by BJ James
Chafing at legal delays, and then the delay by his year of rehab, she’d taken her awarded share and celebrated. He’d paid the debts of the marriage and his injury. Now she wanted more. “So you’ve come to stake a claim on the Broken Spur.”
“Just my legal share.”
“Only what you’re due,” Steve mused as if mulling over the possibilities.
“Exactly,” Angie agreed quickly.
Steve’s laugh was harsh. “In that case, what you’re due is exactly what I said, half of a tremendous debt and a long wait.”
A smug smile turned her face ugly. “What I have is half a stable of valuable horses, and half a canyon Jake Benedict would give his soul to own.”
“The canyon isn’t for sale.”
“We’ll see about that, won’t we?”
“There’s nothing to see. You’ve taken all from me that you’re going to. The Broken Spur isn’t for sale under any circumstance.” Grim with anger, Steve turned from Angie to Jasper. “Get her off my land, Tad, and out of my sight before I throttle her.”
“Oh, ho! Listen to him! A cuckold from one end of the rodeo circuit to the other, and never any show of spirit. But look at him now.” Angie tucked her thumbs in the band of her trousers. Pleased by the success of her goading, she rocked back on the heels of her boots and laughed. “The pussy cat finally shows some claws.”
“The claws were always there, sugar.” Steve said quietly, reining in his temper. “You just never saw them before, you weren’t worth the effort to unsheath them.”
“How dare you!”
“I dare a lot when it comes to the Broken Spur.” Without looking away from her, he spoke again to Jasper. “You don’t need this scheming bitch, but if you want her and her pretty neck in one piece, take her away. Now.”
Leaving Angie to sputter at the savage dismissal, and Jasper to stand with his mouth agape, Steve went to see to Gitano. He was sliding the saddle from the stallion’s back when he realized Angie had followed him.
“You never cared.” The words were thrown at him as she blocked his path to the shed where the saddles were stored. “You never loved me at all, and I knew it” A small quaver crept into her voices. “Did it ever occur to you that all I did was in the hope that I was wrong? That somewhere along the way you would say, stop.”
“Frankly, no, it never occurred to me, and I doubt the idea ever occurred to you until now. But you’re right about another thing. I didn’t love you.” His voice gentled, for even when he fought for a dream, he wasn’t a cruel man. “My father had just died, and for the first time there was only myself, and the endless days and nights. I’d been alone, but never lonely, or in love.”
He looked at her then with a mix of pity and remorse. “For my sins, Angie, I mistook what you brought to me as love, rather than the temporary ease of loneliness. For that, I’m sorry.”
Her openhanded blow took him unprepared. His head rocked with it, and back again with the second. “You aren’t half as sorry as you’re going to be, Steve Cody!” Her shriek became a threat. “Or half as poor!”
“We’ll see, Mrs. Cody—the ex—Mrs. Cody.” He bowed mockingly over the saddle. “Remember, half of nothing is still nothing .”
“Let’s go, Tad. Our business here is ended, for now.” Sliding her hand through the cowboy’s folded arms, she steered him toward their car. “Just so you’ll know,” she called back to Steve, “we won’t be very far away. Anytime you want to make a deal, we can be found at the Silverton Hotel.”
“No deals, Angie.”
“No? As you say, Stevie, we will see.” The last of another threat was lost in the starting rumble of the engine. With a slam of doors and a punishing turn that barely missed the corral, Jasper drove toward Silverton.
“Whoa, boy. Easy.” Steve settled Gitano with a croon. Music blaring from speakers positioned along the parade ground pounded the bordering stockyards with the throbbing beat of an old headache lurking in the brain.
“It’s not as quiet as the canyon by a long shot, but we’ll manage.” He stroked the arching quivering neck of the high strung stallion as it crowded closer to the makeshift fence that separated them. “We’ll do better than manage, and in three days we’ll be home.”
