All for a Cowboy

by Jeannie Watt

  “I didn’t want to leave,” she said when he finally focused on her, “until you knew that I was going. I didn’t want you to wonder what had happened.”

  Jordan collapsed down against the pillow without answering, staring up at the ceiling. Shae went over to the lone chair in the room where they stacked their clothes and he heard her pulling on her jeans. He closed his eyes, focused on his breathing, fighting back the sensation of deep loss. Incredible loss.

  He heard Shae walk to the doorway, pausing briefly as if waiting to see if he’d call her back. He didn’t and a few seconds later he heard her cross the living room.

  Was she also walking out of his life? His need to keep her there was suddenly stronger than his need to keep the aftereffects of the nightmares private.

  “Shae.” Her name came out on a hoarse whisper, spoken just as the front door opened, but she must have heard him. The door scraped shut and after a tense few seconds he heard her move. She was still there. Her footsteps sounded as she crossed back to the bedroom, where she paused in the doorway, waiting for him to make the next move.

  “If you want to stay...”

  She did. Her shirt fell to the floor as she walked back to the bed. Without a word she kicked off her jeans and slipped back into bed beside him, and when he put his arms around her, drawing her close against him, she let out a soft sigh.

  “Sorry,” he murmured in her ear.

  She took what was left of his left hand and pulled his arm around her more snugly, keeping tight hold as she whispered, “No worries.”

  The next morning Shae got up before him, just as the sun rose. She made coffee, fried a couple eggs and they ate breakfast on the porch as if it was a normal morning, even though they were both more than aware that it wasn’t.

  Jordan didn’t feel like talking. He never did the morning after. He preferred to be alone, to let the feeling that he’d been beat up during the night dissipate before rejoining the land of the living, but he couldn’t do that this morning. Shae was there and he felt uncomfortable now that they weren’t quietly holding one another in bed.

  Even though Shae didn’t push things, he wanted her to leave, to allow him his time alone.

  Instead she drank her coffee, stared out over the fields, a faint frown drawing her eyebrows together, as if debating how best to proceed. The air was thick with tension, with things unsaid, but Jordan couldn’t bring himself to do anything to make things better. It was exactly what he’d been afraid of—that once the light of day hit, he would withdraw, shut Shae out. It was as if he couldn’t help himself.

  When Ashley’s pickup came into sight, Shae got to her feet. “I’d better get out of here.” She gave him a quick smile, then on impulse leaned down and lightly kissed his lips. “Can’t help myself,” she said before picking up his plate and disappearing into the house. She slipped out the back door as she did when Ashley arrived earlier than expected and he imagined she was now making her way unseen to the bathhouse, where she and Ashley were making big plans.

  He reached down to stroke Clyde’s curly head, then pushed himself to his feet, determined to meet the day.

  He had horses to work.

  And he had stuff to figure out, as in what he was and was not capable of in a relationship.

  * * *

  JORDAN WAS HAVING difficulty again with the palomino, who continued to live up to her reputation as a Claiborne horse. She was the last in the rotation that day and it was all Shae could do not to go down to the round pen and watch the proceedings as the mare tested Jordan.

  Later that afternoon, after her alleged assistant had driven away, Shae did go to the round pen, where Jordan was standing with his arms on the rails, staring into space. Last night had been difficult, as had this morning. She’d wanted to break her promise, to force the comfort Jordan didn’t want onto him. To tell him that yeah, he probably felt as if the dreams were a weakness but they weren’t, so he should get over it, but she didn’t. For once in her life she’d managed to see beyond her own needs, which were to get Jordan back to a place where he felt comfortable so that she could be with him. He needed to handle this his own way. Last night had proven to her that she could live with that.

  And she could handle the aftermath, too, as long as he didn’t totally shut himself off from her—which he pretty much had that morning. She told herself she could live with it as long as he eventually came back. The question now was, would he? And was she forcing the issue, which she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do, by going to the round pen? A habit built over decades was not easily broken—even after one was aware of it.

  When she leaned on the rail next to him, Jordan sent her a glance edged with self-consciousness. “I’m kind of a son of a bitch the morning after,” he said, focusing once again on the horses he’d been watching.

  “So is the palomino,” she murmured.

  “Yeah. I’m going to have to tell Claiborne that she’s as good as she’s getting. She’s never going to be totally trustworthy.”

  Shae nodded, then shifted her gaze toward Jordan as he put a hand on the middle of her back. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I could ask the same thing.”

  “No,” he said honestly. “I’m all screwed up.”

  “Me, too.” It wasn’t the answer he was expecting. She could see it in his face. “But I think I’m improving and I can be patient while you do the same.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  One corner of her mouth lifted as she slowly nodded. “For right now I’m sure. I haven’t seen anything that’s a deal breaker.”

  “Even if I shut down? Afterward?”

  “I’ll just focus on myself,” she said with a touch of amusement. “I’m quite content doing that. I have years and years of practice.”

  His hand slipped around her waist and he pulled her against him.

