Sun Kissed (6 page)

“Howdy,” the wiry, dark-haired man began, tipping his brown Stetson to Tucker in a polite gesture of introduction. “I couldn’t help but notice that your nose looks broke.”

That struck Tucker as being an odd way to strike up a conversation. “That’s right.”

“Name’s Frank Harrigan,” the cowboy elaborated.

Tucker set aside the magazine. “Samantha’s dad?” Pushing to his feet, Tucker extended his right hand. “Good to meet you, sir. Tucker Coulter here.”

“I know your name,” the smaller man replied. “My girl told me what happened, how you jumped in to stick up for her after that no-account bastard hit her. I owe you one, son.”

“It was nothing.”

Harrigan narrowed his gaze on Tucker’s bandaged nose. “Pardon me for pointin’ it out, but that doesn’t look like nothing. Hit you with a whip handle, I understand.”

Tucker felt a flush creeping up his neck. “I’m sure you heard the rest, then. It wasn’t one of my most stellar moments. Instead of me saving your daughter, she saved me.”

Frank Harrigan chuckled and rubbed his jaw. “She did mention that, yes. But it sounds like you redeemed yourself.”

“I tried.”

Harrigan nodded. “No shame in getting knocked on your ass, son. You got back up and showed him how the cow ate the cabbage. That’s what counts.”

Tucker glanced around the waiting area. “Did you bring Samantha in about her eye?”

The older man laughed again. “Hell, no. She’s too stubborn to see a doctor for a bruise. Last I saw, her brother was putting a scraped spud over her eye, and she was telling him to go home and leave her alone.” He sobered, and his brown eyes met Tucker’s gaze with solemn intensity. “I came to thank you for what you did today. With the nose, I figured you’d be easy to spot, and it turns out I was right.”

“You didn’t need to drive all this way. A phone call would have done just as well.”

“Not this time. The man could have seriously hurt my girl if you hadn’t stepped in. Samantha tells me you’re a vet and specialize in horses?”

“I’m getting there. My brother and I have a practice. I prefer working with large animals, especially equines.”

“Got a card?”

Tucker reached for his wallet and withdrew a business card. After taking it, Harrigan studied the information for a moment. Then he tucked the paper into his shirt pocket. “One good turn deserves another. I’ll see to it you get some business.” He thrust out his hand again. “Good meeting you, Tucker. Could be I’ll be calling you myself sometime.”

As Tucker bade Harrigan farewell, he said, “I’ll appreciate any business that comes my way, but please, don’t feel obligated because of this afternoon. I only did what any man worth his salt would do.”

“Exactly. That goes a lot farther with me than a character reference.”

Frank Harrigan had just exited the building through the revolving door when Tucker’s family entered the waiting room. Still feeling dazed by Harrigan’s unexpected appearance, Tucker said to Jake, “You’re not going to believe who I was just talking to.”

“Who?”

“Frank Harrigan.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“No. It’s true,” Tucker insisted. “He drove out here to thank me for taking up for his daughter this afternoon. He’s a totally nice guy.”

Excitement lit Jake’s blue eyes. “Did you mention me?”

“No. I never even thought to.”

Jake’s jaw muscle started to tic. “I just told you how much I’d like to meet the man, and you never even thought to?” When Tucker shrugged, Jake added, “I should have whomped your nose with that mallet when I had a chance. Some brother you are.”

S
amantha’s large ranch-style kitchen bustled with activity. Her four jet-haired brothers were determined to prepare her dinner to celebrate Blue Blazes’s first-place win in the cutting horse competition that afternoon. Samantha wasn’t fooled. Granted, they were as delighted over Blue’s big win as she was, but the real reason for their presence was to look after her until their father re turned.

And they meant to stay whether she wanted them to or not.

Seated at the table with a scraped potato pressed over her eye, she watched them with weary resignation. As dearly as she loved each of them, she needed some quiet time—an hour or two by herself to regroup and put the events of the afternoon behind her. She also yearned to visit Blue out in the stable. He was an indisputable champion now. That called for the equine version of a champagne toast, a blend of oatmeal and diced apples, fed to him by hand, with lots of petting and kudos in between bites. But oh, no, her brothers wouldn’t hear of it. She
needed to take care of herself first, they insisted. Congratulating Blue would have to wait.

Thanks to her dad, all of her brothers knew their way around a kitchen. They’d just never mastered the skill of tidy cooking. Clint, the oldest at thirty-six, stood at the stove, making his specialty, kielbasa-and-mashed-potato soup. The Viking range looked as if a shotgun blast of onions, cheese, and sausage had peppered its black surface. Quincy, two years Clint’s junior, had been put in charge of making corn bread, and was managing to dust himself and that entire section of granite countertop with whole-wheat flour. Parker, a year younger than Quincy, had commandeered another work area to create a tossed green salad, and he seemed to think
tossed
meant lettuce thrown everywhere. Zach, who’d turned thirty-one three days ago on the ninth of August, had been assigned the duty of watching his sister to make sure she kept the potato pulp over her eye.

