by Cait London
“Are you going to bulldog that thing?” he asked hoarsely as her fingers circled the metal horn.
You tell me, Mr. Ho Ho. Then Harmony carefully uncurled her fingers from the metal and Jonah’s body lurched precariously.
He was not sweating, Jonah decided as she frowned curiously at his upper lip. And if he was, the workshop was overheated.
They looked at each other, not giving an inch. He knew then that Harmony did not recognize what a sensual touch could do to a man, and a little happy cloud filled him.
Reacting to the nonsense in his mind, he smote that inexplicable cheeriness and killed it.
“You stay on your side of the street, and I’ll stay on mine,” Jonah stated slowly, nettled unexpectedly when he thought of other men touching Harmony, kissing that mobile, soft mouth. No telling what big ideas the area’s unmarried men would have in the bonding and mating department. Since they didn’t share his immunity to her, they might go off the deep end the first time they saw her do her welding dance in that tight getup and braids.
Happy little golden clouds weren’t on his menu de life.
“Any man interested in you has my sympathy,” Jonah stated aloud and stripped away the emotion he was feeling just then. Jealousy had never fitted him.
“You can’t tell me what side of the street to walk on,” she returned evenly, her eyes narrowing and sunlight raining sparks on her hair.
“I could tell you plenty. Like you’d better keep your crazy ideas to yourself.” Who needed a woman wearing braids, spandex and heavy workman’s boots anyway? He glanced at the metal horn and breathed deeply, relieving himself of the last remnants of his uncomfortable moment.
“You... are... a... closed-minded dinosaur. Why I ever...?” she began hotly. Her eyes widened slightly and her lips pressed shut.
“Ever what?” Jonah shot back, his hunting instincts leaping to life and focusing on her. What had she done? What secrets flickered behind those furious tiger eyes and arched brows?
Because the tight set of her lips said she wouldn’t answer him, he asked the question that had been pricking him. He glanced at the huge, curved, bristling metal affair. “What’s that thing you were attacking in the corner?”
“I call it ‘Therapy.’ You may leave now,” she offered in a soft, imperial tone.
“One more question, little sweetheart. Whose shirt are you wearing?” Why should he care? Why was it so important?
“Mine, of course.”
Her boot clump-clumped impatiently. Most women tapped their toes, Jonah thought. But the woman of his dreams— was not Harmony. The woman who stood there— the woman stirring him up and making him feel like a bridegroom without his bride, and setting him off— wore heavy “steel-toe” work boots.
She lifted her head defiantly. “As I said, you may leave.”
The flash of her eyes said he’d gotten to her. Jonah allowed the pleasure to fill him and left her with a smirk. He dismissed her ideas that he had nutty “powers.” He knew the shirt was Pax’s. He must have seen Pax wearing it, because the shirt belonged to her brother. Harmony had kept her life very uncluttered with personal relationships and that meant men didn’t come close to her and love her and leave their shirts in her house.
For him, there wouldn’t be any loving Harmony Davis. He knew better than to ask for more trouble in his life. He was not asking her any more questions, and he hadn’t made love to her, and he didn’t want to know anything at all about bonding and mating—
“Jonah?” Her soft voice caught him as he stood in the doorway.
When he turned slowly to Harmony, his heart ached as though he were leaving a part of himself with her. Jonah’s instincts told him that he wouldn’t heal easily... that he’d remember the sight of her standing in that huge shirt, her legs sheathed in spandex, and her boots... He’d remember her braids flowing like gold ropes down her chest as she caught her bracelet.
The muffled sounds of bells died eerily in the wall of dusty sunlight between Jonah and the woman he unaccountably ached to hold.
“Take care of yourself, Jonah,” Harmony said quietly as if she were saying goodbye forever.
Goodbye forever suited him fine, Jonah thought grimly as he closed the door. If he were losing his mind, he could do it by himself— without Harmony setting him off and that bonding and mating nonsense echoing in his brain.
Then why did he hurt so much, as if he were leaving a part of his heart with her?
