So he’d serve out a few days, maybe a week, and he’d hang out with his old buddy Ian. He’d load up on the excellent food at Ruby’s and exercise enough to keep his flat belly lean.
And he’d get outside of his head. Nothing was ever made better by thinking too much.
Abruptly he hit the brakes and stared into the pasture beside the road. Someone was riding, flat-out, and that person was about to leap the cross-fence.
Rider and horse sailed over as if they were one being and kept going without a beat.
He’d done his share of riding, owned his own horses—but this rider was in another class altogether.
Poetry. Beauty in motion.
They disappeared from sight, and Mackey realized he was near the gate of the Star Bar G, so he put his foot on the pedal and turned in. The gate was closed, but he knew the drill. Unwrap the chain holding it closed, drive through, shut it quick before any stock got out. He rewrapped the chain and turned to get back in his truck.
Rider and horse approached. Halted. Studied him without a word.
She’s…magic, Ian had said.
No kidding.
The red hair had darkened some, but it was unmistakable. The woman, however…he would have never recognized.
The skinny tomboy had grown up to be smoking hot, with curves a man’s hand itched to touch.
Wow.
She arched one perfect eyebrow, and her generous mouth curved. “Mackey?”
He placed his hand over his heart. “Cousin Crankypants, you sure done growed up good.”
She had started to smile, but the name registered and her eyes went to slits. “You’ve been talking to City Girl, I see.”
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but suddenly the day was looking a whole lot brighter. Damn, she was one stunning female, her eyes sharp with intelligence, her body voluptuous and strong, so opposite the teenage-boy bodies on the women he was surrounded with in L.A.
“She sends her regards,” he teased.
Rissa snorted. “I just bet she did. So…here you are.”
He nodded. “Here I am.”
“You grew up, too.” Looking down from horseback, she scanned him slowly. Insolently.
His body reacted immediately.
Wait—this was little Clarissa. Except she wasn’t little at all. She was—sweet freaking stars above—hot. Smokin’ hot.
She frowned. “Come on then. I’ll meet you at the house.” Without further word, she and the horse took off.
Well, well, well…things were looking up.
Chapter Three
Rissa dismounted and walked Bonanza into the barn, focusing intently upon unfastening the cinch, on the routine steps of putting away tack, grooming her horse. She let the normal sounds of the ranch seep in: the meows of Maisie and her kittens, the mockingbird in the nearest tree, the soft susurrus of the wind, of her horse’s slowing breaths.
On anything but Mackey.
Had she never truly grown up from the girl who’d worshipped him?
Heaven help her, the man had ten times the impact of the wild teen who’d captured her interest. Owned her heart, foolish and naive as it had been.
She was a woman now, wasn’t she? No silly, impressionable girl.
That, of course, was part of the problem. The male in him—and oh, there was so blasted much of it—appealed to the woman in her.
More than appealed. Sang to her. Growled at her. Made her want to growl back.
Stop that. She was no green girl. Okay, maybe ranch life had kept her isolated, and she didn’t have an active sex life because, well, who was new in Sweetgrass? Who didn’t feel like a cousin or brother? She’d either seen them pick their noses or wet their pants or had been coddled by them, all but patted on her head. Everything here was so…familiar.
And she didn’t like being talked about. Didn’t want already too-nosy folks knowing her business. So sex was mostly an out-of-town thing.
And she didn’t get out of town that often.
“Nothing has changed, has it?” His deep voice, dark like his hair, like the sin in his eyes, crept in as though he’d heard her thoughts.
She touched a palm to her stomach to settle herself, then only cast a quick glance back. “Everything’s changed.”
“Yeah. Of course it has. Sorry. I guess I keep thinking your mom is going to walk outside and tell me I’d better shuck my boots before I step one foot inside, and Jackson’s gonna call me a suck-up ’cause she likes me best and—” He halted. “Sorry.”
“She’s been gone a long time. Everyone has—Jackson and Pen, too.”
“Why did you stay?”
Fury surprised her. “I was twelve years old. What choice did I have?” To her horror, she actually felt the sting of tears. She never cried. Never. She wheeled away. “Come on. I’ll show you where you’re staying.”
He reached for her. “I’m sorry. Of course you couldn’t leave then. I meant…later.”
She shrugged him off. Walked outside, leaving him to follow. “Later was too late.”
“It’s never too late,” he argued.
“Not everyone is so good at leaving others behind, Mackey.” She put her long strides to use, placing distance between them.
Mackey watched her stalk off, kicking himself. He’d never really thought about what life had been like for her once they’d all moved on.
Leaving here hadn’t been easy, whatever she thought. It had been…miserable. The months between Mary Gallagher’s death and his graduation had been excruciating for all of them. Jackson gone. Pen a shadow of her sassy self, David struggling to help his family through the loss of Beth…the Star Bar G no longer a refuge but a torment, since James Gallagher hated everyone and everything…
What must that have been like for a little kid to live through?
And why hadn’t any of them thought about Clarissa, abandoned there with a bitter widowed dad?
“Are you coming or not?” She’d halted twenty or so yards away, hands on hips, not even a shadow of weakness in her frame. “I don’t have all day.”
