So Not a Cowgirl

by Starla Kaye

  “I’ll write you out a check for the day,” he said, pulling open a drawer and sitting down in the chair.

  “You’re firing me?” she asked, annoyed again. “I let you touch my person in such a crude manner—for doing nothing to deserve it, I might add. And you’re firing me?’

  He was in the mood to touch her person in a crude manner all over again. Instead he stated patiently, “I figured you had decided you didn’t want to work for a boss like me.” Please say yes.

  Her chin went up. “It’s only for a month, and I really do need the money.”

  He sat in silence for a long couple of minutes. Finally he shoved the drawer closed. “As long as you understand…”

  Tanya nodded. “That you get a little testy? Yes.”

  Drew climbed to his feet and walked around the desk, stopped right in front of her as she looked stubbornly up at him. “Testy?”

  “Domineering. Bossy. Alpha. Whatever.”

  Color him a damn idiot. He took hold of her shoulders and lowered his head to give her a kiss that took his breath away.

  She didn’t resist a bit.

  Shakily, unnerved by what he’d done, he stepped back. She appeared as dazed as he felt. He walked out of the room before he was foolish enough to kiss her again.

  The moon was high in the night sky, filmy clouds drifting over its full face. As Tanya sat rocking in one of the chairs on her front porch, she savored the cool, gentle breeze. She held her cell phone in her hand, intending to call Mandy. But her thoughts kept returning to the big cowboy with the gruff voice and oh-so-nice butt. She grew hot all over again at the memory of watching him stride quickly from the office after he’d kissed her. The man certainly filled out a pair of jeans well.

  Her heart rate picked up, almost as fast in beat as the sound of the cicadas chattering away in the nearby trees. Drew Weatherford sure knew how to kiss. Even if that one kiss had been too darn short.

  Startling her, the cell phone came to life with a loud trill that seemed out of place in the countryside. She answered breathlessly, “Hello!”

  “You okay out there?” Drew asked, sounding nervous.

  She glanced toward the main house and could see him in the light of the porch, talking on his cell phone. They hadn’t spoken since that bizarre incident in the office when she’d gotten all weird over the invoice, when he’d spanked her, and when he’d kissed her. He’d made himself scarce, like he was afraid of her.

  “I’m fine. Thanks.” She watched him walk to the other end of his porch and look out toward the corral in the middle of the main area. She’d seen someone deliver the three bony horses right before she left the main house for the night. They looked nervous wandering around in the dimly lit arena. “Were they abused?”

  He turned his head in her direction, evidently unaware that she’d been sitting on her porch. “I figured you were safely inside for the evening. And, the horses don’t appear to have been physically abused. Just abandoned. Half-starved. Frightened.”

  She heard the anger in his tone. “So this is what your foundation is about? Helping abandoned animals?” She’d known that, of course, Mandy had told her as much. But she was in the mood to talk a little, and she liked the sound of his voice.

  “Horses mainly. There’s lots of places that take in wounded or abandoned small animals, like cats and dogs. I’m more interested in helping horses.”

  The breeze picked up and with it dust floated her way, enough to tickle her nose. Enough to make her sneeze. Immediately he looked in her direction.

  “Bless you,” he said automatically. “It’s getting late. You ought to go inside, get some sleep.” He hesitated before adding, “Make sure you set your alarm. You wouldn’t want to be late two days in a row.”

  Tanya stopped the rocking chair, heart pounding with a strange sense of excitement. Feeling safe at this distance and in the dark boldly said, “That would be grounds for another spanking, huh?”

  “Oh yeah. A real spanking this time. Not a mere slap on your bottom.” There was a huskiness in his voice and she could almost feel the intensity of his look toward her even from this far away.

  Heat curled lower in her. She grew bolder. “Two slaps.”

  He snorted. “Just know that when I choose to give you a real spanking, you’ll not take it so lightly.”

