How to Kiss a Cowboy

by Joanne Kennedy

  Brady spun toward the stairs so fast he never knew for sure if he kicked out on purpose, but his boot hit the wall hard enough to hurt. He hauled himself halfway up the stairs before he turned to see if his words had had any effect.

  Earl had apparently plugged in the TV, because he was sitting placidly in his chair, engrossed in some old Western as if nothing had happened.

  Sighing, Brady started up the rest of the stairs. He knew Earl wasn’t entirely to blame for his attitude. Folks said Ellen’s death hadn’t just broken his heart; it had caused it to wither up and die. Some people grieve a long time, but Earl wasn’t really grieving anymore. It was more like he’d died when his wife did and was just waiting for somebody to haul him off and bury him beside her.

  The stairway wall was lined with pictures of Ellen, arranged so that climbing the steps was like watching her life run backward. At the bottom were pictures from just before she died. There were photos of her rounding the barrels on her famous horse, Tango, and photos of her in full parade dress. There was even a picture of her riding side by side with six-year-old Suze.

  As Brady climbed, Ellen got younger. Suze appeared in one picture as a toddler, but then she disappeared and it was all about Ellen. Ellen and Tango, running the barrels at dozens of rodeos, in dozens of towns all over the West.

  When he got to the top, it was like going full circle. There was Ellen as a six-year-old, already running barrels; Ellen as a toddler on the saddle of a handsome quarter horse; and Ellen as a baby in her own mother’s loving arms.

  He couldn’t help thinking those pictures should have been of Suze. She was every bit as accomplished as her mother, yet the only picture of her was one where her mom was also present. It seemed backward for a parent to be immortalized there, instead of a child.

  Brady had never known what happened to his own mother. For all he knew she was still out there somewhere, but he’d entered the foster system at age five and barely remembered her face.

  But he thought of Irene Decker every day. She’d passed away just two short years after she’d adopted him and his brothers, but they’d all loved Irene with the deep, desperate love of boys who’d been motherless too long. Bill, of course, had loved her most of all. He’d memorialized her in an aspen grove on the ranch, decorating it with the tiny wind chimes Irene had loved. Brady still bought trinkets for the Chime Grove on occasion. So did his brothers.

  There were only a few photos of Irene around the ranch house, and almost all of them were from the two years she’d had the boys to love. They’d always felt they were the heart of the household. Wherever they’d come from, they were now the next generation of Decker Ranch cowboys, and that made them matter.

  Brady snapped out of his reverie and stared at the door to Suze’s room. It was a plain white door, the same as all the others that lined the hallway. But by opening it and entering, Brady felt like he’d stepped over a line—a line Suze wouldn’t have wanted him to cross.

  * * *

  Although Suze had lived in the same house all her life, her bedroom was sparse and impersonal, as if she were only a temporary resident. There were hardly any pictures on the walls, and plain, sheer curtains hung limp at the window. The bed was neatly made, covered by a quilt that appeared to be the most personal thing in the room. It was made from squares of denim, probably taken from old blue jeans. Some squares were dark blue, some worn almost to white. Brady was glad it was there, figuring it probably warmed Suze’s heart as well as her body as she slept.

  The closet, which was standing open, contained a few clothes, neatly hung. In Brady’s experience, women’s rooms usually looked like war zones where a bomb had exploded, spraying shoes and scarves instead of shrapnel. But in Suze’s room, everything was neat, everything was clean, and hardly anything was personal.

  Well, that just made his job easier. The fact that the room had no more personal touches than the average hotel room made him feel less like an invader.

  He didn’t see anything like a suitcase, but there was a gear bag on the floor—the same kind he used for his own rodeo equipment. He removed a few horsey items—some brushes, a hoof pick—and then stared down at some knitting needles that trailed a length of neatly woven yarn. Somebody was obviously in the middle of a craft project. Suze?

