Abbie And The Cowboy

by Cathie Linz

“Wait a minute. Hold on to your horses, there. The Gypsy legend talks about falling in love. Nothing about getting married and settling down.”

  “What’s to stop you from marrying her if you’re both in love?”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “You’re getting ahead of things here. I only met her two weeks ago.”

  “Brett and Michael only knew each other less than a month before getting married.”

  “That was for the baby,” Dylan argued. “To keep Hope.”

  “And don’t you give up hope, little brother,” Gaylynn told him. “I know how much rodeo meant to you, but God works in mysterious ways. When He closes a door, somewhere He opens a window. Maybe Abigail Turner is your window. Your ultimate destiny.”

  My destiny, Dylan thought to himself. Or my downfall?

  Six

  Abigail tilted her head to reread what she’d just typed on her computer screen. The writing wasn’t going well.

  Trying not to get discouraged, she popped another handful of cherry jelly beans into her mouth and curled her toes into the plush rug beneath her feet. She’d never been able to write while wearing shoes or even socks. It had to be bare feet.

  When she’d done a writer’s workshop at the Romance Writers of America’s conference last year, she’d talked about the mysterious magic of writing and the steps writers sometimes took, which made superstitious ball players seem tame in comparisons. Abigail knew writers who had crystals on their desks, positive affirmations tacked onto their walls, photographs of inspiring places or people stuck to every spare inch of wall space.

  And when things weren’t going well, like today, then sometimes desperate measures were called for, including changing the color on the video monitor, moving to another room, changing chairs or reverting to the tools of the old days—pen and paper.

  When things got rocky, Abigail always tried to reassure herself by mentally saying she was in the construction business, word construction. She did that because there were times when being a writer was just too darn scary. What if the magic never came back? What if she couldn’t write another book? What if she ran out of things to say?

  Then we’ll do the talking, her heroine reassured her.

  Abigail grinned. She’d often said that her characters were very real to her, and she was just sitting there taking notes as they had their wild adventures. She just wished they’d learn how to type!

  In the end, she got a good three hours’ worth of work done before realizing that she was at it again, bestowing Dylan’s characteristics onto her hero, Jake—who’d started the book with light brown hair and blue eyes and now had flashing dark eyes and long dark hair. He was even starting to sound like Dylan. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of little ol’ me,” she’d just typed.

  Just for fun, she had her heroine steal the clothes that her hero had left on the riverbank and burn them.

  Abigail’s grin was short-lived as she got to wondering what Dylan would look like, standing stark naked in a stream that only went to just below his navel. Droplets of water would run from his dampened, long dark hair, lazily meandering over his shoulders, down his chest and washboard stomach. His grin would be temptation enough to kiss it from his mouth. She’d run her fingers through his hair, down his back, beneath the water to…

  Abigail’s fingers flew as she wrote a heated love scene, not even noticing that she’d typed Dylan’s name instead of her hero’s until she’d finished it and completion had been reached, by her heroine if not herself.

  No, Abigail was still seething with unfulfilled desire. Her eyes wandered on over to the window and the horse corral she could see outside. Dylan was there, in the open doorway to the barn, using a pitchfork, appropriately enough for a man who had such a devilish grin.

  He looked good enough to eat. He’d taken off his shirt. She could barely make out the ripple of his back muscles as he leaned into the pitchfork for another load of hay. Her mouth watered at the way his jeans rode low on his hips. Where were her binoculars when she needed them?

  She was as bad as that woman who’d worn the Girls Go Nuts For Cowboy Butts T-shirt. But that didn’t stop her from looking.

  Dylan’s body seemed to be a magnet that pulled at her, creating an irresistible force field tugging her ever closer. She was mesmerized by the fluidity of his movements, which were nothing fancy but were totally self-assured, projecting confidence and skill and…sex. Abigail couldn’t get her mind off it. Or him.

