Breed True (6 page)

And then she spoke directly to all of them, moving toward him and the door he now blocked.

"Let me get this straight." She swept the room with a quick look of disgust. "Mr.

Hawks, you want to parade me around the territory as your white wife, to prove how civilized you are. And Mr. Quince, you want me to give my children to your wife, a move that would also eliminate any inconvenience that might disrupt the show Mr.

Hawks plans to put on."

Then she looked at Hiram Potter, who was clearly uncomfortable with the way the evening had gone. But she spoke to both him and Judge Conklin, "And you two, they brought in to make everything legal and tight."

After all the bullshit that had been spattered around in the talking, she'd filtered out what affected her. He gave her the courtesy of a tight smile. She considered him for a minute while the rest of the room studied her. She appeared calmer than she had been all night … and resolved.

"No one gets my daughters, understand that. My children stay with me." Then she focused on him, and he was reminded that she wasn't a tame dog to be frightened into submission.

"Are you talking a real wife?" At his raised brow of incredulity that she might consider otherwise, she paused a moment and then amended her question. "Where would this magnificent coupling take place?"

He almost laughed out loud at her assessment but did her the courtesy of a straight answer. "Hawks Nest Ranch abuts the Double-Q ranch east of town. It stretches above the foothills behind Eclipse."

"Is it isolated? Can people come and go?" Evidently, the gambler's woman needed a place to lay low with her daughters for awhile. He declined to mention the duration of her visit.

It seemed to him that the location of the land might be the only temptation to her agreeing. She needed a haven. Maybe Hawks Nest would be that place.

Her knuckles showed white as she backed against a heavy piece of furniture and clutched the edge of the desk.
So, she's not as tough as she wants us to believe.
As Grady watched, her translucent skin blanched even whiter, displaying clearly the degree of her exhaustion, as her knees began to buckle.

He was on her in a second, his arm sweeping familiarly around her shoulders for support. "Only folks coming onto my land are those I allow entrance."

"I've had a husband, and I don't want another," she told him desperately, but already her gaze assessed him.

She was interrupted by Hamilton Quince, who edged close enough to follow the conversation. "Want plays a poor second to need, and right now, Mrs. Rossiter, it would appear that you need the protection of a man."

Grady remained expressionless and silent, letting Quince make his case. But the gambler's woman didn't spare a glance for Hamilton, intent on answers to her questions.

She skimmed the room with a suspicious gaze at the same time she spoke softly to him, pitching her voice so that even Quince couldn't hear.

"Pretty convenient me just being made a widow." Her tone was intimate, and although quiet, spoke volumes about her willingness to forget the matter if he did admit killing Frank Rossiter. But he had strong doubt that she'd agree to marry her husband's murderer.

"Did you, or your hireling, kill Frank Rossiter?" She locked eyes with Grady Hawks as though she could read his soul. She was a slender woman who reached his shoulder.

She was bruised from another man's fists, but she questioned him with authority, asserting her right to know.

"No," he told her. "I can't claim that pleasure." From the sound of the mob, someone had been busy spreading the rumor that one or the other of them had killed Frank Rossiter.

"As you have heard, I have twin baby girls." Her bravado wavered at the sound of the mob's approach, and she waited tensely for his response.

"My wife will be protected, as will her family, because they will belong to me."
No
sense in lying to her. She's as safe as she wants to be. I sure as hell don't plan to hurt her
or a couple of kids.

He shrugged and waited, admiring the way she hid her thoughts from those in the room.

"All right," she agreed, accepting his proposal. It was no decision at all when faced with the sound of her other choices coming up the street.

As they turned expectantly toward the judge, she asked. "How long will we need to playact?"

The others in the room strained to hear the negotiations quietly taking place, but her words were too softly spoken. He liked her voice and that she appeared to own some sense and had no need to rely on the others in the room to make her decisions.

"This is no playact. I intend a legal wedding witnessed by the leaders of Eclipse society. We will remain married, and you will give me a son." Grady felt her flinch and shudder.

