MATCH MADE IN WYOMING

by Patricia McLinn

  He's been neglected. Maybe abused. Taylor's words echoed in his head with a good deal more meaning than they'd originally had. This puppy had missed more than a couple of meals.

  "All right, you made your point," Cal muttered as he headed for the cupboard.

  Damned if he wasn't starting to sound like Taylor, thinking about dogs making points.

  Which made no sense, because all Cal Ruskoff and Taylor Anne Larsen had in common was living in Knighton, Wyoming. She'd arrived shortly after he'd been hired on by Matty's great-uncle. Her degrees and connections and history were common knowledge, and she'd settled into the life of the town and made friends. For almost two years he'd seldom left the ranch, and he'd shared none of his past with the people of Knighton.

  Then Matty, an entirely different kind of boss, inherited the Flying W. She'd needed a good lawyer. But she hadn't wanted to go to Dave last spring when they had not yet untangled the emotions that led to their now being happily married. So, she'd signed on with Taylor, the town's other lawyer.

  And in between Matty inheriting and when she and Dave worked things out, Cal and Taylor had stood up as witnesses at their wedding and even engaged in a bit of subterfuge to help the couple along. Their cooperation hadn't altered the fact that there was a gulf the size of the continent between their lives.

  When he'd first seen her sitting with the dog on the steps of the foreman's house, two possibilities had hit him almost simultaneously.

  New Year's Eve was the first possibility.

  She's working for them was the second.

  They were equally unlikely.

  If she'd had any thought of following up on what happened on New Year's Eve, she hadn't acted on it in these past weeks. Which just saved him the effort of withstanding further temptation.

  As for the other, his trip to the library had not only confirmed what he'd read in the newspaper, but added a nasty surprise to it. But it was a big leap from that to anyone knowing where he was or who he'd become. That was the reason he'd dismissed that second possibility. Not from any starry-eyed notion that Taylor Anne Larsen wouldn't sign up for the job. Dangle enough money in front of them, and most people would take on any kind of work.

  So, having her sitting on his front steps in order to foist off a homeless dog on him was actually good news.

  None of that meant he would start thinking like her, especially about the scrawny animal watching his every move. Next thing he knew he'd be calling the creature something like Muffin.

  He's your dog now. You name him.

  He wasn't his dog. A man in his position couldn't afford to own anything he wasn't prepared to leave behind any minute.

  Still, after Cal selected a blanket and two towels, he grabbed an old pillow for good measure and added it to the crate.

  Three hours later, he moved the crate to a corner of his bedroom.

  Self-defense.

  A man couldn't sleep wondering what the critter was doing in the other room. But at least he'd come up with a name for him – and one Taylor would have to approve.

  * * *

  "Are you going to tell me, or are you going to make me ask you?" Matty propped her hands on her hips.

  Cal knew what she wanted. They'd covered a fair amount of information about the Flying W's operations in the past hour, but only in between her questions about the puppy and his brief answers. If she expected him to wax poetic, she'd have a long time to wait.

  "Ask me what? You already asked me every question under the sun about this animal. From his eating habits to his burps to his emotional state."

  "You still haven't said if you like him."

  "He's all right."

  "What a ringing endorsement. Looks as if he thinks more highly of you."

  "I feed him."

  "Just goes to show those old wives' tales aren't always right – like the one about dogs being able to tell good character."

  He grimaced. But she was looking beyond him with a faraway look.

  "Maybe I should tell Taylor she was right, that you're not the right one to have this puppy, and she needs to come and take him back."

  Did Matty really think he was that easy to lead? That he'd declare himself devoted to this canine and beg her to let him keep it or that he'd protest Taylor's low opinion of him? "Maybe you should."

  "It would be nice for you to get to see Taylor again so soon, wouldn't it?"

  He should have known Matty wouldn't be that obvious. It was Taylor she wanted him to declare his devotion to, not the dog. Or maybe both. He used his most reliable defense: silence.

