by Cait London
“How’s it going?” had seemed to be a safe remark for Liam. From her icy look, it wasn’t safe, and The Motel Incident wasn’t forgotten.
Liam ran his hand over the scorch mark on his shirt. He’d thought Michelle’s ironing at his house, arranging the new clothes in his closets was some kind of woman-therapy thing. He decided not to mourn all those fine old clothes, just broken in right. Or to offer to pay for the clothes, though keeping silent went against his pride. He’d given her that rocking chair, needing refinishing. He’d hauled it up to her doorstep and plopped it down, resenting his need to see her. Nothing would do, then, until she had him put the rocker in her house, move it and move it again, for just the right place. But when she gathered J.T. upon her lap and tucked her chin against the boy’s black hair to rock, her expression held him.
Liam recognized the emotion—holding a small soft child gave comfort in troubled times. A child gave hope when life was dreary. Michelle battled her identity questions and her pride by herself, keeping Liam apart. He’d sat in a chair and just watched her, the creaking of the old chair the only sound. If his body weren’t in a continual ache, those moments of sheer peace might have been enough—just watching her rocking his child and finding comfort.
Peace wasn’t in the life of a man who had offended Michelle, he decided, as she opened the door to Maddy’s and stood outlined in the neon lights. Her hair was loose and wild, just as he liked it, and the fire in her eyes leaped immediately to him. He settled back to watch her, Elizabeth’s legend running through his mind—When a man and a woman equally matched strike against each other, fire will fly—just like two flints, striking sparks off each other. ’Tis a game, finding the strength of a man and challenging that truth….
Was that how Michelle felt, needing to come after him? Needing to clash with him to test what rang true between them? Or was he romanticizing and praying that all that fire held more than temper?
She could have left town at any time, but she’d preferred to pump her own gas at his station, wipe her own windshields and then glare at him through the glass.
A man was delicate before the tricky elements of a woman’s mind, Liam decided warily. The heavy thud of his heart told him it had nowhere to run, because she held it in her palm.
Michelle stalked toward him, the boots he’d given her clumping on Maddy’s wood floor. The silver earrings he’d given her flashed and swayed amid her hair. They weren’t the professional style she’d worn when she first arrived. They were inexpensive, delicate filigrees that whirled and turned and fascinated, warmly dotted with carnelians.
He’d taken J.T. to select them from an old man high in the mountains; Liam had wanted his son to know the mountains his ancestors had loved. The old man’s work was intricate despite his gnarled fingers. The Tallchiefs understood family, the old man had said, eyeing father and son. “You’d be a Tallchief, all right. If you’re doing your courting with my earrings, I’d say you’re determined. You brought your boy, too, teaching him the ways though he’s just a tike. That’s good, to hold family close and give them what you know. I have something here that I’ve been holding a good long time. It belonged to a Tallchief woman, too. Elizabeth Tallchief she was. She got a new loom and gave this one to my great-great-grandmother.”
When Liam had given her the earrings, Michelle had said, “They’re lovely.” Then the tears had come to her eyes, dark as the dragon-green of the Tallchief tartan. “That’s really how you see me, isn’t it?”
“I see you as yourself. Strong enough to take what comes and meet the future,” he’d said honestly.
“They’re so feminine—not my usual taste. They’re rather flamboyant for me,” she’d said thoughtfully. For a moment Liam had been frightened that she’d be offended with his choice. Then she’d said, “I love them. Thank you.”
She’d kissed him, placed the earrings into her lobes and studied the mirror intently. “Yes,” she’d said quietly as if agreeing with his choice. “I think a change is good, don’t you? But I still haven’t gotten over you leaving me in that motel.”
Standing between his spread legs now, leaving no doubt as to who she’d come to see at Maddy’s Hot Spot, Michelle tossed a paper on the table. Recognizing a woman on the warpath and glad that it wasn’t their women, the Tallchief men immediately excused themselves, deserting Liam.
