How to Handle a Cowboy

by Joanne Kennedy

  “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “I don’t know. I’d feel better if you took a look.” He couldn’t believe it. He was begging, really begging, a woman to come home with him. Maybe he’d lost his touch.

  He’d tossed out his credit card as soon as the check came, but Sierra snatched it and ran her finger down the columns. She flipped through her wallet and laid out half, plus a couple bills for the tip. “We can look at the house when I drop her off.” Her eyes widened. “Oh. I need to be home to let Riley in.”

  Riley, always Riley. Although Riley was doing the right thing tonight, trying to figure out more about this Mitch character. She’d showed some spine there, at least.

  Sierra’s phone suddenly blasted out the electric whine of rock guitars—Led Zeppelin, Ridge thought. Heads turned as she fumbled through her purse. When she finally found the poor smashed thing, she bobbled it and nearly dropped it out of sheer nervousness before she managed to answer.

  “Riley?”

  Oh, great. He sat back, wondering if he should try to get Chrissie’s attention and get another drink. Something stronger this time.

  Sierra gestured an apology and mumbled into the phone for a while. Finally, she shut it off.

  “What’s up with Riley?” he asked.

  “She’s spending the night in town.” Sierra shoved the phone into her purse and zipped the bag shut as if she could zip Riley and all her problems inside with it. “She said she’s too tired to pack all her stuff, but it sounded like she was at a party.”

  “Where did she say she was?”

  “At a friend’s apartment. But I’m not sure I like the friend.”

  “Why?”

  “I could swear I heard Mitch’s voice.”

  He put on his best poker face. “You don’t think she’d go anywhere near him now, though, do you?”

  “Not after I told her he lied about knowing me.”

  “It was probably someone else.”

  “Probably.” But Sierra looked troubled, glancing down at her purse.

  “Look, why don’t you come over? We can do something positive for Riley by making sure I have a place for her.”

  “Ridge, I’m sure you have something. She’s hardly picky.”

  He shook his head sadly, hoping he looked helpless. “It’s pretty bad. I mean, the three of us have been batching it for a long time now, and Bill before that.”

  “What about Irene?”

  “She passed away a few years after we boys moved in. There hasn’t been a woman in the house for years.”

  Unless you counted the girls Brady brought home. But they weren’t likely to clean anything or add a woman’s touch to anything but Brady himself. He supposed you could count Shelley too, but she’d only been to the ranch a couple times. She liked neatness and order, fancy meals by candlelight, and expensive sheets and towels. The couple times she’d come to the ranch, she’d seemed a little taken aback by the roughness of his lifestyle.

  Sierra, on the other hand, seemed to like the ranch. She’d been a little shocked by Sluefoot, but the natural way she talked to the dogs told him she’d be as good with animals as she was with kids once she got used to them. And when they’d walked into the bedroom, and she’d seen Irene’s lace curtains and flowered wallpaper, he’d seen a look in her eyes that said home. It had scared him a little that night, but now he’d changed his mind. He wanted to see that look again.

  Because another thing he’d discovered since coming back to the ranch was that it felt like home to him too. The steady work, the animals, the sense of being home—he’d been surprised to discover he didn’t mind waking up to the same sunrise every morning one bit.

  The question was, could he wake up to the same woman?

  He looked over at Sierra, who was fishing an extra dollar out of her wallet.

  “You paid your share,” he said.

  “This is a little extra for Chrissie.” She flushed. “I know she screwed up a little, but this is a big job for a high school kid. And she did the best she could.”

  Yes. He could wake up to this.

  He reached across the table and took her hand in his.

  Chapter 31

  Sierra looked down and realized with a start that Ridge had reached out with his damaged hand. The fingers wouldn’t curl around hers, but she did that for him, lacing her fingers through his.