She stepped back and away, shaking her head. "Don't be foolish. Playacting at being your wife is one thing," she told him. "But I won't give you a child like I'm promising you the first pup from the litter. I'll not leave a baby—boy
or
girl child—to be raised by you."

She was fierce with that disclaimer. He didn't factor in her experience with Frank Rossiter before his own temper flared. "You have a problem with my Indian blood?"

Anger simmered as he prepared to say to hell with the whole proposition and take his chances with the crowd gathering outside.

But he explained himself, for her ears only. "I need to deed my spread to a son. My bloodlines range a little too close to my Kiowa mother for present ease."

Her expression was unreadable, but her hands still clutched the edge of the table. She asked, "Why would that fix anything?"

"We'll breed back to the red hair and white skin of my father. If I'm fortunate, my son will inherit those features." He frowned, irritated to admit his plan to deliberately dilute his Indian blood.

His voice dropped into a threatening growl. "After you give me a son, pale-skin or Kiowa, do what you will, but the boy remains with me." The crowd outside was louder, and Grady Hawks thought it was time for plain speaking.

"Ma'am, you need a husband, and I need a wife. What say you?"

The heavy tread of footsteps and flickering light of a torch had more of her attention than he did. She walked to the window and peered outside, ignoring the room's occupants. Grady had time to admire the proud line of her back and shoulders as she telegraphed her right to be left alone.

He mentally shrugged and admitted defeat. The gambler's widow had made her decision. He pulled on the brim of his hat and nodded at the others.

And then, because in a curious way he still needed to close out his memory of her at the Eclipse social, he joined her at the window, shielding her from the room's view.

She didn't flinch or respond, but their gaze crossed in the window's reflection. A shout outside and a lifted torch showed the crowd. But her gaze was tilted upward, fixed on a second-story window in the Golden Eagle Saloon. A man outlined there stood smoking a cigar and watching the mob. Her gaze refocused on Grady, and green fire met cold slate.

"All right." She nodded her acceptance, surprising him.

It was a good enough answer for him. Negotiations were over, and he'd courted and claimed himself a bride. She turned to him, almost in his arms and lowered her voice, shielding the rest of the discussion from the other listeners in the room.

"Why is it, Mr. Hawks, that our paths seem to keep crisscrossing?"

He drew deep of her scent, the smell of Comfort Quince's soap and bottled pretties drifting up as he leaned closer to hear her husky voice. Her own rich musk wafted sweetly and tickled his senses, unexpectedly stirring an arousal. He was the first to step away, but he had the last word. "I think you know." His eyelids drifted to half slits, and a growl of hunger clawed at his throat.
Siren, they call her. Jesus.

*

Jewel felt a minor triumph when her would-be groom stepped back. Although it shouldn't have been so, he took up more space than the others in the room combined. She assessed the half-breed rancher.
I think you know.
His muttered words erased any sense that she'd brought these troubles on him. Grady Hawks was just another man who wanted to use her.

He wasn't the biggest man in the room—that would be Hiram Potter. Grady Hawks was neither tall nor broad, standing no more than a head above her five and a half feet.

But his compact build exuded power that dominated everyone else—except her. The woman who was once Julie Fulton stared at him and resisted.

Jewel let her eyes play mockingly across his face as his eyes undressed her. "My husband just perished at the hand of a murderer, Mr. Hawks. Surely you would allow a widow a discreet mourning period."

Her words were now pitched to carry to the other room occupants. It was a call for agreement, protection, support. None was forthcoming.

She tried to look past his thin lips, blade-like nose, and copper skin to see the man beneath. But he remained expressionless except for the pale eyes that returned her intent stare. For a moment she was dizzy; a combination of little food, fear, and the trauma of finding Frank, threatened her with weakness.

Grady Hawks saw the moment her strength abandoned her, and he took her into his arms, preventing her slide to the floor. She looked up at the man balancing her weight, as he demonstrated his claim on her to the room members. For a moment, she wanted to close her eyes, let go, and let him take control.

