Cattleman's Courtship Read online

  He tucked her close, his cheek resting lightly against her hair, his breath gently stirring the silky strands.

  “Maybe someone should warn you away from the animal life in Colson.”

  His voice was a husky murmur of sound in her ear. Victoria shivered with awareness.

  “What kind of animal life?”

  “Beckman, for one.”

  “Oh.”

  “If you were dancing with him in this dark corner, he’d be kissing you by now.”

  “Ah. But I’m not dancing with Mr. Beckman,” she said lightly, trying to ignore the heavy thud of her heart and the press of his chest against her breasts, the heavy muscles of his thighs flexing smoothly against hers as they swayed together. “I’m dancing with you.”

  “That’s not exactly safe, either.”

  “Really? Why?”

  He turned his head and close-shaven though he was, still she felt the slight rasp of masculine, beard-roughened skin against her cheek.

  “Because I’m having a lot of trouble remembering why I shouldn’t be kissing you myself.” He said bluntly.

  Victoria’s nerves jumped. “Oh?” She turned her cheek and found his lips a whisper from hers. Bewildered by the breathless, hot reaction that swept her, she wondered dazedly if this instant physical connection was what romantics meant when they talked about love at first sight, or if the overwhelming affinity she felt was only her hormones reacting to his male chemistry.

  Quinn saw the heat that flushed her fair skin and the sensual lethargy that lowered thick lashes over her drowsy blue eyes. Her body was delicate and infinitely feminine in his arms. A swift surge of unfamiliar emotion rocked him as a sudden flash of insight told him she fit against him as if her curves had been carved purposely to accommodate the harder angles of his own body.

  “That didn’t sound like no,” he murmured, his voice husky with restraint.

  “No, it didn’t, did it?” she whispered.

  Quinn didn’t ask again. The need to feel her mouth under his was overwhelming. He tilted his head and his lips found the soft, outer corner of hers. She gasped softly, one swift indrawn breath that parted her lips, and he brushed his mouth along the lower curve of hers, tracing its velvety softness and beyond to the opposite corner before he carefully settled his mouth over hers, slowly fitting them seamlessly together.

  Shielded from the other dancers by Quinn’s broad shoulders, Victoria was adrift in a world bounded by Quinn’s arms and the magic of his warm mouth wooing hers.

  The sudden cessation of the music and the bandleader’s voice announcing a break was a rude intrusion.

  Quinn reluctantly lifted his mouth from hers, his brain foggy with desire. “The music stopped.”

  Victoria’s senses were on overload. She’d never before been so aware of the differences between male and female. His arms wrapped around her, gently crushing the softer curved lines of her body against the harder planes of his. Distracted by the press of his body and the pleasantly abrasive brush of worn denim where his long legs aligned with her own bare limbs below the hem of her skirt, it took a long moment before she registered his words.

  “Oh.” She glanced over his shoulder. The dance floor was slowly emptying, couples retreating to booths and tables.

  Quinn reluctantly released her waist, catching her hand in his. “I’ll take you back to your table. Are you here with somebody?”

  “Just my cousin.” Victoria pointed across the room before smoothing a hand self-consciously over her hair. Her fingers twined in his, she started across the room.

  The booth that had held only Nikki and Victoria when Quinn first saw her was crowded now. Quinn nodded to Doug Akers, SueAnne Gibbs, Nikki and Lonna Denning.

  “There you are, Victoria,” Lonna said. “I’m sorry that it took so long to get our drinks, but I was delayed by a friend who insisted that I dance with him.”

  “That’s all right,” Victoria replied. “I was dancing myself.” She looked up at Quinn. He looked back, his green gaze going molten, and for a moment, she forgot that anyone else was present.

  “Jeez, Quinn,” Nikki blurted, her eyes round with surprise. “What are you doing with her—she’s an attorney!”

  Victoria laughed at the redhead’s blunt shock, expecting Quinn to share her amusement.

  But Quinn wasn’t laughing.

