Ride the Thunder (18 page)

His spurs jingled to the accompanying thud of his boots on the steps. A grimness settled over his features as he reached to open the door. He couldn’t put off meeting Fletcher Smith any longer. Brig fought down the irritability that gnawed at him and walked into the house.

His gaze glanced over Jocko and Tandy to seek the iron-haired man a few feet from them. Brig forced a tight smile onto his mouth and pulled off a leather glove to shake hands with the hunter.

“Hello, Fletcher. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to meet you. Tandy looked after you all right, I hope.” He felt the strong grip of the older man.

“Fine. He explained that work here at the ranch kept you from meeting us,” Fletcher assured him.

“Hello, Brig.”

His gaze swung around to his cousin standing near the door. “Max.” He nodded a curt acknowledgement of his cousin’s presence and noticed the gear stacked beside him. “Tandy, give them a hand carrying their
stuff upstairs.” Brig turned to the stocky cowboy he gave the order.

An uncertain look flashed across Tandy’s expression. He glanced uneasily at Brig. “I didn’t know exactly how you were going to work it so I thought I’d better wait until you got here to show them where they were going to sleep tonight.”

Annoyed, Brig suppressed the urge to snap an impatient remark. He had made the sleeping arrangements plain. The hunters would double up in the rooms upstairs. But he wasn’t about to rebuke Tandy in front of Fletcher. He could chew him out later when they were alone.

As he turned back to Fletcher, his gaze started an arc to encompass all members of the hunting party. When it touched the tall young man with the black hair and dark eyes, it hesitated in surprised recognition. It flashed through Brig’s mind that he might be the reason for Tandy’s uncertainty about the sleeping quarters.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glint of red. Sunlight streaming through the window had set fire to the brown hair of the woman standing by it. The sight of her hit him like a hard blow to the stomach. For a second, Brig couldn’t move, breathe, or think.

Desire seared through his veins, burning him up in a white-hot heat. It wasn’t a mirage. Jordanna was actually standing there, in the flesh—in beautiful, soft, alabaster flesh. The look in her hazel-green eyes said she recognized him, too, and remembered. He wanted to groan with aching relief that she was finally here to put an end to his torturous obsession. His need was so great he wanted to strip the clothes from her and take her where she stood, then carry her to his bedroom and not come out for a week. Even then, he wasn’t sure if it would be long enough.

Before he could obey the urge, someone moved and made Brig aware of the others in the room. Then it struck him, why she was here and who had brought
her. The hot flames burning through him turned to rage.

His head jerked to Fletcher in savage accusal. “What’s she doing here?” The man was asking too much from him. The thought of her being under the same roof and sleeping in another man’s arms was more than Brig could tolerate.

Startled by the violence in the question, Fletcher frowned at him in confusion. “Who? Jordanna?”

“Yes! Jordanna.” The words were dragged through his clenched teeth. Never in his life had he actually wanted to kill a man, but Brig ached now to circle Fletcher’s throat and strangle him with his bare hands. He turned away before he was overwhelmed by the urge to kill. “The hunt is off!”

“What?” Her father’s voice held confusion. “What are you talking about, McCord? We made an agreement.”

Shaken by the discovery that the stranger was Brig McCord, the rancher who was going to serve as guide for their hunting trip, Jordanna could only stare. He remembered her. She had seen it in his eyes when he’d first noticed her. Now he looked as unfeeling as stone, hard and cold.

“There was nothing in the agreement about a woman!” His withering gaze flashed to Tandy Barnes. “Why did you bring her?”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Tandy defended himself. “You never said anything about a woman, but how was I supposed to know you didn’t know she was coming?”

“McCord, I’m sorry if I forgot to mention Jordanna,” her father apologized with a helpless shrug. “It wasn’t intentional. Jordanna always goes hunting with me.”

“That’s your problem,” Brig retorted and sent a glowering look at Jordanna. “I didn’t make any arrangements to accommodate a woman. We don’t have the facilities. The hunt’s canceled.”

