How to Rope a Real Man

by Melissa Cutler

  “Tara, hi. I’m Jenna.” She held out her hand. “Thank you again for doing this.”

  “Oh my gosh, you’re adorable.” Tara’s words were filled with genuine delight. She bypassed the offered hand and embraced Jenna in a sincere hug. “And young.” She pulled back and lifted Jenna’s left hand. “And single. You’re single, right?”

  Unfortunately. Thanks to your brother. “Definitely single. Painfully single.”

  Tara raised on tiptoes to look her brother square in the face. “Do you hear that, Matt? This adorable, young woman is single. Painfully so. Isn’t that terrible?”

  Matt kissed her hair and handed her the tray of coffees. “Almost as terrible as you, sister dearest.”

  Jenna’s chest shook in a silent chuckle, even as her cheeks heated. She walked to the flower-prep counter so Matt wouldn’t see her blush.

  Tara moved next to Jenna, sliding the coffees onto the counter with a wink. “It certainly makes the male population of New Mexico seem downright stupid, if you ask me.”

  Amen to that.

  Tara was a riot. When Jenna moved to Santa Fe, she’d have to invite her out for drinks or maybe they could get the kids together for a playdate. “I don’t date much. My son keeps me busy.”

  “Ah.” Tara’s eyes shifted briefly to Matt and her expression blanked. “You’re a single mom.”

  Jenna would’ve sworn she heard a strain in her tone.

  Matt, wearing an odd smile that didn’t seem a hundred percent genuine, walked to the counter and cracked a couple knuckles. “Jenna’s a great mom. She has a five-year-old son named Tommy who’s a lot like Brittany. A real spitfire. And as smart as they come, like his mama.”

  Even his words, though effusive in their praise, lacked his usual spark, but held an undercurrent of some unspoken message to Tara. Jenna fingered the delicate pink petal of a peony and decided to ignore the underlying weirdness that had descended on the conversation.

  Matt and Tara were doing her a huge favor tonight, and repaying their generosity by seeing tension where there most likely wasn’t any didn’t fit with her agenda. “Aw, thanks. I agree about Tommy, by the way. He’s a sweetie and a spitfire. Matt was showing him some slick moves on the dance floor tonight. How old are your kids, Tara?”

  Tara picked up a bundle of white roses and arranged their heights. “I have a five-year-old girl, Brittany, and an eight-year-old boy, Len. But enough about me,” she added with a wave of dismissal. “We’ve got a lot to do tonight, so we’d better get to it. I can fill you in on all the details of my family and some pretty embarrassing stories about Matt as a kid once we’re working. You said the bride’s colors are pink and white with a shabby chic look. I can’t manage sweet peas this late in the summer, but peonies and rose will do the trick. And these stephanotis for the bridal party’s updos will look beaut—”

  Tara’s face puckered. She backed away from the table and sneezed about twenty times in a row. With a hand over her nose and mouth, she ran to the desk for a tissue. She blew her nose loudly, then sneezed at least a half dozen more times, then blew her nose again. When she returned to the flower table, her eyes were bloodshot and watering.

  “Are you okay?” Jenna asked.

  “Tara is allergic to flowers,” Matt said dryly.

  “What? But you’re a florist!”

  Tara wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Geez, Matt, you could at least paint an accurate picture.” Her watery eyes met Jenna’s. “I’m allergic to everything God put on the Earth. Dust, pollen, perfume, animals, nuts, gluten, soy. You name it.”

  “Except tattoo ink,” Matt muttered with a bemused smile.

  Tara took his jab in stride. “Except tattoo ink and loud music. The only way I could go through life without stuffed-up sinuses, weepy eyes, and itchy skin would be to sit alone in a sterile room. And that is not acceptable to me. Other than the food allergies and bee stings, which might actually kill me, nothing’s going to stop me from doing what I love, least of all my own body. And what I love most is creating beautiful pieces of art using flowers.”

  Go, Tara. “That’s why you named your flower shop Carpe Diem?”

