The Right Cowboy

by Rebecca Winters

His eyes narrowed on her features. “A new memory to make,” he said in a husky voice that caused a fluttering sensation in her chest.

  She felt heat rush to her face.

  “Shall we go get some dinner before we head to the arena?”

  Cole followed her out the door of the tent and walked her to the truck. They drove to the city park where a huge crowd had gathered. The Buffalo Barbecue never disappointed. They filled their plates and sat at a table under the canopy with Sam and his family while they enjoyed the music and entertainment.

  Jake joined them, but he monopolized the conversation with Cole, wanting any last-minute tips he could give him. Tamsin loved the camaraderie with their family. Cole had grown up with them. When she thought about the two losses in his life, it touched her that the Setons treated him as one of their own. She had no doubt it filled the hole in his heart so that he hadn’t been forced to come back from Colorado to an empty house.

  When she tried to put herself in his place, she couldn’t. If she’d been gone for years and had to come home to a ranch devoid of her family... She couldn’t begin to imagine it. But Sam and Louise had been there for Cole when he’d needed them most. They’d guarded his secret and had taken care of his ailing parents. Without knowing them, she loved them for their goodness.

  * * *

  TO COLE’S SATISFACTION, Jake placed fifth in the marathon and second in the teenage bull-riding competition. He gave him a bear hug. “You keep working on it. Next year you’ll be number one.” Tamsin gave him a hug, too, putting a smile on his face.

  The fireworks thrilled everyone far into the night. At ten after twelve, Cole left the park happier than he’d been in years. His thoughts were all over the place by the time he and Tamsin arrived back at the Seton house.

  With a three-quarter moon in a sky free of clouds, they saw their way clearly as they walked around to the backyard.

  Cole went on ahead to get the lantern from the tent while Tamsin darted inside the house for a minute. When she came back out, he’d lighted it and followed her over to the tepee where she was examining the horse paintings.

  “Doris is an amazing artist, Cole. Every horse is a different breed or color. Out here in the moonlight, the tepee looks surreal, like we’ve gone back in time. I love it. If my parents had one of these when I was young, I would probably have slept in it a lot.”

  His gaze roved over her face. “We can sleep in it tonight.”

  “You mean it?” He could tell she was excited by the idea.

  “Of course. Let’s get our things out of the tent and move in here for the night.”

  “They won’t mind?”

  “Tamsin—whenever I drive here, I sleep in it. The tent’s a pain to set up.”

  She chuckled. “So you did all that for me? Why didn’t you say so when we first arrived?”

  “I didn’t know how you’d feel about it.”

  “After reading the quote on the wall hanging in the house Doris painted, I’ll feel honored to sleep in here tonight. With that moon up there, the whole night seems enchanted.”

  He felt it, too, and walked to the tent to get their gear. She helped him and, before long, they’d entered the tepee large enough to house a family. The floor was laden with gorgeous Arapahoe-designed rugs, and there were several low, rustic divans and log drums that served as end tables. The fire pit in the middle would keep you warm in the winter.

  Her eyes followed the line of the poles that rose through the hole at the top. “I had no idea the interior would be so elegant.”

  Cole nodded. “This tepee is made of elk skin and gives it a richness that canvas never could.”

  “No wonder you always sleep in here when you come. It’s pure luxury.”

  One of the things he loved about Tamsin was her appreciation for life. She’d shown a graciousness to Sam’s family plus a friendliness to Jake that he knew had pleased them.

  “While you get ready for bed, I’ll say good-night to everyone and then I’ll join you.” He reached in his duffel bag for a pair of gray sweats and left the tepee. A few minutes later Cole emerged from the house having changed clothes. He was more than excited to spend the night with Tamsin. This was a first for them. It could blow up in his face. But now that he was back home after a nine-year separation, he didn’t plan to waste a second with her.

  The soft light from the lantern bathed Tamsin in a special glow. She’d already climbed inside her sleeping bag and lay on her side with her head on the pillow.

  Cole stretched out his bag a few feet away from her. But after pulling a pillow from the duffel bag, he walked over to her. Once he’d dropped it next to hers, he lay down outside her bag and lowered his mouth to hers, stifling her surprised cry.

  At first she tried to wriggle away, but he’d trapped her with his arm around her body, drawing her as close as he could with the bag between them. The taste of her mouth after all his dreams of loving her almost gave him a heart attack.

  He drove his hungry kiss deeper and deeper until he heard her satisfying moan. Then there was no more protest as she began to kiss him back in the old familiar way. Cole felt like they were eighteen again, but this was so much better because circumstances had changed. At twenty-seven years of age, they were free to love each other with no more obstacles.

  The ecstasy of being able to let go of long suppressed emotions caused him to forget time. Their desire caught fire so he was trembling. “I always wanted to sleep out under the stars with you, but it never happened,” he lamented against her lips.

  “We were underage, Cole.”

