No Ordinary Cowboy

by Mary Sullivan

Without warning, Matt pulled her onto the dance floor again and her head spun. When she could finally look back to where Hank had stood, he was gone and Amy’s sense of loss was staggering.

  MATT PARKED the Jeep behind the stables, between the school bus and Amy’s Audi.

  A faint glow from the light on the side of the building filtered through tree limbs to barely illuminate Matt as he turned to Amy. His arm snaked across the back of her seat while his other hand settled on her waist, surprising her. He’d been surprising her with his too-fast moves since Hank and the children had left the dance.

  The beers she’d drunk—she’d lost count after the third—slowed her reaction. Her head felt muzzy. Weird word. She’d just made it up. Hank would like it.

  “Let’s do something about setting this stick of dynamite on fire,” Matt murmured.

  Before Amy could even think the word no, let alone say it, Matt’s lips were on hers. The man could kiss. He made a fine art of it, coaxing her mouth open with gentle, persuasive licks.

  He leaned into her, covering her with his muscular bulk and trailing kisses down her neck. Funny that they weren’t kindling a spark, let alone setting her on fire. Maybe it was the alcohol that made her feel so detached, like this was happening to someone else.

  His hand moved from her waist, easing up onto her blouse, to her breast.

  “You have great breasts,” he murmured.

  Breasts. No, not two. Only one. Before she could stop him, his hand was on her prosthesis, kneading it as expertly as he had her real breast.

  Like a startled deer, she was out of his arms, pushing him to his own side of the vehicle. Couldn’t he tell the difference between a real breast and a fake one? A bitter laugh caught in her throat.

  “Huh?” He shook his head, dazed, his eyes unfocused with arousal.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” She owed him an apology for not stopping him sooner. She wasn’t—had never been—a tease. “I’m truly sorry, but I can’t do this.”

  “Why not?” He tried to reach for her again. “You want to.”

  Yes, but not with you. With Hank.

  She pressed her hands against Matt’s chest, maintaining the distance. The poor guy looked puzzled. She didn’t blame him.

  Fumbling for the door handle, she said, “I have to go.”

  “Hey, wait. I don’t understand.”

  She leaned in after she fumbled her way out of the car. “Matt, you’re an attractive man. I can’t explain. Just believe me. It wouldn’t work.”

  “What wouldn’t work?” she heard him say as she walked away. He opened his door. “This isn’t a relationship. It’s just a little sex!”

  She started to run. That was the problem. Even if she could handle the relationship, the hellish embarrassment of the sex was beyond her. Even if she had the nerve to start something with Hank, she would always be confronted with this insurmountable truth. Her body was deeply flawed, and she didn’t have a clue how to tell him that.

  With a man like Matt, there was no touching and holding without sex. Right now, she desperately needed to be held. Only held.

  The tears stayed at bay until she entered the house, but tore out of her on the second floor, long before she made it to the safety of the attic. Sobs escaped—all the bitterness from Tony’s betrayal now released in a flood of misery. He had taken one look at her scar and had never touched her again. Six months later, he’d asked for a divorce.

  HANK COULDN’T UNDERSTAND why sleep eluded him until he heard Amy running past his bedroom door. He’d been waiting for her to come home. He’d wanted her home early, without Matt, so he could avoid imagining what she might be doing with the handsome cowboy.

  He sat up in bed when he heard the first sob. He stood when he heard the second one and was pulling on his pants before she made it up the attic stairs. Oh, boy. She must have heard about Cheryl losing one of those earrings. He’d better make it right with her.

  He found her facedown across her bed, crying like the world was coming to an end. He’d had a feeling the pearl was real. How the heck was he going to pay for it?

  “Aw, Amy, please don’t cry.”

  She rolled over and she blinked in the light from the small bedside lamp.

  “What—What are you doing here?” She swiped her sleeve across her face, leaving a long smear of mascara across her cheek and a black spot on her pretty blouse. He rarely saw her less than perfectly turned out, and here she was staining her shirt. Hank’s eyes nearly goggled out of his head when she wiped her nose with her sleeve. Wasn’t it only diamonds that women got emotional about?

