Last Dance

Because the tilt of Gwyneth’s head as she studied him brought back a sweet memory, he brushed his thumb across the corner of her mouth. He noted the fine pink surface, void of lipstick. How long had he wanted her? Since he was eighteen and she was fourteen? Or years before that, when she’d come crying from Leather’s jibes into his mother’s arms?

“So how’s it going, Gwynnie?” he asked to taunt the woman who had just paled at his touch and to derail the sweet memories before that fateful wedding night.

She shivered with anger, her eyes biting at him. “If you bring a hussy into Anna’s house, I’ll be all over you.”

“My, my, my,” he drawled, and grinned at her, pleased that he could rev her so easily, this woman who had torn apart his young dreams. Young Gwyneth had been sweet and retiring and this one wasn’t. “You certainly have a high opinion of me.”

She impatiently ran her hand through her short hair, and he remembered his fingers wrapped deep in the silky sunlight of her long hair. Clearly trying to maintain control, Gwyneth slashed a dark look up at him. “I mean it, Tanner. You bring a woman into Anna’s house and she wouldn’t like that.”

“A woman? Like a woman in my bed? All hot and bothered and—” He couldn’t resist teasing Gwyneth, or was he? That night, long ago, had ripped away part of him. At first he’d tried to make love with other women, and he’d tried to make relationships work—but somehow he couldn’t forget that night.

“You know what I mean about women,” she shot back at him, narrowing her sight on the earring in his ear as though it marked him as “sinner” and “lech.” “You’ve probably… I’ve heard about sailors in port…how they—”

“Yes?” he drawled, really enjoying Gwyneth’s obvious impression of his years away from Freedom Valley.

The quick color moving up her cheeks pleased him. He lifted an eyebrow, fascinated with the woman scowling up at him. Years ago, Gwyneth was little more than a sweet shadow, a girl on the cusp of being a woman—fragile, quiet, uncertain and yet just as fascinating with her green-brown eyes, her cupid’s-bow mouth, those dimples in her cheeks. He ran his hand across her hair, riffling the short strands. “You look good with short hair.”

He took in the length of her fit, athletic body. Gwyneth worked hard and the muscles were smoothly defined on her arms and legs. She had the look of a strong earthy, sensual woman who could take as well as give…not the kind to lie quiet beneath a man. Tanner pushed down that bit of nudging lust for his ex-wife. “Goes with the rest of you.”

She flushed and looked away, and came back with a haughty “It’s practical. A gentleman would put on a shirt while holding a discussion with a lady.”

“Don’t count on manners from me, Gwyneth Bennett,” he said slowly, meaning it. Once again, he remembered her expression as he walked toward her on their wedding night—her eyes had skimmed his chest in that same fearful way…and she’d run away.

Gwyneth had taken his pride and his dreams that night, and now she deserved nothing.

Her indrawn breath hissed in the sweetly scented morning and she paled. “And don’t you dare turn this into a boy’s clubhouse with all your old buddies. They’re all here or come back periodically, all your old high school football and sports buddies—Gabriel Deerhorn, though he keeps to his mountains most of the time—Michael Cusack, York, Frazier, and the rest of your swaggering Bachelor Club! Any beer and babe parties in Anna’s house and I’ll call any wives attached to them. If they’re not married, I’ll call their mothers, and Kylie and Miranda, and I’ll bring you up before the Women’s Council as an undesirable influence on married and unmarried men. They still remember when you pierced your ear and the Bachelor Club, your swaggering boys’ club, followed suit—every last one… Just get out of town and make it easy on everyone.”

“I don’t like threats and I’ll decide when I’m leaving.” Tanner didn’t like the too-soft snarl to his tone, because that proved she was getting to him. He’d honored his mother his entire life, respected her home; Gwyneth’s low-dog opinion of him nettled.

“Good…decide to leave quick, and I don’t make threats. I make promises, and try not to embarrass your family when you go sniffing after women.” With that, Gwyneth lifted her chin and tromped back around Anna’s house. Gwyneth slammed the door of her van and it roared away. Tanner realized darkly that her threat was the first he’d ever heard from her. His shy, sweet bride of years ago was nothing like the fast-mouthed, hot-tempered woman this morning.

Did it really matter? Tanner wondered bleakly. Why should he care if Gwyneth had threatened him with the worst fate of an unmarried male in Freedom Valley?

