Cowboy Fantasy

He seized her shoulders to pull her toward him, wondering if this time she’d—

His head came down. Her lips pursed eagerly as she lifted them. In the fraction of a second before their mouths touched, he thought she whispered, “I’m sorry, North. So, sorry.”

But before he could deepen their kiss, he heard the brisk patter of Dee Dee’s footsteps. Quickly he straightened, and Melody twisted her crimson face away, so her mother couldn’t read her.

“Is that you, North!” Dee Dee shrieked from the other end of the hall as she rushed down the hall that was papered to look like a voluptuous garden gone wild in spring.

He froze.

Melody jumped free and began smoothing her hair.

“North…Melody…”

Dee Dee, who was golden and gorgeous and looked years younger than she was, smiled as they hastily backed away from each other and began to fidget—Melody with her sash after she’d finished on her hair and he with his tight collar.

“It’s so good to see you, dear.” Dee Dee smiled knowingly as she came forward and stretched on tiptoes as if to peck his dark cheek. All he felt when her glossy lips hovered close was the stir of her warm breath against his skin. “I’m the chairman of the charity ball, so I was on the phone and couldn’t get the door.”

“You said Melody was in Austin.”

“Did I?” Dee Dee smiled up at him artlessly. “You know Melody. She’s as fickle as Texas weather, and I suppose we’re about due for a norther.”

“After this hellish summer, something a little cool…and frosty might be a welcome change,” he agreed thickly, his eyes on Melody.

“Sam’s out back,” Dee Dee said. When an alarm buzzed in her kitchen, she started. “Why don’t you join him, dear? And while you’re outside, make sure he doesn’t burn up my rib eyes. Meanwhile, I’ll go get you a beer out of the fridge.” Then she flew to the kitchen to check on whatever she had in the oven.

“It’s only one evening together,” North muttered in a hoarse whisper to Melody. “Surely we can be civil and behave ourselves in front of your parents for a few hours—for their sake. For ours, too.”

“Only one night?” Melody looked a little strained as she smiled up at him. “Oh, no, North. I quit my job. I’m home to stay. Or at least I’ll be at Nana’s. You and I could see each other anytime—that is, if we wanted to.”

“Which we don’t.”

“Speak for yourself. The last thing I intend to do where you’re concerned—is behave myself.”

Nana was her grandmother.

“I thought south Texas bored you.”

“I was wrong…about a lot of things.”

He remembered her apology right before their kiss. “What things? What do you mean?”

“I’ll be around. That’s all.”

“You said you loved Austin because it was wild. That south Texas and I bored—”

Her parting shots had cut him to the quick. At one point she’d said he was so ultraconservative that she felt stifled and dead anytime she was anywhere near him.

“Well—” She paused. “I’m here for a while. Not because of you, but because I’m going back to school. To get a masters and a teaching certificate.”

“Teaching? You said you didn’t want to settle for any sort of traditional roles like wife or teacher that women used to be forced into by macho men.”

“I was a child. Naturally I wanted to be glamorous and special.” She paused. “I guess I figured out I like kids. I figured out some other stuff…that I like, too.”

Like men? Like sex? Like me?

As if she read his mind, Melody notched her chin upward a bit defiantly, and he found himself drinking in the beauty of her long slender neck and wondering if she really might be referring to sex.

“With this degree and certificate,” Melody continued, “I can work anywhere in the world. I’ll be independent.”

So that was it! She hadn’t come back because of him. This was about her infernal determination to be independent of him. To stay single.

Not that he cared.

“So you still want to travel?” he whispered, making his voice both insolent and admiring. “To see the world?”

“To be free,” she agreed, but her tone was low and urgent as if this really was important to her, as if making him understand mattered.

“Sexually free?”

She turned red again. “Is that all you ever think about?”

“That does seem to be a burning issue when you’re around.”

“Which is why I wanted to get as far away from you as I possibly could!”

“To have more of your little adventures?”

Her eyes blazed. “You don’t get me at all. I should’ve known better than to try to talk to you. You wouldn’t understand.”

He understood, all right. She teased him. Did she want real adventures with other, wilder men, who weren’t so predictable, who didn’t bore her—as he did?

“You might get into trouble. I worry about you.”

“Well, don’t.” Her eyes smoldered. “This isn’t about you, North.”

Something cold coiled around his heart, and then he saw that she was trembling.

“You’re right, of course,” he forced himself to agree. “We broke up. Or rather, you broke up with me. You said we’re—”

“Finished. And you said—” Her voice was tight and sad, and he realized his parting shots had hurt her, too.

He’d said she was doing him a favor.

She was right. They were finished. It was what she’d wanted, what he wanted, too. He was a rancher, born and bred—traditional to the core. He couldn’t change that. He couldn’t—not for her, not after everything she’d done.

