Joshua and the Cowgirl

by Sherryl Woods

  Irresistibly drawn to him, she reached out a hand, but when her fingers were no more than a hairbreadth from his chest, she jerked away. No. Maybe, if she’d been capable of viewing this as no more than a casual fling, she could indulge in one caress, but her defenses warned her against that much at least. Joshua had changed the rules by declaring his love. Such declarations weren’t worth the breath wasted on them, but the temptation to believe, to trust, was always there. Garrett had learned the danger of that the hard way and it was a lesson she was never likely to forget.

  Convinced that she dared stay no longer, she tried to slither through the nest of blankets toward the foot of the bed. Keeping one watchful eye on Joshua, she moved inch by inch to safety. As she crept, he turned restlessly, reaching for the space where she had been. She heard a softly muttered curse, just before she felt his fully alert gaze on her back.

  “Going someplace?” he inquired, stretching lazily.

  Evading his eyes, she said, “I thought I’d add some wood to the fire.”

  “If you’d crawl back up here, I’d keep you warm.”

  The seductive offer alone fulfilled that promise, she thought as flames instantly heated her blood. “Thanks, but I think I’ll stick to my original plan.”

  “Any special reason why you chose that particular route to leave?”

  “I was hoping not to wake you.”

  “How thoughtful,” he said skeptically, just when she was congratulating herself on her inventiveness.

  Since it was too late to sneak away undetected, Garrett jumped out of bed, grabbed the clothes that had been hung in front of the fire to dry and raced for the comparative safety of the bathroom.

  “Garrett,” Joshua said softly just as her feet hit the icy tile.

  She hesitated, her hand on the doorknob.

  “I’m ninety-nine percent certain that I didn’t store the wood in there.”

  She scowled at him and slammed the door behind her. The man was so damned smug and he had the uncanny knack of reading her thoughts, which meant it was more essential than ever that she get them off of him and back on practical matters such as getting back to the ranch, where she could put acres and acres and maybe a thousand head of cattle between them.

  She stood under a steaming shower, hoping to wash away the memory of Joshua’s caresses, but the slickness of the soap and water on her sensitized flesh had exactly the opposite effect. It was as if his hands were sliding over her again, reminding her, in the very core of her being, of what it meant to be a woman. She’d spent so long in what was predominantly a man’s world that the rediscovery came as something of a shock. It was an awakening that could only lead to disaster, especially if she counted in any way on Joshua to keep that feeling alive on a permanent basis.

  For one wistful moment she tried to imagine him staying, tried to envision a lifetime of powerful sensations such as those he’d stirred in her last night. No matter how hard she tried, though, the picture wouldn’t stay in focus. He wouldn’t mean to hurt her by leaving, but he would leave. There was no question in her mind about that. Getting back to what he thought of as civilization had been on his mind from the instant he’d put those fancy, impractical shoes of his into ankle-deep snow.

  That meant there could be no repeat of what happened during the night—no more smooth-as-silk kisses, no more innocent touches destined to lead to something more intimate. Celibacy was something with which she’d been familiar for a long time now. There was no reason to believe she couldn’t embrace that life-style again after such a brief lapse in judgment.

  As Garrett brushed and braided her hair, she studied her face in the foggy bathroom mirror. Her eyes seemed wider and brighter than usual, her mouth softer and more vulnerable, her skin a healthy pink. Like a woman in love! No, more like a woman who’d lost the last of her sanity. She yanked her hair tighter, as if to tame the emotions that had caused the changes in her appearance. She stiffened her spine resolutely and curved her lips downward. Better, she decided. Unfortunately there was nothing she could do about the glow of her complexion or the defiant sparkle in her eyes.

  Reminding herself that her entire future hinged on her ability to impress Joshua with her intention to pretend that nothing untoward had happened between them, she opened the bathroom door and stepped back into the cabin’s main room.

  While she’d been gone, Joshua had added wood to the fire. Now he was in the kitchen, humming cheerfully as he poured pancake batter onto a griddle. He glanced at her over his shoulder and smiled.

