Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Copyright

“There’s All Sorts Of Things We Can Do To Entertain Ourselves,”

Kyle said, licking his smile.

Lauren was twenty-seven. She knew he was being verbally clever, saying things that were salacious—Well, maybe he was a gentleman and was not salacious. Maybe he meant exactly what he said, and it was only her own wild and wicked libido that was berserk.

How did one know?

She could ask him. Are you being salacious?

If she did, he’d probably not understand and be shocked by her assumption.

She was going to have to be clever and slow in order to lead him into allowing her access to his body.…

Dear Reader,

This month, we begin HOLIDAY HONEYMOONS, a wonderful new cross-line continuity series written by two of your favorites—Merline Lovelace and Carole Buck. The series begins in October with Merline’s Halloween Honeymoon. Then, once a month right through February, look for holiday love stories by Merline and Carole—in Desire for November, Intimate Moments for December, back to Desire in January and concluding in Intimate Moments for Valentine’s Day. Sound confusing? It’s not—we’ll keep you posted as the series continues.and I personally guarantee that these books are keepers!

And there are other goodies in store for you. Don’t miss the fun as Cathie Linz’s delightful series THREE WEDDINGS AND A GIFT continues with Seducing Hunter. And Lass Small’s MAN OF THE MONTH, The Texas Blue Norther, is simply scrumptious.

Those of you who want an ultrasensuous love story need look no further than The Sex Test by Patty Salier. She’s part of our WOMEN TO WATCH program highlighting brand-new writers. Warning: this book is HOT!

Readers who can’t get enough of cowboys shouldn’t miss Anne Marie Winston’s Rancher’s Baby. And if you’re partial to a classic amnesia story (as I certainly am!), be sure to read Barbara McCauley’s delectable Midnight Bride.

And, as always, I’m here to listen to you—so don’t be afraid to write and tell me your thoughts about Desire!

Until next month,

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Texas Blue Norther
Lass Small

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LASS SMALL

finds living on this planet at this time a fascinating experience. People are amazing. She thinks that to be a teller of tales of people, places and things is absolutely marvelous.

One

It all began quite stupidly when the car phone gave its rude beep.

Lauren Davie was by then a mature twenty-seven. She didn’t instantly reply to intrusions. She was driving out west of San Antonio, there in TEXAS, and she just wasn’t curious who would be calling.

Whoever was calling on the phone gave up. There was only the hushed song of the tires touching on the asphalt. And the wind blew, trying to tumble the portion of loose blond hair that wasn’t protected by her white golf hat.

With the car top down, she was vulnerable to the winds. She loved it. There was a feeling of freedom, of escape, to drive alone in the breezes under the sun.

But she wore driving gloves. Her golf hat with its long bill was enough shade for her face. Of course, she wore a silk blouse with long sleeves, and her silk trousers covered her legs. The silks were colored in pale shades of sand.

Her car was cream colored. The top was white.

As Lauren drove along, the radio music was interrupted. She learned there was a warning of an approaching storm.

She looked around at the uninhabited area. The trees were discreetly low. The sky was clear. The surface of the land was uneven so that it wasn’t boring. The wind was gentle if one was still. At the speed she was going, with the car’s top down, the wind was searchingly frisky and intrusive.

The sun above her was obvious and it was not screened by storm clouds. It was a perfect March day. The bluebonnets were like jewels strewn across the land in blue magic.

Lauren Davie was restless. She didn’t know what was wrong with her life. She had everything she wanted. Why was she so disgruntled? What could she target in her life with criticism?

She was busy. She helped out at the hospital and the food bank. She had almost too many friends. Those same friends were trying to marry her off. Lauren wasn’t interested in being married and nailed down. What an expression.

Because one great-grandmother had been especially frugal, Lauren had her own money and was free. She didn’t need a job. She volunteered her time. She probably needed to start a business.

What sort of business? What—really—interested her enough to apply her attention to what endeavor?

Nothing she could think of at that time. If she put her mind to it, something would appeal to her. She’d make a good CEO. She would let everybody else run the whole shebang.

If everyone else ran the business, what would she do? How would her life be any different from what it was? She’d have even more money.

Her thinking was out of whack. She needed to concentrate on something that was interesting enough and stimulating enough and ragged enough that her attention wouldn’t wander.

Yes.

Of course.

Right away.

The turnoff from the highway ought to be somewhere along that particular empty stretch of the two lane road. It would be to the right and go north. Her eyes watched with some discontent.

An interestingly weird portion of her friends was taken with the game of a pretend insurrection and how to cope if the government was taken over by an enemy. To Lauren, it seemed somewhat juvenile.

She thought such an exercise was rather similar to an adult version of Dungeons and Dragons. That fascinating lure had come into being with quartersupplied video games, and later it was the alluring miracle of the 1980’s Apple Personal Computers. The Apple computer was matched with the early computer line called the Gorilla Banana, which had the dot matrix printer.

When those had burst into being, Lauren had been quite young. She hadn’t been overly interested. But her daddy had thought having the Apple II and the matrix printer would help in schoolwork.

At the time, all the kids had come to her house to see the computer and play with it. It had been an interesting time. The computer had been magic to them all.

And for her, now, to be driving out for an airplane pod drop was really another type of Dungeons and Dragons. The pod was a yellow gourd and it had a long cotton tail tied to it. The tail helped the searchers to see it fall to the ground.

At twenty-seven, wasn’t she too old for such games?

Not yet.

Lauren had become involved mostly just to get away from the routine of golf, bridge and meetings. These newer, more complicated games were a distraction.

So.

She was admitting she was bored?

Hmmm. Maybe so.

If she was only bored, what was the solution to the boredom?

Her sisters would say it would be something else that was newer. Something more stimulating. Like organizing and helping with some group, traveling and shopping…Or a man.

Searching for something new was why Lauren was driving out in the sticks, looking for a side road in order to go to a pod dropping.

