Her Summer Cowboy (4 page)

His eyes widened and then he lowered his head and his mouth brushed against hers.

H
udson pulled her
closer in his arms. The fierceness he’d come to expect from Emma was dampened this evening. She seemed subdued and almost, if he were being honest, a little lost.

He’d followed her to cheer her up, yeah, right, his body said. He’d followed her in the hopes of claiming this kiss. He had expected to seduce it out of her with laughter and maybe some of his country charm. Not from sympathy.

But he’d take it. God, she felt good in his arms. He pulled her closer, felt the way her curves settled against the hard planes of his body and remembered what it felt to be living.

He’d existed for too long. Too long. But tonight he didn’t have to think about any of that. In fact the way her tongue brushed over his and her hands skimmed down his back and pulled him closer made him stop.

Her lips were soft and she tasted of iced tea and summertime. She moved against him like the branches of the willow tree in the wind. Brushing against him and retreating as her hands clutched at him and the kiss took on a life of its own.

His blood ran hot and heavy. Her skin was soft under the touch of his fingers as he caressed her neck and jaw. He pulled back and looked at her in the moonlight. There was a slight pink flush to her cheeks and her lips were swollen a little from their kiss.

“Um…that was unexpected,” she said.

“A nice surprise,” he said, keeping his arms around her. She was like the lightning bugs that flicked and flittered around them. He knew if he didn’t keep her close she’d drift away from him.

Hell, even holding her, he knew she wasn’t his for long. She was probably kissing him to distract herself from whatever it was that had driven her away from the party. He didn’t want to be a dumb cowboy like Lisa had called him. Falling for a woman who was just using him as a distraction.

And it was too soon for that anyway. But his body was saying don’t let go. And his mind was saying that he could like her.

“Yes, it was. Listen, I’m not going to lie to you, Hudson,” she said, reaching up to stroke her finger over his jaw. “You look like sex on a stick and there is something so appealing about the thought of burning up the sheets with you.”

“I’d say
hell, yeah
, but I can sense a but coming.”

She gave him that sad sweet smile of hers. “I don’t want to see either of us get hurt and being on tour with Gramps and singing those old songs is stirring up emotions I have been pretending didn’t exist for a long time.”

He nodded. He knew that. He’d heard it in her voice when she’d sung earlier at the dress rehearsal. He’d seen it in the way she’d smiled at the crew and the band and acted like she was enjoying herself but the truth in her eyes showed she had some apprehension. But he’d tasted something in her kiss that told him she might want to pretend he was a distraction except that he wasn’t too sure that was all he was.

“I don’t mind letting you use me.”

He wasn’t too sure where he was going to end up at the end of the summer. Marietta he knew. But on the ranch with his dad, who knew? He had the old ranch foreman’s house that was his own. But he wondered if he’d be truly welcome out there. Maybe he’d have to start fresh with a new place. Somewhere out on Highway 89. But this back-up country singer, Emma, wasn’t going to figure in his life then. He knew it, suspected she did as well.

“We’re summer strangers, Emma. We can stay polite acquaintances or make ourselves something more. That all depends on what we want. I don’t want to hurt you either,” he said.

She flexed her fingers around his arms and went up on tiptoe and kissed him hard and deep. Every nerve ending in his body jumped to attention and he felt himself harden as he drew her closer. Her arms slipped up his back and she held him fiercely.

There was more passion in that kiss than he’d felt in a long time.

She pulled back, putting her hands on her hips and tipping her head to the side so that her long hair blew in the breeze. “Strangers? I don’t think so. There’s something between us. I guess as long as we both know it’s just for summer we’ll be okay.”

“You think?” he asked. Damn, his voice sounded rusty and husky and he knew that was because of the way she’d made a mockery of his control and turned him on.

All he could really think about was how short that skirt was and how easy it would be to slip his hand up underneath it as he drew her closer to him and gave her back the kiss she’d just taken from him.

“I do,” she said.

“What are we going to do about it?” he asked. “I’ve got a few ideas.”

She threw her head back and laughed. The sweet sound echoed around them and warmed the cold places in his heart.

“I bet you do. I was thinking we’d just let it flow. See what happens. Worse comes to worse all you’ll be to me is my summer cowboy,” she said.

Her summer cowboy. He could handle that. He’d never had anything in his life that wasn’t temporary. He was used to drifting along through peoples’ lives and making a new place for himself every few months.

But even as he nodded and tried to act like he was cool with her suggestion, even as he told himself that the future he saw for himself in Marietta involved him, his horse and no one else, he knew he was lying.

He wanted Emma Jean Wells. And his mind, body and soul said that he wasn’t going to be satisfied with only this summer.

*

Emma hadn’t felt
so free in a long time. She hadn’t realized what it was that had driven her from the party and out here. But when she’d hugged Hudson and felt that spark between them she knew that it was freedom that was spurring her on.

She’d hidden away in Winsome and would have been happy to continue on with her routine there if Gramps hadn’t shoved her out of her safety zone. But he had. And when she’d stood at the microphone today next to Tasha and Mo, she’d realized how much she’d missed singing.

