His Dangerous Bride (The Brides of Paradise Ranch - Spicy Version Book 2) (9 page)

It was several minutes before he had a chance to react to Eden’s statement as the two of them walked their horses to the stream where Lawson was setting up lunch.

“You know.” He began slowly so that he could sort out the jumble of his thoughts. “I can think of maybe three people who have ever gone out of their way to defend me in my life.”

“Really?” Eden seemed genuinely surprised beside him.

Luke nodded. “My ma—my real ma, before she died—Josephine, and my big sister, Libby.” He smiled as he thought of all three of them and turned to Eden. “I always thought it was funny how the only people who ever saw something in me were women.”

Eden’s answering smile was so soft and feminine—almost as if she had tears in her eyes—that it tightened his throat.

“It’s because women are smarter than men,” she said, leaning closer.

“You know, Mrs. Chance, I think you might be right.” He winked at her, hoping she would take it to mean that he had no hard feelings about her talking to Travis. Why the hell had he thought she would take a shine to Travis in the first place?

Because he wanted her so much that the very idea of her turning to someone else was almost more painful than he could bear.

He sucked in a breath. Whoa. No wonder love was compared to Cupid firing an arrow. It hit you that fast and stuck that hard.

They reached the edge of the quickly thrown-together camp. Luke hid his sudden burst of feeling by dismounting. Getting skewered by Cupid’s arrow was one thing, but if Eden didn’t feel the same about him, it would be more of a wound than a wonder.

He busied himself getting Marshall settled and helping Eden with her horse. Only when he had gathered his calm enough to look strong and commanding did he whisper to her, “I appreciate your help, Eden. I really do. I only hope I can live up to your expectations.”

She stepped closer, lifted to her toes, and kissed his lips. “You will,” she said and patted his cheek before stepping away to help Lawson with lunch.

Cody and Billy hooted and made kissing sounds at him. “Want us to rope off an area so the two of you can be alone?” Cody laughed.

“We could clear out the back of the wagon for a while,” Billy added. “Just don’t go rocking hard enough to break the wheels.”

They snorted with laughter. A few of the others reluctantly joined in. Eden frowned.

“That’s enough of that.” Travis stepped in, his voice commanding. “Show some respect.”

Cody and Billy’s teasing expressions faltered. They glanced to Luke, as if expecting him to go along with his teasing, to open himself up to being the butt of jokes.

Luke settled into an easy stance, tipping his hat back and grinning like he knew something they didn’t. “I might have to take you up on that offer.” He winked across to Eden, who grinned and blushed and shook her head. Cody and Billy continued to gape, so of course Luke leaned closer to them and said, “Jealous, boys?”

To everyone’s surprise, neither Cody nor Billy had a ready comeback. There was a first time for everything.

“Well, we all know who the smart one here is,” Mason added as he took a bowl from Lawson and served himself cold beans from a pot. “I bet we’re all wishing we had sent off for brides ourselves.”

Lawson laughed at the comment and started around the camp, handing out tin bowls to everyone. Cody and Billy not only kept silent, they edged around Luke with the averted looks and hangdog expressions that men only wore when they worried they’d gone too far and offended someone they shouldn’t.

Luke grinned. Hope filled his chest as he helped himself to a lunch of cold beans and cornbread. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d just taken the first small step to being a real leader.

“Good job,” Eden whispered as she sat next to him on the ground beside the chuck wagon.

“You think so?” He leaned into her, bumping his shoulder against hers.

“Yep.” She nudged him back.

Luke couldn’t remember the last time he’d been happier. Things were looking up.

Lunch was unusually quiet, almost as if the boys didn’t know what to say if they didn’t have Luke to tease. It wasn’t until Mason suddenly frowned and squinted back the way they’d come that the mood shifted.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

They all turned to look back at the hill they’d just come around. It was a couple hundred yards away, but a lone figure on horseback stood out against the western sky. Luke squinted, trying to see far enough to tell if he recognized the rider.

“Must be a scout from a local ranch,” Travis said.

“I didn’t think there were any ranches out this far,” Luke said.

“Could be an Indian?” Lawson ventured.

“No.” Travis shook his head. “He’s not dressed right.”

“You can tell from this far away?” Cody asked.

“I bet it’s one of Bonneville’s men following us,” Mrs. Piedmont’s man, Oscar, said.

