How to Handle a Cowboy

by Joanne Kennedy

  “Dang.” He cracked a smile for the first time since he’d arrived. “You make playing games sound like a lot of work.”

  She flushed. She knew she was wound a little tight. It was just that she cared. She couldn’t stand it if one of the kids got a paper cut. What kind of injuries might happen on horseback?

  “I want the kids to have fun,” she said. “I just don’t want anybody hurt.”

  He shrugged. “I got hurt all the time when I was a kid. Bumps and bruises, cuts and scratches—it all goes with being a boy. Trust me, they won’t mind.”

  “But I mind. My guys have been hurt enough.”

  “I know that. I get it.”

  “Do you?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “They wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t had a rough time, right?”

  A rough time. Sierra resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The guy was trying to be understanding. But how could a man who lived a carefree cowboy life know anything about what it was like to live on the streets? What it was like to have no parents, nobody who cared about you?

  He didn’t have a clue.

  ***

  Ridge Cooper knew he needed to get out of Sierra Dunn’s office.

  Fast.

  The room was so small there was barely room for the two of them, and although they didn’t seem to be getting along, the pheromones were flying. He couldn’t stop breathing in her scent—sweet and grassy, with a hint of flowers. The woman smelled like a meadow in the sun.

  He leaned closer, inhaling. It was like she’d rolled around in sage and violets and fresh-cut grass on her way to work. He probably shouldn’t be standing there sniffing her like a flower, but dang, she smelled good.

  Maybe it had been too long since he’d been around a woman. Not too long ago, he’d had plenty of cowgirls to choose from. Barrel racers with their strong, sleek muscles and crazy, hell-for-leather courage. Rodeo queens with sparkly clothes and attitudes to match. Even buckle bunnies, energetic and inventive, offering themselves up for a night with a cowboy and expecting nothing in return but good times and new notches on their bedposts.

  The barrel racers smelled like horses and hard work. Rodeo queens and buckle bunnies smelled like night jasmine and spice, heady scents designed to spark dreams of twisted sheets and hot skin. This woman wasn’t as wholesome as the ranch girls, but her scent was sweet and subtle.

  And it was knocking him on his ass.

  He needed to shake it off. With sixteen screws and a steel plate in his riding arm, his career was a shambles. He didn’t have a thing to offer any kind of woman, and he wasn’t about to inflict his moodiness and despair on anyone.

  Especially not a social worker. She’d probably diagnose him with depression and tell him he needed therapy. He didn’t need therapy. He had horses. Nobody who had horses needed therapy.

  But wasn’t there some kind of smell therapy or something? What did they call that?

  Aromatherapy, that was it. He needed some of that.

  He edged toward her. She seemed to move in a cloud of fragrance, clean and wholesome but sexy as hell. Sage, violets, and what was that other smell? Something fruity. He dared to sneak another sniff.

  Apples.

  She took a step back and shot him a glare.

  “What are you doing?” She narrowed her eyes. “Were you smelling me?”

  He started to stammer out an apology, but she held up one hand and shushed him.

  “Do you hear anything?”

  He heard plenty. He heard his heart pounding, his blood humming in his ears, and his breath coming fast and hard. What the hell was going on here? He’d sworn off women. For good. And yet here he was, getting all hot and bothered about a girl who probably couldn’t tell a quarter horse from a golden retriever.

  “Don’t hear a thing,” he said.

  “Me neither. And that’s not good. The boys are never quiet.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “They’re up to something.”

  She put her fingers to her lips and smiled. He did hear something—a soft brushing noise, like stocking feet on hardwood floors.

  “They’re sneaking up on me,” she whispered. A playful light danced in her eyes. “They’re going to jump out and yell. Act scared, okay?”

  He barely had time to nod before there was a flurry of footsteps in the hall and a stifled giggle.

  And then, the door slammed shut with a loud whap and he heard the unmistakable snick of a lock snapping firmly into place.

  Chapter 3

  Sierra’s smile flicked off like a light.

  “Shoot. I knew I should have done something about that lock.” Lunging for the door, she smacked it with the palm of her hand. “Hey, come on, guys. Let us out.”

  No answer.

  “Gil must have gone home. He was on day shift today.” She checked her watch. “Yup. Five past five. But he’s not supposed to leave without checking in with me first.”

  “Gil Martin? He’s working for you?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, good luck getting him to toe the line. Gil’s an old hippie. Free spirit, does as he pleases.”

  “I’m starting to see that. About the only rule he follows is the one about quitting time.” She twisted the doorknob so hard it had to hurt.

  “Breaking that off probably won’t help,” he said. “How good’s the lock?”

  “Really good.” She slouched against the wall beside the door. “I just moved the office in here today. Before that, it was the supply closet. Supplies as in snacks. The kids have tried to jimmy that lock a dozen times.” He was surprised how glad he was to see her smile again, even if it did tremble at the edges. “They had an expedition one night, all of them out here in their bare feet hunting for the key while Isaiah tried to pick the lock with a bobby pin. Trust me, Jell-O Pudding Snacks inspire all kinds of ingenuity. That lock won’t break.”

