Choose Me, Cowboy

by Barbara Ankrum

  “Shoot.”

  “Tell me where you’ve been the last few years,” she said. “Because I know you weren’t in Marietta.”

  “Up in Missoula, mostly. But the last two years we’ve moved a few times. I’ve been working ranches in Boise, Helena and down in Denver, trying to learn the business from the ground up. Been lucky enough to work for some mentors who’ve been willing to teach me.”

  She traced the shape of her champagne flute with her finger. “I’ll admit I was a little prickly the first night we met. But I had no right to complain about you settling here. And I can hardly argue against the place I love most. It’s a great place to raise a family.”

  He tipped his head gratefully as the waiter delivered the wine.

  “That doesn’t, by the way, mean I’m not prickly anymore,” she said quietly, when the waiter left. “I am. Very prickly.”

  “What’s a rose without a few thorns?” He popped an olive in his mouth and grinned.

  “There, see? Don’t go trying to sweet talk me, Finn Scott. That won’t change anything.”

  He wondered if she was right about that. He hoped not. She stirred those old feelings in him without even trying. Feelings he’d numbed himself to years ago. He wanted to reach over and pull her closer. Run his thumb along the inside of her wrist and follow the path with his mouth. Leave a trail of dampness like a brand against her skin.

  But only a lie of convenience bound them together now. What was underneath was too fragile to support any expectations. If he was smart, he’d keep the complication of him and Kate out of what he was trying to do. She’d made her feelings clear. He was grateful to her and maybe that would have to be enough.

  Then again, maybe he was kidding himself.

  “While we’re on the subject of how this will work, I’ve drawn up a list of rules.” She pulled a piece of paper from her purse and unfolded it.

  He stared suspiciously at the paper. “Rules?”

  She dipped a look in his direction. “To avoid any possible misunderstandings. You know...”

  Picking up a piece of bruschetta, he stuffed it into his mouth and leaned back. “Go on.”

  “First, I keep my apartment. I’ll move in with you, ostensibly, until after the hearing, but I’ll keep my things where they are. That will make things easier in the end.”

  He took a sip of wine and signaled her to go on.

  “Second, we don’t share a room. Or a bed. No sleeping together. For all intents and purposes, I’m the nanny and we don’t want any confusion.”

  He didn’t like this rule, but he wasn’t surprised by it. As far as confusion went, he wondered if she was talking about the kids or herself? Or maybe him?

  “Third, no kissing. We all know where that leads.”

  He frowned. “Well, maybe just—”

  “Fourth, we’ve already talked about the annulment. That’s a given.”

  Not in his book. He’d do everything in his power to change her mind on that front. But if things came to that—

  “And fifth, we don’t tell anyone. Especially my family.” She chugged a gulp of wine. “They wouldn’t understand. Any talk about this marriage will take place in the courtroom in Missoula and no one here needs to know anything about it.”

  “Kate?” The all too familiar female voice came from somewhere behind her. She whipped around to find Olivia standing a few feet behind her, beside her tall dark and handsome fiancé, Jake Lassen, who was smiling.

  Her sister, however, was not.

  Chapter Five

  “Olivia!” Wide-eyed, Kate crumpled the paper in her hand and leapt to her feet. “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Olivia said under her breath as she reached a hand across the table to Finn, who had just gotten to his feet. “I’m Olivia Canaday, Kate’s older sister. This is my fiancé, Jake Lassen. And you’re—?”

  “Finn Scott. Nice to meet you, Olivia, Jake.” He slid a look at Kate, who seemed like she was about to hyperventilate.

  “Not the pro-bull rider, Finn Scott?” Olivia said.

  “Uh, yeah. The same,” he answered, taking Jake’s proffered hand. That answer earned Kate a second, more probing look from her sister.

  “No kidding?” Jake said. “Hey, really nice to meet you.”

  “Right. Well, you know it’s always a treat to see you both. But we were just about to have dinner, so...” Kate said in a voice several octaves higher than normal, giving her sister a little nudge toward the door.

