The Wrangler (10 page)

"It's likely."

"Sometimes we sit up on the rise at night and wait for 'em," Fred explained as he hunkered down a safe distance away from the mare. She watched him warily, her skin flicking, her eyes white-rimmed. "Don't we, Kit? We count shooting stars until we spot 'em. Sometimes they're runnin', sometimes they're grazin'. A couple times they even come up close and drink at our part of the creek."

"Is that right?" Dakota asked. The mare relaxed as he stroked her with his big, well-shaped hands. She let her head rest on the grass. Only her heaving sides spoke of her fears and her pain. "Must be more than one herd in the area."

"Yep, but the black stallion and his herd are almost always here. Every night we watch for 'em, we see 'em. Kit said I can have one of the mustangs for my very own since I'm old enough to help build the ranch."

"You'll be a good horse owner," Dakota said.

"I'll do my best!" Fred gazed up at the man like he'd hung the moon. Looked like the horse wasn't the only one falling beneath the man's spell. "Palominos are my favorite."

"I'm partial to them, too. What can you tell me about this mare?" Dakota set the pail down and sorted through it. "How old is she?"

"She's got white around her mouth. She's old. Maybe that's why the mountain lion tried to attack her."

"You have a good eye, kid."

"Kit taught me everything I know about horses. I help her take care of Blue and Jack. I can brush and comb 'em, I can clean out their hooves and I wash all their tack."

"Do you help feed and water them, too?"

"Uh huh."

"Sounds to me like you're already a fine horseman." Dakota flashed the boy a kind smile.

That put a lump in her throat. Her pulse went ka-thump. Why couldn't she resist him? She was tougher than this. She peered through her lashes at the man cleaning the caked blood from the mare's wounds.

The day a man could lull her was a sad day indeed.

"That's what I wanna be one day. A horseman." Fred's chatter blended into the background, like the lark song and the rustling wind as Dakota dabbed gently at the worst of the deep gashes on the mare's flanks.

But the man and his kindheartedness held her attention as fixedly as the sun did the earth.

"'Scuse, me, Miss Kit?" Elderly Mr. Mason rounded the corner of the barn. His long skinny nose and hollowed cheekbones were hardly visible behind the bushy tangle his mustache and beard had become. "I've got the smokehouse ready."

"I'll bridle the horses, and we'll be right over to help." She handed Dakota the cloth, hopping to her feet before their fingers could brush.

The mare, worried over the newcomer, struggled to get on her feet again, leaving Dakota busily calming her. Kit escaped without glancing back, doing her best to shut out the temptation of his voice.

"Can I stay and help Dakota?" Fred asked, eagerly hopping after her. "Can I? I can help him feed her. I'm real good at that."

"Didn't you want to help slice and smoke the meat?" She untied Jack's picket. "You were all excited about it earlier."

"But that was before Dakota and the wild mare." Fred took Jack's lead. "Oh, I know what you're gonna say. We gotta go help. But I wanna stay."

"I know." It was crazy, but she did, too. She waved to Mr. Mason as he mounted up on his swaybacked gelding, waiting for them, and gestured to Mindy, who watched shyly from behind the tent doorway. "Go bridle Jack. We'll ride bareback, since Mr. Mason's waiting."

"Okay. C'mon, big fella." Fred clucked, laid his hand on the gelding's neck and the two wandered off toward the barn.

Something lipped her hair and tugged on her braids. Blue. She untied his picket line, wishing her gaze didn't zip over to the mare and the wounded man tending her. He ought to be on bed rest. Any other man would be, but no, Dakota Black wasn't like most men. Even if his hands trembled with weakness, even if he'd clamped his jaw together in pain with the color drained from his face, he was determined to tend the horse and win her trust.

He looked up and saw her watching him. "Go on, I can keep an eye on things here."

What was it about him that held her captive? He made her want to trust him. When their gazes met, awareness charged through her like a cataclysm. Her lurching heartbeat rattled her with the force of a winter wind.

She fisted her hands, tried to break the enchantment he'd somehow cast on her and failed. So she forced her feet to carry her away.

I don't want to care about him,
she thought stubbornly.

But it was already too late.

Chapter Eight

It had been a long day, but Mr. Mason's smokehouse was full of curing meat. Kit rode into the long slant of the evening sun, thinking about home and the man waiting there.

