Opposing the Cowboy

by Margo Bond Collins

  Once he had found the letter, Jonah had no further use for her.

  She understood that, and it made her breathlessly angry.

  But doesn’t that anger mean I still care about him?

  Her heart constricted in her chest.

  She couldn’t even bring herself to call him names—not aloud, not in the privacy of her own mind.

  She loved him too much for that.

  But I can get over it, given enough time.

  With a sigh, she pulled her key fob out of her purse to unlock her car and saw a manila envelope tucked under the windshield wipers. Puzzled, she drew it out. A note was scribbled on the back: Please sign and return. —J

  It had been Jonah she had seen leaving the restaurant.

  Tears swam in her eyes, blurring her vision. He couldn’t even be bothered to give her the papers in person.

  He truly doesn’t care about me.

  It really was all an act. He wanted the mineral rights more than he ever wanted me.

  She hadn’t been willing to admit that any part of her believed he might have actually cared—but the misery she felt suggested that she’d hoped, at least subconsciously, that he might come back, might tell her it had all been a mistake.

  How could she have believed anything he said? How could she have trusted him?

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. You knew all along what he was here for.

  It was all her own fault for forgetting, even for an instant, that Jonah was the enemy, out to take her world away from her.

  And he succeeded, too.

  Her heart felt like it was cracking inside her chest, and no amount of yoga would ever help her heal from it.

  There’s no pose for this kind of pain.

  But I need to move past this.

  There had to be a way. After all, she’d gotten over Darrell pretty quickly, all things considered. Then again, Darrell was the king of ass-hats. But her breakup with him had left her open to Jonah’s charm.

  I will never be that vulnerable again.

  Blinking away the tears, she opened her car door and dropped the papers into the passenger seat.

  Time, she told herself. That’s all she needed.

  But honestly? She wasn’t sure there would ever be enough time to get over Jonah.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The buzz of his cell phone woke Jonah the next morning. Rubbing his eyes, he rolled over to grab it and tried to shake off the deeply erotic dream he’d been having about an upside-down LeeAnn.

  He squinted at the phone in the half dark of the hotel room, then blinked when he saw the time. He needed to get moving if he was going to check out today and head back home.

  Home. Right.

  A lonely apartment in Midland.

  He began to scroll through his texts. Maybe Natural Shale had a new job for him already, and he could skip going back to Midland altogether.

  His boss Nathan had indeed sent him a message, but not one that would send him away—not quite yet, anyway. Apparently LeeAnn had faxed the signed paperwork over to the main office the day before. Sami and Bev still hadn’t sent their signed copies, so Nathan had asked him to contact Sami.

  In person would probably be better.

  He flinched at the next thought that came unbidden: Or at least more likely to allow me to turn the conversation to LeeAnn and her reunion with Darrell Vincent.

  Shaking his head, he rolled out of bed and headed toward the shower.

  Before he got a signature from Sami, he would schedule the final survey team to go out to the ranch—and then he could leave Fort Worth behind him, at least for a while.

  …

  “Come on in,” Sami said, ushering Jonah into her tiny apartment. He’d been glad, but a little surprised, to find her at home at three in the afternoon. He might have assumed that she had left work and come home for a late lunch break, if not for the fact that she was still in pajamas and a robe and had daytime television playing in the postage stamp–sized living room.

  “Is this a bad time?” he asked.

  “Not really,” she said. “I…took the day off.” She tightened the belt of the robe and crossed her arms.

  Remembering Sami’s discussion with LeeAnn over the barbecue grill, Jonah refrained from asking any more questions. Instead, he chose to broach the subject that brought him to her apartment. “My boss asked me to stop by and pick up the contract,” he said, pitching his voice somewhere between a question and a statement.

  “Right. I’m having one of the attorneys at work look it over. That’s not a problem, is it? She said she’d probably have it done by tomorrow.” As small as she was, her worried expression made her look especially childlike.

  “Not a problem at all,” he replied. “Do you know if she has any questions? I can get the new survey team out to the ranch tomorrow, but I don’t want to try to schedule drilling until we have the contract in hand.”

  “Tomorrow?” Sami asked, startled. “Does LeeAnn know?”

  I wish I hadn’t mentioned that part.

  Usually he was much more careful about the words that came out of his mouth. But apparently everything about LeeAnn—even dealing with her tiny cousin—rattled him.

  He tried to gather his thoughts. “She signed the right-of-way contract, so…” He shrugged.

  Sami nodded, wincing a little—presumably at the thought of the yoga instructor’s reaction to trucks barreling across her land. “Let me call Teresa and see where she is on the contract.”

  She left the room, and Jonah glanced around, his gaze snagging on a shelf full of family photos. He moved closer, searching for pictures of LeeAnn.

  There she was, standing at another backyard party at her place, her head thrown back, mouth open in laughter. His heart squeezed in his chest.

  She’s so beautiful.

  Next to her in the photo stood Darrell Vincent, a supercilious smile on his face.

