Do You Take this Cowboy?
Page 20
Her. Em.
Just as quickly as he recognized that anticipation, that almost hopeful desire to see her again, he pounded it down. Hopeful. Who did he think he was?
She was self-possessed, confident—intriguing to him. But she was still young, a woman who’d calmly set her boundaries while wrapped in youthful blue ruffles.
He was nothing more than a jarhead who’d left the Marine Corps, who’d spent a year after that burning a few bridges in the corporate world, who’d returned to grad school only to drop out weeks ago. He was on his way to take the only job offer he had left, one from his uncle, one that would barely pay minimum wage, but one that would require little to no human contact in the rural part of Texas. He’d given up on fitting in with the world, and he had no business forgetting that tonight, not even for a minute.
Let the beauty live her beautiful life.
He stalked toward the blinding light, straight into the toilet stall, and slammed the door.
* * *
Oh, my gosh. Ohmigosh, ohmigosh—who was that man?
Emily washed her hands quickly, thoughts racing.
Heart racing.
She wasn’t sure what had just happened. She’d taken one look at him and bam! Her heart had started pounding. Then when she’d turned around and brushed against his body, she’d practically melted at his feet. He was hot. Hot in a way that the other men in her world weren’t.
She had the impression he could be dangerous, but she couldn’t say why. He’d just stood there, really. Just said one sentence to her idiot ex and nothing to her at all. But there was an aura about him that left her in no doubt that he was a man with whom one did not mess. An aura and a hard body.
She shivered as her soapy fingers slid together, but it was a delicious shiver. None of that danger had been directed her way, but she’d felt it. And it had triggered just about every primitive response she was capable of. More than she’d known she was capable of. She’d never met a man like that, not on her college campus, not even among the cowboys on her family’s ranch. She’d grown up here in cattle country, so she knew plenty of men who were plenty masculine, but none had ever been so...dangerous.
No, he wasn’t dangerous to her. What was the word she was looking for?
Sexual.
Maybe it was just sexy to have a man step in to defend her.
Him, Tarzan. Me...Jane?
No way. As long as Emily could remember, she’d always been able to rope and ride and keep up with the boys in her life. Unlike poor helpless Jane, Emily would never stand still in a frilly dress and scream uselessly, waiting for a man to swoop out of the jungle to save her.
Maybe that’s why no man ever has before.
She hadn’t known she could feel like Jane, body set all aflutter because a physically powerful man had brushed against her dress. Emily barely dried her hands before using the paper towel to yank the door open.
Too eagerly.
Slow down.
Had she learned nothing in her twenty-two years? Had her sisters’ dramatic love lives taught her nothing? Her mother’s three marriages?
Slow down.
She, Emily Dawn Davis, was not going to have her life derailed by a man. She was no Victorian miss, no helpless paragon of femininity waiting for a man to complete her. In fact, she’d prefer not to have a man in her life at all right now. She had plans. Things to do. Places to be. Goals to accomplish.
But not tonight.
She was going to have to obey her family and return to Oklahoma Tech University in three days whether she stayed at this bar another three minutes or three hours. She’d intended to leave when she’d realized her ex was here at Keller’s and her friends were not, but now...
A dangerous man had appointed himself her bodyguard. For once, she understood the appeal in having a man take care of everything. What would life be like as Jane, not having to stand up for herself as long as Tarzan was around? She could just look pretty in her new blue dress and—and—
And not be in charge of my own life.
Her mother was controlling enough. Her older sisters, too. This entire winter break had been one frustration after another as they put roadblocks in her path. The last thing she needed was a man to give her his opinions on where to go and how to live.
It was time to leave. There was nothing she needed from a man, not even from a bodyguard.
The men’s room door opened, and Tarzan stepped out in a blaze of light.
Sex.
Well. There was that.
She took in all the vivid details as the door slowly swung shut behind him. He wore a navy blue knit shirt, long sleeves pushed up his forearms. Snug jeans, not new. Boots, but not cowboy boots. Maybe he was a biker? His dark hair was just a shade shorter than most of the guys. Maybe he was from Fort Hood. A soldier?
She wanted to know. She was wild to know more about him.
In the last sliver of light before the door shut, their eyes met. The man had honest-to-goodness green eyes, a warm green, like the grass in autumn when she went riding, happy in her world.
Emily stared at him, mute. Had Jane been struck speechless when she’d first laid eyes on her uncivilized man?
We don’t do helpless. Snap out of it.
Emily forced herself to move. She stuck out her hand to shake his, as if she were back at the James Hill Ranch, meeting a new cowboy whom the foreman had hired for the season. Not the most feminine move, but it was better than staring.
“Hi there. I’m Emily Davis.”
“Graham.” He took her hand in his without taking his gaze off her face. He looked so terribly serious about a handshake, as if they were closing a business deal.
It occurred to her that she was accosting someone in a bathroom hallway, just like her ex had done. Just ugh. She was classier than this. More mature than this. Really, she was. But that electricity she’d felt when she’d first brushed against Tarzan was all there, that thrill in the air as warm palm met warm palm. Every crude line her girlfriends used to describe a sexy man, every purr about a man who could make a woman want to drop her panties at one smoldering look, all of them suddenly made sense.
Even his hand feels sexy.
He let go, gave her the slightest of nods and the smallest attempt at a smile, and then he started to shoulder past her.
No! Don’t go. In sudden desperation, words popped out of her mouth, the oldest pick-up line in the world, the one dozens of men had used on her. With a jerk of her chin toward the bar, she raised her voice over the music and the crowd.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
Copyright © 2017 by Caro Carson
ISBN-13: 9781488014437
Do You Take This Cowboy?
Copyright © 2017 by Vicki Lewis Thompson
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