Tall, Dark, and Lonesome

by Debra Dixon

  “All right. You can saddle a horse, but that doesn’t mean you can ride.” Zach stopped to answer a question for three dudes on horseback and pointed out a break in the trees, which, he indicated, was the best spot to cross the creek. Returning to the conversation, Zach observed, “Everybody’s accounted for. You’d better hustle.”

  “Well, I am trying,” Niki snapped as she tried to figure out how to throw herself as gracefully into the saddle as Zach did. Having an audience didn’t help her concentration, neither did the impossibly high stirrup. Wedging a boot in that contraption would leave the rest of her in such a stretched-out, unbalanced state that she’d never be able to do a proper job of pushing and pulling to get into the saddle—well, not without looking completely foolish and awkward.

  “Need some help?” Zach asked, his mouth close to her ear, his chest against her back.

  Before she could answer, he spanned her waist beneath her jacket with his large hands and lifted her, Niki recovered enough of her composure to shove a boot in the stirrup and throw a leg over the saddle. Once she was settled, Zach let go, but allowed his hand to trail down her thigh before he turned back to Dap.

  Niki sat in a daze. The man’s simplest touch sent her nerve endings into red alert. Belatedly she remembered her manners. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime,” Zach said. “If you’re ready, let’s get out of here. And I want you to stick close to me, so I can keep an eye on you today.”

  “Fine,” she agreed, but didn’t bother to point out that he hadn’t taken his eyes off her since the day before. “I wanted to do a column from your perspective anyway.”

  Caught off guard, Zach asked warily, “Why? I thought they’d want to read about the people who come here, life on the trail, and all that garbage.”

  Grinning impishly, Niki nudged her horse toward the same opening that Zach had pointed out earlier. “You are all that garbage. The old-fashioned trail boss who pushes his men as hard as he pushes his cows, but not as hard as he pushes himself.”

  “Well, that’s certainly flattering.”

  “Of course, the trail boss has the proverbial heart of gold hidden beneath a taciturn exterior.”

  “Of course.” Zach grabbed the pommel of his saddle and slung himself onto Dap. “I don’t know where you get your information, Niki, but you need better sources.”

  With a careless gesture Niki tossed her braid over her shoulder. “Trying to deny the heart of gold?”

  “Nope,” he answered seriously, allowing Dap to pass the chestnut. When he was several feet in front, Zach said, “I don’t push my cows nearly as hard as I push my men.”

  Niki’s laughter filled the early morning air, and Zach couldn’t think of a better way to start the day than to enjoy a quiet joke with this woman. With. Now that was a scary word. He’d shared jokes, a three-hankie cry, and a tent with her. So much for promises to himself about keeping his distance and avoiding her. Then he smiled as he realized he’d decided what to do about Niki Devlin.

  Just past the edge of trees screening the creek, Zach turned to wait for her. He wanted to see her reaction when she got her first good look at the herd. By now the men would be easing the cattle into the first stage of today’s drive along the creek bed, heading off independent heifers who wanted to investigate alternate trail routes and convincing the lazy to move.

  Riding up beside him, Niki surveyed the scene before her without saying a word. She glanced back over the rump of her horse at the deserted camp of modern tents, and then back at the throng of cows strung out along the creek bed. Men who’d limped pitifully into camp the previous night now looked as if they’d stepped off the pages of a western novel, ramrod straight in the saddle. Some of the attorneys wore chaps, slapped their thighs with their hats, and hollered “Ho” in two syllables. The foothills of the Medicine Bow Mountains formed a perfect backdrop, the cloud-capped peaks rising gently in the distance.

  “It’s incredible,” Niki finally said. “It’s as if civilization disappears at the edge of the creek. The modern-day world is gone, wiped clean, forgotten.”

  “Not forgotten. Postponed.” Zach urged his mount into the stream.

  “Postponed,” Niki echoed, nodding. Excitement tripped along her nerve endings as she followed Zach toward the past.

