The Cowboy Way

by Linda Lael Miller

  Then she turned and walked away, trying to calm her pulse, trying to calm the racing of her heart.

  She just needed to go back to her place, calm down, and—now that the plumber had been in—get herself a cold shower to help recalibrate her stupid body.

  And then everything would be fine. Tomorrow morning, she would be over this thing that had flared up inside her, and she and Eli could get on with planning the community barbecue.

  Yeah, that was a very nice lie. And it was one she was going to keep on telling herself until she couldn’t anymore.

  * * *

  “THAT WOMAN IS a menace,” Eli said, pacing the length of his brother’s living room, all the blood in his body still heated to boiling since he’d gone and done the most stupid thing imaginable and kissed Sadie Miller like she was oxygen and he was suffocating.

  “I don’t know, she hasn’t caused much trouble other than bursting the pipes, but even with paying for that, her rent is bringing in enough that we’re still coming out ahead on the agreement this month.”

  “Assuming she doesn’t cause any more disasters,” he said.

  “Well, sure, assuming that,” Connor conceded, sinking deeper into the couch, his legs sprawled out in front of him, his arms spread out across the back.

  “Which is a big assumption, all things considered.”

  “Untwist your panties,” Connor said. “You’re just still pissed because I did this without consulting you. And you don’t like change. And you don’t like feeling out of control.”

  Well, dammit, was he that obvious?

  “This isn’t about me. It’s about her.”

  “Sure,” Connor said, resting his head on the back of the couch and drawing his hat down over his eyes.

  “Will you stop that?” Eli asked.

  “What?”

  “Stop being so damned disengaged all the time.”

  Connor straightened, pushing his hat back. “Sure, Eli. You going to arrange to have my wife returned to me?”

  Eli’s chest seized up, his heart squeezed tight like it was locked in a vise. “You know I can’t.”

  “Then maybe fuck off and stop commenting on how disengaged I am.”

  It was rare for Connor to acknowledge that he was still grieving Jessie. But then, it was rare for Eli to call Connor on his bullshit in a serious way.

  “Fair enough,” Eli said, his voice coming out tight.

  “Now, I believe you were ranting about our tenant.” Typical of Connor. Get really pissed, then pretend it hadn’t happened.

  “I was. She has plans. And dammit, Connor, I sort of have to side with her on them.”

  Now Connor’s body registered some tension. “What kind of plans?”

  “Community barbecue plans,” he said.

  “And how does this concern me?”

  “Because she wants to host things here,” he said. “Particularly, she’s planning on having a county-wide Independence Day celebration here on our ranch.”

  Connor had the decency to look perturbed about that. “Here? On the ranch? I won’t have to do anything, will I?”

  Eli let the implosion happen internally. He hadn’t imagined his brother would actually propose that he help out with things, but then, it would have been nice if everything that wasn’t cows didn’t fall to him.

  Which was maybe really unfair of him, but at the moment he didn’t care.

  “We’ll have to clear things with you and your schedule. And I would guess base some things around what fields you want your cows in at a given time. Also, if any barns are going to be used, that needs to be cleared with you.”

  “Right. Fine. Just...when plans get more advanced, run dates and things by me and I’ll see what I can do.”

  The fact that it made Connor look so damn tired brought Eli back from annoyance to pity. “Great. Sounds like a plan.”

  Connor frowned. “What happened to your tie...and...all of you?”

  “What?” Eli looked down and saw the streak of dirt on his tie. It screamed feminine handprint to him, but he was pretty sure that to the unknowing observer it looked like a streak of dirt. Still, it made him feel a lot more like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar than he would like. And it made him think about what had happened between him and Sadie, which, in all honesty, he hadn’t stopped thinking about since he stepped onto Connor’s porch, but now he just felt like his face was projecting the words so Connor could read them easily.

  He tried to remind himself that Connor wasn’t that perceptive. And then he wondered what was wrong with him because any normal man would feel some sense of pride over kissing a woman as pretty as Sadie.

  But then again...what they’d shared wasn’t exactly a kiss so much as an explosion that happened to be detonated by the meeting of their lips.

  “You look like you rubbed up against the side of a barn.”

  Eli looked at the rest of his uniform, heat making his face sting. He could see where every inch of her had been pressed against every inch of him. “Something like that,” he said.

  Connor narrowed his eyes. “Something like that?”

  “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “You pay attention to everything. Which means...you paid extra close attention to whatever happened to your uniform, because obviously you’re lying.”

  “Why the hell have you chosen to get engaged with what’s happening right this moment?”

  Connor raised a brow. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever caught you doing something you weren’t supposed to do.”

  “I’m an adult. As long as it’s inside the law there’s nothing I’m not supposed to do.”

  “But let’s be honest, Eli, the laundry list of things you think you can’t do is longer than your arm.”

  “You don’t know everything I do.”

  “No, but I know everything you don’t do. We live too close to keep secrets.”

  “Fine. I brushed up against the barn.”

