Cowboy Trouble (The McCord Brothers 1.5)

by Delores Fossen

  Rico wanted some air clearing, but this didn’t feel right. Not after the against-the-counter hand job.

  “My mother didn’t just leave Spring Hill,” Natalie finally said. “She tried to kill herself. Sleeping pills. And that happened because I sent her over the edge.”

  Rico could have sworn his heart skipped a couple of beats. “She did that because we got married?”

  Natalie shrugged. “It didn’t help. She was already...delicate. And I kept getting into trouble. For her, public appearance was everything even if it was a facade. When the facade was gone, she just couldn’t handle it.”

  Things suddenly became a whole lot clearer. “So, that’s how your father has kept you in line all these years.”

  She didn’t deny it. “My mother is in a mental hospital just outside of Austin. Of course, it’s top notch, more of a country spa with lots of daily therapy. She has no intention of leaving—ever.”

  Well, hell. Rico had wanted to know. And now he did. But how the devil was he supposed to deal with this?

  “Are you okay?” It was something he wished he’d asked a whole lot sooner.

  “Yes.” She nodded, repeated it. Natalie even scrounged up a smile. “I can’t fix the situation with my mother, but at least I’ve worked out some things in the last hour or so. I’m not losing weight. I’m burning those Skinnies. And I’m buying some comfortable shoes.”

  Rico made a sound of approval. All of those were good, but that issue with her mother would always be a dark cloud. And in their case, that dark cloud was hanging right over their heads.

  “I’m also going to tell Marcus that I can never marry him,” she went on. “That way, he can get on with his life and find someone thinner who’s right for him.”

  He made a sound of approval to that, too.

  Natalie made a corresponding sound and continued, “Of course, I’ll have to make my father understand, as well. Because I’ve messed up so many things, he thinks he knows what’s best for me. But he doesn’t.” She paused again. “One final thing. I want to have sex with you.”

  Rico made another sound of approval before those last words sank into his head. A head he was already shaking.

  “Muddy waters,” he reminded her. Because while she wasn’t marrying Marcus, that didn’t mean she’d stay married to him.

  And Rico wasn’t sure he wanted that anyway.

  “You’ll always be daddy’s princess,” he added. “I’ll always be a ranch hand.”

  He frowned. Because he wasn’t just a ranch hand. He was in charge of managing the other ranch hands for one of the most profitable cattle brokers in the state. And Natalie was more than just a princess. She was apparently a capable businesswoman with questionable taste in undergarments.

  Unlike before, she didn’t come to him, so Rico got up and went to her. He turned her around so he could tell her to her face exactly what she didn’t want to hear.

  She tipped her head to the papers. “I’ll sign them. I’ll even file them. But I want one last afternoon with you.”

  He doubted she was talking about margaritas and scrambled eggs, either. No. This was about what they’d been skirting around since she’d stepped from her car at the ranch.

  Even though Rico was pretty sure this was a mistake, he no longer cared. He pulled Natalie to him and started something that he intended to finish. And not just do a half-assed job, either.

  Rico intended to finish this the right way.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DESPITE WHAT RICO had just told himself, the right way got off to a wrong start.

  He lowered his head to kiss Natalie at the same moment that she raised hers to kiss him. Their faces sort of collided, her cheekbone slamming into his nose. It felt as if a boxer wearing iron gloves had punched him.

  Rico probably would have disgraced himself by howling in pain if Natalie hadn’t followed through on the kiss. It only took a few seconds of her mouth on his to cure the pain. It cured other things, too, like any remaining doubt and common sense. But then, he’d never had much common sense when it came to Natalie.

  She slipped right into his arms. And into the kiss. Of course, it didn’t just stay a kiss, either. Not with their bodies already pressed against each other. Since there weren’t any condoms in this part of the house, Rico scooped up Natalie and headed toward his bedroom.

  Rico got another jolt of pain when he slammed his shoulder into the doorjamb. He wasn’t usually this awkward with sex, but the stakes suddenly seemed sky-high.

  Like maybe this would be the last time he’d ever be with Natalie.

  That froze him for a moment. Because it was true. This would almost certainly be a onetime deal. It should have been a whopping red flag flapping in the breeze. Not that he was opposed to onetime sex deals. In fact, he’d been a willing partner in them on several occasions. But it just didn’t seem right when it came to Natalie.

  That didn’t stop him.

  Mainly, though, because when they landed on the bed, Natalie immediately started trying to undress him. Or maybe she was trying to give him a hand job. It was hard to tell which. Either way, it was a huge distraction, and thoughts about onetime deals flew out of his head.

  Rico stopped her undressing attempts by flipping her onto her back and pinning her hands to the bed. That way, he could kiss her neck, and her breasts, without the distraction of an imminent orgasm.

  Man, she tasted good. Tasted right, too. There it was again, the word that kept finding its way into his lust-hazed mind. Since the word just kept coming, Rico made it his mantra, and he kissed her right, as well.

  He circled her nipples with his tongue.

