Christmas Cowboy: Will of Steel / Winter Roses

She sighed and slid her arms around his neck. She tucked her face into his throat. “I feel so safe with you,” she said softly. “Like nothing could ever hurt me.”

“Now, Jake, that’s not the sort of thing a man likes to hear.”

She lifted her head, surprised. “Why?”

He pursed his lips. “We want to hear that we’re dangerous and exciting, that we stir you up and make you nervous.”

“You do?”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

She searched his eyes. “You don’t want me to feel comfortable with you?” she faltered.

“You don’t understand what I’m talking about, do you?” he wondered gently.

“No … not really. I’m sorry.”

It was early days yet, he reminded himself. It was disappointing that she wasn’t shaky when he touched her. But, then, she kept secrets. There must be a reason why she was so icy inside herself.

He set her down but he didn’t let her go. “Some things have to be learned,” he said.

“Learned.”

He framed her face with his big, warm hands. “Passion, for instance.”

She blinked.

It was like describing ice to a desert nomad. He smiled wistfully. “You haven’t ever been kissed in such a way that you’d die to have it happen again?”

She shook her head. Her eyes were wide and innocent, unknowing. She flushed a little and shifted restlessly.

“But you have been kissed in such a way that you’d rather undergo torture than have it happen again,” he said suddenly.

She caught her breath. He couldn’t know! He couldn’t!

His black eyes narrowed on her face. “Something happened to you, Jake. Something bad. It made you lock yourself away from the world. And it wasn’t your experience with the traveling auditor.”

“You can’t know …!”

“Of course not,” he interrupted impatiently. “You know I don’t pry. But I’ve been in law enforcement a long time, and I’ve learned to read people pretty good. You’re afraid of me when I get too close to you.”

She bit down hard on her lower lip. She drew blood.

“Stop that,” he said in a tender tone, touching her lower lip where her teeth had savaged it. “I’m not going to try to browbeat you into telling me something you don’t want to. But I wish you trusted me enough to talk to me about it. You know I’m not judgmental.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

He cocked his head. “Can’t you tell me?”

She hesitated noticeably. She wanted to. She really wanted to. But.

He bent and kissed her eyelids shut. “Don’t. We have all the time in the world. When you’re ready to talk, I’ll listen.”

She drew in a long, labored breath and laid her forehead against his suit coat. “You’re the nicest man I’ve ever known.”

He smiled over her head. “Well, that’s a start, I guess.”

She smiled, too. “It’s a start.”

Four

It was the liveliest place Jillian had ever been to. The dance band was on a platform at the end of a long, wide hall with a polished wooden floor. Around the floor were booths, not tables, and there was a bar in the next room with three bartenders, two of whom were female.

The music was incredible. It was Latin with a capital L, pulsing and narcotic. On the dance floor, people were moving to the rhythm. Some had on jeans and boots, others were wearing ensembles that would have done justice to a club in New York City. Still others, apparently too intimidated by the talent being displayed on the dance floor, were standing on the perimeter of the room, clapping and smiling.

“Wow,” Jillian said, watching a particularly talented couple, a silver-haired lean and muscular man with a willowy blonde woman somewhat younger than he was.

They whirled and pivoted, laughing, with such easy grace and elegance that she couldn’t take her eyes off them.

“That’s Red Jernigan,” he told her, indicating the silver-haired man, whose thick, long hair was in a ponytail down his back.

“He isn’t redheaded,” she pointed out.

He gave her an amused look. “It doesn’t refer to his coloring,” he told her. “They called him that because in any battle, he was the one most likely to come out bloody.”

She gasped. “Oh.”

“I have some odd friends.” He shrugged, then smiled. “You’ll get used to them.”

He was saying something profound about their future. She was confused, but she returned his smile anyway.

The dance ended and Theodore tugged her along with him to the dance floor, where the silver-haired man and the blonde woman were catching their breath.

“Hey, Red,” he greeted the other man, who grinned and gripped his hand. “Good to see you.”

“About time you came up for a visit.” Red’s dark eyes slid to the small blonde woman beside the police chief. His eyebrows arched.

