The Lover (7 page)

“With what?”

“Antipholgistine.”

That widened his eyes again.

“Why don't you just shave my head? Or, better yet, you might scalp me.”

“I was being careful not to get it in your hair,” she said.

“Except that the
wound
is in my hair.”

“It's at the edge,” she said. “Sort of.”

He gave her a narrow-eyed look that forced her to defend herself.

“Once the poultice dried out, in a day or two, it would come off without too much damage,” she said.

“You hoped.”

“I know it,” she said.

“Susanna,” he said, speaking slowly in a hard tone, “nobody touches my hair. My hair is my power.”

She held his fierce gaze. The moonlight was streaming in now, yellow and wild, bringing out the copper lights in his skin.

“I didn't know the Cherokee believed that,” she said.

“Most do. We of the Texas remnant of the Nation are said to be old-fashioned.”

His eyes burned into hers. If he only knew it, his
eyes
were his power.

“I'm sorry,” she said, “I didn't know that about your hair.”

“But you did know that I didn't want a poultice. I told you.”

She shrugged.

“I thought you were just being contrary. Just being a man.”

The corners of his mouth lifted.

“All men are contrary?”

“All men I've ever known.”

He did smile then.

“And all women aren't?”

She smiled back.

“Some are.”

“But not you?”

“Not me.”

He was still holding her arm. His fingers were burning their shapes into her skin and sending
their heat through it into her blood. Her breath was growing short again.

His deep, brown gaze was holding her as surely as was his hand.

“Of course
you
aren't contrary,” he drawled. “You've only contradicted me at every turn all day long.”

“You brought that on yourself,” she said, “because you were wrong.”

His grin broadened. “No. Not when I said you'd argue with a fence post.”

“I
won't
,” she said, and that made them both laugh.

Then they suddenly fell silent, staring into each other's eyes.

Eagle Jack couldn't move. Her mouth was only inches from his.

It was all he could think about but he wouldn't let his gaze drift downward. If he ever so much as glanced at her sensual lips, he would taste them.

The thought took him over and wouldn't let him go.

He closed the distance and kissed her. A light brushing of her lips was all he meant it to be, just enough to sample the taste of her and satisfy his curiosity.

But that first touch of his lips to hers, when she gave a little gasp of surprise and then leaned into his hand, did him in. He kissed her fiercely.

It was moonlight streaming in across them but she felt warm as sunshine to him. She tasted like the dawn wind, a new day stirring its wings.

And she kissed him back like there was no tomorrow. The way she opened to him was so immediate that it struck his heart. The sweet shock of it sent desire surging through him like a river.

She must've been wanting this all along, the way he had. Her tongue entwined with his, her lips melted beneath his, and a shiver ran through him.

Susanna stayed still on her knees and begged him with long, throbbing caresses of her tongue and light whimperings in her throat not to stop. He didn't.

He had been right at that first sight of her this morning—she was a woman passionate in every way. This could turn out to be the greatest trail drive of his life if he took her with him.

Eagle Jack slid his hand beneath the weight of her hair and caressed the nape of her neck, cupped her shoulder, and then moved his hand down to cup the fullness of one perfect breast. A perfect handful to fit in the palm of his hand.

Her mouth went still on his.

He found her nipple with his thumb and caressed it. Once. Twice. She melded her softness closer into his hand in one, brief, silent demand for more, and he gave it. He began the kiss again.

But she took her mouth away.

She turned her head from him and a strand of her hair brushed his face, soft as a feather's flight.

“No,” she said, very low, almost in a whisper.

Her voice sounded sad and scared, both. Stunned, he stared at her. She looked out the open window for an instant, then she straightened her shoulders and in one fast, fluid motion, got to her feet.

“If you think you can soften me up and convince me to stay home when you couldn't
order
me to do it,” she said, in her normal voice, “think again.”

The words were a slap in the face, made even worse by the way she turned toward him when she said it but didn't look at him. Anger stabbed through his surprise and frustration.

“What are you
talking
about?”

Susanna started to walk past him. He caught her hand as he got to his feet.

“Talk to me, damn it. You're insulting me for no reason.”

She still wouldn't look at him.

“Damn it, Susanna, you led me on. You're the one who has to explain yourself.”

He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. Her gaze met his, then slid away.

