“I gathered that from some of the language your sister used. I’ve heard bullwhackers who spoke more delicately to strangers.”
“Oh, my. Don’t blame Cricket. Half the time she doesn’t even realize she’s saying those things. The summer she was fourteen she helped a teamster who’d lost his arm in the War for Independence drive his load of cotton to Galveston. She enjoyed it so much she’s been helping him out ever since.”
“She apparently learned a lot more on those trips than how to drive a team of oxen,” Creed said.
Bay ignored his gibe as she unwrapped the basket of food she’d brought. “I’ll have to feed you, since your hands are tied.”
“I seem to have lost my appetite,” he replied. “Just tell your father when he comes home that Jarrett Creed wants to talk to him.”
“Was my father expecting you?” Bay asked, startled.
“Just tell him I’m here.”
Bay nodded her agreement to the abrupt command.
“Is your sister going to spend the night here in the barn?”
Bay glanced over to where Cricket lay curled in a ball, her cheek resting on Rogue’s massive chest. “Rip will come and pick her up when he gets home and bring her into the house. He usually does.”
“Usually? You mean she gets drunk like this all the time?”
“Not all the time,” Bay hurried to explain. “Only when she has the . . . only some of the time,” she finished lamely.
Bay quickly collected the items she’d brought with her from the house, including the lantern that provided the only light in the barn. She looked worriedly from Creed to Cricket and back. “Good night, Mister Creed.”
“Creed.”
“Good night, Creed.” Bay headed for the barn door, leaving Cricket and Creed alone in the darkness.
Creed hadn’t thought he’d be able to sleep with all the turbulent thoughts racing through his head, but a blaze of light from the doorway of the barn woke him from his restless slumber just before he heard bootsteps crackle in the straw.
Creed had never seen Rip Stewart before, yet he felt certain that was who held the lantern that lit Cricket’s sleeping form. Creed lay a bit outside the yellow aureole and decided to remain quiet in the shadows a moment in order to observe the mammoth man before making his presence known. Rip’s hair lay in curls over both brow and collar, and his blunt features looked sinister, rather than soft, in the candlelight.
Creed knew all about Rip Stewart. He had a reputation for being a notorious bully, stubborn and opinionated. He was also clever, or maybe cunning was a better word for a man who’d started with nothing and now controlled the flatboat trade on the Brazos River, the only way for the Texas planters to send their cotton to market in Galveston. He was known to be a bit of a scoundrel, albeit a likable one. And Rip Stewart loved his children.
Creed couldn’t say what made him so sure of the last, unless it was the look reflected in Rip’s eyes when he beheld his daughter. After hanging the lantern on the hook at the end of the stall, Rip bent down on one knee next to Cricket and reached over to smooth away a piece of straw that clung to her cheek. He spoke a word of reassurance to the wolf, which had raised its head and growled low when he touched Cricket. Then he gently turned Cricket and reached under her shoulders and knees, lifting her into his arms and holding her embraced to his chest. He bent forward as though he might kiss her brow, but paused abruptly before completing the gesture.
With a speed fast as hummingbird wings, Cricket was thrown back into the straw and a Colt Paterson appeared in Rip’s right hand. “Step forward where I can see you, or I’ll shoot.”
“Whoa! I’m tied up here.”
At the same moment Creed spoke, August came running from the back of the barn with another lantern. “What’s goin’ on?”
The additional light confirmed Creed’s trussed-up condition.
“Where’d he come from?” Rip asked August, pointing at Creed with his Paterson.
“Cricket brung ’im home. She brung home them five mares, too. Said this here fella stole ’em.”
“Well, well,” Rip said with a chuckle. “Well, young man, what do you have to say for yourself?”
“If you’ll untie me, I’ll explain everything,” Creed said. “Your daughter Cricket—”
“No, no, on second thought, I don’t think I’m ready for any long explanations right now. I’ve had a tiring ride home and it’s late. I’m sure your story will keep until tomorrow.”