Even so, the thought of other men touching her…of her touching them…

That shouldn’t have bothered him. But his stomach twisted, and a bleak, lonely wave of despair washed over him as he considered working his ranch, dating other women, even Maria—while Melody had romantic adventures.

“I—I guess I’ll go and get dressed,” she said after an awkward spell.

When she left him, North’s gaze followed her. Her waist was slim, the flare of her hips and thighs enticingly sweet. That short red silk thing made her look leggy and coltish. He couldn’t seem to move till she disappeared from his view.

Then he adjusted his collar and raked his hand through his hair. So what if he had to endure one miserable night with her?

They’d catch up on old times. Then he really would forget her. He’d see Maria on Saturday, and maybe he’d find a bad girl on the side to sleep with. From now on, he’d drown himself in other women instead of work.

The only reason Miss Melody Woods was getting to him tonight was that she’d burned him so bad, he’d avoided all women since her.

Until Maria, he reminded himself. Maria was perfect for him. At least Jeff said so.

Could he help it if Melody looked good enough to eat, and that he was starved?

One night with her.

What could possibly go wrong?

Smile. It’s the second best thing you can do with your lips.

Why did those infernal words keep repeating themselves like a broken record? Why did he keep imagining her mouth on his body?

He didn’t like the heat those images brought.

One night.

That was all.

Three

Vegetarian alert: Take a flying leap!

—The Plants

The bumper sticker tacked to her mirror was the first thing Melody saw when she raced into her room. North had given it to her as a joke after she’d become a vegetarian. She’d kept it, even when he’d dated Claire. Just like she’d kept all her pictures of him, those framed and those not, at the bottom of her underwear drawer.

She was shaking as she studied the skimpy red, one-piece bathing suit she’d grabbed from her mother’s drawer, shaking when she thought of wearing it outside with North there.

She shut her bedroom door and sank against it. For a second the wood felt cool against her hot skin after her steamy backyard.

After North.

Uncertain, conflicted, she threw the suit on the floor. She hated red, more than any color in the world, hated the sexy style cut high over the thigh her mother had chosen. And yet…

Mother had said it was so hot, that they should swim before supper. When Melody had mentioned she hadn’t unpacked and didn’t know where her suit was, Dee Dee had said, “I have a brand-new one in my top drawer you can borrow.”

Stripping off her T-shirt and shorts, Melody moved past the piles of suitcases and boxes toward her flamboyantly red flowered bed, only to be upset not by her mother’s gaudy decorating, but by her own reflection in the long mirror beneath the bumper sticker.

The frightened girl with those rosy cheeks in the push-up black bra and thong panties reminded her of that other queasy girl she’d seen in North’s apartment mirror six months ago when she’d been trapped between boundless love and desire and sexual despair.

She’d called him an animal.

His hand had been inside her when he’d muttered, “An animal? I love you, Melody. This is what men and women who love each other do together—in private. Someday, you’re going to grow up. You’ll come running home, for this, darlin’, but I won’t be here waiting. I’m sick and tired of waiting.”

Then he’d let her go and had lain on the bed beside her for a while, staring up at his ceiling fan that had spun lazily above them. Finally, when they’d both recovered a little, he’d balled her black lace panties and bra in his brown fist and thrown them at her, saying she’d come back, begging for more of the same. Saying that even if she crawled, he’d tell her he was done with a tease like her for good.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said after he’d dressed, apologizing for what he’d done to her in bed and for some of what he’d said.

“I’m sorry, too.”

From the door he’d lashed her with rough words that had smashed her heart. “I’m sorry I ever met you.” He hadn’t slammed the door. It had clicked so softly; she’d barely heard him leave. Still, a cold chill had run down her spine at the utter finality of his retreating footsteps.

Desolation had overpowered her just as fear had gotten a grip on her when he’d started making love to her, and she’d just felt so scared and helpless and had wanted to get away.

She hadn’t been able to face her true feelings that night much less try to tell him. But over time, when he hadn’t called, she’d begun to miss him terribly. Some inner resilience had lessened her sense of shame and intensified all the other inexplicable needs that had made her unable to forget North.

He’d been so wonderful to her in so many ways. So kind and patient, especially in those early years. But he was a man, and he needed a woman.

“I want a grown-up woman, a real woman, who knows how to love.”

“You mean you want sex.”

“Now that you mention it—yes. That would be a great start.”

And here she was, home again, and more confused than ever about everything, including North.

North hadn’t said, “I told you so,” tonight.

Not in so many words. But he’d made her feel it—in every cell of her being. Every time he’d looked at her so coldly, and she’d flamed to life again, she’d remembered that night when she’d enflamed him, enticed him, and then gotten terrified, and hurt him all over again.

Melody opened her closet to search her built-in drawers for another suit. In the second drawer she found a stack of videocassette tapes. Blushing, remembering where she’d found them and what they were of, she fisted her hands like a defiant child. Then she slammed the drawer.

