Wyoming Woman (5 page)

Rachel did not answer his question. Her gaze flick
ered away from his, then dropped to her hands, as if she were weighing the consequences of lying to him.

“Rachel?”

Still she was silent. He stared at her for the space of a long breath, then exhaled with mixed relief as the truth sank home. “They're not expecting you, are they?” he said. “You were driving that rented buggy home from Sheridan to surprise them. That's why you chose to come with me instead of waiting by the wash. You'd have been stranded if you'd stayed.”

She looked up at him again, and he saw the flash of anxiety in her beautiful blue-green eyes. He was an untrusted stranger, and he had just discovered that no one would be searching for her or riding to her rescue. For better or for worse, she was at his mercy, and she knew it.

“Tell me I'm right, Rachel,” he said.

Her expression hardened. Only the white-knuckled clasp of her hands betrayed her. “You're wrong,” she said. “If I'm not back at the ranch before dark, there'll be two dozen armed men out looking for me, including my father and brothers. They won't rest until they know I'm safe.”

The first glimpse of her vulnerability had moved him. Now it angered him. “Damn it, woman, what do you take me for?” he exploded. “Do you think I'd be crazy enough to touch one hair of your precious Tolliver head? Do you think I'd even
want
to?” He glowered at the sky, where the darkening clouds mirrored his emotions. “If you're so all-fired worried, why didn't you take your chances back there, with
those four cowboy friends of yours? You could be halfway home by now.”

Without waiting for an answer, Luke swung his gaze back toward her. She looked even more frayed than she had before, her eyes too large in a face that seemed too small and pale.

“Did you know them, Rachel?” he demanded, resolving to show her no mercy. “Is that why you didn't show yourself?”

She glanced away, hesitating a second too long before she shook her head. “They were masked. I couldn't see their faces. And I didn't know what they'd do if they found me.”

“So you decided you'd be safer with a sheep man.” Luke made no effort to keep the edge from his voice. “Should I be flattered?”

“Stop it!” The worn thread of her patience snapped. “Can't you understand that none of this mess is my doing? I've been away at school. Except for a few days at Christmas, I haven't lived in Wyoming for almost three years!”

“That doesn't change who you are, Rachel,” Luke said quietly.

Her head went up sharply, nostrils flaring like a blooded mare's. “I'm proud of who I am,” she said. “I love my family and I love this land. But today…” The words trailed off as she studied the boiling clouds. “Today I feel as if I've wandered into somebody else's nightmare and can't find my way out.”

“And I'm your bogeyman.” He spoke without emotion.

She shook her head. “It's not just you. It's everything. I want to wake up. I want to open my eyes and find this place the same as it was three years ago, before you came here.”

“You're saying I should leave so you can have your nice, peaceful life back.”

Either she'd missed the irony in his voice or she was choosing to ignore it. “My father would gladly buy you out, Luke. You could go somewhere else, with plenty of money to make a new start.”

“Just like that.” Luke would have laughed at her naiveté if he hadn't been choking on his own fury. “You've never had to fight for anything in your pampered little life have you, Miss Rachel Tolliver? You can't even imagine what it's like to want something so much that you'd spill your own blood to get it, and to hold onto it.”

She raked her hair back from her face with restless fingers. “Maybe not,” she said in a taut voice. “But I know enough to recognize a stubborn fool when I see one.”

“And I know enough to recognize a woman who thinks she can rearrange the people around her like furniture, to suit her own pleasure. Anyone who's spoiling her pretty view will be shown the door. Well, this time it's not going to work.”

“Especially not with a man who's bent on self-destruction!”

Without waiting for his response, she stalked down the slope to where the lamb had finished nursing and was tottering away from the ewe on uncertain legs.
Bending down, Rachel caught the small creature around its chest and scooped it into her arms. As she turned back to face him, a ray of amber sunlight slanted through the clouds to touch her windblown hair. For an instant her face was haloed by living, moving flame. Luke was no artist, but if he could have taken brush to canvas he would have chosen to paint her exactly as he saw her now—as a rescuing angel with blazing hair and a wounded lamb cradled in her arms.

But Rachel Tolliver was no angel, he reminded himself. She was a willful, self-centered minx who demanded life on her own terms and gave no quarter to anyone else's point of view. The sooner she was off his hands and back with her own kind, the better for them both.

