Tangled Past (3 page)

A strangled sound came from the corner of the stall. McLeod swung the lantern in that direction, his eyes boggling when he spied Nate standing there. “You whore! You were with two of them at the same time?”

McLeod swung a meaty fist in Sarah’s direction, but Jackson deflected it into the wall before it connected. From behind them, he heard the sound of a pistol cocking.

“You want to hit someone, you can hit me or Jackson,” Nate growled. “Not her.”

“She’s mine to discipline.”

Discipline. Yeah, he had a good idea of the type of discipline Sarah had endured from McLeod. From her half-brother too.

Jackson shook his head. “If you’re gonna force her to marry me, then she’s mine now.”

McLeod’s lip curled. “She ain’t yours until the preacher says she is.”

Sarah rubbed her arms where he’d held her. Damn it, had he hurt her? “I just came out to say good-bye to Bandit, that’s all. Nothing happened, I swear.”

Nothing she’d better talk about, or else he and Nate might find themselves swinging from the barn’s rafters right soon.

Josiah’s glare turned from Sarah to Jackson and raked downward. Thank God his erection had flagged as soon as he’d spied her. “Nothing happened? I find you in your nightdress in the same stall with one man who’s buck nekkid and another man with only his britches waitin’ his turn, and you think I’m going to believe nothing happened? You’re getting married as soon as the preacher gets here. Then I can finally wash my hands of you.” Glaring at Sarah, he pointed out of the stall. “Get your bee-hind in the house. Now.”

Sarah ducked as she slipped past him, as if she expected to be cuffed. Or worse. But McLeod didn’t move until after she’d darted out the barn door. Then he shouted, “And start packin’, ’cause you ain’t spending another night under my roof.”

“Proves she’s her mother’s daughter down to the bone, don’t it?” Jed leaned a shoulder against the stall door behind Josiah. “Ready to spread her legs for whatever man comes sniffing around.”

“I’ll do right by her, McLeod, but Sarah told the truth.” Jackson held up a hand to stop the older man from speaking. “Nothing happened between us. I give you my word. I’ll be taking her virginity in our marriage bed.”

“You’re lucky I don’t shoot you both and bury your bodies where they’d never be found.” McLeod’s lip curled in a sneer. “If Jed here hadn’t seen her come out here on her own,” Josiah continued, “I mighta thought you two had kidnapped her. Even so there’s not a judge in the land who’d convict me.”

Why had Jed been watching the barn? Or was he watching Sarah? Perhaps Sarah was lucky they’d been here too, or Jed may have used the opportunity to force himself on her. If he hadn’t been the reason she’d slipped out to the barn in the first place. No matter which way he played it, they were lucky the male McLeods hadn’t been the ones to discover him and Nate together.

“You don’t have to marry her. I will,” Nate said quietly.

Jackson glanced at Nate. It really was the answer. Nate had a house, not to mention his land. Three thousand acres would support a good sized family.

McLeod raised one eyebrow and seemed to be considering it for a moment, then shook his head. “I found her with him, and he’s the one who’s naked as a jaybird. You at least still had your trousers on. I’d not ask a man to raise another man’s brat like I had to. ’Sides, I expect Sarah and Kellar here will suit each other better.”

Since they’re both half-breeds
—Jackson heard the implied insult.

McLeod took a deep breath and focused on Jackson. “I expect you to take her off my land as soon as the preacher’s done hearing your vows. I don’t want that girl back here again. She’s been an embarrassment to me long enough.”

“You can count it.” Oh, yes, he’d be putting as much distance between him and the McLeod ranch as he could, and as fast as if his britches were on fire. Of course he’d be accompanied—and by a wife of all things.

Jackson maintained his guard until McLeod was out of sight, then he snatched up his trousers with a curse.

A hand on his forearm stopped him. He looked up to see Nate more serious than he’d ever been since he’d known him. “I meant it, Jack, I’ll marry her. I know you…” He glanced away. Even in the dim light the splash of color rising in his cheek was plain to see. “I know you don’t want to get hitched to a woman.”

His fingers curled into a fist out of reflex. “You know I’ve been with women before. What the hell did you think me and Lavilda Taylor were doin’ the nights I stayed over at her place?”

“I just…” Nate looked away, his nostrils flaring. “I thought maybe it was a show. To fool people.”

