Luke's Cut

It was an intriguing dichotomy. The glimpses of the woman beneath the crushing shyness were like catching a hint of a plot twist in a clever mystery novel. She intrigued and tempted. She was a challenge wrapped up in a self-deprecating package that was very intricately constructed; it just didn’t fit the sense he had in his gut about her. He would love to have a conversation with her, to find out if her mind matched the impact of her body. He had a feeling it did.

He watched as she stumbled getting into the wagon. As he knew she would, she looked over her shoulder at him, eyes narrowed as if he were to blame for her clumsiness. And maybe he was. If she was as aware of him as he was of her, then she had to know he’d been staring. Just as he suspected she’d been staring at him a time or two. A pang of regret wove through the anticipation of a new adventure. Unfortunately, Josie was one bit of exploration he was going to miss. He didn’t have the time or the patience for a fling. With a defiant toss of her head, she climbed into the wagon. And that fast, he reconsidered his decision. Some challenges just begged to be met.

* * *

HE WAS WATCHING HER. The well-dressed man with the broad shoulders and I-dare-you glare was watching her. Josie could feel his gaze like fingertips skimming her skin with sensual inquiry, looking for a reaction and getting it as her fingers trembled and her neck muscles tightened. If he were touching her, he’d feel the heat rise off her skin, see the pink flush of her cheeks. Oh darn, maybe he could see it from over there. She ducked her head just a little. Just enough for the shade of her bonnet to provide cover from potential revelation.

Look away. Look away.

The plea went unheard. More prickles of awareness flustered her composure. Even more flustering was the reality of who that man was. Luke Bellen. One of the infamous Hell’s Eight. Men said to chew nails and spit bullets, eat danger for breakfast and gather women like wildflowers. Another shiver went down her spine at the thought. She didn’t want to be gathered.

Liar.

The accusation came from within.

“Traitor,” she whispered back. The last thing she needed right now was an ill-advised sense of temptation distracting her from the job for which she’d traveled so far. She was here to commemorate the wedding of her Uncle Jarl. Big and blustery, a handsome, hard-eyed businessman, Jarl Wayfield was very dear to her, and while not actually blood, he was as close to a real father as she’d ever had. From the day he’d come courting her mother, they’d had a bond. When his relationship with her mother had ended, he’d stuck around in the background of Josie’s life. She’d long since stopped wishing he was her father and instead settled for the security he offered.

He was probably the only one who saw the sense of adventure that lurked beneath her persistent shyness. And he’d indulged it by summoning her away from the smothering small town in which she’d been born and the ever-stifling presence of her overly judgmental mother. Without him she wouldn’t have this opportunity to see the West, to indulge her passion for taking pictures. She owed him so much. Too much to let six feet of wide-shouldered, lean-hipped, dark-haired pure temptation take her off task. Still feeling the weight of Luke Bellen’s gaze, she hurried on, almost dropping the tintype in the rush to her wagon.

Darn it!

The wagon had been an off-the-cuff purchase, but she only had so long to develop her images and hard experience told her that in a household environment, no one respected her need for darkness to do her work. They were forever trying to shed light on her process. These images were too important to risk. Jarl giving her this opportunity to photograph his wedding meant the world. His faith in her ability to forever capture this precious time was a much-needed boost to her flagging confidence. Being dumped like yesterday’s garbage by the man to whom she’d thought she’d been discreetly engaged for the past five years had been a hard lesson in humility. And shame. She’d been a fool to let Jason convince her to keep their engagement a secret. She’d been more than a fool. She’d been an accomplice in her own humiliation when he’d announced his engagement to another. And worse, expected her to understand.

She grimaced as she opened the back of the peddler’s wagon and stepped up. She hadn’t understood. She’d wanted to kill him. Her foot slipped and her knee scraped the metal edge. She bit back a cry and the need to burst into tears. She hated being emotional. She hated being clumsy even more. And truth was, she was only clumsy when she was under scrutiny. So it was really all Bellen’s fault.

Holding the tintype securely, she glared over her shoulder at the cause of her distress. He didn’t even have the decency to show remorse. Instead, he stood up there on the porch with another of the Hell’s Eight, nonchalantly leaning against the rough-hewn support, looking for all the world like a lion surveying his pride. She had the childish urge to stick out her tongue.

