Charming the Cowboy

by Liz Isaacson

  “You have a mild concussion.”

  “I found a rubber spatula in your house when you couldn’t.”

  Levi liked this banter between them, enjoyed Heather’s quick wit, and he said, “I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”

  “Well, I would like to go see your farm,” she said, pushing herself into a standing position. Well, at least a flamingo standing position. “And then you can take me over to my school.”

  Levi pretended like he didn’t see her wince, didn’t see her hippity-hop on her good foot. “All right.” He swept to her side just to be there in case she stumbled. “Let me get the wheelchair.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t need it.”

  “Heather, you sprained your ankle. It was almost fractured.”

  “It feels okay,” she said, testing her weight on it. “Maybe just one crutch.” She blinked up at him, sheer determination in her expression. “And I’ll hold onto your arm.”

  Levi couldn’t believe he liked the sound of that, but he sure did. “One crutch, and you hold onto my arm. And you tell me if you’re feeling tired in the slightest.”

  “Is this a negotiation?”

  “I signed a paper,” he said. “A doctor’s legal consent form.”

  “You didn’t even read it.” Laughter sparkled in her eyes.

  “Which means I could get in trouble for anything. I wasn’t kidding when I said the ground at the ranch was uneven. My farm’s not much better.”

  “So I’ll use a crutch, and hold onto your arm, and tell you if I’m feeling tired in the slightest, and I’ll watch my step.” She smiled, and the action sent heat right through Levi’s veins. “Why even go outside?”

  “It’s a beautiful day,” he offered. “Let me grab the crutches from the mudroom.” He left her balanced on one leg with one palm pressed into the table. He hurried to grab one crutch and help her get settled on it. She couldn’t get it up under her injured arm, and she didn’t need it on the other side.

  “I honestly don’t think I need this,” she said, looking at him for approval.

  “I don’t see how it’s going to work,” he admitted. “Let’s try it without.” He offered her his arm, and she slipped her dainty hand through the crook of his elbow. The skin-to-skin contact made him want more. Maybe palm-to-palm. Laced fingers.

  Mouth-to-mouth.

  Levi cleared his throat, his face flaming now and desperate for fresh air, and edged toward the double French doors that led to the deck. “All right?”

  “We’ve taken two steps.”

  “I was just asking how your ankle felt.”

  “It’s…twingy,” she said as she gently settled her weight on it. “But tolerable. I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as you think it is.”

  “I just….” Levi wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Everything had been blown wide open between him and Heather, and he felt like the ground wouldn’t be able to hold his weight when he took the next step. But it did. And Heather waited patiently for him to continue.

  Everything he’d suspected about her was true. She didn’t miss many details. She’d want to know everything about him. She’d demand it.

  He’d already told her about his first marriage. And it was a short step from that to the baby. And then…. He swallowed as the already warm fall air came into the house as he opened the door.

  “So I have peach trees here in my back yard,” he said, moving on from the unfinished sentence in his head. “And my gardener put in native trees and plants and flowers.”

  Heather paused at the top of the steps that led to a gravel path, which took them out to the barns and stables. “It’s beautiful. So quiet too, even though you’re right on the edge of town.” She looked at him. “And you have a gardener. What do you do for yourself?”

  “I have the money,” he said, realizing how close to the edge he really was. “And I figure I’ll spend my time doing what I like and let someone else do the stuff I don’t.”

  “Like cook, and clean, and mow grass.”

  “I take care of the farm,” he said. “I like my goats, and my chickens, and my horses.”

  “And you run the boarding stable.” She looked down and carefully put her injured foot on the step below.

  Levi held her tight and moved with her. “Right. I love the boarding stable.”

  “And you started that after you returned from Kentucky, right?”

  “Yeah.” He exhaled, ready to tell something that wasn’t too personal. “I loved the sprawling stables and farms there. There are a lot of horses in Kentucky.” Just the thought of the long rows of white fences and green pastures filled with horses made him smile.

  They reached the bottom of the steps and the gravel crunched beneath their feet. On the less flat surface, Heather took an additional moment before committing her weight to her foot.

  “Since I love horses, and I’d seen what a great boarding stable looked like, I came back here and started my own.” He shrugged as they approached the barn where Whiplash, Sundance, and Genie lived. The pregnant little goat bleated, and Levi smiled.

  “Most people have enough land to keep their own horses,” he said as they approached the fence. “But I seem to do okay with the riding lessons, and the open riding seems popular.”

  Heather started laughing, and the sound of it floated away into the sky. “Yeah, that open riding seems popular with the ladies.”

  Levi chuckled and ducked his head. “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “Oh, so you know? You know that every single woman in the county is coming out to your stables on Friday night?”

  “In the county? Come on.” He reached the fence and reached over it to pat Genie’s head. “Hey, Genie. You look good this morning.” He peered at her, wondering if he should call Brighton and cancel his appointment.

  “Levi?” Heather asked.

  He switched his attention from the goat to her. “Yeah?” He almost lost himself in the porcelain complexion of her skin, the push and pull of her ocean-colored eyes.

  “Are you interested in dating?”

