Four
“What’re you doin’ in here?”
At the sound of Brig’s voice, Cassidy nearly dropped the comb that she was dragging through Remmington’s knotted mane. The colt snorted, rolling his eyes as he tossed his head.
“What does it look like?” she asked, feeling heat sear up her cheeks. She glanced over her shoulder and stared into eyes that seemed to smolder in the half-light of the stable.
“Botherin’ the horse.”
“He needs to be groomed,” she replied tartly, then winced when she recognized the sound of a spoiled little rich girl’s voice. Her voice. “I, uh, thought it would be a good idea.”
“I thought you didn’t want a show pony.”
“I don’t.”
“But you think he gives a good goddamn whether his mane and tail lay straight?” He snorted and shook his head. “Hell, all he cares about is throwin’ you out of the saddle, tryin’ to take a nip out of my arm, and mountin’ those mares up in the south paddock. You should see him show off for the ladies.” His smile was crooked and cynical, his voice low with a sexy drawl. “Kinda reminds me of Jed Baker and Bobby Alonzo anytime your sister’s around.” With a knowing grin, Brig climbed up the metal rungs of the ladder to the hayloft. Within seconds bales of hay tumbled to the concrete floor.
Cassidy didn’t want to be reminded of her half sister. For nearly two weeks she’d remembered Angie and Felicity’s conversation by the pool, and she’d watched as Angie had set her plan into motion. It bothered her how Angie had begun hanging around the stable, talking and smiling at Brig as he worked, laughing with him, turning on the charm. Cassidy wanted to believe that Brig was just being polite to the boss’s daughter, but it was more than that. He, like every other male in Prosperity, responded to Angie. Male to female. It wouldn’t take long before he and she were making out and…the image of their two bodies, slick with sweat, panting and heaving, flitted through Cassidy’s mind.
A sour taste rose in the back of her throat.
Brig didn’t bother with the ladder, just swung down from the haymow and landed lightly on his booted feet.
“What about you?” she asked as he pulled out a pocket knife, leaned over and slit the twine that held the bale together.
“What about me what?”
“The way you act around Angie.”
He snorted as he stepped over another bale and sliced through the twine. The bale split, sending up a tiny cloud of dust. “I don’t ‘act’ around anyone, Cass. You should know that by now.”
It rankled her how he shortened her name. Like she was just one of the hands. Or a kid. “Sure you do. Every guy does.”
“Well, I’m not just like every guy, am I?” He clucked his tongue and, straddling the broken bale, stared up at her. His gaze touched hers and held, causing the back of her mouth to turn to dust. His slow-spreading smile was downright nasty. “You think I’ve got the hots for your sister?”
“I didn’t say—”
“But that’s what you meant.” Making a sound of disgust in his throat, he clicked his knife shut. “Women,” he muttered under his breath as he grabbed a pitchfork hanging on the wall and began pronging hay into the mangers.
Dropping the currycomb and brush into a bucket, she climbed over the top of the stall gate as Remmington began picking at the hay Brig had shaken into his stall. Brig didn’t stop working, just kept forking split bale after split bale into the open mangers. Cassidy watched him walk—saunter, really, along the row of feeding bins. She noticed the way his thighs and butt tightened beneath his sun-bleached Levi’s as he stopped, bent over, cut the twine, then tossed hay into the stalls. A restless man, he never seemed to stop moving, and her heart fluttered stupidly whenever he looked her way. Not that he did very often.
She waited, hanging around until he was finished and walked back to the door. “All done with him?” Brig asked, nodding toward Remmington’s stall as he hung the pitchfork on its hook. “No bows or ribbons?”
Anger surged through her, but she managed to hang on to her temper. “Not today. Maybe Sunday.”
He laughed as they stepped outside, where the summer sun was hanging lazily over the ridge of mountains to the west, and yellow jackets and wasps hovered at the spilled water near the trough. The day was without a breath of wind, and Cassidy’s clothes felt sticky and damp from the heat.
“You should be able to ride your horse soon,” Brig said as he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. “I think I told you before, I like to take it slow.”
