On Her Way Home (32 page)

Rivers of rain poured down his face as he raked her with intense eyes, searching her for injuries. Finding none, he pulled her to him fiercely.

Jo rested her head against his wet shirt. His heart was beating wildly in his chest, and she pushed her face up to it, letting its rhythmic beat calm the fear pulsing through her as she pieced muddled flashes together. Mac had saved her. He had reached her just in time. The bull was within feet of Jo when he bolted in between them on General. Unable to stop in time, the bull had rammed into the side of Mac’s horse violently. The collision shoved General to the side, forcing his flank into Jo’s back. The contact had thrown her onto the ground, knocking the wind out of her and jarring her violently, but it was a fragment of the damage that would have been caused by the bull. Jo was now aware that Mac’s voice had been the one calling her name, shouting at her to get up, to run, and the hooves she heard weren’t only the bulls. He had placed himself and his horse in the path of danger until Jo was clear of the field.

Charlie rolled to his knees in the mud. “Jo, I am so sorry.” His face was white with fear and stricken with guilt.

Jo lifted her head from Mac’s shirt to reassure him. “I’m fine, Charlie,” she said shakily, trying to calm him.

“It was me. I left the gate open. After I fed him.”

Mac’s arms went rigid around Jo. “What are you talking about, Charlie?” he demanded, above the rain.

“I was latching the gate when Leif came to get me,” Charlie moaned, “I…”

Mac shot to his feet, pulling Jo up with him. He narrowed icy eyes at Charlie. Mac’s face was a granite etching, hard and white with anger. “Your carelessness could have killed her!” he hissed, the words slicing from his tongue, sharp and cool as a knife blade.

The air crackled around them, thick with the biting rain and tension. Mac’s eyes skimmed over Jo. She was dripping wet, mud and grass clinging to the front of her dress, her big round eyes still full of fright. “Jo,” he said coolly, “go inside.”

She shook her head from side to side, refusing to leave. Pushing past him, she went to Charlie. “It’s all right, Charlie. I’m fine.”

His eyes were filled with anguish and guilt. “I’m so sorry, Jo.”

Jo put her arms around him. “It’s all right.”

“Like hell it is!” Mac roared above the thunderstorm. Slashing the air with his arms, he thrust them violently out to the side. “Your neglect is inexcusable.”

“Stop!” Jo yelled back at Mac just as loudly. “It was a mistake. An accident.”

“An accident? An accident!?” Mac scoffed at her, a glassy sneer spreading over his face. He turned his back on them, pacing angrily in the cold hard rain, fighting to get control of his wrath, wanting to tear apart the corral, the fence, the whole barn. His shoulders shook with anger at Charlie’s carelessness. All he could see was the bull bearing down on Jo, not knowing if he could get there in time. Whipping back around to Charlie, Mac said in a deadly calm voice, “I can’t have someone so careless working on my ranch.”

Charlie’s woeful eyes stared at Mac and then shifted remorsefully to Jo. Nodding his head, he said in a quiet whisper, “Yes, sir.”

Leif stepped in between Mac and Charlie. “Hold on a minute, Mac. Charlie’s never….”

Mac’s back straightened, and his thick fists clenched tightly at his sides, his deadly identity had returned. “No.” The lone word sliced authoritatively over Leif. “Charlie…pack up your belongings tonight. I will drop you off in town in the morning. We’ll leave early.”

Mac’s verdict was delivered flatly, no discussion, no space for mercy or understanding. The flat wall of his back as he turned away from them stamped the finality of his decision. He took two steps to his horse before Jo caught him around the arm.

“No! This isn’t right,” she shouted, pulling at his unyielding arms to get him to stop. Mac brushed her away from him as she yelled, “You can’t do this! He’s just a boy!”

A yelp of pain broke from Charlie’s throat as Jo’s errant words stung him, like a dog unexpectedly kicked by his trusted master. Betrayal and hurt swarmed in his eyes.

Jo shook her head to the side fiercely. “No, Charlie. I didn’t mean it like that.” She rushed to his side, anxious to take back the reckless words.

Like Mac, Charlie shook her off, deeply wounded by Jo’s appraisal of him. Rising to his full height, Charlie met Mac’s eyes. “I’ll be ready to go in the morning.”

