A COWBOY'S PURSUIT Read online

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  © 2002

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  One

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  The slam of the back door stirred Artie Gilliam from his catnap in the armchair in his living room. He blinked, glanced at his watch, then frowned as he heard booted feet cross the kitchen and stomp in his direction.

  "Bit early for lunch, ain't it?" he said when Jace Tucker appeared, glowering from the doorway. "Or did my watch stop?" His daddy had given it to him right after the First World War and Artie supposed it could have given up the ghost by now, but he hoped it hadn't. He was counting on something outlasting his ninety-year-old bones.

  "I didn't come for lunch," Jace growled. He stalked into the room, still scowling, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders hunched. He strode clear to the end of the room before he turned and nailed Artie with a glare. "She's back."

  "She," Artie echoed with interest. It wasn't a question. He knew damned well which "she" Jace meant.

  As far as Jace Tucker was concerned, there was only one female in the whole universe: Celie O'Meara. Not that Jace had ever said as much to him. Or to anyone.

  If there was ever anyone more likely to make a hash of his love life—besides himself, Artie reckoned, and that had been a good sixty-odd years ago now—it was Jace. For a smart, good-lookin' feller who oughta be able to sweep a woman off her feet without half tryin', Jace didn't have the skills of a push broom.

  Artie sighed inwardly and shook his head.

  Misinterpreting the head shake, Jace enlightened him. "Celie," he spat.

  "Ayah." Artie tried to look as if he hadn't already figured that out. He smiled gently. "How nice."

  Jace's shoulders seemed to tighten more. "Ha," he said. He did another furious lap around the living room. The young fool would wear out the rug at the rate he was going, and that would be something else that wouldn't survive him, Artie thought glumly.

  Now he raised his brows. "Thought you was lookin' forward to her comin' back."

  Jace, being Jace, of course, hadn't said anything of the sort.

  But every day when he'd come back from working at the hardware store or from training horses out at the ranch, he'd asked if Artie had heard from any of Celie's family. The whole O'Meara clan had gone to Hawaii ten days ago for the wedding of Celie's sister, Polly, to Sloan Gallagher.

  Artie was sorry he'd missed it, but the ol' ticker had durn near give out on him this past winter, and the doc had said he wasn't up for flying halfway around the world yet. Didn't matter, really, as they'd kept him posted. He'd heard all about the wedding on the beach and the party with Sloan's film crew afterwards, and he'd always shared the news with Jace.

  He'd relayed every scrap of information he'd got after phone calls from Celie's mother, Joyce; from Polly and Sloan; from Polly's oldest daughter, Sara; and once from Celie herself.

  "Huh," Jace had said when Artie told him about Celie's phone call. "Managed to tear herself away from all those beach bums long enough to see if you were still among the livin', did she?"

  Artie had grinned. "She's a sweetheart, all right," he had agreed, knowing that wasn't what Jace had meant at all.

  Jace had scowled then.

  Jace was scowling now, hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans as he rocked back on the heels of his well-worn cowboy boots.

  "Reckoned you'd be glad to see her," Artie said, lifting a quizzical brow.

  "That was when I thought she'd come to her senses!" Jace's boots came down flat with a thump.

  "What do you mean?" Artie frowned. "She didn't cause no problems at Polly and Sloan's weddin', did she?"

  Everyone in Elmer knew that Celie had had a crush on cowboy-turned-actor Sloan Gallagher for years. She'd even bid her life's savings to win a Hollywood weekend with him at that cowboy auction they'd held back in February.

  What's more, she'd won! But if she'd gone out there starry-eyed over Sloan—and Artie wasn't absolutely sure she had—she'd sure seemed to come back cured. She'd had nothing but good things to say about Sloan, but she'd treated him more like a brother after that.

  And a good thing, too, as Sloan had been sweet on her sister, Polly. It could have been sticky, but it hadn't been. Far as he knew Celie had been delighted to be asked to be the maid of honor at Polly and Sloan's wedding.

  "She behaved herself at the weddin', didn't she?" he demanded now.

