Tallchief for Keeps (20 page)

She was involved. For starters, she never wanted Alek waking to his nightmares alone. He should be held and tended and loved.

Elspeth groaned. She knew herself, the old-fashioned steel built into her. She ran her hand across her mother’s quilt, the one she’d been holding that terrible night long ago in the kitchen.

Alek Petrovna had come from another time,
from another world in which she’d given herself.

She’d changed. Or had she?

She’d changed, the proof lodged in her body.

Elspeth placed her hand over her eyes and sat upright.
Elspeth…
She recalled his murmur, close and hot against her. She didn’t trust Alek Petrovna; he was far too experienced at games and always pushing her, prodding her about what she’d locked inside. The shawl’s legend was none of his business. She’d tossed it and her romantic dreams away after returning from Scotland.

Elspeth shivered and reached for her jeans, drawing them on and zipping them. She sucked in her breath and glanced at the light scrape marks on her stomach caused by Alek’s morning stubble. The rough denim material rubbed against the sensitized flesh of her thighs, and Elspeth groaned.

This morning, Alek’s back had shocked her, pink lines showing where her nails had scraped him. A rush of heat shot through her, and Elspeth groaned again. She quickly drew on an old blouse she hadn’t worn for years. Alek had demanded everything, kissing her intimately, touching her. He’d handled her gently, firmly, committed to extracting the ultimate from her.

Elspeth let out an unfamiliar, long, frustrated groan.

She shook her head. Sex with Alek
shouldn’t have gone so far, nor taken her so high, nor should gentler emotions tug at her now.

Elspeth threw up her hands. What did she know about sex? She’d been unprepared for the shattering, and no amount of preparing could have shored up her walls, her protection.

It was eight o’clock. Elspeth shivered and swept the lacy handkerchief from her family portrait. At least Alek had that much decency before he planned his raid.

Downstairs, for the first time in her
life, her loom held little interest. She was too restless. Elspeth forced herself to sip her morning herbal tea and then work her hair into one long braid. The sounds coming from next door said that Alek had set out to remove another wall—or tear his house apart. She listened intently and decided she liked Alek Petrovna worked up and frustrated.

Elliot Pinkman, an older man needing to supplement his retirement income, came to till her garden and haul away brush. “Mornin’, Elspeth. You’re looking in the pink. Flushed, sort of. You been baking?” Elliot sniffed the June air. “Nope, can’t smell that good bread of yours. You sure look worked up. Alive. Full of it. Haven’t looked that way in a few years.”

“I’ve…I’ve been moving my loom, Elliot. You know how big it is. I’ve got to get back to it.” Elspeth quickly made her retreat and glanced at the mirror. She placed her hands on her hot cheeks and released the taut, frustrated “Aargh!” to the shadows of her home.

Elliot knocked at her door. “I could help you move that loom, Elspeth.”

“Thank you for asking, but it’s
all right now,” she lied. Nothing would ever be the same again, not with Alek dipping in her life.

Jeremy called, clearly aware of the morning’s events. He wanted to confirm their dinner date. Jeremy hesitated slightly before asking her if she had a “thing” for Alek Petrovna. Her “We’re neighbors and Talia is his sister,” pacified Jeremy, who had been hovering around her for years, even during his marriage.

This morning, Elspeth decided to ignore her
garden, ignore her waiting loom and Mark’s messages on her answering machine. She slapped sandwiches into a backpack and drove to Tallchief Cattle Ranch.

The time had come to visit her parents, resting high on Tallchief Mountain. When she’d returned five years ago, she couldn’t bear taking her shame to them—that she had loved a married man and had taken his child.

Her mother had always told her that a special love waited and Una’s journals had supported that belief. Elspeth had returned with crushed dreams and chose to mourn her baby alone. Though she thought of them often, her parents’ love had been so perfect that it seemed they should rest, undisturbed by Elspeth’s dark storms.

She’d missed the visits with her mother, as daughters do, and now it was time to share her life with them.

Like a violent summer storm on the mountains,
Alek had changed her life yet again. Her parents needed to know about him.

Alek.
She refused to surrender to him easily. Years ago, she’d tasted heaven in his arms, certain that life would grow richer and love would come to call. Those dreams were dashed too soon and that trust was hard to regain.

