Claimed by the Cowboy

by Sarah M. Anderson

  And just like that, they were back in high school. He was teasing her and she was glaring at him, and then she picked up her napkin and threw it at his head. He dodged and they both started laughing.

  It felt good to laugh again. It wasn’t that he hadn’t laughed in the last five years. So maybe it just felt good to laugh with Lucy again.

  When they finally quieted down—after several judgmental looks from other diners—Josh tried again. “I got you into this mess, sort of. The least I can do is bring you food and carry your luggage.”

  “You’re right,” she said with a smirk that meant that he had it coming and he had no choice but to sit there and let her cut him to shreds. “It is the least you can do. You’re on. I like pad see ew—medium hot plus.” She dug around in her purse until she came up with the stub of a pencil and a scrap of paper. She wrote down her address and slid it over the table to him. “I should get home by six thirty and, I told Grace Winchester that I would try to be out to the estate by eight thirty. That doesn’t give us a lot of time.”

  That made Josh’s eyebrows jump up. Time for what? He had meant it when he said this was just dinner—but was something else on the menu?

  “To eat and get packed,” Lucy hurried to add, her eyes getting wide again.

  He couldn’t fight the grin that took hold of his lips. Sure, this was still just friends having dinner. But there was no mistaking it—she had thought the same thing he had.

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Whatever it wound up being, he was looking very forward to it.

  Five

  Despite the fact that Lucinda had told Josh that she would get home about six thirty, she managed to get home at six. True, she had to bend the truth to get out of the meeting with John Jackson by saying, “I’ve got to run—the Winchesters, you know.”

  It wasn’t entirely a lie. She was heading over to the Winchester estate that very evening to set up camp.

  But first she found herself doing some last-minute cleaning while simultaneously trying to apply mascara without putting out her own eye.

  Needless to say, it was not going well. She’d gone—what? Six months without wearing mascara? Yes, the last time she’d caked it on had been to go to that gala fund-raiser for the hospital. Coincidentally, that was also the last time she’d worn her dress.

  Yet here she was wearing mascara for the second time in two days. And why?

  Josh Calhoun. A man she’d convinced herself she never wanted to see ever again.

  Six thirty came and went. Then six thirty-one. Six thirty-two.

  Oh, God, she was going to drive herself insane. She forced herself to stand in front of her meager closet. What exactly did one wear when sleeping over at the billionaire’s estate to make sure that he got his cancer treatments on time? Somehow, her fleecy pajama bottoms featuring frolicking penguins didn’t seem quite right.

  In general, frolicking penguins did not exactly scream professionalism and medical authority.

  Maybe she would just sleep in a pair of her dress slacks. She’d be rumpled, but at least she wouldn’t be humiliated.

  Her buzzer sounded, making her jump. Six thirty-six. That could still be reasonably construed as being on time.

  She hurried to the intercom. “Yes?”

  “I have pad thai,” Josh promised over the staticky intercom.

  She pushed the button that would let him in. “Come on up.” Although she didn’t know how she was going to eat at this moment.

  Her stomach was a hot mess, and as much as she tried to tell herself it was simply because she was about to put herself at the mercy of the Winchesters and the Newports for an indeterminate amount of time, that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it by a long shot.

  No, the reason she was nervous was knocking on her door. “Lucy?”

  She took a deep breath and opened the door. She hadn’t thought of herself as Lucy in so long that the name still sounded weird. But she couldn’t imagine Josh calling her anything else.

  He was leaning against her door frame, his arms full of grocery bags. “Good Lord!” she gasped as she stared at the bags.

  “Dinner is served,” he said in what could only be described as a gallant voice. He stepped into her apartment and then, before she could process what he was doing, he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “I have Thai,” he said, leaning back but not stepping clear. “A bottle of California Chardonnay and some ice cream from this new place I’ve heard of—Calhoun Creamery?” He winked at her. “I hope it’s good. I got you mint chocolate chip.”

  Lucinda knew that she needed to do something or say something. Maybe even shut the door. But he had just short-circuited her brain.

  He’d kissed her. He’d remembered what her favorite kind of ice cream was.

  And more than any of that, he was here.

  Josh was still standing over her, smiling down as if he was enjoying her complete and total befuddlement. “I’ll just put this in the kitchen, shall I?”

  “Oh. Yes.” She gestured in the general direction of her kitchen and managed to get her door shut. She was suddenly very aware of why, exactly, having Josh at her place made her so twitchy.

  It was because they were alone. Dinner at the pizzeria last night had been out in public. But right now?

  It was him and her. And some Thai food.

  She realized that she had never had a man over to her apartment before. Which sounded pathetic, but it was the truth. At almost the exact same instant, she remembered the last time she’d been alone with Josh—that awful night she’d embarrassed herself so completely in front of him.

  Right. He may have kissed her, but a friendly little peck on the forehead wasn’t any kind of seduction. Therefore, it wouldn’t do for her to act like this was anything more than a continuation of their conversation last night. They were friends. And there was no way she was going to risk humiliation a second time.

