by Arlene James
Kara was too overcome to speak, so it fell to Rye to step forward and offer his hand one more time, saying, “Mr. Tenery, we can’t thank you enough, all of you. We never dreamed folks would take our troubles to heart like this.”
“Hell, son, we all figure we’ve got some stake in this, too. Some of us won’t be tending our own stock anymore, but we can still see that the real lifeblood of the ranching business don’t go the way of the family farm. Least we’ll know that you young pair will be keeping on down in the Chama Valley.”
Kara sent Rye a loaded look, which he deflected neatly. “We’ll make this drive, Mr. Tenery, I swear. We’ll make it on time with all the cattle we need to meet the terms of the will, whatever it takes.”
The old man grinned. “Glory be,” he said, “if I was a decade or two younger, I’d saddle me a horse and go with you!”
Rye chuckled, but something caught Kara’s eye. She pointed past Hud Tenery out the window at two men in full gear galloping their horses right down the center of what passed for Main Street toward them. Hud glanced over his shoulder.
“That’d be Wesley Randal and Charlie Choate, good cowboys both, though Wes, he sells insurance now and Charlie—that’d be the one with the beard—he’s a trucker.” He sent Rye a confidential look, adding, “Charlie’s wife, she left him, took the kids and went back to Idaho, so he drives a run between here and there to look in on the kids now and again.” He shrugged. “Ain’t a bad life for a single man. Wesley, now, he’s got a pretty wife and two little girls cute as buttons. Twins. Named them both Elizabeth—calls one Beth and the other Betty. Can’t tell ‘em apart for nothin’.”
Kara didn’t know if he meant that their father couldn’t tell them apart or if he, Tenery, couldn’t, but she didn’t suppose it mattered and was too bemused to ask.
“Are they coming here?” Rye asked, disbelief ringing in his voice.
Tenery looked at him. “Oh, yeah. Some fellow heard you say to that reporter yesterday that you was a couple hands short, so a bunch of the guys got together and drew straws to see who was gonna get to go and work for you.”
“But, Mr. Tenery,” Kara said, “we can’t afford to pay them.”
“Pay ’em!” he said in shock. “Why, honey, they’re probably gonna offer to pay you!”
“Pay—” Kara choked at the notion. “B-but they can’t do that! Why, it’s hard, dirty work, sleeping on the ground, cold showers.”
“Food’s good,” Rye mumbled hopefully.
“No TV,” Kara went on. “Riding all day. It rains, too. Man, I hate it when it rains!”
“There’s music,” Rye said. “Dean even wears earphones on horseback.”
“Bugs and vermin.” Kara shuddered. “And you won’t believe how stuff wears out!”
“Still, there’s something to be said for sitting around a campfire at night,” Rye pointed out. “And we could post extra guards.”
“Guard duty!” Kara said, rolling her eyes. “It’s boring and it’s cold and all you want to do is sleep, even if it is on the ground.” She shook her head and bit her lip. Rye had a pleading look about him. She thought what it would mean to have extra hands to share the work. “Well, I couldn’t possibly charge them,” she said flatly. “It wouldn’t be—”
Rye put his hand over her mouth, explaining, “But we can dam sure feed them. You tell them, would you, Mr. Tenery? Tell them just how it is, and if they still want to go, well—”
Kara pulled his hand from her mouth and exclaimed, “We’ll take them!”
Tenery chuckled and rubbed his hands together. “I’d go myself. I purely would! But I wouldn’t be no help to you.” He held out gnarled hands, adding, “Arthritis.” Shaking his head, he went out to greet the two cowboys riding up. Their eagerness showed on their faces as they dismounted.
“I can’t believe this!” Rye said, watching the conversation progress. He shook the paper still in his hand at the cowboys listening intently to Hud Tenery’s explanation of what they could expect. “Honey, do you know what this means?”
“It means we’re going to make it,” she said excitedly. “God bless them all, we are going to make it!”