Silverton’s Fall Festival was in peak form. From the look of the crowd, every cowboy and cowgirl from every ranch for miles around jammed the streets and festival concourse. Sprinkled among them were gaggles of children, a cosmopolite or two, families, tourists, city folk and farmers. And if luck was with him, more than a serious breeder or two.
As he’d always done, he stood apart, more observer than participant, his thoughts turned inward, his concentration centered on the contest at hand. Yet this time he hadn’t been so completely unaware or so completely untouched by the mood of the crowd.
This time he’d listened and watched. Absorbed the atmosphere, and watched. And when he searched among the crowd, there was laughter on every lip, a twinkle in the eye, a swagger in jaunty steps. Finery shouted its stiff newness in a flash of gaudy colors, or announced treasured antiquity in a worn and muted sheen. But no matter the costume, or its age, one thing was clear, for native Westerners and tenderfoot alike boots and buckles and Western hats were de rigueur.
As were dust, heat, sawdust and sand. Adrenaline surged, excitement mounted, the scent and feel of them hovered in the air. Silverton named it festival, but by any name it was much like a thousand small town rodeos he’d ridden in a thousand times. The aura was always the same, and beyond the season he’d found little difference from his first day in town.
Except the face he searched for wasn’t there.
“But no matter what, this time, we’re part of it.” A very different part, because he was different. He’d come with a sense of trepidation, wondering if he’d feel a stranger in a world that was once his life. He found instead that he liked this new role in which horse and rider would work together, rather than one struggling to conquer the other. “We’ll work together, and we’ll walk away with best of show in more categories than one.”
In this quiet time, when the stockyards were oddly deserted and only he moved among the animals, he let himself admit winning wouldn’t be quite the same without someone to share it. “But we’ll manage in that, as well, Gitano. We’ll manage.”
He’d managed already, for Savannah had been conspicuously absent from the Broken Spur in the week following Angie’s fiasco. Yet absence hadn’t blinded him to the wisdom of her advice. On a dark and lonely night, when the canyon seemed more claustrophobic than tranquil, he’d changed the course of his plans. He would show the stallion and Lorelei, and enter The Lady in competition. If they won, the prize money would help ease the financial burden, the honor and exposure would do more.
“The Cody horse,” Steve said simply because he liked the name. And because he’d begun to believe it might come to pass.
But would it be the same without Savannah?
He missed her. Every day he missed her. The emptiness she’d left in his life never lessened, not even when he accepted that it would be permanent. “We’ll make it, Gitano.” He stroked the stallion, assuring himself more than the animal. “It won’t be easy, but we will.”
Gitano’s whinny, and the flick of his ears, warned Steve they weren’t alone. Swinging around, he found himself face-to-face with the last person he expected.
“Savannah.”
“I’m sorry.” She was ashen, shadows still lay beneath her eyes. The surprise and malaise that swept over her face were quickly concealed. But not quickly enough. She backed away, half turned to go, yet she didn’t. Still poised for flight, stammered excuses poured from her. “Sandy told me Gitano was here. I thought he was alone. I wanted to see him.” Subdued, she made another apology. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“You aren’t intruding. In a way, you have as much at stake in this as I.” Black eyes, hungry for the sight of her, savored every detail.
She’d proven
she was many women, and today she was yet another he’d never seen. Familiar and practical work clothes had been discarded for traditional Western garb. Handsomely tailored narrow trousers and a shirt in shades of gray fit her slender frame like a glove. A fringed vest of butter-soft leather draped loosely over the slight rise of her breasts. Only a belt of silver, inlaid with turquoise, revealed that pounds only recently recouped had been lost again.
She was beautiful and frayed at once, and he wondered if she was sleeping at all. From the underlying fragility he sensed, he suspected that she wasn’t.
If things were as they should be, when the festival was done, he would take her to the Broken Spur. There he would kiss away her doubts, and hold her while she slept. And when the fatigue was gone, he would make love to her until she slept again.
But things weren’t as they should be.
