by Lori Wilde
Joe leaned over, and for one crazy moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. Her breath made a rattling sound in her lungs.
He didn’t kiss her, just reached overhand to pluck a black, broad-brimmed Stetson off the rack behind her. Her limbs went liquid as his sexy scent surrounded her. Now why was she wanting him to kiss her?
Because he’s a hottie.
So what? She’d never been so bowled over by a man’s looks before. Why him? Why now?
It was the widower mystique. Had to be. Blame it on her all-time favorite movie, Sleepless in Seattle.
“Here,” Joe said, and settled the cowboy hat on her head. “Try this.”
Mariah felt like a giant dork and reached to doff the hat, but Joe’s words stopped her.
“You look good.”
She swallowed against the heat of his gaze. The man had the uncanny ability to steal every rational thought in her head with a single glance. Nervously, she ran her tongue over her bottom lip. “You’re not just saying that to flatter me?”
“Look.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face an oval mirror hung on the wall beside the hat shelf.
The weight of his hands felt solid. Real. Honest.
Mariah thought of the men she’d dated in Chicago. Businessmen more concerned with their bottom line than anything else. She realized she’d never dated a man who was good with his hands. For the most part, she’d gone from cerebral types, drawn to the kind of man that was the antithesis to Dutch.
But Joe . . . Joe was just like her father. Passionate about horses. Good with his hands. Easy to be with. Was he as equally unreliable as Dutch? That thought put the brakes on her runaway fantasies.
“See,” Joe murmured, his lips right next to her ear. His breath warmed her skin. She felt so many things she shouldn’t be feeling. Desire, need, hope. Joe Daniels wasn’t the answer to her problems, but damn if she couldn’t help wondering if he could be the answer to her long, lonely nights. He took her chin in his palm and raised her head.
Mariah met her own gaze in the mirror, startled at the cowgirl who looked back at her. Dressed in the black Stetson, she looked the part. That made her feel immeasurably better. She’d always been good at playing the part. Accomplished at donning the costume of whatever role she assumed. But somehow this was . . .
What?
Staring at her reflection she experienced an oddly puzzling sensation, as if she’d been digging through an old trunk and run across some family keepsakes she’d known nothing about. Familiar yet foreign, like a once beloved friend, not seen for decades, changed beyond recognition. Had Cassie and Dutch once dressed her like this as a little girl? She couldn’t remember, but it was likely.
“And these,” Joe said, walking over to where the ladies’ boots were shelved and retrieving a pair of exotic cowgirl boots. “You’d look sharp in Old Gringo.”
She was still barefooted from when she’d taken off her Manolos to show Prissy.
Joe tossed her a pair of socks and the boots. “Try them on.”
She had to admit, for cowgirl boots, they were very chic. Full-grain leather with a fashionably worn look. Leopard print with red piping details. Joe had excellent taste.
Mariah sat down on a stool that Joe brought over for her and slipped on the socks, and then the boots. They were surprisingly comfortable. She’d never had a pair of shoes that fit instantly, without any break-in period. But the Old Gringos seemed cobbled especially for her. Like Cinderella and the glass slipper.
Joe studied her feet, echoed her thoughts. “They’re made for you.”
“I’ll take it,” Mariah said to Prissy, who came floating back over with the chaps for Joe.
“The hat or the boots?” Prissy asked.
The price tag on the boots was a bit hefty, but if she had to wear cowgirl boots, she might as well go with the comfortable snazzy ones. When looking the part, Destiny had drilled into her, go all the way.
“Both. And let’s throw in some Wrangler jeans and a half-dozen blouses.”
“Dang, look at you.” Prissy beamed and sank her hands on her hips. “Fittin’ right in. Go ahead and pick out some shirts and jeans while I ring Joe up.”
Joe followed Prissy to the cash register.
Mariah watched him go. The man possessed a magnificent butt.
Yes, so what? A magnificent butt did not a relationship make. Not that she wanted a relationship with him. She didn’t. He was damaged. She was damaged. She didn’t want a relationship with anyone. Not now. Not for a long, long time.
