by Kathryn Shay
Maudie spotted her, said something to Ed. He folded the paper and slipped it inside his open jacket.
“What are you two conspiring over?” she teased, as she came close enough to wrap both hands around his arm. His opposite hand came up and clasped over hers, as if to secure her hold on him.
“Nothing.” He didn’t meet her eyes, even as his hand tightened.
“Maudie —?” But the older woman was walking away, heading toward her cubbyhole, and Grover was beside her. So much for attending the door.
She turned to Ed. Before she got in a question, he said, “Temperature’s dropped. We’ll get a cab.”
She started to protest, then decided a cab was a good idea. A really good idea. It would get them to the hotel, and his room, faster.
“Where would you like to eat?” He held the door for her.
Cold rushed around her, inside her, licking up her legs under the coat’s hem, burrowing inside the cuffs, slapping her face.
“I’m not hungry. Let’s just go to the hotel.” The sooner they got to the hotel, the sooner she could seduce him, once and for all. Let’s just go to bed. That’s what she wanted.
“No supper? You feeling okay?”
“Mmm-hmm. Maudie gave me the perfect meal between performances.”
He used one long arm to wrap her to his side so his body protected her from the worst of the cold as they came out of the alley. He raised his other arm to signal to a taxi sitting down the block. Even in the short time it took for the taxi to arrive and to get in it, she felt as if her face had iced in place.
The taxi’s interior was cozy by contrast, and Ed radiated heat beside her, especially when he put his arm around her and she snuggled close.
“What were you talking about with Maudie?” she asked when he’d finished telling the driver where they were going.
He put his hand over hers where it rested on his chest. “You’re freezing.” He opened a button of his jacket and slid her hand in.
Ahh, delicious.
She flexed her fingers, feeling the muscle beneath his shirt. She would see his strength uncovered tonight. Stripped... although the idea of taking her own clothes off made her curl into a tighter ball to hold onto the warmth.
“Maudie?” she repeated, before a yawn overtook her.
“Nothing much. Why don’t you close your eyes? You’ve gotta be beat with all these shows.”
She yawned again. Had to be nerves. Though he was right she had reason to be beat. Seven performances in four days, the party, minimal sleep. The lack of sleep was his fault, of course. But that would end tonight.
She wouldn’t lie awake thinking about him tonight. Not once she’d seduced him.
Maybe she would close her eyes. Just for a little.
HE CONSIDERED CARRYING her in from the taxi, let her keep sleeping. But it would have raised eyebrows. Along with making it even harder to ignore how much he wanted to ask her — drag her, beg her — back to his room.
She gave him a sleepy smile as they entered the elevator. Some might think the yawn that swallowed it dented the smile’s sexiness. Not him.
He fought a mighty battle with himself in the two quick breaths before he leaned over and hit two buttons — his floor and her floor.
At her floor, they crossed the elevator threshold together, took a couple steps, then he pivoted, catching the door just in time, and re-entered the elevator alone.
She was another yard down the hallway before she realized, looking back at him, then at the numbers on the doors nearby in confusion.
“I thought — Your room’s on the same floor?”
“No. You get some sleep.”
“But —”
“Go on now. If I hold the door much longer the alarm will go off, and people’ll be mad.”
She stood there, looking back at him. He cursed under his breath, let the door go and stepped out before it closed.
“Where’s your key?”
She handed it over, and he saw the number was a couple doors away. He guided her there.
“Oh, good. You’re coming in,” she said as he opened the door.
She was so tired she’d forgotten the existence of Lydia, who’d return shortly.
“No. Go in, Donna.” He put the key in her unresisting hand, and nudged her into the room. “We have all of tomorrow.”
Before he ran out of willpower, he closed the door on himself.
Sometimes being a gentleman was a pain in the ass — and another part of his anatomy.
Yeah, things were definitely harder, he thought later, grimacing as he cupped his head in his interlocked fingers and stared at the ceiling.
Couldn’t possibly get any harder.
CHAPTER NINE
Monday
“TELL ME MORE about Wyoming,” Donna demanded.
While they ate breakfast, then drove his pickup to the grounds, she’d peppered him with questions about the stock show. Now that they’d parked at a distance necessitated by livestock trucks clogging close-in spots, she’d shifted focus.
“It’s home.”
“Some people hate their home.”
He looked at her. “You?”
“No. I love my family, and the house I grew up in. And Indiana’s great, it’s just... ”
“Just?” he prompted.
“I think I always knew I was headed for someplace else.”
Without turning his head, he cut a look toward her. When she’d gotten to the word headed, he’d fully expected the rest of the sentence to be to Broadway. Was he fooling himself thinking that a couple days ago it would have been?
Yeah, he probably was.
As if to confirm his assessment, she gave herself a small shake. “But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about Wyoming.”
“Go right ahead then,” he invited with a grin. “Talk.”
“Edward —”
She interrupted herself mid-scold. “What’s your middle name?”
“David.”