As if he heard the thought, he smiled at her, a slow, knowing smile. The full-on flush started in her toes, crept up her thighs, heated her chest and burned in her cheeks. It was sheer bravado that had her snubbing him with a lift of her chin before pure unadulterated cowardice sent her diving into the wagon. Cowardice had often been the bane of her existence. And sometimes, her salvation.

The door banged shut behind her. Placing the undeveloped tintype on the plank counter, she braced herself, hands spread across the uneven wood as she took a steadying breath. She was twenty-six years old, for heaven’s sake. Far too old to be undone by a man’s glance. But there was something about Luke that just ferreted its way past the defenses she’d built up over the years and reduced her to the cripplingly shy child she’d been. She hated it. She wanted to blame him. And if he only would say or do something other than observe her from afar, she probably could. But he didn’t.

He was probably doing it on purpose.

She reached for the developing chemicals only to notice her hand was shaking. She took another breath and waited. The chemicals that made the miracle of photography possible were highly flammable. Not to mention noxious smelling. She needed a steady hand when dealing with them.

She soon discovered that standing in the hot, humid interior of the darkened wagon was not conducive to relaxation. Alone in the dark, it was too easy for her mind to wander. And without anything else to distract her attention, her mind inevitably wandered to Luke Bellen. As she was sure hundreds of other women’s minds had done before.

All the men of Hell’s Eight were compelling but there was something about Luke that stood out. There was a symmetry to his broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, well-muscled body that made her breath catch. A smoothness in the way he moved that made her fingertips tingle. And the way his utter masculinity prowled beneath the nonchalance of his expressions... She sighed. Well, that just made her want to sink to the ground at his feet and let nature take its course.

If she let him, he would take advantage. She was sure of that. Just as he would with any other woman who succumbed to his blatant sexuality, no doubt. She had only to look back at her own engagement to see the folly of her first line of thought. Her fiancé, Jason, had nowhere near the presence Luke had, but it had been enough for her to convince herself the words he’d whispered in her ear were real. That the emotions he professed were honest. And that the passion he’d made her feel was unique to them. All that only to find out at her own long-awaited engagement party that he’d whispered those same words to, invoked those same passions in so many others. And she’d been such a blind fool, building excuses on top of her ignorance because the little he’d given her had been easier to accept than venturing back into the tenuous social position of being unclaimed. Bastards could only be so bold.

She grabbed the bottle of developer from the wooden box. Thank goodness Uncle Jarl had offered her this escape. More than once he’d been her salvation, often stepping in to give her breathing room from her mother’s constant expectations. As he had this time when he’d sent her the tickets to come out to Texas—Texas!—to memorialize his wedding with her tintypes. Even if she hadn’t been wanting to escape her mother’s newest press for her to choose a husband—she loved her, but in some ways she was absolutely relentless—she would have jumped at the chance to come out to the wild-and-wonderful West she’d read so much about. Texas was just Texas. Big, wild and full of potential. She couldn’t take two steps without wanting to pull out her camera box and capture a moment.

Her mother was constantly seeking ways to regain the respectability she’d abandoned when she’d fallen for the wrong man and had a child—Josie—out of wedlock, and the subsequent pressure for Josie to accept any invitation dropped off at the house was becoming impossible to duck. One of the reasons Josie had been thrilled to take up Uncle Jarl’s invite was to escape that sudden increase in invitations. She was long past marriageable age anyway. She’d been cast aside. By all measures, she should be a pariah, but in the wake of her mother’s suddenly full social calendar, Josie had just as suddenly been receiving callers. As those callers had been of a certain age, she’d had the uncomfortable feeling her mother had found a new way to increase her value as a marriage prospect. It was too mortifying to contemplate. And too distasteful. She did not want to marry an old man, no matter how good their tailors made them look in their suits.

And that fast, her thoughts were back to Bellen and the way he looked in his suit. So many men looked awkward in more formal attire. But that man wore his clothes the way he wore his confidence, as if they were an extension of some deeper secret. She opened the bottle. She would love to photograph him in all his untamed elegance. To catch the way the sun highlighted the lighter streaks in his brown hair. To see with her lens the answer to the mystery he posed. To know him.

