Wish Upon a Cowboy (8 page)

Her big green eyes widened in astonishment and she clapped one hand to the center of her chest. "I've caused…?"

"You are the one who hit Hank with a spoon, aren't you?"

"I didn't hurt him," she defended herself lamely.

Jonas sighed and threw both hands wide. Was she deliberately missing the point?

"You couldn't hurt Hank if you backed a wagon over him." Feeling the need to move, to do something, he started pacing, kicking at the dirt beneath his feet. "I'm talking about how you carried on in there."

"For heaven's sake, Mackenzie."

He stopped in front of her and silently warned himself not to look too deeply into those green eyes. Or to notice how the top of her head reached only as high as his chin. Or how when she was angry, color rushed into her cheeks, giving her skin a glow that made him want to touch it.

Damn it.

He didn't want her here. Didn't need the distraction she dragged along with her like a shadow.

The sky rumbled overhead. From the corner of his eye, he spotted lightning flash against the ridge. His morning was quickly turning to crap. And a blond-haired fireball with soft green eyes and a curvy body wasn't helping anything. Pretty or not, she had to find out right now just who was the boss around here.

"What the hell was that all about, anyway?" he demanded, his voice as tight as his body.

She leaned in close and he caught a whiff of what smelled like lemons.

"How can you even ask me that?"

He pulled his head back to avoid breathing in her scent again. "It's not up to you to teach those men—or me –" he added, "manners."

"Someone should –" she started, but didn't finish because he cut her off abruptly.

"They work hard. We all do." Steeling himself, he met her gaze and still felt a slap of something hard and searing shake him to his boots. Damn it, he wasn't a kid anymore, stirred into a froth over a pretty face and sweet smell. Gritting his teeth, he went on determinedly. "We expect our meals to be plentiful and hot. We don't expect to get our hands smacked for not saying please and thank you."

She was simmering. He didn't need to see the flash of indignation in her eyes. He sensed it pulsing around her body like a heartbeat. Anger fairly rippled off of her in waves. He wouldn't have been surprised to see sparks shooting from the ends of her hair.

Well, she could be as mad as she wanted to be. It didn't matter a damn what she thought of him. Hell, it would probably be easier on them both if she couldn't stand the sight of him. Then at least she'd give up on that marrying nonsense for good and all. And maybe if she was shooting daggers at him all the time, his thoughts would quit straying to notions he had no business considering.

"I worked hard, too," she told him shortly.

Hell, he knew that. Breakfast was better than anything he'd had in longer than he cared to think about. Still he was boss around here and she'd better learn that now.

Bracing his feet wide apart, he folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her. "A cook cooks," he said. "Nothing else."

"That explains what happened to your house," she muttered.

His teeth ground together until he thought his jaw might break. And despite the small part of him that enjoyed her not backing down, he stood his ground. "So," he said, squeezing the words past thinned lips, "do we understand each other?"

Her mouth worked furiously as she drew several deep breaths. She clasped her hands together at her waist and squeezed until her knuckles whitened and paled against her dark green skirt.

And still he waited.

"I think so," she said at last, in no more than a strangled whisper. She dipped her head and looked up at him from beneath impossibly long, dark eyelashes. "You want plentiful, hot meals with no worrying about table manners."

That had cost her. He could see it. And one part of him admired the hell out of her for it. Anybody who could rein in a temper like hers had strength. She had the look of a woman who didn't give in lightly, or often. As that thought occurred to him, he also thought that perhaps he ought to be worried by her surrender. But in the next instant, Jonas decided there was no point in looking for trouble when it came looking for him often enough.

Nodding, he said. "That's right. Think you can do that?"

"Oh," she told him, still giving him that shaded stare, "I think I'll be able to manage."

"All right, then," he said with another nod. Frustration drained from him as he gave the sky another searching look. He smiled faintly. The once-threatening clouds had thinned into misty ribbons of darkness stretching haphazardly across the sun. Lowering his gaze to hers, he said. "Guess the storm's passed us by this time."

"Perhaps," she said, starting for the house again, "but the clouds are still there, so it's too early to be sure."

