A Stranger in the Family (Book 1, Bardville, Wyoming Trilogy) Page 6

  “Would you like to join us for church services, Boone?” Irene invited at breakfast. “I know young people sometimes don’t care to—”

  Pete mumbled something around a mouthful of pancakes that sounded like a protest that he was a young person and how come he didn’t get a choice.

  “And when they get to be adults, they can make that choice for themselves,” Irene serenely digressed. “But if you’d like to come along, you’re most welcome. We’ll leave in half an hour.”

  Boone would have turned down the invitation, except he saw that Cambria expected him to.

  He got a most unholy delight at her martyred sigh when he said yes.

  She showed up at the appointed time in a simple green dress that reminded him of the freshness of spring flowers—if spring flowers glowered.

  “You’re coming, Cam?” Ted Weston made no attempt to hide his surprise.

  “You know Martin Haines is away for the summer, so Reverend Elaitch is taking his place, don’t you?”

  Irene’s frown didn’t ease under Cambria’s grim, “I know.”

  “I didn’t think you cared for Reverend Elaitch’s, uh, approach,” Irene said.

  “Reverend Elaitch is a self-satisfied, sanctimonious windbag.”

  “Cambria!”

  Irene’s admonishment was lost under Ted’s chuckle. He put an arm around Cambria’s shoulders and squeezed. “She’s right.”

  Cambria’s conspiratorial smile at her father faded when she faced Boone, replaced by a look of pure determination. “But he’s not going to stop me from going to church. Not him or anybody.”

  Boone had a hard time squelching a grin. Served Cambria right for tormenting him all week that she was going to sit through services conducted by a man she didn’t like—and accompanied by a man she didn’t trust.

  She sat next to Boone in the pew, so his senses drank in her subtly spicy scent each time she moved. And he wondered who was tormenting whom.

  A latecomer slid in at the end of the row, squeezing out the margin of space they’d left between them. Now, the length of her arm and her hip snugged against him, and through the protective layers of cloth, he absorbed the contact.

  He didn’t hear a word the Reverend Elaitch said, but he prayed like mad.

  His prayers would have astounded the congregation. But they were answered—he made it through the services without making a fool of himself.

  Early that afternoon a discussion about the previous day’s game ended with Pete wanting to demonstrate a pitch he’d been working on and Boone lowering himself into the nearly forgotten catcher’s crouch. He hadn’t played ball since the army.

  But his muscles remembered, and even as he commented on the pitches Pete threw, Boone’s mind was freed to consider another matter.

  The past week wasn’t all Cambria’s doing.

  He could have found excuses not to spend all that time with her. He hadn’t wanted to find excuses. He liked spending time with her. Her tongue had an edge to it, but he didn’t mind. Kept him on his toes.

  He could see her determination not to enjoy being with him, so he enjoyed those moments he surprised a smile out of her, or better yet, a laugh. He liked that a lot. She had thoughts about the land, people, movies, politics, songs, society and preachers. He liked that, too.

  He also liked that spicy scent, and the lock of hair she was forever tucking behind her ear, and the precise curve of her back—up to her shoulders and down to her rear end—and the change that lit her when he overcame her reluctance and doubts and earned that smile. Oh, yes, and the way she tested the texture of things with her hands. The quick, light touch to a leather briefcase or wooden fence or dusty horse. Followed by a lingering stroke that seemed slow enough to absorb every nuance of every atom it encountered. Oh, yes, he liked that a lot. It had slipped into his dreams.

  “Hey, Cam, did you see that pitch?” Pete called.

  “I saw it.”

  Boone twisted around in time to see Cambria’s smile for her brother lapse as she looked at him.

  “Boone was telling me I could get better control by changing my hold a little.”

  “Was he?”

  Pete tugged on his blue baseball cap, the front emblazoned with the yellow letters P.A.W. For Peter Andrew Weston, Pete had said. It was a gift from Ted when they’d been at the state fair in Douglas three years ago.

