To the One I Love: That Old Familiar FeelingAn Older ManCaught by a Cowboy

by Emilie Richards

She pushed her hand higher, cutting him off. “I’m not done yet. I’m truly sorry if I’ve hurt you by refusing your proposal, but I like my life just as it is and I’m not about to change it.”

  He hitched his hands on his hips. “And how would marrying me upset your life so much?”

  “Right now, I can go where I want. Do what I want. Don’t you see?” she cried in frustration. “There’s a whole world out there to explore, a million things I haven’t tried! I’m not about to get married and tie myself down. So there,” she said, and gave the hem of her T-shirt a decisive tug. “Now you know.”

  “What I know is, the two weeks aren’t up yet.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m fully aware of that, and I intend to fulfill the terms of my contract. But in order to do that, we need to establish a few rules. Ones that will allow us to continue on without destroying our friendship.”

  He arched a brow. “Friendship?”

  “Well, yes. We are friends, aren’t we?”

  Crossing the room, he draped an arm around her shoulders and headed her for the deck. “Sure, we are. I sleep with all my friends, don’t you?”

  “Would you stop it!” she cried in frustration. “I’m being serious.”

  “Sorry,” he murmured, though there wasn’t an ounce of apology in his voice.

  “In order to coexist congenially,” she continued, “you have to promise to keep your hands to yourself.”

  He withdrew his arm from around her. “Agreed.”

  “And you have to promise not to talk like we’re getting married. Or about sex,” she added quickly.

  Biting back a smile, he opened the door to the deck. “Okay. That’s three promises for me. What’s yours?”

  She jutted her chin and brushed past him. “I promise to finish out my two weeks.”

  Chapter 5

  Deanna shook her head. “No,” she said, frowning, then pointed. “Over there.”

  Frustrated, Cope hitched his hands on his hips. This was the second day he’d spent moving furniture around for Deanna, and he was growing a little weary of the back-breaking chore. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “But I had it facing the windows before,” he reminded her, “and you made me move it.”

  “Yes, but if the sofa’s facing the window, you’ll be able to enjoy the view of the Gulf.”

  “Which is why you had me move it there in the first place. Then you decided it would look better facing the fireplace and had me move it there.”

  She squinched her nose. “I did, didn’t I?”

  Tossing up his hands, he flopped down on the sofa. “When you’ve made up your mind, let me know. I’m moving this sucker one more time and that’s it.”

  Deanna walked around the room, studying the sofa’s position from every possible angle. Still undecided, she stopped in front of Cope. “You choose. Where do you think it looks best?”

  He caught her hand and tugged her down beside him. “I think it’s fine right where it is.” He gestured to the bank of windows the sofa faced. “Just get a load of that view, would you? This is the perfect spot.”

  Deanna glanced behind her at the rock fireplace. “But in the winter it would be nice to have it in front of the fireplace, so you could enjoy its warmth.”

  He dropped a kiss on her cheek. “When winter comes, we’ll move it.”

  She turned to look at him. “You mean you’ll be moving it. I’ll be in Hawaii by then.”

  “Maybe…if that’s where you want us to spend our honeymoon.”

  “Cope!” she cried, bolting to her feet. “You promised!”

  He tugged her back down beside him. “Just keep an open mind,” he suggested mildly. “That’s all I ask.”

  “I’ll keep an open mind, if you’ll quit talking like it’s a done deal.”

  He tipped his head, as if considering, then stuck out a hand as if to seal the agreement. “Okay.”

  She gave him a wary look, but placed her hand in his and shook.

  She attempted to stand again, but he pulled her back down.

  “Cope!” she said in frustration, wrenching her hand free.

  “What’s your rush? Sit and enjoy the view a while.”

  “I’m supposed to be working. Remember?”

  “So consider it your job.”

  “Sitting by you?” She snorted a breath and pushed to her feet. “Though I do consider that a chore, I’ve got better things to do.”

