Her Favorite Maverick

by Christine Rimmer

  She gazed up at him, her mouth so tempting, the moon reflected in her eyes. “No way.”

  “Good, then. I’ll get up before dawn and sneak out. I promise not to wake you.” He wrapped his free arm around her and claimed a quick, hard kiss.

  Laughing softly, she led him up the walk.

  * * *

  Sarah woke at six fifteen the next morning.

  Logan’s side of the bed was empty. She slid her hand over there. The sheet was cool.

  Longing warmed her belly and made her throat tight. Last night had been every bit as beautiful and fulfilling as the night before. He’d made love to her twice and she’d dropped off to sleep with a smile on her face.

  Already, she was getting so attached to him. She should probably claim a little space between them, let a few days go by at least, before seeing him again.

  But then she got up and went into the kitchen and found a drawing of a weathered fence, a barn in the background and a sign hooked to the fence that read, See you tonight. 6 o’clock. I’ll bring takeout.

  And her plans to get some distance? Gone like morning mist at sunrise.

  Grinning to herself, she grabbed her phone and texted him.

  There had better not be candles or fine china involved in your takeout plans this time. She paused without sending and frowned at the text box before adding, You know what? Forget takeout. I’ll fix us something. She hit Send, figuring it would be a while before he had a chance to check his phone.

  Not so.

  He came right back with, I’ll stop at Daisy’s and get dessert.

  That evening, he arrived right on time carrying a bakery box full of red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Then he kept Sophia busy while Sarah got the dinner on. When they sat down to eat, he held Sophia in his lap. With one hand, he helped her keep hold of her bottle. With the other, he ate his chicken and oven-roasted potatoes.

  Once Sophia was in bed, he led Sarah straight to her bedroom. He removed her clothes and his, too, in record time and then did a series of truly wonderful things to her body.

  Later, after she’d turned off the lamp, as she drifted toward sleep, feeling so safe and satisfied and peaceful, her head on his chest and those hard arms around her, he said, “You need to choose your paint colors. I talked to the guy at the paint store in Kalispell. I can order the paint and he’ll send it over with a couple of professional painters. They’ll get the job done the way you want it.”

  She didn’t know whether she felt bulldozed or taken care of. “Logan, I don’t want to spend my money on professional painters.”

  He smoothed a hand down her hair and pressed a kiss on the top of her head. “That’s okay. I’m going to pay for the paint and the guys to do the painting.”

  She wiggled out of his grip, sat up and turned on the lamp. “No, you’re not.”

  “Sarah,” he chided gently. “Yes, it’s true that now I spend my working days moving cattle and repairing farm equipment, but that’s by choice.”

  “Back to the land and all that, huh?”

  “Essentially, yeah. What I’m saying is I’ve got money to burn.”

  “Good for you, Mr. Moneybags. I don’t.”

  “Exactly. So let me do this for you. Don’t make a big issue of it.”

  “But it is an issue, Logan.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  She sat there and glared at him, more annoyed by the second. “How can you possibly be so wonderful and so pigheaded simultaneously?”

  He pretended to give that some thought. “I’m getting the feeling the question is rhetorical.”

  “Let me make this achingly clear—no. You are not paying for the paint or the painters.”

  He studied her, his blue eyes narrowed. “You need it done. I want to do it for you. This shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Listen carefully. Thank you for the offer, but I will do this my way.”

  He didn’t answer immediately, which gave her hope that he had finally let it go. And then he reached out, slid his big, rough hand up under her hair and hooked it around the back of her neck. A gentle tug and she was pressed up against him.

  She glanced up to meet his eyes. And his mouth came down on hers. He kissed her slowly. By the time he lifted his head again she was feeling all fluttery inside.

  “So what’s the compromise?” he asked. “How about a painting party?”

  She reached over and turned off the light. They settled back down, her head on his chest. She traced a heart on his shoulder. “Hmm. A painting party...”

  “You like that?” He sounded way too pleased with himself. “We could at least get a room or two painted, depending on how many people we could get and how long we all worked.”

  “When would this painting party occur?”

  “A week from tomorrow—or sooner, depending on when everyone can come? We could make a list of victims—I mean, volunteers. We’ll paint and then feed everybody. I’m thinking pizza and Wings To Go, soft drinks, beer and wine.”

  “I’ll buy my own paint and supplies.”

  “Hey, you’re the boss.”

  “Yes, I am and you shouldn’t forget it.”

  “I’ll bring the food and drinks,” he said. She would have argued, but he added, “Shh. Let me do that, at least.”

  “All right.” She lifted up and kissed him. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  The next day was Saturday. Well before dawn, she woke to an empty bed. But then a floorboard creaked and she saw him through the shadows. He was pulling on his jeans.

  She sat up, flicked on the lamp and yawned. “Don’t you take Saturday off?”

  One shoulder lifted in a half shrug. “There’s always work that needs doing around the Ambling A.”

  “You can’t possibly be getting enough sleep.”

