LOVE OF A RODEO MAN (MODERN DAY COWBOYS)

by Hutchinson, Bobby

  This time, she nudged Steamboat into a gentle trot, and by the time they reached the rambling upper meadow with its grove of willows clustered around a rushing stream, Sara felt that although she wasn’t quite Olympic riding material yet, at least she felt more at home on Steamboat than she would have thought possible a few hours earlier.

  Steamboat ambled over near the water, turned his head back and gave Sara a pained look that obviously indicated it might be nice if she got off and let a poor horse have a drink in peace.

  She slid to the ground, feeling as if her legs had turned to jelly.

  “Feel like a sandwich?” Mitch had dismounted as well, pulling from his saddlebag the carefully packaged bags of lunch Ruth had prepared and handing them to Sara.

  They ate sitting on the grass beside the creek, sharing the thermos of iced tea. Swallowing the last of a cheese-and-tomato sandwich prepared with Ruth’s homemade bread, Sara sighed deeply.

  “This is the first time since I started working for Doc Stone that I’ve managed to lose the feeling that the phone is about to ring any minute and I’ll have to leave,” she said. “This was such a good idea, Mitch.”

  He was a few feet away, sitting with his back against a stump, unwrapping the third package of sandwiches. He glanced over at her, humor sparkling in his eyes.

  “For a while there, I had my doubts about it,” he teased. “I figure Steamboat did, too, but with some practice, that horse’ll make a cowpoke out of you yet.”

  She wrinkled her nose at his teasing, and he studied her, sitting with her long legs folded under her and her shining hair wild and ruffled by the breeze. In spite of the hat, her nose was sunburned and a few freckles had sprouted. Tenderness welled inside of him.

  “I feel such a fool, not knowing how to ride,” she said.

  “Truth is, Sara,” he admitted gruffly, “you’re so good at your job, you sort of scare a guy. It was a relief to find out there’s some things you can’t do.”

  She had a way of looking at him, straight on, with none of the coyness some women affected, no false denials or phony modesty.

  “I imagine you’re just as good at your job as I am at mine.” She settled herself more comfortably. “Tell me what it’s like, being a rancher, Mitch. I see the problems ranchers have with their stock, but I don’t actually have much idea how you spend your days.”

  He gave her a long, unfathomable glance and then looked away from her, squinting out across the meadow to where, in the far distance, a small herd of cattle grazed.

  Rancher, she’d labeled him, and as always, it stuck in his throat. Well, wasn’t that what he was?

  Some deep rebellion inside of him still wanted to deny it. He still never thought of himself as a rancher. If he were asked what he was, he’d automatically say rodeo rider, wouldn’t he?

  How did a man make the transition, how did a man learn to live with the fact that he was sentenced to one sort of life when his body and soul still wanted to do something else? And increasingly often, he felt trapped. It made him angry, deep in his gut, that sense of unrest, and the anger made him ashamed.

  After all, he wasn’t a kid anymore, longing for excitement and travel. He’d had that, and he ought to be content now with this new life that fate had arranged for him. Trouble was, he wasn’t. Content.

  His glance went back to Sara, sitting motionless, watching him with those thoughtful gray eyes and waiting patiently for him to get around to answering her.

  Knowing her was making it a little easier, and also a little harder, maybe. The feelings she stirred in him weren’t the temporary ones he was used to feeling for women he’d met on the circuit.

  Sara was permanence, a house and kids and deep roots in one place. All the things he wasn’t sure yet that he wanted.

  Except that he knew he wanted Sara. He reached in the breast pocket of his shirt and drew out the package of cigarettes he kept there, noting how crumpled they were and remembering how she’d felt, helpless in his arms, crushed tight against his chest. His body surged at the memory, and he quickly shifted to a different position, expertly shaking one cigarette from the pack and extracting it smoothly with his lips. He found a match and lit it with a thumbnail, automatically cupping a hand around the blaze, drawing the smoke into his lungs and savoring it before he expelled it in a cloud the breeze drew up over their heads and away.