He let his gaze roam over her dark-rust sweater, a match to the carnelians in the earrings, down those curved hips and long legs sheathed in jeans. Little kept him from reaching out to smooth that feminine line or to tug her onto his lap. But after days of uncertainty, Liam needed some comforting reassurance that Michelle cared.
“That’s the police report,” she said in a businesslike tone, as if her lips hadn’t run hot and silky beneath his own, as if she hadn’t sought him in the night. “You keep forgetting that I’m thorough. You underestimate me. The report is worse than I thought. You did endanger yourself. Oswald had held everyone at gunpoint. You included. You leaped at him. You actually threw yourself at him so the others wouldn’t be hurt.”
“All I want to know is if you’re done bossing me, and if you’re tromping out of town still mad at me, or are you staying?” His tone was surly, but a man without a sense of how to handle his woman had the right to be growling. She stood firmly between his spread boots, and the image brought back the one of her easing over him, capturing him—Liam inhaled sharply. “I’m not begging,” he added, just to keep his pride. “Make up your mind.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I always do. I wouldn’t think of leaving. I’m not finished with you yet.”
He grunted, the primeval noise suiting his instincts to carry her off to his lair. He wanted to ravish her and be ravished in return. Michelle was a woman who matched him in passion—hot burning passion that he hadn’t experienced in over a week. “Figures.”
Michelle left, stalking out as she had come in, the view of swaying hips drying Liam’s mouth. The territory clear, the Tallchiefs returned to the table, sprawling around it and grinning knowingly at Liam. “Shut up,” he said pleasantly, because one could do that to men who were almost brothers.
“Shut up, yourself,” Birk returned easily. He plucked a pink baby rattle from his flannel shirt pocket and waggled it. “I guess we’ll have to retract your title, ‘Liam the Lover.”’
“Give me advice I can use or leave,” Liam ordered sullenly. He mourned that smooth, cool control that gave him shelter from hot-blooded women.
“Hey. We just stopped by to help you lick your wounds,” Alek said.
“You’re in the doghouse, boy, and first base is a long way away. Better ask her for a date,” Maddy stated around his well-chewed cigar. “But whatever you do, don’t act like those other Tallchiefs when they had woman trouble. Don’t start a brouhaha that might cost me a mirror.”
Nick rubbed his forehead. “I hate it when women think. You never know what’s coming—it’s like a cocked gun.”
“Well, she’s doing plenty of that,” Liam brooded. “She’s holed up there, stitching little pieces of material together and rocking by the window. She’s playing with J.T. during the day and tucking him in, and he’s calling her ‘Mama.’ I’d like to make that a legality.”
“Silver says no woman would like being stranded in a motel like that,” Nick offered.
Oh, well, Michelle was all woman, Liam brooded and noted his rough hands. He glanced at the Tallchiefs and wondered what they used on their hands. Their women liked to hold hands.
Big Sam MacIntire, a bully from another town, chose that moment to burst through Maddy’s doors. His construction crew grumbled about layoffs, and the men lined up at the bar. “That was a cute little number who passed me on the way in. Curvy with green eyes and long hair down to here. Looks like a real handful, too, top and bottom, like she’d keep a man busy—”
The hard scrape of Liam’s chair as he stood should have warned MacIntire. It didn’t. He didn’t take the hint when Maddy hurried to cover the
big bar mirror with a hard foam panel. Big Sam still didn’t take the hint when Liam’s big hand caught his shoulder and spun him around.
An experienced brawler and one who had been at the wrong end of the Tallchiefs when he’d pushed them, Sam narrowed his eyes. “What?”
He glanced at the tall, lean Tallchief men, now married and somewhat tamed, as they settled back into the shadows. Sam knew he’d have to fight fairly or they’d jump into the mix. The cool stranger looked like the Tallchiefs with his black hair and gray eyes and hard features. He looked as though he’d seen a few hard times and needing a trimming.
“Maybe you’d better leave,” the new Tallchief invited too quietly. A muscle flexed across his jaw, and in his eyes was the look of thunder and lightning.
