by Alison Kent
PRAISE FOR
“SO, I WAS IN COLLEGE while reading this and holy shit I couldn’t stop reading and then there was this super-hot Scrabble game scene that made me want to call the fire department. This book was hot, sexy, and romantic.”
~ Saly, Goodreads reviewer
ONE
NEXT TIME HER MOVIE CHOICES were limited to a testosterone fantasy or kickboxing beefcake, she’d be sure to stay home with her dog.
Shaking her head at the waste of a Sunday afternoon, Sophie North slammed the door of DayLine Construction’s crew cab truck. She stood on tiptoe, gave a wave to her two coworkers sprawled across the back seat, then turned her gaze to the driver.
“What time tomorrow, Rico?” she asked.
“Six-thirty too early for you, güerita?” Rico’s dare was cut off as zigzagging lightning lit the northern sky and the thunder following rumbled through the metal frame of the truck.
Not about to be bested by the foul weather—or by her foreman’s challenge—Sophie took up the gauntlet. “Make it six on the nose and the bacon and eggs are on me.”
Rico put the truck back in gear. “Tired of your own cooking already?”
Before Sophie could respond, Dan leaned over the back seat and smiled. “I dunno, Rico. Judgin’ by her size, it’s not the cookin’ she’s tired of but the eatin’.”
“Maybe it’s just the company,” Sophie said and scowled playfully.
“You’re not gonna hafta worry about company if you don’t get a move on, girl. That wind comin’ up’s gonna blow you away.” Dan nodded toward the approaching storm then sat back to an accompanying grunt from the third occupant of the truck.
J.D. spit a stream of tobacco juice into a Coke bottle and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “We wouldn’t have to be out in this weather if she’d stay in town. It’s not like the motel ain’t got the room.”
“You know Sophie’s rules, J.D.” Rico held her gaze as he spoke. “She’s a damn good electrician. Where she stays is her business. Not yours.”
Sophie sent Rico a silent thanks. Working in what was traditionally a man’s world brought resistance from time to time. But the fact that she insisted on separate quarters from her coworkers had never been a problem before J.D.
Too bad for him. No grumpy old man was going to drive her away from a job that was her best chance for finding her father.
She pulled her gaze from J.D. back to Rico and gave a farewell slap to the truck door. “I’ll see you at six.”
Rico winked, his long dark lashes sweeping down like a brush, put the big white truck in gear, and drove off, leaving Sophie standing in a chalky cloud. Waving her hand in front of her face, she crossed the country road. Shells and gravel crunched beneath her boots. To the north, Mother Nature chimed in with more noisy promises.
The area was desperate for deliverance. The creeks were running low, the wells running lower. Even the cement mixers that poured the foundation at the DayLine site had stirred up enough dust to pave the road Sophie walked twice a day to the cabin she’d rented for the duration of this job.
Ford’s Motel and Diner, the only lodging available in the small West Texas town of Brodie, had been happy to provide accommodations for the seven men of the DayLine crew. But Sophie didn’t bunk with the boys.
Ever.
She’d grown up around construction sites and knew more than she wanted about the groupies who went for hard bodies in hard hats. Being mistaken for a construction camp follower wasn’t going to happen. Being the daughter of one had been enough.
Rachel Ford, who’d waited tables in the family diner, had suggested Sophie talk to Sam Coltrain. Sam, who’d happened to be in Ford’s at the time, offered her use of the cabin. The small bungalow had been a line shack until he’d converted it into quarters for his father before the elderly Coltrain passed on.
The road dust cleared and Sophie shook her head. Small towns. One person’s business was another’s—even when another was a complete stranger and would only be in the area for a couple of months.
Cowboy was waiting for her at the gate to the Coltrain place, sitting as motionless as a guard dog should. He wouldn’t so much as wag his tail until she gave the word. He certainly wouldn’t bark. But Sophie could tell he was fighting every canine instinct running in his blood.
“C’mere, big boy,” she crooned and then the black lab’s paws were on her shoulders, his hind feet two-stepping all over her boots.