“But I’m—”
“No buts,” Rip interrupted, waving his Paterson for emphasis. “August, if he makes too much noise, knock him out. I’ll send Cricket out to get him in the morning.”
Incredulous, Creed watched the large man reach down and grab the drunken girl by the arms. He pulled her limp form upright and then slung her headfirst over his shoulder. He grabbed the lantern he’d brought in with him and stalked from the barn with Cricket’s head bobbing against his huge back, her long auburn braid dangling almost to his knees. The half-wild wolf, whose sharp teeth had raked Creed’s arm and nipped his heels, followed them docilely out the door.
“A mouth open wide like that, catch a lotta flies in this here barn,” August said. “You jus’ get comfortable now, mister. It not be long ’fore mornin’. Cricket, she come get you first light.” August headed back to his room in the rear of the barn, leaving only quiet, velvet darkness behind him.
Creed shut his mouth and resignedly closed his eyes. Getting a word in edgewise around a Stewart was quite a chore. He should have suspected the father would be as bad as the daughter. When he finally got a chance to speak in the morning, you could bet he wasn’t going to start with any sociable preamble. He sighed disgustedly. He probably should have told the girl who he was in the first place, but he’d figured she was some brat out playing, and the fewer people who knew he was here . . .
The worst that would result from his error in judgment was that he’d spend the night tied up in the barn. Surely in the morning they’d give him a chance to explain before they strung him up. On the other hand, in light of his recent experience with Cricket and Rip, maybe not. He’d taken enough foolish chances with what had started out as a routine mission. It was time to deal himself a better hand. Creed brought his moccasined foot up to meet his tied hands and began to work the concealed knife free.
Dawn found Rip drinking coffee at the breakfast table with two of his three daughters. Cricket wasn’t one of them. Rip had noted Cricket’s absence this morning with a concerned frown. It was true that ordinarily her presence wouldn’t have been missed. While Sloan had duties as overseer, and Bay had been bookkeeper for Three Oaks the past year, Cricket had no specific duties on the plantation. Of course, that was easily explained because he was grooming Sloan and Bay to take their rightful places as heir and surety for Three Oaks, while Cricket was simply his pride and joy.
It was only recently he’d decided to provide Cricket with a role in life other than the prodigal son. Naturally, the plan he’d contrived to secure her future was far grander than that for either of his other two daughters. Yet Cricket’s latest drunken episode, together with the discussion he’d had yesterday with Señor Juan Carlos Guerrero, made him think perhaps it was time he began preparing her for what was to come.
“Bay, go get your sister out of bed,” Rip ordered.
“I already tried,” Sloan interjected. “She was dead to the world and feeling no pain.”
“Wake her up anyway.”
“I’m going.” Bay grabbed her cup of coffee from the table, planning to pour some down Cricket’s throat. Before she got to the stairs she remembered her promise to the horse thief and turned back to Rip. “Cricket brought a man home with her yesterday. He’s tied up out in the barn.”
“Yes, I know.” Rip chuckled. “Caught her a horse thief. By God, we’ll have us a hanging today!”
Bay struggled to balance the coffee cup on the saucer, which teetered alarmingly in her hands at Rip’s announce
ment. “He said to tell you his name is Jarrett Creed and—”
“What?”
“His name is Jarrett Creed and—”
“I’ll be damned.” Rip burst into uncontrollable guffaws, slapping the cherrywood table so hard the delicate china rattled.
Bay looked to Sloan for an explanation of Rip’s jovial humor, but Sloan just shrugged and shook her head.
“This is rich. Well, I promised Jarrett Creed I’d send Cricket out to get him in the morning and send her I will.”
Rip rose from the table and passed Bay on his way up the stairs. She turned and followed hurriedly after him. Rip threw open Cricket’s door so it slammed against the ivy-papered wall.
The resounding bang brought Cricket, still fully dressed except for her moccasins, bolt upright in her maple four-poster bed. She clapped her hands to either side of her head to try to quiet the hundred Indian drums pounding inside.
“Rise and shine!” Rip said.
Cricket moaned loudly and fell back down in a prone position.
“You have a prisoner to free,” he said.
