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

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Emily trailed her fingers over the stenciled name on the bottom of the other bag. “These duffel bags look like the real deal.”

  He was glad to hear her voice. “We call them seabags, but yeah. I’ve had them a long time.”

  “Seabags. Were you in the Navy?”

  “Marines. Oo-rah.”

  It was the default response in the Marine Corps for nearly any kind of comment, said far more frequently than the motto, Semper fi. He said the oo-rah quietly, tongue in cheek, as he watched her, unsure, for once, how to decipher the expression on her face. He pulled out the olive drab track jacket he knew would be near the top of the seabag, rolled in accordance with regulation. Some of the Marine lessons were worth following still; rolled items were the most efficient way to pack a duffel bag. Once a Marine, always a Marine, as the saying went. Semper fi.

  Emily ran her fingers over the block letters he’d stenciled so many years ago during his very first week as an officer: GRAHAM, B.

  “Benjamin,” she said softly.

  “Yes.”

  “I almost slept with a man who’d only given me his last name.” She didn’t make it sound like that was a good thing. “Mr. Schumer knew your first name before I did. Why did you tell me your name was Graham?”

  “My name is Graham.”

  “With everybody?”

  Why did she seem upset about this? “All the time. Always has been. Midshipman Graham, Lieutenant Graham, Captain Graham. In the corporate world, my assistant put calls through to Mr. Graham. Graham takes clients to dinner. Graham buys a round of cigars on the golf course. And when someone new introduces herself to me, I shake the hand she offers and introduce myself as Graham.”

  “Like a business acquaintance?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

  Whatever she was asking, it was enough to make Emily drop that arm’s distance she’d been maintaining. She came a step closer to him, and she lifted her chin to a challenging angle. He preferred it over that shy duck-away.

  “I’m asking what name you go by with the women who know you better than I do. The women whom you are willing to take to bed? In the dark, what name is a woman supposed to cry out at that moment? Do the privileged few know Benjamin?”

  There were no other women he was more willing to take to bed than her. That wasn’t it at all. He just didn’t want to use her and leave her. If he and Emily could’ve stayed in bed for a weekend—for a year—forever—

  He had to stop that train of thought. Keep it light.

  “My mother calls me Benjamin. I don’t think that would be the best thing to hear at that moment, do you?”

  But Emily didn’t smile with him. She looked away and traced the letter B with one finger. He dared to touch her again. He had never wanted to stop touching her, but maybe he hadn’t made that clear. She inhaled sharply when he slid his hand under her hair to the back of her neck, but he pulled her close, anyway.

  “The only woman who matters at all to me has been calling me Graham all night. I was not keeping you at a distance by giving you that name, not at any distance whatsoever, but if you want to call me Benjamin, go ahead. Ben works, too. I’m not a fan of Benji.”

  Now her expression was easy to read. She was deciding whether or not to believe him. He waited, pressing his fingers in slow, lazy circles on the back of her neck to relieve the tension there.

  “I’m not a fan of Emmie,” she said. “Em if you must. But really, the whole three syllables isn’t a lot to ask of a man.”

  “Emily.”

  “Benjamin.” She thought it over. Her expression said she didn’t like it. “Maybe Ben. Hello, Ben.”

  “Hello.”

  Then she threw up a hand. “Oh, to heck with it. Graham. It’s going to have to be Graham, like a business deal. You know, when a man gives you an amazing orgasm as Graham, he’s pretty much going to be stuck as Graham in your mind forever after that. ‘Me and Graham, at the lake that night.’ That’s just the way it is.”

  There was a whole lot to process in that declaration. The fact that he was going to be in her mind forever tugged at his heart, because he already knew she was going to be the standard by which he measured any other evening with any other woman from this day on. But the most important thing was that she’d returned to her bold and straightforward style. He was so relieved, he wanted to laugh and kiss her and thank her for still talking to him, all at the same time.

  He went with the kiss.

  He felt her soften, felt her give in, but then she backed out of his hold. She was better than he was at resisting this new addiction.

  She’d been wearing his coat as a cape all night, but now she put her arms through the sleeves. He put on the track jacket, a uniform item that Marines were allowed to wear as civilian dress. He could wear it even though he was no longer in the military. Out of habit, he zipped it up halfway. Regulation.

  Emily tugged on his sleeve. “This is all I was looking for in the back seat. Something to keep you warm while we went to look at the dock. Pretty innocent of me. But then I started kissing you. I know that I was the one who started kissing you first—”

  “Nothing is your fault. You didn’t start it.”

  She let go of his sleeve and shoved her fists in the coat pockets. “Actually, I did. I introduced myself to you at Keller’s. I offered to buy you a drink. Later on, I practically begged you to kiss me on the side of the road, and I brought you here. But you…” She fell silent.

  He was keenly interested to hear where this was going. “But I…?”

  “You’re a grown man, Graham. I mean that in the best way. You know exactly what you’re doing.”

  Well, he had known, until he’d met her and gotten the crazy idea that he could enjoy a few harmless hours dancing or drinking with her, then walk away unaffected.

