The Taming Of Jackson Cade

“Next week, this will be forgotten,” Haley predicted as she turned on the taps, discarded Jackson’s shirt and stepped into steaming water. “Next week he’ll hate me again.”

“‘My apologies. Called away, but not for long. Dancer’s fine, you needn’t check him. Wait. Rest. I’ll see you home.’”

Haley read out loud the note she’d found on the bed along with a selection of Merrie Alexandre’s clothing. Crumpling the hastily scrawled missive, she let it fall to the floor along with the towel covering her from breasts to hips. Then she proceeded to dress, admiring the younger woman’s taste, and disconcerted by Jackson’s evident skill in making choices in women’s clothing.

When she’d finished, she wondered briefly where her own clothes might be. Then, with a dismissive shrug, she counted them lost. Once the towel had been dropped in the clothes chute, her hair twisted into a helter-skelter knot and secured with what pins she could find, then the bed put in order, she was ready to go.

“Not one trace,” she murmured. “He won’t even remember I was here.” Spying the note lying on the floor, she scooped it up and stuffed it into the pocket of the borrowed jeans. Making one last survey, pleased by the utter perfection she was leaving behind, she left it behind.

As she hurried to the barn, anxious to check on Dancer before the master of the house returned, Haley reflected that it felt good to be back in jeans and boots. And even the soft but sturdy blouse that tugged a bit too snugly across her breasts. Merrie was obviously slender, with a more adolescent figure. And, either she wore no bras, she’d taken all of that particular sort of garment back to her apartment, or Jackson had forgotten.

A breeze was just kicking up, in it lay the promise of rain. Nothing was prettier than a lowcountry rain falling like streaks of silver and gold as the sun would alternately hide or shine. Haley loved the autumn showers, and in anticipation she crossed the cobblestone path to the barn with a less guarded step. Her back still ached, but the soak and simply moving had eased it into a manageable state.

A draft skittered around the side of the barn, rattled the metal rings of rigging, and set a gate banging. The fabric of her shirt was supple enough to cling, sturdy enough to not be indecently revealing, and rough enough that with the movement of her body coupled with the efforts of the breeze, it brushed over the tips of her breasts, teasing her nipples to a pleasant tingle.

Haley’s soft laugh at this secret pleasure was cut short by a low, deep bellow.

“What the hell are you doing here, and why the devil are you dressed like that?”

Spinning, she nearly collided with Jackson. As he glared down at her, she smiled with a calculated pleasantness, then sobered, assuming her most professional demeanor. “I’m here to check my patient. I’m dressed as I am because these are the clothes you chose for me.”

“Then I made a mistake.”

“Evidently you did. And, given your attitude, it’s just as evident that before we’re done with each other, it won’t be your last mistake.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Duchess?”

“You figure it out, Mr. Cade.” Smiling another, equally calculated smile, she sauntered away.

“Who’s Todd?” he called, expecting a reaction. Wanting one. Needing one.

His probing salvo produced nothing, not so much as a stumble in her step. With a dismissive waggle of her fingers, and maddeningly calm, she called back, “Todd’s no one you need be concerned with. He’s no one. No one at all, anymore.”

Three

Five days. Five long, long days.

Frowning as he put the thought and its unacceptable implication out of his mind, Jackson flicked a glance at Jesse Lee. Beyond the usual half-mumbled good morning, each wrapped up in their own thoughts, their own chores, they’d spent most of the day barely speaking until they walked together to the west pasture. The pasture most visible from the entrance of the faded and tattered manor, where Dancer had been allowed his first day of true freedom. But only under the watchful eyes of guards strategically posted by Jericho Rivers, sheriff of Belle Terre and the surrounding county bearing the same name as the city.

It rankled, having armed men roaming the farm. The idea of strangers, regardless of how unobtrusive they were, tramping the land, disturbed and disrupted what had been a gratifying routine. But Jericho insisted. As a friend, as well as the local legal authority, he feared the crisis with Dancer was more than an isolated incident, and perhaps a resurgence of the vandalism that had burned Jackson’s first new barn at River Trace to the ground. An unsolved crime that troubled Jericho. Now, as much as years ago.

Though he agreed with the need for the precautions, though he was more than grateful for Jericho’s men, Jackson hated the atmosphere of an armed camp. He mourned the loss of the peaceful innocence that had settled over his land since the fire.

Peaceful or dangerously complacent? he wondered now, and was surprised. Complacency wasn’t his nature. In fact, it was the last emotion he would ever be accused of harboring. Whatever he felt, right or wrong, he felt strongly. Obstinately.

“Yeah,” he admitted under his breath. “Obstinate. Right, and especially wrong.”

“You talkin’ to yourself, boy?”

Jackson looked down at Jesse and shrugged. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I hope you’re a mite friendlier to yourself than you’ve been to some other folks I could name.”

“That bad, huh?”

“I’d say so.”

“But you’re still here. Why, Jesse?”

