Where Eagles Fly

by Lisa Norato

  As she searched for a place to dump them, she noticed built-in cupboards stacked with large iron skillets that likely weighed a ton. She saw tin plates, big tin mugs, cutlery and long-handled wooden spoons. Soon she would be scrubbing them without the aid of a dishwasher or even the protection of rubber dishwashing gloves.

  Shelby ran her fingers through her strawberry blond bob. This would be a hard, dirty job. What made her think she could handle it? She didn’t know the first thing about cowboy cuisine, much less operating a cookstove. Besides, in her present mood, she no longer felt motivated.

  Jorge’s nails clicked across the wooden floor, and Shelby found him in a corner, sniffing around a big wooden barrel that supported a checkerboard. A worn deck of cards lay on top of the checkerboard, while on the wall above them hung two pair of brown leather boxing gloves.

  Shelby considered donning a pair herself and going out in search of Ruckert, but instead walked to the nearest window to let in some fresh air. A heavy odor of tobacco and wood smoke hung in the room. She stood there a moment, breathing in and out, telling herself everything was going to be all right, when she noticed a sheet of paper tacked to the wall.

  WHOLESOME RULES

  TO BE FOLLOWED BY ALL HANDS OF THE FLYING EAGLE

  No cussing or obscene language shall be used anywhere on the ranch.

  No indecent gestures.

  No hard liquor.

  No gambling.

  No firearms shall be carried about the homestead or its outbuildings.

  No one is excused from obeying the laws of cleanliness.

  Shelby began to feel encouraged, much to her relief, and impressed, especially with the cleanliness rule. This she credited to Rose, for whom else but Rose could have been responsible for such a list? Cookie perhaps. But Shelby saw Rose St. Cloud as a courageous woman, not only surviving in a man’s world, but taking charge and shaping that world to fit the wholesome principles she herself upheld. She read on:

  LAWS OF THE COOKHOUSE

  No spitting on the stove or cookhouse floor.

  Each man in turn must build the stove fire, carry out the ashes and empty the spit boxes.

  Each man must take his turn to wash the day’s dirty dishes with no guff.

  Shelby grinned at the dishwashing, but spitting? Oh, no, no, no. no. Spit boxes aside, she would not work her behind off feeding a bunch of ranch hands only to have them spit in her work environment. She didn’t tolerate disrespectful behavior in her classroom; she wouldn’t tolerate it here. Ugh, nothing was more disgusting than watching a man spit. Gag. A few minor changes would be necessary. She grabbed a nearby pencil and added some rules of her own:

  No smoking inside the cookhouse.

  No spitting anytime, anywhere inside the cookhouse.

  No burping or farting in the presence of the cook.

  She grinned at her own audacity and thought, what the hey. Her world as she knew it had disappeared. She had nothing to lose.

  With her renewed sense of purpose, she donned a clean apron. Now, whose turn was it to light the stove and why wasn’t he here doing his job?

  The door creaked open behind her as she went about lighting the oil lamps. Jorge started with his excited yapping. Shelby turned to watch him dash toward the entry where Ruckert stood holding a slab of beef and an armload of firewood.

  “Oh . . . it’s you,” she droned in a voice flat with disinterest. Her Pomeranian raised himself on his hind legs and pummeled Ruckert’s shin with his front paws, begging for attention. He barked and wagged his plume of a tail, but Hoss Man only had eyes for her.

  He unnerved her.

  “What do you want?” she asked sarcastically despite the obvious. “What faux pas am I guilty of now? Have you come to tell me you don’t want me to cook, either? Maybe this time you’ll try to slam one of those iron skillets down on my fingers. Maybe you just don’t like me breathing the same ranch air as you. What’s on your mind, cowboy? Hmm? What gives?” she baited, sick of his silent, mysterious games. She leaned forward and called, “Come here, Jorge. That bad man’s not deserving of your love.”

  Ruckert stepped forward, all long, lean angles and fluid grace that chimed softly with the jingle of his spurs.

