How to Lasso a Cowboy

by Jodi Thomas

  But Tess held back.

  “Come on,” Josh urged. “We’re here. We might as well go in and act like a married couple.”

  She backed up a step, very unlike the Tess he knew.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t go in there,” she admitted from between clenched teeth. “I . . . just can’t.”

  “You wanted to look married.”

  “It’s not . . . that. I . . . I don’t feel like myself. All gussied up like . . . you know. Everyone will stare. Everyone will laugh.”

  He sighed, then held out his hand. “Come on.”

  She frowned.

  “Come with me. Show some guts, woman.”

  That brought her chin up, as he knew it would. She put her hand in his, and for the first time he noticed the graceful, tapered fingers that looked almost delicate. “This way,” he told her and led her around behind the barn, where prying eyes couldn’t find them. There he took out the knife he always carried on his belt.

  “We’ll just make a few changes.” A half dozen big silk bows fell victim to his knife before she could object. Several gaudy flounces shared the bows’ fate. The resulting dress had simpler lines and showed off Tess’s womanly shape. And Tess did have a womanly shape, Josh noted—a slender waist, trim hips, and, well, other attributes that a decent fellow wasn’t supposed to stare at.

  “There now,” he said, clearing his throat and forcing himself to behave. “You look fine. You don’t need all those gewgaws hanging on you. They just distract people from noticing how pretty you are.”

  Tess looked down at herself with a dubious frown.

  “You can’t get the picture from where you’re standing,” Josh told her. “You’ll just have to take my word for it. You’re prettier than a flower in spring.”

  At that, she snorted. “Save it, cowboy. You don’t need to tell me lies.”

  “I don’t lie. You’re damned pretty! Haven’t you ever looked in a mirror, woman? You’ve got—well, hell!—you’ve got everything a pretty woman should have. A nice smile. Shiny hair, great eyes, good . . . well, a gentleman isn’t supposed to talk about the details, you know. Just take my word on it. The men in that barn are going to think you’re downright beautiful.”

  She was, Josh suddenly realized. Maybe her man’s dress and mean-dog attitude had blinded him up until this moment, but seeing Tess in a dress—now that he’d chopped away some of the excess—served as a revelation. Or maybe she was a woman who took time to grow on a man. She possessed the finest pair of eyes Josh had ever seen—deep green, like a quiet shady pool. Lush black hair and smooth olive skin—bronze even beyond the touch of the sun—hinted that her Irish father had taken a Mexican wife. And from the looks of Tess, her mother must have been a beauty.

  She still looked doubtful. Strange to see uncertainty reflected upon that usually confident face.

  “Tess, in the one week I’ve known you, I’ve seen you climb on top of ornery broncs, face down your obnoxious brother, and push around range cattle who wouldn’t mind stomping you into the dust. You can’t possibly turn chicken because a few folks have gotten together for a barn dance.”

  Her jaw stiffened. “Who’s chicken? I’m not chicken.”

  He held out a hand. “Then let’s go. It’s starting to rain.”

  Teeth clenched, but head held high, she took the offered hand.

  TESS had never felt so out of place in her life as in that barn with the fiddlers sawing out lively tunes, the couples doing jigs or polkas or whatever foolishness they wanted to do, and the other folks eating, drinking, talking, and smiling. Children ran wild through the crowd, getting in the way, tripping the dancers, making off with food from the heavily laden planks laid across bales of hay, but no one scolded them. This was a time for kicking up heels and having a good time. Everyone looked as if they just naturally knew how to have fun. Tess didn’t. Colin McCabe hadn’t been much for socializing. Work had always gotten in the way.

  As Josh guided Tess toward the food, lawyer Bartlett spotted them and waved, a sly smile on his face. Or at least the smile looked sly to Tess, but she might have been just a little bit cranky when it came to Tombstone’s one lawyer. And dancing with Meg Riley, the blacksmith’s pretty daughter, was none other than Sean. Tess hoped Meg knew what a skunk her brother was.

  The thought depressed her, because she hadn’t always thought her brother was a skunk. When they had been kids, Tess had been right fond of him. After he left, the two of them had occasionally written letters. Their daddy had refused to hear of Sean, but Tess had loved to read of the places he’d been and the things he had done. Maybe he really did think selling the ranch would fix them both up right. But he didn’t have the feeling for the Diamond T that Tess did.

