But her thoughts turned back to Robin, of the way she shut down whenever anyone mentioned Buck. Of the way Jacob tried to look after her. “How many women are you protecting from Buck McGillis?” she asked as she rubbed her bruising arm.
It was an odd thing to see such sorrow wash over his normally blank face. “I won’t be late again.”
More than just Robin. Was he counting that little girl who probably wasn’t his daughter too? “It wasn’t an accusation,” she said as he turned away from her.
He paused, not looking at her. “I know. Just a fact.”
The horse snuffed as it lifted a piece of hay from the ground. “Jacob,” she asked carefully as her mind ran back over the flurry of motion that had saved her from McGillis, “did you let the horse go?”
“No.”
She shot him her cut-the-crap look—never as good as her mom’s, but it got the job done.
“I didn’t let him go,” he protested.
“I’ve never seen you lose control of an animal.”
He sheepishly shrugged.
Realization dawned on her. “You drove him down the aisle?”
He leveled his eye at her, unreadable as always. “Worked, didn’t it?”
For the first time since she’d run into Buck, Mary Beth smiled. “I didn’t cost you your job, did I?”
“First, you didn’t do anything. Second, I make him too much money for him to fire me. Third, he’s all talk.”
“I don’t know about that,” she replied, scrambling to her feet. “Not a lot of that seemed all talk to me.”
“I’ll give you that. He’s all talk with men,” Jacob corrected. Mary Beth giggled, and he looked at her like maybe she’d hit the ground too hard. “What?”
“‘This is America—learn the language,’” she snickered. “He’s not too smart, is he? Lakota is more American than English is. You guys were here first.”
“Yeah, you’re okay. The mouth still works.”
Tommy cleared his throat. She hadn’t heard him come back into the barn, but suddenly there he was standing next to Jacob. “He’s in the house.”
“Hey, Tommy.” She smiled, trying to act like the whole thing had been just another day on the ranch. “Thanks for your help.”
“No problem, Doc.” He blushed, looking more like the slightly shy guy he normally was. “Next time, threaten to castrate him.”
She laughed out loud, and even Jacob chuckled. “I’ll do that, thanks.”
After that, Jacob never left her alone while she was on the ranch. From the moment the cab door opened, he was within line of sight, never taking his eye off of her until she climbed back in the Ram at the end of the day. Even then, he stood there and watched her until she drove around a curve in the road.
But instead of a claustrophobic closeness, Mary Beth felt unusually safe around him. Aside from when he’d grabbed her by the armpits and hoisted her onto her feet, he hadn’t touched her. He was close enough to defend her, but not close enough to give anyone, including her, the wrong idea. Sure, some days he still didn’t do more than grunt in response to her questions, but he was always there.
Mary Beth guessed it worked, because aside from the roaring of the Jeep past the café just before the show every night, she didn’t see Buck McGillis again.
But just seeing his Jeep cut a swath down Main Street was enough to make her sweat.
Chapter Six
One cloudy morning in late July, Bill sent her up to the ranch alone. “Got a bit of a head cold,” he explained as he reached for the tissues on his desk.
“No problem, Bill.”
“We were going to preg-check those cows,” he said before he blew his nose.
Nothing new there. “Jacob will have the chute, right?” The chute was a rickety steel contraption that was probably older than she was, but it kept the cows contained. Mary Beth always felt badly for the poor cows, but preg-checking was an important job. And besides, she was usually covered in manure from head to toe by the time she was done. The cows got their revenge all right.
“Right. And Fran has packed extra shoulder gloves,” he sniffed, unsuccessfully trying to breathe through his nose.
“I’ll be sure to thank her,” she replied, quickly escaping before Bill shared any of those germs with her.
As usual, Jacob was leaned against the barn with Mick drop-tethered next to him and Jezebel tied to the fence. “Mary Beth,” he said with a touch of the fingers to the brim of his hat. “No Bill today?”
