The Cowboy's E-Mail Order Bride

by Cora Seton

  I can’t do this. I have to leave tonight.

  But even as she thought it she knew it was a lie. She’d do anything to get this story and clinch her contract with CityPretty. Writing for a magazine was the one goal she’d ever reached in life and she wasn’t going to lose that achievement now, just because a cowboy’s kisses sent her around the bend.

  I’ll see this through until the end.

  She wouldn’t give her mother or sister another reason to call her a failure. Bad enough she hadn’t gone into medicine like they did. Bad enough she’d ever mentioned going to culinary school. Bad enough when she’d listened to reason and gone to a university instead, she’d switched from pre-med to majoring in English. Bad enough she’d bailed from the internship her mother had set up for her to travel to England with Becka instead. Bad enough she’d refused to get her Masters and PhD so she could be a professor.

  Bad enough she was a writer. A writer for a women’s magazine.

  If she lost her job now it would mean one more family chorus of “I told you so,” and another disappointment for them to chalk up on their score cards. She could not bear that. So she would see this assignment through to the bitter end, no matter what it took.

  As she flushed the toilet and made her way to the sinks, she didn’t allow herself to think about just what that might mean.

  * * * * *

  Ethan watched Autumn snake her way back through the tables, stopping every few feet to shake hands and receive congratulations from well-wishers among the diners. As she chatted with a few, he caught a look of naked worry on her face and realized she was out of her depth making up details of their relationship on the fly. They’d better put their heads together and sync up their stories tonight before one of them slipped up.

  When she reached their table, she glanced at the extra chairs, now filled with Rob, Cab and Jamie, who were happily destroying the contents of a bread basket and quenching their thirst with a pitcher of beer. She slipped into the seat next to him and whispered in his ear. “I’ve been telling everyone you’d fill them in on how we met. I didn’t know what you wanted me to say. Don’t they know about your video?”

  “No,” Ethan hissed. “Well, except for these guys. And I’d like to keep it that way. It’s embarrassing,” he added when she gave him a questioning look. “I didn’t think many people would see it.”

  “You put a video on YouTube and thought no one would look at it?”

  Damn. He thought fast. “Just follow my lead. We’ve known each other off and on for a couple years. After Lacey bailed, I got back in touch. We’ve had a long distance relationship for the past six months.”

  She nodded. “Okay. How about, we couldn’t stand being apart any longer but I’m a traditionalist; no living together until there’s a ring on my finger. We’ll say I’m a bit of a control freak and wouldn’t let you pick it alone.”

  A ring.

  “How much is that gonna cost me?” The words were out before he thought them through and she rewarded him with a look that seemed half-disgust, half-hurt. Shit. He kept forgetting she was here because she believed this was for real – she wasn’t in on the joke. A joke that had gone way too far. He wiped his hands on his jeans under the table and gathered his courage. He hated to do it like this – in public, especially after the upwelling of support from the community they’d just witnessed, but better to do it now – to pull the band-aid off quickly, so to speak – than to wait for things to get even worse.

  “Look, Autumn,” he began, leaning toward her.

  “I guess…I always wanted something simple,” she said, the hurt still there in her voice. “I don’t need a fancy ring to prove that I believe in always and forever.”

  The words he meant to say vanished.

  Always and forever.

  Was she for real? After all the blows he’d been dealt this past year, was fate finally turning on its head and offering him a gift? Always and forever was exactly what he wanted. Well, what he used to want – until his mother and Lacey showed him how little a woman’s vows meant.

  “We’ll find something pretty,” he heard himself say. “Something pretty for a pretty girl.”

  She blushed. The sweet, curvy, beautiful woman sitting next to him actually blushed. He couldn’t help himself. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. Straightening up, he caught Rob’s knowing smile, but before he could think of something biting to say to wipe it off, Sarah-Jane came to the table with two more pitchers of beer.

