“I was hoping you’d come,” he said.
“I’m glad you’re still up.” She sat down beside him and laid her head on his shoulder. “How’s Hud?”
“No physical work for a week until the doctor sees him again, and then maybe not for a while after that. But Justin is sending us two of their hired hands to get the hay cut tomorrow and he’s loaning us their big round baler so we can stack it outside instead of in the barn. And Emily is coming to help out too.” Tag draped an arm around her shoulders.
“I’ll help any way I can,” she said.
He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Darlin’, you are helpin’ just by bein’ here beside me. But if you want to go with me to the tack room and help get it organized tomorrow, I’d love to spend the time with you.”
“Done.” She yawned.
“I’d carry you to bed, but…” He glanced down at his foot.
“I’d carry you, but…” She grinned.
“Let’s just lean on each other and go get some sleep,” he said.
“That sounds great.” She stood up and got her bag from the end of the sofa where she’d dropped it. “And, Tag, I love you.”
“Never thought I’d say those words or hear them either. They’re pretty powerful, aren’t they?” Tag stood and draped an arm around her shoulders.
“Me neither. And yes, they are. They can still a restless heart.” She served as his crutch to the edge of the bed. He sat down, and she dug around in the bag for a nightshirt.
“I like it better when you come to bed naked,” he said.
“Tonight we’d better sleep in clothing.”
“Why?”
“Because we don’t have the energy to make love all night and then work all day tomorrow.” She yawned again. “I just want to fall asleep in your arms.”
“I can be satisfied with that tonight.” He slid between the sheets and waited, then gathered her close to his body when she joined him.
Tag awoke to the aroma of coffee and bacon. When he sat up in bed and opened his eyes, he saw Nikki in the kitchen area making breakfast. “Good morning. You sure look sexy in that outfit.”
“What, this old thing?” She tugged at the bottom of her faded nightshirt. “I wore it to a White House dinner, and then to tea with the queen.”
He laughed out loud. “And I bet you wore diamonds with it to one and pearls to the other.”
“One can’t meet the queen without her pearls. Pancakes are ready. Need your crutches or can you hop,” she said.
“I can actually walk a little on the foot now, if I’m careful. Trouble is I look like an old man.” He got out of bed and eased his way across the floor to the table.
“Honey, we all get old eventually.” She waited until he was seated and gave him a kiss and then handed him a cup of coffee. “Eat up. We’ve got a tack room to clean this morning, and we need to check on Hud.”
Tag would have liked to spend an hour in bed before they left, but Nikki rushed through breakfast, did the cleanup, and got dressed so fast that he didn’t have time to seduce her. Oh, well, he’d make up for that later that evening, after she’d talked to her mother.
They passed Maverick and Paxton, each operating a John Deere tractor that morning. The smell of fresh-cut hay filled the cab of the truck. It reminded Nikki of Saturdays when her father mowed the grass. She always thought it was a big privilege when he let her push the lawn mower for a few rounds.
Tag’s phone rang and he didn’t even check the caller ID before answering it.
“Hello.”
“Hud is in the tack room,” Maverick said. “Paxton and I took four-hour shifts like you suggested all night, but we figured it’d be easier on you to take care of him in the barn. Just giving you a heads-up. He’s an old bear.”
“Thanks for everything. I’ll take it from here, and I owe you,” Tag said.
“It’s just through today and then he should be fine,” Maverick said. “And we volunteered. Did you tell her yet?”
“I did,” Tag answered.
“Good for you,” Maverick said. “Holler if you need us.”
“Will do.” He ended the call and turned to tell Nikki what was going on.
When he finished, she simply nodded. “I’ll watch the time for you.”
They found Hud stretched out on the worn-out sofa in the tack room. He was snoring loud enough to wake hibernating grizzly bears all the way up toward the northern part of the States.
Nikki checked her watch. “He can sleep until nine o’clock. Now, where do we start?” Her eyes scanned the messy room.
“We don’t have to do it all today. I don’t think Eli Johnson threw away anything.” Tag picked up a jar filled with bent nails.
“I remember his wife. She and Mama could’ve been sisters. Not so much in looks but in their attitudes. The two of them were always comparing medicines and illnesses. I bet Eli spent hours out here.” Nikki picked up a box of empty milk jugs. “We probably need a whole box of big trash bags to start with.” She turned around slowly, taking in the whole room. “There’s a bathroom right there. Has it got a shower?” She crossed the room and stepped inside. “Yep, it does, and you’re not going to believe this, but it’s above an old claw-foot tub. I bet this was his doghouse. When she was on a rampage, he probably lived out here. My dad’s escape was the cab of a truck. Eli’s was this tack room.”
Tag slipped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her hair. “Am I going to need a doghouse?”
“No, but you do need a bunkhouse, and I’m seeing a possibility here. If you knock out that wall and claim the two stalls on the other side, throw up some drywall and insulation, you could have a really nice bunkhouse right here. Or you could just cut a door through right about here and make two bedrooms.”
