“Dammit, Eli, this is your fault!”

She was obviously not going to be reasonable.

“My fault. What the devil are you talking about? You’re the one who insists on riding that hell-bred snorter!”

“He is not a—a snorter! Whatever that means.”

They were pratically shouting, kneeling no more than six inches apart on the red, sun-baked clay. “He’s sure as hell no mount for a lady.”

“I’m no…”

The rebuttal went unfinished. The glittery look of defeat in her eyes stole the fire right out of his next charge. “Lilah? Don’t say that. Don’t even think it, because it’s not true.”

Face flaming anew, she opened her mouth, then closed it. Eli didn’t know what came over him—later he might ascribe it to sunstroke.

He yanked her into his arms and helped himself to her succulent pink mouth before she could let fly with another barrage….

Praise for author Bronwyn Williams

Longshadow’s Woman

“This is a perfect example of western romance writing at its very best…an exciting and satisfying read.”

—Romance Reviews Today

The Paper Marriage

“From first page to last, this is the way romance should be.”

—Old Book Barn Gazette

“Creating multi-dimensional characters in a warm-hearted story, Ms. Williams draws you into the heart of her tale.”

—Romantic Times

#631 GIFTS OF THE SEASON

Miranda Jarrett/Lyn Stone/Anne Gracie

#632 RAFFERTY’S BRIDE

Mary Burton

#634 THE DUMONT BRIDE

Terri Brisbin

Beckett’s Birthright

Bronwyn Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Available from Harlequin Historicals and
BRONWYN WILLIAMS

White Witch #3

Dandelion #23

Stormwalker #47

Gideon’s Fall #67

The Mariner’s Bride #99

*The Paper Marriage #524

Longshadow’s Woman #553

The Mail-Order Brides #589

†Beckett’s Birthright #633

To Gilbert Stevens Burrus, for all the love and laughter we shared too briefly.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

Orange County, NC

1899

He was tired. Tired of moving on, tired of following false leads, tired of asking the same old questions in town after town, saloon after saloon, gambling den after gambling den. More often than not, he would lead up to it in a roundabout way. “Next round’s on me, fellows. Lady Luck was with me last night. Oh, and by the way—” Here he’d offer a conspiratorial smile. “If you happen to see a gentleman with a streak of white hair to the left of a center part, don’t be too quick to get into a game with him, he’ll be out for revenge.”

As often as not, it did the trick. Someone would remember seeing a man who fit the description. A few even recalled a name—Chips. Deuce. John Smith. Nothing a man could put much stock in. After a few more casual questions, Chandler would be off again.

Another town, another game, another lead.

But God, it grew old. Sometimes to his shame, he was tempted to let go. To take root and start building himself a brand-new future, with no ties to the past.

The Bar J wouldn’t be a bad place to settle. It was a long way from Crow Fly, out in the Oklahoma Territory, but maybe that was good. There was nothing back there for him—nothing but an old barn and a few thousand acres of barren land. By now, the squatters would have moved in.

“Good luck,” he bade them under his breath. He stood and stretched, breathing deeply of the soft spring air. Removing his worn black Stetson, he rubbed his scalp vigorously, leaving his thick straw-colored hair standing on end. Replacing the hat, he stood at the office window and watched a couple of hired hands pitch horseshoes. They were supposed to be replacing the hinges on the paddock gate, but what the hell. It was spring.

He had half a mind to join them. How long had it been since he’d taken time out for something as unproductive as a game of horseshoes? The last time he could recall taking a full day off for purely pleasurable reasons had been when he’d ridden three miles out of town to take Abbie on a picnic at a riverside park.

Ironic, he mused, that after nearly two years of following the man who had kidnapped his fiancée, a woman he barely even knew, he’d ended up back in the East again, only a few hundred miles from where he’d left his best friend, his true love…and his fortune.

The mental image of a small, dark-haired woman tugged at the edges of his mind. Before it could fully take shape, the door behind him burst open.

“You ready to check out the new men, boss?”

Reluctantly, Elias Chandler reined in his wandering mind and nodded. “I don’t suppose one of them has a streak of white over his left eyebrow?” When he’d hired on as manager of the Bar J nearly seven months ago, he’d let it be known that he was looking to catch up with a gambler with a polecat streak. The general assumption was that it had to do with a gambling debt.

“No, sir, that they don’t. Sorry.” Shem, the old man he’d replaced as manager, still liked to keep his hand in by working a couple of hours each day.

“Send ’em in, then. One at a time. How many showed up?”

“Four. Three of ’em might do, but t’other one’s no good.”

Eli didn’t ask why, he merely nodded. There was little Shem didn’t know about men and ranching after working for Burke Jackson’s Bar J for nearly forty-five years. Here in the East it was called a cattle farm. In the West, it would be called a ranch.

The interviews took up less than an hour. Once the usual questions were asked and answered, Eli managed to slip in a few random remarks, skillfully framed so as to elicit the particular information he sought. After tracking a man halfway across the country, often following leads so thin a shadow would pass through them, he’d learned not to pass up any opportunity to garner information.

Today that information wasn’t to be found, but because they were shorthanded, he ended up hiring three of the men and sending the fourth man on his way.

Shem was waiting outside the office when the last man emerged. “I’ll show you fellers where you can stow your gear.”

It would be up to Streak, a gaunt giant of a man with a quiet voice and a gentle heart, to decide which men could be trusted to work cattle and which ones would be assigned other tasks. When Shem had been promoted to manager, Streak had replaced him as herd boss. What both men didn’t know about cattle wasn’t worth knowing.

“Jackson ain’t lookin’ too good,” Shem confided later that evening as the three men headed for the cook-shack.

“You implying he ever looked good?” Eli asked. Both Streak and Eli deliberately shortened their steps so that the older man could keep pace.

“Must’ve looked some better,” Streak offered. “Got hisself a wife. They had ’em a daughter.”

Eli had heard plenty about the daughter, none of it good. She was reputed to be big as a grizzly bear and twice as tough. They said she could peel the bark off a hickory tree with her tongue, and God help the man who tried to get into her bloomers.

He wondered why any man in his right mind would even try.

“Worser’n usual, is what I mean. No color to ’im. Lips blue, though. Reckon that’s color.” Shem nodded decisively.

Eli hid his grin. There were times when a man had to ask questions, but it had been his experience that far more could be learned from priming the pump and waiting to see what flowed out.

As the new general manager, he’d been invited to take his meals at the house with Jackson and his housekeeper, but after the first few days he’d made some excuse to take all his meals with the men. Jackson might be rich as cream, but regardless of his health—or perhaps because of it—he was about as disagreeable as any man Eli had ever had the displeasure of meeting. That went twice for his housekeeper, Pearly May, a prune-faced beanstalk of a woman who was no better at cooking than she was at keeping house.

To his credit, however, Jackson didn’t meddle in the day-to-day operations. Once he’d satisfied himself that Eli could do the job, he’d left him strictly alone, which suited both men just fine. Unless something came up that required the owner’s attention, Eli reported to his employer once a week.

Supper tonight featured pig stew, beans, greens and cornbread. For a farm that ran thousands of head of cattle, they ate an awful lot of pig meat. Eli had remarked on it once and been told about the time when Jackson’s little girl had been about seven or eight years old. She had pitched a fit when she’d come home from school to discover that her pet calf had just been slaughtered.

Shem, who’d been herd boss at the time, had taken it upon himself to change the dietary habits of the entire company, from the main house on down to the chuck wagon. As the crew cook could easily perform miracles with nothing but pork, a sack of onions, a sack of potatoes and a handful of salt, no one had ever complained. Why, Shem had reasoned, eat up the profits when hogs were cheap and Chicago paid top dollar for Jackson beef?

The cookshack was as noisy as ever, with the exception of the new men, who were mostly listening and getting their bearings. Seldom a week went by without at least one new man at the table. At a pittance a day plus room and board, which was all Jackson offered, most quickly moved on to better-paying jobs.

Eli ate silently, too, watching. Listening. A quiet man by nature, he had honed the skill of silent observation over the past two years. It paid off occasionally, but there were times when he came close to losing hope that Rosemary was still alive. It had been almost two years since she’d been kidnapped and the Chandler homestead burned to the ground. It still ate into his conscience that after promising to take care of her, he had failed. As long as there was any hope at all, he would go on searching.

By the time the trail had led him to Durham, in the state of North Carolina, he’d been dead broke, flat out of leads and exhausted from months of tracking, being sometimes only hours behind. He’d been nursing a beer and helping himself to an occasional pickled egg, idly glancing over a local newspaper someone had left on the table when he’d happened to overhear a discussion about a man who evidently ran one of the biggest cattle operations in this part of the country. His ears had perked up, because working cattle was one of the things he was qualified to do.

“I heard Jackson fired old Shem and he’s looking for a new manager.” The speaker polished off his beer and slid the tankard across the bar for a refill. Half a dozen men played poker at a nearby table, a few more lined up at the bar.

One of the first things Eli had learned about the man he was hunting was that he could usually be found in bars and gambling dens, any place where men might gather to risk a week’s pay. So he’d leaned back in the scarred bench seat and watched a fly crawl across the table while he eavesdropped.

“Burke Jackson? Stingy ol’ sumbitch, if he’d pay a decent wage, he might hold on to his crew.”

“I worked there once. Didn’t last out a week. I heard ol’ Shem’s still there, he just can’t cut the mustard no more. Reckon Jackson’s meanness plumb wore him down.”

There’d been a general agreement from the men gathered at the bar. “They say that daughter of his is cut from the same bolt o’ cloth,” another man had remarked.

That had been the first time Eli had heard mention of the daughter. He remembered feeling relieved at the description. At least she didn’t sound like the fragile, feminine type. Being tall, tough and short on polish, Eli admitted to an unfortunate weakness for petite, delicate females that invariably landed him in trouble.

Mean, though, he could handle. In all his off-and-on years of wearing a badge, he rarely had to resort to force. Unless a man was blind drunk or desperate, Eli’s size alone usually did the trick.

The clincher had been when the bartender had said, “Sooner or later, I reckon half the men east o’ the Mississippi turn up lookin’ for work on the Bar J. Never stay more’n a few weeks, though.”

“Can’t much blame ’em ,” one man had commented.

There was a nodding of heads and a general agreement, then the bartender swiped a rag over the bar and said, “You gotta admit, though, some men jest don’t like to work for their money.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said a grizzled farmer as he downed the last of his beer and wiped the foam from his bushy mustache with his sleeve.

“It ain’t the piss-poor pay,” declared the man standing next to him, “It’s that daughter of his. They say she’d scare the gizzard out of a wild hog.”

Eli thought now about all he’d heard about Jackson’s legendary daughter, who was currently away at school. According to rumor, Lilah Jackson was big, tough, could outride and outshoot any man and would deck the first one who touched her.

Eli didn’t feel the least bit threatened. She could be pretty as a picture and dainty as a rosebud and he still wouldn’t be in any danger. After giving his heart to one woman, offering his name to another, and losing them both, he had nothing left to give.

When Abigail had married his best friend, he had cut his losses and headed west again. As for Rosemary, she had been stolen right out from under his nose. He’d had no choice but to go after her.

