Tangled With A Texan (Texas Cattleman’s Club: Houston Book 8)

by Yvonne Lindsay

  She made her way back downstairs and went to the kitchen, drawn by the aroma of freshly made coffee. Her mouth was quite literally watering by the time she found a mug in the cupboard and poured a cup from the carafe on the warmer.

  “Good morning.”

  A voice from behind her made her spin around.

  “Good morning to you, too. Good coffee, thanks,” she answered, holding her mug up to Cord in a toast. “You’re a man of surprising talents.”

  He smiled, the action sending a punch of heat straight through her body and making her all too aware that she stood here before him dressed in nothing but an oversize T-shirt. For all that it covered her butt and skimmed her thighs, she knew her nipples had to be prominent against the well-washed white cotton. She hazarded a glance downward. Yup, there they were. Perky as all get-out and happy as hell to see him.

  And he was a sight this morning. Dressed in blue jeans, worn in all the right places, and a loose-fitting chambray shirt that was open a few buttons at the neck, he was a visual feast. Zoe took a sip of her coffee, sucking down the hot brew as if it wasn’t burning the roof of her mouth and scalding her throat. Anything to distract herself from taking those few short steps across the kitchen and jumping up into Cord’s arms and hooking her legs around his waist.

  “Speaking of talents,” he said as he grabbed a mug and poured himself a coffee, too. “Your clothes are dry and ready for you when you want to get dressed.”

  He made it sound as though getting dressed was optional, and for a moment she considered tormenting him by just hanging out in his T-shirt all day long. But she knew she would be the one to suffer. Already she felt as though she was at a disadvantage.

  “Thanks, I’ll grab them now.”

  “Would you like to look around the ranch with me today? I need to check some fences in the outer pastures.”

  “On horseback?” she asked, barely suppressing a shudder.

  Sure, she could see the value of horses in this environment, but nothing and no one said she’d ever have to ride one. As far as she could tell, one end bit and the other kicked. She wasn’t interested in what came in between.

  “Not keen?”

  “Not on horses, no. Got bikes?”

  “I’m sure you’ll enjoy what I’m planning. Why don’t you get dressed, then we can have breakfast and get going.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said with a mock salute. “Question.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where’s the laundry room?”

  He chuckled and pointed down a hallway off the kitchen she hadn’t been down before. “Down there. You’ll find it.”

  “Thanks.”

  She grabbed her things and went up to her room to dress. In no time she was back in the kitchen. She moaned out loud at the scent of breakfast cooking.

  “Are those huevos rancheros?”

  “Yup,” Cord said, sliding eggs onto the plated tortillas topped with fried beans.

  He spooned fresh salsa over the eggs and then crumbled feta cheese over the top and garnished it all with chopped cilantro. He took their plates over to the large wooden kitchen table and set them down.

  “Eat,” he said simply and gestured for her to take a seat.

  Zoe didn’t waste another second. She sampled the breakfast and moaned again.

  “This is amazing. I think you must have missed your calling. Ranching? Forget it. You should have been a chef.”

  Cord smiled in return. “I did think about learning to cook professionally, but I was born to this ranch and its way of life. From the day I was old enough to walk, I was out there with my dad learning the ropes from the ground up, the way he learned from his dad.”

  “And the way you’ll teach your children one day, too?”

  He stiffened, his fork halfway to his mouth. “Maybe,” he admitted before letting his fork clatter down onto his plate. “What about you? Planning to have kids one day?”

  She shrugged, not entirely comfortable with the conversation being turned back to her. “Maybe,” she replied, mimicking his answer. “But the cooking? This is seriously good. If you ever decide to give up ranching, you could make a killing with your food.”

  Cord helped himself to a little more salsa from the bowl he’d put on the table.

  “They’re my grandmother’s recipes. I’ll be sure to tell her you’re impressed.”

  “Please do. This is feta cheese, right?”

  Cord nodded.

  “I’ve never been a fan of it before, but this tastes divine,” Zoe enthused.

  “I make it myself. I keep a few goats and like to dabble in new ideas. Who knows, maybe one day I can expand my herd some more and turn the goats and the cheese into a more commercial operation.”

  “Seems I learn something new about you every day,” Zoe commented as she cleaned up her plate with the last scrap of a tortilla.

  Cord shrugged. “I’m not complicated. If you want to know anything about me, just ask.”

  Zoe leaned back in her chair and looked at him. “What went wrong last night?”

  “With the fire?”

  “No.” She pushed. “Before that. You were all good until we got to the club, and then when that woman stopped by, it was like you had been frozen in ice.”

  “Old memories.”

  Zoe waited for him to expand on that, but it seemed he felt that was quite enough on the subject because he abruptly rose from the table and cleared their plates away. Zoe rose to help him but he shooed her off.

  “Go do whatever it is you women do before going out. We’ll be leaving in about fifteen minutes. Meet me by the garage.”

