The Love of a Cowboy

by Anna Jeffrey

  She went back inside and to her room, pulled her extra blanket off her sleeping bag and draped it over Piggy’s still body. Piggy snored away, unconscious to being on the brink of hypothermia.

  As shadowy quiet stole through the empty house, she thought of how Luke McRae seemed to fill the small space.

  And she had looked and sounded like a dumb klutz.

  If she had a reputation for anything, it was for her cool head. When all around her screeched in hysterics, hers was the rational voice. Emotional ups and downs didn’t paralyze her productivity. Hormonal ebbs and flows didn’t drive her to do irrational things. Ever. What had happened to all of that? This tall stranger had wiped out her unflappability as if it had never existed and her hormones must be rioting.

  She went back to her room, rolled up her sleeping bag and carried it to the living room, where she spread it on the floor in front of the fire. Then she turned off the lights, added another layer of clothing and sweats and burrowed into the sleeping bag.

  Though she was worn out, sleep didn’t come. Luke McRae and his sexual remarks kept sneaking into her thoughts. Was he teasing her or was he serious? She was sure he had been aroused there in front of the fire place. Did he really think she would just up and . . .

  Piggy would. Piggy would already be in bed with him and tomorrow, be joking about mindless sex. Dahlia had never had mindless sex in her life, nor had she experienced the variety Piggy had. Her physical relationship with Kenneth had been on a more elevated plane, or so he said. She now knew that was an excuse for the truth. He had been having sex with someone else.

  Piggy’s drunken snore resonated from the bedroom. Oh God. Four months. She must have been insane to let Piggy and Dad talk her into coming here. If only she were home, warm and safe in her own bed, around people she had known all her life, where failings of the opposite sex were common lore and she didn’t have to guess at the motives.

  Yet even as she wished for home, she found herself wondering if and when she would see Luke McRae again and at the same time, fearing she might.

  Piloting his old Ford north, Luke let the hot coffee slide down his throat and warm him from the inside out. Weariness settled on him. He had been up since four-thirty and he was unaccustomed to drinking so much.

  The green-eyed woman wouldn’t leave his thoughts. It was too strange running into her twice in one day. What was even stranger was getting a hard-on in front of her fireplace. She didn’t look anything like the Nordic types who usually turned him on. And she was nervous—just about the most nervous person he had ever met. And serious. She had hardly cracked a smile all evening. He wondered what she would call fun.

  He sighed. It didn’t matter. Unless she froze to death in that house, it was doubtful he would ever hear of her or see her again, which was just as well. His associations with the opposite sex were better left out of town, away from wagging tongues and prying eyes.

  In Callister, folks nosed into their friends’ and neighbors’ lives for entertainment. His hell-raising marriage and ball-busting divorce had put his whole family on the receiving end of gossip in a way few McRaes had ever been. The opinions of the bigmouths in town meant no more to him personally than a bunch of magpies squawking, but he would be forever making up for the hurt and embarrassment he and his ex-wife had brought down on his innocent family members.

  Janet had been away from the Double Deuce, if not out of his hair, for five years now and the busybodies had moved on to juicier victims. Her exit had restored harmony to life at the ranch and he would fight a pack of wolves before he would let it get screwed up again.

  He finished off the coffee and thought about the green-eyed woman’s fingers touching his when she handed him the cup. And the way he had lingered a few extra minutes at her front door, hoping for…what? An invitation to stay over? He chuckled. Hell, she didn’t even have a bed.

  Then he wondered if, back in Texas, she might have a husband she had forgotten to mention. When it came to lying and deception, he wouldn’t put anything past a good-looking woman.

  You said that as if you’re ancient. Her words in that soft Texas drawl hung in his memory. Ancient. That’s how he felt, all right. Older than dirt, older than his years. When was the last time he had felt young? Or been allowed to be young? A father and a husband at nineteen, a ranch manager at twenty-four, it seemed he had been an adult forever. His one brief excursion into the frivolity of youth had been when he played basketball for a year at college.