  She’d seen shame in his eyes when he’d first shown her his injury, and since then, he’d kept his bad hand under the table where she couldn’t see it. But now he’d handed it to her, quite literally put himself in her hands. She felt like Androcles in the old fable, holding the lion’s injured paw.

  The last time she’d visited the ranch—now there was a euphemism for you, visited—she’d been drawn by Ridge physically, and her libido had crashed through all her boundaries like a rodeo bull breaking down a chicken-wire fence. But now, she felt like she’d peeled away the secrets of his past, layer by layer, and uncovered a man who’d been shaped by a fractured childhood, just like the kids she cared for.

  She could only pray they’d do as well as Ridge had. He represented everything she hoped her boys could achieve—success, fulfillment, a place in the community. But with his injury, that success had been stripped away.

  Men tended to define themselves through their work—construction foreman, stockbroker, teacher, rodeo cowboy. Ridge had lost that identity, and he needed to find a new place and purpose for himself in the world. And need was the one thing Sierra could never resist.

  A ribbon of desire spun through her veins, spiraling into a tangle of feelings that was so dense and confusing she didn’t want to even start to unravel it.

  She was going to go home with Ridge. She’d slide into those cool sheets again, watch the lace curtains billow in the breeze from the open window. She’d feel his hands on her again, and she’d ease his pain. She’d kiss him and touch him and take him inside her, giving him and herself the simple gift of losing themselves in the rapture of making love.

  She had the whole night off from Phoenix House—a treat she got twice a week, when Gil and his wife stayed over. So she had no excuse.

  Or did she? Riley had the car, and she didn’t feel right about going in the truck with Ridge. She had to get back to Phoenix House tonight, and she didn’t dare leave that detail to anyone but herself. So she didn’t just have an excuse; she had a roadblock.

  She felt the dull thud of disappointment low in her stomach. There had to be some solution.

  The van. She’d take the Phoenix House van. She had permission to use it as a personal vehicle when necessary, so driving it to the ranch wouldn’t be a problem. She’d just have to park at the bottom of the dirt road and let Ridge drive her up to the house, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t mind.

  She could hardly claim momentary madness this time, though. She’d have to go back to the house, get the van, and drive all that way. She couldn’t pretend she was going to all that trouble for Riley.

  No, she was making this trip for herself. She’d have plenty of chances to stop, but she knew she’d keep right on going, straight to the heart of the Wyoming night.

  ***

  Sierra followed Ridge’s truck through town. Ahead of her was the ranch; behind her were Wynott and Phoenix House and the careful, rational life she’d planned to lead here.

  She’d given up on love on her very first day. Sure, it had just been a computer dating profile, but the act had been symbolic, and she’d meant to stick by her resolution. So why had she gone to dinner with Ridge Cooper? And why had she followed him home?

  On the surface, she and Ridge had nothing in common. They’d both had difficult childhoods, but his was much, much worse. And they’d overcome them in different ways. Ridge had gone country—or, more accurately, gone cowboy. He’d found a simple way of life that worked for him, one that fit his strengths and made him happy. Sierra, on the other hand, had escaped the poverty of her childhood by excelling in school, earning scholarshi
ps and using good grades and intelligence to fulfill the purpose she felt she’d been born to.

  At some point in their lives—maybe about the time that picture had been taken of a sulky Ridge on the doorstep of the homestead with his new adoptive family—they could have been soul mates. They were two kids who’d been born into difficult situations, kids whose anger and resentment was about to propel them toward a solution, but they’d chosen different paths. Could those roads come together again?

  She was starting to hope so.

  Ridge pulled over in front of the old homestead, truck tires crunching on rocks and dirt. She pulled in beside him, and when she got out of the van, she took one look at him and found the answer to her question.

  She was here because never ever in her whole life had she had the chance to make love to a man like this. And she’d probably never have that chance again.

