Page 25 of Unwilling Wolf

Garret tossed the stable boy a nickel. The young man gave him a baffled smile and waggled his eyebrows. “She sure is a spitfire, mister.”

Garret didn’t know if that was a compliment. “Find yourself a nice lady when you get older.”

“I would settle for that kind,” he said, twitching his head toward Eliza as she stomped past. “Seems excitin’. Hey, your eyes look awful strange in this light.”

Garret turned away from him and headed back to the stall he knew his horse was in. Some people in town were used to his bright eyes, some weren’t. He didn’t know this boy. He was perhaps seventeen or eighteen, and may have stumbled into this town by way of train and found work here.

As he pulled his horse from the stall, Lenny appeared like an apparition with her own horse, as well as Eliza’s, and followed behind him.

“Tired of her?” he guessed, but Lenny didn’t answer. When he tossed a look over his shoulder, she wore a frown and her eyes were downcast. She had bright wolf eyes too. Maybe she’d heard him talking to the stable boy and was trying to keep her eyes shielded.

Outside, he mounted easily and waited as Lenny held Eliza’s horse’s reins. She still hadn’t looked at him, and he was getting the feeling something was off.

Eliza took a hundred years to hoist herself over the saddle and rearrange her skirts just so. Garret now had an eye twitch.

In the amount of time it took Eliza to preen her skirts to adorn her horse’s backside just so, he could’ve ambled back into the saloon at a slow walk and taken a shot to prepare him for whatever obnoxious conversation she would no doubt foist upon him on the long ride home.

She glanced up at his glare. “What? You try riding in skirts.”

Garret held his breath for a five-count, then stifled the growl in his voice as he said, “Lenny, can you take her to the dressmaker please? Get a few readymade dresses and have them put it on my account.” He glared at Eliza. “I can’t stand watching you flounce around in that getup anymore.”

Her chin lifted and she leveled a fiery look at him. “I don’t flounce. And anyway, I don’t need your money. I have my own. It’s not a lot, but it should cover a few dresses.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to Burke and try to find Cookie. You ladies go on ahead and I’ll catch up. I’ll escort you home.”

****

Sitting outside the dress shop astride his restless mount and watching through the large window, Garret fumed. He’d misjudged how long it took women to shop for dresses, and by a long shot. He’d already talked to Burke and Cookie about heading home, which should have given Eliza plenty of time to be in and out of the dressmaker’s shop. They should have been on the road already. Long ago, damn it.

She saw him waiting, by the furtive looks she darted at the window, and if the way she stuck her prim little chin in the air as she spoke to the dressmaker was any indication, chose to ignore his glares. Thunderous looks, if his reflection in the window had any merit.

Lenny had escaped to her horse shortly after he’d arrived, which likely had more to do with her withering under the portly dressmaker’s cold stare, and less to do with the tedium of dress shopping.

When Eliza finally came out of the dressmaker’s shop with three brown paper-wrapped dresses, he was minutes from losing his mind and dragging her from the shop. If she’d thought to teach him patience, she hadn’t succeeded.

“Took you long enough,” he muttered as she handed him the packages.

She ignored him and mounted Buck, who had patiently stood tied to the post out front. He really was a good horse for her, because he was old as dirt and didn’t care how bad Eliza was at riding. While he put the wrapped dresses into his saddlebags, Eliza waited, lips pressed in a line. Oh, now she had nothing to say?

Without another word, he kicked his horse and turned him down Main Street toward the Lazy S.

“Your manners really are atrocious,” Eliza sang after him.

Though he couldn’t resist throwing her a steely glare, he held his tongue. The woman was a splinter, and maybe it would annoy her, like he’d just been overly annoyed at her not talking to him.

Lenny caught up and rode beside Eliza. After a few times checking on them over his shoulder, he couldn’t help popping off. “You get under my skin.”

“Only thirty years to go,” she muttered.

Chapter Seven

Eliza held back on the ride home to the Lazy S because Garret had made it obvious he didn’t feel like talking to her. He focused instead on Lenny and asked her questions in a different language, which she answered minimally.

A small fraction of unexpected tenderness warmed her for the way Garret treated her friend, though she would never admit that out loud. How had Lenny become such a pivotal part of daily life at the ranch? And Cookie too, for that matter?

Lenny turned in her saddle, glanced at her and nodded her head up to Garret, who led the way on his large bay stallion. The girl was right; she was wasting precious time, and Garret would have no excuse not to listen to her out in this wilderness.

She kicked Buck and pulled him up beside Garret. He must have caught the movement out of the corner of his eye because he said without looking, “You seem better in the saddle. More comfortable. Have you been riding while I was away?”

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