“Slow?”
“So as not to break his spirit.” Shaking out a Camel, he eyed the lowering sun, then jabbed the cigarette into the corner of his mouth.
“I want to ride him now.”
Striking a match on the bottom of his boot, he said, “Be patient.”
“He’s mine.”
“Haven’t you heard that patience is a virtue?” With a half-smile, he lit up and stared at her through the thin veil of smoke. “Or is that the problem—that you’re not into being virtuous?”
Again his eyes held hers and she felt her stomach turn over. “I just want to ride my horse.”
“It’ll happen. In time.”
“I can’t wait forever.”
“Two weeks isn’t forever.” He sighed heavily and plucked a piece of tobacco from his tongue. “You know, Cass, the best things in life are worth waiting for. At least that’s what my old man used to say before he took off. I never knew him, but Chase, he did, and he keeps spouting off these words of wisdom from a guy who decided he didn’t want to stick around and take care of his kids and wife.” He frowned as he drew hard on his cigarette, and lines etched between his black eyebrows. He stared at a solitary fir tree in a corner of the paddock, but Cassidy suspected he was miles away, thinking back to a childhood filled with poverty and pain. “Personally, I think anything Frank McKenzie said was a pile of shit, but Chase, he seems to think our father was God.” He chuckled without a trace of mirth. “Chase, he’s the optimist. Has an idea that someday he’ll be rich as your old man. Own himself a house bigger than yours. Can you imagine?”
“Why not?” Cassidy said.
He turned to face her again, and this time there was no light in his eyes. He dropped his cigarette and squashed the butt with the heel of his boot. “Because there’s a system. The haves and the have-nots. Chase just hasn’t figured out where he stands. He’s a dreamer.”
“And you’re not?”
“It’s a waste of time, Cass.” His lips were thin and harsh. “Well, break’s over,” he said, as if suddenly realizing he was talking to the boss’s daughter. “Time to get back to work.”
“Everybody dreams.”
“Only fools.”
She couldn’t help herself. She reached out, grabbing his arm as if to keep him from stepping away from her. He glanced at her hand, then slowly lifted his head until his gaze touched hers. “You…you must have dreams,” she said, unable to let go of the conversation, the intimacy, the feeling of dark want that had started to unwind deep in the very center of her.
His lips curled cynically. “Believe me, you don’t want to know about the kind of dreams I have.” His voice was barely a whisper.
Cassidy licked her lips. “I do. I want to know.”
“Oh, Cass, give it up.” Slowly he peeled her fingers from his arm, but his gaze still held hers, and for the first time she saw a glimmer of something—some deep emotion he hid—a flicker of desire in his dusky blue eyes. “Believe me, the less you know about me, the better.”
Every muscle in Brig’s body ached from five hours of stretching fence line and two hours of shoveling manure from the broodmare barn. He smelled bad, felt worse, and couldn’t wait to get off work, though he looked forward to working with Cassidy’s feisty colt. Remmington was ornery and mean, but was slowly coming around. In another week he’d be tame enough for Rex Buchanan’s mule-headed daughter to ride. Then maybe she’d quit bugging him. Not that he minded all that much, but she was just a kid, barely sixteen, a tomboy who didn’t know that she was becoming a woman. Gritting his teeth, he remembered the heat he’d felt in her fingertips when she’d touched him the other day, when he’d witnessed a shimmer of passion in her gold eyes. Funny, he’d never really looked into her eyes before, never realized that a spattering of freckles across a girl’s nose could be sexy. For the love of Christ, what was he thinking? She was the boss’s daughter. And only sixteen. Problem was he was horny as hell. Needed to get laid. Then he’d quit thinking about her.
Sure. Since when do you ever quit thinking about a woman? He’d been cursed from the age of fourteen, wanting sex all the time.
He took a break and lit up, drawing hard on his smoke and resting his shoulders against the rough bark of a single fir tree near the stable. He glanced up at the Buchanan house and snorted. A family of five, living like goddamned royalty in a mansion big enough for fifty.
