THE STARDUST COWBOY

by Anne McAllister

  Dori pressed her lips to his back. "A very good idea," she murmured. He got her home. Barely.

  He yanked off the saddle, turned the horse out and, clutching the towel with one hand and Dori with the other, he hobbled toward the house.

  She opened the door. He shut it—and pressed her up against the wall.

  "I'm dying," he muttered, his hips surging against hers, his face buried against her neck, his lungs gasping for air.

  She turned her head, kissed his ear, nibbled it, nearly sending him over the edge. Then her hand found him. "You feel pretty lively to me."

  He shook his head. "Don't! Not here. We gotta make it to a bedroom at least."

  "We don't have to," she argued.

  But he was having none of it. "Yes," he insisted, "we do. We waited this long. We can wait twenty seconds longer to do it right."

  "Right isn't where," Dori told him, slipping her arms around him. "It's who." He let go of the towel then. He scooped her up in his arms, and somehow or other he got them down the hall. He stumbled on the rug, and they toppled headlong onto the bed. It creaked. It groaned. It didn't break.

  He wouldn't have cared if it had.

  It didn't matter.

  Dori was right. What mattered wasn't where or when. What mattered was her.

  He'd always thought he was a one-woman man. He'd always thought the woman was Tricia. Now he wasn't so sure.

  Maybe he was still a one-woman man. But this was the woman.

  Dori. She was the one he wanted. The one he thought about, dreamed about, cared about. Loved. Yes, he did. He loved her.

  She wasn't Tricia. She was sweeter than Tricia. Kinder than Tricia. Stronger than Tricia.

  She'd come into his life and jarred him awake again. She'd made him sit up and look around, see the present and stop living in the past. She'd dared to take his plans and turn them upside down and inside out.

  She'd given him Jake. And hopes. And dreams that he'd thought long dead.

  He loved her.

  He just hoped he could hang on five seconds at least and show her how much!

  His fingers fumbled with her buttons. She helped. He couldn't manage the zipper of her jeans. She could. He didn't want to wait for her to take off her boots, but she made him. She made him wait until she was as naked—and far more gloriously beautiful in that nakedness—as he was.

  Then she lay back on the bed and held out her arms to him.

  For a split second he didn't move. He just looked at her—warm and welcoming, promising him more than he'd hoped for in a dozen years.

  "Riley?"

  He smiled. "Right here, darlin'." And then he slipped between her legs and let her guide him home.

  His eyes shut. A shudder of sweet bliss swept through him as he settled against her. He bit down on his lip, froze where he was, teetered on the edge, like some damn horny teenager too hot to control himself.

  Her body tightened around him. She shifted her lips and somehow he seemed to slide in even deeper. He groaned.

  "Riley?" She touched his face, stroked his hair.

  "Ah, babe…" He kissed her jaw, her chin, her nose, her lips. They parted beneath his. Her tongue touched his. He trembled. Steady, fella. Steady. Hold on. Hold back. Hold—

  And then she moved again. She rocked against him, tensed, rocked, tensed … rocked.

  And he felt her body tighten, felt her quiver, felt her shatter. And he did, too.

  His whole body shook as, warm and liquid, Dori wrapped him up and made him hers.

  They loved again that night. And again.

  More times than Dori remembered. It didn't matter that she'd lost count.

  What mattered was now and the future. She loved him. She knew that words were not Riley's medium. He didn't need to be told so much as he needed to be shown.

  Earlier, right after the urgency of their first lovemaking had abated and they'd lain side by side in the tumbled bed, he'd risen up on an elbow and looked into her eyes. "I'm not Chris," he'd said quite seriously. "I can't ever be Chris."

  She'd touched his chest, laid her palm against his heart, then had traced his lips and pressed a kiss where her fingers had lingered. "I don't want Chris," she'd told him. "I want you."

  The look in his eyes had said he needed to believe that. So she'd shown him. She'd shown him with her kisses, with her touches, with her soft sounds and gentle nips. She showed him with everything that was in her. She gave him her body, her heart, her soul.

