Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (48 page)

With the amber flare of dawn behind them, Zack drove the wagon back to her spread. He helped her down to her front yard, and an awkward moment of silence passed between them. He avoided her eyes with a trace of his old shyness, dragging the reins through his fingers again and again.

"I'll have to return Wes's wagon, of course, but... I was wondering if you wanted me to come back here this afternoon. I could, uh, help you find a new foreman."

She winced. She'd been so consumed with grief over Mac that—ironically—she hadn't given much thought to her business and all the troubles she would have it if didn't rain soon. In fact, she was beginning to regret she'd ever staked that prize for One Toe's hide. Five hundred dollars would have gone a long way toward drilling a few more wells before autumn brought relief from the heat and, hopefully, the rain.

"I know this is childish and terribly shortsighted," she admitted after a moment, "but I'm having a hard time accepting the idea that I have to replace Mac."

"It's not childish, Bailey. He lived here all your life. I understand."

"You do?"

Zack nodded, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. "It's too soon to think about replacements, that's all."

She stared forlornly at her bare toes. Mac had been gone for only two days, but already it felt like forever. The Rio Grande was a good week of hard riding away. He might as well have moved back to Scotland, because visiting him would be an impossibility for at least six months. Maybe longer. Assuming the drought didn't force her to sell half her livestock before September, the goats' fall shearing loomed on the horizon. In the spring, she would be consumed with lambing and kidding and another shearing for both the goats and the sheep.

And, of course, she couldn't forget her vow to bag One Toe, since he was still lurking out there somewhere, only a boundary line away.

Her shoulders slumped.

"Would you like me to stay and help with the ranch until you've made up your mind about a foreman... and us?"

Her chest ached as she thought of herself alone day after day, with only Jerky and the dogs for company, while she waited for Zack to pay his next weekend call as her suitor. Wouldn't they be more likely to work out their troubles together than apart?

Thinking they might very well be laying the foundation for their future, she gathered her courage to murmur, "Yes. Please stay."

The joy in his smile made her giddy heart trip.

"But what about your fall roundup?" she added hastily, worried that maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't be strong enough to stick to her guns if he continued distracting her with his heart-melting smiles.

"I have two brothers who can oversee my ranch hands while they mark, brand, and alter my calves," he said. "Cord and Wes owe me a vacation after the hundred or more times I've toed the line during their domestic, er, diversions.

"Besides," he continued, his husky timbre sprinkling shivers down her spine, "those migrant Mexican shearers are due through here in the next two weeks, aren't they? I want to learn how to clip mohair—er, if you think that's a good idea," he added.

She clasped her hands and curled her toes, so pleased by his concession to ask her advice that she wanted to burst. However, she still had reservations about his new, agreeable behavior. She didn't want him to know how easily it could wrap her around his finger.

"If you're certain your own spread can do without you," she said in her gruffest business tone, "I sure wouldn't mind the help."

His dimples flashed. "Fair enough. I'll, uh, just put my bedroll back in the barn, then."

His hopeful gaze touched hers, and she felt her neck heat.

"There's no sense in your sleeping on the ground when there's a perfectly good cot in Mac's shack."

His breath released in a slow whisper of disappointment. He pasted on another smile. "Thanks."

Despite her every self-assurance that she'd done the right thing, she felt like a fool for the rest of the day.

* * *

Having Zack as her daily work companion while she tried to decide whether she wanted to surrender again as his lover created a delicious dilemma in Bailey's life. She learned he liked to laugh a whole lot more than she'd ever imagined, and that he had a playful, creative side beneath his crusty exterior.

She'd always been one to put business before pleasure, and yet without a chaperone, it became increasingly difficult to resist temptation. She had a hard time keeping her mind on her chores whenever he bent at the waist, presenting her a pulse-stirring view of his backside, or squatted, offering an equally tantalizing view of spreading thighs and the treasure between them.

While she stubbornly tried sleeping alone each night in the yawning emptiness of her bed, she often heard Zack's harmonica playing a soft lullaby beneath her open window. Sometimes, Pokey would scratch and whine at her door with a gift attached in carrier-pigeon fashion to his collar. Once, it was an intricately carved figurine of Boo that looked so lifelike, she cried. Another night, Zack's gift was a small jar of honey, with a piece of the comb still dripping inside it. The accompanying message read "Sweet dreams."

By the end of that first week, Bailey was yielding to Zack's deliciously persuasive seductions. Not only was he sharing her bed at night, he was enticing her into a new, midday tradition. In honor of her
pastores,
he solemnly dubbed it their
siesta.

She tried not to think what Mac or her daddy would have said if they'd seen her afternoon chores go unfinished while she let Zack chase her, laughing and screaming, around the barnyard. On the rare occasions when she wouldn't let him catch her, he'd retaliate by disappearing, refusing to answer any of her calls. She'd spend an exhilarating hour or so, her heart speeding in anticipation to realize that her mate was lying somewhere in wait for her, biding his time until she wandered unwittingly into his love trap.

Looking back on those sizzling summer romps, she couldn't remember a happier time in her life, even during a wet season. She started relenting little things, like Zack's suggestion that Pris and Pokey sleep in the hall when they made love, and his request that she wear her hair loosely tied, not in a knot. She thought to please him was the least she could do, since he tried so hard not to be overbearing when it came to running her ranch.

Nevertheless, some dim, nameless fear stalked her through her dreams. She kept seeing herself in a struggle, trying to reach her heart's desire—a handsome, dark-eyed man with endearing dimples—and yet she always seemed to be bound to a bedpost by some invisible rope or shackle.

She didn't know what the vision meant, but it disturbed her enough to lose sleep.