He followed the van hurling down Anna’s dirt driveway and out onto the unpaved road leading to the Smith ranch. Across the green patchwork of fields, he turned to view Freedom, a quaint town with a tall white church steeple—where he’d married Gwyneth. Then his view swept the town with its neat, well-tended houses and stores, its town square, cherished by the community and where the spit-and-whittle “boys” of eighty or so, held their meetings.

He inhaled slowly; after eighteen years of intermittent visits, he’d come back to the valley’s traditions and an ex-wife’s threat—“I’ll bring you up before the Women’s Council as an undesirable influence on married and unmarried men…”

Freedom’s Women’s Council was powerful, a tradition established from the single women settlers looking for husbands. Women who would choose their own paths, they’d had to protect themselves from brutish men and had formed a family of women, sisters bonded together. Traditional approval of the council usually meant a smooth courtship, according to the women’s terms. The man seeking a bride had to conform to the various stages set forth by the Women’s Council, and a century and more later, this approval was held dear by families and prospective brides.

A man marked as a “Cull” or reject by the Women’s Council could court, but he’d have a difficult time, because his beloved would want the same courtly traditions as her friends. An unhappy prospective bride could make her lover quite uncomfortable.

And so it was that most men in and around Freedom Valley abided by the Women’s Council’s Rules for Bride Courting, an 1880s manual fiercely defended by all the women in the area—mothers, daughters, sisters and aunts. Life in Freedom Valley could become quite challenging for males not abiding by the Rules for Bride Courting.

Consequently the friends of a misbehaving “Cull” were likely to be in for trouble, too, outcasts in the dating game, and the wheels of romance could come to a frustrating, cold stop.

After his wedding night fiasco, Tanner knew about frustrating, cold stops. In his haste to claim Gwyneth, Tanner had shoved aside traditions—

He rubbed his callused hands over his face, pushing away memories and the unexpected, uncomfortable emotions circling him about Gwyneth. With a sigh, Tanner went into his mother’s house and sat in the neat, cheery kitchen. A cobweb she would have never allowed taunted him with memories.

Just finished with college and with a new teaching job far away, he’d wanted Gwyneth to marry him quickly—“A girl like Gwyneth has a lot to fight,” his mother had said all those years ago, standing up on a chair to dust away an encroaching cobweb. “Her mother died when she was two and Leather hasn’t made her life easy, treating her more like a possession than a daughter—a hardworking ranch hand was how he treated her. Now you’re pushing her. Give her more time…let her come to her own decisions, in her own time.”

But twelve years ago, time had run out, and so had his bride. Tanner slammed his palm down on the table, jarring the mug and coffee that had grown cold. He picked up the framed picture of a beaming, eager groom and a blushing bride on the church’s front steps, studied it for a heartbeat, then slammed it facedown on Anna’s practical tablecloth.

“Don’t worry, Mother,” he said grimly to the empty kitchen. “I’m not in the market for another bloodletting.”

Gwyneth leaped from her van and ran up to the old weathered house with its missing shingles and battered flooring and leaky plumbing. Fumbling with her keys, she quickly clicked open the series of locks on the door, and stepped inside the hallway. She slammed the door on the sunshine that had moments ago gleamed on Tanner’s black waving hair, on that expanse of deeply tanned skin across his chest and the light matting of hair Veeing down into his low-slung jeans.

That shaggy haircut, the black strands damp upon his face and neck, did little to proclaim him a gentleman. The scowl that drew his eyebrows together was too fierce for Anna’s son and the set of his mouth said he wasn’t handing out favors. “I don’t like threats and I’ll decide when I’m leaving.”

One look at Tanner, and buried emotions had hit her like a firestorm. She hadn’t intended to stop at Anna’s, to blast Tanner, but delivering her pottery to Freedom’s Decor Shop and buying feed for the ranch had drawn Tanner-is-back comments from everyone she’d met. It was how they looked at her, that curious hopeful romantic look that brought back that night and how she’d run from him. He’d never hurt her and yet, she couldn’t bear for him to touch her—She should have known…

Sucking in air, listening to the furious pounding of her heart, she flattened her body back against the hallway’s ancient faded wallpaper.

“Hello, Gwynnie,” he’d called from Anna’s rooftop. He’d looked so powerful then, scowling down at her, his body solid from hard work, his big hands broad and rough. His mouth turned into a fierce, grim line, black eyes burning her, tearing through her body. After all those years, his anger was still there, lashing at her.

