Broken Spurs
Page 9
Her voice slipped from the low, smoky range that had made Steve wonder if she ever sang the blues. Standing only inches away, he watched her, taking in every nuance of her irritation and frustration and, for once, uncertainty.
Color flagged her cheeks. Her breasts rose and fell beneath the clinging silk of her blouse as she struggled for composure. Light spilled though the door in the ever changing cant of the sun, her hair drew fire from it. There had never been a woman more alive, more desirable.
“Name it, damn you!” She’d been maneuvered into a corner, and with the exclusion of the Rafter B, had given him virtual carte blanche in setting her risk in this wager. “Name it and be done with it!”
“You.”
She wasn’t sure she’d heard right, certain someone had come into the stables, with pieces of a separate conversation preceding them. Blankly, she stood shocked and startled, realizing there was no one else. No one else had spoken. “What did you say?”
“I said, you, Savannah,” his voice remained softly resolute. “I want you.”
She shook her head, more to clear it than to deny. Her body trembled, her heart tripped. “No!”
Steve flung his hat aside, his arm snaked out. His hand cupped the back of her head, sending her hat falling after his as he drew her to him. “Yes.” Their bodies touched, the curving bounty of hers yielding to the hard planes of his. “You.” He stared down into silver turned stormy. “And this.”
He meant it to be a teasing kiss, part of the game he played. He knew he wanted her. Consciously and subconsciously, he’d known it for a long while. Yet he didn’t expect the intensity of the rush of desire that rocked him as his mouth closed over hers. Nor that he would be so hungry for her that it hurt. With her smothered cry warm on his cheek and her body taut and hard, yet lush and giving against him, there was more than the simple, physical need stirring deep inside him. His cradling hand stilled her head, keeping her lips locked to his, parting them, exploring the velvet beyond. In his last coherent thought, he knew that nothing between them would ever be simple.
Through slitted eyes he saw the flutter of her lashes and felt their sensuous caress. After the first shocked gasp and taut jerk of her head, she didn’t struggle. She endured. Passive resistance, his own weapon of choice. But even then she felt good, the heat, the contours and textures, the natural sweetness, the elemental womanliness.
Savannah. Guileless enchantress, who seduced simply by being.
A challenge. But not for here, not now.
Releasing her, he backed away. She only looked at him, her eyes darker than he’d ever seen them, her mouth swollen from his kiss. With a will of its own, his hand returned to her face, his palm curving around her cheek. His thumb glided over her full lower lip, stroking, soothing. And, God help him, he wanted to kiss her again.
“You, Savannah,” he repeated hoarsely. “I want you.”
She didn’t move from his touch, didn’t look away from his gaze black with passion. “Never, so long as you live, you son of a—”
“Lady.” He stopped her with a word. His fingers slipped from her face to her nape, burrowing beneath the coil of her hair, grasping her tightly, but not hurting. “Whatever I’ve been, whatever I become, I will always be the son of a lady.”
Because nothing in the world could have stopped him, he leaned to brush her mouth with his. Her response was a ragged denial and a flutter of lashes as her eyes closed. Then, in a sudden, reluctant quickening, a subtle change, a hushed nuance...an answering passion. Smoldering, sensual. As unfathomable as elusive. Exquisite.
“Forever is a measure of time too brief for lovers,” he whispered in a shattered breath, “and never has no meaning.”
With tender constraint he kissed each eyelid, watching as they lifted, as unfocused confusion became the riveted fury he expected. Lifting his hands from her, he stepped back.
“Quoting bad poets now, Cody?” She was a figure carved of ice. Only her lips moved, and her throat, forming each word precisely for the smoky, bluesy voice. And he found even the warp of scorn tantalizing on her lips.
“A poetess,” he corrected in a tender tone she hardly heard. “A lady, who suffered the worst of a terrifying death with the grace of angel.”
Silence unraveled between them, a thread broken only by Steve. “I called her Mother.”
