by Joanna Sims
Damn, but she was determined and strong. He’d never seen anything like her before.
“Ow...crap.”
His hamstring locked up when he stepped over the edge of the tub to get out of the shower. He half fell onto the bath mat, grabbed for his hamstring with one hand and the towel bar with the other.
After he got his hamstring to unlock, Nick hobbled, with stiff joints and an aching lower back, to the bed and flopped onto the mattress.
“Oh, man.” He carefully stretched out his legs, wincing at the pain in his knees as they straightened.
He’d never been a jock or a muscle head, and he had been slacking off on his workout routine for the past several years while he was buried up to his eyeballs in law books—but he’d never considered himself to be a lightweight before. He felt like a total lightweight now.
Eyes closed, Nick rested his hands on his stomach and tried to rest. The day after you exerted your body was always the worst; tomorrow he imagined he was going to feel awful. Instead of falling asleep as he’d hoped, he started to think of ways to make the cleanup of Lightning Rock quicker. But the only two options he could come up with included bringing a crew of men in to help clean out the buildings or bringing in a crew to just demolition the buildings and be done with it.
Whenever he thought through either of those options, his mind would conjure Dallas’s face. This was personal to her—these were her father’s belongings. And even though most of it was just moldy, decaying papers, every once in a while, Dallas would come upon something in the rubbish that she wanted to keep. How could he take that away from her? How could he tarnish the legacy of Davy Dalton?
The answer to both of those questions, no matter what angle he came at the problem from, was I can’t.
* * *
The next morning, Nick got a later start than he’d intended. He awakened stiffer than a starched shirt with an ache in his muscles, joints, neck and lower back that he’d never felt in his life. Even the palms of his hands hurt; they were red and rough from wielding that shovel all day. His hands had remained mostly callus free and he had been perfectly fine with that. Perhaps it had even been a badge of honor to be a part of the white-collar and blue-blood class. But after watching Dallas work like she could keep going until nightfall while he was sucking wind an hour into the cleanup, he’d decided some calluses on his hands were exactly what he needed. He could stand a little toughening up.
Nick packed his belongings, put them in the rental car and checked out of the hotel. If Dallas could rough it out at Lightning Rock, then so could he. He grabbed a fast-food breakfast on his way out of town, ordering an extra-black coffee for Dallas just in case.
When he drove long distances, he liked to take the time to think. Same when he was stuck in rush-hour traffic back home in Chicago. He didn’t listen to music or books on CD. He always thought about his next move, his next big goal. His future. All the way out to Lightning Rock, Nick thought about the property, and what he might say to his uncle Hank when it came time to discuss the sale of Lightning Rock. Intertwined with business was Dallas. On his first night in Montana, he’d wondered if his interest in her, his curiosity about her, was a passing fancy. By his second night in Montana, he had his answer: no. It wasn’t a passing fancy. She fascinated him. He was drawn to her. He wanted to know more about her—about what made her tick. He liked her.
And there was this one moment yesterday that he couldn’t stop thinking over again and again: the moment when Dallas lifted up the bottom of her tank top to wipe the sweat off her face. It wasn’t meant to be a tease—it was an innocent, practical move on her part. But that flash of pale skin on her toned stomach, so different than the reddish brown of the skin on her arms and neck, made his body stir and made his mind turn to sex.
* * *
“I was beginnin’ to wonder if you’d decided to get the heck outta Dodge,” Dallas said to him as she dumped the contents of her cart onto the trash pile.
“Don’t think I didn’t consider it.” He was working hard not to walk in a way that would show how much hurt he was feeling. “I wasn’t sure if you drink it, but I brought an extra coffee just in case.”
“Been drinkin’ it since I was ten.” Dallas dropped the cart and walked over to him. “More of that unusual life of mine.”
He caught her meaning and wanted to clear the air now that he had the chance.
“I think you have a great life, Dallas. Unusual isn’t a bad thing in my book.”
