The Courting Cowboy

by Tara Janzen

  The information did not surprise him, not after seeing the photograph.

  “When Charles died, they swooped down on our apartment in Argentina and took over everything, including our research. I’ve been rather out in the cold ever since.”

  “That’s why you’re not rich anymore?”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “He should have taken better care of you.” Ty knew it wasn’t any of his business, but he found he didn’t like her dead husband.

  “I thought so at first.”

  “What changed your mind?” he asked, setting the photograph aside and trying to hide his irritation. He wasn’t in much of a forgiving mood when it came to old Charles Edward Willoughby IV.

  A moment passed before she answered.

  “For the first time in my life I’m responsible for taking care of myself. I like it. The more they take away from me, the less I seem to need. I’m getting along quite well without servants, though I do sometimes miss my secretary. J.J. could grade all those homework papers, do my lesson plans, keep Mr. Frazer happy, and still have energy left over to work on organizing my research.”

  Ty stared at her, his eyes narrowing in a moment of disbelief, as if he expected her to laugh and tell him she’d only been joking. But she didn’t. Servants and secretaries. He wondered just how rich old Charles had been. Richer than Ty had thought, that was for damn sure.

  “My grassland research is on hold,” she continued, “but I plan on resuming it next summer on the Pawnee. I’ve become quite intrigued with the Buffalo Commons idea, whether or not the Great Plains, if left alone to rejuvenate itself, could once again support a free-ranging buffalo herd comparable to the wildebeest herds on the Serengeti and Masai Mara.”

  That jerked him out of his wondering reverie. “You’re kidding,” he said, hoping she was even as he sincerely doubted it.

  “Not in the least,” she assured him, a small smile curving the corners of her mouth. “I think it is one of the grandest ideas I’ve ever come across.”

  “What about the ranchers already out here trying to make a living?” Ty had heard about the Buffalo Commons idea, and he thought it was grand all right. Grandly crazy.

  “Certain sacrifices will have to be made, of course.”

  Ty agreed, but begged to differ on who should have to make the sacrifices. The difference of opinion and the ensuing conversation got them to the restaurant a half hour away without a single awkward moment. Even so, Ty was aware that once again an evening with Victoria Willoughby had gotten off on an unexpected, strangely intimate note.

  Victoria was also quite aware of this turn of events and was equally at a loss as to how to explain it. She did take full responsibility for revealing the circumstances of her financial situation. But she still didn’t understand why she had—unless it had something to do with Ty’s kiss. Possibly, such physical intimacy had triggered her outburst of personal facts.

  Then again, there had been his unexpected confessions on the dance floor. Maybe those had loosened her own tongue. Maybe Ty Garrett was going to be a friend. She slanted him a quick glance and felt her cheeks warm. Her money was on the kiss.

  * * *

  Ty had chosen his favorite restaurant, the Red Lantern. On arrival he realized it hadn’t been his wisest decision. To begin with, because of its proximity to Talbot, it was everybody’s favorite restaurant. Greg and Amy Lambert were pulling up at the same time as Ty and Victoria. Ty wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t pleased, and he wished he’d remembered that most Saturday nights at the Lantern looked like a Talbot homecoming.

  He returned Greg’s greeting and waved across the parking lot. With a little less enthusiasm he included Amy. He didn’t want to be rude, but neither did he want to encourage Amy. Not that she needed encouraging. She’d been at it again last Sunday, making eyes at him in church, brushing up against him in the Sunday school hallway, being coy and provocative at the same time, and consequently getting him to thinking about Victoria’s kiss and a whole lot of other things he shouldn’t have been thinking about.

  He’d had a hell of a week, and all he wanted was to get Victoria off somewhere by himself, during dinner and after dinner. Especially after dinner. He did not want to spend the evening with Greg and Amy Lambert. Too late, he realized he should have told somebody out loud and in no uncertain terms.

  He should have said, “Nice to see you, but Victoria and I want to be alone while we eat our supper. Just the two of us, her and me, not you. We don’t want company.”

  If that had failed to get his point across, he should have said, “Go away, far away. Go on, git!”