“I guess this means you’ve forgiven me.” She crouched to ruffle her hands over the dog’s sleek coat “I know you think you’re human but there are limits to what a human dog can do. Sitting through a two-hour movie is one of them.”
Tugging his ear playfully, she got to her feet, slapped her leg twice, and headed down the drive. Cowboy fell into step beside her. A fierce blast of cold air plucked her T-shirt’s thin threads and she lengthened her stride, pulling her jean jacket tighter.
Twenty feet later she saw the tire tracks.
Thirty seconds later she heard the gunshot.
She’d rigged the blast to startle trespassers and vagrants, to ward off hormonal teens who hadn’t heard the local love nest was occupied. But, still, a shotgun was no toy…
Cowboy barked once and raced ahead, then waited for her to catch up. She did, sprinting now, pounding across the plank bridge spanning Little Creek. Within seconds, she saw the cabin—and the red step-side pickup parked cockeyed to the front.
The truck was a flashy-looking thing; tinted windows, pin-striping, rims that looked to have been lifted from a spaceship. She wondered if she’d killed the owner.
Hurrying down the driver’s side, she rounded the front of the vehicle and found her gunshot victim standing in front of the cabin’s steps. He was quite alive. Quite unharmed, in fact. And quite intimidating.
It wasn’t his size. Though tall, he was sleekly, subtly muscled. Black jeans encased strong legs and a braided leather belt circled his lean waist, the silver buckle riding flat on his lower belly.
It wasn’t his appearance. If he was local stock, she was Snow White. From what she’d witnessed so far, the natives of Brodie, Texas, didn’t come with this one’s presence, his polish, his style.
No. It was the look in his eyes. The way they narrowed with each measured step she took toward him. The way his lashes, as sable-dark and thick as they were, couldn’t hide the glitter of green.
Fingers of cold air whipped madly at his longish hair but it was cut to tousle. And the starched white fabric of his mother-of-pearl studded shirt snapped smartly in the strengthening wind.
He held the broom she kept on her porch in one large hand. The front door to the cabin stood open. He’d obviously used the first to push open the second—which just as obviously meant he’d discovered the alarm system she’d rigged up beneath her porch.
She came to a stop on the opposite side of the steps. Cowboy stopped beside her. The two-foot width of the two tiny stairs wasn’t much in the way of distance or deterrent.
She was going to need one or the other.
“Is that your dog?” he finally asked into the whistling swirls of dust.
She nodded, digging her fingers into the ruff of Cowboy’s neck, expecting an alert tension, finding him, instead, at ease. Interesting response, she thought, but didn’t let go.
The man inclined his head. “I saw him up at the gate. Didn’t recognize him as belonging to anyone in the county.”
Sophie felt her brow lift. “You know all the dogs in the county?”
“I’m gettin’ there,” he said and his grin pulled a dimple deep into one cheek.
That grin transformed him from intimidating stranger to intimidatingly attractive male.
The grin wasn’t flirtatious or put on or planned. But it was who he was, she realized, and her stomach knotted in anticipation,
“That would make you, what? The local dog catcher?” She held Cowboy tighter. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re with the county animal control.”
“In a manner of speaking. But you don’t have anything to worry about”—he nodded toward Cowboy—“as long as he has all his tags and shots.”
“He does,” Sophie said.
“Good. Otherwise, I’d have to take him in and give ’em to him.”
“Give them to him?” This was getting weirder by the minute.
“Now, don’t be goin’ all prickly on me. Livelihoods out here depend on healthy livestock which is why I asked about his immunizations. I’m only doing my job.”
“And what exactly is your job?”
He tossed the broom up onto the porch, dusted his hands together, and propped them at his hips. “I’m Tyler Barnes. The local vet.”
Tyler Barnes. The local vet The local vet whose hospital she was building. The local vet with a smile to make a girl lose her balance. Not good when said girl spent her days running electrical wiring to fixtures twenty feet above the floor.
