MATCH MADE IN WYOMING

by Patricia McLinn

  "I'll keep that in mind." She smiled, hoping she sounded as offhand as he did. "What other tricks does he do?"

  "Well, he retrieves socks. Clean ones only, of course. And only when you want them left where they were."

  She chuckled and busied herself with petting the puppy, glad it gave her an excuse to keep her head down.

  Cal Ruskoff, with a smile playing around his lips and his eyes relaxed, was not only an unusual sight, but a potent one. Almost as potent as Cal Ruskoff in a towel … or not in a towel.

  * * *

  "Cal, please, let me help."

  "No need. Go back to your book."

  They'd had this exchange four times already, and he didn't think it would be the last one.

  He'd refused her help bringing in more firewood. He'd refused her help fixing a dinner that mostly went from the freezer to the microwave to the table. And now he'd refused her help with the minimal cleaning up.

  He didn't mind her doing things on her own, like closing the drapes over the front window or hanging up their outer clothes. But having her help him, with the conversation it would start and the nearness it would require was not a good idea.

  Dinner hadn't been silent, though, because he'd picked up a station on the TV.

  The local newscast was full of the blizzard. Warning people not to take chances, listing signs of hypothermia, speculating on losses of livestock, harking back to historical precedents.

  Most storms this bad tended to blow through fast, powered by their own winds. But this one had settled over them and wasn't likely to budge for at least the next twenty-four hours – just, the weather forecaster said with grim satisfaction, as he'd forecast on this morning's early show.

  Cal felt the flick of Taylor's look toward him but didn't return it. He had a fair idea that Matty had heard that forecast and Taylor hadn't. But if Taylor was worrying that he thought she'd come out despite knowing the storm was coming, maybe she would keep her distance. That would be good, because this was the most dangerous situation he'd ever been in.

  And he didn't mean the snow.

  * * *

  Eventually, Cal ran out of things to do – all of them with no assistance from her.

  Taylor felt tension radiating from him as he finally picked up the bookmarked Dick Francis mystery from the coffee table and took a seat at the far end of the couch.

  Earlier, he'd ordered her to move to the couch to read, because, he said, the lamp on the table behind the couch was the only one fit to read by. She'd moved, because he was right. She wasn't surprised when he took the opposite corner.

  She didn't know how much longer she could pretend to read. She ran her finger up and down the edges of the book's pages.

  The forecast had left her with too many questions. If the storm was as bad as they were saying, just how long might she have to stay here with him?

  Did he think she'd finagled to come out here in hopes of this happening?

  Could the tension between them get any worse without one or both of them exploding?

  And what, in heaven's name, did he have in mind for their sleeping arrangements?

  There was one bed. A double.

  With the doors to the bedroom open, she could see it from where she sat. It was covered by a crisp white-and-blue quilt, with four fat pillows in sparkling white cases, suggesting its owner liked to lie back against the plushness. No one encountering Cal elsewhere in his life would guess that.

  Another hairline crack in his shell and her calm. She had no clue to what he might be thinking. He'd presented her with a curious blend of surprising humor, surrounded by stretches of dour silence, laced with unpredictable snatches of sharpness. Somehow the humor made the silence and the sharpness all the harder to accept.

  A sensation that had been growing along her left leg suddenly pierced her consciousness. "Oh!"

  Sin was doing his best to turn invisible. His creeping efforts had succeeded in getting his front half on the couch cushion next to her; it had been his efforts to introduce his other half that had caught her attention when his back paw scraped against her side.

  "Sin. Down."

  Cal's deep-voiced command set a low pulse beating deep inside her, but obviously didn't thrill Sin the same way. The dog gave her a dirty look for giving him away as he dropped all four feet back to the floor.

  "I still can't believe you named him Sin." If she could start Cal talking, this might be an opportunity to get some of her questions answered.

  She looked at the puppy, who cast her a quick look before starting the circling motion dogs often used before sitting or lying down.

  "Don't let him— Sin!"

  "Let him, wha— ow!"

  Lancing pain in her left foot felt as if it spread all the way to her head.

  "Sin. Up." Cal's order came out muffled. If he was even trying to hide his amusement, he wasn't trying hard enough.

  The puppy popped up, but the pain waned more slowly.

  "He's got—"

  "The boniest butt in creation," Cal concluded for her. "Only dog I've ever encountered whose butt is sharper than his teeth. And you have shoes on. First time – only time – I made the mistake of letting him do that to me, I only had socks on."

  "Really?"

  "You don't have to look so pleased. I thought I'd have to go for stitches."

  She was able to chuckle, now that some of the nerves in her feet were recovering. She toed off her shoe and drew her knee up to the cushion to rub her foot.

  "Hey."

  She looked up, surprised and something more by the change in his tone. He was leaning toward her, his hand near her face. She felt the brush of his fingertips across her lower lashes, and knew they'd come away wet.

  "It stung." Meaning the words to come out light, they instead emerged husky and breathless.

  "Didn't know lawyers could be such soft touches." The fleeting stroke across her cheek with the back of his fingers gave the expression a different meaning entirely.

  He eased back so three inches separated his hand from her cheek, then he stopped.

