Christmas Cowboy: Will of Steel / Winter Roses

Three

Jillian jerked back away from him as if he’d offended her, flushing to the roots of her hair. She stared at him with helpless misery, waiting for the explosion. The auditor had cursed a blue streak, called her names, swore that he’d tell every boy he knew that she was a hopeless little icicle.

But Theodore didn’t do that. In fact, he smiled, very gently.

She bit her lower lip. She wanted to tell him. She couldn’t. The pain was almost physical.

He took her flushed face in his big hands and bent and kissed her gently on the forehead, then on her eyelids, closing them.

“We all have our own secret pain, Jake,” he whispered. “One day you’ll want to tell me, and I’ll listen.” He lifted his head. “For the time being, we’ll be best buddies, except that you’re wearing a skirt,” he added, tongue-in-cheek.

“I have to confess that very few of my buddies have used a women’s restroom.”

It took her a minute, then she burst out laughing.

“That’s better,” he said, and grinned. He cocked his head and gave her a very male appraisal. “You really do look nice.” He pursed his lips as he contemplated the ensemble and its probable cost.

“They’re loaners,” she blurted out.

His black eyes sparkled with unholy glee. “Loaners?”

She nodded. “Sassy Callister.”

“I see.”

She grinned. “She said that she had a whole closet of stuff she never wore. I didn’t want to, but she sort of bulldozed me into it. She’s a lot like her new husband.”

“He wears petticoats?” he asked outrageously.

She glared at him. “Women don’t wear petticoats or hoop skirts these days, Theodore.”

“Sorry. Wrong era.”

She grinned. “Talk about living in the dark ages!”

He shrugged. “I was raised by my grandmother and my uncle. They weren’t forthcoming about women’s intimate apparel.”

“Well, I guess not!”

“Your uncle John was the same sort of throwback,” he remarked.

“So we both come by it honestly, I suppose.” She noted his immaculate dark suit and the spotless white shirt and blue patterned tie he was wearing with it. “You look nice, too.”

“I bought the suit to wear to John Callister’s wedding,” he replied. “I don’t often have the occasion to dress up.”

“Me, neither,” she sighed.

“I guess we could go a few places together,” he commented. “I like to hunt and fish.”

“I do not like guns,” she said flatly.

“Well, in my profession, they’re sort of a necessity, Jake,” he commented.

“I suppose so. Sorry.”

“No problem. You used to like fishing.”

“It’s been a while since I dipped a poor, helpless worm into the water.”

He chuckled. “Everything in life has a purpose. A worm’s is to help people catch delicious fish.”

“The worm might not share your point of view.”

“I’ll ask, the next time I see one.”

She laughed, and her whole face changed. She felt better than she had in ages. Theodore didn’t think she was a lost cause. He wasn’t even angry that she’d gone cold at his kiss. Maybe, she thought, just maybe, there was still hope for her.

His black eyes were kind. “I’m glad you aren’t wearing high heels,” he commented.

“Why?”

He glanced down at his big feet in soft black leather boots. “Well, these aren’t as tough as the boots I wear on the job. I’d hate to have holes in them from spiked heels, when you step on my feet on the dance floor.”

“I will not step on your feet,” she said with mock indignation. She grinned. “I might trip over them and land in a flowerpot, of course.”

“I heard about that,” he replied, chuckling. “Poor old Harris Twain. I’ll bet he’ll never stick his legs out into the walkway of a restaurant again. He said you were pretty liberally covered with potting soil. You went in headfirst, I believe …?”

She sighed. “Most people have talents. Mine is lack of coordination. I can trip over my own feet, much less someone else’s.”

He wondered about that clumsiness. She was very capable, in her own way, but she often fell. He frowned.

“Now, see, you’re thinking that I’m a klutz, and you’re absolutely right.”

“I was wondering more about your balance,” he said. “Do you have inner ear problems?”

She blinked. “What do my ears have to do with that?”

“A lot. If you have an inner ear disturbance, it can affect balance.”

“And where did you get your medical training?” she queried.

“I spend some time in emergency rooms, with victims and perps alike. I learn a lot about medical problems that way.”

“I forgot.”

He shrugged. “It goes with the job.”

“I don’t have earaches,” she said, and averted her eyes. “Shouldn’t we get going?”

She was hiding something. A lot, maybe. He let it go. “I guess we should.”

“A Latin dance club in Billings.” She grinned. “How exotic! ”

“The owner’s even more exotic. You’ll like him.” He leaned closer. “He was a gun runner in his wild youth.”

