How the Cowboy Was Won

by Lori Wilde

  “Overqualified. The bane of brilliant minds everywhere. You could just stay at the Silver Feather and be a gentleman rancher.”

  “The Silver Feather is Ridge’s baby. Duke made that clear enough. Besides, I’d be bored out of my skull within a week. Ranching is monotonous as hell.”

  “A week? C’mon. You wouldn’t make it two days.”

  “You see my dilemma.”

  “Suck it up, Lockhart. There are worse things than playing Edward Beale.”

  “It’s not that. It’s the whole fund-raiser thing.”

  “And now we’re back to why you need a wife.”

  “Using a wife to further my career does not sit right with me.”

  “You’re looking at this the wrong way. Marriage is a partnership. You do things for each other.”

  “The way you and Trey did?”

  “Low blow.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Most men your age are married with families. It’s normal.”

  “I’m not most men.”

  “For sure.” It was one of the things she liked about Ranger. How he didn’t fit inside any particular box, not even the genius nerd box. Yes, he was whip smart and lived inside his head, but he was also an earthy cowboy and a fiery poker player, and underneath it all, he had this gentle caring side honed by his own childhood misfortunes. He truly cared about people, even if he didn’t always understand them.

  She thought of all the times she’d seen his kindness in action—when he donated bone marrow to a local child with leukemia, the ten years he served in the Cupid volunteer fire department, the destitute family he let live in his guesthouse for free until they could get back on their feet. Altruism was a hallmark of his character. He hardly cared about money at all, which was why he was having trouble with the whole concept of fund-raising.

  Ember figured this easy-come, easy-go attitude toward money stemmed from when he discovered that his mother, Sabrina, had accepted two million dollars from his father to walk away from the marriage and sign over her parental rights.

  He’d come running to Ember one Christmas morning when they were eight, filled with percussive grief and betrayal. He’d opened a present from his mother to find a deck of playing cards and a Hoyle book on how to play poker, and a handwritten note telling him she was so sorry she couldn’t be with him.

  It was the first present he’d ever gotten from his mother, and initially he’d been ecstatic, but something about the letter niggled at him. The handwriting looked awfully familiar. He’d compared it to refrigerator notes written by his stepmother, Lucy. The “d” in Dear, looked an awful lot like the “d” in Dates on Lucy’s grocery shopping list, and he’d confronted her with the evidence.

  Kindhearted Lucy had only been trying to make Ranger feel better for lack of contact with his mother, and she hadn’t expected the sharp kid to put two and two together. She’d admitted to writing the note and buying the presents, but when he’d asked her why she’d done it, Lucy had told him to ask his father.

  Blunt Duke had popped out with the truth. “Yeah, your real mother left you and signed away all her parental rights for two million bucks. So what?”

  That’s when Ranger had come running to Ember.

  Studying him now, his long legs stretched between the sofa and ottoman, his eyelids half-closed, his ruggedly handsome features softened in the dim light, Ember’s heart melted like butter on a hot biscuit.

  “Spend the night,” she invited. “It’s late and you’ve had beer.”

  “Throw me a blanket and pillow, and I’ll stretch out right here on the couch.”

  “I’ve got a king-sized bed, Lockhart.” It was the bedroom suite she’d inherited in the divorce; she’d gotten a new mattress, of course. “No need for the couch. Besides, that’s where Samantha likes to sleep.”

  It wasn’t the first time they’d slept in the same bed. They’d done it dozens of times as kids, and once, there was that time he’d come to visit her when she was in college and they’d been out to a wild party and got so wasted they passed out in the same bed.

  Although, she remembered waking up in bed with him stunned, hungover, and thinking crazily, I slept with Ranger Lockhart!

  It was the first time she ever really imagined them as a couple, but immediately she’d erased those thoughts. They were absolute best friends, and she wasn’t going to let anything under the hot Trans-Pecos sun ruin that.

  A strange expression slipped over his face, one she didn’t recognize, and Ember thought she’d seen every one of Ranger’s expressions there was to see.