  FIVE

  By late morning the trail drive had lost its allure. Niki was ready to pronounce each of the disgustingly cheerful lawyers certifiably insane. She was heartily sick of cows and gave serious consideration to murdering Zach in his sleep. For every mile of ground covered by the herd, Niki covered four. Zach had her chasing every cow that even turned its head the wrong direction. It didn’t help matters that Cay had only one speed, and that was full throttle. All Zach had to do was point; off Cay raced without consulting his rider.

  Finally she couldn’t resist asking him, “What exactly is it that the dogs do? And why don’t you have more people? For crying out loud, there’ve got to be more than a thousand cows out there! And I’ve chased every one of them.”

  “A little over twelve hundred.”

  Niki’s mouth dropped open. “Why, that’s … that’s almost a hundred cows per person.”

  “Not if you count the dogs. Each does the work of at least two men. That makes it about seventy-five head of cattle to each drover.”

  While Niki was struggling for a reply, Zach rode away to intercept some cattle veering away from the creek. His mission accomplished, he returned to her and smiled. “Could be worse. The ratio on trail drives in the late 1800s was more like one man for each two hundred head of cattle.”

  “Two hundred!”

  Her exclamation didn’t jar Zach nearly as much as the way she peeled off her sweatshirt. He’d been expecting the striptease since she pulled off the jacket and tied the sleeves around her waist half an hour earlier. Driving cattle was hard work, and the temperature was climbing past the fifty-degree mark. The T-shirt didn’t cling to her body the way yesterday’s purple model had, but the soft cotton fabric still followed the rounded contours of her body too closely for Zach’s comfort.

  “Did you go to New York University, or is that T-shirt part of a collection?”

  Niki glanced down at the college emblem and letters emblazoned across her chest. “Alma mater. Where’d you go?” She held her hand up to keep him from answering. “I bet it was one of those sinfully expensive, stuffy institutions.”

  “The stuffiest.”

  “Harvard,” Niki guessed immediately. “I wasn’t aware they offered a degree in trail bossing. And I sure didn’t think they let cowboys inside their ivy-covered walls.”

  Zach resettled his hat and smiled wryly. “No, trail bossing is just an avocation. I’m a lawyer by trade.”

  “Harvard Law School?” she asked.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  Whistling, Niki remembered a comment John made about Zach quitting a “zillion-dollar-a-year suit job” to come to the ranch. “What’s that joke about Harvard Law School graduates looking for jobs?”

  “They don’t have to look farther than the line of C.E.O.’s and law firms at their front door.”

  “Is it true?”

  “True enough,” he admitted uncomfortably.

  Niki didn’t press, content to let Zach think he’d managed to avoid her questions. He had. For now anyway. But she intended to find out what brought him back to Wyoming. Men usually didn’t walk away from power careers without a plan. John had said Zach was the slow, deliberate type, and she agreed. She’d already decided that Zach wasn’t the kind of man who’d run from anything. That meant he came back to something. But what?

  Lunch was a darn sight better than her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Murray was truly a master of the camp stove, and the lawyers were more fun than a barrel of rodeo clowns. She’d laughed all afternoon as the lawyers tried to outdo each other with rope tricks and fancy riding.

  The rodeo lawyer was the best of the group, and he’d shown her how to throw a rope du
ring lunch, one of the few times during the day Zach hadn’t been hovering nearby. She’d tried all afternoon, with little success, to lasso every bush and tree stump in her path. Of course, each failure and the constant grin on Zach’s face only made her more determined. He’d offered to give her some additional pointers, but she’d refused. Pride insisted that she could do this without his smug help.

  “Spit!” she said bluntly as she rode up to camp. Her rope had just missed a perfect stump, a stump that had been made for a rope, a stump that all but cried out to be roped. Frustrated, she reeled in the long, thin lariat. The light was fading, and she still hadn’t roped a stationary object. Roping a moving cow was out of the question.

  “Get off your horse and let me show you how,” Zach ordered as he walked toward her from the camp, catching Cay’s bridle and stopping the horse. “Otherwise, it’s going to drive you crazy all night.”