  The thought that this might be more than just physical attraction scared her even more. Chemistry was a powerful thing. When combined with love, it was downright overpowering.

  Not that Abigail would be foolish enough to fall for a rolling stone like Dylan. If his injury hadn’t taken him out of the rodeo circuit, he’d be off at some rodeo right now, never giving her a second thought. He’d made her no promises, probably because he hadn’t wanted to lie—to say he’d always be there for her when she’d be lucky if he hadn’t left by the end of August.

  One summer. That’s all she’d have with him. Barely two months. It wouldn’t be enough. She knew that. Just as she knew that kissing him hadn’t been enough. She’d wanted more, and so had he. But that’s where the similarity had ended. Dylan wanted sex, uncomplicated by emotions and declarations of unending love. She wanted more.

  Despite his injury, Dylan wasn’t done wandering. He certainly wasn’t ready to settle down yet. She knew that, but turning away from the passion he promised her was almost impossible, and getting tougher by the minute.

  Drooling over him this way wasn’t helping things, she reminded herself even as she stole one last look. The thing to do was to keep things cool and businesslike between them. Rancher to ranch foreman.

  Abigail tried to do that during dinner that night, but got distracted by the feel of his fingers brushing hers as he passed the gravy, not to mention passing the candied carrots and the salad. He kept handing her bowls whether she wanted them or not. And each time, he took the opportunity to add a softly diverting touch.

  When he played the guitar outside her window after dinner, she tried putting on headphones and playing her portable CD player loudly. That didn’t help much.

  Unable to stand the suspense when the music outside stopped, she rolled her chair over to the window to see what was going on. She saw Dylan leaning against the railing around the corral. His horse, Traveler, was nuzzling his shoulder, something Abigail wouldn’t mind doing herself.

  As she watched, Dylan nimbly stepped up on the rail to wind his fingers in Traveler’s dark mane. A second later, he was astride, riding bareback around the corral before leaning over to undo the gate leading to the open meadows.

  As she watched the sky turn scarlet, Dylan rode off into the sunset in true Hollywood Western fashion. The scenery provided a spectacular backdrop, one that would have done director John Ford proud. The cloud formations were those her father had called mare’s tails, brilliant streaks of sunlit crimson. The play of light over the mountains defined them, making the range of the northern Rockies seem much closer than they actually were.

  Such grand scenery might make a man seem inconsequential. Not so Dylan. He was an integral part of it all; the silhouette of man and horse riding wild across the open valley was the very embodiment of the West.

  When Abigail almost rolled over her bare toe with her chair in an effort to get a last look at Dylan, she knew she had to put a stop to this. She had to get her mind off Dylan and back on track. She had a book to write and a ranch to protect. People were counting on her. Raj, Ziggy, Shem, her editor, her agent. Time to get back to work.

  But when Raj came in later that night, with chapter six in her hands, Abigail knew her tactics weren’t working.

  “You forgot to take Dylan’s name off of the love scene on page ninety-nine,” Raj said, managing a straight face for all of two seconds before cracking up.

  “It’s a good thing you’re a close friend of mine, or I’d be tempted to murder you,” Abigail mutter
ed darkly.

  “I’ve heard sexual frustration can do that to a person.”

  “This isn’t funny! Nothing I’ve tried has worked,” Abigail wailed. “I tried treating him like an employee…”

  “That you lust after…”

  “I’ve tried treating him like a friend…”

  “That you lust after…” Raj repeated.

  “I’ve even given him the green light so he wouldn’t keep chasing me. At the dance, I kissed him back when he kissed me, and just got into more trouble. I tried scaring him off with talk of settling down and a woman’s nesting instincts.”

  “And?”

  “And he just told me to nest in his arms for a spell. I swear the man has cast a spell on me. I’m not normally like this.” Getting up, Abigail began prowling around her office. “Sure, I’ve had a weakness for cowboys before, but it’s never been anything like this. This is all-consuming. This is never-ending. This is…”

  “The real thing?” Raj quietly asked.