“No, don’t tell me who you are,” Tyler went on before she could think of a reply. “Let me guess. You look about the right age to be a friend of Lindy Coltrain’s.” When she frowned, he said, “Sam’s daughter? Sam Coltrain? He owns this cabin?”
“I know who Sam is.”
“Good. Thought I’d lost you for a minute.” He moved his long fingers from his hips to his front pockets, leaned his backside against a porch post, and took his sweet time. “I doubt Lindy would put up a friend this far from town but Lucas is another matter.”
Sophie lifted her blank gaze from Tyler’s pockets to his face. What was it he’d said?
“Lucas? Lindy’s brother?”
She moved her head noncommittally.
“Sam has been known to rent the place. So, I guess you could be passing through. ’Cept that nobody passes through Brodie, Texas.” The corner of his mouth curled with all the subtlety of a big bad wolf.
It took a blast of cold wind to snap her to her senses. She huddled deep into her jacket, ignoring the temptation that came with that smile. “If you want to know who I am, why don’t you just ask?”
“Who are you?”
“Sophie North.”
“Well, Sophie North. You’re obviously not from around these here parts,” he said in a long, slow John Wayne drawl.
No doubt he’d’ve tipped back his Stetson if he’d been wearing one. Sophie crossed her arms. “How can you be so sure?”
“First off, if you were, I’d know both you and your dog.”
His mock arrogance had her compressing her lips. There was just something about a cowboy—even one who wasn’t. This one might not make his living riding the range but he had Wild Wild West written all over him. And he definitely needed his cheeky attitude knocked down a peg.
A big fat raindrop obliged, smacking him between the eyes. Sophie managed not to laugh when he blinked and stepped back—a good thing since a second stinging splat hit her on the back of the head. Slapping her leg for Cowboy to come, she headed for the shelter of the porch.
Tyler followed, vaulting onto the warped board floor. “And secondly”—he picked up the conversation at the same time he picked up the broom and hooked the handle on the nail next to the door—“if you were, you wouldn’t have call to rig up a shotgun under your porch.”
Turning her way, he blinked slowly, his lids lazy, his expression expectant, and waited for her to reply. The rain began in earnest, the plop-plop of the first plump drops muffled by the pattering of the now steady shower. She turned her face to the diversion.
Why was it now that she had to notice how low the porch roof hung? How small the unenclosed space could be? How nice a man could smell wrapped in the fresh scent of cold sweet rain?
Her back to the cabin’s wall, she crouched to rest her rear on her heels. Cowboy lay at her feet. An envelope of mist hugged the cabin; she hugged herself, wrapping her arms close.
“I tripped the wire with the broom handle,” he said, apparently quite content to carry the dialogue. “I’d seen the gun under the porch when I filled the dog’s water bowl.”
That explained what he’d been doing down there but not the sense of expectation playing her body’s notes. She finally looked over. “Sam left me the gun for protection.”
Tiny lines crinkled the corners of his eyes when he smiled. “He expected you to get some backlash from the kids, I guess.”
Sophie frowned. “The kids?”
“Yeah. I’d imagine there’s more than a couple of young lovers not too thrilled to find out you’re living in Big O’s. Not that you’d actually need a gun on account of—”
“Back up a minute.” She really didn’t want to ask but, “Big O’s?”
“Big Oscar. Oscar Coltrain. Sam’s dad. The place was always known as Big O’s. Once he passed on, the name sort of took on a new meaning if you get my drift.”
“I get it,” she answered, wondering if she’d imagined the flush on Tyler’s cheeks.
He took a couple of steps forward, braced his palm on a porch post, and lifted his face to the cool breeze. The spray softly sprinkled the strands of his hair, dampened his skin and his crisp cotton shirt. Moisture beaded on his belt buckle and puddled on the fringed flaps of his black lace-up ropers.
Sophie swallowed hard and looked away.
“Like I was saying, even when they’re rowdy, they’re a good bunch. You call a place home all your life, you get to know your neighbors, the kind of folks they are, how they bring up their kids.”
