Southern Charms

by Trana Mae Simmons

  And scared the diddly darn out of her. Scared her back into her senses.

  He didn’t try to stop her when she scrambled off his belly. Clasping her hands over her mouth, she backed away from him, and abruptly came up against the dead limb. Legs weak, she welcomed the seat.

  The scalding sensation below her stomach lingered, and she tightened her thigh muscles one time before realizing what she was doing. The pleasure sharpened again, and she released her muscles. Horrified at herself, she stared at Shane.

  He lay flat on his back, eyes closed and his right hand flung out as though reaching for her—fingers curled as though in longing. She firmly ordered her wayward eyes not to look below his chest—and they disobeyed her just as firmly. That part of him that had scared her was visibly outlined in his tight jeans. It throbbed one time against the material, as though sensing the touch of her eyes.

  Ellie gasped and jumped to her feet. Wildly, she scanned the area for Cinder, finding the gelding grazing more than a hundred yards away. She tried to call him to her, but the whistle he always responded to clogged in her throat. Frantically, she kept trying, but all that came out was a faint, tiny sound.

  “Ellie?”

  She froze. Her wayward eyes disobeyed her once again. He was sitting up now, a look of deep concern on his face. Thank you lord, his bent leg hid—the rest of him.

  “Ellie, I’m very sorry that happened. It got out of hand way too quickly.”

  She cleared her throat—strenuously. “I understand.”

  And she did. Mr. Big Shot Moneybags was afraid she might think there was more to what they were doing than just a dalliance on his part with the poor little orphan girl. Well, she could put his mind at ease in that regard real fast. Succeeding in her attempt to whistle for Cinder this time, she rose to her feet.

  “I’m really not hungry any longer, so I’m going to get back to work. I—”

  Gosh darn his fast movements! He was on his feet and standing in front of her before Cinder got to the top of the creek bank.

  “I’m the one who’s to blame for spoiling our lunch, Ellie. I’ll leave, and you enjoy yourself.”

  His stallion hadn’t wandered nearly as far as Cinder, and it stood at the top of the bank. He reached down and grabbed his saddle and strode to it. Less than thirty seconds later, while Ellie chewed her lip and tried to keep from begging him to stay, he was on Blackjack’s back. Tipping his hat at her—she hadn’t even seen him put it on—he nudged the stallion and galloped away.

  Ellie sank back onto the limb. She looked at the tablecloth, where the formerly delectable lunch still lay spread out. Now the cheeses looked unpalatable, the ham unappealing. She bent down and retrieved one of the apples, tossing it up the bank to Cinder. The gelding chomped it greedily.

  Shane’s lips had been greedy, too....

  Snorting her disgust, Ellie grabbed the sack of cookies and the canteen. Maybe the staple foods didn’t appeal to her, but sweets always succored distressed feelings. She ate one cookie in two bites, washing it down with tangy, sweet lemonade, and then reached for another one. She didn’t stop until every cookie crumb was gone.

  Chapter 11

  Fatima gazed deep in the bowl of water, disgust at both humans in her care clenching her lips. Sweet Venus, what on earth was it going to take to show those two how perfect they were for each other? There sat Ellie, munching on those delicious cookies Fatima made for her, tears running down her face. And there was Shane, on down the creek bank, wading in the cold water to cool his ardor. He could have cooled his ardor with Ellie, and they both would have enjoyed the interlude completely!

  Fatima wasn’t of the school that said a man and woman had to wait for a piece of paper before they shared the pleasures of their bodies with each other. At least, not if the two people truly loved each other. Despite Ellie’s stupid hangup about being an orphan, and despite Shane’s dumb priority setting that said he had to find out Ellie’s true identity before he fell in love with her, they had both already fallen.

  “But humans are so obtuse at times,” she muttered. “They’ve got all these silly emotional stumbling blocks in the way of facing their real feelings.”

  Someone gasped, and Fatima stiffened. Uh oh. She glared at Pandora for a second, stretched out there in front of the stove on a fluffy rug—a fluffy rug Fatima had conjured for her so her poor little padded body wouldn’t suffer on the hard pine floor. The cat always warned her if a human was slipping up unnoticed and Fatima needed to shield her appearance. This time Pandora had shirked her duty.

