Courting the Cowboy

by Liz Isaacson

  “I’m going to kiss you back, Kurt.” She lifted her face toward his, a rush of adrenaline pounding through her.

  Her mouth met his, and an explosion went off in her brain. At some point, she dropped his cowboy hat so she could curl her fingers around the back of his neck, and he ran his fingers through her hair, pulling back slightly.

  “May,” he breathed into her mouth, but she didn’t have any words to answer him with.

  So she just kissed him again.

  Though the wind blew and the sky held gray clouds, May wanted to shed her jacket and let the cool air take away some of the heat still infecting her bloodstream. The ten-minute drive to the church on Freestone Avenue had been made in silence, both of her hands wrapped around his right one, their breathing done in near tandem.

  She hadn’t known what to say after kissing him, and she was glad she didn’t have to know. So maybe things were moving a little fast. But it wasn’t like May had time to waste.

  You should tell him about your father’s deal, she told herself. He deserved to know that she wouldn’t just be a manager or a pastry chef at the restaurant for much longer. And owning and operating a business as large as Sotheby’s was even more time-consuming that making tiramisu and chocolate cheesecakes.

  He pulled into the parking lot at the same time her phone buzzed. He glanced down at it as she did, and he chuckled. “You can turn off your availability,” he said.

  Her mouth turned down as she looked at the message from TexasFaithful.com. When Kurt had messaged last week for the first time, her heart had done cartwheels. But she got six or seven more hearts every day.

  “What?” she asked, swiping away the notification. She felt bad she didn’t message the men back who had hearted her. But she’d tried that in the first couple of days, and the messages she got back weren’t favorable.

  “You can set your status to ‘in a relationship’,” he said, cutting the engine. “Then you won’t get other men messaging you all the time.”

  She looked away from her phone and right into his eyes. “We’re in a relationship?”

  “Aren’t we?” He looked at her thigh flush against his. “You’re ridin’ right next to me in the truck. Girlfriends do that. You kissed me back there. Felt like a girlfriend kiss.” He ducked his head. “But it’s up to you, Miss May. Maybe you go around kissin’ everyone.” He opened his door and got out while May tried to decide if his words had carried hurt and anger or not.

  She scooted over and dropped to the ground too. “I don’t go around kissing everyone,” she said to his back.

  He twisted to look at her, something she couldn’t identify storming across his face. “All right.” He extended his hand toward her, and she took it.

  “I’ll figure out how to turn off my availability.” She’d honestly never thought of it. Every heart was another opportunity to have a real chance at a wedding by the end of the year. Although if the tender passion she’d just felt in Kurt’s kiss was any indication, he wasn’t a man who dragged his feet when he wanted something.

  So the real question was whether he was looking to get married or not. He definitely wasn’t a player, but she was once again reminded of how little she knew about him.

  “So,” she said as they made their way toward the double doors. “I’ve told you about my sisters. You’ve mentioned a sister in passing. I think….”

  “Two sisters, same as you,” he said. “I’m the oldest, same as you.”

  So maybe they did have some things in common. May had been stewing over their differences more than she should. All she’d been able to come up with was their shared love of dogs. And the appetizer platter. And cooking….

  But his horses scared her—there was something about their eyes she didn’t like. Horses felt unpredictable to her, like they could freak out and stampede her at any time.

  And they both liked to cook. Other than that, their lives couldn’t be more different. In the end, she’d told herself not to worry so much. She and Kurt seemed to get along just fine.

  “May.”

  She startled out of her inner musings and blinked, the image of her mother coming into ultra-sharp focus.

  “Mom.”

  Kurt’s fingers on hers tightened, and May glanced up at him. When she looked back at her mother, she was positively staring at the tall cowboy with the wide cowboy hat.

  “Mom,” May said, stepping forward and putting her free hand on her mother’s back. She released Kurt’s hand and stood beside her mother. “This is my new boyfriend, Kurt Pemberton.” She smiled at him, urging him to relax that jaw and be the gentleman he was.

