MATCH MADE IN WYOMING

by Patricia McLinn

  "You're a smart little dickens," he said to the dog, still chuckling.

  Cal stood and started toward the bowl, then caught sight of her.

  He erased the laughter from his expression faster than she could have thought possible. What replaced it, though, wasn't quite the blankness he so often hid behind. Instead, she recognized a faint wariness.

  "Good morning. What's Sin up to?" She purposely focused her gaze on the puppy, but was still aware of the man's movement as if he'd just relaxed clenched muscles.

  "I give him a biscuit after his breakfast. This time, I gave him half, thinking he couldn't know the difference. But he didn't fall for it for a second."

  He bent over and placed the other half biscuit in the bowl, a quick bunching and flexing of muscles, displayed by the tightened fabric of his jeans, that turned Taylor's mouth dry.

  She passed him to go into the kitchen. Pouring herself a glass of water, she recognized that Cal had already fixed and cleaned up his breakfast.

  "You've eaten?"

  "Yeah." He didn't look at her, assuming great interest in Sin's attack on the biscuit. "You weren't stirring so I let you sleep in."

  She'd slept in because she'd had so much trouble falling asleep. She'd assured herself, as she stared at the ceiling, that it was simply because it had been an inactive day, without any kind of … exercise.

  Trying to stop her thought before it reached that word was like trying to stop an eighteen-wheeler with no brakes going down Mount Everest.

  And once exercise crashed into her consciousness, it dragged with it all the things Cal had said to her in describing his idea of exercise. As it had in the morning, her body responded immediately.

  Sleep had been a long time coming.

  Cal's voice broke in. "I saved a plate for you. It's in the oven."

  "Oh, uh, thank you. I'm surprised you were up so early, since you don't have your regular chores to do."

  "My body clock's tuned to ranch hours. Besides, I do have chores. I was about ready to head out to the barn."

  "Again?"

  "Animals need checking."

  "What would happen if you couldn't get to the barn?"

  "They'd do the best they could, I suppose. But I can get there. It's stopped snowing."

  She looked out the small center portion of the kitchen window that wasn't either frosted over or lined with snow. The sky was leaden gray, leaving even the drifts below it looking dull. The wind was whipping streamers of snow through the air and forming drifts on the ground.

  "How can you tell it's stopped snowing? Besides, I'm sure Matty wouldn't expect you to go out in this."

  "I expect it of myself."

  "You must really like this job to go out in this stuff."

  "I like open space."

  "Like sailing."

  His eyes narrowed at her, but she thought it was mostly trying to puzzle out what she'd said.

  "You could say that," he said slowly. "I've heard the plains likened to the ocean. I don't know about this country. What made you think of that?"

  She busied herself getting the plate out of the warm oven. The only logical thing to do next was to take it to the table where he'd set a place for her and sit down near him.

  She managed that maneuver without being too obvious that she was avoiding eye contact.

  "What made you think of that?" he repeated. It had no edge to it, but his words didn't need an edge to convince her he wouldn't give up until he had an answer.

  "Oh, it just occurred to me that a man on a horse alone out on the range might feel similar to a man in a sailboat alone out on water."

  Perhaps she overplayed the airiness, because despite her apparent devoted attention to her plate, she saw his gaze shift to the model atop his bookcase, and stay there.

  "Could be," he said without inflection. "They probably both have the illusion that they're not in danger of drowning, when, in fact, they could capsize any moment."

  Sin, having scarfed up both halves of the biscuit and subjected the mat under his dish to a near-vacuuming for any stray tidbit, now trotted over to Cal and stuck his nose at the hand that had previously hidden the half biscuit.

  "No more," Cal told him.

  Sin poked him in the leg with his nose, then went back to the hand.

  Taylor chuckled. "He figures if you've tried to trick him once, you might try again, so he's checking you out. This puppy isn't going to believe that what you tell him is necessarily the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He is smart."

