by Kadie Scott
“Hmmm.”
“Don’t you always say glitter makes everything better, Ms. Coop?” a small voice piped in.
Beth blinked, then leaned to the side to peer around Autry and find that Dylan was standing in the classroom with them. “Hi, Dylan.”
Dang good thing she hadn’t given in and kissed the man standing in front of her. The kid smiled at her. A real smile and not one of the wary ones he’d been giving her all year. Whoa. A few weeks with Autry, and he was smiling?
Beth beat down the small demon of jealousy that popped up, along with the accompanying guilt, with a stick. After all, she’d been trying for a smile like that all year. But, what was truly important was that it came, not who’d unlocked it.
She smiled back. “What are you two doing here?”
“Autry is taking me fishing!” Dylan exclaimed. “And we want you to come.”
She flicked a glance at Autry.
He must’ve interpreted it correctly, because he held up both hands. “This was Dylan’s idea.”
Ridiculous that she went from suspicion to disappointment in zero seconds flat.
“Not that I don’t want you there. I do.” Autry reached up to run his hand through his hair, only stopped himself and lowered it to his side instead.
Was he as awkward about this as she was? About only being able to picture what they’d been doing last time while standing here? Something about Autry feeling the same had Beth relaxing. Only a tiny bit, but still, it helped that Mr. Suave wasn’t entirely cool right now.
But go with them fishing? That was a bad, bad idea. On so many levels. Not that anything would ever happen with Dylan there. Still, she didn’t need more reasons to have Autry on her mind. “Oh, wow. I would love to, but I’ve got all this grading—”
“Bring it with you,” Autry said.
Beth bit her lip and tossed him a glance.
“Please, Ms. Coop?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah, Ms. Coop.” Autry’s tone, not sweetly hopeful like Dylan’s, more enticing and lower, slid through her. “Play a little hooky.”
Finally, she tilted her chin to give him a speaking look. “I swear, you are so bad for me.”
Autry’s slow grin poked at the nest of butterflies that had taken up permanent residence in her tummy, making them tear around inside her. “Everyone needs fun.”
“Come on, Ms. Coop,” Dylan wheedled.
He really did want her to come. No way could she disappoint him. “Fishing, huh?” She glanced down at the slim, red skirt she’d worn today, paired with a white silky blouse with floaty sleeves that gathered at the wrist. Her nicest blouse. “Mind if we stop by my house so I can change?”
Dylan gave a whoop and pumped his arm. Where had this kid—one who smiled and whooped and got excited—come from?
“I think we can do that,” Autry agreed. “Grab your stuff.”
An eerie sensation of déjà vu lingered as she finished putting her classroom to rights, then packed her papers into her massive purse, and followed Autry and Dylan out to the parking lot. Only this time, he followed her home. Beth left them waiting in the running truck in her driveway while she ran inside and changed into her oldest jeans and a blue long-sleeved T-shirt. She added a thick sweatshirt-style hoodie to the mix, in case the weather turned cooler than she expected.
Stuffing the math tests into a waterproof sack, she ran back outside, trying not to acknowledge she was way too eager for a day of fishing. Her dad loved to fish and had brought all of his daughters with him when he went. Except Beth never liked actually hooking a fish. Juliet was the fisherwoman of the family.
Autry hopped out when she appeared and came around the front of the truck to open her door. “Did you lock your front door?” he asked.
“Oh, bananas,” she muttered. She snatched her keys out of her bag and jogged back to the front door, locking it before returning.
As she climbed up into the cab, Autry chuckled. “Bananas?” he teased.
She plopped into the seat to give him a haughty glare. “It’s as good a word as any. You got a problem with bananas, pal?”
His lips twitched and a light entered his eyes that had her holding her breath. He leaned forward, as though he was going to kiss her. “You’re adorable.”
The air punched from Beth’s lungs as he closed the door on that pronouncement. He walked back around and got in beside her, only his expression gave nothing away. Like he hadn’t rocked her world a tiny bit with that look and those words.
