Authors: Francis Ray
“Shannon noticed he was quiet when she went inside around seven.” Matt squatted by the older man. “What time did Jay bring him in?”
“Midday,” Cleve answered. His gnarled fingers lightly ran over the stallion’s leg, then he gently raised the hoof and just as gently, flexed and extended it. “Looks like he might have kicked the stall too hard and bruised himself. Don’t look like it’s botherin’ him enough to worry about a fracture. I’ll go fix up somethin’. He should be fine since we caught it early.”
“Thanks to Shannon.” Matt nodded in her direction. “She noticed the quiet.”
“It was nothing,” she said from the stall door. “Anyone would have done the same.”
Cleve’s free hand clenched, his battered gray hat tipped forward. Slowly he stood. “Meanin’, I should have?”
Her eyes widened at the implication. “No. Of course not. I was here, you weren’t.”
“I guess we’re lucky you were here then,” he told her, then glanced down at Matt. “I’ll fix the poultice.”
Shannon stared after the elderly cowboy. “I didn’t mean to offend him. I wouldn’t intentionally do that to anyone.”
“So you keep saying.”
She faced Matt. “I know it might be hard to believe, but you’re the only one who can make me forget reason.”
Since she made him behave the same way, it wasn’t difficult at all for him to believe her. “Yeah.”
“We just rub each other the wrong way,” she stated, folding her arms and catching her lower lip between her teeth.
“Rubbing each other the right way would create just
as many sparks. Maybe more,” he told her, his voice unnaturally gritty.
Her hand flew to the base of her throat where her pulse leaped wildly. “You . . . you shouldn’t say things like that.”
She was right, but hearing the breathless catch in her voice made the sudden tightness in his jeans worse, not better. Pivoting away from temptation, he stood facing the horse. “I wonder what’s keeping Cleve.”
“If you want, I’ll go check.”
“No, he likes fixing his remedies alone.” Matt’s hand ran over the horse’s flank. “He takes his responsibilities seriously. This ranch is his life, the family he never had.”
“Matt, I didn’t mean to infer otherwise,” she said earnestly, watching Matt’s large hands glide reassuringly over the animal.
He glanced over his shoulder. Her face was filled with entreaty and a strange kind of hope. Shannon might be a lot of things, but so far he had yet to see her be deliberately cruel. She was just as quick to soothe as she was to annoy him with her sharp tongue.
“I believe you,” he finally answered.
Her face lit up. “Thank you.”
“Cleve will probably come to the same conclusion once Brazos is all right.” The horse neighed and Matt stroked him. “Although he knows it’s not his fault the animal is hurt, Cleve feels guilty he wasn’t the one to notice the problem.”
“Just like family members feel guilty when a loved one becomes ill and they hadn’t noticed sooner,” Shannon said, remembering her own feeling of guilt about her grandfather.
Matt looked at her intently. “Sounds like you’ve been there.”
Her breath came out shakily. “Yes, I have.”
Matt watched her brown eyes darken, watched her struggle for composure and win. She had loved someone, and if he didn’t miss his guess, she had lost him. Questions pounded in his brain, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to
know the answers for himself or for the ranch’s benefit . . . or why he felt the urge to pull her into his arms and console her.
“You better go on in. Cleve and I can finish things here.”
“A men-only thing, huh?” she questioned with a laugh. He struggled to keep from being affected by the twinkle in her eyes and the laughter. “I won’t have you sleeping on the job tomorrow because you stayed up needlessly tonight.”
“I’ve pulled double shifts before. I can take it,” she told him. “I’ll go see if Cleve needs any help.”
“Shannon, go to the house.” She kept walking. Matt shook his head. “And she called
me
stubborn,” he muttered.
She opened the door to the tackroom and saw Cleve sniffing the contents of a quart-size brown bottle clutched in his right hand. She tensed. “What are you doing?”
He whirled around. Shannon was confused. Instead of the glazed look she had often seen in the eyes of people who had inhaled substances, Cleve’s were sharp and accusing. “You ruined everything.”
He was still upset with her. “You’ve got to believe me when I say I didn’t mean anything earlier.”
“I mean this,” he said angrily, the wide arc of his arm encompassing the top two shelves where various bottles and metal containers sat.
