Cowboy Lessons (Harlequin American Romance)

by Pamela Britton

  They touched down.

  The thump brought him back to earth, and Scott had to blink a bit to dispel the thoughts.

  “Do you want me to power down or come back and get you?” his pilot asked.

  “Power down,” Scott instructed.

  “Might want to grab your hair,” he said as he unbuckled his seat belt, then crouched down to open the door. When he turned back, he got the view of his life. She was crouched, too, only when she did it her dress gaped open around the neck, giving him a view almost down to her navel.

  Hot damn. No bra.

  “What?” she asked with wide eyes, a sure sign that his mouth must have dropped open. Then she glanced down, too, gasped, then clutched the dress to her chest.

  “Pervert.”

  He laughed. “Just appreciating the view,” he said, opening the door, which gave a pressurized pop. It was cold outside, and the air was whipped into a frenzy of dust and dried grass and litter.

  “Close your eyes,” he yelled over the sound, which was louder outside than it was in…an engineering feat that still amazed Scott. He turned to help her down, but she was already out, the wind plastering her dress against her body like static filled Plastic Wrap. Wow.

  “Cold,” she yelled as they darted beneath the blades.

  Yeah, he could see that. “Should have brought a jacket,” he called back.

  “I didn’t know I’d be running beneath the blades of a helicopter like some Bond girl.”

  “You look like a Bond girl.”

  They were out from under the blades now, the wind still kicking up the skirt of her dress. No, Scott admitted, she looked better than a Bond girl. She’d let her hair go, the rotors stirring the air with just enough force to make her hair ripple around her face, make her dress flatten against her sides, make her nipples stand erect.

  Hot damn.

  “This better be good,” she said, rubbing her arms.

  “Oh, it will be.”

  “I can’t believe you closed the place down,” she said as she fell into step beside him.

  “That’s not the only thing I did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He opened the door that was nestled into the long side of the building.

  “What the heck is that?”

  “Music,” he said with a pleased smile. “Mood music, to be exact.”

  “Just what the heck kind of mood are you hoping to set?”

  And then the strains of “I’m in the Mood for Love” must have hit her, because she rolled her eyes. Scott stepped back, letting her precede him inside, though he bounded ahead of her so he could see the look on her face when she saw what he’d done…or rather, what Burger Barn’s staff had done.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. Scott had to jump around her at the last minute when she all but skidded to a stop. “What the heck is all this?”

  “Do you like it?”

  He watched as she looked to her left at a counter where, on a normal day, patrons would place their orders but which was now covered in white linen and roses. The members of the three-string band that had played at the barn dance were dressed in tuxes tonight as they plucked at their instruments. To their right, picnic tables covered in red-and-white checkered vinyl had been pulled off to the side. Except for one table, which stood exactly in the center of the room, with a white linen tablecloth, two china plates with gleaming silver alongside, and a candle that flickered and lit the table in a romantic glow now that someone had shut off the fluorescent tubes above.

  “Well?” someone asked.

  Amanda turned toward the counter. “Flora, what the heck are you doing here?”

  “Working.”

  “Here?”

  “Sure. You wouldn’t believe the grandpas that come in here with their grandkids. Great hunting ground.” She looked past Amanda and smiled at Scott. “Hi, handsome. Like what you’ve done to the place.”

  “You don’t think it’s too much?”

  “Nah,” Flora said.

  Amanda snorted. Scott looked over at her. A snort? Had he actually heard her snort?

  “C’mon,” he said, the band switching to “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

  She took a seat, or a bench as the case may be—no chairs at Burger Barn—even as Scott scrambled to pull it out for her. She didn’t seem to notice, just scooted herself under the table the way she’d done a hundred times before. Only tonight she grabbed a linen napkin that’d been shaped into a swan.

  “Unbelievable,” she muttered.

  “I hear he’s taking you to a hotel afterward.”

  “Hotel?” Amanda said, her blue eyes going wide as she looked between Flora and Scott.

  “She’s joking, Amanda,” Scott said with a roll of his eyes in Flora’s direction. But that didn’t stop the wayward thought that he had that he’d like to go to a hotel with her. From the moment he’d first seen her in that dress, he’d felt the zing and pop that always accompanied looking at her. Something about the way she carried herself. About the way she’d donned her cowboy boots along with a two-thousand-dollar dress totally turned him on.

  “Here’s your menu,” Flora said, placing a pink sheet of paper in front of them. “The crew in back thought you two might like something special to eat tonight.”

  Scott glanced down, brows raised. What was this?

  Appetizer

  Fresh Oysters

  Heart of Romaine Salad

  Dinner

  The “Love at First Bite” Burger

  French-Kissed Fries

  Dessert

  Seven Layers of Covers Cake

  Whipped cream available for takeout

  He let out a chuckle as he read the last, then looked up to gauge Amanda’s reaction. She just shook her head, the candlelight catching on her hair so that the red strands almost seemed to glow and spark. The sun had long since sunk below the horizon, but the sky still threw a muted glow into the place.

  “Why?” she asked, clasping her hand beneath her chin.

  “Why what?”

