Wyoming Born and Bred

“The Wades never sold out. This land was stolen from us plain and simple.”

The sponge that Patricia was holding fell into the sudsy water with a plop. Had she heard him right?

“Stolen?”

“Legalized theft.”

The words came out of Cameron’s mouth like bullets. Hard and fast. “About twenty years ago the economy around here took a dive. The president called it a recession at the time, but things weren’t nearly as bad as the banks wanted folks to believe. They took advantage of the situation to call in the loans on several ranches. The Triple R was one of them.”

He didn’t have the heart to expound further. The memory of his father, a kind and gentle man by nature, broken by the greed of a few unscrupulous opportunists could bear no more contemplation than the last two decades had already born. The thought of his father now confined to a cubicle in a retirement home brought a familiar tightness to his chest. Personally he thought the Eskimos’ tradition of setting their old people adrift on icebergs was preferable to the sterile, drawn-out death his father had so selflessly chosen for himself. The last time Cameron had visited him, he had apologized repeatedly for letting “the old man” and his own boys down.

Even from the grave, Spencer Wade threw a long shadow over his only son who, despite a lifetime of trying, had never been able to live up to his legendary expectations. Cameron was torn between love of his father and pride of the gruff grandfather who had taught him how to ride his first horse. Just as soon as the Triple R was back in his hands, he vowed to bring his father back home and lay away the ghosts of the past.

Once and for all.

Patricia felt a tiny shudder of foreboding at the determined look on Cameron’s face. “Do you fancy yourself a little like your grandfather?” she asked hesitantly.

The question was astute enough to coax a lopsided smile from him. “Well, I’d wager we’d both feel the same way about turning this ranch into a foul playpen for the ugliest flock of chickens I’ve ever seen.”

A smile danced in Patricia’s eyes. “Fowl play did you say?”

Cameron groaned at the tortured pun. Patricia giggled. And just as quickly as the sun bursts though the clouds on an overcast day, melancholy reminiscences turned to light, easy banter.

As Patricia went about the business of getting two seemingly inexhaustible little boys tucked into their respective beds, Cameron sank into a worn, comfortable recliner and closed his eyes—for all of ten seconds before Amy Leigh’s sudden and shrill cry brought him upright in his chair. He was tempted to call upstairs for Patricia to “do something” with the child but knew how unnecessary that would be. Had she been in the farthest corner of the attic, Patricia would have been able to hear her baby wailing.

Cameron had told his new boss in no uncertain terms that he was no bird wrangler. He thought it went without saying that he was not a baby-sitter. Figuring that if he ignored her bid for attention those little lungs would surely give out sooner or later, he leaned back and closed his eyes again. This particular strategy served only to incense the child, and the volume of her cries increased several decibels. His nerves crackling with the force of her renewed intensity, Cameron felt his blood pressure rise. He pulled a cherished watch fob out of his pocket and checked the time.

Swallowing the curse scalding the tip of his tongue, he hoisted himself out of the comfort of the sagging recliner and made his way over to the mechanical swing into which the child was securely strapped. According to Patricia, this was the best way of putting Amy Leigh to sleep.

He’d hate to see how her other methods worked.

“Stop it,” Cameron said firmly in the same tone of voice that had proven effective in training any number of dogs over the years. “Stop it right this instant!”

Eyelashes glistening with tears, Amy stopped only long enough to hold out her pudgy arms to him.

Upstairs, Patricia listened to the boys’ nighttime prayers with only one ear. The other one was attuned to Amy’s usual prebedtime petulance. Cameron didn’t exactly strike her as the patient type with children, so when Amy’s cries stopped in the middle of the boys’ “God-blesses” just as abruptly as they had begun, she grew worried. Would she come downstairs to find her youngest gagged and trussed up like some unlucky steer?

What Patricia actually found upon her return to the living room was enough to make her shake her head in disbelief. Cameron was dozing in the big chair while her daughter sat in the middle of the floor teething on what appeared to be a genuine solid gold pocket watch.

