Cowboy on the Run

by Anne McAllister

  "I wish I could take you," he'd said. "God, we'd have a blast. Maybe we can." He'd warmed to the idea, his enthusiasm bubbling over. "Think of it, Ellie," he'd said, twirling her into his arms. "Ireland—all summer. You and me! What do you say? Want to come?"

  And crying inside, Ellie had shaken her head and pulled away from him. "I've got to work, Rance. I can't play this summer. I have … responsibilities."

  "Sometimes you sound like my old man," he'd grumbled.

  Sometimes she'd felt like an old woman—panicky and fretting, certain that the world was spinning out of her control. She'd seen him off in May with a smile and a wave and the last bit of courage she could muster. She hadn't cried until she got back in her car. She was still crying three hours later when she got home.

  Spike had been quick to notice. Spike always knew when something went wrong. "Tell me," he'd said, putting his arms around her, drawing her into a gentle embrace. "Tell me, El."

  And she'd told him. She'd hiccupped and sniffled through the story, aware that she was destroying his image of her, but unable to pretend.

  And when she had finished, Spike had said, "Do you want him? I'll go get him for you if you really want him."

  And there had been no doubt in her mind that he would. Spike would have moved heaven and earth for her, and she knew it. Just telling him had made her feel better. And braver.

  So brave she'd shaken her head. "I don't want him," she'd said. "I don't want a man who doesn't want children to be the father of my child."

  "Would you settle for me instead?"

  The words had been so unexpected that even today the very memory of them could send a shiver right down Ellie's spine. At first she hadn't believed them, had thought she'd dreamed them because marrying Spike would certainly be a far, far better ending to this than she deserved. She hadn't answered.

  But then he asked her again. "Would you marry me, Ellie?"

  And before she could do more than open her mouth, he went on, "I'd like to be a father to your child. I love you, El. I always have. You know that." There had been urgency in Spike's voice. He'd taken her hands and crushed them between his own work-roughened ones. "I do love you. And I'd love your child. Our child," he'd amended.

  She'd told him he was crazy. She reminded him that he was not quite twenty-one years old. How could he know such a thing? How could he be willing to make a commitment like that?

  "I love you, Ellie," he said again. "That's not going to change."

  "I love Rance," she'd admitted, forcing herself to be honest, not wanting to hurt Spike then, but knowing that if he wasn't fully aware of her feelings, she'd end up hurting him more later.

  She'd seen the flicker of pain on his face. But then he'd nodded. "I figured that much. But could you learn to love me?"

  "I already do love you. Just not the same way."

  "I'll settle for being loved in my own way." Spike rubbed his thumb along the edge of her hand. "I think we can make it, El, if you want to." He looked into her eyes, his light blue gaze so intent and pure that Ellie couldn't have said no to save her life.

  In fact she thought that Spike's love had saved it for her.

  He didn't see why they should tell anyone that their baby wasn't his. "It's nobody's business but ours," he'd said. "What good would it do?"

  None. Ellie had certainly agreed with that. And Spike couldn't have been a more devoted father. He couldn't have been a better husband, either. They hadn't been married a year before Ellie knew she'd made the right choice.

  The love she'd felt for Rance had been strong and intense and passionate. It had swamped her like a storm at sea. She'd had no defense against it. She'd had no defense against him. But it hadn't been the sort of love that would survive a screaming baby, 2:00 a.m. feedings, frosty morning calvings, dipping cattle prices and three more children in six years.

  What would have sent Rance around the bend, Spike thrived on. And they were the things Ellie thrived on, too.

  "Spike was the best husband any woman could have ever had," she told his mother now, tears brimming. "I loved him."

  Sandra crossed the room and put her arms around Ellie. "I know that. He knew that." She gave Ellie a gentle squeeze.

  "He loved Josh," Ellie said in a croaky little voice.

  Sandra smiled. "He loved Josh more than anyone," she agreed. "Partly because Josh was so like him—and partly, I think, because without Josh he might never have gotten you."

