Must Love Cowboys

by Cheryl Brooks

  Only a few minutes before, Jack Kincaid had called me a “good girl.” I’d been referred to in that manner all my life. I knew it wasn’t the right time or place, but just this once, I wanted to be bad.

  Very bad.

  Chapter 8

  Dean seemed more than willing to accommodate me. Deepening the kiss, he teased my lips with the tip of his tongue. Somehow, my hands were on his shoulders, sliding down to grip his upper arms. I could have pushed him away, but instead I pulled him closer, letting his tongue slip into my mouth. Gliding a hand to the back of his neck, I threaded my fingers through his hair. Earlier that day, touching Wyatt there had done something to me. Something I felt again. Only this time, I recognized it for what it was.

  Intimacy. Passion. Desire.

  I kept telling myself this was happening simply because Dean was as lonely as the other guys living in that bunkhouse. Joe might’ve had a girlfriend, but the others were starved for female companionship to the point that a woman like me, who’d been virtually ignored all her life, was now receiving more attention than she knew what to do with.

  If movie plots were anything to go by, the next step would find Dean in my bed—or in the backseat of my car—making wild, passionate love to me. We would be tearing each other’s clothes in our haste to get down to business. Funny, I’d never felt that kind of urgency about much of anything. Nor did I feel it then. Although I was perfectly willing to let nature take its course, I saw no need to rush.

  Dean was right about one thing: I certainly wasn’t cold. On top of that, he tasted like apple pie. Would I compare this kiss to others I received in the future? I had no idea.

  You’re thinking too much, Tina.

  Maybe the fact that I was doing so much thinking was a bad sign. Surely I should have been kissed senseless by now.

  Or maybe I was already senseless. After all, I was on a ranch in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming, leaning against my car while a handsome cowboy attempted to kiss my lips off. If that was sensible behavior, I’d obviously been following the wrong rules.

  Following those rules was probably why I’d never had a boyfriend. I had always expected Prince Charming to ride up on a white horse and fall in love with a woman too shy to say a word or even look him in the eye. Thus far, he hadn’t bothered to put in an appearance.

  Still, whether I craved it or not, I was too straitlaced for a whirlwind romance. Resigning myself to the inevitable, I turned my head, effectively ending the kiss.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “I’m not any good at this.”

  “I think you’re doing fine.” His voice was tempered with a thick, husky timbre. “But maybe I’m pushing too hard.”

  “Well…considering I only met you yesterday, you might be.”

  “Look, I know you think I’m just a big flirt, but I really like you, Tina.”

  I nodded slowly, wondering how many women he’d said that to. I was so naive. But there was one way to overcome that failing.

  Experience. The amount I’d had thus far would fit through the eye of a needle. “I like you too. Only I don’t know how much yet.”

  His deep sigh contained a slight quaver. “Me either.” A smile curled his lips as he traced the contour of my cheek with a fingertip. “I’d sure like to find out.”

  “And how do you propose we do that?”

  “Whatever you want. I’m game.”

  Gulping in a breath, I took what was, for me, quite a plunge. “A little fun and games, maybe?”

  His eyes lit up. “Really?”

  “I’ll only be here for a couple of weeks at the most. Nothing serious, of course, and no strings attached, but…”

  Somehow, I doubted Dean had ever been serious about much of anything. The odds were much greater that I would be the one to fall for him. He was cute and likable. What more could a woman want in a man? Money? I didn’t expect to marry a millionaire or even date one. The romance novels I’d read should’ve had me believing that young, sexy, single billionaires fell from the sky like rain in April.

  For that matter, handsome cowboys were supposed to be as plentiful. I didn’t doubt there were hoards of them in Wyoming alone, but cowboys who met the young, sexy, and single requirements were bound to be pretty rare. Aside from the fact that most women probably didn’t envision living out their happily ever afters in a bunkhouse.

  None of those things mattered because I was only there to help out for a short while. When Calvin recovered and returned to the ranch, I would go home. If he couldn’t resume his position as cowboy and cook, the owners would hire someone else who could take on both jobs. Replacing one man with two people made no sense whatsoever.

  “No strings, huh? I can handle that.” Dean retrieved the shoe boxes from the roof of the car and offered me his arm. “What do you say we start by spending the evening in your room reading old letters?”

  His sly grin led me to assume there would be more than letter reading going on, although I had absolutely no idea what to expect.

  As we strolled back to the bunkhouse, I became aware of something I couldn’t recall ever having felt before—a slick, wet sensation between my thighs. I’d never been around a man who’d even attempted to elicit that response from me. Evidently, I wasn’t incapable. Dean had proved that with one kiss.

  He climbed the steps to the porch and held the kitchen door open for me. As soon as I stepped inside, I wished we’d used the door that opened directly into my room. Wyatt and Bull were at the sink, washing dishes, and the scowl Wyatt aimed in my direction made me suspect him of spying on us. I couldn’t have named all the emotions reflected in his eyes, but at least one of them was disgust—or maybe annoyance. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t jealousy.

  In that instant, my anger flared. Who was he to judge me anyway? I was a grown woman who’d rarely even been kissed. Didn’t everyone deserve a little passion in their life?