The others hummed in agreement, standing and setting aside their lunch to glare at the lone rider.

“Bonneville,” Luke growled. He balled his hands into fists, ready for another fight.

But no, a leader didn’t lead his men into pointless altercations.

“What do you want to bet Bonneville is sending his men out to sabotage the drive?” Lawson grumbled.

Travis sighed. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“As if sabotaging dealings with Dashiell wasn’t bad enough,” Mason grumbled.

Something shiny flashed near the rider’s head. “What’s that?” Billy asked.

They all shifted, shielding their eyes to look harder. The flash appeared again, then disappeared as the lone rider lowered his arms. Luke scratched his head as some of the other boys shrugged and returned to their lunch.

“Bonneville can eat my dust,” Billy muttered.

“It’s a spyglass.”

Eden spoke so quietly that no one but Luke paid her any mind.

“A what?” he asked.

When he turned back to face his wife, his heart dropped to his feet. She’d gone as pale as a sheet and held her bowl of beans as though they would make her sick. Her stance had changed too, and now she sat half curled up in a ball, as if she could fold up and disappear.

Luke jerked back to stare at the hilltop, but the rider was gone. Something hard and primal rose up in his gut. He squatted by Eden’s side, setting his bowl aside.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” He closed his hands around her arms, caught between wanting to hold her close and needing to chase after whatever had frightened her—and she
was
frightened—and destroy it.

“It’s a spyglass,” she repeated, voice shaking, eyes round with dread. “He always carries that damn spyglass.”

Chapter Eight

Three times in the next day and a half, Luke checked for burrs in his saddle. The itching, stabbing sensation that something was very wrong refused to leave him, even after Eden brushed away her comment about the spyglass, busied herself cleaning up lunch, and pretended nothing was out of the ordinary. The others hadn’t noticed her discomfort or heard her comment, but it wouldn’t leave Luke. Of course there were no burrs in his saddle, but he would have preferred that answer to the dangerous tension that floated all around him.

“Ho! Ho, there, Luke!”

At Travis’s call, Luke snapped out of his prickly thoughts. Jumped was more like it. His heart raced as he twisted in his saddle to find Travis. Off to the right flank, a single cow was drifting to the side, but Eden was there to guide it back in line. He hadn’t noticed the cow making a break for it. He hadn’t noticed anything.

“Yeah?” he called across to Travis, barely able to be heard above the noise of the cattle.

From point position, Travis glanced back at him with a frown. He held back until Luke rode up around the herd’s right flank. Along the way, he sent Eden a look that was as steady and reassuring as he could manage. He would protect her from whoever that was on the hill. He would keep her safe, make her happy.

“What do you want, boss?” he asked Travis as Marshall fell into step with Travis’s mount.

“I want you to get your head out of the clouds,” Travis got right to it. His frown lightened to deeper concern. “You haven’t had your head on straight since we saw Bonneville’s man on the hill yesterday.”

Luke opened his mouth to say he doubted that had been Bonneville’s man, but closed it just as quickly. He didn’t know who the man was and wouldn’t until Eden opened up to him.

Travis went on. “Look, I know that saloon fight was a crossroads of sorts for you. I admire the changes you’ve been trying to make. But if we get into a tussle with Bonneville’s idiots out here on the drive, it won’t be a fool’s fight, like at The Silver Dollar. You’ll be defending the herd. No one is going to think less of you for that.”

Luke turned about three shades of red—from embarrassment to anger—at Travis’s speech. Travis was a friend and was trying to show support, but he still didn’t think much of him. He could argue the point, but that would only draw Eden into things, and she was upset enough already.

“Yep,” he answered, his jaw set, his eyes trained straight forward to the curve of the river they were approaching. It was all the answer he could give.

Travis studied him in silence. Luke knew the man to be smart enough to catch on to all the unspoken stuff that was going on, but he wasn’t going to be the one to speak first. Finally, after a long, awkward silence, Travis nodded and let out a breath. “We’ll reach that river in about twenty minutes. The herd has to ford it. I want you to lead while they do.”

Surprise bumped Luke straight out of the gristmill of his thoughts. “Me?”

Travis quirked to a grin. “That’s why you’re here, aren’t you? To lead?”

Thank God above for Eden. Maybe her little chit-chat with Travis had done some good after all. “Hell yes.” He smiled, the first smile that felt natural in two days.

