"Sugar," drawled Ty, giving Janna a thorough up-and-down look, "you could have walked naked past me and I wouldn't have suspected anything at all. You're the least female female I've ever seen."
Janna's fingers tightened on the herbs as the barb went home, but she was determined not to show that she'd been hurt.
"Thank you," she said huskily. "I just took a leaf from Cascabel's book-hide in plain sight. The pony soldiers caught him way down south last year. He escaped from them. They went looking for him, expecting to run him down easily because there was no cover around. It was flat land with only a scattering of stunted mesquite. No place for a rabbit to hide, much less a man."
Ty listened in spite of his anger at having been deceived. As he listened, he tried to figure out why Janna's voice was so appealing to him. Finally he realized that she no longer was trying to conceal her voice's essentially feminine nature, a faintly husky music that tantalized his senses.
And she was nineteen, not thirteen.
Stop it, Ty told himself fiercely. She's all alone in the world. Any man who would take advantage of that isn't worthy of the name.
"Because the soldiers knew there was no place to hide, they didn't look," Janna continued. "Cascabel is as shrewd as Satan. He knew that the best place to hide is in plain sight, where no one would ever look. So when he was convinced that he couldn't outrun the soldiers and they would catch him in the open, he rolled in the dust, grabbed some mesquite branches and sat very still. The branches didn't cover him, but they gave the soldiers something familiar to look at-something they would never look at twice. And they didn't," Janna concluded. "They rode right by Cascabel, maybe a hundred feet away, and never saw him."
"Probably because Cascabel looks a hell of a lot more like a mesquite bush than you look like a woman."
"That's your opinion," Janna retorted, "but we both know how trustworthy your eyes are, don't we?"
Ty saw the reaction that Janna tried to hide. He smiled, feeling better than he had since he realized how badly he had been fooled. If his brothers ever found out what had happened, they would ride him until he screamed for mercy. Ty had always been the one the MacKenzie men turned to for advice on the pursuit and pleasuring of the fair sex.
He laughed aloud and felt his temper sweeten with every passing second. He was going to get some of his own back from the gray-eyed chameleon, and he was going to enjoy himself thoroughly in the process. She would rue the day she had fooled him into believing she was an effeminate boy.
"If you'd been any kind of a woman," Ty drawled very slowly, "I'd feel right ashamed of being fooled. But seeing as how you only say you're a girl, and I'm too much of a gentleman to ask you to prove it… I guess I'll just have to keep my doubts to myself."
"You? A gentleman?" Janna asked in rising tones of disbelief. She looked pointedly at his half-grown beard and soggy breechcloth. "From what I can see-and there's dam little I can't see-you look like a savage."
Ty's laugh wasn't quite so heartfelt this time. "Oh, I know I'm a gentleman for a fact, boy. And so do a lot of real ladies."
Mentally Janna compared herself to the sketch of her mother-loose, ragged clothes against stylish swirls of silk, Indian braids against carefully coif fed curls. The comparison was simply too painful. So was the fact that Ty had been taken with her mother's image and couldn't have been more blunt about the daughter's lack of feminine allure.
Unshed tears clawed at the back of Janna's eyelids, but the thought that Ty might catch her crying appalled her. Without a word she dusted off her hands and brushed past Ty, refusing even to look at him, knowing that for all her scathing comments to the contrary, his eyes were uncomfortably sharp when it came to assessing her mood.
When Janna was at the edge of the grassy area of the valley, she cupped her hands to her mouth and called out to Zebra, using the keening cry of a hawk. To human ears there was almost no difference in the sounds-to Zebra, it was a call as clear as a trumpet's. Within moments the mare was cantering through the grass towards Janna.
"Hello, pretty girl," Janna murmured. She stroked the mare's neck and pulled weeds from her long mane and tail. "Show me your hooves."
She worked slowly around the horse, touching each fetlock. Zebra presented each of her hooves in turn, standing patiently while Janna used a short, pointed stick to worry loose any mud or debris that had become caught between the hard outer hoof and the softer frog at the center.
"It would be easier with a steel hoof pick," Ty said.
Janna barely controlled a start. On the meadow grass Ty's bare feet had made no more sound than a shadow.
"If I bought a pick, people would wonder what I was planning to use it on. Only one other human being knows that I've tamed…" Janna's voice died when she realized that Ty as well as Mad Jack knew that she mingled with Lucifer's herd. "Could it be our secret?" she asked as she looked at Ty, her voice aching with restraint. "It's bad enough that I turn up from time to time with raw gold. If some of the men around here knew that I could get close to Lucifer, they'd hunt me down like a mad dog and use me to get their hands on him."
Ty looked at the face turned up toward him in silent pleading and felt as though he had been kicked in the stomach. The idea of using Janna to get close to Lucifer had been in the back of his mind since he had realized that Zebra was part of the big black stallion's harem.
They'd hunt me down like a mad dog and use me…
Before Ty realized what he was doing, he cupped Janna's chin reassuringly in his hand.
"I won't tell anyone," he said quietly. "I promise you, Janna. And I won't use you. I want that stud and I plan to have him-but not like that, not by making you feel you had betrayed a trust."
The heat of Janna's tears on his hand shocked Ty, but not as much as the butterfly softness of her lips brushing over his skin for an instant before she turned away.
"Thank you," she said huskily, her face hidden while she resumed working over Zebra's hoof. "And I'm sorry about what I said earlier. You're very much a gentleman, no matter what you're wearing."
Ty closed his eyes and fought against the tremor of sensation that was spreading out from the palm of his hand to the pit of his stomach and from there to the soles of his feet. Before he could prevent himself, he had lifted his hand to his lips. The taste of Janna's tears went to his head more quickly than a shot of whiskey, making him draw in a sharp breath.
You've been without a woman too long, he told himself as he fought to control a combination of tenderness and raw desire.
Yes-and the name of the cure is Janna Wayland.
"No," Ty said aloud harshly.
"What?" Janna said, looking up.
Ty wasn't watching her. He was standing rigid, his face drawn as though in pain. When she spoke, he opened his eyes. She wanted to protest the shadows she saw there, but he was already speaking.
"I'm not what you think," Ty said, his voice rough. "I'm too woman hungry to be a gentleman. Don't trust me, Janna. Don't trust me at all."
Chapter Ten
Under Janna's watchful eyes, Ty sprang onto Zebra's back with a flowing, catlike motion. The mare flicked her ears backward, then forward, accepting Ty as her rider without a fuss.
"I told you she wouldn't object," Janna said. "You've ridden her before."
"Don't remind me," he said. "I've had nightmares about that ride every night since." He leaned down and offered Janna his left arm. "Grab just above the elbow with your left hand, pretend I'm a piece of mane and swing up behind me."