She sang at church so it wasn’t like she didn’t get a chance to sing, but she’d missed the performance aspect. The part where she stopped being conscious of being Emma Jean and just became a tool for the music. She’d needed that.

And somehow in her mind it was tied up with Hudson. His jeans that hugged his first-class ass. Those boots that were worn but polished. His spicy aftershave and the way he looked at her like he saw Emma and not the girl that had many country songs written about her.

He made her feel real in a way that she hadn’t in a long time.

“What do you think?”

“Are you always this forward?” he asked.

“You like it,” she said. “And you know it.”

The side of his mouth lifted in a half-grin and he nodded. “I do. I’m a pushover for a strong woman who sees what she wants and goes after it.”

She wished that he were describing her. And decided that he was. She was changing. Gramps had started it but now Emma planned to own the change. And Hudson and the songs were going to be hers.

“Ha.”

“Ha?”

“You’re not a pushover for anyone or anything. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d somehow tricked me into hugging you just so you could kiss me.”

“If only I were that clever. And I don’t think my momma would have approved of me using her to get a girl to kiss me.”

“You know grown women don’t like to be called girls,” she said, starting to walk up the path toward the buses.

He fell in step besides her. “They don’t? Well, I sure didn’t mean any disrespect, ma’am.”

There was something to his charm. She knew what he was doing but that didn’t make it any less effective. “How often has that country aw’ shucks, ma’am, thing worked for you?”

“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“Slippery too,” she said. “I’m going to have to keep my eye on you.”

“Maybe your hands too,” he said. “Wouldn’t want me to get out of line.”

She liked the silly way he acted and how he’d made something that could have been awkward into well, something more. She’d asked him to have an affair with her sort of. To be her summer lover and being Hudson he’d found a way to move them beyond that. She felt like if something happened they’d be okay with it. No pressure.

She hummed a melody that had been dancing around in the back of her head all day. Something with a little fire and passion. The tune was a simple snippet that just a nice G chord with a progression to G7.

“What’s that?”

“Just something that keeps flirting with my mind much like a cowboy I know.”

“You know men don’t mind being cowboys,” he said. “It’d sound silly if I made you call me a cowman, wouldn’t it?”

She shook her head. “You’re ornery.”

“Yes, ma’am, I am.”

She stopped walking when they got to the lot where all the buses were parked. The drivers were all back here, having eaten earlier and were getting everything ready to go. The record label had the buses painted with Gramps’ pub photo and a huge font that said farewell tour.

She took out her cell phone and snapped a picture of it.

Hudson took her phone from her, wrapped his arm around her shoulder and drew her close. Startled she looked up at him. But he just kissed her nose. “So you have a picture of when the journey began.”

He hit the button and snapped a selfie of the two of them with the bus in the background. Then handed the phone back to her. There was something more going on with him than he let on. She knew it. She should ignore it because summer affairs ended when the summer was over.

But she wanted to know more.

“Tell me about your momma and why you haven’t moved home before now,” she invited.

He looked at her. “Only if you tell me why you didn’t want to sing that duet with Alan.”

One personal secret for another. She wanted to know all about him but had hoped to sort of hide her own fears away. But Hudson was clearly an Old Testament kind of man. She could respect that and him.

“Fair enough,” she said. They sat down on two of the director’s chairs that had been set up outside the bus. She sank down in the fabric-covered seat and glanced over to see that Hudson had his long legs stretched out in front of him. She still had her camera app open and snapped a few photos of him before he glanced back at her.

“So…”

“Oh, you want me to go first?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t seem gentlemanly.”

She shook her head and then took a deep breath. “When I sing with Gramps I’m reminded of every time I’ve sung in my entire life. The stylized way he sings a lyric mirrors what my mom did. It’s sweet but also a bit heartbreaking when I hear it.”

“I get that. But what does that have to do with you singing?” he asked.

She wrapped her fingers around the arms of the chair and looked down at her lap. “When I sing I never sound as good as Mom did. I don’t want to let her down.”

He reached over and tapped her under the chin. “When you sing you own the song and no one would be disappointed in that. You make that song your own and I think your mom would be proud that you’re singing her part.”

*

Hudson felt like
Jesse James, an outlaw saying what he needed to her in order to steal what he wanted from Emma. But he knew in his soul that he wasn’t doing it for nefarious reasons. There was something a little bit vulnerable about Emma. That aura had been around her since he’d picked her up at Alan’s mansion earlier today.

And tonight when he’d held her in his arms and reminded him that she had a lot of strength. Both sides were warring and she was stuck in the middle trying to manage them both. It must be hard to be so much a part of an industry that just turning on the radio could trigger a flashback.

For him there were a few things that could do that but they were the smell of his leather saddle or using the bridle that his dad had given him with his first horse. Sometimes seeing bales of hay when he drove his pick-up down the highway reminded him of chores and getting ready for winter in Marietta. Always he stayed away from the reason why he’d left home.

But for the most part those memories were tinged with happy times. Not like the tragedy of Emma’s past. And she seemed to be okay most of the time but every once in a while he heard the pain in her voice.