“You’ve gotten used to us by now,” McCloud added. “Come on, boys, let’s give this kid a shower.”
He came over to the bunk and took an arm. The others came and each took an arm or leg and picked Mattie up off the bed before she realized what was happening.
“Get your hands off of me,” she shrieked.
“Stop acting like a girl,” Clyde insisted, as he turned on a shower and adjusted the water, while the others held her from wriggling out of their hands. “Water’s ready,” Clyde announced and the four put Mattie under the shower, clothes and all.
“See, that’s not so bad, is it?” Dusty asked and then he reached in and pulled Mattie’s tee shirt over her head, getting his fingers tangled in the ace bandage and causing it to spring loose, unraveling as it slid down around Mattie’s waist, revealing her firm breasts.
Dusty stepped back.
“Well, lookie here, boys. Pretty-face is more than just a pretty face.”
Mattie turned her back on them.
“Think you had better go get Matthew,” Buck said to Dusty, but Dusty did not move.
“I’ll do it,” Clyde said and left the room.
“Are you guys just going to stand there and gawk at me?” Mattie asked.
“Sweetcakes, I believe you gawked at me once,” Dusty said. “In fact, you even got to measure me, if I recall right. Maybe all’s fair…” his hand touched her shoulder.
“Guess you are right,” Mattie said, suddenly turning around. “Hell, it’s not like you’ve never seen a naked girl before, and I’ve certainly seen all of you naked at one time or another. But you just better keep your hands to yourself,” she warned, and then she amazed them by pulling off her jeans. “You gonna hand me the shampoo, or what?” she asked, as the three stood with their mouths open.
“Sure thing, sugar,” Dusty said, grabbing a bottle from the next stall and handing it to her.
“Hated wearing that ace bandage anyway,” she said, as she lathered her head, while the men watched on.
“Okay, what is this all about?” Matthew said as he entered the shower room.
Then he stood stock still.
“What is going on here?” He bellowed.
“You come to watch too?” Mattie asked. “Seems the boys got tired of smelling my stinky body and insisted I take a shower.”
“You boys get out of here,” Matthew growled and everyone scattered. “What are you trying to prove, Mattie? You’re under-age, for Christ sake.”
“I’m not having sex with them, if that is what is worrying you,” she spat, as she continued to wash her hair, tantalizing him as she faced him without flinching.
“Get out of there and cover yourself up,” Matthew demanded.
“When I’m through,” she said. “They’ve seen me, you’ve seen me. There is no more of me to see, so what’s the big deal?”
“Because I don’t want my horse wranglers, gawking at the woman I am going to marry,” he said.
Mattie stopped and glared at him.
“I don’t recall you asking me,” she hissed, “And I don’t remember me agreeing to it, even if you did.”
“Mattie, listen….”
“Dusty?” Mattie called.
Dusty poked his head in the door.
“Someone call me?” he asked.
“You know, I was thinking about when I was measuring you?” she asked. “Maybe you were right. That wasn’t very fair, was it?”
“What?”
“You want at wash my hair or don’t you?” she asked.
Dusty looked at Matthew’s angry face.
“Sure thing, only I don’t want to get fired,” he said hesitantly.
“You won’t get fired because if they fire you, I’ll be leaving as well,” she promised him. “So why don’t you take those duds off, and come do it?”
“Mattie,” Matthew said between clenched teeth.
“Come on in boys, Dusty and I have another little show for you,” she called, but no one dared step foot in the showers while Matthew stood there with murder in his eyes.
“Do not do it, Dusty,” Matthew growled.
Dusty stood still and shrugged.
“Fine, then, Matthew you do it! But you gotta take your clothes off first.”
Matthew glared at her.
“I’m standing here all dripping wet and naked while you are looking at me. I should be able to look at you as well, so if you don’t take your clothes off, maybe I will do it for you.”
She took a step towards Matthew, and he put his hand out and grabbed her shoulder.