“I can’t believe you guys are over here on a Saturday night, messing up my kitchen and fussing over me like this,” she grumped. “It’s only a little bruise. Don’t you have lives?”

Clint broke off from whistling a cheerful ditty to wink at her over his well-muscled shoulder. With his wavy black hair, burnished skin, dreamy brown eyes, and perfectly toned body, he should have long since been married, but somehow he’d escaped that fate. “You want me to stop making soup and do what I really want to do?”

The kitchen went suddenly quiet, and Samantha, peering out at him from behind the spud, realized all her brothers were looking at her expectantly. With all their
faces turned toward her, she was strongly reminded of the blood ties that bound the five of them together. They each had their father’s curly, pitch-black hair, dark eyes, and irregular features, the only major difference being that the irregularities were a lot more attractive on their masculine visages than they were on hers. They also refused to wear sunscreen, despite all her lectures, and as a result, their skin had a bronzed, weathered texture that hers lacked.

“What is it, exactly, that you really want to do?” she asked cautiously.

“I’ve got a tire iron under the seat of my truck,” Quincy replied.

Samantha narrowed her uncovered eye and thinned her lips. “Don’t even
think
about it. The man hit me, it’s over, and now he’s in jail. End of story.”

“Tire iron, hell,” Clint said with a low growl in his voice. “My fists will serve me just fine. Just let me at him.”

Zach, sitting across the custom-made alder table, slumped on the chair and thrust out both of his long, denim-clad legs to peruse his brown Tony Lama boots. “I’m wearin’ my pointy-toed shit-kickers. Why bark my knuckles when a few swift kicks will do the job?”

Parker gave the lettuce an extra-hard toss that sent bits of green flying from the bowl again. “I’ll let you boys have your fun. Then I want him to myself for a little finish work.”

“Oh, please.” Samantha propped both elbows on the table and groaned. She knew her brothers were absolutely serious. The Harrigan code was, “One for all and all for one,” and her brothers had been fighting her battles most
of her life. “That’s just what I need, the four of you going off half-cocked and ending up in the pokey. Use your heads for something besides a Stetson rack.”

“We are using our heads,” Clint retorted. “That’s why we’re here, cooking you supper. We’d much rather be parked outside the sheriff’s department, waiting for the asshole to make bail.”

“To contemplate going there is beyond dumb,” Samantha retorted. “You don’t even know what he looks like.”

“Mean, hungover, and butt-ugly is my guess,” Zach said.

“And when we get done with him, he’ll be even uglier,” Parker added.

“When, in the entire history of the world, has physical violence ever solved anything?” Samantha demanded.

“Sometimes you are so
female
in your thinking, it totally blows my mind.” Quincy turned from the mixing bowl. His black T-shirt had a hand smear across the chest. “Women think every damned problem can be solved by paying it a little lip service.”

“Hello. Maybe, just
maybe
, we have it right. Did you ever think of that?”

Quincy wiped his hand on his T-shirt again. “Arguing with you is pointless. You have selective hearing, a one-track mind, and a stubborn streak a mile wide.”

Samantha lowered the potato from her eye to smile sweetly at him. “If it’s so pointless, why do you argue with me? Better to simply concede the point and admit you’re wrong.”

“Ha!” he retorted. “You’re the one who’s wrong. And
I argue with you for two reasons, one being that Dad would think we were both sick if we suddenly stopped.”

“And the second?”

Quincy smirked. “Because sooner or later you get pissed off and stop talking to me. The silence is music to my ears.”

Samantha almost laughed. Sparring with Quincy was one of her favorite pastimes because neither of them ever took it seriously.

“Children, children!” Clint called from the stove. Pointing at each of them with his spoon, he added, “We’re supposed to stick together at times like this, not squabble among ourselves. We all know you’re right, Sam. Knocking the snot out of the guy would be a stupid move.” Before turning back to the soup pot, he graced her with a burning glare. “Just understand that knowing you’re right does nothing to make the idea any less appealing. The son of a bitch hit you. We have every reason to be royally pissed, so cut us a little slack.”

Samantha drew the potato from her eye again to gesture with her hands. “You’re all acting as if he walked away scot-free, and that wasn’t the case at all. Before it was all over, I turned him into the human version of a bilateral cryptorchid.”

Zach snorted at her use of the veterinary term for a male horse with both testicles undescended. “Good for you, sis. I never heard that part of the story. Used a little Harrigan judo on him, did you?”

Clint gave her a thumbs-up. “Yes!” he said with a burst of enthusiasm. “All those hours I spent teaching you self-defense actually paid off.”

“I only resorted to kicking him because I had no choice,” she explained. “He nailed Tucker on the nose with a whip handle—one of those long, old-fashioned lunge-whip handles made of wood and wrapped with a leather thong. Tucker was blinded and couldn’t defend himself. I bought him a few seconds to regain his senses.”

“So physical violence is sometimes justified?” Quincy asked sarcastically.

“In self-defense, yes. It’s different when you go looking for trouble.”