In the pod would be some kind of directions. When it was retrieved, the group would “assault” some way station and conquer whoever had been designated to act as the enemy. The actual taking was benign. No rough stuff.

Well, sometimes the assault got rough. There are just people who take everything seriously—even in games like basketball, golf and cards. There were people who played so intensely that it wasn’t a game. It was war! So, basically, this pod game was a war.

Take Willard Newman. He was serious about everything. Even her. Willard had wanted her daddy’s backing. He didn’t just want Lauren Davie, he wanted her daddy to see him as kin. That way Willard would have the backing of a man who had clout.

It seemed to Lauren that no serious courter had ever seen only her. He’d seen past her to her daddy, to the Davie holdings, to security for himself.

Recognizing such a fact was somewhat diminishing.

It could be no surprise that Lauren had become sour about men. She wondered how it would be to see the light in a man’s eyes that was for her and not for her money. It would never happen. Her daddy’s name was prime in TEXAS. No one could hear her last name was Davie without asking, “He kin to you?”

They’d ask in just that way. Not if she was her daddy’s daughter, but was he kin to her.

Sourly impatient with herself, Lauren watched for the turnoff, and it finally came along with the road under her tires. She signaled needlessly. There were no other cars. She turned with skill from the lessons Mr. Soper had given her in driver’s training those years ago. And she went on, following the map.

By then, the road wasn’t divided by a painted line down the middle. It was just a road. She felt she was far, far away from civilization. Soon the road deteriorated. In TEXAS? A deteriorated road? It was still asphalt.

But that didn’t last, either. The road became a onetrack, dirt road.

Was she lost? Had she taken the wrong turn? There were no markers. The Good Guys of the exercise couldn’t allow the Enemy to know where they were.

Lauren sighed. She carried water with her always in the wide country of TEXAS. And she had the car phone.

What was the name of the road?

There had been a couple of turnoffs that had been dirt tracks, just like this one she was on.

She stopped and looked at the secret map. Lordy, Lordy, deliver her from games. The map was accurate. It showed she was to go straight ahead and she judged she had another mile at least.

How had she gotten tangled up in some game this strange?

Stupidity.

Undiminished by her own labeling, she went on, watching the mile creep on the adjusted odometer. The moving, seemingly undulating land had emptied out. Even the mesquites were scarce, but there was an occasional, lone oak. There were vast ranges and the vista was beautiful, but it was lonely and bare. It was grazed land. There were cattle out there somewhere.

The meeting place was a little past that presumed mile, but there were the other two cars. They were tucked in under the short mesquites that appeared along parts of the roads. The cars were hidden? How droll.

The short, lacy trees were gnarled, and cattle had trimmed up the branches so the trees were like useless, fragile umbrellas. The noisy couple with their mesquite-hidden cars was jubilant she had arrived.

Mark met her and opened her car door. He scolded, “Why didn’t you answer your car phone? Melissa called, she’s about to have the baby! So Gail and I are going back. You can handle this one. Tom and Buzz couldn’t make it. Jack’ll be here in no time. He’ll buzz you first, then drop the pod. Thanks, honey. We’re gone!”

And they left.

Lauren sat in her car, watching the other two cars disappear. She thought, Why am I here? What on earth am I doing? This is really dumb. At my age, I ought to know better than to get involved in something this stupid!

And there she was, dressed in silks with fragile shoes. And she was supposed to drawl through the fence and retrieve the pod?

Disgruntled, she waited.

And waited.

She looked at her watch and sighed. She looked at her silent car phone. She wondered why she was sitting there.

Eventually, she heard the sound of a small plane. She looked up. She looked around. She looked down the dirt road. At some distance, she saw the plane buzzing the mesquites clear down yonder. That would be Jack.

Jack had never struck Lauren as being particularly bright. However, he could fly a plane. She could not. But if he was that smart, why was he buzzing the mesquites, clear down there?

She had started her engine and was bouncing down the lane toward where Jack had been. Had he gone on off a way and was supposedly dropping the pod? Away from the trees? Why clear out of sight after buzzing the place to call their attention? He could have dumped the pod there!

Men are strange.

Something entirely logical to a woman is beyond a man’s grasp.

It would seem basic that if a person was going to try to communicate with someone, however secretly, he wouldn’t buzz them first and then go on off to drop the pod someplace else, out of sight.

The way he’d flown was right out over that bare, roadless land. The male retrievers had probably thought it would be rugged to then hop out of their cars and trudge off after the damned gourd.

Lauren took a steadying breath.

Then she looked in her glove compartment. Yes. A compass. She removed it. Her father had given it to her. He was another strange male. In this, her daddy had been right. For the first time since she was sixteen and passed her driver’s tests and had a car, she did need a compass. How had her daddy known such a time could come?

He’d probably understood that she would get entangled with some males whose idea of excitement was to go out onto the wide and empty land and find a plane-dropped gourd. How had her daddy known?

Well, he was male.

And with that revelation, Lauren recalled her mother sighing and mentioning just that very thing! ‘He is a man,’ she’d say. And until that very minute, Lauren had always thought her mother had been bragging and complimenting her husband, who was Lauren’s daddy. But her mother’s evaluation was a sobering thought. Her father was a man.

The compass confirmed that, as the plane had disappeared over the uneven land, it had been five degrees west of North. Okay. There was no way her car could go through that barbed wire fence and out over that land. A Jeep would have had less trouble.

So Lauren took a Great Forbearing Breath, got out of her car and began to follow a plane. She was doing that! Perhaps there is some comment that could be made about women. Why was she there?

She held the compass in her hand and at the top of the rise, she looked to see which way the plane had turned.

The plane was…gone.

Yes.

So Lauren looked for the trailing cloth that was to identify the pod. And other than the grazed and uneven land with a few rocks and a whole lot of sky, she could not see one damned thing.