He swept her up into his arms and threw back his head, laughing. “Lady, you are magic! Pure magic!” Eyes sparkling, he kissed her hard on the mouth. Then he sobered. “You didn’t really think we’d fail before now, did you?”
“Not a bit of it,” she told him, looking straight into his eyes. “You’re a winner, Rye Wagner. I knew that about you the very first time I laid eyes on you, and that you’re arrogant as all get-out.” He just grinned and kissed her again.
“I swear,” Rye said into the telephone, “it was like something out of an old Western. These two come riding up through the middle of town all geared out for the trail. I half expected sixguns slung low on the hip, and actually, one of them—that’d be Charlie Choate—is packing a rifle. I assured him there wouldn’t be any call to use it, but you never know.”
“We can sure use the help, though,” Pogo said. Then he paused and added, “Hey, Rye, you don’t think there’s anything suspicious about this, do you? I mean, they couldn’t have been set on us or anything?”
The thought had occurred, but Rye had satisfied himself that it wasn’t so. “They drew straws for the jobs, Pogo. Hud Tenery held them in his own fist while they drew. I think we just sort of captured their imaginations, you know?”
“Hell, Rye, why do you think I’m here? When do you suppose any of us will ever have an opportunity to experience something like this again?”
“I suppose. But you haven’t had the organizing or the worry of it.”
“It’s a big job, for sure,” Pogo allowed, “but you’re a big man, Rye. You and Kara have done right fine together. Seems like you two make a pretty good team.”
Rye clamped his jaws shut. They made a good team, all right. When it came to sex or work, they were better than just good together, but beyond that, he just didn’t know. Actually, he did know. He knew that beyond those two things, he’d find some way to screw it up. Just the suggestion that he and Kara ought to be a permanent thing lifted the hair on the back of his neck and brought the very real urge to run fast in the opposite direction. And at the same time the idea of ending it was eating him alive.
“Rye? Rye, are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here, but you know what, you’ve got work to do, so I won’t keep you. I just wanted you to know that Charlie and Wes will be joining you, and that you’re to put them to work, and also that it’ll be tomorrow afternoon before Kara and I can catch up to you. Something about connectors. Anyway, we’ll spend one more night here and catch up with you by lunch tomorrow. Anything comes up, you know how to reach us.”
“Sure enough, boss. Take it easy. You two deserve a break.”
“See you tomorrow.”
He pushed the Off button on the phone and flipped it closed. One more night. Tomorrow night they would spend at the ranch south of Durango, and after that, Chance would be with them again. One more night. Just one. He felt an odd pain in the vicinity of his chest, a tightness that made him want to cough and pound a fist against his breastbone. Kara bumped open the door with her hip and came inside, carrying two large containers of fountain drinks.
“This cola is so good,” she said, sipping from one straw. Then she stopped and looked at the hand he’d unwittingly pressed against the center of his chest. “What’s the matter, hon? Something wrong?”
He dropped his hand. “Oh, no. Pogo’s really pleased about the new guys, especially since we’ll be here one more night. I told him we’d be in the saddle by tomorrow afternoon. If we could afford to pull another hand away from the drive right now, I’d have someone come get us. With two new men we could always send somebody back for the motor home.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not an option. Guess we could have somebody come tonight after the herd’s bedded down, but I know they’ll all be tired, and we should be back with them before
lunch tomorrow, anyway.” She slipped up onto the corner of the desk. Leaning forward, she placed his drink in front of him. “I should’ve stayed with them. You could’ve handled this alone.”
“Glad you didn’t,” he said softly.
She smiled. “Me, too. Tomorrow night we’ll be at your family’s ranch.”
He couldn’t quite look her. “Yeah.”
She straightened and sipped her cola. “So tell me about it, your folks’ ranch, I mean.”
He reached for his drink, sucked down several gulps so cold they hurt and launched into a detailed description, beginning with the ranch’s location south of the city of Durango. “It’s not in the mountains, but they’re there, you know, regal and beautiful, a perfect backdrop. Then there’s the Animas River to the west. It moves, that river, sometimes like gangbusters. Fishing’s great. Pasture’s real good, too. They have to do some haying in winter, but not so much as you’d think, you know?”
