Teaching the Cowboy (16 page)

She sighed again. “I’m not hiding, John.”

“Call it what you want. Sure feels like it.” He stripped down to his underwear and left her at the edge of the bed as he tossed the superfluous pillows from the head and crawled in on his usual side.

She turned off the overhead light and joined him beneath the sheets in her long, loose shirt. She turned her back to him and he curled up behind her, trying not to think too hard about his flaccid organ being cradled against her cheeks. It wouldn’t be soft for long.

He draped an arm over her belly and she moved it up a few ticks to her ribs and wound her fingers through his. He worked his left arm out from under his body and used it to loosen her hair elastic. She was so tired she didn’t object. He mussed her hair and pushed it over her shoulder and then nuzzled his nose against the back. She always had a slight aroma of green apples and the bit of alcohol in the hair spray she used, but that day she didn’t smell like anything. He lowered his nose to her neck and rubbed it across her pulse point. Nothing there, either.

“Run out of perfume?”

“Why, did you like it?”

He backed off a bit and put his face back against the pillow he shared with her. “I thought it was a bit high-brow at first, but it’s grown on me. Just seemed to fit.”

“Oh. I’ve just been cutting my morning constitutional down a few steps is all. Kids don’t seem to care what I look like, and I don’t exactly have anyone to impress out here.”

He tried not to feel offended. He just closed his eyes and ground his teeth. He didn’t want to ruin a good thing. She thought he was compulsive and reckless, so he wanted to prove that he could be patient. Within reason.

Around three, best he could guess based on the moon’s position through the window, he felt a tug on his arm from Ronnie repositioning his hand. He thought she was just trying to get the heavy weight off her side and tried to pull it off altogether, but instead she jerked it back and slipped his hand into the front of her panties. He’d been groggy before, but that woke him up. When he noticed how wet she was from one short sweep of his fingers, his junior woke up, too. She burrowed her rear end against his swelling erection and made him force out a breath. It’d only been a few weeks. He shouldn’t have been that sprung.

She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and pulled his hand out of its warm nook, only to hook his thumb around the bit of waistband at the top of her hip. Her request was clear: off. He was happy to oblige. He edged the lacy material down inch by inch, pausing once her rear was exposed to trace his fingers along the swell of her ass, before nudging the panties down to her knees and then off with the aid of his toes. He balled the fabric of her shirt in her fist and pushed it to uncover her belly. He wasn’t interested in her belly, however. His fingers trailed upward to her breasts and found one pert nipple which he tugged between two fingers. He palmed her breast, savoring the fullness of it as he plied and kneaded.

Hmm. Nice. Ronnie’s got a bit of extra padding now. I should thank Becka for that.

“Let me get a condom.”

Her heavy eyelids raised, and she shook her head, planting a palm on his shoulder to still him. “I’ve got it under control.”

“Oh.” He was certain his smile was feral, and he couldn’t help it. He was going to get to
feel
her, finally. No barriers in place, the way nature intended.

He sat up just enough to engage her neck with his lips once more and as she tipped her head back for his easy access, he parted her lower lips and slipped into her from the rear without even dropping his shorts. He sucked in a breath at the tight entry, closing his eyes as he pushed his shaft in farther and farther until the front of his body pressed against her soft cheeks. He slipped his hand around to her front and pressed at her aroused nub as he started his slow thrusts into her.

“I think you missed me, honey.”

All she could do was whimper. She wrapped her topmost leg around his to give his hand more territory to explore.

“It doesn’t have to be like this.” He grazed his lips up the lobe of her ear and grabbed onto the top with his teeth and gave it a gentle nip. “Why don’t you move in with me and the kids?” Okay, patience gone. He’d tried.

She clamped around his shaft so hard she nearly pushed him out.

He grunted and grabbed her hips to still her. “I take it you think that’s a bad idea.”

Her voice was raspy when she answered, and not from the bliss of their late-night escapade, but from something else. Had one of the kids gotten her sick? “You hardly know me.”

“You know that’s not true.” He gave her clit a little pluck and was rewarded by the clamp of her nails against the skin of his wrist.

“This isn’t a relationship.”

“Feels like it to me.” In one deft motion, he rolled her onto her belly and pulled her hips back to meet him. He pushed his cock through the hole in his briefs, pushed the damned things off, and tossed them to the floor.

“And maybe that’s the problem,” she panted. “This is all we do.”

“What do you mean?”
Stop talking.
He increased his pace and gripped her hips, wishing there was more light so he could see the perfection he was probing his head against. He thought briefly about turning on a lamp, but she had started to pant, and he knew what that led to.

“We have sex, John. That’s all we do.”

