Western Man Read online

  “Yes. Mom and Dad and Scott are out at the South Meadow gathering the first-calf heifers. It always happens that way, doesn’t it?” She smiled in his direction. “Livestock never gets out unless you’re the only person around. You could have helped,” she said in a half-accusation.

  “You and Sam were doing all right,” he replied with a faint grin. “I thought I should stay by the lane in case the horses got past the two of you.”

  “Sure,” she mocked him with an exaggerated agreement. “The truth is you were standing back there so you could watch me racing around there like a mad hen with two-ton Tony on her hip.” Upon entering the kitchen, she plunked Tony on his chair and pushed it up to the table. “You’d better finish your cookies and milk,” she advised him, but he was still pouting because she wouldn’t let the dog come in the house. He hung his head, his lower lip jutting out sullenly, and showed no interest in the cookies or milk.

  Ridge wandered over to the kitchen counter where the cookies were cooling on the newspaper. “I’m going to be needing a couple of extra riders at Latigo the day after tomorrow. I stopped by to see if Scott might be able to shake free.”

  Latigo was the name of his ranch, which encompassed nearly a hundred square miles of Piceance Basin in western Colorado. The rough terrain of hill and gully was well suited for cattle ranching, and Latigo was one of the larger ones in the area.

  “I’m sure Scott can help out,” Sharon answered. Although her father and brother were ostensibly partners in their ranch, her brother often hired out for day work at neighboring ranches to lessen the drain on the ranch’s finances and permit them to put more of the profits back into the ranch.

  “Do you suppose I can persuade your mom to come along and cook for us—and maybe swing a rope now and then?” He arched her a querying look as he bit into a cookie.

  The corners of her mouth deepened with a faint smile. Her mother was widely respected and sought after as both a cook and a cowhand, although the approval of her skill on horseback was usually grudgingly given. Of course, her father gave full credit to his wife for working at his side and building their ranch from practically nothing to the modest holding it was today. Sharon admired her because even though her mother did a man’s work, she never stopped being a woman. She didn’t resort to cussing or rough talk to gain male acceptance as one of them. If anything, men respected her more for that.

  “You’ll have to ask Mom.” Sharon didn’t answer for her mother.

  “What I should do is arrange some sort of package deal for the whole Powell family?” A slow smile widened the line of his mouth.

  “That might be arranged.” She laughed briefly, pleased by the subtle recognition of her worth as a working rider. After she washed her hands in the sink, she walked to the table to begin spooning the rest of the cookie dough onto the sheet pan. It was easier to keep busy while Ridge was around. It kept her from focusing too much attention on him. “Do you want me to have Scott call you tonight?’

  “Yeah, why don’t you do that?” he agreed and came over to the table to watch her, a fistful of cookies in his hand. He stood idly for a minute, then pulled out a chair to sit down.

  When she carried the pan to the oven, she had to step over his long legs, his boots hooked one atop the other. Ridge always seemed so relaxed, and she always felt so tense. Turning back to the table, she deliberately shifted her attention to the pouting Tony.

  “Drink your milk.” She pushed the glass closer to him so it was within his reach.

  “No. Don’t want it,” he refused sulkily. “It’s warm. I want another glass.”

  A fresh glass of cold milk from the refrigerator would probably have only one swallow taken from it, then be left to sit as this one had been. In Sharon’s opinion, that was a shameful waste.

  “You have to drink this milk before you can have any more,” she informed him.

  “No.” Tony slumped in the chair and peered up at her through tearful lashes.

  “Don’t be so mean,” Ridge eyed her with mock reproval. “I don’t blame the kid for not wanting warm milk. I don’t either.”

  With an adult supporting his demand, Tony reasserted it, banging his feet against the chair in a slight temper display. “I want milk.”

  “You’re a lot of help,” she muttered to Ridge. “I tell him no and you undermine what little authority I have.”

  There was an amused glint in his eyes at her flash of anger. “There is a simple solution to this that will satisfy both you and Tony,” Ridge insisted.