“All right.” Travis faced forward, nodding chin-first at the line of the river. “I’m pretty sure this is Dyson’s Run. It’s a little narrower down this way. Ride on ahead to see how deep it is and where would be the best place for the herd to cross.”

“Yes, sir.” Luke nodded, then tapped Marshall to send him running ahead of the group. It felt good to gallop, to feel the wind in his face, his muscles working in tandem with his horse. It felt good to have a specific purpose and a task ahead of him that was more than worrying and wondering. He could do this.

The river was more of a stream as far out on the plains as they were. Luke rode right into it, slowing Marshall enough to test the riverbed, looking for submerged obstacles, depth, and speed of the water. Every lesson he’d learned about cattle and the wilderness in the past ten years and more came back to him, like well-oiled cogs in a machine. He remembered crossing rivers as an adolescent on the Oregon Trail. Sometimes they’d had rafts to take them across, but for smaller streams like this, they’d waded through. He remembered the advice Pete had given him with a confident smile.

As he galloped back to Travis and the herd, his mind was full of calculations and a sense of purpose. Travis rode out ahead of the herd to meet him. Luke pulled Marshall to a stop and waited, scanning the dusty cloud of the herd for Eden. She still rode on the right flank, but judging by the stoop of her shoulders and the angle of her hat brim, she wasn’t paying any more attention than he had been.

“What does it look like?” Travis asked.

“I think we can—” Luke stopped cold. Before he could turn back to Travis, his eyes caught something far in back of the herd—a flash of light. He stood in his stirrups, squinting to see if he could make it out.

“What?” Travis turned his horse to look where Luke was looking.

“I thought I saw a flash of light,” he said. “Like the one we saw yesterday.”

“That reflection from Bonneville’s man,” Travis said.

Luke swallowed. “Yeah.” His heart hardened and he clenched his hands into fists around his reins.

Eden must have seen him searching for something, because she had stiffened from her defeated posture and was looking over her shoulder. The last thing Luke wanted was for her to worry more than she already was. He gave up searching behind them and focused on the task in front of them.

“There’s a nice, sandy, shallow spot right over that way.” He pointed across the plain in front of them as the herd plodded closer. “Should be easy enough to cross, as long as none of the cattle strays too far downstream toward those rapids.”

He went on to explain the lay of the land on the other side and the depth of the stream. Travis nodded with confidence.

“Sounds like you’ve got this figured out,” he said with a smile. “Take the herd across.”

Of all the times for Travis to hand the reins over to him with a hearty vote of confidence, it had to come at exactly the moment when Luke would have rather abandoned his duties to chase after whatever was upsetting his wife. This was his moment to shine, and suddenly his thoughts were everywhere else. He clenched his jaw, tightened his grip on his reins, and nodded to Travis. A true leader finished the job in front of them, no matter what the distraction. If he could get the herd across quickly and efficiently, then he would have more time to devote to solving Eden’s problems.

“Right.” He sat taller and waved to the others. “Lead the herd this way. There’s a good spot to cross between those trees and that pile of rocks,” he shouted.

He shouldn’t have been so surprised that Mason and Cody and the other who had had no problem poking fun at him a few days before waved and hollered back and went exactly where he pointed them. The herd shifted its course, slowly marching on to the ideal river crossing. It was as hard to believe as it was thrilling that everything was falling into place. Luke breathed in the proud sensation of leadership, but only for a moment. He had a job to do.

When the first of the cattle splashed into the river, right after Mike drove the chuck wagon across, he was there to guide them across. The ruckus that the herd made walking across land was nothing to the splashing and lowing and thunder they made as they forded the river. As the front of the herd ran up onto the opposite bank, water splashed everywhere, making the far side of the river a muddy mess. Luke directed Mason and Travis to continue on at point as the thick of the herd gamboled across the current.

“Keep them away from anything farther downriver than those bushes,” he ordered Eden and Billy as the middle of the herd clogged the river. “There are rocks starting about that point, and the water gets deeper.”

“Yes, boss,” Billy replied without question.

That simple acknowledgement was almost as heady as Eden’s proud smile as she rode up to his side. “I knew you had it in you,” she said, eyes flashing.

