Not Just a Cowboy (Texas Rescue) (11 page)

“I’m leaving. Honestly, I thought we could be friends, but you’re just a pest.”

“Like a brother.”

“Yes, a pesky brother.”

She tossed her napkin on the table and stood, ready to make good on her threat to leave, but Quinn caught her hand. “But even pesky brothers are still brothers. Remember that.”

She paused and looked down at him. Patricia had no brother, of course. Her father had made sure she had no siblings, unless she counted Wife Number Two’s daughter from a previous marriage. Yet Quinn was telling her she had him.

Just when she softened, just when she wasn’t sure how to handle the lump in her throat, Quinn smiled devilishly and very softly started chanting, “Tricia and Lukey, sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”

“Oh, for the love of God. I can’t believe I ever wanted to marry you.”

“Is this seat taken?” Luke said, standing right beside her.

Oh, the timing.

Quinn stood immediately, grinning like a fool. “Have a seat. This is my friend, Tricia. Keep her company for me, would you? I was just leaving.” Before he left, he made a big deal out of raising Patricia’s hand and kissing the back. “
Au revoir,
Tricia dear.
Très charmant
.”

“Go away.”

He did.

Luke skipped Quinn’s chair and sat next to Patricia instead, shoulder to shoulder. He began eating his pre-packaged, reheated meatloaf with gusto.

Patricia knew her cheeks were burning. She picked up her fork and spun a cherry tomato around her plate for a moment. The suspense of waiting for Luke to say something was too much, so she decided to go first. “I gather you know Dr. MacDowell?”

“Apparently not as well as you do, Tricia dear.”

She stabbed the tomato and watched the juice drain out around her fork.

He tore a ketchup packet open with his teeth and squirted it directly onto his meatloaf. “Were you two engaged?”

She hadn’t wanted to give Quinn a hint about her deal with Daddy Cargill. She didn’t want to tell Luke that she knew Daddy Cargill, period. Luke didn’t know she was an oil baron’s daughter. He liked her just for being Patricia, the personnel director who had no friends in the dining hall.

Luke pressed her for an answer. “I’m asking because that was a mighty interesting comment I heard as I walked up. You wanted to marry him?”

“Does it matter? He’s madly in love with someone else. Or is there some guy code, and you can’t date his sloppy seconds?” She stared straight ahead, looking at the door.

“Since Quinn was nice enough to introduce us, I believe you can look at me without anyone thinking twice about it. Look at me, so I can casually smile at you and pretend I’m not about to say something important.”

She looked at him.

He smiled, but his eyes didn’t quite crinkle at the corners as they usually did. “If you told me that you’d married and divorced Quinn MacDowell, it wouldn’t change the fact that I can’t get enough of you. You’re in my thoughts all day. I can’t wait for night to come, so I can touch you again. Just so you know, of all the women I’ve ever met, you are the least likely to ever be sloppy, and no man could ever look at you and think ‘seconds.’ You are first quality, Patricia. The finest.”

She ignored his smile for the public and looked into his serious eyes. He meant what he said. She didn’t think she’d ever heard a more sincere compliment. She doubted she’d hear one like it again. It had taken her thirty-two years to receive this one.

“Since we are supposed to be making small talk,” Luke said, “why don’t you smile politely and say something?”

“I’m the same age as Quinn,” she blurted. “Thirty-two.”

“Okay.” He shrugged. “Why are you looking like you just confessed a murder to me?”

Patricia stole a look around the tent. Most people had cleared out, thankfully, because she was having a hard time pretending this conversation wasn’t engrossing. “How old are you? Quinn said he refereed your Pee Wee football games.”

“I don’t remember that, but it’s not hard to believe that he did.”

“So, how old are you?”

“Afraid you’re robbing the cradle? I’m twenty-eight. Twenty-nine come November, if you’d like to throw me a party.”

She was four years older. A woman in her thirties befriending a man in his twenties sounded a little desperate, maybe, but a four-year age difference wasn’t so bad.

