Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men) (9 page)

“Are you crazy?” she demanded. “We’re about to be carved up for
breakfast and all you can think of is what you’ve got in your breeches!”

His passion slowly ebbing, Jackson frowned down at her. She was
staring fixedly at a rather large clump of sagebrush, behind which a tawny
feline rump twitched from side to side, a maneuver Josephine often employed to
check her balance just before she sprang on some unsuspecting deer mouse. Jackson
had always thought the maneuver charming, but he could tell at a glance that
Reagan was nearly breathless with panic. “There’s nothing to fear,” Jackson
said in an effort to reassure her. “It’s only Jos—”

Before he had the chance to explain, the cat sprang.

Letting go with a war whoop that would have done a Blackfoot
proud, Reagan Dawes clawed for possession of the pistol still thrust through
Jackson’s wide leather belt, but as her fingers found purchase, the piece went
off with a deafening roar.

“Mother of God,” Jackson said prayerfully, his throat suddenly as
dry as sun-bleached bone. The whiz of the ball passing precariously near his
manly pride was almost more than he could bear. The stricken look on the small
white face of Reagan Dawes when she realized the enormity of what she’d done
might have been laughable in any other circumstance.

Jackson was not laughing.

“Jesu!” she swore again. “You didn’t lose your—is everything
still—are you all right?”

Summoning the steel to survey the damage, Jackson glanced down at
the blackened hole in his buckskins, a mere inch and a half to the right of his
crotch.

He shuddered to think what might have happened had he not been
fully aroused and standing at attention. Squeezing his eyes shut, he drew a
deep breath, letting it go slowly, and when he opened them again they were
brimming with anger. “Am I all right? Am I still intact? Yes, damn it, I
believe that I am, no thanks to you! What in hell were you thinking, trying to
seize my weapon just now? You might have killed me, or worse!”

“There’s no need to shout!” Reagan shot back defensively. “I
didn’t mean to put your nether parts in danger. It was an accident. And anyway,
it’s your fault. If you hadn’t been so intent upon using that thing, you might
have listened when I tried to tell you there was a panther in the bushes!”

Jackson swallowed hard, but it did little to contain his rising
fury. “My fault.
My
fault? Who came to the river, then lingered there naked, hoping
to be found in that state of undress, knowing that I would not be able to
resist so tempting a prize?’ ’

“I was takin’ a bath, for heaven’s sake! A bath, I might add, that
you interrupted!”

“A bath!” Jackson said emphatically, as if that somehow proved his
point. “And you did it solely to entice me!”

“Entice you?” Reagan screeched. She’d felt repentant for all that
she’d done, sorry for nearly emasculating him, until now. Now she was thinking
that he’d gotten precisely what he deserved, and she ached to give him even
more. “You’re an idiot,” she said, picking up her freshly laundered clothes. “And
it would have served you right to have lost that thing in your britches. Maybe
then your brain would go back into you skull where it ought’a be in the first
place.”

She stomped back the path to camp, Jackson reluctantly following,
his gaze fixed on the tail of his hunting shirt, aware that his narrow escape
hadn’t taught him a damned thing.

Seconds after the two combatants had disappeared, the observer
stepped from the cover of a cottonwood and stood, staring down the trail they
had so recently traversed. “Patience, old son,” he said softly to himself.
“Patience. That whelp of a French whore has friends hereabouts. To try and
secure the chit now would be a hasty, ill-begotten business. Better to bide
your time, catch old Seek-Um somewheres out there, when Strickland and the
other ain’t around. Then you do for him right and proper, carry L’il Sister off
to her rightful home, and leave his bones for the buzzards.”

Reagan sprinted into the clearing, a grumbling Jackson hot on her
heels. Clutching her sodden clothes to her bosom, she put the campfire between
them. “Stay where you are, Seek-Um. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

Jackson snorted. “Somehow I am unconvinced... but then, your
attempt at emasculation may have something to do with that fact.”

“I done told you, that was just an accident,” Reagan insisted. “I
was tryin’ to save your life.”

“It’s
told,”
he said, impatiently shoving his hair back out of his eyes. “’I
told you.’ The word
done
has no place in that sentence.
Done
means finished, completed.”

“I know what it means,” Reagan replied. “I ain’t stupid, and you
didn’t tell me nothin’. In fact, as I recall, you weren’t doin’ much
speechifyin’ with that mouth o’ yours.”

He shifted his stance, quirking one black brow. “I did not hear
you complaining back there.”

Reagan put her nose in the air, indignant that he would be so
ungentlemanly as to re
min
d her of her moment of weakness.
“Wouldn’t have done me much good to complain, now, would it, since I was naked,
and you had the upper hand?”

Before Jackson could reply, a large tawny cat came slinking out of
the lean-to and headed straight toward him. It looked like the same cat she had
seen last night, and again just moments ago, by the river. Torn between fear
and fascination, Reagan looked around for a weapon, unsure if she wished to
save Jackson’s life a second time, or let him be devoured.

The feline did not pounce, however, just rubbed cat-fashion around
his legs, prompting Jackson’s odd half smile. “Hello,
petite,"
he said,
reaching down to scratch the cat’s black-tipped ears while Reagan gaped.

“That
beast
belongs to you?” she said skeptically. The young lion flopped
down in the grass, rolling onto her back in an open invitation for her master
to scratch her belly.

Reagan rolled her eyes. “What am I sayin’? Why, of course it
does.”

