When I'm With You

by JoAnn Ross

  He recovered quickly, but that was Tristan. While I was pining, he’d probably been dating rodeo groupies, cocktail waitresses, and tourists. While I was waiting tables to get through school, he was winning fancy belt buckles for the school team and getting straight A’s at the University of Montana without wasting time on such pedantic matters as studying and earning a living. “Back around the bend and put your flashers on. Otherwise, this situation might get a whole lot worse.”

  I just sat there.

  “Hello?” he snarled.

  I still didn’t move.

  Tristan opened the door of the rental and leaned in. “Get out of the car, Gayle,” he said. “I’ll do the rest.”

  My knees were watery, but I unsnapped the seat belt and de-carred. Four stumpy French fries fell off my lap, in seeming slow motion. It’s strange, the things you notice when the earth topples off its axis.

  Tristan climbed behind the wheel and backed the compact around the bend. When he returned, I was still standing in the road, listening to the cattle bawl inside the truck trailer. I felt like joining them.

  “Are they hurt?” I asked.

  “The cattle?” Tristan countered. “No. Just annoyed.” He did that cowboy thing, taking off his hat, putting it on again in almost the same motion. “What are you doing here?”

  For a moment, I was stumped for an answer. His eyes were so blue. His butternut hair still too long. Everything inside me seized up into a fetal ball.

  “Gayle?” he prompted, none too kindly.

  “The Bucking Bronco is up for sale, as you probably know. My mom sent me to protect her interests.”

  The azure gaze drifted over me, slowly and thoughtfully, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. “I see,” he drawled, and it sounded like more than an acknowledgement of my reasons for returning to Parable, as if he’d developed x-ray vision and could see the lace panties and matching bra under my linen slacks and white cotton blouse. My blood heated, and my nipples went hard. When we were together, Tristan had had a way of undressing me with his eyes, and he hadn’t lost the knack.

  I flushed. “How long until you get this truck out of the way?” I asked. “I’d like to get my business done and get out of here.”

  “I’ll just bet you would,” he said, and a corner of his mouth quirked up in an insolent ghost of a grin. He leaned in, and I felt his breath against my face. More heat. “You’re real good at running away.”

  My temper flared. “Whatever,” I snapped. If he wanted to make the whole thing my fault, fine. I wouldn’t try to change his mind.

  His gaze glided to my left hand, then back to my face. “No wedding ring,” he said. “I figured you would have married some poor sucker, out of spite. Maybe even had a couple of kids.”

  “Well,” I said, “you figured wrong.”

  “No boyfriend?” There was a note of disbelief in his voice, as though he thought I couldn’t go five minutes without a man, let alone ten years.

  I straightened my spine. The pitiable state of my love life was nobody’s business, least of all Tristan McCullough’s. “I’m in a committed relationship,” I said. “His name is Bob.”

  Tristan’s mouth twitched. “Bob,” he repeated.

  “He’s in electronics,” I said.

  Something sparked in Tristan’s eyes—humor, I thought—and I hoped he hadn’t guessed that Bob was a vibrator.

  Get a grip, I told myself. Tristan might have known where all my erotic zones were, but he wasn’t psychic.

  Feeling bolder, now that I knew I wouldn’t spontaneously combust just by being in Tristan’s presence—provided he didn’t touch me, that is—I cast a disgusted glance toward the trailer, full of unhappy cows. “So, how long did you say it will take to get this truck off the road?”

  “You already asked me that.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t answer.”

  He looked irritated. “I called for some help. There’s a wrecker on the way. Guess you’re just going to have to be patient.”

  I approached the trailer—the cattle smelled even worse than they sounded—and noticed that a set of double wheels at the front had slipped partway into the ditch. Beyond it was a drop-off of several hundred feet.

  My stomach quivered. “I really hope they don’t all decide to stand on one side of the trailer,” I said.

  Tristan was right beside me. He looked pale under his rancher’s tan. “Me, too,” he said.

  “What happened? I thought you were this great driver.”

