Intimate Strangers (Eclipse Heat Book 2) (9 page)

Instead of sauntering off as he usually did when he issued a challenge, he stood tensely, waiting for Lucy’s response.

“I notice you only use poor grammar when you talk to me. Did your mama teach you that ‘ain’t’ isn’t proper anytime? I think she did.”

Lucy turned her back, dismissing him as she lifted Sheba’s foot. Alex took the lure, sidling closer to where they worked.

“My mother left us,” he said coldly, pronouncing each word with precision. “I don’t care what she taught me then, and I’m not interested in what an impostor has to say now.” His fierce stare reflected past pain and betrayal.

“It’s your choice to be ignorant or not.” Lucy spoke over her shoulder.  “Hand me a hoof pick, Brody.”

She accepted the tool and said casually to Alex, “And as to your mama leaving you, what if she didn’t leave, but was kidnapped, abused, and left for dead? Do you still think ill of her if she didn’t abandon you by choice?”

Brody thrust the bucket of grooming equipment at her brother and said, “I have to go to the privy.” She hurried out of the barn without looking at Alex or Lucy.

Lucy balanced Sheba’s hoof, probing gently, dislodging tiny irritants beneath the shoe. She kept her mouth shut and gradually her son’s simmering rage dissipated.

“She needs to be reshod.” Alex pointed at Sheba’s hooves. They’d grown too long for the steel horseshoes.

Lucy set Sheba’s hoof back on the straw and stood, running her hands up the leg, appreciating the mare’s fine conformation. “I need the services of a blacksmith for that.  Buffalo Creek didn’t have one but Sheriff Potter took her somewhere and had her shod the last time.” Casually she continued grooming her horse and talking to her son. “You’re right, it’s time again.”

Alex followed her progress around the mare as Lucy cleaned each hoof and inspected each leg, murmuring horse-speak to Sheba while she worked.

Finally he cleared his throat and said, “I can take care of that for you.”

Lucy accepted before he could rescind the offer. “All right, pull the shoes for me, clip the extra hoof back and rasp smooth the edges. Then we’ll see if we can reset these shoes.”

She led Sheba out of the stall and helped Alex cross-tie her between two beams so that he had room to work, liking the way he gentled the mare before he made a move to pick up her hoof.

“Is she a Morgan?” Setting aside his earlier quarrel with Lucy, Alex enthusiastically brushed Sheba’s coat.

Lucy smiled at her son’s obvious love of anything equine. “As far as I know, she’s just a horse.”

Satisfied she’d found an interest she and Alex shared, Lucy made an excuse and returned to the kitchen. “I’ve got bread to bake. I’ll be back in a spell to check on your progress.”

It graveled Quincy when Lucy hurried past without giving him so much as a glance.

Loosening his belt and tightening the cinch on his saddle, Hamilton nodded at her and said, “I’ll give her one thing. Lucy sure figured out how to cook.”

The kitchen had become an oasis of good smells, and hurried meals—once conducted over warmed-up beans and a rehash of the day’s business—had changed to pure pleasure.

When Lucy had everyone else served, she’d perch uncomfortably on the edge of her chair as far from him as she could get, and then retreat to the kitchen at the first excuse. In Quincy’s opinion, Luce didn’t eat enough to keep a titmouse alive. “You ever see her eat?”

Hamilton shook his head. “Nope. Maybe she eats when she’s cooking, like Ma always did. She rubs that scar a lot, like it pains her,” he added, confessing his own worry.

Hamilton had made it clear that he was prepared to suffer Lucy’s existence because she was the mother of Brody and Alex. But
this
Lucy, a reclusive stranger who spent her days cooking and cleaning and setting things righter than they’d ever been, was an unfamiliar person to everyone. The tilt of her head, husky voice and flashing aquamarine eyes were Lucy. But the watchful woman who observed and listened to those around her, quietly serving each member of the family, was an unknown. It pleased Ambrose that she’d earned Hamilton’s respect.

