Cowboy Tough

by Joanne Kennedy

  “It’s okay.” She stood and staggered a little. “Wow. I’m a little stiff.”

  “Saddle soreness takes a while to set in.” He reached out to steady her, gripping her elbow. “Might be a little tough getting out of bed in the morning.”

  He looked her in the eye, but he made sure she felt his gaze right down to her toes. “I just want apologize for—for everything.” He still had no idea what he’d done, but that should cover it.

  She apparently was at least considering accepting his apology, because she let him keep hanging onto her arm. She’d gone still, like a wary animal testing the air.

  “I like the way you care about your niece, the way you look out for people.” He kept his voice low since they were so close to the bunkhouse. “And I want you to know someone’s looking out for you.”

  He put his other arm around her shoulders and drew her close. She looked up at him, her eyes troubled and maybe a little scared. Something in his heart melted and he bent his head to kiss her, but she put her hands on his chest and pushed him away.

  “No, Mack.” She said it gently, but it still hurt. “Not with Dora around.”

  “Dora’s asleep.”

  “I don’t know that for sure. And I can’t take any chances.” She stepped away.

  “Life’s all about taking chances,” he said. “You can’t play it safe all the time.”

  “No, but I can do my best.” She walked away, heading for the Heifer House. “Good night, Mack.”

  Chapter 12

  Morning came way too soon for Cat. She’d stared up at the ceiling half the night, wondering why she’d felt compelled to lie to Mack. Ames wasn’t her boyfriend. Sure, she’d dated him—once. They hadn’t even made it to the main course before realizing they were better as friends. Ames should have been exactly what she wanted in a man, but for some reason the idea of touching him left her completely cold.

  Unlike the cowboy, who heated her up like a spark striking tinder. When he’d boosted her into the saddle, she’d thought she was going to melt right off the mule. The ride, the ranch, the worries about the bunkhouse, and her clients—they’d all receded as a series of images flashed through her brain.

  Images of sliding down into his arms. Images of being carried off to the barn. Images of the two of them literally rolling in the hay in various states of undress.

  It was ridiculous. She’d just met the man. So she’d brought out Ames in self-defense, figuring there was some kind of Code of the West that forbade poaching another guy’s gal.

  No such luck. Maybe the Code only counted if the other guy was a cowboy too. And Ames was certainly no cowboy.

  She’d finally fallen into a restless sleep, but she’d dreamed all night—dark, flickering dreams where she and Mack made love again and again under a starry Van Gogh sky. She’d woken up exhausted before dawn, and stayed in the rickety bed worrying about her sanity for almost an hour before she got up.

  What the hell was she thinking? This man was wrong for her in so many ways. He was as different from her as night from day, the Mutt to her Jeff.

  Worse yet, he was a business associate. The one thing they had in common—besides an ill-advised lust for each other—was a burning desire to make this trip a success. Which meant they needed to ignore all the other burning desires that threatened to send the whole project up in flames.

  She needed to make the most of this day, not lie around mooning about cowboys. For her, work was always the solution to the problem. That was probably why Ames was the closest thing she’d had to a boyfriend in years. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out that city socializing wasn’t for her. She went to a few openings and kept up some professional relationships with drinks after work. But she much preferred the company of Alizarin Crimson and Cerulean Blue to most of the men she met.

  She loved losing herself in a painting, surrendering to the hypnotic flow of pigment in water. That was one reason the noise and bustle of the city had never bothered her—she’d spent her evenings absorbed in the workings of her brush, the sweep of charcoal on rough paper. Days had belonged to Trainer and Crock, but nights had been filled with glowing, fanciful paintings, always of natural subjects—trees and clouds, water and sky, all painted from photographs and vacation memories.

  Here, she had nature all around her. And time was wasting while she worried about a man she’d be leaving in two weeks—a man she’d never see again after this trip.

