Welcome Home, Cowboy

by Karen Templeton

  “That I can muck out the goat house on my own again?”

  “Absolutely. Just make sure you have all the proper equipment before you do any of that…mucking. What is it, Rox?” she said with a smile to whoever had come to the door.

  “Silas Garrett’s out there, the color of a piece of Wonder Bread because his youngest boy fell and cut open his head. He said you were closer than the E.R.—”

  “He still bleeding?” Naomi said, standing.

  “It’s bandaged, so I think it’s stopped, but Silas says it probably needs stitches.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that. Okay, Emma…you’re good to go. Roxie, go ahead and schedule Skye for his two-month,” she said, leading Emma back out front, passing a very distraught Garrett brother with a sniffing, bloodied four-year-old clinging so tightly to Silas he’d knocked his father’s glasses askew.

  “It’s gonna be fine, Daddy,” Naomi said, steering the pair down the hall. Roxie took a second to—Emma assumed— admire the view before easing herself behind the computer. She had to hand it to Donna and Gene Garrett—they sure did know how to make good-looking sons. If accountants had a male calendar, Silas would make one hot Mr. June.

  “Why do parents always seem to take it harder than the kid?” Roxie said behind her.

  Setting the baby down in his carrier, Emma smiled. “You have kids?”

  The young woman paused, then shook her headful of dark ringlets. “Not yet,” she said softly, focused on the computer.

  “When you do, you’ll understand.”

  That got a brief smile as she brought up Emma’s file. “Wonder how Mrs. Silas is going to take it?”

  “Far as I know, the former Mrs. Silas flew the coop a couple of years ago.”

  Pale green eyes flew to Emma’s, glittering with an odd mixture of humor and pain. “And the man is still single? Get out.”

  Not that Emma knew the particulars, exactly, but the gossip grapevine had long tendrils. “Not for want of candidates, from what I hear. And if they don’t show up on their own, his mama goes out trolling for ’em. But when a man’s been hurt…” She paused, thinking of Cash. “Sometimes those roots go deeper than can be dug out.”

  “Sounds like you’re talking from experience.”

  “So,” Emma said, pulling herself up short. “You’re Naomi’s new receptionist?”

  “Only temporarily,” Roxie said, her eyes on the computer screen. Her gaze flicked to Emma’s, then back to the screen. “Came home to lick my wounds.”

  “From?”

  “Kansas City. Although I doubt you’re interested in my business. Two weeks from today at 10:00 a.m. okay?”

  “Perfect. And clearly you’ve been away from Tierra Rosa too long,” Emma said, and the young woman smiled. “A man?”

  “A man. A job. My apartment.” Roxie shrugged, then wrote out an appointment card and handed it to Emma. “So I figured I may as well help out Naomi while I pick up the pieces of my sorry life.” She sighed. “Funny, how I always figured by thirty I’d have everything worked out. Not be back at square one.”

  Emma reached across the low partition to give Roxie’s shoulder a supportive squeeze, declining to point out that Square One was the default setting for life. Which the gal would figure out on her own soon enough.

  Skye had nodded off by the time Emma started home, giving her plenty of time to think. To ponder the foolishness of what she was about to do. Since she somehow doubted her womanly bits, as spectacular as they might be, had any magical healing powers to repair wounded souls.

  She’d never had casual sex in her life. Didn’t intend to now. She’d also never been in a situation where the give-and-take part of things wasn’t equal…or where the potential to get her heart broken was so great. But without taking that risk, there was no chance of fixing Cash’s, was there?

  Emma checked her watch, figuring she had barely enough time to make a swing by the drugstore in the next town over to pick up some…equipment.

  She might be crazy, but she wasn’t an idiot.

  Cash wrenched the ancient acequia spigot to the off position, then straightened to remove his hat, mopping sweat off his forehead with the hem of his T-shirt. His father had never used the Spanish colonial-era irrigation system which snaked through the property, as well as most of the northern part of the state, but Emma’s vegetable fields were very grateful for the weekly allotment of water. The flooded fields glittered in the sun, serene and sated, as realization flooded Cash’s consciousness that his reasons for hanging around were pretty much over.

