Beckett's Birthright

“Oh.” Lilah scratched her elbow. “I forgot. Well, anyway, you’re coming to spend the summer with me.”

“Maybe I should start looking for work before all the good jobs are taken.” Other than music, Isobel had no particular talent, so far as they’d been able to determine. Unfortunately, the curriculum prescribed by the terms of her scholarship hadn’t prepared her to earn her living. She had spent summers and holidays working for the Dean’s wife to augment her scholarship.

As for Lilah, she knew very well what she intended to do with the rest of her life. She was going to manage her father’s farm. At least then he might pay some attention to her. Dammit, she couldn’t help it if she hadn’t been born a boy.

“Now remember my instructions. Just keep thinking about how much fun it’s going to be, a whole summer without having to open a single book.” Isobel was bookish; Lilah was not. “But if Papa’s really sick, he’s going to need me, which means I’m going to need you, so don’t you dare think of not coming.”

Lilah knew too well what it was like not to be needed, much less wanted.

Two days later Eli strode into the barn, looking for the lackwit that had left a gate open, allowing the bred heifers to trample a newly planted field. He was tempted to tell the man to collect his pay and move on. Then he saw the fellow’s eyes shift toward the door and widen. At the same time another of the new men dropped the bridle he was supposed to be mending, tripped on the trailing end and caught himself by grabbing the wall, noisily toppling two pitchforks and a post-hole digger.

“Jesus,” Eli muttered, distracted. He turned to see what the men were staring at and then said it again. “Jesus.”

He’d barely caught a glimpse of her the day before when the livery wagon brought her up to the front gate. A big woman wearing a full skirt and a rain cape, she’d looked to be the size and general shape of a haystack. She had snatched a bag in each hand and hurried into the house, leaving the poor driver to struggle with her trunk.

In the midst of trying to track down a bill he knew damned well he’d paid, but which had been sent again, Eli hadn’t given her a second thought.

Until now. The woman who filled a good portion of the personnel doorway was definitely no haystack. With sunlight behind her, glinting off a mop of wild red hair, he couldn’t see her face, but he felt as if he’d been poleaxed.

Today she was wearing trousers. Not just trousers, but tight ones. Her hips and thighs looked as if they’d been poured into them like butter into a mold. She was a big woman, all right. Some might have said a magnificent woman, but Eli wasn’t among them. Weren’t women supposed to be small and helpless, so that a man could take care of them?

This woman looked more than capable of taking care of herself, and anyone who tried to interfere.

Clearing his throat, he stepped forward. “Ma’am—Miss? Is there something I can do for you?”

She came all the way inside the barn and turned toward the sound of his voice. “Who are you?”

He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He swallowed and cleared his throat. What the devil ailed him? He felt as if he’d grabbed on to the business end of a hot branding iron.

Deep breath. “Name’s Elias Chandler, ma’am. I’m the new manager. Or foreman,” he added as an afterthought. Jackson had spelled out his duties, but nothing had been mentioned about a title.

“Shem’s the manager,” the woman said flatly. Or as flat as a voice could be when it resonated in regions of his body where voices weren’t supposed to resonate.

“Then I’m his, uh—assistant. If you’re looking for Shem, he and Willy went to town on an errand for your father. If there’s something I can do for you…”

“You may bring my horse around,” she replied, as if conferring a great privilege.

Imperious witch, he thought, more amused than irritated. One of the new men headed for the tack room. Eli leaned against a stall and watched as the lady—if a woman in men’s trousers could be called that—examined everything in the spacious interior. He took momentary pride in the fact that nothing was out of place. Nothing, that was, except the two pitchforks and the post-hole digger. The dirt floor had been raked clean, the air redolent with the clean smell of hay, leather and animals.

She was something, all right. Arrogant didn’t begin to describe it. The cowboy came up behind her leading one of the big draft horses used to pull the ten-gang disc harrow through the dense red clay. “This the one you wanted, ma’am?” He snickered and glanced at his mates for approval.

Waiting for all hell to break loose, Eli considered the man’s serious lack of judgment. Eyes narrowed against the light slanting in through the wide barn doors, he tried to gauge the Jackson woman’s reaction. In a fair fight, she could easily take the young fool.

No one spoke for a moment. The big gray gelding stood patiently, as if waiting to be hitched up. Then, cool as anything, the lady lifted an eyebrow and said, “Get on with your plowing, boy. I’ll fetch my own horse.” Turning to Eli, she said, “I’ll be riding Demon this morning. I’ll be riding Demon every morning.”

Chapter Two

Eli dismissed the men with orders to hitch up a cart and haul a load of locust fence posts out to the south pasture. Only then did he turn back to the woman who stood boldly in the open doorway, hands firmly planted on her generous hips.

