Abbie And The Cowboy

Dylan wouldn’t stay long; cowboys rarely did. But maybe he’d stay long enough for her to get someone more permanent for the job. Someone older and preferably married. Someone settled down.

Not that the words settled and cowboy often went together. They never had in her experience. Her third and final relationship with a cowboy had ended two months ago with him heading for Arizona and her nursing a broken heart. She’d be the first to admit that it was rather ironic that a successful writer of Western romances like herself could write a best-seller of a happy ending, but couldn’t seem to find one for herself. At the moment, she was more concerned with finding out exactly who’d sabotaged her horse—putting both her and Wild Thing’s safety, if not their very lives, in jeopardy.

“What the hell is that?” Dylan demanded, staring in disbelief at a strange-looking structure perched alongside the gravel lane heading to the ranch house. The compact building looked as if it had sprung from the earth and, unless his eyes deceived him, it even had grass on the roof. He knew Pete had been getting a little eccentric in his later years, but he wouldn’t have built something this bizarre.

“That’s Ziggy’s place,” Abigail replied as Dylan pulled his pickup truck to a slow halt.

“Who the hell is Ziggy?”

“A friend of mine.”

“And you let him build that monstrosity on your land?”

“Ziggy is an artist.”

As if to accentuate that point, the sudden and unmistakable roar of a power saw filled the air, causing a jay sitting on a nearby cottonwood branch to go skittering across the sky in raucous disapproval.

The sound of horses’ hooves hitting the bottom of the horse trailer conveyed their nervous reaction to the unfamiliar loud noise.

“Get him to turn that damn thing off!” Dylan ordered her in a growl. “He’s upsetting the horses.”

“Wait a second, who’s the boss around here?” she demanded, but she was speaking to empty air since Dylan had hopped out of the pickup cab and gone around back. By the time she’d slid out of the truck, Dylan was already marching over to Ziggy’s place as if determined to shut him up himself.

Even though the day was sunny and warm, Ziggy was wearing his customary Swiss army cap. His shaggy white hair stuck out at wild angles from beneath it. Baggy overalls, a plaid lumberjack shirt and work boots completed his outfit. The middle-aged outdoorsman and wood-carver was described as unique by his friends, crazy by his enemies and talented by those who bought the sculptures he carved out of whole tree trunks. He was up to his ankles in sawdust and standing to one side of the weird dwelling he’d built.

Ziggy spoke English with an accent, but whenever he was upset he reverted to German and French curses mixed with a touch of Italian—a result of his Swiss heritage. When Dylan interrupted him, Ziggy glared and the international string of swear words filled the air instead of the sound of the power saw.

“How can I work when I am always interrupted?” Ziggy demanded of Abigail, his tone much aggrieved.

“Baaaaaaaah.”

“Now see what you are doing? You are upsetting Heidi und Gretel,” Ziggy stated.

“Who are they? Your kids?” Dylan asked.

“In a matter of speaking,” Abigail replied on Ziggy’s behalf. “Goat kids,” she added, pointing to the grass roof, where a trio of goats was munching on the grass.

To her surprise, the beginning of a rueful smile tugged at the corners of Dylan’s lips, making her realize what perfectly sculpted lips they were. As before, the brim from his hat shadowed much of his face from her view, but the sun shone full force on his mouth, accentuating the aesthetic curve of his upper lip and the sensual fullness of the lower one.

“Nice friends you’ve got here,” Dylan drawled.

“No kidding,” she replied with a grin of her own.

He groaned. “You didn’t say anything about bad puns being part of this job.”

“That bother you?” she inquired saucily.

“Do I look bothered?” he countered. Using the tip of his thumb, he angled his hat a little farther back on his head. The shape of the broad brim gave an added edge to his appearance. Aside from a red cardinal’s feather, there was nothing fancy about the rather dusty black Stetson, and there was nothing fancy about Dylan. She had a feeling that the L-shaped rip in the left leg of his jeans wasn’t a fashion statement, but was instead a sign of wear and tear.

Feeling her eyes on him, Dylan decided that turnabout was fair play. So he stared at her, his gaze appreciative and speculative, as he fantasized that he was touching her with more than just his eyes.

“Stop that, you two!” Ziggy commanded. “I can feel fire from here. All this emoting is too distracting for an artist like me.”