“Wow!”

“I thought you’d be impressed. So was I.”

“You have an interesting collection of strange people in your life,” she commented on the way to his truck.

“Goes with the—”

“Job. I guess.” She grinned when she saw the truck. “Washed and waxed it, huh?” she teased.

“Well, you can’t take a nice woman to a dance in a dirty truck,” he stated.

“I wouldn’t have minded.”

He turned to her at the passenger side of the truck and looked down at her solemnly in the light from the security lamp on a pole nearby. His face was somber. “No, you wouldn’t. You don’t look at bank accounts to judge friendships. It’s one of a lot of things I like about you. I dated a woman attorney once, who came here to try a case for a client in district court. When she saw the truck, the old one I had several years ago, she actually backed out of the date. She said she didn’t want any important people in the community to see her riding around in a piece of junk.”

She gasped. “No! How awful for you!”

His high cheekbones had a faint flush. Her indignation made him feel warm inside. “Something you’d never have said to me, as blunt as you are. It turned me off women for a while. Not that I even liked her. But it hurt my pride.”

“As if a vehicle was any standard to base a character assessment on,” she huffed.

He smiled tenderly. “Small-town police chiefs don’t usually drive Jaguars. Although this guy I know in Texas does. But he made his money as a merc, not in law enforcement.”

“I like you just the way you are,” she told him quietly. “And it wouldn’t matter to me if we had to walk to Billings to go dancing.”

He ground his teeth together. She made him feel taller, more masculine, when she looked at him like that. He was struggling with more intense emotions than he’d felt in years. He wanted to grab her and eat her alive. But she needed careful handling. He couldn’t be forward with her. Not until he could teach her to trust him. That would take time.

She felt uneasy when he scowled like that. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to blurt that out and upset you …”

“You make me feel good, Jake,” he interrupted. “I’m not upset. Well, not for the reasons you’re thinking, anyway.”

“What reasons upset you?”

He sighed. “To be blunt, I’d like to back you into the truck and kiss you half to death.” He smiled wryly at her shocked expression. “Won’t do it,” he promised. “Just telling you what I really feel. Honesty is a sideline with most people. It’s first on my list of necessities.”

“Mine, too. It’s okay. I like it when you’re up-front.”

“You’re the same way,” he pointed out.

“I guess so. Maybe I’m too blunt, sometimes.”

He smiled. “I’d call it being forthright. I like it.”

She beamed. “Thanks.”

He checked his watch. “Got to go.” He opened the door for her and waited until she jumped up into the cab and fastened her seat belt before he closed it.

“It impresses me that I didn’t have to tell you to put that on,” he said as he started the engine, nodding toward her seat belt. “I don’t ride with people who refuse to wear them. I work wrecks. Some of them are horrific, and the worst fatalities are when people don’t have on seat belts.”

“I’ve heard that.”

He pulled out onto the highway. “Here we go, Jake.

Our first date.” He grinned. “Our uncles are probably laughing their ghostly heads off.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it.” She sighed. “Still, it wasn’t nice of either of them to rig the wills like that.”

“I guess they didn’t expect to die for years and years,” he commented. “Maybe it was a joke. They expected the lawyer to tell us long before they died. Except he died first and his partner had no sense of humor.”

“I don’t know. Our uncles did like to manipulate people.”

“Too much,” he murmured. “They browbeat poor old Dan Harper into marrying Daisy Kane, and he was miserable. They thought she was a sweet, kind girl who’d never want anything more than to go on living in Hollister for the rest of her life.”

“Then she discovered a fascination for microscopes, got a science degree and moved to New York City to work in a research lab. Dan wouldn’t leave Hollister, so they got a divorce. Good thing they didn’t have kids, I guess.”

“I guess. Especially with Dan living in a whiskey bottle these days.”

She glanced at him. “Maybe some women mature late.”

He glanced back. “You going to develop a fascination with microscopes and move to New York?” he asked suspiciously.

She laughed out loud. “I hope not. I hate cities.”

He grinned again. “Me, too. Just checking.”

“Besides, how could I leave Sammy? I’m sure there isn’t an apartment in a big city that would let you keep a calf in it.”

He laughed. “Well, they would. But only in the fridge. Or the freezer.”

“You bite your tongue!” she exclaimed. “Nobody’s eating my cow!”

He frowned thoughtfully. “Good point. I’m not exactly sure I know how to field dress a cow. A steer, sure. But cows are, well, different.”

