Not My 1st Rodeo

by Donna Alward

  He did, stretching out his long legs. The air was cool in the shade of the trees and the sound of the trickling water was soothing.

  “You know your big view back at the Lazy H? This is that place for me.” She turned her head and looked at his profile. “I used to come here to ease my tension and stress. It was a busy spot during my teenage years.”

  He chuckled, the sound low and warm.

  “Brett, I’m sorry. What you’re doing for my parents…well, I’m not sure Dustin would have done the same.” It pained her to admit it, but it was true. Dustin had a family. He would have moved into the house and not thought twice about it. Which would have been his right. Maybe that was what made Brett’s compromise that much more amazing.

  “It was Manda’s idea,” he replied, staring at the stream. “Turns out she has some good ones now and again.”

  “That’s generous of you to say. I mean, our first few dates were good up until…well, you know. Until it all blew up. I did a lot of thinking this summer, and I realized my whole perspective was clouded by fear and emotion. It was unfair of me to blame you for everything, or to expect you to change your plans. It had far more to do with feelings I hadn’t dealt with yet.”

  “About James.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “I thought I had, but having feelings for someone again, and then finding out you were the one trying to buy the ranch…I thought it was you I didn’t trust. Turns out it was my own judgment.”

  He turned a little, though the seat afforded minimal room. His knee bumped against hers as he looked into her eyes. “You weren’t the only one who was stubborn. I considered withdrawing my offer. The fact that it even crossed my mind scared the hell out of me. I felt like you wanted me to change who I was, and I’d already had to do that before, only it failed miserably. Maybe neither of us was ready to enter the dating game again.”

  Did that mean he wasn’t interested now? Not that she deserved another chance after all she’d said.

  “The thing is…” Her tongue felt thick in her mouth as she fumbled around for words. “The whole time I was gone, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I thought I’d go away and shake this whole thing off, come back, make a fresh start. Instead, I found you at my parents’ kitchen table and everything came rushing back and…” She looked away, embarrassed. “Well.”

  “What are you saying?” he asked.

  She took a deep breath. “Not that I’d deserve it, but I’d like to give us another chance.”

  That little sideways smile teased his lips. She’d missed that.

  “Like go out on a date?”

  “Maybe.” She looked into his eyes, found warmth and invitation there. “Maybe just take things one day at a time and see where it goes.”

  He lifted his hand and placed it on the side of her cheek. “You keep saying you don’t deserve a second chance. But, Mel, one of the things I did after you left was try to put myself in your shoes. I get it. All of our actions are colored by our past experiences.” He smiled, bigger now. “Hey, just because you were wrong about me doesn’t mean I don’t understand where you were coming from.”

  She rolled her eyes, amazed that they were actually teasing about this. “I see your ego didn’t suffer any permanent damage.” She put her hand over his. “Aw, hell, you have to know I’m kidding. You probably have the least ego of anyone I’ve ever met.”

  He moved his thumb, rubbing against the tender skin of her cheek, the teasing expression gone from his face. Just tenderness remained, and her heart did a crazy weird thump thing. The sun created dappled shadows around them, the birds in the trees and the rushing stream their background music. And when Brett leaned forward and kissed her this time, she met him halfway, curling her hand around his neck and drawing him closer.

  This kiss was different, Melly realized. Better. One hundred times better. There was still sweetness and passion, but now there was something more. Trust. Acceptance. Possibility. All the things she’d wanted and had been searching for.

  And when he pulled her into his embrace and wrapped his arms around her, she figured that maybe she’d been right after all. Maybe there really was nothing like a cowboy.

  Chapter Nine

  The leaves on the poplars and birches were like millions of gold coins, glowing against the blue sky and creating a gilded carpet on the forest floor.

  Brett held Mel’s cold hand in his as they ambled through the grove, something they often did on Sunday afternoons when she came out to the ranch. Her favorite spot had now become his too. They often sat on the creek bank and cuddled together, isolated from the outside world. The last time they’d come out here, they’d made love under the canopy of the trees. It had been the first time since they’d decided to start over. For Brett, it had been something particularly precious. It hadn’t been the rushed and fevered joining that they’d experienced at the beginning of their relationship. It had been slow and profound. It had stirred something inside him that he welcomed and yet scared him too. He’d fallen in love with her, heart and soul.

  “What are you thinking?” Mel asked, nudging his shoulder as they walked. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “I was thinking about the last time we walked out here,” he replied, squeezing her hand.

  “Oh, right.” She looked up at him and her eyes twinkled at him. “Listen, cowboy, it’s getting a little chilly to be sneaking off to have sex in the great outdoors.”

  “I can think of ways to keep you warm.”

  “I just bet you can.”

  He could hear the trickle of the creek ahead, but he slowed his steps, nervous but in a good sort of way. Today was the right time. He wanted to take things to the next step.