Did she trust Alek? Not quite. He pushed too much, moved too quickly and wanted too much. She wasn’t ready to give her deepest heart, the privacy she kept as her fortress. She doubted that now she could give that part to anyone…

A man who could and had changed her life, Alek wanted everything. Elspeth clung to her safety, weaving it around her like a shield. As a girl, she’d lost her parents, and then Alek…. She feared another loss would take her deeper into the shadows….

She needed this visit to quiet the sadness within her. Her parents had missed so much of their children’s lives and now it was time….

When she arrived at Tallchief Cattle, Duncan had saddled Delight, a sturdy brown-and-white mare. He’d always known when she needed to ride up the mountain; they shared the Tallchief intuitions.

As he watched her strap on her chaps,
Duncan’s expressive eyes told her he worried but that he understood. He nodded to her and held out the reins. Elspeth placed her western hat on her head, nodded to her brother before placing her foot in the stirrup and rising to the saddle. Duncan didn’t say anything, nor did she; the Tallchiefs understood that dark moments roamed within them and needed privacy. She took the trail to Tallchief Mountain, passing through the shadows of the pines up a rocky stretch and over meadows filled with grazing Tallchief sheep.

It was the first time she’d taken the trail to her parents’ graves in those five years.

Nine

C
hipmunks ran up the red bark of the pines, and rabbits crossed Delight’s path as she carried Elspeth upward. In an aspen clearing, Elizabeth Montclair, Elspeth’s great-grandmother, had met the son of Una and Tallchief. Liam Tallchief, a half blood, had fought his captors who wanted him to dishonor Elizabeth. To save her sister, Elizabeth had agreed to shed her pride, marry the savage in his customs and take him into her body. Then Liam had followed her to England to revenge his pride, his seed taken from him unwillingly by the English heiress. She’d given up everything to be with him, to return to Tallchief land.

The mountain sun burned through the trees, and a lizard baked on a lichen-covered rock. Scarlet Indian paintbrush blooms quivered in the wake of scurrying ground squirrels.

Elspeth lifted her head and sighted a cliff where LaBelle Dupree, her grandmother and a reformed international jewel thief, had hidden her treasures. LaBelle had been a bit of a tomboy, something like Fiona, always into trouble, and she’d loved intrigue. Nothing satisfied her like plucking fortunes from the wealthy. Until Jake Tallchief had turned up at her fancy soiree and blackmailed her into marriage. Jake had only wanted to capture her, to prevent her from hanging or worse, and tuck her under his wing. LaBelle, once faced with a man she couldn’t push to do her bidding, had fallen deeply in love with him.

Now LaBelle’s earring was Alek’s.

Elspeth slid the reins through her
fingers and glanced up at the clear blue June sky. Her ancestors had loved deeply, and she would settle for nothing less.

Alek had carried the woven swatch with him for years.

Elspeth ran her hand across her damp lashes, not wanting to believe the tenderness in Alek’s arms, the gentle, reverent way he touched her.

A doe bounded across the path, startling Delight. Elspeth calmed her in a soft, gentling tone. The sound reminded her of Alek, whispering wild, exotic things to her, treasuring her with his body….

A hawk swooped down in a grassy meadow, reminding Elspeth of Alek. In a cave beyond that meadow, Pauline Dante, the first woman judge of Amen Flats, had been held hostage. Matthew Tallchief, her childhood nemesis, and a sheriff’s deputy assigned to protect her from threats, had tracked the kidnappers and rescued her. There in the meadow, he’d won her heart by reciting Greek mythology.

Elspeth stood in the saddle, absorbing
the mountain’s familiar sounds and scents. Her eyes swept the valley below, a blend of rich fields, winding roads and the small town of Amen Flats. She stretched, her muscles aching from Alek’s lovemaking and from riding. Elspeth inhaled the pine scents and knew that she’d never pitted herself against anyone, any challenge, like Alek.

She’d never felt more alive.

She believed in her senses, in what they told her before the happening; they’d told her that Alek would be coming and that he would change her life.

Lovers’ whispers swept through the pine branches, and Elspeth shivered because they sounded familiar, the tone the same as Alek’s and hers.

Delight grazed in the meadow while Elspeth settled near her parents’ graves. She folded her arms over her knees and let the tears roll down her cheeks.

She’d created a safe nest, and now he’d come to tear her loose.

