Wyoming Rugged

“Don’t tell me you haven’t been out with anyone since,” he said, surprised.

She grimaced. “Well, I was sort of afraid to try again,” she confessed. “I wasn’t sure you’d be around to rescue me when my date brought me home,” she added with a smile. She couldn’t confess that no man in the world could compare to Blair, in her mind or her heart.

He stuck his hands in his pockets. “How did the football hero fare?” he asked.

“He went back East rather suddenly after my father’s attorney had a talk with his father,” she said. “Strange, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

“If he tries it again, I hope the girl’s father belongs to the mob and they find him floating down some river in an oil drum,” she said firmly.

He laughed under his breath. “Vicious girl.”

“You’re right. That wasn’t nice at all. Can you put this on for me? I can’t quite reach.” She indicated a spot high on the tree where she wanted one last red velvet bow.

“You can reach.” He caught her small waist and lifted her easily within reach of the branch. She was so slight, it was like lifting a feather. The feel of her, the scent of her, was disturbing.

She laughed. “You’re awfully strong,” she remarked when he set her down again.

He moved away from her rather quickly. “It comes from wrestling with my board of directors,” he replied drily.

She moved back and looked at the tree. “Will it do, you think?”

“It’s lovely.” He frowned. “Do you and your father have any other family?”

“Not really. He has an aunt, but she lives overseas. He didn’t have brothers and sisters. My mother did, but her only brother died when I was in grammar school.” She looked up at him. “Didn’t Elise want to come with you?” she asked. “I’d love to meet her. I’m sure Daddy would, too.” She was lying through her teeth. She never wanted to meet Elise, if she could help it.

“She’s in Europe with some friends,” he said.

“Oh.” She didn’t really know what else to say. She went back to her decorating.

His voice sounded raspy.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He drew in a breath and grimaced. “My chest feels a bit tight. I think it’s allergies. I get them this time of year.”

“Me, too,” Niki confessed. “But mine usually lead to pneumonia. I had it in my early teens. I guess it repeats. It’s so unfair. I don’t even smoke.”

“Neither do I,” Blair replied. “People around me do, however. I came here by way of Saudi Arabia. I was coughing before I got on the plane. It’s probably just the allergy.”

She nodded. But he sounded the way she did when she was coming down with a chest infection. Men never seemed to want to admit to illness. Perhaps they thought of it as a weakness.

* * *

BLAIR DIDN’T GET up for breakfast the next morning. Niki was worried, so she asked her father to look in on their guest. She wasn’t at all sure if he wore pajamas, and she didn’t want to walk in on him if he didn’t.

Her father was back in a minute, looking concerned. “I think I’d better ask Doctor Fred to come out and check him. He’s got a fever, and he’s breathing rough. I think it’s bronchitis. Maybe something more.”

Niki didn’t have to ask how he knew. He’d seen her through pneumonia too many times to mistake the symptoms.

“That might be a good idea,” she agreed.

* * *

DR. FRED MORRIS came out and examined Blair, prescribing a heavy cough syrup along with an antibiotic.

“If he isn’t better in three days, you call me,” Fred told Niki’s father.

“I will.”

“And you stay out of his room until the antibiotic takes hold,” Fred told Niki firmly. “You don’t need to catch this again.”

“It might not be contagious,” she protested.

“But it might be. Humor me.”

She managed a faint smile. “Okay, Dr. Fred.”

“Good girl. I’ll be in my office until late, if you need me,” he told her father as they shook hands.

“Okay. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

* * *

NIKI INSISTED THAT her father call Elise and tell her that Blair was sick and needed her. Todd was reluctant, but he badgered Blair until he got the number. He called her.

Niki never knew what was said, but her father came out of his office cold-eyed and angry.

“Is she coming?” she asked.

Her father made a rough sound in his throat. “She said that’s what doctors are for, getting people well. She doesn’t do illness, and she doesn’t want to be exposed to what he’s got anyway. There’s a ball tomorrow night in Vienna. A friend is taking her.”

Niki felt sick to her stomach. What sort of woman had Blair married, for heaven’s sake?

“It’s not our business,” her father reminded her.

“He was so kind to me, when Harvey attacked me,” she recalled. “I thought he’d found a nice woman who’d want to have children and take care of him.”

