Wyoming Bold (Mills & Boon M&B) (22 page)

His movements, urgent and hard and deep, lifted her off the bed in a shivering ecstasy of satisfaction even the first time.

“You said that it usually took a little time for people to get used to each other like this and enjoy it, especially for women,” she reminded him as he laid her back on the pillows.

“Well, yes,” he said, grinning. “But I neglected to mention that I was speaking about men who are far less skillful and patient than I am.” He chuckled.

“Skillful. Patient.” She gasped. “Sometimes a little too patient...!”

“Oh, am I?” He pushed down, hard. “Better?”

“More!” she gasped.

“Like this?” He caught her thigh and pulled her up to him, riveted her body to his and took her in a blind, pulsing fever that drowned them both in hot, sweet relief from a tension that had almost been pain.

She cried out, shuddering and shuddering as the pleasure went beyond anything she’d even dreamed.

“Yes,” he groaned at her throat. “Oh, God, baby, never like this...never!”

“I...know!”

They paused just for a few seconds. But the fever was burning too high, too bright, and they no sooner stopped than they started all over again.

“I shouldn’t do this,” he groaned. “You’re still weak...”

“Weak? I’ll show you...weak!” She wrapped her legs around his hips and arched up at him, her eyes wide-open, watching him as the endless pleasure wrapped her up in fire and fury. He dimmed in her vision as the final explosion came, so raw and sensual that her teeth sank into his shoulder as he shivered above her in one last exquisite movement.

* * *

H
E
 
DREW
 
HER
 
against him. Moonlight streamed in through the sheer curtains on their balcony window overlooking Montego Bay.

“I should have married you the night you came to the back door and said someone was trying to kill me,” he said. “Think of all the wasted time!”

“That’s okay,” she murmured with a contented sigh. “We’ll make up for it.”

He smoothed back her damp hair. “Tell me about the future.”

She smiled. “Long and sweet.”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

He sighed. “I was pretty sure of that. But it’s nice to have it confirmed.”

She brushed her hand over his hair-roughened chest. “It’s nice of you to have the cabin rebuilt for Mama. Now that it’s safe for her to live there, that is.”

“It was the least we could do. She loves the place.”

“I do, too.”

“You can’t go live with her,” he pointed out. “I’d be lonely.”

“I’d only go if you went with me,” she agreed.

His eyes were briefly troubled. “Merissa, there isn’t going to be anyone else coming after me, or you or Clara?”

“No,” she said. She was still. “But that young woman in Texas... There was already an attempt. She doesn’t even know...!”

“It’s all right,” he promised. “I’ll phone Hayes Carson first thing in the morning and tell him.”

“He’ll think I’m nuts.”

“Not at all. He’s a nice guy. I’ll take you to Texas to meet him and his wife one day.”

“That would be nice.”

“As long as we go together,” he told her, very seriously. “I’m never leaving you again.”

“You can bet money on that,” she agreed. “I won’t let you.”

He pulled the covers up with a sigh. “How about a tour of the historic places tomorrow?”

“Oh, yes, and I want to try ginger beer. I’ve been reading about it.”

“You can have a whole keg if you like.” He drew her closer and looked into her eyes in the moonlight. “In fact, you can have anything you like. Anything at all.”

She reached up and pulled his mouth down to hers. “I just want you.”

He kissed her back, tenderly. “You’d have to chase me away with a tank,” he mused. “And even then I’d come back.”

She nuzzled her cheek against his. “Life is sweet,” she whispered.

He sighed. “Yes, my darling. Life is sweet.”

* * *

B
ACK
 
IN
T
EXAS
, a furious politician was having a closed-door meeting with a shady character of his acquaintance.

“How the hell did he let himself get killed by some local yokel in Montana?” Matt Helm raged.

“Beats me, boss, but he was burned alive.”

“Did he leave a trail that leads to me?” the politician demanded angrily.

“Not that we can find. I got one of my brother’s friends who’s a detective to check it out for me. He says everything’s cool.”

“Well, at least he got rid of the loose ends. His colleague, that stupid woman who got herself arrested at the hospital, is dead. The computer images of him wearing the damned watch are erased, we have the computer...” He stopped and shook his head. “Damned shame that man he sent after Cash Grier’s secretary missed!”

“They think he was just some religious lunatic after her father,” the man soothed. “No worries there. Martin said he hired another man to do it, someone reliable.”

