Wyoming Fierce

“You be careful, too,” he added. His own tone was oddly tender. “Wear a coat when you go out. Temperature’s dropping.”

“I noticed.”

Soft breathing came over the connection. “I guess I should go.”

“You said that,” she replied, and her own tone was as reluctant as his.

He laughed softly. “I guess I did. Well…good night.”

“Good night, Cane.”

“I like the way you say my name,” he said suddenly. “Bye.”

He hung up abruptly, as if he regretted what he’d just let slip. Her heart was pounding like mad when she put up the phone and opened her bedroom door. She felt as if her feet weren’t even touching the floor.

All the same, she did manage to get the material memorized for her biology final. She got up very early the next morning to drive back to school in her battered old vehicle.

She kissed her granddaddy goodbye.

“Good luck on those finals,” he told her as he hugged her.

She grinned. “Thanks. I’ll need it. I’ll see you next weekend.”

He managed a smile. “Miss you when you’re not here, girl.”

She was touched. “I miss you, too. I won’t be away that long, and then we’ll have the Christmas holidays together. I’ll make cakes and pies…”

“Stop! I’m starving already,” he teased.

She grinned again and kissed him again. “See? Something to look forward to.”

* * *

FINALS WERE EVERY BIT AS grueling as she’d imagined. Her first was biology. A lab rat was laid out on a dissecting board with pins stuck in various portions of its anatomy, designating which parts were to be labeled and discussed on the exam.

She felt that she’d sweated blood on the written portion, however, especially trying to recall the methodology of the Punnett Square, used to predict heritability of genetic traits. That was one part of the textbook section that she had problems with. But she hoped she remembered enough of the material to slide by.

The next exam was physical anthropology. That one didn’t worry her. She loved the subject so much that she was in her element when she studied it. She breezed through the test. Only two to go at that point, English and sociology.

* * *

FINALLY THE EXAMS WERE finished, the teacher evaluation forms at the end of each class were filled out and turned in and she was packing to go home.

“You should stay here tonight…come out with us to celebrate,” Beth told her with a grin. “Ted’s got this friend Harvey. He’s really nice, you’d like him. You never date,” she accused.

Bodie just shook her head as she went back to her packing. She wasn’t going to tell her friend anything about Cane, for fear of being teased. It was too early in her changed attitude toward him for that. “I have a career in mind. No time for romantic activities.”

“There’s the holidays, we could go out then,” Beth persisted.

Bodie shook her head again. “I’m going home for the holidays and it’s just too far to drive back with gas prices what they are. I’m really sorry,” she said when her friend looked disappointed.

“Well, I’m going home, too, to Maine,” she agreed. “But after the first of the year, when the new semester starts, you really should meet Harvey. He’s just so cute!”

“Poor Ted!”

“No! I mean, he’s cute. My Ted is gorgeous,” she added, wiggling her eyebrows. “He wants to marry me.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She sighed. “I don’t know what to do. I really want to go on to do my master’s work in history, but Ted wants to get married now.”

“You should do what you want to,” Bodie advised.

“Marrying Ted is what I really want to do. Ted and several babies and a nice house with a fence,” she said dreamily.

“Babies.” Bodie laughed. “I want one, too, but not for years yet. I’m going to be successful first.”

Beth gave her a look that she didn’t see; her nose was in her suitcase.

“That’s why you won’t date,” Beth guessed. “If you fall in love, that career’s going on hold for a while.”

“Mind reader,” Bodie said. “Now go dress for your date and let me finish packing.”

“Ted wants to go dancing. I love to dance!”

“I didn’t notice,” Bodie said dryly, because it was a familiar theme.

“Okay. Well, you drive safely. I’ll see you in January. I hope you have a great Christmas and New Year.”

“Thanks. I hope you do, too. And that Ted buys you a nice big diamond,” Bodie teased.

“On his salary? Fat chance. But the ring doesn’t matter.” She sighed. “All I want is Ted.”

Bodie just smiled.

CHAPTER THREE

BODIE’S HOMECOMING WAS met with a sense of urgent misery by her grandfather’s sudden bout of indigestion. He took a dose of baking soda, an old-time recipe he’d learned from his grandmother, but it didn’t seem to be working.

Bodie was worried enough to get him to their family doctor, who diagnosed something that stood her hair on end.

“I think it’s his heart,” Dr. Banes said gently. “His blood pressure is abnormally high and he has a murmur. I’m having my nurse do an electrocardiogram. I need to send him to a specialist. We have a good one up in Billings, Montana, and he can do an echo, a sound picture, of your grandfather’s heart to see if there are clogged arteries.”

Bodie’s expression was eloquent. “He gets a pension from the ranch he used to work for,” she said, remembering the Kirk brothers’ kindness in that act. “He’s just now eligible for social security, but it won’t start until January. He’s trying to get disability, too, but it’s a long process. We just don’t have any money, and there’s no insurance.”

He patted her on the arm. “We can make arrangements about that,” he assured her. “I know you’re getting through school on scholarships and grants and student loans,” he said. “And you work at a part-time job near the college to pay for your expenses. I admire your work ethic.”

“I learned it from Granddaddy.” She sighed. “He was always a stickler for earning things instead of being given them.”