“Matt doesn’t want to be married,” Ellen said as she rescued her imprisoned hand.
“Of course he does,” Isabelle said. “Every man wants to get married. Matt doesn’t think he’s worthy.”
“Why?”
“He’ll have to tell you that. Now, let me introduce you to some of your new brothers-in-law.”
Ellen knew every man gathered around the corral. You couldn’t live in Bandera and not know the Maxwell clan.
“This is Sean O’Ryan,” Isabelle said as she introduced Ellen to a mountain of a man with flaming red hair. “You two ought to get along like pigs in a blanket. His wife used to own a saloon.”
“Best singer and dancer you ever saw,” Sean said, as Ellen’s hand disappeared into his massive paw. “And the most beautiful. I still don’t know why she married me.”
“Neither does anybody else,” said Buck. “The worst part is, she keeps having sons who look just like him.”
“Don’t discourage the newest member of the family,” Sean said. “She’s still got to swallow Will. Will,” he called, in a voice that matched his body, “come meet your new sister-in-law.”
Ellen could never see Will without catching her breath. He was absolutely gorgeous.
“Will got the looks and Matt got the brains,” Sean said.
“He’s good-natured for all that,” Isabelle said. “It’s impossible to be gloomy for long with Will around.”
“You’ll just want to strangle him in five minutes,” Buck said. “I think Isabelle’s ulterior motive in having him help Matt is to get rid of him for a few days.”
“I love him just as much as the rest of you,” Isabelle insisted.
“I know,” Buck said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “We love you for it. We just don’t understand it.”
Noah burst into the group. “Ellen, you’ve got to come watch Matt. Jake says he’s going to ride the meanest horses first.”
Ellen grabbed Noah before he could run back to the corral fence. “I want you to meet your uncles.”
“I’ve already met them,” Noah said. “Come on.” He pulled at Ellen’s hand.
“Why don’t you take your sister to watch?” Isabelle suggested.
Tess tried to hide in Ellen’s skirts.
Buck knelt down. “You want to come with me? I’ll make sure those horses don’t come anywhere near you.”
“It’s okay,” Ellen said when Tess hung back. “Noah will stay with you. I’ll be over in a minute.”
“Ellen!” Noah complained.
“You stay with Tess until I come. Otherwise you have to go back to the house.”
Buck eyed Ellen. “You sound remarkably like Isabelle when she tricked Jake into marrying her and adopting all of us.”
“I sure do pity Matt,” Sean said, grinning, “and him thinking you so meek and biddable.”
“He didn’t think any such thing.” Will had reached the group in time to hear Sean’s last remark. “He probably wanted a workhorse to take care of all the wayward boys he plans to take in. Hi, I’m Will Haskins, Matt’s brother. They’ll tell you I’m an idiot, but they’re just jealous because I’m prettier than they are. And I’m not so big I’d give a decent woman a fright,” he said to Sean.
Ellen didn’t know what to think when Will threw a punch at Sean, and Sean immediately caught him in a bear hug.
“Ignore them,” Isabelle said. “Sean has to be a sober, married man most of the time. When he gets away from Pearl, he acts like the boy I foisted off on Jake.”
Sean had Will down on the ground.
“Don’t listen to a word she says,” Will said as he struggled against the powerful muscles of his huge brother. “She’s crazy about us.”
“You wondering what kind of bizarre family you’ve wandered into?”
Ellen turned to find Jake watching the tangle of men on the ground.
“They’ll get it out of their systems in a minute,” he said.
“No they won’t,” Isabelle said, “because their father’s just as bad.”
“I’m not down there with them.”
“But you’d like to be.”
“Come watch your husband before she gives you a bad impression of me,” Jake said to Ellen. Sean and Will stopped wrestling as quickly as they’d begun.
“I’m stronger than you are,” Sean said.
“And I’m prettier,” Will shot back as he dusted himself off.
The two men laughed and headed toward the corral. Ellen decided all Matt’s family was crazy.
