Cowboys Don't Cry Page 12

  He couldn't wait. He slipped his fingers beneath the elastic. The back of them brushed lightly against the smooth, warm skin of her belly. The tips touched the soft curls at the apex of her thighs. His fingers gripped the lace and drew it down. Maggie moved to accommodate him, to let him draw the panties down her legs, wriggling free of them. Then coming back to straddle him again, she slid her own fingers down his chest to feather across his abdomen, to slip beneath the confines of his briefs.

  She touched him. One simple touch and he almost lost control. He'd waited so long, daydreamed so much. He'd felt it in his mind a thousand times before—and a thousand times he'd never come close to imagining the reality of her hand on him. It was soft, gentle, feather light. It teased, it tantalized, it tormented. And then it grew bolder, firmer.

  "Mag-gie!" Her name was a hoarse exhalation of breath, strangling him. His ringers sought her warmth, her moisture. He saw her bite her lip as he teased her, opened her. She grasped his briefs and tugged them down and he lifted his hips to make it easier for her.

  And then he was free, the cool morning air touching his heated flesh as it ached for her to touch him, to stroke him again, to let him into the warmth of her body.

  She was ready for him. He was sure of it, could see it, could feel it. He needed to do one thing, though, first.

  "Maggie! In my jeans. My wallet."

  She frowned, then seemed to realize what he was asking for. She reached down and snagged his jeans off the floor, got out his wallet and gave it to him.

  With fumbling fingers Tanner took out the foil package he'd bought in anticipation of the wet-T-shirt contest.

  "Show me how," Maggie whispered.

  He sucked in his breath. "Like this." Then he shut his eyes as she did it, struggling desperately for control. He was right on the brink, and she'd barely finished when he muttered, "Now! Let me in! Please, Maggie. I can't wait any longer."

  Maggie eased herself up. Her hair fell forward, obscuring her face, as with both hands this time, she drew him toward her, guiding him. He nudged against the very center of her, felt her warmth, her welcome. He bit his lip.

  "There," he muttered. "No. Yes. Yes. There."

  "Help me," Maggie whispered, and Tanner's hand came to meet hers, seeking, finding, easing him in.

  "Yes." It was a hiss through his teeth. Sweat beaded his forehead as her tightness began to close around him. He drew her down, thrusting upward as he did so, needing to be inside her—a part of her at last. She tensed. He felt a sudden barrier, stopped, and then couldn't stop any longer.

  His hips surged up to connect them completely. With one hand he touched her breasts and teased her nipples, while with the other he began a gentle exploration of the petal softness at the juncture of her thighs. He smiled as his touch made her writhe and squirm. He gloried in the heightened pink of her cheeks, in her lips, full with the passion of arousal.

  She moved more quickly now, and Tanner moved with her, caught in a storm of longing he'd never before experienced, captured by a woman he didn't understand, sensing a completeness he'd never known before, but wanted to know again and again.

  He felt Maggie's body contracting around him, felt her shudder and tremble and grip him for all she was worth. "Oh! Oh, Robert!"

  And he surged into her one last time, spending his passion within her, then sank back onto the mattress, shattered, and gathered her against his chest.

  He didn't know how long they lay like that. He felt her heart thundering against his, stroked her back with still-trembling hands. Maggie nestled her head in the curve of his neck and shoulder. Then, as her breathing slowed, she lifted her head and raised her body slightly away from Tanner's chest to look down at him and smile.

  She brushed his hair off his forehead.

  She traced the line of his brows, trailed a finger down his cheek, tickled the corner of his mouth, making his lips curve into a smile.

  She kissed his nose.

  "I love you," she said.

  And Tanner closed his eyes and hung on to the mo-ment, knowing all too soon it would be gone. He couldn't pretend any longer.

  His time had run out.

  Eight

  It was a long time since he'd gone down the road. Too long. He should've left the Three Bar C sooner. Four years was too long to stay in one place. It made a man lazy, soft.

  It was wide open spaces a man really needed. A pickup, a trailer, horses, a saddle. Those were the things that mattered. Nothing else.

