Dogie glanced in his boss’s direction, then quickly at the men. From their shrugs, none had any more idea of what had riled their boss than he did. Dogie dropped his cards face down, rolled to his feet, hitched his droopy britches, and swaggered with false courage toward his boss.
“What burr got under his saddle?” she asked Wade Henry.
He glanced briefly toward the remuda, then returned his attention to his reading. “Nothin’ to worry your perty head about. Ace is just bein’ Ace, is all.”
Flap Jack drew a card from the deck. “The boy’s probably just gettin’ his hide chewed a bit.”
That was obvious, but for what? Corrigan couldn’t be finding fault with the way Dogie took care of the horses; he cared for them as tenderly as a mother with a new babe.
Then again, what concern was it of hers? If Corrigan felt there was cause to upbraid the boy, that was between the two of them.
“How long do you think it will take to track down the horses, Miss Annie?” Flap Jack asked. For such a giant, deep-chested man, he had an incongruously mellow voice.
“Tracking them down won’t be the hard part,” she told him. “If they’ve gone into the canyon, and if renegades haven’t already claimed them for themselves, we should find them in a few days. It’s catching them that’ll be tough.”
“That’s been our problem all along,” Wade Henry commented. “That bandit won’t let us get close enough to the herd to rope ’em.”
Annie nodded. “A lead stallion is naturally territorial. He’s worked hard to build his harem, and he won’t let them go without a fight.”
“Maybe, but that devil don’t stand a snowball’s chance against you.”
She frowned at Wade Henry’s confidence in her. What if she didn’t get the stallion? It had been years since she’d gone after mustangs. What if she’d forgotten everything Sekoda had taught her?
Dogie returned then, distracting her from the image of her neck in a noose if she didn’t accomplish the task she’d taken on. Despite the grin on his face, his brown eyes carried a shadow of dejection that pulled at her heartstrings.
“What the matter, kid?” Flap Jack asked him as he sat cross-legged on his blanket. “Forget to brush down one of the horses?”
“Naw. Ace just didn’t like the halter I put on the pinto.”
“Don’t let him get to ya.”
“Heck, he don’t bother me none.”
None seemed inclined to challenge the bald faced lie.
Wade Henry closed his Bible. “Come on, boys, time to hit the sack. We got an early day ahead of us.”
Emilio packed away his guitar, Flap Jack pocketed his cards, and everyone settled into their bedrolls. Within minutes the peacefulness of night descended, broken only by the song of cicadas and the bark of a prairie dog.
Despite her fatigue, Annie couldn’t make herself relax. Corrigan still hadn’t returned and she couldn’t help wondering what kept him. Damning her curiosity, she rolled to her feet and strolled toward the edge of camp. The spotted horse Corrigan had been inspecting earlier blew a greeting through his nostrils as she passed the remuda. Annie paused, then cupped her palm over the animal’s velvety nose. He nuzzled her collarbone for a moment before losing interest in her.
Moonlight shed a dim glow to see by as she examined the tack closely for whatever flaw Corrigan had found. It was almost unnoticeable to an untrained eye. If Annie hadn’t been braiding halters since God was a baby, even her keen eyes might have missed the tiny knots threaded into the rope. Knots that eventually would have chafed against the horse’s tender cheek.
Was this the boy’s great crime?
A muffled curse drew her attention beyond the campfire’s glow, where a lone silhouette stood head bowed amidst the billow of buffalo grass.
Leaving the horses, she crossed toward the figure, knowing it could only be Corrigan.
A moment later it was her turn to curse. He’d stripped himself of his shirt and chaps, and the quarter moon outlined his broad shoulders and narrow torso. Even the dim lighting couldn’t disguise the impressive expanse of bare arms and back.
Annie’s heartbeat suddenly picked up pace. She was no stranger to a man’s nudity, but catching Corrigan alone and half naked seemed some-how . . . forbidden.
Just as she turned sharply away, a gentle whirring sound made her pause. She looked back. He’d set the lasso circling above his head, and Annie was drawn to the sight of his body in motion. Tendons flexed, muscles rippled . . . was there not an ounce of loose skin on the man?
