Secret Nights with a Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  “If you’re talking about kissing, you made that pretty clear the other night.”

  He wanted to argue about how she’d unfairly maligned his character, but not as much as he wanted to talk about kissing her. “Are we talking about that?” Connor about killed himself to sound lazy. Careless. “I got the impression you were going to pretend that didn’t happen.”

  She smiled and her whole face lit up, and he couldn’t muster up any defense to that. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  And later that night in the front seat of his truck she threw one leg over him, took his face in her hands, and kissed him so hot and so right that he didn’t particularly care if they never discussed it again.

  Just as long as she kept doing it.

  That was how things went for the next week. December got colder. The snow kicked in when it felt like it, blanketing the valley and reminding everyone that they were only ever one bad storm away from nature taking control.

  But Connor didn’t care. Every night the roads weren’t too bad, he made his way into town, with or without his brothers. And every night, whether she’d bothered to acknowledge him or not inside the Broken Wheel, he drove Missy home.

  And indulged himself in nostalgia and a bright, hot new greed there, fully clothed in the front seat of his truck.

  “You’ll never believe who’s back in town,” his sister, Amanda, said one Sunday dinner before Christmas, in the family’s sprawling ranch house.

  Their parents lived there now, and despite the snow today, his grandparents had walked across the pasture from the smaller house they’d built when they were ready to leave the bulk of running the Bar K to Connor’s father. It was a full house today, with everyone crowded around the big, wide ranch house table that had been built to seat whoever might show up.

  “All kinds of people,” Connor said in repressive tones that he knew would be ignored. Because he also knew what was coming. Amanda had been using the story of Missy’s low-cut shirt as a weapon for years, which he supposed meant it really had produced the effect she’d wanted. “After all, Christmas is coming. Folks tend to turn up, filled with nostalgia and desperate to escape their—”

  He remembered himself.

  “To escape what?” Amanda asked innocently.

  Connor reminded himself that his baby sister was as evil as the rest of the Kittredges when she put her mind to it.

  “Memories of high school, monkey,” Connor replied in the same tone, as if he hadn’t been about to say their families.

  “I ran into Marianne Minton the other day,” Connor’s mother said sedately from her end of the table. “She said Missy has come back home from Santa Fe.”

  Riley was there with Rae, both of them acting like they hadn’t spent the better part of a decade at odds now that their marriage was back on. He frowned. “Missy Minton. Isn’t she the one…?”

  Amanda drew a line down the front of her shirt.

  “Amanda moved out, lived above the Coyote, and served drinks there, which is basically the Cold River version of working at Hooters,” he threw out there. “Just to remind everyone.”

  “Definitely classier than Hooters,” Amanda’s husband, Brady, said, shooting his wife a look filled with the kind of heat Connor felt it was his duty, as Amanda’s older brother, to studiously ignore.

  “I didn’t realize you had a basis of comparison,” Amanda replied tartly.

  Brady looked at Riley, his best friend since the dawn of time. “Denver,” they said together.

  “Connor already knows Missy’s back in town,” Jensen chimed in then in his helpful voice. Which was to say, not helpful at all. “We saw her the other night at the Broken Wheel.”

  “She wasn’t wearing a low-cut shirt,” Zack drawled. “Because I know that’s the next question. Obviously, as a duly elected member of law enforcement, it would have fallen on me to intervene if there had been any indecent exposure on the streets of Cold River.”

  Connor schooled himself not to react. It was what they wanted. Or even if they didn’t want it, directly, if he showed any reaction, that would only make things worse.

  But that didn’t mean his jaw hurt any less as he sat there clenching it.

  “I don’t think anyone in this room wants their exploits as a sixteen-year-old held up to any scrutiny,” Connor heard himself say, despite the clenched jaw and the fact he knew better.

  His brothers all stared at him. Brady too.

  Amanda grinned. “Not me. I was an angel.”

  “Accidentally,” Brady contributed from beside her.

