To Tempt a Cowgirl (16 page)

He’d think about later, well, later. Right now he had a goal and he felt that he’d made some decent headway on getting to know her and gaining her trust. She had talked rather openly about her family and for the first time since...maybe ever...he’d told someone besides Neal about his mom. Not much, but a little.

Why?

To get Dani to open up, of course. But it had felt like more than that. It was one thing to tell her he’d been in foster care, another to give her details. He didn’t give details of his life, because the next thing you know, all the sordid truth would come out. He didn’t think he should still be doing penance for teenage mistakes, but he also didn’t want to be judged on those mistakes, and if life had taught him one thing, it was that people judged first.

He turned before opening his door and watched the old pickup kick up dust as it thundered down the driveway to Dani’s house. Yeah, he’d made headway, but it didn’t feel right.

She’d wanted to sell the ranch before she’d lost her job. That was what he needed to focus on.

Sometimes you cut ties with things you love in order to move on.

Something else he needed to focus on. She’d verbalized exactly what he wanted her to see—that she and her sister would be better off moving on. They’d get paid handsomely and the older sister would no longer be reminded of a painful past. Plus Deputy Kyle wouldn’t have any reason to mess with them any longer. Win, win, win. And another win if he counted Stewart.

Gabe walked back into the house and booted up his laptop to see what he could find about Jolie Brody—particularly who she worked for.

CHAPTER TEN

W
HAT WAS SLEEP
?

Something that had eluded Dani after she returned home from her “friends-only” evening with Gabe, leaving her yawning the next morning and doing her chores in a haze. Apparently sleep had eluded Gabe, too, because every time Dani rolled over in bed to face the window, she could see his lights. Nothing new, because he was a night guy, despite his insistence that he was changing, but she couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking of her. She sure as hell couldn’t stop thinking about him.

How crazy had it been to give in to temptation and kiss him?

A little crazy, but nothing she wouldn’t have done pre-Chad. She’d kissed Gabe because he was attractive and she wanted to reassure herself that she was still in control, that she didn’t need to be emotionally paralyzed by what Chad had done to her. And she had been in control—right up until her lips had touched his and a primal urge for
more
had slammed into her. Even now the memory of the brief kiss, the way her hands had automatically tightened on his shoulders as she pulled herself closer to him, made her grow warm. She’d been lucky to have walked away as easily as she had, without losing face or ending up in his bed.

In his bed.

She gave her head a small shake to clear it as she cranked on the water trough faucet. Some nice imagery there, but not what she needed just now...

Or maybe it was exactly what she needed to wipe Chad out of her head once and for all and restore her confidence.

Warmth pooled deep within her at the thought, making her wonder if she should indulge in a hot session of confidence restoration. Logically she knew Chad’s cheating was a reflection on him, but a small part of her still occasionally whispered that maybe she hadn’t been enough and that was why he’d cheated.

“Bull,” Dani muttered to herself as she adjusted the flow with a sharp twist of her wrist. She didn’t need to sleep with Gabe to restore confidence when her only shortcoming had been in believing Chad. Trusting him too much.

She leaned down to scoop out a couple of soggy leaves that had swirled to the top of the icy trough water, then wiped her hand on her jeans. Nothing like getting the figurative punch to the gut to make her realize past errors in judgment. In retrospect, she should have figured out something was going on long before she had. The signs had been there, but she had chosen not to see them. It was Chad, after all. The love of her life.

Dani moved the hose from the first trough to the next, splattering her pant legs as the water splashed onto the dry ground.

The love of one’s life didn’t screw other women.

She wouldn’t be that careless again.

She filled all the troughs and then dove into pen cleaning, resolutely turning her thoughts away from Gabe and toward her plans for the horses that occupied those pens. She’d just finished mucking out the last area when the phone rang in her pocket. If it hadn’t been Allie, she would have ignored the call.

“What’s up?” she asked, hoping that her sisterly radar was wrong; that this was just a touch base call. It wasn’t.

