Читать книгу: «Cattleman's Choice»

Chapter One

At first, Mandelyn thought the pounding was just in her head; she’d gone to bed with a nagging headache. But when it got louder, she sat up in bed with a frown and stared at the clock. The glowing face told her that it was one o’clock in the morning, and she couldn’t imagine that any of the ranch hands would want to wake her at that hour without cause.

She jumped up, running a hand through the glorious blond tangle of her long hair, and pulled on a long white robe over her nightgown. Her soft gray eyes were troubled as she wound through the long ranch-style house to the front door that overlooked the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona.

“Who is it?” she asked in the soft, cultured tones of her Charleston upbringing.

“Jake Wells, ma’am,” came the answer.

That was Carson Wayne’s foreman. And without a single word of explanation, she knew what was wrong, and why she’d been awakened.

She opened the door and fixed the tall, blond man with a rueful smile. “Where is he?” she asked.

He took off his hat with a sigh. “In town,” he replied. “At the Rodeo bar.”

“Is he drunk?” she asked warily.

The foreman hesitated. One corner of his mouth went up. “Yes, ma’am,” he said finally.

“That’s the second time in the last two months,” she said with flashing gray eyes.

Jake shrugged, turning his hat around in his hands. “Maybe money’s getting tight,” he guessed.

“It’s been tight before. And it isn’t as if he doesn’t have options, either,” she grumbled, turning. “I’ve had a buyer for that forty-acre tract of his for months. He won’t even discuss it.”

“Miss Bush, you know how he feels about those condominium complexes,” he reminded her. “That land’s been in his family since the Civil War.”

“He’s got thousands of acres!” she burst out. “He wouldn’t miss forty!”

“Well, that particular forty is where the old fort stands.”

“Nobody’s likely to use it these days,” she said with venom.

He only shrugged, and she went off to change her clothes. Minutes later, dressed in a yellow sweater and designer jeans, she drew on her suede jacket and went out to climb in beside Jake in the black pickup truck with the Circle Bar W logo of Carson Wayne’s cattle company emblazoned in red on the door.

“Why doesn’t anybody else ever get called to go save people from him?” she asked curtly.

Jake glanced at her with a faint smile. “Because you’re the only person in the valley who isn’t scared of him.”

“You and the boys could bring him home,” she suggested.

“We tried once. Doctor bills got too expensive.” He grinned. “He won’t hit you.”

That was true enough. Carson indulged her. He was fiery and rough and lived like a hermit in that faded frame building he called a house. He hated neighbors and he was as savage a man as she’d ever known. But from the first, he’d warmed to her. People said it was because she was from Charleston, South Carolina and a lady and he felt protective of her. That was true, up to a point. But Mandelyn also knew that he liked her because she had the same wild spirit he possessed, because she stood up to him fearlessly. It had been that way from the very beginning.

They wound along the dusty ranch road out to the highway. There was just enough light to see the giant saguaro cacti lifting their arms to the sky, and the dark mountains silhouetted against the horizon. Arizona was beautiful enough to take Mandelyn’s breath away, even after eight years as a resident. She’d come from South Carolina at the age of eighteen, devastated by personal tragedy, expecting to find the barren land a perfect expression of her own emotional desolation. But her first sight of the Chiricahua Mountains had changed her mind. Since then, she’d learned to look upon the drastically different vegetation with loving, familiar eyes, and in time the lush green coastline of South Carolina had slowly faded from memory, replaced by the glory of creosote bushes in the rain and the stately stoicism of the saguaro. Her cultured upbringing was still evident in her proud carriage and her soft, delicately accented voice, but she was as much an Arizonian now as a Zane Grey character.

“Why does he do this?” she asked as they wound into the small town of Sweetwater.

“Not my business to guess,” came the reply. “But he’s a lonely man, and feeling his years.”

“He’s only thirty-eight,” she said. “Hardly a candidate for Medicare.”

Jake looked at her speculatively. “He’s alone, Miss Bush,” he said. “Problems don’t get so big when you can share them.”

She sighed. How well she knew that. Since her uncle’s death four years before, she’d had her share of loneliness. If it hadn’t been for her real estate agency, and her involvement in half a dozen organizations, she might have left Sweetwater for good just out of desperation.

Jake parked in front of the Rodeo bar and got out. Mandelyn was on the ground before he could come around the hood. She started toward the door.