  She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor with her head in her hands. “How could I be stupid enough to spend even half a second in a room that could be locked from the outside?” She lifted her head and let it loll against the wall. “They’ve probably eaten all the Pudding Snacks by now. My budget won’t let me buy more until November. How am I going to work my reward system without Pudding Snacks?”

  He frowned. “If mass-produced pudding is the most they have to look forward to, it’s no wonder they don’t behave.”

  “They do behave. They just…”

  “They just lock you in the office and eat all the pudding.”

  “Exactly.”

  She rose to her knees and put her ear to the door. “I don’t hear anything. They’re probably out running wild in the streets.”

  “Just one street.”

  “Right. Route 35. Cars go through here at eighty miles per hour.”

  “We’ve got a thirty-mile-per-hour speed trap right at the town line. They’ll be fine.”

  “Have you seen our sheriff? He rides a bicycle.”

  “Well, yeah. We can’t afford a real cop. Our sheriff kind of elected himself, so nobody’s about to buy him a car.”

  “One more reason we can’t let these kids run around town unattended.”

  “They’ll be fine,” he repeated.

  “No. You don’t get it. They won’t be fine.” She staggered to her feet and started to pace the tiny office. “They’re not here just because they’re troublemakers. Their parents are—well, let’s just say their parents are criminals of one kind or another.”

  “So aren’t the parents in jail?”

  “On and off. Once in a while one of them gets out and decides he wants his kid back.”

  “So this is kind of like witness protection for kids.”

  She nodded. “Exactly. We don’t want these kids to be found.”

  ***

  Sierra hated small spaces. Hated them.

  Maybe that’s why she’d made the mistake of telling this guy about the kids’ families. If folks in Wynott found out what kind of trouble could
follow her kids to their quiet little town, they’d run her out with torches and pitchforks.

  And why was she talking to the cowboy when she should be calling for help? She edged over to grab her purse and found herself pressed hard against his chest. She paused and looked up into those strange, pale eyes.

  Big mistake.

  They stood there a beat too long—long enough for a hot, uncomfortable awkwardness to fill the tiny space. Long enough for certain of her body parts to warm and hum like the purring engine of a very sleek and feminine sports car. His eyes held a heat that revved her engine even higher, making her want to stand a little closer. Just a little…

  What the hell was she thinking? Giving up on love must have given her a hormonal surge, because there was no way she’d be going all gooey for a cowboy otherwise. She was a city girl and a survivor—no match for Mr. Rodeo Star, with his acres of land and some big house on a hill.

  She squeezed past him and dove for her purse, shoving her hand inside and rummaging for her phone. Brush, lipstick, compact, gum, keys, wallet.

  Her phone must be in one of the side pockets.

  She poked her fingers into the purse’s generous side pockets. Another lipstick, nail clippers, and ouch! toothpicks.

  But no phone.

  If Ridge Cooper sniffed her now, he wouldn’t smell her Marc Jacobs perfume. He’d smell desperation.

  She upended her purse onto the floor just as a picture popped into her mind of her cell phone, charging on the counter in the house’s old-fashioned kitchen.

  “Do you have a cell phone?” she asked the cowboy.

  “Nope,” he said. “We’re on our own.”

  Just then, there was a clunk, followed by a loud crack.

  And then the lights went out.

  “Dang it,” said the cowboy. His deep voice seemed ominous in the dark.

  Unfortunately, everything seemed ominous to Sierra with the lights out. A little ball of panic escaped from her heart, winging away like a panicked bird. She wasn’t afraid of the dark. Or claustrophobic. Not really. She just didn’t like being trapped.

  Caged, like a rat in a hole.

  She reached up to find the wall so she could pull herself up and feel her way toward the door. Instead of the wall, she laid her palm on something warm.

  She was pretty sure what part of the cowboy she’d just touched. Whipping her hand away with a little scream, she banged it on the desk.

  “It’s me.” He reached down and grabbed her upper arms, helping her to her feet. “Just me.”

  Yeah, right. Just him, with his tanned skin and uncanny eyes, with that five-o’clock shadow and that body part she wasn’t supposed to think about. But how could she not think about it when she’d just touched it?

  “Well, the good news is you’ve got a lot less to worry about than you thought,” he said.

  “Sure,” she said with faked brightness. “Because now we’re not just locked in a closet, we’re locked in a dark closet. So much better. Now I don’t have to worry about the electric bill.”

  “Somebody turned the lights out, right? Had to be the kids. So they’re still in the house.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Unless it was a short in the wiring. This place is ancient.” She could feel perspiration breaking out in a few unfortunate places. “What if we’re locked in here and the place burns down?”

  “Then they’ll find our charred bodies lying here together once the fire’s out.”

  “Lying here?” What did he think she was going to do? She should have known this guy was trouble when the sniffing started. “Why would we be lying here?”

  His soft laugh started deep in his chest, sliding straight down into her core to join the Sam Elliott voice. “We’d be lying here because people fall down when they’re dead.”

  “Oh, great.”

  She prided herself on her courage and toughness. She wasn’t afraid of drug dealers or bad men with guns, or even spiders. But she was nervous in tight spaces and scared to death of the dark.

