Seven Brides: Daisy Part 1

Daisy.

Leigh Greenwood.

Prologue.

Frank Storach was tired, cold, and mad as h.e.l.l when he shoved his way into the small, crumbling adobe. He didn't take off his coat because the temperature inside was barely above freezing, but it was a welcome refuge from the blizzard raging outside. Two men looked up as he slammed the door behind him. One, a grizzled older man, stood watching the coffee pot on the stove. The second, a slim young man with a beardless face, dark blond hair, and cruel eyes, lounged on a bunk.

"What did you find?" the older man asked. His tone was nervous, anxious to please.

"I told you there was no need to go back." The younger man's manner was callous, almost challenging. "Can't nothing go wrong."

"The h.e.l.l it couldn't!" Frank cursed, fury and exhaustion in his slate-grey eyes. "I found the old man buried neatly in a grave. The girl was gone."

"What!" the older man exclaimed. "How could that be?"

The young man rolled up on his elbow, his eyes widening in surprise.

Frank grabbed the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. "Two men got her."

"If they didn't bury her with the old man, that means she's still alive," the older man said.

"You're real clever, Uncle Ed," Frank sneered. "That's what I figured, too, so I followed them."

"Did you finish her off?" the young man asked.

Frank swallowed his coffee and poured himself some more. "Some b.a.s.t.a.r.d started shooting at me just as I was about to plug her. I got a bullet into the other guy, though."

"Where did they go?" the young man asked. He sat up, faint interest flaring in his eyes.

"I don't know, Toby, but they're somewhere in those mountains. I tried to follow, but I lost them in the snow."

"I say we forget them," Ed said. His uneasiness had increased. "She didn't see you kill n.o.body."

"Somehow I think she'll be able to connect the old man's death and the bullet in her head to me," Frank replied, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

"The boss ain't going to like it," Ed said, nervously running his hand over his balding head.

"Then he shudda made sure she was away while we did the job. He didn't, and now we're in the soup."

"I ain't in nothing with n.o.body," Toby said. His cold eyes reminded Frank of a snake. The boy had no nerves. He would kill anybody. That's why Frank had hired him. But looking at him now, coiled, ready to strike, Frank wondered if being his cousin was enough to protect him from the boy's urge to kill.

"I was thinking about going into Bernalillo," Toby said. "I got a senorita over that way pining for me to come back."

"n.o.body's going no place until that female is dead."

Chapter One.

Tyler Randolph entered the cabin in a swirl of snow and bl.u.s.tery cold wind. He kicked the door closed behind him and dropped the armload of wood in a box against the wall. After hanging up his coat, he checked the fire in the stove. It was burning well. Wisps of steam had begun to curl on the surface of the water in a pot atop the stove. The cabin would soon be warm.

He walked over to the bed and stared down at the woman lying there. She couldn't have been more than twenty. Her dark brown hair was badly scorched on one side of her head, soaked with blood on the other. Her skin had lost its color making the freckles that dotted her cheeks all the more prominent. Her expression was blank, her jaw slack.

She moaned softly, but didn't wake. She had been unconscious for more than twenty-four hours.

She was the tallest woman he'd ever seen, fully six feet tall, but that appealed to him. He had never been fond of pet.i.te, fragile women. He liked a woman to be an armful. Yet despite her height, there was something childlike about her. No, she had a look of innocence about her that was childlike and fresh. He found it appealing. He supposed that accounted, at least in part, for his decision to bring her back to his cabin. He couldn't give himself a satisfactory reason for that decision except that a gut instinct told him she wouldn't be safe in Albuquerque. Three men had twice tried to kill her. He was certain they would try again.

Turning away from the bed, Tyler brought a table over to the bed. Then a chair. Next he poured some water into a basin, set it on the table, and got some strips of cloth and a tin of ointment from the shelf. Seating himself in the chair next to the bed, he began to clean her wounds.

She moaned again, louder this time, and rolled her head from side to side. He was afraid she might injure herself, so he held her head still. She fought him, her mouth trying to form half syllables.

Tyler wiped some of the blood from the side of her face. It had dried hard. He cleaned her face and forehead. There was something compelling about this woman, something more than her size and innocence. Maybe it was the way she had lain lifeless under his touch, vulnerable and helpless. Maybe it was the fact he knew if he didn't take care of her, she could die.

