The Last Real Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  “Seemed like the right time.”

  “Your brothers must not have liked that at all,” Rae said with that big laugh of hers. It was the most genuine sound Amanda had heard her make in the presence of a Kittredge in years.

  Rae’s laugh was bright and infectious and merry, and Amanda hated that she couldn’t enjoy it anymore. Instead, she wanted to leap in and defend her idiot brothers, when she would have knocked their heads together right now if she could. She certainly couldn’t stand here and listen to Rae Trujillo talk badly about them, even if it was only by inference. And still, beneath all of that, there was the same old grief that Rae had been family and now wasn’t, and there was nothing but this weird no-man’s-land between them forevermore.

  “We’re family,” she found herself saying. But she smiled to take the sting out of her gruff tone. “We protect our own.”

  When Rae smiled again, it wasn’t sad. Not quite. But it wasn’t filled with any of that infectious merriment either.

  “Don’t I know it,” she said quietly. “It’s nice to see you, Amanda.”

  They both smiled politely and moved along. But Amanda found herself scowling as she kept walking down Main Street and headed for the river.

  Interactions like that were exactly why she often thought longingly of picking up and moving to a big city. Any big city, she didn’t care. Just somewhere she could go where no one would know she was. Where she could walk down a street and not be assaulted by feelings that weren’t even hers.

  It wasn’t her marriage that had broken up.

  Rae had never been anything but nice and sweet and sisterly to Amanda. Even if Amanda did live in an anonymous big city, she suspected she would still feel profoundly unforgiving of the woman who’d broken her big brother’s heart—whether Riley chose to put it that way or not.

  But she wouldn’t have to run into her on the street.

  When a truck idled beside her as she left the pretty brick buildings behind her and followed the road as it wound down to the river, she sighed. Then she rearranged her features into something more welcoming as she turned, expecting it would be one of her brothers. Or a neighbor. Or any one of her friends’ parents, or parents’ friends, who took it upon themselves to comment on the behavior of any child they happened to have known growing up.

  But it was none of those people.

  It was Brady.

  “Get in,” he ordered her.

  “Why?” But even as she asked the question, she remembered what Hannah had said earlier. And she smiled at him before he could answer her. “I’m walking because I want to walk, but thank you.”

  If confidence was all that mattered, well, Amanda could certainly fake that, or she never would have survived a single family meal. And would even now be locked away in her old bedroom in her parents’ house, forbidden from participating in her own life because it made her brothers so uncomfortable.

  “You have to get in,” Brady replied, his voice as calm as his dark gaze was … not. “Lucinda Early just drove by and slowed down to take a closer look. You know what a gossip she is. What kind of reputation would I have left if I let that little Kittredge girl walk back to her scandalous apartment when I could have given her a ride?” He looked in his rearview mirror. “She pulled over. I think she might be filming us.”

  Amanda wanted to throw a temper tantrum. But that would only prove that everything people were saying about her was true, wouldn’t it? Besides, Brady wasn’t wrong about Lucinda Early. The older woman was, as Ellie liked to say when she found Christian kindness a challenge, an opportunity to practice grace.

  She stared at Brady a moment, irritated. Then she looked up the street toward town, and sure enough, Lucinda Early’s car was idling on the shoulder. She was likely already on the phone, calling Ellie to ask her if she knew her daughter was wandering aimlessly by the side of the road and hitchhiking too.

  Amanda surrendered. She climbed into Brady’s passenger seat and tried to pretend that everything wasn’t different now, as he started to drive. Because she’d ridden in his truck before. They were neighbors, and he was her brother’s best friend. He’d driven her more times than she could count.

  There was absolutely no reason this should feel any different than those times. But it did.

  She told herself it was because he wasn’t driving her back out to her childhood home. He was driving her down to the river, then across to her very own, private apartment. Where, if she wanted, she could invite him in. For coffee, the way they did on TV shows, and no one would be around to loom intimidatingly or ask aggressive questions.

  Or even know about it.

  Amanda had already had enough coffee to float away on today. But when Brady pulled up behind the Coyote, delivering her to those same steps where they’d stood and argued a few nights back, she thought about rhinestones. And shine. About controlling what flashed, and what didn’t.

  When Brady threw the truck into park, she swiveled in her seat, smiled at him, and even batted her lashes.

  Because why not make an entrance when she could?

  “You want to come up for coffee?” she asked him.

  Then watched, fascinated, as Brady went volcanic.

  7

  “What did you ask me?” Brady demanded, because his blood was roaring in his ears and he’d obviously misheard her.

  He must have misheard her.

  “Do. You.” Amanda drew each word out, as if he were very, very dim. And possibly hard of hearing. “Want. To come up. To my apartment. With me.” And then she smiled, much too sweetly for his peace of mind. Or his blood pressure. “For coffee?”

  Maybe she really liked coffee. She worked at the coffeehouse. Maybe she thought she was issuing a perfectly innocent invitation.

  But even as he tried to tell himself that, her body language told him something else. Because she was twisted around in the passenger seat to face him. One leg was crossed over the other, and she was twirling a hank of her honey-colored hair around and around one finger.