  “Anyway,” Amanda said, ignoring her husband, “Missy was in the coffeehouse the other day while I was having a lunch break. She told me she’s moving home with her mother until she figures out what to do next. She was engaged, you know.” Connor didn’t know who Amanda was looking at when she said that, because he was very deliberately studying his plate. “But that ended. She and Tessa Winthrop were talking about how neither one of them has ever been on a real date.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jensen demanded. “You don’t get engaged without dating. And Tessa made it perfectly clear that no one better dream of asking her out unless they want to get shot.” He let out a laugh when every pair of eyes at the table turned to him. “Just reporting the facts. If I wanted to ask Tessa out, I wouldn’t be afraid of a little shotgun blast.”

  “I don’t think we need to sit here gossiping about that Minton girl, or Tessa Winthrop,” Ellie said in her usual sedate way. That every single person at the table knew full well was wrapped around a core of unbendable steel.

  Connor didn’t thank her directly. But later that afternoon, he found himself driving over to Missy Minton’s mother’s house to ask her on a date.

  A real date.

  While the sun was still shining, it wasn’t late at night, and there was no pretending he wasn’t doing exactly what he was doing.

  4

  Missy didn’t know what she’d expected.

  Coming back to Cold River had seemed like such a great idea. Things had changed in town, or so Laurel always tried to convince her. At Thanksgiving, Laurel had waxed rhapsodic about all the new and exciting ways that tiny little Cold River was ushering itself into the present century. As opposed to the way Missy remembered it, which was a town frozen forever somewhere between a John Wayne movie and the gold rush era.

  But there were more stores downtown these days. Little boutiques, which Laurel told her catered more and more to weekend and wedding traffic out of Denver. There were more restaurants, even in the dead of December, which meant the proprietors were actually giving the cold Colorado winters a go instead of shutting down until summer. There were new ideas right here next to Old West traditions, and the result was eclectic. Charming.

  Missy couldn’t help but love it.

  But while the actual town of Cold River was changing, other things remained the same.

  Like Missy’s infamy.

  “I don’t know what you expected,” her mother fussed at her that particular Sunday. Marianne was bustling around the kitchen as she prepared three separate potluck meals for various families in need of a little TLC this week. “I told you at the time that reputations are fragile things.”

  “Yes, Missy,” Laurel said dryly, from where she was slumped at the kitchen table with her phone in her hand. “Your reputation as a sixteen-year-old who wore a scoop neck one day will be the end of you. Might as well pack up your things, go down into town, and beg for work at the old bordello. That’s clearly the only option open to you.”

  Missy bit back a laugh while her mother turned her glare on Laurel.

  “I’m not suggesting anything of the kind. But your sister went out of her way to make scenes before she left town. You shouldn’t be surprised, Missy,” Marianne continued pointedly, “that having stayed away all this time, that’s what folks remember.”

  “I’m not surprised they remember it,” Missy said. She wasn’t. She had indeed gone out of her way
to create a small-town scandal, and she’d known full well that sort of thing haunted a person. Whether it amused her or not depended on the day. “I’m surprised that Lucinda Early felt that it was appropriate to sniff at me about it in the drugstore.”

  Laurel rolled her eyes. “Lucinda Early will lecture anyone at any time, anywhere.”

  “Lucinda Early is an elder in this community and deserves your respect,” Marianne snapped. And then sighed. “She might also be the biggest gossip in the Longhorn Valley, I grant you. That certainly hasn’t changed.”

  “Dad used to call her the town crier,” Missy said, grinning.

  And as with any mention of Hank Minton, they all stopped smiling. Then smiled a bit brighter, because Sundays weren’t the same with him gone. He’d always woken them up early, laughing at any expressions of teenage crankiness as he’d rousted them out of bed. He’d made them help him make pancakes with bacon and syrup, fluffy scrambled eggs, and his grandmother’s biscuits.

