The Cowboy Claims His Lady

The weariness in her eyes seemed to stop him too. His warmth was suddenly gone. She seemed to awaken from a dream, and found herself in the arms of a snowman. He pulled away from her, the eyes still staring, but this time with accusation and censure.

“We’ve got to go,” he said abruptly, pulling her out of the water as if she were nothing but a rag doll.

“Why?” she gasped, disoriented by his moods and the lash of stinging cold air on her wet body.

“Do what’s good for you, girl. Get your clothes on,” he answered gruffly.

She looked at him. Every tight line of his buttocks was visible in the sheer wet cotton of his boxers.

He turned around to scowl at her. She held her breath. If what she saw between his legs was the result of cold shrinkage, she doubted she could handle it, even then.

“You want some now?” he demanded.

She gasped and shook her head.

“Then, get your clothes on.” He turned to scoop up his jeans and shirt.

She fumbled for her jeans. Sodden and shivering, she could hardly pull them on.

“You can put your boots on in the truck.” He led her by the elbow to the pickup and helped her into the cab.

Seated next to her, he flipped the switch for the diesel and started the engine.

“W-w-was it something I did?” she stammered.

He glanced at her, his face a stone mask in the dashboard light.

“I thought we were having fun—”

He stopped her. “Know what a grizzly feels like when it wakes up?”

She shook her head, her eyes wide.

“He’s hungry,” he growled. “So hungry he can’t think of anything but what it is that he wants.”

“And what do you want?” Her words came out in a frightened whisper.

He took one hard look at her. He didn’t have to speak.

Even she heard the word in the silence, the long, echoing word, damning her and praising her in a monosyllabic curse.

You.

Three

“A dead varmint. Yep. That’s what she looks like.” Hazel’s words penetrated the fog in Lyndie’s mind.

“It’s awake! It’s awake! Hallelujah!” Ebby, Hazel’s longtime cook, a tall raw-boned woman who’d ranched a hundred head of cattle and five sons all on a widow’s pension, stood over the bed.

Hazel peered over Ebby’s silver tray of coffee and toast. “Yep. There’s life in her still. I see her glaring at me.”

Lyndie sat up in bed. Her head pounded. She winced.

“Have a good stomp at the mill, did we?” Ebby tsked while she set down the breakfast tray.

“I’ll never drink whiskey again,” Lyndie moaned.

“Is it the whiskey you regret, or the man?” Hazel asked.

“Oh, please say it’s the whiskey.” Ebby clucked. “Even old hens like us dream about men like Bruce Everett.”

Lyndie eyed both women woefully. “I was set up. And which one of you did it? Was it—Hazel?” she accused.

Hazel smiled like a Cheshire cat. “Live life to bursting, I always say. But I didn’t think you’d go and do it the first minute you were off the yoke, dear. Still, you’re a McCallum through and through. You’ll find your way. We McCallums always do.”

“Hazel, promise me for the rest of this trip that you’ll refrain from mentioning the words whiskey and men.”

Lyndie wobbled to her feet, clad in pink satin pajamas of her own label. The memory of the night before was coming to her in waves like the water from a gristmill. She recalled the awkward silence in the pickup as Bruce drove her to the Lazy M. It was almost as if Mitch and Katherine had been in the truck cab with them, casting their pall. After a chilly farewell, she’d crawled to her bed, vowing to forget about Bruce Everett forever.

And then the nightmares came.

She’d had them all night long.

She’d be at the grocery store, the accountant’s, in line for a movie—then she’d look down and see herself as if in a mirror. Her white T-shirt was wet and transparent, outlining each half-dollar mauve nipple, and her sodden hair was plastered against her forehead like a water nymph.