Connor, who she’d spent all these nights with over the past couple of weeks. There in the front seat of his truck, all her clothes on as if they were both still in high school. Kissing and kissing until they were both giddy and laughing and entirely too heated up for their own good.
“It never really happened that way,” she managed to say. “It was a situation that developed, and then we were together. The point being, I’ve never been on a traditional date. That’s all.”
She risked a look at Connor despite her mortification and felt her embarrassment ease a bit. Philip would have been appalled. Disgusted, even, that anyone would be so ill mannered and unsophisticated as to toss ancient history around so cavalierly. But Connor was from here. He had a big, unruly family of his own. He knew small-town ways better than she did, and he didn’t look put out at all.
Something inside her eased at that. An old knot she hadn’t realized she’d tied so tightly, back when she’d had to navigate Philip’s disdain of this place and these people. And everything else she’d held dear.
This was Connor, who would hurt himself to keep her safe.
He’d proved it.
Where that knot had been, something began to bloom as she looked at him.
“You’re in luck,” Connor told her.
And even though he was grinning, there was all that intent in those dark eyes of his. Her heart flipped around in her chest, and she was too warm and too charmed, and it crossed her mind that she might be in trouble with him, after all.
Dates, she reminded herself frantically. He’s talking about dates.
His grin widened like he could read her mind, and she felt that like his hands, all over her. “I’m going to change that, Missy. One date at a time.”
5
And the crazy thing was that Connor meant it.
Missy had laughed, that day in her mother’s kitchen. She’d thought that was a cute thing for Connor to say—and she’d still been fighting off her embarrassment—but she hadn’t expected much out of it. She didn’t have any expectations where he was concerned.
In point of fact, she’d given up expectations right about the time she’d left Santa Fe.
That afternoon, while the light was still waning as the sun flirted with the mountaintops and Laurel was pretending not to both stare and eavesdrop the way she had back when she’d been in braces, he’d asked her if she would go on a walk with him.
It was like falling back through time. In the beginning of their teenage relationship, he’d been forced to turn up on the porch, contend with her father, and then escort her on a walk there in the clearing where Hank could keep an eye on them.
That was what he did that day too. And when they were done taking a long, slow turn around the clearing, they sat on the porch and pretended they couldn’t feel the cold even as it turned their noses red.
Because Hank had always explicitly vetoed any blankets.
Hands where I can see them, young man, he’d boomed at Connor from his spot at the window.
“This is ridiculous,” she’d said, shivering on the chilly bench. She’d told herself she found it all a lot less fun this time around. A sixteen-year-old was supernaturally impervious to the weather if there was a cute boy around. A thirty-year-old was just cold.
But she didn’t go inside.
“It’s not ridiculous, Missy. It’s a date.”
“It’s not a date,” she’d retorted. “It’s a stunt. These weren’t dates back in high school, either. Dates require forethought. And an activity. This is what Tessa and I were talking about in Cold River Coffee, by the way, when your sister was eavesdropping. Your high school boyfriend showing up at your house and prancing around the yard—”
“I do not prance,” Connor protested.
“—doesn’t count. You were making a good impression on my father so that he wouldn’t object to you driving me home sometimes, which is where all the good stuff actually happened. But that doesn’t make it a date.”
“It felt like a date to me,” Connor said. “Then and now.”
“A date is something that is planned,” Missy told him, shivering. “It is something you plan, to be more specific. Then you ask me if I would like to join you at whatever it is. I either agree or don’t. If I do agree, you have to come pick me up, transport me to said activity, pay for it—”
“I thought a city-girl type like you always insisted on paying your own way.”
“If I asked you on a date, of course I would pay. The asker does the paying, Connor. The asked does not.” She shrugged. “I don’t make the rules.”
“Convenient rules. That’s all I’m saying.”
“After the date, I may or may not kiss you in the front seat of your truck. I may or may not invite you inside. I won’t, because I live with my mother at the moment. But you get my point. That’s a date. It requires more of you than a stroll around a yard.”
“Message received,” Connor had said, and he hadn’t kissed her, there on the front porch the way he had when they’d both been kids and her father had been looking the other way.
But he had called her later that night to formally ask her on a date.
“A real date,” he’d clarified.
“I guess so,” Missy had said, trying to sound something other than silly.
“There’s that enthusiasm,” Connor had replied with a laugh. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at eight.”
And that was how it started.
That first night, Connor picked her up and escorted her to his truck, where he held the door for her while she climbed into the passenger side. Then he drove her down the hill into town and took her to one of the newer restaurants. Where they both laughed over the absurdly hipster menu and were both pleasantly surprised that food like massaged kale with chickpea butter and monk fruit sugar tasted so good.
They lingered over dinner, and when they were done, Connor did not suggest they drop into the Broken Wheel. Instead, he took her home, pulling up in front of her mother’s house with a certain flourish. Then he came around to help her out of the truck in the same chivalrous way.
“I didn’t realize when you suggested a date that it would be a very proper date from the 1950s,” she said darkly as he escorted her up onto the porch.