She glared at him. “You are not field dressing Sammy, so forget it.”

He sighed. “There go my dreams of a nice steak.”

“You can get one at the restaurant in town anytime you like. Sammy is for petting, not eating.”

“If you say so.”

“I do!”

He loved to wind her up and watch the explosion. She was so full of life, so enthusiastic about everything new. He enjoyed being with her. There were all sorts of places he could take her. He was thinking ahead. Far ahead.

“You’re smirking,” she accused. “What are you thinking about?”

“I was just remembering how excited you get about new things,” he confessed. “I was thinking of places we could go together.”

“You were?” she asked, surprised. And flattered.

He smiled at her. “I’ve never dated anybody regularly,” he said. “I mean, I’ve had dates. But this is different.” He searched for a way to put into words what he was thinking.

“You mean, because we’re sort of being forced into it by the wills.”

He frowned. “No. That’s not what I mean.” He stopped at an intersection and glanced her way. “I haven’t had regular dates with a woman I’ve known well for years and years,” he said after a minute. “Somebody I like.”

She beamed. “Oh.”

He chuckled as he pulled out onto the long highway that led to Billings. “We’ve had our verbal cut-and-thrust encounters, but despite that sharp tongue, I enjoy being with you.”

She laughed. “It’s not that sharp.”

“Not to me. I understand there’s a former customer of the florist shop where you worked who could write a testimonial for you about your use of words in a free-for-all.”

She flushed and fiddled with her purse. “He was obnoxious.”

“Actually they said he was just trying to ask you out.”

“It was the way he went about it,” she said curtly. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a man talk to me like that in my whole life.”

“I don’t think he’ll ever use the same language to any other woman, if it’s a consolation.” He teased. “So much for his inflated ego.”

“He thought he was irresistible,” she muttered. “Bragging about his fast new car and his dad’s bank balance, and how he could get any woman he wanted.” Her lips set. “Well, he couldn’t get this one.”

“Teenage boys have insecurities,” he said. “I can speak with confidence on that issue, because I used to be one myself.” He glanced at her with twinkling black eyes. “They’re puff adders.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve never seen one myself, but I had a buddy in the service who was from Georgia. He told me about them. They’re these snakes with insecurities.”

She burst out laughing. “Snakes with insecurities?”

He nodded. “They’re terrified of people. So if humans come too close to them, they rise up on their tails and weave back and forth and blow out their throats and start hissing. You know, imitating a cobra. Most of the time, people take them at face value and run away.”

“What if people stand their ground and don’t run?”

He laughed. “They faint.”

“They faint? ”

He nodded. “Dead away, my buddy said. He took a friend home with him. They were walking through the fields when a puff adder rose up and did his act for the friend. The guy was about to run for it when my buddy walked right up to the snake and it fainted dead away. I hear his family is still telling the story with accompanying sound effects and hilarity.”

“A fainting snake.” She sighed. “What I’ve missed, by spending my whole life in Montana. I wouldn’t have known any better, either, though. I’ve never seen a cobra.”

“They have them in zoos,” he pointed out.

“I’ve never been to a zoo.”

“What?”

“Well, Billings is a long way from Hollister and I’ve never had a vehicle I felt comfortable about getting there in.” She grimaced. “This is a very deserted road, most of the time. If I broke down, I’d worry about who might stop to help me.”

He gave her a covert appraisal. She was such a private person. She kept things to herself. Remembering her uncle and his weak heart, he wasn’t surprised that she’d learned to do that.

“You couldn’t talk to your uncle about most things, could you, Jake?” he wondered out loud.

“Not really,” she agreed. “I was afraid of upsetting him, especially after his first heart attack.”

“So you learned to keep things to yourself.”

“I pretty much had to. I’ve never had close girlfriends, either.”

“Most of the girls your age are married and have kids, except the ones who went into the military or moved to cities.”

She nodded. “I’m a throwback to another era, when women lived at home until they married. Gosh, the world has changed,” she commented.

“It sure has,” he agreed. “When I was a boy, television sets were big and bulky and in cabinets. Now they’re so thin and light that people can hang them on walls. And my iPod does everything a television can do, right down to playing movies and giving me news and weather.”

She frowned. “That wasn’t what I meant, exactly.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I mean, that women seem to want careers and men in volume.”

He cleared his throat.

