Only Hers (15 page)

Her chin lifted. “I’m an only child and he gives me anything I want.”

The conversation between the elderly rancher and Matt now made sense. Mr. Gordon might have come to his senses about Matt not being right for Vivian, but his daughter still needed convincing. And her father clearly wasn’t up to telling her what you want isn’t always best for you.

“I’m not a threat to any relationship you might have with Matt. He hardly knows I’m around.” Vivian looked doubtful. “If there was anything going on here, do you think I’d be cleaning out stalls and polishing harnesses?”

The younger woman looked horrified. “Daddy said you were helping Octavia.”

“Matt doesn’t like for his workers to be idle,” Shannon said sadly. If she was going to play the part of advice-giver she might as well do it right. Her brothers hadn’t spared one rotten detail about the high school football captain.

“That’s awful,” Vivian said, looking at Shannon in a different way. “I don’t have to do a thing around my house if I don’t want to. Daddy would never ask me to do anything menial. I always thought Matt was just as considerate of women.”

Shannon chortled. “Obviously you haven’t disagreed with him on anything.”

“We really haven’t talked much.” As if realizing what she had said, Vivian rushed on to add, “He’s busy a lot on the ranch.”

“If he’s too busy to spend time with you, then he isn’t worthy of you,” Shannon said. “I bet there are plenty of young men around here who would jump at the chance to talk with you.”

“Yes, but none of them are like Matt. They all seem so immature and insignificant compared to him. Matt has it all . . . money, success, a gorgeous body, and looks to make any woman’s knees weak. He is one fine brother,” the younger women said, her voice a breathy rush of adulation and yearning.

“I can’t deny that, but I think I’d rather have a man
who cared about me above everything else.” Shannon’s eyes twinkled. “Then again, I’m greedy at times. I bet you can find a man with it all.”

Vivian laughed. Shannon joined in. The roar of the tractor drowned out the sound. Vivian’s large brown eyes widened as she looked from a grim-faced Matt on the farm machinery to Shannon.

“Please don’t tell him why I’m here.” No longer did she sound like a self-assured woman trying to warn off another female from her man.

“He has a big enough ego as it is.”

Matt stopped the tractor beside the women. As soon as he cut the engine, Shannon said, “I see the clutch I helped you fix is working fine on the tractor.”

Vivian’s eyes rounded in renewed horror. “He made you work on the tractor, too?”

With a long-suffering sigh, Shannon nodded.

The young woman glared up at Matt. “You shouldn’t work her so hard. Daddy would never do that to a woman.”

“What have you been telling her?” Matt growled and came off the tractor in a controlled rush.

Vivian stepped back from the harsh intensity of his glare. Shannon lifted her chin. “Only my work schedule.”

“Apparently it’s too light if you have time to lollygag,” Matt told her.

“You’re not the man I thought you were, Matt Taggart,” Vivian said. She turned to Shannon. “My father’s ranch is down the road about six miles on the left-hand side. Gordon’s Angus Ranch. You’ll always be welcome there.”

“Thank you, Vivian,” Shannon said. “And good luck.”

Without a glance in Matt’s direction, the young woman went to her car and drove off.

“What the hell was that all about?” Matt demanded. “That girl’s been following me around with those big eyes of hers for the past three months. Now she acts like I’m the devil incarnate.”

“Angry that you lost an admirer?” Shannon asked.

“Heck, no,” he said, his face spreading into a wide grin. “I was just wondering if you could do it again.”

His smile stole the air from her lungs. Her heart lurched in her chest God. If he had smiled at Vivian that way, no wonder the young woman was so captivated.

“How did you do it?”

Shannon moistened her dry lips. There was no help for her throat. “I—I told her how hard you worked me.”

He frowned and she smothered a small groan at the loss. “That’s all?”

Shannon came out of her haze. “You aren’t that irresistible.”

The look he sent her obviously said he didn’t care what she thought. “We’re going to a party Saturday night.”

“Why?”

“To meet your neighbors, of course.”

“Try again?”

“Now who is being suspicious?”

Silence was her only answer.

