The Cowboy's Mail Order Bride

by Carolyn Brown

  “I’m hungry,” Greg said.

  “Me too, and we aren’t flirting,” Emily said.

  Finger foods were laid out beautifully on crystal platters. Slider sandwiches stuffed with ham and cheese, a vegetable tray with a scrumptious-looking dip, a fruit tray with strawberry cream cheese dip, and a cheese ball covered in pecans with an assortment of crackers surrounding it. A three-section warmer held tiny egg rolls, buffalo wings, and smoky sausages in barbecue sauce. Several kinds of homemade cookies, including oatmeal raisin, which was Emily’s favorite, were stacked on pretty plates at the other end of the table.

  How in the devil was she supposed to top a spread like that the next week? Maybe she should just write Clarice a note on Sunday and sneak out before daybreak on Monday. She made it to the dining room in time to hear Rose talking softly to Clarice.

  “I write down what she says, but I swear I can’t remember what those letters all stand for. FYI, OMG, WTF… I lost my notebook. I know one of them has a dirty word in it, but I can’t remember what they are. If she don’t come over tomorrow I won’t be able to get on the laptop.”

  Rose blushed when she noticed that Emily was in the room. What in the devil were these old girls into? Had they discovered Internet dating for seniors?

  ***

  “What a day! Gramps, I wish you were here so I could tell you all about it,” Emily whispered at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

  It had gone by in a fast blur, and yet it had been the most exciting day she’d spent in years. As she brushed her teeth, she recaptured the highlights and most of them had to do with the expressions on Greg’s face throughout the day.

  It was only ten thirty when she crawled between the soft sheets and shut her eyes, but sleep would not come. Nothing helped! Not beating on the pillow. Not flipping from one side to the other. Not sitting up and staring into the semidarkness or imagining baby calves hopping over a low fence.

  “I need warm milk. Either that or a double shot of Gramps’s moonshine, and since the only jar left is on Shine Canyon, I guess it’s milk.” She slid out of bed, peeked out the bedroom door, and slipped out into the dark landing.

  Tiptoeing down the stairs and across the foyer, she used the moonlight coming in through the windows to make her way to the kitchen. She carefully poured milk into a coffee mug, set the microwave for twenty seconds, and waited until the ding.

  “Shhhh,” she hissed at the microwave. She didn’t want to wake up everyone in the house just because she was too worked up to get to sleep. She took a sip and decided that it needed chocolate. She held the refrigerator door open with her foot and squeezed a stream of chocolate syrup into the glass. She stirred with her finger, let the door go shut, and took a sip.

  “Couldn’t sleep either?” Greg asked from the shadows.

  She had to swallow fast to keep from spewing chocolate milk all over the kitchen floor and cabinets. In the semidarkness, she could see that he wore light gray sweat bottoms hanging low on his hips, no shirt, and no glasses. He was so sexy that it plumb took her breath away.

  The second hard swallow had nothing to do with milk and everything to do with a half-naked man right in front of her.

  “Must’ve been all that late-night food,” she muttered. “I even tried counting baby calves jumping over a rail fence.”

  With a flick of the wrist, he flipped the light switch. “That looks pretty good. Think I’ll join you. I count calves in a pen rather than watching them jump over a fence. If I did that, I’d start worrying about catching them all.”

  She immediately tugged at her shirttail, but the flannel didn’t stretch or cover any more of her legs. “I’ll just go on back to my room.”

  “Stay and talk to me,” he said.

  The clock in the living room chimed twelve times and she smiled. “I’m not dressed to stay and talk to you.”

  “I got the pants. You got the shirt. Between us, we’re dressed.” He poured a glass of milk and added two long shots of chocolate. “Let’s go to the living room where the chairs are more comfortable.”

  “Aha,” she said when realization hit.

  Fate was throwing another test at her, daring her to be alone with him.

  He turned the kitchen light off. “Aha, what?”

  “Nothing.”

