To Tame a Wolf

“You have a very nice—” He looked pointedly at her chest. She’d bound her breasts, but he’d seen what lay underneath the wrappings. “You still have to pay a price for my saving your cow, Miss Bernard.”

“She isn’t my cow.”

“Seems everything you touch ends up belonging to you.” His grin vanished. “Why is that, Tally?”

She faltered under his stare. He put his hands on her hair, slid them down to cup her face.

Mon Dieu. It was truly happening. Not like before, when he’d stolen a kiss just to prove his indifference. There was no indifference in him now. And none in her.

“What will you give me, Tally?” he whispered.

She closed her eyes. “Everything.”

Praise for Susan Krinard

THE FOREST LORD

“This story, a mating of Regency romance and old myths, is enchanting, creating a world and characters to dream upon…. The use of fae characters and ways spices up the story, turning a tale of romance between different classes into a different and magical read.”

—Affaire de Coeur

SECRET OF THE WOLF

“With riveting dialogue and passionate characters, Ms. Krinard exemplifies her exceptional knack for creating an extraordinary story of love, strength, courage and compassion.”

—Romantic Times

TO CATCH A WOLF

“[E]ach scene richly paves the way for an explosive, satisfying conclusion.”

—Romantic Times Top Pick

TOUCH OF THE WOLF

“Touch of the Wolf is a mystical, enthralling read, brimming with lyrical prose, powerful emotions, dark secrets and shattering sensuality.”

—Eugenia Riley, bestselling author of Bushwhacked Bride

ONCE A WOLF

“Once again Ms. Krinard brilliantly delivers a gripping romance, turning every emotion inside out to expose all the facets of love. She holds you spellbound with her magic.”

—Rendezvous

To Tame a Wolf

Susan Krinard

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

PROLOGUE

Hat Rock, Texas, 1866

THE OLD DRUNK, Charlie, was the one who came to tell Sim his mother was dead.

Others would have known earlier, of course—the madam of the brothel, Evelyn’s fellow soiled doves…and any number of clients, respectable and less so, who frequented the Rose of Texas. Gossip traveled fast in a whorehouse.

None of them bothered to pass the tragic news to Evelyn’s only son. Charlie came not because he gave a damn about Sim, but because carrying the story made him feel important. More important than a worthless, troublemaking sixteen-year-old tramp.

Sim, standing in the dusty street in front of Hat Rock’s pathetic excuse for a bank, heard Charlie’s slurred speech without emotion. He’d learned to hide his feelings early on, when he figured out that Ma couldn’t be trusted from one moment to the next. Sometimes she cuddled him and called him “my son,” but more often she cursed him as the bane of her life, the burden who had ruined her for the better things she deserved.

Sim clenched his fists and walked out of the cloud of Charlie’s whiskey-soaked breath. He strolled down the center of Main Street, making the carriages and buckboards and horsemen go around him.

Ma was dead. She’d been going at it a long time, riddled with some kind of wasting disease. But she’d kept working, even when only the lowest clients would take her. And Sim had visited the Rose every day to see if she needed anything from her only kin, if she would accept a little of the money he earned or stole in every petty way he had learned in his years on the street.

On his last visit she’d spat at him. He’d wiped the spittle from his cheek and left, though Madame Rose had tried to bribe him with promises of a hot meal and a free ride after. He’d sworn he wouldn’t go back. He’d planned to break his oath this afternoon. He could have said goodbye.

She could have said she loved him.

He laughed, startling some fine lady’s skittish horse. Her male escort, a rich rancher decked out like a pimp, spurred his long-legged eastern gelding in front of Sim and slashed the air with his quirt.

“Get out of the street, you savage,” he snarled.

Sim tilted back the brim of his ragged hat and looked the man in the eye. The man yanked on the reins. “Filthy beggar,” he muttered. “No better than a—”

His horse squealed as a length of heavy rawhide rope slapped down on the animal’s well-bred rump. The beast took off like a shot, and the lady’s mount plunged after it.

