The Last Cowboy Standing

by Barbara Dunlop

  Travis reached for a handful of the snack mix on the bar. “Keep telling yourself that.”

  “I will, thank you very much.”

  The waiter set her drink down in front of her and looked to Travis for his order.

  “Are you hungry?” Travis asked her. “Those little crab puffs and cheese squares didn’t do it for me.”

  “I’m not leaving yet.”

  “I’ll take a beer,” Travis said to the waiter. “Whatever you’ve got on tap.”

  “It’s by the bottle, sir.”

  Danielle couldn’t help but grin as she stirred the ice in her soda and lime.

  “Anything from DFB?”

  “Mountain Red?”

  “Sounds great.”

  The waiter turned to the glass-fronted refrigerator.

  “This isn’t a honky-tonk,” Danielle pointed out.

  “Are my country roots showing?”

  She realized how snobby she sounded. “An honest mistake. No big deal.”

  The waiter returned with an open bottle of Mountain Red and a chilled pilsner glass. Travis handed him a tip, and Danielle realized she was the one who lacked class.

  “How’s it going?” Travis asked her as he tipped the glass and poured in the amber liquid. It foamed slightly at the top of the flared glass.

  “They seem serious,” she answered, gazing at the bubbles in her own drink. “They know a lot about me.”

  “Yeah? All good?”

  She smiled to herself. “They think it’s good. They know what I did for Active Equipment and a few others, and they want me to head up a South American division.”

  She couldn’t help replaying the conversations in her mind. If Claude Hedley was to be believed, she’d be on the cutting edge of a global wave of interest. The earning potential would be massive, and she’d be in a position to set her own priorities and parameters.

  “You going to take it?” asked Travis.

  “I’m thinking about it,” she answered honestly. Then it suddenly occurred to her she was talking to a close friend of Caleb’s.

  She quickly turned to take in his expression. “But...uh...”

  He caught on quick. “You don’t want me to tell Caleb.”

  Her hand went reflexively to his forearm. “I’d never ask you to lie. But it would be better for me if you didn’t mention it to him right away.”

  He took a reflective drink of his beer. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Thank you. I’m sorry to put you in that position.”

  “I know you didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “I really didn’t think this through.” Where had her common sense been yesterday when she’d mentioned this to Travis.

  “Unusual for you?” he asked.

  “Very.”

  “He’s coming over.”

  “Who?”

  “Randal. Who else.” Travis’s gaze went down. “You’re touching me, and he feels threatened. He’s about to stake his territory.”

  She immediately realized she hadn’t taken her hand from Travis’s arm. Then she realized his arm was warm, hot actually under her fingertips. He was solid, strong and alive. She didn’t want to pull away.

  “Don’t panic,” Travis muttered in an undertone. “But I’m going to touch your hair.”

  “Wha—”

  Before she could finish the word, he gently brushed the back of his knuckles along her cheek, smoothing her hair back over her ear.

  She froze, every nerve ending in her body focusing on the gentle touch. Pings of awareness and desire shot out, sending signals of desire to every corner of her body.

  “Dani,” boomed Randal’s voice. He wrapped a hearty arm around her shoulders and gave her a pat. “It looked like things went well?”

  Travis’s hand fell away. “Hello, Randal.”

  “Oh, Travis.” Randal pretended he’d just noticed him. “How’re you holding up here?”

  “Managing just fine,” Travis responded.

  Randal turned his attention back to Danielle. “What did they say? More importantly, what did you say?”

  “She hasn’t made up her mind yet,” Travis put in.

  Randal sent him a glare. “I asked Dani.”

  “Well, Dani told me first.”

  “Travis,” Danielle warned.

  He was entitled to whatever theory he concocted, but that didn’t give him the right to pick a fight.

  Randal drew back his shoulders, lifting his chin. “She did, did she?”

  “They offered me a South American division,” she quickly told Randal.

  “That’s great.” His shoulders relaxed. “I’m going to head up Europe, starting in September. We’d be at exactly the same level, on the partners’ floor. I don’t have to tell you, that’s an impressive way to enter the firm.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Danielle agreed.

  “The expense account is unlimited. The benefits are top-drawer, and the work is some of the most intellectually stimulating—”

  “Randal?” she interrupted.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been listening to the sales pitch all night.”

  Travis stifled a chuckle.

  Randal’s attention immediately flew to him. “You got something to add here?”

  “Not a thing,” said Travis, polishing off his beer. “You’re doing just fine all by yourself.”

  Randal glared a moment longer, but then something caught his attention across the room. “There’s old man Nester.” He squeezed Danielle’s shoulder, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial level. “Give me three minutes to break into the conversation, then come over and join us.”

  He walked away.

  Travis looked at Danielle, and she stared back.

  “Well?” he asked.

