Fire Brand (11 page)

The exclamation came at the sight of one of the small boys tearing into the corral, laughing as he taunted the bronco. The other boys egged him on with loud cries of encouragement.

“Get the hell out of here!” Bandy yelled.

The bronco was still bucking, incited by the child waving his arms. The boy was laughing, not paying a bit of attention to Bandy. He thought it was a great game, but the bronc wasn't playing.

“Do something!” Gaby cried.

Bandy ran toward the bronc, only to be knocked to the ground by the shoulder of the frightened animal. Gaby started over the rails in pure terror, but a lean, strong hand caught her and held her back.

“Get me a rope, quick,” Ned Courtland demanded, his lean face set and ruthless as he watched the bronc start to chase the boy.

Bowie had heard the urgent sounds and came out of the barn at a quick, hard stride.

“Bring a rope!” Courtland yelled, and climbed deftly to the top rung of the corral.

Bowie reacted instinctively to the sharp command. He grabbed up a lariat and threw it to Courtland. The older man caught it and quickly made a loop, which he sent singing out from the top of the corral fence. It caught easily around the bronc's neck. Courtland jumped down, his booted feet planted firmly so that his heels dug into the soft ground. His lean strength slowly brought the animal to a standstill while Bandy got the boy out of the corral. Then it was a treat to watch Courtland gentle the gelding.

He didn't jerk him around or mistreat him, or even use a great deal of force.

He talked to him, softly, quietly, standing still with the rope taut as the animal stood panting and wild-eyed. The boy had been caught and whacked soundly on the bottom by Bowie, who told him off quietly and effectively in flawless Spanish and sent him running, with his friends, to his mother.

Courtland was moving toward the horse now, while Aggie, Bowie, and Gaby watched, fascinated. The older man began to stroke the horse's soft muzzle, still talking to him. He smoothed the mane, the long, elegant neck. All the while, he spoke to the horse, as if it were as intelligent as he'd said only minutes earlier. Then he turned and led it gently back to the barn door and handed the reins to Bandy.

“My God.” Bandy shook his head. “I've heard of men who could do that, but I've only seen it done a time or two. That was a real treat, Mr. Courtland.”

Courtland only nodded. He walked back to the fence, vaulted over it with the ease of a man half his age, and took off his hat to wipe away the sweat.

“How's the boy?” he asked Bowie.

“His bottom is pretty sore,” Bowie said quietly. “Otherwise, he's fine. His father is one of the cowboys here.” His eyes narrowed. “That was a hell of a bit of roping,” he said speculatively. “And I gather that you know something about horses.”

“Oh, I used to ride some when I was younger,” Ned Courtland said, pursing his lips amusedly. “I like horses.”

“They seem to like you, too. Bandy's been working that little white-eyed horror for three days, and it's nearly killed him once that I know of.”

“I got lucky. Aggie, let's get along. We're going up to see something called Cochise Stronghold,” he told the others, sliding a casual arm around Aggie's shoulders.

“We're going to stop for lunch while we're out,” Aggie said, beaming as she nestled closer to the lean man. “So don't wait for us.”

“We won't,” Bowie agreed. “Have a good time,” he told his mother, but absently, because he was still digesting what he'd just learned about her suitor.

He watched them walk away with Gaby, thoughtful and silent, at his side.

“That man knows ranching,” Bowie said. “I'd bet money on it. But why is he so damned secretive? And who is he? I can't find anybody in Jackson who knows the cattle business who's ever heard of Ned Courtland.”

“Maybe he isn't from Jackson,” she suggested. “Maybe he's trying to throw you off the track.”

“My God, the man may have a criminal record that he's trying to hide,” he said shortly. “What if he's on the run?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

G
ABY
THOUGHT
ABOUT
what Bowie had said before he stormed off into the garage to work on the truck. She didn't really think that Ned Courtland was a criminal, but what if he was? They were going to have to find some way to check him out.

She spent her morning telephoning invitations to the people on Aggie's guest list. The party would be Friday evening, and it was already Wednesday—hardly enough time to have invitations printed and get them mailed. Gaby wondered what would happen when Bowie found out that not only was his mother in love with Ned Courtland, she intended to marry him. She had to talk to him, to soothe him down, before Friday.

Montoya had come in to fix lunch, and while he and Tía Elena were working on it, Gaby slipped out to the garage to talk to Bowie.

She heard a lot of angry banging from underneath one of the pickup trucks, and saw a familiar pair of big booted feet sticking out on one side.

Bowie was under the truck, flat on his back, wielding a wrench and turning the air blue.

Gaby, now wearing her jeans, sat down cross-legged on the concrete floor of the garage beside him without a word.

“Hand me the socket wrench,” he said curtly, holding out a big, greasy hand for it.

She looked at the red container of socket wrenches. “There must be twenty of them. Which one...?”

He told her, and she found it, pressing it into his palm. The arm disappeared. There were metallic sounds and then a lot of muttering. “That damned real estate agent had better not come back here again,” he said shortly. “I've warned him about coming out here and bothering me.”

“It sounds as if the situation is getting serious, Bowie,” she said quietly.

