by Gem Sivad
Eden copied the ingredients and instructions on a card while Miri and the men ate. Then she brought it to the table and laid it by Miri’s plate. Deacon reached over, picked it up and read it.
Miri didn’t say anything until he started to put it in his pocket.
“Hey.” She reached across and grabbed the edge of the paper.
“Guess we’ll have to fight for it,” he growled.
“You think you can take me, preacher man?” She laughed out loud, taunting him. As a matter of fact, considering his recent theft of her prisoner, she was eager to put Deacon on his ass in the dust.
“Yep,” he said grimly, staring at her.
It didn’t take long for Sam to do his usual bet collecting and the next thing she knew, the two of them were in the McCallister ranch yard, ringed by the rest of the family.
Deacon took off his gun belt, handing it to Sam.
A prickle of unease coursed through Miri when the McCallister women lined up on her side and faced the men across the circle as though they were backing her in the coming fight.
I sure can’t be losing now. Not that she was going to. Charlie drew a line in the dirt, stepped outside the circle and nodded.
“First one pins the other’s shoulders wins?” Deacon looked at her as he asked his question.
“Sure,” she agreed. She had a move she’d been wanting to try out on someone and now was a good time. She pulled her hat on tighter and commenced to think like a Kiowa brave. Her opponent was bigger and brawnier than her so she’d have the advantage in speed. Besides, she figured he’d want to keep his pants clean and wouldn’t do more than take a swing or two at her.
“Let the best man win,” she said, bouncing on her toes as she stuck her hand out to shake on it.
As soon as he took her hand, she ducked, pivoted into his hip and hooked her leg behind his knee, pulling him off balance and slamming him on his rump. Before he could recover, she fell down on top of him.
“I win,” she crowed, grinning at the surrounding audience. “Beat ya, McCallister. Told ya not to mess…”
Her words trailed away as she gazed down at how she was straddling him and felt a blush crawl up her neck. She’d warmed considerably between her legs too and wondered if he could feel the heat where she was pressed against his belly. It was embarrassing. Instead of shoving his shoulders to the ground and pinning him, she scrambled up and backed away.
“Best two out of three,” she mumbled, trying to look nonchalant.
“Absolutely,” Deacon agreed, stood and stalked across the yard, stopping in front of her. Just like that, he wrapped her in a bear hug and said, “I’ve got you pinned. Admit it.”
“No fair,” she cried foul. Her arms were pinned—to her sides. She tried to butt her head against his but he solved that threat by lifting her off her feet and tossing her into the air. He caught her, holding her around the waist, aloft at least six inches and far enough from him to render her kicks ineffectual. He also wore a grin plastered over his face.
“Deacon,” she yelled. “What in tarnation is wrong with you?”
“Gotcha,” he answered, his grip tightening around her waist.
Gotcha? She’d said the same thing when she’d wrapped her legs around him in the Pleasure Dome’s fancy bathtub. She stopped kicking, jarred from her Beau persona with a thud. Heat crept from her neck to her face.
Deacon winked and set her on the ground. Before she could run for the hills, he pulled her into his arms, molding her body to his. Shock waves rippled through her. She had a feeling she’d been suckered. She was acutely aware of his chest pressing against her unbound breasts under her buckskins.
“Not so mouthy now, are you, brat?” He was talking low so the others couldn’t hear. “I like Calvin’s wig better than Beauregard’s.”
“I don’t know what yer talkin’ about.” She tried to bluff her way when she knew it was a fruitless cause.
“Don’t you?” He put his hand on her rump, and in front of his kin and God Almighty, Deacon fit his long length tighter to her. She could feel his cock pressing against her mound. As a matter of fact, they lined up real nice.
“Charlie, I don’t understand,” Naomi murmured.
“You will shortly,” Charlie answered. The conversation drifted to Miri, jarring her into action.
“Let me go. Your relatives are gettin’ an eyeful.”
“When I feel like it,” he growled. Squinting at her and wearing a satisfied expression, Deacon looked way too pleased with himself.
“I’m in the middle of a hunt. This is not the time for shenanigans,” she muttered.
