Her Convenient Cowboy

by Lacy Williams

  Even the smell of freshly cut pine was blown away by the biting wind. All that was left was the wind, snow and growing darkness.

  By the time he carried armloads of quartered logs to the cabin, he couldn’t feel his extremities at all.

  He forced himself to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. On dumping each load of wood into the growing, haphazard pile near the door. On one more trip. One more load.

  And then when he’d started thinking how he might sit down and rest, how closing his eyes for a few moments would be wonderful, a curious yapping startled him so that he nearly dropped his armful of wood.

  The little white dog ran up to him, barking. It jumped up and put its front paws on his knees.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked, the words slower that he meant them to be. He stared at it, thinking fuzzy thoughts, wondering how it could’ve gotten outside.

  Then he looked up and found the cabin door was open. Rose stood silhouetted there with only her worn shawl around her shoulders and the wind blowing loose locks of her dark hair around her face.

  “Come inside this instant,” she said.

  He wanted to tell her she sounded as bossy as his ma, but his mouth seemed to be frozen shut.

  She looked down at the dog still leaning on him, back up at him, and said, “He says so, too.”

  He stumbled toward her, over the threshold with his arms still full. His shoulder hit the doorjamb, and he spun into the room, dumping his load of wood near the fireplace with a clatter against the plank floor.

  * * *

  Rose had watched the cowboy, Davy White, through the window for the past hour. First he’d disappeared into the woods, his dark coat white against the snowfall until she couldn’t see him anymore.

  After a good while, he’d appeared with his arms full of wood. He’d trudged through the drifting snow slowly, his movements awkward and not the sure stride he’d started with.

  He’d said his family’s place was down the mountain. If he’d ridden out in the cold all morning, without a chance to warm up because she’d let the fire die...

  With each return trip, his movements had become more erratic.

  She didn’t particularly want him invading the cabin. But she was out of choices, with no food and no idea where to go to find more help...

  If he died from hypothermia, what would she do?

  His dog had become anxious, whining and scratching at the door until finally she’d opened it. Her fear of being left alone again had pushed her to call out to the man, and he’d stumbled inside, looking as though if the wind blew him the wrong way, he would tumble to his knees.

  By now the afternoon had waned, and everything outside the small window had gone slate gray. It would be nightfall soon.

  The cowboy went to his knees in front of the hearth, his movements jerky and unnatural. Even shaky and weak, his presence seemed to overwhelm the small space. The wind that had ushered him in had stirred up scents of snow and man as he had passed her. After more than two weeks without Jamie, her husband’s scent had faded from the room almost entirely. It made her uncomfortably aware that he was no longer around to protect her.

  The dog sat on its haunches just inside the door.

  The man struggled to take off his gloves, his fingers clumsy and the leather stiff and frozen. When his hands were free, she saw his fingers were pale and blotched with red. Could he have frostbite?

  Was this her fault, too? Would he blame her? She was used to being blamed, but a hot knife of anxiety speared her innards regardless.

  He pulled a handful of tinder from inside his coat and tucked it into a ball in the middle of the stone hearth. His fingers moved stiffly, unbending at the joints.

  As she watched him struggle something inside her softened. She was the reason he’d had to go out in the snow. Because she and Jamie had used all the firewood.

  And if he hadn’t come she probably would have frozen. The fire had gone out early in the morning and already the cabin was chilled. She was uncomfortable, though she’d doubled her petticoat and had wrapped herself in the shawl.

  His hands trembled as he struck a flint and the tinder, which caught instantly, filling the room momentarily with the scent of sulfur. How had he managed to light a fire so quickly given his condition?

  For the second time she noticed the breadth of his shoulders. But she wasn’t frightened, not like she had been the first time he’d burst inside the cabin demanding answers.

  She felt...sorry for him, that’d he’d gone out in the elements. For her. And for himself, too. No doubt he would be miserable without a fire, but still. He had done it for both of them.

  The growing flames devoured the small sticks and twigs he’d added and now he piled on chunks of wood.

  It wasn’t warming the room yet, but melting snow dripped off the brim of his hat.

  He didn’t seem to notice.

  But she did.

  He stood up stiffly and stared down at the dancing orange flames. As if his gaze was riveted to them. Or perhaps he was muddled from being out in the cold.

  She wanted to help him.

  “Don’t you want to take your coat off?” she asked. “It’s covered in ice.”

  He jumped as if she’d startled him, and his head jerked toward her. Surely he hadn’t forgotten she was there. His blue eyes were unfocused, the pupils large and dark in the dancing light from the open stove door. Now that he’d turned his face to her she saw his cheeks were pale and splotched with red, just like his hands. The tip of his nose was white.

  He’d come inside from the cold, but what if he still took sick and died? Surely that was still a risk.

  The thought, the fear, spurred her toward him. “Let me help you,” she said, almost disbelieving that she’d dared to make the offer.

  Nearer the fire it was warm and would get warmer as the logs caught fire; he’d left the stove door open and flickering light filled the room.

