Into the Arms of a Cowboy

by Isabella Ashe

  His house on Russian Hill dazzled her with its view of the Golden Gate Bridge. But Andrew’s rough embrace and bruising kisses took her by surprise. She pulled away, chided him gently, and tried to make a joke of it. Andrew wouldn’t take no for an answer, though. He grabbed her breast. She pushed him away again, angrily. He called her a tease, and other names Cassie preferred to forget. He shoved her down onto his immaculate white living room carpet. That’s when she realized she was in serious trouble.

  With Andrew on top of her and panic clawing at her chest, her instincts took over. Cassie had hoped a knee in the groin would bring the man to his senses, but it only enraged him. Luckily, while he was doubled over and groaning, she found the chance to scramble away. He came after her, and struck her with his closed fist. The impact snapped her head back. His ring gouged a bloody groove into the skin above her eyebrow. She barely remembered picking up the fireplace poker, but she must have hit him, because--

  A muted sob broke from Cassie’s throat. She clapped her hand over her mouth, too late.

  “You all right there?” Jess asked, in a voice that mingled gruffness with compassion--a unexpected combination, like tree bark and raw silk, or gravel and clear water.

  The warmth and gentleness in his words proved the last straw. Tears slid down her cheeks, big fat tears of fear and loss. She brushed them away with the back of her hand. “I’m fine,” she said, not very convincingly.

  Jess’s tentative fingers touched her leg. When she didn’t protest, he laid his palm over her thigh. Just a light touch, not demanding, not even sexual. It was a kind gesture, one human being communicating sympathy to another, and as they sat together without speaking Cassie’s tears dried up as quickly as they’d begun. When it came to self-pity, she strictly enforced a “no wallowing” rule.

  Jess palm and fingers radiated heat through the thin fibers of her dress. A pleasurable shiver passed through her body. Jess, apparently misunderstanding, drew his hand away. Cassie immediately missed the warmth of his touch.

  “Would you like to talk about it?” Jess asked, his voice rich and deep and sexy, comforting as hot spiced cider on a winter night. “Sometimes that goes a long way towards making it better”

  Cassie wouldn’t have minded letting those broad shoulders bear her burden for a while. But she was a fugitive, and she’d already turned Jess into her unwitting accomplice. It would be selfish to involve him any further. “Thanks,” she whispered. “Thanks, but I can’t.”

  He glanced her way, his brown eyes soft in the dim light. “You sure? Most folks say I lend a pretty good ear to their troubles.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay, then. But if you change your mind. . . .”

  Once again, quiet settled down around them, but this time it felt like a warm, cozy cloak rather than an icy unease. Cassie soon dozed off.

  When she woke, she blinked against the early morning light. Pink streaks lit a cloudless sky. Jess had just parked his truck in front of a sprawling one-story ranch house.

  Jess let his dog out, then rounded the truck and opened her door for Cassie. “How’re you feeling?” he asked.

  As she climbed from the truck, she rubbed the back of her neck. “Sort of stiff, but I’ll recover.”

  “I thought about waking you up--you know, so you could get in the back--but you were out cold.” A roguish grin flashed across his face like summer lightning. His mouth was so firm, as sculpted as a Renaissance statue, and Cassie couldn’t tear her eyes away. How would that masculine mouth feel under her own lips? Hard as marble? Or soft and supple? Warm, for sure. Warm as his hand on her thigh last night.

  “Cassie?”

  “Huh? Oh--right.” A hot flush stung her cheeks. For some reason, with Jess around, her hormones were working overtime. “You were saying?”

  “I asked whether you’d like a shower and some breakfast.”

  “That would be heavenly,” she admitted. “Is this where you live?”

  “Nope. This is my uncle’s ranch. My place is about an hour from here, a ways up the hill from a town called Bitter Creek.”

  Cassie followed Jess to the front door of the house and waited behind him while he knocked.

  The door opened. Cassie stared.

  A man of about 60 stood before her, wiry and whipcord-tough, with grizzled whiskers on a face crisscrossed by wrinkles and seams. But it wasn’t the weathered face or the twinking blue eyes that riveted Cassie’s attention.