“Fat chance, that woman ever having a child,” her father scoffed. “It might interfere with her social plans!”

She sighed. “Well, we’ll take care of him.”

“Mrs. Hanes and I will do that, until he’s no longer contagious,” her father emphasized. “I’m not risking you. Don’t even ask.”

She smiled and hugged him. “Okay, Daddy.”

“That’s my girl.” He kissed the top of her head. “Poor guy. If it’s this bad and they’ve only been married a year or so...” He let the rest of the sentence taper off.

“Things might get better,” she said. But she didn’t really believe it.

“They might. Let’s have Mrs. Hanes fix us something to eat.”

“I’ll ask her.”

* * *

EDNA HANES HAD been the Ashtons’ housekeeper for over twelve years. She was as much a mother as a housekeeper to Niki, who adored her. When Niki had her sick spells, Mrs. Hanes was the one who nursed her, even when her father was home. He was a kind man, but he was out of place in a sick room. Not that he’d ever been unkind to his daughter. Quite the opposite.

“She’s not coming, then?” Edna asked Niki about Blair’s wife.

“No. There’s a dance. In Vienna,” she replied with a speaking glance.

Edna made a face. “He’s a good man, Mr. Coleman,” she said, pulling out pans to start supper. “I hate to see him married to someone like that. Wants his money, maybe, and not him, as well, but had to take the one to get the other.”

“He said she was beautiful.”

“Beautiful isn’t as important as kind,” Edna replied.

“That’s what I think, too.”

“Pity you aren’t older, my girl,” Edna said with a sigh.

“Why?” Niki asked, smiling.

Edna forgot sometimes how unworldly the younger woman was. “Nothing,” she said quickly. “I was just talking to myself. How about mincing some onion for me, and I’ll get this casserole going!”

“I’d be happy to help.”

* * *

BLAIR WASN’T DOING WELL. Niki managed to get into his room the next day while her father was out talking to his foreman and Edna went shopping.

His chest was bare, although the covers were pulled up to his diaphragm. He had a magnificent chest, she thought with helpless longing, broad and covered with thick, curling hair. Muscular and manly.

He opened bloodshot, feverish eyes to look at her as she touched his forehead. “You shouldn’t be in here,” he said in a gentle tone. “I might be contagious.”

“I’m not worried. Well, not about me. You should be better by now. When an antibiotic starts working, you can feel the difference.”

He drew in a raspy breath and grimaced. “He gave me penicillin. It usually does the trick.”

“Maybe not this time. I’m calling him right now.”

She went out the door and phoned the doctor.

He was perturbed that she was trying to nurse Blair. “Listen, if you get it again, it might go into pleurisy,” he argued.

“Now, Doctor Fred,” she teased softly, “you know I’ve just finished a course of antibiotics. I’m not likely to pick anything up. Besides, there’s nobody else to do this. Edna has her hands full just with meals, and Daddy’s in the middle of a business deal. Not that he’s a nursely sort of person,” she laughed.

He sighed. “I see your point. Isn’t Coleman married? Where’s his wife? Did you call her?”

“There’s a ball someplace in Europe where she has to go dancing,” she said, the contempt in her voice unmistakable.

“I see.” His tone was noncommittal. “Well, I’ll phone in another prescription, something stronger, and a stronger cough syrup, as well. Try to get some fluids into him. And I don’t want to have you wind up in my office...”

“I’ll be very careful, Doctor,” she promised, thanked him quickly and hung up.

* * *

LATER, SHE SENT one of the ranch’s cowboys into town to get the new medicines, which she’d coaxed out of the poor, harried pharmacist, a friend from high school.

Blair grumbled when she came in with more medicine. “Niki, you’re going to come down with this damned stuff,” he complained.

“Just be quiet and take the nice tablet,” she interrupted, handing him a glass of orange juice with crushed ice.

He frowned. “How did you know I like this?” he wondered.

She laughed. “I didn’t. But I do now. Come on, Blair. Take the pill.” She coaxed his mouth open and dropped the large tablet in.

“Bully,” he muttered in his deep voice.

She only grinned.

He sipped the juice and swallowed. He winced.

“Oh, gosh, it’s acidic. I’m sorry. I’ll get you something less abrasive. Gatorade?” she suggested.