  Josh Calhoun was off-limits.

  She surveyed what seemed like enough food for a dinner party for ten. “Josh, how much food did you buy?”

  “This?” Josh looked at the chaos he had unleashed on her kitchen island. “It’s just some pad see ew, pad thai, crab rangoon, egg rolls, rice—it’s not that much.”

  “You know it’s just the two of us, right?”

  He paused in the process of putting the ice cream in the freezer. “Actually, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. It’s possible you have a roommate or...someone.” He shut the freezer with more force than was necessary. Then he turned and gave her that easy grin. “We didn’t discuss that at dinner the other night.”

  She blinked at him. “I’m not seeing anyone.” Which was the truth. However, it also neatly sidestepped the fact that she had never really seen anyone except for Gary. But she was doing her best to avoid sounding pathetic on what was still probably not a real date, so she left that part out. “You?”

  “No.” Considering that he was the one who had brought up significant others, his clipped tone seemed out of character. “Let me get the wine open. Can you get some glasses?”

  Oh. Right. She stepped around him—her kitchen was small—and got two matching glasses out of the cabinet. They weren’t wineglasses, but at least they were clean. She gave them to Josh and then got out the plates and the silverware.

  “Nice place,” Josh said as he poured them each a glass of wine. “Have you lived here long?”

  “About four years—since I joined Midwest.”

  “You have a hell of a view,” he said, looking out toward the living room with its floor-to-ceiling windows.

  She’d arranged the couch so that it faced the windows instead of the flat-screen television she only used to watch movies. She didn’t have drapes or anything on those windows. She hadn’t wanted anything between her and th
e sky and the water.

  She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “To be honest, most of the time I eat on the couch so that I can watch the colors at sunset.”

  “Then by all means,” Josh said, grabbing a plate and loading it up.

  They carried their plates and wine over to the couch and settled in. The sun was just beginning to set behind the building, and the sky over Lake Michigan was going from blue to pink and orange. They ate for few moments before Lucinda worked up the nerve to ask him about that clipped no. “I’m surprised.”

  “About what?” Josh asked around a mouthful of crab rangoon.

  “That you’re not seeing anyone. I always assumed you’d settle down, have some kids.” She knew immediately that it was the wrong thing to have said. She would have given anything to be able to take it back. But it was too late. The question hung over Josh like a dark cloud, and not even the brilliant sunset already fading into purple could burn it away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. God, she was an idiot. Because his reaction could only mean one thing.

  He had done just that and it hadn’t worked out.

  “Don’t be.” His tone was casual, but she heard how forced it was. “It was just one of those things.”

  She wasn’t buying that for a second. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really. But I don’t want to hide things from you.” He set his plate on the coffee table and leaned back, his eyes fixed at some point way out over the lake. “Sydney. Her name was Sydney.”

  Was. That was possibly the worst word in the English language. Was.

  “Graham Newport introduced us in my junior year. And, man, I was gone from the start.”

  She needed to say something here, something comforting and understanding that still kept things light. She was, after all, a professional at this sort of conversation. She had them weekly—daily, even. Bad news and loss were her constant companions.

  But Josh wasn’t her patient and Lucinda simply didn’t know what to say.

  He slid a sideways glance at her. “She was smart and fierce and she made me toe the line.” He grinned, but it was a sad thing. It made Lucy’s chest hurt. “She made me laugh. She’s the reason I made it through law school. She didn’t like it when I undersold myself, either. You would’ve loved her, Lucy.”

  “I would have,” Lucy murmured. “You needed that.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence fell between them as darkness fell outside.

  Too late, Lucy realized that she didn’t have any lights on in the apartment. One moment, she and Josh were sitting in a nearly light room. The next, they were in almost total darkness. “You asked why I left Chicago,” Josh said in the darkness. “My life here was with her. And when she died...”

  Lucy nodded, belatedly realizing that he probably couldn’t see her. There was something comforting about the darkness, where she couldn’t see his expression and he couldn’t see hers. “So you went back to Cedar Point.”

  “I did.”

  They were quiet for some time longer. Lucy finished her wine and sat forward, leaving her glass on the coffee table next to the remains of her dinner.

  When she sat back, her shoulder brushed against Josh’s. It was another innocent touch, much like his kiss on her forehead earlier. But at the same time, it wasn’t.

  Josh shifted and his arm came around her shoulders. She wasn’t sure if he pulled her against him or she was the one who moved first. The outcome was the same either way. She curled up against the side, her arm around his waist and her head against his shoulder as he held her.

  There was an intimacy to the moment, but for once Lucy didn’t overthink it. Josh had been right—they would always be friends. Right now, she wanted to let her friend know she was here for him and that she understood. More than anyone, she understood.

  She didn’t know how much time passed before Josh spoke again. “I didn’t really mean for that to be quite such a downer.” His voice was low and soft in her ear.

