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One thick brow rose over his crystalline eyes. She caught a whiff of bay rum clinging to hard-cut jaws that had been scraped bare less than an hour ago.
“Are you—afraid?” Brooks gazed at her with his seductive eyes. “Are you?”
“No, I am not afraid,” she snapped. Several heads turned to stare in her direction because of the volume of her reply. “My—my dress is just tight as a narrow cinch, th-that’s all.” She lowered her voice to a respectable whisper. “And with all these folks squeezed in here there’s barely a breath of air left.” She forced herself to ignore the amusement etched in every line of his face. “So why don’t you quit jawing so much and using up what little air there is left?”
He laughed.
Damn him to hell and back. He had the gall to stand there and laugh. And then he raised a long-fingered, brown and roughened hand as if to touch her.
The thought sent her belly dropping to her feet like a stone.
“Rest easy, little lady. If you swoon, I promise I’ll do my best to catch you before you hit the floor in front of all these people.” Mercifully, his fingers stopped just short of touching her cheek.
Her face grew hotter and all the shallow little breaths she was taking seemed to be hanging at the back of her throat. It took all her control to keep from yelling at him, or slapping his face, but she managed to keep her voice low and controlled and her hands clenched at her thighs.
“I appreciate the offer, Brooks, but you’ll never see the day when I can’t stand on my own two feet around you.” Her long, unbound hair tickled her backside through the silky material of her dress as she emphasized her speech with a little nod of her head.
Brooks did not laugh this time, but she felt his amusement sluice over her in a scalding wave. Her heart beat a tiny bit faster inside the sateen bodice of her dress.
Damn him. Double damn him!
He could affect her with just a look, or God forbid, the hint of a casual touch. And then, as if he had read her tortured thoughts, he reached out and took hold of her elbow with his bare fingertips. A myriad of peculiar and uncontrollable emotions ripped through her middle when his fingers tightened around her arm. She promised herself that she would not react, but she stiffened in spite of herself.
“Don’t make a bigger fuss, Missy. Everyone is watching.” His low warning rumbled over her while his gaze slid around the interior of the crowded Catholic mission, the closest house of God they could find.
Missy followed his line of vision. Just as he had said, the tiny adobe building was full to overflowing, and while not everyone was staring at her, more than enough curious eyes were looking her way.
She died a little inside, knowing that her confrontation with Brooks had been the object of their attention.
“Come on, Missy, I won’t bite you—” he leaned close enough to whisper in her ear, tightening that possessive hold on her arm “—but I might nibble a bit around the edges.” His breath fanned her earlobe. For one terrifying moment she was afraid he would nip her flesh.
Was she afraid he would—or that he wouldn’t?
“It is time we took our places, Brooks,” she managed to croak. “Stop all this foolishness.”
Brooks grinned widely, flashing a glimpse of straight teeth, then he deftly maneuvered her and the wide ruffles of peacock blue sateen up through the narrow aisle. Missy marveled that he got them where they needed to be without tripping either one of them.
She shook herself and blinked. Without quite knowing how time was moving so fast and disjointedly, she realized she was now standing opposite Brooks in front of the slat-thin minister with the too-large Adam’s apple.
Missy allowed herself one backward glance. Now every single person seated in the small chapel was watching her as she stood at the front of the church, twisting her fingers and plucking at the too-tight, unforgiving waist of her dress.
She whirled back around, staring at the shiny worn knees of the minister’s trousers. She felt like a complete jackass—and she blamed Brooks for it and for making her feel things that confused and befuddled her.
A murmur of restrained voices, like a cooling breeze over dried leaves, moved through the chapel. Missy turned to see what had caused the stir, grateful that something, anything, had distracted the group’s interest from her. Then she saw Trace, and all of her thoughts were for him alone.
He looked happy, healthy and more handsome than she’d ever imagined. His dark hair reflected the flames of the candles on the altar; his face was flushed with excitement.
The organ groaned and wheezed again. Then, with a reverberating sound that tickled the bottoms of her feet, the “Wedding March” began. Missy followed Trace’s gaze to the side door.
Moving with all the grace of an angel fallen to earth, Bellami appeared in her flowing ivory gown. A heavy lace veil trailed behind her on the red, Spanish-tiled floor.
Throughout the long preparations for the wedding, Trace had made only one request: that Bellami wear nothing over her face. The operation had removed the bone sliver from his brain, but it had been Bellami’s love that had truly restored his sight and his life. He had told Missy that he wanted to look upon the face of the woman he loved, now and forever.
Bellami shifted the bouquet of wild lavender and oxeye daisies to her empty hand while she stretched up to deposit an affectionate kiss on Brooks’s lean cheek, then she offered a reassuring smile to Missy. The gesture made the hot dry lump in Missy’s throat grow larger.
