Cowboy in Disguise

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  “Where do you think you’re going so fast?”

  “What else is there to do?” She swept her arm out, encompassing the empty table and shelves. He could say that she had a sweet heart, but working alongside him all morning had been sheer delight. He had a way with people that was entirely captivating. Male, female, young, old. Didn’t matter. They all walked away with smiles on their faces as well as jars of jam in their hands. “Everything’s sold.”

  He closed his hands around hers. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the fun’s over, does it? Come on.” He drew her around the empty table that he pushed back onto the fake turf so that it no longer protruded out into the aisle where the shoppers walked. “You haven’t lived until you’ve had one of Mariana’s fry bread tacos.”

  He seemed to take it for granted that she would agree, and since she was more than happy to prolong the pleasure, she did.

  Her book bag bounced between them as they wandered through the rest of the market and Jay took it from her to sling over his own shoulder. “This thing gets heavier every time I see you. What’re you doing? Collecting rocks?”

  “I told you.” She poked her hand down into the depths and blindly pulled out a binder with a bright orange cover. “My notebooks.” She let it fall back into the bag.

  Instead of taking her hand, he dropped his arm around her shoulder and fresh heat flowed through her veins. “How many journals does a girl need?” He angled around a young couple pushing a baby stroller. “And why carry them with you all the time?”

  “They’re not really journals,” she admitted. “They’re...stories. Like...novels. Sort of. And I carry ’em around with me because I can’t help myself. I had five nosy big brothers. If I didn’t want them making fun of me, I learned not to leave them lying around. It’s a habit I can’t break.” And then she braced herself.

  But he didn’t mock. Didn’t laugh. “What are sort-of novels?”

  She made a face. “Ones that I start but never finish?”

  He lifted the bag as if judging its weight. “How many?”

  “Six.”

  “That was a loose-leaf binder. You write in longhand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why not a computer? A laptop or a tablet? Would weigh a lot less than all those binders.”

  “Yeah, but there’s something satisfying about a pen on paper.”

  He grinned. “What do you do when you want to change what you’ve written? Wouldn’t pencil be better?”

  “Probably, but I think better with a pen.” She shrugged self-consciously. “It’s just my thing.”

  He squeezed her shoulders. “Your process is your process. What do you write about? What kind of novels?”

  “Just...stuff.” She could feel the look he gave her and stopped to examine a table filled with screen-printed T-shirts as if they were positively fascinating.

  “Stuff, she says cagily,” he said. “Now you’ve really got me curious.” He leaned down until he was looking over her shoulder, his chin touching her shoulder. “What secrets are you keeping, Arabella Fortune?” His deep voice caressed her ear.

  Her knees went to mush. “A couple mysteries,” she admitted faintly. “Fantasies. A bunch of children’s stories. And—” She slid a look toward him, feeling engulfed by the warmth in his green gaze so close to her own.

  “And?”

  “And a romance,” she finished in a rush.

  But again, he didn’t laugh. Instead he just straightened with a smile. “That’s quite a variety. Are those the genres you also like to read?”

  “I like to read everything,” she admitted.

  “Looks like they do, too.” He picked up one of the shirts so the printed front was visible. Two skeletons wearing sunglasses and holding books in their hands reclined on chaise lounges in the shade of a cactus. It’s a dry heat was printed below them.

  “We’re having a special on tees today.” A bubbly girl quickly moved from her chair deep in the shade of a market umbrella. “Buy one, get two free.” She tugged proudly at the white T-shirt she was wearing that had the words I’d give it all up for Jett Carr splashed across her breasts. “Have a whole new batch of these in. We sold out of them last weekend.” She turned around briefly to show them the back, which had a black-and-white image of the bearded singer’s profile, and smiled brightly over her shoulder at Arabella. “What do you think?”

  Arabella smiled ruefully and shook her head. “Pass.”

  Jay made a sound that sounded vaguely choked. “Not even cactus and bony readers?”

  She gave them both an apologetic shrug. “Not in the market for T-shirts today, I’m afraid.” She folded the skeleton shirt and placed it neatly atop the small stack of them. “Good luck with your sale, though.”

  Even before they moved away from the booth, they’d been replaced by two other shoppers—both women—who screeched a little excitedly over the Jett Carr shirt the seller was wearing.

  Arabella shook her head. “I don’t know what they find so exciting about that singer.”

  Jay laughed and kissed her on the head. “Me, either.” He dropped his arm over her shoulder again and they fell into step once more. “How often do you write?”

  He was still talking about her books. As if they were actually something to be taken seriously. “Most every night. Sometimes it’s only a paragraph or two.”

  “Isn’t that how books get written? A paragraph or two at a time?” He squeezed her shoulder. “Why d’you suppose you haven’t finished any of them?”

  “I guess because I get another idea that I think’ll be better, and so I abandon what I’m doing and start all over again.” The latest were the children’s stories that she’d started working on when Brady had become guardian to Toby and Tyler.

  “Do you have a favorite?”

  “I’ve never thought about it.” She did then, briefly, and shrugged. “I don’t have one.”

