This Fierce Splendor (63 page)

Zach laughed and took her hand, noticing that despite the cool day, her hand was warm, like her eyes. He hesitated a moment before saying, “Call me Zach. So the cattle drive wasn’t your idea?”

“Do I look like I belong here? Do I look like I
like
the outdoors?”

With a straight face, Zach wondered aloud, “Is it that you don’t like the outdoors or that the outdoors doesn’t like you?”

“At the moment, it’s a mutual dislike,” she said easily. “Now that we’ve settled that, do you think you can help me get this wagon out of the mud?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Zach answered soberly, pulling leather gloves out of his back pocket. He was unaccountably pleased that she’d included herself in the solution to the problem. And he was worried about being pleased—but not as much as he was worried
about purposely omitting his last name during the introductions.

A split second before he introduced himself, Zach knew he wanted to put off the inevitable moment of recognition as long as possible. People had a habit of pulling away from political candidates, or worse, they clung to them like leeches, grabbing for the limelight. He realized it was the height of conceit to believe a woman from New York would recognize him as a candidate for the Wyoming state senate, but even if she didn’t connect the Weston name with politics, she’d know he was more than a cowhand. She’d come to the Weston Ranch to research cattle-drive vacations, and he didn’t want her to start pumping him with questions for her column.

Right now all he wanted was to be Zach. Not the rising young political star, not a Weston of Weston Industries, not Z. P. Weston the rancher and commercial cattleman, not even Zach Weston the trail boss. He wanted to leave all the baggage attached to his name in the closet. And he wanted to enjoy Niki Devlin’s slapdash approach to life.

“Well, New York, you had the right idea when you reached for the plank.”

A smile of pure pleasure crossed Niki’s face as she gave the wagon a superior look. “I knew it!”

Zach chuckled and led his horse to the back of the wagon to tie the reins. When he turned, he saw Niki struggling with the plank. “Whoa, your balance is off. You’ll land in the soup again.”

“Right,” Niki agreed instantly. “Here, you take it. Better you than me anyway.”

As he came up beside her and took the board, Niki noticed his eyes were gunmetal gray and serious, almost guarded. Only the wrinkles around them gave evidence that he had a sense of humor. And she’d been right about the face, all gorgeous planes and angles, rugged and handsome. Perfect column material. Stepping away from him, she made a mental note to get his story.

“Niki, go around to the other side and help me move this plank into position,” Zach ordered as thunder boomed behind them, unleashing a torrent of rain.

This time Niki savored the drenching, letting the water wash the mud away, knowing it would be days before she’d see a real bath again. She grasped the plank firmly, helping Zach work it carefully under the leading edge of the rear wheels.

“That ought to help,” Zach said, satisfied with the job. “I’ll get my horse, then you give it a try.”

Niki retrieved her raincoat and tossed it onto the wagon seat before climbing up. When she unwrapped the leads and slipped the brake, she asked Zach, atop his horse, “You ready?”

“Do it.”

Niki snapped and clucked exactly as she had been taught, willing the wagon to move. This time it did. She focused on the stand of cottonwoods and didn’t look back until she’d reached them. Slowing the mules, she
recognized a silly feeling of accomplishment for having made it to her destination. Zach rode up beside her as she set the brake, and Niki grinned at him, inviting his congratulations.

“Okay, Cookie, it’s New York 1, Wyoming 0,” he acknowledged and wondered if she knew her smile could pull the weary right out of a man’s bones. “You’re ahead. For now. But where’s the warm fire, coffee, and lunch?”

Niki’s eyes narrowed at his cavalier praise of her accomplishment. “I’m not your Cookie, and as to your coffee, ask your boss. He’s the one who assigned me to the chuck wagon without bothering to find out if I could chuck!”

“You can’t chuck?” Zach asked.

“I couldn’t boil water with a blow torch,” Niki said dryly. “Any suggestions?”

“
Meals with Three Ingredients
.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a cookbook. Even a city girl could follow it.”

“That lets me out,” Niki said, jumping down from the wagon. “I’m not a city girl. I was born, and raised in a
small
town. So get off your horse and show me how to make coffee for cowboys.”

