by Lesley Jones
“Not everyone says that, but where I come from, we do, or at least if I did say it, everyone would know what I was on about.”
“So, what’s a Scooby, apart from a cartoon dog? And who are Kip and Bill?”
She bites down on her bottom lip, which I don’t find as sexy as all hell. No, sir. Not. At. All.
“You said last night that you didn’t have a Scooby, that you needed Kip and you called for Old Bill.”
She blinks a few times before a smile lights up her face, evolving into a full-on, head thrown back laugh. When she looks back at me, she’s wiping tears from under her eyes.
“Oh my God, dude, that’s seriously funny.”
I stare at her as she continues to laugh. It’s infectious, and I actually feel myself grin.
“Why’s it funny?”
She clears her throat. “So, when I said I ain’t got a Scooby, I meant I didn’t have a clue. Scooby Doo—clue. When I said Kip, I meant sleep—”
“I thought Sooty was sleep?”
“Yeah, it is as well.” She shakes her head as if I should understand what she’s saying, when in fact, I don’t have a fucking Scooby.
“And the Old Bill are the police.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why not say what you mean instead of giving everything a different name? Scooby, Kip, Hank, and Bill. How the fuck is anyone supposed to understand what the hell you’re talking about?”
She chews on her lip again as she appears to think about my question.
“I don’t actually know. It’s just what we say where I come from. I’ll try to tone it down, Cowboy, don’t wanna have you all confused now, do we?”
She turns back towards the fridge, which is now beeping because the door has been open for too long. It only adds to the headache that talking to this woman and trying to work out what in the ever-loving fuck she’s talking about has given me.
Thankfully, she closes it before moving to search the cabinets.
“You want me to make you something?” she asks over her shoulder.
“I could eat. There’s steak in the fridge if you’re real hungry.”
“Nah, I was gonna do cheesy beans on toast.”
“I have no clue what that even is.”
She turns around so fast I jerk back in my chair.
“No way? Stop fucking about. You seriously don’t know what cheesy beans on toast are?”
“Not a Scooby.” I can’t help but grin as I answer. “And why the fuck would anyone put beans on toast? Is that really an actual thing you do over there?”
“Oh, Cowboy, you best drink your bourbon and hold on to your hat, because I’m about to rock your world.”
I sit back in my seat and watch as she pulls a can of baked beans from the cabinet and hands it to me.
“Would you open that, please? I can’t do it one-handed.”
“You should have that arm in a sling. It’ll help get some of that swelling down if you keep it raised.”
“Let me do this first, and then you can play doctor.” She winks. I turn back towards the kitchen counter and open the beans, hopefully hiding the fact that my jeans have become a little tighter.
I hand the opened can back to her and watch as she empties the contents into a pan, lights the burner, and sets the pan on the stovetop. She then gets the bread out of the cabinet and puts four slices in the toaster before getting cheese and butter from the fridge.
“Grater?” She asks.
“Excuse me?”
“Grater, for the cheese?”
“Drawer below the silverware.”
She frowns.
“Flatware?” I offer. She shrugs.
“Cutlery?”
“Ah, knives and forks.”
“Yeah.” I’m now beginning to wonder if we do, in fact, both speak English.
She passes me the cheese and the grater. I grate until she tells me there’s enough. She then throws a handful in with the beans, as well as some butter, and then stirs.
I set out plates and pull some knives and forks from the drawer, all the while feeling a little strange as we move around each other in my kitchen.
Other than a surface to fuck on, it’s been a long time since I shared any kind of space with anyone other than Kai, especially a woman.
Aside from Malia.
Once I’ve set the table, I get myself a beer from the fridge and sit back down. Two minutes later, she collects the plates from where I set them and puts them on the kitchen counter next to where she’s working before dropping three slices of toast on one plate, one slice on the other.
“Would you butter those, please?” she asks, setting the two plates back on the table just as another slice of toast pops out of the toaster.
Once the toast is all buttered, she pours the beans over the top of each slice before adding the remaining cheese.
“Tuck in, don’t be shy,” she orders. I stare down at my plate, wondering what the fuck I might have just agreed to eat.
“You got any pepper? Cheesy beans taste better with a bit of pepper.”
I get pepper from the cabinet and hand it to her first, watching as she adds it to her food. When she hands it back to me, I do the same.
“Would you like some help with that?” I ask when I realise she’s struggling to cut her food.
Her eyes meet mine across the table, and she lets out a frustrated sigh. “If you wouldn’t mind. Sorry to be such a pain.”
“I’m getting used to it.” I mean it as a joke and feel bad when she blinks as if she’s trying to clear tears from her eyes.
I pull her plate towards me and begin slicing through the beans to get to the toast as she watches me.
“Thank you for all of this.”
I look back up at her, but she moves her gaze to the plate.
“For slicing your food?”
“No,” she says quietly. “For letting me stay and letting me have something to eat.”
Her words cause an ache in my gut that travels to my chest, and I have no clue why.
“I’m not a fucking monster. I know we kinda got off on the wrong foot last night, but that was just a misunderstanding.”
