The Rancher's Dance

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  Would he?

  Her breath felt strangled suddenly, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with Shelby’s grip.

  “I get to jump off the diving board at the swimming pool.” Shelby wasn’t finished with her case obviously. “And I swim better than even the big kids in swim class. Please?”

  Lucy could see the softening in his eyes even before his lips twisted. “Fine. But we’re going to do it together first.” He unlooped her hand from Lucy’s neck and his knuckles skimmed along her throat. The nerves in Lucy’s chilly skin suddenly went hot and, afraid he’d see, she quickly ducked under the water and swam off, popping back up a few feet away.

  But he was already swimming toward the shore with Shelby in tow, and when he gained a foothold, hung his giggling daughter under one arm off his hip and carried her out of the water and over to the boulder.

  Lucy watched, rapt, as he set Shelby upright and flipped her around to his back. She crossed her arms around his neck and he took the knotted rope in hand, his gaze clearly judging the sturdiness.

  “You’re going to fill this hole to overflowing if you don’t stop drooling.” Sarah swam up beside Lucy, her auburn hair looking like streamers of wet fire around her shoulders.

  “I’m not drooling,” she dismissed. Pretty much an utter lie.

  “Could have fooled me.” They watched Beck wrap his hands around the rope just above one of the big knots. “Admit it, Luce,” Sarah chided softly. “You’re not feeling neighborly at all.”

  Lucy made a face at her cousin but quickly looked back toward the boulder. “He’s a good man. And I just think it’s nice to see a dad with his daughter,” she assured. “He’s really quite terrific with her.” Then she laughed when Beck gave a leap, Shelby screeched and the pair soared over the water and dropped with a mighty splash.

  “So it appears. But you still can’t fool me, my dear.” Sarah leaned closer. “When’s the last time you thought about Lars?”

  Lucy’s chin dipped under water. She gave Sarah a quick look. “What?”

  “Me thinks you’re not suffering a broken heart over the jerk, but a longing one for the neighbor instead.”

  She opened her mouth to deny it, but the words wouldn’t come and Sarah gave her a sympathetic look. “Just be careful,” she murmured.

  “And not fall for a guy who isn’t over his wife?” Lucy pasted a grin on her face as Beck and Shelby swam by again toward the shore. Whether it was Shelby who was ready for another go at the rope swing or her father, it was hard to tell. Beck was still smiling and every time Lucy looked at that stretch of mobile lips, something inside her chest tightened. “Don’t worry,” she told Sarah as she started to follow them out of the hole. “I know how to take care of myself.”

  But even as she climbed out of the water, her gaze strayed back to Beck. There really was no point in worrying over how she felt about Beck.

  Because it was already too late.

  She’d already started on that long, long fall.

  The sun was well below the horizon when the group began to thin. After the food, the boys—Erik and Casey—had departed for finer pastures; namely Colbys where they could play pool and pick up girls. Courtney had left with them because she was on duty at the hospital. Then Leandra and Evan—who had arrived just when they’d started up the fire to cook the steaks and the foil-wrapped corn on the cob—departed with their brood. After them, it was Sarah and Max and their clan who eventually drifted away, also taking J.D. and Jake’s twin boys, who were spending the night there with Eli, as well as the tuckered out Tuck, who’d been sound asleep in his carrier for hours.

  Judging by the way Jake was hustling J.D. to their vehicle, Lucy knew what they would be up to the second they were alone without the kids, and couldn’t help grinning to herself when they quickly departed, too.

  She leaned back in the low folding beach chair she’d brought along and stretched her toes closer to the fire ring. The flames that had cooked the steaks to charred, juicy perfection had burned low and the wood was mostly glowing hot embers now, but the heat still felt good against the encroaching coolness of the evening. Replete with good food, hours of hot sunshine and cold swimming, she felt in no hurry at all to head back to the Lazy-B.

