Tex Appeal

by Kimberly Raye, Alison Kent

And speaking of cowboys and their jobs…Tess slowed her car, raised her hand to shield her eyes hidden behind a big pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses. Then she slowed even more, bringing the car to a complete stop, shifting into Neutral and setting the brake.

  There he was. Oh, there he was.

  Sliding from the driver’s seat, her heart in her throat, her stomach churning, she stood in the wedge of the open door smack dab in the middle of the ranch’s main road, her hands curled over the frame above the window as she got her first glimpse of man and beast at work.

  Her cowboy sat astride a big horse—chestnut, she thought the color was called—his back straight, the reins in one hand, a coil of rope in the other held against his thigh. He used those thighs to move the animal, cutting quickly to one side then back to the other before returning to where the two as a team had begun.

  Tess pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, feeling a smile spread across her face as she listened to his sharp whistles and the sounds—oh, that voice—that she guessed equated to words of praise and commands. She found herself captivated by the way the horse paid attention—ears flicking, head bobbing, nostrils flaring—and by the flex of the muscles in its massive hindquarters as it backed across the stretch of ground, snorting and huffing as it did.

  The man giving the orders was equally impressive, his shoulders broad, his torso tapered, his biceps tight as he pulled back, left, right on the reins. Though it was late winter with spring hovering on the horizon, the damp fabric of his shirt clung to the small of his back above jeans that rode low on his hips and sat against his flat belly. And then there were those thighs.

  She shook her head, slid her sunglasses back into place, and wrapped her tunic-length cardigan more tightly around her body even though she wasn’t particularly chilled. The early February morning was surprisingly bright, the temperature mild. But this was the Texas Gulf Coast; there was no guarantee tomorrow wouldn’t be stormy and dark.

  She supposed the cowboy knew that, too, and was taking advantage of the day, though she imagined he spent plenty in the rain doing exactly what he was doing now, putting both himself and the horse through their paces. Whether the horse was his or part of the stock supplied for rodeos, Tess had no way of knowing from here.

  What she did know was that he was the source of the shivers tickling her skin, and that just wasn’t like her. She was more attracted to a man’s brain than his brawn or the roman numeral after his name, and all she knew of this one was that he looked damn fine on a horse and could turn her to jelly with an almost inaudible word.

  Except that wasn’t all she knew, was it?

  It took more than powerful thighs and a talented tongue to coax the horse beneath him to obey. He had to use the head on his shoulders in concert with the body which rolled fluidly with the animal’s quick moves.

  That’s what Tess was responding to. That package. That combination. The skill he showed off with each order given, with the anticipation of each response.

  She looked away, across the pasture that was on the verge of being swept from winter brown to the green of spring, reminding herself that this was work, not pleasure, and that a fling with a cowboy would not be worth what her mother would put her through should she ever bring one home.

  And then she looked back, feeling once again in control, more centered, only to find him looking at her, his hat pulled low on his forehead, just not low enough to hide what he was thinking. Silly, the things going through her mind, this intense reaction tightening her skin, tickling the hairs on her arms.

  Was this what sent the women she’d interviewed into one cowboy’s bed after another? Was it this physical pleasure as much as the thrill of bringing the arena’s conquering hero to his knees? Even if it wasn’t her thing, she understood the psychology of the latter, the power and confidence such a triumph instilled.

  But the former?

  Pleasure she could get from a man wearing Armani as easily as from a man in chaps, boots and jeans. For that matter, she had no problem taking care of those needs herself—yet even as she had the thought, she realized that the things his look had her imagining went deeper than sex.

  Okay…where had that come from? She could relate to being physically itchy; the women she’d talked to held back nothing when describing their sexual encounters—the quickies with boots on in pickups, the blow jobs in country-and-western dance halls, the hands inside clothing in broad daylight offering sexual relief.

  But none of those titillating depictions should have done more than temporarily raise her temperature.

  They should never have her thinking that this cowboy was looking at her as though she had more to offer him than a stare, or have her wanting to give him—this man she’d never seen before, this man with dark and dreamy bedroom eyes—anything he had on his mind.

  2

  THE MORNING had been cool, and for once Wyatt Crowe hadn’t rolled out of bed to find more on his plate than his usual chores. Work lasted most of the day seven out of seven every week, but today he’d wrangled enough breathing room to take Fargo out for a ride before lunch.

  He’d been just antsy enough about the rest of the day and the three to follow that he’d felt it best to get out from under the eagle eye of his ranch manager and foreman, Bertram “Buck” Donald. Doing so would save him a hell of a lot of ribbing when the other man put two and two together and came up with the answer to Wyatt’s case of nerves.

  He couldn’t deny it.

  He was itchin’ with the wait.

  He’d seen the dust kicked up by the silver sports car as the woman made her way down the road from the ranch’s main gate. And, yeah, he was sure the driver was female. The psychologist-cum-newspaper columnist, Tess…She was due around noon, the only visitor on the schedule, and the only woman who’d had reason to come out to the Triple RC in a very long time—even if the reason was flimsy as hell.