I slide her plate back across to her, and as she digs into her food, I do the same. We eat in silence for just a few seconds before I have to speak. “Well, fuck, who would have thought?”
When my eyes meet hers across the table, her smile and her dimple are back.
“You likey?”
“It’s good.”
“So can I stay, because, in all honesty, I checked every website I could think of and short of going to some shitty motel, I can’t find another place to rent until after New Year’s, everywhere else is booked out.”
That probably explains why she was a little quiet when she first came into the kitchen earlier.
Having her stay here will throw my plans out the window, but with this weather, it’s not like I’m gonna get much work done anytime soon.
“Why’d you wanna stay all the way out here on your own for anyway?”
She has a fork full of beans halfway to her mouth when I ask, and it just hovers there as she considers her answer.
“I need to work.” She shrugs. “I needed to get away, to be inspired. I thought six months somewhere that was in total contrast to where I live would give me that.”
“What is it you do?”
“I have a lifestyle blog, and I also have a fashion line, specifically designed to wear to festivals—well it was when I first started, but it’s kind of evolved.”
“What’s a lifestyle blog?”
“It’s kind of like an online magazine. I write about the latest fashion, makeup, fitness fads. I write about trending homewares, clubs to be seen at, films to watch. There’s a little bit of gossip about celebrities, but it’s more about what they’re wearing than who they’re fucking or which club they’re falling out of.”
I’m not entirely sure I understand, but she’s so animated a
s she speaks that I want to ask her more questions. Her work is obviously something that she’s passionate about. Her cheeks are flushed, and her good hand is moving around as she talks.
It’s been a lot of years since I’ve felt that kind of passion about anything other than my kids. I used to feel it for football until that was replaced with my music, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve written a song, or even played my guitar.
“What do you do?”
“Huh?” I finish the last mouthful of my first ever cheesy beans on toast and wash it down with a swig of beer.
“For work, what do you do?”
I stare down at my empty plate. What exactly do I do?
“Well, I do a few things, but the last few years, I’ve mostly been flipping houses.”
“Fixing up old places and selling them on.” It’s a statement, not a question. “I’ve seen the shows. I watch all of those kinds of reality type shows as research for my work.”
“So, what’s festival wear?” I attempt to change the subject, not really wanting to talk about me or what I do or what I used to do.
“I design clothes that make life easier if you’re attending a music festival.”
“And you thought locking yourself away in a cabin in Colorado in the middle of winter was going to inspire you to come up with some new designs?”
She stares down at the table before looking back up at me. “I was initially coming here with my boyfriend. The plan was to try to work on us, but he decided that working on his career was more important, so we broke up.”
She gives me possibly the saddest smile I’ve ever seen and shrugs.
“How about you? Why are you hiding out here?”
She’s doing what I do—deflecting—and I’m not sure how to answer her question without doing exactly that.
“Who says I’m hiding out?”
“Last night, I thought I heard Nelson mention that you lived in Aspen?”
I rub my hand over my beard, watching her wait for my response.
“I do. I told you already. I grew up here, and my aunt passed and left me the place. I came to start renovations.”
“What renovations can be done in Arctic conditions? It’s like Siberia out there. I had to fight a polar bear on the landing, and at least a half-dozen penguins fell out of the tap in my bathroom when I turned it on.”
“Tap?”
“Tap. On the sink. What the water comes out of.”
“Faucet?”
“I didn’t force anything.”
That makes me chuckle. I’m not sure if she’s messing with me or if she’s serious, but she makes me smile either way, and that’s something I don't know if I like or love.
“F-A-U-C-E-T. Faucet, that’s what we call a tap.”
“Oh. Well, anyway. Stop deflecting. What renovations were you hoping to achieve in these conditions? You can’t even paint when it’s this cold, surely?”
She has me there.
I drain what’s left of my beer and pour myself another bourbon. Taking a sip, I give her my reply—and yeah, it’s another deflection.
“You really are a nosy little-bit, ain’t ya?”
“Sorry, just trying to make conversation. You don’t have to tell me anything. But just remember, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter, and I’m one of the best.”
Her chair scrapes back loudly as she stands from the table.
And now she’s pissed. An emotion that I don’t elicit from only her. It’s something that happens to a lot of people when they spend time in my company, females especially.
I sip my drink, because when all else fails...bourbon.
“Maybe you should just quit with that, the conversation I mean.”
She turns from where she’s just placed her plate in the sink and looks at me. “Perhaps I should.”
Grabbing her bottle of water from the table, she leaves the room with a not nearly mumbled quietly enough, “Fucking dickhead.”
“No denying that,” I call after her.
“Prick,” she calls back.
I hear her bedroom door slam, and a few seconds later, music starts to play.
I try to listen. Again, I don’t know why.
Why am I interested in her, her clothes, her business, or her taste in music? I vowed four years ago that I’d never let another woman get under my skin, and that’s precisely the way I plan to live out the rest of my life. Alone, living off my bitterness.
