The Cowboy's Gamble: Destined For Love Series (2 page)

His face moved beside hers, and she could feel his warm breath brush across her cheek and flutter the wispy strands of auburn hair that had escaped the pile of hair she’d pinned up earlier, could feel a light stubble graze her jaw. And for a fleeting moment his hold seemed to loosen, as if he was cradling her in his arms.

A warm, masculine scent surrounded her, like earth, leather, and sun all combined into one. Her stomach fluttered, and her breasts swelled and tightened. She gritted her teeth, hating herself for responding to him in any way but anger. He deserved nothing less than her contempt after the way he’d used her and deliberately broken her heart.

“Let me go,” she hissed furiously.

His mouth moved to her ear. “Not so brave without your rifle, now are you, darlin’?” he taunted.

She closed her eyes against the sudden rush of tears surging forward. “I hate you,” she whispered, voicing the words that had been locked inside her for eleven painful years.

“Yeah, well, Josie, darlin’,” he said on a long, drawn out sigh. “The feeling’s completely mutual.”

“Mom?”

The softly spoken word in a child’s quivering voice served to do what Josie’s demands could not. Seth immediately released her and straightened. Josie went to her daughter who stood in the doorway, her only thought to soothe her fears.

Josie smoothed Kellie’s curly auburn hair, so much like her own, away from her stricken face. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she said gently, knowing the lie was necessary.

Peeking around her mother, Kellie eyed the large man standing on the porch. “Who is he?”

Josie pulled in a deep breath. “His name is Seth O’Connor.”

Kellie frowned. “Is he one of those no good O’Connor boys I’ve heard Grandpa talking about? Did you shoot him?”

Josie grimaced at her child’s guileless questions. Although the McAllisters and O’Connors weren’t on friendly terms by any stretch of the imagination, she’d raised her daughter to be nonjudgmental—and that included the McAllister’s nemesis.

“He’s our neighbor, remember?” She’d explained as much when Kellie had first asked her who the O’Connors were—and that’s all she’d told her daughter, because that had been the only pleasant way to explain who Robert and Seth were. At the tender age of ten, Kellie didn’t need to be privy to just how bitter their relationship was, or how far back the O’Connors had hated the McAllisters.

“And no, I didn’t shoot him.” Josie looked back at Seth, giving him a direct, pointed stare as if to suggest she was beginning to regret that decision. “Mr. O’Connor was just leaving.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, looking as formidable as a Brahman bull. “I’m not going anywhere until we talk.”

She didn’t understand him, his insistence, or his crazy talk about the Golden M being his property. But whatever he had to say, she didn’t want it said in front of her daughter. Once again she requested that Kellie go inside while she settled a few issues with Mr. O’Connor. Reluctantly, and with a few more assurances, the young girl obeyed.

Josie closed the door after her daughter as a precaution, then in a tone feigned with politeness, she said to Seth, “You may think you’re here to talk, but we have nothing to say to one another.”

His gaze flickered down the length of her, taking in her summertime attire with too much interest. As if he was taking stock of her—like a cowboy sizing up a potential breeding mare. When his eyes reached hers again, they were filled with heated resentment.

“Polite talk, no,” he agreed, his voice harsh. “But this is in regards to a business related matter.”

“Business?” She shook her head at the absurdity of the situation. “I wouldn’t do business with an O’Connor if you were the last man on earth who could offer me refuge.”

A faint smile curved his mouth. “I might just very well be.”

Fed up with whatever game he was playing, she stared him down. “Get off my property.” She directed her finger toward his horse to emphasize her point. “
Now
!”

He didn’t budge, and there was enough smugness touching his features to make her uneasy. “Don’t be so hasty, darlin’—”

Her temper flared at his sweet-talk. “Do I need to call the Sheriff out to arrest you for trespassing, not to mention assault?”

“Assault?” His dark brows rose incredulously, right along with his voice. “You’re the one who damn near blew my head off!”

She lifted her chin a defiant notch and gave him a cool smile. “I was feeling . . . threatened.”