“It was never anything else.” He banged something else. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes.”

“You're a reporter. Start digging.”

“I'm going to do that. But you aren't going to change my mind about the state of the local economy and the need for an additional tax base,” she said.

“You and these damned liberals,” he said shortly. “You'll sacrifice the whole quality of life for a few dollars.”

“It's not like that at all,” she said. “There are two sides to every story, I know, but the unemployment rate here is terrible. You have to have industry or new business to keep people working. And I know about the danger of pollutants in the groundwater table—I've done several articles about water quality and conservation. But you can't just leave the land as it is forever, Bowie! Desert serves no one except itself.”

“Take your damned sermon out of here,” he said, his voice cutting. “I've got more than land on my mind right now, and you know it.”

She sighed. “Yes. I know it.”

“She's out of her mind,” he said audibly.

“She's lonely, Bowie,” she replied gently.

He made a sound and held out his hand. “That's the wrong size,” he said, handing the wrench back.

“That's what you asked for,” she pointed out.

“Then read my mind next time. Give me the next smaller size.”

She searched for it, found it, and handed it to him.

“Damned imports,” he mumbled.

“This isn't a foreign truck,” she pointed out.

“Wyoming imports!” he corrected shortly. “Him!”

“Oh.”

“My father's only been dead eight years,” he said angrily. “And that yahoo from the Tetons isn't a patch on him, even if he can spin a rope and talk to horses.”

She had to hide a grin at the way he'd put it. She wondered if his pride was sore because Courtland had jumped in with that rope before he could. He wasn't the kind of man who liked being stuck on the sidelines in an emergency.

“I guess it would be hard to watch Aggie marry someone else,” she said quietly, feeling his pain even through the anger.

There was a hard pause. “Harder than you know.” He tightened another bolt. “What about your own mother, Gaby?”

She studied a spot on the knee of her jeans. “I don't remember her very well,” she said, finding it easier than she'd dreamed to talk to him about it. “She died when I was about five or six. Then Dad and I traveled all over, anywhere he could find work. He wasn't the best father in the world, but he was good to me.”

“Where is he now?”

“He's dead.” She bit off the word. It hurt to say it. She'd never really come to grips with his death, and it hadn't been until she went to work in Phoenix for the newspaper that she'd learned about it. That was all she'd found out, though—nothing about the people who'd been involved in her mad flight from Kentucky and her father's agonizing last year of life in a mental institution. She'd been afraid to pursue that line of questioning in her research, for fear that it might give the people in Kentucky some clue to her whereabouts. The last thing she wanted was to have the past revealed. It would inevitably involve the McCaydes in a terrible scandal, and that she couldn't have.

Lost in her thoughts, she hadn't realized that Bowie had spoken again. “I said, are you listening?” he repeated.

“Oh, were you saying something? My mind drifted away,” she said lightly.

“I said, you never talk about the past.”

“It's all long forgotten. Do you want another wrench?”

“No.” He slid out from under the truck and sat up. He was wearing a white, short-sleeved T-shirt dotted with grease. It clung to his powerful chest and shoulders and arms like wet silk, and Gaby caught her breath at the impact of all that vivid masculinity so close. He was sweating, and the dampness made the fabric cling to his breastbone. Under it was the faint shadow of thick chest hair. She couldn't imagine why it should affect her so strongly lately, but ever since she'd seen him without a stitch of clothing on in the pool house, she'd had such erotic thoughts about him.

She forced her eyes away from his torso and up to his face. He was so unbelievably handsome—every line of him was perfect. His black eyes narrowed at her scrutiny while he pushed back a sweaty strand of blond hair. Her eyes glanced off his and she colored.

“Do I have spots on my nose?” he asked pointedly.

“No.” She shifted, studying her boots. “Sorry.”

“You stare at me a lot lately,” he observed. “Mind telling me why?”

She smiled self-consciously. “For the same reason other women do, I guess.” She looked up and then quickly down again. “You're very handsome, Bowie.”

He made a sound and tossed the wrench he was holding into the tray of tools. “Hell.”

“Well, you are.”

“Hand me that piece of cloth and a cigarette.”

She tossed him the cloth, watching him wipe the grease from his big, lean hands as she pulled the cigarette package from the pocket of the shirt he'd tossed aside before he had begun working on the truck. “Do you have matches?” He searched in his jeans pocket, tightening the fabric over the powerful muscles of his legs tightened. She felt pleasure ripple through her at the sight, and blushed when she realized what was happening to her.

He saw the blush and his eyes narrowed. He calmly lit the cigarette and propped one leg up, dangling the hand with the cigarette over it. “Nervous, Gaby?” he asked with a faint smile.

“A little,” she confessed, deciding that it was always best to fight fire with fire. “Things are getting very complicated around here.”

“Oh, it's not so bad,” he said. He took a draw from the cigarette, still, studying her. “Courtland will go home soon, Aggie will get back to normal, and the agricultural combine will discover that when I say no, I mean it.”

Her olive eyes danced. “Nice to be so certain of things,” she murmured, because he didn't yet know what his mother had in mind.

