Cheyenne's Lady

by Mindy Neff

  Cheyenne was more than a passable artist. He didn’t have the dramatic flair that Jimmy did, but his simple style was above average.

  His strength, it appeared, was in capturing expressions.

  And he’d captured hers. The likeness was amazing, though he’d smoothed out the rough edges some. She was certain she didn’t look this relaxed and dewy-eyed.

  Rather than frames that would eventually mesh together as a whole picture for advertising purposes, he’d done a portrait.

  And in the portrait were a man and a woman, each holding an infant wrapped in a blanket. The woman’s lips were parted, lush. Her expression was soft, maternal even, yet filled with a shining sensuality that made Emily feel a bit like a voyeur just looking at it.

  The man in the sketch looked remarkably like Cheyenne, yet he wore a hat that shaded his face and his expression, his head tipped over his family as though shielding them under the brim of his protection.

  It was a portrait of them—Cheyenne, Emily and the babies.

  Her hands trembled as she ran her fingers over the shading, smudging the lines a bit.

  When she’d come up with the idea, she’d had older kids in mind—actually just one child. A little girl playing dress-up with Mom’s lipstick, Dad smiling down at his two women.

  She’d thought she was looking at the marketing angle of the idea. Little girls loved to play dress-up. Men and women loved to kiss. She’d created an idea that involved a loving family.

  A Freudian slip perhaps? An ad that catered to the sex appeal of a woman, as well as her maternal side, showing that the two can and do mix?

  And from her description, Cheyenne had drawn them. She hadn’t billed herself as the heroine of the ad, yet here she was, in charcoal shading that captured her right down to the uneven arch of her left brow, the kinky curls that frizzed at her temples no matter how much she tried to tame them.

  And the man in the portrait. Oh, she knew that man, could picture him. He was the bad boy with the gentle streak. The guy who could kiss wildly, with the soul-stealing rigor of youth. The guy with deep emotions that he kept hidden, yet whose very silence and mystery would draw a young girl like a moth batting at a flame. The guy who fought and clawed for respectability, who’d tamed the wild streak of youth, mellowed with maturity, harnessed his sensuality into something explosive that only time and experience could accomplish, tempered it with a gentle touch and protective streak.

  The kind of guy who knew where he’d been and where he was headed, who would always be there for his family.

  The kind of guy who gave his love only once, and it was forever.

  Cheyenne Bodine.

  Her husband.

  Emily pressed a hand to her heart, felt the dampness that had seeped through the nursing pads in her bra.

  She blinked. “Good grief. Get a grip.”

  Taking a breath, she folded the paper and tucked it into her attaché case.

  It might be in the wrong format, might not be commercial-quality graphics, but if she faxed this drawing to the company’s media buyer—who just happened to be a woman—the Cockran agency would get the account for sure.

  Women around the world would buy the lipstick just to dream about the man.

  The problem was, this man wasn’t someone Emily wanted exploited. She didn’t want to share him.

  The drawing was too personal.

  And the fact that she realized that told her she was in deep, deep trouble.

  HALF-ASLEEP AND DEAD on her feet, Emily stared at both babies, who were squalling as though their little hearts were broken.

  “Alicia, right?” she said as she lifted one baby. She peered inside the diaper. “Got it on the first try. Do me a favor, will you, sweetie pie? Don’t even think of dieting. Chubby cheeks are all the rage and you’re beautiful just the way you are.”

  “And so’s her mom.”

  Emily whirled around. She’d known Cheyenne would come when he heard the babies cry, so she shouldn’t have been surprised to see him there.

  But she was, just the same. He stood silhouetted by the dim hall light, shirtless, shoeless, his jeans unsnapped. And in his large hand, he held a bottle.

  The sight was so sexy she nearly sighed.

  Her gaze went to that washboard stomach and she felt her heart flutter.

  Her hormones had very poor timing.

  Alicia was nuzzling at her chest, snuffling, managing to get her thumb in her mouth. Finding that it had nothing she wanted, she fussed and fidgeted. So much that she nearly wriggled out of Emily’s hold.