  “Damn straight. I almost named it Screw You, Immune System, but that didn’t quite have the same ring to it.” She blew her nose again and tossed the tissue like a basketball into the trash can. After wiping a tear from her eye with the back of her hand, she picked up a set of shears. “Time’s a-wasting. Let’s get to it.”

  Jenna sipped her coffee and tucked in close to Matt, listening while Tara launched into a motor-mouthed explanation of their game plan for the night.

  Chapter Five

  Matt awoke to find he was still sitting upright on the tattered sofa in the back room that he, Jenna, and Tara had collapsed on sometime around three. Jenna was asleep with her head propped against his shoulder, her hair fanning over his shirt and her body heat seeping through his clothes into his skin.

  He turned his nose into her hair and luxuriated in her honey-almond scent, fantasizing about hauling her onto his lap and waking her with a kiss. He bet she’d feel just right in his arms, as she had while they were dancing.

  A look over her head revealed Tara sleeping on the opposite end, curled over the sofa’s arm and snoring through her open mouth. It had probably been hell on her allergies to spend a whole night in the shop, and he bet her nose would be impossibly stuffy for days to come.

  The air glowed a faint yellow-orange from the lights still shining in the main part of the store. Through the walls, he could hear the hum of activity from the dry cleaner next door, but he didn’t need to look at the cheap plastic face clock hanging on the wall to know it was just about six o’-clock. As it had his whole life without fail, his internal alarm clock woke him at almost precisely the correct time, no matter what time he needed to get up.

  Tara had insisted on setting the alarm on her phone anyway because she and Matt had both been born as stubbornly independent as cats, way more than any of their other siblings. Their mom swore it was an inherited trait, passed from their pioneer ancestors.

  Now that he thought about it, Jenna had a stubbornly independent streak in her too. She’d blown him away last night with her confession that she was about to graduate college and leave her family home in pursuit of her dreams, in Santa Fe, of all places. That took gumption, big-time.

  The more he learned about her, the more he found to love. He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman more. But he already had three pictures in his wallet of smiling, precious kids he’d thought he was going to have the privilege of fathering until he and their mothers had broken up. The pain of those breakups had dulled over time, which was probably why he’d let himself get so close to Jenna and Tommy. But now, with her snuggled against him, he fought to remember the heartache.

  He forced himself to evoke the pain of saying good-bye to each of those kids, knowing he’d never see them again. That’s how it would feel if he and Jenna didn’t work out. One more chance at having a family slipping through his fingers.

  The truth closed around his heart like an iron fist.

  Jenna would have to go on haunting his dreams because his spirit couldn’t survive another loss. What he needed to do, what he would do as soon as the wedding was over, was go hunting. Take his horse and a shotgun into the mountains for a long weekend to clear his head. He’d always called it hunting, as his father had when he’d gone off in the mountains alone, though Matt rarely did much shooting, and even less killing. But it was as good an excuse as any for beating it out of town and allowing the solitude of nature to settle his soul.

  After that, he really ought to get serious about opening his legal clinic. Jenna was moving to Santa Fe, so Matt’s best move was to relocate to Catcher Creek. He could buy Vaughn’s old house, open his clinic in the heart of New Mexico’s oil country, and maintain a three-hour buffer between him and the most tempting woman he’d ever known.

  The tinny peal of a rap song sounded from Tara’s
phone, rousing her. She smeared her hands over her face, then turned off the alarm. Jenna squirmed, nuzzling her face deeper into his arm, but slept on.

  Tara offered him a sleepy grin across the top of Jenna’s head. “Hey.”

  “Morning.” He tested his left knee by straightening his leg. Despite standing on it all night, it wasn’t any stiffer than it usually was at the start of the day since that truck had plowed into his bike eleven years ago and turned him into roadkill. He bounced his foot in a small, controlled rhythm, careful not to jar Jenna as he loosened the joint.

  “Those three hours of sleep went fast,” Tara said through a yawn.

  “Thank you for doing all this. Losing sleep and being away from the kids. I appreciate it, and I know Kellan and Amy do too.”

