The Traveling Kind (5 page)

Less than a week after Shad had come to work for them, Charley was in the barn giving the horses their evening portion of grain. Outside she heard the rattle and roar of the tractor and mower signaling Shad’s return from the hay field. She glanced at her wrist watch since Shad had told her at noon that he wouldn’t be coming in until all the hay was cut. She had planned supper for seven; an oven meal of baked ham, scalloped potatoes and baked beans since those dishes would be the easiest to keep warm if Shad had worked until dark. As it was, by the time she finished with the evening chores and put the food on the table, Shad would have time to shower and clean up before sitting down to supper.

When the horses were grained, Charley tossed some hay into the corral and checked the water in the stock tank. The bay gelding, Dollar, nuzzled her shoulder, trying to wheedle an extra portion of grain from her. Charley laughed and rubbed its velvet nose.

“Sorry, fellah. That’s all for tonight.”

Slipping between the corral rails, she crawled through the fence and started toward the house. The grinding noise of a dead engine trying to be cranked to life attracted her attention. The sound stopped as she turned to locate its source and heard the tinny slam of a truck door. She changed her course, angling toward the machine shed where Shad was lifting the hood of an old pickup that had given up the ghost more than a year ago. She watched as he bent to examine the innards of the truck.

“It won’t run.” She approached him from the left, drawing his sideways glance.

“I noticed,” Shad replied on a dryly amused note and went back to his inspection of the motor and its related parts.

“Any objections if I tinker around with it in my spare time?”

“Gary said it would cost more than it was worth to fix it,” she warned. “He’s been going to junk it, but hasn’t got around to it yet.”

“I’ll pay for whatever spare parts are needed.” He straightened to close the hood. His face and clothes were dusted with hay chaff and dirt, perspiration caking his clothes to his skin. “I’m in need of transportation. If I manage to get it running again, you can sign the pickup over to me in lieu of a month’s wages.”

“But what will you do for money?” Charley frowned.

“I have enough cash to get by,” he insisted and held out his hand to shake on the bargain. “Is it a deal?”

“Unless Gary has some objections, it’s a deal as far as I’m concerned,” Charley agreed and let her hand become lost in the firm grip of his. He held it a little longer than was necessary, his gaze locking with hers for a breath-stopping second.

When he let go of her hand, she tried to defuse the suddenly charged atmosphere. “I’m afraid you’ve landed yourself with a white elephant.” She softly laughed out the remark, conscious of the musky smell of him, intensified by the heat of the sun and his body.

“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” he shrugged and smiled. “Were you headed for the house?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“I’ll walk with you.”

He fell into step beside her as she started for her original destination. Her heart began skipping beats in schoolgirl fashion. It didn’t resume its normal pace until they separated company inside the house when Shad went upstairs to shower and change.

Chapter Three

FARMERS AND RANCHERS are rarely able to celebrate holidays or observe the Sabbath if there is work to be done in the fields or on the range. For a change, this Sunday in June was a day of rest on the Collins’s ranch, except for the daily chores. The mowed hay in the fields was still too damp to be baled; none of the animals were sick; and no fences were down.

Charley had gone to the little community church in the mountains where she and Gary were members. Gary had refused to go with her, insisting that he wasn’t going to ruin his one good pair of suit pants by cutting off one of the legs in order to put them on over his bulky cast. Shad had declined to attend, as well, without giving a reason. So Charley had gone without them, leaving instructions to keep an eye on the roast in the oven.

When she returned a little after twelve noon, the food was done and the table was set. Gary freely admitted that the credit belonged to Shad. The three of them sat down to a leisurely Sunday dinner with all the trimmings.

Not surprisingly, Charley didn’t have any volunteers to help with the washing up. Shad disappeared outside and Gary clumped to the living room couch to lie down and take an afternoon nap. Even after the dishes were washed, dried, and put away, Charley still had the feeling she was a stuffed sausage with all the food she’d consumed. She went outside to walk off some of the fullness.

The serrated outline of the Sawtooth Mountains was etched sharply against the backdrop of a summer blue sky as Charley stepped from the front porch. She lifted her gaze to the distant peaks, a parade of rocky spires on the horizon. Their craggy tops were crowned with snow while thick pine forests blackened their slopes. At their feet, the lush rolling meadows of the high country valley sprawled, crisscrossed with mountain-fed streams and dressed in the green of early summer. The boundaries of the Collins’s ranch lay within the valley floor in the shadow of the Sawtooth Mountains.

A breeze, fresh with the scent of pines, swept across the ranch yard and playfully tugged at the fold of her wraparound skirt, like a child eager to have her follow it. Charley smiled and let herself be urged along its path. It carried her first to the corrals where the horses trotted to the fence to see if she’d brought them any treats and stayed, crowding together and jealously vying for her attention.

After a little while she strolled away keeping to the relatively smooth ground of the ranch yard to make the walking easier in the spiky heels of her dress sandals. Shad was working on the old pickup truck, parked in the shade of the machine shed. Charley wandered over to see what progress he was making, if any. He was lying half under the front of the truck, limiting her view of him to the denim-clad, lower half of his body.

“Have you found out what’s wrong with it yet?” Charley sidestepped the assortment of tools on the ground and stopped by the front fender.

“Yeah.” Shad’s voice was slightly muffled. “It won’t run.”

Charley laughed and countered with a response as facetious as his own. “How clever of you to notice!”

Lying on his back, he scooted out from under the truck except for one shoulder. Her pulse was stimulated by the sight of his shirtless torso. His flatly muscled chest was all hard sinew and bone with a sprinkling of tightly curling black hair in a vee-shaped patch. The smearing stain of grease coated his large work- roughened hands. When she met his blue glance, there was a vibrancy to his look that tugged at her breath.

