Just Shoot Me (Cowboy Way, #1) (5 page)

Tina Montgomery stood, put her fists on her
hips then met his eyes directly. “Fuck you,” she said, so primly
Dean almost laughed. He thought he might be hearing things. Surely
this prissy little woman didn’t just say what he thought she
had.

“
Excuse me?” he asked with a
disbelieving laugh.

She lifted her eyebrow higher, put her fists
on her deliciously curvy hips then repeated very clearly, “I
said
go fuck yourself.”

Dean chuckled, and it looked like she got
angrier.

She was so small, her neck was laid back on
her shoulders like she was staring at the sky, so she could glare
up at him. Unfamiliar laughter tickled his belly. If her eyes were
a laser beam, Dean would be melted in a puddle at her feet. That’s
how hot her eyes were when she got a little neck action going and
said, “You aren’t the boss of me, and your attitude
sucks!”

You aren’t the boss of me?
How old was
this woman?

She was the size of a child, but from her word
choices, and her full breasts which were heaving with every
agitated breath she took, he didn’t think she was that young. Until
that moment though, Dean hadn’t realized just how beautiful his
sister-in-law’s friend actually was. In the barn this morning, the
dim lighting hadn’t done her justice. Standing here under the tree
with shafts of late morning sun setting the auburn streaks in her
dark hair on fire, the soft light painting her skin a golden glow,
and her anger making her cheeks rosy, Dean decided she was
amazingly
beautiful. As beautiful as one of the china dolls
in his mother’s collection, which he realized she
resembled.

And that damned full pink mouth of hers was
calling to him. He’d like to kiss the sassy right out of it. Dean
would bet it tasted just as good as it looked. Like moist, ripe
cherries. She licked those lips and his dick stirred in a big way,
which pissed him off. He didn’t have time for this. The feed store
was closing soon.

Besides he should be pissed at her, not
standing here daydreaming about kissing her. This tiny little woman
with a mouth the size of Texas had just told him off. That was
pretty ballsy, since she was the one getting in
his
way
here. “Where did you learn to drive, sugar? Wal-mart special
driver’s ed course?” Dean asked with a nasty snicker.

“
I’ve never driven a stick before,”
she answered defensively.

He huffed out a frustrated breath. “Give me
the keys, and I’ll move it,” he said holding out his hand for them.
She gnawed her lower lip, and he had the sudden urge to do the same
thing. Dean jerked the keys out of her hand and opened the
door.

“
You’re not going to fit in there,”
She screeched. “That car is a mini.”

Dean leaned down to gauge the odds of fitting
himself inside, and realized she was probably right. He cursed and
handed her the keys back. “Get your assistant to move
it.”

“
She’s busy. I’ll do it. I think
part of the problem is these damned boots,” she informed, with a
wave of her small hand toward the boots. “They’re too big, and I
can’t get the clutch in far enough.” She sat back on the seat, and
tried to toe off one of the boots.

After a minute, when she couldn’t remove them,
Dean bent to grab the boot. He put his hand behind her knee to get
leverage and she gasped. His eyes met hers, and he saw a look there
he hadn’t seen in a woman’s eyes for him in a long time. Interest.
Desire. His heart kicked in his chest, and she looked
away.

Dean swallowed hard, got a grip on his
suddenly active libido and the boot then pulled it. He held her leg
a moment longer than necessary, because he couldn’t resist taking
the opportunity to stroke the smooth, soft skin of her inner thigh
with his thumb. His dick got harder. With a growl he dropped her
leg, then picked up her other foot to remove the boot. When it slid
off, he noticed the size of her feet. His mother’s feet were small,
because she was petite too, but this woman’s foot was even smaller.
She was smaller.

And that’s when it hit him, right between the
eyes. Tina Montgomery looked a lot like his mother. Acted like her
too. Even though she wasn’t young anymore, his mother was still
beautiful. She was the most amazing woman he’d ever known. The only
woman in the world he trusted. She didn’t get mad often, but when
she did you better find a place to hide. One thing he could count
on with her is she would always tell him how it was without holding
punches.