"Get this woman something to eat," he commanded. It was that order that brought her back to attention. His nose intruded into her space, and she commented waspishly,

"I'm fine. I want nothing from these people. Let me up."

Chapter Five

She pushed ineffectually at the forged steel of his shoulder as he remained close, his breath mixing intimately with hers.

"You're very strong," she told him. But instead of the compliment or flirt it might have sounded, it was a recognition of the damage such strength could deliver. Jewel shuddered involuntarily.

Grady Hawks set her on her feet but didn't remove the hand that telegraphed ownership from her back.

The judge licked his lips and looked alternately at the rancher and then at her. Jewel could see that the man of mixed blood made most of the people in the room uneasy.

When Judge Conklin moved toward her, Hawks shifted, subtly warning the other man away. And yet, he was careful to keep his gaze from touching any but her, ignoring the others in the room as though the two of them were alone. She was irritated at his possessive stance.

"Well, then, Judge. Mrs. Rossiter has agreed. Let's get on with it." The voice of Hamilton Quince interrupted the silent tableaux, urging haste.

"Wait," Jewel hesitated. Again, remnants of her former self clamored in her head.

She turned to the man she had just agreed to marry. "I can't do this."

But, on the porch, someone yelled, "Come on outside, Jewel. Glad you're back in town. You can stay at my place for awhile."

"Better take her weapons away from her before you tuck her into bed, Jud." Julie recognized the voice of Ansell Harper, one of Frank's card buddies.

"Better yet, how 'bout we both tuck her in. I figure Jewel can handle us both," and then, as though he knew she was listening, he yelled, "Right, Jewel? You'll fuck more than one of Frank's friends at a time, won't ya?"

Her face burned in humiliation as the room's occupants listened. She stepped toward the door, ready to leave. "I'm going out the back way."

"I'll see to the care of your daughters and give each one a section of land when she marries."

Jewel stopped in her tracks. She had nothing to return to but a thin-walled paper shack that now had holes kicked in the side.

Her glance played over Comfort Quince, who sat tensely on the arm of her husband's chair, as he rested his hand on her hip. It was such an intimate gesture Jewel looked away. The Quinces hadn't given up.

If she stayed where they could watch her, she could lose her children anyway. The judge seemed ready to toady up to whoever wielded the most power and influence.

Grady Hawks was a rich rancher who could protect her and her children. "Access to water," she asked him, adding silently,
to be able to give my girls a dowry, a grubstake to
protect them when they're grown.

She didn't know much about Texas land, but she'd heard the word
water
repeatedly since this conversation had begun. So she put that in too and studied his face, looking for assurances. His eyes were cold and hard, but he nodded.

"One year. If there is no child in one year, the girls get their land or the price of it, and I get enough money to set us up in a decent home when we leave."

He stared at her sudden, aggressive demand and then nodded.

"I want it in writing." She swung around to the judge, who laughed nervously, glancing at Grady Hawks and then back at Jewel.

"Might be best to put the conditions in writing," he advised.

Grady Hawks pulled on the coat that she'd abandoned, turned, and walked toward the door, saying nothing to the people in the room. The occupants didn't realize at first that he was leaving.

Jewel froze. She'd pushed too hard. Grimly, she stepped to his side and laid her hand on his arm, turning to face the others. "I beg your pardon. I'm accustomed to dealing with men who don't keep their word."

It was all she said, but she felt the stiffness of affront drain from his muscles as he turned her back into the room.

Once begun, the particulars didn't take long. "Your full name—we need to make sure this is right and tight." It was Hamilton who pushed the business forward.

When she hesitated, he assured her, "It goes no further than this room, but the documents need to be witnessed and legal. We need your given name."

"Julia Fulton Rossiter." She hadn't been that girl for four years, and it felt as though she called out another's name when the Judge made fast work of the ceremony. The vows consisted mostly of
Will you?
and
Do you?
, wrapped up in male ownership papers. As soon as the last promise was made, she asked, "My girls?"