The reference to the inappropriate surroundings made him feel inept and somehow backwardly uncouth. She always made him feel like a lusting animal soiling her with his baser needs. Immediately Ty was angry with himself for allowing such a thought to occur. He had tried to coerce a willing submission from her, so it was hardly fair to condemn her because she had the strength of will to resist him.
“I’m sorry.” He let her go and turned away to rub the back of his neck. “I had no right.”
Ty. The light touch of her hand was on his arm. The softness of her voice and the fragrance of her hair nearly made him groan aloud. “I’m not angry with you. To tell you the truth”—the lightness of amused self-reproach was in her voice—“I’d probably be hurt if you didn’t want to make love to me. I’d wonder what was wrong with me.”
Turning his head to look at her, Ty was moved once again by her incredible beauty. A longing rushed through him that was pure pain.
“There is nothing wrong with you.” His low voice was half strangled by emotion. “You are perfect in every way. Any man who doesn’t see that has to be blind.” He covered the slim hand that rested on his arm and gripped it tightly. His gaze was earnestly intent. “When I told you I loved you, I meant it, Tara. This summer, will you come to Montana? I want you to meet my parents. I want you to see my home.”
“I’ll try to come,” she promised.
“Don’t try. Just come,” Ty insisted.
But she didn’t.
Four riders closed on the last of the cows being herded through the opened gate. Tall grass waved in the golden-ripe light of late summer. A lagging cow eyed the gate with distrust and stubbornly ignored the riders’ urgings to pass through it.
Ty reined his horse alongside the reluctant animal and reached out to slap it on the rump with his coiled rope. It spied the gap between the riders, created by Ty. With a swing of its head, it bolted for the opening, tail high in defiance. Ty hauled back on the reins and pivoted his horse on its hind legs to give chase.
Another horse and rider were streaking after the fleeing cow, the slim rider snaking low on the grulla’s back. Ty glimpsed the accompanying pursuit out of the corner of his eye, but he had the angle on the animal. With the sound of
hoofbeats hammering the grass-covered sod thundering in his ears, he shook out his loop and raced along a few more strides until his horse was in position for him to make the cast.
As the loop went out straight and true, he sat back in the saddle and checked his horse, preparing for the second when the full weight of the cow hit the end of the rope. A shadow or the hiss of the rope must have warned the cow of its imminent capture. At the last second, it swung its head aside and the loop harmlessly slapped its chunky jaw and neck and slid emptily off its shoulders.
Silently cursing the missed cast, Ty put his spurs into the horse’s side and sent it bounding after the cow again while he gathered in the rope. By then, the mouse-gray horse and its rider had taken a dead aim on the cow and had maneuvered into position to make the throw. The loop shot out with unerring accuracy and settled over the cow’s head in picture-perfect style.
Ty eased up on his horse and let it come down naturally to a snorting trot. There had been few opportunities to demonstrate the improvement in his roping skills during the course of the summer work on the ranch. It irritated him that he’d missed this chance. And it didn’t make it easier that he’d been bested by a girl, no matter how good she was.
His smile was on the grim side when he met the broad grin on Jessy Niles’s face as she led the balky cow to the gate. She was tall and slim as a rail. Wisps of hay-brown hair straggled loose from the rubber band that collected its thick length at the back of her neck. With the shapeless cowboy hat atop her head, she resembled a happy waif. Her sun-browned skin glowed with the healthiness of outdoor living and added to the sunny sparkle in her hazel eyes.
“We got ’er.” Her cheery voice was magnanimous in triumph over the capture of the cow, happily giving credit to
“You got ’er, Jessy,” he corrected. Her expression sobered slightly, some of the exhilaration fading from her smile.
“We make a good team just the same, she said with a vague shrug of her shoulders to indicate it was insignificant which of them had actually roped the animal.
Since she had followed as rus backup, there was some truth in her reply, but Ty was sensitive to the point that he had gone after the cow and Jessy was the one bringing it back in tow. It grated just a little, and he tried not to let it show.
Dropping his horse back, he herded the roped cow after Jessy so it wouldn’t fight being led. Buzz Taylor was afoot by the gate, waiting to close it as soon as the cow was turned loose beyond it and Jessy had ridden back through. Once the gate was shut, Ty secured his coiled rope to the saddle and stepped to the ground.
With the herd shifted to a range with good graze and plenty of water, their work was finished for the day, and the riders paused for a smoke break before heading back to the camp at South Branch. Ty bent his head to touch the end of his unaltered cigarette to the match flame Bill Summers offered.
“That wily ole cow ducked right out of your loop,” Bill observed, commiserating.
“Yeah.” Even though there wasn’t a wind, Ty cupped his hand protectively around the cigarette out of habit so no live embers would be blown into the tinder-dry August grass.
“Ole sure-eye Jessy got ’er, didn’t ya?” Buzz Taylor declared with a hearty grin of teasing approval directed at the girl standing slank-hipped with them.
“Ty hazed him into position for me.” She blew out a quick puff of smoke from her cigarette and turned her head aside to spit the bits of tobacco from her tongue.
“Hell, he just got out of your way, that’s all,” Buzz retorted. He cast a suspicious eye at Jessy. “Does your pa know you’re smoking?”
“Sure. He don’t like it much,” Jessy admitted with an uncaring shrug.
“Stumpy didn’t like her bummin’ cigarettes off the rest of us,” Bill Summers corrected her answer, coming to her defense. “Finally he told her that if she was doin’ a man’s work and drawin’ a man’s pay and smokin’ a man’s cigarettes, she could either start buyin’ her own or stop smokin’.”
Jessy managed a wry grin at the explanation. That’s about the way it had turned out after her father had gotten over his initial prejudice against a young girl smoking at all. Before that, he’d done just about everything but tan her hide to keep her from smoking. Of course, she hadn’t listened to his railing lectures. Everyone around her smoked, so she didn’t see why it was so wrong for her to smoke, too.