“Sounds kind of like Chama, but without the mountains. Summers are great, really green and rich. And the winters are cold, plenty of snow, that sort of thing, but not so bad as around here. I love it.”
Rye nodded. “Sounds like home.”
“What about the house?” she asked.
“Big old two-story thing. Dad built the original ground floor himself. Then later they had the upstairs added on. Mom has this thing about green on white, so they put on white siding a few years ago, and the shingles and shutters are all green.” He went on to describe the deep front porch that was stacked with cordwood in the winter and the red rock fireplace, one in the living room, one in the master bedroom, which was habitually the coldest room in the house. He talked about his mother’s big, homey kitchen and how hard it was getting for her to manage with her arthritis so bad. “My brother’s wife, Kay, was a real help to her,” he said.
Kara was surprised. “I didn’t know Jess was married.”
“She died. It was a freak accident. They went out for a late dinner one summer evening to this place out on the mountain road, and a storm came rolling down on them. Thunder and lightning, sheets of rain. It was real intense, lasted an hour or more. Lightning struck a transmitter, but nobody minded too much. They just lit the candles on the tables, and that made it more romantic. They were the first ones to leave, and Kay took her shoes off because, she said, the ground was wet and she didn’t want to ruin them. Jess always said it was more that she couldn’t resist a good mud puddle. He offered to carry her, but she wanted to walk. He was wearing boots with rubber soles himself. Anyway, it was dark out, so they couldn’t see.... They just didn’t know that lines were down all over the parking lot. She stepped barefoot into a little bitty puddle, and a jolt of electricity knocked her about twenty feet. They said she died instantly. Jess got a good shock himself when he went down on his knees to try to help her, but it was dryer there, so that and the rubber soles on his boots saved him. Ambulance driver told me that he had to pry their hands apart, though. Jess had grabbed her, and then he either couldn’t or wouldn’t let go again.”
Kara’s eyes were full of tears, though he’d told the story in the flank, unemotional way he’d learned to long ago. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “When was that?”
“Eight, nine, no, by golly, I guess it’s ten years ago next summer now. I was twenty-three. So she would’ve been twenty-five, and Jesse was twenty-eight.”
“And he never remarried.”
He shook his head. “Naw, guess he didn’t have the heart for it after that. There’s a woman in Durango, I understand, but Jess is real discreet. Must not be very serious. He’s been seeing her four or five years, I’m told.”
“And you’ve never met her?”
He shook his head. “Nor the folks, either, and if it was serious, you can bet she’d have been introduced to Mom by now. Besides, he occasionally dates, not too often, but occasionally. He says at his age they’re all too young or divorced and needing help with another man’s kids. Not that he wouldn’t make a good father or that he’d object to a ready-made family if there wasn’t another man in the picture somewhere. He likes to take a hand with Champ now and again, and I’m glad to let him. It’s hard, raisin’ a kid on your own.”
Kara sighed. “Life gets awful complicated, doesn’t it?”
Rye nodded. “Yeah. Even for Jesse, and he’s a real uncomplicated sort of guy.”
“You’re not,” Kara said matter-of-factly.
“Guess not,” he admitted. “Most the time, I can’t even figure me out. You’d think brothers would be more alike.”
“Just look at my dad and Uncle Smitty, though,” she said. “They had even less in common than you and Jesse. You’d think they’d been raised in different households, in different parts of the country, even. Smitty grew up on the Utah spread same as Daddy, but he has no feeling for the life at all, and Dad, well, you couldn’t separate him from it. It was part of him.”
“Like you,” Rye said.
“Like me.”
She held his gaze for a long time, and he knew that she was telling him this was something strong they had in common, but there remained something stronger still, something that made him aware of his own body in ways he’d never been aware before, something that made him crave the feel of her, made him long to have her next to him. It scared him. He didn’t want this need that she’d awakened in him. And he had Champ to consider. His son always would come first. He couldn’t let her become so important to him that he’d risk Champ’s emotional well-being, too. How the hell was he supposed to stop these feelings, though? He hadn’t found any way yet. But he would, even if it meant just digging down and enduring. He’d endured worse, after all.