  Although she stared directly into his eyes, she could not read their intent. If her life had depended on it, she couldn't have decided which was more likely – his continuing to retreat or his return to touching her. Her emotions were equally jumbled. But her body was united, from the urge to sweep her tongue across her lips, to the tingling in her cheek, to the shouting of her arm muscles to reach for him, to the thrumming low in her belly.

  They held there, suspended, not touching physically, but with the desire to touch and the memory of touch so strong they seemed to form a new reality.

  The light flickered. Its unsteadiness gave him the appearance of motion, and for an instant Taylor thought she felt his hand on her face once more, his palm gliding across her cheek, preparing to cup the back of her head to draw her near enough that his lips could…

  The light steadied, and he was no closer and no farther away than before.

  Laughter that might have sounded crazed threatened to bubble up. She couldn't deal with illusions; the reality was tricky enough.

  Unable to stem the urge any longer, she started the tip of her tongue across her dry lips.

  With the first motion, his gaze dropped to her mouth. She withdrew her tongue and swallowed. He lifted his gaze, and what she saw in his eyes made her lips part once more in a faint indrawn breath.

  The lights went out.

  She felt like a statue, afraid that moving a fraction of an inch in any direction might set off shock waves whose result no one could predict. This time the darkness remained.

  "C-Cal?" The faint stutter came from saying his name, with the darkness and his nearness bringing thoughts of an intimacy they didn't share. But she understood why he interpreted in another way.

  "It's all right."

  She felt his touch then. His hand unerringly covered hers where it massaged her foot. And his voice held none of its usual harshness.

  "The backu
p generator will kick on in a minute, and that'll keep the furnace going. We won't freeze."

  She heard a faint mechanical sound at a different pitch from the storm's groans.

  But they remained in the dark.

  "Stay here," he ordered. "You, too, Sin, Stay."

  She felt around to find the dog's collar and held on, as Cal made his way across the inky room. Slight sounds gave her clues, but only the scratch of the match, an instant before the flare of light, told her for sure that he was lighting the fire he'd laid earlier.

  "This'll give us enough light to find the candles and. lanterns. And this room doesn't get as much heat on the backup system."

  "The lights won't come on?"

  If she sounded shaky, she had good reason. Cal in broad daylight was already too much temptation. In the dark? Well, common sense seldom thrived in the dark.

  "No." He didn't turn around, concentrating on the fire. "Backup system feeds some power to the barn and garage shed, too. Keeps the animals' water from freezing solid, and keeps a couple vehicles charged. Keeps the heating system running, hot water, stove and refrigerator. It doesn't have enough juice for lights, too. "

  The fire fully caught hold, brightening the area where she still sat. He looked back over his shoulder at her, but she couldn't see his expression against the dazzle of firelight

  "Stay put."

  He disappeared into the wavering darkness beyond the living room. From the sounds, he was in the same utility closet that held the washer and dryer. After a couple of pulls to try to follow Cal, the puppy subsided, leaning back against Taylor's shins and absorbing her slow petting.

  "These'll give us enough light to get around," Cal announced, bringing back two lanterns that he lit with a stick from the fireplace. "Might as well go to bed now. Light's not good enough to read by."

  Panic pushed words out of her mouth before she considered how inane they might sound. "Firelight worked fine for Abe Lincoln to read by. Did all his homework in front of the fire using a piece of coal on an old board. Haven't you heard that story?"

  He studied her, and she could only hope the uneven light left him at as much, a disadvantage reading her expression as she was reading his.

  "You put in a hard day wandering around in a blizzard, and it'll be a hard job getting you out of here tomorrow. You need your rest. And so do I."

  Her lips parted, but she said nothing. He'd heard that TV forecast, the same as she had – there would be no getting out tomorrow. He must want to be rid of her to even hold out that possibility.

  And that pricked enough at something she'd like to think was ego, that she managed to ask what had been on her mind since she'd first realized she would be staying overnight in Cal's tiny house.

  "Cal, where … where am I going to sleep tonight?"

  "In the bed."

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  In the bed.

  His own words hung out there like a heat-seeking missile hunting around for a target, and Cal knew damn right well where it would explode – in his gut. At least he hadn't said In my bed.

  "You've only got one bed."

  His body was fully aware of that fact, fully being the operative word. "I'm taking the couch."

  "Oh, no. I couldn't put you out like that." Her brows dropped in a frown, but he heard a relief that made her voice almost giddy. "I'll take the couch."

  "No." It came out sharp and short. What did she think, that he'd force her?

  "I'm shorter and smaller." She sounded almost cheerful now. "It only makes sense for you to keep the bed and I'll sleep on the couch."

  He doubted he'd sleep much no matter where he spent this night. Not with Taylor Anne Larsen under the same roof. Not with her scent being drawn into his lungs. Not with her skin an arm's reach away. Not with her hair spread out across his pillow.

  "I'm taking the couch."

  "Cal—"

  "You'd better quit arguing, or I'll think you're angling for me to share the bed with you."

  That snapped her mouth shut and brought color up her throat and into her cheeks that he could see even in this light.

