Six White Horses Read online

  It was her grandfather's shoulder that had been drenched with her tears. He was the one who had convinced her to continue the circuit when she wanted to curl up and die. She enjoyed the circuit, the constant training that was necessary to keep the horses in top form. It kept her from dwelling too much on the impossibilities of her dream, but it was still work. And it was not the way she had envisaged spending the rest of her life.

  Patty had wanted a home and children. Lije's children to be sure, and a ranch that she could help him run. She was as capable as any ranch hand around. That had always seemed a plus factor in her favor, a reason why Lije would choose her above anyone else. How wrong she had been! His wife was a fashion model who had never been on a horse in her life, city-born and city-bred. She, Patty, could have given him so much more.

  The salty taste of tears covered her lips and she realized with a start that she was crying. That was something she hadn't done in over a year. Hiccuping back the sobs, Patty wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. Liberty turned luminous brown eyes on her and nickered softly. It took all her willpower to resist the urge to fling her arms around the horse's neck and cry. Misery and self-pity dominated her senses and Patty didn't notice the darkening of the stall.

  "There you are, Skinny." A low-pitched, faintly derogatory voice spoke from the doorway. "I thought I might find you in some dark hole, licking your wounds like a hurt animal."

  After an initial start of surprise, cold anger held her motionless. Only one person called her Skinny.

  "I don't know what you're talking about, Morgan Kincaid," Patty glared. "And I don't particularly care, so why don't you just get out of here?"

  "I could have been mistaken," he drawled lazily. His tall, husky, broad-shouldered figure blocked out the light. "But it seemed to me that you turned white as your horses when you saw Lije in the stands."

  Patty held his blue gaze for an instant, but its latent sharpness was too perceptive. "You were mistaken," she snapped, turning away to begin moving the pitchfork in the straw.

  "I'm glad to hear that." The strong mouth moved into a smile. "Thinking the way I was that you were all tore up at seeing Lije again, I would have sworn that there were tears on your cheeks."

  "That's absurd!" She kept her face averted. "It's only perspiration. I don't know where you got the idea that it would bother me to see Lije. He and I are good friends."

  "Listen, Skinny." His voice was patiently indulgent. "Nearly everyone on the circuit knows that you thought you were in love with the guy"

  "I can't control what people think." Any more than she could control the faint tremor in her statement.

  "No, that's true," Morgan Kincaid agreed, a thumb hooked negligently in his belt as he watched her moving the straw around the horse's hooves.

  Patty turned on him suddenly, unable to tolerate any more of his unsubtle cross-examination. "Shouldn't you be at the chutes making sure your precious rodeo stock is all right?"

  "Sam is the chute boss. That's his job," he answered smoothly. "Aren't you curious why Lije came all this way to see a rodeo?"

  "Why don't you tell me?" she responded in a tone seething with irritation.

  "He wants to sell Blake Williams a young bulldogging horse he trained. It seems he needs the money."

  "What's so unusual about that?" Patty shrugged impatiently. "Name me a rancher who doesn't need cash money?"

  "It isn't for the ranch that he wants the money." There was a watchful stillness in the blue eyes. "His wife is going to have a baby."

  Patty had already accepted that it was more than a probability that some day Lije and his wife would have children. But for the announcement to come now—without any warning—and from Morgan Kincaid, a man she loathed and despised, was more than her poise could conceal. Her brown eyes widened in shock as she uttered a gasping cry of pain. Morgan Kincaid's gaze glittered sharply over her.

  "Now why should that bother you? You and Lije are only friends." His mocking statement held the fine edge of cutting steel. "You certainly don't look happy at the news. A stranger might think you were envious or jealous."

  Her fingers tightened convulsively on the pitchfork handle. "You've said what you came here to tell me. Now get out!"

  He didn't move as he stared at her thoughtfully through narrowed eyes. "The old wound opened up, did it? You still think you love the guy?"

  "I never thought! I knew I loved Lije!" Unwillingly Patty raised her voice, no longer trying to pretend that she didn't care. She lifted the pitchfork to a threatening angle. "And if you don't get out of here, I'll run this through you!"

