“My conscience keeps telling me that I shouldn’t take you,” he said flatly. “I don’t want to hear a young girl who doesn’t know better whispering undying love in my ear. But I want you, honey. I want you like hell on fire. Now do you know what I mean when I tell you not to push me?”
Mutely she nodded, trying not to stare at the potent evidence of Reever’s masculinity. It was impossible. The thought that she could affect him to that extent made her melt and run like hot, sweet honey.
Reever had expected her to be frightened or repelled by his body’s frank hunger. He hadn’t expected her to make a swift, soft sound that was halfway between a whimper and a moan, and to look at him as like he was a hidden spring and she was shaking with thirst.
“Sweet God,” he said hoarsely. “How the hell did you stay a virgin this long?”
She closed her eyes. “It was easy. I hadn’t met you.” She laughed almost helplessly, and then the laughter faded. She opened her eyes and looked straight into his. “I have too much self-respect to chase a man who wants nothing from me but a roll in the hay. So relax, cowboy. I wouldn’t rip your clothes off you, even—” she eyed her trussed palms wryly “—even if my soft little city hands were up to it.”
“You’re just naturally sassy, aren’t you?” he asked, smiling against his will.
She laughed slightly, then with genuine humor. “Yeah, I guess so. It’s how I stayed sane when the coaches yelled at me. I’d smile and tell them how wonderful they were. Some of them believed me.”
Reever laughed out loud, shaking his head. “Coaches, huh? What are you, some kind of tennis baby?”
“Nope. Some kind of water baby. That’s how I met your cousin. He’s one of the swim club’s biggest supporters. He finds jobs for—” She bit off the rush of words as she heard Reever’s name being called from the yard between the house and the barn.
“In here, Jed,” called Reever.
The back door to the kitchen opened, and a man’s disgusted voice said, “That lazy son of a bitch Cookie is off on another goddamned toot. If you ask me, when we find him, we ought to string him up by his useless, shriveled—” There was an instant of shocked silence when Jed spotted Tory. “Er, sorry, miss. I didn’t know anyone but the boss was in here.”
“No problem,” she said, smiling at the lean, blond cowhand who looked barely as old as she was. “Where I come from, cussing is one of the favorite outdoor sports.”
Jed slanted her a sideways smile. “Yeah? Where you from, pretty lady?”
“Sin City,” she said in a husky, theatrical voice, winking at Jed, falling quickly into the kind of kidding that had been a way of life at the swim club.
With narrowed eyes Reever watched the instant, easy camaraderie between Tory and the young cowhand as they introduced themselves. Reever knew that he should be relieved to have those wide green eyes looking anywhere else but at him. He also knew that he wanted to pick up the handsome young Jed by the scruff of his neck and heave him out the back door.
“You bring the cards?” Reever asked curtly.
The buried anger in his voice gave it a crackle that made Jed’s head snap around instantly. “No, sir.”
“Get a pack while I unsaddle Blackjack and round up the rest of the boys. We’ll draw to see who replaces Cookie and who drives him into town.”
“Town?”
“Town,” Reever said flatly. “This is Cookie’s last toot on my ranch. We’ll cook for ourselves until I find someone else.”
“The boys won’t be happy.”
Reever grunted.
Tory saw both the distaste and the acceptance in Jed’s face. Apparently none of the cowboys liked to cook. Her conclusion was underlined by the banging of the screen door behind Reever on his way out and the outraged howls of various men as Reever gave them the news.
She hesitated, then turned away from the back door and began rummaging in the kitchen. It was obvious that if she was going to eat anytime soon, she’d have to fix something herself. Humming quietly, she began piling ingredients on the counter by the stove. She looked up from time to time as heated outbursts from the men outside told her that the draw had either been inconclusive or was being hotly contested.