Dean didn’t have a mommy complex or anything.
He usually preferred taller, leggier women too. But maybe that’s
what this strange attraction he was feeling toward Tina Montgomery
was about. Whatever it was, he didn’t have time for it. The feed
store was going to close.

Dean knelt beside her and leaned inside the
car to study the gear shift. “Reverse looks to be down and over to
the left,” he informed her.

He inhaled and her soft, flowery scent
surrounded him. It wasn’t overwhelming, it was subtle, but called
to something inside of him. The scent fit this woman perfectly.
Soft and feminine. Everything about Tina Montgomery screamed girl,
except her salty attitude. Cindy had the same attitude, only
coarser, and she had been tall and lanky. A country girl to the
core. This woman was her complete opposite. Maybe
that
was
the attraction.

Dean leaned back out of the car so he could
get some fresh air. “Make sure it’s in neutral. That’s the center
position. Push in the clutch, hold the brake and start it. To put
it in reverse, push in on the stick with your palm, then move it
down and to the left. Ease your foot off the clutch at the same
time you release the brake.”

“
Yes,
sir,
” she said
sarcastically. His eyes flew to hers, and he was about to blast
her, but he saw hers held teasing laughter.

Dean ignored the tug in his gut and stood to
hold the door open. “Give it a try.”

She wiggled the gear shift to make sure it was
in neutral. He closed the door and stepped back to watch her fiddle
with the controls. The engine cranked smoothly, and she smiled out
the window at him. Dean’s lips automatically curved up too, and the
pull of his skin felt strange.

After a few grinding tries, she finally found
reverse, and her smile widened. A light feeling developed in his
chest, and the skin on his cheeks stretched more. The car lurched
backwards a few feet, before it died. A laugh bubbled in his chest
when she frowned and pounded her tiny fist on the steering
wheel.

Dean picked up the rubber boots and walked to
the door to tap on the window. She rolled it down, but he opened
the door. “That’s fine. I can get out now,” he said, dropping the
boots beside the car. “Put those boots on, because there are
stickers out here.”

She growled, then jerked the keys from the
ignition then pivoted on the seat to swing her legs outside. “Yes
sir, anything
else
sir?” she asked in a snarky
tone.

Damn she was cute when she was mad.

“
Yeah…have a nice day,” he said
with a wink. She growled at his back as he walked off, feeling
lighter than he had in a long time. Dean didn’t hold back, he did
laugh.

It was almost sundown when he got back to the
ranch. After the feed store, Dean had to stop at the hardware store
to pick up some wire and a few posts. Big mistake. Walter Sims, the
owner, decided he wanted to catch up.

Dean didn’t want to be rude to the old-timer
who had been good to his family. Before he could escape though, he
had to talk about his daddy’s condition, Cord’s coming back home
with a new wife, and beef cattle prices. They talked about that so
long Dean could probably quote the current prices of every breed by
memory. That was useless information to him though, since he
couldn’t buy any beef cattle at the moment.

And now it was dark. Another day pissed
away.

But something good did come out of his
conversation with Walter. The old man gave him a lead on a good
breeder bull a neighbor had for sale. As if he could afford to buy
the bull right now either. Dean knew by the time he got that much
money again that bull would probably have third-generation calves
old enough to breed.

Huffing a breath, he picked up his hat from
the seat and slapped it on his head. He got out and walked to the
house. Wishing things were better for them wasn’t going to make it
happen. He just needed to be thankful that his daddy was healed.
Whatever it took to make that happen was worth it. Even losing the
ranch would be worth it. But hopefully it didn’t come to
that.

There had to be something he could do to buy
new stock.

If his brother would stop trying to convince
his daddy to go with some get-rich-quick scheme, maybe they could
figure it out. Recovery was going to be a slow and steady race
here, not a sprint. Dean had faced the fact that they weren’t going
to make the ranch successful again overnight, and he wished his
brother and father would too.