Shannon looked at the shelves she had worked on most of the early morning rearranging and cleaning. From over-the-counter liniment to grooming needs, all the various bottles, jars, and cans were now neatly in groups instead of the chaotic mess she found this morning. She could find anything she wanted without . . . Her mind came to a halt.
This was Cleve’s domain, not hers.
“I’m sorry. Before I moved anything I should have asked first. I needed some extra saddle soap. While I searched for another can, I started cleaning and rearranging.”
She studied his unhappy face. “If you’ll tell me where, I’ll put everything back tomorrow. Right now Matt is waiting.”
“Tell him I’m comin’,” he said sharply, and set the bottle on the table with several other similar-looking ones and turned away.
She started to go, then frowned when she read the label on the bottle. Iodine. “I’ll straighten things out tomorrow. Matt is waiting.”
“I know what I’m doin’,” he told her flatly. “You just tell the boss I’m comin’.”
“I’m glad to know it,” said Matt.
On hearing Matt’s voice, the cowhand tensed and slowly turned. Lines bracketed his mouth and raced across his dark forehead. He glanced at Matt, then away.
“It’s my fault,” Shannon blurted. “I rearranged the shelves and now he can’t find anything.”
“You what?” Matt shouted. His gaze swept the neat shelves, then Cleve’s tense body before coming to rest on an anxious Shannon. “I told you to polish the harnesses and other gear, that’s all.”
She explained what had led up to her cleaning session.
Matt’s stony expression didn’t soften. “Go to the house, Shannon, and this time I mean it.”
She started across the room. “Cleve—”
Matt blocked her path. “I’m not going to tell you again.”
Shoulders back, chin lifted, she accepted his angry glare unflinchingly. “I messed up. The least you can do is let me apologize.”
“You’ve already done that.” Matt took her by the elbow and led her to the door. “I don’t have time to waste arguing with you.”
“But I could help. I know where I put things.”
“We’ll find them.”
Digging her heels in did little good. His callused hands were gentle and powerful and determined. “The old bottles like the ones on the table are in the back of the second shelf.”
Matt stopped. “You didn’t throw them away?”
“What kind of an idiot would do that without asking?” She wrinkled her nose at his raised eyebrow and answered her own question. “The same kind that would rearrange someone’s work space without asking.”
She twisted to look at Cleve. His shoulders sagged. She had done that. “I really am sorry. The only reason Octavia hasn’t thrown me out of her kitchen is that she feels the same way about keeping things in order. I forgot men aren’t the same way.”
Once again she was on her way to the door. “Good night, Shannon.”
Looking up into Matt’s unrelenting face, she bowed to the inevitable. “If you’re not too tired, please let me know how they both are when you come up to bed.”
His hand clenched on her arm.
She swallowed. The tip of her tongue ran across her lower lip. Matt’s narrowed eyes followed. “I . . . I mean when you come upstairs.”
“Good night.” Spinning on his heels, he went inside the tackroom and closed the door, shutting her out.
“Need any help?” Matt asked on reentering the tackroom.
Cleve lifted his head. His eyes were old, tired. “You think she suspected anything?”
Matt gritted his teeth to hold back a curse word. He had learned a colorful array of words on the rodeo circuit and as a rancher. But respect for his elders was bone deep. “No.”
Nodding his head, the elderly man began pulling bottles from the second shelf. “I know what you told me, but I can’t help how I feel.”
“I shouldn’t have sent her in here,” Matt replied, turning on the faucet and filling a bucket with water. “I never thought she’d do more than what I asked her to do.”
“She looks like fluff, but she’s as scrappy as I’ve ever seen.”
Matt shut the gushing water off with a snap of his wrist. “Sounds like you like her.”
Taking three quart-size brown bottles from the shelf, Cleve hugged them to his chest. “Just speakin’ the truth.”
The bucket of water plumped on the table. “She won’t be here much longer. In the meantime, I’ll set her to riding fence or something.”
A battered straw hat came upward sharply. “Meanin’ I can’t handle one female.”
Matt had seen that stubborn look before. “Meaning I had already planned on seeing how well she liked being in the saddle for eight hours.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his body reacted with predictable swiftness.
