A Fire in the Blood Page 4

  She ran her fingers across his beard-stubbled jaw. "Your beard is awfully heavy. I thought men with Indian blood didn't have beards."

  He reined in with an oath while she clung to him tight as a tick. His pants were getting tight, too, and the last thing on earth he wanted was to let her know how she really affected him. Jess peeled her away from his body and dropped her on the ground. "You could've broken your neck with that damn fool stunt!" he said as he dismounted and stalked back to where her horse stood in the waving grass.

  "Stunt! You say I could've been killed and still call it a stunt!"

  He picked up the cut cinch strap and held it out, glaring at her. "Stunt," he echoed flatly.

  "Well, since you have the biggest horse—and since you bathe regularly—I guess you'll have to carry me to the J Bar," she said cheerfully, ignoring his scowl and her own pounding heart.

  The other men came tearing up and leaped from their horses.

  "Miz Lissa, you all right?" Rob asked breathlessly.

  "Gal, you scared more years off'n me than the blizzard of '76!" Luke Deevers said in his sharp Tennessee twang.

  "I'm all right. One of the cinches just broke. Nothing to get excited about. Mr. Robbins saved me from taking a spill."

  "Oh, you might just take a spill yet, Princess," Jess said in a silky voice that only she could hear.

  "A durn good thing yer daddy believes in good old Denver saddles with double rigging, else yew cudda been throwed," Deevers said, noticing the cut leather but saying nothing.

  "Can you repair it?" Jess asked the old man.

  Deevers spit a shot of tobacco juice like a Union Pacific engine expelling steam, then replied, "Reckon I kin sew 'er up good 'nough fer a leetle bitty gal like Miz Lissa to ride it home."

  "Coward," she whispered to Jess, then turned and stalked away.

  Repairing the saddle took little time and they were soon on their way again. Lissa rode with Rob Ostler and Matt Helmer, forcing laughter at their outrageous cowboy humor while she stole furtive glances at Jess, still the solitary point rider.

  "'N this here English feller starts talkin 'bout goin' ta Paree. Then old Deevers, he says, 'I been ta Paree.' 'You been to Paree, France?' the English dude asks. 'How'd you get to Paree?' 'Went with a herd of beeves,' old Deevers says. 'How in hell'— beggin' yer pardon, Miz Lissa, but old Deevers, he's powerful profane," he added as an aside to her. She nodded with a smile and he reddened, then continued. "Wal, the English feller he kindy gets his back up 'n asks, 'How'd you git across the ocean with a herd of beeves?' 'Didn't cross no ocean,' says Luke, 'trailed them critters around the Divide!'"

  Everyone around them burst into laughter, even Pappy Deevers, who had heard the story told on him for years.

  "Tell us about the time you tangled with that lantern-jawed bronc at the Triple E," Matt urged Rob.

  With a shy look at Lissa, Rob warmed to his subject with the zeal of a natural-born storyteller. "Wal, I climbed aboard thet critter with a belly full of butterflies, I wanna tell yew." Lissa grew restive, and was only half listening to the young wrangler's tale of the high-bucking bronc. She was glad when he concluded, "I ain't never goin ta ride no broncs agin."

  As everyone laughed, Ostler continued to pledge that his bronc-busting days were over forever. Then an impulse born of boredom and frustration seized Lissa and she asked, "You don't bust horses, but how about racing yours? Seems to me I recall beating you last summer. Bet I can do it again."

  "Aw, Miz Lissa, I let you win that time."

  A chorus of guffaws drowned out the young cowhand's protests until he threw up his hands. "All right, I'll race. Where do you want to—"

  "Right here! I'll race you to that big rock up ahead," Lissa said as she dug her heels into her gelding. The startled horse took off at a gallop with a whooping Ostler close behind her, his hat waving wildly up and down as he urged his rangy buckskin in pursuit of her big gray.

  From his vantage point on the rise, Jess watched the two young fools head toward the sharply jutting promontory in the center of the valley floor. Then his eyes swept across the terrain in front of them. Winter snows had been heavy, followed by spring rains. The creeks in the valley had overflowed their banks. In marshy, low-lying areas, the ground was treacherous. Lissa, pulling well ahead of Rob Ostler, was heading for a brushy, overgrown area that could be dangerous.

