The Cowboy & The Belly Dancer (Heartbeat)

by Charlotte Maclay

  If he’d thought it would do any good, he’d take a can opener to the lamp and be done with it. He’d get Nesrin out of there. But he didn’t think that’s how undoing curses worked.

  Idly his thumb smoothed over the ancient inscriptions on the lamp and he wished he was stroking Nesrin’s soft skin instead.

  “I did a lot of thinking on the flight home and I’ve finally gotten things worked out,” he said as he shifted the lamp in his hands. The truck shocks gave a little as Parker rested one hip on the tailgate. A couple of birds were singing their morning greetings, and the bees were busy taste-testing purple lupine that had grown wild at the edge of the grass, but he paid no attention to any of that. “I figure we can get married and that’ll more or less take care of the immigration problem. You’ll be legal and there won’t be too many questions asked.” Like date of birth, he thought grimly.

  “You won’t be able to tell anyone you’re a genie, of course,” he continued. “That would really gum up the works. You can imagine what the general would make of it in a custody hearing if I announced my wife was a nine-hundred-year-old genie who casts spells as a hobby.”

  In spite of himself, Parker chuckled. His dad would have apoplexy at the thought. Nesrin simply didn’t fit into any of the old man’s neat little niches. Even her spells weren’t very well disciplined. It would serve him right if Parker told him the truth.

  But he couldn’t risk that if it meant he would lose custody of the kids. Maybe later...

  “See, I figure if we get married I can watch out for you. Keep you out of trouble, you know?” He’d always taken on the protector’s role. With his sister, Marge. His troops. And now the kids. He’d simply add Nesrin to his responsibilities. From his point of view it made a lot of sense.

  “There’re a lot of guys out there who would take advantage of your, well, innocence. In fact, if you let it be known you’re a genie, there’d be a raft of hotshot promoters who’d want to turn you into a media circus. TV interviews. The press hanging around our front door all the time. You wouldn’t like that. It’s better if we handle everything low-key. No more genie. No more spells. Just you and me and the kids.”

  He looked down at the lamp. It seemed to be growing hotter in his hands by the minute, the metal almost glowing with angry heat.

  Now why the hell would that be happening? He was just explaining what needed to be done.

  Damn, he wished he could remember what he’d said to get Nesrin out of the lamp. Desperation beaded his forehead with sweat. His gut knotted on a painful possibility he didn’t want to admit. What would he do if he couldn’t release Nesrin? Ever.

  Worse, what would she do?

  He must have said or done something simple the first time, he reasoned, damping down an uncharacteristic sense of growing panic. Something he hadn’t given any particular thought to. Something easy. Like...

  His eyes widened.

  “Abracadabra!”

  She exploded out of the lamp like a comet.

  “May all your daughters be toothless and your sons have pointy tails!” Nesrin cried as she burst into being again.

  “What?” Parker asked incredulously, both grateful and confused by her acrimonious appearance.

  “I would not marry you if you were the last man on earth.”

  He shook his head. “Why the hell not? We’ve already slept together—”

  “Does that mean you love me?”

  “Love doesn’t have anything to do with—”

  “Then what we did was no more than that which a master would demand of his harem girl.”

  Her accusation brought him up short. “You know that’s not true.” Didn’t she realize he cared about her? A lot. What they’d done together went a hell of a lot deeper than gratuitous sex.

  But how much deeper? asked a niggling voice at the back of Parker’s mind.

  Before he could respond to the thought, Nesrin continued furiously, “You have never been able to accept me for what I am. A genie. Granted I am not as skilled as some who have gone before me, and sometimes my spells go awry, but I am very likely the only living genie in the entire world. That should stand for something.”

  “Well, yes, sure.” She was in his face and he had no choice but to take a step back. Her expression was as foreboding as the dark robes she wore. He wanted to hold her, hug her, and do a whole lot more. But this didn’t seem like the time or place to press the issue. He hadn’t realized she had such a fierce temper. It was kind of cute.

