“No,” he murmured. “I don’t think you were.”
The hallway wasn’t nearly cool enough. Tempted to fan her now heated face, Roxie balled one hand and tried to pull the other out of his grasp.
He lifted his arm, tugging her closer, even as she pulled her hand away.
“It is something I can help you with?” he asked softly, like he knew she wasn’t used to showing weakness.
“No. It’s something I have to go through on my own.” She didn’t know why she even gave him that much information.
“Life’s more fun when you have a partner.” He seemed surprised at the words that came out of his mouth.
“I’m getting a partner. In two weeks.” She almost smiled. That definitely made him blink, and she thought he almost jerked back. But her humor was short-lived. He stepped even closer.
“Maybe your future partner ought to be here.” He put a hand on her waist, taking her fingers with his other, in what would be, if she had her hand on his shoulder, Closed Position from her ballroom dancing lessons. “Then you wouldn’t need me.”
She wasn’t sure if he were referring to the fact that she’d needed him to help her dance, or that she’d needed him to take her from the reception and give her time to ease the panic in her chest, or that she needed him now, as he pulled her closer until there was nothing but a prayer between them. He started swaying.
Moving away would be the smart move. But she didn’t want to, and her hand was suddenly on his shoulder and her body moving naturally with his, her hips following the hips of the stranger in front of her.
She didn’t even know his name.
She didn’t want to.
She was about to get married to a complete and total stranger; she didn’t even know which stranger.
The heat from the hand on her hip was a sweet burn that traveled up, heating the tight ball of her stomach and whipping her heart into an even faster rhythm.
If only a man like this would bid for her.
But she wasn’t delusional. Or romantic. The odds of her having an honorable, straight man, who also wasn’t hard to look at and who acted like she was precious and held her like she was valuable, whose touch made her body heat and whose voice sent shivers bumping up her spine...the odds of that being the kind of man she’d end up married to? Ha. Zero.
She pushed the prayer away, and their bodies touched. His eyes widened, and his jaw hardened.
A smile touched her lips. Eve’s smile, from millennia ago. Her hand moved from his shoulder to his neck, lightly brushing the tanned skin above the collar of his shirt.
His body shuddered.
His eyes, uncertainty pulling at the edges, searched her face, like he was trying to figure out what she was doing. Or maybe what she wanted.
She didn’t know.
Her body tightened; the panic that been pushed back, but not defeated, scratched to be let out.
His fingers flexed on her waist. Then a soft touch. It might have been meant as comfort, but it stroked the fires of her soul.
Maybe she did know what she wanted.
She’d never done what she was about to do. Never even considered. She’d been responsible all her life. Always doing the right thing. Going to the right school. Getting the right degree. Marrying the right man.
And two weeks from now, she was going to follow her uncle’s will to the letter, in order to inherit her family’s ranch and, eventually, the money. She’d looked at the will. There were pages and pages of stipulations for every contingency. If someone didn’t bid. If she changed her mind. If the bidder didn’t have enough money. There were even time limits. Yeah. She was locked in.
But tonight?
She stretched up.
By now, the cowboy’s eyes were wary, like he knew something was going on.
She didn’t know many men who would refuse what she was about to ask, but she didn’t know many men like the one touching her now.
He lowered his head. Their cheeks skimmed, the roughness of his stubble sending a delicious shockwave through her chest, easing the tightness coiled there.
Her lips brushed his ear. “I know someplace we can go.”
His breath hitched harshly, loud in the dim, silent hall. His entire body tensed, the hand on her waist squeezing hard.
Another harsh breath before his head shook, precluding the word that came out of his mouth.
“No.”
But his head was still lowered.
Anxiety gripped her heart like six-inch nails digging into the soft tissue of her body. Panic spun, clawing at the back of her throat. Instinctively she knew the man in front of her could make it go away.
His head moved back and forth, but his body hadn’t pulled back. When his face turned toward hers, she moved, touching their lips together.
Chapter 2
“Wake up, you idiot. What’s wrong with you? You just blew half a load of chopped corn out on the ground. Get a grip, man.”
Luke Petal’s voice crackled over Boone’s CB radio.
Boone ground his teeth together and grabbed the mic. “Sorry. I’m watching now.”
“You’re supposed to be watching this whole time. It’s like you’re zoned out.” Luke’s truck and trailer pulled away from Boone’s chopper spout. “That was just corn. You need to wake up, or someone’s gonna get hurt.”
“I know. I’m good.”
There was no answer as Luke pulled away. Why should there be? They worked with heavy equipment all day long. No one could afford to be as distracted as Boone had been all afternoon.
It was Sunday, the day after Clay’s wedding. The whole harvest crew, all six guys, had helped clean up the gymnasium after Clay and Reina left the reception. Then they’d piled into their pickups and driven half the night to get to northeastern Colorado, where they were now and where they were running behind schedule, hence working on Sunday afternoon after attending services in the morning.
Clay had left Boone in charge for the time he’d be gone. Not long, probably. Reina and he could go away all they wanted this winter, but when the crops were ready to harvest, everything needed done at once, and Clay knew it. He’d spend some time with his bride, but he’d be back. Soon.
