Moonlight and Shadows

by Janzen, Tara

  Strong hands. The thought crossed her mind and momentarily caught her attention. His hands were the essence of strength, rugged and weather-worn, built of sinew and bone and brought to life by the ridges of veins tracking beneath his skin. She would have expected no less. Every working cowboy needed strong hands. Someone who bet his life on the ability of five fingers to hold him onto half a ton of bucking bronc or a ton of aggravated bull needed more than a strong hand. He needed an arm of steel to back it up.

  Her gaze slipped up the pearly snaps on his cream-colored shirt, taking in the streaks of mud and the dirt ground into the cloth. His head was tilted back against the small chair, giving him plenty of snoring room. A day’s growth of sandy beard darkened the chin and jaw jutting out from beneath the black Stetson that covered his face. She noted the small bandage taped high on his cheekbone, and the bit of blood showing on the gauze wrapped around his knee. From the looks of him, he’d taken more than one spill last night. No wonder Shoat had been worried about him.

  Finally, her gaze settled on his right hand, half hidden by the cast. He was loosely cupping the big gold and silver rodeo buckle at his waist, as if he were trying to hold whatever was left of himself together.

  An unconscious sigh lifted her chest. Her glance drifted to his saddle and his rigging bag and those fancy chaps, then back to him. He was a wreck, but he looked mostly like what he was, a saddle tramp, the prodigal son returning home, a cowboy on the short end of the rodeo circuit. What he did not look like was James’s brother, let alone James’s little brother.

  James wasn’t six foot of anything, and he sure didn’t have legs like that—long, lanky, and put together in a way that made her gaze stray back to the mostly naked bandaged one. Ropes of muscle corded his thigh and his calf, flexing with every slight movement he made in his sleep. It was a sight to see, and it made Callie’s mind wander in unaccustomed ways.

  She blushed at her sensual musing, then became irritated with herself. She’d obviously been cooped up with Shoat and the cows too long if she was ogling the likes of Travis Cayou. He was no business of hers. She’d only come as a favor to Shoat, and she hoped to hell James never found out she’d done even that much. Her boss was darn touchy when it came to his younger brother.

  Quietly clearing her throat, she forced her gaze to the bus station clerk. The red-haired lady was doing the same thing she’d been doing, staring at more man than either of them was used to seeing. It was ridiculous.

  “Mr. Cayou? In from Colorado and New Mexico?” she asked, gesturing with her thumb and drawing the clerk’s attention.

  “Yeah.” The clerk grinned. “He’s been kind of decorating up the lobby this afternoon. You got here in the nick of time. I was about to close up. Figured I’d just take him home with me.” The grin broadened, taking half a dozen years off the older woman’s face, and leaving no doubts in Callie’s mind about what the lady had been planning to do with him. From what she’d heard about Travis Cayou, he drew women like a lodestone—whether they were married or not.

  She gave him another inadvertent glance. At least now she knew why. He had a look about him, and she hadn’t even seen his face.

  But that wasn’t her problem. Her problem was getting him home.

  She took a step toward him, then hesitated, feeling a tingle of wariness, or shyness, speed up her pulse. Chastising herself for more foolishness, she wiped her hand across her middle and took the last two steps to him, her boots squishing softly on the carpet.

  “Mr. Cayou?” She reached out and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Mr. Cayou?”

  From a far-off distance, Travis heard a husky sweet voice calling him. He debated with himself whether it was worth waking up, whether it was worth coming back to all of his aches and pains to find out who was behind the coaxing voice. But it wasn’t much of a debate, especially when she repeated his name louder and gripped his shoulder tighter to give him a shake.

  “Mr. Cayou? Travis? Come on, wake up, Travis.”

  The increased contact helped him slip closer to consciousness and sent home an instinctively known fact: She had good hands. He could feel the warmth of them, the gentle pressure, the just-right touch. She was probably good with horses. In the haziest of thought processes, he wondered if she’d be good with him, this lady whose voice he wished was whispering a little closer to his ear, this lady whose voice he’d like to hear with more need straining the sweetness, a more passionate need.

  “Travis? Come on, wake up. Shoat sent me to bring you home.”

