Sandra Steffen - Wes Stryker's Wrangled Wife

She supposed it was curiosity that had her skating toward the barn and slipping inside. “Stryker?” she called, wrinkling her nose at the smell of horses and hay and something she hoped she hadn’t already stepped in. “If I ruin this pair of boots, I’m going to hold you personally responsible. Where are you, anyway?”

“I’m right here.”

She jumped at his sudden appearance in a doorway a few feet away. When he disappeared again, she followed, striding past a row of dark stalls and into an area that was divided into two sections by a wooden fence. “Why is it,” she said as her eyes slowly adjusted to the light spilling through three high windows, “that you only answer half my questions?”

Wes waited to breathe a sigh of relief until after he’d returned the scoop to the barrel of oats. She hadn’t left. Hallelujah, she hadn’t left.

He’d almost kissed her out in the yard. A tiny thread of self-preservation had stopped him at the last minute, because something had warned him that if he kissed her, she would hightail it out of there. And he didn’t want her to leave. He wanted her to stay, and that wanting scared him more than he cared to admit.

Being careful of his left shoulder, he carried the bucket of oats to a far corner and emptied it into the feeder. Three horses immediately started eating. Smoothing his hand over the middle horse’s gray muzzle, he said, “I’ve always been a firm believer in letting actions speak for themselves.”

Jayne strolled a little closer, thinking about Wes’s answer. She didn’t know what to make of him. What, exactly, were his actions saying right now? He was looking at a horse, stroking its muzzle with his right hand. His hand was broad and tanned, his fingers blunt tipped and slightly crooked, as if they’d been broken a time or two. It was a masculine hand, but not a terribly attractive one, and yet there was something very attractive about the way it moved up and down the horse’s head.

“Is he your favorite horse?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“He was my best friend’s favorite horse.”

The current in his voice drew her gaze. “Does he have a name?”

“My friend’s name was Dusty. This is Gray.”

“How long ago did Dusty die?”

Wes’s hand went perfectly still. “How did you know he died?”

She studied him thoughtfully for a moment. He’d done it again, hadn’t answered her question. “I guess bleeding hearts recognize each other.”

She strolled a little closer, drawing a line in the dust on the top board of the stall with a finger. “I spent the first few months after Sherman moved out wondering if I was going crazy. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate. A friend of mine convinced me to enroll in an art class. Another friend suggested yoga.” Jayne shook her head. “I have no artistic talent, and all that breathing and chanting didn’t relax me. It drove me crazy. I know death and divorce aren’t the same things, but they’re both losses. I won’t say something trite, trying to minimize your pain, but time has helped me.”

She glanced up from the dust on her finger and found him looking at her. She hadn’t realized she’d moved so close to him, and she certainly hadn’t intended to tell him about something as personal as her divorce. It was still a touchy subject, but if her experience eased his sorrow in some tiny way, she wasn’t sorry she’d bared a small corner of her soul.

“Jayne?”

She stared at him, patiently waiting for him to pour a little of his own heart out to her.

“You were married to a man named Sherman?”

Jayne blinked. She’d unearthed her soul, and his only comment pertained to her ex-husband’s name?

Did he have no feelings? Okay, he hadn’t laughed, but there had been incredulity in his voice. What? Hadn’t he ever known anyone named Sherman? There had been plenty of emotion in his voice when he’d mentioned his best friend. In some perverse way, she was glad he hadn’t turned all maudlin on her. Still, it made her curious. Just what was Wes Stryker made of? He was a man—a very private one. She doubted he enjoyed having someone traipse through his thought processes. In that respect he wasn’t so different from the men she’d known in Seattle.

The men back home wore expensive suits for work and designer sportswear for play. Wes was wearing a sheepskin jacket, the collar turned up, jeans that had seen better days and a faded shirt that looked as soft as butter. His skin had acquired a permanent tan, and there was whisker stubble on his cheeks and jaw. She’d never been a fan of facial hair and yet his did nothing to detract from the hollows, planes and angles of his rugged face. For all his face’s interesting contours, she was most interested in the depth and intensity of his eyes.

Crossing her arms, she said, “You’re something else, Stryker, do you know that?”

A smile found its way to his mouth much the way a cloud drifted over the face of the sun. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Jayne could count on one hand the times in her life she’d been speechless, and yet in the tight space so near him, she couldn’t think of a single thing to do or say. He had no such problem, reaching for her hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She’d thought he was going to kiss her earlier. Now she was sure. She knew she should try to fight it, but as he lowered his face, she lifted hers, his features blurring before her eyes, his breath a soft rasp on her cheek, her heartbeat a slow stutter in her chest.

Something streaked past her ankles, fluttering the hem of her skirt. She jerked, shrieked and jumped. Her clamber to the top of the gate might not have been graceful, but it was certainly fast.

A cat hissed. A dog whined. Jayne screamed again.

“It’s all right,” Wes said. “It was just a cat. Marilyn won’t hurt you.”

Jayne turned her head slowly. Holding on to the top board with one hand, she peered over her shoulder where a scruffy-looking, half-grown kitten stood in a corner, back arched, fur on end. A dog that must have weighed at least seven times more seemed to be trying to decide how to get closer to the kitten. The kitten swiped and spat, sending the dog reeling backward.

“Come on, Marilyn. Be nice.”

Jayne loosened her grip on the gate with utmost care. “You have a problem with my ex-husband’s name, and yet you named a kitten Marilyn?”

“I never said I had a problem with your ex-husband’s name. What don’t you like about ‘Marilyn’?”

She used the time it took to get her breathing and heart rate under control to look around. The horses were still eating, Marilyn’s back was still arched, and two other kittens were watching from the hayloft. “You have to admit it’s an unusual name for a cat. What do you call them?”

He looked over his shoulder, but he didn’t turn around.

“The calico one is Carolyn, the butterscotch-colored one is Sherilyn.”

Carolyn, Marilyn and Sherilyn? “They’re all females?”

“I haven’t had the heart to check.”

Another time Jayne might have laughed. As it was, she could only shake her head. Being careful not to get her feet tangled up in the folds of her brightly colored skirt, she climbed down from the gate and put a little distance between her and Wes.

One of the horses nickered, and the one named Gray tossed his head and snorted. Marilyn, the kitten, joined her sisters, if they were indeed all females, the dog watching silently.

“It’s quite a menagerie of pets you have here, Stryker,” she said, pulling up the zipper tab on her coat.

Wes pulled the brim of his cowboy hat lower on his forehead, watching as Jayne prepared to leave. She was putting on a pair of bright green gloves, her lower lip tucked between her teeth. If it hadn’t been for two of those pets she’d mentioned, he would have known how her lips felt and tasted.