Tallchief for Keeps

by London, Cait

  Birk glowered at Alek. “Huh. What did she do, drag you here? You outweigh her by a good eighty-five pounds.”

  “My, the testosterone in this room is fairly bubbling,” Talia noted with delight, inching away from Calum’s restraining hand. “This could be the makings of a new play.”

  Alek ran his finger along Elspeth’s hot cheek and jerked it away before she bit him. “She came after me. This wasn’t my plan at all. I’m a regular old-fashioned guy. I’d prefer necking and dating and picnics and the regular route to…ah…a relationship. But there she was, determined to have me, and what could I do?”

  Too incensed to speak, looked at him as though she’d like to tear him to bits. He jerked when her fingers pinched his thigh. After a quick search and another pinch, he captured her hand and brought it up on the blankets to hold it.

  Elspeth’s muttering was the frosting on Alek’s well-devoured and sated cake. He knew he was glowing and grinning. “At least she’s not indifferent to me.”

  “Idiot.”

  Duncan snorted, drawing on his leather gloves. “I’ve got a field to plow.” He glared at Alek and then at Sybil, who was smothering a grin. “I’ve got work to do. Any time, Alek. Name it.”

  “They don’t call him Duncan the defender for nothing.” Sybil gave way to her grin.

  Talia straightened the curtains at the windows. She glanced at the tree limbs connecting Alek’s open window to Elspeth’s. An experienced troublemaker, Talia knew exactly how Alek had traveled to Elspeth’s bedroom. “So, Elspeth. Are you keeping that dinner date with Jeremy Cabot? Or does this change things?”

  Elspeth tried to reclaim her hand from Alek and couldn’t. “Alek and I are not going steady or engaged. Of course I’m keeping my date with Jeremy.”

  That stopped Alek, who was foraging for his shorts with his toe.

  Sybil cradled her cup of coffee and sat on the end of the bed. “Don’t glower, Alek. Mmm. Tell me what you know about Una’s shawl, the one she seduced Tallchief with?”

  “I did not seduce Alek,” Elspeth stated firmly, edging away from Alek.

  “I found the shawl. Used it as bait/’ He jerked her back, glowering at her after a full minute of trying to identify one Jeremy Cabot, a man soon to die. “Is that the idiot that runs the office at the feed-and-grain store? The piece of blubber who tries to fit himself into that tiny red sports car?”

  She sat very straight and smoothed her hair. “He’s always liked me. It’s been only lately, since his divorce, that I’ve thought he might have possibilities.”

  Talia leaned against Calum, whose expression said he was putting lots of twos together. “You know, this reminds me of home, Alek. Remember when all of us piled into Mom and Dad’s bedroom and Dad kept trying to shoo us away?”

  “Una’s shawl?” Duncan repeated too slowly in a tone resembling a growl.

  “Get lost, and take your posse with you. Now.” Alek didn’t want to deal with the Tallchief brothers right now; they could take him apart later. He took Elspeth’s wrist; Cabot wasn’t getting her. Elspeth glared at him and tried to reclaim it. She picked up the pillow.

  “You hit me,” he stated a heartbeat later, and blew a feather from his lips. He slashed a hand down his face and glowered at her, the woman who had swung the pillow with enough force to tear it He blew away another feather, tumbling down his forehead. Outraged that she would attack him after a night of lovemaking, Alek stared at her. When she didn’t act as though she’d apologize, Alek wrapped the quilt around his waist and stood.

  He looked out into the morning sunshine. The sheriff was parked on the street, binoculars focused on Elspeth’s bedroom window. Beside him stood Elspeth’s first-grade teacher, Mrs. Schmidt, shaking her head. A squad of little boys on souped-up dirt bikes stared with blatant interest and open mouths. Alek cursed; the boys would learn soon enough how a woman could make a man act like an idiot.

  “That’s mine,” Birk stated as Alek reached back to grab a kilt that had been flung over a chair. A spool of thread attached to the hem rolled to the floor.

  “I’m sure you won’t mind me borrowing your skirt, under the circumstances,” Alek returned. He stepped into the kilt, ignored the sewing pins jabbing him and crossed the limbs amid hoots and whistles from the Tallchiefs. Once in his bedroom, Alek slammed down his window. The phone ran a second later, while he was debating about which wall to take down. “Yes?”

