Love in Romance Arkansas (10 page)

John stopped well short of the fallen rider.
I hope she is okay. She is lying there like a rag doll someone dropped in the dirt. If she is badly hurt, I don’t know what I’ll do. She has come to mean a great deal to me, whether she knows it or not. Another reason to tell people how you feel about them when you have the chance.
“Okay Oscar, I’m not going to hurt her or you. Easy boy, let me check her out.” The horse returned to nudge her shoulder. Jenny groaned, stirred a bit and sat up.

“Jenny, are you okay? You hit the ground pretty hard.”

“I think so, nothing feels broken, just had the wind knocked out of me.” Oscar nudged her shoulder again. “Hey old boy, are you okay?” She rubbed his nose and looped her arm around his neck. He slowly pulled her up and stood stone still as she wobbled a bit.

John approached without incident, scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the grandstand. Oscar walked beside them, nosing Jenny all the way. She had her arms tightly around John’s neck. “Jenny, you scared me there. I didn’t know but what you were badly hurt. Girl, you mean so much to me, I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

She looked at him in a peculiar way. “You’ve come to be important to me also.”

She dusted herself off, gathered up the reins, petted Oscar a bit, swung into the saddle and loped off across the pasture. Someone said, “Look at that.” Oscar was stretched out in a dead run with Jenny tucked close to his neck, urging him on. They thundered past the arena to the far end of the pasture and came flying past again. This time they walked back to the arena. The look on her face was one of pure delight.

“When you fall off, you have to get right back up. It’s a confidence builder and lets the horse know everything is okay. Look at him, hardly breathing fast after that run.”

The more she rode him the better he got. He seemed to feed off the presence and gentle direction of Jenny. His temperament improved to such an extent that he would allow anyone to ride and groom him. Even when someone brought or shipped a mare for breeding, he remained the best of horses. Jenny never let her guard down around him and he seemed to sense that. She usually rode him daily, no matter the weather or how tired she was.

One morning over breakfast she asked John about the book he was writing, supposedly about her. Up to this point progress reports had been rather vague with remarks like
pretty good
or
got another chapter finished.
This morning he said, “Well the book is finished except for the ending. Having a bit of trouble with that area. If you want, I’ll print it out so you can read it.”

“That would be nice, I’ve never seen a story about me before. I’ll see just how accurate my story is.”

A couple of days later he gave her a manuscript titled
LOVE IN ROMANCE ARKANSAS.
“I love the title. I’ll give you a critique in a few days.”

Over the next several nights she read as time permitted. She laughed and cried over many of the incidents. The more sensual occurrences caused intense arousal as she recounted every detail of the event.

* * * *

Ranch work continued regardless of the weather and the reading of a book. A sudden early winter storm caught them repairing a fence at the far end of the ranch. A drenching rain accompanied by a keen north wind quickly chilled her to the bone. He helped her mount and swung into his saddle. She was trembling so violently she could barely hold the reins. “Ride straight to my quarters. Hate to say this, but don’t spare the horse. Ride as if your life depends on it because it does.” The rain turned to sleet as they pounded across the fields toward the house and slid to a stop at his door. She couldn’t dismount so he pulled her from the horse and carried her inside.

He grabbed an armload of blankets, piled them before the fire in his quarters and hit the high button on the wood pellet fireplace. “Get your clothes off and crawl into that pile of blankets.”

She looked at him as if he was crazy. “I’m not taking my clothes off in front of you. I’m not falling for that game.”

“OK, I’ll turn my back, but I want you in those blankets as quickly as you can get there, time is wasting.” He stripped off his clothes and turned.

She stood unable to move. “So cold, I can’t feel my hands or feet, so cold!” she mumbled. “Can’t unbutton my shirt,” she muttered as another series of violent tremors swept through her.

“What are you doing?” she stuttered as he unzipped her jeans, slipped them down and pushed her down into a chair. He tugged off her boots and jeans and stood her again. He almost ripped off her shirt.
Guess I’ll leave her bra and panties so she can preserve a bit of dignity. Not much material there and it is transparent!
“I’m getting these wet clothes off so we can help warm each other. A few more minutes and we would’ve really been in trouble. Hypothermia is a dangerous condition. It is easy to let it go too far and lose the ability to do anything. People die every year in conditions well above freezing.
Any other time I would take my time and enjoy this, but this is serious. Nice body though, much nicer than when her horse bit her. Ranch work has added a few pounds of fine muscle to an already beautiful body.

He pulled her down on the pile, wrapped them in blankets and hugged her close. Her body was like ice on his chest as she continued to shiver uncontrollably. As warmth seeped into her, seemed to settle into a drowsy stupor. Holding the almost naked woman in his arms just seemed right, as if it was supposed to be this way.
Now what am I going to do? She’s going to be somewhat embarrassed when she wakes up and finds us like this.
Despite his best efforts, nature added some heat of a different sort.
What is she going to think when she finds me like this? She is going to think I tried to seduce her as sure as the world. I bet she hits the roof.
All he could do was hold her, watch her sleep and marvel at her beauty.

He must have dozed off because the next thing he knew she was watching him with her dark, expressive eyes. “You are such a handsome man when you sleep. I’ve had to fight to keep my hands off you.” With that, she slipped her arms around his neck
and pulled him close. “There is no place in the world I would rather be than right here, right now, with you. This is the place, but the timing is off a bit. When the time is right, I want this to be the place.” Her smooth, now warm body pressed to him set off a reaction that brought a smile of pleasure to her face. “I feel that you think the same way. I know this will be hard for you, but will you just hold me?”

“Not a problem at all. Come here and let’s get a comfortable position so no one gets squashed. After a few snuggles and adjustments, she was nestled under his arm, her head on his chest and one leg hooked over his. One hand settled lightly on his belly.
Holding a freezing person is one thing, holding a warm, beautiful woman is another. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word hard. It is easy to hold a beautiful woman, it is hard not to embarrass oneself while doing it.

A pleasant question he had been toying with for several weeks floated into his mind. “Tell you what. How about we get married and let this be the place for as long as and as often as we want?”

* * * *

Six weeks later on a cold gray winter day, Jenny and John began their life together. As the wedding guests left, snow began to fall, lightly at first, building to a heavy fall of big fluffy flakes. As they watched, the view of the valley became obscured as the outside world shut down.

With a look of mischievous happiness Jenny said, “Let’s write the ending to that book of yours.”

In the nest of blankets before the fire, everything was soft (well not
everything
was soft), easy, warm and unhurried. Little yelps, moans and groans of pleasure, punctuated several times by wails of feminine satisfaction, issued from the nest long into the night.

I live in Benton, AR with wife Debbie. I have one of the last Bachelors of Forestry degrees awarded in the United States. Four years were spent in the US Air Force, where I learned absolutely nothing about forestry, but much about people. I have been employed as a Forest Entomologist for the past thirty-eight-plus years. The degree I received in 1969 qualifies me to be a dinosaur, and you know where all the dinosaurs are.

Hobbies include woodworking, turning pens and pencils out of tropical woods, skeet shooting with Jess, trap shooting with Debbie and informal non-competitive benchrest shooting. We have traveled extensively in the Southern US. I used to hunt and fish a bit, but the critters don’t bother me anymore, so I don’t bother them.

In general, I try to enjoy life and not take myself too seriously.