  Shelby straightened to meet him, letting him know she wasn’t intimidated, but saw no animosity in his expression. Her gaze explored his bronzed face, the luxuriant black mustache, sensual lower lip and clean-shaven jaw. At once, that same clear, cool ranch air grew stifling. Her heart rate stepped up to a breathless pace. Her insides danced with nervous, excited energy. Something was happening she didn’t understand.

  Ruckert’s gaze clung to her like sweet on honey, and as Shelby looked into his thickly-lashed, mellow green eyes, she found it increasing difficult to maintain her composure.

  She wanted to turn away. Ruckert’s eyes were too intense, too wise and discerning. Instinct told her that to continue staring would be flirtatious . . . no, more than flirtatious. Telling. It would be telling. It would betray her attraction to him, for the longer Shelby stared, the more it became apparent her entire being connected at some level with this strange, quiet man.

  She broke eye contact, then watched beneath lowered lashes as Ruckert strode to the cookstove. Jorge trotted after him.

  Ruckert set the slab of beef down on a scrubbed pine worktable. Jorge sniffed the air after its scent.

  Ruckert opened his arm, allowing the firewood to drop into a wooden box beside the stove. Jorge pulled a small stick from the pile and laid it at the big cowboy’s feet.

  A chuckle rumbled out, rough and deep. Ruckert leaned forward, then paused to consider Jorge before scooping him up with one hand. He scratched the dog behind the ears, giving the Pomeranian the attention he’d been craving, then immediately began to tug at Jorge’s red sweater as if he would take it off, but couldn’t quite figure out how.

  Shelby crossed her arms impatiently. “Now what are you doing?”

  Ruckert gave up the struggle and set Jorge down again. Lifting the cast iron lids from off the top of the stove, he began to scrape inside with a fire poker. He emptied the ashes into a bucket, shoveled a scuttleful of coal into the front-loading fire chamber. Still, he had not uttered a word. His back to Shelby, he squatted before the cookstove and added kindling.

  Nothing could have infuriated her more. She wanted to march over and kick him in the seat of his pants.

  She didn’t need his guff. If she were interested in a secretive and uncommunicative man full of repressed hostility, she could have easily found one on any online dating site.

  What is with you? she wanted to scream. Say something, you lunatic.

  His hands stilled in their work. He turned in profile and pushed his Stetson back off his forehead with the tip of a finger. Ruckert released a sigh, yet it was not to her that he spoke.

  “You know, Hawr-hey, the idea percolated through my head that I may have been wrong to tell Miss McCoy not to play the piano.”

  Resting a forearm on his thigh, he leaned toward the Pomeranian, who listened, enthralled. “Life brings each man a share of experiences he’d just as soon forget. He reckons he’s moved on, when one day, as he’s going about his business, he sees something or hears something that brings back his pain just like it was yesterday. What happened in the house a while ago is my problem and has nothing to do with Miss McCoy. Truth is, I heard some beautiful music coming from that piano. And I figure if the Good Lord has seen fit to give a person a talent . . . well, nobody should have the right to tell her not to use it. She can play whenever she likes. And you can tell her I said so.”

  And with that, he straightened to his full height of six-four to approach a large burlap sack leaning against the wall. It was labeled “Arbuckle Brothers of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” He removed a brown paper bag from the sack and dumped dark, shiny coffee beans into a coffee mill.

  “Pardon me,” she called, stepping closer. “Is that your idea of an apology? Via my dog, as if I’m not standing h
ere? The least you could do is look at me.”

  He quit grinding coffee beans to do as she asked. He gave her the full measure of his stare, and immediately, Shelby regretted her brassy tone.

  Reaching into the coffee bean bag, he pulled out a peppermint stick, of all things, and offered it to her.

  Shelby accepted, surprised at the candy stick, surprised it had been hiding inside a bag of coffee beans. At his slightly embarrassed smile, her insides turned to mush. Words escaped her. She didn’t know how to react to his sweet side, any more than she knew how to take his standoffish behavior.

  She slipped the peppermint between her lips, feeling like a fool because he confused her so, stalling for time until she could compose her thoughts and figure out how to deal with this nutcase and her conflicting emotions. She narrowed her eyes in contemplation of him, and when at length she removed the stick from her mouth, she decided to let bygones be bygones.

  “Great . . . yeah . . . whatever,” she said, shaking off her confusion. “I, uh, I accept your apology.”

