THE STARDUST COWBOY

by Anne McAllister

  "No brussels sprouts," she murmured as she fixed the potatoes. As far as she was concerned, there would be no more brussels sprouts in their lives as long as she lived.

  Jake was eating the soup, the potatoes were boiling and Dori was up to her elbows in dishwater—washing what looked like a week's worth of Riley's dishes—when the back door opened and the man himself stepped into the kitchen.

  On horseback Riley Stratton had looked imposing. In the kitchen, in his socks, she'd imagined he'd be less so.

  Somehow he wasn't.

  Chris had never daunted her, had never made her swallow and take a step back—or if he had, it was only because he was so darn good-looking.

  But Riley was daunting. He was no taller than she remembered Chris. Neither was over six feet. But Riley was filled out. His shoulders were squarer, his chest deeper. For all that he was as lean as Chris, he seemed more muscled and less slender. His hair was darker and shorter than his brother's had been, his features sharper, his jaw more uncompromising, his whole aspect harder, less handsome—and more intimidating.

  Dori ran her tongue over her lips and took a quick, steadying breath.

  Riley didn't speak. He stopped dead just inside the door, his hand still on the knob, as he looked first at her standing by the stove and then at Jake seated at the table.

  Jake, as usual, rose to the occasion, looking up, grinning through his tomato soup mustache. "Want some dinner?"

  "He was hungry," Dori apologized quickly. "We hadn't eaten in hours. And it isn't yours, the soup I mean. I brought it with me." She didn't mean to sound so defensive, but somehow she couldn't seem to stop herself.

  Riley blinked. Then he said, "You're welcome to whatever food you find." There seemed almost to be a line of color rising in his face. "There ain't—isn't—much. I haven't been to the store in a while."

  "I brought plenty of groceries." Dori waved a hand toward the sacks she'd lined up on the counter. "I expect to pull my weight. We can share."

  "Share?" Riley looked at her, baffled.

  "The groceries. The … house."

  He didn't reply. The silence was deafening.

  Then quite suddenly she heard a soft rumbling sound coming from the region of his stomach. She frowned for just a moment, then grinned with relief when she realized what it was.

  Riley instinctively pressed a hand against his belly. A touch of color definitely crept into his cheeks now.

  "Sit down." Dori waved a hand at a chair, as if it were her kitchen, not his. "You must be starving, too," she said. "The soup is ready. The potatoes will be soon. I brought some fresh green beans. The steak's almost ready." She turned to look for a clean bowl to dish him up some soup, then remembered they were all in the sink.

  Riley obviously realized this, too, as the color in his face deepened, and quickly he shook his head. "You don't need to fix me anything."

  But in the silence after he spoke, his stomach growled again.

  Dori laughed.

  "Really. I don't expect—"

  "You obviously weren't expecting us," Dori cut in. "We've landed on you without any warning at all. I apologize for that. It couldn't be helped. At least let me begin to make it up to you by fixing dinner. Do you need to shower first or do you just want to sit down and eat?"

  He seemed almost nonplussed for a moment, then he said, "Um, shower. I need a shower."

  "Everything will be ready by the time you get back," she promised.

  He started down the hallway when she spoke. "Riley?"

  He looked back over his shoulder.

  Dori gave him the best smile she knew how. "Thanks."

  She made his dinner.

  Soup. Steak. Mashed potatoes. Green beans. His stomach thought he'd died and gone to heaven. It was the best meal he'd eaten in … well, years maybe. Certainly the best one he remembered.

  He said so.

  The tomato soup was out of a can, she told him, holding it up. "I just added a little dill, and I made it with milk."

  He supposed that was what made the difference. He didn't know. She'd probably done something equally prosaic to the potatoes, too. But they tasted better than any he'd ever had. And the green beans. He poked at a brown speck in them.

  "Bacon bits," Dori explained. "If you don't like them, I can leave them out next time."

  Next time? There was going to be a next time?

