Blazing Bedtime Stories, Volume VIII: The Cowboy Who Never Grew UpHooked

by Kimberly Raye

  “Ginny?”

  “I heard Dad and Mr. Barrie talking about it a while back. They talk about it a lot, actually.”

  James pushed his chair away from the table, but couldn’t muster enough strength in his legs to stand. Instead, he just muttered a curse that made his sister’s eyebrows pop up high beneath her bangs.

  After all these years, he’d never really considered how his and Allie’s breakup might have affected the people around them, especially their fathers. As the only two single dads in Lost Gun, Matthew Barrie and J. R. Hooker had become fast friends and confidants. Matt’s gentle nature counteracted J.R.’s good-old-boy attitudes, softening J.R. around the edges and opening his mind to alternative parenting strategies to a bootstrap. And Matt’s knowledge as a pharmacist had come in handy while J.R., who had stubbornly remained single no matter how many widows and divorcées had flounced around him after his wife’s death, dealt with raising a baby who’d been born with colic and suffered from croup and thrush several times before she’d turned three.

  James had never understood exactly what J.R. brought to the equation, but even at his most stubborn, the man was loyal to the end. And to most men, that was more than enough to make you a friend for life.

  “What do they say?” he asked.

  Ginny shifted uncomfortably in her chair as if she realized how hard this topic would be for them to discuss. “Just that it’s a shame, how it all went down. How they were sure you two were going to get married and if not for that stupid bull, they’d be sitting on the porch watching their grandchildren tear down the driveway in soap-box cars rather than talking about sports and politics.”

  James downed his soda. Since he was in the presence of his sister, he belched long and loud.

  “You’re so gross,” she said.

  “It’s why you love me,” he countered.

  “I love you because you’re going to tell me what I should do about Dad, so that he’ll give Wade a chance and not go all Rapunzel on me and build a tower to lock me up in.”

  “I have no advice,” he said, chuckling at his sister’s analogy, not because it was outlandish, but because he could see his father going that far if anyone mentioned the option while within his earshot. “But it seems to me that following Wade’s way isn’t a bad start. Take it slow. You don’t need to rush into anything at your age, especially when it comes to boys.”

  “Is that what ruined you and Allie?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When you got hurt and then Allie lost the baby, you rushed to break up with her before you’d even left the hospital. Then she rushed off to school. Rush, rush, rush. I can see how it hasn’t worked out too well for you.”

  James scowled at his sister, but she lifted her chin and met his disapproving gaze head-on. Damn if when the girl decided to add cement to her spine, she chose the quick-drying kind.

  “I don’t want to have this conversation with you,” he muttered, taking away her soda bottle even though she wasn’t done. He dumped the contents in the sink, rinsed the inside and threw the glass bottle into the bin beside the door.

  She coolly slid her chair out, stalked to the fridge, pulled another cold one out and popped the top with a loud swoosh.

  “Dad’s right. You’re a pain in the ass,” he concluded.

  “Dad’s never said that and even if he had, I’d take it as a compliment. I’m tired of always doing what everyone else wants me to, James Hooker, and that includes you. Seems to me that you need someone to talk to. About Allie. About the past. About the fact that she spent the night here last night but now she’s gone and maybe you’re not sure if she’s coming back.”

  “She’s coming back,” he insisted, though to be honest, he wasn’t entirely confident she would. He couldn’t help but think that once she got away, she’d realize what a mistake she’d make if she opted to stay in Lost Gun rather than take a job that would pay her to live at a five-star resort.

  “I hope she does,” Ginny went on. “She’s a good person. I know she’s been chasing you around for a long time, but maybe because she’s just a gal who knows what she wants. I’m finding I appreciate that more lately. And I’ve always liked her anyway. She never bossed me around when I was a kid, even when you did. She’s pretty and she’s smart, and obviously you still have the hots for her. And let’s face it, you’re not getting any younger. I would like to be an aunt someday and like it or not, you’re my only hope.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and kicked one ankle atop the other as he leaned back on the counter, trying to look as if this conversation hadn’t digressed into a topic he’d rather not be discussing with his teenage sister.

