The Princess of Coldwater Flats (16 page)

In her peripheral vision she saw Cooper lean forward to listen to something Bev was saying. Something about Emmy. Sammy Jo caught a glimpse of his strong jaw and dark lashes before she snapped her attention back to Brent. “No,” she answered shortly, then could’ve kicked herself for the flash of hurt that crossed his face. “I mean, nobody has to love animals, and hey, I wish I could give up meat, but it just isn’t in me.”

“You’re one in a million, Sammy Jo.”

She couldn’t tell from that remark whether that was good or bad. “Well, you know me,” she deflected, gulping more wine.

She was too conscious of Cooper and Bev. It was as if the very air thrummed with their vibes.

Brent said, “Have you come to any decision yet?”

“About?”

“Marriage.”

The subject was rearing up again sooner than she wanted. But she needed to take the plunge, didn’t she? Beneath the table, her hand fisted, her nails biting into the flesh of her palm. She forced herself not to glance at Cooper again. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

“And?”

“It’s an important decision. A really tough one. And I don’t mean that to sound negative,” she added hurriedly. “But, you know…” she trailed off.

“I do know.” His sincerity made her feel worse.

“I’m kind of independent.” She half laughed.

“I like that about you.”

“I’m a pain in the ass. Everyone says so. And I’m going to run the Triple R the way I want to run it. Period.”

“I have no interest in running the ranch.”

She stared at him helplessly.

“I don’t care how much trouble you are,” he said, answering her look. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. I just thank my lucky stars that you need me.”

Sammy Jo couldn’t disagree more, but she stilled her tongue. Brent reached across the table for her hand. The silence was eloquent as he waited for her answer.

Sammy Jo’s heart thundered in her ears. She could feel Cooper’s presence, overwhelmingly male and strong. It filled her senses, frighteningly so. She would be crushed by a man like him.

“I would like to marry you, Brent,” she said in a clear voice, but to her ears it sounded as if it came from a long, long way away.

* * *

Cooper froze, unable to swallow the luscious bite of fried chicken. It lodged in his throat, as big as a whole watermelon.
Sammy Jo Whalen just agreed to marry that jackass?

“Something wrong?” Bev’s eyebrows drew together in concern.

He had to wash the bite down with beer. He couldn’t breathe. His blood pounded, hot and throbbing.

Covertly, he watched the waiter serve Sammy Jo and Brent their meals. She shifted her weight, and he couldn’t help but sneak another look at her slim legs.

Desire, dark and tempting, swept through him. He had to resist the urge to reach over and yank Sammy Jo from her chair, shake her and demand for her to think.

But that was just part of it. A small part. He really wanted to kiss her, bend her over his arm, or better yet, push her down on one of those red-and-white-checked tablecloths and cover her body with his.

The image was so hot, so tempting, so real, that he was momentarily blinded to anything but that desperate, swelling need.

“You look…‌stern,” Bev said, glancing at Sammy Jo, though Cooper had purposely brought his attention back to the remains of his meal.

A pulse beat in his jaw. Images slashed across his mind. Images of a woman in the throes of passion. Sammy Jo. Head thrown back. Arms wrapped around his neck. Legs clamped tightly around his hips. Thrusting into her. Hot. Silky. Wet.

“Dessert?” the waiter asked.

Cooper nearly jumped from his skin. What the
hell
was the matter with him?

“No, thank you,” Bev said primly.

“Check, please.”

She arched penciled eyebrows. “We’re leaving?”

“Did you want something else?”

His terseness didn’t escape her notice. She hesitated. Almost as if she couldn’t help herself, she looked over at Sammy Jo and Brent again. Brent was star-struck, gazing at Sammy Jo as if she’d given him the world. Sammy Jo was pale, and she ate slowly. Feeling Bev’s gaze, she glanced up, but her eyes searched for Cooper.

His gut tightened. It hurt to look at her. Unsure why he was feeling so wildly protective and just plain randy, Cooper scratched out his name on the check and walked away, Bev trailing behind.

“Cooper…”

Sammy Jo’s voice arrested him. With an effort, he turned her way, purposely keeping his features under control.

“Since the beavers are settling into their new, and hopefully happy, home, when do you want to take out the dam?”

