The Cowboy Meets His Match

by Meagan Mckinney

  She gasped in shock as she plunked unceremoniously into the frothing water, so cold she felt as if she was plunging naked into a snowbank.

  Roman Nose simply swam on toward the opposite bank without her, whickering to announce his clever victory over his rider.

  Jacquelyn was a good swimmer under reasonable conditions. But wearing boots and heavy jeans while fighting a swift current hardly constituted reasonable conditions.

  At first, tumbled about like so much driftwood, she couldn’t even orient herself to start swimming. Besides, there were good-size boulders in the water. She had to worry about protecting her head. It was all she could do to tread water while the current washed her rapidly downstream.

  And it was cold…so cold so quickly, already she was numb and her back teeth were chattering hard.

  “Rope!” she heard A.J. shout. “Grab the rope!”

  What rope, she wanted to scream. What damned—?

  It literally slapped her face. He had looped it in accurately.

  She reached out, seized rough hemp and felt herself being tugged through the worst of the raging current.

  Once out, she staggered up onto the bank, looking and feeling like a drowned rat. A.J. stood there above her, strong white teeth flashing as he laughed in unbridled glee.

  “‘It’s been many years since a horse has thrown me,”’ he mimicked in his wretched imitation of her accent.

  She was too cold to care about feeling humiliated. The day was cooling quickly as sunset approached, and now each spirited breeze cut into her wet flesh like a blade.

  Her spare clothing would have remained dry in the waterproof pack. But she glanced around and felt her stomach sink—absolutely no cover for even minimal modesty.

  He read her dilemma and sent her a goading little grin. “Guess you’ll want to get out of them wet things, huh?”

  “It can w-wait.” She shivered. The campsite was only a half mile farther. There would be trees there to hide behind.

  “Go ahead,” he urged her, making a show of placing a hand over his eyes. “Peel ’em off. I won’t peek. Cross my heart.”

  “N-no, thanks. Let’s just g-go on.”

  Forcing herself to move, she reset her saddle and carefully cinched it. Wincing at the cold contact of wet clothing, she was about to hoist herself into the saddle when a warm, strong hand stopped her.

  “Don’t read too much into this, Miss Rousseaux, but I ain’t bringing no corpse back to Hazel. Hypothermia is quick. Now get out of those wet clothes. And get out of them now.”

  She stared up at him, every muscle in her body shivering. “There’s no privacy here for me to change.”

  “Ahh, well, it don’t matter if you strip buck,” he assured her, still staring at her with those cool, piercing eyes. “Wet like you are, I can already see plenty of what you got.”

  Mortified, she looked down at her wet shirt plastered across her chest. The pale pink broadcloth might as well have been the filmiest negligee in the lingerie store. And her glossy pink spandex bra now looked as transparent as cellophane. A professional stripper couldn’t have devised a more titilating outfit.

  Folding her arms across her breasts, she glared at him like a rabid cat. “I thought you j-just said you have n-no interest in looking at me,” she spat.

  “No,” he corrected her. “I said I’m not woman starved. But there’s nothing wrong with my appetite.”

  “Save it for your ‘fillies,”’ she fired back, shivering violently as she went to the other side of Roman Nose and fumbled for the dry clothes in her pack.

  Now how was he going to get that out of his mind, A.J. asked himself as he refilled his canteen from Crying Horse Creek. This trip that he thought would be nothing more than putting an uppity woman in her place was proving to be much more complicated. Jacquelyn Rousseaux was not his type of woman at all, but every now and then she got this strange, wistful expression in those sea-colored eyes of hers, and he felt himself relenting, lowering his guard one more fraction. Now he was going to have to make camp, and all he was going to see in his mind’s eye for the rest of the night was her, spitting mad, wet, cold and nearly naked from the waist up. He closed his eyes even now. The way she was built she sure looked good from the waist up.

