Wrangled by the Watchful Cowboy

by Tamie Dearen

  “Has the doctor cleared you for any sports activities? I don’t think he’d want you canoeing this soon after your injuries.”

  “Now, Sharon,” said Bucky, as he entered the kitchen, newspaper tucked under his arm. “I doubt Cord wants a lecture right now.”

  “But he’d probably love getting one later on,” Jess added, as she carried a plate of hash brown potatoes to the table, humor dancing in her smoky gray eyes.

  “Yes, please,” Cord agreed. “I haven’t had a good lecture since Friday night, when Jess warned me about flossing my teeth.”

  “Okay, I’ll lay off.” Sharon chuckled, good-naturedly. “That’s my chair next to Bucky, Jess. Go sit next to Cord.”

  With wooden legs, Jess walked around to his side, her face like someone sentenced to death.

  As she sank into the chair beside him, he leaned close to murmur, “Are you afraid to sit by me?”

  “No,” she squeaked, laying her napkin across her lap.

  Seeing his prime opportunity for revenge, he scooted forward in his chair and reached for the plate of tortillas in front of him. At the same time, he let his left leg move until it pressed against her bare thigh. She jumped, and scooched her chair away from him.

  After building his breakfast taco and taking a few bites, he repeated the shifting move, this time as he reached for a napkin.

  Like he’d touched her with a hot coal, Jess sprang from her chair. “Would anyone else like some orange juice?”

  “No thanks,” Sharon and Bucky replied, the latter from behind his newspaper.

  “I’d love some juice,” Cord said, plastering a benevolent smile on his face.

  When she returned with two glasses of orange juice, Jess managed to move her chair a bit farther away before sitting down, just out of reach of his extended knee.

  Undaunted, Cord gulped his orange juice down and stood up. “Would anyone like a glass of water?”

  Bucky looked up from his paper, his eyebrows darting high. He must not have noticed Cord’s lack of attire when he was sitting. “Uhmm… no thank you.”

  “You certainly are thirsty,” Sharon observed. “Did you put too many jalapenos on there?”

  “That must be it.”

  “Why are you working on the river trips today?” Sharon asked.

  “Let’s just say I wanted to increase our visibility in all the recreation areas.” Cord looked at Jess as he made the double-entendre.

  “Don’t we have enough boats?” Bucky’s voice came from behind his paper.

  “You’ve got plenty of boats. But the water sports are barely mentioned on the website. I want to have an entire feature page to entice new guests.”

  Cord quickly filled his glass with water and returned to the table. His eyes locked with Jessica’s, her nostrils flaring a warning, and he hesitated. But he caught the ghost of a smile and knew she was enjoying the game. He moved his chair closer to hers as he sat down, pushing his knee to the side, expecting to make contact with her smooth skin. Instead, he felt cloth. What was it?

  With his eyes glued to her impassive face, he used his elbow to edge his spoon off the table. It clanged as it bounced on the tile.

  “Oops! Dropped my spoon.” He bent down to retrieve it, looking under the table, where he spied Jessica’s thigh, neatly wrapped in her napkin. Chuckling, he came up with his spoon and set it on the table with a flourish. “Well done,” he murmured.

  Her lips spread in a smug smile.

  The game’s not over yet…

  “Thanks for breakfast, Sharon. I really need to be going.” He downed the last of his taco.

  “Wrap one up to go?” Sharon asked.

  “Thanks. I’ll take you up on that.”

  He stood and leaned across Jess as he reached for the bacon on her left, though it took a bit of contortion to do it, deliberately rubbing his bare back against her face.

  “Excuse me,” he said, as he sat back down.

  Her face glowed liked she’d been baked in the sun, but she was fighting back a smile. “You could’ve asked for the bacon, instead of reaching. Were you raised in a barn?”

  “Yes, but I learned a lot from the goats.” He added potatoes, eggs, black beans, salsa, and sour cream before rolling up his to-go taco.

  “Like how to annoy people?” she asked.

  “No. I was born with that talent.”