"Old Mr. Sinclair was pretty scary," Fred commented as he adjusted Jack's reins. "I don't think he likes us much."

"I think you're right." Kit shivered, glad that errand was over and done with. Another hundred dollars was due in thirty days, at least according to the contract, which had a few things in it that made her nervous. The Sinclairs could amend the payment dates at any time. "I don't think Tannen's father is happy he gambled away his share of their ranch."

"How come they have so much land?" Fred asked.

"I heard from Mrs. Mason that the Sinclairs were prospectors," Mindy spoke up, seated on Jack's back. She tightened her grip on Fred. She didn't like horseback riding. "Mrs. Mason said they wound up with a claim that paid out big. Lots of gold. They put it into land, what they could homestead and what they could buy."

"Golly, I'd sure like to strike it big." Fred lit up at the thought. "I'd build you both a real nice house, like the Sinclair's house with lots of columns. And we'd have a thousand horses and we'd hire men to help train them. We'd have candy every day."

While Mindy and Fred debated the merits of this, and came up with other ways to spend their imaginary gold, Kit's mind wandered back to Dakota. There she was, thinking about him again.

Blue reached around and nibbled her foot.

"Hey, buddy. What are you doing?" She patted his neck. "You aren't jealous, are you?"

Blue arched his neck, pacing down the road, apparently too dignified to answer.

"Don't worry. No one can come close to you in my heart." She leaned in to lay her cheek on his neck, and wrapped her arms around him. He gave a low nicker of agreement, as if he felt the same exact way.

Blue was the only male she could really trust. She would do well to remember that.

Jack blew a loud sigh when the lane home came into sight.

"I'm awful hungry," Fred was saying.

"You just want some of the food Mrs. Mason packed up for us," Mindy argued easily.

"Sure, I do. I can smell it." Fred's stomach gurgled in proof. "See there? I'm starving."

"We're almost home." Mindy rolled her pretty blue eyes, looking sweet as a daisy in a white calico dress and yellow sunbonnet. She'd tucked her skirt around her as she sat bareback, with the strings of the food sack tight in one hand.

Kit reined Blue up the lane, glad they'd spent more time getting to know their neighbors. Mr. Mason's wife, Effie, was a plump, gregarious woman who'd raised six boys to manhood, kept a spotless house and served a delicious meal when they'd taken a break from cutting and hanging meat. Kit even had Effie's family fried chicken rule written on a paper scrap and tucked in her dress pocket.

Had Dakota found the food stores and fixed something to eat? Was he finally getting some rest? What if he'd been too active and tore his stitches? Her ribs seemed to cinch tight, making it hard to breathe.

The minute the yard came into view, she couldn't help searching for him. She spotted a pair of boots on the ground by the soddy, laying toes up, slack, attached to denim-encased legs that were sprawled out like they belonged to a dead man. That was all she could see. The barn was in the way.

She didn't remember springing from her Blue's back, hitting the ground or racing across the yard. Dakota was on the ground, stretched out on his back, his head turned away from her. His Stetson lay a few yards off, where the wind had apparently carried it. Whiskers darkened his jaw. His chest rose up lightly with each breath.

Okay, he was sleeping. Sleeping. She rocked back on her heels, tried to calm her crazy pulse and resisted the urge to kneel down beside him. She wanted to touch him, to see if he was as hard everywhere as he looked.

Just curiosity, she told herself. Not anything more. And that was the story she was sticking to.

"He looks dead." Fred skidded to a stop beside her. "Is he?"

"We're not that lucky," she quipped. "Run and help Mindy with the horses.

"I'm glad he's not dead." Fred disappeared in a cloud of dust.

"Me, too," she whispered, more relieved than she could find the words to say.

"I heard that." Dakota opened one eye.

"No, you didn't. You imagined it. I'm not glad at all." She meant the words to be light and carefree but they stuck in her throat, rasping with an emotion she dared not acknowledge. Dared not name. "What are you doing sprawled out like this?"

"Taking a nap." He opened his other eye. Sat up. Winced.

"And what about those fence posts over there?" She hopped up to fetch his hat.

"I decided to make myself useful now that I'm your employee."