No daughter of mine will get a dime for marrying a man who’s not of the right age. You want to prove you’re not a spinster, then don’t marry a doddering old man with one foot in the grave, and no college boy, either. Believe you me, it’s a piece of cake to get a sweet young thing half your age to marry you for money. And you’re getting old enough for a man to be half your age, aren’t you?

Her father had failed to set a specific age. Twenty-eight wasn’t all that young.

Patricia stopped herself short. Luke didn’t meet any other criteria, anyway.

She stabbed another tomato. “I’ll kill Quinn for lying to me about that. When he said Pee Wee football...”

“Pee Wee isn’t as young as it sounds. I played when I was twelve, so he was probably fifteen or sixteen. I reffed a few times in high school myself. Got twenty dollars on a Saturday morning to spend on a girl Saturday night. Please pass the salt.”

Patricia reached for the plastic shaker and slid it down the table, feeling stiff and self-conscious.

Luke salted his green beans like this was just any old dinner. “Do you like me more or less, now that you know I’m younger than you? I think I like you more. The idea of dating an older woman is hot. When we’re done being discreet, can I tell everyone you’re much, much older? It’ll make me seem like a gigolo.”

“You just keep amusing yourself, Waterson.” She didn’t have any fresh tomatoes to stab, so she pricked the first one again. “So, if you don’t remember Quinn from being a Pee Wee—” she paused to cast a skeptical look at the man who looked like he couldn’t possibly have ever been a Pee Wee anything “—then how do you know him?”

“Ranching, mostly. We spent school vacations rounding up steer. Branding calves.”

“Really? But he’s...he’s a cardiologist. And you’re...”

“Still branding calves.”

He didn’t sound happy about it.

How could he be? Cowboys weren’t any more glamorous than firemen, and probably were paid less. “A cowboy paycheck” was a daily wage, paid in cash. The last time Patricia had fancied herself in love with a cowboy, the standard rate had been one hundred dollars a day.

She’d just turned eighteen and didn’t think her father could control her anymore. Daddy had found out about the cowboy, who’d worked on the ranch of a girl from Fayette. Daddy had offered him ten times his pay to leave her. One thousand dollars, spread like a fan in his hand. The cowboy had turned him down, and Patricia had felt the thrill of being valued.

She was better than the dollars that had made her family so famous.

Then her father had offered the cowboy one hundred times his pay. Ten thousand dollars. The cowboy had taken it and left. Proof that at the age of eighteen, Patricia had been worth ten thousand dollars.

She supposed she ought to be pleased with this year’s upgrade. A suitable husband for the Cargill heiress would hold at least a million dollars in liquid assets, in addition to owning land in the great state of Texas. Her father now thought she was worth a million. How fast would a cowboy leave her if Daddy Cargill offered him a million dollars?

Patricia knew, suddenly, that was exactly what her father planned to do when she produced a prospective husband. She was the real Cargill, the one who had the Midas touch. She could turn money into more money. Daddy Cargill was just the front man in his white suit and his longhorn Cadillac. She hadn’t thought he realized that—but he knew. Daddy wouldn’t let her go. She was worth too much.

Still, they’d made a deal. They’d shaken hands, with witnesses. He couldn’t welch on the deal. He couldn’t cheat. He couldn’t change the terms—but he would surely try to offer a millionaire of the right age a better deal to leave her. And he’d surely never offer her another chance to escape again.

Luke patted her on the arm as he got up, a friendly, “nice seeing you” type of gesture for the dining public. “I don’t know what has you looking so sad, but hang in there. It will be dark soon, and I’ll help you chase away the day’s worries.”

He threw his paper plate in the industrial garbage can and walked out the door.

Chapter Twelve

S
he did not need a handsome fireman to make her forget her worries.

She needed to focus on them. If it hadn’t been for this hurricane, she’d be making the rounds to all the right events in Austin, perhaps branching out to Dallas, putting herself in the path of the right type of men, inquiring discreetly into their financial and marital backgrounds.