  “Is that why you keep toting around even the ones that you abandoned in favor of the next greatest idea?”

  “No, I keep toting them around because one day, maybe I’ll finish one of them.”

  “Then they’re not really abandoned, are they? They’re just hanging out, waiting for some sunshine to start growing again.”

  He stopped and she realized they’d reached Mariana’s food truck. The picnic tables that had been vacant earlier were all now occupied and the line at the window was even longer than it had been earlier. The tinny music that had been playing before was still going strong, though the volume had been turned up.

  “Waiting for some sunshine.” She looked up at him. “That sounds a lot better than that I can’t bring myself to throw them away because it feels like admitting failure.”

  “Nothing creative is a failure.”

  A short laugh escaped. “Says the insurance actuary.”

  He grinned. “Former insurance actuary. I didn’t last long.”

  “I thought you went into that straight out of college.”

  “I did.” They’d reached the end of the line at Mariana’s truck.

  “What’d you do after that?”

  He didn’t answer and she looked up and followed his gaze toward the quaint carts filled with fruits and vegetables where Mariana was holding court, talking to a young woman with a mic while a brawny guy nearby wielded a television camera. “Looks to me like she’s too busy to be making fry bread tacos.”

  “Looks that way to me, too.” Jay turned to face her and settled his hat more firmly as he studied the line they’d joined. “No wonder it’s not moving. What say we take a rain check on the fry bread until next weekend and raid my grandmother’s kitchen instead? Sound good?”

  So he expected to see her next weekend.

  She beamed. “Sounds perfect.”

  Chapter Ten

  Louella was not home when they
arrived at her house.

  Arabella had followed Jay in her car and when they walked in without even knocking, she could read his surprise when they found the place empty.

  “Did she leave a note?” Her mother always left a note for her dad whenever she went out.

  He glanced around, presumably at the obvious places. “Not that I can see.” He dropped the fat envelope filled with the cash they’d taken in at the market into a kitchen drawer and pushed it shut again before opening the refrigerator door.

  “Jay!” She couldn’t help a protesting laugh. “We’re not really going to raid her fridge when she’s not even here, are we?”

  He gave her a look as if she’d grown a second head. “You think she makes all of this because she wants to eat all of it herself?” He removed a platter wrapped in plastic wrap and set it on the counter. “Cold fried chicken.” He followed it up with another covered bowl. “Potato salad.” Then a tall glass pitcher. “Fresh lemonade.” He added it to the collection on the counter and then leaned over to open a lower cupboard. “She’s been trying to put meat on my skinny ass my entire life.”

  “Please. You’re perfect.” The words escaped without thought and she flushed when he shot her a look over his shoulder, catching her right in the act of ogling his butt.

  His smile turned wicked as he straightened with the wicker picnic basket he’d pulled out of the cupboard. “We could always compare yours and mine.”

  She flushed even more and injected some bravado into her eye roll. “How suave you are.”

  He chuckled soundlessly as he stacked the food inside the basket. Then he grabbed the lemonade pitcher and headed toward the rear door. “Come on.”

  She hurried around him to open the door since his hands were full and they went outside. She half expected him to stop and set everything on the patio table that overlooked the garden, but he kept walking. Around the beds of strawberries, past the shed and around through the peach orchard.

  She saw the big tub of his grandmother’s, nestled in a shaft of sunlight beaming through the trees, and her heart began skittering around inside her chest as they neared his stone barn and her feet dragged a little.

  He noticed and gave her a curious look. “Something wrong?”

  “Not...uh, not at all. I just, I just didn’t realize you had a water wheel,” she said quickly. Not entirely untruthfully. Because she hadn’t realized it until now. Hadn’t seen it, because she hadn’t gotten so close to the barn the last time she’d been there.

  But there it was. Positioned closely against the far side of the stone barn, dipping into the stream and producing a soothing, distinctly rhythmic creak as it turned.

  But her sudden shot of nerves was caused only because it had dawned on her that she was finally seeing his place. That they were alone.

  That anything could happen.

  She wasn’t a virgin. Before Tammy Jo had landed Ham, Arabella had been involved with him first. But that had still been a while ago. Was she really ready to take that step with Jay?

  He was still waiting for her to catch up to him. “Barn used to be a flour mill.”

  She blinked. “Seriously? I was only joking when I asked if your grandmother milled her own flour for her chocolate chip cookies.”

  “She’s probably capable, but she couldn’t do it here. Not anymore. The mill was dismantled a long time ago. My grandfather was a farrier. He did a lot of his work here.” He aimed toward a rough-looking door positioned closer to the short side of the barn and she was surprised that he stopped to pull a key out of his pocket to unlock it.

  “Get a lot of break-ins out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  He pocketed the key again. “You’d be surprised.” He pushed open the door and waited for her to enter first.

  She did, and what she saw inside made her jaw drop.

  Whatever the stone building’s previous uses had been, the interior now was plainly meant as living quarters for humans. The stone walls on the outside were the same on the inside, but the floors were gleaming wood. A galley-style kitchen was located on one narrow end. At the other side of the room, a couple of rough-hewn posts anchored a staircase leading to a loft area that filled only a limited portion of the magnificent space soaring up to the crisscrossing barn rafters.

