Kitabı oku: «Wyoming Fierce»

CHAPTER ONE

BOLINDA MAYS WAS HAVING a hard time concentrating on her biology textbook. She hadn’t slept well, worrying about her grandfather. He was only in his early sixties, but he was disabled and having difficulties paying his utility bills.

She’d come home for the weekend from her college in Montana. The trip was expensive, considering the gas it took to get her back and forth in her beat-up but serviceable old truck. Thank God she had a part-time job working for a convenience store while college was in session, or she’d never have even been able to afford to come home and see about her grandfather.

It was early December. Not too long before Christmas, and she was having final exams the next week. Really cold weather would come soon. But Bolinda’s stepfather was making threats again, about turning her grandfather out of the house that had once been Bolinda’s mother’s. Her death had left the old man at the mercy of that fortune-hunting fool who had his fingers in every evil pie in Catelow, Wyoming. Bolinda shivered, thinking how impossible it was going to be for her, trying to pay off her used textbooks that she’d charged on her credit card. Now she was going to have to try to pay for her grandfather’s utility bill, as well. Gas was so expensive, she thought miserably. The poor old man already had to choose between groceries and blood pressure meds. She’d thought about asking her neighbors, the Kirks, for help. But the only one of them she knew well was Cane, and he resented her. A lot. It would be dicey asking him for money. If she even dared.

Not that he didn’t owe her something for all the times she’d saved people from him in the little town of Catelow, Wyoming, not too far from Jackson Hole. Cane had lost an arm overseas in the Middle East, after the last big conflict but while he was still in the service. He’d come home embittered and icy cold, hating everyone. He’d started drinking, refused physical therapy, refused counseling and then gone hog wild.

Every couple of weeks, he treed the local bar. The other Kirk brothers, Mallory and Dalton, always paid the bills and they knew the owner of the tavern, who was kind enough not to have Cane arrested. But the only person who could do anything with Cane was Bolinda, or Bodie as her friends called her. Even Morie, Mallory Kirk’s new wife, couldn’t deal with a drunken Cane. He was intimidating.

Not so much to Bolinda. She understood him, as few other people did. Amazing, considering that she was only twenty-two and he was thirty-four. That was one big age difference. It never seemed to matter. Cane talked to her as if she were his age, often about things that she had no business knowing. He seemed to consider her one of the guys.

She didn’t look like a guy. She wasn’t largely endowed in the bra department, of course. Her breasts were small and pert, but nothing like the women in those guy magazines. She knew that, because Cane had dated a centerfold model once and told Bodie all about her. Another embarrassing conversation when he was drunk that he probably didn’t even remember.

She shook her head and tried again to concentrate on her biology textbook. She sighed, running a hand through her short, wavy black hair. Her odd, pale brown eyes were riveted to the drawings of internal human anatomy, but she just couldn’t seem to make her brain work. There was going to be a final next week, along with an oral lab, and she didn’t want to be the student trying to hide under the table when the professor started asking questions.

She shifted on the carpeted floor, on her stomach, and tried again to concentrate. Music started playing. Strange. That sounded like the musical ring of her cell phone, the theme from the Star Trek movie…

“Hey, Bodie, it’s for you!” her grandfather called from the next room, where she’d left her cell phone in her coat pocket.

She muttered something and got to her feet. “Who is it, Granddaddy?”

“I don’t know, sugar.” He handed Bodie’s cell phone to her.

“Thanks,” she whispered. “Hello?” she said into the phone.

“Uh, Miss Mays?” came a hesitant voice over the line.

She recognized who was calling immediately. She ground her teeth together. “I won’t come!” she said. “I’m studying for a biology test. I’ve got a lab, to boot…!”

“Aw, please?” the voice came again. “They’re threatening to call the police. I think they’ll do it this time. The newspapers would have a field day…”

There was a pregnant pause. Her lips made a thin line. “Oh, damn!” she muttered.

“Darby says he’ll come get you. In fact,” the cowboy added hopefully, “he’s sitting right outside your house right now.”

Bodie stomped to the window and looked out the blinds. There was a big black Kirk ranch truck parked in the driveway, with the lights on and the engine running.

“Please?” the cowboy asked again.

“All right.” She hung up in the middle of his “Thank you!”

She grabbed her jacket and her purse and slipped into her boots. “I have to go out for an hour. I won’t be too long,” she told her grandfather.