  He zipped his fly. A little thrill shivered through her when he looked up and met her eyes. Whatever this was between them, however long it lasted, it sure did feel good. “I set my own hours. Today, I’ll only work until around three,” he said, “and then I’ll get a nap. I’m fine, believe me. I’ll be back at six tonight.”

  She just sat there with the covers pulled up over her bare breasts, thinking he was the best-looking guy she’d ever seen. “I’ll do something with the leftover chicken. I mean it, Logan. Don’t bring anything. There are still some cupcakes left for dessert.”

  He’d picked up his shirt, but then he dropped it again and stalked to the bed. Spearing his fingers in her scrambled hair, he hauled her close and kissed her, a deep, slow kiss, morning breath be damned.

  When he let her go, she laughed. She couldn’t help it—really, she laughed a lot when he was around. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Every word.”

  Maybe. But that didn’t mean he would do as she asked. “You are impossible.”

  “And you mean that in the best possible way, am I right?”

  “Yeah, right.” She admired the gorgeous musculature of his back as he returned to the chair and scooped up his shirt again. Then she frowned. “Hold on a minute.”

  He turned as he was slipping his arms in the sleeves and she was presented with that amazing sculpted chest and corrugated belly. “Yeah?”

  “I just remembered. I usually try not to schedule appointments on the weekends, but I have a quarterly report to go over with a shoe store owner in Kalispell. We were supposed to meet yesterday, but he asked if I could move our meeting to today. It could go as late as six or six thirty.”

  “No problem. I’ll wait.”

  “What? Like on the front porch?” That didn’t seem right.

  He dropped to the chair and pulled on a sock. “Sarah, it’s not a big deal.” He put on the other sock and reached for a boot.

  “No. Really. There’s an extra house key in that little
green bowl on the entry table. Take it. Let yourself in if I’m not here when you arrive.”

  “That works.” He pulled on the other boot and stood to button his shirt and tuck it in. Then he came to her again, tipped up her chin and gave her another sweet kiss. “Lie down. Go back to sleep.” He waited for her to stretch out under the covers and then tucked them in around her.

  “Drive carefully,” she whispered.

  “I will.” He turned off the light.

  She listened to his quiet footfalls as he left the room. A minute later, she heard the soft click of the lock as he went out the front door and then, very faintly, his crew cab starting up and driving away.

  For a while, she lay awake, staring into the shadows, thinking how she didn’t want to start depending on him, couldn’t afford to get overly involved with him. She wasn’t ready to go risking her heart again.

  And yet, she’d gone and given him a key to her house.

  Chapter Eight

  Logan worked alone that day setting posts to fence a pasture several miles from the ranch house. It was good, being out on his own. He got a lot done when there was no one else around to distract him with idle talk and suggestions about how this or that task should be done.

  Being on his own also gave him time to think—about Sarah, about this thing they had going on between them.

  When it came to Sarah, he didn’t really know what exactly was happening to him.

  There was just something about her. From the first moment he’d set eyes on her that day at the old train depot, he’d only wanted to get closer to her, get to know her better.

  It wasn’t like him. He adored women, but he’d always been careful not to get attached to any of them, not to let them worm their way into his heart.

  There had been some hard lessons in his childhood and those lessons had stuck.

  Logan was seven years old when his mom abandoned her family to run off with her lover. Max had said really cruel things about her then, called her rotten names. He’d told Logan and his brothers to get used to her being gone because she’d deserted them without a backward glance and she was never coming home. He’d said that a man couldn’t trust any woman, and it was better for all his boys that they were learning that lesson early.

  At the time, Logan refused to believe that he would never see his mom again. How could he believe it? Until she vanished from their lives without a hint of warning, Sheila had been a good mom, gentle and understanding, always there when he or his brothers needed her. For years, into his middle teens, he refused to lose faith in her basic goodness, in the devotion he just knew she felt to him and to his brothers. No matter what his dad said, he was waiting for her to return.

  But she never did. She never so much as reached out. Not a letter or a phone call. Nothing. Radio silence. Year after year after year.

  On his fifteenth birthday, when once again she didn’t call or even send a card, he finally got it. He accepted the hard truth. Max was right. Sheila was gone for good and he needed to stop waiting for her to change her mind and return to her family.

  That day—the day he turned fifteen—he finally accepted the lesson Max had tried so hard to teach him. A guy needed to protect himself, because if you let her, a woman would rip your heart out and leave you with nothing, dead and empty inside.

  By then, it didn’t matter that logically he knew it was beyond wrong to blame all women because his mother had deserted her family. Logic didn’t even figure into it. The lesson of self-protection had hardwired itself into his brain, wrapped itself like barbwire around his heart.

  Of course, he knew that there had to be lots of women in the world who kept their promises and took care of their own above all. He just didn’t see any reason to go looking for one of them. He liked life on his own.

  And in the years that followed, Logan never allowed himself to get too close to anyone. He was more of an overnight meaningful relationship kind of guy, a guy who treated any woman he was with like a queen for as long as it lasted—which was never very long. He always made it clear to any woman who caught his eye that he wasn’t a man she should pin her hopes on.