  “Isn’t that a great photo of LeeAnn?” Sami entered the room, phone in hand. “She hates it, but it’s one of my favorites.” Pausing beside him, she brushed a speck of dust from the brass frame. Her voice hardened. “Of course, it would be even better if that jackass wasn’t in it.”

  Jonah worked to keep his tone casual. “You mean Darrell? Aren’t they seeing each other again?”

  Sami’s laugh filled the small space. “No way. He came begging back, but LeeAnn sent him packing.”

  The rushing noise that filled his ears blocked out the next few words.

  LeeAnn wasn’t with Darrell Vincent?

  Suddenly, Jonah felt lighter, as a cloud he hadn’t even known was hovering over his heart lifted.

  “So anyway,” Sami said, “Teresa says the contract should be ready in the next few days. I’ll get Bev to sign her copy and fax it, too.”

  He nodded, fighting an inappropriate urge to grin.

  “Thanks so much,” Sami said as she ushered him to the door. “LeeAnn says you’re the one who found the letter. If you hadn’t, we might never have known that the rights belonged to Bev and me. Every time I try to thank her, she says it’s all because of you.”

  “She does?” Stepping outside, he turned back to face Sami.

  “Yeah. You really saved me. The letter was under some stuff on her bedside table, right? She said she dropped it there when I called about that party.” An impish grin lit up her face. “But she won’t tell me what you were doing in her bedroom when you found it.” With a wink, she shut the door, leaving Jonah standing outside, trying to work through all the implications of Sami’s words.

  LeeAnn isn’t dating Vincent.

  And if I am wrong about that…then what else might I be wrong about?

  Back in his hotel room, Jonah paced the length of the room, trying to decide what to do next.

  So what if LeeAnn wasn’t seeing her ex again?

  What does that change?

  She clearly didn’t care about the important things in life. She was still too flaky to be trusted with important papers. An
d she was still wrong for him in almost every way—too vegetarian, too hippie chick, too…too…

  He froze, stunned by the thoughts that came next.

  Too concerned with her family to let her ideals interfere with their needs.

  Too kind to let an abandoned horse remain homeless.

  Too caring to allow an injury—even a scratch from a mesquite tree—stay unbandaged.

  Too generous to say no when her cousin asked for a spirit-lifting barbecue on the ranch.

  Too helpful to try to find a better job when her friend needed someone to watch the store.

  Too strong to go back to someone who hurt her as badly as Vincent did. As badly as I did?

  Finally, he admitted it to himself. What did the fact that she wasn’t seeing her ex again change?

  Everything.

  Because his life looked grim without her in it—an endless round of drilling rights negotiations, punctuated by dreary hotels rooms and lonely nights.

  Sure, he would get the promotion. A better title. More money.

  But why did he need it? To take care of his father? His dad’s tiny house had been paid off for years, and truth be told, it didn’t cost Jonah all that much to support him. His own apartment? There was nothing holding him there.

  The thought of continuing as he was made his heart sink.

  So what about a future with LeeAnn? The idea caused him to freeze in sheer terror for an instant. Spend his life with someone that unpredictable?

  But then he tried to picture it, and the images unfolded in bright colors. Horseback riding. Fixing her fences. Buttermilk pie at the Wagon Wheel Diner. Yoga classes. Her beautiful gray eyes, sparkling up at him.

  He’d spent years building his career, resenting his father for being a burden. Earning money, but never really using it to live.

  And he’d shoved away the one person who had given him a glimpse of what living life could really be like.

  Could he ever possibly win back her trust?

  Maybe even her love?

  Almost as soon as that thought finished, a plan sprang into his mind, as if it had been waiting in his subconscious for the right moment to leap out at him.

  “Oh,” he whispered. “That’s perfect.”

  He glanced at the clock, running through everything he’d have to do.

  There was no way he could finish all the steps before Natural Shale shut down for the evening.

  But I can definitely get started.

  Moving as quickly as possible, he snagged his phone from the desk, prepared to dial. But then he saw the text that had arrived while he paced. It was from Jenny, his librarian friend in West Texas.

  She had found a buyer for some of the magazines he’d been snapping pictures of for the last several weeks. As he read the rest of the message, he began laughing aloud.

  “Jenny,” he texted, “your timing is perfect.”

  Then he dialed. “Nathan,” he said when his boss answered. “We need to talk.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The heavy grinding sound of the trucks’ engines made LeeAnn wince as she stepped out onto the front porch. They had shown up earlier than she had anticipated, interrupting her morning practice. Squinting into the sun, she watched the small convoy as it trundled across her land.

  A dually pickup bounced over the caliche road and turned off the path to lead the way down to the lower pasture. The other trucks followed, smashing bluebonnets and wildflowers under their heavy tread. Closing her eyes, LeeAnn drew in a deep breath, then coughed at the residual exhaust in the air.

  At least they were following the directions she had given them on the phone—they weren’t trampling her vegetable garden or her cultivated flowers.

  This is important to Sami and Bev, she reminded herself. They need the money more than I need to leave the land untouched.

  If it helped them, even the horrible trucks crawling all over her ranch would be worth it.

