Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (28 page)

Personally, Bailey wanted to hunt cougar. Seething over Zack, infuriated by the trespassers, she would have much preferred to bag cowpokes, but she figured shooting cattlemen was a hanging offense, even if they did deserve to have their hides scraped and tanned.

Besides, she'd just spent the better part of an hour pleading, ranting, and finally insulting Mac to keep him and his shotgun off the Rawlins property. She couldn't very well seek vengeance when she had an example to set for her hired hands, now, could she?

With only half an ear, she listened as Rob Cole convinced the others to spend a half hour mending the wire with the tools that he and every other sheepman had learned through years of harsh experience to pack in satchels or saddlebags. Campaigning must have come naturally to Rob, she mused. Even though his vice presidency in the Woolgrowers' Association was assured for another year, he was stumping with zeal, insisting that sheepmen stick together, since no lawman in the county gave a damn about their troubles.

Well, Bailey couldn't argue that. The only problem was, she wasn't particularly fond of a certain sheepman right now, and the last thing she wanted was his company.

Dear old Mac. No doubt he'd intended to preach at her some more, because he'd brusquely declined the Coles' invitation to track down One Toe after their hunting party had called at the house. She really hated it when he got on his high horse.

Unfortunately, he'd weathered last night's storm at the Vasquez cottage, which meant he'd returned to the big house in time to watch Zack gallop off in his black rage. Mac had rushed upstairs, seen her tear-streaked face, and exploded into an imitation of her father. She'd had to volunteer for the hunt, sore thighs and all, just to escape another hour or so of lecture.

"There's no excusing yer behavior this time," he'd snapped in a rare fit of Scottish temper. "Throwing yerself at Nick was bad enough, but ye know I always blamed myself for that, since ye were so hurt when I turned ye from my bed. But lying with Rawlins? That was an act of sheer selfishness."

"Selfishness?"

"That's right. All ye care about is making some public-spectacle to prove ye're equal in every way to a man."

"Damned straight I'm equal! I have just as much right as you, Zack, or anyone else to mate as I please. If I were a man, you'd be congratulating me!"

"If ye were a man, I'd knock ye on yer ass! Ye're playing with hearts, and ye dinna give a damn whose bleeds. I'm ashamed to say I raised ye."

She'd stiffened, wounded to her core. She'd already told Mac that Zack had proposed to keep Mac from gunning Zack down, and then she'd had to lie, saying she'd gotten Zack drunk because he wouldn't have bedded her any other way, to explain why she'd refused a legitimate marriage offer.

Mac was from the old country, and he'd tolerated her wish to marry for love only while she'd remained an innocent. Now that she was as wanton as her mother—he hadn't said so, but she was sure he must have thought it—he was hell-bent on riding her to the altar.

"Raised
me? You're not my kin, Iain McTavish!"

"I've been both father and mother to ye, Bailey, but ye changed all that when ye wanted me for yer lover."

"Thank God! Because I'm sick and tired of reminding you who's the
boss
, and who's the
foreman.
Maybe now we can keep things straight around here!"

He'd sucked in his breath so fast, one might have thought she'd plowed her fist into his gut.

Reflecting back on their argument—and the Coles' timely interruption—Bailey couldn't say she was proud of herself. It had always been hard on Mac, practically being kinfolk and yet, in very subtle ways, not being a member of her family. He'd devoted his whole life to Patrick McShane and the McShane ranch. Other than the thousand dollars in gold Patrick had willed to his foreman upon his death, Mac had little to show for his years of loyal service. Bailey remembered how it had frightened her two years earlier to think of running the ranch by herself, if Mac had taken the pittance and moved on.

But Mac had stayed. At the time, she'd been too relieved to question why. Now the idea that he could pull up stakes at any time was unnerving. Maybe she shouldn't have thrown in his face that he was just her hired hand....