  She squirmed in the chair, imagining one of his big hands landing on her bottom when he was serious about spanking her. No, she didn’t imagine the experience would be something to take lightly. And she had no idea why she was even talking about this, must be overly tired.

  Yet she found herself telling him, “My father still spanks me, when I do something that he considers stupid. Pretty strange thing don’t you think, for someone my age? It’s one of the reasons why I didn’t move back home now while I’m between jobs.”

  “Don’t think it’s strange at all. Some women just need a good bottom burning no matter what their age.”

  They were silent for a minute. She feeling embarrassed for having told him, and clueless as to why she had.

  She was about to say good-night when he asked curiously, “You still love him, don’t you? Even though your dad spanks you.”

  “Of course,” she didn’t even hesitate to answer. Being punished by him had nothing at all to do with her feelings for him.

  “He give you more than a few taps on your bottom?”

  She very well remembered the last time her father had spanked her. “Definitely.” She hadn’t sat comfortably for a whole day.

  “Ever been spanked by someone besides your dad?”

  Tanya sucked in a breath, that heat curling through her again. Drew’s tone was deeper, huskier now. Sexy. She should end this odd discussion, but instead she said, “No.”

  “Reckon that’s soon going to change.” He sighed and she heard the shakiness in his voice. “Go to bed, Ms. Montrose. And set your alarm.”

  Chapter Three

  A cloud of dust drifted up around Drew as he, again, landed butt first in the middle of the corral. He glared in pure disgust at the honey-toned mare all but prancing by him in delight. Not only had she just tossed him off, but she’d done so two times before that. Damn, his butt hurt. Almost as much as his pride.

  “Gonna sit there all day resting?” Greg, his foreman, taunted, leaning on the outside of the corral.

  Drew eased to his feet, feeling muscle strains all over his body. He turned his glare toward Greg and the pair of cowboys standing next to him doing all they could not to grin. Thank God he hadn’t groaned with the effort of getting up. “Your turn here with Fancy Lady. See if you can keep your butt in the saddle.”

  The grin remained on Greg’s face. As far as Drew knew there wasn’t a horse alive that his friend couldn’t ride, even if some of those first rides were purely hell.

  Concentrating on putting one banged-up leg in front of the other, Drew headed out of the corral. His gaze darted toward his house. Everything in him wanted to head there and ease into his whirlpool tub to soak the aches away. Even more, though, he wanted to invite a certain blue-eyed blonde to join him in that tub. He’d been avoiding Tanya for five days as much as he possibly could. They passed in the hallway on occasion, or he endured very short periods of time in the office with her as they went over this or that. But being around her for more than a half hour at a time made his thoughts veer far away from anything to do with business. Sometimes it didn’t even take a half hour.

  He dusted off the sides of his jeans and growled under his breath. Tanya kept him distracted too damn much, whether in her presence or whether he was thinking about her. He wished he could spank his conniving sister all over again for putting him in this unbearable situation. His gut told him that she’d been playing more matchmaker than just matching an employee with an employer. She refused to believe that he would rather stay single the rest of his life than go through the nightmare of another marriage that fell apart. Which his marriages always did.

  Greg picked up o
n the growl and the attitude, grinning even more as they passed by each other at the corral gate. “You could always go see Sarah. Get a little stress relief of sorts. She’d be willing.”

  “I don’t need any stress relief,” he lied, fully understanding what Greg meant. And, yes, Sarah, his long-time lover whenever either of them needed that sort of thing with no strings attached, would probably have no qualms about taking him to her bed. His body wouldn’t mind at all some recreation like that. Trouble was his heart just wasn’t in it.

  As Drew glanced at Greg, the man’s telling eyebrow rose. “Maybe you should consider doing some lip-locking with that hot little accountant. Maybe even…” He waggled his eyebrows.

  The other two men chose that moment to wisely walk away and find some work to do elsewhere.

  “Oil and water. Fire and ice. Whatever,” Drew said bristly. “Plus, she’s pretty pissed off at the male of the species right now.”

