by Cora Seton
Instead, she leaned her head back against the seat trying to sleep herself. Anything she dreamed while she slept couldn’t be any worse than the nightmare her life had become in the last two days. Well, hopefully it would be over soon. Austin said he needed to call his boss with an update on the ranch hand, so that must mean he was still employed at the ranch, right?
He obviously had a lot of responsibility, and she took him saying he was well taken care of there to mean financially. As far out in the boonies as the ranch was, there was no way it could be financially feasible for him to drive all the way to town for part-time shifts at the station, even Captain shifts, to get his foot in the door. That meant applying for the Chief’s job was out of the question too. The board always hired from within if someone qualified applied for the job. She was a qualified applicant, he wasn’t even an employee. Case closed.
The tightness in her shoulders eased some, and Sunny’s head lolled as she eased into a welcome, peaceful nap.
Chapter Eight
‡
Austin parked the truck by the barn and glanced in the rearview to see his backseat passengers were sound asleep. One was making cute little sounds that reminded him of a kitten purring. The woman on the right side of the truck whose face was finally peaceful. Those tiny furrows that separated her tawny eyebrows relaxed. He figured the only time Sunny Gleason was truly relaxed, and not on guard and trying to control everything around her, was when she was sleeping. And like the guys at the station—her son, on the opposite side of the backseat, couldn’t relax either, unless his mother was sleeping.
With a huffed breath, Austin opened his door and walked around the truck. He met Rand on the other side. “I think the guys are out right now moving the broncs to another pasture. Go look around.” He pointed toward the long wooden building off to the right behind the largest barn. “The bunkhouse is over there.”
Rand gripped his shoulder smiling, and it reminded him of the one and only smile he’d seen on Sunny Gleason’s face out at the fire in the marijuana field. That woman needed to learn to loosen up and have a little fun for a change. Her brother was right about her being wrapped entirely too tight.
“Thanks man. You have no idea how much I appreciate you rescuing me from those women. Between Sunny and my Momma, and staring at the four walls I was real close to begging them to send me to the county mental hospital.”
“I appreciate the help,” Austin replied. “If you’re sure you’re back on your feet enough for the job?”
“I’m good to go,” Rand replied, tilting his chin arrogantly, again reminding Austin of the man’s sister. “This limp is not going to hold me back. They can shove the rest of that therapy and the damned cane they told me to use up their ass, because I’m way past done.”
More of that arrogance and bravado. It must be a family thing. Ditching therapy probably wasn’t the best idea for a man who had his hip and other body parts almost crushed by a bull. Neither was pushing his recovery by immediately getting back on said bull. At least if he was out here, he wouldn’t be getting back on a bull. Austin was going to make sure of it. Just like he was going to with Tanner, who he knew would be just as hardheaded as Rand when he got out of the hospital tomorrow.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, buddy,” Austin said, shaking his head.
“I got this,” Rand assured him with a cocky grin. “This will be a cake walk compared to what I usually do.”
“Okay, then. Go look around and we’ll catch up with you later. Let me know if you have any questions.” And try to stay out of trouble. We’ve had enough of it around here lately.
Austin watched Rand limp toward the barn before he turned to open the back door of the truck. Gently shaking Sunny’s shoulder he said, “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
And she was beautiful right then with the sun glinting off of her golden hair, her gorgeous face relaxed. She stirred, but Billy sat straight up, his face a comical mask of disorientation. Sunny though, just nuzzled her face into his hand and delicious fire sizzled up his arm.
Cupping her face, Austin lifted her lolling head and leaned near her ear. “Wake up, beautiful,” he murmured, taking the opportunity to inhale her fresh flowery scent. Austin knew he wouldn’t have the chance to do that when she was awake, because she’d never allow him, or anyone for that matter, close enough for that.
To his surprise, Sunny’s face rolled toward him and her lips brushed his. With a moan, she lifted her chin as if seeking out his mouth, her hot, sweet breaths scorched his lips, and those soft, wet lips drew him like a magnet. Austin knew he shouldn’t, really shouldn’t, but he had no control as he closed the fraction of an inch between them to press his mouth to hers.