  Determined not to let Wyatt make me feel guilty, I lifted my chin and walked past him with a purposeful stride. “Dean and I will be in my room reading through these letters if anyone wants to give us a hand.”

  I could have sworn I heard Wyatt let out a snort, but Bull was the one who spoke up. “I don’t envy you that job. I never could read Calvin’s handwriting.”

  Having been more accustomed to reading printed texts and emails, I wasn’t much good at deciphering such things myself. I paused by the doorway to the hall. “Hopefully we’ll have better luck. If not, I’ll start searching online or read the letters my grandfather sent to Calvin. I’m sure they’re all typewritten, although I don’t believe they’d be as useful.”

  “Probably not,” Dean agreed. With a smug grin, he placed a hand on the small of my back and steered me into the hall. “Y’all know where to find us.”

  I could scarcely contain my giggles until we reached my room. “Do you think they saw us?”

  “I dunno,” Dean replied, chuckling. “But if looks could kill, Wyatt would be facing murder charges.”

  “What’s his problem anyway?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe he wants you for himself.”

  My thoughts touched on the back rub episode. If Wyatt had wanted more than a massage, he’d had plenty of opportunity to ask me, and he hadn’t. “I doubt it.” I was a breath away from making the usual self-deprecating remark when it occurred to me that I now knew of at least one man who was anxious to be my—what was he, anyway? A sort of temporary boyfriend? The whole idea seemed rather shallow. Still, I certainly wasn’t going to turn down a little male attention, particularly when the man in question was as cute—and willing—as Dean.

  Wyatt struck me as the unattainable type. Sexy and tempting, perhaps, but ultimately beyond my reach. Unfortunately, dismissing him from my thoughts wasn’t easy. Putting my hands on him had done things to me I couldn’t begin to explain.

  “His loss.” Waggling his bro
ws, Dean dumped the boxes on the bed and sat down, patting the space beside him. “Have a seat.”

  Something told me if I were to sit that close to him, we wouldn’t get much reading done. I opted to perch near the head of the bed with the letters between us.

  “Chicken,” he chided.

  I grimaced. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not have to listen to any teasing from the rest of the gang. Not yet, anyway.”

  He glanced toward the door. “I’m guessing it’ll be a while before anyone decides to join us.”

  Once again, I was far more adventurous in theory than in practice. On the other hand, unless he sneaked into my room late at night, this was probably our best opportunity. I couldn’t see meeting him in the barn. For one thing, it was much too cold. “Okay, but make it quick.”

  “Don’t believe anyone’s ever said that to me before.” Smiling, he shoved the boxes aside and pulled me into his arms. “But I’ll do my best.”

  The kiss was better this time. Soft. Sensuous. Heady. We were even on a bed. Never having come that close to having sex in my life, I wouldn’t have been too surprised if his kisses had triggered an orgasm.

  They didn’t, of course, although his lips did make me forget the possibility of being observed.

  Until the image of Wyatt’s scowl popped into my head.

  I broke off the kiss. “Better not press our luck.”

  “Damn. I was just getting started.” To my surprise, he seemed a bit breathless. Had kissing me really done that to him?

  Amazing…

  Breathing quite heavily myself, I scooted sideways and slid the boxes between us. Heat flooded my cheeks as my erogenous zones screamed in protest. Swollen lips, tingling nipples, and that sexy moisture between my legs.

  He lifted the lids on the boxes and then handed one set to me. “These look like the oldest of the bunch.”

  “If I know my grandfather, they’re probably in order.” Doing my best to steady my nerves without making a big show of it, I chose a letter from one end of the box and studied the envelope. “This one’s postmarked Saigon. Doubt if it would help us much.”

  Suddenly, I had no desire to read any of those letters, especially after noting the address on that first one—a missive Grandpa must’ve received while recovering from the wounds that earned him a Purple Heart. Those boxes had been in my possession for months, but beyond a quick check to verify their contents, I’d kept their lids firmly shut. Even now, when I had a valid reason to go through them, I was reluctant to do so, knowing full well how painful the task would be.

  “You okay?” Dean asked. “You’ve been staring at that for a long time.”

  I glanced up. “I’m not sure I should be the one to do this.”

  He nodded as though he understood. “Too close to the recipient?”

  “Yeah.” I turned the letter over in my hand. “I wasn’t even born when this letter was mailed. Calvin was still serving in Vietnam. The war hadn’t been lost yet. Saigon hadn’t been renamed Ho Chi Minh City. And Grandpa was in an Army field hospital in Da Nang.”

  Goose bumps prickled my skin as I spoke those last words. Grandpa had come very close to dying in that hospital. Mom had told me that much. I didn’t want to know any more.

  Dean took the letter gently from my hand. “Maybe all we need to look at are the return addresses.”

  I nodded slowly. “I can do an online search once we know where Calvin lived during a census year. The 1980 census would be best.”

  “Then we’ll just look for a letter with a 1980 postmark.”

  “Okay.” That much, I could do.