  Fatima erected the shield into place anyway. A second later, she turned and found Shane’s valet in the kitchen doorway. Withers’s face indicated in no uncertain terms that he had seen her in her true dress—at least from behind. And silly her, she hadn’t realized until this minute that the mirror beside the dry sink reflected the front of her.

  Nonetheless, Fatima attempted nonchalance. “Uh—hello. Can I do something for you, Withers?”

  “Who are you, madam?” he said in that oh-so-proper English accent.

  “You know who I am,” she evaded. “I’m Fatima, the cook and housekeeper.”

  “No.” Withers barely breathed the word, then continued, “You are the most ravishing beauty I have ever seen in my entire life.”

  “Oh!” Fatima simpered, batted her eyelashes and preened. “Oh, that’s so nice of you to say that.”

  “It’s bloody true,” Withers insisted. He slowly walked toward her. “You’re even beautiful the way you look now. Have you not noticed how drawn I am to you?”

  “Drawn to me? Why...why, I can’t say that I have. I’ve been so busy trying to get Shane and Ellie together, I haven’t thought about myself.”

  “We may just have to do something about that then, my beautiful Fatima. I would truly like you to pay some very serious attention to yourself, my darling. And to me.”

  “Oh, Withers,” she said with a heartfelt sigh. “You are so forceful and masculine.”

  He kissed her, and Fatima’s shielded appearance and her defenses all crumbled to the floor.

  Pandora smiled that cat’s smile of satisfaction and licked a pink tongue across her upper lip. Then she yawned and settled down for a nap. Fatima wasn’t the only matchmaker in this partnership.

  * * * *

  Shane’s boot sank in something gluey, and for the first time he noticed the creek bed here was lined in red clay mud, not the nice sand, like in the spot where he and Ellie had planned to eat lunch. Where he had planned on fostering his friendship with Ellie and finding out more about her possible identity.

  Hell, friendship had been the furthest thing from his mind the moment he touched his lips to hers. And he hadn’t lied to Ellie. That same moment he realized he had wanted to taste her since the first moment he saw her in that rather worn dress in the buggy at the circus.

  Maybe it was the contradiction of her shabby mode of dress and his knowing there could be a fortune waiting for Ellie that interested him.

  Sure! And he kissed her just because she was a handy female and he hadn’t kissed one in a while.

  Damn it to hell, he hadn’t felt such passion even those nights with Anastasia, the willingest woman for sex he ever ran across. But, he honestly told himself as he tried to pull his boot free from the mud, a few minutes ago he learned the difference between sex and lovemaking.

  Look at how his relationship with Anastasia fell apart after his body was scarred. How quickly Anastasia realized she didn’t want to be between the sheets with a marred body. Sex was empty passion, something two people mistook for what it took to make a lifetime commitment when they didn’t know any better. That’s what he had with Anastasia. Sex—something that satisfied their bodies, but not the more important needs they didn’t even realize they were entitled to—like companionship, admiration, respect.

  Damn it! Like love!

  Hell, that’s why they called it lovemaking. He jerked on his boot, lost his balance and landed on his
ass in the cold water. Instead of getting up, he bent his head and buried his face on his knees.

  Lovemaking. That’s what he would have had with Ellie if she hadn’t came to her senses before he did. That’s where they had been heading. The differences between how he had felt when he held Anastasia and how he felt with Ellie were nothing short of profound.

  Ellie.

  He could have companionship with Ellie. When they weren’t sparring, they enjoyed each other’s company. Hell, even when they sparred, he enjoyed it. In just this short time, she had made a huge impact on his life.

  Admiration? Oh, yeah. He admired that little bit of a woman so much it was like a disease sometimes. He never saw any female who could run a ranch and take care of so many people the way Ellie could. She didn’t even realize how much her men, her sister and her stepmother depended on her. She just went about taking care of them, expecting nothing in return.