“Let me go, Eagle Jack,” she said. “I need to find that poultice.”

“No, you don't.”

“It's good medicine going to waste. We may
need it on the trail and I don't have money to buy any more.”

Her voice wavered on the last word. That sad, scared sound was there again, and it made him feel sorry for her. She hadn't just been leading him on—something else was at work here.

“What's going to waste is that good kiss,” he said, more gently.

“I told you you can't control me that way.”

“I'm not trying to control you, Susanna.”

That made her look at him. Her eyes flashed in the moonlight.

“You are
so!
That's
all
you've tried to do since the minute you hired on with me.”

She was trembling now. The undertone of fear was in her voice more strongly.

He let her go.

“What are you scared of, Susanna? I'd never hurt you.”

“I know that.”

She turned and walked to the window, set her back to him.

He wanted, powerfully, to follow her, but he waited instead. She didn't say any more.

“
How
do you know it? I could be a ruthless outlaw for all you know.”

“I just know it.”

He waited a moment more to let her gather herself.

“Was it your husband who scared you?”

“Everett didn't exactly scare me,” she said. “But he controlled me in every way he possibly could.”

“How?”

“By withholding money—for food and lamp oil. He never gave me personal money, anyway. By not letting me have a horse to use as I wished, by running off the neighbors and not letting them visit me.” She whirled to face him. “In general, by being a mean and petty lowlife bum who never thought about anybody's feelings except to try to manipulate them.”

She stopped talking and swallowed hard. He looked for signs of tears, but she only hardened her jaw and glared at him as if he were Everett.

“And sometimes he didn't even try to manipulate, he just trampled on people's feelings instead. That's what he did the first time I ever had a social caller after we moved to Brushy Creek. Letty Martindale. He told her harshly that we didn't entertain and we didn't want visitors.”

She took a long, ragged breath.

“I never had another,” she said.

He was struck, suddenly, by the depth of the loneliness she must have felt. She hadn't had a friend, ever, much less someone to love her.

A quick, sharp guilt stabbed at him. All that while she'd been as alone as an eagle, he had been happily living on the Sixes and Sevens, surrounded by parents and brothers who loved him
and hired hands and friends who came and went in the big headquarters house like family.

But his life hadn't been all roses and he could know a little bit about what she'd gone through by remembering the people who had turned away or who had turned him away because they didn't want anything to do with an Indian. As his grandfather would say, The Apportioner gives good and bad to every person.

That was true and he mustn't let himself feel too much sympathy for her. He mustn't take it upon himself to make her feelings his responsibility.

Her
cattle
were his responsibility. That was all.

“And you think that's what I am? A mean and petty lowlife bum?” he said.

“No,” she said.

She looked at him, really looked at him, while his heart made the strangest rhythm of fast beats.

“I'll tell you straight,” she said. “I'm scared of you because you're just the opposite of Everett.”

He listened. But she didn't go on.

“And…?” he said.

“And right now I have no idea what a little bit of kindness and desire could do to me.”

He stared at her as the words stabbed through him. That was the most pitiful thing he had ever heard. And she was entirely serious about it.

“Well,” he drawled, as he fought the urge to go to her, “it couldn't make you stay at home, I can
tell you that, right now.” He sat back down on his pallet and reached for his other quilt. “I could've told you that the first time I saw you, so you needn't be accusing me of trying to seduce you into submission.”

He lay down and pulled his cover over him as he turned away from her, then he made a show of a great yawn as he thumped the pillow. What he wanted to do was to get up and go put his arms around her.

But she would shy at that. He wanted her coming to him, not shying away.

He wanted to show her what a little bit of kindness and desire could do to her. What they could do
for
her.

For his own peace of mind, that shouldn't be what he was wanting. But it was.

“Go to bed, Susanna,” he said. “Morning comes early on the trail.”

That remark committed him and he'd have to take her along, but then, actually, that had been true from the start.

It was certain he wouldn't leave her here now. He had a feeling old Everett couldn't hold a candle to the smiling Mr. Adams when it came to control. Not to mention trampling on a woman's feelings.

After what seemed an age, she walked past him and went to her bed.

“Good night, Eagle Jack,” she said, as calmly as if they'd slept in the same room all their lives.

“Good night, Susanna,” he answered. “Pleasant dreams.”