  It was the missing left ear.

  The old man chuckled and fingered the ragged flap of cartilage. “Lost it to a bull named Brimstone back in ‘67, missy,” he said, in a thick Texas drawl. “I fell off the damn animal and he sliced it off with his hoof.”

  As usual, Cassie’s curiosity overwhelmed her good manners. “Did it hurt?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  Jess’s uncle threw back his head and let out a loud cackle. “Hurt like hell.” He turned to Jess, still laughing. “Where’d you find this kid? She’s got spunk. Purtier than a speckled pup, too.”

  Jess rolled his eyes. “Cassie, meet my Uncle Gus.”

  Gus offered a callused palm for a handshake, then led the way into the living room. Definitely a bachelor pad, Cassie decided. No woman would have tolerated the racks of antlers bristling from the wall, or the table fashioned from barrel staves.

  “Cassie’d like to freshen up,” Jess said. He eyed her cashmere dress in an appraising way that made the blood rush back into her cheeks. “Gus, you got anything she can borrow? She didn’t, uh, bring along much luggage.”

  To Cassie’s relief, Gus didn’t ask any of the obvious questions. “Sure,” he said. “There’s some of Patty’s duds still around.” He pointed down a narrow hallway. “Shower’s through there, and the clothes are in the closet on your left. Might be sorta musty, but they’ll fit. Patty carried a tad more padding around the hips and such, but she was about your height.”

  “I’m sure whatever you have will be fine,” Cassie said. She hesitated, touched by the shadow of sadness darkening Gus’s blue eyes. “Patty was. . . ?”

  “My wife. She passed on a few years back.”

  Cassie touched his arm. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Gus nodded. “Thanks, missy. We had some good years, Patty and me.”

  Cassie glanced Jess’s way and caught him watching her with an odd, strained expression on his rugged face. What was going on in that mysterious mind of his?

  The strange look slipped away as he met her eyes. “Better get moving,” Jess said gruffly. “There’s a rodeo waiting, and Gus’s got some business there in an hour or so.”

  “I’m a stock contractor,” Gus added, “and I’ve got a big sale in the works.”

  “Stocks?” Cassie wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Like, Wall Street and high-tech IPOs?”

  The two men choked back their laughter, with obvious effort, and Jess shook his head. “Stock, like bulls and broncs. Gus supplies rodeos all over the state.”

  “Oh, I get it.” Cassie laughed, too. She never let her fear of looking foolish keep her from asking questions, even stupid questions. How else was a person supposed to learn things? She grabbed her handbag, grateful for once that the jumble of odds and ends inside included a travel toothbrush and other toiletries. “I won’t be long,” she promised.

  A few minutes later, as she gratefully eased her sore shoulders under a stream of hot water, she realized Jess hadn’t said anything about their parting ways. He’d assumed she wanted to come along. Well, she didn’t have any better ideas.

  Besides, she’d never seen a rodeo before.

  Jess set the bacon to sizzling, then poured the first puddles of golden pancake batter into an extra-large skillet. Gus stood beside him at the stove, scrambling the eggs. While his uncle hadn’t said a word yet, the questions hung thick in the air.

  Finally, Jess let out an exasperated sigh. “Why don’t you just ask me who she is?”

  Gus shrugged as he cracked another fresh bro
wn egg into his bowl. “Okay, I’ll bite. Who is she?”

  “I don’t know. She won’t tell me.”

  Gus chuckled. “Another one of your wounded creatures, eh?”

  “Yeah, I guess, but what do I do with this one?”

  The oil in Gus’s frying pan sputtered as he added raw egg. “What do you do with the rest of ‘em?”

  “Help them heal up, then let them go in the woods.”

  Gus raised bushy, graying brows. “So?”

  “So, she’s a person, not a hawk with a broken wing. It’s not the same thing at all.” He flipped the first set of pancakes. Charred black on the bottom. It figured. Jess scraped them into the compost bucket and started over. “I can’t just take her home with me. Besides. . .”

  “Not sure you could turn her loose in the end, are you?”

  Jess scowled. Gus had taught him everything he knew about rodeo, but that didn’t give the old man the right to butt into his personal life. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just met her.”

