A Cowboy for Keeps

by Laura Drake

  He proceeds to teach me things about myself. How the scrape of his beard stubble over my nipple can bring my back off the bed. How a hot breath in my ear can make me spasm. How a giving, reverent touch can open parts of me I didn’t know were closed.

  When I’m squirming and begging him with my kisses and my tongue to take me, he spreads my legs wide, so my heels are off the sides of the narrow bed. I hear the crinkle of a condom wrapper, and then he’s there, slipping just the head of his throbbing cock to the edge of me, whispering, “Now?”

  “Oh please, now.”

  He laces our fingers together on either side of my head, then plunges into me.

  I suck in a breath and my fingers clench on his.

  Slow, so slow, he withdraws, until he’s at the edge of me again, then holds. Holds. Holds.

  When he plunges again, I lose all control. My heels are on the bed, and I rise to meet every thrust, kissing him wildly, willing him faster. Faster. Faster.

  A titanic orgasm starts high and rolls over me, spasming my body and exploding my mind. His mouth takes in my scream and he thrusts.

  I feel his release, and my body takes it, milking him for more.

  Then we’re falling, locked together, perfectly in sync, as one.

  There is only the dark and the sound of our quieting breaths. He cradles me as if I’m as fragile as a child’s wish.

  His lips touch mine in a delicate kiss that somehow tastes like promises. “A tragedy brought us together. A baby made sure we stayed that way. So much has happened in the past months, I feel like our new family has been forged from fire.” He kisses my forehead. “I’ve never been happier than I am right now.”

  And with his words I realize that despite the pain of the past months, neither have I.

  * * *

  Reese

  There’s a buzzing, like swarming bees in my brain. Lorelei’s face is illuminated, squinting in the light of her cell phone.

  “What time is it?” I mumble.

  “Four.” She lifts my arm off her chest.

  “What? Why?” I grab her wrist when she sits up. “You don’t get up ’til five.” It’s dark, and the bed is a warm nest, made for snuggling—and more, going by the strength of my woody.

  She sits up and drops her feet to the floor. “That was before I had to get Sawyer ready and drive her across town to Carly’s.”

  I groan. So much for picking up where we left off last night. “You don’t need to, you know.”

  “Yeah, I do. If I don’t open on time, they’ll beat down the door.” She flips on the dime-store lamp on the floor and reaches for the clothes she laid out last night.

  “No, I mean you don’t need to work anymore.” The past days have changed things. What I thought was forever beyond my reach is no longer a mirage—it’s real, solid, so close on the horizon, I can almost touch it. “I still think we should get a nanny for Sawyer, but if you’re opposed to that, why don’t you stay home with her?”

  “What are you talking about?” She hooks her bra, then shrugs into a white blouse.

  I push myself up on one elbow. “Don’t you see? You don’t have to work. You can have the luxury of being a full-time mom.”

  She frowns. “What makes you think I want that?”

  “You told me yourself that Carly can’t watch Sawyer forever, so rather than stick Sawyer in day care, picking up germs and bad habits and who knows what all, she could be hanging with you, at home. You could spend more time with her and be there for all the big moments.” I shrug. “Win-win. What could be better for you both?”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” She stands and pulls her jeans up with jerky movements. “I have to work.”

  “Hon, that’s what I’m saying. You don’t.” I sit up. She’s worked so hard her whole life. I’ve looked forward to easing that burden, to spoil her with the luxury of time.

  “I like to work.” She tucks her shirt into her jeans.

  “Okay, then, you could go to school, get your degree. With that, you could—”

  Her eyes narrow. “I like being manager of the café. I’m good at it.”

  “Of course you are.” I have got to learn the language she speaks, because I mean well, but most times I end up chewing my boot. “But now you can be anything you want. You’re smart enough. You want to be a doctor? An attorney? We’ll make it happen.”

  Her brows come down. “I see. What you’re saying is that a manager of a café isn’t good enough for you.”

  No way I’m getting back to sleep after this. I stand and reach for my pants. “Dammit, that’s not what I’m saying.” She’s really pissed. “You twist my words and make me sound like some elitist ass. I’m not.”

