The Courting Cowboy

by Tara Janzen

  The very idea scared her senseless.

  * * *

  Ty had to get by without a second dance with Victoria Willoughby. There had been no helping it. The evening had gone on a downhill slide after the first dance, and he’d been unable to do anything except go along for the ride and pick up the pieces.

  For starters, Josie Brannerman had gotten sick, and the Gibson boy had gotten scraped up and bruised. Victoria had held the girl’s hand until the teenager’s mother had been able to get into town and take her home. Ty had sat the boy down, administered first aid, and explained to him that most girls weren’t impressed by how many bleacher seats a boy could jump. The feat impressed the hell out of other boys, but girls didn’t take much stock in bleacher-seat jumping.

  Then Victoria had caught one of the eighth-graders chewing tobacco and had given him a lecture while she’d marched him to the bathroom. She’d made Ty go in after him to make sure the boy rinsed out his mouth.

  Later Ty had followed a commotion out to the parking lot and chased off a group of high school boys, after checking to make sure they didn’t have any junior high school girls with them.

  To top things off, the sound system had died about three-quarters of the way through the dance. Ty had spent a good half hour fixing it, then listened in discouragement as it gave up the ghost a second time.

  And through it all ran the inevitable heartbreaks. Some girls were never asked to dance, some boys were never accepted as partners. New romances began. Old romances died messy deaths amid the confusion of adolescent emotions.

  The one positive note of the evening was an overnight invitation from Corey’s best friend. Ty had agreed without hesitation, then had spent the rest of the evening wondering if Corey had arranged the invitation so Ty could be alone with Miss Willoughby when he took her home, in case he got a signal. He appreciated the opportunity, but he liked to think he could manage such things on his own.

  When the time came, though, his gratitude far outweighed his concern. He brought his truck to a slow stop in her gravel driveway, shut off the ignition, and turned to face her.

  “Thanks for helping out with the dance,” he said, knocking his hat back on his head and draping one arm over the steering wheel. She’d been quiet on the short ride home. After all the noise and ruckus of the dance, he hadn’t blamed her, or missed the conversation. But he didn’t want the evening to end just yet. “We should be safe from Glen Frazer up until about Christmas. He’s usually looking for plenty of help around the holidays.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” she said, glancing at him from her side of the truck cab. A deep breath followed her statement, then she reached for the door. “And thanks for the dance—I mean the evening—and your help.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, watching her hand on the door latch and wondering whether he should reach for her or let her go. “The last time I chaperoned was with Ann Riverson, and she’s not nearly as pretty as you.”

  Victoria felt a blush warming her cheeks, not at all sure his words were complimentary. Ann Riverson put new meaning into the word “spinster,” and Victoria had often wondered if a few more years of her own would have her ending up looking as pinched and dried out as the Talbot English teacher.

  “Miss Riverson is a very good teacher,” she said in her colleague’s defense.

  “So are you,” he countered. “And you’re still pretty.”

  A definite compliment, she decided, her blush deepening.

  “Mr. Garrett,” she began.

  “Ty.”

  “Mr. Garrett.” She looked up and held his gaze. “It’s been a rather remarkable evening. I’ve never had one quite like it, and I—”

  “We could do it again,” he interrupted. “I would like to take you someplace where we didn’t have fifty kids to look after. Or, for that matter, fifty kids looking after us.” A grin broke across his face, filled with a teasing promise she didn’t dare acknowledge, because it brought to mind the same longing she’d felt with his kiss.

  “No, thank you,” she said quickly before she gave in to his smile and herself. “And thank you again.” She opened the door and made a move to leave, but he reached for her.

  The pressure of his hand on her arm was slight, barely there, but it was enough to freeze her into immobility.

  “I’d like to see you again,” Ty said, going for broke.

  “I’m sure we’ll see each other, Mr. Garrett. Talbot is quite small and—”

  “If it was the kiss, I could apologize.”

  Her crestfallen gaze flicked up to meet his. The moment passed almost instantly, but not before Ty received and analyzed the signal inherent in her dismay.

  “I wouldn’t want to,” he said quickly. “Apologize, that is, for kissing you. Not when it wasn’t my fault. And I liked it too much for you to apologize to me.”

  “I beg your pardon?” She stiffened under his hand.

  “I was more than ready to oblige when you asked me to kiss you,” he explained.

  “Asked?”

  “Asked.” His grin returned in full force.

  “Mr. Garrett, let me assure you, I never asked you to kiss me or anybody else. Not one word of such a request ever—”

  “You didn’t say it out loud.”

  “Of course I didn’t,” she said, thoroughly shocked.

  “But you were looking at my mouth, and the way you were looking made me think of kissing.”

  Her gaze inadvertently slipped down to his smile, and she remembered. His lips had been warm, his breath so soft blowing against her skin. “I—I can’t be held responsible for your imagination.”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  A guilty blush colored her cheeks. He moved closer, and she slowly lifted her gaze to meet his eyes.

  “No doubt about it, Miss Willoughby,” he drawled, leaning over her. “When you look at me like that, I get to thinking about kissing.”