  Later, after they dozed and awakened to each other again, he said he ought to take a shower.

  "We could take one together," she responded.

  He looked shocked. Then he grinned. It was the sexiest, heart-and-body-melting grin Dori had ever seen. And he took her hand and said, "What a good idea."

  In the shower she lovingly washed him all over. Then she tried to hold still while he washed her.

  "We could have done this at the swimming hole," she reminded him.

  But Riley shook his head, nibbling her neck, caressing her back, cupping her buttocks and pulling her close. "No," he murmured. "Better here."

  He was right. It was. Just as he'd needed to know she wasn't confusing him with Chris, she had to be sure he wasn't thinking about Tricia.

  He'd pushed Tricia away, she reminded herself.

  He hadn't wanted Tricia. He wanted her!

  And Dori wanted him. Desperately. His touches were driving her mad.

  She snaked out a soapy hand and found him, teased him, stroked him. With her other she cradled the weight of him in her palm.

  She heard him swallow and then he breathed raggedly against her ear. "You tryin' to wring me out, woman?"

  "I'm trying to love you. Too much for you, am I?" she teased him.

  A corner of his mouth tipped into a strained grin. "We'll have to find out, won't we?" He lifted her then, settled her legs on either side of his hips, and thrust deeply into her.

  A sweet shudder rocked her. "Oh, yes," she gasped. "Let's."

  They did.

  Riley was gonna be his father. Jake was sure of it.

  Oh, they hadn't told him yet. But he'd seen the way they looked at each other when he got back from Jared's. He saw the way they sometimes touched when they thought he wasn't paying attention.

  He'd even seen Riley come up behind his mom when she was sitting at the computer last night. He'd nuzzled at her ear and then he'd whispered something to her, and Jake had heard his mother laugh and turn her head and they had kissed.

  Jake had taken a great deal of satisfaction from that kiss.

  Now he pushed back the curtain and looked up at the star-studded sky. He remembered sitting in his mom's lap when he was so little she could pick him up without even thinking. He remembered looking at those stars while she told him stories about the Stardust cowboy riding through the sky taking a little boy named Jake on wonderful adventures.

  "Where do you want to go tonight?" she always asked him.

  And Jake remembered bouncing up and down in her arms. "Wherever my daddy is," he said.

  And his mom had wrapped her arms around him and touched him right where his heart was. "Your daddy's here, Jake."

  That was true.

  And Jake knew his flesh-and-blood dad was buried next to the set of grandparents he'd never known in town at the cemetery on the hill. But a part of his dad was in the Stardust cowboy he'd written about—the cowboy who cherished hopes and dreams—and was determined to make them come true.

  "You don't mind if Uncle Riley is my dad, too, do you?" he asked now, blinking up at the stars that winked back at him.

  He took the wink to mean his father agreed. But just in case there was any question, any hesitation at all, Jake reassured him.

  "It'll be okay," he told his father. "Mom says love is expandable. That means I can love you and Uncle Riley, too."

  Word traveled fast.

  Everybody seemed to know Riley was marrying Dori almost before Dori knew it herself.

 
She went into town two days later, and Gloria at the beauty shop said, "So when's the date?"

  "Date?" Dori blinked. "For what?"

  "The wedding, of course."

  "Where you goin' on your honeymoon?" Sybil at the convenience store wanted to know.

  "H-honeymoon?" Dori almost dropped the gallon of milk in her hand.

  "Gotta have a honeymoon," Ev Warren poked the handle of a brand-new hammer at her. "Don't you let ol' Riley tell you he's gotta work so's he can't go. Everybody needs a honeymoon."

  "Damn right," Robert Tanner nodded as he came up next to Ev and presented a united front.

  Dori looked from one to the other of them. "Maggie?" she guessed. "Did Maggie tell you Riley and I were getting married?" Maggie had brought Jake home. She'd seen Dori's well-kissed mouth, Riley's unshaven cheeks and misbuttoned shirt.

  Tanner shook his head. "I believe it was Jared who told me."

  "And me," Ev agreed.

