Dragon's Eden (27 page)

“Mr. Cayou?” She reached out and touched him
lightly on the shoulder. “Mr. Cayou?”

From a far-off distance, Travis heard a
husky sweet voice calling him. He debated with himself whether it
was worth waking up, whether it was worth coming back to all of his
aches and pains to find out who was behind the coaxing voice. But
it wasn’t much of a debate, especially when she repeated his name
louder and gripped his shoulder tighter to give him a shake.

“Mr. Cayou? Travis? Come on, wake up,
Travis.”

The increased contact helped him slip closer
to consciousness and sent home an instinctively known fact: She had
good hands. He could feel the warmth of them, the gentle pressure,
the just-right touch. She was probably good with horses. In the
haziest of thought processes, he wondered if she’d be good with
him, this lady whose voice he wished was whispering a little closer
to his ear, this lady whose voice he’d like to hear with more need
straining the sweetness, a more passionate need.

“Travis? Come on, wake up. Shoat sent me to
bring you home.”

Passion. Lord it had been a long time, and
never with a woman with a voice like a hot summer night, soft but
laced with a husky edge. He needed to meet this lady. Seems old
Shoat had sent him a woman right out of his dreams, even if she did
sound a mite on the impatient side.

Drawing in a deep breath and wishing he’d
taken another pain pill, he dragged himself up from his deep sleep.
Slowly, he lifted his hand and pushed his hat to the back of his
head.

Callie had been ready for anything—anything
except the hard reality of Travis Cayou. In the space of a few
seconds, the time it took for him to lift his hat, he went from
being a half-infirm, broken down, physically intriguing cowboy to
the most hazardous material in Wyoming, unsafe at any speed.

From under the brim of the black Stetson,
barely focused eyes of the darkest brown stared at her. His gaze
trailed over her face in a slumberous caress, leaving a path of
sudden, unwelcome heat on her skin. As her cheeks flushed, a rawly
sensual smile formed on his mouth.

How something moving so slowly could have
the impact of a speeding freight train was beyond her, but she felt
shaken to the toes of her boots by the implicit sexuality of his
smile. Heat raced through the rest of her body, touching her
everywhere and pooling in liquid warmth in her veins.

She swallowed hard and took a half step
backward, stumbling slightly over her boot heel. He was making a
thousand promises with his smile and with the midnight fires banked
in the depths of his eyes, the kind of promises most women dreamed
about and most men couldn’t keep. He was also sending messages. One
in particular was loud and clear: He wanted to take her to bed,
right now. She’d never had it said to her any plainer, and she’d
never felt herself react to the invitation with such an
electrifying physical response.

Travis did want to take her to bed, every
inch of her, from the wild ebony hair escaping her hat and her
braid, to the generous curves of her breasts, to the slim-hipped
elegance of her long legs. But he didn’t have the wherewithal to do
anything but think about it, because fast on the tracks of
consciousness came pain, dull and heavy and inescapable. His
fantasy and his smile both took the short, downward slide into the
truth. He thought about saying hello, but the pain told him to do
something else.

Grimacing, he dropped his hand to his pocket
and dug out the brown plastic bottle filled with his pain pills. He
took two and closed his eyes on an unsolicited groan.

Callie’s heart lurched. Raw sex was a bit
beyond her ability to handle, but nurturing was well within her
acceptable guidelines for personal or even impersonal
relationships. Taking care of cows was what she did for a
living.

She took the bottle out of his hand and read
the label. Her eyebrows slowly rose as she looked back at him, and
once again he took her by surprise, just by being there and looking
the way he did.

He was a lot younger than James, maybe ten
years younger, yet he was harder looking, as if life hadn’t settled
as easily on him. Sandy-brown hair streaked with blond framed a
lean, handsome face set off by a short nose and square chin with a
slight cleft, a face tanned by the sun and chiseled by a life spent
as a range rider and a rodeo cowboy.

Callie had never been anywhere to speak of,
but she was pretty sure they didn’t make men like him anyplace on
earth except east of the Pacific Ocean and west of the Mississippi
River, and he was a rare breed even there. He was the kind of man
she’d grown up knowing, a cowboy, but no cowboy she’d ever met had
made her blush.

Her cheeks warmed again. He was good-looking
all right, in a rugged, impish way, and his smile ought to be
against the law, at least in public, but it was obvious to anyone
she could outrun him in his present condition.

“We better get you into the truck while you
can still walk,” she said, putting the pills in her own pocket. By
her count and the instructions on the bottle, he’d had more than
enough.

“Who said I can walk?” he asked softly, his
eyes still closed, his face still tight with pain.

“I’ll take your saddle and your gear out,
give you a few minutes for those pills to take the edge off.” She
stepped around his legs, her wet duster slapping against her
jeans.

