How To Lasso A Cowboy

Chapter One

TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA 1889

TESS ANN MCCABE brushed the trail dust from her jeans and slapped her weatherbeaten hat against the hitching post before stepping into the Bird Cage Saloon. The warm, dusky interior washed over her with comforting familiarity, but the scowl on her face didn’t ease. She had to do what she had to do, Tess told herself. But dadgummit, she didn’t have to like it. Life could sometimes be downright unreasonable.

Heads turned when the clunk of her boots on the plank floor announced her presence, but the men enjoying their liquor, cards, and the attentions of the saloon girls didn’t pay her much mind. The newcomer was just Tess from the Diamond T. Nothing to get stirred up about.

But when she brought down her fist upon the polished top of the long bar, eyes turned her way.

“I need a man!” Tess announced. A shameful confession, but there it was. “Now. Today. I need a goddamned man.”

All activity in the bar ceased. Silence as heavy as the pall of cigar smoke answered her. She stood rigid and proudly upright under the curious regard, refusing to lower her eyes, refusing to give in to cowardice and run from the saloon.

Then a throaty feminine chuckle broke the silence. “Honey girl, don’t we all! Join the line.”

Tension broke in a wave of laughter. Tess didn’t smile.

“Hey, Tessie,” came a hoarse shout from Joe Daniel, who sat at a poker table near the back of the room. “I’m your man, sweetie! I could use me a nice little ranch down on the river and a sweet little gal to go with it.”

Laughter greeted his offer.

“Gettin’ mighty brave, Joe,” a man at the bar said.

Another shouted. “You take some sweet little gal onto Tessie’s ranch and Tess’ll likely hogtie her, brand her, and sell her to the Injuns like a side of beef. Ain’t it so, Tess?”

Tess felt her face heat. True, she had threatened her brother, Sean, with such a fate once, but that had been in fun. Besides, he had deserved it. Her father had never tired of jawing and guffawing about the incident to anyone who would listen. And of course nobody believed that she, Colin McCabe’s “wild” daughter, might be the one Joe meant by “a sweet little gal.”

Glory Gilda, one of the Bird Cage’s most popular whores, strolled up to stand by Tess’s side. “You jackasses shut your yaps. Ain’t a one of you in here such a catch that you can make fun of Tess. Besides, she could whup every one of you in a brawl.”

“That ain’t exactly true,” Tess admitted to Glory. “But I could outlast any one of them in the saddle.”

“Course you could.” Glory guided her toward an empty table. “Given half a chance, a woman can outlast a man at just about anything you can think of. Whiskey?”

“You know I don’t hold with strong drink.”

“You look like you could use a strong drink, though. The stronger, the better.” The woman plunked herself down at the table with a sigh. “So you’re finally up against it, are you?”

“Between a rock and you know what.” Tess heaved a disconsolate sigh and pulled up a chair to straddle.

Everyone in the bar knew her problem. Hell, everyone in Tombstone knew that Colin McCabe had reached up from the grave to twist his daughter’s tail. Many a man laughed out loud to think that Tess Ann McCabe, one of Arizona’s most ineligible females, had to find a husband or lose her ranch to her runty little brother, as worthless a piece of flesh and bone that ever God allowed to breathe the world’s air.

Okay, maybe Sean wasn’t totally worthless. He was her brother, after all, and he probably did have good qualities somewhere, if a person looked hard enough.

Gilda commiserated. “That was a bum thing your daddy did to you, Tess, honey. Have you talked to a lawyer?”

“Hell yes. But the only lawyer in town is Harvey Bartlett, the skunk who wrote up Daddy’s will. Fat lot of help he is. Maybe I will have a whiskey. What’s it taste like?”

“Damned good, most times.”

When Tess took her first sip of the amber liquid Glory set in front of her, she disagreed with a grimace. “Uck!”

“It grows on you,” Glory assured her.

It would have to, Tess mused. The whiskey burned all the way down her gullet into her stomach. Fine comfort that was! But she took another sip, just to be sure that she hadn’t missed something.

“So how long has it been since the old man bit the dirt?” Glory asked.

“Five months, two weeks.”

“And he gave you six months to find yourself a husband?”

“Six months,” Tess confirmed. “The rat. All my life I was my daddy’s righthand man. Hell, when I was five years old he had me driving cattle and riding halfbroke horses. I’m the best damned cowboy on the Diamond T, probably the best damned cowboy in all of Arizona, but that crazy old man kept expecting me to bring home a husband along with the cows.”

Glory nodded sympathetically.

“A husband is harder to rope than an ornery bull,” Tess said with a morose sigh.

“That’s a fact. But, honey, it’s not like you ain’t got nothing to offer a man. The Diamond T is a nice little ranch, with plenty of water and a good crew.”

Tess took another sip of whiskey, which began to send warm streamers into her veins. “That’s the rub, Glory. No husband is going to move in on my territory, boss my crew, or run my ranch. Hell, he might even expect me to cook and mend and all that nonsense.” She brought a fist down on the table with force enough to make her shot glass jump. “What I need is a lazy, worthless sonuvabitch who’ll run out on me after a few days’ time. Me and Miguel and Rosie have it all figured out.”

Glory laughed her throaty laugh. “Well, honey, the world is crawling with worthless men. It’s the good ones that are hard to come by. I might even be able to help you out.”

A twinkle of mischief lit Glory’s eye as the amiable whore surveyed the room. “How about old Jack Campbell? He hasn’t done a lick of work in the last two years as far as anybody can tell. Feed him a meal or two and he’d most likely do anything you say.”

“Too old. Yellow teeth. Smells bad.”

“You said you wanted someone worthless.”

“Yeah, but if I’ve gotta actually marry the fella, he’d better be at least a couple of steps above a goat, or no one’s going to believe it.”

Glory screwed up her face in concentration, creasing her thick makeup. Then she smiled. “I have it!”

“You have it?”

“I have it!”

Hope rose in Tess’s chest. Or was that the liquor?

“Tess, honey, look at the fellow drowning in his glass at that corner table. He’s been drinking for two days, that one has, too wed to his whiskey to even take me up on the offer of a tumble. He might clean up right nice if you took a scrub brush to him and poured strong coffee down his gullet.”

Tess looked at the cowboy in the corner. He looked worthless enough. Hell. She might as well give him a try.

JOSHUA Ransom looked drunkenness straight in its ugly face, and he welcomed it. The drunker he got, the more chance he could forget his goddamned brother, David, forget the Double R Ranch-once the finest ranch north of the Mexican border-and forget that a rancher with no cattle was a rancher with no future. If Josh got fallingdown, blind, drooling swacked, maybe he could forget that two days ago he had sat at this very table, in this same saloon, and listened to his last hope in the world tell him the bank wouldn’t loan him the money he needed.

So what the hell could he do now? Where does a man turn when his best and last chance rears up and smacks him in the head? How does a man deal with a brother who squanders a family business, a family home, a family tradition, on a bad poker hand?

Josh didn’t want to think about it. He wanted another drink, another shot of liquid fire to numb his brain. If he could only manage to lift his hand to summon one of the bar girls.

Magically, one of them appeared without a summons, a yellowhaired angel in pink lace and fishnet.

“ ’Nother drink,” he slurred.

“Sweetie pie, you don’t need no more whiskey. But I brought you something better.”

Josh focused blurrily upon what she offered. It was a girl, he thought. But he wasn’t sure. Yeah. A girl. Her jeans and denim shirt could have belonged to a man, but no man ever filled out clothes in quite that way.

Strange way for a whore to dress, but there was no accounting for taste.

“No, thanks,” he mumbled. “No woman. Drink.”

Hell, right now he wouldn’t be any use to a woman. Not in his state-which state he really needed to help along with at least one more shot of whiskey.

The yellowhaired vixen in pink chuckled throatily and turned to her associate. “He’s all yours, honey, if you can hook him.”

THE man smelled of sour whiskey and other things Tess didn’t really want to think about. The notion of hitching herself to this slug, even for a short time, made her stomach turn. She looked to Glory for help, but Glory’s attention had turned elsewhere, namely, to a poker player who looked as if he might donate all his winnings for a chance to peer down her corset.

Tess sighed and sat down, trying not to scowl at her prospective suitor. The man was old enough to be her father. Silver hair hung in his face, reddened eyes sunk into shadows, and his mouth sagged. He might start drooling at any minute. All in all, the bum looked like something you might find beneath a rock.

Even if she scrubbed him up, would anyone believe that Tess McCabe would hitch herself to this piece of dog shit? Well, maybe they would. She had a certain reputation in these parts. Most folks would shake their heads and say something like “That’s what comes of a woman wearing pants.”

The man seemed to have forgotten Tess was there, so she woke him up with a kick beneath the table. “Hey, you.”

He jumped. “Huh?”

“You look like you could use some help.”

His laugh sounded something like a burp. Maybe it was.

“I’ve got a deal to offer. Maybe it would help you out.”

The man simply looked into his empty shot glass. “You wanna go get me a drink?”

Tess wrinkled her lip. She didn’t much approve of boozing, at least not on this scale. Plainly she’d better work fast before the poor slob passed out.

“You don’t need another drink, looks like to me, mister.”

Maybe she should try to put on some feminine airs, Tess mused, then decided that ploy didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Less, maybe. She decided to come right to the point of her offer. “You married?”

He snorted. She took that as a no.

“You need money?”

That put a spark into his eyes. A dull spark, but there it was.

“How does three hundred dollars easy money sound to you, mister?” Tess pitched her voice low so it wouldn’t carry to the other tables.

The man choked. “Three… three…”

Glory abandoned her poker player and came to Tess’s aid. “Shush now, you. Tess, honey, you don’t want the whole saloon listening in on your private business, so why don’t we take this up to my room?” She nudged their reluctant Romeo. “What do you say, sweetie pie?”

He crossed his eyes and nearly fell from the chair. They took that as a yes.

Glory’s “room” was one of the upstairs gilded “cages” that gave the Bird Cage its name and fame. Getting the poor slob up the stairs posed a challenge, because he was bigger than Tess expected. When she took his arm and braced it across her shoulders, the hard muscle beneath his shirt surprised her. Apparently the fellow had only recently turned to liquor. Jerking him off of his downward path could be a good deed.

Or not. This could be the biggest mistake of her life. Still, a woman had to do what a woman had to do.

“Let’s sit him on the bed,” she told Glory. “I don’t like him towering over me like that.”

The stair climb had brought the fellow around a bit. His eyes now looked more wary than dull.

“What are you gals up to?”

“Saving your sorry ass from boozing yourself to death,” Glory answered primly. “And setting you on the road to riches.”

“That’s right. We’re doing you a good deed, is what.”

Tess nearly strained a muscle helping Glory sit the fellow on the bed. He didn’t carry much fat on him to lighten things up. Finally, she straightened up and looked him narrowly in the eye. “I’ll put it to you honest, cowboy. If you aren’t already hitched to a wife, you can earn yourself three hundred easy dollars in one afternoon’s work. Just stand up with me before a preacher and say ‘I do.’ Then you can be on your way to whatever hell you’re headed for.”

The poor man nearly toppled over. Glory and Tess both took an arm and hauled him upright again.

“You see…,” Tess continued, hoping to make her proposal sound reasonable, “my father left me the ranch when he died. It’s not much of a ranch,” she added hastily. It wouldn’t do to set the fellow’s thoughts running along lines of greed. “But it’s home, you know? But my noaccount brother gets the whole thing unless I get myself hitched by March fifteenth. And today is March first.”

In truth, her father had been buried on a hot day back in September. He had given her six months to find a husband, but she had kept putting things off, hoping a miracle would happen. A miracle hadn’t happened, and so now she found herself facing this sorry excuse for a man in Glory’s gilded cage.

He made a choking sound that might have been a laugh. “You…you want me to marry you?”

Tess bristled. “You don’t have to make it sound like I asked you to go to hell and back.”

He laughed again. This time it was definitely a laugh. “You want me to marry you?”

“A few minutes with a preacher,” Tess continued through gritted teeth, “then, when the deed is in my name, you can collect your money and be on your way. I don’t need a husband, and if I did, I sure wouldn’t choose a drunken bum like you.”

Glory lifted a cautioning finger at her. “Now, Tess, honey. You’re wanting this man to do you a favor. Mind your temper.”

The prospective groom heaved an alcoholic sigh and shook his head. “I’m not much for lovin’ and leavin’.”

Tess hastened to squelch that notion. “You won’t be doing no loving in this deal, mister! You can be sure of that!”

“You wouldn’t be married long,” Glory hastened to assure him. “Once things have settled down and people have forgotten about Colin’s stupid will, you’ll get an annulment, won’t you, Tessie? It’ll be like the marriage never existed.”

“Right!” Tess confirmed. Then she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You aren’t already hitched, are you?”

The man chuckled a little too cynically. “Hell no.”

“And you could use the money, couldn’t you?” Tess took an envelope from her shirt pocket, extracted a sheaf of bills, and dangled the money before his eyes. “Couldn’t you?”

The poor sot’s eyes crossed as he tried to focus on the greenbacks. “Three hundred dollars,” he said slowly.

“Three hundred dollars,” she echoed temptingly. Good old money, the bait that would hook almost any fish. “And you’ll be a free man to use the money however you want.”

He reached out to take the money, but she pulled it away. “When the deed is in my hand, cowboy. Not before.”

He squinted suspiciously. “No strings?”

“I’ll cut the strings while the ink is still drying on that deed.” Her heart jumped. The fish had taken the hook.

“Nobody gets hurt.”

“Not a soul.”

“Nothing ill… illegal,” he slurred.

“Of course not. Say a few words and sign a piece of paper. Then you leave, and a while later, I send word that you’re legally free. Simple.”

Simple. Right. Anything but, a voice in her head warned. But she had no choice.

Her groomtobe looked a bit queasy. “You got yourself a deal.”

TESSwasn’t about to let her fish squirm off the hook while she dillydallied about. Glory stood guard over the groom on the excuse of letting him sleep off his liquor in her room, while Tess dispatched the bartender’s son to the Diamond T to fetch Rosie and Miguel for the wedding. The ranch was an hour’s ride on a fast horse, and longer for her foreman and stepmother to hitch the buckboard (Rosie flat refused to climb up on any horse) and drive back to town, so Tess had time to talk Preacher Malone into a hurryup wedding and also drop by lawyer Bartlett’s office to inform him that she was about to head up the matrimonial trail. She didn’t bother to tell him what a short trail it would be.

Tess left the attorney’s office with a chuckle bubbling in her chest. The look on Harvey’s face had told her that he didn’t think she had what it took to lasso herself a man, not if her daddy had given her six years instead of six months.

Arrangements made, Tess had time on her hands, something she didn’t want. So far the morning had moved fast- the ride into town, meeting Glory in the Bird Cage, putting her persuasive powers to the test with-what was the damned fellow’s name? She hadn’t even asked. Oh well. His name didn’t really matter.

Tess walked over to the hotel for lunch, even though her stomach didn’t much welcome the idea of food. Through the steam swirls rising from her coffee she saw her father’s face. She had labored so hard to please that hardedged, obstinate man. His rare words of praise were hoarded treasures. His impatience, hot temper, and above all, his razor strap, had inspired her to labor even harder to please him.

Her brother, Sean, on the other hand, had fought the bit like a sour mustang. He had hated the ranch, hated the work, hated the livestock, the dust, the summer heat, and the winter cold. On his fifteenth birthday he’d up and left. Colin had been both furious and embarrassed that his only son “had a limp noodle spine.” And he’d leaned even harder on Tess, who had tried her best to be better than a son to him.

