Her Stubborn Cowboy

by Patricia Johns

  “Andy would say it’s because he takes chances,” Chet said.

  “And tossed away a twenty-year marriage,” she responded.

  She had an excellent point. He’d wondered over the years how her father had been able to just walk away. Mack’s mom was a timeless beauty, much like her daughter. Where had things gone wrong?

  “Maybe he regrets his mistakes more than you think,” Chet suggested. He couldn’t imagine a man not regretting that. She cast him a sidelong look, and he smiled. She didn’t want to hear that. “So you haven’t forgiven him yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  Her pale hand rested on the stubbly hay between them, and he slid his hand over hers. Her skin was warm and smooth, and instead of pulling away, she leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. The scent of her shampoo—or was it perfume?—mingled with the aroma of hay and horses. Everything was so quiet, and having her snuggled against him felt better than he’d imagined it would.

  “Why can’t men just be straightforward?” she asked.

  “Some of us are.”

  She’d never seen him as a real option, but he was the kind of man who would have stood by her, loved her. His eye would never have wandered.

  “Well, you, of course,” she said—and her tone was so casual he was mildly stunned. “You’re one of those old-fashioned types whose handshake is as good as a contract.”

  She sat up again, the spot on his shoulder where she’d rested suddenly feeling empty. So she knew that he was a good one? Even though there were so many things he couldn’t tell her, he was glad that she’d picked up on that. But when they were teenagers, she’d never looked his way. Andy had won, fair and square.

  “What’s wrong with having some principles?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she replied with an apologetic shrug. “Only that you’re the last of them under sixty.”

  Her smile was teasing, but he heard the message underneath. She wanted an honest, reliable man, just not him. That smarted a little, but it also sparked a challenge. He’d never acted on his feelings, not wanting to offend, not wanting to overstep. A part of him wanted to change the way she saw him.

  “Chet, can I ask you something?” She turned to him, blue eyes looking almost navy in the light. Her cheeks were a light pink, and he had an urge to reach out and run the back of a finger down that silky cheek. He had to jerk his mind back from the precipice.

  “Of course.”

  “Are you going to ask to buy my land?”

  He blinked. Where had that come from? “I thought you wanted to run it.”

  She sighed. “There’s a stable just outside Billings. Krissy’s aunt is selling it, and my dad’s suggestion was to unload the ranch and buy the stable.”

  She said it so casually that the words didn’t hit him until a moment later. Sell? Was she considering it?

  “Are you interested?” he asked, trying to keep his tone as casual as hers.

  “I don’t know. It isn’t a bad idea. I mean, Granny’s ranch needs a lot of work, and it’s going to stay a lot of work. This stable, if managed properly, could almost run itself. According to my dad, at least.”

  He didn’t say anything. It really wasn’t his place to tell her what to do with her own land and her own money. When he’d heard that she was coming back, he hadn’t let himself think about it too much. He’d been curious to see her—wanted her to see him in the best light, of course—but he’d kept any kind of hope firmly quashed. Then she’d arrived and they’d started spending time together, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d been allowing himself to feel lately until this moment, when the thought of her leaving was like a lead weight in his stomach. If she wanted him to make this decision easier for her by offering to buy her out, he wouldn’t do it.

  “You haven’t offered to buy me out,” she said after a second.

  “No, I haven’t.” His tone was more brusque than he’d intended. He looked over at her, and he found those blue eyes fixed on him in an expression of uncertainty. Her gaze flickered down.

  “In your honest opinion, can I do this?”

  “Run this place?”

  “Yes.” She looked up again, and she was so close that he could easily have slid an arm around her waist and pulled her against him.

  “You bet. Like you said, it’s hard work, but you could do this.” He swallowed. “If it was what you wanted.”

  Having her this close was too much like those times when Mack had been dating Andy and Chet had been keeping his distance, at least emotionally. He could still remember the way she used to lean over the fence, her eyes squinted against the sun. She used to watch him work when Andy wasn’t around, and it had taken all his effort to keep himself working, to keep himself from walking over there and pulling her solidly into his arms and forgetting about his principles.

  Of course, he never had.

  “Would I be able to do it without you, though?” she pressed. “I mean, without your help and advice?”

  “You mean if Andy sells and I can’t stay,” he clarified, the words almost sticking in his throat.

  “Worst-case scenario...”

  “Everyone needs advice,” he said quietly. “Doesn’t need to be mine.”

  Everyone needed love, too, but she didn’t have to get any of it from him. Even if he wanted to be that man in her life so badly that he could taste it. She dropped her gaze and rubbed a hand down her bare arm. The golden light from the overhead fixture made her hair glow, and he had an overwhelming desire to close that distance between them. He stopped.

  “Mack—” His voice caught as he said her name, and she turned toward him again. This time, he didn’t stop himself. He didn’t rein it in, and he didn’t ask permission. He brushed a tendril of honey-colored hair away from her cheek, then slid his hand behind her neck, burying his fingers in the silken warmth of her hair. He tugged her toward him, and she followed his movement, her eyes widening in momentary surprise and her lips parting slightly as if she was about to say something.

