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

by RaeAnne Thayne

  He kissed her neck again, up high, and worked his way higher, light kisses over her jaw, a husky murmur at her ear. “I’ll be working with my uncle out in the middle of nowhere. I promised him three months. Minimum.”

  She shivered. Poor girl, not what she wanted to hear. Then she pushed his face away. “Stop that. It tickles.”

  He waited.

  Nothing. She’d shivered because it tickled? That was it? That was her response to off the grid for three months or more?

  She turned so her back was to his chest, making herself comfortable by sitting between his legs, her bare legs sliding against his jeans. His arms came around her waist, of course. Prom pose, seated version.

  Once again, she didn’t ask him the question he was expecting. “Would you rather talk about where I’m going instead of where you’re going?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He’d meant to say it like a Marine, but he might have regressed to a little boy hopeful that his pretty teacher was going to tell the class a story.

  Whichever it was, Emily laughed and fluffed the comforter over them. “I’ll tell you where I’m supposed to go. Years ago, my mother got me to promise I’d get a college degree. I earned a degree in Farm and Ranch Management.”

  “I didn’t know that was a major, but it sounds perfect for you.”

  She put her head back a little bit, talking to him almost cheek to cheek again, the way they had when they’d stood in their prom pose on the bar patio. It wasn’t so innocent this time, not after she’d told him she loved his hands and the way they could please her. It would be too easy to do it again like this. He could hold her hips still between his thighs, not letting her push or press, making her wait for his hands to give her release. He’d make her wait until he’d reduced her to being only able to say ah and oh again.

  “I want to go into ranching. I grew up around it. Even in San Antonio, we kept twenty head of dairy cows. I didn’t want to get a college degree at all. I thought that anything I didn’t already know, I could learn on the job. That’s what cowboys do, but most of the college courses were actually useful. I learned some new things about soil conservation. Lots about legal requirements for livestock. Good stuff.”

  As he listened, Graham looked out at the stars, letting his gaze drift randomly from bright pinpoint to bright pinpoint. What a long way he’d come, from Chicago to the Marine Corps, from Asia to Afghanistan and all the way back to Chicago, before life had sent him another thousand miles southwest to Texas. It seemed like the longest journey a man could take in order to land here at the side of a pond. But here he was, content to listen to a woman who thought learning about livestock was good stuff. That same woman would willingly help him if he started to unzip her dress, yet he didn’t want to stop this pleasure of hearing about an entire life spent in the hundred miles between Austin and San Antonio, with twenty cows.

  “But it’s an associate’s degree. A two-year degree. It was cheating. I knew my mother meant the full four-year bachelor’s degree when she made me promise, but I got an associate’s, so technically, I’d gotten a college degree. So clever of me, right?”

  He smiled as he smoothed some of her hair away from her cheek, loose tangles from the earlier breeze. “I take it you didn’t get away with it.”

  “Not for a second.”

  With her hair smoothed out of the way, he put his arm under the comforter again, around her middle, ruffles tickling the inside of his wrist once more. This time, he slid his wrist up those ruffles and stopped with his arm snug under her breasts. He was aroused, anyway. He might as well torture himself for these last few hours before dawn came and he walked away.

  “Cheaters never win. Since I planned my class schedule for that associate’s degree, I skipped this one course in hydrology that I didn’t need for the two-year degree. Now I’m getting my four-year degree in Agricultural Engineering, and guess which lousy, one-semester, three-credit course I’m missing?”

  “Hydrology.”

  “Hydrology,” she repeated, disgust in every syllable.

  “Makes a good curse word, the way you say it.”

  She cursed again: “Hydrology.”

  They laughed. The sole of her bare foot pressed the top of his foot as she laughed, casually sexy, intimately friendly.

  You don’t walk away from this, Ben. Wake up. It’s time to wake up.

  He was losing his mind with these crazy-clear thoughts.

  He put his other arm around Emily and laid back a little more, slouching his way down the seabags that supported his back, letting Emily lie on top of him a little more heavily. He needed her weight to keep him grounded under the infinite stars.

  “I should have graduated a few weeks ago, as a December grad. I would have finished my degree in three and a half years, if it wasn’t for Hydrology 201. It’s ridiculous to pay for dorm and the dining hall for another entire semester—thousands of dollars—just to take this one last course, but it’s a mandatory part of the degree. Here’s the kicker. It’s offered as an online course this coming summer. I could be done with college and start my real life now, get a real job, and just take it as a summer online course. My degree would be complete by September.”

  “Sounds like you have it figured out.”

  “My mom disagrees. Apparently, it’s vital that I graduate this May and do the big cap and gown shindig. I did that for high school. I don’t feel the need to do it again. Oklahoma Tech can mail me my diploma in September as far as I’m concerned, but my family just about lost their minds at that idea.”

  He remembered Mr. Schumer, sounding as proud as Graham imagined her family was about the MBA. “So you’re going to start on your master’s this semester while you finish Hydrology. Makes sense. Then you aren’t spending all that dorm money on one class.”