The vision dissolved as she moved, striding back up the hill toward him. “Let's go,” she said. “I've had enough rain for one day.”

Luke mounted and reached down for her. She passed him the lamb, then seized his free arm and allowed him to swing her up behind him. She was light and strong, like lifting a bird, he thought as she scrambled into place on the horse's withers. Light and strong and tough. And while she'd been pushy and temperamental and annoying, not once had he heard her whine.

Passing her the lamb, he whistled to the dogs and urged the buckskin to a trot. Overhead the skies darkened and rumbled, showing a thin streak of red above the mountains, like a bed of glowing coals glimpsed
through the grate of an iron stove. The sheep were moving fast now, driven by the pressing dogs and by a sense of urgency that seemed to hover in the air around them all. Luke felt it, too, and he pushed the animals harder. He had been away from the ranch too long. There was evil afoot, his instincts shrilled. He needed to get back home before it was too late.

T
he lamb had fallen asleep, its milk-swollen belly as taut as the skin of a drum. Rachel balanced its warm weight between her breasts and the rock-solid expanse of Luke's back. Her free hand gripped Luke's belt as the tall buckskin pushed across the open flatland behind the sheep.

“I know this country,” she muttered, bracing her self as the horse lurched up the side of a wash. “The boundary of your ranch can't be more than a mile from here.”

“We've already passed it. You're on my land now.” There was an edge to Luke's voice. He had said little since they'd remounted, and Rachel had been too tired to start what would surely turn into another argument. But she'd felt the tension in him. She had sensed the black weight of his thoughts, and she had been torn between the need to understand more and the fervent wish to wake up in her own bed, to the happy discovery that this whole day had been
a horrible dream and there was no such person as Luke Vincente.

“You won't have to hold on much longer.” The strain came through in his voice. “If it's any comfort to you, there should be a hot meal ready when we get to the ranch house.”

Rachel's empty stomach growled at the mention of food, but her thoughts had already darted to another matter. Hot food meant there would be someone waiting at the ranch—a wife, most likely, since Luke didn't strike her as the sort of man who would hire a cook. And if there was a wife, there could be children as well—beautiful children, she imagined, with fierce obsidian eyes like their father's. No wonder Luke was so protective of his own. No wonder he was so determined to stay and fight off all comers.

Where she gripped his belt, she felt his sinewy body shift against her hand. His aura surrounded her, setting off a shimmer of heat, as if his fingertips had brushed her bare skin. The leathery, masculine aroma, which had lain dormant in her nostrils, suddenly stirred, triggering a jolt of awareness. It had been there all along, she realized, this slumbering sense of his maleness. Why now, of all times, did it have to wake up and kick her like a mule, leaving her warm and damp and tingling?

Was it because she'd just surmised that he was married and therefore forbidden? Ridiculous, Rachel told herself. She had branded Luke Vincente as forbidden from the moment she found out he was a sheep man. It made no difference whether he was
married or not. Nothing had happened between them. Nothing would happen. The whole idea was unthinkable.

Laden with the smell of rain, a chilly wind whipped Rachel's hair across her face. By now the sun was gone. Inky clouds, back-lit by flashes of sheet lightning, rumbled across the twilight sky. The sheep flowed through the hollows like patches of fog, their bells clanging eerily in the darkness. There was little need for the dogs to hurry them now. The urgency to reach home before the storm broke was driving them all.

Luke's tense silence had begun to gnaw at Rachel's nerves. “Are these all the sheep you have?” she asked, forcing herself to make conversation.

He sighed, sounding drained. “There are just under a thousand head in all, so you're only seeing about a third of them. I don't usually run so many of them together. After what happened today, you won't have to ask why. But we're…shorthanded now. There wasn't much choice.”

The catch in his voice was barely perceptible, but the impact of the emotion behind it struck Rachel like a slap. Whatever was happening here, she sensed, she had barely glimpsed the surface of it. The truth was larger and uglier than she had ever imagined.

“When I was growing up, I loved the open range,” she said, thinking aloud. “Even as a little girl, I could ride for miles, go anywhere I wished, and feel perfectly safe. This was a happy place, Luke Vincente…before the trouble with sheep men started.”

