Love Me Some Cowboy

by Lisa Mondello

  "Are you teasing me, Boone? You?"

  Abruptly, he sobered. "Maddie, I don't want you getting your hopes up. There might be nothing there."

  "There will be. I can feel it. I know I'll find something."

  Boone almost sighed. He'd forgotten the flaky gypsy. "It's really important to you, isn't it?"

  Her chin tilted upward. "I'm just curious, that's all."

  She was lying. Everything about her spoke of nerves this morning. "Do you want me to go up there with you?"

  "Why?"

  So I can protect you from what you might find. Or not find. He shrugged. "The boxes might be heavy."

  For a long span she studied him, the silver eyes softening to gray velvet. "I'll be all right. I'll come get you if there's something too heavy." With practiced ease, she dished up his eggs and pulled the biscuits from the oven, piling four on his plate.

  His hand reached for the plate. She held on, their gazes meeting. "Thank you," she said softly.

  Boone couldn't take his eyes off her.

  Finally Maddie let go. Boone reminded himself of what was real. What was possible. With a nod, he headed for the table.

  * * *

  MADDIE CLIMBED THE attic stairs, grateful that Dev had called to say it would be this afternoon before he could return, that he'd deal with Sam's desk then and see if he even needed to search the attic. She really wanted to do this alone, to seek her grandmother's spirit in a way she could never do if accompanied by a stranger.

  Her heart thumped heavily in her breast with every step.

  Then she reached the top and just stared.

  Across the large attic motes floated in the air, turned golden by the rays of the morning sun. The narrow path between boxes was floored with broad wooden planks, undisturbed under a blanket of years of dust. She smelled the slightly mildewed scent of old fabrics and cardboard. With delight, Maddie filled her lungs—

  Immediately she was seized by a fit of coughing.

  Such a romantic. But she couldn't help smiling, eagerly anticipating treasures in this place.

  And treasures there were—but none of them her grandmother's. She found a box labeled in loopy feminine handwriting, "Boone Baby Clothes." Her fingers itched to open its flaps. I don't care about that. She remembered Boone's words. Carefully, she pried open just one flap.

  On top lay a pair of tiny brown cowboy boots stitched in yellow and red, so small the soles barely covered her hand. Beneath she could see little garments, but Maddie ventured no further. It wasn't her right, no matter how longing squeezed her heart. These things belonged to Boone and his future wife. And to his children.

  With careful fingers, Maddie closed the box, trying not to think of a little boy with Boone's golden hair and blue eyes, and moved on.

  Bless Jenny Gallagher for her careful labeling. Box after box marked "Keepsakes 1976" or "Mitch Toys." Maddie wondered if Boone had any idea what a treasure trove lay up here.

  A few boxes lay on top, unmarked and jumbled in piles. Maddie opened them carefully but could quickly tell they held papers related to the ranch. Sam must have stuck them up here—instead of the careful folding and packing, these seemed almost thrown into boxes, not a one labeled.

  Maddie scoured the attic, lifting box after box, some of them heavy enough that she should have called Boone to help, but she wanted to find Rose's things in private. She reached the single window at the far end and looked behind her, realizing that she'd almost covered the entire attic.

  And found nothing.

  Her heart clutched. Boone had warned her, but she had hoped.

  Oh, how she had hoped.

  She swept the flashlight beam across the expanse, stepping upon a pile and trying to be sure she'd covered it all. An odd shape beneath an old torn, yellowed bed sheet caught her eye. Carefully, Maddie picked her way through the boxes, heart pounding as she removed the obstacles in her way. She barked her shin on one sharp corner but hardly minded, so intent was she upon reaching her last best hope.

  Her fingers trembled as she tugged at the sheet, hearing the rip of worn fabric. Maddie drew a deep breath and struggled to be calm and careful. With the steps of a petitioner approaching the throne, Maddie moved closer.

  It was a very old trunk, the leather cracked with the passage of years, the brass darkened with tarnish. Maddie closed her eyes and prayed that it wasn't locked.