  Natalie seemed to like that a lot because she called him a bad name and used her knee to slide against his crotch. All in all, that was right, too. For a couple of seconds anyway, but then it became too right and would have put a faster end to this if Rico hadn’t stopped it. If this was going to be a onetime deal, then he wanted more than a blink of foreplay.

  He flipped her again, this time with him on his back so that she wouldn’t be able to give him a knee-job.

  Bad idea.

  Really bad.

  Natalie pinned his arms to the bed, and with that naughty glint in her eyes, she went after his neck. It was a very sensitive spot for him. Not as sensitive as the spot she chose next. His chest. She yanked open his shirt and had a go at circling parts of him with her tongue, too. Rico gritted his teeth, tried to steel himself for the onslaught of sensations. He was winning.

  Until her mouth went to the front of his jeans.

  Except it was really the front of his boxers since Natalie had managed to get him unzipped. Yeah, there was a millimeter of cotton between him and her hot mouth, but Rico still felt it as if they were bare-assed naked.

  Which happened next.

  Foreplay sucked when it was time for sex, and he got his hands free so he could do another flip. So he could also strip off her clothes. Natalie laughed like a loon, battling his clothes as if this had turned into a race.

  Rico won.

  But that was only because his cowboy boots slowed her down. However, it did create an interesting body position with Natalie’s head on his boxers while she tugged at the boots.

  Rico didn’t help her. He had his own chore to do. While she wriggled him out of his jeans, he maneuvered himself to the nightstand and fished through the drawer to get a condom. By the time he opened the wrapper, Natalie had rid him of his boots, his jeans, his boxers.

  And she kissed him in the best place.

  Except it was wrong. Because he was already primed and ready to go, and her mouth would put a much-too-quick end to this. That meant more maneuvering, another flip with her on top of him. He barely got the condom on before she slid down onto him.

  And the world tipped on
it axis.

  Yeah, he remembered this, but he still got that jolt of surprise. The word came again.

  Right.

  Sex was usually good, no matter the partner, but with Natalie, it was r word.

  It was selfish of him to let her do all the work, but watching her was spellbinding along with mind-blowing. The way she looked when she slid against him. Her eyes partly closed. Her mouth partly open. And that little smile.

  Maybe this was the r word for her, too.

  Rico caught on to her hips. Not that she needed help. She knew exactly what to do. And even though he’d been the one to start this, Natalie was the one who finished it.

  Natalie finished things for both of them.

  * * *

  NATALIE OPENED HER eyes. And she nearly screamed because she thought she’d gone blind. There was also a tingling sound in her ears.

  Rico’s bedroom was pitch-dark, not even a thread of light coming in through the curtains. That was when she realized there was no blindness involved. It was night. There wasn’t anything wrong with her ears, either. It was raining on the house’s tin roof. A relaxing sound under normal circumstances.

  This wasn’t normal.

  She rolled over, checked the clock on Rico’s nightstand—8:30 p.m. Where the heck had the day gone? She’d only intended to rest for a couple of minutes after their second round of sex. Instead, she’d crashed for hours.

  Groaning, she got up. Or rather she tried to, but Rico just hooked his arm around her and pulled her back to him. Natalie didn’t put up much of a fight. Though she should have. She should squeeze back into her clothes, have him drive her to the McCord Ranch so she could get her car and go home.

  “It’s late,” she whispered. “And it’s raining. I need to leave because it’ll take me even longer to get back.”

  His response was to kiss her, the very thing that had started this afternoon marathon of sex. Natalie gave in to it for a moment longer, but as usual, oxygen became an issue. So did the burning attraction that just wouldn’t cool down. She would have thought that three orgasms would have done the trick, but she still felt that “edge.” Of course, that probably had something to do with having a butt-naked Rico next to her. Hard not to be edgy with a hot body like that around.

  All those muscles.

  Not from exercise in a gym, either. Rico had a cowboy’s body chiseled from years of hard work. Work that he hadn’t been doing since he’d been in bed with her.

  “Won’t Logan be wondering where you are?” she asked.

  “No. I texted him a couple of hours ago when I went to the bathroom. Lucky handled the livestock delivery.” But then she felt his muscles tense. The very muscles she’d just been admiring. He sat up, flicked on the lamp. “But what about you? Shouldn’t you be...somewhere?”

  He meant home, where her father had demanded she be for dinner. Which she’d obviously missed. Even if she left at this very minute, it’d be after ten o’clock by the time she got back to Austin.

  “I need to text my dad just so he won’t worry.” It wouldn’t stop him from being pissed, though. That ship had already sailed.

  She started to get up again, but like the other time, Rico kissed her. This one wasn’t long and lingering. In fact, he cut it short, pulled back and looked at her.

  Uh-oh.

  Now that the lamp was on, she could see more than heat in his eyes. Natalie could see the questions. Well, one question anyway.

  What now?

  Natalie didn’t have a clue. The sex had been great. Better than great. But she already knew from past experience that she couldn’t build a marriage on that alone.

  Especially not with Rico.

