How to Lasso a Cowboy (36 page)

WHEN
Josh drove the McCabe buckboard around to the front of the adobe house, he found Miguel lounging in the shade of the covered front porch. The foreman grinned at him.

“The women are inside, fussin' with clothes or something.”

“Figures.”

Josh had gotten a new shirt and jeans in town. Rosie had burned the ones he'd worn on that day-long, or was it a two-day-long, binge in the Bird Cage. She'd said with a smirk that the fumes had near lit themselves. During the last week he had worn Colin McCabe's duds. But McCabe's clothes, too tight in the shoulders, too loose around the middle, weren't exactly fit for social calling. Though Josh didn't look forward to the prospect of sashaying around the Hoffsteaders' new barn showing off his “bride,” he'd be damned if he would go to this hoopla looking like someone who couldn't dress himself.

Besides, Tess wanted them to look like a respectable married couple, and Tess, in spite of her unwomanly ways and touchy independence, didn't deserve to be shamed by the man on her arm. She was an honest woman with a good soul, and over the past week, Josh had come to respect her. How could he not respect someone, man or woman, who feared neither hard work, wild cattle, ill-natured horses, or equally ill-natured men.

Since the women were taking their own sweet time, Josh set the wagon brake and climbed down to sit in the shade of the porch. The foreman gave him an appraising look. After a moment of silence, he nodded. “Tonight will be a good time. Rosie can dance a barn down, and Tess . . .” He hesitated and gave Josh a meaningful look. “It's time Tess learned that she's a woman.”

Josh snorted. “Don't look at me for that, amigo. I'm temporary here.”

“A man could do worse than to settle on the Diamond T.”

“A man could get killed settling on the Diamond T unless Tess McCabe wanted him here.”

Miguel smiled. “Tess Ransom, now. She is Tess Ransom.”

Josh chuckled, trying to picture Tess as any man's wife. Tess Ransom indeed!

“How come a man like you don't have a real wife?” Miguel asked. “There are more women here now that the Apaches are not trying to kill everyone.”

“I could ask you the same question,” Josh replied gruffly.

Miguel snorted. “My mother was Papago, my father was Mexican. The respectable women of both my mother's people and my father's people look at me like I have a disease.”

Josh nodded. Every kind of people hereabouts looked down their noses at every other kind of people. The Mexicans hated the Indians. The Indians hated the Mexicans. And most whites despised them both. “Well, for my part, I think that no respectable woman belongs on a ranch in this country. It withers them up, wears them down. Pulls all the life out of them just like sap. I watched it happen to my mother and sister. No need to watch it happen to a wife.”

Miguel shrugged. “Rosie is respectable, though she didn't used to be. She likes it here. And Tess blooms like a flower in the desert.” The foreman slid a meaningful look in Josh's direction.

Josh chuckled. “Tess a flower?”

The image inspired an upward quirk of Miguel's mouth. “Maybe she blooms like a weed. But nothing will suck the sap out of our Tess.”

That made Josh laugh. “I wouldn't exactly call Tess a weed. But she isn't a run-of-the-mill woman. She's more like a—”

At that moment, out Tess walked, knocking all thoughts of flowers or weeds right out of Josh's head. She looked like . . . well, certainly not like any man's wife, but miles from being herself, either. He didn't know what he had expected her to wear to a barn dance—a cleaned-up version of her usual work garb, maybe. He certainly hadn't expected this!

Rosie presented her creation like an artist unveiling a master painting, and Miguel grinned from ear to ear.

“Isn't she beautiful?” Rosie asked.

Tess squirmed uncomfortably in her frills. Josh tried to
think of something creative to say that would be complimentary and not an out-and-out lie. Hell, he decided. This called for a lie.

“You do look beautiful, Tess. And so do you, Rosie.”

