A Real Cowboy

by Carla Cassidy

  It was at that moment Nicolette realized she was just a little bit in love with Lucas Taylor.

  Chapter 6

  Night had fallen once again, finding Nicolette sitting alone in the great room. The television played softly, but she scarcely paid it any attention.

  Cassie had gone to bed, as had Lucas at the same time as Sammy. Despite the fact that she was tired, Nicolette hadn’t been ready to call it a night and go to bed.

  She found herself playing and replaying the scene in the café, working through the hateful words that Lloyd had thrown at Lucas...something about everyone now remembering that the men who worked here had been nothing but street scum before Cass had taken them on.

  Her curiosity about Lucas’s past had definitely been piqued, but as the afternoon had progressed she hadn’t had an opportunity to ask him about it, nor did she believe it was any of her business.

  The afternoon had flown by quickly. Cassie returned from her tour and Lucas had taken Sammy to his bunkhouse to show the boy where he had lived for the past fifteen years. Her son had come back to the house more determined than ever to not only become a cowboy, but to work on this ranch and earn a room in the cowboy motel.

  Nicolette wanted to remind him that they weren’t staying, that this would never be their home, but after giving it some thought decided not to say anything.

  She’d promised Cassie that she wouldn’t tell any of the ranch hands Cassie’s plan to sell out, and with the close relationship between Sammy and Lucas she feared that Sammy would spill the beans—or had already.

  The less said in front of Sammy, the safer Cassie’s secret would be. Nicolette already feared she’d said too much to her son about their future plans.

  She’d just about decided to go upstairs to bed when she heard the faint creak of the lower rung on the staircase. She looked to see Lucas come into the room. She sat up straighter on the sofa. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.

  “No, and it’s been my experience that it’s a waste of time to toss and turn and chase after sleep that isn’t ready to come.” He sat on the opposite side of the sofa and set his gun on the coffee table in front of them. “Did you know your son snores?”

  “Is that what’s keeping you awake?”

  “Nah, he snores real soft. I’ve slept beside cowboys who rattle windows and sound like bullfrogs.” He raked a hand through his shaggy hair, looking ridiculously sexy. “I just couldn’t sleep and saw the light on down here and figured you were still awake.”

  “Cassie has apparently embraced the old saying of early to bed and early to rise. She has so much on her mind. This all has been such a huge shock to her,” Nicolette replied.

  “You don’t just step into ranching without experience or a good teacher. Adam will help her, and eventually it won’t be so overwhelming for her.” He was so handsome in a plain white T-shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders and his jeans.

  Although the gun on the table in front of them was a reminder that he was on bodyguard duty, he appeared completely relaxed and she decided it was the right time to ask him about what Lloyd had said that afternoon in the café.

  “At the café today when you spoke to Lloyd, he said something about now that Cass was gone maybe everyone would remember where you all came from. What did he mean by that?”

  He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes holding a mix of emotions she couldn’t begin to sort out. “Remember I told you it was a long story?”

  “We have all night,” she replied lightly, returning to him what he had told her on the night when she’d bared her past to him.

  He sat forward, his gaze growing distant, as if he was accessing memories not often thought about. “I never knew my father. I was raised by my mother, and I use the term ‘raised by’ loosely. Like your ex-husband, she was a partier. She loved her drugs, her alcohol, and when she remembered I like to think she loved me.”

  Although he spoke the words starkly and without any emotion, Nicolette slid a bit closer to him, sensing the pain that he held back.

  “We always had a roof over our head, mostly cheap apartments that were government subsidized in Oklahoma City. There was also usually a little food in the house unless she sold all of our food stamps to somebody for cash to buy drugs. I learned to be fairly self-sufficient early on because when I woke up in the mornings I never knew for sure if she’d be home or not.”

  He paused to draw a deep sigh and once again leaned back against the chocolate-brown sofa. “In any case, we managed to survive, at least until I was fifteen.”

  “And what happened when you were fifteen?” She scooted closer, wanting...needing to touch him, but was afraid in this moment he wouldn’t welcome her touch. He looked like an island, his features taut with tension as his gaze radiated out an inner pain.

  “When I was fifteen years old I came home from school as usual and was stopped by Mr. Blackworth, our landlord at the time. It wasn’t unusual for him to stop me occasionally to tell me to remind my mother that the rent was overdue. But that day, he handed me a hundred dollars and a duffle bag and told me early that morning my mother had moved out and left no forwarding address.”

  He laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. “No forwarding address, can you believe that? She just disappeared and I never saw her again.”

  Nicolette could help herself no longer. She placed a hand on his muscled arm in an effort to comfort the young boy he’d been. “What did you do?” she asked softly.

  Some of the tension left his features and he shrugged. “One thing I knew for sure was that if anyone found out that I was homeless and motherless, Social Services would step in and I’d be placed somewhere. That was the last thing I wanted. For the next month or two I managed to go to school every day and spend the night at friends’ homes. But after I’d stayed at any one place for more than two or three nights, parents got suspicious and so I finally quit school and took to the streets.”