  Better not even to bother saying goodbye. Who knew? Maybe he'd see them all again someday. Or maybe not.

  Tanner drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly, felt the cool night breeze on his arm as it rested on the door of his truck. He was doing the right thing. The only thing.

  He'd let Maggie breach his final defense. He had nothing left.

  With luck she wouldn't realize he was gone until morrn ing. He could be a couple of states away by then. Not that he expected she'd send out an APB on him. Hell, when she thought about it, she'd be thanking her lucky stars she'd made such a narrow escape.

  And it wasn't as if anybody else would care. Ev and Billy were a pair. They'd be fine without him. And Andy—Andy for whom he'd left a note saying, "You've got what it takes to be foreman"—Andy would be thrilled.

  There was Abby, of course. But he'd stopped at the cemetery as he'd driven past. It was almost pitch-black, only a sliver of moon hanging in the canopy of stars, but Fanner had made his way unerringly until he came to stand by the granite marker at Abby's grave.

  "I tried," he said after a moment. "I did the best I could. And if it isn't good enough for you, I'm sorry. The way I see it, I had a choice: I could fail you now or fail Maggie later."

  He didn't wait around to see if Abby might say something from on high. He got back in his track and headed south.

  It didn't take him long to realize that going down the load was different this time. The anticipation was gone, the eagerness to see new places, try new things.

  It would come back, he told himself. It had been four years since he'd taken more than a few days off; he would need a little while to adjust.

  He wasn't in any hurry to find another job. There was money enough to get by until more work was available in the fall, so he just drifted around. He visited some old friends in LaJunta; he dropped in on an old rodeo traveling partner who had a little spread near Farmington. He left his horses and the trailer there, figuring to pick them up in early fall. Then he headed back north as far as Cheyenne for Frontier Days to watch his brother, Noah, ride.

  "Son of a gun!" Noah exclaimed when Tanner knocked on his motel-room door. He reached out and dragged his brother into the room, where five other cowboys lounged in chairs and on the beds. "You remember Tanner, don'tcha? What're you doin' here? I stopped in at your place to see you on my way down. They said you'd quit." Noah looked as if he didn't quite believe it.

  "I did."

  "Come on. Let's walk down by the pool." He steered Tanner back out of the room and toward the swimming pool. "What the hell'd you leave for? Thought you loved that damned ranch? Couldn't even pry you loose to come down to Cheyenne last year."

  "I had work to do last year."

  Noah lifted a dark brow. "Ranch learn how to run itself in the meantime?"

  "I got fed up. You heard Abby died..."

  Noah nodded "Yeah, I meant to call and tell you I was sorry. But, hey—" he grinned "—she gave you a hell of a replacement That Maggie's a good-lookin' gal."

  "You talked to her?" The words were out of Tanner's mouth before he could stop them.

  "Sure. Had dinner with her as a matter of fact. We went to that good little place down in Kaycee."

  "You took her out?"

  "Sure. Why not?" Noah gave his best imitation of a leer. "When have I ever passed up a pretty woman?"

  "As long as having dinner with her is all you did!" Tanner said tightly.

  "Ah, like that, is it?" Noah flopped down in one of the
lounges and grinned up at his brother. "Open your mouth."

  "What?"

  "I want to see the hook."

  Tanner gritted his teeth. "It's not like that. I just know what you're like—and I don't want you messing around with Maggie. She's a lady."

  "Reckon you messed around with her."

  Tanner reached down and grabbed his brother by the front of his shirt, dragging him to a sitting position. "We were not 'messing around!'"

  Noah looked at him, shaken, then gave him a faint grin. "Whatever you say, big brother." He eased Tanner's fingers away from his shirtfront and swung his feet around so he sat with his forearms resting on his knees. He looked up at Tanner, his expression serious. "I don't get it. She looks stricken every time she talks about you. You practically punch me when I even mention you gettin' together with her. What's goin' on?"

  "Nothing."

  "Look me straight in the eye and tell me that again," Noah said. It was what their father always used to say to them when he suspected a less-than-truthful reply. Tanner had never been able to lie to his father. He didn't find it much easier to lie to Noah.