  “Well, let’s recap…” She steps into her shoes. “In the past five minutes you’ve told me”—she ticks off my transgressions on her fingers—“I should stay home with Sawyer, eating bonbons and teaching her skills she’s never going to get stuffed away in a germ-filled tenement, and barring that, I should become a brain surgeon.” She plants her hands on her hips and glares.

  “I did not, and you know it.” Now she’s trying to piss me off. If she wants a fight…“I thought you’d appreciate being able to relax and not holding the weight of the world on your shoulders for a change. What’s so bad about that?”

  “It’s not. But as usual, you dictate what I should want. Who made you the purveyor of what is good for my life?”

  “Okay. You like being a café manager. Great. If that makes you happy, I’m happy. But what about Sawyer? Look, Unforgiven is a great town, but let’s just say there’s a reason I chose your school system to donate to, okay?”

  “Oh, really? My career isn’t good enough, and now my hometown isn’t? I’m relegating Sawyer to growing up poor white trash because she goes to day care? For your information, I grew up in this school system, and I did just fine.” Her voice spirals. “Wait, let me guess. She’s be so much better off if she had a fancy nanny teaching her proper manners, followed by a snooty private school. Or better yet, a home-school tutor. Yeah, that’s it. She could grow up a cultured elitist snob, hanging out at the country club with all the other trust-fund babies.” She puts a finger to her flushed cheek. “Oh, wait. We don’t have a country club in our backwoods burg. Whatever shall we do?” She raises her finger and her voice. “I know, we’ll move to Texas, where things are so high class and wonderful. Of course that house is as cold and sterile as a hospital operating room, but what the heck? She’d do great there!”

  Sawyer wails in the other room.

  Lorelei’s shoulders slump, and a desperate look of sadness replaces anger. “I always dreamed a man would come along who would see past Patsy’s sparkle, to see me. To want me for exactly who I am. I thought I found him. Apparently not.”

  This morning has gone to shit. And I’m not sure why, or how to fix it. “That’s not fair. I’m trying to make your life easier, and you make it sound like—”

  “Oh, my hero.” She wrings her hands. “It’s a miracle I survived until you came to rescue me from the dumpster.” She stalks out of the room.

  I grab a T-shirt, pull it over my head, and follow, stubbing my toe on the cement floor. “Sonofabitch!” I hop to lean against the bedroom doorjamb, clutching my foot.

  “Tsk, tsk.” Lorelei unsnaps Sawyer’s pants in spite of the fact that the baby is flailing, kicking, and crying. “Is that any way to talk in front of a future debutante?” She looks down. “Sawyer, quit already. We’ve got to get you ready.”

  I hobble to the crib. “You go get ready. I’ll change her.” I grab a diaper and reach for the baby.

  “I’ve got it.” She snatches the diaper from me. “You’ve done quite enough already.” She catches Sawyer’s feet and positions the diaper under her.

  “What the hell, Lorelei?” I’m slow to anger, but damn, this is too much. “Now I can’t change her? Will it always be like this? Me getting the tag ends with her, when you’re done and gone off to your little
day job?”

  Sawyer lets loose, peeing on herself, the diaper, and the bedding. “Really, little girl?” Lorelei looks up at me, eyes glittering with malice. “Oh, it’s my little job now? Amazing what comes out when we get right down to it.”

  “Yeah, it is. I didn’t know how you thought about my home. My upbringing. My family.”

  She pulls out the diaper with one hand, a wipe with the other. “Shit. I do not have time for this.” With efficient movements, she wrangles the baby, cleans her, pulls the tabs, and secures the diaper. “I haven’t mentioned your family. But now that you bring it up, I’ve gotta tell you, you’re sounding a lot like your father. Your way or the highway.” She grabs a top and shorts from the garbage bag of clean baby clothes on the floor.

  “Oh, that’s a low blow. And you have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.” At my shout, Sawyer ramps it up to that high-pitched baby screech that runs fingernails down my chalkboard nerves and vibrates my eardrums.

