Jodi Thomas - WM 1 Page 4

  He released her hand. “I’m sorry to have detained you,” he said, touching his hat in polite salute. “I thank you for saving me.”

  He removed his hat, and she noticed dark hair a bit longer than most, a straight nose, high cheekbones, and brown eyes that stared with a coldness she found frightening. Maybe this man had been in no danger.

  “I’m Travis McMurray.” He offered the hand that had just been restraining her a moment before.

  Rainey tried to remember the name she’d been using of late. “Molly,” she blurted. “Molly . . .” She tried to think. It was something Irish, but what?

  “Give it time.” Laughter flavored his words. “It’ll come to you, kinda like that accent of yours tends to.”

  She straightened her back, trying to look taller—trying to control her anger. He’d noticed. She couldn’t help but wonder what else the man had noticed about her and her business. If there was one thing she hated above all else it was people not minding their own business. No matter how good he felt, she could do without his prying.

  Taking a step toward the barn, she glanced back and said without any accent at all, “And to think, I wasted a good kiss saving your life. I should have let the men bash your head in, for they’d surely find no brain to inhibit their progress.”

  He had the nerve to fall into step with her as if he’d been invited. The man truly had no sense of danger. They were almost to the barn before he spoke in a voice so calm it surprised her. “Will you dance with me, Molly, or did you just come to steal a horse?”

  Suddenly too many people were near. She couldn’t risk arguing with him. So she lifted her head and took his hand. “I did no such thing,” she lied as he pulled her close. “I came to dance.”

  He winked at her. “Sure you did, Molly,” he whispered near her ear as he pulled her into the crowd of dancers.

  This time the warmth of his touch felt familiar, and she allowed herself a moment to enjoy it knowing that when the dance was over she’d be forcing it deep into her memory. His hand spread solid and strong across her back, warming her skin through layers of fabric. When he turned to face her, she fought the urge to rise to her tiptoes and kiss him.

  Rainey laughed at herself. Even being near him was like juggling fire. Yet she realized that if this were another time, another place, Travis could be a man she’d find worth knowing. But for the moment she could pretend she didn’t have to disappear in a few hours and she had the time to dance.

  A few minutes later she decided that if Travis McMurray had ever had a dance lesson, he should demand his money back, as he apologized for stepping on her foot. Either his feet were too big, or her arms too short, because they didn’t seem to go together at all. When he wasn’t bumping into her, they were trying to go opposite directions, looking as if they were in some kind of strange tug-of-war set to music. She decided watching his boots was her only defense as the music played on.

  He was busy apologizing for the third time when the torture finally ended and she looked up. To her surprise, the man of oak was smiling.

  “Where’d you learn to dance?” she asked before thinking.

  “I didn’t,” he answered, “but it didn’t look all that hard.”

  His words were so honest, so true, she had to laugh. His eyes turned warm, and she knew without a doubt that she’d discovered one of very few things in this world that Travis McMurray couldn’t do.

  A pretty girl appeared at the oak’s side. “If you’re going to dance, Brother, you’ll have to dance with me next.”

  Rainey felt his grip on her hand tighten as though he didn’t want to let her go.

  His sister insisted.

  Travis’s fingers squeezed Rainey’s hand once more before stepping away.

  She looked up and saw a promise in his brown eyes. A promise she knew he’d never be able to keep.

  Rainey watched as the young woman in lace and ribbons pulled him away. Though he argued, he gave in. While they tried to dance, Rainey Adams slipped away. She hadn’t come here to dance, or for that matter, to kiss a stranger. She had a mission. It was time to get to work.

  He might suspect her if she took a horse from the line, but Travis McMurray would never know if she borrowed one from the wagons.

  CHAPTER 4

  TRAVIS HANDED SAGE THE BLANKET FROM BENEATH the buckboard seat and climbed up beside her for the ride home. Thin wisps of clouds floated in the night sky, but any threat of rain had vanished.

