The Trailblazer

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  He came up next to her, his hair darkened with water, his eyes seeming to mirror the turquoise blue of the pool. “Want to race?”

  She’d do anything that would distract her from the sight of his virile body. “Okay.”

  “Four lengths of the pool. I’ll give you a head start.”

  “Nothing doing.”

  “I should have guessed.” He hooked both hands over the side and faced the shallow end. She followed suit. “On three,” he said. “One, two, three!”

  Freddy pushed off, but his counting reminded her of pulling his pants off, which reminded her of massaging ointment into his thighs, which reminded her of what she was trying so hard to forget. She swam, determined to break the languorous hold of her forbidden passions. He pulled ahead, and she redoubled her efforts. She’d taken trophies in school for the Australian crawl.

  But she was racing an athlete, she remembered, as he lengthened his lead. And what did it matter, this silly race? After it was over, she could go inside, having proven she could handle close encounters of the sensual kind with Ry McGuinnes.

  On his last lap, near the middle of the pool, he went down. She saw the water close over his head and immediately thought he’d had a leg cramp. It would be logical after all he’d been through today. Concerned, she dived for the bottom, following the trail of bubbles. The pool was nine feet deep near the drain. He could drown if she weren’t here to haul him out.

  She reached him and grabbed his shoulders. He grabbed back and pulled her toward him. She struggled, thinking he was going to drown them both. She wasn’t strong enough to break away. He drew her closer, despite her efforts to push him back. Then, just before their bodies entwined, she saw his smile.

  Light-headed from lack of breath, she held on as he wrapped his arms around her waist and pushed from the bottom of the pool. As they shot upward, he captured her mouth in a dizzying kiss of conquest.

  They burst to the surface, and he threw back his head but didn’t release her. She gulped in air just before they slipped beneath the water again and he reclaimed her, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth. The liquid kiss as they sank to the bottom of the pool made her mind spin and her body thump with need. Sanity deserted her and she wrapped her legs around his hips to press shamelessly against his arousal.

  This time when he pushed them to the surface, he kept one arm around her and used the other to maneuver them to the side of the pool.

  “You’re crazy,” she whispered, starting to disentangle her legs.

  “You’re right.” One arm anchored them to the side of the pool, the other kept her close. His blue gaze burned into hers. “You’re absolutely right.”

  Her heart thundered in her ears. “And I’m as bad as you are.”

  “You looked beautiful tonight. Was that for me?” When she didn’t answer, his gaze searched hers. “I keep trying to put you out of my mind, Freddy, but then I see you again, looking so kissable, and all my resolutions go out the window.”

  She could barely breathe. “But we agreed this would be a mistake.”

  He tightened his grip. “Then why does it feel so right to hold you?”

  Her resistance ebbed as her body melded with his. “You should let me go,” she whispered.

  “I know.” He leaned closer for another kiss.

  A cough from the shadows invaded the sensual mood. “What was that?” Freddy asked, her eyes probing the area around the pool.

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Well, I did.” She pushed him gently away. “And even if I didn’t, someone could come along at any time.”

  He reached for her. “Then we’ll go somewhere more private.”

  “No.” She was in control again. “You were right when you said we shouldn’t get involved. It’s too risky...for both of us.”

  The flame slowly faded in his blue eyes and he sighed. “Then I guess you’d better go in. For obvious reasons, I’m staying in the water a while longer.”

  Her arms trembled as she hoisted herself out of the water. Without looking back, she retrieved her towel and hairpins, slipped into her sandals and left the patio. She’d done some difficult things in her life, and leaving Ry tonight ranked up there as one of the toughest choices she’d ever made.

  8

  FREDDY DIDN’T show up at breakfast the next morning. If she was deliberately trying to avoid him, he probably deserved it after that stunt in the pool. He’d never before felt the pull of a sensual attraction that completely robbed him of reason. His need for Freddy was disorienting.