  Well, so much for that. A man could waste all night thinking useless thoughts. He would be home soon. A couple hours sleep, breakfast with his kids and his mom and dad, then a decision what to do about his son, Jimmy. The seven-year-old’s needs were as relentless as winter in the mountains. Putting him in a boarding school a hundred thirty miles from home was a resolution of long-range consequence and Luke would make the decision only after he had slept on the question.

  He clicked on the radio to see if he could pick up a station. Static hissed as low, green light illuminated the cab. Most of the time, besides being dark, the long night ride from town to the Double Deuce was silent and lonesome. Radio waves, like a lot of things, didn’t penetrate the mountains. Once, he had paid the trip no mind, had used the two hours to think and plan, but nowadays, it seemed like getting home took longer.

  Turning down the volume to quiet the noise, he left the radio on. The light and the monotonous hum of the old Ford’s engine were company.

  Chapter 5

  Dahlia had to run, if for no other reason, to clear the cobwebs of sleep. After stoking the fire, she tugged her ski jacket over the three layers of clothing in which she had slept and tiptoed out the front door. At home, she ran at least three days a week, a mile in the summer when the eighty-degree mornings steamed the Texas landscape, two miles or more in the cooler winter months. It did more than keep her trim and fit; the runner’s high kept her spirits from plummeting farther into a black hole.

  Achy and stiff from sleeping on the floor, she jogged toward the end of the block. A long block later, slapped awake by the chilled daylight air, her blood was singing through her veins. She shifted into an easy lope, sucking in the cold, fresh air, exhaling visible clouds of vapor.

  Luke McRae. Cowboy. Jerk.

  He had baited, teased and maybe insulted her—she still wasn’t sure. One thing she was sure of: he had turned her into a bumbling fool and she wouldn’t let that happen again.

  The shrill scraping noise from the sawmill cut through the still morning. Except for a few barking dogs and the crunch of her footfalls on the unpaved road, it was the only sound. Her thoughts veered from Luke McRae to men in general.

  For two years she had kept men at a distance. Too busy at the grocery store to cater to a fragile male ego—that was the excuse. The truth was, the years as Kenneth Jarrett’s wife had damaged her confidence in herself as a woman, had left her untrusting and afraid of being hurt again. Common sense told her every man out there wasn’t as deceptive as he had been, but she considered herself too naïve to know the difference. So she worked hard at helping Dad and clung to the ideal of someday meeting someone as trustworthy and giving as her father was.

  If she continued to meet men like Luke McRae or Mick Ivey, she would probably give up altogether. Grow old alone, dress funny and raise cats.

  She made a right turn and pushed herself two more blocks, pumping her arms. Her eyes watered, nose ran, lungs burned. She felt better already. Another right turn and she was on her way back to the cottage with one goal—a bath and a shampoo, regardless of the temperature in that house.

  When she tiptoed back into the house, Piggy hadn’t surfaced. The fire in the fireplace had warmed the living room to bearable. She gathered her robe and toiletries, set her jaw and trekked to the frigid bathroom.

  A shower head hung over the undersized, fiberglass tub, but the bathroom was so compact, without a plastic curtain, taking a shower would douse the entire room. She filled the tub with hot water a
nd poured in bubble bath. Lavender-scented steam rose and mingled with the strong lingering smell of fresh paint. Sinking into the bubbles, she drew her knees up to her chest and washed fast, passed on shaving her legs.

  Shampooing her hair presented a shivery challenge, but she would endure great inconvenience for the sake of her curly hair-do. It represented freedom and defiance. Kenneth had insisted she wear a smooth bob, no longer than just below her ears. Looks more professional, not quite so earthy, he had always said. Every day, she regretted she hadn't re-styled it while he was alive. It still grated thinking how she had allowed him to dictate her very appearance.

  Letting a dead man have that much influence in her life was sick, Piggy said, but Dahlia had argued that her hair obsession was about survival, no different from Piggy’s promiscuity. Her teeth were chattering and her skin had taken on a purple hue by the time she finished rinsing away the shampoo, but the triumph heartened her. She took her mousse, her hair pick and portable mirror to the warmth of the living room and set about the detangling.

  Piggy shuffled into the living room and wilted cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace. Lucy looked like hell this morning. “Where did we get fire?”