  Standing, Cal ignored her comment and the dog.

  "I'm taking him with me. He can get some exer— run around in the barn."

  If Taylor hadn't known better, she would have said Cal was flustered by the reminder of his words yesterday.

  * * *

  Taylor had seen the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies when she was digging around in the cupboards for the makings for hot chocolate yesterday. She set to work as soon as she'd washed up her breakfast things, dried them and the other items Cal had left in the drainer, and put everything away.

  By the time Cal and Sin returned from the barn, she was checking the first few in the oven. Few, because she hadn't been able to find a cookie sheet. She made do with a rectangular pan, which held about eight cookies at a time.

  She heard them in the area between the doors. Cal was talking to the dog – grumbling, from the sound of it. Still, Cal seemed to voluntarily talk to Sin more than anyone else.

  Maybe she hadn't been giving, Matty enough credit. Matty had said Cal needed a dog, and Taylor would certainly agree the dog, was good for him, opening him up, getting him talking, even if it was basically to himself, and laughing – laughing!

  The interior door opened to reveal Cal, out of his slicker and jacket, rubbing Sin's snow-matted fur with what looked like the remnants of a blanket. The puppy, spotting Taylor, made a dash toward her. Cal caught him with a big hand to each hip.

  "Stay!" Sin subsided slightly. "If you hadn't gone chasing after a twig, you wouldn't have fallen into that snowbank and we wouldn't have to do this. That's the last time I let you loose in the snow."

  Without changing his position, Cal looked up at her. "Go ahead and say it, I shouldn't have let him loose on the way back. Report me to the Rescue League and give me demerits, or whatever you have to do."

  "No demerits. Looks to me like you're learning your lesson all on your own."

  "Nothing like removing snowballs from an antsy dog to…" Cal's voice trailed off and his head came up as if scenting the air. He stood transfixed. "What are you doing?"

  "Baking cookies. I had to do something while you were gone, and I thought you might enjoy them."

  He said nothing for a few minutes more while he finished toweling off Sin. As he made his way toward the kitchen, though, she heard him sniffing, before he said in a hopeful tone, "Cookies?"

  "Chocolate chip cookies," she elaborated, checking the pan again. This time they were the perfect golden brown. She pulled the pan out of the oven. "We finished off your store-bought cookies yesterday. When I found chips in the cabinet, I thought I'd replenish the cookie supply. And since you had all the other ingredients—"

  "Did I?"

  "You didn't know?" She lifted the first cookie from the pan and transferred it to a waiting plate. Her search had failed to turn up anything close to a cooling rack. "I thought when I found the chips that maybe you made them for yourself."

  He shook his head. "Matty must have brought the chips when she picked up supplies. They smell great."

  "Not yet!" She protested futilely as he plucked a cookie from the baking, pan.

  Hands on her hips, she watched him juggle the cookie from one hand to the other, leaving, melting, chocolate behind, and paying the price for snitching. But he obviously hadn't learned this lesson, because to her jaw-dropping amazement, he popped the whole cookie into his mouth.

  "Mmm. Good," he said with his mouth full, his lips closed and his eyes watering. A m
oment later, he added more intelligibly, "Hot."

  "Of course it's hot, you idiot, you saw me take it out of the oven!"

  "I thought you made them for me."

  He gave a half grin as he spoke, no doubt to convey that he meant the words as a joke. But she saw more than the grin, and she heard more than his words. I thought you made them for me. Spoken by a man who hadn't had cookies made for him, and who remembered a boy who hadn't, either. The same boy who'd never had a dog before.

  "I did."

  Pleasure made the blue of his eyes seem almost a different color. Or maybe it was more than the color of his eyes. Maybe it was his face. Or his heart.

  "Then why can't I eat 'em?"

  He feinted a movement toward the pan and she shook the spatula at him.

  "Don't you try it, buster." She battled her grin with a frown, at the same time bittersweet moisture gathered in her eyes. Every child should have chocolate chip cookies made for him. Why hadn't Cal Ruskoff? Was the answer connected to why he stayed inside that shell?