  Glancing behind him, he got a timeline of her changing her clothes. All he could see, with Roman Nose blocking the way, was her legs and the damp tousled top of her head. But then the wet pink blouse came off. He knew it because she dropped it at her feet. The bra followed, falling in a limp pile. Then she peeled off her saturated jeans, and he got a nice gander at trim shapely legs. But then a pair of pink panties to match the bra dropped to the pile. He had to adjust himself twice in the interim.

  “Get a move on, girl,” he barked, intentionally trying to rattle her.

  For a long moment, she fiddled with something, then drew a fleece shirt over her head and stepped into her jeans.

  “I’ll be ready in a s-second,” she stammered, her teeth still chattering. She came around to the other side of her pony and fiddled with the buckle of her saddle bag. She didn’t seem to notice but the bra dangled from the pile in her arms and fell to the ground, still unseen.

  He straightened and went over to her. Picking up the bra, he ran his thumb pensively over the underwire. He’d seen a hundred of the things in his time, but this one seemed different somehow. More fragile, more seductive, more dangerous.

  “Thank you,” she said stonily as she grabbed it out of his hands.

  His eyes locked with hers.

  An unwelcome acknowledgment sizzled between them.

  She stuffed the bra into her saddle pack. “I’m ready. Let’s go,” she rasped.

  “Gotta make up some time,” he ordered before slinging himself into the saddle.

  It was suddenly all business again, but something had changed between them. And all he could think about from that moment forward was wet, translucent pink fabric and eyes he wanted to make dark with pleasure.

  Seven

  The first camp Jake McCallum made while crossing the Rocky Mountains was in a pine-sheltered hollow on the middle slopes. By the time A.J. and Jacquelyn reached the spot, it was bathed in the last fading sunlight.

  Though Jacquelyn had changed into dry clothes, she was still so thoroughly chilled she couldn’t keep from trembling. With shaking fingers she untacked her pony and brushed him down. Then when A.J. was busy using a hatchet to strip kindling bark from an old log, she retrieved her wet clothes from the saddle bag and draped them out of his view over a tree limb.

  When he’d built a fire, she couldn’t help but inch closer to it to relieve her incessant shivering. Seeing her, he held up a piece of nylon fishline with a hook attached. “I’ll be taking care of your supper. So you take care of the horses’ supper.”

  She went to work without a word, her thoughts disturbing and uncharitable.

  While she occupied herself with the mustangs, he disappeared into the gathering darkness of the trees.

  It took her a good bit of time to tend to both horses. She moved a little slower than usual, her back sore from hours against that narrow, high cantle, her fingers still frozen from her fall in the “creek.” With the sun gone, the night chilled quickly. She was happy to finally settle on a warm rock near the fire when her task was finished.

  The insect noise of the night rose steadily, like the hum of power lines. Blazing flames from the fire crackled and sent off little glowing streams of sparks. She breathed in the strong odor of pine resin.

  But despite the peacefulness of the moment, the darkness around her was deep and foreboding. Even being dumped in a rustic camp in Montana couldn’t alter the fact that she was an urban creature. The darkness seemed to lurk like a mugger in the shadows, waiting to pounce on her.

  A stick snapped somewhere beyond the glow of the fire, and she tensed, straining to see in the gloom. But she had ruined her night vision by staring directly into the flames.

  Another stick snapped, b
ehind her this time.

  She rose from the boulder she was seated on and turned to stare into the dark maw of the night.

  “A.J.?” she called. “Is that you?”

  The silence mocked her. A frog croaked, and somewhere nearby an owl hooted. The insect hum rose to a tense crackle.

  Leaves rustled somewhere to her left. Her veins iced over.

  “A.J.?” she called again, louder this time. “Is that—?”

  A hand clasped her shoulder from behind, and she cried out in fright. She whirled around to face A.J.’s insulting grin. He held up two fat trout for her inspection.

  “Little jumpy, ain’t you?”

  “That wasn’t funny,” she stated, backing away from his intrusion into her personal space.

  “The hell it wasn’t,” he contradicted as he started cleaning the fish on a rock. “Matter fact, you’re funnier than a rodeo clown. I’m starting to like this trip. Y’all,” he added.

