“Why are you checking up on me, anyway? You usually don’t even like calling me when I’m here as if you’re afraid you’re going to pick up my accent.”
“It does get more pronounced when you go back. You know that, right?”
“I reckon it does,” she drawled, half teasing. “It’s a small price to pay.”
“It’s going to be a bigger price if you let a certain job opportunity pass you by. Dr. Rayburn called again. He wants your cell-phone number, but I told him you’d expressly forbidden me from giving it out to anyone, even to the man who wants to make you his assistant at the most cutting-edge marine facility the world has ever seen. He made me promise to give you a message.”
Allie pressed her lips together. Did she really want to know what Eric had to say? He’d been sweetening the pot in his attempts to lure her to his new project—and hinting that once he was no longer her doctorate advisor, he might want to take their so-far-purely-academic relationship a personal step further.
He was handsome. And intelligent. And persistent. But none of that mattered when she wasn’t even sure what she wanted to do once she had her doctorate—and not just because of her unfinished business with James.
“Do I want to hear his message?” she asked.
“Depends on how bad you want that cowboy.”
“I want him to the depths of my soul,” Allie replied.
“Then I’ll call you tomorrow and give you Rayburn’s message. You concentrate on working that man out of your system so you can get back here and start fresh.”
“Or not,” Allie said.
Finally Samantha stopped her grumbling and said nothing more than goodbye. Allie clicked the phone off just as James took a right-hand turn onto the dirt road that would lead them to his place. Once there, Allie had no idea what was going to happen—but she had a strong feeling that by morning, she’d know one way or another whether she was going to keep up her pursuit of James Hooker or if she was finally ready to let him go.
3
JAMES PARKED IN FRONT of the house, leaving room on the gravel drive for Allie to ease her car to a stop behind him. Several times during the ride home, he’d thought about making a U-turn and guiding her back to town where she belonged—but then he realized she didn’t really belong there, either.
She had a life in Port Aransas, according to her father. She’d gotten bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Marine Institute at the University of Texas and was nearly done with a doctorate. He’d also heard that she’d been offered some kind of fancy job at a private aquarium, though the local gossip hadn’t provided much by way of details, probably because Allie kept them close to the vest. Either way, Allie was moving up and moving on—and yet, every time she came home, she made it her business to hunt him down.
Now, she’d caught him. That he’d finally let her get close enough to lock her chompers onto his heart again told him more about himself than he wanted to know.
As much as he’d thought he was done with her, he wasn’t—not by a long shot.
He locked up the truck and went around back in time to see her pulling an overnight bag out of her backseat.
“You came prepared,” he commented.
She slammed her door and shouldered the bag. “Like a Scout.”
He held out a hand. “I don’t think the little girls who sell cookies door to door would be happy to have you as a spokeswoman, knowing what you’ve come prepared for.”
“You have no idea what I’m willing to do with you, James Hooker,” she countered.
He snatched her bag, plopped it on top of the hood of her car and unzipped the top. She opened her mouth to protest, but stopped herself and crossed her arms instead. He didn’t have to dig in far to find what he was looking for—and once he did, he was half-sorry he had.
But only half. His other half desperately wanted to see her strut across his bedroom with the mile-high spiked shoes on her feet.
He wolf-whistled loud enough that he heard his dogs bark in response from somewhere in the south field.
She snagged the shoe out of his hand and shoved it back inside her bag. “Don’t make me regret coming here,” she warned.
“Sweetheart, if you don’t already regret it, then you aren’t going to. What do you want to see first? The new building or the house?”
She slung the bag back onto her shoulder. “What do you think?”
He started toward the house.
In the pink glow of the porch light, James noticed that he hadn’t done much to clear up the front of his house since he’d inherited it from his uncle. He usually parked around back and couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone inside through the main entrance. The old rockers with their peeling paint and cracked back slats sagged under the weight of rusted tools, battered boots and rotted ropes he’d been meaning to toss out. The floorboards creaked under their weight and he was sure if he allowed himself a few minutes to notice when the sun was up, the whole place needed a new coat of paint.
But his priorities had been elsewhere—on fulfilling the responsibility he’d been left when Uncle Deke had willed the place to him rather than to his own son.
Luckily for James, his cousin Paul, a big-time lawyer in Houston, had welcomed the idea. He was just happy that someone would put the old place to good use. He’d even invested heavily in James’s project—a dream his uncle had had for more years than he could remember, though the old wrangler hadn’t had the business acumen to turn a good idea into reality.
The J. Roger Ranch had long been a destination for new blood looking to learn about riding, roping and rodeoing. A former champion himself, Deke Hooker had trained up the next generation of wranglers for years, all while keeping a small herd or two of cattle and horses to pay the bills. He’d eventually sold off all the animals except the ones he used for training and by the time a series of heart attacks finally took the life hundreds of bulls and broncos had failed to slow, a tradition of the J. Roger hosting smaller competitions had taken root. Structures had been erected for shade, bleachers had been built to sustain crowds and an old brick barbecue had been turned into a concession stand that could feed anyone and everyone who traveled to Lost Gun to watch the cowboys hone their craft.
