“And I told you that I never kissed them the way I—”
“You never hauled them out of the kitchen and down to the creek bank?” she asked. Ryder smiled sympathetically and shook his head, no. “Promise?”
“I never hauled nobody down to the creek bank…especially with the intentions I had today,” he answered. “You ever touch Cash Richardson’s bare naked stomach?” he asked, and she immediately drew her hands away from his waist where she’d been slightly caressing him—unconsciously.
He chuckled as she shook her head and placed her hands on her crimson cheeks. She took a step back from him, but he took hold of her wrists and held them at her back—pulling her body flush with his own.
“Did you? Did you ever touch him like you do me?” Dusty could only shake her head, mesmerized by the intensity of his gaze. “Don’t you ever be afraid to touch me, Dusty.”
He paused and placed a long, heated kiss on her neck. Releasing her wrist he’d been holding behind her, he put his hand at the small of her back, running it up her spine. Even through her corset she could feel the power and warmth of it there. He’d done it again. As her body melted helplessly against his, she realized that once again he’d vanquished her will to resist him—broken the lock on the door keeping her safe from heartbreak.
“I’m gonna have my way with you yet,” he chuckled in her ear.
Dusty locked the first two fingers of each hand into the belt loops at either side of his hips as his hands held her face, drawing her mouth to his own. His kiss was so familiar, so perfect. Please, she thought to herself. Please, Dusty…don’t be afraid to touch him.
But even as his kiss breathed passion, led her into a kissing she’d known with only him, only cared to know with him, she could not return his embrace. The times in the past when he’d kissed her, she’d never been able to embrace him—to let her hands slide up and over his chest to his shoulders—caress him as she wished in her innermost soul to do. Her mouth surrendered to him more than willingly enough, every thread of her lost in delirium. Still, she could not completely let go of her fear. She wanted to run her fingers through his hair, feel his jaw under her palm working to weave his spell of ecstasy. But she couldn’t. And, after long moments, she sensed the frustration—the defeat in him. Though he smiled at her wistfully, stroked her lips with his thumb, she knew she’d disappointed him. The passionate kiss he’d meant to give to her from the moment he returned—it would never be fulfilled if she couldn’t be completely lost in it with him.
Ryder tweaked her nose playfully, actually slapped Dusty on the bottom as if she were still a child, and said, “Run along now. You’ve wasted enough of your time tendin’ me today.”
“Ryder,” she began. She wanted to beg him to give her another chance—plead with him to be patient with her—tell him she would die if he left her again.
“Run along, sugar. Ain’t no more to say…today.” And he began walking toward the barn.
She watched him go, drowning in agony. Why? she wondered. Why couldn’t she reach out and try to win his heart? He’d kissed her so intimately! Surely he would be willing to fill her heart if she could just reach out and take hold of him for once.
The bright flash of lightning followed almost instantly by a crash of thunder startled Dusty from her sleep. The exhausting night before coupled with the emotional twisting she’d endured at Ryder’s hand during the day had drained her, and she’d fallen asleep fast and deep. Now the rain was pouring down harder than it had all summer, and Dusty couldn’t believe she’d slept through the beginning of the storm. Almost at once there was another flash of lightning and simultaneously a crack of thunder overhead—so loud that Dusty let out a startled scream. In the next moment, her bedroom door flew open to reveal a completely rattled Becca.
“Dusty! This storm—the lightning is so close!” Becca exclaimed. Dusty immediately rose from her bed and went to look out the window. “For Pete’s sake, Dusty, don’t stand so close to the window! Are you crazy?”
The next bolt was almost blinding as it shot across the sky, but it wasn’t until Dusty covered her ears before the attending crack of thunder that she noticed the next bolt hit the ground near the center of the corral.
“Is Daddy up, Becca?” she asked. “It’s gonna hit the house!”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than a streak of blinding light struck the chimney of the bunkhouse as Dusty looked on. As the accompanying thunder cracked, deafening in its volume, the fire sparked on the bunkhouse roof caught like dry grass in a prairie field.
“Daddy!” Dusty screamed. Turning, she fled from the room without a word to Becca. “Daddy! The bunkhouse is on fire!”