“Can we trust him, you think?” he asked sarcastically.

“Maybe. We don’t know who he hired. He was hooked on meth and it was frying his brain,” he said irritably. “He got nuts near the end, took crazy chances. He was delusional. He never used to make mistakes like that.”

“People who use drugs are crazy,” the politician agreed. “That’s why we just supply them.”

“Damned right.”

“You go up to Wyoming yourself and make sure the trail’s clean,” Helm told his henchman. “And see if you can find that damned watch. If you do, destroy it.”

“Gosh, boss, it’s worth a king’s ransom...!”

“It’s worth life in prison for both of us! Got that?” he demanded furiously.

“Okay, okay. If I can locate it, I’ll break it into small pieces and bury it somewhere.”

“He must have had pieces of clothing with him, at least,” Helm continued. “In a suitcase, in his car maybe. You find it!”

“I’ll do my best, boss. But my contacts say they never found even a wallet, and his cell phone was too damaged to get any information.”

“I just want this off my mind,” Helm told him. “The governor’s going to appoint a successor to the late lamented Senator Todd. I hope it’s going to be me, but even if it isn’t, I’ve got power and money behind me in the special election this spring. I don’t want any chance discoveries messing up my future. You tell Charro Mendez the same thing. He’d better be watching my back, if he wants any special favors for his cartel when I get in office.”

“I’ll tell him, boss.”

“I can’t be seen with him again.” He ran a hand through his hair nervously. “What a mess! What a damned mess! I can’t believe Rick Martin messed things up this badly. He was the best in the business—infiltrated the DEA, fed us information to keep our drug shipments safe, took out the opposition. And here he’s almost ruined everything because he couldn’t keep away from drugs!”

“At least nobody’s likely to connect the watch with us now,” the henchman said comfortingly. “The photo’s gone. Even if that girl can remember it, her testimony’s worth nothing. They can’t prove a thing.”

“Even if they could, we could swear that Martin acted on his own,” Helm said, nodding. “You’re right. Our hands are clean. It’s going to be fine.” He turned. “But you get up to Wyoming and tie up the loose ends.”

“What about the girl?”

Helm hesitated. She worked for Cash Grier. He knew Grier. It was dangerous to provoke the man. But they’d camouflaged their attempt on Carlie’s life once before by having their assassin seemingly target her minister father.

“Her father seems to draw lunatics, doesn’t he?” Helm said, staring at the other man. “I mean, it happened once...and we aren’t involved. Hell, we don’t even know who Martin hired, right?”

“That’s true, boss. No way to connect us to it. If he paid a guy to kill her, let him earn his money, I say.”

“So do I. Fewer complications. Find that watch and that shirt.”

“You can count on me, boss.”

Helm didn’t reply. That was what Rick Martin had told him just before he went to Wyoming to take out Dalton Kirk. That hadn’t ended well. In fact, his stupidity after the murder of the district attorney digging into Helm’s business had been the first sign of a breakdown. Imagine stealing a dead man’s watch and clothes and then actually wearing them to a drug bust where he was photographed? The utter stupidity of the act amazed him.

And then to alert Kirk about his presence and get himself killed... Where was that watch? He had to hope that his new enforcer could find it. He had a brilliant future ahead, replete with wealth and power. He wasn’t losing it because of a damned watch!

* * *

C
ASH
G
RIER
 
CAME
 
out of his office wearing a thoughtful expression. He glanced at Carlie. “Got that letter ready for me to mail?”

“Yes, sir. All it needs is a signature.” She handed him a neatly typed letter, on department letterhead, with an addressed, stamped envelope.

He read over it.

“If you’re looking for spelling mistakes, you won’t find a single one, and I do not use spell-checker,” she said with a smug grin.

He laughed. “I’ll take your word for it. Nice work.”

“Thanks, boss.”

He signed it, folded it and put it in the envelope.

“Oh, you had a call from that rancher in Wyoming. Dalton Kirk?”

He frowned. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“Something about that man who was killed. He said his wife had a premonition. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. But he wanted you to call him.”

“I’ll do it when I get back from lunch.”

“Yes, sir.”

She watched him go out the door before she pulled out a sandwich and a soft drink from her lunch box. It was her habit to eat at her desk. The chief never complained. He probably knew she couldn’t afford to eat out, except once in a great while.

She wondered what the Kirk man’s wife had told him? She hoped it wasn’t anything bad. Just lately, there had been quite a few unpleasant happenings around Jacobsville, Texas, including that wild man’s attack on her father. She shivered, remembering how that had ended.

