MATCH MADE IN WYOMING

by Patricia McLinn

  That had always been an element of her response to Cal Ruskoff. His No Trespassing signs were clear and stark. And she'd never been one who'd flouted the law – or common sense – by ignoring such postings.

  Not only was there no telling what the person behind those signs might do to a trespasser, but part of her figured he'd have some right, since he'd gone to such trouble to make it clear outsiders weren't welcome.

  She'd let Matty see only that commonsense element. Because if she ever let Matty know different, Matty would never let go.

  But she didn't lie to herself. There were definitely other elements to her response.

  Desire was a major ingredient She'd felt a jolt of attraction when they'd met. She'd thought there'd been an answering spark from him. But as time went by she'd decided she'd been wrong.

  Then came New Year's Eve. Talk about mixed signals! She couldn't mistake his physical response. It was blunt and potent. And it was seductive to be wanted that way.

  But her ability to read people had been a valuable asset when she started her law career. Even in her low-key practice here in Knighton, it came in handy. And her reading of Cal Ruskoff on New Year's Eve had been that he hadn't liked wanting her one bit.

  "That doesn't exactly warm a girl's heart," she informed Sin.

  Especially when that girl's hormones, respiratory system, bloodstream and all her other little parts were standing up and screaming, "Let's go!"

  It made her feel as if she knew that a chocolate brownie she really, really wanted to eat could make her desperately ill.

  She turned away from the brownie, but that didn't mean she didn't still want it.

  So she had these two sides of her reaction to Cal Ruskoff – the chocolate brownie of desire and the desperate illness of his attitude.

  And then there was a third side.

  Perhaps the most dangerous.

  He's a good man, but he keeps such a high wall between himself and the world, it's like he lives in a …cave. And I think you're the one who could bring him out. You two have a … a connection.

  Ah, Matty Brennan Currick didn't play fair.

  Because that was the tease of the third element. That Cal Ruskoff needed healing, and she could do it.

  The door lurched open on a gust, swirling in cold and bitter air, along with a man. He glared at her even before he started unwinding the muffler that had held down his

  So much for healing. Maybe it wasn't the air that was cold and bitter, but just the company.

  "What are you doing?" he demanded.

  "The snow's clumped to the ends of his fur." She was determined to be reasonable. "It's like snowballs hanging there. I didn't think you'd want them melting all over your house, so I'm removing them."

  "You're removing his snowballs."

  His tone was so neutral it took her an extra beat to catch the double meaning he'd discovered in her words. Even then she wasn't sure, so she looked up into his face.

  Mistake.

  His expression gave almost nothing away. Deep in his eyes, and in the fan of lines at their corners, though, she saw both humor and heightened attention.

  Then he started railing at her again.

  "You better remember this day the next time you think you need to check up on some dog. Remember it, and count yourself damned lucky. Do you have any idea how dangerous a storm like this is? It's damn near whiteout conditions. What the hell did you think you were doing, coming out here with a blizzard coming? No – don't answer. You might want to stand here jabbering, but I don't want to listen until I've warmed up."

  That struck her as unfair, since he was the one jabbering. But she held her peace. Not that it earned her any credit with him. In fact, his frown deepened.

  "Why're you still wearing your coat?' "

  "Because I am still cold," she answered reasonably. Also because she'd been leery of pushing any deeper into the lion's den, but he didn't need to know that.

  "Why the hell didn't you get out of those wet clothes, then?"

  "And get into what? Nothing?"

  Another mistake. A big one. She saw her question create the image in his mind, and across three feet of distance she felt the heat of it.

  "I'll find something. I'll be damned if I let you die of pneumonia after all the trouble it was to save you."

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  « ^ »

  "And be sure the latch catches when you close the door," he instructed as he added a bath towel to the pile of quickly gathered clean clothes he handed to Taylor. He jerked his head toward the bathroom off the bedroom.