  Josh nudged her. “Smile, and stop looking daggers at Sean. You’re married and happy. So look it.”

  Looking married and happy proved tough. Eyes pressed in from all sides, staring at her as she nibbled on chicken and roasted corn, then following every awkward step when Ransom made her dance. He insisted, despite her telling him flat out that she didn’t know how.

  “Learn,” he told her. Just like a man, always wanting to be the boss, but after a few minutes of stepping on toes and stumbling about, looking like a fool, dancing became almost fun. Tess liked the feel of Josh’s arm around her. It was a strong arm. And from close up, the man looked even better than he did from farther away. She liked his face, Tess decided. His eyes crinkled when he smiled, and when they danced, he smiled a lot. What’s more, he smelled good, like soap and leather.

  Too bad she wasn’t some pretty thing like Meg Riley who had been brought up liking the idea of having a husband run her life. Tess was beginning to suspect that Josh Ransom would make a dadgummed fine catch as a husband—for a girl who wanted one.

  And he’d said Tess was pretty. Imagine that. Even if it was a bald-faced lie, it was a nice lie, and mighty kind of him to say.

  They waltzed by Bartlett and his wife. “You two having fun?” the legal eagle inquired.

  Tess gave him a smug look. “Of course we are. Being newlyweds is very romantic.”

  As the crowd of dancers swept Bartlett away, Tess felt rather than heard a chuckle deep in Josh’s chest. “Tess, I don’t think you know the meaning of romantic.”

  She looked up, jaw squared pugnaciously. “I do so.”

  He shook his head. “Someday, some fellow is going to have the guts to teach you, and I’m not sure I don’t envy him.”

  She would have shown her contempt by sticking out her tongue, but Sean was looking their way, so she settled for a quiet snort. “Some folks don’t have time for that sort of nonsense, Ransom.”

  “It doesn’t take time,” he replied. “Just heart. Or so I’m told.”

  “Sounds to me like you don’t know that much about it either.”

  He laughed amiably. “Maybe I don’t, now that you mention it.”

  The conversation got Tess’s mind churning about how romance, real romance, would feel like. Dancing with this man, absorbing his warmth, moving to the guidance of his body, feeling his breath trickle through her hair—it all made her feel flustered and achy inside, with her heart jumping around and a couple of unmentionable parts of herself tingling very strangely. Was that romance, or did the flutter in her belly mean only that the chicken had been a little off?

  When Miguel brought the wagon around, Tess discovered with some surprise that, once started, the evening had flown past. She didn’t really want to leave, but that was pure silliness, because her father had always said that wasting time jawing with the neighbors never brought the beef home or broke a green horse. Still, she wanted to try this again next month, when the Hernandez family had their annual spring get-together. Then she remembered: next month her life would be back in its normal rut, and she would have no reason to get gussied up. Josh Ransom wouldn’t be around to make her dance, or to tell her she was pretty.

  Unless . . .

  Maybe
you should try to make this a real marriage, Rosie had told her.

  That was just about the worst idea Tess had ever heard. But still, it stuck in her mind like a burr.

  By the time the four of them piled into the wagon for the ride home, the pleasant sprinkle of rain that had fallen all evening had changed to a pelting downpour. Luckily, Rosie had packed two canvas tarps for just this happenstance. Tess and Josh huddled under one on the driver’s box. Miguel and Rosie shared the other.

  The night closed in, dark as a cave, as the horses ploddingly pulled the wagon through the storm. Under the tarp with Josh, Tess felt isolated from the whole world, acutely aware of the man next to her. Their shoulders, arms, hips, and thighs touched, pressed together both for heat and to make use of the sheltered space beneath the tarp.

  The contact produced some interesting sensations in Tess. Warm, tingly, heart-racing feelings, even stronger than when they had danced. She wondered, suddenly, what kissing Josh Ransom, really kissing him, would feel like. He had kissed her once, that time that Sean had shown up after their contest on Nitro, but that kiss had been a spur-of-the-moment taunt, a take-this-and-choke-on-it sort of thing. But even that unexpected, annoying kiss had made her toes tingle. What would a real kiss, a thought-out, planned, full-cooperation sort of kiss feel like?

