Johanna Lindsey - Angel

It was her own fault. She shouldn’t have let that man rattle her like she did. She should have called his bluff. But no, she had to go and give him permission to stay, which in turn gave him permission to stick his nose in her affairs. And his following her to town and keeping a close eye on her, as if he had elected himself her personal guardian, said he was going to do things his own way after all, no matter what she had to say about it.

She didn’t look his way again as she continued down the street. But she hurried now, afraid that she would be stopped before she could send off that telegram. And she was stopped. Only it wasn’t by Angel.

Morgan MacKauley stepped out of Wilson’s Saddle Shop right into Cassie’s path. She almost ran into him. And seeing who it was, she tried slipping past him before she was noticed. No such luck.

Morgan considered himself something of a ladies’ man. Whether that was true or not, his eye was drawn to anything in skirts, and it didn’t take him but a second to catch sight of Cassie’s and turn toward her — and step back to block her path. She tried going around him the other way, but he made it dear she wasn’t passing at all by moving into her path again. She finally stepped back to give him a baleful glare, which had no effect whatsoever coming from her.

It galled her that no one down here in Texas took her seriously. They laughed when she wore a gun. They ignored her when she got mad. She was like a ladybug, easily flicked out of the way — unless she had her black panther sitting right next to her. Even the fearless. MacKauleys were wary of Marabelle.

But Cassie never brought her cat to town, and the frown Morgan cast down on her right now was much more effective than hers had been. It was downright intimidating.

Of R. J.‘s four sons, Morgan was the second youngest at twenty-one, but they were all big men, all over six feet tall and hefty for their size. All took after their father with their reddish-brown hair and dark green eyes. Cassie didn’t think for a moment that any of them would actually do her physical harm, but that didn’t stop the fear their animosity engendered. They were hot-tempered, and a hot-tempered man in a fury was capable of doing stupid things he wouldn’t ordinarily do.

“Didn’t think to see you in town this week, Miss Stuart,” Morgan said nonchalantly.

Just two months ago, he had called her Cassie, as most of her friends and family did, rather than Miss Stuart He’d also invited her to Will Bates’s barn dance on a Saturday night, and a Sunday picnic up on Willow Ridge a week later. His intentions had been clear. He’d actually been courting her. And she’d been terribly flattered — and interested. After all, the MacKauley brothers were exceptionally handsome men, every one of them, and as she’d been discovering in recent years, it was hard to find a man willing to marry her and Marabelle.

Morgan hadn’t exactly liked Marabelle, but that hadn’t kept him from courting Cassie— up until she’d meddled in his brother’s life in a way none of them were going to forgive, or forget. And after she’d become the focus of all their anger, he’d let her know that it was only her father’s ranch he’d been interested in.

Whether that was true, or if he’d only said it in anger, it had still hurt Cassie more than she cared to remember. She didn’t have much confidence to begin with when it came to men. Morgan MacKauley had made her confidence drop even lower. And the sorry fact was, she’d really liked him. She’d had such hopes there for a few weeks. Now… there was nothing left, not even the slightest stir of pleasure to be this close to him. Regret was what she felt— and a good deal of annoyance.

She wondered about his casual remark, which from recent experience she thought probably wasn’t casual at all. Warily she asked, “Why’s that?”

“Figured you’d be too busy packing.”

She should have known she couldn’t pass a MacKauley, or a Catlin for that matter, without some unpleasant reminder of her current predicament. It was the MacKauleys who’d set an actual date for her to vacate the area— and threatened, if she refused, to resort to mass destruction of the ranch with lit torches.

“So you figured wrong,” she said in a tight little voice, and attempted once more to step around him. Once more he moved so she couldn’t, prompting her to add, “You’re being obnoxious, Morgan. Let me pass.”

“First you tell me ‘bout that stranger directed out to your place this morning.”

Cassie groaned inwardly. She hadn’t had time to come up with an acceptable reason for Angel’s visit, and she needed time, because when it came to lying and avoiding issues, Cassie was hopelessly inadequate. Unless she devoted a lot of thought and rehearsal to getting it out right, anyone who knew her could spot a lie immediately.

She still had to try with Morgan. “That was nothing. He — he was just a drifter looking for work.”

“You should have sent him over to our place, then,” he replied easily. “You ain’t gonna have work for no one come the end of the week.”

Cassie stiffened at that second allusion to the deadline that had been set for her to depart the area. Somehow she had hoped that the threat to burn down her father’s ranch had been just anger talking, with no substance behind it.

These were people she had socialized with, been friends with; she’d even been courted by one of them. But all that was before she had meddled.

She skipped the subject of Angel, since Morgan had given her another to address. “I need to talk to your pa, Morgan. Tell him I’ll ride over tomorrow—”

“He won’t see you. Fact is, Clayton’s got him madder than ever, and you want to know why, Miss Stuart?”

She started shaking her head as his tone got sharper. She really didn’t want to know, because whatever the reason, she knew the blame would be set at her door whether she was actually to blame or not.

But Morgan was determined to say it, and he did, scathingly. “That fool brother of mine hasn’t been right in the head since he come back from Austin. Can’t get a lick of work out of him these days. And now he’s talking ‘bout ’rights’ and how he’s got some where his ‘wife’ is concerned. He even mentioned that he might go over and collect the Catlin girl, seeing as how they ain’t divorced yet. ‘Course, Pa whipped that notion out of him.”

Cassie was incredulous and didn’t even think to contain her reaction. “Are you saying he wants to stay married to Jenny?”

Morgan flushed bright red at that question, denying it, or the very idea of it. “The hell he does,” he practically growled. “He’s just had a taste of her, thanks to you, and now he wants another. It ain’t no more’n that.”

Cassie was flushing now because of the subject matter, which was outrageously inappropriate for her innocent ears. Morgan knew he’d just stepped over propriety’s line, but he didn’t care. He was furious with her for what she’d done, since it had put an end to his hopes of marrying her, and furious with himself for not having the courage to defy his pa and stick up for her as he’d been inclined to do. The fact was, he still wanted her.

Morgan hadn’t noticed her very much the first time she’d come to visit her father. She had been eighteen then and nothing much to look at, could just barely be called pretty, and Caully had its fair share of pretty women, beautiful women even. And she was much too tiny and childlike for Morgan’s tastes. There was simply nothing passion-inspiring about her, or so he’d first thought.

But there was something damn strange about Miss Cassandra Stuart, something that made her more interesting and attractive each time you saw her. She sort of grew on you — at least her looks did. You began to see that although she might be small in stature, there was nothing childlike in the way she was put together. And the more you saw her, the prettier she actually seemed to become.