by Cait London
Within the remodeled ranch house, children played in front of the rock-hewn fireplace. The home was rich with love and all that was Tallchief, from the tartan draped around Tallchief’s spear, to the hand-hewn cradle with a new black-haired baby sleeping in it.
Michelle traced the summer-warm glass at her fingertips. If ever a man belonged to a family, it was Liam to the Tallchiefs. More than legends held the family together—and Liam and J.T. could use that love.
“You did it, and inside of one week. You won’t have to do Jasmine’s diapers,” Silver whispered at her side.
Michelle nodded, her mind instinctively dissecting Liam’s personality, trying to slot what she knew of him into neat pigeonholes. The profile didn’t fit, odd edges leaping out at her, unanswered questions nudging her need to know everything about him. While Liam would care for J.T., he was definitely a man who preferred the lonely shadows. Michelle shrugged mentally and, allowing for the kitchen’s heat, tossed the thick braid created by one of the beautiful children from her shoulder.
Whatever ran through Liam Tallchief, it wasn’t ice. When he’d held her, when he shot her one of those dark, sizzling looks, the jolt had burned through to her bones. She could still feel his muscles tense, as if he meant to keep her—as if nothing could tear her from him. She frowned, trying to place her emotions in neat order, and failed.
Duncan’s wife, Sybil, came to stand beside Michelle. “You’ve done a lovely thing, Michelle. Liam has been polite and cool, keeping to himself. We know he’s here for a reason and we don’t care. Elspeth was troubled from the first moment she saw him, and that’s enough. Some call her intuitive, but she’s more than that. Una had seer blood, and from Tallchief Elspeth gained her shaman strength. She’s an herbalist and a weaver, weaving more into her products than wool—there is heart and love and strength—and she feels something deep for Liam.”
“I’m an outsider, but even I know this is right,” Michelle said softly. “That little boy is a mirror image of the other children, and Liam is, too—oh, look. The men have gone out to praise that beast of a machine. Look at that. Look at Liam and J.T. amid Duncan, Birk, and Calum. He’s the same—that black hair, slashing brows, those cutting cheekbones and rock-solid jaws—”
“He loves that little boy. Poor thing, he doesn’t know what to do with all those tall men who look like his father. Look at him cling to Liam,” Sybil noted.
“Aye, he does look like us.” Elspeth came to quietly stand at the window, her hair as glossy as her brothers’. Her gray eyes were dark with emotions, her expression still as if she waited—
At her sister’s side, Fiona laughed and juggled a sleepy baby on her hip. “Your Alek looks like a gypsy amid our brothers, and my Joel and his brothers, Nick and Rafe, look exactly alike. They’re gorgeous, aren’t they? Hunks, every one. They’re having too much fun out there alone. Let’s send the children down on them.”
When the other women moved away, Elspeth stood next to Michelle, and her silence as she studied Liam said more than words. “He’s come home,” she said quietly, drawing the Tallchief tartan around her, despite the summer heat. “He’ll find pain and he’ll find joy—”
Then Elspeth turned, the shadows lifting as she studied Michelle. “You’re a soldier, aren’t you? Doing what is expected and yet you’re wanting more. You’ve taken on a crusade because of your love of Silver, and in giving, you’ll find more than you could have ever believed possible for you as a woman.”
“What do you mean?” Michelle whispered, aware and shaken by the strength of Elspeth’s statement. She smoothed the pearl studs in her lobes, chosen to reflect a polished professional image in a harsh business world.
“Time,” Elspeth returned. “With Liam, everything will take time to unravel. But you have your own journey, too, as a woman. You can’t always arrange life to suit you. It doesn’t place happiness in neat little niches. You like a good fight, a challenge to sharpen your teeth, and Liam has stirred your need to conquer. You’ll have a hard time of that with him. He’s like my brothers—savages one minute and scared in their boots the next, if a woman cries.”
While Michelle struggled with that, Elspeth turned to the window again. “Look there, amid the children—J.T. just starting to smile….”