She’d adored him all her life. He’d been a high school football hero, grabbing a scholarship and soaring away to college in another state. He came home that summer, just after her high school graduation. He’d tilted his head as he looked at her and smiled slowly, as she blushed. “Hello, Gwynnie,” he’d said softly, tugging on her braids, and had asked for a date.

She was frightened then—she’d never had a date, her father wouldn’t let her, and somehow Tanner had understood. The next morning, he’d crossed the fence separating Anna’s land from the Smith ranch and walked to her father’s stalled old tractor. By late afternoon, the tractor was purring, Tanner was plowing, and old Leather was swearing, nettled by Tanner’s “I’ll take good care of Gwyneth. If you have no objections, I’d like to take her to a movie, sir.”

Old Leather, a man who craved respect, had gone down easily.

Then suddenly, they were dating and laughing and playing, and she was floating on air. Tanner’s kisses were steamy, his body taut and hot, but cherishing her, he had wanted to wait. He wanted to start a beautiful life with a perfect marriage. Two more years passed and then Tanner had graduated, ready to take a teaching job far away and he wanted her with him.

Confident in their love and future, he had pushed her to marry him, arguing fiercely with Leather that she was twenty and ready to be Tanner’s wife. Fearing the loss of his daughter and ranch hand and cook, Leather had dug in, snarling and resenting the younger man. But she hadn’t cared about his grumbling; she’d wanted to be with Tanner. She’d never been anywhere, but she was in love and so ready. She hadn’t minded that they hadn’t courted according to Freedom Valley’s century-old customs, she’d wanted Tanner too much.

Had she loved him? She’d worshiped him, adored him, waited for the sight of him. But what did she know of love at twenty? Was she only looking for freedom from a father who demanded too much?

After the wedding, she was terrified; she held tightly against her new groom at the church, his body pressing against hers. That first night, with the new marriage certificate resting beside the bed and Tanner’s ring on her finger, she couldn’t stop the clenched-tight fear. She’d trembled as Tanner had walked toward the bed, a towel around his hips….

Penny’s whining and scratching at the front door cut through the terrifying memory and Gwyneth let the German shepherd into the house. Darker and more sturdily built than his mate, Rolf pushed through the door for an ear-scratching.

Gwyneth tried to stop the twelve-year-old echo—his voice had been unsteady, frustrated—“Gwyneth, I won’t hurt you. Don’t back away from me. Look, we won’t do anything tonight, okay? You’re tired—all that wedding stuff. We’ll just sleep and everything will be better in the morning….”

But it wasn’t, because she couldn’t bear to think of him holding her, his big powerful body invading her body—

Later, when he’d come to the Smith ranch house and tried to talk with her, she couldn’t bear to face him. Tanner came from a loving family and he deserved children; she couldn’t bear for him to touch her—not that intimate way. While they were dating, Tanner had been so gentle and proper, his kisses and light caresses so sweet that she’d hoped—

But the old fear remained firmly embedded and on her wedding night, she’d run crying to her father. He was happy, crowing about how right he’d been, that she and Tanner weren’t “a mix.” She hadn’t returned Tanner’s calls, except the one message two years later that had asked for an annulment—she couldn’t have that and he’d agreed to a divorce.

“He just lives five miles down the country road to Anna’s, and the Bennett property borders mine. The rumors will be flying in no time—” She pointed a stern finger at both well-trained guard dogs. “Do not become friends with Tanner Bennett. Don’t hurt him, but don’t go wagging your tails for a new friend, either,” she amended.

Then pushing her hands through her hair and her memories of Tanner away, Gwyneth took a deep breath. “No one is going to fix that rotten fence post but me, or repair that hose on the tractor, or tag the ears of those new calves, so I’d better get after it.”

She ignored the ringing telephone; she wasn’t in the mood for anyone reminding her that Tanner had returned to town, living not far away. She pointed her finger down the hallway, directing the dogs to hunt through the house for unwelcome intruders. The dogs were not only her friends, but her protectors. One sound from them would tell her of danger.