  Sharon dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “Are y’all already having a lover’s spat?”

  “We can’t have a lover’s spat, Nanna. We aren’t even dating. Remember?”

  “Too bad,” she said. “Because it’s so fun when you kiss and make up.”

  “Nanna!”

  “Thanks for the great advice, Sharon.” Cord winked at her as he stood up, ready to deliver his final blow. “By the way… I scheduled a photographer to come today. He’ll be here any time now to take new pictures for the website.”

  “Down at the river, right?” Jessica’s face looked like all the blood had drained from it. “He’s taking pictures for the new water sports page?”

  “No, he’ll be taking pictures of all the activities.” Cord strode to the door and snatched his life vest before turning to watch Jessica’s expression. “We are a dude ranch. I told him to take lots of pictures of the trail rides today.”

  “That sounds very nice, Cord,” said Sharon.

  Bucky mumbled something unintelligible, the newspaper still covering his face.

  Jessica’s glare made Cord glad she didn’t have laser power, or he would have been shredded into unidentifiable pieces.

  9

  “And you won’t believe what he did.” Jessica clamped her phone between her head and her shoulder as she sorted through her neglected pile of clean clothes. “He got a photographer to take pictures for the website that day. Lots of pictures. There must be a thousand with me on a horse with that stupid outfit on. I was mortified.”

  “You knew the photographer was coming. Why didn’t you just change into jeans?” At long last, Laurel had traveled to a place with cell service, and Jess was giving her bestie an earful.

  “And let Cord win the bet? No way.”

  “After that stunt, I assume you broke up with him?”

  “I can’t break up with him,” Jess explained. “How can we break up when we aren’t dating?”

  “You could stop having ice cream together every day.” Laurel’s voice was thick with sarcasm.

  “But you know how much I like ice cream.” Jess turned on the phone’s speaker setting so she could put her socks in her dresser drawer.

  “Buy your own ice cream. You don’t need this Cord guy if the other cowboy isn’t bothering you. Skip breakfast and grab a protein bar like you do when we’re in Dallas. Don’t spend any more time with this dude if he’s so awful.”

  “He’s not really awful.” Jess backpedaled, feeing bad that she’d given such a one-sided view of Cord. “He’s actually super nice. He’s staying here all summer to help my grandparents redo their website and accounting system, and taking a huge cut in pay to do it. Plus, you should see how sweet he is with Nanna and Bucky. And he took me to eat prime rib. And he took me dancing so we could practice before the big Sage Valley Ranch dance. He said he doesn’t like dancing, but he’s really smooth. And I have to admit, those muscles felt pretty good when we were slow dancing.”

  “Oh. My. Gosh.” Laurel left a space between every word.

  “What?”

  “You’re falling for him.”

  “No, I’m not.” Jess froze, a pair of half-folded jeans in her hands.

  “You’re not fooling me one bit. I know you’re into him. Why didn’t you tell me instead of blasting him to bits?”

  “I haven’t fallen for him.” Jessica’s heart did a somersault and landed in her stomach. “We’re not even dating. Bucky made us sign that employee dating form, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Of course you’re dating. You’re with him all the time.”

  “Because
we both work here. That’s the only reason.” Jess picked up the phone and began to pace in front of her window.

  “Yeah, right.” Laurel’s tone gave the opposite meaning to her words. “Have you kissed him?”

  “Only that one time when we were putting on a show for Mason. Since then, we’ve only held hands. I told him I absolutely won’t date anyone until I graduate.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true.” Jess tried to think of something… anything that would prove it. “Just last night, he told me he was fine with us being friends.”

  “Really? What were his exact words?”

  “Something like, ‘I want you to know, when you go back to UNT, I’ll wait for you. I’ll try not to push you to be more than friends. And when you graduate, if you still want me, I’ll be there.’”

  Silence. Jess checked her cell phone screen, but the call was still connected.

  “Laurel? Did I lose you?”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “What?”

  “He’s in love with you.”

  “He barely knows me.”

