Cowboy Welcome

by Alyssa Bailey

  “No, it won’t take long. I know that Kerry wants to rent the place pretty badly as it is coming up on the beginning of the month and she doesn’t fancy another month of it sitting empty.”

  “Well, where is Kerry? I’ll go tell her I am interested.”

  Shanna had been trying to persuade Jamie, who she didn’t realize was as drunk as he truly was until after she had been walking and talking to him for a few moments. How stupid, she chided herself; you should have been able to tell that someone is drunk and not just a little happy. Jamie is not one of those easy drunks if he gets riled up. Fine if you don’t go against him, but she had stitched someone up just the beginning of the week after he had broken a chair over the other drinking buddy’s head. Shanna had laughed because it was so much like a saloon fight in the westerns she liked to watch on Saturday afternoons. Except this was scarier than when she watched things on television. And not quite so entertaining when she was the one patching the participants up with the sheriff standing by. Today, there was no one between her, Jamie, and his anger if she didn’t do as he wanted her to.

  Jamie kept Shanna walking in the direction of Mae’s little variety store. It was closed of course, but it also had an area behind it where Shanna knew had always been the drinking spot for teens and for men who should have known better. It still wasn’t accepted to drink in town in the community places and liquor was still not sold in town, even if the Blue Law was abolished by the county. Shanna began to feel panicky and saw the last vestiges of the sun in the finale of its evening display. Soon it would be dark and with the dark brought its own set of complications where she had not yet let her mind wander.

  Not knowing what else to do as they were getting close to the back of Mae’s place, Shanna urged her brain to think fast.

  “Jamie, this isn’t the way, is it? I was pretty sure it was over in that area.”

  Anxiety beginning to surface in her voice and Shanna knew that was not good. Her hands, normally steady and strong, began to tremble slightly as her anticipation made way for some cold hard fear. What she wouldn’t have given for Zane to wrap his arms around her and show her his protection. Of course, then he would spank her, but it would actually be worth it to be safe in his arms.

  Shanna pointed in the direction of the apartments she knew were not far down the way, the only ones in town, in fact. Trying unsuccessfully to avoid his hand moving up and down her arm as if he was caressing her, she ever so slightly attempted to change the direction of their path.

  “Nah, it is over here, in this neighborhood. I told you it was a house, not one of those apartments.”

  “Zane isn’t going to let me stay in a place over here, nor my dad.”

  Jamie snickered. “Seems like they are just too picky, Miss Shanna. You don’t care about who people are, do you?”

  “No, I don’t, but I do need to get back. Zane is going to be sending out the sheriff soon.”

  Stopping her forward movement, Jamie pointed out, “Now, that Sheriff Coates is one slick fox, you know that? He walked over to show me something and had me in that cell quicker than you could say Jackie Robinson and Jackie was fast.”

  “Jackie was before your time,” Shanna pointed out as she was trying to avoid his roaming hand. She wanted to divert him, but her inane sense of reality kept shoving into the conversation.

  “True, but he was some kinda fast. My daddy told me that even though a lot of people were upset he was on the team they loved what he did for the team. Kind of like how I know folks feel about you and your clinic. They don’t like that they don’t have a man to run it, but they love what you do there. And just like Ol' Jackie, they’ll get settled with you.”

  “Wow, that was pretty insightful, Jamie.” Shanna wondered how much potential was lost when Jamie took up the bottle. “Now, I really have to go back. Zane will be angry and I am getting tired. It’s been a long day. Come on and let's go back to the park.”

  Jamie appeared to be through with small talk as well, but he wanted Shanna to keep him company and he wasn’t through drinking yet. He also had a debt to pay. He grabbed her upper arm and jerked roughly to get her to stop turning to go back to the park. He tried his best to steer her into going around the corner. Shanna could hear someone or someones back behind the building as well and she knew it was now or never. She pretended to trip and it surprised Jamie so much that he let go of her arm. As she swung around, she brought one hand over the other as if she was returning a volley in volleyball and came up hard in his groin. He never saw it coming.

  The agonized sound that came from Jamie could not be described and Shanna could not wait around to see the damage. She slipped her feet out of the flip-flops she had been wearing until now and ran back to the parking lot of the community park. As she got closer to the parking lot, she looked back and didn’t see Jamie. She knew she had incapacitated him for a good while. With the safety issue gone, Shanna stopped on the edge of the lot. She leaned down, hands on her thighs, head down, trying to catch her breath. She needed to calm down before going to look for her friends and ultimately Zane. She went to check her phone and noticed it was gone. Great, what else can happen? Then someone grabbed her shoulder.

  Shanna let out a subdued yell as a hand covered her mouth. Panic set in. She started to fight the person behind her. Instead of being released, she experienced a series of offending, but not hurtful smacks on her thigh and she was pulled hard against a chest. Not registering who her assailant might be, she swung her arm around and tried her best to hit the attacking person. She knew instinctively it wasn’t inebriated Jamie, but that was all her brain could process.