  Dahlia grinned. “A gremlin brought it.”

  Piggy squinted at Dahlia’s hair. “Hey, you’re wet.”

  “You should try the tub. It’s not too bad if you’re quick.”

  Piggy nodded and rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. “Since I’m numb, I won’t notice anyway.”

  “I’m fixin’ to make tea. Do you want coffee?”

  Piggy lay back, spread eagle on the hardwood floor. “I think I’d throw up. No kidding, where’d the wood come from? You chop up your cot?”

  “There’s a pile in the backyard. It was hidden by a big sheet of black plastic. Hot chocolate, then?”

  Piggy grunted. “Don’t feed me. Just shoot me. Put me out of my misery.”

  “It’s tempting.” Dahlia went to the kitchen. She returned with tea, hot chocolate and a package of bran muffins and sank cross-legged to the floor.

  Piggy sat up with a groan and reached for a muffin. “So many men, so many margaritas.”

  “And you drank all of them.”

  “At least I didn’t—”

  “Only because you didn’t get the chance.”

  “You know I didn’t mean to be an ass, Dal. Am I wrong, or were we the only women in that bar last night?”

  “Except for the employees. And the couples in the dining room.”

  “Wow. I think I’m gonna like it here.”

  Dahlia studied her for a moment, recalling a day from childhood, playing in the big oak tree that still grew near the patio in Dad’s backyard. Piggy had wanted to grow up and be a pirate. Dahlia wanted to marry someone just like Dad and have six babies. So much for childhood fantasy. Dahlia’s life hadn’t come close to how she had expected or wanted it to be. Never had she planned to become Dahlia Do-nothing.

  Before they finished breakfast, an Amoco stove oil delivery truck came and filled their oil tank. When they tried to pay the driver, he waved away their money and told them it was all taken care of. Dahlia didn’t know who had paid for it—their landlord or Luke McRae.

  The truck driver gave them instructions for igniting the furnace and soon divine heat filled the cottage’s five rooms. An hour later, like a specter emerging from the mists, a Suburban appeared in the driveway. Hail Jerry Murphy.

  “Where the hell have you been, Jerry?” Piggy slugged his shoulder. “We waited two hours at the Exxon station on Sunday, then again yesterday at the Forest Service. If I hadn’t had the key and the address of this house, we would be sleeping in my Blazer.”

  “Yeah,” Dahlia added, “thanks a lot. We were ready to pack up and go home.”

  Jerry laughed. “Would you believe, stuck in traffic?. His attention landed on Dahlia. “Dal, baby! It’s been a few.” He swept her into a dance position and waltzed her around the living room. “Love the hair, babe. You look like Cher. Hell, you look better than Cher.”

  After a couple of turns, Dahlia wrenched from his clutches with a laugh. She slugged him, too. “You haven’t changed a bit, Jerry. You’re still full of bull.”

  “Might be. And we’re already behind schedule.” He rubbed his palms together. Get your warm clothes on and let’s go.”

  They threw on the warmest garments they had and loaded into his Suburban. He drove them thirty miles uphill through wet snow and thawing mud to just below the snowline. “Wolf Mountain,” he announced. “We’ll start here.”

  Jerry’s voice took on a warning tone. “Dammit, Piggy, don’t start with me. I’ve got a deadline and heavy penalties if I don’t meet it.” He jabbed a forefinger against her collarbone. “You wanted this job, cousin. I told you from the first, this is physical, outdoor work. If you’re gonna flake out on me, do it before we start so I can hire somebody else.”

  Dahlia sighed, zipped up her jacket and stepped out of the back seat—into mud past her ankles. Her best Nike running shoes were soaked with slimy guck inside as well as outside.

  “This is the end of the world,” Piggy groused. “Who’s ever gonna come up here to know if it’s surveyed or not?”

  “Some logger type wants to trade this whole mountainside with the Forest Service for access to his trees. It’s been surveyed before, back in the forties. C’mon, I’ll show you how to find the old section corners.” Jerry lit out toward a gigantic evergreen tree.

  Piggy tramped after him, mumbling. Dahlia squished along behind them in wet, muddy shoes and grim silence as the reality of what was expected of them sank in. It looked like a long, hard summer ahead. And cold, too.