  She bounced out of bed and took the world’s shortest shower, smoothing her hair with her fingers and dabbing sunscreen on her nose, chin, and cheekbones. She edged open the door to Dora’s room, summoning up the courage to suggest they go out and look for subjects together. The rest of the students would be arriving later, so they’d have some of that girl time Dora was so scornful about. Maybe she’d be a little easier to get along with this morning.

  But the girl mumbled something, scowled in her sleep, and turned toward the wall. It might be best to let sleeping Doras lie.

  Grabbing her collapsible easel and a portable plastic palette, Cat headed outside. She’d just do a few quick watercolor sketches, demos for her students. The ranch might not be the height of dude luxury, but it was certainly picturesque. The house glowed in the pink sheen of sunrise, one lighted window marking the kitchen. Maddie was probably already toiling over breakfast. The barn glowed too; Mack was already at work. As she watched, he passed the barn doors with a pitchfork slung over his shoulder. Maybe she should talk to him about posing for a portrait. That would certainly break the ice.

  Yeah, right. She’d gone over every hard curve and solid plane of his body last night in her dreams. The last thing she needed to do was trace the same lines this morning with a pencil. They’d be stamped on her mind’s eye indelibly and she’d never get focused on the trip.

  She reminded herself of her rules. This trip was about Dora. Not cowboys. And certainly not sex.

  So why couldn’t she stop thinking about cowboys and sex?

  The sky was turning from pink to pewter, but the sun still lit the face of the barn. It warmed the red paint and sharpened the shadows that defined the rough wood. Behind and above, clouds blended and blurred. Cat doubted she could improve on it any, but she could preserve it. She had just set up in front of the barbed wire fence when Mack strode out of the barn.

  “Sorry it’s not better weather.” He stood behind her as she stroked the top third of her paper with a water-soaked hake brush, edging around the barn’s roofline. Dipping first into blue, then just touching a dab of burnt umber, she laid in the darkest part of the sky, doing her best to ignore him. She hated it when people watched her work, but she’d better get used to it if she was going to teach.

  “How do you know what colors to use?”

  She shrugged. “Four years of art school. Lots of mistakes.”

  He apparently figured out from her terse answer that she didn’t want to talk, and as she dabbed color on the paper and watched her painting emerge, she finally forgot he was there. Eventually he gave up and returned to the barn. The loose, devil-may-care grace of his walk was a distraction, and the sight of his backside was even worse, but once he was out of sight she managed to get back in the zone.

  She was adding finishing touches when he spoke from behind her.

  “Lunchtime.”

  He was close, too close, and she jumped and spun to face him. Paint flew from the brush and slashed a stripe of alizarin crimson across the front of his pale blue shirt.

  He pulled the shirt from his body so he could see the damage and shook his head ruefully. The paint looked like blood spatter from some grisly crime. “Another one bites the dust. I go through clothes like a horse goes through hay.”

  She grabbed a sponge from her supplies, dipped it in her water bottle, and dabbed at his chest, but that only spread the rich pigment, staining a wider area. She dabbed harder, biting h
er lip.

  She was so intent on getting the stains out that it took her a second to notice how close they were standing, how warm his chest was under her hands, and how his eyes sparkled over a bemused smile. Once she did notice, she probably looked like an idiot, staring up at him with her mouth half-open.

  Apparently she looked like an idiot who wanted to be kissed, because he ducked his head and next thing she knew she was being thoroughly and profoundly seduced under the shady brim of his cowboy hat.

  She splayed one hand over his chest to push him away, but her body seemed to be caught in some inexorable flow of energy moving from his lips to hers. It was like the river she’d seen storming through the bottom of the canyon the day before. Even from high above they’d heard it, rushing forward, pounding over rocks. The same water that fell in gentle rain and nourished the prairie flowers had carved that canyon, working its will with a steady strength that found a way through every obstacle.