Instead, she was at a hurricane relief center where the only man who kept crossing her path wore a close-fitting black T-shirt and called her
darlin’
. The only thing she had to do discreetly was purely physical and involved sneaking around after dark.

She wondered if it was dark yet. One of her clerks left the tent, and Patricia watched the door as he unzipped it. It was still only dusk outside.

She returned her attention to her laptop. Local medical personnel had been walking up to the relief center and volunteering to work with Texas Rescue, a typical occurrence in this kind of situation. Patricia appreciated their willingness to help, but she still required them to fill out the application forms. Just because people introduced themselves as nurses or doctors didn’t mean they were. Her clerks had been verifying licenses and running background checks all day.

Another Dr. MacDowell could have been entered into the system. Patricia slid a glance to the satellite phone. Reviewing personnel files wasn’t really abusing Texas Rescue resources, not like making a call to check her bank balance would be. Personnel files were at her fingertips, right here in her laptop. It was her job to verify physician’s applications. And if she found a man who fit certain criteria while she did it...

She scowled at her fingers and the way they just rested on the keys, refusing to type. The average family doctor was almost never a millionaire, she knew. Having a medical degree did not mean one owned land, either. The doctors who had the time to volunteer tended to be the older ones, retired or semiretired.

Still, she should look. It was possible the right man was right here, right now.

Or, I could take a week off from the husband hunt. Quinn even said I ought to have a little fun for once.

She could be blowing a golden opportunity here. All she had to do was open the first file of a local volunteer and check the date of birth. Just take that one, tiny step.

Her fingers wouldn’t move. Disgusted with herself and afraid the two night-shift clerks would notice her lack of activity, she opened a game of hearts on her laptop.

This did not take her mind off Luke in the least.

“I’ve never heard of a horse named Pickles.”

Patricia froze, finger poised over her touchpad, as Luke’s voice carried through the fabric wall of the tent.

Feminine giggles followed. “‘Pickles’ was my idea. He’s my horse, so I got to name him.”

“I could’ve guessed that. You don’t think any man would ride the open range on a horse named Pickles, do you?”

More giggles. “If you’re a cowboy, what’s your horse’s name?”

“Only manly names are allowed on the ranch. We’ve got Killer, T-Rex, and his son, Ice-T.”

“You do not.”

“We do have a horse named Ice-T. That’s the honest truth, and he looks like a badass, too, just like the actor. Ice-T glares at a cow and it’s too afraid to move. That’s why he’s my favorite mount. Cows are much easier to rope when they’re not moving.”

The peal of feminine giggles snapped Patricia into action. She killed her game and closed her laptop’s lid. Like a fool, she’d started listening to Luke’s tall tale as if she was one of the girls he was telling it to, but the sound of a real horse snuffling and chewing on a bit was unmistakable. The girl or girls Luke was wasting his time charming were on horses in Patricia’s hospital.

“If the cattle heard me call a horse Pickles, I’d lose their respect as fast as that.”

The answering giggles were like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Patricia headed out of the tent. The door, naturally, was on the opposite wall of the tent from where she was hearing Luke’s voice. She had to go out the front and then walk around to the back side, where the tents backed into one another.

When she rounded the corner, she saw the rear of a large, brown horse. Luke was standing at its head, stroking its muzzle as he kept entertaining the young ladies who were sitting on the horse’s bare back. No wonder Patricia had been able to hear him so clearly through the fabric walls. The horse’s flank was practically touching the tent.

Two young women, riding double and riding bareback, had attracted the attention of a cowboy. Had Patricia seen it anywhere else, she would’ve turned to an acquaintance and made a cutting quip about the predictability of such a thing. She was at her hospital, though, and the cowboy was Luke. It was hard to deny that there was something distinctly unpleasant about it all.

Lord, it was jealousy she was feeling. The young women, despite being on a horse, wore denim cut-offs and no shoes. Their legs looked long, but their feet were filthy, Patricia noted with a sniff. She doubted Luke or any other man would notice such a thing, because the girls were also wearing bikini tops. They were as tanned as only girls who lived in a beach town could be.

