After Tom got to bed he lay there far into the night, thinking of Rebecca. He was sure that if he had wanted to, he could have kissed her that night.
What was he talking about? He did want to kiss her. He wanted to very much. But he knew that if he had, it could open up a can of worms that he wouldn’t be able to close again. He was not ready for love—not yet—maybe never again. Not after what happened to Martha. Tom was beginning to think that he should not have gotten off the train in Fort Worth.
“Look at that,” Mo said, pointing to a broken spoke on the right rear wheel of one of the three heavy freight wagons that belonged to the ranch. “That wheel is going to have to be replaced.”
“I’ll help you,” Tom said.
“Well, the first thing we have to do is get it up on a stand,” Mo said. “I’ll get the stand and the lever.”
A moment later, Mo came back from the barn with a stand, a long lever, and a block. Putting the block and lever in place, Mo picked up the jack stand.
“I’m smaller than you are, and I can get under the wagon easier,” he said. “You lever it up, and I’ll get the jack stand set in place.”
“All right,” Tom agreed.
A moment later, with the right-rear wheel of the wagon levered up from the ground, Mo crawled under the wagon and put the jack in place. Tom lowered the wagon onto the stand, which still kept the wheel clear of the ground.
They pulled the wheel off, took it into the machine shed, and replaced the broken spoke. When they came back, Mo tried to put the wheel back onto the axle, but there was an obstruction underneath that prevented it.
“I’ll crawl under there and clear that away,” Mo said. “As long as it is on the jack stand, it’ll be all right.”
It would have been all right, but some of the obstruction was caught under the jack stand itself, and when Mo tried to move it, the jack stand started to fall over.
“It’s falling on me!” Mo shouted at the top of his voice.
Acting quickly, and without giving it a second thought, Tom caught the wagon as it was falling. With muscles in his arms and shoulders straining, Tom not only kept the wagon from falling on Mo, he actually lifted it high enough for Mo to get out from under.
“Put the wheel on,” Tom said.
“I’ll get the lever.”
“Put the wheel on,” Tom repeated, and quickly Mo slipped the wheel hub back on to the axle. Only then did Tom put the wagon back down.
“Sum’bitch!” Mo said. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that!”
By now the story of Rebecca’s initial contact with the two cowboys the night she came back home had made the rounds. The two cowboys, Dutch and Pete, had ridden for several of the ranchers over the last few years, always as part-time riders. When they weren’t riding, they performed odd jobs around town. It was said Pete’s fingers were still misshapen from his run-in with Tom.
“He may be an Eastern dude, but I tell you true, he ain’t someone you want on your bad side,” one of the cowboys said, and all the other riders of Live Oaks agreed.
A few days after the incident with the wagon, Rebecca went out on a ride with no particular destination, but with a definite purpose. She needed to sort out her feelings about Tom Whitman. From the very first day, it was clear that Tom wasn’t like any cowboy she had ever known, and she had been raised around cowboys.
In fact, Tom was not like any man she had ever known, and in the beginning, her interest in him was curiosity only. That was because she had discovered there was much more to him than met the eye. He was a gentleman of the first order, he could discuss anything, and he was not intimidated by wealth or position. The other cowboys of the ranch sensed the same thing about him, but they harbored no resentment toward him, nor did they ever tease him as they would any other tenderfoot.
As she rode around the ranch that day, she realized that her feelings for Tom had grown beyond curiosity and fascination. She found herself staring at him sometimes, wondering what it would be like to be kissed by him, and more.
She thought back to the dance last month, and the walk they had taken away from the dance. He had not kissed her, though she had the feeling that he very much wanted to kiss her. Why didn’t he kiss her? She was certainly letting him know in every way she knew, short of actually coming out and saying it, that she wanted to be kissed.
That night, in bed, she had imagined what it would be like to have him there with her, in bed beside her. Though she was a virgin, she knew what men and women did, and as she lay there, she felt a tingling all over her body as she engaged in thoughts that she dare not share with anyone.
Cresting a small rise in the ground, she saw someone working at a creek just ahead. Then, with a small twinge of excitement, she realized that it was Tom. He was clearing brush from the creek.
She had known this!
She remembered now, hearing her father tell Clay to have Tom clear the brush away from Wahite Creek. She had forgotten that. Or, had she? Had her subconscious mind remembered, and brought her here?
She remained on top of the small hill, sitting her horse for a moment as she looked down at him, wondering if she should turn and ride away before he saw her.
It was too late. He did see her, and he took off his hat, then waved it over his head at her. She felt for a moment as if she were about to jump into a cold pool of water, but taking a deep breath she slapped her legs against the side of her horse and rode down toward him.
“Hello,” Tom said cheerfully. “Are you enjoying your ride?”
“Yes,” she said. “Are you enjoying your work?” she asked with a little laugh.
“I am enjoying it more now than I was a moment earlier,” he said. “Swing down from your saddle and get some circulation going again.”
Although she had been mounting and dismounting from the time she was a small girl, she did not decline his offer to help. And that proffer was more than a mere token effort. As she started down, Tom put his hands under her arms and lifted her easily. But he had made a slight miscalculation as he set her down on the ground. The gap between Tom and her horse was such that when he put her into that narrow space it brought their bodies into direct contact. To make matters worse, her horse, almost as if conspiring to do so, moved up against her, pushing her even closer to him. She felt the crush of his chest against her breasts, and the muscles of his legs against hers. She realized then that it was not a miscalculation, but a carefully calculated move.
She shivered, as a thrill, unlike anything she had ever felt before, passed through her.
“I’m on the ground,” she said.
“Are you?” Tom asked, his eyes twinkling with great humor. “Because right now, I’m on a cloud.”
“What?”
Tom chuckled. “Nothing,” he said. “I was just being poetic.”
He stepped away, and Rebecca found that she could breathe again. Wanting to change the subject, she walked down to the edge of the creek. “Did you have a lot of brush to clear away? It comes down every spring and starts to clog up the creeks in certain places.”
“Choke points,” Tom said.
“Choke points, yes.”
“It hasn’t been too bad,” Tom said. “I’ve nearly gotten it cleared out.”
Rebecca reached down to pull a limb from the creek, then tossed it over onto the pile of vegetation Tom had built up by his efforts on the day.
“You trying to take my job away?” Tom asked.
“Ha! I’ll just bet that I’ve cleared out a lot more creeks than you have,” Rebecca said.
“Since this is the first time I’ve ever done this, I wouldn’t want to take that bet,” Tom said.
“Tom, you never talk about your past,” she said.
“What’s there to talk about? I’m from Boston, and like many other Easterners, I’ve come West. I’m glad I
