For Love of a Cowboy (12 page)

He jumped in his truck and drove the short distance from the airstrip to the main house and stepped inside. A lot of ranches had separate dining rooms for their hands, but his Aunt Emmie had always insisted on having everyone in at the main house, saying it was her duty to make sure her husband’s men had a belly full of good food at the end of their working day. Booth thought about the paperwork he had to complete tonight. Paperwork he would normally have completed by now except for the distraction of one skinny hippie.

He shoved all thoughts of Willow to the back of his mind. Aunt Emmie had always been able to read him like a book, and the last person he wanted to discuss in her presence was the woman who could very well destroy his aunt’s happiness and security.

“Jump go okay?” his uncle asked as he stopped in the mudroom to scrub his hands.

“All good,” Booth informed him. “And the Cessna’s back to normal again and refueled, ready for you to take to Missoula tomorrow.”

It was time for Aunt Emmie’s annual cardiology check. Every time it came around there was an air of tension around the ranch until she got an all clear. Booth still vividly remembered her first heart attack. It wasn’t something he wanted to ever see his beloved aunt go through again. In fact, that was probably the one thing he and his uncle solidly agreed on. As to everything else, well, each day brought its challenges.

His uncle grunted an acknowledgement, about all Booth had expected from a man who was as mean with his words as he was with praise. If Booth hadn’t had a dream to buy his own piece of paradise and run his own spread someday soon, he wouldn’t have been able to stick it out all these years working for his uncle. But he’d recognized the opportunity to get as much experience as he could from a man who he respected for his ranching ability, if not much else.

“You planning on going to the fair?” his uncle asked, in a rare spurt of conversation.

“Maybe,” Booth acknowledged, washing his hands at the sink.

“Your aunt wants to go. Take her for me later this week. I’m getting too old for all that rubbish.”

“Rubbish?” Booth pressed.

“Rides and stuff. You know what she’s like. Sometimes it’s as if she’s a kid all over again.”

There was a slightly indulgent inflection in Kyle Donovan’s voice that was rarely heard unless he was speaking about his wife. It proved that somewhere beneath that weather-hardened exterior beat a human heart after all.

“Sure, just let me know when.”

His uncle gave another grunt of acknowledgement and left the mudroom. Clearly the conversation was over. Booth wondered anew what it was that his aunt had seen in the man, but then again, it wasn’t his place to question what attracted one person to another. Look at how his own libido now sat at a constant simmer since he’d met Willow Phillips. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her he’d recognized she was trouble with a capital T and nothing she’d done since had convinced him otherwise.

So why then had she crawled under his skin so deeply he could barely spend twenty seconds not thinking about her, let alone twenty minutes?

*

Working the fair
on her own was demanding, Willow decided by the end of the week. The socks she’d knitted up out of her New Zealand merino blends had flown off the stand and she was hard at work, when she wasn’t showing people how to knit or selling them yarn, knitting up more to meet the demand. She’d never heard the rodeo superstition of wearing mismatched socks before, but now she knew it, she wasn’t averse to capitalizing on it by separating the paired socks she’d brought amongst her samples. It was just the yellow ones—apparently an unlucky color for cowboys and -girls on rodeo day, particularly—that were slow to sell.

She was forced to take a break, closing the booth for half an hour, so she could run Daisy back to Superstitch’n’s to get some more of the basic sock patterns and kits she’d found popular with knitters. With the option of the double-pointed needles or magic loop supplied with the kit, they’d been flying off the stand.

When she returned, she was surprised to see Booth Lange waiting for her. Her stomach did a little flip of excitement until she remembered that he was likely just here to harangue her about leaving again. He tipped his Stetson back a little as she approached. No man had a right to look that good in hard-worn boots, faded jeans and a checkered shirt, but no matter how often she told herself this, she still felt that stutter in her chest and that primal pull, deep in her womb, every time she looked at him.

“I’m not slacking off, in case you’re wondering,” she flung at him as she skirted his exceptionally fine body and began unpacking the box of supplies she’d brought back from the shop.

Booth put up both his hands in mock surrender. “Did I say anything?”

“No, but I bet you were thinking it.”

“I was wondering whether you were up for a spin on the Ferris wheel later tonight.”

Willow just about gave herself a whiplash turning to look at him. “What? So you can push me out at the top?”

His lips curved in that crooked half smile that made her pulse race even when she instructed it, most firmly, not to.

“As tempting as that might be, that isn’t my motive at all. Ness asked me to stop by and make sure you took a break. She says you’re working too hard.”

Willow shrugged. It was hard work, but it was fun, too. There was a fun camaraderie among the booth holders and in the quiet times—which, granted, weren’t all that often—they took the opportunity to inspect one another’s wares and make a few purchases. While she hadn’t indulged in anything herself, Willow had begun to imagine what it would be like to belong here—to actually put down roots and stay.

All her life had been transient, with her mother home-schooling her as they’d travelled from town to town following the latest mystic or gypsy fair across New Zealand. When her mom had gotten too ill to travel, they’d stayed in a motor camp on the Coromandel Peninsula. Driving to the nearest city for her mom’s treatments had been demanding on them both, but it was when Willow’s mom had refused any further treatment, opting to let her cancer take its course, that had been the hardest time of all.

Now, the idea of staying in one place, of putting down roots and making a home, had an appeal she didn’t want to examine too closely just in case it didn’t happen. But if she was totally honest with herself, she knew she wanted it—a home and a family—more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. She could face anything if she had that stability behind her. If she didn’t…? Well, that simply didn’t bear thinking about.