One assessing stare down the relaxed but powerful set of the Tallchief’s tall body and Big Sam knew he had a good, fine match. “I’ll bet you shave with a woman’s razor,” Big Sam said, just to start things rolling….
The sound of crashing glass caused Michelle to close her pickup door, the one she’d just opened. She had plans to copy Pauline Tallchief’s quilts, making small cardboard cutouts for piece patterns. She needed Elspeth’s company after seeing Liam sprawled across a tavern chair, brooding at her. Her hackles up, she knew that little kept Liam from tugging her down on his lap. He had that raw, hungry look that only fueled her need to pounce on him.
“Don’t you dare!” she ordered sharply inside Maddy’s as a burly man drew back his fist to hit Liam. The man was bigger, a belly bobbing over his belt. The cut over Liam’s eye dripped with blood, and the other man’s eyes were swelling, his lip cut.
She didn’t have time to ask the other men for help. They were obviously commenting on brawling techniques. She had to save Liam. Scowling at her, Liam’s attention was on her when she saw the man release the punch. Liam crumpled to the tavern floor.
“I told you not to do that,” she said to the man as he leered at her. The bully wasn’t Oswald for whom she’d trained, but she did a neat enough job that the man sagged back against the bar, trying to catch his breath.
Liam struggled to his feet and sagged back, elbows propped against the bar, scowling at her. “What are you doing?” he demanded, as if she’d broken a rigid male law.
She reached for a napkin, dunked it in a pitcher of water and dabbed it across Liam’s cut. Like a sullen little boy, instead of the tall powerful man he was, Liam jerked away, disdaining her care. She loved Liam’s dark, edgy moods. She loved walking straight into them and seeing what happened. “I was just evening the odds. Your relatives obviously won’t help. They’re all grinning over there, but they won’t be when I tell their wives. You’re outmatched. He weighs more than you. And you are not a fighter, Liam. Leave that to the rest of the—”
She aimed a pointed look at the Tallchief men, who had not bothered to help Liam in his time of need. They had the look of men gathered together for protection.
“He’s slow. It was just starting to get interesting,” Liam muttered. “If you’d marry me, none of this would happen.”
Michelle stared at the man she knew could be gentle and kind and loving. “You’re coming home with me, Liam Tallchief,” she said between her teeth. “Where we can settle this in private.”
She marched out the door, missing the boyish grin Liam shot back at the Tallchiefs. She also missed their thumbs-up signs.
She’d had a rotten day, brooding about calls from her ex-husband and her parents. With clouds looming low on Amen Flats, she’d searched for long distance consulting work she could do while repairing her life and staying in Amen Flats. As she had expected, her father’s tentacles had blocked her nicely at every turn. Those job-hunting calls emphasized how much of a pawn she’d been—all the while she’d thought she’d been chosen for positions on merit. In the end, exhausted by thinking and remembering, she’d helped elderly Joe Tomlin stack his wood-pile and clean his house.
There wasn’t anything more exciting than nabbing Liam Tallchief, Michelle decided. Liam had that all wound up, raw and fiery look she loved to ignite. Michelle heard Liam’s heavier footsteps follow her up her porch steps. She wouldn’t look back at him, wouldn’t let his sheepish look derail her. “Brawling,” she muttered, noting the tarp covering a mound on her porch.
She’d opened her door, the warmth of her woodstove greeting her, before she walked to the tarp and tugged it away. The wooden cabinet of the old, treadle sewing machine needed Michelle’s sanding and oil, but Liam had repaired the black metal head, scrolled with gold leaf. The bird’s-eye-wood sewing cabinet beside the old machine needed work, but it was good and solid, topped by a rubber dinosaur. The big wooden hoop was just what she needed to keep her stitching taut on the quilt designs she’d made. And a tiny wooden chest, marked by water, sat on a crudely fashioned bench. A huge, disassembled, and obviously old, loom was propped against the house.
Michelle turned to Liam, her heart leaping. He knew perfectly well how to touch her heart, how to make her want to leap upon him and place hurried kisses all over his hard face, just to watch the tenderness soften him. “What’s this?” she asked, wanting the words from him, not just the gesture. He had to meet her halfway in what brewed between them.