But in one thing she had never pleased him. Colin couldn’t understand why his daughter couldn’t lasso herself a husband and bring him home to help run the Diamond T. Her mother could have told him that no man wanted a woman who could handle a branding iron but not a clothes iron, who could butcher a hog but didn’t know the first thing about fixing a fancy pork roast. By the time Tess had reached marrying age, however, her mother wasn’t telling Colin anything. She had died in childbirth, trying to deliver a third child, when Tess was ten.

Tess dropped another lump of sugar into her cup and stirred. I’ve got myself that husband now, she told her daddy silently. But things aren’t going to be the way you wanted, you stubborn old jackass. You’re gone now, and I have to live life the best I know how. And I’m not taking up with some man who wants the Diamond T, not me, and who thinks he can step in and run things better than some silly woman.

So now she was stuck with a pickled bum. But not for long. Everything would work out, Tess assured herself. She would make it work out.

By three o’clock, Tess had rebraided the long black hair that hung to her waist, washed her face at the OK Corral watering trough, and readied herself to meet her bridegroom on the steps of the white frame church on Allen Street. Just as she arrived at the church, Glory turned the corner, headed her way, and the man beside her walked on his own two feet, though his boots didn’t exactly track a straight line. From the other direction, a familiar wagon rattled toward her with Rosie and Miguel perched up on the box. Perfect timing. It was a sign, Tess told herself. A good sign.

Rosie and Miguel arrived first, and her plump, brownhaired stepmother jumped down from the wagon to give Tess a hug. “You found someone so fast!”

“Glory helped.”

Glory and Rosie were good friends from the days when Rosie also had earned her living at the Bird Cage. The two women sometimes banded together to give Tess annoying lectures on how she ought to wear frills and curls to catch a man, but Tess loved them anyway.

Miguel, dark, lean, and wiry, climbed down from the wagon more slowly, favoring a stiff knee that had been stomped by a cranky steer two years before. He gave Tess a smile, but his attention swung quickly to the pair coming up the street. “That him?”

“Yup.”

“Big fella. And that don’t look like fat filling him out. You sure about him?”

“Seems pretty noaccount to me. I found him drunk in the Bird Cage. He jumped on the money fast enough.”

Miguel’s eyes narrowed. “You sure he won’t jump on more than the money?”

Rosie batted the foreman with her reticule. “Don’t talk like that in front of Tess.”

“Woman, I’m just looking out for the girl’s interests. She ain’t no lilylivered little miss who ain’t ever heard a cow turd called a cow turd.”

Tess put her hands on her hips. “Call a truce, you two. And don’t worry about my bridegroom. I made it pretty clear the money is all he gets.”

Miguel scowled, first at Rosie, then at Tess. He had been foreman at the Diamond T for the last thirteen years, and in many ways, he had been more of a father to her than Colin McCabe. He had a father’s protective instincts.

Tess grimaced at him. “Don’t look like you’re going to hogtie the poor sot and carve a brand into his hide, Miguel. You’ll scare him away. After all, this was your idea.”

“It was Rosie’s idea. Only a woman could think up a plan like this one.”

“Well, you agreed.”

“Two against one. I didn’t have much choice.”

“Yeah, damn.” Tess sighed. “Neither do I.”

Tess’s soontobe husband looked a bit dazed when Glory hauled him by the arm up the church steps. “Here he is,” the saloon girl declared proudly.

He shrugged off her arm and nearly toppled with the effort. The bum must have really tied one on to still be soused after sleeping for a couple of hours.

“Well, now,” she said with false heartiness. “Here we all are. Time to get this thing done.”

Rosie eyed the groom with growing doubt. “If there were another way-”

“There’s not.” Tess wished there were.

“Well, then.” Rosie pasted a smile on her face. “Let’s do this up right. Come inside. We’ll just clean you up a bit.”

“Aw, Rosie!”

“You will not be married looking like you’ve just ridden in from the range.”

“He looks worse than I do!”

“Him I don’t care about. You, I do. Come.”

Miguel chuckled. “You better not argue with Rosie, chica. You know how she gets.”

Rosie gave the foreman an arch look.

“I know how she gets,” Tess grumbled.

But she followed Rosie into the preacher’s office, where Rosie had enough privacy to fill a basin with water, make Tess scrub her face-in Rosie’s mind the watering trough of the OK Corral didn’t make for proper washing-and then sat Tess down to brush and braid her hair once again.

Rosie never gave up trying to make Tess look like a proper woman. Such persistence had to be admired, even if it was annoying as hell.

“The man you found is big,” Rosie noted. “And he looks like he knows how to work. No fat. All muscle.”

“He’s a drunk. He’ll be off to drink his way through my three hundred dollars without a thought to how he earned it.”

Rosie shook her head dubiously. “I don’t know. You be careful, Tessie. I wish I’d thought to bring a dress.”

“Forget that! This isn’t a real wedding.”

Rosie humphed. “It would have been nice if you could have found a real husband. Every woman needs a man, and men are lost without a woman to keep them in line.”

Tess snickered. “Miguel, for instance?”

Rosie yanked at the braid. “That one? Ha! It would take an angel from heaven to put up with that mule of a man.”

They met Glory, Miguel, and-what was his name?-in the back of the church, and Tess noticed that Glory had spruced up the groom a bit as well. But even with his hair slicked back and his face washed, he still looked like a bum.

“I guess I’d better know your name for when the preacher gets here. Preacher Malone can get picky about marrying folks who don’t really know each other. He’s funny that way.”

The man gave her a fuzzy look. “Ransom.”

“Ransom what?”

“Joshua Ransom.”

“Josh Ransom,” Tess repeated. A good strong name to be wasted on the likes of this fellow. “I’m Tess McCabe. Diamond T Ranch.”

He had the nerve to look uninterested.

“But don’t get any ideas about the ranch, just because you’re standing up with me.”

So why had she even mentioned the Diamond T? Tess wondered. Maybe because Tess McCabe wasn’t anybody without it. She always attached it to herself. Tess McCabe of the Diamond T. That was who she was. One without the other just wasn’t worth much of anything.

Before she could pursue that unhappy thought, Preacher Malone walked in. Tess warned her groom with a subtle elbow to the ribs. “Just say the right words to earn your money.”

The wedding ceremony was mercifully short. Preacher Malone delivered long, windy sermons in Sunday service, but this being a Tuesday, the preacher seemed to have his mind more on getting back to his carpentry business than running off at the mouth about the sanctity and responsibilities of marriage. Good thing, Tess reflected, because the longer she stood in that church with what’shisname, the more the man swayed beside her. The groom had taken on a tinge of green, and the church had begun to smell like a still. If the preacher hadn’t been in such a hurry, he might have noticed such things.

But more important, if the ceremony had dragged on much more than five minutes, Tess herself might have showed a yellow streak and run. Her stomach began to turn somersaults, and the palms of her hands broke out in sweat. Should she back out before the words were spoken? Could she back out?

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Preacher Malone declared.

Too late. The deed was done, for better or worse.

Slow, insolent clapping from the rear of the church made Tess’s heart jump. In unison with Rosie, Glory, and Miguel, she turned.

“Congratulations, Tessie girl.”

Looking like a greenhorn in a fancy suit and slickedback hair, her brother leaned against the frame of the open church doorway, applauding sarcastically.

“You finally caught yourself a husband, did you? How lucky for you.”

His grin told Tess her luck had just stepped in a cow pie.

Chapter Two

JOSH RANSOM COULDN’T remember a time when he’d felt quite so lousy. Of course, right at the moment, his memory didn’t work all that well. Neither did his stomach, his legs, or his tongue; and his eyes still slipped in and out of focus. A pounding headache hammered his brain, and every muscle in his body screamed for mercy.

Liquor and he didn’t get along. Never had. Never would. Why hadn’t he remembered that when he’d tried to drown his sorrows in a bottle? Liquor could numb the brain for a while, but when those nerves woke up again, there was hell to pay. Except that hell couldn’t be anywhere near as bad as this. He lay back in the tub of hot water and contemplated drowning himself-until a cheerful voice walked in on the legs of a short, plump woman with clear blue eyes and a sympathetic smile.

“Soaked some of the whiskey out, have you?”

A blush heated his face hotter than the bathwater as he sank lower beneath concealing suds. At least he hoped the suds concealed.

The woman laughed. “Don’t worry, muchacho. You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen so often I’m plumb bored.” But her eyes twinkled. “Though I’ve got to say, you’re less boring than most.”

“You aren’t…you aren’t-”

“I’m Rosie.” She laughed. “You thought maybe I was the one standing beside you in front of Preacher Malone? Ha! You really were in a fog, weren’t you?” She took a scrub brush from a nail above the sink and advanced toward the tub. Josh, not a man accustomed to feeling helpless, felt mighty helpless right then.

“Wait. What’re you-”

“You need a good scrub, my friend. Tess-that’s your wife, by the way-she don’t allow liquor in the house, and you’re just about as potent as a bottle of pure whiskey. Some of that stink has to come off.”

“Wait a minute, lady!” As Rosie applied the stiff brush to his back, Josh flailed, sending water sloshing onto the kitchen floor. Rosie didn’t seem to mind the soaking. “Hey! Ouch! Give me that!” He managed to grab the bristled weapon from her hand. “I can scrub myself, missus. Could I have some privacy here?”

“A touchy one, ain’t ya?” But she chuckled goodnaturedly. “Just see that you scrub good. I’ll just put a few more sticks of wood in the stove before I leave and then you can have your precious privacy.”

Josh did make good use of the scrub brush once the woman had left. He wished he could scrub away the last few days-hell, the last few weeks!-along with the dirt and clinging smell of whiskey. Maybe if he’d had those weeks to live over again, he could have kept David away from that poker game, or managed to lay hands on the entire six hundred dollars to settle David’s marker, or at least not gotten tanked in the Bird Cage. His memory at this moment struggled with a whiskeyinduced fog, but to Josh’s best recollection he’d up and married some woman-not the lady with the scrub brush, he gathered-for a sum that would put him over the top for David’s debt. That sort of lamebrain stunt just about put him on a level with his idiot brother, or maybe even below. He had already had one foot in a mule pile, and now had the other foot in as well. Smart of him. Josh thought upon David’s foolishness with a bit more sympathy. Blockheadedness apparently ran in the Ransom blood.

He looked around him, his brain clearing a bit as some of the fogginess dissolved into the warm water. A wood stove pumped out heat against the March chill. Pots hung from a rack-nothing fancy, strictly utilitarian. A chipped metal worktable doubled as a dining table, with benches pushed beneath on either side. A colorful rag rug-the only touch of decoration he could see-covered part of the smooth clay floor.

The curtain between the kitchen and the rest of the house brushed aside to admit another visitor, this one walking on four legs. A roughcoated gray dog about the size of a goodsized coyote regarded him with confident, measuring eyes. One ear stood up, the other flopped down, but the dog didn’t lose any dignity to his lopsided looks.

“You’re not the one I married, are you?” Josh asked miserably.

The dog’s look changed to sympathy, and it padded over to give Josh’s wet arm a lick.

“Friendly, aren’t you? Want to answer a few questions? Like what the hell am I doing here?” Josh wrinkled his brow in a frown, then grimaced with the pain such an effort caused. Thinking hurt. Frowning hurt. Everything hurt. He dimly remembered the ride from town in a poorly sprung wagon. At the time, climbing into the wagon and heading for somewhere seemed a reasonable thing to do, but wasn’t he supposed to hightail it out of town, money in hand, after the ceremony? So why was he sitting in an unfamiliar kitchen in a tin washtub scrubbing himself raw and talking to a dog?

TESSwore a path on the clay floor in front of the fireplace with her pacing. “Dadgummit! Everything was just hunkydory until Sean showed up. I hate that grin of his. It’s his gotcha grin. He knows exactly what I’m up to.”

Rosie rocked in the chair next to the fireplace, her hands full of mending. “I’m not surprised, Tessie. He’s your brother. You two think alike.”

“We’re nothing alike!”

But they were, in a way. They had grown up together, helped each other, ratted on each other, made trouble with each other-until Sean got fed up with the Diamond T, and with their father, and took off for California to find his fortune.

“Maybe you’re right,” Tess admitted with a sigh. “Sean was as stubborn about getting away from the ranch as I was about staying. He knows damned well that I’d hitch myself up with a rattlesnake if it would let me keep the Diamond

T. The question is, can he do anything about it other than complain?”

Rosie shook her head. “You’ve done what Colin wanted you to do, Tessie. I still don’t know if it’s what you should have done, but it’s done.”

“Yeah, but Bartlett-that braying mule-he might side with Sean no matter what. After all, when has the law ever favored a woman over a man? Bartlett said right to my face he thought the will was stupid-not because I had to get married, but because I’d get the Diamond T at all. Never mind that Sean took off. Never mind that he gave our daddy nothing but grief. To a man’s way of thinking, having cojones automatically makes a person stronger, smarter, and just plain better than anyone burdened with breasts.”

“Tess! A lady doesn’t talk that way.”

“I’m not a lady, I’m a cowboy. And I’m the best dadgummed cowboy for miles around.”

Rosie’s lips tightened in disapproval, but Tess didn’t care. She could almost feel the steam coming out of her ears.

“Damn it all, anyway!” she growled to herself. She could think of only one solution to the problem of Sean, and she didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. “Why doesn’t that sorry sot I married climb out of the tub and come out where a person can talk to him?”

“I don’t think he feels so good,” Rosie opined.

“I don’t care how he feels. I need to tell him the way things stand before he makes any plans to spend my money.”

Tess’s patience, never her long suit, wore out in a few more minutes of pacing. What’shisname had been lounging in the washtub long enough to drown a whale, and she didn’t intend to cool her heels waiting for his lazy butt to get out of the bath.

“You about through in there, cowboy? ’Cause we need to talk.”

The reply sounded grumpy and mostly unintelligible.

“Okay then, fella. I’ll come to you.”

Ignoring Rosie’s squeak of a warning, Tess pushed through the curtain, ripe with indignation. Her groom sat in the tin washtub surrounded by dirty gray water that covered him from midchest down, except for his bare knees, which stuck up like two bald islands rising from a sea of soap scum. He appeared to be carrying on a conversation with Rojo, the best damned cattle dog west of the Rockies. Rojo regularly got above himself, though, trying to run the ranch and everyone on it. Typical male.

“Rojo, git!” Tess tapped the dog with a toe. “Get outside and do something useful, you mangy cur.”

Rojo got, and the man in the tub sank deeper into the water. “Hellfire! Can’t a man have a shred of privacy from you women?”

“Not in this house. But don’t worry about it. You won’t be here long enough for it to matter.”

Queer that the sot didn’t look like a man who poisoned himself with liquor. Broad shoulders stretched from one side of the washtub to the other, and below the shoulders, hard muscle slabbed his chest. Silver hair shot with black plastered his skull, and dark eyes, clear now of alcohol’s haze, regarded her suspiciously.

Sitting in that tub all scrubbed and brighteyed, he didn’t look as old as Tess had figured, even with the silver hair.

His mustache, and an admirable mustache it was, showed darker than the thick thatch on his head. Maybe the fellow was middle age. Maybe even a sliver younger than middle age. He boasted prime muscle, hardened by work. How had he slipped far enough down to climb into a whiskey bottle?

