There they were. CJ marveled at the corral of mustangs, tossing their heads, snorting and whinnying. The men had done well. They knew what they were doing. CJ adjusted herself in the saddle and gave Charlie a sideways glance. He’d insisted on riding out with her. His slouch on his horse was comfortable, familiar. He was where he belonged.
“They’re beauties.”
Yes. Yes, Charlie, they were. Beauties she should have rounded up. CJ adjusted her seat and the leather of the saddle creaked beneath her weight. Her bay tossed its head, sniffing the air and the scent of the other horses, wild and untamed.
“Ya know, he’s just watchin’ out for his ranch.”
Charlie’s observation grated on CJ’s already raw nerves. She brushed back a wayward strand of hair that blew in the dry morning breeze. Charlie didn’t seem to notice the stiffening of her shoulders.
“Jonah was a headstrong boy when his mama shipped him from over yonder. He bucked that English tradition they have. Uptights. When he landed here, he was weak of faith and strong in spirit. His uncle didn’t help as much as his mama wanted. Jonah ran circles around him, but gained his favor. Figgers, since he inherited this here ranch.”
CJ wasn’t impressed with Charlie’s reminiscing about the man she disliked more than she’d ever disliked anyone before. But she didn’t have the heart to shut the old man down. Besides, Charlie’s familiar voice, gravelly and wobbled with age, soothed her nerves, even if his words prickled her soul.
She couldn’t help but ask. “What made you take such a liking to him?”
“Boy was hurtin’. Like you.”
CJ met Charlie’s gaze. He gave a short nod. “Tryin’ to prove hisself in a world where they didn’t think he was who he should be.”
“What do you mean?”
Charlie shrugged, as if she should know. “Jonah Sparks was next in line to be some aristocrat or somethin’. But he didn’t want it. Starched collars an’ all that. He wanted to find his freedom from all that rigmarole. He did—eventually. But he had to find freedom in who God made him to be. Same as you.”
CJ licked a thin sheen of desert dust off her lips. “I am free.”
“Are ya now?”
The whinnies of the wild ponies drew CJ’s attention. Kip waved his arm over his head, and Sam, the lazy ranch hand, reciprocated the signal as he rode inside the corral among the mustangs.
Free? No. Not free. Trapped. Within the confines of Jonah’s expectations. Of society’s expectations. Even her brothers’ expectations. Lace and petticoats. She loved them, felt like a princess in them, but the scent of horses and leather made her heady. The creak of a saddle, the rush of wind in her face when she rode, and the exhilaration of breaking a horse made her come alive. What if Jonah felt the same way? England confined him. What if his uncle’s death and the inheritance of the ranch became his ticket to be who the Creator had made him to be? A businessman, a rancher. Free. “I wonder if even God thinks I should take up sewing and homemaking.”
CJ didn’t realize she’d spoken her cynicism aloud.
Charlie chuckled, as he always did. He was never shocked by her sarcasm. “Doubt God thinks anything but that yer His daughter in cowboy boots. An’ a pretty one at that. You an’ Jonah, yer two peas in a pod that ain’t been snapped open yet so ya can see the light o’ day. The good Lord is doin’ His work in ya. ’Bout time ya both stop fightin’ each other and listen up.”
“I think Jonah Sparks is as deaf as a dead steer,” CJ muttered.
Charlie nudged his horse with his heels and started forward toward the mustangs. “An’ what’s yer excuse?”
The screams scorched Jonah with the shock of a branding iron. He jolted from his office chair and vaulted around his desk. The ledger he’d been working on fell to the floor. The scream was unmistakably female. It was unmistakably Celia Jo. Jonah’s long strides swallowed up the distance from his office to the front door. He met the concerned expression of Charlie as the elderly man struggled to his feet from the rocking chair on the porch. Bonita followed Jonah’s long strides.
“Miss Matheson, señor!”
