The Bride Wore Denim (9 page)

“I think it’s one of those damn hobo spiders. What do I do? Those mother-effers are poisonous.”

He clutched at his shirt, feeling for the thing he believed was going to dispatch his life on the spot. The strong, silent hero had turned into a babbling idiot. At least, she thought, now holding back a laugh, here was another thing that hadn’t changed. His pathological arachnophobia.

She tried to catch one of his flailing arms.

“The first thing you have to do is stop jumping around like Pinocchio,” she said, barely hanging on to her straight face. “Stand still so if there really is a spider, you don’t scare it. Do you think it’s bitten you?”

“Don’t even say that.” He whimpered.

“You big baby. Pull your shirt off.” He stared as if he hadn’t understood the command. “Stop backing up!”

“Give me a grizzly bear any time,” he moaned.

“Where is this death-dealing creature?”

“You’re not funny. God, it’s still crawling.”

She couldn’t contain the laughter anymore. Even if it was a hobo spider, even if it did bite him, there was debate about how dangerous the bites were, and there were easily accessible antidotes. Her big, safe, strong friend was hilarious. With her palm, she pressed against his shirt and twisted it softly, feeling along his left pectoral. She jumped a little when she felt the inch-round bulge. Instinctively she gathered the fabric and captured the spider.

“Got him.”

She literally felt the shiver shimmer through Cole’s body. Tilting her head, she gazed up into his face, which was finally draining of panic. A woodsy, warm scent emanated from his flushed skin—even at his least macho, his power was substantial.

“Thank you.” His breath floated onto her face. “You saved me.”

“Unless you got bitten. Then I’m too late.”

“I retract my thanks.” He uttered a low growl as he worked his shirt buttons open. “You’re evil.”

“I’m enjoying this.”

He shrugged out of his shirt only to wind up with Harper holding part of his snowy-white T-shirt along with the limp plaid fabric. “Great.”

She couldn’t say a word from a mouth suddenly as dry as mountain scree. The T-shirt stretched even more nicely than the sweater from yesterday over well-defined arms and pecs she absolutely didn’t remember from the last time they’d gone river swimming. Where was that wiry, skinny kid when she needed him?

“Pull the undershirt off, too.” She managed to choke the words out.

Cole shucked it, shivered, and brushed his hand roughly over his torso as if clearing away the last of his heebie-jeebies. Then he bent and brushed out his hair, leaving it with even more of its signature spiky messiness.

“Guess I’ve wrecked that mood,” he said.

“Good thing you had a big, strong woman to take care of the problem.”

“Yeah.” He caught her eyes, and not a touch of embarrassment shone in his. “You know, I’ve always hated spiders. Don’t know why, but clearly I haven’t gotten any better. Thanks.”

She stood less than a foot from his bare chest. For all the masculine scruff that showed up on his face by late afternoon every day, the skin before her was gloriously smooth and solid and pretty much the hottest thing she’d seen in longer than she could remember. She had to back away or risk reaching out to stroke the flat plane over his heart.

“I . . . you’re welcome. Doofus.”

He waggled his brow. “So, you gonna finish the job with the thing in my shirt or are you just going to stand there and hold it?”

“I think I’m going to make you ride back shirtless. If it happens again we don’t have to go through this. You can brush it off.”

“Oh no. Uh-uh.”

She smiled at last and looked at the bunched shirts in her hand. Slowly she uncurled her fist. Cole backed away like a startled mustang. In the center of a web of wrinkles, stark against the white cotton of the undershirt, sat an inch-long brown-ish spider with classically freaky arched legs and two zig-zag brown stripes down its abdomen.

“Do you, like, sit and study spiders so much that you recognize them in split seconds?” she teased. “These guys aren’t that easy to ID.”

“Last summer Leif said he’d noticed a couple of spots infested with hobos. I leaped to the conclusion.”

“You’re a freak.” She grinned and walked several feet away to shake the spider out behind a different rock outcropping.

“Wait, you aren’t going to kill it?”

“Why? We invaded its home. It won’t be back here before we leave.”

“Now who’s the freak?” He grabbed his T-shirt from her and held it up, inspecting every inch. “Bring on the well drillers—wipe out the spiders.”

