Bride of the Wolf

by Susan Krinard

  Amy edged her mount a few steps back and flung up her head like a rebellious filly. “You may be interested to know that we intend to employ Mr. McCarrick at Blackwater. He is not without friends.”

  “You want Sean for a friend, Miss Blackwell, that’s your lookout. But he’ll use you, just like he uses anyone he thinks he can string along.”

  Amy swung her arm up, and for a split second it looked as if she might try to hit him with her quirt. She didn’t. She just stared at him, hate and confusion in her eyes.

  “When Sean’s uncle returns, he will hear about this,” she snapped.

  “It’s Sean who should be scared of that, ma’am.”

  With a sharp, angry cry, Amy jerked her mare around and kicked it into a run.

  “The señorita is very angry,” Lucia said solemnly.

  “Yeah.”

  “When will Señor McCarrick return?”

  “Soon.” Heath took the mule’s lead. “Let’s get on home.”

  It was near evening when Heath and Lucia reached Dog Creek. He smelled something wrong as soon as they got near the house.

  Joey was waiting for him in the yard, his wiry body vibrating with tension. “Holden!”

  Heath dismounted and helped Lucia dismount. “What is it?”

  “The hands! They all up ’n left…’ceptin’ me ’n Maurice. They rode in from the range a few hours ago. Didn’t say a word, just lit out again right away.”

  Heath pulled off his hat and raked his hand through his hair. “Where the hell’d they go?”

  “Don’t know. But—” He bit his lip. “Maurice says Sean was here talkin’ to El and Gus last night.”

  Sean. Heath hadn’t seen this coming, and he should have. The son of a bitch would have made the most of Heath being gone. He had a way of making people follow him. People like Amy, too blind or stupid to see through his lies.

  The force of his own anger pulled him up short. Why was he so mad? It wasn’t as if he had to worry about problems like this much longer.

  “This here’s Señora Gonzales,” he said to Joey. “You show her into the house.”

  “But, Holden, we ain’t done brandin’! What are we gonna do?”

  “We would have let most of the hands go in a couple of weeks, anyway. Now git.”

  Joey didn’t like it, but he did as he was told. He touched his hat to Lucia and led her to the house. When he returned, Heath set him to unsaddling the mule.

  “How’d it go with Lucia?” he asked.

  “Mrs. McCarrick was sure happy to see her. They showed each other their babies like they was prize bulls.”

  Heath was in no mood for laughing. He saw to Bess, shouldered the saddlebags and headed for the house, aware that he stank of sweat and horse and needed a bath.

  And he needed a run. A good, hard run to clear his mind and remind himself that he was almost free.

  He entered the house without knocking. The whole place smelled of warm human bodies, strong coffee and something good cooking in the kitchen. Rachel was sitting at the table, the baby in her arms. Lucia sat beside them with her own kid, and Heath could see that he’d interrupted their talk. The dim light made Rachel seem different somehow. Not sharp and skinny, with a tongue like a knife, but gentle, like Lucia. It gave him a strange, unsettled feeling in his chest.

  Especially because she didn’t look scared now, or suspicious, or angry. She almost looked happy, as if she’d just been given some pretty ribbon or one of those shiny copper pots he’d seen at Sonntag’s.

  She almost looked glad to see him.

  “I have been speaking with Lucia,” she said with a smile that gave a sparkle to her eyes. “I am grateful that she is willing to help us.”

  Grateful. He hated that word; it bothered him worse than her smile. He didn’t want to hear in Rachel’s voice or see it in her eyes, or care if she was glad to see him or not. None of it was real.

  He’d planned to do whatever she told him, treat her right so she would stay as long as he needed her. But now that he saw her again, all “grateful” as she was, the old bitterness was rearing up, stronger than reason or sense. Rachel Lyndon troubled him too much, and a day and night away hadn’t eased that feeling. Every time he was around her, it only got worse.

  Lucia didn’t make him feel that way. She was quiet. She hadn’t tried to argue or order him around. And she would never betray him, because she would never know any more about him than she knew now.

