Cowboy Crazy (13 page)

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t have time to change. Made the short round today.” He grinned. “The better you ride, the harder you work.”

He assessed the room with narrowed eyes like he was thinking about buying the place—or like he already owned it. Pulling out the empty chair beside Sarah, he lowered himself into it and turned toward her, his arm resting on the table. She felt like she was already in his embrace.

Not that she was going to end up there again. Nope, never again. She was the responsible sister. The responsible roommate.

He leaned toward her and she caught the scent of aftershave, a hint of cinnamon blended with leather and wood smoke. He hadn’t been wearing that last night. All this “I didn’t have time to change” stuff was a load of bull. He’d wanted to make an entrance—and it was working. Every eye in the place was on him—the women covetous, the men envious.

“How are you, princess?”

Sarah bristled. “Don’t call me that.”

She reminded herself that she didn’t like rodeo cowboys. Didn’t like them at all.

You
liked
the
way
he
kissed
you, though. You liked the way he…

She shut down that line of thinking as he gave her a lopsided grin that made him look surprisingly boyish despite the breadth of his shoulders.

“I thought maybe you’d give me a second chance.”

“That’s assuming you ever had a first chance,” she quipped.

The men at the table guffawed, but Lane seemed unaffected by what she’d thought was a killer zinger. He scanned the room and its business-suited clientele with obvious scorn, looking rough, battered, and one hundred percent cowboy.

Being responsible sucked.

She was grateful when the waiter interrupted, bringing course after course of beautifully presented, perfectly cooked food. The conversation started up again around them, and Lane’s white teeth flashed as he good-naturedly answered question after question about rodeo from Eric’s friends. Sarah did her best to shrink into the shadows, concentrating on her food so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

Gradually, the questions slowed and finally ceased as one man after another got up to leave. Lane scooted his chair back a bit, clearly looking to engage Sarah in conversation. They listened to each other breathing for a while. Obviously Eric had invited her here to persuade Lane to do the drilling. And he wanted her to use every possible means to do the persuading.

She had a job to do, and that job didn’t just matter to her. It mattered to Kelsey and Katie, too. She took a deep breath. “We need to talk.”

“You’re right,” he said. “We do.”

“Why won’t you let them drill on the ranch?” she asked.

“That’s what you want to talk about?”

“Of course.” She leveled what she hoped was a dispassionate stare. “What else would we talk about?”

“Us.”

“There is no us. There can’t be. It’s not just my job, either. You’re a cowboy, and I’m—not. You like Two Shot, and I don’t.”

“How can you not like your own hometown?”

“Easy. If you’d really grown up there, you’d understand. Trust me, if it was, you’d be all for making some changes. I know it looks all quaint on the outside, but people there really struggle to keep going.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“It is when you’re the one struggling.”

He sighed. “Do you really want to pave over your past like that?”

She thought of the town as she’d left it. The abandoned school building, with its broken windows and chipped facade. The town library, filled with out-of-date fiction by Frank Yerby and Anya Seton. The streets, pockmarked with potholes.

Then there was the gossip. The meanness. Her mother hadn’t been very well equipped for life, but instead of helping her, folks in Two Shot had whispered and lied. Even the smallest mistake got blown up into a drama worthy of Shakespeare in that town. And Sarah’s mother had made a lot of mistakes, mostly under the influence of alcohol.

“Yes,” she said. “I do want to pave it over.”

“Why?”

She glanced around the table, almost hoping Gloria would say something embarrassing so she wouldn’t have to answer the question. But at some point, probably while Sarah was listening to Lane talk about rodeo, Gloria had left. So had Eric.

As a matter-of-fact, only the middle-aged cowboy with the bolo tie remained.

“Excuse me.” Shoving back her chair, Sarah set her napkin on the table and headed for the front lobby. Maybe Gloria had just felt the call of nature. She glanced right, then left as she left the restaurant. No Eric, no Gloria.

“Where’s the ladies’ room?” she asked a uniformed waitress.

“Down the hall.”

She headed down the hallway and ducked into the door marked “Ladies,” but it was empty, the stall doors standing open. Any other time she’d admire the plush carpet, elegant settees, and posh potpourri bowl, but she had to find Gloria. She went back to the lobby, where a black-jacketed server was manning the maître d’ stand.

“Is there another ladies’ room?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“Have you seen a blonde? Petite, big—hair?” She fluttered her fingers around her face to illustrate Gloria’s poof of curls.

