Cowboy Fantasy

“So, let’s get to work—fast,” Jeff urged.

North inspected the shaved area and the black lines Jeff had drawn along the reddish brown hide. When he was satisfied, he injected a topical anesthetic along every inch of the line. After he sliced through the hide with the scalpel, Jeff injected more anesthetic inside the incision. North began to cut deeper.

There were a lot of bleeders, but North deftly stopped them. Within a minute he was popping hooves out of the cow’s belly and Jeff was pulling the rest of the calf free. They worked together, in harmony, as they always did, smiling at each other after it was over because it was a helluva rush to look into those wet brown eyes and witness the beginning of a new life.

Another life saved.

But for what? North wondered silently as he knew Jeff did. If it didn’t rain? For an early death in a slaughter-house…his short life bartered for a few peanuts? Worse, he might get himself rustled and hauled south to Mexico.

Again, North thought of Melody who’d become a vegetarian just to spite him after her first and only visit to the ranch.

North frowned as he dropped antibiotics into the uterus and then began to sew up the cow, barking questions at Jeff to distract himself from Melody. “Calf breathing okay?”

North remembered Melody saying after he’d finished a long day at the squeeze chute, “I won’t ever eat a hamburger again. I keep seeing a cute little brown-eyed calf peeping its head out of my hamburger bun and pleading for help.”

He stared at the cute new calf. It galled him that Melody thought he didn’t care about his animals.

“He’s a cute little cuss, ain’t he, King?”

Forget Melody Woods.

“Get him tagged and shot!”

Within minutes, North was done and striding out of the barn in shotgun chaps made of scarred leather. He made his way toward the cloud of dust that muted the harsh sun somewhere up above in that bluish white sky.

He pulled his bandanna up and took Mr. Jim’s reins. As he rode toward the herd, Jeff and the other cowboys seemed to float in a golden haze of dust.

When North got closer, Mr. Jim shook his long red mane and neighed. His vaqueros nodded in deference, and Mr. Jim reared.

“Easy, champ,” North whispered to Mr. Jim.

He flicked the reins and began shouting orders to his men in fluent Spanish right before he galloped into the herd. Then, and only then, as he cut cattle alongside his day-labor cowboys, was he able to forget the impossible Melody Woods.

Because he had to drive in to Corpus Christi, he quit earlier than he had in weeks. Before going to the house, he returned to the barn.

The calf he’d delivered was doing fine, so he made a final stop at that stall occupied by the mama llama and her pitifully skinny baby.

“Jeff,” he shouted.

Jeff came running. Hell, everybody came running when the king yelled.

Everybody except…her.

When the baby llama forgot his shyness for the first time and moved toward him trustingly on shaky legs, North melted. He remembered a skinny little girl on the ground, drying her tears with the back of her hand before throwing herself into his arms.

“How long since my baby camel here ate?” North demanded in an oddly rough voice.

“Three hours. Want me to feed her again?”

“Him. No,” North said, surprising himself as he strode toward the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of fresh milk. “Warm this. I’ll do it.”

“You’re wasting a lot of time on that runt,” Jeff said as North squatted near the fragile newborn.

“I guess I’m a sucker for lost causes.”

Melody had said he had no heart.

The barn phone began to ring as North cradled the llama across his knees and offered him the bottle. As the camel nibbled tentatively, W.T. banged inside the stall with the cordless. The llama shivered and stopped suckling. If anybody had the look of a dimestore cowboy, it was W.T. Scuffed high-heeled boots, wide hat, the shiftless fraud carried himself with more style than anybody on El Dorado.

“Take it easy when you come in here,” North whispered testily.

“Border Patrol. Delfino’s at the gate in his Dodge Ram-charger demandin’ access—”

North grabbed the phone. “Delfino, you’d better be here to tell me you’ve got a lead on the Midnight Bandit. He damn near made off with a truck—”

“No. Some half-starved illegals. Kids. Not ten miles south of your headquarters. From our helicopter. Brush too dense to land.”

“Damn,” North muttered.