“Well, fancy meeting you out here,” a soft female voice intoned. Brig didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that Angie had found him again. Third time this week. She was gorgeous, he’d give her that, prettier than her little sister, but big trouble.
Still propped against the tree, he rotated and found her squinting up at him with those incredible blue eyes. Her white shorts rode high on her thighs, barely covering her crotch, and her breasts were squeezed into the top of a black two-piece swimming suit a couple of sizes too small.
“Somethin’ I can do for you?” he drawled, dragging hard on his Camel.
The tip of her tongue flicked against her lips. “I could think of a lot of things.” Her eyes twinkled with a naughty, you-can’t-believe-what-you’re-missing look. She tilted her head to one side and her black ponytail fell forward, the tip curling on the swell of one breast. “But right now Dena needs someone to bring up a ladder to the main house. There’s a few bulbs out in the chandelier.”
“You want me to bring in a ladder?” He nearly laughed because it seemed like such a lame excuse to make conversation with him.
She smiled. “Not me. My stepmother. And it doesn’t matter if it’s you or someone else. You’re just the first hand I saw.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and glanced at his boots, covered with dirt and dung from the barn. “You might want to take those off before you go inside. Dena’s a stickler for keeping things tidy.” With a wink, she turned and strutted away, her hips swaying in perfect rhythm to the bob of her ponytail and the swing of her arms.
He found a tall stepladder in the garage and kicked off his boots before he climbed up the stairs of the back porch. Carefully he finagled the ladder through the kitchen and into the foyer, where a crystal and brass chandelier hung some fifteen feet above the polished marble floor.
Dena was fretting. Company was coming over and a few bulbs were dim or had flickered out altogether. “I don’t know how this could have happened,” Dena said, little lines of irritation forming around the corners of her mouth. “The cleaning service should have told me.” She glanced at Brig and there was a faint flaring of her nostrils, the hint of disdain in her cool eyes as she slid her gaze down his body to land on his socks and the holes in the dingy white cotton.
Brig didn’t let her snobbery affect him as he set up the ladder. Dena Miller came from poor roots herself, though she didn’t have a Gypsy or a Native American in her bloodlines as far as he knew. But she’d been the daughter of a farmer and a seamstress and had put herself through business college. After graduation, she’d taken a job with Buchanan Logging and had been Rex’s personal secretary for years. When Rex’s adored first wife had died, Dena had been around to pick up the pieces of Rex Buchanan’s shattered life. The old man had been a shambles. Dena had seen her opportunity and gone for it. They were married less than a year after Lucretia Buchanan had been buried, and barely eight months later, Cassidy had been born. Dena Miller had seen plenty of tattered socks in her life.
He changed the bulbs and was conscious of the women watching him. Dena with hardly suppressed contempt, Angie with interest, and Cassidy, who thought she was hidden on the second-floor landing, with curiosity. She’d been avoiding him for a couple of days, ever since their conversation near the stable and now, as he finished screwing in the final bulb, he tilted back his head, caught her surprised gaze and winked at her.
She swallowed hard, and though she looked as startled as a rabbit caught in the beams of headlights at night, she held his stare, refusing to ease back into the shadows.
She had pluck, he’d give her that.
He dropped back to the ground and snapped the ladder together. Angie, probably just to bother her stepmother, laid her hand on his arm. “Thanks,” she said with a soft smile. “Maybe we should repay you with a cold drink. Coke? Or if you want something stronger, my dad keeps a stash of Coors in the refrigerator.”
“Mr. McKenzie’s still working.”
He felt rather than saw Dena stiffen, but her words were meant to make him understand his station. He offered Angie a grin. “I think I’ll pass. Work to do,” he drawled, then glanced back at Dena. “Maybe I’ll take a rain check.”
