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“I’m hoping there isn’t going to be a next time.” Being careful not to put all his weight on his bad knee, he tested it. Satisfied that it wouldn’t give out on him, he took a shuddering breath and checked his ribs. Although a couple of them ached, he didn’t think they were broken.
“Well?”
The edge in Jayne’s voice brought his head around and his eyes open. She was looking at him, her chin raised slightly, her lush lips pursed haughtily, despite the way she was shivering.
Aw, she was shivering. Of course she was shivering, he thought, coming to his senses. She wasn’t wearing a coat. She was wearing a high-necked sweater and a skirt in bold colors that nobody in their right mind would put together. And yet on her it looked good. Maybe it was the fit, not the style—he bent over, stiffly scooping his hat off the ground, then proceeded to take a step toward her—or maybe she would look good no matter what she was wearing. Or wasn’t wearing.
Jayne didn’t know what to make of the expression on Wes’s face, but the careful, deliberate way he was walking toward her had masculine intent written all over it. She would have backed up, except her feet seemed to be frozen to the ground. Only her eyes had the ability to move, and they were trained on the man who was advancing with quiet purpose.
“What do you think you’re—”
Without warning, he bent at the waist, snagged her coat from the ground and very carefully placed it on her shoulders. There was warmth in the hand resting lightly on the back of her neck. Another kind of warmth darkened the color of his eyes as he said, “What did you think I was going to do?”
She relaxed her shoulders, but not her guard. Not one to invite trouble, she refrained from telling him that if she were a betting woman, she would have laid ten-to-one odds that he was going to kiss her.
He stared at her through narrowed eyes and slowly eased closer. Make that a-hundred-to-one odds. His face hovered inches from hers, not close enough to kiss her, after all, but close enough to make her slightly uncomfortable and very aware. Of him as a man and of herself as a woman, and of what the two of them could do together. It made her wonder if his chest was really as tanned as it had been in her dreams and if his stomach really had those washboard ripples...
Jayne blinked against the image and told herself to get a grip. What she had to do was get out of there before she did something she would regret. “It’s time I was going. I can’t say this has been fun, but it has been interesting.”
He looked at her long and hard, but he made no reply.
“You are okay, aren’t you?”
He turned without a word, heading for the barn.
Jayne had to force her mouth closed and felt herself bristling all over again. Did the man have no manners?
“Driving on those silly old icy roads was no trouble, really,” she called to his back. “There’s no need to thank me. It was nothing, honest”
He didn’t so much as shrug, although she was sure he looked right at her after he’d unlatched a weathered barn door and had slowly pushed it open far enough to slip through.
The wind was cold at her back, and her feet were freezing inside her thin boots, yet she didn’t make a beeline for her car. Something didn’t add up. She’d been around men all her life. She’d been yelled at by a few and tiptoed around by several, but men rarely ignored her. Wes Stryker had been a perfect gentleman the previous night, with his “evenin’, ma’am” and his slow, easy smile. So what was this silent treatment all about?
She supposed it was curiosity that had her skating toward the barn and slipping inside. “Stryker?” she called, wrinkling her nose at the smell of horses and hay and something she hoped she hadn’t already stepped in. “If I ruin this pair of boots, I’m going to hold you personally responsible. Where are you, anyway?”
“I’m right here.”
She jumped at his sudden appearance in a doorway a few feet away. When he disappeared again, she followed, striding past a row of dark stalls and into an area that was divided into two sections by a wooden fence. “Why is it,” she said as her eyes slowly adjusted to the light spilling through three high windows, “that you only answer half my questions?”
Wes waited to breathe a sigh of relief until after he’d returned the scoop to the barrel of oats. She hadn’t left. Hallelujah, she hadn’t left.
He’d almost kissed her out in the yard. A tiny thread of self-preservation had stopped him at the last minute, because something had warned him that if he kissed her, she would hightail it out of there. And he didn’t want her to leave. He wanted her to stay, and that wanting scared him more than he cared to admit.
Being careful of his left shoulder, he carried the bucket of oats to a far corner and emptied it into the feeder. Three horses immediately started eating. Smoothing his hand over the middle horse’s gray muzzle, he said, “I’ve always been a firm believer in letting actions speak for themselves.”
Jayne strolled a little closer, thinking about Wes’s answer. She didn’t know what to make of him. What, exactly, were his actions saying right now? He was looking at a horse, stroking its muzzle with his right hand. His hand was broad and tanned, his fingers blunt tipped and slightly crooked, as if they’d been broken a time or two. It was a masculine hand, but not a terribly attractive one, and yet there was something very attractive about the way it moved up and down the horse’s head.
“Is he your favorite horse?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“He was my best friend’s favorite horse.”
The current in his voice drew her gaze. “Does he have a name?”
“My friend’s name was Dusty. This is Gray.”