  “Our age had nothing to do with it and you know it. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I wanted to make love to you from the moment we met, but the time wasn’t right. If I hadn’t had parents who needed me desperately, I would have run away with you and lived with you until we could be legally married.”

  “We’re both aware of what went wrong, Cole. I don’t want to revisit the pain of the past. Please let’s not go there.”

  “Never again.” He tasted salt and realized it came from her tears. “Why did you agree to come here with me?”

  He had to wait for her answer. “Sally challenged me to find out if I still loved you. I fought her at first, but when I see the happiness she shares with Lyle and their excitement over the baby, I decided I needed to be certain before I said a final goodbye to you.”

  “Thank God you did,” he whispered against the softness of her neck. “I love you, Tamsin. I always have, and I always will.” He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes. “I only need to know one thing. Do you love me?”

  Tamsin searched his brown eyes that burned with desire for her. “You know I love you, Cole, but I don’t dare give my heart to you again.”

  He caressed the side of her face. “How can I prove to you that I’ll never do anything to hurt you?”

  “You can’t.” She turned her head to kiss his hand. “It wasn’t your fault that you had to leave Whitebark. I know that now, and I know you never loved Patsy. But circumstances beyond our control drove us apart before, and they’re doing it again.”

  A frown marred his striking features. “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you remember that terrible forest fire in the Winds the year you and I were dating?”

  “Of course. My father provided backup.”

  “Then you remember that my best friend Mandy lost her firefighter father while he was battling it.”

  “That was a very sad day. I remember going to the funeral with you.”

  “Exactly. Eight other firefighters from the county also died after getting trapped. It was so horrific, neither Mandy nor her family ever got over it. Five years ago they moved to California to be near relatives and get away from the pain. I haven’t seen her since.”

  He blinked in confusion. “What are you getting at?” />
  Tamsin gripped his hand. “I don’t want to go through that, Cole. Loving you once was hard enough. But to love you again and be terrified every time you get called out on a fire—” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it.”

  He sat up, alarmed. “So if I ask you to marry me, you’ll turn me down because I fight fires?”

  She averted her eyes. “Are you asking me?”

  “You know I am.”

  “Then I’d have to say no,” she said in a broken voice. “If we had children someday, I wouldn’t want them to have to go through what happened to Mandy and her family.”

  “That will never be the case,” he muttered.

  “I’m sure Mandy’s father told his wife the same thing. But you can’t make a statement like that, Cole,” she fought back. “I thought you were a cattle rancher, but you came home from Colorado a biologist committed to working in the mountains at least half of every month. That I could handle. But it isn’t enough for you. When you’re home, you’re fighting fires. I want a man who’s home with me every minute he can be.”

  “Will you marry me if I resign?”

  Her breath caught. “No, because in the first place, you’re following in your father’s footsteps. Everything he’s ever asked of you, you’ve done like an obedient son. Even if you could break a promise to your father, I wouldn’t want you to do so for me. I couldn’t live with you knowing you’d made that kind of sacrifice. You’d learn to hate me. That’s the one thing I could never live with.”

  Chapter Seven

  Tamsin’s words had gutted him. Cole got to his feet. “So what you’re saying is we’re doomed not to have any kind of relationship.”

  “I guess I am, but I’ll always love you.”

  That wasn’t good enough. “I’m going to ask you again. Why did you come to Lander with me?”

  “To get my head on straight.”

  “And now you think you have?” Cole stared down at her. “That’s it? In twelve hours everything’s clear, cut and dried for you?”

  “That’s how it felt when you left Whitebark.”

  “So what you’re really doing is paying me back for all those years of pain?”

  “No, Cole! I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”

  “The hell you didn’t. When I wrote ‘Doomed to Love Her,’ I never dreamed I was writing a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  In the next instant he reached for his pillow and bag.

  “Wait—please don’t go!”

  “There’s nothing you could say that could make me stay. Good night, Tamsin. We’ll head for Whitebark in the morning.” He turned out the lantern and left the tepee, but she raced after him. When he reached the tent, he started to zip the screening.

  “Don’t shut me out!” she cried, and pushed her way inside before he could do it up all the way. The momentum launched her against him and his arms went around her so she didn’t fall.

  For a moment their bodies were locked together. She clung to him. “We need to talk, Cole.”

  “We already did that. It didn’t work...but since you’re here, I plan to kiss you into oblivion.” Faster than she could believe, he swept her into his arms and laid her down on top of his sleeping bag. Then he joined her, locking her legs with his so she couldn’t move. He plunged his hands into her hair and found her mouth.

  “Cole—”

  His name was all he heard before he smothered any other sounds and began to devour her. He’d done enough thinking about them for a lifetime. This was the only way to get through to her.

  “I love you, Tamsin, but since you’ve cut us off at every turn, we can at least take advantage of this night. I know you want me, and Heaven knows I want you. I’m too on fire for you to stop now. If this is all we will ever have of each other, then let me make love to you as if tonight was our wedding night. In my heart you’ve always been my wife.”

