Chapter Eight

"I'll do it, pa. I'll marry Grant." Elizabeth said, her voice strong and clear as she stood ram rod straight and squared her shoulders.

Ernest looked at her with shock from where he sat at his desk, "You will?" Elizabeth nodded, while keeping her neck so stiff he worried it might snap, "Thank God you saw reason!" he exclaimed as he stood and came around the desk. "Grant should be here in a few hours, he'll be so happy."

"The man hasn't even asked me yet."

"I told him not to ask you until I got you to agree because I knew you'd tell him no," Ernest smiled happily. "I'm so pleased!"

He tried to hug her but she stepped out of his reach and shook her head, "At least one of us is happy. I'm just doing this so I can have my ranch." She turned on her heel and walked downstairs to the kitchen where Anita had eggs, bacon, bread, fresh fruit and coffee waiting.

"Sit down and eat, sweetie," Anita said gently. "You look as if you didn't get much sleep."

Elizabeth shook her head and frowned, "I didn't get any sleep. I just laid awake and thought of what it would be like to be married to Grant.... Let's just say I was too afraid of nightmares to close my eyes." She thought of the way his lips had been cold and wet when he'd kissed her knuckles. Would they feel the same way against her lips? She shivered at the thought. Anita poured her a cup of coffee and Elizabeth saw the way the old woman's hands were shaking, "Are you okay?" Elizabeth asked as she took the cup of coffee.

Anita nodded and wrapped her hands in her apron to still them, "Of course. I just don't like knowing that you and your pa are fighting is all," she replied.

Elizabeth shrugged and after taking a drink of coffee said, "We're not fighting anymore. He won." She grabbed a few strips of bacon in her hand and headed for the door.

"Elizabeth," Anita called and Elizabeth turned to look at her. "Braxton said to get started on the far east pasture today if you can. He had Wendell and Kent out there yesterday but they didn't get much done." Elizabeth nodded, "Okay." She knew that Brody and Thomas could handle the south pasture just fine and quite frankly she was in no mood to deal with Brody today. Not after what he had said yesterday evening.

"And Elizabeth...."

"What?" she asked, wondering why the old woman was acting so strangely.

"I love you, sweetie."

"I love you too, Anita," she replied. She sat her half filled coffee cup on the counter and went out the back door. She munched on the bacon as she walked to the river.

She crouched down beside the gently flowing water and stared into its peaceful depths. Why couldn't life be like this river? Peaceful and tranquil. If it was, she would still have her mother, her father would not be dying, she would not be being forced to marry a man she didn't love and the ranch would be hers with or without her name on a marriage certificate.

Elizabeth let out an irritated growl and picked up a large rock, throwing it with all her might down into the water. She smiled at the waves and ripples that formed and splashed against the banks, turning the peaceful water into raging chaos for a few moments. The river would never get the droplets of its water back that had splashed on the bank. It was forever changed. Forever a bit less than it was. That was real life. One moment things were perfect and the very next they fell apart and you never got back to what you were before.

"If you're trying to skip rocks, you're going about it the wrong way." Elizabeth turned to see Brody standing behind her with that typical confident, wide-legged stance and his thumbs in his belt loops. She squinted up at his face, which was impossible to see clearly because of the sunlight behind his head and the shadow his hat created.

"I know how to skip rocks, cowboy," she replied, looking away from him and back down at the water. She tried to ignore the increase in her pulse that his presence created and focus instead on the flowing river.

"You don't look so good this morning. Are you sick?" Brody asked, crouching down beside her and picking at the grass.

"Gee, you sure do know how to sweep a woman right off her feet," Elizabeth replied, smiling so sweetly that it hurt her face.

Brody looked down at the water and smiled, "Naw, not me. I never was much good with words." he looked back at her and the dark circles around her tired green eyes. He saw the way her skin was pale and drawn beneath her hat and he frowned, "You ain't sick are you?"

She shook her head and looked away from him and down at the water. "No."

"Good," he replied. He threw the grass he'd been tearing at into the water and stood straight in a swift, fluid motion that revealed some of his power and grace.

The sound of a buckboard and a horse approaching the house came to both of their ears and though Elizabeth couldn't see who it was because of the house, she knew it was Grant.

"Shit!" she gasped as she dove for a big boulder and hid behind it. Brody tilted his head and pulled a cigarette from his shirt, "What are you doing, Miss McCready?" he asked and then Elizabeth watched as he struck a match across his cheek to light it. "You're gonna have to pull them britches down if you're gonna take a shit."

He grinned at his own joke and Elizabeth rolled her eyes, "Don't be dim!" she snapped. "I need your help."

Brody's grin got bigger and then he took a draw off his cigarette and looked around, "Call me dim and then ask for help. Not really the best way to get my cooperation. Can I ask why you're hiding from city boy?"

"No you can't," she hissed. "Now as your boss I am ordering you to help me."

