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CHAPTER ONE

Simple, Texas, August 1861

DAMN! HE’D BEEN outmaneuvered by a man twenty years his senior. Luke Bellen leaned against a post on the front porch and observed as the distinguished, blond-haired victor claimed the spoils. The normally smooth-running Hell’s Eight Ranch was bursting at the seams with celebratory chaos. All because Hester MacFairlane had gone and married Jarl Wayfield. Right here at Hell’s Eight, before God, the padre and half the town. No one could have seen that coming.

Luke had to admit though, during the past few weeks of upset, panic and last-minute wedding preparations, the women had managed to soften the ranch’s rough edges. For sure he’d never seen the Hell’s Eight looking so festive. Lazy breezes ruffled the ties on the smartly dressed men, the women’s full skirts and the cheery, bright pink bows tied to every post within sight of the side yard. Everyone was wearing their biggest smile and their Sunday best. And Luke was no exception. But for some reason the whole day—the whole event—was aggravating the piss out of him.

It didn’t matter that he hadn’t seriously been in the game or that he was happy for the bride. Nor that he figured just enough of his father’s teachings lingered in him that he didn’t like to lose. Taking a sip of his lemonade, he grimaced as he swallowed the bitter reality. The truth was that he was jealous. If he could’ve made himself care the way he’d needed to, that could’ve been him standing up there with Hester, thanking the well-wishers and letting the stream of congratulations pour into his annoying internal demand for more and fill it up until it was too sated to nag him.

It might have been easier to accept the loss if Hester had chosen Jarl because the man had more money or more prestige than Luke, but money wasn’t the spur to Hester’s get along. The woman had more confidence than six liquored-up cowboys on a Saturday night. It was one of the things that had attracted him to her. No one could seize an opportunity like Hester, but she was also down-to-earth and perceptive, and she’d seen right through Luke’s not-what-it-should-be interest, then turned to someone who could offer his heart along with his hand. He gave the lemonade a swirl, watching the light play hide-and-seek with the shadows. Dammit. Why the hell hadn’t he been able to offer Hester what she needed?

The bottom step creaked in that familiar way he’d grown used to over the last nine months. He looked up.

“Looks like you could use something stronger,” Ace said, advancing to join him. Sunlight glinted off the whiskey bottle he held up as he leaned a hip against the opposite porch rail.

Luke pushed his hat back. “How’d you know?”

Wry humor lurked in Ace’s blue eyes as he uncorked the bottle. “You’ve never been one for losing gracefully.”

Luke tossed the lemonade over the rail. “Age changes a man.”

Ace snorted and filled Luke’s glass. “You oughtta be six shots into the bottle before you start spitting nonsense like that.”

“I’ll be thirty-two next week.” And beyond a couple dozen novels and his place in the Hell’s Eight, he didn’t have a damn thing to show for the time spent.

“You trying to tell me you can’t still tear up the town?”

No. He just didn’t enjoy it the way he used to. “The difference is, now it takes days to recover.”

Ace filled his own glass. “Thirty-two or not, only a fool would bet against you in a fight.”

Luke looked Ace up and down, from his scuffed boots to his serviceable pants and blue shirt, all the way up to his battered Stetson. The only concession to the formal occasion was a narrow tie around his neck. There was no sense pointing out gamblers were supposed to be sharp dressers. Ace went his own way. Always had. Always would. That didn’t mean Luke couldn’t prod him a bit. “Speaking of bets, after fleecing Jarl’s pockets last week, couldn’t you afford a new suit?”

Ace smiled. “You heard about that?”

“A twenty-six-hour poker game?” Luke swirled the amber liquid and watched a sunbeam make light of the potent beverage. “Do you think anyone in the territory hasn’t?”

Ace’s smile took on a feral edge. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

There would only be one reason for that. Ace was spreading the word. “Banking on a flood of hopefuls challenging you to a fifty-two-card duel?”

“Damn straight. Petunia’s been harping about new furniture. Seems now the walls are painted, what we have is ‘tired and sad.’” Ace took a drink and shook his head. “How the hell does furniture get ‘sad’?”

Luke chuckled. “I haven’t a clue. Did you ask?”

Ace cut him a look. “I might be still a newlywed, but I’m not stupid.”

Ace had married Jarl’s daughter, Petunia Wayfield, last winter. Funny how small the world got when a body stayed in one place too long.

“Well, Petunia is one opinionated woman.”

Ace raised his glass in tacit agreement. “The word you’re looking for is stubborn.”