“Clary…”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “And don’t you dare feel sorry for me.” She started walking again, her long legs eating up the ground.
Clary was her mother’s name for her, and he’d teased her with it years before. He was torn between sorrow for that skinny little girl he could still remember watching him with calf-eyes…and the heart-stopping sight of the present-day Amazon with curves to make a man’s mouth water.
Damn, what that woman could do to a pair of worn jeans…
Hell. He really should not have come back. A powerful instinct for self-preservation had him wheeling away toward his Rover—
Whoa. He grasped for a fence post as the world went spinning.
“Well? Are you—Mackey, what’s wrong?”
He heard her footsteps approaching and held out a palm. “Don’t,” he echoed her. He shook his head to clear it, but that only made things worse. All he could do was stand very still and hold on until it passed.
At least he wasn’t on the floor, passed out cold. Or puking.
“Yeah, sure thing, tough guy.” Her voice, thank God, wasn’t cloying or compassionate but instead impartial, even hard-ass. With quick efficiency she slid under his free arm and clasped her own about his waist.
But she only stood still beside him and said nothing else, for which he was grateful. “It’ll pass,” he assured her.
“No rush,” was her only response.
As the roaring in his head eased, he became aware of the warmth of her body all along his side, of the firm clasp on his waist. Of the fact that though she smelled like horse and honest sweat, there was a deeper, sweeter note to her scent, something rich and ripe and…tempting.
Yeah. Like either of them needed him yielding to temptation. Or convincing her to.
Mistake, mistake, mistake, his head proclaimed.
But way down in his chest, something tight eased a
little. Breathed more deeply than he could recall doing in…ever, maybe.
He opened his eyes. The flashing lights at the edges were gone. “So…that happened.”
She chuckled. “Yeah.” But she frowned faintly, too.
He should let her go. Instead he waited for her to move away. When she didn’t, he glanced over. Waited for all the usual questions, the concern, the pain in the ass pity.
Instead she simply looked steadily at him. Arched one brow. “Ready?”
Not really. Not for the state of his life, the implications of his injury…and damn sure not for this face that felt oddly like he’d waited to see it forever.
“Yeah.” He let go.
To her credit, she didn’t hover but turned to leave. No fluttering from this female, apparently. No simpering, no pampering.
Damn. Bad enough that he wanted her, his buddy’s kid sister.
But to like her, too?
Ian might just have to move over and make room, whatever he’d wanted.
They had to pass the house to get to Cooter’s cottage. Rissa smiled a little at the thought of the old man’s snort every time she used her mother’s name for the little house. Not a damn cottage. I ain’t no sissy Englishman.
“Want to share the joke?” Mackey asked from behind her. He sounded fine now.
That episode was unnerving, though. How could she put him to work when he might get injured in a moment of inattention? There wasn’t much in the way of chores that didn’t require physical stamina, but she knew instinctively that he would hate any sense of being coddled.
“Just thinking how Mama always called it a cottage, which aggravated Cooter to no end.”
“Cooter,” he mused. “I vaguely remember him threatening to tan my backside.”
She grinned. “He’s been with us all these years, at least until—”
“You just invite someone for supper without asking me?” her father thundered from up on the back porch.
Rissa prayed for patience. “Dad, we discussed this. Say hello to Mackey, would you?”
Her father’s furious gaze shifted to the man behind her. His eyes went flat, and he turned his attention back to her. “You got that Mullen horse ready to go in the morning?”
Please, Dad, she wanted to beg. For once, just be…nice. As if there was a snowball’s chance in Hades that he would. “Of course I do,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I won’t be here to eat, but thanks for the invitation, Mr. Gallagher,” Mackey said, as if he’d missed her dad’s rudeness. “Ruby promised me meat loaf.”
Her father wheeled and stalked back into the house without a fare-thee-well.
“I’m sorry. He’s…” Nothing had been right since her mother’s death. Mary Gallagher had been able to tease her husband out of his moods when she was alive, but Rissa lacked whatever that magic touch was, however hard she’d tried.
“He blames me for leading Jackson astray.” Mackey shrugged. “He’s hardly the only one who thought I was too wild.” He paused. “Clary—Rissa,” he corrected.
But not soon enough for her to dodge the pain that sliced through her. No one had called her that since Mama.
“Sorry,” he said, sympathy in his eyes.
“Doesn’t matter.” She didn’t want to go back there. Ever.
He looked closely at her. “It does, and it should. She was…amazing. The perfect mom. We all loved her.”
Rissa turned away. The ache of her mother’s loss was a hole in her heart that never went away, no matter how long it had been. Oh, she coped, and she dealt with the fallout, but the loss of Mary Gallagher haunted this house still.
She needed to move. “Let me show you the cottage.” Quickly she put distance between them.
Mackey caught up. “Rissa, this is a bad idea.”
“It’s not. I promised Ian—”
“I don’t think—I’m not going to stay.”
Her head whipped around. “Stay here? Or stay in Sweetgrass?”
“Either. I wouldn’t have been here long, anyhow, and—”
She cocked her head. “Don’t you ever get tired? Of running away, I mean?”
