Wyoming Born and Bred. Cathleen Galitz

magic, he’d wager.

      

      

      Whatever magic this stranger had worked on her little fusspot, Patricia was grateful. When Amy was born, the nurses in the maternity ward had pronounced her colicky. As time passed and the baby refused to outgrow her demanding disposition, Patricia resigned herself to the fact that her daughter was simply going to be dif ficult to raise. Boys, she had heard, would wring a mother’s heart through the years. Girls, they said, would rip it out.

      She pulled a blanket over Amy and kissed her softly on the cheek. Patricia couldn’t help thinking how different their evening routine had been just because of Cameron’s presence. How obvious it was that the boys needed a male role model in their lives. How nervous she was around his overt brand of sexuality....

      Like a predatory cat feigning indifference, Cameron was waiting for her when she returned to the living room a moment later.

      “Looks like you got everybody tucked in but me.”

      The comment made the blood sing through Patricia’s veins.

      As if unaware of the twin roses blooming on her cheeks, Cameron continued, “Just where do you want me to sleep?”

      In my bed! was the unbidden thought that flashed through Patricia’s mind. As a steamy image of this man’s naked body stretched leisurely across her bed caused her to trip over her own tongue, an inner voice of reason yelled at her to get a grip. The last time she’d succumbed to such feminine weakness, she’d wound up a mother to three. Four, she silently amended, if you counted Hadley.

      Patricia realized with a start that Cameron was looking at her strangely. It wasn’t as if he were leering at her; he was simply waiting for an answer to his question. The breath was locked in her lungs. Speak up! she ordered her brain.

      “In the bunkhouse,” she managed at last to sputter. “You’ll have to sleep there. It isn’t much. Just an old cabin actually...”

      Her apology trailed off. There was absolutely no reason that Cameron couldn’t stay in the more comfortable main house with them—other than the fact that people were sure to talk, and Patricia wasn’t about to subject her children to this small town’s rumor mill. The rest of America might be as fashionably liberal as television programming portrayed it, but Lander, Wyoming was still as staunchly conservative as Mayberry, U.S.A. Why, whispered gossip alone had been cause enough for more than one local official to lose his position.

      If there was some other reason why Patricia was uncomfortable having Cameron sleeping under the same roof with her, she wasn’t ready to analyze it yet.

      Little did she know that there was no need to explain about the Spartan living conditions of the bunkhouse. Cameron was familiar with every inch of the place. It had been his grandparents’ original homestead, and he had spent many happy childhood days playing in and around the old cabin. He neither expected nor wanted anything as fancy as a telephone or television set, but he did hope it had been updated with modern plumbing.

      Ten minutes later Patricia was cutting a narrow swath through the darkness with a flashlight. Carefully, she and Cameroon picked their way along the overgrown path connecting the main house to the outbuilding. Once when Patricia stumbled, he reached out to steady her. It had quite the opposite effect.

      Spinning, spinning, spinning out of control... Patricia felt like Alice in Wonderland as she fell against a sky sprinkled with diamonds, toppled into a whorl of emotions which she was trying desperately to suppress. And failed.

      “Are you all right?” Cameron asked. Warm and soft in the darkness, his voice was black velvet to the ears.

      “Yes,” she lied, shining the thin beam of light upon the bunkhouse door.

      As it was never locked, Patricia grasped the knob and pushed the door open. She fumbled in the blackness for the string which activated the antiquated light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was like searching for a single dangling spider’s thread. When at last it brushed her knuckles, she grabbed hold and gave a hard tug. Bathed in the harsh glow of the bare bulb, the cabin’s charm seemed questionable at best.

      “Like I said, it isn’t much, but it’s clean.”

      “It’ll be just fine,” Cameron assured her with a smile so genuine that it measurably reduced the guilt Patricia was feeling.

      Cameron’s modest accommodations consisted of an old brass bed, a couple of high-backed chairs, a braided rag rug, a small table and a narrow bureau. A sink and toilet were sectioned off from the rest of the room by a tiny floral print sheet turned curtain by some handy seamstress.

      “I’ll help you make the bed,” she said, walking over to the bureau where the sheets and blankets were kept.

      “There’s no need,” he assured her. “I’m more than capable of taking care of myself, Patricia.”

      Something about the way her name rolled off his tongue as mellifluous as a poem made her go quite soft inside. How often had she uttered those same self-assured platitudes about being able to fend for herself? So many times that her mother claimed she sounded like a broken record. Her father repeatedly assured her that she was wrong in her foolish assumptions. In that smug way of his, Roland D’Winter liked reminding her just how much she relied on him for the benevolence of a roof over her head and clothes on her back. From a young age, Patricia discerned that he would like nothing more than to keep his daughter pinned permanently under his control like one of the more exotic butterflies in his ghastly collection.

      “I’m sure you are,” she agreed while crisply unfurling a clean white sheet over his bed like a gigantic surrender flag.

      Patricia was keenly aware that this was the first time she had been alone with any man in his bedroom other than her husband. Not that this was any swinging bachelor pad or that she flattered herself with any thought that Cameron was interested in her that way. It was just those crazy electrical signals that her body was giving off, warning her of an impending overload.

      Cameron tucked an edge of the sheet between the mattress and the frame as Patricia pulled her side taut. It was funny how such an everyday task could become so charged with sexual energy when shared with a good-looking hunk of a cowboy.

      Like graceful doves, Patricia’s work-worn hands darted across his bedding smoothing out the wrinkles. Cameron couldn’t help but wonder why she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. His own father, widowed for many years now, never took his off. Like his beloved Rose, John Wade would be buried with that thin gold band on his finger. Cameron knew he had no right to be judgmental, but he was nonetheless bothered by the symbolic rejection of the wedding vows this woman had taken before God and man. Perhaps Patricia was more like the buckle bunnies of his past than he would like to believe. Was she openly declaring herself available to the next likely prospect willing to take on the financial and emotional burdens of a ready-made family?

      As Cameron reached across the bed to even out his covers, he inadvertently brushed fingertips with Patricia. Static electricity arched across the cotton fabric, shocking them both at the same time. Cameron looked across the narrow expanse of the bed into her eyes. They were wide open and shining with distrust and—Was that passion he glimpsed swirling in the depths of those bewitching mahogany-colored orbs? He forced air into his lungs in short, desperate sips.

      “Why don’t you wear your wedding ring?”

      Having already assured himself that this was absolutely none of his business, Cameron wasn’t quite sure where the question had come from.

      Patricia pulled her hand away from his as if she had been stung and gave it an apologetic look.

      “I had to pawn it years ago.”

      Cameron had expected any response but that one. His mother had once said that the pawning of a wedding ring was the ultimate poverty, the supreme humiliation for a woman. He remembered his parents being poor. He remembered not having as nice things as many of his classmates. He remembered all too vividly the humiliation of losing their ranch. But never once