Free Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men) by S. K. McClafferty

shot back defensively. “I
didn’t mean to put your nether parts in danger. It was an accident. And anyway,
it’s your fault. If you hadn’t been so intent upon using that thing, you might
have listened when I tried to tell you there was a panther in the bushes!”
    Jackson swallowed hard, but it did little to contain his rising
fury. “My fault. My fault? Who came to the river, then lingered there naked, hoping
to be found in that state of undress, knowing that I would not be able to
resist so tempting a prize?’ ’
    “I was takin’ a bath, for heaven’s sake! A bath, I might add, that
you interrupted!”
    “A bath!” Jackson said emphatically, as if that somehow proved his
point. “And you did it solely to entice me!”
    “Entice you?” Reagan screeched. She’d felt repentant for all that
she’d done, sorry for nearly emasculating him, until now. Now she was thinking
that he’d gotten precisely what he deserved, and she ached to give him even
more. “You’re an idiot,” she said, picking up her freshly laundered clothes. “And
it would have served you right to have lost that thing in your britches. Maybe
then your brain would go back into you skull where it ought’a be in the first
place.”
    She stomped back the path to camp, Jackson reluctantly following,
his gaze fixed on the tail of his hunting shirt, aware that his narrow escape
hadn’t taught him a damned thing.
     
    Seconds after the two combatants had disappeared, the observer
stepped from the cover of a cottonwood and stood, staring down the trail they
had so recently traversed. “Patience, old son,” he said softly to himself.
“Patience. That whelp of a French whore has friends hereabouts. To try and
secure the chit now would be a hasty, ill-begotten business. Better to bide
your time, catch old Seek-Um somewheres out there, when Strickland and the
other ain’t around. Then you do for him right and proper, carry L’il Sister off
to her rightful home, and leave his bones for the buzzards.”
     
    Reagan sprinted into the clearing, a grumbling Jackson hot on her
heels. Clutching her sodden clothes to her bosom, she put the campfire between
them. “Stay where you are, Seek-Um. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
    Jackson snorted. “Somehow I am unconvinced... but then, your
attempt at emasculation may have something to do with that fact.”
    “I done told you, that was just an accident,” Reagan insisted. “I
was tryin’ to save your life.”
    “It’s told,” he said, impatiently shoving his hair back out of his eyes. “’I
told you.’ The word done has no place in that sentence. Done means finished, completed.”
    “I know what it means,” Reagan replied. “I ain’t stupid, and you
didn’t tell me nothin’. In fact, as I recall, you weren’t doin’ much
speechifyin’ with that mouth o’ yours.”
    He shifted his stance, quirking one black brow. “I did not hear
you complaining back there.”
    Reagan put her nose in the air, indignant that he would be so
ungentlemanly as to re min d her of her moment of weakness.
“Wouldn’t have done me much good to complain, now, would it, since I was naked,
and you had the upper hand?”
    Before Jackson could reply, a large tawny cat came slinking out of
the lean-to and headed straight toward him. It looked like the same cat she had
seen last night, and again just moments ago, by the river. Torn between fear
and fascination, Reagan looked around for a weapon, unsure if she wished to
save Jackson’s life a second time, or let him be devoured.
    The feline did not pounce, however, just rubbed cat-fashion around
his legs, prompting Jackson’s odd half smile. “Hello, petite," he said,
reaching down to scratch the cat’s black-tipped ears while Reagan gaped.
    “That beast belongs to you?” she said skeptically. The young lion flopped
down in the grass, rolling onto her back in an open invitation for her master
to scratch her belly.
    Reagan rolled her eyes. “What am I