Terry McLaughlin - The Rancher Needs A Wife

He’d lowered his head until his hat brim hid most of his face, but she could still see the slow curve of his lips.

“What are you grinning at?” she asked.

“I can nearly hear the wheels spinning in that clever head of yours,” he said. “Figuring all the angles, all at the same time. Probably looking to find the weakest link on the board and work on it until it snaps.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing? Working on you?”

His grin disappeared and his chin came up, the merest fraction of an inch, enough for her to see the faint glint of his eyes beneath the Stetson’s brim. Shadow and light slid over his features, highlighting the rugged arrangement of skin and bone. He’d been a good-looking boy. And he’d grown to be an extremely attractive man.

A strong man, a man who had refused to follow his mother’s desertion, who had dug in and struggled through his alcoholic father’s abusive decline and early death. A man who had battled to hold on to his family’s ruined ranch and then slaved to rebuild it. A man who would never be a weak link by any stretch of the imagination.

“I’d like to see you try,” he said in his deep, quiet voice.

“I’ll bet you would,” she answered.

“Could be interesting.”

“Could be at that.”

Something hovered and snapped in the cold space between them, something that had nothing to do with the echoing past or the current situation. And then his hat brim lowered like a blind to shut her out, and her tension floated away on a tiny cloud puff of a sigh.

“Guthrie did a lot of working of his own on that proposal of his,” said Wayne. “Talked up his idea with a lot of folks around here. Hammered out a kind of informal agreement on how things should be.”

“He never considered any possibility other than something connected to sports.”

“I s’pose there’s a bit of truth to what you’re suggesting. Guthrie’s mighty proud of those big boys of his. And he’s got another one coming along that promises to be every bit as big and fast and tough.” He settled back more comfortably and crossed his feet at the ankles. “And maybe nothing else came to mind because sports is something most everyone in town can relate to.”

“Maybe that’s because there’s nothing else to do.”

“Maybe so. It’s hard to find a variety of things to do when there aren’t more than a few thousand people in this and the next three counties put together. And most of them are busy with making a living off the land.” His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “And maybe sports are what most folks like to watch. And if they don’t, they can talk about how their neighbors’ kids did in the game the night before.”

“There’s more to life than ball games.”

“That’s right,” he said. “There’s rodeo.”

She folded her arms and glared at him. “You obviously agree with Guthrie.”

“I do?”

“And because you do,” she said, brushing aside his question, “why did you vote the way you did?”

“Maybe I don’t like to be rushed into things.”

“All right, then.” She straightened and shoved stray bangs out of her eyes. “That’s something, anyway. Something I can work with.”

“If you say so.” The muscles of his jaw rippled along one side and then the other. “I’m not sure I like the idea of being the object of one of your campaigns, but I guess it comes with the territory.”

“It won’t hurt,” she said with a smile. “Not much, anyway.”

A silence fell between them, the pale wisps of their breath mingling and dissipating in the moonlit air. He straightened away from the truck, and his dark eyes gleamed down at her. “What exactly is it you want from me, Maggie?”

“I want your promise to consider my proposal with an open mind.”

“I’ll consider that proposal of yours, if you’ll consider the possibility that my mind was open to it in the first place.”

She squelched the urge to argue his last point, deciding it would be better to let it go and close the deal. “All right,” she said, extending her right hand. “I will.”

He pulled his hands from his pockets and slid one of them against her palm. It was wide and warm and rough with calluses.

His long fingers slowly closed around hers. “That’s something, anyway,” he said. “Guess I’ll find out whether or not it’s something I can work with.”

“TEAM CAPTAIN and two-time All-County quarterback, Wayne Hammond!”

The dull roar of the homecoming crowd in the stands drowned out the electronic echo of the voice blaring from the speakers, and he throttled back the fear so his feet could move. He aimed for the straggly group of his senior class teammates arranged around the fifty-yard line and started across the field.

The jounce of the padding, the salty stink of his sweat, the hot puffs of breath shredding in the knife-cold night air as his uniform shirt shoved through them—he took it all in, every crystalline sensation, to crowd aside the swelling lump of panic. Trampled grass, slippery mud, the ground so hard beneath cleated feet, jarring his aching knee with every step.

It didn’t hurt, not really, not enough to be taken out of the game. He didn’t favor the leg, didn’t show the pain.

Didn’t let them know it hurt.

He used the pain. Focused on it—that’s what he always did. He pulled tight, pulled in, shut out the rest and went through the motions. Shook hands, Jed’s and Grizzle’s and Trace’s. Faced the stands, nodded and raised a hand. Stared into the lights, the icy white glare. Let the lights blind him to what was beyond—the faces, the people.

This was what he’d worked for, and waited for, and dreamed of and dreaded. All those practices, all those hits, all those sweet, sweet moments of release, of the ball taking flight, sailing toward the target on an invisible thread of energy connecting perfect motion with victory. Bones and muscles and imagination and will. Physics, just like the words on the tattered pages of the fat textbook resting in his locker.

He craved the quiet pleasure of that success and all the other victories, craved the dark silence of the room at home as he tucked another paper memento into the box beneath the bed. But it didn’t matter. Not really.

It wasn’t real, not any of it.

This moment wasn’t quiet, this sensation wasn’t pleasure. This was public—whistles and yells, the slap of fleshy palm to palm, the smell of popcorn oil and spilled beer, the staring eyes. Too many eyes, all aimed at him.

“Wayne!” The drink-slurred voice rose above the others. “Wayne!”

The old man. Drunk, as usual. But not too drunk to climb into a truck and get himself out here. He’d have to rush out of the locker room after the game, find a way to get his keys, make sure he didn’t kill himself—or someone else—getting home.

If he made it home tonight.

He pulled back, pulled deeper inside. Stared into the lights, focused on the pain, kept his chin high. He held, held.

It didn’t bother him, it didn’t matter. Not his fault, not his doing. It wasn’t real.

“Wayne!”

Someone laughed. The noise shifted. The crowd, the many-bodied, fickle, vicious thing in the stands, wavered in the dark shadows beneath the lights. A groan, a hush—the mangled-play, bad-call, missed- pass kind of noise.