Carole Howey - Sheik's Glory

by Carole Howey

  She stared in amazement from one man to the next. Bill Boland, nearest to her on her right, was as breathless as if he'd run the distance without benefit of a horse. He put his hat back on to shade his eyes against the late sun and surveyed her with hopeful cobalt eyes. Despite the cool spring breeze, a seam of sweat darkened the front of his blue shirt right down the lapel to the belt buckle at his trim waist. His big hands, in stained leather work gloves, gripped the reins and pommel of his lathered mount, betraying a tension only hinted at in his bluff address.

  Flynn Muldaur seemed scarcely able to keep a scowl from his features. He appeared, in addition, to be attempting to rivet her with his gaze while glaring openly at the man who'd bested him in their contest, an undertaking she might have found comical were she not so furious. He wore work clothing she'd never seen on him before, including a dark red shirt with lacings at the throat rather than buttons, and a leather vest in the same shade of brown as his hat. Flynn, though, was coated with dust to his curly blond hair, evidence that he'd trailed Boland for a good part of the contest, maybe all of it.

  And he was riding one of her best mares, besides.

  She had more than enough displeasure to spare for both of them.

  "I don't know which of you is the bigger fool, racing these animals that way on a paved street!"

  Both men's expressions, different as they'd been from one another to start, blended to a single representation of openmouthed shock.

  Micah seemed to shrink in the seat beside her. Curious onlookers emerged from nearby shops, but Missy no longer cared about creating a scene: Bill Boland and Flynn Muldaur had already accomplished that with no help whatever from her. Before she realized what she was doing, she was on her feet before the seat of the wagon, clenching her gloved hands in rage as she stared down at the two nonplussed competitors.

  "What can you have been thinking of, Bill Boland, to risk a calamity?" She exploded the full force of her fury on the stunned rancher to her right, whose square jaw hung open like a broken old door. "I thought you had more sense than that, or at least a greater respect for your horses. And you!" Trembling with rage, she turned on Flynn Muldaur, whose deep-set blue eyes looked like twin thunderheads. "How dare you appropriate my stock for such a dangerous and foolhardy exhibition! She might have been lamed on these stones. Or worse! A pair of rare idiots, the both of you! Now get out of my way. I am going home, and I don't wish to see or to speak to either one of you until hell freezes, or until you gain a little common sense. Something tells me the former will occur long before the latter. Drive on at once, please, Micah."

  Missy expected that would be the end of it and she sat down as Micah chucked to the team. Flynn, however, with a look of fury in his eyes, leaned over and set the brake of the wagon.

  "Get down, Micah. I'm driving." He addressed the foreman at the rein, but he looked straight into Missy's soul as he spoke. His tone was cold and hard as steel.

  "Don't you move, Micah!" Missy's voice trembled, just like the rest of her. How dared this upstart profiteer challenge her will on a public street in her own town? How dared he behave as if he were half-owner of the C-Bar-C, and, worst of all, how dared he be so perilously appealing, besides?

  Micah looked as if he wished he were under the wagon instead of in it. His uncertain, petitioning gaze incited a renewed wave of anger in Missy.

  "Who signs your pay voucher, Micah Watts?" she demanded, growing hot in the face.

  "You," the foreman mumbled. "Except” he half rose from his seat "Mr. Muldaur, he did sign the last one."

  Muldaur seemed eager to take advantage of the foreman's hesitation. He spoke up again quickly.

  "This is a matter between me and Missy," he told the man, shooting him a conspiratorial, sympathetic expression that Missy found infuriating. It as much as said aloud, "Women don't understand these things like we men."

  She was on her feet again.

  "There is nothing between us, Mr. Muldaur." She pronounced each word with furious deliberation. "Not this matter or any other. I don't know by what manner you have insinuated yourself into my home and my business, but you may rest assured that it is a temporary state of affairs at best."

  Muldaur seemed unfazed by her heated remarks, except to raise one blond eyebrow in sardonic amusement.

  "I beg to differ, Miss Cannon. I have been resting assured, and in fact resting quite comfortably, on your best mattress at the C-Bar-C for the last three weeks. Would you like to learn what else I've been doing? I mean to tell you, so it's entirely up to you whether you want me to do so here on a public street in front of a score of witnesses or in the more private setting of the ride back to the ranch. So which is it to be?"

  "Want me to take care of this for you, Missy?" Bill Boland's growl was annoyingly patronizing.

  "I can take care of myself, thank you!" she retorted, turning to the widower. "If you really want to be of help, you may just leave. Both of you."

  There was quite a throng of interested spectators lining the walk nearby, and all traffic had come to a standstill in the street. Missy avoided the eyes of people she'd known for ten years, people who surely wondered why Missy Cannon, who had never attracted more than the polite interest of any man in the area, suddenly had not one but two attractive and by all accounts eligible bachelors literally racing through the streets to her side and vying for her attention. Wild speculation would no doubt ensue about the event for weeks.

  She wanted to die.

  "Anybody care to tell me what in Sam Hill is goin' on here?"

