100% Pure Cowboy

Consciously hardening her heart against the rawboned cowboy leading their wagon train with the sinuous potency of a mountain lion, she reminded herself that there was no room in her life for any man at the moment, and most assuredly not for one who made her so achingly aware of the sexual dearth in her life.

Stumbling along in the deep ruts of the Oregon Trail in a pair of high-laced boots, Danielle had plenty of time to consider the decision that had brought her here. What at the time had made perfect sense seemed infinitely stupid when studied beneath the glare of the midday sun. Unlike other mothers who had high-powered jobs and pressing social engagements, Danielle had nothing to tie her down but a dreary list of entry-level Help Wanted ads. So when Lynn had come home from a Prairie Scout meeting one afternoon, echoing Hildy Fustis’s request to sponsor the troop on this Oregon Trail Trek, she’d succumbed to her daughter’s not-so-subtle arm twisting. It actually sounded like a pleasant alternative to spending the entire summer cooped up in a small, un-air-conditioned apartment with a budding teenager whose mood swings were as unpredictable as they were disconcerting.

Lately Lynn had donned the surly, snide attitude considered chic among her peers, even going so far as to verbalize how “crummy” their circumstances were in comparison to her friends’. Scott hadn’t been around enough for Lynn to miss him much, but she did openly miss her daddy’s money and was especially concerned how the lack of it could possibly jettison her from the “in” crowd at school. Lynn simply couldn’t understand why her mother’s pride had kept her from accepting more than the minimal child support payment from a man who obviously could afford more. Danielle didn’t have the heart to tell her that Scott had employed the best lawyer money could buy to avoid paying a penny more than he had to.

Hoping that an educational excursion into the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming would be just the ticket to reestablish the open, loving relationship she had once shared with her daughter, Danielle figured she’d teach Lynn something about the things that money couldn’t buy—things so obviously lacking in the expensive lifestyles of Lynn’s friends.

Feeling the hot sun beating down upon her, Danielle berated herself for such ingenuous optimism. Even though it probably included a bimbo on the crook of his arm, the trip to Disneyland that Scott had been dangling before Lynn’s nose for months could only look all the more appealing after a few days of this grinding ordeal. She grumbled beneath her bonnet that all her good intentions had accomplished was to land her smack-dab in the middle of hell with the devil himself as a wagon master.

With characteristic determination, she turned from such negative thoughts to the windswept landscape they were traversing. A land seemingly barren, it fostered hope of fresh beginnings. Ever-changing, it challenged the strong and mocked the weak. With consideration to the future, Danielle attempted to assess her own abilities. Her lack of college was proving to be a major stumbling block in securing a good job. Years ago when she had first broached the subject of pursuing a degree, Scott had immediately and firmly put the quietus on her hopes, blithely assuring her he would always be there to take care of her. All she had to do was hang tight to his rising star.

Choking on the memory, Danielle scanned a mental list of job possibilities. Other than dead-end minimum wage positions, the only thing she could come up with was the possibility of turning her cooking ability into something more substantial than a hobby. Insisting that they entertain frequently, Scott had demanded gourmet meals to impress his business associates. Over the years Danielle had satisfied the most discriminating palate. Beneath a bright, unclouded sky she pondered the possibility of starting her own catering service. Of course, starting one’s own business took money, and at the moment the only thing more obviously missing from her life than financial stability was sex. That was the only reason, she assured herself, that Cody Walker’s impetuous kiss had knocked her for such a loop.

“Just look at the way those jeans fit him,” Lynn sighed, interrupting her mother’s thoughts with adolescent adulation.

Ray Anne Pettijohn, who was pushing a handcart beside her, agreed. Both girls’ gazes lingered upon the fascinating fit of Cody Walker’s backside to his saddle. Their crushes were as obvious as the blinding sun overhead and every bit as scorching to Danielle.

“You’d do better to judge a man by the size of his heart rather than the cut of his jeans,” she suggested wryly.

Lynn rolled her eyes at the advice. “You judge ‘em the way you want, Mom, and I’ll judge ’em my way.”

Danielle bit her tongue. She couldn’t help but wonder just how enamored chubby Ray Anne would be when she discovered their sexy wagon master had confiscated her hidden stash of candy bars back at the rendezvous site.

Danielle’s new boots chafed almost as much as her daughter’s infatuation with the high-handed Mr. Walker. The only bit of comfort she had derived over the past couple of hours was from the fact that the driver assigned to their wagon was none other than Mollie, the bright-eyed pixie who had so enthusiastically welcomed them aboard. While her own troop inanely discussed the waning appeal of musical groups with bizarre-sounding names and enumerated at length the reasons why their parents should allow them to date at the ripe old age of thirteen, Mollie was busy citing various points of interest.

The child was as taken with a jackrabbit lippety-lopping across the trail as she was with the prairie dogs lining up outside their holes at her shrill whistle. When a herd of antelope kicked up their heels and left the wagon train eating their dust, Mollie’s laughter rang across the open range like tinkling chimes, her blue eyes sparkling with love for the vast land they were traversing.

As they slowly wound their way toward the Sweetwater River, Split Rock cast a long shadow over the sagebrushed plains. After just a few short hours of choking down trail dust, Danielle came to understand how that famous landmark had become such a beacon of hope. Eager for a taste of water that truly must have been sweet indeed for those trail-weary pioneers desperate to fill their canteens and wash away the grime of an unforgiving land, she was glad when Cody Walker signaled the wagon train to stop for lunch.

A short while later he approached their group, carrying two large cardboard boxes.

“How’s everything going?”