  And Hunter, obviously responding to his sister’s distress, joined in like a good sibling.

  Emily turned a beseeching gaze back to Cheyenne, wondering if she looked as wild-eyed and dazed as she felt.

  “He need a diaper change first?”

  “Naturally. They both do.”

  Cheyenne moved to the crib the babies were sharing, and he and Emily worked side by side, unsnapping footed pajamas, extracting fragile little legs, cooing and soothing to no avail.

  Emily was sweating by the time she got the tapes of the diapers in place, and had to try three times to get the snaps of the pajamas to line up.

  “Shush, baby.” She tried to make her voice soothing, but it sounded more like she was begging. She sat down in the rocking chair and draped a blanket over her shoulder, wincing as Alicia finally latched on to her breast.

  Cheyenne lifted Hunter and sat down in the second rocking chair, easing the bottle into the infant’s mouth. After a few weak cries and snuffling noises, Hunter quieted and settled down to eat.

  It amazed her how easy and comfortable she felt with Cheyenne. At first she’d been self-conscious nursing in front of him, even though she always made sure to cover herself. But over the past two weeks, this had become a nightly ritual—more than nightly actually.

  When the world was quiet like this, in the deep of the night, with the wind batting softly at the windows, the sharing felt special. Intimate in a nonsexual way.

  It was only when her fantasies kicked in and her mind strayed that the intimacy took on a sexual feel.

  She rocked and studied the man across from her. The baby wasn’t even as long as Cheyenne’s forearm. As he gazed down at the child he cradled, Emily let herself look her fill. The sight of him holding Hunter so gently, so lovingly, moved her.

  The perfect advertisement for fatherhood. Or for bottles, or formula. Diapers, perhaps.

  Strength and innocence. Large and small. Nothing was more moving than a shirtless, virile man gently cradling an infant against his wide, bare chest.

  He looked up, caught her staring.

  “What?” he whispered.

  “Just thinking about advertising.”

  “Work’s never far from your mind, is it.”

  “It’s been my life.”

  “And you’re good at it.”

  She nodded. There was no conceit. Just confidence. “Advertising I’m good at. Babies are another matter.” She stroked Alicia as she spoke, noticed that Cheyenne did the same with Hunter. He used only his thumb, rubbing it from shoulder to fingertip of Hunter’s arm, his hand nearly as big as the child’s body.

  She wondered if he knew that touch and massage would cause a baby to grow faster. She’d learned that on the Internet when she’d been researching everything she could think of that had to do with babies.

  “You’re doing fine,” he said softly.

  “Sometimes I wonder. When they cry, I go into a tizzy. They’re so precious, Cheyenne. But they can’t talk. They can’t tell me what they need. I worry that I won’t know. That I’ll do something wrong.”

  “You have incredible instincts,” he said. “You’ll know what they need.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  He rocked in silence for a few minutes, adjusted the bottle in Hunter’s mouth. Blue padded into the room and lay down beside Cheyenne’s chair, a faithful friend.

  “Remember when we were kids and
you shared your sandwich with me?”

  For a minute her mind went blank, then an image slowly crystallized like storyboard frames in perfect order: outdoor tables scarred by weather and use at the back of the schoolhouse; she, an underdeveloped fourteen-year-old, he, a sexy, sullen seventeen-year-old who seemed far older than his years. And in his eyes, there had been a hunger that went much deeper than an empty belly. “Yes, I remember.”

  “You knew what I needed.”

  “That’s different. You could talk.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  No, he hadn’t. He’d just sat there, alone, apart from everyone else, pretending he didn’t care, his expression closed, daring anyone to comment or approach him. Most of the kids had enough self-preservation to respect his barriers. Emily had simply led with her heart and was across the schoolyard before she’d thought better of it. She knew what it was like to be teased, to be talked about, to be the underdog.