Darn it. She had to stop thinking of that man. He wasn’t for her. She couldn’t even manage syllables when he was around. Wiping the sweat from her brow with her sleeve, she took a deep breath and released it slowly, feeling the oppressive heat settle around her as she did. Even parking the wagon in the shade of the big oak and opening the windows was not much help against the brutal Texas humidity. For sure, she wouldn’t last long in the closed wagon. She needed to focus or she was going to complete the most ladylike faint of her life before she found out if she’d truly underexposed those last photos as much as she feared. It’d taken so long for the group to get in position and maintain it, the clouds had moved in. She’d tried to compensate, but there was more art than science in this endeavor. Pictures came out best in bright light.

Putting Luke and his disconcerting smile out of her head, she let herself fall into that calm, competent place that surrounded her whenever she worked on her photography. Worry could wait a few minutes to torment her. Right now she had a picture to develop.

It wasn’t the all-absorbing consolation it usually was.

Darn it again.

* * *

LUKE SIGHED WHEN Josie didn’t come back out of the wagon, accepting the show was over for the day, but his interest lingered on past his acceptance. His curiosity was, as always, piqued by the contrast between the exotic depth of the woman’s photographs and her downplayed appearance. And it had to be deliberate because any man who gave her a second glance couldn’t miss the red hints in her hair or the porcelain clarity of her skin that made a body wonder if that same white smoothness extended beneath her clothes. Oh yes, there was something about Josie Kinder, something more than her self-effacing ways, her sexy, plumply curved body and her utter lack of awareness of her own appeal, that called to him. She might by all accountings look like a shy wren to be pitied, but he didn’t want to pity her. He wanted to ravage her. And he’d be damned if he had a clue as to why.

“She’s really not your usual type,” Ace said from beside him, following his gaze as he took a sip from his whiskey.

Damn. Was he being that obvious? “I wasn’t aware I had one.”

“Oh, you have one.” The whiskey in his glass caught the sun as he motioned toward the wagon. “But it doesn’t lean toward shy innocents.”

That shy innocent was watching him. Luke could feel it. “I’m leaving in a few days.”

Ace nodded. “I figured. You’ve been restless since Hester announced her wedding.”

And his tone again implied that Hester’s choice was the reason. And it was, but not in the way Ace thought.

Luke shrugged and took a sip from his near-empty glass. The liquor slid down his throat in a smooth burn. Not like the days when rot-gut was the best they could buy. “Hell’s Eight can’t trust Tia’s safety to just anyone.”

Ace cut him a glance. “I wouldn’t exactly call Zach Lopez ‘just anyone.’”

The Montoya foreman was rattlesnake mean, coyote clever and generally a force to be reckoned with. “True, but I’m riding along.”

Ace wasn’t soothed. The man had always had a problem leaving things to others. “I don’t like the thought of Tia out there at all. Especially after what happened to Pet...”

Petunia’s kidnapping had been a near miss. Fortunately they’d gotten to her in time. “Nothing happened that couldn’t be fixed.”

Luke had to believe that, considering he’d been the one to put Petunia on that stage and straight into the arms of a Comanche raiding party. But it wasn’t something he could just up and ask Ace.

“I’d feel better if Tia would wait until fall, when preparing for winter will keep the Comanche busy elsewhere,” Ace muttered.

So would Luke, but as Sam’s wife, Bella was Hell’s Eight. Full of fire, courage and an unlimited amount of sass, she fit into the group as if made for them. He swirled the last swallow of whiskey in his glass. “There’s no way Tia’s going to miss delivering Bella and Sam’s first child. Not after she promised to be there.”

Ace frowned across the yard at Tia, who’d joined the group around the bride and groom. “She’s not a young woman anymore.”

Luke echoed his frown as the sun caught the gray in Tia’s shiny black hair. When had Tia decided to get old? “She isn’t in her grave, either. And that’s what I think it would take to keep her away from this birth. Especially since Sam asked her to come.” He attempted to change the subject. “You know, of all of the Eight, he’s her favorite.”

Ace snorted. “Tia isn’t here to rile with that accusation, so you can just drop it and stop trying to change the subject.” His frown deepened. “What the hell was Sam thinking?”

