Luke's Cut

“Because she just sent me over here.”

“What the hell for? She’s up there kissing her husband.”

And she was. With all the enthusiasm that he wanted someone to feel for him. That he wanted to feel for someone, but never had. Sometimes, he wondered if he was dead inside, just a ghost of himself, haunting his own existence.

With a shake of his head, Ace reached into his pocket and drew out a note. “She asked me to give you this.”

Luke took the carefully folded piece of paper. As he opened it, Ace added, “Just like it says there. You need someone who can love you from the inside out.”

He cocked a brow at his friend. “You read it?”

Ace didn’t look even a little bit embarrassed. “Of course.”

Of course. Sometimes being wrapped so tightly in a knot with others was not a bonus. Luke glanced down at the slip of paper. “Then I guess I’d better catch up.”

Luke read the note written in Hester’s blunt, confident style.

Ace’s tone softened as Luke refolded it. “She couldn’t give you what you need, Luke.”

Luke nodded, looking beyond the celebration, beyond the limits of the ranch to the mountains beyond. “I know.”

Inside, the impatience he’d been fighting for months surged, anticipation rode double, prickling along his nerves. It’d been a long time since he’d had an adventure. With Ace married and Hester off the market, his reasons for staying in Simple were few. Almost nonexistent.

His gaze returned to Josie as she grabbed the tintype out of the camera and rushed to the wagon. She was such a mousy woman when not busy taking pictures. So shy he had yet to discern the color of her eyes, but once she brought out that wooden contraption of a camera, the real woman came front and center. Gone was the blushing, tongue-tied miss. And in her place was a woman who knew exactly how to get what she wanted.

It was an intriguing dichotomy. The glimpses of the woman beneath the crushing shyness were like catching a hint of a plot twist in a clever mystery novel. She intrigued and tempted. She was a challenge wrapped up in a self-deprecating package that was very intricately constructed; it just didn’t fit the sense he had in his gut about her. He would love to have a conversation with her, to find out if her mind matched the impact of her body. He had a feeling it did.

He watched as she stumbled getting into the wagon. As he knew she would, she looked over her shoulder at him, eyes narrowed as if he were to blame for her clumsiness. And maybe he was. If she was as aware of him as he was of her, then she had to know he’d been staring. Just as he suspected she’d been staring at him a time or two. A pang of regret wove through the anticipation of a new adventure. Unfortunately, Josie was one bit of exploration he was going to miss. He didn’t have the time or the patience for a fling. With a defiant toss of her head, she climbed into the wagon. And that fast, he reconsidered his decision. Some challenges just begged to be met.

* * *

HE WAS WATCHING HER. The well-dressed man with the broad shoulders and I-dare-you glare was watching her. Josie could feel his gaze like fingertips skimming her skin with sensual inquiry, looking for a reaction and getting it as her fingers trembled and her neck muscles tightened. If he were touching her, he’d feel the heat rise off her skin, see the pink flush of her cheeks. Oh darn, maybe he could see it from over there. She ducked her head just a little. Just enough for the shade of her bonnet to provide cover from potential revelation.

Look away. Look away.

The plea went unheard. More prickles of awareness flustered her composure. Even more flustering was the reality of who that man was. Luke Bellen. One of the infamous Hell’s Eight. Men said to chew nails and spit bullets, eat danger for breakfast and gather women like wildflowers. Another shiver went down her spine at the thought. She didn’t want to be gathered.

Liar.

The accusation came from within.

“Traitor,” she whispered back. The last thing she needed right now was an ill-advised sense of temptation distracting her from the job for which she’d traveled so far. She was here to commemorate the wedding of her Uncle Jarl. Big and blustery, a handsome, hard-eyed businessman, Jarl Wayfield was very dear to her, and while not actually blood, he was as close to a real father as she’d ever had. From the day he’d come courting her mother, they’d had a bond. When his relationship with her mother had ended, he’d stuck around in the background of Josie’s life. She’d long since stopped wishing he was her father and instead settled for the security he offered.