  But with Sarah...

  It was different with her from the first moment he saw her that day at the train depot. To him, there had seemed to be a glow around her. As though she had a light inside her, a beacon that drew him inexorably closer.

  Part of her attraction at first was her very wariness with him. No need to protect himself when she was doing such a bang-up job of pushing him away.

  She made it so clear that she didn’t want anything from him, wouldn’t accept anything from him and would never let him get too close to her. That deep reserve in her just made him want her more.

  Because honestly, what man wouldn’t want Sarah—with that slow-blooming smile of hers, those golden-brown eyes, that long, thick hair streaked with bronze, her softly rounded curves and her scent of flowers and elusive spice?

  He’d been miserable when she ended it before it ever really got started. And then, when she admitted she wanted to try again, he’d been over the damn moon.

  And now, this morning, she’d given him a key.

  A key, damn it. That should have been enough to have him backing out the door with his hands up, shaking his head, apologizing for giving her the wrong idea. That should have had him drawing the line, saying no, absolutely not. He wasn’t a man who ever took a woman’s key.

  Which reminded him. He’d never had “the talk” with her, never said that he really liked her but she needed to know he wasn’t looking for anything serious.

  He’d never had the talk and he wasn’t going to have the talk. If he did that, he knew exactly what she would say—goodbye. The last thing Sarah needed was reminding that what they had wasn’t permanent. She already knew that.

  Better than he did.

  No, with Sarah, goodbye didn’t work for him. He wasn’t anywhere near ready to walk away from her.

  Did he expect it to last with her?

  He kept telling himself he didn’t.

  But all that day as he set posts for new fences, he couldn’t stop thinking about her, about that smile she had that lit up her whole face, about the way she cared for Sophia, always putting the baby first, taking her everywhere, managing to run a business with Sophia in tow. Maybe that was what made Sophia such a happy, trusting little thing. Maybe even a baby knew when she could count on her mother absolutely.

  And what about the way Sarah didn’t want him to give her things or do things for her?

  Well, that only made him want to do more, to give her more. He was having a great time just coming up with new ways to make her life a little easier, to bring a smile to that pretty face of hers, to make her laugh, make her sigh. He had this weird dedication to Sarah and to Sophia, to their well-being, their happiness.

  Was he in too deep?

  Definitely.

  Would she mess him over?

  God, he hoped not.

  Because somehow, with Sarah, he seemed to have misplaced his hard-earned instinct for self-preservation.

  * * *

  Sarah didn’t get home that night until ten minutes of seven. Logan’s pickup was already there, parked at the curb. She turned into her narrow driveway and got out to open the door of the cottage’s detached garage. But before she could do that, Logan emerged from the house.

  “I’ll get it,” he called and jogged across her small plot of lawn to open the door for her.

  She got back in behind the wheel and parked in the dim little space. Logan went around and got Sophia in her carrier out of the back seat as Sarah grabbed the diaper bag and tote and got out, too. He shut the garage door and they walked across the lawn and up the front steps together.

  At the front door, he reached out and put his hand on her arm. “Before we go in...”

  Warmth filled h
er, just from that simple touch. She slanted him a sideways look as Sophia let out a joyful crow of baby laughter, followed by a gleeful, “Ah, da, na!”

  He glanced down at her and grinned. “I’m happy to see you, too, Soph. It’s been hours.”

  The man was a menace—to her heart and her emotional equilibrium. Really, she needed to talk to him, tell him to be a little less wonderful, please. “Before we go in, what?” she asked. His blue gaze lifted to meet hers. Now he looked...guilty, maybe? Or at least marginally apprehensive. “What did you do, Logan?”

  He made a throat-clearing sound and took his free hand from her arm to rub the back of his neck. “Well, it’s like this...”

  She tried really hard not to grin. Because she shouldn’t be grinning. He’d done something he knew he probably shouldn’t do, something that she would have vetoed if only he’d asked her first.

  How did she know that? She had no idea. Just, sometimes, she could read him simply by looking at his face.

  She forced a stern expression. “I’d better not find my house painted when I go inside.”

  Another happy giggle from Sophia. And from Logan, “Whoa.” Now he looked hurt. “I wouldn’t do that. We already agreed about that.”

  “Okay...” She spoke the word on a rising inflection and waited for him to explain himself.

  “Well, see, it was like this. As I’m on my way back to town this afternoon, I see this kid by the side of the road, a little towheaded kid in busted out jeans and a straw hat. He’s sitting in a folding chair with this big cardboard box beside him and a sign that says, Kittens Free to Good Home.”

  She knew what he’d done then. “Logan, tell me you didn’t.”

  He put up his free hand and patted the air with it. “Look, if you don’t like her, I’ll take her to the ranch, okay?”

  “It’s a female kitten is what you’re saying and it is in my house right now.”

  “See, Wren might want her. Or I’ll keep her for myself if I have to.”

  “All these options you have for where you might have taken her. And yet, you brought her here.”