Authors: Francis Ray
“That’s not my decision to make,” she said softly. Pressing the disconnect button, she put in Matt’s beeper number, the emergency information, then went outside on the porch to wait.
Matt came thundering over the rise looking down on the ranch in less than five minutes. Low in the saddle, he
leaned over the horse’s long neck as if they were connected in some way. Shannon’s breath caught in her throat when she saw he was headed straight for the white wooden fence of the outer corral instead of taking the time to go to the gate.
Horse and rider cleared the fence with room to spare and Shannon let out a grateful breath that he was an excellent rider. Her gaze glued to him, she watched him take the next fence with the same reckless ease. He was aiming straight for her.
Her eyes widened in apprehension as he swung from the still-moving horse with an agility and skill that left her breathless again. In seconds he was on the porch. His gloved hands closed around her forearms, his black eyes drilled into her.
“What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”
Despite his voice, the gentleness of the hands holding her finally got through to her. “He’s hurting.”
“Who?” he barked, clearly at his limits.
“Cleve. He and I went to the grocery store together.” She took in a huge gulp of air. “I thought he was acting macho and I gave him part of the grocery list.”
Matt’s fingers tightened on her arms.
“He’s hurting, Matt. He’s a proud man. I didn’t know what else to do but call you.”
“Where is he?”
“The barn.”
Matt turned and started back down the stairs. Grabbing the reins of his horse, he tried to slow his drumming heartbeat and get the bitter taste of fear out of his mouth.
He had never been so frightened in his life. Seeing the concern in Shannon’s teary eyes had been like someone twisting his insides. The fear hadn’t been for herself, but for a man she had only known a few days.
Nearing the barn, he wondered if he’d ever know the real Shannon, or if he dared. He saw Cleve sitting a few feet inside on a small stool, three strands of hemp in his dark, callused hands.
Making handmade rope was time-consuming. To Matt’s knowledge, Cleve had never made over a few dollars’ profit from a single one of the highly prized ropes he “sold” to friends. The elderly cowhand considered it a dying art, and since he had no children, he was leaving a part of himself behind. He blessed the good days when his arthritis allowed him the strength and dexterity to work without pain. He’d always said it proved he wasn’t useless.
Cleve certainly had a need to feel useful today.
Matt leaned against the stall door beside Cleve and glanced out the door. Shannon still stood on the porch, her slim arms wrapped around her, her gaze fixed on the barn door.
He looked at the top of Cleve’s battered, sweat-rimmed hat. Matt would rather be locked in a chute with an angry bull than see the old man hurt.
“You all right?”
“She call you?” Hemp twisted around hemp.
“Yeah.”
“Haven’t seen you ride that crazy in a long time.”
Matt propped his elbows on top of the stall door. “She put in the emergency code.”
The battered hat lifted, then swung in the direction of Shannon. “You should have seen her tryin’ to catch Flapjack again. Had a carrot in her hand.”
“She watched a lot of westerns.”
Cleve’s head lowered. A long time passed before he said, “I never wanted anyone else to know.”
“She won’t tell anyone.”
“She knows.” The words came out tightly, embarrassment mixed with resentment.
“She knows and she’s so worried about you that she has tears in her eyes.”
The arch of the old cowhand’s neck brought Matt into his line of vision. “You must be wrong. Why would she cry for an old nobody like me?”
It was all Matt could do not to yell he wasn’t a nobody,
that the person, not the education, not the money, made the man. But he had yelled before and Cleve hadn’t listened. “A nobody wouldn’t drop out of school and stay at home to help with his four younger brothers and sisters after his father was killed when a mule kicked him. A nobody wouldn’t work from sunup to sundown for the price of a soft drink in today’s money. You gave up your education for your sisters and brothers. Without you, they wouldn’t have made it.”
“They’re gone now, but all of ’em got an education,” he said proudly.
“They had you to thank,” Matt said, his hand clamping on the older man’s shoulder. “A nobody couldn’t have done that.”
Cleve’s hand gripped the rope. “A grown man should know how to read.”
“I told you I’d teach you anytime you’re ready.”