  "Guess so." Jace turned and glowered out the window. He rubbed the back of his neck, clenched his fists at his sides, then hunched his shoulders again. To an old rough-stock rider like Artie, he looked exactly like a bull about to blow.

  "She ain't gone back to hankerin' after Matt Williams!" he said, aghast.

  Matt Williams had jilted Celie ten years ago. At the time she'd been little more than a child—barely twenty and besotted with a foolish footloose boy who didn't know a good thing when he had it. But telling her so hadn't helped. Matt's rejection had liked to killed her. It had sure as shootin' made her scared of trustin' men.

  To Artie's way of thinking, if you got bucked off, you had to just get right back on again, meet other guys, go out on dates. But Celie hadn't seen it that way. She'd holed up with her magazines and her videos and had spent the past ten years dreamin' about Sloan Gallagher.

  As far as Artie knew, she hadn't had a date since Matt had dumped her—not until February, anyway, when she'd got up the gumption to bid on Sloan. Of course by then Sloan had already set his sights on Polly.

  Artie hoped to goodness that, her dreams of Sloan thwarted, she hadn't decided to start thinking about Matt again.

  "Make more sense if she had," Jace muttered.

  That made Artie's brows lift. "Since when did you become a Matt Williams fan?"

  They'd been buddies back then, of course, Jace and Matt—traveling partners, in fact—going down the road from rodeo to rodeo. But Jace hadn't agreed with Matt's way of breaking his engagement. Of course, that could have been because he'd left it up to Jace to call Celie and tell her it was off.

  "Matt's a jerk," Jace said now. He yanked off his straw cowboy hat and raked a hand through his hair. "But then we all know that."

  Artie had a terrible thought. "She didn't get engaged to no surfer!"

  Jace snorted. He scowled. He strangled the brim of his hat. "No."

  "Well then, what the devil's the problem? She's back. It's what you been waitin' for." He held up a hand to forestall Jace's protest. "Don't tell me you two are fightin' already?"

  It wasn't any secret that Celie and Jace didn't see eye-to-eye. 'Course that was on account of Celie always having been a sweet, proper-brought-up girl and Jace being something of a hell-raiser. And if that hadn't been enough, Artie knew Celie had always considered Jace the inspiration for Matt's going astray.

  "Matt's role model," she'd called him. Role model was one of the nicer terms she'd used.

  And there was some truth to her accusation. Any young cowpoke with a hankering for women and the wild side could've learned a few things from Jace Tucker. Even now he still liked to have a good time. But he'd settled down a good bit, to Artie's way of thinking.

  The Jace he'd got to know over these past few months drank a few beers and shot a few games of pool at the Dew Drop, but he never came home drunk—and he always came home. Didn't bring no girls with him, either.

  He was true to Celie. Not that she knew it.

  Jace wasn't the sort of feller who wore his heart on his sleeve. Most of the time, Artie reckoned, the young fool had it wrapped up in barbed wire and duct tape and buried it under six feet of sarcasm. So it wasn't real surprising that Celie didn't think he had one.

  "You two,"
Artie muttered, shaking his head in dismay as Jace began pacing again, "are enough to try the patience of a saint. You ain't seen her but a few minutes this morning, Jace! You couldn't have, bein's how it's only just past ten o'clock. So what the dickens has she done to tick you off now?"

  "She's leavin'!"

  "What?"

  "You heard me. She's leavin'!" Jace looked halfway between angry and anguished. His blue eyes, generally light and sunny as a summer sky, were now the color of a storm. He flung his battered hat onto the davenport and cracked his knuckles furiously.

  "What the devil do you mean, she's leavin'? Where in tarnation would she go?"

  "Remember her singles cruise?" Jace fairly spat the words.

  Artie's eyes bugged. Of course he remembered the singles cruise. When Celie had come home from her weekend in Hollywood with Sloan, heart whole and over her crush at last, she'd been determined to get on with her life.

  Jace, who had darned near driven Artie crazy all the time she was gone, had barely breathed a sigh of relief when he'd discovered that just because Celie was over Sloan, it didn't mean she was going to fall into his arms.

