The Cowboy Meets His Match

by Meagan Mckinney

  “We got a word out here for people like them,” he commented. “They’re secondhand, both of them. It’s not the number of lovers you’ve had that makes you secondhand. It’s whether or not you treat ’em cheap.”

  She thought she detected a tone of accusation in his last remark. Did “people like them” include her?

  She stared at him and thought hard about what she should say next.

  He preempted her, calling her attention to all the runoff streamlets gathering force all around them.

  “Best hurry,” he snapped, seeming glad to change the subject. “The lower we go, the more meltwater we face.”

  Clearly, their intimacy the night before had changed his manner toward her. While not exactly courtly or even solicitous, he was civil and considerate toward her now. A vast improvement over his former surliness and indifference.

  But the changes were not just in his manner. In truth she saw him in a different light from last Monday in Hazel’s parlor.

  Though she hadn’t intended to sleep with him, it was not merely lust that motivated her. For one thing, letting that angry bear actually claw him when he could have killed it had proved to her he had a tender side. And his confessions about his parents still clutched at her heart. He clearly had been left with a deep-rooted fear of loss he’d never been able to shake. A guy like that would be way more comfortable going from woman to woman than pledging his troth to one and risking all.

  As they made their way down the slopes, she began to wonder about what was to become of them. She wondered and then froze inside.

  Last night was probably going to turn out to be just like all the rest of his sexual escapades. Short and meaningless. She would bump into him in town in a few months or a year, and he would look at her like a stranger.

  He would tip his hat to her, then walk away.

  And she would watch him go, forcing herself to remain cold inside. Keeping the permafrost intact.

  And then maybe, instead of thinking of the night she clawed his back as if grabbing back her hope, she would go to the liquor store and order up a case of cognac.

  Sixteen

  “I started out in high school as a rodeo clown out in Red Lodge,” A.J. explained in answer to Jacquelyn’s persistent queries about his story. “’Cept I learned quick there ain’t much clowning about it. Their main job is to distract killer bulls and outlaw broncs from attacking a downed rider. Figured long as I had the danger, I might as well get the glory, too. So I started competing.”

  Now and then afternoon sunlight glinted off his nickel-studded belt. They rode back among the trees now, following McCallum’s Trace through a stand of birch and scrubby jack pine.

  “I’ve ridden hurricane decks from El Paso to Calgary,” he added, using a favorite cowboy term for bucking broncos. “The rodeo at Red Lodge is still my favorite.”

  Trouble clouded his eyes, and he knew he was thinking about his last injury. She wished she could say something to reassure him. But in truth her own glum mood precluded such sympathy.

  It had finally sunk through to her that she had completely misjudged this man. In fact, he was just the kind of man she would want, if she honestly consulted the ideals in her heart. He was strong, decent, capable of deep passion and rock-solid commitment. He was everything she suspected Joe was not.

  With a man like A. J. Clayburn to judge other men by, she suddenly found a well of pity inside her for Gina. Her friend would get backhanded by Joe’s shallowness one day, just as Jacquelyn had.

  She swallowed the thick lump of unshed tears in her throat. If the trip had proved anything to her, it was that she was well rid of Joe. It also had managed to dangle something much more tempting in front of her, but the brass ring was too far for her reach. She and A. J. Clayburn were like day and night. He probably did have that harem of fans waiting for him back in Mystery, and she would do well to keep it in mind. There was no point in getting attached and watch her dreams tumble like an avalanche. Their lovemaking along McCallum’s Trace was like her being atop a bucking bronc: momentous to her, another day’s ride to him.

  With every passing hour of their descent into Mystery Valley, she grew more and more quiet. With every hill her heart tightened with the dread of rejection.

  He seemed distant, as well. As if he were still trying to figure out, as was she, what the hell happened between them up in that cabin.

  “Heads-up, news hawk!” he called out late in the afternoon. “Don’t you want to mention that into your tape recorder?”

