Mackenzie's Pleasure (2 page)

him. And like a wild creature that had been only half-tamed, he accepted the boundaries of

civilization, but lightly. He roamed far and wide, and yet he always came back to them.

From the first, though, he had been helpless against Mary. She had instantly

surrounded him with so much love and care that he hadn't been able to resist her, even

though his light hazel eyes had reflected his consternation, even embarrassment, at her attention.

If Mary went down to fetch Chance, he would come home without protest, but he would walk

into the house wearing a helpless, slightly panicked "Oh, God, get me out of this" expression.

And then he would meekly let her tend his wounds, pamper him and generally smother him

with motherly concern.

Watching Mary fuss over Chance was one of Wolf's greatest amusements. She fussed

over all of her kids, but the others had grown up with it and took it as a matter of course.

Chance, though...he had been fourteen and half wild when Mary had found him. If he'd ever had a

home, he didn't remember it. If he had a name, he didn't know it. He'd evaded well-meaning

social authorities by staying on the move, stealing whatever he needed, food, clothes, money.

He was highly intelligent and had taught himself to read from newspapers and magazines

that had been thrown away. Libraries had become a favorite place for him to hang out,

maybe even spend the night if he could manage it, but never two nights in a row. From

what he read and what little television he saw, he understood the concept of a family, but that

was all it was to him—a concept. He trusted no one but himself.

He might have grown to adulthood that way if he hadn't contracted a monster case of

influenza. While driving home from work, Mary had found him lying on the side of a road,

incoherent and burning up with fever. Though he was half a foot taller than she and some fifty

pounds heavier, somehow she had wrestled and bullied the boy into her truck and taken him to the

local clinic, where Doc Nowacki discovered that the flu had progressed into pneumonia and

quickly transferred Chance to the nearest hospital, eighty miles away.

Mary had driven home and insisted that Wolf take her to the hospital—immediately.

Chance was in intensive care when they arrived. At fkst the nursing staff hadn't wanted to

let them see him, since they weren't family and in fact didn't know anything about him. Child

services had been notified, and someone was on the way to take care of the paperwork. They

had been reasonable, even kind, but they hadn't reckoned with Mary. She was relentless. She

wanted to see the boy, and a bulldozer couldn't have budged her until she saw him. Eventually

the nurses, overworked and outclassed by a will far stronger than their own, gave in and let

Wolf and Mary into the small cubicle.

As soon as he saw the boy, Wolf knew why Mary was so taken with him. It wasn't just

that he was deathly ill; he was obviously part American Indian. He would have reminded

Mary so forcibly of her own children that she could no more have forgotten about him than

she could one of them.

Wolf's expert eye swept over the boy as he lay there so still and silent, his eyes closed,

his breathing labored. The hectic color of fever stained his high cheekbones. Four different bags

dripped an IV solution into his muscular right arm, which was taped to the bed. Another

bag hung at the side of the bed, measuring the output of his kidneys.

Not a half-breed, Wolf had thought. A quarter, maybe. No more than that. But still,

there was no doubting his heritage. His fingernails were light against the tanned skin ' of

his fingers, where an Anglo's nails would have been pinker. His thick, dark brown hair, so long

it brushed his shoulders, was straight. There were those high cheekbones, the clear-cut lips, the

high-bridged nose. He was the most handsome boy Wolf had ever seen.

Mary went up to the bed, all her attention focused on the boy who lay so ill and helpless

on the snowy sheets. She laid her cool hand lightly against his forehead, then stroked it over

his hair. "You'll be all right," she murmured. "I'll make sure you are."

He had lifted his heavy lids, struggling with the effort. For the fkst time Wolf saw the

light hazel eyes, almost golden, and circled with a brown rim so dark it was almost black.

Confused, the boy had focused fkst on Mary; then his gaze had wandered to Wolf, and

belated alarm flared in his eyes. He tried to heave himself up, but he was too weak even to tug

his taped arm free.

Wolf moved to the boy's other side. "Don't be afraid," he said quietly. "You have

pneumonia, and you're in a hospital." Then, guessing what lay at the bottom of the boy's

panic, he added, "We won't let them take you."

Those light eyes had rested on his face, and perhaps Wolf's appearance had calmed him.

Like a wild animal on guard, he slowly relaxed and drifted back to sleep.

Over the next week, the boy's condition improved, and Mary swung into action. She was

determined that the boy, who still had not given them a name, not be taken into state custody

for even one day. She pulled strings, harangued people, even called on Joe to use his influence,

and her tenacity worked. When the boy was released from the hospital, he went home with

Wolf and Mary.

He had gradually become accustomed to them, though by no stretch of the imagination

had he been friendly, or even trustful. He would answer their questions, in one word if

possible, but he never actually
talked
with them. Mary hadn't been discouraged. From the

first, she simply treated the boy as if he was hers—and soon he was.

The boy who had always been alone was suddenly plunged into the middle of a large,

volatile family. For the first time he had a roof over his head every night, a room all to himself,

ample food in his belly. He had clothing hanging in the closet and new boots on his feet.

He was still too weak to share in the chores everyone did, but Mary immediately began tutoring

him to bring him up to Zane's level academically, since the two boys were the same age, as

near as they could tell. Chance took to the books like a starving pup to its mother's teat, but in

every other way he determinedly remained at arm's length. Those shrewd, guarded eyes took

note of every nuance of their family relationships, weighing what he saw now against what

he had known before.

Finally he unbent enough to tell them that he was called Sooner. He didn't have a real

name.

Maris had looked at him blankly. "Sooner?"

