Inexperienced stallions tended to switch off their brains and act stupid the first time they met a mare in heat. Pretty much like most guys. Nat glanced over at Eliza who was helping Ezra put salt licks onto the back of the pickup. Dressed in work jeans, with her jacket buttoned up to her chin, she still looked cold despite the warm wind that blew down from the ridge. Dark circles rode her eyes and fatigue wore down the edge of her smile. She laughed at something Ezra said and the sound rippled along his nerves, reminding him of how they’d spent most of last night.
The stallion snorted, velvet nostrils flared red as he danced around, jerking back on the lead-rein. Stealth’s first sexual intercourse was fraught with potential danger—most things depending on the mare. If she kicked him during mating he could become gun shy and be too afraid to ejaculate. Or she could bolt and make the stallion prone to rush to mount mares in the future, to hang onto them too tight.
Shit, Nat could relate. There was nothing simple about dealing with females.
Sweat gathered on Stealth’s back and withers, a sure sign he was geared up for action. Eliza raised her head and looked over at him as if feeling the weight of his thoughts. Then she looked over at the mare who stood lined up against the breeding wall.
Did she compare servicing a mare to rape?
He stumbled slightly and Stealth jerked fussily on the end of the rein.
Nat forced himself to relax. Knew that his own anxieties were easily transmitted to the young stallion. He led Stealth towards the mare, put gentle pressure on the breeding halter, and was pleased at how the stallion responded to him, despite the mind-numbing distraction of imminent sex.
No, Nat didn’t equate the two. A mare that didn’t want to be bred would be damned difficult to force, even by nine hundred pounds of teeth and sex hormones.
Nat swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth and tried to concentrate on the job in hand. The mare angled sideways slightly, took a long look at the young stud that approached her, deciding whether or not she was going to accept him. Nat let her look, but sensed no reluctance. Cal nodded and Nat brought Stealth up to the rear of the mare and eased the stallion over her haunches. The mare braced herself against the added weight of the stallion, but didn’t swing around or kick out.
She was a good mare.
Nat glanced at Eliza, felt the air go sultry between them. Stealth needed no help guiding himself into the mare and Nat stood to one side and tried not to get turned on by the thought of doing something similar with Eliza.
Jesus, this was routine, a normal job on a busy working farm, but today it felt...personal. His nerve endings were on fire and his body in a heightened state of arousal. Damn. It was embarrassing. He scrubbed his hands over hot eyes, and felt like a pervert, lower than the lowest scumbag.
Ezra said something to Eliza and she turned away.
A car crested the hill behind the main house and Nat cursed, knowing the timing couldn’t be worse. The mare shifted nervously as Stealth strove for completion.
The driver gunned the engine and Nat used every ounce of willpower he possessed to calm the mare and urge Stealth to get the job done.
His mouth thinned. He wanted to yell at the driver, but he didn’t dare glance away from the bonded pair. With an inelegant snort Stealth ejaculated and collapsed on top of the mare.
Cal held the mare steady as the stallion slid down, and was already leading her away by the time Nat eased the stallion to the ground.
The horses are fine. Everything is fine.
Nat breathed out a sigh of relief, still as uncomfortable as hell in his snug jeans.
Figured.
He stroked Stealth’s nose, rubbed his ears and told him he’d done a good job. Even if the mare didn’t conceive, the event had been a success. He turned to the newcomers and kept his face carefully neutral when he saw Troy and Marlena Strange, standing next to a new model Mercedes four-by-four.
Tomorrow was the day of the auction.
Nat stopped himself from grinding his teeth. Chances were that by tomorrow evening, Troy Strange would own a piece of his heart.
Okay—so maybe things weren’t so fine.
Marlena glanced at Nat’s crotch with a wicked smile that killed his arousal stone dead. The woman was stunningly beautiful, but she left him colder than a gravestone.
“What do you want?” Nat asked. It wasn’t exactly neighborly, but he didn’t give a shit.
“Thought you might be ready to let me take another look at that stallion of yours.” Troy flashed a phony megawatt smile, the accent pure Texas, but thick with insincerity. “And here he is all ready for me.”