  So he was satisfied, he told himself as he instructed her on turning down the lantern and how to relight it if she needed it during the night. It didn't bother him that what had shut her up tighter than a drum was the prospect of sharing a bed with him. Didn't bother him at all.

  * * *

  Cal had his hands cupped behind his head, staring at the ceiling, trying to force his brain to plot spring planting. But instead of a field of alfalfa, the image that kept forming in his mind's eye was light red hair on a white pillowcase, the old quilt conforming to trim curves, rising and dipping in the most interesting ways. A hand reaching out from under the covers, reaching to him. And a smile welcoming him, beckoning him to—

  The sound jerked him upright. Something had hit the house hard, possibly hard enough to do damage. And damage could let in potentially deadly cold.

  He checked the front window as the most vulnerable spot, even though he hadn't heard glass breaking. Beneath the drapes Taylor had drawn against the cold air that seeped through, the window was intact. The moving dark beyond it showed the storm hadn't let up one bit.

  In quick order, he inspected the rest of that wall, the fireplace wall, the fireplace itself and the small kitchen. Looking out the window in the interior door, he could see that the back door and mudroom were undamaged.

  That left the bedroom.

  He stopped near the kitchen table, undecided.

  Then the right-hand door of the double doors to his bedroom opened and an apparition floated out, carrying a candlestick with a tiny, weak flame.

  It was an apparition wearing an oversize sweatshirt that reached halfway down her thighs and thick socks that reached halfway up her calves, with nothing but long, curved leg in between.

  And nothing underneath? Were those bits of white still where he'd seen them in the bathroom?

  She never glanced in his direction, but crossed silently toward the couch. At the last instant, she went around the far side of the coffee table instead of in the narrow space between it and the couch.

  If she hadn't, and if he'd been lying on the couch as she obviously expected, that bare knee would have been about even with his eyes. If he'd put his hand out to touch her knee, then let his palm run up the outside of her thigh, his hand slipping under the bottom edge of that sweatshirt and—

  "Oh."

  He knew she'd realized he wasn't on the couch.

  She paused, looking up, listening, her eyes widened, her lips parted in an attitude of alertness but not fear. She held the candlestick with the handle that looped off its base – one of his great-aunt's precious chamber sticks – in her right hand, with her left hand cupped around the flame.

  She should have been wearing flowing lace or an old-fashioned nightgown with a high, delicate collar, instead of one of his sweatshirts. He was achingly aware of the curve of her thigh dipping in to the back of her knee, then flowing into the line of her calf before disappearing into the bulk of his socks. He'd had an art teacher in high school who used to talk about how the absolute rightness of the perfect curve could sing in the blood and flood the brain, and for the first time, all these years later, Cal knew what Mr. Bredhaus meant.

  But beyond the awareness of Taylor by all the senses he could name, Cal somehow knew – even as he scoffed at himself for knowing it – that he would remember this moment. That it meant something to him. Taylor holding a candle in one hand, the other hand protecting its flame.

  He jerked his shoulders away from the wall and stepped forward fast enough that the air current caused by his movement made the flame dip sideways, and her left hand shifted to buffer it.

  "Cal?"

  It was more a confirmation than a question, but he chose to interpret it as the question.

  "Expecting somebody else? A ghost maybe."

  "I heard a noise."

  "Th
at was no ghost. Something hit the house. Can't see that it hurt anything."

  "I used to love ghost stories as a girl. And it's that sort of night, isn't it? Wild and dark."

  It could be.

  If he hadn't been watching her hands so closely – it kept him from looking at the rest of her too closely – he would have missed the twitch of her right thumb when the hot wax dripped on it.

  "What the hell are you doing?"

  "I heard that noise.

  "Not that. Look at this—"

  "Wha-at?"

  "You're letting yourself get burned! Of all the damned fool things to do."

  "It's okay. The sound, was it—?"

  "Something got blown up against the house. No damage so far. I have to check the bedroom. But this is not okay. Why aren't you using the lantern?"

  He took the candlestick from her with little regard for the flame, and it writhed in apparent death throes. Impatiently he thunked the candlestick on the nearest flat surface, which happened to be the mantel, and took her hand in both of his.

  "I saw it on the bedside table before I went to sleep—"

  Sure, she'd had no trouble sleeping.

  "—and it was so beautiful. I thought of it first when the noise woke me. It had a candle in it."

  Wax showed in splatters and splotches across the back of her hand, concentrated near her thumb. The biggest one was an irregular-shaped blob at the base of her thumb.

  "Beautiful." He snorted. "The lantern wouldn't have burned your hand."

  She tried to tug her hand loose. When he didn't release it, she reached over with her free hand and slid a nail under a small blotch.

  "See, it comes right off."

  "Yeah, and it's red underneath, because it's burned." He touched the largest section of wax and found it still warm. With the edge of his thumb he gently rolled the pliable material away from her skin, revealing a red mark. He flicked the wax away, then bent his head and placed his lips to the spot.

  No thought preceded the action. It was instinct. Not any different from innumerable times since babyhood when he'd burned or banged or bruised his own hand, and sucked on it to ease the sting.

  The hell it wasn't different.