The Courting Cowboy Read online

  The latter, no doubt, she mused, despite the amazing firmness of his musculature. The only softness she found in Ty Garrett was the softness of his cheek touching her brow and the gentleness of his hand making lazy circles across her back.

  She stiffened.

  When had he started that? she wondered, startled at how easily she had accepted his unacceptable behavior. She took a careful breath. He really must stop, she thought, stop that slow slide of his fingers and palm down her spine and over the curve of her hip as he guided her through the motions of the dance.

  How much guiding was necessary and how much was superfluous was a calculation she found herself unable to make. She didn’t know what kind of dance they were doing. Conversation was her only hope.

  “So, Mr. Garrett . . . I mean, Ty. Tell me about your schooling.” Her voice sounded as faint as she felt.

  As if he’d noticed the change, he tightened his hold on her, which didn’t help. It didn’t help at all.

  “Well, I spent two years at Chadron State on a rodeo scholarship. Studied business, rodeoed hard, and went to Bozeman once for the college finals. I had a real good roping partner that year. He wanted to go pro, and we might have made some pretty fair money. We held our own on the college circuit, and were darn near unbeatable at amateur rodeos.”

  “Why didn’t you go professional?” she asked, daring once again to look up at him.

  He met her gaze, and a slow smile curved his mouth. “Corey. Mom and Dad were real good to let me have a couple of years of college, but he was my responsibility. Besides, I missed him, seeing him only summers and on weekends when I wasn’t at a rodeo somewhere.”

  “What about your wife? Didn’t she help out?” The inappropriateness of the question didn’t occur to her until the words were out. But given the way he was touching her, it was a wonder she could think at all, let alone think in advance of speaking.

  “I’ve never been married,” he said, and came to a halt in the middle of the dance floor. His arm stayed securely around her waist.

  “Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry. I mean—” Goodness, but their conversations got personal quickly.

  “No need to be sorry. I don’t think Linda and I could have made a go of it. She was only seventeen.”

  “Oh, yes. I see . . . The difficulty, that is . . .”

  “And I was only eighteen. I wanted to marry her, but our folks got together and decided that marriage probably wouldn’t be the best thing.”

  “How terrible for you,” Victoria said. After jumping feetfirst into a messy situation, she felt it was imperative she show her support. It was the only gracious thing to do after such a mortifying blunder. “I’m sure you must have loved her very much.”

  “I might have thought so once, but it didn’t last long. She wanted to give the baby up for adoption.”

  Despite her best attempt at discretion, Victoria knew her shock showed. “I didn’t think . . . Of course . . . usually it’s the men . . .”

  “I think her folks talked her into it. They wanted the best for her, a four-year college, a career, all the things they thought were important.”

  His casual discussion of the most intimate details of his life in no way relieved her own discomfort. And she couldn’t imagine why he was confessing it all to her.

  “A young girl . . . Yes, I see . . . Of course . . .”

  “I hope this doesn’t change the way you feel about Corey. He thinks you’re great.” For the first time, his face grew serious.

  “Oh, no, Mr. Garrett,” she rushed to assure him. “Corey is a wonderful child, quite enough to make any parent proud. The complicated circumstances of his birth . . . Well, they wouldn’t influence . . . or change the way I—I mean, he’s a wonderful child,” she ended on a lame note, chagrined at her own embarrassment.

  “It wasn’t all that complicated,” he said, and the teasing grin he gave her made her pulse race. It also made her doubt that he was experiencing the same amount of humiliation she was, though the problem had most certainly been his and not hers.

  “Of course not . . . I didn’t mean . . .” She was flailing for words again.

  “Things just got out of hand. You know how that can happen.”

  No. No, she didn’t. She didn’t know anything about it at all, except that she could understand how someone much younger and less mature than herself could possibly get out of hand with someone like Ty Garrett. But she wouldn’t tell him that. She was already dumbstruck as it was.