Hank Hunter burst out of his room wearing only his long underwear and boots. Not even pausing to answer her, he was through the kitchen and out the back door.
“Daddy!” Dusty called after him. The lightning was still striking too close for comfort, and she knew the fire from the bunkhouse might also attract it. Yet even as Becca rushed into the kitchen, Dusty shouted, “Come on! Somebody might be hurt!”
Oh, how she prayed silently and in mumbled words for Ryder’s safety—for the safety of all the hands! Becca’s face was void of color, and Dusty knew she was saying her own silent prayers.
The rain was torrential! Dusty wondered as she stepped off the back porch and into the sheets of water how it was the bunkhouse continued to burn with such drenching moisture—but it did. As Becca and Dusty raced toward it, they saw the men stumbling from the bunkhouse, dazed and coughing from the smoke.
“Anybody hurt?” Hank shouted. Even though the lightning and thunder were moving away, the downpour was still deafening.
Dusty listened and watched—wiping the water from her eyes.
Ruff coughed, and Titch answered, “Guthrie got conked on the head by a beam that fell! I couldn’t get to him, and Ryder and Feller are still in there!”
With unspoken understanding, Dusty looked to Becca, who looked to Dusty—fear of an unrealized nightmare blazoned across both their faces.
“Lord, help us!” Dusty heard her daddy pray as he started toward the bunkhouse.
“No! Boss! It’s blazin’ in there!” Ruff shouted, taking hold of Hank’s arm.
“Those are my men in there, boy!” Hank shouted, angrily yanking his arm free.
As he ran toward the burning building, Ryder and Feller exited, dragging Guthrie by the feet and arms. For a moment, a vision flashed in Dusty’s mind of another fire—long ago. Another fire and another rescue by Ryder, but the danger at hand left no time to reminisce.
After depositing the injured man at the feet of Dusty and Becca, Feller turned to Hank. “You want us to bucket line it from the well, Hank?”
Dusty only wanted to tend to Ryder, who stood before her, coughing and covered in black soot. His right hand went to the stitched wound at his arm and pressed against it for a moment as he winced. Still, he seemed to be breathing all right, with no new visible injuries. Guthrie, though still breathing, was unconscious. A large laceration across his forehead bled profusely.
“Let it burn. There’s no savin’ it now,” Hank mumbled as he stood watching the fire. “Least everyone’s out.”
Dusty and Becca knelt and studied Guthrie’s wound.
“Let’s get him to the house,” Dusty ordered. As she stood and looked at all the ranch hands standing about, some dressed in nothing but trousers, some in their underwear and boots, she added, “Let’s get everyone into the house.”
“Titch and Ruff, you boys get Guthrie on in!” Hank ordered. “Feller, you, me, and Ryder are gonna get the stock out of the barn…just in case the wind changes and whips that fire over thata way.” He pointed to Dusty and added, “Get that boy tended to, girls. Then get them boys dried off and warmed up. Get a fire goin’ in the kitchen, Becca.”
Dusty watched as, without a pause, Ryder, barefoot and wearing only trousers, started toward the barn. It was obvious his arm
was giving him pain, but he ran off behind her father anyway. Feller, who had managed somehow to be wearing his boots and trousers, followed close behind.
“Just lay him out on the table in the kitchen,” Dusty instructed Ruff as he and Titch worked to carry Guthrie inside.
Becca was close at Dusty’s heels. Almost immediately after entering the house, Dusty and Becca both began to shiver with cold. Realizing only then that both she and her sister stood there before the men in only their soaking wet nightdresses, she said quietly to Becca, “Run get a shawl for each of us, Becca.” Becca blushed and obeyed as Dusty began dabbing at Guthrie’s wound with a dishcloth.
“Put a kettle on for me, Titch,” Dusty instructed. “Put somethin’ under his feet, Ruff. He’s as pale as a ghost.”
It was a long while that Dusty and Becca tended to Guthrie, cleaning his wound and then making him comfortable. He was just beginning to gain consciousness when her father, Feller, and Ryder entered, dripping wet and looking like they were dead on their feet.
