Wyoming Wildflowers: The Beginning (9 page)

“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 returned 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.

His smile faded. “What’s wrong, Donna?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Absolutely nothing.” She sucked in a breath. “It’s time for us to go to your room now.”

Heat flared into his eyes first. Heat that burned into her lungs and all the way down to the pit of her stomach. Oh, yes, he wanted her. Let him even try to say he didn’t.

“Donna—”

“Forget it, Ed. Most times that quiet sternness might do the trick. Not this time. Your room. Now.” She started for the elevator.

He hadn’t been able to argue in the elevator because a businessman stepped in with them at the last second.

Good.

When they reached Ed’s floor, she marched down the hallway ahead, stopping by his door.

“Donna?”

“Open the door unless you want me to do something scandalous right here in the hall,” she threatened.

She had to do it this way. Before she ran out of courage.

Because she knew she’d run out of courage long before she ran out of wanting, a recipe for going stark-raving mad. After the past three nights, alone in her bed, she knew that for sure.

He unlocked the door, letting her enter an even smaller version of the room she shared with Lydia.

As soon as the door clicked closed, she turned and faced him.

“I was going to seduce you Friday night —”

“
Friday
?”

“— but you insisted on riding back in the bus. Yes, Friday. Why’d you say it like that?”

“I thought you were trying Saturday night—”

“I was.
And
last night.”

His grin appeared at her mournful tone. “You were so tired. And you weren’t sure.” He cupped her shoulders, studying her. “You’re not sure now.”

“I am sure.”

Despite herself, her eyes flickered to the bed. The bed was narrow. He was a big man. Tall, broad . . . and long.

“If you don’t — I’m not, I mean I don’t — But you have no way of knowing that, and if you don’t want someone so forward —”

He took her face in his big hands. “I know.”

She tipped her head back, preparing to ask what he thought he knew, maybe even hoping she’d ease her nerves by teasing him. At his expression her breath caught sharp, pulling back her words, along with the scent of his skin, and a knowledge so powerful that it stung fast, undeniable tears into her eyes.

His eyes were hot with desire, a fire that raced through her blood, too. But she’d seen men’s eyes hot with desire. She’d even reciprocated the feeling.

It had never brought tears.

Ed’s eyes, though, also held a warmth so deep and so enduring she thought she could never get to the end of it.

That
brought her tears.

He raised one big hand, cupping the back of her head, and drawing her wet face against his shoulder.

“I know.”

He held her while she cried, letting warmth enfold her, holding off the heat for this moment.

She sniffled against his shirt.

“Are all the men in Wyoming like you?”

“They would try to be if they met you.”

He’d lifted her into his arms then, carried her to the bed, and held her so very gently.

And they’d fallen asleep.

They fell asleep
.

She had to be the least seductive seductress in the universe.

Donna had blinked awake a moment ago, torn between wanting to stay in exactly this position — spooned against him with his arms wrapped around her — for as long as her heart beat, and wanting to leap out of bed and disappear.

They hadn’t even gotten their clothes off. Their shoes and socks, yes, but otherwise a full complement of inside clothes.

Which was a shame.

Because if she didn’t have on blouse and bra, all she’d have to do would be to slide her arm a little and his hand would be on her breast, his fingers in just the right spot to touch her nipple, which was doing its part to make the connection.

Though why he would want to bother with someone who fell asleep for heaven’s sake—

“You’re awake?” His low-voiced words stirred her hair.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I — ”

“No need to be sorry. You needed to sleep.” He ran his palm up and down her arm. “You work hard.”

“I’m not sleepy now.” She aimed for sultry. It came out Ado Annie. Dammit.

She took hold of his hand and put it over her breast. Made a
mmm
sound, though she didn’t feel much except the weight of his touch. Then she set to unbuttoning her blouse.