Granite Man (3 page)

 "Fifteen years," Mariah said. "It's been fifteen years. I thought you had forgotten me."

 "Not a chance, Muffin," Luke said, holding Mariah tightly. "If I had a dime for every time I've wondered where you were and if you were happy, I'd be a rich man instead of a broke rancher."

 Hearing the old nickname brought a fresh spate of tears to Mariah. Wiping her eyes, smiling, she tried to speak but was able only to cry. She clung more tightly to Luke's neck, holding on as she had when she was five and he was twelve and he had comforted her during their parents' terrifying arguments.

 "Without you, I don't know what would have happened to me," she whispered.

 Luke simply held Mariah tighter, then slowly lowered her back to the ground. Belatedly she realized how big her brother had become. He was every bit as large as Cash. In fact, she decided, looking from one man to the other, they were identical in size.

 "We're both six foot three," Luke said, smiling, reading his sister's mind in the look on her face. "We weigh the same, too. Just under two hundred pounds."

 Mariah blinked. "Well, I've grown up, too, but not that much. I'm a mere five-eight, one twenty-six."

 Luke stepped back far enough to really look at the young woman who was both familiar and a stranger. He shook his head as he cataloged the frankly feminine lines of her body. "Couldn't you have grown up ugly? Or at least skinny? I'll be beating men back with a whip."

 Mariah swiped at tears and smiled tremulously. "Thanks. I think you're beautiful, too."

 Cash snorted. "Luke's about as beautiful as the south end of a northbound mule. Never could understand what Carla saw in him."

 Instantly Mariah turned on Cash, ready to defend her big brother. Then she realized that Luke was laughing and Cash was watching him with a masculine affection that was like nothing she had ever encountered. It was as though the men were brothers in blood as well as in law.

 "Ignore him, Muffin," Luke said, hugging Mariah again. "He's just getting even for my comments about his ratty, unreliable Jeep." He looked over Mariah's head at Cash. "Speaking of ratty and unreliable, what's wrong with her car?"

 "Everything."

 "Um. What's right with it?"

 "Nothing. She started in Seattle. It's a damned miracle she got this far. Proves the old saying – God watches over fools and drunks."

 "Seattle, huh?" Luke glanced at the open trunk, accurately assessed its contents and asked, "Did you leave anything you care about behind?"

 Mariah shook her head, suddenly nervous.

 "Good. Remember the old ranch house where we used to play hide-and-seek?"

 She nodded.

 "You can live there."

 "But…" Mariah's voice died.

 She looked from one large man to the other. Luke looked expectant. Cash wore an expression of barely veiled cynicism. She remembered his words:
Planning on moving in?
Unhappily she looked back at Luke.

 "I can't just move in on you," she said.

 "Why not?"

 "What about your wife?"

 "Carla will be delighted. Since Ten and Diana started living part-time in Boulder, there hasn't been a woman for Carla to talk to a lot of the time. She hasn't said anything, but I'm sure she gets a little lonely. The Rocking M is hard on women that way."

 Though Luke said nothing more, Mariah sensed all that he didn't say, their mother's tears and long silences, their father's anger at the woman who couldn't adjust to ranch life, a woman who simply slipped through his fingers into a twilight world of her own making.

 "But I can't—" Mariah's voice broke. "I can't pay my way. I only have enough money for—"

 Luke talked over her stumbling words. "Don't worry. You'll earn your keep. Logan needs an aunt and Carla sure as hell will need help a few months down the road. Six and a half months, to be exact."

 The cynical smile vanished from Cash's mouth as the implication of Luke's words sank in.

 "Is Carla pregnant?"Cash demanded.

 Luke just grinned.

 Cash whooped with pleasure and gave Luke a bone-cracking hug.

 "It better be a girl, this time," Cash warned. "The world needs more women like Carla."

 "I hear you. But I'll be damned grateful for whatever the good Lord sends along. Besides," Luke added with a wolfish smile, "if at first we don't succeed…"

 Cash burst out laughing.

 Mariah looked from one grinning man to the other and felt a fragile bubble of pleasure rise and burst softly within her, showering her with a feeling of belonging she had known only in her dreams. Hardly able to believe her luck, she looked around the dusty, oddly luminous ranch yard and felt dreams and reality merge.