She paused and jerked open a drawer on the hallway table. Her unframed wedding picture and the simple gold ring rolling across it mocked her. She flipped the picture over and shoved the drawer closed, just as she would any thoughts of Tanner. “I am a woman now, not a twenty-year-old, lovesick girl, high on the town hero,” she said to the pale woman in the mirror. “I’ve got responsibilities and work to do, and Tanner will move on. He’ll get bored with small town life, and he’ll leave.”

Then her thoughts ran across the worn linoleum at her feet, like worrying mice that would not go away.

Why hadn’t he married? Why hadn’t he filled another woman’s body with his babies? What would have happened had they courted in the way most women of Freedom cherished, and she’d trusted him with her secret?

Two

Not all men have good hearts, and that is why the Founding Mothers of Freedom Valley decided to lay out their terms when men came courting. I do not like the rage that burns in my heart now, for someone I love has been hurt and I am powerless to avenge her.

—Anna Bennett

Gwyneth dragged herself from under the tractor and wiped her greasy hands on a rag. She swished the barn’s straw from the backside of her cutoff bib overalls, and stood snarling at the metal monster she’d coaxed to life. She hated the old tractor with all her soul; the unsteady feral growling noises provided frustration relief, curling around the airy old barn. She flopped on her baseball hat and damned Tanner Bennett for making her lose a precious night’s sleep. Yesterday, Tanner had invaded her life, her nightmares. She didn’t want to remember him at all, not the tender way he’d kissed her back then, nor the pain and frustration in his expression that night and all the other times he’d tried to call or talk to her.

She’d hurt him badly, and yesterday his scars were showing. Tanner wasn’t the sweetheart she’d known. The lines across his broad forehead and the crinkling at the corner of his eyes told of hours in the weather. She could almost smell the salt air upon him, the nuances of foreign lands and experience with women. Clean-cut Tanner of years ago was now a man with dark, sultry eyes and broad, powerful shoulders that she wanted to—

She shook her head. No man should have such a flat ridged stomach, narrow hips and long, powerful legs. His worn deck shoes marked his experiences away from Freedom Valley and from her. His body, though still lean, was that of a workman…corded, solid and sending out restless vibrations to hers. Tanner had always preferred action to paperwork and there was a hard, fierce look about him, his shields raised. His dislike of her had draped around her like a heavy, cold cloak.

“Swaggering, arrogant—” she muttered, then a flash of a younger, boyish Tanner, clad in his football armor and winking at her, set her heart tumbling. She didn’t want to remember how he had looked all those years ago, walking toward her, dark eyes gleaming, the night of the Sweetheart Dance. She was just eighteen and it was the first time Tanner had taken her to a dance. She’d been thrilled, freed from her father, filled with summer’s sweet expectations and wearing her first dressy dress, borrowed from Kylie. Tanner had taken her in his arms for the last dance, and she’d felt he was taking her in his arms for a lifetime—

Now, she shivered, mentally tearing herself away from that sweet moment years ago. She’d made a life she could live and without her father’s steady demands, she found peace in a hard day’s work and long, quiet hours at her wheel. She missed Leather, of course, because despite his stingy, hard ways, she was his daughter and loved him. But Anna had been the mother she’d never known—sweet, loving Anna, who understood her fears and always offered a comforting cup of herbal tea….

Gwyneth slashed her forearm across her face, the flannel wiping away the tears. She swallowed and straightened with the resolve that had served her through the years of keeping the Smith ranch, of paying her father’s medical bills. Dew hung on the pasture, and mist layered the morning. Somehow she’d work and manage as she always had…and then Tanner would be gone. He’d only come to set his mother’s house aright, a sad obligation; then he’d be off to a life far from Freedom Valley. She had only to wait. She’d coolly smile at the town’s friendly nudges toward her ex-husband, keep quiet, and mind her own business.

“Oh my, he’s a handsome man. He’s got those wide shoulders and that seaman’s walk and he’s sweet just like Anna. I see her in him,” Willa at the café had said, taking the fresh eggs from Gwyneth. “I’m glad you’re keeping Anna’s chickens. She would have liked that, because she clearly loved you like a daughter.”

Yesterday, Tanner’s dislike of her, a woman who had run from her marriage bed and shivered in fear, was as clear as the wide blue Montana sky. His scowl had turned into a wicked, taunting grin because he knew the truth of their wedding night and the consummation that never took place. It was their secret that he could hold and twist and torment—“Oh, Gwynnie…”

She hated him for that—for holding a part of her life that she’d shared with no one, except his mother. But Tanner didn’t know the reason she fled that night and she wouldn’t give that to him, too. She’d told her deepest fears and the reasons for them to Anna, who had held her as she’d cried.

