The storm continued to rage. Finally, Nichole scooted close enough to use Daniel’s arm for a pillow. She fell asleep swearing she’d never drink a drop of liquor again as long as she lived. If she lived to get over this headache.
In what seemed like only minutes, gray morning fought its way through the rain. Nichole rubbed her eyes and stretched, waking her headache up along with her body.
Something moved in the shadows, footsteps muffled by faraway thunder still grumbling. Nick came awake in an instant. She reached for her knife as her gaze focused on the outline of a man.
“Adam,” she whispered at the man too angry to speak standing over her and Daniel.
TWENTY-SIX
“ALL RIGHT, ADAM, stop yelling! I’ll marry her!” Daniel shouted as he shook himself awake and tried to stand in the hay.
“Like hell you will!” Adam jumped toward his brother like a lion in full rage. The sound of the rain on the roof seemed to echo his fury.
Wes, unable to control his laughter, stepped between the two, trying to referee and maintain his balance in the shifting straw. “Hold on, now, Adam,” Wes protested. “If Danny says he only slept beside her, then nothing happened last night worth your getting riled about. Hell, we’ve all slept with her.”
Suddenly, like angry children, the three brothers were shouting and swinging at one another. Daniel’s emotions, which he’d kept so locked away for months, exploded. Adam took his anger out on them both. Wes, well, Wes just loved a good fight and never wasted time looking for reasons.
Nichole watched from the loft ladder as hay and fists flew in the shadowy light of early morning. The storm outside was nothing compared to the one going on in the barn. These three men she’d grown to love and think highly of were scrapping like wild wolves.
“Stop it!” she yelled as they all three tumbled into the back of the loft and began to roll into one huge ball of arms and legs. “Stop it!” she shouted again as the ball slammed into one wall and changed direction. Dust from the rafters sifted down like fine wheat flour over everything.
Thank goodness no one was around. Willow had said, if the rain continued, she and the women would be loading wagons at first light for Sunday service. They didn’t want to trudge through the mud and across the bridge to the church in their Sunday best. These three wild McLains would probably frighten poor Willow to death.
Nichole thought of firing her Colt, but she didn’t want the entire community to hear the shot from the church and come running. She looked around the neat workroom below the loft. The pot of cold coffee was the only thing on the table.
Dropping a few rungs down the ladder, she grabbed the pot and hauled it back up. With one mighty swing, she flung the cold liquid through the air toward the pile of men she once thought reasonable.
They broke apart yelling as the cold, grounds-thickened liquid splattered them all.
“I said stop it!” Nichole stood in front of them like an angry parent as she fought down a smile. “What do you think you are doing? Wiping out the McLain family from within?”
To her shock, all three men broke into laughter.
Adam stood and wiped his face on his sleeve. “You sound just like our mother used to,” he said as he moved toward her. “We wouldn’t have hurt one another. Honest, Nick.”
The other two joined Adam. Wes rubbed his jaw. “I’m not so sure. Little Danny boy’s got a real wallop of a right. Maybe one of us should show him how to pull his punches now that he’s finally grown.”
Daniel shoved him with a massive shoulder, and Wes shoved back.
“Stop it,” Nick warned, “or I’ll throw the pot next time. I don’t even know what you’re fighting over. If it’s me, I’m not for the winning by the whole lot of you. I’ve always thought Yankees a little slow-witted with their fast talk, but you three are downright vacant brained.”
Adam took a step toward Nichole, but she raised the pot like a weapon.
Wes raised an eyebrow as if to argue, but Daniel motioned with his head toward the door.
Wes nodded. “We’ll go wash up by the horse trough in the barn,” he offered as they both moved toward the ladder. “Even brainless, we can tell when we’re not wanted. You two need to talk… or something.”
At the opening, he turned and added, “Kid, if Adam gets too hard to deal with, shoot him.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she whispered as the brothers disappeared, leaving Adam and her alone in the dusty hayloft with only the watered-down morning sun for light.
He stood facing her, still rubbing coffee off his three-day growth of beard. “Must I always find you sleeping in my brothers’ arms?” he snapped, still angry. His brown eyes were almost black with smoldering rage.
Without knowing how to answer, she doubled up her fist and swung, but he saw the punch coming this time. He blocked and pulled her to him as he tumbled backward onto the hay.
He held her close, letting her struggle, feeling her anger. Dear God, he loved her. He loved her more than he’d ever loved anything or anyone in his life, but the harder he tried to hold her the more she struggled. She was a fighter to the core. He might have the advantage now, but she wouldn’t stop and eventually she’d find freedom, or he’d make a mistake and she’d break from his hold.
It would take a strong man to hold Nichole, but not this kind of strength, he realized.
He opened his arms and she jumped to her knees, whirling to face him, ready to fight. Her clothes were wrinkled and dusty. Her hair, cut short against her head, made her eyes seem even larger. Her entire body was tense with the spirit of a survivor. She’d never looked more beautiful to him, more desirable.
Adam lifted his hands in surrender and lowered his head. He couldn’t even look at her without wanting her so dearly all other thought left him. Maybe she was right, maybe he was brainless. He could never fight and keep her, yet he wasn’t sure he had the strength to let go and allow her freedom.
Nichole relaxed when she saw he wasn’t going to grab her. “Don’t ever try to hold me like that again or I’ll…”
“You’ll what?” Adam’s head snapped up and brown eyes challenged green. “You’ll shoot me for wanting to protect you? You’ll cut me deep for helping you? Tell me, dearest Shadow, how do you kill someone who loves you?”
“I don’t need you to protect me.” She saw her words slice him like a knife. “I can take care of myself.” Couldn’t he see by offering to protect her, he was telling her he didn’t believe she could take care of herself? He was silently calling her weak, something no one had done in years. His words of assistance were an insult, not an endearment. But he couldn’t see it.
Adam rose to one knee. “That’s right. You don’t need my help. You’ve proven it over and over. You don’t need anyone or anything, do you, Nick? You can’t even think you might, because if you did that would be a weakness and there are no weaknesses in you. You’re the finest, the best, the strongest, the fastest…”
She stood and checked her Colt’s strap. “That’s right,” she said, wishing his words hadn’t sounded so hard. How could something she’d always been proud of sound so wrong when he voiced it?
Adam stared at her, wanting to scream that she’d learned to be everything but a woman, and all he wanted, needed, was that woman somewhere inside her to be his woman… his love… his other half. But he couldn’t hurt her, no matter how angry he was, by voicing his thoughts.
“We caught the two shooters just after you left.” He broke the silence between them. “Thanks to one talking, we rounded up the third outlaw. He wasn’t hard to identify with a cut across his throat.”
There was so much more he wanted to say, but he stayed with the facts. “Wes and I stood guard over all three until the sheriff arrived yesterday. The sheriff thinks Mole and the deputy might be involved somehow, but he can’t prove it, so he’s having both of them watched.