~**~
Isolation suited Jonah; loneliness stretched out on the snow-covered wheat fields beside the road. Without other people nearby, he was alone with his thoughts. Almost three months had passed since he’d trekked to Harmony’s and spent the night under her roof. Now he was driving home to Fargo land, after working as a hired man for other ranchers.
He rubbed his new mustache, a whimsical adventure, since he’d never had one. He liked the feeling of controlling something in his life, even if it was only trimming his mustache.
With March flying out the door, Jonah still wondered why that morning at Harmony’s he felt like a lover without his morning-after kiss. He understood his need to check on her: She was Pax’s sister and Pax’s broken Leg needed rest. As a neighbor, Jonah always did his part. And he’d been tired, stretched to the limits with his faulty mind, so he’d badly needed sleep when he arrived on her doorstep.
If he could just find a reasonable— or unreasonable explanation— why the first time he saw her backside, he wanted to fill both palms with her and turn her for his hungry kiss.
He wasn’t a kissing man... not counting the time Harmony moved into his arms and kissed him first. That was the evening he’d dreamed that the cupids had bushwhacked him.
Days of exhausting ranch work and nights of repairing farm machinery couldn’t rip away that dream, or the sound of the child crying.
Jonah inhaled sharply and tried to ignore the hollow feeling within his heart.
Okay. A reasonable explanation might be that a man didn’t wake up every morning to a woman welding “Therapy” and clumping in work boots.
The image of Harmony standing in her snug house, her braids glistening in the sunlight and her legs sheathed in spandex, didn’t leave Jonah very much think room.
Every time he lit a welding torch to repair metal, he saw Harmony clumping, attacking her project. She had a memorable backside and the sunlight had seemed to glow around her.
Once the welding memory snagged him, he was a goner, going right off over the edge and thinking about making dream-love to her.
Jonah scanned the snow melting under the late-March sun and tightened his gloved hands around the steering wheel. Montana country was as it had always been before the Blackfoot, the fur traders, before the Fargos. Spring wheat would be sprouting soon, fed by the snow’s moisture. The cattails would be growing in the buffalo wallows, and the berry bushes would begin to leaf. When he could, he’d drive into town and collect the new sheet-metal roofing he’d ordered. Hard work, not silly night-after-the-honeymoon hungers, would keep him occupied.
Making dream-love to Harmony could really tilt a man’s sanity.
Mule deer and antelope would be taking their young across the fields to water near the coulees filled with willows.
Cupids and jingle bells and telepathy and an aging cowboy ‘s sensual needs and fantasies were a bad mix. Toss in the child’s crying in his mind and his full deck was missing a few cards.
Jonah ruffled Shrimp’s fur, then slid his hand to rest upon the battered duffel bag on the seat beside him.
Harmony’s suggestion that the child was crying for that old doll didn’t make sense.
He wasn’t giving up that doll. It was all he had of Grace.
Shrimp was really glad they were coming home after two weeks of living in the Nevilles’ bunkhouse, though it was a step above the Joels’ tiny hired-hand cabin where they had spent the first two weeks of February. Staying at other ranchers while Jonah helped repair equipment, mend fence l
ines, and seed spring wheat, had social advantages, but generally Shrimp wanted her own sleeping rug in her own home. Home was home, where her dreams of Roderegas would be uninterrupted.
“Is this a meaningful conversation?” Jonah asked wryly as he lifted his fingers from the steering wheel to greet Jones’s truck as it passed him. He wasn’t mind-chatting with his dog; he just knew Shrimp well enough to know she liked Roderegas and home.
The Emersons’ teenage daughter had a dirty mind, hankering after Jonah when he was stripped of his shirt. Of course, Jonah had read that in her expression, not her mind. Emily’s sexual experiences exceeded her years.
Frank Neville worried about money, his wife would have to have an operation soon. Jonah had caught the desperation in his neighbor’s—mind?
He shook his head. Desperation was a facial expression... He’d understood Frank’s expression or the tone of his voice, and had lowered his working price. The next second, Jonah was asking Frank if he’d mind repaying him in ranch work hours, when it was convenient. Or if Frank chose, he could make the payments in stallion stud services, garden produce or any convenient payment. There was no hurry for Frank to repay him, but Jonah knew that the rancher’s pride demanded payment.