  “What’s that?” Sharon asked in skeptical challenge.

  “Ice.” After delivering his one-word answer, he rolled to his feet in a single motion and crossed to the refrigerator, removing a tray of ice cubes from the freezer compartment. “Tony still drinks the same glass of milk, but the ice will make it cold.” Taking two cubes from the tray, he walked to the table and dropped them in Tony’s glass. “You see?’ An eyebrow quirked in Sharon’s direction.

  “I hope you’re right.” For some reason, she was still skeptical of his solution.

  “Of course I’m right,” Ridge said as Tony reached eagerly for the glass.

  Instead of drinking the milk, Tony tried to scoop out the ice cubes, and Sharon understood why she had instinctively doubted the wisdom of Ridge’s solution.

  “No, Tony, don’t play with the ice cubes,” she admonished and pulled his stubby fingers out of the glass to dry them with a kitchen towel. She slid a dry glance at Ridge. “Terrific idea.”

  “Drink your milk and see if the ice made it cold.” Ridge changed chairs, sitting in the one next to Tony offering him the glass again. “Once you drink all your milk, then you can have the ice cubes.” With seeming obedience, Tony took a drink of his milk and Ridge shot a complacent glance at Sharon. “You just have to know how to handle children.”

  “And you’re an expert, of course,” she mocked. “How many children did you say you had?”

  “None . . . that I know about,” he qualified his answer with a roguish twinkle glittering in his eyes.

  It wasn’t as if half the women in the county wouldn’t have been willing to bear his child, Sharon thought. She turned away quickly to the oven to check on the cookies before her gaze lingered on the raw strength and maturity etched in his roughly hewn features. It was much too easy to love him—and much too hard to stop.

  The cookies were close enough to being done, so she removed the pan from the oven with the aid of a protective potholder and carried it to the counter. She concentrated on lifting them one by one from the sheet pan with the metal spatula so she could block out the physical impact of his presence.

  “Scott mentioned you were planning on cutting back on the number of shows you’re attending this year,” he remarked.

  “I think so,” she admitted. “It’s getting too expensive to haul horses to some of the distant shows. I thought I’d concentrate on the major shows in the immediate area. I can’t quit the show ring altogether or I’ll lose the chance of getting new horses to train.” She was well aware that competing in stock and western pleasure classes brought her to the attention of owners willing to pay to have their horses trained by a professional. Her reputation as a trainer was growing—and she had a roomful of trophies and ribbons to prove it.

  As she turned to carry the empty cookie sheet to the table, she saw Tony slyly dipping his hand into the milk glass. “Tony—”

  At her sharply reprimanding tone, he jerked his hand out of the glass. The suddenness of his action tipped the glass over, spilling the milk—right into Ridge’s lap.

  “Now look what you’ve done, Tony.” But she couldn’t keep the smile out of her voice as she deposited the cookie sheet on the table and reached for the towel. Her hazel eyes were dancing with laughter when she met Ridge’s glance. “Was the milk cold?” she murmured innocently.

  The anger went out of his expression as quickly as it had come in. “You know damned well it was,” he muttered with a half smile a
nd took the towel she offered to blot up the excess wetness.

  “The ice cubes were your idea.” Sharon took delight in reminding him of the fact.

  “Maybe father doesn’t always know best,” Ridge conceded with a rueful look and stood up to wipe at the front of his jeans where the wet blotch spread onto his thigh. “There’s one consolation. Milk is probably the cleanest thing that’s touched these jeans lately.”

  The faded material was dusty and dirt-stained, but Sharon was more conscious of the way the work-worn fabric snugly shaped itself to his hips and thighs like a second skin. It turned her thoughts in a direction that had no place in the kitchen.

  The spilled milk that hadn’t initially landed on Ridge was now dripping off the edge of the table. Sharon grabbed the dishcloth from the sink and mopped up the milky film on the table. All the while Tony stayed very quiet and very small, not wanting to draw further attention to himself in an attempt to avoid possible punishment. He looked sufficiently chagrined so that Sharon didn’t feel anything more needed to be said.

