The Bachelor Cowboy

by Jessica Clare

  She rolled her eyes, fighting back another laugh. “Thrilling as that sounds, you do know I didn’t buy you because I had a deep and abiding need to ride a horse?”

  “I figured as much.” He lowered his arm carefully, mindful of Oscar, and scratched behind the dog’s ears. “Which is why I thought we could get together today and talk about things.”

  Layla gave him a skeptical look over her glasses. “That’s the third excuse you’ve given me for wanting to get together. First you blamed Oscar, then you said it was because you liked me, and now it’s because you wanted to have a barn date?” She leaned forward over her desk, as if imparting a secret. “Which one is it precisely?”

  Jack put a hand on his chest. “Me, personally, I think every person should get to experience a nice horseback ride once in their life. And you bought a cowboy, so I figured you should get a little cowboy action in there. I’ll even wear spurs if you’re so inclined, and chaps.” He moved his hand to the side of his mouth, whispering, “Ladies love the chaps.”

  She chuckled.

  “But if that’s not your thing, I understand . . . if you’re chicken.” He smirked.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that a dare?”

  “It is absolutely a dare.” He gave her a challenging look.

  Leaning back in her chair, Layla crossed her arms over her chest and studied him. “Well, if we do something that’s your element, don’t you think we should do something that’s mine?”

  “If that’s your way of getting me to agree to two dates, I accept,” he said immediately.

  Layla sputtered. Okay, she laughed, too. She was cornered, wasn’t she? “It’s obvious I’m going to have to think of something sufficiently evil to drag you to for my date.”

  “We could always go somewhere fancy. Dinner and a movie? Dancing?”

  “Dancing? That sounds dreadful.”

  “You pick.” His big hand went to Oscar’s back and he patted the dog.

  Such big, strong hands, tanned by work. His nails were blunt, his fingers thick, and lord if she didn’t find that fascinating. “When did you want to do this?”

  “Which one do you want to do first?”

  “Not the horseback riding, that’s for sure.”

  At the disgust in her voice, he laughed, his shoulders shaking with amusement. “But what if that’s what I’ve got my heart set on?”

  “Paper rock scissors?” she offered.

  “You’re on.” He carefully picked Oscar up and set the dog on the floor, with an apologetic look to her. “Just in case we scare him.”

  “Very thoughtful.” She rested a fist atop her palm and waited. Layla couldn’t believe she was going to do paper rock scissors with a man about a date. It was just bizarre enough that it somehow fit in with the rest of this day.

  He mimicked her movement, and they counted off. One, two, three. She threw paper, he threw scissors.

  Layla groaned, flinging herself backward in her chair. “Noooo,” she cried dramatically. “Best two out of three!”

  “Nope. I won.”

  “Cheater.”

  “You’re just salty because I beat you, and because you’re gonna have to get up close and personal with a horse. Don’t worry, little darlin’,” he drawled in a fake John Wayne accent. “I’ll wear the chaps for you.”

  “This is a disaster,” she grumbled. “I can’t believe I’m going horseback riding in February.”

  “We can have our date when you bring Oscar back to me.”

  “Bring him back?”

  Jack reached over and scooped up Oscar, who, she realized, had his paws up on Jack’s leg and was eagerly waiting to be picked up again. “You’ve noticed he’s a bit clingy?”

  She pinched her fingers indicating “just a little.”

  “I can’t exactly do my job if I’ve got him all day long, and he shivers and cries if I put him down.”

  Oh dear. “But he loves you.”

  “It’s because I’m so lovable,” Jack agreed, holding Oscar up to his cheek. The dog licked it happily, his little tail thumping, and her heart melted a little bit more.

  “But . . . I have a cat.”

  “Oscar promises to play nice.”

  She sighed, knowing she was a big softy and was going to end up taking the sad little wiener dog home with her. Not just because Oscar had sad eyes, but because Jack did, too, and she was an idiot. “For how long?”