  Catching her flying arm midair, Zane pinned her back to his chest even tighter and growled in Shanna’s ear, “Stop. Now. Stop right now. Shanna.” When she heard her name in his voice, Shanna stopped fighting and shifted forward a bit and Zane released the tightness of his hold. Shanna took several steps to walk out of his hold before turning around to face her would be attacker.

  After looking up to verify it was Zane, she let go an ecstatic, “Zane!”

  Shanna threw herself into his arms and Zane, not at all understanding what was going on, caught his woman in almost mid-flight and held on tight. He was still worried she was going to revert to anger or fight him again, but he needn't have worried. Shanna was holding onto him for dear life, kissing and hugging him frantically and then more slowly as she calmed. It was then that the floodgates opened. Down came the tears flowing unchecked, coursing down her cheeks in torrents.

  “Shanna, honey, what is the matter? What is wrong, baby?” His manner changed as his mind filled in possible scenarios, “What happened to you?”

  It took a while before Zane could separate Shanna’s body from his long enough for him to begin checking to see where she was hurting, what was wrong with her.

  “Hey, I can’t see what is wrong with you, baby girl. What happened, show me where you hurt.” Shanna shook her head.

  “I am fine, really, really, I’m all right. You just spooked me, th-that’s all. You just spooked me. Let’s go back to where everyone is and listen to the music. I will be okay. Maybe it is that time of the month or something. And did you just spank me to stop me from yelling?”

  How did he do that? How did he say two sentences and convey a million emotions and messages? He was concerned, a bit irritated, curious, suspicious, and protective and surprise, surprise he was taking back control. He wrapped the whole communication package in a warm, intense tone that made her shiver with desire and comfort. Well, and worry because this told her she was in deep trouble if she did not comply with his wishes and answer him as he requested, which she knew she would not. At least she would not want to. Her vagina began lubricating, ass clenched and her stomach tingled. Would that Zing ever go away?

  Zane could see and hear the desperation in her voice for him to drop it, but that made him even more determined to find out what was the problem.

  “Listen, darlin’, if I had ever alluded
that your behavior was linked to hormones, you would have murdered me so I know something’s wrong, you would have never said that if it were nothing. And that was not a spanking it was an attention getter to give you something else to concentrate on so you would stop yelling.”

  Watching her reaction, Zane could see that Shanna was going to try to walk away from this whole situation and not discuss it with him. To Zane, that was categorically unacceptable. He was seriously beginning to rethink the whole amnesty issue that had happened some weeks back. He was thinking amnesty was not a good idea because then the lesson would have been taught and he would not have to push her to rely on him and tell him what was going on. How could she have learned to depend on him when he didn’t follow through on his promise?

  With a sigh and a slight shake of his head, he grabbed Shanna’s hand and started to walk her away from the park towards his pickup. He knew something had happened. The problem was, he had no idea what that was. Creating the plan in his head while he walked his wayward girl back to his truck, he schooled his voice to be reinforced with steel as he calmly but firmly told Shanna what was going to happen.

  “Okay, baby, I know that something happened to frighten you. I know that you don’t want to enlighten me about what that is. The thing is, sunshine, I need you to know that you are going to tell me. I am not going to remind you that you need to trust me, because when you don’t, it hurts our relationship and me because you know that. I am not going to tell you that avoiding the subject will never work with me because you know that. I am not going to remind you that I intend to protect you from everything that would do you harm because you know that. But I am going to remind you that you enjoy sitting on that cute little butt of yours. That being said, if you do not let me in on what is going on and let me take care of it, sitting will not be something you will be doing comfortably, if at all.

  “Now, since we have all of those preliminary things taken care of, we are going on a drive over to a quiet spot and you are going to start talking. That is, unless you have decided to spill the beans here, in which case I will be more than happy to listen.” Shanna stood with her head down and restated that there was not anything to discuss.

  Zane did not give her another option and he did not give her time to back out of it. He had her in the pickup, the door shut, buckled in and going down the road in less than a minute.

  Shanna, having now recovered control of her emotions, decided she was not pleased with the way that Zane was treating her. After all, she was a grown woman. She knew what she was doing and she could choose to disclose or not as she saw fit. She did not want to say what had happened to her. It was not that it was an enormous thing or even traumatic when she thought back on it, she just overreacted. Sometimes that happens. Trying to blame it on her hormones, she felt like a man would have accepted it. However, Zane was catching on fast and did not buy her excuse at all. If things were not in a tangle, she would have enjoyed the fact that her man paid attention to her so well, but right now was not the time for him to demonstrate it.

  He was learning her too quickly for Shanna to be able to keep up. She was not used to the man in her life cataloging reactions and information about her so well. Then he used it against her so well. She wasn’t sure she would be able to handle living with a man who knew her better than she knew herself. Wait, no living, just being with him. Her fantasies went straight to living with him, sharing breakfast, dinner, and evening entertainment. That is if she could get him past the stage of ‘me Tarzan, you Jane’. At least to the stage where he let her choose what she disclosed and didn’t disclose but even as she thought it, she knew that wasn’t what she wanted and sighed.

