Cowboys Don't Cry

by Anne McAllister

  Tanner shifted irritably, adjusting his jeans, and, with his heel, knocked the hammer to the ground.

  "Hell!"

  Ev laughed at him.

  It wasn't funny. Not a bit. He didn't want this, didn't want the temptation, the distraction that Maggie brought into his life. But even when he tried to avoid her, it didn't work. She was everywhere he went.

  Like Ev, he'd assumed that a full-time teaching job would leave her little time to intrude in his life.

  He hadn't counted on riding in one afternoon to find Maggie and four third graders crouched in a stall in the barn. "What the hell—I mean, heck—are you doing?"

  Maggie looked up and smiled at him. Even now, every time she did it, it felt like a kick in the gut. "Would you believe that some of my children have never seen a cow up close, even in Wyoming? I wanted to show them Grace."

  Tanner stifled a groan. Grace—-God help him—was a calf. An orphan calf he'd found bawling next to its dead mother in last Sunday's snowstorm. He tried to get another mother cow to take it, but none had lost a calf and he didn't have a prayer. So he'd brought it in slung over the front of the saddle.

  Maggie had taken it over—and named it Grace.

  "Because it was through the grace of God that you found her and brought her home," she told Tanner quite seriously, her wide green eyes luminous as she'd looked up at him from where she knelt on the floor of the barn, feeding the calf.

  She was looking like an angel again. "Suit yourself," he muttered, beating a hasty retreat.

  It seemed like every time he went into the barn after that, Maggie was there feeding Grace. And now she had a circle of eight-year-olds sitting there with her, with Billy showing them the bucket with the nipple, demonstrating how the feeding was done. Ev was always telling him that Billy's teachers couldn't get a word out of him. They should see him now, Tanner thought.

  He was unsaddling Gambler when Maggie appeared at his side. He stepped back, her nearness still capable of unnerving him.

  "Grace is a big hit." She smiled at him, then looked over to where Billy was helping one of the girls give Grace the bottle. "They love her."

  "They don't have to feed her day and night."

  "My, aren't you grumpy this afternoon," she teased. "Get up on the wrong side of bed?"

  "Lucky when I can get to bed." For the last four nights he'd been out with calving cows.

  "Should we hire someone to help you?"

  "Waste of money. I can do it myself. Anyway, looks like no one's ready to calve tonight, so I'll have a break."

  "Good. You can take the children back to Casper with me."

  "What! I can't do that!"

  "Why not? I'd like the chance to sit down and talk to you uninterrupted."

  "No, I—"

  "We haven't really had a chance since I moved in. You've been busy and so have I. But tonight—"

  "I can't!" Tanner said desperately. "I've got to—got to—to muck out the barn."

  "I'll help you muck out the barn when we come back."

  "No!"

  Maggie cocked her head. "You know, Robert," she said, one corner of her mouth lifting as she looked straight at him, "the way you're constantly trying to avoid me, I could get the impression that you're afraid of me."

  "I am not afraid of you!"

  "Really? Then prove it."

  He ought to know better than to take a dare. Damn it, his brother Luke was the one who took dares, not him.

  But what was he supposed to do when Maggie lifted her chin and grinned knowingly at him like that? He sure as hell wasn't going to let her think he was running scared.

  Probably it was a good thing, he told himself, being forced. Maybe what he needed was a few hours of nonstop company with Maggie MacLeod. Maybe then whatever itch she was inspiring in him would be scratched. In any case, he didn't see that he had much choice.

  They took the utility truck, which had plenty of room for all the kids when he put the seat back in. It also gave him plenty of elbow room in the front seat—as long as Maggie didn't do anything stupid like slide over and sit next to him.

  The moment the thought occurred to him, he glanced in her direction. But she was turned and talking to the children in the back, asking them what they thought about feeding Grace, and he began to relax a little.

  He liked listening to her talk to the kids. She wasn't patronizing like a lot of his teachers had been. And she didn't bark out orders to them, either. She seemed genuinely interested in them. And they were equally interested in her. They knew all about her life, it seemed to Tanner. About her parents and her brothers and the places she'd lived growing up.

