Tall, Dark, and Lonesome

by Debra Dixon

  Ignoring her disappointment that Zach was married, Niki turned on him to give him a piece of her mind. “You made her retire? That’s positively prehistoric. Pure cowboy mentality. Haven’t you heard? Wyoming’s motto is ‘Equal rights.’ Women can have homes, careers, and babies. Simultaneously even!”

  John’s short bark of laughter was cut off abruptly when Zach shot him a meaningful glance and said, “Eighty-five-year-old women rarely have babies.”

  “Oh,” was all Niki could manage for a moment. Opening mouth and inserting foot was fast becoming a hobby of hers. All the same, she was delighted to know that the paragon of chuck wagon cookery was eighty-five years old. “I thought … I mean … I assumed—”

  “Never assume anything about Zach,” John advised. “You’ll lose every time. Trust me.”

  “I do trust you,” Zach agreed evenly. “To get into trouble at every opportunity. You stay here. I’ll go and send the first shift up for lunch. After everybody’s had lunch, the two of you move the wagon down to Parson’s Meadow. The truck from the ranch should meet you there with our gear for tonight.”

  “Wait,” Niki ordered as he started toward his horse. When he turned around instantly, his eyes warmer than they had been since John arrived, she ruthlessly quelled the impulse to beam like an idiot and said, “I mean, don’t go.” She clenched her teeth and tried again. “I mean, what about lunch? Don’t you want some? The sandwiches are almost ready.”

  “So, you do know how to chuck.”

  “I know how to spread. It’s not the same thing.”

  “In that case, ask John to help you with dinner if you have trouble with the can opener.”

  “Weston, has anyone ever told you that you can be a very irritating man?” Niki inquired pleasantly.

  She could see a silver glimmer of amusement in his eyes when he answered, “People generally like me well enough.”

  “But do you like them?” Niki teased, and turned around before she could see the frown pass over Zach’s face. “Let me grab a sandwich for you. You look smart enough to eat and ride at the same time.”

  When she came out of the wagon, John was checking on the mule team, and Zach sat patiently on his dappled horse, his rain slicker neatly rolled and tied behind his saddle. Niki handed him the sandwich and decided that with a body like his, he was more than a weekend cowboy. She stared at the well-defined chest muscles revealed by the damp T-shirt and the flex of thigh muscles beneath his jeans as he signaled his horse to turn. With an effort she closed her mouth and acknowledged his thank-you with a nod.

  “See you tonight,” he tossed over his shoulder. As he rode away, Zach scrutinized the neat peanut butter and jelly triangles. He rolled his eyes toward the sky and whispered, “Heaven help me, she even cut off the crust.”

  “What’s for lunch?” John asked as he joined her.

  “Sandwiches.”

  Disappointment creased John’s face. “Only sandwiches?”

  “Chips too.”

  Rubbing the back of his neck, John asked, “Did you make plenty of sandwiches?”

  “Tons of them.”

  John looked pointedly at the empty plank. “Is it invisible food?”

  Niki was puzzled for a moment. Then she grinned and stepped up into the wagon. “I can take a hint.”

  “Not very well,” John said bluntly, reminding Niki of her younger brother.

  Inside the wagon, Niki found a plain white wraparound apron that covered the rip in her jeans. As she crossed the strings behind her back and tied them at her waist, she bargained, “If I feed you, will you answer some questions?”

  “Sure,” John agreed, reaching up to take the platters of sandwiches from her.

  Hunting through the cabinets, she saw blue enamel cups with white speckles, and plates that resembled pie pans. She added them to the rest of the lunch items sitting on the plank and poured herself a cup of hot coffee. As she swirled three sugars into her coffee Niki said, “Tell me about Zach Weston. You worked for him long?”

  “Worked on the ranch since high school.” John grabbed a sandwich and leaned against the wagon. “But I don’t really think of this as work. Especially the last few years since Zach took over. The man is amazing. Quit a zillion-dollar-a-year suit job to come back and run the ranch.”