A bolt of lightning flashed across the indigo sky. As thunder cracked behind them, she felt Luke's muscles harden beneath his damp shirt. “You're not a little girl anymore, Rachel,” he said. “If you don't like what's happened here, you can go back East and make a life for yourself. Marry well. Have a family, and keep that happy place in your memory. As long as you don't come back here, it will never change.”

The bitterness in his voice stung her. “I don't intend to go back East,” Rachel answered crisply. “The ranch is part mine. It's my home, and I've returned to stay.”

Luke made a derisive sound under his breath. “What about that fancy eastern schooling you mentioned? Why waste so much expense and trouble if all you want to do is come back here and be a cow-girl?”

“I studied painting and sculpture,” she said, ignoring his sardonic undertone. “Three of my paintings are already in a gallery, and the owner is interested in doing a show based on images of life in the West. With luck and hard work, I can have a successful career right here in Wyoming.”

Luke was silent for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “Images of the West!” he snorted. “I can just picture that. The chuck wagon at sunset! Buckaroos around the old corral!”

“Stop insulting me, Luke,” Rachel said quietly. “I'm not the naive little fool you think I am.”

“You want images, Rachel Tolliver?” he said, his vehemence swelling. “I could show you images that
would burn themselves into your mind for the rest of your life! Animals shot, trapped, crippled, or lying dead around a poisoned water hole. And more—more than a fine lady like you would even want to think about.”

Rachel flinched against the leaden impact of every word he spoke. Another image flashed through her mind—a hand tugging down a crimson neckerchief to reveal a dark young face. A face she loved.

She had heard enough of Luke's bitter words to make her stomach churn. But far worse was the idea of what he had left unsaid. He had intimated, with a cutting scorn, that she was too gently reared to deal with the full truth of what was happening. But Luke didn't know the half of it. He had no idea of what she'd seen, or how the sight of her darling brother's face had left her gasping for breath like a fish flung out of its element.

She had to know. She had to know everything, even if it broke her heart to hear it.

“Tell me,” she demanded, her fingers tightening around the worn leather strap of his belt. “I want to hear the worst.”

“Why trouble your pretty head with such an ugly story?” Luke's defiant question infuriated her. Only the lamb, so warm and peaceful between their bodies, kept her from shouting at him.

“This country is my home and my family's home,” Rachel said in a level voice. “Whatever's going on here, I need to understand it.”

Thunder filled the silence as she waited for Luke
to answer. When he outlasted her patience she pressed him again.

“We've had a few sheep in these parts since I was in pigtails,” she said. “I can't say there was ever any love lost between sheep men and ranchers. But what I saw today—there was never anything like that before! What in heaven's name happened? Was it something
you
did?”

He laughed at that, a deep, bitter release that quivered through his taut body, so that she felt it more than heard it. “I'd pay good money for the answer to that question, lady. All I've ever asked of my neighbors was that they leave me alone. As long as I kept my sheep off their land, most of them, including your father, did just that—until about three months ago. That was when the raids started.”

A vision of the masked riders flashed through Rachel's mind. Had it been Jacob or Josh she had seen with them? Was it possible that both of them were involved in this mess? And what about her father? Morgan Tolliver was a peaceful man, but if pushed far enough he was capable of anger. Was he capable of violence as well?

Rachel's fingers tightened around Luke's belt. She felt dizzy, as if she were spinning in space with nothing solid to support her. For months she had dreamed of coming back to the safe, secure place she called home. But the home she remembered was gone, to be replaced by a nightmare world of danger, doubt and uncertainty.

“Do you have any idea who's behind the trouble?”
she forced herself to ask. “Have you recognized anyone—any of the raiders?”

He shook his head, and she felt an unexpected surge of relief. “Most of the time I don't see them. But when they do show themselves, they always have their faces masked. The fact that they care that much about being recognized makes me think they're locals—and there's a bunch of them, more than just the ones you saw today.” He whistled to direct a dog toward a straying ewe. The wind swept his raven hair back from his face.

“When I saw them up close, they struck me as very young,” Rachel said, filling the pause. “Just boys, I'd guess, out to stir up some mischief.”

Luke's body stiffened. “They may be young, but they're too well organized to be just boys. Somebody's behind them. Somebody with enough money to pay them or enough influence to stir them up.”