Spinning on the flat heel of his boot, he turned from the quick, tricken look on her face. From the need to take her back into his arms. Catching up his hat, settling it in the way of lifelong habit over the ruffled wave of his shining hair, he left her while he could.
Hank watched him go, off balance, a little ashamed. He’d kissed her and teased her, but had never been cruel.
“Just cocky as hell.” With a swipe of her sleeve, she scrubbed the memory of his mouth from hers, striving to rekindle a vacillating indignation.
“Broken down has-been bronc rider.” She began the enumeration of his shortcomings in an undertone, her voice rising with each. When she reached ‘lecher’ and ‘squatter,’ the words were half a decibel short of a shout. “Touch me again and I’ll break your hands.”
Steve was past the entrance, but on that one he turned to her. He stood indolently in the sun, half his face shaded by the brim of his hat, one hand on his narrow hip, the band of his handsomely tailored jacket touching his wrist. “Welshing on a debt already, Benedict?”
“You haven’t won yet!”
“Yet?” His dark brows rose in a parody of surprise. “Feeling the pressure so soon? Having doubts? A while ago you were so sure.”
Her chin assumed that familiar regal angle. A pulse thrummed an uneven rhythm beneath the tanned skin at the hollow of her throat. Every gesture declared she would fight him each step of the way. “Nothing’s changed.”
Delighted by her spirit, Steve fell a little more under her spell. “Nothing, yet.”
Nothing, he amended silently, until she was in his arms.
“You’ll lose, Cody. You always have, when it counted.”
His lazy look moved over her again, lingering, touching. “Not this time.” His voice held the promise of things better left to sultry nights and erotic dreams. “Not when the prize is paradise.”
“You’re a fool, Steve Cody,” Hank drawled with all the contemptuous mockery she could muster.
“Am I?”
“It won’t happen.”
“Won’t it?” A tilt of his head revealed the intensity in his smoldering black gaze. “You’ll see,” he promised in a low, husky voice. “And when you come to me, you’ll know that what began weeks ago could end no other way.”
“No.”
Steve heard the tremor beneath the strength of her defiance and remembered a moment when he kissed her. A wild and heady ripple of time, ended even as it began. A mercuric nuance of passion so sensual it nearly brought him to his knees. A flicker of response so exquisite a kiss meant to tease left him ravenous and aching for more.
“You kissed me just now. For the space of a heartbeat you met me halfway, with no reservations and the dissension between us forgotten. Deny it if you will, but we both know.” His voice never rose above a husky, longing whisper. “God help us, Benedict, now we know.”
“There is no we!” She was shaking and barely able to conceal it. “There will never be. And God help you if you ever touch me again.”
“When I touch you, really touch you, Savannah, it will be because you want me to.”
Hank drew a long, grating breath, and still it was not enough, as impotent fury snatched the strength from her lungs. Holding herself perfectly erect, making the most of every scant inch, she looked at him through the cold fires of disdain. “I’ve heard enough. I’m going to check the horses before the sale begins. You can go to hell.”
“I did, but now that I’m back, I think I’ll stay.” His fingers brushed his hat in the westerner’s gallant salute. “Be seeing you around, Miss Benedict, ma’am.”
He left her abruptly. Watching him, h
er body clenched, and rigid, with a look of bewilderment stealing over her face, she found herself admiring the lean, lithe body, the rare, fluid step.
Steve Cody was a handsome man of unexpected depth and perception, with pain hidden in his teasing laugh. Instinct told her it was more than physical, and far worse. In spite of her indignation, she watched him, and wondered.
“I won’t do this! I don’t care who you are, what you are, or why, you son of a—” She couldn’t finish the slur. Insult shriveled in her throat as she recalled the pride and sorrow when he spoke of the lady he called Mother.
“Damn you, Steve Cody.” She wanted an enemy who would stay an enemy. One of hard, unblurred lines, with no tenderness and no saving grace. She needed that. It made the battle easier.