  In the end, Dean was the one who found the letter we needed. Calvin might not have been born there, but in 1980, he’d been living in Liberty, Texas. Apparently Wyatt’s ear for accents was spot-on.

  If Calvin and Grandpa were indeed the same age, Calvin would’ve been thirty-three years old then. Had his wife and kids already been killed in that accident? I caught myself staring at yet another envelope without daring to examine the contents. I knew finding Calvin’s next of kin was important, but a letter written in the wake of the worst tragedy of his life was one I had no desire to read.

  I went over to the desk and pulled up the census data on my computer but didn’t get very far. If I’d ever known about the seventy-two-year blackout on census data, I’d forgotten about it. The most recent information I could get to was from 1940—perhaps as many as ten years before Calvin was born.

  “Looks like I’m going to have to sign up for one of the genealogy sites to find anything. Too bad we don’t know his father’s name. He would’ve been on the 1940 census along with any of Calvin’s older siblings.” That alone would’ve given us the information we needed, especially if he had any brothers. Any sisters would, of course, have been listed under their maiden names, which would make them difficult to track down if they had ever married.

  Still, we knew Calvin had lived in Texas after the war. I tried a White Pages search, but all I learned was that Calvin probably knew everyone who lived and worked on the Circle Bar K Ranch.

  “My, how helpful,” I muttered.

  “Need a hand?”

  I glanced up to see Wyatt standing in the doorway. The condemning scowl was gone, possibly because I was sitting at the desk while Dean lay sprawled on the bed, evidently absorbed in the letter he was reading.

  “Sure,” I replied. “All I’ve come up with so far is that Calvin lives here in the bunkhouse with you guys.”

  “How come you aren’t reading the letters?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t do it. I—” My voice faltered as I turned back toward the computer screen. My nice, impersonal link to the world. A link that didn’t include the kind of troubling emotions I was bound to find in those handwritten letters.

  “Hits too close to home,” Dean supplied for me. “I don’t blame you, Tina. This stuff is tough to read, and I’m not talking about the handwriting.”

  Without a word, Wyatt crossed the room, picked up a handful of letters, and took a seat in the recliner. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he very methodically chose the first letter in the stack, removed it from the envelope, and settled down to read.

  Wow. Two cowboys in my bedroom. I would have entered that momentous bit of data into my diary, if I’d ever kept one. I’d flipped through one of Grandpa’s journals after he died. He had diligently recorded the high and low temperatures and the amount of rainfall every day along with a list of the things he’d done, but he never mentioned his thoughts about what was happening.

  Not like those letters Dean and Wyatt were reading. I was still hesitant to start poking around in Calvin’s belongings, but continuing a fruitless search when I could be doing something productive was a waste of time.

  “I’m going to look for the other letters,” I announced.

  “Think you’ll find anything useful in them?” Wyatt asked.

  “Probably not, but I can’t read the letters Calvin wrote. I just can’t.”

  He shrugged. “I’m sure Calvin wouldn’t mind if you read the others. At least, not any more than he’d mind us reading these.”

  “Feels intrusive, doesn’t it?”

  “A bit.” It was nothing like reading letters written in another century, even if the correspondents happened to be my ancestors. I barely knew Calvin, but I had known my grandfather quite well.

  I glanced at Dean. As riveted as he was to what he was reading, Wyatt and I might not have even been on the same planet.

  With a nod, I rose from the desk and headed down the hall to Calvin’s room.

  Nothing had been touched since the ambulance crew had left the night before. The bed was stripped, the mattress still askew on its frame. The pill bottles sat on the desk, leaving me to assume that the medics had made a list of them. Choosing one at random, I read the label, just
as Wyatt had done. That particular prescription had been filled several months prior, and the bottle was practically full—sufficient evidence to prove he hadn’t been taking them.

  I returned the bottle to the desk and glanced at the bed. Tidying up his quarters was the least I could do. I had just shoved the mattress back into place when I heard something hit the floor. A tiny glass bottle rolled across the bare wooden surface. Curious, I stooped to pick it up.

  The cap was screwed on tight, but the bottle was empty. I stood there, staring at the label for several long moments.

  Nitrostat.

  Once again, I didn’t have to be a medical professional to know nitroglycerine was used to treat chest pain. According to the expiration date, the tablets would still have been good if there’d been any left. Had he taken the last one right before I found him? Or had the bottle been empty to begin with? And if so, for how long? Surely if he’d been using them often, he would’ve refilled the prescription.

  Unless he’d been putting it off. Still, anyone with a known heart condition would understand the importance of having those tablets on hand at all times. He might’ve even carried them in his pocket.

  I stared at the meds on the desk. Had this bottle been among them?

  Only one way to find out.

  Returning to my room, I handed the bottle to Wyatt. “I found this on the floor just now. Was it with the other medication bottles you checked last night?”

  His brows knit together in a satyr-like frown. “No, but the fact that it’s empty explains a lot.”

  Dean looked up from the letter he’d been reading. “What’s that?”

  “Nitrostat,” Wyatt replied. “Used to treat angina. It won’t stop a full-blown MI, but if he’d taken them, last night’s episode might’ve turned out differently.”