The Mavericks (11 page)

“Let's just deliver the mules and leave,” Zeke said.

“We will as soon as they're ready to travel.”

Zeke swerved to give a wide berth to a large jumping cholla. “Why should that make any difference to when we get started?”

“Because we have to make sure they get to Tombstone.”

“And how are we supposed to do that when they can't even keep track of their mule team?”

“We take them with us.”

Suzette hadn't been aware of the ball of tension until it started to unravel when she saw Hawk and Zeke each leading a mule toward her. She hadn't been terribly worried about finding the mules. She'd been following their hoofprints, confident the mules hadn't gone very far during the night. If she hadn't been able to find them, it wouldn't have been too difficult to return to the Pettingers' farm. So what was the reason for the knot in her stomach?

Hawk. As he drew closer, she felt her whole body relax, and a lazy smile begin to curve her lips. She
couldn't put it into words, but there was something about that man's presence that made everything better. Maybe it was the confidence with which he walked, the easy strength of his body, the steadfastness of his gaze. It could be something else entirely, but right now she wasn't especially concerned about discovering the source. He was here. That was enough for now.

“You're probably thinking me a great idiot.” She spoke directly to Hawk, only vaguely aware she'd walked past Zeke to do so.

“No, but I'll teach you how to put a stake in the ground so it won't come up.”

“My only experience was with horses who spent their nights in a comfortable stall.”

“If you're not sure, you could tie them to a tree.”

“How will they be able to graze at night?”

“Maybe I ought to teach you how to hobble them instead.”

“Is Josie looking for the mules, too?” Zeke asked.

Suzette turned to Zeke, embarrassed to have ignored him. “She stayed in camp to fix breakfast.” She pointed in the direction of the river at a narrow tendril of smoke rising in the brisk morning air. “I'm the one who lost the mules, so I insisted I should be the one to look for them. Besides, I'm better with animals than she is.”

Zeke hoped Josie hadn't burned the coffee. He could use a cup right now.

“Zeke and I have been thinking,” Hawk said. “Since we're all going in the same direction, it seems only logical that we travel together.”

Zeke hadn't been thinking any such thing. It certainly wasn't logical in his mind, but he'd do just about anything to be close to Josie. He didn't want to get
next
to her. That would be too close for either of them. Just close enough to keep her in sight, close enough to figure out what she was like, close enough to figure out the hold she had on him.

Close enough to break it.

“You don't have to do that,” Suzette said. “We'll slow you down.”

“Not much,” Hawk said.

“Thank you, but we'll be fine.”

“Don't you trust us?” Zeke asked.

Nobody trusted a black man and a half-breed Indian, Zeke knew, especially when they rode together. They might as well have
thief
written across their foreheads. Women would yank small children out of their path, merchants dog their every step, men avoid them in saloons, and rowdy boys shout insults at them.

Suzette looked surprised. “Of course I trust you. What makes you think I wouldn't?”

Zeke didn't tell her he had a lifetime of reasons. “You don't seem to want us around.”

“I didn't think you wanted
us
around.”

Zeke couldn't miss the fact that Suzette appeared to be asking that question of Hawk. He wondered if she was as interested in Hawk as Hawk was in her.

“It's not a matter of wanting or not wanting to be around you,” Hawk said. “It's just logical that people traveling in the same direction would be safer together.”

Well, that wasn't true, either. Two women traveling through the desert were bound to attract the attention of any men in the vicinity. And the last thing he and
Hawk needed was for greedy men to know they were traveling with a herd of blooded mares, all carrying foals nearly as valuable as their mothers. They'd already had one brush with horse thieves. Traveling with these women would make them more vulnerable.

“You're not going to Tombstone,” Suzette said.

“Our ranch is close enough,” Hawk said.

Zeke wasn't sure which was a more dangerous cargo, a herd of valuable horses or two beautiful women. It was certain that neither his nor Hawk's mind would be entirely on the horses. They didn't need the distraction, but he didn't open his mouth to withdraw Hawk's invitation.

