At the falsely hardy tone, Pa gave him a strange look, arched a brow at him, then flipped the slices of bacon.
Ma settled Debba at the table and got her a glass of milk. They had glasses made of real glass these days, though Ma rarely let the boys touch one. She’d learned that in a hard school.
But Debba rated a glass. Then Ma set a pitcher of milk on the table, came over to get plates, and while she was close to hand, slapped Tanner on the back of the head.
“Hey!” He didn’t say more. He figured he deserved it.
“A gag, Tanner?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I thought about leaving her there, but she really didn’t want me to leave, did you, Debba?”
He looked at the poor soggy little red-eyed filly. He wanted to pull her into his arms and help her get through her upset.
She shrugged then shook her head. She really needed a haircut.
“But she wouldn’t come with me. Her pa has filled her head with a lot of nonsense about never leaving that canyon.”
“Don’t you say a bad word about my pa!” She was angry, but he could see she was exhausted. The long night and the crying jag had about done her in.
“But I couldn’t stay, and I—I—well…I just couldn’t stand to leave her…but she wouldn’t come.” Tanner shrugged to match Debba. “I just thought no one could talk to her better than you, Ma.”
“You thought you knew best, so you did what you wanted without regard to her feelings, is that right?”
He reckoned that summed it up nicely. “Yep.”
Ma closed her eyes as if the very sight of him caused her pain.
“I’ll take you right back, Debba.” There was no possible way on God’s green earth that he was taking her back. “We’ll head out as soon as we eat.” Except he’d think of a reason to delay it. Maybe if she slept for a while she’d come to her senses.
“I’m sorry.” And that was purely true. He really had hated manhandling her. “I did not want to do that to you, but I was at my wit’s end.” Tanner gave her a weak smile that could hardly have been more unnatural. “Did it help at all to talk to Ma?”
Debba gave him such a forlorn look he half expected to get slapped in the head again. He was tempted to slap himself.
He scraped the cooked eggs onto a platter. Pa was taking up the bacon. Ma saw to the plates and such, along with bread, butter, and jelly. Tanner noticed he got a tin cup. He was probably lucky she didn’t dump hot coffee over his head.
Ma urged Debba to her feet and settled her in a chair between the table and wall, with Ma and Pa at the ends of the rectangular table with the red-and-white gingham tablecloth. Tanner sat right across from her so he could read every expression in her bright blue eyes.
The smell must have done the work all the noise wouldn’t do, because about the time Tanner swallowed the last of his breakfast he heard a stampede that’d impress old Shadow.
The noise made Debba clutch her hands together at her throat, her eyes wide as she turned to face…the dangerous outside world? Had she been waiting for trouble like this?
“It’s two of Tanner’s little brothers,” Ma said.
“Two, there are more?”
Tanner was sure he’d told her about there being five boys, but maybe he’d mentioned that after she’d fallen asleep. Or maybe she was nervous enough she couldn’t make sense out of anything.
“Mark came riding in and asked if he could have some help digging a spreader dam. We sent him your two littlest brothers. Emma can feed them for a while.”
That left Si and Cade to come storming down the stairs, like a pack of hungry wolves on the scent.
They skidded into the kitchen, shoving at each other to get to the food first. Then Si’s gaze lit on Debba, and he stopped short. Cade plowed into him and they both about tumbled to the floor, but Si held his ground and finally Cade noticed. He turned and looked, too, looked hard. Tanner was surprised to feel his temper rise up.
And he really didn’t like it when he noticed Debba looking back, although he thought that might be fear. The house was filling with people, and for a woman too long alone it might be overwhelming. Which made Tanner want to toss his brothers outside and lock them out for good—or at least until he took Debba home—which he didn’t see how he could ever do.
His little brothers were destined to live permanently in the barn.
“Howdy.” Si was the image of Pa. He was twenty-three, only a year younger than Tanner, who figured all five of the brothers looked like Pa, except he alone had Ma’s eyes. The rest of them had blue eyes like Pa’s.