  If Lucia took over the baby’s care, Heath might never have to speak to Rachel again.

  “You mind leavin’ us alone, señora?” he said to Lucia.

  She gathered up her baby, nodded to Rachel and went into the hall.

  “That wasn’t necessary,” Rachel said, some of the light going out of her eyes.

  “How’s the kid?” he asked.

  “Much better than when you brought him. He will be better still when he has…” She hesitated, getting a little red in the face. “When he has the nourishment he needs.”

  Heath didn’t let his relief lead him off track. “Now that Lucia’s here,” he said, “you won’t have to look after the kid no more.”

  She blinked and clutched the baby a little tighter. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard what I said.”

  “Perhaps you misunderstood my request for a nurse. Mrs. Gonzales has a family of her own. I would not impose upon her any more than necessary. And I certainly have no plans to surrender the baby’s care to anyone else.”

  Confusion wasn’t a feeling Heath suffered often, but this woman had him balancing on a broken fence rail with prickly pear thick on either side. She couldn’t really care as much as she pretended. She was acting on some female instinct, the way any animal did, the same way the wolf in him knew how to be a wolf without ever being taught.

  Animals could turn on their own get, and so could human females. They could throw their young away if they got too troublesome, turn from love to hate in an instant. And Rachel Lyndon wasn’t even the kid’s real mother.

  Rachel looked up then, and Heath saw that her eyes were wet. She was afraid again, but not in the same way as before.

  She was afraid he would take the baby away.

  You’re crazy. But somehow he knew he was right. She wanted to keep the baby, even though she didn’t know the first thing about what he was.

  Because she didn’t know what he was.

  Easing down into a chair, Heath looked at his callused hands. Loups-garous healed fast, and a Change could erase most all the damage that could be done to a man by wind and weather, knife and gun. But if you pushed your body hard enough, even a hundred Changes couldn’t erase all the marks left by a lifetime of hard living.

  He almost reached up to touch his neck again, that one wound so bad it had almost killed him. The scar he’d never lose. He remembered that wanted poster in the general store. How did he think he could ever take care of the baby, even when it was old and strong enough to do without the things only a female could provide? What kind of life could he make for a child?

  Better than the life he’d had. The kid would never know what it was like to…

  He shook off the memories and looked at his son. The boy seemed to be holding Rachel as hard as she was holding him, his little fists clenched in the shawl around her shoulders and his head snuggled under her chin. He turned in her arms just enough so he could look back at Heath.

  There wasn’t any way the kid could understand what Heath had said, but his little round eyes spoke just the same.

  I need her.

  Hellfire.

  “I ain’t interferin’ between you and Lucia,” he said, looking away from both of them. “You do what you think is right.”

  A little at a time, Rachel’s shoulders relaxed. She rested her cheek against the baby’s, looking just like a picture of the Madonna Heath had seen once in a church. Benevolent, distant, untouchable.

  “You must be very tired, Mr. Renshaw,” she said, her voice a lot e
asier than his thoughts. “Lucia will rest in my room. If you will hold the baby, I’ll make biscuits and coffee.”

  A Madonna who wanted to cook for him. And wanted him to hold the baby.

  “I don’t expect nothin’ like that from you, Mrs. McCarrick,” he said gruffly. “We got Maurice.”

  “I’m sure he is an excellent cook.”

  “Good enough for us, I reckon. Maybe not what a lady is accustomed to.”

  The word lady came out sharper and angrier than he’d meant. He only had to see the new stiffness in her body to know she was back to old Rachel again.

  “You cannot possibly have any idea what I am accustomed to,” she snapped.

  “The way you talk says plenty,” he snapped back.

  “Because I have an education? How is that proof of prosperity, Mr. Renshaw? In fact, I have known what it is to—”

  She clamped her lips together and blushed. He saw pain in the hollows under her eyes and in her pinched lips. Pain he had noticed before but didn’t want to see.

  Who in hell was she? And what exactly had she “known”?