  And then the tears came. Ellie couldn't stop them. Blinked. Sniffled. Bit her lip furiously. All to no avail.

  And Sandra held her. "Don't cry," Sandra said, patting her back. "Not for that. Cry because you miss him. Cry because he was a wonderful man and he didn't get his full three score and ten. But don't ever cry because you think you shortchanged him. You never did, Ellie. He loved you all. And you loved him." And now Sandra blinked back her own tears. "Spike had what he wanted. He was a happy man." She gave Ellie one last squeeze and stepped back to look deep into her eyes. "Happier than Rance."

  Outside, Ellie heard footsteps on the porch. "Hey, Mom," Josh called. "Dinner almost ready?"

  She cleared her throat hastily. "Almost," she called back. Her eyes were still locked with Sandra's.

  "Tell him, Ellie," Sandra urged.

  If she thought it would be better for any of them, she would, Ellie knew. But all she could see ahead was pain and resentment if she did. Rance was no more ready for the truth now than he had been eleven years ago. And Josh? She didn't even want to think what the knowledge would do to Josh.

  "I can't," she said.

  A part of Rance expected that he'd have his fill of cowboying in a few days' time.

  There was nothing that enthralling about getting up before dawn, wrestling around in the mud delivering slimy calves from ungrateful mother cows, chopping firewood until your back spasmed and your arm was about to fall off and landing on your butt in the dirt three or four times a day while you broke a horse that seemed more likely to break you.

  There was nothing inherently appealing about his mattress, either. Rance didn't think he'd ever get used to sleeping on straw.

  But Ellie needed his help. And no women pestered him. And every day he had the pleasure of gorgeous scenery, plenty of daytime solitude and all the fresh mountain air he could breathe.

  Still, when it became obvious that he wasn't likely to get near Ellie's bed, he thought that his desire to hang around would wane pretty quickly.

  He was wrong.

  He had always liked arguing a case, thinking up angles, making himself aware of all the reasons for and against something, applying himself. It was the challenge of his law career that he found most appealing.

  He got to do the same thing here on a daily basis arguing with Josh.

  They didn't talk about law, of course. They talked about ranching—about breeding and feeding and land use and weather. The kid knew more about running a ranch than a lot of grown men did. And after the first few days, he didn't hesitate to express his opinions whenever Rance tried to tell Ellie how he thought she should be doing something around the ranch.

  At first Rance was taken aback. Most boys his age were seen and not heard. But Josh was determined to have his say, especially if it was something Spike had felt strongly about. The kid must have committed to memory every theory Spike O'Connor had ever expressed.

  Rance found himself making outrageous statements just to get Josh riled and ready to debate. Now he looked forward to their almost daily verbal encounters.

  "Do you always have to argue?" Ellie asked him more than once.

  "We're not arguing, we're discussing," Rance always told her. "The kid is sharp," he added when Josh wasn't around. "And stubborn."

  But sometimes it was a little annoying to have everything he said contradicted by Josh's "Well, my dad said…" followed by Spike O'Connor's pronouncements on ranch life.

  Cripes, you'd have thought Spike O'Connor was some damn oracle.

  But he couldn't
help admiring Josh's interest and, seeing it, he understood better Ellie's determination to hang on to the ranch for him.

  "He loves it," she'd told Rance once.

  Rance could see that. Josh loved it far more than the other two boys. But Rance had a good time with them, too.

  In fact they were more fun than Josh was. Caleb loved logic puzzles, and when Rance found that out, he started giving the boy simplified ones he remembered from a logic class he'd had in his pre-law training. Almost every day Caleb came up with the right answer. When he didn't, he and Rance had spirited discussions about how to get it.

  Rance and Daniel had spirited discussions about cows. Not about their feed or their breeding, like he did with Josh, but about how much formula Lilly Belle, Daniel's orphaned calf, had taken on any given morning, and how much she ought to have in the afternoon, and if Rance had ever known anyone who had raised a cow as a pet.