“Let us all bow our heads for a moment of prayer…” the minister intoned “…and ask God’s blessing on this young couple as they embark on the road of life.”
Brooks watched Missy’s eyes flutter shut. He half listened to the prayer while he continued to observe her from the corner of his eye. Looking at her now, a feminine vision in sateen, it was hard to believe she was the same razor-tongued shrew that had pestered him for the last year—except that he had the emotional bruises to prove it. The little vixen had drawn blood, in a manner of speaking, a time or two. She was feisty and headstrong, the exact opposite of the women he’d formerly pursued.
A murmured amen brought Brooks’s head up. He focused on his twin. Bellami was lovely, as all brides are, but even more so because she held her head up proudly and did not care who gazed upon her face. She no longer hid herself from the pity people might feel for her. Trace’s love had been the spark needed for her to grow and change. For the first time in her life she seemed unaware of the scar.
The scar. It had altered her life and saddled Brooks with guilt for years. But then it had brought Bellami James to the Territory to find her destiny, and in a peculiar sort of way it had done the same thing for him. Bellami’s scar and Violet Ashland’s fickle heart had been the catalyst for Brooks to leave the city and the pointless pursuits he had once thought of as manly.
After Bellami left, Brooks had surrounded himself with a flock of beautiful ladies, but none had ever held his attention for more than a couple of weeks until he’d met Violet Ashland. The petite blonde had captured his interest in a way that no other woman had before…
A nervous cough pulled his attention to the ravenhaired girl standing opposite him. Missy was a wildcat one minute and a siren the next. She could make him madder than any woman he knew, yet in the whole year he’d known her she had never shown the slightest interest in snaring him for his fortune—or any other reason, he thought with a smile.
Not like Violet.
He frowned and wondered where that thought had come from. It was probably the magic of the candles and the organ music and the lethargy of a Territorial afternoon. A man would have to be made of iron not to be influenced by the romantic promise of this moment. The trappings of matrimony had resurrected memories that had long been buried, reminding him of his own proposal of marriage.
But that had been another man, in another life. Now his days were filled with work and with fending off Missy’s verbal arrows. Yes, he thought idly, Missy O’Bannion could strip the hide off a man with one look, but under all that bluff and bluster she was honest and true.
The kind of woman to cross rivers and climb mountains with.
Brooks blinked in amusement at his thoughts. He was beginning to sound, or at least to think, like Clell. The idea that he had learned some wisdom from the irascible cowboy pleased him, and he caught himself grinning.
By accident he and Missy looked at each other in the same moment. Their gazes caught and held. Her dark eyes reflected the candlelight like a deep, shimmering stream in the first rays of morning.
Funny that he’d never noticed how wide and luminous her eyes were until now, Brooks mused.
“Dearly beloved…” the tall, lanky preacher’s baritone voice filled the chapel. “In the sight of God and this company…”
Brooks adjusted the shoulders and front of his black broadcloth frock coat and tried to focus on the preacher’s words. Missy fidgeted once more, and his attention became riveted upon her.
Was she nervous?
Naw. The answer came quickly into his head. Missy O’Bannion was as steady a woman as ever walked God’s earth. But if she wasn’t nervous, then why was her softly rounded bosom rising and falling so rapidly inside the sateen bodice?
He frowned at her in speculation. Then, as if she felt his attention on her, she looked at him again. Her eyes were darker than bottomless pools, and for a moment he felt himself drowning in their depths. She wore an expression so poignant that he nearly reached out and touched her.
He shook himself and looked back toward the preacher. He shouldn’t give a hoot in hell about how she felt. If she was frightened it was poetic justice. She had given him undiluted misery this past year. It would serve her right if she was stewing in her own juices.
No, he didn’t care how she felt. He couldn’t give a tinker’s damn about Missy’s feelings—or any woman’s, for that matter. Life in the Territory had let him see that a lone wolf survived as well as one with a mate.
That was what he wanted now—to remain alone. A lone wolf, free, unattached and pleasantly sane. None of this madness called love for him, thank you. Brooks intended to remain a bachelor, like Clell. Clell was a man who knew what was what. He had helped Brooks learn to rope and ride and how to laugh at Missy’s sharp barbs.
“Trace Liam O’Bannion…” The clergyman’s deep voice gained volume. “Do you…”
The nearest group of candles flickered. Trace leaned over and gave Bellami a little peck on the cheek, quite improper when he was taking his vows, but the kind of thing that Brooks had grown to expect in this half-tamed place. Here men made their own rules to live by. Now that he had become accustomed to it, he liked it.
Missy shifted on her feet and Brooks glanced at her again. She was smiling. It was an angel’s smile, full of love and innocence. Something hot and liquid coursed through his veins while he watched her face.