She had work to do, a ranch to tend, and pots to make and none of that required any thought of an ex-husband. There in the shadows of the barn, the cats daintily licking at the fresh creamy milk she’d given them, Gwyneth kicked the tractor’s tire again. She was in an evil, dark mood and Tanner was the cause of her missing sleep. As she had done for years, she threw out her hands and released the biggest yell possible, stirring the swallows in the rafters. With a quick, tight, satisfied smile that her frustration release technique had worked, she jerked the leather gloves from her back pocket, jamming them onto her hands.

A sharp, happy bark whipped her head around to the doorway, where the intruder stood. She couldn’t see his face, but the tall, powerful lines of his body said Tanner had come to call, Penny and Rolf nuzzling against his hands. “Get off my land, Tanner,” she snapped, walking toward him.

There was no Leather to stand between them now, no sweet Anna to help soothe the rough edges of her fears. Time had changed Gwyneth, for now she wanted to deal with that nasty mood prowling between them. She’d been in control of her life before he’d come back and she’d liked her freedom; she wouldn’t have another man pulling her strings by anger or by love. “Penny. Rolf. Down,” Gwyneth ordered and immediately the dogs sat by Tanner.

“You yelled?” he asked in an overpolite tone. “You seem to like doing that.” In the misty morning, his hair was damp and waving, his jaw dark with stubble. His mouth was set in the same unforgiving grim line as yesterday, but today fury burned his deep-set eyes. The black sweatshirt he wore emphasized his dangerous look, his worn jeans and work boots damp with dew from his walk to her house. “You should answer your telephone, Gwyneth. I didn’t like your little visit yesterday. It wasn’t polite. I thought I’d repay the favor and even the score.”

She cut her hand across a layer of cool mist, tearing away the cobweb tenderness of the past. “There is no score between us. I stay on my land and you’re trespassing, Bennett.”

“You’re in a nasty mood, Mrs. Bennett. Had a good night’s sleep, did you?” he asked in a dark, pleasant tone that lifted the hairs on her nape. The name Bennett slapped her, accused her.

“Did you?” she tossed back; she had no guilt to spare for him. Gwyneth resented looking up those inches to his face, resented the tremor that went through her, the memories that had been safely tucked away slashing at her.

He handed her a note written by Anna. “This was by her telephone.”

The note read: “Call Gwyneth. Ask her to plow my garden.”

Gwyneth fought the hot burn of her tears, carefully folding the note and tucking it into her bib overalls pocket; she’d read it again later, treasuring a woman she loved. “I usually do that for her. That was six weeks ago….”

“You never plowed it.” Tanner’s voice was angry, biting her, condemning her. His gaze slashed the corral gate, hanging from one hinge, the unpainted house and the assortment of old farm equipment rusting in the field. “You’re killing yourself on this place. You’ve got guard dogs—trained guard dogs—four locks on the front and back doors, and you’re…”

His lips clamped on the rest and he scowled at her. “I want this cleaned up. I’m not going anywhere soon and I don’t want you tearing into my mother’s driveway again for a kamikaze attack. You’re working too hard,” he added more softly, watching her too intently, as though he could see where the darkness tore at her.

“Ranch work is hard. It’s my land now and I’m keeping it. Fences don’t mend themselves, you know, and cattle still have to be fed in the winter, when a blizzard comes through.”

Tanner slammed his open hand against the weathered barn boards. “Don’t hand me that. You’re still terrified of men—or is it just me? Everything was fine until that night—you were a bit pale and jittery looking, but innocent brides-to-be are known to be—What happened to you, Gwyneth?”

“Lay off,” she said, brushing by him and slapping her bare thigh for her dogs to follow. Penny and Rolf remained at Tanner’s boots, tongues hanging out as they grinned, their tails happily thumping the ground.

She slapped her bare thigh again, impatiently this time, and Tanner’s easy smile wasn’t nice. “We’ve become friends. As soon as your van leaves, they both run to mother’s house. They each have a bowl at her back steps and I just continued to feed them as she had done. They are trained guard dogs and I want to know why. Invite me in and we’ll chat. Just to set the rules. Unless you’re afraid.”