“When you get him back in his stall, you and Smitty go herd those calves into the big corral.”
Tom stuck his head out the barn door, a wide grin on his dark face. “No kiddin’? You gonna do some cuttin’?”
“Thought I would.”
“Bingo or Duster?”
“Duster, I think. I’ll save Bingo for this afternoon.”
“Hot damn. Hey, Smitty! Saddle up. We got cattle to herd.”
“No kiddin’?”
Tyler gave a dry chuckle. He knew better than to let their sudden excitement over the prospect of his working Duster go to his head. It wasn’t his riding they looked forward to, but Duster’s cutting. And Duster was something to watch. Every bit as good as his multichampion sire.
Tyler strode through the bam and out into the back cor- ral. Duster snapped his head up and perked his ears.
“Hey there, big fella.”
In response, the blood bay stallion, one of Tyler’s two current competition horses, tossed his head up with a shake.
“Been a while since you went eyeball-to-eyeball with an ornery calf. Think you’re up to it?”
The horse snorted and pawed the ground.
“Well, come on then. Let’s do some work.”
Carly was folding laundry, thinking of Tyler, and miss- ing Amanda when she heard the commotion. Not that there wasn’t always something noisy going on outside, but this was different. She’d never heard the cattle so close to the house before, never heard such excitement in the men’s voices. Those small things were enough incentive to have her dropping Arthur’s underwear on the laundry table and rushing to the window over the sink to see what was going on.
In the big corral just west of the stallion barn, Tyler sat astride a horse. Sun gleamed off the animal’s sleek bronze hide. Ears, muzzle, mane, tail and lower legs were shiny black.
In the east corral, Tom and Smitty were herding in about a dozen bawling, wild-eyed young cattle. Willis manned the corral gate and prodded the cattle on through. Neal and Arthur were headed over from one of the sheds to see what was going on.
“Stir ’em up, boys,” she heard Tyler call. “Duster likes ’em feisty.”
Tom shouted something back that Carly couldn’t make out.
Curious, Carly made her way outside. By the time she arrived at the corral fence, Willis had closed the gate, shut- ting the cattle inside, and had come around to join her. A minute later, Arthur and Neal stood beside her, too.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Neal sidled up to her. “You ever see a cutting horse in action?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Then you must not have,” Willis said. Then, as if re- alizing he’d actually spoken to her, he blushed. “It’s, uh, not something you’d ever forget. Not one of Ty’s horses, anyway.”
This must be a big deal, indeed, to get painfully shy Willis to say that many words at once to her. Carly pursed her lips and turned to watch Tyler ride out of the other corral and into the one before her with Tom and Smitty, who’d ridden their horses in with the cattle. .
“Don’t worry about a thing, darling,” Neal said beside her. “I’ll explain it to you.”
Was it her imagination, or had Neal moved closer? She felt… crowded.
“Tyler’s gonna ride Duster into the herd and cut out one calf, separate it from the others. Then it’ll be Duster’s job to keep the calf from rejoining the herd. Tyler’s job is to move with the horse, keep his weight centered so’s not to throw Duster off balance. He might give a nudge now and then with his legs, but he can’t use the reins once Duster starts working.”
Carly wasn’t mistaken. As interested as she was in what Neal was saying, she couldn’t help but realize he had moved closer. So close that when he gestured, his arm brushed her shoulder.
“Ty’s real good at it. One of the best in the world. Me, though,” Neal said, leaning down to her ear, “I used to do the real dangerous stuff. I was a bull rider.”
Carly twitched at the feel of his hot moist breath on her ear. Scooting a step away, she ran up against Willis and apologized for bumping into him.
Willis blushed. “Tom and Smitty are in there to keep the cattle from getting away,” he offered. “Duster’s sup- posed to keep the calf from going back to the herd, but it’s not much of a contest if the calf just wanders off from the horse instead of trying to get past him.”
“Never seen a cutting horse, huh?” Arthur said with a disgusted drawl.