  Cursing, Jess kicked Blaze into a gallop and headed after the reckless girl. By the time he came within fifty yards of her. Ostler was calling out for her to stop as he reined in his mount and turned it away from the creek. Ignoring him, she jumped the shallow, swiftly running stream and plunged ahead until the gray's legs sank quickly into the treacherous mire, throwing her. She, too, began to sink.

  "Quicksand!" Ostler yelled as he began to uncoil his lariat, sliding the loop wide.

  Jess, too, reached for his ketch rope as Lissa flailed in the quagmire, sinking deeper with every desperate move she made. "You have a stronger reata than I do—pull out the gray. I'll get the girl," Jess commanded.

  The young hand tossed his heavy grass rope around the gray's neck and proceeded to haul him out of the quicksand. Jess, with his lighter Mexican reata of braided rawhide, quickly dropped the loop around Lissa.

  "Put it under your arms and hold on to it," he shouted.

  She obeyed him and he pulled her free. When he dismounted, she was sprawled on all fours on the stream bank, gasping for breath and covered with slimy sand.

  Lissa saw his fancy black boots stop in front of her. She sat back on her haunches and looked up at him. "You know how to do anything but scowl?" she asked, raising one grimy hand to him.

  He pulled her up roughly. "You haven't given me any reason not to scowl. That was the dumbest damned thing I've seen since my commander tried to negotiate with a Tuareg chieftain."

  She began to brush off the excess debris with her hands. "What's a Tuareg? An Indian? Were you in the army?"

  Jess ignored the questions as his eyes swept over her soaked body. Damnation, even covered with muck she was beautiful. Every curve of her breasts and hips was revealed by the ooze-plastered clothes. "You're a mess and you reek like a dead cow rotting in the sun."

  "I have clean clothes in my pack," she muttered. "Just give me a few minutes to scrub off in the creek and change."

  "Ten minutes or I'll tie you to one of the pack- horses," Jess threatened as the rest of the men rode up with the pack animals.

  Luke, Matt, and Festus were a great deal more concerned over her safety than was the hateful gunman. She fought the childish urge to stick out her tongue at his retreating back. Why was it that everything she did around Jesse Robbins seemed to backfire on her, making her look like a spoiled child? Couldn't anything go right? She stomped over to her luggage.

  As she was unfastening the straps of her portmanteau, a thought occurred to her. We'll just see, Jesse Robbins, what you do about this! A slow smile spread across her face as she seized a carefully chosen change of clothes from the pack and headed for a copse of cottonwoods that sheltered the creek.

  Barely within the time allotted, she emerged from the trees, dressed in a frilly white blouse and green silk skirt, which was cut with narrow paneled gores, completely unsuitable for riding. She walked briskly up to where Jess was talking to Luke Deevers. "I'm ready," she said sweetly.

  He turned and his eyes narrowed as they swept down her figure. "How in the hell do you plan to ride in that regalia?"

  She shrugged ingenuously and grinned at him. "This is the only thing I brought—other than two low-cut evening gowns." That was not strictly the truth, but the small oversight suited her purpose. "I guess I'll just have to ride on the front of your

  saddle . . ." She watched his whole body stiffen. He looked as if he were going to shake her until her teeth rattled.

  "You brassy little bitch," he muttered low beneath his breath. Jess turned and gave the command to mount up. Then he swung onto his big stallion and reached down for her, lifti
ng her across the saddle. She put her arms around his waist and her breasts pressed intimately against his chest. Her hips wriggled against his inner thighs until he reached down with steely fingers and held her still.

  "Ouch, that hurts. You're pinching me."

  "Lady, that's nothing compared to what you're doing to me," he said darkly. "Is that what you've been wanting to hear? Well, now you've heard it, so shut up and sit still. I'm in no mood for conversation."

  After they had ridden for a few minutes, she said, "You never did tell me what a Tuareg was."

  He ignored her and fixed his eyes on the horizon.