“I’d rather have the juice, honestly. I do wish I had—”

“Some cough drops?” she finished, digging in the prescription bag. “How fortunate that I asked Tex to bring some. And you can have the cough syrup, too.”

She pulled a spoon from her pocket and poured out a dose of the powerful cough syrup the doctor had prescribed.

He took it, his dark eyes amused and affectionate as they met hers. “Your father’s going to raise hell if he catches you in here.”

She made a face at him. “Edna asked me earlier if you’d like something light for dinner. An omelet? She makes them with fresh herbs.”

He hesitated. “I’m not really hungry,” he said, not wanting to hurt Edna’s feelings. He hated eggs.

“I like eggs. We have fresh ones most of the year, when our hens aren’t molting.” She paused, her eyes narrow on his broad, handsome face. “You don’t like eggs, but you don’t want to trouble anyone,” she blurted out. “How about chicken noodle soup instead?”

He laughed. “Damn. How did you figure that out?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly.

“I’d really rather have the soup, if it’s not too much trouble,” he confessed. “I hate eggs.”

She grinned. “I’ll tell Edna.”

He studied her soft face with narrow, thoughtful eyes. “When do you start classes again?”

“January,” she replied. “I’ve already decided what I’ll take.”

“How do you get back and forth when the snows come?” he wondered.

She laughed. “Dad has one of the boys drive me back and forth. We have a cowboy who grew up in northern Montana. He can drive through anything.”

“It might be more sensible to get you an apartment near campus,” he said.

“I don’t like being on my own,” she said quietly.

He reached out a big hand and tangled her fingers in it. “All men aren’t animals, Niki.”

She shrugged. “I suppose not. I keep thinking what would have happened if you hadn’t been here that night.”

His face tensed. So did he. She was so fragile. Like a hothouse orchid. It bothered him that she was in here risking her own health to nurse him while his wife was off having a wild time in Europe and couldn’t be bothered to call him, let alone look in on him.

He’d never told Niki why he’d really married Elise. It had less to do with who she was than who she resembled. He’d just lost his mother, whom he’d adored, and Elise looked just like her. She’d come up to him at a party while he was grieving, and he’d fallen for her at first sight. Elise looked like his mother, but without her compassion and soul. Niki, oddly, reminded him more of her even than Elise, although Niki’s coloring was very different. Elise had the compassion of a hungry shark.

“You’re very quiet,” she commented.

He smiled gently. “You’re a nice child,” he said softly.

“I’m almost twenty-one,” she protested.

“Honey, I’m almost thirty-seven,” he said, his voice deep with tenderness.

“Really?” She was studying him with those wide, soft gray eyes that were silvery in the soft light of the bedside lamp. She smiled. “You don’t look it. You don’t even have gray hair. Don’t tell me,” she mused wickedly. “You have it colored, don’t you?”

He burst out laughing and then coughed.

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” she said at once, wincing. “I shouldn’t have opened my mouth!”

He caught his breath. “Niki, you’re a breath of spring,” he said. “No, I don’t color it,” he added. “My father was from Greece. His hair was still black when he died, and he was in his sixties.” He didn’t tell her that his real father was from Greece. He didn’t know or care where his stepfather, the man who’d raised him, came from.

“I remember my grandfather...”

“What in the blazes are you doing in here?” Todd ground out when he saw Niki sitting on the bed beside Blair.

“Well, darn, caught in the act,” Niki groaned.

CHAPTER TWO

“I DID TRY to chase her out,” Blair told his friend ruefully. “She wouldn’t go.”

“I called Doctor Fred,” Niki told her dad. “Blair wasn’t getting better. By the second day, I’m usually bouncing off the walls. Doctor Fred called in some new meds, and I had Tex go pick them up in town.”

“You’ll get sick again,” her father said solemnly.

“I will not,” Niki replied. “I’m just off antibiotics myself. And it isn’t as if I’m kissing him or anything,” she added indignantly. “I’m only pouring medicine into him. Well, that and orange juice,” she added. She grinned at her father.

Blair, looking up at her, had a sudden stark urge to drag her down into his arms and see if her mouth was as soft and sweet as it looked. That shocked him into letting go of her hand. He must be losing his mind. Well, he was sick. If that was an excuse.

“I’m sorry to stick you with an invalid over the holidays,” Blair began.