He looked off to a field filled with Appaloosa, as though wary of her reaction. “Sara Fay Jenkins has decided she isn’t sewing anymore. She’s tuning carburetors and taking a course in new car mechanics. The other things are Mrs. Akins. She had them stored in the shed and wanted you to have them. J.T. wanted you to have a dinosaur for protection—living here all alone without us.”
“I love them. I’ll take very good care of them. J.T.’s dinosaur will sit right where he can watch any threat,” Michelle murmured when she could speak.
Liam reached into his pocket to extract a small, brown-paper-wrapped parcel. He opened the twine and slid the earrings into his big, scarred palm. The green stones gleamed against his dark skin. “J.T. picked these. When the jeweler asked me the color of my true love’s eyes, I said they were green as grass, dark as a high mountain meadow in summer rain, warm as the love I have for her.”
He watched her intently as if fearing the impact of his words would terrify her. She could only take the earrings, lock them in her fist and hold them over her wildly beating heart. Liam stood there in the chilling November wind, looking as safe and solid and unchanging as Tallchief Mountain. The wind brushed his hair, and when it lifted hers, he reached to smooth it. “My true love,” he repeated softly as if fitting the words to his lips for a lifetime. “With eyes of dragon-green and lips as soft as a rose petal.”
Michelle tried to catch her breath. No one had ever spoken so to her. This man could reach inside her and make her melt with words, a look or a touch. “Do you really feel that way?”
He nodded curtly, apparently unnerved by his own words, his emotions running deep. “Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. And maybe someday, when you’re over that motel incident, we can go back there—after we’re married…if you’ll have J.T. and me.”
“I’m still working things out about my career. I don’t know who I am just yet.”
“I do. You’re the woman I love. You can do whatever you want about your career, it won’t change how I feel about you. And I think you know just exactly who you are, but you haven’t fine-tuned the works just yet.”
“You’re not asking anything—” she whispered, loving him. “No terms?”
“I’ll be honest…I’d like you in my bed, if that’s what you want,” he said flatly. “That’s about it. Just so you know that hot storm you stir up inside me with those eyes and that mouth isn’t exactly sweet…then there’s this—”
Liam opened the wooden chest for her to see. “My namesake, Liam, gave these to Elizabeth and now I’m giving them to you. Duncan and the rest want to give me something of Tallchief and Una’s, and maybe when we’re settled, you would choose for us both. Those pieces of wood against the house are Elizabeth’s loom. Una
taught her how to weave. Properly set up, the loom is a big thing, so you might have to add a room here. Or I’ll build one at my place. It’s your choice. Take your time thinking, honey. I’ll get better at this as we go along.”
Ten
The silver car glided up the road to her house, threatening Michelle’s joy. She’d just discovered how susceptible she was to Liam’s new facet, the tender words of a lover and the look of a man who would last through the years. Michelle took Liam’s hand and tucked the earrings in his pocket. “Keep these safe for me, and I want to hear those fine words then, too. Don’t forget the ‘dragon-green-eyes’ part. Shut my door, Liam. I don’t want them in my house just yet. They have a way of tearing things apart and I’m not ready for that.”
“You’re doing just what you should be, honey,” Liam said quietly. “You’re mending your life. I’ll understand if you need to leave, to do what you must do. But I’m hoping that you’ll always remember me.”
“You can take it then, the battles we’ll have? Because you’re not an easy man, Liam, and you set me off. I used to be quite the cool businesswoman, you know.”
“We’ve both changed, and as for me, I like to see you get all wound up and steamy. I used to dream of owning a ranch, you know—when I was a little boy.”
“You did?” She looked up at him and wondered when he would ever fail to surprise her.
Her parents slammed the car doors and stared at her, obviously hoping she’d be the first to reach out. When she held Liam’s hand tightly, her father scowled and took her mother’s arm, coming to Michelle’s steps. They looked up at her.