Nora

by Diana Palmer

  But he merely inclined his head, glancing around at her stacks of luggage. “Are you moving in?” he drawled.

  Her eyes widened. “These are the bare necessities,” she defended. “I must have my own things,” she added, being unaccustomed to such questioning by servants.

  He sighed loudly. “It’s a good thing I brought the buckboard. With the supplies I’ve already bought, this will sure run over the sides.”

  She turned her purse over in her slender hands and smothered a smile. “If it does, you could run alongside with the overflow on your head. Bearers do that in Africa on safari,” she said pleasantly. “I know because I myself have done it.”

  “You’ve run alongside a wagon with baggage on your head?” he asked outrageously.

  “Why…of course not!” she muttered. “I have been on safari! That was what I said!”

  He pursed his lips and stuck his hands on his hips to stare down at her ruffled expression. “On safari? A fragile little tenderfoot like you, in a rig like that?” He eyed her immaculate tailored suit and velvet hat with amusement. “Now I’ve heard everything.” He walked back the way he’d come, to a buckboard hitched to a fine-looking horse across the way from the depot.

  She stared after him with conflicting emotions. None of the men she’d known had ever been anything less than polite and protective. This man was unflappable, and he didn’t choose his words to pander to her femininity. She was torn between respect and rock-slinging fury. He had a fine conceit for such a filthy man.

  He hadn’t removed his hat or even tipped it in a gesture of respect. Nora was accustomed to men who did both, and kissed her hand in greeting in the European fashion.

  She was too censorious, she told herself. This was the West, and the poor man probably had never had the advantage of being taught social graces. She would have to think of him as she did the native bearers she’d spoken of, kind but uneducated folk whose lot it was to serve for their meager fare. She tried to picture him in a loincloth and had to smother another laugh.

  She waited patiently until her benefactor drove up in the heavily loaded wagon and tied the horse pulling it to a hitching post before he began to load her bags in with long-suffering patience.

  She hesitated at the side, thinking whimsically that she must be grateful that he didn’t suggest that she ride in the back with her luggage. She looked to him to help her up to the wide driver’s seat. It shouldn’t have surprised her that he was already seated, with the reins held impatiently in his lean hands.

  “You were in a hurry, I believe?” he asked patiently, and he pushed back his hat and fixed her with a look from the most unsettling eyes she’d ever seen. They were unexpectedly light in that dark face, a gray that was almost silver in color. They were as piercing as a knife blade, and just as unfathomable.

  “How fortunate that I have athletic abilities,” she said with smiling hauteur before she stepped up onto the hub of the wheel and daintily swung herself into the seat. Sadly, she overshot the seat and ended up in a tidy heap across the cowboy’s chaps. The smell was dizzying, although the feel of his hard, muscular thighs against her breasts made her heart run wild.

  Before she had time to be very shocked by the intimacy of the contact, he hefted her up with steely hands and put her firmly on the seat. “None of that, now,” he said with a stern look. “I know all about you wild city women, and I am not the sort of man to be toyed with, I’ll have you know.”

  She was embarrassed enough at her clumsiness, without being labeled a hussy. She pushed back her disheveled hat with a hand that, appallingly, smelled of the cowboy’s boots. Her hand must have brushed the cuffs of his jeans.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she burst out, digging furiously for a handkerchief, with which she tried to wipe away the vile smell. “I shall smell like a barn!”

  He gave her a narrow glare and snapped the reins to set the horse in motion. He grinned then, and accentuated his West Texas drawl for her benefit. He might as well, he decided, live down to her image of him. “What do you expect of a man who works with his hands and his back?” he asked her pleasantly. “It’s the best kind of life, I tell you, living out here in the open. A cowboy doesn’t have to bathe more than once a month or dress up fancy and practice parlor manners. He’s free and independent, just him and his horse under a wide Western sky; free to carouse with loose women and get drunk every weekend! How I love the free life!” he said fervently.

  All Nora’s illusions about cowboys took a fast turn. She was still scrubbing at her hand when they were on the rough road out of town, having decided that her beautiful gray kid leather gloves might have to be thrown away. The smell would never come out.