“Like hell you were!” He clamped his lips shut and glared. “If anybody is calling the Sheriff, I am. I’ve got a deed that states the Golden M is mine.”

“You’re crazy!”

“I’m perfectly sane.” He rocked back on his booted heels, looking too pleased with himself. “Has your father been around lately?”

The casual way he asked the question, and the insinuation behind his words, put her on alert. Her father had been gone for two days, since that past Friday, though this wasn’t the first time Jake McAllister had taken off without warning. She’d grown used to her father’s drifting, and the fact that he’d lost interest in the ranch long ago. She’d been handling the business end of the Golden M for almost eight years now, and with Mac as their long-time foreman running the day to day cattle operation, the ranch was still thriving. Nothing grand, but she was paying their bills and keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table.

So why was Seth so interested in her father . . . and why was he spouting nonsense about a deed to the Golden M? It
had
to be nonsense, or a ploy of some sort.

She tried to keep calm and not let the panic within her claw its way to the surface. That would never do, because someone as unscrupulous as Seth would take advantage of her weakness.

“My father’s whereabouts are none of your business,” she snapped.

He walked toward where she stood and circled around her, so close his arm brushed her bottom . . . deliberately, she wondered? She suppressed the urge to give him a sharp jab to his ribs with her elbow. She refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d rattled her.

He stopped in front of her. “Did you know your father has a penchant for gambling?” His tone was casual, but there was nothing nonchalant about what he was suggesting.

Josie’s heart dropped to her stomach, and a peculiar sense of dread filled her. While Seth’s father had been notorious for drinking and being loud and obnoxious, her own father had gained a reputation for being an easy gambler. He loved poker, could sniff a game five miles away. There were many times he’d start the game of cards himself in some back room in a seedy bar. Sometimes he was lucky, most times he was not. Bottom line, he was addicted to the game, to the point that she’d feared he’d sink the ranch into bankruptcy. So far, she’d been successful in thwarting every attempt he’d made to take a second loan on the ranch, knowing he’d use that money to finance his gambling habit.

She moved away from Seth, to the white banister enclosing the porch. Unable to meet his disconcerting stare, she looked out at the fertile land stretching for miles in front of her. Land that had been in her family for three generations. Land that once belonged to an O’Connor. “What does my father’s gambling have to do with anything?”

She heard one of the pair of wicker chairs behind her creak as he settled his weight into it. “Your father gambled away the Golden M, and I won it.”

Josie’s world tilted and she grabbed one of the columns for balance. She glanced over her shoulder at him, denial pumping up her adrenaline. He sat there in the white wicker chair, his long body stretched out, his legs crossed at his boots, looking entirely too arrogant.

She pressed a hand to her churning stomach. God, this had to be an awful dream, a nightmare she’d wake up from and laugh about. But Seth was flesh and blood real, his persistence too intense to be anything but genuine.

“Prove it,” she blurted, despising the desperation in her voice. But that’s exactly how she was feeling, grasping at straws in hopes of finding a discrepancy in his outrageous claim.

Withdrawing a squared piece of paper from his shirt pocket, he unfolded it, then handed it toward her. “Here’s all the proof you’re gonna need.”

She stared at the offered document for what seemed like an eternity, the words “Quitclaim Deed” swirling in front of her. With a trembling hand she reached for the paper and forced herself to read the contents. She got as far as the statement transferring ownership of property to Seth O’Connor before a wave of disbelief crashed through her.

“How can this be?” she asked, more to herself than him.

“It’s all very simple,” he said, his eyes dark and unfathomable. “Your father and I were at Joe’s pub this past Friday night and he challenged me to a game of poker in the back room-”

“And you took advantage of him?” she demanded to know.

Seth laughed, the sound deep and rich despite the tension between them. “I know you’d like to believe I did, but I wasn’t the only one in the game. There were five of us present, but I seemed to be the one with all the luck. Your father lost all the cash he had on him, and resorted to writing IOU’s. At one point, he owed me over ten grand, and Gary Drummond four grand.”

