One Hot Cowboy

by Anne Marsh

  “Sure.” Rory shrugged, his powerful shoulders flexing beneath a black T-shirt. The day’s heat already had the fabric sticking to his back. The temperature was going to soar today. “Plenty to do back on the home front.”

  Seth was already kick-starting his ATV as if he was getting ready to hit the arena on the rodeo circuit where he dominated, the sound of the motor instead of applause filling the empty air.

  The driller stayed put. Cabe had paid in advance, as he always did, for a thousand feet, so the man wasn’t looking to settle the bill. He was waiting for Cabe’s next move. “You want me to start the first well on the old Jordan place? I can do it tomorrow. Test drills there hit water at nine hundred feet. Four, five days tops, to get her flowing good, unless I break a bit.”

  “Not just yet.” Cabe needed a little more time. “Give the place another go-over. Pick your drill spots, and get your boys lined up and ready to go. We’ll start next week.”

  The summer heat was already baking the ranch. Today’s water measurements were just another wake-up call he couldn’t afford to ignore. He had cattle to run and a job to do.

  Rory looked over at him. “Heard Rose made it back last night.” His brother dropped the name really casually.

  “I know.” Cabe set the date with the drill engineer and let the man get on with his day. No point in burning more money out here. There was only one way to fix the problem. Which meant he’d drive the ten miles into Lonesome, show up for his meeting with Rose Jordan at the lawyer’s, scheduled—again—for that afternoon, and do what he had to do.

  He ran cattle.

  That was who he was, what the ranch had built its reputation on all those years ago. He couldn’t lose that tradition, not on his watch and not when there was a solution at hand. So he’d do what needed doing, even if part of him wasn’t quite on board with the plan.

  “You think she’ll show at the lawyer’s this time?”

  “She’ll show.”

  Rory just nodded, staring after Seth’s dust cloud. Like he wouldn’t mind running up that trail instead of driving the distance. At twenty-seven, Rory had done two tours with Spec Ops before deciding not to re-up and returning to the ranch. Rory hadn‘t talked yet about what he’d seen or done while he’d been gone, but more than once Cabe had made the late night walk down the hallway between their bedrooms to shake his brother awake from the nightmares. Next day, Rory would go on one of his runs, fifteen miles through the arroyos and along the game trails. Just running and running until he came on back and headed out to the range to work.

  As if nothing at all had happened.

  “We’re square,” he’d muttered when Cabe had called him on it once in the year Rory had been home.

  “You ever talk to Rose?” Cabe asked. Seth had to be half way back to the house by now, given the speed at which he was taking that trail, and Rory would talk when he was good and ready.

  “Talking to her was your thing, Cabe.” Rory’s slow drawl carried just fine. “But, yeah, I’ve talked with her since she left. Not as much as I’d have liked, but she needed the space, had some things she wanted to work out.”

  What could Rose Jordan have to work out?

  As far as Cabe could tell, she’d left behind an admittedly bad childhood in L.A. and moved up here to Lonesome, where she was the apple of Auntie Dee’s eye. She’d then proceeded to thumb her nose at every rule and raise merry hell—with his brothers.

  “You ever reach out to her, Cabe?” Rory’s eyes stared straight ahead, examining the ribbon of trail with a rock steady gaze as he swung a leg over the seat of his own ATV. The nightmares that kept him up at night didn’t show in the daylight. That last tour of duty with Spec Ops had left a mark.

  “She wouldn’t have wanted that.” He fought the urge to take the ATV off the trail and into all the wide open space around them and just open her up. Go somewhere or nowhere, but feel the wind pulling at his face.

  “You don’t know that,” Rory pointed out. “You ever ask her what she wanted?”

  “She was your friend, not mine.” Cabe’s fingers tightened on the grips as he mounted up.

  “Only because every time the two of you were sharing space, you were busy listing off all the things she’d done wrong.”

  “Not every time,” he said defensively. “And you can’t tell me that the three of you weren’t up to your eyes in trouble whenever I looked.”