  He knew it was Elspeth by the soft breathing at the other end. She probably wanted the kilt back, but he served her a warning instead. “You date that jerk, and I won’t be held accountable.”

  String circled Alek’s ankles, and he traced it from the kilt’s hem back to Elspeth’s window. Duncan appeared, grim faced, and jerked something between his leather-gloved hands. The thread at Alek’s kilt went limp.

  Elspeth strained for control. “Alek Petrovna, don’t you dare hurt Jeremy. He’s been my friend for ages.”

  Alek crushed the shawl. He intended to disassemble Cabot. “Will all that lard fit into a bucket?” he asked in a too-pleasant tone.

  Then he looked at the kilt he wore and smiled grimly. For the moment, he was wearing it just the same as the rest of the Tallchiefs. He began to wind the thread around his fingers. He was keeping as much of Elspeth as he could.

  “What’s that noise?” Elspeth asked as Sybil and Talia began laughing. Megan squealed in delight.

  Alek finished his thread recovery and glanced out his window. “Why, Elspeth-love, I believe that’s your brothers’ chain saws.”

  “What?”

  “It looks like they’re cutting off my access route to your boudoir.”

  Her outraged gasp did wonders for his bruised ego. Alek slowly replaced the phone on its cradle. Beneath his window, Elspeth, dressed in a faded flannel robe that exposed her legs magnificently swooped upon her brothers. The revving chain saws died as they backed away from her accusing finger and found themselves against her house.

  Though Alek couldn’t hear the words, from her expression, they weren’t pleasant ones. The brothers’ expressions changed from outrage to frustration. Duncan began arguing with her, Birk threw down his western hat and Calum shook his head. Talia and Sybil stood on the porch and laughed. Elspeth threw up her hands. She pointed to the new flower bed the brothers had tromped.

  “Huh. Look at that,” Alek mused as Elspeth stalked to the water faucet and turned the hose on her three brothers. After they were dripping and Sybil and Talia doubled over with laughter, Elspeth began pacing in front of them, her flannel robe flying around her legs. Duncan, Calum and Birk stood rigidly against the wall, until she pointed at them and scolded. One by one, they spit a distance. Elspeth shook her magnificent mane, threw up her hands and stalked into her house. “I love it when that woman gestures. She’s showing a real flair for it,” Alek murmured.

  The three brothers tromped and huffed and cursed and in the end packed up their chain saws.

  Suddenly Alek felt much better and took the stairs two at a time on his way down to make breakfast.

  He whistled while he fixed his cereal. After plucking away several pertinent pins from the back of the kilt, Alek sat down and propped his feet on another chair. He listened to the birds chirp, the revved-up teenagers’ trucks prowling on the street and settled into a happy cloud of morning-after—

  His back door opened and slammed. “Alek! Where are you?” Elspeth’s tone was not sweet.

  “In here, my love. Would you like breakfast? Have you come to court me or to drag me off to that shotgun wedding?” He was groggy on dreams, daft on making love with Elspeth and mellow with contentment. There was just something about seeing his lady love protect him. “You know Amen Flats isn’t really that boring—”

  When cold milk and soggy cereal ran down his head and onto his shoulders, Alek shivered. Then he grinned and licked a flake from his cheek. He leered at the gaping flannel robe and the curve of her breast. “Things are certainly looking up, Elspeth-mine.”
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br />   “Jerk.” She ripped his shorts from her pocket and dropped them on his head.

  “I’ll treasure that endearment forever.” Alek sat very still as Elspeth lifted the carton of milk and slowly poured it over his cereal and his shorts. He tilted his head to better appreciate the slope of her breast. “Are you going to make me spit, too?”

  He got a delicious view of a taut, dark nipple when Elspeth threw up her hands. “I used to make them settle their differences that way—spitting contests to see who could spit the farthest.”

  “I love a passionate, dominating woman,” Alek murmured, and leered up at her. “Let’s try whipped cream next time.”

  “Whipped cream…” Elspeth’s hand reached for the bed sheets, hovered and then she decided to leave them. She dusted the feathers from it and remembered how outraged he’d been, feathers drifting around his black, shaggy head and shoulders.