  “But you’re eyeing her like a starving man at a barbecue, ain’t you? I’m not just talking about a roll in the hay, either, kid. You already feel something for this girl.”

  Had he been so obvious? He’d felt something, all right, as he watched Cassie tell Gus how sorry she was to hear about Aunt Patty’s death. He’d seen real emotion in her dove-gray eyes. At some point, loss had touched Cassie’s life, too. That certainty moved him. There was no denying it.

  Gus was still watching him closely. Jess’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “She’s in some kind of trouble, Gus. You can see it clear as day. She’s vulnerable, and I’m not about to take advantage.”

  The old man snorted and shook his head as he scooped a steaming pile of scrambled eggs onto a blue ceramic plate, slightly chipped at the edges. “Who said anything about taking advantage? I know you better than that. All I’m saying is you’ll be sorry if you don’t give this thing half a chance. Besides,” and he used his spatula to gesture at the stove, “you gotta get yourself a wife, or else you’ll starve. You sure can’t cook worth a damn.”

  Jess glanced down, then coughed as black smoke tickled his nose. Oh, hell. The second batch of pancakes joined the first.

  “I don’t need a wife,” he said through gritted teeth, as he poured more pancakes. “I tried that once already, remember? And you know what happened there.”

  “This one’s nothing like Danielle. This one’s special.” Gus punctuated his words by stabbing at Jess’s chest with the spatula.

  “You don’t know anything about her.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I can tell she’s a keeper.”

  “I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of my business, Gus,” he growled, as he flipped the pancakes.

  Gus opened his mouth to argue, but at that moment Cassie interrupted by stepping into the kitchen. Her hair, damp and a dark gold now, hung loose around her shoulders. She’d done a credible job of concealing her bruise with makeup, though Jess could still see the dark outline on her cheek.

  Cassie wore a white cotton button-down blouse and a long flowered skirt. The demure outfit couldn’t hide her womanly curves, though. She looked so soft and feminine. Rounded in all the right places.

  She padded across the linoleum floor on bare feet. Jess couldn’t help but notice the bright pink polish on her toenails, and, as she drifted closer, the faint smell of soap clinging to her fresh-scrubbed skin.

  “Smells great,” she said, smiling up at him. In the sunlight, a gold-dust sprinkling of freckles sparkled across her pert little nose. “But, um. . . I think those pancakes are done now.”

  Jess groaned and jerked the skillet off the burner. Too late. More breakfast ruined, and for the same reason as before--Cassie distracted the hell out of him. “I’m more tired than I thought,” he said, with a sheepish grin. “Will you settle for Gus’s bacon and eggs?”

  Cassie settled down at the kitchen table with Gus and Jess. As they tucked into the food, conversation was limited to requests for more toast.

  After breakfast, while Gus found a pair of espadrilles for Cassie, Jess showered and changed into fresh denim jeans. Then they squeezed into the Chevy for the ride to the rodeo grounds, with Harry in the camper. It was a tight fit. Cassie’s hip pressed against Jess’s, and his fingers brushed her leg whenever he went to shift gears. Another distraction he didn’t need.

  Even so early, the parking lot at the rodeo grounds had begun to fill up. Jess dropped Gus at the gate, then parked the pickup in a shady spot. He turned to Cassie. “I’m gonna check in for my events, then head back to the truck to catch a few hours sleep. Will you be all right on your own until lunchtime?”

  “Sure. I’ll just do some exploring. This rodeo thing is all new to me, but I like it already.”

  Jess grinned across the cab at her, captivated by the way her curiosity, energy, and enthusiasm made her battered face shine like a new penny. Even her situation--whatever that was--couldn’t dim her zest for life. “Just make sure you’re in the stands by 10:30 or so,” he said, “when they start the saddle bronc event.”

  She smiled back at him. Her two front teeth overlapped just a little, a tiny, endearing imperfection that made his heart stutter in his chest. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Be careful, will you? It sounds kind of hazardous to your health.”

  “It can be. That’s why it’s such an incredible rush. There’s no feeling like it in the world.” He chuckled, reached down, and briefly squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ve been doing this for a lot of years.”

