Taming a Texas Tease (Bad Boy Ranch Book 7)

by Katie Lane

  After her father left, it didn’t take Emma long to accept the truth of his words. Simple was her home and she would never be happy anywhere else. She contacted the manager of the bookstore in Austin and told him that she couldn’t take the job. Then she contacted the apartment complex and let them know she wouldn’t be leasing one of their units. As soon as she hung up the phone, she started unpacking. Once her dishes were back in the cupboard and her favorite books back on the shelf with their friends, her heart felt a thousand times lighter.

  But she still had one problem. Getting Boone to forgive her. What she needed was a plan.

  She pulled out a notepad and pen.

  Fortunately, she happened to be great at making plans.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “So when’s the weddin’, Boone?”

  Boone had never been so sick of a question in his life. For the last two weeks, he’d had to suffer through everyone in town asking him the same question when they came into the store. Or when they saw him walking down the street. Or when they stopped by his house uninvited. He could no longer smile and act like he didn’t want to punch a hole in the wall.

  “I’m not getting married,” he said to Dan Reed as he placed the box of nails into a bag.

  Dan grinned. “Sure you ain’t.”

  “I’m not!” he snapped as he handed Dan the bag.

  Dan looked surprised and held up his hand. “Okay. I just thought with all the signs around town that it meant you and Emma had finally made up.”

  “Well, we haven’t. The signs are just . . . craziness. Total and complete craziness.”

  Dan nodded. “Well, women will do whatever it takes to get that weddin’ band. My wife, Tammy, discovered how much I loved baked goods when we were dating and started bringing me cookies, cakes, and pies. After three months, she’d trained my stomach to get a giddy feeling whenever I saw her. Of course, it was her coconut cream pie that ended my single life. I didn’t know it needed to be refrigerated and it turned bad.” He shook his head. “Worst case of trots I ever had. When Tammy came to check on me, I was so weak and out of it that I asked her to marry me.” He grinned. “Sometimes it’s best to let your heart do the thinking.”

  Boone had let his heart do the thinking and it ended up getting sucker punched. “Yeah, well, I’m not interested in getting married.”

  Dan shrugged as he headed for the door. “If you say so, but Emma seems pretty determined.”

  Boone didn’t care. He had chased after her for four long years. And just when he thought he’d finally paid enough penance, she’d told him that she didn’t want forever with him. It had been the final crushing blow. For days after she turned down his marriage proposal, he couldn’t eat or sleep. If not for Cheyenne, he wouldn’t even have opened the store.

  Then suddenly, the signs had started showing up all over town. Emma Loves Boone. Talk about pounding the stake through his heart. At first, he’d thought it was the townsfolk doing it. Raynelle and Luanne had come up with some crazy plan to get him and Emma together. But then, one night, a blinding light flashed in through his windows and he looked out to see a huge lit-up sign on Emma’s house and he realized she was behind the signs.

  He didn’t get it. It had to be some kind of trick—one final hurtful blow she wanted to deal him before she left town. Well, he wasn’t falling for it. He wasn’t going to believe some stupid signs. If she truly loved him, she would’ve agreed to marry him when he asked her. He wouldn’t ask her again.

  Ever.

  Once Dan was gone, Boone grabbed the keys and headed to the door to lock up. It was a good thirty minutes before closing, but he’d had enough of people buying things they probably didn’t even need just so they could ask him about marrying Emma.

  As he got to the door, he saw Cal walking up. Cal was one of the few people in town who knew how to mind his own business. Boone pulled open the door to greet his friend.

  “Hey, Cal. If you’re here to pick up Cheyenne, she left a little early. She said she had some things she needed to—” He cut off when he noticed Cal looking down at the sidewalk.

  Someone had drawn a big pink heart in chalk. Boone didn’t have to step out the door to know what was written inside the heart. It was the same thing that had been written on all his truck windows in white shoe polish and spelled out in huge construction paper letters on his garage door and painted on the flat side of the giant screw on the roof of the hardware store in canary yellow paint.

  Emma Loves Boone.

