Carole Howey - Sheik's Glory

  GLORIOUS DECEPTION

  "I'm not doing this very well," Flynn admitted. He sounded more than a little awkward, which might have been an act on his part, but it nevertheless made Missy warm to him all the more. "It's been a very long time since II mean"

  Flynn made a sound of disgust and turned away from her, shaking his head. Despite her terror and confusion, Missy wanted to hear the words he was having such difficulty uttering. She'd never put much credence in the notion of love at first sight, but she'd known the instant she saw him in the stable that she could easily lose her heart to this man. Was it possible that he had felt those same strong feelings and was even now struggling to understand them himself? Her mouth went dry at the possibility.

  She longed to say something light and witty, something that would put them both at ease. But all she could do was waiting for him to reveal his soul to her.

  "I have a letter of debt," he whispered, holding on to her arms, "signed by your late uncle. It makes me half owner of your ranch."

  Summary

  Hoping to maintain ownership of her horse ranch, no-nonsense beauty Missy Cannon enters a battle of wills with Flynn Muldaur, who has won half the ranch in a gambling bet and seeks to obtain the rest.

  Jennifer Doll Missy Cannon had traveled to Louisville to buy mares for her South Dakota horse farm and visit an old friend. She doesn't expect to gain a partner she doesn't want and a young ward, Gideon, she can't resist. As it turns out though, the man she shouldn't like, but doesn’t, Flynn Muldaur, is her equal partner in the C-Bar-C ranch. Flynn Muldaur doesn't know what to make of the feisty Missy, but he is determined to live at the ranch and run it with her. Although both are attracted to each other, neither will admit it until Gideon decides to exploit their natural attraction. He has found a mother in Missy and now he's decided Flynn will make a fine father. All he has to do is make them realize that they love each other. But, unfortunately, everything is not as simple as Gideon thinks because Flynn has secrets that could prove dangerous to them all. There are many obstacles that Flynn and Missy must overcome in order for their love to survive.

  PART ONE

  SIC TRANSIT GLORIA

  Chapter One

  February, 1892

  Missy Cannon's first mistake was wearing gloves to the Louisville breeders' auction. Thanks to her inclination to touch everything, they were already stained and wilted, and she'd only been out for two hours. Her second mistake was slipping away from Joshua Manners and Mr. and Mrs. Foster, who had escorted her. She wondered, as she entered the busy stable behind the auction arena, if she was about to embark on her third error of the young day.

  She was sure of it.

  A nearby gray yearling lifted its black, broom like tail and released an avalanche of excrement. Missy was not quick enough to react, and the droppings exploded on the cobblestone floor, spattering fresh manure onto the ribboned hem of her last clean dress, formerly a suitable shade of navy blue. She eyed the damage sadly. Allyn had scolded her that very morning before they'd left for the auction about the further destruction of her wardrobe.

  ''Hey! Gangway!"

  Missy started at the harsh order. A surly groom pushed by her leading a reluctant gelding, not seeming to notice, or care, that she was a lady.

  "'Scuse me." His mutter seemed more a taunt than a courtesy. The horse, adding injury to insult, stepped on her toe as he moved forward. She smothered a mild curse at the familiar pain. Her black velvet pumps were ruined now, of course. Another casualty of her folly. Her toe throbbed besides, but that, she knew, was not why she felt like crying.

  "Bugger off!"

  Missy jerked her head up at the crude sentiment and glared at the groom. "I beg your pardon!" she exclaimed with a haughty disdain learned from Allyn. "How dare you!"

  "Bugger off, I tell ya!"

  The fellow she'd addressed looked abashed at her rebuke, but clearly it had not been he who had made the vulgar remark, for the second time she heard it, she saw that his lips did not move. Moreover, the words had obviously been uttered by someone far younger than he. A boy. The man before her glanced over his shoulder at the stall on the far side, then shrugged his sloped shoulders before moving along without another word to her. Huffing with sudden humiliation, Missy hurried away from him. Since he went forward, she moved along back, deeper into the cavernous stable.

  "Wet behind the ears?" A man's voice rasped an ugly chuckle. "More like he's still wettin' his drawers, wouldn't you say, Hike? How old are you, boy?"

  Missy stood beside the closed door of the stall from which both the coarse language and the rough voice had come. Inside, a horse nickered nervously. Missy felt a knot form in her stomach, although she was not sure why.

  "Never you mind how old I am!" It was a young voice that answered the rough one. Painfully young. Too young. "I'm here, and I'm lookin' after this horse. Why don't you mind your own damn business?"

  Missy winced at the swear word uttered by the otherwise sweet, if youthful, voice. The boy who used it could not know how ugly he sounded. Whatever would his mother think?

  "Well, you look after her good, 'cos she's headed for the glue factory," another older voice remarked, taking unmistakable glee in reporting his news. "I got an order right here, says we're to take her at the close of business if she ain't sold. This'll be her third day on the block, and no one's come close to an opening bid."

  "She'll sell." There was more bravado than confidence in the youth's retort.