  He pointed across a rocky marsh, and her attention followed the end of his finger. The scant remains of a settler’s cabin were heaped in a little clearing. But he was pointing out the hand-painted sign nailed to a pine tree out front. The whitewash letters were still faintly readable: TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT AT AND IF MISSED WILL BE PROSECUTED!!!

  “Old Dad Gillycuddy used to pan for color up here,” he informed her. “Never found gold, but he became one of Montana’s most famous hermits. He referred to any settlement bigger than fifty people as ‘syphillization.”’

  “Thanks for speaking loudly,” she said, showing him her recorder. “I got all that you said. This Dad sounds like a real friendly guy.”

  “Oh, ’bout like you,” he suggested, starting his horse forward again. “Took what he wanted on his own terms.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, not sure if she wanted to know.

  “Which part confused you, college girl?” he called back. “It was a short sentence spoke in simple English. Hell, I’m just a dumb cowboy. How could I be confusing?”

  Whatever it meant, his implied insult only worsened her emotional isolation. By the time they’d pitched their final camp of the grueling expedition, her defensive cocoon was woven tight. On the surface, little had changed. But in the secret locket of her heart, there was only room for survival skills—and not the mountain kind.

  “Out West,” Jake had written in one of his letters home, “you’re just a face with a name. Nobody really cares about your history.” That was one reason why Jacquelyn had looked forward to escaping to Mystery this summer. But even way out in Montana, you brought your problems with you like bad habits.

  A.J.’s voice broke into her thoughts, ending a long silence beside their crackling fire.

  “We’re back home now…damn mosquitoes,” he mumbled, slapping his nape.

  She herself had been bitten several times in the past few minutes, but she was too despondent to notice the welts.

  He took a look at her face that was no doubt red with fresh bites. “Damn things are in swarming season. I’ll be right back.”

  He returned in about fifteen minutes carrying his coffee cup, now filled with plump berries.

  “These’ll keep the skeeters off if you rub the juice on your skin,” he explained. “Here…you have to squeeze it like this.”

  He took her left hand and extended her arm, rolling the sleeve up.

  “Just pinch the berry ’tween your thumb and finger, and keep the fat end next to your skin. Like that. Then just massage it in.”

  She stared at him as he worked the clear, sticky juice into her skin. His touch ignited a crackle of sexual response within her. She said nothing to him, she made no move, but her insides were slowly being consumed by flame.

  Forcing herself, she spoke simply to end the awkward pause. Awkward pauses could lead to trouble….

  “I guess this surprise storm made for big news around the state, huh? I can’t wait to see a newspaper.”

  “Couldn’t’ve been a total surprise,” he mentioned absently. “I saw it coming last Monday night.”

  He seemed to immediately realize his mistake. Even in the subdued firelight, he watched her stunned expression.

  “Monday night?” She repeated his own words like an astounded Inquisitor. “You knew before we left?”

  “I saw the potential,” he amended hastily.

  Sheer exasperation made her speechless.

 
Finally she demanded, “Did you plant the snake in my sleeping bag, too?”

  He gave her his direct stare.

  “Would you rate my performance as a lover so low,” he asked her quietly, “that I need to use tricks to get laid?”

  She felt herself grow cold in the darkness. Is that all it was for you, she wondered—getting laid? But instead she said, “I have plenty of complaints about you, A. J. Clayburn. But that is not one of them.”

  “’Preciate that much, at least,” he nearly snarled, his words cutting her like a dragoon’s blade.

  “Look,” she forced herself to say, each word an agony, “we’ve been through a lot here. At least at parting, couldn’t we try to be friends?”

  He stared at her, the expression in his gunmetal eyes frosting over. “Friends, huh? You mean, like maybe me giving you my phone number just in case you need a handyman—or maybe just someone to ride one night? God, woman, you are cold.”

  Giving her a derisive glance, he stood and retrieved his bedroll.

  His wounding talk had paralyzed her. She hadn’t expected the anger, the rejection quite so soon. But more so, she hadn’t expected his arrows to hone right in on her weakest, most vulnerable point.