And yet, my ears still strain to hear what she’s playing.
I wash the pan she used to make our cheesy beans in and stack the plates in the dishwasher before taking my bottle and my empty glass into the living room and set them on the coffee table.
I build a fire with the logs I had the foresight to chop as soon as I arrived a week ago.
By the time I’m done, and the flames are dancing in the fireplace, I’m feeling guilty for the way I spoke to Gracie earlier. She’s a long way from home and all alone. It’s an unfortunate situation we’ve found ourselves in, but none of it is her doing.
I head up the stairs, dig out an old bed sheet, and then go knock on her door, the unmistakable sound of the Bee Gees is playing really loudly inside her room.
The door flies open.
“What?”
“I was a dick.”
“Glad we agree on that.”
A few strands of her hair have come loose from the rat’s nest on her head, and I have to fight the urge to tuck them behind her ears.
“You need to get that arm in a sling.”
“I need to unpack; I can’t do that with one hand.”
“Let me deal with that wrist, and I’ll help you,” I suggest, looking over her shoulder at what appears to be a clothes explosion going on in her room.
“You wanna perv over my knickers, Cowboy?”
She leans her shoulder against the door and cocks her hip.
“Your knickers? You wear those great big things?” I know that she doesn’t. I’ve seen up close what she wears to cover that fine ass of hers, but the word ‘knickers’ conjures images of those big bloomers my grandma used to wear.
The music changes and I’m a little blown away by what starts to play.
“Is that...are you listening to Hank Locklin?”
She looks over her shoulder as if there’s someone actually standing there singing and playing the guitar.
“Yeah, why?”
If the man were still alive, he’d be about a hundred by now, and the fact that she’s even heard of him, let alone listening to his music, has me shocked.
“How—” I shake my head. “Why...who taught you about his music?”
“He’s...my grandad. I grew up listening to him.”
“Your grandad was Hank Locklin?”
“What? No. I meant he was one of my grandad’s favourites.”
She blushes from her chest to the tips of her pretty little ears.
It’s beautiful.
“And the Bee Gees?”
“My mum.”
“Your mum was a Bee Gee? I always did wonder about those boys. With all that hair, it had to be Barry.”
That earns me a smile that’s even more beautiful than her blush.
“Yeah, was it my amazing teeth that gave it away?”
“That, and the hair. The resemblance is uncanny.”
“Thanks, I have regular trims, only use plant-based colours and only condition once a week—and that’s just my teeth, don’t get me started on the work I have to put into maintaining my fabulous hair.”
Her shoulders relax, and she gives me a full-on grin, her one dimple showing.
“My mum listened to their music. She was a fan, and again, it was something I grew up listening to.”
“Was?” I shouldn’t have asked that. It’s none of my business, and I don’t wanna care about her answer, but I can’t help notice the way she draws in air through her nose and seems to hold on to it. She closes her eyes for a second too long for it to be considered a bl
ink, then swallows before opening them and looking directly at me. Right at that moment, as her eyes hold mine, I do care. I’ve seen that look, it's stared back at me each time I’ve looked in the mirror over the last eighteen years.
They show a whole world of hurt.
“Yeah, was. She died when I was eighteen, my grandad when I was eleven.”
She clears her throat.
“Look, I’m not exactly sure how much I should be unpacking here. Will I need to be looking for somewhere else once the weather sorts its shit out? Am I staying or going?”
Deflecting, she looks back towards her room.
I scratch and tug at my beard. “Unpack, Gracie, we’ll deal with that once this storm clears, but let me help you.”
She steps aside and lets me into her room.
Her room.
Because I have a feeling in my gut, that’s what I’ll now always consider it to be.
“Go for it, Cowboy, but keep your hands to yourself and your eyes off my knickers.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
GRACIE
“ YEE-HAW! I HAVE A COWBOY in my bedroom, Bullseye.” I don’t say the words aloud, but in my head, I shout them, and I sound just like Jessie from Toy Story when I do it.
I watch as he lifts my suitcases up onto the bed, shifting the clothes I’ve already pulled out to one side.
I hadn’t noticed until after my shower, but the double doors I thought led to a cupboard, actually open to an entire dressing room. There’s a whole twenty-foot wall of hanging space, lots of drawers, a full-length mirror, and a really cute dressing table that has all these glass and ceramic type perfume bottles on it, the type that has the old-fashioned puffer thing that you squeeze. Most look art deco in design, but some could be older.
They kicked started my designer’s brain this morning, which was actually this afternoon, and I even sketched a few things awkwardly with my bad hand.
It’s the dressing room I watch Carmichael the Cowboy head off to now, and I take in his big body as he moves.
He’s built, but more like an athlete than somebody who works out at the gym. He has wide shoulders, a narrow waist and hips, and legs that look toned and muscular under his jeans. But it’s his forearms and his arse that I can’t keep my eyes from.
Forearms aren’t everyone’s thing, but they’re definitely mine. His are covered in a fine layer of dark hair; I know this because today, like last night, he’s wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows.