Rocky Mountain Heat

Bonus Chapter: The Beginning

Lazy Days of Summer, fourteen years earlier

The screams rising from the coulee had changed in the past ten minutes from fun to fearful. Blake flicked the reins to head Midnight over to see which one of his little brothers was in need of getting his britches tanned. Because sure enough when they weren’t fighting for each other, they were fighting each other.

Blake let Midnight take her head as she picked her footing down the steep trail that led toward the swimming hole where loud shrieks continued to echo off the clay embankments. Individual voices grew clearer and Blake grinned. It wasn’t often Travis ended up on the hurting side of the equation.

He rounded the bend and darted his gaze over the scene. Chaos was in full reign. His youngest four brothers and a spare little boy, all in jean cutoffs and nothing else, were covered from head to toe in dark mud. Joel and Jesse, the six-year-old twins, raced in circles, waving their hands frantically while they shrieked at the top of their lungs. Twelve-year-old Daniel was attempting to pry the skinny newcomer off Travis with one hand, his free hand swatting the air with desperate jerks.

Travis screamed again—the eight-year-old was madder than Blake had ever heard the little bully. His attacker was the only one in the area not hollering or swearing at the top of his lungs. Blake watched as the kid swung and connected another solid blow to Travis’s jaw.

Time to stop the fun and games.

“Enough, you little hoodlums.” Blake dismounted and waded in, ready to pull the combatants apart and deliver a timely big brother from hell speech. “Every one of you, get your…”

Then he realized what was causing all the arm swinging and at least half the swearing. Just to the side of the main fight lay a giant wasp nest.

It appeared to have been ripped clean in two.

Blake felt a little like swearing now himself. “Daniel, get the twins back to the house. Take Midnight, and clean her saddle completely after you get hosed off.”

Pausing to make sure Daniel nodded in agreement, he turned his attention to the screaming boys at his feet.

Wasps whizzed around them, and he felt the first sting on his leg. Pulling hard, he lifted the still-swinging blond banshee, grabbed Travis by the wrist and toppled the three of them into the shallows of the swimming hole. “Get ready to hold your breath. Travis, I mean it. Stop screaming and take a big breath. On the count of three.”

He pulled them all under, pushed off the bottom toward the middle of the stream and allowed the gentle current to float them for a good ten count before letting their heads pop up to the surface of the water. The angry buzz was still audible but fading as he hauled his squirming cargo to the shore, dragging the boys over the grassy bottom to the lower edge of the trail.

“Get on up there. Now! Get home and let Ma deal with you. Little idiots, what were you thinking?”

Travis knew enough to sense Blake’s patience was gone. He turned and raced up the hill without even complaining that it was someone else’s fault. The other kid. He didn’t seem to know it was time to stop fighting and start running.

“You ain’t my boss.” Eyes narrowed, chin jutting out as he glared up at Blake. It would have been funny if they both weren’t dripping wet and filthy.

“I am now, Slick. Get on up there. My ma will see to those welts before we get you home. Unless you’d prefer I take you home now and let your folks deal with you?”

The skinny little thing didn’t look more than five years old. Pale wisps of hair stuck up where the mud had washed off, but the dirt seemed permanent on other portions of the creature. “They ain’t there. My mom’s gone to town for grub. I can take care of myself.”

Blake counted to ten. There was no way he could go home and tell his mom he’d let some little tyke wander off without his folks—wasp-stung, filthy, and pounded from fighting Travis.

Even though it looked like the little beast had gotten the better of that particular deal.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Jax.”

“Jack?”

He was given the you’re-too-stupid-for-words look. “J-A-X. My name is Jackson, but Momma and Daddy call me Jax.”

“Well, Jax, you gotta come home with me for a bit. If your folks are gone, you could probably use a little dinner. We’ll hose off the mud and get something to eat. I think my ma’s got leftover chicken around we could nab. Deal?”

Blake knew the second he mentioned food that it would work. The kid was skinny as all get out. Jax scrambled up the embankment and trotted next to him, little legs working double time to keep up with Blake’s wide stride.

At seventeen Blake was getting into his full growth. He was tall enough already that this little guy seemed awfully short.

“How old are you, Jax?”

“Seven.”

That was surprising. Jax couldn’t be any bigger than the twins.

“I’ve never seen you around before. Did you just move in?”

“The blue trailer on the edge of the road. Ma said it’s a dump, but I think it’s okay.” Typical kid, he kept stopping to check out the grasshoppers and spiders that scurried off the trail as they quickstepped toward the house.

Must be the new renters that he’d overheard his parents talking about. The dad had signed on with one of the local hauling companies. Hard work. Jax’s dad would be gone for days at a time. Blake took another look at the kid. His little face and arms were covered with swelling welts, but he hadn’t made a noise of complaint about them.

“So you wanna tell me what happened down at the swimming hole?”

Jax looked up at him in surprise. “I ain’t one of your brothers. You gonna let them tell you what happened, right?”

Blake frowned. “I figure you can tell me just fine. You won’t lie to me, will you?”

Jax stopped dead. “Lying is for babies and cheats. I ain’t no baby and I ain’t no cheat.”

“So, tell me. What happened?”

“Me and Joel and Jesse were swimming and playing a game and Travis came and said he’d make me eat a frog. So I told him that frogs were a delicat-zee and only the really important people could eat them so I thought that was a really fine thing.

“Then he said I had a stick up my butt and he was going to teach me a thing or two. So I said he was too stupid to teach me anything. Then Joel tried to tell him something and Travis pushed him into the mud. Of course Jesse tried to help Joel and Travis pushed him down too. Then Daniel started yelling at Travis and Travis said some bad words and then he tried to push Daniel into the mud and Joel and Jesse were trying to jump on Travis and then…”

Blake stared in amazement. Usually when he asked his brothers what happened he got “he looked at me funny so I hit him” as an answer. Not a five-minute nonstop detailed play-by-play.

They’d reached the house, and there was no sign of any of the rest of the culprits except for a pile of filthy wet shorts lumped by the still-running hose. Blake pointed Jax toward the pile.

“…well, I slipped and fell in the mud and I thought maybe that could be the end and we’d just play for a while. You know, we were all dirty, so why not, but Travis came over and pinched me…”

Yeah, that was Travis. He fought dirty.

Blake stripped off his wet things and turned the hose on himself. Ma put up with a lot, having six boys around the house, but he knew better than to enter the house covered in river water and mud. Even if he went through the basement door straight into a shower.

“…but when I climbed the tree he called me a coward.” Jax finally stopped talking and put his hands on his hips. “I ain’t no coward. So when I spotted the nest I thought it would be a good idea and—”

“Jax. Talk while you take off your stuff. I’ll hose you down.”

“Oh. Okay. So I pulled off the nest but I kinda fell and when I landed I must have made a funny noise because Travis called me a ‘pig in the wallow’ and it made me really mad so I walked up to him and told him at least I wasn’t an ass without a barn and then I pulled that nest apart and things kinda just happened after that.”

The shorts dropped quick like and Jax turned in the spray to let Blake rinse off his back. Welts rose everywhere, and Blake turned down the pressure on the hose. It had to hurt like the blazes.

Then the kid turned around and Blake noticed for the first time what he probably should have figured out sooner.

Jax was a girl.