It is depressing to be involved with unskilled people. Amateurs.

Obviously, Lauren Davie was included in that evaluation.

She stood at the top of the rise and examined the ground that had been under the plane. It was then she became aware the wind was blowing. She was no longer in her car with the top down. But the wind was blowing.

She took a handful of the sparse grasses and tossed them up. The wind was strong. She would have to look to her right of the plane’s path…about ten additional degrees?

She put the compass on North and walked ten degrees to the right. She saw nothing.

Lauren was a dedicated woman. She would find the damned pod. She trudged along, watching so avidly that she didn’t look up at the darkening sky.

With her intentness, it was some time before she realized the sun was gone. There was no friendly shadow accompanying her. She looked at the sky with some indignation. From where had all those dark clouds come?

And she shivered. Could the weather people be right?

Silk is a marvelous material, but even silk has its limits. Her raincoat was in her car. Her car was.that way. She had to find the damned gourd-pod.

So she searched.

And she found it! It was not with glee or satisfaction that she lifted it from the ground. It was with grim, teeth-clenched determination.

The tricky wind had played with the pod as it had fallen. It was not where it should have been, which was right…where?

Lauren stood and looked around, holding the damned cloth-tailed pod. She looked at her compass. She pointed it North.and she began to walk back the allotted degrees to her right.

She walked at an angle. She would find the car. She would never go on another pod hunt in all the rest of her life. She hoped Mark’s wife had triplets.

It took some time for Lauren to realize she could possibly be lost. She figured if she went south and west, she would find the line of mesquites. From there, she would find her convertible. The car was not only hidden among some mesquites, but she had left it with its top down. and rain or dust or something was approaching.

It was not turning out to be a good day.

She would survive…even this. She would find the convertible before she really, really needed the raincoat in the back seat. She would.

The sky darkened almost to night and the winds were not nice.

Lauren trudged along carrying the gourd-pod, which was gaining weight with every step. She was cold. She shivered violently. Her nipples were terse and pinched, and her skin agreed with the discomfort.

She could handle cold. She would find the car, the coat and put the top up, get in and turn on the heat!

The heat. It would be warm and the stream of the heat would go over her body and soothe her. She had the damned stupid gourd-pod, and she would find her car again.

Lauren lost her hat. It was just-gone! She was freezing. She stopped and wrapped the long pod tail around her. It was only minimally better. She was cold.

And…where was she?

She looked around. It was all so relentlessly the same. Rolling ground. No sun. No stars. No clue as to exactly where she was. The compass said North was that way. She went south.

If only she could just get to some trees…even to mesquites.she would be better off. She was so cold.

Lauren redid the long cloth tail of the pod, wrapping it around her head, her neck, and her chest. Her teeth were chattering.

What was a damned gourd-pod worth? Why had she felt the need to go and find it—all by herself? She would probably die out there. Alone. Her bones would eventually be discovered. By then, it would have been so long, since her death, that the finders would assume she was a relic from long, long ago.

She turned to view the approaching storm and her mind saw a man on a horse. So she was hallucinating. Big deal. She didn’t have anything else to entertain her. Lauren’s mind had decided she needed to be rescued and her imagination managed to conjure that.

So she turned her back on the foolishness and trudged off—south and a little west.

Behind her, she heard horse’s hooves.

Yep. That would go right along with the idea that she was being rescued. Her imagination had always been rather vivid. She’d spent most of her childhood reading and rereading her maternal grandmother’s carefully preserved comic pages of Flash Gordon and Prince Valiant.

That grandmother was remarkable.

Lauren figured she was in the final stages of freezing, and she would go out on Prince Valiant’s horse. Okay. She could handle that.

Prince Valiant’s voice came from behind her. “Hey, where the hell are you going?”

How unprincely. Men never acted as they were supposed to act.

She stopped and turned to confront the phantom. “You’re supposed to step down, take off your hat and sweep a really good bow.” With those directions, she stood shivering with her teeth clicking and waited, her back to the storm.

He swung down from the horse with beautiful ease. He took off his coat and wrapped her in it.

That beat the bow all hollow. The coat was gloriously warm. She closed her eyes, knowing she’d already died and probably was in hell. It was so warm. Well, maybe not hell exactly. She hadn’t been that bad.

The masculine voice told her, “Get on the horse.”

Huh? She was going to hell on a horse? That seemed a nasty thing to do to a horse.

She asked the phantom, “What’s he done?”

The phantom’s face was sour. He groused, “I hate women. They always do the dumbest things.”

Warming inside the coat, she retorted heatedly, “Women? Women do dumb things? Do you know that I’m out here for only one thing?”

His interest changed and riveted. “You streetwalking?”

With great, adult patience, she replied, “I came out here with a group to-”

And she couldn’t blab a secret club’s activities. She was staunch.

“Yeah?” He encouraged her speech with his riveted attention.

Why didn’t his Stetson blow away? She was fascinated.

She saw that his shoulders were hunched. He was cold. Where was his coat? It was on her. She said, “I’ll give your coat back to you in just a minute. It’s so warm.”

And he replied nicely but he leaned close as he yelled over the sound of the winds, “As soon as you’re just about thawed, we’ll get out of here before it thunders.”

“It’s thundering?” Her eyes got big and her head jerked around.

“It’s just wind right now. It’ll get interesting in a while. Are you warm enough to get on the horse?”

“What’s his name?”

“Whose?”

“This horse.” She was kind and pointed to the horse so that he’d know what she meant by the word. She didn’t think he was very bright.

But the male creature replied, “Block Head. We just call him plain Block.”

She lifted her chin a little. “He seems more intelligent than that.” She was chiding.

“He don’t know no never mind.”

She indicted the horse’s position and mentioned kindly, “He’s protecting us from the wind.”

“That’s ‘cause he don’t know not to.”