“Said the pot about the kettle.” Ace and Petunia’s courtship had been as much about love as about compromise. He’d never seen two people more determined to swing the deal to their point of view than those two. And enjoy it. He’d always doubted there’d be a woman who could go toe-to-toe with Ace, but Petunia had proven him wrong. She brought balance to Ace. And he to her.

“What makes you say that?”

Luke took in Ace’s too-long brown hair, and well-worn clothes. Ace was a good-looking man, but he wasn’t one for putting a polish on his shine. “The fact that you haven’t taken me up on that appointment with my tailor.”

“I’m a busy man.”

A year ago, Ace had been a single gambler living above the saloon. Now he had a wife, a house and the responsibility of a school for unwanted children.

“Not only busy, you’re living proof life can change on a gust of wind.” He took a sip of the whiskey. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“Not everything changes.” Ace sobered. “We won’t.”

Luke touched his glass to Ace’s, feeling the weight of the lie as he said it. “No, not us.”

They’d been best friends from the moment they’d met outside the one-room building that served as church, school and town hall in the small border town with Mexico where his father had moved his family. They’d been so innocent then, insulated by their faith in their parents’ dreams. They’d had no understanding of the tensions between the Mexican army and the Texan settlers. They’d just been friends enjoying the sunshine and the wild beauty of their new home. Their friendship had been tested by the onslaught of the war, but nothing had changed their commitment—not the massacre that occurred when the Mexican army had swarmed their town and taken their families, not the years of revenge upon which the eight surviving boys had embarked that had built their reputations as Hell’s Eight, nor the struggle in the last few years to go from wild Texas Rangers to stable ranchers. But this becoming stable thing, it was taking Ace and the rest of the Eight to places Luke couldn’t go. There was no way around it, he wasn’t fitting in as easily with the rest of Hell’s Eight as he used to.

“You could have at least polished your boots.”

Ace held up the bottle. “Yours are polished enough for the both of us.”

Luke held out his empty glass.

“Technically, it’s your turn to be doing the tipping,” Ace pointed out.

“I poured at your wedding.”

“That doesn’t count. Pouring at the wedding is the best man’s job.” Ace refilled each of their glasses and then set the bottle on the sanded planks of the porch. His expression sobered right along with his tone. With a jerk of his chin he indicated the wedding group. “Are you all right with this?”

Ace worried too much. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Maybe because just a while back you were telling me how you’d give your eyeteeth to have a steady woman with whom to settle down, build a family...”

Damn Ace for his memory. “I think I was drinking at the time.”

“Not that much.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Rumor was you were sweet on Hester.”

Luke could feel the weight of Ace’s concern. “She had potential.”

Ace’s gaze turned assessing. “It’s not like you to underestimate a situation.”

Luke switched his attention to the happy couple who were holding hands and sharing a smile warmer than the hot August sun. No doubt about it, they looked right together. Another pang of what-if hit. He shook it off. No bigger waste of a man’s time than pondering what-ifs. “Truth is, I just wasn’t any competition for your father-in-law.”

“Uh-huh.” Despite the skepticism in those two syllables, Ace changed the subject. “Our Hester’s come a long way, hasn’t she?”

“That she has.”

Looking at Hester now, dressed in the beautiful pale pink gown that clashed somehow perfectly with her red, curly hair, it was hard to believe that she’d been abandoned by her husband and forced into prostitution to feed her children. It’d been a scandal around Simple when her new fiancé, Jarl, had filed a petition for divorce on Hester’s behalf to formally sever her ties to her former husband, who’d already remarried. It’d been a bold move that had cost the mayor his position and his new family. Jarl Wayfield didn’t fool around when it came to what was his. Luke had to respect him for that. “Dougall should have done right by Hester rather than trying to grind her into the dirt.”

Ace lifted his drink toward the newlyweds in a silent toast. “Got to respect a man who knows how to dole out payback.”

“Yeah, well, wherever his sorry ass is, I’m sure Dougall wishes Jarl was a bit less proficient. That arrogance of Dougall’s cost him everything.”

Dougall had slipped out of town in the dead of night right after the scandal became public. Disgrace had lingered in his wake like a vindictive cloud. There’d be no getting that reputation back. Especially with Jarl funding explicit wanted posters all over the country. Jarl had no intention of giving the man peace.

Luke took another sip. This time without the grimace. Whiskey had always had a way of making things more palatable. “You know we’re indebted to Jarl now. Hell’s Eight owed Hester for protecting Petunia when that drunk Brian tried to kill her.”