  “Mr. Renshaw,” she said suddenly, the way someone does when they want to change the subject in a hurry. “There is another issue we must discuss. Where do you propose to sleep tonight?”

  The question caught him by surprise. She must have noticed the other bedroom and realized it was his. It made sense that she would want him out of the house right away.

  But there was that sense of something hidden that Heath had felt before; it was in her voice and in her eyes, crouching behind her propriety, clawing its way closer to the surface and shredding what was left of the Madonna’s mask. An unexpected wildness in the brown eyes that glanced at him and quickly away.

  He flared his nostrils to take in her scent, so subtle under the stronger smells—laundered cotton, the lingering fragrance of soap, a hint of perspiration. And another he knew as well as he did every bend and twist of Dog Creek.

  The truth caught his body before his mind. His cock hardened, straining against his britches, and his breath came short.

  Rachel was aware of him. Not just as Jed’s foreman, someone she didn’t like or trust, but as a man. Male to her female. Her scent gave her away sure as the smell of bluebonnets announced the coming of spring. She was thinking about things no married woman should. Things he had decided a prim-and-proper lady like her would probably never think about at all.

  And he was thinking the same, even though she wasn’t pretty, couldn’t be trusted and thought he was beneath her.

  When she ought to be beneath him, her legs wrapped around his waist…

  Heath cursed under his breath. Didn’t matter who or what she was. He couldn’t stop his body from reacting. He’d never been inclined to fight what it needed, even when he wanted nothing as much as to stay far away from anything with tits.

  Once, years ago, he’d make the mistake of touching a woman like her. Her kind always denied that kind of wanting because it went against what they wanted to believe. Females like Frankie expected nothing but money from a man. They were as honest as any woman could be; they knew what they were and didn’t try to pretend any different. He could leave their beds and never have to look at them again.

  If he ever got into Rachel’s bed…

  Heath didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to feel anything for Rachel Lyndon. Not even mindless animal lust.

  He grinned at her. “That an invitation, Mrs. McCarrick?” he asked.

  Chapter Five

  SEEING HER FLINCH didn’t help nearly as much as Heath thought it would. She went so pale that he thought she was going to swoon, and he almost got up to catch her.

  She didn’t swoon. The color rushed back into her face, and her eyes went so cold that they could have covered the range in ice.

  “I see I have been mistaken in assuming that you were worthy of my husband’s trust,” she said.

  If a man had said that to Heath, he would be looking at a broken jaw. But Heath had never come close to hitting a woman. Not even the ones who’d tried to kill him.

  “I’ll be movin’ out of the house tonight,” he said, getting up.

  She set to rocking the baby, pretending Heath didn’t exist. That rankled more than any spiteful thing she could have said.

  “Did Joey tell you about the hands?” he asked, just to make her look at him again.

  The poisoned air between them cleared away, and it was all businesslike the way it should have been from the first. “He mentioned something about their leaving,” Rachel said without taking her eyes from the kid. “It will be difficult to run the ranch without them, will it not?”

  “It ain’t your worry, Mrs. McCarrick.”

  She met his gaze with that familiar spark of defiance. “It is if it affects the baby.”

  “It won’t. I already know where I can—”

  What in hell was wrong with him? He was explaining himself to her like some sniveling clerk telling his boss the missing money wasn’t his fault. The kid was making him go soft as a banker’s hands.

  And it wasn’t as if he had to worry about running the ranch much longer.

  “The baby’s your lookout,” he said. “Dog Creek is mine.” He got up. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “You didn’t have any.”

  “Thanks for the offer, then.” He turned to go and stopped again. “Somethin’ else. You came to Dog Creek with Sean McCarrick. Where’d you meet him?”

  She hesitated. “On the way from town. He said that Jed had sent him.”

  “He’s a liar. Jed never told him nothin’ about you.” The stubborn set of her jaw only made him angrier. “Maybe he told you some stories. Maybe you don’t believe anythin’ I say. But he’s the one who got all the hands to leave. He can’t be trusted as far as you can spit.”

