Western Man (4 page)

“I noticed the corral gate is wired shut,” her father remarked. “Trouble again?”

“I think I’m going to change Huck’s name to Trouble.” Sharon identified the chestnut as the culprit and explained about the afternoon’s fiasco—and Ridge’s timely arrival, passing on Ridge’s request for Scott to phone him that evening about working a couple of days for the Latigo.

“Day after tomorrow?” Scott repeated and glanced questioningly at his father. “I should be able to manage that with no problem.”

“None that I can see,” Lloyd Powell agreed with a slow nod.

“How did the baby-sitting go today?” her mother inquired.

“Don’t ask,” Sharon replied with a rueful grimace. “I’m convinced no woman in her right mind would take on the task of motherhood if she knew in advance what it was like. You need three sets of arms, feet, and eyes to keep up with them.”

“Now you know what it was like having you two,” her mother laughed, her sparkling green glance darting between her son and daughter.

“Is that why you waited until I was older before you had Sharon?” Scott wanted to know, drawing attention to their twelve-year age difference. “So you could have a built-in baby-sitter?”

“Your son was a bit slow figuring that one out,” his mother declared as she cast a side glance at her husband.

“My
son? When did he cease being ours and become mine?” he challenged good-naturedly.

Sharon eyed her brother with a studying look.
“Isn’t it time you were thinking about getting married and raising a family?” she asked. “By rights, there should already be another generation of Powells running around the house.”

“Me?” He was startled and amused by her suggestion. “First, there’s a little matter of a bride. If you’re so eager for the folks to have grandchildren, why don’t you marry your oil man?”

She lifted her head. “So you’re the one who told Ridge about Andy.”

Her brother appeared slightly taken aback and a little uncomfortable. “Was your boyfriend supposed to be a secret?”

“No.” She smiled at the thought. “At the moment, that’s all Andy happens to be—a friend. It’s just that Ridge referred to him as an oil man when he asked me about him this afternoon. I wasn’t aware my love life was something you two discussed.”

“We don’t,” Scott replied evenly.

“What do you talk about?’ Her curiosity was heightened by an afternoon spent wondering about such things and what they might reveal about Ridge.

“What kind of a question is that?” Scott frowned at her as if she’d asked a ridiculous question. “What does anybody talk about? Me? You? Dad?”

Put in that context, it did sound a little silly. She poked a fork at her food and shrugged. “I just wondered what men talk about.”

“The weather, business, their health—and
women,” her father answered, “but not necessarily in that order. If they’re married, you can add family to the list. Not a very mysterious list, is it?”

“No.” Sharon had to laugh at her attempt to make something complicated out of a simple statement.

As soon as the meal was finished, Scott left the table to ring through to the Latigo ranch. Sharon helped her mother clear the table, stowing the leftovers in the refrigerator and stacking the dishes in the sink to wash.

“Mom!” Scott called to her from the front room. “Ridge wondered if you would be able to cook for the crew. And he wants to know if Sharon can lend a hand too.”

“Tell him,” her father inserted before either could answer, “that I don’t know if I like the idea of him hiring away my whole crew.” It was meant as a good-natured gibe between friends.

There was a moment’s pause while Scott relayed the message, then came back with a reply. “Ridge says that’s the risk you take when you have a good crew willing to work cheap. It isn’t his fault we work for you for nothing.”

Sharon heard her father’s hearty chuckle and walked to the doorway. “Scott, tell Ridge I can spare two days.” The new horses she was working would probably benefit from a short respite from the training routine. “But—I don’t come cheap. If he wants me, he’ll have to pay top dollar.”

Scott repeated her answer into the telephone. A grin
split his face at the response. “I don’t think I’ll tell her the last part.”

“Tell me what?” she insisted with a wary look.

He placed a covering hand over the mouthpiece. “Ridge said he doesn’t mind paying you top dollar.” He hesitated, the light in his eyes dancing brighter.

“Is that all?” Sharon knew it wasn’t.

“Not quite.” Scott tried to contain his smile. “He said there’s always more than one way to get your money’s worth out of a woman.”

