Hawk's Way: Rebels: The Temporary Groom. Joan Johnston

him. Penelope Trask had said she would see that he was punished for making Laura so miserable she had taken her own life. Now she was threatening to take his children from him.

      He couldn’t bear to lose Raejean and Annie. They were the light of his life and all he had left of Laura. God, how he had loved her!

      Billy pounded his fist on the steering wheel of his pickup. How could he have been so stupid as to give Penelope the ammunition she needed to shoot him down in court?

      It was too late to do anything about his wild reputation. But he could change his behavior. He could stop brawling in bars. If only there were some way he could show the judge he had turned over a new leaf….

      Billy didn’t drive in any particular direction, yet he eventually found himself at the stock pond he shared with Zach Whitelaw’s ranch. The light from the rising moon and stars made a silvery reflection on the center of the pond and revealed the shadows of several pin oaks that surrounded it. He had always found the sounds of the bullfrogs and the crickets and the lapping water soothing to his inner turmoil. He had gone there often to think in the year since Laura had died.

      His truck headlights revealed someone else had discovered his sanctuary. He smiled wistfully when he realized a couple was lying together on the grass. He felt a stab of envy. He and Laura had spent their share of stolen moments on the banks of this stock pond when the land had belonged to her father.

      He almost turned the truck around, because he wanted to be alone, but there was something about the movements of the couple on the ground that struck him as odd. It took him a moment to realize they weren’t struggling in the throes of passion. The woman was trying to fight the man off!

      He hit the brakes, shoved open his truck door, and headed for them on the run. He hadn’t quite reached the girl when he heard her scream of outrage.

      He grabbed hold of the boy by his shoulders and yanked him upright. The tall, heavyset kid came around swinging.

      That was a mistake.

      Billy ducked and came up underneath with a hard fist to the belly that dropped the kid to his knees. A second later the boy toppled face-forward with a groan.

      Billy made a sound of disgust that the kid hadn’t put up more of a fight and hurried to help the girl. She had curled in on herself, her body rigid with tension. When he put a hand on her shoulder, she tried scrambling away.

      “He’s not going to hurt you anymore,” he said in the calm, quiet voice he used when he was gentling horses. He turned her over so she could see she was safe from the boy, that he was there to help. Her torn bodice exposed half of a small, well-formed breast. He made himself look away, but his body tightened responsively. Her whole body began to tremble.

      “Shh. It’s all right. I’m here now.”

      She looked up at him with eyes full of pain.

      “Are you hurt?” he asked, his hands doing a quick once-over for some sign of injury.

      She slapped at him ineffectually with one hand while holding the torn chiffon against her nakedness with the other. “No. I’m fine. Just…just…”

      Her eyes—he couldn’t tell what color they were in the dark—filled with tears and, despite her desperate attempts to blink the moisture away, one sparkling tear-drop spilled onto her cheek. It was then he realized the pain he had seen wasn’t physical, but came from inside.

      He understood that kind of pain all too well.

      “Hey,” he said gently. “It’s going to be all right.”

      “Easy for you to say,” she snapped, rubbing at the tears and swiping them across her cheeks. “I—”

      A car engine revved, and they both looked toward the sound in time to see a pair of headlights come on.

      “Wait!” the girl cried, surging to her feet.

      The dress slipped, and Billy got an unwelcome look at a single, luscious breast. He swore under his breath as his body hardened.

      The girl obviously wasn’t used to long dresses, because the length of it caught under her knees and trapped her on the ground. By the time she made it to her feet, the car she had come in, and the boy she had come with, were gone.

      He took one look at her face in the moonlight and saw a kind of desolation he hadn’t often seen before.

      Except perhaps in his own face in the mirror.

      It made his throat ache. It might have brought him to tears, if he had been the kind of man who could cry. He wasn’t. He thought maybe his Comanche heritage had something to do with it. Or maybe it was simply a lack of feeling in him. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.

      As he watched, the girl sank to the ground and dropped her face into her hands. Her shoulders rocked with soundless, shuddering sobs.

      He settled beside her, not speaking, not touching, merely a comforting presence, there if she needed him. Occasionally he heard a sniffling sound, but otherwise he was aware of the silence. And finally, the sounds he had come to hear. The bullfrogs. The crickets. The water lapping in the pond.

      He didn’t know how long he had been sitting beside her when she finally spoke.

      “Thank you,” she said.

      Her voice was husky from crying, and rasped over him, raising the hairs on his neck. He looked at her again and saw liquid, shining eyes in a pretty face. He couldn’t keep his gaze from dropping to the flesh revealed by her tightened grip on the torn fabric. Hell, he was a man, not a saint.

      “Are you all right?” he asked.

      She shook her head, gave a halfhearted laugh, and said, “Sure.” The sarcasm in her voice made it plain she was anything but.

      “Can I help?”

      “I’d need a miracle to get me out of the mess I’m in.” She shrugged, a surprisingly sad gesture. “I can’t seem to stay out of trouble.”

      He smiled sympathetically. I have the same problem. He thought the words, but he didn’t say them. He didn’t want to frighten her. “Things happen,” he said instead.

      She reached out hesitantly to touch a recent cut above his eye. “Did Ray do this?”

      He edged back from her touch. It felt too good. “No. That’s from—” Another fight. He didn’t finish that thought aloud, either. “Something else.”

      He had gotten a whiff of her perfume. Something light and flowery. Something definitely female. It reminded him he hadn’t been with a woman since Laura’s death. And that he found the young woman sitting beside him infinitely desirable.

      He tamped down his raging hormones. She needed his help. She didn’t need another male lusting after her.

      She reached for an open can of beer sitting in the grass nearby and lifted it to her lips.

      Before it got there, he took it from her. “Aren’t you a little young for this?”

      “What difference does it make now? My life is ruined.”

      He smiled indulgently. “Just because your boyfriend—”

      “Ray’s not my boyfriend. And he’s the least of my problems.”

      He raised a questioning brow. “Oh?”

      He watched her grasp her full lower lip in her teeth—and wished he were doing it himself. He forced his gaze upward to meet with hers.

      “I’m a disappointment to my parents,” she said in a whispery, haunted voice.

      How could such a beautiful—he had been looking at her long enough to realize she was more than pretty—young woman be a disappointment to anybody? “Who are your parents?”

      “I’m Cherry Whitelaw.”

      She said