“Adam and his wife are throwing a party in honor of Vivian’s upcoming graduation from junior college,” he explained. “Since you two hit it off I’m sure you’ll want to go.”

“And if I just happen to spread the word of what an arrogant, obnoxious tyrant you are, that wouldn’t hurt,” Shannon said tightly.

His lips thinned. “Hard taskmaster would be enough.”

“Ohhhh! I can’t believe you,” Shannon railed. “That foolish young woman had some stupid notion of how fine and gallant you were. As much as I pity anyone else witless enough to believe such an idiotic idea, I am not, I repeat
not
going to tell them what a jerk you are. You’ll just have to be man enough and tell them yourself.”

She turned to walk away, then abruptly swung back. “Or just open your mouth and they’ll find out for themselves.”

Black eyes blazed. His body became as taut as a plucked bow string.

Too late she realized she had let her temper run faster than her brain. One look at his hard face and she knew running would do little good.

Before she could draw another breath, unrelenting fingers closed around her forearms. “Let’s just see how irresistible I am.”

His dark head descended.

“I bite.”

Barely leashed passion flared in his riveting black eyes. “So do I.”

Shannon refused to give in to the sudden heat centered in her lower body. “I mean it, Matt. You don’t want me, you only want to punish me.”

“Maybe I just want to see what else that quick little tongue of yours can do.”

The heat became a flame. “You deserved everything I said about you. I can’t believe you’d be so unfeeling. I thought you were a better man than to lead a young woman on.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. He had lifted his head, and she gave only minor thought that he continued to hold her upper arms. “I’ve known men like you who are thoughtless of women. Just because you’re fairly good-looking doesn’t mean you can treat women any way you want. You have no difficulty telling
me
what you think. I can’t imagine you not setting Vivian or any other woman straight,” she told him with certainty. “Failing that, all you need do is look at one of them the way you’re glaring at me and they’d run for the hills.”

“I have my reasons.”

“Yes. I bet your giant ego is one.” She shook her head sadly. “One day you’re going to find out what it is to love someone and not be loved in return.”

“I already have,” he said, his face bleak, his voice raw.

“What?”

Releasing her arms, he started for the tractor. Shannon only hesitated a moment before she went after him. The pain in his face before he turned away had been devastating. And she had caused it in her anger, an anger she had used to keep her mind from the growing desire she felt for him. In trying to protect herself, she had hurt him.

Her fingertips touched his sleeve. He swung around, his expression remote. “You have work to do.”

“The trouble with trying to judge people is that often it makes you take a good look at yourself. I don’t like what I see,” she told him. “I’m developing a bad habit of striking out at you when I’m angry. My problem, but you’re the one who suffers. I’ll try not to let it happen in the future.”

“That’s all?”

“Unless you want it in writing,” she told him with frank calmness.

His Stetson-covered head tilted to one side. “What, no words of pity or polite inquiries?”

“You’re too strong to need pity and too arrogant to accept any,” Shannon told him quietly. “As for the inquiries, I won’t deny I’d like to know the whole story, but you don’t trust me enough to tell me. So why waste both of our time by asking?”

“You always have the answers, don’t you?”

The way he said it wasn’t a compliment. She smiled sadly and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “Once I thought I did, but life showed me how little I knew.”

“Yeah, life is as fickle as any woman ever dared to be.” He climbed on the tractor.

“Aren’t you coming in for lunch?” she asked over the roar of the engine.

“No.”

Shannon watched Matt drive the tractor over to the fuel tank and begin pumping gas. She started for the house. When she entered the kitchen, Octavia was nowhere in sight. Knowing she wouldn’t mind, Shannon found the canvas bag and thermos the housekeeper had given her when she had gone fishing, fixed a ham sandwich, wrapped the last piece of coffee cake, and filled the thermos with iced tea. She took it all outside to Matt.

“Do you want to eat while I pump or do you want to take it with you?” she asked. If
she
was tired, he had to be near exhaustion. An empty stomach wouldn’t help.

“Octavia send you?” he queried.

“Does it matter?” She dismissed the slight feeling of hurt.

“Leave it,” he told her.

