A Cowboy Is Forever

by Shirley Larson

  Athena just patted her back, wisely saying nothing, just listening.

  “He should have known I’d never shoot his father.”

  At that jump from worry to accusation, Athena leaned away to look down into her face, a frown drawing her brows together. “If somebody pointed a gun at your daddy when he was still alive, wouldn’t you yell at him?”

  “I—Of course.”

  “Well, there you are, then.” Gently she extracted herself from Charlotte’s arms. “Sometimes a woman just gotta love a man whether he knows her or not. Sometimes a woman gotta help a man step out on that glass staircase that he can’t see and have faith. And now, I have to go back.” Charlotte’s chin was lifted by a warm, soft hand. “You take care of yourself, you hear? Everything’s going to be all right.”

  She slipped out of the door and back into the night, leaving Charlotte staring after her, almost afraid to believe she’d really been there. But the wonderful smell of the cookies lingered, and Charlotte lifted the white towel and picked one up, not sure whether she wanted to eat it, or just hold it for comfort.

  Chapter Eight

  The cows knew the way to the summer pasture, up past the second bend of the creek, around the grove of aspens, just past the tree festooned with blackbirds and upward along the silver ribbon of a stream that narrowed to a trickle. Gray Mist liked the slow pace, and so did Charlotte, especially on an early July day like this, when it seemed as if she could see the sky from pole to pole and the air had the warmth of a hot sweet biscuit. Even the dust was too lazy to rise. Ahead of her, Tex rode, hat in hand to scare the stragglers, his beloved tri collie nipping at the heels of wandering strays. Even Princess, the premier cow, behaved herself and followed the herd.

  It had been quite a while since Athena’s visit, but her spirit lingered with Charlotte. Have faith in Luke. She hadn’t. She’d sent him away, because in that first crazy moment when she snatched up the gun, he’d acted instinctively. Athena was right, Charlotte’s hackles would have flown to the moon if Luke had seemed to threaten her father.

  I was three years old the last time I tried to hug a porcupine.

  She’d been a porcupine, all right. A stubborn, thickheaded spiny pig. What were the chances he still believed in her, now that they’d found that blasted iron on her property?

  Zero to none. She’d lose Luke’s trust along with everything else.

  She’d had time to think about what it would be like without Luke standing behind her. During these past weeks, with Luke absent from her life, the world had chilled to a bleak emptiness. Too late, she’d realized she’d learned to depend on his faith. Now, when she fell into fitful sleep and dreamed about finding the branding iron and woke shaking and afraid, all her bravado was gone. The days were long and lonely without him.

  Would she be indicted, lose her ranch? Not if she could help it. This was her land, and she would do everything in her power to keep it, including sleeping out in the open tonight to watch the herd. Her horse was loaded down with sleeping bag, water bottle and, tucked away carefully in waxed paper, Athena’s raisin-oatmeal cookies.

  She’d wanted to sell the year-old calves to give Tex the money he needed, but when she called Tom Hartley to let him know, he’d advised her not to. Ordered her not to, actually. He’d said she’d better not sell even the smallest calf until this brouhaha with Henry was settled. Any new moneys in her account were bound to be suspect. She’d agreed. But she knew in her heart that it wasn’t right to ask Lettie to wait, and so she’d gone to the telephone and found a buyer for the one valuable animal she had that was not part of her herd. It was like selling a part of her soul to part with Lady Luck’s colt, but Carson Dole was a good man and, most important of all, he was willing to give her the money now and wait till the foal was weaned to take him.

  It had hurt to take the check from Carson that evening, but it had felt awfully good to put the money in Tex’s hand the next day, after she went to the bank. He might have refused it for himself, but he loved Lettie with a secret fierceness that only Lettie and Charlotte knew, so he’d taken the money and they’d gone off to see the doctor about scheduling the operation that would give Lettie relief from her pain.

