The Rancher's Dance

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  Beck turned the ignition. He got along well enough with his father now—again, thanks to Harmony’s efforts—because he recognized that Stan was a good grandfather. Unquestionably helped by the fact that Stan had stopped drinking by the time Nick was out of diapers and hadn’t touched a drop since. And once Beck was on his own, left behind to his drowning grief and a three-year-old toddler to raise, Stan had become even more entrenched in their lives when he’d stepped in to help. He’d taken care of Shelby and hadn’t commented at all while Beck found his own way out of a bottle.

  “Since today.” His voice was short as he reached for the door. He grimaced. “I won’t be long.”

  Stan stepped out of the way of the door, and pushed it closed himself. “I’m guessing you met the daughter.”

  “What?”

  “Heard she was back when I was picking up Shelby from day camp. Everybody was talking about seeing her at Colbys last night just before closing time. Said she was practically dragging when she went inside and ordered up whatever was still hot in the kitchen.”

  “Did they.” Beck’s voice was dry, but inwardly—considering how he’d seen her favoring her leg—he figured dragging was probably a pretty accurate telling. More accurate than the usual gossip that was always rife in small towns like Weaver. “I met her in passing.”

  “And now you’re taking her food,” Stan added, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing with his own two eyes.

  “Maybe I just don’t want us all to be eating pasta for the next four days,” Beck returned. “You cooked enough for an army.”

  “No point in cooking for one meal when it’s no more work to cook for two.”

  Beck just shook his head. “Don’t forget to pin up Shelby’s pictures on the fridge,” he said, and put the truck in gear before his father could say anything else.

  Twilight was beginning to settle as he drove the narrow road that led to the Lazy-B, but Beck had made the trip often enough that he knew every pothole, bump and sudden curve—daylight or not—and the spaghetti was still hot in the container when he pulled up in front of the Buchanan place twenty minutes later.

  Only once he was there, looking at the simple lines of the old brick house that were outlined against the deepening sky, did he start wondering what the hell he was doing there.

  The Buchanans were related to the Clay family and even as antisocial as he was, he knew their numbers were plentiful in the area. If she needed looking in on, she had plenty of family who could do it.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose.

  The dancer had left the front door open, probably to take in the air that had begun cooling once the sun started heading toward the horizon, and he could see past the screen straight back through to the kitchen.

  He swore under his breath because now that he was there, it seemed worse than stupid to turn around and go home. So he grabbed the spaghetti and stomped up to the front door.

  He lifted his hand to knock, but that’s when he glimpsed the damnably familiar sight of a long leg stretched out against the staircase.

  His nerves bumped and instead of knocking, he grabbed the handle on the door and pulled. The lack of a lock wasn’t surprising considering how far out in the boondocks they were, and he strode inside, his mind already casting around to remember what he’d ever learned about first aid.

  But instead of an injured woman collapsed on the stairs, he got a glimpse of wholly startled blue eyes as Lucy—perfectly conscious even if she was sitting on one of the steps about three-fourths of the way from the top—gaped at his intrusion.

  “Beck!” She whipped the thin folds of her pale gold robe over her legs and wrapped her hand around the banister next to her head. “What on earth are you doing?”

  Making an even bigger ass out of himself. “I thought you’d hurt yourself.”

  She went still, her gaze flickering for a moment. “Thank you for the concern, but as you can see, I’ve done nothing new.” Her hand tightened around the banister and she pulled herself up to her feet in one smooth motion that seemed to belie the fact that her knee was injured at all.

  Except that Beck had seen the way her knuckles went white before she so much as budged an inch.

  He set the spaghetti container on the narrow table that stood against the wall and moved to the foot of the stairs. “If it’s so bad, why bother going up and down the stairs in the first place?”

  Her lips—a little too wide for her narrow face—parted softly. And just as quickly they were pressed into a thin line. “It’s not that bad. And my bedroom is upstairs,” she added as if it should be obvious.