Cleve’s laughter sounded more like a rusty cough. “Might have known you wouldn’t let that those big brown eyes get to you.”
“You noticed her eyes?”
Cleve shot Matt a long, level look. “Might be old, but I ain’t six feet under.” Opening the bottle in his hand, he sniffed the contents, nodded his satisfaction, then poured about a cup into the water. A medicinal smell wafted upward. “She’s got grit to go along with all them other things a man my age can only admire.”
“You about ready?” Matt asked, his words sharper than intended.
The cowhand didn’t appear to notice. “Yep, a man regrets a lot of things when he gets old,” Cleve reminisced.
A younger man also had regrets.
Matt wanted Shannon with an increasing fervor that kept him awake at night, then invaded his dreams when he finally fell asleep. The taste, the feel, the scent of her was never far from his mind. Somehow he knew with a gut certainty that if he took her to bed, his need for her would only increase.
Once before he had been suckered in by wanting a woman so badly he wouldn’t listen to his family, only the wild clamoring of his body. He had paid the price. This
time he was staying in control. “Come on, Brazos is waiting.”
Cleve quickly poured from the other two bottles he had taken from the second shelf. “Grab some clean towels from the drawer over there. This might be a long night.”
“In more ways than one,” Matt mumbled and followed the older man out the door.
Shannon was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. She had on another of those silky pants outfits, this one the color of peaches. Her knees were propped up, her folded arms across them. A faint exotic scent drifted to him as his booted foot touched the bottom step. “It’s after midnight.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“The meadow losing its magic already?”
She rocked. “Cleve’s remedy must have worked faster than you thought.”
Matt peered at her closer. If he didn’t know better he’d think there were dried tears on her cheeks. “Morning is going to be here before you know it.”
She nodded and slowly stood. For some reason, she hadn’t wanted to be alone. She had never minded solitude before. Her grandfather wasn’t the reason. She just felt incredibly sad.
Before she knew it, she was on the steps waiting for Matt. But his aloofness made her feel worse, not better. Without another word she started down the hall.
Knowing he shouldn’t, but somehow unable to help himself, he followed. “What’s the matter? Are you sick?”
Head down, hands jammed in the pants pockets, she continued down the hallway. “I’m not sick.”
“Then what’s wrong with you?”
“Good night, Matt.” She reached for the doorknob.
His hand shot out and closed around her delicate wrist. “All right? I’ll bite.” Her head lowered even more at his choice of words. “You were waiting for me so the least you can do is tell me what’s wrong.”
She shook her head. It was too late.
Two fingers lifted her chin. Her skin was velvet smooth, but what caught his attention were the tears shimmering in her sad brown eyes. They affected him more than he wanted to admit.
“Shannon, what is it?” he asked, unaware of the husky note of entreaty in his voice.
She swallowed around the lump in her throat and the desire to ask him to hold her. “I just wanted to say good night.”
Sadness stared back up at him. He should leave her and go to his room. Yet something tore through him. “Ah, hell. Come here.” Strong arms closed around her. Instantly her hands came up to push him away. Using his greater strength, he pulled her closer. Again and again in one continuous motion his hand brushed from the base of her spine to her shoulder.
She shuddered, then relaxed against him. “I’m sorry,” she gulped.
She fit perfectly beneath his chin. It seemed natural for his cheek to rest against the top of her head. “You smell like some exotic flower.”
“You don’t.”
Matt tensed, then laughed, a deep rumbling sound. Once again she had caught him off guard. “I don’t suppose I do.”
Shannon leaned back and looked up at him. A smile started at the corner of her mouth and blossomed into a laugh. “That wasn’t very nice of me.”
“You certainly don’t pull any punches.”
“Neither do you.”
“You offering to wash my back again?”
“No, and you know it.”
They stood smiling at each other. Then the smiles were gone, replaced by an intensity neither wanted and neither could deny.
Air became harder for Shannon to draw into her lungs. Every place their bodies touched, her skin tingled. She
suddenly knew why she had waited for Matt. The realization made her take a hasty step backward.
She didn’t need this. Dear Lord. She didn’t need this. “Thanks for helping me to laugh. I—I think I can sleep now.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
Shannon escaped into her room, away from the blazing fire of Matt’s eyes. She glanced at her bed, then away. Matt was right.