Never the Twain by Judith B. Glad

Author:Judith B. Glad [Glad, Judith B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Romance, Romance, Idaho, Oregon, cowboy
ISBN: 9781601740281
Publisher: Uncial Press
Published: 2007-07-13T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Rock watched her as she slept. Her eyelids were delicately lavender, her cheeks palely peach. Her silver hair was pulled up and back through the hole of a bright blue billed cap today, a cap with the legend "Live Free or Die" across its front. Wasn't that the slogan of New Hampshire? He thought so.

It would do for Owyhee Country, as well. For Owyhee Country and Rock McConnell.

He didn't like towns and he didn't like crowds. Even the rodeo crowd in a little place like Vale had been a little much for his comfort, today. He didn't even like fences, not when they were around him.

Lately, though, he'd been feeling fenced in. This afternoon, he could almost feel the gate closing for the last time.

No, damn it! He wasn't gonna let Genny Forsythe, tenderfoot from New Hampshire that she was, catch him in any kind of corral. A romp in the hay. That's what he wanted from her. Another afternoon's pleasure like last Sunday had been. Afterward he'd take her home, and not see her again until the next time he was feeling horny.

"This is incredible country," she said, as they climbed the Squaw Creek grade. "So rugged and harsh."

"Not like New England," he agreed.

"No less beautiful, though. I love the feeling of space, the way I can see a hundred miles." She pointed to the right, where the spine of the Owyhee Mountains was visible through a road cut. "Look at that view! I couldn't see a tenth that far at home, not unless I were to climb a high hill."

"It's a hard land," he said, wondering if she'd guessed his feelings about her delicacy and was trying to convince him otherwise. "Hard and lonely."

"That's part of its charm. The emptiness. Oh, Rock, sometimes I felt so penned in, so overwhelmed by people, back in New Hampshire. Sometimes I wanted to be a hermit, just so I could be alone."

Sure you did, babe, he said to himself. Aloud he said, "You'd get tired of being alone pretty quick."

Something in his tone must have intimidated her, because she said nothing more, all the way to his ranch. Out of the corner of his eye, he continued to watch her. She was a real tourist, for all that she'd spent a good bit of time in Owyhee Country. Of course, that was in the Vale District, just over the Oregon line. She probably hadn't been over this way except for that day he'd brought her in the 'copter.

No matter. Idaho and Oregon weren't much different, here in Owyhee Country. A few hundred people, a few thousand jackrabbits, and a few million sagebrush. That's all there was. Them and a lot of open range.

He'd give her one winter, then she'd be ready to call it quits. One winter, when the wind never quit howling through the canyons and the land turned gray and forbidding. That's what had got to Selma, that and the loneliness.

Poor Pa. Along about January every year, Selma had started talking Arizona, and Pa had always given in.

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