But Deke had wanted more. He’d dreamed of turning the J. Roger into a premiere destination for the official PBR competitions, and after James had graduated from business school, he’d done everything to help his uncle realize the dream. Thanks to the investors Paul had found, James was putting the finishing touches on a slick new arena. And since his money men were coming to visit tomorrow to check on the progress, he should have been spending the evening making sure everything was spit-shined and ready.
But he’d tend to that in the morning. Tonight, the only thing he was going to work on was making sure that at some point, he saw Allie in those shoes.
Just inside the door, he flipped on a lamp, then backed up so Allie could enter first. She walked slowly, as if she was strolling into some kind of museum rather than the place he’d called home for the past couple of years.
“Place hasn’t changed much,” she commented.
James had always been close to his Uncle Deke, so Allie had spent a good deal of time with him here back when he was training.
“Deke left me the whole ranch, but I’d been bunking in the back since his first heart attack.”
“I was sorry to hear he died,” she said. “I know you were close. And he was always real decent to me, even when he thought I was a distraction to your training regimen.”
James chuckled. His uncle had never been anything but kind to Allie, but he’d complained more than a few times in private that James shouldn’t have a girlfriend if he was serious about competing. It must have taken every ounce of his self-control not to throw his warnings in his nephew’s face after the accident. But he hadn’t. Not once.
“He was a good man. Calm. Fluid in his ideas about right and wrong.”
“In other words, the polar
opposite of your father.”
He nodded, then took off his Stetson and ran his hand through his hair. “That pretty much sums it up. I haven’t had time to change much around here just yet, but it’s a place to hang my hat.”
“It could be more than that,” she said, looking around with assessing eyes. “With the right touches.”
He supposed she was right, but he couldn’t see why anyone would bother. The house had a homey, warm atmosphere left over from when his aunt had been alive. She’d been a simple woman with no need for anything that hadn’t been in her family for generations. Other than pictures above the mantel of his cousin Paul transforming from chubby-cheeked baby to law-school graduate, the whole place looked as if it was stuck in time.
Once he was a widower, Deke hadn’t cared enough to change anything, and now that he was gone, James figured he’d keep things just the same, too. Wasn’t like he spent much time in the parlor anyway. Even now that he lived here alone, he tended to keep to the kitchen, his bedroom and the back side of the wraparound porch.
And of those three locations, he knew exactly which one he wanted to show Allie next.
“My room’s through there,” he said, gesturing down the long hall.
He flipped on a hall light just in time to spy the hesitation in her step.
“Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
Her determined gaze locked with his. “About being here? Not on your life. I just feel like I’ve finally entered the inner sanctum and I’m not sure if I need to make a sign of the cross or genuflect or something.”
He gave her a playful shove in the direction of his room. “You always were overly dramatic.”
“Me? Remember that time you snuck me into your room when your daddy was out arresting Billy Sumter for taking a bath in the water trough outside the Burning Bear tack shop?”
A rush of heat suffused his face and he was glad for the relative darkness. He’d done some really stupid things in his teenage years, but the way he’d reacted to his father coming home unexpectedly after he’d snuck Allie into his room for a little afternoon delight had to top the list.
“Who would have guessed old Billy would go along quietly and Pops would be home an hour and a half sooner than either of us expected?”
She laughed. “I was buck-naked and about five minutes away from a soul-shattering orgasm when you heard his car pull into the garage. I nearly died of shock right there across your bed.”
“If he’d have caught you, we would have been the ranch version of Romeo and Juliet—two young lovers dead before their time. Luckily, I’m a quick thinker.”
“You threw me into the closet!”
“Good thing you darted out and folded up inside that old trunk next to my bed instead. He beelined straight for the closet once he realized I was home and half-dressed instead of at the movies.”
She slid her hand to the small of her back and stretched. “I was nice and limber then.”
“And you’re not now?”
They’d reached the end of the hall. His door was wide open. The moonlight streaming in from the windows on either side of his bed illuminated what he suddenly hoped would be their final destination.
Allie dropped her bag just inside the door, but didn’t go in.
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Where’s the lady’s room in this man cave?”
He could have directed her to his bathroom, but he wasn’t sure he’d picked up since he lit out of the house earlier. Instead, he sent her to the guest bathroom near the kitchen. With a curse that kept him from feeling like he was a teenager again, he darted inside his room, picked up a few stray socks that belonged in the hamper and silently thanked Sarah, his housekeeper, for changing the sheets only a day ago. In the bathroom, he shoved his razor and aftershave into the medicine cabinet and flattened out the damp towel he’d thrown over the top of the shower rod.
He tried to remember the last time he’d brought a woman home with him and realized that he hadn’t. At least, not since he’d moved in to his uncle’s place. Didn’t seem right when the man was alive, and even after he’d gone, James had protected his space from feminine invasion. He certainly hadn’t been a monk, but when he spent time with a woman, he’d end up at her place, not his, something he hadn’t realized until Allie stood in the doorway and cleared her throat.