  People really are more important than principles, she reminded herself.

  But tears still gathered in the corners of her eyes.

  I ought to go saddle up Blackie.

  When the trucks finally stopped, several men got out, pulling out surveying equipment and setting up tripods as they peered through some sort of lenses.

  Wrapping her arms around her shoulders, she headed back into the house and perched on the edge of the living room sofa. Just because she had said they could get started early didn’t mean she had to watch them.

  In fact, she didn’t have to allow them on the land at all—not yet, anyway. Sami had told her that she and Bev hadn’t actually signed the drilling lease yet.

  But I signed the right-of-way contract.

  Natural Shale had asked if they could get started. Apparently their survey team’s work was unusually light this week.

  The sooner they got started, the sooner Sami and Bev would begin getting paid. She wasn’t about to delay that, even if the thought of the potential damage that drilling could do to the ranchland broke her heart.

  At least, it would have broken her heart if it weren’t already shattered into tiny pieces.

  She’d thought she’d been miserable when she found out Darrell had been cheating on her. Now, though, she recognized that feeling as simply wounded pride, producing the kind of anger that left her cursing his name.

  Her reaction to Darrell’s lies had nothing on how she felt now.

  Misery didn’t really cover it.

  Absolutely devastated came closer.

  Heartsick.

  She had yet to find a yoga pose that could help with that.

  When Sami had called, trying to prod her cousin into saying something by telling her that Jonah had come by, LeeAnn hadn’t been able to work up enough resentment for name-calling.

  She didn’t have any pride left to be wounded. Even if Jonah had no interest in her, she wanted to hear it directly from him.

  But even when she’d overcome her fear enough to dial his number the night before, he didn’t return the call.

  There were things she needed to say to him, though.

  She needed to tell him she wasn’t angry that he had found the letter—that she could be okay with the drilling, if only he were here with her.

  She needed to ask him if she had ever been more to him than just a job.

  She wanted to tell him how she really felt about him, to tell him that she loved him, despite everything.

  Was she stupid to even consider trusting him again? Possibly. But the more she’d thought about his last words to her—people are more important than principles—the more she’d realized he was right.

  Her principles had protected her for a long time, helped her heal from her parents’ deaths and her uncle’s lies. They hadn’t kept her heart safe from Jonah, though. Maybe that was a good thing.

  Maybe she couldn’t ever really connect with someone else unless she figured out how to trust someone other than herself.

  With a groan, she pushed herself up again.

  What she needed was to get out of her own head. As usual, she was thinking far too much.

  Reaching into the top of the entryway closet, she pulled down the mat she used outside. Yoga would clear her mind—or at least help her focus on something else for a while.

  After she was done, she would push past the terror clutching her stomach and sit down to write Jonah a letter. He might never answer, but at least she would know she had done everything possible to let him know how she felt. To begin to learn how to trust again.

  …

  Jonah navigated his pickup through the narrow gate onto the driveway leading to LeeAnn’s house, bouncing in the seat as the tires rumbled over the cattle guard.

  He glanced down at the notification of a voicemail message on his phone one last time, still not fully trusting his eyes.

  The grin he hadn’t been able to shake all morning faltered a bit. Surely LeeAnn would forgive his silence once she found out what he’d been doing.


  As he rounded the bend in the drive and the house came into view, he caught a glimpse of her on the slight hill beside the house, stretching her arms into the air before bending over in a fluid, graceful motion.

  She is stunning.

  His heart constricted at the thought that she might not want to see him.

  The sight of the survey team working out in the pasture did nothing to calm his nerves.

  But they wouldn’t be a problem for much longer. And no matter what, he would not leave again.

  Not if he had anything to say about it.

  Stopping in front of the house, he parked the truck and jumped to the ground. Watching for LeeAnn, he moved around the house.

  Surely she had seen him driving up.

  When he turned the corner, he found her sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, hands placed palm up on her knees. For a long, quiet moment, he simply watched her breathe.

  He could do that forever.

  “Can we talk?” he finally asked, quietly.

  She opened her eyes. “It might take a while,” she said. “I have a lot to say.”

  He nodded. “Okay. But can I say one thing first?”

  “Okay.” She breathed deeply, as if preparing for a physical blow.

  Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he dropped the file folder he carried onto the ground. Then he lowered himself gently to the mat beside her, digging the heels of his boots into the grass in front of him, and flipped through the messages until he found the one he wanted. “Here,” he said, unable to hide the smile in his voice.

  She read the text, blinked and shook her head, then read it again.

  “Wait,” she said, her eyes growing huge as she looked up at him. “Is that number right?”

  His smile stretched wider. “It is exactly right.”

  “Who would pay that much for a bunch of old magazines?” She looked back and forth between him and the phone.

  “Apparently some of the older ones are incredibly rare and valuable.” He took the phone away from her and flipped through some of the pictures. “I think you’ll appreciate this one, in particular.”

  At least, he hoped she did. A smile from her might make the next part of what he planned to say easier. Waiting for her to take the phone he held out, he felt his stomach tighten into knots.