The Cowboy Meets His Match

by Meagan Mckinney

  “And I’m damned,” she exploded in a return salvo, “if I know why she did, either! I came to experience a bit of history, not to endure your know-it-all harping and criticizing! It’s browbeating, that’s what it is! Just plain browbeating like my—”

  She caught herself before she finished it. Like my father does to my mother.

  Gathering herself, she said, “First you yell at me because the girth is too loose. Then you freak out because it’s too tight. Every move I make, you’ve got some complaint about it. And I am not ‘snivelling.’ And what the hell did I ever do to you, anyway?”

  As bad luck would have it, just as she added this last retort, tears sprang from her eyes. Overcome by emotion and exhaustion, she turned away from him and began rubbing salve on Roman Nose’s sore flank.

  He watched her from eyes shadowed beneath his brim. Finally he said, “This ain’t personal.”

  “Oh, it’s not?” she accused, refusing to look at him. “I suppose you’d treat one of your co-workers like this?”

  “You’re not a co-worker. You’re a woman.”

  She finally looked at him, dismayed. “You can’t mean that. You mean this is how you treat your rodeo bimbos?”

  He released a quick, exasperated breath. “I don’t take my women on a hard trip to Eagle Pass.”

  “Then forget I’m a woman,” she demanded.

  “Not likely,” he murmured under his breath, his eyes darting away.

  She stared at him for a long moment. “Why are you so uptight, A.J.? Why don’t you take your rodeo bimbos up here? You clearly love these mountains—why not bring one of your girlfriends here?” Her mouth gave a cynical tug. “I bet I can guess why. Up here you’d have to see them as people.”

  “I see women as people. I sure see Hazel that way.”

  “Yes, you do. But the others are just ‘fillies’ to you. Why is that? Why, if you love women so much, haven’t you settled down with one woman?”

  “I don’t need a girlfriend. I got lots of women.” He was angry now by the flash in his eyes.

  “But why not just one? Why not?” she insisted, her own anger cathartic.

  “Damn you!” he snapped. “Because if I got plenty, then if one gets taken away, then—then—”

  He turned away. Every muscle in his body seemed as tense as forged iron. He cursed. “Then I won’t miss them.”

  She just stared at him; somehow she wondered if she hadn’t unknowingly stumbled on to his Achilles’ heel.

  He shook his head and looked up as if for help. “You want to know why I don’t take them up here? Because trying to figure out a woman is like trying to bite your own teeth.”

  “You don’t know the secret, A.J. And the secret is, a woman’s just like you. I’m just like you,” she managed, unable to trust her voice further.

  He walked away.

  Oddly, though, their little confrontation seemed to act as a sort of pressure valve, at least for a brief time. A grudging, temporary peace ensued. By the time she had strapped a nose bag on Roman Nose and set up her tent, he had built up a cheery fire using wood he gathered on the lower slopes.

  “Notice anything missing?” he commented in a civil tone when she approached the fire.

  She listened for a moment as she searched for a flat rock so she could sit down. Then she realized that a familiar, constant crackle had ceased.

  “No insect noise,” she replied.

  “Right. We’re too high up now for most of ’em.”

  “Feels like it,” she said, pulling on a long-sleeved knit sweater.

  She stared at him in the flickering firelight as he removed his tight boots.

  “You were right about needing heels to hold the stirrups securely,” she finally confessed to him. “I’m working that into my story. Also the fact that your biggest laugh, so far, was when I went into the creek.”

  “I enjoyed it,” he confessed, “but only because I also warned you plenty.”

  She nodded, amazed they were actually having a civil exchange.

  A few minutes of peaceful silence ticked by while lone sparks escaped into the sky like fleeing fireflies. Every now and again she caught him glancing at her. For a few brief moments their gazes held, then she found she had to look away. Something in his stare was just too invasive, too heavy with implication. It unnerved her to ponder it when they were so far from civilization.

  Weariness settled deep into her bones. She never thought she’d see the day when she was sleepy by 8:00 p.m.