She stopped trying to move her head. She kept trying to form words, but no sound came out of her mouth.

He soaked the blood from her hair until he was able to see where the bullet had grazed her skull leaving a wound at least five inches long. It had burrowed under the skin and followed the curve of the skull before exiting. She would have a scar for the rest of her life, but she would live.

Her eyelids quivered. She seemed to be trying to form a word beginning with a "W". Wh . . . Wh . . . Her eyelids moved, opened then closed again.

"Everything's all right," Tyler said in a soothing voice. "You're safe. You can go back to sleep."

He covered the raw gash with a liberal coating of a whitish salve then began wrapping the strips of cloth around her head.

She said Daddy. At least that's what it sounded like.

"Lie still. Don't try to talk," Tyler said. "Nothing is going to harm you now."

She tried to say something else, but he couldn't understand what it was. She seemed to tire. Her jaw grew slack. Her eyes opened wide and unseeing, then floated shut again.

She lay still.

Tyler finished bandaging her head and got to his feet. He couldn't help but wonder if he'd made a big mistake bringing her here. He didn't have time to nurse a female with a broken head, even if the snow was too deep for prospecting. He reached for his coat. He'd better cut some more wood. Once she regained consciousness, he wouldn't be able to leave her alone.

He paused. She would probably wake soon. He wouldn't tell her about her father just yet. He didn't think she was strong enough to withstand that kind of shock.

Daisy opened her eyes. She sensed she had been unconscious for a long time, yet her vision was startlingly clear. An oil lamp, the wick turned low, provided the only light in the cabin, but she could make out her surroundings with absolute certainty.

She didn't recognize anything around her. She was in a strange cabin. She had no idea where she was or how she had gotten here.

Somewhere deep in her subconscious she thought she remembered a rocking motion. She supposed that must have been a horseback ride. She couldn't explain as easily the feeling of safety that kept panic at bay. Lying in a strange cabin, brought here by someone she didn't know, whose purpose she could only guess, she should have been frightened almost out of her mind.

She tried to remember where had she been, what had happened, how she got here, who brought her and when, but her mind was blank.

The last thing she remembered was returning home. She couldn't remember where she had been, but she did know she was going home. She could see the house and all the familiar surroundings -- it was cold, it was going to snow soon -- but she couldn't remember anything else except a painful explosion. Something terrible must have happened, or she wouldn't be here.

Where was her father? Had he brought her here? Why wasn't he here now?

She attempted to sit up, but found she couldn't move. At first she thought she was tied, and panic flooded her mind. It took her several moments to realize she was wrapped tightly in a blanket. It kept her warm -- the air in the cabin was bitterly cold -- but it worried her she couldn't move. She was completely helpless until someone came to unwrap her.

She turned her head to look around, but she couldn't see anyone. There was a bunk above her, but she couldn't tell if anyone was in it. She heard no sound of movement or breathing. She was alone in a strange cabin. Surely someone would come soon.

She tried to lift her head, but a blinding pain caused her to fall back against the pillow. The explosion she remembered must have something to do with the pain in her head, but she didn't remember falling.

She felt dizzy from thinking so hard. She felt the blackness threaten to engulf her once again. She fought it off. She would not lose consciousness again. She would lie still and wait patiently until her father returned. It must be her father. The possibility it wasn't caused her to feel faint.

She didn't have to wait long before she heard the door swing inward. She gasped in alarm when she saw the man who entered. He seemed bigger than any mortal. He had to bend down to come through the door. Covered to the knees with a snow-covered coat and fur-lined hood, he seemed a giant. A thick growth of brown beard covered his face. Piercing brown eyes stared at her from under s.h.a.ggy eyelashes dusted with snow. On his feet he wore the biggest pair of boots Daisy had ever seen.

Daisy was panic-stricken. She felt her heart beating violently in her chest.

"Who are you?" she demanded in a quavering voice. "What am I doing here? Where is my father?"

The man approached the bed. Daisy tried to draw back, but the blankets held her motionless. Her fear was so intense it was almost painful. What did he want? Why didn't he speak? What was he going to do to her? Why couldn't she move?