  The sudden movement and the angry voices unsettled the white horse tied in the stall. There was a frantic whinnying as he pulled against the lead rope, twisting and turning his head, his hooves beating an in-place cadence on the stable floor.

  "Easy, boy," Morgan Kincaid murmured soothingly, ignoring the pitchfork Patty had aimed at him to move to the horse's head. The animal continued bobbing nervously, eyes rolling, but Liberty responded to the reassuring voice and the gentle touch of the human hand. "That isn't any way for a lady to talk, is it, feller?"

  That instant of regret that Patty had felt at upsetting the sensitive and spirited horse was overtaken by a wave of self-pity.

  "I'm not a lady," she asserted with false vigor and pride. "I never have been a lady."

  Letting her statement slide by without comment, Morgan Kincaid ducked under the horse's neck and stood on the opposite side of the horse a few feet from Patty. The quiet tone of his incoherent murmurs eased her own raw nerve ends as well as Liberty's. At last the horse snorted and began nuzzling the hay in the manger. With a large, tanned hand trailing along the horse's withers and over his back, Morgan wandered slowly toward Patty.

  His almost complete indifference to her put her instantly on guard, the slightly lowered pitchfork raising a fraction of an inch. Cautiously she watched him turn to face her, her gaze centering on the movement of his right hand.

  "You remind me of a bantam hen my mother used to have." His eyes insolently inspected her slender form.

  His right hand touched the brim of his sweat-stained hat, lifting it off to reveal the thick black hair. Distracted by the unhurried movement of his right hand, Patty wasn't prepared for the lightning swiftness of his left as his fingers closed over the pitchfork handle and wrenched it easily from her grasp. She made one futile grab to recover it before she was intimidated by his height and breadth. The pitchfork was discarded with a lazy toss over the manger.

  Her back was against the stall partition. "What do you mean, a bantam hen?" she demanded, fighting the sudden leap of fear her heart made.

  His fingers spread themselves against the wall near her head as he leaned slightly forward, mockery in the vivid blue color of his eyes.

  "Puny and proud." Tilting his head to the side, he studied her wary and angry expression. "It fits, though. Puny, proud Patricia,"

  Staring at the massive chest and the strength etched in every rugged plane of his face, Patty felt puny and at a decided disadvantage. But the second part of his observation was just as accurate as her hand raised to slap that mocking expression from his mouth. Her wrist was halted by a steel vice midway to the target.

  "I find you contemptible, do you know that?" When her hand failed, she lashed out with her tongue. "You are disgusting and loathsome!"

  Long sooty lashes couldn't veil the sudden blazing look in his eyes. "You're too big to take over my knee," he declared grimly.

  The forbidding line of his jaw moved closer. With a swiftness unexpected in a man of his size, Morgan Kincaid used his body weight to pin her against the stable wall. Seizing her chin between two fingers, he forced it up while his mouth closed hers in a hard, punishing kiss.

  Patty struggled for as long as she could, fighting for the air he seemed determined to crush from her lungs. All her senses were drugged by his overpowering masculinity. In surrender, she lay passive in his arms, letting him do with her a
s he willed.

  The lack of resistance eased the bruising pressure of his mouth as it became mobile and warmly persuasive against hers. There was a vague stirring deep inside Patty to respond with instinctive reaction of a female to a male. She had no need to fight back the traitorous weakness of her flesh as Morgan raised his mouth from hers.

  "I can better understand a couple of things now," he drawled lazily, his face not more than an inch from hers, the warm moistness of his breath fanning her lashes. "I know why Jack thought you needed more practice and why Lije sought his satisfaction elsewhere rather than take what you blatantly used to offer him. If I'd been in Lije's place, I would have taught you how to make love and taken your gift."

  There was an underlying hint of portent that sent a shudder of inescapability tingling down Patty's spine. "If you had been in Lije's place, I never would have offered anything," she taunted huskily.

  The cruel line of his mouth curved into a smile. "What are you going to do now that you've saved all your kisses for a man who belongs to someone else? Give them out as good-luck kisses?"