By the time Reever stalked back into the kitchen with the men at his heels, savory aromas were arising from the meat and onions browning in a huge pan on the stove. Tory was working at the counter grating cheese, pausing only long enough to stir the meat from time to time. In a second frying pan, thumbnail-sized chunks of bread were cooking in garlic butter. As Reever walked up behind her, she stretched over the big old stove and shook the pan, making the cubes of bread dance.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
The huge cast-iron pan clattered to the burner, sending chunks of bread flying in all directions.
“Of all the clumsy—” he began angrily.
“You’re supposed to be a cowboy, not a darned Indian,” she snapped, cutting off his words. “Why are you always sneaking up on me?”
There were snickers from the six men behind Reever, but nobody said a word. Tory noticed the men for the first time.
“Oh,” she said. “Hi.” She licked the side of her index finger absently, where garlic butter had run down. “Who lost the draw?”
“Reever,” Jed said, unable to hide his smile.
“Oh.”
Reever barely heard. His eyes were riveted on Tory’s pink tongue licking so delicately over equally delicate skin. He couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel to have that hot, sweet tongue caressing him.
Little green-eyed cat. God, she’s tying me in knots.
Tory glanced at Reever and saw darkness and anger. “I figured you’d be all day arguing the draw,” she said quickly. “I was hungry. So I started cooking.”
Reever picked up one of the stray bread cubes, popped it into his mouth and chewed. One black eyebrow lifted in surprise at the unexpected crunch and flavor. He took the spoon and stirred the meat before running his fingertip over the spoon’s shallow metal bowl.
“Not bad,” he said grudgingly.
“You’re too kind,” she said, her voice as sweet and empty as spun sugar.
As one, the cowhands began to fade from the kitchen, sensing with great certainty that the poor fool of a girl was going to set the match to their boss’s famous temper.
“Probably,” Reever agreed sardonically. He ate several big bites of the meat, apparently not noticing the steamy heat. With a sigh he tossed the spoon back into the skillet. “If I don’t die by dinner, you’ve got a job until you earn enough for a bus ticket home.”
“How did you know I was broke?” she asked in the instant before she realized that she had been suckered again. As with her virginity, he had guessed, but he hadn’t known until she confirmed it.
“How much money do you have?” he demanded, grabbing her chin when she would have turned away.
“A few dollars.”
“A few dollars,” he repeated, taking in and letting out a long breath. Then in a deadly voice he asked, “Just how the hell did you expect to get home after you left the Sundance—walk and eat sagebrush?”
“There’s always the oldest profession, isn’t there?” she said flippantly.
His lips flattened. “Honey, you’re so clumsy you’d have to give your tricks combat pay.”
For the second time that day she felt tears clawing at her eyes. She knew that her lips were trembling and hated Reever for seeing it, for shredding her pride until she couldn’t conceal her hurt. She hated herself for being so endlessly vulnerable to him.
She jerked free of his grasp and turned away before he could see her tears.
He swore bitterly. “I told you, little girl. Don’t push me.”
Numbly she nodded, grating cheese blindly.
&n
bsp; “If you want the job, I’ll have Dutch pick up your stuff when he dumps Cookie,” Reever said, his voice harsh.
She knew that he wanted her to refuse. She wanted to refuse, too. But she had no choice. She hadn’t seen a Help Wanted sign anywhere in Massacre Creek. Today, like so many times in the past, she couldn’t afford the luxury of pride. She had to take what was offered and smile and make the best of it. Normally it wouldn’t have bothered her.
But it did now.
She took a deep breath before she spoke, afraid that her voice would shake. She didn’t want that. She would die before she showed Ethan Reever any weakness again.
“Yes,” she said finally, quietly. “I want the job.”
Cursing silently, he watched the slender, proud line of her back for a long time. He had seen the too-brilliant green of her eyes and the betraying quiver of her hands as she worked. He stalked out of the kitchen, yanking his hat into place and letting the screen door bang loudly behind him, cussing himself out thoroughly—and hoping to God that he could keep his hands off the little cat until she earned a bus ticket back to the city, where she belonged.