Rafe Mays, used to the drill, pursed his lips. “You should get combat pay,” he pointed out.

Bodie rolled her eyes and walked out the door. “I hope I won’t be long,” she said before she pulled it shut.

* * *

SHE GOT INTO THE TRUCK. Darby Hanes, the Kirks’ longtime foreman, gave her a wistful smile.

“I know. I’m sorry. But you’re the only person who can do anything with him. He’s tearing up the bar. They’re getting tired of the weekly routine.” He pulled out into the road, after making sure she had her seat belt on. “He had a date last night up in Jackson Hole. Ended badly, I’m guessing, from all the cussing he did when he got home.”

She didn’t reply. She hated knowing about Cane Kirk’s girlfriends. He seemed to have a lot of them, even with his disability. Not that it made any difference to her. Cane would still be Cane no matter what. She loved him. She’d loved him since she graduated from high school, when he presented her with a bouquet of pink roses, her favorite, and a bottle of very expensive floral perfume. He’d even kissed her. On the cheek, of course, like a treasured child more than like an adult. Her grandfather had worked for the Rancho Real until his health failed and he had to quit. That had been while Cane was still in the military, after the second Gulf War, before the terrible roadside bomb had robbed him of most of his left arm, and almost of his life.

She supposed Cane was fond of her. It wasn’t until last year that everyone had discovered her almost magical ability to calm him when he went on drinking sprees. Since then, when he went on benders, Bodie was recruited to fetch him home. There had been a brief period of time when he’d gone to therapy, been measured for a prosthesis and seemed to be adjusting nicely to his new life.

And then it had all gone south, for reasons nobody knew. His bar crawls had become legendary. The expense was terrible, because his brothers, Mallory and Dalton, had to pick up the expense. Cane got a monthly check from the army, but nobody could entice him to apply for disability. He went to show cattle, with a cowboy who handled the big bulls for him, and he was the idea man for the Kirk ranch. He was good at PR, worked to liaison with the national cattlemen’s lobby, kept up with current legislation that affected the cattle industry and generally was the spokesman for the Kirk ranch.

When he was sober.

Lately he wasn’t. Not a lot.

“Any idea what happened?” Bodie asked curiously, because Darby would know. He knew everything that went on around the Rancho Real, or “royal ranch” in Spanish, named by the original owner, a titled gentleman from Valladolid, northwest of Madrid, Spain, who started it way back in the late 1800s.

Darby glanced at her and grimaced. It was dark and very cold, even with the heater running and the old but serviceable coat Bodie was wearing.

“I have an idea,” he confessed. “But if Cane ever found out I told you, I’d be standing in the unemployment line.”

She sighed and fiddled with the fanny pack she wore in lieu of carrying around a cumbersome purse. “She must have said something about his arm.”

He nodded faintly. “That would be my guess. He’s really sensitive about it. Funny,” he added solemnly, “I thought he was getting better.”

“If he’d get back in therapy, mental and physical, he’d improve,” she replied.

“Sure, but he won’t even talk about it. He’s sinking into himself,” he added quietly.

“There goes that theoretical physics mind working overtime again,” she teased, because most people didn’t know about Darby’s degree in that field.

He shrugged. “Hey, I just manage cattle.”

“I’ll bet you sit around in your room at night imagining the route to a new and powerful unified field theory.” She chuckled.

“Only on Thursdays,” he said, laughing out loud. “At least my chosen field of study doesn’t leave me covered in mud and using shovels and trowels in holes around the country.”

“Don’t knock anthropology,” she said firmly. “We’ll find the missing link one day, and you can say you knew me before I was famous, like that guy in Egypt who’s always in documentaries about pharaohs’ tombs.” She lifted her rounded chin. “Nothing wrong with honest work.”

He made a face. “Digging up bones.”

“Bones can tell you a lot,” she replied.

“So they say. Here it is,” he added, nodding toward the little out-of-the-way bar that Cane frequented. Out front was a stop sign that local drunks often used for target practice when they went driving around in four-wheel-drive vehicles late at night. Now it said “S....p.” The two middle letters were no longer recognizable.

“They need to replace that,” she pointed out.

“What for? Everybody knows it means stop,” he said. “Why waste good metal and paint? They’d just shoot it up again. Not much in the way of entertainment this far out in the country.”

“Got a point, I guess.” She sighed.