Waves of liquid heat licked through his body setting every nerve on edge when she responded. Squirming closer, her mouth opened and Austin took advantage to deepen the kiss. He drank as much of her sweetness as she’d give him, lapped it up. Sunny’s breath quickened, the pulse at her neck pounded as he invited her tongue to dance with his. His cock went rock solid as the rasp of her tongue against his made every hair on his body stand on end. A whimper was his only warning she was awake, so shock rocked him when she bit down on his tongue. Hard enough that he tasted coppery blood, as with a yelp he pushed her away and staggered back.
His eyes darted past Sunny to Billy who was sitting on the other side of the seat grinning. How in the hell could he forget the kid was awake? When Sunny’s mouth touched his, when she responded to him, Austin had forgotten everything except her taste.
“You kissed my Mommy. Does that mean I’m going to have a brother?!?” Billy asked, with excitement.
Horror flowed through Austin. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Sunny gasped, and her angry eyes swung toward her son. “No! Why would you think that?” she demanded.
Billy shrugged, his face falling. “Grandma says that’s where babies come from. She said you kissed my daddy and made me.” His chin notched down toward his chest, and Austin’s heart jerked. “I wish I could’ve met my daddy.”
Sunny’s eyes were hot pools of misery when she averted her gaze from Billy to pin Austin with a glare. After a few deep breaths, she blew one out. “Well, Grandma missed one very important detail. I have to agree to be kissed, before that magic happens.”
“So, you liked kissing my daddy? You let him kiss you to make me?” Billy asked quickly.
Closing her eyes, to Austin it looked like Sunny was gathering every ounce of patience she had before she replied. “I gave him permission to kiss me, yes.”
Well, Austin would definitely look forward to the day when Sunny Gleason gave him permission to kiss her. He wanted another taste of those lips, and more. Maybe when she was sleeping again, next to him in bed, he thought, as she swung her long legs outside of the truck. Or when she was wide awake and moaning as she wrapped those long legs around his neck so he could kiss her there too. At that minute, doing that was all Austin could think of—and more.
“Mommy, I want you to give Austin permission to kiss you. I like him and I want a brother to play with!” he shouted, as he opened his door and slid out of the truck. Sunny groaned, leaning her head on the headrest of the front seat. Austin turned toward the barn, and discreetly adjusted himself.
“Come on Billy, let’s go see the barn,” he said gruffly, having mercy on Sunny, who looked like she was about to have a mental breakdown.
Sunny sat in the truck a few more minutes letting the hot sun beat down on her tingling legs and other body parts while she pulled herself together, both from her son’s unexpected words and from Austin McBride’s unexpected kiss.
I wish I could’ve met him. Guilt pressed heavily on her shoulders and her soul. Had she done right by running away from Carrolton? At the time, Sunny was hurting so badly and was so desperate there hadn’t been another option.
Jason didn’t want to be in his life, she reminded herself.
“I’m not father material, Sunny
. It’s your damned fault for not getting on birth control. There’s no way I’m paying for eighteen years for your mistake.”
“It takes two to make a baby, Jason. You decided to forget your condoms, remember?”
“It takes two to prevent it too—you should’ve been on the pill like I told you. This is your problem, not mine. I already have one kid I’m paying for that I didn’t want. Firefighters don’t make a lot of money, so there’s no way I can help you.”
A kid he’d never told her about, and they’d been dating two years. When she found out the other baby was less than a year old from one of the other firefighters, Sunny had been devastated. That meant Jason had been cheating on her when the other baby was conceived. Had probably been cheating with Lord knew how many women the whole time he called himself her boyfriend. When the guys at the station started apologizing for him, looking damned guilty, she knew. They’d all known about it. When the Chief called her into his office to talk about her pregnancy, her plans to continue her job at the station considering the pregnancy and the tension between her and Jason, she figured out he’d known too. And he was telling her, without telling her, he thought she should be the one to resign, which she’d done.
