When Mariah passed the steaming biscuits to Cash, the sudden awareness of him that made her eyes luminous brought each of his masculine senses to quivering alert. Deliberately he let his fingertips brush over Mariah’s hands as he took the warm, fragrant food from her. The slight catch of her breath and the abrupt speeding of the pulse in her throat told Cash how vividly she was aware of him as a man.
Covertly, Cash glanced at Luke, wondering how he would react to his sister’s obvious interest in his best friend. Luke was talking in a low voice with Nevada about the cougar tracks the segundo had seen that morning in Wildfire Canyon. Cash looked back to Mariah, measuring the sensual awareness that gave her eyes the radiance of candle flames and made the pulse at the base of her soft throat beat strongly.
Desire surged through Cash, shocking him with its speed and ferocity, hardening him in an aching torrent of blood. He fought to control his torrential, unreasonable hunger for Mariah by telling himself that she was no better looking than a lot of women, that he was thirty-three, too old to respond this fast, this totally, to his best friend’s sister. And in any ease Mariah was just one more woman hungry for a lifetime sinecure – look at how quickly she had moved in on the Rocking M. Her token protests had been just that. Token.
“You’re a good cook,” Nevada said, handing Mariah the salt before she had time to do more than glance in the direction of the shaker. “Hope Luke can talk you into staying. From what Ten has told me, the Rocking M never had a cook worth shooting until Carla came along. But by January, Carla won’t feel much like cooking.”
“How did you know?” Luke asked, startled. “Dr. Chacon just confirmed it today.”
Nevada shrugged. “Small things. Her skin. Her scent. The way she holds her body.”
Cash shook his head. “Your daddy must have been a sorcerer. You have the most acute perceptions of anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Chalk it up to war, not sorcery,” Nevada said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “You spend years tracking men through the night and see what happens to your senses. The Blackthorns come from a long line of warriors. The slow and the stupid didn’t make the cut.”
Nevada set the coffeepot aside and glanced back at Luke. “If you want, I’ll check out that new cougar as soon as Ten gets back. I couldn’t follow the tracks long enough to tell if it was male or female. Frankly, I’m hoping the cat is a young male, just coming out of the high country to mate and move on.”
“I hope so, too. Wildfire Canyon can’t support more than one or maybe two adult cats in a lean season. Long about February, some of the cattle in the upland pastures might get to looking too tasty to a big, hungry cat.” Luke sipped coffee and swore softly. “I need to know more about cougars. The old ranchers say the cats are cow killers, the government says the cats only eat rabbits and deer…” Frowning, Luke ran a hand through his hair. “Check into the new tracks when Ten comes back, but I can’t turn you loose for more than a day or two. Too damned shorthanded.”
“Need me?” Cash asked, trying and failing to keep the reluctance from his voice. He had been planning on getting in at least a week of prospecting in the Rocking M’s high country. He no longer expected to find Mad Jack’s lost mine, but he enjoyed the search too much to give it up.
“Maybe Luke needs you, but I don’t,” Nevada said. “When it comes to cows you make a hell of a good ranch mechanic.”
Mariah looked at Cash and remembered his disgust with the state of her car’s engine. “Are you a mechanic?”
Luke snickered. “Ask his Jeep. It runs only on alternate Thursdays.”
“The miracle is that it runs at all,” Nevada said. “Damned thing is even older than Cash is. Better looking, too.”
“I don’t know why I sit and listen to this slander,” Cash complained without heat.
“Because it’s that or do dishes. It’s your turn, remember?” Luke asked.
“Yeah, but I was hoping you’d forget.”
“That’ll be the day.” Luke pushed back from the table, gathered up his dishes and headed for the kitchen. “Nevada, you might want to stick around for the MacKenzie family show-and-tell. After all, some of them are your ancestors, too.”
Nevada’s head turned toward Luke with startling speed. “What?”
There was a clatter of dishes from the kitchen, then Luke came back to the big “mess hall” that adjoined the kitchen. He poured himself another cup of potent coffee before he looked down at Ten’s younger brother with an odd smile.