“But we’ve come all this way,” her father protested. “It’s too late for me to try to get someone else.”

“You should have thought of that sooner. I’ll see that you get your money back. Tandy. Jocko.” He turned to the two dumbstruck ranch hands. “Help . . .”

“This is nonsense!” Fletcher interrupted with a burst of impatience. “Just because Jordanna happens to be a woman, she doesn’t require any special facilities. She’s prepared to rough it right along with the rest of us. She always has.”

“I don’t give a damn what she’s done or where she’s hunted with you in the past!” Brig pivoted to point a threatening finger at her father. “I’m not taking a woman on what is supposed to be a hunting trip. Now if you want to send her back to New York, fine.”

“No!” Jordanna found her voice. “Nobody is sending me back to New York.”

Cold brown eyes met her defiant look. “You’re going—either alone or with the rest of them. But I don’t want you here.”

His flat statement of rejection chilled her. It seemed impossible that this was the same man who had made her feel so warm and good inside when he’d made love to her. Maybe she hadn’t really felt like that. Maybe it had all been an illusion.

“McCord, you agreed to take a hunting party up into the high country for bighorns,” her father reminded him stiffly.

“A hunting party? Is that what you call this?” Brig jeered, looking contemptuously around the room. “All I see is one hunter. And I’m not so sure about you any more!”

“I have nothing to do with Max being included,” Fletcher retorted. “He invited himself along. As for my son, kit—granted, he won’t be doing any hunting.”

“Your son?”

Jordanna saw her father whiten with anger at the amused and scornful look Brig McCord cast in her brother’s direction. Family loyalty made her bristle, too. He had no reason to look at Kit that way.

“Jordanna, on the other hand,” her father continued as if pretending he hadn’t heard the derogatory tone Brig had used in reference to his son, “will be hunting. I told you in New York that this would probably be my last chance at a trophy bighorn. I’m going to have it. You aren’t going to back out on our agreement.”

“Let’s get this straight, Fletcher. You may consider this little group to be a serious hunting party, but you and I have different definitions. I don’t consider it serious when you drag along a woman for your own amusement.”

Jordanna’s mouth opened and closed in wordless shock. He couldn’t mean what he was implying. Her gaze flew to her father.

“He thinks I’m your mistress,” she gasped in out rage.

“What?!” He stared at Brig. “My God, Jordanna is my daughter!”

“That’s a likely story,” Brig scoffed in icy mockery. “But more believable than if you claimed she was your niece.”

“It’s the truth, Brig,” Max inserted. “Jordanna is Fletcher’s daughter. Didn’t you know that?”

His cousin’s unexpected support of her father’s claim caused a flicker of uncertainty to cross Brig McCord’s expression. Jordanna was subjected to his piercing scrutiny. She was hurt and indignant that he could continue to question her identity.

It was becoming evident that he had believed she was her father’s mistress when he’d met her in the den at the party. But why? With vivid clarity, she remembered his comment about fastening the hook on her gown after they had made love. He’d seen her father fix it earlier and had presumed that his reason had been the same. The fact that he hadn’t known Fletcher was her father didn’t lessen Jordanna’s sense of outrage. Brig had believed her to be some kind of whore. He had amused himself with her, not caring who she was or even bothering to ask her name.

Incensed by the discovery, Jordanna crossed the room to stand in front of him. Fiery green lights were shooting from her eyes. “How dare you insult me like that?” Her voice was low and trembling with burning anger. “You bastard.” She slapped him hard, too angry to feel the stinging numbness in the palm of her hand.

Her wrist was clamped by the iron shackle of his grip and she strained to free it. The white mark on his tanned cheek was slowly turning red. Jordanna’s only regret was that she hadn’t hit him harder. The blazing darkness in his gaze didn’t intimidate her.

An arm came between them as her brother stepped in to separate them. “Let her go, McCord,” he ordered in a calm voice.