Then he lay there wide-eyed. The pillow held her wonderful fragrance and the taste of her was still on his lips.

He could hear her soft breath like a whisper in the dark.

What had he done here tonight? He'd said he would take her up the trail, for one thing.

And he'd proved out his suspicion that if he kissed her once he'd have to kiss her again.

Restlessly, he rolled onto his other side so he could watch the moon out the window. It didn't help. He could still feel Susanna in the room as close as if he were still touching her.

This was insanity, pure and simple.

He never, ever, should've taken her offer. Not even if he'd had to dig himself out of the Salado Jail with the spoon they brought with his coffee.

Could she even swim? The river crossings were what most of the drovers dreaded the worst.

And the dry drives. He'd hate to see her lips cracked and her eyes wild with thirst and not be able to do anything about it.

Not to mention all the men, of all colors, who might see her. He would have to watch her constantly.

How could he do that and look for Molly, too?

His head began to feel dizzy, the moon swam before his eyes, and his lids drifted closed. He was not a worrier, he never had been, but if it weren't for this concussion or whatever was wrong with his head, he would never sleep tonight.

Once it went away, he might never sleep again.

T
he next day was so hectic that Susanna barely saw Eagle Jack, and she was glad. She had been on the edge of losing control of her feelings last night, and she needed a day to get her balance again. She needed a
week
, if she let herself think about kissing him again.

Which she would not. She had too many other, more important things on her mind. The packing was the most important, along with the branding, and when Eagle Jack rode up from the herd about ten o'clock in the morning to tell her to hurry it up, she was proud of how businesslike their exchange was.

She reported exactly how much more she had to load and that the mules were already in the catch pen waiting to be hitched. He told her that the branding was going faster than he'd expected
and he wanted to head out in the middle of the afternoon and drive all night, since the crew knew the countryside and the moon would give plenty of light.

Maynell grumbled that that idea was nothing but foolishness, predicted that the cattle would spook easier at night—swearing that Jimbo would agree with her, as if he were the wisest veteran trail driver in Texas—foretold that they could never hold the herd together in the dark, and prophesied that somebody's horse would step in a hole and throw the rider to his death before daylight. She pushed and pushed but Susanna refused to take up the matter with Eagle Jack.

The sooner on the trail, the better, was the way she looked at it. The sooner on the trail the less chance for Eagle Jack to change his mind and try again to leave her at home.

May finally stopped agitating when her nephew, Daniel, who was expected for a visit the next morning, arrived around noon. Susanna was so relieved that May would be distracted she could've hugged his neck. She had no patience this day for anybody else's opinions—or their wants and needs—because her own were pulling at her every minute.

All her thoughts were of Eagle Jack. How could she have been wondering who
he
was? She didn't even know who
she
was, anymore. She still
couldn't believe she'd behaved in such a fashion as to let him kiss her senseless and then kiss him right back.

Every time she thought about it, she felt that overwhelming desire for him again and she could not deal with it. She also felt an unsettling sense of betrayal of her new self—the new, independent woman who had come to life in her skin since Everett died.

Was this the kind of trouble that independent women got themselves into? Did a woman have to stay completely away from all men to preserve her freedom? Did freedom mean never experiencing kisses that created a whole new world, one that shook her to the core—because they only made her want to come back for more?

Really, that didn't sound like freedom at all. But then, coming back for more with any man led straight to servitude again, didn't it?

She didn't know, she couldn't say. She hadn't lived long enough to know the answers to such questions.

What she must do now was get her mind on her business and take her cattle to Kansas. What she must do now was forget last night ever happened and hope that Eagle Jack would, too. The important thing to think about was saving Brushy Creek. Eagle Jack was only a tool to help her accomplish that and once it was done, he would be gone.

But in the middle of the afternoon, when she looked up from putting the last item, which was the one ham they had left in the smokehouse, into the wagon and saw Eagle Jack riding up the hill from the herd, he looked like a knight in shining armor come to save her. He and his horse were both covered in dust and sweat, but his seat in the saddle and every movement he made proclaimed he was in control and he knew what he was doing.

She was so glad he was there.

Because he was helping her save her ranch, of course. That was the only reason.