  “Fine. Maybe he’s not in love yet, but he’s headed that way. Guys don’t make promises about the future. That’s commitment, and guys run from commitment. He wouldn’t talk like that if he wasn’t really into you.”

  “Look, I’m not going to make the same mistake I made with Parker and date a guy just because he’s hot.” The room suddenly felt confining, so Jess walked out onto the screened porch. “Believe me, that would be easy to do. I mean, Parker was hot, but Cord makes Parker seem like Antarctica. You should see him without a shirt on. We’re talking melt-your-contacts hot. And his eyes. They’re so blue you could swim in them. Every female guest we’ve had ends up flirting with him.”

  “And you want to scratch their eyes out?”

  “Maybe,” she admitted. “But I don’t have to. Cord acts very professional with the guests. He said he wants me to know he’s not playing games.”

  “Good gravy, Jess!”

  “What?”

  “Tell him you love him. Or at least tell him you like him a lot.”

  “But I don’t. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain. We’re just—”

  “If you say the word friends again, I’m going to hang up right now.”

  “But—”

  “Uh-uh. Don’t want to hear it.”

  “Okay, I won’t say it. But don’t you see? When I got engaged to Parker—”

  “Why do you keep going back to Parker?”

  “I’m not going back. I’m learning from my past.”

  “Parker ruined an entire year of your life. Don’t let him ruin the rest of it.”

  “It wasn’t really Parker’s fault, you know. I’m the one who put him on a pedestal and pretended he was something he wasn’t.”

  “Jessica, you need to hear this.” Laurel’s heavy sigh sounded in Jessica’s ear. “Parker was controlling and abusive. I never prayed for anything so hard in my life as I did for the two of you to break off that engagement.”

  “Why…” The room spun, and Jessica’s throat swelled until she could barely speak. “Why didn’t you say this before?”

  “I tried. But you wouldn’t listen. You had an excuse for everything he did. All the way up until you found out he wasn’t really a Christian. I swear, you would’ve married him if he hadn’t tried to make you drop your faith.”

  Jess remembered the moment. Parker had expressed that he went to church only because it was necessary to impress certain people.

  “I guess that did open my eyes.” Her voice sounded hollow.

  “Thank God! I mean that, literally.”

  “I remember the first time I refused to do something he asked for. His face turned so purple I thought he was going to explode. But he never hit me, Laurel.” Jess felt a desperate need to defend him.

  “No. His abuse was verbal and emotional.”

  “He never tried to push me into sleeping with him. We were together nine months.”

  “That’s because he was cheating on you the entire time,” Laurel said, in a flat tone. “You ignored all the signs, but everyone knew he was doing it.”

  Her stomach churned, threatening to expel her dinner. She collapsed onto a white wicker chair, gasping for air like she was on top of a high mountain peak.

  “He didn’t yell at me.” Jess knew the argument was weak.

  “He didn’t have to,” Laurel said. “When you first went out together, he was nice. But then he started putting you down and criticizing everything that made you special. He forced you to drop out of every activity you loved and change your friends and try to be something you weren’t, just to please him. And he belittled you for not doing a good enough job of changing. By the time he was finished, you were a shell of the Jessica I knew.”

  Jess was as stunned as if she’d been slapped in the face. It seemed as clear as day now. How could she have missed it at the time? How could she have been so weak?

  “I’m even more screwed up than I realized.” A terrible thought came to mind. When she whispered the words aloud, she felt like her lungs were being crushed. “Cord deserves better than me.”

  “Don’t you dare say that.” Laurel spoke like she was squeezing the last smidgeon from a tube of toothpaste. “If you believe that, Parker wins. Are you going to let that happen?”

  Jess sucked air deep into her lungs and held it, then released it through her mouth in a whoosh. “No.”

  “That’s my Jess!” Laurel let out a whoop that rang in Jessica’s ear. “You’re going to put this behind you and move forward with life. Now, tell me more about Cord.”