  He should not have been polite and subtle. Politeness had been taken as an overt act of friendship and subtleness as an invitation. By the time all the introductions had been made, his romantic dinner for two had become a party of four.

  He put his hand on Victoria’s back as they crossed the parking lot, trying to find a way to tell her a double date was not what he’d had planned. Trying hard, too, to resist taking her back out to his truck and heading on down the road to the next watering hole. Greg opened the door to the restaurant before he accomplished the first objective or gave in to the second.

  “This is wonderful,” Amy said, crowding against him by the hostess desk. “The four of us having dinner together and all. It’s always more fun to eat with friends. Don’t you think so, Ty?”

  “Sure, but—” He was still hoping to head a foursome off at the pass, but Amy was too quick for him.

  She turned to Victoria with an overly bright smile. “I’ve heard so much about you, but every time I’ve seen you, you’ve always been busy with some school thing. This will be a wonderful chance for us to chat. Is it true your husband was of royal blood?”

  “Charles was the Earl of Wickham,” Victoria explained, “part of the nobility, not royalty.”

  “This is great, incredible,” Amy said, her excitement growing more sincere. “Who would have guessed I’d ever have dinner with someone who has slept with the nobility?”

  Ty didn’t think it was so damn great, and he couldn’t have imagined worse phrasing if he’d tried. Amy Lambert was quickly getting on his nerves, and not in that pleasant, arousing way he’d been allowing these last few weeks in church.

  “That’s a novel way of putting it . . . I suppose,” Victoria said, looking as unsure as those little burrowing owlets had looked standing in the rain last spring. Ty’s annoyance with Amy picked up in intensity.

  “I have your table ready.” The hostess returned and picked up a few menus. “If you’ll follow me, please.”

  Ty’s manners got him in trouble again at the table. He took a moment to hold Victoria’s chair for her, and while he was busy, Amy and Greg commandeered the two seats on either side of her. He was left with the chair farthest away from his date. Apparently the status of the Lambert marriage was about what Ty had surmised from all of Amy’s flirting.

  “Should we order a pitcher of margaritas?” Amy asked. “Since there’s four of us, I think that’s the best way to go.”

  “Margaritas?” Victoria said, looking down at her menu.

  “Sure,” Greg said. “But they have to be on the rocks, none of that frozen stuff.”

  “Sure,” Ty said. “Rocks.”

  “Margaritas?” Victoria repeated. Her menu had a silhouette of a carriage being drawn by four horses on the cover, with red lanterns and a driver in a top hat. It did not look like the sort of menu from which one went about ordering pitchers of margaritas.

  “You’ve never had a margarita?” Amy asked, touching Victoria’s arm and giving her a you-poor-thing-I-can’t-believe-it look.

  “Well, yes, I have,” Victoria answered.

  “Order whatever you like, Victoria,” Ty said, reaching across the table and giving her hand a small squeeze. “I’m sure the three of us can handle a pitcher.”

  “No. A margarita will be fine,” Victoria said, retrieving her hand and putting on a brave fron
t. With a show of nonchalance she opened her menu, expecting the worst. Her expectations were met. Mexican food, the culinary bane of her existence. She didn’t know which spice or combination of spices in Mexican cooking caused her to break out in a rash, but she knew enough to stay away from anything with a sauce.

  She lifted her chin a degree higher and perused the menu. She would muddle through as she always had. Charles had loved Mexican food. The preference had been the single most surprising thing about him, his one streak of nonconformity.

  She was not alone in her muddling. Ty felt as if he were muddling through the whole dinner too. Watching Victoria push her food around her plate just about killed his own appetite. The Red Lantern was locally famous for the quality of its food, but Victoria sure didn’t look as though she were enjoying hers.

  “Did you live in a castle?” Amy asked Victoria. By Ty’s count, it was stupid question number fourteen.

  “No. The Willoughbys have a large estate in Kent, but there’s no castle.”

  “A large estate, how wonderful. You must be eager to get back,” Amy said. “Talbot must be boring you to death.”