“Looks as if she and Alex made up,” Hamilton said. They were on their way out to the bunkhouse to hire more men, temporary drovers for the cattle drive, but stopped to watch the boy shoeing Lucy’s mare.

Ambrose mounted his horse before he replied. “Good. Maybe Alex and his mama are finally getting the record set straight between them.”

Turning his horse toward the bunkhouse, Hamilton said, “It’s sure going to go hard on the young’uns if she up and leaves.”

Ambrose set his heels harder into his mount’s side than he meant and his horse crow-hopped across the yard. Calming his ride, he brushed aside the possibility. “She’s not leaving. Not now, not ever.”

“You clear that with Lucifer?”

Ambrose gave Hamilton a gloomy look. It couldn’t have escaped his attention that what little Lucy had to say was directed to the young’uns. “If I could get her to sit down long enough to carry on a conversation with me, I’d tell her she’s here to stay.” Urging his mount out of the barnyard he said gruffly, “Be that as it may, she’ll not be leaving her family again.”

Lucy remained stoically unresponsive to his advances, a circumstance turning him into a seething volcano waiting to erupt. For all his declaring her home to stay, short of tying her up, he had no power to make it so.

Hamilton pulled his hat low and kicked his mount into a trot, ending the exchange on a laugh. “Ambrose, are you sure you want to go down that road again?”

Ambrose didn’t hesitate. “She’s my wife, Hamilton, the only one I’ll ever have. I want back our life together.”

“Then, brother,” Hamilton drawled, “you might consider that for whatever reason, you have a shot at a fresh start. Seeing every edgy, hardheaded, jealous inch of you come back to life has reminded me what a sonovabitch you can be. It might be best to work on your courting skills and pray to God Luce permanently forgets before.”

Ambrose had that advice in his mind when he left Hamilton hiring drovers and returned to the barn. Once there, he inspected Alex’s horse-shoeing job. Figuring Lucy would come out to have a look too, Ambrose stayed in the barn, helping his son stack bags of feed in the loft.

* * * * *

The devil got in her way again. Lucy had to see Ambrose before she left on her first investigation since he was between her and her horse. When she entered the barn, he straightened from his half-crouch over the feed sack he was wrestling and pushed his hat off his forehead, waiting for her to declare her purpose.

Avoiding his gaze, she announced to the air above his shoulder, “I’m going to town.”

He was sweating, covered with straw chaff and he didn’t look happy at the interruption. They had maintained an uneasy truce since the night she’d cleaned his office and laid him flat with her knee. She’d like to believe Ambrose had learned respect but it was more probable he was plotting another siege.

Alex jumped from the hayloft and dusted himself off. “Water…” He nodded toward the house and skirted them both, clearly unwilling to witness the imminent explosion.

Ambrose said to Alex, “Take a break.” To Lucy he said, “You aren’t going anywhere.” He pronounced judgment as though he was the Almighty.

Anger whooshed through her like fire through dry leaves.

She stepped around him, heading for Sheba’s stall. “I came to Eclipse to find answers, not dally with my former husband,” she told him.

“Former husband, my ass,” he snarled. Charging her, he hooked his arm around her middle, carrying her into the tack room.

Rage blistered the air—both his and hers.  For more than two weeks, they’d been circling each other like street brawlers, each looking for an opening.

In the dim light, Lucy wasn’t nearly as confident of her rights as she had been a moment before in the daylight. Ambrose surrounded her, backing her against the wall, blanketing her body with his.
Quincy.
The name floated through her mind as his mouth claimed hers, stifling any response other than surrender.

Releasing her lips, he growled at her like a crazed animal, “You’ll stay put, here, and go nowhere without me or mine.” His hands cupped her breasts as if he could make her obey by squeezing them.

But it wasn’t painful. Even as she mustered outrage, Lucy’s body melted under the convulsive stroking and kneading of his hands. He stood too close, and when she tried to push him away he crowded closer.

She should have been in a panic. Instead, desire coursed through her, dampening her feminine curls with wet heat. She fought the mesmerizing force of her own needs as he lifted her onto the flat surface of the saddle bench, pinning her arms to her sides, punctuating his orders with physical demonstrations of his power over her.