He’d been working as sheriff of Crow Fly the day she’d come riding into town on the stage, planning on moving in with an elderly cousin. Trouble was, the cousin was already dead, her house and whatever paltry assets she’d once owned, sold to repay her debts and the cost of her burial.

Broke, with no place to go and no means of getting there, Rosemary Smith had appealed to the sheriff. “What can I do?” she’d pleaded, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It took my last penny to come west to take care of my dear cousin—all in the world I have left is this.” She’d held out a gold chain from which dangled a big ugly pendant in the shape of a teardrop. “It belonged to my mother—see, her name’s engraved all around it?” She’d held it out for him to examine, but without shoving his face up to her bosom, he couldn’t make out the fine script.

“Yes, ma’am,” he’d said politely, wondering if he should offer her his dusty bandana to dry her eyes.

“Now Mama’s gone, and Cousin Carrie’s gone, and there’s no one left, and I—I—” She had blinked her enormous blue eyes, the lashes matted with tears. “I would rather starve to death than sell Mama’s necklace,” she’d declared dramatically. “Papa had it made especially for her b-before he—he died.”

More weeping. One thing had led to another, and Eli had ended up settling her into the big empty house his grandfather had left him, with a widow woman to look after her. Crow Fly didn’t run to a boardinghouse, much less a hotel.

He had offered to pay her passage back home, but she claimed she had no home to return to. In the end, he had offered to marry her. It was the only way he could think of for an honorable man to protect a respectable woman who had no one else to turn to.

About a month later, having spent three days tracking a band of rustlers, Eli had headed home, dog tired and feeling, though he’d hated to admit it, more like a coyote caught in a steel trap than a man about to be married to a pretty woman. Something told him Rosemary wasn’t going to be satisfied for long being the wife of a country sheriff, but at that point in his life, it had been about his only option. If he hadn’t already squandered his inheritance, he might have been further ahead in his plans to rebuild the barns and fences, invest in a small herd of short-horn Oregonians and gradually breed up to high-quality beef.

He’d started smelling smoke a few miles out that day. By the time he reached Crow Fly, three miles from home, he’d known. Known it in his bones, the way Shem always knew when a storm was coming, he thought now, picturing the scene that had confronted him that day.

The house had still been smoldering. The woman he’d left behind to look after Rosemary had been tied up in the barn, which was still standing. “Scary as the devil, he were,” the woman had sobbed. “Streak of white hair right here—” She’d pointed to the left side of her head. “He took Miss Rosemary up with him, and lit out o’ here, laughing like anything. It was the devil, I’m tellin’ you, Mr. Eli. The devil done stole your woman and rode away with her, and there weren’t one blessed thing I could do about it. It’s a wonder he didn’t steal me, too.”

Eli hadn’t blamed the widow. With a big purple knot just over one eye, probably from the butt of a pistol, she’d been trussed up and left with a handkerchief in her mouth. Likely would’ve died that way if Eli hadn’t heard the muffled sounds coming from the barn, because his first impulse had been to ride out immediately, before the trail had time to cool off.

That had been about eighteen months ago. For a man of less than thirty years, he felt older than all the mountains he’d crossed and then recrossed, all the rivers he’d forded heading east and then west, and then east again.

“You ain’t eatin’ tonight, boy.” Shem, his eyes wreathed in wrinkles, but still bright with interest and intelligence, finger-combed the corn-bread crumbs from his gray beard and reached for his tobacco pouch.

“I’m not hungry. Been doing book work all day.” What he needed was to saddle up and ride for a couple of days, sleeping on the ground, watching the stars wheel overhead. Trouble with that was it gave a man too much time to think.

And Eli had too much to think about, most of it painful.

“Rain comin’.”

“Yep. Noticed the clouds.”

“Miss Lilah, she’ll be coming home pretty soon for the summer.”

“Lord he’p us,” Streak said.

There was general laughter, and even Eli had to grin. Might be entertaining to watch the new hires—single men, all three of them—react to the ball-busting Miss Delilah Jackson. He wondered if any of them had signed on after hearing that Jackson had a marriageable daughter. Anticipating some pampered, petite female, they’d soon be splashing off at the horse trough, slapping on cologne and lining up to go courting.

Catching Shem’s eye, he could tell the old man was thinking the same thing he was. “How ’bout you, Eli, you bein’ the manager, you got first dibs. She’s a real sweet woman. I’ve knowed her since the day she was born. It was me that named her, did I ever tell you ’bout that?”

He had. Several times. Shem liked to talk, and Eli was in the habit of listening.

“You already told him,” Streak growled, to no effect.

“Well, the way it happened, see—Burke, he was so broke up over her ma’s dyin’, he didn’t pay no mind a’tall to the babe. It was me that found her a wet nurse and finally give her a name so she could be sprinkled in the church. It was me that set her on top of her first horse and taught her to ride. She growed up to be a fine woman, too, so don’t you listen to what nobody says. You could do a whole lot worse.”

Eli’s grin broadened. Considering his weakness for delicate ladies, he’d be safe enough from Jackson’s paragon. He liked women as much as the next man—liked their frailties, their femininity—truth was, he liked everything about them, even when their tears leaked all over the front of his shirt the way Rosemary’s had the first day she’d come tumbling out of the stagecoach, landing practically at his feet.

Oh, yeah, he was a sucker when it came to helpless females. Never had been able to resist them. But even if he’d been free, Miss Jackson wasn’t the kind of woman he would ever be drawn to.

Burke Jackson in skirts? No, sir, he sure as hell wouldn’t be tempted by that.

“I’m going home, I don’t care what Papa says,” Delilah Jackson declared as she slammed another layer of clothing into her trunk. She was barefooted, wearing only a petticoat and camisole, her wild red hair tied back with a stocking. “Shem wrote that Papa was sick. At least I think that’s what the letter said. With Shem’s writing, you can never be sure. Hand me those shoes, will you?”

Isobel handed over a pair of elegant high-tops. They would have been, perhaps, a bit more elegant several sizes smaller, but then, if Lilah had been smaller, the two women might never have become best friends. They were opposites in all ways but one: Lilah was beautiful, while Isobel had been compared unfavorably to a mud fence. Lilah was wealthy, whereas Isobel was the daughter of a preacher whose congregation, at his death, had done the only thing they could think of to do with his penniless daughter in light of the fact that she had no living relatives. They’d given her a scholarship, unable to bring themselves to simply turn her out to fend for herself. Last of all, whereas Lilah was as tall as most men, Isobel had not grown an inch since she was a scrawny twelve-year-old.

The two young women had one thing in common, however. Both were shunned by their classmates—Isobel for being plain, shy and poor; Lilah for being unfashionably large and far too outspoken.

“Another month and you could graduate,” Isobel reminded her. “Then you could teach school.”

Lilah heaved a sigh. Looking down at her friend, who was bouncing on the trunk, trying to force the lid shut, she said, “Do I look like a schoolteacher to you?”

The freckle-faced young woman with the serious overbite shook her head. “I guess you wouldn’t have to teach, but you could do something else.”

“I intend to do something else. Something that doesn’t require a scrap of paper with a silly gold seal on it.”

They both knew what Lilah intended to do with her life. Isobel could only admire her for her ambition, but she would miss her sorely. They had been fast friends ever since the day Isobel had been delivered by mule cart with her single suitcase to the pillared entrance of the prestigious girls’ boarding school. The friendship had only grown stronger through nearly four years of college.

“Here, fasten this latch while I hold it down,” Isobel said.

Lilah, who could easily have held the trunk shut with one hand and fastened it with the other, fastened the latch and then reached for the leather strap. “The very day you finish here, you’re going to catch a train to Hillsborough. I’ll meet you at the siding and we’ll have a grand time. The first thing I’m going to do is teach you to ride.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Izzy, not all horses bite, and I’ll see that you don’t fall off.”

“Can you keep me from sneezing?”

“Oh.” Lilah scratched her elbow. “I forgot. Well, anyway, you’re coming to spend the summer with me.”

“Maybe I should start looking for work before all the good jobs are taken.” Other than music, Isobel had no particular talent, so far as they’d been able to determine. Unfortunately, the curriculum prescribed by the terms of her scholarship hadn’t prepared her to earn her living. She had spent summers and holidays working for the Dean’s wife to augment her scholarship.

As for Lilah, she knew very well what she intended to do with the rest of her life. She was going to manage her father’s farm. At least then he might pay some attention to her. Dammit, she couldn’t help it if she hadn’t been born a boy.

“Now remember my instructions. Just keep thinking about how much fun it’s going to be, a whole summer without having to open a single book.” Isobel was bookish; Lilah was not. “But if Papa’s really sick, he’s going to need me, which means I’m going to need you, so don’t you dare think of not coming.”

Lilah knew too well what it was like not to be needed, much less wanted.

Two days later Eli strode into the barn, looking for the lackwit that had left a gate open, allowing the bred heifers to trample a newly planted field. He was tempted to tell the man to collect his pay and move on. Then he saw the fellow’s eyes shift toward the door and widen. At the same time another of the new men dropped the bridle he was supposed to be mending, tripped on the trailing end and caught himself by grabbing the wall, noisily toppling two pitchforks and a post-hole digger.

“Jesus,” Eli muttered, distracted. He turned to see what the men were staring at and then said it again. “Jesus.”

He’d barely caught a glimpse of her the day before when the livery wagon brought her up to the front gate. A big woman wearing a full skirt and a rain cape, she’d looked to be the size and general shape of a haystack. She had snatched a bag in each hand and hurried into the house, leaving the poor driver to struggle with her trunk.

In the midst of trying to track down a bill he knew damned well he’d paid, but which had been sent again, Eli hadn’t given her a second thought.

Until now. The woman who filled a good portion of the personnel doorway was definitely no haystack. With sunlight behind her, glinting off a mop of wild red hair, he couldn’t see her face, but he felt as if he’d been poleaxed.

Today she was wearing trousers. Not just trousers, but tight ones. Her hips and thighs looked as if they’d been poured into them like butter into a mold. She was a big woman, all right. Some might have said a magnificent woman, but Eli wasn’t among them. Weren’t women supposed to be small and helpless, so that a man could take care of them?

This woman looked more than capable of taking care of herself, and anyone who tried to interfere.

Clearing his throat, he stepped forward. “Ma’am—Miss? Is there something I can do for you?”

She came all the way inside the barn and turned toward the sound of his voice. “Who are you?”

He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He swallowed and cleared his throat. What the devil ailed him? He felt as if he’d grabbed on to the business end of a hot branding iron.

Deep breath. “Name’s Elias Chandler, ma’am. I’m the new manager. Or foreman,” he added as an afterthought. Jackson had spelled out his duties, but nothing had been mentioned about a title.

“Shem’s the manager,” the woman said flatly. Or as flat as a voice could be when it resonated in regions of his body where voices weren’t supposed to resonate.

“Then I’m his, uh—assistant. If you’re looking for Shem, he and Willy went to town on an errand for your father. If there’s something I can do for you…”

“You may bring my horse around,” she replied, as if conferring a great privilege.