Her green eyes were luminous. A whirl of color from the Japanese lanterns slashed across her bare shoulders and back, turning her white dress and skin into soft shades of peach, aquamarine and mint green.

“Tomorrow?” he suggested.

“D-day. Dam day,” she added for clarification. What time?”

“Let’s make it early. I’ve got things to do.”

His brusqueness wasn’t lost on Sammy Jo. Her thick lashes drew together, a tiny line forming between her eyebrows. Cooper forced his gaze to remain on her face, though the dusky hollow between her breasts beckoned.

“I’ll be there at six,” she told him, then turned back to Brent.

“I’ll bring the tractor.”

They had already decided on their plan to remove the dam; Jack had told him he’d explained it all to Sammy Jo earlier. Now, she nodded dismissively and Cooper left.

Bev followed him to the car. He held the door for her, but didn’t react to the whisper of nylon and silk as she slid inside. Sammy Jo’s legs had been bare. He could have reached out and touched them. Smooth. Sleek. Muscular.

“Emmy’s at her father’s,” Bev said by way of letting him know she was free until all hours.

“Sorry. I’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

She nodded.

He felt like a horse’s ass. He’d used her. He hadn’t meant to, but it still wasn’t fair. Maybe it was for the best. Bev wasn’t his type. Neither, by God, was Sammy Jo.

He needed a woman. He still needed a woman. But maybe one not as high-profile as Bev Hawkins would fill the bill.

His house was dark when he got home. Lettie and Jack had trundled off to their bedroom at the south end of the house. Cooper was virtually alone. Standing on the back porch, he watched a moth fling itself at the porch light in what looked like ritualistic suicide. Finally, the insect sat next to the lamp while other moths joined it, circling and battering themselves senseless.

He felt in tune with them. Nothing he would like more than battering himself senseless. So thinking, he went in search of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, prepared for a long, lonely night.

* * *

Sammy Jo awakened with the birds. A dull heaviness, over her, a vague dread. She had to search carefully through her mind to find its source, like picking through cold embers to find that still throbbing, hot coal.

She’d told Brent she’d marry him.

Groaning, she pressed her face into her pillow. Trigger jumped up and licked her cheek, and the next instant, Sammy Jo leapt to her feet and threw on her clothes. No shower today. She was heading straight for the beaver dam.

She drove the pickup, leaving a whining Trigger behind. Bumping across the field, the truck bounced and jarred along at a fast clip until the terrain grew too rocky and studded with trees, and she was forced to stop. She could hear the engine of Cooper’s tractor. He’d come through the section of fence she’d jerry-rigged. It was at a point where Cotton Creek was fully on her property with about an acre of land between it and the dividing fence.

Cooper had squeezed the tractor down the field to where the creek cut off the acreage, near the fence. The growling vehicle stood on a peninsula of land upstream from the dam on the opposite side of the creek from Sammy Jo.

Jack was there, too, yelling something to Cooper, who sat at the wheel of the tractor. Sammy Jo couldn’t make out the words over the deafening thunder of the engine and the crack of wood as the hook attached to the tractor hitch bit into a sturdy timber, the backbone of the dam.

She got out of the pickup and waved, hoping the two men would see her. They were lost in their own conversation. Cooper shifted gears. The tractor jerked forward. Timber screamed, broke and threw particles of wood in all directions. Sammy Jo hit the ground, covering her face from the flying shrapnel.

The engine cut. Silence. “Sammy Jo!” Cooper called, aghast.

“I’m okay. Really.” Slowly picking herself up, she brushed off bits of dirt, sticks and wet wood.

“I didn’t know you were there.”

“That’s comforting,” she said with a smile. “I’m glad to know it wasn’t on purpose.”

His look was inscrutable beneath the brim of his hat.

“We’re gonna pull this baby down, sure enough,” Jack said, hacking at the nearest logs with an ax.

“I can’t help feeling a little bad,” Sammy Jo remarked.

It had taken hours and hours of labor for the beavers to build such a remarkable structure. Now, the poor beasts had to start from scratch. Yet, without Cotton Creek’s sustaining water, the ground would dry up completely to the south and the vegetation that thrived at both the Triple R and Serenity Ranch would suffer.

Not to mention the ripple effect on the animals. No water, no feed, no nothing.