  “Describe the life of a rancher. Well, let’s see.” His gaze went back to the cattle, and he began awkwardly trying to tell her what ranching was like, drawing scanty word pictures for her, unaccustomed to describing things instead of simply doing them.

  “Ranchers used to be cattlemen, plain and simple,” he began slowly. “That’s changed now, because the market for beef has dropped, so ranchers like my father have to get into other stock, like those damned pigs, or maybe sheep.”

  Sara reached over to fill his cup with more iced tea, and he thought how soft her skin had felt to his lips back there on the trail. “Ranching’s one big gamble, I guess,” he went on. “A rancher’s entirely his own boss, and whether he makes it or not depends a lot on how well he knows his job. It’s not a thing a man learns in any school, it’s something you pick up by living the life, something a man teaches his sons over years and years. Pop used to put Bob and me on the saddle in front of him and take us out on cattle drives when we could barely walk.”

  Funny, he’d forgotten Wilson doing that until right now. It was hard to remember the old man being anything but cantankerous, the way he was mostly... but there had been a time when Mitch was a little boy that he figured his father was the next thing to God.

  “But you didn’t really want to be a rancher, did you?” Sara asked. “I remember you saying that your brother liked it, not you.”

  Mitch took another long drag on his cigarette and shrugged. “Guess a man can’t always spend his whole life doing just what he wants to do. Like Pop keeps saying, rodeo isn’t a lifelong profession, anyway. So sooner or later, I’d have had to come back here. A man has to work at something, and I’m not trained for brain surgery.”

  Her quick smile came and went. “Would you have come back, Mitch? Or would you have bought a small place of your own and started a stud farm, maybe?”

  She’d been listening when he spouted off to Bill Forgie, he remembered. And obviously, she’d filed away everything he’d said.

  It comforted and annoyed him both, that she understood how he felt and what his dreams were. He wasn’t used to sharing his thoughts with anyone.

  He shrugged noncommittally. “Might still do that someday. Not right now, of course. It takes all my time to keep up with the work around here. Today, for example. This is fun, having you with me, but I’d have had to ride up here whether you came along or not, whether or not it’s Sunday. Branding season’s coming up, and it’s important to know how many yearlings we’ve got, where they are, and what shape they’re in before we start rounding them up.”

  “So you have to know all the places they might be on your land,” she surmised, and Mitch smiled. “Not just where they are, but how much water there is, where it is, how long the vegetation in an area will sustain a cow, what other animals are around, maybe endangering your cattle. For instance—” he gestured with the hand holding his cigarette “—there’s a pack of coyotes hanging around here, you can see their signs all over the place. They won’t bother anything but a newborn or an animal that’s really sick, but a timber wolf would. A good rancher keeps a close eye on wildlife sign.”

  Sara questioned, and he patiently answered, describing the particular work each season brought for the rancher, the routine of fencing, haying, seeding, planting and harvest, along with the constant work the stock created.

  “It doesn’t sound as if you get much more time off than I manage to,” she sighed at last, and Mitch shook his head.

  “Nope, probably not. You got old Doc Stone to answer to, and I’ve got Pop. Ask me, one of ’em’s about as bad as the other.”

  �
��You don’t get along too well with your father?” Sara ventured.

  Mitch frowned. “The old man’s set in his ways, and I don’t always think his methods of doing things are any better than mine. We end up having a few words now and then.”

  That was the understatement of the year. Down and out shouting fits described the situation better, Mitch admitted to himself. The old man just had a way of worming under his skin, no matter what good intentions Mitch had each morning.

  “Maybe anger’s just his way of dealing with your brother’s death,” Sara suggested hesitantly. “I’ve heard my mom say that after my dad was killed in the mines, she was angry inside for a long time.”

  Mitch hadn’t thought about it that way. Maybe Sara was right, but it didn’t make Wilson any easier to be around, whatever the reason for his bad temper. And Mitch had no intention, either, of spending this precious afternoon with Sara analyzing his father.