  The gathering crowd parted for Sheriff Eldon Garlock. He was an unprepossessing man of medium height, age, and build, utterly unremarkable except for his inexplicable and uncanny ability to command attention and respect, but not fear, with a direct look and a few well-chosen words. This occasion proved no different.

  Not without an obvious, collective disappointment, the onlookers began to disperse. Eldon eyed Flynn, Missy, and Bill with silent appraisal and a curled lower lip.

  "I figgered this to happen," he said by way of greeting. "'Cept I was hopin' it wouldn't happen in the middle a' the day in the center a' town. It's a fine 'welcome home' for you, I guess, Miz Cannon, but it looks like you'll have to make the best of it for now." He nodded in Flynn's direction once. "Anyways, you can't hash it all out right here in the middle of a public street. You're holdin' up traffic. So move it along, please, or I'll haft a fine all of you for creatin' a public nuisance. And I hope I don't haft a tell you two again” he aimed an acid glare at both Flynn and Bill” that horseplay's a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine and a week in jail. So no more showin' off. I expect you're both a sight too old for that kind a' tomfoolery, anyway. Now you all got” he withdrew a gold watch from the pocket of his leather vest and studied it’ thirty seconds to remove yourselves, else I start handin' out citations. And I get mite grumpy when I haft a waste my time with that when I got more important business on my mind." He spread his stern gaze out over the crowd, as if making sure they all understood they were included in his blanket admonition. Accordingly, they edged away.

  "But Sheriff" Missy tried.

  "Twenty-five seconds."

  She huffed in annoyance. "You don't"

  "Twenty seconds."

  "Micah, get out of the wagon," Flynn ordered swiftly, dismounting. "Take the mare, unhitch the ladies you have in back, and lead them home."

  "Don't you dare get"

  Garlock sighed. "Fifteen seconds."

  "Move, Micah!"

  Micah moved. In moments Flynn was parked in the driver's seat. He gripped Missy's wrist with a firm hand and pulled her down beside him. Bill Boland uttered a sound that was half disgust, half resignation and reined his gelding away.

  "Ten seconds."

  Flynn touched the brim of his hat to the sheriff, released the brake with a soft grunt, and flicked the reins of the team.

  "H'yah!"

  The wagon started through the diminishing crowd with a quick jerk that ma
de Missy put a hand to her hat. They were up to speed and heading out of town in no time. Missy stiffened her back.

  "I have never been so publicly humiliated in all of my life, Mr. Muldaur," she said icily. "And if you ever do such a thing again"

  "you'll probably thank me for it," he finished for her with a hard sigh of disgust.

  "An unlikely occurrence." She sniffed.

  "It didn't have to play out like that, you know."

  The back of Missy's neck prickled.

  "No, I suppose it didn't, as long as I was willing to go along with you peacefully." She employed her most sarcastic tone.

  "Are you always so hard to get along with?" His gloved hands tightened on the reins.

  "Only when people try to order me about to suit their whims," she retorted, stung. She held herself to the far edge of the seat to avoid contact with any part of Flynn Muldaur's long, lean form.

  "Yeah? Well, when your whims don't make any damned sense, expect me to override them."

  "Don't take that condescending tone with me, Mr. Muldaur."

  "It's Flynn," he corrected her, sounding pleased to be contradictory. "No need to stand on some stupid convention, Missy. We're partners. Equal partners."

  "We'll see about that."

  "But you already have seen," he pointed out to her. "Face it. You wasted a lot of time in Louisville trying to prove otherwise, and you failed. It's a fact we both have to learn to live with, so we might as well get used to it."

  "I'll never accept you living at my house, calling half of my ranch yours," she declared, keeping her gaze on the road ahead of them. "And of course, now that I'm home, you'll be moving out of the ranch house."

  "Like hell I will!"

  Missy made a show of wincing. "Guard your tongue, Mr. Muldaur. There's a child in the back of the wagon."

  "What!"

  "I ain't no child." Gideon spoke up at last, grumbling. No doubt he'd enjoyed the performance in town tremendously, Missy thought, and was probably sorry he'd been noticed just as things were getting even more interesting.

  "Sweet mother of God, what's he doing here?" Flynn demanded, turning to her at last with his wheat-colored brows in deeply plowed furrows.

  Missy felt a shimmer of wicked delight. So Gideon's presence surprised and annoyed him. Good, she thought, trying to keep her triumphant smile to herself.

  "Gideon is my ward," she said, determined not to look at Flynn, although she felt his piercing stare on her like needles. "He's been with me and Glory since Louisville, that day when you when we met in the stable. He's agreed to let me be his guardian for the time being, and he will live at the ranch. In the house. In the spare bedroom."

  The room that had been Allyn's, when she'd lived at the C-Bar-C. If that was where Flynn had ensconced himself, she thought, he could damn well pack up and

  move elsewhere. Out to the bunkhouse, for instance. Or to perdition, it was all the same to her. In fact, the farther away the better.

  "He's welcome to the spare bedroom," Flynn remarked with an edge of amused sarcasm. "I moved into the other room, which I guess is yours. But don't worry. I only take up half the bed."