Todd cut him off, chuckling. “Niki’s almost always sick at Christmas,” he replied. “We’re used to it.”

He frowned. “At Christmas?”

“Yes,” Todd said with a sigh. “Last year we made sure she wasn’t around anyone who had a cold. She got pneumonia anyway.”

Blair’s dark eyes narrowed. “You have a live fir tree downstairs.”

“Yes. We always do,” Niki said, smiling. “I love live trees. It’s in a ball, so that we can plant it after...”

“A live tree,” Blair persisted. “Some people are allergic to them.”

Niki and her father looked at each other in confusion.

“We had artificial trees until about three years ago,” Todd said. “You wanted a live tree like your girlfriend had at her home.”

Niki grimaced. “I started getting sick at Christmas three years ago. I never connected it.”

“I’ll have Tex come and take the live tree out,” Todd said. “We’ll get a pretty artificial one from the hardware store in town, and you can decorate it again.”

Niki laughed. “I guess I’ll have to.” She glanced at Blair. “Leave it to you to see the obvious, when both of us miss it.”

“Good for me,” he mused.

“I’ll go talk to Edna about that soup,” Niki said. She put the bottle of cough syrup on the bedside table and picked up the spoon. “Want some more juice?” she added.

He shook his head. “I’m fine. Thanks, Niki.”

She grinned and left the men to talk.

“I couldn’t stop her,” Blair said quietly. “She’s formidable when she makes up her mind. I didn’t encourage her to come in here.”

“I know that.” Todd dropped into the chair beside the bed. “Her mother, Martha, was just like that,” he told the younger man. “She’d go out of her way to help sick people. Niki worries.”

“Yes.”

Todd’s eyes narrowed. “I called Elise.”

Blair’s face closed up. “She can’t bear illness.”

Todd didn’t say a word. But his expression was eloquent.

Blair just shrugged.

“She reminded you of Bernice, didn’t she?” Todd asked, because he and Blair had been friends for a long time. He’d been the one they’d called when Blair was going out of his mind after the accident that left his mother first paralyzed, and soon after, dead.

Blair’s face grew hard. “Yes.”

Todd didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I. But I’ll make the best of it,” he added. “No woman is going to be perfect.”

* * *

THE NEXT DAY, Blair was feeling better. He sat up in bed to eat the food on the tray Edna brought him, and he was smiling when Niki peered in to check on him.

“I’m not going to die anytime soon,” he assured her with a grin.

She grinned back. “Okay. Nice to see that you’re better. I won’t have to worry Doctor Fred again.”

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded. “I don’t think I’m going to catch whatever you’ve got. I don’t even have a sore throat.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” he said. “I don’t want to be responsible for putting you back in bed again.”

“Thanks. But I’m good. Want some more orange juice?”

“Please.”

“I’ll be right back.”

* * *

SHE SAT WITH Blair from time to time while he recovered. Once, she brought in her iPad and presented him with a graphic novel from the Alien vs. Predator series, one they both enjoyed.

“This is cool,” he chuckled. “You can carry graphic novels around without having to lug a suitcase full of them.”

“I thought so, too. I’ve got a Calvin and Hobbes collection on there, as well. It’s one of my favorites.”

He nodded. “Mine, too. Thanks, Niki.”

“No problem.” She got up. “I have to help Edna and the two temporary cooks with the breads. We have a huge spread for Christmas dinner.”

“That’s on Thursday,” he pointed out.

“Yes, and today is Tuesday. We start baking breads today for the dressing, and cooking giblets for the gravy and making pies and cakes. It takes a while. We set the big fancy table in the dining room, and we have the cowboys and their wives come by, in shifts, to share it with us. That’s a tradition that dates back to my grandfather’s time here.”

“It seems like a nice one,” he commented.

She smiled. “They work very hard for us all year. It’s little enough to do. We have presents for them, and their children, under the tree. It’s usually a madhouse here on Christmas Day. I hope you’ll be up to it,” she added with a grin.

“I’ve never been involved in Christmas celebrations,” he commented.

“Not even when you were a child?” she asked, surprised.

“My...father was an agnostic,” he said, hating the memory of his stepfather. “We didn’t celebrate Christmas.”

She hesitated. “Was your mother like that, too?”