Men did not tell her things like that or call her things like that.
Check that.
Men like Autry Hill did not tell her things like that. They called her funny or a good friend, if they thought of her at all.
“Ms. Coop, guess what?” Dylan asked from the back.
Oh, geez. What was she doing with all these inappropriate thoughts when Dylan was right here? “What?”
“Yesterday I loped on Mischief!” The boy couldn’t keep the pride and excitement form his voice, and Beth’s heart swelled a little to hear it there.
“That is awesome!” she enthused, turning in her seat to share a grin with him. “I still remember the first time I loped on my horse, Tasty. Just wait until you learn how to gallop.”
“Maybe not on Mischief the first time though,” Dylan said, all serious with big brown eyes.
Beth chuckled. “Yeah. A barrel racer might not be the best first-time gallop. I hear he’s pretty fast.”
Dylan nodded. “Ms. Holly says that last year Ms. Rusty and Mischief were the best in the Mountain States circuit.”
Dylan and Autry had done enough together for the boy to meet Holly and Rusty? Part of Beth warmed at the thought, but another part of her worried. Was Autry doing too much? Giving Dylan too much of something that would be torn from him when the community service sentence had run its course? Beth flicked a glance at the man beside her, only he had his focus on the road.
“He must be pretty fast then,” she commented to a waiting Dylan.
“Solario is even faster,” he said, awe lacing his voice.
Beth frowned her confusion.
“Holly’s other horse,” Autry explained.
“Oh. Is he a barrel racer too?” she wondered.
Dylan shook his head. “No. He’s fast enough to win the Kentucky Derby, only Ms. Holly decided she and Mr. Cash didn’t have the time to train him or the money to invest in racing him. She’s been having Mr. Will see if any breeders want to check him out.”
Jeez. Sounded like Dylan had met the entire Hill family.
Beth didn’t know a whole lot about racing, but she suspected if Holly could get breeders, that could be a great source of income. Only she’d bet it would be hard if her horse was untried. “I hope it works out.”
“Wouldn’t it be cool to see a race with a horse that came from her horse?” Dylan asked.
That would be a long, long way out if it happened. Yeah. I should definitely talk to Autry about getting too close to Dylan.
On that resolution, she settled in and listened to Dylan talk nonstop—yet another change in him in only a few weeks—about horses and fishing and camping. Apparently, Autry was taking him one weekend soon.
Before she knew it, they were bumping down a barely used dirt track, oak and cedar trees scraping at the sides and top of Autry’s truck as they went.
“Where is this place?” she asked.
“It’s a spot on the Hughes’s ranch I know about.”
At her beat of silence, he glanced over and rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry. I asked permission to come here. Our families are friends. They were the only other family with twins in the county when we were growing up.”
Ashley and Taylor? Yeah. She remembered them. “I didn’t say anything,” she pointed out.
He chuckled. “You didn’t have to. You had that teacher look going.”
“I don’t have a teacher look.”
“Yeah, you do,” Dylan piped up from the back seat.
Autry bark
ed a laugh.
Huh. “Well… If it keeps you two hooligans in line, I guess that’s not a bad thing.”
“Hooligans?” Autry pretended to be offended. “I’ll have you know we are upstanding members of the community. Right, D?”
Autry called Dylan D and got away with it?
“I don’t know what that means,” came Dylan’s response—honest in a way only kids could be.
Dylan’s total confusion even had Beth chuckling. “It means you’re good guys.”
Finally, Autry pulled the truck off the track between two cedar trees and parked. Beth had to squeeze her way out the door, the gap was so narrow, but she managed it.
By the time she got around to the back, Dylan and Autry had the tailgate down and Autry was grabbing up a tackle box and a cooler. With snacks? Beth perked up at that idea. Probably for fish.
“D, you bring the other stuff,” Autry said. “We’ll get the boat in the water.”
“Right.” Dutifully the kid climbed up into the bed of the truck.