She stiffened. Then she said in her Daughters of the Alamo voice, “I’m ready to ride.”

He smiled and bit his lower lip. She was probably hostile enough now to see to herself. He said, “Give me the coat. I’ll wrap you in this here blanket. I’d take the blanket but it don’t have no sleeves. Understand?”

He was a basic man. No wonder he had so carelessly referred to streetwalking. He probably didn’t know any better. She would be careful of him. She took off the coat with steely discipline.

He took hold of her and tossed her up on the horse. Lauren didn’t shriek or sprawl because her daddy had been doing something like that to his daughters all their lives.

She landed neatly in the saddle. She would ride; he would walk. He was a gentleman under all that crudeness. He knew his mann—

Move your foot out of the stirrup.”

He was boarding the horse. too.

But he sat in back of the saddle and he shifted until he got the blanket right, covering the front of her and her legs, then he opened his coat and covered her entirely.

In a sexually stimulating, roughened voice, he commented in her ear, “It’s jest a good thing you got your own gloves.”

He spoke of those thin-skinned, driving gloves, which protected her hands from sun-browning. Sure. But thin as the leather was, the gloves were better than nothing. She said a dismissive, “Yes.”

Then he startled her as he said quite naturally, “The pod’s tail makes a pretty good cover for your head and neck.”

How’d he know it wasn’t a cantaloupe? She replied a nothing, “Umm.”

He didn’t realize the subject had been rejected by her. He said, “We’ve found a couple of them there things. What’s in them? Ones we’ve tried ta see, they just crumbled.”

She looked at the pod, which was the size and shape of a cantaloupe. “I thought it was a distress signal from a plane flying oddly.” Jack’s flying was odd.

The man in back of her with his arms around her said, “He had enough room to land. He didn’t need any such distress signal.”

“I guess not.” But she did hear in his words that he had been watching as the plane had buzzed the mesquites and then dropped the pod.

Why had he waited in the beginning of the storm? Why hadn’t he come to her immediately? He’d allowed her to find the pod. He’d known where it was? If he was so curious, why hadn’t he retrieved it first? She would have never known if it had been found or lost forever.

This person in back of her on the horse had mentioned they had found other pods. Who all had they told of finding them? Where were the ones they’d found?

This whole adolescent activity was only a confirmation that they were all bored. They had too much spare time with little to distract them. Well, Mike’s baby might distract him for a while.

Actually, Mike had had very little to do with his wife having a baby. She’d done all the work. Come to think of it, even at a time when his wife could be very uncomfortably pregnant, Mike had run off on a pod hunt. He had.

She said lazily, “Next time, I get to sit in back.”

“The wind’s at my back,” he said next to her ear. Then his voice was different, lower, huskier. He said, “I’m sheltering you.”

She accepted that as only right and asked, “Where are we going?”

“To the nearest house.”

She was courteous. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

It began to rain quite nastily cold and wet. He pulled her head back under his chin, and she was protected. He slid his hand across her ribs below her breasts under the blanket. “You warm enough?”

Her mouth responded in a tiny, female way that was embarrassing. She told him, “My feet are cold.”

“Sit Indian-style. I’ll balance you.”

She was surprised. Here she was countering all her horse training. She was slumped back against a man and now her legs were crossed under the blanket and she was—warm.

He fumbled down her stomach and his hand slid into her trousers. “Oops, sorry. I’m trying to see if your feet’re okay.”

“They are.”

“Good.”

A lecher. She squinted a little, as she went over the karate lessons she’d taken because her daddy had insisted. She’d been good at it. She’d nailed the instructor. He’d been hostile to her after that.

If the instructor had gone along the whole way, instead of trying to escape, she would have thought he was letting her win. But he’d tried hard to win over her.

Winning had been heady.

Of course, she’d antagonized yet another male. Her father had laughed.

Her mother had altered the classic, “Never give a man an even break.” But her mother had added, “You’d lose.”

And she had. By being so confident and physically safe, she’d lost just about every male who’d come down the pike. Even all those who had been blinded by her daddy’s clout. She’d lost them all.

Which ones had she wanted?

And lying back against a crude man, she went over all of the contenders like turning pages of a diary, and there hadn’t been a one she’d really and truly wanted. To be a twenty-seven-year-old woman who had never really been tempted must be some sort of remarkable record.

She was probably freezing to death and looking back on her life in a farewell. Actually she was warm and cozy, cuddled down, cross-legged but secure on some man’s saddle. She was leaning back against him and wonderfully wrapped in his blanket and the shared coat. His right hand was innocently tucked under her left armpit.

His wrist was resting on the top of her breast, which moved with the horse’s stride. At least the man wasn’t groping her.

She didn’t realize his wrist was feeling her. Only hands did that. Not wrists or backs or arms.

Two

The wind was howling and shrill across the empty land. There was nothing to sieve the sound, but it was moaning and serious.

The rescuer had turned the horse away from the storm, so the brunt of the wind was on the man’s back. He was Lauren’s.windshield. That was perfectly logical. Any man protected a woman. It probably started in TEXAS, when there were many, many more men than women, and women were precious.

Of course. Women should always be treated as if they are precious. They are.

The precious woman peeked around from her limited sanctuary. Where were they going? She was so covered that she couldn’t see ahead, but she remembered there was absolutely nothing ahead of them. They were just drifting as animals drift before a mean wind. That’s how cattle piled up against fences or went off bluffs or fell through ice.

She had clear memories of hearing her father raising verbal hell over the stupid cattle who’d done that. He’d been furious! Her mother had listened calmly, seated on the sofa, and watched Lauren’s daddy.

The daughters had been sent from the room. Their mother had said to them, “Hush. Run along.”

Then when he’d calmed down, and the daughters could hear only the sounds, they would hear their mother’s voice.

What had their mother said to their father? What had she done to soothe him? Lauren would have to ask her. Until then, it had been something Lauren had never realized she might need to know.

