As the women talked and the customer paid, he looked down at Libby and noticed she had more than the usual pink glitter on her braids—she had a strand of bright pink hair tucked into each little topknot. Huh. That was new.
The bell on the door clanged and then it was just Becca and himself in the salon. Well, and Libby. Hank got to his feet even as Becca gave him a wary look and approached. Her gaze met his, and his entire body tightened with an odd sort of tension. The good kind. The kind that made his balls tighten.
“Daddy, help me color,” Libby insisted.
He stepped back and touched Libby’s hair and then grimaced, because the pink glitter was hell to get out of his beard and it always seemed to end up there. “You color it for me, baby girl. I have to talk to Miss Becca.” Hank headed toward the chair, where Becca hovered nervously. He said nothing as he walked up, and her expression seemed to grow more uncomfortable by the moment.
“Before you chastise me,” she began before he could speak, “the pink in her hair is just a temporary color and will wash out with shampoo. I was going to send a note home with her. It’s not revenge for this morning.” Her cheeks flushed and she nervously tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I keep a lot of bright colors on hand in the salon because little girls love them and sometimes a bit of bribery helps a squirmer stay still the entire time.”
“That isn’t why I’m here.”
Becca blinked up at him. “Oh? What’s going on?”
He completely forgot what he was going to use as his tactic. Apology? Weather? Something else? Hell. Eventually, he just cleared his throat. “Yes.”
She paused, frowning up at him. “Yes . . . what?”
Was he sweating? The room seemed really damned hot. He wanted to wipe at his brow, but he was still wearing his cowboy hat and he was just going to get sweat everywhere if he did—or show her his own messy hair. Hat had to stay on, he decided. He licked his lips.
“You asked me if I would go out on a date with you. Changed my mind. Answer’s yes.”
Her mouth snapped shut. She stared at him in surprise. “I . . . oh.”
That wasn’t the excitement he’d expected. Wasn’t she supposed to fall to his feet in blushing gratitude right about now? The look she gave him wasn’t gratitude, though. Or pleasure. It was shock.
“You asked,” he told her accusingly. This definitely wasn’t going how he’d planned it.
“I did,” Becca admitted after a long moment. “I just . . . okay. Yeah. Sure, we can go on a date.” She ducked her head, her long hair falling in front of her face. “I didn’t realize you were interested in me. And this morning—”
He cleared his throat. Yeah, this morning hadn’t gone well. At all. “I’m . . . not good at this,” he admitted.
“Dating?” She peeked up at him through her lashes, so damn pretty it made his chest ache all over again. She had a tiny smile on her lips. “You must have been pretty good at it to have been married before.”
Except he hadn’t been married to Libby’s mother. Hank went silent. He wondered if she’d think less of him if she knew he’d been hoodwinked by a local woman who preyed upon trappers. Better to not say anything at all.
“I’m sorry. I’m prying. I know it’s a sensitive topic.” Her expression changed to one of regret. “I keep telling myself not to ask and I do anyhow. I apologize. When would you like to go out?”
Go out? He had to pick a date? Hank really hadn’t thought that far ahead on things, but he should have. It made sense that he’d need to have some sort of plan for this. Damn it. He wasn’t good at thinking on his feet. “Tomorrow,” he blurted, and then figured that sounded like as good a plan as any. Calving season was slowing down to a reasonable speed anyhow.
Her eyes went wide. “Tomorrow . . . night?” When he gave a sharp nod, she thought for a moment. “It’ll be Friday, and I don’t have any appointments after four. I can close up a bit early. Dinner, I assume?”
Dinner sounded like a smart choice. He nodded again.
“Are we bringing Libby? Should I bring some stuff to keep her busy?”
Bring his daughter on a date? Hell no. He loved Libby. Loved her more than life itself. But the thoughts he’d been having about Becca were distinctly unchaste and he didn’t want to be trying to get romantic with the pretty hairdresser with his daughter around. A four-year-old—a bored one especially—would quickly take over a date.
