Wilde Bunch Read online

  “So you made it back, Webb,” called Mac. “Where’s Lily?”

  A tall, tanned man with sunbleached blond hair had passed through a swinging door to join them. He was wearing old boots and faded jeans and an equally faded plaid shirt, untucked. “I’ve got your hellcat of a niece tied up in the kitchen, Mac.”

  “Uncle Mac!” called an indignant, feminine voice. “Help!”

  Mac strode briskly across the room and disappeared through the swinging door. Kara, for lack of anything else to do, followed him. The tall blond cowboy, in turn, followed her.

  The tiled kitchen was big and airy and distinctly modern with every kind of appliance, from an electric can opener to a microwave oven. It seemed at odds with the rustic Western decor in the sprawling living room-den, except for the head of an elk sporting an amazing set of antlers, which was right in keeping with the hunter-trophy theme.

  A curved bench was built into one wall and an oval table stood in front of the bench. There were four captain’s chairs grouped around the table, and sitting on one of them—tied to one of them!—was a very pretty, raven-haired, dark-eyed teenage girl.

  Kara’s eyes widened in astonishment. This had to be Lily, Mac’s oldest niece. It occurred to her that, except in film, she had never before seen anyone tied up. It was a jarring sight. The young girl’s arms were pulled in back of the chair and her wrists were secured together with rope. Each of her long, slim blue-jean-covered legs was tied to one of the chair’s thick wooden ones. She was rocking back and forth, tilting the chair precariously, but not actually getting anywhere.

  “What’s going on here, Webb?” Mac demanded, glaring at his ranch manager.

  “The sheriff told me to pick her up at the Rustler, or he’d take her to the jail house and hold her in a cell till you came for her,” muttered Webb. “I should’ve let him throw her in jail. She’s more trouble than—”

  “Tie me up, Webb,” Lily interrupted mockingly. “Tie me down. You’re a guy with real kinky tastes, huh? I bet what you’d really like to do would be to tie me to your bunk.” She was wearing a tight, ribbed blue sweater and she arched in the chair, displaying full, rounded breasts.

  “What I’d really like to do is gag you,” growled Webb.

  “Oooh! Like I said, kinky,” Lily teased, provocatively running the tip of her tongue over her lips. “How do you feel about blindfolds, Webb?”

  “Oh, jeez!” Mac groaned.

  Since neither of the men made a move to untie the girl, Kara took it upon herself to do so. She went to Lily’s side and knelt down, attempting to undo the formidable knots binding her wrists.

  “Thanks,” Lily said with a smile that didn’t reach her steely brown eyes. “Whoever you are.”

  “I’m Kara Kirby, a...a friend of Reverend Will Franklin’s and his family.”

  “Well, you made a wrong turn somewhere,” Lily said coolly. “This asylum is about as far from the perfectly perfect Franklins as you can get.”

  Kara had once been a Girl Scout, and the skills she’d learned to earn a badge involving knot tying automatically kicked in. After loosening the bonds on Lily’s wrists, she went to work on the ones binding her ankles to the chair.

  “Hey, you’re really good at that,” the ranch manager said with genuine admiration. “Usually, nobody can untie my knots, but me.”

  When Kara rose to her feet, her work completed, the cowboy extended his hand and said respectfully, “I’m Webb Asher, Miss Kirby. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “Any friend of the Rev’s is a friend of yours, huh, Webb?” Lily shook off the ropes and sashayed over to Webb Asher. Suddenly, unexpectedly, she made a fist and attempted to sucker punch him in the solar plexus. But Webb Asher was remarkably fast and caught her hand before she could strike, twisting her arms behind her back and holding them there.

  “You’ll have to be quicker than that to pull a fast one on me, little girl,” Asher snarled.

  “Lily, you can’t go around punching people,” Mac exclaimed, exasperated.

  “Not even after he tied me to a chair?” Lily struggled in Webb’s grip. “Tell him to let me go, Uncle Mac.”

  “You have to promise not to take a swing at him again, Lily,” Mac admonished.

  Lily abruptly stopped her struggles and cuddled back against Webb Asher’s tall rangy frame. “On second thought, maybe I’ll stay just where I am. I like having a hard man to lean on.” She arched her brows and flashed a sensual challenging smile. She wriggled provocatively against him.

