Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (37 page)

She fidgeted, glancing furtively his way. "Do you?"

The tug on his lips was more insistent this time, and he couldn't quite hide his smile. She really was trying to be considerate, bless her tomboy's soul.

He tried another tactic.

"What if I told you I don't care about fishing as long as I get to hold your hand?"

This time, her head shot full around, and she narrowed her eyes. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Because we're courting now."

His words seemed to catch her off guard, although for the life of him, he didn't know why. Hadn't he made his intentions plain?

"I don't know," she said warily. "What comes after hand-holding?"

"Talking, I reckon."

"And then what?"

"I don't know. What would you like to happen?"

She bit her lip and looked away. "I'm not good at flirting, so stop it."

He wanted to chuckle, but didn't dare.

"Bailey, this is hardly flirting."

She peeked over her shoulder at him. "It's not?"

"No, it's not." The girl was lucky Wes had never cut loose on her. "I'm just trying to get a straight answer from you about what you like to do for fun."

"Oh." She looked a good deal less panicked. "Same as you, I reckon. Hunting, fishing, riding, shooting..."

"Shooting?"

She nodded. "Target practice."

"Oh."

Considering her temper, he wasn't sure he would ever suggest shooting as an outing.

"You never answered my other question," he reminded her after a minute of silence passed. "Are you going to let me hold your hand?"

She chewed on her bottom lip again before she slowly, even reluctantly, surrendered her fingers.

"I've never really been courted by a serious beau," she said. "Most all of them come snooping around 'cause they want my land. Nick included."

Her confession surprised him. She'd never considered McTavish a serious beau?

Veiling his curiosity beneath half-lowered eyelids, Zack tried to put her at ease. "I haven't courted all that many women, so I reckon that makes us even."

"Honest?"

"Honest."

She gave him a shy, grateful smile, and his heart skipped a beat. He was glad he hadn't put her back on the defensive. Maybe, for now, he should just be happy she'd placed
him
in the category of serious beau.

As the silence stretched comfortably between them, he found he liked holding her hand on his knee while Pokey snoozed under the shade of their arms. He liked the idea that she could sit quietly by his side without worrying about the breeze mussing her hair, or the sun freckling her complexion, or the mud staining her boots beyond recognition. It was kind of nice doing something out of the ordinary with a woman, something that
he
liked to do too. God knew, he could survive 'til the end of his days without picking another blasted berry or watching another second-rate performance of Shakespeare.

He did have to admit, though, he was a little disappointed that Bailey hadn't included dancing on her list of favorite pastimes. Since he was bound and determined to prove he still had a gentlemanly bone in his body, despite the way he'd stolen her innocence on the night of the storm, dancing was his only socially acceptable option for getting close to her again.

And heaven help him, he wanted to get close to her. A whole lot closer than they were now.

Earlier, when she'd thrown kissing at him like a gauntlet, he'd been sorely tempted to take up the challenge. He'd known better than to trust himself to stop at one little peck, though. Before he'd met Bailey McShane, he'd never needed female companionship more than once a month, mainly because he'd learned to harness his pecker as a matter of mind over body.

During the past week, however, he'd been mortified by what he secretly feared had developed into a chronic case of lust. Why even now the temptation of her leg stretched so close to his was wreaking havoc on his self-restraint. Each time the breeze wafted her lemony-orange soap scent his way, or the sun glanced off the spun-gold hair that fell across the sweet swell of her breast, his loins ached for him to draw her nearer. Pokey wasn't much of a deterrent either. Forget the crab apple tree she'd suggested earlier. He wanted to push her down onto the grassy bank and make wild, wanton love to her until the sheep came home.

He shook his head in a mixture of amusement and discomfort as his thoughts, once again, stampeded south.

"I was wondering"—he glanced at her profile with its lightly freckled, kissable nose—"if you'd like to go to the Harvest Hoedown with me at the end of the month?"

Bailey, who'd been sitting peacefully, reveling in one of their rare stretches of accord, tensed like a bowstring.

"Hoedown?" she repeated weakly. Her heart gave a mighty
wump
against her ribs.

"Sure. Drought or no drought, I figure we'll have lots to celebrate."

A lump rose to her throat as she tried to fathom his reasoning. Did he mean the baby?

She imagined how she would feel standing before him, telling him about a child that was becoming more and more real to her each day. Sometimes she would lie awake at night, wondering what to call it if it proved to be the girl he'd said he wanted; and if it was a boy, how she could convince Zack to let her name it after her father.

Then there were nights when she would light a candle and stand naked in its fuzzy pool of light, eagerly searching her reflection in her full-length mirror for the telltale bulge inside her belly.

On other nights, the enormity of her life change crashed down around her, and she sobbed into her pillow, thinking that God might take away her baby, and then, by all rights, Zack.

She had only two weeks left, and that wasn't much time to make a man fall in love with her. Especially a man who had everything to lose by making her his wife.

"What with the election falling so close to the dance," she said, "I'm not sure it'd be very good for your image for us to go together."

"Shoot, Bailey, sheepherders and cattlemen have to make peace in this county. We'll just have to bite the bullet and be the first ones who get along." He winked at her. "Besides, I have an idea, and I couldn't make it work without you, so stop worrying. You're actually going to help me win that election."

She was? A tiny knot of dread curled inside her stomach.
Please, oh, please,
God, don't tell me he's actually planning to use me as a campaign device.

She drew a long, shaky breath. "So this dance is important to you, eh?"

"Yep." He cast her a sideways glance. "Real important."