  Their discussions reminded Rance that he actually had once hand raised a calf when he'd been no bigger than Daniel. One of the cowboys had been deputized to look after it and check on it by Rance's grandfather.

  His own father was the one who had encouraged him to step in and take the responsibility on. Trey had even come out to the barn and sat feeding the calf with Rance late into the night. All that had happened so many years ago that Rance had completely forgotten it until Daniel had asked.

  The kids all asked a lot of questions. But in the end, none of them more than Carrie.

  If Caleb and Daniel were eager to befriend him, and Josh was just as eager to argue with him, Carrie was in no hurry to make up her mind about him.

  The first four days he was there, she didn't say anything to him at all except the briefest answer possible to any direct question he might ask her.

  The fifth evening he was sitting on the back porch, taking a break from wood chopping and telling Caleb and Daniel about a bear he'd seen the past spring in the Absarokas, when Carrie, who'd been standing in the kitchen door listening, said, "I got a bear."

  It was the first thing she'd volunteered since he'd come.

  He turned to her and saw that she had the ever-present Clarissa dangling by one leg from her hand. "Will you introduce me?" he asked her gravely.

  Carrie settled the bear upright in her arms and, with equal seriousness, said, "This is Clarissa." And then to Clarissa she said, "This is Mr. Phillips."

  "Rance," Rance corrected, because Ellie wasn't listening.

  Carrie hadn't said anything else, but she'd come and sat down beside Caleb to listen to the bear stories. He made it a point to anthropomorphize them a little more for her. He even found himself creating a character, "Lone Bear," who was looking for a friend.

  "Clarissa would be his friend," Carrie said to him.

  The next morning Rance gave her two horsehair bracelets he'd been braiding in the evenings to take his mind off the fact that he was not then and presumably never would be in Ellie O'Connor's bed.

  "One for you," he said, squatting down in front of her and slipping it over her wrist. "And one—" a very small one "—for Clarissa."

  Carrie looked at them, her mouth a soft little O. Then she looked at him. "Thank you. Say thank you," she said to the bear.

  Rance shook the bear's well-worn paw. "She thanked me," he said. Then he sat down on the porch steps next to her and said, "Let me tell you another bear story. This one's about a bear who goes around a mountain and into a cave…" He picked her up and set her on his lap. "Look, I'll show you…"

  "She's your slave for life," Ellie told him the next day after Carrie determined to follow him around every time he got off his horse. "What did you do?"

  "It's all that world's-most-eligible charm." Rance grinned. "I gave her a horsehair bracelet. And I taught her to tie her shoes."

  Ellie's jaw dropped. Her gaze sought Carrie who was running after the boys in the yard. Sure enough, her shoes were tied. "How on earth? Do you know how long we've been trying?"

  Rance shrugged. "I told her a story." He demonstrated with his hands, pretending they were holding laces. "There was this bear, you see. And this mountain. And the bear went around the mountain looking for his friend. And then he went into a cave and found her and—" he made a pulling motion with his fingers "—they shut the curtains and had a very good time."

  Ellie's face turned bright red. "It was a rabbit," she said, "and the story was not salacious when I heard it."

  "Hey, it worked, didn't it?" He laughed. "Besides, I'm left-handed."

  It was every bit the break from routine—and women—that he'd hoped it would be. It was better, in fact, than he had any right to expect.

  It would have been great—if he'd had Ellie.

  But after a week of herding and sorting cattle, of chopping wood and mending fence, of telling stories and teaching shoe-tying and arguing breeding and feeding calves, he still spent every night on the straw in the barn by himself.

  When he'd agreed to it, he'd been thinking in terms of stopgap measures. A place he could stand to sleep while waiting to get into the house and—he hoped—into her bed.

  But it didn't take him long to see that that wasn't going to work.

  There wasn't any way to sort of ease his way in. There was no extra room in Ellie's house. Every bedroom was taken. All three boys were in one. The little girl was in another, barely bigger than a closet. And even though Ellie had one to herself, Rance wasn't fool enough to think he was going to get an invitation to share it.

