Western Man

by Janet Dailey

  She had the feeling that she hadn’t handled the conversation very well. She had started out in control, but somewhere it had shifted into his hands. Shaking her head, Sharon realized it was silly to make a contest out of every conversation she had with Ridge. There was no need to feel she had to compete with him at every turn. There might be times when she needed to defend herself against one of his advances—and that was only because her heart was vulnerable where he was concerned, not because she was physically afraid of him.

  After fixing his breakfast, Sharon added a second cup of freshly brewed coffee for herself to the tray and carried it to the bedroom. A few minutes were spent helping Ridge maneuver into a sitting position before she could arrange the tray on his lap. He noticed the second cup of coffee as she took it from the tray.

  An eyebrow lifted in querying arch. “Aren’t you eating breakfast?”

  “Not now. I’ll fix myself something after I’ve washed and dressed.” She sipped at the coffee, cupping the mug in both hands.

  There was a slight narrowing of his eyes, although they continued to shine with a blue gleam. His glance flicked from the bowl of oatmeal on the tray to her face.

  “I suppose I’m expected to eat this and, later, endure the aroma of bacon sizzling in the skillet.” There was a hint of amusement behind the accusing statement.

  “That would be cruel, wouldn’t it?” Sharon agreed with an impish look in her hazel eyes. Actually her menu plans for breakfast had consisted of dry cereal and toast, but she didn’t enlighten him at this stage.

  “You know it would,” Ridge countered and picked up the spoon on his tray. It hovered just above the bowl of oatmeal while he cast another glance at her. “There are no knock out drops in here, are there?”

  “None,” she promised and lightly crossed her heart, making a playful gesture of taking an oath. She turned from the bed and started for the door with her coffee cup.

  “Where are you going?” His question came quickly, light with surprise at her intention to leave.

  Sharon half-turned to glance at him. “I’m going to my room to get dressed.”

  “You can do that later. Stay here and keep me company while I eat.” The request was accompanied by a crooked, coaxing smile that was almost impossible to resist.

  When he chose to exercise it, Ridge was a master at the fine art of persuasion, relying on his potent charm rather than male dominance to get his way. Sharon was by no means immune to that brand of appeal. She was conscious of wavering, an invisible force in those glittering blue eyes pulling her back to the bed.

  The first step was taken before she even realized it. The discovery seemed to jolt her. Sharon quickly altered her course, angling away from the bed toward the dresser where a radio sat.

  “It’s just about time for the market reports,” she said. “You can listen to the radio while you eat your breakfast.” After she turned the radio on, she made sure it was tuned to the local Colorado station carrying the grain and livestock reports. The announcer’s voice spilled from the speaker, and Sharon turned to glance over her shoulder at Ridge. “Is that loud enough?”

  “Yeah, but it isn’t much company.” There was a degree of wryness in the slanting line of his mouth. “A radio just talks; it doesn’t talk back.”

  “That should make you happy,” Sharon replied dryly and headed again toward the hallway. “I’ll be back to pick up the tray a little later.”

  Chapter Seven

  Numerous washings and wearings had faded the jeans Sharon wore until they were a color between pale blue and blue-white. Her blouse was a blue and gray madras plaid, its bleeding pattern seeming to match the jeans. A pair of tortoise-shell bar-rettes pinned the sides of her toffee-brown hair away from her face, and a pair of dun-colored cowboy boots with run-down heels clad her feet. It was the usual garb she wore around the family home, and Sharon didn’t dress differently in Ridge’s house.

  On her way to the kitchen to fix a light breakfast for herself, she swung by his room to pick up the tray. The radio was twanging out a country song when she entered. Ridge was reclining on the pillows supporting his back, a bare, muscled arm curled behind his head. A half-smoked cigarette dangled from his mouth. Although the curling smoke screened his gaze, she felt his slowly scanning study.

  “All finished?” Her airy question was an attempt to break the trace of tension she felt. Even before Sharon reached for the tray, she had already noticed Ridge had eaten nearly every bit of his breakfast.