“Head cold,” she replied with a shrug as she hefted the saddlebags out of the truck bed. “He said we’d be preg-checking. Is the chute here or out on the range?”
“Can you do it on the range?”
Mary Beth couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Yes, I could see where you might think I wouldn’t be able to handle preg-checking cows after all these months. Seriously, Jacob.”
His eyebrow edged up just a bit as he almost smiled. God, Mary Beth thought, what a piece of work—uncharted territory just waiting to be discovered. And then her brain decided this was the exact moment to revisit the question of his underwear.
But she didn’t want to fold first, so she jammed her hands onto her hips and glared back at him, ignoring the fact that she was blushing.
Finally, he broke the silence. “The cows are up on the south edge of the ranch. Close to the rez,” he replied, gracefully gliding up onto the paint’s back. Then he looked at her as if he were trying to tell her something.
Close to the rez? Were they checking to see if a field had been used to slaughter cattle? She didn’t know. She only knew he wouldn’t tell her. Then he turned his face away.
“Then let’s get gone,” she said, relieved he wasn’t giving her that look—half-amused, half-pissed—anymore.
The trail wound far away from the parts of the ranch she’d been to, deeper into the hills. Like most of their rides, Jacob was silent, but he was acting a bit odd today. He kept turning around in the saddle like he was going to say something but then seemed to think better of it.
Finally, he pulled his horse to a stop and waited for her to come up next to him.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen the buffalo yet?” Jacob blurted out. Was he blushing?
“No,” she admitted, trying not to stare at the unexpected sight of the masked cowboy looking nervous. “Bill seems to think that if I sedate them enough, it’s no big deal, but I thought they were monster huge.”
He grinned, and Mary Beth melted just a bit. “You want to see one?”
“You hiding buffalo out here too?”
“Nope. There’s a small herd on the rez. We aren’t far.”
Something about the offer made Mary Beth want to giggle. Almost like he was asking her out, but instead of to a movie it was to go buffalo watching. She couldn’t help but wonder if this was Indian flirting.
“We won’t get trampled or anything?”
“I promise,” he replied in all seriousness, “I won’t let you get hurt.”
It was the second time he’d made that promise. As she watched him canter up over a small hill, his body moving in perfect harmony with his horse like he’d been born in a saddle, she wondered if it wasn’t already too late to make that kind of promise.
They rode on for another half hour, slowly climbing higher into the plains, farther from the ranch—and from everything else—than Mary Beth had ever been.
“Where are we?” she asked as he finally slowed down and slid off his paint.
“The center of the world,” he smirked as he grabbed her around the waist and easily lifted her off Jezebel. For just a second, his hands lingered, settling on her hips as he turned her to look out over the ridge they’d climbed.
Okay, this officially counts as a date, she hummed as his right hand trailed up her back while the left pointed out over the Great Plains. Every spot he touched positively tingled with a pleasure so acute it almost hurt.
“See?” he murmured, his mouth only
a few inches from her ear. “Down below.”
The whole vista was nothing short of stunning. The buffalo were huge, but if they’d even noticed the humans a hundred feet away, they didn’t seem to care. She’d never been so alone with Jacob. She could kiss him now and no one would know.
Mary Beth’s heart began to hiccup as she tried to focus on the enormous dark shapes gliding through untouched grasses instead of the overwhelming desire to kiss him. As he lightly swept his fingers over her shoulder and down her arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps in his wake, she decided that she wasn’t getting back on that horse until she’d found out whether or not he had on any underwear. She was tempted to throw herself at him—that’s what she would have done at any other time, with any other man—but somehow, she knew he would have to be the one who made the first move. Otherwise? He might just shut down on her, be as unreadable as ever.
Suddenly, he tightened his arm around her as he gasped. Yes, Mary Beth thought. This was it. He’d made his move, now she could make hers. But then, unexpectedly, he pulled away from her. “We’ve got to go.”
