Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch

by Victoria Pade

  “Sure.”

  She finally persuaded her feet to move. But before she’d gotten more than a few steps away, Cal’s deep voice stopped her.

  “How about we watch the sunrise together sometime soon? I know the perfect place for it.”

  So maybe she hadn’t bored him to death the previous night. Or just now, either.

  “I’d like that,” she heard herself say before she’d given any thought to the wisdom in it.

  Then she wondered if that perfect place to watch the sunrise was from his bed, thinking that perhaps she should add that she’d only like to watch it with him if it was from some respectable spot.

  But somehow that seemed presumptuous even if his tone of voice was full of insinuation.

  Not to mention that she wasn’t altogether sure she wanted to put on that restriction....

  “Happy faucet huntin’, Abby Abby,” he said then, rather than making a firm date.

  “Thanks. Enjoy your bathtub.”

  “Without you? Don’t know if that’s possible,” he said on a sigh.

  Incorrigible. He was definitely incorrigible.

  And she liked it way too much.

  ABBY WAS DREAMING that there was a woodpecker in her room.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  She could hear it, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see it.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  She also couldn’t figure out how it had gotten into her room.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Or maybe it wasn’t in her room. Maybe it was pecking from outside. On her window...

  She came awake slowly until she realized the pecking wasn’t coming from a woodpecker inside or outside her room, that it was someone knocking on her window. Then she bolted the rest of the way out of sleep with a rush of pure adrenaline, sitting up in bed.

  Somebody was knocking on her window!

  Her bedroom—like all the rest in the house—was on the second floor. But being in the rear, it had its own outside door onto the wide sunporch that ran the length of the back side. There were a dozen wooden steps that rose up from the yard to the porch, but no one came calling from there. Especially not in the middle of the night. Or even at 4:43 in the morning, which was what her bedside clock said was the time.

  The lacy white curtains on her window were pulled but they had a tendency to part about an inch at the center rather than meeting directly. And through that inch she could see that there was a person standing out there, and that was where the soft tapping was coming from and not from the woodpecker of her dream.

  She got out of bed and grabbed a bathrobe even though her nightgown, with its high neck and thick cotton fabric, didn’t reveal anything. Still, she didn’t go to the window until the robe was in place and buttoned from the floor-length hem to the round collar.

  She couldn’t really see enough of the window knocker to recognize more than that he was a man, but deep down she knew who it was anyway.

  Cal.

  Who else would have the audacity to come knocking on her bedroom window so early in the morning? No one she knew. And Clangton didn’t have any criminal element to be wary of. Besides, burglars didn’t patiently stand outside and knock before coming in.

  Her heartbeat picked up speed as she finally crossed the room and pulled the curtains open.

  It was Cal, all right. Grinning at her and waving as if he were in a parade.

  He mouthed, “Open the window,” and Abby didn’t hesitate to oblige.

  “What are you doing out there?” she asked, only then wondering how she must look—her hair a sleep-ruffled mess, no makeup, probably pillow creases on her face. And all while he didn’t seem to have been to bed yet because he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on in the hardware store, his hair carelessly finger combed and his face clean shaved enough to make her think he’d spruced himself up not long before.

  “I’ve been workin’ on blueprints of my house all night instead of sleepin’. My eyes were blurrin’ but I’m still not tired, so I thought I’d see if you’d come watch the sunrise with me. You said you would, remember?”

  “You didn’t say when.”

  “So what about now? I have coffee. And beer nuts—the breakfast of champions,” he added as if the coffee and beer nuts were sure lures.

  “Beer nuts?”

  “Nothin’ open around here this time of day, and that’s all I could get from the machine outside of the gas station. But the coffee’s fresh ground and fresh made.”

  Abby stared out at him, wondering how he could be so charming, so appealing, so sexy even at that hour, without any sleep. But he was. And just out of a deep slumber of her own, her resistance was low. Not that it was ever too high when it came to this guy.

  “You don’t have to work, do you?” he asked.

  “No, this is my late morning.”

  “Then what do you say?”

  No was what she should say, she told herself. This was crazy. It wasn’t even five o’clock in the morning. And sneaking out her bedroom to go off and watch the sunrise with a man who’d just been peeking in her window was not something Abby Stanton did.

  But at that moment she didn’t really care about anything but the illicit excitement of doing something she wouldn’t ordinarily do. With Cal.

  “Just give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

  His grin broadened on only one side. “I’ll be waitin’ downstairs.”

  The clock on her nightstand said 5:00 a.m. on the dot when Abby slipped out of the porch door to follow Cal.

  She’d applied just a dab of mascara and blush, and brushed her hair but left it free around her face and shoulders rather than waste the time doing more with it.

  She’d thrown on a pair of jeans she’d had since high school, and the first blouse she found in the closet—a plain white button-down-collar oxford. Then she’d brushed her teeth as she slipped her feet into a pair of penny loafers, applied a hint of lip gloss and away she went, still surprised at the fact that she was actually doing this.

  Cal was sitting on the second step from the bottom and he stood as she went down to him.