At her interested perusal, the man reached for his hat on the table beside the tub and clapped it between his thighs.

The man had nothing to hide that interested Tess in the least. “You’ve been washing long enough to shrivel up like a pea,” she complained.

“That woman took my clothes.”

“That woman? Rosie? You could’a yelled.”

“Okay. I’m yelling.”

“Okay.” She measured him with her eyes. He would fit well enough into Colin McCabe’s clothes. “I’ll get you something,” she promised, “as soon as we talk.”

“How about you get me something now?”

“Don’t get pushy.” She grinned, not about to give up an advantage. “You’re in no position.”

He glared, but she just let the glare bounce off her. A man sitting in scummy water with bony knees sticking up like pink pimples had to work harder than that to be intimidating.

He gave up with a sigh, closed his eyes, and sank deeper into the water. “Okay, then talk.”

“You and I made a deal.”

“Yeah. I seem to remember it included something about me riding out of town three hundred dollars richer.”

“You’ll get your money.”

“Good. You know, lady, you ought to be ashamed ofyourself for taking advantage of a man who’s stumbledown drunk.”

She folded her arms across her chest and chided, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for getting stumbledown drunk.”

“Yeah.” He grimaced. “Well, I’m paying the price. And speaking of prices, if you get me my clothes and my money, I’ll be out of your hair quicker than you can blink. When you get your annulment, or divorce, or whatever, just let me know.”

“That’s what we need to talk about.” Here Tess felt less certain of her ground, and he seemed to sense it, because his eyes narrowed suspiciously. The eyes changed color with his mood, Tess noted. When he was drunk, the eyes had been muddy green. Now they looked almost gray- steel, knifeedged gray, and so sharp they managed to stab clear through to her conscience.

Tess liked to deal straight up and honest with people. If Colin McCabe hadn’t been such a sneaky old coot…but no. She wasn’t stiffing the guy, Tess told herself. Adding a few conditions after the fact, out of dire necessity, simply made good sense in this case.

“Okay, cowboy, here’s the deal. I had to get married or this ranch”-she gestured grandly to indicate the house, barns, grassy range, and the San Pedro River that flowed through it and made the pasture so rich-“goes to my lazy jackass brother. I told you this.”

The eyes didn’t get any less sharp.

“But, you see, I don’t need some man coming in here and unpacking his bags like the place belonged to him, so I found someone willing to make a deal. Marry me, and leave. You.”

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

“I’m a hell of a long way from being crazy.”

“If my brain hadn’t been pickled, I would’ve hightailed it out of that saloon so fast all you would have seen is my dust.”

“Well, your brain was pickled. And don’t worry about your money. I’m keeping the bargain. A McCabe always keeps a bargain.”

“Glad to hear it. So just bring me some clothes and my money, and I’ll go. And I could use the loan of a horse, too.”

The fool just wasn’t getting this. Tess sighed. “That squintyeyed fellow who showed up in the church with the halfbaked grin on his face was my brother, Sean. And he knows something isn’t straight here. If he gets wind that we’re not hitched for real and proper, he’ll go squealing to lawyer Bartlett like the pig he is, and Bartlett will take his side, because he’s a pig too.”

Her groom’s eyes narrowed. “And why should I be concerned about this?”

She threw up her hands. Could it be more obvious? “Because I married you to keep this ranch! What good is wasting three hundred good dollars and going through this nonsense if I lose the ranch anyway? You’ve gotta stick around a few days and make this look real, just until Sean goes back to his hole in California. How hard could that be?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched as he gritted his teeth. “Listen, lady, I don’t have a lot of time to hang around here playing house. You have a problem with your brother? Well, I have problems of my own. And three hundred dollars will help solve them. So keep your bargain, give me what you owe me, and I’ll be on my way. Now.”

She tried to be patient. “You’re not being reasonable.”

“I’m being reasonable for the first time in two days, because I’m sober for the first time in two days.” He exhaled a frustrated sigh, which deflated him enough to make his shoulders sink below the water. “I can’t believe I actually married you.”

That stung. “Hey. Lots of guys would be glad to marry me!”

“Then why didn’t you get one of them?”

“Because I don’t want a permanent husband. Don’t you ever listen?” Her patience threatened to wear thin. “I don’t see that asking you to park yourself here for a few days is expecting so much. After all, you are getting three hundred dollars.”

“So you keep promising.”

He lifted one arm from the water and draped it along the rim of the tub. His fingers had crinkled from the water, but other than that little detail, that arm was remarkably muscled, sprinkled with black hair plastered against sunbronzed skin. Tess felt a flush turn her own skin warm. She’d seen her daddy in the tub often enough, and Sean too before he left. But the sight of them in the wet altogether had never made her feel hot and dizzy. Tess wondered if Rosie had stoked up the stove too hot.

“Listen, wife.” The emphasis he put on the word made it a mockery. “I’m going to get out of this tub and find some clothes if I have to parade naked in front of everyone on this godforsaken ranch. Then I’m going to walk back into town, if I have to, to catch a stage out of here. So if you don’t want your maidenly modesty outraged, I suggest you get the hell out of here and get my money. Because I’m going to be one unhappy cowboy if you welsh. And you don’t want to see me unhappy.”

His voice had risen in volume, but Tess knew a bluff when she saw one, so she just chuckled smugly, confident that she held all the cards. Then he rose up. Water cascaded from slabs of muscle and ran in streams that outlined every sinew. And everything else. Her eyes widened and an involuntary gasp escaped her mouth.

Her face more fiery than Rosie’s stove, Tess whirled around and squinched her eyes shut, as if she could erase the sight imprinted on her unwilling brain. “I’ll get you some clothes,” she choked out, struggling to regain at least one finger of the upper hand. “But you can wait for your money until I have the deed to this ranch in my hand. So I’d just think about sticking around for a few days, cowboy, because you don’t want to see me unhappy either. Trust me on that.”

With a flourish she didn’t quite feel, she marched out of the kitchen, sweeping the curtain closed behind her. The cussing that followed her out made her almost smile.

JOSHfuriously rubbed himself dry with the towel that had been draped across one of the kitchen benches. Damned but that woman had more cojones than most men he knew. What kind of creature was she, anyway? She dressed like a man, talked like a man, swaggered like a man-and apparently had no trouble in outsmarting this particular man. This sorry state of affairs could convince him to never touch liquor again. He couldn’t believe he’d been drunk enough and downright stupid enough to do this to himself.

Before he had toweled away the last of the water on his skin, men’s clothes flew like missiles through the curtain that separated the kitchen from the rest of the house. The jeans were big, but he cinched them in with a worn leather belt. The gray flannel shirt pulled across the shoulders, but otherwise fit. Josh wondered if some other unsuspecting male had stumbled into this nest of women and left so fast he plumb left his clothes behind. He could understand it.

“Are you dressed?” Rosie’s voice asked from the other side of the curtain.

“Yeah. Come on in.”

Rosie flung the curtain aside and stood for a moment to regard him appreciatively. “You don’t look so bad when you’re not swaying like a drunken mule.”

“Uh… thanks. Where should I empty the water?”

“Oh, I’ll do that.”

Josh couldn’t imagine letting a woman carry the heavy tub of water while he stood around and watched. “No, ma’am. Just tell me where to dump it.”

A slow smile softened her face. She had a pretty face that had seen a lot of wear. The smile called up remnants of a fresh girl, though.

“Take it out back. This way.”

He picked up the tub and followed her out.

“Colin’s clothes fit you fine. Though I could let out the shoulders of that shirt.”

“I won’t be around long enough for you to bother, ma’am.”

“Tess said you’d be staying a few days.”

“That’s yet to be settled.”

“You can’t leave while Sean is still sniffing around. He’d be on to Tess for sure. He doesn’t deserve this ranch. Not any part of it.”

“I’ll take your word for it, ma’am.”

“You don’t have to. Ask Miguel. Ask any of the hands who’ve worked here since before Sean left. It wasn’t that he was a bad boy, just lazy. That boy spent more energy dodging work than anybody I’ve ever known.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Josh emptied the tub and hung it on a nail on the back wall. Everything here had its place, he noted. No clutter messed up the yard. What Rosie called the “back” was actually a courtyard, where a fivefoot adobe wall connected the main house with a smaller building constructed in the same style-singlestory adobe with few windows that could be quickly shuttered in case of foul weather or Indian attack. Though the Apaches hadn’t given anyone much trouble for the better part of two decades, Arizonans had long memories.

In the courtyard was a hearth for outdoor cooking, a couple of worktables, a scattering of stools for those who wished, maybe, to sit outside on a mild evening and whittle or swap tales. The hard ground was swept clean of dust and debris.

Beyond the courtyard wall Josh could see two corrals, a barn, bunkhouse, chicken house, toolshed, and smokehouse, all in good repair. Grass already sprouted green between the mesquite, piñon, and cedar, and in the near distance wound the San Pedro, which carried precious water to give life to a land that would otherwise be parched. Fat, healthylooking cattle grazed the river bottom, and on the crest of a nearby hill, a herd of horses stood in silhouette against the setting sun.

The people here had good reason to value this ranch. Many a man’s dream centered on having a place like this. A woman’s dream could rest here as well, Josh figured.

Rosie had noted his visual survey. “The Diamond T isn’t like the grand rich places that run thousands of head, but it’s a good ranch. Colin McCabe, God rest him, was a hardworking man. He knew cattle, and he knew horses.”

He heard words left unsaid, maybe that Colin McCabe should have known his children as well. But this wasn’t his problem, Josh reminded himself.

Miguel came out of the barn, spied them in the courtyard, and wandered over. “Woman,” he said to Rosie, “haven’t you got nothing to do but stand around and talk?”

Rosie snorted, but her eye had softened, Josh noted, when the man walked up. “Old man, you should keep your nose to your own work and not bother about mine. Have you seen Tess?”

“Chopping wood for the stove.”

“Tell her dinner is in half an hour. Luis and Henry too.”

With that, she turned up her nose and marched inside. Miguel’s eyes followed her, and a wry smile pulled at his mouth, but all he said was, “You’ll like Rosie’s cooking. But if you know what’s good for you, don’t ever eat anything that Tess fixes. That girl can shoe a horse and ride a herd, but she sure can’t cook.”

“I won’t be here long enough for her to poison me,” Josh reminded him.

Miguel’s weatherlined face turned to granite. “You’ll stay until Tessie tells you to leave, and then leave when she tells you. And you show proper respect, hombre, with Tess and Rosie too. Likely Tess could whup you if you got uppity, but if she don’t, I will. You hear? That girl has a lot of friends, and you’re right in the middle of ’em.”

Josh raised one brow. “It’s a right friendly place, then.”

Rosie’s cooking proved to be all Miguel had boasted. Supper was fried chicken, corn, and apple pie. Everyone ate at the big table in the kitchen, including Luis and Henry. Luis, a rangy Papago Indian, was Miguel’s half brother, Josh discovered from the conversation. They shared a mother. Luis spoke little English, apparently, because both Miguel and Tess addressed him in Spanish. Henry, with ragged blond hair, pale blue eyes, and skin like leather, talked as much as he ate, and he ate a lot.

As they tucked into their supper, Tess waved toward Josh with a fork. “This here’s my new husband.”

Luis grunted something inarticulate. Henry eyed him curiously but said nothing. Apparently the men here attached as much importance to Tess’s marriage as she did.

Josh thought of the Double R, waiting in limbo until he could get back to settle David’s debt. A foreman and six hands depended on him coming back with six hundred dollars in his hand, and here he was, piddling away time on a secondrate ranch under the thumb of a crazy woman and her “friends.” What did he have to do to get her to give him his money and kick his butt off her property?

An idea occurred to him when Tess yawned and said good night, Luis and Henry ambled off to the bunkhouse, and Miguel cut half a loaf of Rosie’s bread to take with him to his bunk in the “little house” across the courtyard. “You can bunk with me,” Miguel told Josh. “Get some blankets from Rosie.”

“Nope.”

Miguel stopped halfway through cutting the bread. “Nope? What nope?”

“Nope means I’m not bunking on your floor with only a couple of thin blankets between me and the cold. I married the lady of the house. Seems I have a right to sleep wherever I want.”

“Like hell.”

But Josh had already reached the door of the room into which his “wife” had disappeared. He knocked. “You decent, sweetheart?”

The door instantly flung open. Regrettably, Tess still wore her jeans and shirt, though the shirt had been untucked and now hung loosely past her hips. Her unbraided hair cascaded in a dark, shining fall down to those same hips, and she gripped a hairbrush as if it were a club. Her eyes narrowed when Josh grinned.

“What?” she demanded.

“It’s been a full day, wife. I figure I’ll turn in.”

“Go right ahead. And you can forget the sweetheart and wifey talk.”

Miguel and Rosie regarded them uneasily from the kitchen doorway, Rosie wringing her hands and Miguel wearing an incredulous expression that was almost comical. Josh began to enjoy himself.

“Is that any way for a new bride to talk?” He pushed into the room. “Good thing the bed is big enough for two.”

“You’re crazy.” Tess tried to block the way, but had about as much chance as a reed standing against a rolling boulder. His chest collided with hers, and she retreated as if she’d been burned. Josh felt a bit singed himself. Tess McCabe, for all her mannish dress and habits, definitely boasted a woman’s charms.

Miguel clumped toward their little confrontation. “I’ll tear him apart, Tessie.”

“I can fight my own fights.” Her tone stopped the man in his tracks.

“But-”

“Git, Miguel. When have I ever not been able to take care of myself?” She made the claim proudly, though her cheeks had turned pink. Josh’s grin grew wider. He would be out of here in no time.

While Tess watched Miguel and Rosie retreat, Josh sat himself on the bed and patted it. “Nice mattress,” he noted.

Tess whirled around in a onewoman tornado. “You are insane,” she hissed, low and dangerous.

He grinned nonchalantly. “I don’t know about that. I think I’m a fairly good judge of beds.”

She pointed toward the door. “Get out! Get out now!”

“A case of newlywed nerves, sweetheart?”

“Get. Out. Now!”

“It’s my understanding that married folks sleep together.”

“We are not that kind of married. And if you think that you are sleeping in this room, then you’re dumber than I first took you for. Out!”

And Tess McCabe was a good deal prettier than he’d first taken her for. Not to mention more interesting. With every furious movement her hair shimmered in the lamplight. Her face came alight with passion-cheeks aflame, eyes on fire. Not exactly the kind of passion a man likes to see in a woman, but still damned distracting.

He didn’t remove himself from the bed. “Not that kind of married, eh? I got the idea that wasn’t what you wanted the world to think.”

Those fiery eyes narrowed. She backed up a step. “That’s a threat, isn’t it?”

He just smiled. “I’m not such a bum to threaten a lady.”

“And I’m not enough of a lady to believe that load of horseshit.” But her tone became more cautious. “All right. You can sleep on the floor. In the corner.”

With deliberate insolence, he stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head. “Nope. I’ve had a hard couple of days. I fancy a night spent in a nice, soft, clean bed.”

He could almost hear her teeth grind.

“All right, rat bastard. You win. I can put up with almost anything for a few days.” She grabbed the quilt folded at the foot of the bed and jerked it from beneath his legs. Then she headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“It won’t be the first time I’ve slept in front of the fireplace.”

“That might look passing strange if one of the hands happens in.”

“I care how it looks?”

