“Well, you’ve done a wonderful job raising Mollie by yourself,” she said, hoping to swing the topic back to a less disturbing subject.
The absolute last thing she needed right now was to discover depths and facets of this man’s personality that rendered him even more appealing. No woman alive could refrain from reaching out to help a man in pain. As much as Danielle admired the way Cody revered his wife’s memory, she couldn’t help feel a smidgeon jealous of the woman who had gone to the grave carrying her husband’s heart. Nor just a little bit leery. Memories, after all, have a way of editing the past.
Cody looked genuinely pleased with the compliment “Thank you. It goes without saying that I’m partial to the ornery little squirt.”
In the glimmer of the firelight, they passed the time swapping stories about the difficulties of single parenting. Danielle noticed that whenever she posed a question about his past, Cody evaded it with the sure footing of a mountain goat.
“Rode a little in some rodeos,” was his laconic reply. Danielle’s eyes grew large at the thought of stampeding hooves, bloodied spurs, and mangled bodies. “No bulls, I hope,” she said with a shudder.
“Nope. Bareback broncos.”
Cody hoped she would never make the connection between him and the national winner who’d used his acclaim to launch a risky singing career.
“Have you ever thought about singing professionally?” Danielle hoped that by exposing a viable alternative, she could dissuade him from ever strapping himself back on another wild twisting tornado of a beast.
Cody brushed aside the concern reflected in those incredible eyes. Had it not been such a comical suggestion considering his present station in life, he would have offered her front-row tickets to his next concert. It may have been his choice to allow this charade to continue, but it bothered him some if she thought him nothing more than an out-of-work bronco-buster dragging his poor daughter from one rodeo to another.
“I just like singing for myself,” he finally replied offhandedly. At least that was how he’d gotten started. His mama’s words came back to haunt him. You’ve forgotten what singing from the heart is all about, son. You’ve got to remember to put the music first.
“But you’re good.” Danielle broke enthusiastically into his retrospection. “Better than good, actually. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but you remind me of somebody I heard on the radio just the other day.”
Cody had to cut her off at the pass. If he was lucky, she hadn’t seen any music videos to pair up with his first Top 40 single.
“Thanks, but I like what I’m doing. I’m suited for the solitude of the open range,” he said, trying his best to close the book on this particular topic. Perhaps he was guilty of the sin of omission, but he told himself that didn’t really make him a liar. He was simply protecting his rights as an individual entitled to his own privacy.
“Just look up there,” he said, wrapping an arm around her and pointing up at the sky. “You’ll never see stars like that in Nashville. My mama always said a starry night quiets the soul.”
Tipping her head up to catch the spinning universe in the mirror of her eyes, Danielle sighed. “Your mother’s a wise woman. And you’re a unique man, Cody Walker. I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone quite like you.”
He choked on the lump in his throat. For God’s sake, she was looking at him like he was John Wayne or something when in fact he felt like pond slime—no, more like the amoebas that feed on pond slime.
Danielle snuggled against his shoulder. It had been a lifetime since anything felt as good, as right, as holding this woman in his arms and feeling for the first time in such a long time that his life might once again be made whole. Together as they watched the last of the embers in the campfire die out, Danielle tipped her face up to his, inviting more of his sweet kisses.
Cody gladly obliged.
Chapter Six
Arm wrestling over a keg of lighted gunpowder, Danielle watched helplessly as Cody pressed her arm down for the pin. Suddenly a voice, strong and certain in its conviction, rose over the shouts of the surrounding crowd.
“Look into his eyes.”
A woman stepped forward wearing a long skirt and a bonnet that hid most of her face. Danielle recognized her by the proud lilt of her chin. It was Matty O’Shaw striding right out of the pages of her diary.
Danielle did as she was told, swinging her gaze up into the blue fire of Cody Walker’s eyes. Immediately his strength waned.
The longer Danielle peered into Cody’s eyes, the more certain she was that she knew him from another time and place. Was she somehow confusing him with the ghost of Matty’s harsh wagon master?
The answer glimmered just beyond her grasp.
Beneath Danielle’s piercing scrutiny, Cody grew perceptibly weaker and weaker. Intertwined, their arms swayed like the wings of a crazed butterfly. She was within a hair’s width of having him pinned when he pulled a most unconscionable trick. He leaned across the keg of gunpowder and kissed her full on the lips.
Struggle was swiftly replaced with images of passionate lovemaking. Tearing at one another’s clothing, they—
“Good morning, good morning, good morning!”
It was Mollie ringing the morning bell, heralding yet another day with typical good cheer. Reluctant to awaken from such somnolent bliss, Danielle was certain that if she could only get hold of it, she could single-handedly twist that triangular bell into an unrecognizable and unusable shape.
Brushing the sleep from her eyes, she reminded herself that it was bound to be another challenging day. As their leader, she didn’t want to appear a slacker. In fact, Danielle was amazed how quickly her troop had adapted to their wagon master’s expectations. The girls’ whining diminished each day on the trail proportionately to the increase in their fitness and self-confidence as they learned to pull together as a team and abandon their false faces.
