A Cowboy to Kiss

by Mary Leo

It was all Kenzie could do to keep her emotions in check. Eventually almost every horse on the ranch would get a scrape or two or injure some part of their bodies. It was just part of daily life, but Sweet Girl was her baby and she hated to see her in any kind of pain.

  “Did you give her anything?”

  “Yes, for the pain and inflammation.” Coco put an arm around Kenzie’s shoulders, and brought her in close. “Chad caught it in time. He’s one fine young cowboy. You’re lucky to have him. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  Jake nuzzled up to Sweet Girl as she hung her head over the half door, giving her some much needed loving.

  Kenzie wanted to blame him for bringing the mares out to pasture in the first place, but she knew it wasn’t really his fault. Accidents happened no matter how hard you tried to avoid them.

  “I’ll sleep in here for the night so I can run a hose on Sweet Girl’s leg every couple of hours.”

  “I can stay out here, as well. We can do it in shifts.”

  Kenzie didn’t really want to agree to this, but she knew it was the best thing for her horse. “Fine. There’s plenty of room up in the loft for both of us.”

  Coco gave her a look. “We still have that old bed out here? I thought Dad got rid of that years ago when he caught Kayla in the loft with one of the Granger brothers.”

  Except it wasn’t Kayla. Kenzie thought back to that moment as if it was yesterday. She had come back to the ranch with some of her friends, and one thing led to another and before she knew it she was kissing a Granger brother, an experience she wouldn’t trade for anything. It was perhaps the best kiss of her teen years or for that matter, ever.

  “The bed is gone, but I redid the space up there with fireproof flooring, so it’s all new. Plenty of room for two people to sleep on the hay with some blankets. And for your information, that was me with a Granger brother, and we weren’t ‘out here,’ at least not like that. We were just kissing.”

  Coco’s face softened as if she had a memory of her own. “Which brother?”

  “The youngest. Travis.”

  A wide sly grin slowly spread on Coco’s lips. “Did I ever tell you that I kissed Colt Granger once at Skaits ice-skating pond?”

  “No, you did not. How could you not have told me that? It’s one of those important sisterly bonding things.”

  “It was during that time when you’d sworn off kissing boys. I remember thinking it might not be a good idea to tell you about how I turned into mush when Colt took me in his arms and kissed me. That boy almost ruined it for me. I used to compare every other boy’s kiss to Colt’s kiss. Truth be told, he still holds the record for best kiss.”

  “Travis did the same for me, only in a different way.” She turned and glared at Jake. “Travis restored my confidence.” She could tell Jake was pretending not to hear any of this, so she gave him a little nudge.

  “What?” he asked trying his best to look as if he had no idea what she was referring to, but Kenzie wasn’t buying his feigned bewilderment.

  “Oh, don’t go playing all innocent with me. You know perfectly well what you did,” she accused.

  “Hey, I don’t want to know what either of you did,” Coco said handing Kenzie a couple of extra-large white tubes of some sort of ointment. “Rub this on the area after you hose off Sweet Girl’s leg. She’ll need it applied four times a day, and like I said, keep her stalled for at least forty-eight hours. Now, I’ve got to go. Been a long day.”

  They hugged and Kenzie felt grateful that her sister was such a great vet, and always available for whatever injury or illness that arose on the ranch. Kenzie really didn’t know how she could do it without her. “Thanks. I know Sweet Girl will be fine now. Love you, babe.”

  Coco returned her love and said her goodbyes then walked out of the barn, leaving Kenzie and Jake alone.

  “Okay, so what did I do?”

  “Oh, don’t give me that. You know exactly what you did.”

  Kenzie marched out of the barn and headed to her truck, with Jake dogging her every step. She kept a blanket rolled up in the back of the cab for emergencies. This was an emergency. If she went looking for comforts inside the house, one of her parents would try to talk her out of sleeping in the barn, and she didn’t want to get into it with them.

