Black Hills Bride (12 page)

Up until now she hadn’t even dared admit it openly to herself.

And it confused her. She’d never felt this way with Abel. His soft kiss made her feel warm and comfortable.

A mere look from Erik sent her heart into fits.

But how could two loves be so different? Her love for Erik was based on common interests, just as with Abel. But maturity gave her extra insight this time around.

She wasn’t dependent on Erik, though the day wasn’t complete without having him at her side.

She’d leaned on Abel, let him do the difficult tasks in starting a new mission, while she rode on his coattails. And when the going got tough, he rejected her.

No wonder she bristled every time Erik did anything for her. She wanted something different with him, something more than a platonic relationship that would have been convenient for all concerned.

It still bothered her that she had to depend on anyone—especially a man—to complete her work here. She knew it was her pride speaking, and she inwardly cringed as guilt washed over her.

She did depend on Erik.

She naturally turned to him with her problems. But he likewise turned to her. Hadn’t he been talking with her more and more often?

That alone was a minor miracle. Was this what a mature love relationship was all about?

She didn’t have the opportunity to pursue that question as someone knocked rapidly on her door, which led to an outside landing. The landing was graced by a small porch complete with an old wooden rocking chair for watching the mountain sunsets.

“Who is it?” she called, not bothering to rise from the edge of her bed.

“Erik.”

She tensed. He’d never come to her room before, and she couldn’t imagine why he’d be here now. Unless there was a problem.

More vandalism?

D
ixie’s heart jumped into her throat as she launched off the bed, not even habitually running an open palm across the comforter to straighten the wrinkles, as was in her perfectionist nature to do.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded as she swung the door open without the pretense of a greeting.

Erik leaned his forearm against the doorframe and leaned toward her, his lips curling up in the corners just enough to suggest a smile. “Something have to be wrong for a man to visit a pretty lady?”

The skin on her face flushed with warmth under his scrutiny. She swore she’d never heard so many words from Erik before, except when he was talking to his beloved horses.

And he’d called her “pretty”!

“Well, no. I suppose not,” she squeaked. She swallowed, trying to regain her normal voice before she was forced to speak again.

With his free hand, he tipped his hat. “I have the team hitched.”

“To the hay wagon?”

His blue eyes twinkled under the shadow of his black hat.

What else?
he asked without speaking.

Her face went from warm to scorching. Of course, the team would be hitched to the hay wagon. It was the only wagon the retreat owned.

“Let’s go,” he said in his usual gruff way, but it was more a question than a command.

“Okay,” she agreed, not having to think twice about learning to drive a team—or spending time with Erik.

“Oh, wait!” she exclaimed, trying to gather her wits about her. She scrambled back toward her knotted-pine dresser where a stack of horse books lay in a haphazard pile. She quickly sifted through them, at last finding the one she sought.

“Here,” she said, waving the book in the air like a trophy. “We’ll be needing this.”

Erik cocked an eyebrow but said nothing. Still, she could see laughter in his eyes.

Which was nice, for a change, and she didn’t care if she put it there, or more accurately,
how
she put it there.

He was too often broody. Laughter would be good for him, even if he kept it locked inside.

She’d show him just how much a person could learn from a book. She’d studied this particular book with extra attention, and felt quite certain—especially with the new hands-on horse knowledge she’d received from Erik—she could handle a team the first time out.

She knew the lines, and she knew the lingo. She smiled, secretly anticipating surprising Erik with her wisdom.

She exclaimed in delight when she saw the black-and-white Border collie in the back of the hay wagon.

Her angel!

“This here’s Lucy,” Erik said, hoping to keep the introduction short.

“Lucy is
your
dog?”

Lucy. She should have known.

“Yep.”

“I see.” She greeted the dog with the enthusiasm she didn’t want to show Lucy’s owner. But she supposed nothing bad had come from his little deletion. And she’d missed Lucy’s company since she had moved into the main lodge.

His mouth was still crooked in a semigrin when he lifted her onto the buckboard, his large hands spanning her waist. A thousand little darts of electricity bolted through her, and it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sensation. Her head swam with the delicious feeling.

“This one’s Cindy, and that there is Suzy,” he introduced, pointing at the horses left to right. When they heard their names, the horses fidgeted in their harnesses.

“Cindy and Suzy. How lovely.”