He released the noose. It soared toward a saddle set on the ground about fifty feet away.
She’d had no intention of spying on him, and even less intention of alerting him to her presence. But when the lasso landed short of its mark, she found herself saying, “You aren’t rotating your wrist enough.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “What are you still doing awake?”
Neither hellfire nor wild horses would get her to admit she’d been checking on him. “It’s all in the wrist,” she said instead. “If you don’t give it enough rotation, the noose won’t build up enough speed to fly.” She hesitated, then held out her hand for the rope.
He surrendered it with a smile and a bow.
Gripping the rope tight in her fist, Annie stepped in front of him, certain the heat of the day had baked her brain. She’d gone out of her way to keep her distance from this man, and here she was, strolling straight into the dragon’s lair.
Annie pressed her lips together and tossed the coil in her hand, testing its weight and feel. “You start out with a slow circular motion,” she instructed, swinging it first at her side, then above her shoulder. “Keep your elbow up. As it builds up speed, loosen your grip on the neck, letting the loop get bigger. Then release it.” The rope fell directly over the horn. Annie gave a swift yank, tightening the noose.
She looked at him to gauge his reaction, only to find his heated gaze on her rear end.
“Very impressive.” One eyebrow rose and he gave her a crooked smile that had her nerve endings tingling. “Care to show me again?”
Annie snapped her mouth shut and lurched forward to retrieve the rope. She hated it when he looked at her like that—as if she’d been put on this earth solely to satisfy his appetite. “I didn’t learn overnight. And when I made a mistake, I didn’t have someone tanning my chaps about it.”
“Ah, so that’s what this little lesson was all about. And here I thought you just wanted to be alone with me.”
She ignored the dramatized sigh of disappointment. “There was nothing wrong with that hackamore that couldn’t be fixed.”
“It was shoddy braiding.”
“I suppose you can do better?”
“This isn’t about me—”
“You can’t, can you?”
He stared at her for several long seconds. Then he took the lasso and began to coil it. “A person doesn’t have to carry a tune to recognize good music. I was raised around horses. It’s been a lot of years since I worked with them, but I haven’t forgotten that sloppy work will cause unnecessary injury to the horse or the rider.”
“Ah, and raking a child over the coals is such an effective way of teaching him.”
He leaned in close enough to tease her with the musky scent of his skin. “Careful, Annie, I think your heart is beginning to soften.”
He drew back, and Annie’s fingers curled into her palms to keep from smacking the smirk off his face. But he was right, as much as she hated to admit it. She was acting as protective as an older sister against the town bully, and she couldn’t think of a single reason why.
It had to stop. The kid was on his own. Let him figure out that the world was a tough place and life didn’t always play fair. And that there wouldn’t always be someone to stand up for him, to shelter him, to protect him. . . .
Those who did wound up paying the ultimate price.
“Rise and shine and give God the glory!” Wade Henry called in the sam
e cheerful tone as he did every morning.
Brett wanted to strangle him. If he’d gotten two hours of sleep last night, he’d count himself lucky—and it was all Annie’s fault. Every time he closed his eyes, images of her taunted him—the erotic motion of her body on that bronc back in Nevada, the controlled defiance when she’d spouted off her terms in going after the horses, that mind-numbing display with her hair, and the fire in her eyes when she’d taken up for Dogie last night. . . .
Never had he met a woman who could so infuriate and amuse him at the same time. He didn’t have to justify himself to her or anybody. How he handled his men was his business. At least they had jobs. And if they wanted to keep them, then by damned they’d better be willing to do the work he assigned them in the manner he expected.
Didn’t it occur to Annie that going easy on the boy wouldn’t do him any favors in the long run? That a stern hand built character? Obviously not, or she wouldn’t have invented that little lesson. Brett couldn’t decide if he should thrash her for her meddling or applaud her for her mettle. Few men dared to talk to him the way she did, yet Annie stood her ground and spoke her mind as if she ramrodded the place. Hell, if he hadn’t been so aggravated with Dogie, he might have thanked him for inciting the first bit of emotion he’d seen in Annie since they’d met.