Still wearing the Stetson and the Old Gringo boots and lugging an armful of Western-style shirts and jeans, her Manolo Blahniks looped around two fingers, Mariah wandered to the cash register just as Joe was completing his purchase.
“See ya back at the ranch,” Joe said, lifted a hand good-bye to Mariah, and left the store, cowbell clanging merrily in his wake.
“Joe likes you,” Prissy said.
“How can you tell?”
“How can you not?” Prissy giggled. “You know, you look kinda like Becca.”
She found that disconcerting. “In what way?”
“She was small like you and blond.”
“But prettier?”
Prissy waved a hand. “Becca was prettier than everyone. Don’t let that throw you off the hunt.”
“I’m not hunting him.”
Prissy’s eyes rounded. “I sure would be if I didn’t have Paul.”
“I’m not interested.”
“You like guys don’t you?”
“Yes,” she reassured Prissy, “I like guys.”
“Then what’s got you scared?”
Mariah blew a raspberry. “I’m not scared.”
Prissy bagged up her purchases. “If you say so.”
“I’m just not interested. We have nothing in common. He’s country, I’m city.”
“You look pretty country to me in that outfit.” Prissy winked.
“All for show. Besides, he drinks too much.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
Mariah shrugged. “Something I deduced on my own.”
“You’re wrong about that. Joe doesn’t have a drinking problem. He hardly ever goes on a bender.”
“But he does. Sometimes.”
“He never did before Becca died.”
“I don’t need a guy who’s still hung up on his dead wife. That’s just asking for heartache.” Mariah handed Prissy her credit card.
Prissy held up her palm. “No charge.”
“What do you mean, no charge?”
“Joe already paid for you, purchases.”
“No, no.” Mariah shook her head. “He can’t pay for my things.”
“Honey, why not? If he wants to pay, let him.”
“I don’t even know the man. He can’t buy me things.”
Prissy looked confused. “Too late. It’s already been taken care of.”
Mariah grabbed the packages and went running out of the store, to chase him down. Joe was at the corner about to step into his pickup.
“Cowboy!” she hollered.
Every man on the street turned to stare at her.
“Not you,” Mariah said. “Him.” She pointed at Joe and with bags bumping against her, hurried down the sidewalk. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
Joe tipped his hat back. “Just helping you on your quest to fit in.”
“Well . . . well . . .” she sputtered. “I don’t need your help.”
“Wanna tell me why you’re so mad?”
“I don’t need you to buy my clothes.”
“Never said you did.”
“You paid for them.”
“You were sleeping in your car. You’re out of a job. You don’t need to run up credit card debt. I was just looking out for you the way Dutch would have wanted me to.”
“You mean the way that he didn’t?”
Joe shrugged. “You could try saying, ‘Thank you, Joe.’ ”
Mariah realized they were drawing a crowd. She shook a finger at him, the sacks sliding down her arm to her wrists. “You, Joe Daniels, are the most arrogant . . . cocky . . . show-off . . .”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, tipped his hat, got into his truck, and drove away, leaving her standing on the sidewalk amid snickers and curious stares.
It was going to be a very long two and a half months.
Chapter Eight
Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto.
—Dutch Callahan
Joe hadn’t intended on going to the pool tournament at the Silver Horseshoe. The Fort Worth Triple Crown Futurity started at the end of November, and with Dutch out of the picture, he and his best hand, Cordy Whiteside, needed to work extra hard getting Miracle ready.
He thought he’d worn himself out with work, fixing the busted corral fence again and putting Miracle through his paces, so the horse would be too worn out to plan another corral breakout. That animal missed Dutch something fierce.
Joe did too.
But come nightfall, after he’d rubbed down the stallion and stabled him for the night, Joe found himself at loose ends and feeling bone lonely. He’d walked to the liquor cabinet, reached for a bottle of tequila, and then thought about the last time he and Jose Cuervo had done the tango.