  “Breakfast’s almost ready. Want some coffee?”

  “Sure,” she said, pleased with the brisk response. Unfortunately she couldn’t control her hesitant steps as well. An intuitive man would sense at once that she was running scared. As she’d already noted a dozen times in recent days, Joshua was uncannily intuitive where she was concerned.

  He was also too damned attractive, she noted regretfully. With stubble darkening his cheeks, his feet bare and his flannel shirt hanging open to the waist, he promised untold masculine delights. She was caught off guard by the suggestion of intimacy that still lingered, by the captivating web of domesticity that surrounded them. She had never, in all of her adult life, shared such a morning ritual with a man, not unless breakfasts from the back of a chuckwagon during roundup counted. Not once during all of those roundups had she felt the slightest temptation to kiss the back of the cook’s neck, as she did now. Drawn across the room, she was within inches of doing just that. Then she stopped, horrified by how easily her good intentions vanished in Joshua’s tempting presence.

  “The snow’s stopped,” he informed her, turning a stack of perfect, golden pancakes onto a plate and handing it to her.

  She blinked in bemusement, barely grabbing the plate before it tumbled from her uncooperative fingers. “Terrific,” she said aloud, but a startling shaft of disappointment speared her. If the storm had passed, it would be only a matter of time before they could return to the truck. The idea did not seem nearly as appealing as it had mere seconds earlier.

  As if he’d guessed her mixed reaction, Joshua regarded her intently. “Going back won’t be the end of it, you know.”

  “The end of what?” she said, ridiculously pleased even as she evaded his meaning.

  “Us.”

  “There is no us,” she said automatically.

  “We’ll see.”

  His tone of certainty finally snapped her back to reality. If she’d had all her wits about her, she would have smacked that smug expression from his face. Instead she hurriedly tried to inject a note of steel into her voice when she declared, “When we get back to the ranch, I expect you to steer clear of me.”

  “Not a chance in hell, sweetheart.”

  “I won’t have my daughter or anyone else getting the idea that something’s going on between us.”

  “We can always sneak out to the barn at midnight,” he suggested. “Or maybe we could just steal a few kisses…”

  “No barn! No kisses!” she warned him. “Or…”

  A dangerous spark of defiance flashed in his eyes. “Or what?” he asked evenly.

  “Or I’ll have you ridden out of town on a rail,” she vowed recklessly.

  Joshua chuckled. “To do that, sweetheart, you’d have to tell everyone what it is I’ve done. You’ll never do that.”

  She lifted her chin. “Try me.”

  “I already have. That’s what this is all about.” He straddled the chair across from her and regarded her seriously. “Garrett, I’ll be the first to admit that what’s happening between us is damned inconvenient. It’s also probably misguided as hell. We’re like oil and water, cactus and silk. But I’ve been around long enough to know that there’s something special between us that doesn’t come along all that often in a lifetime. It would be a damned shame to ignore it.”

  She heard the determination in his voice, but she also thought she heard a hint of wistfulness. Startled, she studied his face, trying to see so
me faint sign of vulnerability. If it was there, he’d covered it well. She saw only resolve in the depths of his clear gaze, stubbornness in the set of his jaw. Oddly, it was what Garrett didn’t see, the longing, that terrified her the most. She could withstand Joshua’s direct attacks on her senses. She could fend them off with glib sarcasm and studiously kept distance. The vulnerability, however, evaded her defenses and went straight to her heart.

  Fortunately, Joshua was not a man likely to reveal his weaknesses too often. In the end, his own show of strength would be her greatest protection. Secure in that knowledge, she finished the pancakes with enthusiasm and sipped her coffee, aware that Joshua continued to watch her intently. When his attention began to unnerve her, she gathered the dirty dishes and stacked them in the sink.

  “Since you fixed breakfast, I’ll clean up.”

  “You wash. I’ll dry,” he countered.

  “Maybe you should go shovel a path out of here for us.”

