How the Cowboy Was Won

by Lori Wilde

  Perspiration slid between her breasts, and it was all she could do to remain rooted to the wooden floorboards.

  She had a purpose. An intention. Film this scene. Make this picture. As if she knew what she was doing. As if she had the slightest clue.

  Her pulse was a hammer, hard and resilient, thundering out a message—kiss him, kiss him, kiss him.

  Ranger looked down at her, his dark brown eyes unfathomable, revealing nothing. The gambler playing his cards close to his vest.

  Just do it. Just kiss him. Don’t think about it.

  Ignoring her trembling legs, and her quivering belly, Ember slipped her arms around Ranger’s neck, paused a moment and shot a glance at Palmer. “Are you getting this?”

  The cameraman gave her a thumbs-up.

  Ranger made a low sound that only she could hear, a soft chuckle. “God,” he murmured, “you are amazing.”

  If she really was amazing, wouldn’t she be handling this much better? Wouldn’t she just breeze on through and get it done, rather than tying herself into knots over the idea that she was about to kiss her best friend, and no matter how she tried to trivialize it, nothing would ever be the same again.

  It would haunt her dreams. She would know exactly what he tasted like. How his lips felt against hers. How—

  Gak!

  Ranger settled his hands at Ember’s waist as was called for in the script. Script or not, it felt good to be held like this.

  Too good. She was getting distracted. She was supposed to be performing a role, not enjoying herself.

  His gaze locked on her and his smile widened, and she thought, This is real, this is happening. The urge to flee was overwhelming. She would have fled if she could have moved.

  Her knees quaked and chills ran up and down her spine, excitement playing her like a glockenspiel. She was aware that every eye on the set was locked on them, and it seemed as if the entire crew held a collective breath.

  Or maybe that was just all in her head.

  Ember tightened her grip around his neck and peered into his eyes and forgot everything that wasn’t Ranger. No more cast. No more crew. No more cameras. Delete, delete, delete. Vanished. Gone. Nothing but the two of them.

  He pulled her closer, snuggled her against him.

  Panic flooded her bloodstream. He was going to do it. He was going to kiss her. Yes, he was!

  Her legs were boiled spaghetti. Her insides marshmallow, soft and sticky. How was it that she was not a puddle of melted goo glued to the floorboards at his feet?

  Crazy, insane thoughts pinged around her brain. I belong with you. You belong with me.

  Match made. Call Father Dubanowski. Book the wedding chapel. Send out the invitations. Shop for wedding gowns.

  It was as if her brain was filled with Red Bull. A whole freaking case of the stuff. Hyped. Hyper. High.

  High on Ranger’s nearness. The smell of him, his touch. So familiar and yet so different. It was as if she’d been walking on a trail she walked every day, knew every stone and plant along the way, and one day, the earth shrugged with a tremor, shook, cracked open like an egg and she fell through to a whole new dimension.

  A beautiful, magical world she had not even known existed.

  He pulled her closer.

  She gasped. Was she losing her mind?

  “Ember,” he whispered, not Mary as he should have.

  She should have yelled “cut,” stepped away, gone for a walk, and taken a breather. Used any excuse to get away from him and clear her head.

  But she was too far gone to care.

  Their gazes were linked as if by a glittering gold chain. The moment was upon them. They couldn’t get any closer.

  The sun beat down, turning up the heat. Somewhere a camel belched.

  Loudly.

  Ember giggled.

  Ranger laughed.

  She was about to yell “cut,” but she couldn’t.

  Because Ranger was kissing her.

  Instantly, her body responded. Leaning into him. Clinging to his shoulders. Pushing against him as if she could push herself all the way into him. The urge to merge was immediate, overwhelming.

  This man. Mine. Now.

  Fiery tingles flashed from his lips to hers and back again, completing the electrical circuit. Lighting them up. Pulsating. Vibrating. Humming like a power plant.

  Humming.

  So much damn humming.

  It was a deafening chorus of humming. A million honeybees dancing. The high, hot licks of bonfire flames. The wild, colorful whirling of a spindle top.