Imperious witch, he thought, more amused than irritated. One of the new men headed for the tack room. Eli leaned against a stall and watched as the lady—if a woman in men’s trousers could be called that—examined everything in the spacious interior. He took momentary pride in the fact that nothing was out of place. Nothing, that was, except the two pitchforks and the post-hole digger. The dirt floor had been raked clean, the air redolent with the clean smell of hay, leather and animals.

She was something, all right. Arrogant didn’t begin to describe it. The cowboy came up behind her leading one of the big draft horses used to pull the ten-gang disc harrow through the dense red clay. “This the one you wanted, ma’am?” He snickered and glanced at his mates for approval.

Waiting for all hell to break loose, Eli considered the man’s serious lack of judgment. Eyes narrowed against the light slanting in through the wide barn doors, he tried to gauge the Jackson woman’s reaction. In a fair fight, she could easily take the young fool.

No one spoke for a moment. The big gray gelding stood patiently, as if waiting to be hitched up. Then, cool as anything, the lady lifted an eyebrow and said, “Get on with your plowing, boy. I’ll fetch my own horse.” Turning to Eli, she said, “I’ll be riding Demon this morning. I’ll be riding Demon every morning.”

Chapter Two

Eli dismissed the men with orders to hitch up a cart and haul a load of locust fence posts out to the south pasture. Only then did he turn back to the woman who stood boldly in the open doorway, hands firmly planted on her generous hips.

“Demon? What about one of the geldings?” he suggested. Demon was a stallion some sixteen hands high, reported to be part Barb. On his best behavior, he was no ladies’ mount.

Delilah Jackson continued to look at him as if she were trying to determine his breeding. It was nothing particularly impressive, he could have told her. Run-of-the-range stock.

Eli had been accused a time or two of lacking judgment, something he’d never denied. One thing no one could accuse him of, however, was backing down from a challenge. Which, come to think of it, might have something to do with his questionable judgment. The gauntlet had been flung. It was tan kid and smelled faintly of roses.

Nodding to Streak, who had just come inside, he spoke quietly. “Saddle Demon for Miss Jackson, please.” He expected an argument, but the lanky cattleman turned to the woman and smiled, setting his prominent Adam’s apple to bobbing.

“Glad to have you home, Miss Lilah.”

“Thank you, Streak. This time I’m home to stay.”

Streak left to saddle her horse, and Eli shrugged. If she got into trouble, it wouldn’t be his responsibility.

The lady was large, but obviously not too bright. About half a foot under his own six foot three and hatless, she wore her rust-red hair swept up in a mound on top of her head. Her features, he had to admit, were in perfect proportion to her body, from the proud nose to the wide mouth and the big whiskey-colored eyes.

His exploration lingered momentarily on a small dark mole just above the right corner of her lips, then moved on to the generous bosom fighting to break through the small covered buttons on her pin-tucked white blouse.

“Would you care to examine my teeth, too?” Her voice was as lush as her body, but dry.

“Sorry. Nothing personal.” The hell it wasn’t personal. He couldn’t recall ever having been so acutely aware of a woman before.

Well…maybe once, but that was different.

What the devil was Jackson thinking of, letting his daughter parade around in front of the men wearing pants? Did he have any idea of the way they talked about her? Didn’t the damn fool even care? Whatever else she was, she was his daughter—his own flesh and blood, for God’s sake!

Streak brought the saddled stallion around, and the lady turned to smile at him. “Oh, Streak, thank you. You didn’t have to do that, I could have saddled him.”

Then why hadn’t she, Eli wondered. Because it might spoil her imperial princess act?

The big bay snorted and tried to bite the hand that led him. The Jackson woman calmly reached for the reins, murmuring softly to the fractious animal. She swung up with no effort at all, and both men stood in the open doorway, watching as she set off down the back lane.

Lilah, barely managing to cool her seething anger, rode farther and faster then she’d planned. It had been months since she’d been on a horse. No suitable mounts were available at school. Or rather, no suitable saddles. The first time she’d tried to position herself properly on a sidesaddle she had slid off, landing on her hands and knees in front of a group of smirking classmates. That had also been the last time she’d tried to sit on one of the miserable things. She’d been riding astride all her life. Her father knew it. He didn’t approve, but then, Burke Jackson had never approved of a single thing she had ever done.

Lilah had tried for years to understand why he couldn’t love her. True, her mother had died giving birth to her, and everyone said he’d worshipped the ground Achsah Jackson had walked on. People said he’d cried for five days after she died, then he’d cursed for five more days. Since then he’d been a changed man.

Lilah wouldn’t know about that. For as long as she could remember her father had ignored her, leaving Shem and Pearly May to look after her. It had been Shem who had arranged for her to go to the school in the nearby town of Hillsborough once she was old enough. Her father had never showed any interest in whether or not she could read or write.

Shem had even given her a name. He’d asked if Burke Jackson wanted her named after her mother, and Burke had fired him on the spot. Naturally, Shem hadn’t left. By then he was used to being fired. Neither man ever took it seriously. Even Lilah had come to realize that her father didn’t always mean what he said.

So Shem had picked out her name and registered it with the same deliberation he would have given the offspring of one of their prize bulls, although with a different set of authorities.

Delilah Burke Jackson. She’d been named for her father, even though he’d shown no more interest in her than he did the least of his seasonal hires. By the time she’d cut her first permanent tooth, she had accepted the fact that if a father couldn’t love his only child, there was no point in hoping anyone else could. Since the day she’d first reached that conclusion, she had made her own rules.

“And to hell with everyone else,” she muttered now as she jumped Demon over a low fence. “To hell with you, too, Elias Chandler,” she added for good measure.

She had known who he was before she’d gone out to the barn. Shem had already told her about the man who’d been hired as his replacement now that he was so crippled up with rheumatism. Chandler was from Oklahoma Territory, for heaven’s sake. What the devil was he doing here in the East, hiding out from the law?

He looked dangerous enough. All tawny, like one of the big cats she’d seen once in a traveling zoo, with the same watchfulness. Same color hair from what she could see under that battered black hat. She didn’t know about his eyes, but she did know his hips were about half the size of her own.

Not his shoulders, though. Those were massive. She always sized up a man’s strength, as men were always the ones in positions of authority. Some of those men from the western territories were said to be barely civilized. She’d read all about the Wild West in the books she’d made a policy of reading once she’d learned that they were frowned upon for young ladies.

At least he didn’t carry a gun. Not where anyone could see it. It was easy, though, to picture him riding the range, a pair of six-shooters strapped on his sides.

Most of the men who worked on the Bar J wore straw hats in the summer, hunting caps in the winter. Chandler wore a broad-brimmed hat that looked as if he’d been using it as a feedbag, or at least to polish his boots. It was black. Everyone knew which men wore the black hats and which ones wore white.

Leaning forward, she stroked the big bay stallion and murmured soft endearments. “We don’t like him, do we, love? We don’t like his looks, don’t like his ways, don’t like…”

Listen to you, woman! You don’t like the man’s looks? Why? Because he’s bigger than you are? Because he’s so blasted good-looking?

Or because he hadn’t tried to hide the fact that he disapproved of her? Even worse, that he found her amusing?

By the time she returned to the paddock, Elias Chandler was nowhere around. She was both relieved and disappointed. She knew from experience that men found both her size and her attitude unattractive—which only served to make her attitude worse.

Well, that was just too damned bad, because she fully intended to take over the running of the Bar J now that her father’s health was failing. Sooner or later she was going to have to deal with all of her father’s employees. They would either work with her or she would pay them off and send them on their way.

Shem, no matter that she loved him dearly and owed him more than she could ever repay, was no longer up to the job. If he approved of Chandler, then she would just have to try and get along with the man until she was ready to take over.

Eli, watching from the window of the office when she rode in a few hours later, couldn’t help but notice the easy way Jackson’s daughter handled the high-strung stallion. Both the lady and her mount looked as if they’d been ridden hard. The horse was lathered, the lady flushed, her hair flying loose behind her.

She slid down and walked him into the yard. When one of the older hands offered to rub him down, she shook her head. Good for her, he thought. It was a mark in her favor that she took care of her own horse.

He turned back to the books spread across the scarred oak desk. They were going to need a few more temporary hands once the fields dried out enough to plow. The Bar J was considerably smaller than some of the ranches he’d worked on out west, but here in the east, the land was so rich it didn’t take thousands of acres to feed a decent-size herd. They could grow all they needed to winter the stock and still have plenty of land left for summer pasture.

If Jackson would pay decent wages, he might get better quality help. Trouble was, you couldn’t argue with him without setting him to coughing and wheezing. Eli didn’t like the man, but he didn’t want to be responsible for his death.

By the time he finished the payroll, lined up the week’s work and tracked down the receipt for the repeat bill, his hand was cramped, his shoulders stiff, and his eyes hurt. He rarely stayed this long in any job, especially one that entailed so damn much bookkeeping. But until he knew what his next move was going to be, his best bet was to stand pat. No point in haring off on a dead-end trail. Besides, he liked the place. The land was rich, water was plentiful and the buildings sufficient. The stock was damned fine, too—as good as any he’d been privileged to work with, and he’d worked with some of the best.

He figured he could give it another month. Meanwhile, he’d keep his eyes open for a man he could begin training to take his place. Streak wasn’t interested. Reading wasn’t his strong suit, and in these modern times, especially in the East, reading was a requirement.

He’d about made up his mind that if by midsummer he still hadn’t picked up any new leads, he would move on anyway. Try some other venue. Might even ride down Charleston way, to see how his namesake was getting on. Who was to say he wouldn’t find what he was looking for down in that neck of the woods? Charleston had its share of gamblers.

Funny thing, now that he thought about it—the description of the man who had kidnapped Rosemary and another man, one who had come to his rescue in a knife fight nearly five years ago, weren’t all that far apart. Both men were slim, about five foot eight with a liking for fancy clothes. Lance didn’t have a streak of white hair—at least, he hadn’t the last time Eli had seen him, but that could have changed.

Tilting back his chair, Eli stared out the dusty window and considered the first time he had met Lance Beckett. Eli had been two months shy of his twenty-fourth birthday and had just inherited roughly five thousand acres of barren land, a big, two-story house and all the money his grandfather had accumulated selling land to the railroads.

Knowing, or at least suspecting, that there was more to life than could be found in Crow Fly, Oklahoma Territory, he’d headed east to do some sight-seeing before settling down.

He’d gotten as far as Fort Smith, Arkansas—with a few educational stops along the way, such as a whorehouse boasting a cement bathtub that held half a dozen people—when he stopped at a saloon to wash the trail dust from his throat. He’d barely taken a sip of his watered-down whiskey when the fight broke out. Before he knew what was happening, he and a city dude dressed like an undertaker were backed up against a wall, taking on a mob of angry hog farmers.

At six foot three, Eli weighed right around two hundred pounds, depending on whether or not he’d been eating regularly. The undertaker was considerably smaller. Eli remembered seeing him at one point standing on the bar hurling pickled eggs and kicking at the ham-size hands that tried to grab his fancy high-top shoes.