Angie lifted an elegant eyebrow. “And I’ll hold you to it,” she said, touching the tip of her finger to the front of his shirt. Beneath the cotton his skin seemed to ignite by the gentle pressure of her flesh, so close to his. He wondered if Cassidy saw the display, decided he didn’t care and carried the ladder out the back door. He couldn’t help but notice the sleek Corvette parked near the garage. The car’s red exterior looked liquid in the afternoon light, and two boys, Bobby Alonzo and Jed Baker, leaned against a fender, ankles crossed, butts propped on the shiny paint job, arms folded over their chests.
Brig didn’t pay them any mind. Just slid into his boots and carried the ladder back to the garage. He heard quick little footsteps as Angie caught up with him. She slid her arm through his while he balanced the ladder on his opposite shoulder. “Thanks again,” she said.
“No problem.”
“Oh, it was a big problem. A catastrophe, really. Almost as critical as running out of matching silver or driving a car with mud splattered near the tires.” She rolled her eyes. “With Dena it’s always one disaster after another.”
“Looks like you’ve got company.”
She slid a glance toward the shiny car and the two boys staring at her. “Wonderful,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Thought they were your friends.”
She sighed. “Immature spoiled little boys,” she said as Jed pushed his body from the car and waved at her. “Do you know what? They actually have a bet.” Her pretty lips pulled into a scornful little knot and she didn’t bother waving back.
“On what?”
“Well, that’s the interesting part.” She angled her head toward him and her eyes held his. “On which one of them will be the first to sleep with me.”
“They told you?”
“Bobby did.” She showed off a dimple. “I think he did it so that I would be too disgusted to do it with Jed. Can you imagine?”
Brig snorted as if he didn’t care. “So who’ll it be?”
“Neither one,” she said with a toss of that glossy ponytail. “They don’t seem to realize that when it comes time, I’ll do the choosing. And it won’t be with a couple of snot-nosed little boys who only think about sex, football, and cars. Do you know they’re so crude that they actually call a woman’s breasts headlights? Headlights!” She snorted in revulsion. “Little boys.” Reluctantly she slid her hand away from his, her fingertips brushing the inside of his arm. “See ya,” she said, with a flirty little wave of her fingers.
Brig watched as she slipped away from him and he had the distinct feeling that he should be relieved to see her go, but he was male enough to appreciate the swing of her hips, the curve of her calves, the nip of her waist, as well as the fleshy tops of her breasts that jiggled as she turned and smiled at him one last time. Headlights, eh? Well, she certainly had hers on high beam all the time. He didn’t understand the game she was playing or why she was determined to make him a part of it, but he guessed that she wanted to tease him, a rich little girl used to male adoration. Look what I’ve got and you can’t have because you’re from the wrong side of the tracks.
Who needed it?
His brother, Chase, maybe. Chase liked money. And women. Rich women.
But then, Chase was an idiot. A good-hearted idiot who worked his butt off to better himself and take care of the family. Brig grimaced. If it weren’t for Chase, Brig would have sole care of their mother and he wasn’t much good at it. Never had been one to express his emotions.
Angie strolled up to Jed and Bobby. Brig couldn’t hear their conversation, but he didn’t need to. Angie, for all her big talk about not being interested in the “little boys,” was showing off. She laughed and whispered with Jed, letting him touch her waist as she turned back to see if Brig was still watching.
He wasn’t in the mood. There was a part of him that was interested in Angie—any man would be. But another side of him knew she was the worst kind of trouble a man could find, and that if he were smart, he’d stay away from her. She was too damned manipulative and she was playing Jed and Bobby like they were violins. Those boys were suckered in so badly they were nearly drooling and Angie was eating it up. Like a two-year-old with a forbidden bowl of ice cream.
He hung the ladder on its pegs. He heard the roar of a powerful engine, then the tinkling sound of Angie’s laughter. Through the dusty window he watched them leave, Jed behind the wheel, Angie wedged between the two boys. She was laughing gaily, one arm slung around Bobby’s neck, the other around Jed’s shoulders.
Brig walked out of the garage and nearly stumbled over Willie Ventura, who was peering through the lacey branches of a row of arborvitae planted as a hedge between the house and garage.
“Angie—” Willie said, his lips moving, as he stared after the car.
“What about her?”
