The Cowboy Way

by Linda Lael Miller

  She opened the top drawer of her dresser and retrieved a new top. She tugged it over her head quickly, then hovered by the vanity, wondering if she should put makeup on. No, she shouldn’t put makeup on. That was stupid. It was why she hadn’t applied any after her shower this morning. They were just going out on the ranch, after all. And putting makeup on implied she cared about how she looked. And she totally didn’t. At all.

  While she was thinking, she picked up a blush brush and dashed it through the pink powder before swirling it over the apples of her cheeks. There. She looked awake now anyway.

  She frowned and picked up her tube of mascara, brushing some over her lashes quickly. There. In the interest of looking awake.

  She slicked some pink gloss over her lips next. That wasn’t vain. That was just...upkeep.

  She grabbed a rubber band from the little porcelain hand statue on top of the bright yellow vanity and restrained her hair as best she could.

  Okay. So that was done. And not to impress Eli but just because...it was basic hygiene. Right. She didn’t care what he thought. At all.

  She walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen again, waiting to see the look on his face when he registered the change to her appearance. And...nothing. He just sat there drinking his coffee. She’d put makeup on and nothing.

  Which was fine, because she didn’t care. But...she’d expected a little better than that. From the guy who’d hate-kissed her once.

  Okay, nothing about Eli and her attraction to him, her preoccupation with him, made sense. So maybe she should just stop trying to excuse the weird things she seemed to do in his presence.

  She tried, for a second, to figure out what she would say to a patient in this situation, and couldn’t find any readily available wisdom. Because when it came to attraction, her philosophy was simple. Pursue it and, if there was no returned interest, release it. If there was, continue on with it until it was no longer mutually satisfying.

  But there was nothing about that philosophy that applied to this situation.

  She didn’t like him. She didn’t want to be attracted to him. And he clearly didn’t want to be attracted to her. If he even was.

  Well, she knew he was, because boner.

  But was that actual attraction or just some testosterone-fueled rage thing? And if it was, then why did the idea make her feel hot and twitchy and not angry?

  Nothing about this man, or her response to him, made sense.

  “So, what’s the plan, then?” she asked, leaning against the door frame and staring down at him, where he had made himself very at home in one of her kitchen chairs.

  “I’m going to show you around. We’re going to talk about your ideas, and I’m going to tell you which parts of those ideas are absolutely impossible.”

  “Or, to make it not sound dire and negative...you’re going to tell me what will work?”

  “Honestly, I have a feeling we’ll be talking a lot more about what won’t work.”

  “You are a ray of freaking sunshine, Eli. Has anyone ever told you that before?”

  He looked over his mug and arched a dark brow. “No.”

  “Well, that’s just shocking.”

  “You don’t sound shocked.”

  She smiled. “That’s because I’m not.”

  She reclaimed her coffee cup, but didn’t rejoin him at the table. She hovered back, taking her caffeine hit before putting the mug back on the table. “Did you want to run this to your house or car or...?”

  “I’ll pick it up later.” He tilted his cup back and finished his coffee in one deep drink before setting it back down and pushing himself into a standing position.

  “Great. Then let’s go tour.” She turned and walked back out into the entryway and out the door, pausing just outside. “We’re not taking the patrol car?”

  “No,” he said, walking past her. “I drive the truck around the ranch. And around town. I only drive the patrol car when I’m on duty. And today, I’m playing the part of cowboy, not the part of lawman.”

  Both of those things sounded so much hotter than they had a right to.

  “Well, yee-haw,” she said, following him over to the truck. It wasn’t a new truck. It was one of those big, growly monsters with big tires and metal runners to assist in getting inside. It was square and boxy, a dull, faded red with mud splatter fanning out around the tires.

  She pushed the button on the door handle and tugged it hard, before heaving herself up and onto the bench seat. There was a blanket over the original upholstery, and it made her wonder just what sort of things the man got up to in here.

  She could certainly think of a few things that might be fun...

  She was really starting to get concerned for her sanity. The mistake, she feared, was that she hadn’t had a lover in...a while. Like, since pre-California, which put her at two years of celibacy and that was crazy.

  She hadn’t really accounted for needing sex when she’d moved to Copper Ridge, but she most certainly did, and the size of the town was going to make everything much more complicated.

  Slow down, tiger.

  Of course, she hadn’t been worried about it at all until Eli. Now she was hyperworried about it.

  She settled into the seat and closed the door, her elbow butting against the armrest, her shoulder against the window, anticipating just how intense it would be when Eli joined her in the enclosed space.

  He climbed into the driver’s side and, just as she’d feared, the moment he shut the door, she felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out, replaced by a heady mix of hormones and the scent of Eli’s skin.

  And yes, he most definitely had his own scent, one she was suddenly very keyed in to. It made her think of the kiss. Made her think of how he’d tasted. Salt, skin and man. And she really, really wanted more.

  But that was crazy and she knew it.

  He started the truck and it growled to life, vibrating beneath her in a way that was sort of perilous considering her current thought process.