Suzette turned to Zeke. “I didn't think you liked Josie.”

“I think it's more accurate to say she doesn't like me, but we don't have to be friends to travel together. She'll be in the wagon, and I'll be with the horses, so we won't get in each other's way.”

Suzette looked from Hawk to Zeke, then back to Hawk. “Are you sure about this?”

“It would have been stupid to offer if I hadn't been,” Hawk said.

Not that Zeke wanted him to be a smooth talker just now, but Hawk needed to learn how to talk to women if he ever hoped to keep one interested in him for anything but the money he was willing to spend on her. Suzette didn't seem to be offended by his offhand manner, but Zeke could just imagine how Josie would have reacted to a statement like that.

“Well, we'd better hurry back to camp to tell Josie the good news.”

Zeke didn't trust Suzette's grin. There was something
about it that said she knew something he didn't and found it amusing. Zeke couldn't remember a single instance when someone being amused at his expense had been a good thing, and he was certain this instance was not about to reverse the trend. He fell in behind Hawk and Suzette, who walked side by side in silence. That was something else about Hawk. Women didn't like silence. It drove them crazy. He was going to have to learn to talk or give up being interested in women altogether.

But as far as he could see, Suzette didn't seem to mind. She was speaking softly now, in a slow, easy manner, not bothering to wait for Hawk to answer or comment. Zeke was used to Hawk's silences, but he'd never expected a woman to accept them. Zeke had been putting up with those silences for twenty-five years. He could remember some days when he felt he was living with a figment of his imagination.

When the wagon came into view, Zeke couldn't decide whether he wanted to pull to the side so Josie could see him or hide behind Hawk until the last minute. Never one to hide behind anybody else, or put off the inevitable, Zeke pulled over to the side and moved up alongside Hawk.

“I see you've decided it's better to put on a brave front.”

There were times when Zeke wished Hawk didn't understand him so well. “No point in avoiding the inevitable.”

But that wasn't the only reason he had refused to hide behind Hawk. Though he would have denied it to everybody in the world, including Isabelle, he was anxious for his first sight of Josie. Yes, she was a beautiful
woman. Yes, it annoyed him that she disliked him so. Yes, she was so feminine it made his body ache with desire. But none of that explained why this woman had him by the jugular. He was helpless to break the hold she had on him, a hold she didn't appear to want any more than he did. So yes, he was anxious to see her. He couldn't wait to be close to her again. He hadn't wanted this, but it had been forced on him by something deep inside. They were going to tangle until he figured out what she'd done to him. He had no idea what the outcome would be, but the battle was inevitable.

Josie sliced the bacon with quick, skilled movements and tossed the pieces into the hot pan with practiced precision. When the water came to a boil, she knew exactly how many scoops of grounds to use to make the right amount of coffee at the right strength. Though it had been years since she'd done anything like this, she hadn't forgotten the skills she'd acquired nearly as soon as she was able to reach her mother's stove top.

She hated anything to do with cooking. The sound of the bacon frying in the pan, of grease popping into the crisp morning air, fueled her agitation. It reminded her of the way her father treated her and her mother like virtual slaves. It didn't matter that her white father had loved his slave enough to take her west after the war and marry her. It didn't matter that her mother loved her father enough to do whatever he wished. It mattered to Josie that her father treated them both as though they had no purpose in life other than to satisfy his every wish. When she tried to rebel, she felt the
lash of his tongue or the back of his hand. Later, her mother would spend hours trying to convince Josie that her father was the most wonderful man on earth. Josie had finally learned to keep her opinions to herself, her gaze lowered so her father couldn't see the fury in her eyes, and to find something that needed doing as far from her father's presence as possible.

She wasn't in a receptive frame of mind when she looked up and saw Suzette and the mules approaching, accompanied by Zeke and Hawk. She slammed down her knife and wrapped up the bacon. She hoped they'd already eaten, because if they hadn't, they'd go hungry before she cooked for them. She hadn't fixed enough coffee, and it wasn't nearly strong enough for Zeke's taste. She didn't understand how he could drink the stuff he liked. It looked like the tar she used to collect from an oil seep on their farm in Wyoming. They'd used it to start fires.

