Just Shoot Me (Cowboy Way, #1) (27 page)

Dean swiped more cobbler from the dish, as he
kissed his way back down her body. He moved where he really wanted
to be and shoved her knees apart. Dean smoothed the gel along her
folds with his finger, then took a dip inside her body.

“
Dean, that’s enough,” she growled,
writhing her hips.

“
Remember, no screaming,” he said
as he lowered his mouth and made a pass over her sweet clit with
his tongue. She didn’t scream, but she let out a long low wail that
vibrated through his body and settled in his groin.

He lifted his head. “Quiet!” he hissed and
smiled when she bit her lip and nodded.

Opening her pink folds, Dean slowly licked her
from bottom to top. By the time he reached her clit, her body shook
violently. But she didn’t wail, and she didn’t scream. Her chin
dropped to her chest, she clenched her teeth and he saw the most
incredible look on her face.

Ecstasy had never looked more beautiful. He
sucked her into his mouth, and the sweet flavor of her orgasm mixed
with the cobbler there, and he took her higher. She threw her head
back on her shoulders and shook harder. But she didn’t scream. Dean
dropped down and entered her sweetness with his tongue, and she
finally broke. Tina sobbed, then wailed her release and the sweet
sound danced through his soul. Her body finally went limp, and he
released his grip on her thighs to move up her body. Leaning down,
he dropped a gentle kiss on her mouth, then another, before he
untied her hands and rubbed her raw wrists.

He had to get something better if they were
going to play like this again. It made him angry to see the welts
he had put there. He lifted her wrist to his mouth and kissed it,
then lowered her arms to her heaving chest.

“
You okay, buttercup?” he asked,
moving to lay beside her and pull her into his arms.

She didn’t speak, she just nodded. He kissed
her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, before he hugged her to
his side. When he released her, Tina didn’t just settle at his side
like he expected, she shot up and scrambled on top of him to
straddle his waist.

“
Ut uh, it’s my turn,” she said
hoarsely.

Dean grinned when she leaned over him to swipe
her finger through the cobbler, dangling her beautiful breast near
his mouth. She ordered him to put his hands behind his head and
Dean complied. He had a feeling, before this night was done, he
would never think of cobbler the same way again. And every time he
ate it from here on out, he would think of his delicious wife, and
get hard as he was right that moment.

Tina Dixon was his new favorite
dessert.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

Dean kneed Blaze and he danced to the left to
catch a bronco who had broken from the herd. He, his brother and
father were moving them to an adjacent pasture. It had only taken
two weeks for the herd of twenty horses to chew through every last
blade of grass in the pasture. With the rain they’d had recently,
the pasture was also now a big mud pit.

Now, they had to reseed the pasture. Seed cost
money.

Dean had apologized to Cord for going off on
him for buying this damned rough stock instead of the beef cattle
he’d told him to buy. But dammit, the way things were going he’d
been right. Managing this rodeo stock was a lot of work, and they
didn’t have any help. They hadn’t even started using the dummy to
see if they could even buck well. Cord told him that every head he
bought was proven, had been successful at various levels of rodeo
competitions. But Dean wanted to see it for himself. According to
his brother, Zack and Ryan were coming down next weekend to work
with the bulls using the remote controlled dummy they had
bought.

They couldn’t afford to hire any hands, so
those two better get out here to help, or their bulls wouldn’t be
bucking. It was enough for the three of them to make sure the
animals had enough grazing. The ten bulls were in the biggest
pasture and were doing a good job of clearing it too. If they
didn’t start supplementing the natural grazing with feed and hay
they would have a barren ranch before long.

The hefty lease check from the rodeo company
that his brother had thrown in his face the night he got back from
Dallas was getting smaller and smaller by the day. Cord’s two
friends were bringing the retired breeder bull out this weekend
with the cows that they’d bought too. More mouths to
feed.