  Goose bumps spread over her arms. Her nerve endings seemed to split, divide, shatter, and then reassemble until she was glowing, shimmering, buzzing.

  Dizzy, dazed, she staggered against him, realized his knees had buckled just as surely as hers, and they were holding each other up.

  How vast this was! How delicious the extent of his mouth and teeth and tongue. There was not a single sentient soul on earth, and all the other planets, galaxies, and universes in the endless expanse of the cosmos, that wouldn’t kill, bare-handed, for this feeling.

  Alive.

  Electric.

  Plugged in.

  Through his kiss, she felt plugged into all that is, all that had been, and all that ever would be. Connected. Filled with love and light. Open. Raw. Shocked and delighted by the sheer power of her awakening.

  It was as if she wore new skin, heard with new ears. A brand-new soul. Alive for the first time. Drawing her first breath.

  She yearned for him with a longing so deep and wide it could never be filled. His mouth ravaged hers as if he were tasting some sweet nourishing fruit. A fruit that if he just ate enough of it, would heal all wounds, past, present, and future.

  And that humming! On and on it went. A symphony, a chorus, an opera.

  That indescribably beautiful sound. Harp-plucking angels could not play so pleasingly.

  All along, all along, Granny Blue had been right.

  “Ranger?” Ember whispered, the word coming out of her mouth stunned and stumbling.

  “Uh-huh?” His eyes were half-lidded, his voice molasses.

  “Do you hear that?” She’d ruined the scene take, but she was past caring. The bottom had dropped out of her world in a wonderful, glorious way.

  “What? The camels?”

  The humming was fading like the volume slowly being turned down. She had to test it. Had to find out if she could start it back up.

  She kissed him again.

  Boom!

  There it was. The humming. Coming at her in acoustical waves. An ocean of sound. Rolling over her. Through her. Inside her. Singing the song of the women in Granny Blue’s ancestry, a steady repeating hum of This One!

  Ranger.

  It had been Ranger all this time. Of all those frogs she’d kissed. The frog she’d married. The right one had been under her nose from the beginning.

  Ranger was The One!

  Her best friend was her true love. Her childhood playmate was her grown-up soul mate. Her destiny. Tears filled her eyes, and no matter how hard she tried not to cry, no matter how tough she pretended to be, Ember could not stop the tears from spilling down her cheeks in a blustery rain of joy.

  “You’re crying.” Ranger pulled back, alarmed at her tears. “Are you okay? Have I hurt you?”

  “Not me,” she said, because she could not yet tell him what was in her heart and in her head. Not now. Not here. Not in front of all these people. She needed time to recover. “Mary. Mary is weeping to be reunited with her husband again after his long trek across the desert.”

  “You’re acting.” He sounded both disappointed and relieved.

  “Yes,” she agreed, because she was coming unhinged like old doors on a fixer-upper and because she had no idea what to do about it. What was he thinking? Was he as bowled over as she was? Or had it been uneventful for him? Could this humming thing be one-sided? She had so many questions and no clear-cut answers. An uncomfortable state
of being for a woman who liked being in charge.

  The humming was slipping away, and she could not bear to hear it go.

  “Kiss me again,” she said.

  “What?”

  “We need another take. We flubbed the other one. This time, shh. No talking. Just kissing.”

  “Got it,” he said, and kissed her with gleeful intent.

  The rush hit her like water from a fire hose, just as potent as before. Maybe even more so. Sound filled her head. Amplified. Exalted. A humprint, she decided, of his lips branding hers. Endless and intoxicating.

  Her hands were shaking. It seemed too easy. So perfect. The rightness of them overwhelmingly simple. One kiss and her happy fate sealed.

  But in the back of her mind, something niggled. A forgotten thought. A feather tickle in her stomach, gathering clouds in her chest; she was on the brink of a precipice, terrified that she should, but could not, jump.

  Simultaneously, as if he picked up on her doubt, they broke the kiss. Sprang apart.