She groaned silently. Dances meant dresses. Not to mention looking like an idiot when she tripped over her own feet on the sawdust. But maybe this once—just this once—she could bear up under the humiliation if Zack would fall in love with her.

Forcing a bright smile, she tried to imagine how a ladylike creature like Amaryllis might answer. "I'd, uh, be right honored to have you escort me to a hoedown, Zack."

* * *

Bailey didn't know what was worse, being fitted for her first dress in nearly fifteen years, waiting helplessly for some drought relief from the clouds, or watching the Rawlins brothers and their cattle overrun the north and south pastures on her eastern border.

Since she couldn't do a damned thing about her drying creekbeds or the dance she'd let herself get talked into, she focused her worries on the fifty head of steer that Wes, Cord, and a handful of Rawlins cowpokes had driven onto her land.

"It's an experiment," Zack had told her with unabashed enthusiasm. "I got the idea by watching Buttercup grazing with your ewes. All we have to do is figure out how to get sheep and cattle together on a larger scale. Like you said, they're both herding animals, so there's got to be a way to get them to share the same pasture and watering hole, despite the cattlemen's prejudice against it. Once we have proof the herds can graze the same range, we can show the rest of the county how to mend their fences, so to speak."

Well, as the second week was drawing to a close, Bailey was pretty sure she didn't like the idea. She wasn't so much worried about her pasturage getting trampled or her remaining water getting used up. She wasn't even really worried that her silly sheep would run amok, terrified by the big, mooing creatures that were milling among them.

No, her main concern lay closer to home. Zack was taking over.

His presence had infiltrated slowly: first the meal he'd cooked for himself, then the seat he'd started taking at the head of her table. Next came his insistence that he do her chores while she twiddled her thumbs—to keep the baby safe, he'd said.

The most recent example of his insidious overthrow was his decision to drive his cattle onto her spread. Oh, he'd discussed the idea with her; he'd even asked for her opinion on the matter.

Unfortunately, her various sides were at war and had been unable to mount a protest. The business owner had seen the moneymaking potential of his plan; the rancher had welcomed the possibility of a sheepherder-cattleman truce.

But the woman deep inside her had been uneasy. What if Zack continued to change things, ousting her sheep, deploying more cattle, selling her goats, wooing her men? What if she became obsolete as decision-maker on her own spread, and he relegated her to the kitchen?

She couldn't let that happen, of course. She wasn't sure how to stop him without launching one hell of an argument, though, or, worse, destroying whatever chance she had of making him fall in love with her.

So she forced her male side to mind its tongue and stuff its anger while her female side acted as if it enjoyed the way Zack "took care of her," as he called it. Inside, her stomach was constantly churning.

As for Zack, he wasn't entirely sure he was comfortable with the change in Bailey. He wondered if her preoccupation with her possible pregnancy had anything to do with the difference, since she seemed so moody and unhappy. Talk of babies and their future only seemed to make her miserable, and as much as he would have liked to explore his own confused feelings on the subject, he'd quickly learned to keep his hopes and worries bottled up. He didn't want to upset her any more than she already was, so he steadfastly kept his concentration on the kinds of things he thought a father should do, like securing the McShane business assets, earning the respect of Bailey's hired hands, and building friendlier relations with her neighbors.

He just hoped that getting away from the ranch for a spell would improve Bailey's and his relationship—for the sake of their child, at least. He was glad she'd agreed to go to the hoedown with him. He was even more glad she'd taken steps to hire a seamstress, although he sure as heck would never have suggested such a thing. When she'd said she hated dresses, he had respected her feelings. His own female relatives often wore jeans. In fact, Aunt Lally had once confided she disliked petticoats because they were "no damned good for riding horses." Since Bailey practically lived on Sassy, who was Zack to tell her what to wear?

Still, with his second week at her ranch nearly over, he couldn't say why the tension between them kept mounting, even though, for the most part, they'd stopped arguing. When he asked her what was wrong, she'd growl, "Nothing," or snap that she was "dandy."

If he approached her with an idea to improve her ranching operations, she would smile through her teeth and tell him to do what he thought was best, even when he asked point-blank for her opinion. She hardly ever sassed him anymore, which made their conversations damned dull, and she'd stopped wearing her hair gathered loosely in a thong so he could watch it swish against her behind. Now she rolled up her hair in a proper knot at the nape of her neck.

She was driving him crazy.

Friday morning, before McTavish left for his weekly visit to the post office and general store, Zack cornered the Scot in the barn for advice. He figured Bailey wouldn't overhear them because she'd stayed in the kitchen, God help them, to learn from Jerky how to cook range chili.

Still, Zack felt more awkward than a schoolboy, seeking the counsel of a man who could just as easily have been Bailey's lover if he hadn't spent the last few years as her surrogate father.

Zack cleared his throat to announce himself, and McTavish, who was standing at his worktable scribbling something on a piece of paper, jerked his head around. An expression akin to guilt flickered across his features, and he hastily set aside his pen and folded the page.

"Aye, lad, what is it?"

Zack doffed his hat, stepping hesitantly into the slice of morning light that fell from the open loft across a clutter of hammers, wire cutters, and screws. Even though he'd slept for two weeks in the stall adjacent to Mac's work space, he suddenly felt intrusive.

"You're going into town today?" he began lamely.

"Aye." McTavish slipped his letter into an envelope, sealed the flap, and buttoned it inside the bib pocket of his overalls.

A moment of silence lapsed between them.

"Need a hand hitching the wagon?"

McTavish cocked his head, squinting at him through the smoke of his ever-present pipe before he finally pulled the stem from his teeth and nodded.