Cricket squinted one eye open. “To hang, you mean.”
“You heard me right the first time.”
Cricket dragged herself back upright. She grabbed her head again. She hated the monthly miseries. Her head and stomach were definitely on the warpath, and she felt godawful. If Rip wanted to fight over that horse thief, she was in a rotten enough mood to oblige him. “That Tennessee horse thief deserves to hang if ever a man did.”
“He’s no horse thief,” Rip replied with a grin.
“I caught him myself with your mares.”
“The man in the barn is Jarrett Creed,” Rip explained.
“I know his name,” Cricket retorted.
“Texas Ranger Jarrett Creed.”
“What?”
“I sent a letter to the captain of the Rangers in San Antonio when we started getting raided by the Comanches. Jack Hays promised to send a Ranger lieutenant named Jarrett Creed to see if he could help us out. Guess Creed must have come across the Comanches who stole our horses and taken them back,” Rip concluded.
“But he said . . . he never . . . he told me . . .” Cricket sputtered to a stop. A herd of mustangs was galloping through her skull, down her throat, and into her stomach. “Why that low-down, one-horned billy goat. He must have been laughing up his sleeve at me all day. Nobody laughs at me and gets away with it. I’ll fix his wagon, but good.”
“You won’t do anything of the kind,” Rip countered. “You’ll go out to the barn and release him, and politely invite him into the house for some breakfast.”
“Like hell I will,” she raged.
“Like hell you will!” Rip raged back.
The two strong personalities battled as they had many a time before. Eyeball glared at eyeball. Hackles rose on the backs of two necks in anticipation of taking up the gauntlet and plunging into hostilities. Fists formed. Breathing quickened. Nostrils flared.
Bay shrank back against the open door while Sloan, the smallest of the three sisters at only five feet four inches, stepped farther into the room.
“This is getting you nowhere fast,” Sloan said, her dark, chocolate-brown eyes warm with humor. “I’ll go untie him.”
As one, the two combatants shifted the focus of their belligerance. Cricket was the first to respond. She hurtled off the bed, pausing only long enough to yank on her moccasins before flying past her father.
“No. I’ll get him.” She shoved past Sloan and raced out the bedroom door.
Rip pounded down the stairs after her, roaring, “You’ll be polite.”
“In a pig’s eye!” she shouted back, already out the front door.
Bay hung back by Cricket’s door, still frightened of being caught up in the terrifying clash between her sister and her father. Meanwhile, Sloan came down behind Rip and caught his arm before he could leave the house.
“You’ve made your point,” she said. “It won’t hurt to let her vent a little spleen before she unties him. Now that she knows who he is, she’s not likely to kill him, and anything less than that she does to him, he probably deserves. After all, he could have told her who he is at any time.”
Rip hesitated a moment, torn between his desire to observe how Cricket dealt with the Ranger and the knowledge that if he were there he’d probably be tempted to interfere and protect the man from Cricket’s wrath. No, it would be infinitely more fun to let the Ranger pay for his foolishness. He could see the sense of Sloan’s suggestion and, grunting his assent, turned away from the front door and back to the dining room. He only hoped Cricket would remember to bring the fellow in for breakfast when she was done with him.
Cricket’s pride hurt almost as much as her head and her belly. As she stomped toward the barn she planned all the horrible things she was going to do to Jarrett Creed before she untied him. He would learn she couldn’t be manipulated like the other females he knew. She was different.
She shoved the barn door open and slipped inside to the stall where Creed was tied, using her foot to hunt through the straw for her silver flask. The top of her head almost came off when she bent over to pick it up. She bolted down a slug of whiskey that burned her throat and did nothing to settle her stomach. There was no hope for her stomach. It was Jarrett Creed’s fault she was out of bed when she felt like a squashed cotton worm, and she was going to make him suffer the way she was suffering. No man made a fool of her and got away with it. That Texas Ranger was going to wish he’d never met Creighton Stewart. He was going to wish he’d never been born.
Cricket marched over to the sleeping man and slammed the toe of her moccasin into his ribs as hard as she could.