  “Without getting hurt?”

  “Well. . . .” He thought back to the broken collarbone and ribs, the bum knee, half a dozen concussions, and the nose that hadn’t healed straight. Others, good friends, hadn’t been so lucky. “It hasn’t killed me,” Jess said, keeping his tone light. “Not yet.”

  “Knock wood when you say that.” She rapped her knuckles against the paneling on the dashboard, but she was smiling as she opened the passenger door and jumped from the truck.

  As she walked off toward the arena, Jess squinted at her through the morning sunshine. How much longer before she slipped out of his life altogether? It was hard to tell, with her not saying much about her past or her plans. He was torn between wishing she’d hang around a while and hoping she’d move on before he got used to her company. Once she left, his life would get back to normal. Problem was, “normal” didn’t appeal to him all that much.

  An hour later, as he tossed and turned on the mattress in the back of his pickup, Jess was still brooding about that damn woman and her secrets. She must be running from an abusive relationship. At least, it seemed like a safe assumption. How else to explain her bruised face and the fear in her eyes? But she wouldn’t confide in him, and he couldn’t force her. “What the hell am I going to do about you, Cassie?” he asked aloud.

  Harry lifted his head from Jess’s stomach and flicked a dark, floppy ear in his master’s direction. “Not you. Go back to sleep,” Jess muttered.

  He guessed he’d followed his own advice, because two hours later he woke to the insistent buzz of his travel alarm clock. Time to face the music.

  His body hummed with anticipation as he pulled on his boots, then headed for the platform behind the chutes. The day had warmed up good. He pulled the brim of his black Stetson down to shade his eyes as he joined the waiting cowboys.

  The familiar smell of dust, manure, and chewing tobacco assaulted his senses. A rodeo hand safety-pinned a number to the back of Jess’s flak jacket vest. One of Jess’s regular competitors clapped him on the shoulder and said hello. The boom of the announcer’s voice filled his ears.

  Unlike the novices cracking jokes and pacing the planks, Jess wasn’t exactly nervous, just jacked up and ready. Some guys danced to loosen up. Others covered their faces with their hats and prayed. Right before Jess got on, he liked to picture the perfect ride, second by second. It steadied him.

  He would begin with one h
and on the reins and his feet over the bronc’s shoulders. To earn a high score, he would have to synchronize his spurring with the animal’s bucking action. He had to go eight seconds without touching the horse with his free hand. Eight seconds without a foot out of the stirrup, without dropping the reins.

  He’d drawn a poor horse in the same even the day before. Today, though, he planned to win. His focus narrowed down until it closed out even the muted roar of the crowd jamming the stands.

  After his events, Jess would be giddy, jubilant, ready to down a few beers and dance all night. That’s how he’d felt when he met Danielle--ready to celebrate. She’d watched from the front row at a big rodeo in Colorado, a knockout redhead in skin-tight Wranglers. She blew him away with her hot moves on the dance floor and her sultry purr as she wrapped her arms around him to whisper in his ear.

  At the time he’d been a professional cowboy, driving from state to state, working hard to make it to the top. Jess knew his winning rides drew the girls, not his good looks and charm. Still, he’d felt good that night, and maybe a little lonely after so many months on the road. After their one night together, Danielle clung to him, even cried a few tears, but they both knew the realities of a cowboy’s life. Maybe they’d meet up again sometime. She had tickets to the National Finals Rodeo; he was “on the bubble,” as the saying went, real close to the top 15 and a shot in Vegas.

  And he had made it that year after all. He drew a great bull, won the championship buckle, and afterwards at the party Danielle showed up. . . .

  A hand on his arm. “You’re up next, Jess.”

  Jess tensed, gritted his teeth, and angrily brushed away the cobwebs of memory. Focus. He had to focus. The bronc in the chute was an ugly bugger, muscular and tough. Was Cassie in the stands? Was she watching for him? He pushed that thought away, too.

  He was in the saddle now, but still between iron bars. Jess measured the bronc rein with his palm. Too long and the horse would fling him back. Too short and he’d fly over the bronc’s head.