  Even as the words came out of her mouth, she caught him grinning at her. “Man’s work and woman’s work, huh?”

  “Something like that,” she agreed, hiding the fact that what she’d really wanted was to put distance between them. A lot of distance. It wouldn’t hurt if he wore himself out, either. Then, even if they were stranded overnight again, he’d be too exhausted to want her.

  “It won’t work, you know.”

  “What won’t work?”

  “I’ll still want you, no matter how tired I am.” Chuckling at her incredulous and no doubt guilty expression, he reached for a towel. “Start washing, lady. Then we’ll both go shovel the snow.”

  It was less than fifteen minutes before they were both bundled up and outdoors. The stark winter landscape had been softened by drifts of snow. The sun scattered diamond chips of light across the endless blanket of white. The cloudless sky was the purest azure. As beautiful as it was, though, Garrett knew the danger it represented to the cattle. They could freeze to death in a blizzard like last night’s. The hands needed to be on the lookout for strays at once. The counterpointing of urgent danger with the spectacular beauty of the snowfall was one of the harsh realities of life on the ranch.

  “We need to get back to the truck,” she said, her sense of duty restored. “If we take the shovels along, we should be able to dig it out of the ditch and get back on the road.”

  Joshua turned her slowly until she was facing him. With the tip of his finger, he tilted her chin until she could no longer avoid his gaze. “Don’t run away from this, Garrett.”

  “I’m not running,” she denied heatedly.

  “You are. You’ve been running ever since I told you last night that I was falling in love with you.”

  “What if I have? Isn’t that what you’re going to do? Aren’t you going to walk away from this eventually and go back to Florida? I’m just trying to save us both a lot of heartache.”

  “But you’re also costing us the time it would take to get to know each other.”

  “For what? So that we can be ripped apart inside a few weeks or months from now when we finally have to admit that we will never belong together.”

  “How can you predict the ending, when we haven’t even begun?”

  “Men like you do not end up with women like me. That’s a fact, Joshua.”

  His jaw clenched. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Men like me? What exactly does that mean?”

  “It means that you live a certain kind of life, back in civilization, as you call it. You’re rich. You can buy anything you want. Well, you can’t buy me. My price tag is way too high.”

  Joshua ignored the rising fury in her voice. His fingers stroked her cheek, the pad of his thumb following the generous curve of her bottom lip. Despite herself, Garrett was mesmerized.

  “I don’t want to buy you, sweetheart,” he said gently. “I just want to love you.”

  “No,” she responded stubbornly, backing away. She had to get away from the feel of his hands on her, away from the warm glint of desire that lit his eyes and lured her like a beacon. “Absolutely not. Not again.”

  “You take everything too seriously,” he told her, stalking her through the snow.

  The sudden spark of devilment in his eyes and the lazy, flat-out amusement in his voice made Garrett very, very nervous. She held out a warning hand. “Joshua!”

  “Hmm?” He stepped closer, reaching for her.

  Garrett ducked under his arm and started to run, floundering through the drifts. “Stay away from me, Joshua Ames!”

  “I can’t,” he said, gaining on her.

  Garrett caught sight of him over her shoulder, turned unexpectedly and tripped him. He fell, sprawling facedown in the snow. She paused long enough to gloat, then took off, laughing at the startled expression on his face.

  “Okay, that does it,” he muttered, trying to keep a smile from ruining the murderous tone of his voice. “When I get my hands on you, Garrett…”

  “If you get your hands on me,” she taunted as she rounded the side of the cabin and headed for the road.

  “When,” he repeated, gaining on her.

  It was a little like being chased by the Abominable Snowman. Clumps of snow clung to his clothes and hair. He’d grabbed handfuls of the stuff, too, and was forming a gigantic snowball that she knew was destined for her. She hit the frozen creekbed running, her laughter trailing behind.

