Western Man (3 page)

“I think so,” she admitted. “It’s getting too expensive to haul horses to some of the distant shows. I thought I’d concentrate on the major shows in the immediate area. I can’t quit the show ring altogether or I’ll lose the chance of getting new horses to train.” She was well aware that competing in stock and western pleasure classes brought her to the attention of owners willing to pay to have their horses trained by a professional. Her reputation as a trainer was growing—and she had a roomful of trophies and ribbons to prove it.

As she turned to carry the empty cookie sheet to the table, she saw Tony slyly dipping his hand into the milk glass. “Tony—”

At her sharply reprimanding tone, he jerked his hand out of the glass. The suddenness of his action tipped the glass over, spilling the milk—right into Ridge’s lap.

“Now look what you’ve done, Tony.” But she couldn’t keep the smile out of her voice as she deposited the cookie sheet on the table and reached for the towel. Her hazel eyes were dancing with laughter when she met Ridge’s glance. “Was the milk cold?” she murmured innocently.

The anger went out of his expression as quickly as it had come in. “You know damned well it was,” he muttered with a half smile and took the towel she offered to blot up the excess wetness.

“The ice cubes were your idea.” Sharon took delight in reminding him of the fact.

“Maybe father doesn’t always know best,” Ridge conceded with a rueful look and stood up to wipe at the front of his jeans where the wet blotch spread onto his thigh. “There’s one consolation. Milk is probably the cleanest thing that’s touched these jeans lately.”

The faded material was dusty and dirt-stained, but Sharon was more conscious of the way the work-worn fabric snugly shaped itself to his hips and thighs like a second skin. It turned her thoughts in a direction that had no place in the kitchen.

The spilled milk that hadn’t initially landed on Ridge was now dripping off the edge of the table. Sharon grabbed the dishcloth from the sink and mopped up the milky film on the table. All the while Tony stayed very quiet and very small, not wanting to draw further attention to himself in an attempt to avoid possible punishment. He looked
sufficiently chagrined so that Sharon didn’t feel anything more needed to be said.

As she returned to the sink to rinse the dishcloth under the faucet, Ridge followed her. “I’m afraid your towel is soiled,” he said, acknowledging it had picked up some of his dirt along with the milk.

“It’ll wash.”

Taking the towel from him, Sharon draped it over the edge of the counter to dry and folded the dishcloth to lay it over the divider of the double sink. She felt him studying her with a penetrating thoughtfulness and sent him a curious sidelong glance.

“I hear you’ve been seeing a lot of that oil man lately,” Ridge said.

“Oil man?” She frowned with an initial bewilderment, then her expression cleared. “You mean Andy Rivers,” she said, realizing suddenly whom he meant. “He’s a geologist who
works
for an oil company.”

The Piceance Basin of Colorado contained one of the largest concentrations of oil shale. According to Andy, they estimated there were over 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the shale, more than the provable reserves of crude oil in the OPEC countries. It defied imagination when one considered they were standing on top of it.

“Same difference,” Ridge shrugged at her
answer and continued to study her with a kind of interested speculation. “Is it true it’s become a regular thing?”

“More or less. Between his work schedule and my horse show dates, we don’t see each other all that frequently,” Sharon insisted. “But I suppose we go out on a fairly regular basis.”

“Are you thinking about marrying him?” he asked.

Just for a second she searched his face, trying to find some reason for this personal interest, but there appeared to be little more than the casual interest of a family friend. She suppressed a sigh. Friends always seemed to be more inquisitive than family.

She laughed shortly and with little humor. “Why is it that if a girl sees a guy more than a half-dozen times everybody assumes she’s planning on a trip to the alter? Maybe I’m just taking a page out of your book—or Scott’s.” She was vaguely impatient, but there was no heat of anger in her voice.

His eyes narrowed speculatively. “What do you mean by that?”

“You and Scott seem to be on the road to becoming confirmed bachelors.” To her knowledge, neither Ridge nor her brother had been serious about any girl they had dated. “Maybe I’m not the marrying kind either.” Her real problem was that she had to stop comparing every man she met to Ridge. Until she did that, she probably never would find a man she could care enough about to marry. “I
enjoy going out with Andy. We have fun together.”