  Of course, that lack of hurry could well have had something to do with Beck because he was still there, too. Along with his daughter, who looked adorable wrapped in her father’s miles-too-large T-shirt as she chased around in the clover with Chloe trying to catch fireflies, and his father, who was quite obviously trying to catch something for himself, too—namely Jake’s aunt—who hadn’t made any effort to depart when her nephew and J.D. had.

  Lucy wasn’t the only one who noticed either. Mallory, who was sitting beside her in a similar-style chair, leaned close. “I always thought Susan stayed on in Weaver because of Jake and the twins, but watching her now, I’m thinking there was another reason, too.”

  Lucy smiled faintly and nodded. Her gaze kept straying to Beck, who was sitting across the fire ring from her. He wasn’t saying much. Not that she’d really expected him to.

  But he was still there…which she hadn’t really expected.

  The man was a continual surprise.

  “Look out. They’re on the move,” Mallory whispered, sounding amused. Lucy watched Susan begin gathering up her belongings while Stan worked his way around the moonlit swimming hole toward them. She saw him lean down close to Beck, talking softly.

  Beck grimaced and she heard him mutter, “Seriously?”

  Stan whispered again and in the glow of the firelight she could see Beck’s distinctly disgruntled expression. He looked across the fire ring at her. “D’you mind dropping me and Shelby off on your way back home?”

  She barely managed to hide her surprise. “Of course not.”

  He grimaced again at his father, then fumbled in the mess of towels sitting on the ground beside his chair. She saw him hand over his keys to his father.

  Within minutes, Stan and Susan were heading through the trees toward the vehicles, hand-in-hand.

  “Well, well, well,” Ryan murmured once they were gone. “Romance strikes again.”

  Mallory laughed softly. “I think it’s lovely.”

  So did Lucy. Beck, however, was noticeably silent.

  Fortunately, Chloe and Shelby trotted over then before his silence could become awkward. They were full of plans for Shelby to spend the night with Chloe, as long as they could talk their parents into it.

  “We’ll take her to church with us,” Mallory told Beck after agreeing, “and drop her off at your place afterward if it’s okay with you?”

  With his daughter clinging to one of his arms and Chloe clinging to the other, both passionately pleading for him to allow it, Beck felt as if he was losing all control.

  First his father.

  Now his daughter.

  He wanted to tell the lady doctor no just as badly as he’d wanted to tell his father no.

  But Stan was an adult. One with a life to lead, and—as he’d muttered in Beck’s ear only minutes earlier—unlike Beck, he was ready to start leading it again.

  Shelby, on the other hand, was Beck’s young child.

  His young child who wasn’t whispering to him anymore, and who was clearly coming out of her shell around these people.

  He looked across the fire pit.

  Lucy was swallowed in a sweater, her long bare legs sticking out from beneath toward the warmth of the fire. Her hair was a bedraggled mess around her face and in the dim light, her eyes looked like pools just as dark as the swimming hole behind them.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted a woman more.

  “Yeah,” he finally said gruffly. “You can go.”

  The little girls bounced up and down with more energy than any two beings should have after a day of sun and water.

  Ryan leaned over toward the fire pit and tossed a toothpick into the flames. “Mebbe we should have had ’em stay at your place,” he told Beck drily. �
�It’s going to take hours for them to wind down.” Then he pushed to his feet and Chloe bounced over to him. He swept her up into his arms, smacked her young cheek with a noisy kiss and tipped her back onto the ground. “You two gather up all your stuff, then, and we’ll hit it.”

  Looking pleased, Lucy got up, too, and moved over to the folding tables that were nearly empty now. She and Mallory finished packing away the leftovers in the few remaining ice chests. The little girls scampered around, giggling and picking up towels and toys. While Mallory and Ryan carried the ice chests to his truck, Beck went over to the tables. “These go, too, I assume?”

  “Nope.” Lucy turned and propped her backside on one of them. “They can stay. They’ll be used again more than once before the summer’s out and nobody’ll bother them here.” She swung her legs a few times and looked away.