“That is enough, Mattie.”
“You don’t own me, Matthew Douglas, even if you got it in your mind I am going to marry you. You’re dreaming, so if you want to touch me naked, this is your only chance. Otherwise, Dusty is going to do it. And everyone else will be coming in here too, so nothing funny goes on.”
“Then let Dusty do it!” Matthew seethed, “but I’m not staying to watch.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Come on Dusty, looks like Matthew is going to lose out here.”
“Damn it, Mattie!” Matthew said, as he turned back and glared at her.
He stepped into the shower, picked her up, slung her over his shoulder, and stormed out of the bunkhouse with her.
“You put me down!” Mattie, screamed, as she kicked and clawed at him.
“Shut up!”
Daniel came to the front door, as Matthew came stomping up onto the porch.
“Matthew, what the…”
“Here you go, dad. You do something with her. She won’t listen to me,” he seethed, dumping Mattie in front of his father.
He took his shirt off and put it around her shoulders and then stormed past both of them and slammed the front door behind him.
Daniel shook his head, as he looked down at Mattie who was still shooting bullets with her eyes.
“I can do what I want. If you don’t want me here, I will leave, but no one is telling me what I can do with my own body!”
“Just what were you planning to do with your body?” Daniel asked.
“Nothing! That’s the point. You’re swelled headed son thinks that because he wants to marry me, that I will just do whatever he tells me. He don’t want the boys looking at me. Hell, it’s not like they never seen a woman naked before. I have certainly had an eye full of them since I’ve been here.”
“Yeah, Matthew told me about you and Dusty.”
“They made me shower and discovered I was a girl. So all’s fair, right? I had been gawking at them in the nude and then I am expected to be all prude and not let them have an eye-full? That’s all I was giving them, until Matthew showed up, and tried to take over, saying he didn’t want anyone looking at the woman he was going to marry.
“That’s bull shit! I never said I was going to marry him and he never asked me anyway. So if I want Dusty to wash my hair, he hasn’t got any say in the matter. Heck, I offered to let him do it if it bothered him so much for Dusty to touch me, but he just picks me up and brings me here.”
Daniel laughed.
“What makes you think Dusty would stop at just washing your hair?” he asked.
“I beat him in arm wrestling, or hadn’t you noticed? I’ve wrangled down more horses than I can count. I think I could keep Dusty in his place if I wanted to. Hell, he was so afraid of getting fired, he wouldn’t do it anyway.”
“You are only seventeen,” Daniel said.
“That didn’t seem to bother my daddy none,” she hissed.
“Your daddy could be put in jail for what he was doing,”
“I’ll be eighteen at the end of next month, so what difference does it make? A few weeks is not going to make that much difference. I will still be the same girl, and only a month or so wiser,” she laughed.
“It’s the law, Mattie” he insisted.
“It’s only the law that you can’t have sex with a minor. I wasn’t going to have sex with anyone. And I know they value their j
ob here, so they sure as heck was not going to force me. At the end of next month, I will have sex with whoever I damn please, though. So now I am going back to the bunkhouse and finish my shower. Then I am going to town with the boys, and if Matthew wants to brood over that, then let him, cause I wouldn’t marry him in a million years.”
“You should probably move into the house…”
“Hell no! I’ve been sleeping out in that bunkhouse all week. Everyone has seen me nude. I have seen everyone else nude. If anyone tries to touch my pretty ass before I turn eighteen, I will turn them in. So neither you or your son is going to stop me unless you kick me off of your ranch.”
“Are you sure you didn’t drive your daddy to drink?” Daniel asked.
“He was drinking long before I was born. His drinking is what made me learn to fend for myself. He was mean, and I got tough.”
“I’m sorry, Mattie, you deserved better than that.”
“Well, here I am now. I can wrangle horses as good as any of your boys and I can take care of myself. So you keeping me on, or should I go pack my stuff up?”
