A Good Old-Fashioned Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  “I hate that guy,” said Pru.

  “So much,” said Kit.

  “If he needed the ER, I’d step over his body on my way to a coffee break,” said Charity.

  “And I appreciate that. This has been... I’m myself again. Candy and small towns and things I was told I shouldn’t want, things I thought I didn’t want. And Brooks was one of those things. And maybe it’s a little bit crazy, and maybe it’s not a great idea, but I threw myself at the mercy of the slips and they seem to be intent on bringing me Brooks. I know there are plenty of fish in the sea, but I seem intent on catching the same one twice...”

  “As long as the fish you’re catching isn’t salmon, who cares?” Charity asked.

  “Oh, come on,” Kit said. “You don’t have to lie about salmon. Salmon-related lies are now specifically against house rules, and are more dishonorable than all other lies.”

  “I’ll draw another slip,” Hope said. “I promise. But I need to go home and put on different underwear.”

  “Fair,” Pru said nodding.

  “And then we will expect details,” Kit said.

  “I can do that.”

  And while the girls headed to June’s Kitchen, Hope went to her car and back to the farmhouse. Tonight felt like an opportunity: to step into the future, she was going to have to come to terms with her past.

  And Sullivan Brooks was definitely the way to do that.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AS THE MINUTES ticked by, and the sun began to sink behind the mountain, Brooks started to think she might not be coming. That she had pulled a patented Hope Marshall move and had somehow found a way to trick him into believing that she wanted him, only to balk when it came down to the ultimate intimacy.

  But then, just as he was about to give up, drink a shot of whiskey and head to bed alone, he saw headlights out in the rosy dusk, heading up toward the house.

  He got up and went out onto the porch.

  Like a damn dog. Standing at attention just because Hope Marshall had come to him. Did things really never change?

  Maybe we are doomed to repeat our same mistakes until we can put them to bed, so to speak, he thought.

  Well, he had every intention of putting this particular mistake to bed once and for all. Tonight.

  But right then he had a flashback of another time.

  The night Hope had come to his house, something he’d never wanted her to do. The night she’d stood in his driveway in front of the shack where he lived and begged him to make promises while she was getting ready to go out to some fancy-ass college in Chicago. While she was standing there in a pair of jeans that were probably worth more than every electronic device in his house combined. While she was just her, all pretty and polished and everything that Hope Marshall had ever been, looking at him like he was the monster for saying they didn’t have a future together when he already knew she was never coming back.

  And here she was again.

  So who’s the fool now?

  He gritted his teeth and walked down the steps.

  He folded his arms over his chest and watched, waiting for her to park. Waiting for her to get out.

  And she did, in that same pair of high heels and that pretty summer dress, her blond hair loose around her shoulders.

  She looked...shy.

  Which was silly. They weren’t seventeen, and there was nothing to be shy about.

  “Hi.”

  He huffed out a breath, then crossed the space between them, pulling her into his arms, his whole body getting rock hard at the feel of her soft curves flush against him.

  And then he kissed her.

  He kissed her with the memory of her standing out there in the rain all those years ago pounding heavily in his brain. He kissed her with every bit of that pent-up desire that had been inside of him all this time.

  Because it was her, wasn’t it? It always had been. He’d admitted it, much to his shame. He’d admitted it to her. That his very favorite hookup was a little bit blurry. So that he could think of her.

  He’d never had a relationship—not since Hope—and he was thirty years old. That was messed up. And he could pretend all he liked, but that was the truth. He was low-class, like his old man, like his mother who’d run off, like everyone in town had ever thought he was. That he’d been born in the mud and he’d damn well stay there.

  But the thing was...

  It was Hope. And it always had been. All this time.

  So he kissed her. Kissed her like she held the answers to the universe somewhere on those pretty lips, and if he searched hard enough, long enough, she might impart them to him.

  And even if she did, he didn’t know what he’d do with them.

  The secrets of the universe would be wasted on him.

  It was warm out, in spite of the fact that the sun had sunk behind the mountains and suddenly, he was gripped by what he really wanted.

  “Come with me.”

  He took her hand and led her down the trail toward the sugar shack where he had parked his truck.

  She stood back, her eyes wide and glowing in the dim light.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I figure we’ve got some unfinished business.”

  She nodded slowly. “Yeah, I figure we do.”

  He walked over to the truck and opened the cab, pulling out a folded blanket. He walked around to the truck bed and laid it down across the hard, ridged surface. All right, maybe it wouldn’t be the most comfortable, but if they’d done this in high school, this is how they would’ve done it.

  Outside. Away from the lives that had made them who they were.

  Away from the houses that marked him as the wrong kind of boy, and her as a sweet little rich girl—him as a boy with no real future and her as a girl with the bright light in front of her. Anything and everything she could want to be.