  The hint of a smile showed beneath his mustache, a look Shelby found incredibly sexy. She felt inclined to smile back, but resisted the urge because she didn’t want him to think he could win her that easily.

  He turned from her to continue preparing the coffee. He emptied the grounds in the ash bucket and dumped nearly a whole pound of coffee into the pot, cracked two eggs on a large cast iron frying pan and threw in the empty shells, then added water and set the whole thing on the stove to boil.

  So that was that, Shelby thought. He had made his apology, cleared his conscience; now it was back to Mister Uncommunicative Stoneface. She watched his every movement, waiting for an answer she knew she wasn’t going to get. She forever danced on the edge of her emotions with Ruckert, never knowing how to interpret him, afraid everything she said was wrong and yet he said nothing at all.

  Her anger flared again. Each time it happened, his dismissal sliced deeper into her self-esteem, sort of the way he was now carving slices off the slab of beef he had brought.

  “All right now, Hawr-hey,” he said. “Listen up. I want you to pay real close attention to what I’m doing. Miss McCoy needs someone to explain the way things work around here, so I’m going to explain everything to you. Take, for instance, this sowbelly. Cookie always cuts it in thin slices like this, so it’ll be quick to fry. We’ve got ourselves nearly two dozen punchers out there waiting on breakfast. A cook needs to work fast. I can’t be here all the time, and I figure that’s just as well because it’s plain Miss McCoy finds me hard to look at without using profanity. It’s not likely she’ll listen to what I have to say. That’s why I’m counting on you.”

  “I have not used profanity.”

  “Not aloud,” he said without glancing her way.

  Maybe he was psychic. “That’s not fair,” she protested. “I have done nothing but be willing to listen. Problem is, you don’t say anything. Not to me. You speak to my dog. You speak to your horse. I wouldn’t be surprised if next I heard you talking to a fly on the wall. And for what reason? I’ve tried to be nice, tried to make pleasant conversation. I’ve accepted your apology. Yet you step around me like dirt beneath your feet.”

  “It is easier for me to address Hawr-hey.”

  “Easier?” she shot back. “Why is it easier? You’re talking to me now.”

  Ruckert lay down the carving knife and braced his palms flat on the surface of the worktable to prevent them from shaking. His heart beat like an Indian war drum, pumping blood to his flushed face. He had spoken to her, hadn’t he?

  She touched her fingertips to his forearm. The loneliness inside him absorbed the contact till he felt it in the marrow of his bones. Dirt beneath his feet? Nothing could be farther from the truth. She was a drink of cool water to his thirsty soul. And she terrified him. He wanted her with every fiber of his being, and she terrified him.

  “Are you all right? You’re trembling. What’s wrong?”

  He shook her off in search of her little dog, his saving grace. As he bent on one knee, Jorge leapt into his arms. The eagerness to trust within this tiny, fragile creature amazed him. Jorge had jumped, confident he would be caught. Ruckert envied such faith. He stood with the dog cradled in the crook of his arm, and as he stroked the dense black coat, feelings of self-possession began to return.

  “It is easier for me to talk to you,” he told his little canine friend, “and that’s the way of it. She may not like it, but I reckon Miss McCoy would do well to quit fussing and accept there are things about me she doesn’t understand.”

  He paced with Jorge the length of the kitchen area. “Just like there’s things about her I don’t understand. We find her tramping to the ranch on foot, dressed like a fellow, but painted up like a dance hall queen. No one in town’s ever seen or heard of a Shelby McCoy, and there’s no evidence of her passing through Laramie. I will not call her a liar, for that would be disrespectful, and despite her strange ways, I do have much respect for her. But I would like to know what it is she’s hiding.”

  “My strange ways,” she muttered with an air of disbelief.

  He waited, still hoping she might volunteer an explanation, but she didn’t acknowledge him. He sighed and admitted, “Everyone’s entitled to their secrets. And if I have a few secrets myself, I figure that’s all right, too. I won’t expect answers she doesn’t want to give, but she’s got to understand the courtesy works both ways.”