  Passion. Lord it had been a long time, and never with a woman with a voice like a hot summer night, soft but laced with a husky edge. He needed to meet this lady. Seems old Shoat had sent him a woman right out of his dreams, even if she did sound a mite on the impatient side.

  Drawing in a deep breath and wishing he’d taken another pain pill, he dragged himself up from his deep sleep. Slowly, he lifted his hand and pushed his hat to the back of his head.

  Callie had been ready for anything—anything except the hard reality of Travis Cayou. In the space of a few seconds, the time it took for him to lift his hat, he went from being a half-infirm, broken down, physically intriguing cowboy to the most hazardous material in Wyoming, unsafe at any speed.

  From under the brim of the black Stetson, barely focused eyes of the darkest brown stared at her. His gaze trailed over her face in a slumberous caress, leaving a path of sudden, unwelcome heat on her skin. As her cheeks flushed, a rawly sensual smile formed on his mouth.

  How something moving so slowly could have the impact of a speeding freight train was beyond her, but she felt shaken to the toes of her boots by the implicit sexuality of his smile. Heat raced through the rest of her body, touching her everywhere and pooling in liquid warmth in her veins.

  She swallowed hard and took a half step backward, stumbling slightly over her boot heel. He was making a thousand promises with his smile and with the midnight fires banked in the depths of his eyes, the kind of promises most women dreamed about and most men couldn’t keep. He was also sending messages. One in particular was loud and clear: He wanted to take her to bed, right now. She’d never had it said to her any plainer, and she’d never felt herself react to the invitation with such an electrifying physical response.

  Travis did want to take her to bed, every inch of her, from the wild ebony hair escaping her hat and her braid, to the generous curves of her breasts, to the slim-hipped elegance of her long legs. But he didn’t have the wherewithal to do anything but think about it, because fast on the tracks of consciousness came pain, dull and heavy and inescapable. His fantasy and his smile both took the short, downward slide into the truth. He thought about saying hello, but the pain told him to do something else.

  Grimacing, he dropped his hand to his pocket and dug out the brown plastic bottle filled with his pain pills. He took two and closed his eyes on an unsolicited groan.

  Callie’s heart lurched. Raw sex was a bit beyond her ability to handle, but nurturing was well within her acceptable guidelines for personal or even impersonal relationships. Taking care of cows was what she did for a living.

  She took the bottle out of his hand and read the label. Her eyebrows slowly rose as she looked back at him, and once again he took her by surprise, just by being there and looking the way he did.

  He was a lot younger than James, maybe ten years younger, yet he was harder looking, as if life hadn’t settled as easily on him. Sandy-brown hair streaked with blond framed a lean, handsome face set off by a short nose and square chin with a slight cleft, a face tanned by the sun and chiseled by a life spent as a range rider and a rodeo cowboy.

  Callie had never been anywhere to speak of, but she was pretty sure they didn’t make men like him anyplace on earth except east of the Pacific Ocean and west of the Mississippi River, and he was a rare breed even there. He was the kind of man she’d grown up knowing, a cowboy, but no cowboy she’d ever met had made her blush.

  Her cheeks warmed a
gain. He was good-looking all right, in a rugged, impish way, and his smile ought to be against the law, at least in public, but it was obvious to anyone she could outrun him in his present condition.

  “We better get you into the truck while you can still walk,” she said, putting the pills in her own pocket. By her count and the instructions on the bottle, he’d had more than enough.

  “Who said I can walk?” he asked softly, his eyes still closed, his face still tight with pain.

  “I’ll take your saddle and your gear out, give you a few minutes for those pills to take the edge off.” She stepped around his legs, her wet duster slapping against her jeans.

  “Wait a minute.” Travis opened his eyes a fraction of an inch and tried to move when he saw her lift his saddle, but his body wasn’t obeying. “Hey, wait a minute. Who are you?”

  The dark-haired angel in the white canvas duster and black cowboy hat turned and leveled on him the most startlingly blue gaze he’d ever seen.

  “Kathleen Ann Michael. I work at the ranch. You can call me Callie.” She turned again to leave.

  “I had a mare named Calliope once. We called her Callie for short. Smartest horse I ever owned,” he said, then immediately wished he hadn’t, but it had been the first thing to come to mind. Well, actually, the second thing. First had been the word “pretty,” as in “real pretty,” so pretty he felt his gut tighten just looking at her.