“Cole said Matt’s getting ready to ride the meanest horse in the whole bunch,” Noah announced when Ellen reached the corral. “He said he’s got to hold him or he’ll savage Matt. What does savage mean?”
“It means they’ll try to kick or bite him,” Isabelle said. “Wild horses don’t like to carry men around on their backs.”
Cole Benton was Drew’s husband. Everybody knew his father was just about the richest man in Memphis. Nobody in his family could understand why he had married a tomboy like Drew Townsend and lived on a horse ranch in the Hill Country.
“Why is Matt riding that horse?” Tess asked. She was sitting on Buck’s shoulder, apparently happy as long as he held on to her with both hands.
“Because there’s not a horse in the world Matt can’t ride,” Sean said. “Even Cole and Drew send for him when they get a real bad one.”
Ellen hadn’t really had a chance to see the horse Matt was about to ride. Now that she did, she wished she’d stayed inside. Someone had tied the horse’s head so close to a post in the fence that the animal couldn’t move. Cole and Matt stood on opposite sides of the horse, trying to keep the blanket and saddle on long enough to cinch the saddle. The horse, white with huge black spots, threw his hindquarters from side to side, trying to kick his tormentors. His eyes were wide and wild-looking.
“Isn’t that horse dangerous?” Ellen asked.
“Very dangerous,” Jake said.
Ellen felt some of the color drain out of her face.
“Don’t worry,” Will said. “Matt won’t get off until the horse knows who’s boss.”
“Or until he’s thrown off,” Ellen said.
“Only one horse ever threw Matt,” Will said.
“Sawtooth,” Buck and Sean said in unison.
Ellen could tell Will was proud of his brother. In her opinion, he was just too bullheaded to know when he was in danger. She wanted to tell Matt that if he had to risk his own neck, to at least make Orin and Toby stay out of the way. A single blow from one of those hooves could kill.
Matt got the saddle cinched up. Ellen felt reluctant pride in his accomplishment but realized that brought him closer to getting on the horse’s back. She knew that moment had arrived when Toby and Orin scrambled through the rails to safety outside the corral.
“He’s going to ride him!” Noah called out in excitement.
“You can’t see from down there,” Will said to Noah. “You want to get up on my shoulders?”
He might as well have asked Noah if he wanted the moon. The child danced with excitement. Will stooped down, picked him up, and settled him on his shoulders. Will stood just in time for Noah to see Matt spring into the saddle. Cole pulled the slip knot that held the horse’s head to the post and quickly backed out of the way.
The paint was loose, and he had every intention of getting rid of the man on his back. Ellen couldn’t name all the jumps and twists, but Will was giving Noah a jump-by-jump account.
“That’s a fishtail,” he said. “It’ll snap your back in half if you’re not careful.”
Ellen didn’t think Noah heard a word of Will’s description. He was screaming encouragement at Matt and having far more fun than if he’d been riding the horse himself. Ellen wasn’t having any fun at all. Her heart was in her throat.
“Can you imagine any man wanting to do that?” Isabelle asked.
“You wouldn’t see me doing it,” Sean said.
“You wouldn
’t have to,” Will said. “The poor horse would take one look at your huge body and faint.”
Ellen wished the paint had felt that way about Matt. He drove himself into the corral fence trying to crush Matt’s leg against the poles, but Matt raised his leg above the saddle, then lowered it the moment the horse tried to break into a gallop. Stymied, the paint went back to bucking, spinning, and trying to reach back and bite Matt’s leg. Matt didn’t look the least bit nervous. Ellen hoped she was wrong, but she thought she saw a smile on his lips. Only a crazy man could smile about being on the back of a horse that wanted to kill him.
Ellen didn’t see how Matt could stay in the saddle much longer. Flung about like a rag doll, his head snapped back and forth until she wondered why he didn’t get so dizzy he’d let go and fall off.
“The paint’s getting tired,” Will announced. “He won’t last much longer.”
Ellen couldn’t see any slowing in the speed or violence of the efforts the paint made to dislodge Matt.