  “Yeah, and he was right.”

  Still in his crouch, Boone tossed the ball straight up and let it drop into his hands.

  “Was he?” Cambria asked again.

  “Happens now and then,” Boone muttered. “Sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut.” He tossed the ball again as Pete rattled on.

  The ball didn’t come down, and Boone looked up to see Cambria with one hand cradling the stained horsehide. Her other hand brushed lightly across the surface, then stroked across it again, slowly.

  Damn.

  Where his jeans were stretched by his crouched position, they began to grow snugger.

  “I’m going up—” a jerk of her head indicated the mountains to the west “—to look over the snowmelt this afternoon. I thought you might like to go along.”

  Boone rested his forearms on his thighs and let his empty hands drop between as if to signal the pitcher.

  And watched her eyes follow the move.

  “I might at that.”

  Her cheeks darkened. Their eyes locked for an instant, then she broke the connection.

  “Right now, Irene says lunch is ready.”

  With that she turned and flipped the ball to Pete.

  Slowly, Boone straightened.

  Did she think she could look at him with that hungry curiosity and speculation and not have him notice? Did she think that turning away, that denying it, would make him blind?

  Cambria Weston blew hot and cold, and expected him to only feel the cold.

  He didn’t think he could.

  * * * *

  “The water feeds from here down into that canyon.” Cambria pointed and watched Boone follow the gesture with either genuine or expertly feigned interest. “Then across a natural meadow through our near-in pastures and to the creek behind the cabins. Good snowpack can make all the difference in a dry summer, especially if it doesn’t all melt at once.”

  “How’s this one doing?”

  She shrugged. “Not bad.”

  He cocked his head to one side and studied her. “So, that’s it? You drive up here, walk a couple of miles, then drive back down the mountain?”

  That came perilously close to what she’d intended, since her primary purpose had been to interrupt all that male-bonding he’d been doing with her brother.

  “I want to check some more.” She gave a vague wave to a spur of land that jutted between this creek and a smaller one to the south. “Go back to the truck if you’re tired.”

  “I suppose I can make it a few more yards,” he said dryly.

  She started off, aware of him at her side.

  Following deep-sunk tire ruts, she’d driven the truck about half a mile off the highway into the trees, then they’d hiked another mile, out the other side of the trees to where the ground gradually fell away before plummeting into the canyon she’d pointed out.

  On the way Boone had asked a lot of questions about the various types of pines. She gave him their names—lodgepole, Engelmann spruce, an occasional white bark pine, plus the more general Rocky Mountain juniper. But when it came to rate of growth and their lumber’s durability for building, she’d been stumped after saying lodgepole got its name from Indians using the trunks as framework for their lodges. Other than that, she suggested he visit the district forest service office in Sheridan.

  She’d had more success pointing out early blooming lupines and cinquefoils in a protected sunny spot by the highway. Heartier blossoms held sway over ground newly freed from snow—the pink-veined blooms of spring beauty, and in a boggy area, the bright white and yellow of globeflower, even the delicate, nodd
ing heads of the adder’s-tongue.

  And Boone had listened.

  So maybe he wasn’t as much like Tony as she’d once thought. Maybe he was charming. Maybe he was selling something she hadn’t figured out yet. Certainly he was worth keeping an eye on, but she couldn’t fault him on his attitude toward the outdoors.

  Tony had considered the deck of a powerboat the only vantage point for observing nature, preferably while sipping a gin and tonic. Nothing too ostentatious, mind you. Just something to entertain a fishing-crazed representative, undersecretary, or other useful connection for an afternoon of prime schmoozing and ego-massaging.

  Boone also wasn’t like Tony in the way Pete responded to him. The one time her family had met Tony during a visit to Washington—she’d never persuaded him to come to Wyoming—she’d divined in Pete’s attitude toward her fiancé a mixture of extreme discomfort and a hint of disdain. Not at all the way he reacted to Boone Dorsey Smith.