  “Furthermore, I have no need of a man to take care of me. Tuëma, Rasheyd’s wife, settled for that and she is a miserable creature. Angry, greedy and loathsome, interested in gems she did not earn. I am quite capable of caring for myself and I prefer it that way.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “You think me simpleminded? Capable of no more than conjuring up a few peanut butter sandwiches for your evening meal? Do you not think a genie has feelings, too?”

  “Nesrin, you’re getting carried away. I never meant to insult you. For God’s sake, I just proposed to you.”

  “Because you thought it your duty.” She cocked her head and scowled. “Why is it so quiet?”

  Parker had to shift mental gears in order to respond. “The day you were kidnapped someone let the horses out of the corral. I figure it was Rutherford trying to break his contract with me.”

  She glanced at the nearly empty corral. Only two swayback mares stood in the shade of the barn. “No, it was Rasheyd who let the horses go. He wanted you to go off in search of the horses rather than come after me.”

  “His plan didn’t work. But it looks like Rusty and the boys haven’t had much luck rounding the mustangs up again.”

  “Does this mean you will lose the ranch?”

  “Looks like it.” He tried to sound casual, but the fact that his dream was coming apart hurt like hell. “At this point, there’s not one chance in a thousand I’ll have twenty saddle-broken mounts back in the corral by the time I’m due to deliver the goods at the end of the week. I won’t get paid and neither will the bank. They’ll foreclose.”

  “Then what will happen to the children? Will your father—”

  “I’ll fight him every inch of the way.” He sucked in his gut as though preparing for a blow to his midsection. That’s what losing the kids would feel like. “I may lose the ranch and I won’t have any capital left, but I won’t be exactly poverty-stricken. I’ll get a job in the security business.”

  “But that is not what you wanted.”

  “No,” he conceded. He didn’t want to admit he’d failed again. The military first, and now the ranch, his lifelong dream. Wouldn’t his dad just eat that up. His perfect son gone bust. Twice. Maybe he didn’t have a right to ask Nesrin to marry him, even as a matter of convenience. She could sure as hell do better than a two-time loser. In fact, if she had good sense she’d walk out on him for sure. Just like his ex.

  He cleared the press of failure from his throat, and the memory of a lifetime of not measuring up. “The kids need you, Nesrin. You and I don’t have to marry if that’s not what you want.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes. In so many ways he was offering what every woman dreamed of, but offering the dream without the love that was the most important ingredient. As Louanne had said, living with a man without love would be a misery. But the children...dear heaven, Nesrin would miss them. As she would miss Parker.

  “There is no need for you to lose the ranch,” she said.

  “It’ll take a miracle to get those horses back in time.”

  “Or a spell conjured by a genie.” She whispered her promise, a gift she alone could bestow on Parker in gratitude for releasing her from the lamp.

  “Nesrin, I don’t want you to cast any spells to save the ranch. It’s un-American.”

  But she wasn’t listening to him and had already closed her eyes. She pictured Lucifer and his harem of brown and mud-colored mares; she spoke from her heart to the magnificent stallion and ur
ged him to return to the ranch. She sensed only she could give Parker what he so desperately needed—the freedom to love—but he had refused that precious gift. A herd of mustangs seemed a poor substitute.

  The first indication that something was happening came like the echo of distant thunder rumbling through the mountains. The sound amplified as it grew closer. Soon the ground began to shake. Dust billowed into a cloud. The scent of sweaty horseflesh filled the morning air.

  From the roiling dust a stallion trumpeted, and Lucifer burst out of the cloud at the head of his harem.

  Dumbfounded, Parker counted the mares. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Twice, three times as many as they had previously rounded up. The horses kept coming, circling the barn and corral, stirring the dust into a cloud that rose to block out the blue sky, turning morning to twilight. Fine, powdery dirt filled the air. It settled on Parker’s shoulders, and in his hair. He tasted the grit.

  As though in response to a signal pitched well above Parker’s hearing, the horses stopped their wild circling. They milled around, nibbling on sprigs of grass or reaching through the corral fence to get at leftover hay in the feed trough.