The warning barks of the Coles' hunting dogs broke her reverie. In the distance, a long, lean roughrider was cantering from the east on his coal-colored horse. The pony's gait slowed for a moment, and Bailey suspected the rider had spied the hunting party gathered near her fence. The horse's direction abruptly changed, heading northwest to intercept them, and Bailey's heart quickened to an almost painful pace. She'd recognize Zack and Boss anywhere.

Damn the man. What did he want now?

"He's got one helluva nerve," Jesse Cole said, jerking his head in Zack's direction.

The elder Cole frowned, taking a stance beside Bailey's horse. With his folded arms and straddled legs, one might have thought he was guarding the ranch payroll. Bailey should have been amused at the thought, but Rob's protective instincts reminded her too much of Mac's. Why did every man in the county think her incapable of fighting her own battles?

The
pastores
halted their wire mending and scrambled to their feet. Their expressions dark, almost forbidding, they watched the cowboy ride toward the scene of the crime. Whether the Rawlins brothers had anything to do with the vandalism didn't matter to the sheepmen. Bailey could feel their hostility as keenly as she could feel the churning in her gut. A part of her worried that Zack, alone and outnumbered, would make some dangerous argument for the cattlemen's rights to an open range. Another part of her was still too hurt by his behavior six short hours earlier to defend his innocence.

Boss was only a quarter of a mile away now, his fluid strides rapidly closing the distance. Despite the dust he kicked up, and the heat waves radiating above the hardy gramma grasses, Bailey could gauge Zack's mood by the tense lines of his body. He looked grim. Maybe even angry. She snorted. As if he had any right to be!

His hat cast charcoal shadows across his sun-darkened face. When he finally reined in, his yoked shirt and red neckerchief fluttering in the dying breeze, his features were nearly indistinguishable beneath the brim. She could feel his gaze upon her, though. It was hot enough to make the blistering sun feel lukewarm.

"Come back to finish the job, did you, Rawlins?"

The jibe was Jesse's, young wiseacre that he was, and Zack's burning gaze shifted, freeing her. She released a ragged breath. A full measure of heartbeats passed while he stared at the rubble that once had been her line shack. His jaw muscle twitched.

Ignoring Jesse completely, he faced her once more. "Is that what you think?"

She scowled back, wishing her silly pulse would stop fluttering like hummingbird wings. "I haven't formed an opinion."

"Opinions are all we've got," Rob said brusquely. "The storm wiped out the tracks. But then, your kind must've known that, eh, Rawlins?"

Zack simply continued to lock eyes with her, and she had the unsettling feeling that he didn't give a damn what the Coles thought, or even what they might say about him later, which was odd, considering his election hopes. Why didn't he just defend himself with his true alibi: He'd been with her from late afternoon until dawn?

Damn him and his precious nobility! He should have behaved as gallantly that morning, when he'd offered her her dream.

"Why did you come here?" she demanded abruptly.

Boss stomped in agitation beneath him. She knew the mount echoed its rider's mood.

"To join the cougar hunt."

The air left her lungs in a rush.
Bailey, you idiot.
She blinked back tears of mortification
. You knew he wouldn't come back for you—unless you were bearing his precious son.

"Is this some kind of ploy to get us sheepherders disqualified from the contest?" she flung back weakly. "Or are you hankering after my five-hundred-dollar prize?"

"I don't give a damn about the contest or your money. I'm here because of Esteban Vasquez."

"None of us sheepmen has a vote in your election in October," Jesse taunted. "Helping us is just a wasted gesture."

Zack's gaze finally traveled to the young wool baron and branded the boy like an iron. "Last I heard, we were a community of neighbors, not two armies waging war."

"Burning buildings isn't any way to strike a truce," Rob growled.

"I agree." Zack was just as terse. "That's why I've a mind to ride with you, hear you out. Form an opinion myself."

"Don't tell me you might take the sheepherders' side," Bailey said, unable to resist the barb.

"You want my help or don't you?"