“That didn’t come out right.” She laughed self-consciously. “It just seems to me that women are more like the way men used to be. They don’t want commitment. They have careers and they live with men. I heard a newscaster say that marriage is too retro a concept for modern people.”

“There have always been people who lived out of the mainstream, Jake,” he said easily. “It’s a choice.”

“It wouldn’t be mine,” she said curtly. “I think people should get married and stay married and raise children together.”

“Now that’s a point of view I like.”

She studied him curiously. “Do you want kids?”

He smiled. “Of course. Don’t you?”

She averted her eyes. “Well, yes. Someday.”

He sighed. “I keep forgetting how young you are. You haven’t really had time to live yet.”

“You mean, get fascinated with microscopes and move to New York City,” she said with a grin.

He laughed. “Something like that, maybe.”

“I could never see stuff in microscopes in high school,” she recalled. “I was so excited when I finally found what I thought was an organism and the teacher said it was an air bubble. That’s all I ever managed to find.” She grimaced. “I came within two grade points of failing biology. As it was, I had the lowest passing grade in my whole class.”

“But you can cook like an angel,” he pointed out.

She frowned. “What does that have to do with microscopes?”

“I’m making an observation,” he replied. “We all have skills. Yours is cooking. Somebody else’s might be science. It would be a pretty boring world if we all were good at the same things.”

“I see.”

He smiled. “You can crochet, too. My grandmother loved her crafts, like you do. She could make quilts and knit sweaters and crochet afghans. A woman of many talents.”

“They don’t seem to count for much in the modern world,” she replied.

“Have you ever really looked at the magazine rack, Jake?” he asked, surprised. “There are more magazines on handicrafts than there are on rock stars, and that’s saying something.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” She looked around. They were just coming into Billings. Ahead, she could see the awesome outline of the Rimrocks, where the airport was located, in the distance. “We’re here?” she exclaimed.

“It’s not so far from home,” he said lazily.

“Not at the speed you go, no,” she said impudently.

He laughed. “There wasn’t any traffic and we aren’t overly blessed with highway patrols at this hour of the night.”

“You catch speeders, and you’re local law enforcement,” she pointed out.

“I don’t catch them on the interstate unless they’re driving on it through my town,” he replied. “And it’s not so much the speed that gets them caught, either. It’s the way they’re driving. You can be safe at high speeds and dangerous at low ones. Weaving in and out of traffic, riding people’s bumpers, running stop signs, that sort of thing.”

“I saw this television program where an experienced traffic officer said that what scared him most was to see a driver with both hands white-knuckled and close together on the steering wheel.”

He nodded. “There are exceptions, but it usually means someone who’s insecure and afraid of the vehicle.”

“You aren’t.”

He shrugged. “I’ve been driving since I was twelve. Kids grow up early when they live on ranches. Have to learn how to operate machinery, like tractors and harvesters.”

“Our ranch doesn’t have a harvester.”

“That’s because our ranch can’t afford one,” he said, smiling. “But we can always borrow one from neighbors.”

“Small towns are such nice places,” she said dreamily. “I love it that people will loan you a piece of equipment that expensive just because they like you.”

“I imagine there are people in cities who would do the same, Jake, but there’s not much use for them there.”

She laughed. “No, I guess not.”

He turned the corner and pulled into a parking lot next to a long, low building. There was a neon sign that said Red’s Tavern.

“It’s a bar?” she asked.

“It’s a dance club. They do serve alcohol, but not on the dance floor.”

“Theodore, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a bar in my life.”

“Not to worry, they won’t force you to drink anything alcoholic,” he told her, tongue-in-cheek. “And if they tried, I’d have to call local law and have them arrested. You’re underage.”

“Local law?”

“I’m not sanctioned to arrest people outside my own jurisdiction,” he reminded her. “But you could make a citizen’s arrest. Anybody can if they see a crime being committed. It’s just that we don’t advise it. Could get you killed, depending on the circumstances.”

“I see what you mean.”

He got out and opened her door, lifting her gently down from the truck by the waist. He held her just in front of him for a minute, smiling into her soft eyes. “You’re as light as a feather,” he commented softly. “And you smell pretty.”

A shocked little laugh left her throat. “I smell pretty?”

“Yes. I remember my grandmother by her scent. She wore a light, flowery cologne. I recognize it if I smell it anywhere. She always smelled so good.”

Her hands rested lightly on his broad shoulders. He was very strong. She loved his strength, his size.

She smiled into his dark eyes. “You smell good, too. Spicy.”

He nuzzled her nose with his. “Thanks.”