The phone rang. She picked it up, wiping away peanut butter on her lips before she answered, “Chief Grier’s office.”

There was a brief pause. “Tell your father he’s next.”

Before she could say a word, the caller hung up. Carlie stared at the receiver with her heart racing. It was not going to be a good day.

* * * * *

If you loved Dalton’s story, don’t miss another smart, sexy Western tale in WYOMING TOUGH, where sparks fly between the oldest Kirk brother, Mallory, and his new ranch hand. Turn the page—and check your local bookseller and e-tailer—for a hint of the explosive romance between Mallory Kirk and Morie Brannt....

CHAPTER ONE

E
DITH
D
ANIELLE
M
ORENA
 
Brannt was not impressed with her new boss. The head honcho of the Rancho Real, or Royal Ranch in Spanish, near Catelow, Wyoming, was big and domineering and had a formidable bad attitude that he shared with all his hired hands.

Morie, as she was known to her friends, had a hard time holding back her fiery temper when Mallory Dawson Kirk raised his voice. He was impatient and hot-tempered and opinionated. Just like Morie’s father, who’d opposed her decision to become a working cowgirl. Her dad opposed everything. She’d just told him she was going to find a job, packed her bags and left. She was twenty-three. He couldn’t really stop her legally. Her mother, Shelby, had tried gentle reason. Her brother, Cort, had tried, too, with even less luck. She loved her family, but she was tired of being chased for who she was related to instead of who she was inside. Being a stranger on somebody else’s property was an enchanting proposition. Even with Mallory’s temper, she was happy being accepted for a poor, struggling female on her own in the harsh world. Besides that, she wanted to learn ranch work and her father refused to let her so much as lift a rope on his ranch. He didn’t want her near his cattle.

“And another thing,” Mallory said harshly, turning to Morie with a cold glare, “there’s a place to hang keys when you’re through with them. You never take a key out of the stable and leave it in your pocket. Is that clear?”

Morie, who’d actually transported the key to the main tack room off the property in her pocket at a time it was desperately needed, flushed. “Sorry, sir,” she said stiffly. “Won’t happen again.”

“It won’t if you expect to keep working here,” he assured her.

“My fault,” the foreman, old Darby Hanes, chimed in, smiling. “I forgot to tell her.”

Mallory considered that and nodded finally. “That’s what I always liked most about you, Darb, you’re honest.” He turned to Morie. “An example I’ll expect you to follow, as our newest hire, by the way.”

Her face reddened. “Sir, I’ve never taken anything that didn’t belong to me.”

He looked at her cheap clothes, the ragged hem of her jeans, her worn boots. But he didn’t judge. He just nodded.

He had thick black hair, parted on one side and a little shaggy around the ears. He had big ears and a big nose, deep-set brown eyes under a jutting brow, thick eyebrows and a mouth so sensuous that Morie hadn’t been able to take her eyes off it at first. That mouth made up for his lack of conventional good looks. He had big, well-manicured hands and a voice like deep velvet, as well as big feet, in old, rugged, dirt-caked boots. He was the boss, and nobody ever forgot it, but he got down in the mud and blood with his men and worked as if he was just an employee himself.

In fact, all three Kirk brothers were like that. Mallory was the oldest, at thirty-six. The second brother, Cane—a coincidence if there ever was one, considering Morie’s mother’s maiden name, even if hers was spelled with a
K
—was thirty-four, a veteran of the Second Gulf War, and he was missing an arm from being in the front lines in combat. He was confronting a drinking problem and undergoing therapy, which his brothers were trying to address.

The youngest brother, at thirty-one, was Dalton. He was a former border agent with the department of immigration, and his nickname was, for some odd reason, Tank. He’d been confronted by a gang of narco-smugglers on the Arizona border, all alone. He was shot to pieces and hospitalized for weeks, during which most of the physicians had given him up for dead because of the extent of his injuries. He confounded them all by living. Nevertheless, he quit the job and came home to the family ranch in Wyoming. He never spoke of the experience. But once Morie had seen him react to the backfire of an old ranch truck by diving to the ground. She’d laughed, but old Darby Hanes had silenced her and told her about Dalton’s past as a border agent. She’d never laughed at his odd behaviors again. She supposed that both he and Cane had mental and emotional scars, as well as physical ones, from their past experiences. She’d never been shot at, or had anything happen to her. She’d been as sheltered as a hothouse orchid, both by her parents and her brother. This was her first taste of real life. She wasn’t certain yet if she was going to like it.

