by Cathie Linz
A rain barrel of cold water couldn’t have brought her to her senses faster. Yanking herself out of Dylan’s arms, she only then realized that she’d lifted her hands to his shoulders. Two muddy fingerprints left visible testimony to her actions.
To her relief, Ziggy was too caught up in his own news to say anything about the compromising situation he’d caught them in. “I finished my latest piece! It is brilliant! My best. I am brilliant! It talked to me. I was up all the night.” Tugging her into his arms, Ziggy joyously kissed her cheek. “You have made a new man out of me, bringing me here to work. And to show my appreciation, I have come here. You are ready for bed now, yes?” Ziggy asked her.
“What kind of question is that?” Dylan growled, tugging her out of Ziggy’s arms and right back into his.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Abigail snapped as she freed herself, angered by her own weakness where Dylan was concerned.
“You are having trouble here?” Ziggy asked, only now picking up on the sizzling sparks still flying between Dylan and Abigail.
Trouble couldn’t begin to describe it, Abigail thought to herself. “Holy buffalo patties,” she muttered under her breath.
Dylan blinked. “What did you say?”
“Abbie has her own special curses,” Ziggy told him. “I can curse in three languages, German, French and Italian. I have offered to teach her some of these, but she prefers her own.”
“What does that have to do with you asking her if she’s ready for bed?” Dylan demanded, not willing to let go of that quite yet.
“Because I have finished bed for her.” Ziggy pointed to the back of his four-wheel-drive vehicle, where Dylan could barely make out a rough-hewn wood headboard and footboard.
“Ziggy makes some wonderful pieces of custom furniture, as well as his sculptures,” Abigail explained, releasing herself and moving a few feet away from Dylan.
“I also brought Mutti, Heidi and Gretel and put them in barn already. You said you could watch them while I am searching for more wood that talks to me.”
“In German, French or Italian?” Dylan mockingly drawled before Abbie elbowed him in the stomach, adding another mud spot to his once-white T-shirt. Battle scars, Dylan thought to himself with a grin, and worth every twinge.
“Abbie, why are you full of mud?” Ziggy inquired.
“I slipped off the fence. Stupid thing for me to do, I’ve been sitting on fences just like that one since I was six years old. But all of a sudden, I just slid off.” She shrugged. “I must be getting careless in my old age.”
Dylan strolled over to test the top rail.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
“Just making sure that it was an accident and not another incident of sabotage.”
“You can’t blame my own klutziness on Hoss Redkins. Unless you used Gypsy magic to toss me into a mud puddle the way you had that horse throw Hoss into the rain barrel.”
Magic? There was the charmed box, not that Dylan was about to tell her that. He was only too well aware of the suspicion with which his Rom background was viewed. While there were times it helped add to the mystique of his rodeo persona, there were also times when people checked their wallets after hearing about his heritage. The fact that he, born and raised in Chicago, had a supposedly magical way with horses only added to the image of him being different from the other cowboys.
Dylan didn’t believe in breaking horses. He believed in converting them to his way of thinking. Good riding had more to do with your head than anything else, and your best tools were your hands.
He wondered if winning over Abbie was all that different. All he needed was a plan to woo her over, to convert her to his way of thinking.
He had to tune in to her reaction to his every move. With a horse, you checked its eyes and ears. Eyes were important with a woman, too, and Dylan had seen the conflict in Abbie’s sky blue eyes. She’d wanted him. He’d tasted how much in the fiery kiss they’d shared.
Dylan had wanted women before, but never with this kind of bone-deep intensity. Abbie was like a thorn under his saddle, an itch that had to be scratched. He was determined to make her his. Sooner rather than later.
Opportunity knocked only seconds later when Ziggy asked for his help in carrying the heavy headboard and footboard upstairs to Abbie’s bedroom.
Dylan immediately accepted while Abigail immediately protested. “Randy or Hondo can help you, Ziggy.”
“They’re out mending fences,” Dylan said.
“Something you’d be wise to do,” Abigail muttered with a warning glare.
“I’m just trying to be helpful, ma’am,” he said with a lift of one devilish eyebrow.
The sight of Dylan in the inner sanctum of her bedroom proved to be as upsetting as she’d anticipated. For one thing, he looked much too at home for her peace of mind. And for another, setting up the new bed took entirely too long. Despite falling in the mud puddle, she didn’t want to leave to go take a shower yet—the bathroom had a connecting door to her bedroom, and the idea of standing naked under a stream of water while Dylan stood on the other side of the door was just too tempting…
I meant too unsettling, she hurriedly corrected her thoughts, restlessly shifting her weight from one bare foot to another. She’d kicked off her boots in the mud room before coming upstairs. So had Dylan and Ziggy. Dylan had a hole in the right big toe of his white athletic socks, while Ziggy had red-and-green reindeer on his socks.
When she noticed Dylan glancing toward the pine bureau that Ziggy had made for her back in Great Falls, she realized that a corner of her pink cotton nightgown was cascading over the edge of the half-open drawer. Nonchalantly moseying over to the bureau, she shoved the nightgown and drawer back in place.