“You are a genius.” He leaned his crutches against the work table and envisioned the area as a small apartment. “Or this could be a living area and the room beyond it could be a bedroom. With water already out here, we could even put in a small kitchen. I bet Justin could draw some plans pretty quick.”
“We?” she asked.
“Darlin’, I can’t offer you dinner at the White House or tea with the queen, but this is doable real soon. Will you live with me in this five-star bunkhouse when it’s finished?”
“Let’s get it done and then we’ll talk about it.” She hopped up on the work table. “My rent is paid for June. Offer me a closet, and I might consider it.”
“I think we can manage that.” Tag turned to face her and his lips found hers in a long, hot kiss.
“Are we jumping into this too fast?” Her breath came out in short gasps.
“Hey, it’s a whole month away. That’s not fast enough in my book,” Tag said.
“Well, before we can do anything, we need to get our future living room cleaned up,” she said.
“Hey, what are y’all doin’ in my bedroom?” Hud sat up and scratched his head. “Oh, I forgot. Maverick and Paxton made me come out here. Give me something to do. I’m going crazy with boredom, and they kept waking me up all night. Really, what are y’all doing?”
“We’re going to make an apartment out of this room and a couple of stalls next door. We need plans drawn up, but first we have to get things in order,” she answered.
“Do I get the apartment?” Hud asked. “I refuse to live with those Callahan cowboys if they’re going to wake me up all the time. It’s just a concussion.”
“No, it’s for me and Nikki,” Tag said.
“Will you make one of them Callahan cousins move to the cabin so we have more room in the house?”
“You got it,” Tag agreed.
Hud eyed the room. “A doorway over there and you could take it all the way to the end of the barn for a bedroom. This could be the living room. If you knock out the wall on the other side of the bathroom and close it on this side, it could be a private bathroom.”
“I’d say he’s doing much better,” Nikki said.
Tag kissed her on the forehead. “He had an amazing nurse.”
Nikki couldn’t think of a single reason to put off telling her mother that she planned to move in with Tag as soon as their tiny barn apartment was finished. But she wasn’t nearly as prepared for the Monday night conversation as she thought she would be. When the phone rang at exactly seven o’clock, she’d already had her shower and Tag was taking one.
“Hello, Mama, how are you tonight?” Nikki answered.
“My gout is acting up. I was drinking cherry juice twice a day, but it caused me to have colon problems.”
In the Grady house, no one said diarrhea or constipation. “Colon problems” covered both maladies. Women didn’t get pregnant. They were in the family way. The word sex was spoken in whispers when used at all.
“I’m sorry. Have you talked to your doctor?”
“He’s a quack. I keep tellin’ you that I want to change doctors, but you won’t do a thing about it. He’s going to let me die and it’ll all be your fault.”
Nikki inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. “I’m going to move in with Tag Baker at the end of June or before if we get our apartment finished. We’re building a two-room apartment in the barn on his place.”
“You’ve lost your mind! You never were real smart, but this takes the cake.” Ice coated every word Wilma said. “Do you know what people will say about me?”
“Mama, this isn’t about you. I love Tag. We want to spend time together, so we’re going to do this. I’ve been spending most of my nights with him anyway, ever since I was kidnapped,” she said.
“I’ll never be able to hold my head up in town again,” Wilma sighed. “You’ve ruined my reputation. I’ve just built it back from when your worthless father divorced me.”
“If you don’t want to talk to me, we can hang up now,” Nikki suggested.
“It’s not eight o’clock, yet,” Wilma told her.
“Okay, then, I’ll also tell you that I’m having dinner with Daddy and he came to see me in my apartment.” Might as well get it all out in the open.
Dead silence for several moments, and then Wilma said, “You’ve always been more like him than me. Quint took after me. He never was healthy, poor little darlin’ boy. I still miss him.”
Nikki rolled her brown eyes toward the ceiling. Add narcissism to the long list of her mother’s mental problems. When it suited her purpose to be the victim, she rewrote reality. “So you aren’t going to give me grief over visiting with Daddy and having dinner with him?”
“It’s not time to hang up, but I need to go to the bathroom. I guess the cherry juice is affectin’ me. Goodbye, Nikki. We’ll talk again next week,” Wilma said.
A click ended the call before Nikki could say another word.
Tag came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel and a smile, and suddenly it didn’t matter one bit what her mother, her father, or anyone else on the face of the earth thought. She wanted to be with Tag for the rest of her life.
“Let’s go for a walk down to the creek,” she said. “I need a breath of fresh air.”
“Your mama upset you?” Tag dropped the towel and got a pair of jeans from the dresser.
“Nope, she reacted to the idea of me living with you just like I figured she would,” Nikki said. “Everything always has been and always will be about her. Nothing is going to change. The thing I have to learn is to accept it and move on. It’ll be interesting to see what Daddy says about us living together. Somehow I think he might be happy for us.”
“Me too,” Tag said. “Darlin’, you’re forgetting that I’m still on crutches, so how about we drive over to Canyon Creek and sit on the banks of the creek for a while? Will that do?”
