Hazard Ranch

by Joan Johnston

He looked her in the eye. “That it won’t be everything you expect. That it won’t be perfect.”

  Harry smiled a beatific smile. “If I’m with you, Nathan, it will be perfect. Trust me.”

  He eased her back down on the quilt and lowered himself beside her, giving her a quick, hard hug.

  Harry noticed something different about the embrace. Something missing. She chanced a brief glance down at him. “Oh, no,” she said, dismayed.

  “What’s the matter, Harry-et?”

  “You’re not…well, you’re not…anymore,” she said, pointing at a no-longer-aroused Nathan.

  Nathan chuckled. “You’re precious, Harry-et,” he said with a quick grin. “One of a kind.”

  Harry took a swipe at his shoulder with her fist—the same fist that was still holding the condom he’d handed to her. “I don’t like being laughed at, Nathan.”

  He laughed. “I’m not laughing at you.” He rolled over onto his back and let his arms flop free, a silly grin on his face.

  Harry tackled him.

  An instant later she was under him, his body mantling hers. His mouth found hers, and he kissed her with all the passion he felt for her. His hands found her breasts and teased the nipples to a peak. He felt the blood thrumming through the veins in her throat with his mouth. By the time his hand finally slipped between their bodies, she was wet.

  And he was hard.

  “Oh. It’s back,” she said.

  Nathan grinned. “So it is. Where is Mr. Prophylactic?”

  Harry grinned and opened her hand to reveal a slightly squashed condom. “Will it still work?”

  “Not unless you put it on.”

  Her chin slipped down to her chest. She glanced up at him shyly. “Will you help me?”

  Nathan helped her place the condom and roll it on until he was fully covered. The way she handled him so carefully, as though he would break, made him feel treasured and very, very special.

  “Is that all there is to it?” she asked.

  “Pretty simple, huh?”

  She caressed him through the sheath. “Can you still feel that?”

  Nathan jerked. “Uh-huh.”

  “Really?” She let her fingers trace the shape of him, encircle him, run down the length of him from base to tip. “You can feel that?”

  Nathan inhaled sharply. Slowly he inserted a finger inside her. “Can you feel that?”

  Harry gasped. “Uh-huh.”

  He inserted another finger. “And that?”

  Harry tightened her thighs around his hand, reminding Nathan this was new to her. He slowly worked his fingers inside her, stretching her, feeling the tightness and the wetness. He had to be patient. And gentle. And exercise rigid control over a body that ached with wanting her.

  “Harry-et,” he breathed against her throat. “Touch me.”

  Harry had been too caught up in her own sensations to think about Nathan’s. Until he’d spoken she hadn’t been aware that her hands each grasped a handful of quilt. She brought her hands up to grasp his waist instead. Slowly her fingers slipped around to his belly and down to the crease where hip met thigh.

  Nathan grunted. The feel of her fingertips on his skin, on his belly, in those other places he hadn’t known were so sensitive, was exquisite.

  Harry relaxed her thighs, allowing Nathan greater freedom of movement. His mouth found a breast and teased it, then moved down her ribs to her belly, and then lower, where it replaced his hands at the portal she’d guarded against invasion for so many years.

  Her hands clutched his hair as she arched up toward the sensations of his mouth on her flesh. “Nathan, please,” she cried. She had no idea what it was she needed, but she was desperate.

  Nathan’s eyes glittered with passion as he rose over her. She expected one quick thrust and was prepared for the pain. Instead she felt the tip of him pushing against her. Just when she started to feel the pain, he distracted her by nipping her breast. Then his mouth found hers and his tongue mimed the action below. Thrusting and withdrawing. Pushing farther each time. Teasing and tempting. A guttural sound rose in her throat as she surged toward him, urging him inside.

  Nathan thrust once more with tongue and hips and filled her full.

  Harry tensed with the extraordinary feeling of being joined to Nathan. Her legs captured his hips and held him in thrall. As he withdrew and thrust again, she met his rhythm, feeling the tension build within. His hand came between them to touch her and intensify the need for relief. For release. For something.