  “Why go to all this trouble?”

  “Because I could.”

  “That’s it? Because you could?”

  He nodded.

  She stared at him unblinkingly and Scott would have given half his fortune to know what the heck she was thinking. The candle continued to flicker, outside a car drove by, but inside a tension began to build that the both of them could sense.

  Then Flora sidled up to their table and said, “What can I get you two to drink?”

  “The champagne I brought, for starters.”

  It was as if he’d screamed, “My fly’s undone.”

  Flora looked at Amanda. Amanda looked at Flora, then stiffened.

  Scott said, “What? What’d I say?”

  “I’m not getting in the middle of this,” Flora said, turning around.

  “What?” Scott asked again, meeting Amanda’s suddenly pained blue eyes.

  “I don’t drink,” Amanda said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The music still played in the background, but Amanda felt as if everything had stopped. The time had come, she thought. Time to lay it on the line, because, darn it, he was breaking through her defenses. It didn’t matter that she told herself earlier that she refused to be bowled over by what Scott’s money could buy. That wasn’t it at all. Rather it had to do with what Scott chose to do with that money.

  Close down a restaurant.

  For her.

  She swallowed, and though she knew the words needed to be said, they still jammed in her throat like too many steers in a chute. “Two years ago I was involved in an accident, a bad one.”

  She saw Scott stiffen, saw the way his eyes darted over her face as if searching each feature on her face for confirmation of her words.

  Amanda shook her head, looking away, her hand going to the stem of the water glass, twirling it between her fingers. “I wasn’t driving that night, but I might as well have been.”


  “Amanda, you don’t have to tell me—”

  She looked up sharply. “Yes, I do, Scott. You need to hear this. Goodness knows someone else’ll likely tell you if I don’t. And frankly, I’d rather you heard it from me.”

  “I was dating someone back then, someone I’m sure you’ve never heard of but who was something of a celebrity around these parts. Jake Gramercy. Professional bull rider, bronc rider and anything else he could ride.” Including other women, but she didn’t say that aloud. “He and Chase were traveling partners, and if Chase wasn’t winning, Jake was. They were good. Really good. And then the accident.”

  And though it’d been two years, though she’d gotten to the point that she didn’t think about Rita twenty times a day like she used to, suddenly it all came back: the guilt, the shame, the horror of that long-ago night.

  “We’d been drinking at the Spur. I must have had, I don’t know, a few too many beers. I wasn’t fit to drive and neither was Chase or Jake, but Rita, Rita was always the one who insisted on taking care of us all, only Chase wouldn’t let her…not that night.” She clenched her hands tighter and tighter in her lap, because maybe if she felt pain, the ache in her heart would somehow lessen. “I badgered her into letting Chase drive. Told her we were fine. That she had nothing to worry about.”

  “Amanda, if this is too—”

  “No, Scott. You need to hear this.” She blinked, surprised that there were tears in her eyes. “So we drove,” she said. “We shouldn’t have. I knew that. I was at that stage where you know you’ve had too much to drink, but you think you can control it.” She shook her head—slowly—back and forth, back and forth.

  “Rita kept trying to get Jake to pull over. I made her feel the worst, I think, telling her she worried too much and that we didn’t need someone to mother us, and that was when she began to scream. At first I thought it was because she was mad at me. But see, she’d undone her seat belt to lean over the front seat. She was trying to shut the car off, I think. Only Jake swerved, and she must have looked up right when the other car was about to hit us because all I remember is her scream stopping abruptly. I remember Chase crying out. And the sound—” her fingernails were digging into her palms now “—I will never forget the sound. Like an explosion. Glass, metal, plastic, all of it flying around, and then silence.” She looked up then. “That silence was so odd and for a moment I remember thinking that it must have been a dream—a bad dream—because it was quiet now. Then I saw the hole in the windshield.”

  “Jeez, Amanda.” Scott reached across the table, his palm up as he silently asked to hold her hand. But she wouldn’t give it to him. She deserved to relive the moment without support.

  “They arrested Jake,” she said in a voice gone raspy with tears. “Involuntary manslaughter. He’s out now, back on the rodeo trail, but he’s never been the same since. It really tore up Chase, losing Rita. He quit the rodeo circuit, quit life for a while. I did, too.” She tried to tell him without words the importance of what she was going to say next, tried to stare at him unflinchingly as she said, “All those years I’d looked down on my father for his drinking problem, and in the end I turned out just like him. I let Rita down, let Chase down. And then I met Jake’s other girlfriends.”

  He winced. She finally unclenched her hands, took a deep breath and clasped his own hands. They were cold, those hands that had been surprisingly gentle when they’d touched her earlier.

  “It was during the sentencing that I learned that Jake had a string of ‘friends’ across the country who each claimed they were his true love. In the end I suppose it didn’t really matter. The relationship was doomed to fail…like our relationship would be.”

  “Us?” Scott said. “Why?”

  “Because I like you, Scott. Dang, but it surprises me how much I like you, given the low-down, dirty thing you did to acquire my father’s land. But if you put that aside, in a lot of ways you’re like Jake…always traveling, in the limelight, and I just won’t put myself in that position again. Nobody with an ounce of sense would.”