“Tell him not to worry. I come with a money-back guarantee if not completely satisfied.” This time she was the one with the gleam in her eye and Scott was the one hesitant about passing on the message.

Her father cleared his throat and reached for his cigar. Her mother had appeared in the doorway behind Sharon and he arched her a considering look. “Might be that you should go along with this young girl of yours, Lena.”

“My girl?” she countered. “She sounds more like you.” But she glanced at her son. “Tell him I’ll stop over tomorrow and check the camp kitchen and supplies to make sure nothing’s been forgotten.” She didn’t wait to hear Scott relaying her message as she nudged Sharon’s arm. “Do you want to wash or dry the dishes?”

“I’ll wash.” She turned and followed her mother to the kitchen sink.

When she turned on the faucets, the noise of
running water drowned out the sound of her brother’s telephone conversation in the front room. Mechanically Sharon began washing the glasses first, but her thoughts were turned ahead. She had never worked with Ridge before, so she couldn’t help wondering about tins new kind of experience with him. But she was careful not to start imagining possibilities.

“I thought you liked Andy,” her mother remarked, interrupting her silent reverie.

“I do.” Sharon glanced at her in surprise.

“At the table tonight, you seemed to stress the point that he is just a friend.” She took a great deal of time to wipe one glass when she usually zipped over it with a few efficient swipes of the towel.

“He is a friend,” Sharon insisted. “If I was trying to make anything clear, it was simply that I’m not on the verge of marrying him—as everybody seems to think.”

“You mean Scott?”

“And Ridge, too.”

The mention of his name by Sharon produced a long, heavy silence. Her mother was completely aware of Sharon’s previous infatuation with Ridge, and how Sharon had loved him with the blind intensity only an adolescent can attain. She didn’t wish to raise the subject with Sharon because she knew what a long and painful process it had been getting over that unrequited crush.

“After he left this afternoon, Mom,” Sharon spoke softly into the silence, “I had the strange feeling that I don’t know him at all. I built up such
a dream around him that I never saw him—just my dream.”

“That’s usually the way it is,” her mother nodded.

“Around me, Ridge is always laughing and joking—or that’s the way he’s seemed.” She frowned and dipped another glass into the sudsy water.

“Perhaps that’s the only level of communication he’s had with you,” her mother suggested.

“What do you mean?” Sharon’s frown deepened as she turned her curious gaze toward her mother.

“‘When I was a child, I spake as a child,’” she murmured the Biblical quote, becoming vaguely thoughtful. “You were young and carefree, always so quick to laugh and have fun. Whenever the conversation became serious at the table, you used to complain it was boring.”

“Well, I’m a woman now,” Sharon said with the full-blown confidence she’d found this afternoon, “and I’ve put away my childish things.” She paused to look thoughtfully out the window. The evening darkness on the other side gave the glass a mirror-like quality, reflecting an indistinct image of herself. “It’s going to be interesting to meet Ridge as an adult.”

“Sharon . . . you’re not—”

The hesitancy and veiled warning in her mother’s voice made her smile. “No, Mom, I’m not still crazy about him. That’s one of the childish things I’ve put behind me.”

The events of that afternoon had put her on a
new footing with Ridge, but Sharon didn’t intend to replace puppy love with passion. Both were equally blinding emotions. And she didn’t plan to walk down another dead-end street.

Spring had exploded on the rugged plateau, turning the seemingly barren terrain into a patchwork of color. Sharon walked the close-coupled bay horse, a Latigo brand burned on its hip, through a grove of aspen trees growing on the north slope below the ridgeline. She was making one last sweep through this section of range for any strays that might have escaped the first roundup before joining the crew at the holding pens.

Bushes of chokecherry and serviceberry crowded close under the shade of the aspens. The leaves overhead formed a glittering, silvery-green canopy that trembled at the slightest stirring of air. Showy blooms of blue columbine, the Colorado state flower, blanketed the ground in the aspen grove.

Emerging from the stand of aspens, Sharon kept her horse pointed down the slope toward the sage-covered valley. The muted purple-green color of the sage was interspersed with patches of wild-flowers, the brilliant crimsons and scarlets of Indian paintbrush, firecracker penstemon, and scarlet gilia.