  "Dave's got some legal dinner tonight," Matty went on.

  "Taylor will be there. Probably going to wear that green dress she wore when the two of you stood up for Dave and me at our wedding. I'm sure they wouldn't mind one more."

  He said nothing. "Would you like to come?"

  "No."

  "Would you come as a favor to a friend?"

  "No."

  She gave a sigh. He'd like to think that meant she'd given up on this for good.

  "Come by the Slash-C so we can go over the spring planting plan – day after tomorrow, okay? I've got all that stuff in the computer there and it's easier."

  "Sure. 'Bout ten."

  "Good. Plan to stay to lunch."

  "Okay."

  She swung up onto Juno's saddled back with accustomed ease. "Hey, Cal."

  "Yeah?" Squinting up at her, he thought she was fighting a grin.

  "You know it's safe for you to fall in love with Baby Dog. He won't bite. For that matter, neither will Taylor … unless you want her to."

  With a wicked chuckle, she rode away. Leaving him trying to gain control of a certain part of his anatomy that was dealing with the image of Taylor—

  "Damn!"

  The first time he'd seen Taylor there'd been that stir of interest. He'd kept a lid on it, though. But since last spring, with their coming across each other more because of their associations with Matty and Dave, so much steam had built under that lid that it had become practically a full-time job holding it down.

  If Taylor were the type to just take to bed, maybe he'd have accepted the risk and gone for the steamy, sheet-twisting interlude his mind kept conjuring and his body craved … but she wasn't. He had no doubt that she'd tell him she believed every bit in the fairy tale of love.

  So, he couldn't let anything happen between him and Taylor.

  His life depended on it – at least this life did.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  "You want all this filed?"

  Taylor looked up at the question from Lisa Currick in surprise. Dave's younger sister ran Taylor's law office with a firm, organized and self-sufficient hand. Rarely did she consult Taylor on such matters as office equipment or expenses, much less filing.

  "What is it?"

  "Papers on that rescue puppy you took out to Cal Ruskoff. I filed one copy of your receipt from the vet, and other papers. But I thought you might want to take copies to Cal. Medical information on the dog and such."

  Taylor shot her a look that should have made most employees scurry to check their severance package. Lisa looked back at her, knowing her job was in no danger.

  Lisa was a gem as an office manager – organized and utterly dependable. Most times, Taylor knew she'd be crazy to ever let her go. Sometimes, however, Taylor thought that if she were really Lisa Currick's friend, she would fire her, so the younger woman would go find what she was really meant to do. What might make her happy.

  She suspected the answer to the mystery of Lisa Currick rested in the gap between Lisa's happy years growing up on the Slash-C with Dave and their parents and her apparently content life now, dividing her time between more than full-time work and more than part-time school. But Lisa never talked about that gap, and Taylor respected her privacy.

  Perhaps, Taylor also didn't want to risk Lisa asking about certain segments of her past.

  "Mail them."r />
  If she'd known about this a few days earlier, when she'd spotted Cal heading into the Knighton Library for the second time in a week, it would have been entirely reasonable to call out to him and tell him to come by and get the information. Reasonable, but not comfortable. Would he have ignored her? Made an excuse not to come? Or would he have complied, treating it as absolutely no big deal while her stomach acted as if she'd been on a solid diet of Mexican jumping beans?

  "I can do that," Lisa acknowledged.

  "Good."

  "‘Course, there's a weekend coming up. Probably wouldn't get there for oh, three, maybe even four days. If something should happen in the meantime, it could make the difference between that poor little puppy living and dying."

  Taylor glared at her. "It's not like he has a rare medical condition, Lisa. Dr. Markus said he was basically healthy."

  "You might never know," the other woman said, "not until it's too late. I'd hate to have it on my conscience that I didn't do something that could have made the difference.

  Taylor was not a fan of conspiracy theories – to her way of thinking, people could do enough craziness on their own – but she was beginning to get suspicious. Was Matty behind Lisa's sudden push to have Taylor hand-deliver these not-urgent papers to Cal?