Dylan watched the pink blossom in Abigail’s cheeks and shook his head in amazement. “I thought blushing was a lost art,” he murmured.

“It’s sunburn,” she shot back. “We’re leaving now, Ziggy.”

“My name’s Dylan, by the way,” Dylan said, nodding at Ziggy by way of introduction. “You been working on this piece long?” he added, indicating the tree trunk Ziggy had been carving.

“Since early this morning,” Ziggy replied.

“Did you happen to see Abbie here go riding by while you were working?”

“My name is Abigail,” she inserted.

“I call you Abbie,” Ziggy commented.

“That’s because you’re my friend. Dylan is…”

“The new ranch foreman,” he said on his own behalf. “Temporarily.”

“You will be helping Abbie, then,” Ziggy noted with a wide smile. “That is good. She needs help. I can do some but not everything. I am good with horses, I was raised on a farm near the Jura Mountains. We had horses and many cows. Goats, too.”

“You’re good with horses?” Dylan asked.

Ziggy nodded but added, “I’m better artist than cowboy.”

“That’s okay, Dylan here is the cowboy,” Abigail said.

“Did you happen to visit the barn this morning?” Dylan asked Ziggy.

“I was here working on my sculpture all morning,” Ziggy stated.

“Yeah, well, horses don’t like loud noises, especially sudden ones. If you were raised on a farm, you should know that.”

“Swiss horses are much better behaved than American ones,” Ziggy maintained.

“Right. And I’m Buffalo Bill Cody,” Dylan scoffed. “Just watch out when you use the saw, make sure that you don’t make that racket when someone is riding nearby.”

“No one rides nearby here,” Ziggy declared. “They know I am working.”

“Dylan, I really do have to get back to the ranch house,” Abigail inserted, practically tapping her boot in impatience.

Once they were back on the road again and the sound of Ziggy’s power saw was a distant annoyance, Abigail began questioning Dylan. “Why were you interrogating Ziggy that way?”

“Just trying to get a lay for the land. Did you see Ziggy in the barn this morning when you were saddling your horse?”

“Of course not. He likes horses but he loves sculpting. It’s hard to drag him away from his work. Why the sudden curiosity?”

“Because someone put those burrs on your horse’s saddle blanket.”

“It wasn’t Ziggy.”

“What made you bring an eccentric like him up here?”

“He used to come into the library a lot. We’d talk about books and artists. Over the years, he became a friend. When I moved up here, I took pity on his neighbors in Great Falls, who were forever calling the authorities on him for using his saw at seven in the morning. I figured there would be enough space here on the ranch for him to be able to work in peace and quiet.”

“I have a feeling peace and quiet don’t go hand in hand with Ziggy.”

“How about you? Does peace and quiet go hand in hand with you?”

“Sometimes.”

“When you’re sleeping, right?”

The image of her curled up asleep filled his mind, stealing into his soul. Did she sleep on her side or her back? And what did she wear to bed—a slinky nightgown, a cotton sleep shirt or maybe nothing at all?

“I usually make it a point to avoid trouble,” Dylan said, as much as a reminder to himself as a reply to her.

“And how do you manage that?”

“By moving around a lot.”

It was the answer she expected but not the one she wanted.

Coming around the corner of the barn and seeing the ranch for the first time never failed to touch Abigail’s heart. Others might notice the weather-beaten smallness of the three-bedroom log house. They might see the work that needed to be done: the sagging gutters, the neglected yard, the slightly off kilter chimney. Even the porch swing hung unevenly and needed a new coat of paint.

But Abigail saw home. She had always loved the location of her uncle’s ranch, which had an even better view of the surrounding mountains than her parents’ ranch had had. A hillside rose directly behind it, with two tall fir trees standing sentinel atop it. In the evening, she’d climb the path up the hill and sit there, smelling the evergreen mixed with wood smoke from the cabin. Lower down, the aspens’ pale bark glowed in the sunshine. The hill protected the house from the fierce northern winds, while the front porch had a southern exposure.

She and Dylan had unsaddled their horses without any further comment. Dylan had been as familiar with the layout of the barn as she was. And she’d discovered that his horse, an Appaloosa gelding, was aptly named Traveler.

Her thoughts of Dylan and his traveling ways were interrupted by the realization that they had company. An oversize man sat on his much besieged horse, glaring at Abigail’s friend, Raj. The young woman was glaring right back.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Redkins?” Abigail inquired.