Mac hesitated, esteem for Charlie warring with his rage. Lingering shame filled the boy’s face. Mac glared at Jo. It was one thing to fire Charlie for his neglect, but dismissing him as a mere boy shattered his pride. “Do I pay you a man’s wage, Charlie?” Mac asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you do a man’s work?”

Charlie gulped. “Yes, sir.”

“Was this carelessness the mistake of a man or boy?”

Proudly, Charlie answered, “A man, sir.” Mac nodded his head in consent and swiveled around to go again.

“No!” Jo wailed along with the wind. “Mac, please.” Her pleas were carried away in the gale, unanswered, unacknowledged as Mac ignored her and grabbed General’s reins. “Stop!” she shouted again desperately, “You can’t let Charlie go!”

Angrily, Mac whirled around. “
Enough
, Jo. This is not your ranch. Go inside!”

“Please,” she begged him for Charlie’s sake, for her own. She wasn’t ready to have the family she’d recently acquired torn apart, and Charlie was family to her. She clutched Mac’s arm. “Listen to me.”

But Mac couldn’t listen. He was still teeming with fear for her and still enraged by Charlie’s admission of neglect. He ripped his arm away and strode toward the barn.

Jo watched his retreating figure, powerless to stop the spiraling resolute outcome. Before she realized what she was doing, her eyes alighted on a sopping clump of mud at her feet. Desperate to stop him, to make him stay and listen to her, she bent toward the ground and scooped up a handful of the brown muck. Everything around her froze in dead stillness as she hit her target squarely.

Leif and Kirby’s mouths gaped open in stunned disbelief.

The muddy clump had splatted loudly against the nape of Mac’s wide neck and was slowly seeping down the middle of his back.

The wind, lightning, rain, and thunder still blew around them in a torrent of fury, but it was as if time had stopped for Jo. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears like the crashing of furious waves upon the rocks. She watched with trepidation as Mac’s arms lowered stiffly to his sides, his large hands uncurling to hang in his loose but lithe stance.

With his back still turned toward them, Mac dropped his head, the long thick muddy muscles of his neck ticking as he stood with disquieting stillness in front of them. Angry sparks rippled off the planes of his rigid back. He turned around agonizingly slow, inch by inch, until he faced Jo. He lifted his saturated, jet-black head to her.

Jo expected to see icy blue fury shooting from his orbs, but what she saw left her breathless. His eyes were a tranquil, flat black, the veiled pupils boring into her in an unnerving, ominous way. His eyes flicked to her hand, still dripping tellingly with thick brown sludge. Mac moved in powerful, unhurried strides toward Jo, like a prowling predator across the muddied yard.

Jo’s mouth fell open to speak, but lost in the ferocious calm of Mac’s gaze, she could think of nothing to say. She tried again, opening her mouth to form words, “I…”

The first syllable barely escaped her lips before Mac’s hand shot out violently and grabbed her by the elbow. Roughly hauling her behind him, he dragged her toward the barn through the whipping wind and rain. They charged through the shocked and subdued gauntlet of Leif, Kirby, and Charlie.

Concern for Jo etching his brow, Leif followed them anxiously. “Mac…”A low petition scraped hoarsely from Leif’s throat, but it was silenced, cut short by Mac’s upraised hand as it carved through the night, commanding him to be silent.

Still pulled along forcefully by Mac, Jo glanced over her shoulder in Leif’s direction. She stared at him until Mac wrenched her around the doors and into the barn.

As they entered the dry and warm shelter, Mac released his grasp on her arm, the sudden liberation sending her tripping backward toward the wall. Jo curled her back next to its solid, supporting structure and watched Mac pace furiously in front of her, his hand threading through the thick mat of hair at the top of his head. The lantern glowed from its place on the hook, where it had been forgotten as Charlie frantically rushed into the storm. It shrouded the barn in dim light. The horse Kirby had ridden out was still saddled, standing in the back corner of the barn glutting on the endless abundance of hay.

All of the sudden, Mac’s heated pacing stopped, and he turned halfway toward her. He cocked his head in her direction. The calm in his eyes from before was shredded, and a gaping fury and need leapt from them.