“Enough on the pros and cons of physical violence,” Clint interjected. “Tell us the rest of what happened.”

“You’ve heard the rest. Once Tucker got back on his feet, he backed the guy against the horse trailer and pounded the devil out of him.” Samantha chose to leave out the part about the drunk jumping her from behind. “That being the case, there’s no score left for any of you to settle.”

“I’d like to meet this Coulter fellow,” Zach inserted. “He sounds like my kind of guy, a kick-ass good old boy.”

Clint turned back to the stove to stir the kielbasa and bacon. “I’d like to shake his hand myself. Maybe I will someday. For now, we’ll leave that to Dad while we hold down the fort.”

Samantha sat straighter on the chair. “What do you mean, you’ll leave that to Dad?” Silence. She quickly put two and two together. “Is that where he went—to see Tucker? I thought he had business in town.”

“That’s business, and the hospital’s in town,” Parker, the human SaladShooter, said over his shoulder. “Don’t get your nose out of joint. When a stranger steps up to the
plate and defends one of our own, we Harrigans owe him an official thank-you.”

An image of Tucker’s dark face flashed through Samantha’s mind. When she’d said good-bye to him at the sheriff’s department, she’d hoped to put the incident behind her and never see him again. “I thanked Mr. Coulter. What makes Dad think it’s necessary to thank him again?”

Clint, always the self-appointed spokesman in Frank’s absence, fielded her question with, “You can carry the independent-woman thing too far, Samantha Jane.”

“What independent-woman thing?”

He waved the wooden spoon at her. “
That
independent-woman thing, the one where you get all huffy and bent out of shape over silly stuff.”

In her estimation, her need to feel independent wasn’t silly, but critical to her emotional health and well-being. She needed her father and brothers to respect her boundaries, and none of them even seemed to realize she had any. They meant well. They’d
always
meant well. But without intending to, they had a way of taking over her life.

In all fairness, she couldn’t hold them totally to blame. She was the one who allowed it, after all. How difficult was it to say no? She frequently rehearsed exactly how she would handle the next infraction.
No, I think I’ll do it this way.
Or,
I appreciate the advice, really I do, but I’ve already made my decision.
In her head, those responses sounded so reasonable, but even if she managed to say them, she had trouble making them stick.

Other women who found themselves being suffocated
by a meddling family moved away, found a job, and cultivated friendships outside the familial circle. That was impossible for Samantha. Like her brothers, when she turned twenty-one, she had inherited from her father a two-hundred-acre share of the original Harrigan ranch and enough capital to start her own business. Out of respect for her dad, she couldn’t just walk away, turning her back on everything he had sweated blood to build. It would break his heart.

“I need to be my own person,” she said softly.

“So be your own person,” Clint replied. “Who’s stopping you?”

Who, indeed? Her father’s place lay due west of hers, Clint’s was directly to the north, and her other three brothers lived within shooting distance of her front porch. From anyplace on her property she could see the rooftops of their homes, and they all took frequent advantage of the short distance to visit her whenever they pleased. The only time in her life when she’d had any sense of separateness had been during the dark years of her marriage, when they’d all stayed away because they couldn’t abide Steve.

“Forget it,” she said wearily. “Just forget it. I could talk myself blue and never make you understand.”

Clint made it clear he didn’t care to understand by brusquely saying, “Get that spud back on your eye.”

And there it was, the very essence of her problem with him and all the rest of her male relatives. They refused to treat her like an adult. In their minds she would always be Sammy, daughter and pesky baby sister. When she was eighty, they would still be telling her what to do.

“Do you have to be so bossy, Clint?” she asked. “It’s my eye. If I have a shiner tomorrow, oh, well.”

“Bossy?” Her eldest brother looked genuinely incredulous. “What in the Sam Hill are you talking about?” Before she could answer, he put the question up for a family vote. “Am I bossy, you guys?”

Quincy flashed a broad grin. “I’m not touching that one with a ten-foot prod.”

“So you agree?” Clint shook his head. “You actually think I’m bossy?”

Parker chuckled. “Of course you’re bossy, Clint. Helping Dad to raise all of us screwed you up.”

“Yeah,” Zach interjected with a lazy grin. “You think the power of persuasion is a size-eleven boot up somebody’s ass.”

“What is it with you and boots today?” Samantha asked Zach. “As for that, you can all clean up your mouths. This is my kitchen, not the barn.”

“I haven’t taken the Lord’s name in vain,” Zach protested. “Neither has anyone else.”

“That soup is starting to smell mighty good,” Quincy observed in an obvious attempt to change the subject. Boot heels tapping the slate tile, he crossed the kitchen and nudged Clint aside to put the bread in the oven. “I’m hungry enough to eat the south end of a northbound don key without wiping its ass first.” He slanted Samantha a glance. “Sorry, sis.”

Samantha knew when to cut her losses. Her brothers would never break themselves of using colorful language. She picked up the potato to stare at the discolored pulp.
“How long do I have to keep this stupid thing on my eye?”