Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (39 page)

"Has it gotten that bad for you, then?"

The old rancher's shoulders tensed. "Shoot, I don't know what you're talking a—"

"The drought. How many head have you lost?"

Hank focused on his herd, but not before Zack glimpsed in his eyes the same kind of haunted desperation he'd seen in gallows-bound convicts.

"Too many," he finally admitted.

"So you needed water. Instead of cutting my fences, why didn't you just ask for it?"

Belligerence warred with the guilt on Hank's fleshy face. "Now, see here—"

"You're my neighbor, Hank. Did you think I'd turn you away?"

He squirmed beneath her gentle question. "Hell, Bailey, you're a sheepherder. And a woman too."

"And you don't like to be beholden to a woman, do you?"

He muttered something that sounded like an agreement.

"I can't help what I am, Hank."

He blew out his breath. Zack counted his heartbeats. He marveled at the sincere concern in Bailey's manner, considering what the Rotterdams had done to her property and her name. If he'd been in her shoes, he would have punched out Hank Rotterdam's lights and dragged his cantankerous hide to the nearest jail.

But Bailey's approach seemed to be pacifying the old salty dog. Zack felt a surge of pride mixed with uneasiness as he watched her negotiate an explosive situation, maybe even avert a full-scale range war. He wanted to be the one to help her. He wanted to keep the dragons like Hank away from her door.

"Do you think you can get past the fact that I'm a woman so we can settle our differences?" she asked Hank.

Like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he ducked his head and grumbled a few words. They sounded affirmative.

"How many head did you bring?"

"Forty-five."

"By the looks of them, I'd say they were some of your best."

"I brought only the ones that were still worth a damn," he said glumly. "The drought turned the rest to scalawags, and even the government won't buy them."

Despite his outrage at Hank's obvious intent to thieve, Zack felt a grudging sympathy for the man. If what Hank said was true, he'd have trouble fighting off the bank if it decided to foreclose.

"Well, the way I see it," Bailey said, "we're all in this drought together. Take your breeders to the old Sherridan homestead, neighbor. There's still plenty of water there."

Hank's eyes misted over. Tearing up was so unlike the old man that Zack wanted to doubt what he'd seen, especially in the next instant, when Hank cleared his throat and adjusted his hat.

"You're a helluva neighbor, Bailey. And a mighty fine rancher too... ma'am," he added with a gruff respect that Zack wasn't sure he'd ever heard come out of the mouth of any Rotterdam when addressing a female.

He had to admit, he was impressed by Bailey's coup. But it also left him feeling ineffectual and unmanned somehow. He wasn't at all sure he liked this turn of events. He wasn't sure he liked not being needed.

As Hank nodded his curt good-byes and cantered away, Zack frowned after his old rival.

"You caught him dead to rights, you know," he told Bailey, for some reason needing to point out the obvious. "You could see he loses a sight more than his pride if you care to press charges."

She shook her head, continuing to watch the heat-weakened cattle plod laboriously toward the spring they'd probably been dreaming of every dust-choked night.

"I'm not out to destroy the man, Zack. I just want peace. Besides, Hank wasn't always a bastard. I remember when his wife was alive. I used to live for the days when I could sneak off and visit the Rotterdam homestead, because Sally was always baking pies or cookies and making those old cedar walls quake with laughter. Nick and Nat adored her; Hank was crazy mad in love with her." A wistful smile curved her lips. "I used to think that's how families should be. Or, at least, that's how mothers should be.

"I remember railing one day at the unfairness of it all, how I should have had Sally Rotterdam as a mother, not Lucinda McShane. Mrs. Rotterdam wiped away my tears with her apron. She told me she'd always wanted a daughter, and she'd be right pleased if I'd let her think of me as one. She'd always hoped Nick and I would get hitched someday."

Every muscle in Zack's body went rigid.