Tough as it was in Texas, it was tougher in Mexico. And getting tougher. Ejidos, small Mexican settlements, sprang up along the southern edge of El Dorado almost weekly. The people who lived in them were unemployed. They didn’t have a damned thing to do but watch the goings-on at El Dorado.

North had started wearing his Colt when he worked remote pastures of his ranch. He never knew anymore who or what he might run into on his own land. Anytime he spotted illegals, he called the Border Patrol.

Melody’s voice piped up in his mind. “Americans spend more than four billion dollars a year on pet food. You know what else, Bertie? We don’t spend a fourth of that on food to feed starving people in third world countries.”

Bertie. That was Melody’s special name for the king. If ever there was a sissy nickname—

More and more, intense, desperate men seemed to be making border crossings. Not just men these days. Women and children, who were pitifully unprepared to attack the desert.

Delfino repeated that single word, “Kids.”

Ten miles. Illegals never carried much food or more than a gallon of water. In this heat, on foot, they’d be dead before they reached his headquarters.

North nodded glumly. “Keep an eye out for my bandit, you hear?”

After North hung up, the llama suckled indifferently. Still, North fed the baby camel with a vengeance till the bottle was completely empty. When he was done, he touched his brow to the furry ear. “You’re not going to starve on me, Little Camel. Not if I can help it!”

When North was done, he found Jeff in the tack room. “You gonna take care of Little Camel, here, while I’m gone to Corpus?”

“Corpus?” Jeff shot him a look. “What about Saturday and Maria and me and Tina?”

“Right. Saturday. Maria.” North took his sweat-stained Stetson off, raked brown fingers through his black hair, set his hat back on. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” His deep voice lacked enthusiasm.

“We’ll cook ’em steaks, take ’em ridin’ around on the ranch, show off the spread, impress ’em and bed ’em,” Jeff reminded him. “Just like old times…before her.”

“Right. Just like old times.”

Jeff resented Melody more than anybody else on the ranch. North and he had gone to college together, double-dated together. They’d been inseparable until Melody.

“Don’t you worry none about Little Camel, King.”

North showered and changed into a pair of faded jeans with razor-sharp creases, a long-sleeved white shirt and his best boots—his uniform, Melody used to say. Then he stomped out to his white pickup. First thing he saw was his Colt in its holster on the seat.

He was licensed to carry. Quickly wrapping the belt around the holster, he got inside and jammed it into his glove compartment.

Once he left the ranch, the flat, familiar highway was clogged with speeding NAFTA trucks all the way to Robstown where he turned off for Corpus Christi.

The drive through flat, unremarkable countryside was so familiar it soon grew boring. Maybe that’s why he noticed the bumper stickers peeling off the eighteen-wheeler in front of him. One was about beautifying Texas and the need to put a Yankee on a bus.

The other was about Humpty Dumpty being pushed.

North grinned. Melody loved bumper stickers.

Melody. He’d been thinking about her way too much. He should have canceled dinner at the Woodses’.

Too late. Dee Dee was a superb cook. Sam knew everything there was to know about football. North’s own father had died young. Too young. Not that North let himself dwell on that.

Hell, his own mother certainly didn’t dwell on it. She was in Europe blowing her fortune on the immense schloss of a Bavarian count she’d met in Paris.

The Woodses had always made a helluva fuss over North, a helluva lot more of a fuss than Melody or his own mother or even Gran ever had. Besides, he did have appointments with his accountant and cattle buyer in Corpus Christi. A frozen dinner in his bachelor apartment there held no appeal.

But the Woodses were her parents, and he was dating Maria now.

Only one date so far.

Not counting next Saturday.

An hour later, he was knocking briskly on the front door of the Woodses’ two-story home, fighting to pretend he felt cool and was in control. When nobody answered, he jammed his fist on the doorbell. He turned to go when he heard lightly racing footsteps.

The door was thrown open by a slim hand with glossily white fingernails that had ridiculous little silver moons etched into them.

Little silver moons.

They sparkled, winking at him. Even before he saw the rest of her, the jolt of male-female awareness that shuddered down his spinal column told him to bolt.

Instead he drawled lazily, “Hello there, Melody.”

Two

“Smile, Bertie boy. It’s the second best thing you can do with your lips.”

