Her Forever Cowboy (Harland County Series Book 4)

by Donna Michaels

  He cocked his head. “How’d you know?”

  A myriad of emotions crossed her face at once, desire and longing mixed in there, then disappeared to leave her with a raised brow. “Nice try, but it’s not going to work. Now, tell me, what did you do?”

  He knew when to talk himself out of a paper bag and when to not even try. This was one of those not-even-try times. He hobbled past her to the linen closet and fished around for the ankle wrap and tape.

  “You hurt yourself on that flip,” she said, voice surprisingly more sympathetic than accusing.

  “Yeah.” He held up his stash. “Doc said to ice and wrap.”

  She smiled. Why was she smiling?

  “I was just in here icing my knee,” she confessed, pointing to a wet, crumpled napkin in the trash. “Sorry, I already tossed the ice.”

  Pain momentarily forgotten, he dropped his things on the counter to grab her arms, concern tightening his chest. “What happened? Sit down.” He hoisted her up and set her next to the sink. Cripes, she weighted but a feather. “I’ll go get Doc Turner.”

  Her hand snaked out to clamp around his forearm. “Wait. It’s okay. Don’t bother him. I’m fine,” she insisted, her touch soft considering the firmness of her voice. “It’s an old injury that flares up from time to time.”

  Kevin studied her face. It wasn’t pinched. Her eyes were clear and bright.

  “Really. I’m fine. You’re the one who needs help.” She squeezed his arm before releasing.

  He immediately missed her warmth. What the hell was his problem? It was just a touch. Maybe the pain was affecting him more than he’d realized.

  “What is it? Your knee? Foot? Ankle?” Shayla asked, half her body brushing his as she slid off the counter.

  Right now, it was an entirely different body part that throbbed. Hot damn, he wondered briefly if he could hoist her back onto the counter and have her slip off again. Slowly.

  Better yet…

  Swallowing hard, he clenched his fists and fought the urge to lift her up so she could wrap those flexible legs around his hips while he pressed her against the door and kissed her long and deep. Very, very deep.

  Not cool. He needed to keep his cool. Realizing she was still looking up at him, waiting for an answer, he cleared his throat. “Foot,” he said, voice a bit tight.

  Like his jeans.

  “Well, let me help you. You can’t wrap it without icing it first,” she claimed, dropping to her knees.

  All the fantasies he’d had of the redhead the past few months flashed before his eyes at the sight of her kneeling before him. She was so damn sexy looking up at him with those big blue eyes and parted lips. Every drop of blood in his body settled in his shorts. At once. He was so damn hard he could take on a steel beam. And win.

  She glanced at his feet. “Which one?”

  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Apparently, his dick still had control of his voice. He lifted his left foot instead.

  She tried to tug off his boot. Wouldn’t budge. Hurt like hell, though. Pain rocketed through his body and propelled his mouth open, but his voice remained hostage to his throbbing groin.

  “All right, well, maybe it’ll come off easier if you sit down,” she said, rising to her feet. “There’s not enough room in here, so where do you want to go? The couch in the living room?”

  Hell no. The last thing he needed was others seeing him in this condition. And he wasn’t talking about his stupid foot.

  The threat of exposure helped him regain his voice. “No. Let’s go to my room. It’s just down the hall.”

  Chapter Three

  Kevin just had this woman in his arms while they’d danced. He’d held her in his arms last night. She was curvy and soft and damned delicious. He knew this. But nothing had prepared him for the reaction his body had when Shayla crushed her breast into his side and slid her arm around his back to hug his waist.

  It wasn’t a fluke.

  Heat skittered down his spine while his pulse literally jumped. Just like last night. The sensation, the feeling was real. This was all new, but holding a woman close certainly wasn’t. It didn’t make sense.

  Must be the pain.

  Yeah, the pain was definitely playing with his mind. But despite what Connor claimed, Kevin wasn’t a wuss. He usually had a high tolerance of pain.

  “Grab the wrap and tape,” the redhead ordered as she led them to the door.

  Kevin swiped the first aid stuff off the counter and wanted to tell her he could walk. He should tell her. That would stop the heat. But he couldn’t.