  As Jess answered all her roommate’s questions, her mind raced, going over every detail of her relationship with Parker. How had she changed from a strong assertive woman to a weak and vulnerable version of herself?

  She realized the answer. Under Parker’s constant encouragement, she’d opened up and shared her deepest thoughts, believing he cared for her. He knew her secret fears and anxieties. When he began to exploit that knowledge, manipulating her emotions, she’d refused to acknowledge it.

  Meanwhile, Parker hadn’t shared a single vulnerable detail about himself in all that time. What she’d interpreted as his strength of character had simply been a power play.

  Armed with this revelation, she questioned her judgment even more than before. She’d thought Cord and Parker were exact opposites. But just as Parker had never shared any deep, private thoughts… neither had Cord.

  “Bucky, have you got a second?” Cord had been wandering all over the ranch, checking every building, until he finally found Peter Buchanan repairing a hole in the chicken coop.

  “Sure.” He straightened and wiped his shirt sleeve across his brow, leaving a smear of dirt.

  Cord shook his head, folding his page of numbers and stuffing it in his pocket. “Why don’t you let me do that for you?”

  “I’m not too old to do manual labor. Only seventy-four.” His bushy eyebrows bent down, the dark color a stark contrast to his white hair.

  Cord hoped he would be in such good shape at Bucky’s age. “Yes, but you’re paying me to work for you.”

  “I’m paying you to work on the computer stuff and the business accounting. And you’re still in no shape to do strenuous work.”

  Bucky’s gaze traveled down to Cord’s arm, still tucked protectively over his sore ribs. The sling and the bandage were gone, as were most of the lacerations. From the outside, he looked fairly normal. The yellow-green was almost completely faded from the skin around his eye, and he’d abandoned his glasses for his usual contacts.

  “The doc says I can start using my arm a bit.” Cord didn’t mention the fact that he’d been expressly forbidden from riding a bull until the dislocation was completely healed, which would take three to four months.

  “A bit, huh?” Bucky’s eyes narrowed, as if he wasn’t quite buying the story. “What’d you want to talk about, anywa
y?”

  “Only that I’ve hit a wall trying to figure out why you’re losing money. At first, I thought it was McCaffrey dropping the ball, but those numbers don’t add up to a huge change in income or expenses.”

  A chicken wandered past, stopping to pluck a bug out of the dirt.

  “Be honest. Is it a lost cause?” The sudden droop of Bucky’s shoulders made him look ten years older.

  “No, the answer is here. Somewhere. I just need to find it. I want permission to audit all your tax records for the past six years. That way I can compare, and see what changed when your finances started going south.”

  “Knock yourself out,” said Bucky. “I keep all the old records in the attic over the office.”

  “Thanks. Are you sure I can’t help you with that?”

  “Here’s something you can do for me,” said Bucky. “Hold this two-by-four at the top of this post while I secure the other end.

  Glad to feel useful, Cord hefted the board with his left hand and held it in place. Bucky nailed one end with three precise strikes of the hammer, checking the level before driving a nail in the other end.

  “Is the arena ready for the rodeo?” asked Bucky.

  “A few minor problems, but nothing we haven’t been able to handle. I think you’ll be glad you added onto the grandstands. In the end, it didn’t cost us any more than renting extra bleachers, and we’ll be ready to go next year.”

  “Any other last-minute hitches?”

  “Mason thinks the bullfighters we hired are a bit too inexperienced.”

  Bucky dug in his tool belt and extracted a nail. “That tends to be the case with the small rodeos. Everybody has to start somewhere, so we get the new guys.”

  “Right. Mason says not to worry. He has a plan.”

  “Everything will work out…” Bucky paused his sentence to hammer the last nail in place. “Just like the good Lord intended. No need to worry.”

  If I had that kind of faith, my stomach might not feel like I was getting an ulcer.

  10

  “You’ve been quiet tonight,” Cord said, wishing he could see Jessica’s expression. He had to keep his eyes on the winding country road. “Didn’t you have a good time? I thought you liked dancing.”