The bartender was waiting in the doorway, wringing his apron, his bald head shining in the streetlight.

“Thank God,” he said uneasily, glancing behind him. “Mandelyn, he’s got a cowboy treed out back.”

She stopped, blinking. “He’s what?”

“One of the Lazy X’s hands said something that set him off. God knows what. He was just sitting quiet at the table, going through a bottle of whiskey, not bothering anybody, and the stupid cowboy…” He stopped on an impatient sigh. “He busted my mirror, again. He broke half a dozen bottles of whiskey. The cowboy had to go to the hospital to get his jaw wired back together….”

“Wait a minute,” she said, holding up a hand. “You said he had the cowboy treed…”

“The cowboy whose jaw he broke had friends,” the bartender sighed. “Three of them. One is out cold on the floor. Another one is hanging from his jacket on a hook where Carson put him. The third one, the last one, is up in a tree out back of here and Carson is sitting there, grinning, waiting for him to come down again.”

Carson never grinned. Not unless he was mad as hell and ready for blood. “Oh, my,” Mandelyn sighed. “How about the sheriff?”

“Like most sane men, he gave the job of bringing Carson in to his deputy.”

Mandelyn lifted her delicate eyebrows. “And?”

“The deputy,” the bartender told her, “is in the hall closet, asking very loudly to be let out.”

“Why don’t you let him out?” she persisted.

“Carson,” the bartender replied, “has the key.”

“Oh.”

Jake pulled his hat low over his eyes. “I’m going to sit in the truck,” he said.

“Better go get the bail bondsman out of bed first, Jake,” the bartender said darkly.

“Why bother?” Jake asked. “Sheriff Wilson isn’t going to get out of bed to arrest the boss, and since Danny’s locked in the closet, I’d say it’s all over but the crying.”

“And the paying,” the bartender added.

“He’ll pay you. He always does.”

The bartender made a harsh sound in his throat. “That doesn’t make up for the inconvenience. Having to order mirrors…clean up broken glass…it used to be once every few months, about time his taxes came due. Now it’s every month. What’s eating him?”

“I wish I knew,” Mandelyn sighed. “Well, I’d better go get him.”

“Lots of luck,” the bartender said curtly. “Watch out. He may have a gun.”

“He may need it,” she told him with a cold smile.

She walked through the bar, out the back door, just in time to catch the tail end of a long and ardent string of curses. They were delivered by a tall man in a sheepskin coat who was glaring up at a shivering, skinny man in the top of an oak tree.

“Miss Bush,” the Lazy X cowboy wailed down at her. “Help!”

The tall, whipcord-lean man turned, pale blue eyes lancing at her from under thick black eyebrows. He was wearing a dark ranch hat pulled low on his forehead, and his lean, tough face needed a shave as much as his thick, ragged hair needed cutting. He had a pistol in one hand and just the look of him would have been enough to frighten most men.

“Go ahead, shoot,” she dared him, “and I’ll haunt you, you bad-tempered Arizona sidewinder!”

He stood slightly crouched, breathing slowly, watching her.

“If you’re not going to use that gun, may I have it?” she asked, nodding toward the weapon.

He didn’t move for a long, taut minute. Then he silently flipped the gun, straightening as he held the butt toward her.

She moved forward, taking it gently, carefully. Carson was unpredictable in these moods, but she’d been dealing with him for a long time, now. Long enough to know how to handle him. She emptied the pistol carefully and stuck it in one coat pocket, putting the bullets in the other.

“Why is that man in the tree?” she asked Carson.

“Ask him,” Carson said in a deep drawl.

She looked up at the thin cowboy, who was young and battered looking. She recognized him belatedly as one she’d seen often in the grocery store. “Bobby, what did you do?”

The young cowboy sighed. “Well, Miss Bush, I hit him over the back with a chair. He was choking Andy, and I was afraid he was going to do some damage.”

“If he apologizes,” she said to Carson, who was slightly unsteady on his feet, “can he come down?”

He thought about that for a minute. “I guess.”

“Bobby, apologize!” she called up.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wayne!” came the prompt reply.

Carson glared up toward the limb. “All right, you…”

Mandelyn had to grit her teeth as Carson went through a round of unprintable words before he let the shivering cowboy come down.

“Thanks!” Bobby said quickly, and ran for it, before Carson had time to change his mind.