“So we are,” he agreed, continuing to hold her gaze as he included himself in her hunt. “Partners,” he murmured, running his thumb along her lower lip.
“Maybe,” she answered. It wasn’t lost on Miri that he didn’t ask her opinion.
It was hard to maintain the Beauregard persona because it was definitely Miri gawking at him as she stood with her moccasins fused to the dirt and he stepped back, releasing her.
Before he could say or do something else to fluster her, she turned away and headed for the barn. She didn’t have to look to know Deacon was staring at her behind as she walked away. Her body tingled with awareness under the heat of his gaze.
“Better get saddled and ready to ride. Daylight’s burning and Sam’s already gone ahead to let the Hawks Nest riders know we’ll be visiting the stronghold today.”
His pragmatic words trailed behind her when she ducked into Possum’s stall, making her wonder if she’d imagined the moments before.
She’d been pressing him to let her interview the counterfeiter, but suddenly Deacon was urging her to hurry up and making her feel like a slacker for slowing him down.
Ketchum bumped against her side, adding his opinion in the mix and indicating he also thought it was time to leave. She made short work of getting Possum ready to ride and joined the remaining McCallister men, mounted and waiting for her in front of the barn.
The morning’s playful expressions were gone. Miri straightened in the saddle, reining Possum toward Deacon’s side. In the face of the grim trio, any exuberance on her part should have been quelled. The truth was, she had to force back the grin fighting to bust loose from her lips. She was riding with the McCallisters and it felt mighty fine.
As for his acting foolish in front of his kin, well, it seemed like the jig was up. He knew Beau was pretend, that Miri was the woman who’d come into an outlaw camp and saved him and gone into a brothel room to bed him. She had a lot to think about besides questioning Ned as they rode toward Hawks Nest ranch.
* * * * *
Deacon shifted in the saddle, riding his hard-on and trying not to stare at Beauregard’s ass as he followed her horse in their single-file trek through the Hawks Nest woods. In his quest to look elsewhere, he’d spotted more than one Hawks Nest shadow warrior. Renegade Apaches protected the Hawks cousins and their ranch. Nobody came on the spread without an invitation or an escort.
Having visited Grady Hawks in the past, Deacon was aware of the Indian ranch hands both perched in the trees above and pacing along parallel to the McCallisters, ready to shoot, knife or spear if need be.
Deacon wasn’t surprised. Since Grady’s father Henry Hawks had been ambushed and killed on his way home from Eclipse last year, the Hawks cousins kept their ranch well-guarded. Recently a consortium of Eastern bankers had been trying to influence Texas politics and gain valuable land. In an attempt to acquire Hawks Nest, they were currently claiming the mix-blood cousins were too Indian to own property. It was a messy situation that threatened to turn ugly real soon.
Deacon felt like a grizzly coming out of hibernation. It was clear from this new perspective that he’d spent the better part of the last ten years oblivious to anything but family business. Truth to tell, he hadn’t been interested enough in his surroundings to care about what went on with his neighbors.
Now that Sam and Dan had become partners in the horse breedi
ng business, Deacon’s brother was invested in protecting Hawks Nest, which meant Deacon and Charlie were too.
That’s the way it had always been for the McCallisters and that’s the way it would always be. Charlie had rescued some female students when they were kidnapped from a young ladies academy. During the event he’d met and in his peculiar fashion wooed his wife, schoolteacher Naomi Parker. When they’d faced a mob because Charlie was half-Kiowa and Naomi was a white woman, Sam and Deacon had backed their cousin’s play.
Deacon had performed a marriage ceremony and Charlie had claimed his bride. Deacon’s gaze drifted over his cousin. Charlie Wolf was a changed man. The bitterness and hostility he’d radiated before Naomi was missing, swept away by the once-spinster schoolmarm who held his heart.
Deacon had barely adjusted to that family addition when Sam had fallen hard for Eden Pace. She’d been embroiled in a hunt for her husband’s murderer. That didn’t stop Sam from pursuing her or from dragging the McCallisters into an outlaw war that included the whole town of Eclipse and half the Texas Rangers in the state. Deacon had performed Sam and Eden’s marriage ceremony too.