  She was hardly the knitting type, but who else could it belong to? If it was hers, it would give her something to do. He left it in the bag and opened a bottom drawer on her dresser.

  Inside, he found a neat stack of nearly identical Wranglers. He grabbed two pairs, and added a couple of T-shirts from another drawer. The next drawer contained socks. He knew he was getting closer and closer to the skivvies. He threw a few pairs of white athletic socks into the zippered maw of the gear bag, then noticed a pair of fuzzy white socks with kitten faces at the back of the drawer. They must have been a gift from somebody, because he sure couldn’t see Suze buying them. Grinning, he put them in the bag. They’d either make her laugh or make her mad. Either one would give her system a jolt, and that was probably a good thing.

  The middle drawer held a neat stack of pajama pants and some cotton tank tops. That was what she’d need most in the hospital, so he chose one pair of pants with little horses all over them, and another pair with flowers he hoped would remind her of home. He did his best to match a couple tank tops to each pair of pants and shoved them in the rapidly filling bag, doing his best not to picture Suze in those outfits, her long legs curled beneath her, the tank top showing off the parts of her he was trying not to think about.

  He knew what he was going to find in the top drawer. He reached his hand out to open it, then jerked it back as if he expected it to be filled with rattlesnakes.

  It might as well be. Suze might dress like a farmhand on the outside, but he knew her baggy T-shirts and comfort-fit jeans hid a body fit for a Victoria’s Secret model. He’d be reminded of that body, and the night he’d discovered it, as soon as he opened the drawer.

  Ah, what the hell. It was just underwear. A little silk, a little lace—what harm could it do? Taking a deep breath, he opened the drawer and tried not to feel like a pervert.

  The almost compulsive organization of the rest of the room didn’t apply to this drawer. It was a festival of textures and temptations. Scruples forgotten, he buried his hands in the heap of silk and lace pretties, sifting the delicate fabric through his fingers.

  He pulled out a strip of lace and found himself holding an electric yellow thong; he tugged at a bit of elastic and found himself holding a bright red bra that was clearly designed to lift and support the generous breasts he remembered. He missed those breasts—missed them with an ache that was just about killing him now.

  He’d hoped to just grab something and run, but she wouldn’t be wearing thongs and push-up bras in the hospital. She’d want something comfortable. Practical.

  Maybe he should go shopping, because he wasn’t finding anything remotely like that here.

  He finally settled on a white bra and matching panties that would have been fairly conservative if they hadn’t somehow brought the image of a naughty schoolgirl to mind. Rummaging around for a second set, he pulled out one tempting fantasy after another, but nothing fit for the hospital.

  He lifted the last pair of panties out and held them up to the light. Not bad—blue with lace panels connecting two triangles of fabric. At least the triangles were big enough to cover something more than a postage stamp.

  In fact, they were big enough to cover a photograph that was sitting at the bottom of the drawer. Brady picked up the old picture and stared.

  It was a candid shot of Suze and a cowboy at a high school rodeo. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen in the picture, and the cowboy was about the same age. Suze sat on the top rail of a fence. Her booted feet rested on a lower rung, and one leg of her jeans was hung up on the top of her boot. That always seemed to be the case with her. It was
as if she was in such a hurry to get to the horse that she couldn’t even dress properly.

  It was an actual rodeo though, not practice, so she was wearing a regulation long-sleeved Western shirt and a white straw cowboy hat. The cowboy was dressed to compete too, in Wranglers and a bright, striped shirt. They would have looked like a couple of dudes except that the two of them were covered from head to toe with streaks and splotches of rich brown Wyoming mud.

  Suze was smiling down at the cowboy, who had jokingly grabbed one of her legs as if he was going to pull her off the fence. He was grinning into the camera like a fool. Anyone looking at the photo would have known it had been taken on a good day, just from the smiles on their faces.

  Brady knew it had been taken on a good day because he was the cowboy in the picture, and he remembered that Kodak moment.