4
“I’ll do it, Jed,” Tory said, reaching for the egg basket that the young cowboy was holding.
“You sure?” he asked. “That one-eyed hen is mean as a snake. She’s pecked Reever more than once.”
“And survived to lay another egg?” Tory asked dryly. “You should cast that feathered phenomenon in bronze.”
Jed laughed and looked at her with lively blue eyes. During the weeks that she had been on the ranch, the men had come to enjoy her quick tongue as much as her cooking.
All except Reever.
Jed didn’t know what had happened in the kitchen that day when the hands had slunk out, leaving Tory to face the boss in the full flare of his devil temper. But Jed knew that since that day she hadn’t done anything in Reever’s presence except be cheerful, prompt with meals, and a very hard worker.
“Sure I can’t talk you into a movie tonight?” Jed asked wistfully. “That old kitchen will come apart if you clean it one more time.”
“I’m sure. But thanks,” she said, winking at him. “It’s nice of you to ask a senior citizen.”
He winced and then laughed, shaking his head. “Hell, Tory, I’m only two years younger than you.” He looked at her suddenly. “You got a guy back home?”
“No.” She hesitated and then said simply, “I don’t want one here, either. I’ll go to a movie with a bunch of the hands, but not with just one. I’m a friend, not a date.”
He sighed. “Okay,” he said finally, “if that’s the way you want it.”
“Thanks for understanding,” she said, smiling in return.
“You watch out for that old hen,” he repeated, walking off toward the corral. “She’s been a real terror lately.”
Tory walked out to the henhouse, swinging the basket from her arm, grateful that Jed had decided to look for romance elsewhere. With the Sundance hands, she had quickly established the easy, humorous camaraderie that had been the hallmark of her relationship with the various boys and men who had shared the swim club’s huge pools. The inevitable sexual innuendos of the cowhands she either ignored or topped with a deadpan innocence that had caused more than one man to choke into his napkin with disbelief and laughter. Invitations for dates were turned down quickly, firmly, and with a pleasant smile.
She didn’t want to be a challenge to the men. She wanted to be a sister.
Reever was the only exception to that rule.
She wanted to be more to him, but she knew that it wasn’t going to happen. She tried to accept the bittersweet certainty of finding for the first time in her life a man she could have loved … and then losing him before she ever had a chance, simply because she had been born in the wrong place and years too late to attract him. It wasn’t fair to lose that way, through circumstances that she had never controlled, but that kind of loss didn’t surprise her.
Life simply wasn’t fair.
She had learned that hard truth the hard way in the past, when judges were capricious or outright biased in choosing the best divers. Win some. Lose some. Some never had a chance. Maybe next time luck would break her way.
At least, that’s how she had always consoled herself in the past.
Yet being around Reever the past weeks made her hunger for so much more. She remembered grabbing him and dragging him out to see some new chicks, only to find that one of them had somehow gotten caught in the chicken wire. She had gone to her knees to free it. So had he. She hadn’t noticed how close they were until the chick went cheeping back to it’s mother, leaving her fingers tangled with his, his breath feathering her cheek, and hunger vibrating between them. When Jeb had called out with a question and Reever shot to his feet so fast he stumbled.
Then there was the time a green broke bronc had jumped the fence and barreled toward the chicken coop, where she had been collecting eggs. She had raced for the nearest cover—a water trough—and dived in at the same time Reever and Blackfoot dumped the bronc on its side. Seconds later, Reever had pulled her out of the trough, patted her down looking for injuries, and smiled in relief when he didn’t find any. Wet little green-eyed cat. Then he had hugged her hard, put her down, and stalked off to chew out whichever hand had lost control of the bronc.