She’d lived on her father’s enormous ranch all her life. She could ride anything—her father had taught her himself. But she wasn’t accustomed to the backbreaking work that daily ranch chores required, because she hadn’t been permitted to do them at home, and she’d been slow her first couple of days.

Darby Hanes had taken her in hand and shown her how to manage the big bales of hay that the brothers still packed into the barn—refusing the more modern rolled bales as being inefficient and wasteful—so that she didn’t hurt herself when she lifted them. He’d taught her how to shoe horses, even though the ranch had a farrier, and how to doctor sick calves. In less than two weeks, she’d learned things that nothing in her college education had addressed.

“You’ve never done this work before,” Darby accused, but he was smiling.

She grimaced. “No. But I needed a job, badly,” she said, and it was almost the truth. “You’ve been great, Mr. Hanes. I owe you a lot for not giving me away. For teaching me what I needed to know here.” And what a good thing it was, she thought privately, that her father didn’t know. He’d have skinned Hanes alive for letting his sheltered little girl shoe a horse.

He waved a hand dismissively. “Not a problem. You make sure you wear those gloves,” he added, nodding toward her back pocket. “You have beautiful hands. Like my wife used to,” he added with a faraway look in his eyes and a faint smile. “She played the piano in a restaurant when I met her. We went on two dates and got married. Never had kids. She passed two years ago, from cancer.” He stopped for a minute and took a long breath. “Still miss her,” he added stiffly.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’ll see her again,” he replied. “Won’t be too many years, either. It’s part of the cycle, you see. Life and death. We all go through it. Nobody escapes.”

That was true. How odd to be in a philosophical discussion on a ranch.

He lifted an eyebrow. “You think ranch hands are high-school dropouts, do you?” he mused. “I have a degree from MIT. I was their most promising student in theoretical physics, but my wife had a lung condition and they wanted her to come west to a drier climate. Her dad had a ranch....” He stopped, chuckling. “Sorry. I tend to run on. Anyway, I worked on the ranch and preferred it to a lab. After she died, I came here to work. So here I am. But I’m not the only degreed geek around here. We have three part-timers who are going to college on scholarships the Kirk brothers set up for them.”

“What a nice bunch of guys!” she exclaimed.

“They really are. All of them seem tough as nails, and they mostly are, but they’ll help anyone in need.” He shifted. “Paid my wife’s hospital bill after the insurance lapsed. A small fortune, and they didn’t even blink.”

Her throat got tight. What a generous thing to do. Her family had done the same for people, but she didn’t dare mention that. “That was good of them,” she said with genuine feeling.

“Yes. I’ll work here until I die, if they’ll keep me. They’re great people.”

They heard a noise and turned around. The boss was standing behind them.

“Thanks for the testimonial, but I believe there are cattle waiting to be dipped in the south pasture....” Mallory commented with pursed lips and twinkling dark eyes.

Darby chuckled. “Yes, there are. Sorry, boss, I was just lauding you to the young lady. She was surprised to find out that I studied philosophy.”

“Not to mention theoretical physics,” the boss added dryly.

“Yes, well, I won’t mention your degree in biochemistry if you like,” Darby said outrageously.

Mallory quirked an eyebrow. “Thanks.”

Darby winked at Morie and left them alone.

Mallory towered over the slight brunette. “Your name is unusual. Morie...?”

She laughed. “My full name is Edith Danielle Morena Brannt,” she replied. “My mother knew I’d be a brunette, because both my parents are, so they added
morena,
which means
brunette
in Spanish. I had, uh, Spanish great-grandparents,” she stuttered, having almost given away the fact that they were titled Spanish royalty. That would never do. She wanted to be perceived as a poor, but honest, cowgirl. Her last name wasn’t uncommon in South Texas, and Mallory wasn’t likely to connect it with King Brannt, who was a true cattle baron.

He cocked his head. “Morie,” he said. “Nice.”

“I’m really sorry, about the key,” she said.

He shrugged. “I did the same thing last month, but I’m the boss,” he added firmly. “I don’t make mistakes. You remember that.”

She gave him an open smile. “Yes, sir.”