Josie groaned, staggered at the debt her father had incurred. “What happened?” she asked, not sure she really wanted to know.

“It came down to my hand against his, and since he had another three grand of IOU’s in the pot and was about to write another just to stay in the game, I struck a deal with him.”

Her loathing gaze narrowed on him. “What kind of deal did my father make with the devil himself?”

He lifted a dark brow at her derogatory comment. “I told him if he put in the deed to the Golden M and he won the pot I’d dissolve him of his IOU to me, and I’d pay off Gary’s. The same would apply if he lost. Either way, he’d have no outstanding debts.”

“My, wasn’t that generous of you!” Her fingers curled tight around the deed in her hand. A deed that made the very porch she stood on, the house and ranch she grew up on,
his
. The thought made her nauseous.

He sat up in the chair, his gaze holding hers steadily. “He didn’t have to put in the deed, Josie.”

“Doesn’t sound like he had much of a choice.”

Anger flashed in his eyes, hot and dangerous. “He made every choice on his own. I offered a deal, and he accepted it with a stipulation of his own that I agreed to. If he wasn’t prepared to lose, then he never should have challenged me to join the game in the first place.”

He was right, she knew. Her father’s weakness was no one’s fault but his own. Still, she wasn’t going to lose everything that mattered to her without a battle. “I’m going to do everything in my power to get this ranch back.”

Slowly, he stood, looking entirely too sexy for someone she despised. “You can certainly try, but that document is legal and binding. Considering the ranch wasn’t in
your
name, you won’t have much to stand on.”

Her chest grew so tight it hurt to breath. Oh, Lord! She’d never thought to change the deed to include her name, never believed her father could be so desperate as to risk their home in a poker game. She was the last McAllister, and the ranch would have been hers one day, passed on from father to daughter.

She found it ironic that Jake McAllister had lost the property to an O’Connor the same way her great-grandfather McAllister had won it from Seth’s great-grandfather so long ago—in a poker game.

That had been the beginning of the McAllister and O’Connor feud. Judging by the animosity vibrating between the two of them, that dissension was still burning bright and strong. But there had been a brief time when Josie had believed she and Seth would be the ones to breach the conflicts that had trickled down through three generations. She’d been so hopeful that the strife between their families would finally end.

She’d been young, naive, and so wrong about Seth O’Connor’s intentions . . . so easily duped by a heart-stopping grin, and so effortlessly seduced by the taste of her first real kiss and the promise of real love.

She was older, and certainly wiser about how the O’Connors operated. She’d learned the hard way their motives were always self-serving. With that thought, she hardened her resolve. “You won’t get away with this, Seth,” she vowed, and thrust the offending document back at him.

“I already have.” Expression uncompromising, he took the deed from her. When his fingers brushed hers, she felt as though she’d been zapped by a bolt of lightning. The sizzle coursed up her arm, spread through her breasts and settled in the pit of her belly like a warm pool of molasses.

She shook off the unwanted sensation and jutted her chin up a notch, refusing to be intimidated by his superior height, or the intense heat blazing in the depths of his blue eyes. “If you expect me to pack up and leave without a fight, then you have another thing coming.”

“On the contrary, darlin’,” he said, his smooth drawl at odds with the resentment she detected in his voice. “I fully expect you to stay.”

Wariness pulsed through her with every heartbeat, making her feel like a cornered deer staring down the barrel of a rifle—with no means of escape. Was he tricking her somehow? Letting her believe that he wasn’t going to take away the only home she and Kellie had? “I . . . I don’t understand.”

“There’s a stipulation to the deed,” he said very carefully, as if he wanted her to understand what he was about to say. “A provision your father set and I agreed to before I won that last poker hand.”

So, he’d made his own sacrifice to gain what he wanted—the property that once belonged to his family. She was certain whatever price he’d paid wasn’t as great as her father’s loss, or her own dismal future. “What kind of stipulation?”

His smile was grim. “That we get married.”