"Anyhow," Bailey continued hastily, as if realizing she'd just swallowed her foot, "Mrs. Rotterdam died about two months later of pneumonia. I was twelve, the twins were eleven, but I think I cried harder than either Nick or Nat did. Her death changed them all. Nat got kind of lost, begging for female attention of any kind, and Nick started getting into the sort of trouble that leads to reformatories.

"But Hank was the worst. Before Mrs. Rotterdam's death, I used to remember him as a loud, flirtatious braggart, but never a bully. Suddenly he started picking fights—big, nasty ones about fences and water rights—with my daddy. He didn't have any real reasons for riding us so hard. Mac said Hank was just hurting.

"But his hurting led to a heap of bad feelings between our families," she said sadly. "I reckon that was about the same time the cattle ranchers started getting anxious about the number of sheepherders who were moving in and fencing off the county. Hank turned his feud with Daddy into a cattleman-sheeprancher standoff."

Which he thought he could use to bend you to his will,
Zack thought, his outrage growing. It was a damned good thing she had him to protect her, their baby, and their business interests from rounders like Hank Rotterdam.

"Dammit, Bailey, I can't stand by and let them get away with this the way you can," he said.

Bailey just blinked at him. Surely even he could see she'd finally earned an ounce of Hank's respect. And if it had cost her a little bit of water, so what? Frankly, she was ready to celebrate.

"Zack, I'm not letting them 'get away' with anything. Didn't you hear? Hank and I struck a truce."

"And you actually believe he'll keep his word this time? My God, Bailey, I thought you were smart."

She sucked in her breath. If he had slapped her face, the sting she felt couldn't have been as great.

"The Rotterdams aren't all bad, Zack. These are unusually stressful times. Besides, you must have found something you could like in Hank, since you were his political protégé."

"I am no man's lickfinger."

"I didn't say you were." Damn his thin skin anyway. She hadn't meant to insult him. "Look, forget it. Let's just have our picnic, okay?"

"I have more than a passing interest in this spread, and I am not going to
picnic
while Hank Rotterdam coddles, coerces, or charms you out of nailing his hide to the nearest jailhouse wall!"

"So what are you going to do, Zack? Cause more trouble? Spill Hank's blood? Maim Nat and kill Nick?"

A summer squall settled on his brow. "If I were you, I wouldn't worry so much about your precious Nick Rotterdam."

"Why the hell not? You're just like him!"

She wrenched Sassy's head around and spurred the mare hard the way they had come. She didn't want Zack to know how much he'd hurt her. She didn't want him to see her tears. After two whole weeks, nothing had changed. His interest still lay in her land, and maybe her baby, but not in her. Never in her, damn him.

She'd tried so hard to please him, to mind her tongue, to be the kind of female a man like Zack would want, even though her ever-present masculine side rebelled every minute. But she'd been fooling herself to think she could ever be woman enough for Zachariah Rawlins.

"Bailey!"

His angry call chased her through the shadow of a low-hanging cloud. She closed her ears and urged her mare faster over the parched grass valley and up the next hill. She told herself she hated Zack. She hated him for not being able to love her for what she was... or even for what she tried to be.

"Dammit, Bailey, slow down! You'll break your fool neck!"

As if you care!
she wanted to shout back as her hat was snatched off by the wind, but her throat ached too much. Through the blur of her tears, she could barely make out the shadow of Boss's nose beneath Sassy's belly as the gelding pounded closer, gaining inch by inch on the laboring mare.
C'mon, Sassy, you have to win. You just have to....

Zack rode shoulder to shoulder with her now, every muscle taut with anger as he crouched, pumalike, over Boss's neck.

"Rein in!"

"Go to hell!" She turn Sassy's head away from his stretching hand.

But Boss, canny cow pony that he was, swerved beneath Zack's knees, cutting the distance between them in three strides. The gelding was a good two hands taller than the mare. Despite her name, Sassy was intimidated by the male's looming shoulder. She began to balk at Bailey's commands, and Zack, seeing his opportunity, seized her reins.