  “It made you look,” Rory said calmly. “You were busy whipping the ranch back into shape and don’t think I didn’t appreciate that. Seth and I, we were never worried about having a roof over our heads, but the ranch kept you damned busy. You were all work, work, work and no play.”

  “Someone had to be responsible,” he growled.

  Rory glanced over at him. “And you’re real good at it. Seth, he gets all over the place on the rodeo circuit. Hell, he’s still raising Cain. He can’t ever sit still for more than a week or two at a time. He knows that, eventually, he’s going to have to change something, but he’s not sure how or why—but he does know that you’ll always be right here, waiting for him when he’s ready.”

  Cabe felt that same surge of love for his brother that he’d felt since his five year-old self had tiptoed into the nursery to sneak a peek at the family’s newest member. He wasn’t sure what his brother was getting at, but he was doing his damnedest to listen. “What does that have to do with Rose?”

  Rory shrugged. “Maybe, nothing. But she had things hard in L.A. and she always worried that she was screwing things up here in Lonesome.”

  “She spent every minute of every day looking for trouble,” Cabe snarled. “That’s not worrying too much, Rory.”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to get the screwing up over and out of the way,” Rory pointed out calmly. “If the worst has already happened, there’s not as much left to worry about.”

  Cabe stared back at Rory. “That’s ridiculous,” he said finally. “Auntie Dee loved Rose. This was—is—her home. She had nothing to worry about.”

  “Try telling her that. You think she knows about the reverse mortgage?” Rory tossed the question out there.

  “You want to play twenty questions now?” An image of Rose’s face last night at the swimming hole was burned into his memory. Excitement and passion had lit her up from within when she’d talked about Auntie Dee’s house and her plans for the place. Just how many times had she gone over those plans in her head? And why? And would a check be enough to buy her a different dream?

  It didn’t matter.

  He needed those water rights. Hell, he already owned them. He just had to claim them.

  “No,” Cabe bit out. He fired up the ATV and got the quad pointed back toward the closest road. Another day he would have ridden out to the drill site, because on horseback it was easier to feel that connection between the ranch and himself. There just wasn’t as much room for thinking when he took the ATV out, which was why he’d done so today. He’d already thought this thing to death.

  “She doesn’t have a clue,” he said grimly, and he started following Seth on back to the ranch house. The raw power of the ATV motor matched his mood, the primal vibration devouring the sound of Rory’s curses.

  “Rose won’t like it,” Rory warned. Dust puffed up in small clouds as he took the lead. “She’s always had a thing for that crazy little house.”

  Yeah. Cabe tugged the Stetson down farther as the ATV crested a lazy roll of field. There was no surprise there. He’d been ranching all his life, had watched good men be forced to give up the land their families had held for generations because they couldn’t make the note and couldn’t force a living out of their place. In her own way, Rose Jordan had looked every bit as passionate as those men.

  But she’d only spent a handful of years living in Lonesome, and she’d run, first chance she’d gotten. Had she even thought about what it would take to keep up a property? This wasn’t a game, and she couldn’t just come on back and play house. He didn’t like what he was
going to do, but not doing it wasn’t an option.

  She might not want anything from him, even though part of him ached to learn every sweet inch of her, but she was going to take that damned check.

  This time, when she took off, she’d have what she needed to start over.

  He’d make damn sure of it.

  The Honda Civic rattled up Lonesome’s main—and only—street, making it clear that the car was only going this far because Rose had insisted. Since Lonesome wasn’t exactly sporting a Motel 6, Rose had spent the night sleeping on the Honda’s backseat, parked in Auntie Dee’s driveway. She’d considered breaking a window and getting into the house, but then she’d just have to fix the window with money she didn’t have.

  She could wait one more night to get into her house.

  Fortunately, parking was never an issue in Lonesome. There were more than enough spots for cars, although horses were a different story. Picking her place, she parked the car and got out. When she’d consulted the trunk of the car earlier, looking for something clean to wear, she’d settled on a purple chiffon sundress that floated above her knees in a tease of airy fabric—make-you-look clothes.

