Cowboy Dreaming. Shawna Delacorte
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Cody stood up and reached out his hand to help her to her feet. “It’s been about four hours since you left the kitchen.”
“Four hours? Oh, no. I certainly didn’t intend to be out here that long.” She hesitated a moment, then accepted his assistance. “I guess I was just too tired to keep my eyes open.” She noticed the way he kept staring at her, a stare that caused a ripple of confusion and vexation in her. She was also very much aware that he still held her hand within his grasp. She quickly withdrew from his touch and busied herself straightening her clothes and brushing away the loose pieces of hay.
Cody pulled several pieces of straw from her hair. He tickled the last piece across her cheek before dropping it to the floor of the hayloft. It was a brief moment of peaceful coexistence, neither challenging the other’s position or authority.
It was Melanie who broke the moment. She shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other as she stared down at the hay-covered floor. She nervously cleared her throat, then looked up at him. “I, uh, I think I owe you an apology. I guess I was a little overly tired this morning. I’m afraid I wasn’t too polite.”
“Well…” An apology—that was certainly far removed from what he had anticipated. Perhaps Buck’s daughter was not quite the disagreeable ingrate Cody had surmised her to be. “I certainly can’t blame you for getting upset about being tackled and thrown to the floor.”
“And I hadn’t let anyone know I would be arriving in the middle of the night. I can understand why you would assume I was someone breaking into the house.” She stuck out her hand and offered him a tentative smile. “Truce?”
Cody hesitantly agreed, still a little skeptical about her real motives. He accepted her handshake, the sensation of her touch sending a hint of both alarm and anxiety through his awareness. “Sure…truce.”
This time it was Cody who quickly withdrew his hand. He ran it across the back of his neck. For a moment he had forgotten his purpose in being there, had forgotten about everything except the mystery and allure of Melanie Winslow. “Shall we go?” He turned toward the ladder. “Buck wants me to show you around, point out everything new over the past ten years.” He could not stop the irritation that crept into his voice. It was a silly waste of his time. She had lived at the ranch and should be able to spot the changes on her own without taking up his valuable time.
Her manner stiffened. She wrinkled her brow into a slight frown and pursed her lips. She caught the edge to his voice. Was this part of his method of keeping a vigilant eye on her, as he had threatened? “I don’t need a tour guide to find my way around.”
He paused with his foot on the top rung of the ladder. His voice and physical presence carried absolute authority. “Buck wants me to show you around, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
Her temper flared. “This is ridiculous! I lived here for eighteen years. I’ll bet I know places on this ranch you’ve never seen.”
He matched her, word for angry word, as he stepped back onto the loft floor. “Look, kid. There’ve been lots of changes around here in the past ten years. Things are very busy right now. I don’t want you wandering around on your own and getting in the way. Besides, I still don’t know what you’re doing here and until I do—”
She stomped over to the ladder. “Get out of my way, cowboy.” She expertly sidestepped him and quickly descended the ladder. She glanced back up when she reached the dirt floor of the barn. He appeared as a large, dark silhouette against the brilliant blue sky visible through the opened loft doors behind him.
“Humph!” She snorted her indignation, turned on her heel and stormed out of the barn, comforting herself with the knowledge that she had tried to make amends. She had apologized to him, even though she knew she had not been at fault, and had called for a truce. She certainly would not accept any responsibility for the behavior of such an overbearing jerk. A little tremor darted through her body as she recalled her dream, the dream that had seemed so real.
Cody watched from the loft doors as she headed back toward the house. Her stride was purposeful and direct, each step hitting the ground with a thud that he imagined he could almost hear. Then the thought hit him. He glanced at his watch. He needed to hurry if he was going to prevent her from disturbing Buck.
A couple of months ago Buck started taking a short nap before lunch. The short nap had gradually become longer and longer, then became a midmorning nap, an afternoon nap and an evening nap. There was no reason for him to continue to get up as early as he did. Cody had tried to get him to sleep later in the morning, but to no avail. Cody had not belabored the point. Buck had spent his entire life rising before dawn.
Cody understood Buck’s need to feel that he was still capable of making a contribution to the daily work effort. For a man like Buck Winslow to be denied his feeling of usefulness was tantamount to denying him a reason to go on living. And Cody wanted to do everything he possibly could to see to it that Buck would be around for as long as possible. He flashed on the unexpected way Buck had seemed to perk up around his daughter. The thought left as quickly as it had arrived. Cody climbed down from the hayloft and hurried toward the house. He went straight to the office, irritation growing inside him to the point where it shoved aside whatever tender feelings he might have momentarily harbored toward Melanie.
Melanie again found herself watching her father as he slept, only this time he was stretched out in the recliner in the living room. The nap she had stolen in the hayloft had somewhat cleared the fuzziness from her sleep-deprived brain. She needed to dig out some straight answers. Exactly what was wrong with her father and what involvement and authority did this Cody Chandler person have in her father’s business affairs? He projected an air of authority far beyond that of hired hand, even that of ranch foreman.
She could not imagine her father as either weak or vulnerable. He had always been in charge of everything around him. Nothing happened on the ranch that he did not know about. She remembered him as an unemotional, pragmatic man. The ranch had always come first in his life. He had been fair with his employees, but his family was a different matter. She had been hurt on more than one occasion when he had turned his back on her and walked away when she had tried to talk to him. He had never allowed any tenderness or softness to show through. If that side of him existed at all, she had never been aware of it. But seeing him now…again she was struck by how frail he appeared. Was Cody Chandler nothing more than an opportunist taking advantage of a sick man?
Melanie Winslow was confused. Very confused. For some unknown reason she found herself experiencing the very foreign sensation of feeling protective toward her fatherprotective of this cold, overbearing man with whom she had a relationship that could be described at best as adversarial.
She shook her head to clear the strange thoughts. Sleep. She needed more sleep. Obviously she was not thinking clearly. She turned around and left the living room. She would find Cody Chandler and get some answers from him. Then she would put a call in to Henry Sanderson.
Henry had been Buck’s attorney for more years than Melanie was old. She furrowed her brow in thought. That is, assuming Henry was still her father’s attorney. It was possible that he, too, was no longer connected with the ranch or her father, just as Tom Collier was no longer on the scene.
Was this all some sort of plot engineered by Cody so that he could get his hands on her father’s ranch? Was he really some sort of slick con man? Good grief! Get a grip on yourself, Melanie. Next you’re going to be imagining subterfuge behind every rock and tree. She tried to put her thoughts into some sort of logical reality. Her father was obviously in bad health and not capable of performing the hard work connected with a large cattle ranch. It was necessary for him to delegate a lot of the authority and responsibility. Even without the tour that Cody seemed determined to give her she could see that there had been lots of changes since she was last there. Things looked very prosperous.
Melanie turned to leave the living room and immediately ran into Cody in the hallway leading from the office. She fixed him with a determined stare, refusing to give credence to the tremor of excitement caused by his presence. “I want