Cowboy Up

by Stacy Finz

  “I told her to get in line. Besides having a drinking problem—or maybe because of it—no one likes me.” He smiled to show he was teasing, but it had a more sensual effect on Aubrey. The fact that they were sitting on a bed together only added to the sexual tension in the room.

  “Right,” she said, trying not to roll her eyes. “I’m guessing you have quite a fan club. Blondes, brunettes, redheads.”

  He chuckled but didn’t deny it.

  “What do you say we tape and paint the wall now?” Or else she might do something stupid and throw herself at him.

  He winked and got to his feet to go in search of a ladder, leaving Aubrey to realize that Cash’s surly shtick was quite possibly his version of dry humor with a bit of flirtation thrown into the mix.

  Don’t be getting any ideas. She forced herself back to business.

  She took a few minutes to appraise their paint job. Not bad. Then she measured out the placement of her stripes, marking the walls with a pencil. When Cash didn’t immediately return with the ladder, she headed to the living room, where Ellie had spread out on the couch. Aubrey brushed the girl’s legs out of the way and plopped down next to her.

  “I used to watch that show,” she said as the Tanner family’s living room filled the flat screen. “I bet your dad would take you to see the original Full House Victorian in San Francisco.” Aubrey had read somewhere that it was in lower Pacific Heights and that the Full House creator had purchased it for over four mil.

  “It’s really there?” Ellie perked up. “I thought it was a set, like in Hollywood or something.”

  “They might’ve filmed some of the scenes in a studio, but part of it was the real house.” Aubrey began stacking Ellie’s breakfast dishes, which now cluttered Cash’s poor excuse for a coffee table.

  “How do you know about it?” Ellie asked, and actually got up to take her bowl and glass to the sink.

  “I’m an interior designer,” she called to the kitchen. “I take an interest in these things.”

  Ellie reclaimed her spot on the sofa. “My mom was a police detective.” She puffed up with pride.

  “That’s what I heard. You know your dad used to be in the FBI?” It couldn’t hurt to pump Cash up in his daughter’s eyes. “I’ve heard he was a big-deal agent.”

  Ellie shrugged with indifference. “How come he doesn’t work there anymore?”

  Cash came in, carrying the ladder, and Aubrey said, “Why don’t you ask him?”

  But the opportunity was ruined when Travis and Grady followed Cash through the door like human tornadoes.

  “Ellie, you want to go with us to the pool in Dry Creek?” Grady hopped up on the couch and bounced up and down as if the sofa were a trampoline. “Uncle Cash said you could.”

  “Hey, Grady, buddy, how ’bout you sit down and take a breather?” Cash propped the ladder against the wall. “You want to go, Ellie?”

  In the summer, most of the kids swam in the creek, but in the last couple of years the high school had opened its pool to the public. Aubrey suspected it was a nice alternative because the pool had lifeguards, which probably put a lot of parents at ease.

  Ellie appeared to be on the fence about it. Aubrey couldn’t blame her; it had to be hard getting used to a new town with all its new faces.

  “A lot of girls your age go,” she said, knowing that Mercedes’s grandkids were regulars, as well as Mitch’s nieces. Apparently, all the middle-school girls had crushes on a few of the high-school lifeguards. “It would be a great way to make some new friends before school starts.”

  “I won’t be here for school.” Ellie lifted her chin in defiance.

  Aubrey could tell Cash wanted to protest but thought better of it and instead said, “You may as well make the best of the place for summer. It’s either the pool or painting, your choice.”

  “The pool!” Grady shouted.

  “The pool,” Travis seconded.

  “All right, the pool,” Ellie agreed. “I’ll put on my suit.”

  “I’ve got to text Yoda and tell her we’re waiting for Ellie. Otherwise, she’ll call my dad and turn it into an international incident.” Travis began tapping out a message on his phone.

  “Don’t call your sitter Yoda,” Cash said and put Travis in a headlock. “Give me her number. I want to make sure it’s okay if Ellie tags along.”

  “She said it was okay.” Travis tapped a few more keys. “I sent it to your phone.”