The cowgirl didn’t respond to his comment, but he could read in her eyes that his words had hit their intended mark.
“It’s black,” he said of the coffee.
“I drink it any way I can get it,” the cowgirl said to him as she took the cup of coffee from him. “Thank you for thinkin’ about me.”
She’d probably be worried if she had any idea of how much actual thinking he had done about her.
“I have somethin’ for you too.” The cowgirl pointed to his shovel resting against the porch banister of the cabin; a cowboy hat was hanging on the end of the shovel’s handle.
“It was Davy’s,” she added.
Surprised by her thoughtful gift, Nick walked over to the cabin and unhooked the hat from the shovel’s handle.
Nick hadn’t spent time following bull riding since he was a kid—his interest stopped around the time his father and uncle Hank had their falling-out over the will—but, before that, he wanted to be like his uncle Hank, and his uncle Hank loved bull riding.
“Davy Dalton’s hat.” Nick held the aged brown Stetson in his hands reverently.
“And his gloves,” Dallas added. “Flip it over.”
Nick turned the hat over and saw a pair of work gloves tucked inside the inner band of the hat.
“If they don’t fit, don’t worry,” the cowgirl said.
“I feel like these are things that you should keep,” Nick replied.
“Why?” Dallas shook off his comment with a shake of her head. “They’re too big for me, and Pop can’t use ’em anymore. He’d think it was right that one of Hank’s kin found some use for ’em.”
Nick decided to take Dallas at her word; she didn’t strike him as someone who spent much time talking around the truth. If she said it, she seemed to mean it.
He tried on the hat first and was pleased that it fit pretty well. Then he tried on the gloves. With a little stretching of the leather, they would suit him just fine.
“Thank you.” He smiled at the cowgirl.
Dallas, who was pulling the cart back to the cabin, paused when she looked at him. A flicker of some emotion flashed quick and ephemeral, like a shooting star across a black sky. He couldn’t read the emotion it passed so quick.
After a second, Dallas said, “Pop is pleased.” And then she got back to work.
Chapter Three
It took them three days of sweaty, backbreaking work to clean out the cabin and get it rehabbed enough for him to bunk there with relative comfort. It had running water and electricity in from the main part of the ranch. It was humble, but it was habitable. Dallas had taken a break from training long enough to get him in the cabin; today, the fourth day of cleanup, she insisted on taking a break to practice barrel racing.
“How are you gettin’ on?” Ketch asked him when he came back from giving Dallas some critiques on her technique.
Ketch was the only person Dallas had invited out to Lightning Rock. Nick had a feeling that Dallas didn’t trust many people, including him, but she trusted Tom Ketchum.
“She’s pretty quiet, most of the time.”
Ketch kept his focus on his student. “She’s been through a lot, that one.”
“I think everything we’ve been doing out at Lightning Rock,” Nick said about sifting through the remnants of Davy Dalton’s life, “would be sad
for anyone.”
“Trouble is a private thing,” Ketch agreed, then went back to coaching Dallas.
Nick watched Dallas with unabashed fascination. She was in complete control of her horse; sometimes she careened around the barrels so fast and so low that it actually made him hold his breath thinking that the horse was going to tip over onto her leg and pin her on the ground. She was fearless, her hair flying loose down her back, her cowgirl hat worn square on the top of her head. He hadn’t thought she was beautiful when he first met her—cute, maybe. Now he had it in his head that she was one of the prettiest women he’d known. For sure, she was prettier on the inside than most he’d met. She was pretty on the inside like his sisters Taylor and Casey. That was the highest praise, as far as he was concerned.
“Woooo-weeee!” Dallas let out a loud whoop after her last barrel run. It felt great to be back in the saddle doing exactly what she loved to do. Blue’s coat looked a shade darker from the sweat and he had white foam dripping from his mouth.