  Not now. Not when Sweet Girl needed her.

  “What? When?” Jake asked, his voice booming from behind her.

  “When I was sixteen. You kissed me, and don’t even tell me you don’t remember, because it was the first thing you mentioned when you arrived.”

  She opened the cab door, grabbed the red wool blanket, slammed the door shut and headed back to the barn aware of the moonlight guiding her, the gentle breeze pushing through the trees and the sounds of cattle bellowing softly in the distance as they welcomed the long night. She was surrounded by everything she truly loved, except for Jake Scott.

  He was the fly in the ointment of her discontent.

  “Oh, that kiss,” he said, but she knew he had no idea how his laughter had effected her.

  “You really don’t get it, do you?”

  For months after that disheartening kiss, she’d stressed and fussed over what she might have done wrong. And not only that, she couldn’t even kiss another boy for an entire year. It wasn’t until her friends had convinced Travis Granger to kiss her that she’d finally gotten over her fear. And she wouldn’t have done it then if it hadn’t been one of the Granger brothers. Every girl for a hundred miles knew that the Granger brothers could make a girl’s toes curl with just one kiss.

  She couldn’t pass that up, no matter how badly she might kiss him back.

  Travis didn’t laugh, not even when she went in for a second and third kiss. Her dad had come in and caught them just as they were about to kiss once again. She’d gotten grounded after that, for two solid weeks. That stopped any momentum she and Travis might have had. Besides, he was always pining over Bella Biondi anyway, so no other girl in town ever stood a chance with him. But still, Kenzie always had a fondness for Travis Granger.

  Unlike her distaste for Jake Scott...which, the more she thought about that embarrassing kiss, was actively returning.

  “Wait, you’re talking about that awkward kiss we shared when the lights went off during Mariam Weiner’s birthday party when you were sixteen, right?”

  They arrived back in the barn and faced each other. He truly looked perplexed. As if he was trying to remember what could have possibly gone wrong. He removed his hat and raked his hair straight back, causing him to look impossibly striking.

  “Yes. I’d been following you around all night because I felt completely out of place. Everyone was a lot older than me. Then when the lights went out, you turned and kissed me...and laughed.”

  “I’m sorry, but I never expected you to kiss me back. I thought you’d push me away, like you always did whenever I got too close, but when you didn’t, well...” He shrugged. “I was just coming off one of the worst colds I’d ever had, and my nose wouldn’t stop itching. My mom had given me cough syrup before I left for that party and I was feeling a little woozy. Wait, I didn’t attempt anything else, did I? Because if I did, I—”

  “What? No. Wasn’t that bad enough?”

  He stared straight into her eyes, a smile tugging at his lips. “That I kissed you?”

  “That you laughed. I felt humiliated.”

  “Wow, I had no idea. Is that why you’ve been so angry with me for all these years? Why you stopped coming out to Montana with your folks? Why you were never around when we drove out here? Why you don’t like me telling you about natural ranching? Because I laughed during something really unexpected while I was dizzy on cough syrup?”

  “I was traumatized, afraid to kiss another boy for a long time.”

  “If I remember correctly, I didn�
��t laugh laugh. It was more of a snicker or chuckle. Did you ever think that maybe I was a little shocked, and didn’t know how to handle it?”

  “Is that your excuse? You were shocked?”

  A wide grin graced his lips, his eyes sparkled as he stretched his arms out wide trying to reach her. “Yeah. I was, so come on over here and let’s try that kiss again. I promise I won’t be laughing this time.”

  For a moment, she wanted to do just that, fall into his arms and kiss him like he’d never been kissed before.

  But she didn’t.

  Instead, she stepped back. “You can’t be serious. I just bared my soul to you and you want to kiss me?”

  She headed for the loft, taking each stair with a heavy thud of her boots. He followed.

  “Darlin’, with words like that there’s a lot more that I’d like to do than just kiss you.”

  When they arrived at the top of the stairs and entered the loft, she turned back to him.