The air was sharp and clear, the morning sun pressing its warmth on her the instant she left the coolness of the north slope. Sharon reined in the bay horse and peeled off her jacket, tying it behind
her saddle. Her flannel shirt of green and gold plaid was adequate covering on this exceptionally mild spring day.

A ribbon of green wound crookedly through the valley of sage, marking the course of a small creek. The scattering of cottonwood and willow trees growing along the banks offered potential concealment for an odd cow or two. Taking up the reins again, Sharon urged the bay horse into a canter and headed for the creek to investigate.

The small creek was full from the winter runoff, and the water ran swiftly over its shallow bed in a rushing murmur. There were no cattle in sight, nothing larger than a mule deer disturbed into flight by Sharon’s approach. Still, she continued to walk her horse along the wide band of tall grass beside the creek. The scene was too idyllic to leave, and the general direction of the stream was one she would have taken anyway.

The strides of her horse made quick, swishing sounds in the thick rye grass that nearly reached her stirrup. Once this grass had dominated the landscape the way the sage did now, until early cattlemen had allowed their cattle to overgraze it. The Ute Indians had given this country its name,
Piceance,
which means “tall grass.” Now the grass, properly called Big Basin wild rye, grew only along isolated stream beds flowing into Piceance Creek.

The bay horse whickered softly and tugged at the bit, pricking its ears toward the silver rush of water. Her own mouth felt dry after the long
morning ride, so Sharon reined the horse toward a gravel bar that pushed into the stream a few yards ahead.

When they reached the narrow bar, Sharon dismounted and let the horse bury its muzzle in the cool, clear water and suck in the liquid in noisy slurps. She removed her hat and shook her shoulder-length hair free after hours of being tucked under the crown. After the horse had satisfied its thirst, she moved a short way upstream and stretched flat on the gravel to scoop up several handfuls of water, laying her hat on the ground beside her. For safety’s sake, she kept hold of the reins. The bay horse appeared to be well trained but she wasn’t taking any chances.

The water was crystal clear and cold, revealing the smooth and glistening stones on the creek bottom. Sharon had taken her last drink when she felt a pull on the reins. She tightened her grip on them quickly and hastily looked up. The solid-colored bay had lifted its head in sudden alertness to stare at some distant object across the creek. It snorted loudly, then its sides heaved in a questioning whicker.

As she pushed to her feet, wiping her wet hand on her jeans, she heard the drumming of a horse’s hooves growing steadily louder. She shielded her eyes with her hand to look into the sun and identify the approaching rider.

The tall, lean shape could belong to no one but Ridge Halliday. A thread of uncertainty ran through her nerves at the prospect of meeting him here. Sharon was puzzled by the cause of it. She hadn’t seen him since the dawn hours when he’d assigned the crew their individual tasks. There had been no resemblance to the joking, smiling Ridge
Halliday she knew. Perhaps she’d been put off by the hard, authoritative figure he had presented. It had been all business and no nonsense. And Sharon hadn’t been sure how to react to this change even though she had come expressly to discover it.

Her hat was on the ground near her feet. Sharon turned and bent to pick it up as Ridge slowed the liver-colored chestnut gelding into a long-striding walk. She heard his horse splashing across the creek to the gravel bar where she was standing and made a project of adjusting her hat snugly on her head before blandly turning to greet him.

The saddle leather creaked as Ridge stepped down, the gravel crunching beneath his boot. His hard features had relaxed out of the stern lines of the morning. There was a faint curve to his mouth, and the rich blue of his eyes was lit by a taunting gleam. Sharon felt a vague relief that this was the Ridge she knew.

“Looks like I caught you loafing on the job,” he remarked as his horse dipped its nose into the clear-running creek.

“Just watering my horse the same as you’re doing,” she retorted, matching his faintly complacent smile with one of her own.

“I had the distinct impression you were lying down when I rode up,” Ridge countered and let the reins fall to trail the ground.

“I was getting a drink. The water’s icy cold and fresh,” Sharon stated, all her senses coming alert as he leisurely approached her.

“So you were taking a break.” His skimming glance was playing havoc with her pulse. That purely physical attraction was asserting its influence over her again. “That’s going to cost you.”