  Accepting she’d been summarily dismissed after touching on what was obviously a very raw subject for him, she did as he suggested and went back up to her room. After a quick trip to the bathroom she folded her clothes and stacked them in one of the empty drawers. They didn’t take up a lot of room. Satisfied she’d killed enough time, she went downstairs and out to the garage. Cord was waiting by his truck. She could see he’d loaded some tools and a roll of fencing wire in the back of the truck.

  As they headed down the drive Zoe asked, “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see,” Cord responded cryptically.

  She fought back the urge to press him for more information, but they hadn’t traveled more than five minutes before he turned off the road and drove toward what looked like a hangar. A wind sock hung limply at the end of what she worked out was a runway.

  “You have an airport?”

  “A private strip. Jesse and I share it, as it borders both our properties. We learned to fly together. He prefers to stick with fixed-wing and I prefer choppers.”

  “Choppers.”

  “Don’t tell me you’d rather go horse riding?” he laughed.

  “Actually, no, I wouldn’t,” she responded firmly. “Choppers are fine.”

  “So glad you approve,” he teased. “Here, come and give me a hand with these.”

  He gave her his toolbox to carry while he grabbed the roll of fencing wire, then led the way into the hangar.

  “We’re going up in that?” Zoe asked, eyeing the small chopper settled on one side of the hangar.

  “What, cold feet, Detective?”

  “It’s smaller than I’m used to, that’s all.”

  “The Robinson R44 is perfect for around the ranch. We use it to monitor stock, find strays and check the fence lines. All sorts of things. It’s highly maneuverable, so it’s perfect for the kind of work we do.”

  “Sounds versatile.”

  “Oh, it is. You’ll see for yourself in a few minutes.”

  “Where do you want this?” she asked, gesturing to the toolbox she’d set at her feet.

  “I’ll take it,” he said, stepping toward her and picking it up with next to no effort at all.
>
  She’d seen him naked so she knew he wasn’t heavily muscled, but the man was very clearly strong. He hefted the toolbox into a compartment at the back of the chopper with ease and stacked the fencing wire in there, too, before attaching a pair of ground-handling wheels to the helicopter skids; then, grabbing hold of the back of the chopper, near the tail rotor, he tilted the machine and rolled it forward out of the hangar to the area marked on the tarmac with a large letter H.

  Zoe followed, fascinated by the whole process. “I never realized it was as easy as that to move the thing.”

  Cord laughed. “There are all sorts of tools you can use. I prefer these,” he said, gesturing to the removable wheels.

  He bent down to remove them from the skids, and after stowing them away back in the hangar, he did a preflight inspection on the chopper. The sun glinted on the bright blue of the fuselage, making Zoe shield her eyes and wish she’d brought her sunglasses.

  “There’s a spare pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment in the truck if you need them,” Cord said as he got to the end of his inspection.

  “Thanks.”

  Zoe didn’t waste any time. She went straight to the truck and opened the glove compartment. The space was very full but she spied the sunglasses quickly and tugged them free. As she did so, a double-folded sheet of paper fell out with them. A funeral service notice, she realized. A stunningly pretty young woman smiled up at her from the front of the notice. She recognized her from a photo she’d seen at the house and assumed it was a relative. Zoe scanned the dates. The girl had died a couple of years ago. Was she the reason for the “memories” Cord had referred to? Instead of relatives, had they been a couple? Feeling as though she was prying into something intensely private, Zoe pushed the notice back into the glove compartment and swung it closed.

  As she slid the glasses onto her nose and walked back toward the chopper, she thought about the young woman whose face had imprinted on her so firmly. There was something familiar about her, too, but she couldn’t put her finger on when or where she’d seen her. Obviously she couldn’t ask Cord. She didn’t want to be accused of being nosy, for a start, but she sensed that the subject of the late Britney Collins was a sensitive one.

  “Ready?” he asked as she drew closer.

  “For sure. Thanks for the shades.”

  “No worries. I always carry spares.”

  Zoe’s stomach lurched a little as they rose in the air and turned sharply to one side and flew away from the airfield. There was an incredible sense of freedom sitting here in this relatively small bubble and observing the ground racing away beneath them.

  “All good?” Cord asked, his voice a little tinny through the headset he’d instructed her to wear.

  “A-okay,” she replied. “This is really cool.”

  He flung her another of those grins that made her toes curl. She watched as he competently handled the chopper, dipping and weaving along the contours of the land as they followed fence lines, until he found an area that looked to have been breached. He swiftly turned the chopper around, making Zoe’s gut lurch again, before setting the machine down on a level patch of land.

  “You do that as if you’re born to it,” she said after they’d exited the R44.

  “I love it. There’s a freedom that comes from being in the air that you don’t get in a car or a truck. No matter how high performance.”

  She helped him carry his gear over to the breach in the fence line and watched as he competently made the repairs, handing him tools when he asked for them.

  “You’re good at this,” he commented as she neatly packed his tools back into the box when he was done.

  “I used to help my dad around home a lot. With my four older brothers, he had to do a lot of repairs,” she said with a laugh.

  “I can imagine. Did you enjoy growing up in a large family?”

  “It has its drawbacks, but overall it’s been good. My brothers are all married now and starting families of their own. It’s a bit of a zoo when we all get together, but what can I say...it’s family.”