It had taken her all evening yesterday and all day today—except for the necessary hours required to cook three meals and clean them up—to finish packing her supplies, load and organize the wagon and get it hitched to the mules. She could never have done all that and helped get the herd ready for the trail at the same time.

“Time to head out,” he said, when he reached her. “You have everything you need on the wagon?”

His eyes were sparkling. He was eager to go.

“This is the last of it,” she said. “Let me make one more sweep through the house to see if I forgot anything.”

Eagle Jack's gaze moved to something behind her. She turned.

“You forgot me,” Maynell said.

May was carrying a bucket full of early plums and her winter coat over her other arm.

Susanna stared at her. “What are you doing? You're staying here, May.”

Maynell shook her head. “Nope. Me and Jimbo's goin', too.”

It took a minute for Susanna to actually realize what she'd said.

“But who'll watch Brushy Creek? The trail drive is to save Brushy Creek, Maynell. What's the sense if we leave it abandoned?”

“Daniel's gonna be here. He'll take good care.”

“So that's why you quit fussing when Daniel came,” Susanna said.

“Yep,” Maynell said, “I couldn't go off with the cattle tonight without nobody to do the chores and I'd thought the boy wasn't comin' till tomorrow.” She stopped and set her bucket down beside the wagon wheel and began to fold her coat. “Scared me bad,” she said.

“Serves you right,” Susanna said, “for making plans behind my back.”

Maynell flashed her birdlike eyes. “Only made 'em when I seen what the truth was.”

Susanna waited but May pressed her thin lips together and said no more.

“I'm afraid to ask what that truth is,” she said.

“Fine with me,” Maynell said. “Cain't tell you anyhow, or you'd know as much as I do.” She
cackled with satisfaction at her own joke as she stood on tiptoe to lay the folded coat on the wagon seat. Then she looked Susanna in the eye. “Only kept 'em secret 'cause I knowed you'd tell me stay.”

It was her most stubborn look. Susanna knew it well. When Maynell got that look, it was a waste of breath to argue with her.

Instinctively, Susanna turned to Eagle Jack, although she regretted it the minute she did. If she couldn't manage her own help here at the house, how could she expect him to share responsibilities concerning the drovers with her?

He sat his horse quietly, looking down at her with a thoughtful look in his eyes and the ghost of a grin on his lips.

“Eagle Jack doesn't like to be responsible for women on the trail,” Susanna said, throwing the words over her shoulder to Maynell while she looked at Eagle Jack with a silent, desperate demand for him to back her up. Her stomach clenched.

Living with Maynell in such close quarters as a trail drive chuck wagon for weeks on end would not be easy. Jimbo would be riding with the men. Once Maynell got on a rant about something, Susanna would be the one beside her on the wagon seat, and therefore the one who'd have to hear it for hours and hours on end.

“Got my own slicker and my coat,” Maynell
said, as if she'd read Susanna's mind by looking at the back of her head. “Got my sourdough jug and my own rolling pin.”

Eagle Jack raised an eyebrow. “She's prepared,” he said thoughtfully.

Susanna made a face at him. “Tell her she can't go,” she said. “Just the way you told me.”

“Oh, I don't know,” he said, folding his arms across his saddle horn and relaxing to enjoy the spectacle. “You seem to be telling her that yourself.”

“You can see she won't listen to me,” Susanna said, her voice rising with every word. “She never does.”

She turned around to see Maynell already perched on the wagon seat, her coat folded neatly beside her and the bucket of plums set carefully between her feet.

“It's for your own good,” Maynell said. “Give up the fight, Suzy.”

“You need to be here,” Susanna said. “Daniel can't be more than sixteen years old.”

“He'll be fine,” Maynell said serenely.

“Jimbo's a homebody. Surely he doesn't really want to travel so far away.”

“Jimbo's been actin' like an old man,” Maynell said. “This here trip'll be good for him.”

Susanna whirled around to look at Eagle Jack again. “Did you tell Jimbo he could be one of the drovers on the trail?”

He spread his hands in a show of innocence. “This is the first I've heard about it,” he said, in an entirely too reasonable tone, “but I can always use an extra hand.”

It made Susanna want to take his horse away from him and make
him
ride on the wagon seat with Maynell.

“Jimbo's too old to be a drover, and you know it.”

“He can help wrangle the remuda,” Eagle Jack said. “And dig your fire pits.”

