Rose seemed to be the only one not overreacting to what Danielle was to henceforth refer to as her “little spill.” Knowing that her mother was a not a strong swimmer, Lynn had become hysterical when Danielle tumbled down the river. It both surprised and pleased her that Lynn periodically stopped by the wagon to check in on her. The sincere concern for her welfare served to bring home the fact that despite her daughter’s repeated claims of maturity, Lynn was still her little girl. It also reinforced just how terrified she was of losing her mother as well as her father.
Paradoxically, the ride that Danielle had once so coveted proved to be far less comfortable than walking. It was so jarring that it felt like her teeth were being rattled right out of their sockets, and though her legs were somewhat wobbly after her experience, Danielle doubted whether the benefit of putting her feet up outweighed the headache that such jolting transportation induced. For some reason the packed earth of the trail was a favorite spot for badgers to dig their holes, and every time they hit one squarely, Danielle worried she was going to be tossed right out the back of the wagon.
She was grateful when the wagon train came to rest and a golden head popped up over the tailgate. White teeth flashed in a grin as Mollie pulled a bouquet of wildflowers from behind her back. Smuggled inside the bright blossoms was a contraband chocolate candy bar.
“You’re an absolute doll!” Danielle exclaimed, unwrapping the candy bar and breaking it evenly in two.
Mollie shook her blond ponytail selflessly. “No thanks. You can have it all...You’re gonna need it.”
Danielle cocked an eyebrow at the cryptic statement.
With an impish grin Mollie explained, “Dad’s doing the cooking tonight.”
“W-what?” Danielle sputtered through a mouthful of chocolate. For some reason she found herself perturbed to find herself so easily replaced.
“He says you’re still tuckered out by your experience this afternoon and you’re not to lift a finger ’round camp tonight.”
Danielle was still feeling pretty foolish about her afternoon performance, and despite his good intentions, Cody’s offer only made her feel worse. She was torn between the desire to get up and prove her stamina and not wanting to hurt Cody by throwing his gift back in his face. After all, it was the sweetest gesture Danielle could remember any man ever making in her behalf. She couldn’t help comparing it to the time Scott had dragged her out of bed with a temperature of a hundred and one to make him breakfast. In all their years of marriage, Danielle couldn’t remember her husband ever so much as fixing her a simple cup of coffee.
As if reading her thoughts, Rose cocked her head in Danielle’s direction. “If I was you, missy, I’d sit still and just be grateful.”
So Cody even had this cantankerous old gorgon under his spell. Danielle didn’t bother pointing out that she hadn’t asked Rose for her opinion. She was too busy wondering what could have possibly compelled Cody to make such a selfless offer on her behalf.
A few days ago Cody wouldn’t have lifted a finger to stop a certain flashy redhead from floating right out of the state of Wyoming. He could no more account for why his heart had clenched into such a tight fist when Danielle fell into the river earlier in the day than he could explain what had compelled him to volunteer to cook supper for a troop of ravenous teenage girls. One taste of his cooking and, he supposed, Danielle would assume it was to poison them all.
His culinary abilities were limited to mixing up bowls of instant oatmeal and occasionally exploding hot dogs in a microwave. Cody scratched his head. He could manage well enough on the grill, and the thought of a barbecue set his taste buds to tingling. He didn’t even have to look far to spot a nearby cow wearing his Double C brand, but he doubted whether he could come up with an explanation for butchering what the Prairie Scouts were bound to believe was rustled cattle.
He reached up to stroke his mustache and, finding it gone, swore under his breath. This whole incognito business was proving more bothersome that he had first imagined.
He wondered whether his agent had called the National Guard yet or if his sudden disappearance had been noted in any of those slick Hollywood tabloids that tried to give credence to all the most morbid speculations. For all he knew, they had already printed an article on his impending death from some horrible and incurable disease right next to one about aliens populating the White House.