“Kyle.” There was a moment of silence, as if she was calming herself before continuing on. “He’ll bring the tractor back this weekend, but now he wants the armoire. The same one he told me to stuff when we had a fight over who got what.” She exhaled, then said, “He never liked it and never seemed to care what it was worth. But now he wants it.”

“Let him have it,” Dani said.

“I don’t want to. It was mine in the settlement and I gave it to you.”

“Let him take it.”

“It’ll set a precedent.”

“Of what? Do you have anything else he can demand?” No, because Allie had sold almost everything she’d gotten in the settlement to pay for college and to get the stuff out of her life. Even the dishes had gone. Only the tractor and the armoire remained, and the armoire was there because Dani had asked Allie to leave it, planning to buy it from her at a later date, as in when her business was solidly in the black.

“I hate doing this.”

“Do it. Give him the armoire and maybe he’ll go away.”

“It doesn’t feel like he’s ever going to go away. He’s dead set on making me pay for making him feel like a loser. Nope. He’s not going away.”

Dani gave a small, brittle laugh. “We’re a pair, Al.”

“How so?”

“Chad’s not going away, either. He’s branch manager of the local US Western.”

“Get out.”

“It’s true. And when I went to meet Gina at the Eagle Valley Days meeting, there he was, working the crowd.”

“Aw, Dani. That stinks.”

“I agree. I came here to get away from him.” And the moral was that maybe running didn’t solve anything, but she wasn’t saying that out loud to Allie just yet. Not when her sister was still so raw from everything that had happened with Kyle.

“You can cope. I know you can.”

“So do I.”

“What happened at the meeting?”

“I chickened out.” Dani truly hated forcing out those words. “I didn’t even get out of my car.”

“You know what? I totally understand.”

“I’m not sure I do. I’m tougher than this, Allie.”

“Give yourself a break. Seriously.”

“I will if you just give Kyle the damned hutch and be done with it.”

There was a long silence, so long that Dani was about to say, “Allie?” when her sister finally let out a breath and said, “I hate it, but all right. I’ll let him know he won. I won’t put it in those terms, but it’s pretty much what happened.”

“Maybe it’s the last battle.”

“One can only hope. I’ll give you a heads-up before he comes to get it.”

“Thanks, Al. Is everything else going all right?”

“You know...it is. As good as can be expected anyway, for a nontraditional student still trying to learn the ropes. I have no idea how Mel spent her entire life in school.”

“While loving every minute of it. I agree. She’s from another planet.”

Allie laughed, sounding like her old self for two or three whole seconds and giving Dani a glimmer of hope that maybe she was sorting things out. “If you have any trouble with Kyle, like if he snaps off any standpipes or anything, let me know.”

“Will do. And you promise not to worry.”

“Fat chance, but I’ll do my best.”

* * *

T
HAT AFTERNOON
AFTER
working her last horse, Dani caught Lacy and led her out onto the lawn to eat grass. Gus followed, flopping down under a tree, lifting his head as the landline rang inside the house. Dani pushed herself back to her feet and jogged to the house, leaving the mare to graze under Gus’s watchful eye.

Gabe? One of her sisters?

Sister.

“I got an extension on my internship.” Jolie’s voice vibrated with excitement. “Until next March, which means more money in the pot for the arena and a winter I won’t have to spend waiting tables or something. I won’t be able to move home until spring, but, hey—more money for the arena.”

“That’s incredible,” Dani said.

“My lease is up next week, so I’m moving in with Shelby. That’ll save even more money.”

“Both of you in that camp trailer?”

“Just for a couple months.”

“Like what? Six months? I guess that’ll test the bonds of friendship.”

“There’s more,” Jolie said.

“More?”

“They said this could work into full-time.”

“No kidding?” No one got a full-time job in horse science right out of college. Few people
ever
got a full-time job in the field.

“Yeah. I guess there might be some funding available and...I don’t have all the details, but there is a possibility.”

“That’s...great! Wow. Unexpected, too.”

“Yeah. I know. Paycheck! Okay, so anyway, I have to run. I’ll talk to you soon!”

“Sure thing.”