  “On the house – from the Winters.” She nodded to a couple smiling and waving from across the room. Dave Winters was Ethan’s 10 grade shop class teacher. He forced himself to smile and raise a glass in appreciation. Damn it, what was he thinking kissing Autumn? Promising her a ring! Had he gone completely insane?

  “Drink up!” Cab shouted. “And kiss the girl! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” In a moment the whole crowd was chanting along.

  Not again.

  Autumn raised her glass to his, then drank deeply. He followed suit, not knowing what else to do. For tonight, they were caught like deer in the headlights of this crowd’s enthusiasm. Rob had won for now. He’d drink. He’d kiss the girl. Tomorrow, however, he would sort this out once and for all, put Autumn on a plane back to New York City and give Rob the whupping of his life for hurting the most desirable woman he’d ever met.

  He downed his drink, slipped a hand under Autumn’s silky hair and pulled her close, then kissed the daylights out of her. The crowd went wild.

  * * * * *

  It was a tight fit in Rob’s truck at the end of the night since Jamie picked up some female company. Autumn didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything. She’d drunk more beer than she thought humanly possible, been kissed more times in one night than she’d been in three years. She’d lost wildly at pool and darts in DelMonaco’s games room, danced with more cowboys than she could count on DelMonaco’s poor excuse for a dance floor while being serenaded by its juke box, and taken pictures of everything.

  She was dizzy, sleepy, and warm all over from the excess of human contact she’d experienced. Now she perched on Ethan’s lap, one arm around his neck, because it was the only way they fit in the back seat of the extended cab, crammed in next to Jamie and Sheila somebody – a loud talking cowgirl all the men seemed to know. Ethan’s arms circled her waist and one hand rested on her thigh. The heat of it was sending shivers of desire up and down her body. How long had it been since she had been held and caressed? Ethan’s battered jacket covered her since the night had turned cool. She snuggled under it, her face pressed to his neck. He smelled so good – so different from men in New York. Not a whiff of cologne on him. She realized in a rush what a turn-off it was that so many of the men in New York used more product than she did.

  Ethan used good old soap and shampoo, she’d bet. She pressed her nose further into his skin and breathed in long and hard. Yummy. Did he taste as good as he smelled? She pressed her lips against his neck and allowed her tongue to dart out. Yep. Delicious. She tried it again.

  Ethan stiffened, then tightened his hold on her, his hand on her thigh smoothing down her skirt, then traveling to her waist, then higher still. When it brushed against her breast, her breath caught and she stilled, waiting for that caress to go on. After a moment so long it felt like a lifetime, it did. His hand curved around the swell of her breast and lightly squeezed. A rush of heat warmed her and she leaned into him, biting her lip when his fingers found her nipple and began to tease it through the fabric of her bra and dress.

  She kissed him harder, straining to reach his ear, down his neck, under his chin. His touch grew stronger, surer, the sweep of his hand around her breast setting her on fire and the pass of his thumb over her increasingly sensitive nipple nearly driving her to moan out loud.

  “Okay, you two – get a room!” Rob called over the seat.

  Autumn pulled away from Ethan with a gasp and met Rob’s gaze in the rear view mirror. The cowboy’s mocking grin made her turn
away and look out of the truck. They’d stopped in a driveway before a long, low house. A single lightbulb on the porch broke the darkness that seemed to spread for miles in every direction. This must be Ethan’s ranch. She shivered at the sudden realization they were alone out here. Well, alone with four rowdy cowboy friends.

  Cab got out of the front seat and opened the door for them. Ethan scooped her into his arms and slid out of the truck, landing hard but keeping his footing in the dirt of the driveway. Not acknowledging the whoops and cheers from his friends, he walked toward the front door of the small structure before them, carrying her as if it was something he did daily. She heard the truck turn in the driveway with a roar of its engines. He stumped up the steps, fumbled with the doorknob for a moment, then carried her indoors and slammed the door shut behind them.

