Tallchief: The Homecoming (9 page)

She’d been bundled in the tartan, despite her protest. When she’d refused to walk, he’d packed her down the mountain trail. Shaken by Liam’s easy handling when no one else had dared, she’d made her excuses to Nick and Silver and packed her repaired car. Unprepared for the stark emotions within her, she was running from a good fight, and she didn’t like the taste of losing. The territory was unfamiliar and the rules too difficult to understand without stepping back for breath—for Liam had truly done that, knocked the wind from her. There were fights she wanted to win, she told herself, and ones that were worth the effort. She had a good life, molded to her needs. She knew herself. If she stayed, she’d be fighting that big, tall, hard-kissing— “If I stay, I’ll throttle Liam Tallchief,” she brooded as she drove out into the early-August day, sailing away to safety. “He’s lucky I’m leaving.”

“A
ye, it’s good here.” Liam inhaled the early-October air and cuddled J.T.’s limp, sleeping body closer upon his lap. The stars overhead seemed close enough to reach, as if his son could reach for a star and capture a dream. Camping on Tallchief Mountain seemed to be the right thing to do, with his son wrapped in the blue and dragon-green of the tartan. Liam traced the Tallchiefs’ vermillion, striping the Fearghus plaid. J.T. would have this, not the cold bitterness that Reuben had planted inside Liam. J.T. would play with the other Tallchief children, though Liam found it hard to talk freely. Raised by a relentless man, Liam’s life was engines and gas and tools, not conversation. He liked skimming his hand along the highland sheep’s coats, thickening for winter. He loved watching his son drink pure, fresh milk and slathering butter he’d churned onto Elspeth’s bread. For a time before Karen gave birth to J.T. and she had passed quietly
away, Liam had tasted what a home could be, all frilly curtains and the scent of a good meal wafting through the rooms.

He closed his eyes, inhaling the scents of autumn, and admitted that he was ruled now by his emotions—and his hunger for the woman who had stirred him. She was tough, battling through his shadows to seek him out, not fearing the consequences.

He’d been wrong to lash out at her, when he wanted to cuddle her and hold her close and cherish the wonder of her body mating with his. He’d wanted to bury his face in the scent of her hair, draw that silk around him and forget the starkly cold years behind him.

He smiled against J.T.’s glossy hair. He’d loved igniting Michelle, watching the heat rise beneath that fine skin, her eyes flashing like emeralds to match the Tallchiefs’ dragon-green—but Michelle was off-limits to a man who had nothing to offer.

Liam studied the flickering campfire. He knew little about women, the scary, prickly edges that had excited him with Michelle. He knew about the demand of his body, her warmth straddling him, arousing him, her breasts enticing beneath the layers of expensive torn cloth. He regretted that, the tearing of the cloth and his control. He regretted that boyish play with a woman bred to another world. She had been testing herself against a man she wanted to control—a woman in command of others, who wanted to make him ache.

Because of her, he visited now with the Tallchief family, and J.T. had been in heaven—swimming and playing for the remainder of the summer. Emily had gone to college, but now, during the day, J.T. stayed with the Tallchiefs and yelled and played and came home to sleep without nightmares. Liam wouldn’t owe them for J.T.’s
care, so he’d helped repair fence and machines. His taut edginess around the Tallchiefs had eased enough for him to accept their invitations to dinner. Family dinners were a good thing for J.T., seeing the love passed with the food.

He could manage the needs of his body, but images of Michelle, wrapped in his tartan for warmth, found him in the night or trapped him in the sunlight. When the breeze slid against his skin, he caught the scent of her hair, the silky strands capturing him. He wouldn’t ask her to stay—she didn’t belong in the small town, there were no battles to fight in Amen Flats, and Michelle was a woman who needed a good challenge to keep her happy.

The flames flickered in the campfire as Liam held his son closer. It was enough, he told himself…more than he had expected from life. After reading Elizabeth’s journal, he knew more what ruled him so fiercely upon Tallchief Mountain—the need to take the woman and to make her his.

Pitch hissed, igniting in the campfire, and brush crackled as a night animal prowled. And life went on—he’d manage without that lovely witch with silky skin and hair and fascinating eyes. She’d run back to safety the next morning, away from him, and that was for the best, because one look at her and he couldn’t resist taking.