  In the fading light of evening, Ridge wasn’t just handsome, like some of the men she’d met in the city. Sure, he looked good—but his appeal ran far deeper than that. He was masculine from the calloused palms of his hands to the righteous core of his heart, which was appropriately hidden in a hard, nearly impenetrable shell. Dogs and kids and horses got a free pass; he loved them without reservation. But people? Not so much.

  And yet he saw something in her that he wanted.

  He held open the door to the truck and waved her inside with a courtly gesture. Oh, yeah, the truck. She remembered how embarrassed she’d been as she’d scrambled over the shift lever, but now she just zipped right into her place.

  “You ever think about getting the other door fixed?”

  He rested his arm on the seat behind her while he turned to back up for a straight shot at the rough road.

  “Don’t need it most days.”

  She didn’t point out that most days he worked alone. If he wanted to start a foster family, he might want two doors on his vehicle. Heck, he might want a minivan, but she wasn’t about to mention that idea. The very thought of a minivan sent most men screaming into the wilderness.

  When they reached the ranch house, Sierra looked at the place with new eyes, imagining she was some strict state inspector looking for trouble. And she realized Ridge was right: the house needed a lot of work. It was amazing what a mess a bunch of men could make in ten years.

  Women made a nest of a house, arranging everything to create a sense of comfort. Men, on the other hand, made their homes into offices, or workshops, or whatever else seemed useful at the time. In this case, the house had been made into a barn.

  That was the only possible explanation for the fact that a hoof-pick was in the dishwasher or that the center of the kitchen table held a napkin holder, salt and pepper shakers shaped like cowboy boots, and a pair of pliers.

  “Maybe we’ll start with laundry hampers in the bedrooms,” she said, surveying the pile of laundry beside the front door.

  “No way.” Ridge looked at her like she was crazy. “You want us tracking all our dirt into the house? We’re not heathens. We always take off our clothes as soon as we walk in.”

  Sierra choked back a laugh. There were women, lots of women, who would pay to help the men of Decker Ranch shed their Carhartts after a long day’s work.

  He showed her the family room next. Sierra opted not to comment on the well-worn saddle that sat in front of the fireplace, stirrups splayed toward the hearth. The two old rocking recliners that bracketed the hearth were more traditional furnishings, along with an old sofa along the wall behind them. It was draped with blankets and looked like it probably belonged to Dum and Dee.

  “The state won’t make us replace these chairs, will they?” There was a note of panic in Ridge’s voice.

  “I don’t think so.” The furniture was worn and well-loved, but not dirty enough to condemn.

  “Bill sat there.” He pointed to the one on the right. “That was Irene’s. Now Shane uses Bill’s, and I sit in the other one.”

  “So Brady sits on the sofa?”

  “Kid doesn’t sit still long enough to need a chair,” Ridge said. “Most of the time, he’s in that saddle, stretching.”

  “How old is Brady?” Ridge always referred to him as a kid, so maybe he and Shane were raising a teenaged brother. That would make it a lot easier to argue that they were capable of caring for other kids.

  “Twenty-two,” he said.

  She laughed. “The way you talk about him, I thought he was fifteen.”

  “The way he acts, you’d think he was ten.”

  Sierra laughed. “I think I’m going to like Brady.”

  “Everybody does—everybody female, anyways. You might as well join the herd.” Ridge rolled his eyes as he spoke, but there was a note of pride in his tone that almost overwhelmed the annoyance.

  He showed her the pantry lined with canned goods and cereal boxes, and a quaint powder room off the kitchen. Then they climbed the stairs, and she felt her heart skip up to a happy, anticipatory beat.

  Halfway up the stairs, he took her hand. Just putting her small hand in his big, rough one had made her feel warm and ready for anything, so she was almost disappointed when he kept up the pretense of showing her around the house. She barely looked at the upstairs bath, which was clean enough considering three men lived here on and off.

  “This is Brady’s room.” He opened the first door on the right. Sierra jumped backward and let out a little scream.

