Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (50 page)

He dropped his fists to his hips. "Now see here, Bailey. I've never forced you to do anything you didn't want to do."

"I'm not saying you did!"

"Then just what the hell
are
you saying?"

She made an exasperated sound. "Haven't you listened to a word I've said?"

"Yes, I've listened. And frankly, I'm tired of listening. When are you going to take a little portion of the blame?"

"Me?"

"That's right. I figure the problem isn't me trying to control you. I figure the real problem is you're too damned scared to be a woman."

"That's not true!"

"Yeah?" He snorted. "How many times have you avoided feminine things? Jewelry, dresses, dancing, courting? You're scared to hold babies, and you'd rather starve than cook. Even in bed you argue instead of surrendering to the pleasure I'm trying to give you."

Her chin trembled. "That's not fair. I—I'm trying to pleasure you too."

"Well, that may be. But the fact of the matter is, Bailey, you're afraid of becoming what you already are. Like it or not, you live inside a woman's body. So stop punishing me for accepting the truth you'd rather deny."

Bailey choked, her vision blurring. His words had triggered a deep, hidden fear inside her. She didn't want to hear the truth. She didn't want to
feel
it.

"You're wrong!" she flung back. "And what's worse, you don't really care! Because if you did, you'd stop trying to force me into being
your
idea
of a woman."

Blinking back tears, she bolted past him.

"Bailey—"

She reached the stairs and ran for her room, slamming the door closed behind her. Panting on the threshold, she pressed her palms to her burning cheeks. It was in that moment that she realized—to her supreme mortification—that she'd just become the very thing she'd always tried desperately not to be:

Her mother.

A creak on the stairs jolted her back to her surroundings. She quailed to hear his steady, purposeful bootfalls ringing closer in the hall. She dived for the key and turned it in the lock.

"Bailey."

His voice was quiet, laced with a thread of iron. It wasn't her father's voice, charged with rage and acrimony. The realization only made her more heartsick, more miserable. She pressed her hand to her mouth, choking back a sob. Why was this happening to her and Zack? They loved each other, didn't they?

"Bailey," he said again. "I don't like when you lock doors on me."

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Then will you open up, please?"

She shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed. "I—I can't. I want to think about what you said."

He was silent for a moment on the other side of the door. "Bailey, I love you."

"I love you too," she said hoarsely.

"Then let me in. Not just into the room, sweetheart. Let me into your life."

Tears burned twin trails down her cheeks. She trembled, her fingers twitching over the key as she ached to obey his husky, persuasive plea. The female side of her wanted nothing more than to throw back the door and launch herself into his arms.

But her male side knew what would happen next. She'd swallow her resentments. She'd knuckle under, and they'd make love. In the morning, Zack would blissfully go about his day, thinking she was content and he was pardoned. Meanwhile, not a single damned thing would have been solved.

This pattern had to end. Either Zack accepted her on her own terms, or she sent him packing for good.

Please, God, make him understand. I do need him. It's just not the way he's used to being needed.

"Zack," she ventured, struggling to keep the anxiety from her tone, "I can't do what you ask. And I can't accept your marriage proposal until this issue is resolved. Please, try to understand..."

The leather of his boots creaked. She caught her breath, her gaze riveted in morbid fascination on the doorknob.

It never turned.

Instead, she heard the floorboards groan as he walked wordlessly down the hall. The banging of the front door filled her with a sick sense of dread.

Anxiously, she ran to the window, peering past the curtains. She saw his silhouette striding across the yard. Jerky caught up with him, several short words were exchanged, then Zack took his Winchester into the barn. Boss emerged minutes later, a bedroll and two saddlebags bulging behind his master's ramrod-straight spine.

When Zack rode into the moonlight, he didn't look back.

Chapter 21

Bailey dozed on and off through the night, sleeping little in the rocker by her open window. She kept hoping she'd hear Boss's hooves crunch on the drive or the
ka-chink
of Zack's spurs on the porch.

As the sun rose, stretching its amber fingers above the horizon, she was waked instead by the sleepy calls of the shearers and the rattle of their pans as they cooked breakfast.

Sighing heavily, she threw the blanket off her lap. Only then did she realize she'd fallen asleep with her doll in her arms.

Oh, Zack.
Biting her lip to stave off the tears she'd sworn she wouldn't shed again, she gazed down at the sweetly painted smile and the bright blue eyes beneath the golden ringlets. The doll was like a part of her she'd never known, the little girl who'd tried so hard to please Daddy and Mama, and in the end had sacrificed a piece of herself.

Was it true, as Zack had claimed, that she was afraid of being what God had intended her to be? Perhaps it was.

But no one had ever valued her as a female. At least, no one had until she'd found Zack. When she was in his arms, she didn't feel like a misfit in her own body. For the first time in her life, she felt truly alive, accepted, and safe. The sensations were so new, she still wasn't sure she could trust them.

She wished she could tell him that. She wished she could explain to him he was teaching her how to be different—no, to be whole.

Becoming complete was scary, scarier than anything she'd ever had to face in her life. So many things could still go wrong with the process. Zack might not like the final product. Maybe that was what she should have told him last night.

If the words had occurred to her then, would they have been enough to make him stay?