It was the kind of trash that made the air out here smell even sweeter. The simple pleasures of breathing fresh air, feeling a horse beneath him again, and spending time with Mollie under the infinite Wyoming sky, unencumbered by the pressures of the job was so right that Cody simply couldn’t bring himself to feel particularly guilty about aggravating Arnie’s ulcer. He knew his agent would have a good laugh if he could see his most promising client don a cook’s apron with more trepidation than he’d ever experienced facing a cheering crowd of thousands.
Though Cody dubbed his specialty “wagon master hash,” the girls came up their own names for the slimy concoction he attempted to pass off as the evening meal.
“Trash is more like it,” suggested Mollie.
“I think it’s called Something on a Shingle,” Ray Anne Pettijohn volunteered.
“Sh—” Lynn promptly supplied.
“Lynn!” Danielle interrupted.
Perhaps swearing was as in vogue among Lynn’s friends as it was in the mass media, but her mother was determined to break her of the nasty habit.
“Well, whatever it is, it’s awful,” grumbled Inez Quest, poking her fork into her dinner plate as if it were some unidentifiable roadkill.
When Cody clasped a hand over his heart in mock pain, Danielle surprised herself by rushing to his defense.
“You girls aren’t being very gracious about Mr. Walker’s offer to make your dinner. After such rude treatment, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if he refused to ever sing for you again.”
The threat had an effect upon the group, who offered quick, if not sincere, apologies to their wagon master and forced themselves to choke down a polite portion of their dinners.
They absolutely adore him, Danielle thought in wonder. Who would have thought her streetwise girls could ever have been motivated by this cowboy’s distinctive country-western warble? She suspected that the girls would have been just as enthralled had he belted out old Lawrence Welk tunes on an accordion. Call it charisma, audience appeal, or pure magic, Cody Walker naturally seemed to have that special something that so many entertainers strive their entire lives to attain.
As a matter of routine, he had brought his guitar along. Danielle snuggled into the woolen blanket that he had so thoughtfully draped around her shoulders earlier. It might be the middle of summer, but in Wyoming the nights were crisp and cool.
This was Danielle’s favorite part of the day. Mollie added wood to the campfire as her father began tuning up. The fire crackled against the early twilight, blending into the fading rays of a glorious sunset. Gone was her terrifying experience at the river; gone was the bitterness and fear of previous days. In its place was the soothing sounds of a man and a well-loved guitar.
Once again, a sense of familiarity struck Danielle as she watched Cody coax magic from that battered old guitar. What was it about him that beguiled her so? He was handsome, yes, but so were a couple of other men who had asked her out since her divorce, and Danielle had no trouble dismissing them from her mind.
She sighed deeply. This was neither the time nor the place for her to go gaga over some masculine hunk of cowboy who was no more willing to take on the responsibilities of a divorcée and her teenage daughter than he would consider forgoing the freedom of the open range for a desk job. Cody Walker was the epitome of the rambling man in the song he was singing. Danielle told herself she was too old to make a fool of herself over the most charming smile this side of paradise.
Her breath caught when Cody’s gaze fell upon her and she met his eyes directly. Beyond the mirth glittering in those eyes lay rea
l danger. Bright with masculine appreciation, they offered an invitation to seduction.
How was a woman supposed to handle a look like that? Overcome by a sudden fit of exasperation at Cody for calling to the surface the passions she had worked so hard to repress, Danielle assured herself she was made of sterner stuff. As a mother with responsibilities beyond her own personal needs, she had to be.
“Time to call it a night,” she announced as the final strains of Cody’s last song died out.
The news was greeted by a collective groan. If it were left up to the girls, Danielle was sure they would stay up all night listening to Cody sing. She was sorry to be the voice of reason, but tomorrow was certain to be another arduous day.
“No grumbling now. Do as she says,” Cody said, with a gentle smile and a firm tone.