  After breakfast he walked into her office, half hoping she’d be there, but she wasn’t. Last night, he’d been too excited about Lavette’s call to take much notice of the office, but now he cast his eyes around the cubicle, intrigued by the little space. The room looked like a converted storage closet; the battered oak desk and chair might have been commandeered from an elementary-school teacher. The same went for the gray metal file cabinet. A computer, a goose necked lamp and a telephone sat on the desks, and the fax machine occupied the only other piece of furniture in the room, a low bookcase stuffed with ledgers. The room was windowless, which was probably just as well. A window would have taken up too much wall space. Everything in the room spoke of practicality—except for the rogues’ gallery on the walls.

  The paneling was crammed with framed pictures, each of them a segment of ranch history. A recent color glossy of Leigh on Red Devil nudged against a grainy shot of the old frame ranch house, the surface of the photo cracked and one edge singed. Ry wondered if it had been hastily rescued during the fire Freddy had talked about. Beneath the ranch house picture, women wearing bobbed hair from the twenties posed by the fireplace, and beside that was a portrait of Freddy at about three years of age mounted on a barrel. A closer look showed that the barrel was suspended by ropes. Even at three, she was learning how to ride a bucking bronco.

  Ry smiled. All decked out in boots, fringed shirt and hat, Freddy sat straight on the barrel, a wide grin on her face. Ry recognized that grin, the same one she’d given him as they’d raced side by side down the wash two days earlier. It was an expression of pure joy, and he’d felt it, too. Felt it and become frightened. That kind of joy shared with another human being made a person vulnerable to the worst hurt in the world.

  He turned from the wall of pictures, walked behind the desk and put his briefcase on its uncluttered surface. Work was the best antidote he’d ever found to that kind of pain. Yet there on the desk, as if to mock him, was a calendar open to May 24, today’s date.

  The anniversary of Linda’s death.

  It always ambushed him like a cowardly street thug. Last week, he’d known it was coming, had even realized he’d be in Arizona when it hit. But calendar days didn’t seem so important on the ranch, and he’d lost track. That he’d forgotten seemed an act of disloyalty.

  Linda would have been the first to criticize him for clinging to his grief. He thought it was the other way around. Grief clung to him like a leech, except when he lost himself in the intense world of commodities trading. And except when he was here. Perhaps that was the magic of this place. Maybe the ranch was the poultice that would draw the agony from him at last.

  Well, he’d never know unless he finished putting the deal together. He looked for a wastebasket to rid himself of the piece of paper crumpled in his fist. Then he opened his fingers slowly and stared at the ball of paper. Carefully he pulled it back into shape and grimaced. Without realizing it, he’d torn the page from Freddy’s desk calendar. She’d scribbled a couple of things on it—” auto parts’ on the first half and “Dexter” on the second. Ry wondered how he’d explain his unthinking vandalism. He’d have to come up with some logical reason.

  Stuffing the calendar page into his pocket, he started to pull the chair up to the desk. That was when he first noticed the pillow on the seat. Not a seat cushion, something that might reasonably be on the chair, but a bed pillow, still in its pillowcase.

  He
wondered who had put it there, and if it was an act of compassion or a taunt. He picked it up and sniffed the case. Freddy’s scent, faintly floral, lingered. That devil-woman had taken a pillow from her bed and placed it on her desk chair, expecting him to find it and be reminded that he was a greenhorn who didn’t belong here! This was no act of compassion. This was an act of war. His first instinct was to toss the pillow across the room. But, sad to say, he could use the extra padding, although he wasn’t as sore today as he had been the day before. He plumped the pillow and settled into the chair. Then he picked up the telephone to begin his business day.

  With his first call, he instructed his lawyer to draw up a partnership agreement. Then he spent the rest of the morning haggling with loan officers about interest rates.

  Freddy didn’t reappear at lunch, either, so Ry used the office again that afternoon when the eager real estate agent arrived at the True Love with the offer typed and ready for Ry’s signature. The agent would send the papers to Joe in the overnight mail, and Joe would hand-deliver them to Chase Lavette before shipping them back to Tucson.