  “You’re welcome, even though I’m positive we’re not doing this for Kellan and Amy.” She worked a frog out of her throat, blew her nose, then leveled a way-too-serious stare at him. “I like her, Matt.”

  Right. Of course. Because six in the morning, in Jenna’s presence, on a day they were going to need to work their asses off, was the perfect opportunity for Tara to lay into him again, as if they hadn’t beaten this particular dead horse a million times over the past few years. Well, he didn’t have to play along.

  “She likes you too,” he said instead, wishing he didn’t sound like a snarky teenager.

  The remark earned him a belabored sigh. “You’ve got to get over—”

  “I’m not talking about this. Not here. Not now.”

  Tara lifted her palms skyward. “I’m just saying.”

  “I already know what you’re saying. And you know what I’m going to say back. We really ought to start numbering our arguments. Then we could call out ‘Fight Number One’ and be done with it. Think of the energy and time we’d save.”

  Jenna squirmed again. Her eyes fluttered open.

  Looking affectionately exasperated, Tara pushed up from the sofa, brushed imaginary dust from her legs, then walked to Matt’s end of the sofa and crouched.

  “You deserve this,” she whispered close to his ear. “You deserve to be happy.” With another pointed look, she headed to the bathroom.

  Absolutely obnoxious, the way she needed to always have the last word. He was the same way, but still. Sometimes Matt hated being the youngest. The eternal little brother. Everyone in the family thought they had a right to tell him how to live his life. Sometimes, he swore that when they looked at him, they still saw that gangly, awkward kid with the glasses and the too-big ears.

  Matt knew what he needed to be happy. He knew how to take care of himself, and exactly what he deserved and didn’t deserve, meddling big sisters be damned.

  Jenna pulled away from him, taking her warm softness with her. Bummer.

  “Good morning. Sorry I crowded you. You make a good pillow.” Her voice was thick with drowsiness, her hair tousled. The cheek that had been resting against him was rosy. His body stirred to life.

  “I didn’t mind. You made a good blanket.” And the award for the most awkward compliment ever paid to a woman goes to Matt Roenick.

  Jenna grinned and smoothed a hand over her hair. “Is Tara ready to hit the warehouse?”

  They’d completely tapped out the store’s refrigerator and still had two mega arrangements to create, so the plan was to make a quick trip across town to the only wholesale flower supplier in Santa Fe and pray they had what Tara needed. “Just about. If we leave in the next five minutes, we should have enough time to swing by a coffeehouse before the wholesaler opens at six thirty.”

  “Perfect.” She stood, stretching her arms over her head, and Matt had to agree—she looked perfect. Especially the creamy backs of her thighs where the dress pulled up during her stretch. Not that he was trying very hard, but all night long, he hadn’t been able to get his eyes off her legs.

  She’d taken off her boots almost as soon as they’d arrived in the shop, claiming achy feet. She’d doffed her socks as well. Her choice had been a torturous one for a leg man like him because now free of boots and socks, her thin, tan, gorgeous legs seemed to stretch for miles and ended in pretty, white-tipped toenails that matched her fingers.

  Who knew he had a thing for nail polish? He’d certainly never given it much thought before. But now, he couldn’t stop imagining polished fingers wrapping around him and polished toes tangling with his legs while he rose above her.

  Swallowing a growl, he pushed off the sofa, snatched her boots and socks from the corner, and delivered them to her. Then he walked away before he was tempted to sit back down and watch her put them on. A man could only take so much.

  In a matter of minutes, they’d locked Carpe Diem’s door and assembled at Tara’s van.

  “Toss me the keys. I’ll drive,” Matt said.

  The look Tara shot him would’ve wilted a lesser man. “You think I’m going to let you drive my van? Because, what, you’re a man? Out of my way.”

  It had been worth a try. He much preferred being a driver to being a passenger. Apparently, Tara felt the same.

  Jenna stood there grinning like crazy.

  He offered her a mock-defensive scowl in return. “What? You gonna tease me now too?”

  She shook her head. “My big sisters won’t let me drive either. Rachel still reminds me about what a terror I was behind the wheel when she was teaching me to drive. As if I’m still that young and irresponsible.”