  That his services were no longer needed.

  The other night, a beaming Emma had shown him her Quicken “books.” God knew the farm would never make her rich, but she was once again in the black, especially since the state had finally agreed to pay off Lee’s medical bills. And now that she had regular help again and Cash no longer had to take up the slack with the chores…

  He slammed his hat back on and whistled for the dog, intending to return to the house for a glass of tea or lemonade. Except his plans were foiled when the old Suburban groaned into the driveway.

  Emma’s gaze barely glanced off his when she got out of the car and opened the door to get the baby. A light breeze tickled her loose, blue-and-white-striped shirt, her bra—her breasts— plainly visible underneath. Six weeks on, what baby weight she hadn’t lost had regrouped into curves worthy of a forties pinup girl. There was nothing flat about her, anywhere.

  Which was just fine with Cash.

  “No, I’ll get him,” he said, not looking fully at her until he had the sleeping, dimple-kneed baby out of his car seat. For a half second he thought about leaning over to kiss her, like real couples did when they saw each other again.

  Except they weren’t a real couple. Would never be one. At least not in the sense that Emma would define the word. And, since fate had nixed any opportunity for funny business since that kiss three weeks before, they weren’t even a couple in a way that Cash might define it, either.

  Then he noticed how pink her cheeks were. Somehow he didn’t think it was from the sun.

  “What?” he said, shifting the sacked-out baby on his shoulder. Ignoring how naturally the little chunker molded to him. How good it felt.

  Ostensibly watching the dog plod to the middle of the yard, where he collapsed with a groan, Emma blushed ever harder, then looked at Cash. “Got the all clear.”

  “To…? Oh. Well, hell. Nothing like getting right to the point.”

  “Didn’t think you needed to be seduced.”

  “I suppose that’s true enough.” Palming the baby between the shoulders, he said, “Thought maybe you’d changed your mind.”

  “Nope. You?”

  “Uh, no.” Cash blew a short laugh through his nose. “So much for romance.”

  Emma busted out laughing, then covered her mouth when Skye jerked in his sleep. “Romance,” she whispered, “is for people who don’t have to deal with a house full of people who watch your every move.”

  Also true. And yet…something was bugging him about this. Took him until they were back in the house and she’d laid the baby down in his crib before he put his finger on it. “You don’t think you deserve romance?”

  She spun around, her hands still hovering over the baby, then shooed him back down the hall to the kitchen, Annie’s megadecibel TV amply covering their conversation. “What I think,” she said, going to the fridge and pouring both of them tumblers of sweet tea, “is that this thing between us is…” Frowning, she sipped her tea, then said, “More honest than that. It is what it is.”

  Cash leaned against the counter. Chugged half of his own tea. “And what’s that?” he said over the roar of canned applause in the other room. The even louder roar of lust in his veins.

  “Another step in your recovery process.”

  His brows shot up. Then down. “I know you’re nuts—which is okay, nuts is what I like about you—but if you think I want to—” he lowered his voice �
�—sleep with you as part of some exorcism ritual…that’s not nuts, it’s flat-out insane.”

  Unperturbed, she took another sip of tea. “Then what would you call it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t go around trying to define everything like you do. What’s wrong with wanting to make love to you because I like you?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. But then, there’s nothing romantic about that, is there?”

  Cash blew out a sigh. “Put that way…I suppose not.” He finished off his tea, then said, “So what’s your reason?”

  “Does it matter?” she said softly, her gaze pinned to his, and a pleasant heat bloomed in parts south. A pleasant heat that was going to become extremely unpleasant if they didn’t do something about it before too much longer. “Not that I have any idea how we’re going to pull this off, exactly.”

  “Leave it to me,” he said, and she grinned, then left the room, all those curves gently swaying underneath her soft, clingy shirt.

  The man was a genius.