“Like I was telling your servant there—”

“Raj is my friend, not my servant,” Abigail declared.

“Whatever. I’m here to see if you’ve decided to accept my offer to take this place off your hands,” Hoss said, shifting in his saddle.

“And I told you that I’m not interested in selling,” Abigail stated.

“I thought you might have changed your mind.”

“Now, why would you think that?” Abigail demanded.

“Yeah, why would you think that?” Dylan drawled, speaking for the first time.

Instead of answering, Hoss said, “What are you doing here, boy? I heard you busted your leg in some rodeo down in Oklahoma. Come to loaf the summer off old man Turner, have you? Must have been a surprise to hear he’d kicked the bucket.”

“Still as charming as ever, I see, Redkins,” Dylan retorted.

“Is this man bothering you?” Hoss demanded of Abigail, his face florid as he glared at Dylan.

“No, but you are,” she muttered under her breath.

“What was that?” Hoss asked.

“I said that Dylan is not bothering me. He’s…”

“Come to help her,” Dylan inserted.

“Hah!” Hoss scoffed. “You’ve come to mooch off a helpless woman, more likely. Dylan here has a reputation where ladies are concerned,” Hoss informed Abigail. “He’s got a string of buckle bunnies from Oklahoma City to Calgary. ‘Course that was before he busted his leg.”

The feel of Abigail’s hand on Dylan’s arm stopped him from hauling Hoss off his horse and stuffing his head in the nearest pile of horse manure.

“Dylan is a friend of my uncle’s and he’s welcome here,” Abigail emphatically stated.

“I’ve just signed on as the ranch foreman,” Dylan added for Hoss’s benefit.

Hoss frowned at this news. “Why would you want to do that? I’ve never known you to stick around in one place very long. A job like this doesn’t sound like something you’d want to get involved with.”

It was one thing for Dylan not to want this job, but it was something else entirely for Hoss to try to tell him the job wasn’t for him. No one told Dylan how to live his life, and he didn’t tell others how to live theirs.

“What do you know about running a ranch?” Hoss was now demanding of Abigail. “Why, I heard you write them trashy romance novels—”

“You heard wrong,” Abigail angrily interrupted. “I write damn good historical romance novels! There’s nothing trashy about them! Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about my neighbors,” she said with a pointed look in Hoss’s direction.

Much affronted, Hoss declared, “I don’t write trashy romance novels!”

Abigail sighed. Her verbal insult had clearly sailed right over the man’s ten-gallon-size head.

“Why don’t you head on home, Redkins, now that you’ve dazzled Ms. Turner here with your charm and intellect.”

“Why don’t you mind your own damn business?” Hoss retorted. “What’s it to you how long I chat with the lady here?”

“The lady here has asked you to leave her property,” Dylan reminded Hoss, his eyes taking on a dangerous glitter.

“And what you gonna do if I don’t leave?” Hoss taunted him. “You gonna throw me off with that busted leg of yours?”

“Don’t tempt me,” Dylan replied, his voice all the more dangerous for its softness.

“You and what army?”

“That does it…” Dylan growled, shaking off Abigail’s arm and heading straight for Hoss with murder in his eyes.

Three

Fearing the worst, Abigail exclaimed, “Dylan, don’t!”

But it was already too late. She watched with disbelieving eyes as—seemingly at Dylan’s silent command— Hoss’s horse suddenly reared, dumping the portly rancher smack in the middle of the water-filled rain barrel.

The resultant splash of water should have doused Dylan. Instead, it somehow miraculously missed him by a few inches.

His florid face bobbing like a red apple, Hoss sputtered, “H-how’d you…do that?”

“Me? I didn’t do anything,” Dylan denied with a lift of his eyebrow.

“I heard stories about you and that cursed Gypsy magic you practice,” Hoss declared, eying him with equal parts of anger and suspicion.

“Hey, it’s not my fault if you can’t keep your seat, Redkins. You need any help getting out of that rain barrel?” he inquired with mocking courtesy.

“Keep away from me,” Hoss yelled, making his horse sidestep even farther away. Hauling himself upright, Hoss added, “You’re going to regret this, boy.”

“I doubt it.”

