Outback Cowboy

by Lexxie Couper

  Chicken.

  He looked at her, his expression unreadable, and for a moment she thought he was going to call her out. But then his grin returned and he sat up to place a quick kiss on her lips, the subtle perfume of her juices tickling her senses. “Sounds like a plan, Stan.” He swung his legs to the floor, kicked off the boxers still tangled around his ankles and pushed himself off the bed, crossing to the door. Buck naked and so goddamn sexy Monet wanted to moan. “As long as I don’t have to eat another hotdog from those sidewalk trolleys. Call me unadventurous, but I don’t think my delicate Aussie stomach is cut out for that kind of food.”

  She laughed, even as her pulse pounded in her ears. Even as she tried desperately to hide how scared she was.

  Watching him walk through the door, she stayed on the bed. Unable to move. It wasn’t until she heard the sounds of the shower running a few moments later that she finally succumbed to the fear gnawing away at her belly.

  Fear. God, how could she have gone from rapturous pleasure to gut-churning fear so quickly?

  Because you’ve fallen in love with an Australian cowboy, because there’s no guarantee he loves you back and, worst of all, there’s no reason you can possibly think of to ask him to stay in New York even if he did. Isn’t that enough?

  She dropped her forehead to her knees and scrunched her eyes tight. “Bloody oath it is,” she muttered. “Bloody oath it is.”

  Five minutes later, Dylan stood in her room again, his hair a tousled mess of damp honey-gold strands, his exquisitely muscled legs covered by faded denim jeans, his fingers buttoning up a soft black chambray shirt she hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t one he’d bought here, which meant it must have come from his luggage.

  His luggage from Australia.

  Because that was where he was from. And unless she said something, that was where he would return. Is that what she wanted?

  Ignoring the question, she hurried off the bed. She couldn’t bring herself to think about Dylan being away from her anymore.

  Chicken. Again.

  “How ’bout a greasy, touristy breakfast at Ellen’s Stardust Diner?” she all but shouted, snatching clean clothes from her bureau. “And then we can brave the Black Friday madness and buy some cold cuts and French rolls from Whole Foods. A hotdog-free meal but still very New York.”

  Dylan’s appreciative hum made her turn halfway through yanking her jeans up her legs. He leaned one broad shoulder against the doorframe, the dimple in his right cheek flashing at her. “I’m becoming quite partial to the idea of ‘very New York’.”

  The buzz of her apartment’s intercom cut through the room.

  Biting back a curse, she tugged her jeans all the way on, zipped her fly and walked to her front door, all too aware Dylan watched her the whole time. There was something going on in his head. She could tell.

  Her buzzer sounded again, making her jump. And swear.

  “Yes, Tommy?” she asked, pressing the button to activate the speaker to the doorman’s desk.

  “There’s a flower arrangement here for you from the Kerrie Anderson Gallery, Ms. Carmichael,” the doorman answered. “A rather large vase of what I believe are Australian eucalyptus flowers. Would you like me to have Franklin bring it up?”

  Behind her, Dylan laughed.

  Monet pressed the button again. “You can keep it for the day, Tommy. Dylan and I are just about to head out.”

  “Very good, Ms. Sullivan.”

  She turned back to Dylan, her heart still doing its damndest to beat its way out of her chest, and froze when she noticed two very significant things.

  One, Dylan’s hat was nowhere to be seen.

  And two, he was looking at her with open, undeniable lust.

  “Are…are you ready to go?” she stammered.

  He shook his head. “Not yet.” His accent played with her senses. “There’s something I need to do first.”

  * * * *

  It took them at least an hour to leave the apartment. Dylan blamed it on Monet’s jeans. They were so snug they showed off her sexy arse to perfection. It was all he could do not to strip them from her the second she’d finished talking to her doorman. As it was, he’d pressed her to the door, pinned her wrists beside her head and kissed her until she could barely stand. Then he’d worshipped her breasts, unadorned by bra or shirt, sucking on her dark, hard nipples, refusing to stop until she came, her cries of release as powerful as the aching throb in his cock.