  “Your mama’s been cooped up in this house with your baby brother for six solid weeks,” Cash said the next evening at dinner. “So I’m taking her to Santa Fe to see a movie. That okay with you, Annie?”

  “Sure thing,” she said, blotting her mouth with her napkin and slipping tidbits under the table to who knew how many cats. “The baby’s going for four hours between feeds now, so why not? I’ll call Jewel, see if she wants to come over and watch a movie or something—”

  “Already done,” Cash said. With a straight face.

  “Then we’re set. Go out, kick up your heels! Live!”

  Don’t look at Cash, don’t look—

  When Emma stood to clear the table, Zoey twisted in her chair. “How come we can’t go?”

  “Because,” Emma said, returning to the table, “it’s a grown-up movie.”

  “With cussing and naked people?”

  “Zoey! Honestly!”

  “Maybe,” Cash said.

  “Eww!”

  Emma scooted—for real, these days—to the counter with the next load of dishes, blushing so hard she felt feverish.

  “Can we stay up un-til you get back?” Hunter asked as she heard Cash’s chair scrape across the floor.

  “No,” he said, coming up behind her, close enough for their respective pheromones to dosey-do and her nipples to go Ten-hut! “I’ll get this,” he murmured, “you go feed the baby.” As she fled down the hall, she heard him say, “If we’re not back by nine-thirty, you two go on to bed…”

  As soon as Jewel arrived—bearing videos and popcorn— they were on the road, headed toward Cash’s mountain house, Emma with enough butterflies in her stomach to repopulate the entire Amazon Rainforest.

  “If you’re thinking of backing out?” Cash said softly beside her. “It’s okay, I half want to catch that new Matt Damon flick, anyway.”

  Finally, the laugh she’d been holding in for the past hour escaped. “You do not.”

  “Well, yeah, I do,” he said, then grinned over at her. “At some point.”

  “I’m not backing out, Cash. It’s just feels so…” She lifted one hand, let it drop. “Planned. Unromantic.”

  “Is that one of those female-logic things?”

  “Yes,” she said, and he chuckled.

  “Then pretend it’s not. Pretend…” He reached over, took her hand. Started making circles in the center of her palm with his middle finger. Hel-lo, erogenous zone. “Pretend we really were going to the movies, only while we were waiting on the popcorn our hands touched and we got so hot we ran back out of the lobby like a pair of idiots—”

  “Were people staring at us?”

  “You bet. Overcome with envy, most of ’em. Since it was pretty obvious what was going through our heads. So anyway, we left the movies—” he let go of her hand to navigate a curve in the road “—and now we’re on our way back to my place, our hearts pounding in anticipation of the night of wild lovemaking ahead of us. What’s so funny?” he said, his grin far brighter than the setting sun slicing through his window. And oh, my, did she love that grin.

  “You are,” she said over her own chuckle, then sighed, looking out the window. “Seems a shame, though. Forfeiting our tickets like that.”

  “We gave them to that pair of teenagers, remember?”

  “Oh, right. I forgot.” She looked at his profile, half wishing she knew what he was really thinking. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  A few minutes later, they were inside his house. Her first impression was that there was nothing wrong with it, exactly, but…

  “There’s nothing of you here, is there?”

  “Same as every other place I’ve ever lived,” Cash said, unlocking the dining room’s patio door. “Guess you have to know who you are for that to happen.” He slid the door open, gesturing for her to step out on the deck. “View’s terrific, though.”

  Emma braced her palms on the wood railing to take in the village below, the endless, slate-colored mountains in the distance. A breeze danced across her cheeks, soothing and arousing all at once, then plucked at her loose hair, blowing it into her face. Shoving it back, she smiled, then turned to see Cash watching her, his expression thoughtful. Tender. Aroused.

  “What?”

  “You are so damn beautiful it almost hurts to look at you.”

  She laughed. “Get out.”

  “I’m serious. Thought it the minute we met. And about a million times since. Lee struck gold with you, and that’s a fact.”

  “Wow,” she said, her eyes burning. “You’re smooth.”