Her nose was down in the blanket and most of the blanket was surrounded by his opened coat. With all that and the wind, Lauren asked, “What is your name?”

Oddly enough, he understood her. He said in a questioning statement peculiar to TEXANS, “I’m listed in the book as Kyle Phillips? But I answer to just about anything if the caller is serious.”

She replied, “How do you do?” And she bowed her head a trifle, as those words had demanded since she’d first been taught the phrase, long ago.

He replied to her response, “Pretty good, so far. What’s your name, honey?”

Just the fact that he’d called her ‘honey’ was a clue. He was basic TEXAN. So she said, “I’m not sure I should give it out in these circumstances.”

“It’s okay.”

He was saying he was safe for her. If he knew her father’s name, what if he just decided to hold her for ransom? She could give her first name. “I’m called Lauren.”

“Lauren. That’s a real nice name.”

How strange to have such a conversation with the wind howling around them and the horse patiently plodding along. Occasionally they moved to one side or the other. It was probably done to avoid something.

Warm, her stomach growled. Could she ask if he had some tea and cakes?

She could be flipping out. Dreaming. Hallucinating? Was she actually on a horse riding. “Where are we going?”

“The place is yonder a ways. We’ll have a fire.”

“In the—place?”

“Yeah.”

Now how big could his place be? She said a nothing, “Oh.” And she knew full well that everybody in TEXAS called their holdings their “place” because that was where they were. It could be a half acre or it could be miles square. She sighed.

And he heard her defeated sound. “It’ll be okay.”

Sure it would. Men were not any smarter than women. Their perception of things was unusual and completely different. Even plain, ordinary words had other, changed meanings. And then there was sex.

Lauren had found that out when she was quite young. Her cousin Theo had played Doctor with the fascinated Davie sisters. At that age, it was just looking.

Since that introduction by Theo, Lauren had managed to avoid such bold encounters. She was still a virgin.

Theo had gone on to actually become a doctor. Lauren had never gone to him for medical purposes.

Being human was one big pain in the neck, or lower. There were all the rules. All the customs. No other mammal had to fool around with all that stuff. The difference was to prove humans are superior beings.

Even as limited as she was, she could peek around the supposedly virgin land. She wondered what horrific wastes humans had discarded, buried deep in the low, surrounding hills. Were the hills real hills or just earth-covered piles of waste? Animals didn’t pollute the world but briefly. Humans really loused it all up. In some places, the pollution would be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.

How could the people, who lived in that distant future, know? What if the chemical wars wiped out all previous knowledge and future peoples or creatures would have no clue about the dreadful storages of harmful waste?

Being human wasn’t a brag.

Being a woman meant you followed all sorts of rules. You either did—or you didn’t. Hadn’t.

Since Lauren was in the didn’t/hadn’t category, if she was in the middle of dying, right then, and going to freeze into an ice statue, should she take advantage of this opportunity to know what Life Was All About?

She’d take another look at this person whose name was nicely Kyle Phillips, and she’d decide. Had her guardian angel sent him so that she could experience him? It seemed rather unkind to take advantage of an innocent man.

Of course, he had asked if she was a streetwalker. He might not be too difficult to lure.

She lifted her head and therefore straightened her body a bit as she peered around to see if anything was in sight. It was snowing!

As she said, “It’s snowing in TEXAS!” She became vividly aware that her shift had caused his hand to come free of her armpit and cover her breast! She said, “Sorry,” as if that had been her fault.

He put his hand back under her armpit and replied, “My fault.”

How kind of him to take her guilt. She would have to pay attention and move more carefully.

She was again discreet. With her head back under his chin, she could smell the freshness of him. Obviously, he didn’t smoke. He smelled nicely male and pure. And she began to wonder what he looked like.

As had happened on occasion, she would more than likely be disappointed.

She tried to recall how tall he was and how he looked…really. He was becoming quite nice in her mind. When they got to the Place, wherever that could be, she would be able to see if all her thinking about him was true.

With some tolerance, she considered how like a woman to devise a romance out of absolutely nothing. He’d found some dumb broad out on the land with no means of transport and not dressed for the weather. And he’d managed to get her wrapped up nicely and held warmly.

So her romance novel mind had gone into overdrive, and she was imagining a Hero with a capital H. How could she possibly be so silly?

It was the storm. Her circumstances. And the fact that she would have frozen to death without him, and she was grateful? Yes. Umh-mmm. Mmmm.

Her imagination was really pretty silly. He was silent. He hadn’t talked all that much. He looked around and guided the horse. She wouldn’t even know he was aware of her being a woman except that his hand had been tugged from her armpit and that hand had curled around her breast.

How cheeky of him to have done that. He had no upbringing. He probably was an orphan and not schooled at all.

If that was so, she might could—use him! She just might do that. She’d be kind but she would see if she could use him. She’d look him over and see if she could endure him—enough. It would be an experiment. Out in the blowing storm that carried a load of snow. the snow was getting deep.

She asked, “Are we lost?”

“Not yet.”

An interesting reply. Not-yet. Did he plan for them to become “lost” while he had his wicked way with her?

Well, now, Lauren, not every man sees you as a tasty morsel. He probably has five women waiting for him plus a wife and fourteen children.

Or he might not really care for women. That could be. Think of a curious woman being in a cabin in a storm with an indifferent man.

Perhaps there would be a TV? She didn’t have her purse. It was back in her roofless, exposed and vulnerable car. In her purse was her tatting. Her tatting had saved her sanity any number of utterly boring times.

What did the man behind her look like? The man who was holding her body on the horse with him. He breathed. She could hear him breathe. It was as if keeping her balanced was a chore.

It was interesting that the horse wasn’t bothered by the storm. She sneaked a glove-filmed hand from its shelter, leaned forward and brushed the snow from the horse’s mane.