  “Damn it!” He strode out the door and marched straight over to the heart and started smudging the words out with the sole of his boot.

  Cal didn’t say anything, but his smirk said it all. Boone didn’t think it was funny.

  “How did Emma do it without me seeing her? I know this wasn’t here when I went to get lunch.” He smudged out his name, and then worked on Emma’s with even more vengeance.

  “I don’t think Emma was responsible for this,” Cal said. “I know my daughter’s bubble letters when I see them.”

  Boone stopped smudging and looked at him. “Cheyenne? She’s working for Emma too?”

  Every woman in town seemed to be working for Emma. He’d watched Raynelle change the letters on the Simple Market sign to read Emma Loves Boone. Dixon’s Boardinghouse had an Emma Loves Boone banner hanging above its entrance. And Luanne had made Emma Loves Boone shirts and bracelets for the entire Simple Book Club. They all loved coming into the store in the ridiculous pink shirts, rattling their bracelets at him. But Boone had thought his own employee would be on his side.

  “Why, that little traitor,” he said. “And to think I gave her a raise.”

  “That’s what I’m here about,” Cal stated.

  Boone had known Cal wouldn’t take the raise he’d given Cheyenne well. He finished smudging out Emma’s name and pulled open the door. “Come on in and I’ll get us a beer.”

  Once they were inside, Boone locked up and then led Cal to the back. When he opened the door of the refrigerator, he groaned in frustration. Every bottle of beer had a sticky note on it with Emma Loves Boone in bubble letters. It looked like Cheyenne had been busy. He pulled the sticky notes off two bottles and closed the refrigerator. Cal had taken a stool at the worktable. Boone carried the beers over and handed him one.

  “Before you get on me about giving Cheyenne a raise,” he said. “You need to know that it’s not charity. Cheyenne has been working her butt off here. First, she took over for me. Now she’s taken over for Emma. She’s even taken over the accounting. Which is why I gave her a raise. It has nothing to do with charity and everything to do with saving money. If I’d had to pay a bookkeeper, I would’ve been out much more. So stop thinking that everyone in town views you as a charity case.”

  Cal studied him for a moment before he released his breath. “Sorry. I just have a hard time accepting help.”

  “Everyone needs help occasionally. But it looks like you won’t need it anymore.” He took the other stool. “Congratulations on buying the gas station.”

  Cal grinned. “Thanks. I still can’t believe it. I thought for sure I hadn’t gotten the loan, but then Miss Applegate called and said there had been some mix-up on my loan approval.”

  There was no mix-up. Just a nice woman who had done the right thing. But Boone was going to keep that information to himself. He didn’t want Cal to refuse the loan because he viewed it as charity.

  “Anyway,” Cal continued. “I’m now the proud owner of a rundown gas station with a leaky roof and broken garage doors.”

  “You’ll get those taken care of in no time. Especially since you have a friend who’s a pretty damn good carpenter.”

  Cal nodded. “Thanks, Boone. And thanks for giving Cheyenne a raise. She’s proud as all get-out.”

  “She should be. She earned it.” He glanced at the refrigerator. “But if she continues to harass me with signage, I’m going to take it back.”

  Cal laughed. “What can I say, she’s
a woman. And women seem to all be romantics at heart. Now that I quit working at Cotton-Eyed Joe’s, Cheyenne has started bugging me to date again. But that’s not going to happen. I don’t mind enjoying a pretty lady’s company once in a while, but I don’t want a long-term relationship.”

  “You and me both, brother.” Boone held up his bottle. “To staying clear of women who just want to screw with your head.”

  “Amen.” Cal clinked Boone’s bottle before he took a sip of beer. After a slight hesitation, he asked, “Are you sure Emma’s just screwing with your head?”

  “Hell yeah, I am. She had her chance to prove her love and turned me down flat. Then all of a sudden she starts confessing her love all over town. That’s crazy. Just plumb crazy.”

  “A woman declaring her love for all the world to see doesn’t seem so crazy to me.”

  “She painted my barn, for God’s sake! I don’t mean the yellow. I mean she painted a big heart on the side with Emma Loves Boone—in pink!”