Harper shook her head and settled her gaze on his incredibly beautiful torso, flexing in preparation for donning the shirt. A snarky comment to cover her deep,
deep
enjoyment formed at her lips and hung there ready to fly, when a soft crash and sibilant spray of scree pebbles spun them both in place. Right above them on a slight path behind more large rocks, Skylar Thorson sprawled on her butt, scarlet creeping up her cheeks.

C
OLE WATCHED THE
disoriented teen scramble to her feet and back defensively toward the rock she’d apparently slid from. As she drew back, she gathered up a book of some kind and held it roughly against her stomach.

“Skylar?” Harper called. “Are you all right?”

Cole’s first thought, since he could see the girl wasn’t injured, was to wonder what she was doing there in the first place.

“Fine,” Skylar called.

“Come on down here.”

“I’ll just go home.”

“Oh no.” Harper shook her head and crooked a finger. “Come.”

The teen picked her way slowly down the short slope. She glanced at Cole but turned quickly away, a scowl on her face. Surprised, with no clue what he’d done to deserve the stink eye, he pulled his T-shirt over his head and smoothed it down.

“Well, well, hi there,” Harper said when Skylar stood in front of them. “This is a surprise. Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

For a moment she said nothing. “I heard you tell my mom where you were riding. They let you take my horse without asking me, so I came to keep an eye on him.” Her pointed little chin rose in a small show of bravado.

“We looked for you so we could ask, but you weren’t home.”

“I wasn’t that far away. They could have found me.”

“Then I’m sorry. We would have left Bungu alone if you’d wanted us to. I get that you don’t know me well enough to know if I’ll ride him carefully. Still, that’s not really a reason to come spying.”

“It’s not Bung-goo,” she said, ignoring the apology and the mild chastisement. “It’s Boong-goo. Everyone gets it wrong, even my mom. It’s Shoshone for horse.”

“Bungu.” Harper pronounced it correctly. “I’ll remember. Would it help if I told you he’s every bit as brave and perfect as you said he was?”

Skylar’s defensive posture eased—like any woman whose child got complimented. “He’s a really awesome horse.”

“He is. But this is a long way to come on foot. Seems a little extreme. You sure you aren’t spying on us for some other reason, too?”

The teen shrugged. “I’m not spying. It wasn’t hard to follow you. I do cross-country at our homeschool sports group. It’s the only sport Mom lets me do because it doesn’t cost much and the coach goes to our church. I could do chess, but I don’t like chess.”

“Bummer.” Cole interrupted her. “Chess keeps your brain young.”

“Don’t mind him. He was captain of the chess team in high school. It was his only claim to glory.” Harper fixed him with a teasing grin, but couldn’t control her eyes as her gaze moved down his torso and back up. He grabbed his outer shirt.

Skylar, too, gave him a dazed up and down assessment. When he tried to smile at her, she whipped her gaze away again. The defensiveness returned.

“Like I said, I run a lot.”

“Does your mom know where you are?” Harper asked.

“I come out exploring all the time. It’s fine.”

Cole exchanged a skeptical glance with Harper. “We had lunch earlier. Would you like a brownie or something to drink?” he asked.

Skylar shook her head and stuffed her hands into her jean pockets, her notebook, or whatever it was, wedged between one arm and her side. “Are you going to sell the ranch?”

Harper’s jaw dropped.

“Who told you they might be selling?” Cole asked.

“I hear stuff. My grandpa talks to Dad, and Dad talks to Mom. And now you want to let there be oil wells here.”

“Look,” Cole said, hoping somebody who wasn’t family wouldn’t sound like he was sugarcoating the truth. “I promise, the talk you’re hearing is just that, talk.”

“We don’t want to sell the ranch,” Harper said firmly. “And we didn’t invite the oil company people to come, our dad did. So we don’t know anything about that yet.”

Cole eased out a long sigh. In his opinion, a fourteen-year-old child didn’t need to know anything about the business decisions being discussed on the ranch. All it would take was for her to blab to one friend, and some person in Wolf Paw Pass would start rumors—correct or incorrect. Paradise Ranch’s problems could be spread across Wyoming.

“We should probably head out,” he said, quietly ending the conversation.

Harper didn’t argue and turned toward the girl. “I’m guessing you’d rather ride Bungu home. I’m telling you, if
I
ride him, I won’t want to give him back. He’s like driving a brand new sports car.”

A smile darted across Skylar’s mouth. “Okay.”

“And how are you getting home, smart girl?” Cole turned to Harper.