  “So you think I should ask Allie to give up her plans and dreams for the future and come back home to give us another shot because you want to be an aunt?”

  Ginny grinned. “It’s as good a reason as any other. Except for maybe the fact that you still love her.”

  “Oh, I do? How the hell do you know what’s inside my head?”

  “Well, first of all, love doesn’t exist in your head. If it did, no one would ever feel it because most of the time, it makes absolutely no sense. But if you didn’t still love her, you would have ended things with her a long time ago.”

  “I did end things with her.”

  “Ha! You may have broken up with her, but you never really ended things. You’ve been stringing her along for years.”

  “Before last night, I barely talked to her.”

  “But you did talk to her. And when you did, you never once said, ‘Allie, we have no chance of ever getting back together. I’ve moved on and you should, too,’ did you?”

  He frowned. No, he hadn’t. Even when he was still angry and bitter, he could never bring himself to tear Allie apart more than he already had that day in the hospital when he’d said things he’d had no business saying out loud to the girl he’d once spent hours making love to—the same girl who’d lost his baby to a miscarriage.

  “I didn’t want to be cruel.”

  “You didn’t want to lose her,” his sister insisted. “Somewhere in the back of that thick head of yours, you wanted her back. You just weren’t ready to face it. Now you are. So face it. Get her back if that’s what you want or let her go for good, but stop stringing her along like a pull toy. That’s cruel.”

  He pushed away from the counter and pulled open the back door. He had chores to do, more than he might be able to finish before Allie came back for dinner. But he supposed if he gave his sister’s opinion a minute’s worth of consideration, he wouldn’t be able to argue with her reasoning.

  But as much as he now wanted to figure out if he and Allie could make their relationship work again, how could he ask her to come back for good when coming home meant passing up a once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity in the Caribbean? He was tied down to landlocked Lost Gun, Texas. How could they ever make it work?

  But if they didn’t try, how many more years were they going to live as slaves to regret, fear and resentment?

  “It’s not that easy,” he muttered before he whistled for the dogs to follow him out to the stables.

  His sister jogged to catch up. “Love never is, big brother. Love never is.”

  * * *

  ALLIE LAID HER CLOTHES across her bed, wondering why she hadn’t packed her extra pair of skinny jeans. They’d look awesome with her pink blouse, the one with the frills that reminded her of the prom dress she’d worn on what had been her last big date with James. Shortly after that magical night, she’d realized that the nausea she’d been fighting off had not been a sign of the flu, but that she was pregnant—and thus had fallen the first domino in the chain that had thrown her life into chaos.

  But now she had a chance to find her direction again. The years she and James had been apart had worked both for them and against them. Forgiveness now came easier—just as it was simpler now to forget all the angry words from so long ago, when they were both young and raw from the pain of losing
so much.

  Now, they were older. Wiser. Lonelier. And though Allie had fruitlessly tried to lure Hook back into her life over the years, absence must have finally made his heart grow fond enough for him to finally let her catch him. It certainly had elevated the heat between them. Her body still thrummed from their lovemaking. The entire outer layer of her skin tingled with anticipation of more kisses and more touches, while the deepest recess of her heart longed for the rare and intimate connection she could share with him and only him.

  They had so much they could give each other, physically and emotionally. But first they had to make it through dinner.

  She pawed through the outfits she’d stuffed into her suitcase, then decided she hadn’t brought anything she liked. She turned to the closet her aunt had reserved for her the first time she’d come home from school. Over time, she’d forgotten various things or decided she no longer needed them—but her aunt had kept them all, in case a future need arose. Lost Gun had that effect on the people. You could move away, but you couldn’t help but leave things behind that you’d need when you least expected it.