“Now you do,” he said, though there was that wicked light in his gaze.
And there on the porch, the light felt buttery against the December dark. Connor reached over and ran his thumb over her lips, a corner of his mouth crooking up when she shivered. And not from the cold.
“I object,” Missy whispered.
“Then you should probably go out with me again,” he said. “On another real date. Who knows what might happen?”
Missy had other things to think about, she assured herself. She had a life to rebuild—or start anew, depending on what level of positivity the day required. She had interviews at different hotels in resort towns all over Colorado, and at this time of year, that sometimes meant overnight stays when the weather stopped cooperating.
But every time she came back to Cold River, there was another date with Connor. He took her dancing in a honky-tonk saloon halfway to Aspen. He took her ice-skating on a crisp, clear Saturday afternoon, up on a lake in the hills that was still filled with giggling high school kids. Like they’d been, once upon a time. They drove up into the woods on Kittredge land and chopped down a Christmas tree that he told her he planned to put in his own cabin.
“What exactly are you doing?” Tessa asked one night. For once, she wasn’t working behind the bar at the Broken Wheel. The two of them were enjoying cheeseburgers and fries cooked to perfection on a very relaxed Thursday night, the week before Christmas.
“Eating my cheeseburger,” Missy said, pretending she didn’t understand the question. “I’m enjoying the cheddar, though I will admit, I’m wondering if I should’ve gone a little crazy and gotten the Swiss with the mushrooms.”
Tessa pointed a french fry across the table. “Mushrooms
are the devil.”
“Do I have to know what I’m doing?” Missy asked softly.
Two men walked in, and Missy froze. Because they were both tall, gorgeous, more dark than blond with those same impossibly dark eyes—
But it was Riley and Jensen. Not Connor.
Down, girl, she ordered herself.
“No, you don’t have to know what you’re doing,” Tessa was saying. Unaware that there were Kittredges about, clearly. “I certainly don’t know what I’m doing approximately 80 percent of the time. But the difference is, I don’t do it so … publicly.”
Missy stopped looking at Connor’s brothers and concentrated on her friend. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“All these dates.” Tessa shook her head. “It’s cute, but it looks like courting, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t think so. Mostly because it’s no longer the 1800s. People don’t court, Tessa. You can order sex acts on your phone, for God’s sake.”
“This is Cold River.” Tessa laughed. “Not your fancy sex-act cities. That man has been taking you out almost every night since you came home, and you know how folks are.”
“They can’t possibly think…” Missy shook her head. “They’re still talking about a questionable shirt I wore in church a hundred years ago. Believe me, even if they’re aware that Connor and I have been going out on dates—”
“Believe me.” Tessa’s voice was dry. “Everyone’s aware.”
“—I’m sure they think I’m nothing more than that loose woman he’s wasting his time with, part two.”
Her old friend looked at her for a long moment. Long enough that Missy began to feel uncomfortable. Her cheeseburger sat in her stomach like a lead weight.
“Is that what you think?” Tessa asked softly. “That you’re a waste of time?”
It took her too long to answer. “Of course not.”
“I never liked Philip,” Tessa said matter-of-factly. “I thought he was full of himself, and he acted like coming from a small town was a fate worse than death. But you always wanted a city guy, and I figured maybe that’s what city guys were like.”
“You met him all of two times.”
“And he was obnoxious both times. Which wouldn’t matter if he were good to you. He wasn’t.”
“No,” Missy said on a sigh. “He wasn’t.”
“People cheat,” Tessa said with a shrug. “Life is complicated, and humans do selfish things sometimes. He could have married you and cheated, so I guess doing it before you got married is a kindness, in its way. But what I don’t understand is why you’re taking what happened as any kind of commentary on you. You aren’t the spineless, gutless liar in this scenario. He is.”
“He made a fool out of me,” Missy whispered.
“There’s a fool in this, sure. But it’s not you.”
Missy tried to shake it off. “I don’t want to talk about him. It’s boring.”
“We’re not talking about him,” Tessa said softly. “We’re talking about you.”
“We can stop that too.”
“You broke up with Connor Kittredge our junior year because you were way too in love with him,” Tessa said, clear-eyed and very, very certain. “You knew if you didn’t, you’d be married to that man and knee deep in babies within three years.”
That had seemed like a fate worse than death thirteen years ago. Tonight, it settled in her like spiced wine, rich and warm. Which should have horrified her.
“I broke up with Connor Kittredge because he was flirting with that awful cheerleader whose name I deliberately don’t know—”
“You know her name. And she’s perfectly lovely, by the way. She and her partner have a goat farm.”
“I’m delighted for her, really.”
Tessa leaned forward and put her hand on Missy’s wrist.
“Is it really the worst thing in the world to admit that maybe you had it right the first time?” she asked softly. “Stranger things have happened, you know. I would have told you Connor Kittredge was incapable of taking anyone on a date, ever, and look. You’ve been on a million. Maybe you were meant to come back here all along.”
“No way,” Missy managed to say, trying her best to find her laughter again. And not checking her phone when it buzzed in her back pocket. “Connor and I are having fun, that’s all. It’s nothing serious.”
