by Heidi Rice
Couldn’t find a clitoris with a road map. What the actual fuck?
Where the heck did Miss Hot Irish Accent get off trashing all cowboys? And trashing him in particular, when she’d never even met him? Especially as he had such stellar references on his hookup résumé?
His righteous indignation only made the pulsing heat in his crotch all the more inexplicable as he climbed into his Chevy flatbed truck. He’d offered to help flip burgers for Marietta Booster Club’s fundraiser tonight at the picnic in Crawford Park and after that he planned to head to the rodeo grounds to check on his horse Baby, who he’d installed in her temporary pen this morning.
Then he would take a moment to walk through the arena before tomorrow’s event, a tradition his foster daddy, Mitch O’Connell, had instilled in him and his brothers and sister when he’d first introduced them all to rodeo.
Maybe it was superstitious, but the night before a rodeo, Flynn always did the walk-through, because he liked to imagine Mitch talking to him again. The ex-champion bull rider’s voice, the deep measured easygoing tone, the confident words and phrases, telling Flynn he was valued, he was important, and that it wasn’t the winning that mattered it was the taking part, but winning was worth working for. Remembering Mitch helped him to channel his adrenaline, and calm his nerves, and dispel all the doubts and insecurities, and usually relaxed him enough to get a decent night’s sleep before the main event.
But as he jerked the stick shift into reverse and backed out of the yard, the tug of frustration in his groin made him pretty damn sure that Miss Hot Irish Accent had already screwed with his karma enough to make an uninterrupted night’s sleep impossible.
Chapter Two
The deep blue of the sky was starting to glow as twilight approached and Logan drove the ranch truck the length of Front Avenue in Marietta and then swung the truck to a stop at the back of the impressive courthouse building in a reserved parking lot set up for the first responders. Behind the Victorian dome on top of the building, Copper Mountain loomed in the gathering dusk.
The silent, brooding presence of the mountain was in sharp contrast to the activity and energy in Crawford Park.
Marietta’s downtown area was now closed for business, but families had gathered in the park right in front of the courthouse to socialize and eat and raise money for what Charlie had said were a load of good local causes—such as booster classes for the high-school students. People of all ages milled about in groups and clusters.
Squished between the truck door and Charlie, Evie wondered how she was going to describe the view in her column without sounding awestruck. Fairy lights had just begun to glitter in the trees that flanked the park. Flags flicked and flapped to add to the general air of festivity.
Clearly Marietta took its rodeo weekend seriously. And knew how to throw a party. Evie felt like even more of a gatecrasher than she had earlier in the day.
Blankets and hay bales had been scattered around the park’s manicured lawns so that families and other groups could chow down. A row of barbeque drums were supplying burgers and hot dogs in one corner of the park with a sign for the Marietta Booster Club, while a beer garden was cordoned off in another area complete with garden tent and a sign boasting Rosita’s World-Famous Margaritas. The townsfolk milled about chatting and laughing and generally getting into the party mood. And a stage had been set up in the main parking lot for a band to play later in the evening.
The women wore pretty print dresses or fancy jeans, while the guys were all decked out in what Evie had begun to realize was the cowboy’s formal-wear uniform of clean Wranglers, button-down shirts and shiny boots.
Evie’s heart clutched and released at the sight of a group of children lining up for a face painter. A break-off group ran across the courthouse lawn chasing a yapping dog. A petite woman standing in front of a stand selling ice cream grabbed hold of a boy of about eight at the front of the group. His head sunk to his chin, as his mother let rip.
Evie looked away. A couple of Rosita’s World-Famous Margaritas might not be a bad idea to help her get through tonight. The smell of mesquite and roasting burgers drifted on the warm September air and her stomach grumbled.
“So how are you settling in so far, Evie?” Logan drawled, having parked next to a cluster of almost identical battered ranch trucks and strolled round the front of the vehicle to open the passenger door.
“Very well, thank you,” she said as he helped her down from the cab. She could certainly get used to the innate courtesy she’d noticed from every man she’d met so far. During the parade, she had been introduced to some of Logan’s co-workers at the sheriff’s office and a couple of the other calendar guys—every single one of them had tipped their hats in greeting.