Sunny left Carrolton that day, and swore that Jason could rot in hell for all she cared. He would never hear from her again, or influence her child.
I wish I could’ve met him.
No you don’t kid. He’s not worth a minute of your time, and I do not want you having that for an example of what a man should be. If he let me down in the worst way, he’ll let you down too. You’ll be just as devastated as I was when you finally see how he really is.
But it was obvious to her that she wasn’t doing a good job of being both mother and father to her son. He was latching onto and clinging to every man who wandered into his orbit. Her uncle, Rand—and Austin McBride.
Mommy, I want you to give Austin permission to kiss you.
Good God, what in the hell was she going to do? Find a man who wasn’t an adrenaline-soaked cowboy or a fireman to provide her son with a good example. But that meant kissing and sleeping with that boring man eventually, and just the thought of curling up with a white-skinned, milk toast accountant sounded as distasteful to her as that kind of job sounded to her son.
But kissing Austin McBride again didn’t sound like such a bad idea at all.
The tingling in her legs came back tenfold to zip up her legs and converge at the top of her thighs. Especially if he wasn’t a fireman. Cowboys, who weren’t bull riders, were good, dependable men, and he seemed stable. Maybe this could work after all, she thought, with a wobbly smile. Her son liked him, and grudgingly, now that it didn’t look like he would be competition for the Chief’s job, Sunny liked him much better too. Too much.
Standing, Sunny shut the truck door and walked toward the barn. Her steps slowed, because the nearer she got to the barn the stronger the smell of manure and horse became. Rand and Austin McBride could have it. Give her soot and smoldering ashes any day over this, she thought, as she walked inside and looked around for Austin.
A high-pitched squeal split the air, and a horse snorted. Sunny headed that way, because she knew that squeal. Billy was evidently inside of one of the stalls on the far side of the barn with either Rand or Austin. The last stall door was open, so Sunny stepped around it and what she saw inside made her heart dance. A very young foal was suckling it’s mother with Austin’s help. He looked up at her and smiled. “Look what came while I was partying with you at that fire,” he said with a laugh. “Our first bucking stock colt.” The pride in his voice, and the ownership in his words were not lost on Sunny. Regardless of what he said, Austin McBride was a cowboy at heart. He loved being a cowboy, and that made her very, very happy.
The shiny black foal seemed to know what Austin said, because he nose-butted his mother’s underside and she grunted. Austin leaned aside then fell on his butt, just avoiding the sharp little back hooves that shot out toward his shoulder.
Laughter curled in Sunny’s stomach then burst from her lips, and Austin grinned. “I think we’re gonna call this one Cowboy’s Nightmare, since he’s already showing signs of being prized bucking stock.”
Billy’s head appeared under the mare’s neck. “No—it’s Black Beauty, remember?”
Fear stopped her heart—that mare was huge and could crush Billy against the wall of the stall if she had a mind to do that. “Billy, you need to come from back there,” Sunny said calmly, holding the mare’s eye to try to gauge her level of agitation.
“I’m back here with him,” Rand announced, his head appearing over the mare’s back. “Chill out, sis—he’s fine.”
Chill out? Sunny opened her mouth to blast her brother, to tell him to get her son the hell out of the stall, but her eyes met Austin’s and they reassured her. When he added a slow wink, and a half-smile that mule kicked her heart, Sunny huffed a breath and nodded.
After the three guys finished supervising the foal’s feeding, Austin stood and brushed his hands on his jeans. “Let’s get the golf cart and go cut some wood,” he said with a wink at Billy.
“I want to ride a horse like you,” Billy said petulantly, as he scuffed the loose straw in the stall with the toe of his shoe. “Don’t want to ride in a golf cart.”
“I’ll let you drive,” Rand coerced, nudging Billy’s shoulder and he looked up and smiled. Sunny opened her mouth, but Austin was there again, his eyes telling her to just let things be. Easy for him to say, he didn’t have to pay her son’s hospital bills. But Sunny let it go, as Rand led Billy out of the barn leaving her standing there with Austin.