“Bellami Irene James, do you take…”
The image of Violet Ashland flitted unbidden into Brooks’s head. The memory of that cold, elegant woman filled his mind. Then he glanced at Missy. Where Violet had been cold, Missy ran red-hot.
“And her hot tongue will sear flesh, as well,” he whispered to himself.
Brooks caught himself smiling at the memory of Missy’s frequent outbursts and his determination to prove himself. If he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit that he had come to enjoy their verbal sparring. His taste in women had changed, or maybe he had changed in the rowdy environment of the Territory. One thing for certain, Brooks was not the same man he had been when he’d stepped off the train. Besides, if the time came that he wanted to settle down—and he wasn’t thinking that it would—but if it did, then Missy would be here. He cast a furtive glance at her.
Yep, he could count on Missy O’Bannion to be constant and unchanging. She would always be Missy and she would always be tied to the Circle B Ranch.
It was a comforting thought, and one that Brooks tucked away in the corner of his mind for safekeeping.
“The ring, if you please…” The minister’s voice snapped Brooks back to attention. He forced himself to quit woolgathering. He pulled the ring, from the watch pocket of his brocade vest and gave it to Trace.
Bellami handed her spray of flowers to Missy and allowed Trace to claim her hand. Work-roughened fingers held hers within a protective grasp. In a few more years Brooks’s hands would be as rough. He thought of his old life in New York—the champagne suppers, buggy rides through the park and trips to the athletic club. He glanced back at his parents, sitting side by side in the nearest pew. Brooks grinned. He had withstood Miss Hell-for-leather O’Bannion. He turned back around in time to see Trace slip the ring on his sister’s finger. A smile still curled Brooks’s lips. He couldn’t think of anything or anybody that would force him to return to New York City—not ever again.
Chapter Two (#ulink_3fedfb98-a251-54f3-8ad1-768e19c1b248)
A side of prime Circle B beef sizzled on an iron spit over a glowing pile of coals several yards from the ranch house veranda. A coyote howled somewhere off in the twilight and a mournful answer echoed. The smell of burning mesquite wood filled the air. As Clell swabbed spicy chili sauce on the beef, some of the thick concoction dribbled onto the embers. Flames shot upward, as they would inside of everyone’s bellies after a taste of Clell’s secret sauce.
Missy’s heart was beating hard with happiness and excitement. Clinging to the railing, she lingered on the veranda, content to observe the crowd. Firelight reflected off rows of silver conchas running down the legs of the black calzoneras worn by the mariachi singers as they got in position to serenade the newlyweds.
Bellami’s cheeks flushed crimson as Trace softly translated their melodic Spanish. Then, as the fiddle players joined the mariachis, Bellami and Trace waltzed for the first time as man and wife.
It was almost painful for Missy to witness so much happiness. The persistent lump she had been choking on all day came again. She fought back tears of joy and laughed at Trace’s mock awkwardness when the fiddles abruptly quickened and he was forced to dance a Highland jig.
Nobody could out-celebrate a cowboy, she thought. Fast-moving boot heels clicked on the wood in quick rhythm. Missy laughed out loud when Lupe joined in and lifted her skirt to reveal slender brown ankles and layers of snowy white petticoats. She executed a series of lightning quick and intricate steps. Her movements flowed with such grace and speed that it was hard for Missy to believe the Circle B cook was nearing sixty years old. Her dark eyes flashed with Spanish fire as the mariachis played faster and faster to match her feet.
Without warning the tempo changed. Strains of two additional fiddles blended with the romantic Spanish guitar.
Another waltz for the married couple.
Trace kissed Bellami and pulled her close, and they began to float around the dance floor in a way that made Missy’s heart catch. A part of her hungered to be in the middle of the swirling, twirling couples, but her awkwardness kept her in the shadows at the edge of the veranda.
Bellami had shown Missy how to wear the complicated frippery of a lady, but she still did not feel like one. She clapped her hands to the brisk tempo while she watched other girls from nearby ranches being swept onto the dance floor by one handsome cowhand after another. Her one consolation was that she was in no danger of making a fool of herself while she was hidden alone in the shadows.
“Grab a partner,” Hugh bellowed. “Everybody dance! I don’t want to see anybody sitting this one out.”
“Boo.” Brooks’s voice jarred Missy. “Penny for your thoughts, little lady.”
She whirled to find him standing no more than six inches from her. His black string tie and long-tailed coat had been discarded. The white shirt was unbuttoned halfway down. An errant breeze ruffled the hair on his hard, muscled chest.
“And just when I was enjoyin’ a private moment,” she snapped, pulling her gaze from his torso.
