Bride of the Wolf (8 page)

T
HERE WAS EVEN
less left of Jed’s body than the last time Heath had seen him. The worst of the stench was gone, but the ground and air all around his bones were thick with the musk of scavengers.

It wasn’t possible to keep Jed in one piece, so Heath moved the body in three pieces, laying it back down under the overhang. He crouched there for a little while, staring into the empty eye sockets and wondering whether he should just make sure once and for all that no one ever knew the bones belonged to Jedediah McCarrick. All he would have to do was take away the belt with its unusual buckle and Jed’s gold tooth.

But ruining what was left of Jed seemed wrong, and in the end it wouldn’t change anything. Whether or not Jed was found, he would eventually be declared dead in the eyes of the law, and what was going to happen would happen anyway.

Heath rolled a few stones over the old man, covered him with a good layer of brush and dirt, and returned to the place where he’d buried the saddlebags. The ground hadn’t been disturbed; he dug up the saddlebags, refilled the hole and buckled the bags to Apache’s saddle. He didn’t let himself relax again until he was back at the foreman’s cabin.

The gnawing guilt that Heath had begun to feel much too often made his hands clumsy when he reached into one of the bags. He weighed a handful of coins in his palm. Plenty here to give to Rachel, and more for Joey. Jed would have wanted them safe.

Heath reached inside again, feeling deeper until he touched the bundle of letters and the sheath holding the wills. If he’d wanted to know more about Rachel Lyndon—if her hopes and dreams and fears really mattered to him—he could have read the rest of those letters.

But he didn’t want to know. She could keep her damn secrets to herself.

He kept the handful of coins, buckled the saddlebags and pushed them under his bed. He would have looked for a better hiding place if he had to keep it here more than a few days, but none of the few people left at the ranch was going to go snooping around his cabin. The money would be safe until he figured out a way to give it to Rachel without raising too many questions.

He didn’t sleep much that night; the cabin held in the heat, and he’d let himself get used to the bed in the house. At dawn he rode out to help Joey hunt for strays. When he came in off the range, Charlie Wood was waiting for him.

The man looked more than a little sheepish; he’d lit out with the rest of the hands, and Heath was none too pleased to see him back.

“Reckon I didn’t like the idea of workin’ at Blackwater,” the man said, scratching at his raggedy three-day beard. “I been here a long time. Don’t seem right to leave.”

Charlie’s words only confirmed what Heath had suspected. “All the men went to Blackwater?”

“Yessir.”

“Ain’t you gettin’ better pay there?”

“That don’t matter to me, Mr. Renshaw. I don’t much trust Sean. He’s got sneakin’ ways about him, ’n he’s a
liar. He told the Blackwells that he chose to leave Dog Creek, not that you threw him out.”

“Too bad you didn’t think of stayin’ earlier. Maybe we don’t need you no more.”

Charlie removed his hat and turned it around in his hands. “I know I made a mistake, Mr. Renshaw. I really want to come back.”

Heath grunted. If he didn’t take Charlie back, Joey would try to do all the rest of the early-summer work himself. He was just that way.

“You can stay, Charlie,” he said. “Long as you prove your worth.”

“Thanks, Mr. Renshaw.” Charlie saluted and ambled toward the corral, leading his piebald gelding. Heath frowned. Charlie had been with Jed a long time, but he’d never struck Heath as the kind who would give up good pay for loyalty.

Shrugging off his speculation, Heath looked after his mount, then fetched the account books from his room in the house—glad that Rachel was in Jed’s room—and went over the figures in the foreman’s cabin. Dog Creek was still solvent, but without Jed’s money, Sean wouldn’t have nearly as much as he wanted once the ranch was sold. As soon as Heath was finished, he headed for the cookhouse to talk to Maurice, who had come back with a wagonload of supplies from Javelina.

He knew he was only putting off going back into the house to clear out his things. Rachel wouldn’t always be hidden away in Jed’s room. He’d have to talk to her again sooner or later, if only to see how the kid was doing.

Rachel must have heard him thinking about her, because she came out of the house a moment later,
wearing a different but still plain dress and carrying a worn-looking parasol. Her gaze went straight to the horizon, as if she was expecting Jed any minute. The shadow of her parasol made her eyes hard to read.

