Bride of the Wolf

Chapter Five

SEEING HER FLINCH didn’t help nearly as much as Heath thought it would. She went so pale that he thought she was going to swoon, and he almost got up to catch her.

She didn’t swoon. The color rushed back into her face, and her eyes went so cold that they could have covered the range in ice.

“I see I have been mistaken in assuming that you were worthy of my husband’s trust,” she said.

If a man had said that to Heath, he would be looking at a broken jaw. But Heath had never come close to hitting a woman. Not even the ones who’d tried to kill him.

“I’ll be movin’ out of the house tonight,” he said, getting up.

She set to rocking the baby, pretending Heath didn’t exist. That rankled more than any spiteful thing she could have said.

“Did Joey tell you about the hands?” he asked, just to make her look at him again.

The poisoned air between them cleared away, and it was all businesslike the way it should have been from the first. “He mentioned something about their leaving,” Rachel said without taking her eyes from the kid. “It will be difficult to run the ranch without them, will it not?”

“It ain’t your worry, Mrs. McCarrick.”

She met his gaze with that familiar spark of defiance. “It is if it affects the baby.”

“It won’t. I already know where I can—”

What in hell was wrong with him? He was explaining himself to her like some sniveling clerk telling his boss the missing money wasn’t his fault. The kid was making him go soft as a banker’s hands.

And it wasn’t as if he had to worry about running the ranch much longer.

“The baby’s your lookout,” he said. “Dog Creek is mine.” He got up. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“You didn’t have any.”

“Thanks for the offer, then.” He turned to go and stopped again. “Somethin’ else. You came to Dog Creek with Sean McCarrick. Where’d you meet him?”

She hesitated. “On the way from town. He said that Jed had sent him.”

“He’s a liar. Jed never told him nothin’ about you.” The stubborn set of her jaw only made him angrier. “Maybe he told you some stories. Maybe you don’t believe anythin’ I say. But he’s the one who got all the hands to leave. He can’t be trusted as far as you can spit.”

“I don’t spit, Mr. Renshaw.” But her tart reply masked an uneasiness Heath could smell a mile away. “Why would Mr. McCarrick do such a thing?”

“‘Cause he’d do anythin’ to see the ranch fail rather than see me keep it goin’ till Jed—” He broke off, unable to give voice to the lie.

“You hate him,” she said.

“Not half as much as he hates me.”

“He left Dog Creek because of you.”

“Who told you that? Joey?”

“I …” She bit her lip. “Yes.”

“I should have run the son of a bitch off a long time ago.”

“What did Sean ever do to you?”

“It ain’t just what he’s done. It’s what he is.”

“And what are you, Mr. McCarrick?” Her glance fell to his Colt. “I was told that the West could be a violent place. Is that why you carry that gun?” She swallowed. “Would you use it on someone you hated?”

“What in hell did Sean tell you?”

She pulled back like a turtle into its shell. “Nothing,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry for asking.”

He doubted that very much. Her opinion of him was fixed, no matter what her body wanted. And he didn’t care what she thought of him. He didn’t.

But the Colt, as much a part of him as the hand that wielded it, hung heavy with her scorn. He’d used it more than once on someone he’d hated, someone who wanted to kill him. But not since he’d come to Dog Creek. It was a piece of his old life, one he hadn’t quite been able to let go, but he’d never planned to use it on a man again.

You ain’t doin’ it for her, he told himself as he unbuckled the belt, dropped it on the table and went to leave.

“Wait. Please.”

He waited, though he didn’t want to be around her one more minute. “Ma’am?”

“I understand that we have neighbors. The Blackwells.”

He wondered why she’d brought that up now, and who had told her about the Blackwells. “Yeah,” he said. “We share a border with Blackwater along Dog Creek. They have the biggest spread in the county.”

“I see. There are ladies at Blackwater?”

“Amy and Mrs. Blackwell. Fine ladies the both of them.” He frowned. “Why?”

“Would it be expected of me to visit them?”

What Jed knew about visiting manners could fit on the tip of a lizard’s tail, but he did know he didn’t want Rachel involved with the Blackwells. “You just got here,” he said. “The Blackwater house is near twenty miles away. No one’s expectin’ you to run around the county just yet.”

She nodded so fast that he knew that was what she’d hoped to hear. “Thank you, Mr. Renshaw.” All stiff and formal again. And that was a very good thing. Heath pinched the brim of his hat and walked out, an itch between his shoulder blades, anger in his gut and the ache still in his loins. She’d put those feelings there, and they were going to stick as long as he stayed at Dog Creek. And if she couldn’t get her own lust under control, she would be suffering the same way.

