by Ginny Glass
“You look like a stranger.” Her voice could have cut through steel.
“Yeah. I’m sorry. The ranch came through that Wednesday.”
“And the bank wanted your cell phone as collateral, so that’s why you couldn’t call?”
He pulled back to look in her face, which was tight and scowling. “I should have called. I used being busy as an excuse.”
“So what’s the real reason?” Her tone dared him to bare his soul. Her eyes implored him to be honest with her.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he murmured.
Her expression didn’t lighten—either she didn’t hear him over the noise of the Saloon, or she didn’t care.
What was the real reason? “I just assumed I’m a shit like my dad,” Ben blurted out. “You deserved better.”
He expected her to walk off, but the song hadn’t ended yet. She tucked her head alongside his chin.
When the song was over, Ben took his hands off her. Time to say goodbye. He opened his mouth but what came out was, “Biggest mistake of my life.”
“I quit my job last week,” she said.
“Come out to the ranch. Please…” Ben knew he was being an asshole, but seeing her did something to his head. “I don’t deserve a second chance, but come anyway.”
She shook her head very slowly, but her eyes were sad. Then she was gone. He watched her walk back to her date, who was smart enough to smile at her like she was pure gold.
Someone jostled Ben, which reminded him he was on the dance floor. He returned to Jeff and Willy, who peppered him with questions about “the waitress.” Ben ignored them. Eventually they gave up trying to get him to talk.
*
Ben woke up at the usual time even though it was a Sunday and nothing much needed to be done that early. He made coffee and breakfast, then considered his choices. The tractor was getting close to its two-hundred-hour-service—he might as well do that. It looked like another scorching day, with no clouds to temper the late-summer sun. Relief only came with twilight falling a bit quicker every day.
Easiest to work on the tractor in the shed, close to the tools and out of the sun. Hotter, too, but that was why he’d better get it done first.
The worst part of greasing the Zerk fittings was getting to them. More than one required him to be on his back, reaching in at a stretch.
“Ben?”
His head lifted so fast, he slammed his forehead against the underside of the front-end loader. “Shit!”
“Oh, God, are you all right?” Diana’s voice moved closer, then her face peered at him.
“Sorry, you startled me.” He wriggled out from under the tractor.
“I’ll go. I didn’t think you’d be busy.”
“I’m not.” He stood up, brushing dirt off his backside. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
She grinned at him, then stared at his bare chest and cutoffs. “I didn’t think I would either.”
He took advantage of the distraction to look her over too. She was wearing khaki shorts and a Big Hollow Food Co-op T-shirt. He thought maybe she wasn’t wearing a bra. She looked—well, he was scared to find a word for how good she looked.
He realized the silence had gone on too long. “I have iced coffee, if you want some.”
“That’d be nice, thanks.” She tucked her hands in the back pockets of her shorts. She was biting her bottom lip, which reminded him of those early days in April when he ate at the Short Stack twice a week.
“I wish I’d done it differently.” The words were out of his mouth before he realized.
She cocked her head to one side. “Why don’t you get me that iced coffee?” Her Tennessee drawl sent shivers up his spine despite the heat of the morning. He nodded and led her inside.
They sat at the kitchen table, tumblers of pale mocha coffee in their hands, the ice clinking as they stirred it.
Now that he had his chance—an opportunity he hadn’t expected and sure as hell didn’t deserve—he didn’t know what to say. He was about to admit that when she spoke.
“Tell me about the ranch.” She lifted her chin to indicate the green horizon beyond the windows.
“Oh. Okay. Well, it’s mine.” What could he say about it? She couldn’t be interested in the haying business.
“No, I mean, tell me about your dad’s ranch.” She wasn’t smiling.
“Someone been gossiping?”
She nodded.
He stirred his coffee just to have something to do. “I love it. It’s all I ever wanted, as a kid. To help my dad and someday—when I was a lot older—to take over. Then he died.”
“And you didn’t inherit?”
