Masked Cowboy (Men of the White Sandy) (14 page)

“Jesus, Jacob.” She shuddered as his other hand left her leg and circled just under her breasts, pulling her back to his chest. “You are totally cheating right now.”

“Try to understand,” he whispered into her ear. “It’s been almost eight years since I felt anything for a woman—any woman. I’d given up on all of this,” he said as he kissed her neck again, “until you came along.”

Eight years? For crying out loud, she considered herself in a drought if she’d gone six months without sex. No wonder he was such a grump sometimes. The man had a sex backlog that would kill anyone else.

Slowly, he nuzzled his way up to her ear before he took the lobe in his lips, tugging gently. She couldn’t help but turn to meet his mouth, her breath coming in short, hurried pants. Who could think about eight years when he was seducing her right now?

“But you…you taste like strawberries in sunshine, and I still haven’t figured out how I can be around you without sweeping you off your feet or ignoring you. I don’t know how to find a happy medium. I’m sorry I’m not good at this.”

Oh, sweet Lord
, she thought as his tongue traced the edges of her ear.
How strong does one woman have to be?

“Well,” she tried as her eyes fluttered from the touch of the hot wetness of his mouth, “let me help you out. Focus on not being a jerk, okay? Right now, you are still being a jerk, because you are turning me on with no intention of doing anything about it.”

“Are you turned on?” he asked as he cupped her breast, his thumb already pulling her nipple tight.

“Jesus, Jacob, stop it right now, or I’m going to stab you in the leg.” She tried to grab at her knife with her right hand, but the twist pulled at her shoulder again, and she moaned a bit.

“Calm down. I’ll stop.” His hand left her breast and slowly traveled back down to her leg.

“Okay.” She blew hard, trying to get her mind to focus. “Ways Jacob can not be a jerk. One: No seducing without intent to satisfy. Two: Answer questions with more than a grunt. Three: Don’t ignore me and don’t treat me like your special toy.”

“Technically, that was three and four,” he corrected as he rested his chin on her shoulder. She could just see the black leather tip of his nose in her peripheral vision.

“Whatever. Can you handle that?”

“I will do my best. I don’t want you to be mad at me, although you are pretty funny when you’re all worked up.”

“Great. Here for your amusement,” she scoffed.

Jacob pulled Mick to a halt and quickly slid off, still resting his hand on her leg.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re close to the ranch,” he replied as his fingers trailed down her the whole length of her leg, a thousand goose bumps in their wake. “I don’t think the hands should see us…together.”

“This is what you call together?” she shot at him, shaking free from his touch.

“You know what I mean.”

“Fine,” she huffed. “But don’t be a jerk, Jacob.”

He looked up at her, his eye dancing as he smiled that good smile, the one that turned her brain to jelly. “I promise, I’ll do better.”

It was a hard promise to keep. Every day she came out to the ranch, starting when she slid out of the cab of her truck, her boots crunching the frost-covered gravel as she held her left arm close to her side with her mouth already screwed into a challenge, he had to resolve not to be a jerk all over again. Every night as he lay in bed and stared at the mask on the small shelf next to his bed, he wondered how he’d do it again the next day she came out.

It had been a relief to know she still wanted him, but damn if he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a teenager again, hopelessly in puppy love with another woman so far out of his league she was in a different sport.

Not that it hadn’t been torture to ignore her. Every wounded look she’d shot him, every smart-ass comment she’d muttered under her breath when she thought he couldn’t hear her, every single time she’d tried to smile at him only to have the smile die on her face, it had torn him up.

God, but he hated being a jerk. Wasn’t his nature. But keeping his mouth shut was. That was what his grandfather had taught him, and Jacob had always been a good student.

Jacob wondered what his grandfather would do. Samuel Plenty Holes, the respected council elder, had raised Jacob after his parents disappeared back in the early 70s. It was at his grandfather’s knee that Jacob had learned how the tribe worked and what his place would be as a tribal leader.

Never a demonstrative man, Samuel had lived the philosophy of his favorite author, Mark Twain. “It is better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” The only time Jacob had ever left the state was the year he turned ten, and his grandfather had packed him into the beat-up Ford still parked behind his trailer today and driven him to Hannibal, Missouri, to tour his hero’s home.

Jacob still had his leather-bound copy of
Huckleberry Finn
Samuel had gotten him on the trip tucked between his mattress and the thin wall.

Of course, that trip had also taught him what it was to be an Indian in a white man’s world. Far removed from the familiar brown sameness of the rez, Jacob clearly remembered the shock and shame that filled him as complete strangers walked up to his grandfather—the leader of the Lakota tribe—and said, “How!” like it was the best joke they’d ever heard.

And all Samuel did was smile kindly, as if the joke was indeed somewhat funny. Better to be thought an ignorant savage than open your mouth and prove some idiot right.

At least the experience had prepared him for college. His grandfather had been one of only a handful of Lakota men with a college degree, and it had never been a question of
if
Jacob would get his as well. He’d gotten his bachelor’s in three years, and his MBA a year later. That had finally shut some of those
washitu
up, to have that kind of power in the white world.

It had taken a long time for Jacob to realize his grandfather was a powerful man, but after years of going with him to council meetings, he figured it out. As the tribe struggled through the years, Samuel sat silent through the raucous procedures until everyone else was argued out. Then he’d make his pronouncement of what the tribe should do, and the tribe would do it.

He wasn’t always right. Jacob could remember loud arguments—in private, of course—with his best friend, the medicine man, Henry Steele. Samuel felt the tribe had to modernize to avoid extermination and extinction, but Henry had fervently believed that the only thing that could save their people was a return to the old ways.