Si had Tanner’s full six feet of height. Cade two inches taller. They’d finally had to leave off calling him Shorty.
Luckily Jake and Will were at Emma’s.
Ma spoke, and it was a good thing because Tanner didn’t want these two to know who Debba was—which was rude and mighty stupid.
“Debba, these are two of my five sons. Si is the oldest save for Tanner, and Cade is my third born. The next two, Jake and Will, are away.” Ma rested a hand on Debba’s arm to draw her attention. “I have four daughters who are older, but they are all married and moved to their own ranches.”
With a sweet smile, Debba looked at the two knot-heads who’d come in. “Hello, Si. Cade.”
They both came straight for her. Of course the food was right in front of her on the table, so Tanner wasn’t sure what exactly they were aiming for. Tanner grabbed his plate and made a quick move to sit beside Debba. He didn’t think she’d like sitting next to two strange men. And his brothers were mighty strange.
“Debba, that’s a pretty name. Is your name Debra?” Si asked. “My real name is Silas, but with it being Pa’s name I get called Si.”
With a nervous blinking of her eyes, Debba seemed to be searching around on the inside of her head. “I th–think my name is Debra.”
“You don’t know?” Cade asked, sitting square in front of her.
Si slapped him on the shoulder to make him scoot down and leave room for another chair.
“No one has called me that for a long time. Not since before my ma died.” She rested one hand on her mouth then said, “We have a family Bible. I am sure my name is written in it, but I haven’t opened it to those pages for years. I could find out for sure.”
Si and Cade settled in and started loading their plates with food, and loading Debba with questions at the same time.
About the time Tanner was ready to tell them to both shut up and let Debba eat, Pa’s hand landed hard on his shoulder and lifted him out of his chair. He had no good reason to refuse to mind his father, though he wanted to. He resisted fussing and let himself get dragged to his feet and pulled out of the kitchen into the front room. He did his best to make it look like he wanted to go. He hated to look like a child in trouble in front of Debba.
The minute they were out of the room, Pa asked, “What should we do, son?”
“Can’t we keep her, Pa?” Tanner flinched when he heard a little kid coming out of his own mouth.
“She’s not an orphaned pup who showed up at our back door.”
“Honest, she sort of puts me in mind of one.”
Pa nodded.
“All I can think of is, can we find someone to go home with her?”
“Like hired hands? You think she needs hired hands? Or a housekeeper? To tidy a house for one that she tends just fine for herself?”
“Don’t start arguing with me, Pa. It’s a waste of time. I know all the troubles, none of ’em bigger than what to do with a two-thousand-pound house cat with an eight-foot spread of horns. But she can’t go back in there and live out her life alone. I wondered if she could live here with you and Ma. She needs parents.”
“She’s a grown woman, Tanner. I’d say she’s twenty years old at least. She doesn’t seem real sure. The normal way for an adult woman to add to her home is to”—Pa’s eyes sparked with mischief—“take a husband and have some children.”
Tanner spun around an
d leaned sideways to look in the kitchen, where both of his worthless brothers were talking to Debba, and she was turning back and forth between the two of them and smiling to beat all.
“Who’s she gonna marry? She don’t know no one.”
There was such a long silence that Tanner finally tore his eyes away from Debba and his two flirting brothers.
He looked at Pa, who said, “How about if she marries you?”
Chapter 5
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, Pa.” Tanner sounded horrified.
“Nor will I marry you.” Debba rushed from the room, looking widly between the two of them. Then she found the door and raced out.
She heard the door open and shut behind her and thudding footsteps closing in on her. Tanner grabbed her around the waist and swung her up in his arms.
“I want to go home!” She wanted to start crying again, but she’d done so much of it she really couldn’t stand the thought. Being angry held more appeal honestly.