“She left with the gentleman,” he said.

“What gentleman?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I believe they—never mind.” He skittered off to the kitchen as if he’d just revealed the hidden life of Brad Pitt to a paparazzo.

Sarah hovered in the hallway, unsure how to proceed. Should she run outside, try to catch Eric and Gloria? For all she knew Gloria was puking in the bushes.

Then again, she might be in Eric’s Porsche, making out. Or worse.

She stepped outside, holding the door open behind her with one foot while she scanned the parking lot. The highway hummed just over the hill, the steady sound broken by the occasional rumble of a big rig and the rush of wind in the grass.

Eric’s Porsche was gone, and so was Gloria. He’d probably have to help her up the stairs, and then he’d discover Sarah lived there too.

Not that she was going to live there for long. She’d given Gloria one rule, and the girl had broken it as quickly as she could. Heck, Sarah never should have moved to Casper anyway. It would be easier—and cheaper—to live with Kelsey and commute.

She’d tell Gloria in the morning. Or maybe she’d just pack her stuff and go. All her belongings would fit in the Malibu’s backseat and capacious trunk. How pathetic was that? She was living a midsize life.

Something needed to change.

Reluctantly, she returned to the dining room. As she emerged from the hallway, she slammed into a familiar figure, bumping her nose into the unyielding plane of Lane’s chest. He steadied her with one hand, but she quickly skittered backward.

“You want dessert?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “No, I want to go home.” She scanned the empty dining room. There were only a few diners scattered around the room, and Eric’s table was occupied only by a busboy who was clearing dirty dishes.

“Let’s go then,” Lane said. “I’ll take you home.”

The two of them strolled in silence through the parking lot, a lone cricket announcing their arrival. Lane was all cowboy confidence and swagger, and that testosterone aura Sarah had sensed the night before surrounded him like smoke from a campfire.

He unlocked the passenger side door of his beat-up pickup.

“I thought you were doing well with rodeo,” she said. “This looks like the Clampetts’ truck.”

“It gets me places and carries my stuff,” he said. “Is there something else trucks are supposed to do?” He opened the door to reveal a bronc-riding saddle set fork-down on the seat. The stirrups were looped over the seat, and a coil of rope was tossed haphazardly on top. His gear bag was on the floor.

“Oops, no room,” Sarah said. “Better call a cab.”

“There’s room.” He hoisted the saddle against his chest, then set it in the truck bed. There was no sign of the previous night’s injury, and she wondered if he’d really needed help with his bag even then.

He brushed off some of the dust with the flat of his hand. “Come on, princess.”

She climbed into the truck cab, feeling awkward in her short dress and heels. The scent of the saddle lingered in the interior—leather and metal and horse. There was dried mud on the floor mats and a stack of papers shoved between the window and the dashboard.

Considering the amount of space Lane seemed to take up in the restaurant, Sarah had expected to feel cramped in the confines of the truck cab. But with one hand on the wheel and one on the shift lever, he fit far better than he’d fit into the cavernous walnut-paneled dining room at the club.

“Stick shift,” she said, thinking aloud.

“You’re not the only one who likes to control things, princess.”

“Don’t call me that. And anyway, I’m just doing my job.” Suddenly conscious of her posh dress and demure pose, she looked down at her hands, which she’d folded in her lap like a good little girl on a trip to the fair. “I don’t like to control things. Not really.”

“Well, you’re controlling me.”

She let out a quick, short laugh. “I can’t control you.”

Not only couldn’t she control him, she couldn’t control herself. Ever since he’d turned up at the club, she’d felt like everything was spinning out of kilter. The idea of spending time alone with him made her want to screech to a halt like the Road Runner coming to the edge of a cliff, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself—maybe because she was hanging out with Wile E. Coyote. Lane might not have the cartoon critter’s knack for disaster—in fact, he seemed to live a uniquely charmed life—but he had the same scrappy optimism as a coyote, the same trickster mentality, the same devil-may-care determination to get what he wanted.

She’d been like that once—a girl who ran horses hell-for-leather, who cussed and kicked and spoke her mind. Sometimes she wondered if all the phoniness she’d let into her life was really worth the paycheck. The new Sarah might be successful and secure, but she wasn’t really very likable.