Even as tough as he was, Eli hadn’t thought too much of their chances—two men against more than a dozen—especially after some little weasel jumped up onto his back with a knife in his fist, trying to slice off his nose. He’d managed to knock the knife aside, but the little weasel had got him in the side, just above the belt and below the bottom of his leather vest. Before he could react, he’d been hit over the head with what felt like a crosstie, but had probably been only a chair.

When he regained his senses, he was in a small unfamiliar room that smelled of carbolic acid. Turned out to be a doctor’s office. Seems he’d been left there by a stranger who hadn’t bothered to leave his name.

A week later, once he’d recovered enough to ride, Eli had set out to track down the dandy and thank him. He’d had nothing better to do at the time. The Chandler men might not be able to hang on to their women—both Eli’s mother and grandmother had walked out on their husbands—but no one had ever accused a Chandler of welching on a debt.

The trail had come to an end in Charleston, South Carolina. War-scarred and dirt-poor, the city had struck him as exotic and beautiful. To this day he could still remember his reaction to the first palm tree he’d ever seen.

But even the handsome, colorful houses and the lush vegetation paled in comparison to the Charleston women with their delicate complexions and their elegant gowns.

And he’d thought all those whores in that big cement bathtub were something. It just went to show how ignorant a big old country boy could be and still stay alive.

Once he’d located a boardinghouse, bathed the trail dust off and eaten his fill of fried fish, fried okra and corn bread, it had taken him less than a day to locate the man who had dragged his bleeding body out of that Arkansas saloon and delivered him to the sawbones. Having worked off and on as a lawman, Eli was skilled at tracking and the Becketts were a prominent banking family around those parts.

Leastwise, they had been before the war that had ended some thirty years earlier. Here in the south, he learned, the effects still lingered like the scar of a near-mortal wound.

He’d already learned that while Lance Beckett might look the part of a dandy, he was a damned good brawler. Now he learned that the Beckett family had lost a fortune during the war years and that Lance, the last of the Becketts, his father having died in a Yankee prison, was still struggling to recoup.

Eli would willingly have paid him any amount for hauling his carcass out of that saloon and saving him from bleeding to death, but it didn’t take long to discover that Southern gentlemen were big on pride.

Well, hell—who wasn’t?

Once the greetings were over and the two men had shared a few drinks, Lance had invited Eli to move into what had once been an overseer’s house on the Beckett plantation before everything else had been burned to the ground. In the days that followed, while Lance had shown him the sights, the two men, as different as night and day, had become fast friends. That friendship was cemented by respect.

Eli had to respect a man who would go to such lengths to save a stranger’s life against great odds, and Lance respected a man who would take the time and trouble to track him down and thank him.

It hadn’t taken long to learn that even though the Becketts, once well-known in financial circles, had lost their fortune, the Beckett name was still well-known. Lance had already reestablished contact with a few men who were influential in investment circles. What he lacked to get back on his feet was seed money.

While Eli was hardly uneducated—his grandfather had seen to that—he was a man of action rather than intellect. In his years of traveling since leaving Oklahoma Territory, he had earned his way, leaving the fortune he’d inherited from his grandfather intact while he tried to figure out what to do with it. He could shoot, break horses, even stay on a bull long enough to earn a prize. He knew cattle. Having been a lawman, he could do a right fair job of keeping the peace. It had once been said about him that he could track smoke on a windy day to bring to justice any man who broke the law, a talent that had helped in tracking the man who had saved his life.

Only when it came to women was he out of his depth. One of his earliest memories was hearing his grandmother accuse his grandfather of being mean as a snake. A young Eli had silently agreed. What’s more, she’d added, she wasn’t going to stay there and take it any longer. She had left that very day.

Theirs had not been a happy household.

But all that had paled beside what had happened to the Becketts, and so Eli hadn’t mentioned it. He had, however, told Lance about the money he had inherited, and together they had made arrangements to invest it.

“We should be able to triple it and then build from there, but it won’t happen overnight,” he remembered being warned. “This company I’m planning to invest in is going to grow like wildfire now that things are finally opening up.” According to Lance, even after the war had ended, recovery had been delayed by eleven years of devastating “reconstruction.”

“I’m in no hurry,” Eli had replied. He’d been in no hurry because he’d just met the most beautiful woman God had ever created. His nebulous plans to build and stock a ranch could wait.

Abigail Pindacross. Eyes the color of those blue flowers that bloomed out on the prairie, a mop of hair the color of yellow feed corn, and a waist he could have spanned with his hands if he’d dared to touch her.

Hell, he’d even learned how to dance after a fashion, he remembered now with a twist of longing.

His fingers were doing a two-step on the ledger when Streak poked his head through the doorway. “You coming to supper?”

Eli’s feet hit the floor with a solid thud. He’d been so lost in the past he hadn’t even noticed when the lowering sun had turned the dust on the window glass opaque. “Yeah, sure—be there in a few minutes.”

The talk over the long rough table was all about Miss Jackson. Eli hadn’t forgotten his own reaction to her. It was a little like being out on the prairie alone and seeing a big, colorful sunset all streaked with gold and red and purple reflected across a sea of wild grasses. Logic said it was just one more in an endless succession of sunsets that had been happening ever since the world began, and with luck, would go right on happening long after he was six feet under. Still, a man couldn’t help but be impressed.

All the same, Lilah Jackson was just another woman. The world was full of women, women of all shapes and sizes, all dispositions. Always had been; always would be. He had to admit, though, that like sunsets, some made more of an impression than others, if for entirely different reasons.

After hearing a particularly irreverent remark, Shem glared around the table and muttered a few threats. The men ignored him.

“Wouldn’t mind seeing all that spread out on my bunk, nosiree, that I wouldn’t.” That from scrawny little Mickey Lane, who would have been fired on the spot except that he was the best brush roper Eli had ever seen, east or west.

“Cover the whole damn mattress, I reckon,” piped up one of the men he’d hired only a few days ago.

His voice dangerously soft, Eli said, “You’re expendable, Pete. Might want to think about that before you do too much speculating.”

Shem nodded in approval, and Eli applied himself to his roast pork and sweet potatoes, determined not to get into a brangle over the boss’s daughter. He had trouble enough getting decent workers and keeping them on the job without that.

Trouble was, it was May. Windows remained open, allowing the warm air to circulate, and in the still of an evening, with the humid air laden with the scent of manure and wildflowers, voices carried too easily.

They were carrying now. When Lilah’s voice rang out clear as a bell, every man looked toward the main house. Not another sound was heard.

“I damn well will not go back to school! I don’t need any damn diploma to run this farm, I can do a better job of it than that—”

The next sound they heard was a string of curses that ended up in a fit of hacking. Then, “Oh, dammit, Papa, that’s not fair! Pearly May, bring Papa his medicine!”

Every man in the cookshack was still turned toward the house, forks suspended between plate and mouth. Pete was smirking. Shem closed his eyes and assumed a prayerful attitude.

“She telling it straight?” Eli asked quietly. “She’s actually planning on taking over?”

“Over Burke’s dead body,” the old man replied.

“I ain’t working for no woman,” one of the other men declared, stuffing his mouth with potatoes.

Streak told him quietly to shut up. “They been having this, uh—discussion ever since I come to work here,” he said to Eli. “Reckon they’ll go on till one or the other of them gives in.”

Cookie brought in the dessert, a pie heaped high with meringue that was as good as anything Eli had tasted in all his months in Charleston. Talk turned to the condition of the experimental alfalfa fields, with Shem declaring alfalfa wouldn’t thrive. “We’d do better to stick with corn, soybeans and hay, but you can’t tell Jackson nothing.”

“Don’t hurt to try,” said Streak, who tended to be a peacemaker.

“What, to grow alfalfa or to talk sense to Burke Jackson?”

There was general laughter, and then the talk turned to the condition of the herd. Depending on the time of year, the Bar J ran roughly a thousand head, mostly Herefords, the bulk of which would be headed for market by the end of the season.

After tucking away two slices of lemon pie, Eli excused himself and headed for the cramped manager’s quarters he shared with Shem. Passing under the cook-shack windows, he heard one of the men say, “She ain’t really going to run this place, is she?”

He waited for Shem’s reply. “Yep, I reckon she is. You want to argue it out with her?”

“No, sir, not me, that I don’t. Woman like that, she could hurt a man real bad.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Eli muttered a few minutes later as he kicked the mud off his boots and went inside. Might be interesting to see how she’d fight, though. Of course, a man would have to grab hold of her and hang on tight. No hitting—he didn’t hold with striking a woman, no matter how aggravating she was.

On the other hand, he wouldn’t mind holding her while she squawked and wiggled. He always had enjoyed a challenge.

The men ate breakfast early so as to make the most of daylight. All but Shem and Eli had headed out on the day’s assignment by the time Delilah strode across the clearing toward the barn the next morning.

It occurred to Eli, watching her from the big opening in the hayloft where he’d been working on a balky block and tackle, that she neither minced nor strolled. What she did was move like a woman who knew precisely where she was going. Not since that first day had she asked anyone to fetch her horse. She had led Demon out and saddled him herself. Eli tried and failed to picture either Abigail or Rosemary slinging a heavy saddle up onto the back of a horse that stood sixteen hands high.

“Need some help?” he’d offered the second morning, more out of devilry than any chivalrous impulse.

If looks could kill, he’d have been halfway to hell by now.

“Just thought I’d ask,” he’d said, hiding a smile. Damn, she was something, all right—that fetching little mole and all. Bold as brass and twice as tough. If any woman could manage a spread this size, she just might be the one to do it, as long as she handled things the way Burke did, from a distance. Working through a manager, which would definitely not be Elias M. Chandler. By the time she took over—if she ever did—he’d have long since moved on.

For that matter, Jackson could sell out and leave her the money. With that much money behind her, she might even find herself a husband, he mused as he tested the double pulley.

About that time she came into his line of sight, headed down the back lane. Pausing in the task of clearing the gear, Eli watched her, noticing the straightness of her back, the proud angle of her head under all that red hair, and the surprising narrowness of her waist above the lush spread of her behind.

He felt a stirring in his loins he hadn’t felt in a long time.

You need to ride into town more often, man, he told himself. Might not find a cement bathtub full of naked ladies, but there was bound to be an accommodating widow looking for a way to pick up a few extra dollars.

He watched until she moved out of sight when the lane curved around a grove of field pines, then turned back to his work. Shem needed to remind her to wear a hat. Skin like hers, pale as cream and twice as smooth, couldn’t take too much sun without blistering.

For the rest of the day Eli made a conscious effort not to think about Delilah Jackson. It worked…after a fashion.

The next morning when Lilah came down to the barn, Eli made a point of stepping out of the office to meet her. The men had already been given their orders for the day and had ridden out, some singly, some in pairs, depending on the task. “Good morning, Miss Jackson.”

“Where’s Jenny? Is she available?”

“The sorrel mare? Yeah, she’s around.” Curious, he asked, “Why, is Demon lame? I didn’t notice any problem yesterday.”

“Demon’s fine, I just feel like riding a different horse today.”