She stumbled back. “Huh?”
As he mounted up, he pointed west. It was only then that she saw a huge wall of clouds quickly advancing. “Storm’s coming,” Jacob yelled as the wind surged up.
“Yeah, thanks for the weather bulletin,” she snipped as the cloud opened up, furious that she’d missed her chance to find out what kissing a man in a mask could have been like. Great. Just what I need.
The wind and the rain were coming down so fast that the horses were beginning to flounder. Then the wind shifted direction, furious and demanding as the hail began to pelt them.
“Jacob!” she yelped as the hail grew from peas to dimes.
In response, he turned Mick around and darted over a hill. “Come on!” he hollered back to her.
Mary Beth urged Jezebel on faster, trying to dodge the hail that was now up to nickels. She didn’t know where they were going. They were nowhere near the ranch, and she hadn’t seen another sign of life in the last hour and a half. There couldn’t be anything else out here for miles.
Jacob rode through a narrow creek that was already dangerously rising as the trees bent to the will of the wind. But as they crested another hill, Mary Beth was shocked to see a small dark house tucked in a stand of pines appear out of nowhere.
“Quick!” he howled against the wind, throwing himself off Mick and racing the horse to a small lean-to against the house. Mary Beth did the same, but there wasn’t enough room or protection from the hail for all of them.
“Can we go in?” she screamed as the hail battered the tin roof.
Jacob actually paled as he seemed to debate it. But as lightning struck a nearby tree, he flipped a switch on a generator she hadn’t noticed, grabbed her hand and raced the twenty feet to the front door.
It was unlocked and he pulled her inside and slammed it against the furious elements. The wind buffeted the door, threatening to push it open again, but it held fast.
Mary Beth groped around for a second before she found the light switch. As the florescent light flickered and then hummed to life, she saw they were in a one-room cabin with one small bed against the near wall and a larger one in back. A short counter with a sink and a narrow oven encompassed the kitchen, and a sturdy farm table sat in the center of the room.
Everything was clean and neat, if covered in dust. It didn’t look like anyone had been in here for a long time.
Then she noticed the deep-brown stains covering the floor. Three distinct stains glared at her against the light pine floor. The one between the table and the small bed was huge. Between the table and the door was another large stain, and just off to her right was a smaller blot, the edges marking an irregular pool.
“Blood?” she gasped, realizing there could be nothing else that left that kind of mark. When Jacob didn’t answer her, she spun around and said it again. “Blood?”
Jacob’s terrified appearance confirmed her suspicions. He was wheezing, his one eye wild with fear as sweat beaded on his brow. The extreme panic he was caught up in led to only one possible explanation.
Jacob knew whose blood stained the floor.
“Jacob,” she said quietly as his head swung around to hers, his eye still wild in terror. She knew that look. She’d seen that look in Uncle Hank when he got to thinking about Vietnam too much. Jacob was having a flashback. “Jacob,” she said again, keeping her voice low and steady, “tell me what you see.”
“The blood—blood everywhere,” he gurgled, shaking violently.
“Tell me what happened, Jacob. Let it go,” she soothed like he was a panicked, wounded animal.
“I tried to stop it, but it slit her throat. Jesus, there was so much blood,” he cried, the pain twisting his body towards hers.
She caught him as he tried to burrow into her. “Whose blood, Jacob? Yours?”
“Susan’s. Susan died here, and I couldn’t save her. I was too late for Fred, but I thought I could save her.” He wept into her hair. “And it killed her. It laughed as it killed her, and then it came for me. Oh, God,” he sobbed as she held him up.
It came for him? Jesus Christ, is this where he lost his face? Trying not to panic, she did her best to keep her voice calm. “I’m here, Jacob. What killed her?”
Suddenly his back went stiff and his eye furious. “You aren’t supposed to be here. No one is supposed to know about this,” he choked out as the grief transformed into rage before her eyes.