“This is Jillian,” Theodore said gently. “And this is Red Jernigan.”

“I’m Melody,” the pretty blonde woman said, introducing herself. “Nice to meet you.”

Red slid his arm around the woman and pulled her close. “Nice to see Ted going around with somebody,” he observed. “It’s painful to see a man come alone to a dance club and refuse to dance with anyone except the owner’s wife.”

“Well, I don’t like most modern women.” Theodore excused himself. He smiled down at a grinning Jillian. “I like Jake, here.”

“Jake?” Red asked, blinking.

“He’s always called me that,” Jillian sighed. “I’ve known him a long time.”

“She has,” Theodore drawled, smiling. “She likes cattle.”

“I don’t,” Melody laughed. “Smelly things.”

“Oh, but they’re not smelly if they’re kept clean,” Jillian protested at once. “Sammy is always neat.”

“Her calf,” Theodore explained.

“Is he a bull?” Red asked.

“She’s a heifer,” Jillian inserted. “A little black baldy.”

Red and Melody were giving her odd looks.

“As an acquaintance of mine in Jacobsville, Texas, would say,” Red told them, “if Johnny Cash could sing about a girl named Sue, a person can have a girl animal with a boy’s name.” He leaned closer. “He has a female border collie named Bob.”

They burst out laughing.

“Well, don’t stand over here with us old folks,” Red told them. “Get out there with the younger generation and show them how to tango.”

“You aren’t old, Bud,” Theodore told his friend with twinkling eyes. “You’re just a hair slower than you used to be, but with the same skills.”

“Which I hope I’m never called to use again,” Red replied solemnly. “I’m still on reserve status.”

“I know.”

“Red was a bird colonel in spec ops,” Theodore explained to Jillian later when they were sitting at a table sampling the club’s exquisitely cooked seasoned steak and fancy baked sweet potatoes, which it was as famous as for its dance band.

“And he still is?” she asked.

He nodded. “He can do more with recruits than any man I ever knew, and without browbeating them. He just encourages. Of course, there are times when he has to get a little more creative, with the wilder sort.”

“Creative?”

He grinned. “There was this giant of a kid from Milwaukee who was assigned to his unit in the field. Kid played video games and thought he knew more about strategy and tactics than Red did. So Red turns him loose on the enemy, but with covert backup.”

“What happened?” she asked, all eyes.

“The kid walked right into an enemy squad and froze in his tracks. It’s one thing to do that on a computer screen. Quite another to confront armed men in real life. They were aiming their weapons at him when Red led a squad in to recover him. Took about two minutes for them to eliminate the threat and get Commando Carl back to his own lines.” He shook his head. “In the excitement, the kid had, shall we say, needed access to a restroom and didn’t have one. So they hung a nickname on him that stuck.”

“Tell me!”

He chuckled. “Let’s just say that it suited him. He took it in his stride, sucked up his pride, learned to follow orders and became a real credit to the unit. He later became mayor of a small town somewhere up north, where he’s still known, to a favored few, as ‘Stinky.’”

She laughed out loud.

“Actually, he was in good company. I read in a book on World War II that one of our better known generals did the same thing when his convoy ran into a German attack. Poor guy. I’ll bet Stinky cringed every time he saw that other general’s book on a rack.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

She sipped her iced tea and smiled. “This is really good food,” she said. “I’ve never had a steak that was so tender, not even from beef my uncle raised.”

“This is Kobe beef,” he pointed out. “Red gets it from Japan. God knows how,” he added.

“I read about those. Don’t they actually massage the beef cattle?”

“Pamper them,” he agreed. “You should try that sweet potato,” he advised. “It’s really a unique combination of spices they use.”

She frowned, picking at it with her fork. “I’ve only ever had a couple of sweet potatoes, and they were mostly tasteless.”

“Just try it.”

She put the fork into it, lifted it dubiously to her lips and suddenly caught her breath when the taste hit her tongue like dynamite. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “What do they call this?”

“Red calls it ‘the ultimate jalapeño-brown-sugar-sweet-potato delight.’”

“It’s heavenly!”

He chuckled. “It is, isn’t it? The jalapeño gives it a kick like a mule, but it’s not so hot that even tenderfeet wouldn’t eat it.”

