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Cleaning the Kitchen & the RANGE WAR BRIDE 3/16/2007 4:07:06 AM
The fridge repairman is coming and I have to vacuum the floor, wash the dishes, and wipe the counters. His hour of arrival is between 8-5. With my luck it’ll be 8, so here’s an excerpt from one of my novellas, RANGE WAR BRIDE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A hand grabbed her arm and lifted her. Whisked from the ground as if she were a feather caught on the rushing wind, she held onto a man on horseback. The suffering of her injury increased to new heights, but it didn’t stop her from holding onto her rescuer the best she could.
The man’s strong, thick arm circled her back. His gloved hand held the back of her head pulling her head to him. She buried her face against his collar in disbelief. She found herself in the arms of the first man not her brother. He held her tight.
Her breasts compressed to the hardness of his body. Her heartbeat skipped wildly, and she hadn’t even seen his face.
The stench of sweat, dirt, and cattle overpowered her senses. Beneath the dirty odors, she caught a hint of cigarettes, soap, and something she couldn’t place. That single scent of sweetness held her concentration. She needed something to forget the pain in her shoulder. She pressed her nose further into the hollow she found between his shirt collar and the neckerchief he wore over his face. She felt his damp bristly skin prickle her cheek. His Adam’s apple jumped up and down on her lips.
While she should be concerned about her brothers, her mind wrapped only to the man holding her close. Was he mar-ried, old, ugly? Her heart said no. A married man wouldn’t hold her in the tender embrace she imaged a lover might hold her one day.
The scent of him wasn’t anything like her fa-ther’s, no body odor, smelling old.
Ugly had varying degrees. However, the inflexibility of the man felt beautiful,
adjacent to the softness of her breasts compressed to him. She felt safe and secure.
She reveled in the moment and adhered to him like sap to a tree.
She ached to know his touch. As the first cowboy she had contact with, his hard torso squished her soft body and he felt like an ideal match to the man she dreamt about.
The horse jolted to a stop. The book she held slipped out of her grasp, and she let it go tumbling down her leg without much thought. She chanced repeating her fit of coughing to peek out from under the cowboy’s chin. Her fingers touched the tip of the red cloth dangling in the form of a veil from his lower face. Instantly, his gloved hand wrapped hers as if to stop her. Instead, he pulled the neckerchief down keeping her fingers encased in his black, leather covered palm.
“Turn them north and find out who the hell started this stampeded!” he shouted from over the edge of the cloth.
Danika glanced at the man he yelled to and saw only a shadowy figure in the billowing furls of dust. Her interest re-mained more in the man holding her around the waist. His an-gry voice created a shiver to slip up her back. She believed he sensed her tenseness when his arm tightened with a quiet com-forting. He wasn’t old…not like her father, but he had a ma-turity that commanded her full attention.
Her breasts began to ache with a strange tingling that ei-ther started or ended in her sore nipples chaffing through the thinness of her dress. She pressed tighter to stop them from gliding up and down. She could feel the thump of his heartbeat close to hers. She wondered why his pulse hammered so fast. She already knew hers tried to crack her ribcage from the build up of fear.
Her head turned to the ruckus surrounding them. Cattle littered her family’s cornfield. All over, big and little, fat and fast, the dirty beasts ran in a mass of dust. They were the cause of the fretful storm, and it passed as fast as it came.
They rode out of the herd and headed for the trees. A new nervousness settled into her thoughts. As the sheltered daughter of a man with three large, overprotective sons, her brothers hardly let her out of their sight. They would not ap-prove of her indulging in a snuggling embrace with a stranger. She on the other hand, could think of no better place to be than in a cowboy’s strong arms.