  Niki sipped her coffee thoughtfully. She’d heard the Weston name while she was growing up. Smalltown people liked to gossip, and because the Westons owned a large chunk of Wyoming, they were fair game for the grapevine. However, remembering the Weston name was not the same as remembering them. The town grapevine might know everything about the Westons, including their shoe sizes, but Niki couldn’t remember anything much beyond a certainty that there hadn’t been any Weston children in school.

  “You respect him, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I do,” John said, tilting his head in thought. “I also envy his height, his horse, his hat, and his grandmother.”

  Niki laughed and figured John would have to be at least six feet tall himself. “Which do you envy the most?”

  “His horse, of course. But Bess would be a close second,” John said as he picked up another sandwich.

  “Bess, the chuck wagon cook, is his grandmother?”

  “Yep. Sweet lady, iron will. She says ‘jump,’ we ask how high.”

  “Everybody?” Niki asked casually as she reached for a corn chip.

  “Anyone with any sense.”

  “Including Zach?”

  “Nope. Zach doesn’t jump for anybody. He’s the slow, deliberate type.”

  Niki watched John devour his third sandwich and wondered if they were talking about the same man. Zach had certainly made his mind up quickly enough this morning. She could still feel the heat of his gaze, and a tingle slipped up her spine as she remembered the electric touch of their bodies in the wagon. She could testify to the fact that Zach’s heart was definitely jumping. No wonder he’d slammed the cabinets and all but leaped out of the wagon! Zach Weston didn’t like losing control. A ghost of a smile touched Niki’s face as she raised it to the warmth of the sun peeking through a blanket of gray. Watching Zach lose control might be fun.

  By the time Niki had finished feeding lunch to the crew, her head spun with names and faces. Her fingers itched to bang her impressions out on her laptop computer, which was stowed beneath the wagon seat, along with her gear and sleeping bag. She glanced longingly in that direction, but quickly returned to the task of clearing away the remains of lunch.

  The first shift had consisted of Bill Truitt, a weathered old ranch hand, and five young Philadelphia lawyers who had been on the drive twice before. Their whole practice shut down every year while they traded their silk ties and suspenders for designer bandannas and custom-made boots. They even brought their own horses and tack for the drive. When the five of them had come riding up, their horses thundering across the meadow in unison, the only thing missing had been the background music of a low-budget western movie.

  Niki’s first thought was, you can take the lawyer out of the city, but you can’t take the yuppie out of the lawyer. Two of them wore wire-rim glasses and all of them had come through the rainstorm looking as pressed as rosebuds in a Bible. Each flashed an easy, brilliant white smile, and to Niki’s surprise they were a great deal of fun. However, she had a feeling that they would forever be grouped in her mind as “the lawyers” and not as individuals.

  And not a single one of them made your stomach flip unexpectedly or sent shivers up your spine. Niki ruthlessly cut off the little voice inside and steered her thoughts to the second lunch shift. From Seattle came an accountant, Orlando contributed a grandfather, Cleveland a restaurant supply salesman, and Los Angeles an air freight specialist. None of them had been on the trail before. The accountant was the only one who’d even attempted anything adventurous; he’d spent last year’s vacation crewing on a sloop in the Caribbean. In his opinion the cattle drive was vastly superior.

  During lunch everybody talked
cattle, compared horses, and shared “surefire” techniques for chasing strays out of gullies and thickets. Niki purposely remained quiet, listening to the conversations. All these people had come to Wyoming to find the past by reliving the Old West, chasing cattle, and stretching out to dream beneath the stars. What was it about Wyoming that called to these people and made them want to chase the past? Good question—and one Eli expected her to answer.

  Zach tapped the sides of his horse and started after a stray, only to be cut off by one of the lawyers. Satisfied that the situation was under control, Zach pulled back, reminding himself to focus on the task at hand instead of on Niki Devlin. The lawyer would never have beaten him to the stray if he’d had his mind on the job. He had eighty miles to cover in the next week, and he’d better remember that.

