Western Winds

by Raine Cantrell

  “You can’t have this room. It’s indecent! You can’t stay in the house at all.”

  He faced her with a chilling glare. “Can’t I?”

  “No. And stop looking me over like some prize heifer you’re thinking of buying!” What did it take for him to understand how contemptuous his behavior appeared? What ever she had expected, it was not to hear him speak with a soft, almost measured patience.

  “I wasn’t thinking of a prize heifer. The will states that I own half, Lacey. Half of the ranch, half of the house, and half of all it contains. I’ve claimed this one room for my use.”

  “Sleep in the bunkhouse.”

  “I’m not your hired hand.”

  “Then take one of the back guest rooms,” she raged, desperate to keep him as far from herself as possible.

  “I’m no guest. Garrett’s dead. You need a shrine to remember him, build one. It’s my right to have what I want here, and you’re having trouble accepting that.” He stood tensed a moment before he stepped closer and then stopped. “Face it. Understand it now, before you squeeze yourself into a corner, Lacey.”

  “You dare to give me orders?” she grated from between clenched teeth, fighting to retain some control over her temper.

  “Someone had better. You heard the terms of the will. A full working partner. That means I have a say in running the ranch and living here.” He stopped, waited for her to deny him, and then found himself taunting her. “Have I got your coming in here all wrong? You want some other kind of arrangement? My bed’s right there, but it wouldn’t work. You’re not hungry, princess. Not enough for me.” His eyes targeted hers, his grin a wicked curve exposing a flash of white teeth. “No, you purely aren’t woman enough to know hunger for a man.”

  “Hunger!” she screeched in feminine outrage, clenching her hands against the desire to physically attack him. Her eyes raked his body, filled with scorn. “And you think you are man enough to make me feel anything for you? I’d see you pushing up grass from the underside first.”

  “Threats, princess?” With a look of devilry he gave her tense figure a thorough assessment. “Maybe I figured you wrong. You’ve never been hungry for a man before, have you? Don’t matter none if you admit it, but don’t make childish threats against me.”

  He faced her with hands on his hips, the material of his shirt pulled taut across his shoulders, smiling impudently. Heat curled in her belly, sending a fine tremor down her legs. “What are you threatening me with?” she asked in a desperate whisper.

  “You’re one smart lady—figure it out. I warned you once that if you push me, I’ll push back.”

  Her eyes darted around the room, anywhere but at the cool, appraising mockery of his eyes. She longed to tear that look from him, stepped farther into the room, but remembered his firm grasp on her wrist when she slapped him.

  With a calm she was far from feeling, Lacey looked at him. “Any threats I make, I keep. If I promised someone a fight, I won’t back down. You’re baiting me into one, so you’ve had a warning.” She watched a muscle tick angrily in his cheek, but his silence goaded her. “You try coming near me, you so much as threaten me that the only way I’ll keep the Reina is in your bed, and I’ll see you dead.”

  “I frighten you that much?” What the hell happened? He had only meant to taunt her a bit, and here she was forcing a confrontation.

  Lacey’s control had slipped, and she lashed out at him. “You wanted to get things straight between us. I will. Now. You stay out of my way, here, in this house, out on the range, and with the men, or I’ll—” She stopped herself, gripped by a rage so intense, she could not finish.

  “Go on. Finish. What are you going to do to stop me?”

  Lacey smiled. It was a thin, mocking smile that was reflected in her eyes, widening now, a deadly feral gleam that made her look dangerous. “Are you a gambler, Parrish?”

  Clearly puzzled, his answer was slow in coming. “I’ve been known to take a risk on the turn of a card.”

  “That’s good.” Lacey began looking at his scuffed boots, her gaze crawling up his legs, noting with satisfaction the tension in them. She rocked back on her heels, glanced at his hips, the cracked leather belt wrapped around a trim waist, and slowly counted every button up his shirt. Her breaths were even, so at odds with the pounding of her heart, but she kept at it, studying the cords standing out on each side of his neck as tension from her looks seemed to coil around and inside of him. When she finished inspecting the stubble on his face, she met his gaze unflinchingly.

  And then she whispered softly, “Would you really risk your life?”

  She could feel every nerve ending scream inside her, protesting the rigid control she was demanding of herself to stay and finish this.

  “No, Lacey,” he stated in a voice every bit as soft as hers. “With you alone as the stakes, the gamble isn’t worth my life. And if you’re done or not, get out. I want some privacy in my room.”

  He turned his back on her, every line of his hard body its own form of dismissal. With a sharp turn on her bootheels, Lacey left, slamming the door behind her. She waited a few seconds for the sound reverberating to stop and then turned the unused key in the lock, listening to it grate.

  He’d have more privacy than he bargained for!

  The splintering crash of wood came within seconds. She froze on the threshold to her room, terror holding her there. His hand grabbed her arm painfully, spinning her around to face him. With that one-handed hold he shook her.

  “Of all the damn stupid, childish things to do! Don’t ever dare … do you hear me? Don’t ever lock a door in this house against me again!”

  His voice was a barely controlled throaty statement, but the tightness of his muscles straining his shirt made her realize he was somehow holding on to his fury. Lacey whimpered when his grip tightened, but she lifted her head.

