The Cowboy and the Girl Next Door: (A Clean, Enemies to Lovers Romance) Wyle Away Ranch Book 1

by Janette Rallison

  Right. Like that was a topic which could be taught as easily as horseback riding. “You’ve never given a flirting lesson.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Andrew will be eating out of your hand.”

  Eating out of her hand. Such lovely words. Kate curried the horse more slowly. Maybe flirting was something that actually had rules and techniques, and she’d just been too oblivious to figure them out. If anyone could teach her about the subject, Jaxon could. The boy clearly had expertise.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Jaxon went on, “tonight after everyone turns in, meet me behind the trailers for your first class.” He smiled, all smooth charm, and left her to think over the proposition. And she couldn’t do anything else but think about it.

  That night when she left her tent, flashlight in hand, she wasn’t sure Jaxon would really be waiting behind the horse trailers. Most likely, he’d been joking about all of it. She padded through the camp, half convinced she was an idiot for not being able to tell when a guy was kidding.

  She rounded the corner of the horse trailer, and her flashlight beam found him reclining on a hay bale, staring at the sky. A blanket lay over the top of the bale, although she doubted it made the hay much more comfortable.

  “You came,” she said.

  He sat up and patted the spot next to him. “Were you afraid I might be called away on business?”

  She took a few hurried steps over to the hay and plopped down beside him.

  “Right,” he said. “We’ll work on your walk later.”

  “What’s wrong with my walk?”

  “You need to show guys that you have confidence. Shoulders back, head up. You’re a work of art and men should admire you.”

  “Wow,” Kate said, awe rustling her voice. “You’re so good at this, you can criticize my posture and still make it sound like a compliment. I definitely came to the right person for flirting advice.” She put her flashlight on her lap, beam pointing to her stomach. The night air chilled her cheeks, and she shivered. She should have brought a thicker jacket.

  “Are you cold?” He reached over, took hold of the edge of the blanket near her, and draped it over her shoulder. Then he scooted closer, took the end near him, and pulled it across his lap. The two now sat so close their shoulders touched. “Better?” he asked.

  Kate nodded and didn’t know what else to say, but then that was the whole root of the problem—not knowing what to say to guys. And Jaxon’s nearness was making her wonder if he was interested in her. But, no. Not when he had a girlfriend. His offer of help must be exactly what it seemed.

  “Lesson number one,” Jaxon said. “The come-hither stare. Use it when you want a guy’s attention. First, you just let your gaze slide over him, real casual-like.” His eyes traveled over her while he talked, showing what he meant. “Your eyes stop on his. Then you give him a slow smile, like you can tell he’s been waiting all his life to meet you.” He gave her a knowing grin, one that hinted at all sorts of possibilities.

  Just when she wondered if he was going to lean over and kiss her, he straightened. “Okay, go ahead and try it on me.”

  She shifted, swallowed, and tried to smile the way he had.

  “Turn up your sultry. Pout your lips. You know, like you’re about to kiss someone.”

  You were supposed to pout when you kissed someone? “Um . . . what?”

  “Oh,” he said, understanding. “You still have virgin lips. I’d better teach you how to kiss then too.”

  She nearly squeaked in alarm. They’d gone from flirting to kissing? Of course, the idea of kissing Jaxon wasn’t completely unpleasant—because, after all, he was gorgeous. But still, kissing a guy with a girlfriend wasn’t right. She leaned away. “What about Brittany? Aren’t you dating someone?”

  “She’s not technically my girlfriend.” Jaxon dragged out the word technically. “I don’t want to limit my options. Besides, this is just practice. Like how you get your learner’s permit before you get your driver’s license. I’ll teach you how to kiss right so when Andrew finally comes to his senses, you’ll leave him mesmerized.”

  Mesmerized. That word had so much sway. Her life would be so much better if she could mesmerize guys. She scooted back toward Jaxon. “I guess practicing is never a bad thing.”

  Jaxon took hold of Kate’s side of the blanket and tugged her closer. The blanket was hardly big enough to stretch across them both, and it pulled away from his side, leaving him uncovered.