After hearing his back teeth grind, Jonah forced his jaw to relax. There was no way facial expressions could explain other things like Mrs. Bonds exercising her feminine muscles while she was pushing her grocery cart… Like Doris Freeman, a seventy-year-old church matron, wanting to stir her husband into a froth or rather froth him with whipping cream.
Or Lucky meeting him in front of the old Hotel and chatting about branding while he was thinking about playing bedroom lasso games with Harmony. “Games,” Jonah muttered darkly.
When other people were near Jonah, he could sense... He shrugged lightly. He probably sensed people’s thoughts. Living alone, it was reasonable that he understood basic human nature. After all, for ages western men had spent hours contemplating the human mind over the campfire. Bartenders and cowboys were expert psychologists, and if he were to ask any of the old-timers about his problems, they’d all tell him the same thing— he was just plain “range squirrely.” They’d say he’d bottled his natural woman needs and they had backed up on him, thus causing an eventual terminal condition, “squirrely.” He’d get older and moldier and crazier and filled with strange malarkey and “bunk.”
He didn’t understand or believe in mind-reading powers. If he did believe, he wouldn’t want them. He was just plain losing his mind and Harmony had somehow loosened another of his mental screws.
“Mental powers. Malarkey,” Jonah muttered as he slowed to turn under the Fargo ranch sign. As long as Harmony stayed on her side of the fence and didn’t bother him, he could manage. He’d always managed.
Jonah scanned his fields, the wheat fields he’d decided not to work and the range grasslands. The cattle looked good; he’d been checking on them with the help of a neighbor. His five mares were grazing in the back field, the colt frisking around its mother. The old house—
Jonah inhaled and blinked. He pushed down the clutch and the brake and quickly reversed the pickup. He backed until he could see the Fargo sign overhead.
Gleaming in the noonday sun, two wrought-iron cupids fluttered above the Fargo name. With drawn bows, they pointed arrows at each other. They were welded to the old sign in a fancy scroll design.
Jonah glanced at the metal glinting from his rooftop and then to the bright copper weather vane gleaming on top of his barn. He looked back at the house, inhaled and slowly placed his pickup in gear. “Shut up, Shrimp. It is not beautiful.”
He stopped the pickup and leapt out onto the soggy ground. He placed his hands on his hips and stared up at the cupid weather vane, the little arrow pointing in the direction of the late-March breeze. Jonah tipped back his hat and angled his head. He moved three feet to one side, looking up at the lightning rods on top of his house. The dandy spiraling cupid design set off his new sheet-metal roof.
He jerked off his hat, whacked it against his thigh and looked back to the Fargo sign. Some female was muttering how nice the cupids looked… “The hell it perks the place up, Shrimp,” he stated darkly.
There Jonah stood, his boots locked to Fargo land that had been in his family since homesteading days. His forefathers had endured Blackfoot attacks, outlaws and natural disasters. Now he was surrounded by cupids on all three sides, and if given the choice, he would have preferred an honest Blackfoot attack. He jammed his hat down and whistled for his favorite mare. The quickest way to face a cupid bushwhacker was to ride straight for her place and have it out. The old horse trail was faster than the road.
Priscilla, his mare, nickered a soft welcome just as a shiny new van pulled under the Fargo cupids. The van’s side panels were emblazoned with the large logo, Fascinating Homes.
Lucky’s fancy black pickup pulled in behind the van; Jonah could see the cowboy’s grin behind the windshield. A glossy city blonde stepped out of the van. She wanted pictures and an interview because of his unusual ranch and home ornaments; her readers would love the idea of cupids on a Montana ranch. “I’ve been calling on a regular basis, but you don’t have a message machine. We’d so love to see the interior of your home… with the unusual decor outside, you probably have wonderful ideas to share in... that,” she finished with a puzzled frown at Jonah’s small weathered house with peeled paint.
Lucky was smirking. “Huh. Never knew you were a love god. Yep. That’s what you are, Fargo. A pure piece of two- hundred-or-so pounds, six-foot-three, rough, tough, rodeo-bucking, one-hundred-percent love god.”