  He snorted and planted his foot on the bottom tread before reaching up to grab her waist. Ignoring the hiss she gave, he lifted her right off the stairs and carried her the few feet to the living room.

  “I don’t appreciate being lifted around,” she muttered as he deposited her on the couch there.

  He could still feel the suppleness of her waist and the slick silk of her robe against his palms, but he managed a bland look. “You’re a professional ballet dancer. Don’t you get lifted around all the time?”

  “That’s hardly the same thing.” With a quick tug, she tightened the belt around her waist and flicked the robe over her legs again. The thin fabric floated down to settle over her bare feet.

  He still managed to notice they were narrow, higharched and her gangly toes were painted a pale pink, and it irritated the hell out of him.

  He wasn’t interested in anyone’s toes, for cripes’ sake.

  “I was managing just fine,” she said, evidently oblivious to his foot ogling.

  “That was pretty obvious,” he drawled as he moved across the room to retrieve the spaghetti. “Where’s your brother?” He hadn’t seen Caleb’s truck where he usually parked it near the barn. Not that Caleb had been spending much time at the ranch, as far as Beck had noticed over the last few weeks since he’d started construction.

  Protests or not, now that she was on the couch, she didn’t look in any hurry to move when she leaned her head against the cushions behind her. “He turned in my rental car earlier and then he went back into town.”

  “Is he coming back?”

  The pale, pale blue was a narrow sliver between her dark lashes as she sent him a look. “He’s a big boy. I’m sure he can find his way home when he’s ready.” She lifted her slender hand. “And I didn’t come home wanting him—or anyone else in my sometimes-interfering family—assigning themselves as my babysitter.”

  “Maybe you should have,” he said bluntly, “if you can’t get yourself up and down the stairs.” He held up the plastic container. “My father sent over some supper.” The lie was preferable to the truth.

  Not that he was even all that sure what truth had propelled him back to the Lazy-B that evening. “I can get up and down the stairs,” she defended. “And that was very kind of your father but hardly necessary.”

  He shrugged and headed into the kitchen. “Just being neighborly. And you haven’t seen the army that my dad thinks he’s cooking for,” he said as he went. He’d been inside the Buchanan house more than once; mostly because there was no getting around Belle when she was insistent about something like inviting him in for lunch or coffee whenever he had met with Cage for one reason or another. But he still had to open a few cupboard doors before he found the plates. He dumped out a healthy portion on one, stowed the rest in the plastic container inside the nearly barren fridge, hunted a little more for some silverware, then carried everything back out to the living room.

  He extended the plate toward her. “You’ll hurt his feelings if you don’t eat.” Another guilt-free lie. Lifting her off her feet had been about as taxing as tossing a pillow. As far as he was concerned, the dancer could stand to eat more. A lot more.

  She took the plate but didn’t look all that happy about it. “Again, that’s sweet of him, but I can fend for myself.”

  “Okay.” He reached to take the plate back from her, but she l
et out a laugh that was as unexpected as it was quick, and held the plate out of his range.

  “I’m also not foolish enough to turn down a meal when it’s looking me in the face.” A smile hovered on her lips, revealing that faint dimple again. “Particularly one I didn’t have to cook for myself.” Her lashes lifted for a brief moment as she glanced up at him. “Are you going to hover there while I eat, or sit down?”

  He’d done what he’d come to do. Deliver the food and put an end to the annoying niggle in his head that hadn’t let him forget the bravado she’d shown earlier that day on the mower. False bravado.

  The pain in her face then had been as plain as the white knuckles she’d needed to stand up on the stairs.

  Her brother wasn’t around to watch out for her, but she had food in her hands, a couch under her rear. Beck had even noticed the cell phone that was sitting on the end table, within easy reach, which meant she had a passel of family, too, within easy reach.

  No reason for him to keep hovering, that was certain.

  But his feet made no move toward the door.

  He swallowed another oath, even as he found himself sitting down on the couch beside her.