  She sighed as she rested on his chest and looked out to the stars. “I’d be investing more than that. Another half a year of my life. My time. My effort. Once I’ve invested that much, I’d be expected to finish the master’s, which would take both a summer session and another semester. That’s more room and board, too. I’d end up spending so much more money.”

  She sat up, batting down the comforter impatiently so that it still covered her bare legs, but her ruffles and slender arms and long hair were free. She brooded not at the bright stars, but at the dark water. Hydrology.

  “This is the whole reason I wanted to blow off a little steam at Keller’s tonight. This is one of the things I was thinking about at the dock.”

  Graham sat up, too. He’d wondered why she’d come striding off that dock in such a different mood than she’d first walked out onto it.

  She shifted around so she didn’t have her back to him anymore, settling in for a talk. “You’re older than I am, right?”

  “Mr. Schumer verified that, yeah.” He winked at her, but she was too intent on her thoughts to catch it.

  “So tell me what you think, since you’re done with school. It goes without saying I should get that last class to finish my bachelor’s, but starting a master’s seems like an expensive way to do it. If I don’t finish the master’s, then the credits I’d earn would just be more wasted money. What would you do if you were me?”

  At twenty-two, he would have stayed in Chicago and finished his MBA. He wouldn’t have felt like he’d come from a different planet than the other students. Money would have been more of an issue when he was younger, though. “Who incurs the expense of another semester at the dorm? You or your family?”

  “My mother assured me she could cover the cost, although I don’t know where the money is supposed to come from. That makes it all the harder to say no. Who says no to a free education?”

  He smiled at her, such a sweet girl. “There are worse things in the world than a family wanting to see their daughter walk across a stage and get a diploma, or wanting to h
elp their daughter get a master’s degree. You’re lucky they can do it. Why not get the master’s?”

  She spoke gravely. “It wastes my time. I don’t want it. I’ll never need it.”

  His answer was automatic, a reflex. “You never know. Employers are looking beyond bachelor’s degrees now, either in experience or education. If you have a master’s—”

  “No.” She gripped his forearm pretty hard and stared him down harder. “I will never need an MBA. I don’t want one.”

  In a flash, he remembered his first sight of her, being just as firm with an ex who was treating her like she was a silly girl who didn’t know her own mind: We’re through. We’ve been through… Graham saw her calmly correcting Mr. Schumer: Actually, I’m certified in first aid by Texas Rescue…

  Graham was older than Emily, but that didn’t mean she was a child. If she said she’d never need an MBA, it was arrogant of him to tell her otherwise.

  He nodded, just once. “Got it.”

  She let go of his arm. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize when you’re right, especially in the business world. Especially to men.” Damn, he sounded arrogant, anyway, even when he was giving good advice. But she gave him a quick nod, just once, imitating him consciously or subconsciously, before turning her attention back to the water.

  She held her hands out flat, as if she could rest them on the lake surface like resting them on top of a table. “Look at how perfectly still and lovely that lake is tonight. Why make waves and ruin it? Do things the right way, the traditional way. It’s safer. It’s smarter. The dock should be long enough to get you out to a safe depth for diving. The rope should have knots. Be glad your family takes care of you. They only want what’s best for you. There’s really nothing wrong with that.”

  Graham watched her instead of the water or the stars.

  She set her hands on her knees. “Unless, of course, that safe life is starving out the parts of yourself you liked best.”

  Her statement gave him pause. His dangerous life had shut down some parts of him, without a doubt, but it was the safe corporate life that had made him feel adrift. Something as safe and traditional as college could stifle someone who didn’t have traditional goals. “I see why you came off that dock wanting a drink.”

  “It didn’t seem so awful, getting that two-year degree. What’s two years of your life, right? When everyone says you need a degree, it’s easier to just get the degree. But then two years become four years of your life. Now five. I keep postponing my life so that everyone else will be comfortable. They don’t want me to be a cowboy, so I keep not being a cowboy, year after year.”

  He smiled sympathetically. “I guess you’ll be a very educated cowboy someday.”

  She didn’t shy away from him, not exactly, but he could tell she was disappointed with his answer.

  “Someday soon,” he added, because she looked so damned sad. “Emily, you’re not missing out on life. You’re only twenty-two.”

  “What were you doing at twenty-two?”

  He paused for a moment—paused and appreciated the way she was about to make her point. “I was a second lieutenant. An infantry platoon leader.”

  “How big is a platoon?”

  “About thirty Marines. I think I see where you’re going with this.”

  She never took her eyes off the water. “Do you? When my cousin Luke was twenty-one, he inherited one-third of a ranch. My aunt and uncle owned a third and his older brother owned a third, but they didn’t want to stay on the land, so Luke ran the ranch by himself at age twenty-one. He still does. I’m twenty-two. You and Luke were living your lives when you were me. What makes everyone think I still need more schooling before I can be trusted to make my own decisions?”

  She shoots; she scores.

  She answered her own question. “Maybe everyone tells girls to be good and be quiet, so they don’t stop and think when they’re doing it to grown-up girls, too. And maybe it’s my own fault. Maybe the girl doesn’t notice it happening to herself, sometimes.”