Lilly Mason’s four-wheeler eased under the cupids and stopped behind Lucky’s pickup. Lilly leaned out of her window and asked, “Jonah, where did you get those beautiful cupids? I want Roy to put one up on the barn, just like yours. I know my married daughters will want the copper weather vane style on their houses, too.”
The citizen’s band in her rig crackled and Lilly picked up the speaker. “Better get over here, Susie… Jonah’s place. He’s going to be featured in a home decor magazine for the cupids he’s got all over— That’s right... Jonah Fargo. He’s got a cupid weather vane and cupids over the driveway sign... really good idea. You’d better get over here. If we hurry, we can be the first to get in on the cupids-house thing. We might set up a tour, a house-to-house cupid party. I’m going to be busy looking around, but get on the CB and get the girls over here.”
“Mr. Fargo, do you think you could stand a little to the left for the photographer? He’d like to line up the cupid on the barn with your face.... Ah... do you think you could... ah... maybe smile a bit?” the city blonde asked too brightly.
“Sure, Jonah. Give her a real love-god smile,” Lucky singsonged with a big smirk.
~**~
Harmony lay soaking in her second chamomile bath of the day. Jonah’s last cupid was in place at sunset the previous day and she had awakened with stiff, pained muscles.
Pax’s experience and his family and Lucky helped enormously. The cowboy seemed so eager to help, and even invited his friends over for the surprise she was preparing for Jonah. They built the scaffolding quickly, and seemed to relish the chore, eager for Jonah’s return. The experienced men made easy work of the sheet-metal roofing. Lucky had grinned from the time he delivered the sheet-metal roofing at daybreak until the men’s pickups departed under the new cupids on the Fargo sign.
Bathwater drizzled on her chest as she leisurely squeezed the bath sponge. Her debt to Jonah was finally paid and she could go on with her life.
She had missed Jonah, the black-hearted, gloomy, tough, lanky, evil-tempered yahoo. Harmony adjusted the folded towel beneath the nape of her neck and leaned her head back against the tile to examine her emotions concerning Jonah Fargo, cowboy cum psychic.
Shrouded in hard times and aching for his daughter, Jonah’s powers had been stirred by his desperation. While she wished him well, realizing the agony of his discovery
that he had powers, Harmony had very little patience with Jonah’s attitudes, his ability to stir her emotions, or his take-care-of-this-now tendencies.
Harmony did not want to think about making love with Jonah. She had lost enough sleep already, thinking about that man.
She patted the wild topknot of curls on her head and gave herself over to the soothing bath.
She’d created her best work and now her debt to Jonah was repaid.
Jonah? Coming here? He’s angry? Harmony listened very carefully, the hairs on the nape of her neck rising. She heard his boots crossing the boards of her kitchen, her living room, muffled at times by the braided rugs. The purposeful thuds didn’t sound as if he might be coming to thank her.
Harmony sank lower into the bathwater just as the door crashed open and Jonah stood glaring down at her.
“Don’t think you can hide in here, little sweetheart,” he said in a deep, tight tone and moved into the room.
He plopped the toilet lid down and sat on it. He ripped off his leather gloves with the air of a man prepared to lay down laws.
“Would you mind waiting in the other room while I dry and dress?” Harmony asked tightly.
He scowled down at her, then whipped off his hat and plunked his gloves in it. He placed it over the bath powders and scents on a shelf. The feminine collection of bottles rattled ominously. “Yes, I would mind.”
“Is there a problem?” she asked lightly.
“You got it.” He watched Harmony draw the huge sponge over her chest and sink lower in the water. “All I want to know is who helped you.”
Jonah had “vigilante” written all over his rugged, unshaven cheeks.
She liked his mustache. It was full and thick, definitely not squiggly. She’d never been kissed by a man with a mustache before, Harmony thought suddenly.
“Who helped you?” he repeated. She was distantly glad that he was so angry; he hadn’t read her thought about his new mustache. She’d never seen a mustache like that before, as if it belonged there, boldly matching Jonah’s strong face.