  Once Ry had put everything in motion toward acquiring the ranch, he sat at the desk tapping the surface with his pen. He had a decision to make. His plane left the next afternoon, and technically he no longer needed to stay in Arizona. The real estate agent would forward the offer to Westridge. Assuming the company accepted it, the closing wouldn’t take place for at least two weeks, maybe longer, depending on how efficiently the paper shufflers did their jobs.

  But Ry didn’t want to go back to New York.

  Illogical though it seemed, he felt as if he needed to be physically on the True Love to guarantee the sale. His possessiveness grew with each hour he spent there, almost as if he’d planted a flag in the ground in the same way homesteaders had during the Oklahoma Land Rush.

  Besides, now that his butt was healing, he was ready to get back on a horse and toughen himself up. He wanted some jeans and boots of his own to ride in, and he wanted to inspect the ranch in more detail, including the cattle.

  And then there was Freddy. He had to figure out how to deal with her. He shouldn’t have kissed her again. So what if they were attracted to each other? She didn’t want a relationship any more than he did. Romantic involvement would be messy now and possibly disastrous in a couple of years, when the partnership sold the ranch.

  Ry was already thinking of ways to soften the blow with better retirement plans for the older employees and financial backing for Freddy and Leigh if they wanted to purchase another ranch. But he wasn’t about to buy trouble by announcing those plans now. He just wanted an amiable working relationship with the foreman of his ranch, a relationship that would guarantee a smooth transition when the time came to bring in the developers.

  Duane stuck his head in the office doorway, his chewing tobacco making a bulge in his lower lip. “Freddy’s not back yet?”

  “I haven’t seen her.”

  “Okeydoke.” Duane turned away.

  “Want to leave her a message?”

  Duane swung back, as if Ry had offered a brilliant solution. “I could do that.” His smile revealed tobacco-stained teeth. “Leigh asked me to report on Mikey, is all. Looks like he ain’t got no infection or nothin’.”

  Ry tore a fresh sheet of paper from the legal pad he’d been using for his fingers and began scribbling a note to Freddy. “That’s great news.”

  “Leigh wanted me to tell Freddy she was goin’ over to Whitlock’s to practice team ropin’.”

  Ry wrote that down, too. As long as he was the messengers boy, he might as well do a complete job.

  “She has to go over to Eb Whitlock’s, ’cause our arena still needs repairs, but you don’t have to put that in the note. Freddy knows that.”

  “Okay.” Ry finished the note, smiling at Duane’s obvious enjoyment at having someone take dictation from him.

  “See, they was waiting’ until somebody bought the place before they asked about getting’ the arena fixed. ’Course, some of the guests been asking’ about the rodeo and all, but—”

  “The what?” Ry glanced up.

  “We used to have us a rodeo a few times a year, with some easy events for the guests, if they wanted.”

  Ry’s gut reaction was excitement. Rodeo! Then his business sense kicked in as he thought of the liability. “But now you don’t?”

  Duane looked hopeful. “We can start again, once the arena’s in good shape. We kept the Corrientes, the steers we use just for ropin’.” He adjusted his hat and used his tongue to nudge the chewing tobacco to the other side of his lip. “We was hopin’ the new owner would take an interest.”

  “Did anybody tell you the next owner will probably be me?”

  “Well, I figured that. Figured it wouldn’t hurt none to speak up about the rodeo, neither. The hands like it. I like it, matter of fact.”

  Ry felt gratified that Duane accepted him enough to tell him all this, but there was no way the True Love would continue holding rodeos. “Did any of the guests ever get hurt?”

  “Their pride, mostly. I think we had one broken arm, and a few sprained ankles. That’s the guests I’m talkin’ about. We always made ’em sign papers sayin’ it ain’t the ranch’s fault.”

  “Mmm.” Such papers wouldn’t hold up a minute if someone died or became permanently injured, he thought.

  “The hands git hurt all the time, but they ride hurt, anyways. They don’t know any other way of doin’ things.”