Now letting his eyes play over the horse and rider in front of him, he admitted the truth. He’d been envious. He wanted what his brother and cousin had. He wanted a woman who loved him. Beauregard didn’t seem a likely prospect, but then again, she’d rescued him and bedded him. She must have some feelings for him.
The possibility that she didn’t made his throat tighten. He didn’t know what the hell she thought. She was mercurial, funny, endearing, brave. His heart kicked up to a faster beat as he admitted he had feelings for her.
No other woman fit the picture in his brain. She’d erased whatever tentative design he’d been working on. He wanted Miri and somehow he had to separate her from her disguise, convince her to trust him and then…
He swallowed, forcing impatience back into his cage of control. He didn’t have to pursue her or claim her. She’d already done that. He thought over their past association meeting by meeting. At least half if not more had been initiated by her. And the Pleasure Dome encounter—he had no way to explain it away. She knew him and she’d chosen him to be her first lover.
Her only lover. Fierce determination to get this right flooded him. If he had to bide his time, he’d do it by her side. He didn’t need to get to know her to make up his mind. He was already familiar with the brassy kid who knew no fear and the seductress who climbed in his bath and chose him to deflower her. Whoever she really was, she’d spent a year teasing his temper and protective instincts and now she’d roused his passion.
He wasn’t foolish enough to think he could bully her into falling into his arms again. Well, hell. He hadn’t bullied her the first time. She’d done the manipulating and maneuvering. He was surprised from his ponderings when Sam, riding from Hawks Nest to meet them, appeared through the trees and dropped back next to Deacon.
“Dan’s working the yahoo in the barn while he trains a mare in the paddock. We’ll ride up to the bluff and watch from the overlook. But when we get close, no talking.”
Then he raised his voice and said, “You hear that, kid? Keep your questions until Dan says he’s done for the day.”
“Your brother needs to explain to you that Jackson’s my prisoner.” Miri twisted in the saddle to nod toward Deacon as she delivered her message.
“I don’t see your rope on him.” Sam flashed a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He had his back up and Deacon didn’t know why. But he wasn’t going to let Miri and Sam get in a pissing contest.
“We need him alive and we need to find the plates being used to print from. After that, he goes to jail. The thousand you and Dan lost to him will be paid out of my share of the reward. The longer it takes for us to question him, the longer it will be before we collect the bounty and move on.”
Miri turned away from their conversation and Deacon followed her gaze to the woods on either side of the trail. Something besides Sam had her interest. Snarls suddenly emerged from the dense brush, signaling that Ketchum had found trouble.
He was surprised to see her unhook her whip from the leather thong holding it on her saddle. Carrying it, she slid from her mount and disappeared off the trail, shoving her way through the brush toward the sound. Deacon kept his rifle in his hand as he slid to the ground and followed her.
He’d been around Ketchum often enough to think of the animal more as a nuisance than a threat. But when they reached the spot where a fight was in progress, he knew his assessment had been wrong. The wolf was engaged in battle with an Indian ranch hand. There was no doubt that both combatants were going for the kill.
The Hawks Nest crew member had blanketed his arm and held a knife in his other hand. As Deacon watched, he feinted toward Ketchum, taunting the wolf. Beside him, Miri reached for her gun. This was Hawks Nest ranch, they were the intruders, and aside from the fact that the fight was even as far as he could see, a gun would get them all killed.
She shrugged away from Deacon’s touch but he took the coiled leather from her and flexed his wrist, unleashing the whip. Wrapping the fall around the rifle held by the Indian in the tree above, he separated the weapon from the Hawks Nest guard. The rifle clattered to the ground. Deacon flicked his wrist again and wrapped the coil around the Indian in the tree, jerking him from his perch to fall on the man below.
Miri entered the circle, knife out, making it clear she fought beside her wolf. Deacon was right beside her, his rifle up and aimed defensively. It was Charlie Wolf who slid in beside Deacon to defuse the situation. In a language the Indians understood but Deacon didn’t, his cousin exchanged words with them. Then Miri joined the conversation, rolling out a guttural comment aimed at the first man.