Willie visibly jumped and he looked at Brig as if he expected to be beaten. Swallowing hard, eyes darting away from Brig’s intense stare, Willie trembled. “She…she gone.”
“Yeah, with those two creeps. I know.”
Willie’s eyes quit moving so frantically. “You don’t like Bobby?”
“Don’t really know him. Don’t want to.”
“He’s bad.”
“Is he?” Brig wasn’t really interested, but he kept the conversation going just because he thought Willie wanted to talk and that in and of itself was a breakthrough. Willie didn’t speak much and usually avoided Brig.
Willie stared after the car. “Trouble.”
“That’s what you said about me when I first came.”
Nodding, Willie watched the car roll out of sight. He didn’t move until the dust kicked up by the Corvette’s wide tires had settled back on the lane. “You’re trouble, too,” he said and sniffed. “But different.” He glanced at Brig, seemed suddenly embarrassed, then found the riding mower. “Got to work.”
“Yeah, you and me both.”
Cassidy was bored. Her best friend, Elizabeth Tucker, was still away at camp, and she’d already spent more time than she wanted to in town with her mother. Dena, deciding that Cassidy needed to get away from the house and stable, had taken her into Portland, where they’d driven all over the city, poking around antique stores in Sellwood, nosing through shops downtown, and dropping into one store after another. They ate lunch in the dining room of the Hotel Danvers, then joined rush hour traffic for the drive home.
Now, hours later, Cassidy had the start of a headache. She felt sticky and tired and wished she could climb onto Remmington’s broad back, take off over the fields and ride the trails of the foothills to Bottleneck Canyon, where a pool formed in the Clackamas River and she could strip off her clothes and dive into the clear cool depths.
She could ride another horse, she supposed, but it wouldn’t be the same. The sun was setting over the western hills, long shadows stretching over the valley floor. Near the stable, half-grown foals scampered in a herd of mares, who busied themselves by switching flies away with their tails.
Most everyone had gone for the day; it was Friday and her mother and father had driven back to Portland for dinner and a play, Derrick was with Felicity and most of the hands had gone home. Except for Brig. He was still in a single paddock, astride Remmington, trying to get the stubborn colt to obey him. And Willie was probably lurking around somewhere, though she hadn’t seen him all afternoon.
Cassidy walked up to the fence and climbed onto the top rail. Brig glanced up at the sight of her, nodded a quick greeting, then ignored the fact that she was staring at him.
He clucked his tongue and the horse responded, trotting forward for a second before he stopped dead in his tracks, legs stiff.
“Move it, you miserable piece of horseflesh.”
Muscles quivered beneath Remmington’s dusty sorrel coat. The colt’s ears flicked and his eyes rolled.
“Don’t even think about it,” Brig warned.
Too late. Remmington grabbed the bit between his teeth, bowed his long neck and kicked up his heels. Dust flew. Birds scattered. Cassidy’s stomach clenched. The horse snorted angrily as he bucked across the dry ground. Brig, swearing, muscles straining, held on.
Cassidy watched in fascination.
Remmington whirled and raced from one end of the paddock to the other. Brig held on tightly to the reins. Near the fence, under a lone cedar tree, the colt reared, tossing his giant head, and Brig’s thighs clamped tight. The colt bucked forward again. Brig ducked.
Cassidy’s fingers curled over the top rail as man and beast pitted will against will.
With a whistle of protest, Remmington bolted forward, stopped, then shot straight into the air. Brig hung on like a burr. Again the colt ran the length of the fence line, a lather worked into his gorgeous coat, sweat staining the back of Brig’s shirt and running down his face. “Go ahead, try and throw me, you miserable son of a bitch,” Brig growled and the horse threw back his head and stood stock-still.
Cassidy held her breath. The dust settled. Flies droned again. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Brig seemed to have won and that was good—she’d be able to ride her horse again soon. But would he be the same fiery colt she adored or just another mindless piece of horseflesh with a broken spirit? That thought settled like lead in the pit of her stomach.
