Between Strangers (2 page)

Both of them sat in stunned silence, looking out the windshield at nothing but pine needles and bark in every direction. There was total quiet for what seemed like a half hour, but it was probably only a few seconds.

 

“Stay put. I'll go move it out of the way,” Lance growled.

“Is it the whole tree?”

He shook his head in frustration. “It's just a damned big branch. I'll handle it.” He got out and slammed the door behind him.

He knew he shouldn't take his frustrations out on a perfect stranger. None of this was her fault. Whether she was in the SUV or not hadn't caused the wind to take off the biggest branch he'd ever seen and lay it end to end blocking the road.

Okay, so there was nothing he'd like better than to never have seen her and her baby standing by the roadside in the first place. He had a timetable of his own and no time to deal with someone else's problems.

But that little outburst of hers about the no-good scum of a husband abandoning them both before the baby was even born had made him furious. He'd known plenty of bums like that from his rodeo days. Men who would play around with women and then disappear when things got serious.

But knowing about it didn't make hearing the truth from the woman's side any easier. It was despicable. The thought of having a family right in the palm of your hand and casually tossing it aside rather than cherishing every minute made him angry and itching to hit something.

Nothing on earth would make him abandon these two to the storm. He didn't know why he'd been hapless enough to be saddled with them, but it looked as if fate had stepped in yet again and changed his plans. At the very least, he would take them to a truck stop and make sure they were safe.

Pulling his hat lower and hunching down inside his jacket, Lance stepped out of the warmth of the running car and into a polar blast of Arctic air. The temperature must've dropped twenty degrees in the past hour.

He tried not to breathe too deeply in the sharp raw cold, knowing all too well how his lungs would burn if he did. A man couldn't be a wrangler on a ranch in northern Montana without being fully aware of all the dangers lurking in the long, hard winters there.

By the time he made it around the hood through the blinding, blowing snow to the downed tree branch, he felt the bone-chilling cold penetrating all the way down to his internal organs. He quickly discovered that the pine branch was lying across the entire two lanes, making it impossible for the SUV to go around. The limb was thick, full of bushy needles and loaded with heavy snow.

There was nothing to do but drag it out of the way. But two major tugs against the full weight of the
branch told him moving it by hand was out of the question. Man, what he'd give for a cross-cut saw just about now.

“Can I help?” Marcy's question grabbed his attention.

“I told you to stay put,” he yelled against the wind. “The temperature out here has dropped beyond dangerous. Get back in the car.”

“You'll never move anything that heavy by yourself,” she said, ignoring his question in a voice raised above the roar of the storm. “Can we use the SUV to push it out of the way?”

“No.” But her question gave him an idea.

Before buying the SUV, when he'd been checking out the compartment that held the spare tire, he was a little surprised to find jumper cables, a fold-up metal shovel, a cable-size rope and a thick blanket all stuffed in around the spare. The rental agent told him it was standard procedure to keep emergency supplies like those in every car they rented out during the dead of winter.

“That'll have to work,” he grumbled to himself as he stomped to the cargo compartment of the SUV.

By the time he'd retrieved the rope from the compartment, Marcy was beside him again. “What're you going to do?”

“We can't push it out of the way. But maybe we can pull it aside far enough to drive around,” he told her.

Like most newer cars and trucks, this one didn't have decent steel bumpers. But it did have a heavy-
duty hitch installed to the frame under the rear bumper.

Lance glanced over at Marcy and caught the shiver that pulsed through her body. She wasn't dressed warmly enough for this kind of weather. That coat of hers was worn out.

There was no question which of them would do what. “Do you think you can turn the SUV around so that it's headed in the other direction? I'll attach the rope and make sure it'll hold.”

“Yes…yes, of course…” she stuttered.

When she was safely in the driver's seat, he finally relaxed his shoulders. At least her feet wouldn't be subject to frostbite while inside the warm vehicle.

He stepped aside and guided her by hand movements to a point he figured would be the best for moving the branch. After he'd made sure the rope was securely tied to both tree and SUV, he waved her ahead. She cracked the driver's-side window to hear him over the wind.

She tried to inch ahead but the wheels were spinning against the icy patches and the building snow crystals. She couldn't manage to get any traction.

“Let me try it,” he hollered.