  Harry was gasping for air, her heart pounding, her pulse racing. “Nathan,” she cried. “Please. I ache. Make it stop.”

  God, he loved her! He wanted to say the words. Here. Now. But once said, they couldn’t be taken back. He had no idea how she felt about him. She trusted him, that much was clear. But did her feelings for him run as deep as his for her? She hadn’t offered those three words, and there was no way he could ask for them. He could only show her how he felt and trust that it would be enough.

  “Come with me, sweetheart. Let yourself fly. It’s all right. I’ll take care of you.”

  Harry took him at his word and let herself soar. Nathan joined her in her aerie, two souls surpassing the physical, seeking a world somewhere beyond Nyla’s Meadow.

  It was long moments later before either of them touched ground again. Their bodies were slick with sweat, despite the shade in which they lay. Nathan was stretched out beside her with an arm and a leg thrown possessively over her. He couldn’t see Harry-et’s face, so he wasn’t able to judge what she was thinking. But there was a tension in her body that was at odds with the release he’d felt within her just moments before.

  “Harry-et? What’s wrong?” He must have hurt her. He hadn’t meant to, but he had.

  She sighed. A huge, deafening sound. Those last few words Nathan had spoken before she’d found ecstasy resounded in her ears: “I’ll take care of you.” Those words reminded her of why it would be foolish to give her heart to Nathan Hazard. She wanted to stand on her own two feet. He was liable to sweep her off them. She freed herself from his embrace and sat up, pulling her knees to her chest and hugging them with her arms. “This can’t happen again, Nathan.”

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I—”

  “You didn’t hurt me, Nathan. I just don’t want to do it…this…with you again.”

  “It sounds to me like you’re sorry it happened the first time,” he said angrily, sitting up to face her. “You were willing. Don’t try to deny it.”

  “I’m not denying it. I wanted this as much as you,” she admitted. “I’m only saying that it can’t happen again.”

  “Give me one good reason why not,” he demanded.

  Because I’m in danger of falling in love with you.

  Because I’m in danger of losing myself to you.

  Because I find you irresistible, even though I know we have no business being together like this.

  That was three reasons. None of which she had any intention of mentioning to him. Harry turned away from him and slipped on her bra and panties. She could hear the rustle of clothing behind her as he dressed. The metal rasp of the zipper on his jeans was loud in the silence. She stood and pulled up the zipper on her own jeans before reaching for her boots.

  He grabbed the boot out of her hand and shook it, then handed it back to her. “Snakes,” he said. “And spiders.”

  Harry shivered and made sure she dumped the other boot as well before she slipped it on. His warning had been an abrupt reminder that she was a very sore tenderfoot. Harry couldn’t very well avoid Nathan until she learned everything from him that she needed to know. She would just have to learn to control the need to touch, and be touched, that arose every time she got near him.

  Nathan had no idea what he’d done that was so wrong, but after the most profound lovemaking he’d ever experienced, Harry-et was avoiding him as if he had the measles. She wasn’t going to get away with it.

  “Harry-et.”
<
br />   “Yes, Nathan?”

  “Come here.”

  “No.” Harry turned and marched over to the tree where her horse was tied. She tried to mount, but couldn’t raise her leg high enough to reach the stirrup. She laid her face against the saddle and let her shoulders slump.

  An instant later Nathan grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her into the saddle. “Move your leg out of the way, tenderfoot,” he ordered.

  Harry gritted her teeth and did as he ordered, painfully sliding her leg up out of his way as he worked on the saddle.

  “Good thing you couldn’t reach the stirrup,” he snarled. “Damn cinch wasn’t tightened. Saddle would have slid around and dumped you flat.”

  “Stop treating me like I’m helpless,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he retorted.

  “I pulled my own weight today. Don’t tell me I didn’t.”

  Nathan neither confirmed nor denied her assertion. He tightened the cinch on his own saddle and mounted, then reined his horse to face her. “That story I told you about Nyla’s Meadow?”

