Abby regarded her steadily for a moment, the way she always did, because she listened. Really listened, instead of ranting on about her opinions or what everyone else ought to do, like Amanda’s brothers.
“What’s funny to me is that we’ve been married for almost a year now,” Abby said, one hand on the sleeping infant’s deliciously round belly. “We already have a son. We’re as happy as I know how to be, if currently sleep-deprived. And yet the only thing anybody remembers is that I mooned around after Gray for a thousand years.”
“So you would change it.”
“The mooning? Or the marriage?”
“Any of it.” Amanda busied herself with a sudden, intense study of her fingernails. Which were not beautifully manicured to a high shine like Hannah’s. Amanda’s nails were cut short, because as much as it turned out she might like to make an entrance upon occasion, the rest of the time she had to work. Her hands had to do things. “What if instead of mooning around after him, you’d dated other people instead?”
Again, a long look from Abby. “Is there someone you want to date?”
“I’ve never been on a date in my life.” Amanda forced her lips to curve, though it wasn’t exactly a smile. “Only closely chaperoned dances in high school. Because who would dare ask me out? They would have to contend with the brother death squad. It’s easier all around to … not.”
“I would have told you that all I wanted was to go on a date,” Abby said. “That was true. I did. My problem was that I was only ever interested in one person, which would have made going on dates with other people challenging.”
“Everybody knew how you felt about Gray. That’s why you never went out with anyone else.”
“Also no one asked,” Abby said dryly. “My friends would tell you things could have happened if I were looking, but I really only ever saw Gray. So I’m lucky it all worked out the way it did. Because otherwise, I was right on track to becoming Cold River’s very own vestal virgin.”
“I don’t want to be a virgin,” Amanda blurted out, from the very depths of her soul. Because the back office had always been a safe space for such confessions. “Vestal or otherwise.”
“I can’t blame you there,” Abby said in her typically calm, matter-of-fact way. “I’m not going to lie to you and pretend that sex isn’t amazing, because it is.” She concentrated on the bassinet a little more fiercely than before, but Amanda could see the faint color in her cheeks. “Do you have someone in mind to help you out with that?”
That last question was slightly more deliberately bland than the rest, and Amanda smiled, because that was the big sister coming out in Abby. It made Amanda feel safe. Protected. But that didn’t mean Amanda planned to announce she’d kissed her older boss’s even older brother-in-law. She was starting a new life. She didn’t want to end it before it got good.
“Not really,” she lied.
She reminded herself she was a woman with secrets now. That meant she couldn’t go sharing them with anyone, or they wouldn’t be secrets any longer. And that, too, made her feel somehow safe and sultry at once.
Abby nodded sagely. “You must have too many prospects to count.”
“I think some people have prospects, and then other people are me,” Amanda said quietly. Matter-of-factly, because she might have been making grand gestures at the football game, but she’d also been thinking about this for a long time. Or she never would have moved off the ranch. “And if I don’t make my own prospects, it’s never going to happen. It’s not only my brothers who treat me like a child. Everybody does. I don’t want to be the town’s vestal virgin, or even a legendary spinster like Miss Patrick, but both those things are infinitely preferable to being treated like a kid. Forever.”
“I understand that.” The baby made a small sound, and Abby moved her hand in a soft circle on her son’s chubby belly. His mouth moved, but he stilled. “And I know a lot of people have a lot of strong opinions about what you should do. Or not do. But it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. I know it feels like it does, but in the end, the only opinion that really matters is yours.”
“You don’t regret anything, then?”
“I don’t.” Abby got a dreamy sort of look on her face. “But I was terrified to tell Gray how inexperienced I was. I thought it was embarrassing. Or that I would do the wrong thing. And it was fine.” Her eyes danced, then. “It was so much more than fine, I don’t have the words to describe it.”
“You married him, though,” Amanda said. “I think maybe the protocol is different if it’s more of a casual thing.”
Some part of her expected Abby to clutch at the pearls she wasn’t wearing. Instead, she smiled. “In my head, I wanted to be the sort of person who had a great many casual things. Instead, I read about them. But it’s not as hard as you think it is to talk about stuff. Especially if you know the person. Not that I experienced the alternative, of course.”
Amanda tried to imagine sitting around having an in-depth discussion with Brady about the intricacies of sex. Or even about that kiss, rather than simply blundering in and out of moments that left her spinning for days. She felt herself ignite at the notion, and it was a wildfire this time. It was a slow, steady, calamitous burn that unfurled from the deepest part of her and sent licks of flame dancing along her limbs.
She hoped Abby couldn’t see it all over her.
“I know what it’s like to have everyone think of you one way when you want so desperately to be thought of in a different way altogether,” Abby said in her same quiet way, no hint of judgment in her voice. “What I found out is that, sure, there are always going to be people who can’t let go of whatever image they had of you. But most people in Cold River want you to be happy. Whatever that looks like.”
“I believe you,” Amanda said after a moment, when she thought she could speak without giving away that fire inside of her. But her cheeks were still too hot when she lifted her gaze to Abby’s. “My trouble is, there are four particular citizens of Cold River who do not want me happy. They want me in a box. And if that box holds me exactly like this for the rest of my life, they will be delighted.”