  She picked up the abused pillow, and Alek’s scent clung to it.

  A wave of stark longing washed over her, startling her. She couldn’t want him again. Not after last night, her body still aching from his. Yet images of Alek flashed through her mind, forcing Elspeth to brace herself against her emotions as she always did. She quickly made the bed and took a long, thorough shower, and the images returned. Alek, dressed in Birk’s kilt, created a memorable picture. Complete with breakfast cereal and extra milk, he looked delicious. He had sat very still while she poured, then smiled hopefully up at her with milk dripping off his nose.

  His little-boy expression had changed too rapidly back to a dark, passionate one. He’d wiped his face with one big hand and leveled a glare at her. “You date Cabot and—”

  Elspeth had reacted instantly, hooking one foot beneath the legs of his chair and pulling, sending him sprawling down in a mass of muscled, hairy legs and tangled kilt. She’d placed her bare foot on his cereal-spattered chest. “Hmm. Threats. Take a note, Alek.

  Don’t ever threaten me…I have lived with arrogant, threatening males all my life. I have experience in dealing with them.”

  Then, disgusted that Alek had provoked her and lay grinning as if he’d single-handedly won a football game, she had tried for an even tone. “I think I need to get out more,” she had stated elegantly before returning to her home.

  She’d broken every rule that she’d ever made—losing her temper with Alek Petrovna. There was no reason she shouldn’t date Jeremy and add to a growing list.

  Elspeth rummaged through the lacy lingerie she’d stuffed into a pretty flowery box and selected a white lace bra-and-panty set. Her body told her that she’d strained every muscle while making love to Alek, and a few she hadn’t known existed. “And that is how it’s going to be,” he’d said after their lovemaking.

  There was nothing sweet about Alek’s lovemaking, not at the center of it, while he held her on high on that fiery, throbbing pinnacle and still demanded more—Who was he to make rules about their love-making? To say what and how and when?

  She couldn’t forgive him for unleashing her emotions, for exposing her need of him.

  “Shotgun wedding,” she said, repeating Alek’s light concession. She had no intentions of getting involved with Alek.

  She was involved. For starters, she never wanted Alek waking to his nightmares alone. He should be held and tended and loved.

  Elspeth groaned. She knew herself, the old-fashioned steel built into her. She ran her hand across her mother’s quilt, the one she’d been holding that terrible night long ago in the kitchen.

  Alek Petrovna had come from another time, from another world in which she’d given herself.

  She’d changed. Or had she?

  She’d changed, the proof lodged in her body.

  Elspeth placed her hand over her eyes and sat upright. Elspeth… She recalled his murmur, close and hot against her. She didn’t trust Alek Petrovna; he was far too experienced at games and always pushing her, prodding her about what she’d locked inside. The shawl’s legend was none of his business. She’d tossed it and her romantic dreams away after returning from Scotland.

  Elspeth shivered and reached for her jeans, drawing them on and zipping them. She sucked in her breath and glanced at the light scrape marks on her stomach caused by Alek’s morning stubble. The rough denim material rubbed against the sensitized flesh of her thighs, and Elspeth groaned.

  This morning, Alek’s back had shocked her, pink lines showing where her nails had scraped him. A rush of heat shot through her, and Elspeth groaned again. She quickly drew on an old blouse she hadn’t worn for years. Alek had demanded everything, kissing her intimately, touching her. He’d handled her gently, firmly, committed to extracting the ultimate from her.

  Elspeth let out an unfamiliar, long, frustrated groan.

  She shook her head. Sex with Alek shouldn’t have gone so far, nor taken her so high, nor should gentler emotions tug at her now.

  Elspeth threw up her hands. What did she know about sex? She’d been unprepared for the shattering, and no amount of preparing could have shored up her walls, her protection.

  It was eight o’clock. Elspeth shivered and swept the lacy handkerchief from her family portrait. At least Alek had that much decency before he planned his raid.

  Downstairs, for the first time in her life, her loom held little interest. She was too restless. Elspeth forced herself to sip her morning herbal tea and then work her hair into one long braid. The sounds coming from next door said that Alek had set out to remove another wall—or tear his house apart. She listened intently and decided she liked Alek Petrovna worked up and frustrated.

