Promises Prevail

by Sarah McCarty

  “Without telling Clint?” Jenna added, knowing Clint would forbid it.

  Cougar’s big hand engulfed Mara’s where it rested on his thigh. He stared at Jenna, his golden gaze so intent that she immediately dropped her eyes, remembered her vow, and brought her gaze back up to meet his. She might have imagined the slight nod of Cougar’s head, but she was so desperate, she interpreted it as approval to shore up her resolve. He made her hold his gaze for two heartbeats before a slight smile turned up the corner of his mouth.

  “As I owe the man one, I’ll teach you.”

  Jenna closed her eyes as relief swept through her. When she opened them, all she could see was the back of Cougar’s head and the long fall of his hair as he leaned over Mara.

  She’d never seen a man kiss a woman. Watching Cougar kiss Mara was a revelation. For a man who made her think in terms of danger and unpredictability, he was incredibly careful with his wife. From where she sat, Jenna could see the play of muscles under his shirt as he shifted his angle. He was a powerful man. As powerful as Clint, but whereas she was a big woman with meat on her bones to take a blow, Mara was tiny and slender. Cougar could break her neck with a slap.

  Jenna thought she heard Cougar groan and then Mara’s hands crept over his shoulders, the tips curling into his shoulder as if she would pull him to her. Cougar seemed to lean into her grasp. By shifting just the slightest to the right, she could see his hand cupping Mara’s head. She expected to see his fingers fisted in her hair, holding her for his pleasure, but the hand that engulfed her head was open, supporting, not demanding. The dark thumb resting against the white of her cheek caressed the skin with incredible gentleness.

  “Damn, Angel, you go to my head,” she heard him murmur, and she knew the rumors were true. Cougar McKinnely may have found his wife in a notorious bordello, but he loved her.

  She pulled her gaze away from the two and moved the brick down on her thigh. If Cougar could love Mara despite her past, then maybe Clint could love her. Maybe she’d go to his head the way Mara went to Cougar’s, and maybe he’d hold her the way Cougar held Mara—as though she was everything precious that made up his world.

  The floor creaked as Cougar straightened. He was still looking at Mara, concern on his face. “You take care, today.”

  Mara shook her head at him. “You tell me that every day.”

  He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. His skin was very dark against hers. “I have hopes that one day you’ll listen.”

  “I listen.”

  “Uh-huh.” The smile that tilted his wide mouth was as soft as down. He flicked her nose. “And leave the furniture upstairs alone, until I get back.”

  Mara merely rolled her eyes. “Don’t you have work to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why don’t you do it?”

  “When I have your promise.”

  “Can I clean house?” Mara blew her hair off her forehead.

  “Yes.”

  “Figures you’d agree to that.”

  “I’ll have your promise on the other.” Cougar touched her cheek again.

  “Soon as you’re out the door, I could break my word.”

  “But you won’t.” The faintest of smiles crinkled the corner of the eye Jenna could see. He kissed Mara on her head. “You two come on down to the barn when Jenna’s feeling better.”

  “Thank you.”

  He left the room. Mara’s gaze clung to his broad back as he left, her heart in her eyes.

  “I want that,” Jenna said. The declaration landed hard in the sudden silence.

  “My husband?” Mara turned, her expression amused.

  “I want Clint to look at me like Cougar looks at you.” Jenna knew she was blushing from the heat in her cheeks. Not to mention the laughter in the other woman’s gaze.

  “You want Clint to love you.”

  “Yes.” It sounded so stark when said aloud.

  “And you don’t think he does?”

  “No.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you told him?”

  “Yes.” Her blush turned to scorching.

  “And?”

  “He’s kind to me, but he never says it back.” She shrugged, feeling the emptiness of that “and” to the bottom of her soul.

  “That’s not good.”

  “No.”

  “It will have to be fixed.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.” With a wave of her hand, Mara dismissed Jenna’s efforts.