What did she see when she looked out over the Pecos? She couldn’t love this country, not the way Jed did. How could she, coming from the green, settled land of the East? This territory was good for hunters and cattle, not for women. Not even the Blackwell females, who were rich and had the leisure to stay inside and keep their pretty hands clean.

According to Joey and Maurice, Rachel had only been out of the house a few times while Heath was gone fetching Lucia, once to walk along the bank of the creek, once to study the ground near the house, and once to talk to Maurice about the supplies she needed. Maurice had told him that she’d asked only for things a woman required for cooking and cleaning and such, nothing for herself. No pretty dresses or perfume or lace or the kinds of fripperies “real” ladies were supposed to want.

She’d also insisted on taking on some of the washing. Heath had seen the shirts hung out on a line she’d stretched between the house and the old pecan tree. She’d been touching things men had worn close to their skin. Things
he
had worn.

Heath shoved those thoughts far back inside his mind the way he’d shoved Rachel’s letters into the saddlebags, and turned to walk away. But she had seen him. Her body went stiff as a fence post.

Damn if he would let her run him off now. He went to join her.

“How’s the kid, Mrs. McCarrick?” he asked.

“The
child
is still improving, Mr. Renshaw,” she said. “As you would know if you had come to see him.”

She was right. He needed to know just when the boy was healthy enough to travel, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

“I just saw him yesterday,” he said. “Or was it me you wanted to see?”

Damn him for a fool, taunting her with what he wanted to forget. But Rachel didn’t take his bait.

“I know you are a very busy man,” she said in her most formal voice.

Heath cleared his throat. “Maurice told me that you took in some of the washing.”

“Does that surprise you, Mr. Renshaw?”

“I thought you wanted to take care of the baby.”

Her chin jerked up. “I keep him with me when Lucia is not feeding him. Many women are capable of doing more than one thing at a time.” She folded her arms across her chest, and Heath couldn’t help but notice that she was fuller in the bosom than he’d realized. “I am not accustomed to being idle, nor did I come to Texas to drink tea and lounge about in the parlor.”

Trying to figure her out was worse than useless. Heath knew she’d already been cooking. She’d offered to cook for
him
. She intended to be just the kind of wife Jed would have needed, baking pies and cleaning and washing and doing everything else women were supposed to do.

But Jed wasn’t here. Heath would have expected her to wait until her husband came back before taking on so much.

With a speed that left her no defense, he seized her hands and turned them palm up. The fingers were long
and slender, but her fingertips were marked with calluses that could only have been earned with steady labor.

She snatched her hand away. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly, and she looked about ready to hit him.

“I’ll ask you to keep your hands to yourself,” she snapped.

He almost laughed, but it wasn’t from humor. “You done hard work before,” he said.

The cool, prim lady was gone now, replaced by that wild thing he’d glimpsed yesterday in the parlor. “Have you seen enough?” she demanded.

He didn’t want to speak the real answer to that question. “Dog Creek has gone a long time without the services of a lady,” he said.

“Then you had best begin getting used to it.”

She looked so ornery that Heath was dangerously inclined to admire her spunk. “You should be inside with the kid,” he said.

“He is sleeping, and Lucia is watching him.” She glanced toward the barn, and her voice got a lot quieter. “There must be cows that need milking.”

He tipped his hat back on his head. “You want to milk the cow?”

“Do you doubt that I am capable of it, Mr. Renshaw?”

“That’s usually Joey’s job.”

“If I’m not mistaken, you need all your remaining hands on the range with the cattle. Isn’t that so?” She waved her hand to the north, where the desert grassland stretched out beyond the creek. “Shouldn’t you be out there yourself?”

It sounded too much like another order, and Heath
let himself be provoked. “You plan on bein’ the one runnin’ things once Jed comes back, Mrs. McCarrick?” he asked. “You figure you can bully him the way you did the men you knew back East? You should know it ain’t quite the same out here, ma’am. Or do you need more proof of that?”

She dropped her parasol and her body curled inward all at the same time, as if he’d called her a whore to her face. He reached out and caught her arm. It was so tight that he was afraid it would snap if he pressed too hard.