  He reached out and grabbed her hands and tugged her to her feet. “C’mon, let’s take a walk along the creek.”

  Willows grew on either side of the rushing stream, and birds seemed to be everywhere, swooping and calling to one another. The wide Montana sky above them was cloudless, piercingly blue, and the air smelled freshly washed. Mitch clasped Sara’s hand in his own, leading the way down a faint trail that wandered along the water’s edge.

  “Bob and I used to come down here fishing when we were kids,” Mitch reminisced. “We hardly ever caught anything, but Mom always packed us a big lunch, and it felt like a holiday somehow.”

  “It feels that way today, too,” Sara said. “Like a holiday.”

  He slid an arm around her shoulders, nestling her against his side, feeling desire and contentment combine in a heady confusion of feeling. He wanted her, the most simple, direct way a man could want a woman, but there was much more to it than that.

  It amazed him that for the first time in his life, sexual desire was something he was willing to postpone temporarily. He wanted to know so much more about her than just how her body felt when his possessed it, although that urge was almost overwhelming; he desired her. But first, he wanted to understand the person inside that body, get to know the many different faces of Sara.

  For the first time, he was greedy not about sex, but about something much less tangible. He wanted to capture the essence of her mind, find out how and why she thought and felt as she did, learn the patterns of her habits and strengths, get to know the endearing fabric of her weaknesses.

  And he didn’t have a clue how to start.

  Seduction was one thing; getting her to confide in him was quite another.

  “Too bad I didn’t bring some fishing gear today, we could have tried our luck,” he commented after several silent moments. He peered down into the stream. “Did you and Frankie ever go fishing when you were kids?”

  Sara shook her head. “Growing up in a female household doesn’t do much for your fishing skills,” she said with a wry laugh. “We learned to sew, and Gram taught us how to cook, but we’re not great outdoors. Although I do remember once when Mom decided to take us camping, and we ended up scared out of our wits because Frankie was sure she heard a bear. We spent the night in the car with all the doors locked.”

  They traded stories of their childhood and growing-up years as they ambled along the winding path. An hour passed and felt like several minutes.

  At last the position of the sun overhead alerted Mitch to the work he had to do, and reluctantly, he turned them back in the direction of the horses. They mounted, and for another hour rode in what seemed a haphazard fashion over the surrounding meadows, locating cows with calves that had become separated from the main herds and urging them back with the group.

  Sara was becoming more familiar with riding and controlling her mount, and although she wasn’t a great help to Mitch, she felt she didn’t hold him back too much either.

  “Want a drink before we start back to the ranch?” Mitch called at last, and Sara gratefully climbed off Steamboat in a spot where the stream widened and poplars formed a shady grove. She knelt and scooped water into the cup Mitch unearthed from the lunch pack and drank, then filled it again and reached up to hand it to him.

  He watched her kneeling at his feet, naturally graceful, with her shining, tangled hair spilling out from under the soft-brimmed hat and her snug jeans outlining her curving thighs and buttocks, and all the tamped desire that had been building during the past hours seemed suddenly to ignite in a burning knot of fire in his body.

  Instead of taking the cup she proffered, he pulled her to her feet, spilling the water in the process. But neither of them noticed, because suddenly there was electricity between them, a keen awareness that had smoldered just under the surface all day.

  She came up slowly, already within the circle of his arms, and before she had time to wonder what would come next, his lips were on hers.

  There wasn’t any exploration this time or any holding back. The kiss was deep and drugging, conveying immediately the passionate wanting Mitch could no longer control, and with lips and open mouth and pillaging tongue, he conveyed that need.

  Sara’s lips were warm and eager under his. The restraint he’d practiced disappeared entirely as the sweetness of her mouth and the feel of her body against him roused every primitive urge.

  Her hat fell off, and without interrupting the kiss, he reached up an impatient hand and sent his own hat spinning after hers. She arched against him and he kissed her throat, the hollow under her jaw, the soft pulsing center at the base of her neck.

