Tallchief: The Homecoming (16 page)

“Women.” The second week of November passed without Michelle’s snit easing. Clearly, while his son had her attention, Liam was in the proverbial doghouse. It was a very cold place after Michelle’s big warm bed. It was four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, J.T. was building blocks at Calum’s house, and Liam was dreading his empty bed. Warren and Sara Fay were at the station now, arguing over the fine points of the coming car wash. They’d close the station for the weekend. Liam ought to be thinking about a Saturday-night date with Michelle, how she’d look, what she’d wear and how the evening would end with her in his arms. Instead he was finding comfort in the family who had taken him in as one of their own.

In his lifetime, Liam had missed brooding with other males, trying to understand the intricacies of the female mind. Just yesterday, when he was lying on the floor at his house, playing with the new train track J.T. and he had built, he’d turned to see Michelle in the kitchen. She’d brought a casserole and stood in his kitchen dressed in a red sweater and long, tight jeans. Holding the casserole with pot holders, she’d stopped to look at him, poised in the kitchen light. The look she’d given him reminded him of the hot, sultry one when she’d loved him that night—as if she wouldn’t finish with him until neither one of them could move.

Liam sipped his iced tea, served in a beer mug at Maddy’s Hot Spot and continued to brood. Michelle had
waltzed into his house, loaded with packages. She stripped off her coat, hugged J.T. and let him help her unpack the new clothes for them. A dark-green icy stare at Liam had told him to keep his distance and not to mention anything about repaying her. He would somehow, but clearly then wasn’t the time. While the washer chugged and the dryer whirred the new clothes, Michelle and J.T. had gone to work on the closets. “Mama needs scraps,” J.T. had chirped happily, shoving old clothing into a sack. “She’s making me a blankie with all my favorite clothes in it.”

“How’s it going?” had seemed to be a safe remark for Liam. From her icy look, it wasn’t safe, and The Motel Incident wasn’t forgotten.

Liam ran his hand over the scorch mark on his shirt. He’d thought Michelle’s ironing at his house, arranging the new clothes in his closets was some kind of woman-therapy thing. He decided not to mourn all those fine old clothes, just broken in right. Or to offer to pay for the clothes, though keeping silent went against his pride. He’d given her that rocking chair, needing refinishing. He’d hauled it up to her doorstep and plopped it down, resenting his need to see her. Nothing would do, then, until she had him put the rocker in her house, move it and move it again, for just the right place. But when she gathered J.T. upon her lap and tucked her chin against the boy’s black hair to rock, her expression held him.

Liam recognized the emotion—holding a small soft child gave comfort in troubled times. A child gave hope when life was dreary. Michelle battled her identity questions and her pride by herself, keeping Liam apart. He’d sat in a chair and just watched her, the creaking of the old chair the only sound. If his body weren’t in a continual ache, those moments of sheer peace might have been
enough—just watching her rocking his child and finding comfort.

Peace wasn’t in the life of a man who had offended Michelle, he decided, as she opened the door to Maddy’s and stood outlined in the neon lights. Her hair was loose and wild, just as he liked it, and the fire in her eyes leaped immediately to him. He settled back to watch her, Elizabeth’s legend running through his mind—
When a man and a woman equally matched strike against each other, fire will fly—just like two flints, striking sparks off each other. ’Tis a game, finding the strength of a man and challenging that truth….

Was that how Michelle felt, needing to come after him? Needing to clash with him to test what rang true between them? Or was he romanticizing and praying that all that fire held more than temper?

She could have left town at any time, but she’d preferred to pump her own gas at his station, wipe her own windshields and then glare at him through the glass.

A man was delicate before the tricky elements of a woman’s mind, Liam decided warily. The heavy thud of his heart told him it had nowhere to run, because she held it in her palm.

Michelle stalked toward him, the boots he’d given her clumping on Maddy’s wood floor. The silver earrings he’d given her flashed and swayed amid her hair. They weren’t the professional style she’d worn when she first arrived. They were inexpensive, delicate filigrees that whirled and turned and fascinated, warmly dotted with carnelians.