“Didn’t Ten tell you? The two of us finally figured it out last winter. We share a pair of great-great-grandparents – Case and Mariah MacKenzie.”
“Be damned.”
“No doubt,” Cash said slyly, “but no man wants to brag about it, right?”
Nevada gave him a sideways glance that would have been threatening were it not for the telltale crinkling around Nevada’s eyes. Luke just kept on talking, thoroughly accustomed to the masculine chaffing that always accompanied dinners on the Rocking M.
“Case was the MacKenzie who started the Rocking M,” Luke explained as he looked back at Cash. “Actually, Mariah should have been one of your ancestors. Her granddaddy was a gold prospector.”
“He was? Really?” Mariah said eagerly, her voice lilting with excitement. “I never knew that Grandpa Lucas was a prospector.”
Luke blinked. “He wasn’t.”
“But you just said he was.”
Simultaneously Nevada spoke. “I don’t remember my parents talking about any MacKenzie ancestors.”
“No, I didn’t,” Luke said to Mariah. Then, to Nevada, “I’m not surprised. It wasn’t the kind of relationship that families used to talk about.”
When Nevada and Mariah began speaking at once, Cash stood up with a resigned expression and began carrying dirty dishes into the kitchen. No one noticed his comings and goings or his absence when he stayed in the kitchen. Once he glanced through the doorway, saw Luke drawing family trees on a legal tablet and went back to the dishes. The next time Cash looked out, Mariah was gone. He was irrationally pleased that Nevada had remained behind. The bearded cowhand was too good-looking by half.
Cash attacked the counters with unusual vigor, but before he had finished, he heard Mariah’s voice again. “Here it is, Nevada. Proof positive that we’re kissing kin.”
The dishrag hit the sink with a distinct smack. Wiping his hands on his jeans, Cash moved silently across the kitchen until he could see into the dining room. Mariah stood next to Luke. She was holding a frayed cardboard carton as though it contained the crown jewels of England.
“What’s that?” Luke asked, eyeing the disreputable box his sister was carrying so triumphantly to the cleared table.
“This is the MacKenzie family Bible,” she said in a voice rich with satisfaction and subdued excitement.
There was a time of stretching silence ended by the audible rush of Luke’s breath as Mariah removed the age-worn, leather-bound volume from the box. The Bible’s intricate gilt lettering rippled and gleamed in the light.
Nevada whistled softly. He reached for the Bible, then stopped, looking at Mariah.
“May I?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said, holding the thick, heavy volume out to him with both hands. “It’s your family, too.”
While Cash watched silently from the doorway, Nevada shook his head, refusing to take the book. Instead, he moved his fingertips across the fragile leather binding, caressing it as though it were alive. The sensuality and emotion implicit in that gesture made conflicting feelings race through Cash – irritation at the softness in Mariah’s eyes as she watched the unsmiling man touch the book, curiosity about the old Bible itself, an aching sense of time and history stretching from past to present to future; but most of all Cash felt a bitter regret that he would never have a child who would share his past, his present or his future.
“How old is this?” Nevada asked, taking the heavy book at last and putting it on the table.
<
br /> “It was printed in 1867,” Mariah said, “but the first entry isn’t until the 1870s. It records the marriage of Case MacKenzie and Mariah Elizabeth Turner. I’ve tried to make out the date, but the ink is too blurred.”
As she spoke, Mariah turned to the glossy pages within the body of the Bible where births, deaths and marriages were recorded. Finger hovering just above the old paper, she searched the list of names quickly.
“There it is,” she said triumphantly. “Matthew Case MacKenzie, our great-grandfather. He married a woman called Charity O’Hara.”
Luke looked quickly down the page of names, then pointed to another one. “And there’s your great-granddaddy, Nevada. David Tyrell MacKenzie.”
Nevada glanced at the birthdate, flipped to the page that recorded marriages and deaths, and found only a date of death entered. David Tyrell MacKenzie had died before he was twenty-six. Neither his marriage nor the births of any of his children had been recorded.