  "She thinks she loves me," he muttered.

  Noah gave a low whistle. "Heavy stuff."

  "Yeah."

  "Do you think you love her?"

  "I try not to think about it!"

  "Ah. Yeah, I know how that works." Noah grimaced, and Tanner remembered that for plenty of years his brother had fancied himself in love with Lisa Pickney, a tawny-haired barrel racer who hadn't been interested in him. In the end, all Noah had been able to do was try not to think about it.

  "Anyway, it doesn't matter if I do or not," Tanner said finally. "I'm not getting married again."

  "Why not?"

  "You remember what happened with Clare."

  "Yeah, so? Maggie's not Clare."

  "But I'm me."

  Noah scratched his head. "Whatever that means. It's too deep for me, big brother. Still, I think you're nuts. I sure as hell wouldn't be runnin' the other way if I had a looker like that thinkin' she loved me."

  "You'd get married?"

  "If it was a girl like Maggie."

  There was nothing Tanner could say to that. He shrugged. Noah regarded him curiously, as if he might be able to understand what drove his brother if only he looked long enough. Tanner could have told him not to bother.

  "I just need a change," he said finally. "I thought I might go out and see Luke after you win Cheyenne." He managed a grin.

  Noah grinned back. "Yeah...when I win Cheyenne. Well, a guy can hope. Be a good idea, you goin' out to see Luke. I saw him a while back. He drove up to Santa Maria when I was there for a rodeo. He, Keith and Keith's girl. But you better go quick. They're leavin' for location in mid-August, I think."

  "Location where?"

  "Don't know. It's a western, he said. One of those gutsy hell-bent-for-leather types that are making a comeback. Or at least Mallory hopes they are. Might be New Mexico or Texas. Hell, it might be Spain for all I know. Luke gets around."

  "Maybe I'll go with him." Spain might be far enough away to get red hair and green eyes out of his mind, Tanner thought as he stretched out on one of the lounges.

  "You oughta go see Clare."

  Tanner sat bolt upright. "Why the hell should I do that?"

  Noah shrugged. "So's you can get on with your life. Hell, the way I see it, brother, you're still married to her."

  "I am not still married to her! In many respects," Tanner added in a low voice, "I don't think I ever was."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. But I'll tell you one thing, you're a damned fool to throw away a chance with a woman like your Maggie."

  "When did you start givin' marital advice?"

  "About the time you stopped having the sense God gave a goose."

  "Well, if you're going to spend the rest of the week giving me advice like that, I think I'll skip staying around to see you ride."

  Noah smiled and stretched his arms above his head, wincing as his muscles complained. "I've said my piece. Now it's your turn. You got to think about what I said."

  Tanner thought about it more than he would have liked. Though Noah never brought up Maggie again, it was as if she was right there with them for the rest of the week. There were pauses in the conversation, occasional periods of silence that were somehow filled with memories of her, visions of her. Tanner was glad when the week was over.

  "I tried to win for you," Noah said. He was nursing a black eye, courtesy of his own flying fist. But he was standing in the pay line.

  "You didn't do so bad." Tanner said. "Made the short found. Finished third. Pretty respectable, I'd say."

  "I do what I can," Noah said modestly. "You leavin' now?"

  "Uh-huh." Tanner shook his brother's hand. "Reckon I'll see you sometime. Where you gettin' your mail?"

  "Durango." He gave Tanner the box number.

  "I'll drop you a line, let you know where I end up." "Do that." Noah hung onto Tanner's hand a bit longer "Tell you what I'd rather have you send me."

  "What's that?"

  "A wedding invitation."

  Fortunately, Luke didn't know about Maggie. And if he was surprised to see his brother turn up on his Southern-California doorstep early one August morning, he gave no sign.

  "I'm not...interrupting anything?" Tanner asked as Luke, looking bleary-eyed and weanng only a pair of shorts, stepped back to let him in.

  One corner of Luke Tanner's mouth lifted. "Think I've got a bedroom full of starlets, do you?"

  "Maybe I was hoping." Tanner tossed his duffel bag on the floor and looked around.