  “What’d you do?” Greg immediately questioned. Even though the men had barely run into her, they all seemed to like Tanya.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he grouched. Well, he’d slapped her ass a couple of times last week, but she hadn’t really been upset about that. “She got a letter the other day from that asshole ex-boss of hers.”

  “The one who manhandled her?” Somehow her former work situation had made the gossip vine around the ranch. His men were almost as upset about the incident as he’d been when he first heard about it. Cowboys protected their women, and she was one of their women whether Drew liked the idea or not.

  “Yes. He sent her formal notice that she was fired. And he let her know that if she tried to cause him any more problems, he’d sue her for breaking his damn wrist.” When Drew had caught her reading the letter, caught her both muttering curses and crying, he’d fought back the urge to call the idiot man and rip him a new one.

  He’d taken a few strides away when Greg stopped him by asking in a disapproving tone, “You still planning on letting her go after that month you agreed to?” As Drew turned back around, he added, “I figure with that fancy accounting knowledge of hers that she’d be able to lock horns with that IRS gal pretty good. Better’n you will.”

  “Probably, but we only agreed to a month. I’m standing behind that agreement.” He gave the other man a look he hoped put an end to the discussion, and then headed the other direction.

  “Just saying,” Greg called out.

  He didn’t have to say more than that because Drew knew what he meant. Yes, there wasn’t a doubt in Drew’s mind that he probably needed a real accountant to help him deal with the IRS agent. Yes, Tanya would probably be able to do the job. But he hadn’t told her about the upcoming audit, didn’t want to get her involved in the problem, and didn’t want to take a chance on her trying to convince him to let her stay and help. Pride was strangely involved. It was his intense attraction to her that worried him the most. He had a plan now for his life, and it sure didn’t include getting involved seriously with a woman again. She was too damn tempting. No, she was leaving in just over three weeks.

  Tanya stood staring at the chaos she’d created in the office, all because she’d been determined to find one particular invoice. She’d gotten annoyed with references on two past statements to an invoice that she hadn’t found in the vendor’s current file. A phone call to the vendor hadn’t helped the situation. The evidently new bookkeeper there couldn’t put her hands on the invoice record, couldn’t even get into their computer system at the moment. She’d managed to lock it up but good. Finally Tanya had hung up, mumbling in frustration about incompetent help, and then she’d gotten down to serious investigation on her part.

  Annoyance always got her in trouble. She went crazy with tunnel vision when she set her mind on finding something. Her tunnel vision, this time, had resulted in the scattered piles of paper on nearly every surface in the room. File drawers hung open, emptied. Storage boxes sat all around her, emptied as well. If Drew walked in right now…

  She sat down in the desk chair, huffing in disgust. The invoice was either non-existent, thrown away, or she’d overlooked it somehow. But she’d been thorough in her search, she was almost sure of that. Well, as soon as she calmed down, she’d start putting everything back. Hopefully she’d run across that elusive invoice in the clean up process. And, hopefully, she’d have the room as neat as Drew usually kept it before he drifted into the office later.

  Jeez, it was hot in here. More likely all the searching work she’d done had made her work up a sweat. She puffed her bangs out of the way, and stood.

  Without thinking it through, she tiptoed her way across the room to the fan switch. As she touched the switch, she heard the front door opening. Immediately flutters of anticipation swept through her. Drew. The gruff cowboy played havoc with her determination to lead a life of celibacy for a year or so, until she got over all the male jerks who’d treated her so poorly of late.

  She remained perfectly still at the doorway, listening to him toe off his boots. She heard the soft thud as he set his hat on the hall table. Her heart pounded with awareness as he padded toward his bedroom. He probably intended to shower off, as she’d discovered that he did whenever he’d gotten overly sweaty or dirty doing whatever ranch chore. Each time he’d come the house to do that she’d sat in a fantasy state, longing to strip off her clothes and join him.