He parked in front of the bar. There were only two vehicles out there. Probably those of employees. Everybody with any sense would have left when Cane started cursing and throwing things. At least, that was the pattern.

“I’ll keep the engine running. In case somebody called the sheriff this time,” he mused.

“Cane and the sheriff are best friends,” she reminded him.

“That won’t stop Cody Banks from locking him up if someone files a complaint for assault and battery,” he stated. “The law is the law, friendship notwithstanding.”

“I guess. Maybe it would knock some sense into him.”

He shook his head. “That’s been tried. Mallory even let him stew in a cell for two days. Finally bailed him out, and he went back and did it again that same weekend. Our black sheep there is out of control.”

“I’ll see what I can do to rein him in,” she promised.

She got out of the truck, ran a hand through her short black hair and grimaced. Her brown eyes were somber as she hesitated on the porch for just a minute, and then, finally, opened the door.

The mess was bad. Tables knocked over. Chairs everywhere. One was upside down behind the bar in a pile of glass, and the place smelled like whiskey. This was going to be an expensive mess, too.

“Cane?” she called.

A thin man in a Hawaiian shirt peered over the bar. “Bodie? Thank God!”

“Where is he?” she asked.

He pointed to the bathroom.

She went toward it. She was almost there when it slammed open and Cane walked out. His long-sleeved beige Western shirt with the fancy embroidery was stained with blood. Probably his own, she thought, noting the caked blood around his nose, which was bruised, and his square jaw. His sensual mouth had a cut just at the corner, where blood was also visible. His thick, short, slightly wavy black hair was mussed. His black eyes were bloodshot. Even in that condition, he was so attractive that he made her heart pound. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with long powerful legs encased in tight jeans; his big feet in boots that still had the mirror polish on them despite his exploits. He was thirty-four to her twenty-two, but right now, he seemed much younger.

He glared at her. “Why do they always bring you?” he demanded.

She shrugged. “My unusual ability to subdue charging tigers?” she suggested.

He blinked. Then he chuckled.

She went forward and took one of his big hands in hers. The knuckles were bruised and swollen and smeared with blood. She couldn’t tell if it was his or somebody else’s. “Mallory’s going to be mad.”

“Mallory isn’t home,” he said in a loud whisper. He even grinned. “He and Morie went to Louisiana to see a bull. They won’t be back until tomorrow.”

“Tank won’t be happy, either,” she added, using the nickname that family used for Dalton, the youngest brother.

He shrugged. “Tank will be knee-deep in those old Tom Mix silent cowboy movies he likes. It’s Saturday night. He makes popcorn, takes the phone off the hook, locks himself in and saturates himself with black-and-white cinema.”

“That’s what you should be doing, instead of wrecking bars!” she muttered.

He sighed. “A man’s got to have some recreation, kid,” he said defensively.

“Not this sort,” she said firmly. “Come on. Poor Sid will have to clean up this mess.”

Sid came around the bar. He was huge, and dangerous-looking, but he kept a few steps away from Cane. “Why can’t you do this at home, Cane?” he groaned, looking around.

“Because we’ve got delicate objets d’art in glass cabinets,” Cane replied reasonably. “Mallory would kill me.”

Sid glared at him. “When Mr. Holsten sees the bill for replacing all this—” he waved his hand “—you may be getting a visit…”

Cane pulled out his wallet and pressed a wad of hundreds into the bartender’s hand. “If that’s not enough, you let me know.”

Sid grimaced. “It will be enough, but it’s the principle of the thing! Why can’t you go up to Jackson Hole and wreck bars?”

Cane blinked. “It would take too long to get Bodie up there. I’d be arrested.”

“You should be!”

Cane’s black eyes narrowed and he took a step forward.

Sid backed up.

“Oh, come on,” Bodie grumbled. She tugged on Cane’s hand. “I’m going to fail biology because of you. I was studying for exams!”

“Biology? You’re majoring in anthropology,” he argued.

“Yes, but I still have to pass the minimum required courses of study, and that’s one of them! I couldn’t put it off any longer so I had to take it this semester!”

“Oh.”

“See you, Sid. Hope not soon,” she added with a laugh.

He managed a smile. “Thanks, Bodie. Especially for…” He gestured toward Cane. “You know.”

“Oh, yes, I do know.” She nodded.

She pulled Cane out the door and onto the porch. “Where’s your coat?” she asked.