After yesterday’s calamitous fall into the river, Danielle was anxious to share in “Troop Beverly Hills’” common goal of proving they were not wimps. Ignoring the crick in her back, she started in on breakfast: sourdough muffins, a scrambled egg casserole, spiced fruit compote, milk, and piping hot coffee—made just the way a certain blue-eyed drifter liked it.
When Cody sauntered into camp sniffing the air in appreciation, she couldn’t help but compare his smile to the sunlight cresting the surrounding buttes. It was just as striking and definitely warmer. Wyoming mornings remained downright chilly until the sun lodged itself squarely in the sky above them, and then it was broiling. This was certainly a land of extremes, Danielle mused silently. Extreme cold, extreme heat...and extreme men. Men more afraid of exposing their hearts than of taking on the brutal elements of nature.
Though Cody had remained guarded last night, Danielle was pleased by how much he had told her. The conversation between those phenomenal kisses had, for the most part, been easy and honest. As a woman, Danielle had known she was hungry for a man’s kisses. What she hadn’t realized was how starved she had been for simple conversation.
Conversation had been something notably missing from her marriage. Scott simply told her how things were going to be, and she carried out his directives. Visiting with Cody had proven less a military exercise than a soulful replenishing of the spirit. How refreshing it was comparing notes with another single parent, how enjoyable to visit with a man unafraid of an independent woman with a mind of her own. It seemed a perplexing contradiction to Danielle that she could be so comfortable with Cody and at the same time so totally aware of him as a man. A man who had the power to resurrect in her a sense of her own sexuality and a tentative trust in the opposite sex.
Still she couldn’t completely shake the sense of foreboding with which her shrouded dreams had started the day. One didn’t have to be Sigmund Freud to figure out the symbolism of that powder keg between herself and Cody. Even her subconscious had enough sense to warn her to stay well away from trouble that came wearing size 12DD c
owboy boots.
“Glad to see you’re feeling better this morning,” he commented, loading his plate with steaming helpings of another of Danielle’s delicious breakfasts.
“I am,” she replied with a smile. Noticing the generous portions on his plate, she asked, “Hungry this morning?”
“I figured it would be wise to be first in line today. The girls are likely to be famished after dumping most of last night’s dinner over yonder in the bushes.”
Cody pointed to a scraggly scrub pine a few yards away and, with a self-deprecating grin asked, “Does it look a little sickly to you?”
Taking in the decided droop of the boughs, Danielle attempted to assuage his feelings. “It wasn’t that bad.”
Cody remained unconvinced by the white lie. “Mollie suggested marketing the slop as a coyote killer.”
Danielle wrinkled her brow as if she were giving the suggestion her complete attention, then shook her head thoughtfully. “Then we’d have to call the Humane Society on you.”
Her laugh was full of sass and brass—just like the lady herself, Cody decided. Once you got to know her, there was a lot to like about Danielle Herte: the way her smile could bring Christmas to the middle of the summer, the way she maintained a cheerful but firm attitude with the children, even the way she didn’t hesitate putting him in his place. It had been a long time since he’d shared such easy companionship with a woman.
Those who knew Cody Walker the Country Star never questioned much of what he said or did. As a whole, they were too quick to laugh at his jokes, too accepting of his faults, too quick to hop into his bed, and far too eager to usher him up the aisle. He never intentionally led any of them on, letting them know right up front that marriage wasn’t in his plans.
Cody proceeded to dust off his belief that no man was entitled to more than one great love in a lifetime. While it was good that Danielle’s kisses had reminded him that he was still alive, he wasn’t about to dwell on his physical reaction any more than upon the fact that for the first time in a long, long time he had awakened this morning without feeling that gnawing sensation in his gut. That familiar sense of loss probably was just in remission, but Cody wasn’t ready to turn his back on feeling good just yet.
Besides, he could think of no good reason why he should deny himself the pleasure of Danielle’s company. Aside from throwing him for a loop with a pair of lips that made a grown man’s blood pound as hot and fast as in the summer nights of his youth, she was easy to talk to and fun to be with. He could spot nothing about her that was forced, not her laughter or her wit, nor even those kittenish little sounds she had subconsciously made when he’d held her in his arms. Instinctively he knew that Danielle wasn’t the kind of woman capable of faking her reaction to anything, whether it be a lame joke or a sexual encounter. A lady who could kiss like that didn’t need to fake anything.
He had to agree with his daughter that Danielle was good for him. It had been a long time since he’d been able to see anyone of the fairer sex as more than someone out to sink her claws into him for whatever his fame could buy them. And past experience had proven that most weren’t above using Mollie as a means of getting to her daddy.
“And it’s off to the old boarding school for me,” she’d say in a sugary voice to any of them who dared pinch her cheeks with mock affection.
Like her grandmother, Mollie could spot a fake from a mile away. That his daughter truly liked Danielle was an excellent indication of the lady’s true character. Nonetheless Cody hastened to extinguish that matchmaking glint in his daughter’s eyes. There was no point in Mollie getting her hopes up that anything permanent might develop between them. He hoped she believed him when he told her that there just wasn’t enough room in his heart for anything else but music and Mollie herself.