  She studied his profile as they rode in silence. His beard was a heavy black stubble that made him look piratical and fierce. Again, she wondered about his family. She could see the thick black curls of his chest hair peeking out above the open collar of his shirt. Half-breeds normally had little body hair. His face did not have the flat contours or curved roman nose of an Indian even though his complexion was as swarthy as any savage's. The straight blade of a nose and cleanly chiseled brow and jawline looked almost Latin.

  "You're Mexican, not Indian."

  He looked down at her, startled. "No, I'm Indian, too.”

  "Then you are Mexican," she said with satisfaction. "You might as well talk to me, Jess. It's a long boring ride to J Bar. Tell me about your family," she wheedled. When he did not answer she said, "All right. I'll tell you about mine. My mother was a St. Louis belle, a Busch. She died in a cholera epidemic when I was very young, so all I remember of her is what Papa's told me. Papa must've loved her very much because he never remarried all these years. He built J Bar up from nothing— started with a fifty-dollar grubstake and worked it into the largest ranch in southeast Wyoming. He insisted I have a proper education the way my mother would've wanted, so he sent me to live with my Aunt Edith and Uncle Phineas when I was eight years old."

  He laughed as she babbled on. "As an old partner of mine used to say, 'You sure was first in line when tongues was give out'." He could feel her bristling and looked down into her blazing gold eyes. "Have you ever had a thought in that beautiful empty little head of yours besides what you were going to wear or who was going to amuse you today?"

  "You make me sound incredibly shallow," she said softly. "I should be furious—I was furious, but. . . maybe you're right. I do usually get my way." She gave him a wistful smile.

  He snorted in derision. "You've got "every man in the territory jumping through hoops for you."

  "Every man but you." She sighed. "I guess that's why I'm interested in you. It surely isn't because of your charming personality."

  "So that's it, is it. I'm a challenge?" He cocked one eyebrow cynically and looked down at her. "I don't think so, lady. You're a ripe little virgin, all ready for the plucking—curious as hell to find out if the man-woman business is more than just hand-holding and moonlight. And here comes the mysterious, forbidden stranger. The last man on earth your daddy'd ever approve of. You want me to do a lot more than just scrape and bow over you like the rest of your legions of admirers, Princess."

  She reached up with a squeal of outrage to slap his face but he caught her wrist and held it fast. She struggled, kicking and squirming, trying to raise her other hand. The big black sidestepped nervously and Jess swore, seizing her other hand and subduing her roughly.

  Between gritted teeth he rasped out, "You're causing a scene for your daddy's men. If you don't want them tattling back to him, you'd better straighten up and at least try to act like a lady, even if it puts a real strain on your liver."

  She subsided with a glare and leaned as far away from him as she could, mortified by the accuracy of his assessment, but too honest to deny it to herself even though she wanted to do so. "You're an insufferable cad," she said with as much dignity as she could muster.

  He laughed mirthlessly.

  As the day wore on, the horizon billowed up with fat, fluffy gray clouds that moved toward them. The wind gusted up to gale force, stinging their eyes with dust and sand. Then the rains came pouring down.

  "Damn, not so much as a sapling for shelter," Jess muttered, scanning the horizon through the driving rain. "We'll have to keep pushing on and hope we can find some shelter before the lightning starts up," he shouted to Deevers. The old man nodded, and they rode silently while the forces of nature erupted around them.

  Jess could feel Lissa shivering as the cold rain soaked through their clothes. "Surely a bold adventuress like you isn't afraid of a little storm?" he teased as he reached back to unfasten his saddle roll.

  "I've hated storms ever since I was a little girl," she admitted.

  "You're taking a chill. That frilly thing is pretty but not very practical out here on the high plains." He could nearly see through the sheer batiste blouse. It melted against her skin with a translucent whitish gleam, revealing the outlines of her low-cut lace camisole. Only the row of ruffles down the front kept him from seeing the color of her nipples through the thin, soaked cloth! Their impudent pebbly outline protruded sharply against the fabric. Damn, before he knew it he was dreaming about touching them, feeling them arch up against his mouth when he suckled the delicate points. He growled in frustration as she snuggled closer against him.

  Jess unrolled his poncho with a sharp flick of his wrist, and pulled it over his head, covering them both at the same time. Her arms circled his waist tightly, and she laid her head against his chest. Soon a layer of warm body heat cocooned them inside the heavy-woven rain gear. He could smell her orange blossom fragrance mixed with the subtle scent of woman, and he knew he was growing hard.

