More Than A Cowboy

“Now, how could I stay away, knowing this was Last Night and Willie would be serving his apple pie with vanilla ice cream?” She laughed and folded gracefully down, to sit cross-legged between Rafe Montana, manager of Suntop and boss of the trail drive, and his stepson, Sean Kershaw. Firelight danced across her vivid face as she cocked her ear to something Sean said.

She was all he’d remembered and more, Adam told himself, as she glanced up and over her shoulder, then reached for the plate Kent Harris had brought her. The line of her throat lengthened with the movement—glowed golden in the flames. Adam moistened dry lips as he pictured himself laying a kiss there where her pulse beat below her ear. Another in that shadowy hollow between her delicate collarbones…

She murmured her thanks, dipped a fork into Willie’s famous pie à la mode, then closed her eyes in ecstasy as the fork touched her tongue. “Ohh!”

He must be imagining that little moan off her lips. No way it could carry over the surrounding hubbub; still Adam could hear it, clear as if she’d moaned against his mouth.

She swallowed blissfully, opened her eyes, and across the fire, their gazes met—zoomed together like two on-coming trains, blue light to widening green. Her plate fell from her fingers—she let out a yelp and grabbed for it as pie and ice cream slid into her lap. “Oh, darn! Clumsy! Oh, Willie, what a stupid waste!” She brushed at herself, looked helplessly around for a napkin.

Two men rushed off to find one. Napkins weren’t a usual part of cowboy dinnerware.

Quicker-witted than his human counterparts, Watson rose, trundled purposefully around the circle, then insinuated himself under her elbow. Slurped greedily at her slender thigh.

Seventeen men watched in thunderstruck envy as the hound licked her clean—while Tess tipped back her head and laughed. “Why, thank you, sir. And who is this?” She scratched him between the shoulder blades and laughed again as his tail whacked her in the ribs, then bludgeoned Sean.

“Watson, leave her alone! Come.”

“Oh, no, he’s wonderful!” she insisted, glancing up at Adam, then quickly back to the dog. “Can’t he stay here? Clumsy as I am, I’ll probably need him.” She slid her hands under each of Watson’s ears, then lifted them out to the sides. Held their tips. “My! Would you look at these—a three-foot wingspan! Can he fly?”

No, but they would. Together, and soon. As quickly as he could make it happen. Adam hadn’t wanted a woman this much in… He couldn’t think when he’d wanted a woman the way he wanted this one. Or why. She wasn’t pretty like butterflies or flowers. Something much better than pretty, with four times the impact, that hit him like a bolt of summer lightning.

She glanced his way again, and her smile faded. She swung her head toward Joe Abbott, who’d brought her a fresh serving of pie, and it returned.

Whatever this is, you feel it, too, Adam told her silently. He turned to his neighbor, Anse Kirby, not quite the foreman at Suntop, but Montana’s right-hand man. “Who is that?” No need to point. Kirby’s eyes were fixed on her.

“Tess.” Kirby was a man of few words and he saved them for those he knew well. Adam would have to stick around a few more years before he’d qualify.

Tess. It suited her. Started strong, ended soft. A good name for whispering in the dark. Adam swung the other way, toward Bob Wilcox, one of the JBJ crew. He didn’t know the man well, but at least he was a talker.

“Heard tell she’s stayin’ up here for the summer,” Wilcox muttered to the man on his far side. “Over at the Two Bear camp.”

“Well, that oughta liven things up,” observed the other hand. “She ain’t grown up half-bad.”

“They all did. Her daddy had an eye for the lookers, all right. Three outa three.”

Two Bear. That was the peak to the west of Mount Sumner; it towered above the Suntop Range. So. Adam drew a satisfied breath. They were going to be neighbors? For the next three months? All right, then.

Something told him he could have cut her out of this herd of friends and admirers if tonight had been his one shot at winning her. But he preferred to take his time. Cool and easy was the best way when courting a woman. Trying to rush the process only made a man look anxious.

“Dubois.” Someone touched his shoulder and Adam turned to find Rafe Montana standing behind him. “You’re riding herd the ten-till-two shift. Best saddle up.” The trail boss moved on around the circle, tapping other men.

Tomorrow, then, Adam promised himself as he rose. Or if not tomorrow, then very, very soon. He shot her a farewell look as he left the campfire.

If she noticed, Tess didn’t return it.

“WHO’S THAT?” Tess asked old Whitie as the new guy strode off into the dark.