  “It’s okay, baby girl. He’ll be flying off to Oz soon, where the streets are paved with gold.” She says it in a lilting nursery-rhyme voice and pulls the shirt over Sawyer’s head, then lifts her and bounces her to soothe her. “Oh yeah, you’re not mean. You don’t decorate with dead animals. But you’re like a landslide, overcoming opposition with your money and your charm.”

  “Goddamn it, I don’t have any charm!”

  She clutches Sawyer to her chest. “Finally, something we agree on.”

  The future I could almost touch has vanished overnight. Being a loner is preferable to twisting yourself in knots to be someone you’re not or apologizing for who you are. “You knew I had money from the very first day. I can’t change that. Excuse me for trying to make yours and Sawyer’s lives better.” I stomp to the bedroom. “I’ve got to go.” I throw my clothes in my duffel, grab my stuff from the bathroom, and heave it in. In two minutes, I’m out the door. In fifteen, I’m taxiing down the bumpy dirt runway.

  I’ve got four hours of flying time to figure out how I went from I love you to turning into my father.

  I’m not like Bo.

  Am I?

  Chapter 22

  Reese

  I’m in the barn cleaning stalls, because filthy grunt work is about all I’m good for right now. Two days and still no word. I’ve thought eighteen thousand times about calling her, but since I don’t know how that argument started to begin with, I stand a good chance of making it happen again. And that could cause damage I can’t fix.

  How did she get the idea I wanted to change her? I want her just the way she is. Except, obviously, not mad, and closer. She’s a wonderful mother to Sawyer. How could she imagine that I’d think any different?

  And while I’m shoveling shit, I might as well admit that I’m wounded. If she was looking for a chink in my armor, she found it. I’ve tried to look at my behavior through her eyes, and it hurts to recognize I see Bo in how I reacted.

  I put aside the pitchfork and walk to the house.

  The front door opens with a click that echoes down the hall. I glance to the empty gold stand, remembering that perfect memory of Sawyer’s first steps. Missing her and Lorelei tugs at my heart.

  I glance left, to the formal living room, where my mother’s portrait hangs over the mantel. Her eyes seem to follow me as I walk past the door. I stop and go back.

  The room smells of lemon furniture polish and floor wax. I drop onto the ornate French Provincial couch and study her. The story is that Bo wanted her to pose on the grand staircase in a formal gown for that portrait, but Mom refused. Instead, this is the mother I almost remember: a handsome woman with soft eyes, sitting in front of the fire in a high-collared white blouse and a Pendleton plaid wool skirt, her favorite papillon pup at her feet. She studies me back.

  “What, Mom? What am I missing?”

  No answer. Which is probably a good thing. Neither ghosts nor crazy runs in our family.

  I pick up the cut-crystal egg in the ornate stand on the coffee table and hold it up to the light. It probably cost more than Lorelei makes in a month. I focus past it, to the window’s light and the dust motes dancing in it. They will pile up on the floor and the furniture. Someone will come by and dust them away, and they’ll begin falling again.

  Suddenly the air seems heavy. Dead—as if it’s been trapped in this room for decades. The house is silent, save the ticking of the ornate grandfather clock in the corner. It gets louder, ticking the seconds into minutes. Minutes to days, days to decades…

  I can’t breathe.

  I shoot off the couch and stalk to the dining room. The drapes hold the air in here, too.

  Why didn’t I leave this place long ago? Worse yet, why didn’t it even cross my mind to do so?

  Because I didn’t really understand what home meant until I stepped into Lorelei’s well-lived-in farmhouse. Home may be a place, but it’s only walls and a roof to hold your people.

  I want more. Way more than this.

  I need to understand what it is about me that pisses Lorelei off. My money? Yeah, she’s been uncomfortable with it, but it wasn’t the money she was yelling about the other day. What did she call me? A landslide. I decide what I want and then go get it.

  That’s true. It’s what makes me a good businessman.

  It also makes me like my father.

  Both Carson and I were pushed, bullied, and herded to what Bo wanted. We were St. Jameses, a reflection of—and on—him.

