The Groom Candidate, page 1
The Groom Candidate
Cait London
Cait London Books
The Groom Candidate
Copyright 2017 by L.E. Kleinsasser
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.*
*This also pertains to uploading to free download sites, which is considered piracy and does not recognize the labor of this author or their livelihood from that work. Please discourage piracy and purchase works (other than those listed by the author or publisher as Free Books).
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED: 1997
E-ISBN: 978-1-942478-30-0
Paper ISBN: 978-1973779780
* * *
Contents
Tallchiefs
Tallchief Legend
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
About the Author
Tallchiefs
The Cowboy and the Cradle
Tallchief’s Bride
Tallchief For Keeps
The Groom Candidate
The Seduction of Fiona Tallchief
Tallchief: The Homecoming
Tallchief: The Hunter
~Related~
Rafe Palladin: Man of Secrets
The Perfect Fit
Tallchief Legend
TALLCHIEFS: BIRK
The maiden who rocks upon the chair and sings a lullaby will claim the man of Fearghus blood who stands closest to her. She will be his heart and he will be her love…
Prologue
“It’s my fault that man shot your folks, isn’t it?” From the night, ten-year-old Lacey MacCandliss peered at Birk. The back porch light of the Tallchiefs’ ranch home outlined her small body, draped in a quilt and almost swallowed by the cold October mist.
The wind curled around Birk, rustling the leaves at his boots and reminding him that his parents had been killed. At sixteen-years old, and fighting his need to cry, Birk slammed the chopping ax into the stump. “Go home, half-pint.”
His hands ached, raw with blisters despite the leather gloves he’d been wearing. The mountain of chopped wood had grown in the five days since Birk’s parents had been killed in a convenience store robbery.
The Tallchiefs were the only ones who could have tracked the killer into the mountains at night, a skill they had learned from their father and one passed down from their great-great-grandfather, a Sioux chieftain. The sheriff had waited until dawn on the morning after the killing, but the Tallchief brothers—Duncan, Calum and Birk—had set out at once on horseback. No one had stopped them, because the Tallchiefs were the best trackers. Just fourteen years old, Elspeth had stiffened her back and kept her hand on ten-year-old Fiona, keeping her safe as the Tallchief brothers rode into the mountains, shielded by the night. At eighteen, Duncan was the eldest, then Calum—a year younger, and Birk. They returned, their faces hard, and the killer had wept before the sheriff, glad to be out of their hands. Birk didn’t feel like “Birk the rogue” now; he felt old and drained.
Birk ripped off his gloves and glanced at the Rocky Mountains rugged peaks behind Tallchief Cattle Ranch. One mountain had been claimed by his family. Up on Tallchief Mountain, his parents rested and soon would be covered with a blanket of snow.
Birk stood, legs wide and braced against the wind. He stared at the raw places on his hands, caught by the pain in his heart.
Small hands slid into his and he looked down to see Lacey’s pale face, her wide blue eyes shimmering with tears. One fattened and fell to his palm, shimmering in it. The same age as Fiona, Lacey had seen more than her years, thanks to her parents. Her lips trembled and yet she clung to his hands when Birk would have drawn away—after all, he was a guy, he couldn’t be holding hands with a kid and letting her see that he was shattered....
“It was me, wasn’t it? I told you that Ma said I didn’t need pizza and that I was fat enough already. You probably told your Ma and—”
“Lay off.” Birk watched Lacey recoil from his sharp tone, as if taking a slap. But she was right. He had asked his mother to buy pizza—the specialty of the convenience store—because Lacey had never had the best pizza in miles. Unless Lacey ate at the Tallchief table, she rarely had decent food. Birk wouldn’t have her battered with guilt; he was carrying enough of his own. “Hey, kid. Lay off. I wanted pizza for myself, got it?”
Her fingers were freezing, so small and pale against his. Lacey was wearing Fiona’s old coat and a big woolen neck scarf that Elspeth had woven. Her fingers held his hands tightly, her big eyes searching his and finding the devastation of his heart.
“I love you, Birk,” she whispered tremulously.
Wrapped in grief, Birk managed a distracted, “Yeah, kid. I love you, too.”
He couldn’t let go of those small fingers clinging to his. “It’s night and miles from town. It’s freezing. How did you get here?”
“Rode my bike. It works fine, since you fixed it for me. I got this great coat of Fiona’s and the scarf Elspeth wove for me, and over it all, I wrapped up warm in the quilt your Ma made me—”
Lacey’s lips trembled and she dashed away the tears flowing down her cheeks. “Don’t you tell me to go away, Birk Tallchief. Don’t you dare. I came to pay my respects, ‘cause that’s the right thing to do, and my Ma wouldn’t bring me. Anyway, Ma is ‘entertaining’ now and told me to get lost. Ma says you’ll go to separate foster homes now, except for Duncan, ‘cause he’s eighteen, and he’ll lose the ranch.”
“Is that so?” Birk asked tightly. His mother had wanted to protect Lacey, to bring her into the Tallchief family. But Lacey’s pride and her unshakable allegiance to her mother had stopped Pauline Tallchief, a former judge.