Standing awkwardly before her armoire, she finally selected her daddy's faded workshirt, the one she liked to wear whenever she felt too alone, and pulled it over her head. Its denim tail flapped against the backs of her knees, and its sleeves dangled well below her fingertips. She took some consolation from the usual routine: rolling up the cuffs, fastening each button.

She was just about to close the armoire doors, when the shimmer of sapphire caught her eye. Her first dancing dress. She smiled ruefully, fingering its satin folds. The rigging she'd worn when Zack proposed.

On impulse, she tugged free the matching hair ribbon she'd used to weave the torn bodice closed. Instead of her usual leather thong, she used the ribbon to bind her hair in the style she knew that Zack would love.

If he comes home.

The morning crawled by. Vasquez arrived to escort four of the shearers out of the canyon to the nearest line shack, where the other
pastores
had gathered the small flocks of adult goats they tended in addition to their own sheep. Pancho stayed behind with Bailey and Jerky to finish clipping the yearlings.

As casually as she could, she asked her cook if he knew when Zack would return.

The old man grunted, scratching his grizzled chin with his shears. "Don't know. Didn't say." He shaded his eyes and scowled up at the flickering thundercloud heading toward the canyon. "Storm brewing. Wouldn't want to be caught in it."

"I hope you're right, Jerky."
And I hope Zack feels the same way.
She sighed. "But I wouldn't be surprised if that thundercloud's as dry as all the rest. It's probably carrying nothing more than heat lightning."

He fixed her with a portentous eye. "That ain't nuthin' to sneeze at."

"Yeah, well, a wildfire isn't what any of us ranchers need, that's for sure."

By high noon, sunbeams were punching holes through great purple clouds that flickered and rumbled, chugging relentlessly closer on the wind. Pancho took one look at the lowering eastern sky and announced it was
siesta
time. Jerky spanked his last buck into its pen and hung up his shears to start dinner for the men. Pris and Pokey raced ahead of him to the kitchen.

Bailey was left idle. She supposed she could continue shearing, but the idea didn't appeal to her much while she was by herself. Besides, she spent enough time alone. Clipping was backbreaking, tedious work. Without the camaraderie of the men, it was almost torture.

She decided to saddle Sassy and ride up to the line shack to see what progress was being made. Of course, her real motivation was to ask Vasquez and the rest if they'd seen or heard from Zack.

When she turned Sassy up the trail, she heard barking behind her. Twisting in the saddle, she spied Pokey galloping around the corner of the house, fleeing the kitchen, minus whatever food he'd been trying to mooch from Jerky. She shook her head when the rascal caught up with her mare.

"Pokey dog, you're too big for me to carry and too stubby-legged to keep up with a pony. Go home."

The puppy pricked his ears, his tail wagging and his eyes bright with anticipation. Clearly, he was ready for adventure.

"Home,"
she repeated more sternly.

He woofed in agreement and kept right on trotting at Sassy's heels.

Disgruntled, Bailey faced forward again.
Insubordinate, flop-eared little cuss.
The least Zack could have done was teach him the meaning of "home" before riding off and saddling her with the mongrel.

"Pokey, do you know
any
words yet? Besides
dinner, I mean."

He grinned up at her, smacking his nose with his tongue.

"Yeah, well, I think you're a whole lot smarter than you let on. Do you know where Zack is? Go find Zack."

Pokey lowered his snout, and Bailey slowed Sassy so the hound could surge ahead. If nothing else, she could start Pokey on those hunting lessons he needed so badly.
Cute
wore off pretty fast in her eyes if a dog didn't work for its supper.

They cleared the rise with Pokey snuffling ahead. She watched his bobbing tail idly, wondering what scent he was really tracking as he led her northwest, in the general direction of the line shack. A grasshopper sprang up, and Pokey quailed, jumping about two feet himself. He charged eastward after the elusive bug, belly-flopping over the knee-high daisies and growling ferocious threats. A smile quirked the corner of Bailey's mouth.

"Silly cowpoke's dog.
Pokey!
Come." She whistled, and he swung his head around, finally realizing she was leaving him behind. He bounded after Sassy.

As they continued northwest, angling away from the storm, Bailey scanned the clouds to the east with an uneasy eye. She wasn't particularly worried about a downpour overtaking her, but she was starting to wonder if she would have been wiser to wait out the racing thunderheads. The sky sizzled and crackled over Hank's spread, eerily lavender where the lightning jabbed and ominously violet where plump shadows scuttled. There was a deadly beauty in the electrical show, one that made the flesh on Bailey's neck prickle. She began to welcome the pugnacious booming of the cannon, even though the noise had probably helped to drive One Toe onto her spread. As long as Hank's rainmaker was firing, she knew she wasn't the only fool outside in this weather.

Deciding that the shack was closer than the canyon, Bailey encouraged Pokey with calls and whistles to keep up as she turned Sassy toward what was now a dry creek, thanks to the drought. The thought of her
pastores
and the shearers struggling to keep three hundred goats under control lent her patience each time Pokey's curiosity got the better of him and he charged off after some invisible prey. At least in the ravine, growths of shin oak, scrub mesquite, and juniper would shelter her. She could ride beside the creek bed most of the way to the shack, and if the heat lightning did outrun her, she'd be relatively safe.