The elderly man’s sigh was long. “What if I don’t have it in me to learn?” His shoulder moved helplessly beneath Matt’s strong hand. “That’s a failure I don’t want to face in this lifetime. I don’t even know if I can face her again.”
“She regrets what happened,” Matt said.
“She’s sassy, but she’s got a good heart.”
Matt’s gaze followed the direction of Cleve’s. Shannon hadn’t moved from the porch. She might be concerned, but he wasn’t ready to concede her goodness. A good woman would be more disruptive to his peace of mind than a selfish one. “She’s stubborn and opinionated.”
A dry bark of laughter erupted from the old man. “Just like you.”
“Now who’s calling the kettle black?” Matt asked.
“She don’t know spit about ranchin’,” Cleve snorted.
“I don’t know what Wade was thinking to leave her the meadow.”
Cleve came to his feet, his eyes wide. “She wasn’t kiddin’? She really owns a part of the Circle T?”
Matt lips tightened. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
Matt gave the only truth he knew. “She was Wade’s nurse.”
“I’ll be,” the older man said. He looked back at Shannon with new interest. “So she’s the ‘angel’ in the hospital Wade talked about. He thought highly of her. Can’t say he said the same thing for her beau.”
Matt had been about to ask why everyone seemed to know something about Wade and Shannon when he didn’t, until Cleve said “beau.” Every nerve in his body snapped to attention. He came away from the stall and faced the cowhand. “Beau?”
“Yep. Wade spoke of some citified fellow up in St. Louis. Should have made the connection sooner.” Rope in one hand, Cleve took his hat off and scratched his balding pate with the other. “Wade thought she might marry the fellow. Guess he was wrong. Didn’t see no ring.”
Something inside Matt tightened. His ex-wife had kept hers in the coin holder of her billfold. After he filed for divorce she had pawned her things and sent him a useless part of the ticket to show him just how little she thought of him. Enclosed with the torn receipt was a note telling him how angry he had made her by not fulfilling her dreams of fame and riches as the wife of a top rodeo star.
The laughing, caring woman he had met in line at the grocery store and married a month later didn’t exist. He had been suckered all the way by her beautiful face and lying lips. He wasn’t going to be that gullible or that stupid again no matter how tempted.
“I better get back.”
“You shouldn’t have come,” Cleve told him. “I ain’t made out of fluff.”
“Never thought you were.” Untying the horse, Matt went to the waiting Shannon.
“Is he all right?”
He wanted to ask Shannon questions of his own, such as who was this man Wade had mentioned. Matt shut the
words away because he shouldn’t care about the woman whose gaze kept darting from him to the barn. Or care that the perspiration dampening her face indicated she was uncomfortable in the heat. Most of all, he shouldn’t have the strangest urge to run his tongue across the moisture beaded on her brow, the curve of her upper lip.
His jaw hardened. Hell, he’d like to taste her all over and then start again.
“Matt?” Concern etched her face, echoed in that one word.
Somehow he drew his rampaging mind from his fantasy of her body to see need in her face. She cared and she was worried.
Unbidden came the memory of being in the emergency room with a broken collarbone. With his shoulder feeling like someone had taken a branding iron to it, he kept asking why his wife wasn’t there. She’d been in the stands when the bronc threw him four seconds into his ride; she should have been there.
Kane had told him she probably didn’t like to see Matt in pain. He had wholeheartedly believed his big brother, because he hadn’t wanted to face the alternative. Two months later, he had no choice.
A tornado wouldn’t have kept Shannon away. She was capable of caring, possibly even loving. Somehow he knew, if she had been in the stands, nothing would have kept her away.
“Matt, please say something.”
He shook off the memories with practiced ease. “He’ll be all right.”
“I knew you could help him.” She reached out her hand to touch him, then as if realizing what she had been about to do, jerked it back. “He respects you so much.”
“Hard to believe, huh?”
Her smile was tremulous. “No. You can be nice when you put your mind to it.”
The smile, the rosy lips, were too much. She smelled
good and looked better. He turned and swung up on his horse.
“Wait!” she cried, and stepped off the porch. “At least come in and eat something.”
“I haven’t time.” He gathered the reins tighter in his hands.
She grabbed the canvas bag and stepped back. “Then I’ll fix you something fresh. I won’t be but a minute.” She whirled and ran up the steps.