  The speculation sent of bolt of wet heat from the top of her head to the ends of her toes. Enough of that! Tess decided. Such thoughts were downright dangerous. They led to thoughts even more wild, like what might happen between a man and a woman who were truly married—not just the stuff in the bedroom, which Tess regarded as something a woman just had to put up with, but the good stuff, like sharing work and worries during the long days, sitting side by side in front of the fire in wintertime, or in the hot summer drinking Rosie’s lemonade out in the courtyard, listening to the men tell tall tales.

  Damn but these were dangerous thoughts. When a woman dressed in lace and bows, she stopped thinking with anything like common sense. Likely the corset Rosie had laced so tightly had cut the blood flow to her brain.

  When they arrived at the ranch, lamps burned in the bunkhouse and barn. Rosie and Miguel promptly jumped off the back of the wagon and headed into the dark house, still holding the tarp over their heads. But something anchored Tess to the hard wooden seat, there under that tarp with Josh sitting so close beside her. He didn’t move either. Tess didn’t know what his excuse was. She was the one losing brainpower to a corset, not him.

  But he stayed, while the horses stood patiently in the rain and the wind tried to snatch the tarp from their hands. He stayed, and she stayed, and the tension that had been building between them all night shimmered like heat. If he tried to kiss her, Tess decided, she would let him. A girl should have a real, no-holds-barred kiss once in her life. He moved closer, and her heart jumped clear up into her throat. Without actually telling herself to present her face, kisser foremost, she did. In the dim light that spilled from the barn, his eyes looked smoky, his focus single-minded. Closer, closer, until she could almost feel the burn of his lips on hers. Then . . .

  “It’s about time you got home, boss-lady. We got us a problem!”

  They sprang apart like guilty children caught with hands in the cookie jar. The wind grabbed the tarp, snapping it smartly and sending a cascade of cold rainwater into their warm, cozy world.

  “Henry!” Tess snapped, exasperated. “What the hell?”

  “We got about a hundred head of stupid, blockheaded goddamned beeves stranded on a sandbank down in the river, and the river’s rising like hell itself opened the floodgates. Luis and me and the dogs have been trying to move ’em, but we need help.”

  The spell of the night broke as the ranch laid its heavy hand upon her, drawing her back to the real world. “Saddle Ranger for me,” she told Henry. “I’ll get into some real clothes.”

  When she got to the barn minutes later, a dripping wet Henry, looking cold to the bone, stood with a blanket over his shoulders while Josh adjusted the saddle cinches of both Ranger and Jughead.

  “You don’t have to help,” Tess told Josh. After all, this wasn’t his ranch, and she’d paid him to marry her, not risk his neck trying to move ornery cattle through a rising river before they got their silly selves drowned.

  He didn’t say anything, just swung aboard Jughead. Tess wasn’t about to argue. If the man wanted to help, she wouldn’t turn him down.

  They rode for twenty minutes alongside the churning San Pedro before Luis’s cussing, the dogs’ barking, and the bawling of frightened cattle carried to their ears. Tess cursed the darkness. All she could see were black-on-black shadows. She could make out Luis only because his shadow rose taller than the cattle’s. Frantic barking pierced the night above the pandemonium. Bold cattle dog Rojo must have crossed when the water was lower. Tess doubted he would be able to fight the current now. Rojo’s son Chief, not as bold as his father, barked in frustration from the near bank.

  Without saying a word, they all three headed straight for the water. Ranger was Tess’s favorite mount. The big buckskin gelding would go anywhere or do anything she asked, which didn’t say much for his brains but spoke volumes for his heart. He didn’t hesitate, but plunged into the flood. Josh, mounted on the somewhat smarter Jughead, had a fight on his hands, but he finally goaded the horse into the swirling water. Henry’s mare, already tired from a night’s work and having already swum the river a time or two, absolutely balked. No amount of spurring would send her down that path again.