  Cal tried to hide his smile by taking a sip of beer, but Boone still saw it. Even his friends were laughing at him. And maybe that’s what Emma had planned all along. To make him a laughingstock. “Did you paint over it?” Cal asked. “We had some yellow paint left.”

  “I couldn’t find it. I think she stole it and used it to graffiti the big screw on the roof. I had to order new yellow paint and it won’t be in for a week. And you should see the light display she put up on the back of her house.”

  “Emma Loves Boone?”

  Boone snorted. “In clear bright bulbs that should be banned from everywhere but Vegas. I had to buy new blackout blinds just to get some sleep.” He took another sip of beer. “Not that they helped. I haven’t slept since Emma kicked me out of her house.” His hand tightened on the bottle. “And now she wants me to believe she loves me? Fuck that. She could take out a commercial during the Super Bowl and it wouldn’t make me believe her.”

  Cal looked at him. “Are you sure you’re not giving her a little payback for what she put you through the last few years?”

  Before Boone could deny it, someone tapped on the back door. He didn’t know why he jumped and knocked over his beer . . . or stared at the door with his heart beating overtime. Probably because as much as his head was telling him to forget Emma, his heart didn’t agree. Maybe Cal was right. Maybe he was trying to make her suffer for all she had put him through. If that was true, she had a long way to go.

  “You gonna get that?” Cal asked.

  Boone picked up his knocked over bottle and walked to the back door on shaky legs. But when he opened it, he didn’t find Emma. He found Miss Gertie. He was thoroughly disappointed.

  “Hi, Miss Gertie,” he said.

  “Don’t you ‘hi’ me, Boone Murphy.” She pushed her way into the back room with her walker, running over his toes in the process. “Why is your front door locked when your sign says you don’t close until six?”

  “Sorry. I closed a little early today.”

  “And I can see why.” Her eyes narrowed on Cal, who had gotten to his feet and taken off his cowboy hat. “What are you doin’ here, cavorting with the likes of Boone Murphy, when you should be home? I just talked with Cheyenne and she’s fixing you a special dinner to celebrate you becoming a business owner. And no woman likes her food to get cold.”

  Cal nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I was just headed that way.” He gave Miss Gertie and her cat Butler a wide berth on his way to the back door. “Talk to you later, Boone.”

  Once he was gone, Miss Gertie’s sharp gaze landed on Boone. “You promised me a cross, and I want to know where it is.”

  Surprisingly, the cross had survived his anger. There was only a slight nick in the wood where he’d thrown it at the wall. With a little sanding, it would be good as new.

  “It’s almost finished, Miss Gertie,” he said. “I’ll get it to you this weekend.” He walked over and grabbed some paper towels to clean up the beer he’d spilled on the floor. But before he could get to it, Butler jumped out of the basket of Miss Gertie’s walker and started lapping up the Budweiser. When Boone tried to shoo the cat away, he got scratched for his trouble.

  “Leave him be,” Miss Gertie said. “A little beer won’t hurt him.” She turned her walker around and sat down on the cushioned seat. “Now let’s move on to the other reason I’m here.”

  It didn’t take a mind reader to figure out what that reason was. “If this is about the signs, Miss Gertie, I’d just as soon not talk about it.”

  “So you’re just going to ignore Emma’s messages and sit here in the back room drinking beer and feeling sorry for yourself? I thought you had more gumption than that. I thought you were the type of man to go after what you want.”

  He didn’t mean to be disrespectful to the older woman, but he had reached the end of his rope with contrarian women. “I thought you told me to move on.”

  “I was talking about the hardware store. Not Emma. You’ve loved that girl ever since you were in grade school. Everyone in town knows it. Just like they know she loves you. And we didn’t need no signs to tell us.”

  He snorted. “Oh, yeah, Emma loves me, alright. For the last four years, she’s done nothing but criticize me, throw things at me, push me off a roof, paint my barn yellow, and toss my marriage proposal right back in my face. If that’s love, then I want nothing to do with it.”

  Miss Gertie stared at him. “You got down on one knee and proposed to her and she turned you down?”

