Bride of the Wolf. Susan Krinard

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СКАЧАТЬ was in no mood for laughing. He saw to Bess, shouldered the saddlebags and headed for the house, aware that he stank of sweat and horse and needed a bath.

      And he needed a run. A good, hard run to clear his mind and remind himself that he was almost free.

      He entered the house without knocking. The whole place smelled of warm human bodies, strong coffee and something good cooking in the kitchen. Rachel was sitting at the table, the baby in her arms. Lucia sat beside them with her own kid, and Heath could see that he’d interrupted their talk. The dim light made Rachel seem different somehow. Not sharp and skinny, with a tongue like a knife, but gentle, like Lucia. It gave him a strange, unsettled feeling in his chest.

      Especially because she didn’t look scared now, or suspicious, or angry. She almost looked happy, as if she’d just been given some pretty ribbon or one of those shiny copper pots he’d seen at Sonntag’s.

      She almost looked glad to see him.

      “I have been speaking with Lucia,” she said with a smile that gave a sparkle to her eyes. “I am grateful that she is willing to help us.”

      Grateful. He hated that word; it bothered him worse than her smile. He didn’t want to hear in Rachel’s voice or see it in her eyes, or care if she was glad to see him or not. None of it was real.

      He’d planned to do whatever she told him, treat her right so she would stay as long as he needed her. But now that he saw her again, all “grateful” as she was, the old bitterness was rearing up, stronger than reason or sense. Rachel Lyndon troubled him too much, and a day and night away hadn’t eased that feeling. Every time he was around her, it only got worse.

      Lucia didn’t make him feel that way. She was quiet. She hadn’t tried to argue or order him around. And she would never betray him, because she would never know any more about him than she knew now.

      If Lucia took over the baby’s care, Heath might never have to speak to Rachel again.

      “You mind leavin’ us alone, señora?” he said to Lucia.

      She gathered up her baby, nodded to Rachel and went into the hall.

      “That wasn’t necessary,” Rachel said, some of the light going out of her eyes.

      “How’s the kid?” he asked.

      “Much better than when you brought him. He will be better still when he has …” She hesitated, getting a little red in the face. “When he has the nourishment he needs.”

      Heath didn’t let his relief lead him off track. “Now that Lucia’s here,” he said, “you won’t have to look after the kid no more.”

      She blinked and clutched the baby a little tighter. “I beg your pardon?”

      “You heard what I said.”

      “Perhaps you misunderstood my request for a nurse. Mrs. Gonzales has a family of her own. I would not impose upon her any more than necessary. And I certainly have no plans to surrender the baby’s care to anyone else.”

      Confusion wasn’t a feeling Heath suffered often, but this woman had him balancing on a broken fence rail with prickly pear thick on either side. She couldn’t really care as much as she pretended. She was acting on some female instinct, the way any animal did, the same way the wolf in him knew how to be a wolf without ever being taught.

      Animals could turn on their own get, and so could human females. They could throw their young away if they got too troublesome, turn from love to hate in an instant. And Rachel Lyndon wasn’t even the kid’s real mother.

      Rachel looked up then, and Heath saw that her eyes were wet. She was afraid again, but not in the same way as before.

      She was afraid he would take the baby away.

      You’re crazy. But somehow he knew he was right. She wanted to keep the baby, even though she didn’t know the first thing about what he was.

      Because she didn’t know what he was.

      Easing down into a chair, Heath looked at his callused hands. Loups-garous healed fast, and a Change could erase most all the damage that could be done to a man by wind and weather, knife and gun. But if you pushed your body hard enough, even a hundred Changes couldn’t erase all the marks left by a lifetime of hard living.

      He almost reached up to touch his neck again, that one wound so bad it had almost killed him. The scar he’d never lose. He remembered that wanted poster in the general store. How did he think he could ever take care of the baby, even when it was old and strong enough to do without the things only a female could provide? What kind of life could he make for a child?

      Better than the life he’d had. The kid would never know what it was like to …

      He shook off the memories and looked at his son. The boy seemed to be holding Rachel as hard as she was holding him, his little fists clenched in the shawl around her shoulders and his head snuggled under her chin. He turned in her arms just enough so he could look back at Heath.

      There wasn’t any way the kid could understand what Heath had said, but his little round eyes spoke just the same.

      I need her.

      Hellfire.

      “I ain’t interferin’ between you and Lucia,” he said, looking away from both of them. “You do what you think is right.”

      A little at a time, Rachel’s shoulders relaxed. She rested her cheek against the baby’s, looking just like a picture of the Madonna Heath had seen once in a church. Benevolent, distant, untouchable.

      “You must be very tired, Mr. Renshaw,” she said, her voice a lot easier than his thoughts. “Lucia will rest in my room. If you will hold the baby, I’ll make biscuits and coffee.”

      A Madonna who wanted to cook for him. And wanted him to hold the baby.

      “I don’t expect nothin’ like that from you, Mrs. McCarrick,” he said gruffly. “We got Maurice.”

      “I’m sure he is an excellent cook.”

      “Good enough for us, I reckon. Maybe not what a lady is accustomed to.”

      The word lady came out sharper and angrier than he’d meant. He only had to see the new stiffness in her body to know she was back to old Rachel again.

      “You cannot possibly have any idea what I am accustomed to,” she snapped.

      “The way you talk says plenty,” he snapped back.

      “Because I have an education? How is that proof of prosperity, Mr. Renshaw? In fact, I have known what it is to—”

      She clamped her lips together and blushed. He saw pain in the hollows under her eyes and in her pinched lips. Pain he had noticed before but didn’t want to see.

      Who in hell was she? And what exactly had she “known”?

      “Mr. Renshaw,” she said suddenly, the way someone does when they want to change СКАЧАТЬ