  "Do you like it better here or in the jungle?" one of the little boys asked her.

  "Oh, here," Maggie said. "But the jungle was interesting. You should go sometime."

  The boy's eyes widened. "You really think I could?"

  "If you want to bad enough," Maggie told him.

  "Like you wanted your home?" one of the girls asked her.

  "Just like that, Dena," Maggie said. "I was extremely blessed by Miss Crumm's generosity, of course. But I would have made a home wherever I settled. She just made it possible for me to be here."

  "How long you gonna stay?" the boy asked.

  "For the rest of my life, I hope."

  "You stayin', too, Mr. Tanner?" he asked.

  "Not me," Tanner said.

  "How come?" The boy bounced forward on the seat to peer over into Tanner's face. "Don'tcha like Miz MacLeod?"

  "Sure I like her," Tanner said, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel. The truck seemed suddenly to be getting smaller.

  "Then how come you're gonna leave?"

  "Because it's what I want to do." Need to do, his mind raged silently.

  "You know what I think?" Dena said. "I think you should marry her."

  Tanner's head whipped around so fast he almost drove right off the road. Maggie pressed her fist to her mouth to stop a smile, then turned to Dena and said gently, "I think that's a decision best left up to Mr. Tanner and me, Dena."

  The girl kicked her foot against the back of the seat in front of her. "1 was only sayin'. Don't you want to get married?"

  "Yes," Maggie said.

  "No," said Tanner.

  Maggie looked at him for a second before turning back to Dena. "There. You see?" she said lightly. "It would never work. Come on now, look where the sun is setting. Who can tell me what direction we're going?"

  She kept them talking until they were all dropped ofl and she and Tanner were sitting alone in the truck together.

  "Sorry about that," she said, folding her hands in her lap. "I didn't imagine they were going to try their hand at matchmaking."

  He shrugged. "Doesn't matter." He hoped she didn't notice the high line of color that he was sure still tinged his cheekbones. He put the truck in gear. "You need to do some shopping before we head back?"

  "A little," Maggie said. "And then I'm taking you to dinner."

  He protested. She pulled rank. He grumbled.

  She laughed. "I think I'm beginning to like this 'boss' business. Come on into the grocery store with me."

  He didn't argue this time. He didn't remember much Shakespeare from high school, but he did remember the bit about protesting too much. Besides, he didn't see what harm he could come to with her in the grocery store. Which just went to show how shortsighted he was.

  It was like being married to her. Maybe it was just that he had marriage on the brain after what Dena had said. But he couldn't help it.

  Married people went grocery shopping together.

  He remembered doing it with Clare—walking down the aisles side by side, him pushing the cart, her picking things off the shelves, looking to him now and then for approval. Maggie did it now, seeking wordless approval for some package of beans and rice she was considering. It tore at his gut.

  He shoved the cart at her. "Think I'll just get some air," he said, and headed rapidly for the exit.
<
br />   He was pacing around outside, feeling like an idiot, when Maggie came out ten minutes later and apologized to him. "Sorry about taking so long. But I'll make it up to you. I know a great place to go for dinner."

  Once more he tried to convince her they didn't need to go out to dinner. Once more she won.

  "We need to talk. If we're going to work together, we need to get to know each other."

  Tanner thought he knew her better than he wanted to already, but he couldn't tell her that. "So, fine. Let's go. Got any ideas?"

  She did. Her choice surprised him. She directed him back out of Casper and north on the highway to Kaycee. "It's fabulous. They have the best smothered green chile burritos in the world," she told him.

  "I know."

  His response made her blink, then laugh. "Of course you do. Why do I think I'm the first one to discover these places?"

  In fact, he'd eaten there plenty of times. And Maggie was right: they did have the best smothered green chile burritos he'd ever eaten. But somehow tonight they tasted even better.