If she displayed half as much passion in bed as she did out of it. . . .
Spanish curses provided a merciful distraction from his wayward thoughts. Brett glanced up from his coffee toward Emilio. Clad only in his long-handled underwear, the roper was tearing through his belongings like a Texas twister.
“What are you looking for, Emilio?”
“Mis ropas! Alguién me robó de mis ropas!”
Just then Brett spotted Dogie racing away from camp. A strip of something that looked suspiciously like a pant leg flapped behind him from the wad of material in his arms.
“Dogie!”
The boy stopped as suddenly as if a brick wall had shot up from the ground in front of him, then twisted around to face Brett.
“Give Emilio back his clothes.”
Shoulders slumping, the boy did as ordered. “I was just funnin’ with him.”
Brett sighed in exasperation. He should have known bringing Dogie along would cause a stir. The thirteen-year-old had shown up at the ranch a few months back, scraggly and unkempt and looking for work. There’d been no reason to hire him on. They didn’t need the help, and Brett sure as hell didn’t need an inexperienced hand around his beauties. He found himself putting the boy on the Triple Ace payroll anyway, if for no other reason than Brett remembered what it had been like to be young and cold and hungry.
That should have been his first warning.
He shook his head at his own foolish impulses. They’d gotten him into more than one kettle of hot water over the years.
Just as he started to take a drink of his coffee, he caught sight of Annie over the steaming rim. The cup halted mid-air, and his mouth went as dry as rawhide.
She stood in a ray of saffron sunlight, wriggling into a pair of chaps. Inch by inch, soft leather worked its way up those never-ending legs, the outer length of each thigh decorated by five silver conchos.
As she cinched the buckle around her slender waist, his gaze centered on the V between her hipbones where tanned canvas trousers were revealed. He couldn’t recall a pair of chaps looking as good as they did on Annie. But then, since the only chaps he’d ever seen were on men, he hadn’t given them much notice before.
Then she turned and bent over to fasten the ties below her knees. Brett’s stifled a groan at the sight of her heart-shaped ass outlined in snug leather. God, the woman was going to kill him. He’d always thought the most provocative part of a woman was her backside—the extension of the valley between the shoulder blades, the delicate structure of ribs, the hollow at the base of the spine, the swell of buttocks and flare of hips . . . just the sight was enough to make him rigid for hours.
The thought of seeing Annie wearing nothing under the chaps had an entire fantasy unfolding. Cupping each cheek in his hands, pulling her close, rubbing himself against her—
“What the hell are you lookin’ at, Corrigan?”
Brett’s head snapped up. Annie was glaring at him over her shoulder, her blue eyes flashing, scalding color staining her cheeks.
He lowered his cup and said, “I was just admiring your. . . .” His gaze took a leisurely journey to her rear, then rose back up to her flushing face. “Assets.” His lips slid into a slow, sensual smile.
Her eyes narrowed. The color in her cheeks deepened. “I would think for a man so hepped up on catchin’ his horses, he’d have more important things to do than sit around letting his gums flap and his eyes roam.”
At the moment, Brett couldn’t think of any. “More important, maybe.” He saluted her with his cup. “But not nearly as pleasurable.”
Her spine went rigid. She grabbed the buckskin’s bridle, swung into the saddle, and wheeled her horse around.
Grinning at her hasty departure, he turned around, then came to a sudden stop at the sight of his men standing around in various stages of undress, their mouths agape, their lustful gazes on Annie’s disappearing figure.
Brett’s good humor died. He whipped his revolver out of its holster and fired a shot into the air. “If you men aren’t on your horses in ten seconds, the next bullet will be between your beady little eyes.”
No one called his bluff; within the ten allotted seconds, all hands were in their saddles and spurring their mounts out of camp.