Joe hesitated, hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle. For no good reason, he thought of Mariah Callahan. How pissed off she’d been at him. He chuckled, thinking of the sparks in her eyes when she’d come chasing after him, berating him for paying for her clothes.
If he was being honest, he’d been thinking about her all day. While he’d been bumping the bit, directing Miracle to cut a particular calf from the herd, Mariah had been creeping around the edges of his mind like a shadow. He didn’t want her there, not at all, but she wouldn’t go away.
Just before dusk, he’d taken Miracle for a full run more to outrace his thoughts of her than anything else. To eradicate the vision of how lovely and exasperated Mariah had looked standing on the street corner with packages looped over her arm. By the time he returned from the gallop, twilight stars dotted the sky and the sun was nothing but a wan streak of orange, a shroud of evening clouds drawing closed the day.
He knotted his fist, felt a ferocious urge to wipe the trouble from Mariah’s eyes. That’s why he’d paid for her clothes. False sense of chivalry. The cowboy code. It had been a long time since he’d thought of someone else’s troubles.
Selfish.
He’d been damn selfish. Wallowing in sorrow, then throwing himself into cutting as if no one or nothing else mattered. He bought her clothes to assuage his guilt.
Jose tempted, golden and destructive. Drown it all out. C’mon, forget.
He played the game of love once and lost. Lost so badly, his tale was a town legend. He wanted to blank it out. He licked his lips, then purposefully took the tequila to the sink, twisted off the lid, and poured it down the drain. Proud of his choice, he drove into Jubilee.
Now, he sat at the end of the bar; nursing a Lone Star, cracking open peanuts roasted in the hull, waiting for the pool tournament to start and watching Ila play darts with Cordy.
Joe noticed that whenever Ila wasn’t looking, Cordy stared at her as if she was the sun and he was a seedling. While Ila, at five-foot-eleven towered over lovesick Cordy, who stood five-foot-eight in his cowboy boots.
Willie and Waylon wailed from the jukebox, beseeching mamas not to let their babies grow up to be cowboys. Ceiling fans whirled overhead. On the flat-screen television set mounted on the wall over the bar, the Dallas Mavericks were trouncing the Lakers.
Clover climbed up on the stool beside him. “Dutch wouldn’t have wanted you to waste time mourning, Joe.”
“It’s not just Dutch,” he said, picking at the label of his beer bottle.
“I know,” Clover murmured. “But it’s time to let Becca go. It’s been two years.”
“I never would have known that if you hadn’t pointed it out to me.”
“Sorry if I put my two cents in where it didn’t belong.” Clover held up her palms in a gesture of surrender.
“How easy was it for you to let go of Carl?”
“I still haven’t let go of him,” she said earnestly. “But I’m seventy. You’re not even thirty. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Me? I’m just killing time until I can see Carl again.”
Joe took a swig of his beer. Said nothing. What was there to say?
Clover clucked her tongue. “I miss the old Joe—wisecracking, hardworking, but always up for some mischievous fun. Why don’t you ask out Julianne Fletcher?” Clover nodded at a shapely, dark-haired woman playing electronic trivia at the other end of the bar with a group of friends. Julianne was a cutter and a member of the Jubilee Cutters Co-op. “Her divorce just came through.”
“Nah, she’s still too wounded.”
“Like you aren’t? I’m not sayin’ marry her. Just go out and have some fun.”
Joe cocked his head and pretended to give it some thought so Clover would leave him alone. Then the door opened and Mariah Callahan strutted in.
All eyes in the place swiveled to take her in.
She hesitated on the edge of the threshold, looking as if she wanted to turn tail and run. A spurt of sympathy shot through him. Couldn’t be easy being the new city slicker in a close-knit cutting horse town. She wore Wrangler blue jeans, a long-sleeved, white cotton cowgirl-style blouse, and the snazzy leopard-print Old Gringo boots he’d bought for her.
His lips parted. His eyes were glued to her sleek curves and he couldn’t wait for her to turn around so he could check out her butt in those jeans.