  “We’ll need help.” She walked over to the small desk and pulled out paper and a pencil.

  “You think Cougar can’t teach me?” Jenna asked, putting the towel-wrapped brick carefully on the gleaming floor. That was not what she wanted to hear.

  “Cougar would be hopeless at this,” Mara snorted, and not in a ladylike manner. She scribbled on the paper. With a sharp flourish, she finished writing and folded the paper in half. Mara glanced up from the desk and the smile on her face promised ill for someone. “I’m calling in reinforcements.”

  * * * * *

  “Damn it woman, do it like you mean it.”

  Jenna flinched at Cougar’s growl and once again let her body drop while bringing the stick she was pretending was a knife into Cougar’s knee. And once again, at the last moment, instinctively pulled back.

  Cougar hauled her back up, his breath hissing between his teeth with impatience. “That wouldn’t have even broken the skin.”

  “I know.” She’d tried six times, and every time, given in to the sick feeling in her stomach at the last minute.

  “If you can’t take out the knee, how are you going to hamstring them?” The question growled past her ear as Cougar tightened his arm around her stomach.

  “I don’t know.” She had absolutely no idea. She did know, however, if she couldn’t master this, she was never going to succeed in her plan.

  “Goddamn it, you’d better not be crying.” Cougar took a step back so fast she stumbled.

  “I’m not.” She blinked the moisture out of her eyes.

  He caught her arm and turned her around. Sunlight dappled the barn floor. A stray beam shot through the room and struck her across the eyes, blinding her. She shifted to the left in time to see Cougar fold his arms across his chest.

  “You asked me to teach you.”

  “I know.” She waved her hand helplessly. “I just didn’t expect…” How could she say she hadn’t expected it to be so violent?

  “What?”

  She pushed her hair off her face, forgetting about the stick and tangling it in her hair.

  “It seems so mean,” she admitted, unwrapping a strand of hair from the branch bud.

  She flinched when Cougar swore and shoved his hair back over his shoulder. “Did you think you could just ask an attacker to let you go?”

  “No, but do I have to stab them?” She lifted her chin as she yanked at the stick.

  “What the he-eck else are you going to do? You’re no match for a man in a fistfight, you can’t run, and you’re too soft for other things.”

  The calm listing of her negatives just made them seem so much bigger.

  “Maybe I could knee them in sensitive places?” Cougar was shaking his head before she finished.

  “That’s not reliable and you have to be too close.” He stepped forward into her shadowed area, his expression a combination of amusement and exasperation. She flinched as he brushed her hands aside and took the stick.

  “Your best bet is to use what they know about you,” he said as he went to work on the snarled mess, showing none of her impatience, gently untangling the strands.

  “Do you really think it’ll work?”

  His hands stilled. “Don’t take this wrong, Jenna, but for years you’ve taken whatever anyone dished out to you, not saying a word. If push comes to shove, you can bet everyone will be expecting you to surrender.”

  “They’ll probably be right.” It
wasn’t a very pretty picture he painted. She sighed. The stick came free.

  “I’m counting on them selling you short.” He said that in that deep drawl that reminded her of Clint. He handed her the stick. “And when they do, you’ll use that to your advantage.”

  “I will?” She rubbed her fingers down the rough surface.

  “Yes.” He motioned for her to turn around. She didn’t immediately.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because you’re a mother now, and anyone who harms you, harms your children.”

  She hadn’t thought of that.

  “And you really think I’ll be able to do this?”

  “I think if push comes to shove and someone you love is in trouble, you’ll surprise yourself.”

  “I’m not so sure if it’s Gray.”

  “The boy giving you problems?” His smile flashed across his face.

  “He’s so cold and angry.”

  “Scared, too, I’ll bet.”

  She shook her head, remembering the determination that settled in Gray’s eyes and the resentment that curled his mouth. “He doesn’t have time to be scared. If he’s not working with Clint, he’s here with you or over at Asa’s earning that horse he fell in love with.”