He stared into his glass, apparently fascinated by the swirling ice. “My stepmother owns it. She wanted me to stay on as foreman, but I couldn’t. Dad left me some money, enough to buy this place. It’s okay.” Who was he reassuring? He no longer knew.
Her turn to be mesmerized by her drink.
Ben sat up straight. “I’m sorry, Diana. I like you too much to have done what I did. I was busy, but that’s no excuse. By the time I woke up to missing you, it just seemed way too late to try again. And now you’re dating someone else.”
He felt both relieved and leaden when he’d gotten that over with. She’d leave, but at least he’d admitted he screwed up.
“Hey, it was just one night, right?” She faked a little laugh, her eyelashes sweeping up to look at him.
“It wasn’t. At least, not for me.”
Her lips came together in a little circle, like she was about to suck on a straw. She didn’t respond.
He tried to get back to a less personal topic. “So you quit your job?”
“Yeah.”
“Finally got your car fixed?” He meant it as a joke, but neither of them laughed.
Now she was staring at him as though he was even more fascinating than the ice. “I decided to stop waiting.”
Shit. “For me?”
She nodded.
“I should’ve called.” He felt tortured by how much he wanted her. But saying it now, that had to be insulting to her.
“I should have called you. Or, well…I guess…” She drew a deep breath. “I mean, I knew about you buying this place, so I should have known you were busy.” She was biting her lip again. Did she have any idea how crazy-mad with desire that drove him? He tried not to stare at her mouth, think about those lips around his cock.
He shifted in his chair. “No, I’m the one—” He squared his shoulders. “My father cheated on my mother. It’s like she stopped interesting him. I worry that I’m like him.”
“So have I stopped interesting you?” Her eyes flared with some emotion.
“My dick’s been rock hard pretty much since you got here. Does that answer your question?” In fact, if he had to stand up, he’d embarrass both of them.
She blushed as her eyelashes brushed her cheeks. “I guess so.”
They sat there in the peculiar quiet of the country. Lots of noise—insects, birds, even the wind in the grass—creating a peaceful drone.
Ben finally said what he’d wanted to say back in April. “I didn’t need to come to Laramie. That business with the bank, I could have managed that with a phone call once a week. I came to see you. The first time, I could hardly look at you except when you were taking care of other people. I made an excuse so I could go there for lunch.”
He stirred vigorously, watching the ice eddy in the glass. “When we came here, I thought, ‘This is how it could be.’ Us, together, here.”
He looked up at her. “But then we made love, and it was—I don’t know how to describe it. Better than every Christmas rolled into one.” He grimaced. “The next day the bank called, and I thought—I have to choose. I’m not allowed both the ranch and her.”
“You picked the ranch.” It was a statement. She didn’t sound mad, but he wasn’t sure.
“I settled for the ranch. I didn’t think I had a shot with you. I really didn’t. Who was I
? A busted-out ranch hand with a crappy dream. You deserved better.”
Her eyes didn’t even blink. God, he hoped she understood.
She glanced around the kitchen. “You got any condoms?”
*
His bed was rumpled and there was a pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the room, but Diana didn’t even seem to notice. She kissed him on the mouth and his cheeks, at the edge of his hair, and even his ears. He was trying to pull off her T-shirt, but her kisses kept distracting him.
When he did get it off, he discovered he’d been right—she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples were tight. She shivered when he brushed his thumbs against them.
He undid the snap at the waist of her shorts, hooked his thumbs in the elastic of her panties and pushed the fabric down her legs. She kicked off her sandals and the shorts.
“Now you,” she ordered, pointing at his cutoffs.
Once he got his boots off, there wasn’t much left—he was naked in under a minute.
She stepped right up to him and put her hands on his cock. So good, like his dick remembered her touch, her smell, the brush of her nipples against his chest hair. She was playing with the head, and the underside, and his balls, and—he groaned, it felt that damned good.
He brought his hands to her nipples.
“Pinch them,” she said.