Brody flipped some ashes onto the grass and nodded, "Now then, I guess you do know how to get cooperation." he said with amusement. "What can I do for you, ma'am?"

"Go get a horse, some nails and hammers and then ride over here and get me."

"Why don't I get two horses?" Brody asked before taking another draw off the cigarette in his hand. Elizabeth shook her head roughly causing her hat to hit the rock and fall off her head and her long blond braid to fall to the grass. Brody hadn't realized her hair was that long and he suddenly wondered what it would look like all let down and brushed out, shining in the sunlight.

"No. If you get two then everybody will know there's someone else with you and they might guess that it's me. Just get one and we'll ride together to the far east pasture to work."

"I was supposed to be back in the south....."

"Don't argue with me!" Elizabeth snapped and the good natured look left Brody's eyes at her temper.

"Yes, ma'am, Miss McCready. Right away, ma'am." he said, his tone like that of a soldier talking to an army general, which he'd done a time or two.

Elizabeth watched him stomp away and prayed that he'd get back to her before someone else found her. How would she ever explain exactly why she was lying on her stomach behind a rock by the river?

She was staring cross-eyed at a caterpillar climbing across a blade of grass in front of her nose when Brody returned with a horse.

"Took you long enough," she muttered.

Elizabeth stood up and he reached out a hand to help her up. She took his hand and both of them froze as they felt the heat when skin met skin. They stared into each others eyes for several long, tense moments with the sparks flying between them and threatening to catch the dry Texas grass on fire.

Brody was the first to recover and he tightened his grip and yanked her up onto the saddle behind him. Elizabeth clung to him, realizing that he smelled like witch hazel and tobacco, as she pressed her nose into the back of his shirt and wrapped her arms tight around his rock hard torso.

They rode hard to the pasture and the horse was panting when they finally stopped and Brody jumped quickly from the saddle, "What the hell was that about?" he demanded as he opened the saddlebags and pulled out a bag of nails and a hammer.

"Don't cuss at me," Elizabeth scolded as she worked hard to compose herself and get rid of the tingly feeling coursing through her, that being pressed against his body had caused.

Brody just grunted and walked over to the damaged fence. He wondered where Kent and Wendell were but the east pasture had miles and miles of fence line and they could be anywhere. He realized he was alone out here with the woman who had his blood heated hotter than the south Texas desert. The woman who was also the bosses daughter and off limits to the likes of him. He never had been much for following rules but he didn't want to get her in trouble and cause any more issues between her and her dying father.

He started pounding nails and was all too aware of Elizabeth's presence as she knelt down about four feet from him and began trying to lift a board to fix the fence. He watched her struggling to lift the board and hold it in place while getting a nail ready and she failed several times, continually dropping the board to the ground. Brody sighed and scooted over to her. He had learned enough about her over the last week and a half to know she would sooner eat the bag of nails beside her than ask for help. He held the board in place while she nailed it and without a word they continued the rhythm they had developed the day before.

"So what's wrong?" Brody asked after nearly an hour of silently working in the heat.

"My life is over," Elizabeth replied and she winced when she realized how pathetic that statement sounded.

Brody stood from the fence and walked over to the horse. He pulled a canteen of water out of the saddlebag and took a long drink before wiping his face on his shirt sleeve and handing the canteen to her.

He turned his gaze to the horizon when she pressed her lips against the rim and only when he heard her screwing the cap back on the canteen did he look back at her.

"You look like you're alive to me, Miss McCready," he noted. "So your life can't be over."

Elizabeth looked at him and wondered if she could confide in him without him making her feel like a fool. His green eyes were looking back at her with a warmth she had never noticed in them before and she decided she could.

"Pretty soon you're gonna be calling me Mrs. Foster. Of course I'm gonna insist on keeping my maiden name in there too."

Brody's eyes widened just a fraction and he turned away from her quickly and stuck the canteen back in the saddle bag, "I thought you weren't gonna marry Mr. city boy," he said, still looking out at the horizon and avoiding her gaze. He shouldn't care who she married. She wasn't any of his business. But she had told him herself that she didn't want to marry Grant so what had made her change her mind? And why did it make him so angry to imagine another man touching her the way a husband would his wife?

"I wasn't," she agreed with a sigh as she walked over to the newly repaired section of fence and laid her forearms against the rails, "My pa said that unless I marry him, I don't get the ranch. He says I have to have a husband that he approves of or else the ranch goes to someone else."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

Brody could hear her sadness and it bothered him more than he cared to admit. He walked over and stood next to her, laying his forearms on the fence and leaning against it.

"My two cents don't count for much, Miss McCready, but I think you'd run this ranch just fine. I didn't think much of having a woman telling me what to do when I first got here. Of course that was back when I figured you were a spoiled, ugly, rich, painted up lady. Now that I've gotten to know you a little better I can see your grit and toughness. You got what it takes to make it out here."

