Love With a Perfect Cowboy

by Lori Wilde

  She licked her lips, tasted salt and sand.

  “Here we go,” he said. “A big one.”

  A massive dune loomed ahead of them and he took it at a startling clip. They crested the top and …

  The bottom loomed yards below them.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Melody shrieked at the top of her lungs.

  The ATV jumped and was airborne.

  They hit the soft sand with a thudding impact. Her teeth rattled. Adrenaline flooded her system. It felt like great sex. She understood now why he liked this sport. It was a kick.

  “You okay?” Luke shouted, his face knitted with concern.

  She gave him a thumbs-­up. Grinned.

  He grinned in return.

  After that jump, they were ahead of Calvin now. Zipping at a dead run for the finish line, Calvin in crazed pursuit.

  “Eat my dust, Greenwood,” Luke yelled over his shoulder.

  Melody sank down in the seat, fingers hanging on to the grab bar so tightly that her knuckles had gone numb. “Beat him, beat him,” she urged, surprised and delighted by her bloodthirsty chant.

  A second later, they flew over the finish line, Calvin right behind them. The ten other side by sides arrived shortly thereafter.

  Luke grappled with his seat belt, tumbled out of the ATV, and came around to her as she fumbled to get her seat belt undone. Her hands were shaking, her body tingling from head to toe, and she couldn’t ever remember feeling so alive.

  “We won!” he said, pulling her from the ATV and spinning her around. “We won! You’re my good luck charm.”

  “We did at that.” His enthusiasm infected her, sent a restless fever surging through her belly.

  “If we weren’t out here in view of everyone,” he said, “I’d kiss you.”

  “But we are.”

  “Later then. After the rally is over. Meet me at midnight. Our spot. We need to talk.”

  Chapter 15

  THE lake was basically gone, but the cement picnic tables were still there, circled around the dried-­up basin like mourners around a gravesite. A scythe moon cut a slender chunk from the night sky, a glitter of stars glowing around it.

  Luke paced, stopping repeatedly to check his watch and run his hand thorough his hair. It was five minutes after midnight. Would she come?

  Maybe she’d fallen asleep. She’d put in a full day at Sand Fest. Why had he suggested midnight? What was wrong with him? She had to be exhausted.

  He started toward his pickup when headlights appeared on the horizon. In the desert, you could see for miles, and he watched the car grow closer. Was it she?

  The sound of the Corvette engine reached him and within a matter of minutes, she was pulling up to the picnic table, shaded by a ­couple of desert willow trees. She parked and got out of the convertible, the top was down, and she came toward him with an enigmatic expression on her face, unreadable, as if she was trying to be nonchalant but didn’t really know what to expect.

  Neither did he, for that matter.

  Her tousled hair fell to her shoulders, tangled and wild. It reminded him of how her hair had looked after that handful of early morning horseback rides they’d taken together through the mountains. Her complexion was smooth and cool in the moon glow and she’d changed from the casual shorts and top she wore at the rally to a filmy white sleeveless dress. She looked like some kind of storybook sprite.

  This was how he remembered her. That spirited girl.

  Before the night that changed everything. Before she’d gone to New York, become someone else. She still had the spunk and the grit, but she’d lost that sense of wonder and awe. He supposed he had too.

  He tried to be cool, to let her come to him, but damn, he couldn’t stand waiting. He covered the space between them in long, determined strides, almost running, but she was rushing too. He held out his arms. She flew into them.

  They clasped each other in a simultaneous embrace. It had been only a few hours since he’d seen her. How was it possible to miss someone so much in such a short amount of time?

  He kissed her the way he’d wanted to kiss her in the trailer that afternoon, with hot, unchecked abandon. She responded in kind, her mouth driving him past insanity.

  “I didn’t think you were coming.”

  “Got held up tallying the profits and losses for Sand Fest.”

  “And?”

  She made a face. “We lost money on the event.”

  “But maybe the local businesses saw an uptick in business.”

  She bit her bottom lip. “Maybe, but let’s not talk about that now. Let’s kiss.”

  Who could resist an invitation like that? He claimed her mouth again. She moaned, melted against him.

  “Woman,” he growled, wrenching his mouth from her. “I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re on my mind all the time. Everywhere I go, I smell you. Everything I eat tastes like you. I cannot get enough of you.”

  “Ditto,” she said, and attacked his mouth again.

  Minutes later, they broke apart, laughing and gasping.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what? The kisses?”

  “Well, that too, but I’m thanking you for forcing me to go with you on the ATV ride and rigging the drawing so I’d be on your team. That was a stroke of genius. I had fun. You showed me …” She trailed off.

  “What?” he prodded when she did not go on.

  She slanted her head downward, cut a shy glance upward at him. Melody? Shy? In what universe?

  “That I could do something different and not be in control and still enjoy myself,” she said.

  “I could show you more.” He stretched out his hand. “If you wanted.”

  She chuckled and danced away from him. “Oh, I just bet you could.”

  “You’re going to make me work for this, aren’t you?”

  The shy smile was back. God, it was like they’d stepped into a time machine and jettisoned the last fifteen years.