Hanging the canvas bag on the headlight, she started back. That woman had really done a number on Matt, cutting him more deeply than any surgeon’s scalpel.

“Shannon.”

Surprised to hear Matt call her name, she spun around. He stood with one hand on the wheel of the tractor, the other holding the canvas bag.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she called, knowing she was grinning foolishly and not caring one bit that he was scowling again. For a moment Matt had remembered what it was like to repay kindness with politeness not suspicion, and best of all he had shared it with her.

Shannon Johnson had to go and soon, Matt thought as he parked the tractor under the galvanized shed and cut the headlights. Darkness settled around him. It was almost nine, he had been up since six. His body should be ready to shut down. It wasn’t. It hummed with a strange mixture of something. Whatever, Shannon Johnson was the reason.

It made no sense. Hell, who said life or women made sense?

One thing he knew, it was becoming more and more
difficult to remain emotionally detached where she was concerned. This afternoon, she had been right. He had wanted to punish her, but he also wanted to taste her lips and go from there.

Climbing down from the tractor, he started for the barn. His mind knew she was out to take what she could, but his body wasn’t listening.

Maybe it was time he went into Kerrville, have himself some fun. Just as quickly as the idea formed he discarded it. He wouldn’t use anyone like that. And despite Shannon’s accusations, he didn’t lead women on. God knew he had ample opportunity.

Telling the women in the small town of Jackson Falls he wasn’t interested was a lot trickier than telling the other women he met across the country. For starters, he respected the townswomen’s families and didn’t want to create hard feelings. The prodding of well-meaning family members like Adam Gordon was just what Matt wanted to avoid. Then, too, the women in town were too marriage-minded, and he was too easy to find.

He could just imagine the gossip if he flatly rejected one of them. Besides, he’d never forget the laughter and the scorn in his ex-wife’s face when she told him she had never loved him, had only used him to get what she wanted. When he couldn’t fill her needs, she used other men.

He could never do that to another person. He didn’t understand why Shannon had sounded genuinely disappointed in him or why it continued to bother him. Like she said, she had no right to judge anyone. Strangely, at the time she had told him that, she really looked as if she wanted to comfort him, when moments earlier she had been chastising him.

He shook his head. Shannon was a chameleon. Somehow she had learned to adapt and change as the situation demanded, going from innocent to defiant to seductive before his eyes. And by doing so she interested him as no other woman ever had.

An interesting woman was a dangerous woman. A
man tended to go on feelings, on what he saw instead of what he knew.

Wishing he’d never seen Shannon, he entered the barn and saw the one person he wanted to avoid.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Startled, Shannon swung toward him and away from the stall she had been about to enter. “I think there’s something wrong with your horse.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, brushing past her and going to the horse who stood on three legs.

Shannon followed him inside. “This morning when Jay brought him out of the pasture, he was all over the stall. I could hear him stomping around while I was in the tackroom. As I passed just now, I realized I hadn’t heard him in a long time,” she explained.

Matt’s hand slowly swept downward from Brazos’s back to his rump to his leg, then finally to his hoof. His fetlock was hot to the touch and slightly swollen. Matt straightened “How long has he been this way?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at the horse’s leg, then up into Matt’s harsh expression. “He was standing in the same position he is in now when I went inside to get a drink of water at seven. I didn’t think anything about it until I was passing just now.”

“Very observant.”

Shannon shrugged. “Will he be all right?”

“I think so. It’s just tender. Nothing seemed broken or pulled. Cleve does wonders with his remedies,” Matt said, sliding his hand over the horse’s rump. “If he isn’t better by morning, I’ll call the vet.”

“I’ll go get Cleve.”

“I’ll stay here,” he said, staring back down at the horse’s leg.

“I thought you might,” Shannon said with a smile and headed for the bunk house.

Shannon alerted Cleve to the problem.

The frown on Cleve’s face quickly turned to one of
concern. “I’ll get my hat.” With that, he was out the door of the bunk house and down the steps.

Inside the barn, he went straight to the sorrel stallion and inspected him just as Matt had. “He was kickin’ up his usual fuss about being in the stall when I went to the bunkhouse a little after six.”