  “What if it is?” Abigail whispered back.

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “Not while Dylan was here, no. But when he takes off, yes, it would be. Like having my heart torn out and stomped on by a herd of wild horses.”

  “It’s going to take a herd of wild horses to keep you two apart. Some things were meant to be. Fate, you know. Destiny.”

  “Fate means for me to be miserable? Why? What did I ever do to it?”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I considered trying to act like he was my younger brother.”

  Raj snorted derisively.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Abigail morosely agreed. “That would last all of about five minutes. If only I knew what to do, if only I got a sign somehow…”

  As if on cue, the lights suddenly went out. Since it was after ten, the room went pitch-dark. “Great!” Abigail muttered as she reached for the flashlight she kept on her bookcase. “I didn’t back up that last page. Not that I’d written anything brilliant on it.” She turned off her computer equipment so that there wouldn’t be a power surge through it when the electricity came back on. “That wasn’t the kind of sign I was looking for,” she announced to the heavens.

  “What do you think happened to the electricity?” Raj asked.

  “I don’t know. Out here, anything could have happened to it.”

  “They were going to have The Boot Hill Brigade, you know, that 1937 Western classic—”

  “That no one has seen but you,” Abigail interjected.

  “—on cable at midnight.”

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” Abigail asked Raj in amazement, knowing darn well that her friend got up at five-thirty in the morning to prepare breakfast for the men. Before they’d moved up here, Raj had insisted on taking over the cooking duties, since Abigail was providing all the food.

  “You should talk,” Raj retorted. “I’ve heard you up here pacing in your room until all hours of the morning.”

  “I’m worrying about the book,” Abigail said. “And the ranch and everything.”

  “Dylan being a major part of that everything, right?”

  “Wrong. Dylan is all of that everything,” Abigail wryly admitted. “But don’t count me down-and-out just yet. This, too, shall pass.”

  * * *

  But by the next morning, Abigail suffered another setback. It started out with her watching Dylan with Traveler out her office window. The two moved as one. Then something went wrong. Traveler suddenly reared and bucked as if competing in a saddle-bronc competition. All four of the horses’ hooves left the ground as the gelding arched his back in a perfect inverted U.

  To Abigail’s amazement, Dylan managed to stay in the saddle. She would have gone running outside to make sure he was okay, but her knees suddenly turned into mush and she dropped onto her office chair with a thump.

  He’s all right, she kept repeating like a chant. Dylan is fine.

  “You’re not doing so good, though,” she told herself in disgust. “Look at you.” She held up her trembling hands. “What a sissy reaction! Get a hold of yourself!”

  Problem was, she’d rather get a hold of Dylan!

  “Abbie, Dylan wants to talk to you,” Raj called from downstairs a few minutes later.

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. A wasp stung his horse.”

  Remembering an old cowboy cure she’d read about, she yelled down. “Give him some of my uncle’s chewing tobacco to use on the sting and tell him I’ll meet him out in the barn in a few minutes.”

  By then, Abigail hoped to have her act together. She did, but it crumbled when the first thing Dylan said was, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Abigail sure hoped not! If so, he’d know she still hadn’t recovered yet—from the eye-fest she’d had yesterday afternoon and the fall he’d almost taken this morning. Today he wore a shirt, light blue and white checked, with his jeans. It didn’t matter. She already knew what his chest looked like, and she was free to imagine…

  “You’re thinking that I forgot about checking into Redkins’s threat about cutting the water for the irrigation lines,” Dylan said.

  Abigail nodded, because after all, that would have been her second choice.

  “The only irrigation lines that are fed from the river on his land are those in the northeastern corner of the ranch. And that meadow is fallow now, Pete hasn’t planted anything there for over two years now. The water here on the ranch comes from a well. I took the liberty of beefing up the lighting near our well, just in case Redkins takes it into his mind to tamper with our main water supply.”