  She took hold of the edge near him and held on to it so he would be warm too. It was the polite thing to do. The fact that his arm lay across her and hers lay across him. . . well, it was just what had to be done to keep warm.

  Jaxon leaned over, his gaze lingering on lips, and then his mouth gently pressed against hers.

  He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he knew how to mesmerize girls. He was really good at this.

  Jaxon suddenly lifted his head. Only then did Kate hear the crunch of footsteps on the other side of the horse trailer. She startled, half standing up before she remembered that she and Jaxon both held onto the edges of the blanket. She stumbled and fell sideways, pulling him to the ground on top of her. His weight pushed into her and the air went from her lungs. She wasn’t sure which mortified her more, that she’d fallen or that she’d managed to take Jaxon with her. Whoever was walking toward them would be on this side of the trailer in a few seconds.

  “Don’t move,” Jaxon whispered. “Keep quiet.” Her flashlight had fallen at her side. In one quick motion, he turned it off. In the dark, they had a chance of keeping hidden. Maybe the person would stroll right by without noticing them.

  Kate lay perfectly still. She was afraid to move a muscle in case the sound of shifting gravel gave them away.

  The footsteps rounded the trailer, and a flashlight beam spread out in front of them. Please, she thought, just keep moving. The footsteps paused. The flashlight beam swung their direction and landed directly on them.

  Busted.

  The light silhouetted a pair of broad shoulders. She couldn’t tell who it was until the man swore. “Jaxon,” Landon snapped, “have you lost your mind? Get off that girl.”

  Landon. Of all Jaxon’s brothers, he was the one she least wanted to be holding that flashlight. Why couldn’t it have been Dillon, who would’ve just laughed about their predicament?

  As Landon marched over, Jaxon shifted off Kate. Quicker than she’d thought possible, Landon grabbed hold of Jaxon and hauled him to his feet. “What’s wrong with you?” Landon barked. “The girl is barely fifteen. She’s the last person you should—”

  “Lay off.” Jaxon shook off his brother’s grip. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  Only then did Kate realize what it looked like—Jaxon lying on top of her that way. She stood up, mortified. The beam of Landon’s flashlight was too bright. She wondered if the whole camp could see it. “We weren’t doing anything wrong,” she said hurriedly. “He was just teaching me how to kiss.”

  Jaxon let out a resigned breath and dropped his gaze to the ground. She had not made this any better.

  Even in the dim light, she could see Landon’s eyebrows rise. “He was teaching you how to kiss?”

  “Yeah,” she stammered. “He was just showing me. Sort of like a learner’s permit, except with kissing.” She knew her words sounded idiotic, but she was nervous. She stopped herself before blurting out, “Our clothes are still on.” She didn’t want Landon to think undressing had ever been under consideration. Instead she added, “It didn’t mean anything.”

  “Oh, it does mean something,” Landon said. “It means you’re either too young to be unsupervised or you’re not smart enough to come up with a better excuse when you get caught.” His chin tilted down in disbelief, and his gaze raked over her. “Seriously, you’re going to go with a kissing learner’s permit?”

  Her cheeks flamed in embarrassment. She’d started the day feeling so grown up, and now she felt small and stupid and a
wful.

  Jaxon glared at Landon. “Leave her alone.”

  Landon pointed a finger at his brother as though he could pin him with it. “No, you’re going to leave her alone. So help me, if I see you within arm’s reach of this girl again, I’ll rip your limbs off. That is, if there’s anything left after Cal gets through with you.”

  That was really too much. Kate coughed in indignation. “You have no right to threaten us.”

  Landon turned back to her. “I’m not going to argue with you about this. In fact, let’s just go talk to your grandfather.”

  Landon was making way too big a deal out of a kiss—acting like they’d committed a crime. “What I do with Jaxon is none of my grandpa’s business, and it’s none of yours, either.”

  Landon stepped closer to her, each bit of gravel sounding like it was being ground to dust under his boots. “You’re on this cattle drive with my men, and that makes you my business.”