At the same time, Elspeth stood on her front porch, her husband and babies sleeping within their snug home. Her parents had also been killed in October, and it seemed to be a broody month for all Tallchiefs—Liam’s parents had been killed in October, and as a baby his life had changed. Elspeth wrapped her tartan around her and settled into her thoughts. The man upon Tallchief Mountain shared her ancestors, and she knew a bit of what ran
in his mind—he’d set his own terms for healing and he hadn’t come back to her to talk. He needed mending time and then he’d come, and she’d tell him of the family line she’d traced with Sybil, Duncan’s wife.

But there was more pain waiting for Liam Tallchief. The woman who brought him to life, who clashed and fought and burned in his blood, would serve him another dark blow.

The mist was damp with secrets that would tear into Liam’s new peace, a home and a journey he’d begun to make. Elspeth lifted her face to the mountain where Liam had taken his son and murmured, “When a man and a woman, equally matched, strike against each other, fire will fly—just as two flints, striking sparks off each other….”

The October rain drizzled down Michelle’s office window, and she gave up rummaging through the résumés on her desk. It had been two months since her emotions had ruled her on the mountain. Liam’s fierce image still churned in her mind, prowling around the lush gray office, the maroon carpet, the conference table and slid the wall of book shelves.

Her anger had surprised her later, for she had been controlled and in charge of her life since forever. A calculating woman, she had thought marriage to Oliver would suit her, too, but it hadn’t. It seemed her hungers ran more to arrogant, swaggering lone-wolf men than to the gentler, civilized breed. Disgusting, arrogant, cocky, swaggering—

On the paper, Michelle drew a line with her nail.
In the dim light of his wrecker, she’d seen the red marks she’d put on his shoulder—
that fine, darkly tanned skin still taunted her fingertips, even as they stroked the desk’s
smooth surface…. At times, in the night, she could feel his chest against her, his heart racing beneath her hand.

Oh, there was nothing sweet in what she felt for Liam Tallchief, just the need to tear him away from the safety of his shadows—to step through the icy fortress he’d built around himself.

Michelle tapped her signature pen on her expansive walnut desk and fought the emotions running through her. She smoothed the strands escaping her chignon and thought of how Liam had held her tight, devouring her mouth—how he’d torn away her blouse to see and touch her—to fit his big rough hand around her breast, cherishing her—and the answering vibrations within her were enough to spin the earth from its axis.

She’d kept his shirt. On the fifth sleepless night, she’d given in to the need to have his scent nearby and she’d worn it as a nightshirt. She’d washed it herself, not sending it to the cleaners, because it was hers and a reminder that she could tend her own life, despite Liam’s taunts.

She studied her hands, diamonds glittering on her right hand—well-kept, neat, practical-length nails, trimmed to match the one that had broken.
She’d actually cleaned house for him!

Her lower body tightened, remembering Liam’s fullness beneath her shielded by layers of clothing. He’d cost her two months of brooding, of plotting revenge and needing that harsh breath against her cheek, that heat dancing between them. If he’d acted like a gentleman later, she would have forgotten him easily, she told herself. But now he needed a lesson on how to treat a lady, and she was going to give it to him.

She moved her fingertips to the fat file on her desk and tapped them across the label, “Liam Tallchief.”

Liam really shouldn’t have fisted her hair and kissed
her blind and senseless on Silver’s porch…“Stay away from me, lady,” he’d said none too gently before pushing her inside.

Being managed like a piece of luggage went against her pride. He didn’t think she could manage, that she could tend her own cooking and home. Michelle scowled at the fresh red roses and baby’s breath in the crystal vase, reflected on her gleaming desk. Great. She’d acted like a woman for once in her life, had felt those deep needs and had answered them. But Liam Tallchief had picked the wrong woman to tell to stay away. Not a woman to forget a misdeed or a man’s uncivil act, Michelle punched her intercom button. “Lucy, please set up an appointment with Mr. Dover.”

Her boss wouldn’t like his hotshot human resources director taking time off to prove that she could fit into a small town. She really needed revenge, she decided—Liam was far too arrogant and macho, and she intended to bring him to his knees, then walk away with her pride intact. “Who does he think he is to tell me to do anything?” she asked the rose petals quivering beneath her hand.

The hiss of an opening door announced Lucy, who asked with a worried frown, “Ms. Farrell, are you all right? You seem distracted lately, and bookkeeping just called with this little error—you rarely overlook mistakes. Are you certain you are all right? Should I tell the police that Theron Oswald is threatening you again? I thought he’d quit that—maybe he’s been caught and put in jail where he couldn’t—”

“I’m just fine, Lucy. I’m certain the police will notify us if there is anything we need to know.” Michelle glanced out to the broody fall day, mist layering the streets and people on the sidewalks hunching beneath
their umbrellas. She wished she were as certain as she acted. She lived in a secure building, the police had made every effort to find Oswald, and eventually she would learn to relax when her door buzzer sounded.