Dani hung up, wondering just how she felt about this new development. She’d been looking forward to Jolie moving home and now it looked as if she’d spend the winter alone. But as Jolie had said, a longer internship meant more money saved for the arena and year-round training. If it worked into full-time, well, then Jolie had some decisions to make. Would she give that up to come back to the ranch and run clinics? Or would she go with the guaranteed paycheck?

If Jolie’s job became permanent and she didn’t move back home...well, Dani was going to have to reassess her master plan. Without Jolie, it was going to take double the time to buy the covered arena, so double the time until she could train year-round and thus have an income that didn’t depend on a second job. And then there were the ranch repairs that were stacking up. She was applying Band-Aids as quickly as she could, but there was no getting around the fixes that needed to be made before a roof blew off or a fence fell down.

By agreement, the sisters split the cost of repairs, just as they split the ranch income—which at the moment was zero. However, Dani couldn’t ask her sisters to pony up money for repairs they got no benefit from. Maybe if they started running cattle again, but right now...

Right now she was wondering if she should start looking for that second job immediately, since Jolie wasn’t coming home until the spring—if she came home at all. She’d have to wait until her current contracts were done so that she could arrange her training schedule around whatever job she managed to land, but maybe she needed to start looking.

Was it time to call Gina, see about getting on at the café part-time?

She reached for the phone, but instead of dialing Gina, she called Mel. To her astonishment, her sister picked up.

“You’re in cell range and you didn’t call?” Dani demanded.

Mel laughed lowly. “Well, honestly, I thought I’d shower first, since I haven’t seen water in four days.”

“Don’t you remember the pact? Sisters first, shower second?”

“You know, I don’t remember agreeing to that,” Mel said.

“Well, you did. Three glasses of wine in. Have you talked to Jolie?”

“Nope. That shower thing again.”

“She got an extension on her internship.”

“Get out!”

“Yeah, I know. And it may lead into something permanent.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” She in filled her sister on the few details she knew.

“You sound happy...but not.”

Dani sighed as she sank down into her lone chair. “That sums it up perfectly. I’m happy for her, but concerned about how it affects the business and our plans for the Lightning Creek. The place needs work.”

“I’m aware,” Mel said drily. “I think I made a pretty extensive before-we-can-sell list when I first moved back.”

“We got the painting done.” Which made the place look better, but there were issues stemming from long-term neglect that were going to take a healthy infusion of cash to solve. “I’d hoped to put my entire severance toward the arena, but I’m going to have to put a roof on the barn, too.” She pushed her hair back. “It’s kind of an either-or situation that Jolie was going to help alleviate, but now...”

“I told you the ranch was going to be a money pit if we kept it. A lot of negatives and not many positives, other than the feeling of being home.”

“It seems to me that you got something positive from your time on the Lightning Creek.” As in a different perspective, and a reunion with her high-school sweetheart—now her husband.

Dani could hear the smile in Mel’s voice as she said, “No arguments there.”

“Well, that’s a first,” Dani said. “And speaking of men....” Her mouth tightened briefly before she dove in and brought her sister up to date on the matter of Chad and his new bride.

“Lovely,” Mel said flatly. “So how’re you doing with that?”

“I’m fine. Mom doesn’t know.”

“That goes without saying, but she’ll find out.”

“True.” Dani sighed even though she didn’t mean to.

“Don’t let one jerk ruin your life,” Mel said.

“Funny you should mention that, because I, uh, have a hunky neighbor. He lives in the Staley house. He’s...attractive,” she acknowledged lamely.

“Does Mom know about him?” Mel asked mildly.

Dani laughed. “No. Not yet. Probably not ever. I’m training a horse for him, he’s hot and I’m doing my best to not let what happened with Chad color my future activities.”

“And...?”

“And, damn it, Mel, I’m not doing all that well.” She wanted some advice. Gina was out of the question, since she, too, lusted after Gabe in a spectator-sport type of way, so that left her sisters. Of them, Mel was her best bet, due to the fact that she was rarely in cell phone range, so she wouldn’t have an opportunity ask questions too often. Dani needed an ear, but she didn’t need monitoring. Allie was protective and Jolie curious. Mel was definitely the sister for this job.