“How long ago did Dusty die?”
Wes’s hand went perfectly still. “How did you know he died?”
She studied him thoughtfully for a moment. He’d done it again, hadn’t answered her question. “I guess bleeding hearts recognize each other.”
She strolled a little closer, drawing a line in the dust on the top board of the stall with a finger. “I spent the first few months after Sherman moved out wondering if I was going crazy. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate. A friend of mine convinced me to enroll in an art class. Another friend suggested yoga.” Jayne shook her head. “I have no artistic talent, and all that breathing and chanting didn’t relax me. It drove me crazy. I know death and divorce aren’t the same things, but they’re both losses. I won’t say something trite, trying to minimize your pain, but time has helped me.”
She glanced up from the dust on her finger and found him looking at her. She hadn’t realized she’d moved so close to him, and she certainly hadn’t intended to tell him about something as personal as her divorce. It was still a touchy subject, but if her experience eased his sorrow in some tiny way, she wasn’t sorry she’d bared a small corner of her soul.
“Jayne?”
She stared at him, patiently waiting for him to pour a little of his own heart out to her.
“You were married to a man named Sherman?”
Jayne blinked. She’d unearthed her soul, and his only comment pertained to her ex-husband’s name?
Did he have no feelings? Okay, he hadn’t laughed, but there had been incredulity in his voice. What? Hadn’t he ever known anyone named Sherman? There had been plenty of emotion in his voice when he’d mentioned his best friend. In some perverse way, she was glad he hadn’t turned all maudlin on her. Still, it made her curious. Just what was Wes Stryker made of? He was a man—a very private one. She doubted he enjoyed having someone traipse through his thought processes. In that respect he wasn’t so different from the men she’d known in Seattle.
The men back home wore expensive suits for work and designer sportswear for play. Wes was wearing a sheepskin jacket, the collar turned up, jeans that had seen better days and a faded shirt that looked as soft as butter. His skin had acquired a permanent tan, and there was whisker stubble on his cheeks and jaw. She’d never been a fan of facial hair and yet his did nothing to detract from the hollows, planes and angles of his rugged face. For all his face’s interesting contours, she was most interested in the depth and intensity of his eyes.
Crossing her arms, she said, “You’re something else, Stryker, do you know that?”
A smile found its way to his mouth much the way a cloud drifted over the face of the sun. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
Jayne could count on one hand the times in her life she’d been speechless, and yet in the tight space so near him, she couldn’t think of a single thing to do or say. He had no such problem, reaching for her hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She’d thought he was going to kiss her earlier. Now she was sure. She knew she should try to fight it, but as he lowered his face, she lifted hers, his features blurring before her eyes, his breath a soft rasp on her cheek, her heartbeat a slow stutter in her chest.
Something streaked past her ankles, fluttering the hem of her skirt. She jerked, shrieked and jumped. Her clamber to the top of the gate might not have been graceful, but it was certainly fast.
A cat hissed. A dog whined. Jayne screamed again.
“It’s all right,” Wes said. “It was just a cat. Marilyn won’t hurt you.”
Jayne turned her head slowly. Holding on to the top board with one hand, she peered over her shoulder where a scruffy-looking, half-grown kitten stood in a corner, back arched, fur on end. A dog that must have weighed at least seven times more seemed to be trying to decide how to get closer to the kitten. The kitten swiped and spat, sending the dog reeling backward.
“Come on, Marilyn. Be nice.”
Jayne loosened her grip on the gate with utmost care. “You have a problem with my ex-husband’s name, and yet you named a kitten Marilyn?”
“I never said I had a problem with your ex-husband’s name. What don’t you like about ‘Marilyn’?”
She used the time it took to get her breathing and heart rate under control to look around. The horses were still eating, Marilyn’s back was still arched, and two other kittens were watching from the hayloft. “You have to admit it’s an unusual name for a cat. What do you call them?”
He looked over his shoulder, but he didn’t turn around.
“The calico one is Carolyn, the butterscotch-colored one is Sherilyn.”
Carolyn, Marilyn and Sherilyn? “They’re all females?”
“I haven’t had the heart to check.”
Another time Jayne might have laughed. As it was, she could only shake her head. Being careful not to get her feet tangled up in the folds of her brightly colored skirt, she climbed down from the gate and put a little distance between her and Wes.
One of the horses nickered, and the one named Gray tossed his head and snorted. Marilyn, the kitten, joined her sisters, if they were indeed all females, the dog watching silently.
“It’s quite a menagerie of pets you have here, Stryker,” she said, pulling up the zipper tab on her coat.
Wes pulled the brim of his cowboy hat lower on his forehead, watching as Jayne prepared to leave. She was putting on a pair of bright green gloves, her lower lip tucked between her teeth. If it hadn’t been for two of those pets she’d mentioned, he would have known how her lips felt and tasted.