  Niki wavered.

  “Make a decision, Cookie. We’re burning daylight here. If I’m going to teach you, it’s got to be now. Before we lose any more light.”

  “All right. But no comments about my technique.”

  Zach’s face was serious as he reached up to pull her from the saddle, but the twinkle in his eye warned her. “Cookie, there isn’t anything wrong with your technique.”

  Heat spread through Niki like brushfire through a drought-plagued forest. Throwing a rope was no longer the topic of conversation. He was talking about the kiss, and they both knew it.

  “Come down,” Zach said.

  Niki swung a leg over the pommel and leaned toward him, bracing her hands against his powerful biceps. When the muscles tensed beneath her fingers, she swallowed, focused on the top button of his shirt, and let him help her down. As she slid into the cradle of his thighs, she knew that letting Zach teach her anything was a mistake. This is Wyoming, she reminded herself. Wyoming and sex, no matter how powerful the attraction, were mutually exclusive.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled into his collar, wondering how her hands ended up on his shoulders and why her fingers craved the feel of the soft, worn flannel fabric that covered what seemed like acres of steel. The texture was seductive, encouraging her to let her fingers roam and to press her palms flat against his upper torso.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Zach advised. “We haven’t reached the good part.”

  “You mean it gets better?” Niki whispered as her hands charted the expanse of chest in front of her.

  Zach knew he could have kissed her then, sipped the taste of her skin from the shadowy hollow at the base of her throat. Lord knew he wanted to, but he could feel the uncertainty that kept her motionless except for the erotic massage of her fingers. She was a woman torn between two conflicting emotions. He knew beyond a doubt what one of them was, but he didn’t have a clue as to the second. And until he did, kissing her would be the worst thing he could do. To save his sanity, he grabbed her hands as she began working her way down his chest. Right now, standing next to the string of horses was not the place to show Niki how easily he could lose control.

  “Your feet are on the ground now,” Zach said gently.

  “Oh.” Niki breathed deeply and pulled her hands away from him. “I didn’t … I thought …” She gave up and stepped away to clear her head. Standing close to Zach made her feel as if the world were spinning too fast. She couldn’t let him know how easily he affected her equilibrium. Keep it light, she repeated the litany in her head. Bright and breezy. That was the ticket. “Let me tie up Cay and then you can put your money where your mouth is and show me those foolproof roping tips.”

  Zach leaned over her to grab the rope, enjoying the way she closed her eyes and braced herself. He grinned. Rattling Niki’s composure was becoming another one of his favorite pastimes. “Just getting the rope, Cookie.”

  “Sure,” she said sheepishly and opened her eyes. While she finished unsaddling Cay, Zach snaked the rope out in front of him and began loosely coiling it. “The way you’ve been concentrating on this today, a person might think you had a reason for learning how to throw a lariat.”

  “Of course I do.” Now that she had some distance between them, Niki felt much better. Her brain was no longer on vacation, and she could actually put two intelligent thoughts together. “I’m surprised you don’t already know the answer to that one. Every little girl dreams of throwing a lasso around a cowboy and reeling him in. Of course, in my childhood fantasy, I was much better with the lariat.”

  “Got any particular cowboy in mind?” Zach asked, and restrained the urge to throw the rope over Niki and reel her in.

  She took the lasso from him, aware of his overly confident stance and the cocky tilt of his hat. She let her hand rest against his for a second longer than necessary. Flirting with Zach came so naturally to her. She didn’t plan it any more than she planned to breathe. Then she gave him her “gotcha” smile and said, “No rush. Wyoming cowboys are a dime a dozen.”

  Without bothering to dignify her comment with a denial, Zach pointed at the stump she’d missed earlier. “Show me.”

  Settling the rope in her hands, Niki eyed the stump, wound up, and tossed. As usual, the noose landed several feet to the right of her target. Shrugging, she reeled in the lariat.

  “No follow-through,” Zach pronounced, and came to stand so close behind her that her bottom brushed against the cradle of his thighs.