  "Lije belongs to no one but himself." She deliberately ignored the last jeering question.

  "Does that mean you're considering trying to break up his happy home?"

  Lije didn't love her. He never had. To try to come between him and his beautiful wife would only succeed in making her look like an even bigger fool.

  "I meant nothing of the kind," Patty denied in bitter defeat. She hunched her shoulders together, trying to twist free of his firm hold. "Will you let me go?"

  "If I do, will you hit me or run into a corner to hide and try to remember Lije's kisses?"

  "He was infinitely better at kissing than you!" She trembled violently with her dislike as he laughed at her statement. The throaty sound was more infuriating than any mocking words. "What's the matter? Don't you think I know?" she demanded angrily. "He kissed me lots of times. They were always warm, gentle kisses, not coarse and animalistic like yours!" Her fingers touched her sore and tender mouth, still throbbing from his rough kiss while the skin around it was red and scraped by his shaven beard. "Your kisses hurt!"

  "Love hurts." His narrowed blue gaze glittered down at her. "Or haven't you learned that?"

  "I can't imagine you knowing anything about love," Patty retorted with contemptuous sarcasm.

  "Hell!" Morgan chuckled in amusement, releasing her arms and stepping away. "I'm only thirty-five. I couldn't possibly know as much as you do! Why, you must be all of—what, twenty-two?"

  If looks could kill, they would have been carving the date of his death on the gravestone as Patty glared her hatred of him.

  "Yes, I am twenty-two," she asserted vigorously, "which hardly makes me an immature teenager, ignorant of the facts of life!"

  "You may know about them, but you aren't on speaking terms." The grooves near his mouth deepened with mockery.

  "I don't doubt that your bestial existence has given you intimate knowledge," Patty lashed back.

  "Don't knock it if you haven't tried it, Skinny," Morgan winked.

  In that fleeting second, she realized that he was deliberately provoking her temper for his own amusement, laughing at how quickly she rose to the bait.

  "I have work to do, and I'm wasting my breath arguing with you." She spun away and stalked through the stall door toward the tack room.

  "Need any help?" Morgan asked from the tack doorway.

  Patty shook out Liberty's blanket, black with a white rose on the hip. "Never from you," she answered sarcastically.

  "Suit yourself." There was an indifferent shrug of his broad shoulders as he turned away, then paused. "Are you going to Kelly's tonight?" he asked, referring to a local bar.

  "No, I am not."

  "Good. I've just won a hundred dollars."

  "What are you talking about?" Patty frowned, giving Morgan her undivided attention.

  "I bet gramps a hundred dollars that you wouldn't show up tonight because Lije and his wife were going to be there," he responded in a complacent drawl.

  "Gramps? You mean—my grandpa?"

  "Who else? I tried to tell him you'd be too grief-stricken over meeting Lije again to go, but he kept insisting you were made of sterner stuff—smiling on the outside and crying on the inside type of thing. I don't believe he understands women as well as he thinks he does," Morgan concluded wryly. "Females enjoy being miserable."

  Patty's mouth opened and closed. No words came to mind that were sufficiently sarcastic to give vent to her wrath. She was still searching for them as he walked away, heading toward the pens where the rodeo stock was held.

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  Chapter Two

  EVERETT KING WAS SEATED at the small table in the travel trailer, studying a road map when Patty entered. The jacket of his light blue suit was lying on the back of a chair. His string tie was hanging loose and the top buttons of his white shirt opened. Running his gnarled fingers through his pepper gray hair, he glanced up and smiled.

  "Do you have the horses all settled for the night?" he inquired.

  "Grandpa, did you make a bet with Morgan Kincaid tonight?" She stopped beside the table, her hands on her hips, her head tilted to the side.

  "Whatever gave you that idea?" There was a disbelieving look from his brown eyes before they returned to the study of the road map.

  "Morgan Kincaid was the 'whatever' that gave me the idea," Patty answered grimly.