  The look in her eyes was pure evil.

  “For coffee,” he repeated. “You are inviting me up for coffee.”

  “Sure.” More twirling. “Or whatever.”

  “Are you out of your freaking mind?”

  It wasn’t until the echo of his words careened around inside the cab of his truck that he could admit that yes, he’d added a little more volume than necessary.

  But all Amanda did was make a tsking sound. “No need to get all worked up about it, Brady. A simple yes or no will do the trick.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  She lifted one shoulder, then dropped it, never shifting her come-hither gaze from his. “I like coffee.”

  He thought he might crack his own steering wheel in half.

  “You don’t invite men up to your apartment, Amanda. If you do, you have to know what kind of invitation they’re going to think it is. Do you?”

  “You know what kind of invitation it is.” She batted her eyelashes at him, which should have been laughable. And yet Brady wasn’t laughing. “Coffee. Haven’t I already said that?”

  He found himself rubbing his hands over his face, the way he seemed to do a lot around her. He was also praying for deliverance. Both at the same time, and neither helped.

  “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon. Why are you inviting anyone anywhere?”

  “This is the problem,” she complained, dropping the hair-twirling part of her act. Though she didn’t sit back. Or revert to an easily ignored ten-year-old the way he wanted her to. “You have a dirty mind.”

  Brady stared at her. “I do. Because I’m a grown man. And normally, when I’m issued invitations to other people’s apartments, it’s because they also have dirty minds. Because they are grown women.”

  “Did you think when you picked me up that you were scooping up a preschooler? That I was toddling down the road to nursery school?”

  “Pretty much,” he snapped.

&n
bsp; Amanda smiled at him, even sweeter than before, and a whole lot more problematic. “Then what are you getting so upset about? It’s only coffee.” Her smile widened. “Unless it’s not. To you.”

  Everything inside Brady went still.

  The afternoon sun caught at her, flooding the cab of the truck. Amanda was dressed in a regular old T-shirt that wasn’t scandalous in any way. And a pair of jeans that couldn’t be the same ones she wore to work in the bar because they were looser.

  But it didn’t really matter, because he knew now. He knew what she looked like in tight clothes. He knew she had curves, and he’d seen her hips sway. He’d seen her twirl her hair around her finger, and he’d seen the flirtation in her eyes. And he couldn’t figure out how to unknow any of those things.

  There was a breeze coming off the river and into the rolled-down windows of the truck. There was a hint of snow in it, because this was the time of year when the mountains whispered premonitions to the people down below.

  Any way he looked at it, Amanda was a problem and her presence in his truck spelled foreboding.

  He would show her the error of her ways, then get out of here. It was the only rational way to handle this. Her.

  “Okay,” Brady said instead, not shifting his gaze from hers. And not aware he’d even said anything until he heard his own voice.

  “Okay?”

  Brady nodded his head toward the stairs. “Let’s go. Coffee.”

  He had the distinct satisfaction of watching Amanda go from sultry to purely startled.

  He liked that far more than he should have.

  And not only because this was an excellent opportunity to impart a lesson. But because he was tired of being considered unthreatening. Undemanding. The local equivalent of a Labrador retriever, according to his family and hers. It wasn’t that he wanted the people he loved most to cringe around in fear of him, but a little respect wouldn’t go amiss.

  He could start teaching that lesson right here.

  Brady waited, but all Amanda did was stare back at him, her eyes wider than before and filled with more wariness than flirtation.

  “Weird,” he drawled as the silence spun out between them. “If I didn’t know better, I might think you were suffering from second thoughts here.”

  “I have coffee all the time.”

  But she still didn’t move.

  The stillness inside Brady seemed to bloom a bit. Then take root. He studied her for a moment. Then did nothing more than lift a brow.

  And watched Amanda flush.

  He wondered if she’d been flushing like that out in the dark where he couldn’t see it. He certainly hoped so. It made him feel a lot better about the riot going on in him.

  For a moment, for one little second, he didn’t beat himself up for any of it. There would be ample time for that later. For a moment, a breath, he let himself enjoy the tension between them. The breeze and the heat on her cheeks. A pretty woman in his truck and a blue sky above.

  Amanda blew out a breath. And when she moved, she moved quickly. She threw open the truck’s door, jumped out, and then headed for the stairs. She took the metal steps two at a time, and Brady followed. Much more sedately, because he was enjoying the view. And appreciating how fast she moved, because it told him all kinds of things about the energy crackling through her.

  He didn’t have it in him to pretend it wasn’t buzzing around in him too. That didn’t mean he would act on it.

  Amanda unlocked the outer door at the top of the stairs, and Brady followed her into the small, narrow hallway inside. There was a window down on the other end, thankfully, or it would have been dim and much too close. There were two doors that opened into the hallway on opposite sides, and it took Brady a moment to remember that he’d been in the other one. And Amanda’s too, come to think of it, because these were the apartments the Coyote bartenders used.

  He waited until Amanda fumbled with her deadbolt at least three times and then, bright red in the face, shoved her door open and led him inside.

  “Nice to see you put a new coat of paint on the place,” he said cheerfully, as he looked around.