  She gave her head a mental shake. This was getting all twisted around. If Pete and the rest of her family didn’t like Boone, she wouldn’t have to worry about the possibility he was out to get something from them and she wouldn’t have had to drag him up here.

  “How long are you going to keep this up?”

  Boone’s abrupt question brought Cambria to a halt. He faced her.

  “If you don’t want to go any farther, we can go back to the truck now.”

  Her offer drew a truncated burst of laughter from him.

  “It’s not the hike I’m talking about.”

  “What are you talking about, then?”

  “Guard duty. You keeping tabs on me like I’m a foreign spy. What have I done to make you distrust me so much?”

  “For starters, you didn’t tell us your right name.” Was she reminding him or herself of the reasons to be wary?

  “I told you—”

  “Yeah, you told us.” She let him see her disbelief.

  “I’ve got to wonder, Cambria, is it me or is it all men?” His eyes narrowed on her, thick black lashes framing slits of silver. “Maybe all of humanity. Do you find a reason not to trust everybody who’s not a resident of Bardville, Wyoming?”

  “I’ve seen your type before, Boone.” She ignored the quick, what-type-is-that lift of his brows. “Maybe you don’t mean any real harm—”

  “Thank you for that vote of confidence.”

  “But I intend to make sure you don’t do any.”

  “By keeping me busy yourself and out of the way of your family?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to have to work as damn hard as I’ll need to in order to resist you.”

  He made no attempt to hide that the blaze in his eyes had been lit by desire. She opened her mouth, closed it, and tried again. “That’s not an issue. I told you before, I have a rule. I don’t—”

  “Get involved with guests. I know. Rules get broken.” He leaned forward swiftly, not touching her, yet giving her a sense of being surrounded by him. “And people who play with fire get burned.”

  Even when he backed off without another word, and they started for the truck, she felt the heat.

  * * * *

  “There’s a dance tonight in town,” Cambria abruptly announced at dinner Monday night.

  She and Boone had been the only ones around almost all day. Irene had gone shopping, then volunteered at the hospital; Ted had fixed fence on a distant range, and Pete had a meeting after school, then baseball practice. But she hadn’t spoken to Boone until now.

  She’d seen him head to town, carrying his briefcase and his laptop computer. She’d been aware, as she’d finished waxing the floor in the cabin on the far side of the bunkhouse, of him sitting on the narrow front porch of his cabin working on his computer—until an afternoon thunderstorm chased him inside. A man who worked that hard on his vacation was probably allergic to dancing.

  “Do you want to go?” she demanded when her first announcement didn’t draw an immediate reply.

  Pete gulped a mouthful of potatoes. “Oh, hey, that’s the cafe anniversary, isn’t it? They’re going to have a live band.”

  “In the cafe?” Boone clearly couldn’t puzzle out how a band would fit in the tiny cafe, much less dancers.

  “The cafe’s actually part of the Back Bar, the longest-running business in this county,” Ted explained. “One hundred and twelve years old as of today. When the Back Bar was built, Bozeman Road was the main street, but Big Horn Avenue got bigger, so the original owner built the cafe facing that way and joined the two into a sort of L. Stan Elliston rents out the back room that connects them for meetings and such.”

  “And parties, like this one. It’ll be great. When do we leave, Cam?”

  “Not you, Pete. You have school tomorrow. I meant Boone.”

  Boone raised one eyebrow. “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Unless you don’t want to go.” She hoped that hadn’t sounded too much like a challenge.

  He gave her a considering look that lasted too long and probed too deep for her comfort. “Oh, I want to go.”

  “Fine. We’ll leave right after supper. It’s casual.”

  * * * *

  After a silent drive to town—perhaps Cambria wasn’t in the mood to chat because he’d finally won the tussle over who would drive, or perhaps she had other things on her mind—she had the sense to leave him high and dry about three seconds after walking through the cafe and into the cleared back room.