  She wasn’t stupid, and she’d take every advantage she could get in this meeting.

  “I know what I want,” she told herself, loudly slamming the Honda’s door so no one could hear her talking to herself. “Different” didn’t sell well in Lonesome. She’d learned that the hard way, too. “I’m keeping that house.”

  Sure, the cowboys decorating the outside of the bar-and-grill looked plenty sexy, but she knew better. Everyone here knew everyone else, and not just on a first-name basis or a hi-how-are-ya exchange. No, the residents of Lonesome knew who your parents were, where you’d been born. From first word and first tooth right on up to and including first date and firstborn, Lonesome didn’t keep secrets. Didn’t need to. Lonesome’s families were born here, died here, and pretty much did all their living either on the surrounding ranches or on Lonesome’s handful of streets.

  Which didn’t leave a whole lot of room for a girl like her. An outsider.

  The label the town’s gossips had put on her was trouble.

  That label wasn’t wrong.

  She’d come out to Lonesome as part of a program to get kids out of inner-city Los Angeles and away from the tough neighborhoods where they’d grown up. Her foster parents had shoveled her onto the bus that promised to drive her five hundred miles north, away from city conveniences—and city noise, pollution, heat, and general gang-banging violence—to Northern California and ranch country. Matter of fact, she hadn’t wanted to leave Los Angeles. Why would she? But she’d gotten onto the bus because a ten-year-old girl didn’t have too many choices, and she was smart enough to realize, even then, that there were worse destinies than a summer spent in Lonesome.

  Some of the kids riding the bus couldn’t wait for the doors to open up and spit them out into rural nowhere. Those kids talked about horseback riding and swimming and county fairs, but those were just words as far as she was concerned. She knew all about words. Those other kids, the ones who’d been there before and were going back for seconds or thirds, acted like they’d found themselves some new families out there in the sticks. Whatever family she’d been born with hadn’t bothered to stick around for her. She’d wound up in the foster-care system because that was what Los Angeles County did with kids who couldn’t produce a parent. A borrowed roof still beat sleeping in the streets or the back of a car. Lonesome wasn’t going to give her a new family. She knew that.

  But when she’d gotten off that bus, she’d met Auntie Dee. By the end of the summer, she’d known she wasn’t ever getting back onto the bus. She’d stayed. The good residents of Lonesome might not have been sure about her, but Auntie Dee had been. She’d had eight good years with Auntie Dee before she’d finally packed her bags and left. This time, for college and a degree in architecture. She hadn’t been back much—and that was intentional, because she’d been avoiding Cabe Dawson even though he, of course, had no clue how she felt—but she’d convinced Auntie Dee to make the bus ride down to LA, and she’d shown her the city. She should have come back. She shouldn’t have let Cabe’s rejection hurt her so badly.

  Of course, truth was, Cabe probably would have looked her square in the eye, given her a happy meet-and-greet, and offered her a cold longneck. She was a friend of his brothers, and Cabe Dawson valued his family. It was just one of the many fine qualities he had. He thought her attempt to kiss him was just a game, just another attempt to push his buttons hard.

  All of which made her want to plant her brand-new cowboy boot in the middle of his equally fine ass and shove.

  Cabe had welcomed her to Lonesome, invited her to hang out with his brothers. Hell, she’d been one of the boys. Sort of. She’d spent summer after summer following the Dawson brothers around from one piece of mischief to the next, Cabe dogging their heels disapprovingly the whole time. He’d never looked at her and seen a girl. Or a potential girlfriend. And by the time they’d been halfway through high school, she’d wanted him to look at her. She’d made just one move. Once. One attempt to kiss Cabe Dawson and make him see her as someone more than his brothers’ friend.

  He’d been standing by that truck of his that day, looking serious and focused as he examined a fledgling olive tree. She wasn’t sure why he’d added olives to the ranch but Cabe always had a vision and a plan, so there was probably a damned smart reason for that move. The ranch looked good these days and, God knew, the economy had done a number on too many of her former neighbors. Auntie Dee had complained about how tight times were getting more than once.