  It was. Maddie looked around her, fighting the urge to cry.

  She'd always said she was a good hand with a knife. Hoping Vondell would forgive her, Maddie climbed down the steps and retrieved an assortment of kitchen implements.

  Maddie didn't care, long minutes later, that her hair was glued to her neck with sweat. All that mattered was that she'd heard a click and that the latch had popped open.

  Shaking like a leaf, Maddie lifted the lid and looked inside. The faint smell of lavender and mothballs teased her nose. Another yellowed sheet lay over the contents. Maddie lifted it carefully and set it aside.

  On the left side lay a stack of books and things; on the right, a pile of fabric—clothing, she guessed. Maddie lifted a black leather scrapbook in her hands, afraid to open it.

  Drawing a deep breath, she took a look. On the front page, hand-lettered, was the name Dalton.

  Maddie's heart stuttered. She'd found it. On page two, she saw the tiny dark curl of hair carefully placed inside an envelope turned yellow with the years. On the outside, it read Dalton's first haircut, age two.

  Maddie ran one reverent finger over the lock of her father's baby hair. When a tear dropped on the page, she jerked her head up, swiping at her eyes. She couldn't do anything to harm this precious evidence.

  It all belongs to you, Maddie Rose. She could almost hear her father's voice. With a shock, it truly hit her. These things were hers now. She was the last of her line, the last Wheeler.

  Maddie Rose Wheeler. Was that who she was? And where did she belong?

  She lost track of time as she thumbed through the album, seeing her father grow from infancy to boyhood to football team in high school. In the childhood pictures, she could see some of her own features. In the very few teenage photos, she could see the beginnings of the man she'd known.

  She almost thought she could see the beginning of the end, the time when Rose had let Buster Caswell and his poison into their lives. Dalton stopped smiling as life grew more solemn. She couldn't bear to think of what had been happening to them then.

  Some of the photos had been taken at this very house, on the porch outside. She saw her father riding a pony near a barn that she recognized, and suddenly she was struck by a pain so sharp she gasped aloud.

  This ranch held her past. How could she walk away from all that they had loved?

  But she heard Boone's voice. You can't mean to stay. Remembered his eyes revealing how much he needed this place.

  Please, Daddy. Grandmother Rose. I can't stay. Please understand.

  But I won't forget.

  Maddie laid down the album and made a mental note to ask Boone to help her carry the trunk downstairs. Then she reached inside for the large cloth item that took up most of the right side. Unfolding it carefully, Maddie cried out as she realized what it was.

  A wedding dress. Inside its folds lay a picture of a woman Maddie knew in an instant was her grandmother Rose.

  She knew because she might have been looking in a mirror.

  Maddie's eyes filled with tears as she devoured the sight of a tall man who had her father's build and his dark hair standing beside a woman who looked for all the world like Maddie Rose, dressed in this very same gown with its simple cut, the lace now yellowed with age.

  Her knees shaky and weak, Maddie stood and set the picture down with care. She backed away into the small open space and held up the dress, trying to imagine what it would look like on her. With careful steps, she pressed it to her body and closed her eyes.

  Oh, Grandmother, how I wish I'd known you.

  And that was how Boone foun
d her. He'd come inside since Maddie hadn't appeared at her usual time. He'd intended only to make a quick sandwich and go back to work, but the day was hot and he'd begun to worry. Deciding to check and make sure she hadn't passed out from the heat, he'd mounted the stairs, assuming she'd hear his steps.

  When he reached the top, he couldn't speak. Maddie stood in the sunlight holding an ivory gown against her, her eyes closed and tears rolling down her cheeks.

  With careful steps, Boone crossed to her. "Maddie?" he spoke softly.

  Her eyes opened, showing him a world of such pain and confusion that he reached for her without considering anything but that she needed to be held.

  Maddie was always so relentlessly cheerful that he'd come to think nothing could bring her low. To see that he was so very wrong struck him in a way that scattered his resolutions. Maddie needed someone. Right now, it would have to be him.