  Because that would stop the heat.

  Apparently, he was a masochist. Who knew?

  She opened the door, and at this point, her curves felt so damn good molded to his side he didn’t care if anyone saw them. But they didn’t as he directed the surprisingly helpful woman to his room at the end of the hall, allowing her to only take some of his weight. He was not an invalid, but he enjoyed every bit of her softness snuggled close.

  Yeah, he was a jerk. But a happy one.

  “Let’s get you on the bed, then I’ll fetch some ice,” she said.

  Before his brain had the chance to stumble over the bed scenario, she left him alone on the mattress with more than one ache in his body.

  Which was plumb crazy.

  He’d been with many women, and occasionally more than one at a time, so why did this cantankerous redhead get to him so bad? The whole night was nothing if not confusing.

  “Okay,” she said, returning a minute later with a clear bag of ice, brows knit together, gaze and stride full of purpose. “Now, where were we?”

  A smile tugged at his lips. “Is this where you tell me to get naked?”

  She stopped dead a foot away and blinked. “No, you goof, but hey, if it’ll make you feel better, have at it.”

  The bag of ice hit him full force in the chest, but he caught it with ease before it fell to the floor. “Then, can you get naked?”

  She dropped to her knees in front of him again, completely wiping his mind clear of all thoughts, leaving him a swollen tongue and an erection biting so hard into his zipper he saw stars.

  “Why should I?” she asked, lifting his foot to rest against her boobs. Her very nice, rounded boobs. “You’ve already alluded that I’ve been naked in your dreams.”

  As he worked to remove his thick tongue from the roof of his mouth, he watched her gently but firmly tug the boot from his foot.

  “There, that wasn’t so bad, right?” She smiled triumphantly at him.

  God, she looked so gorgeous, and so happy, he almost didn’t have the heart to tell her it was the wrong boot. Nah. He had plenty of heart. “Wrong boot.” And a boatload of wicked to go with it. “That’d be my other left.”

  She muttered under her breath, and if he’d been a timid man, he would’ve blushed. “You kiss your momma with that mouth?”

  “Keep it up and I’ll kiss your lips with my fist,” she replied, yanking his other boot off none too gentle.

  He yelped as pain radiated up his leg and stole his breath. “Jesus, lady, you’re mean,” he said through clenched teeth. “What’d you do? Break it clean off?”

  “Ah, quit being such a baby.”

  Words of rebuttal died on his lips the second she shoved her hands up the leg of his jeans to remove his sock. Barely recovering from the incredible feel of her fingers on his flesh, the she-devil set his bare foot on her chest and gently stroked down to his ankle.

  That’s when he swallowed his tongue.

  “Does this hurt?” A concerned blue gaze bore into his.

  He shook his head. That actually felt good. Real good. Too good. So did the warm, soft cleavage pillowing his foot. He longed to replace it with his face so he could lick every freckle. Twice.

  “Where does it hurt?”

  She stroked different areas, and although several did hurt, he continued to shake his head because otherwise, she’d remove her fingers. He preferred to endu
re the pain while he tried to deduce why her touch was so different from other females. It was puzzling, and he was good at puzzles. But hell if he could figure out what caused the heated fission that passed between them.

  Maybe the woman wasn’t such a meanie after all.

  She slapped the bag of ice on his ankle.

  Wrong. “Dammit, woman,” he ground out. “What’s your problem?”

  “You, ya big jerk,” she huffed, but didn’t move away. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but cut it out. I’m trying to help you, and it would be great to know exactly where to place the ice.”

  “Sorry,” he said, but didn’t mention the puzzle thing. “Right here is fine.” He brushed her fingers and some of her chest as he repositioned the bag to cover the area that throbbed the most…on his foot. It would take a whole hell of a lot more than a few pieces of ice to reduce the swelling in his jeans. Nothing short of streaking through the Antarctic would work.

  Her intake of breath trembled up his leg, and he wasn’t sure if his touch or the ice caused the reaction. He stared into her fathomless eyes for a few beats and wondered briefly if his instability all stemmed from a roofie in the whiskey he’d downed. Being that he’d poured the Jack himself, he could rule out drugs.