  And then he wished that he’d at least had the sense to sit on the chair that was adjacent to the couch.

  He looked away from the vee of smooth skin that extended from her long neck down between the lapels of her robe where they criss-crossed between her breasts.

  Legs that seemed strangely long for someone so short, and breasts that seemed strangely full for someone so slender beneath the skim of that pale gold silk. The fabric was only a shade darker than her skin.

  He realized he’d lifted his hand to run it around the too-tight collar of his T-shirt and curled his fist.

  It was July for God’s sake. The anniversary of his wife’s death loomed like a specter over every breath he drew.

  What the hell was he doing noticing—really noticing—the attributes of his neighbor’s daughter?

  He started to push off the couch but went dead still when she reached out and closed her hand over his arm. “Wait.”

  When was the last time a female had touched him?

  He’d barely had the thought before her hand moved away again, returning to steady the plate that she was balancing on her lap.

  “Sorry.” She focused on the fork she was swirling into the spaghetti. “It’s just a drag to eat alone.”

  There was a rosy glow on her high cheekbones that hadn’t been there before. His need to escape battled something else.

  The something else won, and he subsided on the couch. “I s’pose. I haven’t eaten alone in a long time.”

  She paused, her laden fork aloft, as she gave him a quick look. “You live with your father and daughter?” The spaghetti disappeared into her mouth.

  He realized he was staring, and not entirely because the mouthful she’d taken had been enormous.

  This particular dancer wasn’t exactly eating like a bird. Her appetite looked as healthy as his.

  “Yeah,” he answered a beat too late. “We’re all usually together when it’s mealtime.” He wished he’d have been as careful with that point when his wife had been alive.

  Lucy swallowed and her tongue snuck out to lick the corner of her lips.

  His appetite gave a low, rumbling growl and it had nothing to do with food.

  His fingers drummed on the upholstered arm of the couch as he felt an urgent need to escape. The opened front door wasn’t doing a good enough job of allowing the cooling air inside. He abruptly pushed off the couch. “You need something to drink with that.”

  “You don’t have to wait on me.”

  But her voice was following him because he pretty much bolted toward the kitchen.

  The glasses were in the cupboard next to the plates. He got one down and turned on the water faucet. Looked over his shoulder through the doorway.

  All he could see was the back of her blond head. The hair that she’d had twizzled up that morning in a messy clip and that had been mostly hidden beneath her raggedy cowboy hat that afternoon was now down, pooling over the couch cushion behind her head, looking as pale and soft as moonlight.

  Water spilled over his hand, cooling the twitch in his fingers that seemed to know, instinctively, how soft those strands would be even though they’d been unforgivably forgetful about what his wife’s hair had felt like.

  He shut off the water, wiped his hand on his shirt and carried the glass into the living room. He set it on the coffee table in front of her, then took the seat adjacent to the couch.

  Lucy toyed with her fork, trying not to watch Beck too closely. She feared that if she did, it would spook him. And even though she wasn’t sure she wanted any company at all—not when her knee was throbbing so badly it made her feel ill and long for the pain pills that were in bedroom upstairs—she felt reluctant to do anything that would cause him to bolt.

  “Your dad’s a good cook.” She lifted a bite to her mouth again, feeling only a twinge of guilt for what was an unusual gluttony of carbohydrates.

  “Sometimes.” Beck’s lips twitched faintly, and Lucy realized that she had yet to see him actually smile. “But he’s always better than me, so we’re happy.”

  She reached forward to retrieve the water glass and instinctively knew the moment that his gaze shifted a little. It happened at the very same moment that she felt the lapel of her robe loosen and gape slightly as she leaned forward.

  She was no exhibitionist.

  So there was no reason for her to sit up more slowly than she should have. No reason at all.

  But that’s exactly what she did.

  She sat up slowly, tucking her loose hair behind her ear as she did so. She didn’t know how much she was revealing as the silk lapels tightened again against her chest, and that not-knowing was sending nearly as much warmth through her veins as his suddenly sharp gaze was.