 Then Mariah looked at the tall, powerful man whose eyes were the deepest blue she had ever seen, and she decided that reality was more compelling than any dream she had ever had.

~3~

"Are you sure you're a MacKenzie?" Cash asked Mariah as he removed another slab of garlic pork from the platter. "No MacKenzie I know can cook."

 "Carla can," Luke pointed out quickly.

 "Yeah, but that's different. Carla was born a McQueen."

 "And Mariah was born a MacKenzie," Nevada Blackthorn said matter-of-factly as he took two more slices of meat off the platter Mariah held out to him. "Even a hard-rock miner like you should be able to figure that out. All you have to do is look at her eyes."

 "Thanks," Mariah said.

 She smiled tentatively at the dark, brooding man whose own eyes were a startlingly light green. Nevada had been introduced to her as the Rocking M's
segundo
, the second in command. When his brother Ten was gone, Nevada was the foreman, as well. He was also one of the most unnerving men Mariah had ever met. Not once had she seen a smile flash behind his neatly trimmed beard. Yet she had no feeling that he disliked her. His reserve was simply part of his nature, a basic solitude that made her feel sad.

 Cash watched Mariah smile at Nevada. Irritation pricked at Cash even as he told himself that if Mariah wanted to stub her toe on a hard piece of business like Nevada, it wasn't Cash's concern.

 Yet no sooner had Cash reached that eminently reasonable decision when he heard himself saying, "Don't waste your smiles on Nevada. He's got no more heart than a stone."

 "And you've got no more brain," Nevada said matter-of-factly. Only the slight crinkling at the corners of his eyes betrayed his amusement. "Like Ten says – Granite Man."

 "Your brother was referring to my interest in mining."

 "He was referring to your thick skull."

 Cash grinned. "Care to bet on that?"

 "Not one chance in hell. After a year of watching you play cards, I know why people nicknamed you Cash." Nevada glanced sideways at Mariah. "Never play cards with a man named Cash."

 "But I like to play cards," she said.

 "You do?" Cash asked, looking at her sharply.

 Mariah nodded.

 "Poker?"

 Dark hair swung as Mariah nodded again. "I'll be damned."

 Nevada lifted one black eyebrow. "Probably, but not many men would brag about it."

 Luke snickered.

 Cash ignored the other men, focusing only on Mariah. It was easy to do. There was an elegance to her face and a subtle lushness to the curves of her body that caught Cash anew each time he looked at her. Even when he reminded himself that Mariah's aura of vulnerability was false, he remained interested in the rest of her.

 Very interested.

 "Could I tempt you into a hand or two of poker after dinner?" he asked.

"No!" Luke and Nevada said simultaneously.

 Mariah looked at the two men, realized they were kidding – sort of – and smiled again at Cash. "Sure. But first I promised to show the MacKenzie family Bible to Luke."

 An unreasonable disappointment snaked through Cash.

 "Maybe after that?" Mariah asked hesitantly, looking at Cash with an eagerness she couldn't hide, sensing his interest despite his flashes of hostility. Though she had never been any man's lover, she certainly knew when a man looked at her with masculine appreciation. Cash was looking at her that way right now.

 When Mariah passed the steaming biscuits to Cash, the sudden awareness of him that made her eyes luminous brought each of his masculine senses to quivering alert. Deliberately he let his fingertips brush over Mariah's hands as he took the warm, fragrant food from her. The slight catch of her breath and the abrupt speeding of the pulse in her throat told Cash how vividly she was aware of him as a man.

 Covertly, Cash glanced at Luke, wondering how he would react to his sister's obvious interest in his best friend. Luke was talking in a low voice with Nevada about the cougar tracks the
segundo
had seen that morning in Wildfire Canyon. Cash looked back to Mariah, measuring the sensual awareness that gave her eyes the radiance of candle flames and made the pulse at the base of her soft throat beat strongly.

 Desire surged through Cash, shocking him with its speed and ferocity, hardening him in an aching torrent of blood. He fought to control his torrential, unreasonable hunger for Mariah by telling himself that she was no better looking than a lot of women, that he was thirty-three, too old to respond this fast, this totally, to his best friend's sister. And in any ease Mariah was just one more woman hungry for a lifetime sinecure – look at how quickly she had moved in on the Rocking M. Her token protests had been just that. Token.