  Damn.

  That meant he was high on this woman. Affected by her in some chemical way. Although he knew most things were possible with science, Kevin also knew a remedy wasn’t probable. So, where exactly did that leave him?

  With his body unreasonably turned on, and his frozen foot shoved in the redhead’s mouthwatering cleavage.

  “Damn, that’s cold,” he said, removing the ice.

  “I know.” She gently set his foot on the floor, and backed away before she rubbed her reddened chest where the ice had touched.

  Shit. “I’m sorry, Shayla.” He leaned forward to stroke the cold blotches. Cripes, she was soft. And silky…

  A strangled sound came from her throat a second before she fell on her sweet ass and crab-crawled back a few feet. “No harm done. I’ll live.” She righted herself, then moved closer, picked up his discarded sock and wiped his foot dry. “Give me the wrap.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He handed her the bandage and smiled, but she didn’t glance at him.

  Damn. She was back in she-bitch mode with her guard up again. Having caught a few glimpses of her human side tonight, Kevin’s curiosity was piqued. He watched as she deftly wrapped his foot.

  “You’re good at this. Was it because of your own injury?”

  “Yes and no,” she replied, gaze trained on her ministrations.

  He tried again. “Don’t tell me Caitlin was a tomboy.”

  “No.” She laughed, and this time, glanced at him. “But there were quite a few rambunctious boys at the foster home.”

  Ah, hell. She’d been in foster care? For some reason, that thought tightened his chest. “I’m sorry.” He was beginning to realize there were several layers to this woman, and a few, no doubt, attributed to her prickly demeanor.

  She dropped her gaze and shrugged as she began to secure his bandage with tape. “It was only for a year.”

  “How old were you?”

  Her fingers stopped for a second, then continued to tape his foot. “Sixteen,” she replied without glancing up.

  The sympathizer in him sprang to life, and his whole body shook with the need to take the woman in his arms and comfort her. Of course, that would go over like a lead balloon, and he’d more than likely get poled for his troubles. The fellas were definitely not in favor. He shoved his fingers in his back pockets to keep from reaching for her anyway.

  “That had to be hard on you and Caitlin. She was what…?”

  “Twelve,” Shayla replied, still not making eye contact. “But, she was at a different home.”

  Christ. “They separated you?” He rubbed his chest as if that would ease the tightness squeezing the breath from his lungs.

  “Yeah, but I’m glad. She was in a good home.”

  Which meant Shayla wasn’t. Now his whole upper body hurt. And his mind latched onto something she’d said. “If you were sixteen when you entered foster care, and only there for a year, then you left at seventeen.”

  “Yes.”

  He frowned down at her. “I thought you had to stay in until eighteen?”

  “You do,” she replied, voice low and noncommittal as she shrugged. “I ran away.”

  To hell with it.

  No longer caring about risking personal injury, Kevin hauled her onto his lap and crushed her close. “I’m sorry, darlin’,” he said, burying his face in her hair before she had the chance to slug him. It was soft and silky and somehow stroking the strands calmed him down. He was definitely beginning to understand her prickly demeanor, and since she didn’t push out of his arms or punch him in the face, he took that as a sign it was okay to continue to stroke. “Kade’s parents passed when he was eleven, but at least he had mine to take him in.”

  “He was lucky,” she said, warm lips brushing his neck, sending a round of shivers down his spine. “When I was eighteen, I got custody of Caitlin, and she’s been stuck with me ever since.” The air cooled between them as she drew in a breath. “And I’ve no idea why I’m telling you this.” All too soon, the spitfire scrambled from his lap and backed up a few feet away. “I think you can manage the rest on your own. I’d better go find my daughter before she wonders what happened to me.”

  The baffling beauty turned on her heel and strode from the room, leaving him there with a sockless foot, a ton of questions, and now, a third ache wracking his body. He glanced at the clock on his nightstand. Fourteen minutes to midnight. He removed his other sock, hobbled over to his cupboard and was surprised at how much the pain had subsided by simply wrapping his foot. All right, so it could also be because his mind was still mulling over the fact Shayla had been in a foster home. A bad one. And then on the streets.