But her favorite memories were of the dinners, when she listened to Reever and the hands talk about the ranch and what had to be done. At first he had watched her like he was waiting for something. Then finally he asked if she wouldn’t rather be watching television than listening to everybody talk business. She had laughed. This isn’t business, Reever, it’s living. And I love it.
The sound of a horse kicking the corral fence brought Tory out of her memories. All around her sunshine poured down from a sky so blue that it almost hurt to look at it. There were a few fluffy clouds skidding about, chased by a wind that never touched the ground. The smell of new growth and damp earth swirled invisibly around her. She took a deep breath, savoring the sweetness of the air, feeling herself expand into the limitless land. She loved the early mornings when the world was fresh and the Sundance’s sweeping vistas brought a feeling of peace to her that she had never experienced before she had come to the ranch. Nerve endings and muscles that she hadn’t known were tight had slowly relaxed through the weeks, leaving her with a feeling of contentment that was like coming home.
Even Ethan Reever’s uncertain temper and razor tongue hadn’t been able to spoil that.
After a lifetime of buying perfectly matched eggs in cold, sterile, plastic cartons, Tory found the gathering of various sizes of eggs still warm from the nest to be satisfying in a way that she couldn’t describe. She couldn’t have enjoyed collecting the eggs more if they had been brightly colored and full of Easter chocolate.
“Morning, you ugly, one-eyed witch,” she said cheerfully, pouring feed into the small troughs that ran along the exterior of the henhouse.
The hen in question gave Tory an evil look before going to work pecking at the feed through the fence. The other hens followed suit with only a small flurry of clucking and flapping. They were getting used to Tory as she slowly took over the lighter chores, freeing Jed for other work. When she was sure that the hens were busy, she climbed up the rickety old stepladder leaning against the coop’s outside wall. After she opened the small door that would give her hands access to the raised nests, she wedged her upper body into the henhouse while she patted through the warm straw in search of eggs. She couldn’t see much inside the dark coop, but she didn’t need to. Her fingers could find the eggs faster than her eyes.
As she pulled out eggs one by one and put them into the basket she had braced between her feet, she thought covetously of the small patch of land just in back of the house. Sometime in the past that patch had been a kitchen garden. She was sure of it. The
suggestion of neat furrows was subtle yet distinct, and she had found the remains of a compost pile behind the chicken house.
She had never had any time to garden as a child, yet the thought had always tempted her. Growing seeds into whole plants, eating the fruits or vegetables that unfurled so miraculously from such vulnerable beginnings, taking part in the advancing of the seasons across the earth—she wanted to do that. She wanted to touch the land and feel it warm and fertile beneath her hands.
She was so caught up in dreaming about a garden that she was slow to collect the eggs. The first warning she had that something was wrong was a sharp pain, as though someone had rammed a thick thorn into her finger. With a gasp she jerked her hand away, upsetting her precarious balance as she leaned into the coop. Her feet kicked over the basket of eggs as she tried to right herself without using her hands, which were shielding her face from the mean, one-eyed hen.
Tory succeeded in protecting her eyes but only at the cost of getting her hands severely pecked. She tried to back out but couldn’t without uncovering her face. Frantically, blindly, she braced her weight on her elbows and tried to grab the mean hen. The wild battle stirred up the rest of the chickens. Some of them joined in the effort to repel the intruder. Others simply rushed around clucking and screeching as though a coyote had slipped into the coop and was eating them one by one.
Reever heard the noise, came out of the barn where he had been checking on a lame horse and saw Tory struggling half in and half out of the henhouse. With five running strides he was there. His big, leather-gloved hand shot over her shoulder, covering her face as he yanked her out of the one-eyed hen’s reach and slammed shut the high, narrow opening.
“You little city idiot,” he said roughly, setting Tory on her feet amidst the broken eggs. “Look at that mess. I should take a whip to Jed for not warning you about that one-eyed hen.”
Tory tried not to flinch from the look in Reever’s eyes. “Jed warned me. I was just slow getting the eggs.”
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