Six White Horses (19 page)

"None at all, my princess," Jack grinned back at her, drawing a reluctant smile in return.

There were a dozen or so cowboys perched on the rails of the arena near the chutes. Half a dozen more were working behind the chutes running the ranch horses into the partitioned runway, dropping the gates as each one was at its designated place, trapping them inside.

"Hey, Rafe!" Jack called. "Have you got my rigging with you?"
 

One of the men in back of the chutes waved that he had.

While Patty found herself a seat on the top rail, Jack made his way to the first chute where a horse was haltered and ready for the saddle. Working in the close quarters of a chute, the saddling and flanking of a horse was something that was never hurried. But experience made the procedure swift and sure. A few minutes later, Jack was sitting deep in the saddle, his hat crammed tightly on his head, his blunted spurs lying along the horse's neck, one hand on the rope and the other in the air. A quick nod to the man on the chute gate and it was swung open with an accompanying, "Let 'er buck!"

The horse bucked, but even Patty's less than experienced eye could see that it was not of the caliber of the rodeo horses. It wasn't a genuine bucker, just a rank horse that needed to be shown who was boss. Before the bell signaled the end of the ride, the horse was only buck jumping around the arena. Jack waved off the pickup riders and jumped from the horse, landing on his feet with a flourish of his hand.

"How was that, Princess?" He ambled cockily to the fence, a wide grin of triumph on his face. "I told you it would be a snap. Do you want to try one?" Before she had a chance to respond, he was turning away.

"Paul, do you care if Patty here tries out one of your horses?"

The man named Paul shook his head that he didn't mind and went back to his conversation with two men who appeared to be the owners of the horses in question.

"Eddy," Jack waved to one of the men on the fence rail, "Patty's going to ride."

Then he was taking her hand and helping her down from the rail, taking it for granted that she intended to ride. In sort of numbed shock, she followed him without protest. Unbidden the thought came that if Morgan had been here, he would have hit the ceiling.

But Morgan wasn't there anymore. He couldn't order her around and curse her for being fifty kinds of a fool.

As Patty climbed up the sides of the chute where a Roman-nosed buckskin was held, she knew she was going to ride, a last symbolic gesture that Morgan's presence did not intimidate her life any longer.

It was crazy. It was stupid. But she was going to do it.

She had the best in the business instructing her. And for all of Jack's wildness and cockiness, he was one of the top saddle bronc riders in rodeo and had been for several years. When he stood above the chutes, he was all professional. Now that he had her at the chutes, he wasn't rushing her.

"Let Sam go out first on that sorrel. We're going to take a few minutes," he ordered crisply, then turned to Patty and smiled. "Are you nervous, Princess?"

"A little," she admitted.

He winked and smiled broadly, his vague excitement contagious, "Take a few deep breaths," he ordered.

While Jack supervised the saddling, two chutes down from them, the gate swung open for the rider named Sam. His horse stood in frozen stillness in the chute. Finally after much pushing, shoving and hat waving, it trotted out, gave a few half-hearted jumps, and hurried to the side gate that would take it back to the pens and the rest of its companions, to the boos of the spectators.
 

"Okay, Princess." Jack signaled that they were ready for her. Patty stood above the horse, her feet on the inside chute rails. "You're going to ride this horse all the way. Don't you forget that." Patty knew confidence was the keynote and nodded. "When you settle into that saddle, be quiet and firm. Let him know you're boss. Get your feet in the stirrups and get set. We want to swing the gate open and give you some elbowroom as soon as you're ready. Old Buck here is supposed to be a straight-out, honest bucker with no fancy tricks."

Patty nodded again, not quite capable of speech. Balance, timing and nerve were what she needed in the arena. Two out of three wasn't bad, she thought with an inward smile.

Taking a last deep breath, she started to lower herself into the saddle, a feeling of exhilaration beginning to bring her dead senses alive as the adrenalin began to flow. She had blocked out the sounds of the other men around the chutes, listening only to Jack.

Then, from behind her, came a savagely muttered, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Her heart leaped into her dry throat at the familiar voice. She didn't have a chance to turn her head before an iron band was circling her stomach and lifting her out of the chute. As if she were a weightless object, she was swung over the top rail and lowered to the arena ground with Morgan a half step behind her.

He towered above her, hands on his hips, his expression unyielding in its harshness. "You can't even let me leave this place before you're trying to break your fool neck with some other fool stunt!" he shouted.

The anger blazing in Morgan's voice and eyes triggered Patty's own temper. Her booted foot stamped the ground as she returned his glare with defiant fury.

"It's my neck and I can break it if I want to, Morgan Kincaid!"

"I'll be damned if you will!" he snapped.

"You haven't any right to tell me what to do. Now get out of my way!" Tears of anger and humiliation burned her eyes as she tried to push her way past Morgan. She was too aware of their amused audience of cowboys to let him order her about like a child.

But the granite wall wasn't to be pushed aside and she found herself imprisoned by his grip, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her arms.

"You're not getting on that horse!" he told her harshly, ignoring her wildly flailing arms and legs.

"If you two are going to fight like that in public," Jack laughed, "you ought to marry her, Morgan."

Morgan had swung her over his shoulder, her shrill cry of protest falling on deaf ears as his long legs began striding from the arena.

"I intend to!" he shot back gruffly, amid the mocking applause and cheers from the audience.

It took a full second for Patty to realize what he had said. Even then she couldn't believe she had heard him correctly or that he had actually meant it. But a spark of hope flickered as her punishing fists stopped hammering his back.

"Morgan—" Her temper dissipated almost as rapidly as it had ignited.