  “Ma’am.” He took her hand and lifted it to his lips. “So nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Not entirely true, though May had told a story or two about her mother while they’d chatted.

  “Oh?” She locked eyes with May. “I haven’t heard about you at all.”

  “It’s brand new, Mom.” May silently pleaded with her not to say anything. Thankfully, she was a proper Southern woman, and she shook her hair over her shoulders as she straightened them.

  “But it’s so lovely to meet you. Coming to church with May already?”

  May sighed. She wasn’t sure what she’d been thinking, inviting him to church with her so soon. All at once the answer was there. “Pastor Clark wanted to meet him,” May said, throwing a frantic glance at Kurt. She hadn’t told him this either, and she prayed a double-blindside wouldn’t drive him away. “We’re cooking together in the Spring Jubilee.”

  He seemed to get her mental message. “Yep,” he said. “I’m from Pastor Gifford’s congregation on Elberta Street, but we’re partnering for the cooking competition.” He made their relationship sound so clinical, and May pressed her lips together as they all moved into the chapel.

  “Well, come sit by me and Daddy,” her mother said.

  “Oh, I—”

  “We can’t, Mom.” May stepped in front of her. “Maybe another time.” She reached for Kurt’s hand and drew him away from her mother. “Sorry about that,” she hissed out of the side of her mouth.

  She caught the glances of several people as she led him to a bench in the middle of the chapel. Her sister’s eyes widened, and May had barely had time to smooth her skirt before Beth plopped herself down next to her. “Who is he?” she whispered.

  “Can I text you later?”

  “I’m Kurt Pemberton,” he said, his voice much too loud though he hadn’t spoken right out loud. But with only the organ playing, everyone in the vicinity had definitely heard him. “You must be May’s sister.” He met her eye for a single breath. “Beth, I think. Kate lives in….”

  “Nashville,” May supplied, impressed he’d remembered her sister’s names. She’d mentioned them once in one of their fifteen-minute chats before the sun rose.

  Beth grinned like it was Christmas morning and extended her hand across May for Kurt to shake. “I am Beth. Nice to meet you, Kurt.”

  “And you.”

  Once her sister had left, Kurt put his arm around May’s shoulders and kneaded her closer. She wanted to melt into his embrace, but schooled herself because she was at church. They could curl up and cuddle on her couch later.

  “Any other surprises?” he whispered in her ear, his mouth so dangerously close to touching her skin that shivers exploded down her back.

  “Almost certainly,” she whispered back.

  He chuckled, the sound minimal, but the vibration and warmth from him almost overwhelming to May’s senses.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “I don’t know what I was thinking. My father will want to meet you. And a few of my girlfriends…the pastor so I’m not a liar.”

  As if on cue, Pastor Clark stood up. Kurt brushed his lips across her temple and said, “Happy to do it, sweetheart,” before he straightened and focused on the dais up front.

  May basked in the warmth of his husky, whispered “sweetheart.” He’d only called her that during their ch
ats and hearing the word in his voice was so much better than she’d imagined. As her free hand finally unballed and her fingers relaxed, May let go of the preconceived notions she had about cowboys too.

  She liked this cowboy, and that was that. She didn’t need to be embarrassed about it or wish he was someone different. Pastor Clark started speaking about showing everyone kindness, whether they believed the same way they did or not, and an ember started in May’s core. The warmth and light grew and grew until she felt full of God’s love.

  Sighing, she rested her head against Kurt’s chest and drank in the good words from her pastor, content for now and excited about the prospect of a whole afternoon alone with Kurt.

  Chapter Eight

  Kurt couldn’t shake the way May’s father had sized him up. There was a story there, and it wasn’t that the man didn’t think Kurt was good enough for May. Kurt already knew he wasn’t good enough for May, and he’d watched both of his sisters get married to great men—and his dad hadn’t thought either of them were good enough for his daughters.

