The Trailblazer

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  “Smells pretty good,” said a voice tight with pain.

  She glanced over her shoulder. He stood a few feet away, his legs braced and his expression grim beneath the shadow of his hat. He’d finished about half the flask, which probably explained how he’d managed to walk at all. Her heart swelled with remorse. Dammit, she should have known she was too softhearted to pull this off, especially when her target was taking his punishment with such good grace.

  “If you’ll tell me where the medication is, I’ll get it.”

  “No, let me.” She laid the spoon on a piece of aluminum foil, stood and walked over to the pile of gear. After rummaging through the saddlebag, she found the tin of Bag Balm and the liniment bottle. “Here,” she said, walking toward him. “It won’t work miracles, but it might make the ride out tomorrow more bearable.”

  He flinched at the reminder that he’d be remounting Mikey in the morning. “Thanks.” Keeping the flask in one hand, he cradled the tin and bottle in his other arm while he hobbled back toward the fallen tree.

  She watched him go and knew he’d never be able to manage the therapy alone. What had she been thinking? “T.R.,” she called, going after him. “Maybe I should ride for help. We could bring a helicopter in here, maybe even tonight if I hurry.”

  He turned, his expression incredulous. “A helicopter? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Look, you’ve proved you can take a beating, so why—”

  “Not on your life.” Teeth clenched, he eased back to the log and set the flask, the liniment and the Bag Balm on the ground next to him. “Would any self-respecting cowboy call Search and Rescue?” He took off his hat and mopped his damp forehead with his shirtsleeve.

  “You’re not a cowboy. You’re a commodities trader from New York.”

  He glanced up. “Even commodities traders have their pride, Freddy,” he said quietly. “Don’t take that away from me.”

  “But you didn’t know what you were getting into! You don’t have to tough it out like some stereotypical cowboy. This is my fault, not yours!”

  A smile flickered across his face. “I was wondering when you’d admit you deliberately ambushed me.”

  She averted her eyes. “I wanted to discourage you from buying the ranch.”

  “Why? Somebody will, sooner or later, and you don’t own it now, anyway.”

  She mustered her composure and faced him. “Eb Whitlock wants it, but he doesn’t have the kind of money you do. Eb’s a neighbor and a friend. He’ll let me keep running the ranch.”

  “And you thought I’d fire you? After you’ve proved how valuable you are to the whole operation?”

  “You’re an Easterner. Who knows what you would do?”

  “Never trust anybody who comes from east of the Mississippi, is that it?”

  She lifted her chin. “Works for me.”

  With a sigh, he settled his hat on the log beside him.

  “But I’m...sorry I’ve crippled you,” she added. “You didn’t really deserve that.”

  “What if this experience sours me on the True Love and I decide against buying it, just like you planned? Will you be sorry then?”

  She looked into his blue eyes, sharp with pain. “Yes, I’ll still be sorry. It was a dirty trick and I apologize. Why don’t you let me ride down and arrange for a helicopter?”

  “No.” He took a swig from the flask and contemplated his boots.

  “I don’t think you can get those off by yourself.”

  “Of course I can.” He leaned slowly forward. “I—augh!” He straightened and passed a hand over his face. “And to think only this morning I could tie my own shoes.”

  “Here.” Freddy straddled his leg, her backside to him, and took hold of his boot heel. “Resist me on the count of three.”

  “In this condition., I’ll be able to resist you no matter how long you count.”

  “Very funny. Now get ready. One, two, three!” She yanked and he yelled, but the boot came off. “Now the other one.” She repeated the procedure, then turned to face him, looking directly into his eyes. “Now the pants.”

  Defiance flashed in the blue depths. “I can—”

  “It’ll be faster and easier if I help you.” A heavy load of guilt pushed her to press on in this mission of mercy. “This is no time to be modest, T.R. You need that Bag Balm applied as soon as possible. Imagine yourself as a patient in the emergency room of a hospital.”

  “I usually try to avoid the hospital if I can help it.”

  “And no woman has even taken off your pants?”