“Petunia only acted after she noticed he was beating his kid every time he tied one on. Which was nightly,” Ace reminded him.

“You don’t have to defend her actions to me,” Luke soothed. “I went with you to fetch him, remember?” Recalling how the boy had looked when they’d rode up to that dilapidated shack Brian called a home, thin and bruised in clothes as tattered as his trust, Luke just gritted his teeth. Some men didn’t deserve their sons. “Doesn’t change the fact that in his eyes, she stole his son.”

Ace’s expression hardened. “He needed stealing.”

Ace had a soft spot for kids and underdogs. “Yeah he did, but I still can’t decide if your wife is one of the bravest women I know or the most foolish. A lot of men would be afraid to go up against Brian and his temper yet Petunia never hesitated.”

Ace’s expression softened around the edges the way it always did when he thought about his wife. “She’s got a reckless side, for sure.”

“To match yours.” Luke smiled, waiting for the inevitable response. It wasn’t long in coming.

Ace glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “I prefer calculated risks to impulsive actions.”

“Uh-huh.” Luke suppressed a smile. “The fact remains, the kid’s much happier living at the orphanage Petunia started.”

“Don’t let Petunia hear you call her school an orphanage. She’d likely spill that drink into the dirt.”

Luke sighed. “The woman has no respect for good liquor.”

“Not a lick.” Ace swirled his drink with a certain satisfaction. “You realize that since Jarl paid our debt to Hester by taking care of Dougall, we now owe that hardheaded son of a bitch.”

“Yup.” And he wasn’t upset with the reality. Texas wasn’t a place for the weak. It was a hard land that demanded strong alliances to survive. Jarl might be an Easterner, but he’d proven himself.

Luke took another drink and let the liquor bite into his melancholy as happiness floated all around him, captured in the melodic trill of songbirds and the laughter of the guests. There, but somehow just out of reach. Damn, weddings were depressing.

A feminine voice rose above the cheer. Sweet and high, resonating with deeper notes that stroked along Luke’s nerves like a silk glove. A tightening in his groin heralded recognition. The little photographer, Josie Kinder. Like a homing pigeon, his gaze narrowed in on her. Jarl had brought the woman out from back East, his wedding gift to Hester—a photographic record of their union. All the guests were excited to have their image plastered flat on a piece of metal. And Josie was just as excited to do it.

Luke was unfathomably excited about the photographer. Unfathomably because, at first glance, she had no confidence, no fashion sense and no social skills. But that first impression didn’t hold up once she brought out her camera. Once she picked up the camera, she changed in an indefinable way that was at once both mysterious and challenging. He was a sucker for a challenge.

He watched her direct people around, the feathers in her beribboned hat bobbing as she bustled about, putting people here and there and positioning them this way and that. She looked for all the world like a child bossing about her elders until she turned sideways and those curves of hers swelled into view. Damn, that woman was blessed with a fine figure.

Ace followed his gaze. He pushed back his hat and his eyebrows rose. “So that’s how it is.”

Luke ignored the twitch of Ace’s lips. The problem with good friends was sometimes they knew you too well.

“Keep your nose out of my business, Ace,” he muttered.

“Like you kept yours out of mine?”

“No.”

Josie bustled about, waving folk back into place as they shifted with impatience. Luke couldn’t help but watch. Whatever it took to make a photograph, it wasn’t quick. She tripped over her skirt. Half the people she’d just positioned—the male half—lunged to catch her. She was completely oblivious to their interest. He could almost hear the collective disappointment as she grabbed the hitching post and saved herself. There was no mistaking her exasperation though when she turned and saw what remained of her perfectly balanced group. “For the love of Pete. You moved!”

He smiled as she snapped her skirts straight and marched back, shooing her would-be rescuers back into position. It’d be a miracle if they got one picture done before the sun set. His cock stirred as he admired her. There was something completely charming about the woman when she went all martinet.

“I wouldn’t have thought her your type,” Ace mused.

Josie finally ducked beneath the little curtain attached to the camera. The position gave him a fine view of her admirable ass. Luke’s cock twitched again.

“Fine women are always my type.”

This time it was Ace who said, “Uh-huh.” No little amount of skepticism in those syllables.

Luke reconsidered his initial decision not to dabble with the little Easterner. Even a night or two in her arms before she headed back East might be worth it. She wasn’t a young girl. He’d place her age around twenty-five. The fact that she’d come out West to take pictures pointed to an independent nature. The two combined made for a chance she’d be open to a discreet encounter. Anticipation thrummed harder as he contemplated that possibility. It’d been a long time since a woman had been able to make him anticipate a glimpse of her.