“Matt will be disappointed,” Cole said. He’d come over to join them. “He was counting on this horse to give him some real fun.”
“Fun!” Ellen exclaimed. “How can you call that fun?”
“Matt likes riding wild horses,” Will said. “He doesn’t get much chance any more. He says even the wild ones are half tame.”
Ellen couldn’t understand why anyone would want to ride a wild horse, but watching Matt hang on with all the serene confidence of an expert did give her a different feeling about him. Whatever his shortcomings as husband material, lack of courage wasn’t one of them. She’d always thought a man had to be a little bit nuts to face another man in a gunfight. She added bronco busting to her list of foolish things men did.
“Matt’s been busting Jake’s horses since he was thirteen,” Will said. “Ain’t nobody better. Jump down,” he said to Noah. “I got to catch the paint. He’s about done for.”
Will crawled through the rails to join Cole. They walked toward the exhausted animal. Matt dismounted, a wide smile on his face.
“He wasn’t as tough as I hoped, but it was fun as long as he could keep it up.”
Cole clapped him on the shoulder. “One of these days we’re going to have to go to Utah. I want to see what you can do with some of those mustangs.”
“I’ve never been to Utah,” Toby said. “Can I go?” He and Orin had piled into the corral behind the men.
“Stop worrying about places you’ve never seen and help Cole catch another horse.”
Toby ran off to help Cole. Orin held the bridle of the exhausted paint, and Will stripped off the saddle. Matt walked toward them.
“You got off easy on that one,” Jake said.
“I know,” Matt said, smiling. “But I’ve got dozens more. I figure I ought to find one or two with more spunk.”
“Are you going to break all those horses by yourself?” Ellen asked.
It was a stupid question. Even a woman knew a Texas cowboy broke his own broncos. He didn’t have the right to call himself a man if he didn’t.
“Just be careful,” Isabelle said. “You’ll be tired. There are a lot more of them than there are of you.”
It was clear to Ellen that Isabelle was proud of Matt’s skill as well as worried about him.
“I’ll be fine,” Matt said, a softness in his voice Ellen had never heard. “You worry too much.”
“No woman could be the mother of this bunch and not get gray hairs.”
“There’s not a gray hair in your head,” Jake said, appearing to search seriously. “Are you sure you aren’t dying it?”
“If there are any gray hairs, you put the first one there.”
“Will gave her at least a dozen,” Matt said.
“I don’t have any gray hair,” Isabelle declared. “And if you don’t want to be boxed on the ears, you’ll stop saying so. Cole’s caught you another horse. Ellen and I are going to start dinner. If you’re not more respectful, you won’t get anything to eat.”
She turned her back on the men, linked her arm with Ellen’s, and started toward the house. Almost immediately her stern look vanished, to be replaced by silent laughter. “What do you think of your husband now?” she asked.
Chapter Seven
Ellen didn’t know what to think of Matt. The man she’d seen today bore little resemblance to the man she thought she married. He smiled, even laughed, and talked to everybody. He asked Sean and Buck about their families. He asked Cole if he could take Noah to see Drew’s horses. And though he didn’t indulge in outward gestures of affection, he obviously adored Jake and Isabelle.
Ellen decided something terrible must have happened to Matt to make him distrustful of everybody outside his family. She doubted he would ever tell her about it. He treated her with thoughtful kindness but didn’t show any inclination to take her into his confidence.
From the moment Will hoisted Noah on his shoulders, he’d become perfect in Noah’s sight. He dogged him like a shadow, asked more questions than one human could answer in a week, and sat next to him at dinner. Tess thought the sun rose and set on Matt. When she wasn’t talking about him, she was talking about Isabelle and the doll she’d given her.
Ellen’s whole life had been swallowed up in Matt’s.
All of which served to make Ellen feel more left out than ever. Jake and Isabelle had gone home after dinner. Sean, Buck, and Cole had departed a few hours later, leaving Will and Matt to finish up with the horses. They hadn’t completed their work until dark. It was only logical that she fix supper. Matt had offered to help, but supper would have been at least an hour later if she’d waited for him. Will’s antics kept everybody in a good mood, even Toby.
