the music leaped into the calm of the night. The same moonlight that cast her skin in a silvery glow provided the shadows in which he hid. He knew she wasn’t aware of his presence. She’d be strung as tight as a drum if she had any inkling that he watched her. And not because she found him distasteful. He wasn’t a fool. He knew Sally Mae wanted him, the same as he knew she’d never get serious about it. A brief affair to see how it would be to lie down with a savage, maybe, but he’d learned the hard way that a white woman did not openly take up with a man with Indian blood—not for love or money. She might enjoy him on the side, if the affair could be safely hidden, but there was too much hate between whites and Indians for any more than that to be tolerated. Already there were rumblings because he stayed in her barn.
Not that he gave a shit. Tucker flexed his fingers, remembering the last time someone had suggested he move. It’d felt good to knock the man’s teeth down his throat. Release a bit of that hostility Sally Mae had suggested he pray away. Well, quiet contemplation is what she called it. Tucker shook his head. As if prayer was going to settle the discord caused by a randy wrangler’s speculation. He flexed his fingers again, enjoying the response of muscle. He’d never found talk as effective as action. Might was a great equalizer, and he had plenty of that. And if he had to go back and do it again, that would be the one thing he’d thank his father for giving him the muscle to make a place for himself in a world that had never wanted to give him one.
The hem of Sally Mae’s dress fluttered, drawing his eye. Beneath the somber gray trim of her skirt, he could make out the top of her sturdy boot. Her toe was tapping.
Tucker had never seen Sally Mae dance, had always assumed it was against her religion, but maybe she’d just been in mourning for her murdered husband. Maybe that tapping toe indicated she was ready to come out and join the living. He straightened, the same surge of anticipation thrumming through his blood as when he closed in on his quarry at the end of a long bounty hunt. With the same cold precision, his senses homed in on Sally Mae. He’d lain awake nights, imagining touching his tongue to the smooth white skin at the hollow of her throat where her pulse beat against her smooth white skin. She always smelled of lemon and vanilla, and he bet the scent was strongest there, heated from her excitement and fear. He’d draw a deep breath and take it into himself right before he unbuttoned her prim dress and eased the flaps aside to reveal the treasure beneath.
Some men liked their women plump and soft, some liked them curvy. He’d decided, about two minutes after Sally Mae touched him, that he liked willowy blondes. He’d been in a rage—angry at life, indulging his temper on an equally big man who was in an equally big snit when she’d walked into the saloon, stepped between them and started to lecture them on the foolishness of fighting. He’d had to deck the bastard when he’d hauled back his arm, ready to flatten her. Then he’d had to listen to her lecture him all the way to her house, half-lit, keeping his steps steady because he knew if he tripped she’d try to catch him, and with her delicate build she’d only end up pancaked beneath him. She’d ranted at him in that quiet way she had as she’d gathered her supplies, as if her wild opinions had weight.
He’d sat and listened, breathed her scent, and as he looked around her cozy kitchen later, the longing had hit him with the force of a blow. Had things been different—his mother white or his father Indian—his blood wouldn’t have been mixed and he could have had a home in either the white world or Indian, but as it was, he didn’t fit anywhere except Hell’s Eight. He certainly didn’t fit here, but he’d wanted to. For the first time since his family and town had been wiped out by a Mexican raid when he was sixteen, he’d wanted to fit somewhere other than Hell’s Eight. And when Sally Mae’s hand had settled on his bare arm in an offer of pure comfort, for that brief moment in time, he’d wanted to fit here.
In the months since that night, the need kept creeping back. Didn’t matter how much he told himself Sally Mae was a good woman. Not the kind a man trifled with, he couldn’t shake the belief that she was meant for him. For however long he could tickle her fancy. Since that moment she’d touched him, he’d been biding his time. He was good at that. It made him a good Texas Ranger. A good horse trainer. He eyed the gentle thrust of Sally’s breasts beneath her demure lace collar. A damn good lover.
The music resumed a lively beat. Sally’s toe kept time. He bet she danced with the same inherent grace underlined with an innate sexuality, as she did everything. She was the only woman he knew who could make stitching a wound a sexy event. A smile tugged on the corner of her wide mouth. Probably too wide for beauty, but Tucker liked the generous way she smiled. It reflected the generosity of her spirit. He liked the way her nose wasn’t some small bit of nonsense, too. Straight and narrow it complemented the strength in the rest of her features.
Truth was, a moment spent studying Sally’s face revealed a lot about the woman’s personality. Including how stubborn she was. Just look at the set of her chin. More than one person had tried to get her to move back east after her husband had been shot, but she’d refused politely. When pressed, she’d just ended all argument with a simple statement that she wouldn’t be run out of her home. And when the suggestions had started that she needed to remarry, she’d been just as blunt. Her husband had been a good man. She’d mourn him properly.
The town had backed down. Which had been pure foolishness, in Tucker’s opinion. Texas wasn’t a place for a woman who believed God lived in everyone and turning the other cheek beat a beating when dealing with a threat. Tucker would have put her ass on the next train east, bound and gagged if he’d had to. Sally Mae was too fine for life alone out here. Green to the difficulties she faced, green to the reality that she’d have to marry again. Green to the danger she faced from him. Hell, she’d even pointed out that with a Texas Ranger living in her barn, how much of a threat could there be? Completely missing the connotation people might put on that. Completely missing how right they’d be to speculate on his interest. He did want her and he intended to have her.
On a sensual sigh, she smiled and settled further against the porch wall. Alone in the dark, apart from the town, the way she always was, even though she tended to the townspeople with an evenhandedness a preacher couldn’t fault, taking care of good and bad alike, losing all caution under a sense of dedication. Lately, even more so. As if driven to prove something only she understood. Which was another reason he was still here and not out following the latest lead on what had happened to Ari, Caine’s wife’s sister, why he’d turned down Sam and his new fiancée’s invitation to make his home off Hell’s Eight at their comfortable ranch. He grimaced. He was a glutton for punishment, that was for sure, but someone had to watch over the widow when her common sense took a hike. Like last week when she’d taken in Lyle Hartsmith after he’d been knifed in a bar fight.
Lyle Hartsmith was a real no account, an outlaw with no morals and no allegiance, and if there was any justice in the world, the wound would have killed him, but there was no convincing Sally Mae of that. In her eyes, the prairie rat was one of God’s creatures and entitled to care. And that was the end of it. So Tucker was here cooling his heels, keeping an eye on things, making sure she didn’t take on more than she could handle, feeding a hunger that could go nowhere while he paid back a debt she wouldn’t acknowledge he owed. He shook his head. Who the hell had said that with age comes wisdom? He was thirty-one, and from all recent signs, getting dumber by the day.
The fiddler dropped into a slow, popular tune and Sally’s smile changed, becoming sad and just a little bit lost in the memories the song evoked. No doubt, of her dead husband. Tucker wanted to resent the man for having Sally for his wife, but he couldn’t. Jonah had been a good man who’d deserved better than he’d received. And he’d been stolen from Sally the same way Tucker’s life had been stolen from him when he’d been sixteen—in a hail of bullets and with no warning. He knew the sense of shock left by that kind of murder, the feeling that there was nothing left to hold on to. His parents might not have been the best, but they’d been better than the nothing that had remained when the Mexican soldiers had finished annihilating his small town.
A
