Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (22 page)

"Ye haven't?" She blinked, momentarily dumbfounded. "But what about Amaryllis? Everyone says ye're altar bound."

"Oh, yeah? And who's everyone?"

"Well..." She frowned, trying to sort names from her foggy memory bank. "Amaryllis says it the most, I think."

He laughed, a hearty peal of mirth that made his shoulders quake. She grinned at the sound. She liked to hear his laughter. It sounded so carefree and friendly. She wondered why he didn't laugh more often around her.

"Amaryllis
would
say a thing like that."

"Ye mean she's telling windies?"

He smiled at her dumbfounded look. "Let's just say she leapt to a conclusion I never reached."

"Oh." Disappointed by his answer, she wasn't exactly sure what to think. Did he plan on continuing his courtship with Amaryllis? Or was he going to call it off for good?

She furrowed her brow, searching for a roundabout way to get her answers. After all, she wouldn't want him to think
she
was one of the hundred or so calf-eyed females who'd set their sights on him.

"Would ye marry someone if ye loved her?"

"I reckon."

"So how would ye know ye were in love?"

Her question seemed to throw him. He frowned for a moment, as if he was thinking on it. "Well, Wes says love kind of wallops a fella. It turns him upside down and inside out before he can figure out what hit him."

Bailey wrinkled her nose. "That doesna sound too pleasant."

His smile turned soft, almost dreamy. "Oh, I don't know. Wes and Cord are still doing somersaults, and I've never seen them look so happy."

Bailey fidgeted. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen Caitlin do a somersault. And she knew she'd never seen her daddy do one. Mostly, McShanes just yelled when they were in love.

Gulping down her shot, Bailey gathered all her courage for her next question. "Have... ye ever been in love?"

Zack's gaze was still keen and discerning enough to make her squirm inside. "Hmm. I thought I was, once."

"Once?" She swallowed, dreading his next answer, but inexorably drawn to the truth. "With Caitlin?" she whispered, fearing a yes would place him hopelessly out of her reach. If she had to, she could wallop Amaryllis. But Caitlin was her cousin, and Bailey had a code of honor against punching out her own kin, especially kin that got weepy at the drop of a hat.

She held her breath.

"No," he said quietly.

The air fled from her lungs in a rush.

"Caitlin and I had something going all right," he added, "but it wasn't love."

She heard a trace of pain behind his cynicism.

"Caitlin never meant for ye to get hurt," she said uncomfortably. "It's true she didna use her head, eloping like she did. But she was in love with Teddy—she'd always been in love with him—and everyone knew it. Including Teddy. That's why he acted like such a damned wolf on the prowl before ye came along. He figured she'd always be around, waiting for him to sow his oats, and so... she used ye to make him jealous.

"I'm not saying what she did was right," Bailey added quickly, anxiously. "But she's happy now. Do ye think ye can be happy for her?"

She couldn't tell if he was annoyed or amused by her defense of her cousin.

"Yeah," he said finally. "I can be happy for her."

She smiled in relief.

"What about you?"

"What about me?" she countered, feeling somehow lighter and freer, knowing Zack was well over his infatuation. Maybe she could find a way to win him after all, if she could just get him to admire
her
and stop mooning over ladies. She wondered if inviting him to hunt Old One Toe with her tomorrow might help.

Thunder set the walls to trembling and chased her idea away. The hurricane lamp rattled from a gust of wind that shook its smoking flame. Zack didn't seem to notice though. He was too busy hypnotizing her with the glow in his eyes.

"Seems to me like you've got a few suitors of your own, Bailey McShane."

Unnerved by the gaze that seemed to be melting the iron fortress around her feminine core—that vulnerable, feeling part of her that she'd never dared to show anyone except Mac and Caitlin—Bailey rallied her defenses with humor.

"Oh, them." Raising her cup, she waved away Nat, Nick, and all the other ne'er-do-wells who'd ever sought her favor. "They dinna come here to make me their bride. They came here courting my land and my springs."

The corners of Zack's mouth turned down. "So is that what McTavish is after? Your land?"

Bailey blinked. How on earth had he come up with that idea? "Mac's not after my land. He's not even after me."

It was Zack's turn to blink. Despite the warm, cozy feeling that was permeating all his defenses, he still had enough presence of mind to recall the dark looks and thinly veiled warnings he'd received from McTavish. It bothered him to realize Bailey didn't see that she was precisely what her foreman was interested in.

It bothered him even more, though, to think McTavish might be steering suitors away from her because of his own desire for her land.

He was just about to ask—and none too diplomatically—if McTavish was the one who'd seeded Bailey's doubts against all her former suitors, when a hard, fierce splattering resounded on the tin roof over their heads. In the next instant, a whoosh of wetness sprayed them both through the open window. Bailey's eyes grew as round as silver dollars.

"Rain," she whispered.

She jumped to her feet and ran a bit unsteadily to the window, planting her hands on the sill and sticking her head and shoulders outside. When she turned her face to the skies, wind kicked up her sheath of hair, and thunder crashed like two colliding locomotives, shaking the wooden frame around her. She giggled like a child.

"Rain!" she shouted, turning to face him, her cheeks streaked by the droplets that were sliding into her collar.

His lips quirked. "I can see that."

"Let's go watch!"

Before he could draw breath enough to answer, she'd grabbed the room's lone lamp and raced into the pitch blackness of the hallway.

Thrown into darkness, he muttered an oath, not waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed before he pushed back his chair. The moonshine hit him full force then, and his knees wobbled. The very idea that some slip of a sheepherder was holding her liquor better than he was enough to make the blood rush to his head. He grabbed his hat and fanned his face.