“Do you ride?” he asked with a wide smile before he shut the stall door and latched it. “I have a couple of mares who need exercise.”
“Um…I’ve never been around a horse in my life. That’s my brother’s specialty, and he can have it. If you’re thinking about putting me on a bucking horse, on any horse, think again.”
“It’s relaxing and fun to ride. Lord knows you could use some relaxation. Anyone ever told you you’re wrapped a little too tight?” Austin asked with a little chuckle, as he walked past her toward the back door of the barn.
Sunny just stood there, her feet feeling glued to the dirt floor. When Austin evidently realized she wasn’t following, he turned and his mouth ticked up. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Sunshine?” he asked, his gray eyes and lifted dark brow challenging. “Are you a big, bad firefighter-lady, or a chicken? Only chickens stay in the barn.”
Chicken. The only word that Austin McBride could’ve used to incite her to action. The word her brother had used to get her into all kinds of trouble as a kid—to get her to go along with his hair-brained ideas.
“Saddle up, cowboy. Let a real firefighter show you how it’s done. But I swear if you put me on a bucking horse, when I get out of the hospital you’re a dead man.”
Chapter Nine
‡
Two hours later, Sunny couldn’t figure out why she’d always been so scared to ride a horse. Austin was right, their ride out to the tree line in the far pasture had been relaxing. She also couldn’t figure out why they’d ridden all the way out here so the guys could chop wood.
It was damned hot out, the middle of summer in Texas, there was no reason for them to need firewood. But they were chopping.
Well, Austin was. Without a shirt.
When his shirt became soaked to his skin with sweat, he had no qualms about yanking it over his head and tossing it over a tree limb to dry. Sunny was not going to complain. The view from her perch on a log about twenty feet away from the tree Austin was dissecting was spectacular. She’d offered to help Rand and Billy move the logs to the bin attached to the golf cart and gather smaller limbs for kindling, but Austin told her today was her day off. He put her on this log and told her all she was going to do today was sit on this log and relax.
Austin McBride was good at giving orders, and Sunny had no idea why she didn’t balk,
other than she was exhausted from their call last night. So now all she had to do was sit like a bump on this log and watch him work, watch the ripple of his tightly packed muscles in his chest and arms work under his sweat-slicked skin as he wielded the axe.
Watching him was enflaming, exciting—deliciously naughty, but hardly relaxing.
Sunny felt like a voyeur as she considered the fluidity of his body movements, the ripple of his muscles, the confidence of his actions and the intense concentration on his handsome face to wonder if that same intensity would transfer to other tasks.
Like having sex. With her. Right now out here in the woods.
She imagined her hands gliding over his slick, hard body, tasting the saltiness on his skin as those muscles flexed under her touch, and his big hands wandered over her body. Biting back a moan, Sunny stretched her legs out in front of her to cross them at the ankles. She pinched her knees together against the damned throb her musings caused at the top of her thighs.
Austin stopped, studied her a second, then breathing hard, he shoved his hat back to swipe his forearm over his forehead. Sunny’s eyes followed a sweat bead as it tracked down his chest, glided between his pecs then ping-ponged off his tight abs until it disappeared under the waistband of his jeans.
“Sunshine, you keep looking at me like that and we might need to make a trip out to the line shack on the other side of the woods.”
“Like what?” she squeaked, her eyes streaking back up his big body to meet his heated gaze. He couldn’t know that she’d been fantasizing about him, but blood crept up her throat to her cheeks anyway.
Giving her a knowing grin, he leaned his weight on the axe handle and fisted his other hand on his hip. “Like I’m the tallest and sweetest glass of iced tea you’ve ever seen and you are dying of thirst,” he replied with a wink.
Oh, God—he did know! Sunny’s heart skipped a few beats as she shot to her feet and turned away to brush the dirt and bark from her butt, taking an extra second to find her composure.