Sophie wouldn’t know about any of that. The longest she’d called a place home was a year. Neighbors were hard to get to know when all you had in common was moving on. Still, most of the kids she’d called friends had done a good job raising themselves.
She knew she had.
“The folks living here work as hard on their families as they do on their spreads.” She knew the instant he turned to face her. “You’re as safe staying alone in this cabin as you are on this porch right now.”
Safe? Now? Hardly. “Are you giving Big O’s your stamp of approval?”
“It’s been a while but I’ve done my share of consumer testing.” He reached up and touched the low-hanging porch roof, tracing a set of initials carved into the wood. “I think the tradition started a year or two before I knew about Big O’s.”
She had a feeling he knew more than anyone should about Big O’s. “Tradition?”
“Yeah. Whoever got to Oscar’s first on Saturday night left a flag on the gatepost. Sort of like a No Vacancy sign.” Tyler grinned. “My Uncle Jud never did figure out what happened to all his bandannas.”
All she could do was roll her eyes.
Tyler laughed and went on. “That was an ingenious alarm system, by the way. Don’t think I’d ever realized rock salt made such a racket. You pick up that trick back home?”
“If you want to know where I’m from, why don’t you ask?”
“Well, now, darlin’, I might just. Long as you don’t be goin’ all prickly on me if I do.”
He drew out the words in that sweet-time drawl and walked toward her as he spoke. The front of his shirt was beyond damp. It stuck to his skin, revealing swirls of dark chest hair and the muscles beneath. The cords in his neck glistened, his spiky lashes swept down then up.
He made a gorgeous picture, this cocky cowboy with the heartbreaking grin. And she really had to stop looking.
“So, Sophie North. Where do you hail from?” he asked, stopping to lean against the porch post in her direct line of vision.
“No place in particular,” she finally managed to reply.
“That makes it a tad difficult for folks to come a-callin’.”
“I don’t like folks to come a-callin’.”
“Well, you certainly pick
ed a good place to guarantee they won’t.”
Water bounced and ran off the hood of his truck. She glanced from the fancy pickup back to its fancy owner. “You did.”
“I came about the dog.”
“He’s not much on socializing,” Sophie said, scratching Cowboy’s ears.
“His loss. I’m the best thing at socializing Brodie, Texas has going right now. In fact, I’m on my way to see a little filly that can’t get enough of me.”
“Lucky you,” Sophie commented, wondering whether the little filly was equine, or blond, redheaded, or brunette.
He scratched his chin. “I don’t know if I’d call it lucky. Last time I saw her she tried to take off my shoulder.”
A blast of wind sent rain sheets skating across the porch. Sophie got to her feet, smoothed down her jeans, and slapped her leg twice. “Let’s go, Cowboy.”
The dog brushed by. Once in the cabin’s main room, Sophie reached back to offer Tyler a sack or towel to use as an umbrella. But he’d already closed the door from the inside.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she gave him the Look. The one she pulled on new crew members who had yet to learn Sophie’s Rules. “I thought you had a filly to check on.”
“I thought you invited me in.”
The Look was a wasted effort. She recalled what she’d said, then, “Cowboy’s my dog’s name.”
He propped his beautifully large hands at his waist. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Well, no she couldn’t. But she had more than a little say in his success. “Who does the filly belong to?”
Tyler strolled into the center of the cabin, filling her breathing room with the scent of soft rain and sun-dried cloth. “She’s Sam’s. Lindy invited me out for dinner, so I told Doc I’d save him the trip and chalk it up as my first house call.”
Still leaning against the door, she arched a brow. “Your first house call? So that means you’re not really the local vet... yet.”
His grin could move mountains. “I’ve been the local vet since I was about ten years old. It just took me another eighteen to make official.”
Twenty-eight. Only two years her senior. Wind rattled the door and she moved away, closer to Tyler, then past him and on to the other side of the small kitchen table. “Well, I guess it’ll be all right if you stay here until the storm blows over.”