  Then got to watch, like it was his own, personal show, as Amanda processed that information. What he was telling her. What it meant.

  He would have said it was impossible, but her face got even redder. Then she scowled, though he only got a glimpse of it before she turned her back on him and moved farther into the apartment.

  “I hardly recognize the place,” he drawled when she’d retreated to the other side of the island in the kitchen portion of the living room, and stood there as if she thought it was a wall. A fortress. “It’s actually pretty.”

  “Yes, Brady.” Amanda sounded impatient. But he was staring straight at her while the afternoon sun poured in those big windows that looked out toward town, and he could see she was more rattled than she sounded. “Message received. You want me to know that you’ve spent lots of time in these apartments. I get it. What’s the word for a male slut?”

  He laughed at that, to his own surprise. “There isn’t one.”

  “And I’m betting you don’t think that’s a problem.”

  “I can’t say that I believe in sluts, as a general concept,” Brady said merrily. “It’s an ugly little word to describe one of life’s most glorious gifts.”

  “You mean sex.”

  “I mean a person—”

  “A woman.”

  “An individual who likes sex. A lot of sex. I, personally, consider the enjoyment of sex cause for celebration. Not condemnation.”

  Amanda blinked. “Do people not enjoy sex?”

  Brady tipped his head slightly to one side while that question spun around in him. It suggested that Amanda had never experienced bad sex, or even indifferent sex, which was cause for a whole different level of celebration.

  But then he remembered who she was. And who her brothers were, more to the point. And he couldn’t quite make himself believe that little Amanda Kittredge had been out there indulging in any kind of sex at all—not bone-melting, life-altering good sex, run-of-the-mill, functional sex, or even the bad sex Brady had never experienced—with four angry bodyguards always lurking around her. He feared for his own life when he was with her, and he wasn’t some pimply high school kid.

  He would be very surprised if she’d ever gotten naked with anyone.

  But the alternative was that Amanda was … untouched.

  Innocent.

  Something shifted inside him. He had the uncomfortable feeling that it was a tectonic plate.

  But Brady wasn’t here to indulge in his own earthquakes. He was here to cause them.

  “Some folks don’t enjoy anything,” he told her. “Even sex.”

  He’d thumbed his hat off at the door, and now he tossed it onto her counter and ran his hand through his hair. She was even prettier as the light fell through the windows, making her look like she was made of golden honey.

  His mouth watered. He ignored it.

  “Are you going to make me coffee?” he asked while she stayed where she was on the other side of the kitchen island and gaped at him. “Or do you want a keep the focus on sex?”

  Amanda jolted, and there was color high on her cheeks again. And there was something deeply wrong with him that he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more than reach over and run his finger over the curve of her cheek to feel all that silky heat himself.

  Brady ignored that too.

  She jerked into action. She pulled a bag of ground espresso from her freezer. Then she spooned it into the silver espresso maker on her stove. Once she set it on the gas flame of her stovetop, she busied herself rummaging around for mugs in her cupboard. When she found a couple, she went back to the refrigerator to lift a carton of heavy cream from inside.

  “What?” she demanded defensively, when he only stared back at her. “I don’t like fake things.”

  “Noted.”

  She slammed the carton down on the count
er with enough force to make a dollop of cream spill over.

  “Lite this, fat-free that, low fat, low whatever.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think it’s going to kill us all. We ate real food out on the ranch. I still do.”

  “Amanda.”

  “People feed their farm animals better than they feed themselves. If I wouldn’t put it in one of our horses, why would I put in me?”

  “Easy, killer,” Brady drawled. “Who are you talking to? I grew up ten miles away from you. Frankenstein food is not my thing.”

  Amanda didn’t look remotely mollified, but the espresso maker made noise behind her, indicating the coffee was ready. She took longer than strictly necessary to turn around and handle it.

  Brady watched in a silence that felt thicker by the second as she poured espresso into two mugs, then topped each one up with a dollop of heavy cream. She slid one mug in front of him, keeping one closer to her.

  “You don’t normally take sugar,” she said. “But I have some if you want it.”

  There was a strange note in her voice, like she didn’t want him to know that she was aware of how he took his coffee. Which, again, was a little pinprick of information he didn’t quite need.

  Because he would expect a person who must have made him more coffee drinks than he could count, over the years, to know how he took it. But a completely neutral barista would hardly have feelings about that, would she?

  Sure enough, when all he did was regard her steadily by way of reply, that pink flush bloomed again on her cheekbones.

  “You blush a lot,” he pointed out.

  Amanda tilted her chin up fractionally. “It’s an uncontrollable reaction when in the presence of so much foolishness.”

  “What foolishness is that?”

  He didn’t reach for the coffee she’d made. And not reaching for her seemed like an act of supreme self-sacrifice. Instead, he braced his hands on the countertop, because she was doing something similar across from him.

  “I think you know, Brady.” But she wasn’t sounding quite as sure of herself at the moment. “There’s been a lot of looming. A lot of threats and dire pronouncements. I think we can tie it all up in a bow and call it pure foolishness, don’t you?”