The man pulled off his gloves. A hand proportionally as large as his feet reached out toward her. Daisy felt as though her heart stopped beating.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice a mere thread.

The man lay his cold hand on her forehead. "You're cool," he said. "Does your head still hurt?"

She hoped her eyes didn't show the extent of her fear. "Yes. Terribly. What happened?"

"You were shot."

Shot! That must have been the explosion she remembered, but she couldn't imagine why anybody would want to shoot her. Where was her father, and why wasn't he the one to explain all this to her? "You haven't answered my questions," Daisy reminded him. "Who are you, and why did you bring me here?"

"Lie still. You need plenty of rest. You almost died. We can talk when you're stronger."

"I'm strong enough now," Daisy insisted, but he was no longer looking at her.

"Do you feel okay?" he asked.

He wasn't talking to her. He was talking to someone in the upper bunk. It must be her father. Relief flooded through her. At least he was safe.

"I hurt like h.e.l.l. If someone had to get shot because of that female, it ought to have been you. You're the one who insisted on bringing her here."

That wasn't her father's voice. Renewed tension gripped her like a vise. "Who are you talking to?" Daisy asked.

"My brother."

She was here with two men, one of them shot. The pain in her head was so intense her eyes could hardly focus. She couldn't think. She didn't understand anything. She just wished her father would come.

"What did he mean when he said he got shot because of some female?" Daisy asked. "Does he mean me?"

A young man hung his head over the edge of the bed. "Who else would I be talking about? You don't see any other females around here, do you?"

Daisy stared in disbelief. Even upside down, she could tell she was staring into the face of the most beautiful man she had ever seen, a virtual Adonis. He couldn't possibly be a brother to this man with the big feet. They were nothing alike.

"Who shot you?" Daisy asked.

"I don't know. He didn't introduce himself, but he had a gun pointed directly at you when I woke up."

"Woke up?" Daisy repeated, totally bewildered. "Where did it happen? When?" She felt the dizziness again. "I don't understand. I don't understand anything."

"Help me down," Adonis said to Big Feet. "I can't talk to anybody upside down."

"My brother and I found you with a bullet wound in your head," Big Feet said as he helped his brother into the chair next to the table. "We didn't know where to take you, so we brought you back with us."

Adonis gave his brother a strange look as he pulled the blankets tight about him. "Are you crazy? We found her--"

"Wandering about the hills," his brother finished, cutting him off. "You couldn't answer our questions. Later you pa.s.sed out."

Daisy knew there was something the big man didn't want his brother to tell her. Some look or gesture had pa.s.sed between them. A shaft of fear drove through her belly. What were they hiding from her?

Big Feet moved out of her range of vision. She could only hear his voice. It didn't sound threatening. It was very deep, very rea.s.suring. He spoke in a slow, measured manner completely devoid of his brother's energy and animation, if Adonis was his brother. She still couldn't believe two such different men could be related.

"Where is my father?" Daisy asked.

"We don't know," Big Feet answered. "We hoped you'd be able to tell us."

Pain exploded in Daisy's head, and she remembered. She had been returning home when she heard a shot. She a.s.sumed it was hunters. They had been all over the hills this winter, even on her father's land. She had been surprised to see three horses at the house. Her father hated visitors and discouraged them from staying long. Still she hadn't been alarmed when she rounded the corner to find herself face to face with a man she didn't know coming out of their house. That's when the pain exploded in her head.

She had been shot.

She could hardly take it in. It seemed incomprehensible. Were the men merely robbers she had surprised? What had happened to her father? Had he been gone when the men came? If not, what had they done with him?

"Why didn't you take me home?" she asked. "I couldn't have wandered very far."

"We found you in the hills," the bearded man repeated. "We didn't know who you were."

"I'm Daisy Singleton. My father owns a ranch between Bernalillo and Albuquerque. Anybody could tell you that."

"We didn't see anybody to ask."

"You could have asked in town. Why did you bring me here?" Daisy heard her voice rising, tinged with hysteria. She struggled to remain as calm as possible.

Big Feet came back into view. His brown eyes looked at her with the intensity of an eagle picking out its prey. "I don't know who tried to kill you. I didn't know where I could safely leave you."