He watched her go and as his gaze drifted to the sway of her hips, he wondered idly if they'd been talking about the same storm.

Chapter Five

Once astride his horse, Jonas put everything but work out of his mind. A cold mountain wind shot past him and he hunched deeper into the folds of his jacket. Tugging his hat brim down low on his forehead, he squinted into the afternoon light. His sharp eye inspected each of the beeves he passed, judging their weights, mentally adding the tally of what he could expect come sale time. Thoughts of Hannah Lowell were put aside as he lost himself in plans for the future.

In his mind's eye, he could already see the ranch as it would be in just a few more years—barring, of course, floods, droughts, Indians, and the price of beef falling.

He half turned in the saddle to look back at the ranch house. His imagination conjured up a tree-lined graveled drive leading to the three-story house with its wide front porch. He could even see himself, lounging in a chair in the shade, talking to –

He scowled as the image of Hannah joined his dream self on that imaginary porch.

Damn it. Now she was invading not only his kitchen, but his mind, too.

"She's a pistol, all right," Elias said as his horse meandered toward Jonas's.

Turning his head, he looked at the older man. "How'd you know I was thinking about her?"

Elias snorted a laugh. "Hell, that look on your face meant either thoughts of Hannah or you're fixin' to kill somebody. Since I ain't heard you're at war with anyone in particular, I figured it had to be Hannah."

"She's a thorn in my side," Jonas admitted in a grumble. "I never should have hired her."

"Maybe not," Elias said, drawing his mount to a stop and looping the reins through his fingers. "But she sure can cook. Beats the hell outa the slop Juana sets out."

"Yeah." One small consolation. He'd even heard the men raving about the breakfast they'd been served by that hot-tempered woman. It seemed they were willing to put up with her shouts if she kept the grub coming.

"Why's she here, you reckon?" Elias asked, his gaze sliding to the ranch house some few hundred yards off. "A woman looks like her is usually married by now. Why's she want to come out to the middle of nowhere and be a ranch house cook?"

Married.

That word sure was getting a lot of use here lately.

Jonas folded his hands on the saddle pommel and rubbed the worn leather reins between his fingers. No reason not to tell him, he thought. Hell, even though she'd agreed to let the whole subject of marriage drop, he had a feeling she'd start talking about it sooner or later. Might as well let Elias in on it now, so he'd be prepared. Besides, the old coot might even get a laugh out of it.

"She says she's here to marry me," Jonas told him and waited for a smile that didn't come.

Instead, the older man simply stared at him, his face expressionless, his eyes wary. "To marry you."

"Yeah."

"She's from Massachusetts," Elias muttered, his gaze now locked on the ranch house, "and she's come to marry you." The man's voice, deep and slow, blended in and was swallowed by the muffled roar of hundreds of hooves stamping into the dirt. He rubbed one gnarled hand across whiskery cheeks and swallowed heavily.

Jonas frowned at the man and shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. He hadn't expected the old badger to go spooky on him. "Jesus, old man," he said on a short bark of laughter. "I only told you 'cause I figured you'd think it funny."

"Did you?" Elias asked suddenly, cocking his head to one side. "Find it funny, I mean."

"Funny? No." Jonas inhaled sharply. "Damn strange. Crazy, even. But funny?" He shook his head. Memories, old and cobweb-covered, rose up in his mind like a dust cloud on a hot, still day. Not only did he carry snatches of images of parents he couldn't really remember, but other, more recent memories were always there in the shadows, waiting for their chance to ambush him.

The problem, he told himself, is that he was a man with too much past and not enough future.

Muttering under his breath, he narrowed his gaze, focusing on his herd. The here and now. Hoping to keep his mind too busy to race into the past.

But once prodded into life, those dusty images wouldn't be silenced so easily. As if conjured by his reluctance, the first glimpses of blurred faces flickered across his brain. A man, black-haired, blue-eyed. A woman, with a sweet smile and a dimple he knew he carried in his own cheek. His parents, he guessed, though he couldn't be sure.

