The Taming Of Jackson Cade. Bj James

manor, where Dancer had been allowed his first day of true freedom. But only under the watchful eyes of guards strategically posted by Jericho Rivers, sheriff of Belle Terre and the surrounding county bearing the same name as the city.

      It rankled, having armed men roaming the farm. The idea of strangers, regardless of how unobtrusive they were, tramping the land, disturbed and disrupted what had been a gratifying routine. But Jericho insisted. As a friend, as well as the local legal authority, he feared the crisis with Dancer was more than an isolated incident, and perhaps a resurgence of the vandalism that had burned Jackson’s first new barn at River Trace to the ground. An unsolved crime that troubled Jericho. Now, as much as years ago.

      Though he agreed with the need for the precautions, though he was more than grateful for Jericho’s men, Jackson hated the atmosphere of an armed camp. He mourned the loss of the peaceful innocence that had settled over his land since the fire.

      Peaceful or dangerously complacent? he wondered now, and was surprised. Complacency wasn’t his nature. In fact, it was the last emotion he would ever be accused of harboring. Whatever he felt, right or wrong, he felt strongly. Obstinately.

      “Yeah,” he admitted under his breath. “Obstinate. Right, and especially wrong.”

      “You talkin’ to yourself, boy?”

      Jackson looked down at Jesse and shrugged. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

      “Well, I hope you’re a mite friendlier to yourself than you’ve been to some other folks I could name.”

      “That bad, huh?”

      “I’d say so.”

      “But you’re still here. Why, Jesse?”

      “Two reasons. First, you need me. Second, I figger your mad will pass, at least where I’m concerned.”

      “Have I thanked you? For what you did? For staying now?”

      “No. But I ’spect you will. In time.”

      Jackson nodded silently and turned away. He owed Jesse far more than his thanks. The man was a walking encyclopedia on commonsense horse training and treatment. It was Jesse he’d called first. In the time following the stallion’s strange malady, the cowhand had spent most of his waking hours at River Trace, calling on Jefferson for help, then leaving the stock at Belle Reve in his capable hands. Lounging now at Jackson’s side, face shadowed by the hat brim tipped down against the late-afternoon glare, with his arms folded over the top rail of the fence, his keen regard never turned from the pasture.

      “He looks good,” Jackson ventured after a while.

      “Yep.” Jesse tracked the horse cantering across the pasture. “Friskier than a new colt.” Slanting a sly assessing look at Jackson, he muttered half under his breath, “Which is more than I can say for you. Along with being grumpier than a junkyard dog looking for a leg to bite, you look like hell.”

      Warming to the subject, the older man studied Jackson’s haggard features. “You know, for a man who just had his dream handed back to him by the prettiest little gal to come along in quite a spell, you don’t look half as happy as I’d expect. Fact is, instead of being all smiles like any sensible human being should, lately you got more creases across your forehead left from frowning than this fence post has ridges.”

      Jackson bristled, proving Jesse’s comment. “Let’s see if I get your point, Jesse. Which am I, mean as a junkyard dog? Dumb as a post? A little of both? Or can’t you decide?”

      “Oh, I decided,” Jesse responded mildly, refusing to be riled or distracted. “You helped me decide that sometime past. And by the way, you left out mule-headed.” Before Jackson could bristle again, he patted a hard, broad shoulder. “What’s the matter, boy? Not sleepin’ so good these days?”

      “I’m sleeping all I need to sleep.” A mild exaggeration, but the sharpness eased out of Jackson’s tone. Jesse was nosy, he pried, he meddled, he gossiped, but from the day he’d come to the lowcountry in answer to Jefferson’s appeal for help, the best interests and well-being of the Cade family had become his first priority. Jefferson’s younger years spent in Arizona working on the Rafter B for Jake Benedict had proven to be a godsend in many ways, Jesse Lee’s loyalty not the least of them. In the balance, a little prying and meddling was a small cost to pay.

      “All you need? Humph!” Jesse plucked a splinter from the rail, studied it closely, then flicked it away. “Don’t appear so to me. In another week, what with the shadows lying under your eyes like blue hammocks and gettin’ darker by the day, you’re gonna look like the losing end of a bar hopper’s brawl.”

      An innocent look wiped the worry from the cowhand’s face. Too innocent, as he shrugged. “Considering the extra security set in all the barns and around the pastures, by doggies, I can’t rightly see what’s keeping you awake.”

      “We had security before. Not so tight, of course, but security. If I’m short of any sleep, I suppose it’s because I keep remembering Dancer as he was then.” Mild exaggeration had grown into bald lies. Or almost, by omission. For what Jackson couldn’t get out of his mind was not just Dancer’s screams, or even his critical condition.

      No. What had him jerking from his dreams in a cold sweat was Haley Garrett. Like a tableau forever imprinted in both his waking and sleeping memory, the vision of that small, beautiful woman clinging to a frenzied brute of a horse played like a movie without end over and over in his mind.

      He could still hear the sickening sound of her body striking wood. He saw flashing hooves flailing out in madness, falling ever nearer the unconscious woman. He still struggled to open a gate with fingers made clumsy with fear. And always there was the specter of being too late.

      It was a nightmare that first sent him fleeing his bed, then left him sleepless, pacing and wrestling with yet another memory. The memory of undressing her, made too vivid by the night, a waking dream emblazoned forever on his mind by day.

      Even now as his hands flexed within his gloves, the brush of soft leather became the brush of Haley’s softer, naked flesh. He had only to close his eyes to remember her tawny skin burnished by the fall of lamplight, the fullness of her breasts with nipples dusky and barely furled like newly bloomed rosebuds.

      In his more lucid times, he wondered why his memories confused him. From his first glimpse of her on the day she arrived in Belle Terre, a glimpse that sent every male hormone into feverish response and set every mental warning bell jangling, he knew she was trouble. Trouble with a capital T. Right then, right there, in the middle of Lincoln’s office, he’d turned tail and bolted like a scared yearling. Then, as if escaping that first introduction wasn’t enough, he held himself aloof, rebuffing every near meeting or close social encounter with a grim determination bordering on surly.

      Surly, boorish, tactless, cruel. Hell, given his performance in the barn, he wasn’t sure his vocabulary held enough words to describe his behavior.

      And from the first, his efforts had been for naught. No matter how he avoided the woman of flesh and blood, in spirit Haley Garrett haunted him. No matter where he might go, or didn’t go, at some time Lincoln’s new partner would be mentioned.

      At the local stockmen’s meetings, at the inn, with his brothers, in his own blasted barns—at the feed-and-seed supply store, even the damned grocer’s—as sure as breathing, her name tripped off someone’s tongue. Then she would become the topic of conversation. And though he tried to not listen, he did. Like a man too long without water discovering a sweet, cool well, he drank in every word.

      Each time he kicked himself afterward. Each time he denied he felt anything more than the fascination that goes hand in hand with aversion. Oh, he fought and struggled, he resisted and denied, and still the next time would be the same.

      Haley wasn’t a fool. She wasn’t obtuse. Even the rare times he was subtle, she got the message. She knew how little he thought of her and her sort. If by some far-fetched chance she should misread him, he never let her forget. Even though he’d