Ignoring the impatient tapping of her booted foot, Eli reached for a lead rope and nodded toward the paddock at the far end of the barn. “Want me to get her for you?”

She glared and snatched the lead from his hand. “Get on with whatever you’re doing, I can manage just fine.”

It was only as she strode toward the side door that he noticed the way she was dressed. He’d been so caught up in wondering how the devil she managed to keep all that hair anchored on top of her head with only a handful of tortoiseshell pins that he hadn’t realized she was wearing a dress.

Or rather, a divided skirt. Black twill, with a wide belt and another cotton shirtwaist. Blue, this time. No frills and ruffles for Miss Jackson, he thought, amused. Good thing she knew her style. Some women could carry off fancy frills and lacy ruffles—others were better off not even trying.

The truth was that he’d never thought much about women’s clothes before. Admired them, oh, hell, yes. The shorter the skirt and the lower the bodice, the better he liked it.

But not on real ladies. Ladies like Rosemary and Abigail were in a different category. He could admire them, and he surely did, without wanting to plow through acres of satin and lace to find out what was underneath. Which made it hard to understand why just looking at Lilah Jackson in her divided skirt and her cotton shirtwaist could give rise to the kind of stirrings no man had any business feeling around a lady.

Without taking time to reason it out, he saddled up a big gray gelding and ambled off down the lane. Not that he was following her, because he wasn’t. He sure as hell was not.

Not that he thought she might be meeting anyone, either. She could meet an entire regiment for all he cared. It was a good day for a ride, that was all. From time to time a man needed a change of scenery.

Chapter Three

It had been months since Lilah had been able to visit the Randalls. The cabin was in worse condition than ever, both the tiny front porch and the roof sagging badly. The yard had been raked clean except for a few toys, although the honeysuckle vines had been allowed to ramble freely, adding a softening touch. In spite of what had happened to her husband, Martha Randall had obviously not given up.

The family had lost so much that Lilah was determined to see they didn’t lose their home, regardless of her father’s orders. Burke Jackson had taken it for granted that the Randalls had been turned out immediately after Ed Randall had gone to jail. Without discussing the matter, Shem had simply never gotten around to asking them to leave.

Dismounting, Lilah looped the reins around a catalpa tree and began unpacking her bulging saddlebags. Then the door burst open and a child shouted, “It’s Miss Lilah! Mama, Miss Lilah’s here!”

The yard was suddenly alive with children.

By the time the last bundle had been carried reverently inside Lilah’s eyes had taken on a soft, damp glow. Her hair was tumbling; there were dusty smudges on her dark skirt and small, grimy handprints on her shirt from all the eager hugs she’d received, but she felt enormously full of…love?

Well, yes. Love. And it felt damned good, too.

Laughing and listening to the childish confidences, she followed the five young Randalls inside to where a thin, faded woman was putting away beans, sugar, tea and dried apples. Lilah herself carried the slab of bacon through the shotgun-style house to the coolhouse on the back stoop.

“Aren’t you home early?” Martha Randall queried.

“Yes, and this time I’m home to stay.” Lilah broke into a smile, her eyes twinkling. “Papa’s still grumbling, but I told him it would take blasting powder to pry me loose again.”

Martha cocked an eyebrow. She was a handsome woman, tall, calm and patient. Lilah had always liked her, although the older woman had not encouraged a closer relationship.

The children, though, were another matter. Soon, the sleeves of her shirtwaist turned back, Lilah was seated at the table surrounded by Randall children, from four-year-old Betty to nine-year-old Brantley, who took seriously his role as acting man of the house. Barbara, the eldest, was helping her mother put away food. “You just missed Willy,” Martha said, filling the kettle for tea. “He brought me a mess of fresh-caught fish.”

Willy was not a Randall. In fact, no one knew his last name. As for his age, it could be anywhere from twelve to twenty, although Lilah thought he must be about fifteen. Even Willy didn’t know how old he was, not that it seemed to matter. He had simply turned up at the cookshack one day a few years ago, looking for food. Streak and Shem had taken him in. With his freckled face, his overlarge ears and his guileless smile, he’d come in for more than his share of teasing from the hired hands until Shem had let it be known that teasing Willy was a firing offence. He slept in the wide-open loft or in an empty stall, depending on the season. He ate at the cookshack, ran errands and fed the buttermilks—the motherless calves. Between tasks, he played with the Randall children.

While eleven-year-old Barbara carefully measured out tea, four cotton-white heads leaned over the large picture book. Three pairs of blue eyes and one set of brown peered eagerly at the pictures as Lilah carefully spelled out the words beneath each one.

After almost an hour passed, the time filled with questions and earnest confidences about teeth lost, minnows caught in the creek, and how high Brantley could jump, Lilah handed around sheets of paper and pencils. “First, I want you to copy the picture of the boy on the raft. Then I want you to copy the words underneath. I have prizes for whoever remembers what the words spell, and for whoever draws the best picture, and—and for—”

Lilah tried to think of another category so that each child would receive a prize and, more important, so that each child would have bragging rights. She would think of something. She always did. She’d been coming to see the Randall family whenever she was home ever since Edward Randall, once her father’s blacksmith, had been convicted of stealing a box of shotgun shells from the hardware store in Hillsborough. He’d admitted the theft and gone to prison for eight years, leaving his family totally without support.

Lilah knew Martha did sewing and took in washing for Streak and Shem, but that would hardly provide much in the way of security.

Since then, in unspoken conspiracy, Willy brought fish while Streak hunted rabbits, which he skinned out and took to the Randalls. Lilah, when she was home from school, watched for an opportunity to help herself from Pearly May’s pantry. Burke Jackson would have turned them all out without a second thought, Lilah knew to her sorrow. If the man had ever harbored a single generous impulse, his daughter was not aware of it.

“Have you heard anything from Edward?” Lilah could remember watching the farrier as a child, fascinated by the glowing coals and the way the brawny man could shape metal by turning it fiery red.

“Not a word. He’s shamed, I know he is.”

What could she say? Of course he was ashamed. Edgar Randall was a decent man, but even decent men sometimes made mistakes.

“It’s not the stealing that shames him—well, I reckon it is, but what shames him worse is being shut up in that place and not being able to take care of his family. I should never have had so many babies,” she said, her voice low so as not to be overheard. “But they just kept on coming and every one was such a blessing.”

Lilah thought, damn you, Papa, for being a mean, miserly old man. Right or wrong, her father could have easily prevented the man from being sent to jail. He was certainly not without influence, being one of the wealthiest men in the entire area.

Both women glanced toward the table, where four pale heads were bent studiously over their tasks. The older woman smiled, a spark of animation momentarily brightening her lined face. “I never could say no to the man. Lord, he was a dandy.”

Which was not exactly the way Lilah had seen the burly blacksmith, but then, she didn’t know all that much about men. She’d never been offered the opportunity to learn.

“You know what I miss most with Edward gone?”

“I can probably guess,” she said, not wanting to get into the kind of things that went on between a married man and his wife.

“I miss the way he used to play with the young’uns. He used to hold Betty’s hands and let her walk up his legs and turn a somersault.” She shook her head. “Laugh? I swear, you never heard a child laugh so hard. Used to wet her pants near about every time. He knew it, too, my Eddie did, but he never let on. She used to run up to him when he came in from work and say, ‘Flip me, Daddy,’ and he’d hold out his hands to her. Never did it with any of the others, that was Betty’s special treat. With the boys, it was fishing. Lord, I don’t know what we’d do if there weren’t fish in that creek.”

Half an hour later, Lilah rode away with the sound of children’s laughter ringing in her ears. Candy prizes had been handed out for the neatest lettering, the best drawing of a foot, of a smile, of a fish, and for remembering to sign the drawing. Lord knows, she thought ruefully, if Edward had lured Martha into his bed many more times, Lilah would have been hard pressed to come up with enough categories to reward.

She was halfway back to the horse barn when she heard someone riding up behind her. Turning, she shaded her eyes against a blinding sun. Most of the men were over near the creek cutting the first crop of hay.

Chandler. Her hand rose instinctively to the hair that was tumbling from its pins, thanks to so many enthusiastic hugs. “You’re riding Demon,” she accused. It was the first thing that popped into her mind when she saw him ride up on the big bay stallion.

Actually, it was the second thing, but she wasn’t about to acknowledge the way her stomach quivered at the sight of those yoke-wide shoulders and his lean, unsmiling face.

He nodded to the docile mare. “Jenny’s a bit tame for you, isn’t she?”

It was a perfectly innocent observation, Lilah told herself. So why did it instantly set her teeth on edge? “She needs the exercise.”

“She gets enough exercise, Shem rides her every day.”

“Yes, well…”

She could hardly tell him that Demon couldn’t be trusted to behave around children, much less to stand patiently while she read to them for more than an hour. She had learned that lesson soon after Edward had been sent to prison, when she’d first started riding out to see to the family’s welfare.

Head held high, she did her best to look down on a big man who sat a tall horse. “Don’t you have anything else to do today? Shem can’t do it all, you know.”

Shem could do little more than offer advice. Which he did freely, and which Eli gratefully accepted. “I thought I’d ride out and see how soon we can start planting corn. We’re more than a month late, as it is.”

“Shem always had the corn in by the middle of April.” It was an open accusation.

“Shem never had to wait out a solid month of rain.”

“We’ve had sunny days this spring.” She hadn’t been here, but the weather in Salem couldn’t have been all that different.

“Not enough to dry the ground.”

She couldn’t argue the point. She’d heard Shem complaining too many times about the poor drainage of the fields nearest the creek. He’d wanted to try ditching, but her father had complained that it would take too long and cost a fortune besides.

“There’s ways of draining a soggy field, you know,” he said mildly. Demon was stamping and flicking his tail.

“Of course there are.” She could hardly argue with him. “Actually, I’ve been thinking of several ways to go about it.” She’d been thinking of no such thing, but her thoughts were none of his business.

He looked—the term magnificent came to mind, and she dismissed it. He looked…capable. Big, with large hands, muscular arms and straw-colored hair that showed the marks of his hatband whenever he removed his curl-brimmed black Stetson. Gray eyes…at least she thought they were gray. She’d never been close enough to be sure.

The thought of being close to that muscular body and those tanned, blunt features made the breath catch in her throat. She hadn’t reacted so physically to any man since she’d been fourteen and one of the young hands had had to carry her to the house after she’d tried to jump off the fence onto the back of a half-wild horse.

Elias Chandler bore no resemblance to the scrawny cowpoke who had staggered up the front steps with her long legs dangling over his arm all those years ago. For one thing, there was his arrogance. Some women would probably consider him attractive, but if he thought that just because he’d been hired to manage her father’s farm he was going to manage her, he was sadly mistaken. She didn’t take orders from any man, not even from Burke Jackson.

“I’m planning on getting the field turned by week’s end as long as the weather holds. Conditions here are some different from Oklahoma, where I’m from.” He gazed out over the rolling green pastures as if he had nothing better to do than to sit on top of a restless horse and talk about the weather.

Demon had a notoriously short fuse. Chandler controlled him as easily as if he were the gentlest of mares. One more thing to chalk up against him. “If you don’t like our weather,” she snapped, “why don’t you go back to Oklahoma?”