 "You're a good cook," Nevada said, handing Mariah the salt before she had time to do more than glance in the direction of the shaker. "Hope Luke can talk you into staying. From what Ten has told me, the Rocking M never had a cook worth shooting until Carla came along. But by January, Carla won't feel much like cooking."

 "How did you know?" Luke asked, startled. "Dr. Chacon just confirmed it today."

 Nevada shrugged. "Small things. Her skin. Her scent. The way she holds her body."

 Cash shook his head. "Your daddy must have been a sorcerer. You have the most acute perceptions of anyone I've ever met."

 "Chalk it up to war, not sorcery," Nevada said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "You spend years tracking men through the night and see what happens to your senses. The Blackthorns come from a long line of warriors. The slow and the stupid didn't make the cut."

 Nevada set the coffeepot aside and glanced back at Luke. "If you want, I'll check out that new cougar as soon as Ten gets back. I couldn't follow the tracks long enough to tell if it was male or female. Frankly, I'm hoping the cat is a young male, just coming out of the high country to mate and move on."

 "I hope so, too. Wildfire Canyon can't support more than one or maybe two adult cats in a lean season. Long about February, some of the cattle in the upland pastures might get to looking too tasty to a big, hungry cat." Luke sipped coffee and swore softly. "I need to know more about cougars. The old ranchers say the cats are cow killers, the government says the cats only eat rabbits and deer…" Frowning, Luke ran a hand through his hair. "Check into the new tracks when Ten comes back, but I can't turn you loose for more than a day or two. Too damned shorthanded."

 "Need me?" Cash asked, trying and failing to keep the reluctance from his voice. He had been planning on getting in at least a week of prospecting in the Rocking M's high country. He no longer expected to find Mad Jack's lost mine, but he enjoyed the search too much to give it up.

 "Maybe Luke needs you, but I don't," Nevada said. "When it comes to cows you make a hell of a good ranch mechanic."

 Mariah looked at Cash and remembered his disgust with the state of her car's engine. "Are you a mechanic?"

 Luke snickered. "Ask his Jeep. It runs only on alternate Thursdays."

 "The miracle is that it runs at all," Nevada said. "Damned thing is even older than Cash is. Better looking, too."

 "I don't know why I sit and listen to this slander," Cash complained without heat.

 "Because it's that or do dishes. It's your turn, remember?" Luke asked.

 "Yeah, but I was hoping you'd forget."

 "That'll be the day." Luke pushed back from the table, gathered up his dishes and headed for the kitchen. "Nevada, you might want to stick around for the MacKenzie family show-and-tell. After all, some of them are your ancestors, too."

 Nevada's head turned toward Luke with startling speed. "What?"

 There was a clatter of dishes from the kitchen, then Luke came back to the big "mess hall" that adjoined the kitchen. He poured himself another cup of potent coffee before he looked down at Ten's younger brother with an odd smile.

 "Didn't Ten tell you? The two of us finally figured it out last winter. We share a pair of great-great-grandparents – Case and Mariah MacKenzie."

 "Be damned."

 "No doubt," Cash said slyly, "but no man wants to brag about it, right?"

 Nevada gave him a sideways glance that would have been threatening were it not for the telltale crinkling around Nevada's eyes. Luke just kept on talking, thoroughly accustomed to the masculine chaffing that always accompanied dinners on the Rocking M.

 "Case was the MacKenzie who started the Rocking M," Luke explained as he looked back at Cash. "Actually, Mariah should have been one of your ancestors. Her granddaddy was a gold prospector."

 "He was? Really?" Mariah said eagerly, her voice lilting with excitement. "I never knew that Grandpa Lucas was a prospector."

 Luke blinked. "He wasn't."

 "But you just said he was."

 Simultaneously Nevada spoke. "I don't remember my parents talking about any MacKenzie ancestors."

 "No, I didn't," Luke said to Mariah. Then, to Nevada, "I'm not surprised. It wasn't the kind of relationship that families used to talk about."

 When Nevada and Mariah began speaking at once, Cash stood up with a resigned expression and began carrying dirty dishes into the kitchen. No one noticed his comings and goings or his absence when he stayed in the kitchen. Once he glanced through the doorway, saw Luke drawing family trees on a legal tablet and went back to the dishes. The next time Cash looked out, Mariah was gone. He was irrationally pleased that Nevada had remained behind. The bearded cowhand was too good-looking by half.