He wished...
He didn’t know what he wished anymore. He only knew that this woman had driven out here when he’d needed her, and he didn’t want her to go. Not yet, not until they’d talked a little more and maybe he’d kissed her very thoroughly. Maybe not even then.
“Well,” she was saying, backing up. “I guess I’ll leave you to your assorted pets.”
By the time his gaze made it back to her face, he found her looking at him, waiting for him to say something. During the seventeen years he’d spent on the rodeo circuit he’d made small talk with just about everybody he’d seen, from rodeo clowns to judges to buckle bunnies. And here he was, standing before a woman he wanted to impress, as tonguetied as a teenager with a new pair of boots and his father’s car, trying to work up his courage to talk to the prettiest girl in school.
“You’re right about the animals,” he finally managed to say as he shortened the distance between them. “They’re all misfits in one way or another. By rights, kittens born so late in the year shouldn’t have survived. The dog came limping into the barn a week ago, hungry and half-frozen, no collar, no tags. I asked around, but nobody seems to know who he belongs to.”
Jayne looked at him and then at the dog. “What’s his name?”
Wes shrugged. “I thought I’d wait and see if he decides to stay before I name him.”
He wondered if she would say something negative about the animal. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she had. The dog was a mongrel, not quite brown, not quite black, ugly by most people’s standards. He had a dull coat, a cropped tail and a slight limp, not at all unlike Wes’s.
Wes wondered which of those features Jayne would comment on. She leaned down and held out the back of her hand, letting the dog sniff. “He has soulful eyes.”
Wes swore the beating rhythm of his heart changed tempo. Nothing about the conversation should have aroused lust, yet his desire for her was strong. The entire time it was wrapping around him, soft-touched thoughts were shaping his smile. “So do you, Jayne. So do you.”
He could tell by the way she shook her head very slowly, very precisely and rose stiffly to her feet that he probably shouldn’t have said it. But hell, it was true. He strolled closer, intent upon convincing her to stay. She shook her head again. “Look,” she said, “just so you don’t get the wrong idea. I didn’t come out here to start something. I meant what I said last night. I’m finished with men. All men.”
“You can’t deny the attraction that’s between us.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Wanna bet?”
He took another step in her direction. He liked the way her chin came up and her shoulders went back. He especially liked the way his blood was heating as it made its way to the very center of him. Ignoring the hand she held up to ward off his advance, he said, “I want you. And I think you want me.”
Her blue eyes narrowed, flashing with insolence. “You must have hit your head earlier.”
“I don’t think so.”
Looking him up and down in a manner that would have made a lesser man crumble, she said, “If you tell me you have an itch and a hankering, I’ll be forced to clobber you.”
He eased closer. “That’s one way to put it.”
“It was the way my ex-husband put it when I confronted him with my suspicions that he was seeing another woman. He said the affair meant nothing, he’d had an itch, that’s all, and a hankering. I told him to scratch the itch and shove the hankering. The same goes for you.”
She turned on her heel and headed for the door.
Since Wes didn’t want her to leave, period, and he especially didn’t want her to leave angry, he followed her outside. “Jayne?” he called when she was halfway to her car.
Jayne came to an abrupt stop. Although it went against her better judgment, she turned around. She found herself looking across the expanse of yard where the barn stood in stark contrast to the snow and the sky. If there had ever been any paint on the old building, it was long gone, the boards weathered to a dull, dark gray. Wes’s cowboy hat was gray, too, but a lighter shade, and although she couldn’t see his eyes from here, she could feel the intensity of his gaze.
“I was thinking,” he called, holding very still.
In her experience a woman had to beware of a man who’d been thinking. “About what?” she asked.
“Maybe you’d like to name the dog.”
The suggestion caught her off guard. “You’d really let me choose a name for your dog?”
He didn’t set any records closing the barn door, but he ambled toward her, his limp all the more noticeable since it slowed down a man who was so naturally made for strength and speed.
She wasn’t a mystical, whimsical woman, or a particularly romantic one. She knew herself inside and out, her limits and goals, her strengths and weaknesses. She was a modern-day woman with a smart mouth, a sore heart and an honest soul. And she honestly didn’t know what to do about Wes Stryker.
“A friend of mine gave her dog her middle name, although now that I think of it, her mother had a fit,” she said. “You could do that, I suppose. What is your middle name, anyway?”
He grimaced. “You don’t want to know.”
“Now I have to know.”
Resting his hands on his hips, he lifted one shoulder sheepishly. “You’ll laugh. Everyone laughs.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
He hesitated a little longer, and then, in a voice so quiet she had to strain to hear over the crunch his boots made on the crusty snow, he said, “Engelbert.”