“Isn’t that what your whole scheme is all about? Looking married? Aren’t you the one willing to go to any lengths, cheating or otherwise, to get the family ranch?”

She stopped in her tracks and turned slowly and deliberately back toward him. “I do not cheat. McCabes are straight as an arrow and twice as honest.”

Those green eyes of hers could turn remarkably hard, Josh noted happily. He gave her his most infuriating smile. He knew it was infuriating because his sister had told him so at least a dozen times.

“And I am not letting some twobit sot turn me out of my own place.”

That stung a bit, but Josh figured he might have had it coming.

Still glaring at him, she settled huffily in the room’s one chair and wrapped herself in the quilt. “Enjoy the bed,” she invited sourly. “Just don’t infest it with fleas.”

Chapter Three

TESS UNCURLED FROM her chair in the predawn, the smell of rain tickling her nostrils. Before she left the bedroom, she took a moment to observe her roommate, who snored quietly on the bed-her bed. She made a face. Beneath the covers-her covers-her “husband” looked warm and comfy, while Tess had spent an uncomfortable, almost sleepless night clutching the quilt around her, trying unsuccessfully to ward off the cold. Obviously the fellow was a slugabed, for the cock had already crowed. A lazy smile touched his mouth as he dreamed. The mouth, Tess couldn’t help but notice, was the sort of mouth a sculptor might carve on a statue, and its smile gentled the rugged face. His cheek with its morning shadow of coarse, dark beard, bore a crease from the pillow. Her pillow.

With broad shoulders, tousled hair, and that seductive mouth, the sot wasn’t all that hard on the eyes, Tess decided. Not that it mattered. The fellow could look like a billy goat for all she cared. Sean had better hightail it back to California soon, so she could boot her “husband” down the road. She couldn’t put up with this nonsense much longer.

Cautiously, Tess took her boots from the floor where she had dropped them the night before and tiptoed toward the door. She hoped the fool slept through breakfast. Going hungry would serve him right.

He didn’t sleep through breakfast. Ten minutes after Tess had grabbed a biscuit and a cup of strong coffee, her thornintheside husband strolled out of the house and over to where she talked with Miguel, Luis, and Henry at the corrals. He looked annoyingly fresh and chipper from a good night’s sleep.

“Good morning,” he said, cradling a steaming mug in his hands. “Nice morning.”

Tess nodded curtly. The men mumbled a greeting. Rojo quit giving the eye to the horses in the corral and bounded over to the newcomer with a friendly greeting. He scratched the cattle dog’s ears, and the dog melted in ecstasy.

Tess watched in disgust. Rojo didn’t show much taste when it came to people.

“Be careful of Rojo,” Tess warned curtly. “He’s a good cattle dog, but he doesn’t take to strangers.”

The bedstealer gave her a lazy smile. “Most dogs know who deserves a show of teeth and who doesn’t.”

Tess almost showed her own teeth. This fellow had a way of eating at the edges of her temper. What had happened to the woozy, boozy cowboy she had practically poured into Glory’s crib the day before? Or the selfconscious, confused fellow who had looked so ridiculous sitting bare and hairy in her washtub?

Now the man looked almost cleancut. He had taken time to trim the steel and silver mustache, and his silvershotwithblack hair shone in the bright sunlight. Her father’s old shirt stretched tight across axehandle shoulders which whittled down to slim hips and long legs. The man stood at least a head taller than Tess, who looked eye to eye with Miguel.

“Nicelooking bunch of horses.” He pointed his freshly shaven chin toward the green broncs in the corral-two bays, a chestnut, a gray, and two blacks.

Miguel nodded. “We throw a saddle on these for the first time this morning. They are mustangs brought up from Mexico.”

“Sell them once they’re saddle broke?”

“Sí. Señora Bermudez at the Circle T has already said she will take the chestnut, and she likes the gray as well. She likes mustangs, because they are smart, strong horses that can work all day. And the army always buys from us. Some of the other ranches too.”

Tess scowled at Miguel. The stranger didn’t need to know their business. But Miguel didn’t notice. Once he got to talking about horses, there was no shutting him up. Her husband seemed to have a similar interest.

“You buck them out?”

Miguel shrugged. “If they have spirit, they will buck.”

The bum grinned. “Kinda like women, eh?”

Miguel looked cautiously from the newcomer to Tess, whose fists had clenched, and back again to her husband. When Tess had first walked out of the house, the foreman had given her a swift perusal, then nodded when he found her in one piece after spending the night in a room with her new husband. Now a small smile twisted the mouth beneath his mustache. “A man must know his horses, señor. Some will buck until they drop dead. Some will roll to crush the rider beneath them. There are some who should never be mounted, because they will never be gentled.”

“Have you known many to be that ornery?”

Miguel’s smile grew broader. “Not many.”

The stranger nodded. “On my place, we don’t break a horse, we gentle it. The process takes more time, but it results in a more dependable mount.”

Tess immediately bristled. “The horses we turn out are the best in the area. They’re loyal, smart, and still have plenty of spirit. Hell, they’ll go places even a mule won’t go.”

The uppity fellow just shrugged.

“What’s the matter,” Tess taunted, “are you afraid to buck out a horse? Afraid you’ll land on your tail?”

Luis and Henry leaned against the fence and grinned. Miguel tried to hide a smile.

The stranger met her eyes with an unruffled gaze. “I can stick a saddle as good as most others.” He crossed his arms on that broad chest. His eyes, almost green in the morning sunlight, twinkled with something that might be amusement, and that twinkle was the last straw for Tess.

“You can, can you?”

“Usually.”

“You want to put your bony backside where your mouth is, cowboy?”

He smiled. “You think you can stick a horse better than I can?”

“It’s likely.”

“That would be a surprise.”

“Then get ready to be surprised.”

Rojo whined, gave his new friend a sympathetic look, then trotted over to join the men, who looked on, grinning hugely. Even Miguel, usually more cautious, didn’t bother to hide his anticipation of a good time coming up. There was nothing a cowboy loved better than a good broncriding contest.

Well, they wouldn’t get to see much of a contest, Tess told herself smugly. There wasn’t a man on this place she couldn’t outride, and she expected to laugh long and hard when this uppity jackass left his butt print in the dust.

“Okay-what was your name, cowboy?”

That got his goat just a bit. Tess could tell.

“Joshua Ransom.”

“Okay, Joshua Ransom. I’ll let you prove how well you ride, and then we’ll let the men decide who’s got the upper hand when it come to horses. You game?”

His smile shone with confidence. “I’m game.”

“Good enough.” She grinned wickedly. “Henry, bring out Nitro.”

Miguel’s brows shot up. “Nitro?”

“We want to give our friend here a challenge, don’t we?”

Miguel just shook his head as a grinning Henry sprinted toward the barn. “Nitro’s a stallion we haven’t been able to ride,” he told Josh. “We keep him for breeding, but he’s a wild one under saddle.”

Tess smirked. “Even my daddy couldn’t sit Nitro for long, and there’s more than one cowboy who owes this horse a broken bone or two. Nitro likes to be creative and see how far and how high he can toss anything that climbs on his back. Want to back out?”

Now he looked a little concerned. “Which one of us is going to ride him?”

“We both are. We’ll take turns and see who stays on longest. I’ll cut you a break and go first. Maybe he’ll be tired by the time you get on him.”

Luis chuckled. “Or angry.”

Tess just chuckled. She was about to get revenge for a cold night spent in a chair, and if she got some bumps and bruises in the process, seeing this fellow flat in the dust would be worth the price.

Nitro came out of the barn snorting steam into the early morning air. He was a horse who enjoyed a good romp-a romp in his mind being a chance to break someone’s bones and then stomp him into the dirt.

They snubbed the stallion to a post to get the saddle onto his back, but he stood in docile patience. Nitro knew the drill, and he looked forward to wreaking a little havoc.

“I’ll go first,” Tess said cheerfully. “Miguel, ear him down while I get on.”

When Miguel let go of Nitro’s ear, the horse exploded. Tess knew she couldn’t stick for long, but she figured her performance would be better than anyone else attempting to ride the demon. He bucked, twisted, sunfished, and did everything but turn himself inside out to send her flying. When he connected with the earth, the stifflegged jolt nearly snapped Tess’s spine, or so it felt.

As always, Nitro won. Tess connected hard and painfully with the ground, then scrambled out of the way while Rojo ducked into the corral to keep the horse occupied.

“Ten seconds,” Miguel said, checking his pocket watch. “Not bad, Miss Tess.”

She grinned at what’shisname. “I tired him out for you.”

Nitro did not appear to be tired, though. When Josh climbed aboard, the bronc took off like a badtempered tornado that had just happened to touch down in the McCabe corral.

“Fifteen seconds,” Miguel noted approvingly when the intrepid rider bit dirt. “Damned good.”

“What? Fifteen seconds?”

“Sí.”

Tess’s jaw tightened. “We’ll see about that!”

As Tess got ready to mount again, her grinning adversary spit out a mouthful of dirt and taunted, “I tired him out for you, sweetheart.”

Tess was too busy to retort.

And so the morning went. None of the three parties involved-the man, the woman, or the horse-came close to giving in. Foam flecked Nitro’s damp hide. Tess wore dirt and sweat head to toe. Her stubborn husband looked little better. Finally, when Tess went flying for the fifth time, her adversary looked at her, looked at Nitro, and shook his head.

“The horse has had enough,” he said.

Instantly, Tess’s back-what small part of it wasn’t bruised, battered, and scraped-went up, but before she could reply, Miguel butted in.

“He’s right. Nitro will keep going until he falls over.”

Sitting in the dirt, every inch of her aching, Tess still wanted to object. She hadn’t yet won. But she looked at Nitro and knew that Miguel was right. Nitro was blowing hard, too tired even to come after her for a few good stomps.

And oh, all right, her uppity husband was right, too. She sighed.

“Okay. Luis, walk him out, would you? And make sure he’s good and cool before you put him away.”

“It’s a draw,” Miguel announced, looking relieved.

Tess had to admire a man who could stick a horse like this fellow could. He hadn’t learned to ride like that with his head stuck in a whiskey bottle. Josh Ransom. This time she would remember his name.

“If I had a week,” Josh boasted, “I could be up on that horse without him batting an eyelash.”

“You have a week,” Tess growled.

“I don’t think so.”

“You do if you want your money.” She fixed him with a challenging glare. “Another hundred dollars if you can break Nitro to saddle and rider.”

He looked thoughtful.

She hated to part with any more money, but Nitro was worth it. So was convincing Sean that she was good and married. “That’s a lot of money, Ransom.”

She could see the calculation in his eyes. “I’ll think about it.”

He limped over and offered her a hand up. She thought about slapping his hand away, but then her real problem rode around the corner of the barn, and she grabbed Josh’s hand and forced a smile. “Thank you.”

“Well, now,” Sean said as Josh pulled her to her feet. “Isn’t that sweet. What’ve you two been doing? Wrestling in the mud?”

Josh turned to give Sean a dark look, and at the same time he slipped his arm around Tess’s shoulders.

“They were working,” Miguel told him. “Work. Ever heard of it?”

“Excuse us,” Josh said. “Rosie’s got a good dinner on the stove, and we need to get cleaned up. Join us if you want, Sean.”

Tess tried to object, but acquiesced to Josh’s subtle pressure on her shoulder as he guided her toward the house. Then, on the porch, he did the unthinkable. In full view of everyone, he kissed her. Not a civilized peck, but a cheeksucking, airstealing lip lock that sent a bolt of surprise from her nose to her toes. Surprise, and a shivery, strengthstealing strangeness that threatened to turn her knees to water. Dadgummed but she got so flustered that she almost forgot that Sean stood there staring at them. Sean and everyone else.

Of course that was the reason behind the kiss. Josh staged the passion, the enveloping arms, the warm, delicious closeness all for the benefit of her weaselly brother. He put on a show, and what a show it was. She’d have to thank him later, Tess mused dizzily, when she got her brain back in order.

A perverse part of her almost hoped that Sean stayed awhile.

UNFORTUNATELY,Sean did stay awhile. He moved into the bunkhouse with the declaration that he missed the “old days” and wanted to get reacquainted with the ranch-a load of horseshit as far as Tess was concerned.

Josh Ransom also stayed. Leaving would have been hard, Tess figured, after he’d boasted that he could gentle Nitro in a week. When the man said he would do something, Tess discovered, he followed through on his word, something she admired in a man. He wasn’t quite the bum she had first thought.

She and her new roommate reached a compromise in sleeping arrangements. For newlyweds to sleep anywhere but in the same room would make Sean’s ears prick up for sure, but Tess didn’t intend to spend more than one night in that chair. She settled for guarding her virtue with a rolledup quilt placed between them on the bed. The arrangement didn’t leave either of them much room, but then, how much room did a body need just for sleeping? Tess wasn’t about to crawl unguarded into a bed with any man, especially a man she had dragged out of a saloon.

Not that she had much worry that Ransom would get fresh. He looked like a man who could have a host of females fawning over him if he wanted-all of them with silky hair, rosy lips, plump breasts, and soft skin. What would he want with a whipcordlean, sunbrowned female who wore trail dust instead of perfume? Not that Tess cared. Why would she?

Yet a strange, tingly feeling crept through her at night as she lay tense and sleepless on her half of the mattress, listening to her husband’s breathing, feeling the male body heat that somehow managed to seep through the barrier between them. She would certainly be glad when she was rid of the man. Glad, glad, glad. No more worrying about keeping him out of her business. No more sharing a room and a bed. No more looking at his face over the table at meals, hearing him swap tales with the men, worrying about the hands starting to like him too much. No more getting distracted by the way he sat a horse, the way his hair turned to spun silver in the sunlight, or the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. No more worrying about when and if he might try to kiss her again.

Ah yes. There had been that kiss…

During the waking hours, Sean watched them like an eagle, forcing Tess to play the role of a lovesick bride, or at least a halfway interested bride. Her groom took delight in making her uncomfortable. Tess just knew the man enjoyed himself hugely whenever he put an arm around her shoulders or gave her a peck on the cheek, just because the skunk liked to see her squirm-his bit of revenge for her making him stick around.

By the time Saturday rolled around, Tess’s nerves were wearing thin, and so was Josh’s patience. Tess sat in the barn tack room cleaning her saddle when Josh walked in, his boots thudding heavily on the packed dirt floor, his face looking like he had just eaten nails.

“Do you know what day it is?” he demanded.

“Yup.” Here it came again. Every day he strained harder at the leash. Soon that tether was plumb going to break.

“Just how long until-”

“Well, howdy, you two.” Sean strolled up with his gotcha smile. “Nice day, isn’t it?”

Josh regarded him narrowly, then his face brightened. “Tess and I were just about to ride out and look for that buckskin mustang who tried to run off some of the mares. Weren’t we, sweetheart?”

“Uh… sure.” Sweetheart. Sheesh! “We were.” They hadn’t planned any such thing, but Josh was matching Sean gotcha grin for gotcha grin, so she played along to see what he was up to.

“Want to come?” Josh asked Sean.

“Well, I-”

“You did say you were lonesome for the old days,” Josh said amiably.

“Yes, Sean. You did.” Tess tried to ignore Josh’s hand, which rested with apparent affection on the back of her neck. Queer how a warm hand could send such tingly shivers down a person’s spine.

“It would help,” Josh said innocently, “to have an extra man along.”

The hand kneaded gently. Tess didn’t know whether to grit her teeth or melt into a little puddle.