  “With your....date,” Olivia added, with a meaningful tip of her head that Finn couldn’t interpret.

  “What? Finn?” Kate laughed. “A date? No. He’s not a date. This isn’t a date. Right, Finn?”

  “Not exactly,” he agreed, feeling the slip and slide of dangerous territory moving beneath his feet. “No.”

  Olivia’s confused gaze went back and forth between them.

  That’s when her eyes went wide as they fell to the sparkling diamond ring set on her sister’s hand. She tried to speak, but no sound came out. For a moment, Finn feared she might be choking.

  “It’s—it’s not what you think,” Kate managed quickly, twisting her hand behind her back.

  “It’s. Not?” Horrified, Kate’s sister pinned her attention on Finn, waiting for an explanation.

  Oh, he wasn’t about to step into this sisterly minefield.

  Jake, having missed the sparkly culprit, must have sensed an oncoming crisis and put his arm around Olivia. “We didn’t mean to interrupt you two. Just getting into this place is a bear. We’ve had reservations for months. Liv, darlin’, let’s leave them to their—”

  “Jake?” Olivia said evenly, disengaging his arm, “why don’t you sit here with Finn for a minute while Kate and I go powder our noses?”

  “No.” Kate dug in her feet. “We don’t need to powder our noses. I don’t even have powder. Who uses powder anymore? Why don’t we just talk about this later, O-livia? We’re in the middle of a nice—”

  “I’ll tell you why. Because later might be too late.” She took Kate’s arm. “C’mon, you.”

  ***

  In the restroom, they found themselves thankfully alone. Olivia paced back and forth in front of the large mirrors in the elegant lounge. “Please, do not tell me that you just married a stranger, Kate.”

  Hands on her hips, Kate glared at her and said, “Okay.”

  “You have got to be kidding me. Barely a week ago, you promised us you wouldn’t even date for a month! Now this?”

  “I’m not dating.” She turned and stared at her reflection in the mirror. “I’m married.”

  Olivia put her fingers in her ears and sang, “La-la-la-la-lah!”

  Kate rolled her eyes and snapped open her small purse to pull out a lipgloss. “You asked.”

  Rounding on her, Olivia grabbed her arm. “You have done some crazy ass things before, Kate, but this...? And when did you have time to marry him? And to buy this?” She took a closer look at the ring on Kate’s hand. “Wow! That’s really—” Remembering herself, she shook her head and dropped the ring like the thing burned her.

  “—pretty,” Kate finished for her, staring down at the sparkly stone. “It’s pretty and it’s mine. At least temporarily, that is.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, temporarily? Nobody gets married temporarily.”

  “We did.” Turning to the mirror, she glossed her lips with the peachy tint.

  “Wh-what exactly are you saying? That you’re not married for real?”

  “Oh, we’re married, all right, license and all. It’s just...complicated. And I wasn’t going to tell you. Or anyone.”

  “You weren’t—? Kate, you were going to keep this from all of us? From your family who loves you? Is this about the stupid no-dating bet? Because if you impulsively married this guy just to get back at us—”

  “No. It’s not about that. I swear. But, just for the record, I didn’t lose that bet.”

&n
bsp; “Oh, for the love of—! Forget the bet.” Olivia started pacing again. “You need to tell me what’s going on. I need the whole story. Beginning to end.”

  Kate sighed, knowing nothing else would do at this point. “Fine. But not right now. Tonight, I’m having dinner with Finn at a really, really nice restaurant that he went to a lot of trouble to get us into. So, you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone. It’s our secret. Tell Jake not to say anything either.” She took Olivia by the forearms. “Promise me.”

  “Okay. Fine. Tomorrow morning. Main Street Diner. Eight a.m. The truth and nothing but the truth.”

  Kate exhaled with a nod.

  Olivia pulled her into a hug. “He seems like a nice guy and gorgeous and definitely an improvement over that—” she stopped herself—“over Cree Malone. So, I’ll reserve judgment until after you tell me everything. And I won’t say a word until then.”