  He rose and trailed her to the kitchen. “Like what?”

  “Cooking lunch, for one.” She opened the refrigerator to check out its contents. “You might want to consider a visit to Wallace’s. That’s our local grocery. There’s not much here to choose from.”

  He pulled out his keys and headed for the door. “Great idea. Let’s go.”

  Deanna groaned, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. Along with a wide variety of grocery items and silly tourist souvenirs, Wallace’s was the hot spot for town gossip. Within an hour of her and Cope leaving the store, everyone on Colman Key would know that Deanna had shopped for groceries with a “strange” man. As to why she would be buying a cart full of groceries, and with a man no less, when her grandmother had a garden full of fresh vegetables and herbs to choose from…well, that alone would create enough speculation to keep the island grapevine buzzing for a week.

  Deanna trailed behind Cope as he pushed the loaded shopping cart down Wallace’s crowded aisles, watching as he tossed in the most ridiculous assortment of items she’d ever seen.

  “Cope, really,” she complained, as he plucked a couple of kite kits from a rack. “Aren’t you a little too old for toys?”

  He tossed the kites to the top of the heap and shot her a smile. “What’s that saying about a man and his toys?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It refers to men’s toys that are a little less juvenile than kites, Frisbees and sand pails.”

  He slung an arm over her shoulders, drawing her with him as he maneuvered the cart one-handed to the checkout. “Yeah, but they’re not nearly as much fun.”

  Withdrawing his arm from around her, he guided the cart before the register. “Hi,” he said, offering the clerk a friendly smile, as he began to remove his purchases. “I’m Cope.”

  The woman standing at the register, looked at him curiously. “I’m Mrs. Wallace,” she said, then glanced over at Deanna in puzzlement. “Are you two together?”

  Oh, no, Deanna thought. Here it comes.

  She forced a smile. “Sort of. Cope’s my employer.”

  Cope slung an arm around her. “And soon to be fiancée,” he added, with a proud smile.

  Mrs. Wallace slowly turned her head to peer at Deanna. “You never said anything about an upcoming engagement.”

  Deanna opened her mouth to deny Cope’s claim, but he prevented her from doing so by saying, “It all happened so suddenly.”

  Mrs. Wallace eyed him suspiciously. “You aren’t from around here.”

  Cope chuckled. “No, ma’am. I just bought Sam Fennigan’s place on Beach Road.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Wallace said, lifting a brow. “I guess you know it’s haunted.”

  Cope laughed good-naturedly. “So I hear. But we aren’t afraid of ghosts, are we, Deanna?”

  Before she could reply, he plowed on.

  “We’ll actually be making our home in Texas,” he told Mrs. Wallace, as she totaled up his purchases, “but I figured Deanna would need a place to stay when she comes back to visit her family.”

  “I’m surprised you just didn’t buy her grandmother’s house, since it’s for sale.”

  Cope looked down at Deanna. “Why didn’t you tell me your grandmother’s house was for sale, darlin’? I’d have bought it instead of Sam’s, had I known.”

  Deanna was so furious with Cope, she couldn’t get a word past the anger that choked her. It was all she could do to keep from slugging him.

  Right there in front of Mrs. Wallace, who was probably already itching to get t
o a phone so she could spread the news that Deanna was getting married to some rich Texan, he smiled and dropped a kiss square on her mouth.

  “Well, I’ll buy your grandmother’s house for you, too, if you want it.” Before she could find her voice, he picked up a sack. “We’d better be going. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Wallace,” he said, and placed a hand low on Deanna’s back, ushering her out the door.

  Once in the Hummer, she turned on Cope, her face red with rage. “Why did you tell her we’re engaged? Now everybody on the island is going to think we’re getting married.”

  With a shrug, he put the Hummer into gear and pulled out onto the street. “We are getting married.”

  “No we’re not!” she cried in frustration. “When are you going to get that through that thick head of yours?”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and raked his fingers through his hair, studying his reflection. “Do you really think my head looks thick?”