  "Is that all? Any more orders?" Taylor asked in a falsely sweet voice.

  He frowned at her. He'd simply told her she needed to get out of those cold, wet clothes, take a shower, warming up gradually, and being sure to rub her hands and feet briskly with a cloth. That was just good sense after being out in the cold. And the fact that he'd insisted she go first made sense, too. He was bigger and more accustomed to the cold. The instructions on turning on the shower were necessary with an old, tricky mechanism.

  As for the caution about the door, that was necessary, too.

  "It doesn't catch all the time, and Sin likes opening doors. Unless you'd like to risk a sudden blast of cold air?'

  "No, thank you. I will bolt the door."

  "There's no bolt—"

  "Metaphorically speaking," she said, sweeping into the bathroom with the stack of clothes and towels.

  He waited until he heard the firm click of the latch sliding home, then returned to the main room. Sin, looking disappointed but philosophical, followed.

  There was no way Taylor was getting out of here tonight. And the highway being closed didn't make tomorrow look good.

  What the hell was he going to do with her? Despite his chilled state, his body gave a clear indication of what he would like to do with her.

  For starters, he'd like to be the bar of soap she was using right now. To glide over and around all of her, to surround her with himself the way his hands had surrounded hers.

  His body temperature edged up several notches.

  If he could get the furnace in the main house stoked up enough to make it comfortable, she could go over there and he could stay here.

  He dismissed that idea. It would take all night, and only a fool would risk using up fuel oil like that. This storm had already proved highly unpredictable. Until they had a better idea of how long they might be stuck here, it was much smarter to conserve fuel by staying together in the smaller, already heated place.

  A faint clunk echoed over the sound of running water coming from the bathroom, and he guessed the bar of soap had slipped. She'd be bending over to pick it up. Warm now. Water-slick. Suds running down her sleek legs—

  Damn!

  Fuel conservation. Survival. That's what he needed to be thinking about. Anything other than her.

  He jerked his coat off the peg again and, with a terse "Stay" to Sin, slammed out the two doors off the kitchen area that led to the lean-to where he stored firewood.

  By the time the bathroom door clicked open, he had brought in a stack of logs that should last into morning, and had laid a good-sized fire. He knew from experience that a fire helped fill the gap if they had to rely on the backup generator.

  He didn't turn his head when he heard Taylor crossing the bedroom to the open double doors to the main room.

  "You were right, Cal. The shower felt terrific. Thanks." He turned then, leaving his forearm against the simple wood mantel. The sweatpants he'd shrunk in the dryer last fall bagged around her legs and folded over themselves at the top of her feet, which were covered in his thick white socks. His sweater, once a deep navy, now as faded as old jeans, hung from her shoulders and the cuffs were doubled back a couple times. The bottom of her hair was damp dark, but everywhere else, the curls were wilder than ever.

  She looked like a kid, except she didn't look at all like a kid. He was glad he'd added a cotton undershirt to the s
tack of clothes he'd given her, because the sweater's V neck would have been scandalous on her without something under it.

  At least part of him was glad.

  "Welcome," he muttered.

  "I feel like myself again. I want to say I'm sorry – for doubting you about Sin, I mean. I should have known better. I have no idea what got into Matty, or why she…"

  She let that fade off. They probably both had a good idea of what Matty was up to. And when he got a chance to give her a piece of his mind, Matty would know she'd crossed a line that an employer, even one who was a friend, shouldn't cross.

  "I'm sorry for imposing on you this way. You were right that I shouldn't have waited so long. If I'd turned around as soon as I saw Sin—"

  "You would have been stuck on the highway." He'd had to interrupt. Next she'd be talking about what had occupied their time in the barn. Not the arguing, because that memory posed no danger. No, it was the sensation of her lips against his, the velvet warmth of her mouth, the response of her tongue, the— "You could be freezing to death right now. Better you're here."