Dallas gave Blue some big pats on the neck to praise him for a job well done. She slipped her feet out of the stirrups, dropped the reins so her horse could have his head loose and she kicked her legs forward.
“He did better with a couple days off, Ketch!”
“He’s lookin’ good. He’s gonna be ready to win big next time ye’re in it.”
Dallas picked up the reins to whoa her big blue roan gelding.
“He’s tight and fast,” Dallas said, her face flushed bright red from heat and exertion. “I can’t wait to get back out there. I can’t wait!”
“When you plannin’ on gettin’ back out there?” Ketch asked.
Nick, from her point of view, was paying particular attention to her answer to that question. The only thing she wouldn’t like about being back out on the road was the fact that she wouldn’t be spending time with Nick. They had been building a friendship, a genuine friendship, out there at Lightning Rock, and she was going to miss him. She truly was.
Dallas swung out of the saddle and landed on the ground easily. She slipped the reins over her horse’s head, loosened the girth and started walking over to the one spot where she could rinse the sweat off her horse’s neck and back.
“I think I’ve just about got enough stuffed under the mattress to make a go of it once I’m finished takin’ care of Pop’s business.”
Ketch stayed around to talk with them for a couple of minutes longer before he headed off to tend to the rest of his day. She finished rinsing off Blue before she turned him out with the rest of the horses. After such a great practice session, she really didn’t want to ruin her good mood by tackling more of the cleanup.
Back at Lightning Rock, she said to Nick, “I’m so greasy and grimy, and the water pressure in that ol’ outdoor shower Pop rigged up is as about as useless as tits on a bull. I swear I’ve got a week’s worth of dirt in my hair that I can’t get out. If I don’t take a quick minute to jump in the lake, you’ll be able to smell me from a mile away.”
He smiled at her. “Let’s avoid that.”
She stood there for a moment, just enjoying the way it felt to have Nick Brand smiling at her. So handsome, that man. She got butterflies in her stomach whenever he watched her practice—she never got nervous around anyone when she raced the barrels, but something about Nick was different. Something about Nick made her feel different.
* * *
While Dallas grabbed a bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap and a threadbare towel, Nick pondered on the way Dallas had looked at him just seconds before. She had stared into his eyes and although the moment was fleeting, he had wanted it to keep right on going. She was such a complicated woman that it was hard to figure her out. Maybe that was part of the attraction. She was a challenge.
“You can come, if you want. I’m wearing a bathin’ suit.” Dallas said, “I don’t suppose you brought anything to swim in?”
“No,” Nick said. And now, more than ever before in his life, he coveted his few pairs of clean, dry underwear. Besides, wet white underwear in front of Dallas? The family jewels looked much smaller after an exposure to cold water.
“Do you want to swim?”
“Now that you’ve put the idea in my head, I’d love to get in the water.”
“Go grab me one of your pairs of jeans, then.”
He returned with his last pair of clean jeans; he’d been avoiding wearing them because they were brand-new and too expensive to use for the kind of dirty work he’d found himself doing of late.
“Give me a minute,” Dallas said.
“Hey...what are you going to do with those?”
“Give me a minute,” she said again.
Good as her word, she was back in about a minute. “Here. Go put these on and let’s go.”
Nick took his jeans from the cowgirl. His expensive jeans were now shorts. He didn’t bother to ask her what she had done or why she had done it. That part was obvious.
“These were brand-new,” he said.
“They’re still new.”
The way she shrugged made him believe that she was completely naive to the price of the jeans she had just ruined.
“They’re just shorter. Go put ’em on.”
* * *
Dallas peeled off her sweaty T-shirt, balled it up and dropped it on the bank of the small, clear-water lake. She sat down to yank off her boots as quick as she could. So hot, sticky and gritty. She couldn’t wait to get into that cool lake water. Her luck and her curse were that she was focused to a fault. All she could think about after practice was cooling off in the lake.