“You have a beautiful home. And this is a beautiful town,” she added, a little surprised that she meant it. But really, how could you fault the charm and beauty of this place? As he helped her down from the truck and her feet hit dirt, she was glad she’d opted for practical low-heeled boots tonight.
He tipped his Stetson back, his sky-blue eyes glinting. “Don’t know about beautiful, but it’s comfy.” His gaze strayed to Charlie who had jumped down from the cab on her own. “And cozy.”
A silent message passed between the two of them, before Logan offered Evie his arm. “How about I introduce you around some?” he said. “All the Marietta calendar guys are here somewhere and a few of the local rodeo pros.”
“That’s really not necessary,” she said. “I’m here to observe rather than participate, and I wouldn’t want to keep you two from enjoying yourselves,” she added.
Charlie looked up from checking the camera she had slung around her neck. “That’s okay, I’m going to be taking shots for your piece. You guys go ahead. I can enjoy Logan later.”
Logan gave a gruff laugh, as Evie’s blush reignited and she considered throttling her friend.
Gee thanks, Charlie. Way to make me feel like even more of a gooseberry.
“Come on, let’s leave Charlie to her work,” Logan prompted, obviously not embarrassed in the least by his girlfriend’s inappropriate joke.
Maybe these two were made for each other after all. For all his reserve and apparent stoicism, Logan Tate clearly shared Charlie’s cheeky sense of humor.
Left with no choice, Evie took Logan’s arm and prepared to be paraded in front of the locals like a rare piece of fauna that had flown in from New York.
Twenty minutes and two sinfully delicious Vaquero Margaritas later—which she had been reliably informed by Rosita’s very friendly barman Arturo were specially concocted for the cowboys—Evie had to admit she’d misjudged not just Logan, but the folks of Marietta as well. She hadn’t really had a chance to talk to anyone earlier at the ceremony and parade because everyone had been so busy and a lot of the crowd had been tourists and rodeo enthusiasts following their favorite bull rider or saddle bronc celebrity. But this event seemed to be mostly for the local families. Everyone had been welcoming and relaxed, and also surprisingly cosmopolitan—and not fazed at all at the prospect of having a journalist in their midst. For a small town, Marietta obviously had an interesting and eclectic cross-section of citizens.
As well as chatting to the first responders who had featured in the calendar with Logan—most of whom seemed dismayed and charmingly embarrassed by the success of the venture—she’d had a chat with Charlie’s sister Emily about the local art scene and a brief introduction too, to Jesse Carmody, a rodeo pro who Logan apparently knew from way back, but who hadn’t been in town for a while. With short dark wavy hair and intense green eyes, Carmody was more than handsome enough to grace a topless calendar too, and Evie could totally see why women flocked from miles around to attend the rodeo. His younger brother Casey was also a looker and had informed her he was going to be performing later with a band called The Whiskey Shots. She then got introduced to Em McCullough—a grandmother flanked by her two strapping grandsons—and discovered Em had been a Rockette
at Radio City Music Hall in a former life.
Logan had stayed by her side throughout, although she’d noticed his gaze kept tracking Charlie as the crowd grew—she wondered if he was waiting for her to come and join him for the food. An orderly queue had formed by the Booster Club’s barbeque drums soon after they’d arrived, but Logan had suggested waiting till the line went down a bit.
His brother Lyle and a few friends had begun an impromptu sing-along in the gazebo to entertain the older kids and teenagers before the main entertainment started. But as she and Logan and Emily stood with a group of high-school students shouting out requests to Lyle, who seemed happy to sing everything from Dolly Parton to Sam Smith, her stomach grumbled loudly enough to be heard over Lyle’s rendition of “Stay with Me.”
Logan, always attentive, leaned down to speak to her. “You want to go grab a plate? I’ll hunt up Charlie and find us a spare bale.”
“That would be great, thanks,” Evie said, finishing the last sip of her second cowboy margarita. But then the grass shifted beneath her feet.