Sean gave them a sour look, then surrendered sullenly. “I guess I could use the exercise.”

When Josh led out Amigo for Sean to ride, Tess began to understand. Amigo, a rangy gray with huge hooves, had the most bonejarring gait of any horse that lived at the Diamond T. Josh knew it well, because just two days before, Tess had put him on Amigo when he insisted she give him a tour of the ranch. After two hours in the saddle, he had sat gingerly the rest of the day.

They set off at a good pace, assuring that Sean endured the greatest possible pain. Rojo trotted along with them, dashing off now and again to flush a rabbit or investigate a scent trail, then returning to play a game he and Josh had invented, where the dog grabbed a stick, leapt into the air high enough for Josh to grab it from his mouth, then ran full speed to retrieve the treasure when Josh threw it.

“You’re going to wear him out so he won’t be any use to us,” Tess complained.

“He’s got energy to spare,” Josh assured her.

In truth, Tess’s complaint came from a twinge of jealousy.

Rojo only tolerated most people other than Tess. Tess he adored. His taking up with Josh was a betrayal. She wouldn’t have wanted the dog to threaten Josh, of course. But a little standoffishness would have been nice.

“This horse feels like a broken rocking chair,” Sean complained before thirty minutes had passed.

“You’ve gotten soft,” Tess told him from her comfortable perch on Ranger, who floated over the rough ground. “Didn’t your ambitions for the Diamond T include doing any work here?”

“Didn’t you even read the letter I sent you after our father died?” Sean asked through jarring teeth.

“I read it, and I couldn’t believe you wanted me to sell the ranch and divvy up the money.”

“At least you wouldn’t have had to get married.” Sean gave Josh a cynical look. Ransom just smiled.

“Had to get married? Ha! I wanted to get married,” Tess lied. “The man just swept me off my feet.”

“Who do you think you’re fooling?” Sean scoffed.

Josh took offense. “Why do you have such trouble believing your sister is happily married?”

“I think a man with any sense would rather be staked out on an anthill than marry my sister. And you seem like a man with sense.”

The look on Ransom’s face took Tess by surprise, and it made Sean back into a lame apology. “Uh… that came out wrong. Tess is a great girl. After all, she is my sister. But you’ve got to admit that she doesn’t go out of her way to please a man. I mean, just look at her. Or listen to her.”

“Since I sleep with her every night,” Ransom said coldly, “I might know a bit more than you do about how Tess pleases a man.”

Tess hoped the shadow of her hat hid the flush that crawled up her neck. A rush of gratitude for his defense almost made her glad Rojo was being nice to him.

Lucky for her, before she could go totally mushy, something else demanded her attention.

“Looks like a mired cow over there.” Josh pointed to the brushy bank of an unnamed creek-unnamed because it seldom carried water. The uncommonly regular rains during the last month had turned more than one dry creek to quicksand and mud.

The cow was there, big as life. If Tess hadn’t been so distracted, she would have seen it without Josh’s help.

“She’s a mama,” Tess said.

Indeed, a spindly legged calf fled at their approach, but Rojo circled behind it to block its retreat. It halted uncertainly, bawling distress. Mama bawled back, more angry at the separation from her calf than the mud sucking at her legs.

When Tess started to dismount, Ransom told her to stay put. “No reason for all three of us to get mucked up,” he said cheerfully. “Sean here can back me up. Can’t you, Sean?”

Ordinarily, Tess would have bristled at Josh taking charge, but the prospect of seeing Sean make closer acquaintance with the slobbering, foamflecked, mudencrusted cow made her gladly settle for the role of spectator.

With impressive skill, Josh dropped a rope around the cow’s horns, wrapped the rope around his saddle horn, and drew the rope taut. Sean got the job of pushing from behind.

Predictably, he objected. “You expect me to wade out in that slime? These are new boots!”

Ransom grinned. “We could ask your sister to do it.”

Sean shot him a filthy look, but the challenge to his manhood was clear. Minutes later he stood knee deep in mud with a shoulder propped against the cow’s dungcoated rear end.

“Heave ho,” Ransom said as his horse put tension on the rope. “Push, Sean. Lean into her.”

“Go to hell.” But Sean pushed. The cow bawled her distress, raised her tail, and treated Sean to a stream of greenish brown cow plop.

Tess howled with laughter. She couldn’t help it. Her brother covered with steaming dung was a sight to treasure in her memory. Her sides nearly split.

Sean didn’t see the humor. Between moans and curses, he vainly searched for water to wash off the stuff, which spattered his chest and dotted his face. The creek offered no water, though. Only mud.

Tess took mercy on him. “Take my canteen,” she offered. “It will rinse some of it off.”

He waved it angrily away, still cursing the cow, Josh, Tess, the ranch, the mud, and the whole bovine population in general, which made Tess laugh yet again. In the meantime, the cow, with Josh’s horse steadily pulling, managed to struggle free of the mud. She shook herself and bawled as Josh flipped the rope from her horns. In response, her calf trotted in their direction. Still muttering and waving his arms in disgust, Sean started for his horse. Like some greenhorn, he made the mistake of getting between the distraught mama cow and her calf. Mama, already on edge from her ordeal, saw the man in her line of vision and did what any cranky range cow would do. She charged. Sean looked up to see a thousand pounds of beef bearing down upon him with tossing horns and distended nostrils.

Tess reacted in midlaugh, digging heels into Ranger and leaping forward to head off the charge even as Rojo rushed forward, barking frantically. But Josh got there ahead of both of them. He careened his horse into the angry cow’s beefy shoulder, making her stumble and go down on her knees. The move was both gutsy and dangerous-and probably the only one that could have saved Sean from becoming part of the soil layer.

Sean made a dash for his horse. The bewildered cow got to her feet, shook her head, and with Rojo’s loud encouragement, ambled off toward her calf.

“And you ask why I want to sell the ranch!” Sean growled. Less than an hour after they got back to the ranch, he packed his gear, saddled his horse, and rode off without so much as a huffy goodbye.

The story of Sean’s rescue got passed around the ranch faster than Rosie’s hot biscuits. Josh became the hero of the day. He had won the men’s admiration when he’d stuck with Nitro alongside Tess, but saving a fellow cowboy (even though Sean hardly qualified as a cowboy, in Tess’s opinion) sent him right up the ladder to a pedestal. The next morning, he just about elevated himself to sainthood when he led Nitro out of the barn with a saddle on his back, mounted, and in full view of everyone, rode the stallion one circuit of the corral and dismounted, still in one piece. The stallion tossed his head and regarded the man disdainfully- just to keep his dignity intact-but otherwise, he behaved like a wellbroke mount. Among the onlookers, jaws dropped, eyes widened.

“Whoohoo!” Henry shouted, once Josh had both feet safely back on the ground. “Ride that sucker, Josh!”

Miguel tapped Tess’s shoulder with a fist. “We found you a good one, eh, Miss Tess?”

Could the day get more annoying? Tess wondered. “You didn’t find him, and he’s not a ‘good one,’ okay? And he’ll be leaving soon.”

As she stalked into the house, Miguel grinned at Rosie. “If I hooked a mighty fine fish, I wouldn’t be so anxious to throw him back.”

Rosie shook her head in disgust. “What men don’t know about women is pathetic.”

As soon as they finished the midday meal, Tess saddled two horses-one for her and one for Josh-and announced that they would ride into town for a talk with lawyer Bartlett. She was good and married, and had been for a week. The time had come for Bartlett to cough up the deed to her ranch.

“Look convincing,” she advised her husband. “When I get that deed in my hand, you get your three hundred dollars.”

“Four hundred,” he reminded her. “Remember Nitro.”

Oh yes. That foolish offer she’d made. Who would have thought the man would make good on his boast? “It’s a good thing you’re not staying longer,” she grumbled. “I can’t afford you.”

Still, riding beside him on the way to town felt strangely pleasant. Tess had gotten used to his presence beside her in bed, and after the strangeness had worn off, his warm bulk on the other side of the rolledup quilt had made the nights less lonely. Before this last week, Tess hadn’t realized her nights were lonely. She did now.

And the men liked having him around. After just this short time, they trusted him. Even Miguel liked him. Rosie had hinted that Tess having a husband might not be such a bad thing after all, as long as that husband was a “damned solid cowboy” like Josh.

The very fact that Tess entertained such a thought just pointed up the dire need to have the fellow gone. Some builtin weakness in the female constitution must turn a girl’s brain to mush the minute she started keeping company with a halfdecent man. Yes, Josh Ransom-she wouldn’t be forgetting that name again-did qualify as a halfdecent sort of fellow. He had guts. He had a way with horses. He knew cattle almost as well as she did. Okay, just as well as she did. He had all his teeth, didn’t stink more than any other man who worked hard and wore the sweat to prove it, and he knew enough to take off his mucky boots before coming into the house. Someone had brought him up to manners. What’s more, in spite of Tess finding him in such a sorry state at the Bird Cage, he hadn’t touched a drop of liquor since coming to the Diamond T.

Quite a catch, all in all, if a girl were fishing for a husband. Which Tess wasn’t. Definitely wasn’t. Didn’t need one, didn’t want one, and for sure she would get used to sleeping alone in the blink of an eye. The sooner she sent Josh Ransom on his way, the happier she would be.

Therefore, Tess got very unhappy when lawyer Bartlett refused to cough up her deed.

“Now, then, Tess. Don’t be so impatient,” he advised. “You know your daddy wanted to see you settled like a woman should be settled. That’s why he wrote his will the way he did.”

“I am settled,” Tess gritted from between her teeth. She took Josh by the arm and pulled him forward for inspection. “I’m married, dadgummit. A whole week. Just ask Preacher Malone.”

Bartlett gave Josh a passing glance, as if he were an offering that failed to measure up. “I believe the will’s exact words were ‘settled into marriage.’Your brother, Sean, came by my office earlier this morning and expressed grave doubts as to the nature and commitment of your marriage, Tess.”

“What do you mean nature and commitment?” she cried. Only a lawyer would use words such as those. Her fists balled at her sides, nails digging into her palms.

Then Josh took one of those hands, uncurled it, and interweaved their fingers, just as a real husband might have done. In a reasonable, mantoman voice, he brought the conversation back to a civilized level. “Mr. Bartlett, I think Sean McCabe’s motive is pretty obvious, and I’m surprised you’re lending him an ear.”

The warmth of that masculine hand supporting hers eased the knot in Tess’s stomach. In fact, she felt amazingly light, as if she could have floated toward the pressedtin ceiling of Bartlett’s office.

“The way I understand it,” Josh said calmly, “Tess has fulfilled the terms of her father’s will, and now she wants the deed to the Diamond T in her name and in her safekeeping. That seems both legal and reasonable to me.”

Bless the man. Bless him, bless him, bless him.

Bartlett looked him up and down, as if just now recognizing he was part of this. “Mr…uh…”

“Ransom.”

“Mr. Ransom. Do you have a sister?”

“Yes sir, I do.”

“Then you should understand that a brother’s instinct is to take care of his sister. I don’t know if Tess told you this, but Sean McCabe proposed shortly after their father’s death that the ranch be sold and the proceeds split between them, because he knew that Tess wasn’t inclined to marry, and half the proceeds from the Diamond T would set her up in modest circumstances where she could live securely without having to waste her life on backbreaking ranch work that is difficult even for a man. That is not the proposal of a greedy, unprincipled man, as you seem to imply Sean is.”

The idea of selling the ranch that had been in her family three generations made Tess want to spit, but Josh tightened his hand around hers.

“Mr. Bartlett,” Josh said in that reasonable voice of his, “do you have a legal right to withhold the deed?”

“I believe the wording of the will demands it.”

Tess thought the lawyer’s smile looked like a rattlesnake’s snide grin.

“Don’t worry, Tess.” Bartlett gave her arm a condescending pat. If Josh hadn’t been restraining her, the lawyer might have lost a hand. “What difference does it make whether the deed is in my desk for a bit more? As you say, you’re married. Soon it will be obvious to everyone that your marriage wasn’t an impulsive act meant only to secure the Diamond T.”

Tess couldn’t think of a reply that didn’t involve cussing. Fortunately, Ransom had more presence of mind. He said something stiff about retaining their own lawyer while tugging Tess toward the door. She scarcely heard what he said, distracted as she was picturing her daddy, his lawyer, and her brother all staked out on an anthill.

“I’ll see you at the barn dance tomorrow tonight, won’t I?” Bartlett said as they went out the door.

Tess got out the “Fat” of “Fat chance!” before Josh firmly shushed her.

“Maybe,” he replied.

“Dadgummit!” Tess growled once they reached the safety of the street. “That snake! He’s never liked me. Always told my daddy that he’d raised me to be a heathen. He can’t do this!”

Josh put a finger to her lips to shut her up. “Tess, you need to get a lawyer to handle this for you.”

“Bartlett’s the only lawyer in town.”

“There are other towns.”

“Lawyers and their fancy words and sneaky ways. If it hadn’t been for a lawyer, my daddy would never have thought of that stupid will. Just give me a few days. I’ll think of something. I will.”

The twitch of muscle at the hinge of Josh’s jaw told Tess he had run out of patience.

“Ransom, honest! Just a few more days.”

His mouth a tight line, he held up two fingers. “Two days. Then I’m leaving, Tess. You can make up any story you want to explain why I’m gone, and you can honor your deal or not. Two days, and I’m gone.”

Chapter Four

TESS LOOKED AT herself in Rosie’s fulllength mirror and made a face. “Two days,” she said in a mockery of Josh’s voice. “Two days and I’m gone. You can take that news and stick it up your-”

“Tess!” Rosie scolded. “When you’re dressed like a lady, you should talk like a lady.”

Tess snorted. “These sleeves are cutting off my arms.”

“I can let out the seams,” Rosie offered. “Most ladies don’t have so much muscle in their shoulders and arms.”

“Well, pardon me for working every day to make a living.”

Tess couldn’t believe the woman who looked from the mirror was her. She felt like a little girl playing dressup in her mother’s clothes. Actually, this dress had never belonged to her mother. Her mother had been an aristocrat from Mexico-small, refined, and delicate. Whenever Tess looked at her mother’s wedding portrait, she felt like a gorilla. No, this dress was one of Rosie’s best, decked out with flounces, lace, and ribbon. It was tight in the waist, loose in the bust, and inches too short.

Tess thought she looked dadgummed silly dressed in bows and flounces with her hair not sensibly braided, but tortured into curls that kept falling in her face. But Rosie surveyed her with warm, approving eyes. “I haven’t worn that dress since I was your age and just married. That was before my bones got the padding they have today. It may be out of style, but it makes you look like a princess. I’ll just add a flounce to the hem, let out the waist…” She gave Tess’s chest a dubious frown. “Maybe we can stuff a couple of kerchiefs up there. We don’t want you to look like you’re lacking.”

“Dadgummit, Rosie! You aren’t getting anywhere near me with any kerchiefs. Not unless they’re going around my neck or on my head!”

“Don’t be so testy, dear. I know this feels strange to you, but we agreed, you, me, and Miguel, that the best way to make your husband stick around longer is for you to get him a little bit interested. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, sweetie. Women have been doing this since Eve. It’s tradition.”

“Not with me, it isn’t.” Tess extricated herself from the dress and managed to escape with only two pricks from Rosie’s pins.

“Do you want the man to stay or not?”

Tess sighed. “Just long enough to convince Sean and Bartlett.”