  To build a marriage with him, she’d have to do the impossible and rewrite the past. Talk about a depressing thought. It really killed the mood. Well, until Rico kissed her again. Apparently, that was the way he was going to deal with those questions in his eyes. Temporarily anyway. He pulled back, gave her that look again. So, Natalie just threw something out that would help them with this gorilla in the room.

  “You’ve got your wedding ring in the nightstand drawer,” she said. “I was surprised that you’d kept it all these years.”

  It was as if his expression stuttered. “You looked in my drawers?”

  She lifted her shoulder. “Let’s call it what it is. I snooped. I felt the sheets, too, just to see if I was allergic to the detergent like the kindergarten teacher.”

  He groaned and was probably making a mental note to hire a hit man for Wilhelmina. Bernie’s secretary just didn’t have any boundaries. But then, neither did she because she’d gone through his nightstand—mainly to make sure he had some condoms. He had, but just one. Natalie had then gone through his medicine cabinet to see if there were backups.

  There had been.

  Good thing, too, because they’d needed them.

  “I’m betting you got rid of your wedding and engagement rings,” he said.

  That was a bet he’d lose. Well, sort of.

  She felt around on the floor beside the bed and came up with her top so she could show him the heart pin. It looked silver, but it was actually white gold.

  “My wedding band went missing, but I had a jeweler make the engagement ring into this,” she explained.

  Judging from the way Rico stared at her, he wanted more information. Like why the heck had she done that? And what did it mean?

  Natalie was still trying to figure that out all these years later.

  “I couldn’t just give the ring away,” she said. “Or toss it the way some people do. But it didn’t seem right to wear it, either. If the wedding band had ever turned up, I would have had earrings or something made from it. But I looked everywhere and couldn’t find it.”

  He kept staring at her.

  “I wanted to keep them, all right?” Natalie snapped, and she realized she sounded pissed.

  Which in a way she was.

  She didn’t like explaining that it had felt good to keep the ring, in some form or another, close to her. She definitely hadn’t shoved it away in her nightstand drawer so that it was out of sight, out of mind.

  “You wear the pin a lot?” he asked.

  All the time. In fact, she told everyone it was her good-luck charm. “Whenever it matches my outfit,” she said. Thankfully, it matched everything.

  Rico stared at her a moment longer. Then he mumbled some very bad curse words and dropped his head back onto the pillow. “If the ring was important, why didn’t you get in touch with me at least once during the past twelve years?”

  “I did.” Oh. This would lead to another confession. “I called you but would then hang up because I didn’t know what to say.” After all, there really wasn’t much she could say. “I did that for a while, but then you changed your number.”

  “Because I thought I was getting crank calls. Your name wasn’t on the caller ID.”

  “I used one of those disposable phones when I made the calls. My phone is part of the company’s business accounts.”

  “And you didn’t want your dad to see my number and know you’d contacted me,” he finished for her. He cursed.

  “Well, you didn’t exactly call me,” she argued.

  He stayed quiet a moment. “No, but I did go to see you.”

  She practically snapped to attention. “When?”

  A muscle flickered in his jaw. “About a year after you left. I drove to Austin and saw you walking out of your dad’s office building with another guy.”

  Natalie shook her head, clearly not able to remember that specific time. She exited that building at least once a day.

  “The guy was tall, looked like a body builder,” Rico provided. Judging from the slightly narrowed eyes, he remembered it in nth detail. “He was wearing a brig
ht blue suit.”

  “Trent,” she quickly provided. “He’s my assistant, and he’s married with four daughters. Trust me, Trent and I weren’t involved.”

  “He had his arm around you.”

  Natalie didn’t have to think hard to recall why he would have done that. “I was having trouble walking in my heels.” She huffed. “A year after I left, I wasn’t ready to look at another man. I didn’t get involved with Marcus until four years after that, and the truth is, I was never really involved. Sadly, Marcus is just another outfit that my dad wants me to have.”

  There it was. All spelled out. Her life without Rico. Of course, she was never really without him. Not in thought anyway. Since she was just now realizing that, it made her seem more than a little pathetic.

  “Yeah, having sex with you today didn’t muddy the waters at all,” he snarled, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

  “It doesn’t have to,” Natalie threw out there. Like the pin/ring discussion, he was clearly going to want a whole lot more.

  More that she didn’t have. But she did have an idea, one that would probably send his common sense into cardiac arrest.

  “Why can’t we just be sex buddies?” she asked. “We’re obviously good at it. And it’s not as if we’re having sex with anyone else.” Her own common sense stalled a little when she realized that might not be true. “Are you?”

  He gave her the flat-look treatment. “No.” Then huffed. “You really think we can have more sex and not screw up...things?”

  He meant their lives. Their hearts, too.

  Even with the stakes that high, Natalie nodded. Again, her decision was highly influenced by having a naked Rico just a few inches away from her. Those inches were too far, she decided, and she moved in for a kiss.

  There were plenty of nice things about kissing Rico, but the best one was that it caused them to stop thinking. Natalie didn’t want to think right now. She wanted to have him one more time before she had to go home. Rico seemed to be on the same page with that, and he pulled her down to him. All in all, a very good place to be.