  “I’m real sorry about the earring. Listen, can you stop crying? Please?” What was a man supposed to do with a weeping woman? He’d never figured that one out. He sat on the edge of the bed, let his hand linger on her shoulder.

  “Earring?” Her chest rose and fell as she hiccuped. “What?”

  “I’m sorry about Cheryl losing the earring. She fell asleep crying.”

  She started wailing again.

  “Brouhaha,” he mumbled. Oh, boy. What should he do?

  “Oh, poor Cheryl,” Amy said. “Tell her I don’t care about the earring.”

  She didn’t? Well, she sure was miserable about something. Amy hadn’t really struck him as the shallow type. So what was wrong?

  Matt. Of course. He could kick himself for being a fool.

  His jaw hardened. “Did Matt hurt you?”

  She turned a stunned face to him. “No. He isn’t like that.” Hiccup. “Is he?”

  “I didn’t think he was, but what has you so upset?”

  Her face crumpled. There was no other way to describe it as sobs wrenched from somewhere deep in her body. The woman was in pain. Aw, hell.

  He leaned toward her. “Do you want to tell me what this is all about?”

  Without warning, she threw herself against his chest, nearly knocking him over. “I ca-a-an’t. It’s too a-a-awful.”

  Her breath smelled of beer. She was intoxicated. She was also an intoxicating bundle in his arms. Lord, she felt good. He breathed deeply. Intoxicating. Awesome word.

  He wrapped his arms around her and flattened his palms on her back, on the silky fabric heated by her womanly body. It had been a long time since he’d had a woman in his arms. He didn’t remember one ever feeling this good, but her pain made him miserable.

  Because he had no idea what else to do to soothe her, he rocked her, like he did with the kids when they cried. But she didn’t feel like a kid. She felt warm and feminine. He wanted so badly for her to turn to him for more than comfort, to pick up where they’d left off earlier.

  She’d nearly destroyed him when she’d stopped his kiss. No woman had ever made him feel as good as this one did.

  When her tears finally stopped, she rested limply against him, womanly and ripe in his arms even in her exhaustion. Hank tried not to think of all the things he’d love to do with her on a bed in the dark.

  Forcing his mind away from images too exquisite to bear, he eased her out of his arms.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head.

  “It wasn’t Matt? He didn’t do anything?”

  “No, he didn’t do anything.” The voice that had melted over him like a Chinook the day Amy had arrived at the ranch washed him with relief.

  “If Matt didn’t hurt you, what did?”

  “I can’t tell you.” She faced him, her hands resting lightly on his chest, as if she didn’t want to lose contact. Her touch filled him with a beautiful torture that could last all night and he would bear it. He brushed his hands up her arms for the pure pleasure of it, knowing he was taking advantage of her emotional state, knowing she wouldn’t allow it if she was sober.

  “I’m tired,” Amy murmured. “I need to lie down.”

  He stopped her from drooping on top of the quilt and reached for a tissue. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, noisily.

  He took a fresh tissue, turned her f
ace toward the small lamp that shone on the bedside table and cleaned the mascara from her cheeks.

  “Don’t you think you should get out of those clothes before you fall asleep?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Okay. At least get under the blankets to stay warm.”

  It was like putting a dead drunk to bed. She waited patiently for him to remove her shoes, her feet small compared to the big things he shoved into his own boots every day. For a minute, one of her feet rested in his palm and he felt a tug near his heart, and his groin, then flushed and dropped her foot.

  She rested boneless against him when he stood her up to pull the sheets down. Her head fell against his shoulder and, for a moment, he set his chin on her fine hair. It smelled tropical, like mangoes or coconut. Reluctantly releasing her to end the sweet torture of holding her, he tucked her into bed—jeans, blouse and all.