  She giggled at the progression of her fashion history and made a mental note to pack up some of the more dated items for immediate disposal. The lime-green dress she’d been forced to wear for her father’s wedding went to the top of that pile. She growled at the snug leather vest she remembered purchasing at a Western-themed store in Dallas that catered to girls who wanted to catch themselves a cowboy, then frowned when she realized she’d never worked up the guts to wear it in public. She tried it on, but without the woefully needed skinny jeans, she abandoned the idea. Besides, she was better off saving it for another time, when she wanted James to only have sex on his brain.

  She loved how hot he still was for her, but she wanted tonight to be about more than lust. Attraction was all well and good, but now they needed to deal with the harder issues. He’d sunk every last dime into the

  J. Roger renovation and the business would keep him rooted in Lost Gun for the rest of his life. She, on the other hand, had chosen a career that couldn’t be pursued in a town where the biggest body of water was a man-made lake twenty miles north.

  She had decisions to make—and so did he.

  But before she could make up her mind about her future, she had to know if the promises they’d made so long ago had survived.

  She dug deeper in the closet, whistling when she found a pretty butter-yellow sundress that she couldn’t remember if she’d ever worn. It was simple. Sexy, but not too sexy. Short skirt. Halter top. It reminded her of lazy days and sultry nights and dancing in the moonlight to music streaming from the AM radio in his pickup.

  Deciding it was perfect, she swept her hair up into a loose ponytail, dabbed the perfume James liked best between her braless breasts and slipped her feet into the strappy, high-heeled sandals he’d seemed to like so much last night, though she hadn’t had a chance to wear them. Maybe tonight wasn’t going to be about sex, per se, but she knew they’d end up in bed. Whether it was to celebrate a new beginning or to seal their past for good had yet to be determined.

  She grabbed her keys and the overnight bag she’d stuffed with a change of clothes for tomorrow morning and the bottle of wine she’d promised—a hearty red to match the steak she had no doubt he’d be throwing on his grill—and headed down the back stairs, keeping herself out of sight of the customers in the diner. Crossing to the side alley where she’d parked her car, she was unlocking her door when she heard someone call her name.

  Emerging from the diner’s exit was the last man she expected ever to see in Lost Gun, Texas.

  “Eric?” she said, nearly dropping her keys. “What are you doing here?”

  Eric Rayburn, looking entirely out of place in a breezy Hawaiian shirt, loose khakis and deck shoes, grinned so that his white teeth shone in his perennially tanned face. “I’ve come to take you to paradise, Barrie. And don’t try to put me off again. This time, I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  9

  ALLIE COULDN’T BELIEVE this was happening. Okay, so she had ignored Eric’s repeated phone messages and put Samantha’s warning that her doctorate advisor was determined to track her down out of her mind. But she’d never expected the man to show up in Lost Gun.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Discovering the location of your hometown proved infinitely easier than tracking down your cell-phone number. One quick glance through your college records and here I am.”

  She frowned at the invasion of her privacy, but figured she’d brought this on herself. Eric Rayburn had been an exacting doctorate advisor and a challenging teacher. She couldn’t have expected he’d wait forever for her answer to his more than generous offer—not to mention his hints that his interest in her was more than just professional.

  “I was heading back to Port Aransas the day after tomorrow. You would have gotten your answer then.”

  “Did you tell me that? Did you pass that message along via Samantha? Your dissertation, I happen to know, just needs a little tweaking and the committee doesn’t meet for a couple of more weeks. As far as I knew, you’d gone home for an extended leave.”

  He slipped his hands into his pockets, his casual attire entirely out of place in her decidedly Western hometown. She was half expecting some kind of chemical reaction as the two worlds she’d tried so hard to keep separate and distinct clashed together, but the most that happened was an eruption of sweat over her lower lip and between her breasts. It was warm out tonight and the shock of seeing Eric standing one block off Lost Gun’s main street made her dizzy.