He’d taken J.T. to select them from an old man high in the mountains; Liam had wanted his son to know the mountains his ancestors had loved. The old man’s work was intricate despite his gnarled fingers. The Tallchiefs
understood family, the old man had said, eyeing father and son. “You’d be a Tallchief, all right. If you’re doing your courting with my earrings, I’d say you’re determined. You brought your boy, too, teaching him the ways though he’s just a tike. That’s good, to hold family close and give them what you know. I have something here that I’ve been holding a good long time. It belonged to a Tallchief woman, too. Elizabeth Tallchief she was. She got a new loom and gave this one to my great-great-grandmother.”

When Liam had given her the earrings, Michelle had said, “They’re lovely.” Then the tears had come to her eyes, dark as the dragon-green of the Tallchief tartan. “That’s really how you see me, isn’t it?”

“I see you as yourself. Strong enough to take what comes and meet the future,” he’d said honestly.

“They’re so feminine—not my usual taste. They’re rather flamboyant for me,” she’d said thoughtfully. For a moment Liam had been frightened that she’d be offended with his choice. Then she’d said, “I love them. Thank you.”

She’d kissed him, placed the earrings into her lobes and studied the mirror intently. “Yes,” she’d said quietly as if agreeing with his choice. “I think a change is good, don’t you? But I still haven’t gotten over you leaving me in that motel.”

Standing between his spread legs now, leaving no doubt as to who she’d come to see at Maddy’s Hot Spot, Michelle tossed a paper on the table. Recognizing a woman on the warpath and glad that it wasn’t their women, the Tallchief men immediately excused themselves, deserting Liam.

He let his gaze roam over her dark-rust sweater, a match to the carnelians in the earrings, down those
curved hips and long legs sheathed in jeans. Little kept him from reaching out to smooth that feminine line or to tug her onto his lap. But after days of uncertainty, Liam needed some comforting reassurance that Michelle cared.

“That’s the police report,” she said in a businesslike tone, as if her lips hadn’t run hot and silky beneath his own, as if she hadn’t sought him in the night. “You keep forgetting that I’m thorough. You underestimate me. The report is worse than I thought. You
did
endanger yourself. Oswald had held everyone at gunpoint. You included. You leaped at him. You actually threw yourself at him so the others wouldn’t be hurt.”

“All I want to know is if you’re done bossing me, and if you’re tromping out of town still mad at me, or are you staying?” His tone was surly, but a man without a sense of how to handle his woman had the right to be growling. She stood firmly between his spread boots, and the image brought back the one of her easing over him, capturing him—Liam inhaled sharply. “I’m not begging,” he added, just to keep his pride. “Make up your mind.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I always do. I wouldn’t think of leaving. I’m not finished with you yet.”

He grunted, the primeval noise suiting his instincts to carry her off to his lair. He wanted to ravish her and be ravished in return. Michelle was a woman who matched him in passion—hot burning passion that he hadn’t experienced in over a week. “Figures.”

Michelle left, stalking out as she had come in, the view of swaying hips drying Liam’s mouth. The territory clear, the Tallchiefs returned to the table, sprawling around it and grinning knowingly at Liam. “Shut up,” he said pleasantly, because one could do that to men who were almost brothers.

“Shut up, yourself,” Birk returned easily. He plucked a pink baby rattle from his flannel shirt pocket and waggled it. “I guess we’ll have to retract your title, ‘Liam the Lover.”’

“Give me advice I can use or leave,” Liam ordered sullenly. He mourned that smooth, cool control that gave him shelter from hot-blooded women.

“Hey. We just stopped by to help you lick your wounds,” Alek said.

“You’re in the doghouse, boy, and first base is a long way away. Better ask her for a date,” Maddy stated around his well-chewed cigar. “But whatever you do, don’t act like those other Tallchiefs when they had woman trouble. Don’t start a brouhaha that might cost me a mirror.”

Nick rubbed his forehead. “I hate it when women think. You never know what’s coming—it’s like a cocked gun.”

“Well, she’s doing plenty of that,” Liam brooded. “She’s holed up there, stitching little pieces of material together and rocking by the window. She’s playing with J.T. during the day and tucking him in, and he’s calling her ‘Mama.’ I’d like to make that a legality.”

“Silver says no woman would like being stranded in a motel like that,” Nick offered.

Oh, well, Michelle was all woman,
Liam brooded and noted his rough hands. He glanced at the Tallchiefs and wondered what they used on their hands. Their women liked to hold hands.

