In the Cowboy's Arms

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  Geena considered asking them to stay so they could bring the issue out in the open. But she might make the situation worse and she was a guest who’d been here less than forty-eight hours. Forcing an intervention seemed disrespectful.

  After they left, she looked at Matt. “Are you going to be able to work on dialogue with me?”

  “Yes. It needs to be done.”

  Of course he’d be able to do it. He was a professional. So was she. “I’ll get my computer.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Matt knew he was behaving like a jerk and yet he couldn’t stop himself, which was proof that he wasn’t the guy for Geena. It was now clear as a bell to him, so he wished she’d accept it, too. The sooner she left town, the better, but everyone would expect her to stay until the video was finished and she would insist on it out of professional pride.

  That meant she couldn’t leave until the day after tomorrow, because of limited flights out of Sheridan. Which left a hell of a lot of hours to endure, especially when every time he looked at her he longed to pull her into his arms and kiss those full lips. More proof that he was a selfish bastard.

  She reappeared with her laptop and he fought the urge to take it out of her hands and apologize for every terrible thing he’d said. He’d told her to leave when he desperately needed her to stay. He’d said they were wrong for each other when every time he held her it felt so right he wanted to shout for joy.

  But that was his selfish side talking, the part he’d inherited from his screwed-up, narcissistic mother. For Geena’s sake, he couldn’t listen to that voice. He had to continue to push her away until she finally got the message.

  They plunged into the dialogue project like the pros they were. They didn’t eat much but they drank all the beer. In Matt’s current frame of mind, another couple of bottles would have been welcome. But he wasn’t going back to the kitchen to get them. Rosie would waylay him, for sure. He’d seen the look on her face when she’d brought the food. She knew something wasn’t right.

  Writing the dialogue under these circumstances was a tough slog, but he and Geena pulled it off. She emailed the finished product to Drew, who’d use it to plan the sequence of shots.

  At last she closed her laptop and stood. “That does it.”

  He got to his feet, too. “Yes, ma’am, it does.”

  Irritation flashed in her green eyes. “If you’re such a heinous person, why bother with the gentlemanly behavior?”

  “Maybe it gets me what I want.”

  Her jaw tightened. “Are you implying that you used that yes, ma’am routine to get me out of my clothes?”

  He could tell she was tired and pushed to the limit. The more obnoxious he was, the quicker she’d dump his sorry ass. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  She slapped him so hard it brought tears to his eyes. Good. He deserved it.

  “This is not who you are.” Her voice was choked with fury. “If you were really that rotten, Rosie and Herb wouldn’t love you.”

  “They see what they want to see.”

  She growled in frustration and started out of the room. “I’ll be back for the dishes. I’m sure Rosie and Herb have gone to bed by now and we need to clean up our mess.”

  “Don’t worry about the dishes. I’ll take care of them.”

  “Okay. Great.” She paused in the doorway and turned around. “Feel free to sleep in your room tonight. My door will be locked, so no temptation there.”

  “Thanks for the thought, but I’ll sleep in the barn again.”

  “Why do that? You and I are so done.”

  “That’s not what your eyes say.” He’d keep it up until she hated him.

  “I don’t give a damn what my eyes say. My mouth says we are done, cowboy. I’m locking my door.”

  “In that case, I probably should warn you there’s something else I learned from my worthless mother.”

  “What?”

  “I can pick locks.”

  “Then I should warn you of something I learned from my mother.”

  “Oh?”

  “How to deliver a well-placed knee to the groin.”

  In spite of everything, that made him smile, but he ducked his head so she wouldn’t see. Dear God, how he loved her. Then he went very still as the insight played in a slow motion loop in his head. He loved her? Well, yeah, of course he did. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so determined to sabotage any feelings she’d developed for him.

  He kept his head down until he heard her huff of anger and her retreating footsteps. Hiding his smile was about maintaining a consistent message. Hiding his love was about survival.

  * * *

  Anger fueled an adrenaline rush that carried Geena through her bedtime routine as she took a shower, and washed and dried her hair. Then she lay in the dark, eyes open, and prayed for him to come through the door. She hadn’t locked it, had never intended to. Not that they would make love in this room, not with Rosie and Herb sleeping nearby.

  But if he’d come to her and taken back all those mean things he’d said, they could escape to the barn and put things right between them. She longed to rewind the clock to this morning when he’d been so wild for her he’d risked being discovered by Lexi and Cade, or this afternoon when they’d made sweet love on a cool patch of green grass.

  This evening, with the help of his folks, and his brothers and their wives, they’d created a potential solution to his PR disaster, but at what cost? He’d begun to doubt himself before the Skype call, and the revelations from that phone meeting had left him shattered. Another person might reluctantly acknowledge their self-serving behavior and vow to do better. Not Matt. He was drowning in the shame of thinking he was just like his mother.

  She thought of her own mother, who had, in fact, taught her the knee-to-groin move. Although Geena liked to believe she took after her late father, she had many of her mother’s traits, including fierce determination, which could easily become stubbornness.