  “I’ll be fine right here, Sparky. I don’t mind sharing space with Samantha.” His voice was low and suddenly weary, as if he’d trudged a hard mile straight up one of the Davis Mountains’ peaks. He yawned and kicked off his boots, stretched out on the couch.

  Her pulse pounded, skipping beats for no discernable reason. Ember went to the linen closet, found a blanket and spare pillow and brought them back to him. He’d taken off his belt and draped it over the coffee table and was sitting up.

  She tossed the blanket and pillow to him from halfway across the room, wondering why she was wary about coming closer. Weird. Things had been slightly off balance between them since he’d come home, like a picture frame tilted on the wall after a minor earth tremor.

  He smiled at her, that loopy, dopey smile that said he adored her as always. Nothing had changed. He looked content. Okay, maybe the picture frame hadn’t tilted for him when he’d seen her again. Maybe it had only been that way for Ember.

  When Ranger smiled the way he was smiling at her now, his eyes charged up like stars, twinkling and sparkling, enigmatic and unknowable. Distant, and unobtainable, but madly irresistible. She’d seen that smile bring grown women to their knees.

  Ember thought she was immune to the effects of that particular brand of smile. But clearly she was not. Her knees were overcooked noodles, limp and soft. He had such interesting lips. Angular upper lip with well-defined peaks, and a full bottom lip that promised pillowy kisses.

  Holy closing costs, why was she thinking about his lips? And how kissable they might be? She realized belatedly that she was staring, and blinked.

  “Night,” Ember chirped like some kind of small flightless bird. Which was not her. Not at all. If Ember had been a bird, she would be an eagle, fiery and free and fierce, unbound by rules and conventions.

  And if Ranger were a bird, what would he be?

  She cocked her head, contemplating as he switched off the lamp and settled into the cushions. An owl, she decided. One of the most intelligent birds in the animal kingdom. Wise and inquisitive. Shrouded in mystery, myth, and lore.

  “You gonna stand there all night, Sparky?”

  “No,” she croaked, a bullfrog now, raspy and slow.

  “G’night.”

  “G’night,” she echoed. She scurried to her bed and didn’t fall asleep until far into the wee hours of the morning, her turbulent mind burning with new and disturbing thoughts about her best friend.

  One thing was certain, she had to get him fixed up with a partner and fast before she crossed a line that could not be uncrossed.

  Ranger lay on the couch, as wide awake as Ember. His thoughts scattered, windblown.

  Ember. Had she gotten prettier since he’d been in New Zealand, or was it his imagination?

  Fiona. Was she a possible mate? She was attractive enough and unassuming, and hot dang she was a great poker player. Ember. He really should be mad that she’d finagled him into playing Edward Beale, and with camels? But hey, as with anything involving Ember, it wouldn’t be boring.

  He shifted on the couch, trying to get comfortable, heard a noise coming from Ember’s bedroom. Smelled her intoxicating cinnamon-and-anise scent on the pillow. Imagined her in bed, sleeping in one of the oversized T-shirts she loved to wear instead of proper pajamas. Ranger smiled in the darkness. There was nothing proper about Ember. It was one of the things he loved mos
t about his best friend. Her impropriety.

  His imagination bloomed as he pictured her curled up in the bed, knees drawn to her chest, and he felt himself grow hard.

  Think of something else, quick!

  Andromeda, Aquila, Auriga, Boötes . . . okay, not Boötes . . . Boötes made him think of booty, which made him think of Ember’s well-rounded booty and . . .

  Stop! Just stop. Go to sleep.

  What was happening to him? Sure, he’d been physically attracted to Ember over the years. She was gorgeous, who wouldn’t be? But they were best friends. They’d grown up together. These feelings—which were so damned strong since he’d come back from New Zealand—were completely inappropriate. If they were meant to be anything more than friends, wouldn’t it have happened by now?

  And obviously, she wasn’t attracted to him the same way he was attracted to her. Why else was she throwing Fiona at him? Somehow, Ember must have sensed the change in his feelings for her and she was flinging up roadblocks.