***

Lane rested one hand on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. Sarah was gazing out the windshield too, as if they were already on the highway. As if the two of them were actually headed somewhere together.

Actually, they were. He just wasn’t sure where they were going to end up.

“So tell me again why you want to destroy Two Shot. What did that town ever do to you?”

She heaved a heavy, weight-of-the-world sigh. “It didn’t really do anything to me. I didn’t let it. But my mom, my sister—things didn’t work out there for them.”

“Would they have worked out differently anywhere else?”

“
Yes.
” Her vehemence surprised him. “You probably think everybody in a small town pulls together, right? That everyone knows everybody else’s business, and they just can’t wait to help their neighbors?”

He shrugged. She was right—he did think that. If you all lived in the same place, you’d care about the same things. Surely that would bring people together.

“Well, you’re right on the first count, wrong on the second. Everybody’s got their nose in your business, but when things go wrong, they just crinkle it up like you smell bad and pull away.”

He couldn’t help chuckling at the metaphor and she scowled, making a little crease appear between her eyebrows. He figured she was probably trying to look mean, but mostly she looked hurt.

“And that’s the good part,” she said. “After they pull away, they all go whisper about you together and point fingers and judge you. Remember in high school how there were cool kids and outcasts? Well, in small towns that never ends. Cliques and power plays, winners and losers—it’s all there. If you make a mistake, just one mistake, you’re done. Done.”

“Surely not everyone’s like that.”

She turned away as if something fascinating was going on outside the passenger side window. “No. Some people pretend they feel sorry for you so you’ll let them help you. That way they’ll have more to whisper about.” The hand resting in her lap curled into a fist. “You bet I want to pave it over.”

She turned quickly to face him and he was surprised to see a teardrop hovering on her lower lashes. He brought his hand up to brush it away and remembered how he’d cupped her cheek the night before, just before he’d kissed her.

She must have remembered that too, because she reached up and grabbed his wrist to pull it away. But when their eyes met, she stopped, the two of them barely breathing. Her eyes were wide, and her lower lip trembled a little until she nipped it in her teeth and looked away.

“You
are
a winner, Sarah,” he said in a low voice. “You made it out in spite of it all.” He kissed her, just brushing her lips. “Forget Two Shot. Just be who you are.”

Sarah whimpered—actually
whimpered
, dammit—as Lane’s eyes flickered over hers like he was seeking permission to touch her again.

Why couldn’t he just take what he wanted? Why did she have to decide everything? Her whole life was a series of vows and decisions, all designed to minimize the risk of failure, and where had that gotten her? She’d been working her butt off all her life, but had it made her happy?

Nope.

Lane’s words rang in her head.
Be
who
you
are.
She’d done that last night, and she’d been happy—truly happy—for the first time in a year. And despite the second thoughts and regrets that had plagued her all day, she wanted to feel that way again.

Yes
, she thought.
Yes.

She kissed him back, tentatively at first, but then pleasure set her heart thrumming like a plucked string. Next thing she knew she’d climbed over the gearshift and was straddling his lap, kissing him with every ounce of her real, true self. It felt so good to let go.

He gripped her hips in his hands. God, his hands were huge. His thumbs rested on the soft spot just below her hipbones, and his fingers spanned the curves of her bottom. When she bent down and gave his upper lip a tentative, teasing lick with the tip of her tongue, his fingers dug into her flesh, pulling her against something she was pretty sure wasn’t a belt buckle.

“Sarah,” he murmured against her lips. “Do you know what you’re starting?”

She licked him again, teasing him with her tongue, coaxing him to let her in. It felt good to be the aggressor, demanding what she wanted, and it felt even better when he kissed her back.

She could feel tension building in his muscles, need spiraling up on need as the kiss deepened and his hands moved up to clutch at her hair. He was pushing against her now, nipping at her tongue, trying to take over the lead in the spicy back-and-forth tango she’d started. She pushed her pelvis forward and rubbed against him like a cat, feeling the outline of his arousal through the thin fabric of her dress.

He pushed back, writhing underneath her, and she knew he was losing control. A man who could ride a bucking, twisting, two-thousand-pound animal was losing control to her, Sarah Landon.

He groaned against her lips, and she felt a surge of excitement deep in her belly. Moving her lips up to his cheekbone, then flicking her tongue in his ear, she reached down to the side of the seat and hit a small lever near the back. The seat whirred and tilted backward, taking her and Lane with it. She pulled open the top snaps of his shirt and felt his skin warm under her hands. She’d never done this before. She’d let men touch her, allowed them to make love to her, but she’d never taken what she really wanted.