  Seething, she flopped around to glare at the street ahead. “I’m not talking to you any more.”

  “Now how do you expect us to carry on a relationship if you refuse to talk to me?”

  She shot him a dark look. “If you make one more reference to us as a couple, I swear I’ll jump out of this truck.”

  “And make me a widower before I’m ever a groom?”

  She reached for the door handle and he lunged to clamp a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying not to laugh. “I promise I won’t do it again.”

  “I can only work half a day today,” Deanna informed Cope, the minute she walked in the back door.

  He looked up from his bowl of cereal. “Why?”

  “I need to help Grammer clean out her gardening shed this afternoon and box everything up for her move.”

  Remembering Mrs. Wallace mentioning the day before that Deanna’s grandmother’s house was up for sale, he asked, “Where she’s moving?”

  Scowling, Deanna tossed her purse onto the counter. “To a nursing home on the mainland. It’s awful,” she said, shuddering, as she remembered her and her sisters’ visit to the place. “Grammer won’t be happy there, I know. She’ll miss her gardens, her house. The island.”

  “Then why is she moving?”

  “My father’s making her.”

  He lifted a brow. “Nice guy.”

  “He’s not actually making her,” she admitted grudgingly. “But he’s the one who convinced her that she’s getting too feeble to live alone.”

  Cope frowned. “Is she in poor health.”

  “That’s just it. She’s healthy as a horse. She’s putting on a pretty good act for Lacey, Marti and me, pretending she’s looking forward to the move, but I know the thought of giving up her house is killing her. It’s killing me, and I don’t have half as many memories stored there as she does.”

  “I’ll buy it for you, if you want me to.”

  She gave him a pained look.

  “Okay,” he said, lifting his hands in surrender. “It was just an offer.”

  “Anyway,” she said, directing the conversation back to her need to have the afternoon off. “I can make up the hours another day, if you want.”

  Shrugging, he scooped up another spoonful of Cheerios. “Fine by me.”

  “What do you want me to do today?”

  “I thought we’d play it by ear.”

  “In other words, you don’t have anything for me to do,” she said wryly.

  “I’d planned to spend the morning working on a set of blueprints for a new dude ranch I’ve got in the works. You can help, if you want.”

  She choked a laugh. “Me? I don’t know how to read a set of blueprints.”

  He picked up his bowl and crossed to the sink. “I didn’t either when I started.”

  She tried to recall what a set of blueprints looked like. “Blueprints are nothing but a lot of lines, numbers and angles. Right?”

  “Basically, yes, though there’s a lot more to them than that.”

  She took the bowl from his hand and rinsed it out. “Forget me, then. Math was never my best subject.”

  “What was?”

  She braced her elbows on the edge of the sink and thought a minute, then shrugged. “I’m not sure I had one.”

  Chuckling, he headed for the den. “I doubt that.”

  Deanna straightened up the kitchen, then sauntered into the den, where Cope worked. He lay on the floor, stretched out on his stomach, a large set of blueprints spread out in front of him. He was dressed in a pair of gray sweat shorts that exposed a long length of muscled legs, and a ratty T-shirt, minus its sleeves, which left the edge of the gaping armholes jagged and frayed.

  He looked so cute and rumpled sprawled on the floor, so comfortable…so at home. She could imagine herself stretched out beside him, their heads tipped together, as they discussed the merits of the plans. But they wouldn’t be discussing them for long. It would start with her brushing a toe down his leg, one of the more sensitive areas she’d discovered on his body during her stay in Texas. He’d stand the teasing for awhile…then he’d glance her way, weave his leg with hers. He’d smile and lean to kiss her. A light kiss. A teasing kiss. Then he’d roll onto his back, pull her over him and deepen the kiss. He’d cup his hands over her buttocks and urge her hips to his. She could almost feel the heat of his erection as it swelled, could almost taste the—

  She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the moan crawling up her throat, before it could slip past her lips. What are you doing? she asked herself in dismay. What are you thinking!