  Yoda? Whoever Yoda was, she must be desperate for a job. Jace’s kids were sweethearts in their own rambunctious way but rough as hell on nannies. They seemed to have made a game of running them off.

  Ellie came out of her bedroom in a pair of shorts embroidered with tiny whales. The straps of her bathing suit peeked out from under a white polo shirt. It was more preppy than the kinds of clothes kids wore in Dry Creek. Most of the town’s population lived on a ranch or worked at one. The uniform was basically cutoff jeans and tank tops. But Ellie looked adorable and not so different that she would stick out as an oddity.

  It was sweet to see Cash fuss over her, making sure she had suntan lotion, a hat, and a towel before she left the house. The kids took off for Jace’s to meet up with the aforementioned Yoda, leaving Aubrey and Cash alone.

  “Who’s Yoda?” she asked.

  Cash’s lips quirked. “The lady who used to work at the post office.”

  “Mrs. Jamison? She doesn’t look anything like Yoda.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know where they come up with half the stuff they do.” Cash moved the ladder into Ellie’s room and climbed up, motioning for Aubrey to hand him the roll of tape.

  “Be careful,” she warned.

  He looked over his shoulder as if to say, get real, woman.

  “Not the ladder,” she clarified, though anyone could fall, even Mr. Bad-ass. “The walls are uneven, so you have to improvise to make the stripes trick the eye.” She reached up and made some adjustments with the tape he’d begun to roll out until she was satisfied. “Do you have a level? If not, I could go home and get mine.”

  “I’ve got one.” He came down the ladder and disappeared for a few minutes, only to return with a laser level.

  “Nice!”

  “You like my tool, do ya?” He said it to be funny, not pervy, and she laughed.

  “No more construction jokes. Working for a development company, I’ve heard them all.”

  She and Cash hung the next strip of tape, working their way across the wall until they fell into a nice rhythm. He got the top of the wall and she got the bottom, tweaking as they went. A few times, their arms brushed and her heart raced.

  And once, while fussing to get the tape perfectly straight, their faces nearly collided, and she rubbed against his stubble just a tiny little bit to see how it felt against her skin.

  “Let me look.” She stood back, trying to gain some distance, and double-checked their work before they started painting.

  “Well? How’s it coming?” He came down from the ladder and stood next to her.

  “Good, I think. We’ll know better after we start painting the stripes. Worse comes to worst, I can touch up with the white. You ready to stay inside the lines?”

  “Inside the lines, huh?” He seemed to think about that for a while and finally said, “It’ll be a new one for me, but I’ll try my best.”

  She got the impression they were no longer talking about painting. “You must be a renegade, Cash Dalton.”

  He held her gaze, his eyes so blue they reminded her of Mill Lake in summertime. “Maybe, how ’bout you?” And then his eyes slid over her in a way that wasn’t altogether respectable.

  “Me? Uh…I’m pretty conventional.”

  “There’s nothing about you a man would call conventional.” He stepped in front of her and flicked a piece of tape off her shirt.

&nbs
p; She lifted her face to his, hoping she wasn’t misreading what was going on here. “Should I take that as a compliment?” Are you making a move on me?

  “Damn straight it’s a compliment.” His lips twitched and he tilted his head down close enough that she felt his warm breath on her cheeks. “You know I nearly kissed you the other day? How weird would it be if I kissed you now?”

  She chewed her bottom lip. “Probably pretty weird.” But she didn’t move away.

  His lips hovered barely an inch from her mouth. “Should we try it? What’s the worst that can happen?”

  It was just a kiss, she argued with herself, trying to dismiss all the reasons it was insane, starting with the fact that she’d just broken her engagement to another man. Her head told her to back away, but her mouth said, I don’t see how it could hurt.

  And then, just like that, he covered her mouth with his, tasting her lips until the kiss grew deeper. She opened for him and his tongue slid inside her mouth and tangled with her tongue, hot and wicked. She reached up to hold on to his shoulders before her knees buckled. Lord almighty, the man could kiss. He hadn’t even touched her with his hands, only his lips and tongue, and she felt it to the tips of her toes.

