McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [45]
“They’re hired guns.”
Again, Templeton sighed. “I’m trying to be reasonable,” he said. “Perhaps I should have approached Miss Fellows first. You do know that she’s moved onto the old Hanson place?”
Holt’s back teeth came down so hard they nearly severed his tongue. “You stay away from her,” he said.
Templeton raised a bushy eyebrow, and his mustache, the size of a horse’s tail, quivered. He leaned forward to rest his thick arms on the horn of his saddle. “Sweet on her, are you?” he asked smoothly. “Well, well.” He ruminated a bit, studying Holt as if he were a hair in his soup. “You’re new around here, so I guess it’s my neighborly duty to warn you that Miss Lorelei is a known hellcat. Unstable, too.”
Holt took a step toward him, felt Rafe’s fingers close on his upper arm.
“She’s a silly woman,” Templeton confided, with gentlemanly resignation. “Probably thinks she can make that place pay, with two Mexicans to help her and no cattle. She’ll come around to my way of thinking soon enough.” He paused thoughtfully. “Maybe I ought to marry her. Send her off to England to live with my mother.” He laughed, savoring some private thought. “Serve them both right.”
Holt felt heat surge up his neck to throb along his jawline, and he silently cursed himself. It was one thing for the Englishman to get under his hide, and another to let him know it.
“I’d give Miss Lorelei credit for more sense than to take up with the likes of you,” Holt said.
“Would you?” Templeton asked pleasantly. “She took up with Creighton Bannings. That tells me she’s not too choosey, and the judge, well—he’d do just about anything to marry her off. Especially if it meant he’d get the twenty-five thousand dollars I’m willing to pay for that land.” He lowered his voice. “Financial problems, you know. It’s a shame.”
Holt consciously relaxed his jaw. “Are you through? Because if you are, we’ve got a heifer to drag out of the mud.”
“No, Mr. McKettrick,” Templeton said, in a mild tone, “I am not through. Not by a long ways. But I’ll leave our…negotiations for another day.”
“Save yourself the ride,” Holt replied.
“Holt,” John said, “shut your mouth.”
“Good advice,” Templeton put in. Then, calm as a nun in a chapel, he turned his horse around and rode off to rejoin his men.
Within a few minutes, they’d all vanished over the hilltop.
Rafe gave Holt a hard shove from behind. “Don’t you ever get in my way like that again!” he rasped, when Holt whirled to face him.
“I wouldn’t mind a fight, Rafe,” he said, clenching his fists. “Right now I really wouldn’t mind a fight.”
Rafe beckoned with the fingers of both hands, his face hard with fury.
“Come on, then,” he answered. “I’d be glad to accommodate you.”
John stepped between them, standing sideways with one palm on Rafe’s chest and one on Holt’s. “Damn it,” he growled, “if either one of you throws a punch, I’ll personally chuck you into that mud hole headfirst!”
Rafe and Holt glared at each other, both of them seething, their breath coming hard, but neither of them moved.
John waited them out.
“Why don’t you just go back to the Triple M?” Holt snapped, heading back toward the cow and picking up the rope.
“Why don’t you just go to hell?” Rafe retorted.
“I’ll be goddamned,” John said.
All of a sudden, Rafe grinned. He was like that. Unpredictable. “Were you really a Buffalo Soldier?”
“I’m still a Buffalo Soldier,” John answered. “And right now, I’m giving the orders on this place.” He glowered at Holt. “Regardless of whose name is on the deed.”
Holt felt like he was sixteen again, learning to do as he was told, and he didn’t like it one bit. Just the same, he got behind that no-account heifer and pushed.
Rafe put a shoulder to the other flank. “I’d like to meet this Lorelei woman,” he said. “I think Templeton was right about one thing. You’re sweet on her.”
Holt flushed, and he hated that as much as he hated feeling like a kid and pushing on a cow’s ass. “The hell I am,” he growled, putting all his strength into the task of separating the heifer and the mud hole. “The only