Authors: Sarah McCarty
“I was going to save it.”
“I’ll get you some more.” He wasn’t sure where he would find it or how he would pay for it—they were building the ranch and not established—but anything that took the sadness from those blue eyes was worth it.
She opened her hand and stared at the mess. He caught her wrist and brought her hand to his mouth. He pressed a chaste kiss on the edge of her palm. Chocolate spread to his lips. He backed off, licking his lips. “It’s still good.”
He brought her hand to her mouth. “Eat it while I get supper.”
She glanced toward the jerky. It didn’t take a genius to interpret what she was thinking.
No, not jerky.
“Oh, we can do a lot better than jerky.” Sam disappeared into the darkness and came back carrying two large oval tins with handles. “The padre’s housekeeper sent a bunch of tamales and pork stew along with tortillas and—” he lifted a square basket “—wedding cakes.”
Desi stopped licking at her hand. “Oh.”
Oh, indeed.
“Maria said it wasn’t proper you didn’t have a wedding supper.”
Caine took the basket with the cakes in it from Tracker and put it beside Desi. “Maria cooks like a dream.”
“Learned everything she knows from Tia.”
“Tia?” Desi asked.
“Tia’s been taking care of us since the massacre.”
“Massacre?”
She was beginning to sound a bit like a parrot but Caine couldn’t begrudge her. After the day she’d had she had to feel a bit like she’d been tossed from a coach going at full speed and was now just bouncing around in the aftermath. “We all used to live in the same town. After the massacre took our families, we banded together.”
“We didn’t know shit about surviving,” Sam interjected, opening a tin.
“Damn near starved to death,” Tracker agreed, getting out a metal coffeepot. “Best thing we ever did was to try and steal tortillas from Tia’s windowsill.”
Caine rubbed at the back of his neck with the memory. “That woman wields a mean broom, though.”
“That she did,” Sam agreed, pulling out husk-wrapped bundles. “Lined us up against the wall of her home and lectured us a good hour while dinner simmered in the pot. Quoted the bible one minute and threatened our manly charms the next.”
“Damn longest hour of my life,” Caine said, remembering the hunger that had driven him to steal, the shame at being caught by a good woman who quoted the bible, but most of all he remembered how good that damn meal had tasted after he and the others had worked another hour to earn their place at the table.
“Does she still live with you?” Desi asked.
“Hell, yeah.”
“Runs Hell’s Eight with an iron fist.” Sam popped the top off the second tin. The rich scent of spicy meat stew filled the air.
“She’s family.”
“Yes.” Maybe not by blood but by everything that mattered, Tia was family.
Desi’s face took up that guarded look he didn’t like. He took the package from her hands and set it aside. It wasn’t hard to see where her thoughts had wandered. “She’ll like you just fine, Desi.”
Caine reached back for his saddlebag and fished out his tin plate and spoon. Tracker poured some stew onto the plate and tossed on a tortilla. Sam added a tamale. Caine glanced over at where Desi sat dwarfed by the coat. “Add another tamale on there.”
Sam followed his glance. “Yeah. She could use some fattening up.”
Shit, Caine hoped Desi hadn’t heard that. It only took a turn to see that she had. That full, totally tempting mouth was set in a flat line and those eyes were shooting daggers at him again. He sighed and handed her the plate. “He wasn’t slinging mud. Just concern.”
She took it. “It doesn’t matter.”
He noticed the fine tremor in her hands as he let go. Hunger, fear, anger…? Hell, there were too many reasons that could cause that shaking to pinpoint just one. She didn’t immediately grab up the spoon.
“Maria said to tell you she didn’t make it too spicy, ma’am,” Sam offered.
Desi appreciated that. She’d only met the woman once, early on before James had understood how determined she’d been to escape. Plump and colorful, happily married to the town’s blacksmith, she’d been a too-cheerful reminder of all Desi had lost. Desi’s renewed defiance after the one time she’d delivered food had ensured James had never let Maria back again. “Thank her for me, please.”
“You can tell her yourself,” Caine inserted in his low drawl. “She comes out to Hell’s Eight once a month in good weather to visit Tia.”
Which meant there was no chance she’d find any peace at Caine’s home. Desi clenched the spoon in her hand. The food that had her stomach rumbling a moment before was suddenly as appetizing as glue. No woman wanted her male relations taking up with a whore. If Tia was as formidable as the men implied, she’d spend her days paying for her crimes against decency and her night paying for Caine having to marry her. The future did not look good. She kept her voice even as she said, “Thank you, I will.”
She stared beyond the firelight, to the wildness beyond. It matched the wildness she felt inside. She just wanted to be free. Free of men’s demands, society’s scorn and the personal pain that ate like acid at her soul.
“Desi?”
She resented Caine’s interruption as much as she resented her circumstances. “What?”
He placed his fingers under the plate and pressed, until she either had to lift the plate or wear the contents. She lifted. His cool green eyes met hers with a confidence she wished she could borrow.
“I promise you, nothing’s going to be as bad as you’re imagining.”
I
t wasn’t as bad, it was worse. Desi stared at the bedroll set on the opposite side of the fire from everyone else, the distance emphasizing this was her wedding night. She’d come back from changing into her new clothes and found this. The euphoria and contentment from her full stomach faded. She glanced across the fire to where Caine stood talking to Tracker and Sam. While she didn’t consider twenty feet a token to privacy, Caine probably did. Men, she knew, didn’t mind other men watching them stake their claim. She’d hoped it would be different if she were a wife, but she glanced at the double bedroll again and knew that had been a vain hope.
