Slow Burn Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  “Why?”

  “Because this looks... It looks like I’m trying too hard.”

  “No, it looks like you put on a nice outfit to please me.”

  She turned to face him, her brow furrowed. “Which is part of the problem. If I had to do this to please you, we both know that I would tell you to please yourself.”

  He laughed, the moment so classically Anna, so familiar, it was at odds with the other feelings that were buzzing through his blood. With how soft she felt beneath his touch. With just how much she was affecting him in this figure-hugging dress.

  “I have no doubt you would.”

  They walked up the steps that led into the large white restaurant, and he opened the door, holding it for her. She looked at him like he’d just caught fire. He stared her down, and then she looked away from him, walking through the door.

  He moved up next to her once they were inside. “You’re going to have to seem a little more at ease with this change in our relationship.”

  “You’re being weird.”

  “I’m not being weird. I’m treating you like a lady.”

  “What have you been treating me like for the past fifteen years?” she asked.

  “A...bro.”

  She snorted, shaking her head and walking toward the front of the house where Ellie Matthews was standing, waiting for guests. “I believe we have a reservation,” Anna said.

  He let out a long-suffering sigh. “Yes,” he confirmed. “Under my name.”

  Ellie’s eyebrow shot upward. “Yes. You do.”

  “Under Chase McCormack and Anna Brown,” Chase clarified.

  “I know,” she said.

  Ellie needed to work on her people skills. “It was difficult for me to tell, since you look so surprised,” Chase said.

  “Well, I knew you were reserving the table for the two of you, but I didn’t realize you were...reserving the table for the two of you.” She was looking at Anna’s dress, her expression meaningful.

  “Well, I was,” he said. “Did. So, is the table ready?”

  She looked around the half-full dining area. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we can seat you now.”

  Ellie walked them over to one of the tables by a side window that looked out over the Skokomish River where it fed into the ocean. The sun was dipping low over the water, the rays sparkling off the still surface of the slow-moving river. There were people milling along the wooden boardwalk that was bordered by docks on one side and storefronts on the other, before being split by the highway and starting again, leading down to the beach.

  He looked away from the scenery, back at Anna. They had shared countless meals together, but this was different. Normally, they didn’t sit across from each other at a tiny table complete with a freaking candle in the middle. Mood lighting.

  “Your server will be with you shortly,” Ellie said as she walked away, leaving them there with menus and each other.

  “I want a burger,” Anna said, not looking at the menu at all.

  “You could get something fancier.”

  “I’ll get it with a cheese I can’t pronounce.”

  “I’m getting salmon.”

  “Am I paying?” she asked, an impish smile playing around the corners of her lips. “Because if so, you better be putting out at the end of this.”

  Her words were like a punch in the gut. And he did his best to ignore them. He swallowed hard. “No, I’m paying.”

  “I’ll pay you back after. You’re doing me a favor.”

  “The favor’s mutual. I want to go to the fund-raiser. It’s important to me.”

  “You still aren’t buying my dinner.”

  “I’m not taking your money.”

  “Then I’m going to overpay for rent on the shop next month,” she said, her tone uncompromising.

  “Half of that goes to Sam.”

  “Then he gets half of it. But I’m not going to let you buy my dinner.”

  “You’re being stubborn.”

  She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms and treating him to that hard glare of hers. “Yep.”

  A few moments later the waiter came over, and Anna ordered her hamburger, and the cheeses she wanted, by pointing at the menu.

  “Which cheese did you get?” he asked, attempting to move on from their earlier standoff.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I can’t pronounce it.”

  They made about ten minutes of awkward conversation while they waited for their dinner to come. Which was weird, because conversation was never awkward with Anna. It was that dress. And those shoes. And his penis. That was part of the problem. Because, suddenly, it was actually interested in his best friend.

  No, it is not. A moment of checking her out does not mean that you want to...do anything with her.

  Exactly. It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t anything to get worked up about. Not at all.

  When their dinner was placed in front of them, Anna attacked her sweet potato fries, probably using them as a displacement activity.

  “Chase?”

  Chase looked up and inwardly groaned when he saw Wendy Maxwell headed toward the table. They’d all gone to high school together. And he had, regrettably, slept with Wendy once or twice over the years after drinking too much at Ace’s.

  She was hot. But what she had in looks had been deducted from her personality. Which didn’t matter when you were only having sex, but mattered later when you had to interact in public.

  “Hi, Wendy,” he said, taking a bite of his salmon.

  Anna had gone very still across from him; she wasn’t even eating her fries anymore.

  “Are you... Are you on a date?” Wendy asked, tilting her head to the side, her expression incredulous.

  Wendy wasn’t very smart in addition to being not very nice. A really bad combination.

  “Yes,” he said, “I am.”

  “With Anna?”

  “Yeah,” Anna said, looking up. “The person sitting across from him. Like you do on a date.”

  “I’m just surprised.”