She didn’t dismiss the danger of being stalked, but she wouldn’t let Oswald’s threats rule her life. She’d acted responsibly, taking precautions and placing the matter with the police. She wouldn’t lead her life trapped in fear, just as she wouldn’t lead the life her parents had chosen for her. She wanted a change, though, for in Amen Flats she’d found an excitement and a beckoning she couldn’t ignore. It had more to do with what roamed unsatisfied within her, the need to test herself in life away from what she had known—

She’d been meticulous in her background check of Liam, tearing into his past with a vengeance after returning to Seattle. Liam wasn’t the only one affected by his parents’ deaths.
Was it her place to open his life? Why should she care?

The truth hounded her:
Whatever storms ran between Liam and herself, they rang truer than her other relationships and her marriage.

“I have a little private business to take care of, Lucy. I’ve requested and gotten time off to deal with it. They said to take as much time as I needed,” Michelle said in her usual cool, businesslike tone, despite the excitement running through her. Liam Tallchief was no “little” business, with hot, raking eyes and a mouth that could make her—When her secretary left, Michelle sat down with her yellow pad and began an efficiency plan to remove the big thorn in her life, Liam Tallchief. She knew herself: she couldn’t drop the Liam Tallchief matter until she’d put him in his place—a neat little shelf labeled Project Completed, Score Evened.

A practical woman at thirty-three, Michelle had no soft illusions about herself.
She liked to hunt and dig and find truth, and now her quest to understand more about herself led to Amen Flats and Liam Tallchief.

Was she like other women, soft inside, needing to make her nest? Or was her heart more steel than love?

Two battling parents had seasoned her from the crib, and she knew how to survive, how to care for her own needs and pride. She liked being in control, because she’d once been helpless under her parents’ manipulative thumbs. If she wanted a piece of chocolate cake, she usually ate it—because she knew the need would nag her until she got it out of her system. Liam Tallchief was a blunt, hard-spoken man and one who challenged her at a base level she couldn’t resist. He’d said she couldn’t cope with small-town life—she could. She’d coped with intricate, high-class, backbiting games all her life—Amen Flats’ simplicity challenged her. If she wanted, for the first time, to experience more than her ex-husband’s bland lovemaking, she would. She would leave Liam Tallchief drooling. The prospect was more fascinating than a corporate takeover and integration of employee benefits. “Phase One,” she said crisply, drawing her yellow pad beneath the flash of her pen. “Arrange move to Amen Flats.”

Outside Liam’s new home, a mid-October storm growled and roared. Like J.T.’s toy dragons, sprung to life-size, the storm raged and waited to pounce. The dark clouds had layered Tallchief Mountain all day, autumn leaves slashing against the windows. His emotions were just as unstable since Michelle Farrell had soared back into town in her new red pickup. It had been two days since he’d seen her, and he couldn’t stop thinking of the
way her hips swayed when she’d tossed her head and walked toward him, as if nothing could stop her from tormenting him.

His hands had ached to skim those curves beneath the hug of her sweater and jeans. With her fabulous hair piled high and catching the bright autumn sunlight, she’d looked like an all-American girl—too fresh and innocent for a man raised harshly.
We aren’t a match,
he’d thought,
and she’s trouble.
On her second visit to Amen Flats, Michelle little resembled the expensive, do-this, do-that executive he’d first met. He was her first stop, to let him know she’d come back to prove whatever point burned her.

J.T.’s excited “Mama” didn’t help as she had given him a rabbit with floppy ears and a storybook to match. While she hugged J.T. and nestled her face in his hair, Liam caught a look he wished he hadn’t—as if Michelle wished for her own child, though she obviously adored J.T. When she stood, those green eyes pinned Liam, and her smile was too cool as she served him notice. “I’ve bought a house. I’m staying in Amen Flats.”

The tilt of her chin and the set of her expression had shot him a challenge he wasn’t taking. He’d been controlled all his life, and he wasn’t tossing away his first peace in forever. A woman like Michelle would think little of rumba-ing all over his life and sashaying out of it just as easily.

He damned the instinct that told him when he at last put his hands on her, she wasn’t leaving—