The Hell’s Eight men did everything together. Legend said they were ghosts of warriors past come back to right wrongs. Others said they’d made a deal with the Devil to survive when the Mexicans had wiped out their town. No one ever said they worried over much about what was proper or respectable. And she was a whore in the eyes of everyone around her. Maybe even in her own heart if she dared to check, but she wasn’t checking and she wasn’t believing it. That being the case, she wasn’t behaving like one.
Deliberately, she picked up the closest half of the bedroll and moved it four feet to the left. She would have moved it farther if a shadow hadn’t come between her and the firelight. A booted foot settled on the far corner of the bedroll. She didn’t need to look up to know who that boot belonged to. She’d spent all day today while riding, watching that boot rock in the stirrup. The three horizontal scrapes across the instep marked it as Caine’s. “You worried about catching on fire?”
“No.”
She gave the bedroll a yank. It came out from under his foot easier than she’d expected. She hit the ground hard enough to leave bruises on her fanny. She also managed to move her bedroll and extra two feet.
His shadow stretched over her, then his hand, and then the amusement in his drawl. “The heat of the fire isn’t going to reach this far.”
She accepted his hand. “I don’t mind.”
He didn’t let go as he bent down and grabbed the bedroll. “I do.”
She snatched it out of his hand, draping it over her arm as she smoothed the wrinkles out. “Then you can stay over there.” She didn’t dare look at his face as she added, “I don’t mind.”
He took her hand again. His thumb stroked over the back of it. “I must be in a real contrary mood tonight because I mind.”
Anger surged from deep within. “Why, because you’ll miss out on an opportunity to show your friends how well you fuck?”
That thumb didn’t even break rhythm. “And here I was thinking I won’t get a wink of sleep watching my wife shiver in her blankets.”
She wrenched her arm from his grip and stomped back to his bedroll. She threw the blankets down atop the saddle. “Do me a favor.”
He came quietly up behind her, but it didn’t matter. The man had too much presence to sneak. The hairs on the back of her neck always warned her when he was around. “What?”
“Don’t try to dress it up prettily.”
“Dress what up?”
She glanced across the fire. Tracker and Sam were staring hard at the flames, pretending not to be aware of what was going on. She lowered her voice. “What’s going to happen here tonight.”
She couldn’t see his eyes under the brim of his hat, but she could see the quirk of his lips. “You got something against sleep?”
She turned and slammed her hands on her hips, anger writhing through her like a living thing. “Stop it. Just stop pretending. If all you were planning to do was sleep, we wouldn’t be over here and—” she kicked the pile of blankets “—we wouldn’t be sharing a bedroll.”
A log popped on the fire. She jumped and spun around. By the time she turned back, Caine was right there, close enough that the edge of his poncho touched her coat. His coat. She swallowed and risked a look at his face. He didn’t look angry, but with him, who could tell? His hand lifted. She flinched. His eyes narrowed. She braced her spine for the blow that was coming. His fingers grazed her jaw, slid along the bone, feather-light, but the drag of the rough callus left no doubt he was strong. His thumb came to rest against her mouth as his fingers cradled her cheek.
“The bedrolls are over here because we thought you might be a bit uncomfortable without privacy. The bedrolls are together because it’s damn cold and you’ve taken enough chill for one day, and also because you’re my wife, and my wife sleeps by me.”
“Why?” It felt strange to speak against his thumb, but she didn’t let that stop her.
“Because it’s my right to protect you.”
She pulled back against his hold. “I don’t need your protection.”
“Too bad. You’ve got it anyway.” He motioned to the right. “You got any business to take care of before we call it a night?”
The blush rose despite her desire to contain it. “No.”
“Good.” He bent, and with a few flicks of his wrists, resettled the blankets. “’Cause I’m beat.”
“Don’t you have to stand guard?”
“It’s my wedding night. Tracker and Sam are giving me the night off as a wedding present.”
Just what she needed. She glared at the two men. “What was my present?”
His lips quirked and he pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Me.”
It just burst out. “I got shortchanged.”
Unbelievably, he laughed. “I imagine you see it that way now.”
He sat down on the blankets, sliding his hand down her neck, her shoulder, her arm, hooking her wrist in his grip when he reached the ground and tugging her down. “But you won’t always.”
He had no idea what she thought and what she planned. She fell, more than sat, beside him. He caught her the way he always did, as if nothing ever threw him off guard. He lay back against the saddle, his hand anchoring her wrist. “Lie down. Morning will be here before you know it.”
An owl hooted in the distance. The first she’d heard this spring. Was it a good omen or a bad one? She didn’t know, but looking at the sheer size of the man waiting for her to bed down beside him, she had to pray it was good.
“I don’t have a pillow.”
He patted the broad expanse of his shoulder. “I’ve got your pillow right here.”
He expected her to sleep against him. She bit her lip. The wind blew, rattling the bushes. A cold chill went down her spine. Caine’s smile faded to a frown. He pulled her toward him, lifting her arm over his head, directing her fall toward his chest, not giving her an opportunity to twist away.
“If you don’t get tucked in here fast, you’re going to freeze over faster than a stream in winter.”
He let her go when she was lying along his side, her cheek on her hand on his shoulder. “Sleeping like this is going to break my neck.”
One big hand came across her chest, pulling her into his torso as he hitched up. Her shoulder tucked under his arm. She had no choice but to drop her hand. Her fingers caught in the folds of his poncho. As much as she tugged, she was stuck under her own weight, elbow wedged to the ground, head at an even more awkward angle. His coat, made for a much bigger person than she, bunched up over her face. There was a deep masculine chuckle and then several tugs. The coat opened inch by inch, revealing the same amusement in his eyes that had been in his voice.
She frowned back at him. “This is not an improvement.”
Another button popped and the gap widened, enabling her to see his expression. Caine was smiling. A full-fledged smile without the usual reserve.
“I can see that.”
Another tug on the coat had her yelping. The buttons were now caught in her hair.