  “There’s…something out there,” she said nervously, still staring beyond the fire. “I heard noises. Noises that weren’t you.”

  “There’s plenty out there,” he agreed as he rubbed the juice from a few wild onions onto the trout. “Bears, snakes, coyotes, cats, skunks, raccoons, porcupines. Surprised your friends back east haven’t figured out some way to charge them rent.”

  He cleared a little corner of the fire and laid the trout directly onto the glowing embers. He turned them often with his knife, basting them with more onion juice. They baked quickly. It was easy to peel the scorched outer layer away, exposing the tender and savory part.

  The simple meal tasted delicious to Jacquelyn. Especially with the appetite she’d worked up. Already, even this ridiculously early, her muscles and eyelids were growing heavy. She was working up her courage to once again bring up the awkward topic of sleeping arrangements.

  However, he preempted her. He crossed to the pile of gear. Then he returned to her side of the fire and tossed the folded-up tent and one sleeping bag onto the ground beside her.

  “There’s your private hotel room,” he informed her. “No room service. And the bathroom is the second tree to your left. If you get scared during the night,” he added, “tough toenails. Don’t go bothering me. I need my beauty rest.”

  “Aren’t you at least going to set up the tent?” she demanded as he swaggered away. “I’ve never done it before.”

  “Good time to earn your first merit badge, huh? Nobody waited on Jake, either.”

  “But you’re the guide. Hazel hired you for my care.”

  “This ain’t the Ritz, and I don’t live in your damn pocket. Out West, a guide ain’t a houseboy. He’s a pathfinder, a scout. You’re damn lucky I even fed you. When you can do for yourself, you’re expected to.”

  “Eight seconds on the back of a bucking horse,” she fumed, “and you think it makes you a tin god. You sure are smug for someone who uses the word ain’t all the time.”

  “Listen, cottontail,” he called over as he spread out a canvas groundsheet for his sleeping bag. “I know it’s full of snobs back East where you come from. But out here there’s always been only two social classes—the quality and the equality. And so far, you ain’t neither.”

  “It’s either,” she ranted, wondering if all his taunting was making her lose her mind. “Either. ‘You aren’t either.”’

  “Whatever you say. G’night, sugar britches.”

  Jacquelyn finally managed to get the small tent staked down, though one side caved in on her almost immediately. But she was too exhausted to worry about fixing it.

  The day had begun well before sunrise. The drive, the ride, her plunge into frigid Crying Horse Creek—all that, plus the emotional roller coaster of being at the mercy of A. J. Clayburn had taken its toll. She fell asleep almost at once, as if drugged.

  But though she slept deeply, peace of mind still eluded her.

  She was not plagued with nightmares exactly. Just eerily unpleasant dreams with no apparent point except to make her hate herself. Long, agonizing dream sequences featuring Joe and Gina. Tender love scenes, intimate moments that radiated warmth and spontaneity, which she was always staring at from outside, behind a cold pane of glass, alone and destitute in the falling snow.

  And she saw herself narrating into her pocket recorder. But it wasn’t her voice coming from her. Instead, other voices threw accusations at her like narrators in some absurd Fellini film, voices that didn’t go with the images.

  Or did they?

  Her mother’s voice: After all, baby, decorum should rule everything. Even a Southern debutante’s failed life.

  Hazel’s voice: This world belongs to the living…I assure you, making this journey will change your life.

  The cowboy’s voice: What would you know about being turned on? Is that something you’ve “researched,” too?

  From the first moment that Jacquelyn woke up, something felt wrong.

  For one thing she lay on her back. She had never been able to sleep on her back.

  An urgent inner voice warned her. She sensed the weight on her stomach. The foreign weight. Like a hand pressing down on the lower part of her stomach.

  For a moment she was on the verge of using her left hand to check it out. But the urgent inner voice warned her to be still.

  Still as stone.