  He lifted a hand to remove the cigarette from his mouth. “You can take it away.” With a turn of his head, he made sure he tapped the cigarette into the ashtray on the bedside table. His glance ran sideways to continue its slightly narrowed inspection of her. “Those jeans don’t do anything for you.”

  Sharon faltered at the unexpected, and uncomplimentary, remark. “Thanks a lot.” There was no humor in her laughing retort.

  His mouth lifted at the corners but didn’t finish the movement in a smile. “If I hadn’t seen you in that silk robe and nightgown, I wouldn’t have known you had such a nice shape. It’s a pity you didn’t leave it on. It clung to your figure in all the right places.”

  She hadn’t been aware he’d noticed, but very little escaped those keen blue eyes. “I could hardly run around all day in my night clothes,” she declared with a scoffing laugh that was on the weak side.

  “I wouldn’t have objected in the least,” Ridge murmured dryly.

  “Well, I would,” Sharon responded with a certain stiffness, a little unsettled by the physical interest he was expressing, and walked to the door with the tray of breakfast dishes. “I’m going to the kitchen and fix myself something to eat. Was there anything you needed before I do?”

  There was a hesitation, as if Ridge considered a possible answer and rejected it. “No,” he said finally. “But you can bring me another cup of coffee after you’ve finished.” “Okay.”

  Taking Ridge at his word, Sharon ate her breakfast of corn flakes and toast, washed their combined dishes, then poured his second cup of coffee and took it to him. The disc jockey on the radio was giving the day’s weather forecast when she entered the room.

  “—highs in the upper 60s today. Looks like summer’s just around the corner, folks,” the drawling voice concluded.

  “It’s going to be a nice day,” Sharon observed after darting a glance at the radio. “Here’s your coffee.”

  “I was beginning to think you forgot.” He shifted his position slightly and winced.

  “I didn’t.” She set it on the table near the ashtray, conscious of his bare-chested form and the rusty darkness of his hair in her side vision.

  When she turned to leave, Ridge inquired, “Where are you going now?” with a trace of exasperation in his voice.

  She turned again to the bed, vaguely defensive. “I was going to make my bed and straighten up the house. Why?”

  “When am I going to get my bath and a shave?” he asked, folding his arms across his middle, an action that exhibited both patience and challenge.

  “What?” Sharon blinked at him.

  “When are you going to give me my bath?” Ridge repeated the question, a dancing light appearing in his blue eyes. Dumb struck for an instant, all Sharon could do was open her mouth. He mockingly chided her for wearing such a blank look. “All babies get a bath in the morning. I remember you telling me before breakfast that I was just an overgrown baby. So how about my bath?” When she continued to stare at him in disbelief, he reasoned, “If I were still in the hospital, a nurse would be giving me a bath.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Sharon managed to breathe out shakily.

  “I’d do it myself if I wasn’t so sore I can hardly stand to move,” he replied, again in a reasonable tone that conflicted with the taunting gleam in his eyes. He rubbed a hand across the bristly growth of a night’s beard. “I’d like to get cleaned up—and you’re here to look after me.”

  It was extremely difficult to a
rgue either with his logic or his request. As a matter of fact, Sharon couldn’t find any legitimate excuse to refuse him, although she searched wildly for a plausible reason.

  Heat began to rise in her face at the thought of washing him all over. Sharon turned away from the bed so that Ridge wouldn’t see her reddening cheeks. If it was his intention to embarrass her, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had succeeded.

  “I’ll be back in a minute with a washbasin and some towels.” She cast the statement over her shoulder in a remarkably level voice and headed quickly toward the private bath that adjoined his room.

  The task of finding a washbasin and gathering washcloth, soap, and towels gave Sharon the necessary time to pull herself together. A degree of detachment was required and she struggled to achieve the necessary poise and quiet her jittery nerves.