He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, trying to stem the tide flooding past hastily constructed mental barriers. But they kept coming. Images, pictures. A town he didn't know. Lightning. Someone laughing. A scream.

A muffled groan lodged in his throat. Always the same. Bits and pieces. Snatches of a past long gone. Gritting his teeth, Jonas turned his back on the child he'd been and braced himself for the other, more recent images that, even after ten long years, still had the power to tighten his chest and close his throat.

Wide brown eyes, soft laughter, whispers in the night—then one day, a silent house. And red. So much red.

"Mac? Mac, boy." Elias's voice dragged him from the drowning pool of mind shadows and back to the sunlit range.

Opening his eyes, Jonas took a long look around him.

The familiar landscape soothed him. Cattle. Cowboys in the distance. The mountains, caps covered in snow that glistened like quartz crystal in the midday sun. He pulled in a deep breath, letting the cold, crisp air clear his mind and settle his spirit.

This was what mattered, he told himself firmly. The past couldn't be changed. The future couldn't be known. It was this moment, this time he had to concentrate on. Work at. All the rest was no more substantial than the morning mist that clung by wispy fingers to the mountainside and was gone again by noon.

"You all right, boy?"

He slanted a look at the man beside him. Concern etched itself into Elias's lined, weathered face, reminding Jonas that the older man knew what memories drove him, haunted him. And he wondered if Elias, too, was visited by ghosts.

They'd never spoken of it—as if silently agreeing that talking about the past would only serve to keep it alive, fresh in their minds. But Jonas had discovered that silence didn't protect him from the remembering. The pain of knowing he'd failed the one person who'd needed him the most.

"'Course I'm all right," he muttered thickly, turning his head away from the too-knowing gray eyes watching him. "Why wouldn't I be? The herd looks good. Roundup's just a few weeks away, and there's only a few days until Saturday."

Elias grumbled something under his breath.

"What was that?" he asked, though he knew damn well what the man had said. Same thing he said every damn week.

The older man's jaw worked like he was trying to spit out something that tasted foul as sin. "I said," he repeated, "you don't need to be goin' into town every Saturday night."

Yes, just what he'd thought. A flash of irritation shot through him and was gone again. Pointless to get mad at such an old argument. "That's my business, isn't it?"

"With roundup coming, I figured you'd have better things to do."

Jonas tightened his grip on the reins. The rawhide strips bit into his fingers. You figured wrong."

"I can see that."

Sighing, Jonas turned on his oldest friend. The man who'd been a father to him. "Don't start on me."

"Start?" Elias snorted. "I been saying this for near ten years."

"Then you ought to be about ready to quit."

"Not hardly."

"Damn it," Jonas said, straining to keep his voice even. "I don't need a gray-bearded mama clucking over me."

"No," Elias grumbled. "What you need is a mule kick to the head."

Despite his frustration, Jonas chuckled shortly. "Well, until you find the mule to do the job… leave me be."

The dinner bell rang out loudly, pealing across the range. Heads turned toward the house and, as one, the cowboys started their horses in. After a long morning's work, they were eager for food and the chance to sit on something that wasn't moving.

Jonas and Elias, the tension still thick between them, also headed for the house. "You reckon," Elias asked, "that new girl's settled down some since this morning?"

Jonas smiled, pleased his old friend had decided to let go of their long-standing quarrel—at least for the moment. "Oh, he said, remembering vividly the talk he and Hannah had had under the tree that morning. "There won't be any more trouble."

"I don't know, seems a hardheaded female to me. One to keep an eye on." His scowl deepened.

"She might be hardheaded," Jonas agreed, giving his horse a nudge to quicken its pace, "but she knows who the boss is here."

*  *  *

That notion dissolved a few minutes later as he stepped into the kitchen. Rather than sitting at the table eating their dinner, the men were still standing in a group just inside the door.

"What's going on?" he asked and got no answer.

With Elias right behind him, Jonas pushed his way through the small crowd, wondering what in hell could be keeping his cowhands from eating. He stopped dead when he got a clear look at the table.

"Your dinner's ready, gentlemen," Hannah announced in a voice that let him know she was well pleased with herself.