Instead of scooting over the center console, Marcy hopped out of the driver's door and started around the hood to the passenger side. She raised her hands to cover her mouth against the biting cold, and he got his first good look at her gloves.

Or her utter
lack
of adequate gloves would be a truer description of what he'd seen as she dashed past. He had originally thought she'd been wearing woolen
mittens. Now he was shocked to see holes where her fingers poked through the thin material. She would have frostbite for sure.

Marcy climbed inside through the other door, and he slid into the driver's seat. It didn't take him but five more minutes to rock the SUV ahead, dragging the branch out of one lane. Two more minutes and the rope was untied and crammed back in the compartment with the spare. Then he successfully managed to turn the SUV once again so they could be on their way.

He eased the SUV down the road past the bulk of the tree. Once they were clear, he slowed and put it in Park.

Turning to face her, he tried to remain calm as he said, “Marcy, give me your hands.”

“What?” She swiveled and blinked at his odd demand.

Holding his own hands out, palms up, he cocked his head and waited.

She tentatively started to lay her hands in his, but looked wary and confused. It was all he could do not to break down and beg her to quickly do as he'd asked. He didn't want to scare her, but this was too important.

M
arcy hadn't realized how difficult it might be to give up control and let Lance take her hands. She should've known. After all, it had been more than eighteen months since she'd let a man so much as touch her.

When she glanced up to check the sincerity in his midnight-black eyes, her breath caught in her throat. Was that an erotic spark she saw in those eyes? Marcy had to fight within herself to ignore it and the powerful electric current she'd felt.

Eventually she surrendered her hands to him and stared blankly at where they were joined. The contrast between the golden skin of the back of his hands and the stark whiteness of her fingers drew her entire focus.

Lance studied their hands, too, his face contorted
in a scowl. “We need to get these wet things off you in a hurry.”

“Huh?” That shocking sizzle of sensual awareness she'd just felt had obviously turned her into an idiot.

He didn't wait for her to come to her senses. Tearing off her gloves, he dropped them in front of the heater. But he still didn't let go of her hands.

Wonderful. Now the jolts of electricity were shooting clear up her arms and down her spine, making her overly warm and hypersensitive to every tiny touch. And here she'd thought her fingers were numbed by the cold.

She managed to keep herself from pulling away. Not that she really wanted to. Never in her life had a man's touch affected her so strongly. Her mind froze at the same time her body heated.

But Lance's next move stirred the blood clear to her toes and drove her totally past common sense. He tenderly lifted her hands to his mouth and lightly blew a warm breath across her fingers and palms.

Fire raced from her hands up through her veins, landing with a roar in her belly. Suddenly panicked by the intimate movements and by a fever that was driving her to madness, Marcy shuddered and tugged hard against his grip.

Either her frantic jerking or her audible gasps must've broken through Lance's intense concentration. “Don't pull away. Let me warm you up.”

The tone of his voice sounded more erotic to her than his words. She was already burning up simply from his touch.

“I'm concerned about frostbite,” he advised sternly.

Marcy couldn't keep looking into his eyes. The intimacy was too much for her to take.

“I'm okay,” she told him as she began rubbing her hands together to get the circulation back.

“Don't rub your hands that way.” He reached for her hands again. “Rubbing is one of the worst things you can do for frostbite.”

When their fingers touched once more, he stopped talking and she heard his sudden intake of breath. She wondered if the lightning bolt of sensation she'd felt had seared him as deeply as it had her.

She found herself looking down and away from their joined hands. Anywhere but back into his eyes.

After a too-long second of uncomfortable silence, he finally placed her hands next to the heater's fan and then let her go. “Keep your fingers in front of the blower. They may start to ache but they'll thaw more slowly that way.”

Lance sat back in his seat and put the SUV into gear. “I think we should make it to a truck stop in about an hour.” His voice was rough and dry. “That is, if we don't have any more emergency roadblocks to get around.”

Neither of them said anything more as quiet filled the SUV, and all that could be heard was the blower on the heater's fan and the rumble of the engine as the SUV strained against the icy winds and slick roads.

Marcy couldn't find enough of her voice to say anything at all. She sat stunned in silence for long
minutes, trying to figure out what had just happened between them.