  Flimsy or not, he’d said yes when she and her editor had called and asked to talk to him and his men. He’d liked her voice. Liked it enough that he’d done a Google search to find out if her looks fit her voice. They were even better.

  Though she came from high-society stock, he’d decided then that having her at the ranch for a long weekend might be just the thing to put a spring in his step. Yeah, he was being shallow, but it would be nice to spend time with someone who didn’t walk like she had a horse between her legs or smell like she slept with one most nights.

  And then he’d realized the trouble he was courting.

  Four days was too long for a quick hookup—not that he was expecting to get lucky, or knew if she had anything but work on her mind—but the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to go back to that phone call and say no. The first phone call, anyway. By the time they’d finished the second, he was ready to give her the moon. Still…

  Four days gave a woman time to get ideas about sticking around even longer, maybe permanently—ideas that in his experience took on a life of their own once the truth of who he was came to light.

  Dr. Autrey might not be at all interested in his celebrity or even understand the commodity of his name, but he’d just as soon not take the chance that, like most of the women he’d known in the past, she cottoned to the idea of bedding the legend more than bedding the man.

  Four days. Lord love a cowboy and his horse, but he was inviting all kinds of trouble.

  He’d collected a whole lot of buckles in his day—winning more Professional Bull Riders, Inc., regular season events and world championships than any cowboy in the organization’s history—and had enjoyed the women who were part of the show. He’d been young and full of himself, and had loved having his pick of the bunnies every night to take for a long sweaty ride.

  As the years had piled on along with the aches and pains, he’d given up the uncomplicated luxury of having a woman’s body without asking and focused on making it out of the arena alive. He’d lasted a lot longer than he’d expected, and when he’d gone down, it had b
een in a very big way.

  It had taken four surgeries to put him back together. He could sit a horse with no problem, though he still walked with a limp. Working from the back of Fargo was more for his own benefit than anything. The horse knew what he was doing. Wyatt was the one unable to make his muscles obey his mind’s commands with the same precision as before.

  Washed up at thirty-two.

  It was a hell of a way to go.

  He’d known bull riding wasn’t a long-term career—it was too physically demanding, damaging, dangerous—and that when he finally did hang up his spurs, he’d be taking on the family business. His parents had groomed him to run the Triple RC eventually, knowing with Wyatt at the helm they could afford to take the early retirement they’d dreamed of and see the country from behind the wheel of their RV.

  The Triple RC had been in the Crowe family for a whole lot of years as a working ranch raising grass-fed Angus for beef. Once Wyatt had been left with no choice but to quit the circuit, he’d returned home to take over the place.

  It hadn’t taken him long to realize that he didn’t have it in him to fight both the market and mother nature. And since he had too much rodeo in him to quit the life altogether, raising stock had been a compromise that made perfect sense. He’d gone to his parents for their blessing, and then took a couple of years to plan, plot and make the change.

  He’d been working Fargo, thinking about last week’s shipment of steers, when Dr. Autrey had stopped on the road to watch him. He shouldn’t have been bothered by having an audience. He’d performed in front of crowds as large as those drawn by Major League Baseball. Hell, the Professional Bull Riding World Finals in Las Vegas was no small thing.

  He’d even had his ass handed to him a time or two by a big bad son of a bitch on national television. So, no. It wasn’t being watched that had gotten to him. It was all about who was doing the watching and the way her watching had sent his itch traveling from his spine to his groin.

  He’d let her come because he thought the exposure, the publicity, no matter how limited or obscure, might get his crew the kind of female attention they could use these days, the kind that was about sticking around for the long haul instead of following the boys from show to show, from town to town, which had been all they’d known in the past.

  For the most part, Wyatt himself had found the women harmless and a whole lot of fun. They got what they wanted, and gave the cowboys a good time. Problems started when there was no respect for wedding vows on either side, or when the women thought they were signing on for more than a night or two of mutual satisfaction. And the more famous the cowboy, the more often that came to pass.

  Life on the road, the injuries and competitions, the iffy income, the mental strain…none of it was conducive to permanency. But eventually the years began to stretch like a long straight road into the horizon, and not everyone—cowboy or otherwise—was cut out for making the trip alone.

  Not a one of his men was married. None were in committed relationships. The companionship they did have was occasional and convenient, and, he knew, for some, paid. This article, this profile on the cowboys, if he could get the good doctor to slant it the right way, to hint at what the Triple RC had to offer besides rodeo stock, well, it seemed the least he could do to repay the years of loyalty Buck, Teddy, Skeeter and the others had given him.

  As far as his own situation went, he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had been interested in Wyatt Crowe and not the inimitable “Lawman”—the moniker he’d earned for laying down the law to the bulls he rode. High school, maybe? When he’d started competing professionally?

  His time on the circuit also had put a big kink in his college plans. He’d eventually made up the lost time and had a degree in land management he wasn’t sure did him a bit of good. He relied on experience—his own and his father’s—as well as the business sense of his ranch manager and the common sense of his crew to keep the place going strong.

  All of that kept him too busy to worry much about being thirty-five and alone, though it was funny how that very thing had been weighing on him of late. It shouldn’t have been. His days were busy. He kept them that way so when his nights rolled around he was too tired for anything but sleep.

