Sandra Steffen - Wes Stryker's Wrangled Wife

At first glance out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw him by the barn, but it turned out to be an old barrel. With a sweeping gaze she took in a pair of discarded tires, a roll of rusty wire fence and a stack of hay covered with ice. Shading her eyes with one hand, she peered in the other direction.

Oh, my God, Wes. She froze: her gaze, her mind, everything.

The next thing she knew, she was slipping and sliding up the slight hill that led to the side of the house where a lone figure lay perfectly still, his cowboy hat upside down a few feet away “Wes! Are you all right?”

Silence.

“Are you dead? If you’re dead I’m never going to forgive you.” She was leaning over him now, gazing at a face that had been rugged looking last night but now had a deathly pallor. “Wes, say something. Anything.”

His eyes opened slowly, his dark blue irises tinged with gray. “Honey, I didn’t know you cared.”

She sputtered the same four-letter word she’d used at Burke and Louetta’s earlier. One corner of Wes’s mouth lifted in a half smile. “And to think you eat out of that mouth. Really, I love it when a woman talks dirty to me, but I’d enjoy it more if I were mobile, if you don’t mind.”

If he hadn’t tried to roll over, the action having elicited a pain-filled groan that made her wince and him swear, she would have told him what he could do with his mobility. “Dammit, Wes. I knew I should have called an ambulance.”

His face relaxed, his eyes closing. “I hate ambulances. Besides, I don’t need an ambulance. I need you.”

Her silence must have drawn his attention, because he looked up at her and said, “What, no scathing comeback?”

Hesitating, she measured him for a moment. “I was just wondering how hard you hit your head.”

“Don’t worry. My ribs and shoulder took the brunt of the fall.”

“And you’re sure nothing’s broken?”

“As sure as I can be at this point. What are you doing?”

A moment later she’d shrugged out of her fire-engine red coat and very carefully slid it underneath his head. Wes couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation for the warmth that suddenly wrapped around him. He only knew he wanted to pull Jayne down on top of him and explore this living, breathing thing that had started to come to life the moment she’d set foot inside the Crazy Horse last night.

“Jayne, you’ll freeze.”

She stood up and promptly began to slide down the gradual decline. Slowly making her way back to Wes, she said, “Only if you don’t shut up and help me figure out a way to get you to your feet.”

“There’s a can of ground coffee sitting on the counter.”

“You want me to make coffee? Now?”

He almost grinned. “The coffee’s already made. I was thinking that maybe we could use the coffee in the can for traction.”

“Traction,” she said, a dawning look of realization crossing her features a split second before she rose carefully to her feet. “Of course we need traction. Something for me to stand on to get a foothold, and something for you to use to keep from slipping. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

Since Wes couldn’t move, he did as she said. He watched her until she half slid, half skated beyond his peripheral vision, listening intently to the sound of her footsteps and the string of expletives she muttered when she almost fell. The screen door creaked open, followed by a stretch of silence Wes couldn’t measure. And then she was back, a can of salt in one hand, his brand-new tin of coffee in the other. She sprinkled them both on the ground all around him, taking extra care to grind the concoction into the ice. Seemingly satisfied that neither she nor Wes would slip as long as they were careful, she glided down to her knees.

“Do you think you can move now?” she asked.

Wes gritted his teeth, bent both knees and rolled to his side. Her hands circled his upper arm, flitting to his back and down around his waist as if she didn’t know where to put them. He wouldn’t have minded the opportunity to enjoy this. Unfortunately it required all his concentration to keep from passing out as he pushed himself to his knees. Stars flashed before his eyes. Pain shot through his shoulder, biting, searing, cutting. His ears were ringing by the time he found his feet, and sweat had broken out on his upper lip.

He took a few moments to catch his breath. When the world came back into focus, he held his left arm close to his body and staggered two steps.

“Wes, where are you going?”

He started to slip, jerked, then regained his balance. “Help me get closer to the house.”

She did as he said.

“Okay, now stand back.”

“What are you going to—”

He closed his eyes and slammed his shoulder against the siding. There was a roaring din in his ears and unbearable pain. He heard Jayne swear, but as if from a great distance. Moment by moment, inch by inch, the pain drained out of him, the blood slowly returning to his head. He opened his eyes, tried his shoulder and slanted her a cocky grin. “There. I’m as good as new.”

She seethed.

“Next time you decide to body slam a house, would you give me a little warning?”

“I’m hoping there isn’t going to be a next time.” Being careful not to put all his weight on his bad knee, he tested it. Satisfied that it wouldn’t give out on him, he took a shuddering breath and checked his ribs. Although a couple of them ached, he didn’t think they were broken.

“Well?”

The edge in Jayne’s voice brought his head around and his eyes open. She was looking at him, her chin raised slightly, her lush lips pursed haughtily, despite the way she was shivering.