“I think I like it when you get bossy.” He rolled her nipples, pinched them, even nipped them gently with his teeth. From the way her hands convulsed on his cock, she enjoyed his efforts.
She glanced over his shoulder, although he wasn’t sure what she had to look at. The room had a bed and not a lot else. Then she pushed at his shoulders and he got it. She wanted to make sure they were close enough to the bed. He let himself be pushed back onto the mattress. She reached for the condoms on the bedside table, then crawled on her hands and knees across the bed until she was dead center above him.
He lifted his head enough for them to kiss but she didn’t flop on top of him the way he imagined she would. Instead, she broke off the kiss, gave him an evil grin, then sat on his thighs to unwrap a condom.
“Why did you come? Today, I mean?” He knew he was an idiot to ask, especially in the middle of sex, but he really wanted to know. Maybe this was revenge—they’d fuck, he’d fall asleep and she’d leave. Frankly, he’d deserve it.
She concentrated on rolling on the rubber, frowning as she talked. “Your face when you looked at this land. Back in April. I could tell this was all you wanted, to own land of your own. When you disappeared and we heard you’d bought the place, I was happy for you. I just figured you didn’t want me too.”
She lifted herself and brought her hot, wet, tight core down on his cock. He felt like he’d come home.
She leaned on her hands, staring down at his face. “When you came over to me on Saturday, I was angry, sure, but I was also hopeful that maybe now you had your ranch you had a little room left for me.”
She lifted up and pushed down, hard. They fit together just right. He cupped her ass with his hands, his thumbs curled around her hip bones. She lifted back up and hovered above him, the tip of his cock just barely inside her.
“Darlin’, I have an empty heart waiting for you to move in.”
She rammed back down. “Glad we got that settled.”
He tucked a hand in so he could touch her clit with his thumb.
When she came, her hair flowing around her shoulders, her body shaking with the sensation, Ben knew he’d gotten a second chance.
He was one lucky bastard.
*
Z Is For Zeal
Emily Cale
The local watering hole had turned into a sea of skinny men in brand-new cowboy hats and boots. Tourists. On any given day, it only took me a second to pick them out of the crowd, though tonight the more difficult task was hunting down the regulars from the infestation of visitors. Everything from the oversized belt buckles to the too-tight jeans to the perfectly pressed button-down tops was perfectly clean. Like they’d picked them out at the mall earlier that day and changed in the bathroom before making their way to the restaurant.
It was enough to make me wonder why I’d bothered with the evening at all. Sure, it was Tuesday night. That meant twenty-five-cent wings, two-dollar beers and a reason to actually get in my truck and drive farther than the edge of my property. I sat down at one of the few empty barstools and waited for the bartender to notice me. Despite the place being crowded, the majority of patrons either opted for a table or standing room. I thanked my lucky stars this place had never broken down and bought a mechanical bull.
Most weeks a barstool and a pint were enough to keep me happy. If I was lucky, a friend or two would show up and we’d shoot the breeze for an hour or two. If I was extra lucky I’d get to sit by myself and watch a baseball game on TV while listening to classic country music.
This wasn’t most weeks, though. This was rodeo week. Not just any rodeo either. The rodeo. The largest one in the state and the event that the whole town looked forward to all year. At least that was what the advertising the visitor’s bureau handed out said. There was no denying the week had its pluses. Plenty of good bull riders and a carnival filled with anything and everything capable of being fried.
I wasn’t really allowed to complain given that the majority of my livelihood came from supplying steers for events, including this one. Though I hauled my livestock out of town to other events, mainly small ones for high schools and colleges around the state, this was the big league as far as my finances were concerned. It’d be the perfect arrangement if it didn’t bring a few hundred tourists around. I reminded myself that those visitors were the ones buying the tickets and merchandise that paid my bills, but on nights like tonight it was hard not to see them as a nuisance. A bunch of whiny people who wanted nothing more than to pretend to be cowboys for a few days.