“That’s. Not. True.”

Was it? He had to think. It was so hard to think being buried hilt-deep into her, but he tried. Had it been any different with his ex-wife? What did they do? It all seemed a blur. Merited thinking about, but not right then.

“We’ll talk about it,” he croaked as his thrusts became less rhythmic and his breath left him.

Ronnie was gone. Her back had lost its arch as she collapsed onto the bed, shuddering beneath him, and John followed her to the mat, tapping out his surrender.

Chapter Twelve

T
hanksgiving hurtled toward her at a dizzying speed, and the thought of all that food laid out made Ronnie’s stomach bubble in a most nauseating way. Four months pregnant and she could still hardly fathom the thought of food beyond the occasional bland baked potato or mildly seasoned rice pilaf. She’d sent Becka to her kitchen crying at least twice at her perceived snubbing of the food and had to follow her in explaining as gently as she could about the Irritable Bowel Syndrome she actually didn’t have.

John was still pushing, pleading for her to make herself more visible at the Lundstrom place for meals for the sake of the kids. Landon didn’t give a hot damn one way or the other, but Peter and Liss needed a transition, he said. She couldn’t just move in all of a sudden without there being a ramping-up to her presence. Thing was, Ronnie had absolutely no intention of ever moving in. She’d started taking up more and more invitations from the Ericksons to dine at their ranch, that is when she wasn’t hiding out in the chow hall or going out with Sid.

Oh, and Sid. That was a whole other mess she’d need to work out. Hanging out with the gregarious hipster in Cheyenne’s most rollicking dives was a hoot, and she was a good listening ear, but Sid came with a sort of neediness Ronnie wasn’t sure she had the stamina to endure. If she’d planned on sticking around, she wouldn’t mind being the woman’s constant sounding board and permanent confidante, but as it was, putting up with Phil’s non-stop drama was almost more than she could handle.

She stood in front of the roast chicken station, carving off fat, juicy breast slices and lost in her own thoughts. The women of the Storafalt Lutheran Church’s outreach auxiliary flitted and buzzed around her trying to get the take-out plates ready to distribute. It’d be one of the last delivery days of the year with Thanksgiving and Christmas on the horizon, so the ladies wanted to make sure this meal was a good one.

“Ronnie, did you hear me, honey?”

She startled and looked up to see Sid staring pointedly, waiting for a response, from where she was rolling utensils into paper napkins. “No, sorry.”

“I said your apron came untied in the back. You want me to tie it for you since your hands are greasy?”

“Oh.” Ronnie looked down at the canvas apron printed with the verse from Proverbs
Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered
and found its ties trailing down her sides. “Yes, thanks.”

Sid made her way over and picked up the ends. “This is a pretty dress. Bit cold for it, though.”

It was Ronnie’s favorite dress, or it had been back in North Carolina where it was actually weather-appropriate. She’d purchased the turquoise silk caftan at some little boutique in Wilmington. She usually paired it with a nice pair of flats and went barelegged, but she’d had to put on a slip and hose for Wyoming. As the apron tightened, She watched the convex curve of her belly come more prominently into view.

She turned around before Sid could finish. “Know what? I need to run to the potty.” She peeled off her plastic gloves and tossed them into the overflowing trash bin near her station.

She hurried down the hall, pushed into the ladies restroom, and locked herself into the unoccupied stall. She didn’t really need to go. Instead, she paced in the small corral and wrung her hands.

“Constipated?” the gravelly voice from the adjacent stall asked.

“Oh, no, I…” Ronnie unlatched the door and started to leave the room, but the voice called back.

“Give me some paper, would you, Miss Peacock?”

Ronnie balked. “I’m sorry?”

“Come on, beauty queen. I’ve been waiting in here for fifteen minutes for someone to come in and hand me some paper.”

She took a peek under the stall door to find nude-tone orthopedic sneakers and spotted legs covered in baggy beige hose.
Celia.
Ronnie rolled her eyes and pulled the empty stall door open once more. She grabbed the spare roll from the back of the seat and held it under the partition.

Celia snatched it. “Thank you very much. You can go now.”

Ronnie bared her teeth, but since there was no one available to see the sneer, she didn’t feel any better for it. She washed her hands and retreated back to the safety net that was the fellowship hall, pausing at the door, however, to loosely tie her own apron.

At her check-up the previous day, Doc had said, “I bet you’re gonna be one of those women who carries real high. Won’t be able to hide this even a little bit for much longer. You’re not trying to hide it are you? That’d be dumb.”