  Fine. He got the message, and honestly, she was right. Changing the paradigm of their relationship at this stage of their life was futile. But she had invited him to spend the night in her bed. What was that all about? His pulse chugged. Had it been a real invitation?

  Nah. No. Nope.

  He couldn’t go there. Not even for a second. Because if he let himself hope, he’d be in that bedroom in a nanosecond, and what if that was not what she wanted at all?

  Chapter 9

  “Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.”

  —Jane Austen, Emma

  “Get up.” Ember woke him the next morning. “We’re going sailing.”

  “What? Huh?” He blinked at her, confused for a moment because he’d been dreaming of fast radio bursts and messages from outer space. More often than not, the breakthroughs in his research came to him in dreams, and he felt as if he’d been on the verge of discovery.

  Ranger tried to hang on to the wisp of dream fragments and piece them together in a neat whole. He kept a dream log beside his bed at home for that purpose, but he couldn’t drag back the fractured images.

  Not with Ember standing over him in that oversized Book of Mormon T-shirt with a hem that hit her midthigh and a mug of steaming coffee in her hand. She wasn’t particularly tall, but the woman was all legs.

  He squinted against the morning sunlight tumbling in through the windows, tried not to notice how sexy she looked with her bed-tousled hair and come-hither grin.

  Had he heard her correctly? Had she said “sailing”? There was nowhere to sail within two hundred miles of their desert home.

  “Sailing? What? Where? Why?”

  “Yes, sailing. Why? Because you need to get your mind off work and your head out of the clouds.”

  What he needed was for her to put on some pants before he started having very un-best-friend-like thoughts.

  “You worry too much,” she went on. “Time to get your body moving.”

  The way she said “body” wasn’t the tiniest bit suggestive, but damn if it didn’t have that effect on Ranger. His body tightened in all the wrong—or right, depending on how you looked at it—places.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, you’re always in your head, so there’s that, but all night you were talking in your sleep about biosignatures and extremophiles and pyrolysis.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was going to the bathroom, and I heard you mumbling and I came in here to check on you and stayed to take notes.”

  “Really? Do you have notes?”

  She snorted. “As if! I have no idea what all that science-y gobbledygook means. But you were way into it. Thrashing around and smacking your pillow. Clearly, you’ve been under a lot of stress.” She snapped her fingers. “So we’re going sailing.”

  “Since when do you know how to sail?”

  “I learn new tricks all the time, Professor. Keep up. You gotta start reading my texts more closely.”

  Ranger yawned and scratched his bare chest. “Where are we going to find a body of water to sail in?”

  “Land sailing,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Drink your coffee, get dressed, and you’ll find out.” She thrust the coffee mug at him, turned, and walked off, her fanny bouncing to the jaunty rhythm of her crisp steps.

  An hour and a half later, they were at the entrance to the salt flats made from a shallow lake in the high desert that had dried up in the Pleistocene Epoch, strapped side by side in what resembled a kayak with three wheels and a wind sail.

  “Helmets,” Ember reminded him, and donned a pink helmet with a big white hibiscus flower on the side of it. “Oh, and sunscreen. Did you put on sunscreen?” She waggled a bottle of sunscreen at him, and she plied her skin with creamy liquid. “I’ll share.”

  He could smell the coconut scent from where he sat in his rig just a few feet away from her. He wore a helmet with a visor, and he had a good suntan. There was a cool breeze this high up, and the sky was partly overcast. He’d be okay. To keep her from nagging, he said, “Once I get this helmet on.”

  “Don’t forget.” She put the sunscreen in his front pocket.

  “Radios,” said the land sail rental operator, and passed them walkie-talkies. Cell phones were useless this high in the desert unless you had a satellite phone. “Just in case.”

  “You sure this is safe?” Ranger asked Ember. “I’ve heard stories about people getting stranded out on the salt flats and dying of dehydration.”