He still remembered the last thing his grandfather said to him before he died of a heart attack a month before Jacob’s vision quest.

“
T
h
akóžala
, what’s right and what’s honorable aren’t always the same. As a Plenty Holes, it falls to you to decide for the tribe.”

Jacob had never figured out which kept his grandfather from telling him what had happened to his parents. Henry had finally told him they’d gotten into drug running and never come back from a trip to Mexico one summer when he was two.

He did his best. Working for Buck wasn’t honorable, but keeping a Lakota hand on the land was the right thing to do. He gave his friends—the next generation of Lakota men—good paying jobs as long as they stayed clean and took care of their families. He set up anonymous scholarships for kids who wanted to go to college, and made small loans to people like Ronny. He encouraged the young ones to respect the old ways, even if they chose a different path.

And, while it wasn’t honorable, he kept working at his plan to steal back the Lakota land.

The McGillis men had been trying to destroy the tribe for years—rumor had it that Buck’s great-grandfather had bribed BIA officials to give him the cows meant for the Lakotas one winter just to starve them off the land, and not much had changed since then. Jacob could still remember how mad his grandfather got every time Buck’s father, Clint McGillis, trucked in case after case of beer to the rodeos, making money off the ruination of the Lakota people.

Samuel Plenty Holes hadn’t been able to stop the McGillis men. But Jacob was determined. It’s what his grandfather would have wanted, and moreover, what he would have expected.

Mary Beth Hofstetter? Another matter entirely. While ignoring Mary Beth may have been the honorable thing, it wasn’t the right thing. Not even close.

To fall in love with a white woman? A complete stranger to their ways? He couldn’t shake the feeling that his grandfather’s spirit
wanagi
was frowning down on him. Sometimes when she shot off that mouth of hers, he could almost hear the old man rumbling in displeasure, just like he used to rumble at Henry.

But for all their arguments, Samuel Plenty Holes had loved Henry Steele as family. The two had been fast friends for more than fifty years, each bringing out the best in the other in good times and bad.

Maybe that was part of it. Everyone else treated Samuel Plenty Holes with respect, but no one got close to him except Henry. His grandfather and Henry had never thought of each other as leader and medicine man. They were just brothers.

For too long, people looked at Jacob and saw what they wanted to see. A rancher working for the enemy, a leader who walked away from the council, a man hiding behind a mask.

But not her. When she leveled those gray-blue eyes at him, he couldn’t shake the feeling that she saw him in a way that no one but Susan ever had. Not that she didn’t wonder about the mask, about the working for the enemy, about his place in the tribe and even about Kip, but somehow, it seemed she could see past that. It was the same when she looked at Kip after school. No one else could get past the silent-albino thing, but Mary Beth seemed to be looking deeper.

And none of it seemed to scare her off. She kept coming back for more.

Some days, when Mary Beth was in fine form, he thought that mouth of hers was the most attractive thing about her. No matter what the situation—breech cows or surly cowboys—she always had some lethally smart-ass comment flying out, half the time before even she knew what she was saying.

If he didn’t want her so bad, it would be so much easier. But he couldn’t look at her without thinking about red silk bras or the taste of her lips or the way she screamed—actually screamed—in pleasure at his touch.
His
touch.

He’d certainly never done that for Susan, although not for lack of trying. Undoubtedly though, Susan’s patient instructions had finally paid off, so many years after he’d given up.

And those were the thoughts that haunted him into the deepest parts of the night. He’d convinced himself that he could live without a woman because his destiny was to keep Kip—and the land—safe. That was what Henry had interpreted his made-up vision to mean a dozen or so years ago. Jacob was a guardian, a caretaker of the land and the tribe. And, as that fit with the role his grandfather had prepared him for anyway, Jacob accepted it, grateful that no one had figured out he was faking it.

But now? Now he wasn’t so sure. He still had to protect Kip and his people’s lands, but he wasn’t sure he could do it alone anymore.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

He could try calling Rebel again. Except that Rebel would probably want him to go to a sweat lodge, and Jacob didn’t have time to sit around and sweat just for the hell of it. But Jacob was also pretty sure that Rebel was much smoother with the female sex than Jacob would ever be. Maybe, even if visions weren’t involved, Rebel would know what to do about Mary Beth. But any conversation that started with Mary Beth would end with Kip, and that time hadn’t come yet, because she wasn’t safe yet.

No, he was pretty much on his own about this. And the loneliness never felt keener than it did when he was around her. And every morning she slid out of that truck and shot him a look that said,
What’s it gonna be
? Well, it just got that much harder.

He struggled.

He struggled with the urge to touch that skin that he knew was off-limits. He struggled to come up with the right things to say in front of the ranch hands that wouldn’t raise their eyebrows but also wouldn’t piss her off. He struggled against the comforting silence that he knew would definitely piss her off.

It was a fine line between holding her at arm’s length and just holding her.

Thank God, she came with Bill most days, what with her arm still in the sling. With Bill around, there was a constant buffer, a steady stream of patter about Leslie packing, Leslie shipping furniture to the new house their son had picked out for them in Tampa, Leslie buying Christmas presents for the grandkids. With Bill filling any silent void, Jacob didn’t feel the pressure to either talk or not to her.

Most days, Jacob could have hugged the older man for saving him from himself.

But she healed. Within a month, she was out there alone again, riding out to check on the newborn foals at his barn or carefully preg-checking the cows.

Jacob had to hand it to her, she made it as easy on him as she could—at least when anyone was around. She asked him direct questions, her eyebrow only arched a little bit.

But the time came that they headed out on the range alone. The hired hands had already headed out to round up the cattle they’d be working. It was just him and her for about forty minutes of riding.