His mouth covered hers with a passionate brush of heat and lips. Sheer joy swelled in her heart. She wrapped her arms tightly around his broad, iron-strong shoulders. There was no greater treasure in all of Montana Territory. And he was hers.
An Excerpt From:
">The Rancher's Return
Chapter One
"No!" Nettie felt the skin prickle on the back of her neck despite the heat and the sun. In a flash she halted the wagon, harnesses jangling, and hauled her two-and-a-half-year-old son onto her lap, shielding him from the sight before them.
She recognized her neighbor, Jake Beckman, his big frame silhouetted by the bright red-orange disk of the harsh sun, his head bare. Nettie watched in horror as he drew his strong leg backward, his gaze trained on a downed man in the middle of the road, and slammed his boot into the fallen man's midsection with all of his oxlike strength.
"Stop it!" she demanded. "Stop this right now."
Jake jerked his gaze to her. Several other men stepped into view on the rise above, dark figures outlined by the bright glare of the sun and the deep cloudless blue of the sky.
"This ain't none of your business, Nettie." Jake mopped the sweat from his brow with a swipe of his arm. "Come on, boys, let's get this worthless piece of crap off the road so the lady can pass."
Nettie's ears burned at the venom in Jake's voice. She felt her spine straighten with the need to remind him of her and her son's sensibilities, but now her gaze focused on the man lying so still on the ground. He was dirty, hatless, his shirt torn. Yet even with his back to her, something skidded through Nettie's nerves. Like fear. Like the time she heard the gunshot and knew her husband was dead.
One of the men on the rise dragged the man from the road. "Come on, Nettie," Jake instructed her. "Pass on by."
Silence roared through her ears with the strength and speed of a train so that suddenly, she knew. She
knew
. The man who lay hurt and bleeding and broken was the same man who had killed her husband.
"Come on, Nettie," Jake's voice called her forward.
It was as if the great expanse of the sky was her heart. Unable to feel, Nettie shook the reins, aware of Sam's wide-eyed fear as he cuddled against her on the seat and Old Bessie's protesting groans as they lumbered up the side of the slope. The wooden slats of the wagon rattled. One wheel squeaked. Nettie stared at the passing patch of earth between the tongue of the wagon and the horses' tails.
"Just go on to town," Jake said as she approached. "We'll be along in a few minutes." He spoke casually of the funeral and of his delay as if he were about to tie up his horse or run an errand, not beat a man to death.
Memory slammed through her head with lightning speed. She remembered the threats, two years before, and how her neighbors had taken a stand behind her. Jake had threatened to kill the man if he ever showed his face in the county again.
Nettie pulled the reins hard. Bessie squealed in protest at the pressure on her mouth, but it was a distant sound compared to the heartbeat so loud in her ears. Nettie turned to study the man in the dust. Blood ran from his brow and mouth. His leg lay at a strange angle.
"You men ought to be ashamed of yourselves," Nettie chided as if she were scolding Sam for a misdeed. She left the child on the seat and hopped down from the wagon. Five men stared at her, their eyes dark, their mouths curled into frowns.
Anger. It burned in her breast as fiercely as the sun overhead. It emboldened her now as she halted before the strong, burly men. Men she knew. Men capable of violence. Her hands trembled, but she didn't think of it now. She knelt down next to the man on the ground.
Hank Callahan opened one eye as the woman's shadow threw relief over his hammering body. He had heard Jake Beckman speaking to a woman. He had heard a wagon stop, a horse's complaint, and a woman speak.
Nettie Pickering gazed down at him with concern in her wide brown eyes. Green threads wove through those dark irises like grass on the plain. He opened his mouth to tell her to go, to leave him be, but it only roused up more pain. Pain struck through every piece of him with the force of an ax and it didn't stop.
She was dressed for a funeral. A black straw hat shaded her soft oval face from the sun, and a dusty black dress hugged her from chin to wrist. Ebony fabric skirted her as she knelt, leaning closer, brushing at the cut above his eye with the lightest touch of her small hand.
