Lost in Cottonwood Canyon & How to Train a Cowboy--Lost in Cottonwood Canyon

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “I need to see some ID.” The angry grandpa was just being stubborn now.

  “Fine.” Emily bent over again, slipping her hand into her boot. That mini dress was short, but not quite short enough. It never rode up to a point that would be indecent, but damn, it got close.

  She straightened with a driver’s license in her hand, along with a credit card she’d stashed in her boot. He already knew there was nowhere for her to stash it in that dress, thanks to a long and hot kiss on the side of a dark and cold highway.

  He looked away from her hemline. Angry Grandpa was glowering at him.

  Damn it.

  Mr. Schumer was right. Graham was too busy checking out Emily to realize she was trying to pay for the six-pack. He pulled out his wallet. “Here, I’ve got this.”

  Emily frowned. “But it was my idea—”

  Mr. Schumer thrust her license and credit card at her. Then he looked Graham right in the eye. “I’m gonna need to see some ID.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  The old man tried to stare him down.

  Graham tried not to show his amusement as he took out his driver’s license. “You really think I’m younger than she is? Two years younger than she is?”

  “We got laws. No ID, no alcohol.”

  Graham tossed his driver’s license on the counter.

  “Illinois, is it?” Mr. Schumer held it up, comparing the photo to Graham’s face like it was a wanted poster, not a driver’s license. Then he blatantly started reading everything on the license, not just the birth year. “Six-one, green eyes.” He stopped to scrutinize Graham’s eyes, as if he’d lie about such a thing. “Chicago. Seems like a long ways from here. Tell me, son. You came all the way from Chicago just to buy some beer?”

  Graham flicked the credit card in his hand like it was a playing card, then held it out between two fingers for the man to take. “Yes, I did.”

  The way Emily smothered her laughter nearly made Graham lose his poker face, but after another brief stare down, Mr. Schumer conceded and slid the six-pack over the bar code scanner. He turned his attention back to Emily. “How’s your mama?”

  “She’s fine, thank you for asking.”

  “She sure is proud of your schooling. Told me you’re getting honors at Oklahoma Tech. She says you’re going straight through to get a master’s degree. Not this June but next, you’ll have your MBA. How about that? Your mama’s gonna throw a party like you’ve never seen when you graduate, you wait and see. If she doesn’t, I’ll be as surprised as a pup with his first porcupine.”

  Graham was amused, until he realized Emily was not.

  Mr. Schumer talked on. “You’ll be running Wall Street in no time. Don’t forget us little people when you’re living in your penthouse apartment.”

  “Yessir.”

  The country version of Yes, sir was the shortest answer he’d heard Emily give all night. Clearly, she did not want to discuss this. Graham signed his name on the credit card machine’s screen so he could get her out of here.

  “I don’t know what your plans are for the rest of the night, young lady, but stay away from Keller’s Bar. My police scanner’s been blowing up with all the goings-on over there.”

  “Have they called any ambulances out?” Emily asked, suddenly alert and interested. “Was anyone shot?”

  “Nobody’s shot anybody, and don’t you think for one second about running over there like you’re some kind of Texas Rescue hero. A pretty young thing like you has no business being around a crime scene at this hour of the night. Not at any hour of the day, neither.”

  “Actually, I’m certified in first aid by Texas Rescue.” Her teacher voice was back, patient but firm. “If I was closer than the ambulances, what kind of person would I be if I didn’t try to help until they showed up?”

  Graham thought she made an excellent point, but it wasn’t in Mr. Schumer to concede.

  “Hmpf. It’s after dark. There’s men who know first aid, too. You let them handle things.”

  Emily kept her chin up, her voice calm, but her eyes narrowed as she took aim. “You know my family. Don’t you think my mama raised me not to turn my back when someone needs help?”

  She shoots; she scores.