“I’d thought that I’d been to all of the Bent Tree lakes when I was a kid,” the lawyer said to her.
“It’s always been my private spot.” Dallas unzipped her jeans, shoved them down over her hips and legs so she could step out of them.
Dallas had strategically worn her old Speedo bathing suit under her clothing so she could get into the lake anytime she wanted. Her feet were tough from years of walking barefoot, so the pebbles and broken brush along the side of the lake didn’t bother her.
“You much of a swimmer?” Dallas loved the feel of the earth, warmed by the sun, beneath her bare feet. She always had, ever since she was a little girl.
Nick joined her by the edge of the lake. She glanced over at him as he peeled off his shirt. It was a quick glance, but long enough to notice how light the skin on his stomach was compared to the golden color of his arms and neck. He was a fit man; not ripped and shredded like a bodybuilder, but toned as if he spent some of his time, at least, working out. She seemed to like looking at Nick whether he had a shirt on or not.
“I was captain of my high school swim team.”
His profile to her, Nick seemed to be taking stock of the clear-water lake.
“It’s deep enough to dive from that boulder over there.” She pointed a couple of feet away from where they were standing.
Not able to spend one more second in her grubby skin, Dallas tromped through the short brush, careful not to step on the Sweet William wildflowers that grew in brightly colored clumps along the bank of the lake.
The boulder was hot beneath her feet. To her, the burning was a challenge. The longer she could stand it, the tougher she was. And being tough, being able to handle her business alone in the world was a matter of survival. She didn’t have anyone to depend on. Now that Davy was gone, she didn’t feel like she had a family. The way her brother had treated Davy in his last years, like he was a pariah—that wound might scar over, but it would never truly be healed.
No. She was alone in this world.
Dallas stepped to the edge of the boulder, lifted her arms above her head and touched her fingers together like a steeple. With one strong vault, she arced into the air and cut the water with her hands with only the smallest of
splashes. She knew this lake—had spent hundreds of hours in her youth swimming in this lake. This lake was her swimming pool; the banks of this lake were her playroom. At Lightning Rock, she was more at home than any other place on earth. She hadn’t known how attached she was to the place—she hadn’t realized how hard it was going to be to say goodbye to this beautiful slice of paradise—until she had begun to clear out her father’s belongings. How many times a day had she stopped herself from tearing up? Countless.
Dallas touched a rock lodged at the bottom of the lake before she somersaulted forward to push herself up to the surface with her feet. She broke through the surface of the water just in time to hear Nick’s warning.
“Incoming!”
Dallas was treading her legs so she could wipe the water off her face and out of her eyes. She opened her eyes just in time to see Nick performing a cannonball off the boulder. Nick landed a short distance away from her with a giant splash. Some of the water displaced by his cannonball hit her in the face. She sputtered a little bit, spitting out lake water and wiping the water out of her eyes for a second time.
“What score would you give me?” Nick asked after he swam over to her.
The man’s arm strokes had been clean, strong and confident. She had spent so much of her time around rodeo men who had a propensity for stretching the truth a bit, she had half doubted Nick’s claim to be captain of his high school swim team. But not anymore.
The cool, fresh water made her feel renewed. She smiled with a laugh and held up two fingers playfully. “I had a better cannonball when I was nine.”
“Oh, yeah?” Nick asked, treading water beside her. “You think you can do better? Show me.”
The competitive spirit in her made her swim to the edge of the lake and back to the boulder to at least match, if not surpass, Nick’s “city boy” cannonball. Without paying attention to the time, the two of them tried to one-up each other in the cannonball arena. They should have been heading back to the homestead and tackling the trailer, but instead, they frolicked together in the lake as if they had nothing better to do and all the time in the world. The early afternoon slipped away from them, and it wasn’t until Nick called a tie that Dallas decided to let the competition end. She shared her bar of soap and shampoo with Nick, and they both left the lake a heck of a lot cleaner than they had gone in.