Colorado Bride (10 page)

“What do you mean?” Carrie asked, her friendly feelings toward him evaporating.

Lucas had kept his head down and a horse between them as he stripped the harness off the horses, but now he came around the leader and faced Carrie with a disconcertingly cold gaze. “Two things. You’re a woman trying to do a man’s job, and you’re a woman alone in a country where no female is safe without a man.” Carrie began to get angry. “I don’t mean to take anything away from what you’ve done,” Lucas continued. “You can turn out a first-rate dinner and the inside of the station is so clean it looks spanking new, but this is the second time a stage has come in and you’ve had trouble with the horses. You might have been able to handle those two idiots with the shotguns, but you won’t be able to handle the saddle bums or renegades that might come through, and that’ll end up causing the station no end of trouble.”

Carrie was so angry she knew she shouldn’t answer him. She knew from experience with her father and brothers that when she was this angry, she always made things worse. But she spoke anyway.

“I was under the impression that I was supposed to take care of them because they were
my
customers riding
my
line, but then maybe I’m mistaken. Suppose you tell me what you think I ought to do, you being so well versed in the ways of the West.”

Lucas directed his penetrating glance at her. Carrie’s face was innocent of mockery or derision, yet he was certain her heart contained plenty of both. Oh hell, it couldn’t be helped. The sooner she went back to her husband, the sooner he could get her out of his mind. Just look at her. She was such a tiny little thing he had an overwhelming urge to wrap her safely in his arms. Her face was tilted up now as she squared off against him, her eyes bright with anger, her lips tightly pursed with determination. No matter, he wanted to kiss them anyway. He wanted to touch her flame-spotted cheeks, caress her rigid shoulders until she relaxed into his embrace. Even here, in the cold thin air of a Colorado mountain morning, he felt himself burning with an inflamed heat, fired with a need to touch her hair, to bury his face in the lavender scent that always hung faintly around her.

But she’s married, a strident voice shouted in his head. She has a husband; she’s beyond your
reach forever.
Lucas’s senses bucked wildly against the constraints they felt coming, but he knew he had to get himself under control or he would do something unforgivable.

“I’ve already told you what I think you ought to do.”

That was yesterday. I was hoping you had changed your mind since then.”

It had changed all right, but it wasn’t anything he was going to tell her about, and it wouldn’t do him any good if he could. He found himself irresistibly drawn to the tiny sprite of a woman who had more fire in her little finger than most women had in their whole body, a woman who had the courage to take on a man’s job in a man’s world, to hang on despite setbacks, a woman who faced him without the slightest tendency to swoon over his looks or hang on his sage, male-oriented advice. Staying around her was like sticking his head into a lynx’s den. He knew he would be torn to ribbons, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“I think you ought to go back to Denver, or wherever it was you left your husband, and head back East,” he said, steeling himself against the agonizing thought of never seeing her again. This country has a way of destroying any beauty not its own, and I’d hate to see you looking like an old woman before your time.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I didn’t invite your opinion on my person,” Carrie told him frigidly.

“It’s hard not to think of your
person
when it’s right in front of me.” Carrie couldn’t fail to catch the look that was much more than appreciation of the female form, and she didn’t know whether she felt drawn to him or repelled because of it. He had stepped closer, and she felt intimidated. She wanted to step back, but she didn’t dare. He might think she was afraid of him, or even worse, that she agreed with him.

“Nevertheless, I would appreciate it if we could keep our relations on a business basis.”

“Ma’am, we don’t have any relations, and we aren’t going to have any business either.”

“You call me
ma’am
one more time, and I’m going to brain you,” Carrie said, suddenly furious. He was too sure of himself, too certain he had the answer to everything. “I’m a person, a
real
person like you, not some china doll to be put on a shelf and admired when there’s nothing more important to do.” That wasn’t what she’d meant to say, and the changing light in his eye prompted a feeling of panic. Suddenly things were getting on a personal basis, and she didn’t want that. “I intend to stay here and be a success,” she said, trying to sound as impersonal as she could. “I would appreciate it if you would help me with the horses, but if not, I’ll manage to deal with them myself?’

“Like you have so far?” So much for her thinking he might have taken a personal interest in her.

“Mr. Barrow, if you’re determined to make me dislike you, you can spare yourself any further effort. I thought when you threw Mr. Riggins into the horse trough you were a gentleman, but I see you’re just another one of these bigoted males who thinks females are good for nothing but cooking, cleaning, and having babies.”

“I never said that was all—”

“No, but your actions have,” Carrie declared, ruthlessly interrupting him. “Of course you don’t have to help me if you don’t want to, but—”

“I’ve done everything I could to help you from the beginning. Why do you make it sound like I’m personally trying to run you out of Colorado?”

“Because you are.”

“All I said was that I can’t be around forever, that I have a job of my own to do. That seems to me to be a reasonable statement.”

“Now I’m not reasonable,” Carrie spurted.

“I never—”

“I suppose it’s a waste of your precious time to talk to a female, especially one from the East.”

“Ma’am, I never said time spent with you was wasted.” That light was back in his eyes, and there was nothing impersonal about it this time. Carrie suddenly felt a thrill go through her whole body; it seemed to be equally divided between pleasure and apprehension. All this man had to do was look at her hard, and he upended her ability to think clearly.

“But you just—”

“I said I wouldn’t be around all the time to help you. I never said it would be a waste of my time.” Carrie felt disarmed, but irrationally that fired her anger rather than cooled it.

“I see. Women have their place, and as long as I keep to it, I’m worthwhile. But suppose I decide to step outside your proscribed line. Will I become a waste of time then?” An ironic smile chased the severity from Lucas’s expression. He came even closer, and to Carrie’s shock and dismay, he took her chin in his hand and gently tilted her head up so he could look into her eyes. She had never seen such eyes, so clear and intense; she had never encountered any gaze she felt could penetrate her defenses … until now.

