How to Train a Cowboy

by Caro Carson

  His heart hurt, again. Still. How much easier it would be to unzip her dress, to slip his hand under those blue ruffles and touch her soft breast instead of her soft heart.

  “And then you came home and had a whole year’s pay to blow on this SUV?” She had a little smile in her voice.

  He rested his cheek on her hair, glad to leave Afghanistan behind. “No. I left the service. Eight years was enough. I became an executive with a civilian company that makes military gear. I made an obscene amount of money working in a much safer job. I bought this SUV because my bank balance was getting absurd.”

  He’d bought it because the SUV had the widest wheel base on the market, making it very unlikely to roll over. This vehicle wouldn’t flip over if...wouldn’t roll on him in...in a situation. He resisted the urge to rub his shoulder.

  “Was this the Graham who bought cigars and golf rounds and dinners?”

  “Business cards and administrative assistants. All of it.”

  After eight months, he’d quit. His second executive job had been with a smaller start-up enterprise. He’d thought the energy there would be different, better, but it had made him more impatient than the first—and he’d lasted half as long. He didn’t belong in a suit and tie and air-conditioning, filling out reports and trying to hit sales numbers he hadn’t set, no matter how obscene the money was.

  “And you gave it up? Most people would be happy to have an easy job that paid well.”

  I didn’t belong there. Graham rubbed the curve of her perfect shoulder, her body firm under the frills. He had a sudden desire not to appear like the drifter he’d become. “It was safe, not easy. It was a different kind of hard than the Marine Corps, but it was a challenge. A challenging job, money, safety. It should have been enough.” He stopped himself. This was the part he couldn’t figure out. Why hadn’t it been enough?

  It hadn’t been. Something was broken or missing or worn out inside him, and he didn’t know what it was. He was tired of trying to figure it out. He was going to live where it didn’t matter.

  “Uh-oh. You quit your job and drove from Chicago to Texas. I think I know what’s coming next.” She sat halfway up and twisted around to look at him, pretending to be dismayed. Since a smile was her default expression, she wasn’t doing a good job of not smiling. Thank God. It gave him something to think about besides that wasted, restless year.

  She not-smiled at him. “Is this the part where you tell me you’re having a midlife crisis and running off to join the rodeo? You want to fulfill that boyhood dream of bucking broncos?”

  “That would require me to know how to ride a horse, I assume.”

  She sat all the way up and faced him fully, eyes big. “You’ve never ridden a horse? Not once?”

  “Not once.”

  “Never?” All the air seemed to whoosh out of her lungs, her shoulders falling. Now her smile was truly gone. “That’s terrible. You’ve missed out on so much.”

  He wanted to laugh, but her pity was so sincere. Sweet girl, that horse-crazy phase wasn’t a phase for you, was it?

  “I’ll teach you how,” she said. “My family owns a ranch. I’ll take you riding, okay? When you come back this way.”

  He tucked her long hair behind her ear.

  “Silence isn’t cool, Graham. You are coming back this way, sooner or later.”

  I’m leaving at dawn. But he stayed silent. She knew it already, and he didn’t want to say it again.

  Emily got to her knees, clutching her corner of the comforter to her neck as if she were nude and being modest as she knelt on a mattress, and holy hell, his body responded to that. I wish you could, she’d said. Had he really turned her down tonight? Idiot.

  “When you come back, I’m going to teach you how to ride a horse. That’s a promise.”

  He knew she sincerely thought it would be a wonderful gift to him. She was killing him with her generosity, her genuine desire to share with him what were obviously her favorite things in life. Her horses. This lake.

  She sealed the promise with a kiss, kneeling over him once more, hot mouth, warm body, cold air making its way between them as the comforter was pushed aside.

  My addiction, my craving...

  He took her head in both hands. He kissed her harder, deeper. She trapped his hips, one knee on each side, and sank down, her dress riding up, only his denim fly and her thin underwear separating them. He gave in; he had to have her, just once, just one time. My Emily, my heart—

  He sat back abruptly, breathing hard.

  Sex with Emily wouldn’t be less intimate than stargazing. She was such an addiction, he’d forget himself and pour everything into it. Then he’d be truly spent, with nothing left. The last piece of his soul would disappear with his heart.

  He’d want to stay with his heart and soul. He’d want to stay with Emily. He couldn’t. She was going back to college and a life where he couldn’t belong.

  Emily broke the silence. Her voice was gentle in the dark. “I only promised you a horseback ride.”

  “I know.” He ran his thumb over her lower lip.

  “It was only a kiss,” she said. “I’m not pushing you to cross any line.”

  He paused, his thumb at the corner of her mouth.

  “Graham, are you scared of me?”

  He dropped his hand. He was being so easily read by a twenty-two-year-old girl with long hair and a short dress and a bright spirit. He started to shake his head like No, I’m not scared of you, but knew he should shake his head like How did you know?

  Instead, he started to laugh at himself. “If I’m not, I sure as hell should be. You are something else. Come here.” He pulled her off her knees to sit sideways in his lap, wrapping her in a bear hug, dropping a kiss on the side of her neck, breathing in deeply.