  "Fine, then you take the papers out to the Flying W."

  "Can't. Got a class tonight. Midterm exam." She dropped the folder onto the desk, an inch from the contract Taylor was reviewing.

  Taylor pointedly ignored the folder. Continued ignoring it even after the door had closed behind Lisa. Ignored it until she had to acknowledge that she was spending a lot more time wondering how Baby Dog was getting along with Cal – and vice versa – than she was reviewing the Gibson contract.

  With an exasperated sound, she grabbed the folder.

  She'd assure herself that there was nothing in the papers that couldn't stay a few days in the U.S. postal system, shove them into an envelope and send them on their way.

  She skimmed the receipts she'd already seen, looked more closely at the detailed medical information from Dr. Markus and checked the list of vaccinations given and future ones needed. She indulged in a humph of vindication. All routine.

  In the back of the folder she found the battered cardboard sign with the ballpoint ink-printed "Free" on it.

  Taylor was flipping the front cover of the folder closed when she noticed the corner of an envelope protruding from behind the cardboard. She pulled it out and recognized it as the one she'd absently picked up at the rest stop.

  It bore the imprint of a cut-rate motel chain. Taylor couldn't think of any around Knighton. It was smudged and wrinkled, with no name or address on the front, but a few canine teeth marks on one corner. The flap was loose.

  Taylor opened it and took out a single sheet, raggedly torn along the bottom and folded unevenly.

  When she finished reading the brief message, her eyes

  There was information in this folder Cal Ruskoff should see.

  But she wasn't going to be the one to show it to him. The last thing she needed when she was facing the enigmatic man who made her hormones do the samba was having her emotions close to the surface.

  She folded the note along its original crease and put it back in the envelope.

  How would Cal respond to the sentiments in this note? Would it touch him as it had her? Would it open a crack in that shell of his? She shook her head. Pollyanna Larsen strikes again. That's what her study group at law school had called her for her hopeful views. That had been leached out of her in the years with the firm in Dallas, until she'd felt like a skeleton left in the desert, devoid of flesh and blood and heart.

  But during these past two years in Knighton, she'd felt a return of her hopefulness.

  Maybe too much hopefulness, in the case of one Cal Ruskoff.

  Even if something opened a crack in his shell, who was to say what she might see through the crack? Another shell? Or would she find something darker.

  Just because her intuition said he was a good man didn't mean she was right. What proof did she have that there even was anything beyond his cold exterior? Although she did have proof that there was some hot blood behind that exterior.

  Still, what he showed to the world might be what he was, through and through. Thinking she'd seen glimpses of more really wasn't any better than a hunch. And a hunch was no basis for building a case.

  Or for running a life.

  She plastered a sticky-backed note to the folder, wrote "Send copy of entire contents to CR" on it, and forced her mind to get back to work.

  * * *

  "Uh-huh. I understand. Okay. Lisa. I'll see what I can do."

  Matty finished her conversation with her sister-in-law and hung up the kitchen phone in the Slash-C main house in time to hear her husband emit a humph.

  "Humph, what?"

  She asked the question from reflexive curiosity. She already had enough on her mind without adding mysterious humphs. Dave might maintain that, when she got her mind set on other things, she was blind to her fellow human beings' emotions, and even sometimes her own, but she'd have to be on another planet to have missed the separate but equally lousy moods Cal and Taylor were inflicting on the rest of humanity since New Year's.

  So she was doing something about it.

  Unfortunately, Lisa had just reported that Plan A hadn't sent Taylor out to the Flying W, the way Matty had hoped.

  Time to think of a Plan B.

  Cal and Taylor needed to spend time together. That had worked for her and Dave when they'd both been too stubborn to see that they loved each other and belonged together. Of course, she and Dave had been married by a temporary deal at first, which made spending time together hard to avoid. Getting Cal and Taylor to marry each other at this point might be a task even beyond her determination. So far, even her efforts to get them face-to-face weren't working. She had to think of something else.