  “Come here,” he said, his voice a little shaky—or that might have been the breeze in her ears—and she went, sighing into the kiss as he wrapped her in his arms, and it felt good and right and ten kinds of wrong at the same time, which was thrilling since she wasn’t a ten-kinds-of-wrong kind of girl.

  Eventually, he led her into the bedroom, where Eli Garrett’s magnificently carved headboard momentarily took her breath, a room suffused with the heady, masculine scent of clean linen and aftershave and oiled leather from the half-dozen pairs of boots soldiered along the wall. They undressed each other between unhurried kisses and soft laughter—over stubborn buttons, feet tangling in jean bottoms—until there was nothing between them except the breeze lazily spilling through the open window, the final, piercing rays of the setting sun, their own gazes.

  Emma reveled in Cash’s thorough appraisal. She loved her body, her breasts that had nourished three babies—and were no longer leaking, praise be—her wide hips that had borne them, even the folds and stretch marks they’d left behind. It had served her well, this body. Judging from Cash’s expression, it would soon serve him well, too.

  Smiling, she closed the gap between them, the sunlight embracing them both.

  If the woman hadn’t made her move when she did, Cash might’ve stood glued to the spot for God knew how long, stunned stupid.

  They’d progressed to the bed, lying facing each other, nothing touching but their eyes. Not what he’d expected. Emma, either, most likely. With any other woman, all that eye contact would’ve unnerved him, made him feel vulnerable. And he wasn’t sure that was not was happening here. The difference was, he didn’t care. The difference was, he trusted Emma enough to be vulnerable.

  Which was what was so unnerving.

  When the explorations finally got under way, nobody was in a rush. Cash spent a long time simply fiddling with her hair, sifting it through his fingers, coiling it around his palm and letting it go. Grazing the ends across one pale, marbled breast, then flicking it across the nipple. He watched, fascinated, as it hardened, like he’d never seen anything so amazing in his life.

  Emma crooked her elbow to prop her head in her hand. “Can’t remember the last time I felt this appreciated. It’s nice.”

  Cash mirrored her position. “Will you let me live if I said there’s a lot to appreciate?”

  She laughed, then stroked a fi
nger across his shoulder, making him shiver. “Somehow I figured we’d be going at it like rabbits by now. That we’re not is a real pleasant surprise.”

  “You like foreplay, then?”

  “My second favorite part. But I swear, the way you look at me…that alone’s enough to make me fall apart.”

  “Yeah?” She nodded, all that trust in her eyes, and he felt like he was being crushed inside. He caught her free hand, held it tight against his chest. “I can’t promise you anything.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I don’t expect you to,” she said, suddenly shifting to push him on his back.

  “What are you—”

  “Shh,” she said, her hair cascading over them both as she straddled him, then slowly, deliberately skimmed her fingers over his shoulders and down his arms, across his collarbone, his pecs. She curled forward to lick first one nipple, then the other, murmuring, “Let me have my fun.”

  “This gonna get kinky?”

  Her teeth flashed in the semidarkness. “Probably not. But if you ask me, anybody who thinks plain vanilla is boring has never tasted real—”

  Her tongue swirled around one nipple, then the other.

  “—rich—”

  She sat up to trail one finger to his navel.

  “—creamy—”

  And farther down, only to slowly drift back up before she got to where all the troops had amassed, eagerly awaiting orders to storm the valley.

  “—full-bodied vanilla. ’Cause I’m here to tell you,” she said softly, tossing her hair over her shoulders so the flickering shadows from the live oaks outside trembled over her breasts, “there’s nothing better in the world than vanilla done right. Now hush and let me love you.”

  So he hushed, except for the occasional hiss and moan, letting her touch and taste and explore to her heart’s content, her mouth and hands a damn miracle, soft and hot, gentle and generous, until she took him into her mouth and everything blurred into one big fiery ball of want, and then he felt her roll on a condom, carefully lower herself until he filled her, and her breath escaped her parted lips on a long, satisfied “Ohhh.”