Tempted by a Cowboy

by Sarah M. Anderson

  Nothing. Not a damned thing.

  God, he needed a drink.

  Sun made that unholy noise again, but Phillip couldn’t even look. It was so tempting to blame Sun for this. The horse had cost seven million dollars. He’d never seen his brother so mad as when Phillip had told Chadwick about the horse. If only Sun hadn’t cost so much....

  But that was a cop-out and he knew it. Phillip was the one who’d bought the horse. And all the other horses. And the tack, the wagons, the carriages. He was the one who’d hired the farm hands. And Jo.

  Jo.

  Almost as if he’d called her, she came to stand next to him. Her hand slipped into his and her fingers intertwined with his. She felt...smaller than she had this afternoon.

  He felt smaller.

  “Come on,” she said in that low voice that brooked no arguments. She gave his hand a gentle tug and he stumbled after her.

  She led him to her trailer. Any other time, Phillip would have been excited about this development. But he couldn’t even think about sex right now. Not when he was on the verge of losing everything he’d worked for.

  She basically pulled him up the narrow trailer steps and then pushed him toward a small dinette table. “Have a seat.”

  He sat. Heavily. Jesus. He knew that the company was in trouble. But he had no idea that Chadwick would do this. That he’d even been considering selling the Brewery, much less the farm. He’d thought...Chadwick would win. That’s what Chadwick did. He’d fight off the acquisition and save the company and everything would continue on as it had before.

  But Chadwick hadn’t. Wouldn’t. He was going to get rid of the farm. Of Phillip.

  This was...this was his home. Not the Beaumont family mansion, not the apartment in the city. The farm was where he’d always felt the most normal. Been the most normal. He’d been able to do something that had made him proud. Had made his father proud of him. Hardwick Beaumont had never had a second look for his second son out in the real world. But here, talking horses, his father had noticed him. Told him he’d done a good job. Been so proud of him.

  And now it was going to be taken away from him.

  Jo made some noise. Phillip looked up to see her filling an electric kettle, a small handgun set on the counter next to her. “What?”

  “Making tea,” she said in that same low and calming and ridiculously self-assured voice—the one she used when she was working with Sun.

  He laughed, even though there was nothing funny about tea. “Got any whiskey to go with that? I could use a drink.”

  She paused while reaching into a cabinet. The pause lasted only a moment, but he felt the disapproval anyway.

  He didn’t care. He needed a drink. Several drinks. Maybe a fifth of drinks. He couldn’t deal with losing the farm. With his horses. With Sun. Everything.

  “I don’t have any whiskey.”

  “I’ll settle for vodka.”

  “I don’t have anything but tea and a couple of cans of soda.”

  He laughed again. The universe seemed hell-bent on torturing him.

  The kettle whistled—a noise that seemed to drive straight into his temple. Everything was too much right now—too much noise, too much light. Too much Jo sliding into the seat opposite him, looking at him with those big, pretty eyes of hers. His hands started to shake.

  “Here.” She slid a steaming mug toward him.

  He looked at the tea. Insult to injury, that’s what this was. It wasn’t enough that he was about to lose everything he held dear. He had to have a horse trainer rub his nose in it.

  The anger that peaked above the despair felt good. Well, not good—but better than the horrible darkness that was trying to swallow him inside out. “I’ve got whiskey at the house, you know. You’re not stopping me from drinking.”

  She held her mug in her hands and blew on the tea, her gaze never leaving his face. “No,” she agreed, sounding too damned even, “I’m not.”

  “And I’m not some damned horse, either, so stop doing that whole calm-and-still bullshit,” he snapped.

  If she was offended, she didn’t show it. Instead, she sipped the tea. “Does that help?”

  “Jesus, you’re doing it again. Does what help?”

  “The blackout. Does that help?”

  “It’s a hell of a lot better than this.” Logically, he knew he wasn’t mad at her. She hadn’t done anything but the job he’d hired her for.

  But his world was ending and Chadwick was gone. Someone had to pay. And Jo was here.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

  “You think you know me?” he said. Except it came out louder than he meant it to. “You don’t know anything about me, so you can stop acting superior. You have no idea what my life is like.”

  “Any more than you have an idea of mine?”

  He glared at her. “Fine. Just get it off your chest. Go ahead and tell me that I’m throwing my life away one drink at a time and alcohol never solved anything and blah, blah, blah.”

  She shrugged.

  “I can stop whenever I want,” he snapped.

  “You just don’t want to.”

  “I want a damn drink.” Water pricked at his eyes. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Yes,” she said and this time he heard something different in her voice. “I would.”

  He looked up at her. She met his gaze without blinking and without deflecting. Her nose, he noticed again. It’d been broken. Without the shadows cast by her hat, it was easier to see the bump on the bridge that didn’t match the rest of her.

  She was beautiful. If she wasn’t going to get him some whiskey, she could still sleep with him. Sex was always fine with him. He’d been chasing her for a week now with nothing more than a kiss on the hand to show for it. He could lose himself in this woman and it might make him feel better. At least for a little while.