Which was true. Andy made her laugh. When she was with him, she rarely thought about Ridge. Maybe that didn’t seem earth shattering, but she considered it important.

“The three of us used to have some good times together. You, me and Scott,” Ridge stated somewhat absently. Lifting a hand, he trailed a finger along her cheekbone and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Didn’t we?”

“Yes.” Sharon didn’t trust herself to say more.

There was a poignant drift of memories back to that time he had recalled. It had always been a threesome, although Sharon had been so wildly infatuated with Ridge at the time that she had believed her brother was tagging along with them—instead of her tagging along with them. She had built so many dreams from those innocent evenings in Ridge’s company. She had wanted so much to believe he loved her that she had exaggerated every slow dance, every kiss, out of all proportion.

Long ago Sharon had stopped trying to second-guess his motives, so she didn’t allow herself to wonder whether he was caught in a past memory when his calloused fingers laid themselves against the curve of her neck. He bent his head toward her, the brim of his hat partially masking the skimming inspection of his gaze.

She had learned that a kiss from Ridge was nothing more than a kiss. Avoiding it would make
more out of it than what it was. The trick was to accept it
without
making more out of it than it was.

The warm pressure of his mouth covered her lips and moved familiarly to take possession. His hand tightened slightly on her neck to arch her into the kiss. An encircling arm was bringing her against his body. Sharon relaxed naturally against his hard frame, letting her hands slide around his middle.

Her lips moved under the investigative influence of his. The stirrings of hunger escaped her restraint and became a part of her response. Sharon wavered, wanting to draw back from the edge of this unexpected precipice, but Ridge pressed the issue with deepening insistence. Her indecision dissolved under the heat of raw longing.

There was a slow disentangling of their lips. Her breath was coming low and shallow, as disturbed as the uneven rhythm of her pulse. Sharon was careful not to let her expression show just how much his kiss had affected her. Her gaze she kept focused on the shoulder seam of his shirt. His face remained close to hers, his hat brim casting a shadow on her face while his moist breath warmed her hot skin.

“When did you learn to kiss like that?’ His low voice held a hint of curious amusement.

The hand on the small of her back spread its fingers, testing the supple curve of her spine. It sent little waves of heat lightning flashing through her nerves, recharging their high sensitivity. His hard, sinewed length seemed indelibly imprinted on her flesh, male in its contours.

“It’s been two years or more since you kissed me.” If he’d asked, Sharon could have told him the place and the time. Her voice contained no trace of her tension, even though it was a little on the husky side. “I’ve had time to practice. Surely you didn’t expect me to kiss like some innocent seventeen-year-old.”

“I don’t know,” Ridge murmured and raised her chin, his blue eyes intent and probing in their narrowed study of her. “But I didn’t expect this.”

This recognition of her as a woman was the very thing she had so longed to hear. Her breath caught in her throat, as she hardly dared to believe it. Even if Ridge meant nothing beyond that, there was sweet satisfaction in being acknowledged as a desirable female. However, both her feet remained firmly planted in reality. It was the first time Sharon had met him on an equal footing—man to woman. He didn’t have a starry-eyed romantic in his arms.

All this gave her a new confidence when his mouth sought to discover the mystery of her lips again. It wasn’t necessary to disguise her enjoyment of this intimacy. Her lips parted under the deepening urgency of his kiss. A golden tide of warmth curled through her limbs while she spread her hands over the rippling muscles of his back.

Her senses were awash with the taste, the feel, and the smell of him. His mouth rolled off her lips as he came up for air, the heat of his breath fanning her cheek. There was a labored edge to his
breathing, and her acutely sensitive hearing picked up the slightly uneven tempo of his heartbeat.

There was a bright glint in his eyes when Sharon finally lifted her gaze to meet his. Behind its surface amusement, the look was faintly accusing.

“You’ve come of age,” Ridge murmured.

“I turned twenty-one on my last birthday,” she pointed out, a fact that he had obviously overlooked, being so accustomed to regarding her as Scott’s kid sister.

From the front porch there came a snarling growl that erupted into an angry bark. Sharon stiffened at the sound, then pushed out of Ridge’s arms.