Concentrating on putting him from her mind, she ran full tilt into a solid chest. The arms that gripped her, restoring her balance, held her a little too tightly, releasing her reluctantly. And then only when she pushed away.
“Ransome!” Ransome Lawter was tall and lean, and pretty. A ladies’ man. The only cowboy on the Rafter B with whom she was not completely at ease. He always watched her, his gaze appraising, sexual speculation clearly written on his face. Yet in the two years he and his brother had worked for her, he’d never done anything to merit a reprimand. Finally, she’d shrugged his interest aside, attributing it to the predatory nature of a born womanizer, and a man too pretty for his own good. Yet reservation lingered, and she found his touch unpleasant. Resisting the urge to brush the memory of it from her arms, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t worry, Miss Benedict. I’m not crashing the party. I’m here with Sally Pickette, as her guest.” His hard look swept over Hank, dwelling on the flush of her cheeks before settling on the softness of her mouth.
Hank felt the burn of a blush as she wondered how much he’d seen and what he’d heard. “How long have you been here?”
“Not long.” Ransome lifted his eyes, following the path Steve had taken. “Long enough. I can see that it doesn’t happen again.’
Hank was startled by his cold rage. “What are you talking about?”
“Cody.” A look seething with an emotion she couldn’t fathom returned to her. “Wallie and I can make certain he never touches you again.”
“That’s enough, Ransome.” Hank did not like his proprietary presumption, nor the added threat of his hulking, nearly silent brother. “Steve Cody isn’t your concern.”
“He put his hands on you.”
“That’s my business,” she said, cutting him short. “You were hired to ride for the brand, not to be my keeper.”
“I could help.”
“I don’t need your help.” Stepping back another pace, she looked past him. They were alone. She moved away another step, not really sure why she needed the distance between them. “I think you should go back to Sally. She’s sure to be wondering where you are by now.”
Ransome clamped his perfect teeth over a belligerent comment as he struggled to accept her veiled command. “You’re right, she will be. And since I’m not needed here...”
“You aren’t.” Hank was annoyed, past caring about bruised male egos. She felt no regret for her bluntness as Ransome stalked back the way he’d come. He stepped through the back door and into the empty corral before she relaxed.
It was not easy to put Ransome from her thoughts. She recognized him for a ladies’ man to whom women of all ages were fair game. During the time he’d worked for the Rafter B, he’d left a string of broken and bruised hearts scattered across the countryside. It seemed to rankle more each day that hers was not one of them. Yet when she questioned the wisdom of keeping him on at the ranch, there were never concrete grounds for dismissal. For all his weaknesses, he was one of the best with cattle.
Hank worried about Sally, the daughter of a rancher whose spread bordered the Rafter B on the north. She was young and spoiled. But, given Ransome’s notoriety, hopefully not so naive.
A bell chimed. A warning the formality of Jubal’s sale would begin in five minutes. Abandoning her intention to have one last look at the stock, Hank hurried from the building and crossed the awn, searching the congregating crowd for Jake and Sandy.
“That’s it,” Jake declared as the auctioneer laid down his gavel. He was tired and relieved to have done with the pomp and ceremony Jubal instilled in the event. “That’s the last one.”
“It can’t be,” Hank protested.
“Check the list, sis, they’re all accounted for.”
“No, Sandy. The unlisted ones, Jubal’s special horses...”
“There are none this year,” he told her.
“I don’t know why Jubal has to go through all this fancy folde-ol anyway,” Jake groused. “Why can’t he just parade the animals out here, say this is what I have, what will you give me? A traightforward sale, and be done with it.”
Hank didn’t exactly ignore her father, but she’d heard the complaint so many times she knew it verbatim, verse and chorus. “Ju- al said there would be one special horse.”
“Jubal said,” Sandy reminded her, “but he didn’t promise. You now as well as I do, that’s why his special horses are never listed. He can pull them if the mood strikes. His horses, his prerogative.”
“And damned eccentric,” Jake put in.