A mental picture of the single white business envelope she’d shoved to the bottom of her pack the day she’d moved into Ness’s vacant apartment burned at the back of her mind. She shoved all thought of it away with a resolute push. Not yet. She didn’t want to know just yet. She wasn’t prepared to face her own mortality until she had settled things with her father, and one of these days that would happen.

She’d seen his name on the fair program as sponsor and judge of the junior calf-roping competition, and felt a jolt of fear and anticipation. She’d already worked out that she could take a break around the time he was presenting the awards and she figured she had about enough courage to approach him in front of a crowd and ask for a private moment. She had to have enough courage. It was what she’d come here for after all, but somehow Booth’s antipathy toward her over her meeting with her father had begun to color her thoughts. What if Kyle Donovan didn’t want to meet her? He’d sent back all those letters. Maybe she had gone off half-cocked coming here.

Willow gave herself a swift mental kick. This kind of thinking wasn’t her at all. She was always positive and cheerful. Booth had done a number on her and for some dumb reason she’d gone and let him.

She suddenly became aware that Booth was waving a broad hand in front of her face.

“Earth to Willow, come in please.”

She started back to reality and shook her head. “I don’t like heights.”

“Seriously? Even a Ferris wheel? I wouldn’t have picked you for a chicken. Besides, my sister is counting on me.”

The challenge lay between them like an old-fashioned gauntlet.

“Look, we both know you don’t want to spend time with me. We can barely stand each other, so why don’t you just tell Ness that I turned you down and let’s leave it at that.”

“Stand each other?” Booth pursed his lips and nodded as if he was considering the answer to the meaning of life. “It’s so much better when we lie down, isn’t it?”

Heat poured through her body. “Don’t,” she said abruptly, taking a step back in case he touched her. She knew she’d be a goner if he did that. And if he kissed her again…?

“Don’t what? Think about what we did together every waking minute of my day? Sorry, can’t help it. You know, I thought I’d be able to just walk away from you that night and that would be that, but there’s a part of me that refuses to let go. Why do you think that is?”

He closed the short distance between them. Willow’s heart galloped in her chest, making her hands tremble and her body grow warm and tingly.

“I-I wouldn’t know,” she said helplessly.

He stood so close that the merest movement from either of them would see them touch. The world around her narrowed to just this man in front of her. His scent filled her nostrils. Clean, warm—a blend of man and leather and that intrinsic aroma that defined him. Even as mad as she’d been at him when he’d left that night after they’d made love, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from burying her nose in his pillow and inhaling the trace of him that had been left behind.

Her pulse beat a steady thrum to her extremities, and deep inside she felt that aching hollow that she knew only he could fill. Her breasts felt full and heavy, the fine cotton of her T-shirt abrading her nipples and making them stand to full attention. She wanted him so much she could feel it to the soles of her feet. Her lips parted and she moistened them with her tongue, acutely aware that his eyes followed the movement and of the dull flush of color that stained his cheeks.

“Excuse me, miss?”

Willow came back to earth with a solid dose of reality. She took a step back from Booth, then another. A woman and her daughter, probably about ten years old, stood waiting patiently. How long they’d been there was anyone’s guess.

“Yes,” she croaked. “Can I help you?”

“My daughter bought one of your kits yesterday afternoon. I was wondering if you could show us how to cast-on again?”

Grabbing hold of the opportunity to avoid Booth, she smiled. “Of course. Please, come over here and take a seat.”

She gestured to the two wooden stools she’d brought over from the apartment when it had become apparent that she would be running impromptu knitting lessons here at the fair from time to time. “I’ll be with you in just a minute.”

Willow turned to Booth. “Thanks for the offer of the ride on the wheel. But, as you can see, I really am too busy.”

He gave her a scorching look, one that encompassed her from top to toe and left her feeling as if he’d physically touched her. Her mouth dried. Despite the mother and daughter waiting for her attention, all she wanted to do right now was follow Booth to wherever he led her and find a way to rid her body of this interminable frustration that built inside. The frustration, judging by the fit of his jeans, that rode him as hard as it rode her.

“I’m not the kind of man who gives up easily, Willow,” he said, his voice deep and low. “It’d pay you to remember that.”

She didn’t answer him—couldn’t—and watched as he turned and walked away.

“Goodness, if that Booth Lange isn’t just one fine piece of man,” the mother waiting in the booth remarked from behind her.

“Hmmm,” Willow muttered noncommittally. “Now, let’s see what we can do about that sock pattern of yours.”

But despite the effort and attention she put into the impromptu knitting lesson, her body still ached for that fine piece of man long into the evening.

I
t was the
last day of the fair and finally the day that Kyle Donovan would be making his presentation to the winners of the junior calf-roping competition. Willow covered the stock in her booth and erected the sign she’d made specifically for this purpose, instructing any potential customers that she’d be back in an hour. With the promise from her neighbors that they’d keep an eye out for her things, she hightailed it to the arena, where she could hear the sounds of excitement and cheering as the last of the senior competitors showed off their skills.

Her mouth dried when she saw who was astride the horse barreling down on a running calf in the arena right at that moment. Booth. She gripped her hands into fists. There ought to be a law against a man looking so sexy in jeans, she thought as he roped the calf and flung himself from his horse. Especially when those jeans highlighted a man’s package and backside the way they did Booth’s. She watched, mesmerized, as he tied off the mewling beast and threw up his hands to a rousing cheer from the crowd.

She dragged her attention back to her goal. Kyle Donovan. He’d be at the judging podium any time now and she wanted to get a position near it so she could catch him when he stepped down. She was nearing the grandstand and the judging podium when a voice stopped her in her tracks.