In the meantime, Beth followed Autry, doing her level best to keep her eyes on his broad shoulders and not let her gaze sink lower to appreciate other… assets. He led her around a copse of trees to find a surprisingly large pool of standing water. This pond had to be either spring fed or a small creek refreshed it regularly, because it didn’t have a layer of green gunk on top. Instead, the dark depths were relatively clear, not that she could see the bottom, and the place smelled of wet earth and cedar from the trees all around. Lily pads without flowers floated on the surface along the edge and long grasses stood out of the water.
They were still in winter, but one would never know it today. Crazy Texas weather had brought them blue skies and sunshine, though they still had to wrap up a bit against the chill.
“Wow,” Beth said. “This is lovely.”
“You sound surprised.” Autry went straight to the muddy “beach” where a small, overturned boat waited, and put the things he was carrying down on a bed of newly green grass off to the side.
She followed, putting her bag of papers beside the stuff. “Most of the ponds I come across are stagnant, covered in slime, and smell like rotting fish.”
“I see.” His lips tipped up, but he immediately moved to right the boat. “Who’ve you been fishing with? Not Jason Trask.”
“No. My dad. However, he stopped asking when I was about fourteen and brought a book to read the entire time and didn’t let him keep any of the fish he caught.”
Autry paused with the boat up on its side to stare at her like she’d just grown hooves or something. “Wait. Are you telling me you don’t like fishing?”
Beth glanced over her shoulder to make sure Dylan didn’t hear. “Let’s say I’m not big on fishing,” she murmured.
She came around to the other side of the boat and he lowered it toward her.
“How can you not like fishing?” he asked once they had it flat on the ground right side up.
She shrugged as she grabbed her bag and dropped it in the boat. “I just don’t. I feel bad for the fish.”
Autry followed suit, adding the tackle box and cooler. “But you grew up on a cattle ranch where animals are raised to be slaughtered. Did that bother you, too?”
“No. That was life. Normal,” she admitted. “But something about invading the poor fish’s peaceful haven and yanking them out where they can’t breathe, with a barbed hook in their mouth no less…” She gave a delicate shiver of distaste.
Autry snagged her by the arm, tugging her closer. “Why on earth did you say yes to today, then?” he asked in a low voice.
This close, the familiar scent of him wrapped around her and warmth seeped into her bones from the small contact. What was the question? Oh, yeah. Why, indeed. No way would she admit it had anything to do with spending time with the man holding her hand. “Dylan. He seemed excited to have me here.”
“I see.” Autry frowned like he didn’t like that answer. What was he expecting her to say anyway?
He raised his eyebrows. “Do you eat fish?”
“Yes.” She crossed her arms, an effective way of shaking him off, though her elbow brushed against the solid wall of his chest. “I’ve already heard everything you could say from my dad and my sisters.”
“I see.” Autry checked over his shoulder.
Dylan was still busy getting the poles from the back of the truck, blocked from view by the cedar trees. In a flash, Autry leaned forward and brushed her lips with his. Then stepped away, dealing with loading the boat, a big old grin on his face.
“What was that for?” Beth asked softly while doing her best to corral her stampeding heart and clamoring body.
“I think you know.”
Because she was adorable, like he’d said earlier? Beth scrunched her brow. That couldn’t be—
“Hey.”
She lifted her head to find him watching her, hazel eyes serious in a way she didn’t see often. “Why don’t you believe that I could find you interesting or attractive?”
Beth twitched a shoulder. “Because I’m me and you’re you.”
“What the hell does that mean?” He frowned at her as if trying to puzzle her out.
“It means, I’m just average—average looking schoolteacher in small-town Texas. Every guy I’ve dated has dropped me like a hot potato the second he caught sight of my sisters. Plus, if we’re both being honest, I’m totally not your type at all. Never have been.”