  “You know, Victoria,” he said, his voice low and soft, his hand trailing along the curve of her chin. “If you didn’t fluster so easily, and so prettily, I wouldn’t enjoy doing it to you quite so much.”

  There came his grin again, and she felt herself grow warm from her cheeks to the tips of her toes.

  “However do you keep the high school boys from teasing you to death?” he asked, letting his thumb rub dangerously close to her bottom lip.

  “They are not inclined, sir,” she said, her words a bare whisper. Her reversion to the utmost formality did not discourage him, not one iota.

  “And kissing?”

  “They would never even think of such a thing,” she said firmly.

  “Oh, they’re thinking it all right.” His grin broadened, and he guided her back into the movements of the dance.

  “They’re mere children,” she insisted.

  “And you’re naive, Oxford and all.”

  Actually, her naïveté was crumbling rather quickly under his teasing onslaught. A few stark, undeniable, and quite surprising realizations were taking its place, and once loosed, they were expounding and extrapolating at an alarming rate.

  Simply put, his smile made her think of sex. Though given her experience, she couldn’t imagine why. His smile was much too wonderful to be connected with those few furtive moments spent in the dark with Charles. Yet when he smiled, she thought of sex. The connection had been so unexpected, it had been a difficult one to make.

  Every time he smiled, though, she thought of kissing him in ways she’d never been kissed. She wasn’t sure anybody kissed the way her imagination conjured up when he smiled, yet she still thought about running her tongue across his clean white teeth and holding his face in her hands. She thought about tasting him and touching him.

  Truly, she’d never felt anything like it, this need to get closer. She thought she might like to dance with him for the rest of the night, and she was sure she didn’t dare succumb to such foolishness.

  A quick glance at him confirmed the reasonableness of her decision. At least as much trouble lay in his clear gray eyes as in his mouth. Long, thick lashes lent him an air of innocence, but his dark eyebrows made the innocence enticingly sensual. The irises themselves shone with brightness and warmth, giving him a particularly playful look. Now that she’d been forced to the bare truth, there was no doubt.

  Playful sensuality. Until she’d met him, she would have thought the two words incompatible. She’d never known anyone playful, and certainly no one sensual. In truth, she’d never known anyone like Ty Garrett. He exhibited heretofore undocumented characteristics.

  No wonder he disturbed her. No wonder at all.

  Four

  Victoria survived the dance with little more than her duty intact. Talbot custom and Ty Garrett’s arms had proven near disastrous to her emotions and her wits. Stationing herself by the fruit-punch dispenser, she vowed to take the rest of the evening more firmly in hand and not to budge unless it proved absolutely necessary.

  “Miss Willoughby?” Claire Clark, one of her students, came up to her, looking worried and nervous. “Can I stand here next to you? Bobby Palmer is after me to dance, and I don’t want to dance with him.”

  “Certainly, Claire,” Victoria said, pleased she had regained her image of quiet control. Bobby Palmer was brash, bigger than anybody else in the whole junior high, and had enough other masculine attributes to make any thirteen-year-old girl nervous. “Would you like some punch?”

/>   “Please.” Claire huddled closer, her finger busily twisting together long strands of her honey-blond hair. The girl was pretty and relied on the fact more than Victoria thought was wise, given the impermanence of youthful beauty. Charles had often praised her for her own quick mind, telling her it was the one asset she could depend on to pull her through any situation. To date he’d been right—barring any situation that included Ty Garrett.

  Feeling her composure slipping, Victoria quickly turned and began filling a paper cup with punch. Ty Garrett had no business lingering in her thoughts. The dance was over.

  “Miss Willoughby!” Claire shrieked under her breath, and grabbed for an arm to hold.

  The punch cup and Victoria’s chest collided with a quick jerk and a splash. She sucked in her breath while red punch soaked into her beige trellises and orange poppies, leaving a huge, garish splotch down the front of her dress.

  “He’s coming over!” Claire squealed, oblivious to the disaster she’d caused.