  She cuddled into the wool and asked, “Now, explain to me how you could possibly give away one of Tobin’s matched bays to a total stranger?”

  “It’s not important.” Travis stared at the pale lines of dirt marking the wagon tracks and hoped the night stayed clear enough to see them until he reached the bridge. From there, he could drive home in total blackness; he knew his ranchland well even after being gone most of ten years.

  Sage would not drop the question. “I’m glad you see it that way, because I promise you, Tobin won’t. He raised the two from colts, training them together from the beginning. You know a matched set like that is worth five times what just two horses would be. And, if I know Tobin, he’s got buyers waiting for them.”

  “Tobin has trained a hundred others exactly like them over the years.” Travis tried to make light of the fact that when he went to get the wagon, one horse had vanished. “You ever figure maybe Little Brother spends too much time with the horses?”

  Sage refused to be distracted. “But how, without saying a word to me about it, could you give away one of the McMurray horses? I could understand if you lost it in a bet, or sold the set. After all, we are in the business of raising and selling horses.”

  Travis didn’t want to talk about it. How could he explain that the first girl, besides his sister, he’d ever danced with had stolen the bay? Or at least he thought it was the green-eyed girl who’d kissed him.

  He didn’t know for a fact that she did it. Maybe someone else decided the best horse at the annual barn dance to take would be the one that belonged to a Texas Ranger. It had to be her, whatever her name was; no one else would have been so brave. Most of the people around here knew the horses belonged to the McMurrays, and no one would ever be fool enough to try and steal anything from a McMurray again.

  As they moved through the night, Travis remembered what it had been like those first weeks after his father died. His mother took to her bed, pregnant and heartbroken. Teagen and Travis must have read their father’s letter a hundred times. Every night they prepared, reloading guns, setting traps. Every morning they rode the land looking for any sign that someone had stepped foot on McMurray property. Tobin had only been six and was wounded in an ambush the first day. He’d looked so tiny propped into a chair on the front porch with a rifle on either side of him. Of the three brothers, he’d been the best shot even then, but his job in those weeks was simple . . . to fire a warning if anyone rode toward the ranch house.

  He’d handled his pain and his mission like a man, leaving his brothers one less thing to worry about while they rode guard and tried to keep their father’s stock alive. The only time Tobin fired was the day their mother gave birth to Sage. Autumn McMurray had been inside the house and hadn’t made a sound during the delivery, then she called Tobin’s name softly and told him to come get the baby.

  Tobin tried to wrap Sage in a blanket, but with his bandaged arm and her wiggling it wasn’t easy. He carried her to the porch and fired one shot in the air. By the time Teagen and Travis rode in, Sage was yelling up a storm and their mother had bled out from childbirth. They kept Sage alive and fat on goat’s milk until Martha arrived. Three weeks after Sage was born, a marshal left word at the trading post, where they picked up supplies, that a housekeeper had arrived and was waiting at the stage station fifty miles south. Travis collected his supplies from the post and hurried home as always. He then rode alone to the south and collected Martha. She went with him without question, as if having a half-grown kid, fully armed, slip into
her room before sunup was nothing unusual in her life. Two days later, when they made it back to the ranch, she’d been shocked at how healthy Sage looked considering three little boys were taking care of her. Martha bonded with the baby at first sight.

  Tobin healed slowly during those early weeks, with a scar that seemed to run straight across his heart. For months he talked little, somehow blaming himself for his mother’s death since he’d been the one with her. Finally he began to work with the horses his father bred so carefully with stock from Kentucky. As the colts were born, so was his mission. Travis couldn’t count the times he’d found Tobin asleep in the barn near a horse about to foal. The funny thing was, the horses seemed to understand Tobin and welcome him among them.

  “He’s going to thump you a good one.” Sage pulled Travis back to the present as she repeated one of Martha’s sayings. “Tobin will never understand.”