“I thought it was a rather brilliant deduction myself.”

The lazy smile matched the mood of his drawling voice, while the shimmer of male interest was evident in his sweeping inspection of her. “Are you just going to stand there and be ornamental or will you pass me that wrench?”

Bending her knees, Charley stooped beside the assortment of tools and picked up a wrench. “This one?”

At his affirmative nod, she handed it to him and remained in her crouched position, half- sitting on her heels to peer under the truck to watch him as he worked. She was entranced by the rippling play of straining muscles as he labored to loosen an unseen bolt. She folded her hands across her knees, letting the hem of her skirt drag the ground.

Without pausing in his efforts, he let his glance run back to her for a brief instant. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a beautiful pair of legs?”

Since her skirt was hiding them now, Charley guessed that he must have noticed them before, when she was standing. Her legs tingled in delayed reaction, as if only now becoming aware of the stroking of his admiring gaze.

“Not lately.” But she wasn’t sure that anyone had ever mentioned they thought she had attractive legs.

“It’s a shame they spend so much time covered by a pair of jeans.” Shad remarked. With the bolt loosened by the wrench, he spun it free with his fingers. “That part’s done.” The ring of accomplishment was in his voice as he wormed his way out from under the truck and passed Charley the wrench.

In reaching for it, she misjudged the distance and slid her hand over his dirt-and-grease- coated fingers. The contact left a smear of grime on the side of her hand. Charley didn’t notice it until she had replaced the wrench. As she was straightening to an erect position, Shad was rolling to his feet in a move of superb coordination.

“Do you have a rag?” she asked when she saw the black smear. “I got grease on myself.”

“There’s one on the left fender.” He indicated its location with a wave of his hand.

As she walked over and picked it up, a vagrant breeze whipped a thick length of sandy hair across her face and into her eyes. Half- blinded, she unconsciously used her dirty hand to push it out of her eyes and unknowingly left a dark streak of grease across her cheekbone. When she could see clearly again, she began scrubbing her hand with the rag.

“You’ve smeared it on your cheek,” Shad pointed out, a smile edging the corners of his mouth as he studied her.

“I have?” She lifted clean fingers to her cheek and brushed them over the prominent bone. They came away with traces of the dirty grease. When she tried to wipe her cheek clean with the cloth rag, she only succeeded in spreading the grease.

“You’d better let me do it,” he stated and took the rag from her hand, encountering only hesitant resistance.

His male lips lay flat against each other, held straight, but slashing smile lines were in his lean cheeks and slanting from his eyes. He folded the cloth until he had exposed a clean square patch. The task demanded that he stand very close to her. Charley felt the acceleration of her heartbeat as she lifted her face to his ministrations.

He wiped at the smear with firm, even strokes, taking his time to erase the smallest particle. She could see the pores of his skin and the black centers of his vibrantly blue eyes, half-closed as they looked down at her face. Her breathing was shallow, affected by his nearness and the raw, male vitality that flowed from him. Charley lowered her gaze, fighting the powerful attraction he exerted on her. The sight of the sun-bronzed wall of his bare chest was equally undermining in its influence on her senses. When she looked up again, his gaze was centered on her lips with disturbing intensity. It produced an aching tightness in her throat.

Regardless of the way her body was reacting, she wasn’t a giddy teenager anymore. Although she didn’t claim to be worldly-wise, she knew the score. It didn’t matter how it was added up, she would wind up being the loser in a romantic encounter with this man.

“Stop it, Shad.” Her voice was low and husky with control.

“Stop what?” His look was alive with male interest, boldly sensual and disarming.

“Stop looking at me like that.” She kept her reply steady and faked a calmness.

“Like what?” He pretended an interest in her smeared cheek, but Charley was certain it had been wiped away long ago. “Like I wanted to make love to you?” He rephrased the question to be more specific.

Charley tried to ignore the tumbling rush of her heart. “Yes,” she said evenly.

“Does it bother you?” His mouth quirked, mocking her with the devilry of his smile.

“I’m as human as you are, Shad, but I’m not a fool,” she replied and moved out of his reach, trying to conceal the tremors that rocked her.

But he made no attempt to lessen the distance as he began wiping his greasy hands on the cloth. “Because I’m only passing through.” He guessed her reason for backing off from the possibility of an embrace.

“Aren’t you?” She challenged him to deny it.

A hint of a frown flickered across his expression as he half turned away to throw the rag onto the truck hood. His split-second hesitation before answering caused Charley to hold her breath. But he gave her the reply she had initially expected.

“I’ll be moving on sooner or later,” Shad admitted without apology or any show of regret.

The ranch was nothing more than a stopgap in his travels. She meant nothing special to him. He was only attracted to her because she was on the scene and available. Charley had guessed all this but there was no satisfaction in having her suspicions confirmed. One foolish segment of her heart was wishing he had lied.

Her gaze lingered on his averted face and watched the breeze rumple his heavy black hair. When he turned his head to meet her look, she felt the throb of tension in the air. It was broken by the powerful drone of an approaching car. They both glanced at the intruder on the scene as the car entered the ranch yard.

“It looks like you have a visitor,” Shad remarked with cool indifference.

Charley had recognized the late-model Buick slowing to a stop near the house and would have passed the information along to him if he had shown the least amount of interest. But he had turned his back to her, his attention reverting to the partially dismantled truck motor.

There was taut pressure in the line of her mouth as she started forward to greet the stocky man climbing out of the cream-colored Buick. She forced it into a curving smile of welcome when she came closer to him.