  She could have slipped away and gotten out of the truck. He gave her plenty of time. She could have pushed him back, or she could have told him to refrain from whatever in the world he was thinking about doing this time.

  She did nothing.

  Curiosity was an academic virtue she endeavored to instill in her students, and she was powerfully curious about Ty Garrett’s kiss. His mouth came down on hers, easy and gentle, demanding nothing more than that he be allowed to touch her lips with his own. She granted him the favor of one chaste kiss. There could be no harm, she told herself, in a single kiss.

  No harm, at least, in a chaste kiss. But the first thing she learned was the inevitable tendency of a kiss to change. From one second to the next, the kiss was different from the way it had been before and, as she quickly realized, not the same as it was going to be. The soft stroke of his tongue across her lips surprised and alarmed her. It also sent a melting sweetness rippling down her body. She sighed without meaning to, and he deepened the kiss, taking advantage of her response.

  Suddenly Victoria’s imagination had nothing on reality. Ty ran his tongue over her teeth, then turned her tighter into his arms and softly plundered her mouth. Fascination warred with propriety—and fascination won.

  Comparisons between the kiss and any other she’d ever received were impossible. There were no similarities. Certainly none she could catalogue fast enough to keep up with the changes he kept instigating, except possibly the same edge of excitement she’d felt when he’d briefly kissed her by the potato chips. Except this time the excitement was sharper, more needy, and totally irresistible.

  He kissed with an intimacy that was astonishing, wet and hot, and more personal than anything she’d done with Charles. She pressed herself against the truck seat and clenched fistfuls of her dress. He had a power unlike any she’d ever felt, seductive in its intensity, with passion as its goal. She wanted him to kiss her forever.

  Ty thought forever might be what it would take for her to relax. Her mouth was sweetly compliant, soft, and submissive, but the rest of h
er body was as stiff as a board. He didn’t know whether to press her for more or back away. Not that he wasn’t thoroughly enamored of the status quo. Her mouth was sweet, shy, and tender, and every small response he got went simultaneously to his head and his groin.

  Kissing her brought him more pleasure than he’d expected, deep down and erotically enticing despite the hesitation in her every move. He began to remember just exactly what it was he’d been missing about women all this time. He began to think he wanted Miss Willoughby more than was reasonable or wise.

  He slanted his mouth across hers, hoping for a bit more of a reaction. When he got it, he made up his mind: Victoria Willoughby would be his.

  Victoria wouldn’t have believed anyone who told her the kiss could get even better, closer, hotter. But when he sealed his mouth over hers, cupped her face in his palm, and began a slow, thorough seduction of her mouth, she recognized the difference and his intent without a doubt clouding her judgment. Ty Garrett’s smile had made her think of sex for a very good reason. He was doing nothing less than making love to her with his kiss. Inviting mouth, indeed. Everything about his mouth was a blatant invitation to abandonment . . . sensual abandonment. Suddenly, beyond the pleasure and excitement, beyond the curiosity she was sure would never be satisfied when it came to him, she felt panic welling up inside her.

  Ty felt it too. She gave him a hundred signals in her quick retreat from the kiss. He slowly lifted his head and inhaled a deep, calming breath. But he didn’t relinquish his dominant position of leaning over her with her half in his arms.

  “I would like to take you out to dinner next Saturday night.” His voice was rough and soft at the same time.

  When she didn’t respond, except to look at him through her big round glasses with wide-eyed disbelief, he kissed her again carefully.

  “Please come with me, Victoria.” His mouth touched hers once more. “I don’t get the chance to get out very much, and it would mean a lot if you would have dinner with me.”

  He started to kiss her again, but Victoria was positive she was at her limit. Any more kisses and she refused to be responsible for herself.

  “Yes,” she said quickly, before he could get any closer. “An evening out would be lovely, I’m sure.”

  A slow, easy grin spread across his face just before he leaned down and kissed her one more time, literally kissing her senseless, she was sure. It was the only explanation she could come up with for her actions, and she’d be the first to admit it wasn’t very damned scientific.

  Five

  “Out of the frying pan and into the fire” was a quaint saying Victoria had never dreamed she would be using to describe a predicament of her own making. Yet that was exactly what she’d done by agreeing to go out on a real date with Ty Garrett—jumped right out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  She jerked her skirt around, trying it with the zipper in the back instead of on the side. Clothing was designed to fit a certain way, and there were supposed to be clues, like tags and darts. Her skirt had darts everywhere, and the tags were about halfway down a seam, giving her no clue whatsoever as to which panel was the back. She’d always worn the skirt however it happened to go on, but that wasn’t good enough for tonight. She wanted to get it right. Just once, please.

  Dissatisfied with what she saw in the mirror, she whipped the skirt completely around, trying the totally daring position of having the zipper in front. She stepped back, looked, and was glad no one else was in the room with her.

  She tried the left side. She tried the right side. She tried the back once more, all the while smoothing the skirt with her hands in the hopes she could get out the lumps.