  He’d crank up his favorite radio station, and when Marianne would appear, he would dance her around the kitchen, laughing uproariously.

  It still didn’t make sense that he was gone.

  “Want me to turn up the music, Mom?” Laurel asked. Only half kidding, by the look of it. “I can dance too.”

  Marianne returned to the meals she was tucking away into Tupperware. “Thank you, no. My dancing days are over.”

  “Don’t say that, Mom,” Missy said gently. “You have your whole life—”

  “I would’ve thought you’d understand,” Marianne said, shooting Missy a baffled sort of look. “Some of us are built to love only once.”

  The funny part was, Missy didn’t think her mother meant that as a slap. Because despite her starchiness and her horror that her daughters had grown up a little too wild, Marianne loved them both deeply. And Missy thought she honestly believed that even though she might not have fully embraced Philip herself, Missy had loved him the way Marianne had loved Hank.

  Possibly because Missy had ranted at her parents that she did. That was why she’d chosen Philip, she’d shouted at them. That was why she was marrying him. Because history was repeating itself, and that was all there was to it.

  Something Missy had clung to throughout those years when Philip kept coming up with a thousand terrific reasons to postpone their actual wedding. The focus was on the hotel. Building up the hotel. Making sure it ran smoothly. Catering to their steadily growing clientele.

  Leaving Missy to defend the endlessly postponed wedding to her family, which she’d done perhaps a little too hotly.

  “I guess that makes me the heartless one,” Laurel said happily. “I fall in love every Tuesday.”

  “Oh, you do not,” Marianne tutted.

  But Missy’s attention was caught by the sound of a car in the drive outside. She assumed it was one of Laurel’s friends, but when she went to peer out the windows, she saw Connor’s truck.

  And her stomach flipped over, the way it had when she was still sixteen.

  “Who’s that?” Laurel asked.

  “I wasn’t expecting anyone,” Marianne said, going to the window to stand beside Missy. Then she stiffened when Connor rolled out of the truck.

  And probably not because she was struck by the sight of all his offhanded beauty, the way Missy was.

  It was unfair, really. He was dressed in what looked like his Sunday best, which was still cowboy boots and jeans—but nicer jeans. Boots with a little more polish. And a nice plaid shirt, suitable for sitting at his mother’s table. Add one of the ubiquitous barn jackets and a cowboy hat, and he was basically a fantasy made real.

  A fantasy Missy would have told anyone who asked—and probably had told a lot of people who didn’t ask—she’d never had. That was why she’d moved away to a city that trafficked as much in ghosts as it did in dreams of the wild, wild West.

  But as Connor started ambling his way toward the house, her body was telling her that no matter what she might like to think, the fantasy was alive and well and kicking around inside of her. It was sending out flames and heat wherever it touched.

  Wherever he’d touched, she corrected herself.

  And she only noticed that her cheeks were much too hot when she found both her mother and her sister staring at her.

  “Oh, Missy,” Marianne said in that mix of resignation and disappointment that had been music to Missy’s ears when she’d been a teenager. “Not Connor Kittredge.”

  “Why not Connor Kittredge?” Laurel asked. “He’s beautiful. All those Kittredges are beautiful. It’s not really fair.”

  “I would think, after a broken engagement, that you might take this opportunity to stop,” Marianne said quietly to Missy. “Think. Figure out what went wrong.”

  Missy was a grown woman who certainly didn’t need to act like a teenager and shout at her mother. Or so she reminded herself then. Even if that meant actually, literally biting her tongue.

  “I already know what went wrong, Mom,” she said quietly when she was certain she wouldn’t give in to the urge to shout. “Philip was sleeping with someone else. For years. He was planning a future with her while he was pretending to be planning one with me. That’s what went wrong. The only thing I did was believe in him. And in her, for that matter. She worked side by side with me and pretended to be my friend.”

  And then she couldn’t keep quite as close a hold on herself as she should have. “I understand that you think I brought this on myself because I was a spirited teenager. But I assure you, I wasn’t the one doing the cheating. I was the one being cheated on.”