“It’s not running away. I have a life to get back to.”
“You’re in no condition to be doing dangerous stunts.”
“I don’t have to do them. I can coordinate them. I’ve done it before. I’m also in line to be second unit director on an upcoming film.”
But in his eyes she saw something skitter. Mackey had always possessed confidence in abundance, but he was…worried? Uneasy?
The sight of it shocked her. Mackey and boldness went hand in hand. Wild. Reckless. Half-crazy, some said.
She’d never once considered that he might have doubts. Worries. She should let him go. She’d been foolish to say yes to Ian. Having him around wasn’t going to be easy, not with her dad so set on continuing to hate him.
“I wish you would stay,” she found herself saying anyway. Why? He stood there, tall and gorgeous, his air all confidence and unconcern now.
But that one flicker of vulnerability got to her. She looked at him, for the first time peering past the scrim of her girlhood crush, and saw him as the complicated man he surely must be. Most people weren’t that simple, and Mackey was a bigger puzzle than most.
And yes, hot as a July day in Texas. Hotter.
The thought occurred to her that she could have this red-blooded, sexy male nearby for a matter of days, possibly even weeks, and her inner vixen felt the warm pull of him, the magnetic draw that was about a thousand times more potent than the boy’s had ever been.
“I can deal with my dad,” she said, as the right gambit struck her. “Unless, of course, you’re afraid of him.”
Tall and strong and sexy went instantly commanding and fierce. “Of course not.”
Men were so easy sometimes.
Rissa stifled a grin. Mackey wasn’t the only one with a reckless side. She was playing with fire, but then, didn’t she take risks all the time with fifteen-hundred-pound animals who could kill her with a kick?
“Then let me show you the cottage, and I’ll join you at Ruby’s.”
He threw her a startled glance but moved alongside her. “Whatever you want, Cousin Crankypants.” His grin was wide and white and killer-hot.
“The thought of having to see City Girl almost puts me off my feed,” she retorted. “But not enough to miss Ruby’s meat loaf.”
They shared a glance laced with humor.
“You’re buying,” he said.
“No way, Hollywood. You’re the fat cat.”
Satisfied to be back on steady footing, they resumed walking toward the cabin.
“Range Rover, huh?” She ran her hand over the leather seat in a caress that shot straight to his groin. Her hands weren’t dainty; they were capable and strong, like the rest of her.
That didn’t make her unfeminine. Nor did it keep him from imagining them on his body, wondering what her strong grip would feel like on—
He whipped his attention back to the road.
“You must be doing well out there, Hotshot.”
“I might just have a whopper of a car payment.”
“Do you? Are you a wastrel, Mackey? Does that wild streak make you reckless with money, too? Or just with your body?”
“I know what I’m doing. Stunts have to be carefully planned, just like ops are. Only a fool walks into either without knowing what he’s doing.”
But sometimes no amount of planning can keep everyone safe.
“I guess people ask how many terrorists you killed when you were a SEAL.”
He nodded brusquely.
“I won’t do that. But I will thank you for your service.”
His jaw ground, and he only nodded again. To accept thanks felt wrong. He’d come back, and some of his teammates hadn’t. Killing was never easy, but it was part of the job. You couldn’t let it get to you or you became a liability.
Losing friends, though…he reliv
ed those moments still. On too many nights, bad memories came to visit.
“So you’re, what, like, rich?”
Startled by the abrupt switch but equally grateful, he glanced over. “Why? You want to borrow some money?”
Her brows snapped together. “Of course not. I just wonder why people need to show off. What it is that makes cars and houses and…stuff so important.” She looked across at him. “Around here, everybody’s pretty much in the same boat, just getting by. But I’ve had clients who buy horses they don’t ever get to know, and they wonder why a herd animal they’ve stuck away all alone, only trotting out to show off or bought for some kid who gets tired of the responsibilities ten seconds later…” She shook her head, looking out the window. “If you look closer, usually their kids are messed up, too, and Mom and Dad hardly see each other…but they’ve got all this nice stuff. Big house, fancy cars, all the toys…” She looked back. “I don’t get why they choose that. How come they can’t see that it’s the people, the living beings that matter, not the loot.”
His cheer was restored. “You would hate L.A.” He chuckled. “Whole place is all about consumption and image. Women starve themselves into teenage boys, all because some magazine told them it was beautiful. And everyone fights looking older as if a wrinkle was the first sign of the apocalypse.”
“So why are you there?”
“It’s only my base because that’s where I had to start out. Now that I’ve got a track record, I could live anywhere.”
“Why don’t you move, if you hate it so much?”
“I don’t hate it.” He didn’t let himself feel any emotion that strong. “It’s just…there. No better or worse than anywhere else. Useful, I guess.”
She shuddered. “Too many people.”
“That’s for damn sure.” They entered town, and he headed for Ruby’s, but his attention caught on two figures standing outside the courthouse, looking up.
It was Scarlett and Ruby. Scarlett was calling out to someone up high.
“Ruby’s on the ground, so halftime must be over,” Rissa said.
Texas Wild: The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs Book 2 Page 4