  She assumed the bedroom was upstairs, because between kitchen and stairs, it was all living space downstairs. A small dining table that looked like it was made of the same kind of wood as the posts sat behind a long leather couch that anchored one end of a large rectangular rug woven in mottled shades of gray. Opposite the couch were a wooden trunk serving as a coffee table and two chairs. Most surprising of all, though, was a gleaming black grand piano that stood near the stairs. It ought to have looked out of place, but it didn’t.

  In fact, everything looked magazine perfect in one of those modern-yet-rustic ways. Perfect, yet totally impersonal. There wasn’t a single personal item in sight.

  She turned in a circle, taking it all in. “Your grandmother must have spent a fortune doing all of this.”

  He set the pitcher and the picnic basket on the concrete kitchen island.

  “Was she hoping to rent it out or something?” Arabella wandered nearer, stepping around the buttery-soft-looking couch. There were only a few narrow windows, but they spanned nearly the entire length of the space. Hung horizontally as they were, one above the other, they afforded a view of the horses and the pasture from every position within the barn.

  “Or something.” Jay opened a cupboard and pulled out a sleeve of red cups that he tossed onto the island. He followed it up with a package of paper plates. “Nothing but the finest china here. Makes doing the dishes a breeze.”

  She laughed as she undid the twist-tie and removed two plastic cups while he did the same with the plates. She filled them with ice from the dispenser in the door of the refrigerator.

  The sound of the ice maker reminded her of the towel that Brady had found. “My brother knows I was in the fitness center the other night,” she admitted abruptly.

  His eyebrows rose. “How? I know we weren’t caught on the security camera.”

  She told him about the towel as she reached for the pitcher of lemonade and began pouring. “And he knows I wasn’t alone. Because not only was my towel there, but your tennis shoes were as well.”

  “You told him they were mine?”

  “Of course not, but he’s not an idiot. He knows I’m—” She took a long drink of the cold lemonade, swallowing it along with the rest of her sentence. “I mean he suspects there’s something...you know. Going on. Between you and me.” Why on earth couldn’t she seem to stop her tongue?

  A small smile flirted around the edges of Jay’s lips. “Does that bother you?”

  “No!”

  “So then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that he knows we were there when we shouldn’t have been. We broke the rules. I never break the rules,” she muttered. “I should have known we’d get caught.”

  He pulled off the plastic wrap from the plate of fried chicken and set it in front of her. “The hotel would have to fire me before they could fire you, so I wouldn’t sweat too much over it.”

  “I don’t know how you can sound so calm.”

  He uncovered the bowl of potato salad and stuck a big mixing spoon into it. “I’ve weathered worse.”

  She wanted to ask him more, but instead, followed him to the table, where he set the food in the middle. Then, when he pulled out a chair for her, she forgot to be curious in favor of being quietly charmed. The only other time a man had done that had been with Ham.

  Just once.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Arabella looked at Jay. “Sorry?”

  “You were smiling to yourself.”

  She chuckled. “It’s nothing. Just remembering the last time someone
pulled out my chair.”

  “A guy?” He eyed her over the rim of his red cup. “Do I need to be jealous?”

  She’d always thought jealousy was an unattractive trait. Yet the notion that she could even inspire him to such an emotion was entirely novel. “You be the judge. He took me to the fanciest restaurant in town.”

  “Any guy can do that. Now this?” He gestured with a fried chicken drumstick. “Raiding grandma’s fridge? Takes real thought. So what happened after the restaurant?”

  She bit the inside of her lip, but there was no real way to keep her smile from growing. “He dumped me during the soup course.”

  For once, she was pretty sure she was the one to surprise him. “Were the two of you serious?”

  “I thought so at the time.” She picked a drumstick of her own and took a bite. Even cold, it was delicious. “He’s getting married soon. Well, actually, maybe it’s this weekend. Or last?” She shrugged. “I can’t remember. Far as I’m concerned, he and Tammy Jo deserve each other.” She took another bite. “Is everything your grandmother makes delicious?”

  “Yeah. Tammy Jo the reason he ended things with you?”

  “Is that the polite term for getting dumped?” She grinned. “And no. There were a few other girls before Tammy Jo. Knowing Ham, she’ll be lucky if there aren’t a few other girls once they’re married, too.”

  “Doesn’t sound like he left you with a broken heart.”

  “Mildly bruised.” Another bite and her drumstick was demolished. She set the bone on the side of her plate and scooped up some potato salad. “What about you?”

  “Mildly bruised.”

  If jealousy was unattractive, she was looking as pretty as a toad, right about now. “Long time ago?”

  His dimple appeared and he lightly tapped the edge of his red cup against hers. “The present company I’m keeping makes it hard to remember.”

  “Better be careful,” she warned with a lightness she didn’t exactly feel. “Saying things like that, I might start to believe you.”

  His gaze held hers. “Would that be so bad?”

  Her throat suddenly felt too tight for words. She pressed her lips together and shook her head.