“Good afternoon, Mr. Garrett,” I replied.
“Seems you’ve ignored my advice.”
A week earlier, when he’d seen me running along the road in front of his ranch, Cade had apprised me of the danger. “Seems I have.”
“You take a little tumble, did you?”
“Redneck in a dualie talking on a cell phone ran me off the road,” I said. “I don’t even think he saw me.”
“Can you stand?”
I could and I did, balancing awkwardly on my right foot.
Cade mounted his horse and then reached down and took my arm. In one smooth motion he lifted me into the air and swung me onto the horse behind him. “Wrap your arms around me and hold on tight,” he said. “We’ll head on up to the house and see what we can do for that ankle.”
I did as instructed, flattening my breasts against his broad back as I stretched my arms around his thick chest. I had never ridden a horse before, so rather than moving gracefully with the animal as Cade did, I bounced all around behind him. The friction of my breasts against his back made my nipples stiffen, and I wondered if he could feel them poking him through his blue denim shirt.
We rode along the roadside until we reached the entrance to Cade’s ranch, then up the long drive toward his ranch house. Cattle grazed in the pastures on either side of us.
“You have a lot of cows,” I said.
“Cattle,” Cade corrected, “and not so many.” He explained that a drought had affected most of Texas that summer, wreaking havoc on farmers and ranchers. Several small towns, like the one to which I had just moved, had watering bans in place. “It’s been so hot and dry this summer,” he continued, “that all I’m raising is beef jerky.”
I’d had my own drought—more than a year without a sexual encounter of any kind—and his comment made me wonder if I might be drying up and turning into sexual jerky.
At the house, we dismounted and Cade tethered his horse to a porch rail. He helped me up the steps and inside, settling me on a leather couch before disappearing. He returned with a towel, a frozen gel pack, a glass of tap water, and two ibuprofen capsules.
After I washed the capsules down with the tap water, Cade made me lie back on the couch while he shoved a pillow under my calf to prop up my left leg. His hands were warm and rough against my naked calf, and I wished I’d shaved my legs before leaving the house that morning. He loosely wrapped the towel around my swollen ankle and placed the gel pack on top of the towel.
“You just lay there a spell,” he said. “I have to take care of Max.”
I watched as Cade walked out the front door. I admired the way his faded Wrangler jeans molded so tightly to his backside that I could see his underwear lines. Once he was out of sight tending to his horse, I pushed myself up on one elbow to look around and realized that his living room dwarfed the entire house I was renting just up the road. The furniture was also oversized, with lots of leather and heavy wood, and the room so reeked of testosterone it was obvious that no woman had played a role in decorating it. I smiled, laid back down, and closed my eyes.
I must have fallen asleep waiting for Cade’s return, because I opened my eyes to see him sitting in a chair on the other side of the heavy wooden coffee table. He had a magazine open on his lap, but he wasn’t reading it. I asked, “Were you watching me?”
“I was wondering if I should change your gel pack again.”
“Again?”
“I’ve changed it twice already.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“Almost two hours.”
I sat bolt upright and swung both legs off the couch, sending the gel pack and the towel to the floor. “I’m going to be late.”
“For?”
“Orientation,” I said. “School starts next week and the new hires are supposed to attend orientation this morning.”
“You’re a teacher?”
“Not if I miss orientation!” I pushed myself off the couch, put too much weight on my sprained ankle, and promptly fell on my face.
Cade shook his head but didn’t rise to help me. “What grade?”
“Third.”
He removed a cell phone from his pocket, flipped it open, and dialed.
A moment later someone at the other end answered.
“Billy? I have a Miss—” Cade covered the phone and looked at me. “I never did catch your name.”
“Amanda Wilcox.”
“—a Miss Wilcox sprawled out on my living room floor and she says—no, nothing like that, you old coot—she says she’s supposed to be at orientation this morning and—what?—she was run off the road so I brought her up to the house—and she’s going to be a bit late.”
After Cade ended the call and returned his cell phone to his pocket, I asked, “Who was that?”
“Your principal.”
“You know Mr. Anderson?”
“Billy Bob’s my brother-in-law.”
“You’re married?”
“Nope,” he said. “He’s my sister’s husband.”
“Oh.”
“He said you ought to get a move on.” Cade stood and stepped around the coffee table. When he held out one hand, I took it. He pulled me to my feet and said, “Wrap your arms around my neck.”
I did, and the handsome rancher lifted me into his arms. I’d never known a man strong enough to carry me like that, and I felt a pleasant tingle surge through my body. A bulge in his shirt pocket pressed against my breast, and I shifted position as he carried me out of the house and placed me in the passenger seat of his Ford F-250.
Five minutes later he parked his pickup truck in my driveway behind the seven-year-old Pontiac my father had given me the previous summer and carried me to the porch.
After he set me on my feet, I pointed to my right foot. “My key is down there.”
“Under the mat?”
“In a pocket on my shoe,” I said.
Cade dropped to one knee and retrieved my key. Then he stood and opened the door. Without waiting for an invitation, he followed me inside.