“Demon? What about one of the geldings?” he suggested. Demon was a stallion some sixteen hands high, reported to be part Barb. On his best behavior, he was no ladies’ mount.

Delilah Jackson continued to look at him as if she were trying to determine his breeding. It was nothing particularly impressive, he could have told her. Run-of-the-range stock.

Eli had been accused a time or two of lacking judgment, something he’d never denied. One thing no one could accuse him of, however, was backing down from a challenge. Which, come to think of it, might have something to do with his questionable judgment. The gauntlet had been flung. It was tan kid and smelled faintly of roses.

Nodding to Streak, who had just come inside, he spoke quietly. “Saddle Demon for Miss Jackson, please.” He expected an argument, but the lanky cattleman turned to the woman and smiled, setting his prominent Adam’s apple to bobbing.

“Glad to have you home, Miss Lilah.”

“Thank you, Streak. This time I’m home to stay.”

Streak left to saddle her horse, and Eli shrugged. If she got into trouble, it wouldn’t be his responsibility.

The lady was large, but obviously not too bright. About half a foot under his own six foot three and hatless, she wore her rust-red hair swept up in a mound on top of her head. Her features, he had to admit, were in perfect proportion to her body, from the proud nose to the wide mouth and the big whiskey-colored eyes.

His exploration lingered momentarily on a small dark mole just above the right corner of her lips, then moved on to the generous bosom fighting to break through the small covered buttons on her pin-tucked white blouse.

“Would you care to examine my teeth, too?” Her voice was as lush as her body, but dry.

“Sorry. Nothing personal.” The hell it wasn’t personal. He couldn’t recall ever having been so acutely aware of a woman before.

Well…maybe once, but that was different.

What the devil was Jackson thinking of, letting his daughter parade around in front of the men wearing pants? Did he have any idea of the way they talked about her? Didn’t the damn fool even care? Whatever else she was, she was his daughter—his own flesh and blood, for God’s sake!

Streak brought the saddled stallion around, and the lady turned to smile at him. “Oh, Streak, thank you. You didn’t have to do that, I could have saddled him.”

Then why hadn’t she, Eli wondered. Because it might spoil her imperial princess act?

The big bay snorted and tried to bite the hand that led him. The Jackson woman calmly reached for the reins, murmuring softly to the fractious animal. She swung up with no effort at all, and both men stood in the open doorway, watching as she set off down the back lane.

Lilah, barely managing to cool her seething anger, rode farther and faster then she’d planned. It had been months since she’d been on a horse. No suitable mounts were available at school. Or rather, no suitable saddles. The first time she’d tried to position herself properly on a sidesaddle she had slid off, landing on her hands and knees in front of a group of smirking classmates. That had also been the last time she’d tried to sit on one of the miserable things. She’d been riding astride all her life. Her father knew it. He didn’t approve, but then, Burke Jackson had never approved of a single thing she had ever done.

Lilah had tried for years to understand why he couldn’t love her. True, her mother had died giving birth to her, and everyone said he’d worshipped the ground Achsah Jackson had walked on. People said he’d cried for five days after she died, then he’d cursed for five more days. Since then he’d been a changed man.

Lilah wouldn’t know about that. For as long as she could remember her father had ignored her, leaving Shem and Pearly May to look after her. It had been Shem who had arranged for her to go to the school in the nearby town of Hillsborough once she was old enough. Her father had never showed any interest in whether or not she could read or write.

Shem had even given her a name. He’d asked if Burke Jackson wanted her named after her mother, and Burke had fired him on the spot. Naturally, Shem hadn’t left. By then he was used to being fired. Neither man ever took it seriously. Even Lilah had come to realize that her father didn’t always mean what he said.

So Shem had picked out her name and registered it with the same deliberation he would have given the offspring of one of their prize bulls, although with a different set of authorities.

Delilah Burke Jackson. She’d been named for her father, even though he’d shown no more interest in her than he did the least of his seasonal hires. By the time she’d cut her first permanent tooth, she had accepted the fact that if a father couldn’t love his only child, there was no point in hoping anyone else could. Since the day she’d first reached that conclusion, she had made her own rules.

“And to hell with everyone else,” she muttered now as she jumped Demon over a low fence. “To hell with you, too, Elias Chandler,” she added for good measure.

She had known who he was before she’d gone out to the barn. Shem had already told her about the man who’d been hired as his replacement now that he was so crippled up with rheumatism. Chandler was from Oklahoma Territory, for heaven’s sake. What the devil was he doing here in the East, hiding out from the law?

He looked dangerous enough. All tawny, like one of the big cats she’d seen once in a traveling zoo, with the same watchfulness. Same color hair from what she could see under that battered black hat. She didn’t know about his eyes, but she did know his hips were about half the size of her own.