  He shrugged, lowering the dog carefully back to his lap. “Today’s Sunday . . . We could trade off on Wednesday?”

  “Wednesday? But—”

  “And we can have our date then.”

  She pulled open her planner, flipping through her calendar. As luck would have it, her Wednesday was open. February was slow for her, the calm before the storm. January was a mess because of W-2s and 1099s, and April was when things picked up again. February and March were nice and simple. She could take Wednesday off. Layla bit her lip. “I guess I’ll pencil you in,” she grumbled.

  He grinned at her. “And then we can switch off again on the weekend. You want your date to be Friday night or Saturday night?”

  “Two dates this week?”

  “I’m worth it.” He winked at her.

  Layla arched an eyebrow. “Should we pull another chair in here for your ego?”

  Jack just laughed. “Your cheeks get pink every time I say something outrageous. It makes me want to say more.” He shrugged, rubbing the dog through his ridiculous little jacket. “And if you don’t want to go out this weekend, I’ll understand.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Damn it, her cheeks really were hot, weren’t they?

  “You want cocktails and a fancy dinner somewhere? It’ll be my treat since I’m making you ride a horse.”

  It was sweet of him to offer, but she did the payroll for a few of the ranches around Painted Barrel and knew most of the cowboys weren’t exactly swimming with money. And besides, she wasn’t the type to fuss about that sort of thing. “Let’s just make it something relaxed and easy. No sense in going to a ton of effort.”

  The smile slid off of Jack’s handsome face. “No? Why not?”

  “Because . . . I don’t know. Because it’s not a real date?”

  “Who says it’s not real?”

  Layla gave him an exasperated look. “We both know I’m not the kind of girl you date.”

  Jack leaned in as if he was about to share a secret. “Maybe that’s why I’m still single.”

  Ooh, he was smooth.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  After they finished their coffees, Jack transferred Oscar to her lap and gave her a backpack of supplies—dog food, chew toys, the works. When he left, she locked the office back up again, Oscar tucked under her arm, and then she went home.

  She didn’t know what to think about her flirty, not-quite date with Jack. He said all the right things, flattered her into making it sound like he was sincere . . . and yet there was just a hint of too much playfulness that made her wonder if it was all a joke. If Jack took anything seriously or if he just coasted through life being cute and charming and getting his way.

  Probably the latter.

  For a dog that liked to be held, Layla had to admit that Oscar was very well behaved . . . other than the hand thing. Sterling’s bluish-silver tail fluffed to three times its usual size the moment he smelled the dog, but Oscar was so meek and shivering that Sterling soon got bored and lost interest, lurking on the back of the couch so he could watch the dachshund. Oscar trembled every time she set him down, so Layla ended up sitting her laptop on her legs, tucked Oscar against her thigh, and put a heating blanket on his other side to give him the idea that he was being held. He slept like a baby, then woke up and trembled and gave her a sad look until she figured out he had to use the bathroom and took him outside. Once he did his business,
she gave him a can of food and some water and let him eat in the kitchen while Sterling prowled around. The moment he was done, Oscar returned to her feet, shaking and waiting.

  It really was sweet and sad at the same time. It was like poor Oscar was terrified of being left alone, and she couldn’t imagine who would abandon a dog like that. Layla worried that Sterling would get jealous, but the cat didn’t seem too bothered.

  When she crawled into bed that night, she brought Oscar with her, tucking him against her chest. Sterling liked to sleep at the foot of the bed, so she hoped the cat wouldn’t feel too neglected. She was just about to drift off to sleep when her phone pinged.

  JACK: How’s our son?

  She smiled into the darkness, picked up her phone, and texted him a picture of Oscar, sound asleep against her sweatshirt, tucked under the covers with her.

  JACK: Damn it, he stole my spot.

  The man was an incorrigible flirt. What on earth was she going to do with him? Why did it make her smile so damn much?