  It had rained earlier in the week, and there were deep ruts in the road that made the ride on the board seat uncomfortable. “You don’t talk much, do you?” he probed. “Eastern women are supposed to be real smart, I’ve heard,” he added, doing his rustic rube imitation to the hilt.

  Nora, oblivious, didn’t realize that she was being taken for a ride in more ways than one. “If I were intelligent,” she said indignantly, glaring at him, “I would never have left Virginia!” She scrubbed furiously at another stain, on the hem of her long skirt. “Oh, dear, what will Aunt Helen think!”

  He gave her a slow, wicked grin. “Well, perhaps she’ll think that you and I have been spooning on the way home.”

  Her expression even through the veil would have sent a lesser man off the wagon and running. “Spooning? With you? Sir, I had sooner kiss a…a…coal miner! No, I take that back, a coal miner would not smell so foul. I should sooner kiss a buzzard!”

  He dashed the reins gently against the horse’s flank when it slowed under a shady mesquite tree, and he chuckled. “Buzzards are worth their keep out here. They clean up the rotting carcasses so that the world smells sweet for you dainty little socialites.”

  That was obviously a bit of sarcasm at her expense. She glared at him, but it bounced off.

  “You are very forward for a hired man,” she said indignantly.

  He didn’t reply. She had a nasty way of sounding two steps above him socially, as if to remind him that he was a lowly servant, she a lady. He could have laughed out loud at the irony of it.

  Having given up on removing the foul stench from her hand, she fanned herself with a colorful cardboard fan obtained from the porter on the train. It was the last week in August and unbearably hot. It must be from the gulf breezes that danced up from the nearby coast, she thought, wondering at the smothering intensity of it. Back East, one would expect furious storms when confronted with this sort of heat. Just the year before, there had been a hurricane on the eastern coast, one that had taken the life of a cousin. She had nightmares about high water that remained with her even now.

  She was almost overcome by the smothering humidity. The corset she was wearing under her long skirt and long-sleeved jacket was robbing her of breath.

  Not that her companion looked much cooler, she had to admit. His thin shirt was soaked in front, and she was surprised that her eyes were drawn to the vividly outlined hard muscles of his arms and his hair-roughened chest. She had seen men of other races without shirts, but she had never seen any gentleman in a similar condition. This man was no gentleman, though. It was incomprehensible that a common laborer should stir senses that she had always kept impervious to any sort of physical attraction. Why, he made her nervous! And the slender hands holding the wooden handle of the neat fan, with its colorful representation of the Last Supper on one side and an advertisement for a funeral home on the other, were actually trembling.

  “You work for my uncle Chester, do you not?” she asked, trying to make conversation.

  “Yep.”

  She waited, but the one word was all the response he gave.

  “What do you do?” she added, thinking that he might work in some more skilled job than just punching cattle.

  His head turned slowly. Under the shadow of the wide-brimmed hat, hi
s silver eyes glittered like diamonds. “I’m a cowboy, of course. I work cattle. You might have noticed that my boots are full of…” He enunciated the slang word that described the caked substance on his boots. He said it with deliberate intent. To add insult to the word, he grinned.

  The reply made her face red. She should hit him, but she wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to do what he obviously expected her to do and rage at his lack of decency and delicacy. She only gave him her most vacant look and then made a slight movement of her shoulders in dismissal and turned her attention to the fall landscape as if nothing had been said at all.

  Having traveled through West Texas once, even without stopping, she was aware of the differences in climate and vegetation from one side of Texas to the other. There were no cacti and desert here. The trees were magnolias and dogwoods and pines; the grass was still green despite the lateness of the year, and high where cattle grazed behind long white fences and gray-posted barbed-wire fences. The horizon seemed to sit right on the ground in the distance, as there were no hills or mountains at all. The haze of heat could be seen rising from the ponds, or tanks, where cattle drank. There were two rivers that ran parallel to the Tremayne ranch, her aunt had written, which might explain that lush landscape.

