Nowhere Ranch (10 page)

For a horrible second, I thought Haley was going to invite him along. But before she could, he finished cinching the saddle and gave us a tip of his hat. “You two have a fun time.”

There are three restaurants in town, but she took me to the same cafe Travis had. I considered having the country-fried steak again, then thought about the hot roast beef sandwich, since that was close to what I was going to have. But I planned to make the roast for the next night, so I kept getting stuck.

“You should have a steak,” she told me. “I am. They're good. Rib eye is my preference, but you pick whichever you like.”

It did sound good. It was expensive, but again, it was my birthday, and I wasn't having the night I'd planned. Then I realized she would probably try to pay for it, and knew I couldn't pick it.

The resentment that had started when she told me she was taking me out boiled over, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I was having the steak. And I was paying for it myself. When the waitress came and took our order, I told her so before Haley had a chance.

“But this is your birthday!” she protested as the waitress left. “You shouldn't have to pay.”

“You are not buying me a steak. You should be spending your money on college or something.”

That made her grin. “I'm at WNCC right now, but I hope to transfer to UNL second semester this year.” When I just blinked at her, her grin widened. “Western Nebraska Community College and University of Nebraska at Lincoln.”

I nodded and sipped at my coffee. “Good for you.”

“Where'd you go to college?” she asked me.

“Nowhere.” Something perverse in me, probably the part of me that was all resentful, added, “Didn't finish high school.”

Her eyes got real wide. “How come?”

Should have figured even if I shocked her, she wouldn't stop asking questions. I shrugged. “Didn't suit me.”

“Did you ever take the GED?” I shook my head. She kept on. “But why not?”

“'Cause it don't matter,” I said, trying to sound quelling.

“But in this day and age, and in this economy especially—” She cut herself off and shook her head, but I got wary at the look on her face. I was right. “I'm going to help you get your GED, Roe.”

Jesus God, it was Kayla all over again. I shook my head and tried to look stern.

But damned if she didn't stop being a nineteen-year-old and suddenly turn into some kind of Amazon warrior. “It isn't that many classes, and you can do it online now.”

“I ain't got a computer,” I tossed back.

“Travis does. And I do.” She held up a finger at me. “Don't give me this line about how you don't need it. If you can look me in the eye and tell me not having your high school diploma hasn't made life harder for you, I'll let
you
buy
me
dinner. If not, you have to give me a better reason than ‘I don't need it.'”

I couldn't even look her in the eye. It
had
been trouble at a lot of ranches. When a lot of guys were looking for work, they took the best. I don't know why proving that you could sit still and parrot back shit from a book for four years made you better, but apparently it did. I picked up my spoon and twirled it in my fingers. “It just ain't for me. There's something wrong with my head. The words all just jumble around, and I get itchy. I can't learn a thing by reading. I always been that way.”

But rather than dissuade her, this only seemed to excite her more. “But that's just it—there's nothing wrong with your head. That's learning style. Good teachers would catch that, or good teachers in a school that wasn't overcrowded. You're a tactile learner. A strong one. And that makes sense with how well you do working with your hands. You probably have strong sensory experiences all around. You probably notice smells and colors and lights more. What about auditory? If something is read to you, can you understand it?”

Where was all this coming from? I blinked. “Sometimes. But it's better if I can see it and do it.”

She was nodding, looking like I was some prize she'd discovered. “Seriously, Roe, you have to let me help you. Because this is what I do, or what I want to do. My brother had trouble in school like you, and Dad and I helped him. And we got the school to write him an IEP so they had to read him the tests, and some of them they had to rewrite so he could show them he knew instead of do multiple choice. And now he's graduating.”

She was so excited that she was bouncing in her seat, and eventually she reached across the table and captured my hands too.