  She was amazed that he remembered the incident, surprised it had made enough of an impact on him for him to bring it up this many years later.

  “I was a little afraid of you,” she admitted. “But very intrigued.”

  He stared at her. For one heartbeat, then two. “And I was half in love with you.”

  Her heart leaped even though she knew he didn’t mean it literally.

  She needed to say something so her mind wouldn’t run off on a wild tangent that could only cause her heartache.

  “Yes, I’m sure a skinny little flat-chested girl with freckles and pigtails filled you with lust.” She wasn’t flat-chested anymore and she saw his gaze dip to her breasts—which he couldn’t see because of the blanket she had draped across herself.

  “You had grit.”

  Oh, she liked that. Grit got you places in the world.

  “And a heart as big as the open prairie,” he added.

  For some reason, that made her uncomfortable. In business, a big heart could get you stepped on, make a woman miss a rung of the ladder. Emily had made it a point not to miss too many of those rungs.

  “I don’t know why you keep trying to make me out to be such a softy. That’s not me.”

  “You don’t call a surrogate mother a softy?”

  “No. That was love.”

  “And love’s not soft?”

  “Well, yes. But it was slotted, you know?” How did she explain? “A softy ends up giving up a lot. I wasn’t giving up anything. I could do my job, keep my life and still give my sister her dream.”

  But it hadn’t worked out that way. And her explanation didn’t sound so cut-and-dried when she voiced it in the quiet of the night like this, with the wind blowing snow against the windows, Cheyenne cradling a baby in his arms and she with another at her breast.

  “I take my responsibilities seriously, Cheyenne. Don’t try to read more into me than is there.” Was he hoping she could give him more? She didn’t want to hurt him. She had a job she loved, one she intended to go back to. The children would go with her, and of course there would be changes in her life, but she would manage. She always had.

  Without dislodging the blanket, she brought Alicia out from under it and raised her to her shoulder, patting the little back gently to coax a burp. Milk dribbled from the corner of the baby’s mouth, leaving a saliva trail across her chubby cheeks. Emily kissed that soft, warm cheek, inhaling the essence of the child, her heart turning over.

  They might be a handful, but she loved these babies more than she’d ever thought possible.

  “Trade,” she said to Cheyenne.

  He tugged the bottle out of Hunter’s mouth, burped him, then rose and laid him in Emily’s arm, carefully taking Alicia from her shoulder. She liked to try to nurse both babies at each feeding, wanting to cement the bond between her and them equally. She truly was afraid that one of the babies would end up being slighted, and she nearly ran herself ragged trying to avoid it.

  “Tell me about my brother.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What was he like, how did he spend his days, anything and everything you can think of.” He stroked a finger over Alicia’s cheek. She was sucking at the same bottle her brother had moments ago. “Show me the man I didn’t get to know.”

  Emily focused inward, recalling Jimmy’s blond hair and handsome features as though he stood right there in the room with them.

  “When he came into the agency looking for a job, he didn’t have an appointment, but he was so darn charming I told him I’d give him five minutes to make his pitch.”

  Cheyenne nodded. “As a kid he could wrap folks around his finger without half trying.”

  “Yes, he was good at that. He’d gone to a trade school and gotten a certificate in graphic arts. We usually hired artists who had a full degree, but one look at Jimmy’s portfolio and I knew he had talent. I hired him on the spot. He wasn’t afraid of work. He was the first one there in the morning and the last one to leave. Sometimes I had to threaten him to get him to go home.”

  “Where was home?”

  “An apartment in the city at first. When he and Debbie got married, they bought a pretty condo overlooking Puget Sound. He loved sports—especially basketball—and he came up with some wildly successful ad campaigns with sports themes. He shied away from alcohol ads.”

  “Our parents were drinkers.”

  “Yes, he told me.” Because the memory seemed to make Cheyenne sad, she moved on. “He proposed to Debbie at a SuperSonics game. Had ‘I love you, Debbie. Will you marry me?’ flashed on the scoreboard at Seattle Center.”