  The cowboy was about to see her fall apart.

  Chapter 4

  The woman grabbed Ridge’s arm again, nearly pulling him to the floor. She couldn’t seem to make up her mind. Half the time she was running away from him, and the other half she was clinging to him like he was the last floating oar from the Titanic.

  She was claustrophobic, apparently, and afraid of the dark too. She also seemed to be a little afraid of him.

  It was a shame those three things had to come together in one small room, because she didn’t seem to be afraid of much else. Before the door had locked, he’d noticed that she carried herself with a lot of confidence. And when she talked about the possibility of the ex-con parents coming after the kids, she seemed totally in control.

  But now? Scared to death.

  With horses, the first step in fighting fear was to identify the source. The second step was touch—a touch and a promise.

  The promise he made to horses was that he’d never hurt them, but he couldn’t make that promise to Sierra Dunn. The last time he’d had anything to do with a woman, he’d screwed up so badly, he wasn’t sure either of them would ever recover. Shelley had told him the best thing he could do for her was to stay away, and he’d followed her orders with a sense of failure mixed with relief.

  He’d stay away from this woman too, once they got out of here. But right now, he needed to calm her down. He could hear her scrabbling her way around the room, feeling her way toward the door. When she found it, she hammered it with her fists.

  “Hey.” He crossed the room in a single step and took her wrists in his hands. “It’s all right. You’re all right. Shh. Shh.”

  She hammered on him like she’d been hammering on the door and then attempted to stomp on his instep. Fortunately, it was tough for her to aim in the dark, and all she managed to do was lose her balance and fall against his chest.

  “Shh. Easy.”

  The darkness that stole his sight heightened all his other senses, and he could feel her pulse fluttering in her wrists like hummingbird wings thrumming against his fingers. He could smell her again too—that tantalizing combination of sage and violets. Unfortunately, it was combined with his own scent—leather and horse, hay and probably sweat. He did most of his work in the morning, and he worked hard. Today had been no exception.

  “Breathe,” he said anyway.

  She inhaled, exhaled. Her breaths were choppy at first, but gradually they lengthened and slowed. He was starting to wonder who was sniffing who. She seemed to be inhaling his scent the way he’d inhaled hers earlier.

  “Mmm.” She made a little sound that hummed against his chest. A sexy little sound that upped his pulse till it probably matched hers.

  “Caress,” she said.

  Well, that was direct.

  He wasn’t used to women giving orders, but if that’s what she needed, it was okay with him. Releasing her wrists, he stroked her hair, surprised to notice that his hand was trembling.

  She caught her breath suddenly, almost choking.

  “Come on, honey. Breathe.” She was so close now that his own breath must be tickling her ear. After a while, the soft tempo of her breathing matched his own.

  “That’s good,” he murmured as if he was speaking to a fractious colt. “That’s good. Nothing’s going to hurt you. Nothing, ever.”

  He felt her draw in a quick, startled breath. Still afraid.

  He held her tighter, rubbing one hand up and down her back in a slow, soothing motion.

  “Nothing,” he repeated. “Not while I’m here.”

  He could feel her muscles giving and relaxing, one by one. He’d apparently calmed her down. Unfortunately, the situation was having the opposite effect on him. If she stood any closer, she’d know exactly how he felt.

  This wasn’t some animal he was calming. This was a woman, with breath as sweet as her scent and skin so soft he couldn’t resist running his thumbs over the smoothness of her wrists. He did
n’t know how it had happened, but it felt as if the two of them were wrapped in a warm, fragrant cocoon. The world faded away as they swayed in a soft dance as old as time.

  And then she stiffened and jerked away like a startled colt.

  Whatever had just happened between them was over, but she didn’t run away. Instead, she stood perfectly still, the way a horse does when it’s deciding whether to give in or spin off and run.

  It was then he realized that the office wasn’t completely dark. There was a transom above the door, a narrow window of frosted glass that allowed in enough light for her wide, frightened eyes to glint in the dark.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

  “I have no idea.” He cleared his throat. “You said caress, so I—well, I did.”

  She started to shake. Dang it, was she getting all scared again?

  But then she let go and laughed. And laughed. Her laugh was crystalline and bright, the agile notes rising in the still air of the closet.

  “I was talking about soap. Caress,” she stuttered through her laughter. “That’s what you smell like. It wasn’t an order.”

  He had no idea what kind of soap he was using. Something Shelley had left behind. He pictured the box—pink with a flower on it. Yeah, it was probably called Caress or something like that.

  “It just surprised me that you smelled so good, so I said it.” She was still struggling to get control of her laughter. “Caress.”

  “What did you think I’d smell like?”

  “What did I think?” She was laughing again. “Have you seen yourself? Your jeans are torn, your boots look like you dipped ’em in horse hooey, and your hat…” She struggled to catch her breath. “I’m sorry, but you look like you’ve been rolling around in a barn. Best-case scenario, I figured you’d smell like the front end of a horse. Worst case, the back end.”

  She leaned against the wall beside him, her tension dissolving into unfettered laughter. Most women tittered or giggled. This woman let loose with happy whoops. He wondered what she sounded like when she…