  Here he was, four hours later, the chilly autumn wind playing through his hair, the sounds of New York filling the air like a mad cacophony, Central Park a green oasis in a sea of gray around him, and his cock still ached.

  He’d gently removed Monet’s hands from his belt buckle when she’d finished climaxing, shaking his head with a small smile on his lips. “Later,” was all he’d said.

  She’d given him a curious look, almost a cautious one, but he hadn’t relented. He couldn’t. He knew then, just as he knew now, if he’d let Monet unzip his fly and withdraw his hard-on from his jeans they’d still be in her apartment making love. And while that was the only thing he wanted to do—make love to her, worship her, give her pleasure over and over again as she gave him pleasure in return—he couldn’t let himself.

  Not until he figured out what he was going to do next.

  Not until he knew where he was going to be tomorrow. The next day. And the day after that.

  Here in New York? Or back home?

  Back at Farpoint Creek.

  Dylan’s gut clenched at the thought. He’d never been so bloody conflicted. Had he thought he was messed up a day ago? When he was under the impression Annie was meant to be his future? Fuck, that was nothing to how he was feeling now. Now it wasn’t a woman messing with his head, it was a whole bloody country. Two of them.

  No matter how hard he tried, every time he imagined himself somewhere apart from Farpoint, he failed. But every time he tried to imagine a life without Monet, he failed that too. If he didn’t have an ego the size of Ayres Rock he’d be worried about his sense of self-esteem. But it wasn’t his self-esteem taking a pounding from his current situation, it was his sanity.

  Now he had to do something about it.

  That something was to be outside, be in the city. Exist in the city. Try to picture himself there for a long time.

  And he thought dragging snakes out of the main billabong back home was tricky.

  “This is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Monet’s question drew his gaze to her face and he found her smiling at the sights around them. After breakfast in a crowded restaurant, where the staff seemed determined his coffee mug never come close to emptying, they’d wandered the SoHo district, Monet buying supplies for their picnic, pointing out quirky little facts about the area only a local would know.

  When the lady behind the counter at one store realized he was Australian, she asked him to say “g’day”. He did, and she laughed and commented how different New York must be from his home. He agreed. It was. Very different.

  Chatting about art and movies and Australia and America, they’d finally made their way to the Great Lawn at Central Park, the large expanse of lush grass the perfect place for a picnic. All around them children in scarves and beanies laughed as they flew kites. Lovers necked on blankets, uncaring of those around them. Businessmen in expensive suits and ties scarfed down street-vendor hotdogs as they consulted tablet computers and talked the mobile phones plastered to their ears.

  It was, as far as Dylan could work out from his mother’s addiction to Woody Allen movies, the quintessential New York scene. And yet the movies never conveyed just how loud the traffic was, rising over the park’s serenity. Nor how dank the air was, nor how gray the skyline. At least to Dylan’s senses.

  There wasn’t a moment of quiet peace, even in an area of parkland roughly the size of Farpoint Creek’s main homestead yard. Hell, he was even finding it hard to hear the leaves rustling in the wind. Leaves no longer green but copper
-red and brown from the chilly weather. With this much breeze at home, the leaves would be singing their soft song and he’d be able to hear it. He’d be able to hear the magpies call to each other on the wind instead of dueling car horns trying to out-blast each other in the nearby streets.

  He walked beside Monet, his arm encircling her back, her warmth seeping into his body, and looked at her world. The world he’d been trying to place himself in since the moment he’d accepted he was in love with her.

  He took it all in, his pulse growing fast. The people, the grass—greener than any blade back home—the concrete sidewalks that designated where you should walk and were you shouldn’t, all so different from the home he knew. He looked up at the massive monoliths stabbing into the sky, building after building of metal and concrete and glass so high their shadows seemed to reach for everything around them.

  He saw it all, recognized it as beautiful, but he couldn’t feel it. The only beauty he could feel in this place was the woman who’d asked, “This is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  And there was the answer to the question threatening his sanity. If the only thing that moved him here, the only thing that he found truly beautiful was Monet, he didn’t belong here.