“It didn’t catch the barn,” Hank announced. “Bunkhouse is nothin’ but smolderin’ ashes now. How’s Guthrie?”
“He’s comin’ around, Daddy. He’s got a big ol’ goose egg on the back of his head…but it’s swellin’ out, so he oughta be fine except for a headache,” Dusty answered.
“Good,” Hank breathed with relief. “Then let’s get these boys laid out somewhere.”
Dusty and Becca scrounged what extra blankets they could to help the men settle in on the floor of the parlor. Most of their own belongings, including clothing, had burned. After her father built a fire in the parlor hearth, and she and Becca had seen the men all bedded down as comfortably as possible, Dusty retired to her own bed and attempted to sleep.
The events of the past twenty-four hours—the fire, the rustlers, and mostly the moments spent in intimate exchange with Ryder—however, kept her mind too alive for sleep. So it was that in the early hours of morning, even too early for her father or the ranch hands to be up, Dusty carefully made her way among the sleeping men. She checked each one to ensure they were as warm and as comfortable as possible. Here and there she’d pull up a blanket, and as she did, she wondered how long they’d all have to run around in their bare feet and underwear. She’d always worried about the men who hired on at the ranch, even when she was little. In the winter or during big storms, she would beg her mama to let them all sleep on the floor in the house, completely convinced they wouldn’t be warm and safe enough in the bunkhouse. As she grew older, she still worried. Guthrie and Titch coughed in their sleep, and Dusty winced, knowing the smoke in their lungs, coupled with the fact they’d all been drenched to the bone, would surely cause someone to take on a cold.
Feller slept soundly on his stomach, his head resting on his hands, and she almost tripped over one of his elbows bent at the side of his head. Reaching down, she pulled his blanket up over his back. Then she looked to where Ryder lay nearby.
Ryder slept on his back, hands folded beneath his head, bare feet crossed as if he were awake and simply staring at the ceiling. As she silently approached him and stood gazing down at him, she scolded herself. She had the sudden urge to lie down next to him and snuggle close—sleep there in such a blissful state. His blanket too had slipped away, and Dusty stood in silent awe at the perfect form of him. Even as he slept, the muscles in his arms and chest were so well-defined they were indeed far beyond merely admirable. Unconsciously, she exhaled a heavy sigh of admiration and longing. She wanted him for her own so much more than she’d ever wanted anything in her entire life. Almost half of her life she’d wanted him. He was so wonderful—so witty, strong, and extraordinary!
Her mind drifted to the conversation they’d had the day before. Don’t you ever be afraid to touch me, he’d said. She wanted to! Just to brush the hair from his forehead, hold his hand. He’d never know how much she wanted to hug him, throw herself into his arms as she once did, caress the smooth surface of his skin when he kissed her, feel her fingers tangled in his hair.
But Dusty could only stand gazing down at him. Only now were the moments quiet enough, with everyone safe in the house—only now was peace restored so she could let her mind wander back. It seemed so long ago, as it always did, and yet like yesterday in many ways.
The hayloft of the old barn had always been Dusty’s secret, quiet-thinking, and daydreaming space. Her grandpa had built the barn, and somehow Dusty always felt as if he were up in the loft with her—watching her think as she’d been told he’d watched her daddy so many times when Henry “Hank” Hunter was a little boy. Sometimes she let Becca come up with her, and they’d talk about their dreams or just about nothing. But that crisp, autumn evening, Dusty’s mind and heart were in turmoil. Soon she would be fourteen, and with each passing day she felt her heart binding itself tighter and tighter to the young cowboy who had been hired on by her daddy over three years before. It was something she didn’t know how to manage. Ryder was ever so much older than she. She was still a child in the eyes of the world—and in his. Yet she loved him—more dearly than anything! She knew the drought was bad for the ranch. She’d heard her daddy telling her mama that very afternoon that, if the weather didn’t change come spring, they might actually lose the ranch.