  Be damned if she’d tell him that she’d figured out what fate was up to. She was being tested to see if she really did have roots on her ranch in Shine Canyon. This is what her grandfather was talking about all the time. Emily Cooper was as wily as fate, and not one thing could be thrown at her that she couldn’t handle. Well, okay, maybe not dominoes, but if Greg hadn’t smelled like heaven sitting right beside her all evening, and if he hadn’t kept brushing her fingertips, she might have had a better chance at winning the game.

  She led the way across the foyer and into the living room. Greg followed her and turned on a lamp at the end of the sofa. She set her half-empty glass on a coaster and curled up in the corner of the sofa.

  ***

  Greg had laid his book and glasses aside when he’d heard her bedroom door open and soft footsteps padding down the staircase. He followed her to the kitchen and watched from the shadows as she heated milk. Her black hair had been set loose from the ponytail and floated in gentle waves down past her shoulders. The shirttail hem on the flannel shirt she wore curved up on the side to show fine, shapely legs.

  He took a long gulp of his milk then put it on the coffee table in front of him. It did little to ease the dryness in his mouth or to still his racing pulse.

  “So evidently you are not married now because you’ve agreed to stay on and work for Nana for a month. Have you ever been married?”

  “Have you?”

  “I asked first,” he answered.

  “It doesn’t matter who asked first. I think it’s only reasonable that you answer my questions too. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. You either answer mine or I don’t answer yours,” she said.

  “Nana says that about the goose and gander all the time.”

  “So did Gramps. He said just because I was a girl didn’t mean I didn’t have to learn the ranchin’ business from the ground up.”

  “Okay, fair enough. No, I have not been married.”

  “Neither have I. Why?”

  “That’s two questions,” he said.

  “You asked two, so I get two.”

  She turned her head slowly and her blue eyes locked with his. He wanted to kiss her, to reach out and trace her jawline with his finger; he wanted to kiss her passionately. Even if she slapped the shit out of him, he had to kiss her.

  ***

  His eyes looked different without the glasses, softer and dreamier. Thick brown lashes rested on his cheekbones when he blinked. She reached up and touched the slight cleft in his chin.

  “Are you involved with anyone?” she whispered.

  He ran his left hand from her shoulder down to her hand, where he laced his fingers in hers. “Are you involved with someone?”

  She barely shook her head, afraid that he’d take it as a sign to move his hand.

  She wanted him to kiss her.

  “I should go back up to my room,” she whispered.

  He nodded and tilted her chin up with his right fist. “Me too.”

  Neither of them made a motion to stand.

  “But I don’t want to.” He grinned.

  Oh, hell, she thought as she unlaced her hand and scooted six inches closer to him. She leaned in, wrapped her arms around his neck, and brushed a kiss across his lips.

  He pulled her tightly against his bare chest, only the thin cotton of her nightshirt separating skin from skin. He deepened the second kiss until it felt like white-hot fire, silk sheets, and chocolate all mixed together. It held promises of something so wild and wonderful that it made her whole body
quiver.

  It ended, but it wasn’t over. He brushed the hair away from her neck and moved downward to that erotic zone right below the ear and strung scorching hot kisses from there to the hollow of her neck and back to her lips.

  He wrapped his arms around her waist, and she shifted positions until she was sitting in his lap. Her hand toyed with his hair at the nape of his neck, and the other pressed against his bulging chest muscle.

  His hand slipped beneath her shirt and massaged her back on his way to her shoulders, then gently eased around to cup her breast. She was going to explode any minute right there on the sofa. Tomorrow morning Clarice would find the remnants of a flannel shirt and a few buttons. The rest of Emily would be scattered around the room in fine ashes.

  His thumb grazed her jawbone, and his forefinger tilted her chin up for a better position, each kiss getting deeper and deeper, his tongue doing a mating dance with hers and heat building into a raging fire. He left her lips long enough to kiss both eyelids and move his hand from her breast to the top of her bikini underpants.