  “Your knee looks like it’s working pretty well again.”

  She straightened the leg in question and pointed her bare foot. “One step forward, two steps back,” she murmured. “But yes. So far so good.”

  He very nearly wrapped his hand around that slender ankle and sharply arched foot. But just then Ryan and Mallory stepped out of the trees and called to the girls, and he shoved his itching palm into the back pocket of his shorts.

  “She’s not going to have any clean clothes,” he told them, feeling like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner.

  Mallory waved that off. “She can wear something of Chloe’s. And we have plenty of new toothbrushes on hand.” She patted Beck casually on the arm as she passed by him to retrieve her chair. “Don’t worry about a thing. We’ll take good care of her.” She grinned. “I am a doctor,” she reminded.

  Despite himself, Beck smiled a little. He caught up Shelby before she headed through the trees with her new-found friend and gave her a kiss. “Be good.”

  “I’m always good,” she said indignantly. “Dontchyou remember?”

  He smoothed his hand over her head. God, he loved this child. “I remember,” he assured.

  Mollified, she nodded. “Go on now,” she said as she headed toward the trees, hand-in-hand with Chloe. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Beck’s throat went tight. He nodded and watched his little girl leave. He watched until he heard the start of an engine and the roll of tires. And he watched some more until he heard nothing at all but the soft crackle of the burning wood in the fire pit and the steady chirp of crickets.

  “Well.” Lucy’s voice was soft. “I guess I should smother the firewood.”

  She was right. Douse the fire. Get the hell out of there and retreat to the safety of their own corners.

  But when she slid off the table and started for the fire, his hand seemed to shoot out of its own accord, catching her around her supple upper arm.

  His knuckles felt the soft knit of her sweater. And the even softer give of the breast beneath.

  “It’s not that late yet,” he said.

  She slowly looked from his hand on her arm up to his face. “No,” she agreed after a moment. “It’s not. Do you…want to stay?”

  He wanted. Period. He pulled his hand away from her arm and shoved both of his hands in his front pockets before he could do something else even more stupid. “Yeah, I want to stay.” Which was about the stupidest thing that he could have said.

  And he had no desire to retract the words.

  Particularly because all he had was desire.

  Her lashes dipped. “All right, then.” She pulled a bottle of water out of her bag and twisted off the cap as she headed toward her chair once more. Her sweater slipped off her bare shoulder as she sat down and stretched her toes toward the fire ring again.

  He dragged his eyes away from that curve of taut, smooth skin and went over to his own chair, well away from her.

  Only she tsked at that. “This is ridiculous,” she muttered and dragged her chair around to his side of the fire. She plopped back down on it. “I’m pretty sure I got rid of my cooties back in the fourth grade.”

  The grunt of laughter came out of nowhere. “I doubt anyone ever figured you had cooties. Even when you were in fourth grade.”

  She was smiling a little as she lifted the water bottle to her lips.

  “I, on the other hand, had ’em big time,” he said abruptly. He stared into the fire. “Harmony was the only one who was immune.”

  “How’d you meet?” Lucy’s soft voice seemed to glide over him like a whisper.

  “In high school. She’s the only girl I ever loved.”

  “You were lucky.” She shifted in her chair and the sweater slipped lower on her arm. “Well, obviously not the way you lost her, but I mean you were lucky to find someone to love. Really and truly love.”

  “Didn’t you love the cheating pig?”

  She started. “I don’t remember using that phrase with you.”

  “So? Isn’t that what he was?”

  She shook her head a little and sat back in her chair again. “Yes.” Then she sighed faintly. “And I thought I loved him at least. I told myself that someday we’d have more.”

  “More.” He thought about what J.D. had said. “Like marriage?”

  “And a family,” she admitted. “The normal things that most women want sooner or later, I guess. Even me.” She closed her sweater more tightly across her chest. “I was just fooling myself, though. Lars never wanted either one. The whole family and kids thing just isn’t his way. Never will be. I should have faced that before. And now…I realize he hurt my pride far more than he hurt anything else.”