  He tensed, his big body going completely still. His eyes reflected shock and then an instant, blazing anger before they turned cool and unreadable. His hand released hers and although he only took a small step back, Victoria felt his distancing as if he’d thrown up a wall between them.

  He nodded his head briefly at the quartet seated at the table.

  “Goodnight, ladies—Doug.” He glanced briefly at Victoria, his gaze polite and distant. “Thanks for the dance, Victoria.”

  Victoria was speechless. She watched him shoulder his way through the crowd until he disappeared through the arched doorway before turning to Lonna.

  “What was that all about?” she demanded, stunned hurt and confusion quickly being replaced by growing anger at Quinn’s abrupt departure.

  The four occupants of the booth exchanged uncomfortable glances and shifted uneasily against the red vinyl seat. An unspoken message passed from Nikki to SueAnne.

  “C’mon, Doug,” SueAnne caught the cowboy’s hand and tugged him after her out of the booth. “Dance with me—you don’t want to hear this girl-talk.”

  “Thanks, SueAnne,” Nikki said gratefully. “Sit down, Victoria.”

  Victoria glanced over her shoulder at the doorway where Quinn had disappeared before she allowed Lonna to tug her down onto the bench seat.

  “So—” Victoria lifted a questioning eyebrow at Lonna. Her cousin’s gaze met hers for a brief moment before she looked at Nikki. Victoria’s glance followed Lonna’s and found the redhead staring at her guiltily, her deep brown eyes worried and faintly embarrassed beneath the fine arch of her dark brows.

  “I’m sorry, Victoria,” Nikki said earnestly. “Me and my big mouth—I shouldn’t have told him you’re an attorney. I was so surprised to see him with you that I didn’t think…” Nikki’s shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug, and she turned to Lonna with a silent plea for help.

  “Why would he care if I’m an attorney?” Victoria felt as if she’d started reading a mystery in the middle of the book.

  “You’re female and a lawyer,” Lonna interjected. “And that means that you, Victoria Denning, are a leading candidate for Quinn’s least favorite person.”

  “He doesn’t like women lawyers? Why?”

  “Because his stepmother hired a hotshot woman attorney from Helena to contest the will when his father died,” Nikki said. “Local gossip claims that when Charlie Bowdrie passed away two years ago, he left the bulk of his estate to Quinn and Cully. His sons got most of the financial assets, including the machinery and livestock. Eileen got the house in town and a comfortable trust fund, but she was furious that the boys received more. So she took them to court. The case finally went to trial three months ago and the judge made a decision last week. I’m not sure what happened, exactly, but both Quinn and Cully hate Eileen Bowdrie’s attorney. Gossip says she behaved like a real barracuda, raking up the illegitimacy of the boys, the scrapes they got into when they were kids…all sorts of things that didn’t seem to have a lot of direct connection to the case. Cully said that Quinn was more furious with the attorney than with his stepmother. And of course,” she added, “Quinn doesn’t have a lot to do with women in general.”

  “He doesn’t?” Victoria was dumbfounded. The man that made her bones melt when he smiled didn’t like women? And when he’d kissed her… She shivered and pulled her wayward concentration back to Lonna and Nikki. “A bad experience like that might have soured him on women attorneys, but that doesn’t explain why he doesn’t like women in general.”

  Lonna sighed. “Unfortunately, his stepmother is probably the reason for that, too.” She paused a moment bef
ore continuing. “I don’t like to repeat gossip, Victoria, but Eileen Bowdrie is a mean, spiteful woman. She and Charlie Bowdrie never had children—I don’t know if they simply couldn’t, or she wouldn’t, but Charlie wanted sons. He had a liaison with a young woman in the next county that scandalized Colson and fathered two sons. No one knows what happened, but one day Charlie brought Quinn and Cully home with him and told Eileen that he was going to raise them on the ranch, whether she liked it or not. She’s resented Quinn and Cully ever since, and rumor says she made their lives hell when they were growing up.”

  “How old were the boys when they went to live with their father?”

  “I think Quinn was about eight, which would make Cully four or five.”