Boone flipped a switch as Mack pulled his rig up beside him and started the chopper, forcing himself to focus.
He’d never felt this ripped up before. Not only about what he’d done yesterday, but today he was five hundred miles away, with the pressure of being crew boss on his shoulders and the idea of Sweet Water Ranch being up for auction, an auction he’d planned to attend and bid at, with the off chance he’d win and marry a stranger to get that ranch, pushing guilt through his chest with every single beat of his heart.
What had he done?
Something stupid. No other words for it. By far, the stupidest thing he’d ever done. And there was nothing he could do to rectify anything.
He didn’t even know her name.
Profanity rolled through his head, and he hit the steering wheel with his fist, sending sharp, welcome pain up his arm.
The chopper jerked. The view out his side window was completely obliterated by Mack’s blue truck.
Mack’s voice snapped over the radio. “Watch it, man! You almost ran into me.” A short break before, “Slow down! What’s wrong with you?”
Boone picked his boot up off the gas. Yesterday evening at his brother’s wedding reception, he’d broken every standard he’d ever had for himself and he’d treated a woman in a way that he’d sworn he never would and cheapened an act that was holy and sacred to him.
He knew what the rest of the world did, and he didn’t care. His standards weren’t theirs. It had never mattered to him what everyone else thought and did; he’d known what he wanted and, more importantly, what he wanted to be, and he’d lived that way all his life, never paying attention to what everyone else did. They had every right in the world to choose what they wanted to be.
So did he.
And he’d deliberately made the choice t
o be something different. Something harder. Something more.
Until sixty minutes yesterday evening had changed everything, and he’d become what he’d always despised.
But that was only a small part of the problem.
It had been an amazing sixty minutes. For him.
But the woman had left.
He’d assumed he’d see her again at the reception as it wound down, as they cleaned up, and he’d have an actual conversation with her, find out her name. He wanted to apologize, go back and start things over the right way, have a second chance to be a better man.
But she was gone.
It had taken an hour or so for him to realize he wasn’t going to get to see her. That she was gone and he didn’t know her name, didn’t have her number, and didn’t know how to contact her, even if she lived in the area or was one of Reina’s friends.
He’d almost asked his mother. But he might be twenty-seven years old, and had been earning a man’s wage since he was seventeen on his first harvest crew, but there was no way he could look his mother in the eye after what he’d done.
She wouldn’t be angry. But she’d be disappointed in him, no doubt. She’d raised him to control his animal urges. Ha. He’d seen dogs with more self-control than he’d shown with the woman who had drawn his eyes and body from the first.
Unfortunately, as the night wore on, and he methodically cleaned alongside his crew members, then as he’d sat behind the wheel of the crew cab and driven through the night to Colorado with his buddies and best friends in the truck beside him, all he could hear were the words of the woman as she said she was getting a partner in two weeks.
He had slept with a woman he’d never met before, he didn’t know her name, and apparently, to make everything that much worse, she was getting married in two weeks.
The right-side window filled up with a truck bed, and Boone jerked the wheel to the left, frustrated about everything he’d done and even more frustrated that he couldn’t seem to concentrate on his job this morning.
That had never been a problem before, either.
He grabbed his CB mic. “You’re full. Stopping,” he said to Mack.
They happened to be at the entrance to the field, and as the truck pulled away, Boone saw Abner swinging a long leg off a four-wheeler and start striding over toward the chopper.
He stopped and waited. Something was up, since Abner was supposed to be running the other chopper.
The door clicked as Abner hopped up the ladder and opened it in one smooth motion, like a man who’d spent years moving in and out of machinery.
“Broke down?” Boone asked, wondering why he hadn’t said anything on the two-way.
“It’s getting taken care of,” Abner said easily as he settled into the dummy seat beside and behind Boone. “Figured I’d make a few rounds with you while I’m waiting. Been acting weird since the wedding yesterday, thought you might be sick.”
“I’m fine.” Boone jerked the hand lever into gear, something he normally didn’t do, and engaged the chopper before he started back out the row.
He didn’t need Abner to babysit him.
Or question him.
Well, he’d wanted to talk to Abner anyway, although that hour yesterday had shifted his whole life. He wasn’t sure what to do, but he wasn’t going to cry on Abner’s shoulder.
“What do you think of the ranch I bought just north of Sweet Water?” he asked before Abner could start an interrogation. Not that Abner would. He was as tight-lipped as any of the guys about his past. He’d better not start interrogating Boone about his. Of course, yesterday afternoon wasn’t exactly ancient history. And it was affecting his job performance and compromising the safety of the crew.
Abner had every right to pry.
“Think if I were looking to settle down, I’d want one just like it. Mighta bought it myself, if you hadn’t beaten me to it,” Abner said, just a hint of the Pennsylvania Dutch of his childhood coloring the hillbilly twang he’d picked up since his Amish community had settled in the rolling hills of Ohio, just north of the Kentucky border. That was all of his past Boone knew. He’d pried to find out that much, since he’d never heard anyone who spoke quite like Abner.
His answer was what Boone had been expecting. Back when Boone had bought it, not quite a year ago, Abner had said something similar.