  No sir. Instead in April she'd gone on a singles cruise.

  "What the hell does she need a singles cruise for?" Jace had wanted to know. He'd been doin' laps in the living room then, too.

  "What indeed," Artie had murmured, "when she's got a single feller who loves her right here?"

  Jace had stopped dead at that. He'd spun around and leveled a glare at Artie. "What the hell are you talkin' about?"

  Artie, no fool but no chicken, either, had shrugged lightly. "Seems to me it's obvious," he'd said.

  A muscle had ticked furiously in Jace's jaw. He'd ground his teeth, but he hadn't denied it. He'd rubbed a hand against the back of his neck and had shaken his head as if to clear it. And then he'd dug the toe of his boot into the rug and muttered, "Damn fool thing to do."

  "Is this the singles cruise we're talkin' about or you bein' in love with Celie?" Artie had asked with a smile.

  "What do you think?" Jace had muttered.

  He was muttering again now.

  "Don't see how she can go on another one," Artie said. "Them things are expensive."

  "She can afford it," Jace said through his teeth, "if they hire her."

  "Hire her?"

  "That's what she came in this morning to say. Just waltzed in, pretty as you please, and handed in her notice. 'Just wanted you to know I'll be leavin' in two weeks,'" Jace mimicked Celie's soft tones. "'Got a job on a cruise ship,'" Jace went on in the same furious sing-song voice, "'so I won't be around to annoy you anymore.'" He slammed his fist into his palm to punctuate the end of the quote.

  Artie's heart kicked over in his chest. It worried him a little when his heart did that, but not as much as he was worried about Jace. And about what Jace would do now.

  Artie might be closing in on ninety-one, but he wasn't dead yet. He remembered what it felt like to look at a woman and want her. He remembered what that hungry, hollow feeling was like, how it made a guy follow a woman with his eyes and fall over his own feet if he wasn't careful. He'd done it a time or two himself.

  That was one of the reasons, after his heart attack, that he'd taken Jace on to work for him. To give him a chance.

  Even though she had her own business—C&S Spa and Video, where she cut hair and gave therapeutic massages and Sara, her niece, rented videos—she still came in most mornings and worked at the hardware store with him.

  Artie knew she could have handled the store when he'd had his heart attack. That was the kind of girl Celie was—thoughtful, generous, kind—the sort who'd do an old man a favor, who'd help out wherever she could. The sort of gal who would make somebody a good wife.

  Who would make Jace Tucker a good wife.

  When Artie saw that Jace was sweet on her, Artie reckoned the least he could do was to throw them together. So he had.

  He'd got Jace to fill in for him when he was in the hospital. He'd acted weaker and more frail than he really was when he came home, all so's those two could spend some time together and get their love life sorted out.

  But they hadn't.

  Two more stubborn people than Celie O'Meara and Jace Tucker—when it came to falling in love—would be hard to find. Celie persisted in believing that Jace was no different than he had been at twenty-three, and Jace persisted in remaining stubbornly silent instead of admitting how he felt. They'd been working together four months now, almost five. And as far as Artie could see, things had gone from bad to worse.

  Well, maybe Celie's new job would be the wake-up call, Artie thought, taking a deep breath and sitting up straight. Maybe Jace would finally say something that would stop her from going.

  "So," Artie challenged him, "what're you gonna do about it?"

  Jace slapped his hat back on his head and jerked it down hard. "Get drunk," he said furiously. "Then go find me some other girl!"

  He turned on his heel and banged out the door. All the windows rattled.

  Artie sighed and shook his head. Life really was wasted on the young.

  For as long as she could remember, Celie O'Meara had been in love with the idea of love and marriage. As a little girl, she'd played "wife" and "mommy" while Polly and Mary Beth had played cowboys and Indians and doctor and nurse. It was possible, she thought when she was being brutally honest with herself, that she'd still been "playing" the role when, at nineteen, she'd got engaged to Matt.

  She hadn't thought so at the time, of course. She'd thought she loved Matt Williams. Worse, she'd thought he loved her.

