Cowboy Dreaming

That silenced his parents. Not a good silence, though. Their quiet, condemning stares were riddled with suspicion, and they likely thought he’d put Hope up to saying that. They also likely thought that he didn’t stand a snowflake’s chance in an El Paso summer of being with an Applewood. And they wouldn’t believe that it had been his choice not to pursue her because they hadn’t been around for the “itch” look she’d given him.

A slow storm moved through him, and no, it didn’t have anything to do with the activity that Hope and her dress had caused behind the zipper of his jeans. This had to do with throwing back some of that suspicious condemnation. It had to do with, well, some I’ll show you.

“I’m going to the party with Hope,” Josh heard himself say. And he sealed the deal by catching that ball and doing something stupid with it.

Josh hooked his arm around Hope’s waist, yanked her to him and kissed her.

CHAPTER TWO (#uad5a7c89-3792-5e17-b85e-59d3d49bbea9)

MY, OH, MY. Hope hadn’t seen the kiss coming, but it turned out that seeing it wasn’t really necessary anyway. She felt it—mercy, did she—and that was much, much better than getting any advance warning that Josh was going to do it.

Actually, she figured he hadn’t known he was going to do it, either. This was no doubt a knee-jerk reaction to his parents’ jerk remarks. But Hope would take it, and for these few scalding moments, she would pretend that it was the real deal.

Finally!

She’d wanted this to happen for so long that it certainly felt real. Deep-immersion fantasizing could do that, and she’d been fantasizing about Josh since he’d first walked into her office three years ago and applied for a job. Like now, he’d been wearing those Wranglers that were snug and worn in all the right places. With his rumpled black hair, and chiseled body, he’d looked ready for a photo shoot for one of those magazines that put tough cowboys on the covers.