“No marriage listed,” Nevada said neutrally. “No children, either.”
“There wasn’t a marriage,” Luke said. “According to my grandfather, his uncle David was a rover and a loner. He spent most of his time living with or fighting various Indian tribes. No woman could hold him for long.”
Nevada’s mouth shifted into a wry line that was well short of a smile. “Yeah, that’s always been a problem for us Blackthorns. Except for Ten. He’s well and truly married.” Nevada flipped the last glossy pages of the register, found no more entries and looked at Luke. “Nothing here. What makes you think we’re related?”
“Mariah – no, not you, Muffin, the first Mariah. Anyway, she kept a journal. She mentioned a woman called Winter Moon in connection with her son David. Ten said your great-grandmother’s name was Winter Moon.”
Nevada nodded slowly.
“There was no formal marriage, but there was rumor of a child. A girl.”
“Bends-Like-the-Willow,” Nevada said. “My grandmother.”
“Welcome to the family, cousin,” Luke said, grinning and holding out his hand.
Nevada took it and said, “Well, you’ll have no shortage of renegades in the MacKenzie roster now. The Blackthorns are famous for them. Bastards descended from a long line of bastards.”
“Beats no descent at all,” Luke said dryly. Only Mariah noticed Cash standing in the doorway, his face expressionless as he confronted once again the fact that he would never know the sense of family continuity that other people took for granted. That, as much as his distrust of women, was the reason why he hadn’t married again.
And why he never would.
4
Cash turned back to the kitchen and finished cleaning it without taking time out for any more looks into the other room. When he was finished he poured himself a cup of coffee from the big pot that always simmered on the back of the stove and walked around the room slowly, sipping coffee. Finally he sat down alone at the kitchen table. The conversation from the dining room filtered through his thoughts, sounds without meaning.
His dark blue eyes looked at the kitchen walls where Carla had hung kitchen utensils that had been passed down through generations of MacKenzies and would be passed on to her own children. Cash’s eyes narrowed against the pain of knowing that he would leave no children of his own when he died.
For the hundredth time he told himself how lucky he was to have a nephew whose life he was allowed to share. When he traced Logan’s hairline and the shape of his jaw, Cash could see his own father and himself in his half-sister’s child. If Logan’s laughter and curiosity and stubbornness made Cash ache anew to have a child of his own, that was too bad. He would just have to get over it.
“…real gold?”
“It is. The nuggets supposedly came from Mad Jack’s mine.”
Nevada’s question and Mariah’s answer were an irresistible lure for Cash. He set aside his cooled cup of coffee and went into the room that opened off the kitchen.
Mariah was sitting between Luke and Nevada, who was looking up from the handful of faded newspaper clippings and letters he had collected from the Bible. Despite his question, Nevada spared only a moment’s glance for the gold that rippled and flowed between Mariah’s hands like water. The necklace of nuggets linked by a long, heavy gold chain didn’t interest Nevada as much as the faded, smudged marks on the brittle paper he held.
“Cash?” Luke called out without looking up. “What the hell is taking you so-oh, there you are. Remember the old jewelry I thought was lost? Look at this. Mother must have taken the chain when she left Dad. Muffin brought it back.”
Cash’s large, powerful hand reached over Mariah’s shoulder. Her breath came in swiftly when his forearm brushed lightly against the curve of her neck and shoulder. His flesh was hard, radiating vitality, and the thick hair on his arm burned with metallic gold highlights. When he turned his hand so that it was palm up, Mariah saw the strong, raised, taut veins centered in his wrist, silent testimony to the times when his heart had had to beat strongly to feed the demands he made on his muscular body.
The sudden desire to trace the dark velvet branching of Cash’s life was so great that Mariah had to close her eyes before she gave in to it.
“May I?” Cash asked.