Aw, she was shivering. Of course she was shivering, he thought, coming to his senses. She wasn’t wearing a coat. She was wearing a high-necked sweater and a skirt in bold colors that nobody in their right mind would put together. And yet on her it looked good. Maybe it was the fit, not the style—he bent over, stiffly scooping his hat off the ground, then proceeded to take a step toward her—or maybe she would look good no matter what she was wearing. Or wasn’t wearing.

Jayne didn’t know what to make of the expression on Wes’s face, but the careful, deliberate way he was walking toward her had masculine intent written all over it. She would have backed up, except her feet seemed to be frozen to the ground. Only her eyes had the ability to move, and they were trained on the man who was advancing with quiet purpose.

“What do you think you’re—”

Without warning, he bent at the waist, snagged her coat from the ground and very carefully placed it on her shoulders. There was warmth in the hand resting lightly on the back of her neck. Another kind of warmth darkened the color of his eyes as he said, “What did you think I was going to do?”

She relaxed her shoulders, but not her guard. Not one to invite trouble, she refrained from telling him that if she were a betting woman, she would have laid ten-to-one odds that he was going to kiss her.

He stared at her through narrowed eyes and slowly eased closer. Make that a-hundred-to-one odds. His face hovered inches from hers, not close enough to kiss her, after all, but close enough to make her slightly uncomfortable and very aware. Of him as a man and of herself as a woman, and of what the two of them could do together. It made her wonder if his chest was really as tanned as it had been in her dreams and if his stomach really had those washboard ripples...

Jayne blinked against the image and told herself to get a grip. What she had to do was get out of there before she did something she would regret. “It’s time I was going. I can’t say this has been fun, but it has been interesting.”

He looked at her long and hard, but he made no reply.

“You are okay, aren’t you?”

He turned without a word, heading for the barn.

Jayne had to force her mouth closed and felt herself bristling all over again. Did the man have no manners?

“Driving on those silly old icy roads was no trouble, really,” she called to his back. “There’s no need to thank me. It was nothing, honest”

He didn’t so much as shrug, although she was sure he looked right at her after he’d unlatched a weathered barn door and had slowly pushed it open far enough to slip through.

The wind was cold at her back, and her feet were freezing inside her thin boots, yet she didn’t make a beeline for her car. Something didn’t add up. She’d been around men all her life. She’d been yelled at by a few and tiptoed around by several, but men rarely ignored her. Wes Stryker had been a perfect gentleman the previous night, with his “evenin’, ma’am” and his slow, easy smile. So what was this silent treatment all about?

She supposed it was curiosity that had her skating toward the barn and slipping inside. “Stryker?” she called, wrinkling her nose at the smell of horses and hay and something she hoped she hadn’t already stepped in. “If I ruin this pair of boots, I’m going to hold you personally responsible. Where are you, anyway?”

“I’m right here.”

She jumped at his sudden appearance in a doorway a few feet away. When he disappeared again, she followed, striding past a row of dark stalls and into an area that was divided into two sections by a wooden fence. “Why is it,” she said as her eyes slowly adjusted to the light spilling through three high windows, “that you only answer half my questions?”

Wes waited to breathe a sigh of relief until after he’d returned the scoop to the barrel of oats. She hadn’t left. Hallelujah, she hadn’t left.

He’d almost kissed her out in the yard. A tiny thread of self-preservation had stopped him at the last minute, because something had warned him that if he kissed her, she would hightail it out of there. And he didn’t want her to leave. He wanted her to stay, and that wanting scared him more than he cared to admit.

Being careful of his left shoulder, he carried the bucket of oats to a far corner and emptied it into the feeder. Three horses immediately started eating. Smoothing his hand over the middle horse’s gray muzzle, he said, “I’ve always been a firm believer in letting actions speak for themselves.”

Jayne strolled a little closer, thinking about Wes’s answer. She didn’t know what to make of him. What, exactly, were his actions saying right now? He was looking at a horse, stroking its muzzle with his right hand. His hand was broad and tanned, his fingers blunt tipped and slightly crooked, as if they’d been broken a time or two. It was a masculine hand, but not a terribly attractive one, and yet there was something very attractive about the way it moved up and down the horse’s head.

“Is he your favorite horse?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“He was my best friend’s favorite horse.”

The current in his voice drew her gaze. “Does he have a name?”

“My friend’s name was Dusty. This is Gray.”

“How long ago did Dusty die?”

Wes’s hand went perfectly still. “How did you know he died?”

She studied him thoughtfully for a moment. He’d done it again, hadn’t answered her question. “I guess bleeding hearts recognize each other.”

She strolled a little closer, drawing a line in the dust on the top board of the stall with a finger. “I spent the first few months after Sherman moved out wondering if I was going crazy. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate. A friend of mine convinced me to enroll in an art class. Another friend suggested yoga.” Jayne shook her head. “I have no artistic talent, and all that breathing and chanting didn’t relax me. It drove me crazy. I know death and divorce aren’t the same things, but they’re both losses. I won’t say something trite, trying to minimize your pain, but time has helped me.”