“Just who is putting whom to sleep?” she asked, coming down the last three creaky steps.

Cameron opened his eyes to regard her with a lazy, insolent gaze. He hadn’t been anywhere near asleep but didn’t dare say so for fear Patricia would have him running a day care for every toddler in the area tomorrow. Likely she’d claim it was written somewhere in small print in that fool contract he’d signed.

Besides, it had been his experience that women interpreted any attention toward their kids as an open invitation for them to start calling him Daddy. He shuddered at the thought.

The sentimentality that simply being back in this house evoked in him was disturbing to say the least. Why, he’d almost been tempted to pick the little dickens up and rock her to sleep! Cameron blamed this momentary lapse of sanity on the fact that he’d overheard his own name included in the prayers which had floated down the stairs like sweet perfume.

“God bless Cameron.”

“And make him stay...”

What a rotten trick, he thought to himself. Cameron wondered if they would still pray for him if they knew he’d come here with the express intention of buying their home out from under them.

Gathering her daughter into her arms, Patricia attempted to take the girl’s latest “toy” away from her. The toddler wailed and swatted at her mother’s hands, but the deft substitution of a more traditional teething ring quickly pacified her.

Patricia held the watch out to Cameron by its golden chain. It was covered in drool. Wiping it on the hem of her apron, she took the opportunity to study it more closely. Elaborately scrolled into the back were the initials S.W. and below them a date—1909.

“Your grandfather’s?” she asked, handing it over with due reverence. Amazingly it was still ticking. She had to bite her tongue to keep from asking if he was crazy. Would anyone but a man let a baby play with such a valuable keepsake?

Cameron nodded, noting that the antique was none the worse for wear. He figured if it could pull through gunfights and prairie fires, the old timepiece should be able to survive a teething little girl. Before putting it back in his pocket, he wound it once for good measure.

“If you’ll wait here, I’ll put Amy down for the night and be right back.”

The intimacy of Patricia’s promise wrapped itself around Cameron like sweet cotton candy. That voice of hers was pure magic.

Black magic, he’d wager.

Whatever magic this stranger had worked on her little fusspot, Patricia was grateful. When Amy was born, the nurses in the maternity ward had pronounced her colicky. As time passed and the baby refused to outgrow her demanding disposition, Patricia resigned herself to the fact that her daughter was simply going to be dif ficult to raise. Boys, she had heard, would wring a mother’s heart through the years. Girls, they said, would rip it out.

She pulled a blanket over Amy and kissed her softly on the cheek. Patricia couldn’t help thinking how different their evening routine had been just because of Cameron’s presence. How obvious it was that the boys needed a male role model in their lives. How nervous she was around his overt brand of sexuality....

Like a predatory cat feigning indifference, Cameron was waiting for her when she returned to the living room a moment later.

“Looks like you got everybody tucked in but me.”

The comment made the blood sing through Patricia’s veins.

As if unaware of the twin roses blooming on her cheeks, Cameron continued, “Just where do you want me to sleep?”

In my bed! was the unbidden thought that flashed through Patricia’s mind. As a steamy image of this man’s naked body stretched leisurely across her bed caused her to trip over her own tongue, an inner voice of reason yelled at her to get a grip. The last time she’d succumbed to such feminine weakness, she’d wound up a mother to three. Four, she silently amended, if you counted Hadley.

Patricia realized with a start that Cameron was looking at her strangely. It wasn’t as if he were leering at her; he was simply waiting for an answer to his question. The breath was locked in her lungs. Speak up! she ordered her brain.

“In the bunkhouse,” she managed at last to sputter. “You’ll have to sleep there. It isn’t much. Just an old cabin actually...”