The wind whispered along her body. It caressed the tendrils of hair near her face, and she remembered her mother’s words,
Love isn’t calm, Elspeth. It’s fierce joy, rising out of your very soul. Love can shatter and hurt and, if it’s real, it will take the wear and become stronger. There are no guarantees, nothing but the tenderness in a man’s eyes that’s just for you. When your time conies, honey, take a chance.

Elspeth crushed a bluebell stalk.
Alek’s black eyes had been very tender. He’d placed his face into the hollow of her shoulder, a gentle, sweet gesture from a hard man.

Elspeth held the wildflower bouquet and thought of the heather that Alek had given her that night. She’d taken one chance with Alek Petrovna. Could she withstand another?

You sense things, probably because of your seer and shaman blood, Duncan has a bit of the gift, but not as much as yours. You’ll know. Elspeth, when the man is right. You’ll feel like you’re walking on air when he looks at you. There’s a fever in your blood that is only for him,

Elspeth had been too full of thoughts about Alek; he’d washed away the premonitions she’d come to expect. Even now, she saw flashes of him wherever she looked, big arrogant and bold, pushing…pushing….

Elspeth placed her forehead on her arms, braced over her knees. Alek moved too quickly; he was too passionate, too ready to laugh or to rage…or to kiss her as if all his dreams were wrapped up in her.

Your heart will know, even if you deny him, dear. The Tallchiefs are a complex brood, and I’ve always known that love wouldn’t come easy to you.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, Amen Flats’s Main Street began settling in for the weekend. The scent of apple pie and backyard barbecues hung in the June air. High-school boys in their spotlessly waxed trucks and cars cruised up and down. The butcher hauled an extra order of hamburger into the local drive-in. Trucks and cars were already parking near Maddy’s Hot Spot, and the sheriff had slept in that morning to prepare for Friday night and payday on the ranches.

At eight o’clock, the ballfield lights would flick on for the start of the first softball game. Families would sit on blankets lining the field, and babies would sleep through it all.

A hay baler prowled down Main Street,
on its way for repair at Powell’s Machinery. Forced to move aside, a tractor ran up on the sidewalk, the driver cursing and slapping his battered Stetson. Dirty from working in the fields and building fence, a truckload of college boys home for the summer whistled at Sexy Sue, who wore a gold chain around her waist and had just gotten a brand-new rose tattoo on her ankle. According to gossip, Sexy Sue had pierced more than her ears, and the boys were drooling to know just what.

With Megan strapped to his back, Alek sorted through his thoughts. He’d grown up in a town just like this, his teenage hormones lusting after another version of Sexy Sue before Melissa.

When it came to Elspeth, maybe his hunger hadn’t changed. Alek stared at Jeremy Cabot leaving the feed mill in his red sports car. Jeremy did not return Alek’s unwavering stare. Alek managed not to flinch when Megan’s wet fingers investigated his ear and a certain warm dampness spread down his T-shirt. When Cabot’s sports car shot out of sight, Alek cursed the intricacies of diapers with sticky tabs; his engineering attempt had been admirable, if lopsided.

Outside the newspaper office, Alek crouched in the midst of the dirt-bike squad. Bundled to his back while Sybil shopped, Megan alternately cooed and giggled and jabbered at the boys surrounding her.

Alek liked the feeling of the toddler on his back almost as much as he liked her in his arms.

“They’re girls. I can shoot off a ramp, fly up ten feet, spit another ten feet and still come down on both tires.” Jimmy Lattigo, the biggest of the ten- to twelve-year-olds, wanted a steeper ramp to jump his bicycle.

“Who says we’re girls?” Ace Wheeler demanded.

“You’re lucky you don’t drown when all that spit flies back in your face.”

“Jimmy is a show-off. Watch this.” Mad Matt, his baseball cap on backward, glared at Jimmy and spit a perfect arc into the street.

“Nice shot, Matt. I always thought
the best riders were the most careful. They finished, while the ones showing off laid on the pavement, bleeding their guts out.” Alek tightened the sagging bicycle chain for Killer McGee. The raging discussion was a mix of air gauges, wheelies, tire treads and Annie Jones, who wanted to kiss the entire gang.

Alek had been amid other children, hungry,
damaged ones. The grins on these faces said that no one was hungry and the biggest problem was soap and fleeing Annie Jones’s mushy kisses. It eased Alek to know that in Amen Flats, most parents took care of their children and that they could sleep at night without fearing for their lives. There were images of children he would never forget.