  “Do you even know how infuriating you are?”

  “So I’ve been told,” he said, but it was too late. Whatever shred of affection she’d felt had completely vanished. Instead, she tossed her blanket on the hay, dropped down and rolled herself up like a burrito.

  “If you’re staying, you’ll have to get your own dang blanket, ’cause you can’t use mine,” she told him as he lay down next to her.

  “Don’t need one. Just lying next to you will generate enough heat to keep me warm.”

  And with that, Kenzie reached up and turned out the barn lights on the wall next to her.

  “Don’t even think about touching me,” she told him while her eyes adjusted to the dark.

  “I can’t promise the not thinking part, but I set my phone to ring in two hours. I’ll hose down Sweet Girl the first time so you can get some rest.”

  “Thanks,” she said as her eyelids began to flutter. “I’ll take the next shift. And stay on your own side.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she heard him say just before she blissfully drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Five

  Kenzie slowly emerged from a luscious dream where she and Jake Scott had been riding Sweet Girl bareback while he held her close from behind. She leaned back into him, feeling the warmth of the sun on her body, and his strong arms pulling her closer...still closer.

  A delightful groan escaped and the sound of her own voice caused her to open her eyes. At first glance, she didn’t recognize her surroundings as sunlight poured in through the wide windows. Then, without any doubt, she realized she was in the barn, up in the hayloft, spooning with Jake Scott.

  Fortunately, she was still dressed.

  She immediately pulled away from his grasp, but he didn’t wake. Instead, he merely rolled over and continued sleeping. For a split second, she wondered if he was pretending to sleep. She was about to nudge him, but then thought better of it.

  She hadn’t gotten up once during the night to hose down Sweet Girl, nor had she been able to apply the ointment. Certain that Sweet Girl was in horrible pain, Kenzie was about to run down to her stall when she spotted one of the tubes that Coco had left lying next to Jake. It was now almost empty. Jake had apparently done double duty.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, thinking how sweet of him to let her sleep. Maybe he did have a kind heart under all that bravado, after all. She slid a wisp of hair off his forehead, then gently covered him with the blankets, dusted herself off and made her way down the stairs.

  When she checked on Sweet Girl she seemed fine, and from the looks of the wet ground in front of her stall, it appeared that she’d recently been hosed down and a fresh coat of ointment had been applied.

  Jake had turned out to take better care of Sweet Girl than she did. She certainly couldn’t hate him now. As she walked to the house, all she could think about was how safe and warm she felt snuggled up against him.

  As if she belonged there.

  As if they were lovers.

  And as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she had liked it, liked it more than she had ever imagined she would. It had been a long time since she’d felt that much warmth and caring from a man. Too long. And now that she had a taste of that kind of gentleness she didn’t want it to stop.

  “This is not good,” she mumbled as she approached the back door to the family ranch house, feeling a slight headache behind her eyes.

  But she didn’t have time right now to be thinking of Jake’s warmth, or how she felt with his arms wrapped around her, or how he looked when he was sleeping or the fact that he’d taken care of Sweet Girl while she slept.

  Who does that?

  She forced herself back to the reality of the ranch and what her objectives were for the day. She hoped it was still early enough for her to check on the livestock, especially the new calves. She wanted to personally make sure they were cleaned and had enough feed. She gazed up at the kitchen clock that had been hanging in the same spot next to the stove ever since she could remember. The clock she’d learned how to tell time on. The clock she’d watched when she’d waited for Santa to slide down the chimney. The clock that had ticked off the long seconds when she’d waited for her date for prom, and the clock that now told her it was almost nine thirty.

  “Not again!”

  It seemed impossible. She hadn’t done this since high school, or maybe even elementary school. She had no idea what was causing such a shift in her personality, but she knew it had to stop.