Luke didn’t know, but it had to be serious. “That he needs her. He wouldn’t have sent for her if he didn’t. Sam isn’t an alarmist. He knows the traveling risk right now and he loves Tia as much as all of us. Things have to be serious. To the point I’m thinking he left the Montoya ranch all but unprotected with all the men he sent to escort Tia.”

That was a big thing for Sam. Sam was a wild card. A man who’d ride into a fray of bullets just for the challenge of surviving, but he took his responsibilities seriously. And that included the huge responsibility of the Montoya ranch he’d inherited when he’d married Bella. The ranch sat smack dab in the middle of Comanche country. Luke shook his head. It took a strong man to keep it in one piece. But Sam seemed to be flourishing under the challenge. The man no one thought would ever settle, just might have found his place.

Ace nodded. “So I heard.”

“Did you hear when they’re arriving?”

“Based on the telegram, they should be here any day.”

“Good. We’re going to need everyone. There’s some rough territory between here and there.”

Ace cocked an eyebrow. “And yet you’re volunteering.”

And looking forward to it. Being around so many settled people chafed. “It’ll be a new adventure with which to thrill the readers.”

“Uh-huh. Do your readers know how much truth is in your novels?”

It was Luke’s turn to shrug. No one was more surprised than he at the success of his novels, written under the pen name of Dane Savage. More shocking than the money was the notoriety. According to his publisher, Easterners couldn’t get enough of the rumored-to-be-autobiographical tales of the ever-so-honest, bigger-than-life Texas Ranger’s high adventures in the West. As fast as Luke was writing them, they were selling. He adjusted his hat. “I get the feeling they’re more interested in the fiction.”

“Uh-huh.”

A new voice entered the fray. “I wondered where the whiskey had gotten to.”

Only one man of the Hell’s Eight had such a deep voice. Tucker McCade. His tread was heavy on the stairs, his smile broad but tinged with concern.

Ace held up the nearly empty bottle. “You timed that close.”

“Still can’t get used to you wearing sleeves,” Luke said, turning to greet Tucker. Nor to seeing him without his knives strapped to his thighs.

Tucker smiled and tossed his lemonade over the rail. The heavy muscles in his arms rippled under his shirt with the movement. His shoulder-length black hair fell over his face, casting his harsh features in shadow. “Me, neither.” He held out his glass. “But having a wife who turns a jealous eye when other women ogle my manly attributes means I get tailor-made shirts.”

Ace chuckled and poured. “I’ve heard it’s good to keep a Quaker peaceful.”

Tucker’s smile reached his brown eyes and his teeth shone white against his dark skin, emphasizing the scar on his right cheek. “I do enjoy smoothing Sally Mae’s feathers when they’re ruffled.”

“Pacifist or not, that woman has a way of getting what she wants.”

“Not everything,” Caine pointed out, coming up to join them, a fresh bottle in his hand. “She’s not going to Rancho Montoya.”

“You heard?”

“I think everyone within a mile heard you shouting last night,” Caine said, pulling the cork from the fresh bottle with his teeth.

“That woman has a stubborn streak a mile deep,” Tucker grumbled.

Luke smiled. Sally Mae was a tall, slim blonde and as cool as a spring day. She never raised her voice. The exact opposite of her dark, big, muscular husband. “Almost equal to yours.”

“Yeah, but things, they’re not good out there. You know that. I know that. With the cavalry pulled back East and bad blood, travel isn’t safe. I know Sam sent his vaqueros, but I’d feel better if some of Hell’s Eight were traveling with Tia.”

Caine held up the bottle. Luke held out his glass alongside the others.

“I’m going,” Luke offered. But he wasn’t staying after he got there. The itch in his feet was too strong. The horizon too enticing.

Caine frowned and poured them each a measure. “I wish we could spare more.”

“Sam handled that end.”

“Yeah.” Tucker took a drink of his whiskey and shook his head. “But I’ve got to tell you, I’m being plagued by a bad feeling.”

Shit. There was nothing worse than Tucker having a bad feeling.

CHAPTER TWO

WITH DAWN JUST PAST, the ground wet with dew, the yard bustling with activity, the time to leave had arrived. Even with two cups of coffee in him, Luke was dragging. With the efficiency of long practice, he tightened the cinch on Chico’s saddle. Thanks to a restless night, his mood was jagged.