Something about Melody’s low, Southern voice, something in the images she conjured was so damn sexy, so damn blatant. He began to dream about how good it could be if she put those lips to work.

“Naughty, naughty,” she whispered, reading his mind.

“What the hell…”

“Relax. I didn’t mean anything. I got that line off some bumper sticker when I was driving home today.”

So, she’d been reading bumper stickers, too.

He moved closer. Big mistake. She smelled too good.

“I’ve got one for you, too, darlin’. Humpty Dumpty was pushed.”

She laughed.

To keep from grinning back, he bit his tongue till he tasted blood.

Peeking from behind the door, Melody batted her long, burnished lashes at him, just as she had that night when she’d come looking for him at his apartment. When the lash work got no visible reaction, her impish smile brightened, and she began to tease him in earnest.

His palms dampened. The smile was overkill. Her lash work had done the trick. So had the comment about what he could do with his lips.

No wonder the ambitious Dee Dee had called this morning. A mother knew when her daughter was in the mood to start something. In Dee Dee’s mind he was a prize catch and a big enough dope to fall for her little girl all over again.

“What the hell are you doing home?” he demanded.

“Hi there to you, too—Bertie.”

His mouth thinned. “Don’t call me that unless…”

“Then, hi there, Rancher Black,” she said sassily.

“North will do just fine.”

“Aye. Aye.” Instead of saluting, she touched her lip with a fluttery white fingertip and blew him a kiss.

Little moons sparked.

His lips actually got hot.

Hell, it was August.

His sneer was slow and deliberate, “So, you’ve come back—” Then he added, “What the hell for?”

She flinched at those secret code words, just as he did. Her beauty upset him even more. Her long, straight, reddish-gold hair framed the slender oval of her flushed face. Her golden skin was damp as if she’d just stepped from the shower. And those half-scared, flirty, smoky-blue eyes ate him alive. Why, oh why, did she have to smell of soap and perfumed bath oils?

Even without makeup, she was naturally, heart-wrenchingly beautiful, more beautiful and innocent looking and yet voluptuous than he remembered. She’d come looking for him after her little dance in Shorty’s, after their wild kisses in the parking lot. No sooner had he pulled her inside his place that night, the night he’d wanted her so damn much, he’d felt as if he’d die if he couldn’t have her.

She’d let him take her to bed. But first, she’d actually stripped for him.

“You say I only want to perform in public. Not tonight. Tonight I want to dance just for you. Do you want to dance with me?”

“I’m not the exhibitionist. I’ll watch.”

“You’re gonna have fun. I promise.” Her eyes had gleamed, teasing him, luring him.

She’d put a CD in his player, turned his lights way down and had begun to move in the velvet shadows. For a long time all she’d done was sway back and forth to the heavy beat and run her hands over her body. When he’d joined her, she’d let him grasp her by the waist, pull her close, let him put his hands wherever he wanted, let him strip her ever so slowly. She hadn’t even fought him when he’d undone the buttons of her blouse, one by one. She’d danced and smiled and lured them both to their doom.

The ground rocked under him as he stood on her porch. His heart thudded.

“You look too damn good, darlin’,” he whispered.

“So do you,” she said in a sad, lost tone that matched his own.

Just those words, and he wanted to touch her so bad he hurt. But he remembered the dangerous place that desire had led them to so many times before, so he knotted his callused hands, slipped them into his hip pockets. He took a deep breath and a long step backward.

Instead of her usual grunge attire, she wore some sort of silky, scarlet sarong that clung to her curves so tightly, he saw nipples. And that there was no panty line. It wasn’t hard to imagine her body since he knew exactly what she looked like with nothing on. Show but don’t let him touch, being her motto.

“How the hell could you answer the door in that? I could’ve been anyone.”

“It would have been a whole lot less dangerous if you had been,” she teased before she realized what she was doing. “I was expecting you.”

Her pupils darkened with alarm, but not before her husky voice had rippled over every raw nerve ending, making his skin sting as if he was on fire the way it had that night.

“But you have no right, no claim on me or what I wear…or don’t wear—ever again, Rancher Black.” She lifted her chin, challenging him to more verbal dueling.