  It hadn't taken him long to realize how very much Ellie had loved Spike. Whatever feelings she'd had for Rance—and once he'd dared call them love—Rance had to admit they'd been short-lived. No doubt they'd passed as soon as she'd come home for the summer.

  She didn't say that in so many words. She didn't have to. Her love for Spike was in everything she did every day.

  In fact, if he hadn't known better, sometimes he would have thought Ellie wasn't the woman he'd known in college at all. Though she was obviously grateful for his help, he got the feeling anybody's help would have sufficed—and maybe even been preferable.

  She seemed awkward around him, ill at ease. There was certainly nothing in her manner that made him think she was glad her new hand was a man she'd once professed to love. She would probably have been happier with any remotely competent cowboy the cat had dragged in.

  Of course she didn't have a cat.

  She couldn't afford to feed one.

  That was something else he understood—that finances around the O'Connor place really were tight. The motto was one his great-grandfather would have appreciated: do it by hand, make do, or do without.

  Ellie did a lot of all three.

  Rance would have liked to have made things easier for her, but one thing he remembered very well—and one thing that hadn't changed—was Ellie's pride. She was grateful for his work. She wouldn't be grateful for his money.

  Not even if it would free them up a little time to spend together, Rance thought grimly.

  He was just a little bitter about that.

  Maybe he was spoiled. After all, he'd spent the past few months fending off what seemed like every woman in the western hemisphere. And now, when he finally found one he'd once actually had feelings for—and felt surprisingly strong feelings for still—she didn't appear to be the least bit interested in him!

  Trey would have said it served him right.

  Which just proved again that Rance and his father had never agreed on anything.

  "You want somethin', you got to go after it," Trey always said.

  Rance would have liked to see his father go after Ellie!

  She'd tell him to make himself useful and chop wood or weed the garden.

  Well, Rance had chopped more wood than he'd thought possible. And he'd worked harder than he remembered ever working in his life. But as tired as he was, he still couldn't sleep. He laid awake every damn night, aware of her movements in the bedroom of the house across the yard.

  He didn't suppose she
knew he could see her through the thin shade on her bedroom window. If she had known, she probably would have painted the window black or doused the lights!

  Instead every night she treated him to the sight of her lissome silhouette moving from one side of the room to the other. Some nights he got to watch as she slipped off her shirt or pulled her sweater over her head. He could even tell when she'd shed her bra and was walking naked behind the shade.

  It drove him nuts.

  He watched, anyway.

  He had become a voyeur, a peeping Tom, a lustful, frustrated man who hadn't had a woman in so long he couldn't recall. He was so aware of her, it hurt. And it did him no good at all.

  But for all that she wandered around behind her shade in varying degrees of undress, as far as Rance could tell, she never slept.

  Either that or she never turned the lights off.

  At least, they were always on when Rance finally buried himself in his sleeping bag and let his dreams and frustration take over the night.

  Ellie was the subject of both.

  It was insane. Laughable. The old man would bust a gut laughing if he knew that his son—who'd refused to even look at a busload of gorgeous women all hankering after him—was himself yearning after a widow who didn't even seem to like him anymore.

  Well, she'd liked him once, he consoled himself as he folded his arms under his head and stared up toward the rafters in the dark. She'd slept with him all those years ago, hadn't she? She'd even said she'd loved him.

  Then, he reminded himself.

  Not now.

  Now Ellie hardly even looked at him, much less smiled at him. Or if she managed a smile, it was obviously forced. And yet…

  And yet.

  There was the way he sometimes almost caught her glancing his way. If he looked quick, he sometimes thought he'd seen her just avert her gaze. And there was the way she pulled back fast if their hands touched when she was handing him a mug of coffee or a plate of stew.

  Was she remembering when more than their hands had touched?

  Was the reason the lights were on at all hours that Ellie was having trouble sleeping, too?