  Three more horses galloped into sight.

  “Yahoo!” Rusty shouted, waving his hat. He headed for the corral, bent to unlatch the gate. Pete and Buck shooed the horses into the pen. Except for Lucifer, they went easily. The stallion gave one of his mares a last nudge, then turned, reared—his hooves pawing the air as he trumpeted again—and he raced back toward the hills. A few of the mares escaped to follow.

  Squaring his hat, Rusty announced, “That was the dernedest thing I ever did see. A few minutes ago we had no more’n a half dozen of them mustangs rounded up. Then they started coming down out of the hills all by theirselves, hell bent to get back here to the corral on their own. I never seen the like.”

  Parker shook his head. He felt as though he’d just awakened from a dream. He’d been fighting the nightmare of losing his ranch and maybe the kids. Now he had enough horses to not only fulfill the contract that was due, but to get cash ahead for expansion. He’d be able to buy stock, to take care of overdue maintenance, even buy Amy that pony she was so anxious to have. All because Nesrin had cast up one of her spells, he realized—a spell to save the ranch for him.

  Smiling, he turned to thank her.

  She wasn’t there.

  The brass lamp still rested on the truck’s tailgate where he’d left it, but there was no sign of Nesrin.

  No footprints in the dust. No scrap of colorful silk dangling from the lip of the lamp.

  She’d vanished into the cloud of dust as though she had never existed at all.

  Something inside Parker’s chest cracked, like cement struck with a sledgehammer, and he almost cried aloud at the raw agony. He knew he wasn’t capable of love, not with the upbringing he’d had. But if he were, he imagined the emotion couldn’t be any more painful than what he was experiencing right now.

  * * *

  NESRIN WATCHED from a hidden spot as Parker picked up the children from Louanne’s house. She had known he would come for them. Now a part of her wanted to run to him, to tell him she would be his harem girl, if that was all he wanted of her. But nine hundred years of pride held her immobile.

  If she had been willing to settle for so little in life, she would have submitted to Rasheyd’s demands centuries ago, and avoided all of those painful years imprisoned in the lamp. To acquiesce now would mean her suffering had meant nothing.

  Tears edged down her cheeks.

  She still loved Parker. Nothing would change that. But she would not give herself to him if he could not return that love.

  Cautiously she made her way to Louanne’s and tapped lightly on the door.

  “Well, land’s sake, Nesrin, honey. What are you doing here?”

  “I had nowhere else to go,” she admitted. Without a single rupee to her name, and only the clothes she wore, Nesrin desperately needed a friend.

  “Well, come on in and I’ll give Parker a call.” She opened the door wide and Nesrin followed her into the kitchen. “He hasn’t been gone but a minute or two.”

  “No, you must not tell him I am here.”

  Louanne tilted her head to study Nesrin more carefully. “You two young folks have yourselves a lovers’ spat?”

  “He does not love me.”

  “That so? He sure was fit to be tied, pacing and carrying on like a wild man. Said you’d plum vanished, right when a whole herd of them mustangs came galloping back from the hills.”

  “He only wants me because of the children. To help with their care.” He could not accept her as she was any more than her father had been able to.

  “That a fact?” Louanne pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and nodded for Nesrin to sit down.

  “From what I’ve seen I reckon that young man’s already toppled head over heels for you. What he most likely needs is a good dose of competition to make him take a real good look at himself and come to his senses. Men sometimes need a little nudge to see things straight. I know all three of my husbands did.” She patted Nesrin on the shoulder. “If I can come up with a plan that will get his attention, you willing to give it a shot?”

  “I would do anything if it would mean Parker would love me.”

  “Good girl.”

  Louanne sat down and the two of them put their heads together. Nesrin grinned as the plan unfolded and her hopes grew. Perhaps there was yet a way she could capture Parker’s love and be able to hold it as her own.

  * * *

  ABRACADABRA! Parker pounded his fist on the mantel, making the lamp jump.

  “What are you doing, Uncle Parker?”