  Dylan’s feet stumbled beneath him. He stopped, drew in a deep breath and stared at the New York skyline, the inescapable buildings looming over him, blocking far too much of the sky. He stared up at it and thought of his home, of Farpoint. Of the never-ending blue sky that reached from one flat horizon to the other. The paddocks that unfurled before him as he rode his horse across them, Mutt yapping at the cattle, tail wagging, tongue lolling. He thought of the sweet scent of eucalyptus on the air after a rain. He thought of his brother, his mother. He thought of the sweeping plains that, to a stranger, would look empty and devoid of life but was really teeming with it.

  He thought of his home.

  He thought of Farpoint Creek.

  He thought of Australia.

  And was unable to avoid the answer he’d been so desperately trying to refuse.

  His heart slammed into his throat. Blood roared in his ears. Tearing his stare from the famous metropolis, he turned his gaze to the woman he was irrevocably, completely, one hundred percent in love with.

  “Monet?”

  She swung her gaze to his, and his soul died a little as he watched the smile she’d been wearing fade from her lips. It was the fact he’d called her Monet, maybe, instead of love? Or the expression on his face? Something told her.

  You never were any good at poker, Sullivan. Guess you know now why Hunter kicks your butt every time.

  “Monet,” he said, sliding his arms around her, pulling her closer. Needing to feel her against his body. “I need—”

  She shook her head. “Please don’t say it, Dylan.” She caught her bottom lip with her teeth and shook her head again. “Please?”

  His gut clenched. His chest tightened. “I have to, love.” His voice left him on a whisper, his throat too tight to speak. “It’ll only hurt us both if I don’t.”

  She closed her eyes, pressed her forehead to his chest and shook her head once again. “Don’t.”

  “I love you, Monet,” he said, holding her, aching for her. “I can’t even find the words to tell you how much, and I know my heart is with you, only you, but my place…” He paused, his chest crushed by an invisible vice, his whole body in agony.

  Don’t say it, Sullivan. ’Cause once you do, you can’t take it back.

  “My place is back home. In Australia. I don’t belong here. And I have to go.”

  Chapter 11

  Monet stared at the Australian stockman before her, his square jaw untouched by a razor for at least four days, his hat hiding the expressive laughter in his eyes. She let her gaze roam over his face, a face she would never forget.

  And smashed her balled fist into his strong, hawkish nose.

  The clay—still soft despite being manipulated for the better part of the day—flattened under her knuckles, mashing the stockman’s nose until it was nothing but a knuckle-shaped indent.

  She studied the new shape of her artwork’s face and let out a frustrated sigh. It was the third one she’d created and destroyed since she’d started sculpting on Black Friday The third savaged by her fist since Dylan left, four hours after he’d told her he had to return to Australia.

  Each time she punched the lump of clay she’d shaped, carved, pinched and molded to look like a typical hardworking stockman, a wave of hot satisfaction rolled over her. Followed by an emptiness so total and complete she wanted to sob.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t convince herself the sculptures were anyone else but Dylan.

  Art had always been therapeutic for her. She’d exorcised her parental demons through her first New York exhibition, a collection of sculptures and lithographs depicting a deranged family in various situations. As her career had flourished and her reputation grew as an artist not afraid to unsettle as well as charm with her creations, she’d worked through many issues. Her last exhibition, Lust is Love is Lust, had indeed been partly influenced by Phillip Montinari, just as he’d boasted. But only those works capturing the distorted egotism of sexual power. Phillip and guys like him. Guys who used their sexual prowess to define themselves.

  The works depicting romantic fulfillment and love, however, were the embodiment of what Monet one day hoped to find—true love and happiness.

  And she had, briefly. With Dylan.

  She looked at the mashed-in face of the sculpture. What was this work about? Was her punching the sculpture part of the work? Part of the work’s meaning? Or was she just being pathetic?