  She had to get out of the house. Away from him.

  “Do you need me to run any errands?” she asked, trying to keep the panic from her voice.

  He shook his head.

  “How about laundry? I could make a run to the dry cleaners for you.”

  He made a notation on a legal pad propped beneath his hand. “That’s not necessary. I’ve got plenty of clean clothes.” Frowning, he rubbed the pencil’s eraser against his temple. “See what you think of this,” he said.

  She leaned to peer over his shoulder. To her, the blueprint might as well have been a celestial map of the universe for all the sense it made. “What am I looking at?” she asked uncertainly.

  “The plan for the electrical wiring.”

  She backed up a step. “Sorry. That’s way over my head.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the electrical design, specifically.” He flipped back several pages, then swept a hand over the pages to smooth out the wrinkles. “This is a drawing of the overall project,” he explained. “The guest center is here,” he said, pointing. “The building adjacent to it is the kitchen and the main dining room, and the cabins are the smaller squares that form a horseshoe around the two. Between them—” he pointed to the space that lay between the guest center and the cabins “—I’m thinking about putting a patio and pool area.”

  Intrigued, she sank down to her knees to kneel beside him. “That’s similar to the layout of your dude ranch in Texas, isn’t it?”

  “Essentially,” he said, then reached for a folder at his left and flipped it open. “These are an artist’s renderings of what the buildings will actually look like when completed. Since I’m considering building this dude ranch in Wyoming, I’m using an architectural style more characteristic of the area. Log walls instead of stucco, lots of wood on the interior. Plenty of windows to take in the views of the mountains. That kind of thing.”

  “That’s really neat,” she said, impressed, then asked, “Who designed the project for you?”

  “An architect drew up the formal plans, but I sketched the design.”

  She glanced over at him. “Really? I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”

  “I didn’t. But I discovered that I’d save a chunk of money and time if I went to the architect with a pretty good idea of how I wanted the final plan to turn out.” He chuckled. “Took me a while to convince the architect that what I brought him the first time is what I wanted. Fin
ally had to tell him that I wasn’t paying him for anything that didn’t come close to the original plans I gave him. He drew three or four sets of plans that I refused to pay for before I made a believer out of him. Now he draws what I tell him.”

  “Do you take that active a role in all phases of the construction?”

  “Are you asking me if I swing a hammer?”

  She laughed. “No. It’s just that there is so much that goes into a facility like this. Decorating all the buildings, planning all the activities that will be offered to the guests. That kind of thing.”

  “I own five of these now, so I’ve got the basics of the buildings pretty well in place. The veneer changes, depending on the location, but everything else stays pretty much the same. I choose the site, the layout, oversee hiring the staff and the selection of the livestock that will be used for trail rides and such, but I leave the daily running of the individual ranches up to the managers I hire.”

  He rolled to his side to look at her. “I know what you can do today,” he said, as if the idea had just come to him.

  “What?”

  He reached for a thick portfolio and dragged it toward him. “You can do the interior selections. You did a pretty good job picking out all the stuff here.”

  “You mean you want me to pick out the furniture?”

  “And the light fixtures, bath fixtures, paint finishes. All that kind of stuff.” He pulled open the portfolio and peered inside. “These are the catalogs I’d planned to work from. And this,” he said, drawing out a smaller sketch from the portfolio, “is a floor plan of one of the cabins. You can work from it and make a list of the items we’ll need to order for each.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly, feeling a little overwhelmed. Gathering up the materials, she crossed to the sofa and sat down. “Do I have a budget?” she asked, as she flipped open the first catalog.

  “No. But don’t go crazy.”

  She zeroed in immediately on a breathtaking king-size bed constructed of birch logs. She winced when she saw the price, then stole a glance at Cope.

  “What do you consider crazy?”

  “Why?”

  She quickly jotted down the catalog number. “Never mind,” she said, biting back a smile.