I turned. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t think you’ll be able to drive,” he said, “so I’ll take you to the school.”
“It’s my left ankle. I drive with my right.”
He stared down at me until I relented.
Then Cade sat on my couch, dwarfing it, while I held onto the wall, limped down the hall to my bedroom, grabbed my clothes, and limped back to the bathroom. I showered quickly and didn’t realize until I reached for the empty towel rack that all my bath towels were still in the dryer from the previous night.
The washer and dryer were on the little back porch, only accessible through the kitchen, and the route to the kitchen meant crossing the living room in front of Cade, which I wasn’t about to do. I opened the bathroom door a crack and called Cade’s name.
When he responded, I told him what I needed. He rose from the couch and a moment later stood in the hallway with a bath towel in his hand. I opened the door far enough to stick my arm out.
As Cade handed me the towel, I realized he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking past me. “What are you staring at?”
“Your reflection.”
I spun around and saw the mirror behind me. Until that moment he’d only been able to see a reflection of my backside. When I realized that by turning I’d just given him the full Monty, I turned red and slammed the bathroom door. Even though I was embarrassed, I was also a little bit excited. I had never flashed anyone before. “You weren’t supposed to see me like that!”
After I dried, dressed, and applied the least possible amount of makeup, I limped out of the bathroom. When I reached the living room three steps later, Cade commanded, “Sit.”
“Why?”
He pulled an unwrapped Ace bandage from his shirt pocket. “I need to wrap your ankle.”
I sat. He wrapped. I had an oversized pair of running shoes—I’d grabbed the wrong box during a going-out-of-business
sale and couldn’t return them—and I slipped one over the bandage. When we finished I was able to stand a little better than before.
I grabbed my purse and a notebook, and then Cade drove me into town. He pulled into the grade school’s parking lot and stopped his pickup truck at the curb nearest the entrance. After shifting the truck into park, he offered to walk me in.
“No, thanks,” I told him. “I’ll take it from here.”
“Call me when you finish, and I’ll pick you up.” Cade handed me his business card.
“I think I’ve imposed on you enough,” I said. “I’ll find my own way home.”
“Hardheaded, aren’t you?” Cade said. “Good thing you’re soft everywhere else.”
I ran every day so I wouldn’t be soft everywhere else. I started to make a smart-mouthed retort but thought better of it. He had, after all, rescued me earlier that morning. I shoved Cade’s card in my purse and climbed down from his truck.
“Thank you for your assistance this morning, Mr. Garrett,” I said. “If there’s ever any way I can repay your kindness—”
“I think your bathroom mirror already did that,” he said with a smile that made me suspect he was remembering exactly what he’d seen.
I glared at Cade for a moment. Then I slammed his truck’s door and hobbled up the walk to the school. When I stopped at the front door and looked back, Cade touched a finger to the brim of his Stetson and nodded. Then he shifted his truck into gear and drove away.
Although I often thought of Cade—the way his hand felt against my calf when he lifted my leg, the way my breasts felt pressed against his back as we rode his quarter horse up the drive to his ranch house, the way my entire body tingled when he carried me to his truck, the rush of embarrassment tinged with excitement when he’d seen my naked body reflected in my bathroom mirror—I didn’t see him again until well after the school year started. By then my ankle had healed, I had found a new, safer route to run each morning, and it still hadn’t rained.
I was pushing my cart through the town’s only grocery store, dismayed once again at the paltry selection of fresh vegetables and the high prices. It was either that or drive two hours to take advantage of the better shopping opportunities in the nearest small city. When I rounded the corner into the cereal aisle, I almost ran my cart into Cade’s jean-clad rear end. He was bent over, retrieving something from the bottom shelf, and his Wrangler jeans were pulled snug across his firm buttocks. I sucked my breath between my teeth and admired the view until he straightened and turned to face me.
A smile split his weathered face in two. He touched the brim of his Stetson and said, “Miss Amanda.”
“Mr. Garrett,” I acknowledged with a nod. As I spoke I wished I had dressed in something other than a sweat suit before I left the house, and that I had done something with my hair other than pull it back in a ponytail.
“I hear tell you’re quite popular with the young’uns.”
“And where might you hear that from?”
“Their parents,” he said. He nodded toward my ankle. “I see you’ve healed.”
“Yes, I have, thank you,” I said. “You had the healing touch.”
“So you have no good reason to decline my invitation to the Cattlemen’s Ball.”
“Excuse me?” I’d lived in town long enough to know that the Cattlemen’s Ball was the countywide social event, the one evening of the year when the wealthiest ranchers, businesspeople, regional politicians, and anyone else who could scrape together the outrageous admission fee put on their Sunday best and gathered at one of the ranches to hear a fast-rising or slow-fading country music star, dance, gamble, eat, bid on donated goods, and do it all to benefit the county’s food pantry.
“I don’t have a date,” Cade said, “and I have it on good authority that neither do you.”
There are no secrets in small towns. “Is this how you usually ask a lady on a date?”
“No, ma’am, it isn’t,” he said with a sly grin. “I usually wait until they’re laid out on the side of the road and can’t run away.”