Hadn’t he?
Chapter Thirteen
She had the feeling that he was trying to make it last, trying to store up memories to hold them through the worst of what was coming. Already she could feel him steeling himself to walk away, to endure the regrets and recriminations with which he would heap himself when it ended. She couldn’t help him. She wanted to. Perversely, she wanted to make it easier for him to walk away from her, but only because she didn’t want him to hurt, didn’t want to add to the well of pain that he so carefully tended inside of him, because she loved him. In the end, it all came down to that simple fact. She loved Ryeland Wagner, loved him with a fullness and completeness at which she could only marvel. The pity of it was that for Rye it wasn’t enough.
She thought sometimes that she could hate Di’wana Wagner.
But not tonight. Tonight was about squeezing the most out of every moment they had left.
They borrowed a radio from the mechanic and tuned in the local station, amused and amazed to find that the trail drive was a favorite subject for comment by the listeners who called in to request songs and dedications. The only spot in the motor home big enough to dance in was the space meant as a kitchen, and even there they could only hold one another and sway to the music, shuffling their feet in a tight, never-ending circle. The fact that they did it naked, wet from a long, hot shower together in the claustrophobically small bath, more than made up for the lack of ambience. Who needed ambience when there was so much slick, wet skin on bodies that fitted so nicely together? Who needed room when closeness proved so rewarding?
They danced until their bodies dried and then until the little puddles of water that dripped on the floor dried, as well. When Kara could no longer deny the necessity of combing through her damp hair, they went on to another, altogether surprising form of stimulation. She wouldn’t have believed that having her hair slowly and gently brushed by a naked man cradling her between his thighs could be so blazingly erotic. Somehow her hair seemed to get longer by the yard as he stroked surely and rhythmically through it, and she felt every glide of the brush throughout her whole body until even her bones seemed to crackle with alectricity. When at last he dropped the brush to the sofa and pulled her back against his chest, sliding his hands around to cup and lift her breasts, she was
near to shattering, every nerve ending hypersensitive, and yet, at the very same time, she felt a languid contentment completely at odds with the situation.
She laid her head back on his shoulder and closed her eyes, giving herself up to the incredible sensations wrought by his hands on her body. They never moved from her breasts, never faltered or hesitated in their skillful, gentle ministrations. She reveled in the gradual swelling, the pooling of heat, the correlating tautness and melting in parts of her body as yet untouched. Still, the climax caught her by surprise. One moment she was arching her back, instinctively begging for more, and the next she was falling off a cliff somewhere, darkness shattering with wave upon wave of explosive color.
She was aware of moving to the bedroom, of where his hands went and what his mouth did. She devoted herself to repaying every sensation received with one given, and yet she never quite recovered herself. From that first moment of explosion onward he kept her spinning, tumbling, soaring, plummeting. Time after time he led her to the edge and urged her, pushed her, flung her over it. She wept at the sweetness, screamed in joyful turmoil, clawed and clung and sobbed and sighed, and with every touch, every whisper, every glance and movement, she loved him more, until her whole being expanded with it, grew and changed and reinvented itself. She was stronger, deeper, wiser, more selfless. Complete.
She loved completely, and nothing could ever take that away. No pain, no separation, no thought, no word, no deed could render completion less. The agonized looks that occasionally flickered across his face to be quickly replaced by a calm, indulgent smile told her that she could not truly spare him. Rye’s emotional turmoil was his own product, the result, yes, of past betrayal but also of present determination not to allow himself to truly love again. She grieved for him, but did not try to tell herself that she could change him. How could she love him and want him different? Instead, she tried to trust that the man she loved would prove singularly unable to let real love pass him by. And if he did not? Well, she would love him still, unreservedly, even unconditionally. She didn’t know how to love any other way.