“Then you have to put some work into it. Besides…” Rosie’s eye warmed in a way that made Tess nervous. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea to toss the man out. Maybe you should try to make this a real marriage, Tessie.”

“Hell no!”

“Why not?” Rosie sat on her bed-formerly the bed she had shared with Colin McCabe-and started ripping the seam of the dress’s waist. “At first I thought this Josh Ransom was bad news. But from what I’ve seen, he has more good points than bad ones. A woman is always better off with a man by her side, if he’s a good man.”

Tess knew Rosie spoke from her own experience. Married young, abandoned only two years after her marriage, Rosie had been left on her own to sink or swim. With no money and few skills, she had sunk-at least in the eyes of the world-and ended up plying womankind’s oldest trade along with Glory at the Bird Cage. Glory thrived in such a place. Rosie had not.

When Colin McCabe had come along and taken a fancy to her, Rosie hadn’t hesitated to move out to the Diamond T, put up with Colin’s two motherless children, and cope with the hard life on an isolated ranch. They had never married, because Rosie still had a husband wandering the country somewhere, but she had given Tess’s father all of her devotion and loyalty.

“Did you love my father, Rosie?”

Rosie smiled. “There are as many kinds of love as there are men and women on this earth, Tessie. Your father was a good man, a strong man. He was kind to me, and I loved him for that, even though he had some peculiar ways about him. But now that he’s gone, I could love another man, with a different kind of love.” She glanced toward her bedroom’s closed door, her lips pursing. “If the man wasn’t such a rockheaded idiot.”

Tess smiled, wondering if Miguel would ever catch on that Rosie’s sharp tongue hid a willing heart.

By midafternoon, the dress fit-sort of. Tess sported more frills and bows than a porcupine had quills.

“Won’t Josh be surprised?” Rosie gushed cheerfully.

Surprised might not quite be the word for it. Seeing Tess gussied up like some fancy porcelain figurine might just make the man laugh himself silly. Not that she would blame him.

WHEN Josh drove the McCabe buckboard around to the front of the adobe house, he found Miguel lounging in the shade of the covered front porch. The foreman grinned at him.

“The women are inside, fussin’ with clothes or something.”

“Figures.”

Josh had gotten a new shirt and jeans in town. Rosie had burned the ones he’d worn on that daylong, or was it a twodaylong, binge in the Bird Cage. She’d said with a smirk that the fumes had near lit themselves. During the last week he had worn Colin McCabe’s duds. But McCabe’s clothes, too tight in the shoulders, too loose around the middle, weren’t exactly fit for social calling. Though Josh didn’t look forward to the prospect of sashaying around the Hoffsteaders’ new barn showing off his “bride,” he’d be damned if he would go to this hoopla looking like someone who couldn’t dress himself.

Besides, Tess wanted them to look like a respectable married couple, and Tess, in spite of her unwomanly ways and touchy independence, didn’t deserve to be shamed by the man on her arm. She was an honest woman with a good soul, and over the past week, Josh had come to respect her. How could he not respect someone, man or woman, who feared neither hard work, wild cattle, illnatured horses, or equally illnatured men.

Since the women were taking their own sweet time, Josh set the wagon brake and climbed down to sit in the shade of the porch. The foreman gave him an appraising look. After a moment of silence, he nodded. “Tonight will be a good time. Rosie can dance a barn down, and Tess…” He hesitated and gave Josh a meaningful look. “It’s time Tess learned that she’s a woman.”

Josh snorted. “Don’t look at me for that, amigo. I’m temporary here.”

“A man could do worse than to settle on the Diamond T.”

“A man could get killed settling on the Diamond T unless Tess McCabe wanted him here.”

Miguel smiled. “Tess Ransom, now. She is Tess Ransom.”

Josh chuckled, trying to picture Tess as any man’s wife. Tess Ransom indeed!

“How come a man like you don’t have a real wife?” Miguel asked. “There are more women here now that the Apaches are not trying to kill everyone.”

“I could ask you the same question,” Josh replied gruffly.

Miguel snorted. “My mother was Papago, my father was Mexican. The respectable women of both my mother’s people and my father’s people look at me like I have a disease.”

Josh nodded. Every kind of people hereabouts looked down their noses at every other kind of people. The Mexicans hated the Indians. The Indians hated the Mexicans. And most whites despised them both. “Well, for my part, I think that no respectable woman belongs on a ranch in this country. It withers them up, wears them down. Pulls all the life out of them just like sap. I watched it happen to my mother and sister. No need to watch it happen to a wife.”

Miguel shrugged. “Rosie is respectable, though she didn’t used to be. She likes it here. And Tess blooms like a flower in the desert.” The foreman slid a meaningful look in Josh’s direction.

Josh chuckled. “Tess a flower?”

The image inspired an upward quirk of Miguel’s mouth. “Maybe she blooms like a weed. But nothing will suck the sap out of our Tess.”

That made Josh laugh. “I wouldn’t exactly call Tess a weed. But she isn’t a runofthemill woman. She’s more like a-”

At that moment, out Tess walked, knocking all thoughts of flowers or weeds right out of Josh’s head. She looked like…well, certainly not like any man’s wife, but miles from being herself, either. He didn’t know what he had expected her to wear to a barn dance-a cleanedup version of her usual work garb, maybe. He certainly hadn’t expected this!

Rosie presented her creation like an artist unveiling a master painting, and Miguel grinned from ear to ear.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Rosie asked.

Tess squirmed uncomfortably in her frills. Josh tried to think of something creative to say that would be complimentary and not an outandout lie. Hell, he decided. This called for a lie.

“You do look beautiful, Tess. And so do you, Rosie.”

Clearly Rosie had learned women’s fashions from her time at the Bird Cage. Miguel had told Josh all about Rosie’s transformation from saloon girl to “respectable lady,” relating the story with shining pride and noticeable fondness. But the “respectable lady” still saw beauty through the eyes of the saloon girl. Rosie herself wore a dress that displayed an interesting expanse of chest, but otherwise seemed plain beside the getup she had hung on Tess.

“You don’t think I look…uh…” Tess obviously searched for words that wouldn’t hurt Rosie’s feelings. Uncertainty brimmed in her eyes like tears. Josh wouldn’t have suspected that Tess McCabe could be uncertain about anything, and the revelation inspired an odd protectiveness inside him.

“You look stunning,” Josh supplied. It wasn’t exactly a lie. The first sight of her had certainly just about knocked him over.

Miguel liked Josh’s choice of words. “Sí. Stunning. You both look stunning.”

The mild day made the drive to the Hoffsteaders’ place a pleasure. Birds fluttered among the mesquite and juniper, scolding the travelers for disturbing the day’s peace. A bright sun ducked in and out of gathering clouds, painting the valley and surrounding mountains with constantly changing purple shadows. Tess stayed silent during the ride, but seated together with legs dangling from the rear of the wagon, Rosie and Miguel volleyed insults in the afternoon sunshine. The jibes flew with practiced ease. He complained that she made biscuits like rocks. She accused him of having the manners of an Indian. Since Miguel’s mother had been an Indian, he might have taken offense, but no. He just laughed and said that his Papago mother knew how to cook better than any American or Mexican woman he’d met.

Listening to them snipe at each other, Josh wondered why everyone on the Diamond T snickered behind their backs and took bets on how many months would pass before they set up housekeeping. God himself couldn’t explain the ways of women with men and men with women, Josh decided. So why should Josh Ransom understand?

Wagons and people crowded the Hoffsteaders’ place, which was situated in the foothills of the Dragoon Mountains among the piñon and juniper. The timber house was certainly bigger than the Diamond T’s little adobe compound, and the huge new barn made a perfect site for a neighborly gettogether. Rosie hurried to greet friends and bring their offering of food to a heavily laden table. Miguel ambled off to join a knot of men gathered around a keg.

But Tess held back.

“Come on,” Josh urged. “We’re here. We might as well go in and act like a married couple.”

She backed up a step, very unlike the Tess he knew.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t go in there,” she admitted from between clenched teeth. “I…just can’t.”

“You wanted to look married.”

“It’s not… that. I…I don’t feel like myself. All gussied up like…you know. Everyone will stare. Everyone will laugh.”

He sighed, then held out his hand. “Come on.”

She frowned.

“Come with me. Show some guts, woman.”

That brought her chin up, as he knew it would. She put her hand in his, and for the first time he noticed the graceful, tapered fingers that looked almost delicate. “This way,” he told her and led her around behind the barn, where prying eyes couldn’t find them. There he took out the knife he always carried on his belt.

“We’ll just make a few changes.” A half dozen big silk bows fell victim to his knife before she could object. Several gaudy flounces shared the bows’ fate. The resulting dress had simpler lines and showed off Tess’s womanly shape. And Tess did have a womanly shape, Josh noted- a slender waist, trim hips, and, well, other attributes that a decent fellow wasn’t supposed to stare at.

“There now,” he said, clearing his throat and forcing himself to behave. “You look fine. You don’t need all those gewgaws hanging on you. They just distract people from noticing how pretty you are.”

Tess looked down at herself with a dubious frown.

“You can’t get the picture from where you’re standing,” Josh told her. “You’ll just have to take my word for it. You’re prettier than a flower in spring.”

At that, she snorted. “Save it, cowboy. You don’t need to tell me lies.”

“I don’t lie. You’re damned pretty! Haven’t you ever looked in a mirror, woman? You’ve got-well, hell!- you’ve got everything a pretty woman should have. A nice smile. Shiny hair, great eyes, good…well, a gentleman isn’t supposed to talk about the details, you know. Just take my word on it. The men in that barn are going to think you’re downright beautiful.”

She was, Josh suddenly realized. Maybe her man’s dress and meandog attitude had blinded him up until this moment, but seeing Tess in a dress-now that he’d chopped away some of the excess-served as a revelation. Or maybe she was a woman who took time to grow on a man. She possessed the finest pair of eyes Josh had ever seen-deep green, like a quiet shady pool. Lush black hair and smooth olive skin-bronze even beyond the touch of the sun- hinted that her Irish father had taken a Mexican wife. And from the looks of Tess, her mother must have been a beauty.

She still looked doubtful. Strange to see uncertainty reflected upon that usually confident face.

“Tess, in the one week I’ve known you, I’ve seen you climb on top of ornery broncs, face down your obnoxious brother, and push around range cattle who wouldn’t mind stomping you into the dust. You can’t possibly turn chicken because a few folks have gotten together for a barn dance.”

Her jaw stiffened. “Who’s chicken? I’m not chicken.”

He held out a hand. “Then let’s go. It’s starting to rain.”

Teeth clenched, but head held high, she took the offered hand.

TESS had never felt so out of place in her life as in that barn with the fiddlers sawing out lively tunes, the couples doing jigs or polkas or whatever foolishness they wanted to do, and the other folks eating, drinking, talking, and smiling. Children ran wild through the crowd, getting in the way, tripping the dancers, making off with food from the heavily laden planks laid across bales of hay, but no one scolded them. This was a time for kicking up heels and having a good time. Everyone looked as if they just naturally knew how to have fun. Tess didn’t. Colin McCabe hadn’t been much for socializing. Work had always gotten in the way.

As Josh guided Tess toward the food, lawyer Bartlett spotted them and waved, a sly smile on his face. Or at least the smile looked sly to Tess, but she might have been just a little bit cranky when it came to Tombstone’s one lawyer. And dancing with Meg Riley, the blacksmith’s pretty daughter, was none other than Sean. Tess hoped Meg knew what a skunk her brother was.

The thought depressed her, because she hadn’t always thought her brother was a skunk. When they had been kids, Tess had been right fond of him. After he left, the two of them had occasionally written letters. Their daddy had refused to hear of Sean, but Tess had loved to read of the places he’d been and the things he had done. Maybe he really did think selling the ranch would fix them both up right. But he didn’t have the feeling for the Diamond T that Tess did.

Josh nudged her. “Smile, and stop looking daggers at Sean. You’re married and happy. So look it.”

Looking married and happy proved tough. Eyes pressed in from all sides, staring at her as she nibbled on chicken and roasted corn, then following every awkward step when Ransom made her dance. He insisted, despite her telling him flat out that she didn’t know how.

“Learn,” he told her. Just like a man, always wanting to be the boss, but after a few minutes of stepping on toes and stumbling about, looking like a fool, dancing became almost fun. Tess liked the feel of Josh’s arm around her. It was a strong arm. And from close up, the man looked even better than he did from farther away. She liked his face, Tess decided. His eyes crinkled when he smiled, and when they danced, he smiled a lot. What’s more, he smelled good, like soap and leather.

Too bad she wasn’t some pretty thing like Meg Riley who had been brought up liking the idea of having a husband run her life. Tess was beginning to suspect that Josh Ransom would make a dadgummed fine catch as a husband-for a girl who wanted one.

And he’d said Tess was pretty. Imagine that. Even if it was a baldfaced lie, it was a nice lie, and mighty kind of him to say.

They waltzed by Bartlett and his wife. “You two having fun?” the legal eagle inquired.

Tess gave him a smug look. “Of course we are. Being newlyweds is very romantic.”

As the crowd of dancers swept Bartlett away, Tess felt rather than heard a chuckle deep in Josh’s chest. “Tess, I don’t think you know the meaning of romantic.”

She looked up, jaw squared pugnaciously. “I do so.”

He shook his head. “Someday, some fellow is going to have the guts to teach you, and I’m not sure I don’t envy him.”

She would have shown her contempt by sticking out her tongue, but Sean was looking their way, so she settled for a quiet snort. “Some folks don’t have time for that sort of nonsense, Ransom.”

“It doesn’t take time,” he replied. “Just heart. Or so I’m told.”

“Sounds to me like you don’t know that much about it either.”

He laughed amiably. “Maybe I don’t, now that you mention it.”

The conversation got Tess’s mind churning about how romance, real romance, would feel like. Dancing with this man, absorbing his warmth, moving to the guidance of his body, feeling his breath trickle through her hair-it all made her feel flustered and achy inside, with her heart jumping around and a couple of unmentionable parts of herself tingling very strangely. Was that romance, or did the flutter in her belly mean only that the chicken had been a little off?

When Miguel brought the wagon around, Tess discovered with some surprise that, once started, the evening had flown past. She didn’t really want to leave, but that was pure silliness, because her father had always said that wasting time jawing with the neighbors never brought the beef home or broke a green horse. Still, she wanted to try this again next month, when the Hernandez family had their annual spring gettogether. Then she remembered: next month her life would be back in its normal rut, and she would have no reason to get gussied up. Josh Ransom wouldn’t be around to make her dance, or to tell her she was pretty.

Unless…

Maybe you should try to make this a real marriage, Rosie had told her.

That was just about the worst idea Tess had ever heard. But still, it stuck in her mind like a burr.

By the time the four of them piled into the wagon for the ride home, the pleasant sprinkle of rain that had fallen all evening had changed to a pelting downpour. Luckily, Rosie had packed two canvas tarps for just this happenstance. Tess and Josh huddled under one on the driver’s box. Miguel and Rosie shared the other.

The night closed in, dark as a cave, as the horses ploddingly pulled the wagon through the storm. Under the tarp with Josh, Tess felt isolated from the whole world, acutely aware of the man next to her. Their shoulders, arms, hips, and thighs touched, pressed together both for heat and to make use of the sheltered space beneath the tarp.