The ground beside his head shook with little earthquakes. A small tow-haired child grabbed Nettie's arm. Concern frowned across the boy's brow as he leaned close. "Mama, why's he got so many ows?" he asked.
Nettie's soft mouth compressed into a tight line. Hank watched as she brushed a lock of flyaway hair from the boy's innocent eyes. "Sam, tell me why you aren't waiting in the wagon."
The boy shrugged, and Hank drew in a tentative, painful breath as the boy scampered away. Nettie moved from his side, the crisp black fabric rustling around her. Hank watched her slender body rise with a spine-straight dignity. The sun glared around her and heat burned right into the pain in his guts, doubling it.
A boot nudged him hard in his tender right side. Hank snapped open his eyes to stare up at a black-shirted man, who was also dressed for the funeral. Harv Wheaton nudged him hard with his pointed boot's toe. "You're a dead man, son."
Hank swallowed. He understood the quiet certainty in the man's frank statement. Hank was a murderer in many men's eyes, even his own. When the men he'd called neighbors ran him out of town that dark night over two years ago, Hank knew he could never come back. But here he was.
A shadow slipped across him, blocking out the harsh burn of the sun like cold water. He could smell the cinnamon soap scent of her and hear the rustle of her skirts as Nettie knelt beside him again.
"Jake, Harv, Thomas, help me get him into the wagon." Her voice sounded as firm as the earth beneath his head.
"Now, Nettie. This here is none of your business." Jake's boot stopped within kicking distance. Hank knew the big man's placating voice would urge her away, insist that she continue on her journey to town, and leave them to finish this. It was what Hank expected.
But Nettie stood up, the rock-hard confidence in her voice unmistakable. "This man needs a doctor."
"This man needs a hanging," Harv argued.
"If you don't lift him into the back of my wagon, then I'll do it myself."
Hank felt a small hand catch up each of his wrists and begin pulling him across the rocky, rough earth. Pointed stones bit into his back. His head banged with each small dip and rise.
His leg felt as if someone were ripping it out of his knee joint. Darkness buzzed in Hank's brain until he was hardly aware of the beating sun and the abuse of the ground upon his body. He couldn't even hear the men arguing.
Then a white blast of pain careened through his body as several rough hands ripped him from the ground and tossed him into the back of a wagon.
Pain battered him until he welcomed the comforting blackness.
"You're asking for trouble, Nettie," Jake Beckman cautioned her. "He killed your husband."
"I know that." Nettie's grip on the reins tightened. She couldn't explain her actions, but she knew in her heart she'd done the right thing. "If I had allowed you to beat Hank Callahan to death, then you wouldn't be any better than a murderer."
She clamped her mouth shut She didn't owe Jake Beckman any more of an explanation than that. If she closed her eyes she could still see his vicious and powerful kick to a barely conscious man unable to fight back. Her chest filled with angry sparks of rage.
"Mama." Sam stood up in the wagon bed behind her, his little fingers gripping the wooden seat back. "The man's bleedin'."
"I know, tiger. He's hurt." She unclenched her jaw enough to speak. "Now come sit back down beside me.
"Justice isn't murder, Nettie," Jake spoke with unfailing certainty.
She closed her eyes, counted to ten. For a day that had begun as uneventful as any, her troubles had sorely increased. A funeral to attend. Jake Beckman hovering over her. Now Hank Callahan beaten and vomiting in the back of her old wagon.
Nettie glanced over her shoulder. Blood-tinged spittle clung to the beaten man's lips and chin. A wet patch had darkened the boards, but most of it had already dripped between the slats.
She reached into one skirt pocket and handed Sam a handkerchief. "Can you be a big boy and wipe off his mouth for Mama?"
"Okay." Sam took the piece of plaid cloth and crawled the handful of inches to Hank's head. Nettie watched as he wiped the man's mouth hard. Triumphant, he grinned up at his mother.
"Good boy," she said, and Sam was satisfied.
"That murderer oughtn't be near your boy," Jake pointed out, his hard-featured face harsh beneath the dark brim of his hat.