“Oh, please! Yes, it would be something I could put on my application for UNL, but mostly it would be so awesome to help you! You should have seen how upset Bart was until we got the school to change for him. He thought he was so dumb. They wanted to put him on Ritalin, but my mom said no way. And she was
right
. I mean, I know some kids do need it, but that wasn't what was right for Bart. He needed the school to change to how he needed to learn. And that's the way it should be. I'm going to go to college, and I'll be a teacher, and I will be the best teacher there ever was. And I am going to be great. I'm going to make a difference, and there will be kids like my brother who go to college because of me, and that's what I want, and that's what's going to happen.”

For a few seconds I just sat there blinking at her. She wasn't an Amazon. She was a fucking force of nature. I swear she could glare at a tornado and make it suck back up into the sky for shame. But she wasn't looking at me like I should be ashamed. She was looking at me like she believed in me, and I have to say, when she looked at me like that, I felt like maybe I wasn't dumb and messed-up in the head. Hell, for half a second while she looked at me, I thought maybe I could go to college too.

“You're gonna be a good teacher,” I told her at last.

She beamed at me and squeezed my hands, which were still trapped in hers. “Can I start with you?”

If a tornado didn't stand a chance, there was no way I was gonna last.

But I got a bit of my pride back in the end, because when the meal was over and the bills came, I picked up them both and paid them, and when she tried to object, I said, “It's my first payment for the lessons.”

It was worth it to see her beam like that. Deep down I was still pretty sure they were never gonna take, but part of me tucked away a little bit of hope too.

I wasn't able to plead sick and get back home to my brownies and bottle of wine. In fact, I didn't even try. It was actually pretty fun to hang out with Haley once I got used to how intense she was. We started at the bar called Sid's Place, where I steadfastly refused to sing any karaoke, so of course I ended up singing it anyway. Haley laughed and clapped and hooted, and actually so did a few other people. I threw in some air guitar too for good measure.

She was really sweet. She even deflected the girls who tried to flirt with me by hanging on my arm. I was a little nervous at first that she was actually coming on to me, but when she started murmuring in my ear about which guys had the hottest asses, I relaxed a little. She did know how to pick them too. One of them I even thought, maybe, was giving me the eye. But I wasn't into that, not tonight. Okay, I would like to be into that tonight, especially after all that beer, but I was having fun with Haley. The cowboy could wait.

Haley dragged me up a few more times for karaoke. I was up to six beers by then, but she was stone-cold sober because she'd had nothing but Diet Pepsi all night. Said she was my driver and that was her job. She started picking up my tab too, but I decided I would get her back later.

She had a real thing for the Dixie Chicks, and I think we hit every song of theirs on the machine. I always did like singing, especially the harmony, and I knew the songs so it was easy. The audience liked us, and I really laid into it, taking the melody, hamming it up like hell, even swiveling my hips a few times. I don't know quite what had come over me. I think between the alcohol and how unlike me all this was that the parts of my brain that keep me in line just didn't know what the hell to do.

Though when I caught sight of Travis in the back of the bar, all my guards went right back up again.

Jesus, but he looked good. I suppose he just looked the same as always, just a nicer shirt and black jeans and his tan Stetson, but holy shit. I couldn't look at him because I knew he would be able to see everything, and so would everybody else. We were singing a song now I didn't know as well, so I had to really focus on the words and try to anticipate the melody and the harmony both. It was hard because all I could think of was that Travis was in the back of the room listening to me sing, watching me. I made it through that song, but when it was done I told Haley I needed to take a break.

Travis came over to our table, and of course Haley told him to sit down and join us.

She might have been right about me and the sensory stuff, because oh my God, the scent of him wrapped all around me, and not just the splash of cologne he had put on. I could smell his skin. I remembered what it tasted like too, and even with all the beer, I felt the memory on my tongue. I kept trying not to look at him, but I kept stealing glances. He was always looking at me too.

I began to wonder if this was going to lead to sex again. I really hoped it would.

I should have figured that Haley would pick up on what was going on between us. She chatted Travis up, but I could sense the plot forming in her brain. This time I actually kind of wanted to cheer her on.