  Mr. Schumer shifted on his stool, uncomfortable. “Like I said, no one got shot. They’re not calling in the medevac helicopters. If the men who were fighting can’t handle their own black eyes and broken ribs, then it’s past time they learned how. You and Benjamin go enjoy the rest of your evening somewhere else.”

  Benjamin startled Emily for a second, Graham could tell. She took the six-pack and said good-night as she headed for the door. Graham took his credit card back.

  “I mean it now,” Mr. Schumer said to him, looking ready for a man-to-man chat now that Emily had walked away. “That’s not a situation fit for any girl, no matter what she thinks. Nothing but trouble.”

  Poor Emily. Mr. Schumer wasn’t ever going to see her as anything but a little girl. Graham suspected she knew it, with her yessir and the way she’d walked away. She stood with her hand on the glass door, waiting for him.

  “I don’t want to see Emily in any kind of trouble,” Mr. Schumer persisted.

  It was kind of sweet, the way the old man looked out for his granddaughter’s friend. Very small town. Graham slid the credit card into his wallet. “We’ll steer clear of the bar. Good night.”

  “Any kind of trouble, son. You catch my meaning?”

  Graham hesitated in the middle of putting his wallet in his pocket and turned back to the glowering grandpa.

  “I see the way you’re looking at her, Chicago. I know what it’s like to be young, but there’s no reason to get a young lady in trouble. If you need something, I’ve got it right here behind the counter.”

  He couldn’t be—but yes, he was. The old man was offering him condoms.

  “I don’t ask questions,” the old man said, deadly serious, “and I won’t tell your parents a thing about it. Ever.”

  Graham drew a blank. He couldn’t even picture his father getting a phone call informing him that his thirty-year-old military-veteran son had purchased a box of condoms.

  “I know folks say wait, wait, wait, but there hasn’t been a generation yet that does that. Not back in my day. Not back in my grandfather’s day. There’s always been babies born six or seven months after the wedding. Everyone’s family Bible has one of those. Instead of giving you a lecture that you aren’t going to listen to anyway, I’d rather see you young people just buy what you need to buy in order to stay out of trouble.”

  Graham would have thought he was in some 1950s television show, except the world was in color instead of black and white. “I understand.” That seemed neutral enough.

  “Good.” The old man started to reach under the counter.

  “No.” Graham held out his hand to stop him, exasperated. “No, thanks.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Which, of course, made Graham pause to consider whether or not he really had a condom at hand. He had two seabags in his SUV, all the clothes he’d need for three months of hay and horses. He’d stopped at a big box store on his way through Dallas to buy a comforter and some towels when Uncle Gus had belatedly mentioned that the bunkhouse provided the bed and mattress but only the bed and mattress. But somewhere in his shaving kit, Graham had condoms. He was pretty sure.

  “Because a girl like Emily, she’s not sticking around here. Her mama’s got plans for her. She doesn’t need to get saddled down with housework and a husband and a baby.”

  Never would Graham have guessed that tonight would be the night he got a lecture on safe sex from a gas station owner. If he wasn’t so surprised, he’d laugh. He glanced over to Emily. Judging by the look on her face, if she couldn’t hear every word, she cou
ld hear enough.

  Emily was not amused.

  This might be a small-town novelty to him, something he could laugh about from a distance, but Emily lived here. Having this store owner make assumptions about her sex life—about her entire life—was intrusive. Having someone else’s grandfather decide for her that she needed birth control, then deciding what kind she needed…

  Yeah, Graham was not amused, either. Not anymore.

  Mr. Schumer pulled out a little black box and tapped it on the counter. “I’d hate to see her—”

  “I get that.” Graham knew the old-timer thought he was being helpful, but he was also being a patronizing son of a brick, and he’d already been told no once. It was time for a different type of man-to-man conversation. Graham kept his voice low, his words meant for Schumer, not Emily. “I also get that you’re helping yourself to a whole lot of assumptions about me and more about Emily. You may have read my mind—”

  “Hmpf.”