  Kenzie assured herself that she was done with fooling around, not to mention messing up...and she was most especially done with getting all sentimental over Jake. Sure it had been nice to spend the evening with him, to finally understand why he’d laughed when she kissed him and, heaven help her, to sleep next to him. But ever since he’d arrived she’d lost focus, and there was no time for that. Especially now that her inability to say no to him had caused Sweet Girl her injury. She needed to keep the ranch humming, and getting sidetracked by Jake Scott was not something she could afford to do, not if she wanted to maintain the place and its current upward swing.

  “And whose idea was it to spend the night in the barn with me? His! He knew exactly what he was doing.”

  She knew if he hadn’t been there, she would have set her own clock on her phone and taken care of Sweet Girl. Now she was beholden to him, and he probably had planned it like that all along.

  She didn’t believe that was 100 percent true, but she never would have slept so peacefully if he hadn’t been there with his big strong body next to hers. It was just another example of his sly little tricks to weaken a woman’s resolve.

  Once Kenzie had showered, slipped on a lacy white bra and matching panties...not that she was planning on anyone seeing her undies...she chose some clean jeans and a cream-colored T, dried her hair, added a bit of makeup and tugged on her boots. She was out in the kitchen ready for her first cup of coffee in less time than it took for her to even think about waking up in his arms...over and over again.

  No matter how she tried, she couldn’t shake the warm feelings that were growing inside her for Jake.

  She’d made a few calls to the shipping company, to no avail. She’d also called customs, but got nowhere. To say she was frustrated with the whole thing was an understatement.

  She entered the kitchen, hoping to find a pot of Jake’s coffee waiting for her. Instead, the pot sat empty in its stand. Disappointed, she grabbed the jar of instant, dumped a heaping spoon in her empty mug, ran the water in the sink until hot, slipped her mug under the faucet, then turned for the milk in the fridge.

  She spotted the note stuck to the refrigerator door with specific instructions on how to make a pot of Jake’s coffee.

  Kenzie stared at the note, deciding. No one was around. She could make the coffee and clean out the pot so no one would be the wiser.
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  No way did she want anyone to know she actually liked Jake’s coffee. It would be like admitting she liked Jake...which she was trying her best not to do.

  She moved with the efficiency of someone who’d done this a million times, at least, that was what her delusional mind conjured up. However, by the time she took her first delicious sip and eyed the messy trail she’d left behind, she realized this coffee-making thing was going to take a bit of practice.

  “Good, huh?” Her mom’s voice startled her, causing her to spill coffee down the front of her shirt. Dora and Dolly padded over for some loving, which Kenzie gave them. Then they settled next to the back door in their usual spots on their oval braided rugs.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” her mom consoled. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Did you burn yourself?”

  Kenzie placed her mug down on the counter then tugged at her T to view the damage. The coffee stain ran down the center. No burns, but she’d have to change her shirt.

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure, sweetheart? Because, well, I have to say that lately—”

  Kenzie could tell her mom was fishing for more than wanting to know if she’d burned herself. Kenzie’s mom had a way of getting to the truth of the matter with simply a minor inflection of her voice.

  “None of the coffee soaked through, mom.”

  “I’m not just talking about the coffee, but I think you already know that. How’s Sweet Girl?”

  “She’s fine. I, well, actually Jake, took good care of her last night while I slept.”

  “He’s a good man. Caring. But how are you holding up?”

  Her mom came over to her, and gently slipped a strand of Kenzie’s hair behind an ear. From the time Kenzie was a little girl, she always thought her mom was the most beautiful woman in the world.

  She still believed that.

  Her mom, Mildred, had a deep, rich voice. Her long chestnut-colored hair, that now showed some gray streaks, had been clipped up in its usual bun at the nape of her neck. Mom was a thin, shapely woman and still wore a cowgirl hat when she worked outside, and a frilly apron when she cooked. She didn’t like her hair flying in her face, had crystal blue eyes, thin skin with very few lines, and she always wore deep red lipstick and mascara. But the best part of Mom was her smile. It could carry sunshine into a cave.