Carly stiffened. “And just where, on Nob Hill in the middle of San Francisco, would I see a cutting horse?”
“You ever get down to the Cow Palace?”
“A few times, but not for a rodeo.”
Arthur snorted. “Cutting ain’t done at a rodeo. It’s a show event.”
“Now, boss,” Neal said placatingly. “Don’t go pickin’ on the city girl just ’cause she doesn’t know about horses. I’d be glad to teach her all she wants to know.”
Neal’s slick voice sent prickles of disgust down her arms. She’d bet that in a former life, he sold snake oil from the back of a wagon.
“Don’t waste your time,” Arthur told Neal. “She’s not staying long enough to learn much of anything.”
“She also has ears, a voice and feelings,” Carly said tightly. “And she doesn’t appreciate being talked about as though she were a fence post.”
Arthur gave another short, then propped one boot on the bottom rail of the corral fence.
Neal may have said something else, but Carly tuned him out and watched Tyler cut one red, white-faced cow away from the others. The cow—or was it a calf? Carly wondered—gave a low bawl and started to go around the horse to rejoin the other cattle.
Then the action started.
For every move the cow made, the horse countered. They shuffled and two-stepped along an imaginary line, an ele- gant pas de deux of two superbly graceful athletes, as though some great choreographer had planned each step.
Muscles—bovine, equine and those oh, so human mus- cles along Tyler’s thighs and shoulders—bunched and stretched as the horse and cow stared each other down, matched each other move for move. It was as though the horse could read the cow’s mind and move with it, rather than merely react to its moves.
The cow was plainly agitated. The stallion, however, was a study in arrogant aggression yet playful concentration and grace. Carly had never seen such moves from a horse. One moment Duster would lean back on his haunches, scant inches away from sitting in the dirt, front legs out in front of him, one hoof dancing back and forth as if daring the cow to move.
Then the cow would dodge, and Duster was right there, step for step, dancing, prancing, crossing one foreleg over the other to keep nose to nose with the cow.
When the cow stopped, splayed its legs and stared, the horse matched it by crouching down like a cat ready to spring, or a puppy, forelegs almost flat on the ground, rear end in the air, ready for play. Duster swung his head back and forth, so low to the ground that his mane brushed the dirt.
“Hot damn, look at him,” Arthur said in a low, excited voice. “That horse is every bit as good as his sire.”
Carly knew from talk around the dinner table that Prancer, Tyler’s multichampion stud, was Duster’s sire. Most of the trophies in the house bore Prancer’s name, but Duster, along with Bingo, had been bringing in his fair share during the past couple of years.
Trying to decide which way to go, the cow swung its head back and forth. Duster shifted gracefully from side to side, head swinging, weight changing from one hoof to the other in time with the cow’s movements. Power. Precision. Keen intelligence in every motion the horse made.
And Tyler, anticipating Duster’s every move. He had to keep his weight centered over the horse’s shoulders so as not to throw the animal off balance during a quick maneu- ver.
Tyler made it look easy, as if he were only a passenger. One hand held the reins—loosely, Carly thought—down against the hor
se’s neck. The other hand rested on the sad- dle horn.
The cow suddenly made a mad dash toward the far side of the corral. Duster and Tyler shifted as one, running par- allel, the stallion keeping his head even with that of the cow every’ step of the way. At the fence, the cow decided she’d had enough and turned away from the horse and the herd.
Then Tyler started over, cutting another cow, this one a young black steer. Carly watched in awe as Tyler and Duster danced with one cow after another, step for step, rush for rush. Tyler’s concentration was total. He never took his eyes off the cow before them. Neither did the horse. They were a team. A hell of a team.
One by one the cattle gave up, Duster never letting a single one get past him. When the last one turned away, Tyler patted the horse’s sweaty neck and looked directly at Carly, as though he’d known exactly where she had been the entire time.