  But, she was fine now, his mind reasoned. Had a good job. Good apartment. Good life.

  Nope.

  Not thinking about it.

  Not getting involved.

  He eased on a clean pair of socks, slipped his feet into his Italian loafers, then rejoined the party. There was just enough time for a drink before he planned to snag the blonde who’d been flirting with him half the night and ring in the New Year with a kiss hot enough to make him forget about foster care, and a redhead who laughed when she danced, and had helped him even though he egged her on…and had the softest—

  “There you are, Kevin,” Kade said, approaching without his fiancée. “Take care of that foot?”

  Really? A few of his favorite choice words rumbled up his throat. “She told you?”

  Gray eyes narrowed on him. “She? She, who? Shayla?”

  He refused to answer since Kade’s tone sounded more confused than accusing. If he just kept his cool, maybe his cousin would put away the sheriff part of him for the night. After all, Kade wasn’t on duty. Jordan was.

  “No, she didn’t say a word,” the man eventually answered after staring him down to within an inch of his life.

  Ah, hell. The sheriff persona did disappear, but now Sgt. Hardass took over. Kevin preferred to deal with Sheriff Kade Dalton. Not First Sergeant Kade Dalton. Damn.

  “I know when my men are hiding something, and you definitely had that look fifteen minutes ago. But, we’ll get to that.”

  Sgt. Hardass draped an arm around him, cupped his shoulder and led him…more like pushed, no…propelled him into their deserted kitchen. Once inside, Sir-yes-sir blocked the swinging door with his unmoving body, folded his arms across his chest and leveled him with another of his famous don’t-give-me-no-shit looks.

  “Now, let’s talk about Shayla. Are you the reason I saw her coming from the hallway with her shirt wet? What the hell did you do?”

  Kevin leaned back against the butcher block counter and sighed. He was going on thirty-one, vice president of a billion dollar company, turned in
dustry leaders on their ears when he wrote new code, and yet, his cousin could still make him feel like a reckless teenager with just a stare. What the hell? He hadn’t done anything wrong. No reason to feel guilty. And he didn’t feel guilty. But he did…feel. And wasn’t that just the problem?

  “Talk to me, Kevin. I know you like everyone to think of you as a player, but I know you better. You have heart. You don’t go around messing with people unless they want messing.”

  True. True. Unfortunately, too true. And true.

  “Am I reading Shayla wrong? Does she want messing?”

  “What?” He straightened from the counter and shook his head. “No. And I wasn’t messing with her.” Much…

  Okay, maybe a little. But damn, she was so cute when she got angry. Except for her elbow. He shifted his stance as the fellas twitched. No. Her elbow was not cute at all.

  “Then explain the wet shirt, and why she was coming out of your bedroom.”

  Shit. He’d hoped no one had seen that.

  “It links back to my foot.” No sense in denying since Kade had already called him out on it. “She was just helping me ice and wrap.”

  Sgt. Hardass cocked his head. “With her chest?”

  “Well, yeah…actually. Sort of,” he stammered, a small smile tugging his lips. “She’s the one who shoved my foot there before applying the ice.”

  His cousin blew out a breath and nodded. “Okay, but it doesn’t explain why she rushed from the hall as if her hair was on fire.”

  “Sorry, I don’t have an answer for you, cuz.” He lifted a shoulder and shook his head. “After wrapping my foot, she left my room in that very same manner.”

  Kade’s gaze turned thoughtful as he rocked back on his heels. “I think I know why.”

  “Then, please, enlightened me,” he begged. “Because I haven’t got a clue.”

  “She likes you.”

  He reeled back. Then laughed. “Right. That’s why she nearly tripped over her feet to get away from me.”

  “Yeah. She definitely likes you,” Kade repeated, his tone returning to cousin mode. “But she doesn’t want to.”

  Great. He really didn’t need this knowledge. That made things worse, because he liked her, too, and he was having enough trouble dealing with that fact. He didn’t want to like Shayla. He was happy just lusting the pretty redhead. No way did he want to bring like into the equation.