  She nestled into him and sobbed softly. Boone thought at that instant that he would slay dragons to bring back Maddie's smile.

  "Why couldn't I know her, Boone? Why did I miss so much?"

  He had no answers, no way to change the past. So he just held her while she cried.

  After a moment, her face turned up to his. In her eyes he saw such need for comfort, such loneliness and despair, that he did something he knew he would regret.

  He kissed her.

  He only meant it to comfort, to ease her pain, to let her know she wasn't alone. But one touch was all it took. One brush of lips...and he was lost.

  Maddie slid one arm out from between them and gripped his shirt in one fist, lifting herself to her tiptoes, bringing back the hunger that never really left him.

  Boone forgot about good intentions, forgot about being the wrong man. Forcing himself to go slowly, he licked softly at her full lower lip and heard her intake of breath. A quick prickling heat flashed through him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. For one instant, an instinct as old as man warned him away, reminded him of danger.

  Then Maddie parted her lips, and her tongue stroked him back, her fingers pressing into his side, her breasts soft against his chest.

  He had to get closer. With one hand he gripped the back of her head, sliding his fingers into the thick fall of dark hair and turning her into his kiss. His tongue slid into the sweetness of Maddie's mouth, and he wanted to stay there forever, to drink of her kind heart, her cheerful soul, to soothe her despair and her sorrow.

  Maddie knew only that Boone was here sharing his strength when she couldn't find her own, that he warmed the cold corners of her anguish and made her feel, for the first time in years, that she wasn't alone.

  His kiss was a balm and a solace, but it was so much more. In his kiss, Maddie found a dark, edgy promise of excitement, of bliss beyond the power of words. Maddie felt the ragged border of Boone's own anguish and she poured herself into soothing him, forgetting her own pain as she touched the raw edges of Boone's grief.

  He was so strong that he hid his pain too well, but for a moment Maddie thought she knew his heart's need. She lifted herself higher, sliding her fingers into his hair, murmuring soothing comfort mingled with sharp spikes of need.

  Through Boone shot the same fierce need to possess her that had driven him the night of the dance. He dropped his hands lower and gripped her hips. Pulling her hard against him, he wanted to tear off her clothes and his own, to salve this endless ache that was so much more than physical.

  Maddie thrilled to his touch, to the power of the wanting she felt from him. As his hand slid upward and cupped her breast, she arched against him, pressing into his fingers.

  When they tightened, Maddie bucked against him. Her grandmother's dress slipped from nerveless fingers, and she realized how close she'd danced to the edge of a terrifying precipice.

  It was one second of sanity in a world gone mad with longing.

  One second of hesitation, facing the point of no return.

  Could she do this to him? To herself? For a moment, Maddie flirted with the idea of staying, of yielding to the ever-increasing sense of connection to this place, to the past—

  To this man.

  The second's pause was fatal to something too new, too fragile. It gave Boone time to feel her doubts. To remember.

  He couldn't let himself need Maddie. He couldn't let her in this close. She spoke to him on a level deeper than anyone in his life had ever gone.

  Shaken to his boots, he realized that Maddie could break him, when nothing else in his life ever had.

  She felt him leave her, felt him pull away just the tiniest bit. It might as well have been the Grand Canyon.

  She dangled over the precipice, naked and needy. Alone again for one eternal moment when she thought she'd found home.

  Why hadn't she learned from the past? Robert had brought her low, but he had been nothing like Boone, had not wielded a fraction of Boone's power to hurt her. Boone was a thousand times more dangerous to everything she'd been trying to recover.

  Boone wanted her, yes. She even thought he needed her.

  But he didn't want to want her. And he needed her gone.

  Maddie stepped back, her chest heaving.

  Boone didn't stop her, though his empty fingers flexed and his chest ached.

  Maddie couldn't look at Boone, couldn't bear to see the truth on his face. One hand pressed tightly to her lips, she turned away and stared out the window, still clutching her grandmother's dress to her breast.

  She started to speak, but her voice wasn't hers to command. Maddie cleared her throat and tried again.