  “It is very beautiful here,” she remarked absently. “So much more beautiful than the other side of the state.”

  He gave her a sharp glance. “You easterners,” he scoffed. “You think a thing has to be green to be pretty.”

  “Of course it does,” she replied simply, staring at his profile. “How can a desert be pretty?”

  His head turned and he studied her with narrow eyes. “Well, a hothouse petunia like you might find it hard going, for sure.”

  She gave him a hard stare. “I am not a hothouse plant. I have hunted lions and tigers in Africa,” she embroidered on her one-day safari, “and—”

  “And one night on the Texas desert would be your undoing,” he interrupted pleasantly. “A rattler would crawl into your bedroll with you, and that’s the last you’d be seen until winter.”

  She shuddered at just the thought of a rattlesnake. She had read about the vile creatures in Mr. Beadle’s novel series.

  He saw her reaction, although she belatedly tried to hide it. He threw back his head and roared. “And you hunted lions?” he asked outrageously, laughing harder.

  She made a harsh sound under her breath. “You nasty-smelling brute!”

  “Well, while we’re on the subject of smells,” he said, leaning toward her to take a breath and then making a terrible face, “you smell like sunned polecat yourself.”

  “Only because you refused to help me into the seat and I fell on your foul-smelling…” She gestured helplessly toward the wide leather chaps. “Those things!” She pointed at them, flustered.

  He leaned a little toward her, his eyes sparkling with humor. “Legs, darlin’,” he contributed. “They’re called legs.”

  “Those leather things!” she raged. “And I am not your darling!” she burst out, her poise deserting her as she flew off the seat.

  He chuckled. “Oh, you might wish you were, one day. I have some admirable qualities,” he added.

  “Let me out of this buggy! I’ll walk!” she raged.

  He shook his head. “Now, now, you’d get sore feet and I’d get fired, and we wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

  “Yes, we would!”

  He grinned at her red face and wide, furious eyes. They were like blue flames, and she had a pretty, soft mouth. He had to force his attention back to the road. “Your uncle couldn’t manage without me right now. Now, you sit easy, there, Miss Marlowe, and just let your blood cool. I’m a fine fellow once you get to know me.”

  “I have no intention of getting to know you!”

  “My, my, you do get riled easy, don’t you? And here I thought you rich ladies from back East were even-tempered.” He flipped the reins, increasing the horse’s speed gently.

  “The ones who were probably hadn’t met you yet!” she exploded.

  His head turned, and something twinkled in his silver-gray eyes before he glanced back toward the road with a tiny smile on his hard mouth.

  Nora didn’t see that smile, although she had the feeling that he was laughing at her under the enormously wide brim of his hat. He’d knocked her legs right out from under her, until she couldn’t even find a comeback. It was a new experience for her, and not one she enjoyed. No man had ever made her mad enough to yell like a fishwife. She was ashamed of her outburst. She settled into her seat and ignored him, pointedly, for the rest of the drive.

  THE RANCH HOUSE was long and flat, but it was white as sand and had a long, elegant front porch and a white picket fence around Aunt Helen’s beautiful mixed flower gardens. Aunt Helen was standing on the porch when the wagon pulled up at the walkway, looking so much like her mother that Nora felt immediately homesick.

  “Aunt Helen!” she exclaimed, laughing as she stepped onto the hub of the wagon wheel and stepped gingerly down out of the wagon unassisted, before the man beside her could display more of his bad manners by showing her aunt how he ignored common courtesy.

  She ran to the older woman and was hugged warmly. “Oh, it is good to see you again!” she enthused, her face animated and lovely as she pushed back the veil to reveal her exquisite complexion and bright, deep blue eyes.

  “Mr. Barton, it would have been courteous to have helped Nora from the wagon,” Aunt Helen told the man who bore her luggage to the porch.

  “Yes, ma’am, I meant to, but she lit out of it like a scalded chicken,” he said with outrageous courtesy, even tipping his hat to Helen, and he smiled charmingly as he waited for her to open the front door and direct him to the bedroom Nora would occupy. Beast! Nora thought. The word was in her eyes as he passed her, and his silver eyes registered it and twinkled with pure hellish amusement. She jerked her head around angrily.