  It was because of Maggie. Tanner knew it. He knew, too, that he shouldn't enjoy it, that it was dangerous as hell to let down his guard with her even for an evening. But he couldn't seem to help it. Her enthusiasm made him smile in spite of himself. Everybody knew her. Everybody greeted her with a comment and a grin. They grinned at him, too.

  "Got yourself a looker, eh, Tanner?" one of the waitresses said to him.

  He opened his mouth to deny it, then couldn't. After all, it was true. He shrugged, glancing down at Maggie by his side. Just for the moment, why not just go along for the ride? It was a little like the way his brother described bronc riding. "If I can't control it, hey, I just try to hang in there and enjoy the trip," Noah had said with a grin. "Sometimes that's enough to keep me from getting my butt kicked."

  Tanner prayed that the same would apply to a dinner with Maggie. He looked at her as the waitress left after taking their order.

  "You come here a lot?"

  "One of the waitresses is the mother of one of my kids. She can't make it to conferences very often because she has so far to drive, so I stop in on my way home and she feeds me and we talk." Her brow wrinkled. "You don't think that's a conflict of interest, do you?"

  "I don't know," Tanner said, deadpan. "Depends on if the kid's grades are improving."

  Maggie laughed. "I only wish they were." She sipped at the beer the waitress set in front of her. "Were you a good student, Robert?"

  "Tanner," he corrected. "No, I wasn't."

  "Me, neither. We moved around too much. And then, when I had to come back to the States for high school, I missed my parents and brothers dreadfully. I wrote letters all the time. I never studied."

  That surprised him. He'd had her pegged for a straight-A student, a Little Miss Perfect, and he'd never imagined her lonely. He didn't like to think about her needing someone and not having them. "You must've done all right," he said after a moment. "You're a teacher now."

  "Because I worked hard and because I wanted to be."

  "You're lucky to have gone to college."

  "You didn't?"

  "No." He wasn't going to say anything else, but she didn't comment, just looked at him expectantly, so he went on. "It wasn't that I wouldn't have liked to. There wasn't enough money when I got out of high school. I was saving what I could out of the little I made, thought maybe I'd go the next year. But then my father died."

  "And he didn't leave you any legacy?"

  "Oh yeah, there was a legacy. He left me my brothers. They were seventeen and fifteen."

  Maggie whistled under her breath. "It must have been so hard on you. How did you manage?"

  "Badly." And he didn't care how long she waited, he wasn't expanding on that.

  Maggie smiled. "I doubt that. You strike me as a very capable man. Very responsible."

  "I tried," Tanner muttered. She didn't have to know how he'd failed.

  "What are they doing now?"

  "Luke—he's the older one—is in California. He's the stunt double for Keith Mallory."

  "Keith Mallory?" Maggie's eyes bugged at the mention of one of Hollywood's most popular young actors.

  "Luke got all the looks," Tanner said wryly, "and none of the common sense. You know the sort of pictures Mallory does?"

  Maggie nodded. They were almost all action-and-reac-tion, bar-fights-and-bedlam, horse-and-car-chase flicks.

  "Well, he and Luke are a match made in heaven 'cause Luke never met a stunt he wouldn't try."

  The job, which had come by the fluke of Lucas's simply being in the right place at the right time, had been his brother's salvation, as far as Tanner could see. Doing most of Keith's stunts had provided a channel for his recklessness, a positive use for energy that all too often threatened to spin out of control.

  The waitress brought their burntos and two glasses of beer. Maggie took a bite before asking, "What about the other one? I suppose he's a rocket scientist."

  "Noah? Hardly. He's a rodeo bronc rider. A damned good one. He's gone to the NFR the last five years in a row."

  "NFR?"

  "National Finals Rodeo. They have it every December in Vegas. Only the top fifteen money winners in each event get to go. Like I said, he's good."

  "You must be very proud of both of them."

  "They turned out okay, I guess." There was no need to tell her that it had been far from smooth sailing for any of them.

  "Will I get to meet them?"