“You’re right, of course—Miss Woods!”

No doubt she’d purchased the improbable garment somewhere in the Orient when she’d run away from him on that freighter and driven him mad with jealousy, rage and fear. When she’d finally turned up safe and sound, she’d thrown his life into turmoil all over again when she’d almost seduced him. Then she’d gone off to India.

“I was in the shower,” she said demurely without lifting her gaze to his. “My muscles were stiff after the long drive.”

All of a sudden he had a stiff muscle problem and a mighty keen need for a cold shower, too.

“Would you prefer it if I’d answered the door stark naked?” she teased.

The vision of her naked in a shower stall brought a rush of heat and made the muscle in question pull even tighter. Just for an instant he remembered her in a black lace bra and matching panties and a black velvet hat after he’d removed her blouse and jeans. For no reason at all, he was tugging at his collar.

“Don’t worry…Bertie. If I’d known you were going to be in such a bad mood, I wouldn’t have answered the door at all.”

“Why aren’t you in Austin where you belong?” His voice was as cold as ice.

“Why did you say yes to my mother? This is my parents’ house. It’s your own fault if you’re not where you belong— out on your big ole ranch. Playing king, doing your big man things. Ordering everybody in your kingdom around.”

That wasn’t how it was. Not that he let on.

“Is that what you think of me and my business?”

“Isn’t that what you want everybody to think?”

“I have responsibilities.”

“And they came before me.”

His family hadn’t thought so. “They’re a part of who I am.”

“And I don’t know who I am. Is that what you’re saying?”

In bed or out of it, he almost shouted. Instead he flushed darkly. “My ranch wasn’t the problem.”

“You give everything of yourself to that ranch.”

“Because I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because my father died that’s why!” North remembered the fire. He remembered running. He remembered screaming for help.

“Why you, Bertie?”

“Just…just…” An emotion built and burst inside him, so he waited. “Just because,” he finished darkly, remembering his father’s funeral. “I’m his son. That’s all.”

Her eyes seemed to see inside him, into that shadowy secret place.

She smiled. “You can tell me.”

He glared. “Can I? If you were me, would you trust you…after…”

They’d hardly said hi, and already they were at it.

Yet he preferred arguing and probably so did she—to remembering that night and what had happened in his apartment and what hadn’t.

She was pale and yet breathing hard, every bit as agitated as he was. Those fingers with the little silver moons were tugging at her silken sash. “How can we be discussing this…like it still matters? When nothing about us matters…anymore.”

He watched that rhythmic tugging of those little half moons at her sash as if hypnotized. “My thoughts exactly, darlin’.”

So why was there a painful lump in his throat? Why that painful thickening lower down that stretched his jeans and made him too conscious of her easy power? Why were the memories of his childhood all mixed up with the crazy sexual frustration of that last night? Why this insane desire to yank that infernal sash loose, slide his hands inside that silk robe and pull her against his body when he knew why wanting her was so impossible?

Why couldn’t she be normal? Why did she have to be the sexiest woman alive and not sexy at all?

Those moving fingertips with the little moons that twinkled slid along red silk. He felt his collar tighten like it was really choking him. “Stop playing with that damned sash!”

“Sorry.”

“Do I come in or go?” he growled when her slim hands were still at last. “It’s been a long day.”

“Oh, do come in, Rancher Black,” she teased, pushing the door wider.

“Quit calling me that!”

When she didn’t move out of his way, he was forced to sidle so close to her he almost brushed against her. Which was what she must have wanted because when he was almost past her, she reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder.

“North, I…” Even before the panic flared in her eyes, she chopped off the end of her sentence.

Instantly his muscles contracted beneath the liquid heat of her slim hand. His black head jerked, startling her, and for a long moment they both stared at those fingertips with the tiny silver moons. She’d scarcely touched him, but the effect on his senses was electrifying.

He remembered that last night when her hands had been all over him. She’d been eager, as eager as he. And then suddenly, she’d gotten scared.

“North…” Her little girl voice died in her throat as she splayed her fingers, causing the tiny little moons to twinkle.