Caleb laughed the way he always did, loud and long. He beat the rawhide against his palm. “Pelado,” he scoffed. “Thinks he’s too good for the likes of us.”

His glance pulled Sim in like a brother’s embrace. Besides Ma, he was the closest thing to real kin Sim had. Except Ma had known she was dying and finally told Sim that he had a pa. One even more important than Caleb’s.

Caleb stopped laughing and gave Sim a hard stare. “What’s wrong with you? Been eatin’ leftovers out of Mowbray’s rubbish heap again?”

Sim averted his face and headed for the nearest alley. He had a lump in his throat, and he was afraid he might start bawling. Bad enough to do it in front of Caleb, but if anyone else saw…

Caleb gripped his arm. “It’s the bitch, ain’t it? What’d she do to you this time?”

“Nothing.” Sim yanked free and strode deep into the alley, where the shadows made him feel safe.

Caleb knocked Sim’s hat off his head. “Liar.” He squinted in Sim’s face. “Your eyes are all red. She hit you?” Sim shook his head and snatched at his hat. Caleb held it just out of his reach. “I know damned well you’d never hit her back, no matter how much she deserves it.”

Sim’s heart balled up into a painful knot. “She don’t deserve nothing anymore,” he said. “She’s dead.”

Caleb whistled. “Damn.” He set Sim’s hat back on his head and gently pressed it in place. “Who told you?”

“Charlie.”

“Figures.” Caleb leaned on the wall and bent one knee, wedging his boot heel against the clapboard. “She didn’t leave you anything, did she?”

Trust Caleb to ask that first. He was the one who usually planned their petty thieveries and moneymaking schemes; there was always some little trinket he coveted, some luxury he just had to have, and his father damned sure wouldn’t give him the cash. Marshall Smith was as tightfisted as they came, at least with his own family. The whole town knew that Mrs. Smith and her son lived like the poorest Mexicans, while the marshall spent what he earned on himself and the pretty puta he kept in a house at the edge of town.

Sometimes Sim wondered if he was better off than Caleb. At least Evelyn hadn’t lectured him about the devil and hellfire all day and night like Mrs. Smith. Sim didn’t have his friend’s big dreams for the future, so he wasn’t disappointed. The only thing he had ever really wanted was forever beyond his reach.

Unless he could find his father.

“You better get to the Rose and make sure your ma didn’t leave anything, or one of the other girls’ll steal it for sure,” Caleb said, kicking the wall. “You have the right to take whatever she had.”

A few rags of clothes too big for a wasted body, paint to hide sunken cheeks, a handful of cheap costume jewelry. Sim wanted none of it. But he would go anyway, to make sure Ma had a decent burial. If she hadn’t saved enough, he would find the money somewhere.

His nose started to run from the effort of holding back the tears. He pulled out a handkerchief with the uneven initials stitched into the threadbare linen—S.W.K. Simeon Wartrace Kavanagh. Ma had sewn the cloth for him two Christmases ago, when she was feeling uncommonly charitable.

He shoved the handkerchief back in his waistcoat. Ma was better off dead than suffering. He’d wished her gone often enough. Hated her more than half the time. Hated what she was and what she could never be.

“Hey,” Caleb said. “I’ll make sure you get what’s coming to you, don’t worry. The ladies know me.” He slapped Sim’s shoulder. “Now you don’t have her to drag you down, you’re free. You can leave this stinking town. We can both get out of here and do all that stuff we talked about.”

“Finding lost mines and buried treasure?” Sim said. The words cracked shamefully.

“Hell, that’s only the beginning. We’ll both be rich before we hit twenty. I swear to you, brother, they’ll all remember our names.”

Caleb would make sure they remembered his. If he couldn’t force his father to pay attention to his misdemeanors around town—broken windows and pilfered store goods, mischief grudgingly permitted the marshall’s son—then he would find some other way of getting the kind of life he wanted. He would never be like his ma, trying to ignore humiliation and poverty by believing worldly goods were the paving stones to hell.

No, Caleb would take everything he could beg, borrow or steal, and he’d never look back.

