by Cat Johnson
Pushing aside the memories, Keely picked up her filled tray. “He’s a guy. He’s going to look at my breasts and ass every chance he gets.”
“Looking can lead to more.”
Keely shook her head. “Not with Nick.”
She wove her way through the tables with fresh drinks, staying a few moments to chat with each customer. She knew everyone in the bar, which didn’t surprise her. Unlike the restaurants along the main road through Lanville, which drew tourists, the location of Boot Scootin’ on a small county road made it more of a locals’ hangout. Rarely did someone come in who Keely didn’t know.
She caught and held Nick’s gaze as she walked toward his table. A thrill shot through her when his gaze slid down her body to her thighs and back up to her face. A crooked grin turned up the corners of his mouth.
Despite her heart pounding and her palms growing clammy, she did her best to appear calm and in control as she picked up the empty beer bottles from the table. She glanced at Kory Wilcox in time to see him looking down her scoop neck T-shirt. That didn’t surprise her either. Like she’d told Dolly, a man would look if he got the chance. “You ready for another, Kory?”
He flashed her a boyish grin, one that probably made many gals tumble into his bed. Since she thought of him as nothing but a friend, it didn’t affect her. “Sure.”
She looked at the other two men at the table. “Ready for another?”
They both nodded, which left only Nick to place an order. She faced him, her tray propped on one hip. “How about you, Nick? Want another cold one?”
He slouched a little more in his chair, hooked his hands together at his belt. His movement drew her attention to his fly again. The bulge appeared bigger than it had a few minutes ago.
“Yeah,” he said in a low, husky voice. “I want another.”
Something about the look in his eyes made her think he wasn’t referring to beer. Memories of their one time together returned in a rush . . . the gentle kisses, the soft caresses, the slow slide of his hard cock into her wet pussy. The bite of pain when he’d entered her had quickly disappeared to be replaced with nothing but bliss. He’d made sure of her pleasure, caressing her clit until that burst of ecstasy had flowed through her body. Only then did he increase the speed of his thrusts. She’d wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his hips, and smiled when she’d felt his body jerk from his climax.
Keely had to force the memories aside again and straightened her shoulders. “Be right back with your order.”
She could feel the men watching her as she walked away, so she put a little extra wiggle in her hips to tease them. The whistle of appreciation she heard behind her made her grin. It felt good to be a little bit of a temptress every now and then.
“Damn,” Kory said, “she’s got a great ass.”
Nick agreed. He watched Keely sashay back to the bar, her tight jeans cupping her ass the way a man’s hands should.
The way his hands should.
Nick could be any number of places on a Friday night rather than the local bar. Several women in the small town of 2,400 had called him to see if he wanted to have dinner or go to a movie. Nick had turned down all of them. Instead, he sat here with his friends, country music that he hated blaring from the jukebox, and watched Keely wait on customers.
Sometimes he wondered if he’d been dropped on his head as a kid and his parents never told him, because it didn’t make sense for him to give up the chance of getting laid to lust after a woman he couldn’t have.
You can have her. All you have to do is tell her you want her. You know how she feels about you.
The little voice inside his head hammered at Nick to take that first step to have Keely in his life. He ignored it, the way he always did. He couldn’t get involved with a woman now, not with his messed-up life. A woman deserved his time and attention. Nick couldn’t give those when his every waking moment involved his cattle ranch.
“I’ve asked her to go out with me half a dozen times,” Kory said. “She always says no.”
Nick turned his head toward the younger man. “She’s four years older than you.”
“So? You ever heard of a cougar?”
A laugh sputtered past Nick’s lips before he could stop it. “I think that applies to women who are older than twenty-nine.”
Kory shrugged. “Age doesn’t matter to me.”
“It apparently matters to Keely.”
“Or maybe she doesn’t want to look at your ugly face for an entire evening,” Luis said with a grin.
Kory frowned. “Have you looked in the mirror lately, Hernandez?”
“Don’t have to.” His grin widened. “My wife tells me every day what a stud I am.”
Nick chuckled along with his friends. His laughter died as he watched Keely approach his table. He let his gaze wander over her slowly, taking in every detail of her voluptuous body in the red scoop neck T-shirt and tight, faded jeans. Those large breasts and wide hips were made for fucking . . . long, hard, and often.
Keely placed the new bottles in front of the other three men first, then made her way to Nick. She leaned over as she set his bottle in front of him, giving him an excellent view down her shirt. Full, ivory breasts formed a deep cleavage. He could see the outline of her nipples through the fabric. He imagined them pouting and hard while he ran his tongue over them until she cried out in pleasure.
“Need anything else, Nick?” she asked.
Her voice sounded breathless, raspy. His cock responded, lengthening and thickening in preparation to slide into her pussy.
After mentally telling his dick it wouldn’t get any nooky tonight, he shook his head. “I’m good. I gotta go as soon as I finish this beer.”
Nick thought he saw disappointment flash through her eyes. “Early night for you.”
“I have a lot to do in preparation of that cold front due in Tuesday.”
“You need an extra pair of hands, Nick?” Luis asked. “Sharon doesn’t have a big to-do list for me this weekend.”