  Lissa felt the pressure of his erection against her thigh. So, she was just a spoiled little virgin? Well, he was just as interested in her as she was in him. In spite of her misery a small burble of laughter welled up inside her.

  "Does it put a real strain on your liver riding next to me this way?" she whispered, throwing his words back at him.

  He swore, muttering, "It isn't my liver that's strained, lady."

  A few bolts of lightning zigzagged across the horizon. Then one struck just in front of Deevers's horse. He snarled an oath and raised his fist at the sky, yelling, "All right, yew ole bald-headed son of a bitch up there! Yew want ta kill me, git it done er quit foolin'!"

  "Jeehosaphat! Deevers, don't say thet!" Rob gulped and pulled his horse away from the crotchety old man.

  Matt Helmes laughed. "He always does that. Ain't never got him killed yet."

  "Jist the same, I ain't hankerin' after a belly full o’ lightnin' bolts. I'll jest ride clear o’ him fer a spell."

  Another jagged shaft of lightning hit the ground about twenty yards from them. Lissa jumped, then burrowed down beneath the warm poncho, still holding Jess tightly.

  The rain finally broke and the sun came out, hanging low on the western horizon like a great molten ball of orange fire. The sky around it was streaked with gold and fuchsia. They caught their first sight of the J Bar Ranch against this glorious backdrop. It sat majestically, as if such a natural spectacle was the only appropriate setting for the vast cattle kingdom's headquarters.

  And a kingdom it was, spread out across the wide floor of a shallow basin at the foot of the Medicine Bow Mountains. A winding stream curled around the valley, and a natural windbreak of tall cottonwoods and evergreens grew by the edge of the water. Several long, low buildings and bunkhouses and a mess hall sprawled beside a series of high corrals where horses and stud bulls were kept. A dairy and an icehouse were situated beside a large dugout for storing root vegetables. The little village of outbuildings was completed by a large stable adjacent to the corrals, a henhouse, and a blacksmith shop.

  The real focal point of the place was the big house, old Marcus Jacobson's elegant home. It was made of dressed lumber shipped in from Denver and whitewashed a blinding white with red shutters and trim on the gables along the second-story roof. The windows were in big double pairs, the panes shining in the evening light, revealing la
ce curtains within. A wide veranda circled the rectangular house on three sides, and clusters of tall sycamores and oaks shaded the shingled roof from sun and wind.

  Jess let out a low whistle. Lissa, who had dozed while snuggled comfortably beneath the poncho, sat up as Jess peeled it off and stuffed it partially back into his saddlebag.

  "It is rather imposing the first time you see it, I suppose," she said quietly.

  He looked down at her, surprised. "You don't like your castle, Princess?"

  "I've never felt it was really home, I guess. I've been away at school for the past twelve years. I only spent a month or so, summers, on the ranch. Since Papa sent for me, he’s been gone a lot of the time on business. Germaine is always here, though," she added bitterly.

  Jess could see a tall, solitary figure standing on the porch, peering out at the approaching riders. This must be Germaine. She had dark hair pulled high atop her head in a severe coil of thick braids. Her body was lank and thin, and her face was composed of harsh angular planes. A prominent nose with a small knobby tip was framed by sunken cheeks. Her eyes dominated her face—small, piercing black eyes that moved like malevolent raisins from side to side beneath thin, flat eyebrows. The Wyoming wind and sun had not been kind to that face.

  As they rode up, Jess could see her purse her lips when she saw Lissa seated in front of him. She stepped onto the first riser of the porch stairs and glared at them.

  Germaine inspected Jess briefly, then turned her burning eyes on Lissa. "What will your father say to see you riding with his kind, looking as if you slept with him, hein?" she said in a heavy French accent.

  Chapter Four

  "And just what kind is that, ma'am?" Jess asked in a low, silky voice.

  Germaine Channault peered at him, meeting his steely gray eyes for a moment, then shifting her gaze nervously to Lissa. "Your father will hear about this escapade," she hissed. Backing up a step, she gave Jess a swift glance and quickly retreated into the house.