His face was hard. “She did what he told her to do. It was a different generation, honey. He was old-school. God bless her, she put up with a lot from him. But she missed him when he died.”

“I’m sure you did, too.”

“In my way.”

Eager to lighten the atmosphere, because his face was painfully somber, she said, “We have eggnog on Christmas Eve. I make it from scratch.”

He made a face.

She grimaced. “I see. You don’t like eggs, so you won’t like eggnog, right?”

“Right. I’ll just have my whiskey neat instead of polluting it with eggs,” he said, tongue in cheek.

She sighed. “Are you always such a demanding dinner guest?” she despaired.

He chuckled. His black eyes twinkled at her. “I like pretty much anything except things with egg in them. Just don’t forget the whiskey.”

She sighed. He was very handsome. She loved the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. She loved the strong, chiseled lines of his wide mouth, the high cheekbones, the thick black wavy hair around his leonine face. His chest was a work of art in itself. She had to force herself not to look at it too much. It was broad and muscular, under a thick mat of curling black hair that ran down to the waistband of his silk pajamas. Apparently, he didn’t like jackets, because he never wore one with the bottoms. His arms were muscular, without being overly so. He would have delighted an artist.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” he wondered aloud.

“That an artist would love painting you,” she blurted out, and then flushed then cleared her throat. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

He lifted both eyebrows. “Miss Ashton,” he scoffed, “you aren’t by any chance flirting with me, are you?”

“Mr. Coleman, the thought never crossed my mind!”

“Don’t obsess over me,” he said firmly, but his eyes were still twinkling. “I’m a married man.”

She sighed. “Yes, thank goodness.”

His eyebrows lifted in a silent question.

“Well, if you weren’t married, I’d probably disgrace myself. Imagine, trying to ravish a sick man in bed because I’m obsessing over the way he looks without a shirt!”

He burst out laughing. “Go away, you bad girl.”

Her own eyes twinkled. “I’ll banish myself to the kitchen and make lovely things for you to eat.”

“I’ll look forward to that.”

She smiled and left him.

He looked after her with conflicting emotions. He had a wife. Sadly, one who was a disappointment in almost every way; a cold woman who took and took without a thought of giving anything back. He’d married her thinking she was the image of his mother. Elise had seemed very different while they were dating. But the minute the ring was on her finger, she was off on her travels, spending more and more of his money, linking up with old friends whom she paid to travel with her. She was never home. In fact, she made a point of avoiding her husband as much as possible.

This really was the last straw, though, ignoring him when he was ill. It had cut him to the quick to have Todd and Niki see the emptiness of their relationship. He wasn’t that sick. It was the principle of the thing. Well, he had some thinking to do when he left the Ashtons, didn’t he?

* * *

CHRISTMAS DAY WAS BOISTEROUS. Niki and Edna and three other women took turns putting food on the table for an unending succession of people who worked for the Ashtons. Most were cowboys, but several were executives from Todd’s oil corporation.

Niki liked them all, but she was especially fond of their children. She dreamed of having a child of her own one day. She spent hours in department stores, ogling the baby things.

She got down on the carpet with the children around the Christmas tree, oohing and aahing over the presents as they opened them. One little girl who was six years old got a Barbie doll with a holiday theme. The child cried when she opened the gaily wrapped package.

“Lisa, what’s wrong, baby?” Niki cooed, drawing her into her lap.

“Daddy never buys me dolls, and I love dolls so much, Niki,” she whispered. “Thank you!” She kissed Niki and held on tight.

“You should tell him that you like dolls, sweetheart,” Niki said, hugging her close.

“I did. He bought me a big yellow truck.”

“A what?”

“A truck, Niki,” the child said with a very grown-up sigh. “He wanted a little boy. He said so.”

Niki looked as indignant as she felt. But she forced herself to smile at the child. “I think little girls are very sweet,” she said softly, brushing back the pretty dark hair.

“So do I,” Blair said, kneeling down beside them. He smiled at the child, too. “I wish I had a little girl.”

“You do? Honest?” Lisa asked, wide-eyed.

“Honest.”

She got up from Niki’s lap and hugged the big man. “You’re nice.”

He hugged her back. It surprised him, how much he wanted a child. He drew back, the smile still on his face. “So are you, precious.”

“I’m going to show Mama my doll,” she said. “Thanks, Niki!”