"Shut up!"

He was carrying her through a door into some small office off the arena. As he kicked the door shut with his boot, he swung her to the floor, the momentum nearly carrying her into the wooden desk. Her anger might have receded, but his hadn't in the least. The blue flame of it was blazing hotly in his eyes.

"Whose harebrained idea was that stunt?" Morgan demanded before Patty had a chance to open her mouth.

Her eyes were searching his face, desperately seeking some indication that his previous declaration might have had some foundation in something other than anger or sarcastic mockery.

"What did you say?" Patty asked, holding her breath for his answer.

"I said, whose harebrained idea was that?" he demanded again through tightly clenched teeth, the muscle in his jaw working overtime.
 

"Jack's," she answered his question absently. "I meant before that. What did you say before that?"

There was a brief flicker of something
in his eyes before his look again hardened into an uncompromising mask that told her nothing.

"When?" was his clipped and noncommittal response, impatiently issued.
 

"Jack said you should marry me and you said you intended to. Or—at least, I—I thought that was what you said," Patty ended lamely.

Her fleeting hope accompanied the downward descent of her heart as the harshness of his expression stayed the same, perhaps growing a little grimmer.

"That's what I said." His mouth thinned into a hard, taut line.

"But you didn't mean it, did you?" she sighed brokenly, a tight catch in her throat that bordered on a sob of despair.

"Yes, I meant it." Morgan growled out the admission. "Somebody's got to keep an eye on you, so you might as well get it through your thick, skull right now that it's going to be me!"

There was a broken gasp of delight before Patty threw herself into his arms, circling his waist with her own arms and clinging to him tightly. For an instant, his body was rigid against hers, then it relaxed.

"Hold me, Morgan," her throbbing voice begged, uncaring of how much she was revealing. "Don't ever let me go."

Gently his fingers touched her cheek, then curled beneath her chin to lift her face firmly away from the open collar of his shirt. There was no holding back as Patty gazed into his powerful features, all the love in her heart shining in her brown eyes as she returned his took of wary disbelief with understanding.

"I love you, Morgan," she said simply.

A tiny frown of doubt drew his dark brows together. Then it smoothed away and he bent his head to touch her lips, tenderly at first as though expecting her resistance, then with hungry possession at the unchecked response of hers. She was crushed against him with almost punishing fierceness, but Patty didn't care. The blood roaring in her ears was a wild song of supreme joy.

All too soon Morgan was dragging his mouth from hers, burying it in her chestnut hair as he cradled her tightly against his chest. Patty smiled contentedly into his shirt at the slight tremor that shuddered through him.

"You'd better not be playing some game with me," he warned her thickly, "because I mean to marry you."

"It isn't a game," she promised. "I would be proud to be your wife."

He cupped her face in his hands and examined every detail. "You do love me?" Morgan questioned again. "I can't share you with Lije's ghost."

"You were right all along—it was only a girlhood infatuation," Patty assured him tenderly. "What I felt for Lije is nothing compared to the love I have for you. Lije hasn't meant anything to me as other than a friend for a very long time."

He frowned, "But you kept—"

"No, darling," she laughed easily, "you kept bringing him up. Every time I tried to tell you he didn't matter any more, you kept insisting I was lying."

Groaning at his own stupidity, Morgan kissed his apology. It took a long time to atone fully for his error and Patty enjoyed every minute of it. Finally she was sighing weakly against his chest, drugged by the ardent mastery of his caresses.

"How much time have we wasted?" he murmured against her forehead. "How long have you known?"

"I don't know. Maybe a long time," she whispered with a throbbing ache. "I admitted it to myself at the ranch, but I never dreamed that you might care."

"I should have stayed, shouldn't I?" He smiled wryly. "I thought you were beginning to respond to me. I tried to prod you into admitting it, but you went all cold and prickly again and I gave up."

"I thought you were making fun of me. You were always ordering me around like a child, treating me like a nuisance," Patty murmured, snuggling closer against his chest, needing the reassurance of his uneven heartbeat.

"You were a nuisance," he admitted openly, "to my peace of mind."

"Why were you
quitting? Why were you so determined never to see me again?"

She shivered at the pain she had felt at his supposed leaving.

"Surely it's obvious. We were always fighting." The look in his eyes revealed for the first time how their harsh exchanges had hurt him as much as they had hurt her. "I decided that there was no hope. I was certain you despised me. I thought the only thing that was left for me to do was take the advice I'd given you when I told you that as far as you were concerned Lije was dead."

"We were so cruel to each other."

"It's over now," Morgan promised.

He kissed her gently on the corner of her mouth, drawing the response he had anticipated as she turned to seek the warm possession of his kiss.

"You haven't told me you loved me," Patty murmured against his mouth.

Morgan chuckled softly. "I've loved you from the beginning, from almost the first day I saw you over four years ago." The amusement left his voice and a distant pain echoed in his words. "I watched you tagging along after Lije, telling myself one day you would wake up. For nearly three years, you kept it up and I knew I couldn't endure the agony forever: I persuaded my family to sell the rodeo stock. Then Lije got married and I thought I had a chance again." There was a suggestion of a smile in the grooves near his mouth. "Your grandfather knew how much I loved you even then. I'm afraid we did some plotting against you. But you seemed determined not to forget Lije. I tried every way I knew to make you forget. Until this moment, I thought I'd wound up making you hate me."

"I love you," Patty vowed fervently. "I'll never stop loving you."

"I love you. And you'd better not stop loving me, Skinny." The love in his eyes took away the mock threat in his low voice.