  You know the phrase "filthy rich"? It was meant for my family. Rich. And filthy.

  That's what he'd said when she'd said something about his understanding the boy's feelings about giving up Sin.

  Rich, but not in the way that counted – in support and love and having someone to fix a broken bike or make cookies for them, even having a dog in the family to love. When Taylor got back to her apartment, the first thing she was going to do was call her parents and tell them she loved them.

  "Aw, c'mon," he wheedled.

  "No. You'll get burned a whole lot worse than I ever did from some candle wax."

  Mistake, mistake, mistake. Talking without thinking again, and then as soon as the words were out of her mouth, knowing she would suffer the penalty.

  Should she be grateful or terrified that she wasn't the only one suffering that penalty?

  An arc of heat flowed from him to her like a bolt of lightning. And, reflected in his eyes, she saw his head bowed over her hand and felt the intense jolt of desire once more with the remembered sensation of his lips on her hand, his tongue touching her flesh.

  She turned away and scooped another cookie out of the pan and onto the plate. It was either that or throw her arms around his neck and beg.

  "Tell you what," she proposed, her voice admirably normal, considering. "I was going to save these for dessert tonight, but if you help me clean up, we can have some now."

  She transferred the last baked cookie from the pan and started spooning the next one in.

  "I thought they were for me, so I should get to decide."

  "They're for you, but they're not yours." Was that her mother's voice coming out of her mouth? She might have giggled if Cal hadn't still been staying bare inches from her elbow, making her blood run hotter and faster. "Sounds like if I gave them to you outright, you'd eat them all and ruin your dinner."

  "I ruin my dinner by cooking it. Eating cookies ahead of time could only help."

  Now she did giggle.

  "Your cooking's not that bad. So, c'mon, do we have a deal? Help clean up, then we can eat some cookies."

  "Who said anything about letting you have any," he grumbled, even as he started running water in the sink.

  "Cook's privilege. That's what my Mom always said when we'd catch her dipping her finger in the frosting while she was making a cake, or swiping some batter."

  She slid her finger around the rim of the bowl, gathering a dollop of batter, and popped it in her mouth, closing her eyes and smiling at the wickedness.

  When she opened her eyes, her finger still between her lips, she faced another – and much more powerful – kind of wickedness. Cal was watching her, intent on her mouth, as she licked the last remnant of batter from her finger.

  Taylor felt as if she'd been popped into the hottest oven possible. Her lungs burned and her insides melted.

  He hooked his fingers around her palm and drew her hand free, his gaze never wavering.

  "Cook's privilege?" he murmured, low and dark. "I'm the one who's been cooking the meals."

  She could feel the warmth of his breath on her finger as he brought it to his mouth. His tongue touched the base, far below where any batter might have strayed. That didn't stop his thoroughness as he laved up to the knuckle, around it, then started to climb once more.

  Clunk-clank!

  Taylor's jolt at the noise jerked her hand from Cal's hold, emphasizing that she could have withdrawn at any time.

  Cal spun around and turned off the faucet with a mild oath. The water had not only filled the sink, but had floated the metal measuring cups she'd used over the top of the divider and into the other side of the double stainless steel sink.

  She laughed a little shakily, wiping her finger. Saved by the rising tide, when a different rising tide had threatened to carry her right over the edge.

  "My two older brothers flooded the kitchen one Mother's Day in an attempt to wash the dishes," she said lightly as she put the pan in the oven.

  From then on, as she helped him clean, in between emptying then refilling the baking pan, she kept up a running account of Larsen family stories and events. From the darting glances she sent his way, he wasn't frowning one of his ferocious frowns, and he didn't object. In fact, he said nothing.

  With the last cookies now cooling on the plate, she was washing the pan and spatula, and telling him about her mother baking her chocolate cookies the day her supposed best friend turned six and didn't invite her to the party.