She admired the matched pair of palomino mares. Suzy was darker than Cindy, but other than that, they were a perfectly matched team.

“They’re full sisters,” he explained.

“I wondered how they looked so much alike.”

Erik’s grin cracked through to a smile. “Yep.”

“Cindy and Suzy,” she said again, liking how it made the horses’ ears perk up. “And I should always call them left to right.”

He conceded her small victory with a tug on his hat, which served only to shadow the amusement in his eyes.

She smiled and took up the lines, careful to lace them up between her pinkie and fourth finger and down between her thumb and first finger of each hand, just as the book illustrated.

He grunted, which, she supposed, was the closest she’d get to him telling her how impressed he was with her knowledge.

Excitement welling, she snapped the lines over the horses’ backs, calling
“Git up!”
in her best John Wayne voice.

Cindy and Suzy didn’t move an inch with her command, and neither did the wagon. Chagrined, she flushed heatedly and darted a glance at Erik.

He didn’t so much as blink as he leaned back into the seat and put his arm around the back. “Talk ’em through it,” he suggested quietly. “Use their names.”

“Of course,” she snapped back, though his only crime was being his usual kind self. The truth was she was annoyed with herself for forgetting what she’d learned so quickly.

Use the horses’ names. Any idiot would know that. And there was something about calling left and right hovering at the top of her brain somewhere just out of reach.

Oh, yes. The commands.

Straightening her spine, she darted another glance at Erik and cleared her throat.

Let’s try this again.

“Cindy,
come gee.
Suzy,
go haw!
”

The horses twitched in anticipation when she called their names, and to her delight the cart lurched at the same time her heart did.

For about one second.

After that, both the wagon and her heart died down to a standstill. She wanted to scream in frustration.

Instead, she sighed loudly and glared at Erik as if he were the cause of the problem. She knew she was being irrational, and she didn’t care.

“What now?” she grumbled, making a meager attempt to keep her voice level.

He gestured toward her book. “That thing tell you to do this?”

She glanced down at the book in her lap and nodded. “Yes. I mean, well, I think it did.”

“That so,” he replied, definitely amused.

“Why? What did I do wrong?”

He chuckled. “For starters, you just told the horses to switch places. A little difficult with them being harnessed up and all.”

She scowled, then gave it up and broke out in a laugh despite herself. “Poor things. I really confused them, didn’t I?”

He shrugged. “They’ll get over it.”

“I must have gotten it backward. I thought you were supposed to call them something left to right.”

“Their names. Haw and Gee are directions—
go
left and right.”

“Oh,” she said, deflated. She unlaced the lines and tossed them toward Erik. “You want to take over?”

The twinkle in his eye turned into a hard gleam as he swung his arm over her head and snatched up the lines, immediately lacing them through his rough and tethered hands.

“What did I do wrong now?” she asked, thoroughly exasperated with the entire experience.

He frowned down at her. “You let go of the lines.”

“Of course I did. How else could I hand them to you?”

He shrugged. “And what if the horses had bolted? Those lines would be long gone by now. You and I would be eating dust.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t thought of that, and certainly her worthless book hadn’t mentioned such a possibility.

This was supposed to be an easy transition from regular riding to team driving.

Easy, ha!

She’d botched it up, just as she’d bungled every other project she’d attempted since coming to South Dakota. Another tent falling on top of her, and this time Erik was here to see it and laugh at her mistakes. Although at the moment, he wasn’t laughing.

“I just thought you’d want to take over,” she retorted sharply.

Like you always do.

His gaze met hers, probing and searching. Or was it teasing? She couldn’t tell, with the brim of his hat shading his eyes.

“You thought wrong.” He offered her the lines, which she accepted after considering his shadowed expression a moment longer.

Erik let her look her fill, knowing she couldn’t read what was really in his heart. He’d turned away from her a hundred times, and a hundred times she’d turned him back, made him face the demons haunting him.

It was better for a man just to come clean with Dixie. She always wriggled the truth out of him anyway. He admired her spirit, just as he admired everything else about the small, plucky woman.

“You’ve got the left-to-right part down,” he explained awkwardly. When she frowned and creased her forehead in that little-girl concentrating look she had, he decided once again that words were useless. At least to him they were.

Clamping his mouth shut, he showed her how to strip the lines shorter in her hands without letting go of either piece of worn leather.

“This will give you more control,” he said after several minutes, when she appeared to have mastered command of the lines.