Michelle smoothed her hair, and the tight waves bumped gently beneath her fingertips. Sunlit witch’s silk, Liam had said, stirring that wild restlessness inside her. She had a temper, of course, but her mind ruled it—until Liam Tallchief. When he’d held her in the storm, she’d loved the wind in her hair, the rain on her skin and her lashes, her mouth. She shook her head, and her braid rippled down her back. She always did what was expected—except for leaving her father’s company and divorcing the son-in-law he’d handpicked. She kept very close to the rules and something about Liam Tallchief made her want to break them.
“I should have minded my own business,” she murmured, and wondered if she could manage a timely headache. Liam Tallchief was just too much. “You know he made me clean his house. He actually bargained with me, when he probably knew he was coming all the time. He’s contrary, illogical, and when I think of all the laundry, the bathroom and the floor scrubbing—‘Bring me a glass of iced tea,’ he said. It was there in his eyes, taunting me, saying that I’d never lifted a broom or kept a house and that he wanted to play lord to my servant role, just to set me off.”
“Aye, he’s like the rest, a despicable pig,” Elspeth murmured, humor curling her lips. “And a challenge, just the same.”
“I’ve had enough challenges in my life, just to survive, and I’m not needing another one.” Michelle skipped the background check that she’d used to threaten him. Anyone with enough skills could have pulled the information out of the computers easily enough…and Liam knew it. There were many legal reasons why his name might not have been Tallchief, though he evidently was related. Why had he changed his name and his son’s? Why did he wipe the name Cartwright from him as though it were so much mud?
“You helped him. It’s not in you to sit on the sidelines when you see someone you love troubled, and Silver sees him like the outsider she was. She’s tried desperately to get him to come to their home. But he’s a hunter, like Tallchief, and my father was the best tracker in the country. Now my brothers are, and they like to hunt, treasuring the chase. I’ve an idea that Liam questions anything that comes too easily to him, like the invitations of our families. He’s very cautious and sets his own terms.”
“He should be more appreciative. You’re a caring family. You’ve all given Silver so much when no one else could help. When her twin died at sixteen, she almost did, too. I loved them both and I was so helpless. I just wanted to help all of you. This family is exceptional, and J.T. should be a part of it. Not every family could forgive the sons of the man who murdered their parents. Yet all three of the murderer’s sons, the Palladins, married Tallchiefs. J.T. should know of the traditions of Una and Tallchief.”
Elspeth was silent, but smiled softly. She drew a tiny waving tendril from Michelle’s cheek, studying it in the filtered sunlight of the window. “The boy has snagged your heart and you’re fighting for him and maybe for yourself, too. Tallchief made many cribs, you know, to earn money for his family. Sybil, Duncan’s wife, is a genealogist and loves a good hunt for treasures. She brought the original one to Duncan, the one Tallchief gave to Una for their five babies. Una wouldn’t marry him without a dowry, so he made the first and gave it to his father to keep her pride. My mother worked on Una’s journals, and I helped. Sybil sometimes finds items related to our family. She’s always trying to find another crib. She’s working on that now.”
“Another Tallchief baby?”
“Maybe,” Elspeth said lightly and smiled lightly as she turned away.
At the dinner table later, J.T. sat on Liam’s lap and shyly smiled at Emily, Sybil’s college-age daughter. Emily tossed her red hair, and Joel Palladin’s preteen son, Cody, let out a love-struck, worshipful sigh. A
known charmer and confident of her powers, she smiled at him and riffled J.T.’s hair. “Hey, little man. Why don’t you come sit on my lap and let your daddy eat his homemade ice cream?”
J.T.’s tentative smile said he wanted to, but—He looked up at Liam, who nodded solemnly. Liam had been too quiet, his smoky gaze slowly taking in the big family room. He tensed when he noted the barn board stamped with the Tallchief Cattle Ranch stick man and mountain, and his big hand crushed the woven napkin, the knuckles white. Why had he frowned so fiercely?