As the days began to run together with reassuring familiarity, Danielle was surprised to discover how very much she enjoyed the solitude of the open country. Having spent all of her life in the city, she had expected the vastness of the land to make her feel small, alone, and defenseless. Instead it had quite the opposite effect, helping her to draw upon a deep well of strength that she hadn’t ever fully realized she had.
The panoramic view of a skyline dominated by mountains had a fortifying effect upon her, and Danielle wondered if the people who so sparsely populated this part of the world truly knew how blessed they were to be so isolated from the problems of major pollution and crime.
Mollie certainly did. The child was as free and untamed as the golden eagle soaring overhead. And as headstrong as a wild mustang.
With the exception of Rose, Mollie was the only female excluded from wearing the long dresses that dominated the 1800s. No one was foolish enough to question Rose about anything, and Mollie explained simply that she, “Didn’t do dresses.” She airily dismissed any inquiries by stating, “There had to have been a few tomboys on the Oregon Trail.”
No one seemed to resent her this privilege, least of all her father, who confided to Danielle that he’d just as soon keep his daughter out of dresses for as long as possible. He thought he just might be the overprotective father type whenever the boys started taking notice of his little girl.
With a smile as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s, Danielle simply asked, “Oh, you think so?”
Nothing could have pleased her more than to witness the tight friendship developing between the blond-headed imp and her own daughter. The first thing she promised to do upon returning to “civilization” was to blow up a snapshot she had taken of Mollie and Lynn mugging over an Oregon Trail marker that an old cow was using as her own personal back scratcher.
Midway through their travels, Cody directed the wagon train along the Seminole Cutoff. It was one day shorter and a whole lot easier than traversing Rocky Ridge and making another four tough crossings of the Sweetwater. Although Danielle could personally vouch for the fact that the river did indeed have an almost sugary taste to it—thus the name—she had little desire to sample it ever again.
The long days were broken up by breathtaking sunsets, a myriad of wildlife, and an occasional sheepherder’s wagon. Once when once topping a hill, Danielle gasped in astonishment to witness the amazing choreography of several herds of antelope. The girls gave up counting when they reached more than one hundred and fifty head.
The trail was full of surprises. One day they encountered an odd assortment of locals playing golf along a desolate stretch of dirt road curling into vast, empty spaces. Feeling rather like Alice in Alice in Wonderland, Danielle rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. The group was entered in a one-hole tournament governed by the loose restriction that once you lost all of your balls you were out. Thinking back on Scott’s obsession with golf, Danielle knew he would never engage in such rollicking good fun. As the golfers loaded up in their dusty pickups to track balls cleverly camouflaged against the prairie floor, she tried to imagine the look on Scott’s face while wielding a club in such rough terrain. She couldn’t help but wonder how things might have turned out had her ex-husband paid as much attention to her as to his golf game.
It seemed to Danielle that never were two men more unalike than Scott Herte and Cody Walker. Whereas Scott was smaller and stockier, Cody could easily rest his head on the top of hers when they were standing flush. His body was lanky and as solid as steel, a feat accomplished not in some fancy gym but by hard work beneath a sun that lacked power to fade the wayward shocks of Cody’s dark hair. Scott’s lighter colored hair was always perfectly combed and his tanned complexion perfected in a gym’s salon.
The men were just as different in their likes and dislikes. Whereas her ex had taken up golf for the prestige of belonging to one of the most exclusive clubs in Denver, Cody shook his head at the thought of grown men and women chasing a little white ball across the countryside. His idea of fun was taming a bucking horse, spinning a good yarn, spending time with his daughter, and taking a melody from his head and twisting his heart around it.
Danielle’s feelings toward Cody were too new to bear too much introspection. Although his kisses made her breath come short and her heart race with delight, she wasn’t so naive as to read any more into their relationship than that. Accepting the fact that their time together was limited, she saw herself as little more to this fleet-footed cowboy than a pleasant diversion before he drifted off in search of another job.
From what she’d gathered from their conversations, Cody had seen much of the country. He was indeed a rambling man. She was a stick-in-the-mud, slavishly devoted to the concept of providing her daughter with stability. Altogether it wasn’t a promising combination. Certainly nothing to stake one’s heart on.
Whatever her problems, Danielle could count on Matty O’Shaw to tell her what real suffering was all about. All it took was a little historical perspective to make her own worries fade into insignificance.
June 30, 1846
Due to my refusal to disembark at Fort Stambaugh, I am presently in disgrace among the “good womenfolk” of the wagon train. Rather than the mollifying effect I had hoped for, news of my pregnancy has only served to further incite them. Mrs. Grossman assures me that my foolhardy intention of continuing on into Oregon will likely cost my unborn its life.
I told her to mind her own business.
My animosity toward her is nothing compared to how I feel toward Mr. Bennet. Yesterday he had the audacity to propose to me! Actually what our eloquent wagon master said was that he “would consent to marry me for the sake of maintaining harmony on the wagon train” and assured me that such a “mutually beneficial agreement” would spare my reputation. In exchange for the wifely duties of cooking, cleaning, and looking after him, he would be willing to take on another man’s family.
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