  He considered taking them off but couldn’t bring himself to handle her with fewer clothes on—not when he couldn’t touch her as he wanted to.

  She fell asleep when her head hit the pillow.

  He stared at her. She had secrets. What kind? Just her fear of getting close to people? Yeah, he’d already figured that one out.

  There was something else—he could feel it—something she wouldn’t share with him. It saddened him to no end.

  Would she ever open up and tell him? The warm light traced her high cheekbone. He’d recognized her beauty that first day but had thought himself immune because she was cold, reserved. He’d learned differently since then. Amy’s icy exterior was her defense against the world. Inside, she was soft, and emotional, and loving. And scared to death of getting close to people.

  He sighed. Amy Graves spelled “trouble” with a capital T.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHAT WAS THAT infernal noise splitting her head open?

  Amy rolled over and realized the sound was nothing more than rain dripping from the eaves. They’d obviously had a brief shower and the sun now shone through clouds in the distance, creating four Jacob’s ladders from heaven to prairie grasses. The air streaming through the open window felt hot and humid.

  Sitting up gingerly, she recognized the pain in her head as a hangover. She’d never had much luck with beer.

  “Why on earth did I drink it?”

  Grit in her eyes confirmed a suspicion that she’d fallen to sleep crying. Then why did she feel like something wonderful had happened last night?

  When she stood to walk to the minuscule attic bathroom, her legs balked. Good old country dancing.

  She remembered driving home and later rebuffing Matt’s advances, then running into the house. Nothing special occurred then.

  So why did she keep feeling that something extraordinary had occurred?

  Oh my God. Hank.

  She dropped onto the bed. They’d kissed yesterday. Oh, how they’d kissed—magically. The kiss she’d shared with Matt later had been nothing in comparison. Poor guy had never stood a chance. It had all been about Hank since the day she’d landed on this ranch.

  Hank had held her last night as she’d cried. She wasn’t sure what to do with that memory—her first truly good one in a long time.

  The bad memories had always loomed in her mind larger than the good, starting with her father’s early death. If only she hadn’t seen Dad die, hadn’t watched the life leach out of him, his face pale and panicked, no peace in death, while he stared at her and tried to hold her hand. She’d been useless. She hadn’t been able to save him.

  How would it feel to drop the burden of those memories?

  What had Mother said the other day? “Remember when your father used to send you to the store every night for Cracker Jack?”

  Amy picked up the jade cat Dad had given her, rubbing her thumb over the smooth, cold stone.

  Yes, she remembered the good times she’d buried beneath the bad—how good it used to feel to have her father’s love and his unwise but overwhelming generosity that used to make her and Mother laugh.

  A memory teased her from the corner of her mind. If she could spin quickly enough she might grasp it. Then it was there, full-blown in her mind’s eye—the childhood collection of every single prize she’d ever found in her boxes of Cracker Jack—treasured tidbits in an old cardboard cigarette box. Whatever happened to that collection?

  She went to her dresser, grabbing anything she touched and putting it on—jeans and a pink sweater. She raced through brushing her teeth and washing her face. Then she ran downstairs to an empty house. How late had she slept? As she rounded the bottom of the stairs, she stopped suddenly. Hank walked toward her from the powder room at the end of the hall, adjusting his dirty white Stetson on his head. When he saw her, he stopped, hands slowly dropping to his sides.

  Not a word passed between them, yet Amy knew that something had changed profoundly. Recalling her first day on the ranch, she’d watched Hank with a crowd of children swarming him, and thought he’d looked like an average man with not too much outside of a great body to offer a woman. But standing here now, desire radiating from him, she wondered why she’d so underestimated him.

  She didn’t know what to say. Thank you for holding me while I cried for another man? No, that wasn’t true. She hadn’t cried for Matt, or even for Tony, but for herself, for all of her losses and her own cowardice.

  Hank was becoming a problem. A woman couldn’t get involved with him and not fall for him deeply.

  He tipped his hat toward her—doffed it like a gentleman of old—and brushed past her. That was Hank. A truly gentle man.