Sweat ran in rivulets down the sides of his face. The front and back of his shirt clung damply to the fluid muscles beneath. When his gaze met hers, intent, hot, piercing, Car- ly’s bream caught.
Then Neal’s voice rumbled low in her ear. “You spreadin’ that around, sweet thing, or is it all for the boss?”
Carly flinched at the crude suggestion.
Tyler swung down from Duster’s back and led the stal- lion toward her.
“It’s all right if you wanna share, Neal said, low enough to keep his voice from carrying.”Ty won’t mind, you know.”
Revulsion had her stomach rolling over. She shoved abruptly away from the corral fence and fled to the safety of the house, ignoring Tyler’s voice calling her name.
Chapter Eleven
Tyler followed Carly into the house, determined to know why she’d ignored his call. When she told him she hadn’t heard him, but that she thought she’d heard the phone ring, he let the matter drop. He was in too good a mood over Duster’s performance to go looking for trouble.
His good mood lasted until he stepped out of the shower a short time later and Carly reminded him of the time. “Shouldn’t you be going to pick up Amanda from school?” she added.
The reminder that Amanda was in school shocked him. He might never get used to the idea. Then, chagrined, he confessed, “She didn’t want me to pick her up. Made me promise she could ride the school bus home.”
Carly winced in sympathy. “I don’t have to ask how you felt about that.”
“Like I’ve had the rug yanked out from under me. But she agreed to let me meet the bus at the end of our road.” Checking his watch a final time, he went to do just that.
When his baby girl stepped off the school bus, she was all grins and flashing eyes. There was a new confidence in her step, in the set of her shoulders. School, it seemed, agreed with Amanda Barnett.
“Ah, hell Tyler slumped against the open back door. “It’s only been a week since she started school. I’m gonna die of old age before she turns seven.”
From behind him in the mudroom, Carly chuckled as the taillights of Cousin Frank’s station wagon disappeared down the driveway in the twilight. “You didn’t have to let her go spend the night with Frank and Bev and their girls. What’s the matter? Are you after a little sympathy again?”
With a narrow-eyed stare, Tyler turned into the house and closed the back door firmly behind him. “Are you teasing me?”
Swallowing a laugh, Carly backed through the mudroom into the kitchen, one hand out in front of her to ward him off. “I wouldn’t.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said, his voice growing deeper with every word. “This is not a good time to tease me.”
He was serious, she realized with a start. Very serious. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said, stepping into the kitchen after her, “that it’s Saturday night, the hands have all gone to town and won’t be back till tomorrow evening. Amanda’s gone to spend the night with her cousins. And Dad’s kicking up his heels at the Watering Hole and won’t be back for hours.”
Carly swallowed and took another step back, her play- fulness forgotten under his steady gaze. “Meaning?”
“Meaning—” he matched her step for step “—that for the first time since we met, you and I are totally, com- pletely, one hundred percent…alone. And I, for one, am very, very glad.”
The intensity of his gaze, the blue-green heat shimmering there, turned her knees weak. Dear God, he was going to kiss her. The minute he got his hands on her, he would take her mouth with his, and she would let him.
Suddenly she knew deep inside that tonight it wouldn’t stop with a kiss. She didn’t want it to.
Amanda was getting better every day, growing more open, laughing and happy. It was only a matter of time until she let go of her guilt and got her voice back. Then Carly’s job would be done. She would have no more excuse to stay on the Bar B. It would be back to San Francisco for her.
The very idea of leaving this sage-covered plain for Nob Hill, leaving Tyler and Amanda, and God help her, even cranky ol’ Arthur, left a yawning gap of emptiness inside her she feared would never heal.
She wanted this night, wanted Tyler. She would take and give all she could. Build up memories to see her through the loneliness lying in wait for her just around the corner of her life. If only she had the nerve.
“Alone?” she whispered.
Tyler tried to read her expression but couldn’t, and it scared him.