  She saw an unembellished living room, neat but spare, a door leading into a kitchen she only glimpsed, a flash of hall, and then they were in a bedroom. A man’s bedroom. Dark colors. Solid furniture. He set her gently on her feet and bent to turn on the bedside lamp. He threw the comforter back on the large bed.

  “If you want out, now’s the time to say so,” he said, his breath tickling her chin.

  Warning bells clanged in her mind, but Autumn pushed them back. The last thing she wanted was out. She kissed him full on the mouth, hard.

  “I’m in.”

  * * * * *

  This had to be a dream, Ethan thought. Things like this didn’t happen to guys like him. When Lacey ditched him he swore he’d never be fooled by a woman again, and here he was with a dream girl, hand delivered to him, ready, willing and able not just to share his bed, but his life.

  Forever and always. Her exact words. Hell yeah he’d buy her a ring. He’d put the biggest diamond he could afford on her finger and then together they’d save this ranch of his. They would undo everything his mother had done, pay back the bank, silence his creditors, buy out his sister, and show everyone that the Cruz’s might be down and out, but they weren’t finished. Far from it.

  As Autumn sat down on the bed he shucked off his shirt and undid the buckle of his jeans. Pure lust raged through his body and he couldn’t stand the distance between them for one more minute. Judging from the look in her eyes, neither could she.

  She began to work on the buttons that did up the back of her dress. He kicked off his boots and jeans, turned her around and swept her hair aside. The buttons were small and difficult for his large fingers, but he made short work of them. Shucking off his boxers, he turned her once more gently around and waited for her to do the rest.

  Her eyes widened at the sight of him, naked and ready, and a wicked smile played on her lips as she looked him up and down. “You are something,” she said.

  “Hurry up.”

  She laughed, and the sound fueled his desire.

  “Need some help?”

  “I got it.” She slid the dress first off one shoulder, then the other, then down to her waist. She unhooked her lacy bra, and let that fall, too. Ethan couldn’t wait a moment more. He swept down, took one nipple into his mouth and tipped her over, pulling her into his arms.

  Alone at last, their audience long gone, Autumn chucked all propriety to the wind. In for a penny, in for a pound. She was going to enjoy this night with this helluva man and damn the consequences. As he lay her down, the world spun around her and she knew she’d drunk far too much. She wasn’t thinking clearly. His mouth on her skin was doing delicious things to her insides, coiling them up into golden ropes of desire. He couldn’t kiss enough of her, couldn’t suck hard enough on her nipples, couldn’t touch enough of her at once.

  She writhed in his arms as he moved from one breast to the other, playing with them, loving them, nipping and laving and teasing her until she wanted to scream from delighted agony. Then he moved lower, kissing her belly, her mound, and then….Oh, God… she clutched the sheets. Oh God, that felt good. She coiled her fingers in his hair, let him drive her to the edge of oblivion, and groaned when he pulled back.

  “Ethan,” she cried, and he was there, the length of his body pressed against hers, one hand cradling her head, the other pulling her tight. “I can’t wait,” she breathed. “Now!” Something tugged at her consciousness – a little voice telling her she was forgetting something. Birth control. Shouldn’t she…?

  And he was in her, one thrust taking him all the way home. She gasped aloud, then cried out in sheer pleasure. He smiled, a predatory, knowing grin, pulled out and stroked in again. She didn’t hold back, her moan filling the room, letting him know just how much she wanted him. She slid her hands to his ass, gripped him tight and pulled him against her. He got the message.

  Their lovemaking was like nothing she’d ever known. Fast, hard, passionate, each of them wanting, needing more. He filled her and moved her and slammed into her until the heat and pressure between her thighs built to a peak of tension she couldn’t resist.

  “Ethan!”

  He pushed into her a final time with his own cry of triumph and they came together with an intensity that shocked Autumn to the roots of her soul. Wave after wave of heat and light consumed her body, and she cried out again and again. When it was over she lay back, spent, Ethan sprawled on top of her. She welcomed his weight, welcomed the touch of his lips on her eyelids, nose, cheeks and mouth. And as she drifted off to sleep, she smiled contentedly, knowing that tomorrow they would do this again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  What had he done?