  She turned her head in one direction, then the other, giving him a better look at her nose. “I stopped.”

  The compliment he’d loaded up came to a screeching halt. “Stopped what?”

  She set her mug down and slid out of her seat. “There was never a good reason. My parents are normal, happily married. No abuse, no alcoholism. I wasn’t shy or awkward or even that rebellious.” She stood and undid the top button on her shirt.

  As her fingers undid the second button, his pulse began to pound. What the hell? He hadn’t even busted out the compliment and she was undressing? All his hard work was paying off. He was about to get lucky. Thank God. Then he wouldn’t have to think.

  Except...this wasn’t right. First off, there was far too much talking. But beyond that, Jo—just stripping? Jesus, he must be so messed up right now, because this wasn’t how he wanted her. He didn’t want her to give it up just to make him feel better. He wanted her to want him as much as he wanted her.

  He didn’t get the chance to tell her to wait. She went on, “Dad’s Lakota, so I had my fair share of people who called me a half-breed, but doesn’t everyone get teased for something?” Another button popped open.

  Why was she telling him this? Even if she was trying to seduce him, this didn’t seem like the proper way to go about it. But he could just see the swell of her breasts peek over the top of the shirt.

  She undid another button. Unlike her nose, her breasts were perfect. He opened his mouth to tell her just that, to try and get this seduction back on track, but he didn’t get any further.

  “I had my first drink in seventh grade at a Fourth of July party. A wine cooler I snagged. I opened it up and poured it into a cup and told everyone it was pink lemonade. It was good. I liked it. So I had another. And another.”

  She undid the last button and stood there. The curves of her breasts were tantalizingly at eye level, but she didn’t move toward him,
didn’t shimmy or shake or anything a normal woman might have done. He leaned forward. If he could touch her, fill his hands with her soft skin and softer body, they could get to the part where they were both naked and he wasn’t thinking about anything but sex. About her. That’s what he wanted, wasn’t it?

  She turned her back to him. “By the time I was in high school, I was the resident party girl. I don’t know how I graduated and I don’t know how I didn’t get pregnant. I have no idea how I got into college, but I did. I don’t know if I ever went to a class sober. I don’t remember going to that many classes.”

  The shirt began to slide down.

  Phillip began to sweat. He tried to focus on what she was saying and not the body she was unwrapping for him, but it was a damned hard thing to attempt—a fact that was directly connected with other damned hard things happening to him right now.

  “I’d wake up and not know where I was, who I was with. College guys, older guys—men I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember meeting them or going home with them.” She shrugged, a bare shoulder going up and down. The movement pushed the shirt down even farther. “Couldn’t remember the sex—couldn’t remember if I wanted it or not.”

  Phillip tensed, torn between despair, desire and sheer confusion. Confusion won. Instead of a swath of smooth skin, Jo was revealing a back covered in puckers and ripples.

  “I’d stumble back to my room and scan my phone for pictures or messages. For the memories, I told myself, but there were things I’d done...” She paused, but it was only the barest hint of emotion. “Facing them—no. It was easier to find another party and tell myself I was having a good time than it was to accept what I’d done. What I’d become.”

  The shirt fell off her right arm, revealing the true extent of the damage. Most of her back was scarred—horrible marks that went below the waistband of her pants. She tilted her head to the left and lifted her shoulder-length hair. Even her hairline was messed up—rough and uneven where the scars stole farther up. “The only reason I know his name is because my granny saved the article. Tony Holmes. He ran a red light, got T-boned so hard by a big SUV that it flipped the car. He wasn’t buckled in. I was.”

  She tilted her body so he could see the contours of her back. Hidden among the mass of twisted skin were other scars—long, neat ones that looked surgical. “The car caught fire, but they got me out in time.”

  “Tony?”

  For the first time in this dry recitation of facts, she seemed to feel something. “He wouldn’t have felt the flames anyway.”

  Jesus. His stomach turned. This wasn’t some crazy, “let’s get in touch with our feelings” kind of talk. This was serious—life and death.

  He didn’t want to believe her—he’d never wanted to believe anything less in his life—but there was no arguing with the scars.

  It could have been me, he thought. The realization made him dizzy. It could have been him—the wild party he didn’t remember, the strange person buckled in next to him that he wouldn’t have remembered, either. There was only one reason something like that hadn’t happened. He wished to God that reason was because he was a responsible man.

  But it wasn’t. No, Ortiz—his driver—was the reason. His brothers Chadwick and Matthew had decreed that Phillip would have a driver whenever he was at a company-sponsored event. It was company policy.

  A company policy that no one else in the company had to follow.

  “My back was broken in two places. I shouldn’t be able to walk. I shouldn’t even be alive.” She turned to the side to grab the shirt from where it hung off her left arm. Phillip caught a glimpse of her breast, full and heavy and his dick responded to the sight of her bare breast before she got ahold of her shirt and snapped the buttons back together.