  "I found my grandmother's things."

  Behind her, she heard his voice, low and strained. "I see that. Do you want me to carry the trunk downstairs to your room?"

  So polite. So distant.

  "If it's not too much trouble."

  "No trouble."

  Maddie didn't turn around. Behind her, she heard Boone close the trunk and lift it, heading for the stairs. With a shaky breath, she turned and carefully folded the dress, wrapping it back in the sheet she had dropped in her haste. Fighting hard to hold inside emotions careening out of control, Maddie carried the dress down the stairs.

  When she passed Boone leaving her room, she cast one quick glance at him. If she had seen the slightest sign that he was struggling, too, she might have tried to talk to him, though she had no idea what to say.

  There were no words for the power of what had passed between them.

  Nor for the impossibility of what kept them apart.

  But Maddie didn't have to worry. The man who had kissed her, the man whose heart had lain bare to her own for a few precious seconds...that man lay safely buried behind a mask of stone. That man might have existed only in her very vivid imagination.

  For one endless second, every fiber of Maddie's soul cried out for that man's return.

  Chapter Nine

  BOONE CLOSED UP the attic and walked out of the house like a man gone blind. He fought an urge to get in his truck and head for the nearest port, to lose himself as an anonymous seaman once again. To hide out somewhere, anywhere, until Maddie left.

  He squinted against the scorching sun and lectured the part of him that seemed bent on destruction.

  She won't stay.

  You haven't asked her.

  Remember how she was with Marlowe. She can't wait to get back.

  She wasn't thinking about New York up in the attic.

  For a minute, that was all. Yes, there was heat between them. Boone shook his head. Heat, hell—there was nuclear meltdown when he touched Maddie.

  But it wasn't enough. She deserved so much more. What did he have to offer, a man who knew a hundred ways to kill? A man so incapable of love that his only child never had a chance to be born? A life of hard work and loneliness stuck away in the back of beyond? He'd already ruined one woman's life. He would not risk Maddie...bright, beautiful Maddie.

  You could go with her. To the city.

  No. He could not.

&n
bsp; He would not forsake this place again. Now, more than ever, he was needed to be its guardian. For the sake of the desolation in Maddie's eyes, he would keep this place safe. It was one thing he could do for her, no matter his other shortcomings. He no longer expected to have a family of his own, but if Mitch didn't want the ranch, maybe Maddie's children would.

  A hell of a life, Boone ol' buddy.

  It's who I am. It's all I really need.

  And with that thought, Boone straightened his hat and headed for the barn. Lunch was the last thing on his mind.

  * * *

  MADDIE SPREAD OUT the dress on her bed carefully, smoothing its folds. When she'd first held it, she'd been eager to try it on.

  Not anymore.

  Instead, she sank down on the rug by the bed and reached into the trunk again, her movements lethargic. She looked through framed pictures of unidentified people. Maybe later she'd take them out of the frames and see if anyone had marked them on the back, but not now.

  At the bottom of the pile Maddie saw a little red leather book that looked like a diary.

  With shaking fingers, she lifted it out and sat back down, cradling it on her lap. With slow strokes, she traced the shabby remains of what might once have been gold leaf. Then she drew in a deep breath and opened the cover.

  Rose McCall, it said in spiky, formal script. Beneath it was added the name Wheeler, with a heart drawn beside it.

  So now Maddie knew. Her grandmother's maiden name had been McCall. And she had loved Jack Wheeler, the grandfather who had died too soon. Rose might even have been a romantic, Maddie thought. Drawing the heart was something a younger Maddie might have done.

  The thought of her grandmother as a hopeful young bride brought a smile. Then Maddie remembered how it had all turned out, and her heart ached for the woman she'd never met.

  Reining in her thoughts, Maddie turned the page. The diary seemed to start when Rose had been twelve, and soon Maddie was lost in a life utterly different than anything she'd known. Rose spoke of hard times, and Maddie found a date that pinpointed this as what came to be called the Great Depression. But Rose spoke of girlish dreams and seemed to take the hardships in stride.