“C’mon,” Caleb said, pulling at Sim’s faded flannel shirt. “Let’s go put the old bitch in her grave.”

Sim stiffened. “Don’t,” he said softly. “Don’t call her that again, Caleb.”

“Or what?” Caleb laughed. “You remember when we met? You were bawling behind the livery stable because your ma beat you and called you her ruination. She said she’d wished she’d gotten rid of you before you were born.”

“You think I don’t remember?”

“I cried once, when I was six and Ma took a belt to my back to whup the demons out of me. I used it all up then. You still have a little left in you, Sim. Get rid of it. Now the War’s over, there’s fortunes to be made in New Mexico and Arizona Territory. We got to find them lost Spanish mines and Aztec gold before someone beats us to it.” He slapped Sim’s shoulder. “We’re getting the hell out of this town, and we ain’t coming back.”

“There’s something I got to do first.”

“Go find your daddy?”

Sim acted without thinking, seizing the front of Caleb’s shirt. “What do you know about him?”

“I told you, the ladies like me.” Caleb shrugged him off. “Frank MacLean. One of the richest cattlemen in Palo Pinto county. I’m sure he’s just rarin’ to acknowledge his long-lost bastard son—if you really are his son.”

Sim backed away, striking the wall behind him instead of hitting Caleb. “Ma told me to find him. It was one of the last things she said to me. She wouldn’t have lied.”

“Then go. I ain’t gonna stop you. Maybe I’ll even wait around ’til you get some sense knocked into that hard head of yours.”

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“Hey.” Caleb grabbed Sim behind his neck and shook him like a newborn pup. He turned up Sim’s palm to display the lumpy scar made six years ago with a dull knife and an oath meant to last for eternity. “We’re blood brothers. Nothing can change that. So you do what you gotta do, and then we’ll light out of this town so fast even the dust’ll catch fire.”

Sim almost smiled. Caleb was good at painting pictures with his words, making Sim believe anything was possible. Even a whore’s son becoming one of the great MacLeans.

“I gotta go,” Sim said. “If I don’t come back, you’ll know my pa took me in.”

“Or you’re dead,” Caleb said, only half joking. “If they kill you, I’ll avenge you right proper, don’t worry about that.”

Sim pulled his hat brim lower over his eyes. “Why would they kill me?”

But Caleb didn’t have to answer. The MacLeans were rich, and also ruthless in protecting their property and their name. Frank MacLean had never come to see Evelyn after Sim was born. He could snuff out an inconvenient trespasser without attracting the slightest notice from anyone purporting to uphold the law.

Deliberately Sim rolled a cigarette, taking special care with the precious tobacco. Caleb lit it for him and rolled his own. They smoked together in silence. Sim crushed the butt under his boot and set off for the undertaker’s. Caleb went his own way, but Sim knew all he had to do was whistle and Caleb would be there, right at his side.

If Frank MacLean accepted his bastard son, Sim would try to bring Caleb in with him. Sim had never believed in fate, but he knew there were only two ways his life could go. If he didn’t find a place with his father’s family, Caleb would set the course for both of them.

Sim shivered in the afternoon heat and almost crossed himself the way his mother had taught him when he was very young. He didn’t think there were saints or angels in heaven who listened to the prayers of people like him. He wouldn’t try to pray for himself. But there was no one else to pray for her, and so he would go to the church and light a candle and pretend someone could hear him.

“Hey, kid!” Charlie shouted from the boardwalk of the Cock ’n’ Bull Saloon across the street. “She used to be a good lay, your mama.” He lifted the bottle in his hand. “Here’s to all the whores in Texas. May they never—”

He broke off as Sim turned on his heel and strode toward the saloon. His hand slapped at his hip for the gun that wasn’t there, but his expression was weapon enough. Charlie squealed and stumbled through the swinging doors.

Sim’s fingers curled around the invisible butt of his imaginary pistol. He couldn’t afford a gun. Caleb said he had something about him that worked just as well as a loaded six-shooter for scaring people off—when he chose to use it.

