Free Elizabeth Lowell by Reckless Love Page A

mouth and started chewing with gusto.
    “Now you just listen to me, gal. Territory’s gettin’ too damn crowded. One of these days the wrong man’s going to cut your trail, the kind of man what don’t care about sweet talkin’ or protecting or any damn thing but his own pleasure. And I don’t mean just renegades, neither. Some of them pony soldiers is as bad as Injuns, an’ the scum selling rifles to Cascabel is no better than him.”
    Mad Jack looked at Janna as she worked gracefully over the fire, every line of her body proclaiming both her femininity and her unwillingness to listen to his advice.
    “It’s gettin’ too damn dangerous out here for any woman a’tall, even one wearing men’s clothes. You be too good a woman to go to waste out here alone.”
    “I’ve done fine for five years.”
    He snorted. “Fine, huh? Look at you, thin as a mare nursing two foals. You want to get a man, you gotta put meat on them bones.”
    “My mother wasn’t built like a butter churn,” Janna muttered. “Papa didn’t mind one bit.”
    And neither had Ty, if his reaction to the drawing was any guide.
    Mad Jack cursed under his breath and tried another tack. “Don’t you get lonesome chasing mustangs and living so small you barely cast a shadow?”
    “Do you?” she countered.
    “Hell, I’m different. I’m a man and you ain’t, never mind the clothes you wear. Don’t you want a man of your own an’ kids to pester you?”
    She didn’t answer, because it was too painful. Until she had found Ty, she hadn’t really understood what life had to offer. Then she had met him—and now she knew the meaning of the word
lonely.
    “The mustangs are all I have,” she said.
    “And they’re all you’ll ever have if‘n you don’t leave.”
    “If I leave, I’ll have nothing,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m not the kind of woman to catch a man’s eye. Ty has made that real plain, and he’s the ‘stud hoss’ who should know.” She shrugged, concealing her unhappiness. “I’d rather live with mustangs than cook at a boardinghouse where men grab at me when they think nobody’s looking.”
    “But—”
    “I’m staying, and that’s that.”
     

Chapter Nine
     
     
    The Tub’s slick-walled pool was far enough from its hot-spring source to have lost the scalding edge of its temperature and nearly all of its sulfurous smell. The water was a clear, pale blue that steamed gently in the cool hours of night and gleamed invitingly all the time. Though safe for animals to drink, the water didn’t encourage plants. Not much but sand and stone and willows ringed the pool. The high mineral content of the water had decorated the rock it touched with a smooth, creamy-yellow veneer of deposits that had rounded off all the rough edges of the native stone, making a hard but nonetheless comfortable place for a man to soak out the last legacy of Cascabel’s cruel gauntlet.
    Usually Ty enjoyed the soothing heat of the pool, but not today. Today he simmered from more than the temperature of the water. Knowing that “the boy” was a girl made him want to turn her over his knee and paddle her until she learned some manners. When he thought how she had let him run around wearing nothing more than a few rags of blanket...
    A flush spread beneath the dark hair on his chest and face. The realization that he was embarrassed infuriated him. It was hardly a case of his never having been nearly or even completely naked around a woman. Of all the MacKenzie brothers, Ty had been the one who had caught women’s eye from the time he was old enough to shave. What bothered him was that he must have shocked Janna more than once.
    The thought of a girl of her tender years being subjected repeatedly to a full-grown man’s nakedness made Ty very uncomfortable.
    She must have been dying of embarrassment, but she never let on. She just kept on washing me when I was delirious and putting medicine all over me and reading to me while I teased