  When he was out of sight, Helen grimaced. “He is Chester’s livestock foreman, and he is very knowledge able about cattle and business. But he has a rather unusual sense of humor. I’m sorry if he offended you.”

  “Who is he?” Nora asked reluctantly.

  “Callaway Barton,” she replied.

  “Who are his people, I meant?” Nora persisted.

  “We don’t know. We know his name, but we know very little about him. He works during the week and vanishes on weekends—that was in the contract he signed with Chester. We don’t pry into people’s lives out here,” she added gently. “He’s rather mysterious, but he’s not usually rude at all.”

  “He wasn’t rude,” Nora lied, brushing at the dust on her cheeks to camouflage their color.

  Helen smiled. “You would not have said so even if he was. You have breeding, my dear,” she said proudly. “It’s very evident that you come from blue bloods.”

  “So do you,” she was reminded. “You and Mother are descended from European royalty. We have royal cousins in England, one of whom I visit twice a year.”

  “Don’t remind Chester.” Helen laughed conspiratorially. “He comes from a laboring background, and mine sometimes embarrasses him.”

  Nora had to bite her tongue to keep back a blunt comment. She couldn’t imagine hiding any part of her own life to placate a man’s ego. But, then, Aunt Helen had been raised in a different era, by different rules. She had no right to judge or condemn from her modern status.

  “Shall we have tea and sandwiches?” Helen asked. “I’ll have Debbie bring refreshments to the living room after you’ve had a few minutes to freshen up.” Her nose wrinkled. “I must say, Nora, that is a very…odd scent you’re wearing.”

  Nora flushed. “I…fell against Mr. Barton getting into the wagon and brushed my hand against some of that…vile material on his…on those leather things he was wearing,” she faltered.

  “His chaps,” she said.

  “Oh. Yes. Chaps.”

  Helen chuckled. “Well, it is unavoidable that working
men get dirty. It will wash off.”

  “I do hope so,” Nora sighed.

  The tall cowboy came back down the hall, his burdens unloaded.

  Helen smiled at him. “Chester wanted to see you when you got back, Mr. Barton. He and Randy are working down by the old barn, trying to fix the windmill,” she added.

  “I’ll put up the wagon and join him as soon as possible. Good day, ma’am.” He tipped his hat courteously at Helen.

  He nodded politely at Nora, his eyes twinkling at her expression, and walked on toward the front door, his spurs jingling musically with every long, graceful step.

  Helen was watching him. “Most cowboys are clumsy on the ground,” she remarked, “probably because they spend so much time on horseback. But Mr. Barton is not clumsy, is he?”

  Nora watched, hoping that he’d trip over one of his spurs and knock himself out on the door facing. But he didn’t. She reached up and removed the hatpin that secured her wide hat. “Where is Melly?” she asked.

  Helen hesitated. “In town, visiting a girlfriend. She will be back this evening.”

  Nora was very puzzled as she changed her traveling clothes for a simple long skirt and white middy blouse and rewound her long chestnut braid around her head. Melly was only eighteen and she adored her older cousin. They were good friends. Why wasn’t Melly here to meet her?

  She joined Helen in the parlor, and while they sipped tea and ate homemade lemon cookies, she asked about Melly again.

  “She went riding with Meg Smith this afternoon, and I know she’ll be back soon. I might as well tell you the truth. She was in love with the man her best friend married, and she has been inconsolable. She couldn’t even refuse to be maid of honor at their wedding.”

  “Oh, I am so sorry!” Nora exclaimed. “How terrible for Melly!”

  “We pitied her, but it was fortunate that the man did not return her feelings. He had some admirable qualities, but he is not the sort we want to marry our daughter,” Aunt Helen said sadly. “Besides, Melly is sure to find someone more worthy to love. There are several bachelors who attend services with us every Sunday. Perhaps she might be encouraged to join a social group.”