“Isn’t that why you like him, Jake?” Sandy rebuked mildly. Would he be half so interesting if he weren’t exactly what he is?”
“Hell, no!”
“At the same time he wouldn’t be half so frustrating, either.” lank snapped. “Not by a long shot.”
Sandy only shrugged. He knew Hank had come to the sale with heart set on acquiring Lorelei, the best three-year-old to come through the chutes in some time. He knew that in one of his whim-cal gestures Jubal had withdrawn the horse from the sale. He knew hy.
“Jubal has decided who will have Lorelei,” Hank remarked, before Sandy could comment. When the foreman was silent, she studied him critically. “He has, hasn’t he?”
Sandy nodded, with no recourse but the truth.
“Do I know the lucky new owner?”
Sandy hesitated. “You know him.”
Following the direction of his gaze, Hank found herself looking cross the sales arena, straight into Steve Cody’s steady gaze. “The quatter.”
As if he read her lips, or her mind, or simply anticipated her action, Steve smiled and bowed his head in a rueful gesture, before turning back to Jubal.
“Did he know, Sandy?” she asked, after a moment.
“Not until the sale began.”
“How did it happen?”
“Cody’s a good stockman. A few minutes in his company an Jubal recognized just how good. You know our distinguished ho likes to place his special ‘pretties’ with the best.”
“Bull!” Jake decided to join the discussion. “He’s a ro-day- burn. All he knows about horses is how to keep the seat of his pan in the saddle. Leastwise, part of the time. He knows how to co people pretty good, too. Jubal, for one.” A glare caught Sand “Present company, for another. You brought him here. Now he snatched the best of sale away, and right under our noses.”
“Jubal made the decision,” Sandy addressed father and daughter with an unshakable calm. “But I’m responsible for his bein here. I couldn’t deny that if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. He a hard worker who’s had a run of bad luck. I’d like to see him hay a fighting chance to make a go of the Broken Spur. If he does, He deserves to keep the canyon. If he doesn’t, then your victory will earned, and all the better.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Jake demanded.
“I ride for the brand, but I live with my conscience.” Sandy ke his cool before Jake’s heated interrogation. “Anytime you don’t It the way I do it, you can tell me to pack up my bedroll and ride out He looked from Jake to Hank, including her in his proposal. have before, I can again.”
Sandy fell silent, waiting for their decision.
“Sis?” Sandy looked to Hank, his blue gaze probing hers.
Hank said nothing, instead she slipped her arm through his, are smiled.
Sighing, Sandy patted her hand in his fatherly fashion. “So about the horse. I expected Jubal would like Cody, what I didn’t expect was how much.”
“No one could anticipate Jubal.” Or Steve Cody, she was did covering.
Their contention resolved for a time, Jake sat morosely watching as Jubal petted and stoked Lorelei in preparation for turning her over to Steve.
“What are the terms of their agreement on the horse?” Hank inquired as the horse pranced and danced, her blue-black coat glittering under the lowering sun.
“Only Jubal and Cody know.” The foreman’s answer was spare.
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yep,” Sandy agreed. “He’ll do well with her.”
Hank knew the odds had just tipped in Steve’s favor. A sobering turn of events, requiring thought and careful consideration. “It’s time we went back to the Rafter B.”
Time to gird for the battle of her life.
After their goodbyes, as they retraced their path over the lawn, a pair of dark, sad eyes watched them go.
From a secret place a second pair watched. Green eyes, glittering with jealous hate.
Chapter 7
“Easy, girl. Ho. I’m not going to hurt you.” Steve raked his fingers down the flank of the skittish mare and stroked her hip. His crooning voice calmed her. As he took her through each new step, into each new area of her training, he moved carefully.
Lorelei had proved to be everything Jubal Redmond promised. Quick, responsive and, once she learned to trust Steve, a pet. Even when she shied away from unfamiliar paraphernalia, she was arching her neck to nuzzle at him. Her lips nibbling at his shirt, a whicker, like a purr, rumbling in her throat.