He crooned softly to the cat, then turned his attention once again
to Reagan. “She is a
she,
not an
it,”
he corrected her. “Josephine, this is the young woman I was
telling you about, Miss Reagan Dawes, the one who has caused such a stir. Kaintuck,
Josephine.”

Reagan grimaced at his use of the sobriquet. “Kaintuck” was a
title tacked onto boatmen and Westerners by dandified city folk, and anything
but a compliment.

“I wouldn’t be too free with name-callin’ if I were you,” she
said. “After all, I ain’t keepin’ company with no catamounts.”

Jackson ignored her rebuff. “You may pet her if you like.” But
Reagan couldn’t force herself to get so close to a natural enemy. “If it’s all
the same to you, I think I’ll pass.”

Jackson seemed to have no such compunction. He thumped the
feline’s broad breast in a less than gentle show of affection, then sprawled in
the grass and propped his head on his hand. The cat curled in a large tawny
ball near his feet and, yawning once, settled into a nap. “Set aside your
caution and warm yourself. There are bacon, biscuits, and plenty of strong,
black coffee.”

Sensing that the danger had passed, Reagan sat, but she continued
to watch him as she nibbled a strip of bacon. Jackson made a great show of
ignoring her, pouring himself a cup of steaming coffee, then sugaring it in a
shameless fashion.

“You mind tellin’ me just how the two of you came to be... acquainted?”
she asked, foregoing the coffee and helping herself to a dipper of water
instead.

“I came across her early last autumn. Her mother had been killed
by a grizzly down on the Green River. There were two cubs, but the other one
had already perished. Josephine had hidden herself beneath a rocky outcropping,
and she hissed at me as I passed by. She was such a sad little thing,
completely alone in the world. I simply could not bring myself to leave her to
her fate. And so I took her home to Saint Louis. Surely you could not fault me
for that?”

Reagan shook her head. She could not fault it, but neither did she
comprehend it. “I am not sure that you did her a great service. She is a wild
thing, and she belongs in the forest.”

“Indeed. She’s wild, just like you—or rather, she was. But in time
she gentled to my touch, grew to adore me... as will you, eventually.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of myself, if I were you,” Reagan informed
him, though, privately, the mere thought of his touch thrilled her, raising a
welter of gooseflesh on her torso and upper arms.

Reagan watched as he added a third lump of raw sugar to his cup
and stirred it with a twig.

“I didn’t figure a man who keeps company with mountain lions to
sweeten his coffee,” she said after a while. “You seem more the type to gulp it
straight from the pot, and strain the grounds through your teeth.”

He smiled at that, though a trifle grimly, saluting her with his
cup. “Youth and naiveté do not make for sound judgments. That’s why women your
age need guidance.”

“What would you know about women my age?”

“Enough to procure a fitting mate for you without a great deal of
difficulty, providing, of course, that you cooperate.” His words chilled her to
the marrow. Clutching her cup, she gaped at him. “Mate... as in husband? You
can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am,” he assured her. “I have given the matter a great
deal of thought, and it seems the best, most efficient way to secure your
future. I do realize, of course, that it won’t be easy. Your beauty is
unspoiled, it’s true, yet there are other facets of your personality that shall
require some... shall we say, refinement?”

Reagan choked on her last bite of bacon, staring in disbelief as
he went doggedly on, blissfully unaware of the storm gathering once more
around him. “Luckily, I am not without resources, and shall see to the task of
making you over the moment we arrive in Saint Louis. A new wardrobe and lessons
in speech and deportment shall make a marked improvement in no time.”

Reagan could take no more. Lifting her cup, she slowly,
deliberately poured the contents onto the fire, watching as steam shot up and
Jackson jumped back to avoid being spattered. “The matter? You call it ‘the
matter’? If I may be so bold as to remind you, it’s my
life
we’re talkin’ about, and I
don’t want no damnable husband!”

He frowned, looking quite formidable. “That choice, unfortunately,
is no longer yours to make. As I am now your guardian, it falls to me to decide
what is best, and you will do as I say.”

Reagan gave a loud and unladylike snort. “Guardian, my arse!
You’re just another man who’s full of hisself, and burnin’ to throw his heft
around! Guardian, ha!”

Jackson was on his feet before the words left her mouth, grasping
her arms in a hold that hurt, pulling her up and onto her toes before him.
“Guardian, yes,” he said silkily, “to put it nicely. Yet, since you seem to
prefer straightforward talk, I will remind you, my dear Miss Dawes, that I
own
you, body and soul, at
least while we’re in these mountains.”

Reagan was quivering inwardly, yet the same obstinacy that had
kept her unwed in the face of Luther’s disapproval would not allow her to show
her fear in the face of Jackson Broussard’s wrath. Standing nose-to-nose with
him, bearing up under the weight of his ominous glower, she curled her lip
contemptuously. “What gives you the right—” she began, only to have him cut
her off.

“Two thousand five hundred dollars gives me every right to do with
you as I will, and if you do not believe me, then, pray, take a good look
around you. You may have been reared in Kentucky, but you’ve landed smack in the
middle of hell—a place where a man can sell his unwanted daughter to a
stranger, and not a man steps forward to stop him. I could put you over my knee
right now and blister your ass for your rebelliousness, or take your woman’s
body right here in the open, and no one would dare to question me.” He gave her
another slight shake, as if to underscore his words, then abruptly released
her. “I suggest you think on that while you finish your breakfast, and kindly
make haste. We’ll leave here as soon as your clothing is dry.”