  She pulled him tighter, and his arms went around her and his hands moved up and down her sides. Without realizing it, she whimpered, and he became more brazen, letting those clever hands of his travel under her T-shirt. He touched her back and belly, making her shudder. Then he kissed her again. This time softly, with a deliberateness that caused her whole body to react. Her breath quickened, her neck and chest flushed, and she was wet.

  He too was aroused; she could feel the evidence of it pressed against her belly.

  “Mm,” she purred.

  He backed her up to the bed and started to push her down, then muttered, “Shit.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This is Ellie’s room…her bed.”

  Aubrey pulled away. May as well have poured a bucket of ice water over her head. They’d gotten caught up without thinking.

  “You were right,” she said. “Definitely weird.”

  Yet her body said something entirely different.

  Chapter 9

  Cash decided to drive to town and check up on the kids at the pool. He and Aubrey got the stripes painted, despite a bad case of blue balls. Although it had been a spectacular kiss, it had been a spectacularly bad idea. He needed to be focused on his daughter and his future, not on romancing his next-door neighbor.

  Aubrey had been a good sport about their brief makeout session, laughing it off and blaming it on paint fumes. But they’d had a pretty intense few minutes, and in the interest of honesty, he’d wanted to take it further. Much further. She’d felt unbelievably good in his arms, curvy and soft.

  It was a relief to want sex again. He suspected that had they been in his bedroom instead of Ellie’s, they would’ve made a marathon session of it. And now he didn’t know whether to thank fate or punch it in the mouth.

  He passed the bus station, snagged parking in the high school lot, and cut across campus to the gymnasium. For a tiny town, the good folks of Dry Creek had raised enough cash with a bond measure for an outdoor, Olympic-size pool, open to the public in summer. Because there wasn’t a lot to do in Dry Creek, it was considered quite a boon. Cash preferred the creek or Mill Lake, but he supposed the pool was more convenient for working parents who wanted a supervised environment for their kids.

  He found Mrs. Jamison sitting with two other women under a big umbrella. The kids were in the pool. Cash hung back, taking a seat on top of a retaining wall at the far end of the deck. Travis was at the deep end of the pool with a few kids his own age. Grady was whooping it up on an inflatable bull float, pretending to be a rodeo star. The kid was the loudest one in the water, but Cash got a kick out of his exuberance.

  Ellie was all alone, doing handstands in the shallow end. Cash scanned the area. There was no shortage of young girls, many of whom were laying on lounge chairs or towels, tanning themselves in the sun. There was a small clique that sat at the edge of the pool, dipping their feet in the water. Cash thought they looked about the same age as Ellie.

  He watched for a while, hoping Ellie had had the opportunity to make a few new friends. But from what he’d observed so far, she was playing by herself. The kids in Dry Creek had grown up together and could be clannish. As a kid, Cash had benefited from Jace being a local and their grandfather being a big figure in the community. Still, he, Sawyer, and Angie had never been treated completely like insiders, and he was afraid Ellie would have trouble fitting in. Right now, she could probably use a few friends.

  He continued to stay in the background because despite swimming by herself, Ellie seemed to be enjoying her time in the pool. Cash’s presence would probably ruin that, given how she felt about him. At least Linda had called. Thanks to Aubrey’s suggestion, Linda was sending one of Marie’s old jackets to replace the sweater he’d ruined.

  Jace came through the pool gate, spotted Cash, and waved, then stopped off to have a word with Mrs. Jamison. Several pairs of hungry eyes followed him.

  After a short conversation, Jace made his way to where Cash was sitting. “When did you get here?”

  “About ten minutes ago.” Cash nudged his head at Ellie. “I was hoping she’d meet a few girls from the middle school.”

  “It’s her first day in town, Cash. In the meantime, she’s got the boys.”

  Grady shouted “Cowabunga” at the top of his lungs, and they quickly turned to see him cannonball into the deep end.