  “What is the first stop, then?” she asked.

  “The largest barn seems like a good place to start,” he said, putting his arm across the back of the seat as he put the truck in Reverse and backed out of her driveway, taking them to the main road that ran to the different houses and fields on the property.

  “So you raise...?”

  “Cows,” he said. “And we have a hell of a lot of them. Connor deserves the credit for that. I give him a hard time, but if it weren’t for him this place wouldn’t exist.”

  “Why do you give Connor a hard time?” she asked, slipping into the easy, question-asking mode that she’d always used with patients.

  “Because he’s my older brother,” Eli said, rolling his shoulders upward, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. “And it’s what we do.”

  “Well, yes, but the way you said it implied something deeper than the natural brother-to-brother expression of affection via ‘busting chops.’”

  “Are you charging me for this session?”

  “What?” she asked, like she was surprised, even though she was fully aware that she was both distracting herself and distancing herself by becoming Therapist Sadie, rather than being Sadie the bag of flail who was marinating in her own lustypants.

  “You know. Don’t play innocent. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Is that a value judgment based on the fact that I have a criminal past, albeit a very uncolorful one?”

  “Yeah.”

  That was it. Just yeah. No apology. No attempt to explain. He didn’t even seem at all apologetic for the fact that he was some kind of a relic from a bygone era. With his angry kissing and generally judgmental attitude, who even needed him or his kissing or his judging? She didn’t. Well, for anything other than getting this whole community events thing started.

  “Well, you know, some people might say that the way you judge other people says a lot more about you than it does about them,” she said, sounding annoying to her own ea
rs. Pious, even.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure it does. It says that I’ve spent so much time cleaning up the crap that other people just leave around that I’m short on patience for it. That I’ve spent my whole life being cleanup crew, which means I know people can do better than they do, because I do better. So yeah, it is about me. And I’m judgmental and I don’t care to change it.”

  “Well,” she said, “okay.”

  She was used to very postmodern men. Men who believed in the exploration and articulation of their feelings. Or men like Marcus, who had liked smoothies and telling her about his day over a light dinner.

  She was not used to this kind of Neanderthal he-man thing. Well, scratch that, she was. And she’d walked away from it ten years ago. She wasn’t going to willingly put up with it now.

  She didn’t say anything, though. Instead, she just let the silence grow between them until it filled in all the free spaces in the cab and pushed against her throat until she didn’t think she could bear it anymore.

  Because she didn’t do the walking on eggshells thing now. She didn’t take the path of least resistance, because she didn’t have to. When people were asses, she walked away. No one got to insert their judgments into her life without her permission.

  Not even when the person trying to do so was a badge-carrying, gun-toting deputy. Not. Even. Then.

  “Listen, I don’t care what you think,” she said. “And I’m not going to let you try to put me down because of some kind of moralistic—”

  “I know you don’t care what I think,” he said. “And none of this has anything to do with being moralistic. You know full well you were trying to psychoanalyze me, and then you went and played dumb about it. And now what? You’re going to get all pissy because I said you weren’t innocent? Because you’re going to apply that statement way further than it was ever intended to go? And you’re going to try to do it while feeling all self-righteous? Hell no, baby, that’s not going to happen.”

  She sputtered. “I don’t... You don’t...”

  “Tell me I’m wrong, Sadie.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Liar,” he said, putting the truck in Park in front of a giant barn that she wouldn’t have even guessed was a barn at first glance. It had a dark brown tile roof and honey-colored wood siding, glass-paned windows and sliding doors of varying widths. It was more what she’d associate with a high-end stable, not a cattle ranch.

  “I’m not a liar,” she said, unbuckling and marveling at the severe...neatness of everything. Sure, it was dusty and there was hay all over the ground, but it was neat and tidy. There was no denying that. It was such a sharp contrast to Connor’s house, and the lack of organization there.

  “You are. And if you don’t think you are, you’re at least lying to yourself.” He got out and slammed the door behind him. And she sat for a moment before scrambling out after him. “Thing is,” he said, looking over his shoulder, “it’s not that big of a deal. The original thing I called you on. I think you just like fighting with me.”

  “I don’t like fighting,” she said. “With anyone. And I went a very long time without doing it at all before you came back into my life.”

  “Correction, honey, you came back into mine.”

  “Call me honey one more time, and I’ll dip your fist in honey and shove it in an anthill.”

  “My point stands.”

  “Okay, sweetie pie,” she said, “the point is that except for you, I never fight with anyone. So I think it’s pretty safe to say that you’re the damn problem. Not me.”

  “Is it?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. “It is.”

  “Or do you just not talk to anyone who dares to disagree with you?”

  He strode toward the barn and left a hissing and spitting Sadie standing there, stunned for a full thirty seconds before she took off after him.

  “Why don’t we get back to business,” he continued. “Since I don’t really want to get to know you, and I’m betting you don’t want to get to know me.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “fine.” She reached behind her head and tugged the end of her ponytail. “I don’t want to know you. I want to know your barn.”