  He scowled, did the hat thing again. Before he had to answer, we heard revving engines on the other side of the truck. We ducked between the trailer and the cab and watched as a wrecker and about fourteen pickup trucks rolled up.

  An older man—I recognized him immediately as Tristan’s grandfather—leaped out of a beat-up vehicle and hurried toward us. “We gotta get those cows out of that rig before they trample each other,” he called. He squinted at me, but quickly lost interest. Story of my life. Sometimes, I think I’m invisible. “Jim and Roy are up on the ridge road, unloading the horses. We’re gonna need ’em to keep the cattle from scattering all over the county.”

  Tristan nodded, and I looked up, trying to locate the aforementioned ridge road. High above, I saw two long horse trailers, pulled by more pickup trucks, perched on what looked like an impossibly narrow strip of land. I counted two riders and some dozen horses making their careful way down the hillside.

  “What’s she doing here?” the wrecker guy asked Tristan, after cocking a thumb at me.

  I didn’t hear Tristan’s answer over all the ruckus. Oh, well. I probably wouldn’t have liked it anyway.

  “Get out of the way,” Tristan told me, as he and the guys from the flotilla of pickup trucks up ahead got ready to unload the cattle. I retreated a ways, and watched as he climbed onto the back of the semi-trailer, threw the heavy steel bolts that held the doors closed, and climbed inside.

  An image came to my mind, of the whole shebang rolling over the cliff, with Tristan inside, and I almost threw up the twenty-six peanuts, along with the Big Mac and the fries.

  The horsemen arrived, and several of the men on the ground immediately mounted up. Tristan threw down a ramp from inside.

  “Watch out them cattle don’t trample you!” the grandfather called. He’d gone back to his truck for a lasso, and he looked ready to rope.

  Over the uproar, I distinctly heard Tristan laugh.

  A couple of cows came down the ramp, looking surprised to find themselves on a mountain road. The noise increased as the animals came down the metal ramp. The trailer rocked with the shifting weight, and the wheels slipped slightly.

  “Easy!” Grampa yelled.

  “I’m doing the best I can, old man!” Tristan yelled back.

  The trailer was big. Just the same, I would never have guessed it could hold that many cattle. They just kept coming, like the critters bailing out of Noah’s Ark after the flood, except that they didn’t travel two by two.

  Before long, the road was choked with them. There was dust, and a lot of cowboys on horseback, yelling “Hyaww!” I concentrated on staying out of the way, and wished I hadn’t worn linen pants and a white blouse. On the other hand, how do you dress for something like that?

  Tristan came down the ramp, at long last, and I let out my breath.

  He wasn’t going to plunge to his death in a cattle truck.

  I found a tree stump and sat down on it.

  I lost track of Tristan in all the fuss. The cattle were trying to get away, fanning out over the road, trying to climb the hillside, even heading for the steep drop on the other side of the road. The cowboys yelled and whistled and rode in every direction.

  All of a sudden, Tristan was right in front of me, mounted on a big bay gelding. A grin flashed on his dusty face. “Come on,” he said, leaning down to offer me a hand. “I’ll take you into town. It’ll be a while before the road’s clear.”

  I cupped my hands around my mouth to be heard
over the din. “What about my car?”

  “One of the men will bring it to you later.”

  I hadn’t ridden a horse since the summer of my American Cowboy, but I knew I’d get trampled if I tried to walk through the milling herd. I went to stand up, but my butt was stuck to the stump.

  Tristan threw back his head and laughed.

  “What?” I shouted, mortified and still struggling.

  “Pitch,” he said. “You might have to take off your pants.”

  “In your dreams,” I retorted, and struggled some more, with equal futility.

  Grinning, Tristan swung down out of the saddle, took a grip on the waistband of my slacks at either side, and wrenched me to my feet. I felt the linen tear away at the back, and my derriere blowing in the breeze. If I’d had my purse, I’d have used it to cover myself, but it was still in the rental car.

  My predicament struck Tristan as funny, of course. While I was trying to hold my pants together, he hurled me bodily onto the horse, and mounted behind me. That stirred some visceral memories, ones I would have preferred to ignore, but it was difficult, under the circumstances.