  Appalled, Victoria shook her head. “That’s terrible—they were so young. What happened to their mother?”

  “No one knows. My mother told me that she simply disappeared. No one’s seen her in all the years since.” Lonna spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Quinn keeps to himself and rarely dates. I don’t know that it’s accurate to say that he doesn’t like women. I think it’s more that he’s very cautious and keeps a lot of distance between him and any interested women. As a matter of fact, I haven’t heard of him taking a woman out since he was in high school.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Although it’s no secret that he’s visited several willing women in neighboring counties over the years, I’ve never heard of him actually dating anyone.” She glanced at Nikki for confirmation. “Have you?”

  “No, never. He’s always polite to me,” she added. “But he’s quiet. I certainly don’t know him as well as I know Cully—and I can’t claim to be really close to Cully.” She smiled wryly. “Much as I wish I were. The truth is, there’s something a little dangerous about the Bowdrie boys.”

  A small shiver of awareness raced up Victoria’s spine.

  “Dangerous?” she asked carefully. “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” Nikki paused, a small frown creasing her brow. “Not only is there just something you feel when you’re around them, but there’s always some story circulating about them.”

  “She’s right,” Lonna agreed. “Though I’m skeptical about most of the stories. The last one I heard was a year or so ago when rumors said Quinn got a local girl pregnant and then paid her to leave town.”

  Victoria recoiled inwardly. “Was it true?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it.” Nikki firmly echoed Lonna. “Cully and Quinn have always refused to deny rumors. They hate gossip. But if either of them knew that they’d fathered a child, they would have insisted on marrying the woman and raising the baby.”

  “The only part of the story that’s confirmed is that Angie Patterson left town. The rest is pure speculation,” Lonna added. “Personally, I think Quinn is a far better man than either he or his stepmother think he is. He and Cully grew up knowing they were illegitimate and so did everyone else in Colson. That set them apart. It’s tough to be different in a town as small as Colson. Of course,” she added with a twinkle, “it didn’t help their reputations that they were both pretty wild when they were teenagers.”

  “That’s true,” Nikki agreed. “My favorite story is the one about Cully climbing the water tower and spraypainting it with red, white and blue stripes on the Fourth of July.”

  Victoria had a quick mental image of the town’s medium-size water tower. “The whole thing?”

  “Almost. The mayor caught him before he finished. But the mayor was afraid of heights and wouldn’t climb the ladder, so Cully ignored him and just kept painting until the sheriff arrived and went up to get him. I think he was about twelve at the time, and his dad had to bail him out of jail.”

  Lonna laughed. “I’ll never forget the time they drove a herd of cattle through the middle of town. The merchants were furious, but Quinn told them his dad told him to move old man Johnson’s cattle from his pasture outside town to the rodeo grounds on the other side of Colson. The shortest route was down Main Street. Since it was the merchants who’d asked Johnson to move the cattle, they couldn’t convince the sheriff to charge Quinn and Cully with anything.

  “And then there was the time Quinn broke his arm at the rodeo in the afternoon and that night, he rode again and won the bronc-riding competition.”

  “With a broken arm?” Victoria asked in disbelief.

  “Yes—I suspect he’d numbed the pain with whiskey, but nonetheless, it must have hurt.”

  “No wonder the Bowdries have reputations for being wild,” Victoria commented dryly. “They are wild.”

  “No question that they certainly were when they were teenagers,” Lonna agreed. “They dated the girls with the worst reputations and were the first boys questioned when anything crazy happened. But after their mid-twenties, they settled down.”

  “That’s true,” Nikki confirmed. “But they’re still considered dangerous. Any woman who goes out with one of them is automatically on the top of everyone’s gossip list.” She shifted her red hair back over her shoulder, tucking it behind her ear with an absentminded gesture. “In spite of the rumors and gossip, though, the Bowdrie brothers are still the most eligible bachelors in the county—and the least likely to wed.”