  “Yes?”

  “I made it all up.”

  Harry struggled to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “All of it?”

  “Every last word. No one knows how the meadow got its name.”

  He’d invented a place for falling in love. A place where lovers met. Then brought her here. And made love to her. Now he wanted her to believe it had all been a lie.

  “We made love in Nyla’s Meadow, Nathan. That was real.”

  Nathan met her imploring gaze with stony eyes. “We had sex. Damn good sex. But that’s all it was.” And if she believed that, he had a bog he’d like to sell her for grazing land.

  He was waiting for the retort he was sure was on her lips. But she didn’t argue, just kicked her horse and loped away from him toward the trail back down the mountain.

  “Damn you, Harry-et,” he muttered. “Damn you for stealing my heart and leaving me feeling helpless.”

  He kicked his horse and loped down the mountain after her. As he followed her down the mountain, he thought back on the day he’d spent working with Harry-et. Not once had she asked for his help. Not once had she complained. In fact, she’d done extraordinarily well for a tenderfoot. Was it possible that someday Harry-et Alistair could actually stand on her own two feet? He found the idea fascinating, if farfetched. He stared at the way she rode stiff-backed in the saddle. She had grit, that woman. It sure couldn’t hurt to hang around long enough to find out.

  Harry’s thoughts weren’t nearly so sanguine. All day she’d been careful not to let Nathan do too much. If she was going to feel like a success, she had to make it on her own. She had left her family to get away from people ordering her around.

  But Nathan had never ordered her to do anything. He’d made suggestions and left the decisions up to her. So maybe she could endure his company a little longer. Maybe she could forget what had happened between them today in Nyla’s Meadow and simply take advantage of his expertise.

  But it was clear she was going to have to be careful. Give Nathan an inch and he might take an acre. And the man had made no secret of the fact that he wanted the whole damn spread.

  CHAPTER 8

  In a small town out West what do you do if you become ill?

  Answer: Put on a big pot of coffee, because an hour after you get your prescription from the drugstore, five people will phone with sympathy and two will fetch you a hot dish.

  Harry didn’t see Nathan for a week, but he called her every day with instructions for some job or other that she had to complete: repairing the henhouse, planting a vegetable garden, spreading manure, harrowing the fields and cleaning the sheep shed. She took great pride in the fact that she managed to accomplish every task alone. Successfully. She knew Nathan had expected her to cave in and ask for help long before now. So when he phoned one evening and told her to clean out all the clogged irrigation channels on her property in preparation for starting the irrigation water through the main ditch, she headed out bright and early the next morning, expecting to get the job done. And failed abysmally.

  All Harry could figure was that Nathan had left something out of his instructions. She tried calling him for more directions, but he was out working in his fields and couldn’t be reached until noon. She left a message with Nathan’s housekeeper for him to call her as soon as he got in.

  Nathan did better than that. Shortly after noon he arrived on her kitchen doorstep. “Harry-et, are you in there? Are you all right?”

  He didn’t wait for her to answer, just shoved the screen door open and stepped inside. When Nathan saw her sitting at the table with a sandwich in her hand, his relief was palpable. His heart had been in his throat ever since he’d read the message Katoya had left him. He’d had visions of Harry-et wounded and bleeding from some farm accident. He was irritated that he cared enough about her to feel so relieved that she wasn’t hurt. He forced the emotion he was feeling from his voice and asked, “What was the big emergency?”

  “No emergency,” Harry answered through a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly. “I just couldn’t get the irrigation system to work with the directions you gave me.”

  “What was wrong with my directions?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have called you.”

  “I’ll go take a look.”

  “I’ll come with you.” She threw her sandwich down and headed toward him.

  Nathan felt his groin tighten at the sight of Harry-et sucking a drop of grape jelly off her finger. “Don’t bother. I can do it quicker on my own.”