So on that cool autumn evening, Dusty Hunter sat in the hayloft trying to understand the guilt she felt for wishing the weather would change so her daddy wouldn’t lose his ranch—and for the mere fact that she didn’t want to lose the ranch hands along with it. The guilt she felt was horrible! For, admittedly, she cared more for the fact that Ryder might have to leave than she did about whether her daddy would lose everything he’d worked so hard to maintain.
Sighing heavily, with tears on her cheeks, she had lain back in the soft straw and fallen asleep for some time. What woke her was the thick scent of smoke—the sharp crackle of fire. No one knew for sure what started the blaze—though Feller always suspected Bill West had been smoking in one of the empty stalls. Dusty’s mama didn’t allow the hands to smoke—at least in her presence or where she could see them. Bill had been notorious for hiding away and rolling a smoke now and again. Whatever the reason for the blaze, as soon as Dusty realized the barn was afire, she quickly dashed to the ladder leading down from the loft. Yet when she reached it, the fire below was so terrifying she couldn’t force herself to climb down! All she could see below were flames—everywhere! Even when she saw Feller leading two horses out of their stalls, holding a cloth to his face and coughing as the smoke burned his eyes and lungs, she could not call to him—paralyzed by fear.
She ran to one of the loft windows and pushed at the shutters. But it was the window her father never opened, and the latch was so rusty she couldn’t budge it. Quickly, she ran to the opposite side of the barn and pushed at the large doors there. The doors had been bolted against the autumn winds after the loft was filled with straw for the winter. If it had been summer, they would’ve been open all the time so straw could be pitched out through the doors and down to the ground below. But they’d been bolted, and it wasn’t until Dusty began struggling with the bolts, realizing she would indeed be burned alive if she didn’t find a way out, that she began to scream for help.
“Help me! I’m in here! I’m in here!” she screamed. She could actually hear the blaze increasing below and knew it would only be a matter of minutes before the fire engulfed the loft as well. At last, the bolt gave way, and the loft doors swung outward. Looking out and coughing as the smoke now increased, devouring fresh air, Dusty could see the commotion on the ground below. It seemed like a dream—so unreal! All the hands were running this way and that. They’d begun a bucket line, but she knew it was doing very little good. She saw her daddy and screamed, “Daddy!”
Instantly, Hank looked up to see his daughter at the mouth of the loft doors, the smoke from the fire billowing out past her.
“Dusty!” he shouted.
Dusty saw her mother gasp and burst into tears as she to
o looked up and saw her. Without pause, her father ran to stand just below the loft.
“Jump, Dusty! You have to jump!” he shouted.
“I—I—I can’t!” she cried. Her body was stiff and motionless with fear. No matter how she willed herself to even fall out the opening, she could not.
“You’ve got to!” her daddy shouted.
Her mother dashed toward the burning barn, intent on entering to try to save her daughter. Dusty saw Ryder dash past her mother as Feller grabbed Elly Hunter around the waist to stop her from going in. Somehow Ryder managed to fling a wet blanket over his head. Dusty turned when she heard the crack of his whip to find he had snapped it at one of the large beams of the loft until it was secured there. He climbed it like a rope to reach her since the ladder to the loft was ablaze with flames. She could only stand and stare at him, terrified with panic as the blanket fell from his shoulders when he awkwardly climbed into the loft.
The open loft doors worked like a magnet to the fire. Ryder slapped at the seat of his pants, which were smoking when he reached Dusty.
She could only stare at him as he came at her in a dead run, shouting, “Dang it all, girl! Jump!” The next thing she knew, he’d wrapped his arms tightly around her. Spinning them around so his body left the opening first, he flung them out the door and into midair!
The blanket the other hands had quickly stretched above the ground beneath the loft did little to buffer their fall. When Ryder hit the ground solidly, still holding tightly to Dusty, she knew something in his body had broken; she heard the crack of bone and the moan a man makes when grievous pain is dealt him suddenly. It had been near to six weeks before Ryder’s broken ribs healed sufficiently for him to be able to move comfortably.
Dusty brushed the tears from her cheeks as she now stood looking down at the man who’d saved her life years before. Reaching down, she began straightening his blanket. She gasped, startled, as he opened his eyes and took hold of her wrist.
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