  Brushing hair from her face with the back of her hand, she turned and glared at her studio sofa where Dylan had slept for four nights of his life with her. The sofa where he’d brought her to climax again and again with his fingers and mouth. It was a childish act to be angry at a piece of furniture she knew, but she had no more sculptures to destroy and she’d run out of clay.

  “Oh for god’s sake, Monet. Stop being so ridiculous.”

  She stormed away from the sofa and the beaten-up artwork. If art was her therapy it was doing a fuck-all job. All she’d done since the night Dylan had flown out of JFK was draw sketch after sketch of the man and sculpt bust after bust. There was nothing in them but Dylan. No underlining meaning to the works, no subversive subtext. Just drawings of a laughing, sexy man in an Akubra hat. Just sculptures of a man she couldn’t bring herself to finish because it made her hurt too much.

  Staring through the window at the snow-dusted city beyond, she blew out a wobbly sigh. She felt like shit. If this was how Annie felt every time she had her heart ripped out, Monet was going to drown her best friend in chocolate and suffocate her with hugs when she was back in New York.

  But Annie wasn’t coming back. Not for at least another week. And now Dylan was heading back to Farpoint.

  The reality struck Monet like a fist. Her chest grew tight. Annie and Dylan were going to be in the same country, face-to-face. What happened if they took one look at each other and realized they really were meant to be?

  “For fuck’s sake, stop it!”

  Her shout echoed around her empty apartment.

  She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the cold glass. Outside, snow continued to swirl and dance on the wind. It had begun Friday night, growing heavier with each hour Dylan’s plane flew farther away from New York. The rational part of her knew it was just weather patterns, winter coming a few days early. The drama queen inside her, the one all creative people lived with whether they wanted to admit it or not, knew it was symbolic. The man she loved had left her, and her world would forever be cold and bleak.

  After his revelation in Central Park, they’d returned to her apartment. He’d called the airline and exchanged his ticket for the first flight back to Sydney, one that had a six-hour layover in Denver and a two-hour pit stop in Hawaii. One that departed JFK exactly four hours after Dylan made the
call.

  Which had given her no time at all to convince him to change his mind.

  Why had she let him go? Why hadn’t she fought harder?

  The memory of Dylan’s goodbye assaulted her. The touch of his lips as he kissed her at her apartment door, the kiss that tore out her heart. He wouldn’t let her go with him to the airport. He wouldn’t make love to her again.

  “It will hurt too much, love,” he’d said, his hand cupping her cheek, his eyes—those laughing, mischievous green eyes—so cut with grief it was all she could do not to cry. “If I make love to you again, I’ll never leave.”

  She’d taken his hand from her face and placed it fully on her breast. “Then make love to me. Now. I don’t want you to go.”

  He’d smiled a slow, sad smile that sheared through her like a knife and removed his hand from her breast. “If I stay, we’ll only grow to hate each other, Monet. I don’t belong here. And I can’t ask you to move to Farpoint.”

  Monet opened her eyes, watching the snow dance in the wind beyond the glass. Move to Farpoint. It was an insane idea. She was an artist. A New York artist. A damn successful New York artist. She couldn’t move to a cattle station on the other side of the world.

  Why not?

  “Because…”

  The rest of the answer didn’t come.

  Heart thumping fast, she ran her gaze over the gray clouds hugging the buildings on the other side of Central Park. What was the sky like in Farpoint now? Was it blue? Cloudless? Was it hot there? Would she walk about the homestead, a place she felt she already knew thanks to Dylan’s descriptions, in shorts and a tank top? Would the sun warm her skin as much as Dylan’s arms and love warmed her heart?

  Was that what she was trying to do with her art now? Capture that possibility?

  She twisted a look over her shoulder at the abused bust of the Australian stockman. Until she’d smashed her fist into it, it had been more realistic than any sculpture she’d created. In fact, there was nothing in all the works she’d furiously sketched or sculpted even remotely distorted or abstract. They were nothing but pure, honest representations of a man in a hat who lived in a different world than hers.