One Lucky Cowboy (15 page)

   By the time he reached the barn she'd moved the kittens to a safer corner, the momma cat following along behind, meowing loudly. He backed the truck into the barn and Jane grabbed a set of hooks and began to unload. They worked side by side until the bales were stacked uniformly, then she hopped into the bed of the truck and he drove back to the field. When the truck came to a stop, she wasted no time before getting out, but left the hooks in the seat of the truck. She could load twice as fast simply by picking up the baling wire and tossing it to the hired hand, who had gotten ready to catch it. Next time she'd do the easier job of organizing the hay in the truck to make the most of the space. It was a switch off. The one who threw the bales for one load organized the next time around to prevent exhaus tion. As it was, every muscle in her body would ache at bedtime and the next morning it would be a miracle if she could move.

   It had been years since she'd worked the hayfield, but she remembered the hard work. Her father had tried his best to talk her mother out of making her learn everything about ranching from the ground up, saying that a girl would never need the knowledge. Her mother did not share his viewpoint and she'd won the argument. Ellacyn Jane spent time in the hayfield, mucking out horse stables, planting a garden, canning green beans and corn, making jelly, balancing a checkbook—and then she went to college to learn how to run a business.

   They were running two trucks that evening. When Jane's truck was finally loaded and the driver started back to the barn, she hopped up on the empty one just returning and got ready to stack. On that load, Slade threw and she stacked. The rhythm was fast-paced and kept her hopping to stay up with him. She could have asked him to slow down slightly but there was no way she would give him the satisfaction of knowing she couldn't match his speed.

   "That's it. We got it in the barn before the storm hit," Slade said when they reached the barn with the last load.

   He'd barely gotten the words out when the first drops of rain hit the metal barn roof. Along with the thunder right overhead, it sounded worse than it really was. Slade leaned against the side of the still-loaded truck.

   "You lived on a ranch, or at least grew up on one. No one knows how to do that unless they've spent a lot of time ranching," he said.

   "I never said I didn't know anything about ranching," she said breathlessly. "Help me get this off the truck and go have some supper. I'm starving."

   "You are avoiding the issue," he said.

   "I am not. I admitted that I'm hungry. Now are you going to unload or do I have to do it all myself. Maybe I played you out in the field, huh?"

   He grabbed a set of hooks and fought hard to keep up with her as she tossed the bales. By the time it was all stacked the storm had passed, the rain had stopped and the stars were just beginning to twinkle. Jane inhaled the fresh clean scent of rain and shut her eyes. For a minute she was sixteen and back on the ranch in Mississippi, her mother standing beside her, both of them exhausted to the point of giggles after a long day working beside the hired hands.

   "What were you thinking about?" he asked softly.

   "Old times," she said.

   "Want to go out for supper?"

   "No thank you. I want a shower, my soft old nightshirt, a good movie on television, and food. Not necessarily in that order. How about omelets to start off with?"

   "With cheese and ham and bacon?"

   "All of the above, plus fresh tomatoes on the side and hash browns. No biscuits because I'm too tired to stir them up. Toast."

   "So I wore you out with just two little truckloads, did I?" he grinned.

   "Little ole gypsy city girl like me who's not used to working hard would get tuckered out with just a couple of truckloads, wouldn't she?" Jane put on her best fake Southern accent.

   "You're not ever going to tell me about yourself, are you?" he asked on the walk to the house.

   "That answer would be 'no.'"

   "I wouldn't think less of you," he said.

   "You can't know that. What if I told you I'd murdered a bank teller in a robbery or shot an old lady on the street to make my bones in the gang I wanted to join?"

   "But you didn't. You couldn't live with yourself if you'd done those things," he said without hesitation.

   "If you really, really think that, then everything else doesn't matter. You'll know I'm a good person and that's enough. You want onions in the omelet?" She tugged her filthy dirty shoes off inside the back door and tossed them toward the washing machine along with her socks.

   "Yes, and I'll help," he said.

   "Ahh, a man in the kitchen. That should be amusing."