“Too bad it’s not up to them.” Abby’s gaze was steady. “I don’t think there’s ever anything wrong with asking for what you want, Amanda. I wish I had, and a whole lot sooner.”
“Unless, of course, you don’t get it,” Amanda said, thinking of that unreadable, too-intense look Brady had fixed on her. There in her apartment, and beneath the bleachers at the football game last night too.
She tried not to shiver.
“Sure,” Abby replied, with a small smile. “But what if you do?”
When the baby started fussing, Amanda shooed Abby out the door with him. Then she spent the next few hours handling the coffeehouse paperwork and the usual backlog of calls. Anything that made a dent. She meant to leave, but she got sucked back into the late-afternoon rush, made even more crowded than usual thanks to the Harvest Festival still going on outside.
By the time she actually left, dusk had already settled in. She pushed her way out the back door of the coffeehouse, smiling as she heard the music and sounds of general merriment floating over the back of the brick buildings that fronted onto Main Street. She figured she might as well go home, shower off a day of coffee, and then come back into town on foot so she could enjoy the live bands at the Broken Wheel. Or maybe do a little shopping in the boutiques that would stay open tonight until late.
She was congratulating herself on the perfect evening ahead of her as she made her way out to her car, parked in the lot behind the coffee shop.
Until a shadow detached itself from a nearby tree.
Her stomach dropped. Her heart kicked up.
Then it all got worse, or better, because it was Brady.
He looked like part of the night itself. Dark hat, a Henley and jeans, all of it forcing her to pay too much attention to that chest of his that she’d felt beneath her fingers. She didn’t know how she was supp
osed to handle herself.
There had been twenty-two years of imagining—and now she knew. She knew what his mouth tasted like, and how it moved on hers. And it was nothing like fairy tales or Disney movies. It was raw and physical, wet and hot. Under the bleachers, surrounded by so much noise, she’d forgotten that. A little.
She’d lost it in all that commotion.
But now they were all by themselves in the dark. Everyone they knew and everything in Cold River was on the other side of the stout row of brick buildings, standing there, cheek by cheek, like a wall. And Amanda had known this from the start. She could never go back.
She could never be a girl who didn’t know those things. His taste. His touch. The scrape of his cheek against her jaw. The precise scent of the exact place where his neck met his shoulder.
Amanda had no idea how she was supposed to just … talk to him.
For a moment there, with only the far-off stars as witness, she panicked. She wondered if she’d lost her voice altogether.
“Is this your new game?” Brady growled at her. “You wander around asking random men to teach you about sex?”
He sounded so outraged, so thoroughly disgruntled, that the panic in her eased a little. Or shifted until it joined up with the heat within her, then bloomed into something new.
She felt an ache low in her belly, and what she would have called fear if it hadn’t felt so much like flying.
“I wouldn’t call you random, Brady,” she said. With a bit of a drawl. “You did change my diapers, after all.”
He muttered a curse. “This isn’t something that can happen. Ever.”
But her eyes were adjusting to the dark. She could see the tense, taut line of his jaw. And if she wasn’t mistaken, that particular glitter in his dark eyes that appeared to be wired directly to the slippery place between her legs.
“I’ve thought a lot about what I want,” she told him, venturing closer.
“God help us all.”
She ignored that. Virtuously. “That kiss was clarifying.”
“That kiss scared you half to death.”
“Only half.” She nodded at him. “And showing up in the dark like this doesn’t make you any less scary, by the way.”
She stopped by the hood of her car, maybe three feet away from where he stood. And she couldn’t help but imagine that he’d been leaning against that tree for hours. That he’d only straightened when she’d come out the back door of the coffeehouse. If that wasn’t what happened, she didn’t want to know.
“You think I don’t know what it’s like to be your age, but I do,” Brady said, low and dark. “I remember. You want to get out there and grab hold of everything the world has to offer, and you should.”
“I like to sing ‘Wide Open Spaces’ at the top of my lungs like the next girl,” Amanda replied. “But Colorado is filled with a whole lot of open space. And I like Cold River. Unlike some people, I didn’t race on out of here twenty seconds after graduating from high school. This is home. I like home.”
He made a dismissive noise. “It’s easy to think you love a place when you’ve never been anywhere else.”
“That’s why I made you an offer.” She kept her voice as bright as if she’d offered him a pastry, not herself. She remembered what Abby had said about talking things through. “I’ve been a virgin with no sexual experience for quite some time now. I like it fine. It’s comfortable. But how can I know whether or not I prefer abstinence if I don’t experiment a little? Just to make sure.”
Brady actually laughed. “You think you’re going to debate me into having sex with you?”
“It’s a rational argument.” She leaned against the hood of her car and grinned at him. “All I ever hear are claims that if I was a little more rational, I might actually get what I want.”
“And what happens if I say no?” Something changed, there beneath the tree that would have hidden them from view, had anyone been watching tonight. Though Amanda found she didn’t have it in her to care too much if they were. “Are you going to run out and find someone else?”