  He didn't know how he felt about that. But did he like them? "Hell—I mean," he said with a nervous glance at Jake, "heck, yes."

  She smiled at him again. "Good. I'm glad. I'll be happy to do all the cooking."

  "Er." He took another bite and chewed. And chewed. To give himself time—to fathom, to cope, to think. He'd thought that he'd be able to sort things out in the shower, but he hadn't. He'd stood there with the hot water sluicing down over his body, and he'd remembered the way Dori Malone had smiled at him, and he'd found himself reaching out and turning the tap to cold.

  She'd rattled him.

  Since Tricia, no woman had rattled him.

  It was because he was tired. He'd been working too hard. A good night's sleep and he'd have a better grip. She wasn't that pretty. And she wasn't blonde. He preferred blondes.

  He swallowed. "Well," he managed after he took a long gulp of milk. She'd brought that, too, guessing rightly that he wouldn't have had any in the house. "I don't know. We can try it for a while, I guess." The cooking, he meant. Until she got tired of the place and left, he meant.

  He wished she wouldn't smile at him like that.

  Not when he didn't have a cold water tap handy, at least.

  "Can I get you some more?" she asked him. "There's more potatoes. Another piece of steak?"

  He started to say no, but then he thought it wouldn't be near as good cold tomorrow. He nodded and shoved his plate toward her. "Sure. Why not?"

  She brought him more steak, more potatoes, more beans. She made coffee and poured him a cup. Riley ate all the food, cleaned his plate completely, then settled back, sated, in his chair and cradled the cup in his hands.

  She made good coffee. A damn sight better than the coffee he made. Chris said he couldn't believe anyone would drink Riley's coffee.

  "It's swill," he said. "Pigs wouldn't drink it."

  Riley had never noticed. He didn't think he was a connoisseur of coffee, but even he could tell the difference between what he made and this. He balanced the cup on his broad gold belt buckle, stretched his feet out in front of him and crossed them at the ankle.

  A guy could get used to this.

  And the very thought had him sitting up straight and slapping his cup down on the table so hard the liquid sloshed all over the oil cloth. He had no intention of getting used to anything of the sort!

  Dori turned from where she was rinsing plates at the sink. "Something wrong?"

  "Yes. No," he corrected hastily. "I just … thought of something." He shoved himself out of the chair and stood up. "I got … book work to do," he improvised.

  "Oh. Of course. Don't let us stop you." She hesitated, then said, "But I wonder if you could tell me where to put Jake's things. He's getting a little tired."

  "Am not," the boy said, though he was sitting at the table, one hand propping his head up. He blinked furiously to look wide-awake.

  Riley, watching him, almost smiled. Then he thought about what she'd asked him, thought about where the heck he was going to put them for even the brief period they managed to remain.

  "Come on," he said to Jake. "You can have our old room."

  "Whose?" Jake asked, his brows arching in curiosity.

  "Mine and your dad's. It was the one your dad always used when he came home," he added. It felt funny talking about Chris as anybody's dad, let alone this boy's. But it was true.

  And it still boggled Riley's mind every time he thought about it—just like it boggled him that Chris had never bothered to meet his son. "This way."

  He picked up the duffel bag that Jake said had all his "special stuf
f," then led the boy—and his mother—down the hall and into the smaller bedroom. The bunk beds he and Chris had slept in were still against the far wall. The desk their dad had built was under the window. There were pictures from their high school days. A poster from a twenty-year-old Cheyenne rodeo still hung on the wall. Nothing had changed—not even the paint—in years. Riley was embarrassed to think how shabby it must seem. Their place, tiny though it had been, was at least freshly painted and clean.

  But Jake only saw one thing. "Wow. Cool! I always wanted bunk beds! Can I sleep on the top?"

  And his mother, who, Riley was sure, saw all the shortcomings that her son didn't, just looked at Riley. "Can he?" She grinned. "You have no idea how many years he's been clamoring for them."