  “Giving it a hug because you were so happy to see it?” Connor asked.

  “Okay, you caught me,” Eli said, keeping his tone dry. “I found two women mud-wrestling just outside town and when I went to make sure they had a permit for it, they couldn’t keep their hands off me.”

  “Now I believe you hugging a barn before I believe that.”

  “Well, pick one. Because they’re the only two stories you’re going to get. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and start organizing this disaster of a party, because frankly, I just didn’t have enough to do.”

  “You know you don’t have to do everything, Eli. There’s a certain freedom in just giving the world the middle finger.”

  “Yeah, but since you do it so expertly, someone has to get in there and care.” Eli turned and walked out the front door, feeling like a total ass.

  Grab a woman who hates you and kiss her? Big fat check next to that box. Insult your grieving brother? Check.

  He was on a roll today. There was no denying it.

  He sort of wished the mud-wrestling story was true. That would have been fun at least. There was nothing fun about what had passed between him and Sadie. Hot, yes. But not fun. And certainly nothing he could strut around feeling proud of.

  When she’d pulled away from him...appalled wasn’t a strong enough word for the look on her face. She’d looked completely horrified that they’d touched. And he’d just wanted to grab her again. And kiss her more.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  When he had...affairs, relationships...whatever you wanted to call them, he was careful about his selection. He found women out of town. He found women who weren’t needy or close in proximity. He found women who wanted sex and some easy, occasional companionship.

  With the notable exception of Brandy, the last woman he’d been seeing, they were all very casual and very nonintense. Brandy had turned out to be something of a secret badge bunny and about the time he found her naked in the back of his patrol car begging him to put h
er in handcuffs, he’d known that relationship had to end.

  And one thing was certain—he didn’t pursue women who didn’t want him. Sex was easy. Attraction was easy. It wasn’t...whatever this was.

  And now he was officially too wound up to enjoy his downtime. Now he was on the verge of an extreme hard-on that would have to go unsatisfied. And now he was officially way past rest and relaxation, he realized during his walk through the property.

  What he needed to do was focus on Sadie’s event plans. Yes, that was what he needed. He needed the control. Which, when he thought about it, was probably what the kiss was about. Some unevolved part of himself was trying to seize control through sex.

  It had nothing to do with reality. Or with Sadie. Or with him genuinely wanting to shove her top up and her bra down so he could get a look at her breasts.

  No, that had nothing to do with it. It was the power struggle. But there was another way. He changed direction abruptly, heading toward the Catalog House as quickly as he could, determination making each step hit the ground harder than was strictly necessary.

  He took the steps up the porch two at a time and then knocked on the door.

  * * *

  SADIE CHECKED THE reheating quiche in the oven and smiled. She’d put it in just before getting in the shower. It was looking perfect. And it had taken her only a few tries over the past few mornings.

  She’d done it before, but she usually used a premade crust and she’d decided that wasn’t going to cut it at Chez Sadie once she had guests. She took her oven mitts off the cabinet door and opened the oven, pulling the quiche out and putting it on the stove top.

  Yes, it looked like heaven. And she was self-satisfied to a ridiculous degree. There was something she liked about all this. Building a business from scratch. Building...quiche from scratch. It was awesome any way.

  There was a sudden, impatient pounding on the door that nearly made her jump out of her skin. But almost immediately, she knew who it had to be, without even looking. Because no one else seemed to have emotions strong enough to merit knocks that were quite that intense.

  Unless someone had been involved in a terrible wood-chopping accident and was knocking on her door with what remained of their arm. In which case, she should hurry and answer it.

  She felt bad for hoping it was someone with a bloody stump, but it seemed oh so infinitely preferable to Eli.

  “Coming!” she shouted, pinning her damp hair back and reaching for the door handle, feeling her expression contort to one of horror when she saw who was behind it. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Who did you think it was?” he asked, his dark eyes intense and far too interesting for her own good.

  “I was sort of hoping it was someone who’d been gravely injured and was in need of help.”

  “Sorry to tell you, it’s just me.”

  “Are you in grave danger? Missing any appendages?”

  “All body parts present, accounted for and attached,” he said, his tone dry.

  And now all she could think of was the body part that had most certainly been present and accounted for during their kiss. And she needed to think of anything else. “Well, damn.”

  He leaned in and for one moment, she had the fleeting thought that he was going to burst through that door, throw her onto the table and finish what they’d started earlier in the garden.

  Which was ridiculous because she didn’t want him to do that. And because she was not the kind of person who had crazy, throw-down-on-the-table sex. Because that required a certain amount of insanity that was just not a part of her physical relationships.

  She was into relationships where you kept your head on straight and had sex at the end of a nice meal. She was well-adjusted about things. She wasn’t an animal.

  “I have to work for the next few days, so I don’t have time to entertain you, or help you plan your little barbecue. But the minute that I’m off for the week? You and I have some talking to do.”

  So, he was not here to ravish her. Which was good. It really was. She was relieved. Almost as relieved as she would have been to see someone with a severe wound at the door.