  She watched him wrestle with his bedroll. Almost as if she was acting on another’s bravado, another’s will, she swallowed her fear and went to him.

  “I’m not cold,” she whispered, touching his thick arm where the muscle wrapped like bands of steel.

  He stopped what he was doing, straightened and looked her right in the eyes. “Not cold?” he taunted. “Prove it.”

  Trembling she placed her hands on either side of his face. She pulled him down to her, ignored the distrust in his gaze and kissed him, her tongue licking deep, hot and messy.

  He groaned. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he lifted her to him, pulling her off the ground. His own tongue penetrated her with a hard, wanting kiss, and she knew instantly she had to have him, if just for one more night.

  “I’m gonna regret this,” he mumbled as he scooped his bedroll off the ground and threw it inside the fly of her tent.

  “I don’t want you to,” she whispered before his mouth silenced her with another deep kiss.

  He pulled her into the tent, then ripped at her shirt. A small pink button popped off and rolled away. Neither of them seemed to care. If the night was growing chilly, Jacquelyn didn’t notice in the heat of their lovemaking. Before she could even fathom what they were doing, she was naked, lying on top of him while he cupped her buttocks and kissed her with all the passion in his cowboy soul.

  Unable to wait, she let him roll her to her back and enter her. His large hard body moving against her softness took the breath from her lungs. After only a few moments her hungry pleasure came hard, with him quickly following. But when they collapsed into the sleeping bags, she knew they had only taken the edge off their appetites. They had one last night. And there would be no more.

  With sunrise on Monday morning, Jacquelyn dismally rolled up the tent and broke camp. The silence betweem them was leaden. She cursed the fact they now had only a few hours of mostly easy riding remaining. Soon they would descend the final slope to the eastern edge of Mystery Valley. Soon they would part. And then, after that…she didn’t want to think about what would happen then.

  “Let’s go,” he said, bringing over Roman Nose fully tacked up. He gave her a long, moody stare before handing her the reins and swinging up onto his mount.

  She followed him, desperate to change the course of events. Before dawn, as they lay in each other’s arms exhausted and sated, she’d asked him if she was going to see him again. All she got was the uneasy laugh, then the questions.

  What? Are you gonna give up your city life and come rough it with me here in Montana? Another laugh.

  You with your fancy Beemer, and you’re gonna ride around with me in my old pickup?

  Are you willing to spend the next fifty years correctin’ my English while I tell you what an uppity woman you are? More laughter. Cold derisive laughter.

  Her answers to all the questions were always yes, but she never spoke them. She kept her yesses silent.

  Now hurt and confused, she only wondered when he would be ready to hear her answers. But that time could only come when he stopped pushing her away. He was guilty of all he’d accused her of. With his hard heart, more frozen than her own from the pain of that avalanche so long ago, she wondered if the time would ever come that he would offer to be scared and tell a woman he needed her.

  So for now she kept her thoughts on the trail and pushed away the tears that threatened to overflow at the slightest suggestion.

  Luck had been with them at quick-flowing Thompson’s Creek. Although snowmelt had already swollen the creek over its banks, they were just able to cross on a gravel-bar ford A.J. knew about. They were making fabulous time.

  She wished one of them would fall and break an arm.

  Well before noon they rounded a huge rock abutment. As if an image had just been flashed on a giant screen, Mystery Valley suddenly appeared before them in all its verdant, sun-shimmering glory.

  “Home at last,” she exclaimed quietly. It was practically her only comment since they’d risen.

  Even A.J., who’d had to have seen this panoramic vista often, seemed humbled into silence.

  Far below them, freshly rain-washed meadows gleamed in the sunshine. The town of Mystery was a tiny cluster of toy Monopoly buildings near the center of the valley. Hazel’s huge Lazy M spread was clearly visible west of town.

  “Let’s get to it, then,” he murmured darkly, pushing his mount onward.