  Idiot. She was such an idiot. He didn’t even like her. Okay, he reacted to her; that kiss he’d given her sure told her he wasn’t immune to her. Still…

  She turned the fan’s control knob, grimly determined to put the rancher from her thoughts and get back to business. Only she turned the knob too much and the fan shifted into super high mode. Piles stacked by their original files or storage boxes blew up into an explosion of paper. She was in the midst of a paper tornado.

  “Oh shit!” Tanya yelped in horror, following up that comment with several additional less than lady-like phrases as she tried frantically to turn the knob the other direction. Instead the knob came off in her hand. She repeated her tirade, louder, with more force, more fury.

  She stomped her feet a couple of times in a spurt of temper, and then headed toward the hallway. Drew. She needed his help, even if he’d probably have a tizzy fit when he saw his office.

  She hadn’t gone a half dozen feet when she slammed nose first into a hard wall of man. Sweaty, dusty man. She sneezed as she stepped back in surprise.

  “What the hell were you cursing about? I heard you clear down the hall.” The expression on his dirt-dusted face was filled with disapproval.

  “Don’t get all huffy with me,” she snapped. “I haven’t had a very good day.”

  His expression darkened. “Neither have I.”

  Before she could one-up him on the “worst day” thing, he looked beyond her into the once carefully organized office. When he focused on her again, his eyes blazed with brown fire. “Damn, woman! What have you done?”

  “What have I done! This is so not my fault!” she protested, thrusting the fan knob at him. “It’s yours!”

  Boy, could the man glower. She realized then exactly how crazed she’d acted. She’d be lucky to keep her job the rest of the day. Still, it took her a few seconds to calm down.

  He took the knob from her hand, moved her aside, and went to put the knob back in place. It took him less than a second. Gaining control of his irritation with her looked like would take much longer.

  A vein pulsed in his neck as he ran a hand through his thick, slightly long hair. “Explain,” he barked.

  To her disgust, tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away. She would not cry in front of him. She absolutely would not. Then a tear trickled down her cheek.

  He stared at that tear and heaved a sigh so deep it had to have come up from his toes. “Explain,” he said more calmly.

  “There was this missing invoice,” she began, getting upset all over again even as she blinked rapidly at the moisture still in her eyes. “I needed i
t. I became obsessed with finding it. I get that way sometimes. Obsessed. The idiot girl at the company I called only made me more frustrated and determined.”

  “Evidently you babble, too, when you’re frustrated.”

  She pursed her lips and huffed. “I do not babble.”

  “Trust me, you babble.”

  “Anyway,” she said, tapping her toe in annoyance. “I did an extensive search for that darn invoice. But I was going to put all of this back, and you would never even have known about this minor problem. Except I got hot.”

  “And you turned on the fan, when you had a room full of loose papers.” His look told her what he thought of that brilliant decision.

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time.” She raised her chin indignantly. And then a second tear trickled down her cheek, which made her blush in embarrassment.

  Before she could wipe it away with the back of her hand, Drew stepped forward and thumbed the tear away. He looked resigned, about what she wasn’t sure. Then he gripped her by the shoulders and hauled her closer.

  He didn’t say a word.

  She didn’t say a word.

  His head lowered and those amazing lips of his found hers. She’d been kissed a lot over the years, but never anything like this cowboy could do. She’d been hot before, but now she was on fire. Even more, she ached for him.

  He took his sweet time with the kiss, not that she minded. Then he stepped back, chest heaving, eyes narrowed in frustration. “You are a powerful lot of trouble.”

  Annoyed that he’d ended the kiss so abruptly and with attitude, she glared right back at him. “Am not.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but she noted a hint of amusement in his eyes now heavy with arousal. “That’s mature.”

  “Whatever!” Her shoulders slumped as she realized that he was right. Her conversational ability had slipped to elementary school level. She avoided his eyes and tugged on the hem of her lacy black crop top to straighten it. That’s when she saw how her nipples had hardened, and then she knew he had to be seeing that reaction.