  Elliot Pinkman, an older man needing to supplement his retirement income, came to till her garden and haul away brush. “Mornin’, Elspeth. You’re looking in the pink. Flushed, sort of. You been baking?” Elliot sniffed the June air. “Nope, can’t smell that good bread of yours. You sure look worked up. Alive. Full of it. Haven’t looked that way in a few years.”

  “I’ve…I’ve been moving my loom, Elliot. You know how big it is. I’ve got to get back to it.” Elspeth quickly made her retreat and glanced at the mirror. She placed her hands on her hot cheeks and released the taut, frustrated “Aargh!” to the shadows of her home.

  Elliot knocked at her door. “I could help you move that loom, Elspeth.”

  “Thank you for asking, but it’s all right now,” she lied. Nothing would ever be the same again, not with Alek dipping in her life.

  Jeremy called, clearly aware of the morning’s events. He wanted to confirm their dinner date. Jeremy hesitated slightly before asking her if she had a “thing” for Alek Petrovna. Her “We’re neighbors and Talia is his sister,” pacified Jeremy, who had been hovering around her for years, even during his marriage.

  This morning, Elspeth decided to ignore her garden, ignore her waiting loom and Mark’s messages on her answering machine. She slapped sandwiches into a backpack and drove to Tallchief Cattle Ranch.

  The time had come to visit her parents, resting high on Tallchief Mountain. When she’d returned five years ago, she couldn’t bear taking her shame to them—that she had loved a married man and had taken his child.

  Her mother had always told her that a special love waited and Una’s journals had supported that belief. Elspeth had returned with crushed dreams and chose to mourn her baby alone. Though she thought of them often, her parents’ love had been so perfect that it seemed they should rest, undisturbed by Elspeth’s dark storms.

  She’d missed the visits with her mother, as daughters do, and now it was time to share her life with them.

  Like a violent summer storm on the mountains, Alek had changed her life yet again. Her parents needed to know about him.

  Alek. She refused to surrender to him easily. Years ago, she’d tasted heaven in his arms, certain that life would grow richer and love would come to call. Those dreams were dashed too soon and that trust was hard to regain.

  Did she trust Alek? Not quite. He pushed too much, moved too quickly and wanted t
oo much. She wasn’t ready to give her deepest heart, the privacy she kept as her fortress. She doubted that now she could give that part to anyone…

  A man who could and had changed her life, Alek wanted everything. Elspeth clung to her safety, weaving it around her like a shield. As a girl, she’d lost her parents, and then Alek…. She feared another loss would take her deeper into the shadows….

  She needed this visit to quiet the sadness within her. Her parents had missed so much of their children’s lives and now it was time….

  When she arrived at Tallchief Cattle, Duncan had saddled Delight, a sturdy brown-and-white mare. He’d always known when she needed to ride up the mountain; they shared the Tallchief intuitions.

  As he watched her strap on her chaps, Duncan’s expressive eyes told her he worried but that he understood. He nodded to her and held out the reins. Elspeth placed her western hat on her head, nodded to her brother before placing her foot in the stirrup and rising to the saddle. Duncan didn’t say anything, nor did she; the Tallchiefs understood that dark moments roamed within them and needed privacy. She took the trail to Tallchief Mountain, passing through the shadows of the pines up a rocky stretch and over meadows filled with grazing Tallchief sheep.

  It was the first time she’d taken the trail to her parents’ graves in those five years.

  Nine

  Chipmunks ran up the red bark of the pines, and rabbits crossed Delight’s path as she carried Elspeth upward. In an aspen clearing, Elizabeth Montclair, Elspeth’s great-grandmother, had met the son of Una and Tallchief. Liam Tallchief, a half blood, had fought his captors who wanted him to dishonor Elizabeth. To save her sister, Elizabeth had agreed to shed her pride, marry the savage in his customs and take him into her body. Then Liam had followed her to England to revenge his pride, his seed taken from him unwillingly by the English heiress. She’d given up everything to be with him, to return to Tallchief land.

  The mountain sun burned through the trees, and a lizard baked on a lichen-covered rock. Scarlet Indian paintbrush blooms quivered in the wake of scurrying ground squirrels.