Can
help, not
could
help.

Susanna turned her back on him and gave Maynell her sternest look. “May, you get down from there this minute and get to thinking about Daniel's supper,” she said. “Who's going to cook for him if you're gone?”

“Daniel's been batching it since his mother died three year ago,” Maynell said. “He'll do fine. It's poor Eagle Jack I'm cookin' for.”

Susanna was incensed.

“
Poor
Eagle Jack?
I'll
be cooking for him!”

“Yeah,” Maynell said sarcastically, “and not a pie to be seen for a hundred miles around your camp.” Scornfully, she swept her gaze away from Susanna and smiled at Eagle Jack. “These here plums'll ripen in a day or two,” she said, “and I packed a Dutch oven to make a cobbler in.”

Eagle Jack gave her that irresistible grin of his.

“I can't wait,” he said. “If there's anything I love, it's pie.”

“Always did like a brown-eyed handsome man with good, common sense,” said Maynell.

 

They got the herd headed north and strung out just right for the number of drovers they had and were five miles from Brushy Creek when the moon came up. Eagle Jack rode out a little way ahead of the lead cattle, but not very far.

Until then, he had dropped back often to ride beside one or the other of the drovers. He was beginning to watch all of them with an eye to whether he wanted to take them with him after they joined the crew from the Sixes and Sevens. He took only the best, most reliable, toughest men north—that was a hard lesson he'd learned from the drives of the past.

He felt his lips curve in a wry smile.

He was fooling himself. How could he even have that thought when this time he was taking two women and an excitable old man up the trail? No, obviously, he hadn't learned that lesson at all.

Actually, it wasn't his fault, though. He hadn't had a choice about taking Susanna along, not after he'd stepped into the middle of her deal with Adams and left her vulnerable, and if Susanna were coming along, he'd had to have Maynell and Jimbo to help him with her.

That was the only reason he had agreed to it. They'd be a burden in some ways—two people besides Susanna who were more or less helpless in case of attack or disaster—but Jimbo swore he was a crack shot, and he could do a lot of work around the camp.

Yes, it would definitely be worth doing a little extra baby-sitting, if it came necessary, to have them on the drive. Even if they couldn't keep Susanna entirely out of his hair, just by their presence they could keep him from trying to be alone with her.

He'd had to do
something
to protect himself. During this long, hard day of working cattle he had fought thoughts of Susanna and his desire for Susanna, and he'd decided not to follow his natural inclination to pursue her.

He wanted, as naturally as he breathed, to pick up that challenge of being the first man to introduce her to kindness and desire. But she was far too complicated a woman for him, and best left alone right now when he had so much responsibility to face.

And, since she was far too desirable to keep away from without a little help, Maynell and Jimbo would be just the help he needed.

“Eagle Jack, wait up!”

He turned in the saddle.

While he'd been thinking of her, Susanna had passed the herd and almost caught up with him.

Was it because she was beset with thoughts of him, too? Had she, too, thought of their kiss a thousand times?

“I need to talk to you,” she said, slowing to a trot to match his when she reached him.

“I don't have time to talk,” he said, teasing her. “I have a trail drive to boss.”

“You don't have supper, either, until I give it to you,” she tossed back, brandishing a small cloth sack, “and you won't until I've said my piece.”

He grinned at her sassiness. He couldn't help it. “I'm not hungry.”

Except for the taste of you.

“Eagle Jack, I want to get something straight before we go a step farther,” she said. “You got in my business again today when you sided with Maynell, and I cannot have that all the way to Abilene.”

There was something about her when she was so deadly serious that brought out the opposite in him. Maybe because her seriousness always seemed about to overcome her somehow. She needed help with it.

He stopped his horse. Hers stopped, too.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Not going a step farther,” he said, solemnly. “Only following your orders, ma'am.”

At first he thought she was going to smile, but instead, she scowled at him.

“This is a perfect example of what I'm talking
about,” she said sternly. “You don't take anything seriously enough.”

“While you take everything too seriously,” he said.

“It's my whole life at risk,” she said. “It's whether I have a home at the end of this summer.”

“All our lives are at risk every day,” he said, “if we so much as get out of bed. Even if we don't, a tree could fall on the house or lightning could strike in through the window and kill us.”