  She felt all her own hard edges being worn away just as steadily. Tension hummed in her veins, but she was tumbling like a round rock in strong current. Mack had her sealed to his body with one hand around her shoulders and the other cupping her seat. He shifted, hoisting her up on tiptoe, and she couldn’t help clinging to him as he made a low noise in his throat and deepened the kiss.

  She was going to faint. She was going to fall. Yesterday’s kiss had been casual, a chance encounter. This was very, very deliberate. It was the kind of kiss that made you forget your name. Forget your promises. Forget what you were here for…

  Dora. She was here for Dora. And Dora could be watching right now.

  She moved her hand back to his chest and braced herself, summoning the will to shove him away. He tightened his grip for a second, then let her go and staggered backward.

  She stumbled a little herself, then caught her balance. He looked as shell-shocked as she felt, as if the kiss had surprised him too. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, mostly to hide the fact that they were swollen and trembling with—lust? Emotion? What the hell was that? And what was she going to do about it?

  She opened her mouth to speak and nothing came out. She stood there, gasping like a fish, for what seemed like an eternity before she could eke out one word.

  “Stop.”

  “I did.” He was breathing hard, his chest heaving like he’d just run a marathon.

  She cleared her throat and stroked a lock of hair out of her face. What did you say to a man like this? How did you stop a river’s flow when all you wanted to do was ride it, floating like a leaf on the surface, twirling in the eddies and shooting down the falls?

  “This is a professional relationship.” Her own voice sounded foreign to her, breathless and a little shrill.

  “Professional?” His eyes glinted with their usual humor, but his voice was husky. “Well, that explains a lot.”

  He seemed to realize he’d crossed a line before he’d even finished the joke. Raising both hands like a holdup victim, he started backing away. “Wait. Sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Cat grabbed her hat from the top of the easel and clamped it on her head, fooling with the brim as though the world depended on a rakish angle. She cocked it right, then left. Then right again.

  “I told you—no touching. What if Dora had seen that? What if Trevor did?” To her own horror, she felt tears heating her eyes. Turning away, she stalked off, all stiffness and dignity.

  The trouble with dignity was that it demanded you tilt your nose in the air, and then you couldn’t see where you were going. Her toe hit a hillock and she stumbled, flailing her arms and losing what little poise she had left. Glancing back, she expected to see him grinning over her misstep, but he was standing just as she’d first seen him, his arms loose in that gunfighter stance.

  Only this time his hands were empty, and he looked a little lost as he watched her go.

  ***

  “Darn it; they stopped.” Madeleine turned from the window and beckoned to Hank Slay, who’d been watching her from the doorway like a sad and silent watchdog. “Mack was kissing the daylights out of that woman.”

  The hired man shoved his lanky body off the wall and came over to the window. He’d been a hand on the ranch most of his life, working for two generations of Boyds. He was the only one who’d stuck by her throughout Ollie’s tenure, patiently fending off her second husband’s inexpert orders with stubborn silence. But despite the fact that he’d lived on the place for twenty years, Madeleine felt like she barely knew him. He wasn’t much for fraternizing with the womenfolk.

  The womenfolk. She’d heard him refer to her that way. Despite the fact that she was just one woman, Hank seemed to regard her as an entire alien race. She didn’t know what had happened in his past to make him so spooked about females, but it must have been one of those traumatic experiences that stayed with you all your life, like the wounds soldiers suffered in war. Whenever he had to face her, he’d clutch his hat in front of his chest in both hands, as if it was the steering wheel of a race car going a million miles an hour. His knuckles would go white as he spun it right and left, left and right as if he could steer himself right out of the room.

  But since the Ollie incident, he seemed to have transferred his loyalty to her. She’d assumed he’d take to following Mack around, but he shadowed her instead, lurking in corners and hovering outside the back door, scaring the daylights out of her whenever she turned and saw him standing there with his hat in his hands. She’d taken to talking to him in a running monologue, though she wasn’t sure if he understood a word she was saying. He never responded. It was like talking to a dog or a cat—one-sided, but somehow still satisfying.