Besides. He knew she liked Libby. He wanted to see if she liked him enough. To see if she was having the same flirty—dirty—thoughts he was having. “Jack’ll watch her.”
Of course, he’d have to ask Jack, but his younger brother probably didn’t have plans and Hank would offer him some money. Problem solved.
“Right. Okay.” She turned her face up and gazed expectantly at him.
He nodded.
A flash of disappointment crossed her face, as if his response hadn’t been what she’d expected. Did she . . . did she want him to kiss her? He wasn’t sure if he was ready for that, yet. Not with Libby sitting right there. Not with that expectant look on her face.
He didn’t even know if he was good at kissing. Adria had told him he was, but Adria had said a lot of stuff and then reached for his wallet, so she couldn’t be trusted. So Hank nodded again, and then he felt like a damn idiot just nodding all over the place. He went and scooped up his daughter without a word, crossed the room, nodded at her again—damn it—and then left the salon without a look back.
He was going to be nervous as shit for the next twenty-four hours.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hank groomed his beard as he stared into the mirror and tried not to sweat. He’d already changed shirts once due to his nervous sweating, and at this rate, he wouldn’t have a damn shirt to wear by the time the actual date rolled around. So he concentrated on his beard, trimming a stray hair here and there because he thought maybe that would please Becca.
And for some reason, tonight he wanted to please her. It wasn’t that he had expectations . . . well, hell. He kind of had some expectations, even if he told himself he shouldn’t. He was hoping for a kiss, maybe. Maybe get to touch her hair. She seemed like a good-girl type, the type that would need several dates before she even considered doing anything with a guy. Not that there was anything wrong with that . . . he just didn’t have experience in that sort of territory whatsoever. So he had to think like a gentleman . . . and he worried he was going to mess it up something bad.
Trapping, he knew. Wilderness survival, he knew. What to do when a rutting moose wandered onto your property in the dead of winter? Knew how to handle that.
Take a pretty girl out to dinner and charm her?
He was way out of his depth.
“Daddy,” Libby squealed as she came racing into the bathroom and clung to his legs. “Uncle Jack says you’re seeing Miss Becca tonight and taking her to a movie. I want to go, too!”
A movie? It wasn’t more than dinner. He hadn’t thought past that. Should he have suggested a movie? Uncertain, he reached down and picked Libby up, settling her on the corner of the sink so she could watch him. “It’s a grown-up movie,” he told her gravely. “You wouldn’t like it.”
Her little face grew solemn. “Is it a movie with spider mans?”
She hated Spider-Man, which he thought was amusing. He leaned in and whispered confidentially. “Worse. It’s a scary movie.”
Her eyes went wide. “With ghosts?”
Uh-oh. If he even so much as brought up the g-word she’d be crawling into his bed for the next month. “Nope. Those don’t exist and you know it. It’s a scary movie about . . . fish.”
“Fish aren’t scary.” She giggled.
“They are if you have to kiss them.”
“No one kisses fish! Tell him, Uncle Jack!” Libby looked around him and grinned.
Hank turned, and sure
enough, there was his younger brother, his own beard all neatly trimmed as if he was going on a date himself. Jack smirked and gave Hank a thoughtful look. “I don’t know, Libs, your daddy’s been mighty lonely up in Alaska. Maybe he was kissing fish.”
His daughter’s sweet squeals of laughter almost made him not mind Jack’s comments. Almost. Except Jack had been making cracks all afternoon and it was wearing on Hank’s nerves. Like he needed this tonight. So he set down the beard trimmer, picked up Libby off the counter, and looked over at Jack. “This gonna be a problem?”
“Why would it be a problem?” He feigned an innocent look. “You’re coming home tonight, right?”
“Of course I am. I have a daughter.”
“You might get lucky—”
“I’m coming home,” he growled. And that was that. “You have my cell number. Call if there’s any problems or Libby gets scared.”