"My wounded employee." A gust of hot wind caught the Stetson's brim, sending it into a patch of sunflowers as she tried to grab it. She chased it, butterflies rising up from the blooms in a swoop of color. "You were supposed to take it easy and heal. What do I need with a hired hand who can't take orders?"

"No idea." He reached out for the hat she handed him.

"Typical man. At least you have a way with horses. Your only saving grace."

"No argument here." He stood, pain etched into his face.

"The mare looks good." She boldly unbuttoned his top shirt button, determined to check his injury. "The claw marks don't look deep."

"They aren't. She got lucky. I mixed up a salve that should help keep out infection and heal her up." He cut his gaze to the mare snoozing in the grass near the creek. "How did the smoking go?"

"Fine. Mr. Mason showed us everything hoping we'll be able to cure our own meat, assuming I wanted to hunt down an animal and carve it up."

"Not to mention building your own smokehouse." He clamped his whiskery jaw tight, aware of her body close to his. Another button released on his shirt.

Best not to imagine her wanting to undress him for real. He swallowed past a dry throat, overriding his body's response to her. "And you paid Tannen?"

"Yes, we stopped by his place on the way home." She pushed his shirt away from his shoulder, exposing his arm. "I learned something interesting. Tannen had just received a share of his pa's ranch for his twenty-first birthday."

"And the first thing he did was gamble it away?"

"Old Mr. Sinclair was livid. He offered me cash for the land, but I refused." She peeled his bandage away from his wound. "Now Old Mr. Sinclair doesn't like me, either. He wanted to speak to Howie man to man."

"What did you tell him?" He inched a few feet back and relaxed against the side of the soddy.

"I said Howie was busy. I didn't know what else to say." She hunted down the pail of bandages she'd left by the barn and grabbed a few clean strips. "It's one thing to think my disguise will work at night, in a badly lit saloon around men who are mostly really drunk. It's another for it to work in the light of day."

"I never said your disguise worked last night. Honey, no one thought you were a man. Not a manly one, anyway. You have to stop flicking your wrist when you pick up or put down a card."

"Oh. Guess I didn't realize I was doing that." She unlaced her boots, then peeled off her socks and hiked up her skirts mid-knee. "I'll be careful next time."

Next time? The thought made him weak, so he let his head roll back to rest against the barn wall. He watched her wade into the creek, kneel down and scoop a pail full of water. She was lithe as a cat, slender and shapely as only a woman can be. He couldn't help admiring her grace and loveliness, the nip of her slender waist and the full curve of her bosom.

Not that he ought to be noticing that. Heat stained his face, but he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away nearly as fast as he wanted.

"What else did I do wrong?" She waded out of the creek, water droplets clinging to her pretty, bare feet. "Wait, don't tell me. The sarsaparilla. The way I hold my cards. I'll work on that. Maybe I need to work on my mustache. Make it fuller, more manly."

"I don't think the mustache will help."

"What I need to do is study you." She set down the pail and moved in to dab his wound.

"Please don't do that," he grimaced.

"Tend you or study you?" Her gaze fastened on his. He'd never seen such a true color blue, this close he could make out the tiny threads of gold and green laced within that blue.

 "Study me." The words rasped out of his throat.

"Well, you would be the perfect subject." She concentrated on cleaning his stitches. "You're very manly."

"Guess that's better than the alternative."

"I saw how you handled Tannen at the poker table. You intimidated him with a look." Satisfied, she dabbed the raw skin dry. "I've got to learn that look."

"Sorry, only men can do it."

"You're teasing me."

No, she was teasing him. Fingertips feathered across his torn skin, spreading a medicinal salve. The pain hardly registered. The heat from her touch did.

You can't have her and you know it, Dakota.
He had to make himself listen. Some dreams would always be out of his reach.

"Well, whether it's a tough look or not, I've got to earn respect somehow." Tiny crinkles etched into her forehead, as if she were concerned about hurting him as she worked. "You do it with a glare. You walked into the saloon and everyone held their breath. They thought you were an outlaw, the kind that would kill a man for looking at him."

"I'll let you in on a secret." He squeezed the words out of too-tight lungs, hoping it looked as if he were in physical pain and not because of her nearness. "You won't catch me dead in red suspenders."