Here we go again, Eli thought, amused. He could tell by the way her cheeks flared up, the way she set her lips together in a tight line, that she was hankering for a setto. He was just as determined not to give in to her.

“Well, as to that,” he began, struggling to hide a grin, but before he could finish, she waved a dismissive hand.

“Don’t bother,” she said, gigging her placid mount into a trot. “I’m really not at all interested.”

He held the impatient stallion back while she rode off ahead, watching her as she jiggled on the saddle. Wishing he were the saddle.

What the devil ails you, Chandler? What you need is to take a few days off and spend some time enjoying the delights of a willing commercial lady.

He made a mental note to ask Shem more about the family that lived in the dilapidated old cabin, and whether or not Miss Jackson had any business sneaking off there.

Not that she’d exactly been sneaking. She’d headed off down the lane in broad daylight, both saddlebags full to busting. He’d ridden on past to check the condition of a section they been clearing. Jackson had been using it for a woodlot. Once they cleared out the stumps, he planned to turn it into another pasture unless Jackson had other plans.

When he’d ridden past the cabin on his way back, she’d still been inside. Sensing his distraction, Demon had started acting up and it had been all Eli could do to stay aboard.

Dammit, he’d been hired to oversee the operation of Jackson’s cow farm, not to keep his daughter out of trouble. God help the man who signed on for that duty.

For the next three days in a row Eli watched her ride off down the back lane. It was none of his business where she went or who she met up with. He hadn’t bothered to ask Shem, maybe because he didn’t want to know. He’d sooner come between a hawk and a three-legged rabbit than try to run interference between a hardheaded man and his headstrong daughter.

While Mickey was rounding up strays, getting ready for weaning and castrating last fall’s crop of calves, the driest of the cornfields was being seeded by a couple of the newer hands. It was hard, monotonous work, but it was what farmers did. If they’d signed on thinking they were going to be cowboys, they wouldn’t last long. The men who worked with the herd had to do more than wear the right hat. Mickey was experienced. His helper, another of the other new hires, had worked briefly on a Florida cattle ranch.

And then there was Streak, the herd boss, who was slow, deliberate and methodical. He kept records in his head, which was a problem for anyone trying to maintain an overall view of the operation, but Streak was a good man. And like Shem, he thought the sun rose and set on Miss Lilah’s head.

Eli made the rounds each day, checking on the work in progress. Repairs on the damaged chute and the shed roof they were extending weren’t finished yet, but until the corn was in and he had manpower to spare, they’d hold. He’d sent a man out at first light to check the fences. That was a mandatory daily patrol. Now he lingered to look over the new crop of calves, and then rode out to see how the planting was coming along.

One thing he hadn’t quite figured out yet was the difference between Carolina and Oklahoma when it came to crops and seasons. Back home he’d barely got started on his plan to fence and stock the land he’d inherited from his grandfather. Having left his fortune with Lance Beckett, he’d had to start all over again. He’d got as far as running a few lines of fence and had made plans to buy out a cattleman whose wife insisted on going back to Baltimore when everything had come apart.

Eli was still musing on the unlikely train of events that had brought him east again when Shem rode up, spat a wad of tobacco and said, “Three new men just turned up. Word o’ mouth, I reck’n. I thought we took down the hirin’ sign at the feed and seed.”

“Did it last week. Farmers or cowhands?”

“Bit o’ both, I reckon, ‘pending on what we need. Right now I’d say we need this weather to hold long enough to finish getting them seeds in the ground. Time we wind up there, we’ll have us another crop of hay to get in. I ‘clare, if this ain’t been the wettest spring since Noah went into the boat-building business.”

“Glad to hear it’s unusual,” Eli commented, not that he’d be here come another spring. Might not even make it to harvest time, if he got lucky. “Miss Jackson went out again today on the mare. I understand she has friends in that direction?” He nodded toward the lane that led through forty acres of second-growth timber to the woodlot and the hayfields beyond.

“The Randalls. Her paw don’t know, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t let on.”

“Jackson doesn’t know what? That she has friends?”

“Truth to tell, he don’t know no more about her than he has to. Dang shame, if you ask me, but he ain’t about to change his spots just ’cause he’s a sick man.”

The conversation turned in another direction then. Burke Jackson’s health. It was Shem’s opinion—Eli wasn’t entirely sure he was joking—that the man was being slowly poisoned by that evil old woman’s foul cooking. From what Eli had seen and heard, Jackson’s housekeeper was a slovenly woman who should have been fired years ago.

“That woman can sour a pan o’ milk just by looking at it.”

“What about the daughter? Can’t she step in?”

The old man removed his hat and scratched his bald, freckled head. “Burke won’t listen to her. Never did, not since she was a little thing, sweet as cane and wantin’ to please. No, sir, that man’s miserable and he’s gonna make dang sure ever’body else is just as miserable.”

Eli had trouble picturing Lilah Jackson as a little thing fitting Shem’s description. Whatever she was up to, he didn’t have time to oversee her as well as the rest of Jackson’s operation, even if he’d been so inclined. Spring was a busy time. But then, so was fall. In fact, if there was a slack time on a farm, he had yet to discover it.

Right now there was the first haying and late planting to oversee, not to mention ongoing repairs and improvements. The new crop of calves should have been culled more than a month ago, but due to both the weather and a shortage of manpower, they were running considerably behind. Still to be done was castrating and hair-branding. It was a noisy, dirty business, one he wasn’t looking forward to. Streak, Mickey and a few more men would do the actual work, but Eli was responsible. He’d once worked briefly on a ranch where some numbskull had mistaken his orders, turned the culls out to pasture and made steers of what would have been five valuable bulls.

An hour later Eli interviewed the new men and hired all three. One was the youngest son of a dairy farmer—some experience there. Another was a trapper from up in the mountains, skills that might come in handy if the damned groundhogs didn’t stop digging holes in the pastures. He’d seen more than one horse lost that way.

It was the third man who interested him the most, however. Ace Glover claimed to be a professional gambler in a Midwestern casino before losing the three middle fingers on his card-dealing hand.

“Mind telling me why you applied for work on a cattle farm?”

“A man’s got to eat,” Ace Glover said with a shrug. “I tried dealing left-handed. Tried wearing a glove with plugged fingers.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t the same. Too distracting. Eventually I worked my way east, trying a number of different lines of work. I worked on a gambling boat out of Tampa for a couple of weeks. Big, fancy side-wheeler. Now there’s a line of work I’d be very good at. Trouble is, even tied up in port I got so sick I couldn’t look at a glass of water without wanting to throw up.”

Eli shook his head in commiseration. “You know anything at all about farming?”

“No, but I’m a quick study. I can learn.”

“Know anything about livestock?”

“Like I said, I can learn.”

Eli tipped back his chair, regarding the applicant with a measuring look. The man’s suit had once been expensive, but it was starting to take on the shine of too much wear. Eli had learned about such things from Lance—hell, he even knew how to take the shine off good serge, come to that. Not that he’d ever bothered.

Not that he even owned a serge suit. Levi’s and leather were good enough for the life he led.

Neither man spoke as each measured the other. Ace Glover might not know a damn thing about cattle, but Eli suspected he was shrewd, probably highly intelligent. Like most gamblers, he’d be a good judge of men, which could be a decided asset on a spread with as big a turnover as the Bar J.

Glover crossed his legs. To all appearances, he was totally relaxed, but Eli had had some experience when it came to reading men, too.

He waited, knowing he had the advantage.

Feeling almost ashamed to use that advantage when a man had had a long run of bad luck, as Glover obviously had.

The gambler broke first. “I’ve got a good brain, but there’s a limit on what I can do with my hands. I’ve heard farming’s not an easy job, but I was hoping…” With a wintry smile, he let it rest.

“You heard right. You sure you want to tackle it?”

“A man has to eat,” Ace repeated. “Of course, if I were a fisherman, that wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, the last thing in the world I felt like doing during my two weeks in the Gulf of Mexico was eating.” Both men chuckled, which gave Eli the opening he’d been looking for.

“I’ve heard it said that professional gambling can be almost as risky as farming. Maybe not as physically demanding, but I’ve heard it can turn a man’s hair white overnight. You ever hear of anything like that?”

Glover pursed his lips under a pencil-thin mustache. He looked down at shoes that were long past their prime, but still reflected a shine. “Matter of fact, there was this fellow I met once…” Eli’s fingers tightened around the pencil he held. “Man swore he’d turned white overnight when some hayseed—nothing personal, Mr. Chandler—pulled a gun on him and shot the cards right out of his hand.”

Eli’s body absorbed the jolt of excitement that streaked through him like a lightning bolt. He’d had leads before. Dozens of them, but no matter how promising they seemed in the beginning, few of them had panned out.

He nodded to Glover’s hand and lifted an eyebrow.

The gambler laughed and shook his head. “They weren’t shot off, if that’s what you mean. I tangled with one of these newfangled automobiles. Dangerous machines, I’m telling you. I’ll stick to horses.”

“Smart man. No point in going gray before your time.” The newcomer’s hair was patent-leather black, and just as shiny.

“The man I mentioned—I don’t recall his name, but he had a remarkable streak of snow-white hair. Just a streak, mind you.” He touched his head just to the left of the center part. “Put a man in mind of a skunk.”

Eli eased out the breath he’d been holding, not showing by so much as a twitch the excitement that was beginning to build. This was the first solid lead he’d had in months. There was always the possibility that the man he’d been trailing was playing games, sending Glover in to taunt him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done something like that. Once in Knoxville, when Eli had casually asked after a gambler with a streak of white hair, he’d been given an envelope.

“Man came through here day before yesterday. Said you might be wantin’ to know his whereabouts. Said to give you this here letter. Feels like they might be some money in it.”

He’d waited until he was outside to open the envelope. Cat and mouse wasn’t a game he’d ever liked, but when he played it, he’d always been the cat. The hunter.

When the poker chip with a white streak painted across the middle had fallen out into his palm, he’d gone cold with rage.

And then hot with determination.

Now he was neither.

But he was still the hunter.

Realistically, Eli no longer held out much hope for Rosemary. God alone knew what she’d been forced to endure. But he was on the right track, he was sure of it. When he’d first set out nearly two years ago he’d known nothing more about the man who had burned his home and kidnapped the woman he’d promised to marry other than that he had a streak of white hair. Now he knew that the man was sometimes called Chips. He knew how he dressed, what he liked to eat and drink, and how he made his living. Most of the information had been picked up in saloons, some in jailhouses and one gem—the bit that had sent him to this particular region, he’d overheard in a whorehouse in Tennessee where the ladies of the evening had been discussing a cheapskate with a polecat stripe, who had professed to being on his way to claim his stepfather’s estate in the city of Durham in North Carolina. The creep had escaped through a window without paying for services rendered.

The man called Chips might enjoy tweaking the lion’s tail, but he was a liar and a scoundrel. Sooner or later his luck would run out, and when it did, Eli would be there.

There was only one thing that bothered him. The crime of kidnapping didn’t seem to fit the image of a professional gambler. Not even a lying, cheating gambler. That was the part that had always puzzled him as he’d studied over all the old cases during his stints as a lawman.