  He took another drink from the flask and impaled her with a look. “I didn’t say that.”

  To her dismay, she flushed, which completely destroyed the air of sophistication she’d been striving to maintain, but she barreled on, just the same. “Take off your belt and unbutton your jeans. I’ll work them off from the ankles.”

  He held her gaze while he complied, and she met his challenge for as long as she could before looking away. She suspected the liquor he’d imbibed accounted for the bold stare. The trail ride had been a dumb idea, she decided. She’d thought that by tomorrow she’d be celebrating her victory over the briefcase-carrying businessman who had tried to steal her ranch. Except that T.R. was no longer an impersonal enemy, but a vulnerable man in pain. A sexy man in pain. And that was the crux of the problem.

  “I’m ready.” He was still regarding her with the same intensity. Only now his jeans were unfastened and his hands were braced on either side of him in what had to be an unconscious gesture of invitation, considering his condition. “Got a bullet for me to bite down on?”

  “You’ve seen too many movies.” Taking a deep breath, she squatted between his ankles. As she tugged on the stiff denim, breath hissed between his teeth. She paused.

  “Just keep going.”

  Trying to remain focused on his ankles, she worked the material down. His socks came with the jeans, and finally she was forced to grasp the waistband and pull it past his calves. The job couldn’t be done without touching him, but she tried to minimize contact. In spite of her efforts, her fingers encountered firm muscle and the tantalizing brush of hair. She swallowed and wrenched the jeans over his feet with more force than was necessary. He gasped, but didn’t cry out.

  “There.” With a sigh of relief, she got to her feet. Her relief was short-lived. One glimpse and she realized that a half-clothed T.R. McGuinnes, even put out of commission by an all-day ride, was a sight to triple the heart rate of any normal female. From the looks of his powerful legs, he was well acquainted with the inside of a gym. With a new pang of conscience, she realized he’d make a good rider someday, if she hadn’t just ruined the experience for him.

  He took a glob of Bag Balm from the tin and began dabbing it over the inside of his thighs.

  “Not like that,” she said before she could stop herself.

  He glanced up, a devilish look in his eyes, a crooked smile on his mouth. “You want to show me how?” he said softly.

  Now she’d really done it.

  “Think of this as a hospital emergency room,” he added, holding out the tin of cream.

  She’d come this far in her rescue, and if he didn’t apply the Bag Balm correctly, it wouldn’t do much good. With grave misgivings, she accepted the tin. Kneeling beside him, she smoothed the ointment over the inside of his chafed thigh, applying enough pressure to work it into his skin.

  He groaned.

  “I have to massage it in a little or it won’t penetrate,” she apologized. “I know the muscles underneath are sore, too.”

  “If this didn’t hurt so much,” he said with obvious effort, “I think it would be lots of fun.”

  Freddy wasn’t about to comment. Instead, she concentrated on covering the reddened area with the ointment. Not far from her circling fingertips, his briefs enclosed an impressive bulge of manhood. She tried to ignore it as she spread ointment on his other thigh. As she settled into her massaging motion, he groane
d again. She recognized it as the sound of pain, not ecstasy, but her capricious imagination transformed the low, husky protest into a moan of desire. The image of T.R. making love to her sent tendrils of heat curling through her body.

  She looked up into his face. His eyes were closed, his head thrown back, his jaw rigid in response to the pain. But the expression wasn’t unlike that of a man in the throes of orgasm. Her pulse quickened. She remembered the effect he’d had on her when he’d stepped into the living room of the ranch house dressed in jeans, shirt, boots and hat. There had been an air of command about him then. She’d robbed him of that in the past few hours, but if it ever reasserted itself, T.R. McGuinnes would be a man to reckon with.

  His hand covered hers, stopping her movement. “That’s enough,” he said, his voice rough.

  She glanced up to find his gaze conveying an unmistakable sexual message. She pulled her hand away and sat back on her heels, her heart pounding.

  His smile was wry. “It seems I can’t resist you, after all. Maybe you’d better tend the stew while I get myself under control.”