  It had been as good as a moment could be. Precious, like the lady in the hospital had said. It had rained on and off all day, but the sun broke through the clouds in that moment and made it feel blessed.

  He looked at the photo more closely. Suze’s face was in shadow under the brim of her hat, but her expression wasn’t hard to read. She wasn’t looking at the camera; she was looking at Brady. Her lashes, always surprisingly dark for such a fair-skinned blond, rested on her cheeks, and her smile was—fond. Affectionate. It was obvious that she was happy to be with the man in the picture.

  Man, hell. That was a boy. A boy who was too stupid to know how lucky he was. Too stupid to know that heaven was right there, literally in his grasp.

  The picture was taken Brady’s sophomore year. He’d been so impressed by Suze’s mad gallop the first time he met her that he’d joined the rodeo team first chance he got. He’d fallen as hard for Suze as he had for the sport, but nothing came of his boyish infatuation. Suze was focused on riding, not romance, and there were lots of other girls willing to take Brady’s raging hormones for a test drive.

  He covered the picture up with a few more pairs of panties. There had been a time when he and Suze might have stayed friends, even become lovers. Hell, if he’d dated her back then, they’d probably be engaged by now. Maybe even married.

  Not too long ago, that thought would have given him the willies. But as he looked around Suze’s stark, cheerless bedroom and thought of how sad and vulnerable she’d looked in the hospital, he wished he’d made some different choices since the day that photo was taken. Because he’d been telling the little nurse the truth: Suze was, deep down, a sweetheart.

  He stuffed his selections into the gear bag and zipped it up, wondering why she’d kept that photo. Did she feel the same way he did—as if that moment could have changed their lives? Did she wish it had?

  Maybe she had once. But now that he’d put her in the hospital with multiple injuries, he doubted she felt that way anymore.

  Chapter 27

  Suze lay in bed, like she’d been doing all day, and wondered when she’d be able to go home. She didn’t want to stay in the hospital, but what the hell was she going to do once she got back to the ranch? She doubted she’d be able to walk. Even now, just resting there, her right ankle throbbed so hard it felt like a bomb about to explode.

  She thought about asking the nurses for some pain medicine. The pills might knock her out and help her stop worrying.

  Holy crap. That thought sounded so much like a drug addict, she’d better renew her promise to herself—a promise to use as little medication as she could, no matter what the doctors said.

  She just wished she had something to do—a magazine to read or a book, or her knitting. She’d always thought knitting was an old-ladyish thing to do, but the fact was it made the miles go faster when her dad was driving her to rodeos, and helped while away the long nights between performances. Her mother had taught her to make scarves, and she’d made so many, she’d almost run out of people to give them to, even though she passed them out to every competitor, rodeo clown, pickup man, and announcer she met along the rodeo road. She really ought to learn to make sweaters or something, but there was something pleasurable about replicating the pattern her mother had taught her, over and over, in yarn of various weights and colors. It felt like a connection, a skein unwinding through the years that joined the two of them together.

  But her knitting was at home in her gear bag, and she had nothing personal here at all—nothing but Brady’s bouquet of flowers, which had brought her more pleasure than she’d ever tell him. She picked up a daisy that had somehow fallen on her pillow and brought it to her face. Daisies didn’t have much smell, but she caught the grassy scent of her pasture, the high notes of the sunshine that had nurtured it, and the low, dark notes of the earth where it had grown.

  She’d just begun to drowse a little, the daisy clutched in her fist, when footsteps and the gentle whoosh of her door opening alerted her to a visitor.

  Finally. Her dad.

  She opened her eyes to see Brady. Again.

  She shoved the daisy under her pillow.

  “I brought you your stuff.” He still couldn’t stand to look at her. She must be a real horror. “Some pj’s, jeans, and T-shirts, and, um, other stuff.”

  Surely Brady Caine wasn’t blushing? He was. Over what? Her underwear?