  “I need my purse,” I said.

  “Later,” he replied, close to my ear.

  “And my suitcase.” I’m nothing if not persistent.

  “Like I’m going to ride into town with a suitcase,” Tristan said. “It could spook Samson.”

  “Why can’t we just borrow one of these trucks?”

  “We’ve got a horse.” I guess he considered that a reasonable answer.

  Tears of frustration burned behind my eyes. I’d hoped to slip in and out of Parable unnoticed. Now, I’d be arriving on horseback, with the back of my pants torn away. Shades of Lady Godiva.

  “Hold on,” Tristan said, sending another hot shiver through my system as the words brushed, warm and husky, past my ear.

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. When he steered that horse down into the ditch—one false step and we’d have been in free fall, Tristan, the gelding, and me—I gripped the saddle horn with both hands and held on for dear life. I would have closed my eyes, but between clinging for dear life and controlling my bladder, I’d exhausted my physical resources.

  We bumped up on the other side of the trailer and, once we were clear of the pickup trucks, Tristan nudged the horse into a trot.

  I bounced ignobly against a part of his anatomy I would have preferred not to think about, and by that time I’d given up on trying to hold the seat of my slacks together. He was rock-hard under those faded jeans of his, and I sincerely hoped he was suffering as grievously as I was.

  Parable hadn’t changed much since I’d left, except for the addition of a huge discount store at one end of town. People honked and waved as we rode down the main drag, and Tristan, the show-off, occasionally tipped his hat.

  We passed the Bucking Bronco Tavern, now closed, with its windows boarded up, and I felt a pang of nostalgia. Mom and I weren’t real close, but I couldn’t help remembering happy times in our little apartment behind the bar, with its linoleum floors and shabby furniture. My tiny bedroom was butt up against the back wall of the tavern, and I used to go to sleep to the click of pool balls and the wail of the jukebox. I felt safe, knowing my mother was close by, even if she was refereeing brawls, topping off draft beers, and flirting for tips.

  Behind the stores, huge pines jutted toward the supersized sky, and I caught glimmers of Preacher Lake. In the winter, Parable looks like a vintage postcard. In fact, it’s so 1950s that I half expected to blink and see everything in black and white.

  I had reservations at the Lakeside Motel, since that was the only hostelry in town, besides Mamie Sweet’s Bed and Breakfast. Mom wouldn’t have booked me a room there, since she and Mamie had once had a hair-pulling match over a farm implement salesman from Billings. Turned out he was married anyway, but as far as I knew, the feud was still on.

  Tristan brought the horse to a stop in front of the Lakeside, with nary a mention of the B&B, another sign that Mom and Mamie had never had that Hallmark moment. He dismounted and reached up to help me down.

  I didn’t want to flash downtown Parable, but my choices were limited. As soon as I was on the ground, I closed the gap in my slacks. Tristan grinned as I backed toward the motel office, my face the same raspberry shade as my lace underpants.

  The woman behind the registration desk was a stranger, but from the way she looked me over, she one, knew who I was, and two, had heard an unflattering version of my hasty departure on the four o’clock bus.

  I bit my lower lip.

  “You must be Gayle,” she said. She was tall and thin, with short dark hair. I pegged her for one of those people who live on granola and will risk their lives to protect owls and old-growth timber.

  I nodded. I had no purse, and no luggage. I’d just ridden into town on a horse, and I was trying to hold my clothing together. I didn’t feel talkative.

  Suddenly, she smiled and put out a hand in greeting. “Nancy Beeks,” she said. “Welcome to the Lakeside.” She ruffled through some papers and slapped a form down on the counter, along with one of those giveaway pens that run out of ink when you write the third item on a grocery list. “You’re in room 7. It overlooks the lake.”

  After glancing back over my shoulder to make sure no one was about to step into the office and get a good look at Victoria’s Secret, I took a risk and signed the form. “My stuff will be arriving shortly,” I said, in an offhand attempt to sound normal.

  “Sure,” Nancy said. Then she frowned. “What happened to your pants?”