“I would never have thought of such a combination. And I thought I was a good cook.”

“You are a good cook, Jake,” he said. “The best I ever knew.”

She blushed. “Thanks, Theodore.”

He cocked his head. “I guess it would kill you to shorten that.”

“Shorten what?”

“My name. Most people call me Ted.”

She hesitated with the fork in midair. She searched his black eyes for a long time. “Ted,” she said softly.

His jaw tautened. He hadn’t expected it to have that effect on him. She had a soft, sweet, sexy voice when she let herself relax with him. She made his name sound different; special. New.

“I like the way you say it,” he said, when she gave him a worried look. “It’s—” he searched for a word that wouldn’t intimidate her “—it’s stimulating.”

“Stimulating.” She didn’t understand.

He put down his fork with a long sigh. “Something happened to you,” he said quietly. “You don’t know me well enough to talk to me about it. Or maybe you’re afraid that I might go after the man who did it.”

She was astounded. She couldn’t even manage words. She just stared at him, shocked.

“I’m in law enforcement,” he reminded her. “After a few years, you read body language in a different way than most people do. Abused children have a look, a way of dressing and acting, one that’s obvious to a cop.”

She went white. She bit her lower lip and her fingers toyed with her fork as she stared at it, fighting tears.

His big hand curled around hers, gently. “I wish you could tell me. I think it would help you.”

She looked up into quiet, patient eyes. “You wouldn’t … think badly of me?”

“For God’s sake,” he groaned. “Are you nuts?”

She blinked.

He grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to put it that way. Nothing I found out about you would change the way I feel. If that’s why you’re reluctant.”

“You’re sure?”

He glared at her.

She lowered her eyes and curled her small hand into his big one, a trusting gesture that touched him in a new and different way.

“When I was fifteen, Uncle John had this young man he got to do odd jobs around here. He was a drifter, very intelligent. He seemed like a nice, trustworthy person to have around the house. Then one day Uncle John felt bad and went to bed, left me with the hired man in the kitchen.”

Her jaw clenched. “At first, he was real helpful. Wanted to put out the trash for me and sweep the floor. I thought it was so nice of him. Then all of a sudden, he asked what was my bra size and if I wore nylon panties.”

Theodore’s eyes began to flash.

She swallowed. “I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do or say. I thought it was some sick joke. Until he tried to take my clothes off, mumbling all the time that I needed somebody to teach me about men and he was the perfect person, because he’d had so many virgins.”

“Good God!”

“Uncle John was asleep. There was nobody to help me. But the Peales lived right down the road, and I knew a back way through the woods to their house. I hit him in a bad place and ran out the door as fast as my legs could carry me. I was almost naked by then.” She closed her eyes, shivering with the memory of the terror she’d felt, running and hearing him curse behind her as he crashed through the undergrowth in pursuit,

“I didn’t think what danger I might be placing Sassy Peale and her mother and stepsister in, I just knew they’d help me and I was terrified. I banged on the door and Sassy came to it. When she saw how I looked, she ran for the shotgun they kept in the hall closet. By the time the hired man got on the porch, Sassy had the shotgun loaded and aimed at his stomach. She told him if he moved she’d blow him up.”

She sipped tea while she calmed a little from the remembered fear. Her hand was shaking, but just a little. Her free hand was still clasped gently in Theodore’s.

“He tried to blame it on me, to say I’d flirted and tried to seduce him, but Sassy knew better. She held him at bay until her mother called the police. They took him away.” She drew in a breath. “There was a trial. It was horrible, but at least it was in closed session, in the judge’s chambers. The hired man plea-bargained. You see, he had priors, many of them. He drew a long jail sentence, but it did at least spare me a public trial.” She sipped tea again. “His sister lived over in Wyoming. She came to see me, after the trial.” Her eyes closed. “She said I was a slut who had no business putting a sweet, nice guy like him behind bars for years.” She managed a smile. “Sassy was in the kitchen when the woman came to the door. She marched into the living room and gave that woman hell. She told her about her innocent brother’s priors and how many young girls had suffered because of his inability to control his own desires. She was eloquent. The woman shut up and went away. I never heard from her again.” She looked over at him. “Sassy’s been my friend ever since. Not a close one, I’m sorry to say. I was so embarrassed at having her know about it that it inhibited me with her and everyone else. Everyone would believe the man’s sister, and that I’d asked for it.”