Dean was going to go with the flow, his new
mantra, but he didn’t like it. He just hoped switching the ranch
from beef cattle to rodeo stock didn’t finish sinking their boat.
It had enough holes in it already, and Dean had been bailing as
fast as he could for years. But at least now he had help, and maybe
Cord was right to look at a change. It burned his ass to say it,
but they needed to do something to get out of the financial rut
they’d been in for three years. Like Dean was trying to get out of
the personal rut he had fallen into.

It was an every-day, all day fight to maintain
the motivation to do that. Just this morning, he called the
attorney’s office to see if they’d gotten the DNA results back yet.
The secretary told Cord he was out of the office in court and said
he would call him back when he was available. To Dean’s way of
thinking, considering the price he was paying the man, he should
always be available. But then everyone was paying the same hourly
rate with the man. He didn’t get priority. And neither did Tina
either evidently. Her guardianship order hadn’t been signed by the
judge yet. They were playing the waiting game and Dean was losing
patience.

He’d done everything the attorney had asked
him to do. The week after he got back he took Jeremy to a local lab
to have his blood drawn, and had it overnighted to the other lab.
He’d signed the paperwork the attorney faxed to him and overnighted
it back. Hurry up and wait was getting real old, real fast. Dean
wanted this over with. Wanted Cindy out of his and his son’s life
for good.

“
Dean, look out!” Cord shouted,
just as one of the broncs reared, flailing his sharp hooves and
baring his teeth. Blaze snorted, then reared too. Dean used his
body to try and push him back down to the ground, but he just
reared higher until Dean was almost vertical.

Dean shoved off against the saddle, because he
knew if Blaze went over backward he would be crushed. He hit the
ground hard, jarring his teeth then rolled to the left, about the
same time that Blaze landed and rolled the other way, thank God. If
he’d have rolled the same way as Dean, he still would have been
crushed or trampled. Blaze got up to his feet, danced around
wild-eyed for a second, then took off back toward the barn. Damned
barn sour fucking horse, Dean thought as he sat up to cradle his
shoulder, biting back a moan.

Cord’s horse slid to a stop, and he vaulted
out of the saddle, then knelt beside Dean. “Are you okay?” he asked
with concern.

“
Think I dislocated my shoulder,”
Dean said with a grunt.

“
If you were paying attention, you
would have seen that coming!” Cord grated.

Dean’s phone went off in his pocket, but he
couldn’t let go of his shoulder just yet. “Answer that will
you?”

“
You can call them back later,”
Cord said as he grabbed Dean’s good arm to help him to his feet.
“Now how the hell do you think you’re going to get back to the
ranch?”

“
Ride double with you?”

Cord laughed and shook his head. “I don’t
think so, bitch.”

“
Well you better call Tina,” he
said then groaned. “No, don’t call her.” Dean closed his eyes
against the throbbing pain in his shoulder. That pain would move to
his ass if his wife came out here. She would probably mother him to
death like she was doing Jeremy. Of course Jeremy was loving it
since he hadn’t had a mother in his life in so long. He thought
about it, and there wasn’t anyone else he could call. “Fuck, you
have to call Tina to come out here in the golf cart, or ride back
to the house to get the truck. Either way she’s coming out here, I
know her. Just call her.”

Cord saluted and pulled out his phone. He
dialed, then waited. A smug smile eased up the corners of his
mouth. “Hello, Tina. Your dumbass husband has hurt himself and
needs you to come out in the golf cart and help him.” Holding the
phone out from his ear, so Dean could hear her yelling into the
phone, Cord laughed and waited until she wound down. “No, we don’t
need an air ambulance honey, he just has a little boo-boo on his
shoulder. I’m sure an icepack and a kiss from your pretty lips
would fix it.”

She started ranting again and Cord held the
phone out again. Dean flinched as he listened to the ten-pounds of
dynamite in a five-pound sack that was his wife. God he loved that
woman, but she scared the shit out of him sometimes. When he saw
her reading to Jeremy night before last before he went to bed, Dean
finally admitted to himself that he loved her.