She had to bite her lip to keep from grinning. “Your parents named you Wesley Engelbert Stryker?”
His nod was accompanied by a sigh. “My mother was a huge fan of Engelbert Humperdinck.”
She had to turn around to hide her grin, but she was pretty sure he could hear the smile in her voice as she said, “That dog doesn’t really look like an Engelbert.”
“Who does?”
Her smile grew. “I’ll see what I can do about coming up with something else.”
“I would appreciate that.”
Neither of them said goodbye, but Jayne glanced toward the house after she’d backed from the driveway. Wes hadn’t moved and was watching her from underneath the brim of his worn Stetson. He looked down suddenly and reached into his pocket, pulling out a portable phone.
Before she drove away, she saw him raise the antenna and say something into the mouthpiece. She couldn’t see his expression, but his head was tilted slightly, one knee bent, a hand in one pocket. He didn’t seem to mind the cold or the fact that he was all alone on Christmas morning. Wesley Engelbert Stryker appeared relaxed and comfortable talking to whoever was on the other end of that phone.
Wesley Engelbert Stryker. Lord, what a name.
What a man.
Chapter Three
The phone rang just as Wes was taking a frozen dinner out of the microwave. It was the third phone call he’d had since talking to Annabell earlier that morning. The kids were excited and nervous and curious, not to mention a little afraid of yet another change in their lives.
He left the dinner on top of the stove. Leaning a hip against the counter, he listened intently to the tiny voice on the other end of the line.
“Yes, Olivia, honey. You’ll have your own room... Of course you can bring all your stuff.... Even Snuggles the goose...especially Snuggles the goose.... Uh-huh. And all your pictures of your mommy and daddy.... Yes, you have to bring Logan, too. He’s your brother. No, Olivia, you can’t—”
There was a screech that put Wes in mind of permanent hearing loss. A scuffle followed, and then a young boy’s voice claimed the line. “It’s me, Uncle Wes. Logan.”
As if there were forty other ten-year-old boys who called him Uncle Wes. “What did you do to your sister?” Wes asked calmly.
“I didn’t do anything to her. Well, hardly anything. She’s such a baby. Ouch. She pinched me.”
“I’m sure she didn’t...Logan...”
Olivia screeched again, which made Wes wonder what kind of retaliation Logan had inflicted upon his little sister. “Logan. Logan? Stop bugging your sister and listen to me for a minute... What?... I know... Yeah, I’ll teach you to ride your dad’s horse. Tell Olivia I’ll teach her, too.”
The boy did as he was instructed. Olivia stopped crying in the background, and for the moment at least, peace reigned in a tiny two-bedroom house two hundred and twenty miles away.
The next voice he heard was old and as raspy as if she’d just knocked back a shot of whiskey. Annabell hadn’t, of course. She hadn’t drunk anything stronger than tea since her seventy-fifth birthday. “That,” she said, clearly referring to the little skirmish that had just taken place in her living room, “is why I need your help, Wesley. These children pick on each other worse than two roosters in one henhouse.”
Wes grinned at the analogy. While the eighty-two-year-old woman talked about aching joints and brittle bones, Wes pictured her in his mind. She was probably sitting in a chair that was older than he was, ankles crossed, her prim-and-proper dress hanging limply on a body that had always been small but had grown gaunt these past several months.
“I know it was my idea to take the kids,” she said. “With Kate and Dusty gone, they’re all the family I have left, except you, of course. Why, remember that time you and Dusty showed up on my doorstep three sheets to the wind?”
“Could you narrow it down a little, Annabell?” he asked. “When Dusty and I first hit the rodeo circuit we used to show up on your doorstep three sheets to the wind every time we passed through Sioux Falls.”
She practically cackled. “Those were the days, weren’t they?”
Her cough didn’t fool Wes into believing that the sudden thickness in her voice was anything other than tears. Being the tough old bird she was, Annabell recovered and said, “Those were the days then, and these are the days now. I spoke to a judge friend of mine, discreetly, mind you. He says he doesn’t foresee any major problems or obstacles with placing the children with you. It would be easier if you were blood related, but you are their godfather, after all. You’re going to have to go through the proper channels, though.”
“What channels?” Wes asked, uncrossing his ankles and standing up straighter.
“You’ll have to show the system that you can provide for Logan and Olivia, that you have a suitable place for them to live, that sort of thing. There’ll be some paperwork involved, but isn’t there always? Stanley said that in a perfect world the state would prefer to place children in two-parent homes. I’m telling you, if I were twenty years younger, I’d move out there and marry you myself.”
Wes smiled to himself. If Annabell Malone were twenty years younger, she would still be twenty-seven years older than he was.
“I know there’s been a noted lack of women in Jasper Gulch these past several years,” Annabell said. “But can you think of a woman who stirs your juices, so to speak, and who might take to these two corkers?”
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