  “Get ready for the excitement,” he said, his tone dry. “And I’m assuming barn isn’t a euphemism for my...for anything.”

  “How could a barn be euphemistic?”

  “I don’t know. But you’re always accusing me of missing those kinds of things so I figured I’d take preemptive measures.”

  “Right. Well. No. A barn is just a barn. Though, may I say, this is a particularly fantastic barn. Have you ever had weddings here?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You should. Weddings and parties and—”

  “No.”

  “You are the boringest man.”

  “I thought we were letting go of personal things and getting on with business?”

  “Well, I was, but then you started talking about the possibility of barns being something dirty. Which made me think of your—” don’t say anything dirty “—exasperating nature.”

  “Just look at the barn.” He walked to the side door and released a wrought-iron latch, pushing it open, muscles in his thighs flexing, his biceps and forearms straining just enough to make everything in her tense up to match.

  She stepped inside, the wood floor hollow-sounding beneath her feet, the expansive, empty section cleaner than most of her apartments had ever been. “Wow,” she said. “I’m serious, you could host events here. And you could charge lots of money for them.”

  “It’s nothing special. Just a place to keep equipment and hay.”

  “So...just a place to keep your entire livelihood? Yeah, you’re right. It’s not that special.”

  “Well, it’s a serviceable barn. And it cost a hell of a lot of money. But the old one was run-down, and after we ended up with moldy hay one winter...it was pretty clear things had to change. After Dad died, we got a good chunk of change from his life insurance, and Kate and I gave our share to Connor to invest.”

  “Well, he did it in a very serious way,” she said.

  “Yeah, he did. But this place is our family legacy. Connor’s the keeper of it, sure, but when...when there’s another generation, I guess they’ll all have a part of it. Though I’m sort of skeptical about any of us managing another generation.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You, sure, because... I can see that you’re not the open-your-home-up-to-chaos-and-crazy kind of guy. But Connor could find someone else.”

  “He doesn’t want to. He seems to think cracking a smile’s some kind of hanging offense.”

  “And Kate?”

  “She’s a kid.”

  “She has to be in her twenties.”

  “Twenty-one,” he said. “She’s way too damn young to be thinking about that stuff.”

  “Well, I agree on one level. A husband and kids? No way. Not at her age. But I assume she’s dating and otherwise showing a normal interest in that sort of thing.”

  “Uh...not so much.”

  “Oh.” Sadie’s face heated, embarrassment washing through her. “Sorry, I was making assumptions. I should have said partner.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Oh, just the way you said that I thought maybe I’d made a very broad assumption about her sexuality, is all.”

  He winced. “Can we please not talk about sexuality and my sister in the same sentence?”

  “I just meant, if she’s a lesbian I have no problem with that and I would hate for it to seem like I was passing judgm—”

  “She’s not,” he said. “Considering the number of times I found torn-out magazine pages of...what’s his name? Zac Efron?”

  Sadie laughed. “Okay, but you realize that’s an indication that she does have a sexuality.”

  “I refuse to have this discussion.”

  “All I’m saying is, don’t give up on the next generation yet. You’
re such a cliché,” she said, shaking her head and laughing.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I sort of raised her from the time she was two years old, so I reserve the right to be a little insane.”

  The admission hit her somewhere around the heart. Which made her very uncomfortable. “Oh. Right. I wasn’t...thinking.”

  “Our mom left before Kate turned two. Dad might as well have left. Someone had to work, someone had to take care of the baby. Connor and I were an old married couple before we could drive.”

  “Eli...”

  “Hey, look, I’m over it.” Except he so obviously wasn’t. He wore it as sure as he wore his uniform. His need for order. His need for control. “But the thing is... I think that’s why this place means so much. And why I’m an overprotective crazy person. Because it was all down to Connor and me. And when you have that much responsibility that early, it becomes a part of you in a way it never would otherwise.”

  She turned and looked at the barn, at the care that had so clearly gone into it. Evidence of money that could have taken them away from here. That could have taken the Garrett family on to other things. College, maybe. Had any of them gone? Kate was twenty-one and working, so she clearly wasn’t in school.

  They had given their all for this place. To hold it together. Because it was what they’d done all of their lives and it was what they continued to do.

  For a woman who hadn’t lived in one place for more than a couple of years, it was a level of commitment that was...hideously daunting. It was sticking something out through thick and thin, rain and shine. Old barns and new.

  It was choosing to keep on staying even when there was an out. And suddenly all that history, all that intensity, made it feel as though the walls were closing in.

  And you’re here for five years.

  “Wow,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Anyway, this is great. I mean, if we could do tables, lots of tables in and around here, that would be...excellent. Just so very excellent.” She started to walk back out, quickly, trying to escape the weird, oppressive weight that had settled onto her stomach.

  “I’ll have to clear it with Connor. Farmwork getting done is going to be the top priority. But I think we can arrange to have the field just over here cleared for parking, which should make things easy. It’ll all have to be roped off and...well, it’s going to be a big deal.”