  She stood. Scott stayed seated. “Chase told me today he’d take over your ‘training’ since it seems obvious you plan on keeping the ranch. All I ask is that you give my dad and me a week to get our stuff packed and a new place lined up.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Scott shook his head. “The deal was that you’d teach me to ranch, not Chase.”

  “But Chase would be much better—”

  “No,” Scott said more firmly, though he had no idea why he pushed the matter. “A deal’s a deal, Amanda. I’m not letting you renege on this one.”

  She lifted her chin, and he was relieved to see the tears had dried, tears, he admitted, that he hadn’t liked seeing. “And I’m not going to let you cut our date short, either.”

  “What?”

  “Sit down, Amanda. You need to eat.”

  “Just who do you think you are? Can’t you see I’m in no mood to consume food?”

  “Fine, let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “For a ride,” Scott said.

  “To where? I’ve already seen San Francisco.”

  “And now I’m going to take you someplace else.”

  “The only place you can take me is home.”

  “Fine,” he said again, getting up from the table.

  “Where y’all going?” Flora asked as they headed toward the door.

  “She’s not hungry,” Scott said.

  “Darn it, Amanda, you’re not going to blow this, are you?”

  “Flora, please,” Amanda said, holding up a hand. “I don’t need a lecture.”

  “No. What you need is to get lucky.”

  Which almost made Scott laugh, surprising because a minute ago he would have sworn that was impossible.

  “Flora, if I were you, I’d worry more about your own sex life than my own.”

  Which made Flora throw a dish towel at her, making Amanda duck before slipping through the door.

  The pilot was still in the helicopter, eating the last bite of a burger. “Damn, are we leaving already?”

  “Yes,” Scott muttered as he opened the door for Amanda. She didn’t look happy. Well, after that maudlin tale, he wasn’t surprised.

  “Where to, boss?” Charlie asked.

  Scott looked at Amanda, who was taking a seat.

  “My place,” he said.

  “What?” Amanda said, turning.

  “Charlie, start this bird,” Scott said, blocking her.

  “Not with me inside,” Amanda said, trying to push past him. But there was only one door and Scott was in front of it, and he wasn’t going to move. So he didn’t.

  SHE’D BEEN KIDNAPPED.

  Why wasn’t she surprised? Amanda thought as they crested the mountains that overlooked the Bay Area. Again. Beneath them streetlights twinkled like tiny embers at the bottom of a fireplace.

  Kidnapped.

  Being taken to “his place,” wherever that was. But she refused to ask. Instead she stared out the window, keeping her face averted from Scott.

  Behind her Scott remained quiet, too, but she couldn’t ignore his presence. She knew he was there. Over and over again she kept picturing the inside of the Burger Barn. What kind of idiot goes to so much trouble to impress a girl on a date?

  Scott Beringer.

  Yeah, but still…it had been a bit extreme.

  You loved every bit of it.

  She had. Darn it, she had. Who wouldn’t have been flattered?

  And tempted. Tempted to give in. To date him. To do…other things with him.

  But she couldn’t. as much as she liked him. As much as she laughed at his antics and was impressed by his willingness to work hard. So the question became, what was he going to do with her once he got her to his place?

  She wiggled in her seat, blackness now beneath them, a wide lake of nothingness that signaled the Bay Area’s west hills. She suspected Scott lived in the San
Andreas Mountains. A few minutes later it was confirmed as they passed over another low mountain range and entered an area where an acre of bare land cost more than most ball players’ salaries. The persistent hmmm of the helicopter’s motor filled her ears as she leaned right and looked out. There were no streetlights except for those near the highway, just the occasional flicker of a house light visible between the tall pines and oak trees that covered the hills.

  She was nervous. Truth was, she didn’t exactly trust herself. There, she could admit that, too. Because that fact of the matter was, the whole time she sat next to Scott, smelled him, felt his presence, she was aware of him, too. Aware of him in ways that made her nipples press against the inside of her dress. That made her press her legs together as if she feared she’d suddenly jump him right there on the helicopter seat. Maybe she would.

  No. You will not.

  Then she gasped, because they’d climbed high enough to see over the mountain, the Pacific Ocean glowing like a sheet of aluminum, white-tipped waves visible beneath the glowing ball of a full moon. There was fog out there, she could see it to her left, only now it radiated a pure white that faded to silver and then dark gray at the bottom. They began to drop and Amanda caught her first glimpse of Scott’s “home.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Well?” Scott asked.

  “PG&E must love you” was all she could think of to say in reference to the many lights that shone from its many windows. It was built into the mountain so perfectly, it was hard to tell just exactly how many floors it had, just that it was big. Really, really big. And painted white, or maybe it was shell-colored. The moon distorted the color. As the helicopter touched down on a pad cut into the same mountaintop, a red air sock pointing south, she couldn’t help but think that Scott was really, really rich. So she knew that, but this…this was evidence of wealth like none she’d ever seen before.

  “Actually,” Scott said, “I get a volume discount on kilowatts.”