Brett reholstered his revolver and kicked dirt over the embers. Maybe bringing her into the outfit had been a mistake. This was only the second day on the trail, and already she had his blood sizzling and his imagination running wild.
It had to stop. She wasn’t a concubine brought along to indulge his baser needs. She was a hired horse thief, whose sole purpose was to save his fillies from ruin—and it was best he keep that uppermost in his mind.
Forgetting for an instant could mean the fall of the Triple Ace.
Chapter 6
As they headed south along the windswept plains, Annie kept as far away from Corrigan as possible. She didn’t know what disturbed her more about the way he’d been looking at her—the smoldering fire in his eyes or her own reaction to it. No man had made her stomach flutter or her skin tingle in years. Yet every time Corrigan looked at her, strange things happened to her insides.
And every time she looked at him. . . .
Annie swiped her kerchief across her brow. God, it was hot out here.
“Is that true, Miss Annie?”
She swung her attention to the right and found Dogie staring at her, brows raised in expectancy. This morning, when she’d seen him match up that crimson red shirt with a pair of plaid britches, her first thought had been a hope that they wouldn’t run into any bulls during the day’s traveling. Strangely enough, she’d gotten used to the color. It certainly matched his sunburned complexion. “Is what true?”
“Henry was just telling us that him and your granddaddy once drove a herd of longhorns clear into Montana Territory.”
She could neither confirm nor deny the claim, for even if she hadn’t been too young to accompany them, Granddad rarely told her and her mother where he went on his trips and it went against the grain to ask. “I expect if Mr. Henry said it, it’s true.”
“ ’Course it’s true!” Henry cried. “Me an’ Ole Clovis had us plenty of adventures. Annie, did your granddaddy ever tell you about the time we had to drive a herd of mustangs from Dead Injun Creek to the rendezvous at Pease River?”
Before she could reply, he launched into the tale. “Danged sandstorm whipped up a good froth, stinging our eyes and plugging our noses. Got us so turned around we didn’t know our As from our Zs.
“We ate dust for days. It was in our hair, our skin. We poured out boot-fulls of Texas at night. Finally we wound up at this tiny stream. Ole Clovis says he’s got to s
ee a man about a horse and he disappears behind a set of bushes. Not two seconds later, he comes runnin’ through camp, hollerin’ at the top of his lungs, ‘Injuns! Injuns!’ Well, I had me more hair back then, and no way was I gonna lose it to some Comanche buck, so I jumped on my pony and we skedaddled out of there.
“Next night we come upon another stream that looks a lot like the first one. We make camp. Clovis disappears behind the bushes, then comes runnin’ out again, hollerin’, ‘Injuns! Injuns!’ His face is pale as sourdough and he’s shaking like a cottonwood in a windstorm. So I get on my pony, only this time I give the place a good scourin’. Not an Injun in sight.
“This goes on for three nights, and I was gettin’ mighty furred up at Ole Clovis. I thought sure he was playin’ a shine on me. So I decide I’m gonna get to the bottom of this once and for all.”
“Was he playin’ a shine on you?” Dogie asked with the eagerness of youth.
“Yer jumpin’ ahead of my story, boy.” Henry cast a ferocious scowl toward Dogie—at least, Annie figured he meant it to be ferocious.
“Where was I? Oh, yeah. The next mornin’ I go exploring, and what do I find but a pair of ladies’ unmentionables strung up in a tree? Turns out we’d been riding in circles, landin’ at the same creek each night, and ever’ time the wind blowed, the ruffles flowed out so it looked like a redskin’s headdress.”
The side of Annie’s mouth curved into a smile. She’d heard the story a dozen times before, but it had always been Mr. Henry hollering “Injuns” and Clovis discovering the clay-stained petticoat in the huckleberry tree.
“I got lost in Forth Worth once,” Dogie claimed.
“Good glory, boy, everyone knows you can get lost in a bath tub.”
Annie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. She could hardly believe it. How long had it been since she’d felt like laughing?
A sudden shout interrupted her thought. Annie’s attention veered toward the man galloping toward them, a thunderous expression darkening his face.
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