  She made a sound that could have been in protest or something else, but it no longer mattered. He rolled her on top of him, craving this closeness more than he needed air, and kissed every feature of her face.

  “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are? I couldn’t count all the dreams I’ve had about you. Don’t deny us the pleasure of this night. It’s going to have to last us for the rest of our lives.”

  At first she seemed to be with him all the way. Her hunger matched his as they got caught up in a rapture too marvelous to describe. But suddenly she tore her lips from his and pulled back, placing her hands against his chest.

  He groaned. “Don’t pull away from me now, sweetheart.”

  “Cole...we have to stop before we can’t. I’m going back to the tepee.”

  His breath caught and he grasped her arm. “Surely you don’t mean that.”

  She refused to look at him. “I followed you inside here to talk to you and explain everything that’s going on inside of me.”

  “We are talking in the most elemental of ways.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  His temper flared. “I never thought of you as a tease.”

  She threw her head back. “If you think that’s what I’m doing, then you never knew me. You couldn’t possibly understand how terrified I am of losing you in a fire. I’ve never seen you back down from a challenge. That’s what made you such a great bull rider. You’ve never been afraid of anything in your life.”

  “That’s not true. Every firefighter has to deal with fear. But we compartmentalize it differently.”

  “I don’t know how you do that. When I saw you in your firefighter gear and realized what it meant, I was panicked and horrified. Don’t you realize that horror has grown worse over the last few weeks? What if our positions were reversed, and I was the firefighter and you the CPA? How would you feel knowing that every time I went out on a call, disaster could strike and I might not come back in one piece to you and our children?”

  He took a deep breath. “I’ll admit I’m glad I didn’t come home to find out you were a certified member of the fire department. No doubt it would tear me to shreds if I watched you pull on your turnout gear.”

  She let out a tormented sigh. “Oh, what’s the use of going over this? We’ll never get anywhere.”

  “Tamsin? I have an idea for us to meet each other halfway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As soon as I came home from Colorado, Chief Powell took me on without question. I feel an obligation to him. At the time I had no idea how you felt about this.”

  “I realize that,” she muttered.

  “Over the years I’d had talks with my dad. He impressed upon me at a young age that it was important to be an integral part of the community. That’s why he became a firefighter and helped when he could. I never recall my mother being upset by it, but it’s possible she felt exactly the way you do.”

  “You never got frightened when your dad went on a call?”

  “I was hardly aware of it. He was a rancher first, and later on he had to slow down. When I look back, I can see how lucky we were that he never had a serious injury that made a deep impression on me. If he did, he never said anything about it.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “When we get back to town, I’ll have a talk with Chief Powell and tell him the truth. Once he hears that I want to get married, but being a firefighter is getting in the way of our plans, I’ll make him a proposal.”

  “What kind?”

  At least she was listening. “That I stay on until the arsonists are caught. Every man in the department is needed. Once the culprits have been identified and arrested, then I’ll leave the department. We’re hoping this menace will be shut down by next month. Can you give me that much time to work things out?”

  “No.” She half moaned the word.

  “I see.”
He rolled away from her. “Since you couldn’t have made that any clearer, I wish you’d go back to the tepee now.”

  The next thing he knew she’d draped herself over his back, and pressed her cheek next to his. “I didn’t mean that I couldn’t give you the time you needed before you quit. I was saying no to the idea of you giving up your job permanently for me. It isn’t right.”

  “Look, Tamsin. This isn’t a matter of right or wrong. I’m willing to compromise in order to marry you, yet I can see it’s still asking too much of you.”

  “That’s not true!” She moved around so she lay face-to-face with him. Her hand crept into his hair. “If you can give it up after the arsonists are caught, then I’ll do my part to make our marriage work. My salary at Ostler’s will cover what salary you give up and I’ll help with the ranching. I love you too much to lose you, Cole.”

  He raised up on his elbow, having been elevated from the depths to the heights so fast, he was out of breath. “You’re not going to change your mind?”

  She pressed a hungry kiss to his mouth. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “In that case, don’t move.” He sprang to his feet and lit a lantern.

  “What are you doing?”

  He smiled. “Wait and see. Close your eyes.”

  “Cole—”

  “Just trust me.”

  “I do,” she said emotionally.

  What a glorious sight she was in navy blue sweats with her disheveled hair gleaming like chestnuts and her lips swollen from his kisses! He reached in his duffel bag and pulled out the little velvet box he’d packed. Cole had been operating on faith, having bought her a ring after finding out she wasn’t engaged.

  He pulled it out of the box and got on his knees in front of her. “Now you can open them.”

  When she did, he reached for her left hand. “With this ring, I’m making our engagement official. Be sure this is what you want because I won’t let you give it back.” He slid it home.

  Her eyes had turned into moist blue pools of light. “After waiting nine years, you can be sure I’ll treasure this forever.” She stared at the ring. “I love this diamond. It’s in the shape of Teardrop Lake.”