He studied her curiously. She was small and nicely rounded, with black hair that was obviously long and pulled into a bun atop her head. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was pleasant to look at, with those big brown eyes and that pretty mouth and perfect skin. She didn’t seem the sort to do physical labor on a ranch.

“Sir?” she asked, uncomfortable from the scrutiny.

“Sorry. I was just thinking that you don’t look like the usual sort we hire for ranch hands.”

“I do have a college degree,” she defended herself.

“You do? What was your major?”

“History,” she said, and looked defensive. “Yes, it’s dates. Yes, it’s about the past. Yes, some of it can be boring. But I love it.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “You should talk to Cane. His degree is in anthropology. Pity it wasn’t paleontology, because we’re close to Fossil Lake. That’s part of the Green River Formation, and there are all sorts of fossils there. Cane loved to dig.” His face hardened. “He won’t talk about going back to it.”

“Because of his arm?” she asked bluntly. “That wouldn’t stop him. He could do administrative work on a dig.” She flushed. “I minored in anthropology,” she confessed.

He burst out laughing. “No wonder you like ranch work. Did you go on digs?” He knew, as some people didn’t, that archaeology was one of four subfields of anthropology.

“I did. Drove my mother mad. My clothes were always full of mud and I looked like a street child most of the time.” She didn’t dare tell him that she’d come to dinner in her dig clothing when a famous visiting politician from Europe was at the table, along with some members of a royal family. Her father had been eloquent. “There were some incidents when I came home muddy,” she added with a chuckle.

“I can imagine.” He sighed. “Cane hasn’t adjusted to the physical changes. He’s stopped going to therapy and he won’t join in any family outings. He stays in his room playing online video games.” He stopped. “Good Lord, I can’t believe I’m telling you these things.”

“I’m as quiet as a clam,” she pointed out. “I never tell anything I know.”

“You’re a good listener. Most people aren’t.”

She smiled. “You are.”

He chuckled. “I’m the boss. I have to listen to people.”

“Good point.”

“I’ll just finish getting those bales of hay stacked,” she said. She stopped and glanced up at him. “You know, most ranchers these days use the big bales....”

“Stop right there,” he said curtly. “I don’t like a lot of the so-called improvements. I run this ranch the way my dad did, and his dad before him. We rotate crops, and cattle, avoid unnecessary supplements, and maintain organic crops and grass strains. And we don’t allow oil extraction anywhere on this ranch. Lots of fracking farther south in Wyoming to extract oil from shale deposits, but we won’t sell land for that, or lease it.”

She knew they were environmentally sensitive. The family had been featured in a small northwestern cattlemen’s newspaper that she’d seen lying on a table in the bunkhouse.

“What’s fracking?” she asked curiously.

“They inject liquids at high speed into shale rock to fracture it and allow access to oil and gas deposits. It can contaminate the water table if it isn’t done right, and some people say it causes earthquakes.” His dark eyes were serious. “I’m not taking any chances with our water. It’s precious.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

He shrugged. “No offense. I’ve had the lectures on the joys of using genetically modified crops and cloning.” He leaned down. “Over my dead body.”

She laughed in spite of herself. Her elfin face radiated joy. Her dark eyes twinkled with it. He looked at her for a long moment, smiling quizzically. She was pretty. Not only pretty, she had a sense of humor. She was unlike his current girlfriend, a suave Eastern sophisticate named Gelly Bruner, whose family had moved to Wyoming a few years previously and bought a small ranch near the Kirks. They’d met at a cocktail party in Denver, where her father was a speaker at a conference Mallory had attended. He and Gelly went around together, but he had no real interest in a passionate relationship. Not at the moment anyway. He’d had a bad experience in the past that had soured him on relationships. He knew instinctively that Gelly would only be around as long as he had money to spend on her. He had no illusions about his lack of good looks. He got women because he was rich. Period.

“Deep thoughts, sir?” she teased.

He laughed curtly. “Too deep to share. Get to work, kid. If you need anything, Darby’s nearby.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, and wondered for a moment if she was somehow in the military. It seemed right to give him that form of address. She’d heard cowboys use it with her father since she was a child. Some men radiated authority and resolve. Her father was one. So was this man.

“Now you’re doing the deep-thinking thing,” he challenged.

She laughed. “Just stray thoughts. Nothing interesting.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “What was your favorite period? In history,” he added.

“Oh! Well, actually, it was the Tudor period.”

Both thick, dark eyebrows went up. “Really. And which Tudor was your favorite?”

“Mary.”