That low-pitched voice of his sent a string of tingles to every nerve ending in Danielle’s body. Luckily the need to reply was negated by a dozen adolescent voices trilling an enthusiastic response in unison. The fact that he was responsible for making them whittle down their belongings to “regulation size” had done nothing to lessen their infatuation with the romantic figure their wagon master struck in the saddle.

Cody’s grin revealed two devilishly deep dimples at the sides of his mouth as he queried, “How about you, Red?”

“Just fine,” she lied over the blisters on her heel. “And, by the way, my name is Danielle. I’d appreciate it if you used it.”

“Pretty name,” he commented.

Surprised by the warmth evoked by the remark, Danielle felt oddly empty inside except for the steady rhythm of her pounding pulse.

“But,” he added with an infectious grin, “Red suits you better, temperament-wise.”

“Go away!” she snarled, clenching her hands into fists at her sides.

“But I brought you a present,” he protested.

“Let me guess—boxes of dynamite to blow us back to Beverly Hills?”

Ignoring the sarcasm, Cody set his load down. Nestled inside were sacks of flour, sugar, and salt, some dried meat, powdered milk, molasses, a burlap bag filled with fruit, a similar one of potatoes, an odorous lump of sourdough, and lots and lots of beans.

Dumbfounded, Danielle looked down at the contents and back up into pair of eyes so blue it hurt to gaze at them too long.

“You were expecting takeout maybe?” he asked.

That damned grin of his could have buttered a Thanksgiving turkey.

“Hardly,” Danielle snapped, the reference to fast food making her stomach grumble.

Unable at the moment to cope with fixing anything that didn’t come straight out of a microwave, she proceeded to pass out fruit and jerky to the girls, promising them a more filling dinner later.

Cody couldn’t help but compare Danielle’s carefree attitude with his late wife’s preoccupation with fixing three balanced, nutritional meals for her family every day. Here was apparently yet another modern woman willing to put her own needs before those of the children depending on her. What was most puzzling to Cody was why he was at all attracted to someone who was the exact opposite of what he admired most in a woman.

Swinging himself back into the saddle, Cody started to leave but was detained by a small hand pressed lightly upon his knee.

“Excuse me, sir,” Sheila Pooly said in a squeaky voice. Undeniably the prissiest girl in the troop, she was squinting up at Cody’s sunlit profile as if he were God Himself.

“You can just call me Cody,” he said with an encouraging smile.

Scanning the vast expanse of the plains, Sheila posed her question as delicately as possible. “Where’s the...ah... Porta Potti?”

Like resounding thunder, their wagon master’s laughter exploded across the prairie.

Overhearing the conversation, Mollie, too, burst out laughing, and soon everyone within earshot was privy to the city girl’s faux pas. The native Wyomingites hooted with glee as their wagon master pointed to a thick clump of sagebrush.

“Over there,” he guffawed.

The location to which he pointed hardly provided any privacy. Sheila blushed furiously, and Danielle’s eyes flashed like summer lightning, burning a hole right through Cody.

Keenly aware that he had just wrinkled the suit of armor in which these girls had dressed him, Cody felt a stab of guilt at the wounded look in Sheila’s eyes. Maybe he was being too rough with Troop Beverly Hills. The disconcerting thought took him back in time to his own callow youth. How many times had he himself been ridiculed as a country bumpkin when he had been lost in the big city trying to peddle those first humble, heartfelt songs?

Remembering his promise never to become such a selfindulgent big shot that he was beyond simple kindness and common courtesy, Cody hastened to lessen the sting of Sheila’s humiliation.

Bestowing a slow smile upon the girl that made her blush from the top of her blond head to the bottom of her boots, he said with a wink, “I’ll tell you what. There’s a rest stop just over the next hill. If you’d like, you can hop on back of ol’ Champ, here, and I’ll tote you on over there.”

That wink was Sheila’s undoing. She nodded her head gratefully. Cody reached down and in one graceful move pulled her up behind him in the saddle. Squealing with delight, the girl waved to her friends as they galloped over the hill.

When they returned a few moments later, Sheila wore a look of simpering adoration. Danielle thought it obvious that she couldn’t wait to share every heart-quickening minute with her friends who were certain to be green with envy.

That their wagon master had assuaged Sheila’s feelings only slightly mollified Danielle. As far as she was concerned, Cody Walker was brutish and insensitive. Maybe Sheila’s question had been silly, but the extent of camping that these girls shared was limited to backyard sleep-overs. In her opinion, it was as reprehensible for a grown man to make poor Sheila the butt of his joke as it was to lump everyone from the city into the category of utter simpletons. It hadn’t escaped her notice that some of the other Prairie Scouts were now openly referring to them as Troop Beverly Hills. Since Danielle had firsthand knowledge of who had coined that particular phrase, she intended to give that John Wayne wanna-be a piece of her mind the first chance she got.

Like bright but fragile posies, the girls were beginning to droop beneath a sun too hot. What had once sounded romantic and adventurous was quickly proving to be a lot of hard work. Their meager lunches had worn off long ago, and fatigue was beginning to manifest itself in the guise of petty sniping.

“Knock it off!” Danielle commanded, determined to nip such thoughtlessness in the bud. “Time won’t pass any faster if you pick at each other. We’ve got a long way to go and two weeks to prove we’re women enough to handle whatever this trail has to throw at us. I expect not to be defeated from within our own ranks before the end of the very first day.”

She hated sounding so gruff, but this wasn’t exactly a picnic for her, either. It had been a long time since she had put such rigorous demands upon her body, and it was reacting with aching indignation. By the time the wagon train rolled to their final stop of the day, they had traveled a little under eight miles, and Danielle was sure her feet had a blister to show for each one of them.