Tall, Dark & Western

Dreamily, she smiled as she parked near her building. She’d tell him about Bobby soon. And she was willing to bet she was worrying for nothing. Marty must be a good father to his daughter, to be going to such lengths to improve her life. Surely he’d be equally good to her son.

Two

On Sunday morning Marty drew straws with his brother to see who got the unenviable task of replacing some rotting H-braces along one fence line in the larger winter pasture. It had warmed up after the five inches of snow they’d had last week and they were going to get as much done as they could before it snowed again.

Even when he came up holding the shorter piece of hay, his good mood couldn’t be banished.

Deck eyed him with suspicion as he handed Marty the post-hole digger. “You look like the village idiot. Something you want to tell me?”

“Nope.” Marty lifted tools into the back of his pickup as Deck laid a coil of barbwire beside them.

“Only thing I can think of that makes a man smile like that is a woman. Just what’d you do in Rapid City last night?”

“None of your business.”

Deck chuckled. “I knew it! You were with a woman.”

He sure had been, but he didn’t intend to tell his brother about it yet. It was still too new, too…special to share.

He hummed under his breath the whole way out to the pasture, eyeing the brilliant color of the wide-open sky and seeing no signs of storms.

No question about it—last night had been the best thing that had happened to him in a long time. He knew in his bones that he could convince Juliette to marry him on Friday. He was as excited as a little kid, thinking about the coming weekend.

No, he took that back. He was excited, all right, but no little kid ever felt the way he was feeling every time he thought about her slender frame, her soft lips and wide, blue eyes. All the signs pointed to a high-pressure system that wasn’t going to leave anytime soon.

Well, he could wait. Just barely, but he could wait until Friday to make love to Juliette.

His hands stilled on the post he was setting into the hole he’d dug as he allowed himself to consider what he was thinking. This was the first time since Lora’s death that he’d thought seriously of a woman. He’d thought about marriage on a purely objective level, and the steady sex that would come with it had been an abstract until now. Oh, he’d had sex a few times—a very few times—in the two years since he’d buried his wife, but he’d never planned it and the women hadn’t been important, just interested in a good time.

Making love. That was a troublesome phrase.

He’d made love with Lora. Made love to her. Well and often, during the nine and a half years of their marriage. She’d been the first and only girl he’d ever had, and he’d loved her. Oh, how he’d loved her. He’d thought he couldn’t get any happier when they’d married, a week after graduating from high school, but he’d been wrong. When Cheyenne had been born, his happiness had doubled.

His spirits dimmed as he thought of Lora’s pregnancies. He’d wanted a houseful of kids—his and Lora’s. But it wasn’t to be. She’d had three miscarriages before Cheyenne came along.

And then…then she’d gotten pregnant again. She’d had a little spotting early on, and the doctor had cautioned her against any strenuous activity. They’d both been afraid of losing this baby the way they’d lost the earlier ones, so Marty had made her stay in Rapid with a friend of theirs for a few weeks. But things had gone so well that she’d soon come home again, and as she’d grown bigger, they forgot they’d been concerned.

When the unthinkable happened, it couldn’t have been at a worse time. Lora had gone into labor two months early with no warning. He was out rounding up stock at a pasture much farther from the house than he usually worked. She’d come bouncing across the pasture in his old truck to find him, which couldn’t have been good, and they’d raced for the hospital.

But they hadn’t made it. Her labor had been fast and frightening. Three-quarters of the way to Rapid City, Marty had to stop on the shoulder of I-90 and deliver the baby himself, a son so small and fragile it seemed a miracle he was even breathing. Lora had bled and bled…and he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing except wrap his too-tiny son in his jacket and race for the hospital.

He’d never forget the final moments of that frantic trip, when her increasingly thready voice had finally quit answering his desperate pleas for her to stay with him, to keep talking to him….

He couldn’t bear to dwell on the wrenching hours of the days that had followed, days in which he’d rarely left the hospital, so he returned to thoughts of Juliette.

She was so unlike Lora, who’d been tall and sturdy, with generous breasts and wide hips that should have been able to birth a dozen babies easily. No, Juliette was nothing like Lora. She was small all over, slender and fragile and so fine-boned that he was afraid one incautious movement might snap her right in two.

What would sex be like with her? It wouldn’t be making love. Couldn’t be, unless he loved her, which he couldn’t possibly. Could he? It troubled him to realize that with Juliette, he wouldn’t simply be having sex.

No, when he had her soft body beneath his, had her responding to the touch of his hand, let himself drown in the pleasures he knew she offered, he wouldn’t be thinking of Lora.

The whole train of thought was so disturbing he abandoned it.

He’d thought about calling Juliette last night when he’d gotten home but he’d been afraid it might make him look too desperate. As he wrestled the post-hole digger into place for another attack on the gummy prairie sod, he knew good and well he wasn’t going to wait another night.

He barely waited until the clock said one minute after nine that evening before he dialed the number she’d given him. It rang twice, and then a breathless female voice said, “Hello?”

“Juliette.”

“Marty?”

“Yeah. Hi.”

“Hi.”

If he’d harbored any doubts about her, they vanished the second her soft voice uttered his name. He closed his eyes and said the first thing that came into his head. “I wish I were there with you right now.”

There was a beat of silence, and he kicked himself for being too presumptuous. Just because he felt…connected to her didn’t mean she felt the same way.

Then she said, “I wish you were, too.”

The soft note of genuine regret in her tone pleased him. “I miss you.”

“That’s crazy. You don’t know me well enough to miss me.” There was another small silence, and then she confessed, “I miss you, too.”

He took a deep breath as his pulse increased; he had to clamp down hard on the urge to tell her he was going to drive into Rapid City right now. If he hadn’t had Cheyenne to think of, he just might have done it. “So how does one o’clock Friday sound?”

“One o’clock?” Her voice was a squeak. “You’re serious? You really want to go and get married at one o’clock on Friday?”

“Yep. If you’ll have me.” He knew he was pushing but suddenly he realized he had to hear a commitment from her, had to know she was going to be his.

He wasn’t aware that he was unconsciously holding his breath until she said, “I guess there’s no reason to wait,” in a timid little tone.

“Great.” He was pretty damned tickled that this whole thing seemed to be working out so well.

They talked for over an hour, mostly general getting-to-know-you conversation. He shared everything he could think of about Cheyenne with her. He also began to talk to Cheyenne about Juliette the following day, encouraged when she seemed receptive to the idea of a new mother living in their house.

On Monday he told his brother he was getting married on Friday, and while Deck was still reeling from the shock, he got a promise that Cheyenne could stay with Silver, his sister-in-law, during the day. And he called his bride-to-be again Monday night and Tuesday night.

He told her about his family, his newly married brother and sister-in-law and the closest neighbors, also newly married.

“It was funny,” he said. “I was the one who wanted to get married, and it seemed like everybody else except me was saying ‘I do.”’

“They’re all going to think we’re crazy,” she said.

“I don’t care what they think,” he said. “As long as I get to share a bed with you from dusk to dawn every night.”

He had intended to tease her, but his words back-fired as a heavy rush of desire filled him. He’d been mildly turned on since he’d heard her voice; now he had a serious case of circuit overload threatening.