  At the far border of her summer pasture, the grass was lush, and the salt blocks were strategically placed to space the cattle. Tex gave up herding, the collie sat down with pink tongue hanging, knowing his work was done. Now came the task Charlotte really dreaded. She had to tell Tex she was remaining here alone. “You ride on back to the ranch. I’m staying up here tonight.”

  He’d known, of course, when he saw that sleeping bag rolled behind her saddle, but he’d pretended not to notice until he was forced to. His scowl wasn’t encouraging. “You’ve gone doggone loco on me again.”

  “If somebody wanted to slip some more double-branded cows into my herd, this would be a great time to do it. I want to see that it doesn’t happen.”

  “You’re a consarned fool. I’m staying and—”

  “No. You know your back won’t take sleeping on the ground, especially if it does finally rain. Besides, Lettie needs you. It’s better if I’m here alone. I mean it, Tex. You go home.”

  He mumbled and grumbled and looked like a man severely torn by conflicting loyalties, but Charlotte finally told him to go or he wouldn’t have a job in the morning. They both knew she was lying through her teeth, but her lie gave Tex the face-saving push he needed to get him up on his horse and riding for home and his beloved Lettie.

  Now there was just cows and tree shadows and her. A few of the older cows had already dropped their rear ends to the ground and settled in for the evening. As the sun dropped and the breeze turned cooler, the old line shack looked more inviting. She thought of the winter spiders hiding in every crack and crevice and shivered. She’d rather bed down in the open and take her chances with the cattle thief.

  The moon rose over her little campfire, big, shiny, close. A coyote howled, his cry echoing against mountain granite. She popped the cap of her thermos of coffee and drank the steaming liquid to give her suddenly chilled skin warmth. She spread out her sleeping bag; her saddle would make a backrest. She wished she’d brought marshmallows to toast over the fire. Sean had never forgotten the marshmallows, or the chocolate bars, either. He’d had a relentless sweet tooth. The thought of her father hurt…and yet was oddly comforting, as if she weren’t out there alone.

  There was a bank of clouds off in the east again, but whether they would bring much-needed rain was anybody’s guess. She lay there with her head tipped up enough to watch the stars wink in, one by one. Stars that twinkled with memories of tender kisses and a sweet intimacy she’d never known with anyone except him.

  No. Absolutely useless, those thoughts.

  Day gave way to night. The sky darkened to indigo, the trees disappeared into indefinable shapes, an owl hooted with that curious vibrating call. When it was so dark there was nothing but shadows behind her tiny fire, she heard the soft thudding steps of a horse.

  Her ears ached with listening, her eyes strained to see, her nerves vibrated. Who was out there in the darkness? The thief? Or worse?

  A hat came flying in, ringed on her toes.

  Luke’s hat, not so pristine as when he’d first come to town and tried to present it to her. The band was dark with dust and perspiration. It was a country hat now instead of a city one.

  Her heart accelerated, but under the excitement she felt an ancient wisdom. The hat was hers to accept or not, and the man with it. Her body stinging with the sudden surge of adrenaline, she plucked the hat off her toes and put it on her head, tilting it over her brow and leaning back against the saddle, a woman ready for a siesta.

  “May I take that as an invitation?” Luke’s voice was dark with amusement. But there was a note of reserve, too.

  “Take it as finders keepers,” she said from under the hat, her hand possessive on the brim, hoping her voice didn’t betray her excitement to his ears as much as it did to hers.<
br />
  He dismounted, ground-reined his horse and strolled toward her. With one finger, she tipped up the hat to watch him. He was a dark gray figure in the dark gray night, with the longest legs, the flattest belly and the broadest shoulders in this woman’s universe.

  Wild excitement surged in her, but with it came that tiny shiver of fear. There was nobody she would rather see walking toward her on this earth, but there was nobody who had the power to hurt her quite like Luke had, either. Why had he come?

  There was nothing of her excitement mirrored in his face. He looked utterly at ease. He might have been out for a stroll The classic planes of his cheek and jaw were as cool as the little breeze wafting across her suddenly warm cheeks. What did he want of her?