“This looks like you,” she said.
He glanced around. The room didn’t have much in it besides a king-size bed with a patchwork comforter, a leather easy chair he’d brought with him from his college apartment, a couple of dressers for his clothes and plenty of lamps for reading. On the walls, he’d hung his sheepskin from Texas A&M, a trio of pictures from his rodeo days and a collage of him with Ginny, his mom, and even one from his high-school graduation, standing beside his dad, whose genuine, straight-to-the-bone grin made it apparent he hadn’t expected his oldest child to make it all the way through to the ceremony.
“It’s a place to sleep,” he replied.
She sauntered into the room, swinging her hips in that subtle, sweet little way that he’d forever associate with Allie Barrie.
“Is that all it’s a place for?”
“Up until now,” he answered.
She chuckled. “You want me to believe you’ve never had a woman...or twelve, here before now?”
“Have you ever known me to be a player?”
Allie’s heart thumped an extra couple of beats. She knew from her own personal experience that despite the fact that James Hooker was the hottest guy in the whole state of Texas, he’d been faithful to her for the entire four years that they had been together.
Four years. Damn, it had felt like a decade, but they’d now spent twice as much time apart as they had together. She knew he’d had a few lovers since she’d left for school. She hadn’t been celibate, either, though her interludes had been few and far between and never more serious than a girl needed them to be so she wouldn’t feel guilty about letting a man into her bed.
But had he really never brought anyone home?
“You don’t have to be a player to share that big bed with someone.”
“I’m not big on sharing,” he replied. “Most women whom I hook up with don’t want to wait long enough to drive all the way out here to get what they want.”
She laughed as she rolled her eyes, acknowledging both the truth and the exaggeration of his claim. “That I can buy.”
“But you don’t seem to have any trouble waiting for what you want,” he said, shoving his hat onto a spike by the door and then sitting down on the corner of his mattress. “You seem to have endless supplies of patience.”
“Got me here after all these years, didn’t it?”
“That it did. And now that you’ve made it, are you going to stay sheltered in the doorway as if you’re expecting an earthquake or are you going to come on in and get what you came for?”
Again, he cut right to the chase. And again, the nerve endings radiating from the deepest part of her trembled in response. Allie pushed off from the doorjamb, but wasn’t exactly sure where to go next. She wanted to slide onto his lap and kiss the challenging look right off his face, but she had too much riding on tonight to make the wrong move. If there was one thing she knew for sure, it was that the sexual tension spiking between James and her wasn’t going anywhere—if it hadn’t lessened in nearly nine years, it wasn’t going to disperse in ten minutes.
Unless, of course, the unspoken truths zapped it all to hell.
She settled into the well-worn chair beside his window. Snuggling her backside into the James-size indentation, she inhaled the scent of the leather and what she suspected might be hints of his shampoo or aftershave.
“How much did you hate me after I left?” she asked.
His bright blue eyes widened for a second, as if she’d shocked him by asking a question rather than turning up the heat. Well, it wasn’t the last time tonight she was going to his push limits...or hers.
“More
than I wanted to,” he said.
“What did you want instead?”
“To forget I ever knew you,” he replied. “No offense, Allie, but I was hurt. Physically and—well, deeper than that. If I could have turned back time, I would have.”
“I know,” she acknowledged. The combined agony of losing the only man she’d ever loved and the baby that they’d made together had nearly knocked her unconscious. The miscarriage, unexpected and never explained, had thrown her into a spiral of despair she’d never thought she’d survive. But being raised by a single father had taught her that wallowing in her sadness wasn’t going to change anything. She could have stayed in Lost Gun and tortured herself with Hook’s righteous anger or she could take the early admission to college and see if moving away could lessen the pain.
It had, to some degree. But the longer she stayed at school, the deeper she suppressed her emotions until they finally bubbled to the surface and demanded she work them out. She’d been trying to do that for years with James, but he’d never given her a chance.
Until now.
“Every time I came home, I tried to talk to you. Work things out. Put the past to rest. You wouldn’t listen.”
He cursed even as he nodded in agreement. “When all this shit went down, Allie, I was nineteen years old. In the course of one month, I learned I was going to be a daddy, then that I’d lost my chance at ever riding a bull again, and then that you’d lost the baby. What was I supposed to think? To feel?”
“Angry,” she said, resigned. Without a doubt, that month had been the worst of her entire life. In the time it took for her to sneak a pregnancy test out of her father’s drug store and get the shocking results, the future she’d planned on with James had imploded. He wanted to ride the circuit for a while, save up his winnings, buy a piece of his uncle’s ranch and build them a house with a hot tub where he could soak his tired muscles. She’d planned to go to college, maybe study to be a biology teacher or some other profession that would keep her from getting lonely when James was on the road for the season, racking up points and profits.
Blazing Bedtime Stories, Volume VIII: The Cowboy Who Never Grew UpHooked Page 11