  Threading twelve hundred cattle through narrow gorges and along old creek beds required a certain level of concentration, especially if Brass and Snicker were off duty. Zach’s two favorite Australian Cattle Dogs were his secret weapon for successful cattle drives. As a breed developed from wild dingoes and imported collies, the Australian Cattle Dog controlled cattle without the constant barking that scattered the herds. Running cows were thin cows, and every lost pound of weight meant lost profit.

  True to their ancestry, Brass and Snicker gathered the stock silently, coolly standing their ground when challenged by a cantankerous heifer, moving the herd by sheer force of will and a few well-chosen nips at the heels of the lazy. Zach never used his dogs the first day on the trail, preferring to bring them in after the guests had had an opportunity to gather the herd themselves. Once the dogs arrived, the guests didn’t have to work quite so hard to keep the cattle moving, but Zach always felt his guests needed that first day alone with the animals.

  He grinned. Gathering the herd themselves gave his dudes an appreciation of exactly how difficult it was to create a herd from twelve hundred individual cows. And it gave them a feeling of accomplishment. The visual impact of the herd moving through the wilderness, dust lifting lazily to cloud the air, had quite an effect on most of the guests. Of course, the dust clouds had been temporarily vanquished by the rain, but the herd still made an impression on every person who rode the trail.

  Analyzing people on the basis of first impressions was an old habit of Zach’s that he’d picked up as a kid bouncing from one boarding school to the next. He learned much too early in life that what people said was not generally how they felt, but that their eyes rarely lied. And it was interesting comparing the words to the feelings revealed in people’s eyes. Niki Devlin certainly hadn’t hidden anything this morning. He had only to wait a second, and what he saw in her eyes came tumbling out of her mouth.

  Zach wondered what Niki’s first impressions of the herd would be, then swore under his breath as he realized that he wanted to share that moment. He’d like to watch as her wide green eyes got wider with astonishment. He wished Niki would smile at him and invite him to share the fun she found in life.

  Damn! He’d known the woman for an hour—wrong. He’d known her for weeks if he counted reading the back issues of her columns. He’d already agreed and disagreed with her a number of times. Hell, he’d laughed out loud when he read her impassioned plea for the enactment of a law that would prohibit the wearing of spandex clothing by any person not within spitting distance of a swimming pool.

  “Excuse me, Zach,” said Bill Truitt, reining in next to Zach.

  The creased face of the longtime ranch hand was a welcome sight. “What’s up?”

  “We’re at the creek that runs along Parson’s Meadow.”

  “So soon?” Zach looked around, shocked at how long he must have been riding without consciously directing his horse, not that Dap ever needed much direction.

  “We’ll want to settle the cows on this side for the night, right?” Bill’s question was more of an affirmation than a true request for guidance.

  “Sure.” Zach eyed the line of brush and trees on the other side of the creek that shielded Parson’s Meadow and suppressed a smile of anticipation at seeing Niki again. He had to stop thinking about her. She was deceptively uncomplicated, which made her absolutely dangerous. Niki Devlin was a loaded gun guaranteed to blow a hole in his carefully organized life. She’d already blown a hole in his concentration.

  “Bill, you’d better put two people on every shift: tonight. The cattle are still a little shaky from the storm. I’d sure hate to spend all morning gathering cows that bolted during the night.”

  Bill chuckled. “The lawyers would rather die than let a single cow get by them.”

  Laughing, Zach agreed, “One of them beat me to a stray on the trail.”

  “Small wonder,” Bill observed mildly. He’d known Zach since childhood and didn’t hesitate to point out the obvious. “Your mind hasn’t been on cattle since you came back from lunch.”

  Zach ignored his comments. “Assign the watch, Bill. I’ll go and see what Ms. Devlin’s burning for dinner.” He nudged Dap toward the creek.

  “Can’t cook?”

  “That’s the rumor. Guess we’ll know soon enough.” Zach waved a farewell and left Bill to bed down the herd before dark.

  Instead of following the chuck wagon’s route to Parson’s Meadow, the drovers were following a little-used access road that offered less opportunity for the herd to scatter. Cattle and wagon arrived at roughly the same spot, divided by a wide section of Rock Creek.