  Chilled at the possibility, Abigail ran her hands over her arms.

  “Hondo, Randy and I are taking turns doing a night watch,” Dylan continued. “Shem wasn’t too pleased at not being included, claimed I was discriminating against him because of his age.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I was rewarding him because of his seniority and years of experience.”

  “And he said?”

  “Not to do him any favors,” Dylan allowed wryly. “So I gave in and let him take one of the night watches.”

  “He was just following the Western code of behavior,” Abigail said. “Otherwise known as mule-headed stubbornness. You might have recognized the symptoms, ” she tacked on mockingly.

  “Having observed them in you, you mean?” he retorted with a grin.

  “I guess I should have seen that one coming,” she wryly acknowledged.

  “All kidding aside, we’ve got to keep our guard up around here. Redkins already cut off the water to that pasture. Like I said, if s just lucky that we’re not using the land now.”

  “Which he must know.”

  Dylan nodded. “That power cut last night was deliberate. The power crew was out at dawn and they told me it looked like one of the main lines to the-house was cut.”

  “Shouldn’t we tell the sheriff in Big Rock about that?”

  “I tried to. Called him up this morning, but he just said there wasn’t enough proof. And then he muttered something about harmless vandalism, that teenagers must have gotten bored and decided to raise a little hell.”

  “Redkins has been very clever, I’ll give him that. He hasn’t done anything that can be traced back to him. I heard a wasp stung Traveler.”

  Dylan nodded. “There was a nest under the barn’s eaves.”

  “I’m badly allergic to wasp stings,” Abigail said. “So I made sure that the eaves were clear when I moved here. And I’ve had Randy check them periodically since then. Do you think Hoss could have…?”

  “Had something to do with it? I doubt it. I think it was just an accident. I’ll make sure to dispose of it today before the wasps do any more damage.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re such a good rider,” Abigail said while mentally thinking, Geez, you need editing. Two goods in one sentence? Can’t you do any better than that?

  Luckily Dylan
didn’t seem to notice her repeated usage. “You know they say that man’s best friend is a dog, but the Rom believe that a horse is a man’s best friend. Traveler is special to me.”

  “Did the tobacco help?”

  Dylan nodded.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you why my uncle had that round corral built over there,” Abigail said.

  “No corners where a horse can hide. Pete and I used to talk about training horses here at the ranch.”

  “You’d be good at that. You certainly have a way with animals.”

  “There ain’t a horse that can’t be rode…”

  “And there ain’t a man that can’t be throwed,” she continued, completing the rest of the well-known expression.

  “The trick is in the hands,” Dylan murmured, lightly running his fingers over her face, from the swirl of earlobe to the creamy curve of her cheek. “You’ve gotta use them to lavish attention.”

  Seeing the flare of confidence in his eyes only served to trigger her anger. Dylan was bedeviling her, an old-fashioned word, perhaps, but an accurate one. After two days of secretly watching him from her window, like some kind of lovesick voyeur, she was furious with herself…and with him, for being the cause of all her worry, angst, aggravation, anticipation.

  Abigail had decided that she should have been able to resist his charms better. She also decided that she didn’t appreciate him trying to charm her as if she were a mare. Whipping up her anger with a beater of righteous indignation, Abigail stepped away from his distracting touch to declare, “I’m not a horse you can tame with some sugar cubes, sweet words and lavish attention!”

  “Sugar cubes will rot your horse’s teeth,” Dylan told her.

  “I’ve had it! This has gone on long enough, I’ve had enough of your practicing your seduction skills on me.”

  “Seduction skills?” Dylan asked in amazement before making the dire mistake of letting his amusement show by laughing.

  If there was one thing Abigail didn’t take kindly to, it was being laughed at. It had happened to her once too often in her life—her parents laughing at her intention to take over her uncle’s ranch, her peers’ laughter at her plans of becoming a romance author, the last cowboy in her life laughing when she’d said she’d thought they’d had a future together.