  Her eyelids began to take on weight. His quiet, calm voice prodded her awake.

  “Full moon tonight. You quoted Jake in your last article. ‘The full moon favors lovers and lunatics.’ Which are we?”

  So the man of action deigned to read her articles? Maybe just to see if he’s mentioned, she told herself sarcastically.

  “You mean there’s a difference?” she commented.

  He chuckled. “Hazel said you had a good sense of humor. Maybe she was right.”

  “Too bad, though, I’m such a spoiled brat, right?”

  “That’s the way of it,” he agreed.

  She rose to her feet.

  He followed.

  “Well, good night, Mr. Clayburn.”

  He stood watching her. That strange frisson went down her spine again. She was so close to him, she could have reached out and touched his hard cheek.

  “Good night, Miss Rousseaux,” he rasped. His gaze lowered to her figure. He seemed to be thinking about something, and she was pretty sure it was the same thing on her mind.

  His hands reached out and drew her into his chest. She couldn’t breathe, nor did she struggle. He seemed like a drug at that moment, one she waited all her life to get a fix of.

  A shrill whinny from one of the horses suddenly doused them like a fall into Crying Horse Stream. He pushed her away. Both animals were ground hitched, with picket pins and short ropes, about twenty feet away. The mustangs began bucking and jackknifing, trying to pull the pickets loose.

  She felt her scalp crawl when he slid his rifle from its leather scabbard.

  “What is it?” she asked as he ran to the horses, quickly gentling both animals by speaking low and close to their ears.

  He jacked a round into the rifle chamber. The sound echoed ominously in the quiet darkness.

  “I’d say they’ve caught a whiff of bear,” he explained, his eyes scouring the surrounding darkness. “And pretty close by, too. Horses are scared to death of bears.”

  She stood up and walked over by the horses, out of the friendly glow of the fire. Like him, she too stared down the mountain slope. Shifting moon shadows gave a sinister cast to the landscape.

  “Something’s not right,” he announced in a puzzled voice. “If it was winter, then bears this low wouldn’t surprise me. They’ll go right into a town when they wake up hungry enough. But in summer? These mountain bears will almost always stick to the highest ground they can so’s to avoid men. They’ve learned about hunters and guns.”

  “So why would one be this low?”

  “Tell you what,” he said earnestly. “If this one stops by for a chat, I’ll ask it.”

  “C’mon, humor me. One point of my article is my education along the trail. What drives bears lower besides hunger?”

  “Could be there’s people up above,” he speculated. “Rock climbers come up here, and sometimes researchers from the university. Or maybe there’s some rough weather making up.”

  “The horses have calmed down now,” she pointed out.

  “Appears so,” he agreed, lowering the muzzle of his rifle. “Anyhow, I’m turning in. G’night.”

  She stood and watched him replace the rifle in the scabbard. Then he resolutely ignored her to roll out his sleeping bag.

  Feeling strangely devastated, she went to her tent and double-checked it, making sure that the entrance was zipped tightly closed. She had just burrowed into her sleeping bag when his taunting voice reached her from the other side of the
dying fire.

  “I’ll try to warm my hands up before I search your sleeping bag in the morning,” he promised.

  “Good night, Mr. Clayburn,” she called out testily. “I don’t believe a search will be necessary.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  She deliberately ignored him, forcing herself to fall asleep. The last thing she was aware of, before sweet oblivion washed over her, was A.J.’s deep velvety voice soothing the still-jumpy mustangs.

  It didn’t take long, after she woke up on Thursday morning, for Jacquelyn to discover that last night’s temporary truce with A.J. was over.

  She had slept deeply, waking up feeling refreshed but still sore. Although the day’s new sun was up, it hadn’t yet burned off a morning mist. A thin powdering of frost covered the ground, reminding her how high they were climbing.

  A.J. was nowhere in sight when she emerged from her tent, shivering. But the fire had been stoked to life, and the air was fragrant with the strong smell of “cowboy coffee.”

  She took down her tent, rolled it and her sleeping bag up, then tossed both bundles near her pile of riding gear. It was nippy this early, and each breath puffed white in the cool air.

