Elizabeth Lowell: Outlaw

"Blackthorn," Ten said politely.

"-Blackthorn seems to think," Diana finished. "I don't cringe at a few rough edges."

"Uh, sure," Jervis said, trying and failing not to stare at the noticeable gap that had opened up between Diana's chair and Ten's.

The other cowhands followed Jervis's look. Snickers went around the table like distant lightning, but not one man was going to call down their ramrod's ire by being so rude as to point out that the university woman was politely lying through her pretty white teeth.

Diana didn't notice the looks she received, for she was grimly concentrating on her single pork chop, scant helping of potatoes and no gravy. Despite her usually healthy appetite, her empty stomach and the savory nature of Carla's cooking, Diana was having trouble swallowing. Even though none of the other men at the table were as big as Cash-and Luke wasn't even in the dining room-she felt suffocated by looming, uncivilized, unpredictable males.

"Miss Saxton," Ten continued, "will be here for the summer, working at the September Canyon site." He glanced at the woman, who was at the moment subtly hitching her chair even farther away from him, and drawled, "It is Miss, isn't it?"

Carla gave Ten a quick glance, caught by the unusual edge in his normally smooth voice. Then she noticed what the cowhands had already seen-the gap that had slowly opened up between Diana's chair and the ramrod's.

"Actually," Diana said, "my students call me Dr. Saxton and my friends call me Di."

"What does your husband call you?" Ten asked blandly.

"I'm not married."

Ten would have been surprised by any other answer, a fact that he didn't bother to conceal.

"Dr. Diana Saxton," Ten continued, "will be spending most of her time at the September Canyon digs. In between, she'll be living at the old house, which means that you boys better clean up your act. Voices carry real well from the bunkhouse to the old house. Anybody who embarrasses the lady will hear from me."

"And from me," Luke said, pulling out his chair and sitting down. "Pass the pork chops, please." He looked at Diana, saw the gap between her chair and Ten's and gave the ramrod a look that was both amused and questioning. "Didn't you have time to shower before dinner?"

The left corner of Ten's mouth lifted in wry acknowledgment, but he said nothing.

"When are you leaving?" Carla asked quickly, turning toward her brother, Cash. She didn't know why Diana kept edging farther away from Ten but guessed that she would be embarrassed if it were pointed out. By and large the cowhands were kind men, but their humor was both blunt and unrelenting.

"Right after we play poker tonight," Cash said.

"Poker?" Carla groaned.

"Sure. I thought I'd introduce Dr. Saxton to the joys of seven-card stud."

Smiling politely, Diana looked up from her plate. "Thanks, but I'm really tired. Maybe some other time."

The cowhands laughed as though she had made a joke.

"Guess they teach more than stones and bones at that university," Jervis said when the laughter ended. "Must teach some common sense, too."

Diana looked at Carla, who smiled.

"My brother is, er, well…" Carla's voice faded.

"Cash is damned lucky at cards," Ten said succinctly. "He'll clean you down to the lint in your pockets."

"It's true," said Carla. "His real name is Alexander, but anyone who has ever played cards with him calls him Cash."

"In fact," Luke said, pouring gravy over mounds of food, "I'm one of the few men in living memory ever to beat Cash at poker."

Cash smiled slightly and examined his dinner as though he expected it to get up and walk off the plate.

"Of course," Luke continued, "Cash cheated."

Cash's head snapped up.

"He wanted Carla to spend the summer on the Rocking M," Luke said matter-of-factly. "So he suckered her into betting a summer's worth of cooking. Cash won, of course. Then he turned around and carefully lost his sister's whole summer to me." Luke ran his fingertip from Carla's cheekbone to the corner of her smile before he turned to Cash and said quietly, "I never thanked you for giving Carla to me, but not a day goes by that I don't thank God."

Diana looked at the two big men and the woman who sat wholly at ease between them, smiling, her love for her husband and her brother as vivid as the blue-green of her eyes. The men's love for her was equally obvious, almost tangible. An odd aching closed Diana's throat, making an already difficult dinner impossible to swallow.

"I hope you know how lucky you are," she said to Carla. Without warning, Diana pushed back from the table and stood. "I'm afraid I'm too tired to eat. If you'll excuse me, I'll make it an early night."

"Of course," Carla said. "If you're hungry later, just come in the back way and eat whatever looks good. Ten does it all the time."

"Thanks," Diana said, already turning away, eager to be gone from the room full of men.

Nobody said a word until Diana had been gone long enough to be well beyond range of their voices. Then Luke turned, raised his eyebrows questioningly and looked straight at Ten.

"Are you the burr under her saddle?" Luke asked.

There was absolute silence as all the cowhands leaned forward to hear the answer to the question none of them had the nerve to ask their ramrod.

"She saw me take down Baker," Ten said. "Shocked her, I guess. Then I made her hold Nosy while I cut that boil. Now she thinks I'm a cross between Attila the Hun and Jack the Ripper."

Luke grunted. "Nice work, by the way. Baker, I mean. Nosy, too, I suppose. Carla was worried about that fool kitten. Me, I think we have too darn many cats as it is."

Luke caught the light, slow-motion blow Carla aimed at his shoulder. He brushed a kiss over her captive hand and said, "Honey, from now on put Diana next to you at the table. If the pretty professor moves her chair any farther away from Ten, we'll have to serve her food in the kitchen."

The cowhands burst out laughing. For a few minutes more the talk centered around the overly shy professor with the striking blue eyes and very nicely rounded body. Then food began to disappear in earnest and conversation slowed. After dessert vanished as well, so did the cowhands. Cash went upstairs to pack, leaving Ten, Luke and Carla alone to enjoy a final cup of coffee before the evening's work of kitchen cleanup and bookkeeping began.

Ten rubbed his jaw thoughtfully and was rewarded by the rasp of beard stubble. Undoubtedly that, too, had counted against him with the wary professor. Which was too bad-it had been a long time since a woman had interested him quite as much as the one with the frightened eyes and a body that would tempt a saint.

"How do you want to divide up Baker's work?" Luke asked Ten.

"I can take the leased grazing lands over on the divide, but that leaves the Wildfire Canyon springs without a hand."

"I'll take the grazing lands and have Jervis camp over at Wildfire Canyon during the week and weekends at September Canyon."

"That will make for long days for you," Ten said, glancing quickly at Carla. He knew that Luke had been trying to spend as much time as possible with his wife and new son.

"Your days will be even longer," Luke said. "Starting tomorrow, you're ramrodding the dig at September Canyon."

"Jervis can do it. He gets along with the university types real well. You'd never know it to listen to him, but he taught math in Oregon before he took up ranch work."

"You'd never know it to listen to you, either," retorted Luke, "but I happen to know a certain ramrod who speaks three languages and who still gets calls in the middle of the night from official types who want advice on how to get sticky jobs unstuck."

Ten said nothing.

"But they're just going to have to wait in line," Luke continued. "I've got all the trouble you can handle right in September Canyon."