  Yeah. Their houses had always been a barrier to what they felt. Had always been a bit too stark and clear when it came to revealing just how wrong they were for each other. But out here, under the stars, they were just two people who wanted each other. That was what he’d always liked about the time they’d spent in his pickup truck way back then.

  Because the only thing between them then was desire, and they’d spent a whole lot of evenings running a heated race to nowhere in particular. Just touching and kissing and bringing each other pleasure without ever...

  He’d never been inside her.

  And he wanted that.

  Craved it.

  He was a man who had made an art form out of casual sex—hell, he made a whole rodeo of it—but right here, right now, with Hope, he couldn’t pretend that sex between them could be anything like casual. Not remotely. Because it mattered. Because that final part when they would join their bodies together...it mattered.

  And all the years in between melted away, all the people that had come since the two of them had first kissed in his truck. They didn’t matter. Nothing did.

  Nothing but this.

  They put the tailgate down and he climbed up in the back, taking hold of her hand and lifting her up into the bed with him. He pulled her soft body down over his and kissed her.

  “Outside?” she asked, breathless.

  The sky was becoming that dark inky blue all the way down to the tops of the mountains, erasing the last vestiges of the sun, stars piercing through the coming darkness.

  “It’s how it would’ve gone, right? Back then.”

  She only stared at him.

  He felt suddenly exposed. Hell, he wouldn’t have felt this exposed if he’d been naked. He didn’t give a shit about being naked in front of a woman, but those words had been revealing. This entire thing was revealing, and he didn’t have the mind to care. Or turn away. Or change what was happening. Or take back what he’d said. The only thing that mattere
d was this moment.

  The only thing.

  He shifted, lying on his back, bringing her firmly over the top of him. She kissed him, her blond hair falling down in a silken curtain. He pushed his hands through it. So soft. Just like he remembered. She straightened and took her dress off, removing her bra quickly along with it.

  And there he was, staring at Hope Marshall’s breasts for the first time in twelve years.

  “I used to write damn poetry about those,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You had the prettiest body I’d ever seen.” An uncomfortable laugh felt forced from him. “Hell. You still do. You’re even prettier now.” Later, he was going to have to do this with her in the broad, blinding light of the bedroom where they would have hours and a soft mattress, not just the cover of stars and the bed of the truck. But he needed this right now. They needed this.

  He reached up, cupping her breasts, sliding his thumbs over the tightened buds. She gasped, letting her head fall back, her hips wiggling over where he was hard and aching for her. He kept teasing her, toying with her, until her breath was shaky, fractured and broken.

  “Brooks,” she whispered.

  “Is this where you tell me that you’re a good girl and you can’t go all the way with me yet?” The question was strangled. His throat was tight.

  She looked down at him, and he swore he could see a wicked smile curve her lips.

  “I’m not a girl anymore.”

  His breath escaped in a rush.

  “Thank God for that,” he said. She pushed his shirt up over his head, and then he reversed their positions, growling as he worked her panties down her legs, leaving her in nothing but the high heels. “Those are ridiculous, you know that, right?”

  “I’ll explain,” she said, panting. “But not right now.”

  “Yeah, not right now,” he said. “Because if I do my job right, in a few minutes you’re not going to be able to think.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THIS WAS HAPPENING. She was lying in the back of Brooks’s truck and he was...

  He was going to do exactly what she’d fantasized about for the last twelve years.

  He kissed the divot by her hip bone, and then down her thigh. She began to shake.

  He was the only man that had ever done this to her. And the thought of it kept her up at night. Invaded her dreams. Made her wake up tangled and sweaty in her sheets and caught between wanting to beg James to do it instead, and wanting it to be a fantasy about Brooks and Brooks alone.

  You were never all in with that relationship.

  You wanted to keep Brooks the whole time.

  That stark truth poleaxed her because it was true. She had been angry because there were times when it had seemed like James had had one foot out the door—and of course abandoning her at the wedding proved it.

  But she’d never given her whole self to him.

  She’d kept pieces in reserve—memories and desires and fantasies that had only belonged to Sullivan Brooks.

  And that was why. That was why he’d come to her in her dreams because it was all still there.

  And then she couldn’t think about it at all. Couldn’t second-guess herself or marinate in her emotional realization even if she wanted to, because his mouth was on her, slick and perfect and bringing the kind of white-hot pleasure she’d only ever experienced with him.

  Sure, she’d had orgasms, but that was just release.

  This was something else.

  Something all-consuming, all-encompassing. Blinding. Something that reached down deep and made her feel like she wasn’t herself anymore. And yet somehow more herself all at the same time. Like she was teetering on the brink of something out of control and overwhelmed with need.

  She clung to him as his lips and teeth and tongue played a symphony over her body that left her breathless. He moved his hand down between her legs, sliding one finger inside of her, then another. She gasped, bucking her hips up off the truck bed, whimpering as he pushed her further, higher, faster.