Lord above, nothing on earth felt as good as the approval of a man’s wife. At that moment, he felt like he could drive all the world’s cattle across the Amazon River. He felt like he could carry a cow or two on his back up to the mountain peaks in the distance. He felt like he could—

Another flash of reflected light jerked him toward the horizon behind them. He walked Marshall to the side, squinted and studied the horizon. It took all his willpower not to charge after the light. The riverbed was too low to see anything, but that flash was unmistakable.

“What is it? What do you see?” Eden asked, too breathless for his liking.

The last thing he wanted to do was answer her fears. “A flash,” he admitted, dragging his gaze from the horizon to meet hers. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She met his declaration with a weak smile. “I know.”

“I’m serious, Eden. Whatever that is, I will protect you with my life.”

“Whoa! Whoa there! Stray!”

Luke jerked at the sound of Billy’s call just in time to see one of the cattle who had strayed too far downstream losing its footing. It lowed in fear and splashed before slipping under the water.

Luke didn’t wait. He wheeled Marshall around and ran through the unsteady water as fast as he could to reach the cow. Marshall faltered when they hit the rocks, and Luke was forced to slow down and take it easy. The struggling cow thrashed and screamed, but it didn’t lose its footing entirely.

“Easy there, girl, easy,” Luke called out to it. He fought against the current and guided Marshall over the rocky riverbed as carefully as he could. The rocks were intermittent in this part of the river, but a few more yards downstream and not only would the cow be lost, he and Marshall might find themselves in danger too. Time was of the essence.

“It’s okay, girl, it’s okay.” He pushed Marshall forward until they stood between the cow and the rockier riverbed. As soon as he was close enough, he reached out and touched the cow’s neck. It wasn’t much, but the simple gesture served to point the cow in the right direction and let it know it wasn’t alone.

From there, Luke walked Marshall diagonally through the current and upstream. The cow was reluctant at first, but as soon as it was able to take two steps through the chest-deep water without hitting stones, its confidence grew. Within minutes, it changed course and made straight for the rest of the herd as they crossed in the smoother section of river. Another minute later, and Luke and the cow were charging up the far side of the river onto the muddy plain on the other side, drenched by unharmed. Luke’s pulse pounded and his hands shook slightly, but they’d made it.

It would have been far easier for Eden to enjoy the celebration in Luke’s honor after the river crossing that evening if it weren’t for the creeping, pernicious fear that had her wanting to pick up everything and run. She couldn’t have been prouder of Luke, and was happy that he was getting his due at last. But every snap of a twig and every rustling critter in the bushes had her gasping and jumping. Brent had made good on his threat. Somehow, he’d found her.

“And did you see the way he just reached over and touched the cow’s back?” Billy laughed, telling the story yet again from his angle. “It was like he had some sort of power over the dumb thing to make it calm down and get back in line.”

Luke blushed and smirked as his buddies sang his praises. “It was nothing. The poor cow was frightened and just needed to be pointed in the right direction.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t see how close to the edge of those rapids you were?” Mason went on. “One wrong step and it would have been disaster.”

The others hummed and nodded in agreement as they finished off the fried chicken Eden had made to mark the occasion. She could barely eat. The men were right—Luke had come heart-stoppingly close to hitting the rapids, and who knows what would have happened then.

“And then he comes up on the riverbank with that stoic expression and says ‘Everyone all right?’” Billy went on with his story.

The others chuckled and guffawed. Oscar was close enough to thump Luke on the back.

Eden smiled at the praise Luke was getting for half a second before the shriek of a night bird somewhere across the plain sent her blood running cold. She hid her nerves by standing and collecting everyone’s empty dishes.

“You should have been close enough to see the expression on his face,” Billy went on.

Eden tuned him out. She carried an armful of tin plates to the chuck wagon and began cleaning them out with a greasy, old rag. Her eyes kept darting toward the horizon behind them. Night was falling fast, but she was still able to make out most shapes against the backdrop of the river—now a hundred yards behind them or more—and the plain and mountains beyond. There weren’t many hills or much vegetation in this part of Wyoming, but that didn’t mean Brent and the others couldn’t find a place to hide. In fact, they had always been able to hide, whether there was cover or not.

“Everything all right there, Mrs. Chance?” Cody asked, saying her name with respect instead of teasing this time.

“Huh?” Eden dragged her eyes away from the horizon. “Yeah. Fine.” She turned back to the chuck wagon and the task at hand.