He blinked as the cold air hit him. “In the truck, I think. I don’t need it. ’S’not cold,” he said, his voice beginning to slur.

“It’s below freezing out here!”

He gave her a woozy look and grinned. “I’m hot-blooded.”

She averted her eyes. “Come on. Darby’s waiting. I’ll drive your truck out to the ranch. Where’s the key?”

“Right front pocket.”

She glared at him. “Going to get it for me?”

“No.”

Her bow lips made a thin line. “Cane!”

“Go fish,” he teased.

She glanced around him at Darby.

“No,” he said, putting his hand over his pocket. “Not giving it to him.”

“Cane!”

“Not!” he repeated.

“Oh, all right!”

She pushed his hand aside and dug into his pocket for the keys, hating the deep, sensual sound that came out of his throat as her fingers closed around them. She was flushing and hoped he couldn’t see. The contact was almost intimate, especially when he suddenly stepped closer so that her small, pert breasts flattened against his broad chest.

“Nice,” he whispered, his lips brushing the thick waves of her short hair. “Smells pretty. Feels good, too,” he added, his one good hand pushing her chest against his so that he could feel the sudden hardening of her nipples.

She gasped.

“Yes, you like that, don’t you?” he whispered. “I wish my shirt was off, and I could feel your bare breasts against my chest....”

She grasped the keys and jerked away from him, her face blazing. “You shut up!” she said under her breath.

He made a face. “’How dare you!’” he mimicked in a high-pitched tone. “How Victorian you sound.” He laughed shortly. “I know all about you college girls. You all sleep around and you want taxpayers to make sure you get birth control so you can do it.”

She didn’t reply. Lots of people thought the same thing. She wasn’t getting into another fight with him, which was what he wanted. He was goading her. Odd, he’d never done it in such a sensual way before. It was affecting her, and she didn’t like it.

“Go on, get in,” she muttered, almost forcing him into the truck beside Darby.

“And fasten your seat belt!” she added.

He gave her another woozy smile. “No. You do it.”

She let out a cuss word and then flushed and apologized.

“No need to say sorry for that,” Darby muttered, glaring at Cane. “I feel the same way.”

Cane glared at him. “Not riding with you!”

He got out of the truck in spite of Bodie’s protests, and when Darby got out to try to force him in, he raised a fist and got into a fighting stance. It reminded both of them that he had a black belt in an Asian martial art discipline.

“Oh, all right, you can ride in your own truck and I’ll drive!” Bodie raged.

He grinned, having gotten his way. He went like a lamb to his own truck, waited for Bodie to flick the remote and let him in. He even fastened his seat belt.

She started the truck, waving Darby to go ahead.

“You’re more trouble than cattle!” she told Cane.

He smiled at her. “You think so? Why don’t you slide over here next to me?” he added with a raised eyebrow. “We can discuss cattle.”

“I’m driving.”

“Oh.” He blinked. “Okay, I’ll slide over next to you…” He started to unfasten his seat belt.

“You do that and I’m calling Cody Banks!” she told him, digging out her prepaid cell phone and showing it to him. “You wear a seat belt when the truck is in motion. It’s the law!”

“The law.” He scoffed.

“Yes, well, you unfasten that belt and I’m calling him, just the same.”

He made a face but he stopped fiddling with the belt. He stared at her, his face hard, his black eyes snapping. Actually she only had about five minutes of phone time left on the device, and she didn’t want to waste it calling the sheriff when she might need it for emergencies. Cane could afford a high-tech cell phone and a plan to go with it. Bodie was lucky to have even a cheap one.

“What happened this time?” she asked, not sure she really wanted an answer. But at least it would keep him talking.

His jaw tautened.

“Come on,” she coaxed. “You can tell me. You know I won’t repeat it.”

“Most of what I tell you, you wouldn’t dare repeat,” he muttered, averting his eyes.

“Yes.”

She waited, not pushing, not prodding, not even coaxing.

He seemed to sober a little. “I had on the damned prosthesis. Looks real, right? At least, until you get close up.” He looked out the window at the passing dark silhouettes of bare trees and pasture. “I took her up to my room. It’s been a long time. I was hungry.” Fortunately for Bodie, he couldn’t see the brief anguish that skirted across her face. “I started to take off my shirt and when she saw the straps that held the prosthesis in place, she stopped me dead. She said it was nothing personal, she just couldn’t do it with a man who was crippled like that. She had to have a whole man.”