  But once she was sitting upright once more, his gaze had moved circumspectly back to her face—or at least around her face, because his eyes didn’t meet hers. But her breath still felt strangely short, and the brush of her robe against her nude skin felt strangely erotic.

  She sipped the water, not entirely sure whether she welcomed the attraction or not.

  Until she knew whether her knee would fully heal or not, she was stuck in a holding pattern. Unable to move ahead and make a life that might be wholly different from everything she’d ever worked for. Unable to move back and regain control of the life that she’d had. Either dancing again if she was very, very lucky, or at worst, accepting that being NEBT’s ballet master was simply the next stage in her life as a dancer.

  Whether she appreciated her attraction to Beck or not, her blood was humming in her veins in a way it had not for a very long time—even before Lars’s defection—and her nipples were so tight they were nearly painful. The kind of painful that was only assuaged by a man’s touch.

  Beck’s touch.

  Her gaze had dropped to his long-fingered hands, and realizing it, she felt a flush bloom hotly across her face.

  She quickly lifted the water glass and drained it. “So, uh, how long have you lived in Weaver?”

  “Year and a half.”

  “Caleb said you’re an architect? From Denver?”

  He nodded once.

  Didn’t offer any elaboration. Didn’t make any attempt at all at conversation, for that matter.

  She wasn’t used to feeling tongue-tied or out of her element. She was usually comfortable around most people; could usually find something to talk about with anyone, whether they were reporters or ballet patrons or strangers on the street.

  She looked at Beck Ventura, who still wore a wedding ring despite the fact that he was widowed, who had chilly shadows deep inside his eyes, and all she had were questions that she didn’t feel comfortable asking and an attraction that she was fairly certain was returned. And even more unwanted on his part than it was on hers, judging by the expression on his
face.

  She wished she hadn’t finished off the water so quickly and moistened her lips. “So, what brought you from Denver to our little old town of Weaver?”

  A fresh shadow came and went in his eyes. He looked toward the doorway as if he wanted to get to it just as badly as she’d wanted to get to the pain pills that she hated being weak enough to need, before her knee had simply given out while she’d been climbing the stairs.

  “My wife was born here.” His answer was as abrupt as the way he suddenly pushed himself out of the chair. “I need to get home.” He didn’t look at her as he headed toward the door, only to stop halfway there. “Do you need anything?” The question was almost dripping with reluctance, but something about the way he waited told her that he wouldn’t go until he had an answer. An honest one.

  She thought about the bottle of pain pills that she’d been pretty darn intent on getting to earlier, when her regular dose of over-the-counter hadn’t done the job.

  “I’m fine,” she said quietly. Sincerely. Because she’d finally figured out what was behind that cold solemnness in his eyes.

  And what was a bum knee in comparison to a broken heart?

  Chapter Three

  Lucy knew that it wouldn’t be long after her arrival before the rest of the family began descending on her.

  For one thing, she might as well have announced she was back by megaphone while standing in the center of town considering that she’d stopped in to Colbys Bar & Grill the night that she’d arrived in town.

  There was one sure way to get gossip started in the town of Weaver, Wyoming, and that was to show your face in the most popular watering hole on Main Street.

  And even though she’d touched base with most of them on the telephone the morning before to assure them that she was fending for herself quite well at the Lazy-B, they soon started arriving.

  First came her grandparents bearing coffee and oversize sticky cinnamon rolls that they’d picked up at Ruby’s Café on their way through town from their home on the Double-C ranch.

  Gloria and Squire Clay technically weren’t Lucy’s grandparents. Gloria and Squire had been married for as long as Lucy could remember, but Squire had already raised five adult sons by that time, and Gloria had raised Belle and her twin sister, Nikki. And Belle was Lucy’s stepmother. But those kinds of distinctions had never mattered when it came to the family that her father had married into.