  His men? Landon had made himself king as well as the morality police. The guy was only nineteen. It wasn’t like he’d hired everyone.

  “You,” Landon pointed at Jax again, “get back to your tent. Dad is going to kill you if Cal doesn’t do it first. You,” his finger swung to Kate, “come with me.” Landon marched back toward camp without waiting to see if she followed.

  Jerk. He had no reason to be so upset about this.

  Jaxon picked up Kate’s flashlight and handed it to her. “Sorry I got you into trouble.” All the spunk had drained from his voice.

  “It’ll be okay.” There wasn’t time to say much else. Landon was heading straight to her grandfather’s tent. She needed to go defend herself.

  But she really did think everything would be okay. Her grandfather would give her time to explain. She’d only kissed Jaxon for a couple of minutes. Plenty of girls her age kissed boys. Besides, her grandfather liked Jaxon.

  She didn’t want to follow Landon, but she had no choice. The only thing more embarrassing than being hauled in front of her grandfather was having her grandfather hunt her down in the middle of the night in order to hear her side of the story. It was better just to go face him now.

  By the time Kate reached her grandfather’s tent, he’d already come outside. He and Landon were walking away from the rest of the camp, probably to speak out of earshot. Her grandfather wore an old pair of sweats that he used as pajamas, and his thinning gray hair was mussed, which meant he’d been asleep. Instead of a flashlight, he carried an electric lantern that circled him and Landon in light. Time to go join that spotlight.

  When Kate caught up to her grandpa, Landon was relating that he’d been out looking for Jaxon. He turned to her. “Do you want to tell him how I came upon the two of you?”

  This was so unnecessary. Kate crossed her arms. Her flashlight was on, but her beam had been swallowed by the lantern’s reach. “We were kissing. That’s all.”

  Landon tilted his chin down. “He was lying on top of her with a blanket wrapped around them.”

  “We fell.” Kate attempted a more detailed explanation, but in her nervousness, she left out the part about how the blanket had tangled them together. Her grandfather just gaped at her like she was making up a convoluted excuse.

  The shadows on his face had turned his eyes to coal and switched the lines at his mouth into slashes. “You’re only fifteen and were taking a roll in the hay with Jaxon?”

  Why was her grandfather mad about the hay? She was certain she and Jaxon hadn’t done anything to ruin it. “The hay is fine. We only sat on it for a little bit.”

  This answer didn’t appease him. His nostrils flared in anger. “What kind of morals is that mother of yours teaching you?”

  Her mom was suddenly that mother? Kate didn’t know how to answer.

  Her grandfather didn’t wait for a response. “Is this what passes for normal in Seattle? Babies making babies? Well, you’re not doing that sort of thing on my watch.”

  “I wasn’t…” Kate sputtered. She didn’t know what to say in the face of his anger. “All I did was kiss him.”

  “Thank goodness Landon found you before anything worse happened.” Her grandfather shook his head in disappointment. “You must have heard Jaxon talking about his girlfriend earlier. I guess that didn’t matter to you.”

  Should she protest that Jaxon had told her he was keeping his options open? Should she explain that he was just teaching her how to kiss? Landon had outright scoffed when she’d gone that route, and the last thing she wanted to do was seem easy and stupid. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Landon now. She didn’t want to see his facial expression of what—pity? Smug satisfaction?

  Her grandfather switched the lantern from one hand to the other, a motion that made the shadows around them twist. “First thing in the morning, you’re going back to Grandma. I don’t have time to guard your tent, and I can’t trust you out here anymore.”

  And just like that Kate had been judged and condemned. She hadn’t stayed to hear more. She’d spun on her heel and stormed off to her tent while the words I can’t trust you anymore dug into her soul and kept burrowing. Angry tears filled her eyes. Her grandfather had obviously never trusted her to begin with, or he would have listened to her explanation.

  The next morning, as soon as she emerged from her tent, Landon fetched her to drive her back to Coyote Glen.