  “You were there with them?”

  “Yes. I still have the game ball. All the players signed it as a wedding gift.”

  “That’ll mean a lot to Hunter one of these days.”

  “Shame on you. What about Alicia? Girls can be just as devoted to sports as boys.”

  “I stand ashamed.”

  He stroked Alicia’s downy head. It still amazed her how he could hold the baby and the bottle with one hand and leave the other free. She had yet to accomplish that feat.

  He’d gone silent on her, and she had an idea he was thinking about all that he’d missed in his brother’s life. Because Jimmy had been the one to bounce between his divorced parents, staying with his father most of the time, then striking out on his own, Emily likely had more memories than Cheyenne did.

  It was sad. And she could tell it bothered him. Because Cheyenne was a man who obviously yearned for family. He might not openly admit it, but his actions spoke for him.

  “He was happy, then?” Cheyenne asked.

  “Yes. These last three years, he truly was. He regretted rebuffing you when you tried to make amends that last time. I think he was afraid that if he opened the lines of communication with you, he’d become weak, want to depend on you.”

  “He never depended on me.”

  “Yes, he did. More than you knew. He idolized you. But he felt responsible for your father, and he ended up getting sucked into the wrong crowd. He told me there were several years where he wasn’t such a nice person. I guess after your father died and that incident between the two of you occurred, he hit bottom.”

  Cheyenne rested his head against the back of the rocker and closed his eyes. “I let him down.”

  “No. Actually he said you did him a favor, that if you’d bailed him out, he probably would’ve kept screwing up. I never knew that side of him. By the time he’d applied for the job at the agency, he’d gotten some education, mellowed into a quiet, intensely driven man.”

  “Why didn’t he contact me?”

  “I think he was afraid at first. He didn’t trust his new strength, didn’t want to put it to the test. Sort of like an alcoholic fears his first party after sobriety, I think. Jimmy was a perfectionist, in his job and in his life. I didn’t know the boy, but the man was careful and thorough, and he thought long and hard about each step, determined to get it right. Except when it came to my sister.”

  “She bewitche
d him?”

  Emily nodded, shared his smile. “From the moment they laid eyes on each other, they were hooked.” It had been a beautiful thing to watch. Because her own parents hadn’t had a happily-ever-after, Emily had stopped believing in the fairy tale. She’d almost changed her emotional belief system when she’d seen her sister’s happy marriage, but then death had intervened.

  But watching that relationship develop so quickly and genuinely, she’d allowed herself to dream just a little, had started to wonder if perhaps there was indeed one true love for everyone, wondered if she’d recognize him instantly if that special person came along for her.

  She gazed at Cheyenne, so silent, so gentle, so strong and giving. Was it the stress of all that was going on in her life that made her entertain the crazy thought that Cheyenne Bodine might just be that special person for her?

  Her heart pounded and her palms went damp. She told herself to just stop it. Their relationship was because of the babies. It was the equivalent of the survival theory, where the one being rescued mixed up feelings of gratitude and love for the rescuer.

  And Cheyenne, in essence, had come to her rescue.

  She had to remember that. Her life was in Washington. Not on a peaceful mustang ranch with a sexy sheriff who made her hormones sing and her insides burn.

  Chapter Nine

  Emily stood beside the bed and stared down at her lopsided breasts. Was there no end to the horrors of her body?

  It had been two and a half weeks since she’d given birth to the twins, yet she had so much flab and sag it was appalling. Her clothes didn’t come close to fitting, so she had to wear baggy stuff—zippers were still entirely out of the question.

  And now this.

  One bosom the size of a plump cantaloupe, the other drooping like an underfilled water balloon. Thirty-two years old and her chest had already gone south. And deformed at that.

  She added extra cotton pads in the left side. Good grief, she hadn’t stuffed her bra since junior high.

  Between nursing and pumping, she kept forgetting which side she was using most. Iris had suggested safety pins in the bra as a marker. But she could hardly remember her own name, much less to stick a pin in her bra.