  “I can live with the nightmares,” she said softly, leaning her head against his shoulder, “and the moods that follow as long as you don’t take it out on me. I can give you your space. And I think you’ll get better.”

  “If I don’t?” He hated feeling broken.

  She reached up to kiss the underside of his jaw. “If it gets worse, we’ll look at ways to deal with it. Just give us a chance.”

  * * *

  HE WAS ALL about chances, because he wasn’t ready to walk away from Shae. The one thing he wouldn’t do, though, was put her in a position of having to deal with him if he slipped back into the depths of depression.

  It struck him that night, as he lay holding her, that he hadn’t felt depressed since starting the trip home. Angry, vulnerable, frustrated, outraged, yes, but not depressed. So why the nightmares? Why the sense of being overwhelmed followed by the deep sense of loss that had started permeating his most recent dreams?

  He’d lost his fingers, the normal use of his arm. He’d lost his buddy. His military career, which he’d planned to leave anyway at the end of his current tour. And he’d lost his father.

  Who’d sold him out. But he hadn’t known that when the dreams had started again.

  “What happens,” he asked Shae softly, “when you’re furiously angry at someone you love, and you never have the chance to make things better?”

  “Maybe you have dreams about it,” she said slowly.

  His arm tightened around her. “Maybe.”

  Shae pushed up onto her elbow, brushing her hair away from her face. “How would you know if that’s it?”

  “I don’t think there’s any way to know for sure, but it’s something to think about. I don’t know if I ever grieved for my father. It all happened so fast. He died within days of my being hurt. And now I’m so damned mad at him for putting me in this position.”

  Shae settled back beside him, draping an arm over his chest. “That is something to
think about.”

  * * *

  ASHLEY SEEMED TO be arriving earlier and earlier—almost as if she suspected she could catch Shae coming out of Jordan’s house. Well, so what if she did? Shae could have any number of reasons to be in there. But being there at 6:00 a.m. might be tricky to explain.

  Ashley rolled in at six forty-five, earlier than ever, but Shae was already in the bunkhouse, dressing, and Jordan was in the north pasture, catching one of the fillies.

  “I spoke to Miranda about Mr. Bryan’s horses,” Ashley said shortly after they’d started work for the day. “She says that she has no problem with him having horses, but they can’t be dangerous. Not like the one he was riding the other day.”

  “She has to approve his horses?” Shae said on an amused note, but inwardly she was starting a slow burn. Miranda was now going to make certain that Jordan couldn’t earn a living in the way he wanted. If he had to get a job elsewhere, it’d have to be on a neighboring ranch, which would pay next to nothing. Either that or he could drive to Missoula, maybe get on with a government office.

  A government office had almost been his undoing. He’d talked to her more than once about slowly dying, doing mindless work alone in his cubicle.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Ashley said. “And the pig has to go, too, unless she’s penned and stays off the leased land. No nuisance animals.”

  “I like her,” Shae said.

  “And that’s not all you like, is it?”

  Shae shot a sharp glance in Ashley’s direction, but the girl refused to look her way.

  Don’t ask...don’t take the bait.

  Somehow Shae kept her mouth shut, didn’t ask the question Ashley obviously wanted her to ask, saying instead, “When is the electrical contractor supposed to get here?”

  “Early afternoon.”

  “Do you want to wait for the estimate, or get it tomorrow?”

  “I’ll wait,” Ashley said with a touch of smugness.

  “So when this is all said and done,” Shae said casually, “do you plan on taking over operations here?”

  Ashley didn’t bat an eyelash at the candid question. “I have my studies to consider, but I hope to work closely developing this project.”

  “And what if I want the same thing?”

  “I don’t see that happening.”

  “Why?” Shae asked as a chill went through her at Ashley’s confident tone. She’d realized she was getting sideways with Miranda, but had hoped that she’d played the game well enough since Ashley had arrived to redeem herself.

  “Because you’re sleeping with Jordan.”

  The chill turned into a freezing sensation that crept up Shae’s spine, but she forced herself to impassively meet Ashley’s superior gaze. “What makes you so confident of that?” Shae finally asked. It wasn’t so much that she was afraid for her job anymore, but rather that if she stayed employed with Miranda she might be able to help mitigate the damages Jordan was going to have to contend with.

  “You’re not sleeping in the bunkhouse.” When Shae just stared at her, Ashley finally said on a note of disgust. “I’m not stupid, you know. It’s obvious there’s something going on between the two of you and when I first started working here, the cot in the bunkhouse was never made. The blankets were always a mess. During the past week, the bed’s been made and hasn’t been disturbed.”

  “How do you know?”

  Ashley smiled in a patently smug way. “I know,” was all she said.

  The electrician rolled in not long after that and Ashley went to meet him. Not caring one bit what Ashley thought, Shae marched down to the bunkhouse and went inside. Yes, her cot was neatly made and had stayed that way for many days as she’d shared Jordan’s bed.