  She followed, hardly able to believe they’d been gone just a few days and not a lifetime. She had been through so much. Now she had to sort it out, for right now none of it made much sense. Except that she had fulfilled Hazel’s strange request. She was changed forever.

  The ice princess was back with a vengeance. A frozen surface deflected what could not be safely absorbed—at least until, she reminded herself blackly, it finally shatters from the stress.

  Early Monday afternoon they arrived back in town. But a final surprise awaited them on the lower slopes just beyond the town limits. A herd of matching shiny pickup trucks, each pulling horse trailers awaited them in the parking lot where they’d left A.J.’s vehicle. Amazed at the strange gathering, she couldn’t help but speculate out loud.

  “Is there a horse show going on?’ she asked when she dismounted.

  An off-road Blazer, with the shield of the Colfax County Constable on the door, lumbered up to them. A silver-haired lawman wearing timber boots and a wide-brimmed hat waved a friendly hand at them. She recognized Bonnie Lofton’s husband, Ray.

  “Damn, A.J.!” he shouted to them. “You’re officially being rescued! Congratulations! We got every rider from Clayburn Ranch out looking for you, and here I’m the one who finds you in the parking lot. I’m a local hero now, son. Sure am!”

  A.J. laughed.

  Jacquelyn looked at the horse trailers all painted the same snow-white with the Clayburn logo painted on the sides as if to mimick a brand.

  “Clayburn Ranch?” she questioned. “But I thought you just helped out Cas Davis at his ranch—”

  He cut her off. “My old rodeo buddy Cas Davis use to sponsor me back in the early days when the corporate boys hadn’t noticed my riding yet. So I help him out on weekends. But I run a horse-breeding farm on our homestead with my two younger brothers. You ever heard of the annual Bucking Horse Sale in Miles City?”

  She nodded. Even tourists knew it was a huge exhibition and auction for rodeo-stock contractors. A lucrative business in Montana.

  “We sell a majority of the horses each year.” There was quiet pride in his voice. “Our own breeds, just for rodeo and show riding. The Clayburn brand is on more world-champion rodeo horses than any other.”

  She stared at him, absorbing this next facet of his character. So the granite-jawed cowboy was also a succe
ssful businessman.

  Looking around at the fifteen matching pickups and trailers, she almost laughed at A.J.’s old truck, sitting in the back of the parking lot. “And you really do just drive that old pickup because you like it,” she commented.

  He gave a curt nod. “So is that important after all?”

  She didn’t know how the silence damned her, but she was too caught up in her own jumble of thoughts to turn his around.

  A.J. turned to Ray, giving him a puzzle-headed grin. “So nobody’s working the ranch? They’re all up in the mountains looking for me? I’ll fire every one of ’em when they return. They know better’n that.”

  Ray just smiled and handed him yesterday’s edition of the area’s only daily newspaper, the Helena Sentinel. She walked Roman Nose over so she, too, could read the triple-deck headline above the fold on page one:

  RODEO CHAMP,

  JOURNALIST, LOST

  IN MOUNTAIN STORM

  She knew she had to have turned as pale as the snowy peaks above them.

  “Bonnie left it out of the Gazette,” he told her, as if offering consolation. “Looks like you two went out to get the news and became it.”

  A.J.’s glance searched out her evasive eyes. “Looks that way. Too bad nothing happened. Not one damn thing.”

  “Hell, A.J.,” Ray scoffed, playing up a bit to the rodeo champ. “None of us lawmen thought you were in any trouble. And the cowboys? Aww, man! They’re still joking about how you and—”

  Ray caught himself just in time. He looked at Jacquelyn and cleared his throat, embarrassed.

  Even A.J. winced a little. “Yeah, Ray,” he said, “I catch your drift. ’Nuff said.”

  Jacquelyn caught the drift, too. The ache inside her swelled. It was clear she was just going to be another filly in the A. J. Clayburn paddock. He was the way he was, and her ice princess heart wasn’t warm enough to change him no matter what they’d been through together.