  “In the front seat… I’ve never been kissed like that before. I’ve never been touched so perfectly…” She blushed now in a way she hadn’t blushed in the front seat. “I’ve never been touched so perfectly accurately before.”

  Ah—she meant that kind of knowing what he was doing. It was tough not to feel a little smug about that. Hard on the heels of that thought was jealousy at the idea of other men touching her, followed by the even more irrational anger that other men had apparently fumbled around and not pleased her. They didn’t deserve to touch her if they couldn’t please her. Scratch that—no one deserved to touch her. Ever. Graham could break every man who’d ever dared to try.

  Addicts were irrational.

  Emily’s blush didn’t stop her from being bold. “To be perfectly honest, I loved it, Graham. Every moment of it. I want more of you.”

  Hell, yeah. But he beat down the impulse. She was too young for him, too full of life, too everything as she blushed, pink-cheeked in the pool of artificial light. But she was a hella-brave woman—she never dropped her gaze despite her blush.

  In fact, she was studying him closely. “You’re choosing to bring it all from a full gallop to a hard stop. That’s not my first choice, but it takes two. You said it best. It wouldn’t be any fun if one of us wasn’t having any fun.”

  It would be fun, no doubt, but her regrets afterward wouldn’t be. Didn’t she understand this was all for her sake?

  “But I don’t like the way you’re making this all about me,” she said, echoing his thought with her own kind of accuracy. “You’re being some kind of noble Sir Galahad, protecting my delicate sensibilities. I didn’t ask you to do that. If we’ve come up to a line that you don’t want to cross, I can respect that, Graham, I really can. But don’t cast me in the role of some virginal princess who is too delicate to watch you drive away in the morning. The real reason we aren’t making love right this second is because you don’t want to cross that line.”

  She squinted at
the light in the ceiling of the cargo area as she reached up to find the switch. She turned it off. The darkness was a relief.

  The silence was not, but damn if Graham could think of the right thing to say. Of anything to say. He could only watch Emily become more vivid as his eyes adjusted to the moonlight.

  She stepped close to him, as close as she’d been when she’d put her hand on his heart and asked him for that first kiss. Graham, it’s cold out.

  She was right. She had taken the initiative—brave, bold Emily. The piece of him that would always be a Marine Corps officer valued that. She had everything a man could want in a teammate: initiative, a cool head, the ability to adjust when plans went awry. She kept a sense of humor; she smiled easily and often. Add to that her beauty, her body, the way she’d be heaven in bed, and Graham knew he was looking at the one woman for him—or the woman that would have been perfect for the younger version of himself, the Ben Graham who had existed once upon a time.

  He’d met her too late.

  He was done. Burned out. But if he’d met her years ago, if he’d been the one who was just finishing college, the one who didn’t know what lay ahead, if he’d been the one who was twenty-two—

  She would have been fourteen.

  He would have already finished his first year as a lieutenant in the Marines, and she would have been a high school freshman who could have had no more than a crush on him. No matter how kind he would’ve tried to be if she’d followed him around, her young heart would have inevitably been crushed. He would’ve been her first disappointment, her first disillusionment.

  With one hand, he gently tucked her hair behind her ear.

  I’m sorry, sweet girl, but I’m not the right man for you. Someday, you’ll fall in love with someone your own age, and you’ll see what I mean. I promise.

  She closed her eyes briefly and leaned her cheek into his touch. “I guess I’m wondering what you think will happen if we cross that line.”

  “I don’t want any hearts to break.”

  But Emily stepped into him, arms around his neck, fingers in his hair. She fit herself against him, woman to man, breast to chest and softness to hardness. Graham wasn’t twenty-two; she was. Twenty-two and grown-up and absolutely spectacular.

  Graham bent his head and took her mouth with his, claiming her as if he could keep her.

  And then he let her go.

  Chapter Eight

  The dock made her angry.

  It was well built, sturdy, exactly what Emily had had in mind when she’d started it seven years ago. She doubted she could have made it come out this well. Not at fifteen. This dock had been built by adults, someone with construction connections who could sink proper footings. Someone had even replaced the old rope that had once hung from a branch over the water. The new rope dangled down to brush the end of the dock.

  When no dock had existed, the old rope had been harder to reach, but they’d always managed, standing on shoulders or climbing the tree. Then they’d dared each other to swing out over the water and perform tricks in the air before hitting the surface, stupid and frankly dangerous somersaults and midair cartwheels. The new rope was better, thick and unfrayed, and it had knots tied at intervals to make grips for hands and summertime bare feet. No one would slide down this new rope very far if their grip slipped. No one would get a rope burn so deep it drew blood.

  No one would learn a hard lesson on how to keep a good grip, either.

  She sounded like a crusty old grandpa, like Mr. Schumer on a good day. Sexual frustration made her grouchy. She hadn’t known that. She hadn’t ever wanted a man the way she wanted Graham.

