Emily Carmichael - How To Lasso A Cowboy

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.”

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.”