  So he tugged on her hand, pulling her off the dirt path. The light in her eyes told him that sneaking kisses would be a welcome pastime, so he indulged her by pressing her against a smooth birch trunk and tasting her lips, slowly and thoroughly. As always, her gentle touch made his body spring to life, and before long they were both breathless.

  “You’re very good at that,” Mel whispered, snuggling close against his jacket. “I missed you this week.”

  “I missed you too.” He’d rented a room with a kitchenette at a local motel while the house was being built, and it was damned lonely at night. “Our phone calls just aren’t the same as seeing you in person.”

  “Hey, I showed you how to chat on your laptop.”

  “Didn’t the dating site thing convince you I’m a techno-idiot?”

  She laughed. “Maybe you just need to be properly motivated. I’ll have to make the view…interesting.”

  “Tease.”

  But he loved it. Ever since they’d cleared the air, she’d been so open, so amazing. It wasn’t perfect; nothing ever was, and they both knew it. It was, however, a real revelation to be so compatible with someone. They liked and appreciated so many of the same things. She embraced his way of life because she’d lived it and loved it herself, and he’d never experienced that sort of acceptance before. In return, he loved that she preferred these afternoon walks to other more sophisticated activities, where he felt out of place. He was learning that as a teacher she was big on organization, and he was more of a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. But Brett figured that just balanced them out a bit and kept things from being boring.

  “Mel?”

  “Yes?” She’d stuck her hands in his jacket pockets and was grinning up at him cheekily.

  “I love you.”

  The smile slid from her face, replaced by a look of surprise and what he hoped was wonderment. “Brett,” she whispered. “I…wow.” Her dark eyes were wide and luminous as she looked up at him. “You…when did this happen? How?”

  It wasn’t quite the response he was hoping for, but he pressed on anyway. “It snuck up on me, I guess. But last weekend, I knew. When we were together it was…different. Suddenly, i
t wasn’t just me and you anymore, but us.”

  He cradled her face in his hands. “I don’t know how to explain it, other than to say that when I was inside you, something clicked. Fell into place. Like turning on a light in a dark room, you know? It had been coming for a while, but that was the moment that I knew without a doubt that I was in love with you.”

  She swallowed and her eyes glistened with emotion. “I love you too.”

  He let out a breath. “Thank God.”

  Their soft laughter floated away on the air. “When did you know?” he asked.

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “So remember the Friday night I showed up and you had the bouquet of daisies that you’d picked? That was the clincher for me. No one has ever picked me flowers before. I remember thinking that this was the sort of man I should have been with all along. If I’d had any hesitation, it was gone after that moment.”

  “And you didn’t say anything?” He’d been tormenting himself all week and she’d already been there?

  “I didn’t want to be the one to say it first,” she admitted, blinking, her lips curving in a sweet smile. “Besides, I thought all you cowboys liked to take the initiative.”

  He tilted her chin, gazed into her eyes. “Not about everything, minx.”

  “Hey, guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I love you.”

  He couldn’t stop smiling. Manda was near impossible these days, crowing about her success as a matchmaker, but he let her because he was happy. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was perfectly content. He was working his own place, had a woman he loved, and the future was looking at lot brighter than it had a few short months ago.

  “I can’t wait for the house to be finished,” he said, sliding his hands down to her shoulders. “When it is, I’m going to carry you up to the bedroom and make love to you all weekend.”

  “Mmm. Sounds lovely. Any ETA on that?”

  “Contractor says three, maybe four weeks.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  They started walking back towards the path, their boots making shushing sounds in the leaves.

  “Mel?”

  “Yes?”

  He took a breath and said the other thing that had been on his mind for a while now. “I wish you didn’t live so far away.”

  She laughed. “It’s only an hour.”

  “I know. I miss you during the week, that’s all. I know that you have work and then prep and marking and all.”

  This time she was the one to tug on his hand, halting their progress. “Well, I’ve been doing some thinking about that myself.”

  “You have?”

  She nodded. Her cheeks were pink from the autumn air, and he was certain that even without any makeup she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. Lord, was he getting sappy or what?

  “I was thinking about looking for a teaching position a little closer for next year. I mean, I don’t want to assume anything, but…well, I’d be closer to my mom and dad. And as far as you and me…”

  She touched a finger to his nose. “I’m done with sabotaging the best thing to happen to me by letting doubts creep in. I love you. You love me. And today that’s enough. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

  But oh, she was wrong, Brett thought. His heart was full as he gazed into her eyes and caught a fleeting glimpse of forever.

  “It gets better all right,” he promised. “You just wait and see.”

  About the Author

  A busy wife and mother, Donna Alward believes hers is the best job in the world: a combination of stay-at-home mom and romance novelist.

  An avid reader since childhood, Donna always made up her own stories. She completed her Arts Degree in English Literature in 1994, but it wasn’t until 2001 that she penned her first full-length novel, and found herself hooked on writing romance. In 2006 she sold her first manuscript.