  “I haven’t had time to be bored,” Victoria said, ignoring Amy’s other comment. She couldn’t go back to Wickham. It now belonged to Charles’s eldest son, Neville, and she most certainly was not on his social calendar, let alone his guest list.

  “Lots of women don’t have time to be bored.” Greg entered the conversation with a pointed look at his wife. “Victoria probably has her hands full teaching all day.”

  Amy studiously ignored him, speaking again to Victoria. “Do all the clothes in England look like yours?”

  Stupid question number fifteen. Ty wondered what Greg would do if he stuffed an enchilada into Amy’s mouth. A whole enchilada.

  Victoria glanced down at her suit, not at all sure what Amy Lambert meant. “Wool suits, possibly, look similar to mine in that they . . . um, would be made of wool.” What did the woman mean? she wondered, then wished she hadn’t when Amy supplied the answer.

  “I mean the colors. Is it because of all the rain and fog that you wear such muddy colors? Nothing fresh and sunny. You know,” she finished as if Victoria did know. But she didn’t.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, managing at least to voice a lack of opinion. Amy Lambert’s outfit was white and pink, quite bright and “sunny”-looking. But Thanksgiving was only two weeks away. So wasn’t Amy’s dress out of season? Victoria thought it might be, but, of course, being muddy-looking seemed by far the greater fashion sin.

  Ty wasn’t any good at defusing female animosity. He hadn’t had enough practice. He wanted to come to Victoria’s defense, but he didn’t know how to do it without making things seem worse than they were.

  “I like your suit,” Greg said bluntly, surprising them all. “The wool is real high quality. Must have cost a fortune.” He fingered the sleeve of Victoria’s jacket. “And it’s not muddy-looking. It’s forest green and brown. Good colors.”

  “Thank you.” Victoria practically beamed at the other man, and Ty wished he’d said he liked her suit. He didn’t like it, but it would have been nice if he’d thought quickly enough to say it.

  Greg grinned back at her. “I raised sheep when I was a kid. Took them to the stock show a couple of times.”

  “How interesting,” Victoria said. “A number of my students are involved in animal husbandry projects. I’ve told them they can submit their records for extra credit.”

  “Good idea. I remember keeping track of feeding and immunizations, grading the wool, all sorts of staff.”

  Ty leaned back and watched as the conversation between his date and his neighbor took off as though they’d known each other for years. Hell, his whole life was one big animal husbandry project called ranching, but he hadn’t thought to go talking cows to her. If he’d known it would get her smiling at him the way she was smiling at Greg, he would have talked cows to her all night long.

  Instead, he’d argued buffalo, he reminded himself. They hadn’t had a real argument, not like what Amy had been angling for, but buffalo talk hadn’t gotten Victoria to batting her eyelashes the way he would swear she was doing at Greg. He wondered if the difference was between buffalo and sheep, or if it was between him and Greg. He wondered if he should mention his ranch and his ideas on crossbreeding. He wondered what that look on Amy’s face meant, and he wondered if the night was going to get any worse.

  Six

  Victoria thought dinner had gone without a hitch, except for the food being inedible, Amy Lambert being unfathomable, and a few extra tantalizing highlights she couldn’t keep from analyzing and reanalyzing. Ty had put his hand on the small of her back as they’d crossed the parking lot to the restaurant. He had actually put his arm around her waist when the hostess had led them to their table. Twice during dinner he’d picked up her hand and briefly held it in his own. When they’d left the restaurant, he’d put her coat on her and practically held her in his arms.

  Victoria had been literally warmed by the intimacy of the gesture. Halfway back to Talbot, she was still warm, and quite hungry, and she had come to a certain surprising but nonetheless supportable supposition: The man couldn’t keep his hands off her.

  She’d never felt so alluring, or so incredulous. Maybe the zipper did belong in the back, and maybe Amy Lambert had no more fashion sense than Victoria did herself. She was looking forward to analyzing that possibility over food, any kind of food, as soon as she got home.

  Still, enough was enough. Try as she might, she couldn’t see a future in Ty Garrett’s touches and her surprising effect on him. She wasn’t given to casual dalliances—despite what Charles had said after her indiscretion. The estate was bound to come out of probate with at least a portion of her bequest intact, and then she would be leaving Talbot to resume her duties as co-founder of the Willoughby Institute. It was the path she’d chosen for herself.