Now if that weren’t the pot calling the kettle black. He couldn’t stop his irritation from venting. “Is that the reason you courted Eliza Owens last fall?” He lowered his voice to a hiss. “To prove to yourself you could still get off without my dick up your ass?”

It was a low blow and he knew it, so he didn’t bother blocking Nate’s punch. Or the next. The third one he deflected. As he’d expected, Nate’s whole body followed the swing. He stepped in and caught his friend in a headlock, then whispered in his ear, “I ain’t any different from you, Nate. It don’t matter to me if it’s a woman or man I’m with. Same as you.”

Nate sagged against him. “I figured…”

“You’ve been telling yourself that you were with me because I made the first move that first time, haven’t you? That you weren’t the pervert in this relationship, that you were under my power or somethin’? Because it wasn’t your idea?”

“No.” There was no conviction in his tone.

“We both know you’d been watching me for months before I finally approached you.”

Nate twisted from his grasp so Jackson let him go. “I know what I did. What I am.” He walked to the barn door and stared at the house, its yellow kerosene lamplight deceptively warm and cheerful against the dark November sky.

Was he wishing he’d been the one caught with her? Forced to marry her in the morning? Or did Nate doubt Jackson would be a good husband, considering what they’d been doing? Yeah, he’d been wondering that himself.

Nate stared across the shadows of the yard. Would McLeod be going after Sarah, beating on her for sneaking out to the barn? He sure as shooting had been angry. Would Sarah tell McLeod what they’d been doing?

Images of Sarah decrying them, of the McLeods and their farmhands turning on them, raced through his mind. The skin on his neck prickled as he imagined the noose being placed around it. His arms and legs twitched at the thought of being forced to straddle a horse or stand on a box, while the rope was flung over a tree branch or barn rafter. Of the rope snapping when whatever held him up was kicked from under him. Of the noose tightening, strangling him.

He’d seen the bodies left hanging by lynch mobs with vultures and crows picking at the eyes of the corpses, been sickened by the stench of flesh rotting from the bones in the damned Texas heat.

The drapes in the downstairs of the house hadn’t been drawn. With the kerosene lantern still lit, Nate watched McLeod pour himself a whisky in the kitchen. He was more troubled that there was no sign of Walt or his buddy Jed. A shadow fell across the curtains on one of the upstairs windows, a silhouette of a feminine form, her bodice pulled tight as she reached for something. The image disappeared as she snuffed the light, the window a black rectangle in the dormer.

Would she try to get out of the marriage by telling McLeod what she’d seen? How the holy hell could they explain it so they wouldn’t end up swinging from the rafters come morning?

“I’ll try to be a good husband to her, if that’s what you’re worryin’ about.” Jackson had come to stand beside him and stared up at the window too.

He met Jackson’s gaze for a moment before slowly nodding. “I know you will.”

“We both knew it would end up like this.”

Bet you figured it would be me who’d get hitched first.
Ma would have been pleased to see him settling down, even if it was to a woman with Indian blood. Until her dying breath, Ma hadn’t given up her quest to find a woman who would keep him in line and give her grandbabies. She would have defended Sarah at church against the women who would whisper the sordid details of her mother’s indiscretions. Maybe Miss Martha would stand in her stead.

“If I could change McLeod’s mind, I would.” Jackson sighed. “You’d be better for her, no question about it. I ain’t got nothing to offer a woman ’cept for my hat, my saddle and my horse.”

It took all of Nate’s strength not to touch him right now, but he had a feeling if he did they’d both shatter. He rubbed the back of his neck instead in a futile attempt to ease the impending headache he knew would soon hit. “You and Sarah will do fine. You’ll…do fine.”

And so would he, despite how the world felt as if it was spinning out of control. After all, outwardly nothing had changed. He and Jackson could still work together. Still be friends. Only part of their
relationship
would have to end after tomorrow. A part neither of them should have had in the first place. Maybe this was God’s way of keeping them on the straight and narrow.

Jackson shrugged on his shirt. “Look, since I ain’t got a place of my own, would you let us live in that cabin you got out in the back of your place? Just until I can find us another place to live? A woman deserves her own bedroom and her own kitchen. Somewhere she can fix up and call home.”

Nate snapped shut his jaw after it had dropped. “Shit, that place is one step shy of bein’ a woodpile.”