Because it couldn’t be.
6
Connor couldn’t have said why he’d started this.
He hadn’t liked his family talking about Missy over Sunday dinner. He knew that much. But how that had turned into him deciding to take her on every date he felt she should have had, he didn’t know.
And he really didn’t understand how somewhere in there, he’d gotten a whole lot more serious than he’d meant to do. He was having some trouble dealing with that—but not when he was with Missy. When he was with Missy, he couldn’t think of a single reason he’d ever want to be anywhere else.
When he wasn’t with her, however, he remembered that he’d felt this way a long time ago too. And it had ended, anyway.
Funny how he hadn’t thought much about that part in all the intervening years.
“What’s going on with you and that Minton girl?” Zack asked one morning a few days before Christmas.
It had snowed heavily the past two days, blanketing the valley. And for once, Zack wasn’t off in town doing his sheriff thing. He’d come out the night before as part of a sweep through the far reaches of the Longhorn Valley and had stayed over when the roads got bad. Now he was waiting for what little sunlight they expected today to encourage the ice to relax a bit. Meaning, he was on hand to do some ranch work.
Connor had been happy about that, because it was always nice to have company while driving around the fields and pastures to make sure that the snow hadn’t done any damage. Riley and Jensen preferred to go solo, like their father, but Connor considered himself far more sociable than any of them.
He was less happy now that Zack was taking this as an opportunity to go all big brother on him.
“Not sure I’d call Missy a girl,” he replied eventually, glaring out at the walls of snow all around him. “Since no one’s in high school anymore.”
“Good misdirection,” Zack drawled.
“Is this an interrogation, Sheriff?” Connor asked, doing his level best to keep his wrist draped over the steering wheel carelessly and the same kind of relaxed, easy note in his voice.
“Sure are spending a lot of time with her,” Zack observed in the same drawl. “Out on dates every night of the week, as far as I can tell.”
“Why are you paying attention?” Connor countered. “Don’t you have bad guys to catch and old, rich ranchers to placate?”
“I pay attention to everything that happens in my town,” Zack replied. “Especially when it involves my brothers.”
“That sounds a lot like a more dramatic way of saying that you’re really nosy. Which explains a lot.”
“Connor.”
There it was. No more older brother. Zack had gone 100 percent sheriff of Longhorn County. Because that was Zack. It was all fun and games until he whipped out his badge. When they’d been younger and he wasn’t actually an official of any kind, he’d wielded the power vested in him as oldest to do basically the same thing.
It had been as annoying then as it was now.
“Whatever you’re about to say,” Connor muttered. “Don’t.”
“She seems like a great girl.” Zack sounded something like philosophical. That had to be a trap. “The Mintons are a nice family. I liked Hank Minton a lot.”
“You sound like Lucinda Early.”
Zack ignored that. He shifted in the passenger seat and trained that relentless gaze of his on Connor. “But you have to know by now that she’s not going to stay here. She left the second she could. And she’s only back now because the life she had out there didn’t work out.”
“I’m aware of her biography, Zack.”
; “Then you should also be aware that her kind of biography always means the same thing in small-town terms. She’s not staying.”
Connor kept driving, though he wasn’t sure he was seeing the fields in front of him. Much less the unmapped road he was supposed to be following that was little more than a cleared patch of dirt on a summer day. Today, it was beneath the snowdrifts, and really, he should have been giving it his full attention.
But his chest felt tight. And he felt …
He refused to go there, especially trapped in this vehicle with Zack and the possibility of a ground blizzard every time the wind shifted.
“I’m not sure how you think you know enough about Missy to predict her future,” he managed to say.
“I don’t.” And the worst part was that Zack didn’t sound like this was the usual sort of brotherly heckling they all engaged in. “But I do know small-town statistics. She came home to lick her wounds. Once she’s healed, why would she stay?”
“Funny, what I am sure about is that I didn’t ask you. Even better, what she does or doesn’t do is none of your business.”
“Connor. You know what this town is like. There are some folks who stay and a whole lot of other folks who leave. And most of the folks who leave never come back. Not for good. Welcome to rural America.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Zack laughed. “Like Mom would ever indicate she knew you had a personal life.”
“Why are you?” Connor demanded, slamming a foot on the brakes in the full understanding that the truck would fishtail. And petty enough to enjoy it when Zack had to reach out and brace himself on the dashboard. “I’m trying to imagine any scenario in which you would like it if I rolled up and gave you unsolicited advice about your love life.”
Or anything else.
Zack sighed. And obviously wasn’t replying to Connor’s point, because he couldn’t. There was no way it had escaped him that he was out of line here. But being Sheriff Zack, patron saint of his own martyrdom, he would die before admitting that.
And being the relentless jackhole he’d been since the day of Connor’s birth, he kept going. “You’re knocking yourself out taking this girl on the kind of dates that are guaranteed to make all the ladies in church sigh happily and dream of you dating their daughters. Meanwhile, what do you think she’s doing?”
Secret Nights with a Cowboy Page 31