Jonah didn’t bother to respond as another terrified scream ripped through the otherwise peaceful morning and catapulted him into a run. Remmy whinnied from the corral where she leisured, her leg still bandaged. Jonah swept the yard with his gaze as he sprinted toward the ramshackle stucco adobe that had once been the ranch’s first home. Dear Lord, have mercy. This was why he didn’t want a female foreman. This was the underlying fear in his mind, in his heart. She was beautiful. Tantalizing. And she was the only woman in charge of men who rarely saw another female.
Nightmarish visions raced through Jonah’s mind as he vaulted over a tumbleweed and slammed through the door of the adobe.
“CJ!” His shout ripped from his throat as he jolted to a halt. He scanned the room. No man. An open window. The low-lying cot that sagged in the middle. An end table. And in the corner, CJ, her arms wrapped around her torso. Her body quivered, uncontrolled, and her brown eyes engulfed her pale face. The freckles he had so long tried to ignore as being kissable stood out like miniature hoofprints across her delicate cheekbones.
“Celia Jo?”
Her chest rose in short, spasmodic breaths.
“Roadrunner?” God bless the clothes she was wearing. Jonah realized the early morning hours might have served him an entirely different vision than CJ in her typical shirt and trousers. She must have just taken her clothes from the pegs lined on the wall where she stood and dressed.
She met his gaze. “Kill it.” She pointed. “Kill it now.”
Her words chilled him. They were decisive, strong, and aimed at… well, dash it all! So Celia Jo Matheson was afraid of something!
The fuzzy, eight-legged tarantula on the middle of her cot was as large as his hand. It was more than apparent the beast perched between her and the doorway, keeping her figuratively trapped. She could have simply chosen to walk around the end of the bed, since the head of it was, after all, pushed against the wall. But it seemed CJ believed a tarantula was capable of leaping five feet and landing on her shoulder. It was quite obvious that she had reached the limits of her stiff-necked, stubborn, do-it-herself stamina. The spider had squelched her into submission with the mere twitch of its seventh leg. Something Jonah had been attempting to do since the moment CJ descended from the train in a fluster of petticoats, flowery dress, and leather boots.
“Kill it.” There was steely resolve in her voice, but her eyes reflected so much fear and sheer horror that Jonah almost wanted to grace the tarantula with his gratitude. CJ was like the wild mustang, and the spider had broken her.
Jonah covered the space between him and the hairy spider in one stride. Its black eyes gored up at him, unmoving and perched on the top of its body. Legs six and eight lifted. CJ screamed.
“Please, Jonah…”
Her shaking plea broke his final defense. Dear Lord in heaven, save him from Celia Jo.
Jonah snatched a book from the end table.
“Not my—” CJ protested a moment too late. With a nudge from the butt of his pistol he’d grabbed on his way out the front door, Jonah urged the spider onto CJ’s copy of The Legend of Obadiah Walker. A dime novel.
“Curious.” He shot a wry smile in her direction. CJ scowled.
Oh, the things a man could learn about a woman in a few moments in her private quarters.
“Aren’t you going to kill it?” CJ whispered, her lips quivering with the tremors of irrational fear mixed with surprise.
“This wretched creature deserves a chance at a happy life.” Jonah was goading her. But now it was—well, it was because she was adorable. She needed him. Was this what he had actually wanted all along? Not to diminish her strength and independence as one broke a mustang, but to simply see her as a woman who occasionally needed a hero?
He escaped through the door with the tarantula and flung it into the desert. The arachnid flipped onto its back then righted itself and scurried away toward the horizon.
“You should have killed it.”
Well then. CJ’s words bounced against his back as she came outside and stood behind him. He turned. By jove, she was beautiful. When he really stopped and recognized her with the vision Charlie insisted he use, Celia Jo Matheson was untamed and matchless.
And swooning…
Jonah slid his arm around her waist as her knees buckled. She grappled for something to hold on to and found his shirt. She leaned against his chest, her head fitting perfectly beneath his chin. And here he was—Jonah’s observation was almost out of body—holding his foreman. All because of a hairy, eight-legged spider whose only offense was to bed down on the lady’s quilt.
He must find that tarantula again one day… and thank it.