  “You never intended to leave me anything, did you?” Somehow she kept her features deceptively composed, keenly aware of his greater strength. “But I’m not part and parcel of the Reina that you reminded me you own half of.” Pointedly dropping her gaze to his large hand encircling her upper arm, she added, “No man has ever handled me so roughly.”

  “Maybe it’s time one did,” he muttered.

  Had she pulled her arm free, or had he let her go? She didn’t know. She was admitting to herself it was an act of childish defiance to lock the door just as he claimed. But she never expected him to react this way. He was standing so close she could feel the pounding of his heart, every whiskey-tinged breath he released was inhaled as her own, and those eyes, dark and wary, staring into hers.

  “I’ll have someone fix the door,” he said.

  “You can’t have anyone see this.” She turned, the move allowing space between them, and gestured to the splintered door sagging against the frame. Two wood pieces were on the floor, torn from the other side. When he said nothing more, she looked back at him. His hand moved with an impatient gesture through the thickness of his black hair, until he pushed it back one last time and stopped.

  “I’ll fix it myself.”

  “I might have known you’d be able to fix a broken door. What else can you do? What else do I expect from someone like you?” she demanded.

  Rafe avoided looking at her. He had to strive to find a way to make a truce with this woman he had a feeling was going to take his life and change it in more ways than he cared to explore right now.

  “And you?” he challenged. “What can I expect? More of this?”

  Lacey had to get away from him and walked past him into her room. He followed her, but she knew it would be foolish to order him out. Maybe there was a possibility they could talk.

  “I don’t play at running this ranch,” she began. “I put in as many hours as the men that hire on. There’s damn little I can’t do. Every
thing’s been within my control since Sy had his first heart attack. I don’t intend to give over one bit of it.”

  “That’s not an answer. I asked what I could expect from you, not my ranch partner.” Rafe found himself bewildered by his insistence for having an answer he knew she could not give him. As if she sensed that, her lashes, richly burnished with the same red-gold highlights as her hair, lowered over her eyes, effectively shutting him out.

  “Well? What’s it going to be, Lacey?”

  “What do you want me to say? That I welcome you? That I’ll make it easy for you to take over? I’m not a fool. That’s one thing you can expect from me. The other is that I won’t give over control to you or any man.”

  His laugh was bitter. “That’s the first thing I’ve heard from you that is without question the damnedest truth.” He walked to her bed, sat down, and boldly gazed around him. “We got off to a bad start. But I won’t be pushed around by a woman. I’m not demanding you hand over control. But I’ll share in all decisions made from here on in.”

  “Share? You wouldn’t know—”

  “Stop it! You don’t give a man a chance to breathe before you jump all over him with that tongue sharp enough to slice ribbons in a steer’s dry hide. All I’m getting at is … what the hell, you aren’t listening, but it can’t have been easy to handle this ranch alone.”

  “No, it hasn’t been.” Lacey crossed the room to her rocking chair, sat down, and felt both control and security return with the distance between them. Short of calling men to bodily haul him out, she made up her mind to listen.

  “What about you? You haven’t said much about yourself.”

  “Why ask? My past can’t interest you one bit. You’re the one that had the castle, princess, complete with king of all he owned.”

  “I didn’t grow up like a delicate princess hidden away in a castle!” Her hands gripped the wood arms, muscles aching with the tension he called forth. “Sy was a hard man to please, to live with, and to work for. Just ask any of the men who have been with the Reina for years. Fletcher Ross or Bo James, even ask Maggie. They could tell—”

  “I want to hear it from you,” he insisted. “You’re the Reina’s princess.”

  “Oh, God, stop it! Stop calling me that.” How cruel could he be? Didn’t he understand the pain she felt?

  Rafe couldn’t understand why she would refuse to share memories of the man who fathered him. He stood up abruptly, started for the door, and then stopped. A devil rode his shoulder as he turned around. “What do the men call you?”

  “Call me?” she repeated, her eyes targeted to his grin.

  “Miz Garrett?” he prodded.

  Lacey cringed at his sarcasm. Her throat seemed to close. Miss Garrett, she silently repeated. She had no right to that name. But then, whose name did she have a right to? The fight left her. Wearily she closed her eyes, her voice a defeated whisper. “It doesn’t matter what you call me. The less you have to say to me, the better.”

  “Then princess it is.”

  Lacey’s eyes opened. It was the mockery of his words that infuriated her once more; it was the sight of his submissive bow that made her jump up from the chair like a blue norther ready to strike. “What about the door? And what do I tell Maggie?”

  “Don’t tell her anything. You keep harping about being boss here. Or tell her the truth.” He turned suddenly and found Lacey up against him. He stared down into stormy hazel eyes boldly meeting his. “You sure the hell aren’t afraid of admitting the truth about anything, are you?”

  For a moment Lacey swore he wasn’t talking about the door at all. But his voice, harsh and angry, seemed to pit his will against hers.