  "Ain't sold yet," the first voice pointed out.

  "They put 'er up at the end of the day," the boy complained. "When everybody's gone home for supper."

  "Everybody but you." There was contempt in the older man's observation. "I guess you live with this here nag, don't you, boy? You sure smell like it."

  "I could do plenty worse."

  Missy could not help smiling at the lad's cheeky implication, even as she questioned his good sense in baiting the men.

  "Well, I guess you better find yourself someplace else to bed down after today." The laughter of the two men was cruel. Missy winced at the grating sound, unable to deny a stab of pity for the boy, and for the animal he defended. "She'll sell." There was even less conviction in the quaking young voice this time.

  "She won't hold to service, and she shows a lot of daylight," sneered one of the mare's detractors. "Buyers ain't blind."

  The boy apparently had no answer for that. Missy ruminated: a mare with overly long legs, especially one who couldn't carry a foal, was next to useless in thoroughbred breeding. She started to edge away from the stall as quietly as she could.

  "You brush and curry her good, so she'll be all pretty for the glue wagon," the second man advised. "We'll be back for her at four."

  Missy stopped and shuddered, not from the February chill, although it was cold and drafty in the bustling stable. She hated to think of a creature as noble as a horse ending its life in so mean a fashion, even a leggy, barren mare.

  "Glue wagon, hell!" The boy's voice was hostile and shaking. Missy understood; she almost felt like crying herself. "She'll sell. You'll see. She'll draw an opening bid, and then some, and I'll jam your words down your throat, you sorry-assed sons of bitches!"

  My, but the lad had a mouth on him!

  "Why, you"

  The stable door beside her thumped and rattled. The boy's groan of pain exactly harmonized with the small cry in Missy's heart.

  Don't go in there. Allyn might have been beside her, urging prudence. This isn't your concern.

  "Give 'im one for me, Hike," the other man crowed. "Wiry little bugger. Hold him for me while I break his smart-assed little jaw."

  Missy threw her shoulder against the door and it s
lid back so quickly that she fell face first into the stall.

  Mistake number four.

  "What the"

  "Get out of here!" she gasped, trying to rise, struggling to regain the breath that had been knocked out of her. "Leave this boy al"

  "Leggo, dammit!"

  Missy looked up and saw the small figure in ragged clothing twist away from his captors who, unfortunately, were neither as old nor as inconsequential as they had sounded from the other side of the door. The boy sent a spirited kick into the shin of the man who would have rearranged his facial features before he scampered behind the mare, back by the stall window.

  What was wrong with that boy? she thought, irritated. Why hadn't he run out, as he should have?

  "Who's this bitch?" Hike growled, and Missy felt a pair of strong hands lift her roughly from the straw and shake her like a rag doll. She could not take in enough breath to give him a sharp answer, much as she longed to. She struggled weakly against him, but he only laughed at her efforts.

  "Well, I'll be! A hellcat! And dressed like a queen, to boot. Who is she, boy? Your whorin' ma?"

  "I'm not a whore!" Missy's breath returned in time for her to shout the final word with authority. Hike, no doubt as surprised as she, released her. Her knees buckled, but she kept on her feet, swaying.

  "Look, and she's drunk, besides." His companion laughed. "Would you do me for a nickel, sweetheart? A penny?"

  Her arm was wrenched from behind, and a man's face pressed close to her cheek, his foul breath a cloud of gray mist in the cold stall.

  "Naw, two bits, at least. Can't you see how fine she's dressed?" Hike laughed. It was a sound that would peel paint. Missy scraped her heel down her captor's shin.

  "Eeyowwww!" The hands released her as if she'd suddenly become red-hot. Encouraged by her success, she spun about until she faced both men, her back to the increasingly anxious mare. She fixed a grim look on her face, hoping to mask her fear with it.

  "Get out!" she bellowed at the two men, exercising a commanding tone that not even the most recalcitrant yearling ever resisted. "And don't come"

  "Hie! Hie!"

  It was the boy, and he sounded frantic. She turned to look, but something knocked her shoulder from behind, hard, forcing her down onto the used straw on the floor. The strength of the blow numbed her for an instant before the hot bolt of pain surged through her.

  Realization was slow to take hold as she lay there in pain, but she'd trained enough horses to know that the mare behind her had, in its sudden panic, reared and struck her.

  "Glory! Down!" Through her swimming consciousness and the red glare of fresh pain, Missy heard the boy try frantically to calm the animal. He wasn't having much success, apparently, for the floor thundered at her ear as the horse's hooves landed close to her head, over and over. Must roll away, she thought. She tried to move. She could not command her limbs. At any moment those pummeling hooves would strike her, and she'd be dead where she lay.

  "Damn fools!"

  Before she could catalog the new voice, except to recognize it as male, she was seized by the shoulders. She hurt too much even to cry out against the treatment. She was dragged a good distance across the fouled straw, then dropped unceremoniously like a sack of grain.