“Thanks, but I have it handled. I hired a couple of high-school kids to help with the grunt work. That gives me more time to work on the stuff only I can do.”
“If you change your mind, call me.”
“Me too,” Kory said. “I’ll help if you need me.”
Quade Easton, the fourth man at the table, raised his hand. “Same here.”
Warmth spread through his chest at his friends’ offers of help. Nick had lived in Lanville his entire life and had made a lot of friends, but few who he cherished as much as the guys he worked with on the volunteer fire department. They were always the first to raise their hands when someone needed help.
Keely lightly touched Nick’s shoulder. “Be careful. Don’t try to do too much on your own.”
A different type of warmth spread through Nick’s body this time, a direct connection to Keely’s touch. The heat settled in his cock. He had to get away from her before that heat turned into a full-blown erection.
“Think I’ll head for home, guys.”
Keely glanced at the bottle she’d just set on the table. “You didn’t drink your beer.”
“I’ll donate it to one of these guys.” Nick stood, tugged a ten-dollar bill from his jeans pocket, and laid it on Keely’s tray. “See you later.”
“Hold up, Nick,” Luis said as he pushed back his chair. “I’ll walk out with you.”
Nick waited while Luis tossed some bills on the table, then walked out of the bar with his friend. One would never know a cold front would barrel through Lanville in four days. Stars filled the clear sky. “Nice night.”
“Yep.” Luis strolled alongside Nick toward Nick’s pickup. “Good night to be with a beautiful woman.”
Nick couldn’t argue with that. “Yeah.”
Luis leaned against the side of Nick’s pickup while Nick dug his keys from his pocket. “So why aren’t you? With a beautiful woman, that is. Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but you’d have a
hell of a lot more fun with someone like Keely.”
Nick had known the older man for over ten years and had thought of him as the big brother he’d never had. Even though sharing his feelings with another man made Nick twitch uncomfortably, he knew he could talk to Luis about anything and it would never go further than between the two of them. Same with Dusty Winston, his full-time ranch hand. No one else but Luis and Dusty knew about the ranch’s finances.
“Keely is off limits, Luis.”
“Why? If you can’t see how crazy she is about you, you’re completely blind.”
Clutching his keys in his hand, Nick leaned against the pickup next to his friend. “I can’t get involved with Keely or any other woman now, Luis. You know that.”
“No, I don’t know that. The situation with your ranch has nothing to do with dating. I do know that you’re a good-looking, healthy, twenty-nine-year-old man who should be burning up the sheets with a hot woman on a Friday night instead of drinking beer in a bar with a bunch of guys.”
Burning up the sheets sounded really good, especially if he burned them up with Keely. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option for him. “Keely is the kind of woman who deserves a commitment. How can I give her that when I don’t know from one day to the next what’s going to happen with the ranch?”
“It’s easier to face what happens each day if you have someone to hold at night. It sure is for me. I don’t know what I’d do without Sharon in my life.”
There could be no relationship for Nick, not until the red disappeared from the ranch’s ledgers. That didn’t mean he didn’t long for one. He wanted a close, loving relationship with a woman, like Luis had with Sharon. He wanted a family, a son or daughter—or both—to carry on his name and fill the emptiness in his soul.
He wanted Keely.
Nick slapped the other man on the shoulder. “You’re a good friend, Luis. I appreciate your concern, but I know what I have to do. Until it’s done, I can’t get involved with a woman. End of discussion.”
Luis held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, no more bugging you.”
“Promise?”
A frown turned down Luis’s lips. “Don’t push it, Fallon.”
Nick laughed. “Deal.” He opened the driver’s side door and slid beneath the steering wheel. “Give Sharon a hug for me.”
“Will do.”
Nick waited until Luis walked away before he started the pickup and pulled out of the parking lot. On the drive to his home, he went over all the things in his mind that he had to do over the next three days before the blast from the North Pole hit on Tuesday. Two thousand head of cattle had to be fed, no matter what Mother Nature did. If the cold lingered, as all the meteorologists predicted, his tanks could freeze, which meant hauling water to the cattle along with hay. The two high-school guys he hired to help him and Dusty might not be able to keep up and stay on top of their schoolwork, too.
Their education came first. If Nick had to work twenty hours a day to get things done, he’d do it.
He’d loved his father, despite the drinking and bad money management. But he wished his dad had been honest with him about the ranch’s finances so Nick would’ve been better prepared. It was hard enough losing his dad in a car accident without the additional worry of how to keep the ranch that had been in his family for four generations.
What Luis said about having someone to share his life with made a lot of sense. Curling up on the couch in front of the big stone fireplace in his living room, having a glass of wine, and talking with the special woman in his life would make everything so much easier. It wouldn’t be so difficult to face the next day if he had the woman of his dreams in his arms at night.
No matter how much he longed for that kind of life, until he could offer a woman a life without money worries, he would remain alone.
2
Nick hunched his shoulders to try and keep the wind from creeping down the neck of his heavy denim jacket. The meteorologists predicted a cold front and Mother Nature delivered it right on time. The temperature had dropped from the low seventies yesterday to the mid-thirties today. It wouldn’t get above freezing for at least five days.