  "Jared? How—" Dori winced. "Jake must have—" She would kill him.

  She and Riley had talked about getting married, of course, the next night. They'd stepped guiltily around Jake's curious looks all day. But once he'd gone to bed, Riley had come to get her at the computer. He'd kissed her and drawn her up into his arms, and then he'd walked her out into the living room to do some talking.

  "Not what I wanta do," he'd admitted. "But I reckon we got to talk. We'll get married," he'd said. He was kissing her. Little nibbling kisses that made her blood heat. "When do you want to get married?"

  "Whenever you do." Her fingers had curled into fists in her lap.

  "Doesn't matter to me." He had kept right on kissing. Then he'd taken her in his arms. "I have what I want."

  Dori had tried to think straight. "M-maybe after shipping." She'd thought maybe they could get married when Cash and Milly did.

  Riley hadn't cared. "Sure," he'd said. "Whatever you want."

  What she'd wanted was him. And she'd been very willing when he tugged her shirt out of her jeans.

  Now—in the middle of the convenience store with half of the community looking on—was not the time to remember that! Her face flamed.

  "We're invited, of course," Ev said, oblivious, fortunately, to the direction of her thoughts. It wasn't a question.

  Dori answered anyway. "You're all invited."

  "Hear that," Ev announced to the store at large. "We're all invited to Dori and Riley's weddin'!"

  There was the soft sound of a gasp behind them, and Dori turned to see Tricia Cannon staring at her, white-faced.

  Dori felt her own color drain. She hadn't meant to announce their impending wedding quite like that. And especially not in front of Tricia.

  "We haven't quite set the date yet," she told the other woman politely.

  "Haven't you?" Tricia gave Dori a strained smile. Then she turned and, leaving a loaf of bread on the counter, walked out.

  Riley almost didn't answer the phone.

  It rarely rang for him, anyway. But he was in the house, and he thought it was Dori, calling from town, wanting to know if he'd thought of anything else she ought to pick up. There was no one else it could be.

  So he grabbed it. "Hi, sweetheart. Miss me, do you?"

  "Oh, I do, Riley. I do." It was a woman's voice. But it wasn't Dori.

  He gulped. "Trish?"

  There was a sniffle. "You were right," she said. "Absolutely right when you shoved me away. We shouldn't have done anything then. But it's different now, Riley. It's going to be different."

  He unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth. "What the hell are you talkin' about?"

  "Us, Riley. You and me. You were the one for me all along. You saw it. I didn't." She was babbling.

  He was confused. "Tricia, make sense."

  "I am making sense, Riley." Her voice was urgent. "I've never made more sense. It's just taken me forever. But I don't want you making the same mistake I made."

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  "Marrying the wrong person! Taking second best. Don't do it, Riley."

  "Tricia—"

  "You don't have to do it! I've made up my mind. I'm leaving here. I'm divorcing Jeff!"

  "What!"

  "I love you, Riley! I always have. I always will. And there's no sense in both of us being married to the wrong people. I'm leaving today. As soon as I pack. I'll call you from Denver."

  "Trish! No, you can't—"

  "You said you wouldn't touch me when I was married, Riley."

  "I know. I—"

  "I'm not going to be married anymore." She hung up. And Riley stood staring at the receiver in his hand.

  "Ev invited everybody to the wedding," Dori told him when she got home.

  He was sitting in the kitchen at the table, staring at his hands. He looked … bereft, almost. As if someone had died. And when she spoke to him, she wasn't sure he heard a word she said.

  Dori dumped the bags on the counter. "It was insane the way they all knew what was going to happen before I told them. I think we have Jake to thank for that."

  Riley still looked blank. "Huh?"

  She looked at him more closely. He looked somewhat pale. "Are you all right? Did you get hurt? What are you doing in the house?"

  He seemed to come back from a long way away. He gave a small shake of his head. "I came in to grab some lunch."

  Dori glanced at her watch. "It's almost four."

  He stared at her but she didn't think he saw her. "Uh-huh," he said. He didn't say anything else.