But then, one thing he had learned from experience was that people rarely fit into a neat pattern. Who would have thought that a man who owned the biggest, most prosperous cattle operation in the state of North Carolina would hide out in his house like a hermit and put up with a slovenly female who couldn’t cook any better than she could clean house?

And who would have expected that the same man’s daughter, who was as tall and as tough as any man, would have a mole at one corner of her mouth that tempted a man to lick it off?

The down-on-his-luck gambler stirred, drawing Eli’s attention back to the task at hand. “You don’t know farming. You don’t know cattle. Tell me, why did you apply for work here? What does a man like you have to offer?”

“As I said, my brain. I’m good with numbers, I have a retentive memory, and I don’t mind sitting for long hours.” He grinned again, revealing a self-deprecating sense of humor. “I applied for work at a bank just yesterday. My resume didn’t appear to impress them.”

Tilting his chair, Eli studied the man before him. A seven-fingered gambler wouldn’t be worth a dip of snuff working cattle, but Eli could use a hand with the books.

Glover said, “You seem interested in this fellow I mentioned.”

“Call it a study of human nature. I guess you’ve heard there’s a pretty large turnover here. Jackson pays the lowest wages he can get by with, which means I have to check out any man applying for work to see why he wants to work at the Bar J instead of a place that pays better.”

“Makes sense. Although there’s not a whole lot of hiring going on these days unless a man wants to move to a mill town and work in a factory.” His expression made clear his opinion of that option.

Eli let it simmer. No point in pushing too hard. Glover struck him as a man who played them close to his vest.

The mental sparring continued. Eli had already made up his mind to hire the man, but it suited him to prolong the interview.

Glover said, “If you’re considering hiring me to work on the books, don’t you need to know if I’m honest?”

“Are you?”

“Would I tell you if I weren’t?” An odd moment of understanding seemed to pass between the two men. “But yeah, I am. When I can afford to be,” the newcomer replied.

“That’s honest enough for me,” Eli said dryly. He brought the front legs of his chair down with a quiet thump. “The job’s yours if you want it. We’ll start in the office and see what develops. Like I said, the pay’s not great, but the bunkhouse is clean and the food’s exceptional. Lead your horse around to the feedlot and come back by the office once you’re settled in.”

For several minutes after Glover left, Eli allowed his mind to range freely. Impressions, instinct and random thoughts all merged together. And then a rare smile lightened his eyes without ever touching his lips.

He’d picked up the scent again. Sooner or later something would connect, and when it did, he would need to be ready to move. He might not have a man in place to take over the management, but if Ace worked out, then with the help of Streak and Shem, Jackson wouldn’t be left in the lurch.

Chapter Four

Man, that is one mean woman.” Pete, one of the new men, spoke almost admiringly as they watched the boss’s daughter march back across the clearing that was ringed by the main house, the big barn and the cook-shack, the other outbuildings scattered closer to the back lane.

Lilah had gone to the cookshack to deliver a message from her father. Hesitating in the doorway, she had scanned the noisy, comfortable room with its mingled aromas of pork barbecue, fried onions and tobacco. Locating her target, she took aim and fired. “My father wants to see you.” She pointed at Eli.

He laid down his fork, “May I finish my supper?”

“Now.”

Eli had learned self-control in a far tougher school than the Bar J, having grown up with a domineering grandfather and a drunkard for a father. Lacking, for the most part, a woman’s softening influence, it had been a matter of survival. He took his time rising. Placing his utensils across his plate, he watched Lilah’s retreating figure while the other men waited to see his reaction.

What the hell was Jackson thinking of, using his daughter as a messenger? He could have sent the old woman. He could have come himself, for that matter. Appearances to the contrary, Jackson had not yet lost the use of his short, bowed legs.

“Save my dessert for me, will you?” he said quietly, reaching for his hat.

“Better you than me,” Mickey said feelingly.

“They say she’s got a worser temper then her old man,” said one of the more recent hires.

“Something don’t set right with her, she’ll sure enough let you know about it. I like the ladies, but damned if I’d want to tangle with that one, even if she was giving it away.” Arnold, the carpenter-blacksmith shook his head.

Mickey Lane leaned forward, his animated face alight. “You ever hear her cuss? Man, she can evermore set fire to the bushes.”

Eli was on the point of reprimanding the young brush roper when Streak took matters in hand. Looking at first one man and then another until he had surveyed the entire gathering, he said quietly, “Y’all don’t got no call to talk about a lady thataway. Don’t do it n’more, y’hear?”

On his way out the door, Eli glanced back at the man he had quickly come to respect. An exceedingly homely man, Streak, christened Thomas O’Neal some twenty-nine years ago and called Streak o’ Lean for as long as anyone could remember, had been here longer than any other member of the crew except for Shem.

The day was Wednesday, unless Eli had missed a few days on his calendar. He always reported on Fridays. Searching his mind, he tried to think of anything he’d done lately that might have warranted the peremptory summons.

The corn was finally in the ground. Late, but that was hardly his fault. The haying was well underway and the tally-branding was scheduled to start early next week, probably on Monday if they got the chute repaired by then.

Eli took his time crossing the yard. The housekeeper, Pearly May, yanked open the door and glared at him. Without thinking, he wiped his feet off on the filthy scrap of rug on the front porch. Not that it would have made much difference if he’d tracked in half the mud in Orange County. He didn’t know what the woman did to earn her keep, but it sure as hell wasn’t floor scrubbing. As for her cooking, the less said, the better. He’d had the dubious privilege of taking supper at the Jackson’s table. They’d been served underboiled chicken, over-boiled cabbage and biscuits that might’ve won the war for the South if they’d been used as ammunition.

“In there,” the housekeeper snapped, jerking her head in the general direction of the big walnut-paneled front room.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She snorted. Eli grinned and entered the lion’s den. “You don’t want nothing to drink, do you?” she growled.

He was tempted to say yes, just to see how she would react. “Thank you kindly, Miss Pearly May, I just finished supper.”

Without another word she stalked off down the wide hall, smelling of sweat, onions and vanilla extract. God knows why Jackson kept her around. She was probably the only woman who could put up with his cantankerousness. He might be a smart man, but when it came to charm, Burke Jackson couldn’t charm his way out of a gopher hole.

Of Lilah Jackson, there was no sign. Evidently, her duty was finished once she’d delivered the message. Eli entered the room and nodded to his employer, aware once again of the overpowering smell composed of liniment and something that smelled a lot like tobacco. Jackson had been told to throw away his cigars. Whether or not he had remained to be seen.

If the quick grimace could be interpreted as a smile, Jackson was in an unusually genial mood. “Heard you put a new man onto the books.” The smile disappeared as he leveled the charge at point-blank range. “What you got to say about that?”

Since he hadn’t been invited to sit, Eli leaned against a dusty credenza. “You heard right.”

“That’s what I hired you for. You ain’t up to the job, say so.”

“Ace is better with numbers than I am. I’m starting him on the monthly accounts, under my supervision. If things work well enough I’ll extend his responsibilities. We’re shorthanded, Jackson. I can’t be in the office and out checking up on the new hands at the same time. Maybe if we increased the pay a few dollars, we’d get some competent men and I wouldn’t have to spend so much time keeping behind them.”

“I pay ’em what they’re worth.”

“And get what you pay for.”

“Shem did all that and still kept the books.”

“Shem’s eyesight has been bothering him.” Eli wouldn’t say more than that. Jackson had to know that the old man had allowed things to slide for so long that it had taken Eli weeks to sort things out. In some cases, all he could do was cut his losses and start fresh. “Most operations this size hire a bookkeeper, a herd manager and a general manager.”

“How many spreads you worked on?”

“I believe we went over this before I was hired.”

“Wild West cattle. Spanish stock, all bones, horns and gristle. What d’you think of my herd?”

Eli banked the coals of anger. Jackson was working toward a point. He would get there in his own time. Eli could afford to be patient. He had a new lead; he could move on anytime, but it suited him better to wait until he’d picked up a bit more information. It would be best if he could do it without arousing too much interest, but if weeks passed and he learned nothing more, he might just have to lean on Glover a bit to improve his memory.

First, though, he needed to know whether or not he could trust him. Giving him a set of books to work on was a test. Eli fully intended to go over every single entry and keep his own tally.

The older man, swallowed up by a king-size chair and ottoman, studied him from beneath bushy white brows. Burke Jackson couldn’t be much more than fifty, yet he looked to be at least twenty years older.

“Well? I asked you a question, boy. Speak up.”

“It’s good stock. It’ll bring top prices, especially as you can freight it to market directly instead of having to drive it a hundred or so miles to the nearest railhead.”

“What d’you think o’ my daughter?”

Eli cleared his throat. Talk about coming out of left field. “Your daughter? Well, uh—” Definitely more than bones, horns and gristle, although he didn’t think the old man would appreciate the comparison. “She rides well.”

“Ha! Rides like a damned man. I spent a fortune sending her to that fancy girls’ school and what do I get back? A bossy female that dresses like a man and sneaks around behind my back, stealing food out of the kitchen to feed a pack of poachers!”

That one, he wasn’t about to touch. Poachers? Shem evidently knew where she went several times a week. If there was a problem he’d have reported it, either to Eli or to Jackson himself.

“As to that, I couldn’t say.” He was wondering how to end the conversation and escape. Wondering why he’d been summoned in the first place. He’d actually taken a step toward the door when the man seated in the leather-covered chair, a lap robe spread over his short legs even though the weather felt more like June than early May—spoke again.

“I’m dying, you know.”

Eli dropped his hat. As Pearly May hadn’t offered to take it and hang it up for him, he’d been holding it ever since he’d arrived. He cleared his throat again. What the hell did a man say to something like that?

“I guess we all are.” A philosopher he wasn’t, but some truths, he’d heard tell, were self-evident.

Jackson uttered a short nasty laugh, which turned into a fit of coughing. Before Eli could decide whether to whack the man on the back or summon help, Lilah burst into the room and demanded to know what in hell’s name he had said to her father to set him off.

“Ma’am, I didn’t—”

“Don’t you ma’am me, you scoundrel, or I’ll tell my father—”

The look on her face was priceless. Eli had no trouble finishing the rest of her accusation. She would tell his father that Eli had followed her when she’d gone out riding?

But then she would have to admit what she’d been up to. Whoever lived in that cabin, poachers or not, he had a feeling Jackson wasn’t supposed to know about it.

So he smiled at her. Jackson already knew. Eli had a feeling there was little that went on around here the man didn’t know.

Tapping her foot, Lilah glared at him.

Jackson looked back and forth from one to the other, a curious expression coming over his flushed face. Outside the window a mockingbird cut loose with a rambling threnody. The familiar scent of cow manure and wildflowers drifted in on the warm, humid air, competing with the acrid smell of the room.

Eli, hat in hand, began edging away. Whatever Jackson was thinking, he didn’t want to hear about it. If he was about to be fired, he’d prefer to postpone it until after he’d had another shot at getting Glover to remember something more specific. At the very least he needed a last name.