Her apology trailed off. There was absolutely no reason that Cameron couldn’t stay in the more comfortable main house with them—other than the fact that people were sure to talk, and Patricia wasn’t about to subject her children to this small town’s rumor mill. The rest of America might be as fashionably liberal as television programming portrayed it, but Lander, Wyoming was still as staunchly conservative as Mayberry, U.S.A. Why, whispered gossip alone had been cause enough for more than one local official to lose his position.

If there was some other reason why Patricia was uncomfortable having Cameron sleeping under the same roof with her, she wasn’t ready to analyze it yet.

Little did she know that there was no need to explain about the Spartan living conditions of the bunkhouse. Cameron was familiar with every inch of the place. It had been his grandparents’ original homestead, and he had spent many happy childhood days playing in and around the old cabin. He neither expected nor wanted anything as fancy as a telephone or television set, but he did hope it had been updated with modern plumbing.

Ten minutes later Patricia was cutting a narrow swath through the darkness with a flashlight. Carefully, she and Cameroon picked their way along the overgrown path connecting the main house to the outbuilding. Once when Patricia stumbled, he reached out to steady her. It had quite the opposite effect.

Spinning, spinning, spinning out of control... Patricia felt like Alice in Wonderland as she fell against a sky sprinkled with diamonds, toppled into a whorl of emotions which she was trying desperately to suppress. And failed.

“Are you all right?” Cameron asked. Warm and soft in the darkness, his voice was black velvet to the ears.

“Yes,” she lied, shining the thin beam of light upon the bunkhouse door.

As it was never locked, Patricia grasped the knob and pushed the door open. She fumbled in the blackness for the string which activated the antiquated light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was like searching for a single dangling spider’s thread. When at last it brushed her knuckles, she grabbed hold and gave a hard tug. Bathed in the harsh glow of the bare bulb, the cabin’s charm seemed questionable at best.

“Like I said, it isn’t much, but it’s clean.”

“It’ll be just fine,” Cameron assured her with a smile so genuine that it measurably reduced the guilt Patricia was feeling.

Cameron’s modest accommodations consisted of an old brass bed, a couple of high-backed chairs, a braided rag rug, a small table and a narrow bureau. A sink and toilet were sectioned off from the rest of the room by a tiny floral print sheet turned curtain by some handy seamstress.

“I’ll help you make the bed,” she said, walking over to the bureau where the sheets and blankets were kept.

“There’s no need,” he assured her. “I’m more than capable of taking care of myself, Patricia.”

Something about the way her name rolled off his tongue as mellifluous as a poem made her go quite soft inside. How often had she uttered those same self-assured platitudes about being able to fend for herself? So many times that her mother claimed she sounded like a broken record. Her father repeatedly assured her that she was wrong in her foolish assumptions. In that smug way of his, Roland D’Winter liked reminding her just how much she relied on him for the benevolence of a roof over her head and clothes on her back. From a young age, Patricia discerned that he would like nothing more than to keep his daughter pinned permanently under his control like one of the more exotic butterflies in his ghastly collection.

“I’m sure you are,” she agreed while crisply unfurling a clean white sheet over his bed like a gigantic surrender flag.

Patricia was keenly aware that this was the first time she had been alone with any man in his bedroom other than her husband. Not that this was any swinging bachelor pad or that she flattered herself with any thought that Cameron was interested in her that way. It was just those crazy electrical signals that her body was giving off, warning her of an impending overload.

Cameron tucked an edge of the sheet between the mattress and the frame as Patricia pulled her side taut. It was funny how such an everyday task could become so charged with sexual energy when shared with a good-looking hunk of a cowboy.

Like graceful doves, Patricia’s work-worn hands darted across his bedding smoothing out the wrinkles. Cameron couldn’t help but wonder why she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. His own father, widowed for many years now, never took his off. Like his beloved Rose, John Wade would be buried with that thin gold band on his finger. Cameron knew he had no right to be judgmental, but he was nonetheless bothered by the symbolic rejection of the wedding vows this woman had taken before God and man. Perhaps Patricia was more like the buckle bunnies of his past than he would like to believe. Was she openly declaring herself available to the next likely prospect willing to take on the financial and emotional burdens of a ready-made family?