Ace braced his foot on the bottom railing encompassing the porch and changed the subject. “Did I ever tell you I read your books?”

Shit. He hated for anyone to know he wrote fairy-tale novels about the Wild West for bored Easterners. Let alone read one. His writing was the one thing that connected him to the time before the massacre. The part that didn’t fit the life he’d first been forced into and then, later, chosen. The novels were the only part of the dream his mother had had for him that he’d managed to keep alive. “No.”

Ace just shook his head and sighed. “I don’t know why you’re so secretive about the damn things.”

Luke just shrugged. There was no way to explain he was embarrassed.

“I’ve known you since we were three years old,” Ace said exasperatedly. “Since before the damn Mexican army came into the village and wrecked our lives. I stood with you while we buried your parents. You stood with me while I cried over mine. Hell, you even dropped my bride into my lap when she got all stubborn.”

“What’d you expect me to do? You were being inconveniently self-sacrificing and she wanted to talk my ear off about it.”

“So you kidnapped her and plopped her in my bedroom?”

“Seemed the quickest way to bring back the peace.”

Ace just shook his head and took a sip. “There’s a get-it-done wild side to you. And the woman that’ll match up with you, she’s got to have that same drop-it-in-your-lap wildness.”

Maybe Ace did know him too well. All of the Hell’s Eight had been shifting from wild to leading more acceptable lives, from Caine to the wildest of them all—Shadow. All of them except Luke. “Wild doesn’t match well with acceptable.”

Ace snorted. “Shoot, Luke, there’s about a thousand different ways people interpret acceptable. You just need someone who sees it the way you do. Hester’s a good woman, but she wants a little house with a picket fence perched around it, lemonade on Sundays and a man who loves her. That’s not you.”

“I might have worked up to loving her.” Luke didn’t know why he was belaboring the point. Maybe because he just didn’t want Ace to be right. Or maybe he wanted to be proven wrong.

Ace shrugged. “Maybe you could’ve loved her enough eventually, but for sure she couldn’t ever love you like you need.”

Luke swallowed the last of his drink. “What the hell makes you think that?”

“Because she just sent me over here.”

“What the hell for? She’s up there kissing her husband.”

And she was. With all the enthusiasm that he wanted someone to feel for him. That he wanted to feel for someone, but never had. Sometimes, he wondered if he was dead inside, just a ghost of himself, haunting his own existence.

With a shake of his head, Ace reached into his pocket and drew out a note. “She asked me to give you this.”

Luke took the carefully folded piece of paper. As he opened it, Ace added, “Just like it says there. You need someone who can love you from the inside out.”

He cocked a brow at his friend. “You read it?”

Ace didn’t look even a little bit embarrassed. “Of course.”

Of course. Sometimes being wrapped so tightly in a knot with others was not a bonus. Luke glanced down at the slip of paper. “Then I guess I’d better catch up.”

Luke read the note written in Hester’s blunt, confident style.

Ace’s tone softened as Luke refolded it. “She couldn’t give you what you need, Luke.”

Luke nodded, looking beyond the celebration, beyond the limits of the ranch to the mountains beyond. “I know.”

Inside, the impatience he’d been fighting for months surged, anticipation rode double, prickling along his nerves. It’d been a long time since he’d had an adventure. With Ace married and Hester off the market, his reasons for staying in Simple were few. Almost nonexistent.

His gaze returned to Josie as she grabbed the tintype out of the camera and rushed to the wagon. She was such a mousy woman when not busy taking pictures. So shy he had yet to discern the color of her eyes, but once she brought out that wooden contraption of a camera, the real woman came front and center. Gone was the blushing, tongue-tied miss. And in her place was a woman who knew exactly how to get what she wanted.

It was an intriguing dichotomy. The glimpses of the woman beneath the crushing shyness were like catching a hint of a plot twist in a clever mystery novel. She intrigued and tempted. She was a challenge wrapped up in a self-deprecating package that was very intricately constructed; it just didn’t fit the sense he had in his gut about her. He would love to have a conversation with her, to find out if her mind matched the impact of her body. He had a feeling it did.