“Why the transformation?” he asked, reaching out a hand to touch the shoulder of her sexy blouse. “I've never seen you look quite so feminine before. I hope it's for my benefit, Gaby,” he added, his voice deep, soft.

“You're getting me all mixed up,” she said defensively.

“You need mixing up.” He tugged a lock of her hair, savoring its soft texture with his fingers. “We aren't going to be enemies,” he said quietly. “No matter what happens here with Aggie or the land. You and I are never going to be adversaries.”

“I hope not,” she agreed. She felt shaky. The way he was looking at her made her more nervous than ever. It all came flooding back—the things he'd said in the pool house, the way he'd started to kiss her, the tension that had been steadily building between them ever since. It was in her eyes, in her face when she stared back at him.

“You look as if you might jump up and start running any minute,” he mused. “Am I that frightening?”

“It isn't really fear,” she said hesitantly.

His black eyes darkened even more and his hand stilled on the lock of hair he was holding. “Isn't it?” His fingers tightened. “Come here.”

She wasn't sure, and it showed. “It will...change everything,” she whispered.

“Everything is already changed,” he said quietly. “This has been building between us ever since that night in Phoenix. Every day it gets worse. Do you know, I almost came to you last night?” he asked, his voice deepening at her scarlet blush. “It took all my will power to stay in my own bed.”

She remembered her own anguish the night before, the way she'd wanted him. It was uncanny that he should have felt it, too, but that only increased her fears. She felt her nerve deserting her. She tugged her hair away from his confining fingers and jumped up, moving away from him toward the wall.

“Don't say things like that,” she whispered huskily. “It isn't right!”

“You're twenty-four, for God's sake!” He got up, too, gracefully for a man his size, and walked toward her with the smoking cigarette in his hand. “We're not playing games, Gaby. This isn't some mild flirtation because I'm bored and looking for a diversion. And you won't make me believe that you react to me any differently than I do to you.”

She didn't know what to say. She knew her legs were trembling. She was afraid of what he might expect of her. He was worldly and sophisticated and she was a novice—a very nervous one, at best. She shifted so that she was standing with her back to the long worktable against the wall. “Bowie, you're going too fast,” she said, her voice husky with feeling.

“No. I'm just refusing to put off the inevitable any longer. My God, I want your mouth,” he breathed roughly.

Her lips parted as she felt the impact of the words, saw the need in his black eyes. She couldn't speak.

He studied her expression closely. In a few seconds he dropped the barely touched cigarette to the concrete floor and ground it out deliberately under his booted foot. He hadn't shifted his eyes one inch, and she felt the purpose in that steady gaze grow.

Her breath began to rustle quickly in her throat when he walked toward her. His hands slid slowly to her waist, clasped it, and lifted her gently so that she was sitting on the table. Then he moved closer, between her jean-clad legs, his hands still on her waist.

In her high sitting position, his eyes were on an unnerving level with hers, and she could feel the pervasive warmth of his big body, smell the scent of tobacco and cologne and sweat that mingled sensually and drifted into her nostrils. His black eyes searched hers until she flushed, and then they fell with obvious intent to her lips. She almost swooned with the need to feel his mouth. For two days now, she'd gone hungry for him, but there had never been the opportunity for them to be alone. Now they were, and it was going to happen, at last...!

She felt her heart begin to race when he bent forward and slowly touched his hard lips to her soft ones in a whisper of a kiss, his smoky breath mingling with hers in a silence that magnified the sound of her own rapid heartbeat. She stiffened a little at the intimacy of his mouth against hers, the newness of being so close to Bowie. His lips were hard and warm, and he brushed them lazily over hers, nudging them apart. Her hands gripped his shoulders, half in fear and half in anticipated pleasure. The strength of his body was all too evident in the near-intimate embrace.

He lifted his head enough to see her eyes, and he read very accurately the apprehension there. “This is all I want of you right now,” he said quietly. “Just your mouth under mine. Relax, little one. I won't hurt you. I'm only going to kiss you.”

The complete control he displayed and the laziness of his movements took the rigidity out of her spine. She stopped trying to fight it. Her breath rippled against his hard lips as he bent again. This time the kiss lingered. His mouth brushed at hers again with slow, expert sensuality until he made her lips part. Then he moved forward, feeling her starkly open eyes on him as he turned his head slightly and covered her mouth completely with his lips.

She gasped. It was the most sensuous thing she'd ever done with a man in her life, and to do it with Bowie was shattering. She stared up at him, meeting his steady, curious eyes.

“I feel it, too, baby,” he said quietly, his voice rough with emotion. The unfamiliar endearment sounded so natural, yet he'd never used it with her before, and it sent delicious chills up her arms. His nose rubbed softly against hers as he bent again. “Lift your arms around me.”

She didn't understand why it was imperative that she obey him, but it was. She slid her hands behind his head, where they touched, tentatively, the thick hair at his nape and entwined there. Her mouth yielded to the slow crush of his and she was staggered at the flash of emotion it ignited.

His big hands left her waist to slide up her back and pull her closer into his warm, enveloping embrace. He half lifted her against him, her breasts crushing softly against his broad, hard chest. His mouth grew just slightly harder on hers, brushing firmly at her lips to make them part even more.