He breathed hard, the vein in his throat throbbing beneath his dark skin. As though sensing Michelle’s study, his face jerked to hers, and she saw his pain, mixed with anger. He resented her seeing that—inside him where the dark mysteries flowed, into the man he was, kept from others. To let him know that she’d seen and would not be turned away, Michelle smiled sweetly and fluttered her lashes. She hadn’t much experience in touting feminine airs, but the moment was too good to pass.
Liam tore his fierce scowl from his face and met her smile, the warmth not rising to his eyes. Then he looked to the red Native American shield that had been Tallchief’s, and the old cradle rich with Celtic images and scarred by teething babies. Elspeth’s rugs and woven goods circled the home, and more than once, Duncan—known as The Defender—searched out Liam’s gaze. The message was from male to male, locking and holding and sliding away to pin Michelle. Unfamiliar with the dark intense look, Michelle shivered when Liam’s gaze brushed her mouth.
Fire and storms lashed at her again, drying her mouth and sending her heart fluttering in her throat. She knew she’d long remember the uncivilized hard taste of his mouth, a burning stamp across her own. She hated the trembling of her fingers locked to her iced water glass, an obvious note that he was getting to her. In another instant, if Liam did not stop that smoky, intent stare, she’d dump the—
From then on, J.T. moved into the mass of Tallchief children, his hand locked tightly in Emily’s. “You look enough alike to be one of my uncles and I’m going to claim you as another of my Black Knights. Duncan rescued me when I was a child, but I claim all the Tallchief men as my knights. They’ve been there often enough for me. You can call me princess like they do, and I babysit, you know,” she said, grinning at Liam. “Can he ride horses? I’d take good care of him.”
J.T.’s eyes widened. “Horses? Me? Ride?”
Clearly the little boy worshipped Emily. One look at Liam told Michelle that he was already regretting the boy’s growing up. Then Birk bent to playfully nuzzle his heavily pregnant petite wife, and she elbowed him with enough strength to make him grunt. Retaliating, Birk brought Lacey’s small hand to his mouth to kiss her palm. The humble gesture was so sincere and filled with love that Michelle almost found herself sighing.
But then, she was a practical woman and she’d completed her mission, breaking a fingernail earlier as she had stacked his dishes in the cupboard. Liam Tallchief deserved no more of her time, though she hoped to see J.T. whenever she could.
“Da-da?” Ian Palladin, Fiona’s toddler son chirped and patted Liam’s arm.
“Case of mistaken identity,” Talia, Calum’s wife, said with a grin. “Poor baby is confused. Joel, Rafe and Nick Palladin all look alike, and so do the Tallchief boys, but Alek is a loner—”
“‘Boys’?” Calum, known as Calum the Cool, purred with a slow, hot look at his wife.
“Liam does look like one of the brothers,” Sybil murmured, tracing his features and then turning to study the matching ones of her husband, Duncan.
As the rest of the family talked and ate and teased each other, Michelle studied Liam, looking after his son, his expression sad. On a sudden impulse, she didn’t know why—because she wasn’t a woman who showed affection easily—Michelle patted his cheek.
His aching pain was quickly slashed away by searing anger. “Leave me alone,” he said too quietly.
“You made a choice and it was for your son. J.T. needs this and so do you, whether you’re liking it now or not…. Stand and fight,” she whispered back, shaking with her own anger. She jabbed a finger into his chest and didn’t remove it when he looked slowly, meaningfully down. She prodded him again, careless of the hard, tense muscles running beneath the cloth. “You took the name Tallchief, didn’t you? ‘Stand and fight’ is one of their phrases, used in hard times.”
“I choose what I take,” he returned curtly with a touch of arrogance much like Tallchief must have used.
“Then take this,” she murmured more coolly than she felt as she stood away from the table. She lifted her glass of ice water to pour over his head. While Liam glared at her and ice water dripped down his face, Michelle raised her head proudly. She wouldn’t apologize—not to him. Horrified, she stared at the water dripping to the place mat woven with Celtic and Native American images. She’d totally embarrassed herself and the expensive charm school that her father had forced her to attend. Her cheeks were hot, her dignity was on the hand-braided rug at her feet, and down the long table, the adult Tallchief family studied her. While smiles flirted around their mouths, their eyes held a knowing look.