  Harry hurried to block his exit from the kitchen. “But if I don’t come along, I won’t know what I did wrong the next time I have to do it by myself,” she pointed out in a deceptively calm voice.

  Nathan stared at the jutting chin of the woman standing before him. Stubborn. As a mule. And sexy. Even in bibbed overalls. “All right,” he muttered. “But don’t get in my way.”

  When Nathan crossed behind the barn, he saw the backhoe sitting in the middle of her field by the main irrigation ditch. “I didn’t know you could manage a backhoe.” Handling the heavy farm machinery was how he’d feared she’d hurt herself.

  “It wasn’t so hard to figure out. I used it to widen the main ditch and clear the larger debris from the irrigation channels. But I still didn’t get any water.”

  She was a remarkable woman, all right. It wasn’t the first time he’d had that thought, but Nathan didn’t understand why it irritated him so much to admit it now. Could it be that he wanted her to need him? Needed her to need him? What if she turned out to be really self-sufficient? Where did that leave him? With an Alistair smack in the middle of his property. Nathan pursed his lips. The thought didn’t irk him near as much as it ought to.

  When they arrived at the main ditch, Nathan examined her work. He could find no fault with it. “Did you follow the main ditch all the way across your property?”

  “As far as that stand of cottonwoods over there along the river.” She didn’t add that the thought of snakes hiding in the thick vegetation around the cottonwoods had scared her off.

  “Let’s go take a look.”

  Harry was happy to follow him. The way Nathan was stomping around it wasn’t likely any snake was going to hang around long enough to take him on.

  Harry stayed close behind Nathan and actually bumped into him when he stopped dead and said, “There’s your problem.”

  She leaned around him to see where he was pointing. “That bunch of sticks?”

  “Beaver dam. Has to come out of there. It’s blocking the flow of water along the main ditch.”

  “How do I get rid of it?”

  Nathan grinned ruefully. “Stick by stick. You’d better head back to the house and get your thigh-high rubber boots.”

  “Rubber boots? Thigh-high?”

  “I take it you don’t have any rubber boots,” Nathan sai
d flatly.

  “Just my galoshes.”

  He sighed. “They’re better than nothing. Go put them on. Get a pair of gloves, too.”

  “All right. But don’t start without me,” she warned.

  “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  Harry ran all the way to the cabin, stepped into her galoshes and galomphed all the way back to the beaver dam. True to his word, Nathan was sitting on a log that stuck out from the dam, doing nothing more strenuous than chewing on a blade of sweet grass. But he hadn’t been idle in her absence. He was leaning on two shovels, wore thigh-high rubber boots and had a pair of leather gloves stuck in his belt.

  “All ready?” he asked.

  “Ready.”

  The beaver dam was several feet long and equally wide and thick, and Harry felt as if she were playing a game of Pick-up Sticks. She never knew whether the twig she pulled would release another twig or tumble a log. Leaves and moss also had to be shoveled away from the elaborate dam. The work was tedious and backbreaking. Toward the end of the afternoon it looked as if they might be able to clear the ditch before the sun went down, if they kept working without a break.

  Harry was determined not to quit before Nathan. Sweat soaked her shirt and dripped from her nose and chin. Her face was daubed with mud. Her hands were raw beneath the soaked leather gloves. There were blisters on her heels where the galoshes rubbed as she mucked her way through the mud and slime. It was little consolation to her that Nathan didn’t look much better.

  He had taken off his shirt, and his skin glistened with sweat. He kept a red scarf in the back pocket of his jeans, and every so often he pulled it out and swiped at his face and neck and chest. Sometimes he missed a spot, and she had the urge to take the kerchief from his hand and do the job for him. But it was as plain as peach pie cooling on a windowsill that Nathan was a heap better at dishing out help than he was at taking it. And though they worked side by side all day, he kept his distance.

  Touching might be off-limits, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t look. Harry was mesmerized by the play of corded muscles under Nathan’s skin as he hefted logs and shoveled mud. She turned abruptly when he caught her watching and was thankful for the mud that hid her flush of chagrin.