  Unless Niki and John had pulled out the binoculars, Zach doubted they were aware of the herd’s arrival. In addition to the screen of pine trees blocking their view, the rushing water of the creek stole the sounds from the air. In the gathering darkness it would be difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate the shapes of overlapping branches and brush from the herd.

  Zach emerged from the screen of pines, half expecting a repeat of this morning’s disaster. Instead he found a circle of dome-shaped tents all neatly set up about fifty yards from the trees. Inside the circle, which included the wagon, a hearty fire blazed in welcome. Burnished copper shafts of flame licked hungrily at the twilight. A few meadowlarks that hadn’t yet had the good sense to fly south for the winter warbled a melody over the sounds of the creek water.

  As he got closer the aroma of freshly brewed coffee mingled with the faint mouth-watering scent of just-baked chocolate cake and barbecued ribs. Something was wrong. Everything was too perfect. And everything was too peaceful. He felt like the hero of a science fiction movie waiting for the aliens to make their presence known.

  John’s horse was gone, but the mules were hobbled and grazing contentedly. Other than the hissing of the wet firewood, no sounds came from the camp, but a sudden movement caught his attention. A coyote hovered uncertainly just beyond one of the tents. Caution began to stiffen Zach’s spine, and he knew Dap felt the tension flow right through the reins. As he carefully reached behind him and let one hand rest on his rifle, a shout sent the coyote scurrying for the trees.

  “Hey, John! That you? I found another one!” Niki Devlin stuck her head and arm out of the front of the wagon, brandishing a cylinder as though she’d found the elixir of eternal youth.

  “Oh. It’s you,” she said as soon as she realized that the cowboy had returned, not John. Niki recognized the flutter in her stomach. It was the same one she’d felt when she’d been flirting with Zach in the rain. She had to get over this impulse to run and hide when he stared at her. The man didn’t have a casual bone in his body, and the briefest glance was packed with meaning. He demanded a connection with her without even saying a word. Niki shut down those thoughts and silently said what she was afraid was going to be her litany on this trip—Keep it light.

  Zach removed his hand from the rifle stock. “Another what?”

  “Another sample from that restaurant supply guy. He must have put them in here yesterday,” Niki said as she crawled out onto the seat and plopped down, hooking the heel of her boot on the edge of the wagon. She wayed him closer and whis
pered, “Air freshener in food fragrances. So far my favorite’s the chocolate cake. But I haven’t tried the country ham and biscuits.”

  Disbelief fought with Zach’s sense of humor. Surely he hadn’t heard her correctly. “Are you telling me that you’ve been spraying air fresheners that smell like food?”

  Niki chuckled and rested her chin in her hand as she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “They don’t last long outdoors, but don’t they smell great?”

  “Just like real food,” Zach agreed stiffly. Did she realize how inviting she looked perched on the wagon, eyes closed, her face lifted as if for a kiss? What would she do if he leaned over and kissed her? Would she pull away as she had that morning? He doubted anything she’d done that day was consciously sensual, but each time he looked at her, she elicited a sensual response from him. Right now the look of pleasure on her face was more than enough to stir his imagination. He had to stop thinking of Niki Devlin as a woman. Impossible. She still had on the same torn blue jeans that offered a glimpse of tender skin.

  “No!” Niki’s eyes snapped open and met Zach’s gaze. She shook her head to reject the idea beginning to form in her mind. “Don’t tell me you actually thought I barbecued ribs and baked a cake?”

  Not bothering to deny the truth, Zach dismounted and loosened Dap’s cinch, trying to concentrate on unsaddling his horse instead of running his hand along the bared flesh of her thigh. Unfortunately, his mind ignored his instructions, and his fingers struggled with the buckle. What was so damned special about this woman? Was it simply that her face was made to be cupped between the palms of a man’s hands or that her hair was a dark, rich sable? He groaned in frustration.

  Misinterpreting his groan, Niki imagined Zach’s confusion as he rode up to camp and caught a whiff of heavenly cooking. She lost her battle with the laughter bubbling up inside her. When she sobered, she managed to remind him, “You should have known better. I already told you I can’t cook.”