“What’s going on?” Sam called from the edge of the clearing.
“Beats the hell if I know,” Deacon admitted. “But if push comes to shove, I’ll take out those two in the trees over there.” He spoke loud enough for the Hawks Nest guards to hear.
Sam nodded toward someone in his line of sight but spoke to Deacon. “Be a shame if I have to kill a couple of them too. Dan’s not going to be happy about this.”
“Not going to be any killing today.” Charlie Wolf’s words, spoken in English, were an order both sides recognized. The two Hawks Nest braves on the ground visibly relaxed as they untangled from the incongruous heap they’d fallen in.
But Miri, wearing a grim expression, watched Ketchum. It was clear to all that if the wolf decided to attack, she’d back his play. The beast curled its lip and snarled before disappearing into the brush. Only then did Miri sheathe her knife and walk past Deacon without a word.
He admitted to himself it was a damn shame when a man was jealous of a pet wolf. But as God was his witness, he wanted that loyalty for himself.
“Sure hope I don’t have to go to war with the Hawks Nest crew over a damned wolf.” Deacon knew that Sam’s teasing remark hid two truths. He didn’t want to mess with the business he had going with Dan Hawks but if it came to loyalty, he was backing Deacon and if that meant including Beauregard in the mix, then he was backing Beau.
“What did you say to cool things down?” Deacon asked Charlie.
“Told ’em we fight with the wolf.”
“And Beauregard’s words?”
Charlie Wolf snorted, an unexpected grin rearranging his usual stoic expression. “No way to directly translate but the gist of it was, fight the wolf, you fight me.”
“You’ve known all along she’s female, haven’t you?” Deacon remembered her tale about traveling with an Indian tribe. At the time, he’d assumed the story was part of the Beauregard disguise she used for the sake of distraction and entertainment. Now he looked at his cousin accusingly.
“Nope,” Charlie denied the charge. “First glance at her in Abilene, she had me fooled. But when her pet wolf joined the fight, I knew.”
“How?”
“I gave her the wolf when it was a pup,” Charlie
said and smiled as if remembering.
“You don’t think you might have shared the information? And what in hell are you doing abetting a woman’s danger?”
“She’s not doing so bad on her own, Deak,” Sam drawled.
Charlie shrugged and gave them a little history long overdue.
“I met her when she was travelin’ with the Kiowa.” Charlie’s smile broadened into a grin as he openly savored the memory. “She was skinny as a rail, with white braids hanging halfway down her back. I don’t know how old she was then. Like she said earlier, she was big for her age. But even though she was kicking every young buck’s ass who tried to best her in a fight, she hadn’t gone through a transition ceremony and didn’t join the women in their purification lodge once a month. I think what she told Naomi earlier is the truth. I don’t think she knows her age.” He paused, his expression becoming troubled.
“The Indians said she just appeared one day and attached herself to them. They tried to run her off until she proved her worth, delivering gifts of furs she’d trapped and meat she’d killed.
“Even then, she was lithe, strong and she learned fast, mimicking her opponents’ moves and besting ’em. She picked up their language fast too.”
“Damn, Charlie. You don’t wax eloquent about most folks. Sounds like you knew her pretty well. You were squaw hunting back then. Why didn’t you…” Sam stalled and frowned.
“She was a child, acknowledged so even by the warriors who waited for her to grow up.” Charlie’s information just added layers to Deacon’s need to know.
“Well, what happened to her?” Deacon growled.
“Little Eagle had his mind set on claiming her as soon as she was old enough. I didn’t think she’d take him up on his offer. Guess I was right.”
Deacon grappled with yet another of Beauregard’s hazardous adventures. Hell, she’d even survived living with the Indians for a time.
“So why didn’t you tell me she was female?”
“Didn’t see a reason,” Charlie admitted. “You were doing fine keeping tabs on her, and if she wanted the world to know she’s a woman, she’d wear skirts. Besides,” he added slyly, “the way you two were going at it, you were sure to figure it out on your own—took you a spell to admit it, that’s all.”