Around him, the sounds of the group preparing for departure joined the sleepy chirps of rousing birds. Leather creaking, horses stomping their feet, people talking, items thudding into the buckboard—it was all familiar. The rightness of it had settled over his unease with a soothing balm. He gave the cinch a firm tug. It was time to go. A man who stayed in one place too long got stale.

Tia came out of the house, escorted by her husband, Ed. Her dark green traveling dress was impeccably tailored, and the gray-streaked black of her hair was pulled up into a distinguished bun. She was the perfect image of a refined lady, but if he wasn’t mistaken, her dark brown eyes lit with excitement. It occurred to Luke that maybe he wasn’t the only one who’d been feeling the weight of settling down. For Tia to have been out in the back of beyond as she had been when the boys of Hell’s Eight found her, she had to have a spirit of adventure.

Funny how he’d never thought on that before. Tia had always just been Tia. The stability in their lives. The one they’d counted on. Behind her trailed Sally Mae. At six months pregnant, her belly led the way. It was her second pregnancy, the first having ended in miscarriage, and everyone was worried because, from the girth of her belly, this child was going to have Tucker’s size.

“I should be going with you,” Sally said and sighed, supporting her stomach with her hand. Behind Sally Mae came Tucker, carrying another suitcase. With a shake of his head he negated that idea. “Before you got two feet in that wagon, that baby would be bouncing out of your belly.”

Despite the ease of his tone, there was no doubting the concern in his eyes. Sally brushed it aside with a flick of her hand. “Expecting women have been traveling since the beginning of time.”

The suitcase landed on the pile in the back of the wagon. “Not my woman.”

Before Sally Mae could counter, Tucker wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against him, taking over the supporting of her stomach with his much-larger hands. Placing her hands over his, Sally leaned back and allowed him to support them both.

Her whispered “It’ll be all right this time” carried.

Tucker ducked his head to respond. His hair fell forward to blend with hers. Light with dark. They were opposites that somehow formed a perfect whole. His “I know” reflected her conviction.

Luke didn’t share their confidence. Sally miscarrying the first baby had sent a shock wave through their whole community. The Hell’s Eight wasn’t used to losing, but there’d been no fighting that. Tucker had been devastated. For a time Luke had thought there’d be no more, but Sally Mae, with that implacable quiet resolve of hers, had wanted to try again. Tucker had forbidden it. Clearly in this, Sally Mae had had the stronger resolve.

Watching them, remembering the devastation of that time, Luke wanted to swear. Never, since the days after the massacre that had stripped Hell’s Eight of their families, had he felt so helpless and angry. Rubbing at the tension in his neck, he fought the feeling. Then and now, Tia was the key to the Hell’s Eight unity. She always had been.

Then, they had been starving and consumed with anger when they’d stumbled upon the young widow’s home. They’d tried to steal her pies, and she’d paid them back by taking them into her heart. Tia had given them discipline, education and a purpose. Now a mature woman, she gave them stability and love. Sam might need Tia, but Hell’s Eight needed her, too. No matter how spread out they became, Tia was home. “We could just stay here.”

He knew as he said it, it was a moot point.

Tia shook her head at him before smiling softly at Sally. “There is no need for worry. I will be back in time for this baby.”

Sally nodded. “I know. Bella and Sam need you.”

His “You’re both crazy” went ignored.

“So do we,” Tucker growled, placing his hand over Sally’s.

Tia smiled in that knowing way only another woman found comforting. “Your wife is a healer. She knows this time it is good.”

Tucker’s clenched jaw made it clear he wasn’t feeling any more soothed than Luke.

“I’d feel better with fact, not fiction,” Tucker growled.

Sally Mae patted his hand. “You’re going to just have to wait and see like the rest of us.”

“I hate waiting.”

Luke could put an amen on that. Fortunately, he didn’t have to sit and wait.

Zach rode around the corner of the barn, controlling the prance of the powerful stallion with the same calm efficiency he used to manage the Montoya ranch with Sam. Behind, his men followed, all mounted on equally impressive horse flesh and all equally in control. Zach pulled the stallion to a halt at the edge of the yard. With a tip of his black hat, he acknowledged those gathered. In a slow yet somehow unified meander, his men flanked him. They were an impressive sight.