  She arched against him, ready for his touch, wanting it. His fingertips slipped beneath the elastic. She pressed closer to him and opened up for easier access. God, she’d never been so damn hot in her whole life.

  And then the microwave dinged.

  She jumped like she’d been shot, and with the speed of lightning, both of his hands were gone.

  “Shit!” he mumbled.

  Dotty’s voice floated from kitchen to den. “You couldn’t sleep either? Did you check out your laptop?”

  Emily and Greg scooted to opposite ends of the sofa.

  “Too much excitement. We’re gettin’ old when a domino game keeps us up. I got out my notebook and copied it all off in a new one so I can give it to Rose. She can’t do her business without the alphabet chart,” Clarice said.

  Greg whispered, “They’re in the kitchen. I’ll go keep them busy until you get back to your room.”

  Emily looked down at the telltale bulge in his pants and shook her head. “It would be kind of tough to cover that up. I’ll wait right here for them.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  She heard his bedroom door shut barely seconds before Dotty and Clarice joined her in the living room. She wanted so badly to ask them what they were doing with notebooks full of Internet lingo, but that would be prying into stuff that was none of her business. Still she would just love to see the pictures of the old men that they were flirting with online. Were any of them as handsome as her grandfather had been?

  “I figured Greg would be in here when I saw the light. Sometimes he has trouble getting to sleep,” Clarice said.

  “I couldn’t sleep so I heated up some milk and put some chocolate in it.” She pointed to the table. “That is probably his glass right there. Guess he left it when he went back to bed.”

  “He likes chocolate milk when he has trouble sleeping. I used to drink a little shot of Jack Daniel’s before Clarice put me on the wagon. Now I have a cup of jasmine tea,” Dotty said.

  “That good for insomnia?” Emily asked.

  Clarice sat down on the sofa beside Emily. “No, but Dotty thinks it is. Greg should have at least put his glass in the dishwasher.”

  “Guess none of us could sleep. I checked my emails and my Facebook site. Are y’all on Facebook? I’d love to have you as friends if you are,” Emily said.

  “Gracious, no! We wouldn’t have the faintest idea about all that shit,” Dotty said.

  “We come from the age of writing letters and notes, darlin’,” Clarice said. “Guess you noticed all the sticky notes in the kitchen. We get a big kick out of those. Prissy brought some when we first had trouble with the computer and she stuck them around the monitor. They kind of remind us of our younger days back before all this computer rage, so we started using them a lot.”

  “Well, I’ll see you in the morning, then.” She stood up and headed for the kitchen. It wasn’t until she started up the stairs that she could breathe right again. She and Greg had damn sure lucked out that night. In five more minutes they would have been having sex right there on the sofa or on the living room floor. They’d have been so wound up in each other’s naked arms that they wouldn’t have even heard that microwave dinging. Thank God for microwaves! Greg would have thought she was one loose-legged hussy if she’d fallen into sex with him after only twenty-four hours.

  Greg stepped out of his bedroom door and wrapped his arms around her, kissed her on the forehead, and whispered, “Your room or mine?”

  Shaking her head was the hardest thing she’d ever done. “Neither. We were both saved by the microwave. When fate steps in and stops something, there is a reason.”

  “Damn microwave,” he grumbled.

  “Good night, Greg.” She tiptoed and kissed him on the cheek.

  She shut her bedroom door and flopped backward on the bed. She beat the pillow into submission, but something still wasn’t right. Finally, she figured out that it was his picture, so she turned it around and crawled between the sheets. But sleep was still a long time coming that night.

  Chapter 5

  Lightning zipped through the sky in long streaks, and thunder rattled behind every streak. Clarice rode in the front seat and Dotty sat right behind Emily, umbrellas right beside their oversized purses.

  “Never know what it will do in February. It can put down a late snowstorm, hustle up a damn tornado, or turn off warm enough to work in shirt sleeves,” Dotty said. “If it starts to rain cats and dogs and baby elephants, I promise I’ll share my umbrella with you.”

  “Thank you, Dotty.” Emily smiled into the rearview mirror.