  “Girls break that mold all the time,” he reminded her gently. “Women become Marines. There must be women in ranching.”

  “Plenty of women run barns or teach riding, that kind of thing, but there are definite roles that are acceptable for women. I intentionally say I want to be a cowboy, not a cowgirl. Cowgirls are cute. I don’t do cute very well.” She glanced at him for a bare second, her smile reappearing too briefly. “The rodeo expects cowgirls to do barrel racing and only barrel racing. There’s only one event where gender isn’t an entry requirement. It’s called team roping.”

  “Should I guess which event you’ll enter when you have a midlife crisis and run off to join the rodeo?”

  That got more of a smile, but he only got to see a piece of it while she talked to the lake instead of him. “I already compete now and then, when there’s a local charity rodeo. Roping is good because either you rope that calf when he bolts out of the chute or you don’t. Your horse matters a lot more than your gender. Or an MBA.”

  Graham didn’t know what she saw in that lake, but he saw a woman who had her own opinions, her own set of values, her own way of seeing the world. She already knew how to set her personal boundaries; she wouldn’t let her ex or a store owner or Graham tell her that what she knew wasn’t what she knew. Now she was ready to take on the rest of the world, and she was right that an MBA would be useless in the world she was going to make for herself.

  “So you’re done with college,” Graham said. “What’s going to happen when you tell your family ‘no, thanks’ on the MBA?”

  “If I rebel against their plans, I’ve been told I’ll have nowhere to live. I’ve only got my on-campus apartment or their house. No MBA means no campus housing. As far as living with my parents, it’s a big ‘don’t bother coming home, young lady, not when I’m willing to pay for your school.’”

  Graham nodded as he rubbed his day’s beard, the roughness on his palm sharpening his senses a bit. “Okay, rebel. Let’s think about this. You’ll need to pay for the rest of your bachelor’s yourself, then. But first priority would be getting a place to live.”

  Finally, she was more interested in him than in the lake. That expressive face of hers looked confused. “Are you encouraging me to not go back to school this weekend?”

  “Of course. It doesn’t help any of your goals. You made perfect sense when you explained it.” He angled himself to face her now that she was facing him, ready for a brainstorming session. “You need enough income to pay for the online course tuition, but not until this summer. You’ll need decent internet access to take the course, but that shouldn’t cost too much. How about your pickup truck? Do you have to make payments on that?”

  “No, I own it.” Her confusion was giving way to something that looked a little like amazement.

  “So just gas money and insurance, then.” He wondered why she looked so amazed. This was pretty basic brainstorming, but he explained, anyway. “If you ballpark these expenses, then you’ll know what your minimum acceptable salary is when you start job interviews. It’ll save you the time and effort of interviewing for positions that can’t meet your needs.”

  “Oh, Graham.” The way she breathed his name, it sounded like he’d just taken her over the edge again, given her a moment of bliss.

  “What, Emily?” His voice sounded husky, even to him.

  In a burst of exuberance, she closed the gap between them, throwing herself on him, more or less, as much as the balled-up comforter that got stuck between them would allow. “Midshipman-Lieutenant-Captain-Mr. Benjamin Graham, you are wonderful.”

  “For laying out your expenses?” he muttered, but he had to smile at her excitement.

  That quickly, she teared up. She grabbed his face in two cold hands and kissed him square on the lips, hard and fast.
“You are the very first person who hasn’t told me to stay where I don’t want to be. I haven’t had a single person agree with me and say ‘go for it,’ not one, not since…”

  Actual tears wet her lashes as she looked up at the ceiling of the SUV, trying to recall the last time. It made Graham’s heart hurt all over again.

  “Not since my senior year in high school. Once it became time to apply for colleges, that was it. No one said my decision not to go to college might be valid. Not one person could accept that my associate’s degree might be enough. I couldn’t even get anyone to agree that taking Hydrology online this summer was the most sensible option.”

  She let go of his face to wipe the tears off her own. She kind of laughed and cried at the same time, reminding Graham of the soppy happy endings of the TV movies his mother watched.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily laugh-cried. “No, wait. I take it back. I’m not sorry. I’m not apologizing, because I haven’t done anything wrong, right?”

  “Oo-rah.” Graham didn’t know what else to say, but he could sit here until dawn and enjoy her happy face.

  She wiped her cheeks. “I just didn’t know how good it would feel to hear someone else talk about my goals like they should happen. I think I’ll love you forever for that.”

  Chapter Ten

  Emily could have listened to Graham brainstorm her future forever. He made it sound so normal, like she wasn’t asking for a crazy dream at all.

  “It boils down to pretty simple needs, a job and a place to live. What you don’t need is to defer your life another semester.”

  I love you, I love you.

  But she restrained herself and said, “Exactly, and I better find that job first thing tomorrow, or else.” The image of her parents, furious at her sister, had been burned in her mind years ago. “Just…or else.”

  Graham looked at her intently again. She felt that sense of alertness about him, that sense that he was ready to handle danger. It had an undeniably sexy edge to it, but now that it had returned, she realized how much more relaxed he’d gotten as the night went on, here by the pond. He smiles when he kisses me.