  One swift look confirmed that he had become aroused during the treatment. She blushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

  “Believe me, neither did I.”

  “The—the liniment should be put on your knees and feet.”

  “I’ll do it in a minute.”

  “Then I’ll get dinner ready.” She jumped to her feet and headed over toward the fire, which seemed cool in contrast to T.R.’s warm gaze. Damn! Her plan to make a fool of this Easterner was in shambles, and in the long run, the fool had turned out to be her.

  Two hours later, they’d managed to smooth over the awkwardness between them by ignoring the incident altogether. They sat by the fire drinking coffee laced with the last of the whiskey.

  T.R. leaned against the face of the cliff, a bedroll under him and his jacket covering his bare legs. “I suppose I can expect all sorts of poisonous bugs to show up in my bedroll tonight,” he said.

  “I think the smell of that horse liniment will keep them away.”

  “So that’s why you’re sitting on the other side of the fire.”

  “You’ve got that right.” Actually, the smell of horse liniment didn’t bother her all that much. She’d just decided to keep herself as far from temptation as possible during the long night ahead.

  T.R. chuckled. “Bag Balm and horse liniment. The funny thing is, I’m having a pretty good time.”

  “That’s because you’ve finished off that flask.”

  “Partly. But partly because we’re camping out. I’ve never done that before.”

  “Not even in Boy Scouts?”

  T.R. shook his head. “I got into sports early—Pop Warner Football League, Little League baseball. I didn’t have time for Scouts.”

  “What positions did you play?”

  “Quarterback on the football team, pitcher in baseball.”

  Freddy nodded. “The power positions. They probably called you T.R. when you were nine years old.”

  He sipped his coffee. “Tommy.”

  “Really?” She decided to be bold and see if she could unravel one of the mysteries about him. “Then I don’t understand why you didn’t make the natural progression to Tom.”

  He gazed into the fire for a long moment. “That’s what my wife, Linda, said. She refused to call me by a set of initials. Called it stuffy.”

  A wife. Somehow, Freddy hadn’t thought there was a wife. “She’s right.”

  “Was right,” he corrected in a monotone. “She’s dead.”

  “Oh!” Understanding hit Freddy like a blow. She remembered how he’d looked when he’d said Thaddeus must have loved Clara even after her death. Apparently, T.R. still loved his wife. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t talk about it much.”

  Freddy stared into her coffee mug. Of course he wouldn’t want some cowpoke like Curtis calling him by the name his wife had used. But he wasn’t the type to broadcast his personal tragedy, either. Under normal circumstances, she doubted he would have told her, a relative stranger, but there was something about a camp fire that encouraged confidences. And he had consumed most of the flask of whiskey.

  She waited without much hope to see if he’d add any details. When he didn’t, she refrained from asking. “If it were my choice, I’d call you Ry,” she said at last.

  “Ry?”

  “Isn’t your middle name Rycroft?”

  “I’m surprised you remembered.”

  So was she. The number of things that stuck in her mind concerning him were beginning to disturb her. “It’s an unusual name, that’s all.”

  “So’s Freddy. I thought you were a man.”

  “Would it have made everything easier if I had been?”

  He studied her across the dancing flames. “You tell me. Would a man have trailed me over the ranch until I was so saddle-sore I couldn’t stand? Would Thaddeus have done that?”

  “If his ranch was at stake, he would have. Duane and Curtis thought it was a terrific idea.”

  “So everybody was in on it?”

  “Why do you suppose you got a brand-new pair of jeans guaranteed to make your ride even more miserable?”

  He snorted and shook his head. “You people are tough.”

  “Out here, we have to be.”

  “Well, let me tell you something. Wall Street is no baby’s playground, either.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, but the stakes aren’t as high.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “You don’t consider financial ruin a high-stakes game?”

  “Not compared to losing the thing you love most.”

  The transformation in his expression was dramatic. All the challenge and good humor left his eyes, to be replaced by a stark sorrow that seemed to have no bottom. “You’re right, of course.”