  Travis nodded, realizing he’d better think of a better story. In theory a fourth of the horses belonged to him. But he’d never taken more than a fresh mount now and then when he returned home. More often than not, Tobin had one already picked out. He’d say, “This one’s got the heart of a Ranger. He’ll keep up with you.”

  Sage leaned her head against his arm, and Travis hummed softly as she fell asleep. She might be all grown up now, but she hadn’t changed. The only time she wasn’t talking was when she slept. He thought of asking if she enjoyed the dance, but he already knew. He’d seen it in her eyes. She hadn’t met the man who’d win her heart. From the unshed tears he’d seen sparkling in her eyes as they said their good nights to the neighbors, no man had even come close to being right.

  A few hours later Travis carried Sage into the house. His brothers stood, nodding their greetings as he crossed to his little sister’s room and put her to bed as he’d done all her life. He tugged off her shoes and covered her with a blanket before returning to the fire where Teagen and Tobin waited.

  They toasted his homecoming and the two oldest settled in to talk, but Tobin stood. “I’ll put up the horses,” he said, “and be right back, so don’t start telling all of your adventures without me.”

  Travis nodded once, then added, “I loaned out one of the bays. I’ll get him back tomorrow.”

  Tobin left without asking more.

  Travis knew the explanation was sketchy, but it was all he could think to say and still be telling the truth.

  When Tobin left, Teagen offered his brother a cigar, and they lit up with a shared smile. Even though they were in their twenties, they still listened for Martha’s steps. The woman could smell cigar smoke from three rooms away.

  “How was the dance?” Teagen asked in his straightforward way.

  “Not bad,” Travis answered. “Saw Mrs. Dickerson. I think she’s hoping to get married again and give up teaching.”

  Teagen nodded.

  “Elmo Anderson told me to tell you that new saddle you ordered should be in by tomorrow or the next day.”

  The older brother nodded again. “You coming home to stay this time?” He’d asked the same question for almost ten years. For Teagen there would never be anything but the ranch. For Tobin it was horses. Neither seemed to understand that for Travis it would always be the open land, the roaming. He loved them all, but Travis knew he was born to travel. If it hadn’t been the Rangers, it would have been the army, or something else. He needed the sky for a roof and the horizon for walls.

  “What did I miss?” Tobin said from the doorway.

  The brothers pulled their chairs in a circle by the fire, and Travis told them of his adventures while they related everything that had happened at the ranch. Finally, long after midnight, the talk turned to Sage and how much they’d all miss her if she married.

  Teagen suddenly laughed. “We sound like a bunch of old maids.”

  Tobin shrugged. “We are. Sage is our only hope of having a next generation. There’s not a woman in Texas who’d marry any one of us.”

  Teagen leaned back in his chair. “True,” he said matter-of-factly. “Martha says piss and vinegar must run in our blood to make us so mean. I’m the oldest, I’m already hard-boiled, but Tobin, you’re still young. You could marry.”

  “I’m almost twenty-four. An old man, so stop talking about me like I’m still growing.”

  Travis looked at Teagen but pointed to Tobin. “He’d have to talk to a girl if he married her. Unless we can find one who looks like a horse, I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

  Tobin almost knocked Travis out of his chair with a playful blow.

  They were still laughing when they climbed the stairs to the men’s quarters. Three rooms, all exactly alike. Travis waved good night as he closed his door and fell into bed. He thought he’d fall to sleep in a few breaths, but the pretty face of a redhead filled his mind. He’d almost told his brothers that he’d danced tonight and a girl had kissed him. But he didn’t want to sound like a pup. If he told them details, he’d probably end up telling them about how, likely as not, she stole his horse.

  Travis rolled over. Tomorrow he’d ride to the trading post. She had to be traveling with the group of wagons heading north. He’d get his horse back and lecture her on the law. She could get shot for taking a horse. If he were playing by the rules, he should arrest her and let some judge decide what to do with her. But it was hard to think about cuffing someone he’d kissed.

  Well, could be he didn’t kiss her, but she definitely kissed him.