Somehow, that jarred Kyle’s hand from her armpit again and it was again on her breast. As she stiffened and leaned back, he said, “Sorry.”

And he again tucked the hand into her armpit. He had a little trouble, and he had to move her breast over so that he could get his hand where it was supposed to be. But he accomplished that discreetly with his wrist.

Lauren considered thoughtfully that, if he was at all tolerable, he would probably be easy. She would see.

The horse plodded on through the snow. She again asked, “Are we lost?”

And he again replied, “Not yet.”

She began to anticipate the line shack. That was what Kyle meant. He would have a line shack somewhere as his place.

She had seen several line shacks in her time of learning to ride. Long riding trips had involved becoming familiar with line shacks. They were neat and tidy and warm. The facilities were primitive but clean. There would be a protected place to rest the horse.

The only fly in the ointment was they might not be alone in the shack. There could be other refugees sheltering from the storm.

With the thought, Lauren began to reason with her guardian angel who was a nuisance at best.

They came to a barbed-wire fence. She glimpsed the fence from the side of her blanket covered face. In TEXAS such fences are called bob wire. When she was little, she thought the fences all belonged to her Uncle Bob. She had been grown before she knew an “r” was in the labeling.

She had never considered having to cope with a fence. She frowned at it. It was tall and securely made. It was five strands instead of the normal three strand indication of property.

Trees were in the distance. That was nice. The horse seemed to be a little perkier. His steps were a bit quicker. Her breasts shimmered somewhat and so did her stomach.

Rock hard Kyle seemed relaxed and indifferent.

The snow became a little heavier. With the fence, the line shack could very well be occupied. Wouldn’t that be a snit! Here she was planning a seduction—right after she confirmed that Kyle was worth a one night stand—and now they were getting back to civilization.

How droll to match a barbed wire fence with civilization.

She glimpsed…a barn? It was inside the fence. There were horses ahead of them! Where had they come from? Horses never sought shelter unless the storm was severe. There were too many loose horses, and the barn was too big for a line shack.

They were not going to a line shack? How discouragingly disappointing. Well, damn. This great opportunity for a discreet seduction of a basic man was fizzling. She wouldn’t know-anything. She was right back where she’d started. No, she had a topless car full of snow…out somewhere on beyond. Which direction? She hadn’t kept track.

However, if they’d had their backs to the storm all this time, they were east of her car.

They came to an entrance in the fence, which had a cattle grid. The other horses went over the grid with distaste. Their horse walked over it with familiarity and some interest. No words were exchanged. Kyle was silent. How like a man to do something like this and thwart a willing woman. How snide of him.

Well, he probably wasn’t interested in women. Or he could have a lover. He could be committed.

He turned east again after going through the gridded gateway. And ahead, nestled in trees, there was a house.

A whole house.

The horse took them through a second gate. That, too, had the cattle guard and the horse went over it with some frisky movement.

She inquired politely, “Do the round tubes on the grill have electricity in them?”

“No,” Kyle responded. “The horse just knows it’s going into forbidden territory and he needs to show off.”

“Oh.”

No one came out to greet them. The place was deserted? It was a big old, old, old house. It was rather elaborate and had been meticulously expanded. It spread as does any place which must house more and more people. How many would be there?

The house had been cared for. It had been repaired and repainted and plumbed. The steps were sturdy.

The front porch was perfect. It had a table and comfortable chairs off to the side, back under the roof of the porch. The porch was on the southeast side of the house. That got the summer gulf breezes.

The northwest was where the storms came with threatening clouds black and mean…and more snow.

There were the leafed pin oaks and the bare-leafed pecan trees and some of the nasty, scrawny mesquites. No one walked barefooted under mesquites. The thorns were mean.

There were not-yet-leafed hackberry trees and barely budding lilac bushes.

And there were bluebonnets. Those precious weeds were a spring flower and the TEXAS state flower.

They really did look like bonnets crowded on a hat rack. And they were blue. But if you looked closely, there was a pink-purple that was accurately put. And there was a perfect cream. That was looking closely. Otherwise, a field of bluebonnets was a marvelous sea of blue and green magic.

Also disappearing under the snow, there were the Indian paintbrushes and the firewheel. There were poppies and buttercups. And the mesquite trees weren’t yet leafing out. They’re generally the last tree to do that, and they are the biggest natural nuisance in TEXAS.

The oaks’ new leaves had pushed off last year’s leaves. The trees did that in one day or night. When it happened, it seemed to be all at once. There was the sound like rain as the discarded leaves slithered, sliding down the roofs like heavy droplets.

Lauren looked around, seeing the snowy setting. It was unusually quiet. The snow softened sound. No one came out to see who was there. She asked Kyle, “What is this place?”

He dismounted, and he looked up at her as if judging, then he replied, “It’s okay.”

He reached up his hands, and she slid sideways into them with long practice. He lifted her down and put her on her feet in the snow.

She had the choice of a barn, which had horses, or a vacant house. “Whose horses are those we saw?”

“Somebody keeps them in the barn?”

And she knew they were his.

So he was an itinerant cowboy? Okay. She watched as he sought a key along the top of a window frame and found it.

She told him, “I hesitate to intrude.”

“Nobody’s here.”

“But what if—”

“The people who owned the place haven’t been here for years and years. The last newspaper was 1938.”

“Aw.”

He looked at her with hooded eyes as he asked, “Why the compassion?”

“My granddaddy told me the thirties were a hard time. The Depression.”

“Most survived.” He unlocked the door and it squeaked open like something never used.

She paused. “Mice. There’ll be mice.”

He countered that. “There are three cats. I’ve seen them.”

If the cats had been seen, then it would seem he’d been there before. He was a squatter. He’d just moved in and appropriated the place? A whole lot like he’d appropriated her?

She looked at him. And he watched her back.