“I can fix it up.”

“The roof leaks like a sieve. The chinking needs to be replaced, unless you want Sarah to die of pneumonia. The privy stinks to high heaven no matter what way the wind is blowin’, not to mention the bats and all the other critters who are livin’ in it. Even the hands prefer to sleep outside instead of using it when they’re checkin’ the lines.”

“Aw hell, Nate, you’re right. She’d take one look at that place and turn tail. What the hell am I going to do?”

Wasn’t it obvious?
“Why don’t you bring her back to my place?” He waved his hand in impatience when Jackson looked as if he was going to argue. “My place has more than enough room for us all, and it’s nicer than that old shack.”

He gathered himself and lightly squeezed Jackson’s shoulder. “She’s gonna be skittish for a while, Jack.”
She ain’t gonna be the only one.
“This is the only home she’s ever known, and we can both tell she ain’t had anyone in her corner her whole life. At my place, she’ll have Miss Martha to help her out or talk to whenever she needs a woman’s advice, or to introduce her to the ladies in the church.”
Cut off any gossip they might dish.
“She deserves better than what she’s had here.”

She did. In so many ways. So did Jackson. But shit, it was going to be awkward, the three of them living together, watching Jackson and Sarah go to bed, knowing what would be going on between them.

Jackson paced the length of the barn. At any other time he would have made some smart-mouthed comment about the way his friend’s backside flexed, or the play of the lantern light on his shoulders, but Nate knew better than to say anything while Jackson worked it out in his head.

Eventually Jackson returned to the doorway and stared at the McLeod home again. “You’re right, Miss Sarah probably misses her ma. I hadn’t even thought of that. Having a woman close by might be the best thing for her.”

“It would.”

“Still, I’ll need to work on building our own place. It ain’t right that we impose on you forever.”

Nate swallowed at the thought of being apart from Jackson. In the meantime, this might be his last chance to show him how much he’d miss him. “How long do you figure it’ll take for the preacher to get here?”

Jackson stared into the night sky, his brows drawn together. “It’s a good ninety minutes’ ride into town, and then McLeod’ll have to find the preacher, convince him to come out in the middle of the night instead of waiting for morning. Ninety minutes or more for the trip back, dependin’ on if the preacher rides horseback or uses a buckboard. So five hours, give or take an hour, I reckon. Why?”

“Do you think anyone would have a reason to come out here any time soon?”

Jackson shook his head slowly. “I doubt it. Why?”

Nate shut the barn door and jammed a bar through the two handles so no one could open it easily without them hearing. “’Cause I want to give you a proper good-bye.”

He reached up and cupped Jackson’s head, drawing him down until their mouths met. Jackson tasted of burnt coffee, but he couldn’t have tasted better to Nate. They clung to each other, their tongues tangling, their hips grinding against each other before Jackson broke off the kiss.

“I can’t do this, Nate. It’s too dangerous. And it ain’t fair to Miss Sarah.”

Chapter Three

“It’s not a death sentence, darlin’,” Jackson murmured.

Sarah jerked her head up. His dark eyes assessed her, not in judgment but concern. “What?”

Clean-shaven and in the soft glow of the oil lamps lighting the lounge, Jackson didn’t look near as scary as he had last night. Especially when he pressed her knuckles against his lips with a fleeting kiss similar to the way he’d kissed her in front of the preacher that morning. He leaned forward and lowered his voice so the folks in the hotel lounge wouldn’t hear. “Bein’ married to me ain’t a death sentence.”

No? So why did
’til death do you part
still pound in her ears louder than Bandit’s hoof beats on a hard-packed road?

Sarah swallowed as he lifted her left hand and ran a thumb over the wedding ring that her mother had once worn. The ring Josiah had produced when the preacher called for one. Right before the preacher declared them man and wife.

“You were staring at your ring as if it might poison you or some such. It’s just a gold band, and a used one at that.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Lots of women married men they hardly knew. Look at all the women who had come out west as mail-order brides. It could be worse. She could have been forced to marry Jed. She suppressed the shudder that ran through her at that thought. Jed wouldn’t have waited until they reached town to assert his husbandly rights. He probably would have taken her virginity as soon as they’d lost sight of the McLeod ranch, instead of taking her to a hotel for her wedding night.