  “Thanks, Liv.” She should have known she could never keep a secret in a town as small as Marietta, or from Olivia, her best and oldest friend.

  The old adage, “No good deed goes unpunished,” came to mind. Just how much retribution would she be meted out for her decision to help Finn keep his children? Or for needing to put a period on an old paragraph of her life? Time would tell. Until then, all she could hope for was damage control.

  ***

  That evening, when they drove back to Marietta, he parked in front of her apartment and shut off the engine. For all intents and purposes, their lovely evening had ended with Olivia and Jake’s unexpected appearance. What were the freaking odds they would show up at a restaurant so far out of town? He supposed that to expect the unexpected was becoming a way of life with him.

  As much as he’d wanted Kate to come back with him tonight, to settle her into his home, she’d convinced him to wait until tomorrow, when the children would be up and they could introduce the idea of her-as-nanny together.

  She was right, of course. But uneasiness tumbled through him at the idea that what they’d done today was as fragile as a bubble that might somehow burst by morning if they weren’t together. But maybe that was just because he’d spent the last five years waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now that the shoe had dropped, with Melissa’s custody grab, he could stop looking over his shoulder for impending doom. He could see the damn thing coming. But with Kate back in his life, he felt like he could breathe again for the first time in years.

  Kate lingered in the passenger seat, gathering up her things. “I’m sorry about tonight,” she said. “You went to a lot of trouble.”

  “None of that matters,” he said. “As long as you don’t change your mind.”

  A scowl furled her pale brow. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Can’t say that I’d blame you if you did. It’s pretty off the hook, what we did today.”

  A soft smile curved her lips. “That’s why it’s perfect. As you said, anything less than crazy just wouldn’t be enough.”

  He sighed and stared past her, toward her apartment. “My kids are already wild about you. You know that.”

  “I kinda like them, too.” She brushed her fingers against the petals of the wilting Calla lilies, then seemed to realize what he was saying. “No, really. Don’t worry about that, Finn. I promise I’ll do everything in my power to protect them. Whatever issues we have, whatever stands between you and me, has nothing to do with your children. They’re just kids. They had nothing to do with what happened in our past.”

  Her words made his chest constrict. What happened in their past did still stand between them. And maybe always would. She didn’t trust him, and he supposed he deserved that. She’d claimed there might be a certain payback involved where Melissa was concerned, but he couldn’t be sure whether she felt the same about him.

  One thing he believed, however: she cared about his children. She might even come to love his children. But he would never have agreed to this if he didn’t believe, with his whole heart, that Kate would never blame them for the mess he’d made of his and Kate’s lives. Still, he was glad she’d said the words out loud. For him, this marriage might be a way to mend the past with Kate, but first, it was about keeping Cutter and Caylee.

  The sun was down and the streetlights had come on in town. Marietta was mostly shut down by this hour and except for the crickets that chirped in the distance, the quiet seemed almost intimate as they got out and he walked her up the walkway to her door.

  “What time should I come tomorrow?” she asked when they stopped on her stoop.

  “Whenever you want. Or,” he suggested, “come tonight.” The invitation in that suggestion was just that—an invitation.

  “No, tomorrow. I’ll come over then.” She reached into her purse searching for her keys.

  He braced an arm on the door beside her head and leaned close. “So these rules of yours...specifically the one against kissing, don’t technically, start until tomorrow, right?”

  Her lips parted and she leaned back against the door. “Technically speaking, they’re already in force.”

  “Yeah? Because I was thinking...” he said, softly, studying her eyes in the moonlight. They’d gone dark all of a sudden and she blinked up at him with the first hint of uncertainty he’d seen in her since they’d reconnected. He didn’t touch her, but closed the distance between them until he was close enough to feel her heat. “Since I’m forced to leave you here at your own door on the night of our wedding, the least I can do is kiss you goodnight.”

  “That’s...that’s not a good idea.”