His fingers curled closer into hers. “No young woman asks for such abuse,” he said softly. “But abusers use that argument to defend themselves. It’s a lie, like all their other lies.”

“Sometimes,” she said, to be fair, “women do lie, and men, innocent men, go to jail for things they didn’t do.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But more often than not, such lies are found out, and the women themselves are punished for it.”

“I guess so.”

“I wasn’t here when that happened.”

“No. You were doing that workshop at the FBI Academy. And I begged the judge not to tell you or anybody else. She was very kind to me.”

He looked over her head, his eyes flashing cold and black as he thought what he might have done to the man if he’d been in town. He wasn’t interested in Jillian as a woman back then, because she was still almost a child, but he’d always been fond of her. He would have wiped the floor with the man.

His expression made her feel warm inside. “You’d have knocked him up and down main street,” she ventured.

He laughed, surprised, and met her eyes. “Worse than that, probably.” He frowned. “First the hired man, then the accountant.”

“The accountant was my fault,” she confessed. “I never told him how old I was, and I was infatuated with him. He was drinking when he tried to persuade me.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I even did that.”

He stared at her. “You were a kid, Jake. Kids aren’t known for deep thought.”

She smiled. “Thanks for not being judgmental.”

He shrugged. “I’m such a nice man that I’m never judgmental.”

Her eyebrows arched.

He grinned. “And I really can do the tango. Suppose I teach you?”

She studied his lean, handsome face. “It’s a very, well, sensual sort of dance, they say.”

“Very.” He pursed his lips. “But I’m not an aggressive man. Not in any way that should frighten you.”

She colored a little. “Really?”

“Really.”

She drew in a long breath. “I guess every woman should dance the tango at least once.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

He wiped his mouth on the linen napkin, took a last sip of the excellent but cooling coffee and got to his feet.

“You have to watch your back on the dance floor, though,” he told her as he led her toward it.

“Why is that?”

“When the other women see what a great dancer I am, they’ll probably mob you and take me away from you,” he teased.

She laughed. “Okay.” She leaned toward him. “Are you packing?”

“Are you kidding?” he asked, indicating the automatic nestled at his waist on his belt. “I’m a cop. I’m always packing. And you keep your little hands off my gun,” he added sternly. “I don’t let women play with it, even if they ask nicely.”

“Theodore, I’m scared of guns,” she reminded him. “And you know it. That’s why you come over and sit on the front porch and shoot bottles on stumps, just to irritate me.”

“I’ll try to reform,” he promised.

“Lies.”

He put his hand over his heart. “I only lie when I’m salving someone’s feelings,” he pointed out. “There are times when telling the truth is cruel.”

“Oh, yeah? Name one.”

He nodded covertly toward a woman against the wall. “Well, if I told that nice lady that her dress looks like she had it painted on at a carnival, she’d probably feel bad.”

She bit her lip trying not to laugh. “She probably thinks it looks sexy.”

“Oh, no. Sexy is a dress that covers almost everything, but leaves one little tantalizing place bare,” he said. “That’s why Japanese kimonos have that dip on the back of the neck, that just reveals the nape, when the rest of the woman is covered from head to toe. The Japanese think the nape of the neck is sexy.”

“My goodness!” She stared up at him, impressed. “You’ve been so many places. I’ve only ever been out of Montana once, when I drove to Wyoming with Uncle John to a cattle convention. I’ve never been out of the country at all. You learn a lot about other people when you travel, don’t you? ”

He nodded. He smiled. “Other countries have different customs. But people are mostly the same everywhere. I’ve enjoyed the travel most of all, even when I had to do it on business.”

“Like the time you flew to London with that detective from Scotland Yard. Imagine a British case that involved a small town like Hollister!” she exclaimed.

“The perpetrator was a murderer who came over here fishing to provide himself with an alibi while his wife committed the crime and blamed it on her absent husband. In the end, they both drew life sentences.”