“Gitano missed you. So did Lorelei. The Lady went off her feed for a day or two.” He searched for safer topics and found there were none.
“I missed them.” She was becoming more ill at ease and more anxious to be away, but couldn’t bring herself to leave without a word of encouragement. “I wish you luck with them.”
“I don’t need luck.” Steve took a step toward her, drawn by a power stronger than he. “I had you.” Flags of color brightened her cheeks at the tribute. He smiled ruefully. “In that, I was fortunate. Win or lose, Savannah, you made them champions.”
“You would have done as well. Perhaps better, if it weren’t for the Lawters.”
“I owe them a debt of gratitude.”
He was so close. His nearness, the familiar scent of him—soap and leather and captured sunlight—made her head spin. She wanted to run from him, she wanted to run to him. She wanted him to hold her and make her believe everything would be all right. Instead, she stood her ground, clinging to the little pride he’d left her. “The Lawters could have killed you. What debt could you owe them?”
“They brought you to me, and into my arms.”
“Don’t!” She backed away, giving ground she hadn’t intended. “I’m not sorry I came to you. I would have done it for anyone.”
“The Good Samaritan?”
“If you like, yes. The rest was a grave mistake.”
“No!” He caught her hand in his, keeping her with him. “Nothing as right as what we shared could be a mistake.”
“So right you forgot a little detail like having a wife?”
“Ex-wife,” Steve said patiently. “You seem determined to forget that most important detail.”
“All right, then, ex-wife.” Savannah stood stiffly in his grasp. “One who clearly doesn’t plan on remaining an ex for very long.”
“She wants half the canyon and the Broken Spur, not me. You’re a fool if you can’t see that.”
Savannah laughed. Even to her the sound bordered on hysteria. “You’re an even bigger fool if you can’t see she wants both.”
“Dammit! You don’t know anything at all about our marriage and what it was like, but just like that, with a snap of her fingers, you think I’m going to fall back into her arms?”
“She’s a beautiful woman.”
“So are you, Savannah.”
Jerking back violently, she pulled from his grasp. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Then go!” Simmering temper flared as Steve lashed out. “Nobody asked you to come here. Just as nobody asked you to come to the canyon. We would have muddled through then. We will now.”
“But...” Inexplicably, she was reluctant to leave, when it was what she’d wanted only a heartbeat before.
“Go!” The word was a snarling command. He was convinced there was nothing more to say, yet when she made no move to comply, he sighed harshly, and heard himself offering explanations. “Okay.” He shrugged in defeat. “Maybe you were right. Maybe I should have told you about Angie, but I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t want to sully what we had by bringing her into it. Maybe I forgot. Or maybe I simply didn’t think she was an issue, any more than if you had some past lover hovering in the background.
“Hell, maybe I didn’t think at all.” His blazing gaze held hers. “I couldn’t, you know, when you were in my arms.”
With a shock, Savannah realized only then that in their quiet moments, when they spoke of more than ranching and horses, their discussions of the past had centered on childhood and family and ambitions. Beyond that, she’d thought no more clearly, and been no more forthcoming, than he.
Suddenly it seemed important that he know what he’d never asked. “Steve.”
“What?” The word burst from him with the force of an expletive. A savage gesture underscored his tension. “What now?”
Her mouth was dry, she felt like a schoolgirl admitting she hadn’t done her homework. “You never asked... I never told you...” She was babbling like that frightened schoolgirl, and didn’t know why.
“What didn’t I ask?” Anger abated, tensions eased as swiftly as they’d come. His was reflective, bemused. “What didn’t you tell me?”
Her heart thudded beneath her breast, her throat threatened to close. Her lips barely moved in a whisper. “No lovers.”
Two words that he didn’t seem to hear, exacting a toll beyond their worth. Clearing her throat, and drawing herself erect, she repeated in a voice that was thankfully strong, “I’ve had no other lovers. There was never anyone before you.” Staring down at her hands, unable to meet his look, she whispered almost too softly to be heard, “No one ever mattered as much.”