Cooper didn’t answer her, just went about his business. It bugged her. Was he really so impervious to nature and its balance? Yes, the dam had to be taken down, but couldn’t they at least mourn the wasted effort and feel pain in their hearts?

Knowing she was being overly sentimental, Sammy Jo fought her own feelings and helped drag dirt and debris out of the stream as Cooper’s tractor yanked out the more massive logs. Soon the water was trickling through a small V, then it was streaming, then it was rushing wildly, like a pack of racers fighting to be first over the finish line. The three of them pulled the last of the major branches to the shore.

“All done,” Cooper called to her across the creek. Jack leaned on his ax, watching with satisfaction. Water poured over the thick mud, digging grooves through the sluggish silt, pushing it south. Soon Cotton Creek would be flowing smoothly and the mushy earth around the manufactured pond would dry out and revert to its normal state.

Cooper and Jack conferred for a moment, then Jack jumped on the tractor and drove it back toward the hole in the fence. To Sammy Jo’s surprise, Cooper splashed through the creek and came up on her side.

“Hey,” she murmured, stepping back.

“Well, that’s one problem resolved.”

“Yeah, right.” Sammy Jo folded her arms over her chest and glanced in the direction of the house. “I’d better get to my chores.”

“Wait a minute.”

Sammy Jo gave him a cautious look. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and it gave him a rakish appearance she found terribly appealing.
No, no, no!
This was no time to notice the way his strong brown hands swept off his cowboy hat and brushed through his hair. Nor should she realize that within his blue eyes were darker striations, deeper color that added to their mystery.

Nor should her pulse thud until it hurt.

“I heard you agree to marry Brent last night.”

Her breath caught. “Oh.”

“So you’re really going through with it?”

“Um…‌yeah.”

“You don’t sound too sure.”

“What’s it to you?” she demanded.

“Nothing. Not a damn thing,” he stated with suppressed frustration.

“Good.”

He seemed to want to say a hell of a lot more, but Sammy Jo gave him her coldest glare. If he wanted a fight, fine. She felt like a fight.

“You disappoint me,” he said quietly, then turned back to the water, as if he’d said all he was going to say.

That did it. He’d scraped her nerves raw with her own guilt, a trick her father had been a master at, and now he planned to run away. “How was Bev?” Sammy Jo asked tightly.

“Bev was fine.”

“Just
fine?
”

Cooper turned to her, his lips curved into a nasty smile Sammy Jo felt she’d somehow earned. “I took her home after dinner.”

“Whose home? Hers or yours?”

“You want to know about my sex life?” he asked. When she snorted dismissively, he added, “You want to know if Bev and I got down to it?”

“No.”

“Yes, you do. I brought her here, actually. We came back to the ranch, crossed over the fence and stood right where we are.” He gestured to the trampled ground beneath their feet. Sammy Jo didn’t believe him. He was doing this on purpose. But her heart started beating a hard cadence. “Then we started kissing,” he said, “kind of like you and I did earlier.”

“Okay. I get it. Not my business.” She held up a hand to stop him.

“And then my tongue was in her mouth…”

“Stop. Enough. You’ve made your point.”

“Her breasts were pressed to my chest.”

“Say one more word and I’ll kill you!” Sammy Jo spit out.

“I unbuttoned her blouse. Each button through the hole, one by one. Then she was standing there, just skin and lace and I couldn’t help myself. I put my hand—”

Sammy Jo slugged him, with everything she had. The microsecond before she connected with his stomach, he twisted protectively, one arm slamming down on hers, deflecting the blow. She cried out as Cooper pushed her backward, against the hard trunk of a tree. Her breath came out in a whoosh, and she was left gasping for air.

“I didn’t do a damn thing with Bev and if you had any sense in that rock-hard head of yours, you’d know it.”

“You bastard,” she ground out, embarrassed.

“You asked for it,” he retorted.

“Get your hands off me.”

“Gladly. But you want me to touch you. You just can’t admit it.”

Despite his words, he didn’t release her. “I don’t want you anywhere near me. You’re trouble.”

“You’ve got a lot to learn, lady. A lot to learn.”

“Let go of me or I’ll scream.”

“Scream,” he ordered. “As loud as you can.”

Nothing could have clamped her lips closed faster and tighter. Sammy Jo glared daggers at him, daring him to further manhandle her.