* * *

The countywide thirst for water was reaching alarming proportions. Ranchers and farmers were willing to do just about anything for water. To Zack's irritation, their attention turned to Hank Rotterdam's desperate, last-minute bid to win votes before the October board election. Not only were most of the cattlemen listening to his cannon idea, the sheepherders and sodbusters were too.

A few more levelheaded souls, like Rob Cole, Judge Larabee, and Zack's brothers, publicly argued against a full-scale revolt from Zack's treaty. They pointed out that even if Rotterdam's artillery bombardments did produce better results than the prayer vigils and rain dances, neighborly cooperation among sheepherders and cattlemen was vital to ensure a lasting peace throughout Bandera County.

They were talking pretty much to themselves, though.

Doing his level best to push his campaign concerns from his mind, Zack reminded himself he had bigger problems closer to home. The drought was putting Bailey on edge, and she worried incessantly about her ability to water her livestock. Her business pressures were putting a tremendous strain on her patience, which made peaceful living a challenge—to say the least. To watch her agonize over concerns that most women never contemplated made him feel helpless, even useless. He wanted so badly to make things right for her, but he couldn't. The best he could do was try to shield her from some of the frustration and the pain.

That's why he decided not to tell her about One Toe's raid.

Squatting beside the migrant Mexican shearer who had discovered the cat's half-eaten
cabrito
feast, Zack gazed narrowly at the telltale paw prints and the four butchered doe goats the cougar had slaughtered for spite. One Toe had been clever enough to raid a pen too far from the house to risk gunfire, yet close enough to the yearling ewes' pen to give their guard dogs conniption fits. Now Zack understood why his dreams had been haunted by howling hounds.

He muttered an oath, half in anger, half in guilt. Bailey, being the wildcat that she was, had worn him out the night before in the best way a man could possibly get tired, and he'd slept like a log, oblivious to the cougar attack.

Then again, who would have thought One Toe would dare to come down into the canyon, where Bailey kept her breeders, her kids, and her lambs? The cat had whole pastures worth of adult livestock up in the mesquite and the shin oak to stalk.

Zack felt like a complete failure. He was supposed to be protecting Bailey and her livestock, not relying on the canyon walls to do it.

"Not a word of this to the
senorita
, Pancho," he told the head shearer, who had accompanied him to the pens to view stock.

"
Sí
,
senor
." The Mexican's eyes were disapproving above his drooping mustachio. "But she will miss these four, no?"

Zack ground his teeth. He hoped not. He rarely realized when a couple of cows were missing from a roundup until the final count was in. Bailey's final doe count wouldn't occur until the following evening. By that time, he hoped to have the carnage removed. Then when he told her the bad news, she wouldn't run out and aggravate herself by looking at it.

He blew out his breath. He just hoped those does weren't among the ones that Bailey had named, like pets.

"The
senorita
has too much on her mind right now, Pancho, to frighten her with worries of cougars. Do you understand?"

The man shrugged, raising his sombrero to adjust the bandanna he wore over his head. Zack suspected that Pancho thought he was a
cabrito-
hating
gringo
and that his loyalty was to Bailey.

As it should be,
Zack reminded himself.

Still, it was hard to get used to the idea that he was less than a boss and more than a foreman. Just what the hell was he on this spread? Bailey hadn't said she would marry him, and he'd asked for her answer three weeks ago.

Maybe it was time to discuss matrimony again.

That night, while the shearers furtively removed the goat carcasses, Zack sat over a half-eaten plate of
cabrito
and fidgeted while Bailey heaped praises on him.

"You sure showed that old billy goat who was boss," she crowed, her eyes shining with a glow that transcended the dining room's oil lamps. "Poor Wildhorn never knew what hit him. Mac's the only man who could ever get a rope around that devil. The shearers refused to try after the first couple of seasons, 'cause Wildhorn flat out gored two of them. I think Pancho looks at you as a kind of hero now. Not a bad day's work,
compadre,
considering how much Pancho dislikes
gringo
cowboys."

Avoiding her gaze, Zack pushed his plate away. "I did only what comes natural."

"You're too modest by far." She chuckled, a rare and sweet sound these days. "I've never seen a greenhorn catch on to clipping quite as fast as you did. Shoot, by week's end, you'll be bagging almost as much mohair as I do. And you
know
I can't let that happen. Reckon I'll just have to stay on my toes."

He couldn't help but smile at her teasing. "Reckon you will," he murmured, reaching for her hand.

She grinned, curling her fingers through his and cupping her chin in her palm. "Did you see poor Pancho when Hank's cannon went off this afternoon? He jumped so hard, he nearly put his shoulders through the top of his sombrero. That must've been one helluva way to wake up from a
siesta."

Zack nodded distractedly. He was thinking the artillery blasts were worse than thunder. Wes and Cord, Rob Cole, and a couple of farmers to the east of Rotterdam's spread were petitioning Judge Larabee to make Hank move Old Reb to an unpopulated part of the county. The noise was stampeding their livestock. After ten days of earth-quaking blasts, not a single raindrop had fallen, and the novelty was wearing thin.

"Speaking of
siestas
," Bailey purred, rising and trying to tug him to his feet, "I think we're due for one."

He gazed into her sun-bronzed face, with its tawny eyebrows and catlike smile, and her feral beauty called to him in a deeply primitive way. He liked when she was the aggressor. He liked it a lot.

All his shearing successes aside, though, he wasn't feeling particularly good about his failure to protect her livestock. "Bailey, we need to talk."

She flashed him a positively wicked grin and caught his other hand. "It can wait," she drawled, succeeding in pulling him from his chair. "It's time I showed you just how proud I am of you."

"Uh, that's probably not a good idea, what with the shearers outside and—"

"Forget them." She rubbed herself against his hips and weaved a hand through his hair. Tugging his head down for her kiss, she whispered, "I want you."