  It wasn’t a room; it was a cave. Jeans, boots, and tattered rodeo magazines paved the floor from wall to wall. The furniture was festooned with dirty laundry, and various discarded items, from gum wrappers to aftershave bottles, littered the floor. The bed was unmade and probably had been for some time. It looked more like the cave of some beast than a man’s bedroom. Sierra wouldn’t have been surprised to see the bones of deer and other prey tossed in a random corner.

  Ridge shut the door quickly. “Sorry. Kid’s a slob. One of the best bronc riders in the PRCA, though.”

  “So you call him a kid because he’s the baby of the family.”

  Ridge laughed. “Don’t let him hear you say that.”

  She smiled. “Looks like he’s used to having his big brothers pick up after him.”

  “Don’t remind Shane of that fact. He’s a neat freak, and that’s exactly what ends up happening.”

  He opened the next room down the hall.

  “I guess this one belongs to the neat freak,” Sierra said. The room was so clean and well organized it was almost stark. The bed was made with military precision, and every surface, from the old oak desk to the wide windowsill, gleamed.

  “Yup. Shane’s room,” Ridge said. “I was thinking this might work for Riley.”

  “Well, duh.”

  She’d been pretty sure the whole “I don’t know where Riley should sleep” thing was a ruse to get her to the ranch. Now she was positive, and she couldn’t help laughing.

  He shrugged. “I just wasn’t sure.”

  “What about your room?”

  Now it was his turn to smile. “I thought maybe you could sleep there. Tonight, anyway.”

  She ducked her head to hide a smile and followed him down the hall.

  Chapter 32

  Ridge’s room faced west, so its rough plaster walls were blessed by the first hint of sunset. Sierra swept the curtain from the window to reveal a sky streaked with the colors of Black Hills gold, a shimmering pink with coppery highlights. The sun blessed the day as it died, bestowing a richer shade of green on the pine trees and a brighter glow on the aspens’ bright gold leaves.

  Ridge came up behind her and set his hands on her shoulders. The beauty of the scene seeped into her senses, along with the warmth of his chest against her back and the whisper of his breath on her neck. Somehow, his hands wound up clasped around her waist, but she couldn’t have said when or how.

  This place was magic. She didn’t know what it was that made her feel so safe here—the peace of the prairie or the warmth of the evening sky. Maybe it
was the ageless plains or the trees standing sentinel like soldiers at attention. Maybe it was the house: the well-worn floors, the old-fashioned furniture, and the faded linens, or just the feeling that generations of men and women had made this their home.

  Maybe it was Ridge, but she didn’t want to think about that. If she let herself believe for an instant she might be falling in love with him, she’d have to protect herself from the magic of this moment, and she didn’t want to guard her heart tonight.

  When she’d followed him home, she’d made up her mind to break through all her carefully constructed fences and promised herself she’d mend them tomorrow. Tonight, she was like a racehorse running wild, pounding past the finish line without slowing down, racing into the distance toward a future where she didn’t belong. Her heart beat like hooves pounding on hard earth, pumping energy through her whole body.

  She didn’t know when she turned around or when Ridge’s hands slipped beneath the gauzy shirt she wore. Come to think of it, she didn’t know what had happened to her leather jacket. She must have shed it when they stepped inside. Maybe that’s what had made her so vulnerable; maybe the jacket was her armor. She’d have to remember to put it back on when she left. Put it on and keep it on.

  Right now, she wanted to take things off. Resting her wrists on Ridge’s shoulders, she let him tug the shirt up over her breasts. She loved the way her skin glowed in the fading light, all gold and mellow peach. She heard his breath quicken when she lifted her arms over her head and tossed her hair back, giving herself to him without reservation.

  As he slid the thin fabric up, up, and away, the slip of cotton and lace seemed to float in the air a beat longer than was possible, lofted by the breeze that billowed the curtains. It twisted and danced in a ray of the dying sun as it fell, and she swore she heard a sigh as it settled to the floor.