  Respect? It was tied in there with admiration. He respected her independence, her confidence in herself, which she didn’t flaunt, at least as far as running the ranch went. Which maybe she didn’t even realize she had. Maybe those other insecurities outweighed everything else. Wasn’t that what happened to people at times? No matter how well they did in most facets of their life, the things they obsessed on were the negatives in their lives.

  What had she said earlier that day on the range?

  I’m just the orphan doggy who was given a home with the Parkers.

  Some faint sound made Shane lift his head, but his thoughts remained occupied with Ellie. Could it be? For the first time he found himself wanting desperately to prove that Ellie was indeed Cynthia. He had lost his objectivity about the matter, if he had ever had any.

  Probably not, he admitted. He came to Texas...Texas...with his mind made up that he would find a woman with a similar background, but not Cynthia Spencer. That’s why he had hidden his true reason for being here.

  But most definitely, when Ellie found out he was here under false pretenses—not to look for investments but to prove or disprove her identity—she would hate his guts for deceiving her.

  What the hell had he done?

  The sound drew his attention again—a faint bawling he recognized as that of a young calf. Then a louder sound joined it, the moo of a much larger animal. He recognized the distress in the moo, a result of hearing both types of sounds this morning—contented moos from cows with calves by their side; frantic moos of separation when the cows searched for calves lost in a herd that milled and raced away at the approach of the ranch hands.

  Shane rose to his feet and, with an effort, jerked his boot out of the sticky red mud. Waiting until he climbed out of the stream before replacing his boot, he grimaced at the sodden leather. Hell, he shouldn’t have waded into the water with his boots on, but he hadn’t even thought about that when he stopped here. All he wanted to do was soothe the ache in his groin before he ended up with a case of long-lasting, excruciating blue balls.

  Stomping his feet, he jammed the right one down into place, then looked for Blackjack. The stallion stood near, ears perked as it listened to the sound of the cow, now bawling repeatedly and agitatedly downstream.

  Gazing at the red clay soil, Shane figured out immediately what may have happened. Shorty had said earlier that his men checked this creek periodically when the calves were young, due to the chance the tiny calves might wander into the glue-like mud. The calf he heard was no doubt stuck, needing just such a rescue.

  He didn’t have a rope with him, but he remembered one hanging from Cinder’s saddle. Besides, he could never keep that cow away from her calf while he rescued the baby without some help. Some of these beasts had awfully long, sharp horns.

  Reluctantly, he climbed into his saddle, then urged Blackjack toward the distressed cow. He better find out how bad the situation was before he went for help.

  Hooves thundered, and Shane glanced over his shoulder. Ellie rode toward him, and he pulled Blackjack to a stop.

  She paused beside him. “I heard that cow bawling.” She avoided his face, a hint of blush lingering on her cheeks. “Have you checked to see what’s wrong?”

  “I was on my way. But just in case it’s a stuck calf, I’m glad you came along. I don’t have a rope.”

  She nodded and settled her hat on her head, then kicked Cinder into a gallop. He followed, but not far. When they rounded a bend in the creek, Shane’s theory proved true. The little calf was stuck in the mud, its head barely above the water line. Its mother stood on the creek bank, bawling her distress.

  “That’s sure a small calf for this time of year,” Shane observed.

  “It’s the old brindle,” Ellie told him. “She always calves late. And she’s vicious, so we need to be careful.”

  “We better figure out what we can do both carefully and quick. That calf’s going to drown in about ten seconds.”

  They started forward, and the brindle swiveled toward them with a roaring bawl of confrontation. Lowering her head, she shook a pair of what must have been six-feet-long, sharp-tipped horns at them.

  “Jesus,” Shane muttered.

  ““While you’re at it,” Ellie said quietly, “ask Him and everyone else you can think of to help us out here.”

  She snapped her rope loose from the saddlehorn and shook out a loop. Twirling it by her side, she walked Cinder towards the cow, murmuring soothing words.

  “Come on, Brindle. Come on, you pretty thing. We’re here to help your baby, not hurt it. Come on, girl.”