  He paused, his mouth hovering over hers, waiting for her protest, and when it didn’t come, he lowered his lips ever so lightly onto hers. She sucked in a breath as their lips met, and at first she was perfectly still. It started out gently, but when she moved into him, he deepened the kiss and slipped his other arm around her waist, pulling her against him, and if he weren’t as soundly principled as he was, he wouldn’t have stopped there.

  He’d wondered what this would be like for a decade—how she’d feel in his arms, how he’d feel with his lips on hers—and right now all he could think was that he didn’t want this moment to end.

  Mackenzie pulled back, and he reluctantly released her. A hand fluttered up to her lips.

  “Oh...” she breathed.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for a decade,” he said huskily. He brushed a hair away from her face and shrugged apologetically.

  She laughed shakily, and when her eyes met his, he was tempted—so very tempted—to do that all over again...

  “I think I’d better get back,” she said.

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  His brain was pounding in time to the beat of his heart, and he couldn’t entirely think straight. He’d had reasons for holding back until now—good ones. He needed to get his mind straight again before he did something he regretted.

  Mackenzie stood up and straightened her shirt. She looked back at him briefly. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shone. Then she bent and patted Butter Cream’s side, then scooped up the kid, and miraculously, the goat obediently followed her toward the door of the barn.

  “Good night,” he called, his low voice reverberating through the barn.

  “Sleep tight, Chet—” Her voice was soft, and it was clipped off by the closing of the barn door, leaving him alone with the animals.

  Sleep tight. He smiled to himself. Not a chance tonight.

  He let his head sink into his hands. That had felt good—too good. He might have wanted to do it fo
r the better part of a decade, but all of his reasons for refraining were now flooding back to mind.

  A brother didn’t move in on his brother’s ex-girlfriend, especially if that brother had already stated a renewed interest in her. Chet might have feelings for Mack, and that only made stepping back harder. Andy was also pretty testy right now as it was. There was more than his last family relationship to worry about; there was this ranch, which was already hanging in the balance...

  Regardless of all the reasons against it, Chet didn’t regret that kiss. It had been a long time coming, and even if it was the only kiss they’d ever share, he’d made it count. He might be the only principled man under sixty around here, but he was a man. Principles didn’t change that.

  * * *

  MACKENZIE SHIVERED DESPITE the warm night as she made her way across the dark turf toward her own land. The moon hung low in the sky, stars twinkling like spilled glitter, darkened here and there by tufts of clouds. Butter Cream trotted compliantly beside her and squeezed through the fence without so much as a bleat of protest.

  Her lips tingled where his lips had pressed against them, and she could still feel his fingers in her hair, and she shivered again.

  Wow. She’d had no idea that Chet Granger had that in him... He’d said he’d had feelings for her when they were kids, but this hadn’t been a kiss rooted in the past. It was very much something from the present, and that made her nervous.

  She breathed in the cool night air, and her mind went back to her conversation with her father. He’d said that Chet had been dead serious about buying her grandmother’s land. Granny had mentioned it to Mack, too. But even with everything going against Chet—his brother threatening to sell to the developers, his being turned down for a loan big enough to buy his brother out—he hadn’t once brought up the possibility of buying her land. Not once.

  But why? That was the question. Why wouldn’t he turn to the most obvious solution to his problem?

  Unless Chet wasn’t the last principled man under sixty. Maybe he was just like all the others—like her own father—capable of lies and deception when they got him what he wanted.

  Even as she considered it, she didn’t truly believe it. Chet wasn’t like that, but there was something else holding her back, too. If she couldn’t run this ranch on her own, she didn’t believe that she had the right to continue depending on her neighbors. If she couldn’t do this on her own, she needed to sell the place and find a business where she could stand on her own two feet. And when she’d asked Chet if she could run the ranch alone, he hadn’t reassured her that she’d have no problem—he’d said that she could find someone else to guide her. And that wasn’t what she’d been looking for—not that she’d had the chance to think it through all the way before he’d kissed her.

  If she couldn’t run this ranch by herself, then she needed to make the responsible decision and sell it. And if she couldn’t stay in Hope, then she had no business kissing Chet or letting her feelings keep going in the direction they’d been moving. And she wasn’t sure if she’d stay or not. While she wanted to make a success of this second chance her grandmother had afforded her, she had to be realistic. She wasn’t sure how possible it truly was.

  These Granger boys had a way of tying her up into knots, and it wasn’t fair. When she’d last been on this ranch, it was Andy who’d tugged her into a romance that left her head spinning, and now Chet? She wasn’t here to put her heart through the Granger wringer. She was here to try to build a life on the land her grandmother had left her.

  None of the facts had changed since she’d arrived in Hope. Her land was still Chet’s only solution to keeping his ranch, she still wasn’t sure that she could run her ranch, and she still had the very difficult decision to make about what to do with her future. But one thing had changed... Dare she admit it? She was falling for him. That had changed, but the facts and the situation they found themselves in had not.