  “Holy camel shit!” Zeke hooted. “I don’t know about y’all, but I ain’t never seen two best friends kiss like that.”

  Ranger was not the kind of man who believed in magical thinking. He was a scientist after all. Facts. Concrete details. Mathematics revealed how the world worked in provable equations. Those were the tools of his trade.

  Then again, there was Einstein and his quandary with quantum mechanics. The “spooky actions at a distance” of particle entanglement. There were mysteries in the universe that science, as yet, could not fully explain.

  The complexity of the human brain being one of them, and its relationship to emotion and the human heart.

  As an astrobiologist, he believed in probability of life elsewhere in the universe; why not believe that there was such a thing as a predestination? Just because he couldn’t prove it didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.

  What could it hurt? This overwhelming belief that he and Ember were meant to be together. That their names had been written on some cosmic slate before they were born. An entanglement theory to top all entanglement theories.

  Yep. Magical thinking. All the way.

  And yet, he reveled in it. Embraced it. Breathed it in. Breathed her in. Wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. Wanted her with a craving far beyond physical need.

  So what to do about it?

  Come clean? Tell her how he felt? Own up to his undying love for her?

  And risk ruining their friendship?

  She’d cried during the kiss, and he’d thought, Yes, yes, she feels it too. This power. Their connection.

  He’d never seen her cry when she was not in physical pain. When it came to feelings, Ember had a tough outer core. She let very few people see her emotional wounds. But when he’d asked her about the tears, she’d tossed off a smile and said she was acting, and all the stars had fallen from the sky because in his heart, in his head, he had forgotten all about the film.

  Ranger had been fully invested in that magical moment. Fully kissing her, tasting her, living the experience of her. He hadn’t been pretending to be Edward Beale kissing his wife, Mary, after coming home from a long journey. He’d been Ranger Lockhart, kissing his best friend. The friend he’d been aching to kiss since the time she’d come to visit him when he was in college and they’d gotten drunk at a party and ended up in bed together.

  They had just fallen asleep, of course, no touching, nothing untoward or suggestive, but he’d awoken wanting so much more from her. It had taken monumental restraint not to seduce her.

  At the time, he’d had a girlfriend and she’d had a boyfriend. She’d made him scrambled eggs in the morning, and they had drunk chocolate milk and laughed over their hangovers and taken aspirin and that had been that.

  A missed opportunity? Or had it been part of a divine design, everything slowly leading to this moment?

  What to do? Did he announce he was in love with her? Or did he play it cool? Wait? Let her make the first move? Or sweep her off her feet?

  Ranger was good at waiting. Spending much of his childhood as an invalid had honed his patience. Sharpened the idea that good things came to those who waited.

  Ember was a good thing. A great thing. The best damn thing in his entire universe. He’d waited almost thirty-three years for her. He could wait a few weeks more if that’s what it took.

  But what if, oh what if, she hadn’t felt the earth crack open as he had? What if, as he’d feared all along, she saw him as nothing more than a dear friend? What if he kept waiting and she never made the first move?

  Because, reality slap here, if she’d had deeper feelings for him, would she really have married Trey in the first place?

  Whatifwhatifwhatif?

  He thought of a story Ember’s Granny Blue had once told them as children around the campfire at her cabin in the mountains. A cautionary tale about letting your fears get the best of you. He remembered it now with vivid clarity, a fable about how Rabbit was once a great warrior, but because he feared the magic of the unknown to such an extent, he betrayed his friend and his true nature. Crying his fears so loudly he called Eagle to him, and that was the end of Rabbit.

  The moral of the story being if you fed the fear, then fear was what you would bring into your life. Granny Blue had looked into the face of each child circled around the campfire and said, “If a rabbit has hopped into your life, it is a sign to stop talking about the horrible things that could happen and scrub what if out of your vocabulary. Stop it now!” The elderly woman’s voice was in his head, as loudly as if she’d been standing beside him.

  Had he, with his head in the stars, unwittingly become a rabbit? Letting fear rule his life?

