Cowboy Seeks Bride (6 page)

“D-d-don’t nobody touch his wagon,” Buddy chuckled.

“I didn’t build it so someone else could ruin it. Better quit your jawin’ and start your chewin’ ’cause the nooner don’t last half the afternoon.”

Dewar set about eating like nothing at all had happened when their hands touched. Maybe he had a woman back in Ringgold. No one as handsome and sexy as he was could possibly be single. He had to be close to her age and that would put him at thirty or a little more.

She shut her eyes and visualized the file that Carl had on Dewar back when they first came up with the idea of the cattle drive reality show. He was part owner and operator of a cattle-slash-horse ranch and that he could easily get a crew of six and a herd of a hundred cows together for the reenactment. It didn’t even have a place for married, single, or divorced.

“Shit!” she mumbled and quickly jerked her head up to see if anyone heard her.

He was probably engaged and that was the underlying reason that he did not want a woman on the drive with him. If she was his fiancée, she’d be on her way to drag his sexy little butt right back to Ringgold, Texas, as soon as the gossip hotline told her that H. B. McKay was not a stuffy, middle-aged man.

Dewar was sitting straight up when he awoke. Nerves on the back of his neck prickled and his heart thumped around in his chest like it was looking for an escape route. He quickly turned his boots upside down, shook any possible bugs out, and jammed his feet down into them. A lonesome coyote yipped in the distance, but he didn’t get an answer. Crickets and tree frogs chirped away. Still, something wasn’t right. He could feel it in his bones and they never lied to him. He quietly unsheathed his rifle and held it beside his leg.

He scanned the campsite. Buddy even stuttered when he snored. Finn mumbled in his sleep, and Sawyer rolled from one side to the other, trying to get comfortable. The fire crackled in the moonlight, but everything and everyone looked all right.

Until he turned around and realized Haley’s bedroll was empty. His gun was still standing beside the tree, which meant she hadn’t gone to check on rustlers again. Dear God! Someone had kidnapped her for a ransom?

“Not without a fight from that redhead,” he mumbled. “She’d be pitching a screaming hissy fit.”

Lord, why did H. B. McKay have to be a woman!?

Everyone along the trail knew they were bringing a hundred head of cattle down the old Chisholm Trail. It would be easy to back a trailer right up to a gate on the far side of the pasture and drive off with a straggler or two or even half the herd. He could imagine a dozen places where it could happen that very night.

He leaned against a scrub oak tree, keeping himself out of the moonlight as he scanned the area for stealthy rustlers. He felt a presence behind him, spun around, and whipped the rifle up to point right at Haley’s heart.

“Shit! It’s me. Haley. Don’t shoot.” She grabbed her chest with one hand and held up her palm.

He quickly lowered the rifle. “What in the hell are you doing out here?”

“I might ask you the same thing,” Haley smarted off right back at him.

“Trouble is brewing,” he said.

“How did you know?”

“It woke me up. Now you? What were you doing out here?”

“I woke up and went down to the creek for a bath. When I came back you were gone and I came to see what you were doing sneaking around out here. We got more of them pesky kids trying to steal cows?” she whispered.

The aroma of sweet-smelling soap wafted across the night breeze to his nose. At the same time a slinky, low-to-the-ground movement near the mesquite trees at the far fence line caught his attention.

He pointed. “It’s probably a bobcat or maybe a mountain lion. Wind is blowing away from us right now or he would have picked up our scent and run away before now.”

The longhorn bull put his head down and let out a low bawl that sounded like a warning. The cows moved restlessly behind him.

“Shoot ’im?” she asked.

“Not unless I have to. It would spook the cows, maybe cause a stampede, and definitely wake everyone up. Walk with me.” Dewar’s voice was barely above a whisper.

Chill bumps chased down Haley’s backbone, not from fear of danger but from his voice at that timbre. It was so damn sexy that it brought all kinds of naughty images into living high-definition color.

He moved across the pasture in long easy strides with her doing double time to keep up. Finally, he reached down and took her hand in his. She wasn’t even a bit surprised at the warmth spreading through her body.

Before they got around the herd, she heard a deep-throated growl and another shadow ran back into the woods in a lope. Dewar turned to look at the bull that was already trotting back to his herd with his head up.

“That bull thinks he’s the big hero,” she said.

Dewar turned around but he didn’t let go of her hand. “He’s a good leader and he probably would have stood his ground, but I’d hate to lose him.”

“You think he would have lost?”

“Coyotes run in packs. Those were just the two out scouting for a midnight snack.”

“I’ll make a note of that for the show,” she said.