  “So, if you don’t have a secret desire to join the rodeo, where are you going? Passing through means you have a destination, right?”

  The moment of light-heartedness died. She shouldn’t hope. She shouldn’t wait for him. He was wrong for her. He’d met her too late.

  His answer was curt. “I’ll be off the grid.”

  “That sounds mysterious. Not some undercover Marine Corps mission?”

  “No.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to tell me if it was.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was teasing or not—but he was not. He didn’t want to tell her much, but not because it was top secret. He didn’t want her to hope and wait—or worse, to look for him. “No, it’s nothing like that. I was offered a chance to get away from it all. A job, and I took it. I made the commitment. I need to be there in the morning.”

  “Yes, at dawn. I got that part. But for how long?”

  He hesitated. Don’t wait for me; go live your beautiful life. “It’s open-ended.”

  It was an evasive answer, but it was true. Emily only had to tilt her head a single degree, only had to narrow her eyes the tiniest bit, and he knew she wasn’t foolish enough to take that for an answer.

  He might have been disappointed if she did.

  He kissed her neck again, up high, and worked his way higher, light kisses over her jaw, a husky murmur at her ear. “I’ll be working with my uncle out in the middle of nowhere. I promised him three months. Minimum.”

  She shivered. Poor girl, not what she wanted to hear. Then she pushed his face away. “Stop that. It tickles.”

  He waited.

  Nothing. She’d shivered because it tickled? That was it? That was her response to off the grid for three months or more?

  She turned so her back was to his chest, making herself comfortable by sitting between his legs, her bare legs sliding against his jeans. His arms came around her waist, of course. Prom pose, seated version.

  Once again, she didn’t ask him the question he was
expecting. “Would you rather talk about where I’m going instead of where you’re going?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He’d meant to say it like a Marine, but he might have regressed to a little boy hopeful that his pretty teacher was going to tell the class a story.

  Whichever it was, Emily laughed and fluffed the comforter over them. “I’ll tell you where I’m supposed to go. Years ago, my mother got me to promise I’d get a college degree. I earned a degree in Farm and Ranch Management.”

  “I didn’t know that was a major, but it sounds perfect for you.”

  She put her head back a little bit, talking to him almost cheek to cheek again, the way they had when they’d stood in their prom pose on the bar patio. It wasn’t so innocent this time, not after she’d told him she loved his hands and the way they could please her. It would be too easy to do it again like this. He could hold her hips still between his thighs, not letting her push or press, making her wait for his hands to give her release. He’d make her wait until he’d reduced her to being only able to say ah and oh again.

  “I want to go into ranching. I grew up around it. Even in San Antonio, we kept twenty head of dairy cows. I didn’t want to get a college degree at all. I thought that anything I didn’t already know, I could learn on the job. That’s what cowboys do, but most of the college courses were actually useful. I learned some new things about soil conservation. Lots about legal requirements for livestock. Good stuff.”

  As he listened, Graham looked out at the stars, letting his gaze drift randomly from bright pinpoint to bright pinpoint. What a long way he’d come, from Chicago to the Marine Corps, from Asia to Afghanistan and all the way back to Chicago, before life had sent him another thousand miles southwest to Texas. It seemed like the longest journey a man could take in order to land here at the side of a pond. But here he was, content to listen to a woman who thought learning about livestock was good stuff. That same woman would willingly help him if he started to unzip her dress, yet he didn’t want to stop this pleasure of hearing about an entire life spent in the hundred miles between Austin and San Antonio, with twenty cows.

  “But it’s an associate’s degree. A two-year degree. It was cheating. I knew my mother meant the full four-year bachelor’s degree when she made me promise, but I got an associate’s, so technically, I’d gotten a college degree. So clever of me, right?”

  He smiled as he smoothed some of her hair away from her cheek, loose tangles from the earlier breeze. “I take it you didn’t get away with it.”

  “Not for a second.”

  With her hair smoothed out of the way, he put his arm under the comforter again, around her middle, ruffles tickling the inside of his wrist once more. This time, he slid his wrist up those ruffles and stopped with his arm snug under her breasts. He was aroused, anyway. He might as well torture himself for these last few hours before dawn came and he walked away.

  “Cheaters never win. Since I planned my class schedule for that associate’s degree, I skipped this one course in hydrology that I didn’t need for the two-year degree. Now I’m getting my four-year degree in Agricultural Engineering, and guess which lousy, one-semester, three-credit course I’m missing?”

  “Hydrology.”

  “Hydrology,” she repeated, disgust in every syllable.

  “Makes a good curse word, the way you say it.”

  She cursed again: “Hydrology.”

  They laughed. The sole of her bare foot pressed the top of his foot as she laughed, casually sexy, intimately friendly.

  You don’t walk away from this, Ben. Wake up. It’s time to wake up.

  He was losing his mind with these crazy-clear thoughts.

  He put his other arm around Emily and laid back a little more, slouching his way down the seabags that supported his back, letting Emily lie on top of him a little more heavily. He needed her weight to keep him grounded under the infinite stars.