She’d known most of these men all her life. Half a dozen rode for her father’s brand. The rest were friends and neighbors. She’d ridden roundups with them since she turned fourteen, when she’d first flouted her father’s orders, running off to tag along on the spring drive. After that there’d been no holding her back. She’d kept right on defying Ben, riding with the hands fall and spring, till she went away to college.

But she’d never seen him before. Even at fourteen, she’d have noticed.

“The Cajun? That’s Dubois. Riding line for McGraw.”

Dubois, she spoke his name silently. If Dubois worked for Tripp McGraw, that would explain why he’d slept at Sumner cabin last week. He must have been moving in. The hairs stirred along her forearms and a warm ripple of awareness lapped up her spine. So… We’ll be neighbors.

Trouble, that’s what would come of this, she knew instinctively. Trouble and excitement.

“Not from around here,” she noted casually. “Is he really a Cajun?” Or had the men simply dubbed him that, because of his French surname? Still, that would account for the trace of accent she remembered. And his teasing use of the endearment cher.

“He’s a Lou’siana boy.” Whitie’s shrug said, what more do you need? He’d brought her a cup of hot chocolate, then stayed to gossip. “I bunked at Sumner cabin with him a few years back fer a while. He was workin’ half-time for Kaley and half-time for Tripp, that summer ’fore they came together.”

“But a Cajun cowboy?” she mused on a note of mild derision. “What did he learn to ride on? Alligators?”

“Beats me. He was a close-mouthed, smilin’ son of a gun back then and he ain’t improved much on that count. Seem to recall he said somethin’ ’bout having kin over Durango way. Had his share of cow sense.”

That was high praise, coming from Whitie. Tess changed the subject before the old man could mark her interest. “I see. So…where’s Chang?” Whitie’s constant companion was a doddering Pekinese with an evil eye and a worse disposition.

“In the wagon sulkin’, if he ain’t flopped on his back, chasin’ dream rabbits. He’s been mad enough to bite his-self ever since we let that there Watson hitch a ride.”

The hound was lying with his warm spine propped against her knees. Tess scratched between his ears. “And Watson belongs to…to Dubois?” Funny how momentous that felt, speaking his name for the first time.

Something told her it wouldn’t be the last.

NATWIG LAY half dozing on the couch. Any minute now he’d find the energy to get up and stir the fire, he was assuring himself for the third time, when the phone rang. “I’ll get it!” He sat and scrubbed a hand across his face.

But Karen was already wheeling herself toward the kitchen. “Don’t be silly. It’ll be for me.” Her big orange tomcat leapt down from her lap and stalked off, tail lashing at this disturbance. The little calico that was draped across her footrest stayed put, staring fascinated at the carpet rolling past its whiskers.

Eight months ago, his lively wife would have grabbed the phone by its second ring. Natwig gritted his teeth as it rang a fifth time, a sixth, while she maneuvered her wheelchair around the center cooking island he’d built her only last year. Ought to take that out of there, so she can move easier, he told himself as she snatched up the phone.

Karen had pulled a fit the time he’d suggested it. She was going to walk again—would be riding again by next year—she kept on telling him. Your lips to God’s ear, sweetheart. But Natwig was starting to doubt it.

“Hello?” she cried happily. She’d left a message on her sister’s answering machine just before supper. “Hello? Hel-lo-o-o!” She stared at the receiver with a puzzled frown. “Hung up, whoever it was.”

“One of those damned recorded salescalls, most likely.”

“But there was somebody there. I heard a rustle.”

“Wrong number, then. How about a bowl of ice cream?”

While she tried her sister again and again reached her machine, Natwig dished out two helpings of vanilla. That finished the carton. He scraped up a final spoonful. “This one’s got your name on it.” He teased the spoon across her smile, then eased it onto her tongue.

As she savored it, her wide blue eyes looked into his. She swallowed, then made a little sound as she licked her lips—his stomach muscles jerked tight. He straightened hastily, turned to drop the spoon in the sink. It jangled against a pot he’d yet to wash.

“Honey…” She broke the charged silence. “Dr. Murray says it’s—”

“Yeah, I know he did, but…” But Natwig had hurt her already, allowing her to ride that green-broke colt. Didn’t matter that she’d begged him to let her. What kind of fool took a chance with the thing—the person—that mattered most in all his life?

And if he hurt her again, he’d never, ever forgive himself. She seemed so tiny and fragile, trapped in that hateful chair. To satisfy himself at a risk to her? No way. It was better to wait.