Troy moved toward Stealth, who stood quivering from exertion, and raised his hand to stroke the black stallion’s nose. The horse bared his teeth and rolled his eyes until their whites gleamed like bloodshot crescents in the afternoon light.
“Touch him and I’ll put my fist through your face.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. With one step he moved between Troy and the stallion.
Troy hesitated, dropped his hand. “You can’t afford to be choosy, neighbor.”
As if Troy had a say in how Nat felt.
“If you go belly-up, I’ll have this place for peanuts, the horses too.” Troy snapped his finger and thumb together for effect. He took a cigarette packet out of his shirt pocket and offered one to Nat.
Like they were friends having a conversation.
Nat kept his silence though he wanted to smash Troy so hard, he could barely hold back. His fists rounded into solid blocks by his side, but he didn’t need a lawsuit on top of everything else, and Troy Strange would bring a lawsuit.
Nat said nothing, stood absolutely still and stared down at Troy like he was a bug on a pin.
“You know it and I know it,” Troy continued, ignoring the silent warning. “Why don’t we just cut the crap and I’ll buy the horses and the ranch now for a fair price.” He named a ridiculously low figure, tapped the cigarette on the packet and lit up. He breathed the smoke deeply into his lungs, blew out, straight into Nat’s face.
Nat didn’t blink.
Troy thought he understood the code of the west, thought he knew how to be a real man, but he wasn’t even close. If Troy had been bigger Nat might have taken him on, lawsuit be-damned, but he was only medium height with a slight build. It would be like punching out a child.
Marlena strolled over to stand beside her husband. She towered over him, slim and lithe, long dark brown hair flowing in waves to halfway down her back. Troy placed a possessive arm around her waist as if to rein her in.
Sneering, Nat figured she needed a leash. She eyed him like he was on the menu, her tongue just peeking out of her oversized lips.
Great. Freaking great.
Troy glared at him even though Nat kept his face impassive. Nat threw Eliza a quick glance, but she’d disappeared.
“Get off my property,” asshole, he bit down on the insult, “before I call the sheriff.” His voice remained flat calm, like the surface of a lake before an electrical storm. Inside he seethed, resentment curling through him like an ember on slow burn.
“Sheriff Talbot would be a little upset if he had to come out here two days in a row.” Strange smirked and suddenly Nat knew. Troy had set up the whole thing—the fight, the visit from the sheriff. He was trying to drive the Sullivans right out of town. Sonofabitch.
What the hell had Marlena told her husband about him?
“How’s the convict?” Strange smirked again. As if he was too goddamned stupid to figure out he was being screwed by the Texan.
Nat sensed Ryan come up to stand beside him. His brother moved quietly when he wanted to and Nat sometimes forgot he wasn’t the only Sullivan who stood to lose the ranch.
“Did you know half the town’s fucked your wife?” Ryan asked Troy with a slow friendly smile. “Only the male half, mind.” Ryan laughed at his own little joke, as if he thought it was funny.
Nat didn’t. He hated where this was going, c
ringed before Ryan opened his mouth again.
“She even offered Nat a blowjob a couple weeks ago, but he was kinda rushed so he couldn’t take her up on her offer...I took her up though,” Ryan spoke in a low dead whisper, the king of easy-going, suddenly pissed. “She tell you about that?”
Crap.
Troy’s frame buzzed with temper. His fists clenched and unclenched by his side.
“Maybe you need the stud for her?” Ryan smiled, but Nat had never seen him look so deadly. “Because I know she likes it hard and fast, and maybe you’re just not up to the job?”
Marlena started to splutter a defense. Troy cut her off with a sharp slice of his hand and a hard grip on her wrist. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re trying to do.” He glared at Ryan with unrestrained fury. “This from the king of screwing around? I bet your dead wife turns in her grave, the way you nail anything that—”
Troy never saw it coming. He was flat on the ground, nursing his face with both hands before he could say spit.
Nat was just sorry Ryan had got there first.
“Don’t ever mention my wife again,” Ryan spat between gritted teeth.
Maybe he should have warned Troy about Ryan’s sore point.