“You should have seen old Sawtooth trying to get rid of Matt.” Will was telling them about the first wild horse Matt had ridden. “It drove him crazy he couldn’t snake around and bite a hunk out of him. It just made him more determined to jump on him until he was dead.”
Tess wiggled a little closer to Ellen.
“Did he really try to kill Matt?” Noah asked, completely enthralled and drinking in every word.
“Sure did,” Will said. “Threw Matt twice. Tried to kill him both times, but the boys got ropes on him until Matt could mount up again.”
“I wouldn’t have gotten on him again,” Orin said.
“I would,” Toby said.
“He’d have killed you.”
“He didn’t kill Matt, did he?”
“You can’t ride as good as Matt, either.”
“I’m sure Toby can ride just as well as I could when I was his age,” Matt said, heading off an argument. “I’m just glad we don’t have any horses like Sawtooth in this bunch.”
“I was kinda hoping we would,” Will said. “I was looking forward to seeing Matt fly through the air, his butt facing the sky.”
Everybody except Tess and Ellen laughed, Orin protesting that would never happen to Matt, Noah wondering if he’d land on his head or his bottom.
Matt pushed back his chair and rose. “We ought to go see how the horses are settling in.” Toby and Orin jumped to their feet. “But first we’ve got to clean up.” Both boys stopped in their tracks, their disappointment easy to see. “Ellen and the kids fixed supper,” he said. “It’s only fair that we clean up. You know the rules.”
Neither boy argued. They started immediately to clear the table.
“You stay right where you are,” Will said when Ellen started to get up. “No point in offering to do work somebody else is willing to do for you.”
“Are you offering?” Ellen asked.
“I’m a guest.” Will handed his plate to Orin and directed a dazzling smile at Ellen.
“I would have thought you’d been here enough times to lose your guest status.”
“More than enough,” Matt said.
“I sacrificed my time and endangered my body to help you with those savage animals,” Will said with a wink at Ellen. “It’s only right that I take my ease
while you clean up.”
Ellen couldn’t help but smile. She imagined Will’s looks and unabashed manner had gotten him out of a great deal of work in his twenty-six years. “Surely you’d help Matt out of brotherly love.”
“I didn’t ask him to go into debt to buy this huge ranch or saddle himself with two brats. If he had any sense, he’d still be at the Broken Circle letting Isabelle fuss over him. She likes him better than the rest of us, you know. He broods. Women are a soft touch for a brooding man.”
“I’m not a brat,” Toby said. “Matt says he couldn’t run this place without me.”
“If he didn’t have this place, he wouldn’t need you.”
“It’s worth the debt and the brats to get away from you,” Matt said. “He talks like this all the time. Now you understand why no one can stand him for long.”
“He’s just jealous because I know how to talk to pretty women while he stands around tongue-tied.”
“Matt doesn’t waste his time with girls,” Orin said. “He says they’re not worth it.”
Will nearly choked himself laughing.
“Thank you, Orin,” Matt said, “but I’m perfectly capable of putting a noose around my neck all by myself.”
“That’s what you said when Eugenia Applegate came sidling up to you acting like she got something in her eye and you the only one who could get it out,” Orin said, obviously unsure why his remark had caused Will to laugh.
“But he saw the error of his ways when he met the fair Ellen,” Will said, barely recovered from his mirth.
“No he didn’t,” Toby said. “He—”
Matt stuffed a dishcloth into Toby’s mouth. “As soon as we finish cleaning up, you boys go outside and start digging a hole behind the corral. I’m going to need a place to bury my brother after I murder him.”
Will, eyes dancing with enjoyment, jumped up out of his chair and crouched down behind Tess and Noah. “Save me,” he cried. “I’m too young to die.”
“A slow and painful death is long overdue,” Matt said without turning around from the dishes he was washing.
Matt (The Cowboys) Page 9