Big Sam MacIntire, a bully from another town, chose that moment to burst through Maddy’s doors. His construction crew grumbled about layoffs, and the men lined up at the bar. “That was a cute little number who passed me on the way in. Curvy with green eyes and long hair
down to here. Looks like a real handful, too, top and bottom, like she’d keep a man busy—”

The hard scrape of Liam’s chair as he stood should have warned MacIntire. It didn’t. He didn’t take the hint when Maddy hurried to cover the big bar mirror with a hard foam panel. Big Sam still didn’t take the hint when Liam’s big hand caught his shoulder and spun him around.

An experienced brawler and one who had been at the wrong end of the Tallchiefs when he’d pushed them, Sam narrowed his eyes. “What?”

He glanced at the tall, lean Tallchief men, now married and somewhat tamed, as they settled back into the shadows. Sam knew he’d have to fight fairly or they’d jump into the mix. The cool stranger looked like the Tallchiefs with his black hair and gray eyes and hard features. He looked as though he’d seen a few hard times and needing a trimming.

“Maybe you’d better leave,” the new Tallchief invited too quietly. A muscle flexed across his jaw, and in his eyes was the look of thunder and lightning.

One assessing stare down the relaxed but powerful set of the Tallchief’s tall body and Big Sam knew he had a good, fine match. “I’ll bet you shave with a woman’s razor,” Big Sam said, just to start things rolling….

The sound of crashing glass caused Michelle to close her pickup door, the one she’d just opened. She had plans to copy Pauline Tallchief’s quilts, making small cardboard cutouts for piece patterns. She needed Elspeth’s company after seeing Liam sprawled across a tavern chair, brooding at her. Her hackles up, she knew that little kept Liam from tugging her down on his lap. He had that raw, hungry look that only fueled her need to pounce on him.

“Don’t you dare!” she ordered sharply inside Maddy’s
as a burly man drew back his fist to hit Liam. The man was bigger, a belly bobbing over his belt. The cut over Liam’s eye dripped with blood, and the other man’s eyes were swelling, his lip cut.

She didn’t have time to ask the other men for help. They were obviously commenting on brawling techniques. She had to save Liam. Scowling at her, Liam’s attention was on her when she saw the man release the punch. Liam crumpled to the tavern floor.

“I told you not to do that,” she said to the man as he leered at her. The bully wasn’t Oswald for whom she’d trained, but she did a neat enough job that the man sagged back against the bar, trying to catch his breath.

Liam struggled to his feet and sagged back, elbows propped against the bar, scowling at her. “What are you doing?” he demanded, as if she’d broken a rigid male law.

She reached for a napkin, dunked it in a pitcher of water and dabbed it across Liam’s cut. Like a sullen little boy, instead of the tall powerful man he was, Liam jerked away, disdaining her care. She loved Liam’s dark, edgy moods. She loved walking straight into them and seeing what happened. “I was just evening the odds. Your relatives obviously won’t help. They’re all grinning over there, but they won’t be when I tell their wives. You’re outmatched. He weighs more than you. And you are not a fighter, Liam. Leave that to the rest of the—”

She aimed a pointed look at the Tallchief men, who had not bothered to help Liam in his time of need. They had the look of men gathered together for protection.

“He’s slow. It was just starting to get interesting,” Liam muttered. “If you’d marry me, none of this would happen.”

Michelle stared at the man she knew could be gentle and kind and loving. “You’re coming home with me,
Liam Tallchief,” she said between her teeth. “Where we can settle this in private.”

She marched out the door, missing the boyish grin Liam shot back at the Tallchiefs. She also missed their thumbs-up signs.

She’d had a rotten day, brooding about calls from her ex-husband and her parents. With clouds looming low on Amen Flats, she’d searched for long distance consulting work she could do while repairing her life and staying in Amen Flats. As she had expected, her father’s tentacles had blocked her nicely at every turn. Those job-hunting calls emphasized how much of a pawn she’d been—all the while she’d thought she’d been chosen for positions on merit. In the end, exhausted by thinking and remembering, she’d helped elderly Joe Tomlin stack his wood-pile and clean his house.

There wasn’t anything more exciting than nabbing Liam Tallchief, Michelle decided. Liam had that all wound up, raw and fiery look she loved to ignite. Michelle heard Liam’s heavier footsteps follow her up her porch steps. She wouldn’t look back at him, wouldn’t let his sheepish look derail her. “Brawling,” she muttered, noting the tarp covering a mound on her porch.