“Maybe somebody will give me a lift?” She raised her brows and glanced from Cole to Skylar.

“Bungu doesn’t carry double yet,” the girl said. “He still kind of bucks.”

Cole immediately felt the result of Skylar’s announcement, as his pulse kicked into high gear. The idea of Harper sitting behind him on a horse for an hour and a half sent happy shivers coursing through his body. Right along with a little bit of dread. Cuddling with her next to a rock with the safe, unsexy topic of oil wells and the future between them was one thing. Having her sweet, very sexy body pressed up to his on the back of a swaying horse was quite another. Nonetheless, his lips and voice formed the words.

“Guess you’ll have to ride with me.”

Harper’s wide eyes mirrored the tension in his body perfectly. “I guess you’re right,” she said.

Their mutual uncertainty intertwined and spread like an infection. He wondered if there was a vaccination against attraction.

Once the horses were ready to go, Skylar mounted Bungu, and Cole swung back up on Paco. Harper used a large rock as a mounting block and still had to encircle Cole’s torso in order to hoist herself up behind him. She settled in behind the saddle, holding him around the waist as they jostled to get underway. He liked her touch. He reveled in the distraction of her body’s pressure against him and marveled at the way she fit against the curve of his back like a soft, custom-made sweater. It took a solid fifteen minutes along the trail for him to get his mind, body, and voice to all behave together again.

“You ride as well as you always did.” He finally teased her, when his words felt normal and his skin shivered only slightly from her touch.

“Hard to forget when a person rode before she could walk.”

“The perks of being a ranch kid. We might not know the future, Harpo, but do you miss this sometimes anyway? Do you think about growing up here?”

“Sure I do. It was like growing up in Disneyland. And I never think I miss Paradise when I’m back home in Chicago. Well, okay, I miss this—the horses—but it takes a trip back to remember how grand it all is. And after this visit, it’ll be very hard to leave.”

“I assume you really do think this art show is worth it?”

“What do you mean? Of course I do.” Her half-wounded words pressed against his neck like a physical touch.

“All I mean is that you should be sure you’re truly following your heart. Don’t leave here for any other reason than it’s exactly what you want. It’s a first rate show, isn’t that what you said?”

“It’s exactly what I want. And I don’t know how first rate my stuff will make it, but Crucible is a classy gallery—not a dive or a struggling, starving artist’s place. My work will hang in the same hall as a lot of big name local artists. I’m excited and honored.”

“All right then. That’s what I’m talking about.”

Cole let Skylar, ahead of them, take a solid lead. She rode like a ranch kid, too, easy in the saddle with a light touch on the reins and a long-legged confidence.

“You met our little spy before she showed up here,” he said. “What’s her story?”

Harper’s answering sigh brushed the back of his neck. “I don’t know for sure. I came across her sketching yesterday and found she’s very talented for a fourteen-year-old. I only talked to her for five minutes. She and her brothers, Marcus and Aiden, are homeschooled. That’s why they’re able to roam around. Melanie gave them a vacation day today.”

“I’ve heard that from Leif. He really thinks his grandkids should get into the public school in Wolf Paw Pass, but he says Melanie is a pretty devout woman. She thinks this is the way to protect the kids from bad influences.”

“Skylar hinted yesterday at not loving school. But parents have to do what they think is best, I guess.”

“You know, she’s taken some sort of dislike to me,” he said. “I got the hairy eyeball a couple of times. Never had that happen before. Is it because she’s turned into a real teenager? What did I do?”

To his surprise, Harper chuckled. “Trust me, she doesn’t hate you. That was no hairy eyeball; it was pure embarrassment she was trying to disguise. She thinks you’re the only hot guy in Teton, Jackson, and Sublette counties combined. Which may be the entire geographical extent of her world.”

“Very funny. I know full well I did not come up as a topic yesterday in your five-minute conversation with a fourteen-year-old.”

“You’re wrong. Don’t sell yourself short, Cole. You’re not all that ugly, you know. You’re only eighteen years older than she is—there’ve been bigger age gaps in a marriage. That’s what she’s thinking.”

“And that’s not even a little bit funny.”

“You just said it was. Make up your mind.”

“You’re itchin’ to walk home. I can tell.” He shook his head. The banter lifted his spirits and led him to familiar territory with Harper—where this new lust for her played a lesser role.