“Yeah, well, you just better watch your back,” Hoss said, plunking his hat on his head—only to dump a ten-gallon-hat’s worth of water on his head.

Abigail couldn’t help herself. She cracked up, the laughter slipping out as she joined Dylan, whose grin was downright devilish, in his enjoyment of the moment.

Wiping the water out of his eyes before glaring at them both, Hoss said, “You’re both going to regret this day.”

“I don’t think so,” Dylan replied as a dripping-wet Hoss remounted his still-skittish horse.

Abigail could practically see the poor animal groaning under the rotund rancher’s weight.

Watching the furious set of his thick shoulders as Hoss rode off, Abigail sobered as reality returned.

“That probably wasn’t the brightest thing to do,” she murmured.

“Who cares?” Dylan replied. “It felt damn good.”

“That’s no reason for doing something.”

“No? I happen to think it’s a wonderful reason for doing something. One of the very best.” As Dylan spoke, he reached out to sketch a brief line from the corner of her mouth to the underside of her jaw.

His work-roughened finger created havoc within Abigail. She, who was supposedly fluent in the language of love after having written about it for so many years, found herself unable to describe this suddenly shameless surge of emotion. Instead, all she could do was give in to it, surrendering to the moment, even if only for a second or two. But the instant she realized she’d actually closed her eyes with pleasure, she snapped out of her Dylan-induced trance.

Stepping away from temptation, she said, “Trying to practice some Gypsy magic on me, too? If so, you can forget it,” she added crossly. “Understand?”

“Sure do,” he said in a clipped voice, anger tightening the skin on his lean cheeks and compressing his lips into a grim line. “I’m the hired help, and that’s all. Since I don’t exactly have folks lining up to hire me, I’d better be on my best behavior because, after all, there’s not much need for busted-up Gypsy rodeo riders, right?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Not in so many words maybe.” His jaw clenched as he continued in the same hard inflection, “Listen, lady, there are plenty of other ranches I could be working at.”

“I realize that.”

“I don’t need to go looking for trouble.”

“If you want to leave, just say the word.”

“Right,” he scoffed. “And have you run Pete’s ranch into the ground so that Redkins can get his greedy hands on the place after all? No way! I owe it to Pete to protect this place.”

Dylan and Abigail were almost nose to nose, her blue eyes glaring into his dark ones, when the sound of Raj’s voice interrupted them.

“Hey, I hate to interrupt such a friendly discussion and all, but I just wanted to know…is he staying for dinner?” Raj inquired. Her midnight black hair swung into a short page-boy cut just above her jawline, and her chestnut eyes gleamed with interest.

“Yes,” Abigail said, taking a step back from the fire in Dylan’s dark eyes.

“I’ll add another place for dinner, then. By the way, my name is Raj Patel,” she told Dylan.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said with a polite nod of his head.

“And would you be Dylan Janos, by any chance?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“How did you know his last name?” Abigail asked Raj.

“Because he’s famous. Everyone knows who Dylan is.”

Who I was, Dylan thought to himself, rubbing his thigh.

“Why, he was the best saddle-bronc rider in the NFR— National Finals Rodeo—championships in Las Vegas last year!” Dismissing Abigail’s blank look, Raj explained to Dylan, “Abbie never reads the ProRodeo Sports News. I’m sorry she doesn’t know how impressive your credentials are. Only the top fifteen cowboys in each event make it to the NFR,” Raj told Abigail before frowning. “Dylan, I heard you’d been badly hurt…four months ago, was it?”

“Something like that.” His voice was completely devoid of expression.

While his face was equally impassive, Abigail saw the briefest flash of something, an inner torment that compelled her to intervene. “I don’t think Dylan wants to talk about it, Raj.”

“I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “Sometimes my enthusiasm gets ahead of me. Come on in and take a load off.”

“I’d like to get settled in and clean up first,” Dylan said. “If you’ll just tell me where my quarters are.”

“I’ll show you,” Abigail stated.

Once Dylan set his belongings down inside the small cabin set aside for the foreman’s use, Abigail realized how little he had with him. She knew cowboys traveled light, and Dylan was no exception. She was willing to bet that most of the stuff in his gear bag was rigging related to riding.