  Boone was glad she did, because he was entirely too fascinated by the way the wide neckline of her turquoise blouse slipped toward first one shoulder then the other. No strap ever showed, and that stirred speculation—and other things—that made her leaving him alone definitely the wisest move.

  She had an assist from the fair-haired guy in cowboy dress who got a hold of her arm and drew her onto the dance floor to the strong beat of the small band crammed in the far corner.

  She did give Boone a half-apologetic look over her shoulder—a shoulder not quite bared by that turquoise blouse she had tucked into a fine-fitting, above-the-knee, denim skirt—before she swung into the stream of the dance.

  “Mr. Dorsey!”

  He finished paying for his beer, then looked around.

  A wave caught his eye and he recognized the older woman from Jessa Tarrant’s shop—Rita, that was her name. Rita Campbell. Beyond her, Jessa leaned against the wall. He smiled a hello and started toward them. Rita was talking as he came to stand beside her.

  “It’s good for people to get out, enjoy themselves, right, Jessa?”

  Jessa gave a slight smile.

  “Can I get you ladies a drink?” he offered.

  “No. Thank you.”

  “Me, either, but that’s real nice of you to ask,” Rita said. “Oh, they’re doing a line dance. C’mon, you two.” She edged closer to the dance floor as the space quickly filled with spectators joining lines. “Everybody’s going to dance now.’’

  “You go ahead, Rita. You, too, Boone. I’ll be fine.”

  Boone spotted Cambria between the fair-haired man and the portly proprietor of the cafe, Stan Elliston.

  “I’ll stay with you, Jessa.”

  Rita looked from one to the other. “Are you—?”

  Jessa gave her a gentle push. “Go on.”

  Boone joined Jessa in leaning against the wall. “I’m going to have to get a haircut.’’

  “What? Why?”

  “I figure it must be the hair that made Rita worried about leaving you alone with me.”

  She smiled. “Rita feels responsible. She talked me into coming. I, uh, haven’t done much socially lately.”

  “Me, either.”

  He knew she was studying him, and he let her, without returning the look.

  “Lately’s an understatement for me. It’s about three years.”

  His mouth twitched. “Six for me—and no,
there’s nothing wrong with me, physically or otherwise. It’s just...I’ve been busy,” he finished lamely.

  She digested that in silence for a moment, then asked, “Do you know how to line dance?”

  He smiled. “No, but I’m willing to learn.”

  They stumbled through three songs, trying to follow more expert dancers. The music slowed to a ballad, and they gladly found spots along the wall. Cambria went right into a dance with the fair-haired cowboy. At least it wasn’t a clinch.

  “He’s in insurance.” Jessa said from beside Boone.

  “What?”

  “The guy monopolizing Cambria. Kent Kepper. He’s in insurance, and Cambria isn’t interested in what he’s selling.”

  “Guess she figures there’re better investments than insurance.” With the ballad still lilting, he leaned in to ask in a conversational tone, “Would you like to dance?”

  She looked startled, glanced away, then back, meeting his gaze squarely.

  “No. I know I should be flattered and—” The next words came slowly. “I might kick myself tomorrow, but no. Thank you, no. But you should go find someone who will dance with you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Why not you?”

  A smile lit her eyes. “Because of the way you look at Cambria. And she’s my best friend.”

  That shook him a little, but he masked it. “So you won’t dance with me?”

  “Not when you’re thinking about how much you’d like to hold her while you’re asking me to dance.”

  He leaned back. “You’re pretty sure you know what’s going on in my head, aren’t you?”

  He was rewarded with a warm smile from Cambria Weston’s best friend. “Yes.”

  * * * *

  Cambria watched Jessa and Boone Dorsey Smith talking, and saw the long eye contact and the smiles.

  She didn’t like it, even if it did keep him occupied and away from her.

  He kept secrets, for one thing. And a man who’d flirt with one woman after the way he’d looked at another woman—and reacted to another woman—the way he had just yesterday afternoon...Well, he wasn’t to be trusted.