  Armed with a pair of thick bath towels, a basin full of soapy water, and a washcloth, Sharon emerged from the bathroom, appearing outwardly calm and, she hoped, professional. She ignored the faint smile that played around the corners of his mouth as she walked directly to the bed and placed the basin on the nightstand.

  In her baby-sitting days, she’d had more than ample practice bathing toddlers and young tots. The trick was to pretend Ridge was the overgrown child she had claimed him to be.

  “How do you want to go about this?” Ridge asked, not cooperating at all. “Do you want to begin at the bottom and work your way up? Or at the top and work your way down?”

  It was a simple question, but the way her mind was working, she read something much more suggestive into it. And she suspected that Ridge had counted on that. Distance from those taunting blue eyes seemed preferable. Also, Sharon didn’t think she’d find anything very sexy about his feet, so she opted for them as a beginning.

  “The bottom.”

  Striving to keep that air of clinical detachment, she tossed aside the bedcovers to expose the lower half of his body and draped one of the bath towels across his hips. She could sense the laughter in his glance at that action, but she steadfastly kept her attention on what she was doing. She shook out the second towel and lifted the leg farthest from her, sliding the towel under it so the bedding wouldn’t get wet.

  When she turned to the basin to wet the washcloth and soap it up, she was conscious of Ridge’s glinting look. Silently he lay there, giving every indication that he was enjoying all this immensely —at her expense.

  The knowledge fed an inner irritation. Sharon was a bit more vigorous than was entirely necessary when she began scrubbing his leg and foot. His soap-slicked skin made her more aware of the rope-hard muscles in his calf and thigh. She concentrated on his foot.

  “Be sure to get between my toes,” Ridge instructed and wiggled them slightly to draw her attention to them.

  After an instant’s hesitation, Sharon complied. Her lips were clamped shut against the building tension inside. He’s just a little boy, she kept telling herself, adding, —with big feet.

  “When my mother gave me a bath, she always played ‘This little pig went to market’ with my toes.” The thickness of dry amusement was in his voice.

  His reference to himself as a small boy completely destroyed her pretense. By no stretch of the imagination could she kid herself into believing any longer that this wasn’t a man’s leg she was washing.

  “This is ridiculous,” Sharon muttered under her breath and wetted the cloth again so she could rinse the soap from his leg.

  “Is something wrong?” Ridge asked in false innocence.

  “Whatever gave you that idea?” Her answer was terse, with none of its implied amusement, as she rinsed the soap from his leg and dried it.

  “I thought I heard you mutter something,” he persisted dryly.

  “Well, you must have been hearing things.” She shifted the towel under his other leg and began washing it with an air of determined indifference to mask her heightened sensitivity.

  She was conscious of his watching eyes and calmly folded arms. It increased her awareness of the amount of bare flesh exposed to her sight. Sharon wished she could pretend Ridge was a stranger. Maybe then she wouldn’t be wondering what was going through his mind.

  It was worse when she rubbed the washcloth over the top of his thigh and the smoothly muscled flank. Her heart racketed against her rib cage in disturbed reaction.

  “I guess you don’t want to play ‘Piggy went to market,’” Ridge concluded when she had finished scrubbing his foot and moved back up his leg.

  “No, I’m not going to play ‘Piggy went to market.’” She stepped to the basin and rinsed out the washcloth. “But if a rubber ducky will keep you quiet, I’ll see if I can find one.”

  He tipped his head back to look at her. “Am I bothering you?”

  “Do birds fly?” Sharon retorted and briskly wiped the soap from his leg to dry it.

  Ridge waited to reply, timing it for the moment when she began washing his outstretched arm. “What made you think about birds?”

  Her hand paused along his flexed bicep as Sharon darted a glance at the lazy and inquiring expression on his face. In her mind there was an immediate word association of “birds” with “bees.” It was hardly surprising. Since she was engaged in the intimate act of washing him, how could she not be aware of his sex—and her own? She began to feel very warm, and a growing agitation within started to affect the natural rhythm of her breathing.