Ronnie had smiled and made some bullshit statement about updating her wardrobe. And she had. She now owned more sweatshirts and flannel shirts than she’d ever had in her entire life. Sweats weren’t ladylike, she’d always thought. Well, they hid a belly. She’d learned that trick from some of her former students. There was a reason why preppy girls suddenly went thug chic.

When she re-entered the kitchen, there was a new arrival. John, out of his usual cowboy garb for once and dressed in a plain white button-up and dark slacks, leaned into the pass-through chatting with the girls. She took the long way around the room and slipped back to her station without him catching her in his periphery. She resumed her chicken slicing and tried not to think about how good the man looked in a pair of well-fitted slacks. She just kept her head low and sliced. Slice and stack. Slice and stack.

He stopped running his mouth to Sid just long enough to see the blur that was Ronnie. “There you are. You ready to go?”

Ronnie scrunched up her face and set down her carving knife. “Go where?”

“To deliver plates. They guilted me into it because I’m a fine Christmas and Easter Lutheran, and that’s not enough.”

Shit. I was doing so good resisting him.
“Okay. What’s that have to do with me?” she said with a waver in her voice.

“You’re on deck again, Ronnie,” Kitty said from the dessert station. “We all take turns. We usually have two drivers and two runners.”

Ronnie sighed at the smirking cowboy.
Oh, my. He shaved.
She itched to run her finger along his smooth jaw, but instead jammed her hands more securely into the pockets of her borrowed apron.
Men shouldn’t come that good-looking
. Then she realized she was carrying his kid. A little girl, if Doc’s too-fast assessment could be trusted. A little girl she’d have to lock up in an ivory tower and keep away from cowboys.

“And you want to leave now?”

“If you don’t mind. We’re only taking half. Becka will get the rest after the service, so someone else can take over for you.”

Ronnie started to peel off her gloves yet again. “Wouldn’t you rather Landon do it? I’m sure you’ve got a lot to do back at the ranch.”

“Nope, he’s studying for that AP history exam. It’s you and me.”

“Oh.” She turned her back to the greater kitchen, untied her apron, and lifted it over her head. She straightened her dress and slipped into her pea coat before turning around. “I’ll just get my purse.”

He grabbed his hat from the counter and waited for her to track past him before picking up the box of take-out plates and hitching it up to his hip.

She held open the side door and bobbed her head toward the ramp. “After you.”

“That’s supposed to be my line.” He winked and wound down the wheelchair ramp.

She opened the passenger door of his truck and waited as he pushed the box up onto the seat toward the middle and then pressed his fingers to her waist as if to lift her.

She jerked backward. When he narrowed his eyes at her, she patted down her jacket and put up a hand to press down her messy hair. It was getting harder and harder to find time to tame it, and all the residual energy she had as of late was going toward remediating Peter and the Erickson kids and getting Landon ready for his next tests. She was resigned to the fact that at some point, she might just have to go curly. She hadn’t been curly since she was thirteen and always thought curly hair made her look too young. She had a hard enough time getting John to take her seriously. “Sorry, John. I…”

His eyes widened a bit and he leaned against the truck side.

Make something up.
Anything.

“Nightmares. I’ve been having nightmares. When you touched me, it reminded me of one.” It actually wasn’t a complete lie. All that progesterone building up in her body was causing her brain to do some seriously trippy stuff at night. She kept dreaming of John getting thrown from his horse, Liss disappearing on the ranch, Peter being bit by a snake. All sorts of morbid things that made her wake up sweaty and agitated. More than once she’d shuffled to the door thinking she’d drive over to check on them all, but she always decided to stay put. Liss kept asking her to spend the night, have a slumber party, and the dreams alone made her want to say yes, just so she’d be nearby.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, yeah? That why we haven’t made love in a month?”

Her blood burned behind her cheeks, and she forced herself to swallow down the lump in her throat. She grabbed hold of the inner door handle and scurried up into the truck. “Perhaps we shouldn’t have this conversation on church grounds.”

“I don’t think the Lord’s going to smite us any time soon, honey.” He started pushing the truck door shut, but at the last minute pulled it back ajar. “At least not for that.” He slammed it and Ronnie blew out a long breath.

Not for that.

Once they were on their way down Main Street, Ronnie braced herself for the conversation she didn’t want to have. She’d seen John almost daily for weeks, but they’d never been alone. One of the kids always rescued her at the last minute, and during the few attempts he made to visit her at her little house, she hadn’t let him in, always pleading the next morning that she slept with her earplugs in again. She’d gotten the earplug idea from Becka who claimed Ted snored like a chainsaw running.

Now, buckled into his truck, she had no choice but to talk to the man she’d been tediously repelling for weeks.

“Ron?”

Here we go.