“Wait a minute.” Travis opened his eyes a
fraction of an inch and tried to move when he saw her lift his
saddle, but his body wasn’t obeying. “Hey, wait a minute. Who are
you?”

The dark-haired angel in the white canvas
duster and black cowboy hat turned and leveled on him the most
startlingly blue gaze he’d ever seen.

“Kathleen Ann Michael. I work at the ranch.
You can call me Callie.” She turned again to leave.

“I had a mare named Calliope once. We called
her Callie for short. Smartest horse I ever owned,” he said, then
immediately wished he hadn’t, but it had been the first thing to
come to mind. Well, actually, the second thing. First had been the
word “pretty,” as in “real pretty,” so pretty he felt his gut
tighten just looking at her.

Those aquamarine eyes slanted him a purely
innocent glance over her shoulder. “Yeah, well, I used to have a
dog named Travis, but he wasn’t exactly on the bright side.” She
paused as if considering her words, then added, “We didn’t keep him
around for his looks, either.”

Travis wasn’t sure if he’d been insulted or
not. Either way, he couldn’t stop his grin. “He must have had some
good points.”

“A couple,” she agreed, hefting the saddle
higher in front of her, holding on to it with both hands.

Travis tried to rise, but she stopped him
with a quelling look.

“I can carry your saddle, your suitcase, and
your rigging bag, but I can’t carry you. So do us both a favor and
save your strength.”

The angel had spoken. Travis collapsed back
in the chair to wait his turn. If he’d had any confidence
whatsoever about his ability to get out the door on his own, he
would have helped her. But spending the afternoon cramped in the
little chair had stiffened him up something terrible. Parts of him
were even starting to shake.

At first he tried to ignore it, but by the
time she carried his suitcase out, his knee was knocking against
the chair, an added pain he really didn’t need.

He gripped his right thigh with his left
hand and tried to massage the spasm out of the muscles. He wished
he’d dropped his bull rope two seconds later than he had the
previous night. The extra time would have gotten him to the
eight-second horn and might have put him down someplace other than
under the bovine tornado.

He wished the pills would kick in too.
Pressing his palm harder into his thigh, he worked the muscle with
his thumb and fingers. And if he was going to fall apart like this,
he wished Shoat had come himself instead of sending Kathleen Ann
Michael.

The sound of the door slamming brought his
head up quick. Just as quickly, he looked back down at his leg.
There were lots of things he liked getting from women. Pity wasn’t
one of them.

“Should I be taking you over to the hospital
before we go home?” she asked.

“No.” He pressed even harder on his leg,
willing the muscles to relax, and they did. Slowly at first, then
deeply. A sense of well-being began infusing his senses. “Callie, I
. . . I think we better get me into the truck
real
quick.”

Callie didn’t need to be told twice. She was
at his side in three strides, wrapping his good arm around her neck
and sliding her arm around his waist. “I’ve got you. On three.
One—”

“I’ll be glad to help you, honey,” the
station clerk offered, coming around from behind the counter.

Callie just bet she would, and if the lady
had helped her with his gear, she might have considered it. As it
was, she was determined to get him out on her own, all six feet of
him. Six feet of lean muscle, long legs, strong arms, and rock-hard
body.

“No, thanks. I’ve got him,” she said,
indulging in a small lie. He was all over her and slipping fast,
but the red-haired lady wasn’t going to lay a hand on him, not if
Callie had anything to say about it. He belonged to her outfit, and
she was the boss, the foreman of the home ranch of the Cayou Land
and Cattle Company. Nobody was going to call her shots for her.

Not even you, Travis Cayou
. She
stiffened her resolve and one knee and shifted her shoulder deeper
under his arm, trying to take more of his weight and inevitably
ending up with her right side mashed up against his left side. He
half groaned, half sighed in response.

Normally, she wouldn’t have noticed. After
all, she was only helping a hurt man out to the truck. But that
hurt man was Travis Cayou, and when his hat brushed up against hers
and his pained sigh echoed in her ear, she couldn’t ignore the warm
blush blooming on her cheek, the catch in her throat, or the
resulting shiver winding its way down her spine.

She would have dropped him right then and
there, like a hot skillet, if it hadn’t meant more work to get him
back up. For a moment she tried to blame her reaction on skipping
lunch, but she’d skipped more than one meal in her life without
going all hot and cold in the middle of the afternoon.

“You all right?” she asked in a voice meant
to be gruff. It sounded provocative instead, even to her own
ears.

“I’ll make it,” was all he said, very
softly, very close, his arm tightening around her shoulders.

Callie swore soundlessly and headed him out
the door.

* * * * * * * * *