*
Autry stared at the woman who’d managed to twist him up like a tornado had struck. The thing was, she wasn’t wrong. If anyone would’ve asked him a month ago, he wouldn’t have listed Beth in the top fifty women of interest in La Colina County. Because he’d been a blind idiot. Now that he’d got to know her, Beth Cooper got to him in a way none of those other women ever had.
And after that night at her house, she was all he’d thought about this week.
She hadn’t responded to his one text after he’d left her house, and he’d done his damndest to stay away because of the stupid bet. He’d ended up snapping at his mother, pissing off their best hand, and catching plenty of “what’s wrong with him” looks from his family behind his back. The only person he hadn’t managed to be awful to was Dylan.
All because of the woman standing in front of him who seemed to believe she wasn’t good enough.
“Wow.” Autry shook his head.
How did Beth not know that she was totally amazing? Like intimidating kind of amazing? Not only was she as cute as he kept telling her, but she was also unfailingly kind, put others first, an incredible teacher if Dylan was evidence, and a damn good kisser. Damn good at all of it, actually.
“You really need to relook at how you view yourself,” he said.
She shrugged, again. As if she didn’t care, but he got the sneaking suspicion she did. “I’m not digging for compliments, and I’m fine with my self-confidence, thanks. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a realistic picture of who I am. Thousands of women like me can be found across the US of A and beyond.”
Autry opened his mouth to argue with her, only Dylan popped up. “Ready?” he asked.
Damn. He’d table this for now, but no way was he letting Beth keep believing something so patently wrong.
Autry dropped it and focused on the reason they were here. Dylan. The way the kid was grinning from ear to ear—such a difference from their first day hanging out—was the other unexpected thing in his life. The boy had won Autry over in a way he never would’ve guessed possible. Dylan was a great kid—smart, funny. He’d had some hard knocks, that was all.
“Yup. We’re ready. You hop in and I’ll push it a little ways out. Then Beth can get in. You’ll both sit on the middle bench. Got it?”
Dylan nodded.
Once he had the two of them floating with the pointed bow of the boat the only part out of water, he got paused.
“Try to stay still,” he warned. “I’m going to jump for it.”
“No way!” Beth protested. “You’re going to turn us over.”
“Oh, ye of little faith. If I can wrestle a cow to the ground, I think I can get in a dingy without trouble.” On that cocky assurance, Autry gave it a big shove while at the same time leaping the gap of water rapidly widening between the boat and shore. The thing wobbled precariously. He almost had it, but Beth shifted at the last minute, trying to get out of his way as he pitched forward, and it made the boat list to one side.
Autry windmilled his arms before falling forward. Right on top of Beth. He managed to catch himself with one hand on the bench, so he didn’t crush her, but he was still plastered over the woman.
Immediately, several things registered. The addictive almond-blossom scent of her bodywash. The way his eyes were right at chest level. And the way Beth was wriggling beneath him and trying to push him off her, even as she laughed. Big belly laughs. After a beat, Dylan’s own higher-pitched howls of hilarity joined hers.
Fighting back an almighty urge to kiss her laughing lips—because the peck he stole while they were on the shore was as far as he was willing to go when they had Dylan with them—Autry managed to get his other hand on the wooden seat and shove back. More carefully, he sat, then pulled Beth up from her own toppled position.
Still laughing, she shook her head at him. “I thought you were supposed to be the Hill with the smooth moves.”
Autry laughed, too. Either that or point out to her the move managed to get him in full body contact with her. Something his dick had definitely noticed. “We all have bad days.”
He winced and held up his hand pretty damn sure he’d gotten a splinter.
“Let me see.” Beth reached for him.
He pulled back. “I can get it.”
Only his hands were too big and nails cut too short to be able to.
“Come on, you big baby. Let me do it.” Beth held out a hand to him.
With a sigh, he gave his over, then had to clamp down on his physical response as she lightly brushed her fingers over his palm searching for the prickle of the splinter. That innocent contact alone was enough to have him hard and aching.
What is wrong with me? He was a grown man for dang sake. He should be able to control his impulses better than this pathetic effort.