Birk pushed back his fear that the Tallchiefs could be separated. He looked at the too-small girl holding his hands and said confidently, “That won’t happen. We’re staying together, here, same as always.”
She shivered, her face luminous with cold and fear. She peered down at his abused hands, touched the opened blisters with the tip of one small finger.
He needed this bit of a girl, despite his pride. Birk swiped the back of his hand across the tears on his cheeks.
“Hold me—I’m cold.” She held up her thumb, a tiny scar crossing the tip. “See? I’m wearing the Tallchief blood-sister sign. I’m one of you, or almost.”
Birk glanced at the house and decided that if no one saw him, he might hold the girl on his lap. She was just the same as Fiona, and needing warmth and comfort. When he had time, he’d take care of Jo MacCandliss, because his mother would have wanted Lacey to be protected. Birk allowed the girl to hold his hand while he walked to the Tallchiefs’ back porch and then sat in the old rocking chair.
Lacey plopped herself in his lap, startling Birk. She glared at him. “Don’t let me scare you, bub. Your dad held me on his lap, and Duncan and Calum, too. Tell me how you know you’ll be safe, so’s I won’t have to worry about it.... I just don’t have the heart to worry about more things. Aye, I would worry.”
When the Tallchiefs said “Aye” it was a pledge and Birk nodded. Birk stared at her, this child too old for her years. He had to believe her, to believe in himself and the Tallchiefs. “I chose my great-great-grandmother Una Fearghus’s rocking chair to find and return to our family as my pledge. It’s in her journals, how Tallchief captured her— an indentured servant. Before that part of her dowry was sold to keep Tallchief land, Una sat in the chair and rocked her babies in it. Here goes: The maiden who rocks upon the chair and sings a lullaby will claim the man of Fearghus blood who stands closest to her. She will be his heart and he will be her love.”
“I’ll be your love, Birk.”
“Sure you will, kid.”
One
Nineteen Years Later….
“Lacey MacCandliss has finally ruined me for life,” Birk muttered as he ladled another gourd-dipper of water onto the sweat lodge’s round, flat, heated rocks. The rocks were layered into a pit in the center of the small building. Steam boiled and hissed into the air, matching Birk’s smoldering temper.
Clouds rose to the center opening of the lodge he had built years ago, covered with birch bark, and Birk wished he could send the thought of Lacey’s kiss out with the smoke. Droplets of steam settled onto Birk’s nude body, mixing with his sweat. With his arms behind his head, he lay naked on a wooden bench and studied the layered bark walls, keeping in the steam.
An autumn leaf, a shimmering gold aspen, hovered in the small center hole, then drifted away on the mountain wind.
October had always stirred the Tallchiefs’ personal storms, the month when their parents had stopped for pizza that fatal night. Birk inhaled sharply; he’d asked his mother for the special treat: It was to celebrate the adding of a new ram to the Tallchief flock. It was also because Lacey MacCandliss, a scrawny, blue-eyed, hungry bit of bones and freckles, the same age as Fiona, had never tasted the best pizza in town.
The wind swept do
He’d come here to cleanse and meditate in the old ways, to erase the unique, enticing taste of Lacey’s lips. Properly sweating, he would run straight into the freezing waters of Tallchief Lake, shouting, and forget the disaster of her lips, soft against his. He’d shiver in the freezing mountain air and beat himself with birch branches. It was so simple, and the taste of her lips would be forgotten.
After dressing, he would saddle his Appaloosa gelding, Storm Maker, and ride down from Tallchief Mountain, cleansed of Lacey MacCandliss.
At thirty-five, Birk liked to kiss women, but not Lacey MacCandliss. Every time he came close to her, which was often because she was almost his sister and a pseudo-member of the Tallchiefs, he met with disaster. The latest event occurred at Elspeth’s wedding just five days ago.
Birk scowled through the steam to the tiny ash floating upward. There he was, feeling like an oversize adult orphan, circled by the legends of his great-great-grandmother and the Sioux chieftain who had captured her, all coming true. Duncan had married Sybil, fulfilling the legend of the cradle; Calum had married Talia Petrovna, and the legend of the garnet ring came true. Then Alek, Talia’s brother, had come to claim Elspeth, captured by Una’s paisley shawl and the Marrying Moon legend. Birk had yet to find the small rocking chair that Una’s indentured family had brought to the New World, and with it, claim his legend.
Birk had tossed away that whimsy long ago. The chair had been lost for over a century and a half, and had probably gone to kindling.
Elspeth and Alek Petrovna’s wedding ceremony was almost completed when Lacey had snuggled to Birk’s side, just as she did when she was a child and needing reassurance. Lacey had been too quiet and, just as he had done when they were younger, Birk sensed she needed cuddling—
Cuddling? He’d wrapped his arms around Lacey MacCandliss as if he needed her to live— He’d fitted his mouth to hers and dived into—
“Well, hell.” Birk clamped his lips closed. Lacey had him talking to himself. “The Tallchiefs are falling like flies... first Duncan, then Calum and then Elspeth. No wonder I’m delicate.”
Birk tossed a small bundle of sage onto the heated rocks and let the ritualistic cleansing herb, mixed with the scent of sweetgrass curl around him. Leaning against him, Lacey had been so much a part of his life. He comforted her automatically when she leaned her head on his shoulder. Her light sob hit him like a brawling boxer’s punch, leveled him, and his arm closed firmly around her, gathering her to him. He’d kissed her forehead—she was a good foot shorter than him and over eighty pounds lighter.
He’d kissed her cheek, to let her know that she was safe, just as he’d always done—until she was seventeen and getting big ideas.
He’d kissed her nose, edged aside a black wild ringlet scented with the flowers she wore in her hair. He’d moved down to capture the soft sigh upon her lips.
The sweet taste of her caught him, wound around him, and drew him closer. Her lips were soft— He’d slipped into heaven and heat and storms all at the same time and he ached where every slight, feminine curve touched him. Since they were both wearing the Tallchiefs’ kilts to please Elspeth, good strong denim didn’t shield his immediate need to bear her to the ground... or to toss her onto his horse and ride off into the mountains with her.
Birk slashed his hand across his face, flicking away his sweat. He’d dived into the taste of Lacey and forgot that the entire town of Amen Flats and his family watched him kiss her, gripping her hair in both fists. Birk tossed more water onto the coals and shook his head grimly. He could still feel her hair— a mass of wild, untamed, long spirals tossed by the wind... like warm, living silk curling around his hands.
He’d wanted to bury himself in it, drape it around her breasts— Good Lord. Lacey MacCandliss’s small breasts! Birk’s headache pounded. “It’s October. I’m a Tallchief... and any man would have kissed the woman next to him under those circumstances.”
He liked women, adored them—logical, feminine average-size women with sweet personalities. Lacey, at twenty-nine was none of the above. She was his worst nightmare, a tough competitor in the remodeling business and half his size.
Half his size. Birk studied the stones in the lodge’s center pit and tossed on a handful of aromatic herbs, a donation of Elspeth, who knew that he’d be brooding about Lacey. Lacey hadn’t felt like a child.... She had fitted snugly into his arms, pasted against his body as his arms drew her closer. She was all woman and what he had been seeking....
He’d taught her how to build a dollhouse... how to drive, how to use a power saw— She was more like his sister than a desirable woman.
Birk wasn’t teaching her anything more about kissing. He’d leave that to someone who didn’t want to survive. Besides, in the time between her seventeenth and twenty-first years, Lacey had been known as “Racy Lacey” and had led the males in the area a frantic chase with her short, short skirts and tight jeans. An athletic, compact Venus, she’d simply worn men out with challenges, left them in her dust, and Birk didn’t want to think about what else she’d used to exhaust them. She’d craved attention and men were only too happy to oblige. No lectures from the Tallchiefs had stopped her as she danced away, laughing at the games. She’d settled down... on a typical Lacey level after Birk saved her from a near rape. He knew she understood just what dangerous game she played, and yet—
Why had Lacey’s kiss thrown him into heaven?
Birk circled his thoughts—for the past three years something had been bothering Lacey. No one else had noticed during the preparations for Elspeth’s wedding, but Birk had seen Lacey’s desperate shadows and storms. Until she was seventeen, he knew her better than anyone. Whatever bothered her now, she hadn’t stopped taking it out on him.
He’d kissed her, tasted her! Lacey MacCandliss was everything Birk didn’t want in a woman—tough, cynical, extremely competitive, and marked by scars. She didn’t want children or homemaking or commitment to anything, anyone—except to torment him.
Irritated that he’d let himself think of Lacey, Birk tossed a handful of small branches, chosen for their scent, onto the coals. He reached to widen the small hole, allowing for the smoke to escape. After tugging aside the small board covering the hole, he settled down to his wooden bench.
At the wedding, he’d slid his fingers through Lacey’s curling black hair to find the shape of her head, lifting her up to his level for his kiss. For just that heartbeat, Lacey MacCandliss had tasted like his dreams—
Until she kneed him in a vulnerable place. Her fist to his jaw packed more muscle than he’d expected; her leg had tangled with the back of his and... and in front of the whole town of Amen Flats, who were used to the Tallchiefs’ antics, he’d sprawled to his backside.
“My damn kilt blew up,” Birk muttered darkly as he remembered Lacey huffing off with a fiery, threatening look over her shoulder. With her kilt and tartan flying, she’d leaped onto that big demon she called a motorcycle, revved it up and roared off, leaving him to deal with hoots, his pain and humiliation.
Birk inhaled, forcing his thoughts into a cool, logical pattern. He was a craftsman after all, an artist at building plans and breathing life into the plans, an expert at restoring beloved furniture. He planned everything, despite his image of a carefree bachelor. He hadn’t planned that kiss. He inhaled the fragrance of sage and sweetgrass and tried to calm himself, to push away the need to run her down and kiss her again.
He was delicate, Birk repeated. After all, he’d just been dumped by another fiancée, thanks to Lacey. A man had a right to be off balance when his sister got married. He’d just held Megan, Duncan’s toddler, and Calum’s new baby girl, Kira, a newborn, had nestled in Birk’s arms, bundled and protected by his plaid.