“Hey, why do you go by H. B.? And what’s the big deal about letting folks think you are a man? There are women correspondents in war zones. And last I heard women could even vote these days,” he changed the subject abruptly.

“My whole name is Haley Belle McKay Levy. McKay was Momma’s maiden name. Momma is half Irish-Cajun. The Levy name is Jewish.”

“Does you mother have red hair like you?”

“Oh, no! She’s got all the Cajun features. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Just like her momma. Daddy is the same. Dark hair and dark eyes like Grandpa. I was named after my grandmothers. Mahalia on Cajun side. Isabelle on the Irish side. Think about it,” she said.

He frowned.

“Think harder.”

He shrugged.

She squeezed his hand. “In grade school they called me hay bale. That could ruin a serious businesswoman.”

“Kids can be cruel, can’t they?” He grinned.

“How’d you get a name like Dewar? It sounds like something out of a historic romance book. I bet people mispronounce it all the time and call you Dee-War instead of Dew-Are,” she said.

“Folks probably don’t even know how it looks on paper. When I’m introduced they just say Dew-Are and that’s the way they remember it. My folks are both Irish and Dewar is an old family name, but I never got teased until Sawyer came up with that stupid Dewy Darlin’ story.”

“Now that we understand names, what do you do about the big cat or coyote problem? I need to know for the show.”

“Either stand watch at night or buy a donkey.”

“A donkey?”

“They are natural enemies for coyotes and wild cats.”

“Okay, I vote for a donkey, but it’ll be more dramatic if we make the contestants stand watch. How do they do that?”

He started walking back toward the camp. “Four-hour shifts. What time are you calling it a night on the trail?”

She fell in beside him. “Ten at the latest, but I suppose there’ll be some love interests like on all reality shows and the couple who can’t keep their hands off each other will do some sneaking into the night.”

“Then someone watches from ten to two and someone else from two to six. Rotate the guards so no one loses two nights’ sleep in a row. Someone will be grouchy on the days that they have to stand watch. Or you can just send one of them to buy a donkey the next day after a coyote or mountain lion becomes a threat. It’s a lot easier than a bunch of grumpy folks.”

She shook her head. “I’ll put that in my report, but I like the guard idea better. But who knows what the producers will like? How does a donkey fight off coyotes and cats anyway?”

“Donkeys will bite and stomp them to death. They get along fine with cattle and they’ll protect them, but coyotes and big cats are a different story. I hope I can find a rancher willing to sell me one—hopefully tomorrow. I should have thought of that before we even left.”

“Did they use them on the real Chisholm Trail rides?” she whispered as they neared the camp.

“I wouldn’t know, but I’m going to buy one as soon as I can. Starting tomorrow night we’ll stand watch until I can find one.”

“We don’t need to do watch tonight?” She didn’t realize he’d stopped until she took two more steps and collided with him, breast to hard muscled chest. And then his arms were around her to keep them both from tumbling to the ground in a heap.

“Whoa!” she gasped and looked up.

His eyes went soft and dreamy and were half-shut as his lips came closer and closer. Her pulse raced as she rolled up on her toes. His thumb grazed her jawline and traced the outline of her lips. Her eyes fluttered, half-open, half-shut. She moved a hand away from his chest to his neck.

Just before his lips met hers, his eyes popped open for just a second. She’d never seen such raw hunger before. Her eyelids slowly drooped shut and his mouth landed on hers in a kiss that raged through her body like a Texas wildfire coming over the plains with a good strong tailwind. She tangled her fingers in his hair, holding his lips on hers. She couldn’t think of anything but putting out the fire as his tongue flicked through her lips and she tasted heat and desire rolled into a long, lingering kiss.

His hands moved to her back, drawing her closer to his chest, as if he wanted to melt the two of them into one to ease the blistering hot flames that had him instantly ready for sex.

And then he broke the kiss and stepped back.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why? Are you engaged or married?”

“N-n-no!” He sounded like Buddy.

“Then there’s nothing to apologize for. Good night, Dewar.” She walked away without looking back, sat down on her bedroll, kicked off her boots, and crawled into her sleeping bag.

***

Dewar could not sleep. He looked in her direction but her back was to him and all he could see was a mop of still-damp red hair. What would it feel like to have that thick hair splayed out over his chest when he woke up the next morning? Or tickling his nose as she kissed him awake?

The visions did nothing for the semi-arousal, so he turned his back to her and forced himself to think about plowing a hay pasture. He always listened to country music when he was in the tractor, so one song after another played in his head, but each one turned his thoughts back to the woman barely six feet away with the sweet-smelling soap aroma still hanging on the night breezes.