  Landon. The guy who’d been present for her humiliation—that was who Grandpa chose for the road trip home. Perhaps he thought Landon was the only one who wouldn’t be susceptible to her wiles. Grandpa didn’t even show up to tell her goodbye.

  She got into Landon’s truck, folded her arms, and kept her head turned toward the side window. She wasn’t going to look at him, let alone speak to him.

  After they’d been on the road a few minutes, Landon said, “Listen, I’m sorry about how this turned out. You’re just a kid, and you don’t know what you’re doing, but one day, you’re going be glad I stopped you. Jaxon’s not old enough for this, and neither are you.”

  She turned to Landon long enough to roll her eyes. “If you’re about to give me the birds and bees talk, you can spare me. Jaxon and I were just sitting on the hay with the blanket wrapped around us, and when we heard your footsteps, I startled, fell, and accidentally pulled him on top of me. We only stayed that way because we hoped if we didn’t move, you wouldn’t see us.”

  Landon nodded, eyes on the road. “Well, that story is a tad better than the kissing-learner-permit one, but still a might hard to swallow.”

  She gritted her teeth. He was so annoyingly certain of himself. “Just do me a favor and never speak to me again.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I always do my best to oblige a lady.”

  “Oh, I’m a lady now. I guess that’s better than being that girl.”

  “Um, what?”

  He probably didn’t even remember what he’d said last night. Why should he? It wasn’t burned into his soul like it was hers. “You told Jaxon to stay away from that girl. You don’t even remember my name, do you? You don’t care about anyone else’s name because everyone’s beneath you.” She was angrier at her grandfather than at him, but Landon was the one here, and he’d started the problem by ratting her out.

  Landon only raised an eyebrow in reaction. “Well, well, Kitty has claws.”

  “My name isn’t actually Kitty.”

  He pulled his attention from the road to give her a blue-eyed gaze. “True, but ‘Kate has claws’ doesn’t have near the ring to it.”

  So he did know her real name. Surprising, since no one on Coyote Glen ever used it.

  “I know you get straight As,” Landon continued, “and you’re in track. I know all sorts of things because Cal likes to brag about you. You might not feel it right now, but he loves you.”

  She used to think he did, but not anymore. You didn’t yell at someone you cared about the way he’d yelled at her. You didn’t kick them off a cattle drive. The truth was that her grandfather had only ever treated her
with cheerfulness when he was in a good mood and strained tolerance when he wasn’t. He didn’t actually love her.

  Kate stared firmly out the window again and refused to say anything else to Landon. Fortunately, he didn’t give her any more advice on how to redeem her fallen life.

  When Landon pulled up to her grandparents’ house, her grandmother was outside picking apricots. She met Kate’s arrival with the forced cheer a person uses when trying to avoid awkwardness. “I’m glad to see you. I can use some help turning these into jam.”

  And thus began Kate’s lifelong hatred of apricot jam. Bad association. From then on, the flavor tasted like tangy sweetness mixed with disgrace.

  Kate had called her mother, told her what had happened, and threatened to hitchhike to Washington if her parents didn’t bring her home immediately. She flew back to Seattle the next morning.

  When summer came, Kate got a job near home instead of going to the ranch. Ditto for all the following summers. Her grandfather never apologized, and Kate wasn’t about to pretend, like he did, that none of it happened. But still, as the years went by, Kate had hoped for a reconciliation. She’d hoped he’d grow softer and more caring in his old age. She should have known better. Her grandfather had been as unrelenting as the Arizona rock that lined his ranch.

  And now she was sitting in a pew at his funeral and nothing could change between them. Any words either of them wanted to say would be left unsaid.

  She wiped at the tears that ran onto her cheeks. It was best to leave all the memories of Coyote Glen here in the desert, best to let the past stay here with the cacti, the mesquite, and coyotes. She belonged in Seattle.

  Chapter Four

  After the funeral, Kate’s family went to the graveside service. Her father had been an only child, so the group was small. The sky was pale blue and endless. Even though it was the second of September, the temperature was still in the high eighties—part of Arizona’s perpetual summer. All the sunshine seemed a discordant contrast to the somber mood and black clothing.