Sarah McCarty - Caine's Reckoning

Caine glanced over at Sam. “What did you handle?”

“What needed it.” He pitched the unlit smoke into the fire.

It wasn’t like Sam to waste a smoke. A glance at Desi didn’t reveal any more than Tracker and Sam had. She just sat there clutching the package to her chest, all hunched down as if she wanted to disappear. Shit!

“I’m thinking maybe I should have been the one to fetch my wife’s things.”

Tracker’s gaze flicked to Desi as he said, “I’m thinking things worked out the way they should have.”

Maybe. Caine asked Desi, “What do Sam and Tracker know that I don’t?”

She licked her lower lip the way she did when she was nervous. “I have no idea.”

That was a bald-faced lie. He cupped her chin in his hand and brought her face up. She’d tell him and then he’d handle it. Her lids flinched but the rest of her expression stayed stub bornly set. “Now, try telling me the truth.”

“Leave her alone, Caine.”

He didn’t let go of Desi’s chin or take his gaze from hers. “This is between me and my wife, Tracker.”

“Some things don’t need telling.”

He didn’t agree. The haunted look in Desi’s eyes drove him to know. “I’ll be deciding that.”

Denim rustled as Sam stood. “No. You won’t.”

Caine straightened, letting his hand slip from his wife’s chin. “Who’s going to stop me?”

Desi gasped as Sam took a step forward. “If you can’t resist being an ass long enough to find the respect you owe your wife, I guess I will.”

“I don’t think so.”

A soft sound had him looking down. Desi was backed against the boulder doing her level best to fade into the rough rock, her blue eyes wide and locked on him and Sam, but he wasn’t exactly sure she saw him. There was a wildness to her gaze, an inward focus that reminded him of battle-crazed men lost to reality. She clutched the package to her. He stepped back from Sam. Sam’s gray eyes cut to Desi and then back to him. “Leave it alone, Caine. At least for now.”

“She’s had about all she can take,” Tracker added.

Caine could see that. He hunkered down in front of Desi as he asked them. “Tell me one thing, when the time comes, did you leave one for me?”

“We did better than that.” Sam added, “We left you three.”

“Good.” He needed to know there would be a place to release the rage that consumed him. “Desi?”

She didn’t answer the call, didn’t look at him. He rubbed the backs of his fingers across the backs of hers, his nails hitting the paper on the package, the rustle of the paper sounding loud in the sudden silence. “Sweetheart, you haven’t finished your chocolate.”

A long pause and then she blinked. She looked down at her hand. “Oh no.”

Smears were on her fingers and the brown paper. “You’d best eat it fast before it makes a mess of your new clothes.” Her lashes lifted and he was staring into her big blue eyes and all the devastating sadness she normally hid.

“I was going to save it.”

“I’ll get you some more.” He wasn’t sure where he would find it or how he would pay for it—they were building the ranch and not established—but anything that took the sadness from those blue eyes was worth it.

She opened her hand and stared at the mess. He caught her wrist and brought her hand to his mouth. He pressed a chaste kiss on the edge of her palm. Chocolate spread to his lips. He backed off, licking his lips. “It’s still good.”

He brought her hand to her mouth. “Eat it while I get supper.”

She glanced toward the jerky. It didn’t take a genius to interpret what she was thinking. No, not jerky.

“Oh, we can do a lot better than jerky.” Sam disappeared into the darkness and came back carrying two large oval tins with handles. “The padre’s housekeeper sent a bunch of tamales and pork stew along with tortillas and—” he lifted a square basket “—wedding cakes.”

Desi stopped licking at her hand. “Oh.”

Oh, indeed.

“Maria said it wasn’t proper you didn’t have a wedding supper.”

Caine took the basket with the cakes in it from Tracker and put it beside Desi. “Maria cooks like a dream.”

“Learned everything she knows from Tia.”

“Tia?” Desi asked.

“Tia’s been taking care of us since the massacre.”

“Massacre?”

She was beginning to sound a bit like a parrot but Caine couldn’t begrudge her. After the day she’d had she had to feel a bit like she’d been tossed from a coach going at full speed and was now just bouncing around in the aftermath. “We all used to live in the same town. After the massacre took our families, we banded together.”

“We didn’t know shit about surviving,” Sam interjected, opening a tin.

“Damn near starved to death,” Tracker agreed, getting out a metal coffeepot. “Best thing we ever did was to try and steal tortillas from Tia’s windowsill.”

Caine rubbed at the back of his neck with the memory. “That woman wields a mean broom, though.”

“That she did,” Sam agreed, pulling out husk-wrapped bundles. “Lined us up against the wall of her home and lectured us a good hour while dinner simmered in the pot. Quoted the bible one minute and threatened our manly charms the next.”

“Damn longest hour of my life,” Caine said, remembering the hunger that had driven him to steal, the shame at being caught by a good woman who quoted the bible, but most of all he remembered how good that damn meal had tasted after he and the others had worked another hour to earn their place at the table.

“Does she still live with you?” Desi asked.

“Hell, yeah.”

“Runs Hell’s Eight with an iron fist.” Sam popped the top off the second tin. The rich scent of spicy meat stew filled the air.

“She’s family.”

“Yes.” Maybe not by blood but by everything that mattered, Tia was family.

Desi’s face took up that guarded look he didn’t like. He took the package from her hands and set it aside. It wasn’t hard to see where her thoughts had wandered. “She’ll like you just fine, Desi.”

Caine reached back for his saddlebag and fished out his tin plate and spoon. Tracker poured some stew onto the plate and tossed on a tortilla. Sam added a tamale. Caine glanced over at where Desi sat dwarfed by the coat. “Add another tamale on there.”

Sam followed his glance. “Yeah. She could use some fattening up.”

Shit, Caine hoped Desi hadn’t heard that. It only took a turn to see that she had. That full, totally tempting mouth was set in a flat line and those eyes were shooting daggers at him again. He sighed and handed her the plate. “He wasn’t slinging mud. Just concern.”

She took it. “It doesn’t matter.”

He noticed the fine tremor in her hands as he let go. Hunger, fear, anger…? Hell, there were too many reasons that could cause that shaking to pinpoint just one. She didn’t immediately grab up the spoon.

“Maria said to tell you she didn’t make it too spicy, ma’am,” Sam offered.

Desi appreciated that. She’d only met the woman once, early on before James had understood how determined she’d been to escape. Plump and colorful, happily married to the town’s blacksmith, she’d been a too-cheerful reminder of all Desi had lost. Desi’s renewed defiance after the one time she’d delivered food had ensured James had never let Maria back again. “Thank her for me, please.”

“You can tell her yourself,” Caine inserted in his low drawl. “She comes out to Hell’s Eight once a month in good weather to visit Tia.”

Which meant there was no chance she’d find any peace at Caine’s home. Desi clenched the spoon in her hand. The food that had her stomach rumbling a moment before was suddenly as appetizing as glue. No woman wanted her male relations taking up with a whore. If Tia was as formidable as the men implied, she’d spend her days paying for her crimes against decency and her night paying for Caine having to marry her. The future did not look good. She kept her voice even as she said, “Thank you, I will.”