Her chin went up and her shoulders straightened and she let go of the door and strode forward, a resolute expression on her face.
His skin heated up. Just the beer. It was just the beer making him feel flushed. Not the girl. Not the girl at all.
“How about that one?” Clover nudged him in the ribs with her elbow and nodded at Mariah.
He pulled his gaze from Mariah, studied the neon Michelob sign on the wall in front of him, took a pull from his warm beer. “C’mon, Dutch’s daughter?”
“Don’t say it like it’s impossible.”
“It is impossible.”
“Why’s that?”
Joe shrugged, wiped the condensation from the outside of his beer bottle. “I’m not interested.”
“Liar.”
“She didn’t treat Dutch right,” Joe brooded. “He loved her so much and she never once came to see him.”
“You don’t know the whole story,” Clover said.
“And you do?”
“Dutch took off on her and her mama when Mariah was little.”
“He was a great guy.”
“To us, yeah. But to Mariah . . .” Clover shrugged, hopped off the stool, and went back around the other side of the bar. “Life is complicated. Ask her out. Give her a chance.”
He shook his head, took another swig of beer. It was getting warm. “She’s out of her element here. She’ll be gone as soon as I can scrape up the money to buy the place back from her.”
“I don’t know about that,” Clover said. “If she’s got an ounce of Dutch’s stubbornness, she just might surprise you.”
Mariah edged up to the bar.
“Hello,” Clover greeted her. “What’ll you have?”
Joe busied himself with staring at the TV but he couldn’t help watching Mariah from his peripheral vision. She was a curiosity. And she smelled really good too.
“I’d like a Riesling, please,” she said.
“Sorry,” Clover said. “It’s Chardonnay or Merlot.”
“Seriously?”
“Not many wine drinkers come to the Silver Horseshoe.”
“Chardonnay then.”
Clover poured up the Chardonnay, set it on a napkin, and passed it across the bar.
Mariah stood there holding her wineglass by the stem, looking a little lost.
“Ha
ve a seat,” Clover invited, canting her head at the bar stool beside Joe.
Mariah cast him a glance. He felt it rather than saw it because he was pretending to concentrate on the Mavericks forward who’d just made a shot from midcourt.
“Do you mind?” she asked.
“Free country.” He waved, wondering why he was feeling so tense, and finally made himself look at her.
She put her glass back up on the bar, tucked a strand of hair behind one delicate ear, and scaled the bar stool. She was so petite that her feet didn’t even reach the top rung.
A primal protectiveness that he didn’t want to feel toward her stole over him.
“You gettin’ settled in at Dutch’s cabin?” Clover asked, wiping the bar with a towel.
“Yes.” Mariah smiled faintly.
“Smoked ’im,” Ila crowed, striding up to the bar as Cordy wandered off to the jukebox where Neil Young was singing “Are There Any More Real Cowboys?” “A celebratory beer, please, Clover.”
Ila stood beside Joe, twisting her long, dark hair up on her head, and fanned her neck with her other hand. “Whew. I’m steamin’ hot. Who knew victory could make you sweat?”
“Cordy let you win,” Joe observed.
“What?” Ila looked startled. “No, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did.”
Flabbergasted, she sank her hands on her hips. “Why would he do that?”
“He’s got a crush on you.”
Ila wrinkled her nose. “No way. We’re just friends.”
“You tell Cordy that?”
“He’s Jack and I’m the beanstalk.”
“And he wants to climb you,” Joe teased.
“Shut up!”
“I’m serious.”
“Like your judgment counts for anything.”
“What do you mean?” Joe asked.
“Oh hey,” Ila said to Mariah. Apparently she didn’t want to talk about Cordy’s crush anymore. “I didn’t see you there.”
“And I didn’t recognize you out of uniform,” Mariah said. “You look very pretty in a dress.”
Ila struggled not to look flattered. “You like my dress, Joe?”
“Pretty,” he said. Why was Ila wearing a dress? She never wore a dress.