  Again, he waited for a reaction. Something he’d said had obviously struck a chord, for she flashed him a sour look, then ducked her head to avoid his stare. She wrapped both hands around the handle of a heavy iron skillet and dropped it down on top of the cookstove with a bang. She hefted the kettle of potatoes and set about draining off the water.

  Ruckert watched her. She seemed to be making a whole lot of noise for a task as simple as preparing breakfast. In between all her clinking and clanging, she mumbled in a wounded voice that, oh, so now she wasn’t allowed to ask questions, and he didn’t know anything because, for his information, she had so passed through Laramie yesterday morning.

  She called him a weirdo. Ruckert had never heard the expression used before, but he knew enough to recognize it wasn’t flattering. He had offended her, yet that hadn’t been his intention at all.

  Heck, he had plenty of his own chores waiting on him. It wasn’t his place to help out in the cookhouse, but he had come because he had looked into the depths of her blue eyes as she sat at the parlor piano. It was as he had suspected yesterday. Miss McCoy was hurting.

  One thing being a stutterer had done for him—it had developed in him a sensitivity toward the feelings of others. He could tell when someone was scared. He recognized heartache.

  It was as plain as the nose on his face Shelby McCoy was different. She didn’t fit in with polite society as he knew it, and as much as he had vowed to avoid her, he felt protective of her because he saw her as a misfit like himself.

  He strode up behind her to look over her shoulder as she worked. “It would appear I’m not the only weirdo here,” he told Jorge. “How can Miss McCoy expect to fry these eggs and potatoes using one small spoonful of lard?”

  “There’s nothing weird about being a little health conscious. I know you skinny cowboys don’t worry about cholesterol, but if it’s clogged arteries you want, it’s clogged arteries you’ll get.” She scooped up a chunk of lard and dropped it into the hot skillet. It sizzled and spat. She jerked back from the spray, bumping into him, then gasped at the contact of their bodies.

  Ruckert didn’t back up to give her space. He kept her imprisoned between his body and the cookstove, her rounded bottom touching his thighs. “I gotta ask myself, Hawr-hey, what would possess a delicate brought-up young lady with painted lips and a fancy dog to volunteer her services as cook for a bunch of hard-edged cowpokes, when she doesn’t appear to know the first thing about boiling coffee, much less frying an egg?”

  Her back arched at his nea
rness, raising her breasts beneath one of his brother Wylie’s shirts, almost as if her awareness of him had brought her body to attention. Or so Ruckert’s fanciful imagination wanted to believe. He watched his breath fan the fine, red gold strands on top of her head. He inhaled the baby soft, sunshiny scent of her and longed to wrap his arms around her slender shoulders and hold her.

  “My lips are not painted,” she stated firmly, but in a low voice that lacked the sarcasm of her earlier remarks.

  “No, ma’am. They’re naked today, and don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

  She turned to gaze up at him. One delicate, pale eyebrow arced. “There. See how easy that was. You can address me just fine.”

  “Sometimes I can whisper,” he confided on a hoarse breath.

  They were staring into each other’s eyes, breathing on each other’s faces. His mustache hovered just above those sweet, unpainted lips. She wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was he.

  Ruckert lowered his head. He couldn’t believe what he was about to do, but he jumped and hoped he would be caught. He closed his eyes, a leap of faith in the dark, and pressed his lips to hers.

  What’s happening? Shelby thought as Ruckert’s lips descended onto hers. They felt warm, pliable and welcoming, and she melted into the kiss. She felt the soft brush of his mustache against her upper lip and knew exactly what she was doing. No more denying the attraction behind the long looks they’d been exchanging. Fate had steered them in this direction and Shelby, for one, felt good to have arrived.

  With a slight tilt of her head, she parted her lips, asking for more, and Ruckert responded hungrily. Were they out of their minds? Hadn’t they just been arguing? Ruckert was all wrong for her, but then why did he feel so right? Where have you been all my life? she wondered.

  He shaped his large hand to the curve of her back and drew her closer. Shelby fit her body against the lean, sinewy length of him. It had been so long since she’d been kissed this way—maybe never. No, never anything like this. He angled his head and deepened the kiss. Shelby rose on tiptoe and tangled her fingers in the silky soft, blue-black hair at his nape.