  Watching her come, he smiled again. “I wasn’t sure whether you’d go through with this or just call the sheriff to haul me away.”

  “There are laws against window peeking, you know,” she said just to give him a hard time. “My sisters would shoot you if they knew you’d looked in at them while they were sleeping to figure out which room was mine—that is how you figured out which room was mine, isn’t it?”

  “It is. But yours was the first window I tried.” He leaned toward her and confided, “Don’t ever underestimate my luck.”

  Or anything else about him, Abby thought, but she didn’t say it.

  He held his arm out for her to lead the way around the house to the curb in front where his car was parked, but once they’d reached it he made sure he was there ahead of her to open the passenger’s door for her. It struck her that the small courtesy he always performed was something her former fiancé—who would probably be considered the more civilized of the two men—had never shown her.

  “So where are we going?” she asked when Cal was behind the wheel and easing the Corvette away from her house.

  “It’s a surprise,” he said.

  He drove through town at a leisurely pace, with his right arm stretched across her seat back, seeming to enjoy the sight of a sleeping Clangton.

  “What was it like growin’ up here?” he asked, almost as if he envied the fact that she had.

  “It was nice. Ordinary, though, I guess. We went to school, to the movies on Saturday, to church on Sunday. In the summers we swam in Palmer Lake. In the winters we waited for it to freeze over so we could ice-skate on it. Or we went sledding down Harris Hill. There weren’t a lot of restrictions because there weren’t a lot of dangers and everybody pretty much knew everybody else, so parents weren’t paranoid.”

  “Were you born here?”

  “Mm-hmm. We’re the fo
urth generation in Clangton. My parents are the first not to spend their whole life here.”

  “Have you ever lived anywhere else?”

  “I went to college in Fort Collins. But then I just came back here. I like it.”

  He nodded his head slowly. “Me, too.”

  “How did you pick Clangton to finally settle down in?”

  “I’d been in and out of Colorado plenty of times. Liked it. Liked the seasons changing. The people—” He shot her a meaningful glance. “So when I decided to buy property I went to Denver and hooked up with an old friend—”

  “Cissy Carlisle’s cousin.” The playboy.

  “Word travels fast,” he guessed with a sideways glance at her.

  “Don’t ever doubt it.”

  “Anyhow, Cissy’s cousin set me up with Cissy, who showed me the Peterson place, and there was just somethin’ about it and Clangton that said home to me. I told you I trust my instincts. So here I am.”

  There seemed to be an underlying message in that last part, but Abby didn’t know what it was any more than she’d been sure what he might have been alluding to with his question about whether to invest in the tub or something else the previous afternoon in the hardware store. And she didn’t have time to find out because just then he turned onto the road that led to his house.

  “Your place is the best spot for watching the sunrise?” And what was she going to do if he said watching it from his bed was what he had in mind?

  “Yep,” was all he answered as he stopped in front of the house and switched off the engine.

  “I don’t know about this....”

  “You gettin’ scared on me again?”

  “No, I’m not scared. It’s just that—”

  He pressed a finger to her lips to halt the words. “Just wait and see.”

  He got out of the car and came around for her, taking her hand to offer help she didn’t need and keeping hold of it once he had.

  But rather than guiding her toward his house the way she’d been expecting him to, he veered to the left and headed in the direction of the big white barn that ran at a forty-five-degree angle to the house.

  They went through the open great doors that cast what little moonglow lit the way. But darkness didn’t seem to bother Cal, who took her confidently to a homemade wooden ladder not far from the barn’s entrance.

  “Climb up,” he said.

  “Into the loft?”

  “Into the loft.”

  She hesitated only a split second before doing just that, rising into the scent of freshly cut hay and cool country air.

  The hay doors at the far end stood open, too, spilling more moon- and starlight onto a blanket spread over a cushion of hay. A thermos and two mugs were nearby, as was the promised bag of beer nuts.

  It could well have been a scene for seduction.

  Or nothing more than what he said it was—the perfect place to watch the sunrise since the loft offered a clear view to the east, over the house and the rest of the outbuildings. With Cal it was hard to tell. But by then she was inclined to think that it was all just very sweet. That this man was very sweet, no matter what kind of a reputation had followed him here.

  He’d trailed her up the ladder and now pointed toward the blanket to let her know that was their destination.

  “When did you do this?” she asked as she crossed to it.

  “Just before goin’ to kidnap you.”

  Two hay bales under one end of the blanket made a perfect backrest, and Abby sat in front of them, Indian fashion, looking out the hay doors.

  Cal joined her, sitting the same way beside her.

  “Coffee?” he offered.

  “Not right now, I don’t think,” she said. She still felt lazy and weighted from sleep, which helped make her more at ease, more comfortable with him. It was nice and she didn’t want it disturbed by caffeine.

  Instead she surveyed his property beyond the barn.

  The main house was the biggest in the county. The center portion was a two-story, redbrick Georgian structure, and on either side were single-story wings that stretched out like welcoming arms.

