Stacey Kayne - Mustang Wild

I t wasn’t all that uncommon for Tucker Morgan to wake up in bed with a strange woman and a pounding headache, but he wasn’t suffering from an ordinary hangover. The fierce throbbing in his skull wasn’t the only thing out of sorts this morning. He lifted a wet cloth from his forehead and glanced again at the woman sleeping beside him.

Hell. Plenty about this morning was out of sorts. The fact that he and the woman next to him were fully clothed being the most troubling. They even had their boots on!

Her boots weren’t the laced or buttoned-up version most women wore, but the same leather tug-on boots he was wearing. Her uncommonly short hair couldn’t reach past her shoulders. Lying on her side, the golden strands swirled across her face. But her body, now that was all in proper order, with all the right curves in all the right places, and encased in a hideous blue dress that might have fit her once upon a time. The fabric of her bodice molded to the round swell of her breasts like a second skin.

Tucker closed his eyes, the pounding in his head increasing. His headache wouldn’t even let him enjoy the view. He needed coffee and a shot of whiskey. Hell, with this headache, he needed a pint of whiskey.

Groaning, he forced himself to sit up and glance around his bedroom. How had they ended up here? He’d never brought a woman back to this run-down cabin.

Trying to jar his memory, he stood and slowly shuffled toward the kitchen.

“’Morning.”

Tucker jumped at the sound of the unexpected greeting. A young boy with pure white hair sat at the little table that occupied the left half of his cabin. He gave the cotton-topped kid a quick once-over before muttering, “Who the hell are you?”

“Your bride’s brother.”

“My what?” Tucker countered, his headache suddenly forgotten.

The kid’s white eyebrows pinched inward as his eyes narrowed. “Your wife’s brother. I…am…Skylar’s…brother.” He dragged out each word as though he were talking to the town idiot.

Stunned, Tucker glanced toward the bedroom.

I married a saloon girl?

He knew all the girls at Big Jack’s. Skylar wasn’t a name he’d heard before, and he would have remembered that short, golden mane. He rubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw, trying to recall the events from the previous night. Surely this was some kind of misunderstanding between the woman and the boy.

“Skylar?” he said aloud, the name sounding no more familiar than the kid looked sitting before him.

“Yes?” called a feminine voice, just before the slender woman appeared in the doorway. Deep blue eyes held his gaze. Sunlight streaking in from the bedroom window glimmered in the tangled golden hair wisped around her oval face. A vision from the saloon flashed in his mind.

He’d just won a hand of poker when he’d heard a woman say his name—then there she was, an angel with gilded hair and the purest sapphire eyes gazing straight into his soul. He’d jumped to his feet and…

Dear God, I married an angel!

Not a true angel, his sober mind reasoned. He’d met her in Big Jack’s, after all. Despite her threadbare clothes and bedraggled hair, she was a pretty thing. Damn pretty.

“Are you new at Big Jack’s?” he ventured.

Hearing the metallic click of a gun hammer, Tucker shifted his gaze toward the kid. The boy sat at the table, calm as you please, holding a rifle aimed straight at Tucker’s chest.

“Mister, I believe you just called my sister a whore.”

“Garret!” called the woman. “I’m sure that’s not what he meant. Is it, Mr. Morgan?”

Of course that was what he’d meant. Why else would she have been in a place like Big Jack’s? Tucker met the kid’s hard gaze. His hazel eyes revealed a boy well beyond his young age. This was a kid who’d seen his share of hardship, but, hell, who hadn’t?

“I need some coffee,” he groaned, his head again pounding, the pain increasing by the second as the prior evening’s events came flooding back into his mind.

Tucker turned his back on the boy and his rifle. He was surprised to find a pot of coffee already steaming on the stove. He filled a cup and took a few sips of the strong brew. What could have possessed him to actually marry the woman standing behind him? A man could find plenty of other ways to torture himself besides taking a wife.

“I’m sure it was a farce,” he said, mostly assuring himself as he stared into the steaming, dark depth of his coffee.

“Not what I was told,” she answered in a stiff tone. “You tricked me into signing an actual marriage document and I’m pretty sure your preacher friend muttered some vows.”

Tucker bit out a curse, feeling the disgust he heard in her voice. He had laughed as hard as everyone else when Henderson threw that marriage document into the pot, but it seemed the joke was on him.

He took another gulp of coffee then turned back toward the mess waiting behind him. Seeing the kid with his rifle still trained on him, he smiled.

“Boy, you better put that away before you hurt yourself.”

“Garret, lower your gun.”

“Who are you?” Tucker asked, his gaze again taking in the woman’s short, tangled hair and strange attire.

“A full name would be nice,” he added, his voice clipped. “You said my name when you entered the saloon last night, so you knew who I was.”

“Not exactly. I was looking for Chance Morgan. My father never mentioned any Morgan by the name of Tucker.”

“You knew I wasn’t my brother. You called me Tuck.”

“I heard a man call you by that name and when you stood up, I knew you weren’t Chance.”

“How?” he challenged. He didn’t know a single living soul who could recognize him from his twin.

“You look…different.”

“The hell I do!”

“He’s got a point, Sky,” the kid put in. “He sure looks like Chance to me.”

“Only Chance isn’t a drunk,” she said in a harsh tone. “Chance worked with my father for two years when we drove stock in Texas and I never once saw him in such a state.”

Hearing her harp on Chance’s choirboy character only increased Tucker’s anger. His twin truly was his other half. His boring half. Just because Chance couldn’t stomach the taste of whiskey didn’t make him a saint. No more than blowing off a bit of steam before heading out on a long drive made Tucker a drunk. “And your father would be?”

“Zachary Daines.”

Ah, hell. I’m in trouble. If Chance returned this afternoon and found him married to Daines’s daughter, he’d have a holy fit. Chance had assured him Zach Daines was one of the best horse trainers around, which was why Tucker had agreed to purchase Daines’s mustangs and hire him on as foreman for their new horse ranch in Wyoming. He’d also heard that Daines was a sizable man and hard as stone, which made Tucker wonder why Daines wasn’t doing his best to beat the life out of him right at this moment.

“Where’s your father?”

Her blue eyes narrowed. “Where’s Chance Morgan?”

Tucker didn’t like the direction of their conversation. If Zach Daines were alive and kicking, he’d be standing inside this shack, keeping his belligerent daughter in line. Now that he thought about it, he wondered what she was doing here at all.

He’d been told that Daines was bringing his two sons, along with a crew of men and a few dozen horses, none of which he heard milling about outside the cabin. Tucker’s gaze moved between Skylar and her brother. “What happened to your father?”

“He was kill’t,” the boy informed him baldly. “Four weeks back in Arizona. Randal, one of our own men, turned on us. His buddies rode into our camp with their guns blazing. I heard gunfire and came runnin’ to see what all the ruckus was about. Sky grabbed me and said Randal kill’t our pa and was after the deed. She threw me on a horse and…here we are.”