He was probably the only one who saw the sense of adventure that lurked beneath her persistent shyness. And he’d indulged it by summoning her away from the smothering small town in which she’d been born and the ever-stifling presence of her overly judgmental mother. Without him she wouldn’t have this opportunity to see the West, to indulge her passion for taking pictures. She owed him so much. Too much to let six feet of wide-shouldered, lean-hipped, dark-haired pure temptation take her off task. Still feeling the weight of Luke Bellen’s gaze, she hurried on, almost dropping the tintype in the rush to her wagon.

Darn it!

The wagon had been an off-the-cuff purchase, but she only had so long to develop her images and hard experience told her that in a household environment, no one respected her need for darkness to do her work. They were forever trying to shed light on her process. These images were too important to risk. Jarl giving her this opportunity to photograph his wedding meant the world. His faith in her ability to forever capture this precious time was a much-needed boost to her flagging confidence. Being dumped like yesterday’s garbage by the man to whom she’d thought she’d been discreetly engaged for the past five years had been a hard lesson in humility. And shame. She’d been a fool to let Jason convince her to keep their engagement a secret. She’d been more than a fool. She’d been an accomplice in her own humiliation when he’d announced his engagement to another. And worse, expected her to understand.

She grimaced as she opened the back of the peddler’s wagon and stepped up. She hadn’t understood. She’d wanted to kill him. Her foot slipped and her knee scraped the metal edge. She bit back a cry and the need to burst into tears. She hated being emotional. She hated being clumsy even more. And truth was, she was only clumsy when she was under scrutiny. So it was really all Bellen’s fault.

Holding the tintype securely, she glared over her shoulder at the cause of her distress. He didn’t even have the decency to show remorse. Instead, he stood up there on the porch with another of the Hell’s Eight, nonchalantly leaning against the rough-hewn support, looking for all the world like a lion surveying his pride. She had the childish urge to stick out her tongue.

As if he heard the thought, he smiled at her, a slow, knowing smile. The full-on flush started in her toes, crept up her thighs, heated her chest and burned in her cheeks. It was sheer bravado that had her snubbing him with a lift of her chin before pure unadulterated cowardice sent her diving into the wagon. Cowardice had often been the bane of her existence. And sometimes, her salvation.

The door banged shut behind her. Placing the undeveloped tintype on the plank counter, she braced herself, hands spread across the uneven wood as she took a steadying breath. She was twenty-six years old, for heaven’s sake. Far too old to be undone by a man’s glance. But there was something about Luke that just ferreted its way past the defenses she’d built up over the years and reduced her to the cripplingly shy child she’d been. She hated it. She wanted to blame him. And if he only would say or do something other than observe her from afar, she probably could. But he didn’t.

He was probably doing it on purpose.

She reached for the developing chemicals only to notice her hand was shaking. She took another breath and waited. The chemicals that made the miracle of photography possible were highly flammable. Not to mention noxious smelling. She needed a steady hand when dealing with them.

She soon discovered that standing in the hot, humid interior of the darkened wagon was not conducive to relaxation. Alone in the dark, it was too easy for her mind to wander. And without anything else to distract her attention, her mind inevitably wandered to Luke Bellen. As she was sure hundreds of other women’s minds had done before.

All the men of Hell’s Eight were compelling but there was something about Luke that stood out. There was a symmetry to his broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, well-muscled body that made her breath catch. A smoothness in the way he moved that made her fingertips tingle. And the way his utter masculinity prowled beneath the nonchalance of his expressions... She sighed. Well, that just made her want to sink to the ground at his feet and let nature take its course.

If she let him, he would take advantage. She was sure of that. Just as he would with any other woman who succumbed to his blatant sexuality, no doubt. She had only to look back at her own engagement to see the folly of her first line of thought. Her fiancé, Jason, had nowhere near the presence Luke had, but it had been enough for her to convince herself the words he’d whispered in her ear were real. That the emotions he professed were honest. And that the passion he’d made her feel was unique to them. All that only to find out at her own long-awaited engagement party that he’d whispered those same words to, invoked those same passions in so many others. And she’d been such a blind fool, building excuses on top of her ignorance because the little he’d given her had been easier to accept than venturing back into the tenuous social position of being unclaimed. Bastards could only be so bold.