  A couple of children ran up to him with one of the dog-eared books he read from every night—not a picture book, but what the kids called a chapter book. Hank lifted the kids into his arms and headed to a big armchair, where he settled them under an afghan.

  He sat in another armchair and started to read.

  Something was off. It took her a minute to register that Hank was turning the pages at an erratic pace that was at odds with what he said. Amy stared. It was as though he wasn’t reading it, but rather making up the story as he went along. Strange. Why not read it the way it was written?

  She watched him, his big hands holding the book, his too-long hair peeking out from beneath his hat. She pictured Hank turning back to catch her watching him, of a look in his eyes that she hadn’t recognized last night, but did now in the light of a new day. Longing.

  She blushed as the ghost of last night’s embrace nudged her.

  Hank Shelter—a man with perceptive eyes and welcoming arms. Oh Lord, she was in trouble. She’d fallen for him like a ton of bricks.

  After wandering down the hall, she found Mother in her room, reading. Amy knelt in front of her like a penitent. Mother looked up, not surprised to see her there.

  “Good morning, dear.” She looked clear-eyed and peaceful.

  “Mother,” Amy said, “do you remember a collection I used to have? Of—”

  “Of all of your prizes from your boxes of Cracker Jack,” Mother finished for her, smiling, as if she’d been waiting years for the question.

  Amy sat back on her heels. “How did you know I was asking about that?”

  “It was the only collection you ever owned.”

  “What did I do with it?”

  “You threw it away after your father died.”

  A pain started in Amy’s throat and spread to her chest. She’d thrown it away. How careless and hard-hearted.

  Mother’s warm hand touched her cheek. “After you stomped off to your room, I rescued the box from the garbage can, none the worse for wear after I cleaned off a little salad dressing and coffee grounds.”

  Thank you. “What did you do with it?”

  “I stored it for you, hoping that someday you would want it.”

  Amy released a pent-up breath. “Do you think I could see it sometime?”

  “Of course, dear.”

  Something had changed with Mother, too. She looked calm, unlike her usual querul
ous self.

  Amy asked, “You like it here, don’t you?”

  “No, Amy, I don’t like it here,” she said, surprising her daughter. Then she grinned like an imp. “I love it here.”

  As Amy smiled and rose in search of breakfast, Mother stopped her. “I also love the dear man who runs this ranch. If you decide you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”

  “Mother.” Amy gasped. “I’m not looking for a man.”

  She escaped before her mother could find the flaws in that claim. But a sudden revelation gave her pause.

  In the years following Dad’s death, she’d needed Mother to depend on her so that she could avoid her own emotions. Amy had feared they would overwhelm her if she ever let them out. What if she’d had to face her own needs instead of tending to Mother’s? Amy might have fallen apart. She recognized a part of herself that she’d buried for years—the emotion, and the need.

  It was past time to be honest with herself.

  As she stepped into the kitchen, a school bus honked in the driveway and she heard children running from all directions and out of the house.

  “What’s happening?” Amy asked Hannah, who bustled around the spotless kitchen, cleaning up after breakfast.

  “Those kids are going home today,” Hannah answered.

  “Home? Today? But—” How could that be? Cheryl was leaving? Already? Where had the days gone? Amy’s empty stomach flip-flopped.

  “They are only here for three weeks,” Hannah said. “You knew that.”

  “Yes, but I guess I lost track of time. I’ve been distracted by the accounting.”

  Hannah wrapped her arm around Amy’s waist. “Come. We will say goodbye together.”

  It felt good to have Hannah’s support when they stepped outside. The bus stood waiting for the children to board for their trip to Billings. From there, they’d continue on to their home cities.

  Hank stood in front of ten boxes, with the children in a lineup beside him. He took a small white Stetson out of one of the boxes to place on the first child’s head. Jenny snapped a photo of the child, who then threw her arms around Hank’s neck and clung, whispering her goodbye in his ear.