Her instinct was to respond from the gut with a sharp no. To tell him that she’d had any number of offers at the Coyote and hadn’t felt compelled to take anyone up on any of them.
But there was something else in her, kicking around, hot and bright and connected to that pulsing heat between her legs. She knew things about him now. And that meant she knew things about herself too.
A month ago, she would never have smirked the way she did then, or shifted her body so that it emphasized her curves.
“This is Cold River, Brady,” she drawled, watching his gaze move over her curves and take its time finding her eyes again. “There’s no shortage of cowboys.”
She didn’t see him move, but he must have. Because suddenly he was close enough to cup her cheek. And he held her there, though there was no tenderness in it. Or nothing so simple as tenderness. There was torment in his gaze and what looked like denial flattening his mouth.
But then his thumb moved, a small scrape over her cheekbone and she understood. That this was the truth. This pulsing, exultant sensation, like their own, secret heartbeat.
“I can’t have you wandering around the valley, propositioning cowboys anytime you feel like it,” he rumbled, his voice as much inside her chest as in her ears. “It might cause a riot.”
It was hard to focus on anything but the hypnotizing sweep of his callused thumb against her cheek, but Amanda tried. “Can’t you?”
“Your brother asked me to look out for you. I should have known it would mean something like this.”
“Poor Brady,” she murmured sadly, though there wasn’t a shred of sadness inside her. “Do you have to take one for the team?”
“You’re going to be the death of me, Amanda.”
“I hope not.” She tipped her head back, swaying closer to him. “If you died, I’d be right back where I started, wouldn’t I?”
He took possession of her other cheek, and then he held her there. A breath away from his mouth. From another kiss. From all those things that swirled inside of her, looking for a way out. Looking for him.
Amanda melted.
The entire Cold River High School marching band could have paraded around them, then, and she doubted she would have noticed. There was only him. Only Brady. His hands on her face and that hot gleam in his eyes.
“Let’s you and me get real clear about the rules,” he said, after a whole lifetime of that shuddering excitement.
“Why do you get to make the rules? This is my thing, not yours.”
“You made it my thing, Amanda. Suck it up.” He waited until she inclined her head slightly. “No one knows. Ever. Not your friends, definitely not Abby, and never, ever your brothers. I’m going to need you to agree with me. Out loud.”
“I agree with you.” And she shuddered again at the sheer deliciousness of the situation. And the possibility that it was actually happening. That she was here in the dark making bargains with Brady Everett for sex. For sex. She was finally going to have sex. With him. She was glad he was holding her, because otherwise she might have fallen over. “Nobody knows but us.”
“And as long as this goes on, as long as it’s you and me, it’s only you and me.”
“I already told you I’m a virgin,” she said, laughing. “Do you really think you’re going to crack open that door and I’m going to come storming out like I’m on a mission to make up for lost time?”
“This isn’t a debate about expectations, little girl.” There was something dark and particularly, marvelously male about the way he said it. “We’re agreeing to terms.”
“I agree; no one else.” She couldn’t let that settle in her. It made her knees feel weak. “You have to agree that if you get all weird, you can’t just snap your fingers and be done with me. No ghosting. You have to actually talk about it. With me. Like I’m a grown adult woman and not your best friend’s little sister.”
“Except yo
u are my best friend’s little sister.”
“I want you to teach me, Brady, not condescend to me. Do you think you can handle that?”
His mouth crooked up in one corner. “Do you?”
“I’ll need you to agree out loud, thank you.”
“I agree,” he said.
Then there was nothing but his hands on her face, the things they’d agreed to, and all that heat kicking around between them.
Oh my God, she shrieked inside. Is this actually happening?
“Okay,” Brady said after a long, drugged sort of moment. Or maybe only Amanda felt that way. Maybe he had conversations like this every day. “Okay, then. We have rules.”
Amanda was … jangly. Tangled up inside, filled with anticipation, and panic, and straight-up terror—all mixed up together with excitement and that trembling. She’d never wanted anything as much as this. She didn’t know if she could survive it.
But all Brady did, after a last, long look, was drop his hands. Then step back.
There was a roaring in her ears. “You have to be kidding me. That’s not it, is it?”
“It’s going to be hard to keep a secret if we’re making out behind the coffeehouse, Amanda. This is still Cold River.”
She blinked. “Is this what people mean when they talk about someone being a tease?”
He let out another one of those laughs, as if she’d punched him again.
“You’re killing me.” It sounded like he was talking through clenched teeth. “Get in the truck.”
She wasn’t following him. “The truck? You mean your truck?”
Then, before she could puzzle that out, he was advancing on her. She made an embarrassing squeaking sound as he got directly into her space, crowding her there against the side of her car. He hooked one arm around her back, then hauled her up against him, so every part of the front of her was pressed tightly against the front of him.
She was pretty sure she flatlined.
But when she didn’t actually die again, she felt everything.
Everything.
His hard chest against her breasts, which felt deliciously swollen tonight. His belly, flat and enticing, pressed tight against her. And that hard ridge even lower down that made her … dizzy.
The Last Real Cowboy Page 13