"Son of a—"

Bailey bit off her oath and grabbed for her saddle horn. She wasn't the bronc rider Zack was, and Sassy was trying to rear. To display such poor horsemanship galled her almost more than she could bear. But to let herself be chased down by some arrogant, bull headed cowboy was even worse. Twisting in her saddle, she let her fist fly.

Zack was ready for her. Catching her arm, he used her momentum to topple her sideways. He locked a steely arm around her waist and dragged her kicking and cursing onto his lap. For a heartbeat, she didn't know which was more astonishing: his audacity or his strength. Then he reined in, clamping his mouth over hers, and she decided it was his audacity.

"Let me go!" she gasped, struggling as much as she dared in a saddle that was definitely meant for one. Boss was too tall for her to risk a fall, and Zack, taking advantage of her frustration, dug his fingers into her hair and tumbled the thick knot free. Knocking off his own hat, he imprisoned her head for his kiss.

Zack.
A traitorous tear spilled past her lashes as his lips plundered hers, at first punishing, then dizzily gentle, growing in hunger, demanding her need. Soon she was fighting herself, not him, and the hatred she so desperately wanted to feel wouldn't come to rescue her from her heartache.

She pushed a shaking hand against his chest, but he just hugged her tighter, his loins heating as his thighs circled her hips. She stifled a groan, not wanting to betray the torment of her love-starved senses, not willing for him to guess how many endless, aching nights she had yearned for his embrace.

"Kiss me," he growled, his breath hot and moist against her lips. "Kiss me the way you did the night of the storm."

She began to quake, and his hand pushed past her neckline, beneath the laces of her chemise. It closed, warm and roughly callused, over her tender nipple. A cry ripped from her throat. His petting was fueling her secret desires. It tempted the femininity she tried to disown, driving her beyond all caution, all reason, all pride.

She arched, filling his palm. He rewarded her submission with languorous circular strokes, rubbing the nub to tingling arousal. When she whimpered against his lips, he reached for her belt buckle.

"Zack, we can't—"

He drew her tongue deep into his mouth, effectively silencing her protest while his deft fingers made quick work of her fly. She was vaguely aware that Boss was moving, walking steadily toward the line shack a half mile to the east. Then Zack's work-weathered palm was rasping over the flesh of her belly and sliding beneath the waistband of her drawers. When his fingers curled through the damp nest between her legs, she squirmed in a mixture of wanton welcome and maidenly modesty.

"Only a little farther," he whispered huskily, his promise smoking down every nerve. "Hold on..."

His finger plunged into her honeyed heat, and she moaned, her hips thrusting helplessly in return. Her fist gathered great folds of his shirt, and she turned her face into his shoulder, less mortified by the idea that some stray Rotterdam cowhand might see them than by the thought that she was so easy for him to seduce.

"I want you to want me, darlin', " he breathed against her ear. "I want you to need me the way I need you."

The musky sandalwood of his scent mingled with the smells of saddle leather, baked earth, and horse. Insidiously arousing, the aromas snaked inside her brain, robbing her of her last shreds of self-respect. He sucked on the sensitive hollow of her ear, and she nearly crawled out of her skin as sparks of sensation showered down her spine. Then he touched his thumb to her throbbing trigger, and she exploded. She threw her head back to cry out, but he caught the sound neatly with his mouth.

The world was spinning with mystifying sparkles as he pulled her down from Boss and kicked open the door to the line shack. She barely had time to adjust her eyes to the shack's dimness, to blink at the dust motes dancing in the slice of sunlight that cut across the cot, before the door swung closed behind them again, and he laid her on the straw mattress.

"Zack." She tried to gulp down enough air to rouse her flagging wits. "What do you think you are, a prairie pirate? You can't just drag me from my horse and ravish me."

"Pleasure you," he corrected her, grabbing her leg.

When she tried to yank free, her boot popped off.

"You can't do that either," she retorted as he imprisoned her other leg between his knees. Her gaze was involuntarily drawn along the line of her thigh to the healthy bulge beneath his chaps. She licked her lips. She didn't remember him looking so awesome in lightning and firelight.