Wyoming Woman. Elizabeth Lane
had a cowlick in his ebony hair, and Josh had a dimple in his left cheek. This time she had felt no surge of recognition. But the boys would have grown older since her last sight of them, she reminded herself. And the glimpse of that youthful, unmasked face beneath the Stetson had been so brief, the expression on the sharp young features so hardened that the shock of it had left her breathless.
The lamb struggled free and scampered away, unheeded, as Rachel watched the riders vanish over the top of the hill. Only one of her brothers had been with them, she surmised. None of the other three had matched his wiry build. But she was hard put to imagine either of the gentle, lively boys she remembered taking part in something as brutal as the driving of three hundred sheep to their deaths.
Things had clearly changed in the time she had been away from the ranch. People, it seemed, had changed, too. It was as if she had suddenly awakened in a war zone, with land mines hidden all around her.
And right now, she was clearly on the wrong side.
“Rachel? Are you there?” Luke’s voice, coming from below the rocks, startled her. Straining forward, she saw him striding toward her through the grass with the lamb clutched in his arms. The horse stood behind him, its sleek buff coat flecked with foam.
Legs quivering, Rachel rose to her feet. Relief flickered like passing sunlight across his leathery features; then his expression soured. “I thought maybe you’d taken off with your cowboy friends,” he said.
“They’re not my friends!” Rachel was not about to make matters worse by telling him that one of the marauders had been her brother. “But I must say I’m surprised to see you back here,” she said, deliberately changing the subject. “I thought you might just ride off with your precious sheep and leave me to walk home by myself.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “I had to come back for the lamb,” he said brusquely. “If you’re coming with me, get down here and let’s get moving. I have to get the sheep home before anything else goes wrong.”
He turned away and strode to his horse without a backward glance, leaving Rachel to scramble down the rocks alone. By the time she reached the horse, he was already in the saddle, cradling the lamb across his lap. Without a word, he reached down, caught her arm and swung her none too gently up behind him. Rachel clambered across the buckskin’s rump, feeling damp and sticky and cross. She had barely regained her seat when he kneed the horse to a brisk trot. The sudden motion flung her off balance, throwing her to one side, so that she had to grab his waist to keep from sliding to the ground.
“Blast it, this isn’t my fault!” she muttered, her face pressed against his sweat-soaked shirt. “Stop treating me as if I were to blame for your troubles!”
His body was like stone to the touch, his muscles tense, his spine rigid. His skin smelled of sage and leather and salty male perspiration. The odor teased at her senses, triggering an odd tingle where her knees pressed the backs of his legs. The sensation crept upward to pool at the joining of her thighs. Rachel stared past Luke’s shoulder, struggling to fix her thoughts elsewhere.
“You’re one of them,” he said. “You told me as much the first time you opened that pretty mouth of yours. I didn’t invite you to be here, Rachel Tolliver, and as far as I’m concerned, the sooner I’m rid of you the better.”
“Well, at least we agree on something,” she said tartly. “How often do you get social calls like the one you had this afternoon?”
“Depends on what you call a social call.” His voice was flat, guarded. “This is the first time they’ve tried to run the sheep over a cliff. But having animals trapped, shot, even poisoned—that’s just business as usual.”
Rachel waited, expecting him to go on. Instead he gathered up the lamb, twisted in the saddle and thrust the squirming baby into her arms. “We’re wasting time,” he muttered, spurring the horse to a canter. “Hang on.”
At once the lamb, which had lain quietly across Luke’s knees, began to struggle and bleat. Rachel locked one arm around the wretched little creature, bracing it against her chest. Her other arm gripped Luke’s waist as she struggled to keep from bouncing off the horse’s slick rump. If she made it home safely, she vowed, she would never again have anything to do with these cursed sheep or with their sullen, arrogant, mule-headed owner. If Luke Vincente wanted to pit himself against the whole civilized world, that was his problem. She’d be damned if she was about to make it hers.
The sheep milled at the foot of the slope, under the brow of the ledge where they’d come so near to their death plunge. The tireless dogs darted along the fringes of the herd, lunging and yipping to keep their charges in line.
Sensing its kind, the lamb renewed its struggles, digging its sharp hooves into Rachel’s ribs and bleating like a miniature steam calliope. A fly settled on Rachel’s matted hair. She shook it away, her temper growing shorter by the second.
Luke had slowed the horse to a trot as they neared the herd, but Rachel was still bouncing behind the saddle, her buttocks miserably sore and her bladder threatening to burst. When the lamb’s hoof jabbed her breast hard enough to bruise, her last thread of patience snapped. “Enough!” she yelped. “Either we stop right here and let this little monster find its mother, or I start screaming loud enough to be heard across three counties!”
“Anything to please a lady.” Luke’s voice dripped sarcasm as he reined the horse to a halt. Shoving the wretched animal toward him, she slid off the back of the horse and dropped wearily to the ground. For a moment she glared up at him, scrambling for a comeback that would put him in his place. But nothing came to mind except the awareness that she was sore and miserable and badly in need of a bush.
“Wait right here, and keep your back turned.” Rachel spun away from the horse and, with as much dignity as she could muster, stalked off toward a clump of tall sage that grew at the foot of the slope. She had spent enough time on the range that going to the bushes in the open was nothing new. But something about this disturbing man’s presence made her burn with self-consciousness.
“Watch out for rattlesnakes,” he said. “They’re bad in these parts.”
Rachel ignored the remark, but her face blazed with heat as she ducked behind the sage. Growing up alongside brothers and cowboys had given her a natural ease with the male sex. At school, the boys had flocked around her, and she’d never wanted for escorts or dancing partners. In the past year alone, she’d rejected three proposals of marriage. Once she had fancied herself in love, but even for that brief time she had kept a cautious rein on her heart so that when the infatuation passed she was able to walk away without regret.
Always, in her relationships with men, Rachel had insisted on being the one in control. So why now, of all times, did she find herself hot and flustered and blushing like a schoolgirl? Luke Vincente was not one of her conquests. He was too old, too proud, with too many shadows lurking about his tall, dark person. Worse, he was a sheep man, with a hatred for her kind that ran bone-deep in both directions.
Why in heaven’s name hadn’t she called out to her brother as he rode past her hiding place? Surely she could have smoothed over the awkwardness, perhaps even lessened the tension by explaining how Luke had rescued her after the accident with the buggy.
If she had played her cards more sensibly, she might be headed for the ranch right now on the back of her brother’s horse. Luke would be rid of her; she would be rid of him; everybody would be happier. So why hadn’t she spoken?
But Rachel knew why. The horror she had witnessed, coupled with the shock of recognizing her adored brother, had left her mute.
As she gazed back toward the hilltop where the four riders had disappeared, a sense of pervading blackness crept over her. For months she had looked forward to home—to the grand sweep of mountain peaks and prairie sky and the smell of coffee on the crisp morning air; to friends and family, to sunny days filled with hard work and laughter and love. But home had changed, Rachel realized. And something told her it would never again be the carefree place she remembered.
Luke