  He could see color mounting in Anna’s cheeks, could see her losing her hold on her temper.

  “Are you here by yourself?” Anna asked.

  Wendy laughed, the sound like broken crystal being pushed beneath his skin. “No. Of course not. We’re having a girls’ night out.” She eyed Chase. “Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m going home with the girls.”

  Suddenly, Anna was standing, and he was a little bit afraid she was about to deck Wendy. Who deserved it. But he didn’t really want to be at the center of a girl fight in the middle of Beaches.

  That only worked in fantasies. Less so in real life.

  But it wasn’t Wendy whom Anna moved toward.

  She took two steps, came to a stop in front of Chase and then leaned forward, grabbing hold of the back of his chair and resting her knee next to his thigh. Then she pressed her hand to his cheek and took a deep breath, making determined eye contact with him just before she let her lids flutter closed. Just before she closed the distance between them and kissed him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SHE WAS KISSING Chase McCormack. Beyond that, she had no idea what the flying F-bomb she was doing. If there was another person in the room, she didn’t see them. If there was a reason she’d started this, she didn’t remember it.

  There was nothing. Nothing more than the hot press of Chase’s lips against hers. Nothing more than still, leashed power beneath her touch. She could feel his tension, could feel his strength frozen beneath her.

  It was...intoxicating. Empowering.

  So damn hot.

  Like she was about to melt the soles of her shoes hot. About to come without his hands ever touching her body hot
.

  And that was unheard-of for her.

  She’d kissed a couple of guys, and slept with one, and orgasm had never been in the cards. When it came to climaxes, she was her own hero. But damn if Chase wasn’t about to be her hero in under thirty seconds, and with nothing more than a little dry lip-to-lip contact.

  Except it didn’t stay dry.

  Suddenly, he reached up, curling his fingers around the back of her head, angling his own and kissing her hard, deep. With tongue.

  She whimpered, the leg that was supporting her body melting, only the firm hold he had on her face, and the support of his chair, keeping her from sliding onto the ground.

  The slick glide of his tongue against hers was the single sexiest thing she’d ever experienced in her life. And just like that, every little white lie she’d ever told herself about her attraction to Chase was completely and fully revealed.

  It wasn’t just a momentary response to an attractive man. Not something any red-blooded female would feel. Not just a passing anomaly.

  It was real.

  It was deep.

  She was so screwed.

  Way too screwed to care that they were making out in a fancy restaurant in front of people, and that for him it was just a show, but for her it was a whole cataclysmic, near-orgasmic shift happening in the region of her panties.

  Seconds had passed, but they felt like minutes. Hours. Whole days’ worth of life-changing moments, all crammed into something that probably hadn’t actually lasted longer than the blink of an eye.

  Then it was over. She was the one who pulled away and she wasn’t quite sure how she managed. But she did.

  She wasn’t breathing right. Her entire body was shaking, and she was sure her face was red. But still, she turned and faced Wendy, or whichever mean girl it was. There were a ton of them in her non-halcyon high school years and they all blended together. The who wasn’t important. Only the what. The what being a kiss she’d just given to the hottest guy in town, right in front of someone who didn’t think she was good enough. Pretty enough. Girlie enough.

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice a little less triumphant and a lot more unsteady than she would like, “we’re here on a date. And he’s going home with me. So I’d suggest you wiggle on over to a different table if you want to score tonight.”

  Wendy’s face was scrunched into a sour expression. “That’s okay, honey, if you want my leftovers, you’re welcome to them.”

  Then she flipped her blond hair and walked back to her table, essentially acting out the cliché of every snotty girl in a teen movie.

  Which was not so cute when you were thirty and not fifteen.

  But, of course, since Wendy was gone, they’d lost the buffer against the aftermath of the kiss, and the terrible awkwardness that was just sitting there, seething, growing.

  “Well, I think that started some rumors,” Anna said, sitting back down and shoving a fry into her mouth.

  “I bet,” Chase said, clearing his throat and turning back toward his plate.

  “My mouth has never touched your mouth directly before,” she said, then stuffed another fry straight into her mouth, wishing it wasn’t too late to stifle those ridiculous words.

  He choked on his beer. “Um. No.”

  “What I mean is, we’ve shared drinks before. I’ve taken bites off your sandwiches. Literally sandwiches, not—I mean, whatever. The point is, we’ve germ-shared before. We just never did it mouth-to-mouth.”

  “That wasn’t CPR, babe.”

  She made a face, hoping the disgust in her expression would disguise the twist low and deep in her stomach. “Don’t call me babe just because I kissed you.”

  “We’re dating, remember?”

  “No one is listening to us talk at the table,” she insisted.

  “You don’t know that.”

  Her heart was thundering hard like a trapped bird in her chest and she didn’t know if she could look at him for another minute without either scurrying from the room like a frightened animal or grabbing him and kissing him again.