  “But you haven’t read hers. She knows her own mind. She calls her own shots. You’re assuming she can’t control herself if she’s alone with me, and that is an insult. Back in your day and back in your grandfather’s day, a man wouldn’t put up with another man insulting his date like that.” Where that old-fashioned notion had come from, Graham couldn’t say, but it seemed to strike a chord with Mr. Schumer.

  Mr. Schumer glanced toward the door and immediately away, not quite able to look at Emily, but Graham he scrutinized for a moment longer. “I guess you two aren’t kids.”

  Graham said nothing.

  Mr. Schumer finally nodded to himself, and he put the box back under the counter. “You come back at lunch one day, when there’s brisket.”

  Graham accepted that concession with a nod of his own. “I’ll do that.”

  As he walked toward Emily, she leaned back against the door, opening it so he could walk right through, but he slipped his arm under the coat and around her waist, and he left with her by his side, ruffles tickling the inside of his wrist.

  He couldn’t decipher the way she was looking at him as he took the six-pack from her and opened the passenger door. She was thoughtful, or maybe amused. Bemused, he decided.

  He nearly dropped a kiss on her lips. “Is Mr. Schumer watching us?”

  “Every move.”

  “Tell me getting a drink like the locals doesn’t involve sitting in this parking lot and having a beer while Mr. Schumer chaperones.”

  “Not with an SUV like yours, it doesn’t. We can go somewhere much nicer. It’s just a little farther down the road.”

  Graham got behind the wheel, and when she pointed him west, deeper into ranch country, neither one of them looked back at the horizon to see if the red and blue lights were still keeping them together.

  Chapter Six

  “I couldn’t hear every word in there, but I think you just defended my honor.”

  Since Emily was turned toward Graham, watching his profile as he drove, she saw the way his mouth quirked in a fleeting smile before he turned stoic once more in the dashboard lights.

  “Thank you,” she said simply.

  He glanced at her, back to the black road. “I wouldn’t normally face off with an old man like that. I just didn’t like the way he assumed you were some kind of… I don’t know, some kind of nymphomaniac.”

  So you set him straight. She hadn’t had to defend herself—not even in her own head, which was what she did pretty often when the argument got hopeless. Instead, she’d leaned against that glass door, surprised at the turn the conversation had taken, what she could hear of it. Then not surprised. This was Graham, after all, a man who wouldn’t leave her behind. He wouldn’t let her reputation twist in the wind, either. This was a great night; she absolutely loved every minute she spent with him.

  So she smiled. “I don’t know, maybe you should have bought what he was selling. How do you know I’m not a nymphomaniac?”

  The lift of his eyebrow told her just how absurd he found that possibility, but then those deliciously male, surprisingly soft lips quirked again before he said, with perfect seriousness, “If you really were a nymphomaniac, I wouldn’t have had to buy anything, either. I’d expect you to pull a whole strip of condoms out of your little cowboy boot. So far, I’ve just seen a key and a driver’s license.”

  “So far.” She slid her fingers over her bare knee, down inside her boot, inching down her shin, until Graham tore his eyes off the road to scowl at her hand.

  She pulled her hand out and wiggled her fingers. “Kidding. Definitely not a nymphomaniac. Had you worried there for a minute, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t know if worried is exactly the right term.”

  “Hopeful?”

  He kept one hand on the steering wheel and rubbed his neck with the other, still frowning.

  “Confused?” she suggested.

  “Let’s go with that.”

  “Slow down here. There’s going to be a break in the fence—there it is. Since we’ve already put a little mud on the tires, we can do some cross-country driving to go to Old Man Cooper’s farm. It used to be one of my very favorite places. It’s probably all overgrown now, but there used to be a trail back here…oh.”

  The trail was not only there, but it had been upgraded to a dirt road, cut through brush and grasses that looked like the walls of a tunnel in the headlights. They followed it until it opened into a clearing. There, perfectly still in the moonlight, was a small lake.