Marlena must have decided that the best defense was a good offense because suddenly she was shouting. “I didn’t come on to him. He attacked me!” She was pointing at him, Nat, and there were actual tears in her eyes. He just bet she’d spun a great tale that hadn’t included going down on him as a tip for a ride home.
The woman was spitting mad, her revenge foiled by a man she thought she’d already nailed. “And don’t think I have to take these accusations from you.” She pointed at Ryan. “You’ll hear from my lawyer.”
Nat stared at Troy who still rolled around in the dirt and shook his head—mention the freaking lawyer now, why don’t you.
Ryan laughed, but it didn’t sound pretty. “I can get signed affidavits from half the cowboys in town, sweetheart, regarding your favorite sexual position. And they’re just the ones who can write.”
Troy climbed to his feet nursing a split lip. “I’m going to destroy you, you bastard.” Troy thrust his face closer to Nat’s.
What? Why him? He crossed his arms over his chest and stared Troy down. “Just try it.”
Did he really believe he’d go anywhere near his crazed wife? Nat glanced across at Marlena and swore. She was reeling against the four-by-four, crying as if her heart had been broken.
His hands itched with the desire to start clapping and shouting Bravo.
The bitch was completely loco. He could lose the family ranch because some bimbo didn’t like the fact he’d rejected her?
“Nat!” Eliza shouted, “NAT!”
What the…? Nat looked across to see Eliza standing on the porch of the main house, trying to hold his mother upright.
He started running.
“I hope the old bitch dies—” Troy shouted after him. Nat knew Ryan hit the little bastard again, but he didn’t stop to look.
By the time he’d reached the porch, Eliza had laid Rose down on the floor and dashed into the kitchen to phone 9-1-1.
His mother’s complexion was a ghastly gray and her skin clammy when he touched her cheek.
“Nat,” she gasped. Her right hand clutched at her left breast as her back arched off the floor. “Hurts...” She was having another heart attack. Panic screamed inside his head, but reason drowned it out. Her blue lips were pulled back in a grimace of pain, her breath shallow. His own heart shriveled and died inside his chest. He couldn’t lose her now.
“It’ll be okay, just try and lie still.” Kneeling, he pulled a blanket off his mother’s rocking chair and placed it as a pillow beneath her head. The emergency services would take too long to get here.
Sas was at the ER.
“Phone the ER, Eliza, number’s on the board,” Nat shouted through the screen door. “Ask them what to do.”
She held her chest and grimaced hard. She shuddered, took a sharp, jerky breath. “Don’t. Let them. Take the ranch. Nat.”
“No one’s taking anything, Mom, so—”
“Promise me.” Rose gripped his hand so hard it hurt. “Promise. Me.” She gazed into his eyes and Nat’s whole body filled with dread.
Swallowing the knot that formed in his throat, he nodded. “I promise.”
Eliza ran through the door at the same time Ryan pulled Nat’s truck up to the porch steps.
“Doctor says get her to the ER as fast as you can.” Eliza held out a strip of tablets. “She told me to put one of these under her tongue and then get yourselves down there ASAP.”
Eliza tore out a tablet and passed it to Nat.
He placed it under his mother’s tongue and picked her up, cradled her silver-haired head against his chest. She’d drifted into unconsciousness.
Grimly, Nat held Eliza’s gaze as he climbed into the truck. He hugged his mother close to his chest as Ryan gunned the engine, but the chances of Rose making it to the ER alive were slim to none and they all knew it.
***
Five hours later, Elizabeth waited at the kitchen window, looked out at the moon, past little pots of herbs that lined the windowsill. Nat had phoned.
Rose was dead.
Elizabeth felt sick. She’d finally figured out that her whole damned life was cursed.
She wasn’t in denial anymore; her eyes were wide-open. She loved Nat Sullivan to the depths of her soul and there was nothing she could do about it. Now his mother was dead, but she couldn’t even stay to comfort him.
Despair dragged like lead in her chest—pulled her shoulders down in defeat. She was going to leave tomorrow, abandon him as if he meant nothing to her, with that bitch and her husband ready to drive nails into the coffin.