“Thank you for the cue.”
She picked up where she’d left off:
“— David Currick, don’t be difficult. Tell me more about Wyoming.”
“Prairie in the east, Rockies in the west, and in between there’s near-desert, rolling hills, wild country, and just about everything else.” He considered. “Except cities.” Cities with big theaters.
“What’s the land like around Knighton and on your ranch?”
“Runs from a bit of broken flats up into the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. We’re on the eastern slope of the Big Horns.”
“Mountains?” She sounded intrigued.
“Big Horns aren’t the Rockies,” he said, so she wouldn’t have a mistaken image. “They’re older mountains, so they’ve been worn down. Look rounder, sort of. Though they’ve got their ways, too.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means they’ll catch you out if you get cocky. Bring you down if don’t give them the respect they deserve. Flip side, they provide good water from the snow melt, so it’s greener than a lot of the state. That’s why my dad’s grandfather settled there. Each generation’s added to his parcel, bit by bit. Starting from longhorns from Texas in the 1870s, we’ve kept making the stock better. What’s that look for?”
“You love it.”
“I love it.”
She nodded slowly. “Why?”
They walked a minute, maybe more while he considered. When he spoke it wasn’t anything he’d known he’d say. “Ranching and Wyoming do something I’ve never heard of anything else doing. They make you small and they make you big all at the same time. You watch a calf being born and know you’re no more than an attendant on Nature’s parade, sweeping up after the elephants.”
He heard her warm chuckle, and appreciated it.
“But then you have a heifer that’s stuck so good she’ll never get out of a fence tangle, and if you weren’t there, right then, fighting her and the fence and rain pouring down and clippers no
t working worth a damn, you know — you know — she’d have died. There you were. Not ten years old, and you did it, and you felt so big your head should poke a hole in the thunderclouds overhead.
“The Slash-C... I can breathe there. Breathe in deep and slow, and know I’ve filled my lungs with something good. It can be a harsh land, but it doesn’t play favorites. And there’s a beauty... I can’t tell you, not right. I’m not good with words.”
“You’re doing just fine.”
He met her gaze. And stopped right there outside the stock show, surrounded by people and animals milling around with the busyness of departure, and kissed this woman whose amazing hazel eyes went soft with reflecting his emotions back to him.
THE KISS LEFT them both breathless. It might have done a lot more if a wolf whistle and some chuckles hadn’t penetrated her consciousness.
They stood there, looking at each other for a dozen breaths.
What is happening here ?
Lust. It had to be. A potent enough case of lust that she was going to make love with this man tonight. No matter what. And despite the fact that she knew — knew — there was no future, because his ship was headed back to Knighton, and hers was aimed for whatever stop came next on the way to Broadway.
At last, Ed sucked in a final deep breath, held the exhibition hall’s big door, then took her hand and led her in.
She was Alice through the looking glass. Stepping into a world she had never known before. Never considered before.
And he was her guide.
They wandered hand in hand. Some would not view the emptying space as a romantic venue, considering the need to sidestep certain hazards from cattle, as well as the odor impossible to sidestep. But this was his world, and she saw he moved through it with a confidence that also included humility, bringing it a grace that made her heart lift and hammer.
“Ed, glad to see you.” A lanky man with a lush mustache extended his hand. “Missed you yesterday. I’d hoped to have a word.”
“Mr. Gates, good to see you, too. This is —” He smiled down at her. “— Donna Roberts. Donna, this is Mr. Gates, one of the best cattlemen in this country.”
A smile spread under the mustache. “If you’re going to say things like that, you’d both best call me Carter. Miss,” he added, lifting the front of his hat. “Can’t talk long. Need to find that scamp of mine and get started back. Tucker’s probably driving some poor soul to distraction with his questions.”
“They’re good questions,” Ed said. “I was part of a group hanging around for the answers to his questions to those folks from Texas showing the paint horses.”
Pride showed in the older man’s eyes, but he shook his head. “I’ll be lucky if he’s not headed south with them, everything forgotten but wanting to know more. But what I want to talk to you about if your young lady here doesn’t mind is more on your thoughts about crossbreeding continentals with Herefords.”
“I don’t mind at all,” Donna said. Not when she saw how the older man’s interest lit Ed’s eyes.
She listened carefully, and understood about every third word.
But while she didn’t understand much of the spoken language, their body language didn’t require translation.
Ed was respectful toward the older man, yet sure in what he was saying.
For his part, Carter Gates started interested, and ended deeply impressed. Donna fought back a temptation to beam at him when he expressed the sentiment.
“You coming to the National Western?” Carter Gates asked.
“Afraid not.”
“That’s a shame. They’ve opened to crossbreeds, and others would be interested in what you’re doing. If you decide to bring stock down, you let me know, and we’ll find you a spot with ours in the barns.”
“I appreciate that, Carter.”
They parted, but as she and Ed continued walking past display areas being dismantled and animals being led out, she quickly realized Carter Gates was not alone in being interested in and impressed by what Ed was doing on the Slash-C.