“Wake up!”
Before she could get in a second kick, the Ranger had scissored his legs around her feet and dumped her in the straw.
“That’s enough, Brava. I’m awake.”
Cricket scrambled onto her knees, nose to nose with the Ranger. “Good. Because I want you to hear every word I have to say before I hang you.”
“Look, you little savage,” he snarled, his golden eyes flashing, “before you do anything you’ll regret, let me tell you I’m a Texas Ranger. I got those mares from the Comanches who stole them from your father. The Rangers sent me here to trail the Comanches that have been raiding—”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re making that up so I won’t hang you, and it won’t wash. Try to be a man for a change, and take what’s coming to you.”
The Ranger’s flush at her insulting accusation pleased Cricket hugely.
“Ask your father—”
“My father rode away at dawn,” she lied. “He told me to do with you as I see fit. And I see fit to hang you!”
“Aw, hell.”
Cricket wanted to laugh but knew that would give away the game, and Jarrett Creed hadn’t suffered nearly enough yet to pay for what he’d done. “Do you have any last requests?”
“Would it be too much to ask for breakfast?”
“Sort of a last meal for the condemned man?”
“Sí, Brava.”
“My sisters and I were having breakfast when I remembered you were out here. Would you like to join us in the dining room?”
“You want me to join you . . . in the house . . . at your table . . . for breakfast?”
“Yes, since it’s your last request. Why not?”
“All right. You’ll have to untie me, though.”
Cricket pondered his request for a moment and came to the quick conclusion that Creed had offered her the perfect opportunity to pay him back for his deception before she delivered him to her father. She would pretend to have trouble untying the ropes. When she used her knife to cut him free the blade would slip and leave a little nick, a tiny scar which would be there always as a reminder of how a woman had held him in her power, rather than the other way around.
“You won’t try to escape, will you?” she said in a syrupy-sweet voice.<
br />
“Of course not.”
Green as grass, Creed thought.
I’ve got him now, Cricket thought.
They both moved at the same moment. Creed’s hands miraculously came free just as Cricket leaned over to untie him. Stunned, Cricket didn’t resist when Creed caught both her wrists in one hand and quickly secured them with the same rope which had once tied him.
“You’re going to have to learn to be a little more considerate of your company, Brava.”
Cricket stared down at her hands in disbelief for a second, then looked up at Creed. He’d done it again. This was not to be borne. Like a lassoed bronc, she gathered her muscles to explode.
“You birdbrain! You hobclunch!”
“Now, now, Brava. Temper, tem—”
Cricket rammed her head up under Creed’s chin, knocking his teeth together and slamming his head back against the wooden stall. Creed grunted in pain. He was too dazed to avoid her next attack, as she threw her full weight behind her shoulder into his solar plexus. Cricket tried to bring her knee to bear, but Creed rolled to the right, using his legs to knock her onto her side. She could see him getting ready to lunge at her and knew if he caught her, his sheer weight would pin her to the floor. As he dove, she rolled, and he landed on his stomach in the straw next to her.
“You missed!” she taunted.
In the next moment, she slammed her knees down in the middle of his back. She surrounded his head with her arms and brought her tied wrists up under his throat, cutting off his air. Cricket could feel the rough hemp abrading Creed’s neck. She knew how raw a rope burn could be, and conscious of Rip’s wrath if she did too much damage to the Ranger, she slackened the tension slightly.
Creed was on his knees in an instant, and her arms, which encircled his head, slipped down around his shoulders almost to his waist as he struggled upright. Creed turned to face her and Cricket found herself embracing him with her hands tied behind his back.
“If you want to fight like a man, Brava, then so be it,” the furious man hissed. “But I’m going to prove to you once and for all that you’re a woman!”
There was no way Cricket could resist Creed when he put his arms around her. He shoved her against his muscular chest with one broad hand, wrapped a handful of her braid around the other, and urged her mouth up to meet his. Cricket could feel his heart pounding. The muscles of his chest were hard, like granite, unrelenting, like the man.
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