  "He can sleep wherever you want. There're clean sheets in the closet. I'll get 'em." He pulled a set out and Dori took them from him. He started to help her make the bed, but it felt somehow far too intimate, and his hands dropped to his sides.

  "Don't let me keep you," she said quickly.

  "Huh?"

  "From the book work."

  "Oh, right." He scratched the back of his head. "Yeah." He glanced from her to the boy. Both of them were smiling at him. He managed a quick, almost desperate smile in return. Then "G'night," he said over his shoulder and fled.

  He retreated into the alcove off his own bedroom. It had been "the babies' bedroom" when he and Chris had been in diapers. When they'd moved across the hall into the room where Jake was now, his father had turned the tiny alcove into "the office." It was a glorified term for a desk, a filing cabinet, a slipping tower of stockman's journals, stacks of graph paper breeding charts and a brand-new computer, which Riley was doing his best to come to terms with, determined that by learning to use it, he would be able to chart the herd better, have more information at his fingertips and, thus, make more well-informed decisions.

  He wondered just how well-informed the decision was to buy the damn computer sometimes. But he assured himself he would get the hang of it—if he ever had the time.

  Now he had time.

  He was well fed, through no effort of his own. He wasn't going back into the kitchen which suddenly seemed "Dori's territory"—not for anything on earth. And he'd just lied and said he had book work to do, hadn't he? Well, surely book work could be expanded to include learning this blasted software program for herd management that he'd purchased.

  So he turned it on. Then he sat there, stared at it and tried to figure out what he was doing.

  The computer program was no more mysterious than his life.

  He couldn't focus on bales per ton or tons per month. His eyes drifted past weight at birth and gain per ton of dry matter fed. It was gibberish to him. His mind tried to bend it around, get a grip on it. He could get Dori Malone and her pint-size cowboy out of his head.

  And then he heard light footsteps behind him, and he jerked around.

  Dori stood there, a tentative look on her face. "I'm sorry to interrupt. I was wondering … Jake would like to say good-night to you."

  "I already said good-night."

  "Yes," she agreed. "But he didn't."

  Riley hesitated, feeling awkward. But then he shrugged and got to his feet. Dori looked past him toward the computer screen.

  "Book work?" she asked.

  He grimaced. "If I ever get that far. It's a new computer. A new program. And an old cowboy." His mouth lifted in a wry twist.

  She smiled. "Not so very old," she said.

  The way she looked at him made his whole body warm. Or maybe it was just hot in here. Yeah, probably the start of a damn summer heat wave.

  He stepped carefully around her. Seeing Jake seemed suddenly less awkward than staying here.

  The boy was tucked into the top bunk—Riley's old bunk—his trademark eager grin on his face, his arms folded behind his head. "Dylan has bunk beds," he said. "But when I sleep over, he always gets the top one. Here, I do!"

  "Who's Dylan?"

  "My best friend." Then Jake's grin faded. "Back in Livingston he was my best friend, anyway. Maybe he won't be my best friend now that we've moved."

  Maybe you'll have moved back by then, Riley thought, but he didn't say it.

  "Oh, I reckon you're probably friends for keeps," Riley said to him. "You look like that sort of guy."

  Jake's grin came back again. He looked pleased as he leaned up on one elbow. "Then maybe before school starts he can come visit?"

  Riley wasn't sure how to reply to that. "Depends on what your mother says." That seemed safe enough.

  Jake settled back against the pillow. "It doesn't matter. What matters is that we're here. Even though I saw the Stardust, I was afraid Mom was still gonna say no."

  "There wasn't any Stardust," Riley told him, wanting to get that straight.

  Jake raised his shoulders slightly. He smiled.

  "There wasn't."

  "Mom said it was glitter," Jake told him. He didn't sound like he cared.

  "That's right," Riley said. "Glitter. And manure and dust," he added. There was no point in romanticizing things.

  "Yep," Jake said. It didn't seem to matter at all. "Cash—my almost uncle—says he reckons the Stardust cowboy can come in lots of forms."