He dwarfed the one-room cabin. He didn’t have the muscle-bound looks of some of the men who graced the covers of her books. Instead, he was very lean and whipcord strong. She still remembered the powerful feel of his arms whisking her off her runaway horse a few hours earlier. She’d felt perfectly safe in his arms, yet she’d also felt a wild excitement that was at definite odds with the first emotion.

Clearing her throat, Abigail said, “Um, the bathroom is in the corner, and over here by the sink is a hot plate. It’s not real fancy.”

“I’ve stayed in worse.”

“Yes, well…” Abigail paused to lean over and nervously smooth the quilt covering the bed. “You haven’t tried the mattress from hell yet. Although I’ve never slept on it, when I aired the mattress I could see the lumps never mind feel them.” She was babbling, but having Dylan and a bed in the same room definitely made her breathless. “Come on over to the house whenever you’re ready. Supper is at six,” she gulped before making her escape.

“Where’s the fire?” Raj asked as Abigail came rushing into the kitchen.

“No fire. I just came to see if you needed some help,” Abigail maintained.

“You mean you’re not out of breath because of Dylan Janos? Now, that’s hero material,” Raj dreamily declared, tilting her head in the direction of the foreman’s cabin.

Abigail shrugged nonchalantly. “He’s just a guy.”

“A darn good-looking one.”

“His hair is too long.”

“Hah!” Raj said triumphantly. “You’re tempted.”

“I am not!” Abigail denied.

Raj gave her a look that said she knew better.

“Okay, I might have been tempted at first,” Abigail allowed. “In the very beginning, when he saved me. For a minute or two.”

“Wait a second!” Raj squealed. “This is the first I’ve heard about him saving you. From what?”

“Boredom,” Abigail retorted.

“Yeah, right. You’ve never been bored a minute in your entire life. Now, come on, tell me everything!”

“You know I took Wild Thing for a run this morning? Well, we hadn’t been out long when she suddenly took off, and I couldn’t stop her. She was heading right for that stand of woods in the north pasture, the one with the prairie-dog holes. Anyway, Dylan showed up out of no place and helped out.”

“Helped out how?” Raj asked. “Anything that required you to end up in his arms?” Seeing the blush on Abigail’s face, she crowed, “Aha! I knew it.”

“I told you, I might have been tempted, but I got over it. Real fast. He’s a cowboy.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Raj said dreamily.

“Cut that out. He’s working here. I’m his employer. And I am not about to repeat my past mistakes. You know my rule—no more cowboys. I’ve sworn off of them for good.”

“You know what Katharine Hepburn said—‘If you obey all the rules…you miss all the fun.’”

“I have all the fun I can manage at the moment, thank you very much,” Abigail retorted tartly. “Besides, you’re hardly an objective observer in all this. You’re practically as bad about cowboys as I am.”

“Nonsense. I am merely a fan of Western US. social life and customs.”

“Yeah, right. That’s putting it mildly. You think John Wayne walked on water and you got your master’s degree in Western culture by writing a thesis on the cowboy as mythical hero.”

“Not the most practical thing I’ve ever done,” Raj admitted. “But then I’m not one to conform to expectations.”

Raj had left her native India at the tender age of fifteen, to visit a third cousin who owned a restaurant in New York City. That had been twenty years ago, and she’d often told Abigail that she’d never looked back. By the time Abigail had met her in Great Falls, Raj was working as a waitress by night and taking college courses by day.

The first time Abigail had visited Raj’s tiny studio apartment, she’d been overwhelmed by the Western memorabilia—classic posters of John Wayne and Barbara Stanwyck Westerns covered the cracked plaster walls, while their movies on video filled the bookcases and overflowed onto the floor.

It was a love that Abigail shared. She was lucky to have been able to combine her two loves—books and Western life—into her second career as a Western-romance writer.

“Yes, well, a lot would say that I wasn’t practical leaving my job at the library in Great Falls to come up here and live on this ranch. My parents especially,” Abigail noted wryly. “They think I’m crazy, that this is some passing phase I’m going through, and they’re praying that I’ll ‘come to my senses’ is the way my father put it, and sell the place.”

“To that idiot who was here earlier?”

Abigail nodded. “My parents just don’t understand, and I don’t know how to explain it to them. The thing is that I feel such a sense of peace here, a sense of belonging. When I look at those mountains out there—” she swept her hand toward the large window facing east “—it just feels right in here.” She pressed her clenched hand against her chest.