Her brain slowly came back around to focusing on her surroundings at the exact moment she heard Angie begin to stir in the back seat. Relieved and grateful, she figured that her baby would be a good distraction to take her mind off the odd reaction she'd had to Lance's touch. Marcy unbuckled the seat belt and twisted around on her knees to check the little girl.

“What's the matter with your baby?” he asked. “Is she all right?”

“She's just waking up, but I'm betting she'll soon be loudly voicing her complaints.”

“Complaints?”

Angie opened her eyes, and Marcy decided to slide past the center console to go between the two front seats in order to reach her. The familiar sounds of the baby's “I'm wet and hungry” cries told her that it was indeed time for a change.

“Whoa,” Lance bellowed over the din created by Angie's screams and the fierce sounds of the blowing winds. “Should I stop?”

“We're barely moving as it is,” Marcy told him. “I trust you. Just keep going. I can reach her diaper bag in the back,” she continued. “Just let me change Angie and try giving her the water bottle. I'll wait to feed her until we can get inside someplace warm.” At least, she hoped Angie could wait a little longer.

 

Lance concentrated on his driving. Still shaken from his crazy reaction to the touch of her skin and
the spark of something he'd seen in her eyes, he now had one more thing about Marcy Griffin that deviled him.

She trusted him to keep them safe. He was frantically searching his memory for any other time when someone had actually trusted him that much. The only thing he could come up with was when Buck pulled him off the rodeo circuit and hired him to be in charge of his ranch's rodeo stock program. He must've trusted him a lot to do that. Right?

Lance had never been able to figure out what made women tick, though. And this one was turning out to be more confusing than any of the others.

Take Buck's daughter, Lorna, for instance. She was a good friend. Someone who would gladly ride across the Montana countryside with him, and someone he could also take to movies on lonely Saturday nights. Lorna was steady and predictable. And he was sure she would accept his ring. She would make him a good wife.

But never…ever…had he felt the same kind of steamy heat and staggering flood of senses that he'd experienced just by touching Marcy's hands.

He couldn't remember any time in those days before he settled down on the ranch—and certainly never with the woman who lived there now—when this intense kind of desire had bypassed his good judgment. With Lorna, he'd wanted to wait until the two of them were at least engaged before they took things past friendship. And he was sure Lorna felt the same way. Letting sex rule a relationship was not a
thing he felt comfortable doing with someone who would be his life partner.

So this sudden craving to take a perfect stranger into his arms and kiss her senseless was totally unexpected and absolutely unwanted. Perhaps the life-and-death circumstances they found themselves in were making his normal male reactions to a pretty woman suddenly seem much more powerful.

He decided not to dwell on it too much. The best thing for him to do was to talk to Marcy. Try to make friends with her. Keep things casual. They probably would be together for several more hours at least. By the time he was on his way down the road without her, perhaps the two of them would've found they had nothing in common and his libido would've settled back in line.

Good plan. Now if only his body would cooperate.

Within fifteen minutes Marcy had quieted her baby and climbed back into the front seat. Lance was beyond tired and hungry. And Marcy looked as if she hadn't eaten a decent meal in about a week.

“Another half hour and we should be at the truck stop,” he told her. He took his eyes off the road for a second and glanced over to check on her.

She smiled up at him. Actually smiled. It felt as if someone had flipped on a light in a pitch-black room.

The unexpected sizzle of heat and tension made him jerk his head back around to stare through the windshield. He figured it was too dangerous to take his eyes off the road ahead. In more ways than one.

“How come you know the country around here so
well?” she asked congenially. “Are you from the area?”

Now, this was better. They could talk for a while. Just as long as he didn't have to look at her.

“No, ma'am,” he said with a chuckle. “I've spent most of my adult life following the rodeo circuit. It's a hectic way of life for a man…traveling from one rodeo town to the next. But after a few years of doing it, a guy gets to know the routes and stops pretty well. And a man can manage to make friends in the places he comes back to year after year.”

“You were in the rodeo? What'd you do there?” Surprise colored the tone of her questions, but she sounded more awed than disgusted.

He never knew what to expect when he mentioned his work. Many people had no idea about what went on at a rodeo. Others felt it was a low-class kind of life. Still others, like the buckle bunnies and camp followers, were too easily impressed by what was really just a job.