  “I guess I didn’t. I’m sorry. But why the rush? The job doesn’t start until the fall.”

  “Thanks to a mild hurricane season,” he said, “the resort construction is months ahead of schedule. Management wants my team in the water in three weeks to start collecting specimens. They want the place teeming with sea creatures before the bigwig celebrities fly out to check on the progress of their private bungalows. Sales haven’t been as robust as they’d hoped and they need us to sweeten the pot.”

  Allie found herself shaking her head, though she wasn’t sure if it was Eric’s timing that had her thinking, No, no, no, or the final realization that her desire to fly out to the Caribbean and work on an exciting private-sector job was nothing compared to her need to drive out to the J. Roger and figure out if she and James had anything left to salvage.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Allie,” Eric said. “This is the kind of job that marine biologists dream about. What are you going to do if you pass this up?”

  “I meant, I can’t deal with this right now, Eric. I have some place I need to be.”

  “Yes, and it’s in the islands with me.”

  She pulled the part of her brain that was already on the way to the J. Roger back into her head. She looked at Eric again, this time with her full gaze, and the sudden intensity in his dark eyes struck her hard.

  “I’m sure you don’t mean that the way it sounds,” she said.

  “You need to open your eyes to reality, Allie. I’ve seen your town. Took me all of fifteen minutes. What could there possibly be for you here? You’re better than Lost Gun, Texas, and you are definitely too good for a man who doesn’t know a great thing when he has it.”

  She staggered a few steps backward, knocked unsteady not only by his words, but the presumptuousness of him saying them out loud.

  She’d known Eric Rayburn for four years. He’d been her doctorate advisor for two and never once had he pried into her personal life, though she supposed that the closed quarters of their research vessels might have meant he’d overheard more of her conversations with Samantha than she’d ever intended.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “No, you’re right. I don’t. I only know what I see, which is a beautiful, sexy, intelligent woman who spends every free moment she has running back to her hometow
n to try and win back a man who threw her away a long time ago.”

  If possible, her temperature rose another ten degrees.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Maybe,” he conceded, “but I care about you. You can’t let old feelings keep you from following your dreams—and trust me, I know what I’m talking about. You’ve got to put the past behind you and embrace the future. I thought I was going to teach college for the rest of my life and live a peaceful existence doing what I loved. But now I have a chance to do something new and unexpected. I want to take you with me. You just have to say yes.”

  Allie didn’t flinch when Eric grabbed her wrists. His touch wasn’t gentle, but it wasn’t rough, either. It was desperate. Passionate. Seeing how much the job at the resort meant to him clarified so much for her—it was as if her eyes were opening for the first time.

  She’d never wanted anything as badly—nothing, except James and a life in Lost Gun.

  She worked her hands out of his. “I can’t say yes.”

  “God, Allie. You’re passing up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And not just for your career, either. Look, I—”

  She held her hand up, stopping him before he said more than necessary.

  “I’ve loved the university, Eric. I’ve loved every project, every exam, every long, hot day in the Gulf when we were lucky to find one decent specimen. But I don’t have to use that knowledge only one way. I can teach. Inspire the kids like me who’ve been landlocked all their lives. But I can’t go to the Caribbean,” she said.

  “You can, Allie. Your talents would be wasted here.”

  She patted his cheek. “You know that’s not true.”

  “So it’s me you don’t want.”

  She frowned, not wanting to say what needed to be said. He was truly a breathtaking man. Intelligent, dedicated, handsome. But she’d never truly noticed because her heart had always—and would always—belong to James Hooker.

  “You’re a great guy, Eric. An amazing teacher and an attractive man, but my heart is here in Lost Gun, with the man I’ve loved since I was fourteen. Maybe it sounds ridiculous to anyone else, but it makes perfect sense to me. In fact, now that he’s let me back into his life, my whole life makes sense. The resort job is once-in-a-lifetime. But so is falling in love with your soul mate.”