But she could help. She would help. She’d already set the wheels in motion and hoped there was time to make it work. Nat wouldn’t like it, but then he didn’t have to know.
Heartache choked her and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get the air past the weight of guilt and misery that blocked her throat. Elizabeth stumbled to the door. Threw it open and staggered outside. Ran from the house into the cold night air and reached the corral, climbed the rails and stared up at the stars.
Stealth trotted over, a zephyr of air in the darkness, and rubbed his velvet soft nose against her arm. The misery didn’t stop. Desperate, she did something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl. She found the North Star, wished upon it, like a child the night before Christmas.
***
Nat’s shoulders slumped forward; his throat constricted so tightly that no matter how hard he swallowed, grief still suffocated him like a garrote.
Sarah—hell, he didn’t even want to think about the look in her eyes when she’d realized they’d lost the battle. All that medical knowledge and she was still impotent against death. He held on to the edge of the kitchen sink, squeezed his eyes shut, but only saw the hollow reflection of grief in her eyes. He’d known before she’d told him that Rose was gone.
Hell.
Standing in the kitchen, encircled by darkness, the sound of his breathing was harsh in the noiseless room. The house was silent as if in mourning. Hell, it was.
Sarah had stayed at the hospital to make the arrangements for the funeral. He’d dropped Ryan and Cal at a bar then he’d come home for Tabitha. And for Eliza.
He didn’t remember the house ever being this quiet before. Not when his dad had died, nor when Ryan’s wife, Becky, followed just a few months later. Maybe it was because there’d been a baby to take care of, or maybe, this time, death had finally stolen the heart and soul of his family.
Not wanting to think about his mother, he methodically finished his drink of water, washed the glass, and towel-dried his hands. Walking upstairs, he listened to each footfall echo off the wood before taking another step. It sounded cold and lonely. At the top, he moved along the landing until he reached the last room at the end of the house.
The door was open a crack and he pushed it wider. Eliza lay in a dim pool of light, asleep on top of a Winnie-the-Pooh bedspread. Her legs dangled off the side of Tabitha’s tiny bed, dark hair loose and tangled around her face, lips slightly parted. Tabitha curled toward her, a kangaroo clutched in a headlock beneath her chin.
Nat forced back tears. He didn’t want to have to tell Tabitha that her grandma had died—he could barely comprehend it himself. But Sarah had enough to cope with, and Ryan...well Ryan didn’t deal well with death.
Nat rubbed his hand over his face, gnawed the inside of his lips against the edge of his teeth. He didn’t really have a choice. Maybe she’d be too young to understand anyway. And that thought brought a rush of sorrow that welded his throat shut. Tabitha wasn’t even three years old and she’d already lost three of the most important people in her life. Four—if you counted Ryan’s stony detachment.
The nightlight coated the curve of Eliza’s cheek with soft peach and darkened the golden freckles that stood out on her nose. Another orphan, raised by strangers.
How did you survive without a mother to love you? A mother to wipe away the tears, soothe the hurt and scold the misdeeds? A mother to make you wear sweaters when you weren’t cold and wash up when there was nothing wrong with being dirty?
He watched the gentle rise and fall of Eliza’s shoulders as she slept. Wanted to reach out and touch, but couldn’t get his hand to release the death-grip on the doorknob.
Rose Sullivan had been a hard woman, bred for toughness in the high mountain valleys, but she’d had a soft side too, a side that had loved her children as fiercely as a wildcat defended her young. Just the way he’d loved her back. But now his grief weighed him down like a boulder, twice as heavy because of the promise he’d made before she’d slipped away.
He’d save the ranch. Somehow.
The auction would go ahead tomorrow morning. The woods would probably be sold before most people knew Rose was dead. Shit. Nat let go of the door, rubbed his eyes and straightened his shoulders. Eliza whimpered and her hand burrowed beneath her pillow. Protectiveness hit him in a wave that rocked him. Pushing the door wide open he walked into the room and stepped over the stuffed teddies that lay scattered across the carpet. He covered Tabitha with her favorite blanket, brushed a fine blonde curl back from her forehead and kissed her cheek.
Crimes of Passion Page 51