“Who did they kill?” she asked.

“Her cousin who was set to inherit the family estate and about ten million pounds,” he said, shaking his head. “The things sensible people will do for money never ceases to amaze me. I mean, it isn’t like you can take it with you when you die. And how many houses can you live in? How many cars can you drive?” He frowned. “I think of money the way the Crow and Cheyenne people do. The way most Native Americans do. The man in the tribe who is the most honored is always the poorest, because he gives away everything he has to people who need it more. They’re not capitalists. They don’t understand societies that equate prestige with money.”

“And they share absolutely everything,” she agreed. “They don’t understand private property.”

He laughed. “Neither do I. The woods and the rivers and the mountains are ageless. You can’t own them.”

“See? That’s the Cheyenne in you talking.”

He touched her blond hair. “Probably it is. We going to dance, or talk?”

“You’re leading, aren’t you?”

He tugged her onto the dance floor. “Apparently.” He drew her gently to him and then hesitated. After what she’d told him, he didn’t want to do anything that would make her uncomfortable. He said so.

“I don’t … well, I don’t feel uncomfortable, like that, with you,” she faltered, looking up into his black eyes. She managed a shaky little smile. “I like being close to you.” She flushed, afraid she’d been too bold. Or that he’d think she was being forward. Her expression was troubled.

He just smiled. “You can say anything to me,” he said gently. “I won’t think you’re being shallow or vampish. Okay?”

She relaxed. “Okay. Is this going to be hard to learn?”

“Very.”

She drew in a long breath. “Then I guess we should get started.”

His eyes smiled down at her. “I guess we should.”

He walked her around the dance floor, to her amusement, teaching her how the basic steps were done. It wasn’t like those exotic tangos she’d seen in movies at first. It was like kindergarten was to education.

She followed his steps, hesitantly at first, then a little more confidently, until she was moving with some elegance.

“Now, this is where we get into the more exotic parts,” he said. “It involves little kicks that go between the legs.” He leaned to her ear. “I think we should have kids one day, so it’s very important that you don’t get overenthusiastic with the kicks. And you should also be very careful where you place them.”

It took her a minute to understand what he meant, and then she burst out laughing instead of being embarrassed.

He grinned. “Just playing it safe,” he told her. “Ready? This is how you do it.”

It was fascinating, the complexity of the movements and the fluid flow of the steps as he paced the dance to the music.

“It doesn’t look like this in most movies,” she said as she followed his steps.

“That’s because it’s a stylized version of the tango,” he told her. “Most people have no idea how it’s supposed to be done. But there are a few movies that go into it in depth. One was made in black and white by a British woman. It’s my favorite. Very comprehensive. Even about the danger of the kicks.” He chuckled.

“It’s Argentinian, isn’t it? The dance, I mean.”

“You’d have to ask my buddy about that, I’m not sure. I know there are plenty of dance clubs down there that specialize in tango. The thing is, you’re supposed to do these dances with strangers. It’s as much a social expression as it is a dance.”

“Really?”

He nodded. He smiled. “Maybe we should get a bucket and put all our spare change into it. Then, when we’re Red’s age, we might have enough to buy tickets to Buenos Aires and go dancing.”

She giggled. “Oh, I’m sure we’d have the ticket price in twenty or thirty years.”

He sighed as he led. “Or forty.” He shook his head. “I’ve always wanted to travel. I did a good bit of it in the service, but there are plenty of places I’d love to see. Like those ruins in Peru and the pyramids, and the Sonoran desert.”

She frowned. “The Sonoran desert isn’t exotic.”

He smiled. “Sure it is. Do you know, those Saguaro cacti can live for hundreds of years? And that if a limb falls on you, it can kill you because of the weight? You don’t think about them being that heavy, but they have a woody spine and limbs to support the weight of the water they store.”

“Gosh. How do you know all that?”

He grinned. “The Science Channel, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel …”

She laughed. “I like to watch those, too.”

“I don’t think I’ve missed a single nature special,” he told her. He gave her a droll look. “Now that should tell you all you need to know about my social life.” He grinned.