  “I don’t spit, Mr. Renshaw.” But her tart reply masked an uneasiness Heath could smell a mile away. “Why would Mr. McCarrick do such a thing?”

  “’Cause he’d do anythin’ to see the ranch fail rather than see me keep it goin’ till Jed—” He broke off, unable to give voice to the lie.

  “You hate him,” she said.

  “Not half as much as he hates me.”

  “He left Dog Creek because of you.”

  “Who told you that? Joey?”

  “I…” She bit her lip. “Yes.”

  “I should have run the son of a bitch off a long time ago.”

  “What did Sean ever do to you?”

  “It ain’t just what he’s done. It’s what he is.”

  “And what are you, Mr. McCarrick?” Her glance fell to his Colt. “I was told that the West could be a violent place. Is that why you carry that gun?” She swallowed. “Would you use it on someone you hated?”

  “What in hell did Sean tell you?”

  She pulled back like a turtle into its shell. “Nothing,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry for asking.”

  He doubted that very much. Her opinion of him was fixed, no matter what her body wanted. And he didn’t care what she thought of him. He didn’t.

  But the Colt, as much a part of him as the hand that wielded it, hung heavy with her scorn. He’d used it more than once on someone he’d hated, someone who wanted to kill him. But not since he’d come to Dog Creek. It was a piece of his old life, one he hadn’t quite been able to let go, but he’d never planned to use it on a man again.

  You ain’t doin’ it for her, he told himself as he unbuckled the belt, dropped it on the table and went to leave.

  “Wait. Please.”

  He waited, though he didn’t want to be around her one more minute. “Ma’am?”

  “I understand that we have neighbors. The Blackwells.”

  He wondered why she’d brought that up now, and who had told her about the Blackwells. “Yeah,” he said. “We share a border with Blackwater along Dog Creek. They have the biggest spread in the county.”

  “I see. There are ladies at Blackwater?”<
br />
  “Amy and Mrs. Blackwell. Fine ladies the both of them.” He frowned. “Why?”

  “Would it be expected of me to visit them?”

  What Jed knew about visiting manners could fit on the tip of a lizard’s tail, but he did know he didn’t want Rachel involved with the Blackwells. “You just got here,” he said. “The Blackwater house is near twenty miles away. No one’s expectin’ you to run around the county just yet.”

  She nodded so fast that he knew that was what she’d hoped to hear. “Thank you, Mr. Renshaw.” All stiff and formal again. And that was a very good thing. Heath pinched the brim of his hat and walked out, an itch between his shoulder blades, anger in his gut and the ache still in his loins. She’d put those feelings there, and they were going to stick as long as he stayed at Dog Creek. And if she couldn’t get her own lust under control, she would be suffering the same way.

  That didn’t make him feel much better. He didn’t want her distracted. Little as he wanted to admit it, Rachel was right about one thing: no one else could take care of the kid as well as she could. Even if she believed Sean’s lies, whatever they’d been, that wouldn’t affect her feelings for the baby. The feelings she believed were real.

  His pace slowed as he got near the cabin that Sean had vacated and he would soon be occupying again. He’d been thinking a lot about what he had to do to make the baby well so the two of them could get away. He’d thought about Joey’s future. He’d even tried to warn Rachel about Sean.

  But even then he hadn’t let himself think about why he had to warn her, or what she would do once Jed was declared dead. Sure, he’d driven Sean off the ranch, but that had been more for himself than for her, and Sean would only stay gone until Heath wasn’t around to make sure he did.

  What was the point in warning her, anyway? She didn’t believe what he’d told her, and her opinion of Sean, whatever it was, wouldn’t affect Heath when he was hundreds of miles away or change anything Sean decided to do.

  There was a ball of lead inside Heath’s chest worse than anything he’d felt since he’d left the house. When he’d buried the saddlebags and the wills, he’d stopped caring what happened to Dog Creek. Jed’s intended hadn’t been real to him then, and he’d never even dreamed of the baby’s existence.