  “The boy’s got a goal, that’s for sure.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good one.”

  “Probably not, but he’ll work through it and be glad for his family when he gets to the other side.”

  She shrugged. “I think he just doesn’t think much of me.”

  “I’d say he thinks the world of you,” Cougar contradicted, turning her around.

  “What makes you say that?” She twisted against his hand to see his face.

  “He gave his sister to you.” With a simple push, he finished turning her around. She stood where he placed her, staring at the dust motes floating through the air.

  Gray had given his sister to her.

  “He didn’t argue when I claimed him,” she mused aloud.

  “He’s not dumb. He knows a good thing when he sees it.” His arm settled around her waist. “Like Clint.”

  She slipped the stick of wood in the slit pocket of her skirt, biting her lip against the urge to ask him how he knew Clint saw her as a good thing.

  “This time,” Cougar said, spreading his legs, his hard body a solid wall behind her, “let’s just do it all the way, no matter what. You drop hard on that one side, bring the knife around.”

  “Okay.”

  “And try to picture someone hurting Tidbit while you’re at it.”

  She did, but as always she pulled back, tapping his knee, rolling when she hit the ground to lightly hit the back of his ankles. He grabbed her skirt. Remembering what he’d told her, she brought the stick down on his hand, closing her eyes as she did so, missing. He sighed as she scooted back.

  Cougar got to his feet holding his hand out to her. She bit her lip as he helped her up.

  “Maybe I’ll do better if it’s the real thing.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound any more convinced than she, and his “Let’s try it again” had a resigned note she didn’t find comforting. Brushing off her skirt, she stepped into his arm, and vowed to do better.

  * * * * *

  An hour later her leg was aching, she had bruises on her hips, and she still hadn’t mastered the art of being vicious. It was a relief when the sound of a fast approaching horse interrupted yet another attempt.

  “That, I expect, will be Clint,” Cougar said as he walked to the entry, left open for light. He glanced out then back at her. “You left word where you were, didn’t you?”

  “I told Gray.” She pushed the tumble of her hair out of her face, grimacing as a piece of hay stabbed her palm.

  “Hmm.”

  That was not a comforting “Hmmm”.

  Twisting her hair into a braid behind her head, she walked to the door. Sunlight poured over her, unnaturally bright after the dimness of the barn. She blinked against the sting, and the sight of Clint tearing into the yard atop his big buckskin, Danny close behind. The way he leaned over the horse’s neck, urging it to more speed, sent her heart into her throat. Something must he wrong.

  “Clint!” She let go of her hair and started running toward him. Her leg gave out on the second step. She went down, only to be snapped back up again as Cougar snagged her arm. Clint’s head whipped around, and as if horse and rider were one, the big buckskin pivoted and without a break in stride, came charging at her.

  “You okay?” Cougar asked.

  “Yes,” She didn’t have time to say more. Four strides and the horse was on them, so close she could see the pink in the flare of his nostrils. So close she flinched, expecting to be run over, but in another of those moves that was more like poetry than riding, the horse sat back on its haunches and slid to a halt while Clint, in a graceful flow of muscle, launched out of the saddle, hitting the ground on a run. His eyes black as pitch, his mouth set in a grim line.

  “Son of a bitch,” he growled as he snatched her out of Cougar’s grip and up against his hard chest. “I’m going to beat you black and blue.” A hard squeeze nearly cracked her ribs, and then he held her away. His lips thinned to a flat line as his gaze paused at her hair, her dirty skirt, and the smudges on her cheeks. “What in hell happened to you?”

  “I was practicing.”

  “What?”

  “Fighting.”

  He blinked. His fingers on her arms tightened. “You weren’t hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Son of a bitch.” His lips slammed down on hers, his hand in her hair pulling her head back further as his mouth opened over hers. His tongue filled her mouth along with his groan.