  He whirled around. “Nothing, son.” Except he was nearly hoarse from shouting at the damn lamp for the past three days. He’d looked everywhere else he could think of and still no sign of Nesrin.

  “I sure miss Nesrin,” Kevin said. “I wish she’d come back.”

  “Yeah, so do I, kid. So do I.”

  “That Mr. Mildon is here to pick up the horses, Uncle Parker.”

  “Okay. I’m coming.” He shot a final look at the lamp. Where the hell could Nesrin have gone?

  Rutherford was waiting for him at the corral.

  “I admit, Parker, I didn’t think you’d be able to make delivery,” he said as he handed over the check for the mares. “‘Specially when I heard you’d lost most of the herd.”

  “Yeah, and I bet you were chuckling up your sleeve when you thought you’d be able to break our contract, and save yourself a bundle in the process.”

  Rutherford’s face went red, and his jowls formed a second double chin. “Now don’t you go accusing me of something you cain’t prove, boy.”

  “I’m not. And since you’ve got your horses and I’ve got your check, it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Now look here, young man. I only heard about your troubles at the High Mountain Saloon last night. I was watchin’ that pretty little lady of yours sashaying around on that stage, when old Jeb Dobson said something about—”

  “What pretty little lady?”

  “That there wisp of a girl I saw you with at the grocery store a few weeks back. She’s a knockout. And ooo-eee, can she ever shake it like nobody I ever saw before.”

  Parker couldn’t get rid of Rutherford fast enough. Nesrin was at the saloon. Dancing! Probably in that little skimpy costume.

  God, didn’t she know those rough-and-tumble cowboys who frequented the place would make mincemeat of her?

  He was going to get her out of there. Back to the ranch where she belonged. Dammit, it was his duty to take care of her.

  He’d been glad enough to see his ex leave. But that wasn’t the case with Nesrin. He missed her like hell and there was no way he was going to let her simply walk out on him...and the kids, he added as an afterthought. They deserved better, and so did he.

  He waited until the kids were in bed, then left Rusty in charge of baby-sitting duty.

 
Trying to act casual, he sauntered into the saloon. She was dancing. Through the screen of smoke she looked like a slightly out-of-focus dream, and so achingly beautiful Parker wondered if he could grasp her any more tightly than a man could catch the mist that sometimes rose from a winter pond in the high mountains.

  As she gyrated on the small dance floor to the canned music of quarter-tone melodies, the murmur of approval rose several decibels. Parker’s teeth clenched until his jaw throbbed to the Middle Eastern beat. To his surprise, the cowboys in the bar weren’t hootin’ and hollerin’ as he had expected.

  They were in awe of Nesrin. Dammit all, half of them were in sappy, cow-eyed love with her, he realized.

  He wanted to toss Nesrin over his shoulder and haul her back to the ranch without any debate. But he figured he’d get quite an argument from fifty or so cowboys if he tried that stunt while she was dancing.

  So he waited by the bar, sipping a beer, a jealous rage burning his gut every time Nesrin smiled that sweet, innocent smile at one of the cowboys up front.

  Finally she finished her number to a huge round of applause. Parker followed her backstage. Or at least he tried to.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  The burly bouncer for the High Mountain Saloon blocked the hallway to the back of the building. He looked like he used to be a lineman for the Denver Broncos and was definitely not a guy Parker wanted to argue with.

  “Nesrin’s a friend of mine,” he said.

  “Yours and every other cowboy who’s got the hots for her. Which includes just about every male in the county over the age of fifteen. So why don’t you move on back to the bar and have another beer.”

  A red haze threatened to stifle Parker’s better judgment. His fingers flexed into fists. “She’ll see me.”

  “Leave your name. I’ll tell her you stopped by to say hello.”

  A door opened at the end of the hall. “Is there something wrong, Roger?”

  Roger? It figured.

  “Not a thing, Miss Nesrin. I’m just politely asking this gentleman to leave.”

  A sheer robe was belted around Nesrin’s waist and her dark eyes flicked coolly over Parker without a spark of recognition. “What was it he wanted, Roger?”