“Oh, Cane,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry. Yes. She was sorry, too. I took off the damned prosthesis and threw it at the wall. Then I flew home.” He laid his head back against the headrest. “I couldn’t think about anything else. The look on her face, when she saw that thing…haunted me all day. By sundown, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to get that memory out of my mind. Had to!”

She bit her lower lip. What could she say? Of all the things to happen. She hated knowing that he had women. That wasn’t even her business. But for a woman to treat him that way, after all he’d been through, as if he was less than a man because he lost part of his arm fighting in a conflict sanctioned by his country. It was unthinkable.

“I can’t live like this!” he burst out. “I can’t go through the rest of my life being half a man, being pitied…!”

She stopped the truck. “You stop that!” she said harshly. “You’re not half a man! You’re a hero! You ran right over the damned IED, knowing it would blow up, to save the medics in the jeep behind you! You knew your vehicle had better armor, you knew the bomb would explode when the column went past. You made a sacrifice, saved God knows how many lives by saving those medics. And some stupid woman makes a remark out of ignorance, and you throw away that heroism, that act of gutsy courage, like a used tissue. Well, I won’t let you do it! I won’t!”

He gaped at her through a drunken haze. He shook his head.

She started the truck going forward again. Her face felt hot.

“How do you know that, about me?”

“Tank told me,” she said gently. “The last time I had to go get you from a bar. He said it was tragic, not only what happened to you, but that you wanted to forget something that won you a silver star.”

“Oh.”

She drew in a long breath. “Why do you date women like that in the first place?”

“Most of the women around here are married or ugly.”

She glared at him. “Thanks, from the ugly brigade, I mean.”

“I didn’t mean you,” he said easily. He pursed his lips and studied her. “You’re not ugly, but your breasts are too small.”

The truck almost ran off the road. “Cane!” she exclaimed.

“Don’t worry about it, a lot of men like small breasts. I just like nice big ones. And a soft, sweet belly to sink against when I get inside all that delicate, wet…”

“Cane!” she exclaimed again, flushing.

“Oh, come on, you know about that,” he said, leaning his head back. “Nothing so cushy as a woman lifting to you on cool sheets, feeling you thrust into her, swelling and swelling until you burst and she cries out with the pleasure.”

“I get sex education in school!”

“Well, you get the basics, but they don’t tell you how good it feels, do they? Or that men come in different sizes and shapes. I’m well-endowed myself. Not too big, but I can…”

“Will you please stop?” she raged.

He glanced at her. “Getting aroused, are we?” He chuckled in a deep, soft, sensual tone. “You’re not really my type, kid, and you’re too young, but I could make you get off like a machine gun firing.”

She swallowed, stepping on the gas.

“But I don’t think your grandfather would ever forgive me. That’s probably why you go to college out of state, so he won’t know what you’re up to. How many lovers have you had?”

“Can’t we talk about the weather?” she asked, trying not to sound desperate. She was aroused, unbelievably aroused. He wouldn’t know it, but she was still a virgin. Despite that, the imagery was giving her real problems.

He stretched and grimaced. “Sure. It’s cold.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you like the man to get on top, or do you like to get on top? I can go deeper that way,” he said as easily as if he was discussing the weather.

She groaned.

“Real deep, in fact,” he murmured, getting drowsy. “I remember this one woman, she was small and I was afraid I’d hurt her. But she got on top and pumped me like a shotgun, screaming the whole time. We went all night long.” He grinned. “She liked to try new positions. So one time…”

“I don’t want to hear about your sexual acrobatics, Cane!” Her voice was high-pitched and desperate.

He rolled his head against the headrest so that he could see her face. “Jealous?”

“I am not jealous!”

He smiled. But the smile faded. “You’d have to get on top,” he said coldly. “I don’t have two arms to prop on anymore. I don’t even know if I could do it now. I wanted to find out. I wanted to see if I could still be a man....”

“Cane, there are men all over the world who have lost arms and legs and who can still have sex,” she pointed out, trying to restrain her embarrassment. “People find a way!”

He drew in a long breath. “I won’t have the nerve to try again,” he said in a haunted tone. “She said I was a cripple.” His eyes closed. “A cripple. She wanted a whole man....”

She pulled up at the front of the house and blew the horn. She almost jumped out when Tank came onto the front porch.