  “I didn’t get down on one knee, but I told her I loved her and wanted to marry her. I’ve wasted years putting up with all her abuse and living like a monk waiting for her to prove she cared, and I’m through waiting.”

  Miss Gertie lifted her eyebrows. “If the rumors are true, you haven’t exactly lived like a monk.”

  “I might’ve flirted with a lot of women and kissed a few, but that was only to get Emma jealous. My heart has always been hers. But that’s not enough for Emma. Now she thinks that putting up a few signs around town is going to make up for the hell she’s put me through. Well, she’s wrong. If she really cared, she’d show up herself.”

  Miss Gertie sighed. “It seems to me that both of you have wasted a whole lot of time waiting around for the other one to show you how much they care. Well, that’s not how love works. It’s not about waiting for the other person to show they care. It’s about you showing that you care. From what I can tell, neither one of you has done a good job of that.”

  “I apologized to her when I got back and told her I still loved her.”

  “And you expected her to just forget you’d run off for seven years without a word? When you came back to town, you should’ve acted like a whupped pup instead of a cocky rooster. And you certainly shouldn’t have been trying to make her jealous with other women. You should’ve given her the space she needed to forgive you, instead of taking your parents’ offer of running the hardware store and shoving your face in hers every day of the week. And then to add insult to injury, you went and rented the house right behind her. I understand why Emma hated you so much. You didn’t give her a choice to accept you back. You just said, ‘Here I am whether you like it or not.’” Miss Gertie snorted. “I would’ve shoved you off the roof too!”

  Boone stared at her as her words sank in. He hadn’t given Emma a choice. He’d just waltzed right back into her life and expected her to forgive him. When she hadn’t, he’d latched onto her like a leech and refused to let go. It was only when he did let go and was going to leave town that she finally started to show she cared. True, she had painted his barn yellow. But teasing had always been their love language. She’d also made love to him. Sweet, sweet love. And instead of just taking things slow and enjoying the moment, he’d started talking about running the hardware store together and getting married without even asking what she wanted. Of course she didn’t trust him. Trust needed to be rebuilt slowly.

  “You’re right, Miss Gertie. I did shove my way back into Emma’s
life, instead of letting her welcome me back.” He sat down on a stool and ran his hands through his hair. “Damn, I’m such an idiot. I just love her so much.”

  “Then why did you leave?”

  He lifted his head. He had kept the secret of his mother and Michael’s affair for so long because he didn’t want to hurt his family or Emma. But now he needed to get it out. He knew that if he could trust anyone to not tell a soul, it would be the old woman looking back at him.

  So he told Miss Gertie everything. He told her about the night he’d found his mother and Michael together and he told her about being so angry and disillusioned that he needed to get as far away from Simple as he could get. And not just Simple, but also Emma.

  “I thought love was this perfect thing,” he said. “And when I found out it wasn’t, I somehow blamed Emma. It took seven years and some growing up before I realized how badly I had messed up. So I came back and thought I could fix everything by forcing her to remember what we had together.”

  “Which is exactly what she’s trying to do to you,” Miss Gertie said.

  The woman was wise. He realized why he was so angry at the signs Emma had put up. After her rejection, telling him she loved him wasn’t enough. He wanted her to show him. Not with gaudy signs, but with actions. He wanted her to come into the store and put her arms around him and tell him that she had made a mistake and was sorry.

  Which is all Emma had wanted from him.

  She had just wanted a sincere apology and some time to forgive. Instead, he’d pushed his way back into her life and become an obnoxious fool just to get her attention. For four long years, he had held onto the hope that Emma would prove to him love lasted forever. When what he really should’ve been doing was proving to her that his love would last forever. Except he didn’t have a clue how to go about doing that.

  He sighed. “How am I going to fix this?”

  Miss Gertie stood. “I’m afraid that’s something you’ll need to figure out for yourself. But you won’t do it by sitting here feeling sorry for yourself. Butler!” The cat jumped up into the basket. He looked much less grumpy after the beer. Miss Gertie patted the cat’s head before she headed for the door. “Get my cross done, Boone.”