  Suddenly her feet shot out from under her and she tumbled face-first into the snow on the opposite bank. Before she could even roll over, Joshua was on the ground beside her, pulling her into his arms, tumbling with her like playful kids in the season’s first snowfall. The teasing attack took her back in time. Once, just once, she’d crept out of her parents’ crowded, dirty apartment to see the first snowfall. Blanketed in purest white, the world for that brief, fragile moment had indeed been a wonderland, spread out before the eyes of a seven-year-old who’d seen too much of harsh reality. She had lain down on her back and made snow angels, then built a snowman, thrilling to the magical winter world she was creating. She felt the magic again now. That same innocent joy was stealing over her.

  Because of Joshua. Joshua, who was trying to sneak a handful of snow down her back. Laughing, Garrett formed her own snowball, ready to retaliate. He grabbed her hand. “Oh no, you don’t,” he warned, his gaze locked on hers.

  “No?” she questioned softly.

  “No.”

  She let herself go limp in his embrace. “Okay,” she said agreeably.

  He smiled. “That’s better.” He shifted until he had her pinned to the ground. “Better yet,” he said, his eyes blazing.

  “You like this?” she inquired innocently.

  “Having you under my control? Absolutely.”

  “There’s just one thing you should remember.”

  “What’s that?”

  The hand that he’d mistakenly freed came up and jammed a fistful of snow down his shirt. As he yelped, she scooted free. “You’re in the West,” she reminded him sweetly. “You really should remember to watch your backside.”

  “And you really should watch who you challenge,” he countered. He was on his feet in an instant, covering the distance she’d put between them far faster than she could increase it. Expecting to be tumbled back into the snow at any second, she gasped with shock when arms suddenly scooped her off her feet. The next thing she knew she was dangling headfirst over his shoulder.

  “Joshua Ames, put me down this instant!”

  “Sorry. You can’t be trusted.”

  “And you can be?”

  “Absolutely. I always do exactly what I say I’m going to do. Didn’t I warn you that you couldn’t run from me? Didn’t I vow to stick with you like glue?”

  “Where exactly are you taking me?”

  “Where else? Back to my lair, so I can ravish you.”

  Garrett slammed a defiant fist into his back. Considering the thickness of the sheepskin coat she’d insisted he buy the previous day,
the punch had no more impact than a pesky fly landing on him. Okay, she thought in resignation and an undeniable flaring of anticipation, for the moment she was going to have to concede his physical superiority. That meant relying on her wits.

  The incentive was fairly powerful. If she didn’t escape his clutches, she was very likely to stop listening to her head and go with her hormones, which apparently weren’t the slightest bit daunted by the icy temperatures. Apparently she wasn’t nearly as far removed from the cavewomen as she would have liked to believe. There seemed to be a primitive appeal to being dragged off by a chest-thumping man. There was something astonishingly heady about a man wanting her enough to make such a public declaration. She indulged in the feminine satisfaction of that for a few brief seconds before reminding herself forcefully to extricate herself from this predicament.

  “Now!” she muttered aloud, in case the message wasn’t getting through her hormone-induced stupor.

  “Did you say something?”

  “No. You know, though, since you seem to have all this energy, it would probably be a very good time for us to get to the truck. The snowplow should be along anytime. It could help dig us out.”

  Joshua opened the cabin door and stepped inside before he responded. Slowly he let her slide down his body until her feet reached the floor. Though he’d loosened his embrace, Garrett found she couldn’t bring herself to take that one step that would have ended the contact between them. Even through the layers of clothes, her body throbbed with awareness, the tips of her breasts chafing against the warm flannel of her shirt.

  “Are you so sure that’s what you want?” he said softly, lowering his mouth to hers. The touch was a thrilling blend of fire and ice. He tasted of snow and to her deep regret she couldn’t remember anything ever being any more delicious, any more tempting. With the tip of her tongue she tasted snowflakes as they melted on his lips, on his cheeks and finally on his forehead. Beneath her kisses, Joshua remained perfectly still, but there was a slow flaring of passion in his eyes, a faint hitch in his breathing.