  She was all schmoozed out. Her feet were swelling. Her makeup was about to crack. And the last thing she wanted to do was humor the wheezy, narcissistic Edger Nester through what she’d heard tended to be half-hour-long discourses on the flaws in judicial procedure. If she took the job, she’d have to put up with it. But she wasn’t there yet.

  “I’m out of here,” she told Travis.

  His hand went immediately to her elbow, helping her down from the high stool, before turning them to a nearby side exit.

  They came out into the gardens, quiet in the late hour. The breeze had picked up, cooling the air, and Travis quickly shrugged out of his suit jacket, draping it around her shoulders. They started down a winding flagstone walkway.

  “That was a quick decision,” he noted.

  “I’ve only met Mr. Nester once, but I’ve heard tales of his boring orations, and I’m tired.” She reached down and peeled off her sandals, moving to the soft grass at the side of the path. “My feet are killing me.”

  “You want me to carry you?” he offered.

  She shook her head, though the thought of being held in his arms gave her a shiver of excitement. “This is nice.” She curled her toes into the dense blades of grass.

  He took up a slow pace, along the edge of a narrow brook, in the general direction of a purple lighted pond, leaving the music and laughter behind them. “If you resign, what will happen in Chicago?”

  “You mean, what will happen to Active Equipment?”

  “And your other clients.”

  “They’ll be assigned to other lawyers.”

  “Does that worry you?”

  “I’d feel guilty,” she admitted, switching her sandals to the other hand. “But I’m not the only lawyer in the world. My firm has many other people who are perfectly capable of servicing my clients.”

  “So, there’s nothing unique about you?”

  She smiled
at that. “I’d like to think there was. I’d like to think I was irreplaceable. But that would be a little conceited, right?”

  His voice was low, sounding almost annoyed. “Some people do have to stay where they’re needed.”

  “Do you think I’m letting Caleb down?”

  “I wasn’t talking about you.”

  She paused, tilting her head to peer up at him. “Who?”

  He stopped walking, seeming to hesitate for a long moment, as the babble of the brook rose around them, the scent of the flowers sweetened the air. “I was talking about me.”

  “You’re leaving Lyndon Valley?” She could hardly believe it.

  In her mind, Travis was Lyndon Valley. While the Terrells and the other Jacobs siblings might come and go from the ranches, Travis was the stalwart, always there, always available, always taking care of anything and everything.

  He shook his head. “My point was, I can’t leave Lyndon Valley. The ranch needs me.”

  “And you need the ranch.” She thought she understood.

  “Something like that.” There was an edge to his voice.

  “You think I’m abandoning the people who count on me.”

  It was hardly the same situation. Just because she’d gone to law school and started in a particular job, didn’t mean she had to stay there forever.

  “If you were abandoning them. If they told you, you were abandoning them. If you knew it would hurt them, would you stay?”

  “That’s a hypothetical situation.” She’d like to think she’d done some good work for Caleb and the others over the years. But she’d hardly cripple anyone’s business if she moved on.

  “Hypothetically speaking, and I’m not going to hold you to it, if you knew it would hurt them, would you leave anyway?”

  She searched his expression. “What are you getting at, Travis?”

  He gazed at the lighted trees. “Responsibility, I guess—the kind of responsibility that paints a man into a corner and limits his choices.”

  She stepped forward, still not pinning down where he was going with this. “You’re getting very philosophical on me, cowboy.”

  He gave a self-conscious smile. “Just trying to help you make a decision.”

  “You want me to stay in Chicago.”

  “I want you to understand the true details of your options.”

  A door banged shut on the pavilion, and several voices rose in the garden.

  “He wouldn’t come looking for me,” Danielle said, more to herself than to Travis.

  “Oh, yes, he would.” Travis snagged her hand, striding across the sloped grass, tugging her toward a dark corner where they’d be screened from the path.

  She had to trot to keep up.

  They made their way behind a hedge, beyond the orange glow of the walkway lanterns, to a secluded corner where blue light filtered weakly through the maple leaves. Her mind went back over his words. He’d said it limited a man’s choices, not a woman’s choices, not a person’s choices.

  He abruptly stopped, and she nearly ran into him.

  “Your feet okay?” he asked, turning.

  “Travis, do you want to leave the ranch?”

  “No.”

  She pondered a second longer. “But you resent that you can’t. Or, wait a minute, you resent that you don’t have the choice.”

  This time he hesitated before answering.

  “You should tell them,” she said.

  “Tell them what?”

  “That you—”

  “That Katrina can’t be a ballerina?” Travis spoke right over her, annoyance in his tone. “That Seth should give up being mayor? That Mandy can’t be in Chicago with Caleb? Or that Abigail should force Zach to sell his brewery?”

  Danielle definitely saw his point. It didn’t make it fair, but she understood how he must feel.

  “We’re the fifth generation,” he told her.

  “That’s a lot on your shoulders.”

  “They’re broad shoulders.”

  Her gaze strayed. “Yes, they are.”

  “You won’t say anything to Caleb.”