“You took me so far from home I have no way to return. I couldn’t find my canyon if I searched for a lifetime.” She balled up her fist and considered swinging it, though she’d never struck anyone in her life. That gave her pause. She might have swung a fist or two at Tanner earlier, and kicked him. And tried to smash him in the face with her skull. But she’d never hit anyone in her life, except him.
This was obviously Tanner’s fault.
“Listen, what Pa said, Debba, we don’t know each other nearly at all. We can’t think of getting married. I’m sorry you heard that and it upset you. But you can’t go back and live out your life in that canyon all alone.” He dropped her legs so they swung down, and he stood her firmly in front of him, his hands on her shoulders.
She noticed the sun had come up. Somehow she’d passed an entire day and night with Tanner. Kidnapping was very time-consuming.
The sights around her stopped her from punching Tanner. She probably wouldn’t have done it anyway. The house she’d been in was beautiful. Large and tightly built with spindles lining a porch. There were two huge barns and a corral with grazing horses that connected them. Cattle, black and red cattle of all things, spread out beyond the buildings. No horns anywhere. There was a low-slung shed with one side open, and parked in there were a wagon, a buckboard, and a buggy. She only even knew what a buggy was because it was referenced in one of the books she had in her house. Books she’d read over and over until they were nearly memorized.
There was so much life here. It overwhelmed her to the point of silence; at the same time she wanted to ask a thousand questions. There was so much she wanted to know she couldn’t collect her thoughts to begin. Which made her realize how exhausted she was. Her anger and embarrassment drained away. She was simply too tired to do anything more right now. Her shoulders slumped. Tanner was holding her up anyway—in addition to arranging her life. Why bother doing anything herself?
Lifting her chin took all her energy, and she looked into those unusual golden eyes. She didn’t know quite what to say, but he took over, as he’d been doing since they met.
“You need some rest. Let’s go back inside. Ma will find you a place to sleep. We can talk more later.”
“Tanner, what are we going to do?”
She said we. That was wrong. What was she going to do? Tanner had caused this problem, but it was her life. Her problem to solve. Pa had always told her an adult had to stand on her own.
Tanner touched her cheek, drawing her back from her worry.
“I think, Debba, that…you can’t go home. Not for good. Not alone. So when you ask what we’re going to do, you need to spend time admitting you can’t live walled off from the rest of the world, not anymore. So decide what you’re going to do instead of what you’ve always done. It’s your only possible choice.”
Tanner watched Debba walk back to the house. Ma reached out an arm to wrap around her shoulders.
Pa left them to the house and strode toward Tanner with a glint in his eyes. “Let’s go for a walk, son.” If that didn’t make a man nervous, nothing did. Tanner figured Debba’s upset was mostly Pa’s fault for his crazy notion about marriage. But there was no sign of remorse on Pa’s face. Which most likely meant Pa was of a different mind.
Si and Cade picked that moment to come riding in, and Pa waited for them. It was something in the way he stood but his brothers slowed way down, like a person might when they were facing their own doom.
“Howdy, Pa.” Si swallowed hard. “Uh, is something wrong?”
“I want you boys to ride out to the line shack.”
They exchanged a glance. Cade said, “But we want to get to know Debba better. She’s the prettiest woman we’ve ever seen.”
She was about the only woman they’d ever seen. Ma and Pa didn’t go to town much, and when they did, they rarely took their children along. And even in these modern times, Divide, Montana was a small town, mainly full of western men. The few respectable women were all married.
The boys all went along on the yearly cattle drives to Helena so they caught a glimpse of a woman on those trips, but they didn’t linger in town after the cattle sold.
“The line shack, now. Do a head count while you’re there. See how the spring calf crop is faring, and see if there’s any trouble with wolves.”
The line shack was right near a trail that went up and over a mountain, leading to the most treacherous trail known to man…well…that is, the most treacherous known to Tanner. They drove the cattle that way to Helena.
“Can we go up to the high country while we’re over there?” They both had a rifle in a boot on their saddle and a holster with a six-gun and extra bullets. A man didn’t ride out without being ready for trouble in the West. Besides, the line shack was well stocked with ammunition and food—even a few changes of clothes.