  She felt like hell. What a thing to have said to a man whose wife had died. “Sorry again. I seem to be putting my foot in my mouth on a regular basis.”

  “Never apologize for telling the truth, Freddy.” He finished his coffee and stretched gingerly out on the bedroll. “So you think I should change my name.”

  “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who goes by initials.”

  “What kind is that?”

  She hesitated. “A little on the pompous side.”

  To her relief, he glanced over at her and laughed. “It’s not easy being pompous around you. Maybe I’ve been heading in that direction, though. Is Ry a good name for a cowboy?”

  “An excellent name.”

  “Then maybe I’ll try it for a while.” He turned his head to look up into the sky. “I had no idea there were so many stars.”

  “City lights block them out.” Pleased that he’d accepted her nickname for him, she threw another stick on the fire and watched the sparks climb into the cool night air. Then she slipped off her boots and lay down on her own bedroll. “But then, I’ve never seen the lights of Times Square. I guess each place has its own kind of beauty.”

  He was quiet, and she wondered if he’d fallen asleep. A series of sharp yips drifted up from the valley. “Are those ranch dogs?” he asked.

  “Coyotes.”

  “I thought they were supposed to howl.”

  “Most Easterners think that. But they yip. Which makes the dogs go crazy. Can you hear them?”

  “Yeah. Noise really travels out here.”

  Her eyelids grew heavy. “Yes.”

  “I’m glad you brought me up here, even if your motives weren’t pure.”

  “You’ve been a good sport.”

  “Thanks. Good night, Freddy.” His voice seemed to caress her name, sending unexpected goose bumps over her skin.

  “Good night...” She hesitated. “Ry.”

  * * *

  SHE AWOKE to an unidentifiable scream. Bolting from her bedroll, she saw the man she’d recently dubbed Ry crouched against the cliff, a glowing stick he’d plucked from
the fire brandished in one hand.

  “What is it?” she called.

  “I don’t know. Get over here.”

  She was halfway around the fire before she realized she was obeying his command on her territory. The scream came again, followed by the sound of wild snorting and stomping hooves. “It’s the horses!” she cried, hurrying back to her bedroll where she pulled on her boots before locating her flashlight and her Smith and Wesson. “Most likely a snake or cougar disturbing them.”

  “Damn, where are my boots?” he asked.

  “Stay put. I’ll handle it.”

  He grunted with pain. “The hell you will.”

  Ignoring him, she turned on the flashlight and shone it in the direction of the scream. “It’s okay, Maureen,” she called, setting out through the underbrush. “I’m coming, Mikey. Hang in there.” She was counting on the sound of a human voice to discourage whatever critter was after the horses. But if her voice didn’t work, her aim with the Smith and Wesson would. She hoped she wouldn’t have to use the gun. By coming up this canyon, she knew that she’d invaded the territory of several desert dwellers who had a right to protect themselves, but she had to safeguard her horses.

  She found Mikey and Maureen quivering in the clearing where she’d left them, yet a sweep of the flashlight revealed nothing in the area that might have spooked them.

  “See anything?” Ry said from behind her.

  Freddy sighed in irritation as she continued searching the bushes and overhead branches with the beam of her flashlight. “No, but go back to camp. I don’t want to have to worry about you, too.”

  “No dice.”

  “Look, you know nothing about the dangers out here. You—where do you think you’re going?”

  Ry pushed past her and limped over to Mickey. “Shine the light on his hind leg.”

  She did, and gasped. It was dripping with blood. “Oh, my God.” She hurried over and crouched beside the horse, whose flanks were heaving. “Easy, Mikey. Easy, boy. Ry, hold his head so I can check this out.”

  While Ry stroked Mikey’s nose and murmured to him, Freddy took a bandanna from her pocket and dabbed at the blood until she could see the wound, a jagged cut just above his fetlock. A little deeper and Mikey would have been crippled for life. As it was, he couldn’t be ridden back down the mountain. “I’m going to look Maureen over,” she said, moving carefully around the quivering Mikey to her own horse.