That hard anger tightened like a fist inside Nettie's chest. "I know you've been a wonderful neighbor and friend to me since Richard's death, but I don't like this. You did this to him, Jake, and I'll expect you and the men to pay the doctor's bill."
The man riding beside her wagon shook his head. "You're too kind for your own damn good, Nettie. I don't care if you like it or not, I'm not leaving you alone with a known murderer. We'll get him to town, and that will be the end of your worries."
Nettie sighed. "Today is Mr. Callahan's funeral. Don't you realize Hank came to town to see his father buried? Surely you could have left him alone."
Jake spat a wad of tobacco juice away from the wagon. "I've known you a long time, Nettie. You won't marry me and you won't marry anyone else around here that's tryin' to help you. Now you just gotta trust that a man knows how to handle this."
Nettie opened her mouth, her angry protest already a string of words in her throat, but she hesitated. She did not agree with Jake Beckman, but he had been more than a good neighbor to her. She couldn't afford to anger him even if she would never agree with his way of thinking.
She snapped her mouth shut, her jaw muscles aching.
"Mama." Sam grabbed the board behind her and leaned into her ear. "Looky."
Nettie glanced over her shoulder past the sun-blond head of her young son to the man lying prostrate on her wagon floor. His strong, masculine body trembled, shivering as if he were in a frigid wind.
She pulled the horses to a stop, set the brake because of the incline, and hopped over the wagon seat. Her skirts fell around her ankles as she hurried to the man's side.
He looked like death. A bright red cut slashed the skin above his left eyebrow and wet blood trailed down the side of his pasty white face. Dark eyelashes fanned the bruises of his eyes; the soft, sensual line of his mouth was swollen in several places, and the split skin bled.
"He got lots of owies." Sam stared down at the injured man.
"Yes, he does." Nettie sighed. "Where is your hat? Put on your hat so you don't get sunburned."
While Sam grabbed up his small hat made just like Jake's, Nettie grabbed a folded blanket from beneath the seat and tucked it around the shivering man. In her heart, she feared he was close to death. Dead for nothing more than coming home to his father's funeral.
Jake had pulled his horse up to the wagon bed, and his shadow fell across Nettie's feet. The man's dark eyes were unreadable beneath the brim of his hat, and she frowned at him, meeting his gaze for a second longer than necessary.
"I'm sorry, Nettie." His voice came gruff but not apologetic.
She said nothing. What was there to say? She condemned what he'd done to this man. She condemned violence of any sort. Perhaps it was because her father's love for whiskey had driven him to abuse his wife and his family and to land him in jail for brawling in the streets. Perhaps it was simply because striking someone never solved one problem that she could see. Either way, Nettie snatched up Sam's hand in her own and lifted him gently over the back of the seat.
"Sit still and watch for gophers," she instructed the boy as she climbed over the boards herself, careful of her skirts. "I bet you can find two or three before we get to town."
With Sam busy, there were no more innocent questions begging to be answered. Jake rode silently beside the wagon. And Nettie settled into her own thoughts, troubled, afraid the man in the back would die before they reached town.
Walla Walla boomed dirty and noisy as Nettie carefully negotiated the main street. Tall brick-and-wood buildings faced her, and movement swirled around her. Shoppers jammed the boardwalks. Horses and buggies stood tethered. Freight wagons crammed the streets, and Nettie waited impatiently until she could nudge around the slow-moving traffic and off the main street.
She pulled up before a tidy white building and told Jake to find someone inside. Sam chattered on about what he'd seen, and Nettie tried to answer him as she glanced at their passenger in the back. The shivering had ceased. He lay like a corpse buried beneath the dark wool blanket. Nettie distracted Sam, her heart heavy, and lifted him down from the wagon.
The grass was cool in the dappled shade, and Nettie sent the boy to pick clover. She watched his gentle footfalls and his little-boy innocence with a tight throat. He would grow up to be gentle like his father, wouldn't he? Troubled, she remembered Jake's behavior today and shivered.
At least the question that had been troubling her for three weeks was answered. She would not marry him.