  “And before him?”

  She shrugged. “Nobody serious enough to even remember really. I was too busy concentrating on my career.” Then she smiled rather impishly. “But way before him, I dated Evan for a while.”

  “Taggart?” He frowned. “Leandra’s husband?”

  “One and the same. I guess if anyone qualified as my first love—” she lifted her fingers in an air quote “—he’d be it. When I turned thirteen he was at the birthday party that Belle and my dad threw for me. Even though I was a total gimp with my leg torn up the way it was, we danced in the barn.” Her grin was quick and mischievous. “My tender heart swooned.”

  He tried to envision her and the vet together and couldn’t. “So what happened?”

  “Oh, we grew up, of course. We were friends and we were a habit through most of high school. But I was more interested in dancing than anything else. He was more interested in Leandra, though he didn’t have the guts to admit it until it was too late and she’d married his college roommate.”

  “Ouch.”

  “It took them a while and plenty of tragedy before they found their way to each other.” She picked up a stick and poked it at the embers, sending sparks shooting up into the sky. “They’ve been married only a handful of years now, but it’s hard to imagine either one of them with anyone but each other. They’re so obviously perfect for one another.”

  “I figured they’d been married for a long time.”

  She gave him a look over her temptingly bare shoulder. A small smile played around the corners of her lips. “Why?”

  He shrugged, feeling strangely foolish. “I don’t know. They…fit.”

  Her gaze softened. “Yes, they do. Nobody who was here today has been married all that long actually.” She looked back at the fire. “Or married at all,” she added, obviously referring to herself.

  “You’re young. You have plenty of time.”

  She gave a snort of laughter and tossed the stick into the fire. “I’m not young, and you don’t need to go around sounding like you’re as old as Moses.” She pushed to her feet and shrugged out of the sweater, letting it fall onto the seat. “Come on.”

  He eyed the hand she held out toward him. “Where?”

  She tilted her head toward the swimming hole. “Back in the water.”

  He shook his head. “You’re nuts. The water was cold.”

  “But it’ll feel warm now,” she assured. “Once
you get used to it.”

  He didn’t know why he stood up when he didn’t believe her for a second. The water had felt great when it was counteracting the hot sun. But there was no sun now.

  Only a fire’s ember glow, the moonlight and the occasional glint of a firefly.

  She was picking her way to the water’s edge, and as she moved, she unfastened her cutoffs. They slipped off and fell to the clover, leaving her in a bikini bottom that was just as brief as the top, and just as maddening to his senses. She stepped out of the denim around her feet and continued to the boulder where the rope hung. But instead of taking the rope to swing over the swimming hole, this time, she just dived off the rock, knifing cleanly, quietly into the water.

  Her head bobbed up a moment later. He could see the pale gleam of her wet head and her face. “Come in, Beck,” she called softly to him. “The water’s fine.”

  He doubted it, but he was burning from the inside out. So he went over to the same boulder. Did the same dive.

  When he came up, she was several feet away.

  “The water is not warm,” he said emphatically, and saw the gleam of her smile.

  “It will be,” she promised. “Some things just take a little time. Give it a few minutes. And then you’re not going to want to leave the water at all.” She turned onto her back and the red of her bikini gleamed dark and wet, in stark contrast to her skin that gleamed pale and wet.

  And inviting.

  He ran his wet hand down his face.

  “I used to love coming here at night when I was younger,” she mused softly.

  “Did you come here with Taggart?”

  She flipped over with a little splash and swam past him. Her smile flashed. “Would you be shocked if I said I did?”

  “Shocked?” He shook his head. “Jealous?” He shrugged ruefully. It was quite a step to admit that to himself, much less to her.

  She looked more surprised than he felt as she switched directions and swam past him the other way, as nimble as a fish. “As it happens, I did not.” Her voice was studiedly casual. “I told you. We were only friends.”

  “Anyone else, then?”