“I never saw anybody to beat you for twisting a man’s words. Any man who didn’t know you might get the notion you were trying to make him mad.” Carrie wondered how she could make anyone mad when her mind was in such chaos she didn’t know her own thoughts.

“I’m afraid that we women tend to let our emotions color our thinking. And in case you haven’t noticed, I am a woman,” she said a little hesitantly.

“That’s one thing I noticed right off,” Lucas stated, dropping his face until it was only a few inches from hers. “I knew the moment you stepped down off that stage you were more woman than I’d ever seen before, a woman a man could feel proud to call his own.”
His own,
Carrie thought, quickly recovering from her momentary bemusement. She’d show him Carrie Simpson wasn’t going to be owned by anyone. She reached up, pushed his hand away from her chin, and stepped back so she could see him without craning her neck.

“Treating me like the witless other half of some man is a mighty strange way of showing it. No woman wants to feel owned, not even one as silly and helpless as you seem to think I am.”

“Ma’am …”

“And don’t call me ma’am,” Carrie nearly screamed. “My name is Carrie. You said it once, and I doubt it would kill you to say it again.”

“I hope not, but you never can tell about things like that.”

“What
are
you talking about? First you insult me by telling me I ought to go back to Denver before I get myself hurt, then you start to make me feel like you
want
me to leave.”

“Ma’am, I mean Carrie ma’am, you sure do make a right spirited attempt to read a man wrong.” Furrows of frustration crisscrossed his brow, but Carrie could see the indisputable twinkle in his eye and feel the magnetism radiating from his body. He was laughing at her again, and she struggled to fight off the numbing effect this attraction was having on her ability to resist his blandishments.

“I wasn’t aware that your words left any room for interpretation.”

“You know, it’s silly for you to be getting so angry at a man when he’s doing everything he can to help you.” He came a step closer, and Carrie moved a step back, but his stride was much longer than hers and he was closer now. “We ought to be friends. I’ll help you as much as I can, but I’ve got my own work to do.”

“So you keep telling me, but since you’re supposed to be providing the station with extra horses, I would think that you were, in a way at least, working for the company. If that’s the case, I don’t see why you can’t consider helping with the horses part of your job.”

“You seem determined to keep at me until you get your way,” Lucas said, and the twinkle turned into a smile. “I might as well warn you that I never give in to any female, not even when she’s as beautiful as you.”

Carrie felt as if she’d received two crushing blows and didn’t know which one to respond to first. That Lucas thought she was beautiful was a thrilling disclosure and made her want to sing and dance at the same time, although she knew she did both very badly, but the fact that he had interpreted her need for his help as a poorly disguised attempt to gain her own way, with God-only-knew what further demands he thought she might make, made her so angry she quite forgot the compliment.

“I would find it quite easy to remain angry with you whether you agreed to help me or not,” she said with lofty scorn.

Without warning, Lucas took her by the arms and kissed her soundly on the lips. Then thinking better of it, he took her
in
his arms and kissed her in a way Carrie didn’t know a woman could be kissed.

Carrie felt as though her lips were touched by fire, a hard and insistent heat that was determined to blaze a path all the way to her heart. There was nothing timid, chaste, or even gentleman like about this kiss; it was rough, demanding, and completely devastating, and his hard, muscled body pressed the length of hers merely added fuel to a fire that blazed out of control before Carrie even knew what had started it.

Lucas’s lips took hers and without hesitation his tongue eased its way between her teeth, thrusting, seeking, demanding. She was certain shock and mortification would hold her lifeless in his arms, but she found herself responding to his warmth, her body taut with yearning, her arms tentatively around his neck. Her mind shouted at her to resist, to push him aside, but her body remained helplessly enthralled and it was Lucas who ended the embrace.

There,” Lucas said, his impish grin disguising the fact that he was as thoroughly shaken as she, “now you have a reason to be angry with me.” Then he turned, picked up the dropped harnesses, and disappeared into the tack room, slamming the door behind him.

Carrie was immobilized. Her whole body had shut down, even her heart and breathing seemed to have stopped, and she was unable to stir from the spot. Then suddenly she gave a convulsive sob, turned, and ran toward the cabin.

Katie was finishing up the last of the breakfast dishes when Carrie returned to the kitchen sometime later. She poured herself a cup of coffee and almost collapsed into a chair.

“You have the look of a ghost about you, and no wonder,” Katie said. “I stepped outside when I heard the shots, and I saw you being carried off like you were a doll in a dog’s teeth. Me heart was in me throat, I can tell ye, I was so scared. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Barrow, you might have been killed.”

“It seems I have still another reason to be grateful to him,” Carrie said. The bleak note in her voice did not escape Katie’s notice.

“’Tis mighty useful to have a man like him about,” Katie said, watching Carrie out of the corner of her eye. “And mighty agreeable he is to look on too,” she added with a giggle. “Had there been any like him back home, ‘tis certain I would never have left Ireland. Some girls would do desperate things to get a man like that.” Carrie refused to allow her mind to think of Lucas as
her man,
but a tremor arced through her body and she felt betrayed by her own flesh.

“Maybe some girls would,” Carrie said, bringing her wary gaze up to meet Katie’s, “but “I’m not in the habit of pursuing men.”

“Oh, you don’t count,” Katie said blithely. “You’re married.”

“I’m not married and I
do
count, Carrie’s body screamed. But her mind warned her that everyone thought she was married and that
they
had decided she should be beyond feeling an attraction to any man other than her husband, and especially a man like Lucas.