  “It’s okay.” And, honestly, it was. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m an oncologist. Death is a part of my life. You don’t have to apologize for it.”

  He squeezed her tight. “Thank you,” he said in a voice so quiet she had to look up to make sure she’d heard him correctly.

  “For what?”

  Somehow, she knew that he was looking down at her even though the room was almost pitch-black. Then he shifted and his fingertips brushed against her cheek and traced a path along her jaw. “For not telling me to get over it or move on or that it was God’s will. Because that’s what people always say and I hate it.”

  His fingers continued to move over her cheek in a slow, stroking motion. She wasn’t surprised at what he’d said—she’d heard it all and more. “I would never dismiss your grief like that,” she told him. Objectively, she knew all about the stages of grief and how people processed their loss.

  But she wasn’t thinking objectively right now. The arm that was around her side moved and his hand slid over her ribs and down her waist. She knew without even having to see that he was getting closer to her. She could feel the heat radiating off his chest, and the warmth of his breath against her forehead and then her nose. When he spoke again, she could feel the ghost of his lips moving against hers. “I missed you, Lucy.”

  This was wrong. So, so wrong. He was still in love with his wife and Lucy was married to her job, and it seemed as if there was something she was supposed to be doing right now—something that did not involve melting against him and trying to decide if she would wait for his kiss or just take one herself.

  But she couldn’t think of anything except Josh. Her hand skimmed up his chest and over his jaw and then there was no more space between them.

  Once, she’d kissed him. She didn’t remember very much of it because she’d been upset and desperate, and then there’d been the dawning horror that not only was he not kissing her back, but he was pushing her away and saying he couldn’t do “this.”

  The memory was so painful that, for a moment, she was physically locked up with panic. She couldn’t handle the humiliation, not again.

  And then Josh sighed into her mouth, a sound of satisfaction and need like she’d never heard before, and Lucy stopped thinking about that first, terrible kiss. Instead, she lost herself in his lips and his arms. Here, in the dark, it was okay. Everything was okay and getting better by the second.

  Then his tongue traced the seam of her lips and she opened for him and everything went from being okay to something else—something entirely different. Better. Hotter.

  Because, all of a sudden, Lucy’s skin started to tingle and her heart pounded and, unexpectedly, her nipples tightened to the point of pain—so much so that she arched her back to get closer to Josh in an effort to relieve the pressure. His sigh turned into a growl, a noise that she felt throughout her entire body. The space between her legs grew hot and heavy and the pressure was maddening.

  It scared her a little, the intensity of the physiological responses that blossomed out of nowhere. Because suddenly, after years of convincing herself she did not need a physical relationship with a man—that she didn’t need any physical relationship at all—she realized what a lie that had been.

  She needed this. She needed him.

  And she needed him now. She shifted, unsure of how to ask for what she wanted—unsure of what it was exactly that she wanted. But the pressure on her nipples and the weight between her legs were pushing her toward something.

  As she tried to adjust her angle toward Josh, he surprised her by lifting her onto his lap. She straddled him, which made everything better and worse at the same time. “God, Lucy,” he groaned before his hands slid down her back and his mouth captured hers again.

  He gripped her bottom and settled her against him more
firmly. She whimpered as his erection made contact with her, hard and hot between her legs. All she could think was, finally. After all these years, she was finally going to find out what everyone else in the whole wide world already knew about.

  Her head fell back as Josh ground against her, but he kept kissing her. His lips trailed down her neck and she arched into him again, her body begging for things she didn’t have the words for. She was bracketed in his arms as his mouth moved lower. He grabbed the placket of her shirt in his teeth and pulled it to the side, exposing the top of her breast.

  “I want this,” she managed to say as she loosened her grip on him long enough to undo the stubborn buttons. This must be why people were always ripping shirts off in movies—buttons took too damn long.

  Finally, she got three of the stupid things open. That was as far as she got before Josh was pushing her up and his mouth closed over her breast. Even though Lucy still had her bra on, the feeling of his mouth on her body was electric. Synapses and neurons all fired at once and the result had her shivering and shaking in his arms.

  She wished she could see him. That was the only thing she’d change about this moment.

  “Let me, babe,” Josh said against her skin as she clung to him. His hands moved—one had stayed on her bottom and the other came around the front to cup her breast. He pulled her bra aside and then his lips wrapped around her nipple and his teeth were on her skin and—and—and—

  “Josh!” His name was on her lips and his mouth was on her body, and she wanted this like she’d never wanted anything else. She’d always wanted this.

  “That’s it, Lucy. I just want to...” His voice trailed off as he reached between her legs and began to stroke over the seam of her pants.

  Lucy moaned. She understood the biology of the human female body. But she knew nothing. Nothing compared with what Josh was effortlessly doing to her. He sucked at her breast, gripped her bottom and rubbed her clit and there wasn’t a single thing Lucinda could do about any of it. She was helpless in his arms and if she was making a fool of herself, then so be it.