Sweetbriar Read online

  Cord Macalister stood in the open doorway. “Well, if you ain’t a sight for sore eyes.” His eyes raked her sleep-flushed face, golden hair flowing across her shoulders, down her back, the unbuttoned dress revealing a full curve of her breast.

  “Cord, I didn’t expect…”

  “You ’spectin’ Mac? Well, he’s luckier’n I thought.”

  Linnet hurriedly fastened her dress, pulled her hair back into a long, fat braid. “What can I do for you?”

  He settled himself onto the bench by the table, long legs out in the floor. There was something demanding about Cord Macalister that made you pay attention to him, made you always aware of his presence. “I’m just bein’ neighborly. Thought we might like to get to know one another.” His eyes held amusement as she had to step over his legs to get to the fireplace.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, but I have to prepare supper.” He watched her as she hurriedly scraped potatoes and threw them into the pot.

  “Seems like a lot of food for one so little as you,” he commented.

  “It’s for Devon. He eats supper here.”

  “Well now, that’s real cozy for him, ain’t it?”

  “It’s little enough to repay him.”

  He lazily looked at her body, considering her without clothes, then brought his eyes back to hers. “I just reckon I could find another way to have a debt repaid, if you owed it to me.”

  A knock on the door made Cord shout, “Come in,” before Linnet could get there to answer it.

  Devon lost his smile when he saw Cord and turned cold eyes to Linnet.

  “I didn’t know you had company. I’ll just go tend to my own business.”

  “Now, cousin, don’t be that way. This little lady’s cookin’ a mighty fine supper. I’m sure there’s enough for both of us.”

  Devon shot Linnet a look of contempt. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt anythin’. Good night.” He closed the door behind him.

  Linnet started after him but Cord caught her arm. “Leave him be. He’s always been like that. Got the quickest temper you ever saw. Never could say nothin’ to that boy without him gettin’ riled.”

  Linnet’s eyes caught Cord’s and flashed anger at him. “And you knew this about him and deliberately provoked his anger.”

  Cord gave her an incredulous look. “Well now, you might say I did, but then when the game’s a pretty little thing like you, I’d say any way of huntin’ was all fair.” He held her arm, running his hand over her from wrist to elbow.

  She pulled away from him angrily. “Now that you’ve invited yourself to supper, you may as well eat it….” She tossed half-raw stew into a wooden bowl, splattering the front of her dress.

  Cord was fascinated. In thirty-six years, no woman had found his charm resistible—any woman he decided he wanted, that is. The reluctance of this one held him in awe. He ate slowly, unmindful of the food, but watching Linnet as she angrily stabbed a needle in and out of what looked to be a man’s shirt. When he’d finished, he rose and stretched, white fringe whirling about him, beads glittering in the firelight, grinning when he saw Linnet watched him. “Miss Tyler, honey, it’s been a real interestin’ evenin’, real interestin’, but I got to be goin’.”

  She nodded. “Good night.”

  He flashed a smile at her, then paused at the door, thoughtfully. “Sweetbriar ain’t never been one of my favorite stoppin’ grounds, but I just may change my opinion of it real soon. Might be nice to stay around here this winter and just see what happens.” He left her alone.

  Cord walked into Devon’s store, expecting the people who waited there for him. He was a good storyteller, and his visits were enjoyed. With a grin at the eager children before the fireplace, allowed to sit up late on Cord’s first night in Sweetbriar, he went to where his cousin stood by the wide counter. “Real fine cook that little lady of yours.”

  Devon turned cold eyes up to the man, ten years older than he, but his rival most of his life. “I don’t remember puttin’ a brand on her.”

  “Just wanted to hear it again. Sweet words they is, too.” He sauntered toward the fireplace, beginning a story already.

  Chapter Six

  LINNET STOOD QUIETLY IN THE DOORWAY FOR A moment, a cloth-covered basket under her arm. She watched Cord, surrounded by enraptured people, his big blondness, the white of his fringed buckskins, setting him apart from the others. Doll Stark caught her arm and silently motioned her to a door at the back of the store. No one noticed her as she opened it, thinking it led outside to the stables. She was momentarily startled when she found herself in another room, and it took a while to adjust to the darkness before she saw Devon lying on the narrow bed, his shirt and boots thrown onto a bench. His dark skin gleamed in the moonlight, his black hair thick, curling about his neck. She marveled at how young he looked, how like one of Crazy Bear’s braves. She thought of the necklace he’d worn the night of her rescue.

  She tiptoed to a bench by the bed. She should leave, she thought, she should leave the basket of food for him and go away. His fingers twitched in some dream. How much she wanted to touch him! His eyes were open, staring at her, the blue so incongruous with the dark skin.

  “Brought your supper,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t have come in here except Doll Stark pointed this way and I thought the door led outside,” she explained too rapidly. Of course that didn’t explain why she was sitting two feet from him or why she had put out her hand to touch his warm fingers.

  He sat up, bare feet on the floor, and ran his hand through his thick hair, and she wondered if his hair was coarse or soft. There was no hair on his chest, just clean, dark skin, long, lean muscles.

  “You didn’t have to bring me anything.”

  She smiled, trying to keep her eyes on his face. “I know I didn’t, but I wanted to. I couldn’t let you go hungry, not after it was my fault that you hadn’t eaten or slept.”

  He took the basket from her. “I get pretty mad sometimes and say things I don’t mean. Oh, Lord! Don’t tell me this is fried chicken.”

  “An entire chicken and a whole apple pie.”

  “I think I can eat it all.”

  “I thought you could.” As Devon bit into a chicken leg, she looked around the room. There was a shelf on the far wall, and she went to look at the ornaments there. She couldn’t see them very well in the darkness, but they were more of the wooden ornaments she had seen in the front of the store. She ran her hands over one of them, enjoying the smoothness of the carving, as Devon watched her. “You made these?”

  He nodded, his mouth full.

  “Devon, do you know that these are works of art? That if you were in the East they could be sold for high prices?”

  He paused a moment before resuming eating. “Just whittlin’. My pa was a lot better’n me.”

  “I can’t imagine that.” She picked up another piece. “What was he like, your father, I mean?”

  Devon smiled. “He was a good man. Ever’body liked him. Best pa a boy could have. Let me alone when I needed it, tanned me when I needed it.”

  “He wasn’t very old when he died, was he?”

  “No,” Devon stated flatly.

  “How did it happen?” she asked quietly.

  “Bear.” Devon seemed to put some of his grief in that one word, grief that he’d felt after he’d seen his beloved pa torn apart by that bear. Gaylon had held him and kept him from tearing into the animal with his bare hands. Devon wondered later how the old man had had the strength, since Devon was already a strong young man of twenty-three.

  “Take some of ’em if you want,” he motioned to the figures, “or all of ’em, I don’t care.”

  “Devon, you should care. They’re beautiful, and you can’t just give them away indiscriminately.”

  “Whatever you mean, I don’t know.”

  “You can’t give them away to just anyone.”

  “Why not?” he demanded. “They’re mine, and there’s plenty more where they came