  She sashayed over to the picnic table, climbed to sit on top of it. “Are you going to tell me why you told me to meet you here?”

  “It’s our place,” he said.

  “Forever tainted.”

  The mood shifted, just like that. But what had he expected? Asking her to come here of all places.

  “Not forever,” he explained. “That’s why we’re here. To make a new memory on top of this picnic table.”

  She shook her head. “We can’t trivialize what happened that night, Luke.”

  Were they finally going to talk about it? Was that really why he’d asked her here? Closure?

  He moved to join her on the table, reached out to take her hand. This time she did not resist him. “I should never have kissed you that night.”

  “But you did.”

  “And it’s made all the difference.”

  “I know. If we’d never kissed your brother wouldn’t have died. You wouldn’t be a rancher, since the Rocking N was Jesse’s legacy as the oldest son. You’d be off riding the rodeo circuit.”

  “I gave up that dream a long time ago. And you know what? I love being a rancher. I just wish Jesse was here to work the ranch with me.”

  “We can’t change the past, Luke. Contrary to Back to the Future movies, there is no DeLorean that can whisk us back to high school so we can fix everything.”

  “I know.” He traced his thumb over her knuckles.

  “So we have to let it go. We’ve moved on.”

  “Yeah.” He moistened his lip. “I know it in my head, but I guess there’s a part of me that still hasn’t accepted it in my heart.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “It was a terrible, terrible thing.”

  “I remember what you were wearing that night,” he said. “Short, tight cutoff blue jeans and a red blouse that you’d taken the hem and knotted under your breasts to make a midriff top out of it and red cowgirl boots. I wanted you so badly I could have chewed those shorts right off your body.”
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  “I was scandalous.” She sighed. “I thought I was Miss Thing.”

  “You certainly got my attention.” He wrapped his arm around her, drew her closer to him.

  She draped her right leg over his left thigh. She was so warm and soft. “I remember what you were wearing too.” She paused. “Wranglers and a black T-­shirt. That ended up torn and covered in blood by the end of the evening.”

  The mood shifted again, running from light to dark to lighter, back to the darkest of all. A full scale of emotions that encapsulated the past. Sadness, curiosity, anger, wonder, regret, delight, guilt, revenge, and fear.

  Always fear at the crux.

  “Do you blame me for Jesse’s death?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I never did. It was my family that blamed you and I’m sorry for that.”

  “I’m the one who is sorry. You couldn’t go against your family. Not under the circumstances.”

  “Neither could you. If anything, I was to blame.”

  She took his head in her hands, turned it so he was looking straight at her. “Neither one of us is to blame. It was my cousins who pulverized you.”

  “And it was my brother who crashed while driving drunk coming to avenge me.”

  “And yet fifteen years later, the guilt is still an anchor around our necks. If we’d never kissed …” She trailed off.

  “But we did.”

  “That’s what kept us apart. The guilt.”

  It was the wedge that time would never erode. Things had been so much easier between them in New York, why was it so much harder here?

  Why? Because here the stakes were so much higher. In New York they were free of their families, free of the past. Here, they were haunted. He understood now why she’d left. It simply hurt too much to stay.

  “It’s all dried up,” she said sadly, gazing out at the dusty lake. “Gone.”

  “It’ll be back.”

  “Maybe not. It’s the longest drought on record.”

  “It’ll be back,” he reiterated.

  “Everything comes to an end,” she murmured. “Everything.”

  “The key is to enjoy what you have, while you’ve got it.” His voice came out hoarse and scratchy.

  “That’s true.” She nodded. “I took my life in New York for granted. I thought I would always be there.”

  “You’ll go back.”

  “Luke.” She ran her hand up his arm.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why are we here?”

  “Is this a philosophical question? Because I’m not the one you should be asking it of.”

  “No, literally, why are we here? What do you want from me, Luke?”

  She had to ask? She couldn’t see it on him? His desire. His abject longing for her.

  “I want you, Melody. Like I’ve never wanted any woman.”

  “I want you too, Luke, but this is only going to work if we don’t fall in love. Promise me that you won’t fall in love with me.”

  His pupils narrowed, the irises darkening. “I can’t promise that.”

  She put her palms on his chest, pushed back from him. “Then we can’t do this.”

  He tightened his arms around her waist, holding her in place. “I might not be able to promise that I won’t fall in love with you, but I can promise that I will never hold you back. With me, you’re always free to be yourself, Melody, and if that means you have to fly away, back to New York or wherever it is that your ambition takes you, then I’ll accept it.”

  She plucked at his collar. “You make it sound as if I’m going to break your heart.”

  “Honey,” he said, “you already have.”

  Her eyes widened in distress. “What do you mean?”

  “When we were teens,” he rushed to add, not wanting her to know exactly how vulnerable he was. “It broke my heart that I never really got to talk to you again after that night.”

  “Oh. Yes, that was a heartbreaking time, but can you handle a strictly sexual relationship? I don’t want to enter into this if there’s going to be—­”

  “Sex is good enough for me,” he lied. It was better than nothing. And one night with her was more than a lifetime with anyone else.