And they were definitely girls. Perhaps they were teetering on the edge of adulthood, but they were still teenagers. Surely Luke could see how painfully young they were.

Patricia was accustomed to seeing older men with much younger women, but generally that didn’t occur until the men of her acquaintance were on their second wives, and then those women were generally no more than two decades their husband’s junior. Only men like her father pushed the boundaries further. It went without saying that he’d slept with women younger than Patricia while Patricia was in college.

Are you quite sure she’s eighteen, Father? Think of the negative press. The cost of a good legal team. Yes, twenty-one is a much safer age.

Patricia would have bet a million dollars that Luke was nothing like her father, and yet before her eyes, he was enjoying a long and silly chat with pretty young girls on a horse. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Men were so predictable.

The real issue here was that there was a horse in the hospital. Once more, she’d lost her focus around Luke.

From a good five yards away, she broke into their party of giggles. “Good afternoon, ladies. I’m sorry, but you need to take your horse out of the tent area immediately. It may not look like it, but this is a hospital. The horse presents sanitation and safety issues.”

At the sound of her voice, the horse stepped in place, dangerously close to the guy lines. The girls on its back twisted around to glare at Patricia, causing the horse to shift more nervously.

Luke kept his hand on the horse’s muzzle. “Don’t walk up behind the horse, Patricia. You’ll get kicked.” He sounded perfectly calm.

“I know that,” she said. Basic equestrian skills had been a mandatory part of her schooling. Besides, she’d once been in love with a cowboy, back when she’d been young like these riders.

“Then stop doing it.” Luke sounded quite firm, although his posture was very relaxed, and all his attention was on the horse. Patricia had thought she was walking toward them at an adequate angle for the horse to see her coming, but she stepped farther to the side at the tone of Luke’s voice.

“We’re not hurting anything,” one girl said, clearly feeling her oats. “You can’t make us leave.”

“Actually, she can,” Luke said. “This is a restricted area, and she’s the boss lady.”

The girls, who moments ago had seemed on the verge of womanhood as they’d practiced their feminine wiles on Luke, became petulant children. “Fine, we’ll leave. What a bitch.”

The horse whinnied, bobbing its nose under Luke’s hand.

“Now look there,” Luke said. “Pickles doesn’t want to hear such an ugly word coming from his owner’s mouth. I know you love this horse, but look at his feet. You’ve got him ready to trip over a tent spike, and he’s going to have to step around a half-dozen more to get back out to the main walkway. There’s a difference between someone being bitchy and someone enforcing a rule to save your horse, isn’t there? Hand me the reins, and I’ll walk you out.”

And that, Patricia realized in a flash, was why Luke had been talking to those girls in the first place. He must have spotted the horse and had stepped in to prevent it from getting hurt. How easily it could have tripped on a rope and torn down part of the hospital, possibly hurting itself or others. Luke had been talking to the girls in order to keep the horse in place, giving the horse time to smell him, then more time to adjust to his touch as he petted it.

The horse, relaxed and trusting Luke, willingly followed him out of the tangled danger into which its young owners had placed it. Patricia drifted along at a little distance, watching Luke as he coaxed the giant horse to take delicate steps over and around the guy lines. Luke needed nothing more than his calm voice and a gentle tap of the reins on a foreleg that needed to be lifted higher before he would let the horse proceed.

Patricia didn’t want to feel the emotions he was stirring in her. Her fireman clearly had the horse sense of a cowboy, for example. It was easy enough to fool herself that her admiration wasn’t really lust for a man who tamed a beast.

It was easy to admit that she felt gratitude, too. He’d stepped in to take care of a potential problem for her, after all. But it was the relief that worried her most, because she clearly felt relief, damn it, that Luke wasn’t the kind of man who chased anything female in a bikini.

It shouldn’t matter so much to her. After this week, she wouldn’t care what he did with girls who wore bikinis or anything else. Patricia needed to stay detached, but he was making it so very difficult.