“Two reasons. First, you need me. Second, I figger your mad will pass, at least where I’m concerned.”

“Have I thanked you? For what you did? For staying now?”

“No. But I ’spect you will. In time.”

Jackson nodded silently and turned away. He owed Jesse far more than his thanks. The man was a walking encyclopedia on commonsense horse training and treatment. It was Jesse he’d called first. In the time following the stallion’s strange malady, the cowhand had spent most of his waking hours at River Trace, calling on Jefferson for help, then leaving the stock at Belle Reve in his capable hands. Lounging now at Jackson’s side, face shadowed by the hat brim tipped down against the late-afternoon glare, with his arms folded over the top rail of the fence, his keen regard never turned from the pasture.

“He looks good,” Jackson ventured after a while.

“Yep.” Jesse tracked the horse cantering across the pasture. “Friskier than a new colt.” Slanting a sly assessing look at Jackson, he muttered half under his breath, “Which is more than I can say for you. Along with being grumpier than a junkyard dog looking for a leg to bite, you look like hell.”

Warming to the subject, the older man studied Jackson’s haggard features. “You know, for a man who just had his dream handed back to him by the prettiest little gal to come along in quite a spell, you don’t look half as happy as I’d expect. Fact is, instead of being all smiles like any sensible human being should, lately you got more creases across your forehead left from frowning than this fence post has ridges.”

Jackson bristled, proving Jesse’s comment. “Let’s see if I get your point, Jesse. Which am I, mean as a junkyard dog? Dumb as a post? A little of both? Or can’t you decide?”

“Oh, I decided,” Jesse responded mildly, refusing to be riled or distracted. “You helped me decide that sometime past. And by the way, you left out mule-headed.” Before Jackson could bristle again, he patted a hard, broad shoulder. “What’s the matter, boy? Not sleepin’ so good these days?”

“I’m sleeping all I need to sleep.” A mild exaggeration, but the sharpness eased out of Jackson’s tone. Jesse was nosy, he pried, he meddled, he gossiped, but from the day he’d come to the lowcountry in answer to Jefferson’s appeal for help, the best interests and well-being of the Cade family had become his first priority. Jefferson’s younger years spent in Arizona working on the Rafter B for Jake Benedict had proven to be a godsend in many ways, Jesse Lee’s loyalty not the least of them. In the balance, a little prying and meddling was a small cost to pay.

“All you need? Humph!” Jesse plucked a splinter from the rail, studied it closely, then flicked it away. “Don’t appear so to me. In another week, what with the shadows lying under your eyes like blue hammocks and gettin’ darker by the day, you’re gonna look like the losing end of a bar hopper’s brawl.”

An innocent look wiped the worry from the cowhand’s face. Too innocent, as he shrugged. “Considering the extra security set in all the barns and around the pastures, by doggies, I can’t rightly see what’s keeping you awake.”

“We had security before. Not so tight, of course, but security. If I’m short of any sleep, I suppose it’s because I keep remembering Dancer as he was then.” Mild exaggeration had grown into bald lies. Or almost, by omission. For what Jackson couldn’t get out of his mind was not just Dancer’s screams, or even his critical condition.

No. What had him jerking from his dreams in a cold sweat was Haley Garrett. Like a tableau forever imprinted in both his waking and sleeping memory, the vision of that small, beautiful woman clinging to a frenzied brute of a horse played like a movie without end over and over in his mind.

He could still hear the sickening sound of her body striking wood. He saw flashing hooves flailing out in madness, falling ever nearer the unconscious woman. He still struggled to open a gate with fingers made clumsy with fear. And always there was the specter of being too late.

It was a nightmare that first sent him fleeing his bed, then left him sleepless, pacing and wrestling with yet another memory. The memory of undressing her, made too vivid by the night, a waking dream emblazoned forever on his mind by day.

Even now as his hands flexed within his gloves, the brush of soft leather became the brush of Haley’s softer, naked flesh. He had only to close his eyes to remember her tawny skin burnished by the fall of lamplight, the fullness of her breasts with nipples dusky and barely furled like newly bloomed rosebuds.

In his more lucid times, he wondered why his memories confused him. From his first glimpse of her on the day she arrived in Belle Terre, a glimpse that sent every male hormone into feverish response and set every mental warning bell jangling, he knew she was trouble. Trouble with a capital T. Right then, right there, in the middle of Lincoln’s office, he’d turned tail and bolted like a scared yearling. Then, as if escaping that first introduction wasn’t enough, he held himself aloof, rebuffing every near meeting or close social encounter with a grim determination bordering on surly.

Surly, boorish, tactless, cruel. Hell, given his performance in the barn, he wasn’t sure his vocabulary held enough words to describe his behavior.

And from the first, his efforts had been for naught. No matter how he avoided the woman of flesh and blood, in spirit Haley Garrett haunted him. No matter where he might go, or didn’t go, at some time Lincoln’s new partner would be mentioned.