  Her brow furrowed. "What happened, Riley? It's not Jake?

  Did something happen to Jake?" She heard a shrill edge to her own voice.

  Jake had gone to Maggie's again. She'd dropped him off on the way to town. Surely he would have said if Maggie had called!

  "It's not … Jake."

  "Then … what?"

  "It's Tricia," he said numbly.

  Dori started. "Tricia? Why?" She remembered the shocked look on the other woman's face. "Did she call to congratulate us?" She gave Riley a wry smile and hoped he would smile, too.

  He didn't. He didn't do anything. He just sat there, staring at something she couldn't see. Then he said, "She's … getting a divorce."

  * * *

  Eleven

  « ^

  Tricia was free.

  Oh, not yet … but she would be.

  The one thing he'd hoped for—and had never admitted, even to himself—for the past dozen years was actually coming true. Now. Why now?

  Why not before he'd met Dori Malone? Why not before he'd got involved with her and her son? Why not when he was still free himself instead of about to get married?

  He couldn't believe it.

  He played the conversation over in his mind, hearing her words again and again. I love you, Riley. I always have. I always will. I don't want you to make the same mistake I did. Don't marry the wrong person.

  The words tumbled through his mind, made a whirl of his thoughts, a snarl of his emotions. I love you, Riley. I'm not going to be married anymore…

  Damn. He sat on horseback staring down at the ranch house.

  He could see Dori in the yard, pitching a ball to Jake. Jake swung and missed and landed on his butt in the dirt. Dori hauled him to his feet again, and they laughed and laughed.

  It was a scene he'd dreamed about for years—of coming home and looking down and seeing his family there. For so long he'd been on the outside of other families, looking in.

  But he didn't have to be on the outside of this one. Dori and Jake belonged at the ranch now. They were a part of it—a part of him.

  And yet … Tricia still loved him.

  It doesn't matter, he told himself fiercely. It's past. Tricia's past.

  It didn't matter what she was doing now. He'd made a commitment. Riley kept his commitments—no matter what.

  He drew a deep breath, touched his heels to the sorrel's sides and rode down to meet them.

  Jake's face broke into a g
rin when he spotted his uncle coming down the hillside.

  Dori was smiling, too, but her gaze was more serious. Probing, almost, as she looked at him. As if she knew his turmoil. But she couldn't. He hadn't said a word after he'd told her Tricia was getting a divorce. He never would.

  It didn't matter. He wouldn't let it.

  Jake came running. "Hooray, you're back! Now we can go get Tugger!"

  Riley looked at Dori. She stayed where she was in the yard, but lifted her hand to shade her eyes as she looked up at him and nodded. "Maggie called and said the puppies were ready to go home."

  "So can we?" Jake was jumping from one foot to the other. "Can we go now?"

  Once upon a time Riley had dreamed of getting a dog for his kids. Only they hadn't been gangly dark-haired boys who looked like him but little towheaded urchins like their mother.

  Would someone else get Tricia's kids a dog? Would someone else besides Jeff have children with her?

  He shoved the thought away and cleared his throat. "Sure. Why not?" He gave himself a little shake and mustered a smile. "Let's."

  The puppy was a distraction. It occupied all of Jake's attention and a good part of Dori's. It wriggled in Jake's arms, ran around on the ground, then came and snuggled against Riley. It was a persistent, tumbling, panting little black-and-white ball of fluff. He scratched its ears and was grateful to have something to focus on when Maggie said to them, "Did you hear about Jeff and Tricia?"

  There was a second's pause. Then Dori answered. "We heard they're getting a divorce."

  Maggie nodded. "She went to Denver, I heard. Just took off." She shook her head. "Such a sad thing." She looked at Riley for comment.

  He didn't say a word. He had nothing to say. He concentrated on scratching the ears of Tugger who was wiggling once more in Jake's arms.

  Then, "He's peein' on me," Jake yelped.

  "Put him down," Maggie commanded.

  And the moment passed. They talked about housebreaking. They talked about crates and puppy food. Tricia wasn't mentioned again.

  But he thought about her.