   "I can cook. Granny made me learn the basics. She said there would come a day when she was gone and by damn, it has come. I didn't think she'd go. I thought she'd be back at dinnertime with some big hoo-raw about how she'd scared the hell out of us with her tale of leaving for a whole week."

   Jane opened the refrigerator and removed eggs, green peppers, onions, cheese, bacon, and ham. "Why did she make you learn to cook? I thought in this part of the world, men were men and women were women."

   He pulled out the wooden cutting board and chose a sharp chef's knife from the drawer. "I suppose she didn't want me to starve."

   She fried bacon. He chopped vegetables and shredded potatoes for hash browns. She made toast. He made coffee and set the table. She made the omelets and he put butter and jelly on the table.

   "Did you see that? We made supper without killing each other and there was a knife right handy," he said.

   She passed him the platter with the potatoes and eggs. "A knife isn't my weapon of choice. Too much blood."

   "You prefer a gun?" he asked.

   "Poison," she said with a twinkle in her eyes. "Did you watch every single move I made in the kitchen? I could have put arsenic in your half of that omelet."

   He turned the platter around and took the half closest to her. "Now the poison belongs to you. Who do I call when you fall dead on the floor in about twenty seconds?"

   She loaded her plate and picked up her fork. He was one sneaky son of a gun and she was dog tired. She'd have to watch her tongue or she'd spit out a name so quick even she wouldn't know where it came from. "Just roll me up in a blanket and toss me off the back of the hay truck in the nearest bar ditch."

   He helped wash dishes and gave her first chance at the shower on their wing. While he cleaned up, she picked out a movie from the stash beside the television set in the living room. She chose
The Shooter starrin
g Mark Wahlberg. It had been a toss up between that and
Runaway Bride. She loved Julia Roberts
and Richard Gere, but didn't think she'd find the movie quite as humorous as she had the first time she saw it.

   "So what chick flick have you picked out? Not that I care. I'll be asleep and snoring before the first scene is over," he said.

   "It's between
Shrek
or
Shrek Two. I thought I'd le
t you decide," she said.

He rolled his eyes and glared at her.

She grinned.

   "Are you teasing? I never know whether you are serious or not," he said.

   "Keep 'em guessing, that's what my grandmother said," she teased.

   He sat on the other end of the sofa as far away from her as possible. "Oh, you had a grandmother? I thought you sprang from an egg somewhere deep in the forest, that you were sent here from a flat UFO that landed just outside the bus depot in Wichita Falls."

   "Shhh. The mother ship will hear you and call me back home," she whispered as she pushed a button on the remote control and the movie started.

   He actually smiled when he realized what she'd chosen. "I love this movie. Haven't seen it but once, but it's a good show."

   "Well, I haven't ever seen it so don't tell me anything," she said.

   "Only thing I'll tell you is that you won't fall asleep."

   "Hand me a pillow and hush."

   He fulfilled the first request but she learned that evening that he was not quiet when he watched movies in his own house. He voiced opinions, swore at the bad guys, and rooted for Mark's character, Bob Lee Swagger. Bob Lee had been pressed into service to help the government officials prevent an attempt on the presi dent's life, only to find that he had been double-crossed. The real target was an African who was about to tell the truth about atrocities related to an oil line.

   While the adrenaline was still pumping, Slade grabbed Jane in a bear hug when Bob Lee finished the job at the end of the movie. She wasn't ready for him to pick her up off the sofa and dance around the living room with her while the credits rolled. Her feet didn't come close to touching the floor and she felt dizzy.

   Suddenly Slade realized what he was doing and set her down abruptly in the middle of the floor. He kept his arms on her shoulders for a moment until she was steady. He was mesmerized as he stared into her chocolate-brown eyes waiting for them to focus and lose the glazed look.

   He bent forward.

   She tiptoed up to meet him.

   Their lips met in a whirl of emotions that shocked them both, but neither wanted the kiss to end.

   Finally, at the same moment, they each pulled back.