  “My lake,” she said softly, wondering why she was surprised it was still here—wondering why she felt like crying. “You should turn off your headlights so you can see the moon on the water.”

  Graham pulled closer to the lake, parking where a lot of previous cars had already flattened the ground. He turned off the lights.

  “Isn’t it pretty?” she asked.

  Lights suddenly came on across the water, the headlights of a pickup truck that backed up so fast, so hard, it churned up dirt.

  Emily shut her eyes and turned her face away. “Jeez, someone has to be home by midnight.” She waited until she could see in the night once more. It was little for a lake, but definitely more than a pond. The moonlight was white on its black surface. “Okay, now isn’t it pretty?”

  Graham was watching the pickup truck as it left, always the alert bodyguard.

  Emily sighed for him, but Graham shook his head and actually chuckled. “Is this the local make-out place? Lover’s Lane for teenagers?”

  He was laughing at her pond. Her lake.

  And here she’d been feeling sorry for him. She glared at him instead. “No.”

  Graham gave her that skeptical raised eyebrow again.

  “Not really. Not always.”

  “Either you park here to kiss a girl without adult supervision, or you don’t.”

  “Fine. Then I guess it was the local make-out place. But it was more than that. I always thought it was so pretty.”

  Graham had probably been around the world with the military. He’d probably seen incredible sights like oceans and waterfalls. She’d only seen Austin and San Antonio—and more than enough of Oklahoma.

  She let go of her indignation. “It’s just a pond, I know. Don’t laugh at me.”

  “I’m not. I’m just feeling…old. It’s been a very long time since I drove a girl to a place like this.”

  “I know what you mean. The last time I was here, I was fifteen. Seven years ago. I kind of thought it would be abandoned and all overgrown by now. I don’t know why I thought that. Just because I could no longer come here, that doesn’t mean no one else would come here.”

  She wasn’t the center of the universe. She knew that, of course. But she was looking at a lake that proved life went on without her. This piece of her youth belonged to other people now, p
eople who’d never heard of her, people who didn’t care if she’d ever been here before them.

  She felt a moment of vertigo.

  Graham’s voice anchored her in the here and now. “Why didn’t you come here when you were sixteen or seventeen?”

  “We moved back to San Antonio my junior year. Then Mom got remarried and we moved back here my senior year, but my new stepfather didn’t believe in free time. Or in dating. My big freedom was sleeping over at my aunt and uncle’s. I spent every minute at their place riding. I missed the horses more than I missed this lake, I suppose.” She couldn’t get enough of the view now, though, as the breeze rippled the reflected moonlight. “Maybe since my memories kind of faded away, I thought this place would, too. It’s all so vivid now.”

  “Teenagers wouldn’t abandon a place like this.” Graham sounded kind again, that gentleness back in his deep voice. “Especially when it’s this pretty.”

  “This really wasn’t just a make-out place. We’d lie out on blankets and stare at the stars and talk about all our plans for the future and how great our lives were going to be. If you didn’t have too much ranch work on a Sunday, you could come in the afternoon to swim. I had the idea to start building a dock the summer I was fifteen. Mr. Cooper didn’t care what we did as long as we didn’t leave empty beer bottles or leave a fire burning.” The memories were sweet, but this place was no longer hers. That innocence was over, and never would be hers again.

  She couldn’t look at the lake, not while she was drowning in this surge of memories, so she looked at Graham. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I’d feel so strange. I think I’m suffering from a bad case of nostalgia. When did I get old enough to have nostalgic memories of my childhood?” She rubbed her fingers over her chest, right where her heart hurt. “It sucks. Yay, adulthood. Rah, rah, rah.”

  Graham didn’t say anything.

  She wrinkled her nose apologetically. “Sorry. Nostalgia’s not very sexy, is it?”

  Graham looked at her for the longest time. When he raised his hand, she thought he was going to touch her, maybe slide his hand under her hair again, reaching across this extra-wide center console that kept them so far apart.