  “We’re going after Rose. Thank God she don’t drive anymore. Last time she got in her truck, she backed right out into the side of a police car. Totaled that car and ripped the tailgate off her damn truck,” Dotty said.

  “It was her fifth accident, so the insurance company canceled and no one else would insure her,” Clarice said. “It was time she quit driving years ago, but she didn’t have a grandson to take her truck keys away from her like Greg took mine or like Dotty’s boy, Jeremiah, got hers.”

  Emily followed directions into Ravenna and pulled into the driveway of a little white frame place with a couple of cats lazing on the steps.

  “Toot the horn. Rose primps until the last minute. She’s got a crush on that old guy at Dairy Queen,” Dotty said.

  Emily hit the horn and Rose came right out. Emily hopped out like a professional chauffeur and opened the van door for Rose, helped her inside, and buckled her seat belt.

  “Now this is real service,” Rose beamed.

  “See, I told you. Rose gets all fancied up to go to the beauty shop,” Dotty said.

  “I don’t take out the garbage without putting on my makeup. Lord, I’d scare the poor old trash man plumb to death,” Rose said as she took out her compact mirror and checked her lipstick one more time. “I’ve decided I’m having a massage today too, Dotty. I weeded all my flower beds and got them ready to plant in a few weeks before we played dominoes last night, and I’m aching all over.”

  “Woman, you got enough money to hire someone to do that for you. You are eighty years old, not twenty. Hire some help. There’s plenty of folks lookin’ for a job around here,” Clarice said.

  “I know how old I am, Clarice Adams, and I also know if you don’t use it, it’ll dry up and die, and my arms already look like bat wings, so I’m not going to just sit down and let them go to complete fat,” Rose said.

  “Well, shit! I ain’t used my female equipment since my husband died. You think it’s dried up?” Dotty asked.

  Rose slapped the air around Dotty’s shoulder. “Don’t talk like that around Emily. You’ll embarrass her. I would have been on the porch waiting, but I got a phone call from Letha who wanted to talk about Prissy… oh, turn righ
t at the T, Emily.”

  Emily turned and looked over at Clarice. “Now make the next left and go a quarter mile. You’ll see the arch over the gate. That’s where you turn right again, and Madge will be on the porch. She still drives, but we like to take her with us on Wednesdays so we can all be together.”

  “We all became friends back when we were young women,” Rose said.

  Emily looked at Dotty in the rearview.

  “Friends, hell. They are slave drivers and bossy as hell. My Johnny died five years ago and I had a lot of good old Kentucky bourbon therapy until this bunch of women interfered.”

  “We had an intervention,” Rose said seriously.

  Clarice pointed at the arch. “Yes, we did. I took charge and made her work for me, threatened to make her go to those meetings down at the Presbyterian church if she ever picked up the bottle again, and she’s doing fine. Madge is waiting on the porch.”

  Emily hopped out of the van again and settled Madge into the third spot, beside Rose. They were cramped, but it wasn’t too bad, and Madge swore she was not wiggling into the backseat, because she might miss something they said.

  “Now what were y’all talking about?” Madge asked. “I was looking on the farmer’s only dot…” She stopped dead and looked at Clarice.

  “You mean that farmer’s game thing on the Internet?” Rose asked too quickly.

  Emily’s ears perked right up. Those old girls were covering up something and she’d be willing to bet half her hundred acres that the next word after “dot” would have been “com.”

  “Oh, so you’re on Facebook and you like to play the farm game?” Emily asked innocently.

  “Not me,” Madge said. “My grandson brought a game for me to plug into my laptop that has to do with farmin’, and I was playin’ with it and…” she floundered.

  Clarice butted into the conversation. “We were telling Emily about our Dotty intervention.”

  Dotty slapped Clarice’s hand. “Intervention, my ass. You should’ve seen them come marching into my house like judge, jury, and Jesus all in one. They poured out my Jack, yelled at me, packed my clothes, and called Jeremiah to come sell my trailer.”