  Nicolette tried to imagine Sammy at fifteen, on the streets and all alone. She couldn’t bear the thought of it, and she couldn’t bear the thought of Lucas in that position either.

  “Oh, Lucas. How did you survive?” She tightened her grip on his arm, as if she could pull him out of the dangers he’d faced so long ago.

  “Day by day,” he replied. “I met up with other groups of kids who were homeless or runaways. We slept under bridges and in parks. We sweated through the summer and froze in the winter. The money my mother had left me didn’t last long. Lots of the kids were into drugs, but I never touched them. But I did steal food to eat, I rummaged in garbage cans behind restaurants, did whatever I needed to do to survive.”

  He frowned and drew in a deep breath. “I think the worst part of it all was that no matter what kind of person my mother had been, I loved her and she just left me behind.”

  He shook his head, as if unable to believe the life he’d led. He gazed at her and covered her hand with his. “And then I was saved.”

  “Saved how?” she asked.

  “By a social worker named Francine Rogers and a force of nature named Cass Holiday. Francine often visited the lost boys, as we called ourselves. She’d come in the evenings after her day job and try to talk the runaways into going back home, the addicted to get into treatment and the boys like me to get into the system.”

  “She was friends with Cass?”

  “Good friends. This was all around the time that Cass had lost her husband and most of her employees had abandoned her and her ranch. None of them believed a fifty-two-year-old widow had the chops to keep the ranch running. They vastly underestimated Cass Holiday.”

  “So Cass decided to restaff her ranch with boys Francine brought here?” Nicolette asked. She moved close, closer to him still, until their thighs touched.

  “The ranch was already in bad shape. Cass’s husband had been sick for some time before he passed. Cass didn’t just decide to restaff the place. She decided she was going to start again with cowboys she built from the ground
up. I had just turned seventeen when Francine brought me here.”

  “You must have been scared.”

  He smiled at her and the shadows that had filled his eyes were gone. “I was terrified,” he admitted. “I didn’t know anything about ranching or being a cowboy, but I also knew that if I stayed where I was on the streets, then there were really only two outcomes...death or arrest.”

  “Tell me about Cass.” Nicolette realized that at some point in the conversation she’d leaned against him, her body snuggled against his.

  “I don’t even know where to begin.” His voice filled with a mixture of love and respect. “She was the strongest woman I’ve ever known, and when I first met her she scared the hell out of me. Adam was already here working for her and if he hadn’t helped me along those first weeks and months, I might have not stayed.”

  He took her hand in his, and it felt incredibly normal to have his big hand wrapped around hers. “Cass was tough, determined to make us from little boys into the kind of cowboys she wanted. She gave us rules and consequences for breaking those rules, but she also gave us love and respect and self-esteem. This was a kind of last-chance ranch for most of us. If we hadn’t made it here, who knew where we’d all be.”

  “She made you into the wonderful man you are now,” Nicolette said.

  He looked at her and smiled, a slow teasing grin that made her conscious of every single place their bodies touched. “You think I’m a wonderful man?” His face was suddenly intimately close to hers.

  Despite the temptation to lean closer into him, she sat back. “I think Cass must have been a wonderful person.” She couldn’t allow another kiss to happen because she knew one would never be enough. “Did she get all of you men the same way?”

  He released a sigh, as if sorry that she’d put a little physical distance between them. “Yeah, we were all brought here by Francine. There were others, but they either ran away or were taken away by Francine. They were the drug addicts who pretended to be clean, young guys who refused to abide by the rules or just plain didn’t cut it.”

  “It seems like you are all a good bunch now,” she replied.

  “We’re like brothers and Cass was the mother we’d never had. All of us who are here now would have died for her. You know she died between here and the bunkhouse. We think she was running to warn us about the tornado when she got hit in the head by a tree branch. She died trying to save us.”

  Emotion choked in his throat and he stood abruptly. “I think that’s enough for tonight.” He smiled tightly as he grabbed his gun from the table. “I guess talking so much about myself has tuckered me out. Good night, Nicolette.”

  “Good night, Lucas,” she replied and watched as he left the room and went up the stairs.

  She almost wished he hadn’t told her about his tragic past because knowing his struggles and seeing the kind of man he’d become only made her admire him more.

  She didn’t know who had tried to get into the house using a ladder. She didn’t know how long it would take before Cassie put the ranch up for sale and headed back east.

  All she knew for certain was that Lucas Taylor was getting way too deep into her heart.

  * * *

  Despite the fact that Lucas had told Nicolette he was ready for bed, when he climbed into the twin bed sleep was the last thing on his mind.

  He’d just needed to escape from her, from the feminine curves that had fit so neatly by his side, from the warmth of her so close against him. He’d had to get away from the scent of her and most important the compassion and then the admiration that had filled her eyes as he’d told her his story.

  Now his head was not only filled with Nicolette but also old memories that he hadn’t entertained for years. He tried never to think about that day he’d returned home from school to find his mother gone...vanished.