Christopher’s intervention prompted Tandy Barnes to step forward and place a restraining hand on Brig’s shoulder. “Back off, Brig.” He walked softly with his words. “The lady didn’t mean anything by it.”

An eyebrow lifted in cold, arrogant mockery. “I think she did.” Brig released her wrist and stepped away.

“I hope we’ve straightened out this misunderstanding, McCord,” her father stated. “I’m sorry Jordanna lost her temper like that, but . . . under the circumstance, I think it was forgivable.”

“You could be right” Brig rubbed his cheek but was not prepared to completely agree.

“As for myself. I can’t help but feel complimented by your mistake.” Fletcher Smith smiled with faint wryness. “It’s flattering to think a woman as lovely as my daughter could be interested in me.”

“For enough money, there are some people who can pretend an interest in anything,” he retorted.

“Speaking of money, I hope you’re going to change your mind about the hunt now that you know who Jordanna is. We both have our heart set on getting a trophy bighorn.”

“She is your daughter.” Brig took a deep breath as if he wasn’t quite convinced it was true.

“Do you want me to show you my passport?” Jordanna
challenged. “Would that convince you? Or how about a copy of my birth certificate?”

“How serious are you about hunting?” he ignored her caustic questions.

“Didn’t Jordanna show you her trophies mounted in the den?” Kit’s question revealed that he remembered Brig as being the man in the den with his sister the night of the party. “Most of them in there are Dad’s, but a few of them are hers.”

“No, she didn’t.” Brig studied her with a cold, hard stare.

Jordanna had always considered brown eyes to be warm and luminous, but his weren’t. They were stone-brown, hard and flat. There was a dry quality to them, like a desert rock. It wasn’t easy to withstand their scrutiny, but Jordanna didn’t let her gaze waver.

“Your concern that we aren’t serious about hunting is unnecessary.” her father stated. “My daughter is as dedicated to the sport as I am.”

He didn’t take his eyes from her. “She’ll be nothing but trouble.”

“If I didn’t think that she had the strength and stamina to make this hunt, she wouldn’t be here. Nothing is going to stand in my way of getting a trophy ram, not even Jordanna. She learned a long time ago that she receives no concession for being a female. Her sex doesn’t entitle her to special treatment, or special accommodations.”

“Hunting isn’t a sport restricted only to males.” Jordanna’s voice was low and challenging. “As a matter of fact, in the predatory animal world, it’s the female who does the bulk of the hunting. The African lion, the supposed ‘King of the Beasts,’ does very little. It is the lioness that makes the kill to feed the pride of lions.”

The atmosphere was thick. Jordanna left the invisible bombardment of tension along her nerve ends. Brig McCord continued to stare at her for another full second; then he turned to the two men who worked for him.

“Take their gear up to the room, all except for Miss Smith’s. Put hers in my bedroom.” The command was issued in a low, rumbling voice that would tolerate no discussion. In spite of her anger, her senses leaped at the assignment of her sleeping quarters. Jordanna received a brief, sardonic glance. The elaboration he added was for her benefit, although he addressed it to his men. “I’ll be bunking in here on the floor with you.”

“Then you are going to honor your agreement?” Fletcher Smith insisted on an answer more clear-cut than the implication of Brig’s orders.

Brig started for the door that led to the kitchen, impatiently throwing the answer over his shoulder. “Yes, you’ll have your damned hunt.” He yanked the door open and strode through the opening, slamming the door shut behind him in a way that betrayed the inner violence of his emotions.

S
HAKEN BY THE
encounter with the man she hadn’t expected to find here in the wilds of Idaho, Jordanna turned to her father. She had argued with him for the hunt to take place as planned, but the prospect of spending two or three weeks with Brig McCord, considering his low opinion of her, was too daunting. As she opened her mouth to object, her father gave her a stern, silencing look. Any discussion would take place when they were alone, not with others listening in. Jordanna held her silence, trying to contain the upheaval of emotions.