“Go take your shower. A night in town should probably improve your disposition,” Daniel laughed, “but like it or not, I’m sending Matthew with you, to keep an eye on your wild heart. You need to get things straight with him, Mattie. He loves you, and I think you are breaking his heart.”
“I didn’t ask him to,” she said quietly. “He can just go love someone else.”
“Don’t think it is that easy. Give him time to prove himself, at least.”
“He can’t just have me because he wants me.”
“That’s true. You have to want him too, but don’t make any rash decisions about anything. Just give it time. You’re young yet. You have your whole life in front of you to decide what you want and don’t want. I’ll talk to Matthew and tell him to go easy on you.”
“I don’t need you fighting my battles, for me.”
“I know, but I’m doing it more for Matthew’s sake than for yours. After all, he is my son, and I don’t want to see him get hurt.”
“I don’t want to hurt him. I just don’t want him loving me.”
“Why, Mattie?”
She didn’t answer because she could feel tears coming to her eyes. She just turned and headed back to the bunkhouse.
“Come on, Dusty,” she said grabbing his hand as she passed. “You still want to wash my hair?”
Dusty saw the tears running down her face and didn’t say anything, but followed her into the showers. The others stayed in the bunkhouse, realizing that the mood had suddenly changed.
Dusty just stood there, looking at her, as she flung the shirt from her shoulders.
“Wash my hair, Dusty,” she said as her body started to shake with the tears that were spilling over her lids. “Please wash my hair,” she pleaded and Dusty stepped to her and she put her arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder. Then she was unbuttoning his shirt and unsnapping his jeans, pushing them off of him.
“That’s better,” she whispered. “Now it is fair.”
There was a knock on the bunkhouse door and Mattie, wrapped in a towel, looked up, as Daniel came into the room. He walked over to Mattie and handed her a bag.
“Since we all know you are a girl, and you plan to go into that country dance, I thought maybe you might like wearing a dress. You are about the same size as my wife was before she died. I never got rid of her clothes, so I picked out something that isn’t too much out of style. The old styles are all coming back, I noticed.”
Mattie looked up into Daniel’s eyes.
“You know, if I could have picked my father, I think I would have picked you,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.
“And if I could have had a daughter, you would have made a perfect one. Even if you never marry my son, I hope you will stick around for a long time.”
“If you were twenty years younger, I think I would marry you,” she smiled.
Daniel laughed.
“Don’t tell Matthew that. He’s jealous of how much you like me, as it is. But just remember, I’ve tried to raise him to grow up into a man I can be proud of. He’s got to end up a little bit like me. Just give it a few years, and he’ll be filling my boots.”
Daniel turned and left her holding the bag up to her chest. Mattie looked into the bag and pulled out a soft flowing blue skirt and white lacy blouse. She stepped into the skirt and pulled the blouse on. “Hey, Dusty, think you can button this for me?” she called.
Dusty walked over, and did up the buttons at the back of the blouse and then turned her, to look at her.
“Mattie, you aren’t just a pretty face anymore. You are one damn good looking woman!”
He kissed her forehead.
“And a horse wrangling woman to boot!”
At that moment, Matthew came through the door. He stopped short when he saw Mattie. Then he walked over to her.
“You boys take your trucks, Mattie is going to ride with me,” he informed them and took Mattie’s elbow in his hand and steered her out of the bunkhouse and to his truck.
Before he opened the door, he paused.
“I want to apologize for what I did in the barn and in the shower,” he said. “I was out of place both times. I hope you can forgive me, Mattie. Please tell me you forgive me.”
“I’ll forgive you for everything, except for one thing,” she said.
“What one thing?”
“Not staying and washing my hair,” she said.
And then she climbed up into the truck, as Matthew’s heart flipped over in his chest at her remark.