“How would you feel about buying it from me?”
Abner snorted. It wasn’t a snort of surprise. “You saw the Sweet Water Ranch auction paper.”
Boone’s youngest brother, Mav, pulled his rig in beside Boone, and they started out the field in tandem.
“If you’re interested, I’ll back off.” Boone was surprised at how hard those words came. He already had a ranch, and it would suit him just fine. Why did he want to give that up for the off chance to have Sweet Water?
But he knew. He’d admired the Sweet Water Ranch all his life. He couldn’t pass up the opportunity to own it.
“Nope.” Abner stretched his long legs out, propping them on the door handle and crossing his worn driving boots at the ankle. “You gotta marry some girl to get it. From what I could gather, she was at the wedding yesterday, but when I looked around for someone matching her description, couldn’t find anyone. I assumed she wasn’t there after all.” His eyes leveled at Boone. “You disappeared for a while.”
Boone sure hoped his deep tan hid the flush that burned up his neck. He didn’t say anything, because there was nothing to say. He’d done wrong, and it wasn’t that he was afraid or ashamed to confess it. He wasn’t a coward, and he’d stand up and take whatever flack he needed to. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t, cast shade on the woman that’d been with him.
Abner didn’t pry. Boone had known he wouldn’t. If he had, Boone would be all over his past like wet on rain. And Abner didn’t talk about his past. Boone wasn’t ashamed to use that against him.
“Been hearing on the radio a good bit today that you’ve not had your head in the game. Kinda figured whatever was going on yesterday was eating you today.” Abner’s casual tone hadn’t changed.
“I’m not sure marrying some stranger would be worse than scouring the countryside, looking for love. Or, at the very least, trying to find some girl that doesn’t carry a knife in her hand waiting to stab you in the back first chance she gets.” The bitterness in Boone’s tone was undesirable but not unexpected.
Maybe he’d done what he did yesterday because of Angela and what she’d done. He’d never had an illusion that Angela saw him as anything more than Clay’s brother. But he’d definitely had illusions that she could.
She hadn’t broken his heart, he was sure of it, but she had made him harder and more cynical. Of course, if being hard and cynical caused him to toss his morals aside and act like an animal in a small, dark room with a complete stranger, then maybe he’d better work on rectifying his heart issues.
“You’d marry a stranger to get Sweet Water Ranch?” Abner asked, only a hint of incredulity in his voice.
Unbidden, a teasing smile floated through his mind. A stumble and another grin as she learned the simple line dance steps. A lifted chin and a look of stubborn determination.
Man, right now he wasn’t interested in marrying anyone else. He wanted to find her.
“Yeah, I would.”
“You want me to buy your ranch, so you have the cash to put down at the auction.”
That was one of the nicest things about Abner. He was perceptive. Annoyingly so, at times. But he didn’t usually need things spelled out to him. And he wasn’t afraid to act.
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
No. He wasn’t. He wanted to find the woman from yesterday. “I’m sure.”
“How much?” Abner asked, his feet dropping off the door. He straightened, all business.
Boone named the price he’d bought it for. He’d not made many improvements over the winter, and he wasn’t trying to profit off his friend’s generosity.
“Fair dea
l. I already have tentative approval at the bank for a little more, contingent on profit and loss statements and some other paperwork.”
“I have what you need, probably.”
“And I have a little under half to put down, so getting the money shouldn’t be an issue. I’ll get to work on it.” Abner grabbed the mic. “Stop here, Mav. I’m getting out.”
They’d come around the field, and the ATV Abner had borrowed from somewhere sat just a hundred yards away.
Abner stood, opening the door. “I’ll be talking to ya.” His serious eyes, dark under his hat brim, met Boone’s. “Hope you’re not making a big mistake. It isn’t a small thing to make a vow before Almighty God.”
A jolt, like his veins had turned into pulsing shocker wire, ran up through Boone’s torso. “God knows I’m good for it.”
He’d never get the woman from yesterday out of his head. Not just the hour they’d spent in the reading room that had been turned into a large supply closet. But her easy laugh, her stubborn determination, the pain that shadowed her eyes, and the hurt she tried to hide.
She’d drawn him to her from the very moment he’d set eyes on her, pulled him as sure as the sun would rise tomorrow.
But if he made vows to another woman, he’d keep them just as sure.
He just wasn’t convinced he wanted to walk away without even trying to find her or wait for her to walk back into his life.
Still, she’d hinted that she was getting married, too. Maybe it was for the best.
Abner exited the machine without a backward glance.
Boone had accomplished what he wanted—he’d arranged for someone to buy his ranch and provide the necessary down payment he’d be expected to front at the auction. If he lost the bid, though, he’d be homeless.
Chapter 3
“No. Don’t park that there,” Roxie yelled over the beating of the tractor motor. She waved her arms because Bill, the driver, almost certainly couldn’t hear her. If he couldn’t hear her across the dinner table with almost total silence surrounding them, there wasn’t much hope of him hearing her while he was sitting on the open-cab tractor with the motor running.
Cowboys Don't Buy Their Bride at Auction Page 2