  Ry nodded, almost in envy. What he really wanted, stupid as it sounded, was to trade places with one of those hands for a while.

  “Ever thought about ridin’ a bull?” Duane asked.

  Adrenaline shot through him. “You have Brahma bulls at this rodeo of yours?”

  “A few. Some of the ranchers ’round here like to keep ’em. Eb Whitlock’s got a big one that’s never been rode. He’s called Grateful Dead, ’cause when you get outta the ring, you’re grateful you ain’t dead.”

  Ry could almost taste the danger. And he was far too drawn to it. Better to switch topics. “Duane, where’s the best place to pick up some Western clothes?”

  “I always like the Buckle Barn. The stuff’s not too fancy, but it works good.”

  “In Tucson?”

  “Why, no, it’s down the road a piece, in La Osa.”

  “A shopping mall?”

  Duane laughed so hard he almost swallowed his chaw. “I reckon not,” he said at last, gaining control of himself. “It’s a little town, La Osa is. ’Bout ten miles northwest.”

  What the hell, Ry thought. Might as well go exploring. “Would it be possible to borrow a truck or something, so I can drive there?”

  Duane scratched his chin. “Well, now, I can’t think of what you could take. My truck’s tore apart, waiting’ for the new carburetor Freddy’s bringing’ from town. Leigh’s left already, and she borrowed Freddy’s truck ’cause hers needs a new fan belt, which Freddy’s also bringin’, and Freddy’s got the van. There’s the stove-up vehicles the hands drive, but I’d be real reluctant to put you in one of them. You could break down, easy. Now, if Freddy was to come back, you could—”

  “Did I hear my name?” Freddy appeared in the doorway, a leather purse over her shoulder and a plastic bag in one hand. For the trip to town she’d worn denim shorts and a True Love Guest Ranch T-shirt. Her hair was caught up in a ponytail, and instead of a hat, she’d worn sunglasses, which were pushed to the top of her head now that she was indoors. Ry tried not to stare at the graceful curve of her thighs. With her face flushed from the heat and her informal outfit, she looked like a teenager—a very sexy teenager.

  She flicked a glance his way and nodded. “Hello.”

  “Hello.” He hoped this casual greeting fooled her. Had he imagined he’d be able to create an amiable working relationship with a woman who affected him the way Freddy did? One look into the sage-colored coolness of her eyes and he longed to replace that indifference with the hot
passion he’d seen there the night before. His hand trembled slightly as he closed his briefcase.

  “Here’s the fan belt and the carburetor,” Freddy said, handing Duane the plastic bag. “Let’s hope that’s all that has to be fixed for now.”

  “Let’s hope.” Duane tilted his head toward Ry. “He wants to go to the Buckle Barn, git him some clothes. Should I gas up the van for him?”

  Freddy looked at Ry with raised eyebrows. “You want some Western clothes to take back to New York?”

  So she remembered that his plane left tomorrow. She was obviously eager for him to be on it. “Something like that.”

  “I promised Dexter we’d take him to La Osa this afternoon for an ice-cream sundae,” she said. “It’s a ritual we have once a week, so I can’t loan you the van, but you can ride along.”

  It wasn’t the most gracious invitation he’d ever had, but he’d decided he needed to see La Osa. Anything that might impact on the True Love was important, and he hadn’t even known of the existence of a little town near the ranch. If it was quaint enough, it might be a selling point for developers. “Sure, that would be great.”

  “If you’re going, you should know a few things about Dexter,” she said. “Because of his stroke, he has aphasia. He understands everything you say to him perfectly, but he can’t always find the right word to respond. Some people make the mistake of thinking they can talk in front of him as if he weren’t there. But he picks up on everything.”

  “Boy, ain’t that the truth,” Duane said. “I think he’s sharper now than ever. He can hear better than I can.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Ry said.

  “Meet you out front in fifteen minutes, then,” Freddy said, turning.

  “Freddy?”

  She glanced back at him.

  “The pillow was a nice touch.”

  Her gaze challenged his. “I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable today.”