“That’s better,” Brig said, relaxing and patting Remmington’s red neck.
“Is it?”
“Hey, don’t say anything, okay? We’re working here.”
Anger coursing through her blood, Cassidy jumped into the paddock. “I don’t want him to act like some wimpy—”
“Get out of here,” Brig ordered in an even tone meant to keep the horse calm. “What’re you trying to do, get me fired?”
“From what I hear, you do a pretty good job of that yourself!”
“For the love of Jesus, leave, Cassidy. I’ve got a job to do and it’s not safe while I’m working with him. Who knows what he’ll do!”
She kept striding to the horse. “You can’t order me around!” Noticing the lackluster look in Remmington’s usually flashing eyes, she felt a horrible sense of disappointment. “Get off him!”
“Not yet, Cass—” He twisted in the saddle to see her more clearly. His mouth turned down at the corners.
“He’s my horse and I said—”
A flash of red hide swirled before her. Remmington, sensing his enemy had been distracted, reared high into the air, forelegs pawing, his whole body shuddering, and Brig, still twisted in the saddle, tried to keep his balance, but it was too late. The colt landed on his front feet, kicked up his rear legs, and Brig went flying, soaring through the air to land with a sickening thud on the cracked earth near a pile of manure. “Son of a bitch!”
So he wasn’t hurt. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean—”
“Get out of here!” Brig roared at Cassidy, but she was swallowing a smile.
“Guess you’re not finished with him yet, are you?”
Springing to his feet, Brig dusted his jeans and glared at the colt. “Leave us to our business, Cass.”
“Give it up, McKenzie.”
“Never.” The fire in his blue eyes was as bright as the flame in Remmington’s.
With a victorious squeal, Remmington spun and started running along the fence line, heading straight for her.
“Cassidy! Get out of the way!” Brig lunged forward. “Oh, shit—”
She jumped onto the fence as the horse barreled past, his body brushing against her so hard that she lost her grip and fell back to the ground. Pain fired through her shoulder.
“For the love of Christ!”
She started to get back onto her feet, but Brig was at her side, and before she could say anything, he’d swung her into his arms and walked her to the gate, which he shoved open with a knee. Anger lined his dusty face, sweat dampened his hair, grime and dirt streaked his arms, and the cords in his neck bulged with fury.
Kicking the gate closed, he plopped her onto the ground. “Don’t you ever—”
“You can’t lecture me!” she said, cutting him off and wincing as she moved her arm. “This is my property and you’re working with my horse.”
“And you could have got yourself killed, trampled, knocked unconscious or all three.”
“No way, I—”
“Bullshit!” His nostrils flared and he sniffed loudly. “Worse yet, you could have done the same to me.” Pointing a stiff, determined finger at her breastbone, he added, “You stay away from me when I’m working with that damned colt!”
“Don’t you ever tell me what to do.”
Eyes locked and Cassidy could barely breathe. He reached upward, grabbed the chain around her neck and the St. Christopher’s medal that was hidden in her shirt. Yanking slightly, he slid his fingers down the links so that the flat metal piece slipped into his palm, then he held it tight, pulling her face to within inches of his so that she could smell his angry smoke-laced breath and see the pores of his skin. For the first time she noticed that his intense blue eyes were flecked with tiny streaks of gray. “I’ve got a job to do, Princess,” he growled, “and you can play high-and-mighty all you want, but if you get in my way, you could get hurt.”
Her heart was thudding so loudly she was certain he and the rest of the county could hear it. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Wouldn’t be smart.” His lips barely moved.
She inched her chin up a notch. “I’m old enough to make my own decisions.”
“You’re playing with fire, Cass.”
“Meaning?”
“Just stay away from me.”
“Why?”
“I need to concentrate. I can’t do it when I have to worry about some candy-assed little girl getting in my way.”
“I’m not—”
“Leave.” He dropped the chain suddenly and she nearly fell over, then he stalked toward the horse. His muscles were bunched and he looked as if he could strangle the colt. “Okay, you ornery bastard,” he growled. “Let’s try it again.”