  Ranger swam steadily while Tess tried not to think of unseen dangers the swirling current might send careening toward them. Whole trees torn from the bank could ride the flood and spell death for an unlucky rider. Whirlpools and eddies could suck horse and rider beneath the churning water. Floating mats of vegetation could sweep them downstream like a lethal broom. Crossing such a flood during the day was dangerous. At night it was just damned foolhardy.

  But the fool cattle would simply stand there and drown while the river ate at their sandbar.

  Both Ranger and Jughead climbed onto the sandbar at the same time, carrying rain and river-drenched riders. Luis raised his arm in the darkness and Rojo barked a greeting.

  “Take the rear,” Tess told Josh.

  He didn’t argue.

  Luis already had the left flank in hand, and Rojo read the situation as any good cattle dog would and harried the beeves on the right. After squinting through the darkness for a few minutes, Tess spotted the lead cow, the animal whose loud bawling drove the others to greater panic, the animal they would follow if she could be persuaded to reason.

  Tess urged Ranger through the churning mass of cattle and tried to cut her out. The cow wanted none of it. Tess cursed, but the cow didn’t care. The wind snatched away Luis and Josh’s shouting. Even Rojo’s hoarse barking whipped away into the night.

  “Well, damn it all, anyway!” Tess maneuvered upwind of old bossy and let her lasso fly. Three tries later, it hooked around the lead cow’s horns. “I don’t care if you want to go or not, flea-brain. You’re going.”

  At a touch of Tess’s heels, Ranger tightened the rope and pulled the struggling cow toward the water. She bawled and bucked, went to her knees, and struggled like a fish on the end of a line until the current snatched her feet from beneath her. Then she followed instinct and swam, striking out for the opposite bank, where Henry and Chief waited to welcome her. Tess snubbed up the rope and swam beside the cow on Ranger to keep her headed in the right direction.

  Under the goading of the two men and dog, the beeves began to move, mindlessly following the lead cow. Josh and Luis kept the animals in a tight knot in the current. When the last one climbed onto dry land, Josh turned Jughead back into the current. Tess’s heart caught in her throat as he lunged up onto the rapidly shrinking sandbar and scooped a dripping Rojo onto the saddle in front of him.

  Tess would have gone back for the dog, who—forty pounds dripping wet—didn’t have the bulk to fight the sti
ll-rising current. A cowboy didn’t leave a good cattle dog, or even a bad cattle dog, behind. The dogs were part of the family. But for Josh to do it, without even being asked—well, there she went turning to mush again, and she couldn’t blame a corset this time.

  She didn’t have anything to blame at all, except herself, when she met him at the river’s edge, leaned over Rojo’s wet body, and gave Josh Ransom that full-cooperation kiss she’d thought about all evening. And suddenly the rain, the wind, her drenched hair and soggy clothes no longer were cold.

  NEXT morning, Tess slept long past her usual predawn rising time. Perhaps her slothfulness resulted from stumbling to bed in the wee hours of the morning after hours spent cold, drenched, and in danger of losing both her cattle and her life. Or perhaps she snuggled more deeply into her bed because of the dreams entertaining her sleep. The dreams featured Josh Ransom in a prominent role. Josh smiling, Josh shaving in front of the little mirror hung outside the kitchen door, Josh riding Nitro and giving her that smug look that he did so well, Josh hauling poor Rojo onto his saddle and letting the dog kiss his face. Then Tess was kissing his face.

  Josh kissing. Yes indeed, that was the meat of the dream, complete with heart-thumping, blood-boiling bolts of sensation that shot through her like lightning.

  Periodically she woke, soft and warm with remembered sensations, and in those brief conscious minutes, having a real-life husband didn’t seem like such a bad idea, as long as that husband was Josh. In fact, in those otherworldly moments between one dream and the next, having the man here day and night seemed a hell of an idea. Why had she ever thought that it wasn’t?

  Sun streamed through the bedroom window and made square patterns on the bed when Rosie marched in and put an end to Tess’s dreams.

  “Aren’t we the lazy one this morning!” Rosie punctuated her comment with a sharp slap to the lump beneath the covers that was Tess’s rear end.

  “Ow! Don’t! I’m getting up!”

  “Well, you’d better, because you’ve got business to attend to in the kitchen.”