  It was into the silence after her announcement that Connor’s knock came on the door.

  Missy and her mother were too busy staring at each other, too much unsaid—though maybe that was a blessing. Laurel went over to the door, swinging it open and letting the cold air rush in.

  “Oh, hi, Connor,” she said brightly. “Are you lost?”

  Missy jerked her gaze away from her mom and still wasn’t prepared for an eyeful of Connor standing in her kitchen doorway. She watched him take in the room. And the tension.

  Then he grinned. “Nice to see you, Laurel. Mrs. Minton. And no, I’m not lost. I’m here to see Missy.”

  Marianne stacked up her Tupperware with what Missy thought was a little too much unnecessary force.

  “Good afternoon, Connor,” Marianne said primly. “I hope you’re aware that it was your influence in high school that led to my daughter being branded—”

  “There are no brands, Mom,” Missy interjected, her eyes widening in horror as she stared at Connor. Who, for his part, looked wildly entertained. “No branding whatsoever. I don’t even have a tattoo, much less a brand.”

  “Her father thought it was funny, but I never did,” Marianne continued.

  Connor’s grin faded. “I know I told you this at the funeral, Mrs. Minton,” he said. “But I sure am sorry. My dad doesn’t say much at the best of times, but he always told us that Hank Minton was the only lawyer he was inclined to trust.”

  Missy watched Marianne take that in, blinking rapidly because she knew what a compliment it was, given that a great many members of the community were not inclined to trust a lawyer as far as said lawyer could be thrown. But that had been Hank’s charm. He’d been a cowboy first himself, and a lawyer second. All Marianne did was nod and excuse herself, murmuring something about delivering the food.

  “I guess it’s up to me to ask your intentions, Connor,” Laurel said with a drawl, ignoring the glare that Missy sent her. “My sister is not wearing a low-cut shirt today and never can again, thanks to you. Do you intend to further humiliate her—and more importantly, the Minton family name—by forcing her to bare her various body parts around town?”

  “Someday,” Missy promised her, “I will have my revenge.”

  Laurel waved a hand. “Bring it.”

  Connor shut the door he’d held for Marianne, then leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb like he c
ould stand there all day. Like that had been his plan all along. “It was your sister’s choice to wear that shirt. I dared her, sure, but she took the dare. I’m not sure the fallout is on me.”

  “Debatable,” Laurel shot back.

  Missy looked back and forth between them. “Why are we talking about me like I’m not right here?”

  “I know you’re here,” Connor said. His dark eyes, laced through with laughter, met hers and made her … short out. “I heard a rumor that you’ve never been on a date, Missy.”

  Laurel’s mouth fell open. And Missy felt about as embarrassed as she had that fateful day in church long ago, when she’d sauntered into the congregation in the low-cut shirt that would live in infamy, and had decided to brazen it out.

  “What?” She frowned at Connor. “How on earth would you know something like that?”

  “My sister said you were talking about it in Cold River Coffee.” Connor grinned. “You know that’s just as good as taking out a billboard.”

  “How have you never been on a date?” Laurel demanded.

  Missy shot a look at her sister. “Because Cold River has a vibrant dating scene and you’re out every night?”

  Laurel smirked. “Point taken, but you haven’t been living in Cold River for years. You were out there in real places, with real people, and what I assumed were endless single-girl-in-the-city dating adventures.”

  “As a matter of fact, no,” Missy said with as much dignity as she could muster. “Dating wasn’t really a thing in college. People sort of hung out, or didn’t, but there weren’t any … actual dates. After that, I was working so much that it was sort of the same. And then, you know. Philip.”

  Her younger sister was now studying her as if she were a specimen in a lab. “Surely, you had to date him in order to agree to marry him.”

  Missy wanted to talk about anything else. Anything in the world. Politics, religion, team sports. Anything but Philip and dating him when Connor was right here.