Jack reached over and took Libby out of Hank’s arms. He hauled her into the hallway and flipped her in a quick, dangerous way that made Hank’s heart leap, but Libby laughed and squealed as Jack tossed her around on his shoulder like she was a sack of feed. “Maybe me and Libby will watch a fish movie ourselves, hmm?”
“Nemo!” she called happily. “Let’s watch Nemo!”
“You go watch.” Hank took one last look in the mirror and steeled himself.
He had a damned date, and he decided he was going to approach it the same way he approached everything in life. He was going to take it on with grim determination.
Everyone in the world dated, right? He could do this.
CHAPTER NINE
Becca fussed with her hair for what felt like the hundredth time in the last hour, smoothing down an errant strand. Of course she wasn’t having a good hair day today. Now that she had a date? It was humid for the first time in weeks and her carefully fixed hair looked puffy and wild and slightly untamed no matter what she did to it. After wrestling with it for a while, she clipped it up and put on a pair of dangly earrings, hoping it would make her neck look longer. She put on lipstick, took off the lipstick, put on gloss, took off the gloss, and eventually put on just a light flavored gloss instead.
He might kiss her, after all, and she didn’t want to get pink lipstick all over him.
That sent butterflies floating through her stomach.
The first person she’d ever kissed was Greg. The last person she’d ever kissed was Greg, and that had been two years ago. She’d never kissed anyone else and she often wondered if she was any good at it. Kissing Greg had been exhilarating at first—and wet—but over time their kisses had gone from long and passionate tongue sessions to quick, perfunctory pecks on the mouth. Maybe that was her fault, but after a while she hadn’t enjoyed kissing him any longer. He’d always smelled like his dinner, or he’d been too aggressive with her mouth, and she’d always been the first one to pull back. She’d thought it was just part of the relationship changing as they’d matured.
Now she wondered if it had been a warning sign she’d deliberately ignored because she was so focused on Greg being “the one.”
Sometimes she really could be so stubbornly dumb.
Still, it didn’t mean she couldn’t be nervous about kissing another man. Kissing was intimate, and while she’d been intimate with Greg plenty of times, she felt like she was starting over.
That was one reason why under her cute, flirty A-line pink dress, she was wearing her oldest pair of granny panties. It didn’t matter how good a kisser he was; she wasn’t putting out on the first date. Period. Those awful panties would remind her not to get undressed at all.
But because she wanted to be pretty, she’d also worn her tallest pair of fuck-me pumps and dangly earrings. She’d painted her nails a shell pink to match her dress, and she’d debated endlessly over perfume before deciding to skip it.
And then there was nothing to do but wait. Becca paced near the front door, doing her best not to peek out onto the storefront porch that she shared with her hair salon. She didn’t want to look too eager. Too nervous. Too excited.
She was all those things, but she didn’t want to look them. Heck, Becca wasn’t even sure if she liked the man. Sometimes he made her breathless, and sometimes she wanted to choke him. He rarely said anything to her. He glared a lot. He was far too tall and hairy for her.
But she’d asked him out, and he’d finally said yes, so she guessed they were going out, and she had no idea why that made her so damned nervous. After he’d turned her down, it had been easier to just think of him as a friend, and now she was thinking of him as date potential again, and it was . . . odd.
The doorbell rang, jarring her out of her thoughts, and she peeked through the curtains at the man on the porch.
Her heart fluttered again.
Okay, she was attracted to him. Even if she tried to convince herself otherwise, one look at Hank sent Becca’s pulse to hammering. He was everything she said she wasn’t attracted to—tall, rough, hairy—but, damn, he really did something to her. She gazed at the broad spread of his shoulders in the plain, dark button-down shirt. He practically bulged out of it. He wore jeans that showed off a rather tight butt, and his legs were long and strong and just . . . gosh. What would it be like to be kissed by someone like him instead of slender Greg?
Her mouth went dry at the thought.
Hank scowled at the porch and then rang the doorbell again.