  Shocked at his boldness, Niki gasped and realized this was his revenge for the cowboy remark, his way of proving that cowboys were as different as night and day and that her reaction to him was unique. His proximity impaired her ability to coordinate her hand movements with the signals from her brain. Suddenly she was all thumbs and nervous. After what seemed like an eternity, she had the rope neatly coiled again.

  “What now?” Her voice was an octave higher than usual.

  Zach put his hands on her shoulders, thumbs against her shoulder blades, and straightened her posture. Not coincidentally, correcting her body position brought her back into direct contact with his chest. “First learn to square up to your target.”

  “All right,” Niki agreed, vaguely aware that she’d closed her eyes and let her arms go slack.

  Once Zach squared her shoulders, he let his hands slide upward to cradle her head, raising her line of vision slightly. “How’s that? Better view?”

  “Perfect.”

  Since she hadn’t opened her eyes, her response was a lie. Her body had given itself over to Zach’s care, and she had all but forgotten the reason for Zach’s presence behind her or his hands adjusting her body to suit himself. All she knew was that each time his hands touched her, her pulse jumped and throbbed. A fog of pleasure had surrounded Niki as soon as Zach had surrounded her.

  Next Zach grazed the underside of her breast with his palm as he shifted his left arm into a position around her waist. With his right hand he traced the line of her shoulder and down her arm to capture the hand that held the rope. “Pay attention, Cookie. This is important. Throwing the lasso is like making love.”

  Niki became aware of Zach’s arousal. She struggled to pull enough air into her lungs to ask, “Making love?”

  “That’s right,” Zach whispered against her ear. “Close your eyes and imagine. Use your senses. Feel the texture of the lariat. Let it become a part of you as it slides through your hands. When you’re ready, grip it firmly. You’ve got to build the tension slowly as you wind up to throw. And when the moment is right, you let go and instinct takes over. But you don’t stop there.”

  “No?” The word was a hoarse croak. Niki swallowed hard. Her heart pounded as Zach made love to her with words and made promises with his hands. His hands had moved to her shoulders again, massaging, seducing. His arousal was pressed intimately to her bottom, and his hips moved once. Just once. Enough to remind her that her body wanted him inside her.

  “Follow the release with your body. Let your body reach for the prize.”

  And when Niki’s body reached for the prize
, she gasped and pulled away, shaking. What had almost happened wasn’t supposed to happen in full view of the camp and with every stitch of her clothing on.

  “Lesson’s over,” she said, and dropped the rope. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.”

  “You were made for this, Niki,” Zach warned her as she walked away.

  The night began to cool as Niki absently waved good night to the guys, her attention riveted on the computer in front of her. The video screen on her laptop was high-tech, incredibly easy to read but also a battery hog, which meant she had to get the column finished before the computer started beeping warnings at her. Zach, on the other hand, had been beeping silent warnings at her for the last ten minutes.

  Now that he waited by the fire bereft of company, he was a constant reminder that it was time to go to bed. With him. To his tent. Earlier he had politely stayed away from the tent while she took a sponge bath and changed. She’d returned the favor. Then he’d thoughtfully left her alone to write while he talked with the men. Now, however, he was making it abundantly clear that retiring for the night was going to be a joint endeavor. Snapping the computer shut, Niki slung the strap over her shoulder and gathered up her sleeping bag, which she’d used to cushion her rump from the cold ground.

  As soon as she saw the patient passion in Zach’s eyes, she knew she was in for trouble. Maybe not tonight, but eventually Zach would grow impatient. And when he did, she’d better be ready, because experience told her that resisting Zach would be a full-time job.

  As she had the night before, Niki dove into her sleeping bag the minute she entered the tent.

  Zach followed, not bothering to hold back his chuckle. “Tired?”

  “Very,” Niki murmured, glad he couldn’t hear the tommy-gun beating of her heart. Settling into her sleeping bag and pretending to be tired meant she didn’t have to talk to or look at sexy Zach Weston. “Very tired.”

  “I bet. What with all that running. After cows, I mean.”