I snorted. Like any of them would last a single second on a real working ranch. Hell, the minute one of them got a little mud on his hundred-dollar boots, he’d probably run off crying and begging for a damp towel to clean up with—and a caramel macchiato to calm his nerves. Wait until he discovered that it was more likely to be cow manure than mud.
Actually, I’d pay good money to see that. If one of the networks put out a reality TV show with a bunch of city guys attempting to be America’s Top Rancher, I’d finally break down and subscribe to cable just for the pleasure of actually witnessing such a thing.
Until then, watching them get drunk and stumble around the bar was as good as it got. Not quite as exciting as seeing one of the noisy assholes slip on a cow pie, but it helped to imagine the blisters they must have from the unyielding leather of their new boots. Still, tonight would likely end after one beer and a quick walk around the place to say hi to bigwigs from the planning committee. Had to make my one social appearance for the week to make sure they believed I was worth their investment.
Or rather that my steers were. No one gave a shit about me as long as I managed to show up on time, kept the animals strong and didn’t say anything that royally pissed anyone off.
God, now I remembered why I didn’t leave my property very often. Simply being this close to so many people made my head pound. I really needed that beer. That involved getting the attention of a bartender, though, something I was failing at tonight.
“This seat taken?”
Damn. I thought I’d managed to put on my best mess-with-me-and-die face. Guess I was out of practice. No, but I’d still prefer you didn’t sit there. “I’m not saving it.” I needed to be more assertive. At this rate, I’d wind up talking to a whole bunch of wannabes all night long.
I kept my eyes glued to the bar top as the stranger situated himself on the barstool next to mine. Eye contact could only lead to bad things. If I pretended he didn’t exist, maybe he’d extend me the same courtesy.
“Nathan Howell.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see his outstretched hand. Wincing internally,
I turned and plastered my best “Welcome to Colorado” smile on my face. “Aaron Lyons.” Holy. Hell. I almost choked on my next sentence. “You in town for the rodeo?”
I hadn’t expected to find the person sitting next to me to be so goddamn attractive. I also hadn’t expected to find someone who didn’t look the least bit like he’d just walked out of a Western-wear store.
This guy was the real deal. He might be wearing the same tight jeans and boots, but they were well broken in. I’d expected some bright-eyed Californian overcompensating with a massive belt buckle and five-gallon cowboy hat. Instead, my eyes feasted on a tousled mess of golden-blond ringlets sitting top one of the most beautiful men I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. A part of me wanted to reach up and touch his hair, just to see if it was as soft and thick as it looked.
“Work trip.” He swung his barstool back and forth a few times.
Still counts as a tourist. I consoled myself with the thought that I’d been right about that part. “What kind of business you in?” My curiosity got the best of me. Besides the rodeo, not much went on in town.
“I’m not at liberty to say.” He smirked, big dimples forming on either cheek.
“Do I look like a spy to you?” I could hear the flirtatious tone in my voice and tried to remove it partway through the sentence. Instead of fixing the problem, my words came out sounding even more breathy.
He sat up straight and let his eyes wander over my body, starting at my boots and working his way up to where my hat usually sat. I always left it in my truck when I went inside, but now wished I’d worn it to shelter myself from his gaze. Or at least to hide the redness I could feel in my cheeks. Exposed, I tried not to focus on the heat trail that seemed to follow his eyes as they worked their way up my body. When he finished and snapped his head back, the molten feeling settled in my groin. Shifting in my seat, I tried to find a position to accommodate my growing erection while still hiding it from my new friend.
“Nah, but I still can’t tell you. How about I buy you a drink instead and you tell me about this little town. I always like to get an insider’s opinion.”
“Sure, I suppose I could tell you a few things.” I should have said no. In fact, I should have gotten up and walked straight out to the parking lot, hopped into my truck and driven home. There was a fridge full of beer and a recliner waiting for me. And I wouldn’t have to wait for the staff to grace me with their presence. You’d think they’d be interested in keeping the regulars at least a little happy. Once the week ended, we’d be the only thing keeping the place out of the red.