Steve heard. Each time he’d heard her admission, but in his heart he’d always known. Just as in her heart she should know he could never settle for someone like Angie again.
If only she’d listened to her heart’s voice...but that time was past. “Go,” he repeated wearily. “Thene’s nothing left for us now.”
“There never was.”
“You don’t believe that!” His head reared back, the fire in him rekindled. “You don’t believe it now, and you didn’t then, or you would never have come to my bed.”
“I don’t know what I believed.”
“Don’t you?” His look touched every part of her, remembering the woman who had held him and loved him as fiercely as he had loved her. “You’re asking me to accept that you crawled into my bed with no more concern than an alley cat in heat?”
The harsh analogy stunned her, but she made no effort to interrupt him.
“Jake Benedict’s daughter wouldn’t.” His tone lost its hard edge. “Camilla Neal’s daughter couldn’t. Not for any reason save one.”
“Lust or love,” she spoke as thoughtfully as he. “Whatever the reason, does it matter anymore?”
He was silent for a long while. The brassy music blasting over the festival grounds changed, shifted moods. Trumpets and drums gave way to the mellow notes of a guitar strumming the opening chords of a plaintive Western ballad. Before the melody became apparent, the pure, sweet notes were reminiscent of a favorite adagio. A poignant, heartbreaking composition they’d listened to together countless times.
There was music. As the sun dipped behind the Western rim and darkness filtered through the canyon. Music. As storms of heart and body raged. Music. As her body curled into his, tender and trusting, and thoroughly loved.
Rhythmic cadences of a popular tune became more pronounced and definitive, his sense of déjà vu vanished. An ache for lost trust filled him.
There was music. As hope perished.
“You’re right, Benedict. Lust or love, what does it matter?” He moved away, dismissing her. Little changed about his posture. His back was as straight and strong, his broad shoulders as stalwart. The tilt of his head beneath the brim of his Stetson was neither belligerent nor dejected. He’d put her out of his life, without a backward glance, accepting the emotional pain as stoically as he did physical pain.
Only the tiniest tremor in the hand that stoked Gitano’s forelock betrayed him. And, if Savannah had been near enough to see, would have
proved his cool rejection a lie.
Standing as she had, yet completely and firmly dismissed, she was bewildered by her continued reluctance to go. She shuffled her feet, her boots scuffing the straw strewn dirt. It was only a small move, but one that uprooted her from this place that seemed to hold her with a will of its own. And still she couldn’t go.
“Steve.”
He turned to her, his expression hard beneath the sardonic line of his brows. “Still here? When only a minute ago what you wanted most was to be gone from the unscrupulous rogue?”
She turned more than ashen under the windburn of her skin, and Steve wondered why he couldn’t hate her for understanding him so little. Why he wanted to hold her and comfort her for the insult she’d paid him.
“I never called you either unscrupulous or a rogue.” Her voice was baiting, broken. Her hands were still locked before her, slender fingers twisted fretfully.
“One look was worth a thousand words, sweetheart.”
The name that should have been an endearment crushed her with its rancor. They couldn’t be lovers, should never have been, but she didn’t want him to despise her. “I never meant it to be like this. This isn’t how I wanted it to be.”
“How do you want it, Savannah?”
“I was hoping we could be friends.”
“Just friends?” Cynical disbelief swept through him. She thought they could be just friends, when even now, when he’d meant to turn his back on her forever, he still wanted her? Silently he damned her naiveté, while every part of him ached so badly for her he was like an maddened addict. An addict whose drug was Savannah. Whose craving was so great that, with the least provocation, not even the risk of intruders would stop him from dragging her down with him to the straw and making love to her at Gitano’s feet.
The worst of it was he knew that once he touched her she wouldn’t stop him. Then would come the hate. Until the next time.
“Friends? That’s what you want from me? All you want?” There was a storm in his look, thunder in his voice.