  Instantly, Webb Asher cast her away from him with such force that she went crashing into Kara. Face-to-face, Kara gazed into the younger girl’s gleaming brown eyes and realized at once that Lily Wilde was in full control of this scene and taking great pleasure in making both men feel uneasy and inept.

  “I’m getting the hell away from that conniving little witch,” snarled Webb. He stormed from the kitchen.

  “Dammit, Lily! All I need is to have my ranch manager decide to quit on me!” Mac snapped. He strode out of the kitchen, too, presumably to placate his irate ranch manager.

  Lily turned to Kara with a shrug. “What can I say? The guy turns me on.”

  “You’re just kidding, aren’t you?” Kara asked uncertainly. “You don’t really have a crush on Webb Asher?”

  “A crush? How juvenile! I haven’t had one of those in years.” Lily laughed. “But I’m definitely hot for Webb’s incredible, muscular body. You should see him without a shirt on— Wow! And he’s so strong he can pick me up with one arm. He carried me out of the Rustler tonight. It was so cool, so macho! Just like in the movies,” she added exuberantly.

  “But he’s so much older than you are,” protested Kara.

  “It’s not like he’s ninety or something. He’s thirty-four.”

  “That’s twice as old as you are,” Kara said pointedly.

  “What are you—a human calculator? Anyway, who cares about years with a man like him?” Lily suddenly scowled at Kara. “Of course, if you’re a friend of those prissy Franklins, you probably think I should be dating someone from school or something dull like that.”

  “Does your Uncle Mac know how you feel about his ranch manager?” Kara asked curiously.

  “Oh yeah, right!” Lily jeered disparagingly. “Like Uncle Mac and I sit around having heart-to-heart talks about my love life! Or his lack of one.”

  “He doesn’t have many—um—dates?” Kara felt a twinge of shame for pumping Mac’s teenage niece for information about him, but it wasn’t strong enough to stop her from doing it.

  “Try none! Hey, if you’re new in town, why don’t you take up with my uncle? I don’t think the poor guy has had sex since me and my brothers and sister moved in.”

  “He hasn’t?” Kara’s heart started to beat like a runaway train. Well, there was the definitive but disheartening proof that Mac’s instantaneous response to her earlier was merely a result of his sexual deprivation rather than any real attraction to her.

  Lily shook her head no. “From what I’ve heard, Uncle Mac was Bear Creek’s major hunk, with girlfriends falling all over themselves to get to him—and into his bed,” she added wickedly, her brown eyes gleaming. “Then the four of us arrived. Bam, his partying days were over! He turned into an instant family man and the party girls of Bear Creek didn’t like it. They sure don’t like us kids, either!”

  “Are there many...party girls in Bear Creek?” Kara asked, chewing her lower lip thoughtfully.

  “Enough, I guess. And if you believe in gossip, my uncle has had them all, at one time or another. But not since June. It’s looking like Uncle Mac’s never gonna get it.”

  Once again, Kara remembered those tempestuous moments in the Jeep when Mac had taken her in his arms and kissed her into a sensual daze. She felt an unwelcome surge of color sting her cheeks.

  Oh, yes, she could believe the Bear Creek gossip about Mac Wilde and his party girls! To make matters worse, her sexual experience was as lacking as his was plent
iful. She wondered if he’d been able to tell, then decided of course he had. He’d probably been secretly laughing at her lack of expertise; he probably considered her surrender pitifully inevitable.

  “What’s with all these questions about my uncle Mac?” Lily asked shrewdly. “Are you hot for him or something?”

  Mac reentered the kitchen, glancing from Lily’s amused face to Kara’s anxious one. “Quit harassing Kara, Lily,” he ordered.

  “She’s not,” Kara replied quickly. “She was just telling me about...about some of the citizens of Bear Creek.”

  “Yeah,” Lily agreed. “And I didn’t even get to her friends, the Franklins, yet. I have lots to tell about them. Prim Miz Ginny who smiles when she doesn’t mean it, and icky-sweet Tricia who pretends to be everybody’s friend, but has never seen a back she didn’t want to stab.”

  “That’s enough, Lily,” Mac warned. “I’m sure Kara doesn’t want to hear you bad-mouth her friends. Anyway, I happen to like Ginny and Tricia.”