  The material was beautiful and quite expensive, a foresty green with a nubby brown weft. Or maybe it was a warp. Regardless, the wool of her suit had come from only the finest sheep, been woven in the finest mills, and been sewn by the finest seamstresses for a Willoughby Victoria had never met, but who Charles had assured her felt beholden to send more clothes along for his wife. Victoria just needed to improve her posture to make the clothes fit.

  She straightened her shoulders, pulled in her stomach, and decided on keeping the zipper in the back. She just hoped a suit wasn’t too formal for a dinner date.

  * * *

  Ty had been ready for anything, or so he’d thought. When Victoria opened her door, though, he was seized by an urgent desire to do away with her clothes. To gather up some of the suit jacket and make it less huge, to somehow straighten the ill-fitting wrinkles out of her skirt, and, if possible, to change the muddy-green color of the outfit. The only nice thing about the suit was that it covered up most of an awful yellow blouse.

  She was so pretty. He didn’t understand how she could have ended up with nothing but big, ugly clothes. None of the women he knew had ever had the luxury of being clotheshorses, but even Lacey fussed around with herself until she achieved a flattering look.

  “Hi,” he said, smiling. The suit be damned, he was glad to see her. He’d thought about little else all week.

  “Come in. Please.” She opened the door wider and gestured for him to enter. “I’ll be only a minute. I just have to feed my cat.”

  It was a lie.

  Victoria had prepared herself for the moment of Ty Garrett’s arrival, but with it upon her, she found she needed either more preparation or more moments. So she asked him in, voiced her polite lie, and left him on his own while she beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen.

  There was a cat she could feed, but it most definitely wasn’t hers. The stray tom showed up when he pleased, did as he pleased, and was particularly pompous as he went about pleasing himself. In short, he was a familiar male presence, unlike the one standing in her living room, looking tall and dark, very masculine, undeniably handsome, and quintessentially western from the top of his black cowboy hat to the toes of his fancy leather boots.

  “Archie, kitty, kitty,” she called out the back door, shaking a milk carton for added incentive. Within seconds she was miraculously rewarded with a responsive yowl.

  A sleek orange and white feline streaked past her into the kitchen, giving her all the excuse she needed to dawdle until she was ready to face her date. She promised herself she wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself. She just wanted a chance to shore up her composure, a chance to calm herself, a chance to reclaim a mature perspective on the last time she’d seen him, up close and personal, after he had ravished her with his kiss.

  Ty moseyed around the living room, looking at photographs and books. She had a lot of both. The house itself belonged to the school district. Depending on the individual teaching contract, it was sometimes offered rent-free, or at a reduced rent. Sometimes the board threw in free propane. Ty had heard that they had offered Victoria the works, every benefit the district had or could dig up, and that they still felt like they’d gotten the bargain of the century.

  Looking at the framed degrees, certificates, and awards covering one of the living room walls, he agreed. He was impressed and a little taken aback by what all the flowing script had to say about the woman in the kitchen. She must have studied at half the universities in the world.

  He walked over to the desk beneath the living room window and let his gaze roam over the haphazardly arranged photographs: Victoria in front of the pyramids, with older men on either side of her; a much younger Victoria with a satchel, standing in front of an awesomely gothic building; Victoria on a barge, flanked by the same old men; a portrait of one of the men, a head and shoulders shot. Balding head and stooped shoulders.

  Ty picked up the picture, then turned when she entered the room. Their eyes met, but only for a second before her gaze shifted to his mouth. He grinned, and her startled gaze flew back to his eyes.

  She did wonderful things for his ego. Corey and Lacey could rest assured he had the situation firmly in hand.

  “It’s . . . uh, Charles,” she said, directing his attention back to the
photograph in his hand. “It was taken a few months before he died, for inclusion in the Willoughby Institute directory. We have a number of highly prominent people in the organization.”

  Her husband? Ty looked down at the photograph, noticing what he’d casually overlooked before, like the gray color of what little hair Charles had had left, the sallowness of his skin, a slackness around the man’s mouth, and the years—decades of them—etched into the lines of the man’s face and the weariness of his eyes.

  He didn’t know what to say. Fortunately she saved him the effort of finding something.

  “He was quite brilliant.”

  “Yeah.” Ty put the photograph back on the desk. “I think you mentioned that at Parents’ Night. He was a colleague of your father’s, wasn’t he? And your teacher?”

  “Yes. After my father died, Charles took me under his wing.” A small sigh escaped her. “He wasn’t at all well the last year or so. He died in Buenos Aires. We were doing research on pampean grasslands.”

  How exotic, Ty thought, and how incredibly old her husband had been for her. But Ty had figured out the mystery of her wardrobe. If he had been an old man married to a pretty young woman, he would have hidden her under a lot of brown, baggy clothes too.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been hard for you, being so far from home.” He’d finally found something correct to say.

  “Actually, I wasn’t any farther from home than usual. That wasn’t the hard part.”

  Ty was quickly getting in over his head, and with any other woman he would have backed off from the conversation. But he didn’t with Victoria. He didn’t know why she wanted to tell him about her husband’s death, but if she wanted to talk, he was willing to listen.

  “He had three children by a previous marriage,” she explained, stepping over to the desk and rearranging a few of the pictures. “They are all older than me by quite a bit.”