  Jerry dropped them off back at the cottage late in the afternoon. He asked if they had good gloves, sturdy boots and long underwear. Also cell phones. When they said they didn’t, he groaned and told them to take tomorrow, get their stuff together and meet him at the Forest Service offices at daylight Friday, ready to start. As an afterthought, he mentioned they would have to go shopping down in Boise, a hundred thirty miles away.

  For the first time in over a week, Dahlia and Piggy bathed, perfumed and made up, readying for a shopping trip to Boise using Piggy’s credit cards. Piggy put on jeans and boots, but not Dahlia. She donned a tan broomstick skirt and fussed over a top to match it. Wearing skirts made her feel feminine. She wore jeans only when she did something where a skirt would be too inconvenient.

  Piggy leaned a shoulder against the door frame as Dahlia tried her third top. “Wear that green shirt, the one with the lacy embroidery around the neck.”

  “It’s too low-necked—”

  “Wear it. It shows off your boobs. If we meet any new men, you’ll be irresistible.”

  “I don’t want to show off my boobs. I’m not trying to be irresistible.”

  “If I was a thirty-six-D, I’d wear the green one.”

  The bickering between them could go back and forth all day. Dahlia gave up and pulled on the long-sleeved, deep green velour shirt. It was slightly darker than her eyes. Its V-neck almost but didn’t quite show cleavage and it did flatter her full bosom.

  “Bright lights, big city,” Piggy sang as they left Callister in chilly, brilliant sunshine. Besides necessities for work, on their shopping list were items that, in Dahlia’s mind, were necessities of life—window shades, a shower curtain and some odds and ends for the kitchen. No matter what Piggy said, Dahlia planned to cook. Eating out was wasteful.

  Twenty-two miles out of town, the Blazer came to a choking, leaping halt. Piggy nursed it off the highway onto the shoulder. They opened the hood and stared into the engine well, brains anesthetized by the confusion of hoses and wires.As they contemplated their options, a white pickup slowed and pulled off the highway, crunching to a halt on the gravel behind the Blazer. Dahlia recognized the driver in silhouette even before the pickup stopped—the square set of wide shoulders, the shape of a head and hat. Her heart made a leap and she bit down
on her lower lip.

  Luke McRae stepped down from the driver’s side and sauntered toward them as if the temperature were eighty instead of forty. His denim jacket hung open showing a tan button-down shirt. His long legs filled a pair of clean and sharply creased Wranglers. Dahlia found herself wondering who, if he wasn’t married, put the crease in them.

  He stopped at the Blazer’s left front fender, planted his fists at his waist and looked down at the engine. A toothpick dangled from the corner of his mouth. “You girls have a breakdown?”

  Piggy’s brow arched. “Naw. We like to look at engines so much, sometimes we just have to stop wherever we are and do it.”

  Dahlia willed her pulse to settle down. “Maybe you’d let us use your phone.”

  He gave her a tolerant look. “My phone’s a long way from here.” He bent forward, jiggled and adjusted a few wires and hoses. “Start it up,” he told Piggy. Dahlia stuffed her hands in her pockets and waited as Piggy followed his instructions, with no results. Finally he said, “You’re not going anywhere in this rig right now. Looks to me like a bad fuel pump. Holt Johnson at the Exxon’s got a tow truck. I’ll take you back to town.”

  Dahlia found her tongue and stepped forward. “But that’s a lot of trouble. You’re going the opposite direction. If you could just send somebody—”

  “Two women sitting on the side of the highway all by themselves is a dumb idea.” He hitched a thumb toward his pickup. “Get in the truck.”

  Without further argument, shoulder to shoulder, Dahlia and Piggy marched toward the passenger door of the 4x4.

  “Who made him king?” Piggy grumbled. “Ordering people around like—”

  “Shut up. He’s right. I don’t want to sit on the side of the highway.”

  Dahlia yanked open the passenger door, lifted her foot to step up and stopped still. A small boy huddled by the steering wheel stared at her, clutching a toy horse in a choke hold. He was perhaps five or six. Pale and freckled and red-haired.