“Oh yeah,” Nikki said.
The radio was playing Rascal Flatts’s “Back to Life” when they got into the truck. “This is my song to you tonight,” Tag said. “Listen to every word. Just like the song says, you really do bring me back to life.”
“This is one of my favorite songs. It should be our song, because you pull me up every time I feel like I’m going under,” she said. That’s when the idea hit her and she smiled. She took her phone from her pocket and found the right karaoke music.
He parked as close to the creek as possible and got out of the truck. “I’ll have to use the crutches on this uneven ground. I like it back here. Someday we’ll build a house in this copse of pecan trees,” he said.
“I’d like that, Tag, but I’ll be content in our little corner of the barn until we can afford to build,” she said as she let herself out of the truck. She walked down to the edge of the water and removed her boots and socks.
“Going to do some wading,” he asked. “Reckon it would hurt my foot if I joined you, Nurse Nikki?”
“If it doesn’t hurt them to take a shower, then this creek water shouldn’t either,” she said. “But I had something other than wading in mind,” she answered. “I betcha I can get undressed faster than you can.” She tugged her shirt over her head.
“You’re on.” He tossed the crutches to the side, sat down, and jerked the boot off his good foot, his sneaker off the other one, and then his socks. She tossed her clothing on the ground and would have beat him if he’d worn underwear. But while she was pulling off those cute little black lace panties, he was already on his feet.
“It’s not deep enough to swim,” he said.
“Who said anything about swimming?” Nikki pushed a button on her phone and tossed it on the ground with her clothing. The music to “Live Like You Were Dying” started playing. When it got to the chorus, she sang about going fishing and riding a bull named Fumanchu, but when it came to the part about skydiving, she substituted “skinny-dippin’.”
Tag laughed out loud as he waded into the cool bubbling water. “I’d rather go skinny-dipping with you than skydiving any day. Have I told you today what a lucky cowboy I am?”
“No, but don’t ever forget it,” she said.
He bent at the waist and splashed water on her. “My rebel days are over.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him down into the water with her, then shifted her position so that she was sitting in his lap. The fast-moving current flowed around them at waist level. “I love my rebel cowboy in the bedroom, but outside of it, I’d sure breathe easier if he took those stickers off his truck.”
“Anything for you, darlin’.” He scooped water up into his hands and poured it down her back.
“Will you tell me if you begin to regret any of this or change your mind?”
“Yes, I will, but it ain’t happening. I’ve finally got closure. How about you?”
“I do.” Nikki nodded.
“Maybe someday in the not too distant future, you’ll say those two words in a church.”
Nikki cocked her head to one side. “Tag, are you proposing to me?”
He ran a hand down her naked sides. “If and when I do, do you reckon you’ll say yes?”
“Probably.”
“What do you mean, probably?”
“You’ll have to ask me to find out. I’ll tell you right now I want the whole nine yards—you down on one knee with a ring in a velvet box. I’m not real crazy about a wedding like Emily’s. Can’t you just see my mama and daddy in the same room? It would be a total nightmare. A trip to the courthouse will be fine with me, but I want the big engagement so I’ll have the memory to hold on to.”
“Darlin’, you will have everything you want, however you want it. And I’ll always be your bedroom rebel.” Tag pulled her face to his and sealed the promise with a kiss.
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High Praise for Carolyn Brown
“Carolyn Brown makes the sun shine brighter and the tea taste sweeter. Southern comfort in a book.”
—Shelia Roberts, USA Today bestselling author
“Carol
yn Brown is one of my go-to authors when I want a feel-good story that will make me smile.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Carolyn Brown writes about everyday things that happen to all of us and she does it with panache, class, empathy and humor.”
—Night Owl Reviews
“I highly recommend Carolyn Brown as a go-to author for all things sexy cowboy.”
—Harlequin Junkie
COWBOY BRAVE
“Sizzling romance between believable characters is the mainstay of this whimsical novel, which is enhanced by plenty of romantic yearning.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Warmth, humor and sweet romance…Carolyn Brown always manages to write feel-good stories.”
—Harlequin Junkie, Top Pick
COWBOY HONOR
“The slow-simmering romance between Claire and Levi is enhanced by the kind supporting characters and the simple pleasures of ranch life in a story that’s sure to please fans of cowboy romances.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Friendship, family, love, and trust abound in Cowboy Honor.”
—Fresh Fiction
COWBOY BOLD
“Lighthearted banter, heart-tugging emotion, and a good-natured Sooner/Longhorn football rivalry make this a delightful romance and terrific launch for the new series.”
—Library Journal
“Cowboy Bold is the start of a new and amazing series by an author that really knows how to hook her readers with sexy cowboys, strong women, and a bunch of humor…Everything about this book is a roaring good time.”
—Harlequin Junkie, Top Pick
“Everything you could ever ask for in a cowboy romance.”
—The Genre Minx
Also by Carolyn Brown
The Longhorn Canyon Series
Cowboy Bold
Cowboy Honor
Cowboy Rebel--Includes a bonus short story Page 26