It was Jackson who broke the silence. “One thing I’d like to see before I die,” the man said sanctimoniously.

Eli and Lilah turned as one to stare at the older man. “Papa, don’t talk like that,” Lilah said. “You’re not about to die.”

“Shut up, girl. You got no notion of what I’m about to do.”

Eli stepped out into the hall and looked around for Pearly May. The old woman was used to handling him. Must be, else she’d have been fired long before now.

“It’d please me mightily to see my little girl settled down with a husband,” Burke Jackson said wistfully. He coughed again, as if to underline his words.

Lilah was first to react. Eyes widening, breast heaving, she cried, “Your little girl! Why, you wicked, scheming old son of a bitch, don’t you dare try to push me off on another man! You’re damn well stuck with me, whether you like it or not! And whether you know it or not, I’m a damn sight smarter than that son you never had that you keep whining about!”

Eli had never heard any mention of a son, whining or otherwise. He did know when it was time to leave. Less than a minute later he found himself outside the front door staring at a row of grinning cowpokes, elbows and booted feet propped on the rail fence. They had obviously heard every word.

Streak and Shem weren’t among them, but that didn’t keep him from thinking it might not be a bad idea to get out before things got any crazier.

A husband for Delilah? The man would have to be seven feet tall, with brass balls and the hide of a rhino.

Through the open door he could hear raised voices. Hers and his. God knows, that was one argument he didn’t want to get in the middle of. What the devil did the man have against his own daughter? All she’d done was show proper concern. Was that any reason to shout curses at her?

For that matter, why should she be surprised that her father wanted to find her a husband? Any decent man would want to be sure his daughter was secure before he passed away.

Something crashed noisily. Glass, from the sound of it. If he had to guess which one had thrown it, his money would be on Delilah. She had a temper to go with all that red hair, and from the looks of him, Jackson didn’t have the strength to spit more than two feet, much less grab something breakable and throw it.

Early the following morning Lilah hitched up the buggy, neither waiting nor asking for help. Three men paused in what they were doing to watch. Eli was one of the three.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, knowing he was risking a set-down in front of his men, something a smart manager avoided whenever he could.

“What does it look like?”

“Then you won’t mind if I take Demon today? I’ll be out all morning, so if you were planning on riding later…?”

She opened her mouth to retort, then clamped it shut again and swung herself up into the buggy.

Watching her ride away, snapping the whip so that it curled just above the little mare’s shiny rump, he had to admire her style. Underneath all that flash and fire, he had a sneaking suspicion there lurked a woman no one knew. What kind of lady would go out of her way to alienate everyone around her, including her own father?

A daughter whose father didn’t approve of her? Didn’t even appear to like, much less to love her?

At least Burke seemed to have her best interests at heart, Eli told himself as he saddled the stallion and set out toward the south pasture to look over the crop of fall calves one last time before the final cut was made.

As much as he hated to admit it, his own childhood had not been all that different as far as family relationships went. According to Shem, during one of their late evening, front porch discussions, Lilah’s mother had given birth to a stillborn son, and a year later she had died giving birth to a daughter, leaving behind the helpless infant and a brokenhearted husband. Both had evidently survived, after a fashion.

His own mother had waited until her son was eleven years old to run off, claiming in equal parts her father-in-law’s nasty disposition, having to work her fingers to the bone, and the freakish Oklahoma weather.

The irony of it was that the Chandler family had had plenty of money. They could have hired help if there’d been any help to be found in the desolate area Matthew Chandler had chosen to settle in. The trouble was that like Burke Jackson, the old man had been a skinflint of the first order. He figured that as long as he had women in the family, why go to the trouble of hiring outsiders? He didn’t like strangers in his house.

For that matter, he hadn’t much liked having his own family there. Eli had grown up in a house so big and empty it echoed, set out in the middle of nowhere. The nearest settlement, consisting of a jail, two saloons, and half a dozen shanties, was three miles away. By the time he was old enough to give much thought to women, he’d been convinced that the Chandler men were congenitally incapable of forming a lasting relationship with any of them. Nothing that had happened in the intervening years had changed his mind.

At least after Grandmother Ianthe had left, his grandfather had channeled his bitterness into amassing a fortune by buying up more land and reselling it, mostly to the railroads. Randolph, Eli’s father, had drowned the sorrow of his wife’s desertion in a bottle. When the old man, furious at his son’s weakness, had threatened to take custody of young Eli, Randolph had made an effort to sober up and find work. His good intentions hadn’t lasted. Drunk again, he’d been riding point on a herd of longhorns for a neighboring rancher when he’d started firing at imaginary rustlers. The cattle had spooked; Randolph’s horse had bolted and Randolph had been trampled to death in the ensuing stampede.

No sooner had his son and heir been laid to rest than Matthew Chandler had set out to tame and educate his grandson, who’d been fifteen years old at the time, wild, tough and already towering over most men.

There followed a string of major battles between the two remaining Chandlers, with the old man usually winning. Gradually, mostly against his will, Eli had been educated and a few of the roughest edges polished off.

Now, looking out over the tall pines, a rocky stream and acres of lush green pastures, all so different from the barren land he’d inherited—thinking of the fortune his grandfather had worked so hard to acquire, and that his only grandson, on inheriting it, had given away, Eli had to wonder if there was a pattern to the things that happened over a man’s lifetime. He’d about come to the conclusion that God simply scattered his children over the face of the earth like handfuls of confetti and left them to the will of the four winds.

A few miles to the south at the train station, Lilah waited impatiently for the last of the passengers to disembark. She was certain she had the right day. If Isobel had changed her mind, she would have written or sent a wire. It was one more way in which the two women differed. Lilah was prone to barging full steam ahead once she’d set her mind on a course of action. Small, timid Isobel Dinkins would hang back, awaiting permission before ever making a move.

“Growing up in a parsonage,” she had once explained, “you learn early not to offend a single soul for fear of finding your whole family uprooted and moved to a new charge before the cat can lick her paw.”

Isobel’s parents had perished in a house fire that the church board felt somewhat responsible for. They’d been told that the chimneys in the parsonage were in sad condition, but had put off having them repaired in favor of more important matters, such as new carpeting for the church.

Lilah had been sent off to school by a father who didn’t approve of her, didn’t want her around and could well afford to pay someone else to contend with her. He’d been sick to death of the constant wrangles between his housekeeper and his daughter. The two women had despised each other since the day Pearly May had been hired to look after the house, the man and his newly weaned daughter.

“There you are, the last straggler off the train. I might have known,” Lilah exclaimed, rushing forward to embrace her friend. “Where’s the rest of your luggage? Is this it? I told you you’d be staying here all summer, didn’t I? Well never mind—we’ll just start all over again. I know a woman who can make you a dress in a day’s time. Shall we shop for cloth while we’re in town, or come back next week?”

“Whew!” The smaller woman caught her breath and readjusted the bonnet that had been knocked crooked by the enthusiastic greeting. “I’ve got everything I need. Just because I came for a visit, don’t think you’re going to manage me the way you did at school. I’ve graduated, remember? You didn’t.”

“Oh, so now you’re going to rub my nose in that, I suppose.” Both women laughed. As oddly assorted as they were, they were closer than most sisters.

Isobel swooped up her cardboard suitcase and looked around. “Where’s the cart?”

“I took Papa’s buggy.” Lilah grinned. “He purely hates for me to drive it.”

“I see being back home hasn’t changed you. Was your father furious when you told him you’d dropped out three weeks short of graduating?”

“Mad as a wet hen. Not a blasted thing he could do about it, though. Fussed a lot about the waste of money. Since then I mostly just try to stay out of sight so that he forgets I’m around.”

After stopping to buy three bolts of dimity in pastel colors and one of pale blue sateen, all over Isobel’s protests, the two women climbed back in the buggy. Catching up on gossip about classmates which neither could claim as friends, Lilah drove them to the Hillsborough Inn for refreshments, knowing her friend would not have had the pennies to spare on the journey from Salem.

“Now, what is this exciting new development you hinted at in your letter?” Isobel blotted her lips with the linen napkin. At four foot nine, she was plain as a woman could be short of being downright homely.

“Oh, that. Well, I told you Papa was ill. Doc Bender said it was a consumptive heart. Or was it congestive? Anyway, he’s gotten worse since I’ve been home, and before you say a word, no, it’s not because I’m there.” There were no secrets between the two young women. Isobel knew that Lilah’s father had no use for her, but she was determined to make him respect her.

“I still intend to take over managing the farm,” the vibrant redhead continued. “At least then Papa won’t have so much to worry about.”

“Has he agreed?”

“Not yet, but he will. He’s hardly in a position to stop me,” Lilah replied, not without a hint of regret. He was her father, after all, even if he did resent her very existence. “And honestly, Izzy, it makes sense. I do know how to study. I can learn whatever I need to know, and who has a bigger stake in seeing the Bar J succeed than I do? Well, there’s Shem, of course.”

She had told her friend all about the man who had taken care of her all her life, even giving her a name to live up to. Shem’s given name was Samson, he’d once confessed, although no one had called him that in half a century or more.

“I don’t know,” Isobel said, frowning. “I don’t think your daddy’s going to let you do it. What if he comes right out and forbids it?”

“He always forbids things, no matter what I ask,” Lilah dismissed airily. “Don’t you worry, I have my plans all laid out. The first thing I’m going to do is get rid of Pearly May and hire a neighbor of ours, who really needs a job, to take over the housekeeping. She happens to be the same woman who’s going to make you a whole new wardrobe.”

“No, she’s not, either,” stated the freckle-faced girl with the dun-colored hair.

“Oh, hush. I’m certainly not going to wear all those pretty pastel colors. Mrs. Randall sews beautifully, and besides, she needs the work.”

Over the long ride back to the Bar J, the women talked over plans for the future. Lilah was not quite as confident as she tried to appear, but if she’d learned one thing over the course of twenty-two years of being a misfit, it was that no one was going to shape her life for her. If she wanted something, she would have to go after it herself. And what she wanted was a real home, one where she was both needed and respected.

She was definitely needed in her father’s house. Unfortunately, he was not yet ready to admit it, and until he did there was little she could do to earn his respect without setting him off. He would roll his eyes and his face would turn red, and then he’d clutch his chest and make her feel like the vilest creature who ever lived for daring to upset him. The trouble was, she had a temper to match his, and sometimes she just couldn’t hold back.

They pulled into the yard just after five that evening, hungry, dusty, their throats raw from talking nearly nonstop throughout the journey. Catching sight of a familiar trap tied off in front of the house, Lilah frowned.

Streak emerged from the barn and came shambling across the clearing. He stared at the passenger for a moment and then reached for the reins. “Here, let me take her for you, Miss Lilah.”

“What’s the doctor’s trap doing here?”

The herd boss glanced over toward the house. “Well now, as to that, I reckon Doc Bender just stopped by to pay his respects to your papa.”

Lilah jumped down and handed over the reins. “The devil, you say. Papa’s had another spell, hasn’t he?”

“All I know is when Shem went up to the house this morning, he come out threatening to wring Pearly May’s neck for not sending Willy to fetch Doc Bender.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.