  “And mess with your self-righteous sense of nobility?”

  “I’m not self-righteous.”

  She gazed up into his eyes. He was taller when her feet were bare. Taller, stronger, magnificent.

  “You are noble,” she whispered, finding herself shifting closer to him.

  “I’m practical.”

  “You operate on instinct,” she reminded him, tilting her chin, moistening her lips, wondering if she could possibly be more obvious.

  “I do,” he breathed.

  “So, instinctively...”

  His hands bracketed her hips, easing her against him. “Instinctively, I want to kiss you.”

  She smiled.

  “But I’ve had that particular instinct for a long time now, and I’m not sure I should trust it.”

  “You should trust it.”

  His hands moved to her face, cradling it gently in his palms. “What about my other instincts?”

  “You have other instincts?”

  “To toss you down on the grass and ravish you in the moonlight.”

  Want and need instantly cascaded through her, weakening her knees and robbing her of her breath. She wished it didn’t sound so tempting. There were a million complicated reasons to keep her distance from Travis, even if her own desires were screaming at her to ignore them.

  She came up on her toes to meet him. “Let’s take it one instinct at a time.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” His lips came down on hers, warm and firm, fueled with purpose and expectation.

  One arm went around her waist, the other bracing the back of her head. She dropped her sandals and clung to his shoulders. Then she ran her hands through his hair, pressing her body against his, parting her lips and inviting the sweep of his tongue.

  His kiss deepened, and she clung tighter, letting the sweep of arousal and desire flood through her. Leaves clattered above them. A blue glow surrounded them. The grass was cool on her feet, while Travis’s hot palm moved its way down her cheek, to her neck, to the bare shoulder revealed by her dress.

  He stopped there, fingertips caressing against her skin.

  He broke the kiss and pulled back, breathing deeply.

  She had to blink the world back into focus.

  “We have to stop now.” His tone was slightly ragged.

  “I know.” She understood that they were playing with fire.

  He stepped determinedly back, letting his hold drop away from her, putting space between them.

  When he spoke again, his deep voice rumbled through her. “I guess that was inevitable.”

  “Kissing me?”

  He held her gaze in the dim light. “Well, that, too. But I was thinking it was inevitable that kissing you would be fantastic.”

  Fantastic? She loved that word. Her skin glowed. Her lips tingled. Every inch of her body felt the sensual impact of Travis.

  Still, fantastic didn’t quite do it justice.

  Four

  “That was fantastic,” Travis shouted to Corey as he clambered out of the dusty dune buggy in the parking lot of Desert High Rentals. He peeled off his crash helmet, calling again. “I think we’ve found a winner.”

  Corey gave him the thumbs-up as he stepped away from his own tube-style, open-air vehicle. It had once been red, but now was plastered with dirt and debris from their twenty-mile race across the desert.

  “It’s a toss-up between this and paintball,” said Corey.

  The two men started toward the compact, white-painted building and the chain-link compound that held neat rows of rental dune buggies.

  “I was tr
ying to figure out if we’d have time to do both,” Travis added.

  When Travis had called Corey this morning, Corey had quickly agreed to help out. So, they’d spent the day testing activities for the upcoming bachelor party.

  Hot air ballooning had been a bust—too sedentary. Sky diving was another option, but they couldn’t count on everyone buying into that. They’d looked into bus and boat tours, and even gambling, but Travis was pretty sure thrills and adrenaline was the way to go.

  A keg of beer, spicy, fried junk food and the Colorado Rockies game on the big screen at the Emperor Plaza’s Ace High Lounge was a given. Travis had booked it for the private party Friday night.

  “How early will these guys be willing to get up?” Corey asked.

  “They’re mostly cowboys. But I guess it depends on how it goes Thursday night—whether things stay down to a dull roar. Caleb’s pilot is flying everybody in around four.”

  Thursday would be informal. They’d stop by a bar or two along the Strip, maybe play a little poker.

  “Book paintball for the morning,” said Corey. “If they get blasted the night before, they can bloody well cowboy up.”

  Travis grinned. Better to have too much planned than too little.

  “Paintball, it is,” agreed Travis. “Followed by dune buggy racing in the afternoon, and then Ace High for the night.”

  “The guys can all crawl to their rooms from there.”

  “We should have been party planners,” said Travis as he set his helmet down on the counter, in the shade of the porch at the rental building.

  “Party planners don’t get the girls,” Corey responded.

  “How’d it go out there?” asked the rotund, fifty-something clerk as he set his magazine down and stood to meet them.

  “Great,” Travis replied. “It’s a very exciting course. We’re looking to bring a group back with us on Friday afternoon.”

  The man pulled a clipboard down from a hook on the wall and rustled up a pen from a drawer beneath the counter. “How many in your group?”

  “About thirty. Better make it thirty-five to be safe.”

  The man’s bushy brows went up. “Thirty guys? Do they each need their own buggy?”

  “I’d plan on that,” said Travis.