  She looked up at him, then away. "Yes, well…"

  "I'm gonna take a shower. Make yourself at home."

  "Oh. Okay. Thank you. Is there anything I can do for you while—"

  "No. Just make yourself at home."

  He closed both bedroom doors behind him before he crossed to the bathroom. A billow of warm, fragrant air met him at the threshold. Before he could stop himself, he drew in a deep, eye-closed lungful.

  She'd used his water, his soap, his towel and she wore his clothes, but somehow the air still managed to smell like Taylor.

  He opened his eyes to find, neatly hanging over a hanger that was dangling from the window lock, a pair of freshly washed panties and a white bra with some sort of silky material on the bottom half, and lace on the top half. He could see through the lace.

  That stopped his breathing entirely.

  If she were wearing it, what would he see through that lace?

  The thought ran through his head and kicked a higher dosage of heat to his groin.

  If she were wearing it … but she wasn't. She was wearing nothing under the clothes he'd seen – his clothes. Nothing.

  * * *

  The words coming from the direction of the bathroom were muffled behind the bedroom doors he'd closed so firmly, but the tenor of Cal's mood was obvious, not only to her, but to Sin, who sat erect with his head tipped and his ears flicking up and down. Cal was cursing. Could she have used all the hot water?

  Possibly, except he hadn't turned the water on yet, so that couldn't be it. And she'd carefully hung all her wet clothes to dry out of his way.

  "Is he always this grouchy?"

  The puppy looked around at her, then stretched long and hard, with his hind end in the air and front paws extended, before shaking himself and trotting off.

  "You've got the right attitude, Sin. Shake it off. Don't let him get to you. That's what I've been telling myself for the past half hour in the bathroom, too."

  Now all she had to do was put that plan into action. They were stuck here together for an unspecified amount of time, that was obvious. And Cal Ruskoff had made it equally clear that he had no intention of letting any cracks show in his shell. So, reminding herself that beating her head against a brick wall was not her favorite sport, she'd decided she might as well make this episode as pleasant as possible. That meant allowing only the commonsense aspect of her response to Cal to rule her actions.

  "So, let's see what we have here," she murmured to herself, starting an exploration of the main room.

  Sin followed her to the kitchen area, which stretched along the narrow north wall. The countertop was uncluttered, the appliances about two decades old, but clean and neat.

  "Nothing very interesting here," Taylor said.

  Sin gave his food dish a hopeful bump with his nose as if to disagree. Taylor smiled but said, "I don't dare risk feeding you. It might be upsetting some rule set by the Great Dictator."

  The windowed door off the long end of the kitchen's U was where they had come in. It opened onto a protected utility area she had barely noticed when they had passed through it earlier. A second door opened onto the porch whose steps she'd tripped on. The wind blustered against the outer door, and she suppressed a shiver.

  A square wooden table with four chairs, including the one he'd had her sit on, occupied the area between the outside door and the kitchen. On the wall directly across from that chair hung a large oil painting.

  Taylor's gaze started to skim over the painting, then came back to it. A seascape. A quite good seascape, catching the roll and pitch of a restless ocean as it pounded against a sand-dune and sea-grass shore. And where sea met sky, was the glimpse of a while sail, far enough out to feel free.

  "Interesting," she informed Sin.

  She passed the closed double doors that separated the main room from the bedroom, and came to two sets of shelves that stood nearly as tall as she did. The ones on the bottom were covered by doors that swung up and slid back into the shelves. Banister cases. She had some very similar in her office. They were tempting, very tempting, but she didn't even consider opening them.

  However, the uncovered shelves were fair game. She scanned the diverse titles, a good number of thrillers, with classics and several nonfiction hardcovers whose titles promised information on horses, cattle and ranching. But what caught her attention was a model that sat atop the right-hand shelves, back in the corner as if the shadow might hide it. A sailboat.

  "Very interesting."

  Sin gave a sort of rumbling assent from the spot he'd taken on the woven rug in front of the fireplace.