“Hey there.” Logan gripped her elbow to steady her. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said, blinking.
These margaritas are deadly.
“Although I should probably get some food before I have any more of these,” she added, lifting her empty glass. She wasn’t much of a drinker anymore, not since the months of IVF—so bolting down two of the cocktails in quick succession probably hadn’t been the smartest move.
“Good thinking,” Logan said as he took the plastic cup out of her hand to drop it in one of the trash bags tied to a tree. But instead of letting go of her elbow, he escorted her through the crowd and then past the line of people still queuing for food.
Snagging a paper plate and cutlery, he finally stopped to insert her at the front of the line. “Sorry, folks, but this lady’s need is greater than yours. She’s had two of Rosita’s margaritas and no sustenance,” he announced to the crowd behind them. No one seemed to be objecting to their deputy’s antics, all of them either chuckling knowingly or simply waving her on.
But Evie was mortified. Maybe she wasn’t as anal as a Brit about queue-jumping, but it would still have been considered a cardinal sin by her mother in Kildare. And she was trying to blend in tonight, not come across as a prima donna. Or a lush.
“Logan, I don’t think…” she began.
“Hey, Flynn,” Logan interrupted her horrified whisper, addressing one of the men serving behind the barbeque drum.
Everything inside Evie stilled as she took in the cowboy’s tall, rangy build in a pair of hip-hugging jeans, a button-down shirt that molded to an extremely impressive torso and the most strikingly handsome face she had ever seen in her life.
Vividly green eyes stared back at her, as she took in his high, slashing cheekbones, and a bold, square jaw covered in five-o’clock beard scruff, which didn’t quite manage to disguise the devastating dimple in his chin. His brutally short hair, and a tattoo—which looked like a necklace of barbed wire on his collarbone—visible through the open neck of his shirt only added an edgy danger to the hotness overload.
“This here is Evie Donnelly,” Logan said, but his words buzzed around in Evie’s brain as she tried to get a grip on the wave of heat engulfing her body.
Did he say Flynn? Please don’t let this be that Flynn. The guy whose sex life I already know way too much about. Or I may well spontaneously combust on the spot.
“She’s staying at The Double T for the weekend to report on the rodeo,” Logan was still talking. “She needs food—can you look out for her while I round up Charlie?”
“Sure, Logan,” the guy said, his deep lazy Montana accent flowing through her veins like warm molasses.
She didn’t just feel tipsy now, she felt trashed.
The piercing emerald gaze never left her face as he handed his barbeque tongs to the guy standing next to him, who Evie recognized as Kyle Cavasos, aka Mr. October. “Kyle, you’re on your own.”
“Evie, this is Flynn O’Connell, one of the hands at The Double T, and a damn good calf roper,” Logan finished the introductions, unlinking her arm from his.
Feck. It is that Flynn. I’m a dead woman.
“He’s gonna look out for you while I go find Charlie.” Logan was still talking as he handed Flynn the cutlery he’d snagged for her and then backed away from them both. “Don’t forget to taste Grandma Bramble’s cranberry coleslaw,” Logan finished, before disappearing into the crowd. And leaving Evie trapped—and intoxicated—and horrifyingly turned on.
All of which was not good.
She didn’t get turned on anymore. She didn’t want to get turned on anymore. She was still fragile, emotionally and physically. And currently in a strange place, with strange—albeit friendly—people. And Flynn O’Connell was a strange man, whom she did not know. Even if Charlie had given her far too many of his vital sex-tistics.
“You really don’t have to do this,” she managed, as the Sure Thing Sex God stood too close—and she noticed a ripple of tension tighten across his mile-wide shoulders. He smelled of wood smoke and laundry detergent and spicy cologne. Her stomach roared.
“No sweat,” he said, but she detected an edge to his voice as if he meant exactly the opposite. He picked up the plate Logan had left for her on a side table, next to bowls of potato salad and Grandma Bramble’s legendary coleslaw. “It’ll be my pleasure, Miz Donnelly,” he added. But what she saw in his face disturbed her even more. Because beneath the cowboy chivalry was the glitter of heat… And something that looked a lot like animosity.