  Gathering clean clothes and a towel, she headed toward the nearby spring. It bubbled up in the midst of a clutch of huge boulders, only a few feet in diameter, but pure, delicious water. And the boulders afforded some natural privacy.

  She was still a few yards away when she heard A.J. singing in a low voice, “‘Buffalo gal, won’t you come out tonight…come out tonight…come out tonight?”’

  She rounded the first big boulder and spotted him. His back turned toward her as he washed in the little pool. He was completely naked in the water, splashing it over his head despite the chill air.

  Once she had read somewhere that good rodeo riders developed strong physiques from the constant tensing and flexing required to stay in the saddle. But she hadn’t expected the strong, defined muscles now rippling across his back and shoulders like taut steel cables. Nor the smooth, tight mounds of his buttocks that crowned a pair of tall, strong hair-sprinkled legs.

  He had the body of an Olympian.

  She stood dazzled, watching him, aware once again that her body was betraying her. A heat melted like wax between her thighs. Her breath grew shallow, her heart beat stronger.

  I thought only men, she admonished herself, could divorce their desires from their emotions like this. How could she feel instantly turned on at the sight of a man so self-centered and arrogant, so blue-collar and crude and foreign to her experience?

  Feeling guilty at her chance voyeurism, she forced herself to go back to camp. But then he spun around and caught her.

  Mortified, she stood frozen like a deer in the headlights.

  Cupping his endowment, impressive even in the cold water, he flashed the familiar sarcastic grin. “Morning, peeping Jack!” he called out in a hail-fellow voice.

  “I’m s-sorry. Really, I was not ‘peeping,”’ she protested, heat rising into her face.

  “Why go away frustrated, m’heart? If you’d like, you can come join me.” He threatened to remove the cup of his hands.

  She was suddenly so embarrassed that she actually trembled. “In your dreams, cowboy.”

  “Dreams?” He laughed as if the word were a punch line. “Now me, I’m the kinda man, if I’ve got a dream I turn it into a reality. But don’t get your hopes up, Jack, ’cuz I don’t dream all that much about princesses like you. I like my girls earthy and fun.”

  Without him knowing it, his words hit her heart like an arrow to a bull’s-eye. Wounded, she retaliated. “Sure, you don’t want a woman like me. I don’t have enough silicone in my bra and feathers in my head—just what a man like you deserves.”

  He laughed.

  She turned to leave him. He pulled on his jeans and followed her.

  When he took her arm, the serious expression on his face jolted her. Her heart skipped a beat, then adrenaline and something more kicked into her veins.

  She refused to admit to sexual attraction. Not here. Not with him and his stupid, cutting insults.

  But something thrummed in her body, heating her, even when the hand on her arm was cold from the water.

  And, oh, how she had wanted to see him all naked. To see what other women had had for their pleasure.

  He pulled her toward him, closing the distance between them. His lips twisted in a secret smile. She swore he was testing her.

  Her gaze held his. Defiantly she matched him moment for moment. It was a standoff. There was no telling whose will would prove the stronger. Until he made the final move.

  His eyes still on her, he lowered his mouth.

  Her instincts surged; she knew she should have turned her head away. But she didn’t. She took his kiss with all the greed of a woman starved, of an ice princess desperate to thaw. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, and she opened hers even more, letting him in, no, willing him into the smooth, pink, wet cavern of her mouth.

  Damp and hard, his arousal pressed against her. Immediately she regretted her weakness. She pulled away and pressed her hand against her burning mouth.

  “Look at that,” he marveled, his voice low and harsh. “You’re just a flesh-and-blood woman after all.”

  She refused to look at him, refused to acknowledge his need, his arousal and her own reaction to it. “I don’t need you to tell me that,” she whispered, unshed tears stinging in her eyes. “I know it better than anyone.”

  Closing her eyes, she felt as if she had just danced her soul out in front of him.

  He was silent for a long time. Without another word, he brushed past her. He sauntered away as if the moment had never occurred.

  But it had, and they both knew it.