  Behind the house was another barn—smaller than the one they were in, a two-level bunkhouse, a large foreman’s house that dated from when there had been a foreman and several smaller cabins that had been built when the place had been turned into a dude ranch.

  With the exception of some weather-worn gutters, the main house—because it was brick—didn’t show many signs of disrepair on the outside. But since all the outlying buildings were wood, they did. Paint chipped and peeled or was water-stained in a pattern that looked like muddy icicles dripping from beneath the eaves. Window and door screens were torn, glass had broken, shut ters were hanging, shingles were in need of replacing, paddock fences had splintered and weeds had overtaken the grounds all around.

  Still, though, there was no denying it was a big spread. Especially for a man alone. A man who’d bought the place, Abby recalled, hoping his many brothers and sister might join him. But until that happened, it just felt lonely.

  Or maybe he did and she was only sensing it intuitively.

  “What’re you thinkin’?” he asked, breaking the silence that surrounded them.

  “That you have your work cut out for you.” She lied, rather than telling him what she’d just been wondering.

  “I like a project,” he said, once again making it sound as if he were referring to more than what it would take to get the place back in order.

  “Is that what I am, a project?” she asked, this time guessing at what else he might mean.

  He smiled slightly. “I was thinkin’ more of you as a plaything.”

  “So you’re toying with me.”

  “No, just enjoyin’ you,” he said slowly, as if contemplating what exactly he was doing with her. Then, in the same way, he added, “Enjoyin’ you and thinkin’ about you more often than not. Wonderin’ about you. Wantin’ you...”

  “Me?” she asked as if she couldn’t believe what he’d just said. Well, actually, she couldn’t believe it.

  He chuckled at her, reaching over to take a strand of her hair and letting it curl around his long, thick finger. “Are you fishin’ for compliments or are you a quart low on self-esteem for some reason?”

  “It’s just that I wouldn’t think I’m your type.”

  “Why is that?” His voice was quiet, but it had a touch of huskiness to it as he stared at her, his eyes caressing her face. And Abby wondered how it was possible for the man to take her from cool porcelain to red-hot flames with just that glance.

  “You said you’ve known a lot of wild women. And from the things I’ve heard...well, I’d just think wild women were more suited to you,” she said as she feebly attempted to fend off her own feelings.

  “I’ve known my fair share of wild women, all right,” he conceded.

  “More than your fair share, is the rumor.”

  “Is that right? Maybe you ought to fill me in on what’s bein’ said about me.”

  “I’ve been told that you’re a ladies’ man. A womanizer. A playboy. That you get around...”

  “I’m thirty-seven years old and I haven’t led a monk’s life, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”

  “The insinuation isn’t that you date a lot of women. It’s that you juggle them. That you’re never serious about them—”

  He shook his head. “Cissy Carlisle’s been doin’ a lot of this talkin’, I can tell.”

  “Is she wrong?”

  “I don’t juggle women. I don’t use them. I’ve never in my life kept company with more than one at a time or cheated in any way. I try to be honorable and honest, and to do everything I can to make sure nobody gets hurt—which is why I didn’t ask Cissy Carlisle out again after she made it clear she was husband huntin’. I was not interested in her that way and didn’t want to take up time she could be usin’ findin’ someone who was.”

  Abby didn’t doubt that scenario. Cissy Ca
rlisle was notorious for her hot pursuit of a husband and the fact that no man dated her more than once or twice without her starting to wonder out loud what their kids might look like when they had them.

  But Abby was also not losing sight of the fact that Cal was not denying that he was a ladies’ man, either.

  “So, all the women you don’t juggle or use or cheat on—are they wild women?” she said, getting back to their original subject.

  “Mostly they have been. I guess I have to own up to that. But I seem to have hit a time in my life when that’s gotten old.”

  “So you thought you’d try out something new—like me?” she said wryly.

  He looked into her eyes. His expression was very serious. “I didn’t set out lookin’ for a wholesome woman, no. Meetin’ up with you just happened. Likin’ you just happened. But what I’m findin’ in you is that there’s one thing wild women have in common that you don’t.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They’re shallow,” he confided, leaning near as if someone might overhear him. “No substance. No meat on their bones, so to speak. Over the years I guess I’ve just been left hungry for somethin’ more. Now I’m findin’ myself starvin’. And you’re lookin’ like a feast.”

  He held her eyes with his for a long moment before he slipped the hand that was fiddling with her hair behind her head, bracing her for the kiss that came after the slow descent of his handsome face.

  It was a gentle, chaste kiss initially. But it didn’t stay that way for more than a few moments before his lips parted and his tongue came to urge her lips open, too.

  Not that she required much persuasion, especially when she’d been craving this since he’d left her dazed after the sunset kiss.

  His other arm went around her, pulling her closer, and for the first time Abby grew brave enough to wrap her arms around him, too. To press her flattened palms to his back—his broad, muscular back—soaking in the feel of the hard hills and valleys that spoke of a healthy, virile, masculine body.

  She gave herself over to that kiss, which was even better than the last, as his tongue traced the very tips of her teeth, teasing, taunting, entering only in small darts that enticed her tongue to frolic along with his.