  "I don't see much of 'em, but they call sometimes. Feel sorry for me stuck out in the back of the beyond, I guess." He gave an awkward shrug and bent his head, concentrating on his burrito again. He wasn't used to talking this much. Maybe it was the beer. Or maybe it was just that Maggie was easy to talk to. Too easy to talk to.

  He changed the subject. "What about your brothers?"

  So she told him about her brothers—about Duncan, the elder, who was working on an advanced degree in geography at the University of Colorado, and about Andy, who was an undergraduate at Wyoming.

  "He doesn't know what he wants to do," she told Tanner finally, after having described a few of Andy's more daring scrapes. "He's at loose ends academically. I think he'll like the ranch. He keeps telling me he wants to be a cowboy."

  Tanner drained his beer. "A right-thinking man."

  "I'm sure he'll be delighted when you tell him so. He's coming this weekend."

  Tanner had forgotten that. It was a measure of how much he was mellowing under the influence of good food and beer that he didn't feel his customary protest welling up inside. He finished his burrito and pushed his plate away. The waitress poured him some coffee and he lifted the cup to his mouth, settling back in the booth and sipping it.

  Surely it wouldn't hurt just to look at her. He wasn't buying; he knew that. But just this once, for a few stolen moments...

  Maggie looked up and saw him watching her. "Are you in a hurry?"

  He shook his head. "Tell me about this jungle you grew up in."

  She did, talking easily and with fondness about her growing-up years. Listening to her, Tanner could imagine her as a child, all knobby knees and eager grins, and then as a teenager coming to the States, her enthusiasm more cautious, her eyes more wary. He could see all those things and more in the woman she'd become.

  Maggie took a swallow of coffee. "I'm talking too much."

  "No." He could have listened all night.

  "But we have the barn to muck out, remember?" She grinned at him.

  "Forget the barn. I'll get Bates to help in the morning."

  "Well, we probably ought to go anyway. We have to get up early."

  He knew she didn't mean it the way he took it. He knew it was only his imagination that had them getting up together. The waitress brought their bill. Maggie reached for it. Tanner got it first.

  "I invited you," Maggie protested.

  "Tough." It was like looking at her for just a moment had been—wishing. Indulging hims
elf in just the smallest bit of pretence, the fantasy that he'd really had a date with Maggie MacLeod.

  Of course, he knew he hadn't. But damn it, if a guy couldn't have reality, if he had to make do with dreams, was it such a crime if he based those dreams on what little he could muster from real life?

  It was dark as they walked to the truck. The wind was cold and there was still frost in the air, and if he'd dared, he'd have slipped his arm around her as they walked. He did open the door for her. Another little bit of fantasy. She thanked him. Her voice was soft. He almost had to strain to hear it. He got in the driver's side and started up the engine. For just a moment he wished she'd slide over next to him, let her hip press against his.

  But there was only so much reality that a fantasy could stand. That would be carrying things too far.

  He flicked on the radio as they drove. Neither of them spoke. Just as well. Anything they said would spoil it, tip the balance, kill his dream.

  He wasn't so dreamy that he forgot to do his job. He stopped to check on the cattle on the way to the house. "You can drive home if you want," he said as he got out of the truck. "It's not that far. I can walk."

  "I'll wait," Maggie said, and she smiled at him in the moonlight. His heart kicked over.

  Careful, he warned himself. It isn 't going to happen.

  It couldn't happen. He wouldn't let it.

  He only wanted the dream. The cattle cooperated. He was back in the truck within twenty minutes. "All's well," he said, rubbing his hands together, then started up the engine.

  He helped her carry the groceries into the house. There were only two bags. She could have managed alone, but he couldn't seem to let go. After they'd put the groceries away and he'd asked for and received a glass of water, he had no other choice.

  He slanted her a smile and backed toward the door. "I'll, er, see you tomorrow."

  Maggie followed him onto the porch. "Yes. Thank you for dinner. I didn't intend for you to pay for it."

  "I wanted to."

  They looked at each other for a long moment. He wanted to kiss her. He remembered the time she'd kissed him, when their lips had touched, when his body had burned. Maggie ran her tongue over her lips. He shut his eyes.