   Jane was shaken and wiped her forehead, trying to make light of the kiss.

   "Whew. Thanks for holding me up until I could get my bearings. It wouldn't do for us to watch an action film like that in the theater, would it?"

   "Not hardly. But I do try to refrain from too much live commentary when I'm in public. I'm off to bed. Want to go to church with me in the morning?"

   Maybe some good old hellfire and damnation would preach out the hot desire that had surged through his body the moment his lips touched Jane's.

   "Where do you go?" she asked. Surely she'd dreamed that kiss. One minute she was floating away on a wave of sensation, the next they were talking about church. She reached up and touched her lips to see if they were as hot as they felt.

   "Methodist over in Nocona. Granny and I haven't been in a month, with the busy season on us, but the hay is in and we could take a day of rest, I suppose," he said.

   "What time?"

   "We don't often attend Sunday School, so eleven for church." He wanted to retract the invitation. Everyone in the church would think they were a couple. Lord, if he shared the hymnbook with her, they'd have him standing in front of the preacher within a month.

   "I'll be ready," she said.

   She immediately realized her error and didn't know how to bow out of it gracefully—or at the least without Slade demanding an explanation. She'd have to go or else he'd want to know why. There would be that many more people who might remember her if John did appear on the scene. That many more who could point a finger to the Double L Ranch, and she wouldn't put Nellie… or Slade… into harm's way for all the gold in Fort Knox.

   She fell asleep thinking that she wanted out of the oil business if there could ever be an ounce of truth in the Bob Lee Swagger story. Did people actually commit such atrocities out of greed for oil? Of course they did. A company as small as Ranger Oil had caused Paul to be greedy and to put out a contract on her. Maybe it had been an omen that she had watched that particular movie tonight.

Sunday.

   She wore one of her two sundresses and sandals. She shaved her legs and used the last of her perfume. Slade was quiet on the way to church and kept his distance. The kiss must have been nothing more than the surge of adrenaline brought on by the movie. She sat in the air-conditioned comfort of the pickup truck and wondered what she would have done if Slade had kissed her because he wanted to and not because he was hyped up on the action film. The refrigerated air couldn't keep up with her hormones and she had to cough to keep from actually panting a little.

   He was dressed in his Sunday best. Shiny eel boots. Black Wranglers. White shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Hair combed back perfectly. Shaving lotion applied to send a woman's senses reeling.

   Once they were in the sanctuary and sitting in the Luckadeaus' normal pew, two from the back on the left side, he was careful to keep his hymnbook in his lap and a foot of space between them. She did the same. She wasn't totally ignorant of the ways of the religious. Sit close enough together to share a book and the old ladies went home to start a double wedding ring quilt. It sounded old world, maybe even a bit Amish, but her momma had taught her more than how to stack hay and make lasagna.

   The preacher's sermon was from the twelfth chapter of first Corinthians. He went on and on about the aspects of love and what it produced in the lives of Christian people. Jane thought about asking the preacher if he taped his sermons so she could buy one to send to her stepfather and ex-fiancé.

   After services she was introduced to a multitude of people. Gray-haired ladies who'd tipped the dye bottle a little too much and turned their hair lilac, young women who no doubt thought Slade Luckadeau was a whole dishful of eye candy, old men who slapped Slade on the back and winked, young men who slapped Slade on the back and winked.

"So where are you going to feed me?" she asked.

   "What makes you think I'm going to take you out? We can go home and eat there."

   "You have to take me out or else get singed by hell fire. It's biblical."

   He led the way to the car and was very, very careful not to let their hands touch. One infraction would be reported to his grandmother so fast it would create a tornado between Nocona and Wichita Falls. Every woman in the church had been hunting for a bride for Slade since he'd turned thirty. Folks evidently thought that he was near death and an heir to the Double L was in danger. Didn't they remember that his Uncle Robert had two children? Granted, they weren't one bit inter ested in ranching, having been raised in the big city of Houston where Robert worked for NASA, but it didn't mean Slade was the last chance to keep the Double L in Luckadeau hands.