Amanda was getting better every day. She was happier, more playful than she’d been since the divorce. With the help of her cousins and Carly, she had weathered her first week of school like a little pro. The new light in her eyes glowed with a self-confidence she hadn’t shown in months. It seemed as though any day now, the rest of her guilt, whatever its cause, would slip away and she would start talking.
The kicker was, when Amanda talked, Carly would leave. She would hightail it out of Wyoming so fast it would take a week for her dust to settle.
Tyler clenched a fist at his side. Why should getting the most important thing in his life, the one thing he’d prayed for for months—Amanda’s recovery—cost him the one woman he wanted to get closer to, the woman he thought he might be falling in love with?
He wouldn’t accept it, dammit. Amanda would get well, he knew. The time was coming. But he wouldn’t accept that it had to cost him Carly.
Him, hell. Who was he kidding? Amanda herself was so damned attached to Carly she was bound to suffer when Carly left. Okay, then. There was no sense in Tyler and Amanda both getting their teeth kicked in. Carly would just have to stay, at least for a while. He would just have to see to it.
But first he had to get a rein on his emotions. He had to calm down. “Yeah, alone,” he finally answered. “Just you and me.” He had to take that look of caution out of her eyes. He improvised. “But the sympathy can wait. What I’d really like is your company while I check on the stock. How about it?”
Carly didn’t know what she’d been expecting… No, that wasn’t true. She knew exactly what she’d expected, and it hadn’t been an offer for an evening stroll through a couple of aromatic barns. Swallowing her disappointment, she of- fered him a smile. “I’d like that”
His answering smile warmed her. “Better get a jacket,” he warned. “The temperature’s already dropping.”
When she stepped out the back door with him a few minutes later, she hoped he didn’t notice that her cheeks were flushed from rushing. After all, she didn’t want him to think she was so eager to be with him that she’d taken the stairs two at a time, then stopped to brush her hair before flying back down.
With the exception of the bookkeeping and the brief out- door tour he’d given her on her first day at the ranch, Tyler had never offered to share details of his work with her. He’d never invited her to watch him work, nor asked for her company.
She didn’t count that she’d taken over feeding the chick- ens and gathering the eggs. That, as Arthur so politely pointed out, was, after all, merely women’s work, not ranching.
C
arly had picked up a lot of information and some actual knowledge of the ranch workings, however, from over- hearing the men’s conversations around the table. But it wasn’t the same as if Tyler had actually shared those things with her.
She took in a deep breath of the clean air already chilled now that the sun was down. The slight breeze carried a hint of sagebrush, dust and hay. God, but it smelled good.
The outdoor utility lights were already on, casting streaks of light and shadows across the dark buildings.
“What do you have to do?” she asked as they crossed the bare ground toward the stallion barn. “Can I help?”
He gave her a curious look. With one hand he straight- ened his hat; the other hand stayed in the pocket of his denim jacket. “I always got the impression you’d rather not have anything to do with the outdoor aspects of ranch life.”
Carly gaped at him in the gathering darkness.”Where’d you get an idea like that?”
He pulled open the barn door and shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess from the fact that except for a trip to the chicken yard now and then, you rarely ever stick your head out of the house.”
His tone was light, but Carly thought she detected an underlying tension in his words. She stood in the open doorway and blinked against the sudden brightness in the barn as Tyler flipped on the overhead lights. He stared at her with a mixture of curiosity and caution.
“I was never invited,” she explained. “I didn’t want to get in anyone’s way.”
The caution in his eyes faded as a slow smile spread across his face. “Ah, hell.” He swung an arm around her shoulders and started down the aisle between the long rows of stalls. “No bigger than you are, you couldn’t get in the way if you tried.”
As they strolled the aisle, Tyler eyed each horse they passed. Occasionally he stopped to scratch behind an inquisitive set of ears here, along a muzzle there, his voice soft and low, almost crooning. Carly wondered if he would use that same tone on a woman while making love.
Oh, good grief. Where the devil had that thought come from?
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