But why would he dislike her? They’d never met.
She was still getting the hostile vibes as he dumped enough food on her plate to feed a buffalo, without asking what she wanted. She bristled. There was courtesy and then there was overkill. Seriously, what was his problem?
Could he have heard me talking about him? How could he? Unless he has bionic hearing?
“That’s more than enough food, thanks,” she said, trying to take the plate.
He raised it out of her reach and proceeded to toss a couple of hot dogs, a burger and a corn on the cob on top of the mountains of potato salad, coleslaw and mac ‘n’ cheese. “Is it really, Miz Donnelly?” he said, that chiseled jaw hardening in front of her eyes.
She glared back at him, although it wasn’t one of her best. Because he was starting to seriously unnerve her.
“Are you sure?” he continued, the husky voice lowering to a growl as his eyes narrowed. “’Cos I sure wouldn’t want you going around telling folks this farm boy didn’t know how to treat a lady right—even without a road map.”
Her beating heart smacked into her tonsils and the deep throbbing in her sex incinerated her whole body as those brutally green eyes locked on her face, hot with temper…and knowledge.
Shite. He has got bionic hearing.
*
Flynn could see the exact second Charlie’s Irish friend figured out that he knew what she’d been saying about him—and his skills in the sack—because her pale, translucent skin lit up brighter than Main Street during the annual Marietta Christmas Stroll.
“You heard,” she murmured, her lilting accent ragged with shock.
“Heard what, Miz Donnelly?” he said, laying on the fake cowboy charm thick enough to grease a hog.
Her blue eyes widened to the size of wagon wheels in her delicate heart-shaped face. The true heady turquoise was stormy with emotions that ran the gamut from horror to mortification.
He felt the punch of lust in his gut and ignored it. Or tried to.
Wasn’t it just his luck that the woman had the face of an angel—a hot, sultry Irish angel—to go with that hot, sultry Irish accent?
Her hair—the wavy mass of it so black it had the glossy sheen of the midnight sky—shifted around her face in a gust of wind. She drew it back behind her ear, but a single tress played over her lips, drawing his gaze to that mouth. Slicked with lip gloss, it looked
wet and way too inviting in the half-light.
The punch of lust hit harder.
Illuminated by the glow of the setting sun, she looked like a goddess, long and slim, regal and refined. Fine-boned is what his foster mom Dolores would have called her.
Although she was too thin and kind of fragile-looking, as if you could break her apart with a careless breath, it was hard not to notice the generous curve of her breasts under her silk blouse. The mouth-watering booty displayed to perfection in skinny jeans and the toned muscles in her legs, the mile-long length of which were accentuated by a pair of cowboy boots she’d probably bought from some fancy store in the East Village—and would fall to pieces if she got within thirty feet of an actual corral—completed the picture.
But looks could be deceiving.
This woman wasn’t fragile. She was a ball-buster. He ought to know, because his ’nads were still recovering.
“You overheard Charlie and me talking about you,” she confirmed, surprising him, her pale skin now bright red. He’d expected her to be coy, or to lie about it, maybe shift the blame to Charlie for what she’d said, but instead she was looking at him with a directness that was both embarrassed and unapologetic at the same time.
“Did I?” he answered, not letting her off the hook.
“It wasn’t personal, Mister O’Connell,” she replied.
“Call me, Flynn,” he said, her exaggerated politeness only making him madder. “Let’s not stand on ceremony, seeing as how you already know all about my pussy-eating skills. Or rather the lack of them.”
He’d expected to shock her again with that little zinger. Enough to have her throw a hissy fit and maybe chuck the plate of food in his face. If Logan got wind of how he’d spoken to her, he’d get fired from The Double T and run out of town on a rail. And a part of him, the part that wasn’t attached to his nuts, knew he would deserve it. He never spoke disrespectfully to women. But the part of him that was attached to his nuts was doing all the talking now. Because it was still smarting from what she’d said an hour ago.