  At least she hadn’t asked him how he’d earned all that money he used to pay his chef and his gardener. Didn’t mean he knew what to say. His heart thundered the way the horses did as their riders spurred them toward the finish line at the Derby. What could he say to keep her arm in his?

  Nothing came, and still Heather waited.

  Chapter Nine

  Heather couldn’t believe she’d asked Levi if he was interested in dating. She was basically asking him if he was interested in dating her.

  And he was taking entirely too long to answer.

  “What’s wrong with your goat?” she asked, taking her eyes off his and giving him an easy way out.

  “Depends,” he finally said, his voice rougher than normal.

  “On what?”

  “On who I’d be goin’ out with.”

  The corners of her mouth twitched. Her heart felt like she’d laid it out on warm sand, under the sun, with the sound of waves nearby.

  Levi moved his arm from where it leaned on the fence, and his fingers drifted along her hand and then lighted on her fingers. Her first instinct was to jerk away, afraid he’d know how she felt about him.

  But his hand clasped hers, and she didn’t want to pull back.

  Giddiness romped through her. She was holding hands with Levi Rhodes! Her mind spun with all that had happened, and she couldn’t believe an accident was what it had taken to get Levi to look at her.

  She wondered if he was still more concerned with what Dwayne would think than her actual well-being. The thought poisoned the moment, and she pushed it away.

  “So Genie is pregnant, but she’s not the one I called Brighton about,” Levi said, like it was no big deal that they stood holding hands on his farm. “That’s Whipp. She’s gettin’ old.” His voice carried a hint of sadness, and Heather squeezed his fingers.

  “When is Brighton coming?”


  “She didn’t give me a time.”

  “So we have time to see the horses?”

  “You don’t like my goats?” He tilted his head toward her, hooking her gaze out of the corner of his eye.

  She honestly had no idea Levi could tease and flirt the way he did. She hadn’t seen him go out with many women in the past several years, but he was good at making her feel like he was absolutely interested. Maybe he practiced his wit on these goats. His pick-up lines with the ponies. Or maybe he was simply pure male perfection.

  “I prefer horses,” she said simply, feeling inadequate in more ways than one.

  “Well, I have plenty of those.” He nodded his cowboy hat further down the path. “Stables back there.”

  She stepped carefully, increasing the pressure on his hand. Her ankle was uncomfortable but not too painful. It was her arm that ached with an intensity that never really faded. She didn’t want to tell him, though, because he’d take her right back to the house and drug her up. Maybe if he swept her off her feet and carried her….

  “Do you need my arm?” he asked, jolting her out of her insane fantasies. But her heart and brain were both screaming at her that she was holding Levi’s hand! So the fantasies were completely justified.

  Unable to give up his hand, she shook her head. “I’m okay.”

  He pushed into the stable, and the familiar scent of straw and animal and leather met her nose. She took a deep breath of it, and it smelled like home. She sighed, and Levi looked at her. All of his features went soft and for a moment, Heather saw the boy she’d grown up with. She wanted to reach up and stroke her fingers down his clean-shaven jaw, but that would require her to give up his hand and she didn’t want to do that.

  “You love farms,” he said. “Or rather, ranches.” He wasn’t asking, and Heather didn’t want to deny it anyway.

  “I love everything about ranches and farms,” she admitted, leaning a little further into his body. And he received her, something Heather hadn’t even fathomed happening in this lifetime.

  “Levi?” a woman called.

  “That’ll be Brighton.” He transferred her hand to a post. “Let me go talk to her, and then we’ll go see Margarita.”

  “How’d you know she’s who I wanted to see?”

  “You’ve always had a crush on Margarita.” He flashed her one of his brilliant smiles and went to meet the vet. Heather felt the temperature rise in the stable, but she also felt like he’d stolen her breath.

  He knew which horse of his she had a crush on? How? She’d never been out to his farm, and he rarely brought his personal horses over to the boarding stables.

  And if he knew she liked Margarita best, had he known all this time that she’d had a crush on him?

  Determined not to be embarrassed for how she felt, she took tentative steps down the aisle, noticing how clean Levi kept his stable. Maybe he had a stable boy to do that. Heather smirked at her internal joke, but made a mental note to ask him about it.

  Almost immediately, she said aloud, “You will not ask him about it.” He’d flinched with every question she’d asked him, and though he’d shared something deeply personal with her last night, she knew it had been difficult for him.

  She lectured herself not to micromanage the man. Let him come to her. Let him volunteer some information first.

  “You can’t control this,” she muttered as she arrived outside of Margarita’s stall. She clucked her tongue at the horse, who started toward her, hanging her big red head over the gate. She could train horses, get them to do exactly what she wanted them to. She could train third graders, reward them for standing at their desks the way she wanted them to.

  She could not train Levi.

  She’d tried to do that with men before, and it had never gone well.

  Gotta do something different, she told herself as she stroked Margarita’s neck.

  “Hey,” Levi said as he approached. “You moved without holding onto my arm. You violated our deal.”

  Giggling, she twisted to find him striding toward her in all his masculine glory. “What are you going to do about it?”

  He paused and cocked his hip, sweeping his heated gaze from her face down to her toes and back. “Lunch.”

  “Lunch?”