  “I hope to hell he knows what he’s doing,” she said.

  Hank spun the hat to the left.

  “Everything depends on this first bunch of customers,” she said. “Our reputation’s at stake. Plus I need to make back the money that son-of-a-bitch husband of mine stole.”

  He didn’t respond, but she just kept talking—partly to see if she could get a rise out of him. “Oh, I know you think a woman can’t do it. But you mark my words, I’ll make this dude ranch thing pay. Make it pay enough to make up for my stupid mistake.”

  She blinked fast, keeping her eyes fixed on Mack and the painter lady so Hank wouldn’t see that she was tearing up. She wasn’t a crier. She was a ranch wife, tough and resilient.

  And Ollie Kress was hardly worth crying over. It was obvious her ex wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be. He didn’t love her like she’d thought, either. She’d just been a means to an end, a foolish woman willing to hand over all her assets, and her body too. That was the part she regretted most. Thinking of Ollie’s hands on her, of the way he’d used her, made her want to crawl out to the barn and die. It shamed her just to think of how foolish she’d been.

  It was easy enough to make excuses for herself. Her grief for Mack’s father had been deep and wide, a cold, dark river she couldn’t seem to cross. Life without him on the ranch had been unbearably lonely, and Ollie had offered her a distraction.

  But in the end, she’d just heaped a heavy dollop of shame on top of her sorrow.

  She twisted her hands in her apron, pretending she needed to wipe them clean. She wouldn’t let anyone catch her wringing her hands over Ollie. Not even Hank. It was just anger that made her do it, anyway. Not hurt. Not heartbreak. Anger.

  “I know it’s been hard on you.” She shot Hank a sideways glance, knowing that if she looked at him directly he’d shy away and disappear. “Here you’ve been relying on me, and I let you down. I’ll pay you, you know. All I owe you, plus interest.”

  Hank shoved his hands in his pockets and rolled the toe of his boot over a pebble that had somehow escaped the wrath of her broom. He rolled it over and back, over and back, until she was half-mesmerized by the repetition. Maybe he thought he wa
s shifting gears in that race car. Who knew what went through the man’s head?

  “Well.” She rushed to fill the silence. That was the problem with Hank. His quiet ways set her to babbling. “If my son wants to seduce that woman into thinking this is the right place for the Art Treks, that’s fine with me.” She turned and strode out to the porch, not caring if Hank followed her or not. “God knows the bunkhouse didn’t impress her.”

  “She’s good for him,” Hank said. “You ought to get her to stay.”

  She spun and faced him.

  “Why, Hank.” She struggled to find her voice. He’d shocked the talk right out of her. She watched him redden and turn away and realized she needed to act casual, pretend this was all normal. It was like taming a wild animal. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t get too close.

  “You think she’s right for him?” She kept her tone casual.

  “She’s strong.”

  She leaned against the door frame, staring up at the rafters that lined the porch roof. “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “If she was a horsewoman, maybe, or some kind of sexpot, I’d figure she was more his type. But that woman sits a horse like she’s perched in a church pew.”

  A faint smile creased Hank’s face, but he kept his eyes on the floor. “That ex of his was no horsewoman,” he said.

  “Got a point there.” Madeleine pictured Alex as she’d last seen her, dressed in a black broomstick skirt and fringed suede jacket. She’d been draped with so much Navajo jewelry she looked like she was leaking turquoise and silver from her pores. “You know, I knew she was wrong for him. But I wanted him to marry her anyway.” She pulled a metal bar from a nail in one of the porch posts and used it to ring out a summons to the table on the old-fashioned triangle that had hung there for generations. Spinning on her heel, she walked briskly back to the kitchen, knowing Hank would follow. “Not because I’m one of those women that wants grandkids so bad. I’d never sacrifice my boy’s happiness for something I want, you know. But if it took a woman like that to tie him to home, I was all for it. Anything to keep him off those broncs.”