  It was like rowing upstream at flood stage. "You get some sleep," he told the boy. "Reckon you're pretty tired."

  "Kinda," Jake admitted. He snuggled down under the blankets, then reached out a hand, offering it to Riley.

  Riley hesitated for just a second, then took it in his. It was small and mostly soft, but along the palm Riley felt a line of new calluses. He ran his thumb over them.

  "From when I was at Taggart's," Jake explained. "Learnin' how to cowboy." The boy's eyes—Chris's eyes—met Riley's with eagerness and trust. His palm lay open in Riley's big rough one. Then he turned his hand over and gave Riley's a squeeze. "I still got a lot to learn. But you'll teach me, won't you? I mean, we're partners now, aren't we?"

  Riley swallowed. He blinked. Then he nodded slowly. "We're partners."

  Dori stood staring at the computer screen. It contained a database not unlike the one that Milly had developed for the store. The categories were different, but the principles had to be the same.

  It was the one really nice thing about computers as far as Dori could see. They followed patterns. If you put the right numbers in the right slots, you got the right answers. It was simple.

  Very unlike life.

  She rubbed her hands on the sides of her jeans and tried to steady her still-hammering heart. It had settled down pretty well during the time she was fixing dinner. She had settled—probably because fixing meals was part of the autopilot behavior that got her through life. It was soothing, regular, an everyday activity where the ease of long practice took over.

  What would happen when Riley came out of Jake's bedroom would be exactly the opposite.

  She'd had no practice at all trying to explain what had to seem to him totally irrational behavior. She wasn't sure it wasn't irrational behavior. She just knew that she had no other choice.

  Well, he would have to understand. She would make him understand.

  "So tell me what's going on."

  She hadn't heard him come back in the room. At the sound of his voice right behind her, she jumped and spun around. He stood there, hands loose at his sides, but still ready. He reminded her of a gunslinger, balancing on the balls of his feet, all senses at the alert—waiting for the explanation he had every right to.

  Dori cleared her throat. "Why don't we … go into the other room." The alcove where she'd been standing was right off a bedroom that was clearly his. Granted that the whole house was his, still it seemed smarter to get on more neutral ground.

  Wordlessly Riley shut down the computer and then waited for her to precede him out of the room.

  But if she'd thought that the right words would come the minute they were back in the living room, she was wrong. There didn't seem to be anything she could say that
would make him nod and say, "Of course I understand. It makes perfect sense. I'd have done the same thing."

  He tapped his sock-clad toe on the floor and waited, unblinking.

  Dori shrugged helplessly. She sat on the edge of one of the overstuffed chairs and knotted her fingers in her lap. Then she looked up at him. "I know you expected us to sell. I expected us to sell. But in the end … I couldn't."

  Still he didn't speak. He just looked at her.

  "We had to leave," she said at last. "If we hadn't my father would have killed Jake's dreams."

  She didn't know she was going to say it until the words came out of her mouth. And then she thought, Yes, that's basically the truth.

  "It was all right that he killed mine," she added with determined honesty. "It was fair. I … deserved it. But I couldn't let him kill Jake's!"

  She expected him to tell her she was exaggerating. But he didn't. He just propped his butt against the fireplace, folded his arms loosely across his chest and said quietly, "Tell me what you mean."

  So she did. She talked about how desperately Jake had always wanted to be a cowboy, how living on a ranch had always been his dream. She rambled, she was sure, but he didn't stop her.

  And his undivided attention gave her courage, and she kept right on. She told him about Jake buying the cowboy hat with his savings. She told him about Jake wearing the boots every day and getting blisters, about how he'd never once complained—or stopped wearing them. She told him about Jake's eagerness to go to Taggart's, and even when he was tired and battered and sore the first day, to want to go back. And back. And back.

  "He's always wanted to be a cowboy," she said, her eyes locking with Riley's. "He was doing everything he could to make it happen."