  She reached up and grabbed the brim of his hat, flipping it off of his head. It was cold to the touch. The firelight twinkled off of the underside of his flame-red hair.

  “You’ve got ice in your hair,” she said. Snow must’ve melted and then refrozen as he’d worked.

  She tossed his hat on to the table. He tried to shrug out of his coat, but the leather was soaked through and frozen as well. She crossed behind him and helped struggle it off, letting it fall to the ground. Her hands went cold just from touching it. From behind she couldn’t help noticing how his shirt stretched over his shoulders, revealing the contours of his back.

  She had no business noticing any such thing. “Let me see your hands,” she said, circling him again and attempting a businesslike tone. He was no one to her, but he had helped her by bringing the firewood and had promised to see her to safety.

  To her surprise he allowed her to take his hands in hers. Her fingers wrapped only partway around his huge palms; though her hands had become chilled from touching his coat, his hands were like blocks of ice.

  She inhaled slightly at the nearly unbearable sensation, breathing in leather and horse and man. “Your hands are cold.”

  “Yep.”

  His one word answer was calm and implacable, and she couldn’t help looking up.

  His eyes were still slightly unfocused, and he was staring down at the mountain of her belly between them.

  Uncomfortable at his scrutiny, she dropped his hands and abruptly wheeled around. Her belongings were meager, but she had two towels tucked in her satchel.

  “You might have frostbite,” she said, not looking at him. She didn’t want him to be aware of her as a woman, not alone out here in the wilds with no one to protect her.

  Something inside her told her she had nothing to fear from the cowboy, but her emotions had ruled her
for too long, had tied her to Jamie, and look where that had gotten her. She couldn’t trust her heart, not any longer.

  She found the towels and went back to the cowboy, who was standing where she’d left him. Was he all right?

  Worries swirled through her like the howling storm outside, and she didn’t know exactly what to do. How often had that been the case since her papa’s death almost a year ago?

  She dragged one of the two rickety chairs over near the stove. The dog had moved from its post at the door and now lay between the wall and stove.

  “Sit down,” she told the cowboy.

  He didn’t, not at first. He looked down on her with a question written across his brow, a question she didn’t recognize.

  Then he slumped into the chair. “You’re as bossy as my ma,” he said, but there was no heat to the words.

  She bit her lip. She didn’t know whether that was an insult or a simple comparison, but she was trying to help the man. He could affect some gratefulness.

  She knelt in front of him with some difficulty and reached for one of his boots. She had her hand on the frozen leather before he shifted.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Taking off your boots,” she responded, a little miffed. She reached out and grabbed the heel, pulling it off before he could protest again. It spun across the floor as she went for the second boot.

  Perhaps the action was too intimate for their acquaintance—they were strangers, after all, but it needed to be done and he obviously wasn’t completely in his right mind.

  She sat back on her heels in preparation for standing up—balancing her bulk wasn’t easy now that the babe was so close to arrival—and wobbled.

  She lost her balance, but before her rump could hit the floor he steadied her with his hands on her upper arms, and then helped her stand. Too close. She took a quick step back.

  She flushed, going hot. Maybe he would blame the color in her cheeks on the fire that was growing and warming the room.

  She took one of the towels from the table and folded it around his hands, chafing them between the rough material.

  “My hands are fine,” he said. “Why don’t you make some coffee?”

  She just kept rubbing, bent toward him.

  “It’s not frostbite,” he said quietly, the words ruffling the fine hairs at her temple. “I’ve had a touch of it before, and I’ll probably never forget what it felt like. This isn’t it.”

  She was too close. If she looked up at him, he’d see everything she was holding so tightly inside—the fear that something would happen to him and she would be alone up here again.

  So she nodded. And kept rubbing.

  Maybe the warmth had loosed his tongue because he kept talking. “You aren’t scared of me anymore.”

  “I suppose not.” She wasn’t frightened of him. A little uncomfortable at the forced intimacy of their circumstances, but he’d proved that he didn’t intend her harm, hadn’t he?

  “If you were going to take advantage of me, I suppose you wouldn’t have gone out in the snow for hours,” she said.

  She was staring at the towel in her hands but saw his smile, a flash of white teeth in the shadowy room. Without his hat, his hair was plastered to his head and in the firelight she could see the tip of his nose was red. She hoped he knew what he was talking about and that it wasn’t frostbitten.

  His chin turned and she saw his gaze flick to the shelves above the stove, bare of food.

  “You ate all the canned goods. All of them.”

  His fixation on the shelf solidified her assumption that all was not right. Did he simply need to warm and rest to recover?

  “Yes,” she answered, still looking down at his hands as she continued to rub them. “I’ll find a way to pay you back what they were worth.”

  He continued to stare at the shelves. Until she became uncomfortable.

  “Are you angry?” she asked.

  “I was.” He paused. “Not anymore.” Another pause. “I saw the grave.”

  The punch of emotion surprised her, tears blinding her instantly. She let go of his hands, pulled the towel away.

  She couldn’t breathe. Blinked.