The contact produced some interesting sensations in Tess. Warm, tingly, heartracing feelings, even stronger than when they had danced. She wondered, suddenly, what kissing Josh Ransom, really kissing him, would feel like. He had kissed her once, that time that Sean had shown up after their contest on Nitro, but that kiss had been a spurofthemoment taunt, a takethisandchokeonit sort of thing. But even that unexpected, annoying kiss had made her toes tingle. What would a real kiss, a thoughtout, planned, fullcooperation sort of kiss feel like?

The speculation sent of bolt of wet heat from the top of her head to the ends of her toes. Enough of that! Tess decided. Such thoughts were downright dangerous. They led to thoughts even more wild, like what might happen between a man and a woman who were truly married-not just the stuff in the bedroom, which Tess regarded as something a woman just had to put up with, but the good stuff, like sharing work and worries during the long days, sitting side by side in front of the fire in wintertime, or in the hot summer drinking Rosie’s lemonade out in the courtyard, listening to the men tell tall tales.

Damn but these were dangerous thoughts. When a woman dressed in lace and bows, she stopped thinking with anything like common sense. Likely the corset Rosie had laced so tightly had cut the blood flow to her brain.

When they arrived at the ranch, lamps burned in the bunkhouse and barn. Rosie and Miguel promptly jumped off the back of the wagon and headed into the dark house, still holding the tarp over their heads. But something anchored Tess to the hard wooden seat, there under that tarp with Josh sitting so close beside her. He didn’t move either. Tess didn’t know what his excuse was. She was the one losing brainpower to a corset, not him.

But he stayed, while the horses stood patiently in the rain and the wind tried to snatch the tarp from their hands. He stayed, and she stayed, and the tension that had been building between them all night shimmered like heat. If he tried to kiss her, Tess decided, she would let him. A girl should have a real, noholdsbarred kiss once in her life. He moved closer, and her heart jumped clear up into her throat. Without actually telling herself to present her face, kisser foremost, she did. In the dim light that spilled from the barn, his eyes looked smoky, his focus singleminded. Closer, closer, until she could almost feel the burn of his lips on hers. Then…

“It’s about time you got home, bosslady. We got us a problem!”

They sprang apart like guilty children caught with hands in the cookie jar. The wind grabbed the tarp, snapping it smartly and sending a cascade of cold rainwater into their warm, cozy world.

“Henry!” Tess snapped, exasperated. “What the hell?”

“We got about a hundred head of stupid, blockheaded goddamned beeves stranded on a sandbank down in the river, and the river’s rising like hell itself opened the floodgates. Luis and me and the dogs have been trying to move ’em, but we need help.”

The spell of the night broke as the ranch laid its heavy hand upon her, drawing her back to the real world. “Saddle Ranger for me,” she told Henry. “I’ll get into some real clothes.”

When she got to the barn minutes later, a dripping wet Henry, looking cold to the bone, stood with a blanket over his shoulders while Josh adjusted the saddle cinches of both Ranger and Jughead.

“You don’t have to help,” Tess told Josh. After all, this wasn’t his ranch, and she’d paid him to marry her, not risk his neck trying to move ornery cattle through a rising river before they got their silly selves drowned.

He didn’t say anything, just swung aboard Jughead. Tess wasn’t about to argue. If the man wanted to help, she wouldn’t turn him down.

They rode for twenty minutes alongside the churning San Pedro before Luis’s cussing, the dogs’ barking, and the bawling of frightened cattle carried to their ears. Tess cursed the darkness. All she could see were blackonblack shadows. She could make out Luis only because his shadow rose taller than the cattle’s. Frantic barking pierced the night above the pandemonium. Bold cattle dog Rojo must have crossed when the water was lower. Tess doubted he would be able to fight the current now. Rojo’s son Chief, not as bold as his father, barked in frustration from the near bank.

Without saying a word, they all three headed straight for the water. Ranger was Tess’s favorite mount. The big buckskin gelding would go anywhere or do anything she asked, which didn’t say much for his brains but spoke volumes for his heart. He didn’t hesitate, but plunged into the flood. Josh, mounted on the somewhat smarter Jughead, had a fight on his hands, but he finally goaded the horse into the swirling water. Henry’s mare, already tired from a night’s work and having already swum the river a time or two, absolutely balked. No amount of spurring would send her down that path again.

Ranger swam steadily while Tess tried not to think of unseen dangers the swirling current might send careening toward them. Whole trees torn from the bank could ride the flood and spell death for an unlucky rider. Whirlpools and eddies could suck horse and rider beneath the churning water. Floating mats of vegetation could sweep them downstream like a lethal broom. Crossing such a flood during the day was dangerous. At night it was just damned foolhardy.

But the fool cattle would simply stand there and drown while the river ate at their sandbar.

Both Ranger and Jughead climbed onto the sandbar at the same time, carrying rain and riverdrenched riders. Luis raised his arm in the darkness and Rojo barked a greeting.

“Take the rear,” Tess told Josh.

He didn’t argue.

Luis already had the left flank in hand, and Rojo read the situation as any good cattle dog would and harried the beeves on the right. After squinting through the darkness for a few minutes, Tess spotted the lead cow, the animal whose loud bawling drove the others to greater panic, the animal they would follow if she could be persuaded to reason.

Tess urged Ranger through the churning mass of cattle and tried to cut her out. The cow wanted none of it. Tess cursed, but the cow didn’t care. The wind snatched away Luis and Josh’s shouting. Even Rojo’s hoarse barking whipped away into the night.

“Well, damn it all, anyway!” Tess maneuvered upwind of old bossy and let her lasso fly. Three tries later, it hooked around the lead cow’s horns. “I don’t care if you want to go or not, fleabrain. You’re going.”

At a touch of Tess’s heels, Ranger tightened the rope and pulled the struggling cow toward the water. She bawled and bucked, went to her knees, and struggled like a fish on the end of a line until the current snatched her feet from beneath her. Then she followed instinct and swam, striking out for the opposite bank, where Henry and Chief waited to welcome her. Tess snubbed up the rope and swam beside the cow on Ranger to keep her headed in the right direction.

Under the goading of the two men and dog, the beeves began to move, mindlessly following the lead cow. Josh and Luis kept the animals in a tight knot in the current. When the last one climbed onto dry land, Josh turned Jughead back into the current. Tess’s heart caught in her throat as he lunged up onto the rapidly shrinking sandbar and scooped a dripping Rojo onto the saddle in front of him.

Tess would have gone back for the dog, who-forty pounds dripping wet-didn’t have the bulk to fight the stillrising current. A cowboy didn’t leave a good cattle dog, or even a bad cattle dog, behind. The dogs were part of the family. But for Josh to do it, without even being asked- well, there she went turning to mush again, and she couldn’t blame a corset this time.

She didn’t have anything to blame at all, except herself, when she met him at the river’s edge, leaned over Rojo’s wet body, and gave Josh Ransom that fullcooperation kiss she’d thought about all evening. And suddenly the rain, the wind, her drenched hair and soggy clothes no longer were cold.

NEXTmorning, Tess slept long past her usual predawn rising time. Perhaps her slothfulness resulted from stumbling to bed in the wee hours of the morning after hours spent cold, drenched, and in danger of losing both her cattle and her life. Or perhaps she snuggled more deeply into her bed because of the dreams entertaining her sleep. The dreams featured Josh Ransom in a prominent role. Josh smiling, Josh shaving in front of the little mirror hung outside the kitchen door, Josh riding Nitro and giving her that smug look that he did so well, Josh hauling poor Rojo onto his saddle and letting the dog kiss his face. Then Tess was kissing his face.

Josh kissing. Yes indeed, that was the meat of the dream, complete with heartthumping, bloodboiling bolts of sensation that shot through her like lightning.

Periodically she woke, soft and warm with remembered sensations, and in those brief conscious minutes, having a reallife husband didn’t seem like such a bad idea, as long as that husband was Josh. In fact, in those otherworldly moments between one dream and the next, having the man here day and night seemed a hell of an idea. Why had she ever thought that it wasn’t?

Sun streamed through the bedroom window and made square patterns on the bed when Rosie marched in and put an end to Tess’s dreams.

“Aren’t we the lazy one this morning!” Rosie punctuated her comment with a sharp slap to the lump beneath the covers that was Tess’s rear end.

“Ow! Don’t! I’m getting up!”

“Well, you’d better, because you’ve got business to attend to in the kitchen.”

Tess stuck her head out from beneath the blankets. “What business?”

“Just you get up and find out. And don’t be too long about it.”

Tess grumbled as she rolled out of bed, pulled on clean jeans and a cotton shirt, and quickly plaited her hair into one long braid. She couldn’t think of a thing she needed to take care of in the kitchen, except maybe grabbing some breakfast. What had Rosie all stirred up this morning?

She found out when she walked into the kitchen to find Josh sitting at the table. At the sight of him, her dreams hit her smack in the chest and nearly stopped her breath.

She greeted him normally, even though heat climbed into her face. “Ransom.”

“Tess.”

His expression looked a bit grim. And at his feet lay a small carpetbag that belonged to Miguel. What was this? After last night, he couldn’t still be…still be-

“I’m leaving this morning, Tess.”

Her heart nearly stopped. “Leaving?”

“I told you I would go at the end of two more days. Two days is up.”

Right. But he would change his mind if Tess told him she wanted him to be a real husband, that he could be master-well, assistant master-of the Diamond T. Any man’s head would turn at a precious gift like the Diamond T.

Rosie stood by the stove, plump arms crossed over her chest, regarding Tess with a “what are you going to do now?” expression.

“Rosie, git!” Tess didn’t intend to make this bargain in front of witnesses.

Rosie got, but not without sending Tess a look over her shoulder. She pulled the curtain closed behind her, leaving Tess and Josh alone. Tess started talking before she lost her nerve.

“I know you said two days, but things have changed. I don’t think it would be a bad idea for you to stay. I mean, at first I thought you were a sot and a bum, but you’re not. You’re steady, and you’re good with horses, and you know cattle. And…and I don’t mind your company. Not at all.

I figure we’re already married, so that’s out of the way. You might as well stay.”

He replied with an awkward silence, and the muscle at the hinge of his jaw twitched. Tess tried to tell herself that he was overwhelmed by his good fortune, but her heart sank.

“You could run things right along with me,” she said. “This is a fine ranch, with good people. It’s a better life than, well, whatever…”

Tess stared at the toe of her boot, wanting to take back her babbling. She sounded stupid, saying all the wrong things. But what did a girl say to a man to get him to stay?

The crease between his brows deepened. “Tess-”

“Last night…”She couldn’t let him start. Somehow, he had to understand. “Last night you did great. And we… we…” Did she actually need to mention the kiss? The kiss she had started and he had finished, that had turned into two kisses, then three, and then a silence that had seemed heavy with affection, or maybe something more urgent than mere affection.

“Tess…” He sighed. “Last night…I took advantage of you. I apologize.”

He took advantage of her?

“I can’t stay, Tess. I have a place of my own, over by Arrivaca, and I sure as hell need to get back to it. I’ll come back and make sure you get that deed of yours, and then we can talk about this. And if you want, you can just forget the money. I’ll get what I need somewhere else.”

A lead weight descended on Tess’s stomach. She thought she might actually throw up. The money. He cared about the money, not the Diamond T. Not her. Of course. How could she have forgotten about their bargain? Josh Ransom had married her for money, had stayed at the ranch day after day, because of the money.

The lead weight started to heat, to bubble, to boil, firing her blood and sending color racing into her cheeks.

“I’ll get your goddamned money.”

He followed her to the jar where she kept her cash, and when she turned around, he stood so close that she nearly slammed into him. With a forceful push, she knocked him backwards. “Go ahead and leave.” She stuffed a roll of bills into his shirt pocket. “And don’t do me any favors by coming back. I can take care of myself. I can take care of my ranch, and my own business. And I don’t the hell need you!”

Then she fled the room before he could see the tears gathering in her eyes.

Chapter Five

JOSH SAT BACK hard onto the stony ground, his clothes as well as his hands-and one long smear on his cheek-grimy with blood and muck. He exhaled a deep sigh, every bit as exhausted as the cow that had just given birth, but also content in the day, the blue sky, the warm spring air, and the satisfaction of being where he wanted to be and doing what he wanted to do.

Only one thing wasn’t quite right in his life, and that was something he didn’t want to think about right then. He was too tired, and his mind wasn’t up to the task of Tess McCabe.

No, he wouldn’t think about her.

The cow lumbered to her feet, and Josh did the same. The bull calf, eyes blinking at the world he had just been launched into, uttered a wondering bleat.

“Okay, kid.” Josh rubbed the newborn’s slimy neck with rough affection. “Let’s get you on your feet.”

He gave the wobbly little creature a hand at getting all four feet beneath him, then nodded in satisfaction as the little fellow instinctively went for the chow wagon. Birth never failed to leave him in awe. It was a wondrous thing to behold.

Some men, a bothersome inner voice nagged, got to watch their own babies open eyes to their first view of the world. Men with wives. Men with families. Men who didn’t have to face an empty house at the end of each day.

But the Double R ranch house wasn’t empty, even though David had hightailed off to look for gold in Colorado. Marguerita, chubby and amiable, cooked, cleaned, and tried to ride herd on every part of his life. Eight hired hands lived in the bunkhouse only a hundred feet from the house, and more often than not, they tromped through the Double R kitchen, begging an extra roll or piece of pie from Rita or stopping in the main room to talk about this cow or that horse or the rustlers who liked to heist a few beeves and then hop over the border to Mexico.

No, Josh didn’t lack for people in his life. He had plenty of people.

But not the right person, the annoying voice insisted. Josh did his best to ignore it.

He left the cow and her new son to themselves and led his horse the short distance to a tank just over the rise. The little manmade depression trapped rainwater for the cattle-when the weather blessed them with rain. Today the tank stood full. The storm two weeks ago that had trapped the Diamond T cows had been followed by smaller rains that filled the depression and turned the landscape spring green.

The green of Tess McCabe’s eyes.

Damn! He wasn’t going to think about her. Josh stripped off his filthy shirt and dunked himself into the water, head, shoulders, and chest. The cold, clean shock felt good. This was probably the same cold rainwater that had fallen from the sky two weeks ago when they had struggled to save those blockheaded beeves. Images crowded his mind. Tess with her hair drenched and hanging in her face. Tess plunging into the water, fearless of danger. Tess leaning over and kissing him, a wet, aromatic dog in between them.

Kissing him… What a kiss that had been. It had inspired him to throw away all gentlemanly instinct and take full advantage of her momentary weakness. What a kiss indeed. It had heated his blood all through the night and convinced him that he had to leave then, right then, or get so deeply entangled with that astonishing, surprising, engaging woman that he would never break free.

Had he truly broken free? Did he really want to break free?

Josh groaned and dunked himself again. Surely enough cold water would bring him back to his senses.

But later that night Tess crept back into his thoughts as he sat in front of the fireplace mending a shirt by the light of a kerosene lamp. Rita came in from the kitchen, where she had been washing the supper dishes. Even with his eyes on the torn seam of the shirt he felt her disapproving frown.

“If you would get yourself a wife like most men you wouldn’t have to do that, Señor Ransom.”

He had a wife. Sort of. But not really.

“What do I need with a wife when you’re the best cook north of the Mexican border, Rita?”

“Ha! Excuses! You are just like your father, may he rest in peace! The Ransom men don’t grow from boys to men. You, and Señor David, and your father. When a boy grows to a man, he takes a good wife, raises a family.”