  Very slowly she lifted her head to take a better look around her. The fly of the tent had worked open a crack, perhaps when the one side collapsed. And evidently she must have gotten too warm during the night—her sleeping bag was closed but she’d left it unzipped to a point just above her navel.

  Open tent, open bag…and something definitely sharing the bag with her. Something seeking warmth during the night.

  Sweat broke out on her face, and she felt her heart surge on a spurt of adrenaline. She looked down into the darkness of her sleeping bag. Along with the fear came a powerful sense of revulsion.

  She knew most snakes weren’t poisonous. But Montana still had rattlesnakes. And though the bite from just one wasn’t usually fatal for an adult, it could be—especially this far from any medical help.

  She fought to gain control of her breathing. The weight had stirred against her, as if reacting to her fear responses. Thank God she’d slept fully clothed. Otherwise the snake would be rubbing its rough scales against her bare skin. That thought brought a wave of nausea that she barely fought down.

  She could see gray, grainy light beyond the open fly of the tent. Just barely dawn.

  She mustered her courage. “A.J.,” she called out softly.

  Nothing. He said he slept like a baby, damn him.

  “A.J.?” she called out again, a little louder this time. Again the weight stirred against her, intimate and disgusting.

  “I don’t serve breakfast in bed,” his sleepy, irritated voice replied just when she’d given up hope he would hear her.

  “A.J., my God, help me,” she breathed out slowly. “There’s a snake in my sleeping bag.”

  “Just lie real still,” his voice answered immediately, wide awake now and closer to the tent. “It should be in a stupor from your body heat. They can be grabbed by the head if it’s done quick.”

  Her neck got tired and she had to lower her head again. But she could hear the slithering whisper as he opened the fly of the tent wider. Then she saw him carefully maneuvering, shoehorning himself into the cramped space beside her sleeping bag.

  “Easy does it,” he whispered to her as his right hand eased into the bag. “Just lay there and don’t move a hair.”

  He still carried the pleasant smell of the campfire with him. He was bare from the waist up, and even in this stingy light his muscles stood out like taut ropes.

  She felt his hand move over the swell of her breasts. In the back of her mind, she seemed to think he paused there. Her anger was tempered only by her fear. “I don’t believe you. Any cheap excuse to cop a feel.”

  “You want me to get the snake out of the landscape or protect yo
ur modesty? Choose or I leave.”

  He started to slide his hand back out.

  She almost asphyxiated in her panic. “No! Please!” she pleaded. “I’m sorry. Please just get it off me, A.J.”

  “You women and your damn serpents,” he muttered. “I better at least get an apple out of this.”

  He slid his hand in again, easing it cautiously lower. But the intrusion had disturbed the snake. She almost screamed when it moved even lower, as if retreating from his hand. She could feel it now, sheltered in the valley formed where her thighs joined.

  “It went lower,” she whispered, lips trembling with fear.

  He nodded. “I saw the shape move. Now I know which end’s the head.” And he added, the grin returning, “Oh, to be that snake’s head right now.”

  She wanted to slap him, but she didn’t dare move. She felt his hard callused hand slide down the flat plane of her stomach. It moved even lower, and despite her rigid fear, her body reacted on its own to the intimate, if unavoidable, caress.

  “Close?” he asked her, torturing her with obvious relish.

  She almost wimpered. “Very.”

  “Gotcha!” he exclaimed, suddenly withdrawing his hand.

  Mercifully, she got only a quick look at the approximately three-foot-long reptile as he pulled it out of the tent.

  “Hell,” he scoffed, turning it loose on the ground, “it’s just a harmless gopher snake.”

  Shaking, she peeled the sleeping bag off and scrambled from the tent. By now there was enough light to clearly make out the camp.

  He suddenly burst out laughing. “You Southern gals are fast, huh?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  “Hell, we’ve only spent one night together. And already you’ve let me run my hand down your pants. From my neck of the woods, that’s third base, ain’t it?”

  “God, I hate you,” she fumed, turning her back on him to disassemble the tent.