Like my father,
Rachel thought. She knew better than to speak the words aloud, but even the idea was terrible enough to create a dark, hollow feeling in her chest.

“As for the so-called mischief—” Luke cleared his throat, but when he spoke again, his voice was still low and gritty. “I have three herders working for me, a father and two sons. They're from Spain by way of Mexico, good men. Fine men.” Luke swallowed hard. Rachel felt the strain in him, the scream of raw nerves, and she sensed that, whatever he had been holding back from her, she was about to hear it.

“Three nights ago, the old man, Miguel, was out
on the range with part of the herd. He'd bedded down for the night in his sheep wagon when he heard riders coming over the hill. They were making enough noise to rouse the devil, he told us later. Probably drunk, or making a good show of it. Miguel ordered his dogs—the two you see here—to move the sheep out fast. He was going to get his horse and follow them, but he realized the riders were too close, so he ran back to the sheep wagon and barricaded himself inside.”

“Dear heaven,” Rachel whispered, bracing her emotions for what she was about to hear.

“There were five of them, all masked,” Luke said. “Five against one old man. When Miguel wouldn't come out of the sheep wagon, they lit a dry branch from the campfire and threw it on the roof.”

Rachel's skin was clammy beneath her mud-soaked clothes. Her throat was paper-dry, and so tightly constricted that she could barely breathe. The lamb stirred against her, warm and drowsy and smelling of milk, like a creature from a world she no longer knew. A drop of cold rain splashed her cheek. She wanted to scream at Luke, to make him stop his story.

“The wagon went up like a torch. By the time he got the door open, Miguel's clothes were beginning to smolder. He staggered outside, begging for help…”

Luke's voice broke as the rage moved inside him. Rachel could feel it clawing at his insides, threatening to tear him apart as he fought for enough self-control to finish the story.

“We found him the next morning on the ground, next to the burned-out wagon. That harmless old man.

Those bastards had beaten him almost to death.” The silence was so deafening that Rachel could no longer hear the wind's breath or the thunder that had trailed them across the flatland. She could no longer feel the wind on her face or the warm sleepy weight of the lamb in her arms. Her thoughts were fixed on the picture Luke's words had drawn in her mind—the blazing wagon, the balled fists that hammered the aging, battered body, the masked faces twisted with hatred. Whose fists? she wondered. Whose faces?

“How badly was he hurt?” she asked, forcing each word out of her reluctant mouth.

Luke exhaled raggedly. “Bad. Broken nose and jaw. Broken ribs. And God knows what they did to his insides. He was coughing blood when I left two days ago to bring in the sheep. He's a tough old man, and the longer he hangs on, the better his chances are. But the beating he took from those sons of—” He bit off the epithet and fell into silence, afraid, perhaps, of betraying too much emotion.

Rachel clung to his back as he pushed the horse to a lope. The rain had begun to fall around them, not hard, but gentle, like tears.

She thought of Jacob and Josh, so playful and full of innocent fun. Remembering their antics, she could not believe they had been among the raiders who'd paid a call on old Miguel. But cold reason told her otherwise. One of them had been with the marauders
today. She had seen his face. If that was possible, anything was possible.

The image of her darling brothers—or, heaven forbid, her father—brutalizing a helpless old man drew the ugly knot in the pit of her stomach so tight that she wanted to retch. On top of that, another worry suddenly seized her, this one all but paralyzing her with dread.

What if they were caught? What if they were arrested and sent to prison? That would kill her mother. It would kill her father, too, whether he was involved with the others or not. Rachel fought down rising waves of panic. She had started out believing the sheep man's troubles with the ranchers were none of her concern. Only now did she realize they had the power to tear her family, and her happy, secure world, apart.

“Who have you told about this?” she asked, masking her terror with concern. “Did you send word to the authorities?”

“The authorities!” He laughed roughly. “You mean those stooges the Cattlemen's Association pays to keep the peace in these parts? Why bother to tell them? They'd only look the other way.”

Rachel allowed herself to breathe, but her throat felt as if she were strangling, and the fear remained, thick and cold and heavy inside her.

“The cowards who ganged up on Miguel were masked.” Luke's tone was flat with anger. “There's no way to identify them. Even if there were, what's the penalty for burning a sheep wagon and beating up
an old Spaniard? Any judge who valued his job would call it boyish mischief and throw the case out of court.”