  “I’ll think of something. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Will you stop! I don’t want you making up some tale to protect me. I don’t need your help. I don’t need you. No one wants to have everything destroyed. And that’s what your coming has done. I curse the day Judge Walker found you. Do you hear me? I wish he had left you wherever it was. You’re a bastard in the truest sense of the word! And what’s more, you’re a son of a bitch!”

  She instinctively recoiled against the blaze of fury lighting his eyes. But only for an instant. Where there had been heat, now there was cold, a glacial chill that whipped her like his voice.

  “You don’t know when to stop, do you? Don’t ever call me that again,” he grated from a mouth whitened with rage. “Never, Lacey, never. Do you hear me?” His hand snaked out to grip her arm, dragging her against him, ignoring her cry, her uncontrollable shaking. There was fear in her eyes that silently begged release. His taut, low-voiced growl was breathed against her lips. “I’ve killed men for saying it.”

  Hauled up against him, held by his punishing grip, Lacey barely registered the shocked tremors passing through both of them. From one breath to another his threat changed.

  “But then, you’re not a man.”

  Her breath was stifled in her throat, and to her shame, she reacted instinctively to the male threat of him. Shaking her head, her eyes seemed to widen, but nothing would free her from his gaze.

  “Oh, God, what are you doing…?” The words were torn from her, and his mouth curled into a slow, insidious grin.

  Chapter 6

  “I could show you how wild you make me with that savage little mouth.” He released her with a shove. “But not now.” Rafe softly closed her bedroom door behind him. Lacey was shocked into silence.

  How could she stand living with him for a year?

  There was no way she could stop the sudden sobs racking her body. “Why did Sy do this to me?” she cried in a hoarse whisper. Rafe Parrish was in her life to stay, and she admitted her fear of him. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she stood there, staring at the closed door. Her fear stemmed not from his unbridled rage, or his control, not even from the implied male threat of him. It was the ease with which he had broken her defenses and made her cry that spiked terror inside her.

  She couldn’t begin to think of the questions of her parentage that his coming here had raised. A fresh storm of weeping shattered what little control she had left.

  Listening to her, Rafe stood in the middle of the bedroom. His anger needed time to simmer down. Never before had he faced a woman and found her infuriating scorn so apparent in every look and word she directed toward him. Never had he lost his temper so quickly. But then, he had never met anyone like Lacey. His women were bordertown drifters like himself. He cursed Sy Garrett, who had, with his will, turned his life into conflict.

  Why had Garrett waited so long to find him? Why had the man tried to make right the empty promises he had offered to a woman he claimed to love? And why, Rafe asked himself, had he come to claim his share of the Reina?

  Rafe gazed around the room as if the innate pieces of furniture could yield a clue to the man who held his life in a grip of precarious balance. By acknowledging him as his son, Garrett had set him to walk a knife’s edge.

  Turning toward the splintered doorway, Rafe no longer heard Lacey sobbing. He spared a thought to fetching the woman Maggie for Lacey, then dismissed it. Somehow he knew that Lacey’s pride would make her hate him for exposing her now. She was just as much a victim of Garrett’s manipulations as he was. Pity flared—then died. Lacey had her memories of love and a home to console her, while he had nothing but twenty-six years of hunger.

  Hunger for a place to call home. Hunger for answers. Pain tightened his gut. He refused to allow it to take hold. He would find his own consolation in the thought that Garrett had not forgotten his mother. Reina, he had called his ranch, Spanish for queen, just like her name. Would that knowledge have added a measure of peace to her dying? It wasn’t a question he could answer. Emotions that he had fought hard to keep buried began to surface. With a ruthlessness that governed his life, Rafe pushed them away.

/>   He was here, half owner of the Reina, and he swore that no one would call him bastard again.

  The room confined him, and he bolted from it.

  In the act of opening her door, Lacey paused as she heard his bootheels strike against the bricks. She was not ready to face him. Her crying had ceased as abruptly as it had started. She controlled her fear of him, for nothing was as important as keeping the Reina. She would bargain with Rafe Parrish to keep it on any terms.

  Maggie shot Rafe a quick look as he entered the kitchen.

  “Coffee’s hot,” she said, kneading dough at one end of the table. “Supper’s a mite late ’cause of the service an’ all. Got your gear stowed?”

  “Yeah. Seems you’re the only one who’s accepting my being here.”

  “But I don’t count. Lacey’s a horse of another color.”

  “I know.” He met her direct gaze, somewhat surprised to find himself liking her. He did not take to people with ease, but there was something about Maggie that made him think he could trust her. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at the table.

  “ ’Fore you make yourself at home an’ ask questions like you’re dyin’ to, best get that door fixed.”

  He almost choked on the black brew.

  “Wasn’t bein’ nosy, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. Went to check on Lacey. Body be dead not to hear the ruckus. She got herself a temper, and you stroked her wrong.” Maggie waited, punching and rolling the dough.

  “It was over his room.”

  “Figures. Fletcher’s down at the barn. He’ll help. Don’t want anyone else knowin’.” She gazed at him and her smile was warm. “Lacey won’t fight for long. Gal loves this ranch. Needs patience.”

  “Haven’t had much truck with that.” Rafe sipped and wondered why Maggie was on his side. The innate mistrust that governed him rose sharply. Sounds at the outside door distracted them.