Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men) by S. K. McClafferty Page A

however, with an invitation in those big gray eyes, and
trail grit or no, it’s a circumstance I may decide to remedy.”
    “Blackguard,” Reagan said, snatching up the trade blanket,
flinging it at his handsome head. “Your threats don’t worry me none!”
    Peeling the wool blanket from his face, Jackson watched her stomp
off in the direction of the Popo Agie River. Once she was out of sight, he
released the breath he’d been unconsciously holding. “My dear Miss Dawes, I
assure you it was no idle threat. I fear that I am not the sort of man a woman
toys with.” Josephine chose that moment to put in an appearance, sidling around
the comer of the lean-to. Slinking to his side, the young mountain cat pushed
her nose under his hand, begging for attention. Jackson stroked her broad head,
scratching her ears and watching as she closed her eyes in a perfect show of
feline ecstasy. “Bon jour,
ma petite. You’ve had a good prowl, and now
you come home to Papa, eh?” He laughed low as Josephine tried to insinuate
herself onto his lap, then pushed her off good-naturedly. “Alas, cher, things have changed since
you went off to have your sport. There is another woman in camp. An irascible
young woman, quite impossible to ignore.”
    Impossible to ignore, Jackson thought. Reagan Dawes was definitely
that, and he already regretted taunting her, probably due to the fact that he
wasn’t altogether certain just how much of what he had said was jest, and how
much was truth. He knew only that when he had awakened to find her smoky gray
gaze locked on him, he had reacted instantly, instinctively. His body, already
in a state of arousal, had hardened to the consistency of granite, and he had
wanted nothing more in that moment than to strip the mannish clothes from her
fine white body, to lay her down in the grass and....
    Unconsciously, his fingers tightened in Josephine’s fur. The cat
gave a soft yowl of protest, and with a sigh Jackson released her. Those
ill-fitting rags the girl wore, her disheveled state, should have been
deterrent enough to keep her safe from his rampaging lust. Yet he seemed to
have no trouble gazing through the dust and baggy linen, the old felt hat, and
the perpetual scowl to the beauty beneath.
    Sighing once more, Jackson sat up, closing his fringed shirt,
belting it at the waist. Though he hated to admit it, G. D. had been right
about one thing: he had no business setting himself up as the girl’s protector.
It was rather like appointing a marauding wolf as shepherd to a flock of tender
newborn lambs.
     
    “Of all the high-handed, arrogant, low-minded ...” Reagan searched the dark
recesses of her mind, but she couldn’t find a fitting epithet to describe his
ungentlemanly behavior. Pausing on the banks of the Popo Agie River, the dark
waters of which reflected the ever-changing sky, she tried to analyze which
made her more angry: his bold hints at seduction, or the fact that his
scandalous talk thrilled some secret part of her, the part that had been caught
ogling a strange man in a most improper manner while he slept.
    “I wasn’t ogling,” she insisted softly. “Not really. I was
curious, was all.”
    But the argument sounded lame even to her own ears, and a furious
blush leaped to her cheeks, bringing with it uncomfortable heat.
    To combat it, Reagan knelt by the river’s edge, and cupping her
hands, plunged them into the icy flow. Then, catching sight of her reflection,
she froze, her dripping hands poised in midair.
    The creature staring back at her from the placid surface of the
river bore little resemblance to the prideful young woman who’d pranced and
sashayed through Bloodroot, dashing the hopes of potential suitors to bits with
her scathing glance. The strain of the past few months had put hollows in her
cheeks and smudged the fragile skin beneath her eyes with pale blue shadows,
barely glimpsed beneath the thin layer of grit clinging to her face, hands, and
throat. Here and there