“You’re not leaving today, tomorrow, or the next fifty years without my say-so.” His words, little more than grunts, were interspersed between kisses delivered to her neck and mouth while his hands caressed and aroused her breasts.

His lips left a hot trail, making her shudder. When he captured her face between his big hands, holding her still for his plundering kisses, she repeated weakly, “Mr. Quince, I’m going to town. Get off me.”

“Like hell,” he growled.

She let him claim her mouth, thoroughly tasting his invasive tongue. When she retreated, nibbling on his lower lip as if it was something she had done a hundred times before, he released her arms to cup her face in his hands. “Lucy… God, sweetheart, I’ve missed you.”

Lucy’s first line of defense, a reticule carrying her gun, lay useless on the barn floor. Giddy though she was, she inched her hand down to her thigh and lifted her skirt to access the blade she’d strapped there.

“Mr. Quince.” She tried to be polite, but her breathing was labored, and emotions she chose to label as anger bit into her as sharp as the knife she placed at his throat.

She couldn’t guess whether it was her manners or the blade getting his attention, but he stilled.

“I’m going to town. Get off me.”

He stared at her—frozen. And then his passion turned to fury and he dared her to kill him. Pressing his neck against her weapon, he marked himself, a line of red appearing on his skin, reinforcing his challenge. “Go ahead, cut my throat. I don’t think you’ve got the nerve.”

At the same time he held her gaze, he shoved his hand inside her drawers, stroking her belly and then trailing lower, riffling her nest of curls. Outraged, she lowered the knife and pushed at his shoulder, but he shrugged her off as his fingers teased the lips of her sex, running up and down the rim of her cleft before delving deeper to brush across her pearl.

The throbbing pleasure in her womb turned Lucy’s brain to mush and her traitorous thighs eased open, admitting her arousal. She breathed in the musky scent of his sweat and dropped the knife, arching into his touch.

“You’re hot for it,” the devil crowed, breaking the spell as he stared at her smugly.

Holding his gaze, she fumbled the tin feed scoop into her hand and slammed him in the head. “Mr. Quince, you’re wrong.”

Stunned, he stumbled back and watched as she picked up her useless knife to sheathe it in the leather casing she wore wrapped around her thigh.

Evidently unwilling to let the last round be called hers, he declared, “Mrs. Quince, when it comes to my
wife
, I’m never wrong.” He emphasized the word, reinforcing his claim.

“Don’t call me wife.” Her voice was husky, her words tart as she straightened her dress and returned to the main barn, unsteadily continuing her interrupted journey to Sheba’s stall.

“If you would like to ride along and protect me,” Lucy couldn’t help the sarcasm that tinged her offer, “I would appreciate your escort. I’m going to the bank. I need to have a conversation with Mr. Pauley.”

“About what?” Ambrose asked furiously.

“To discover if he contributed to my disappearance.”

“Well, if you go visiting your old friend dressed like that, he won’t let you through the door.” It was the derision and disbelief in his voice that set her back. She looked down.

She wore her second-best dress, a feed sack calico that covered her well enough and was clean. She had no reason for shame, but his words brought scarlet to her cheeks anyway.

“I’m covered,” Lucy couldn’t believe the defensive mumble her voice had become. Where was her spine? She straightened it and continued toward Sheba.

“I’ll hitch up the buckboard, you change into something fit.” His order rankled. Roberta, being a seamstress, had complained often about Lucy’s lack of clothes sense.

She told him sharply, “My invitation didn’t include you ramrodding the drive.”

Ambrose seemed prepared to argue, but Hamilton rode in moments later. “Stay saddled up, we’re riding to town. I’d hate to think it, but Sheriff Bailey might take a notion to finish his last Quince project.”

Lucy hadn’t considered that. It was easy to forget the rest of the world once on the Double-Q where the Quince brothers thought they were the law. Evidently, the town of Eclipse didn’t hold the same opinion.

Before all was said and done, she changed into an ill-fitting flounced dress, more appropriate, she thought, for a woman selling herself.