  “Well, that doesn’t count for much,” retorted Lily. “You like all kinds of strange things—fly fishing, watching golf on TV, Mrs. Lattimore’s putrid casseroles. Of course you’d like Ginny and Tricia Franklin!”

  Clay and Autumn came charging into the kitchen. “We can’t find the cat!” Autumn wailed. “It’s like he just disappeared! Like he was kidnapped by aliens and flew away on their spaceship.”

  “What cat?” asked Lily. “Autumn, is there really a cat or is this another one of your weird paranoid fantasies?”

  “No, there’s a real cat,” insisted Clay. “She brought him.” He pointed a stubby finger at Kara. “Me and Autumn are playing with him. Except he’s not playing with us! Tell him to come out and play with us,” he ordered Kara.

  “You can’t tell a cat what to do, cats do exactly as they please,” Mac explained. “Maybe if you two quiet down and stop running around yelling, he’ll decide to come out on his own. But you’ll never make friends with him by carrying on like a pair of maniacs. Go and watch some TV.”

  Clay and Autumn got into a shoving match while trying to beat each other through the swinging door.

  “Don’t put that vampire thing back on,” Mac called after them. “Why not watch the tape of the Little Mermaid I bought you?”

  That stopped them dead in their tracks. The two youngsters, allies again, whined their protests.

  “Okay, then watch Beauty and the Beast, instead,” Mac compromised. “You can pretend the Beast is a biker vampire and the Beauty is a sorority sister.”

  “Uncle Mac, that is so geekful,” complained Autumn.

  “Thanks, Autumn. I lay awake nights trying to come up with geekful ideas, and your heartfelt words make it all worthwhile.” Mac turned to Kara. “Well, you’ve met three of the clan. Now all I have to do is to locate Brick. Lily, where is your brother?”

  “How should I know? Brick goes where he wants, when he wants and he sure doesn’t run it by me.” Shrugging, Lily turned her attention to Kara. “Are you really going to visit the Franklins?” she asked, her dark eyes assessing Kara with unnerving scrutiny.

  Kara nodded her head. “In fact, I should call him now and—”

  “That is so incredibly cool!” Lily squealed in delight. “You look so harmless and sweet but you’re really a stealth witch.”

  Her tone indicated that this was a compliment. Kara stared at her askance. “I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, that’s perfect!” chortled Lily. “You sound so innocent. Even that old bat Ginny will have to believe you when you say it like that.” She laughed merrily. “Taking a cat with you to visit the Franklins! Super! Is your plan to put that snotty Tricia back in the hospital? How diabolical! I love it!”

  “You know all about Tricia Franklin’s allergy to cats, too, hmm, Lily?” Mac asked casually.

  “Anybody who knows the Franklins, knows the story about Tricia being rushed to the hospital because she was so allergic to her new kitten she couldn’t breathe,” Lily said. “I think it was the highlight of Tricia’s boring life. She works it into the conversation five minutes after you meet her. Like anyone cares!” she added caustically.

  Kara’s knees felt oddly, suddenly weak. She slipped into one of the chairs and clung to the armrests for support. So it was really true; her pseudo-stepsister really did have a serious allergy to cats. Lily’s unsolicited collaboration of Mac’s story was convincing proof. And if Ginny Franklin had no part in inviting her to Bear Creek, as Mac had claimed, Kara could only imagine the reception accorded to her by the woman if she arrived on their doorstep bearing a yowling feline allergen—a dire threat to her daughter’s health!

  “I honestly didn’t know about Tricia’s allergy to cats,” she murmured. “What am I going to do with Tai?”

  “Turn him loose in Tricia’s room,” Lily said enthusiastically. “Rub her pillow all over his fur.”

  “You could always leave him here,” Mac offered a more humane alternative. “Autumn and Clay would love that.”

  Kara thought of poor Tai, hiding somewhere in this ranch house terrified by this overly enthusiastic reception. Tai had never met a child in his life, and those two were a rather unnerving introduction to the species. She imagined leaving her cat here while she went to stay in town with the Franklins—with Ginny Franklin who had never liked her and probably still didn’t, but who would be forced to take her in at Uncle Will’s command. It was not the sort of week’s vacation she’d imagined upon accepting the invitation.