Okay, this is normal, she tried to reassure herself as his body went steel hard against hers. Displacement. No problem. Uncle Hank used to do this too. Just a flashback.
The wind blew the door open, throwing her into his inflexible arms. He slammed her back into it, shutting the door with her body as he returned from his own personal hell. His breath was hard and fast as he stared her down, mere inches between them.
Good, she thought. He’s coming out of it.
But then his eye began to dart back to the bloodstain next to them.
“No, don’t go back there, Jacob,” she demanded, taking his face in her hands. “Stay with me. Just stay here with me.” She skimmed her hand over the worn leather of his mask, and the growl that sprang from deep in his chest flattened her even harder against the door.
If she could keep his attention, he wouldn’t slip back into the flashback—and her hands on his mask definitely had his attention. “I want to see what a man with a mask looks like underneath,” she said in a breathy whisper, relieved to have something he could focus on with exquisite, if enraged, clarity.
At least he’s not panicking, she thought as Jacob knocked his mouth against hers so hard that her head bounced back against the door. The stiff leather nose of the mask dug into her cheek before he tilted his head a bit and shoved his tongue into her mouth. The surprising ferocity sent a thrill through her.
Okay, she thought as she opened her mouth farther, drawing his tongue in, if it’s distraction sex you want, it’s distraction sex you’ll get. As she looped her leg around his, pulling him into her, she tried to touch the mask again. “I want to see,” she whispered when he pulled back, his chest heaving in an erotic rage.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he growled, grabbing both her hands and smashing them over her head. “These things are not for you to know.” With each word, he banged her hands against the door with an extra bit of force. “These things are not for you to see.”
Mary Beth supposed she should have been scared. All the times she’d been with men, she’d chosen timid, cautious guys too shy to do much but come at the third thrust. Guys she could control. Guys she could dominate. Guys she could take or leave.
But now here she was being savagely kissed by an-honest-to-God cowboy—an Indian with a mask, to boot—as if she were the enemy and sex were the weapon. He had control, at least of her body, but she still had him right where she wanted him. The combination of power and powerlessness was intoxicating. As he raked
his tongue through her mouth again, Mary Beth decided she was far too excited to be scared.
“What things do you want to see, Jacob?” she growled in his ear, testing to see how firmly he held her hands as she arched her back, pushing her breasts into his chest. “What things do you want to know?”
He snarled at her as he quickly put both of her wrists in his left hand. Then the mother-of-pearl buttons on her cowgirl shirt were popping apart as he ripped through them, leaving her covered with nothing but her red silk Victoria’s Secret bra.
“You ride horses in that?” he barked, momentarily distracted by the flash of overt femininity.
“I didn’t wear it for the horses.” She wiggled one hand free and ran it through his mop of hair until she hit the patch strap. Before she could even begin to trace its path back up to his face, he growled again, grabbing her hand and completely flattening her against the door with the force of his kiss. Despite the soaked clothes, the heat rolling off him had her melting in all the best places.
“That’s right,” she panted, beginning to feel like she was losing control of the situation—of herself. “You wanted to know. You wanted to see.” He savagely grabbed one breast, expertly kneading the nipple through the silk.
Mary Beth was definitely losing control of herself as her head began to spin. No man had ever touched her like this, with this naked, aggressive need. Already, she was more turned on than she could ever remember being with any of the others. The way he pawed at her made the tingles on the top of the bluff look like child’s play. This—this was for grown-ups only.
“Yes,” she hissed as he bent his head and bit down on the silk. “Feel me. Taste me. Know me.”
“Shut up, just shut up,” he growled as he released her hands to yank her belt free and strip her pants down to her knees.
As he traced around the edge of the matching red silk panties, Mary Beth caught his face with her hands and pulled him back up to her lips. But instead of trying to get under his mask again, she slid her hands down to his belt and slid it free as she quickly undid those promising buttons.
Masked Cowboy (Men of the White Sandy) Page 7