  Shae blew out a breath and walked across the room. She might not have made up the cot after sleeping in it all that often since Ashley had started work there, but she had on occasion. How did the girl know that she wasn’t simply going through a tidiness kick?

  Reaching down, she pulled back the covers and then let out a low curse. There, lying in the middle of her bed on the sheet, was a nail from the bathhouse wall—no doubt exactly where Ashley had placed it many days ago. And the bitch had been checking daily—probably reporting back to Miranda.

  Shae dropped her chin, pressing her fingertips against her temples.

  Damage control. Think, damn it, think.

  And...she could come up with nothing. Did she protest that she’d been sleeping in her truck as before? Oh, yeah—that made perfect sense with a perfectly good cot in her room and no mice. Or that she’d been going back to Missoula at night? That wouldn’t wash, because Ashley got there so early. And she’d been leaving the truck parked next to the Subaru instead of by the bunkhouse, where she’d parked when she was sleeping in it.

  What really struck her, though, was the fact that she was more concerned about what effect losing her job and leaving the ranch would have on Jordan rather than on her career.

  After the electrician left, Shae walked with Ashley as far as her truck, getting a bit of grim satisfaction out of the fact that Ashley appeared slightly unnerved by Shae’s escort. She waited until Ashley opened the truck door to say, “You’ve been tattling to Miranda, haven’t you?”

  Ashley went red. “Excuse me?”

  “You know exactly what I mean.”

  The woman drew in a sharp breath through her nose. “It’s in Miranda’s best interest to know what’s going on.”

  “Your best interest, too.”

  “I won’t deny that,” she said stiffly, getting into the truck. “I’m loyal to my employer.”

  “Who helps pay your tuition?”

  Ashley pulled the door shut and started the truck. Shae stepped back to stand out of harm’s way as the woman put the truck in reverse, sensing that her days with Cedar Creek Enterprises were numbered by more than just the end of her contract.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE FRONT DOOR banged open and Shae marched across the living room into the kitchen, stopping a few feet away from the table where Jordan stood folding the laundry he’d done on his last trip to town. “Ashley knows we’re sleeping together.”

  “How?” he asked, putting down the T-shirt he’d been working on.

  “She put a nail in my bed—quite a few days ago, apparently—and then checked to see if it was still there.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Jordan said softly, impressed in spite of himself. He reached out to put a hand at her waist, his thumb smoothing over her lower ribs as he gently pulled her toward him. Shae took a half step forward, then stopped, her muscles taut beneath his palm. “What now?” he asked.

  “We wait,” she said. “Who knows how long that nail was in the bed? I haven’t slept there in a week, so Miranda has known for at least a couple days. She hasn’t done anything, so I’m not doing anything.”

  “I’m so damned sorry,” he said. He didn’t like Shae working for Miranda, but he didn’t want his ex-stepmother plotting against her, either. And just on general principle he hated the thought of Ashley outmaneuvering them.

  Shae smiled without humor. “I wish I had a clue as to how this is going to play out. I think my days of being able to run interference, as ineffective as if was, are over.”

  “They were over when Ashley showed up.”

  “I preferred to pretend they were not,” Shae said wearily.

  He pulled her closer and she tilted her face up before putting her hands around his neck, her fingers skimming over the scars as she pulled his mouth down to hers. It didn’t take long for the kiss to deepen, to shift from consolation to heat.

  “I hate waiting and wondering,” she murmured against his mouth. “I’m the world’s worst waiter.”

  “I can try to distract you.”

/>   She smiled. “I’d like that.”

  The distraction worked well for the next hour, but after that Shae disappeared down to the bunkhouse, leaving Jordan to wonder what he could do to make matters better.

  Nothing. Shae had to work out her issues, just as he had to work out his. But he was finding that having company along the way wasn’t a bad thing. He hoped Shae felt the same.

  * * *

  THREE DAYS PASSED, during which time Shae left the nail in the bed, right where Miranda’s henchwoman had put it. She wished she could have come up with a way to replace it with something nasty, like a snake, but took the high road. Besides, she couldn’t figure out how to keep the snake in the bed and she didn’t want a snake in her headquarters, so that option was out.

  She and Jordan debated about tactics while they waited for the other shoe to drop. Should she continue working until the end of her contract, knowing full well that Miranda would renege on her promise to reinstate Shae to her old job now that she knew she was sleeping with Jordan?

  She already planned to send new résumés out, but was concerned about references. Mel was the only person she could count on and if Miranda decided to blackball Shae...

  “Why am I saying if she decides to blackball me?” Shae asked Jordan as they sat on the porch steps, she on the step below his, drinking Bud Light and watching the sunset. “She’s definitely going to do me some harm if I’m consorting with the enemy.”

  “Maybe you can convince her you’re only using me for sex.” He draped a hand over her shoulder, his fingers brushing lightly over her breast.

  “It’s more than sex,” Shae said as she leaned back against his thigh.

  “Yeah?” he asked softly.

  She tilted her head back to look up at him. “You’re also my sounding board.”