  She didn’t know what to do, what was wrong, so she dug her nails into the hard muscle of his arms and hung on, while he fucked her mouth with brutal intensity, hunting for a response that she didn’t know how to give. Twisting her head to the right as if he wanted to permanently mate their mouths, their breath, their souls.

  “You might want to take that into the barn.” The amused drawl from the right was like a dash of cold water.

  Against her, Clint froze. His black eyes unreadable, he stared at her. With a brief nod and a curt “I think I might” he bent and put his shoulder to her stomach. In the next instant she was upside down, Cougar’s moccasins swinging in and out of view with the swish of her hair across the ground.

  “I’ll cool Ornery down while you’re occupied.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you could keep Danny with you, too.”

  Cougar grunted a “You owe me” before his moccasins faded from view.

  Clint’s first step drove the air from her lungs. His second a protest. The third a scream as the flat of his hand came down on her sore rear.

  “Quiet, Jenna.”

  Sunlight changed to shadow as they entered the barn. Shadow turned to darkness as the barn door creaked closed. She groaned as he set her on her feet and pain shot up her leg. His “Don’t try to get around me with a play for sympathy” was as mean as a snakebite, but his hands were gentle as they probed her thigh, and became tender as he felt the spasming muscle.

  “Well hell.” He lifted her and then sat. His thighs were hard beneath her hips. “How am I supposed to beat you when you’re hurting?”

  If he didn’t know, she wasn’t going to tell him. Try as she might she couldn’t see his expression in the gloom. “Why do you have to beat me at all?”

  “You scared the shit out of me woman.” His callused palm slid up her thigh beneath her skirt.

  “It’s not that far over here.”

  “One foot beyond the porch is too far.” He began to knead the tight muscle. “Especially when I didn’t know where you were going.”

  “I told Gray.”

  “Must be he thought I’d hurt you when I found you because all he did was shrug when I asked.”

  Or maybe he was trying to start trouble. The unwelcome thought slipped throu
gh the pain to prod Jenna.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with him,” she whispered, the last syllable coming out high as another spasm wrenched her leg.

  “Give him some room to sort things out and he’ll be fine,” Clint countered.

  “Will he sort it out?” She felt his nod in the brush of his hair against her cheek. “Good.”

  “Leg still hurt?”

  She bit her lip and nodded, unable to do anything else as the muscle contorted excruciatingly. At her whimper, Clint cupped her cheek and pulled her head against his chest. “Shh, baby. Just relax into me and let me take care of this.”

  She did, turning her face into his neck, breathing deeply of his scent, riding the soothing notes of his baritone as he reprimanded her for riding, for scaring him, for hurting herself, for tricking Jackson. By the time he got the muscle to relax and the pain to a manageable ache, he was pretty much condemning her for getting up in the morning.

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  His finger tipped her chin up. She could barely make out the whites of his eyes as he corrected her.

  “It’s as bad as it gets, and if you don’t believe me, imagine coming downstairs a year from now and not being able to find Bri. Not knowing if she was taken or if she just walked out the door and into trouble. And while you’re looking for her, you just keep imagining all the trouble she can get into, knowing damned well exactly what can happen.”

  Nausea mixed with pain. She’d die if that ever happened.

  “Exactly.” His finger touched her cheek. She’d forgotten he could see where she couldn’t. His hand scooted up her thigh, not flinching as his fingers hit the dips and ridges of the scars. “You scared the shit out of me. Again.”

  His palm came to rest on the bulge of her hipbone, his fingers dangling in the crease of her thigh, the thin cotton of her pantaloons doing nothing to diminish the searing heat of his touch. Deep inside, her body sprang to life. She turned deeper into his embrace.

  “I’m sorry I worried you.”

  “You’re going to be.” The hard edge to his voice sent a shiver of worry sneaking through her.

  “When?”

  “Just as soon as you’re up to it.”

  “I don’t think you should beat me.” She’d never be up to it. She tested the give in his biceps. There was none. She opened her fingers measuring their depth. She couldn’t even get her hands around the upper curve.