“You’re serious?” asked Zach, throwing a leg over his saddle and sliding to the ground in a fluid movement.

Niki nodded and put her hands on her hips, not looking the least bit embarrassed. “Yes, I’m serious,
unless you happen to have a coffeemaker and an electrical outlet handy. Why? Don’t you know how to make fifty cups of coffee either?”

Zach knew a challenge when he heard one. His eyes slid over her, tracing a path from the tips of her boots all the way to the swell of her breasts, then to the curve of her mouth. “Actually, I can manage a mean bucket of coffee when called upon, but I’m better at intimate dinners for two.”

“Is that an invitation?” Niki asked right on cue in an unconsciously husky voice. When Zach moved closer, her stomach did an unplanned flip. He was too tall, too confident, and too close.

“If it were, would you accept?” Zach asked softly, dropping his gaze to the soaked purple T-shirt, which left everything and nothing to his imagination. Anticipation curled in his belly, and he branded her with his gaze, knowing he would rather have pulled her into his arms and branded her with his lips. Suddenly the air of friendly camaraderie was replaced by a tension that Zach could not explain. Nor could he explain why her eyes darkened in alarm before regaining their sparkle.

Niki panicked as she remembered she had both feet firmly planted on Wyoming soil, the one place in which she had to maintain perfect control.
Your feet might be planted firmly, but everything else is a bit shaky. What are you doing, Niki? You’re flirting in the rain. It might not mean anything in New York, but in Cutter’s Creek it does. At least it does if
you
do it, so cut
it out. Keep it light. Otherwise, this cowboy’ll gobble you up for dinner
.

“I don’t care for the strong, silent cowboy type. No offense. However, considering my present circumstances, I’d date an ax murderer if I thought he’d give me a recipe. So are you going to help me or not?”

“Sure,” Zach said, stepping back immediately and nodding toward the wagon. “Let’s get out of the rain.”
And we’ll both pretend this sticky little moment didn’t happen
.

First he showed her how to stake the special awning attached to the back of the wagon. Then he set up the camp stove beneath it, and explained how to control the gas flame. For the life of her, Niki couldn’t understand why she forgot to breathe every time he looked her way to see if she understood his instructions. But she did forget. Of course, Zach didn’t just happen to flick a glance her way and then look away. No, he made instant eye contact and stopped her heart as he held the contact a few seconds longer than necessary. When he shucked his gray rain slicker and climbed the drop steps into the wagon to give her the guided tour of the amenities, Niki took several deep breaths and wondered why she felt as if she’d just been thrown to the lions.

As soon as she followed him inside, Zach knew the guided tour was a mistake. The closeness inside the wagon conspired to make him more conscious of her than when they’d been standing toe-to-toe in the rain. He found himself wondering what shade of
brown her hair would be when it dried, and whether she ever wore it loose. If she’d been wearing perfume, the fragrance was gone, replaced by the crisp scent of rain and meadow grasses.

She didn’t say a word when he leaned across to flip open one of the built-in cabinets, accidentally pressing against her, and he didn’t think he could have said anything if he’d tried. The electric hum that pulsed through his veins at the contact startled him. Their wet T-shirts were little more than second skins, and the shock of feeling her softness against him robbed him of words.

By the time he’d managed to list the food stocked in the wagon, he knew he was fighting a losing battle. Every time he moved, he touched her, but he’d be damned if he was going to apologize for the size of the wagon! Abruptly, Zach slammed the cabinet and moved away.

“If you need it, just look for it. Chances are it’s in here somewhere.” He stepped down to the ground and added, “Use the water in the big barrels strapped to the sides of the wagon.”

The intimacy of the wagon had been torture on Niki’s nerves. Trying to pretend nonchalance when she could almost feel the beating of his heart against hers had been impossible, and she exhaled a sigh of relief when he left. The rain had stopped, Niki noted as she watched him through the oval opening in the canvas. He struggled with the knot he’d tied in the reins. Obviously, the intimacy had effected him too.
Good. She was secretly glad to see a chink in his armor.

As she leaned out of the wagon he looked up and asked, “Any questions?”

“Only two.”

“Shoot.”