  With effort Victoria controlled her anger and irritation. “Calm down, Claire. I’ll handle Bobby Palmer.” She picked up a paper napkin and dabbed at her dress. It was hopeless.

  “Not Bobby,” Claire said, her voice full of excitement. “Ty Garrett is coming over.”

  Victoria froze in mid-dab. She looked over her shoulder and swallowed hard. Ty Garrett was indeed coming over. She would rather have faced ten Bobby Palmers.

  “Gawd, he’s so cute.” Claire gushed and giggled while Victoria fought panic. She didn’t deserve this night.

  Grabbing more napkins, she made a hasty attempt to pull herself together. She dabbed top to bottom and left to right, then once again all over, fast.

  “Victoria?”

  Her heart missed a beat. She whirled around with the giant wad of napkins pressed to her chest.

  “Mr. Garrett?” She lifted her chin to meet his eyes, forcing calmness into her voice.

  “Ty,” he insisted, smiling. Then his gaze fell on the napkins and the splotch. Concern lifted his eyes back to hers. “What happened?”

  “Hi, Ty,” Claire said, sidling between them. Unconcealed adoration softened her voice and put a totally inappropriate sultriness in her movements.

  Victoria looked askance at the suddenly flirtatious young woman. Whatever was the girl thinking? she wondered, then on second thought decided she didn’t want to know. Not when Claire was only thirteen and Mr. Garrett—Ty—was . . . was so close.

  “Hi, Claire,” he said, taking Victoria’s arm. “Could you excuse us for a minute?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer as he grabbed a handful of napkins and pulled her a little farther down the snack table.

  “I should have warned you about the kids getting rowdy,” he said in apology. “Somebody is always spilling something on somebody at these dances. I’m sorry it was you.”

  Victoria allowed herself to be guided to the end of the table, thinking it was terribly gallant of him to assume she hadn’t ruined her own dress.

  “It was an accident,” she assured him. “The young person was momentarily distracted.” A female reaction she was beginning to understand with startling clarity. Ty Garrett was the most physically distracting man she’d ever met. She would never forget how strong and solid his thighs had felt against her when they’d danced. She was sure she would want to forget, but she knew she wouldn’t.

  They stopped in front of the chips and dip, and his eyes met hers, serious and beautifully gray. He had sinful lashes, so thick and dark and long.

  “Was it Bobby Palmer? I saw him hanging around, and I—” He absently lifted the handful of napkins toward her, and their conversation came to a sudden, not-so-absent halt.

  What in the world was he thinking of doing with those napkins? she wondered, her pulse picking up.

  Ty caught her reaction and wondered the same thing. What had he been thinking? That he would press a few flimsy pieces of paper and his hand to her breast? His gaze followed his thoughts and his chest grew tight. He’d meant no disrespect, he was sure. But he knew from dancing with her that her dress was deceiving when it came to her anatomy. Her breasts were full and lush, and they were rising and falling in a quickening rhythm, another signal bound to keep him awake most of the night.

  The thought brought his head up, and his gaze collided with that of his son. Corey was giving him a look of desperate encouragement from across the gymnasium, as if he knew half the battle had been lost but that there was still hope.

  Ty felt a compelling urge to go over to Corey and explain that he hadn’t been the one to spill fruit punch all over Miss Willoughby’s dress. That he hadn’t forgotten Corey’s advice, and that he also hadn’t stepped on her when they’d danced. And that there was no reason to call Lacey, because his father was well able to handle himself and one not very troublesome, but somehow incredibly disconcerting woman.

  “I’ll have a talk with Bobby,” he said, lowering his arm and dropping the napkins on the table as discreetly as possible. He’d been in control once this evening, when they’d been dancing, and he swore he’d get her to dance with him again—no matter what it took.

  Victoria released her breath in an audible sigh, not caring if he heard her or not. She was too relieved to care. For a moment he’d been about to touch her intimately, and her whole body had come alive in a dizzying, dangerous rush.