  Still, with his men bunking in their quarters—for all intents and purposes, a frat house—his own two-story place had a lot of empty space and echoes. And his talking to Dr. Autrey, to Tess, had brought all of that home.

  He couldn’t get her out of his mind, the way she looked, her voice. How putting the two together and knowing what he did of the way she thought, the success she’d made of herself…how all of that intensified not so much his loneliness, but the fact that he was alone.

  Why her? He couldn’t have answered had Buck roped him to Fargo’s belly and slapped the horse down the road. Right place, right time? Chemistry? The fact that she talked to him as if he was a regular Joe, not a legend or a celebrity or a commodity, and it had been way too long since he’d had a woman beneath him in bed?

  So what had he done? Why, smart guy that he was, he’d set up Dr. Autrey in the room down the hall from his for the weekend, wanting her to be comfortable in the guest space that was rarely used but offered more privacy than the suite on the first floor. Stupid, because as quiet as the house was at night, he’d probably be able to hear her breathing.

  He sure as hell would rouse any time she turned over. That particular bed frame creaked worse than his bones, which were held together with pins, and his joints, which had seen too much rough-and-tumble abuse over the years.

  And the shower…no, he couldn’t think about her in the shower, with steamy mirrors and slick white-and-yellow tiles and air too sweaty and hard to breathe, smelling as it would, of her. He wouldn’t have anyone but himself to blame for the sleepless nights ahead.

  He wondered how she liked her eggs, if she drank real coffee or needed all those extras that turned a cup of joe into a five-dollar affair. He wondered if she’d ever sat the back of a horse, if she’d be willing, or if a foreign sports car was the only way she liked her rides.

  Thinking about her riding had him wondering what she wore to bed, and what he would do for the chance to find out. And since that kind of thinking was a danger any sane man could see coming for miles, he stopped.

  Or at least he tried to stop, settling for reining Fargo around and riding hard all the way back to the barn, realizing along the way that no matter what he owed his men, this had been a very bad way to go about getting it.

  3

  BY THE TIME Wyatt reached the barn, Dr. Autrey had made it to the house along with most of his men, who’d been drawn to her car like calves to feed. The only one missing was Buck, who was waiting to take Fargo’s reins and let Wyatt know what he was thinking with a shake of his head.

  “What?” Wyatt asked, as if expecting a surprise. Buck was the only one he’d told about the true intent behind allowing the doctor to visit.

  “Four days, huh?” The lanky foreman hefted the saddle and Wyatt’s brightly woven blanket from the back of the horse and stored them away. “A Saturday I can see. Give her Friday to settle in and see the place. Saturday to talk to the boys. But four days?”

  Having just had the same argument with himself, Wyatt didn’t see how having it now with Buck would be any sort of help. He tugged off his hat, ran a hand back over his hair, then settled the hat once more into place, pulling the brim extra low on his forehead.

  “We talked about what she’s wanting to do, and I agreed that just a Saturday wasn’t long enough to spend time with all you bowlegged has-beens.”

  “You being the king has-been and all, you need Sunday and Monday for yourself then, is that it?” Buck found the curry comb he wanted on a shelf beneath the hanging tack. “Do you not remember the poker game last Fourth of July?”

  Wyatt remembered. The hands who hadn’t headed to town for the big barbecue in the square had sat around the table in the bunkhouse kitchen, smoking big fat ciga
rs while winning and losing the same money all afternoon.

  They’d downed enough beers to float their own fleet, and revisited the good and bad of their years on the circuit, agreeing that four days was too long to stick with any one woman in any one town.

  The trip down memory lane was a little too late to be any help. “I first suggested she get done what she could on Saturday and leave after breakfast Sunday morning. She said she’d like to stick around long enough to get the full flavor of the place.”

  “And you bowed down and told her yes.”

  Wyatt gave him the eye. Buck was thirty-eight to Wyatt’s thirty-five and thought for some reason that gave him the right to say anything he wanted even though Wyatt was the boss. Or maybe he said what he did because they were things needing to be said.

  Since the other man was also his best friend, he let him. “I didn’t bow down or bend over.” He added the latter to keep Buck from saying it since the look in his eyes made it clear it was on his mind. “She explained her thinking and her reasons for needing the time made sense.”

  “You Google-searched her, didn’t you? You looked her up and decided you’d give your left nut to get your hands on her, and allowed yourself enough time to make sure it happened. And happened often.”

  “Leave my nuts out of this.” Hands at his hips, Wyatt pulled in a deep breath along with the smells of damp leather, damp horse, fresh hay and not-so-fresh man. Him. Not the first impression he’d wanted to make, but so be it.

  “This is as much for you guys as anything, remember?” Wyatt threw out a lot of the stuff he’d been thinking. “No one comes out here who’s not buying stock, leasing stock, selling stock or training stock unless they’re offering up supplies to help get all the rest of it done.”

  There was silence from Buck, so Wyatt went on. “I’ve kept the bunch of you so busy it’s a wonder you haven’t all up and put in your notice. You need more of a life than what you’ve got here. You deserve wives and families, if that’s what you want, and this may not pan out, but I thought it worth a shot.”