Danielle was grateful for his support. At every turn Scott had deliberately usurped her parental authority with Lynn. Unwilling to be the bad guy in his daughter’s eyes, he let his wife be the one to dole out whatever punishment was warranted. To compensate for his shortcomings as a father, he tried to buy Lynn’s affection with lavish gifts. He said he enjoyed spoiling her rotten. Even though he’d fought every dime he had to pay in child support, Scott still liked to dangle extravagant carrots before his daughter.
“You just sit here and drink this,” Cody said, handing Danielle a steaming cup of coffee, “while I see to the girls.”
Danielle stifled her protest. It was an awkward fit, this being treated like a princess, but after a moment’s reflection, she decided she could grow accustomed to it with very little effort.
In less than ten minutes the camp was quiet and Cody returned to find Danielle staring into the dying embers of the fire. At this point in his life, he didn’t want to so much as notice any woman. But, he reasoned with a sigh of resignation, a man would have to be blind not to notice the way the glow of the campfire caught in Danielle’s bright auburn hair like handfuls of copper pennies.
The time they shared on the trail made the woman no less an enigma. Stubborn, fiery, passionate. Soft, gentle, nurturing. Cody could use any of those words to describe Danielle at any given time. Absently he decided that those luminous eyes were simply too large for her face. At five foot five inches, she was too short for him. As a rule, he liked tall, leggy women on the unpretentious side. With hair the color of a fireball, Danielle Herte was anything but unpretentious. And though she was pretty, she was not the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.
He added another log to the fire. Like his own smoldering thoughts, the embers glowed hotly when stirred. What was he doing fantasizing about running his hands through that shimmering mass of curls? Asking for another display of that matching red-hot temper, he guessed.
A light touch upon his sleeve burned like a brand. Cody stiffened against the desire to give in to his own need for human comfort.
“I owe you a debt of gratitude,” she said as stiffly and properly as some prim missionary in a faded, old Western.
Good Lord, who talked like that anymore? Cody was tempted to laugh out loud at the antiquated phrase, but something soft lurking in those aquamarine eyes hit him with the force of a pool cue leveled at his thick skull. He was touched by the vulnerability peeking out from behind her usual bravado. It was the same feeling he’d gotten when he’d held Mollie as a baby, the same feeling he still got whenever he silently observed her sleeping to this day. It was the same instinct that drives any male animal to protect that which is his.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he muttered uncomfortably. Except the claim you’re making on my heart...and I’d sure like it back undamaged “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“It’s more than just saving my life,” Danielle began awkwardly. “It was making dinner and the way you—”
“I didn’t exactly save your life,” Cody scoffed. “And dinner wasn’t exactly a five-star affair.”
“It was the sweetest thing I can remember anyone doing for me.”
She had to be kidding. Cody couldn’t imagine a life lived without the sharing of such simple courtesies.
“Your husband must have been a real crud,” he muttered, disgusted with the man for not realizing what a precious gift he had. Suddenly curious, Cody found himself inquiring into her private past. “What was he like?”
Danielle was startled by the question. It was the first time Cody had shown any interest in her private affairs. Having vowed not to be the kind of mother who bad-mouths her child’s father, she kept her pain entirely to herself. So it was to her own great surprise that she found herself opening up to this virtual stranger. This renegade who had the ability to make her feel desirable again. This drifter who in less than two weeks could very well walk off with more than the secrets of her past tucked neatly in his saddlebag.
“Actually you remind me of him some,” she said after a minute’s thought. “He was very good-looking and sure of himself.” It pleased her to see him blush. “And he had loose lips,” she added softly.
Cody hastened to defend himself. “Now wait a minute. I don’t as a general rule go around kissing just anybody.”
Her eyelashes dipped. “You don’t?”
“No, I don’t!”
Grateful that the girls were all tucked snugly in their sleeping bags several wagons away, Danielle gazed steadily into his eyes, and Cody did not turn away. Instead he leaned forward, intimately captured the back of her head, and pulled her close.