She wondered: Had he watched her with the pod and decided since she was alone that he could womannap her? She looked at him more closely. He wasn’t bad. Average height, black hair, green eyes and a square jaw. His shoulders showed he worked hard. He had muscles. His eyes on her were steady and seemingly benign.

He didn’t look like a highwayman. Now why would she think about a highwayman? A robber? His clothing was normal and not patched. Therefore he made enough that he could buy clothing.

He’d had such clothing on when he’d found her. He hadn’t had to rush to this place to change in order to look normal. He wasn’t normal. Kyle Phillips would never look only normal anywhere!

She asked, “Do you. bunk. here?” She should have thought out what she was going to say and how to say it less intrusively.

He replied, “It’s my place.”

His place. Yeah. Sure. However, if he was there, and stayed there and wasn’t thrown out, he might be able to buy it at a tax sale. She wondered who owned the land. Her dad would know. She’d ask.

She inquired, “Been here long?”

He looked at her seriously but with tolerance. He replied, “Long enough.”

“Does your phone work?”

He nodded, “In the kitchen.” And he moved his hand to indicate the way.

She looked around the entrance hall’s exits as she put the gourd-pod on a table. She asked, “Which way?”

“Sorry. I forget manners. Come thisaway.”

And he escorted her to the kitchen. There, they could hear the roar of the storm and from the windows they could see the snow blinding their view out and away.

She lifted the phone and with the storm, she was surprised there was the tone. She dialed direct with her card’s number and got the housekeeper, who asked, “Yeah?”

Such a jewel had flaws. The rest of her was superb. “Hi, Goldilocks, this is Lauren.”

“Yeah, Lorry?”

“I’m safe and sound. The storm’s going to delay my returning home. I’ll call back later when I know more.”

“Okay.” And Goldilocks was gone.

Now, why hadn’t she asked Lauren questions which could be succinctly, privately answered. Like: “Where are you?” “Are you there by choice?” Stuff like that?

The “I’m safe and sound” should have been a clue. Help these days was too tunneled. Goldilocks was a miracle of a cook. She went through the house with a finger over and along everything to see to it that the cleaning staff didn’t miss a thing. But she was no detective. She was too blatant to understand clues.

Goldilocks would tell Lauren’s mother that Lauren called and she was just fine.

No alarm would be sounded. After all, Lauren was now twenty-seven and an independent adult. After Kyle had had his wily way with her, she’d probably be dropped down an abandoned well.

She looked at her host. He looked too benign to drop anyone down a well. She asked, “Do you have any abandoned wells around here?”

He replied right away, “I’ll check it out.”

That made her skin goose bump so that her nipples peaked tightly.

He asked, “Are you any kind of a cook?”

And she replied using her Daughter of the Alamo reasoning, “I only taste.”

“Your mother’s not doing her part.”

“She makes up the—menus” She almost said they had help. He would then ask her father for more money to release her. She added, “We, the children, do the cooking.”

“So, you’re trained to cook?”

“No. I pour the pan milk and. deal out the oatmeal.”

He coughed.

She looked out at the snow.

The silence crackled and popped. She said, “The bluebonnets will freeze.”

“Are you cold?”

“The blanket—”

“I’ll put a fire in the…parlor?”

“Please.”

“Are you hungry?”

“It’s been a while since breakfast.”

“You eat lunch?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t always have the time. But when I eat, I eat.”

She nodded to agree his words made sense.

He bowed his head and rubbed his nose. He said earnestly, “I’ll build a fire in the parlor.”

“Thank you.” She asked, “Is the water in the sink drinkable?”

He gestured openly. “Gen-u-wine artesian, the real McCoy. Have some.”

He went and turned on the faucet and water gushed forth. Lauren had forgotten her parched mouth. She drank two glasses. She put the again-filled glass aside.

“You was thirsty.”

And she replied, “Obviously.”

He said it earnestly, “You can get any more anytime you want some.”

“Thank you.”

And he responded with great courtesy, “You are most welcome.”

It was then she realized he varied his speech. He might not be a hayseed after all. That only proved he was tricky.

She considered him. How come he was talking thataway? What was his purpose to pose as something other than what he was? He was a coyote.

The animal coyotes are clever and sly. They are amused by their tricks. There are humans who are called coyotes. Like those who smuggle people over into the States from Mexico and charge outrageous prices to guide them. And those intruders who get lost, get lost. And they die in the unpeopled areas from the heat and from not finding water.

Kyle asked, “So you don’t cook at all?”

“Oatmeal.”

“Then when you get hot, come in the kitchen and I’ll get you dinner.”

She responded, “Excellent. I’m quite hungry.”

“This’ll be a ball and a banquet.” He almost smiled.

“I’ll look forward to it.”

And he left the room.

She shed the blanket and went looking for the lavatory. She found one and it was pristine.

Kyle was probably a cattleman but who had cleaned the lavatory? He didn’t look the type to care.

She washed her hands before she left that room and got back by the fire before she heard Kyle whistling in the kitchen.

Her daddy whistled. It was such a cheerful sound. Her daddy had told her all cattlemen whistled or sang. It was for the beeves.

Kyle wasn’t with cattle, he was in the kitchen fixing her supper. She could set the table. The house was really quite comfortable. There must be a means for heating it.

Lauren found the kitchen and looked at it with untried eyes. She saw that it wasn’t like the one at home that was ruled by Goldilocks.

She asked the man by the stove, “May I help?”

He turned and looked at her.

Something happened in her stomach and to her breathing. He was absolutely glorious! Or maybe it was the mouth-watering smell of cooking onions? Something was wobbling her.

He looked’at her without the blanket. She wore the soft silk, sand-colored outfit of blouse and trousers. They were more for a drawing room than a kitchen. On her, they were something.

Maybe the something that was so eye-catching was the body inside the silks. With some resolve, he tore his eyes from her and said, “Yes.”