  Cabe had got that, got the ranch.

  What he hadn’t got was her.

  “Cabe—” She killed the motor on the ATV and coasted to a stop next to him.

  “Not now, Rose,” he grunted.

  “This is important,” she insisted.

  The look on his face said the olive tree was important, too, but he turned that dark gaze on her and the usual butterflies kicked up in her stomach. God, he was something else. All big and remote and so very, very disciplined. She’d never seen him out of control. Not once. He knew exactly what to do and when and how to do it.

  He was perfect.

  Her gaze dropped to the broad shoulders beneath the sweat-dampened T-shirt. That part of him was perfect, too. The delicious curl of heat, low in her belly, had nothing to do with the July heat and everything to do with the man watching her. And he was all man. Those six years between them weren’t too much. Not at all.

  “I want to try something,” she said.

  “Alright.” He stepped back from the tree, leaned against the side of the pickup patiently. Waiting for her.

  This was it, she told herself. This was the new start she’d wanted for them. He was looking at her and she had a chance. Don’t screw up, she told herself fiercely. Get this right. But the words weren’t coming, were drying up in her throat. He was perfect. She sure as hell was not.

  Palms damp, she swung off the ATV. She was going to do this. This was going to work. Screwing up her courage, she threw herself at him. Her breasts hit that hard, firm chest, his arms closing reflexively around her, steadying her. God, he felt good. She wanted to just stay like that, wrapped up in him, but she had to do this before nerves got the best of her.

  “Rose—” He sounded irritated. Impatient.

  Before he could say anything else, she reached up and tugged his head down. He let her. She didn’t know if that was because she’d clearly surprised the hell out of him or because he wanted to be closer. Please let it be the latter.

  Still, she looked up because she needed to see him coming closer. His lashes swept down over those dark eyes of his as he watched her carefully. Screw it. She reached up and got her mouth on his.

  He tasted perfect, felt perfect. His lips were firm and so very male. She parted her lips, coaxing him to open up. To come out and play as her tongue licked the closed se
am of his mouth.

  Perfect, but only for a too brief handful of seconds. His hands carefully moved her backwards and away from him.

  “Christ, Rose.” He sounded tired. “I don’t have time for your games today. Go cause trouble somewhere else.”

  Shame hit her hard. He thought she was playing games.

  “Cabe—” she held out her hand to him.

  “Go home, Rose,” he said, already turning back to the olive trees. “No more games. ”

  So much for her chance. She’d screwed it up. Again. Just like always.

  After that, she’d decided that if she couldn’t have Cabe as a boyfriend, she’d settle for keeping him on his toes. She’d devoted every day to proving all the reasons she wasn’t good enough and pushing all of his buttons.

  She didn’t like the direction her brain was headed now, so she picked out the lawyer’s office. Right where it had always been. With a little sigh, she bent down and grabbed the handle of her suitcase. It was missing a wheel, but, if she got it balanced just right, the bag would roll, and she wouldn’t have to sort out the paperwork the lawyer had e-mailed to her from her clothes.

  If today’s meeting worked out, she’d finally have a place to call home. Even from beyond the grave, Auntie Dee was watching out for her.

  “You need some help, miss?” One of the cowboys loitering in front of the bar strolled over, offering his assistance. And probably something else, too, but she wasn’t going there.

  She didn’t want his help. She didn’t need his help. The bag wobbled and then balanced. See? She could do this. “I got it,” she said cheerfully, because there was no point in burning bridges, and he’d meant well. Those cowboys couldn’t really help themselves, now, could they? Certain things—like well-intentioned, teeth-gritting chivalry—were practically imprinted on their DNA from birth.

  The guy tipped his hat at her. “If you’re sure.”

  “Positive.” She laid in a course for the lawyer’s office. “And I’m only going a hundred feet. I’ve got it.”