  She struggled against her cumbersome skirt to sit up, hoping to breathe, hoping to live past the pain, and cursing silently at the foolish bustle that hampered her efforts. It had shifted to the side, where it had no business

  being. She hated the infernal things, anyway. Back home in Dakota, she never wore them except maybe to church on Sundays. When she'd been a lady's maid to Allyn Cameron back in Philadelphia, she'd never had need for one. Truth to tell, she didn't know why she needed one now, except as tribute to the gods of fashion. It was more troublesome than it was attractive in any case, especially just now.

  Why on earth was she thinking about bustles? Here she was in a stinking stall with her shoulder on fire. Gingerly she sank back against a small pile of straw. Ordinarily she found the various smells of horses to be, on the whole, rather pleasing, but combined with the unrelenting waves of pain, they made her want to retch.

  "Calm that horse, boy, or it'll be the worse for both of you." The new voice was deep and clear, like a rain-filled quarry. It was also more than a little annoyed. Missy wished she could crawl away without being noticed, but figured her chances of that were slim, at best. Her shoulder throbbed so from the mare's kick that she saw stars dance in the darkness around her.

  Missy closed her eyes again and swallowed hard to keep from being sick from the pain. The sounds of a hasty retreat brushed past her ear, and she knew the men who had baited the boy were gone. Good riddance. She'd wanted to take a stick to them for what they'd done, but she would have to satisfy herself that they'd been scared off. She tried to get up.

  "Oh!"

  She hadn't meant to cry out loud, but the burning pain in her shoulder squeezed the sound from her lips.

  "Trying to kill yourself? Don't move. It's dislocated."

  Missy knew it was so. She'd known it before she heard the words. She wanted to retort to the terse, dispassionate voice, but she was afraid she'd cry out again if she opened her mouth. Instead she tried to open her eyes.

  She was sure she hadn't succeeded, for all she saw before her, like an illusion born of pain, was the face of an angel. An angry angel, but an angel nonetheless. She might have believed she'd died and gone to heaven but for the stern, censuring expression on the angel's face, the unremitting stench all around her, and the constant, tearing ache in her shoulder.

  She remembered a picture from her childhood which had always held a morbid fascination for her, from the old family Bible, the only memento she had of her deceased Georgia kin. The bookplate was a fanciful rendering of the angel whom God had expelled from heaven. She could not recall his name, but that seemed unimportant. What was important was that the angel had had an ascetic, yet oddly sensual, sculpted face: hollow cheeks, a perfect cleft chin, a high, noble brow ridge, and intense, deeply set eyes. His hair had been fair and curly, piling perfection on top of perfection.

  But had his eyes been the lush, endless blue of the replica before her?

  How could they have? she chided herself. It was a print, not a painting.

  The angel spoke.

  "What kind of a damn fool are you, ma'am? That horse could have killed you. And those men . . ."

  His reprimand trailed off, as if he figured she needed no enlightenment as to their intentions. Missy's delusion was effectively shattered. Her shoulder ached again, and she felt sick, besides.

  "Let me up."

  "Best lie still till I fix you. That shoulder's bad."

  Flynn Muldaur knelt beside the woman and pressed her backward with a slight pressure against her breastbone. She was smaller than she'd seemed moments ago when she'd turned on those two fools in the stall. And weaker. His hand went gentle, to his surprise, when he touched her. Weak? This woman? Not likely.

  So this is Melissa J. Cannon, he thought, cautiously feeling around her injured shoulder for the damage. Orphaned at a young age by the War between the States. Trainer of horses, specialty thoroughbred stock. Former owner, with Allyn Cameron, now Allyn Cameron Manners, of the stallion Sheik, who'd won the Triple Crown and the Travers in '89, and races since too numerous to count. Current owner of the C-Bar-C ranch, just outside of Rapid City, South Dakota.

  For now.

  Melissa Cannon held her breath. She squeezed her eyes and her mouth shut tight. She was scared, he guessed, with a twinge of pity. But she looked as if she'd rather die of the pain than admit it.

  She was prettier than he'd expected, thank God, even with her face all puckered like a dried piece of fruit. She looked smaller, too; he'd been told that Melissa J. Cannon was quite an armful of woman. So far, though, she'd lived up to her reputation in every other regard: blunt, outrageous, unpredictable. He'd followed her when she left the auction area, for no better reason than to dis
cover where she might be going, and he was chagrined but not overly surprised to see her make for the stable. What had surprised him was to find her in a stall defending a foulmouthed urchin against two boorish ruffians.

  Flynn felt a smile test the muscles of his face as he surveyed the wreckage that was Miss Melissa Cannon. She was wearing a bonnet that had once, no doubt, been a stylish trig, but it was sadly smashed and sat at a queer angle on her dark mass of hair. Her face was the golden brown of one who spent much time in the sun without benefit of either hat or parasol, but the hue of her skin was both becoming and strangely fitting. Her clothing was in ruins.

  She was certainly no lady. Not in the accepted sense, in any event. Flynn could not envision her, for example, participating in such time-honored feminine rites as afternoon tea with the minister's wife, or presiding over mindless chatter in a drawing room. Not like Madeleine . . .