  "You talked to him, did you?" Her grandfather breathed in deeply at her answering nod and folded up the map. "Are you going to Kelly's?" He didn't glance up as he asked the question.

  "I shouldn't go, just to teach you a lesson," she sighed.

  "But you are going," he stated positively, a decided twinkle in the brown eyes that met her pair of equally dark ones.

  "You did it deliberately, didn't you, grandpa?" Her mouth curved into a smile of affectionate exasperation. "I'll bet you even told Morgan where I was just to make sure that I found out about it. You knew he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of telling me."

  "That sounds as if I tricked you into going," he said with mock reproval.

  "You did and you know it!" Patty shook her head and stepped into the small kitchen area. "We can't afford to lose a hundred dollars on a silly bet like that and I couldn't stand a week of Morgan's gloating. I suppose he is the stock contractor at our next rodeo?"

  "Well, yes, actually he is," her grandfather admitted reluctantly.

  "Your little maneuver was successful," she sighed. "I am going to Kelly's, but you're going with me. I'll need some moral support—so don't you go off in some corner with Lefty."

  "There's a towel and washcloth in the shower," he told her. There was a pause as he darted her a twinkling glance and added, "And I laid your yellow outfit on the bed just in case you decided to go."

  "Just in case, huh? Sometimes, gramps, you're positively exasperating!" Patty declared as she walked into the miniature bath area on the side of the trailer.

  "I take after my granddaughter," he called after her.

  Twenty minutes later she was tucking the opaque flowered blouse into the waistband of the matching lemon yellow slacks. Her dark brown hair was brushed free of its braid to hang loose and tickle her shoulder blades. The casual style alleviated the tomboy image, but the lightly applied lipstick, mascara and eyeshadow couldn't dim the youthfully open look to her features.

  With a resigned shrug, Patty turned away from the mirror. She couldn't compete with the sophisticated perfection of the blond model who was Lije's wife. Although she did have a grandfather who maneuvered her into impossible situations, she didn't have a fairy godmother who could suddenly transform her into a raving beauty with the wave of a wand.

  Besides, hadn't she learned already that Lije didn't see her as anything more than the little girl next door? She wished she could despise him for the way she had wasted all those years waiting for him. It might make it easier to get over him. But s
he couldn't and didn't. She just kept right on loving him as though nothing had changed.

  "All right, grandpa," she said, as she walked through the tiny kitchen to the equally tiny living room of the trailer. "I'm ready. We'd better go before I change my mind."

  His shirt was buttoned and his jacket back on. The Western string tie was secured in its longhorn clasp. He set his ivory tan Stetson at a jaunty angle on his peppery dark hair.

  "There aren't any quitters in the King family," he smiled, and opened the trailer door.

  "I wish I were as sure about that as you are," Patty murmured as she followed him into the starlit night.

  The churning of her stomach was worse than anything she had experienced prior to a performance as they approached the entrance of the small tavern a few blocks from the arena grounds. Because of its closeness, it was frequented by a majority of the rodeo cowboys, those who weren't flying elsewhere to compete in another rodeo. That majority seemed to be there in force tonight, Patty decided when she and her grandfather stepped through the doors.

  The room was hazy with smoke, a gauze cloud that hung near the ceiling. The billiard tables in one corner were the scene of some good-natured baiting, the loud voices mixing with the laughter and chatter coming from the tables in the rest of the tavern. Overriding all of the din was a country dance band playing a popular song.

  "Do you see him here?" Patty whispered nervously.

  "He's sitting over by the dance floor. There's an empty table beside him. Come on," Everett King ordered.

  Her searching eyes found Lije easily. He was facing the door with his arm resting on the back of his wife's chair. Blake Williams, one of the leading professional steer wrestlers, was seated at the table with him, for the present commanding Lije's attention.

  But Patty wasn't interested in Blake Williams. All of her attention was centered on Lije, catching the loving glance he gave his wife. The look brought a stab of jealousy that cruelly twisted its blade in her heart. What a striking couple they make, she thought dejectedly. The thought didn't stop her from wishing that she had been the recipient of that glance.