  “And not something Juan Carlos has made.”

  “So you’re going to torture me with disgusting food, is that it?” She cocked her hip to mirror him, but her sprained ankle and other injuries on that right side didn’t agree with her movement.

  She stumbled, and a cry slipped from her lips, and Levi lunged forward. “Whoa, whoa.” He caught her around the waist and steadied her. She put her good hand on one of his shoulders and tried to do the same with her broken arm.

  Pain poured through her, and tears sprang to her eyes. A shriek escaped her mouth, and Levi’s eyes went from filled with desire to filled with concern.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Leg? Arm?”

  “My arm. I—I need to go back to the house.”

  “Let’s go then.” But he didn’t move. Neither did she. He gazed down at her, and it seemed like nothing could penetrate the circle of shadow his cowboy hat cast onto her face. Though they stood in a huge stable, on a big farm, with expansive peach orchards surrounding them, Heather felt like it was just her and Levi.

  “If I was the one asking, would you go out with me?” she asked.

  This time, Levi didn’t hesitate. He said, “Yes,” in that husky, sexy voice she’d only dreamed about.

  Heather’s stomach fluttered, and she smiled. “Great. This afternoon, you can take me to my school and help me get everything laid out. Should be a hoppin’ time.”

  “Oh, that won’t do.”

  “No? What would do?”

  “Well, for a first date, we’d need to do something amazing. I mean, that’s what you talk about for the rest of your lives.” He finally backed up a bit and stepped toward the exit. She laced her hand through his arm and held on, more tired than she cared to admit.

  “The rest of our lives?” she asked.

  “I mean—” But he didn’t finish. She’d let him off the hook earlier when he’d done that, but she really wanted to know what he meant by his statement about first dates.

  “What was your first date with your first wife?”

  “Yeah, like that,” Levi said. “I just meant people talk about their first dates.”

  “Even if the relationship doesn’t work out?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I think so.” He stepped with her out into the sunshine. The air was scented with peach leaves and animals, and Heather loved it too. “Don’t tell me you can’t detail all of your first dates.”

  “Well, the ones with men where the relationship turned serious.”

  Levi didn’t respond to that. They passed the goat shed where Brighton was in the fenced area with the older goat. He helped her up the stairs with patience and kindness, and Heather liked this side of Levi.

  “So our first date has to be something great.” He opened the doors to the house. “And it’s not sub plans.”

  Exhaustion consumed Heather, and she tried to give him a flirtatious smile. She was sure she didn’t pull it off, because Levi didn’t sweep her into his arms and carry her to her bedroom. He made her walk, and he made sure she was sitting on the bed before he bustled back to the kitchen to get her pills.

  “Rest for a while,” he said. “I’ll be outside with Brighton and Whipp for a little bit. I’ll come check on you soon.”

  Heather swallowed her medication. “Thanks, Levi.”

  Emotion stormed across his face and he took the glass of water back from her. “Thanks for letting me take care of you, Heather.”

  She watched him go, wondering when he’d started feeling things for her. Before the accident? Or after?

  And did that matter?

  Chapter Ten

  Levi kept his focus on Brighton and what she did with Whipp. Otherwise, his mind wandered down crooked paths.
Dark paths, with Heather’s hand in his, and all his secrets out in the open.

  His heart pounded though Brighton’s news was good. “She just needs to get up and move around more.”

  “So I need to exercise her?”

  “And make sure she’s eating enough.”

  “I swear she never stops eating.”

  Bright laughed. “Goats are like that.” She took off her gloves and looked at him with her bright green eyes. “How’s Heather doing?”

  “You know, she seems to be doing okay.” He glanced toward the house as if she’d appear on the back deck. “She’s out of the wheelchair already, so that’s something.”

  Brighton nodded and bent to retrieve her bag. “Tell her hello from me. She looked like she was in a lot of pain.”

  “She did?” Levi hadn’t even noticed. Had he fallen so far down that rabbit hole already? Of course he had. He’d told her about Johanna, and he thought he might have told her anything. She’d asked him if he was interested in dating, and then she’d point-blank asked him to go out with her.

  Levi knew how life went. If they stayed together, she’d tell that story—her limping and hurt in his stable, asking him out for the first time—over and over and over.

  And it was too late to change it now.

  So what? he asked himself. If he’d wanted to start something with Heather, he could have. Years ago. Or last week.

  What was strange was how she’d always been there, and he’d never seen her.

  “Just a hundred today,” Brighton said, making Levi blink his way out of his own thoughts.

  “Let me run inside for a sec.” He took the steps two at a time up to the deck and then went into the master bedroom. He kept cash in a small envelope in the top drawer of the desk in his office, and he took out a hundred dollar bill to pay Brighton.

  Once she’d gone, Levi stayed outside on the deck. He found his thoughts could work through themselves better outside of walls, and he needed some time to get things straight in his mind.

  His phone rang, and he swiped on the call from Dwayne. “Hey, how’s my sister?”

  The warblings of organ music could be heard in the background, and Levi assumed Dwayne was calling from the church. “She’s doing okay. We went outside to the farm this morning, and I think she got tired. Probably because she made eggs.”