Mandelyn sighed, staring up at Carson’s hard face. It was a long way up. He was tall and broad shouldered, with a physique that would have caught any woman’s eye. But he was rough and coarse and only half civilized, and she couldn’t imagine any woman being able to live with him.

“Jake with you?” he bit off.

“Yes. As usual.” She moved closer and slowly reached out to catch his big hand in hers. It was callused and warm and it made her tingle to touch it. It was an odd reaction, but she didn’t stop to question it. “Let’s go home, Carson.”

He let her lead him around the building, as docile as a lamb, and not for the first time she wondered at that docility. He would have attacked any man who tried to stop him. But for some reason he tolerated Mandelyn’s interference. She was the only person his men would call to get him.

“Shame on you,” she mumbled.

“Button up,” he said curtly. “When I want a sermon, I’ll call a preacher.”

“Any preacher you called would faint dead away,” she shot back. “And don’t give me orders, I don’t like it.”

He stopped suddenly. She was still holding his hand and the action jerked her backward.

“Wildcat,” he said huskily, and his eyes glittered in the dim light. “For all your culture and polish, you’re as hard as a back-country woman.”

“Sure I am,” she replied. “I have to be, to deal with a savage like you!”

Something darkened his eyes, hardened his jaw. All at once, he turned her, whipped her around, and bent to jerk her completely off the ground and into his hard arms.

“Put me down, Carson!” she said curtly, pushing at his broad shoulders.

He ignored her struggles. One of his arms, the one that was under her shoulders, shifted, so that his hand could catch her long blonde hair and pull her head back.

“I’m tired of letting you lead me around like a cowed dog,” he said in a gruff undertone. “I’m tired of being called a savage. If that’s what you think I am, maybe it’s time I lived down to my reputation.”

His grip on her hair was painful, and she only half heard the harsh words. Then, with shocking precision, he brought his hard mouth down on her parted lips and took possession.

It was the first time he’d touched her, ever. She went rigid all over at the unfamiliar intimacy of his whiskey-scented mouth, the rasp of whiskers that raked her soft skin. Her eyes, wide open and full of astonished fear, looked up at his drawn eyebrows, at the thick black lashes that lay against his hard, dark-skinned cheek. He made an odd sound, deep in his throat, and increased the pressure of his mouth until it became bruisingly painful.

She protested, a wild sound that penetrated the mists of intoxication and made his head slowly lift.

His chiseled lips were parted, his eyes as shocked as her own, his face harder than ever as he looked down at her. His hard gaze went to her lips. In that ardent fury his teeth had cut the lower one.

All at once, he seemed to sober. He put her gently down onto her shaky legs and hesitantly took her by the shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” he said slowly.

She touched her trembling lips, all the fight gone out of her. “You cut my mouth,” she whispered.

He reached out an unsteady finger and touched it while his chest lifted unsteadily.

She drew back from that tingling contact, her eyes wide and uncertain.

He let his hand fall. “I don’t know why I did that,” he said.

She’d never wondered before about his love life, about his women. But the feel of his mouth had fostered an unexpected intimacy between them, and suddenly she was curious about him in ways that unsettled her.

“We’d better go,” she said. “Jake will be worried.”

She turned, leaving him to follow. She couldn’t have borne having to touch him again until some of the rawness subsided.

Jake opened the door, frowning when he saw her face. “You okay?” he asked quickly.

“Just battle-scarred,” she replied with a trace of humor. She climbed in, drawing her knees together as a subdued Carson climbed in beside her and slammed the door shut.

“Get going,” he told Jake without looking at him.

It was a horrible ride back home for Mandelyn. She felt betrayed. In all their turbulent relationship, she’d never once thought of him in any physical way. He was much too coarse to be an object of desire, too uncivilized and antisocial. She’d vowed that she’d never love a man again, that she’d live on the memory of the love she’d lost so many years ago. And now Carson had shocked her out of her apathy with one brutal kiss. He’d robbed her of her peace of mind. Tonight, he’d changed the rules, without any warning, and she felt empty and raw and a little afraid.

When Jake pulled up at her door, she waited nervously for Carson to get out of the truck.

“Thanks,” Jake whispered.

She glanced at him. “Next time, I won’t come,” she said curtly.

Leaving him to absorb that, she jumped down from the cab and walked stiffly toward the front door without a word to Carson. As she closed the door, she heard the pickup truck roar away. And then she cried.