  “Mitch... oh, Mitch,” she breathed as his lips traveled back up her face, capturing her lips once again, and desire spilled like hot liquid through him. His hands cupped her breasts, and he felt the nipples harden.

  He groaned and wrapped his arms around her, molding her hips tightly against him, and his arms slid around her shoulders and under her knees. The next moment, she was lying full-length in the soft grass, and Mitch was beside her, holding her, pressing the entire length of his body against her in delicious rhythmic movements that matched the quickening thrusts of his tongue as he kissed her.

  “Mitch... Mitch, stop.”

  Her words finally penetrated the surging wave of desire he was riding. With an effort that seemed superhuman, he rolled away from her, panting hard, staring up into the blue heavens and waiting for the fire to die enough so he could think, or talk.

  Finally he rolled his head in the grass, facing her, and her gray troubled eyes met his.

  “I want you, Mitch,” she said. “I’m not teasing or playing games here.” She struggled to a sitting position, and after a moment, he did, too.

  “It’s just that making love is an awfully big commitment as far as I’m concerned. A two-way commitment. And I’m not sure I’m ready, or have enough time in my days for that right now.”

  She paused and drew her knees up, resting her arms on them, head down. “I’m not sure you do, either,” she finished.

  She sounded miserable, and Mitch reached out a hand and circled her wrist. “Sara, it’s okay. If you need time, that’s fine with me.” He caught her chin in his fingers and forced her to look at him, adding, “I know what you’re saying about commitment.”

  He swallowed, because the rest of what he had to tell her was difficult for him to put into words. “Sara, this thing between us. I want you to know that it’s not just...” He searched for a word, and the only one he could think of sounded biblical and dramatic, but he used it, anyway. “It’s not just lust with me. This scares the living hell out of me,” he finally blurted in a rush, “but I think I’m falling in love with you. I’m telling you because I can’t have you believing I’m just some fast-talking cowboy out to make it with you.”

  She sat motionless, staring at him. His fingers went from her chin to her hair, smoothing the tumbled curls tenderly, picking out bits of twigs and grass.

  Finally she nodded the slightest bit, and her words came out in a rush. “Mitch, I
know. I know what you’re saying, because I think the same thing is happening to me.”

  Her words sent joy surging through him, and he realized that he’d been holding his breath, waiting to see what she’d say.

  “So what do you think we should do about it?” His voice was concerned and puzzled, and she reached a hand out and touched his jaw.

  “Maybe just leave it alone for a while and see if it grows?” she suggested, and it felt as if the responsibility for the whole thing wasn’t his alone anymore; they could share the decisions that had to be made.

  She was wise, this Sara. Time was exactly what he needed to come to terms with his life. By saying no, she was saying yes to a future with him while refusing to rush into something that might endanger that future.

  She knew he needed time, and he was thankful for it.

  They rode home in the dizzying brightness of afternoon heat, not saying much, but soaking in the sounds of the horses’ hooves, the creaking of the leather saddles, the smells of the open range and the ripening hay.

  It was the same country they’d ridden across earlier that day, and yet to each of them, it felt strange and exceedingly new, like the vista that stretched between them back there by the stream. Love made everything look different somehow.

  Mitch was coming to Bitterroot for supper, but he had to take his own truck so he’d have a way home again.

  Ruth and Wilson were out when Sara and Mitch arrived at the Carter ranch house, so Sara helped Mitch unpack the picnic things. She’d forgotten to tell Ruth about the visit Adeline had planned for Thursday, so she scribbled a note and left it on the table, thanking Ruth for the hat as well and adding a teasing line to Wilson about the boots.

  “See you in an hour, Mitch?”

  Instead of answering, he gripped her shoulders, drew her into his arms for a quick kiss on the lips and another on the tip of her nose.

  “Drive carefully,” he growled. Sara did, and with every other mile a new obstacle to loving Mitch rose to haunt her, and with every in-between mile, a correspondingly delightful memory of the time they’d spent together made her lips curl upward into a smile.