  “I don’t imagine that’s surprising, given their background.” Victoria frowned at the bottle of beer Lonna handed her. Her own life as a well-loved daughter had been quiet and safe. She’d been an intense, focused child who’d known from the time she was eight years old that she would become an attorney. Boys and dating hadn’t been an important issue, and she’d never known anyone quite like Quinn Bowdrie. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from Quinn, but to have him reject her before she had a chance to decide, and for reasons that had nothing to do with her personally, was frustrating. “So much for cowboys—I should have known better,” she raised the bottle, swallowed with an unladylike gulp and choked. “Yuk! What is this stuff?”

  Lonna laughed, her eyes twinkling at the look of disgust on Victoria’s face. “Beer—would you rather have wine?”

  “No,” Victoria said with grim resolve. “I’m stuck in Montana for the next year—I’ll learn to drink beer. Straight from the bottle.” She closed her eyes, took another sip, and shuddered.

  “I think it may take awhile.” Nikki said dryly.

  Lonna nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  Chapter Two

  Over the next two weeks, Victoria threw herself into a frenzy of activity transforming the apartment she had rented in the old Victorian house next door to Nikki’s home into a welcoming nest. In the end, she was well satisfied with her home.

  The activity focused her, gave her a purpose to fill her days and kept her too busy to fret over her problems. Her life as a child, teen and a young adult had been goal-oriented. She’d known from the day her uncle John had taken her and Lonna to the courthouse to watch his friend Hank Foslund plead a case that she would be a lawyer when she grew up. During her childhood, Victoria’s father had driven his family from Seattle to his brother’s home in Colson to spend their three-week summer vacation. She and Lonna were as close as sisters, and Victoria’s parents often gave in to the girls’ pleas to allow Victoria to spend an extra month with her cousin after they returned to Seattle. Many warm evenings had found the cousins challenging the widowed attorney to checker marathons on the screened porch. Those long summer evenings had cemented their friendship and her own resolve to practice law.

  Now her health and her doctor’s edict had taken away her career. Granted, it was a temporary situation, but still she felt cut adrift, anchorless and without purpose.

  Victoria didn’t like it, and she was determined to get her life back on track. The hiatus from her work was frustrating. So she threw herself into working on the apartment, clerking at her uncle John’s pharmacy and filling in for Hank. Business at the law office was slow, for all of his clients knew that Hank had left on a much-needed vacation. Fortu
nately for Victoria, however, Hank’s files were a disaster. She discovered that there was apparently no rhyme nor reason to his filing system, in fact, she couldn’t decipher any system at all. Satisfied that here was a project that would test even her fierce need for involvement, she dived into the years of files and documents that filled the cabinets in Hank’s office.

  Busy though she was, however, she found thoughts of Quinn Bowdrie intruding all too often. Irritated to find herself remembering the handsome rancher and the kiss they’d shared, she determinedly pushed the memory aside. Still, she found she couldn’t banish him from her dreams.

  Just after lunch one afternoon, Victoria bent from the waist and ran a feather duster over a bottom shelf in the cosmetics section. Dennings Pharmacy was enjoying a pleasant lull after a busy morning. The early afternoon sun poured through the plate-glass windows at the front of the store, glittering off the decorative glassware, bottles, and colored jars displayed in the deep window embrasures. Victoria had already dusted and efficiently reorganized the display before moving on to the aisle counters.

  Humming along with the country music playing softly on the radio, she brushed the feather duster over a jewel-toned collection of bottles filled with nail polish. The store was quiet except for the low murmur of voices as a customer chatted with her uncle John at the pharmacy counter in the back of the store.

  The jingle of bells that hung on the front door interrupted the soft music and Victoria stood, glancing across the store at the entrance. The small drugstore boasted only six aisles, the displays and shelves low enough for her to see over the top and across the width and length of the store from front to back.

  That’s odd. I’m certain I heard someone come in.

  Her tennis shoes made no sound on the waxed tile floor as she walked to the end of the aisle. She rounded the end display and stopped in midstride. Her pulse accelerated and irritation warred with attraction before distraction won.