  * * *

  * * *

  Layla thought the next day at the office would really be business as usual. Clearly, she was an optimist.

  She walked in a little after eight with Oscar tucked under her arm, her coffee in hand, and smiled at Phyllis, who ran the front desk for the building.

  “There you are!” Phyllis beamed at her as if she’d solved world hunger, and immediately, Layla’s hackles went up. “The talk of the town.”

  Uh-oh. “Oh? Why’s that?” She kept her voice deliberately light and easy. Oh sure, Phyllis wouldn’t even mention that Layla had walked in with a sausage-like sweater-clad dog under her arm. Which meant that she was about to be bombarded with something far more juicy.

  “Miss Big Winner at the auction.” Phyllis giggled girlishly. It was a bit of an alarming sound coming from a woman older than her mother. “You bought yourself a fine-looking man.”

  “Um, it was for charity.”

  “Well, I hope with all the money you paid, he treats you right.” Phyllis gave her an exaggerated wink.

  Layla smiled awkwardly and headed back to her office. Okay, that was weird and somewhat unnerving. Phyllis made it sound creepy, like Layla was some sort of basement-dwelling monster that had somehow emerged into the light to buy a man for sexually deviant purposes. She knew it was a small town. Knew that people were going to gossip. That was what they did. But she hadn’t really thought too much about it when she’d bid so much. In that way, she was just like her mother—plowing ahead without thinking.

  Ugh.

  She settled Oscar into her office, put down a bowl and some food, and let him walk around on the floor for a bit. He gave her hopeful looks as if wanting to be picked up again, but she wouldn’t be able to get a thing done if she held him and tried to type. Eventually she relented at his sad expression and sat down on the floor with her laptop. He immediately put his head on her leg and curled up against her, and she petted him between answering emails, mindful of her hands.

  And because she was that person, she checked her phone constantly. Just in case Jack texted her. So far there was nothing, and she had to admit it was playing with her nerves a little. Not that he had to text her constantly, but it would have been . . . reassuring. Now that she’d taken the dog from him, there was always the slight worry that he’d ghost her.

  A knock at the door made Oscar jump.

  “Come in,” Layla called.

  A big man stuck his head inside her office. It was Carl, who did insurance down the hall. He was twice her age, balding, divorced, and sometimes a little too friendly for her tastes. Now was one of those “too friendly” times. “Heard you had a wild weekend.”

  She managed a smile. “Not so wild.”

  “If you’re that hard up for a man, I’m available. Free, too.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Layla managed to smile weakly.

  It went like that for most of the morning. Layla would get some work in, and then someone would inevitably drop by her office to try to gossip about the auction. For an event that hadn’t been all that well attended, everyone in town sure seemed to know about it. They knew she’d bid an extravagant amount on Jack. They knew she’d bid against someone else, who’d stormed out. And everyone seemed to think she’d bid on Jack because she was lonely and desperate.

  After all, she was a single woman, so she clearly had to have a biological clock that was ticking like a time bomb, right? No one seemed to grasp that Layla was perfectly fine being just Layla, not Layla-plus-one. Was dating Jack going to be fun? She hoped so. But it didn’t change who she was . . . and it made some of the shocked and titillated reactions of her co-workers in the office kind of irritating.

  Her inbox flooded with emails, too. All the clients she normally had to chase down for receipts and documentation? They all seemed to be emailing today, attaching the needed files and asking casual questions about how her weekend was and how did the auction go, and she ignored them all. She gave up on getting any work done, pulled up a crochet pattern online for a dog sweater, and managed to make a blue Superman sweater with a red cape attached to it for Oscar, who endured having it tugged over his head with the patience of a saint.

  “You’re a good boy,” she cooed at him, and was rewarded with a whippy little wag of his tail.

  At lunchtime, she took Oscar out for a walk and handed off her mom’s paperwork package to Phyllis. “Can you overnight that out, please?”