Clearly Rosie had learned women's fashions from her time at the Bird Cage. Miguel had told Josh all about Rosie's transformation from saloon girl to “respectable lady,” relating the story with shining pride and noticeable fondness. But the “respectable lady” still saw beauty through the eyes of the saloon girl. Rosie herself wore a dress that displayed an interesting expanse of chest, but otherwise seemed plain beside the getup she had hung on Tess.

“You don't think I look . . . uh . . .” Tess obviously searched for words that wouldn't hurt Rosie's feelings. Uncertainty brimmed in her eyes like tears. Josh wouldn't have suspected that Tess McCabe could be uncertain about anything, and the revelation inspired an odd protectiveness inside him.

“You look stunning,” Josh supplied. It wasn't exactly a lie. The first sight of her had certainly just about knocked him over.

Miguel liked Josh's choice of words. “
Sí
. Stunning. You both look stunning.”

The mild day made the drive to the Hoffsteaders' place a pleasure. Birds fluttered among the mesquite and juniper, scolding the travelers for disturbing the day's peace. A bright sun ducked in and out of gathering clouds, painting the valley and surrounding mountains with constantly changing purple shadows. Tess stayed silent during the ride, but seated together with legs dangling from the rear of the wagon, Rosie and Miguel volleyed insults in the afternoon sunshine. The jibes flew with practiced ease. He complained that she made biscuits like rocks. She accused him of having the manners of an Indian. Since Miguel's mother had been an Indian, he might have taken offense, but no. He just laughed and said that his Papago mother knew how to cook better than any American or Mexican woman he'd met.

Listening to them snipe at each other, Josh wondered why everyone on the Diamond T snickered behind their backs and took bets on how many months would pass before they set up housekeeping. God himself couldn't explain the ways of women with men and men with women, Josh decided. So why should Josh Ransom understand?

Wagons and people crowded the Hoffsteaders' place, which was situated in the foothills of the Dragoon Mountains among the piñon and juniper. The timber house was certainly bigger than the Diamond T's little adobe compound, and the huge new barn made a perfect site for a neighborly get-together. Rosie hurried to greet friends and bring their offering of food to a heavily laden table. Miguel ambled off to join a knot of men gathered around a keg.

But Tess held back.

“Come on,” Josh urged. “We're here. We might as well go in and act like a married couple.”

She backed up a step, very unlike the Tess he knew.

“What's wrong?”

“I can't go in there,” she admitted from between clenched teeth. “I . . . just can't.”

“You wanted to look married.”

“It's not . . . that. I . . . I don't feel like myself. All gussied up like . . . you know. Everyone will stare. Everyone will laugh.”

He sighed, then held out his hand. “Come on.”

She frowned.

“Come with me. Show some guts, woman.”

That brought her chin up, as he knew it would. She put her hand in his, and for the first time he noticed the graceful, tapered fingers that looked almost delicate. “This way,” he told her and led her around behind the barn, where prying eyes couldn't find them. There he took out the knife he always carried on his belt.

“We'll just make a few changes.” A half dozen big silk bows fell victim to his knife before she could object. Several gaudy flounces shared the bows' fate. The resulting dress had simpler lines and showed off Tess's womanly
shape. And Tess did have a womanly shape, Josh noted—a slender waist, trim hips, and, well, other attributes that a decent fellow wasn't supposed to stare at.

“There now,” he said, clearing his throat and forcing himself to behave. “You look fine. You don't need all those gewgaws hanging on you. They just distract people from noticing how pretty you are.”

Tess looked down at herself with a dubious frown.

“You can't get the picture from where you're standing,” Josh told her. “You'll just have to take my word for it. You're prettier than a flower in spring.”

At that, she snorted. “Save it, cowboy. You don't need to tell me lies.”

“I don't lie. You're damned pretty! Haven't you ever looked in a mirror, woman? You've got—well, hell!—you've got everything a pretty woman should have. A nice smile. Shiny hair, great eyes, good . . . well, a gentleman isn't supposed to talk about the details, you know. Just take my word on it. The men in that barn are going to think you're downright beautiful.”