  He wanted to ask May about her parents—they’d both seemed overly interested in Kurt and May’s relationship—but he didn’t want her to think he didn’t like them. There was plenty of time for conversing, especially over the app. Especially when she said, “So I have to work next weekend, but I was thinking we could get together on Tuesday.”

  “Like two days, Tuesday?” He sat in her expansive kitchen, trying not to be blinded by the shiny silver surfaces of her refrigerator, double ovens, and dishwasher. She must’ve hated cooking in his tiny cabin kitchen. Compared to hers, where he prepared coffee felt like a closet.

  She cut cold butter into flour. “No, like next Tuesday. I’m working a lot this week.” Her gaze skittered around the kitchen, never truly landing on him.

  “So nine days from now.”

  “Yes.” She clipped the word out, and Kurt squinted at her.

  “You okay?”

  She paused in her pastry-making. “I work a lot, okay?”

  He felt like he needed to hold his hands up in surrender. “Okay.” He blinked at her. “Did I say anything about it?”

  She pushed her breath out in an exaggerated sigh. “No.”

  But it clearly meant something to her. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re upset?”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “I have eyes, May. Two of ‘em, and they work great.”

  She cocked her hip, some of her tension melting away. “You’re almost fifty years old, and I was told by my optometrist that the forties aren’t kind to eyes.”

  Kurt put one hand over his heart and feigned hurt. “Almost fifty?” Though forty-six was closer to fifty than forty, Kurt had never thought of himself as old. And he couldn’t fire back about her age. He knew better than that.

  She giggled, plucked one pea-sized bit of floured, salted butter from her pie dough and tossed it at him.

  “Oh, now you’ve done it.” He stood from the barstool with a scrape of wood against tile and bolted around the island.

  She shrieked and danced away from him, finding herself too slow. She backed into the corner, the fridge to her right and a row of cabinets that held the sink and dishwasher to her left. “Stop it,” she said, laughing.

  He took one predatory step toward her, every nerve in him firing. Every desire he’d kept at bay about May surging forward. “Stop what?” he asked, pausing long enough to stick his fingers in the flour mixture. All it needed was a few tablespoons of ice water, and it would make a nice dough.

  “Kurt,” she warned, her tone becoming more serious as her gaze dropped to his fingers. “This is a really expensive dress.”

  “I’ll buy you another one.” He licked his lips and rubbed his fingers together.

  She lunged for the sink, which had a faucet that came loose so she could spray out the porcelain. He blocked her, swiping his messy fingers down the side of her face with a loud laugh.

  “Hey!” She struggled against him, still trying to get to the water, but he captured her completely in his arms. He held her close, and tight, looking down at her with fire burning in his belly.

  Her giggles quieted and she gazed up at him. They moved simultaneously toward each other, this kiss twice as passionate as the one they’d shared in his truck. She kissed him back like he was the air she needed to survive, and Kurt wondered when he’d let himself fall so hard for her.

  He cleared his mind and backed up. They were both too old to be acting like hormonal teenagers. The silence in the kitchen before hadn’t bothered him, but the energy in the air now felt sizzling hot.

  “Okay,” she said. “So I’ll get this dough in the oven, and you can start cracking eggs.”

  His phone chimed, and he didn’t tell her it was a useless text message and that if he was with her, there was only one person who’d be texting—Dwayne. He said, “I need to take this,” and high-tailed it out of her kitchen. Through the living room that was big enough to fit his whole cabin into, and out onto her front porch.

  Only then did he breathe and check his phone. It wasn’t Dwayne, but Alicia. Kurt frowned, his mind working overtime to try to figure out what his ex-girlfriend could want.

  How are you feeling?

  Should he answer? Why did she care? As a paramedic, she could find out from anyone at the small hospital on the south side of Grape Seed Falls what his diagnosis was and how he was doing. So why was she really texting?

  Not wanting to be rude—Grape Seed Falls was a small town, after all—he sent back fine.

  I’m glad. I’ve been thinking about you. About us.