  She stood up and stretched before leaning against one of the fence posts and surveying the land around them.

  “Do you ever feel trapped by all of this?” she asked.

  “Trapped? That’s a strange way of looking at a large amount of space.”

  “Well, y’know. The responsibility you have to the land, to the herds, the people you employ. There’s so much to consider every day of every month. You’re never completely free of it, are you?”

  He came and stood in front of her, and she could feel the warmth of his body as he came in close.

  “Oh, city girl, you have no idea,” he murmured before reaching up to pull something from her hair.

  “Was that an insect?” she said with a wary glance at his hand as he tossed something away.

  “Just a bit of grass. You’re out of your element right now, aren’t you?”

  “It doesn’t bother me,” she said, defending herself.

  “But you’re not comfortable, either, are you?” he pressed.

  “I’m never comfortable when I’m not in control. I don’t know this world.” She gestured around them. “Your world,” she clarified.

  “And you call yourself a Texan?” he teased, lowering his face to hers. “Let’s see if we can’t relax you a bit.”

  * * *

  He planted his arms on the fence on either side of her and pressed his body against hers as he took her mouth in a sweeping kiss. He’d been thinking about doing this from the moment he first saw her in the kitchen this morning dressed in his old shirt. Last night had been difficult, but even so he hadn’t been able to leave Zoe completely alone. He felt raw, as if his nerves were exposed and irritated, and the only thing that would soothe him would be to feel her warmth curled up against him as she slept in his arms.

  That had been enough, for then. But now? Now was another story entirely. Now, with the clear fall light bathing the land around them and with the shade trees changing color and beginning to drop their leaves, the sheer satisfaction of being here in his element made him want to pull her into the spell, too.

  Her mouth opened beneath his, her tongue meeting his and tasting him with the same eagerness he felt for her. It wasn’t long before he knew that kissing her wasn’t enough. Would likely never be enough. His desire for her was like a drug in his body, creating a need he couldn’t, didn’t want to control.

  It was both exhilarating and terrifying in equal proportions. Look at how much he’d needed to be with her last night. Even with memories of Britney swirling in the back of his mind, he’d sought Zoe, convincing himself that she needed him more than he needed her. But as he’d lain there, holding her, listening to her steady breathing, absorbing the warmth of her skin, he’d admitted to himself that his need had been the greater.

  He’d woken early, determined to put distance between them, but the second he’d seen her again all resolve had been blown to the four corners of the earth. He was glad she’d come out with him today. He’d wanted her to see this, his world, as she’d called it. To understand the call of the land, the beauty that lay before them.

  What was the point, though? She was going to be here for only a short time longer. He doubted that Frank would be able to put Sheriff Battle off on the repairs to the equipment for much longer.

  He’d take what he could get, he decided. Share with Zoe the perfect synchronicity of their bodies. And when she left, at least he’d have the memories.

  Cord tugged her down to the ground and pulled her on top of him. He pushed his hands through her silky hair and cupped the back of her head as he continued to kiss her. She tasted so good, so right, and the way their bodies fit together was equally so.

  “What’s this?” Zoe asked, pulling slightly away. “Are we checking ground temperatures now?”

  He laug
hed. She was amazing. He hadn’t laughed during lovemaking this much, ever.

  “Call it whatever you like. I thought it would be a shame to get your blouse all grass stained, hence me being on the bottom,” he replied.

  “Oh, so you don’t want me to get dirty?”

  There was a wicked gleam in her eye that totally undid him. “Oh yeah, get as down and dirty as you want.”

  “Did you bring a condom?”

  “Do I look like the kind of man who’d forget something as important as that?”

  She cocked her head and grinned. “I’m so glad you like to think of everything.”

  And then all sensible thought fled as she yanked his buttons undone and bared his chest. Her fingers spread over his skin, her nails lightly rasping over his nipples and sending shocks of delight through his body. He lay there, allowing her access to every part of him, lifting his hips in acquiescence as she tugged his belt free and undid his jeans. When her hands closed over his erection, he jerked against her.

  “Whoa, there, cowboy,” she murmured. “In some kind of hurry?”

  “In some kind of something,” he muttered in return.

  He clenched his teeth and tensed as she stroked him, her rhythm perfect, and when she wriggled lower down his legs and took him into her mouth, he all but lost it. She licked and tasted him, drawing him into her mouth, then letting him slide free, in a tantalizing, teasing dance. The light breeze was a delicious cold shock against his wet skin. He couldn’t take much more of this. He wanted—no, needed—to be inside her.

  “Condom, front right pocket,” he rasped.

  Thankfully she was in agreement, because in a matter of moments she’d sheathed him and was pushing her jeans down and standing only briefly enough to remove them and her panties before lowering herself over him again. He could feel the heat at her center as she hovered over him, then reached for his shaft, guiding it to her entrance. And when she slid the rest of the way down he surged upward, meeting her halfway, again and again until the blue sky above them blurred and the only sounds he could hear were their labored breathing and the slap of their skin as she rode him to completion.