  He thought about why she must have taken the horse. Maybe she had a good reason and he should hear her out before he started his planned lecture. Maybe her sick ma and pa were in a wagon. Maybe she was a widow trying to make it alone. She looked to be in her twenties, so it could be possible. She might have spent her last few dollars burying her man and now she had to make it back to a little farm alone. Or she could have been on the run from a father who beat her regularly.

  Travis spent an hour thinking about her and finally decided two things. One, he’d take an extra horse with him, an animal that wasn’t part of a matched set, in case any of her stories sounded good. And, two, when he saw the woman who called herself Molly, if he got the chance, he’d return her kiss.

  He drifted off a few hours before dawn calling himself a fool. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t push the feel of her against him from his thoughts. She’d somehow branded him with her touch. The softness of her body pressed close to his was something he wouldn’t be forgetting any time soon. She fit him, he decided and wished mating could have been so simple. No verbal sparring, no courting, just one man and one woman bumping together to see if they fit.

  By the time the smell of bacon woke him, the sun was up. Travis stretched, thinking how good a bed felt. Even when his travels took him into towns, he usually chose to camp out a mile or so away from people. He said it was because the smell of civilization bothered him, but in truth, the filth of hotels never appealed to him. He knew the sheets were changed once a month if the room had been rented every night, but most places rented half the bed. So a stranger might wander in and claim his half during the night.

  He’d seen signs asking all boarders to wash their feet before going to sleep, but Travis felt they should have washed the rest of their bodies as well. Even on slow nights when he could get an almost clean room alone, the odors of former guests kept him awake.

  Travis stripped to his underwear and went down the back stairs to the washroom. He wasn’t surprised to find hot water and soap waiting. By the time he washed and returned to his room, clean clothes were on his bed.

  “Thank you, Martha!” he yelled as he dressed while moving down the front stairs.

  A few minutes later when she plopped a platter of food in front of him, she answered, “You are welcome.”

  As he shoved eggs into his mouth, she added, “Everyone else has been up and working for hours.”

  He didn’t answer. Martha seemed to have the idea that being a Texas Ranger was some kind of long game
he played and one day he’d grow up and come back home to do real work. None of the boys had ever asked her about her past, or doubted the rumor that prison had been a part of it. For all he knew, Martha had a hatred of lawmen based on personal experience.

  He stared at the eggs hoping she hadn’t gone to prison for poisoning someone. Taking another mouthful, he smiled. If she didn’t kill him for all the wild things he did growing up, she wasn’t going to poison him for sleeping late today.

  Travis stood shoveling in the last bite of bacon. “I have to go into town. Do you want me to pick up any supplies?”

  Martha shook her head. “I get my supplies on the first of the month, and anything I forget we can just do without until the first rolls around again.”

  “I’ll be back before supper, I hope. If not, I’ll leave word with Anderson. I have a feeling Teagen will by riding over tomorrow morning to see if his saddle came in, so tell him if he doesn’t see me tonight, there will be a note waiting.”

  She didn’t even look up as he left.

  He caught two horses in the corral and saddled one, then headed for the back trail through the hills. It was faster than the bridge road. Travis pushed hard, thinking that he should have been at the trading post before dawn. By now the wagons would be a few miles north. He’d catch them easily on horseback, but he could have saved time if he’d reached the post before his green-eyed thief left with his horse.

  When he stopped to talk to the owner of the trading post, old Elmo Anderson claimed there was no woman named Molly with the travelers. He’d supplied every wagon himself and could not remember any woman fitting Travis’s description. Elmo also swore that if a McMurray bay had been among the horses, he would have noticed it. Most of the wagons had been pulled by oxen, a few by mules, and the few riders between the wagons were on nags. Anderson couldn’t remember even a cart pulled with one horse.

  Travis took the time to talk with a peddler who’d traveled from south of the post. He said he hadn’t seen a soul all morning, so she couldn’t have gone south. Any other direction would be open country and far too dangerous for a woman to travel alone. His little thief seemed to have vanished.