* * *

In the morning, Patricia woke feeling wonderful.

Luke Waterson was an excellent kisser. He’d come for her after dark, taking her back to the picnic table near the hospital building. He’d made her lay on top of the table with him. She’d felt silly, a grown woman reclining on wood planks, but he’d said he wanted her to look at the stars. They were brilliant in the black sky, undiluted by civilization’s usual glow of street signs and restaurant marquees.

Even in June, the night air had felt a bit cool, and Patricia had stayed warm by keeping herself tucked by his side, her head on his chest, leg along leg. They’d kicked off their shoes and let their bare feet tangle, and they’d talked about stars they could see from horseback and stars they could see from boat decks.

Then, they’d kissed. Long and lazy, knowing the whole night stretched before them. She’d enjoyed the slow build-up. When he hadn’t pushed for more, she’d enjoyed it a while longer, but eventually, she’d been confused. They’d taken things pretty far in the shower facility. Surely, he’d expect things to go further this time.

Men wanted sex. That was a fact of life. They wanted it, they appreciated the woman who gave it to them for a short while, and then they moved on, wanting it again from the next woman. Patricia excelled at keeping sexual relationships civilized, as did her friends. It was the height of bad taste to weep after a lover or to be enraged over a divorce.

Yet last night on the picnic table, Luke had kept things surprisingly PG. Maybe he’d lifted the elastic of her sports bra and let his thumb slide over her full breast. Maybe she’d let her hand slip over the nylon of his track pants, just to get a hint of the size and the shape of him. But mostly, it had been a starry night of kisses and whispers.

Surely, that meant he was enjoying her company, if he was delaying the sex. He was in no rush to be done with her and then move on to another woman. She felt dangerously pleased about that.

He won’t be easy to leave.

She wouldn’t think about that now. Fortunes and husbands and fathers could wait. She would work through this day, and live for another precious night.

* * *

Not touching a man was an aphrodisiac.

There could be no other explanation for it. Patricia was dying as she ate lunch sitting to the left of Luke. Others surrounded them, eating and talking, oblivious to the way Patricia tried not to stare at the man with the blue eyes and lazy grin. A nurse sat down to debate sci-fi movies with Murphy. Some of the Houston fire crew sat there, too, eating quickly and leaving. Quinn stopped in for a bite and stayed awhile.

Patricia found that being polite to an acquaintance so no one would guess he was really a man who’d caressed every inch of her body required concentration. She couldn’t be too aloof, but she also had to be careful she didn’t laugh any louder at Luke’s jokes than Quinn’s. When Murphy asked if anyone else had noticed how many more stars there seemed to be in this part of Texas, she turned her face away from Luke and brushed imaginary crumbs from her lap, not daring to meet his eyes and share a memory.

Lunch could have been horrible hot dogs or heavenly foie gras, so little did Patricia pay attention to her food. Instead, she was exquisitely aware of every move Luke made. She deliberately didn’t watch the muscles in his shoulders move when he turned to toss a bottle of ketchup to Zach’s table. She was aware when he casually placed his left hand on the table, perhaps four inches away from her right, and kept it there. She didn’t move her hand away, either. They talked to other people while they didn’t hold hands.

When his radio sounded its alert tones, though, she forgot not to look into his blue eyes. He didn’t look away, either.

“Guess lunch is over,” Luke said.
Don’t worry about me, darlin’.

“I hope your crew gets back before dark this time,” she answered.
Because I’m dying to touch you tonight.

And then he was on his feet and out the door, and she was looking at her plate, vaguely surprised to see lunch had been neither hot dogs nor foie gras. She’d apparently chosen mashed potatoes and vanilla pudding, a gourmet combination the elegant Cargill heiress would never have touched before a hurricane had put her plans on hold.

She looked at the silly lunch on her disposable plate and started to smile to herself. She wouldn’t let herself laugh. She had her limits. But then Quinn began whispering his chant about kissing in a tree, and Patricia got a bad case of the giggles.