  It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it before, and lots more like it on other women—although she did have a liking for pretty underwear, and kind of collected sexy bras and matching panties. If she was competing, she wore a sports bra. Otherwise, her pretty underthings made her feel like something about her was pretty, at least.

  “Where’s my dad?” she asked.

  “He was, um, busy.”

  “Yeah right,” she said. “Let me guess. There was a Bonanza episode on he’d only seen sixteen times.”

  Brady sighed and sat down in the chair beside the bed. Taking his hat off, he raked his fingers through his hair and finally looked at her.

  Suze had run her fingers through that thick hair once. Suddenly she had the urge to do it again. A picture flashed across her mind of Brady laying his head in her lap, of her stroking that soft brown hair while they both fell asleep to the clicking and humming of the medical machines. The thought made her eyelids droop, and a wonderful feeling of peace came over her.

  She shook her head, hard. Where had that come from? She definitely needed to knock that picture out of her head, and fast.

  She’d had thoughts like that about Brady since she was fifteen years old. She had no idea what it was that attracted her so strongly to this careless ladies’ man of a cowboy. She believed in working hard, in taking things seriously, and Brady never worked a day he didn’t have to. She trained hard and thought harder, strategized and drilled her horses; Brady just hopped on a bronc and hung on. He had so much natural ability he’d never had to work at it.

  She still wondered what would have happened if she’d been nicer to him after that night in the trailer. Or if she’d pursued him a little harder back in high school, before he started catting around so much.

  It was probably just as well she’d never learned the answer to that question. Whoever ended up in a relationship with Brady was bound to be miserable. He was a prime candidate for one of those off-kilter relationships where one partner does all the loving and the other partner is so busy dazzling the rest of the world that they don’t have time for their partner. Because Brady was a dazzler. He couldn’t help it.

  She’d seen that kind of relationship in her own parents. She’d never understood their fights when she was little, but as she’d grown, she’d realized that her father was no match for Ellen Carlyle. The woman was like a Fourth of July sparkler, blazing so brightly she left the image of her white-hot beauty burned into the eyes of everyone she met. Suze’s father had been a stabilizing influence, a support, almost a servant. Even as a child, Suze knew that wasn’t what she wanted for herself.

  “What’s wrong with your dad, anyway?” Brady aske
d. “He’s not the only person in the world who ever lost somebody. Why can’t he get over it?”

  “I don’t know.” Suze shrugged. She wasn’t about to get into that with Brady. “What did you bring me?”

  Brady shifted in his chair and cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable. “Some pajamas,” he said. “The pants and tops to match, and some jeans and T-shirts. Socks too.”

  “Is that all?”

  He nodded, staring at the floor.

  “Didn’t you bring me any underwear?”

  A ruddy flush started at the back of his neck and suffused his tanned face. Best of all, it turned the tips of his ears bright pink. “The red one and the white one,” he blurted.

  She’d have to keep in mind that the red one and the white one were apparently winners when it came to embarrassing Brady Caine.

  The thought made her giggle, and that felt so good she loosened the reins on her laughter and let it fly. Brady looked stricken for a moment, but then, good-natured cowboy that he was, he joined in. The two of them struggled for control, but every time Suze managed to quit laughing, Brady would catch her eye and she’d start up again.

  It felt good. After all the stress and tension of the past two days, she needed to let loose with some kind of emotion, even if it was a totally inappropriate one.

  They finally wound down, slowing to little spurts of laughter here and there, with longer and longer intervals in between. When Suze finally recovered fully, she was stunned to find she’d taken Brady’s hand at some point. Or had he taken hers? It was hard to tell, but she quickly disentangled their fingers and looked away, embarrassed. The air practically hummed with sexual promise, and images from their one night together flickered through her mind. The images moved from past to present, and she imagined Brady taking her now—climbing on the bed, kissing her, tugging at the tie on her hospital gown…

  How could she shut this down?