  Her mom had force-marched her through years of performance training, which had taught her self-respect and discipline. Her mom had been absent a lot, but she’d never completely abandoned the field. Geena had become self-reliant out of necessity, but that wasn’t a bad quality.

  Without the upbringing her mother had provided, she might not have had the guts to follow Matt to Sheridan. She definitely wouldn’t have had the discipline to knock out a video script despite the tension that had ricocheted around the room the entire time. And the person she’d become would not lie staring at the ceiling until dawn, either.

  Climbing out of bed, she put on her glasses. Then she located the boots Rosie had loaned her and the flashlight tucked in the bedside table drawer in case of a power outage. Once again she’d play the role of uninvited guest. He might turn her away. In fact, he probably would. But she had to try.

  Rosie and Herb hadn’t bothered to lock up, so she was able to slip out easily while carrying her boots and flashlight. Locked doors seemed to be a rarity in the country, which made her earlier comment to Matt all the more ludicrous. She wasn’t sure her bedroom door even had a lock.

  Cool air greeted her as she stepped out on the porch and sat in one of the Adirondack chairs to put on her boots. The ranch looked different at night, a little bit alien with only the dusk-to-dawn lights illuminating the circular drive and the barn several yards away. She descended the steps. The crunch of her boots on the gravel drive seemed unnaturally loud in the stillness. When a cricket chirped in the bushes beside the porch she jumped.

  Placing a hand over her racing heart, she paused to take several deep breaths. She could do this. The barn wasn’t that far away. She started out, putting her feet down carefully so her boots on the gravel wouldn’t sound so much like somebody chewing potato chips.

  No one was out here, so it might not matt
er, but she didn’t want to attract attention from...anything. Belatedly she remembered that Wyoming was filled with wildlife. She’d heard that making a lot of noise would frighten animals away, but she wasn’t sure that was true of really big creatures like bears.

  Okay, now she was scaring herself. Time to calm the heck down. Once she’d passed outside the glow of the first yard light, she lifted her head to look at the stars. Oh, my. They covered the navy-blue sky like spilled sugar. She’d never seen so many.

  Then she heard something. Glancing wildly around, she saw a shadow near the barn door. A pretty big shadow, like a bear on its hind legs would make. She tried to yell but only managed a tiny squeak. She was so stupid to come outside by herself! And now a bear would eat her and she’d never get to tell Matt that she—

  “Geena?” Matt stepped into the light hanging over the barn as his long strides quickly eliminated the distance between them. “What in God’s name are you doing out here?”

  “I—I...wh-what are you doing out h-here?” Her teeth chattered as relief washed through her, leaving her weak and trembling. “I thought y-you were a b-bear!”

  “Ah, Geena.” He gathered her close and rested his cheek on the top of her head as he rocked her gently back and forth. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Is th-that a rhetorical question or d-do you want an answer? Because I c-can give you some ideas if you n-need any.” She held on to his solid warmth and gradually the quivery feeling subsided.

  His body started to shake and eventually she realized he was laughing. He’d muffled the sound in her hair, which was probably a good idea because maybe a bear really was lurking nearby. She’d seen grizzlies on TV. Two people, even one built like Matt, were no match for a grizzly.

  Even so, she felt a thousand percent safer in his arms than she had walking through the dark alone.

  Finally he cleared his throat and gazed down at her. “What sort of ideas would you like to offer me?”

  “Could we discuss this in the barn? I’m worried about bears.”

  “There aren’t any bears around.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The horses would get agitated.”

  “Oh. Well, good, but I’d still like to have this conversation inside, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course I mind.” But as he said it, he drew her closer, which revealed that a certain significant part of him didn’t mind at all. “I came down here to get away from you, and then you show up in your Captain America shirt and your boots, and you must have washed your hair because it smells amazing.”

  “I did wash it.” She began to quiver for a different reason altogether. “And I admit I did that for you. I thought maybe you’d come to my room and we could...talk.”

  “Talk. Right.” He rubbed her back, moving gradually lower until he cupped her bottom and pulled her in tight. “I thought you were planning to lock your door.”

  Her body warmed as his fingers flexed, creating an arousing massage. “Does it even have a lock?”

  “No.” And he started laughing again. “We’d better head for the barn before this gets any hotter and we wake up the folks. In the summer they like to sleep with their windows open.” Looping an arm around her shoulders, he guided her toward the big double doors. “I should be walking you back to the house, but I can’t seem to make myself do that.”

  “I’m glad. I really...the way we left things was...”

  “It was awful. That’s why I was outside, just looking up at the stars and thinking. I kept wondering if I should go back to the house and at least apologize, but then I knew you’d be in bed wearing that sleep shirt and the inevitable would happen.”

  “It wouldn’t have.”

  “You would have rejected me?”

  “No, I would have insisted we come down here, away from the house.”

  He looked at her and smiled. “You knock me out, you know that?”