  “It wasn’t Bobby.” She sounded breathless, and she didn’t care if he knew that either. The man was a mine field. She needed to get away from him. She took a step backward. She needed some distance between her and his eyes, his body, his smile. She took another step—and the potato chip bowl crashed to the floor.

  Embarrassment flooded through her. It was too much. She’d never been clumsy. Economy and efficiency of movement had been ingrained in her right along with the economy and efficiency of all other aspects of her life.

  An unrelenting sense of responsibility forced her to her knees to pick up chips, when all she wanted to do was run for cover. Worse yet, Ty Garrett’s sense of responsibility sent him to the floor with her.

  “My fault,” he said, sweeping broken chips into a pile with his hands.

  “No . . . really. I bumped into the table.”

  Their knees were almost touching, his right and her left, and their heads were bowed together over the small mess. Victoria wished he’d left her alone to clean up. His help was more disturbing than useful.

  “I know,” he said, “but that was my fault, too. I make you nervous.”

  The boldness of his statement left her speechless. She slowly raised her head and found him smiling at her. The gentleness of the expression shone in his eyes and in the shallow creases of his sun-browned cheeks. Her gaze unexpectedly lowered to his mouth. His bottom lip was slightly fuller than the top one, his teeth white and straight. As she stared, his smile faded, and before she realized what was happening, he leaned forward and kissed her.

  The caress of his mouth on hers was brief and potent, with only a heartbeat of time between his nose brushing against hers and his sigh blowing across her lips in retreat. It was the sigh that shook her to the core. More than the touch of his mouth, his sigh was filled with yearning and promise. He’d not only kissed her, he’d wanted to kiss her very badly.

  “I came over to tell you I have to go out in the parking lot and help get a truck started,” he said, filling the huge void of shocked silence with his soft, easy drawl and commonplace words.

  “By all means,” she said, her voice a bare whisper, her encouragement sincere. The parking lot was the best place for him. She needed to think, and as it stood, with him so near, her thought processes had completely shut down. She was running on automatic pilot alone.

  He’d kissed her.

  “I shouldn’t be gone very long. Sounds like he only needs a jump. If you need me, send one of the kids out.”

  “Of course.” She knew all about jumper cables and the combustion engine. She did not know much about kissing. Ty Garret
t did it similarly to Charles, but with a difference she didn’t comprehend. The action was the same, the quick touching of mouths. Charles had sometimes pressed a bit harder, a little less comfortably against her. The sigh had been unique though. And her response had been unprecedented, including the time of her unmentionable indiscretion. The kiss of her indiscretion had gone physically further than Ty Garrett’s, yet not as emotionally far as a sigh.

  “I’m sorry about your dress,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t be, really. I was never quite sure it was right for me.”

  He flashed her a grin and took her hand in his, helping her to her feet. “And I was just getting to like it.”

  She nodded, as if it were only natural for him to like her dress better after it had fruit punch spilled down the front and dozens of potato-chip crumbs clinging to the hem.

  When he walked away, she turned and braced herself on the snack table, closing her eyes and taking a deep, head-clearing breath. But her head didn’t clear, not at all. He’d kissed her, and everything inside her was acutely aware, buzzing with life and the memories of the seconds when he’d touched his mouth to hers.

  She would be the first to admit she’d led a sheltered life: growing up all over the world in the company of a group of much older, highly academic men. Men who had little or no time to spend on a young girl’s curiosity about anything other than the historically or scientifically significant subject at hand. She knew she’d missed some of the finer points of the male-female relationship, and her years with Charles had done little to enlighten her. There had been no abuse, of course, sexual, emotional, verbal, or otherwise. She and Charles had been above anything as personally involved as abuse. Sex had been a chore, kissing a duty, affection rare. Even physically they’d been as unattached as possible.

  But Ty Garrett had kissed her, and she felt longing. He had sighed against her lips, and she felt wanted. She knew those two emotions, with little effort, could change her life forever, make her something other than what she was.