How could her parents watch those things? Sex? Why was it so important to everybody except her?

She’d made her choices. Why, oh why, did they have to be so hard to live with? Why, oh why, did she have to be the only modern girl in all of the United States who had hang-ups about sex?

“Get over it,” Cathy, her best friend would say. “You know what they say, practice makes perfect.”

North’s cockiness and blatant sexiness along with Melody’s natural wariness weren’t going to get her down tonight. Neither was his cool, calculated indifference. Tonight would be short and sweet, like they’d agreed. Then they’d go their separate ways.

Tonight wasn’t going to be about sex!

She picked up the red suit and pulled it on. When she saw herself, she gasped at how much of her backside was hanging out.

Through her gauzy curtains, she could see North and her father talking amiably, more amiably than when she’d been out there with them. She was too far away to hear the rumble of his deep drawl, too far for it to send shivers through her, but it was all too obvious, North was much more relaxed when she wasn’t around.

Likewise.

He lounged against the garage, his arms crossed, his long legs sprawled apart, laughing at something her father said. When she’d been out there, too, he’d stood stiffly by her father’s side, his eyes on the shrimp appetizers sizzling on the grill, his answers to her father’s questions brief and uninformative when Sam had done his best to ask intelligent questions about the ranch or roundup and the drought.

Sam had watched them both as he’d taken a lengthy pull of his imported beer. “Long, hot summer?”

“Yes.”

“Bad for ranching?”

North had nodded.

For the first time Melody had noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the weariness behind his smiles. He’d been working too hard she could tell.

“Any chance of rain?” her father had asked.

“Not unless we get a hurricane.”

“It rained out west last night.”

Then Melody had asked, “What do you hear from your mother, North?”

“Not much.”

“Do you miss her?”

“What the hell kind of question is that?” he’d snapped.

North, who had been so dark and intense in the foyer, hadn’t even looked up from the grill when she’d joined them there or when she’d spoken. Not even when he’d burst out at her so angrily. His refusal to do so had gotten her even more dizzily nervous than she’d been in the foyer when he’d pinned her against the wall.

First, he’d been all over her in the foyer. Then in the backyard, not only hadn’t she existed, she’d been the last person he intended to confide in.

But he’d come over, and he made her feel alive, as she hadn’t in months. More alive than in India or any other exotic locale.

In the six months since that night, she’d gone to India and Manhattan and Boston and then back to Texas. She’d moved into a tiny cottage with an older woman named Elizabeth, who was a musician in the Austin music scene. Elizabeth did gigs almost every night. Home alone, Melody had realized she was lonelier than she ever had been in her whole life. Even so, after North she hadn’t wanted to date.

She’d gotten up every morning, flossed and brushed her teeth, washed her hair and gone out to her menial job at the park. Her parents hadn’t understood her not getting a “real” job, not using her education. But she’d preferred wandering through the park, being out with nature, even picking up garbage, to a real adult job.

Nights, she’d showered and gotten into bed—alone again. Her life had been a dull routine until that day Randy Hunter, a guy she intensely disliked from school in Corpus Christi, had shown up at the park.

He’d leaned against the door of her tiny tollbooth, trapping her inside. “You look awful good in those short shorts, sugar.” His hot eyes had lingered on her legs long after she’d handed him his receipt and change.

“What is that getup, a little rangerette costume?”

“I’m a park tech.”

“Aren’t you the girl that used to wear red panties in elementary school?”

She hadn’t answered.

“What color are you wearing under—”

Shaking, she’d closed her eyes in mute panic. “Why don’t you go enjoy the park.”

“You still like sexy underwear?”

Randy had come to the park too often after that. But what had really bothered her was the package somebody had sent her later the same week. When she’d opened it and a pair of red thong panties had spilled out of it, she’d quit on the spot.

And come running home.

To North.

No. No. But, when Melody lifted her gauzy curtain and caught another glimpse of North, her heart started hammering. He did make her feel, make her feel she was real, make her know that she wanted more than she had.

And North wanted her, too.

Which was why she’d run from him.

Yet what she felt for him was profoundly different than anything she’d ever felt for another man. Suddenly she realized that she’d thought about him for months and months even when she hadn’t admitted it to herself.

When her mother had sent her applications for an internship in Paris, Melody hadn’t bothered to fill the papers out. Paris had suddenly seemed too far away. Why had she turned down so many wonderful opportunities?

She told North she wanted adventures with other less controlling men, men who didn’t press her to give what she couldn’t give. The truth was she had zero interest in other men. Zero interest in being so far away.

Still, North was all wrong for her. Maybe he was only twenty-nine, maybe he was only seven years older than she was; still, because he’d assumed massive responsibilities at such a young age, he seemed a lifetime ahead of her. He’d managed a difficult family, employees, land, animals and lots of money. As a result, he seemed so sure of himself, he made her feel even younger and less certain than she did with other people.

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