“I was a bull rider for the first few years,” he admitted. “Then later I rode the broncs.”

“Cool. That's awesome. But isn't it dangerous?”

“I've had my share of bruises and broken bones, I guess. But the point is to know when to stop before it takes you down for good.”

“You don't do it anymore? You quit?”

Is that what he'd done? “I retired from the circuit. I moved on to something better.”

“Back at your ranch in Montana?”

“The ranch isn't mine. I'm just a hired hand.”

She seemed hesitant to make a comment. “Re
ally?” she finally said in a neutral tone. “What do you do there?”

He didn't know if Marcy was truly interested, or if she'd even have the foggiest idea of what went into his job. But she was waiting for an answer. And he'd already made the decision that he wanted them to become friends.

So he figured he would just keep talking. “The ranch was always home for a good friend of mine. His family has lived on the land for nearly a hundred years.

“They've got a formidable operation there with many different kinds of businesses. Sheep. Cattle. They breed show horses and champion stock bulls, and do lots of other profitable things, as well. My friend's dad, Buck Stanton, hired me to run the stock contracting end of the business.”

“Stock contracting?”

“Yeah. We supply the livestock to rodeos. Our operation isn't big enough yet to produce the shows themselves. But we'll be getting there someday.”

“Your ranch raises the bucking horses and those mean ol' bulls?”

The question brought an automatic grin. “There's a bit more to it than that. I acquire bucking stock at auction, study the genetics of breeding good buckers and make sure the stock stays rank by pasturing them far away from humans.

“So far we have a crew of thirty in my division. Vets, chute men, transporters. The whole deal is growing by leaps and bounds.”

“Goodness,” she said with a slight chuckle. “I had
no idea so much went into that sort of thing. Have you been doing it very long?”

“Not long,” he told her with a shake of his head.

“I see.”

There was something in the way she said the words that told him she had questions not yet spoken aloud. He just didn't know what answer to give if she wouldn't ask the question.

Nothing for him to do but keep talking. Maybe he'd hit on the right answer by accident. Plus…all this talking was helping to keep him alert and was making the time go by quicker.

“But the ranch is definitely my home now,” he told her without a second thought. “It's great not having to travel all the time.”

“But you're traveling now. Was this trip for business?”

His thoughts on this trip were still all jumbled in his head. Grief and regret mixed together with a final release of duty and the promise of a brand-new life. He wasn't sure he could talk about it just yet.

“No,” he grunted. “My grandmother passed away. I felt it was my duty to attend her funeral in New Orleans.”

“Your ‘duty'?” Marcy asked in a quiet voice. “I don't understand.”

Hell, he'd managed to say the wrong thing after all. He really did
not
want to talk about this.

“It's not important,” he said quickly. “What's important is that I'm headed home. And if I'm lucky, I'll make it there by Christmas Eve.”

“Does your family celebrate that with special traditions?”

“Didn't know I had much family left. And now that Grandmother Steele is gone, I guess I'll never know much about that side of the family.” Now why had he let that slip? Jeez, he was sure saying way too much to a stranger. “I hope to make the Stantons in Montana my family from now on. They've done more than give me a job—they're more like family than just friends and employers.” Again, that was just too much to say. What was the matter with him?

“But you don't have a wife and kids waiting for you back in Montana?”

Ah. He had a feeling that was the question she'd been wanting to ask. He'd noted over the years that it was a question most women asked when they first met a man.

“No, ma'am. Not as yet. But I'm hopeful that'll be changing real soon. Now that I'm building a home, I intend to have everything that goes with it.”

“Oh? You're engaged, then?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. But I expect that Lorna Stanton will consent to marry me when I propose at the family's traditional Christmas Eve party. So…no, as of this moment, I'm not engaged, either.”

“Did you mean to say that this Lorna is your girlfriend?”

“I suppose you could call her a girlfriend,” he admitted hesitantly. “But I've never thought of her that way. We have a lot in common. A marriage between us makes sense. It's a good solid fit.”

“Hmm. So does she love you? Do you love her?”

“I can't say that we've come that far yet. But I believe the best marriages are the ones where love grows over time. I'm starting a little late in life, but we still should have fifty years or so to learn about love.”