“Sorry. I don’t know why I’m teasing you. In all seriousness, I don’t know anyone who makes a better older crush for a teenager. You’re the last guy who’d pay any attention to that—a good, safe, future-husband role model. She’d do worse than to pick someone like you. Much younger, of course.”

“You are insane. Don’t you dare ever counsel that girl.” He laughed.

She rode silently for a bit, her hands on the saddle’s cantle, her chest pressed to his back. “I shouldn’t be having fun but I am,” she said finally. “Thanks to you and your arachnophobia dance, and Skylar Thorson coming to steal her horse back.”

“It’s okay to have fun. Even when someone dies. Your dad wouldn’t want anything different.”

“Oh, I don’t know. In his case nice asshole-ed-ness didn’t include wasting time being goofy.”

“Maybe he wasn’t goofy, but he knew how to have fun.”

“If you say so. I guess maybe he mellowed. One of the things I learned from Skylar was that he took an interest in her art and in her photography. He gave her an old camera of his.”

“The old Minolta? I saw she was using it. Huh. Proves you never know about some people.”

“Yeah.” This time her voice carried the slightest note of hurt. “It would have been nice to find out before he was dead.”

T
HE FAMILY RIDE
did little to solve the issue of inviting or not inviting the oil company to explore Paradise land. Harper knew she, backed more or less by Joely, and Kelly down in Denver, was the stubborn hold-out for the nots. Mia, the other two triplets, and their mother insisted that learning what the land held in terms of oil would not constitute a decision to drill. Harper believed with her whole heart that if Mountain Pacific found deposits, the fate of Paradise would be decided.

A decision was easy to put off. The last two days before Mia and Harper had to leave turned into nothing but strings of disasters. One of the ranch’s two, indispensable hay balers broke down, requiring a new, expensive part. Nobody could agree on what Sam would have done to replace it. That same day, their best breeding bull had to be put down. The day before Harper’s plane was scheduled to carry her away from the mounting difficulties, another massive rainstorm overwhelmed the sump pump in the house.

After three hours helping rescue boxes, furniture, and rugs in Rosecroft’s basement, Harper escaped from the house and searched out the only person who’d made her last two days tolerable. Even special.

Cole drew her like a new drug and scared her just as much. She’d been burned in college by her inability to say no to drugs and the wrong crowd. In his own way, Cole was both. She was going back to Chicago, and she couldn’t deny the prospect had her adrenaline pumping. Falling for Cole was stupid on a practical level and equally foolish on an emotional one. They wanted such different things. She wasn’t the one who could rescue the Wainwright legacy with him by making a passel of babies and raising them to take over the Double Diamond. For that he needed someone like practical, devout Melanie Thorson, not a crazy painter with dreams of national success for her art in her starry eyes.

And then there was Mia. She was no longer a factor in Cole’s life. And yet she was. She’d curbed her animosity for Harper immeasurably over the past three days, but there was still an underlying current of irritation that sparked whenever Harper and Cole did something together.

There
was
a sister code. It had to be respected, even if it couldn’t really be explained.

But despite everything that was wrong with building any kind of relationship other than friendship with Cole, she couldn’t leave him alone. Whenever she was with him, his mere presence smoothed every wave of rough water in her life. Agree or disagree, he was a safe harbor, and Harper hadn’t sheltered in one of those for so long. What harm could it do to enjoy it while she was here?

She headed for the barn, the place Leif told her he’d last seen Cole. She’d managed to ride every day of her visit, and since the rain had finally stopped, she planned to talk him into coming along on her ride for this last evening. He’d kissed her once—that day of the chicken wrangling. Since then he’d been far too gentlemanly. Despite all the reasons she wouldn’t pursue him once she returned to Chicago, today she had a shivery, almost uncontrollable fantasy that she’d kiss him one more time: good-bye.

Late afternoon sunlight streamed along the barn aisle from front door to rear, mockingly cheerful after all the rain they’d had. Dust motes danced through the beams; the scents of hay, manure, wood shavings, and the uniquely sweet-musk odor of horse mingled and met her nose in the true perfume of a ranch.

She headed down the aisle, searching for Cole and Chevy and Paco’s halters. She made it to just outside the tack room at the end of the barn before she heard the voices. It shocked her to recognize Cole and Mia. Knowing she should walk right in and announce her presence, Harper stopped anyway, not to eavesdrop but to decide if she should leave them alone.