  Those aquamarine eyes slanted him a purely innocent glance over her shoulder. “Yeah, well, I used to have a dog named Travis, but he wasn’t exactly on the bright side.” She paused as if considering her words, then added, “We didn’t keep him around for his looks, either.”

  Travis wasn’t sure if he’d been insulted or not. Either way, he couldn’t stop his grin. “He must have had some good points.”

  “A couple,” she agreed, hefting the saddle higher in front of her, holding on to it with both hands.

  Travis tried to rise, but she stopped him with a quelling look.

  “I can carry your saddle, your suitcase, and your rigging bag, but I can’t carry you. So do us both a favor and save your strength.”

  The angel had spoken. Travis collapsed back in the chair to wait his turn. If he’d had any confidence whatsoever about his ability to get out the door on his own, he would have helped her. But spending the afternoon cramped in the little chair had stiffened him up something terrible. Parts of him were even starting to shake.

  At first he tried to ignore it, but by the time she carried his suitcase out, his knee was knocking against the chair, an added pain he really didn’t need.

  He gripped his right thigh with his left hand and tried to massage the spasm out of the muscles. He wished he’d dropped his bull rope two seconds later than he had the previous night. The extra time would have gotten him to the eight-second horn and might have put him down someplace other than under the bovine tornado.

  He wished the pills would kick in too. Pressing his palm harder into his thigh, he worked the muscle with his thumb and fingers. And if he was going to fall apart like this, he wished Shoat had come himself instead of sending Kathleen Ann Michael.

  The sound of the door slamming brought his head up quick. Just as quickly, he looked back down at his leg. There were lots of things he liked getting from women. Pity wasn’t one of them.

  “Should I be taking you over to the hospital before we go home?” she asked.

  “No.” He pressed even harder on his leg, willing the muscles to relax, and they did. Slowly at first, then deeply. A sense of well-being began infusing his senses. “Callie, I . . . I think we better get me into the truck real quick.”

  Callie didn’t need to be told twice. She was at his side in three strides, wrapping his good arm around her neck and sliding her arm around his waist. “I’ve got you. On three. One—”

  “I’ll be glad to help you, honey,” the station clerk offered, coming around from behind the counter.

  Callie just bet she would, and if the lady had helped her with his gear, she might have considered it. As it was, she was determined to get him out on her own, all six feet of him. Six feet of lean muscle, long legs, strong arms, and rock-hard body.

  “No, thanks. I’ve got him,” she said, indulging in a small lie. He was all over her and slipping fast, but the red-haired lady wasn’t going to lay a hand on him, not if Callie had anything to say about it. He belonged to her outfit, and she was the boss, the foreman of the home ranch of the Cayou Land and Cattle Company. Nobody was going to call her shots for her.

  Not even you, Travis Cayou. She stiffened her resolve and one knee and shifted her shoulder deeper under his arm, trying to take more of his weight and inevitably ending up with her right side mashed up against his left side. He half groaned, half sighed in response.

  Normally, she wouldn’t have noticed. After all, she was only helping a hurt man out to the truck. But that hurt man was Travis Cayou, and when his hat brushed up against hers and his pained sigh echoed in her ear, she couldn’t ignore the warm blush blooming on her cheek, the catch in her throat, or the resulting shiver winding its way down her spine.

  She would have dropped him right then and there, like a hot skillet, if it hadn’t meant more work to get him back up. For a moment she tried to blame her reaction on skipping lunch, but she’d skipped more than one meal in her life without going all hot and cold in the middle of the afternoon.

  “You all right?” she asked in a voice meant to be gruff. It sounded provocative instead, even to her own ears.

  “I’ll make it,” was all he said, very softly, very close, his arm tightening around her shoulders.

  Callie swore soundlessly and headed him out the door.

  * * * * * *

  Thank you for reading Moonlight and Shadows. Please visit my website, www.tarajanzen.com, and follow me on Facebook http://on.fb.me/tcBKCq, and Twitter @tara_janzen http://twitter.com/#!/tara_janzen so you won’t miss the release of my upcoming e-books.