Dean’s hand was on the doorknob of the front
door when he heard giggling and then a soft curse from around the
corner of the wraparound porch. Curiosity set his feet on a path in
that direction. He rounded the corner and rocked back on his heels.
Tina Montgomery, Laney and Jeremy were engrossed in a heated board
game.

None of them noticed him, but he noticed her.
She sat cross-legged in a pair of soft, grey sweat pants that were
a size too small. The cropped football-type jersey shirt she wore
stopped right under her full breasts, leaving a lot of smooth. bare
skin visible. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her
feet were bare.

She looked fresh, and about sixteen years old.
His body reacted instantly, and it pissed him off. Dean dragged his
eyes away, and cleared his throat. He pinned his son with a stern
look then said, “Jeremy you need to get ready for
supper.”

“
But daddy we were playing a game,“
Jeremy whined as he glanced slyly at Tina Montgomery for
support.

Her full lips pinched, and there was a
challenge in her eyes, like she was daring him to argue, when she
said, “We’re almost finished here.”

“
Yeah, please let him finish,”
Laney piped in. Dean’s eyes swung to the tiny blonde girl with the
big blue eyes just like her aunt’s. He realized he was outnumbered.
If he met the challenge the girls were issuing, insisted that
Jeremy leave the game, he was going to have a fight on his hands.
It just wasn’t worth it. And it was Saturday.

“
Fifteen minutes,” he said gruffly
as he walked off.

Excited giggles followed him around the
corner, then he heard Tina say, “You’re not sorry, squirt. You’re
just too good at this game for me.”

“
Yes, ma’am!” Jeremy shouted
gleefully.

Dean shook his head, but couldn’t help smiling
as he made his way inside the house. Voices in the kitchen told him
his mother was getting dinner ready. He walked into the kitchen,
and saw Cord and Hope sitting at the table with his father. His
mother was leaning against the counter with her arms folded over
her chest. Whatever they were discussing must not be pleasant,
because none of them were smiling.

“
What’s wrong?” Dean
asked.

His mother forced a smile and pushed away from
the counter, and turned her back to him to flip biscuits from the
baking sheet to a plate. “Nothing, honey. We were just
talking.”

“
About what?” Dean asked, taking a
seat at the table with a funny feeling settling in his chest. That
his entry into the room seemed to halt the conversation meant he
was probably the topic of their discussion. He looked at Cord,
whose face he could usually read like a book. Not this time. “What
were ya’ll discussing,” he asked again.

His daddy cleared his throat and looked away.
“Mama found out from a friend in town that Cindy is remarried and
living at a ranch on the outskirts of town. I guess her husband got
a job there,” Cord informed, looking away too.

Dean’s heart took a dive in his chest, but he
mentally dragged it back where it belonged. “To what unlucky
bastard?” he asked gruffly.

“
Last one she took up with, I
think,” his daddy said with disgust. “What was his
name?”

“
Bobby Jones,” Dean supplied. It
was a name he wasn’t likely to forget anytime soon. The cowhand he
hired, because he was Cindy’s old high school friend. Dean found
out later what Bobby Jones had been was her old high school
boy
friend. A man she’d kept as lover behind his back almost
the whole time they were married, when he wasn’t out on the rodeo
circuit. A fucking bronco rider. The man who Cindy claimed was
Jeremy’s biological father.

She’d dropped that little nugget of sunshine
on her way off the ranch the day Dean caught them out in the barn
and told her to leave. What Bobby Jones probably didn’t know was
when he wasn’t around, she cheated on both of them. Faithless
bitch. Dean had only married her because she was pregnant, and told
him it was his. Doing the right thing had bought him three years of
misery, and a son who probably wasn’t his to raise.

“
I’m so sorry, Dean,” Hope said,
and the sympathy in her voice was his undoing.