He had been agreeing that she was special.

She assumed he meant she could help. So she sought the right cupboards and brought the germane dishes and glasses to the table. But she put them aside. Then she dampened a towel and wiped down the table quite well.

After that, she set the silver precisely, then the plates and glasses. She found napkins. They were yellowed, but fairly clean. In the hall, she found a bouquet of dried flowers and leaves. It was intact, and it was glorious to put it on one side of the table.

He watched her as he cooked. She amazed him. She rattled him. And her body drove him tilted off center. Her mouth did, too. Her hands. Then she licked her lips!

He breathed…carefully.

She asked with courtesy, “What are we having?”

He looked at her a minute as if surprised she could get out a communicating sentence. He finally told her, “Beans. The onions in them are the vegetables. The chili peppers get rid of worms.”

She looked aside as she assimilated the last part. She looked at him again and inquired, “Worms? In the house?”

He tilted back his head as he bit his lower lip. His eyelashes almost closed over the humor, and he said, “The ones in your digesting tract.”

And she formed her lips thoughtfully as she responded, “Oh.”

He went on cheerily stirring the beans and dropping in the onions and peppers.

She noted the beans had come from a can. They would be perfectly all right. He was a sham. She would figure something to pay him back for his sly humor.

She looked in the cupboard and then the freezer and found tortillas. She thawed and toasted them. Then she cut cheese into bits with some of the onions and rolled those into one of the tortillas. Hot, the cheese melted, and she handed him one.

It was perfect.

Actually, it was normal. It was just that they were so hungry that it didn’t matter what condition the food was in, it would be good.

Three

In the pantry, Lauren found some dried fruits and washed the various kinds before she cut them up with an apple for a fruit salad. It was pretty and colorful on the plate with the yellow cheese on the tortillas, along with the brown beans and the red peppers.

As they ate, she was leery of the peppers and her fork discreetly isolated them from the beans. The rolled tortillas substituted for bread. They were heated and the cheese melted just right. The milk was from a great glass canning jar. The substance tasted like milk.

Kyle turned on the radio, and they got the weather station. The snow would be a three day deluge according to their information. Settle in and enjoy! That was their advice.

Lauren asked, “Can you ignore the cattle?”

He replied logically, “The beeves are drifting from the storm so the men are guiding them so that they don’t get piled up or fall off anything along the way.”

Then he added with ease to explain himself, “The milk cows have to be milked but they’re here. The horses don’t mind a little snow. The Jeep doesn’t, either. You wanna go home?”

She didn’t. Oddly enough, she didn’t want to go home. She said, “I’ll have to retrieve my car.” And she left the subject hanging. He could figure it out. She wasn’t of any mind to go off and leave there. She was going to have an adventure…with him. It would be a first time and with a stranger. If she loused up or quit in the middle of it, no one would ever know.

How strange that a coward like she would come to this rash decision.

Was it being twenty-seven? Was that what was making her so reckless? That and the fact he’d made no real intrusions, uh, he’d kept his hands to himself. Yes, he had. Other than those two times when his hand had slipped out from her armpit.

Where would she sleep? Would he brusquely insist that she sleep with him? Maybe. And maybe she’d just find out what sex was like. She was old enough. She was beyond being old enough. Even Sid had had one.

Lauren had noticed that the knowledgeable women’s eyes were smug and different. They giggled and whispered. Lauren felt out of it. The last women’s golf tournament at the club had been a trial until she was put in with three other women-and not one of them had mentioned anything about any man! It had been a surprise. It had been quite refreshing.

If there were women who…didn’t and didn’t even talk about it, then why was Lauren Davie so anxious to experience something so private with a total stranger?

She had no idea. But it was something to think about. Something to decide about. What would happen if she just up and told Kyle she was curious?

Would he say, “Okay.” Or would he back off with his hands up to fend her off?

She smiled at the idea of his fending her off.

He asked, “What’s so funny?”

And she raised her eyes to his and smiled.

“What you thinking?” But he was a little tense as if she was thinking about him and laughing at him. That was interesting to observe. He was vulnerable.

She said, “I was playing golf with some women and they were talking. It was just a joke I remember.”

“What kind of joke?” He was serious.

She was kind. “It was a woman’s joke.”

And he asked, “About. men?”

And she was gentle. “No. About another woman who couldn’t cook at all. Like I am.”

His face changed. He was interested. He considered and told her seriously, “You could learn.”

“I am really a peanut-butter woman.”

And he complimented her. “You did nice with the tortillas and cheese.”

She scoffed, laughing. “It was the onions chopped in the cheese that caught your taste buds. You like onions and hot pepper. You’re a chili man.”

He nodded as he considered her with a nice smile. And he told her, “Yeah.”

It was only then, with the exchange, that she understood he was vulnerable, and she couldn’t taste him without hurting his opinion of himself.

It was a giant step forward for Lauren to understand that. She had never really thought about other people that way. They could be hurt. The realization of his being vulnerable was sobering.

With the meal finished, Lauren sat back in her chair and sighed. “I was starved. You are a wonderful cook.”

He said it quite nicely, “That fruit thing was nice. Pretty.” He appeared lost for words, so he declared, “You got a good appetite.”

She assumed he meant her table manners. His elbows were on the table. Could she tolerate that? And she considered manners and mores.

He’d saved her neck. He’d rescued her…and horses! The horses that had gone in the barn gate! He’d been rounding up horses! So that’s why he’d been out there! He had known about the storm and he’d gone out to get his horses!

Of course.

He hadn’t just been moseying along. He’d been there for a purpose. That’s why he shifted their course a time or two. He had been monitoring the horses.

And by the greatest chance, he had ran into her out there, on foot. Alone. He could have just gone on and left her there. And she was not dressed for, nor capable of surviving, such a storm. But he’d seen her and been committed. He’d brought her back with him, there to the house where he was living.

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