  Jace tilted his head back to the sun as if he was praying for patience. “The kid never runs out of energy.”

  “You used to be like that before you got old,” Cash ribbed him.

  “I’m not old, asshole, just tired.” He grabbed a spot on the retaining wall, and Cash noticed for the first time that his cousin had a few gray hairs. They were both the same age: thirty-seven. “My campaign manager thinks I have to do something about the Aubrey rumors. I know what Sawyer thinks, but what about you?”

  “What does she want you to do?”

  Jace snorted. “Hold a press conference. To announce that Aubrey and I are nothing but friends. People are just going to believe what they want to believe. It seems making a big deal out of it just adds fuel to the fire, you know?”

  “How do you think the rumor started in the first place? Her moving to the ranch?”

  Jace watched Grady perform another cannonball, then in a soft voice said, “Mitch started the rumor, even though he knows there’s no Goddamn truth to it.”

  “Why?” Cash had learned a long time ago that nearly everyone had an ulterior motive for everything they did. Cynical? Maybe. But working many years in law enforcement had made him a cynical guy.

  Jace shrugged, but Cash got the sense it was a studied nonchalance. There was more going on here than Jace was willing to let on.

  “Would it be better if Aubrey moved off Dry Creek Ranch?” Cash asked. Better for whom? he thought to himself. The woman was certainly a temptation he didn’t need.

  “Nah.” Jace shook his head. “I’m not kicking her out. She needs a place to live and we need the rent.”

  They’d lived without the rent all this time. Cash knew Jace was just being obstinate. It was in the Dalton DNA. Besides, he suspected there weren’t a lot of rental options in Dry Creek. “Then what else can you do?”

  “I could beat the shit out of Mitch,” Jace said, but it was more to himself than to Cash.

  “Yeah, probably not the soundest of plans. Abuse of power and all that.”

  Jace socked him in the arm. “Since when are you the voice of reason?” He got up and threw a beach ball lying on the ground to a group of kids in the pool. “On another note, an acquaintance of mine is retiring from the Bureau of Livestock Identification. You should go for t
he job.”

  Cash threw his head back and laughed. “A cow cop? That’s pretty funny, Jace.”

  Jace turned to Cash and gave him a hard look. “You like being unemployed?” When Cash didn’t respond, Jace said, “Yeah, I didn’t think so. The pay is good, and you could continue to live on the ranch. And in my experience, cows are more amiable than people. The cattlemen around here need a good investigator and you’re the best. Think about it, Cash. With a good word from me, you’d have an excellent shot at getting the job.”

  It was Cash’s turn to pin Jace with a glare. “You sure about that?”

  Jace flipped Cash his middle finger. “This shit with Aubrey will fizzle out.” But just a few minutes earlier, Jace hadn’t seemed so confident. “You interested in the job or not? A position like this won’t last long.”

  “Nope, not interested.” Cash was done with law enforcement of any shape or kind. Period. And it wasn’t as if he knew a damned thing about cattle rustling.

  “Suit yourself.” Jace got to his feet, stuck his fingers in his mouth, and let out a whistle. It was something Grandpa Dalton used to do when he wanted to round up his grandsons.

  Travis and Grady climbed out of the pool, and Jace huddled up with them for a few minutes, then strolled out of the pool area, presumably to return to his office. Ellie got out too, grabbed a towel, and found an empty chair as far away from Cash as possible.

  The day had gone from hot to hotter, and a steady stream of kids and adults poured in. The place was starting to feel too crowded. Cash walked over to Ellie. He’d forgotten to give her money in case Mrs. Jamison took the kids over to the coffee shop or went to Grass Valley or Auburn for burgers at a drive-through.

  “You having fun, kiddo?” He squeezed the back of her neck and she pulled away.

  She lifted her shoulders, which Cash noted were getting sunburned. “The kids here are annoying.”

  “Annoying, huh?” He pulled up one of the last vacant chairs. “How’s that?”

  In her typical communicative way, she failed to respond. Like father, like daughter, he supposed. Cash had never been accused of being overly forthcoming.