“So how long have you been waiting for me to get run off the road again?”
“Nearly a month,” Cade said.
“And you felt confident no one else would invite me to the Cattlemen’s Ball before you got around to it?”
He answered my question with a question. “Have you been on any dates since you moved to town?”
I shook my head, and the end of my ponytail swept across my shoulders. “I haven’t even been asked.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Cade explained. “People saw you riding in my truck. That’s as good as wearing my brand.”
“Your brand?” I stood up straight, my chest rising with indignation.
“You can whoop and holler all you want, but that’s just the way things are around here.”
“Do you always get what you want?”
“Near enough,” he said. “I can’t convince God to make it rain and put an end to this drought, but I get pretty much everything else.”
“And what makes you think I’ll accept your invitation?”
Cade removed his Stetson and leaned close, holding the cowboy hat to prevent others from seeing what passed between us.
“I suspect you want me just as much as I want you,” he whispered, his warm breath tickling my ear and sending an erotic tingle through my entire body.
I caught my breath as the heat of desire rushed to my core, and my nipples dimpled the front of my sweatshirt. I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue and began to breathe again as he pulled away.
I couldn’t deny what was so obviously true, and I agreed to accompany Cade to the Cattlemen’s Ball.
I was ready before I heard Cade’s pickup truck enter the driveway and the engine cut off. When his footsteps crossed the porch, I grabbed my black clutch and opened the door, catching him with one hand upraised to knock.
His eyes opened wide as he drank me in. “You’re not wearing that, are you?”
I had chosen a slinky black dress that exposed my décolleté, scooped low in the back, and hugged my curves all the way down to mid-thigh. I’d put my hair up, wore an accenting pearl necklace with matching earrings and new black pumps with two-inch heals that made my legs appear just a little longer and a little firmer than they actually were. “Why not?”
“One look at you dressed like that and all the men will bust their zippers.”
I examined Cade from top to bottom. His Stetson was freshly blocked. He wore a crisply pressed blue plaid snap front western shirt, dark blue Wranglers with knife-sharp creases ironed into the legs, a thick leather belt with a dollar-bill-sized buckle holding it in place, and snakeskin cowboy boots.
I had the sinking feeling I should have selected my wardrobe from the feed store, which actually had a large selection of ranch-appropriate western wear, but I said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “That was about as good a compliment as I could ever give.”
He escorted me to his freshly washed truck, and half an hour later we pulled into the long drive of the Bar-B-Dahl ranch one town south of where we lived. The field to the left of the drive had been designated for parking and was already half-filled with pick-up trucks and SUVs when we arrived.
At the top of the drive, Cade handed his keys to the valet and led me through the hay-bale-lined entrance to the barn where much of the evening’s activity would take place. He showed our admission tickets to an older woman with big hair and bigger breasts, and then we were inside.
The dirt-floor barn was as big as an arena football stadium. Gaming tables had been arranged at the near end. At the far corner to the left was a small stage where a local band would play later in the evening, with an open area in front of it for dancing. In the other corner were donated items to be auctioned off. In the middle were several tables arranged in a rectangle where the buffet would be set out, and scattered throughout the barn were several small bars
serving beer and wine.
Most of the men were dressed like Cade and so were many of the women, and I quickly learned why cowboy boots were the footwear of choice when we exited the far side of the barn. My heels sank in the soft ground as I struggled to walk across the uneven pasture to where tables had been arranged in front of the outdoor stage. Cade held tight to my elbow to keep me from pitching over.
I overheard two women talking about me as I passed the table where they were seated. One said, “She’s not from around here, is she?”
“Not even close,” the other replied. “Cade went out and found him a Yankee girl.”
As we sat at our table, I saw a fellow teacher—accompanied by the single father of one of my students—several tables away, and I waved to her. She returned my greeting with a wave of her own.
The evening’s entertainment was a country star who’d had several hits back in the eighties and nineties, but hadn’t charted since the start of the new millennium. He put on a great show, and when it ended we went inside to raid the buffet table. We ate, drank, and gambled with play money until the local band took the stage. Then we danced.
I already knew how to waltz. Cade quickly taught me a basic two-step, and except for the line dances, which we both avoided, we danced away the rest of the evening. He was strong, his movements sure, and he guided me around the dirt floor as if we had been dance partners our entire lives. I was so enamored of Cade that I didn’t care I wasn’t dressed appropriately and that my expensive heels were dusty by the start of the final dance.
Someone dimmed the barn lights as the band began the only slow song of the evening. Cade pulled me into his strong arms, flattening my breasts against his chest. One big hand on the small of my back pulled me against him, and I quickly realized his belt buckle wasn’t the only big thing trapped between us.
I looked up into his eyes, and wet my lips with the tip of my tongue. Cade caught the hint and leaned down until his lips reached mine. We kissed as we danced, oblivious to the fact there were several dozen people on the dance floor with us and several hundred still milling about the barn. By the time the song ended, we weren’t actually dancing anymore, just standing in the middle of the dirt dance floor with our tongues in each other’s mouths.
Cowboy Lust: Erotic Romance for Women Page 7