  “Yes, because you knock me out, too, which is why—”

  “Nothing’s changed. We’ll go into the barn and make love because I can’t stand not to, but after that...”

  “I have an idea. Let’s not think about what happens after that.”

  He took a deep breath. “Good thinking.” He ushered her into the dim interior, lit only by small lights along the aisle between the stalls. “Wait here.” He ducked into a room just inside the barn door.

  She breathed in the scent of hay, horses and oiled leather while she listened to various snorts and soft groans, the clunk of a hoof against a floorboard and the rustle of straw. She loved being here because this was Matt’s territory, one he could share with her if only he would. The possibility of that didn’t seem very high at the moment.

  But she’d suggested to him that they should forget about both the past and future, and concentrate on the present. Good advice. She ought to take it.

  He reappeared, a blanket under his arm. “This way.” Grasping her hand, he led her down the wooden aisle to an empty stall.

  The door was open, and now that her eyes had adjusted, she could make out mounds of straw inside. “Is this where you slept last night?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He unfolded the blanket and laid it out on the straw.

  “Can you do something with these?” She handed her glasses to him.

  “We’ll hook them over the stall door latch.” He made sure they were secure, draping his hat over them. “That should do it.” He turned to her, his hands on his hips. Then he sighed. “You know what? This is nuts. I’m taking you back to the house. Making love again will only—”

  “Don’t you dare back out now, cowboy.” Launching herself at him, she nearly knocked him over.

  He staggered when he caught her but he managed to keep them upright. “Geena, come on. This is crazy.”

  “Shut up and kiss me.” She grabbed him around the neck and pulled his head down. If she could get him in a lip-lock, he’d be toast.

  “It’s a mistake.”

  “We’re doing it anyway.”

  He groaned. “Looks like it.” And when his mouth found hers, there was no doubt. He kissed her with the hunger of a man barely in control. He broke away only long enough to pull the sleep shirt over her head and toss it down. Then he lowered her to the blanket and began tasting every inch of her.

  Gasping, she writhed on the blanket. “My...boots.”

  “I’m leaving ’em.” He kissed his way from her breasts to her navel. “I’ve never made love to a woman wearing boots.” He planted soft kisses along her trembling thighs. “I’m guessing you’ve never made love to a man while wearing them, either.”

  She moaned. “Good guess.”

  “I’m all wrong for you.” He blew gently on her damp curls. “But I’m selfish enough to want you to remember me.” And he settled into the most intimate kiss of all.

  She’d remember him, all right, whether she kept the boots on or took them off. A woman didn’t easily forget a man who gave her more pleasure than she’d ever dreamed possible. Her climax arrived with such force that she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to keep from yelling.

  After bestowing a few more tender kisses in strategic places, he moved away and began stripping off his clothes. As she lay on the soft blanket, sprawled in reckless abandon, she wished they had more light because he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen and this might be the last...no, she wouldn’t think about that. Worrying about the future robbed her of precious time with him tonight.

  Her body hummed with anticipation. Before long they’d once again experience that magic connection and they’d share the joy of...wait a minute. He hadn’t expected her to walk down here. “Matt, do you have a condom?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” His breathing was a little ragged.

  “How could you, when you weren’
t expecting me?”

  “Pure luck.” Foil crinkled. “I left the rest of the box hidden in the tack room this morning. After our conversation today, I didn’t figure I’d have a use for them.” He lowered himself to the blanket, propped himself on his outstretched arms and settled between her thighs. “You changed my mind.” His face was in shadow as he leaned down and brushed his mouth over hers.

  “I’m encouraged that I can do that.” She ran her hands up his muscular chest and savored the tactile thrill of springy hair beneath her palms.

  “Don’t be encouraged. It’s temporary.” He nibbled on her lower lip.

  “Oh, Matt, I wish—”

  “You’re thinking about the future. You told me not to.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t think, just...feel.” He slid in smoothly, effortlessly.

  Sighing, she lifted her hips to bring him closer. “Like that?”

  Muttering a soft oath, he held very still. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It does work.”

  “What?” His voice sounded strained.

  “Those cowboy manners.” She explored the manly terrain of his broad shoulders. “To get me naked.”

  “That was a stupid thing to say. I didn’t mean it.”

  “I know.” She stroked lower and pushed her fingertips into his impressive back muscles.

  He sucked in a breath. “I wanted you to be mad at me.”

  “I was, but I’m sorry I slapped you.”

  “I deserved it.” He feathered a kiss over her lips. “But right this second, I have a problem.”

  “What?”

  “I desperately want to start moving, but I don’t have much control. I’m liable to get a little crazy. Can you handle that?”

  Her heartbeat kicked into high gear. “Uh-huh.”

  “Then hang on.”

  He wasn’t kidding. It was the wildest few minutes of her life, and the most thrilling, too. His intensity triggered an orgasm before she expected it, but he kept going, urging her on as he stroked faster, and faster yet.

  “Again.” He changed the angle and she gasped, on the brink of a second climax.