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  “Radar,” he said.

  “And I thought that long patrician nose was only good for imperious staring over.”

  “Excuse me?” He stared down at her with all the mock imperiousness at his command. “Did you say long nose?”

  “I must have said strong. Strong patrician nose.”

  His mouth quirked. He tried to control the grin, but he couldn’t. That smile was so darkly attractive that it made her toes want to curl. “Am I forgiven, then?” he asked.

  “Yes. As long as you forgive me.”

  “Well, this was easier than I thought it would be. Mind if I share your sleeping blanket? Just to sit for a while.”

  Her toes did curl, and so did her nerves. She didn’t want to be misunderstood. Yet how could she calmly move over to make a place for him and pretend there had been no kisses shared on a night Just like this one? “As long as you take your boots off first and bring your own pillow.” She wriggled her toes, glad it was dark, glad he couldn’t see how just looking at him, hearing his voice, made her cheeks heat and her hands chill. He’d obviously stopped by for a talk, nothing more. She must matcn his light attitude, no matter how hard it was.

  He tossed his saddle down opposite hers, shed his boots and settled down facing her. “This is cozy. Just us and a few hundred cows.”

  The slightly cynical tone made her laugh. “Not exactly the Ritz.”

  “A much overrated hotel.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  He leaned back on his elbows and gazed at the stars. “Yeah. I’d rather be here. Not many places can compare to a night like this.”

  Something flitted across his face, a darkness. He was gone from her, thinking of things she’d never see or know. “You’ve seen so much that I haven’t.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he looked at her. “It’s an illusion. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “When you haven’t been somewhere, it seems like all you need in life is to see that new place, meet those new people. But after you do, you realize that new place and those new people are just another version of the old place and the old people, only they don’t know you as well, or care about you as much. And you think maybe you’ve lost something you’ll never get back, and you wonder if there’s any place in the world that will feel right to you again.”

  “This place feels…right to me. It could to you, too, if you let it.” She watched him, holding her breath.

  “You’re one of the lucky ones,” he said. “You know who you are and where you belong.” He reached up to brush off her hat and run his hand down the long length of her hair. “Lucky Charlotte.”

  She smiled, lifted her chin, struggling to keep her mind on her words when his hand kept sliding sensuously over her hair. “Lucky isn’t exactly the way I think of myself these days. I may not be in my place much longer, if someone has their way. I—I suppose you heard about the branding iron.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, but she knew he meant yes. He gazed into the night, his hand still sliding down her hair absently.

  “Who do you think is doing this to me?”

  He shook his head, his concentration returning to the hand that he ran down the length of her silky tresses. He seemed to be testing the weight of her hair, the thickness. She’d never had anyone touch her with such total absorption. Yet he seemed as distant as a star. She wanted to touch him in response, but she knew it wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her to pretend that he wasn’t touching her, that he wasn’t lifting her hair and letting it fall against her shoulder over and over again.

  She struggled to keep the conversation going. “It—it was really nice of you to speak to Clarence on my behalf.”

  He looked at her then, as if he had come awake. His hand fell away from her, and his face took on the look of a dark angel’s. He relaxed back from her, and she felt the loss of his touch and his closeness acutely. “I’m not nice, Charlotte. I’ve lost the habit. Cured, shall we say, by experts?” Surprising her mightily, he reached down and picked up her stockinged foot and enclosed it in his warm palm, almost as if he had to keep touching her in whatever way he could. With a casual surety, as if he had done it for her a thousand times, he pulled her foot across his thigh and began to massage her sole, rubbing his thumbs around and around on the ball of her foot.

  His hand was warm and intimate, his face cool and expressionless. She was confused, afraid to hope, and more aroused than she’d ever been in her life. “You haven’t been cured of being nice, Luke. You think you have, but you haven’t.” The dark helped her say what she needed to say, with only the owls listening and the whisper of the cottonwoods down by the creek and her little fire throwing just enough light on his face to make him recognizable, turning his eyes into dark pools.