His mouth had twisted, and he'd looked far too old for his fourteen years. "Yeah, like

a mongrel dog."

"No," Wolf had said, because the name was a clue. "You know you're part Indian.

More than likely you were called Sooner because you were originally from Oklahoma—and

that means you're probably Cherokee."

The boy merely looked at him, his expression guarded, but still something about him

had lightened at the possibility that he hadn't been likened to a dog of unknown heritage.

His relationships with everyone in the family were complicated. With Mary, he wanted to

hold himself away, but he simply couldn't. She mothered him the way she did the rest of her

brood, and it terrified him even though he delighted in it, soaking up her loving concern. He

was wary of Wolf, as if he expected the big man to turn on him with fists and boots. Wise in the

ways of wild things, Wolf gradually gentled the boy the same way he did horses, letting him

get accustomed, letting him realize he had nothing to fear, then offering respect and friendship

and, finally, love.

Michael had already been away at college, but when he did come home he simply made

room in his family circle for the newcomer. Sooner was relaxed with Mike from the start,

sensing that quiet acceptance.

He got along with Josh, too, but Josh was so cheerful it was impossible not to get

along with him. Josh took it on himself to be the one who taught Sooner how to handle the

multitude of chores on a horse ranch. Josh was the one who taught him how to ride, though

Josh was unarguably the worst horseman in the family. That wasn't to say he wasn't good,

but the others were better, especially Maris. Josh didn't care, because his heart was wrapped up

in planes just the way Joe's had been, so perhaps he had been more patient with Sooner's

mistakes than anyone else would have been.

Maris was like Mary. She had taken one look at the boy and immediately taken him under

her fiercely protective wing, never mind that Sooner was easily twice her size. At twelve, Maris

had been not quite five feet tall and weighed all of seventy-four pounds. It didn't matter to her;

Sooner became hers the same way her older brothers were hers. She chattered to him, teased

him, played jokes on him— in short, drove him crazy, the way little sisters were supposed

to do. Sooner hadn't had any idea how to handle the way she treated him, any more than he had

with Mary. Sometimes he had watched Maris as if she was a ticking time bomb, but it was

Maris who won his first smile with her teasing. It was Maris who actually got him to enter the

family conversations: slowly, at first, as he learned how families worked, how the give-andtake of talking melded them together, then with more ease. Maris could still tease him into a rage,

or coax a laugh out of him, faster than anyone else. For a while Wolf had wondered if the

two might become romantically interested in each other as they grew older, but it hadn't

happened. It was a testament to how fully Sooner had become a part of their family; to both

of them, they were simply brother and sister.

Things with Zane had been complicated, though. Zane was, in his own way, as

guarded as Sooner. Wolf knew warriors, having been one himself, and what he saw in his

youngest son was almost frightening. Zane was quiet, intense, watchful. He moved like a cat,

gracefully, soundlessly. Wolf had trained all his children, including Maris, in self-defense,

but with Zane it was something more. The boy took to it with the ease of someone putting on

a well-worn shoe; it was as if it had been made for him. When it came to marksmanship, he had

the eye of a sniper, and the deadly patience.

Zane had the instinct of a warrior: to protect. He was immediately on guard against

this intruder into the sanctity of his family's home turf.

He hadn't been nasty to Sooner. He hadn't made fun of him or been overtly unfriendly,

which wasn't in his nature. Rather, he had held himself away from the newcomer, not rejecting,

but certainly not welcoming, either. But because they were the same age, Zane's acceptance

was the most crucial, and Sooner had reacted to Zane's coolness by adopting the same tactics.

They had ignored each other.

While the kids were working out their relationships, Wolf and Mary had been pushing

hard to legally adopt Sooner. They had asked him if that was what he wanted and,

typically, he had responded with a shrug and an expressionless, "Sure." Taking that for the

impassioned plea it was, Mary redoubled her efforts to get the adoption pushed through.

As things worked out, they got the word that the adoption could go forward on the

same day Zane and Sooner settled things between them. The dust was what had caught Wolf's

attention. At first he hadn't thought anything of it, because when he glanced over he saw

Maris sitting on the top rail of the fence, calmly watching the commotion. Figuring one of the

horses was rolling in the dirt, Wolf went back to work. Two seconds later, however, his sharp ears

caught the sound of grunts and what sounded suspiciously like blows.

He walked across the yard to the other corral. Zane and Sooner had gotten into the

corner, where they couldn't be seen from the house, and were ferociously battering each

other. Wolf saw at once that both boys, despite the force of their blows, were restraining

themselves to the more conventional fisticuffs rather than the faster, nastier ways he'd also

taught them. He leaned his arms on the top rail beside Maris. "What's this about?"

"They're fighting it out," she said matter-of-factly, without taking her eyes from the

action.

Josh soon joined them at the fence, and they watched the battle. Zane and Sooner were

both tall, muscular boys, very strong for thek ages. They stood toe to toe, taking turns

driving their fists into each other's faces. When one of them got knocked down, he got to

his feet and waded back into the fray. They were almost eerily silent, except for the involuntary

grunts and the sounds of hard fists hitting flesh.

Mary saw them standing at the fence and came out to investigate. She stood beside Wolf

and slipped her small hand into his. He felt her flinch every time a blow landed, but when he

looked at her, he saw that she was wearing her prim schoolteacher's expression, and he

knew that Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie was about to call the class to order.

She gave it five minutes. Evidently deciding this could go on for hours, and that both boys

were too stubborn to give in, she settled the matter herself. In her crisp, clear teaching voice