  “One,” Ember said, “I packed a gallon of water and a quart of Gatorade.” She gestured to the picnic basket tucked into the back of what the land sail guy called the turbo pod. “And two, if there wasn’t a bit of danger, it wouldn’t be so thrilling, now, would it?”

  She smiled as if she’d actually welcome getting stranded in the desert and having to find her way out. That was Ember, always up for a challenge.

  “Maybe we should have a rain check,” Ranger said, unnerved at the thought of breaking down in the salt flats. He’d gotten lost on the ranch once when he was thirteen, and had to spend the night alone in the desert listening to the coyotes all around him yip and howl. He’d been running away from home after a blowup with his father, and his horse had thrown him. Ember, of course, had been the one to find him the next morning, bloodied and bruised from his fall.

  “No way,” Ember said. “You’re doing this. Wanna know why?”

  “Why?” He couldn’t resist asking.

  “Because every time you take a risk and you come out on the other side, you feel stronger and more alive.” She closed her eyes briefly, smiled as if she’d found nirvana and breathed. “What a rush.”

  “You’re in good hands, dude,” the operator said. “Em knows what she’s doing.” The guy winked at Ember and she winked back, and Ranger got this cold, lonesome feeling in the pit of his stomach like he had that long-ago night he’d gotten lost on the ranch.

  “Have fun,” the operator said, and went back to his wooden hut underneath a wide, colorful umbrella.

  This time of the morning, on a weekday, they had the salt flats to themselves.

  Ranger and Ember sat elbow to elbow, the sail’s rigging stretched between them. For a moment, it was dead quiet. He liked these easy moments of belonging, when it felt like the two of them against the world. With Ember anything and everything seemed possible.

  Ember did something with her hands on the rigging, raising the sail. The wind caught it and immediately, they were scooting along across the flats.

  “Oh shit,” Ranger mumbled, and held on tight to the sides as the craft picked up speed. “How did I let you talk me into this?”

  “Same way I talked you into hang gliding. ’Member that? You can’t resist my charms.”

  Hang gliding as a present from her for his eighteenth birthday. How could he forget? He’d been terrified of heights, but he’d gone anyway because it was Ember. He’d fe
lt pretty damn powerful once they were back on the ground and they’d survived. Bonus, he’d also beaten his fear of heights.

  The land sail zoomed along on the flat, crunchy ground. The wind whipped his shirt around his shoulders as they picked up speed. Forty miles per hour. Fifty. Sixty. Soon they were clipping along at ninety miles per. The ground was a blur beneath their fast-moving wheels.

  “How you doin’, Professor?” she called, guiding the vehicle so it cornered fast on two wheels as she swiftly changed directions.

  “Do you have to do that?”

  “I don’t have to do it, but if I don’t turn we’ll end up in the middle of the desert. Too far from rescue if the wind gives out on us.”

  “In that case, carry on. I’ll try not to barf.”

  Ember laughed. “God, but I’ve missed you.”

  “Missed torturing me you mean.”

  “Don’t be such a grouse. You know deep down you love having me push you out of your comfort zone, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Cards on the table? She was right. His life was far richer because of her. See. That’s really why he didn’t want to get married. How could he build a life without his best friend in it?

  Her face was a wreath of joy. This was the real Ember, joyous and free, not shutdown and nervous the way she’d been when she was married to Trey.This was what he loved about her most. How she thrived on madcap adventures, how her bright laughter lit up his stodgy world. If he could find a woman who possessed Ember’s sterling qualities, he’d marry her in a heartbeat. She did something to make them go even faster, wind fully expanding the sail. The quick acceleration took Ranger completely by surprise.

  “Good God, woman, can’t you ever do anything normal.” He was teasing her, joking about her wild and untamed nature, but the light instantly dimmed in her eyes and she quickly glanced away, her smile vanishing.

  Uh-oh. What had he done? Ranger felt a pang in his chest, physical, as if someone had punched him squarely in the heart.

  “Ember?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She was staring straight ahead, not meeting his gaze.