Eventually we moved on over to the Bronco, Travis beside me as we walked down the sidewalk. When I staggered, he righted me, and after several stumbles he just held on to my arm. His grip was strong and sure, and it made my head spin worse than what the alcohol was doing. I knew I should get home and get to bed because I had to work early in the morning, but I didn't want to go. Not without him.

The Bronco was a lot darker and dirtier, but it was rowdy and crowded, and best of all we had to squeeze together into a booth at the back. Haley once again made sure it was me in the corner and Travis beside me. She then left us alone to go get drinks, but Travis didn't move over. He stayed pressed up against me, letting me feel his heat. I felt his hand on my leg too, and I wanted to purr.

“Last time we sat at the back of a bar with live music in a booth like this, things got really interesting,” he commented.

I leaned into his ear and said, “I want you.”

His hand slid higher on my leg, pulled it back on its hinge, and opened me, and when his hand cupped my cock through my jeans I pushed into him, letting him feel how much I wanted him.

Then Haley came back to the table, and I blinked, coming out of the spell.

But his hand stayed on me, working me up, making it almost impossible for me to focus on anything. Though I wasn't so gone that I didn't hear Haley say, with pride, “I'm going to help Roe get his GED.”

Travis didn't even miss a beat, and his hand kept up its wicked massage underneath the table. “That's great.” Didn't sound surprised at all. I suppose he looked that up too when he was checking out my prison record. Surprised he didn't look up my birthday too while he was digging for all my secrets.

They began to make arrangements for us to meet at Travis's house, using his computer, but I couldn't pay attention because of his damn hand. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore, and I reached my hand down too. I undid my fly and guided him in there, holding my hand over the outside of my underwear, shutting my eyes for a second to get the visual in my head. I was developing a kink for this. I was so hard, and I was slick too because the head kept weeping, and he'd just sweep it up and slide it over the shaft. And meanwhile he's asking Haley about her summer job at the nursing home and about her mom and her brother.

But it must have been getting to him too, because all of a sudden he said, “I really need to be heading home.” He squeezed my cock.

“Me too,” I said.
I need to go have sex.

Haley, I hope, did not know about the hand job, but she knew code when she heard it. “I thought I might pop back into Sid's quick. Do you mind taking Roe home, Travis?”

“No,” both of us said at once. And from her grin, I knew later I was going to get quizzed about how my night was, but I didn't care. I sure as hell hoped it was going to be great.

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Chapter Six

“So it's only been a month this time,” he observed as he angled his truck out of the parking lot onto the road. “That's a step up, I guess.”

“I been wanting it,” I confessed, emboldened by the beer. “I just wasn't sure how to phrase it.”

“What you said back in the bar works fine, for the record.”

The beer wasn't just emboldening me. It was making my tongue loose. “But I don't want any hearts and flowers. I'm not a relationship man.”

“Is that what had you panicking?” He cast a sidelong look at me. “How the hell did you get that out of tying you up to the side of a hot tub?”

I still didn't quite understand that one myself. “Actually, it was the grocery store account that started it.”

“What? You think that's a relationship? I was trying to bribe you into cooking for me. So you're saying I should have offered a rough fuck instead? All right. I'll write that down.”

“Are you mad?” Damn stupid loose tongue.

“Exasperated, yes. Mad, no.” He gave me another look across the seat. “Monroe Davis, you have some twisted thinking going on in that head, you know that? I already figured out you don't want a relationship. That's why I keep giving you a wide berth. I could tell if I tried to make friends with you it would spook you, so I thought maybe we'd just fuck, since we did it so well. But I have no idea where to put my foot when I'm around you. I seem to scare you off no matter where I stand.”

He made me sound like such a head case. Maybe I was. “I don't do friends.”

“Everybody has friends, Roe. It's part of being human. Anyway, you were doing all right with Haley, I thought. What do you call that?”

I had no idea what to call Haley. “She's a stubborn filly,” I said.