  He opened the passenger door for her. “That’s the story of my life. My family still treats me like I’m a kid.” Not only was he the youngest, but he was the only sibling who wasn’t married or had kids of his own. “Drives me bat-shit crazy sometimes.”

  Jenna paused halfway onto the seat and touched his cheek. “Despite that, you’ve got a great family. I look forward to meeting your parents tonight at the wedding.”

  Tara angled forward, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “After I tell them about you and Matt’s teamwork to fix this flower emergency, I’m sure they’ll be dying to meet you too.”

  Bat. Shit. Crazy.

  He didn’t bother to scold Tara with a cranky expression, just closed the passenger door and crawled in the backseat. “Let’s move it, Tara. I need some coffee.”

  By nine o’clock, without a minute to spare, they’d returned to Carpe Diem to fashion flower toppers for the arch Kellan and Amy were going to stand under during the ceremony and the wedding party’s table at the reception. They’d then transferred the arrangements, bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres from the shop’s fridge into the back of Tara’s minivan.

  Time was flying way too fast. The wedding might not be until three o’clock, but the photographer would be there to take pictures of the bridal party at one. Which meant he and Tara needed to put some extra pressure on their gas pedals to make it to Catcher Creek in time for a beautician to stick flowers in Amy’s hair, better known as—he’d learned at about 2:00 A.M.—her updo.

  He programmed directions to Catcher Creek into the minivan’s GPS, then jumped into the driver’s seat of his SUV and jammed it in gear.

  Jenna’s purse chimed. She pawed through it and came up with a cell phone. “It’s Kellan, returning my text from earlier. Amy’s feeling better. That’s a relief.”

  “Excellent. I’m glad she got over whatever it was fast. You ready to ride with me again, darlin’?” he asked, cocking a brow in her direction as he navigated out of the parking lot.

  “I’d be your passenger any day. I wouldn’t even fight you for the keys.” She paired the remark with a set of bedroom eyes that heated him all the way down to where it counted.

  Yow. Guess it was his fault for opening the door to flirtation with his question, but it was going to be a long day for his fraying willpower. He was still going to allow himself to dance with her tonight at the wedding reception, if she’d have him, but that was a safe, public place and they’d be surrounded by people. Until then, he was not under any circumstances going to let himself touch any part of her or
even allow his attention to linger on her figure too long.

  Irritated by how turned on he got by simply telling himself he wasn’t going to think about her body, he flipped on the radio, checked for cross-traffic, and pointed them south.

  After the windy drive down from the Rockies, it was a straight, flat shot to Highway 40, which would take them on into Quay County.

  He blazed over the blacktop like a rocket, with Tara’s minivan tailgating him. Every so often, the van’s speed would plummet before eating up the ground between their vehicles again. He could easily imagine her having sneezing fits, being trapped in a closed area with so many flowers. What a ridiculous way to live, ignoring what her body was trying to tell her.

  Jenna spent the first part of the drive on the phone with the cake lady, the event rental company, and who-knows-who-else, making arrangements and confirming arrival times. The hairstylist was going to meet them at the civic center, the DJ was all set, and between Rachel and Kellan’s mom, Tommy was taken care of.

  An hour and a half into the drive, she tossed her phone into her purse and shook out her arm.

  “We good to go on this wedding?” he asked.

  “Finally. I don’t think there’s anything more I can do from the road, which is good because my mind is toast.”

  “How about some music?” Anybody who loved dancing as much as she seemed to was probably a huge fan of music, though they hadn’t listened to much on the way to Santa Fe because they’d been deep in conversation and he’d kept the volume on his radio extra low on this drive because she’d been on the phone.

  He found a bouncy pop station on the radio playing songs from the 1980s and immediately felt the tension melt away from her. Before long, they were both singing along at the top of their lungs. For the most part, he kept it together, fighting to be gentlemanly, but at the first notes of Jenna singing along to “Hungry Like the Wolf,” he couldn’t stop his affectionate cringe. She had a terrible voice. And by terrible, he meant dying-donkey bad.