  Muldaur's remark evoked a quick, vivid image in Missy's mind that made her dizzy and short of breath. This time she was thankful when Gideon spoke up.

  "Miss Cannon's a lady," he said in as menacing a tone as an adolescent boy could manage. "It ain't right, you talkin' to her that way, and you know it. I thought you was a gentleman, Flynn."

  Flynn didn't know whether he was more annoyed or embarrassed by such a dressing-down at the hands of a mere boy, but then neither did he know how he'd allowed himself to get so flip with Missy, when he'd meant all along to be nice. The whole day had been shot to hell, he decided gloomily, from the time Bill Boland rode up to the privy.

  "You'd best call me Mr. Muldaur, son," he growled, because he'd rather do that than apologize to the stern, stiff woman beside him.

  There was a sound from the back of the wagon that Flynn took for an expression of disdain.

  "I call Miss Cannon Missy," Gideon drawled. "Guess you ain't no better'n her. Flynn 'll do for you. And you can call me Gideon when you call me anything, because I sure as hell ain't your son."

  "Language, please, Gideon," Missy murmured, her gentle rebuke to the boy several shades softer than her previous declarations. "Thank you for standing up for me that way. At least there's one gentleman in this wagon."

  "Flynn can bunk with me in the spare room." Gideon went right on as if he'd been hired to mediate for the two of them. Moreover, he sounded, to Flynn's chagrin, as if he were making the concession grudgingly. "And I'll make sure he don't bother you, Miss."

  "I said the bunkhouse!" Missy sputtered and hissed as if she were a hot piece of metal dunked in a water barrel. "Don't think you're going to interfere with the management of my ranch, Gideon, just because you're"

  "Our ranch," Muldaur cut in, glad that at least the boy seemed to be on his side in one respect. "And frankly, Missy, as long as Gideon's there to play chaperon, I don't think you need concern yourself about your reputation."

  Missy drew away from him and stiffened as if she'd over starched her drawers. Damn, he hadn't meant that to come out sounding so cold and unfeeling, as if to declare he had no interest in her as a woman, but it was too late. The words were spoken. Missy's silence answered any question he might have raised as to how she'd taken his incautious comment.

  The wagon hit a rut, and he smothered a curse. He'd meant to impress Missy with all he'd done at the ranch in the past three weeks, but as he thought about it, those things nailing a few shingles on the privy roof, for instance seemed less and less noteworthy. Absurd, even. A part of him had wanted to find the place hanging by a thread, waiting for a competent man to take over. But the truth of it was the C-Bar-C was already a thriving concern, worked by people who obviously cared a great deal about the place, and about the owner. The more he thought about it, the more he realized Micah and the hands had all just humored him until Missy returned. Hell, they were probably glad he'd found things to do that made him think he was helping and kept him out of their way.

  Maybe they were even laughing behind their hands and calling him the new janitor.

  Muldaur restrained a compelling urge to spit a bitter taste out of his mouth over the side of the wagon.

  Damn.

  Gideon yanked his cap down over his eyes to keep out the sun. He settled against the sack of flour at his back. After the long, boring train ride, he'd sure enjoyed the excitement in the middle of town. The wagon jolted along the dirt road, though, and the town faded behind them. Except for the creak of the wheels and the constant clopping of the horses, it was quiet. A kind of tense quiet, like the stillness before a thunderstorm.

  Things were even better than he'd hoped. What a piece of luck that Flynn Muldaur had actually heeded his suggestion in Louisville and come to the C-Bar-C! Missy, he'd learned during the past few months, was apt to point to some pretty farfetched coincidences and say they were the work of God. Maybe God had played a hand in this, too. Never mind that the two of them together were as prickly as a briar patch. At least they were together. That part of the problem was solved.

  It was nice to think that maybe God and he were on the same side, for once. It seemed to him that if there was a God, he, Gideon, had spent most of his life on His wrong side. Well, maybe that was about to change. Maybe it had changed already. He smiled at the idea and shifted onto his side.

  Doing so, his gaze came to rest on a nearby jug. He guessed it was molasses, at least he hoped it was. He was partial to sweets. He stared a while longer at the jug, wishing he could read what was marked on the outside of it, but he'd only learned his letters so far, not how to sound them out or put them together.

  But there were things he could put together. And, he thought, glancing over his shoulder at the straight backs of Flynn Muldaur and Missy Cannon, maybe God wouldn't mind a little bit of help doing His work, either. . .
.

  In spite of her agitation, Missy felt a thrill of pride when she set her eyes on the C-Bar-C again after nearly five months away. From a distance, it appeared that the house and the buildings had weathered the winter well, and the paddock, alive with yearlings, was a sight that made her heart glad, despite her latest problem. New life had a way of bringing out her best, of making her feel as if even impossible situations might turn out all right. Allyn often called her an optimist, and she said it in a way that made Missy think her friend envied her the quality. She wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but if it meant she could always find something good even when things seemed at their worst, then an optimist she was.

  "It's a nice place."

  "What?" It had been an eternity since either of them had spoken, and she wasn't sure she'd heard Muldaur correctly. It seemed as though he was reading her thoughts.