“I just won a bet,” Dylan noted with a gleam in his dark Gypsy eyes. “I bet myself that you’d tidy that drawer within ten seconds of you noticing it.”
“You notice entirely too much,” Abigail retorted.
“Where you’re concerned, there’s no such thing as too much.”
Abigail tried to come up with something smart and funny to say, but her mind was wiped clean, like a schoolroom blackboard being cleaned.
As if sensing her discomfiture, Dylan said, “I like the photograph of the aspens over your bed.”
This she could make a sensible reply to. “Thanks. I took that picture in Colorado a few years back, but it reminds me of the aspen grove out back. Did you know that if you kill one aspen tree, the entire grove will die? That’s why if s stupid to carve anything in the tree’s bark.”
“You mean like ‘Dylan and Abbie’ with a heart around it?” he inquired with an angelic bat of his lashes.
Like a moth to the flame, Abigail felt her gaze returning to Dylan’s, felt herself being drawn into the fiery heat of his gaze.
“I do not use aspen trees for my work,” Ziggy announced, reminding them both of his presence. “Pine is good, if prepared correctly.” He lovingly ran his hand across the knots in the wood. “I have used linseed oil on this piece, you see how it glows?”
Dylan saw something glowing, all right. And it was in Abbie’s sky blue eyes. He’d seen hunger; he’d seen desire. He’d seen enough to give him hope.
After dinner that night, Abigail was sitting in the upstairs bedroom she’d turned into an office, trying to edit what she’d written the day before, when the sound of someone softly playing a guitar came floating up through her open window. She managed to type a few more sentences on her computer screen before the sirenlike music sent her from her ergonomically designed office chair to the window to see who was playing.
Even pressing her nose against the glass, Abigail still couldn’t see the covered porch that ran across the front and around the western corner of the ranch house. Reminding herself that she had to finish this chapter by that night, she dutifully returned to her chair, only to have the alluring music continue.
She lasted another fifteen minutes before tossing in the towel, usi
ng the excuse of a cold drink as a reason for going downstairs. After grabbing a bottle of kiwistrawberry juice from the ancient fridge, she moseyed on outside.
She saw his boots first, propped up on the porch railing. She’d seen those same pointy-toed boots out of her peripheral vision right after she’d slipped from the rail and landed in the mud earlier that day. She was cleaned up now, and had changed into a floral skirt and pink top. The outfit made her feel feminine and was one she liked to write in; the fact that she looked rather nice in it was irrelevant, but did give her confidence as she raised her eyes to meet Dylan’s mysterious dark gaze.
His only other audience was an orange barn cat, comfortably perched on the railing not far from his feet.
“Looks like you’ve got a friend,” Abigail noted as she sat in the other pine rocker on the porch. Straightening the swing was still on her list of things to do. “That cat has kept its distance from me, but seems to have cottoned on to you.”
“I’ve got a way with animals,” Dylan admitted with something close to modesty.
“I’m not surprised. I was surprised to find you out here playing that, though,” she said, pointing to the slightly battered guitar on his lap. She’d found it in the closet in the foreman’s cabin and, since she wasn’t a musician herself, had just left it there in case its owner ever returned.
“No more surprised than I am,” he replied.
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say I’ve never had a talent for music before. In fact, when I was a kid, the priest asked me not to sing while in church, but just to mouth the words. That’s how bad I was.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say to a child,” Abigail said, indignant on his behalf.
“You’ve never heard me sing.”
“Let me hear you now.”
He just shook his head.
“Come on,” she coaxed him. “I’ll sing with you. Something easy. How about ‘Home on the Range’?”
His version was somewhat unusual, including a line about antelopes not having much to say. But his voice was like liquid gold, rich and sexy. The man definitely could sing. Almost as well as he could kiss.
Try as she had, Abigail hadn’t been able to forgot that kiss they’d shared in the mud earlier. It had been a forget-your-name, melt-your-knees kind of kiss. And it had given her even more reasons to be tempted, and to be cautious. Her voice wavered and then petered out completely as she just sat there and listened to him. And stared at him.
By now, she knew exactly where the L-shaped rip was in his jeans and how much of his left thigh it exposed. Not enough. His hands strumming the guitar strings were callused and nicked, his fingers lean and long and capable of creating pure magic—not only on a guitar but also on a woman’s body. Her body.
Realizing she was eyeing him much too hungrily, she lowered her gaze to the cat while asking Dylan, “Where did you learn to play?”
“Funny thing is that I just kinda picked it up over the past few days. I found this in the closet in the cabin, I hope you don’t mind my playing it.”
“No, of course not. You must have a real ear for music, despite what your priest said.”
“Yeah, or maybe I’m just a late bloomer,” Dylan said with a Gypsy grin.
“I doubt that,” she replied. “You seem pretty fast on the draw to me.”
“Not with you. Why, I’ve been here almost two weeks and haven’t even asked you out yet,” he said. “There’s a dance in Big Rock this Saturday night. How about stepping out with me?”
“Thanks, but I’d better not.”
“Why not? Don’t tell me you’re afraid?” Dylan teased her. “Of little ol’ me?”