  As she returned to the sink to rinse the dishcloth under the faucet, Ridge followed her. “I’m afraid your towel is soiled,” he said, acknowledging it had picked up some of his dirt along with the milk.

  “It’ll wash.”

  Chapter Two

  Taking the towel from him, Sharon draped it over the edge of the counter to dry and folded the dishcloth to lay it over the divider of the double sink. She felt him studying her with a penetrating thoughtfulness and sent him a curious sidelong glance.

  “I hear you’ve been seeing a lot of that oil man lately,” Ridge said.

  “Oil man?” She frowned with an initial bewilderment, then her expression cleared. “You mean Andy Rivers,” she said, realizing suddenly whom he meant. “He’s a geologist who works for an oil company.”

  The Piceance Basin of Colorado contained one of the largest concentrations of oil shale. According to Andy, they estimated there were over 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the shale, more than the provable reserves of crude oil in the OPEC countries. It defied imagination when one considered they were standing on top of it.

  “Same difference,” Ridge shrugged at her answer and continued to study her with a kind of interested speculation. “Is it true it’s become a regular thing?”

  “More or less. Between his work schedule and my horse show dates, we don’t see each other all that frequently,” Sharon insisted. “But I suppose we go out on a fairly regular basis.”

  “Are you thinking about marrying him?” he asked.

  Just for a second she searched his face, trying to find some reason for this personal interest, but there appeared to be little more than the casual interest of a family friend. She suppressed a sigh. Friends always seemed to be more inquisitive than family.

  She laughed shortly and with little humor. “Why is it that if a girl sees a guy more than a half-dozen times everybody assumes she’s planning on a trip to the alter? Maybe I’m just taking a page out of your book—or Scott’s.” She was vaguely impatient, but there was no heat of anger in her voice.

  His eyes narrowed speculatively. “What do you mean by that?”

  “You and Scott seem to be on the road to becoming confirmed bachelors.” To her knowledge, neither Ridge nor her brother had been serious about any girl they had dated. “Maybe I’m not the marrying kind either.” Her real problem was that she had to stop comparing every man she met to Ridge. Until she did that, she probably never would find a man she could care enough about to marry. “I enjoy going out with Andy. We have fun together.”

  Which was true. Andy made her laugh. When she was with him, she rarely thought about Ridge. Maybe that didn’t seem earth shattering, but she considered it important.

  “The three of us used to have some good times together. You, me and Scott,” Ridge stated somewhat absently. Lifting a hand, he trailed a finger along her cheekbone and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Didn’t we?”

  “Yes.” Sharon didn’t trust herself to say more.

  There was a poignant drift of memories back to that time he had recalled. It had always been a threesome, although Sharon had been so wildly infatuated with Ridge at the time that she had believed her brother was tagging along with them—instead of her tagging along with them. She had built so many dreams from those innocent evenings in Ridge’s company. She had wanted so much to believe he loved her that she had exaggerated every slow dance, every kiss, out of all proportion.

  Long ago Sharon had stopped trying to second-guess his motives, so she didn’t allow herself to wonder whether he was caught in a past memory when his calloused fingers laid themselves against the curve of her neck. He bent his head toward her, the brim of his hat partially masking the skimming inspection of his gaze.

  She had learned that a kiss from Ridge was nothing more than a kiss. Avoiding it would make more out of it than what it was. The trick was to accept it without making more out of it than it was.

  The warm pressure of his mouth covered her lips and moved familiarly to take possession. His hand tightened slightly on her neck to arch her into the kiss. An encircling arm was bringing her against his body. Sharon relaxed naturally against his hard frame, letting her hands slide around his middle.

  Her lips moved under the investigative influence of his. The stirrings of hunger escaped her restraint and became a part of her response. Sharon wavered, wanting to draw back from the edge of this unexpected precipice, but Ridge pressed the issue with deepening insistence. Her indecision dissolved under the heat of raw longing.