  Luke's house, a Spanish-style two-story stucco only feet from the wide white sand of the South Bay, was a far cry from the sort of place Tanner was used to. And if the house wasn't enough, the silver Porsche in the drive-way and the customized Harley next to the back door attested to his brother's affluence and fast-lane lifestyle.

  "Well, I'm sure I can find you someone suitable," Luke said after a moment. "Just let me know what you have in mind."

  But the only thing Tanner had in his mind was Maggie Everywhere he went, there was Maggie. Before he'd spent the week with Noah, he hadn't been able to forget her Noah, having seen her and formed his own opinions made it impossible to forget her. But even the sights and sounds of Southern California didn't seem to be able to blot her out of his head.

  "I need some sleep," he told Luke, who obligingly pointed him in the direction of a bedroom.

  But sleep brought dreams here just as it had everywhere else. And the dreams brought Maggie.

  Luke didn't ask him any questions. He took Tanner to the set with him, to parties with him, to the beach and even down to Mexico for a few days of deep-sea fishing. He introduced Tanner to a bevy of beautiful women, most of whom stared and simpered and were fascinated with the notion that he was "a real cowboy."

  Tanner threw himself into everything Luke thought up, hoping that it would occupy his mind, but somehow there was always a part of that mind wondering at every moment what was happening back on the Three Bar C, whether Andy was coping, whether Ev and Billy were well, whether Maggie was remembering him the way he remembered her.

  Finally, after three weeks and no improvement, Tanner decided it was time to move on.

  "You don't have to go," Luke told him. "I'm off for Utah on Monday for the new movie, but you can stay in the house as long as you want."

  But staying in one place, even such a single man's paradise as Luke's version of Southern California, wasn't going to solve Tanner's problem. Apparently play of any kind wasn't going to solve it. He needed to get back to work.

  Haying wasn't any cowboy's idea of a dream job. It was a measure of Tanner's desperation that when his friend Gil, the rancher near Farmington, said, "Don't suppose you'd like to help with the haying, would you?" that he practically jumped at the chance.

  Gil looked at him, taken aback. "Should I call the doctor?" he asked his wife.

  Jenn shook her
head. "Not for this kind of sickness."

  "I'm not sick," Tanner said flatly.

  "No," Jenn agreed complacently. "You're in love."

  "Why the hell would you say a thing like that?"

  Jenn smiled. "I know the signs. Moody, depressed, can't eat or sleep. If California couldn't snap you out of it, you're in pretty bad shape, Tanner. And when you actually agreed to help with the haying, well—" she shrugged "—there isn't any doubt."

  "I just want to help out an old friend," he muttered "Even if the old friend has a nosy, interfering wife."

  Jenn laughed. "Whatever you say, Tanner. Whatever you say."

  But haying, however tedious, hard, hot and monotonous it was, didn't help either. After a week and a half, he was no closer to forgetting Maggie than he'd ever been. It was because it didn't sufficiently occupy his mind, Tanner decided. He needed a challenge.

  "I'm goin' up to Durango next week and ride a bronc," he told Gil.

  "Are you nuts? You haven't rodeoed in years. You'll wreck your knee. Or dislocate your shoulder again. Or break your neck. Then again—" and here Gil, who had come to believe all Jenn's preposterous speculations, looked at Tanner closely "—maybe that's what you want?"

  "Don't be an ass," Tanner grumbled. "I signed up a couple of weeks ago. Figured if I didn't want to, I could turn him out. Are you coming?"

  "To watch you get bloody and broken? No, thanks."

  So Tanner went by himself.

  "You're coming back after, aren't you?" Jenn asked him.

  "If Noah's there, I'll probably go down the road with him a spell—"

  "Check out a few hospitals," Gil put in dryly.

  "Thanks for your confidence," Tanner said in a sour lone. He got into his truck. "You don't mind keeping the horses and trailer awhile longer?"

  "We'll put it on your tab." Gil grinned.

  Tanner gave him an answering grin. "I reckon you owe me for all that haying."

  "That was therapy," Gil said. "I oughta have charged you. Would have, 'cept it didn't do much good, did it?"