Josh gave up and put the shirt aside. “Rita, my father had a wife, in case you didn’t notice. She’s living in Tucson with my sister.”

“You see!” She waved a chubby finger in his direction. “What woman did he choose? A boy’s dream, your mother is, not a man’s. Soft and beautiful, fit only for decorating some rich man’s arm. It is no wonder that she wilted like a flower here. A ranching man must choose wisely-a real woman, not a flower.”

“Marguerita…” He always called her by her full name when she annoyed him. Not that annoying him bothered her a bit. She seemed to think of it as her duty. “Why the lecture?”

She shrugged. “The place is very lonely right now. Señor David is gone.”

“He’ll be back when he gets tired of looking for gold.”

“But not to stay. And you, señor, have had your face dragging on the ground since you came home.”

“I have not.”

“You should be happy. You have the cattle back, don’t you? My man Carlos says the calving has started, and everything is well. So I think to myself, why does Señor Joshua frown all the time and bark at his people like an angry dog?”

“I do not frown all the time, and I only bark when barking is needed.”

She answered with an indignant “Hmph! You live an unnatural life, señor. Man was not meant by the Almighty to live without a wife.”

“Only women think that,” he shot back.

She dismissed that with a wave. “Boy, that’s what you are. A boy. You Ransoms never grow up.” On that sour observation, she donned her shawl, grabbed up the shirt he had been mending, and marched out to join her husband, Carlos, the foreman, in the little house they shared. “I will take care of the shirt,” she groused, “because you do not have a wife as you should. So the rest of us must suffer. Hmph.”

Josh had to smile as Rita banged the door behind her. The lecture rang familiar, because he got one at least once a month. Rita wanted children to fuss over. Hers were grown and gone, so now she wanted his.

If Marguerita knew he was legally hitched, she would dance with glee-until she met Tess, that is. Tess McCabe sure as hell wouldn’t be caught dead mending any man’s shirt. Josh would be willing to bet on it. And he doubted Tess could bake a pie or make fluffy biscuits.

But she could ride as if she were born on a horse. She could throw a rope over a set of horns or snag a steer’s foot in a single toss. Flooding rivers didn’t faze her. Cold and wet didn’t stop her. She feared nothing-except losing her home and her way of life, and maybe being laughed at by people who didn’t understand her worth.

No one who really knew Tess McCabe would laugh at her, Josh reflected. She marched to a different drum, perhaps, but along that march she had become a special sort of woman. Strong, proud, undaunted by things that sent most women into a tizzy. But when she took off those work clothes and got dressed up like a woman, run for cover, because Tess could knock a man’s socks right off his feet.

Or kiss his lips right off his face. Tess McCabe kissed like an angel. No, not an angel, she kissed like a woman. A hell of a woman.

A woman who would likely shoot him if she saw him again, considering the way he had left. By now she would have remembered why she didn’t want a man messing up her life. And she sure as hell wouldn’t want to leave her precious Diamond T to be his wife for real, even if he asked her.

But then, there had been that kiss…

MIGUEL scraped the mud from his boots before he came into the house, where Tess was helping Rosie put dinner on the table. The aroma of Rosie’s beef stew mingled with the warm scent of freshly baked bread, and Miguel inhaled appreciatively.

“You look like a drowned rat,” Tess commented.

“You didn’t look much better an hour ago,” Rosie reminded Tess.

Tess, Miguel, and Luis had spent most of the day beating the brush looking for mired cattle. Tess had come in early to look over the accounts. Her freshly braided hair still dripped water down the back of her shirt.

“Can’t complain about the rain,” Miguel said. “The way the cows are dropping calves, we’ll need the good pasture this summer.”

“You’ll never hear me complain about rain,” Tess agreed. “Not in this country. Even if it does make more work.” She smiled. “Even if it does make you-and me too-look like something that the high water swept in.”

She put a tureen of stew on the table as Miguel sat in his accustomed spot. “Where’s the others?”

“In the bunkhouse, cleaning up. Henry’s been cleaning the barn all day, and he smells worse than a cow. And you can’t see Luis for the mud. Compared to those hombres, I look dressed for company. And speaking of company, Don Sebastian de Moros will be along any day now, I’m thinking. I heard in town yesterday that he’s bringing another herd of those longlegged Spanish horses he breeds. I was thinking we could pick up a few from him this year. Improve the mustang blood in what we’re turning out.”

“He always wants a lot of money,” Tess said, tucking into her plate of stew.

“Worth it,” Miguel replied.

“Maybe. We can think about it when he shows up.” Normally, Tess loved an evening of talk about horseflesh, cattle, and plans for the future of the Diamond T, but lately she couldn’t maintain much interest. She still loved the land, loved the ranch, but her former singleminded concentration had disappeared. Her mood had been gloomy as the gray spring skies.

A week later, the sun shone brightly from a clear blue sky and wildflowers perfumed the warm spring air, but Tess’s mood hadn’t improved. It dropped yet another notch as the familiar figure of her brother, Sean, rode down the road toward the house.

“Just what I need,” she muttered to Rosie. They were busy hanging wash on a line strung between the main house and the little house on the other side of the courtyard.

“Have patience, Tessie girl. He is family.”

“Which means we’re stuck with him for life,” Tess grumbled. “Joy.”

Sean rode up to the courtyard wall and grinned at Tess. “Howdy, Sis. How’s life treating you?”

“Thought you’d be headed back to California by now,” Tess grumbled. “Heard that old Maisie at the hotel threatened to take a broom to you unless you paid your bill.”

“A minor misunderstanding,” Sean said. “We worked it out.”

Tess knew that Sean had been hanging around town talking to lawyer Bartlett. She’d had reports from the men that her brother spied on the ranch as well, probably trying to see if her socalled husband was still here. Tess had grown so weary of this deception she could spit, preferably hitting both Sean and lawyer Bartlett with the same effort.

“You’re looking good, Tess. Marriage must agree with you.”

“Right,” Tess snapped. “I’m sure you mean that.”

“Mind if I stay and chat awhile?”

“I could stop you?”

He just smiled.

While Sean put his horse in the barn, Tess thought furiously about what she would do. If he had been slinking around as the men said, he probably knew that Josh was gone.

With more violence than necessary, she snapped a wet shirt into the breeze with a sharp cracking sound. Had it connected with someone’s backside, the wet material would have delivered an attentiongetting sting. She could think of several backsides that would be good targets.

“Miguel is waving from the casita,” Rosie told her. “He wants you to come.”

“Later,” Tess groused. “First I have to send Sean packing. Somehow.”

Sean ambled through the courtyard gate, picked up a bedsheet, and helped Tess pin it on the clothesline. “I don’t see your husband about. What’s his name?”

“Joshua.” Joshua Ransom. She wouldn’t forget the name again. Not ever, as much as she might try.

“Haven’t seen him in town, either.”

Tess kept her mouth shut. Lying made a person tired, and she didn’t have the energy for it.

“I found out a thing or two about your husband. Want to hear?”

“I doubt you know anything I don’t,” Tess said through clenched teeth. “After all, we are married.”

They picked up another wet sheet. “Did you know he has a big spread over by Arrivaca?”

“So?”

“And his brother, the fool, gambled away their entire herd of beeves? Ransom came to town because he had a friend at the bank. Tried to hit him up for a loan to get his cattle back.”

So that was why he had wanted her three hundred dollars. That was why he had been desperate enough to marry her. Tess could understand a man-or a woman-going to any lengths to save a ranch. Look at what she had done. Too bad her scheme seemed doomed to fail, thanks to Sean and that lizard Bartlett.

She hoped Josh Ransom had gotten his beeves back.

“Tess!” This from Miguel, impatiently beckoning from the doorway of the little house. Tess ignored him. Whatever it was, she could take care of it later.

“Are you two gonna pin up that sheet or stand there staring at each other like two badass dogs?” Rosie complained.

Stiffjawed, Tess draped the sheet over the line. Sean sighed unhappily. “Tess, listen, will you?”

“I got ears.”

“This isn’t anywhere near a real marriage you got with this Ransom fellow. You know it. I know it. And it won’t be hard to prove to Bartlett, who’s got the judge wrapped around his finger, anyway, if it comes to that. But hell, I don’t want this ranch. To me it’s just a hunk of dirt and sand that’s full of bad memories.”

She gave up any pretense of hanging the wash and focused a level green stare on her brother. “Sean, if you don’t want the Diamond T, then go away. Just go away.”

“No. I won’t. Because it’s not fair that our rat of a father didn’t leave me anything. Not a blessed thing. Do you think that’s fair?”

“You left.”

“I lived here fifteen stinking years.” He kicked at the dirt with the toe of his boot. “The only fair thing is to sell the place and divide the money. We should get enough so that I could go back east and go to college. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. And you wouldn’t have to work yourself to death on this stinking ranch. You could get married for real, maybe. Hell, Tessie, when you’re not covered in dust and cow muck, you’re not half bad to look at. I’ll bet you could find someone to settle down with you.”

Tess wondered if strangling him would be worth getting strung up.

“Tess, you’re just as stubborn as the old man was. I put up with just as much as you did.”

Not nearly as much. Still, if she were to be entirely fair about it…

But Sean continued and took all inclination to charity right out of her mind. “I just wasn’t good enough to shine beside the princess of cow pies,” he said bitterly, “the queen of dust and dirt and horse sweat.”

“You piece of-!”

An unexpected voice interrupted. “That’s my wife you’re talking about, you horse’s ass. I suggest you apologize to the lady.”

Both Tess and Sean gaped at Josh Ransom, while Rosie folded her arms and looked on with a satisfied smile. “Where did you come from?” Tess demanded.

He strolled over, casual as you please, and laid an arm across her shoulders. “Sweetheart, I told you I’d be back sooner than an eye can blink. Didn’t I?”

Too astounded to answer, Tess just stared.

Leaning on the door frame of the little house, Miguel said, “I tried to tell you.” He shook his head and muttered something that sounded like Idiota, but Tess couldn’t be sure.

Sean looked skeptical. “Give it up, you two. Everyone knows you’re faking it.”

“Really?” Josh sounded as if he were enjoying himself. “Is this faking it?”

Before Tess could pull away, Josh’s mouth came down upon hers. Then she decided that she didn’t want to pull away. She should have been embarrassed with such an audience looking on, but embarrassment didn’t even occur to her. This kiss felt too right, too much like fate, and just too dadgummed good. Her arms wound around him, pulling him closer-that wonderfully wide, wonderfully hard chest. The broad, sturdy shoulders. The narrow hips that pressed so close to hers. Oh my! She had missed him!

Finally, he pulled back just a bit, and softly against her mouth posed a question only he and she could hear. “Marry me for real, you incredible woman? I don’t want the Diamond T. I just want you.”

Then while Tess tried to keep her knees from buckling, he grinned at Sean. “Did that look fake to you, college boy?”

ROSIE wept against Tess’s shoulder, turning her shirt into a soggy mess. Smiling, Tess patted the older woman’s back. She had smiled a lot these past two days, more than she had smiled in her entire life, it seemed.

“I’ll miss you so much,” Rosie sobbed, pulling back a bit.

“What could I do?” Tess spread her hands helplessly. “He needs me, poor man.”

“Ha. You don’t fool me for a minute, my girl. You love the man, and he loves you.” Then she broke down in tears from the sheer sentiment of it all, collapsing once again on Tess’s shoulder.

Tess gave her a solid hug. “Rosie, Rosie. I’ll be a day’s ride away. That isn’t so much. Besides, you’ll be too busy to do much missing. This place doesn’t run itself, you know.”

Rosie swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. “It’s true. Oh, look what I did to your shirt.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Now that you’re a married woman for real, you should be wearing a dress.”

There Tess went smiling again, even when she should be taking Rosie down a peg. “I have a full day in the saddle ahead of me, and Josh would think I’d gone loco if I put on something as silly as a dress.”

Who knew a man could be so sensible? Who knew a man, a terrific, goodlooking, strong, competent fellow like Josh Ransom, would want Tess McCabe-no, Tess Ransom-just as she was? Miracles never ceased.

“And now that you’re a married woman for real, Mrs. Miguel Cabo, you should be paying attention to your new husband instead of bothering me while I’m trying to pack.”

Packing consisted only of stuffing a carpetbag with two pair of jeans, three shirts, a hairbrush, and the hand mirror that used to belong to her mother. There was nothing else in the house Tess wanted to take with her. Her future promised to be far different than her past, and while that frightened her a bit (not that she would ever admit to being frightened), the prospect excited her as well. Josh would be there, and Josh loved her. After the night before, she knew that for a fact. No man could be so sweet, so gentle, and so dadgummed, downright wonderful to a woman without loving the hell out of her. And nothing less than real, nodoubtaboutit love could have convinced her to pull up stakes at the Diamond T and move herself to Josh’s place over the mountain.

She wadded up the last shirt and stuffed it in her bag. Rosie still looked at her as if she might disappear forever any minute.

“We up and lassoed me a good one, Rosie. I’m going to be happy as a hen in a barrel of chicken feed.”

Rosie nodded, smiling through tears.

“And we caught you a good one too. And don’t you go feeling guilty about hitching yourself to Miguel when that jackass you married all those years ago might still be above ground. He’s no husband to you, and God knows that. Miguel’s your real husband. He’s the one who counts.

I always knew when you two were going back and forth like a couple of feisty jaybirds that you belonged together.”

Rosie ventured a small smile. “That man needs a woman to keep him in line.”

“Well, you kept me in line all these years. Ahah! Don’t turn into a water pump again. Let’s go on out.”

Miguel and Josh waited for them on the porch. At the sight of Josh, Tess’s stomach fluttered. She grew warm thinking about the night before, when they’d become man and wife for real. She understood now why mares switched their tails at stallions and cows bawled out their invitations to the bull.

Tess grew warmer when Josh greeted her with a brush of his lips-just enough to tantalize, but not enough to be publicly indecent. “Well, Mrs. Ransom, ready to ride?”

Ranger stood patiently under saddle, along with the stocky chestnut that Josh had ridden in on-a gorgeous animal. Josh obviously knew what he was doing with his horses, at least. But he might need her advice when it came to cattle.

Tess smiled a smug little smile at the thought of the Double R, a huge new ranch just waiting for her to start running things right. Along with her husband, of course. A partnership. They would make it work.

“I’m ready.”

She kissed Miguel on the cheek. Being a man, he certainly wouldn’t cry, but his eyes glistened with suspicious moisture.

“You are my angel,” Miguel said. “I will take care of this place like it was my own.”

“It practically is, as long as you pay the rent.” Tess tried hard to keep a stern tone in her voice. Otherwise she might melt down as mushy as Rosie.

“You sure you want the rent to go to Sean?”

Miguel had insisted upon paying rent when Tess asked him to take over the Diamond T. Rent would make him feel like a rancher, not a caretaker, he said. So Tess had named a small amount and told him to send it to Sean. The money wouldn’t send her brother to a college back east, but it would be a start. Sean had been right. The Diamond T belonged to him as well as her.

They rode out to a chorus of goodbyes and accompanying barks from Chief, who had been promoted to cattle dog in charge. Rojo trotted by Ranger’s side. Where Tess went, he went also.

“I got a dog in the deal along with a wife?” Josh asked when he noticed Rojo.

“Hell yes,” Tess replied. “A woman can buy a husband in any saloon in the West, if she has the cash. But a good cattle dog is hard to find.”