  One scenario after the other tumbled through her mind, each one more unpleasant than the next. It was nearly impossible to keep a reasonable perspective, try as she might. “I—I’d like to call Uncle Will, if you don’t mind,” she said softly.

  “Of course. There’s the phone.” Mac pointed to the cordless telephone resting on its base on a corner stand.

  “Uncle Will?” Lily echoed. “Reverend Franklin is her uncle?”

  “I’ll explain later. Let’s give Kara some privacy while she makes her call.” Mac took his niece’s arm and propelled her through the swinging door, out of the kitchen.

  Reverend Will Franklin answered the phone on the second ring.

  “Uncle Will, this is Kara.”

  “Kara!” he repeated jovially. “Are you all packed? Tomorrow’s the big day! I can’t wait to see you, my dear. I’ll be right there at the gate, waiting to meet your flight. I thought we could have a nice dinner in Helena and then drive to Bear Creek.”

  Kara was confused. “Uncle Will, I’m already here. I arrived today.”

  “What? Here? Today?” The reverend sounded totally flummoxed. “But how could that be? I wrote down the time and date of your arrival. Yes, it’s right here in my personal calendar. You’re to arrive tomorrow.”

  “Who told you that?” Kara asked, suspicion dawning. “Was it Mac Wilde?”

  “Why, yes,” the reverend confirmed. There was a pregnant pause. “Uh-oh,” he muttered glumly.

  “Yes, uh-oh. That about sums it up, doesn’t it?”

  The pieces were fitting together with startling clarity. Mac, who had purchased her ticket and therefore knew her scheduled time of arrival, had fabricated a different one for Reverend Franklin. But why?

  “When were you going to tell me about Mac Wilde and this—this plot to marry me off to him, Uncle Will?” she asked tightly.

  “You’ve met him? He told you everything?” Reverend Will’s tone was morose.

  “Everything,” Kara confirmed.

  “Marry?” Lily exclaimed on the other side of the kitchen door. She and Mac were both pressed against it, listening, though Mac periodically tried to push Lily away, in the direction of the TV set. She refused to leave. “Uncle Mac, are you going to marry her?”

  “Go ahead, tell me how much you hate the idea,” growled Mac. “I assume you’ll pull out all stops and try to wreck the plan.”

  “Actually, I think it’s a good idea for you to get married, Uncle Mac. Autumn and Clay need
somebody to mother them, and I bet you wouldn’t get so grouchy if you had a woman to—”

  “Be quiet!” Mac hissed fiercely. “And get away from this door. You shouldn’t be spying on Kara.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave that job to you,” Lily said archly. “I wish you luck with her, Uncle Mac. You’re sure going to need it. From what I’ve heard so far, you botched it big-time.”

  Truer words had never been spoken, Mac thought grimly. Lily wandered away, to join Autumn and Clay. He remained fixed to the spot, eavesdropping on Kara’s conversation with Reverend Will.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Uncle Will?” Kara demanded. “You led me to believe you’d bought my ticket because you wanted me to visit you.”

  “I do want you to visit, my dear. I’ve been so looking forward to seeing you. I’ve missed you so much over the years, Kara. That’s why I immediately thought of you as a...a mate for Mac. It seemed like the perfect solution for all of us. Mac needed a wife to help him raise the children, and you sounded so lonely and lost in the big city. I know how much you’ve always wanted a family, and here was a ready-made one for you.”

  Kara drew in a sharp breath. She’d always tried to make her letters to Uncle Will light and witty; she had never written the words “lonely” or “lost” in a single one of them. But it seemed he had read between the lines and thought her pathetic and desperate, with no hope of ever getting a steady boyfriend, let alone a husband and family. She was humiliated to the bone!

  “If you married Mac, you would be living on the Double R, close to Bear Creek.” She tuned back in to hear Reverend Will continue wistfully. “I could be a part of your life again, watch your children grow up. I know I should have told you, but it seemed so awkward to do it over the phone.” He had the good grace to sound ashamed. “I thought if you came out here, I would introduce you to Mac, he could court you and things would proceed naturally.”

  “And I would’ve never known it was actually an arranged marriage. I would’ve been deluded into thinking it was a love match.”