She grabbed the bottle of developer from the wooden box. Thank goodness Uncle Jarl had offered her this escape. More than once he’d been her salvation, often stepping in to give her breathing room from her mother’s constant expectations. As he had this time when he’d sent her the tickets to come out to Texas—Texas!—to memorialize his wedding with her tintypes. Even if she hadn’t been wanting to escape her mother’s newest press for her to choose a husband—she loved her, but in some ways she was absolutely relentless—she would have jumped at the chance to come out to the wild-and-wonderful West she’d read so much about. Texas was just Texas. Big, wild and full of potential. She couldn’t take two steps without wanting to pull out her camera box and capture a moment.

Her mother was constantly seeking ways to regain the respectability she’d abandoned when she’d fallen for the wrong man and had a child—Josie—out of wedlock, and the subsequent pressure for Josie to accept any invitation dropped off at the house was becoming impossible to duck. One of the reasons Josie had been thrilled to take up Uncle Jarl’s invite was to escape that sudden increase in invitations. She was long past marriageable age anyway. She’d been cast aside. By all measures, she should be a pariah, but in the wake of her mother’s suddenly full social calendar, Josie had just as suddenly been receiving callers. As those callers had been of a certain age, she’d had the uncomfortable feeling her mother had found a new way to increase her value as a marriage prospect. It was too mortifying to contemplate. And too distasteful. She did not want to marry an old man, no matter how good their tailors made them look in their suits.

And that fast, her thoughts were back to Bellen and the way he looked in his suit. So many men looked awkward in more formal attire. But that man wore his clothes the way he wore his confidence, as if they were an extension of some deeper secret. She opened the bottle. She would love to photograph him in all his untamed elegance. To catch the way the sun highlighted the lighter streaks in his brown hair. To see with her lens the answer to the mystery he posed. To know him.

Darn it. She had to stop thinking of that man. He wasn’t for her. She couldn’t even manage syllables when he was around. Wiping the sweat from her brow with her sleeve, she took a deep breath and released it slowly, feeling the oppressive heat settle around her as she did. Even parking the wagon in the shade of the big oak and opening the windows was not much help against the brutal Texas humidity. For sure, she wouldn’t last long in the closed wagon. She needed to focus or she was going to complete the most ladylike faint of her life before she found out if she’d truly underexposed those last photos as much as she feared. It’d taken so long for the group to get in position and maintain it, the clouds had moved in. She’d tried to compensate, but there was more art than science in this endeavor. Pictures came out best in bright light.

Putting Luke and his disconcerting smile out of her head, she let herself fall into that calm, competent place that surrounded her whenever she worked on her photography. Worry could wait a few minutes to torment her. Right now she had a picture to develop.

It wasn’t the all-absorbing consolation it usually was.

Darn it again.

* * *

LUKE SIGHED WHEN Josie didn’t come back out of the wagon, accepting the show was over for the day, but his interest lingered on past his acceptance. His curiosity was, as always, piqued by the contrast between the exotic depth of the woman’s photographs and her downplayed appearance. And it had to be deliberate because any man who gave her a second glance couldn’t miss the red hints in her hair or the porcelain clarity of her skin that made a body wonder if that same white smoothness extended beneath her clothes. Oh yes, there was something about Josie Kinder, something more than her self-effacing ways, her sexy, plumply curved body and her utter lack of awareness of her own appeal, that called to him. She might by all accountings look like a shy wren to be pitied, but he didn’t want to pity her. He wanted to ravage her. And he’d be damned if he had a clue as to why.

“She’s really not your usual type,” Ace said from beside him, following his gaze as he took a sip from his whiskey.

Damn. Was he being that obvious? “I wasn’t aware I had one.”

“Oh, you have one.” The whiskey in his glass caught the sun as he motioned toward the wagon. “But it doesn’t lean toward shy innocents.”

That shy innocent was watching him. Luke could feel it. “I’m leaving in a few days.”

Ace nodded. “I figured. You’ve been restless since Hester announced her wedding.”

And his tone again implied that Hester’s choice was the reason. And it was, but not in the way Ace thought.

Luke shrugged and took a sip from his near-empty glass. The liquor slid down his throat in a smooth burn. Not like the days when rot-gut was the best they could buy. “Hell’s Eight can’t trust Tia’s safety to just anyone.”