  In the firelight she saw his hands were a more normal pink. Relieved in one part and needing escape in another, she pushed the second towel at him. “Dry off your head and neck before you take a chill.”

  She didn’t care if it was bossy, the action of drying his hair was too intimate, too painful in the face of Jamie’s absence and her very aloneness.

  Focus on something else. She must.

  She went to the stove and picked up the battered coffeepot. A trip to the door to scoop up snow to melt chilled her as the wind threatened to push the door out of her hands.

  But the familiar swish of liquid inside the coffeepot calmed her. Some. The smell of grounds rose to tease her nose. Her stomach clenched. The coffee didn’t belong to her. Neither did the food she’d seen in his belongings. He didn’t have to share it with her. But she was desperately hungry...

  He didn’t even seem to notice her busy activity. Stared into the fire, idly toweling off his hair.

  When the smell of coffee began filling the room, he stirred.

  “I went through your bags while you were chopping wood,” she admitted before he could ask.

  “I won’t be angry if you pour me some of that.”

  She was in profile to him as she took the battered tin mug and poured. Their fingers brushed when she handed it to him; his hands had warmed.

  She struggled for something to say. “Do you really think your family will help me? A stranger to them?”

  His white teeth flashed again as he lifted the coffee to his lips and sipped. “Never stopped my pa before. He adopted a whole passel of kids that started out as strangers to him. I’m one of them.”

  Surprise brought her to look at him. Their gazes connected, his blue to her brown.

  His statement was revealing. Probably he wouldn’t have admitted as much to a stranger; probably he was still a bit muddled from being out in the elements. What kind of man would do such a thing?

  “How many siblings do you have?” she asked, because her curiosity couldn’t be contained.

  “There are eight of us adopted. Seven boys and a girl. Then Jonas—that’s my pa—and his wife have three kids of their own.”

  She couldn’t imagine the chaos that must’ve been with so many people living under one roof. As a child, she’d longed for a brother or sister. But perhaps it was a hidden blessing that she’d had no one—her stepmother had been indifferent at best, unkind in some circumstances. Maybe it was best that another child hadn’t gone through the same experience.

  She’d longed for the kind of loving family that Davy described. More so in those dark, lonely days after Papa’s death when her stepmother had encouraged Jamie’s suit, and Rose had mistaken Jamie’s advances for the love she craved.

  She wasn’t sure she believed in love anymore. Nor did she have the luxury of looking for it. She had to find a way to support herself and the child she would bear. And soon.

  As if sensing her melancholy thoughts, Davy pushed heavily from the table, as if his muscles were weighted down. With him standing to his full height, the room seemed to shrink again.

  “If you’ll put a pan on I’ll unload the kitchen goods. I’ve got a side of beef out in the lean-to and there’s flour and salt for biscuits.”

  She did as he asked and he moved about the cabin slowly, as if perhaps his muscles ached after the strain he’d put them through out in the cold. She wasn’t sure what to make of him. He treated her kindly, as if he’d forgotten she’d held a gun on him when he’d first arrived.

  When the meat was frying in the pan, filling the cabin with its savory smell, he sat in the c
hair and rifled through a satchel at his feet.

  “Do you know how long until the baby comes?” he asked conversationally.

  Heat seared her cheeks. It wasn’t proper to talk about such things with an unmarried man, but then, what about this situation was proper?

  “A few weeks, I’m...I think,” she replied, not looking at him. “My mama has been gone a long time, so I couldn’t ask her, but Jamie said that the baby would be here by Christmas.”

  She shrugged. She’d believed everything he’d told her—at first.

  “We’ve got a doc in the family. Two actually. My brother Maxwell and his wife Hattie are both doctors, so I’m sure they’ll take care of you and the baby.”

  It was a thought that made her swallow hard. She hadn’t truly been able to rely on anyone since Papa had died.

  Was this man, this family, an answer to her prayers?

  Chapter Three

  Davy woke in the early morning darkness to sounds of movement and a soft whicker.

  What? Where was he?

  His head felt hot; he was disoriented.

  Until a cold draft down his bedroll reminded him. Smells of sweet, clean hay and horse assaulted him.

  The storm. The cabin.

  The girl.

  He sat up, tucking his knees up inside the bedroll. Last night his head had been muddled from the cold and exhaustion, but the more he came awake the more he remembered. Rose.

  The vulnerability in her trembling lips—and the slight prideful hike of her chin—when she’d asked if his family would help her.

  When he’d mentioned her dead husband, her eyes had gone dark and then shuttered.

  And he’d felt a stirring of compassion he didn’t want. He had the winter herd to see to. Her presence complicated things. It meant a trip down to deliver her to his family at the homestead, and more work chopping wood to replenish what had been used. He also would be forced to rely on his ma’s pantry or else use his own funds to replenish the food stores that were gone.

  He didn’t need the trouble, and he’d already invested enough in the herd. He owed it to his brother to do a good job with the cattle. But he didn’t have a choice about the extra time and expense now that she was here.