"C'mon, Zack!"

Her voice floated in to him above the banging of the front door, and he grinned. He couldn't help it. Rain, by God. There was actually rain!

Draping his Stetson haphazardly over his brow, he hurried across the unfamiliar floor, banging his shin on the doorstop and stubbing his toe on a sitting room chair. He hardly noticed though. He was too eager to follow that beckoning light to the circle of brightness it cast on the parched and withered yard. Bailey had balanced the lamp on the porch railing, and when he pushed open the bottom half of the door, he spied her dancing in its yellow blaze. Laughing, she spun like a top, her arms outstretched, her face turned to the heavens. He stumbled to a halt, simply staring.

Her exuberance had loosed her hair from its leather thong, and it whipped around her like slick amber tongues, twining around her upper arms, slapping her buttocks, caressing her thighs. The rain had plastered her jeans to her skin, and the white cotton of her shirt was almost transparent. He swallowed hard, unable to do the gentlemanly thing, unable to tear his gaze away from that sheer clinging fabric and the feminine peaks and valleys it outlined so faithfully.

"Come out, come out, ye puddocks! 'Tis a fine wet storm," she was shouting, jumping up and down like the frogs she was apparently hailing. When she clicked her heels in the air, he let another grin slide across his face and thrust his hands into his pockets.

"You keep that up, McShane, and your behind's gonna say howdy to that puddle."

"Ha!" She whirled to face him, her boots scrambling in the mud to keep from bearing out his prediction. When she regained her balance, she flashed a triumphant smile beneath the sodden curtain of her hair. "Shows ye how much ye know." She swept the mass out of her eyes. "What are ye still standin' under that roof for, ye old mossy horn? 'Fraid ye're gonna melt?"

He snorted to hide his amusement. Old mossy horn, indeed. "Where there's thunder, there's lightning, sweet pea. You'd best come back inside before you get yourself cooked."

"Aw, I ain't afeared o' lightnin', pardner," she said, stomping through the mud on exaggerated bowed legs. "After all..." She gulped a lusty breath and threw back her head. "'I am a Texas cowboy,' " she belted out in a brassy, off-key soprano, "'just off the rain-soaked prairie...' "

He chuckled, and she hooked her thumbs over her belt, swaggering closer to the porch.

"'My trade is hosses, steers, and skirts; I rope 'em ne'er to tarry...' "

He raised his eyebrows in mock protest, and she grinned, strutting up the stairs.

"'... When a bolt of lightning comes, I snare it, 'tween my knees, and with my spurs and lariat, I ride it where I please.' "

She halted toe to toe with him and crooked her forefinger in a beckoning gesture. "C'mere, cowboy," she said huskily.

Her steamy warmth gusted over him, and he felt his pulse do a strange little two-step, dancing like white lightning through his veins.

"Yeah?" His eyelids drooped, and he leaned closer, relishing the rain-washed scent of her hair. "What for?" he drawled.

"So I can do...
this!"

Before he could guess her intention, she'd snatched the Stetson from his head and dashed back into the slashing downpour, whooping like an Indian in a rain dance.

"Hey!" He couldn't stop himself from laughing. "Give me back my hat, woman!"

"Not unless you catch me first!"

A wicked pleasure spiraled through him at her game. "I'll catch you all right," he growled, jumping off the top step and charging after her into the yard.

Thunder rolled around the canyon, but the darkness remained pristine, unmarred by spears of storm fire. Only the lantern over the calf's stall and the dim reflection of the full moon behind the thick cloud banks brought any relief from the foggy pitch of night. Zack could spy Bailey skipping backward, a silvery wraith with pale hair and an even paler shirtfront.

"Come and get it, cowpoke!"

He lunged, and she shrieked, dodging his arms and racing ahead. He heard the startled honking of geese, saw the vague arc of beating wings. Then came a peal of Bailey's laughter, breathy and mischievous and full of childlike glee. His heart bobbed on that ripple of sound, feeling lighter and freer than it had in the years since he'd helped his Aunt Lally bury her husband, since he'd taken the responsibility of her ranch onto his seventeen-year-old shoulders.

"You're a goner, McShane," he threatened good-naturedly, giving chase through the growing slop of dirt-turned-mud and the plump summer raindrops that splashed his face and hands.

Her heels clattered on the planks of the bridge. "I'm quakin' in my boots!" she flung back, balancing precariously on the rail-less edge. "One more step, and the Stetson gets it!"

"You wouldn't dare!" he shouted above a thunder rumble, watching her dangle his hat over the gurgling stream below.

"Oh, wouldn't I?"

The felt brim fluttered in the wind. Zack planted his fists on his hips. "Only a coward takes prisoners. Come down here and fight, McShane!"

"Come up and make me, Rawlins!"

She pirouetted, holding the hat over her head like an umbrella. He was just about to rush her, when he heard her gasp. Suddenly she wobbled. Her arms and legs flailed. In the next instant, she was toppling and shrieking at the top of her lungs.

"Bailey!"

He heard her splash. He heard a choking, coughing sound as she went under.

Then there was silence. A deafening, blood-chilling silence.

Chapter 9

"Bailey! Dear God, no!"

Panic, dark and tangible, seized Zack's heart. Without thought for his boots or spurs, he ran for the streambank. Slipping and sliding, he scrambled through the rain-slickened reeds and plunged into the tepid waters. All he could think in that terrible, mind-numbing moment was that he'd lost her. He'd lost his precious Bailey.