She was, Josh suddenly realized. Maybe her man's dress and mean-dog attitude had blinded him up until this moment, but seeing Tess in a dress—now that he'd chopped away some of the excess—served as a revelation. Or maybe she was a woman who took time to grow on a man. She possessed the finest pair of eyes Josh had ever seen—deep green, like a quiet shady pool. Lush black hair and smooth olive skin—bronze even beyond the touch of the sun—hinted that her Irish father had taken a Mexican wife. And from the looks of Tess, her mother must have been a beauty.

She still looked doubtful. Strange to see uncertainty reflected upon that usually confident face.

“Tess, in the one week I've known you, I've seen you climb on top of ornery broncs, face down your obnoxious brother, and push around range cattle who wouldn't mind stomping you into the dust. You can't possibly turn chicken because a few folks have gotten together for a barn dance.”

Her jaw stiffened. “Who's chicken? I'm not chicken.”

He held out a hand. “Then let's go. It's starting to rain.”

Teeth clenched, but head held high, she took the offered hand.

TESS
had never felt so out of place in her life as in that barn with the fiddlers sawing out lively tunes, the couples doing jigs or polkas or whatever foolishness they wanted to do, and the other folks eating, drinking, talking, and smiling. Children ran wild through the crowd, getting in the way, tripping the dancers, making off with food from the heavily laden planks laid across bales of hay, but no one scolded them. This was a time for kicking up heels and having a good time. Everyone looked as if they just naturally knew how to have fun. Tess didn't. Colin McCabe hadn't been much for socializing. Work had always gotten in the way.

As Josh guided Tess toward the food, lawyer Bartlett spotted them and waved, a sly smile on his face. Or at least the smile looked sly to Tess, but she might have been just a little bit cranky when it came to Tombstone's one lawyer. And dancing with Meg Riley, the blacksmith's pretty daughter, was none other than Sean. Tess hoped Meg knew what a skunk her brother was.

The thought depressed her, because she hadn't always thought her brother was a skunk. When they had been kids, Tess had been right fond of him. After he left, the two of them had occasionally written letters. Their daddy had refused to hear of Sean, but Tess had loved to read of the places he'd been and the things he had done. Maybe he really did think selling the ranch would fix them both up right. But he didn't have the feeling for the Diamond T that Tess did.

Josh nudged her. “Smile, and stop looking daggers at Sean. You're married and happy. So look it.”

Looking married and happy proved tough. Eyes pressed in from all sides, staring at her as she nibbled on chicken and roasted corn, then following every awkward step when
Ransom made her dance. He insisted, despite her telling him flat out that she didn't know how.

“Learn,” he told her. Just like a man, always wanting to be the boss, but after a few minutes of stepping on toes and stumbling about, looking like a fool, dancing became almost fun. Tess liked the feel of Josh's arm around her. It was a strong arm. And from close up, the man looked even better than he did from farther away. She liked his face, Tess decided. His eyes crinkled when he smiled, and when they danced, he smiled a lot. What's more, he smelled good, like soap and leather.

Too bad she wasn't some pretty thing like Meg Riley who had been brought up liking the idea of having a husband run her life. Tess was beginning to suspect that Josh Ransom would make a dadgummed fine catch as a husband—for a girl who wanted one.

And he'd said Tess was pretty. Imagine that. Even if it was a bald-faced lie, it was a nice lie, and mighty kind of him to say.

They waltzed by Bartlett and his wife. “You two having fun?” the legal eagle inquired.

Tess gave him a smug look. “Of course we are. Being newlyweds is very romantic.”

As the crowd of dancers swept Bartlett away, Tess felt rather than heard a chuckle deep in Josh's chest. “Tess, I don't think you know the meaning of romantic.”

She looked up, jaw squared pugnaciously. “I do so.”

He shook his head. “Someday, some fellow is going to have the guts to teach you, and I'm not sure I don't envy him.”