“Tony,” she gasped the toddler’s name as she raced into the living room. He had managed to push the screen door open. When he heard her coming, he hurriedly tossed the cookie at the barking dog and guiltily let the door swing shut.

“Doggie wanted a cookie.” He blinked at her with wide-eyed innocence.

Fully aware that Tony was trying to make her believe he had intended throwing the treat to the dog all the time, Sharon wasn’t buying any of it. The cookie had been offered in an attempt to entice the dog inside the house.

“All right, bud. It’s nap time for you,” Sharon informed him angrily.

The minute she picked him up Tony started wailing at the top of his lungs. “Don’t want nap!” he protested. His cries immediately started the dog barking.

Between the two, Sharon was nearly deafened. She shouted at both of them to hush up, but neither listened. When she turned, she spied Ridge leaning an arm against the doorway to the kitchen and watching the scene with detached amusement.

“Will you shut that dog up!” she demanded.

“Sam. Quiet.” The two words came out hard and quick. There was instant silence from the dog, although Tony continued his whining bawl in her ear. Ridge’s smile was close to a taunting grin as he moved lazily toward the door on a path that took him past Sharon. “One way or another, I think Sam and I have done enough damage for one afternoon.” His glance flicked to her lips and she guessed they were still swollen from his kisses. “Don’t forget to have Scott phone me tonight.”

“I won’t.” But she’d practically forgotten the reason Ridge had stopped in the first place until he reminded her. Being in his arms had driven nearly everything from her mind.

The instant Tony realized the dog was leaving too, he sent out a fresh protest. Ridge and Sam were long gone before Sharon was finally able to quiet him down. Although he tried very hard to stay awake, Tony was exhausted from all the excitement and eventually fell asleep against his will.

When the ranch house was at last filled with silence, Sharon returned to the kitchen to put the last sheet of cookies into the oven. It was impossible not to think about Ridge. The scent of him still clung to her clothes and her skin, and the
remembered sensation of his roaming hands remained with her.

She was determined not to make a mountain out of this molehill-sized kiss the way she’d done in the past. To paraphrase an old saying—one kiss did not a romance make. But it gave her a lot to think about.

Ridge—so easygoing and carefree on the surface. But there was more to the man than that, even if he never showed the serious side of himself around her. It existed—of that she had no doubt. No one could approach life with the shallow and lackadaisical indifference that Ridge showed and efficiently manage a ranch the size of Latigo. If that was the true sort of man he was, the ranch would have started going downhill five years earlier, when Ridge took over after his father’s death. That hadn’t happened. From the talk Sharon had heard, the Latigo was in a more solid financial position than it had enjoyed in years.

Her brother Scott probably knew Ridge better than anyone, but getting him to talk was about as difficult as extracting oil from shale economically. Scott was undoubtedly a bonanza of information, but Sharon hadn’t successfully squeezed any of it from him.

When the last of the cookies were cooling on the counter, she began washing up the baking dishes. It was funny to discover that as a teenager she had been attracted to the slightly wild and fun-loving side of Ridge, always ripe for a laugh and a good time. Now that she had grown older—and hopefully
wiser—she was becoming more intrigued by the more silent, and probably stronger, side of him.

It was nearly six in the evening when Rita came by the house to pick up Tony. She had to rush home to fix supper, so there wasn’t time for Sharon to have more than a quick chat with her while they gathered all Tony’s toys and clothing.

Supper was in the oven and Sharon had the evening chores done when the pickup truck with the horse trailer crested a hillock and approached the barns. Sharon waved to the three people crowded together in the cab of the truck and continued to the house. With their horses to be unsaddled, rubbed down, and fed for the night, it would be another quarter of an hour before they joined her, Sharon knew.

By the time Sharon’s parents and brother had taken turns using the shower, three-quarters of an hour had passed before they all sat down at the table. There was a moment’s pause while her father said grace. Lloyd Powell was tall and broadly muscled, with a silver mane of hair that had once been the color of his thirty-two-year-old son’s dusty brown hair. Scott had his wide features, bluntly chiseled and weathered brown by the sun and wind, but he had his mother’s green eyes. On the other hand, Sharon had inherited her mother’s slender build and toffee-colored hair, and her father’s hazel-brown eyes.