He went to the undertaker’s and found that his mother’s “friends” at the Rose had paid for her coffin and burial. He didn’t go to the whorehouse. He had Evelyn’s handkerchief, and that was the only memory of her he wanted to keep.

The next morning he set out for the MacLean spread, perched on a ewe-necked bit of crow bait Ethan Cowell had lent him in exchange for two days’ work mucking out the livery stable stalls. The horse returned to town before he did. The doctor pronounced it a true miracle that Sim survived the beating, let alone made it back to Hat Rock on foot.

When Sim recovered enough to ride, he and Caleb stole horses and gear from the livery stable and rode out of Hat Rock so fast that the dust caught fire.

Sim laughed until even the wind was sated with his tears.

CHAPTER ONE

Cochise County, Arizona Territory, 1881

TALLY HATED TOMBSTONE. She hated its dusty streets lined with saloons and brothels, its crowds of miners and gamblers and cowboys out for a little “fun,” its almost frantic attempts at respectability.

Tombstone reminded Tally of herself. She was as dusty as its streets, as false as the bright facades that lured the naive and reckless into the gambling halls, where fortunes were lost and won every hour of the day and night. She blended right in with the more ordinary class of men, and that was exactly the way she wanted it. No one looked twice at a figure clad in baggy wool trousers and a loose flannel shirt, or a face smudged with dirt under a sweat-stained hat.

Miriam, with her dark skin and simple cotton dress, attracted scarcely more attention, and neither did Federico. People of all races came to the mines or passed through the deserts and mountains of southern Arizona. Tombstone was no longer the mining camp of a few years past but a fully incorporated city of seven thousand souls, with five newspapers, its own railroad depot and a telegraph. There was a whole new world to be won here, a new life to be made by those willing to work—or risk everything for luck.

Tally was willing to work, but luck was definitely not going in her favor. She dodged a heavy wagon loaded with lumber for some new construction at the corner of Second and Fremont streets. The smell of cheap perfume drifted from the nearest cathouse, temporarily overwhelming the stench of horse droppings, whiskey and unwashed clothing.

If André was here, it might take her days to find him. But Tally didn’t know where else to look. Her brother had made arrangements to buy fifty yearlings and two-year-old heifers from a rancher in northern Sulphur Spring Valley, but he should have been back at Cold Creek a week ago. She’d sent Elijah after him at the end of the first week, and now her foreman was missing, as well.

God knew the ranch couldn’t afford to lose any hands in the middle of calving season, even if rustlers had run off with half their stock last winter. Bart and Pablito would make do as best they could, but an old man and a ten-year-old boy didn’t have the time or strength to handle all that needed to be done.

There was a chance that André had met with some mishap. Apache renegades raided American settlements from time to time, and Arizona was an outlaws’ haven. But Tally didn’t believe André had run into that kind of trouble. Far more likely that he’d become distracted by the gambling halls and carnal temptations of Tombstone.

Tally sighed and surreptitiously pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, wiping the dust from her mouth. Miriam, whom Tally wouldn’t think of sending into the saloons, was off buying supplies in the dry goods store while Federico investigated the establishments that catered to the Mexican traders and miners. That left Tally with dozens of saloons and bordellos to visit. She dreaded the brothels most of all.

For that reason as much as any other, she chose Hafford’s Saloon, known for the hundreds of exotic birds painted on its walls rather than for its soiled doves. She walked up to the polished bar and leaned against it like any one of the men.

“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked.

Tally considered her limited supply of coins and ordered the smallest drink she could get away with. “Maybe you can help me,” she said as the barman slapped the shot of whiskey on the counter before her. “I’m looking for my brother— André Bernard. Blond hair, brown eyes, a few inches taller than me. Have you seen him?”

The bartender looked askance under his bushy gray browns. “You just described ’bout a hundred men who passed through here the past couple of days. I can’t remember all of ’em.”

“Then perhaps you’ve seen a black man, very tall….”

“Not as I recall.” He scratched his unkempt beard. “Might ask the faro dealer. He always remembers a face.”