  It wasn’t fear he saw in her eyes, but heat. Want. Maybe even need. Need he recognized from so long ago, when what was between them was a thing that made them both want to spend entire days in bed and made keeping their hands off each other nearly impossible. But that was then. He’d already stolen one kiss from her. The next one would have to be hers to steal.

  “You’re probably right,” he conceded, dipping his face against her hair to catch the fragrance of her shampoo—some lemony, minty thing that brought to mind long, cool drinks in the shade. Whether she meant to or not, she tilted her head back against the door as he brushed the tender skin of her neck with his lips. “Who knows what could happen, right? With a simple kiss between you and me?”

  She swallowed thickly. “Right. I mean, it...wouldn’t change anything, because—” Her words fell off then, as his tongue dampened a spot on her throat.

  “Because?” he asked.

  “—because abiding by the rules will protect us.”

  “From what?” he whispered, brushing his mouth up the side of her throat until he felt her quake. He heard her keys drop from her fingers and hit the concrete step. Her eyes flew open at the sound.

  “From going where we both know we shouldn’t go,” she said, placing her hands against his chest and gently pushing him away.

  He took a step back, reining in whatever had just been about to happen between them. He’d heard her rules and tonight was probably too soon to try to break them. But he damn well intended to break them.

  Kate was like a concrete-coated flower whose outsides needed chipping away. That tough exterior was a façade that even she was convinced was real. The girl who didn’t believe in love anymore, the one who dallied with tattooed musicians who wouldn’t have the vaguest idea what to do with a woman like her, even if he could catch her, that Kate wasn’t the same one he’d known back in Missoula. He guessed he was the one who’d put that coating there, and the one who’d have to chip the damned stuff away.

  With a slow smile at the look on her face, he reached down and retrieved the keys for her. “Better get inside, you. I gotta get home to the kids. Past Izzy’s bedtime.”

  Settling the keys into her palm, he backed away, then headed down the two steps to the sidewalk.

  “Finn?” she called, still braced with her back to the door.

  “Yeah?”

  She thought better of whatever she’d been about to say and simply said, “See you tomorrow.�
��

  He nodded. “Night, Kate.”

  ***

  Kate and Olivia met at the Main Street Diner the next morning, but the place was so crowded, they decided to duck into the less crowded Java Café and take a walk instead. Kate ordered coffee and two blueberry scones from Sally Driscoll, the barista, and handed one to her sister. Outside, they strolled past the quaint, red-brick western store fronts on Main Street, where banners decorated every lamp post, announcing the upcoming 77th Annual Copper Mountain Rodeo.

  The rodeo itself had become the grand finale to a premier event in Marietta that few locals missed, complete with a grand dinner right here on Main Street and dancing in the park. A momentary weakness had her imagining dancing under the twinkling lights with Finn, letting him hold her close, pretending they really belonged together.

  She pushed such insidious thoughts from her mind and refocused on the task at hand.

  It took two long blocks, winding down Collier and Church Avenues, to explain her convoluted situation to Olivia. And even as she talked, she was still trying to sort the whole mess in her own mind. She’d barely slept at all last night, fretting about moving in today. Enlisting Olivia to keep her secret kind of paled in comparison to what the rest of the day might hold with Finn’s children.

  As they began the loop again, they passed Sage Carrigan’s Copper Mountain Chocolate Shop, they stopped in unison and stared at the pretty goodies in the window like puppies eyeing cheese. Olivia took a sip of strong coffee, considering the madness of Kate’s new ‘arrangement.’

  “Almost more shocking,” she said at last, “than the fact that you married this guy to help him after what went down between you, is the fact that I never knew about any of it.”

  Her words broke the chocolate spell Kate had fallen under. There was hurt in Olivia’s expression. She couldn’t blame her. “I know, I know,” Kate said with a guilty look at her sister. “I’m sorry.”

  Olivia paused with a sigh. “But why? Why would you keep it from us? Not let us help you through it?”

  “I’m...I don’t know, Liv. I think...initially, I was afraid it wouldn’t last. And then, that I would screw it up.