In fact, none of them had been anything close to what she’d wanted. They’d been appropriate men, men who fit into her future. Lane was anything but appropriate. He was an accident, a glorious, serendipitous accident that was going to free her from all her self-imposed restraints tonight.

Just
tonight
, she told herself. Tomorrow she’d get back on track.

She had a vague memory of making that choice once before. A foggy recollection that maybe it hadn’t worked out so well. But she was in charge now. How could that be a bad thing?

She tightened her thigh muscles, pressing her hands to his shoulders to hold him down. She might have lost control over her life lately, but she was definitely the boss in this situation. This was what she wanted, to have her way with this man, to have…

Blaaaaaaat.

She shrieked as the harsh blare of a horn cut through the night air. Falling against Lane’s chest took her butt off the truck’s horn, but as she thrashed to rise, her legs tangled with his and her foot hit the stick shift, shoving it out of gear. The truck rolled backward, slowly at first, then faster. Grabbing her around the waist, Lane pushed himself off the seat with one hell of an ab crunch and cranked the wheel to the right. Hauling himself upright, he reached for the knob and floundered for the brake. The crunch of gravel under the tires gave way to rougher ground and the truck bounced over rocks and stones. Tree branches slapped at the windows. Finally there was a faint crunch and their backward motion stopped abruptly.

“Oh, God.” Sarah struggled to extricate her arms and legs from his, twisting herself out of his arms and into her seat. She looked over her shoulder. “What did we hit?”

“Tree,” he said. “Good thing, too. We were headed for the ditch.”

“Oh, no. Your truck. I’m so sorry.” She pawed at the door, but the handle flexed uselessly under her hand. She was locked in. She tugged at the handle in a panic. She couldn’t get out. She couldn’t…

“Wait.” He grabbed her hands and held them both in her lap. She stiffened, her back tight against the back of her seat, her spine rigid. They’d ended up under a tree that shut out the moonlight so she couldn’t see his face, but she had no doubt he was frowning. Of course he was. She’d wrecked his truck. Ruined the evening, and probably his bumper, too. She wondered if the taillight was smashed. Taillights were expensive.

He shifted her two hands into one of his and pulled her toward him so she could see his face again in the faint glow of the parking lot lights, which seemed oddly distant and far away.

He was, incredibly, laughing.

***

Lane looked over at the terrified woman on his lap and tried to stifle his laughter. She seemed to think denting the truck bumper was some kind of disaster, which only made it funnier. He was anything but angry. In fact, he was right where he wanted to be.

When the truck had flipped out of gear, it had drifted backward across the sloping parking lot, rolling across a small patch of grass and into a grove of trees. They’d almost hit somebody’s SUV, but he’d cranked the wheel in time and the truck had come to rest against the trunk of an enormous pine. The tree’s branches draped around them, drooping almost to the ground. He could barely see the club with its tasteful landscape lights glowing in the distance more than fifty yards away.

Nobody was likely to notice him here. Or Sarah. Or the truck, hidden under the boughs of the tree. He’d yanked the headlights on as he’d floundered for the steering wheel and now he shut them off. It felt like they were deep in a forest, sheltered by the ancient tree, safe in a cave of branches.

“Don’t you want to check the bumper?” Sarah asked.

“No,” he said. “But if I don’t repair this night right away, it’s a goner.”

“This—what?”

“This—I don’t know what to call it. Whatever’s happening between us.”

He kissed her, kneading the back of her neck with his fingers as he slid his lips over hers. She was tense as a jackrabbit caught in the open, frozen but ready to bolt. Teasing her lips with his tongue, he felt her nervousness drain away. Then a new kind of tension took over and it wasn’t nerves but need that made her tremble as she kissed him back.

He moved his lips down her neck, pausing to nuzzle the curve where her shoulder met her neck. She was running her hands over his back, over his shoulder blades, tracing his muscles. When she cupped his hips in both hands he felt a stab of urgency that almost hurt. He pulled at the straps of her dress, tugging them down to admire the simple black lace of her bra. It was plain, but not prim—just practical. What it held, though, was heaven. A few faint freckles spattered her skin as if they’d been poured down her cleavage. They faded where her breasts swelled over the lace and her skin turned to smooth white perfection. He kissed her again and slipped one hand past the lace. Her breast fit his hand perfectly, the nipple hard against the center of his palm.