  Heart in his throat, Shane watched, afraid any move he might make would be the wrong one—result in the cow charging. At one point, the brindle did actually lower her head further, pawing one front foot on the ground. Cinder stopped, although Shane hadn’t noticed Ellie pull on the reins. Probably the cow pony knew as much about what needed done as Ellie—and a lot more than Shane, who didn’t usually find himself on the waiting-for-orders end of a situation.

  Cinder moved a couple cautious steps forward. The cow charged. Cinder nimbly swerved and pounded away, the cow after him.

  “Get the calf!” Ellie shouted over her shoulder.

  Shane urged Blackjack forward and slid from the saddle on the edge of the creek. Stumbling in, he grabbed the calf and pulled it free of the sucking mud a second after the first wave of water lapped over its head. Securing it in his arms, he turned toward shore.

  And saw the brindle cow racing back toward him, snorting like a house on fire, horns swerving wickedly from side to side as she ran.

  With a neigh of terror, Blackjack deserted him. Well, hell, the stable master had told him the stallion was a breeder, not a stock horse.

  The cow thundered on, and Shane tried to decide whether to throw the calf at the bank and head for a tree or just close his eyes and wait. He prepared to toss the calf.

  A lasso loop circled almost lazily, then dropped over the cow’s horns. She slid to a stop on her ass, right on the edge of the creek. Glancing past the huge, sprawled, spotted body, Shane saw Cinder on his haunches, the rope stretched between him and the saddlehorn, Ellie wildly waving her hat at him.

  “A cow won’t attack a man on horseback as quickly!” she yelled. “Put the calf down on the bank and get on your horse!”

  Shane did. He scrambled out of the water, dropped the calf beside its mother—not too near—and raced after Blackjack. Luckily the stallion hadn’t gone far, and when it saw him, it ambled forward. Shane met it halfway, caught it and lunged into the saddle.

  He looked back at the cow just as Ellie somehow flicked the rope off the animal’s horns and she scrambled to her feet. Kicking Blackjack into a gallop, Shane raced away and gave the brindle privacy to clean its calf.

  After a few seconds, Ellie joined his mad gallop, racing Cinder alongside. When Shane looked at her, he saw her swaying dangerously in her saddle. God, had she somehow gotten hurt?

  He slowed Blackjack, but before the horse stopped completely, Shane realized why Ellie was swaying. Her l
aughter shook her so hard, she nearly tumbled out of the saddle!

  Shane gritted his teeth. It wasn’t one damned bit funny! That crazy cow could impale them both on her horns and go looking for other prey with barely a pause to clean the horns off!

  “Stop that damned cackling!” he shouted at Ellie.

  She straightened in the saddle, blue eyes dancing and sparkling with laughter tears. She bit her lips for a second, then collapsed again. Nudging Cinder into a gallop, she left Shane and Blackjack behind in her dust, Cinder’s hard pounding hooves failing to cover up the sound of the guffaws carried back to Shane on the wind.

  Chapter 12

  When Cinder showed signs of tiring in the heat, Ellie slowed the gelding. For an entire five seconds, she firmly refused to look over her shoulder and see if Shane had kept up with her. In the sixth second, she saw him far back on the flat horizon, Blackjack ambling slowly along.

  Nudging Cinder to a fast walk, which would cool the horse after its run, she headed on to the ranch. The rest of the fence check could wait until tomorrow, even if it was hours earlier than she normally went in. If anyone asked, she could blame her illness from the previous day. Not that Darlene or Elvina would ask, she reminded herself. They weren’t even aware she had been ill.

  In the barn she quickly unsaddled Cinder and gave him a cursory grooming, promising him a better one later that evening. It was too hot right now, she told herself, and he would be fine with a roll in the dirt in the corral.

  Sure, and pigs fly. She wanted out of the barn in case the big black horse decided on a faster gait and carried its rider here before Ellie made her escape.

  After turning Cinder into the corral—and not seeing Shane riding up yet—Ellie hurried to the house and through the empty kitchen. Crossing to the stairwell in the main part of the house, she noticed how clean and fresh everything smelled, much nicer than Birdie had kept it. To be honest, though, Birdie had never really given them any cause to complain about her abilities. It must be the comparison, Ellie guessed.