She nodded, still concentrating furiously.

“Relax,” he coaxed, just as he had when she learned to ride Victory.

Dixie took everything way too seriously, especially horses. “This won’t be much different than riding. Cindy and Suzy have been a team for years now.”

She blew out a breath and visibly relaxed her posture. The movement caused the book on her lap to slide to the side, lodging next to Erik’s thigh.

With a chuckle, he picked up the book, waving it in front of her nose.
“How to Drive a Team in Five
Easy Lessons?”
he teased, though the actual title was something far less innocuous.

“Team Driving for Dummies,”
she countered with a laugh.

He slid a finger down the soft, peaches-and-cream skin of her cheek, then chucked her lightly underneath the chin. “You’re no dummy.”

She smiled, though a shadow passed over her face. “Thank you.”

“So, are you gonna drive this team, or are we just going to sit out on this old hay wagon all night?”

“Cindy, Suzy, git up!” This time, the horses sprang forward, causing them both to lurch back in their seats.

“Still have the lines tight?” he asked, adjusting his position and replacing his arm behind her back. For reassurance, he assured himself, and not just because it felt good to put his arm around her.

“Yep,” she said in an exact imitation of his low drawl.

“You sound like a regular cowboy,” he teased.

She smiled hesitantly, and then her eyes grew wide as the horses lumbered toward the pasture, apparently taking it upon themselves to choose a route.

“What trail are we taking?” she squeaked, her voice high and tight.

Erik pointed to the left, where a wagon trail had been etched from the land by the stable hands. “That one there will take us to the steak.”

“I wish.” He heard the rumble of her stomach, offering its own opinion on the many benefits of a thick steak dinner.

“No supper?” he queried lightly.

She shook her head, and he struggled to keep his lips firm when they wanted to slide into a grin. Maybe he’d really surprise her, for once, with something nice, something she wouldn’t take offense to. Maybe he was finally figuring the woman out.

But he wouldn’t bet his paycheck on it.

“If you don’t tell me how to turn this thing, we’re going to be taking another route, right into that tree up there,” she said, her voice teasing, if tight.

“Cindy, Suzy,
go haw,
” he said, turning his attention to the horses, who immediately followed his command, moving to the left and toward the correct trail.

“How did you do that?” she demanded, glancing curiously at him. “I thought the one with the lines did the driving.”

He just shrugged, afraid he’d ruined the moment with his casual instructions, which came second nature to him.

“You drive them with your voice?” she persisted when he didn’t answer.

He shrugged again. “Mostly.”

“Teach me,” she pleaded, her voice low and earnest. “I want to learn.”

Her insatiable need to learn was one of the things he loved most about Dixie. He was one cowboy who thought he was beyond learning new tricks, but she’d proven him wrong, again and again.

“You know most of it. Use their names.
Gee
for right,
haw
for left.
Go
for forward,
come
for back.”

“That’s all?”

“Pretty much.” He gestured to the driving whip posted in one corner. “Some people direct their horses with a whip.”

“A whip? Isn’t that rather barbaric?”

She sounded truly affronted, and he chuckled. “Not really. You don’t actually whip the horses. Just touch their flanks to let ’em know where to go.”

“Oh. I see,” she said, sounding like she didn’t
see
at all.

Erik couldn’t stop smiling. Without realizing it, Dixie was lightly handling the lead lines, guiding the team down the trail.

“I think I’ll just stick to using my voice and not a whip,” she said at last.

He watched as she maneuvered the team over a small creek without so much as a whinny from either horse. She was a natural and she wasn’t even aware of it. If only she knew.

Pride swelled in his chest, though there was no good reason for it. He sure couldn’t take any credit for her natural talent and her unwavering willingness to try and try again until she got it right.

Clearing the frog from his throat, he turned his attention to the book in his hands. “Can’t believe someone wrote a book on how to drive horses.”

She glanced at him, a smile in her eyes, then returned her attention to the team, still a little too stiff in her movements, as if she were afraid of doing the wrong thing. “They have books on just about everything.”

“I suppose they do,” he said, astounded. He flipped through the pages, noting the illustrations. “Hey, look how this guy is holding the lines.”

She leaned her cheek on his shoulder in order to see the picture he was pointing at, and he inhaled a large whiff of peaches from her hair. He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the strong, sweet scent.