  Carson went along.

  I rebelled.

  But did I really? I didn’t rodeo or drink whiskey or make crude remarks, but funny how the career I chose complemented Bo’s empire nicely. Was my rebellion a capitulation? When you’re indoctrinated from an early age, who’s to say what was your idea and what was just an acceptable alternative?

  But I can’t get distracted by tangents. The past can’t be changed, and this isn’t about me. It’s about Lorelei. She tried to tell me all this from the first day I met her. But I thought I knew what was best. For her, for Sawyer. I muscled in, threw money around, and expected things to go my way. How is that any different from Bo?

  Lorelei

  Two days since Reese stomped out and still no word from him. I’m glad. Okay, not really, but I’m thankful for the time to think. I was angry. I regret saying he was like his father. Insinuating his life is like his house—cold and empty.

  I’m guilty of having lost my temper but not of saying anything that isn’t true. I just wish I’d said it a little gentler. A little less angry.

  In a vacuum, I don’t know if he thinks we’re fighting, or if we’re over. Hell, I’m not even sure which outcome I’m rooting for. On one hand, he is the first man who saw past the waitress, the caregiver, the doer, to me. I finally believed that was who he wanted. But if he wants to change me into whatever his idea of a St. James woman is, we are done.

  “Hey, Lorelei, you gonna bogart that coffeepot, or can we have some?”

  When Moss holds his mug out, I realize I’ve been standing and staring out the front windows far too long. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.” I pour. “You want a refill, Manny?”

  “Sure.”

  I pretend I don’t see the flask of white lightning he tips into it before offering the mug.

  He studies me as I pour. “Where’s that old, polecat, Reese, today?”

  Moss smacks his friend in the arm. “Shut up, ya idjit. I told you they were broken up.”

  “Oh. I forgot.”

  I roll my eyes to the stamped tin ceiling. I love many things about this town, but personal business traveling at the speed of light isn’t among them.

  Manny’s eyes are full of bloodshot sincerity. “He prob’ly did something stupid, but he means well. I’m sure of it.”

  I wish it were that simple. “Good, then you can go out with him.”

  “I’m just saying, you should give a guy a chance, you know—”

  “I now know why they named this town Unforgiven.”

  Moss per
ks up at his favorite subject. “You do?”

  “Men. You figure it out.” I slam the coffeepot on the warmer and steam for my office, where I won’t get any more work done than I have the past two days.

  Should Sawyer and I move out of the cabin? They’ve started demolition on the second story of my house, so we’d be living downstairs amid dust and chaos, but we’re gone before dawn and home after dusk, so we wouldn’t be in the workers’ way. Not a great one, maybe, but it’s an option. Plan B.

  My bruised heart keeps thumping, the pain a constant reminder that I’m living in limbo. I don’t want a plan B. I miss Reese. Sawyer keeps asking for her Baba.

  I miss us.

  Maybe I should be the one to call. What would I say? Nothing has changed.

  But…

  An hour of vacillating later, I am interrupted by Sassy sticking her head in my office. “There’s a guy out here asking for you.”

  My heart taps a hopeful dance, and the corners of my mouth lift. “Reese?”

  “Nah. Some guy I’ve never seen before.”

  I sigh and push to my feet. Probably a vendor’s rep, trying to poach my business. I push through the swinging door to the dining room. The stranger sticks out of the crowd. He’s young, with slicked-back hair and expensive shoes. And he’s the only one in a suit.

  “Lorelei West?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you live at 305 Solomon Lane in Unforgiven, New Mexico?”

  Alarm jangles down my nerves. “That’s none of your business. Who are you?”

  “Process server for Travis & Partners.” He hands me a folded piece of paper.

  Heart banging, I open what looks like a legal document and scan it as he turns away. Summons…Form numbers, legalese, blah, blah CUSTODY: Sawyer West.

  Knees shaking, I stumble back, steady myself on the counter, and skip to the signature at the bottom. Reese St. James.

  “Lorelei? What is it?” Moss catches my arm. Then he looks down at the paper. “Why that chickenshit piece of Texas trash.”