  Ethan stood on the front porch of the bunkhouse he’d converted into his home, and gazed across the yard at the big house he’d grown up in, letting the cool morning air blow over his shirtless torso. He gripped a cup of coffee in one hand like it was a lifeline, and in a way it was. His head ached, his mind refused to think clearly. All he knew was that in the 24 hours since he’d watched his last sunrise over the fields of his family’s ranch from this very same spot, he’d acquired a fiancée, lied to just about everyone he knew about his intentions toward her, and had the most riveting sexual experience of his life.

  With a stranger.

  A stranger he intended to put on a plane and send away this very morning.

  The acid burning in his belly and the back of his throat wasn’t due to the copious amounts of alcohol he’d consumed the night before. It was the product of the knowledge that before sundown the whole damn town would be sneering at him. Ethan the cheat. Ethan the loser. Ethan, the man who lures defenseless women to town for a quick roll in the hay, then sends them packing. Ethan, who can’t even hold onto the ranch that’d been in his family for generations.

  No matter that Rob was the joker who had set this whole fiancée thing in motion. No matter that Lacey made him a loser in the love department. No matter that his own mother had siphoned off the ranch’s earnings for years to support her outrageous spending sprees.

  In the end it all came down to him. His inability to control his world. His inability to right the wrongs of others. No one else could be trusted to make things right. He had to do it all, or die trying.

  His knuckles stood out white against the mug and he forced himself to relax his grip. He’d been through some tough times before and this one wouldn’t kill him, either. He thought his parents’ deaths would be the end of him; two of the people he loved most in the world snuffed out with no chance to say good-bye. He remembered the night the state troopers knocked on his door, broke the news man to man, then left him to the realization that he was all alone. He barely had time to absorb the shock before all the responsibilities of running a ranch came crashing down on his shoulders. Cattle, horses, men, all depending on him to keep things right.

  He’d reached out to his sister then, but she’d turned him down flat. Claire had left for Billings years ago to become an interior designer after a particularly nasty argument with their mother. No way she was coming home to help, not even for a couple of weeks. She offered to find a realtor to list the spread and he’d hung up on her. It was mo
nths before they spoke again.

  Then came another shock – the day he spent with his parents’ accountant, going over the books for the Cruz spread for the first time. He had no idea how much money his mother spent on her annual jaunts to Europe. No idea how thin the ranch’s margin was. His parents were in debt up to their eyeballs when they died and he was the lucky inheritor of the whole mess.

  That night was the worst of his life – when he realized he hadn’t just lost his parents; he was losing everything his family stood for. Still living in the Big House, he’d gone over and over the printouts the accountant gave him, looking for any good news in all the bad. Sometime around 2:30 in the morning, he’d gone to the kitchen to refill his drink and he’d taken in the granite countertops, high end appliances and hand quarried slate floor. He’d been surrounded by his mothers’ excesses all this time and never thought to question it.

  In that moment, the dim light of the refrigerator spilling across the floor, he had the awful thought that maybe his parents’ deaths weren’t an accident after all. Maybe broken under the load of debt, his father had deliberately crossed the line on the highway and driven off the road.

  No. He knew that wasn’t right. He knew it.

  But the thought haunted him for days. It was with him when he confessed to Lacey the state of the ranch. It rung in his brain when she recoiled from him, ran away and refused to take his calls. Stuck in his head when he began to hear the rumors that she’d taken up with another man – a rich outsider come to town to buy a show ranch.

  It kept him up through long nights of imagining that stranger touching her – sleeping with her. Prevented him from eating, and brought up whatever food he managed to choke down, while he struggled to find a foothold in the mountain of debt that would allow him to keep the ranch – and a reason to keep on trying now that Lacey had abandoned him. He wanted to throttle his father. Why hadn’t he stood up to his mother? Why hadn’t he stopped her?