  Jacquelyn was already primed for a bad mood even before they broke camp and resumed their ride toward Eagle Pass and Bridger’s Summit beyond it. A.J., as usual, rode in the lead. Even looking at him from behind on horseback, she realized she couldn’t shake the picture of him by the spring, naked, with rippling muscles.

  At one point, perhaps an hour after they rode out, he pivoted around in his saddle. He bored those direct eyes of his right through her.

  “Rock slide country up ahead,” he informed her. “See all those traprock shelfs and outcroppings above us? Some are unstable. Quit building sand castles in your head and pay attention. You’ve got to stay aware up here.”

  “Now you’re a mind reader?” she riposted. “How do you know I’m not paying attention?”

  “Same way I know a plugged nickel has a hole in it. Just do what I tell you.”

  “Ja, mein herr!” she added a sieg heil, raising her right arm in a Third Reich salute.

  He smiled darkly. “You’ll call me worse than a Nazi before this little trip is in the books,” he assured her. “And you try daydreaming on Devil’s Slope, the trip will be over—for you.”

  But despite his threatening and infuriating manner, she admitted to herself that his warning was due. She was tuning out and perhaps dangerously so.

  However, she couldn’t help herself. For various reasons her mood was fluctuating between confusion and exhilaration. As it seized her in its grip, she was less and less able to stay alert and attuned to danger.

  The magnificent view was a distraction all its own. From their elevation, she could see as far north as the Canadian Rockies, as far east as the North Dakota plains, as far south as the sprawling grasslands of eastern Wyoming. The grandeur of nature should equal grandeur of feeling.

  But now was not the time. Instead, she let the pictures pile up inside her head, ignoring them. Nor did she any longer feel motivated to narrate impressions into her pocket recorder.

  A.J.’s horse abruptly stopped on its own. The mustang’s head came up, and it pricked its ears forward.

  “Hold it,” he called back, raising one hand to halt her.

  “What is it?”

  “Ask my horse, not me. He’s the one on a
lert.”

  She watched A.J.’s slitted eyes carefully study the ridge all around them. “Might be our bear is still around,” he said as he started his horse forward again. “Be careful. They can attack quick if surprised, especially a she-bear with cubs.”

  Even this threat, however, failed to penetrate the gloomy depths into which she felt herself steadily sinking. Indeed, the higher they rode, the lower she sank.

  It wasn’t by choice. It was simply the stark, unavoidable contrast between the past and the present; between the account of pioneer Jake, with his overpowering love of his new bride, and the lovelorn reality of her own life; between princesses and real women who embraced life with all its earthy pleasures.

  It seemed so clear to her now, so devastatingly sure that such a love, such a sense of belonging as those lovers found in Mystery, were beyond her grasp.

  And what did she have instead, she of the golden spoon and limitless opportunities? Right now she was growing increasingly dependent on the very man whom she desired more and more fervently to be away from.

  Lost deep in such unpleasant thoughts, she fulfilled A.J.’s warning—she was caught completely off guard when trouble literally reared its head.

  A.J.’s horse rose up, forelegs kicking savagely as A.J. fought to control him on the narrow, steep trail. Jacquelyn almost flew from the saddle when Roman Nose crow-hopped sideways, almost tumbling down the steep face of the mountain.

  She heard the savage roar of the infuriated bear up ahead even before she spotted the animal. A.J. yanked his horse around, getting its nose out of the wind to quell its panic.

  “Ride down our back trail!” he shouted at her. “Now, dammit!”

  He stabbed both heels hard into his horse’s flanks, grabbing Roman Nose by the bridle as he flashed past. She saw him yank the rifle from its saddle scabbard. Then, a heartbeat later, she saw the massive brown bear charging straight toward her flank, its huge fangs exposed for the kill.

  Ten

  It all happened in mere seconds. Yet to Jacquelyn it had a dream-time slowness to it, as if it were happening underwater.

  She was too frightened to scream. As the huge, dusty, scarred animal lumbered closer, a shock wave of immobilizing fear slammed into her.