Luke's Cut. Sarah McCarty

ever tell you I read your books?”

      Shit. He hated for anyone to know he wrote fairy-tale novels about the Wild West for bored Easterners. Let alone read one. His writing was the one thing that connected him to the time before the massacre. The part that didn’t fit the life he’d first been forced into and then, later, chosen. The novels were the only part of the dream his mother had had for him that he’d managed to keep alive. “No.”

      Ace just shook his head and sighed. “I don’t know why you’re so secretive about the damn things.”

      Luke just shrugged. There was no way to explain he was embarrassed.

      “I’ve known you since we were three years old,” Ace said exasperatedly. “Since before the damn Mexican army came into the village and wrecked our lives. I stood with you while we buried your parents. You stood with me while I cried over mine. Hell, you even dropped my bride into my lap when she got all stubborn.”

      “What’d you expect me to do? You were being inconveniently self-sacrificing and she wanted to talk my ear off about it.”

      “So you kidnapped her and plopped her in my bedroom?”

      “Seemed the quickest way to bring back the peace.”

      Ace just shook his head and took a sip. “There’s a get-it-done wild side to you. And the woman that’ll match up with you, she’s got to have that same drop-it-in-your-lap wildness.”

      Maybe Ace did know him too well. All of the Hell’s Eight had been shifting from wild to leading more acceptable lives, from Caine to the wildest of them all—Shadow. All of them except Luke. “Wild doesn’t match well with acceptable.”

      Ace snorted. “Shoot, Luke, there’s about a thousand different ways people interpret acceptable. You just need someone who sees it the way you do. Hester’s a good woman, but she wants a little house with a picket fence perched around it, lemonade on Sundays and a man who loves her. That’s not you.”

      “I might have worked up to loving her.” Luke didn’t know why he was belaboring the point. Maybe because he just didn’t want Ace to be right. Or maybe he wanted to be proven wrong.

      Ace shrugged. “Maybe you could’ve loved her enough eventually, but for sure she couldn’t ever love you like you need.”

      Luke swallowed the last of his drink. “What the hell makes you think that?”

      “Because she just sent me over here.”

      “What the hell for? She’s up there kissing her husband.”

      And she was. With all the enthusiasm that he wanted someone to feel for him. That he wanted to feel for someone, but never had. Sometimes, he wondered if he was dead inside, just a ghost of himself, haunting his own existence.

      With a shake of his head, Ace reached into his pocket and drew out a note. “She asked me to give you this.”

      Luke took the carefully folded piece of paper. As he opened it, Ace added, “Just like it says there. You need someone who can love you from the inside out.”

      He cocked a brow at his friend. “You read it?”

      Ace didn’t look even a little bit embarrassed. “Of course.”

      Of course. Sometimes being wrapped so tightly in a knot with others was not a bonus. Luke glanced down at the slip of paper. “Then I guess I’d better catch up.”

      Luke read the note written in Hester’s blunt, confident style.

      Ace’s tone softened as Luke refolded it. “She couldn’t give you what you need, Luke.”

      Luke nodded, looking beyond the celebration, beyond the limits of the ranch to the mountains beyond. “I know.”

      Inside, the impatience he’d been fighting for months surged, anticipation rode double, prickling along his nerves. It’d been a long time since he’d had an adventure. With Ace married and Hester off the market, his reasons for staying in Simple were few. Almost nonexistent.

      His gaze returned to Josie as she grabbed the tintype out of the camera and rushed to the wagon. She was such a mousy woman when not busy taking pictures. So shy he had yet to discern the color of her eyes, but once she brought out that wooden contraption of a camera, the real woman came front and center. Gone was the blushing, tongue-tied miss. And in her place was a woman who knew exactly how to get what she wanted.

      It was an intriguing dichotomy. The glimpses of the woman beneath the crushing shyness were like catching a hint of a plot twist in a clever mystery novel. She intrigued and tempted. She was a challenge wrapped up in a self-deprecating package that was very intricately constructed; it just didn’t fit the sense he had in his gut about her. He would love to have a conversation with her, to find out if her mind matched the impact of her body. He had a feeling it did.

      He watched as she stumbled getting into the wagon. As he knew she would, she looked over her shoulder at him, eyes narrowed as if he were to blame for her clumsiness. And maybe he was. If she was as aware of him as he was of her, then she had to know he’d been staring. Just as he suspected she’d been staring at him a time or two. A pang of regret wove through the anticipation of a new adventure. Unfortunately, Josie was one bit of exploration he was going to miss. He didn’t have the time or the patience for a fling. With a defiant toss of her head, she climbed into the wagon. And that fast, he reconsidered his decision. Some challenges just begged to be met.

      * * *

      HE WAS WATCHING HER. The well-dressed man with the broad shoulders and I-dare-you glare was watching her. Josie could feel his gaze like fingertips skimming her skin with sensual inquiry, looking for a reaction and getting it as her fingers trembled and her neck muscles tightened. If he were touching her, he’d feel the heat rise off her skin, see the pink flush of her cheeks. Oh darn, maybe he could see it from over there. She ducked her head just a little. Just enough for the shade of her bonnet to provide cover from potential revelation.

      Look away. Look away.

      The plea went unheard. More prickles of awareness flustered her composure. Even more flustering was the reality of who that man was. Luke Bellen. One of the infamous Hell’s Eight. Men said to chew nails and spit bullets, eat danger for breakfast and gather women like wildflowers. Another shiver went down her spine at the thought. She didn’t want to be gathered.

      Liar.

      The accusation came from within.

      “Traitor,” she whispered back. The last thing she needed right now was an ill-advised sense of temptation distracting her from the job for which she’d traveled so far. She was here to commemorate the wedding of her Uncle Jarl. Big and blustery, a handsome, hard-eyed businessman, Jarl Wayfield was very dear to her, and while not actually blood, he was as close to a real father as she’d ever had. From the day he’d come courting her mother, they’d had a bond. When his relationship with her mother had ended, he’d stuck around in the background of Josie’s life. She’d long since stopped wishing he was her father and instead settled for the security he offered.

      He was probably the only one who saw the sense of adventure that lurked beneath her persistent shyness. And he’d indulged it by summoning her away from the smothering small town in which she’d been born and the ever-stifling presence of her overly judgmental mother. Without him she wouldn’t have this opportunity to see the West, to indulge her passion for taking pictures. She owed him so much. Too much to let six feet of wide-shouldered, lean-hipped, dark-haired pure temptation take her off task. Still feeling the weight of Luke Bellen’s gaze, she hurried on, almost dropping the tintype in the rush to her wagon.

      Darn it!

      The wagon had been an off-the-cuff purchase, but she only had so long to develop her images and hard experience told her that in a household environment, no one respected her need for darkness to do her work. They were forever trying to shed light on her process. These images were too important to risk. Jarl giving her this opportunity to photograph his wedding meant the world. His faith