  But all he felt was cold and shaky. His head was pounding as if he had a hangover. He still wanted a drink. He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to block out the images she’d put there on purpose—images of her waking up with strangers, never really knowing what had happened. Of her trapped in a burning car next to a dead man. “I’m not like that.”

  “Because you don’t drive?”

  He nodded. He’d never been with anyone who’d died after a good party. He never did anything with anyone who didn’t want it.

  He felt the dinette shift as she sat back down at the table. It’d be safe to look at her. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t move.

  “Between the back surgeries and the burn care, I was in traction in the hospital for months,” she went on, as if he needed more torture. “It was a year before I could move without pain. And because I am an alcoholic, I never even got the good painkillers. I had to feel it all. Everything I’d done. Everything I was. I couldn’t hide from it.”

  “How do you stand it?” Why did he have to sound as though she was twisting the knife in his gut a quarter-turn at a time?

  Because that’s what she was doing. Twisting.

  Except she wasn’t, not really. More like she was holding up a mirror so he could see the knife he was twisting himself.

  “I stopped. Stopped drinking, stopped sleeping around, stopped fighting it.”

  “What if...” He swallowed. What if he couldn’t stop?

  He heard the seat rustle as she leaned back. “Did you spike your coffee this morning?”

  “No.” But he was really wishing he had. Anything to numb the pain.

  “What about yesterday?”

  He shook his head. He’d thought he felt hopeless after Chadwick had driven off. But now?

  He didn’t know if he was coming or going.

  “It’s now...10:53. Another hour and seven minutes and you’ll have made it through two days.” She had the nerve to sound optimistic about this fact. “That’s as good a place to start as any.”

  “Is this the part where I’m supposed to say ‘One day at a time’ and we sing ‘Kumbaya’ and then we talk about steps?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good. Because I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Our kind never does.”

  “We are not the same kind, Jo.” But even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. The only difference was that she’d stopped and he hadn’t.

  “No,” she agreed. “I have the scars to prove it.”

  “Does it...does it still hurt?” He didn’t know if he was asking about the scars on her back or the other kind of scars.

  “Not really. I have Betty now. She helps. It’s only when...”

  Something in her voice—something longing and wistful—made him pull his hands away from his face.

  Jo was looking at him. That wasn’t a surprise. The trailer was small and they were talking. But it was how she was looking at him. Gone was the unnatural calm.

  Sitting across from him was a woman who wanted something that she would never allow herself to have.

  Him.

  She looked away first. “He wants you to give up,” she told him as she studied the bottom of her mug.

  Phillip was still trying to figure out that look, so her words took him completely off guard. “What?”

  “Your brother. He expects you to run off and get so drunk that he can do whatever he wants with your farm and your animals and you won’t be able to put up a fight.” When she looked back up again, whatever longing he’d seen in her eyes was gone.

  “What should I do?”

  “That’s not my place.” She gave him a tight smile. “You have to decide for yourself. Fight or give up, it doesn’t matter to me.”

  “It doesn’t?” It hurt to hear that, but he wasn’t sure why. “Not even a little?”

  She gave him a long look. He got the feeling she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t.

  Finally, she said, “Can you live with yourself if you let the farm go without a fig
ht?”

  Phillip dropped his head into his hands again. This was the only place he’d ever been happy—where he was still happy, even though his father was dead and gone.

  He didn’t know who he was without the farm to come back to. The Phillip Beaumont that put on suits and went to parties—he didn’t remember half of what that Phillip did.

  He’d been telling himself that not remembering was the sign of a good time for how long? Years.

  Decades.

  Even if he fought for the farm, as she said, he wasn’t sure he could live with himself.

  “I need this place.”

  “Then fight for it.”

  He nodded, letting the words roll around in his head. They bounced off memories of Dad lifting him onto the back of a Percheron named Sally and leading him down the drive. Of piping up as Dad and his trainer argued over a Thoroughbred to say that Daddy should buy the horse because he ran fast—and having Dad pat him on the head with a smile as he said, “My Phillip’s got a good head for horses.”

  Memories of buying his first Thoroughbred and watching it win its first race in the owner’s box with Dad.

  Of buying the Appaloosas over Dad’s objections, then overhearing Dad tell the farm manager that the horses were better than he expected, but he should have known because Phillip always did have a good head for horses.

  Of harnessing up the Percheron team himself for Dad’s funeral and driving the team of ten in the procession over the objections of every single member of his family because that was how he chose to honor his father.

  When he wasn’t on the farm...he had nothing. Vague snippets of dancing and drinking and having sex with nameless, faceless women. Headaches and blackouts and checking his phone in a panic the next morning to see what he’d done.

  “If I go back to the house, I’ll get the whiskey.”

  Just saying it out loud was an admission of failure. It was also the truth. He didn’t know which was worse.

  He heard Jo take a deep breath. “If I make up a bed for you, you understand that’s not an invitation?” She exhaled. “It’s not that I’m not...” her voice trailed off.