She could imagine the superior smile on Zeke's face right now, the smirk that said he knew she couldn't make it to Tombstone without his help. Knowing he was right made that truth even harder to swallow. She stopped pacing, turned in their direction, placed her hands on her hips, and tried to think of some withering remark that would tell Zeke in a single sentence exactly how she felt about his presence.

“They found our mules,” Suzette said.

The obvious statement threw Josie off stride, but not nearly so much as Zeke's expression. He looked like he was braced for an attack. He came to a stop with his legs apart, arms held slightly out from his sides, his body balanced on the balls of his feet. His gaze was fixed on her, but his jaw was clenched and his lips
were compressed until they formed a tight circle. The hand still holding the rope attached to the mule's bridle was clenched into a tight fist.

It shocked Josie to realize that his reaction was entirely due to his expectation of what she would say and do. She'd never thought her behavior was so terrible, her words so ill-natured. She just didn't mind telling people who bothered her that she didn't want them hanging around. Zeke's reaction made it plain he saw her as some kind of hellcat. If not a hellcat, at least a very nasty woman. But she wasn't like that. All she wanted was to be left alone.

“Thank you.”

The words surprised Josie as much as they appeared to surprise Zeke and the others. She wanted to retract them the moment they left her lips, yet she didn't want Zeke to go on thinking she was some kind of raving, irrational, ungrateful woman. She wasn't. Really. But life had taught her some particularly painful lessons, and she had no intention of allowing herself to be in a position to experience any of them again. She moved her hands from her hips, gripped them together in front of her, a gesture she realized was totally out of character.

“I'm afraid I haven't made enough breakfast for everybody,” she said. “If you want something to eat, there's plenty more—”

“We've already eaten,” Zeke said.

Thank goodness Zeke interrupted her. She was about to say she could cut some more bacon, make some more coffee. She was about to act just like her father had expected her to act. Knowing that clarified some of the confusion in her mind. She didn't intend
to cook for Zeke and Hawk. But she also didn't want Zeke to continue thinking of her as some kind of hate-filled woman. She didn't hate him. She even thought he was attractive, probably nice as well, but she knew what she wanted out of life. More importantly, she knew what she
didn't
want, and she didn't want anybody to be in doubt about that.

“Would you like some coffee?” Suzette asked.

“I'd love some,” Zeke said.

Josie grabbed the pot. “It's not strong enough for you.”

“I don't care,” Zeke replied.

“It won't take long to make some more,” Suzette offered. “I'll just have to heat some more water.”

“You know you can't make decent coffee,” Josie said to Suzette.

It had always seemed ironic to Josie that Suzette didn't mind living in the West but knew so little about how to take care of herself, while Josie hated it but could survive quite nicely on her own. The difference hadn't mattered in Globe, because they lived in a rooming house where they had their meals prepared for them, their washing sent out, their rooms cleaned, even their beds made. Now Suzette's lack of knowledge manifested itself constantly, especially when she offered to do things she couldn't.

“It doesn't matter. I can drink the coffee you already have,” Zeke said.

“There won't be enough for all of us,” Josie pointed out.

Josie realized she was sending mixed messages, neither of which was what she wanted to say. She was merely pointing out the obvious, but Suzette looked
embarrassed, and Zeke looked like he'd rather be anywhere than where he was. Hawk looked from one to the other with no identifiable expression.

“It won't take but a few minutes to make some more,” Josie said.

Again, she'd said something she hadn't meant to say, but she couldn't back down now. To cover her confusion, she turned away and walked to the wagon to get some more coffee beans. Once she was out of sight of the others, her body sagged against the wagon. She didn't know what was wrong with her. Her brain and her tongue didn't seem to be connected. Either that, or her brain had divided into halves, with each sending different messages. Whatever the problem, it was Zeke's fault.