  “Really? Is it?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. For as long as you’re in town, I want to be with you.”

  “Just sex?” she reiterated, looking deeply into his eyes.

  “Just sex,” he echoed.

  “No one can ever find out. It’s not worth the fallout to the community. To our families. To us.”

  “I know.”

  She slipped her hot little palm up underneath his shirt, splayed it over his chest, setting off an instant hard-­on. Classy, Nielson. Real classy.

  “If we get caught …” He glanced over his shoulder but there was nothing around except sand and cactus and they could see any oncoming cars.

  “But we’re not going to get caught,” she said with so much certainty that he fully believed her. “You’re my dirty little secret.”

  He didn’t know if he liked that, but then she put her mouth to his throat and did some kind of sexy maneuver with her tongue that made his eyes roll back in his head and yanked a groan from his throat.

  “We can’t make love here,” she said. “And we can’t use our condos either. Too many ­people around who know us. If they see us coming and going from each other’s places, they’ll know something is up.”

  “We can’t even use a local motel. Not in this town. ­People know our cars.”

  “Marfa?”

  “And risk running into Carly?” He stroked his chin.

  “It’s the same with all the small towns around here. Everybody knows everybody.”

  “We can’t go to my ranch,” he said. “My dad is living in the original farmhouse. He would have a heart attack if he knew what we were up to.”

  “Your father hates me.”

  “He hates all Fants.”

  “He blames me.”

  “Melly, he’s bipolar. He’s got emotional problems.”

  “Don’t we all,” she mumbled.

  “We could drive to El Paso,” he suggested.

  “It’s two hours away.”

  “I’ll think of something, but for now—­” Luke didn’t get to finish his thought because his cell phone rang. He didn’t want to answer it, but it was late at night. What if someone he knew was in trouble? What if it was his dad?

  Melody pulled the phone from his shirt pocket and handed it to him, and looked at him wide-­eyed.

  The name on the caller ID flashed: Jeff Davis County Sheriff’s Department. His blood froze. He was afraid to answer it.

  Melody nudged him with her elbow.

  He hit accept and put the phone to his ear. “Luke Nielson.”

  “Mayor, this is Deputy Calvin Greenwood.”

  Luke steeled himself for bad news. “What is it?”

  “Your office has been vandalized and graffitied with hateful slurs directed at your family name.”

  It took a second for the words to sink in, for Luke to realize that the news was unfortunate, but not tragic. “I see.”

  “I decided not to wait until morning to call because I didn’t want this thing to escalate,” Greenwood said. “I imagine it’s got something to do with you winning that Sand Fest trophy.”

  “Really? Who the hell is that petty?”

  “You’re asking me? We’ve both got jackasses on our side of the family. It’s probably just kids, but you never know. ­People get liquored up and do dumb things all the time.”

  “I’ll be right there,” he said, and switched off the phone. He looked over at Melody, told her what had happened.

  “That call is so much better than it might have been.” She fingered the thin gold chain at her throat.

  “I know.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Not a good idea.”

  “You’re right. What was I thinking?”

  “That
you wanted to be with me.” He chucked her lightly underneath the chin. “I appreciate it, but we have to be careful.”

  “There goes our tryst. This secret affair is going to be harder than I thought.”

  “Rain check? Let me handle this and I’ll get back to you on a rendezvous time and place.”

  She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t leave me hanging.”

  “I’ll text you when I come up with something.”

  She cast a sly glance at his crotch, winked. “Looks like you already have.”

  WITH A HEAVY heart Melody watched him go, memories of the night that changed the trajectory of their lives washing over her.

  She and Luke had been sitting on this very picnic bench, having slipped away from their families’ respective Fourth of July celebrations. They’d held hands and watched the fireworks exploding over the water, feeling their teenage hormones rising, pushing them headlong into trouble.

  He’d leaned in. She sank her head against his shoulder.

  He murmured her name. The smell of gunpowder tinged everything. His lips brushed hers. She sighed. He tasted of watermelon and warmth. His arm went around her.

  Her heart was beating so fast she could scarcely breathe. It was the sweetest moment of her fifteen-­year-­old life. Kissing the boy who made her blood sing. Knowing how dangerous this was, the thrill making it all the more compelling. Need and want and desire overtaking her.

  She hugged his neck and he laid her back on the cement table, the stone cool against her heated back. Over his shoulder, rockets burst into brilliant flames—­blue, green, yellow, red. Life was love. Love was life. She’d never experienced anything so intense.

  They’d been sneaking off for weeks, meeting each other to go horseback riding or climbing through the mountains, alone, away from families and their prying eyes. They could have kissed on any of those outings, and while they’d been nudging closer and closer to it, they had not.

  No, stupidly, they’d waited until the Fourth of July, and in a public place they had finally succumbed to the unstoppable force that consumed them. They were so wrapped up in each other that they had not heard the footsteps until it was too late.

  Her cousins were upon them, pulling Melody from Luke’s arms. Beating him. Hitting him and hitting him and hitting him. Three of them against one, while a fourth cousin held her and called her vile names as she screamed for Luke.