  She didn’t like it. She didn’t like any of it.

  It all felt too real, too raw and too scary. It all came from a place too deep inside her.

  So she decided to do what came easiest. Exactly what she did best.

  “I expected better,” she told him, before taking a bite of her burger.

  “What?”

  “You’re like a legendary stud,” she said, after swallowing her food. “The man who every man wants to be and who every woman wants to be with. Blah, blah.” She picked up another sweet potato fry.

  “It wasn’t good for you?” he asked.

  “Six point five from the German judge. Who is me, in this scenario.” She was a liar. She was a liar and she was a jerk, and she wanted to punch her own face. But the alternative was to show that she was breaking apart inside. That she had been on the verge of the kind of ecstasy she’d only ever imagined, and that she wanted to kiss him forever, not just for thirty seconds. And that was...damaging. It wasn’t something she could admit.

  “Six point five.”

  “Sorry.” She lifted her shoulder and shoved the fry into her mouth.

  They finished the rest of the dinner in awkward silence, which made her mad because things weren’t supposed to be awkward between them. They were friends, dammit. She was starting to think this whole thing was a mistake.

  She could bring Chase as her plus one to the charity thing without her brothers buying into it. She could lose the bet. The whole town could suspect she’d brought a friend because she was undatable and who even cared?

  If playing this game was going to screw with their friendship, it wasn’t worth it.

  Chase paid the tab—she was going to pay the bastard back whether he wanted her to or not—and then the two of them walked outside. And that was when she realized her truck was back at his place and he was going to have to give her a ride.

  That sucked donkey balls. She needed to get some Chase space. And it wasn’t going to happen.

  She wanted to go home and put on soft pajamas and watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. She needed a safe, flannel-lined space and the fuzzy comfort of an old movie. A chance to breathe and be vulnerable for a second where no one would see.

  She was afraid Chase might have seen already.

  They still didn’t talk—all the way back out of town and to the McCormack family ranch, they didn’t talk.

  “My dirty clothes are in your house,” she said at last, when they pulled into the driveway. “You can take me to the house first instead of the shop.”

  “I can wash them with mine,” he said.

  Her underwear was in there. That was not happening.

  “No, I left them folded in the corner of the bathroom. I’d rather come get them. And put my shoes on before I try to drive home actually. How do people drive in these?” She tapped the precarious shoes against the floor of the pickup.

  Chase let out a harsh-sounding breath. “Fine,” he said. He sounded aggrieved, but he drove on past the shop to the house. He stopped the truck abruptly, throwing it into Park and killing the engine. “Come on in.”

  Now he was mad at her. Great. It wasn’t like he needed her to stroke his ego. He had countless women to do that. He had just one woman who listened to his bullshit and put up with all his nonsense, and in general stood by him no matter what. That was her. He could have endless praise for his bedroom skills from those other women. He only had friendship from her. So he could simmer down a little.

  She got out of the truck, then wobbled when her foot hit a loose gravel patch. She clung tightly to the door, a very wussy-sounding squeak escaping her lips.

  “You okay there, babe?” he asked, just to piss her off.

  “Yeah,
fine. Jerk,” she retorted.

  “What the hell, Anna?” he asked, his tone hard.

  “Oh, come on, you’re being weird. You can’t pretend you aren’t just because you’re layering passivity over your aggression.” She stalked past him as fast as her shoes would let her, walked up the porch and stood by the door, her arms crossed.

  “It’s not locked,” he said, taking the stairs two at a time.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to go in without your permission. I have manners.”

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “If I didn’t, I probably would have punched you by now.” She opened the door and stomped up the stairs, until her heel rolled inward slightly and she stumbled. Then she stopped stomping and started taking a little more consideration for her joints.

  She was mad at him. She was mad at herself for being mad at him, because the situation was mostly her fault. And she was mad at him for being mad at her for being mad at him.

  Mad, mad, mad.

  She walked into the bathroom and picked up her stack of clothes, careful not to hold the greasy articles against her dress. The dress that was the cause of so many of tonight’s problems.

  It’s not the dress. It’s the fact that you kissed him and now you can’t deal.

  Rationality was starting to creep in and she was nothing if not completely irritated about that. It was forcing her to confront the fact that she was actually the one being a jerk, not him. That she was the one who was overreacting, and his behavior was all a response to the fact that she’d gone full Anna-pine, with quills out ready to defend herself at all costs.

  She took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of his bed, trading the high heels for her sneakers, then collecting her things again and walking back down the stairs, her feet tingling and aching as they got used to resting flat once more.

  Chase wasn’t inside.

  She opened the front door and walked out onto the porch.

  He was standing there, the porch light shining on him like a beacon. His broad shoulders, trim waist...oh, Lord, his ass. Wrangler butt was a gift from God in her opinion and Chase’s was perfect. Something she’d noticed before, but right now it was physically painful to look at him and not close the space between them. To not touch him.