He felt her, remembered her in every pore. They’d lain in his bed that night, his body pressed firmly against hers, her lips against his throat, her breast against his chest, the rest of their bodies touching all the way down. She’d felt so right. She always did.

He’d held her for a long time, stroking her hair, trying to gentle her as he might a frightened colt. But she’d gotten frightened again and gone back to the wild on him anyway.

“Don’t start in on me again, darlin’…unless you intend to finish what you start…this time.”

Her hand tightened and then fell away slowly, and still he couldn’t move past her any more than she seemed able to escape him.

“I want to forget you,” he said, but his gaze was on her pink lips.

“That does seem like the sensible solution to our problem.”

“Your problem,” he said in a flat tone.

“And yet—”

“There is not going to be a yet—damn you.”

She blushed. Her eyes remained downcast. “What if I can’t be as sensible or as rational as you? What if I—”

“Not if you crawled—”

She went white at that code word.

“You broke up with me, remember?” he said in a softer tone.

“And you’ll never be able to forgive—” Her husky voice had dropped, too—to something that sounded close to shame or regret.

“That’s right.”

Leave her alone. Cool off. Talk football outside with Sam.

But she looked so small and vulnerable. Suddenly he couldn’t stop staring at her lips and wondering how long since anybody had kissed their wet, pink fullness. Wondering who else knew how they tasted. These thoughts got him so riled, North pushed his way inside, grabbed her, backed her against the red flowers on the foyer wallpaper and pressed his body firmly against hers.

She swallowed. Her eyes shone nervously; her cheeks blazed a brighter hue, but for once, she didn’t try to run.

Suddenly his breathing was fast and irregular. “Why? Why do you always goad me? Why do you always have to push?”

“I—I don’t know. I-it’s just the way I am with you. I don’t like it that I do it, either. North—”

“Shut up,” he said silkily.

Then he touched her cheek with the back of his hand, ran it along her throat. Her skin was smooth and soft. Womanly soft. And hot. So hot. She was burning up just like he was.

“Let me go,” she whispered.

He stroked her hair. “Not just yet. You touched me. You led me on.”

“You’re too easy.”

He grinned. “If only you were as easy.”

She shut her eyes as if to shut him out.

“Your desires are every bit as deep and dark as mine,” he murmured. “Have you found someone else to satisfy them?” Just asking her drove him crazy.

Her lashes fluttered. Her smoky eyes darkened. “No…”

“How long…since you’ve been held? Kissed?”

“Not since…that night.” She turned deep red.

“Me, either.”

Why the hell had he admitted that? Unwanted desire for her wound him tighter. When she tried to run, he seized her arm again. “Not yet, darlin’. You’re not going anywhere. Not just yet. Not till I’ve had a final taste.”

Melody was tall, but he dwarfed her. Easily he scooped her closer. When he snugged her hips against his, she quivered, and even the slight response on her part that warred with the wild panic in her eyes made him explosively needy. Always, always she drove him past the limits of his careful control.

“Why do you always bully me?” she whispered.

“Sometimes I think because you want me to.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What do you want, Melody? What’s so wrong—”

An electric silence hummed between them. She was nervy, yet secretly thrilled and eager, too.

“You scare me,” she said breathily.

“You scare you. You ought to know by now I would never hurt you. Or force you—”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“I just want to touch you.” He wanted to slide his fingers inside her again, to know she was wet as she’d been that night, despite all her puritanical and hung-up assertions to the contrary.

She shut her eyes, half opened her mouth and sank back against the wall. “If only—”

God, it had been so long. Six months since that wonderful, awful night. He had told himself, never, ever again—not with her. Then the minute he set eyes on her, the minute she touched him, she had him again. More than anything he craved to kiss her, to run his hands through her long, soft hair, to do all the things she’d forbidden him to do.

What would she do this time if he tried? What would she say? What would he do if she ever let him? He’d wanted her so damn much. He’d waited so long.

Maybe he would have held himself in check if Melody hadn’t reached up and brushed her fingertips against the crisp black hair above his white collar. Maybe. But even though her touch was light and tentative, he felt her feverish response behind it, and that alone set him off.