Too shaken by her own reaction to speak, Mariah opened her eyes and handed the loops of chain over to Cash. She told herself it was an accident that her fingertips slid over his wrist, but she knew she lied. She also knew she would never forget the hard strength of his tendons or the alluring suppleness of the veins beneath the clean, tanned skin.
Silently Mariah watched Cash handle the necklace, testing its weight with his palm and the hardness of random nuggets with his fingernail. Very faint marks appeared on the rough gold, legacy of his skillful probing.
“High-test stuff,” Cash said simply. “Damn few impurities. I couldn’t tell without a formal assay, but I’d guess this is about as pure as gold gets without man’s help.”
“Is it from Mad Jack’s mine?” Mariah asked.
Cash shrugged, but his eyes were intent as he went from nugget to nugget on the old necklace, touching, probing, measuring the malleable metal against his own knowledge and memories. Then, saying nothing, he took Mariah’s hand and heaped the necklace in it. Gold chain whispered and moved in a cool fall over both sides of her palm, but the weight of the nuggets that remained in her palm kept the necklace from falling to the table.
Cash pulled a key from his jeans pocket. Dangling from the ring was a hollow metal cylinder about half the size of his thumb. With a deftness that was surprising for such big hands, he unscrewed the cylinder.
“Hold out your other hand,” he said to Mariah.
She did, hoping that no one else sensed the sudden race of her heart when Cash’s hand came up beneath hers, steadying it and cupping her fingers at the same time. Holding her with one hand, he upended the cylinder over her palm. She made a startled sound when a fat gold nugget dropped into her hand. The lump was surprisingly heavy for its size.
Carefully Cash selected a strand of chain and draped it over her palm so that one of the necklace nuggets rested next to the nugget he had taken from the cylinder. There was no apparent difference in the color of the gold, or in the texture of the surface. Both lumps of gold were angular and rough rather than rounded and smooth. Both were of a very deep, richly golden hue.
“Again, without an assay it’s impossible to be sure,” Cash said, “but…” He shrugged.
Mariah looked up at Cash with eyes the color of gold. “They’re from Mad Jack’s mine, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never found the mine.” Cash looked down into Mariah’s eyes and thought again of golden heat, golden flames, desire like a knife deep in his loins. “But I’d bet my last cent that these nuggets came from the same place, wherever that is.”
“You mentioned that Case kept a journal,” Mariah said, her voice a husky rasp that made Cash’s blood thicken.
“Yes,” Luke a
nswered, though his sister hadn’t looked at him, having eyes only for the gold in her hands – and for Cash, the man who hunted for gold.
“Didn’t he say where the mine was?” she asked.
“No. All we know for sure was that Case had saddlebags full of gold from Mad Jack’s mine.”
“Why?”
“He was going to give it to Mad Jack’s son. Instead he gave it to Mariah, Mad Jack’s granddaughter.” That caught Mariah’s attention. “You mean it’s really true?” she asked, turning quickly toward Luke. “You weren’t just joking? We’re really related to Mad Jack?”
“Sure. Where else do you think the nuggets in that necklace came from? It used to be a man’s watch chain. Mariah had it made for Case as a wedding gift. The chain came down through the family, staying with whichever son held the Rocking M. Until Mother left.” Luke shrugged. “I guess she thought she had earned it. Maybe she had. God knows she hated every minute she ever spent on the ranch.”
Mariah looked at the gold heaped on her palm, shining links infused with a legacy of both love and hatred. Yet all she said was “That explains the modern clasp. I assumed the old one had fallen apart, but watch chains don’t need clasps, do they?” Without hesitation she poured the long, heavy chain and bulky nuggets into a heap in front of Luke. “Here. It belongs to you.”
He looked startled. “I didn’t mean-”
“I know you didn’t,” she interrupted. “It’s still yours. It belongs with the man who holds the Rocking M. You.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Half of what I inherited should be-”
“No.” Mariah’s interruption was swift and determined. “The ranch was meant to be the inheritance of whichever MacKenzie son could hold it. Mariah’s letters made that quite clear.”
“That might have been fair in the past, but it sure as hell isn’t fair now.”
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