That didn’t make him feel much better. He didn’t want her distracted. Little as he wanted to admit it, Rachel was right about one thing: no one else could take care of the kid as well as she could. Even if she believed Sean’s lies, whatever they’d been, that wouldn’t affect her feelings for the baby. The feelings she believed were real.

His pace slowed as he got near the cabin that Sean had vacated and he would soon be occupying again. He’d been thinking a lot about what he had to do to make the baby well so the two of them could get away. He’d thought about Joey’s future. He’d even tried to warn Rachel about Sean.

But even then he hadn’t let himself think about why he had to warn her, or what she would do once Jed was declared dead. Sure, he’d driven Sean off the ranch, but that had been more for himself than for her, and Sean would only stay gone until Heath wasn’t around to make sure he did.

What was the point in warning her, anyway? She didn’t believe what he’d told her, and her opinion of Sean, whatever it was, wouldn’t affect Heath when he was hundreds of miles away or change anything Sean decided to do.

There was a ball of lead inside Heath’s chest worse than anything he’d felt since he’d left the house. When he’d buried the saddlebags and the wills, he’d stopped caring what happened to Dog Creek. Jed’s intended hadn’t been real to him then, and he’d never even dreamed of the baby’s existence.

The kid would be taken care of, no matter what Heath had to do to make sure of it. But there wouldn’t be anyone to stand beside Rachel. Sean was a coward and a weakling, all hat and no cattle, but he was smart in his own way, and he did have friends in the county. He didn’t know that the greatest obstacle to his ambitions—Jedediah—was already out of his way, but that wouldn’t keep him from scheming about how to make sure Jed’s wife never got what he thought was his by right. Even once the truth was out and the new will, if Jed had left other copies, made Sean’s claim harder to push through.

And if Sean ever suspected Rachel was lying about having married Jed …

She’ll leave, Heath thought. She might think she wants Dog Creek for her home now, but that’ll change. She can’t fight on Sean’s level.

Heath reached the door to the cabin and stopped. He owed Rachel something for taking care of the kid, but the rest wasn’t his problem. She wouldn’t want his help anyway; she might feel sorry about losing the baby, but she wouldn’t mourn when he was gone.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt much to give her the means to tide herself over once she left Dog Creek. That would have to be enough.

Stepping back from the door, Heath went straight for the stable. He had one more job to do before the day’s work was done.

HHAT WAS WRONG with her?

Rachel sat up on the bed and dropped her head into her hands, fruitlessly. The baby lay undisturbed beside her, oblivious of her feelings. That was the only blessing.

Oh, how she had tried to prepare herself for Holden Renshaw’s return. She had been so certain that she could face the foreman again with composure and objectivity, with all the polite and distant neutrality that was absolutely necessary under these precarious circumstances.

She had failed. She had been so grateful when Lucia had arrived; Renshaw had been gone so long because he had been fulfilling her request for a wet nurse, and that could only count in his favor.

But then he’d told her that she didn’t have to care for the baby any longer, and it had seemed that her worst fears were being realized. She was just a tool to him, a tool to be tossed aside when she was no longer of use. Just as Sean had said, Renshaw was scheming to drive her away.

For a little while, anger had bolstered her resolve. She’d felt safer behind that shield, protected from his glittering, uncanny eyes. Then he’d turned the tables on her again. You do what you think is right.

Trusting her. Forcing her to once again question Sean’s suggestion that Renshaw had been behind the attempted bribe in Javelina. Compelling her to let down her guard again, until she had almost gone so far as to tell him …

Rachel lifted her head and stared blindly at the bare wall. She’d almost made an admission that would show Renshaw just how desperate she had been to leave her old life behind. And then, afraid that he would think too much about what she’d almost said, she had blurted out the question that had been in her mind ever since she had looked into his room.

Where do you propose to sleep tonight?

His gaze had met hers, and she’d felt as if he were stripping off her clothing, dress and corset and petticoats and undergarments, to reveal her quivering nakedness. For one awful moment she had imagined what it might be like to give herself to such a man, feel his long limbs and hard muscles moving against her body.

She closed her eyes. No matter how resolutely she tried to shut the memories out of her mind, no matter the terrible consequences that had come from her one and only indiscretion, she could still feel it. Feel the ecstasy of Louis lying over her, inside her, arousing such painful joy that she had become a wanton, lost to all reason.

That wanton should no longer exist. She should have died on the day her aunt had cast her, penniless, into the street. When the life sheltered within her, the fragile flame sparked by what she had thought was love, flickered out.

But that shameful other self had outlived the infant Rachel had wanted so badly. Oh, she had managed to believe herself cured during the hard years that followed, through Jedediah’s epistolary courtship and her journey from Ohio. She had told herself that what she must do with Jedediah would be only a way of making him happy, a task no different than sweeping the floor or washing his shirts.

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