  “I should have graduated a few weeks ago, as a December grad. I would have finished my degree in three and a half years, if it wasn’t for Hydrology 201. It’s ridiculous to pay for dorm and the dining hall for another entire semester—thousands of dollars—just to take this one last course, but it’s a mandatory part of the degree. Here’s the kicker. It’s offered as an online course this coming summer. I could be done with college and start my real life now, get a real job, and just take it as a summer online course. My degree would be complete by September.”

  “Sounds like you have it figured out.”

  “My mom disagrees. Apparently, it’s vital that I graduate this May and do the big cap and gown shindig. I did that for high school. I don’t feel the need to do it again. Oklahoma Tech can mail me my diploma in September as far as I’m concerned, but my family just about lost their minds at that idea.”

  He remembered Mr. Schumer, sounding as proud as Graham imagined her family was about the MBA. “So you’re going to start on your master’s this semester while you finish Hydrology. Makes sense. Then you aren’t spending all that dorm money on one class.”

  She sighed as she rested on his chest and looked out to the stars. “I’d be investing more than that. Another half a year of my life. My time. My effort. Once I’ve invested that much, I’d be expected to finish the master’s, which would take both a summer session and another semester. That’s more room and board, too. I’d end up spending so much more money.”

  She sat up, batting down the comforter impatiently so that it still covered her bare legs, but her ruffles and slender arms and long hair were free. She brooded not at the bright stars, but at the dark water. Hydrology.

  “This is the whole reason I wanted to blow off a little steam at Keller’s tonight. This is one of the things I was thinking about at the dock.”

  Graham sat up, too. He’d wondered why she’d come striding off that dock in such a different mood than she’d first walked out onto it.

  She shifted around so she didn’t have her back to him anymore, settling in for a talk. “You’re older than I am, right?”

  “Mr. Schumer verified that, yeah.” He winked at her, but she was too intent on her thoughts to catch it.

  “So tell me what you think, since you’re done with school. It goes without saying I should get that last class to finish my bachelor’s, but starting a master’s seems like an expensive way to do it. If I don’t finish the master’s, then the credits I’d earn would just be more wasted money. What would you do if you were me?”

  At twenty-two, he would have stayed in Chicago and finished his MBA. He wouldn’t have felt like he’d come from a different planet than the other students. Money would have been more of an issue when he was younger, though. “Who incurs the expense of another semester at the dorm? You or your family?”

  “My mother assured me she could cover the cost, although I don’t know where the money is supposed to come from. That makes it all the harder to say no. Who says no to a free education?”

  He smiled at her, such a sweet girl. “There are worse things in the world than a family wanting to see their daughter walk across a stage and get a diploma, or wanting to help their daughter get a master’s degree. You’re lucky they can do it. Why not get the master’s?”

  She spoke gravely. “It wastes my time. I don’t want it. I’ll never need it.”

  His answer was automatic, a reflex. “You never know. Employers are looking beyond bachelor’s degrees now, either in experience or education. If you have a master’s—”

  “No.” She gripped his forearm pretty hard and stared him down harder. “I will never need an MBA. I don’t want one.”

  In a flash, he remembered his first sight of her, being just as firm with an ex who was treating her like she was a silly girl who didn’t know her own mind: We’re through. We’ve been through... Graham saw her calmly correcting Mr. Schumer: Actually, I’m certified in first aid
by Texas Rescue...

  Graham was older than Emily, but that didn’t mean she was a child. If she said she’d never need an MBA, it was arrogant of him to tell her otherwise.

  He nodded, just once. “Got it.”

  She let go of his arm. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize when you’re right, especially in the business world. Especially to men.” Damn, he sounded arrogant, anyway, even when he was giving good advice. But she gave him a quick nod, just once, imitating him consciously or subconsciously, before turning her attention back to the water.

  She held her hands out flat, as if she could rest them on the lake surface like resting them on top of a table. “Look at how perfectly still and lovely that lake is tonight. Why make waves and ruin it? Do things the right way, the traditional way. It’s safer. It’s smarter. The dock should be long enough to get you out to a safe depth for diving. The rope should have knots. Be glad your family takes care of you. They only want what’s best for you. There’s really nothing wrong with that.”

  Graham watched her instead of the water or the stars.

  She set her hands on her knees. “Unless, of course, that safe life is starving out the parts of yourself you liked best.”

  Her statement gave him pause. His dangerous life had shut down some parts of him, without a doubt, but it was the safe corporate life that had made him feel adrift. Something as safe and traditional as college could stifle someone who didn’t have traditional goals. “I see why you came off that dock wanting a drink.”

  “It didn’t seem so awful, getting that two-year degree. What’s two years of your life, right? When everyone says you need a degree, it’s easier to just get the degree. But then two years become four years of your life. Now five. I keep postponing my life so that everyone else will be comfortable. They don’t want me to be a cowboy, so I keep not being a cowboy, year after year.”

  He smiled sympathetically. “I guess you’ll be a very educated cowboy someday.”

  She didn’t shy away from him, not exactly, but he could tell she was disappointed with his answer.