He eyed her with cool detachment and picked a bud from the rose of Sharon that grew in abundance by the veranda. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were hiding up here away from the dance floor, Miss O’Bannion.” That mysterious half smile tickled his lips beneath the full mustache. His eyes twinkled mischievously in the firelight as he sniffed the blossom.
“I ain’t doin’ no such thing. What a fool notion.” She turned back toward the dancers and started clapping again, but the toe-tapping music had changed. Now everyone was twirling in another slow, seductive waltz. She had been so caught up in her talk with Brooks that she hadn’t even noticed. Her cheeks burned with inner heat and she brought her palms together awkwardly, not really sure what to do with her hands.
“Care to try?” Brooks asked with an amused chuckle.
“Try what?” Missy knew exactly what he was asking, but she’d sooner take a polecat for a walk than let Brooks James know she couldn’t dance. She looked back at the dance floor, staring determinedly at the laughing couples, trying to ignore the knot that had taken up residence in her middle.
He stepped closer and leaned near her ear. His warm breath carried the faint trace of whiskey—and danger. “Would you care to dance—with me?”
Missy whirled to face him once more. She summoned her voice, but the refusal that had been in her mind died in the back of her throat when she encountered his charming smile.
The night breeze lifted strands of his silky dark hair. Silvery moonlight and the amber glow from the bonfire made his eyes a most peculiar shade of blue.
Missy couldn’t describe it, or what looking into his eyes was doing to her insides. It appeared, for one heartlurching moment, that his eyes glowed with an inner fire like lightning playing on the horns of cattle in the midst of a storm.
Goll-dang, if he isn’t a handsome cuss.
She swallowed hard. Her heart beat against her rib cage like a gloved fist. “I—uh, that is…”
“You can dance, can’t you?” One winged brow rose in silent challenge. Then he raised his hand and deftly slipped the rose bloom behind her ear, tucking a thick lock of hair in place over it.
The heat of a blush raced up her cheeks. Her first inclination was to turn tail and run. She couldn’t dance, but she had gotten to know Mr. Smart-jackass James well enough to know he would require her to prove it. That was a humiliation she would just as soon spare herself, if you please.
“I—I—” she stammered while visions of public indignity raced through her mind.
One side of his mustache lifted. “I believe I will take that as a yes, Miss O’Bannion.” He slipped his arm around her waist and drew her close to his rock-hard body before she had a chance to flee.
Panic welled up inside her, but it was soon overwhelmed by the stunning impact of the way it felt to have his arm about her. A tiny voice in her head said Dig in your heels and run while there is time, but she didn’t listen, she just let him clamp her against his body and pull her off the veranda.
“You know, Miss O’Bannion—” his grin widened “—back home I was considered to be quite a good dancer.”
“Yeah, well, what do a bunch of Easterners know about anythin’?” she answered defensively, raising her chin a notch higher.
He laughed deep and low in his chest. He liked this easy, teasing banter; he liked Missy and the tug-of-war that went on between them. It was much more pleasant than getting all tangled up romantically. He looked at her face, sweetly flushed with lips that were soft and kissable, and he realized this was what he wanted. He wanted to stay in the Territory where he was safe from having to make any permanent commitments and decisions. He was content to stay where he could tease Missy and know that she was always there, day in and day out. She had no suitors hanging around, so he had a clear field. It was the best possible situation for a man who had no desire to settle down.
Missy blinked back her confusion while tingling heat meandered into her limbs from the spot on her back where Brooks’s hand rested. She was afraid her knees would buckle, afraid she’d get all tangled up in the dress, fearful she would make a fool of herself, and sure Brooks would take an inordinate amount of pleasure in whatever indignity befell her. But to her surprise, he started talking to her in low soothing tones, as if she was a skittish filly he was determined to gentle. His voice was smoother than Clell’s twelve-year-old whiskey and as hypnotic as a ripe summer moon.
“Put yourself in my hands, little lady. I promise I won’t step on your toes.” His deep voice vibrated through her rib cage, where he held her tightly against his body. “At least not too often.” His rumbling laughter drew her eyes to his face.
“And what happens if I step on yours?” Missy managed to ask as her foot touched the first pine board. “You won’t think your little joke is so funny then, will you, Brooks?”
The mocking grin faded from his face. “I hope I am tough enough and man enough to take whatever comes of this dance, Missy.” He stared at her, unblinking, while her heart hammered in her chest. “Now and in the future.”
His words hung before them like a spider’s silken web. Then he laughed again and broke the enchantment. “Now wipe that frown off your pretty little face and act like you’re having fun. Trace and Bellami will wonder what I’m doing to you if you keep scowling like that.”
Missy swallowed hard.
Telling her that she was pretty was just about the nicest thing Brooks had ever said to her. How in tarnation could a man like him think a girl who wore chaps and boots was pretty?
He had been everywhere, seen everything.