Mac covered the five steps to Jo in a heated bolt of power, sweeping his arms around her waist and crushing her to him, his mouth slanted hotly over hers in raging hunger. Jo gasped in shock, but it was quickly swallowed by Mac’s ravenous mouth. His lips pressed into her with frighteningly sweet intensity as the smooth granite planes of his mouth melded into Jo’s soft and pliable lips. She was trapped in the powerful, unrelenting pressure of his muscled arms. Breath, space, pain, happiness, and every other opposing force in mortality melted into a tangle of starving, excruciating need. Mac pulled Jo’s arms up to his neck, where she wrapped them in his heavy sopping wet hair. She could feel gritty granules of the mud she’d thrown at him sieving through her fingers.

Jo clung to him, her own need, heartbreak, and love tearing from her soul. She moaned into his mouth, the taste of him and the rain from his face blending together with addictive potency.

Mac’s hands dug into her back, kneading and pressing her into his body with a devastating fervency. He lifted her up and trapped her against the barn wall with his solid body. Jo flung her head back, resting it on the boards behind her, and closed her eyes as Mac’s mouth ground hot, moist kisses along her throat. She had never felt anything like this before, had never imagined this silky warmth coursing through her body, had never experienced this heavy craving in the pit of her stomach. Slowly, the ferocity of Mac’s storm calmed, and his kisses became the sweet drops of heaven after a pouring rain. They stung Jo’s soul with their intense longing, their craving. He drank her in with a thirsty
need that could not be quenched, his lips,
so
soft.

“Mac,” his name rolled from her tongue, a lonesome, yearning plea for this pleasure to never cease.

Groaning, Mac kissed and cradled her in an endless, body-shattering assault until Jo’s lips were swollen and bruised. Her breath, and his, pounded loudly in her ears. Mac tore his lips from hers and eased his crushing hold around her waist.

Slowly, Jo slid down the length of his body until her feet touched the floor. The deep indigo pools of her eyes stared up at him with dawning wonder. Placing her hands between their bodies, she stroked them up the front of his panting chest and cupped his rough jaw between her hands. With burning tenderness she glided her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and pulled his lips to hers. She pressed a fervent kiss to them and then drew back, enforcing the meaning of her kiss with earnest eyes.

A raw, vulnerable loneliness flashed across Mac’s face that broke her heart. With sweet womanly reverence, she kissed his lips, his chin, his hands, seeking to heal the destructive pains of his life with her love.

“Jo,” his low conflicted voice broke with anguish and desire.

“Let me in,” she implored in soft, hypnotic wisps, her eyes soft and pleading.

Mac wrapped his hands in the tangled wet masses of hair at the back of her head, forcing her mouth up to his. Skimming her lips with his, he breathed into her ear, caressing and rubbing his rough cheek against hers. His teeth grazed the line of her jaw, sending splintering shivers racing up Jo’s neck. Mac’s lips found hers again, claiming them with hungry possession, branding a deep overwhelming pleasure forever into their memory.

The storm raged outside. Through her heaven, Jo could hear its howling wind, its dense and heavy rain pounding on the roof of the barn. She was lost in the feel of him. A warning voice threaded into her mind, struggling against the desire of her body. She was Mac’s. She willingly gave him her heart, her hands, her life, and though she wanted to, she could not give her body, would not give her soul.

“Mac,” she sighed, her lips parting unwillingly from his. Mac’s hands wrapped tighter into her hair, pulling Jo’s mouth back to his commandingly.

“Mac…” she exhaled his name again, unwinding her hand from his neck and placing it against his chest.

The firm pressure of her palm against his thudding heart was the first sign of resistance Jo had shown. He stilled his lips and pulled back, searching her eyes. Desire and warmth pooled in them, but also a firmness, a control that was lacking in himself. Understanding pounded into his clouded mind. Reluctant to change his course, he pressed more kisses to her lips with a throbbing tenderness that nearly undid Jo’s resolve. She pressed against his chest again, lightly.

Resting his forehead against hers, Mac closed his eyes and drew in deep breaths of air in an effort to slow his racing pulse and clear his foggy mind. The sweet, fresh scent of Jo swam in his senses like an intoxicating drug. Simultaneously, they opened their eyes and looked at one another. Jo’s eyes were bright with love and passion, her lips red and enflamed from their ardent fever. Mac’s were torn, yearning, and still hungry, but he didn’t press her.