  Feelings were not reliable enough to be a guide in life’s toughest choices. Feelings flapped in the wind. She needed logic.

  “I don’t want this!” she said aloud as she ushered Butter Cream into her pen, then set down her kid. The goats looked up at her with their googly eyes, and Butter Cream let out a bleat. She sighed.

  “Not you, Butter Cream,” she said. She glanced at her watch. She’d have to be back in three hours to feed Chocolate Truffle her next bottle.

  Mackenzie was no longer as certain about what had happened when Andy broke up with her back then, but there was one thing that she hadn’t wavered about, and that was that Chet put his family first—always. What was best for the Grangers would always trump everything else. Including her. It always had. Logically speaking, there was no reason why Chet’s designs on her grandmother’s land should have changed.

  “I should be careful,” she whispered to herself. She didn’t need anyone else’s advice on that. She already knew it.

  She shut off the light and closed the barn door, then headed with heavy steps toward the house. And as she strode across the stubby grass, a cool breeze lifting her hair away from her face, she suddenly knew exactly what she was feeling right now—in the midst of all those boiling emotions and uncertainties, she recognized one feeling as predominant: anger.

  Just when she had gone and fallen for the rugged cowboy, she had to realize that soft kisses and a pounding heart didn’t change facts. He was gentle and kind, gruff and determined, and when his lips met hers...

  The memory of his kiss returned with surprising force, and she forced it back. It didn’t matter how strong his hands were or how direct that gray gaze... That kiss wasn’t fair! It was intense and warm, and it made her heart pound to even remember it, but it wasn’t fair.

  She trotted up the steps and let herself into the darkened mudroom of the ranch house. She was angry because she wanted to believe that Chet was falling for her the same way she was falling for him.

  Except she’d conveniently forgotten along the way that Chet wanted the land, and he would offer to buy her out. Eventually, he’d have no other choice. He might not want to do it this way, but the developers had pushed up the land value, so he’d need someone willing to sell to him at the land’s real cost. Did he have feelings for her? She’d felt it in his kiss—and Chet didn’t strike her as that good an actor. But that didn’t change the basic truth that the Grangers always stood together, and their land came first.

  When it came down to the line, she wasn’t going to win this.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, Chet and Andy stood by the horse paddock after chores were done. The horses were already in the closest pasture, and Chet hooked his boot over the rail of the fence. The paddock was clean, and the dirt still retained the hoofprints. Chet pushed his hat back on his head. A brisk wind chilled his back where his shirt stuck to his sweaty skin. For once, Andy had gone out and worked as hard as Chet had, and Chet had a feeling that his brother was feeling a little bit bad about their argument the night before. They’d said a lot, but they hadn’t talked about the right things—this land, their shared inheritance.

  “Look, about last night,” Chet said.

  “Forget it.” Andy pulled his hat off and slapped it against his leg. The sun was still low in the sky, the rays flooding Chet’s arms and back with welcome warmth. The pinks and reds of sunrise had melted away, leaving a soft golden glow.

  “No, really.” Chet turned away again, unwilling to look his brother in the face while he talked about this. “It’s your relationship. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have butted in.”

  Who was Chet to judge, anyway? He’d done something he shouldn’t have in the barn last night. He could still remember the feeling of Mackenzie in his arms, but it was wrong. He shouldn’t have gone there. A night’s fitful sleep had convinced him of that.

  Andy was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. “I meant it when I said I should have married Mackenzie.”

  Irritation swam up inside Chet’s gut, and he glan
ced back toward his brother. “That was a long time ago. What makes you think she’d even be interested?”

  Andy shrugged. “I don’t know. We really had something at one time. It’s hard to imagine that going away completely.”

  Chet could only hope that it had...except that he wasn’t really meaning to start anything up with Mack, either, so he knew that his emotions weren’t steering him straight. If Mack wasn’t going to stay, there was no point in putting himself through that kind of pain, not if they eventually had to part ways. If he ended up having to sell, then the result was the same. Besides, with his brother feeling things for Mack—things that made him want to punch the guy—then what kind of future was really possible between himself and Mackenzie? Any kind of future worth having included the rest of the family, too—including Andy.

  And what if Andy got his way and was able to spark something up with Mackenzie again? Could Chet really step aside for the sake of family unity? He tried to picture it and came up with a ball of rage in the pit of his stomach. He’d been able to step back once when they were teens, but he didn’t think he could repeat that kind of honorable sacrifice. Couldn’t they both just leave her alone?

  “What about Ida?” Chet asked quietly. “No judgment. I just want to know what happened.”

  Andy squinted against the morning sun. “We were just so different. I thought that it wouldn’t matter, but it turns out that it did.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “She’s so free-spirited. I thought that dating a yoga instructor would be hot, and it was, but...” Andy shrugged. “I always thought I’d end up with someone who could root me, tie me down.”

  “You hate being tied down,” Chet said with a laugh. “So you want the actual ball and chain?”