  He’d run down the hallway to the apartment that had been home and had used his key to open the door, stunned to find everything gone. Even though he and his mother had gone through many bad times, he couldn’t believe that she’d just abandoned him like an old piece of furniture she didn’t want to move to a new place.

  He’d thought he was over that pain of abandonment, but his discussion tonight had made him realize there were some things you never really got over, you just moved on.

  As he listened to the faint snore of the six-year-old in the bed next to his, his heart expanded with affection. Sammy would never know abandonment from his mother. Nicolette’s love for her son was evident every minute of every day.

  He lusted for her, but he also admired her maternal instincts. He wanted her in his bed, but he also didn’t want to break her heart, and he had a feeling she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t give herself to a man easily. One kiss with her hadn’t been enough. As he drifted off to sleep, he dreamed he was kissing her once again.

  He awoke just before dawn and silently left the room. He showered and dressed, and then crept down the stairs. No lights were on downstairs, letting him know that he was the first one up in the house.

  He made a pot of coffee and then stood at the kitchen window sipping it as dawn began to streak across the sky. He hoped to talk Cassie and Nicolette into heading to town for breakfast this morning.

  Since it was cow chipping day, they would need all hands on deck in the lower pasture and he didn’t want to worry about the women and Sammy being all alone in the house while all the cowhands were occupied so far away in the pasture.

  He’d just started on his second cup of coffee when Cassie walked into the kitchen, clad in a blue bathrobe and with her blond hair making messy curls around her head.

  “Thank goodness you made coffee,” she murmured as she beelined toward the counter where the hot brew awaited her.

  “I have a favor to ask you,” he said once she’d poured her coffee and was seated at the table across from him.

  “What’s that?” She blew across the top of her cup and then took a drink.

  “I think maybe it would be a good idea if you three went into town for a leisurely breakfast this morning. It’s going to take all of us ranch hands to round up the cattle and herd them where they need to be for the chipping.”

  “But Adam thought it was important I see this chipping operation,” she replied.

  “If you head into town for a couple of hours, then you’d probably be back in plenty of time to see how it all works. If you do come down to the pasture, I’d like Nicolette and Sammy to be with you.”

  She took another sip of her coffee and studied him thoughtfully over the rim of her cup. “Do you think it’s dangerous for the three of us to be here in the house all alone?”

  “Probably not, at least not in the daytime,” he said thoughtfully. “I can’t imagine anyone bringing danger during the day when they would know we’re all up and around, but today all the men will be down in the pasture. I still think it would be safer if you were having breakfast at the café and then return and come to where we’ll all be.”

  “So, you don’t think the danger to us is over,” she said, her eyes slightly widened.

  “It might be over, but I won’t feel completely comfortable until I know who was climbing up that ladder and why,” he replied. “I don’t particular like unsolved mysteries.”

  “Okay, we’ll get out of here and head into town and when we get back we’ll go to the pasture,” she agreed.

  “Since none of you ride, you can take one of the cars to drive you down there.”

  “Cars I do, horses not so much.” She finished her cup of coffee and stood. “I’ll go wake up Nicolette so that you can get out of here. It shouldn’t take us long to get ready.”

  True to her word, within half an hour, all three came down the stairs, dressed and ready for a trip into town. “Is the café even open this early?” Sammy asked as he scrubbed a fist in one still-sleepy eye.

  Lucas smiled at him. “The café is open before the sun first peeks over the horizon. Lots of hungry cowboys eat the
re before they start their day at work.”

  “Okay, then let’s go!” Sammy exclaimed.

  Lucas laughed and his gaze connected with Nicolette, who looked stunning despite the early hour. Her hair was loose and fell to the shoulders of a bright red blouse that made her eyes appear even greener than usual. The tight black jeans showcased the long slender length of her legs, and he couldn’t help the knot of desire that formed in the pit of his stomach.

  He was grateful when minutes later they pulled away from the house in the car that had belonged to Cass. He locked up the place and headed for the stables, knowing he was already late to get to work.

  Lucky and three others were the only horses left in the stable, indicating that all the other men had already gone to the lower pasture for the day’s work. He saddled his horse and tried not to think about the woman who haunted his dreams and the little boy who had wormed a path dangerously close to his heart.

  Maybe it would be better if he got somebody else to bunk in with Sammy. The minute the idea formed in his mind he rejected it as a streak of unexpected jealousy swept through him.

  There was no way he wanted another man to see Nicolette first thing in the morning, with her hair still bed-tussled and her green eyes sleepy and sexy. There was no way he wanted another pair of male eyes to feast on her wrapped in her silky robe as she drank her first cup of coffee.

  He mounted Lucky and gave the horse a light rein. As he rode, he breathed in the clean morning air and noticed how much work the others had accomplished the day before in their tree and brush cleanup.

  He passed the nearly destroyed long shed that stood as a constant reminder of the storm that had ripped through the area and had taken Cass’s life. He’d be glad when they got it torn down and rebuilt it, and then maybe it wouldn’t be a constant reminder of loss.

  Loss. He’d had enough, and even though Cassie hadn’t told the men, Sammy had mentioned to Lucas that she intended to sell the place and head back to New York City.