"Ugly?" Elizabeth asked as she raised her brow and looked over at him.

He shook his head, "Out of everything I said, that is what you heard?" he demanded while looking down at the grass.

Elizabeth looked down at their dirty hands, close together hanging over the fence. Hers were work worn but still soft and feminine when compared to his which were hard and scarred. She wondered what kinds of things he had done in his life to give him such a hard appearance.

"I heard what you said," she assured him, "Thank you Brody."

"I was just speakin' the truth, Miss McCready."

"Elizabeth. Please call me Elizabeth."

"Yes, ma'am," he said and she could see a small smile pulling at his firm lips as he too looked at their hands. "So this ranch means so much to you that you would marry a man like Grant to keep it?"

"Yes. I shouldn't have to marry him to keep it but I would do anything to keep this ranch. I have dedicated my whole life to this place. I don't know how to cook or clean or do anything else a woman is supposed to be able to do. I know cattle and pounding fences and breaking horses.... And I'm not foolish enough to believe that any other ranch would give me chance if I left here. Hell, they'd take one look at me and laugh me right back off their land."

"Trust me, Elizabeth, no man would take a look at you and laugh," Brody assured her and Elizabeth felt herself blushing as butterflies swarmed in her stomach. Why did she have to be such a typical woman around him? Getting so happy over simple compliments. She looked at Brody and figured he wasn't a man to compliment anyone very often so he probably meant what he was saying and the compliments weren't really simple at all, and that just made her even more confused about her feelings.

She was falling for Brody but the man had already said he never wanted a wife and, besides, she had to marry Grant in order to keep her ranch. Why oh why did life have to be so difficult?

"Seems to me like a foolish thing to do Elizabeth. Ain't no way in hell I'd marry somebody I didn't love just to keep my hands on a piece of land. Hell this country is full of land that ain't owned yet. You could go grab a new piece somewhere else and find a man who would really appreciate a cowgirl like you."

"Foolish? You just don't understand, Brody. My pa built this place! I've been working it since I learned how to walk! I can't just leave and start over! It would never be the same!" she exclaimed, growing a little angry that she had to defend herself to him like this.

Brody shrugged, "I was just giving my two cents on the matter."

"When I want your two cents, I'll ask for it! I thought of all people you would understand about having a sense of loyalty to something your family built seeing as how you fought in that war to protect your family's way of life."

Brody straightened up and stared down at her, "You have no idea why I fought in that war. It sure as hell wasn't over no patch of dirt and a couple of cows. I was fighting out of loyalty to my family not anything they built."

"Well I'm sorry I'm not as perfect as you are, Brody Atkinson, but this place means a lot to me and I don't want to marry that city boy to keep it but that's just the direction my life took and there ain'T a whole hell of a lot I can do about it," Elizabeth snapped, standing straight herself and putting her hands on her hips as she glared up at him.

A blind man could have seen the sparks of intensity jumping between the two of them as they stared at each other. Sparks of both temper and passion. Elizabeth waited for Brody to say something but he didn't. Instead he looked away from her and out over the grassy, rolling hills.

"Well is that all you got to say about it, cowboy? You said your piece and your done now whether or not the other person is ready......"

"Shut-up," he whispered harshly.

Elizabeth's nostrils flared and she fought the urge to punch him in his arrogant face as he continued to look away from her, "How dare you, I'll have you fired, Brody..."

Her words were cut off when he grabbed her by the arm, spun her around, pulled her back into his chest and clamped his hand over her mouth.

"Shut-up." he whispered again, much more firmly and this time Elizabeth had no choice but to listen to him and she heard the sound of a horse whinnying a short distance away. She figured it was just Kent or Wendell but she quickly knew it wasn't when she looked up and saw the severe set of Brody's jaw. He was worried.

Brody listened closely and then he heard it, the distinct cocking of a revolver. He threw Elizabeth to the ground just before a bullet ripped through the air and slammed into his forearm, coming cleanly out the other side.

"Brody!" Elizabeth shouted.

Brody crouched down beside her, ignored the pain, and pressed a finger to his lips to shush her. He lifted his head slightly above the grass line and saw three men riding toward them on horseback.

Brody pulled his revolver, "You stay down," he warned her. He stood up but before he could fire a single shot, he heard a twig snap behind him just before the butt of a gun came down sharply on the back of his head.

The look of horror and fear on Elizabeth's beautiful face as a huge man grabbed her was the last thing Brody saw before he fell unconscious to the ground.

Elizabeth fought against the man that had grabbed her but he just laughed. He was close to seven feet tall and solid muscle, and her five and a half foot frame was no match for him.

"What do you want?!" she exclaimed as three other men rode up on horseback.

"You, Elizabeth McCready," the big man replied and then she felt a sharp pain in the back of her head before her world went black.