J.T. giggled suddenly, clapped his hands, and Liam’s head jerked to his son. The boy began to laugh outright, the sound delightful. When Liam turned back to look up at Michelle, she didn’t trust his dark, dangerous look…nor her own wild mood. With as much dignity as she could scrape up from the rug, she managed, “I think I’ll just take a walk. Excuse me, please.”
In the next moment she was hurrying down the path to Tallchief Lake, careless of the brush tugging at her head and body. She lived her life in logical one-two-three steps, acted logically, and now she’d just dumped a glass of ice water over a man’s head—in front of a family she adored. She began to run, careless of the cream silk designer blouse and loose black silk slacks. The strap of one Italian-made sandal tore away, caught on a bush, and she hobbled along the rest of the distance to the shore of the dark, brooding lake. A gentle wind stirred the reeds along the river bank and rippled the water.
Tallchief Mountain, etched with fir and pines, dappled with tiny meadows and jutting rocks, soared up into the sunset, shading the lake. Michelle hobbled to a rock, careful of the torn strap, and sank down upon it, ready to brood.
The chirps of frogs and birds and the sweet scent of lush grass wove around her as she sat, chin braced upon her raised knees, her arms circling her legs. She turned to the sound of a twig snapping, fearing a bear or a wolf prowling in the shadows before night. The outline of Liam Tallchief’s tall body was unmistakable, but just as predatory. Shivering again with anger, she turned back to study the dark, mystical lake, the waves gently patting the shore. “You’re too much trouble, even for a bet,” she said, meaning it. A second thought had her turning around again, searching the shadows. “You didn’t bring J.T. out here, did you?”
“No. I don’t want him to see the fight we’re about to have, and for once, playing with the Tallchief children, he didn’t care where I was. He knows I’ll be back. I’m always there when he needs me, but he’s too excited with his new friends—what’s this about a bet?”
“I bet Silver that I’d get you here, and I did. That’s all there is to it.” She didn’t want him to know that her efforts were on her own behalf, too, not just to avoid Jasmine’s diapers. She wanted to see him again, amid the family that he obviously belonged within—
“All those dishes and scrubbing for a bet?” he pushed.
“J.T. was worth it. They’re his cousins. They’re a match for coloring and features, and so are you,” she added, and waved her hand airily. “Fight away. It takes two, and I’m done talking with you.”
“My relationship with the Tallchiefs is my business. And the next time you get bored and want to play, pick on someone else.” He snagged her wrist and tugged her to her feet. When she swung her free hand at him, he caught it, holding her immobile. “You’re going to go back there and apologize to that family for disrupting their dinner.”
>
While she was working up a good scalding brew of what she thought of him, Liam placed both her wrists in one hand and tugged the band binding her braid, tossing it away. Then his fingers were in her hair, working it free of the weave. When she struggled against him, her hair flew out into the slight evening breeze and whirled around her head. He sank his fingers into the freed strands, capturing her as he studied her furious expression. “You always get your way, don’t you? You’re used to plowing right over people to get what you want.”
She tried to toss her head and failed, her hair captured by his fist. “I got you here, didn’t I?”
“I would have come, anyway. Eventually. I like choosing the time and place. I just liked watching those expensively tended hands, decked out in those flashing diamonds, doing J.T.’s and my laundry.”
“You would not have—You haven’t visited with them in six months. Perverse, arrogant—You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Trapping a poor defenseless woman, out here—Don’t deny it. I see it in your eyes, in that grin. You’re enjoying taunting me—Why?”
“Someone has to. Everyone else just lets you run over them and you’re not defenseless. You’ve got a cutting tongue, lady.” In the evening shadows, with the moon beginning to peek over Tallchief Mountain, Liam’s devastating grin widened.
She stood still and tossed her head, looking away from him. When he tossed that reckless, boyish grin at her, he was too dangerous. She didn’t trust the pitter-pat of her racing heart for one moment. “You’ll get bored, holding me captive. That’s illegal, you know. You’ll—”