  Above the mantel was a framed western print by Charlie Russell of a cowboy and his horse temporarily losing the fight with a steer. A solid couch in a faded brown plaid faced the fireplace, with a high-backed wing chair to one side, angled toward the small TV, and a battered coffee table.

  The wing chair's partner sat by the front window, accompanied by a small table. The chairs' fabric was good, but worn; the lines refined but solid.

  Beyond the window, the storm whirled white and gray, with no sky or ground distinguishable in the mix. The front porch was not only covered, but its shape was masked in the wind-driven drifts. There was no hope of seeing anything beyond it. And even though it was still early afternoon, the light was fading noticeably.

  Only when she turned from the window did she notice two more small seascapes hung on the wall where someone seated in the chair could see them, yet they would not be obvious from anywhere else in the room.

  "A ranch hand in Wyoming with a yen for the sea,"

  Taylor murmured to herself.

  She ran her hands over the fabric of the wing chair and considered the room from this vantage point. The two chairs, the bookcases and their contents and the seascapes – all easily packed in the bed of a pickup – were his. The rest had come with the house. She wondered if he had any idea how obvious that was. She suspected he didn't, or he'd have worked harder to mask it.

  It's the one thing that's familiar to him.

  Those had been Matty's words about the towel belonging to the puppy, but might the same theory apply to Cal's belongings?

  Her eyes suddenly prickled.

  He'd been wrong before. If she'd come in here after the car got stuck, she would have intruded on his privacy. As little as his home told, it was much more than he'd ever said himself. It might have taken the deviousness of Matty Currick and the ferocity of a Wyoming blizzard, but he'd let Taylor inside his world. At least a little.

  The realization made the harsh, arrogant man suddenly seem vulnerable.

  She made a point of being in the wing chair close to the couch, reading a collection of articles by John McPhee when the shower turned off.

  The changing sounds from the bedroom apparently roused Sin from his nap. He got up, stretched and padded off in the direction of the closed doors.

 
; A soft bump, followed immediately by a faint squeak made Taylor look up from the book – and straight at a nearly naked Cal Ruskoff.

  The left-hand door to the bedroom had swung open – Sin's wagging tail, as he stepped into the room, told the story of how that had happened. Cal had apparently been crossing from the bathroom toward the dresser on the opposite wall of the bedroom when Sin performed his door trick.

  He wore a towel. Only a towel. And not a very large towel. Wrapped around his waist, with the loose ends not quite meeting, leaving a slit all the way up his muscled thigh and smooth hip.

  His abdomen was faintly rippled and still carried some summer bronze. A line of glinting hair bisected his chest, disappearing under the towel. His shoulders were as broad as she'd known they would be. His face was set and concentrated.

  Their eyes met. She stopped breathing. He stood stock-still.

  No, not quite stock-still. The towel was moving. Shifting…

  Taylor's gaze snapped back to his face. And a heated shiver tingled through her, tightening her breasts, clamping the base of her stomach.

  Then he moved, in a blur of a grabbing hand, a slipping towel, a hard male haunch and a wagging tail.

  "No, Sin. No! Sit."

  Cal and the puppy had disappeared from view, toward the closet. The door remained open, he couldn't get to it to close it without providing another inadvertent peep show.

  Under no circumstances would he want to do that, of course. He hadn't wanted to the first time. It had been the result of a puppy's prank.

  Except…

  No, no. They were too far apart, the light was too dim for her to put any credence in what she thought she'd seen in his face.

  She mustn't read anything into something that was, after all, simply an accident. More embarrassing than anything else. And only mildly embarrassing between two reasonable adults.

  That interpretation seemed even more likely when he reappeared in old jeans, a flannel shirt over a black T-shirt and sneakers, and said casually, "Sorry. I told you Sin likes to open doors."

  The culprit came prancing by her chair, as if looking for praise.