Oh. Right. Here she was staring at him through the window instead of answering the door. Becca smoothed her artfully loose chignon, took a deep breath, and then opened the door. “Hey, Hank.”
The big cowboy said nothing, just looked her up and down. It made her nervous . . . but it also made her squirm in a lot of good ways. “Is this okay?” she asked, gesturing at her dress. It was pale pink and sleeveless, above the knee, and it toed the line between cute and flirty and too summery.
He dragged his gaze away from her legs, paused at her boobs, and then clenched his jaw and gazed up at her face. “What?”
That was flattering. Becca found herself smiling. “Is this okay for where we’re going?”
He grunted.
Becca resisted the urge to smack him in the stomach to get an answer out of him. A grunt was not a damned answer. “Where are we going?”
Hank gazed down at her, and she noticed his cheeks were slightly flushed and he was sweating. Was he nervous, too? If so, that was cute. To think she made a man this intimidating-looking anxious. It made her feel a bit more like a femme fatale—something she’d never been. Becca was always the sweet one, the cute one, the dependable one. Never the vixen.
Tonight, she kinda wanted to get her flirt on and see where it would take her.
“Dinner.”
She gazed up at him. “I know that. I mean . . . where?”
“Steak.”
Now she was the one clenching her jaw. The man was impossible. Was this how the entire dinner was going to go? Nervous or not, he had to talk to her.
Didn’t he?
But it was a silent ride in his truck as he drove them two towns over. They stopped at a familiar steak house, one that she’d seen and heard about but that Greg had never taken her to. By that time in their relationship, they’d been together for so long that dates pretty much just involved getting together and having sex . . . and then she’d clean his apartment and cook for him. Yeah, she was an idiot.
She was doubly an idiot because she was thinking about her ex again while on her first date with a non-Greg man.
Hank pulled the truck up to the restaurant, and before she could get out of the cab, he was dashing around the far side to get her door. He’d done that back at her house, too, but she’d been too distracted to notice. She appreciated it now, though, and beamed at him. “Thank you, Hank.”
He gave her a jerky nod, wiped his hands on his jeans, and then went to get the door
to the restaurant. He wasn’t holding her hand or touching her, but it was still a thoughtful gesture. Her heels clacked on the sidewalk as she approached the front door, and as she did, she passed what must have been twenty motorcycles all piled into a row of parking spaces. Was this a biker joint? She suddenly felt very out of place in her pink dress and tall heels. But then Hank was right there, looming over her as he held the front door open, and she suddenly felt safe again.
They were seated in relative silence, Becca glancing around at the restaurant. The place was crowded, the faces unfamiliar. There was one restaurant in Painted Barrel, and if they’d gone there, she’d have known everyone in the place. Here, she felt even more out of her element.
“Do you . . .”
She looked up from her menu.
Hank rubbed his beard—had he trimmed it? “Would you like me to order for you?” he asked.
Becca leaned forward conspiratorially over her menu. “You’ll have to forgive me because I haven’t dated a lot, Hank. Is that a thing?” She’d heard it was back in the day, but did men still do that?
His gaze dipped to the gape of her neckline before his face flushed ever so slightly again. But a slow smile broke across his face and he leaned toward her. “Uncle Ennis—Doc—told me it was a good idea.”
She bit her lip, determined not to smile. “Has Doc dated since the Cold War?”
Hank chuckled, the sound raspy and raw, and it made her innards squeeze with pleasure. “Got a point.”
Feeling a little friskier, Becca winked at Hank. “I think I can manage my own order.”
He pretended to peruse his menu. “Guess I won’t have to worry about cutting up your steak for you, either.”
A horrified giggle escaped her. “He told you to do that?”
“No, but I do it for Libby.” He was smiling now, his teeth a white flash under that thick, dark beard. Oh gosh, and now her heart really was racing a mile a minute.
She kept chuckling. “I’ll let you know if I need assistance.”
The Cowboy Meets His Match Page 7