  “You leaving for lunch?” Phyllis asked, fascinated. She leaned forward on her desk. “If Jack calls, what should I tell him?”

  Like Jack would call her office. Phyllis was bored and fishing for details, and she was being totally obvious about it. She wanted to make a joke. Yes, please tell Jack I’ve gone and bought a ton of latex for tonight. Or Tell Jack that his gimp costume is ready and I’ll only respond to the name Dr. Mistress. But it would fly right over Phyllis’s head and only add to the rumors. “Just . . . send him to voicemail,” she choked out, and left.

  She went for a long walk, taking Oscar to the playground at a nearby church.

  Why did everyone have to stick their noses in and ask about her and Jack? They weren’t anything yet. They hadn’t even gone on a date. They’d literally talked for five minutes at the auction and had coffee yesterday. A handful of texts. That was it.

  The more people made a big deal out of things, the more skittish it made Layla feel.

  Oscar delicately picked through the icy grass, did his business, and immediately went to her side and put his paw on her leg, asking to be picked up. “You’re such a diva,” she grumbled, even as she scooped him up.

  Her phone pinged with an incoming text.

  Heart pounding, Layla took a deep breath and checked her screen.

  Amy. Oh. Not that she was disappointed to hear from her friend . . . but it wasn’t Jack, was it?

  AMY: You are all that the teachers here are talking about today!!

  AMY: Small-town celebrity status achieved!

  Layla wanted to throw up.

  LAYLA: Don’t remind me. Everyone at the office won’t leave me alone.

  AMY: They’re just bored and love having something to gossip about. It’ll die soon.

  AMY: Don’t take it to heart. People just love a fairy tale!

  LAYLA: It’s not a fairy tale if we haven’t even gone out on a date yet.

  LAYLA: I’m tempted to call the whole thing off. You know I hate this.

  LAYLA: You guys can keep the money but I just want to be left alone.

  Long years of experience had taught Layla that attention inevitably brought with it bad feelings. She didn’t like being scrutinized. She didn’t like everyone nosing into her business. Maybe because it reminded her of her mother far too much, and inevitably she was waiting for someone to trot her flaws out for the entir
e town to see. You know, like her mother did.

  Painted Barrel had felt safe and comfortable because it was quiet. Anonymous. Sure, she was the local quirky accountant, but every town had quirky people. That wasn’t weird.

  Now she was the weird single lady that had bid far too much on the hot guy. Now everyone was talking about her.

  She wished she’d never gone to the stupid auction. She wished she’d told Becca and Amy that she was busy.

  AMY: No! You cannot back out. You and Jack would make such a cute couple, I promise.

  AMY: Just ignore everyone, okay?

  Layla didn’t respond. She rubbed Oscar’s head and thought about going back to work. She could answer some of those emails that had come in over the weekend, but it felt strangely tiring to try to put on a normal face when she was feeling so out of sorts. In the end, she decided to grab her laptop and work from home. She returned to the office, put the out of office sign on her door, and beat a hasty exit.

  Even there, she couldn’t escape all this date stuff, though. She’d no more than walked in the door when her phone pinged again with another incoming text.

  JACK: Amy says you want to cancel?

  JACK: Did I do something to offend you? If so, I apologize.

  JACK: Can I call? Not a fan of texting.

  Layla groaned. She set Oscar on the couch, and the dog sniffed worriedly at Sterling, who was sprawled on his favorite spot on the cushions. The cat growled low in his throat, tail flicking. “Behave, Sterling,” she told the cat, and for a moment, she could relate. Sterling just wanted to be left alone. Layla just wanted to be left alone.

  Oscar wagged his tail uncertainly, looking from her to the cat.

  “We’re pretty growly at first but I promise it’s all bluster,” she soothed the dog. She patted his head one more time, gave Sterling equal love, and then turned to her phone.

  Before she could decide if she wanted to text Jack back, she had an incoming video call.