“Who does the dishes?”

Zach pointed at her. “Next question.”

“You
do
work for the ranch, don’t you? I mean, you’re not a cattle rustler?”

Zach, who was leading his horse, did a double take. “A
what?
”

“A cattle rustler. One who rustles cows and chuck wagons.” Shrugging her shoulders, Niki said, “I thought I ought to ask.”

“I work for the ranch,” he assured her, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“What do you do?”

“Whatever needs to be done. Like going back for the buffet table we left on the ground.” He walked his horse a few more feet and then mounted in a swift, practiced motion. Once he was in the saddle, he looked back at her and said, “I’d hurry up with those sandwiches if I were you. First shift’s going to be here any time now.”

“What about the coffee?”

“I’ll be back.”

That’s what worries me, Niki admitted silently. Inside the wagon she found a bucket-sized jar of peanut butter, a quart of grape jelly, and two loaves of
whole wheat bread. Rain pattered against the canvas while she smeared peanut butter and jelly on slice after slice of bread and reminded herself to keep her distance from Zach. That was one man she had no business encouraging. She tried to tell herself that part of her attraction to him was the cowboy mystique that she and every other young girl had been spoon-fed from infancy.

Unfortunately, Niki couldn’t convince herself. New York had its share of urban cowboys with expensive alligator boots, ten-gallon hats, and tight, button-fly jeans. She’d never been remotely attracted to them, which meant her attraction to Zach had nothing to do with cowboy mystique.

Quirky hormones. That was her problem. Her brain and her libido couldn’t seem to agree on the right time and the right place, much less the right man. They never had and, she suspected, they never would.

She was here to gather material for her syndicated column “Heartbeat.” Nothing else. Especially if the
else
was Cowboy Zach from Cutter’s Creek. What was his last name? Had she forgotten it already? She didn’t remember his perfect profile from high school, which meant he had to be a newcomer. He must have moved to Cutter’s Creek sometime during the past eight years.

Why anyone would want to move to a small town like Cutter’s Creek, full of narrow-minded, mean-spirited people, was beyond Niki’s imagination. She’d
spent the last year of high school dreaming of nothing but getting out … getting away from the hushed conversations and painfully understanding stares. Niki smiled grimly to herself as she cut the sandwiches into triangles.
There’s nothing like a painful past to shape a better future
. She had no intention of allowing herself to become involved with a hometown cowboy, despite quirky hormones.

Read on for an excerpt from Adrienne Staff’s
Dream Lover

PROLOGUE

A man was running across the hilltop, a bare, beautiful man racing against a red sky. His body was gleaming with sweat, the muscles rippling across his chest and back, the long, hard muscles of his thighs tightening and stretching with every swift stride. His hair was black as night, a wild mane flying behind him. His heart was pounding, as if every evil in the world were chasing at his heels. Fleet-footed, he reached the edge of the cliff … and yet he ran on, magically leaping up into the sky, his body transforming from muscle and flesh to feather and talon. He was an eagle, dark and powerful, soaring against the endless blue. And she … she was left far below, a small figure wandering through a maze of old ruins. In the dimness she bumped against a cold stone wall, stumbled on the crumbled rocks covered in the dust of centuries. But she couldn’t leave. She was searching for something, something she’d lost so long ago. She was weeping,
her heart broken. When she fell, she could not get up again. Then an old man appeared, an old Indian in a ceremonial robe with feathers and beads, bits of glass sewn on the buckskin. She saw herself reflected there in a hundred tiny mirrors, each image shattered. He reached for her, and it was as if she could hear the words: “Stand. Take off your jacket. Take off your dress, your shoes. Untie your hair. Stand, and take off your skin, your bones, your sorrow. Take the stone out of your heart. Here …” His palm lay open. “Place it in my hand.” But she was too frightened, her arms and hands weighted down with fear. Her body was paralyzed, her feet had taken root. Yet suddenly she was balanced at the very edge of the cliff; there was only air and sky behind her, and the old man moving toward her, closer and closer, his hands out-stretched. This time he chanted aloud words that her heart somehow understood:
To fly with the eagle is to reach for the stars
. And then his hand touched her—