  Emily reached up high with one hand to grip the rope and test her weight on it. With the edges of her boots standing on the bottom knot, she bounced the branch a few times. Definitely a better rope than hers had been, despite the wimpy knots. It ticked her off, this proof that her way had been the wrong way, too headstrong, inadequate.

  Graham was standing at the shore, watching her in the dark. Always on alert, always the bodyguard. For some reason, he’d stopped at the edge of the lake, though, and just nodded at the dock and told her to go ahead and check it out. She supposed he was trying to give her space to indulge her memories. She would have preferred to indulge in the oblivion she’d felt in his arms, cradled to his chest, when the only thing she’d needed had been more of his touch. What would it be like to make him focus on her touch that way? What would it be like to have his body all to herself, all hers to touch and learn and love on and—

  Her hand slipped down the rope.

  She caught herself on a knot.

  That only made her angrier. The dock was just a few inches below her feet, but the safety knot made her feel like she was in danger when she wasn’t. It was all safe now, standard rope, standard dock. She looked across the dark water, trying to remember the lake the wild way it had been at fifteen.

  She remembered how she’d been at fifteen. Fearless—she’d dreamed of owning her own cattle ranch. Not a cute little hobby farm with twenty head of dairy cows, but a real cattle operation like Uncle James and Aunt Jessie owned. Of course, even at fifteen she’d known that would take millions of dollars if enough land ever came up for sale. Almost all cattle ranches were either inherited legacies or corporate holdings. Uncle James had inherited his ranch.

  At fifteen, Emily had understood that Uncle James was her uncle by marriage. Her aunt had married the owner of the James Hill Ranch. Emily never had been and never would be in line to inherit anything, but it was still the family ranch. Uncle James and Aunt Jessie’s two boys were her first cousins, and she’d grown up with them, always trying to keep up with them. Considering Trey and Luke were older and bigger, she’d done pretty well just by never giving up. Stubborn since the day she was born, that was what her mother and Aunt Jessie would say.

  There wasn’t another James Hill out there to inherit or purchase that she knew of, but why not dream big? At fifteen, she’d gone big on everything. If she swung high enough over the water to attempt three cartwheels, at least she’d get in two and one heck of a thrill before she plunged into the lake. Emily didn’t have to own a cattle ranch to be happy; taking steps toward that dream would still make for a great life. She could work the James Hill Ranch full-time, even become the foreman some day. She’d know how to run a ranch, should one ever come open.

  She was glad her younger self couldn’t see her now. She should own at least two good working horses by now, along with all their tack, a trailer, a truck. She should’ve been able to afford all that because, at twenty-two, she should have been a ranch hand with four years of experience. With her riding and roping skills, she’d have been paid at the higher end of the scale for an experienced hand. Cowboys were never rich, but she could’ve earned enough money for all she wanted.

  Instead, she was in her fourth year of college, getting a degree only her mother wanted. Emily had so naively believed if her family knew her plans, then they’d understand why she didn’t need to spend years of her life at college. Her mother, her aunt, her uncle—they’d all smiled at her with a little pity and a little kindness. Go out and see the world, sugar. Enjoy college. There are so many options, you might find a career you’d like better.

  And then there’d been the death blow, the argument she hated the most: Ranching is hard enough on men, sugar. I hate to see a pretty young lady choose a hard life when she hasn’t even seen what else is out there.

  Not one of the smaller ranches would hire James Waterson’s niece, not when it was common knowledge that her family wanted her to go to college. She’d pored over want ads in the ranching magazines, but the ranches in Montana and Wyoming that would be beyond the Waterson influence had all required four years of experience and a letter of recommendation to apply.

  She’d applied anyway.

  Nothing.

/>   She’d had no choice but to go to college. Fifteen-year-old Emily would be so disappointed in her.

  It’s not as easy as it looks. You didn’t know your whole family would be against you for trying to follow in their footsteps. I haven’t given up. I’m fighting.

  But it was wearing her down. Was it any wonder she’d wanted to spend one night, just this one night, with a man who took care of her? She’d just wanted to be Jane and let Tarzan keep her close to his chest, cradled in his arms. But one little taste of that, and she was hooked.

  I don’t want any hearts to break, he’d said.

  Too late. Had he known how dangerously addictive it was for her to be around a man like him? Had he known the exact moment she’d made room for him in her dreams, had he read her mind when she’d thought that making him happy would make her happy?

  I’m already half in love with you. She could have said that—but she hadn’t. What had she actually said? Let’s be naked this time.

  She snort-laughed at her own words as she stepped off the rope and brushed off her hands. She’d never said anything like that before in her entire life. So much for being a shy and helpless Jane.

  And yet Graham was still worried about breaking hearts. She’d given him no reason to think her heart was in danger, had she? She’d kept her feelings a secret. He couldn’t be talking about her heart. And if he wasn’t talking about her heart, then that left…

  His.

  She sneaked a peak at Graham. He was watching over her. If she somehow fell into the water right this second, he’d be there one second later, she had no doubt. He’d appointed himself her protector from the first moment at Keller’s. It was crazy, the chemistry that had hit them both when they’d met. Already it was more than chemistry for her. And for him?