  "I was so unhappy, and Mom managed to turn that all around with some flour and eggs and chocolate chips." She was smiling, lost in the memory. Six years old once more, and awash in her mother's love. "I always associate chocolate chip cookies with—"

  In the next second, she was aware with every fiber of her being of the man who was reaching over her shoulder to put measuring cups away in the cupboard. And she felt nothing like six. If she turned around, she could press her lips to the open V of his collar, taste the warm skin and feel the hammering pulse of life in his throat.

  "What do you associate them with?"

  Stretched as he was, he was looking down at her even more than usual, his face as full of challenge as his voice had been devoid of emotion.

  "I always associate chocolate chip cookies with love." It came out blessedly calm.

  He released his stretch, moving farther to her side before turning and propping his hips against the counter beside her, dropping his chin to look at her over the end of his shoulder. "Yeah?" he drawled. "You don't mind crumbs between the sheets?"

  She felt heat rising up her chest and into her neck as she rinsed the pan and spatula.

  She truly hadn't been thinking of love, as in the act of making love. She hadn't even been thinking of romantic love. And he knew it.

  She dried the pan with more energy than it required, then gave the spatula the same treatment.

  He'd managed fine with the carnal looks they been sharing, and with the heated touch of his tongue to her finger, but just now she'd been talking about home and family, and he'd responded like Pavlov's dogs. Mention home and family, and Cal Ruskoff automatically pushed her away or crawled back into his shell.

  Well, she wasn't going to be pushed this time.

  She put the pan and spatula away before she turned to him. "I meant the emotion of love, not the act."

  "Love's a load of—"

  He pushed off from the counter. Instead of heading out of the kitchen, though, he went to the refrigerator, grabbing a milk jug. This might be an opportunity to get to know the man behind the shell – a rare opportunity – and she wasn't going to waste it. She regarded him steadily.

  "You don't think Matty loves you?"

  He delivered a scathing look as he returned the milk to the refrigerator.

  "You and I both know Dave's the only one she's got eyes for, even when it was clear as day at their wedding that they weren't so sure."

  She picked up the plate of c
ookies and followed him to the couch, remembering that wedding.

  There were so many currents running between Matty and Dave that she hadn't understood at the time, but Cal was right: she'd had no doubt that they loved each other when they made those pledges.

  She also remembered an instant after the judge said "You may kiss the bride," and Dave complied with great enthusiasm. With Dave and Matty still kissing and the judge starting to chuckle, Taylor's gaze had slid to the other witness standing across from her. Cal.

  Was that the first time she'd spied the man hiding behind the shell?

  She'd certainly noticed his good looks before, but she hadn't been able to read the emotions in his eyes, even though she had seen the power of those emotions and had recognized how hard he worked to keep them dammed up.

  She settled into the opposite corner of the couch from where he'd sat, pulling her feet up to the cushion, with her chin on her knees, while he took a cookie and washed it down with a third of a glass of milk.

  At the wedding, the attention had been on Matty and Dave, so she'd had plenty of time to regain her poise. Of course, she also hadn't had any experience with the passion that could flare between her and Cal.

  Now she did. That wasn't conducive to poise.

  So she had only her own willpower, and the desire to explore some of his hidden emotions to keep her from melting into a puddle of blithering desire.

  "Got eyes for?" she challenged as he took two cookies from the plate she'd set on the coffee table. "You mean Matty loves Dave. And Dave loves Matty."

  "Call it what you want," he allowed with ill grace. At the same time, his stern expression relaxed into something close to ecstasy when he bit off half of another cookie.

  "So you think that what they feel for each other is a load of…?" She filled in the question with a shrug.

  "That's between the two of them."

  Ah, he was hedging now. "I'm asking your opinion."

  "None of my business."

  "But you don't rule out the possibility that love might exist between them, no matter what your experience might have told you."

  "This has nothing to do with my experience."

  "Yes it does."