Due to the unusually warm October and November weather, grass still grew over his 2,500 acres of land. That plus the hundreds of bales of hay he had stacked in his barns would give his cattle plenty to eat. The problem would be water. If the tanks froze—and Nick had no reason to believe they wouldn’t—he’d have to break up the ice on top of the tanks so his animals could drink. Should the cold spell last longer than predicted, the tanks would freeze solid, meaning he’d have to haul water to his cattle.
Not a fun proposition.
He remembered his grandfather telling him about a fierce cold front that moved through North Texas back in the ’80s. The temperature didn’t climb above freezing for almost two weeks. What a mess that would be if it happened again.
Thinking about what might happen wouldn’t accomplish anything. Nick had to work with now, today, and repair all the tears in the fence before any of his cattle wandered into the next pasture.
After attaching the barbed wire to the post, he held out the excess so Dusty could cut it. Now he and his helper could move down the fencerow in search of more tears.
“Done,” Dusty said as he snipped the wire. “I vote for a cup of coffee.”
After three hours in the cold, coffee sounded like an excellent idea to Nick. He gave the wire a good jiggle to be sure it stayed in place, then slipped his hammer into the leather loop on his side. “I second that vote.”
Their horses were tethered beneath a huge oak tree fifty yards away. The two beasts huddled together on the south side of the tree, out of the direct line of the cold wind. Smart horses, Nick thought as he and Dusty walked into the wind to get to the animals and the hot coffee that Nick’s housekeeper, Olive, had supplied.
Once he located his thermos in his saddlebag, Dusty sank to the ground between the horses. “Take a load off, Nick.”
Another good idea. Nick sat down with his own thermos, then leaned against the trunk of the tree. He removed his gloves, poured the hot coffee into the metal lid, and held it between his palms to warm them. The scent of the strong brew drifted up to his nostrils. He savored the aroma a moment before taking a sip. He released a satisfied sigh.
“God, that’s good.”
“Olive makes the best coffee I ever tasted.”
“Dirty dishwater would probably taste good now, as long as it was hot.”
Dusty chuckled. “True.”
Nick sipped again while letting his gaze wander the pasture before him. As far as he could see, the land belonged to him. At least for now. Thanks to his father’s drinking and gambling, Nick had inherited a mountain of debt along with the ranch two years ago when his father died. Climbing out from under that debt would be a long, slow process. But climb he would. He wouldn’t lose something that meant so much to him.
“Leg botherin’ you?” Dusty asked.
The question didn’t surprise Nick. He’d expected it. No matter how much he tried to hide it, the cold made his left thigh ache. He couldn’t help babying that leg when it flared up as it had today, yet he hated to admit the weakness to anyone. “It’s fine.”
Dusty scowled. “Don’t bullshit me, Fallon. I know the cold bothers it. Why don’t you let those two kids you hired help me with the fencing?”
“Those two kids are in school, which is where they should be on a Monday.”
“They could help after school.”
“They’ll have homework or some kind of sports practice after school. They only work on the weekends.” Nick raised a hand before Dusty could say anything else. “My ranch, my responsibility. End of discussion.”
The scowl still on his face, Dusty looked off in the distance. “You’re as stubborn as your old man was.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult.”
A hint of a grin made Dusty’s lips twitch. “Maybe a lit
tle of both.” He turned his head toward Nick. “I’ve worked on this ranch for twenty-six years. Your dad was a good man. He loved you and your ma somethin’ fierce.”
“I know he did,” Nick said softly.
“He enjoyed a drink like everyone does ever’ now and then. He didn’t start drinkin’ heavy ’til your ma died.”
“I know that, too. I just wish he would’ve been more upfront with me about money so I could’ve helped him.”
“What more do you think you could’ve done?”
Nick shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. Get a second job or something.”
“Hell, Nick, you were only twenty-four when you lost your ma. She was sick a couple years before she died. You took over all the bookwork she used to do when you were barely out of college, along with doin’ all the physical work a man has to do on a cattle ranch. Don’t know how you could’ve juggled a second job on top of all that.”
“I should’ve known he was in trouble financially. There should’ve been something to alert me.”
“Your dad was real good about hidin’ his problems, Nick. Hell, I knew him half my life and I didn’t know he was slowly workin’ his way through his personal savin’s. You didn’t have access to that. That was his and your ma’s private account. You had no way to know he was in trouble.”
Everything Dusty said made sense. Still, Nick couldn’t help the guilt that sat on his shoulders that screamed there had to have been more he could’ve done to help his father.
The sharp beep-beep-beep that came from his jacket pocket drew his attention back to the present. The pager went off again before he removed it from his pocket and pressed the button to stop the noise.
“Uh-oh,” Dusty said. “I know what that sound means.”
“Yeah, three beeps mean a house fire.”
A shiver slithered up and down Nick’s spine. He’d volunteered to work on the fire department shortly after he’d turned eighteen. He remembered how cocky he’d been at that age, how sure he could do anything and never get hurt. Getting trapped beneath a beam in a burning house quickly taught him life could end in a second without any notice or time to prepare.