Tally hid her disgust and downed the whiskey. It would affect her a little, but not too much. She’d learned to hold her liquor those first years in New Orleans.

“Listen, boy,” the bartender said with a confidential air of one doing a great good service, “I’d hold off that stuff if I was you. Wait until you’re a mite older. And stay out of Big Nose Kate’s!” He laughed uproariously at his “joke” and slapped the counter so hard that Tally’s empty glass bounced.

A shadow fell over Tally and the bartender. The newcomer seemed very tall in comparison to the stout barkeep—lean and taut with muscle, dressed in the wool pants and coat of a cowman rather than the duds of a miner. His black hat shaded his face, but something in his manner, the way he cocked a hip against the bar and dominated the space around him, alerted Tally’s instinct for danger. She paid for her drink and turned to go.

“Hey,” the bartender said, grabbing her shirtsleeve. “What name should I give if your brother comes looking for you?”

“Tal,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Tal Bernard.”

“Good luck.”

Tally tipped her hat, but he was already serving the tall newcomer. The skin between Tally’s shoulder blades quivered. She walked quickly to the gambling tables and searched out the faro dealer. He looked like a panther about to pounce as she approached, but he was pleasant enough when she explained her mission. A few of the gamblers took pity on the boy and speculated among themselves as the dealer laid the cards on the table.

“I think I seen him,” a miner offered. “About so high, curly yeller hair? Saw him at the roulette wheel over at the Crystal Palace, oh, near ten days ago. You say he’s your brother?”

Tally nodded, her heart sinking to the soles of her boots.

“Don’t think he did too good. Lost a heap o’money. Heard him talk about buying gear and heading into the Chiricahuas to make his fortune.” The miner chuckled. “Poor feller. Looked like he might know something about beeves, but mining…” He shook his head. “I’d ask over at the harness shops and livery stables. He’d’a needed a couple good mules, at the very least.”

Tally thanked the miner and trudged out of the saloon. André must have gone crazy. He knew that money had to go for cattle or the ranch could fail. And he knew less about mining than she did. If he really had gone to the mountains, it was probably because he was too ashamed to face her and had thought up some cockeyed scheme to recoup his losses.

No, André wasn’t crazy, just rash and sometimes thoughtless. She had hoped this time he would prove responsible. She had needed to trust him with the money she’d saved from her marriage, needed him to show that he cared as much about Cold Creek as she did.

She’d expected too much.

Still, reckless or not, André was her brother. He knew what she’d been, and he hadn’t turned his back. He was the only family she had left. Even if all the money was gone, she had to find him and bring him home.

Tally began the wearisome rounds of Tombstone’s numerous corrals, stables and supply stores. By late afternoon she knew that André had indeed bought a pair of mules and all the appropriate gear, and had set off from Tombstone over a week ago. His likely path would take him east, toward the Chiricahuas, but well north of Cold Creek’s little side valley.

Tally muttered a curse she saved for only the worst situations and returned to the stable where she had left the wagon and horses. Miriam and Federico were waiting for her in the shade of the building. Federico looked as though he’d eaten a sour lemon, and Miriam was furiously knitting the shawl she’d begun on the ride to Tombstone. She stopped when she saw Tally.

“Bad news?” she asked softly.

“Bad enough. André gambled the money before he bought any cattle and went back to the mountains with mining gear.”

“Madre de Dios,” Federico muttered.

“Elijah?” Miriam said.

The worry in her voice revealed far more than her dispassionate face. Tally knew how much she cared for Elijah, and he for her. God help the man if he ever made Miriam cry.

“I can’t find any evidence that Elijah was ever in Tombstone,” Tally said.

“He’s been gone a week,” Miriam said, crumpling the shawl between her graceful hands.

“He may be looking for André in the Valley. It’s a big area to cover.” Tally pushed back her hat and blotted the perspiration from her forehead. “We can’t afford a hotel tonight. We’ll sleep in the wagon and decide what to do in the morning—if you don’t mind bedding with the horses, Rico.”