  Blinking, Ranger glanced around and realized he’d been so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn’t heard a thing people had been saying to him, and now, everyone was staring.

  “Was the take good?” he asked, his lips still pulsing with the pleasure of kissing Ember.

  “Best film kiss ever,” Palmer said. “You two have sizzling on-screen chemistry.”

  “That’s because we’ve been friends forever.” Ember efficiently brushed her hands together. Her countenance was the same. Brisk, in charge. Nothing had changed. At least not for her. “Now that we have that scene in the can, we can break for an early lunch.”

  Without saying a word to him, she pivoted and walked off the porch.

  Chapter 16

  “Mr. Knightley, if I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream.”

  —Jane Austen, Emma

  The minute that filming was finished for the day, and after turning down an invitation to head over to Chantilly’s with the cast and crew, Ember practically flew her Infinity to the Silver Feather to see her younger sister.

  She found Kaia sitting nursing baby Ingrid under a shaded pergola beside the shimmering pool, in a lavish outdoor space that Ridge had built for his wife who loved water. A pitcher of tea and two glasses filled with fresh ice sat on the table in front of her.

  Ember looked at the two glasses. “Were you expecting someone?”

  “You.” Kaia gave her that heavenly Madonna smile that she’d picked up since she’d married Ridge and given birth to her daughter. As if she knew the secrets to the universe.

  It could be really annoying.

  “How did you know I was coming over? And don’t give me any of that Granny Blue, a crow flew north at noon, baloney.”

  “No crow flew north at noon to the best of my knowledge.” Kaia chuckled and shifted Ingrid to her shoulder, patted her back for a burp. “Ridge texted me when he saw you blow past the mansion. He’s over helping Duke hang drywall for the new nursery.”

  Yes, Duke’s third wife, Vivi, was pregnant—with twins—the four Lockhart brothers would have two new half brothers in four months. Making young Ingrid older than her uncles. Duke would be a father again at sixty-one. Here was hoping he’d do a much better job this time aroun
d.

  “Have a seat.” Kaia kicked out the leg of the chair across from her with her foot. “You look off balance.”

  Ember sat down, although a part of her wanted to run far away. She was the big sister. She should be the one doling out advice, not the other way around. But Kaia was the only one who had experienced the humming, other than Granny Blue, and she wasn’t in the mood to get a wise, I-told-you-so nod from her grandmother.

  “How’s the filming going?” Kaia poured tea over the two glasses of ice, pushed one toward Ember.

  “Great, fine, listen . . .” Ember brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen from her ponytail.

  “All ears, sis. What’s up?”

  “Um . . .” How to start? Just shoot from the lips. It’s what you do. “I heard it.”

  Kaia cocked her head, a whimsical smile lighting up her eyes. “And what did you hear?”

  “You know.” Ember bobbed her head, wriggled her eyebrows, trying to get her point across without having to come out and say the words. “It.”

  “I’m not sure what it is.”

  “You’re enjoying this,” Ember accused.

  “Enjoying having tea with my big sister? Yes, I am.” Kaia winked.

  “Good gravy, Kaia, you know what I mean.”

  “Do I?”

  “I heard the humming, okay? Is that what you want to hear? Hum, hum, hum. There, I said it. I heard the freaking hum.”

  Rather than tease her as she expected, Kaia’s face took on the same rapturous hue it did whenever she looked at her husband or Ingrid. Her voice became soft as baby duck fuzz. “Oh Ember, I am so happy for you.”

  Kaia got up and settled Ingrid into her infant carrier, came over, knelt beside Ember, and wrapped her in the most loving, accepting hug Ember had ever gotten.

  Ember’s heart melted, and the tears she’d cried on that front porch at Fort Davis and pretended it was just acting pressed against the back of her eyelids again. Fudge rockets! Did the humming turn you into a sap?

  “That’s wonderful.” Kaia rocked back on her heels.

  Unable to speak, Ember merely shook her head no.

  “It’s not wonderful?”