He should go. He didn’t.
Shannon’s big brown eyes staring at him one moment as though she’d like to lay his head on her soft breast and comfort him and the next as though she’d like to eat him with a spoon was too much of a temptation to see again.
He waited and, of course, it took longer than a minute. A smile on her face, she came rushing out of the house and handed him the bag.
“You eat every bit of it.”
“You’re beginning to sound like Octavia.” He hooked the bag over the saddle horn. She was in her comfort mode. His gaze flickered to her breasts.
Her smile widened. “Maybe you’ll listen to one of us.”
“I’m hardheaded, remember.”
“You’re a lot of things, I’m just beginning to learn,” she said softly and went into the house.
Matt had one leg over the saddle before he realized his intention of going after Shannon and asking what she meant. Calling himself crazy, he regained his saddle and took off. He didn’t care what she thought of him. Even as the words formed in his thoughts, he knew he lied.
Good or bad, he wanted Shannon Johnson with a soul-burning urgency. It was stupid, it was dangerous. His mind knew, his body just wasn’t listening.
Her grocery basket was exactly where she had left it earlier. Thank goodness there had been nothing perishable inside. Hands clamped on the handle, she headed
to aisle 4. Baking products. Rounding the corner, she came to a halt.
Cleve. A smile started at the curve of her lips and spread.
He put a ten-pound bag of flour inside his cart next to the cornmeal and the sugar. “What else is on that list?” he asked.
Grinning, Shannon started toward him. “Cleve.”
He backed up a step when she lifted her arms. “Ain’t no call for all that.”
Her arms lowered. “I’m glad you came.”
He shrugged. “Ain’t much gonna fit in that little toy car of yours, so I followed in my truck. I got a taste for a German sweet chocolate cake.”
“I’ll fix you one tonight.”
“Hmph. Hope you cook better than you can catch a horse.”
She laughed. “Cleve, you’re priceless. You and Matt must have given Wade a run for his money.”
His smile was warm with memories. “Wade was one of a kind. Left me that truck of his.” He fixed her with a stare. “Left you the meadow, I hear.”
She hadn’t told Griff the exact location of the property or why she owned Taggart land. “Matt told you.”
“He did.”
“You needn’t worry. I’ll be gone soon and, when I go, the ranch will be his alone.” She said the words calmly, as if something inside her wasn’t protesting at the thought of leaving the ranch, leaving Matt.
Cleve picked up a box of pancake mix. “This on the list?”
Glad to have the matter dropped, she scanned the list. “Yes,” she answered, then named several other items.
Without pausing, Cleve plucked them from the shelves. For the first time, she really looked at the various items and realized how difficult it must be for someone to memorize labels, especially when some products by the same manufacturer were packaged in so similar a manner.
She was just beginning to fully understand something Matt already knew. A man’s character was measured by many things. Strength and courage and intelligence were shown in many different ways.
Matt cared about the person inside, not what he was, not who he was. A hardcase wouldn’t care or know the difference. Wade had been right. But was it possible to find the gentleness inside Matt and bring it to the surface?
“You gonna daydream or what?”
Cleve’s terse voice snapped her back to the present. “Sorry.”
“You thinking about that feller of yours?”
Shannon blinked. “What!”
“Wade said you had a feller you might marry.”
Shannon’s mind flashed not to James but to Matt. Strong, compelling, and so handsome he made her knees weak. She looked away from Cleve’s sharp gaze. “We’re just dating.”
He nodded tersely. “Glad to hear it. Wade wanted better for you.”
So did her grandfather, but she felt it disloyal not to speak up in James’s defense. “James is a very successful lawyer and well respected by everyone.”
Cleve’s gaze sharpened. “Is that the only way you take the measure of a man?”
“No,” she answered without thought.
He nodded. “You’ll do. You’re not like the other one.”
“What other one?” she questioned, afraid she already knew.
“If you don’t know, ain’t my place to say.” Wheeling his basket around her, he started down the aisle.
Abandoning her cart, she caught him in two steps. “You can’t make a statement like that and leave me hanging.”
Cleve’s lips clamped tighter than a two-year-old’s mouth with a spoonful of spinach in front of him.