As Cameron reached across the bed to even out his covers, he inadvertently brushed fingertips with Patricia. Static electricity arched across the cotton fabric, shocking them both at the same time. Cameron looked across the narrow expanse of the bed into her eyes. They were wide open and shining with distrust and—Was that passion he glimpsed swirling in the depths of those bewitching mahogany-colored orbs? He forced air into his lungs in short, desperate sips.

“Why don’t you wear your wedding ring?”

Having already assured himself that this was absolutely none of his business, Cameron wasn’t quite sure where the question had come from.

Patricia pulled her hand away from his as if she had been stung and gave it an apologetic look.

“I had to pawn it years ago.”

Cameron had expected any response but that one. His mother had once said that the pawning of a wedding ring was the ultimate poverty, the supreme humiliation for a woman. He remembered his parents being poor. He remembered not having as nice things as many of his classmates. He remembered all too vividly the humiliation of losing their ranch. But never once in Cameron’s memory could he ever recall his parents so much as discussing the possibility of such desperate measures as selling their wedding rings.

He grabbed a pillow and jammed it into its case with unnecessary roughness. Something about this woman with her proud chin and soft brown eyes elicited in him a protective, tender sentiment that quite frankly scared him to death. Just watching her take a tired swipe at the stray wisp of hair that fell across her cheek made him want to sweep her up in his arms and lay her upon this bed like a bouquet of exotic blossoms. To make passionate, exquisite love to her...

She was talking to him, he realized with a start. Reluctantly Cameron forced his thoughts away from the bed to what it was she was saying.

“You’ll take your meals with us, of course, and...” Why for gosh sakes was it so hard to say it? “You’ll have to use the bathing facilities at the main house. Do you prefer morning or evening showers?”

Patricia hated asking such personal questions, but with a family of four already utilizing the only bathroom in the house, it was imperative that some kind of schedule be formulated as soon as possible. She shuddered at the image of one of the boys pounding on the bathroom door while Cameron was in the shower. She shivered at the thought of herself accidentally walking in on him wearing nothing more than a towel.

“Mornings, if that’s all right with you,” he replied.

“Mornings it will be then.”

They smiled stiffly at each other. Just a couple of hours ago they had been going at one another with their gloves off. Now they stood on opposite sides of a brass bed contemplating the fact that whether either one of them liked it or not, there was clearly as much attraction crackling between them as animosity. What was that old adage about love and hate being separated by a very thin line? This was going to be a far more dangerous arrangement than either one had initially imagined.

If she could have fired him, Patricia would have.

If he could have walked away, Cameron would have.

Speaking volumes with their eyes, they gauged one another warily.

“I should be going,” Patricia said at length, pulling a tight smile across her teeth. “If there’s anything else you need, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

Cameron’s aroused libido told him that there certainly was something else, but he didn’t think good-night kisses were listed among the benefits in that blasted contract he’d been so eager to sign.

“Everything’s fine,” he assured her over a heartbeat that mocked him in double time. Liar, Liar, Liar! it sang out.

As he held the door open for Patricia to leave, Cameron felt a cold breeze enter the room. It wasn’t until she closed it behind her with an echoing “Good night and sleep well,” that he realized how her presence had taken the chill from the air.

Sitting on the edge of the newly made bed, he proceeded to take off his boots and make plans for tomorrow. Having come straight from the hospital, he hadn’t brought much with him. First thing in the morning he was heading into town to buy a few things from the store.

Cameron lay back into his pillow, closed his eyes and tried to dismiss whatever it was that kept pricking his conscience like a mosquito relentless in its pursuit of blood. Uncomfortable with guilt as a business partner, he reminded himself once again that this opportunity to make his long-cherished dream a reality was no chance happening. Not by a long shot. This was a matter of fate, plain and simple. A matter of destiny. Of universal justice.

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