She flashed back to watching him at the opening night party, talking to those heavyhitters. She would have been jittery and overly talkative. But Ed was at ease with others, because he was at ease with himself.
Because he knew who he was and what he wanted to do.
But... she knew who she was and what she wanted to do, too.
She did.
“AND THEY TALK about theater being a small world,” she said as the rancher said farewell. “You must know every soul here.”
It had gone on like that all morning, through their lunch at a food stand, and now the afternoon.
“Cattle can be a fairly small world, but what we’re doing here is new, and that’s an even smaller world. At the National Western, I’d be a speck in the ocean.”
“That’s the big show in January? You mentioned that, then we got sidetracked by rodeo.”
“Rodeo and other things.” His grin was as potent as the first kiss his words recalled. Memory of the sensations of that kiss, her responses, and all that had followed sparked through her.
“Can’t you get away other times of the year?” Her voice sounded breathless and throaty, at odds with the prosaic question.
“Spring’s calving season, planting, and repairing what winter brought down. Summer’s caring for stock and doing your best sunup to sundown to keep up. Then you’re into roundup and weaning and getting ’em ready for market. Winter’s your most downtime. So that’s when ranchers go to stock shows.”
She’d had little to do with farms growing up in Indianapolis, but being surrounded by some of the most fertile cropland in the world made it impossible for even a self-absorbed theater-mad teenager not to know farmers didn’t have anything like the 40-hour work-week and annual vacation package of the suburbs. A year-round and lifelong commitment.
Like marriage.
“Oh, look at the size of those.” She pointed rather wildly at animals in a parallel aisle.
He looked around. “European stock. Most American cattle, like the Herefords, Angus you’re probably familiar with, give good meat production. If we can breed bigger European seedstock in while keeping meat quality, we’ll have the best of both.”
“Seedstock?”
“That’s what I came to see. Animals available for breeding into our herd. It’s fine to research the lines, but watching the animals move, getting an idea of temperament, that’s important, too.”
“You’re a trailblazer in this, aren’t you?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I’m doing some.”
“What does your mom think? And your father?”
“Dad can tell a bull from a heifer without help, but the law is what he cares about. Mom? She’d have us going full-bore. In fact, she did that with a small subherd. Trouble is, the meat’s not as good as we want for Slash-C brand. I’m taking it cautious with the main herd. Being real careful what lines we breed in.”
She understood the gist, while glimpsing the complexities and variables behind his explanation. Like theater, there was another universe backstage. “You should do it,” she said.
“What?”
“Come back to the big show in January.”
He shook his head. “Not this year. Maybe never.”
“But, Ed, all these people have said it would be a great opportunity for you.”
Each one had urged him to bring some of his livestock. She’d also heard the show included rodeo events, a horse show, singing, dances, and parties. She ignored twinges at images of him singing, dancing, and partying without her. It wasn’t like she expected him never to sing, dance, party... or love... after this week.
“It’s hard on everyone when I’m gone, even in winter. It leaves Mom and a couple of hands who were old when she was born.” He shook his head again.
Yet he’d stayed on. For her.
AFTER AN EARLY dinner at a place one of Ed’s friends recommended — she had never seen steaks that big — they retur
ned to the hotel.
The transformation of its lobby shoved aside her rising nerves.
Christmas had arrived at staid Rockton Hotel.
Sort of.
A tree stood in the lobby, with smaller tree-like decorations spotted around, including at either end of the front desk, squeezing the clerks.
“It’s pink,” Ed said, in apparent disbelief. “Pink and fuzzy.”
Pink, fuzzy, and sporting aqua balls and an encircling magenta streamer.
“I think it’s supposed to look like it’s been flocked,” she said. “Unless — Oh, God, I hope they didn’t do that to a real tree. It’s got to be a fake tree. It’s got to be... ”
They stood side by side in front of it, staring. He took her hand in his, and she leaned her shoulder against his arm.
“So your tree won’t look like this?” he asked.
“I won’t have one this year. Not unless my parents can find one when I have a break in January. You?”
“Won’t look anything like this. Live tree, decorations mixed from several generations, and what my sister and I made as kids.”
She smiled at the thought of his parents bringing out his creations each year.
“Everybody together, piling into the car for the tree lot, looking for the right one,” she said. “Balsam for that wonderful scent.”
He caught on right away. “All together, yeah, but on horseback, finding a fir from the mountains. Smells like outdoors.”
“Multicolored lights. Not the tiny ones.”
“Right.”
“Tinsel,” she said.
“Garland.”
“No flocking,” they said in unison, and laughed.
“Star on top,” she said.
“Angel. Looks a lot like you, actually.”
She looked into his eyes, and felt that spotlight sensation of their first meeting multiplied a hundred times.... Except now she realized it was also the feeling from the opening night party of a line connecting them. Together, those feelings had informed her precisely where he sat whenever he was in the audience.