  “You make it sound like I’m in big trouble,” she said, the words sounding a little softer and a whole lot more flirtatious than she intended.

  Her body, it seemed, hadn’t realized what her mind had—which was that the ravishment was off the table, so to speak—and had gone into Mae West mode accordingly.

  She tried to tell her inner hussy that he could not come up and see her sometime, but her heart was still beating at hyperspeed.

  “That all depends on your definition of trouble, Miss Miller,” he said.

  Oh, Lord, why did the way he said those words make a shiver of something rattle through her bones? Why? Why did she sort of wish she could go back to being in trouble with him?

  She needed another shower. A colder one this time.

  “Not really,” she said, her words terse. “It kind of depends on yours since you have legal backing.”

  “I just want to give you a tour of the place. And discuss what is reasonable for the barbecue, and what isn’t.”

  “Okay,” she said, feeling a little blindsided by his darn reasonableness. “But I’m not really sure what inspired you to play nice.”

  “Must have been the azalea. And if you’ll excuse me, it’s my time off, and I’m going to go unwind.”

  She really wished she could stop herself from imagining what all him unwinding might entail. She remembered the presumptively thick erection from earlier and imagined him settling down and unzipping his pants...

  No. Bad Sadie!

  “Well, you go...do that,” she said, forcing herself not to look down. Forcing herself to look only at his eyes and nowhere else, which, frankly, she felt she deserved a freaking medal for. His hardness had been pressed right up against her today and never—not once—had she given in to the urge to visually explore it.

  “I will. And I’ll be here on Thursday morning. Very early. Be ready.”

  “Bring coffee.”

  He arched a brow. “All right. I will.”

  And for some reason, that easy agreement before he walked down off the porch and into the fading light made her more nervous than any fight ever could have.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE LAST TIME someone knocked on her door this emphatically, it wasn’t because of an ax wound, and she had a terrible feeling it wasn’t this morning, either.

  Sadie wiped her hands on her apron and then untied it, draping it over a chair as she walked to the door. “Coming!”

  She smoothed her hair, then jerked the door open with a smile pasted onto her face.

  And there was the man himself, the cause of the past four sleepless nights, looking awake and far too sexy for a man in a simple pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. And far too tempting.

  She looked down at the mug of coffee in his hand. “So thoughtful of you,” she said, reaching out and snagging the bright blue-and-white-spotted tin mug and lifting it to her lips. “Mmm.”

  “That was mine,” he said, pushing past her, “and are you going to invite me in?”

  “You’re in,” she said, feeling warmed both by the coffee and by the implication that his lips had been on it. Which was juvenile in the extreme. She’d kissed him. What was the point of getting warm and sweaty over her lips touching a mug his lips had touched?

  “So I am.”

  She took another sip of coffee, fully aware of the awkwardness that was building as they stood in the doorway, making eye contact and with her drinking his drink. Her nipples prickled and she shifted, the motion seeming to draw his eye right down to the place that was currently feeling quite perky and obvious.

  “Do you want to come sit at the table?” she asked. “I actually have more coffee. Lucky thing, since you didn’t bring any extra as instructed. And happily for you, my quiche of the day is ready.”

  “You have coffee and you took mine?”

  �
�It’s rude to turn down gifts, Eli. Didn’t you ever hear not to look a gift azalea in the mouth? Oh, no...you must not have heard that.”

  “And gift quiche?”

  “Same. It’s spinach. And salmon.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Well, I might be able to have some.”

  They moved into the kitchen and she fought to breathe right. She went to the counter and got a knife, slicing a generous piece of quiche for Eli, before getting him coffee, and delivering both to his seat.

  “You’re my guinea pig,” she said, watching him expectantly.

  “You’re staring,” he said, looking at the food, then at her.

  “Yeah, I want to see if you like it.”

  “That’s...disconcerting.”

  “Sorry. I’ll look the other way.” And she did. Obediently. Until he made a borderline orgasmic sound that sent a thrill straight down through to her midsection and...beyond. She looked back and watched his jaw working while he chewed. So weird, but she found the motion sexy. What the hell was wrong with her?

  She wanted to make an excuse about needing to change her top or something since she’d been cooking. Just so she didn’t have to sit and eat with him. And stare at his weirdly sexy mouth motions. But that felt self-conscious. If she ran off before he was done, she would look like she was doing it because she was uncomfortable around him—which she was.

  Oh, to hell with pride.

  She stood up. “I’ll be right back. I have to... I got flour on my top and I’m gonna...change.”

  She turned and scurried out of the kitchen, moving to the back room, where she’d just gotten all of her things organized last night.

  It was part of an addition made to the house in more recent years. By which she meant the 1940s or so. The room was skinny and rectangular, set slightly lower than the rest of the house, matching the incline of the property, with windows covering the entire back wall and a slanted, wooden ceiling that had been painted white at some point.

  It was weird, and quirky, and she was sure guests wouldn’t like it very much. But it suited her just fine.