  It was twelve years ago, and it was now. It was everything.

  It was Brooks.

  Brooks.

  And when she shattered, it was complete. Utter and total decimation. A wave of pleasure that held her captive, made her feel like she was in danger of being dashed on the rocks, but it held her fast and brought her back down into his arms, into safety.

  And before she could catch her breath, he was undoing the belt buckle on his jeans, and pushing them down his thighs. She reached toward him, and he made a low growling sound.

  “What?”

  “We’re not playing around.”

  “But you have no idea...” She looked at him, at that most masculine part of him, thicker and stronger than she remembered, and oh so enticing.

  “I think about this. About the way you tasted...”

  “And I am not a man to say no to a blow job, Hope. So you can definitely owe me one. But we’ve done that.”

  “So you get to taste me and I don’t get to taste you?”

  “Damn straight. I want to be inside you.”

  The intensity in his voice, the roughness in his tone, undid her. Because when had James ever been desperate for her? Never. That was the answer. Never. Neither of them had ever once been desperate for each other.

  Her eyes suddenly stung, the emotion overwhelming her. Brooks reached into the pocket of his jeans and produced a condom, protected them both, and then returned to her, kissing her hard and deep. Then she felt him pushing against the entrance to her body.

  And then he thrust home.

  She cried out with a mixture of pleasure and deep emotion she hadn’t expected. He was still for a moment, and she looked up at him, barely able to make out his features in the dark. But she knew it was him.

  Brooks.

  She might as well have been seventeen again for all that she shook. For all that she felt this was new. Like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

  Because it was him.

  It wasn’t sex she’d been afraid of. It was Brooks.

  And she’d been right to be scared.

  Because now she couldn’t imagine leaving him. Not ever again.

  You idiot. You just got out of a nine-year relationship, an almost-marriage.

  And she had fallen right back into Sullivan Brooks’s arms because...

  Because they were the arms she’d been running from all this time.

  Because this was the thing she’d feared more than anything. Wanting something this much and not being able to have it. She’d told herself that she wanted all those things in Chicago. She’d told herself that those friends and that position mattered. But it didn’t. It never had, and deep down she’d never believed it. And that was why it had been easy.

  Easy to cut out sugar and get lilac bridesmaid gowns and conform. Because it hadn’t mattered if she failed.

  But what if she couldn’t be what Brooks needed? Being his girlfriend when she’d been in high school had been the most wonderful, devastating experience of her life. Underneath it all, there had always been a distance to them. And it was that distance that had scared her. The way he’d held her at arm’s length from his life. The way he’d acted like she was always going to run.

  And then you did.

  Yes. She had. But he’d said he didn’t love her and...

  Like you didn’t know he was just afraid?

  She’d been seventeen. She shouldn’t have had to know.

  He shifted his hips, growled, and blinding pleasure shot through her, making it impossible for her to think. And so she let it all go. She released the past, and the future, to luxuriate in the present. In the feel of him, thick and hard inside of her. In the way he was above her, the way he held her, the way he growled as he found his pleasure inside her.

 
In the way her own pleasure shattered over her like glass, or like stars in the night sky, leaving her spent, breathless, certain she couldn’t possibly handle any more, but desperate for it all the same.

  They lay there, in the bed of the truck, her head on his sweat-slicked chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart.

  And she just wanted to cry. What if they’d done this then?

  What if she’d been brave enough?

  “You want to go back to the house?” he asked, his voice filled with grit.

  “I...” Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. Suddenly she needed...

  She needed her friends.

  “I have to go. We have...a curfew. And house rules.”

  “What?”

  “Uh, we’re not supposed to let men...take precedence while we’re here. Rah-rah girl power and stuff.”

  “Umm...” he said, “what the hell?”

  “It’s a pact.” He just stared at her and she wanted to scream. “You’re a boy. You wouldn’t understand.”

  She felt ludicrous and seventeen but that wasn’t stopping her from scrambling out of the truck bed, hunting around for her bra and her dress, both of which she found easily. But her panties were... She had no idea.

  “It’s the shoes. And the perfume. There are penalties when you break house rules. I can’t explain it right now but I need to go. And...thank you.”

  “Are you running away from me?”

  “Maybe.” She made a sound that was a little bit too much like a sob. “Maybe.” And then she turned tail and fled back to her car, underwear be damned.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME she stumbled into the farmhouse, disgraced and miserable, she felt like she’d made a terrible mistake. Except, she wasn’t sure which thing the mistake was: running from him or sleeping with him in the first place.

  Her three friends were sitting in the living room. Charity was angrily stabbing at a ball of yarn, and watching Charity angrily do anything was almost enough to jerk Hope out of her sadness.

  Though it had to be said that sometimes she wondered about Charity. Her friend seemed so placid and organized, but she’d left medicine and hadn’t really explained why. And every so often it was like some rage that lived deep inside her escaped by accident.