  Donna loves being back on the East Coast of Canada after nearly twelve years in Alberta where her Harlequin career began, writing about cowboys and the west. Donna’s debut Harlequin Romance, Hired by the Cowboy, was awarded the Booksellers’ Best Award in 2008 for Best Traditional Romance.

  Donna loves to hear from readers; you can contact her through her website at www.donnaalward.com, visit her Facebook page, find her on Twitter at @DonnaAlward or through her publishers.

  Look for these titles by Donna Alward

  Now Available:

  Almost a Family

  Sold To The Highest Bidder

  Breathe

  First Responders

  Off the Clock

  In the Line of Duty

  Into the Fire

  Beneath the Badge

  Print Collections

  First Responders, Volume 1

  First Responders, Volume 2

  Something About a Cowboy

  Sarah M. Anderson

  Dedication

  To Donna Alward and Jenna Bayley-Burke, for roping me into this! It’s been a blast, ladies!

  Chapter One

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  Mack Tucker stood just inside the hotel bar, scanning the sparse crowd in front of him. Even though this was one of the fancier hotels in the area, complete with an indoor water park, the place was not crowded. But then Tuesday nights in the middle of January in Billings, Montana, weren’t exactly peak tourist season.

  He wasn’t supposed to be here, not alone. Not looking for a blind date with a woman he’d met on a website named NotMy1stRodeo.com, of all ridiculous things.

  If he was in a hotel looking for a woman, it should’ve been his wife, Sue. God rest her soul. He was married. Or at least he had been, back before the cancer had taken her.

  But Sue had been gone for six years, and Mack’s three boys kept insisting it was time for him to get out there again, as his youngest, Tommy, kept saying.

  It’d been Tommy who, unbeknownst to Mack, had put up a profile on NotMy1stRodeo.com. Tommy, who’d been screening likes and flirts and messages and God only knew what else people did on online dating sites.

  And it’d been Tommy who’d given Mack’s email and home phone number to a woman.

  The woman Mack was supposed to be meeting tonight.

  He could still bail. It didn’t matter that he’d driven almost three hours in the dead of winter to get to this fancy hotel. It didn’t matter that the woman, by the name of Karen Thompson, had the kind of voice that had made him sit up and pay attention when she’d called. It had absolutely no bearing on the situation that, at least in her online pictures, she was beautiful—delicate and refined but with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

  He was not now, nor had he ever been, the kind of man who met a woman he didn’t know and do anything with her, much less have sex with her. He was forty-six and far too old for this kind of shit.

  Then he saw her. Well, he didn’t know if it was her her, but he saw a woman sitting at the bar in a dress that wasn’t all there. He only caught glimpses of red fabric low on her hips and high around her neck. The rest was bare skin, smooth and creamy and begging to be touched. Her mass of dark brown hair was twisted up and off her neck with a red rose pinned behind her ear, making her look elegant and sophisticated and absolutely not the kind of woman who would be interested in a working rancher who got cow shit on his boots every single day.

  Maybe he’d get lucky—lucky enough—and that wouldn’t be his date. That’d she’d be a happily married woman waiting on her happily married husband and Mack could go on with his life, none the worse for his small temptation into sin. Absentmindedly, he spun his wedding ring on his right hand.

  His phone chimed—Tommy’s chime. “You can do it! Have fun, Dad!” the message read.

  He sighed a
t the text. Out of all his three boys, Tommy was the one who was pushing him the hardest to move on. Whether he liked it or not, Mack was going to be dragged into this decade kicking and screaming by a young man who wasn’t technically old enough to even drink.

  “Excuse me,” said a voice heavy with irritation. “You’re blocking the door.”

  Mack startled back to himself. How long had he been standing here? He didn’t know. He stepped all the way into the bar and let the man—a business traveller by the look of his suit—pass.

  Then he looked back up to where the woman in the red dress was sitting. She’d pivoted on her stool, no doubt to see what all the commotion was about.

  Her gaze met his and she smiled.

  Oh, hell. It was her. Karen.

  There was no turning back. Aw, who was he kidding? There’d been no turning back the moment he’d agreed to meet her. He tried to return her grin, but it didn’t feel right, so he gave up the effort and settled for walking toward her. As he did, he kept looking at her.

  She was, if possible, even better looking in the flesh than she’d been in her NotMy1stRodeo.com photos. There, she’d been grinning goofily at the camera, holding up a small dog—the yippy kind—and generally being unselfconscious about her appearance.

  But now? As he closed the distance between them, she stood, and Mack got the full magnitude of that red dress. In addition to being backless, it had a deep V that cut close to firm, high breasts and a slit that went most of the way up her leg. The whole thing skimmed over her curves, leaving just enough to the imagination. She had a lush, full body—hourglass shaped and perfect in proportion.

  For six long, dark years, he’d not allowed himself to think, much less look at another woman. Suddenly, one siren in a red dress had him thinking about what it’d be like to undo the tie on her neck and let those breasts, those hips free from that dress.

  Desire hit him low in the gut. He was really doing this. This was really happening.