He watched as she stumbled getting into the wagon. As he knew she would, she looked over her shoulder at him, eyes narrowed as if he were to blame for her clumsiness. And maybe he was. If she was as aware of him as he was of her, then she had to know he’d been staring. Just as he suspected she’d been staring at him a time or two. A pang of regret wove through the anticipation of a new adventure. Unfortunately, Josie was one bit of exploration he was going to miss. He didn’t have the time or the patience for a fling. With a defiant toss of her head, she climbed into the wagon. And that fast, he reconsidered his decision. Some challenges just begged to be met.

* * *

HE WAS WATCHING HER. The well-dressed man with the broad shoulders and I-dare-you glare was watching her. Josie could feel his gaze like fingertips skimming her skin with sensual inquiry, looking for a reaction and getting it as her fingers trembled and her neck muscles tightened. If he were touching her, he’d feel the heat rise off her skin, see the pink flush of her cheeks. Oh darn, maybe he could see it from over there. She ducked her head just a little. Just enough for the shade of her bonnet to provide cover from potential revelation.

Look away. Look away.

The plea went unheard. More prickles of awareness flustered her composure. Even more flustering was the reality of who that man was. Luke Bellen. One of the infamous Hell’s Eight. Men said to chew nails and spit bullets, eat danger for breakfast and gather women like wildflowers. Another shiver went down her spine at the thought. She didn’t want to be gathered.

Liar.

The accusation came from within.

“Traitor,” she whispered back. The last thing she needed right now was an ill-advised sense of temptation distracting her from the job for which she’d traveled so far. She was here to commemorate the wedding of her Uncle Jarl. Big and blustery, a handsome, hard-eyed businessman, Jarl Wayfield was very dear to her, and while not actually blood, he was as close to a real father as she’d ever had. From the day he’d come courting her mother, they’d had a bond. When his relationship with her mother had ended, he’d stuck around in the background of Josie’s life. She’d long since stopped wishing he was her father and instead settled for the security he offered.

He was probably the only one who saw the sense of adventure that lurked beneath her persistent shyness. And he’d indulged it by summoning her away from the smothering small town in which she’d been born and the ever-stifling presence of her overly judgmental mother. Without him she wouldn’t have this opportunity to see the West, to indulge her passion for taking pictures. She owed him so much. Too much to let six feet of wide-shouldered, lean-hipped, dark-haired pure temptation take her off task. Still feeling the weight of Luke Bellen’s gaze, she hurried on, almost dropping the tintype in the rush to her wagon.

Darn it!

The wagon had been an off-the-cuff purchase, but she only had so long to develop her images and hard experience told her that in a household environment, no one respected her need for darkness to do her work. They were forever trying to shed light on her process. These images were too important to risk. Jarl giving her this opportunity to photograph his wedding meant the world. His faith in her ability to forever capture this precious time was a much-needed boost to her flagging confidence. Being dumped like yesterday’s garbage by the man to whom she’d thought she’d been discreetly engaged for the past five years had been a hard lesson in humility. And shame. She’d been a fool to let Jason convince her to keep their engagement a secret. She’d been more than a fool. She’d been an accomplice in her own humiliation when he’d announced his engagement to another. And worse, expected her to understand.

She grimaced as she opened the back of the peddler’s wagon and stepped up. She hadn’t understood. She’d wanted to kill him. Her foot slipped and her knee scraped the metal edge. She bit back a cry and the need to burst into tears. She hated being emotional. She hated being clumsy even more. And truth was, she was only clumsy when she was under scrutiny. So it was really all Bellen’s fault.

Holding the tintype securely, she glared over her shoulder at the cause of her distress. He didn’t even have the decency to show remorse. Instead, he stood up there on the porch with another of the Hell’s Eight, nonchalantly leaning against the rough-hewn support, looking for all the world like a lion surveying his pride. She had the childish urge to stick out her tongue.

As if he heard the thought, he smiled at her, a slow, knowing smile. The full-on flush started in her toes, crept up her thighs, heated her chest and burned in her cheeks. It was sheer bravado that had her snubbing him with a lift of her chin before pure unadulterated cowardice sent her diving into the wagon. Cowardice had often been the bane of her existence. And sometimes, her salvation.

The door banged shut behind her. Placing the undeveloped tintype on the plank counter, she braced herself, hands spread across the uneven wood as she took a steadying breath. She was twenty-six years old, for heaven’s sake. Far too old to be undone by a man’s glance. But there was something about Luke that just ferreted its way past the defenses she’d built up over the years and reduced her to the cripplingly shy child she’d been. She hated it. She wanted to blame him. And if he only would say or do something other than observe her from afar, she probably could. But he didn’t.