“Don’t be pestering critters that aren’t pestering you. But yep, you can go up in the high country. Stay together. Use your heads. Don’t come back until I come and get you.”
Si shrugged then flashed Cade a smile. “I reckon Pa wants Debba to spend time with only Tanner. Two good lookin’ men like us around and it might confuse the little woman.”
Tanner clenched a fist, and Si and Cade whirled their horses and rode off laughing.
Then Pa turned to Tanner. “I’ve been meaning to build a bigger chicken coop. Help me chop down some trees.”
With a shudder, because he knew what was coming, Tanner followed Pa and shouldered an axe. Pa’s own personal solution to every child that gave him any trouble was to put the problem child on the business end of the heaviest tool he could find. If it wasn’t the axe, Tanner would be pitching the straw out of the barn all day and night, or swinging a hammer on the longest stretch of fence west of the Missouri.
“I don’t know why you’re upset at me.” Tanner flinched. He was pretty sure he’d just said something that would have sounded better coming out of a five-year-old.
Pa sighed. “Maybe it’s the kidnapping.”
“I don’t see how I could have avoided that, Pa.”
“Maybe it’s the gag.”
“I thought her yelling might set off her cattle. I didn’t put it past them to fight me for her.” She’d tried to bite him, too, but he didn’t mention that. He figured that was fair, considering the kidnapping.
“Or maybe it’s that when I suggested you marry her, you said something so rude you should be ashamed of yourself. I made a mistake to suggest marriage when she could overhear.”
Which didn’t mean Pa thought it was a mistake to suggest it, he’d just needed to pick a better place and time.
“But you were downright unkind. What you said really hurt her feelings.” Pa glared at Tanner. “She might’ve started crying again.”
And that was where Tanner had really messed up. Pa’s dislike of tears was legendary.
They walked on in silence for a long time. Tanner noticed Pa didn’t bring an axe, which didn’t bode well for who was going to be doi
ng most of the work.
Then Pa pointed at a stand of slender aspens, the closest stand to the house. “You get busy chopping. I’ll talk.”
It’s was Pa’s very own version of a slap on the back of the head.
Chapter 6
Ma came into the kitchen late that afternoon with her hand on Debba’s back.
Tanner couldn’t quite decide if she was just giving the poor confused girl support or was she shoving her into the room?
Probably, considering how Debba was and…how Ma was, it was shoving—as gently as possible of course.
Then Tanner forgot all about shoving because Ma had combed Debba’s hair and cut off about two feet of it, but it still hung past her shoulder blades. Washed her up and given her a new dress that Tanner recognized as one of Ma’s own. Debba was shorter than Ma, but Ma was quick with a needle and the dress fit just exactly right.
Tanner had to admit it, Debba cleaned up real good.
Then Ma sat her down at the table in the same place she’d sat before, between the table and the wall, and gave her a long hug before she stepped back.
While he was really glad he’d brought her to Ma, the hug gave him a little jab that he suspected might be jealousy. Tanner kind of wanted a hug, too.
And it wasn’t just the hugging that made him jealous. Debba got a nap, too.
At the rate Pa worked him today, Tanner probably could have added a room onto her cabin and just kept Debba up there and stayed with her. Which was all kinds of improper, but still the idea occurred to him.
Instead Pa got a bigger chicken coop out of the deal, and Tanner got some sore muscles.
And he shouldn’t have said marrying Debba was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. He knew that before he’d caught up with her outside. Chopping down all those trees would sure enough help him remember not to do it again.
Tanner was busy putting plates on the table. Ma had always expected inside chores from her sons as well as her daughters. And since Tanner’s big sisters worked hard outside every day, that’d been fair. He’d been nearly an adult man before he’d heard such a thing as men’s work and women’s work.
The Lassoed by Marriage Romance Collection Page 21