  Another area of concern was growing as she thought about the predicament she was in. It was not only what she would tell Zane, but also how she was going to get him from taking out his frustrations on her bottom. It is not that Zane scared her, or that she was worried that he would lose control, because she absolutely knew that he would not lose control. Zane was anything but a loose cannon. She was so caught up in her own thoughts that she did not notice when they pulled up to the spot they had visited the last time Zane heated her butt fully, not the reminder swats he did often.

  Zane had remained quiet, watching the emotions flit across Shanna’s face and hoped that the quiet ride would give her a chance to think through the right choices. She was positively thinking about something. He hoped he was right because he hated chastising her when his preference was the fun spankings. He liked giving the kind of spankings that resulted in both parties finding satisfaction and completion. Zane sighed and reached over to lay his warm hand on her thigh and patted it, calling her name.

  “Where did you go, baby?”

  “Oh, nowhere. Sorry, I was just thinking about something, and…hey, do you know what that guy Jamie that walks around town, irritating everyone, what did he do for a living? I mean, who is he, really?”

  How did that pop out? She hadn’t even really thought that first before her mouth spewed it out. Would today ever end?

  “Sweetheart, why would you ask that?”

  Shanna opened her mouth to tell him when she quickly stopped, trying to decide how to answer without giving anything away that would upset Zane, but realization already showed on his face. Damn, he was good. She strove to erase the emotion from her face.

  “What did he do, Shanna?”

  “Who? What are you talking about? He’s purple, that’s all. His color is purple. He wasn’t at first, but it was almost as if I could smell his fear. That was a first for me. He was afraid of something.” Shanna shrugged her shoulders and tried extremely hard not to look Zane in the face, she flitted her eyes to the side. She was taken by complete and utter surprise that he had even connected the dots that rapidly. She did not have time to catch up with the conversation because he was processing much too swiftly. She went into survival mode to protect her butt and keep Jamie breathing another day. He was a twit, but she didn’t want anyone to sustain injuries due to her mouth. And, well, it was a reason to talk about Jamie, he was purple.

  “Purple? You mean you see purple for him like you see the grass green for me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yep, not happening. You would not have brought that up if you had not run into him. You either tell me what happened or I am going to blister your butt and then we are going to go for a drive to hunt for Jamie. Then we will drag him to the sheriff’s department. Once we are there, you are going to tell the sheriff what you are not telling me. Then I am not sure I won’t want to tear into you again for holding out on me. Or we can do it this way—you tell me what happened right now. We might be able to skip the butt blistering and I still go after Jamie and fix the problem. Those are your two options. Questions?”

  Shanna could feel her blood pressure rising and the anger filling her up. What gave this man the right to take over her life? Who did he think he was? Shanna flipped her head around and looked Zane right in the face, preparing to ask him that exact question when she saw the look in his eyes.

  She did. She gave him that right. As angry as she was feeling, this man cared about her, honestly cared. This was the precise category of lover she had wished she could have in her life. She had asked for a man who took control and who cherished her, took care of her, protected her, and did not put up with her garbage. Well, here he was in the flesh, staring at her with his hurt and determination showing in his eyes.

  As she began to assess honestly the truth of the situation, her anger slid away. If she continued battling him, she would take from him the respect he deserved by trying to cover up what an unfortunate and inebriated man had done to her. While she did not wish to cause trouble for anyone, it had not been her fault. The fact that it had happened to her made it personal to Zane, so she needed to let him do this. She wanted to be his to take care of and she needed to let him handle business. She needed to protect their relationship.

  Knowing more now than she did the first time around, she
knew that she had asked for more of a man than she could probably handle without learning to give in to him. Trust him and let him have total control. Zane had been clear that letting go was freeing. Empowering. Well, she was about to test that theory.

  Fighting with a man like Zane would never be a winning proposition and what she could lose in the battle was more than she was willing to give up at this point. Zane desperately wanted to take care of her. At first, when he called her his woman, it irritated her, but now he gave her those flip-flop belly feelings and that overexcited desperate tingle when he came into the room. Her goose was cooked in more ways than one and she couldn’t be happier about it.

  Shanna reached over and put her hand on Zane’s hand that still lay across her thigh and she gave it a couple of pats. Trying to organize her thoughts for a moment, she took a deep breath and slowly let it out, signaling that she was about to do or say something. Zane responded by body language. He straightened up, he situated himself better in the seat, and he leaned forward as though every word that she was going to say was of the utmost importance to him.

  Shanna thought this is why all the women drooled over Zane. It wasn’t that he was tall, dark, and handsome and intense. He was. It was not because he had a beautiful smooth, resonate Texan drawl. He did. They drooled over Zane because if you were his woman, you were the center of his universe. You were cherished, loved, and protected and there was not a thing in the world that was more important than you. There wasn’t a woman in this town or any other town who would not give all that she had and more to have her man so into her.

  Shanna thought I am that woman. I need to show him that I do trust him, so she decided what she was not going to do was keep things from him. What she should do was tell Zane everything that happened, and just let the cards fall as they may. She had to trust that he would do the right thing and that he would not overreact. Shanna expected he would cause more trouble than had already happened, but she needed to let him take care of it as much as it was difficult for her.