Matthew let the other two trucks drive out towards town before him. He drove through the open gate and then got out of the truck and shut it. When he got back in the truck, he just sat and looked at Mattie as the sun began sinking low, giving enough light to make out her features.
“Damn, Mattie. When I thought you were a boy, I couldn’t understand why I was so attracted to you. But I figured something out. It’s not just how a woman looks but what she does that attracts a man. I liked you the moment I saw you sitting up on that big horse of yours, looking all sure of yourself like you knew something that I didn’t know. Well, now I realize what that something was, but don’t just shut me out, Mattie. If nothing else, I want to at least be your friend.”
“You know, the boys are my friends,” Mattie explained. “They’re my friends because they accept me as one of them, even though now they know I am a girl. They don’t treat me any differently than they did when they thought I was just a kid. They don’t tell me what to do and act like they own me. You got it all in your mind you were going to have me, and in the barn, I wanted you too. But in the barn, I realized it all had to be on your terms. You wouldn’t let me have you. Instead, you were going to have me when you were all good and ready to do things the way you figured they should be done. Well, that’s not how it works with me, Matthew. I’ve been calling the shots for myself for a long time now while dodging my daddy. I’m not going to let a man just come along and take up where my daddy left off, saying what I can do and can’t do, and then me having to go around it.”
Matthew gave a low laugh.
“I guess I know what you mean. I wouldn’t want you telling me what to do either. Maybe that is what scared me in the barn. You were egging me on, forcing my hand, and then in the middle of it, you started taking over the situation. I was used to being the seducer, not becoming the seduced. And then, of course, you were under-aged, and that was scaring me as well. I wasn’t trying to push you away, Mattie. You know I wanted it as much as you did. I was just trying to be mature about it.”
“Sometimes you just have to go with the flow,” Mattie said. “But I’ll tell you how you can make it up to me,” she said, as she leaned in towards him. “The next time I am in the Shower, I’m sending Dusty after you, and you can come wash my hair.”
“I think I will look forward to that,” Matthew breathed.
“Of course, you know all the boys will be watching, so no hanky panky will be going on.”
“You just want to humiliate me, seeing me all turned on, and not being able to do anything about it,” he smiled.
“Yeah, we could put on a real good show for the boys, if you want.”
He frowned.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You know, I might want to measure you too. Dusty says it’s the size that counts. I bet they would like to see me do that to you.”
“Well, you’re not going to do it, Mattie. You’re pressing it here!”
“I guess Dusty was right. You’re just a stick in the mud.”
“You know, I’m beginning to think you are just a fist full of dynamite, that needs some dampening down!”
“Yeah, you are a wet towel, always wanting to put out a fire somewhere. Fires can warm you up sometimes,” she whispered in his ear.
“You’re not just a warm fire, Mattie. You’re a blazing flame, and anyone trying to get next to you would be risking getting burned to a cinder.”
“I guess you don’t’ want to take that risk after all then?” she asked.
He turned and looked at her upturned face, noticing the long lashes that were half covering her eyes, and the full mouth that was in a half smile as she spoke.
“My father said that sometimes going to hell to get away from an angry woman could be a relief, compared to sticking around, but if you are my hell, Mattie, then I’m about to get burned.”
With those words, he pulled her head towards him, burying his fingers in the curls of her hair, and smothering her lips under his. He drew back and looked at her hypnotic eyes.
“Heaven help me, Mattie, your fire is going to consume me someday.”
Then he turned and put his foot on the gas peddle and eased the truck down the road. Any more of that, and he would be dragging her to the barn again, he thought.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They could hear the music clear out in the parking lot, when Matthew’s truck drove up. The boys were all impatiently hovering around the two trucks they had arrived in, waiting for Matthew and Mattie to show up.
“You guys take a detour or something?” Dusty asked as he grabbed Mattie’s arm. “I’m getting the first dance with this filly,” he grinned. “We all know she hates you, Matthew,” he ribbed as he poked Matthew in the side with his elbow.
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