  Dave's voice brought her back to the present.

  "I was listening to the weather forecast. That snow they've been predicting? They've moved it up to arriving late this afternoon. Storm's developing fast. And they're saying it's going to be a big one."

  "Yeah?"

  "Could get nasty." Dave looked out the window toward a line of gray along the northern horizon of the otherwise blue sky. "I'm going to stop by and have a word with Jack before I head into Knighton. I've got to be in the office for an appointment about ten, but then I'll head back. You don't have to go anywhere, do you? You're squared away over at the Flying W?"

  "Hmm?"

  Dave touched her arm, drawing her attention away from the fast-clicking thoughts in her head. "Are you okay?"

  "Yes. Of course. Sorry. What were you saying?"

  He looked at her quizzically, and she returned her most limpidly innocent smile. He looked more worried. "I said are you squared away at the Flying W? You and Cal. have you got things set for a storm like this?"

  "Sure."

  "Then why do you have that look?"

  "What look?"

  "The look that says somebody better look out."

  "Don't be silly. Except…"

  "What?"

  "You better come back here before the storm hits. All the years we've known each other, we've never been snowbound together."

  Worry was wiped from his expression, replaced by something she enjoyed much more. And something that promised even greater enjoyment later on. "We'll see what we can do to remedy that."

  "Good."

  "You aren't thinking about going over to the Flying W. are you? Storm could hit early. I don't like the idea of you getting caught out in it."

  "No, I thought I'd stay here. I have a phone call to make."

  * * *

  Taylor opened the car door and took a blast of cold, wet, stinging snow in the face.

  What was she doing out here at the Flying W instead of in her snug office getting more work done?

  Taylor interrupted her own thoughts w
ith a hard shudder and amended her question to what was she doing here besides freezing? And watching the snow come down harder and faster with every passing minute.

  She was here for a puppy, that's why.

  "Oh, Taylor, I've never heard Cal sound like that," Matty had said on the phone less than an hour ago. "Said he's at the end of his rope."

  Fear had clutched Taylor's throat so tightly she'd hardly recognized her own voice. "Is he all right? Is Cal hurt?"

  "Cal? No, he's not hurt." Had Matty sounded gleeful? Taylor had thought so, but with her friend's next words, that impression disappeared. "No, it's the puppy. Cal said he's totally fed up. Wants him out of there. Today. Or he won't be held accountable."

  "Oh, no. I can't believe it. They seemed so…"

  She'd started to say attached. But that word didn't fit Cal Ruskoff.

  "I know, I thought so, too. But if you could have heard him. He was totally fed up…"

  Matty's voice trailed off into ominous silence. Taylor had a bad feeling she knew what was coming, but she made a stab at preventing it.

  "So what are you going to do?"

  "Oh, Taylor." Matty was not a wailer, but she came close. "I don't know what I can do. Dave's not here and my truck won't start and on top of that Juno's thrown a shoe, so I can't even ride her. But somebody's got to get there."

  "Okay, Matty. Don't worry. I'll go."

  "You will? Oh, Taylor, that's such a relief. You'll have to go right away."

  "Of course I will," she said staunchly. It wasn't as if she were braving great danger. Just six feet of irritated male. "I'll pickup the puppy and bring him home. But you have to start making calls to find this puppy a new home – before Hugh sees him. Right this minute, you understand?"

  "You know I'm not sure that'll be necessary. Cal might relent, you know. You have to try talking to him first, okay?"

  "If he's so fed up—"

  "Oh, I know, but promise me you'll talk to him first."

  "Fine. I'll talk first, but that puppy deserves a home where he'll be loved, and if your foreman isn't—" She clamped her mouth shut before she could add capable of love. She was getting too worked up about this. A dog surely wouldn't feel a sense of rejection because a certain man looked at it with cool disinterest. "Promise me you'll make those calls to find a new home, Matty."