  Luke knew he was treading in dangerous water. He just wanted to look at her, be with her, touch her. He wouldn’t ask anything of her. He had no right. But when she looked up at him with those eyes shining, and that long hair draped over her shoulder where he’d left it, he felt as if his heart were going to leave his chest. He didn’t like the feeling. It disturbed him, irritated him, that she had such a hold on him. She’d drawn him here. Now she was looking at him with her heart in her eyes and he knew he had nothing left

  of his heart to offer her. “Don’t be fooled by my genial facade, darlin’, or make the mistake of thinking I’m the same naive boy you once knew. There’s nothing I can do to help you.” Always sensitive to his tone of voice, Charlotte shivered, chilled through and through. She moved her foot, asking for release. He opened his hands and let her go, his mouth twisting a little, as if he’d expected her withdrawal.

  She wasn’t finished with him. “Forgive me for being confused,” she said, her voice crisp. “If you don’t want to be…involved with me, why did you come?”

  “Looking for the right place to be, I guess.” That cynical tinge was back in his voice again. “God knows it isn’t here. I guess I’ll have to keep on looking.”

  “This is your home—”

  He gave her that flash of a glance, that twist of his head. “No. Not anymore. This is your home, not mine. I don’t think it ever was.”

  He leaned back, away from her. He wasn’t touching her anywhere, and she felt the loss dreadfully. He said, “So. I tried God’s country and I tried man’s city and I don’t like either of them. I tried ambition, living by the ten-year plan, having goals, being motivated, dressing for success, and I was an abysmal failure at all of them. Maybe I’ll try sloth for a while, see how good I am at that.”

  “You haven’t failed, Luke. You just…got another piece of your education.”

  He laughed; it was an amused, ironic sound. “You must be the absolute epitome of the power of positive thinking.”

  Quick as a wink, she shot back, “I’ve stood up against your father all these years, haven’t I?”

  “Yes, you have. And for all these years, you’ve believed in me. That should give you the award for optimist of the year. The worst of it is, I don’t deserve your faith in me.”

  “Sometimes we get things whether we deserve them or not.” She smiled at him, a flash of sweetness in the
firelight.

  He burned to touch her again, now, quickly, before he lost his nerve. Her skin glowed, her hair was dark as coal in the little light from the fire. She sat with her knees up and her hands clasped around them, but he could see her bare throat under her shirt and the satiny skin that promised sweet curves below. He told himself it was wrong, wrong, to reach for her when he had nothing to give her in return, but his body didn’t listen, and his hand doubled into a fist and he brushed his knuckles lightly over hers where they rested on her knee, once, twice. “So, having duly warned you off, I can’t, as you may have noticed, keep my hands off you.”

  She caught his masculine hands in her smaller, feminine ones. He had lean, graceful fingers, a callus on his thumb pad. “They are nice hands. They feel very good…on me. They feel…right.”

  “Don’t,” he murmured, reaching out to brush his fingertips over her cheek, kindling a flash fire in her. His eyes claimed hers, taking them, holding them.

  “Don’t…what?”

  “Don’t be so damn wonderful.”

  “I’m sorry. I duly promise I’ll be rotten to the core from now on.” And she smiled.

  “I’d better go,” he said, but he was caught on her smile.

  “I suppose so.” Her eyes shone, and she reached forward and took his hand in hers. “Before you leave, I’d like…to give you a kiss like the one you gave me.” And she brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed his palm, then let her eyes love his face while she folded his fingers over it. “You don’t have to wait for the mate. You can have it now, if you like.” She took his other hand and kissed it as she had the first. When she saw the dark gleam, the flare of excitement that at last matched hers, she knew she must seize this one chance. She must make it impossible for him to walk away from her. Her heart pounding with fear and excitement, she carried his hand to her breast, cupped his palm on her and pressed her hand on top of his. “Don’t go. Stay with me, Luke. Let me be your home for just a little while.”