Finally, he slept only to dream one erotic scenario after another, with Haley the center of each one. He awoke to hear the rattling of pots and pans and Coosie whistling “Oh What a Beautiful Morning.” He threw back his sleeping bag, dug his toothbrush from his saddlebags, and stuck it in his shirt pocket. Maybe if he brushed his teeth and got the taste of Haley’s kisses away from his lips, he’d forget all about how they felt.

He forgot all about brushing his teeth when she sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and finger combed her hair. He rolled his bedding slowly so he could watch her deftly twist her hair into braids and secure the ends with rubber bands she pulled from her shirt pocket. Her jeans were tighter and darker than the pair she’d worn the day before; the shirt long sleeved with buttons and two pockets bulging over those big breasts that had poked into his chest the night before.

“Good morning,” she said.

“What’s so good about it?” he grouched.

“It’s not raining and I smell breakfast cooking. Two good things,” she said.

He did a half snort, half humph and tied the rope knots around his bedroll. “We’ve got the Comanche thing today.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Didn’t Carl give you an itinerary?”

She shook her head. “He said that I didn’t need anything that would cloud my ideas. I did do some extensive research back when I came up with the idea. Aren’t Comanches Indians?”

Coosie laughed as he flipped plate-sized pancakes in a big cast-iron skillet. “Comanche is a town probably about eleven or twelve miles north of where we are right now. We’ll be doing a parade through the town in the middle of the afternoon since it’s one of the big things on the historic Chisholm Trail. The newspaper folks will take pictures and maybe even corner one of us for a few quotes.
My
main concern is getting to the service station with a water hose so I can fill up the barrel. We’re getting low and it’ll be a while before we are in another town.”

“Oh, I remember now. It was called Tucker at first and the town site was north of where it is now. Are we going through town? Won’t that take us off the real trail? Is there a possibility there’s an old saloon or bank or something still standing that was built during the cattle run days?” she asked.

“So you did some homework,” Dewar said.

“Had to in order to make this all happen to begin with,” she said.

Dewar glanced at Haley. Had he dreamed the kiss from the night before? “The town is real big on being part of the Chisholm Trail and they’ve asked for a parade. When we move the cattle out of the fields and start up the highway, you’ll ride point with me. Coosie will bring up the rear in the chuck wagon. Buddy and Sawyer will herd from the east side and Rhett and Finn from the west side. If we all keep in our place it should be fairly easy traveling.”

“Why do I ride point?” she asked.

“Because the people in town are all going to want to see the person responsible for bringing a reality television show through their town. Think of it as being the queen of the rodeo,” Dewar said.

Coosie slapped a pancake on a plate and handed it to Haley. “Syrup, butter, and sausage patties are on the table. Help yourselves.”

“So why all the worry about going through town?” she asked.

Rhett raised his hand. “I’m done with breakfast. I’ll answer that one. We’ve got one rangy old longhorn bull that hates loud noises and ninety-nine more head of cattle that could stampede at the drop of a hat. Think about glass window fronts, the sides of the street packed with people watching the trail run. Now add in a lot of yelling kids, dashing out into the street to see if they can touch the horns on our big bull. It could go smooth. It could be a total disaster.”

“Ah, the stuff reality shows are made of,” Sawyer said. “You going to finish the drive if you get a broke leg in a stampede?”

“I’ll finish it if I have to ride on the horns of that bull,” she smarted off. And by golly, she would, too.

***

Haley snuck looks toward Dewar as he ate that morning. She’d awakened with a smile and touched her lips to see if they were still as warm as they’d been when she went to sleep. He’d awakened grouchy. Did that mean he was sorry he’d kissed her?

She hung back when they started out.

Coosie looked straight ahead and didn’t offer anything at all. It looked like another long morning with nothing to think about but the kiss, and that was dangerous territory.

“Tell me about you and Buddy. Are y’all brothers?” she finally asked.

Coosie flicked the reins to get the horses to move along a little faster. The land had more rolling hills than the day before and they weren’t too keen on pulling the wagon up the steep sides.

“We might as well be brothers, but we ain’t. We was born down around Bowie the same year and started to school at the same time. Buddy stuttered from the time he could say his first word and the kids, well, you know how mean kids can be. I was always the biggest kid in class, so that first day when someone picked on him, I whooped the snot right out of that kid. Every time a new kid came to town they had to get their whoopin’ before they understood that nobody picked on my friend. Buddy might stutter, but he’s real smart, so he helped me with the learnin’ and I helped him with the bullyin’ kids.”