She pulled her phone out of her purse and pretended to be very interested in an item on the screen. “Yes?”

“Where are you having Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Oh. Well, Becka asked.”

“Asked when?”

“Last month.”

He growled over the rumble of the diesel engine. “I’ll talk to her.”

“That’s not necessary. I mean, really, she’s doing me a favor. I could be eating with the ranch hands. It’s a wonder no one has commented on the favoritism.”

“No, you should be eating with me and the kids.”

“Becka won’t understand. You know she’s so sensitive about her hospitality.”

“I’ll make her understand.”

“What are you going to tell her? As far as I’m aware, she doesn’t know our relationship is anything other than platonic.”

“So, I’ll tell her the truth.”

“Tell her what? That we’re boffing?”

He growled, and Ronnie rolled her eyes.

“Come on, Ronnie. We’re doing a little more than that. You’re not being fair.”

“Oh? Do you realize this is the farthest from your ranch we’ve ever been together? I realize the ranch is your own little world, but I have to live
outside
it, too. It’s not a snow globe.”

“So what are you saying?” He turned off on a dirt road and slowed the speed way down as they traveled toward the first of their drop-off spots. “You want to, like, go on dates?” He laughed. “Ronnie, I haven’t done that since high school, and even those were nothing to write home about.”

“That would have been a start.”

“What do you mean
would have
been?”

She didn’t answer. She loosened her seatbelt and then took the first of the plates off the top of the box as she pushed her door open. She left it ajar as she strode across the small, dusty yard and up the front steps of the unkempt house. She knocked. Footsteps sounded from inside and stopped just on the other side of the door.

“Who is it?”

“Ronnie Silver from the church. I have your dinner, Mrs. Smith.”

“Leave it on the stoop.”

“That’s fine, but do you need help with anything else?” The ladies at the church had trained her to ask, but no one ever took her up on it. She tried not to feel offended.

“No. You go on.”

Ronnie sighed, set the covered plate down and used a corner of the welcome mat to prevent the top from blowing off, and then retreated to the truck. She’d never before in her life felt so useless. When she climbed in, John took up his former line of questioning.

“So, do you want to go on a date? Yes or no.”

“I’m really busy, John.”

“If I didn’t know that was true, I’d be annoyed by that response. You know you can come over whenever you want, right?”

“Mm-hmm.” She studied her nails. “Liss extended that invitation.”

“You’ve got, what, three-quarters of her hair detangled now?”

“Something like that. If you’d keep it in a braid, it wouldn’t get so bad.”

“Unfortunately, neither I nor Landon ever mastered that particular skill. We don’t exactly go around braiding the horses’ tails, you know.”

“Anna would have done it.”

“Anna hates hearing Liss cry. She tried twice to comb her hair and her heart broke so bad from the child’s shrieking, she said she’d never do it again.”

Ronnie slumped. Yeah, the tears were hard, but Liss whimpered less and less with each de-knotting session. She felt like she was taming a bit of the child’s unbridled spirit with each swipe of her large-toothed comb and hated that it had to be at her hands. It should have been her mother, but that was big ol’ ball of wax Ronnie wasn’t even going to touch.

Something messy was going on with John and his ex. He’d heard Anna, John, and Landon whispering about it in heated tones, but she hadn’t been nosy enough to involve herself in the discussion. The way she figured it, his ex wasn’t any of her business.

“I may talk her into cutting it short, if that’s all right with you,” she said. “As it grows out she’ll learn in steps how to care for it on her own.”

“Hmm.”

She looked over the box to see John rubbing his chin.

“Is that what you would do if she were your little girl, or is that what you’d suggest to the father of one of your students?”

She felt her heart hiccup and turned her face toward her window. Her little girl? “I don’t see why those things should be different.”

“You’re closer to my kids than any teacher. Liss emulates you. Wants to be like you. So tell me, is that what you would do for
your
daughter?”

She swatted some flyaway hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her right ear. Would she, if Liss were her little girl? No. She’d be about the tough love. She’d force her into a grooming routine after one long, torturous battle with the knots. Negative reinforcement.

“Your silence is suspicious, so I’m guessing the answer is
no
.”

“Probably,” she whispered to the window.

He idled the truck in the driveway of their next stop.

She sighed and hopped down to the ground with the stack of three meals.

As always, the door sprang open before she made it to the porch. “Hi, Davey,” she signed after balancing the plates on her left forearm.

Davey, a deaf man of around thirty with Downs Syndrome, waved back and held out his arms for the food.

“How are your parents?” she signed. “Can they come to the door?”

Davey shook his head.

“Sick again?”

He nodded.

“Need anything else?”