  The smart thing was to put an end to what she was sure would remain one of the more intriguing interludes in her life. Ty Garrett was far too disturbing, too disconcerting, too dangerous, too enticing. She would put an end to it, and that would be that.

  Of course, such a delicate subject should be approached with the utmost decorum and, if possible, roundabout grace.

  “I enjoyed meeting your friends,” she said. “It was nice of Greg to offer his help with the science fair.”

  Ty grunted.

  Wordless masculine communication, namely grunting, was a language Victoria was all too familiar with; so much so that she hardly noticed Ty’s lack of a more formally voiced response.

  “Any help is appreciated,” she continued. “But I wouldn’t like the school board to think I can’t handle it by myself. What do you think?”

  Ty thought Greg had no business sashaying around Victoria like a moth hell-bent on getting burned. He thought Amy had been about to tell her husband just that in no uncertain terms. He thought Victoria had no idea how outrageously Greg had been flirting with her, though he’d gotten the impression Greg knew just exactly how outrageously his wife had been flirting with Ty all these Sundays past. He thought the date had been a disaster so far, and he was desperately trying to think of a way to salvage the evening and keep Greg Lambert from moving in on Victoria. The Lamberts were married, for crying out loud. Somebody should tell them to start acting like it.

  He didn’t say any of those things. A better idea, the perfect solution, suddenly came to mind. “I’ll help out too,” he said, his mood immediately lifting, “We’ll call it community involvement. The school board loves community involvement.” He was already too busy by half, but somehow he would fit in the science fair. Glen Frazer would probably ask him for help anyway.

  “What a wonderful idea. Thank you,” Victoria said, then realized she shouldn’t have. Foolish girl. A woman did not “break off” with a man by accepting his help.

  They slipped back into a silence that grew more comfortable for Ty and less comfortable fo
r Victoria as the minutes and the miles rolled by. Ty had effectively neutralized Greg Lambert. Victoria had made a tactical error. She looked out the window at the dark landscape, wondering how to reopen the conversation. Ty divided his time between watching the road and watching her, thinking about how he was going to kiss her, and kiss her again, when they got home.

  The tensions from dinner eased out of him, replaced by tension of a much more pleasant kind. He’d start with her mouth, the kissing of her, that was, and he’d work his way around to her neck. It had been a long time since he’d gotten to the point of kissing a woman’s neck. He could hardly wait to open his mouth on her skin and taste her with his tongue, to hear her sigh in his ear as he cupped her breast and felt the weight and softness of her in his palm, to . . .

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and shot her a guilty yet fascinated glance. He was powerfully attracted to Miss Victoria Willoughby. Powerfully attracted. He wanted to get her home and take her to bed.

  When she looked up suddenly and caught him staring, he tried to alter his thoughts of guilty fascination to ones of friendly interest, but he didn’t think he was successful. The first sweet edge of arousal had stirred in his loins. He wanted her, and he knew it was written all over his face.

  Victoria changed her position, too, more than a little unnerved by the look she had intercepted. Whatever he was thinking had put a definite glimmer in his eye, a smoky, sensual gleam she was too wary to interpret. She had never broken off with anyone before, and her time for putting it off was running short. They were nearing the outskirts of Talbot.

  “Amy seemed very interested in English culture,” she said, bluffing her way into a new conversation. “I should have assured her that not everyone in the United Kingdom dresses the same way I do. English women have their own varied styles the same as Americans.”

  “I’m not sure Amy was as interested in English culture as much as she was just curious about you,” he said, giving her a quick smile.

  “Well, I’m hardly a good model for English fashion. Charles did most of our outfitting. He had an aunt who used to send clothing along for me. Good English woolens are known for wearing forever, and the Willoughby motto has always been ‘Waste not, want not.’ Though I’ve never been able to decide if Aunt Sarah liked brown, and that’s why she had so much of it, or if she loathed brown, and that’s why she sent so many brown clothes to me.”