“Absolutely. Any wise woman would be, when her hormones…”
“Yeah? Go on,” he prompted her, his grin now as wide as the sky.
Rather ticked off by the way he acted as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, she decided to say something guaranteed to scare him off. “When a woman gets the nesting instinct. You know, wanting to settle down.” That should send him running in the opposite direction, she told herself. “A wise man would do well to watch his step then.”
“I’ll do that, ma’am. I’m so glad we had this talk about the birds and the bees. Meanwhile, if you ever feel you need to stop fluttering around, and you’re looking for a nest to settle in, you just fly on over to me and nest in my arms a spell.”
A spell. He was weaving one of those, all right. Snaring her with the white flash of his grin, the tempting curve of his darn-near perfect lips, the dark fire in his eyes. Gypsy eyes flashing Gypsy magic.
“Don’t hold your breath,” she muttered, tearing her eyes away.
“I noticed you do that when you kissed me. Hold your breath, I mean.”
“I think it would be best if we both forgot that kiss happened.”
“Not possible.”
“Anything is possible. You just told me so yourself.”
“If anything is possible, then it’s possible you’ll come with me for the dance in town this Saturday.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re an employee of mine.”
“Afraid I’m going to hit you with a sexual-harassment suit?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what will it take for you to go out with me?”
“For you to be as rich as Croesus,” she retorted in mocking exasperation.
Dylan just grinned at her.
But the next night, he came knocking on her front door—a stranger in tow. “This here is Buzz, Buzz Kresus. And he’s got all of…how much was it again, Buzz?”
“Twenty-eight dollars and twenty-one cents.”
“Twenty-eight dollars and twenty-one cents to his name.”
“You expect me to believe that’s his real surname?” she said in disbelief.
“Show her your driver’s license, Buzz.”
The older man flipped open a battered-looking wallet. Sure enough, his surname was Kresus—spelled differently than Croesus but pronounced the same way.
“Thank you, Buzz,” Dylan said. “I reckon you can head on out now. And thanks again for stopping by. Good luck at that old-timers’ rodeo up in Alberta.”
“Sure thing, Dylan.”
“Let’s see…” Dylan counted out the money, his hand drawing her attention as he did so. He had long, slim, battle-scarred fingers. “That should be twenty-eight dollars and twenty-one cents. This is what you said it would take to make you go out with me to the dance this Saturday. Here you go.”
She refused to take the money he held out. “I was talking about Croesus, spelled with a C…”
“Well, ma’am, then you should have been more specific. That’s not what you said. No mention was made of spelling requirements. You just said—”
“I know what I said,” she interrupted him.
“Good. Then I’ll stop by to pick you up for the dance tomorrow around six.”
Knowing when she was beaten, although assuring herself this was only a temporary setback even while she was wondering what to wear, Abigail said, “I won’t be ready until six-thirty.”
He allowed her her small victory. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
“It will be,” he softly assured her. “Mighty fine.” Reaching out, he briefly brushed one work-roughened fingertip down her cheek as he had done a number of times before. “Mighty fine indeed.”
Abbie had written about physical attraction, had even experienced it personally before. But never to this degree, where one touch scattered her thoughts and her willpower like sparrows in the wind. Which made her a birdbrain for even considering taking up with a wandering cowboy like Dylan.
Despite Abigail’s initial misgivings, she spent a great deal of time preparing for her date with Dylan. “It’s not really a date,” she told herself for about the hundredth time as she pawed through her closet.
“What else
would you call it?” Raj asked from the doorway to Abigail’s bedroom. The room was done in golden pine, which matched the rounded curve of the logs that formed the walls. Abigail had brought the egg-shell-colored carpet with her. Not very practical for a ranch, she’d told Raj with a grin.
“You know, your carpet seems to be holding up better than you are,” Raj noted.
Nodding, Abigail said, “I know.”
“I think you should wear that short denim skirt with the flounce.”
“And have every man in Big Rock looking at my thighs?” Abigail looked horrified at the very idea. “Forget it!”
“Are you worried about every man or about Dylan?” Raj inquired as she perched on the edge of a pine deacon’s bench.
“What do you think?”
“That the two of you create some pretty powerful chemistry. And have you noticed how the hero in your latest book has taken on some of Dylan’s characteristics?”
“Mule-headed stubbornness, you mean?”
“I was referring more to the perfect curve of his lips and the flash in his eyes. Or the way he slides his hand through his hair before stuffing his hat back on his head.”
“Damn,” Abigail groaned before sinking onto the bed. “I hadn’t noticed that.”
“Obviously you did notice Dylan doing that or you wouldn’t have put it in the book.”
“I meant I didn’t realize I’d incorporated that into my book. What am I going to do?”
“Get dressed. Dylan will be here in another fifteen minutes.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to come with us?”
“You’ve never heard that three is a crowd? Besides, I’ve got a hot date with Clint tonight.”
“Clint who?”
“Clint Eastwood, of course, is there any other? There is a retrospective on cable tonight with episodes from ‘Rawhide’ and then the movies For a Few Dollars More, Hang ‘Em High and High Plains Drifter.”