  Oh, no. Kurt looked up from his phone, but the words were burned onto his eyeballs. Even May’s meticulously landscaped front yard couldn’t distract him.

  “Hey.” May poked her head out. “I need you in here.”

  He held up his phone. “My ex-girlfriend is texting me.” He just blurted the words out, a sense of panic threatening to overtake him.

  May stepped onto the porch, the curiosity thick on her face. “Oh yeah? Who is it?”

  He handed her the phone and watched her as she read the texts. “Well, at least you’re no more loquacious with her than you are with me.” She bumped him with her hip and looked up at him. “Alicia? As in Alicia Felding?”

  “The one and the same.”

  “How long did you guys date?”

  “A few months last fall,” he said, the truth boiling to the surface. “It was serious, I suppose. I took my availability off TexasFaithful, and we…well, we….”

  “We what?” May put a few steps of distance between them, and Kurt was able to think a bit better.

  “We were supposed to go to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. She broke up with me only a few days before that trip.”

  “Oh.” May wrapped her arms around herself, and she was so thin, she couldn’t have been adding any warmth with the self-hug. “And now this?”

  “Yeah. Well.” He shrugged and breathed in. “She was one of the paramedics on-scene at the fire last Monday.”

  “Ah, so her old flame has been rekindled.” May nodded, and though her words carried a hint of irony, he couldn’t find any playfulness in her expression. “What are you going to tell her?”

  “That I’m with you, of course.” He reached for his phone, and May relinquished it to him. He started tapping on the screen while May moved to the porch railing. He hit send and said, “Done.”

  He joined her and gazed down the lane that led to the road. “I have something else to tell you.” He didn’t want to, but he felt strong things for May he hadn’t felt for anyone—not even Alicia—in a while.

  “Okay, but let’s go make the pie while we talk. I have a feeling we’re going to need the extra sugar to make it through the afternoon.” She turned and started for the house without waiting for him, and Kurt sent a silent prayer heavenward—Please help her understand—before joining her.

  It really wasn’t all that hard to make a peca
n pie, and she stirred the corn syrup—half light and half dark—with the sugar while he whisked eggs together. He wasn’t quite sure how to start, other than blurting out his past in one long sentence.

  “Okay, so Alicia’s not my only ex,” he said, glad the words had somehow come to him.

  “Oh, so it’s the ex-girlfriend talk.” She flashed him a smile, and he wished he could relax because of it.

  “More like…ex-wife.” He held very still, staring down into the bowl of eggs.

  May’s movement stuttered, but she regained the smooth round and round motion of whisking after a moment. “Oh, I see.” She lifted one shoulder into a shrug, and with her half-bare shoulders, Kurt had to force himself to look away. “Well, you’re forty-six. I suppose it makes sense you’ve been married before.”

  “Have you?” he asked.

  “No.” Sadness touched the single-syllable word, and Kurt wanted to share all of his pain with her too so she wouldn’t feel alone.

  “So Kara, my first wife, she….” He exhaled and turned away from the eggs and went back to his perch on the barstool. “She didn’t want to be intimate with me,” he said in a rush. “We were only married for about ten months, and then she left me.”

  Though it had been sixteen years, there were pieces of Kurt that were still floating around somewhere. Pieces he’d given her and hadn’t been able to find or get back yet.

  May kept whisking, whisking, whisking. “Why’d she leave?”

  That usually wasn’t the first question people asked, but the reason was easy to give. “I found out later that she wasn’t interested in men.”

  May turned from the stove, her whisk dripping clear sugar syrup, her eyes wide. Her mouth worked, but no words came out.

  “Yeah,” Kurt said. “I was lost for a long time. Sometimes I still feel like she took something from me that I desperately need, but that I’ll never get back.” He nodded to the pot behind her. “Your sugar is going to burn.”

  She spun back to the stove. “Kurt,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I couldn’t stay in San Antonio,” he said. “That’s why I came to Grape Seed Falls and took the job out at the ranch.” Well, one of the reasons. No need to go into everything in one afternoon though.