  She’d probably seen me on the front of Tristan’s horse, and I didn’t want her jumping to any conclusions. “I—sat in something,” I said.

  She nodded sagely, as though people in her immediate circle of friends sat in things all the time. Maybe they did. Country life can be messy. “I could lend you something,” she offered.

  I flushed with relief, claiming the key to room 7 with my free hand. “I would really appreciate that,” I said. There was no telling how long it would be before my car was delivered, along with the suitcase.

  “Hold on a second.” Nancy left the desk, and disappeared into a back room. I heard her feet pounding on a set of stairs, and she returned, handing me a pair of black polyester shorts, just as a minivan pulled into the gravel parking lot out front.

  I practically snatched them out of her hand. “Thanks.”

  A husband, a wife, and four little kids in swimming suits got out of the van, stampeding for the front door. I eased to one side, careful to keep my butt toward the wall. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Nancy grin.

  “Heck of a mess out on the highway,” the husband announced, as he stepped over the threshold. He was balding, clad in plaid Bermuda shorts and a muscle shirt. The effect of the outfit was brave but unfortunate. “Cattle all over the place. We had to wait at least twenty minutes before the road was clear.”

  “Where’s the pool?” one of the kids yelled. All four of them looked ready to thumb their noses and jump in.

  Their mother, a harried-looking woman in a saggy sundress, brushed mouse-brown bangs back from her forehead. “There isn’t a pool,” she told the children, eyeing me curiously as I sidestepped it toward the door, still keeping my back to the wall. “You can swim in the lake.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, and edged past her to make a break for it, the borrowed shorts clutched in one hand.

  Room 7 was around back, with the promised view of the lake, but I didn’t bother to admire the scenery until I’d slammed the door behind me, peeled off my ruined slacks, and wriggled into the shorts.

  Only then did I take a look around. Tile floors, plain double bed, lamps with wooden bases carved to resemble the chain-saw bears I’d seen in the gas station parking lot. There was a battered dresser along one wall, holding up a TV that still had a channel dial. The bathroom was roughly the size of a phone booth, but it was clean, and that was all that mattered. I wouldn’t be
in Parable long. Sit in on the negotiations, sign the papers, and I’d be out of there.

  I splashed my face with cold water and held my hair up off my neck for a few seconds, wishing for a rubber band.

  Going to the window, I pulled the cord and the drapes swished open to reveal the lake, sparkling with June sunlight. There was a long dock, and I could see the four little kids from the office jumping into the shallow end, with shouts of glee, while their mother watched attentively.

  I felt a twinge of yearning. The Bronco backed up to the lake, too, and Mom and I used to skinny-dip back there on Sunday nights, when the tavern was closed and the faithful were all at evening services.

  I was tempted to call her, just to let her know I’d arrived, but I decided against it. There would be a charge for using the phone in the room, and my budget was severely limited; better to wait until my stuff arrived and I could use my cell. I had unlimited minutes, after all, and besides, she probably wouldn’t hear the ring over the roar of the Harley engine. My mother, the biker chick.

  The lake was really calling to me by then. I would have loved to wander down to the dock, kick off my sandals, and dangle my feet in that blue, blue water, but I couldn’t bring myself to intrude on the swimming party. Anyway, I figured being at the fringe of that happy little family would have made me feel lonelier, instead of lifting my spirits.

  I was sitting on the end of my double bed, leafing through an outdated issue of Field & Stream, when the telephone jangled and nearly scared me out of my skin.

  “Hello?” I said uncertainly.

  “Just thought I’d let you know your car is here,” Nancy told me. “It’s parked in the lot, and I have the keys here in the office.”

  I thanked her and rushed to reclaim my suitcase and purse.

  When I got back to the room, I took a shower, scrubbing the pitch off my backside, and put on clean jeans and a tank top. My cell phone, nestled in the bottom of my bag, was on its last legs, making an irritating bleep-bleep sound.

  I turned it off, plugged it in for a charge, and peered out the window again. The minivan family was still in the water. The dad had joined them by then, but the mom still sat on the dock, smiling and shading her eyes with one hand.