She smiled bitterly. Actually, she wanted a good, solid reason to punch him in the gut.

While she preferred to believe she wasn't pregnant—in truth, she was doing her best to push the disturbing notion from her mind—she still couldn't forgive him for acting as if his seed, his baby, mattered more to him than she, the mere carrier of his child.

Fortunately for him, she never let her personal feelings take precedence over her business concerns.

"Sure, Mr. President," she said. "I want your help. Haven't I been asking for it for three damned years now?"

Zack stiffened at her jibe. She was being unfair again, but then, he should have expected that. As he recalled, she'd come to the Cattlemen's Association only twice in three years, and the first time Rotterdam was still president. The second time, Zack had followed appropriate procedure, placing her complaint on the agenda of the next board meeting scheduled for two months later. She'd flown into a fury, refusing to wait that long for her grievance to be heard, and had stormed off his property claiming he was uncooperative, unscrupulous, and a couple of other things he'd chosen to forget.

Although he believed he'd been in the right during that argument, Zack reined in his outrage, realizing another mouth fight with Bailey wouldn't solve anything. It never did. She only caterwauled louder when she was backed into a corner by the facts.

Besides, they had private matters to discuss, and like it or not, he was going to have to bide his time until he could get her alone. In the meantime, he could at least keep an eye on her. He didn't want her climbing live oak trees to harvest any damned mistletoe.

"We're burning daylight," he told her briskly. "Let's ride."

She didn't pay much attention to him after that. In fact, as he spurred Boss alongside the sheepherders' ponies, he suspected she was going out of her way to ignore him, taking special pains to canter Sassy between Rob's and Jesse's mounts.

He didn't care. At least, that's what he told himself. He wasn't helping to avenge Esteban's death to make Bailey love him. Hell, he wasn't interested in making any mutton puncher love him.

So the fact that they all set their jaws, squared their shoulders, and refused to waste a breath of conversation on him didn't bother him in the least. He was used to silence. In fact, he preferred it.

Riding for hours, they circled through the foothills, looking for cougar tracks. Any hope of finding even a cold trail was slim after the previous night's storm, and in the heat of late afternoon, Zack suspected it would take a miracle to stumble across any puma prints, much less the one-toed kind. Cougars were nocturnal creatures, and most of them were shyer than foals. It was a rare cat that approached a man, and a rarer one still that stalked one.

The problem was, once cougars got a taste of human blood, they usually came back for more. A four-legged man killer was even more fearless than the two-legged kind.

About a half hour before twilight, they finally reined in and had a powwow. The closest they'd come to any cougar all day was a leaf-covered deer carcass and a couple of scratches in the dirt near some limestone cliffs. As for other hunters, they'd run across no one from either the cattlemen's or sheepherders' team. Apparently excitement over the storm and the resulting responsibilities at most ranches had temporarily diverted interest away from Bailey's five-hundred-dollar prize.

"One Toe's gotta be holed up here somewhere," Jesse said irritably, wiping his sleeve across his forehead. "I know for a fact there're caves in those cliffs."

"There's water nearby too, on account of the rain," Rob said, squinting up at the jagged limestone walls that were turning golden in the lengthening rays of the sun. "I can hear it."

They all grew quiet for a moment, listening for the telltale trickle of water on rock. Zack took the opportunity to steal a glance at Bailey. She looked hot, tired, and frustrated. Her pale blue shirt was damp between her breasts. Aried not to look there, but his gaze had a nasty habit of wandering back, despite his best intentions.

Fortunately, he couldn't see anything more than the vague silhouette of a lacy chemise. He swore he'd swing a fist at the first man he caught staring at the same place, hoping for a more pronounced view.

When she straightened her knees, furtively adjusting her seat, he recalled that she'd been fidgeting more in the saddle than an accomplished horsewoman should. He suspected the reason and groaned inwardly, hating himself.

God, what he wouldn't give to turn the clock back twenty-four hours...