“No, not just anybody, by a long shot.”
He barely grazed her mouth. Danielle parted her lips expectantly. Where the last kiss had been punishing, this one was soft and exploratory.
Like a hummingbird drawing nectar from a delicate bud, Cody luxuriated in the sweet taste of her. When she whimpered, he pulled back and drank in the sound of his name on her lips.
Her eyes were as big as the moon overhead and just as bright. Danielle felt heavy-limbed and drunk with sensuality. Cody dropped a kiss upon her upturned chin, then trailed his lips along the arch of her neck, nuzzling the sensitive spot along her collarbone.
Flushed and wanting, Danielle became fluid heat in his arms. He continued torturing her slowly and methodically, nibbling on her earlobes, scattering whisper-soft kisses upon the freckles that had been the bane of her adolescence. He deposited more upon her closed eyelids and one upon the tip of her nose.
Danielle’s breathing was a series of muted sighs.
Cody couldn’t imagine any man abandoning a woman who could kiss like this one. Nothing in his past had prepared him for the physical impact that this perplexing creature had upon him. The very first time he kissed Danielle, he had meant to hasten her on her way back to the big city with an image of an untamed, uncivilized cowboy branded in her memory. That he had been the one sent reeling had come as a more than a mild surprise to him. After Rachael’s death, he’d tried a time or two to blot out his grief with hot sex, but it had left him feeling cold and empty inside. He’d pretty much given up on trying to fill that void in his life. That he couldn’t seem to get enough of Danielle’s kisses frankly scared the hell out of him.
Pulling away from the heaven of Danielle’s embrace, he asked, “Besides being an idiot, is there anything else I should know about your ex-husband?”
“Well, he was a liar and cheat, too,” she replied with a lopsided smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Realizing that her attempt at levity fell far short of its mark, she tried to expound. “That’s why I divorced him.”
The note of distress in her voice gave away her shame. Her failed marriage was her greatest regret in her life. “On second thought,” she amended, bolstered by the sincerity in Cody’s face, “Scott wasn’t much like you at all. You’re an honest man. The girls recognized it right off. They trust you completely and would do anything for you.”
Cody flinched from her words as if they were a whip. He wished he’d never broached the subject at all. Especially uncomfortable talking about liars, the last thing he wanted to
hear was how much Danielle admired him for his honesty. The perfect opportunity for admitting his identity slipped away before his eyes into a gaping black hole. How could he possibly explain that little “oversight” away now that the trust glistening in those huge aquamarine eyes had turned his insides to warm honey?
Cody tried to rationalize the twinge in his heart that he recognized as his conscience. In just a couple of weeks they would walk away from one another and go their own paths. What could it possibly matter if he kept his identity to himself? He not only didn’t want to disappoint Danielle by admitting he was exactly what she most despised—a liar—he also wasn’t quite ready to give up his anonymity just yet. It was a refreshing change being accepted for himself rather than his name. Despite his fame, he remained who he was—a cowboy with a guitar and a pocketful of hurtin’ songs inspired by a life of being trampled into the dirt and having to get back up again and dust himself off.
Danielle’s words were like barbs rattling around inside his heart. Cody cleared his throat uncomfortably to stop her from going on and on about how wonderful Lynn thought he was. “I think maybe she’s just looking for a father figure.”
She gave him a smile that seemed to light her up from the inside out. “You’re right, of course. A person only has to watch the way you handle your own daughter to know that you’re a pretty good psychologist.”
Her kind words were making him feel like a real heel. “Even a fool’s right some of the time,” Cody replied with the self-effacing manner of a man who knew better than to take himself too seriously.
“Was your wife as terrific a parent as you?”
Danielle had accidentally probed a gaping wound that time refused to heal. A muscle in Cody’s jaw clenched as he forced the words out of his mouth.
“She was an angel,” he said tersely. That must have been the reason why God had called her back home. Leaving him to raise their child alone.
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