  “I really couldn’t say why I did.” Sharon attempted an indifferent shrug but answered truthfully.

  To wash his other arm, she had to lean partially across him. The focus of his attention was on the nearness of her face rather than on what she was doing. As he lazily inspected her, he observed every nuance of her expression, adding to the havoc he was already creating in her senses. Her pulse was behaving erratically—slowing down, skipping beats, then taking off again.

  “Having someone bathe you is a very enjoyable experience,” Ridge commented idly.

  “I’m glad someone’s enjoying this.” It was a low retort, close to being muttered. Sharon rubbed the soapy washcloth over the muscled ridges of his shoulders, under his throat, and across the top of his chest, taking care not to get the elastic bandage around his ribs wet.

  “Aren’t you?” A smiling knowledge lurked behind the blue surface of his eyes.

  “I’m having a ball,” she mocked. Rinsing out the washcloth, she went over the same territory again.

  “I thought so,” he murmured.

  Sharon nearly blushed because it was true, despite all this self-consciousness. She was enjoying this excuse to touch nearly every part of him, not once but a total of at least three times, when she counted washing, rinsing, and drying. Through with the washcloth, she dropped it into the basin and picked up the towel to pat dry his damp skin.

  “When I get up and around—” Ridge had to lift his chin high to avoid the bulky towel when she dried his throat and chest “—remind me to return the favor and give you a bath.”

  Sharon faltered but recovered quickly and straightened, all brisk and efficient. “I think I’d rather manage by myself.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he warned.

  “I guess that’s my loss,” she countered and dipped her hand into the basin for the washcloth again. “Do you want to wash your own face, or shall I do it for you?”

  During a small hesitation, Ridge seemed to measure the glint in her hazel eyes. “I think I’d better do it myself,” he decided. “You look like you might want to push that washcloth down my throat.”

  “Me?” Sharon returned innocently. “The thought never entered my mind.” But she had been thinking about the hard contours of his face beneath her fingers, so it was just as well that he did the job himself. She soaped up the washcloth and handed it to him, then put the towel within easy reach. “I’ll bring your razor and comb from the bathroom while you finish up.” When she reached the doorway to the bathroom, she paused and turned to look
over her shoulder. “Don’t forget to wash behind your ears.”

  There was a sound of amusement, close to a laugh that didn’t get finished, checked by painful rib and stomach muscles that wouldn’t permit it without severe protest. Sharon swung on into the bathroom to collect the items.

  Ridge had finished when she came back and crossed to the bed. Before she handed him the electric razor, she reached behind the bedstand and plugged the cord into the outlet, then passed the razor to him.

  “Do you need a mirror?” she asked. “Or can you shave just by feel?”

  “I can get by without a mirror,” he said, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw.

  The hum of the razor filled the room as Sharon gathered up the damp towels and the washbasin and carried them back to the bathroom. By the time she had hung the towels and washcloth up to dry, rinsed out the basin, put it away, and returned to the bedroom, Ridge had shaved and combed his mahogany dark hair.

  “How do I look?” he queried.

  As long as she ignored the bandaged ribs and bruised stomach, he looked vitally fresh, able to take on anything or anyone and win. But Sharon kept that opinion to herself.

  “You look fine,” she said and gathered the razor and comb from the table. “I’ll just put these things away.”

  “You can bring me some clothes, too,” Ridge instructed as she headed for the bathroom again.

  “You don’t need any,” she retorted as she set the items on the bathroom sink counter and came back out. When she saw the argumentative look in his face, she reminded him of his promise. “You’re going to stay in bed and rest, remember? Since you’re spending the day in bed, there’s no need to get dressed.”

  Grim and restless, he swung his gaze away from Sharon, flashing it around the room, then slicing it back to her as she approached the bed to reposition the sliding pillows supporting him.

  “Dammit, I’ll go crazy in here with nothing to do,” he protested.

  “You can listen to the radio and I’ll bring some stock magazines for you to read.” She punched the pillow into place behind him and straightened to leave.