“You’d best get back into the shade, ma’am,” he said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. Anger not at her, but at himself. He’d sunk pretty low by using Jed against her when Jed was never coming back.

He picked up the parasol, keeping his grip, despite her resistance, all the way back to the shade, and sat her down in the old rocking chair Jed used to favor on summer nights, when he would smoke his pipe and talk to Heath about his dreams.

Rachel recovered quickly. Whatever had made her so upset didn’t stop her from standing again and pushing her face up to within an inch of his.

“This cannot go on, Mr. Renshaw,” she said. “You may not like me, and I may feel the same about you, but we must both live here until Mr. McCarrick returns. I will no longer engage in these ridiculous battles with you. I will treat you with the respect due your position, and you will do me the same courtesy.”

Heath didn’t have any choice but to look straight into her eyes. They weren’t just plain brown like he’d thought, but all kinds of tawny colors, like the pelt of a panther when the sun hit it just right. His gaze dropped to her mouth. Her lips weren’t as thin as he’d remem
bered, either. In fact, they were the prettiest thing about her face, besides her eyes.

She took a sudden step back. Her little pink tongue darted out to touch her lips, and Heath’s cock started up again.

“Do we have an agreement, Mr. Renshaw?” she asked, her hands held rigidly at her sides, as if she was afraid
she
might touch
him
. “Do we have a truce until Jedediah returns?”

Heath was damn grateful that she didn’t have a wolf’s hearing, or she would know just how fast his heart was beating. “If that’s the case,” he said, “you’d better start callin’ me Holden.”

“I prefer—”

“You want the truce or not?”

“Yes. I take it that is your condition?”

“Yes. And I’ll call you Rachel.”

“Very well,” she said shortly. She stepped back again until her skirt brushed the rocking chair. “Now that that is settled, we must have a serious discussion about the infant.”

“Why?” Heath asked, tensing up himself. “You said he was doing good.”

“Doing
well
,” she said, and then blushed. “The baby is growing stronger every day, Mr. Ren—Holden. But we must consider…” She swallowed. “If he has family, they must be located.”

“Family?” His stare must have scared her a little in spite of her bold talk, because she sat down and clenched the arms of the chair so hard that her knuckles went white. “I found him all by himself. There wasn’t no one else around.”

“
Where
did you find him?”

“An empty dugout between here and Heywood.”

“What is a dugout?”

“A shelter dug out of the side of a hill.”

“What kind of family leaves a kid alone in a place like that?”

Heath turned and paced to the end of the porch. “You were mad when I said you didn’t have to take care of him no more. You changed your mind?”

“No! It’s just that I…” The chair squeaked as she shifted position, and her voice went very quiet. “Just because someone abandoned him doesn’t mean that there aren’t other kinfolk who would want him.”

He has kinfolk, Heath wanted to shout. He clamped his teeth together instead and thought about what he was going to say.

“I wouldn’t know how to find them,” he said at last, facing her again. “The kid had no name on him, nothin’ to say where he belonged. Folks in Javelina know about him now. If anyone wanted him, they’d have said when I was in town. I could ride to some other towns, ask around. But I won’t find out anything.”

Her body seemed to go boneless. “It does seem an impossible task,” she murmured.

“I don’t much care for folk who throw their kids away like rotten meat,” Heath growled.

She looked up, and he wished he hadn’t said it. Her eyes had gone soft just the way they had when she’d been “grateful” for Lucia. “Anyone of decency would abhor such a thing,” she said.

Was she
approving
of him?

“You think I’m decent, Rachel?” he asked, smiling in a way that usually sent enemies cowering and everyone else to thinking better of crossing him.

“I don’t know.”

Honest. Straightforward. You would never think she could lie about anything.

“That’s mighty nice of you,” he said, “considerin’ just yesterday you thought I was a killer.”

“I…” She kept her chin up, even though he could smell that she was ready to run. “The gun is still where you left it. You are welcome to take it back.”

The anger was passing through him now, breaking up like storm clouds as they tore apart on the wind. “You keep it. In case I get tempted to use it on somebody I don’t like.”