  She had been devastated when he'd jilted her. Her world had come crashing down. All her hopes, her dreams, her expectations had been destroyed. She'd felt like a fool.

  Even more, she'd felt like a failure. In Celie's mind, Matt's rejection had publicly branded her as a woman unable to satisfy a man.

  "You've just got to meet some other guys," her sister Mary Beth had said, doing her best to console her.

  "Better guys," her sister Polly had insisted firmly.

  "Exac'ly. It's like fallin' off a horse," Artie Gilliam had told her. "You jest gotta pick yerself up an' get back on."

  "Of course you do. And you will. You'll find the right man someday," her mother had said, then she'd given Celie a hug of encouragement.

  But Celie wouldn't even look. She wasn't about to "get back on." She'd been humiliated once. She'd trusted a man. She'd given him her heart and he'd trampled it into the dirt. Get back on and let another one do the same thing?

  No way. Once was enough for any lifetime, thank you very much.

  But even though she'd vowed never to trust another man, her old dreams of love and marriage had died hard. In fact they hadn't died at all. And even though Celie had given up on "real men," she'd kept her fantasies.

  Like Sloan Gallagher.

  Sloan was everything she'd ever dreamed of in a man. He was handsome. Strong. Brave. Resolute. Clever. Determined. Sexy.

  But mostly he had been safe.

  She'd seen him in theaters and on television, had read about him in magazines and allowed herself to imagine what loving him would be like. It had been wonderful—because it had been impossible—until Sloan agreed to come to Elmer for the Great Montana Cowboy Auction to save Maddie Fletcher's ranch.

  Then Celie's fantasy world had collided with her real one. Her two-dimensional Sloan was in danger of becoming a real person. Her dreams were no longer merely dreams, they were possibilities—if she let them be. For weeks before the auction they had tormented her, taunted her, challenged her. And in wrestling with them, she'd realized what a hollow empty place her real life had become. She might have been able to ignore that realization, to pretend it didn't matter—if it hadn't been for Jace Tucker.

  She might have been able to ignore herself—but she couldn't ignore Jace.

  No one ever ignored Jace!

  He was too vital, too intense, too … too everything. She remember
ed him from childhood, watching him from afar, always aware of him—wary of him—because he seemed different. Fascinating. Bigger, tougher, louder, rougher. Alien. Other.

  Unlike Polly, who had been her dad's sidekick, and Mary Beth, who had tagged along after them, Celie had always been a "girly" girl. She'd never been entirely comfortable at the brandings, hanging around the fire teasing with the cowboys. She'd never wrestled with the boys on the playground. She'd liked Matt because he hadn't been as rough as some of them. He'd been quieter. Gentler.

  A man after her own heart, she'd thought.

  But even Matt had rejected her.

  And it had been all Jace Tucker's fault! Matt had come home from the Wilsall Rodeo that summer, saying he'd been talking to Jace and he was thinking maybe he'd go down the road with Jace for a spell.

  "Sow me a few wild oats," he'd said with a grin, "before you tie me down."

  She should have worried then, but she hadn't. She hadn't believed he really meant it. But she also hadn't been thrilled about him going down the road with Jace Tucker.

  "Don't let Jace lead you astray," she'd warned him.

  And Matt had laughed. "No fear."

  But it turned out that all her fears had been realized when two months later Matt hadn't come home to get married. Instead, fifteen minutes before the ceremony was to start, Jace Tucker had called to say Matt wasn't coming.

  "He says he's not ready," Jace had told her.

  "What do you mean, not ready?" Celie could still remember her high, tight voice. But even then she'd been like an ostrich, head in the sand, believing that Jace must mean that Matt simply hadn't figured out how to tie his tie or button his suit coat yet.

  "To get hitched," Jace had spelled it out. "He says he can't do it. That he's got places to go, things to do, to see…" Jace's voice had faded, and there had been a considerable pause during which he obviously expected her to say something.

  But Celie had been incapable of speech.

  She'd been strangling the receiver in disbelief. There were close to a hundred people just up the street going into the church at that very moment, for goodness' sake!