She gasped and he pulled away to make sure it was a gasp of pleasure. It was. Her head was tilted back, and the dim light from the moon spilled over her shoulder and made her skin glow magically silver, just as it had the night before. He reached up and tugged the straps from her shoulders, moving them slowly down her arms and enjoying the slow revelation of her breasts while he expertly flipped open the clasp at the back.

He bent his head to lick a slow circle around each of her nipples, pink as her lips and perfectly round. His hand moved down to fumble with the hem of that sleek little dress—so professional, so prim. He wanted it gone. He wanted her naked, and he wanted her
now.

And she wanted him too. She was pulling at his shirt, tearing the snaps open, but when she hit the last button the console got in the way. She hit it with the heel of her hand and made a little mew of frustration.

“Does this thing come out?”

“No.” He opened the door. “But we do.”

***

Before Sarah had time to think, Lane was out of the truck and around it, opening her door. She tumbled into his arms and clung to his neck, her dress hanging off her shoulders, her bare breasts brushing his chest. He lifted her like she weighed nothing and strode around to the back of the truck.

The bumper was dented, all right. The tree had caved in the tailgate and he had to set her down to jerk it open. It fell with a clang that resounded through the night and made the crickets hush their chirping.

She shivered.

“You cold? Hold on.”

Lane set her on the tailgate and ducked into the cab. A second later he tossed her the silky tasseled wrap she’d carried along with her purse. She pulled it around her breasts and held it at her throat, dangling her legs over the tailgate and looking up at the tree branches that ascended like a spiraling ladder up the rough trunk. A few stars peeped through the filigree of needles, and the moon perched high above as if impaled on the topmost spike.

“Merry Christmas,” she whispered to herself. It might be July, but she was giving herself one heck of a present. She pushed back all the cautions poking at the back of her mind—
someone
might
catch
you, he’s your boss’s brother, you shouldn’t do this, it’s not professional
—and she laughed, because all those things mattered so little compared to the way Lane was looking at her.

“Something funny?” He climbed up beside her.

She smiled. “You.”

“That’s just what a man wants to hear.”

He scrambled up to his hands and knees. He’d brought a blanket from the truck cab and he draped it carefully over a couple bales of hay at the front of the pickup bed. One bale had broken open and spilled straw in a smooth cascade, and the blanket turned it into a sloping chaise lounge. Lane sat back against the intact bale, and propped one arm behind his head. His shirt was open to the last button and the flat plain of his chest glowed in the moonlight. Sarah thought he looked like a shot from a cowboy calendar. Mr. July.

She scurried up beside him and he crooked the other arm around her, lazily stroking the wrap she’d pulled over her breasts. She wasn’t sure where her bra had gone, but the feel of his hand sliding over her taut nipples with nothing but the thin fabric between them raised goose bumps on her chest and arms. He pinched a bit of fabric between his fingertips and she let out a shuddering breath and arched her back.

“You like that?”

“I’d like it better without the shawl,” she whispered.

“You sure?” His hand paused. “We don’t have to do this. It’s kind of in the open. We could…”

“Don’t.” She pulled his hand back to her breast. “Please don’t. I want this. I want the moonlight. I want
you
, Lane. Just one more time.”

He pulled the fabric gently away from her body, first one side, then the other. “One more time? Are you thinking this is a two-night stand, Sarah Landon?”

She sat up and shrugged off the shirt. “Yes.”

Then, to his surprise, she shimmied out of her dress so fast he barely had time to enjoy the show before she was lying beside him again, clad in nothing but a pair of black bikini panties.

She splayed her hand over his chest. “I work for your brother. I work for your
father
, Lane. In a way I work for you, except we’re not on the same side. Remember?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t take sides. And I don’t want to talk about work right now. Besides, you know I don’t care about the company.”

“I think you do,” she said. “You told me last night I messed up your life.”

He knelt beside her and ran a gentle finger across the top edge of her panties, stroking her belly from one hip to the other, then skimming back again. Her skin quivered under his touch. He reached the side and slipped his finger under the waistband and tugged it down, then stroked from one side to the other until he’d uncovered her and she kicked the panties away.

“I have a feeling you’re going to make up for messing up my life,” he said. “But it might take more than once.”