Other than his sister-in-law Hope, he hadn’t
met a better woman in his life. She was real, and she actually
fucking cared about people. But Dean was scared to tell her,
because he wasn’t sure she felt the same way about him
yet.

“
Yeah, be sure and tell Mama too,”
Cord said, before he hung up the phone.

“
You are a bastard,” Dean growled,
hugging his shoulder.

“
Takes one to know one,
brother.”

Dean’s phone went off in his pocket again, and
he said, “Answer my damned phone. It could be the attorney calling
back.”

Cord huffed out a breath, then leaned down and
shoved his hand into Dean’s pocket. He pulled out the phone and
pressed the button. “Hello?” A moment later his brother’s eyebrows
lifted, then slowly fell as he listened to whoever was on Dean’s
phone. “No, this is his brother Cord,” he said and his eyes met
Dean’s. “Dean can’t hold the phone right now, so I’ll tell him.
Shoot.” The longer his brother listened, the more concerned Dean
got.

“
Who’s on the damned phone, Cord?”
Dean demanded, as he held his elbow to his chest.

“
I see. So what now?” Cord asked
and Dean’s heart shot to this throat. If the attorney had told Cord
what Dean wanted to hear, there would be excitement in his tone.
Happiness. His brother’s voice was too serious for it to be good
news he was hearing.

“
Tell me what he’s saying!” Dean
demanded. He let go of his arm to grab for the phone and pain shot
through his collar bone and up to his ear. Dean moaned, sat back
down and held it to his chest again. Cord disconnected the call and
took a deep breath, while he stared at the woods. Definitely not
good news. “Tell me what the fuck he said!” Dean
shouted.

Cord finally looked at Dean, and his eyes were
watery. “Jeremy isn’t your son.”

Dean suddenly didn’t feel the pain in his
shoulder anymore, the pain in his chest was more intense. “Did he
say anything about custody?”

“
Cindy’s attorney has refiled the
custody petition, but your attorney has asked that the judge order
Bobby Jones to have a paternity test too. He thinks Jeremy can stay
here until they get those results back.”

Dean looked down at the ground, trying to wrap
his mind around Jeremy actually not being in his life anymore, but
he just couldn’t do it. A white card laying on the ground caught
his attention, and he picked it up.

With everything on his mind, Dean had
forgotten all about the woman he met in the elevator when he was in
Dallas. He held the card up to Cord, and he took it.

“
Call that woman. She wants to talk
to you about a harassment suit against Laramie. I forgot to tell
you.” At least maybe one of their situations might work out
okay.

Dean had a really bad feeling he had just lost
his battle to keep his son. He needed to just start preparing
himself to let him go.

***

Dean had been in bed four days. His shoulder
had to be feeling better. His heart is what Tina was worried about.
She had never seen a man hurting so badly. And he wouldn’t talk to
her or anyone else about it. He hadn’t said two words to her since
she’d picked him up from the field in the golf cart, even though
she’d done everything she could to pry out of him how he felt. What
he was thinking.

Cord had filled her in on what the attorney
said, or else she wouldn’t even know that much. Her new husband was
a stubborn son-of-a-bitch when he was hurting or angry. Tina knew
Dean was both right now, because Mr. Cranky Pants was back in the
building again. If he wasn’t tight-lipped he was a grumpy bastard
to her and everyone else. Tina about had enough of it.

When she left Dallas, Tina had been worried
about being bored and not having anything to do out here. Well, she
had been terribly mistaken. She didn’t have time to be bored, she
had plenty to do. She was doing it all right now. Taking care of
him, dealing with Jeremy and Laney, and keeping up with the
house.

Mr. and Mrs. Dixon didn’t want to leave, but
they had to go to Dallas for his checkup with his doctor. The way
Dean was acting, Tina had been half-tempted to load Laney up and go
with them back to her apartment. The lease wasn’t up until the end
of the month, and all her stuff still hadn’t been moved out to the
ranch. But she couldn’t leave Dean. Even as sour as he was to her
right now, she knew it was because he was hurting.