  There was a slow disentangling of their lips. Her breath was coming low and shallow, as disturbed as the uneven rhythm of her pulse. Sharon was careful not to let her expression show just how much his kiss had affected her. Her gaze she kept focused on the shoulder seam of his shirt. His face remained close to hers, his hat brim casting a shadow on her face while his moist breath warmed her hot skin.

  “When did you learn to kiss like that?’ His low voice held a hint of curious amusement.

  The hand on the small of her back spread its fingers, testing the supple curve of her spine. It sent little waves of heat lightning flashing through her nerves, recharging their high sensitivity. His hard, sinewed length seemed indelibly imprinted on her flesh, male in its contours.

  “It’s been two years or more since you kissed me.” If he’d asked, Sharon could have told him the place and the time. Her voice contained no trace of her tension, even though it was a little on the husky side. “I’ve had time to practice. Surely you didn’t expect me to kiss like some innocent seventeen-year-old.”

  “I don’t know,” Ridge murmured and raised her chin, his blue eyes intent and probing in their narrowed study of her. “But I didn’t expect this.”

  This recognition of her as a woman was the very thing she had so longed to hear. Her breath caught in her throat, as she hardly dared to believe it. Even if Ridge meant nothing beyond that, there was sweet satisfaction in being acknowledged as a desirable female. However, both her feet remained firmly planted in reality. It was the first time Sharon had met him on an equal footing—man to woman. He didn’t have a starry-eyed romantic in his arms.

  All this gave her a new confidence when his mouth sought to discover the mystery of her lips again. It wasn’t necessary to disguise her enjoyment of this intimacy. Her lips parted under the deepening urgency of his kiss. A golden tide of warmth curled through her limbs while she spread her hands over the rippling muscles of his back.

  Her senses were awash with the taste, the feel, and the smell of him. His mouth rolled off her lips as he came up for air, the heat of his breath fanning her cheek. There was a labored edge to his breathing, and her acutely sensitive hearing picked up the slightly uneven tempo of his heartbeat.

  There was a bright glint in his eyes when Sharon finally lifted her gaze to meet his. Behind its surface amusement, the look was faintly accusing.

  “You’ve come of age
,” Ridge murmured.

  “I turned twenty-one on my last birthday,” she pointed out, a fact that he had obviously overlooked, being so accustomed to regarding her as Scott’s kid sister.

  From the front porch there came a snarling growl that erupted into an angry bark. Sharon stiffened at the sound, then pushed out of Ridge’s arms.

  “Tony,” she gasped the toddler’s name as she raced into the living room. He had managed to push the screen door open. When he heard her coming, he hurriedly tossed the cookie at the barking dog and guiltily let the door swing shut.

  “Doggie wanted a cookie.” He blinked at her with wide-eyed innocence.

  Fully aware that Tony was trying to make her believe he had intended throwing the treat to the dog all the time, Sharon wasn’t buying any of it. The cookie had been offered in an attempt to entice the dog inside the house.

  “All right, bud. It’s nap time for you,” Sharon informed him angrily.

  The minute she picked him up Tony started wailing at the top of his lungs. “Don’t want nap!” he protested. His cries immediately started the dog barking.

  Between the two, Sharon was nearly deafened. She shouted at both of them to hush up, but neither listened. When she turned, she spied Ridge leaning an arm against the doorway to the kitchen and watching the scene with detached amusement.

  “Will you shut that dog up!” she demanded.

  “Sam. Quiet.” The two words came out hard and quick. There was instant silence from the dog, although Tony continued his whining bawl in her ear. Ridge’s smile was close to a taunting grin as he moved lazily toward the door on a path that took him past Sharon. “One way or another, I think Sam and I have done enough damage for one afternoon.” His glance flicked to her lips and she guessed they were still swollen from his kisses. “Don’t forget to have Scott phone me tonight.”

  “I won’t.” But she’d practically forgotten the reason Ridge had stopped in the first place until he reminded her. Being in his arms had driven nearly everything from her mind.