The Surgeon and the Cowgirl

“It doesn’t make me fill this in any faster with you breathing down my neck.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I am breathing down your neck because that’s not the figure for feed,” she said, and leaned in a little more. Her breast tingled when it contacted his back. God, he smelled good. How could he smell good after a full day of work?

She stood up and moved away while she gave him the correct number. She paced in her small office as he typed. She was sure it wasn’t worry about getting the numbers right that made him pound the keys. Like her, he must feel the arc of awareness that crackled between them.

She knew him well. She certainly recognized the narrow-eyed look he’d gotten when he stared at her breasts. When they were young and in love, that heated gaze would’ve led to the bedroom, where he would’ve tested his theories on how long a human body could stand to be teased. Jessie had begun to think that the current tension between them—left over from their marriage—came from remembering what was and reacting to each other instinctively. She’d been trying to ignore it. The tension hadn’t gone away. It was getting worse, making her snappy and restless.

She knew that acting on the sexual connection, or whatever it was, would be a disaster. They had divorced for a lot of very good reasons. Maybe if they kissed for real, not just because she’d called him on his challenge, they would prove to themselves that what they remembered as amazing was actually ordinary. Before she talked herself out of it, she said, “Payson.”

“Yes,” he said but kept typing.

“Are you listening?” He nodded. “You know how you wait all year to go to the Pike’s Peak Fair for the fry bread, and you keep thinking about it and no other fry bread tastes as good. Then you go to the fair and you eat it, but it doesn’t taste all that good?”

“Let’s just pretend I understand.”

“What I’m saying is that you build something up in your mind as wonderful, as spectacular, but when you finally get it, it’s really just ordinary.” His head tilted, so she knew she had his full attention. “Well, you see, I’ve been thinking that maybe that’s what’s been happening here between us.”

“I’m hungry for fry bread?”

“No,” she said. She’d been an idiot to start this conversation. “You know, the tension, the remembering.” He didn’t say anything. “Maybe, if we kissed, we’d realize that it’s not that special anymore. That all of that is behind us.”

“You need to kiss me to prove to yourself...what?” he asked. He shifted in the chair and rolled his shoulders again, something he did when he was tense.

“I’m looking at this the way you would, like a scientist. We were married. We’re not anymore, but we’re working together. We’re both remembering how it was, and it probably wasn’t like we remember anyway. We need to prove to ourselves that there’s nothing there. Nada.”

“The theory that you’d like to test is that if we kiss, we’ll discover that what we had was pretty ordinary?”

“Something like that. I’m just trying to be honest here. I know you feel the tension. I’ve seen those looks and I know what they mean. If we just kiss and get it out of the way, we’ll be good to go. We’ll have eaten the fry bread.”

“When would you like to conduct this experiment?”

“What about now?”

“That will be fine. Let me input these final numbers and then I’ll be ready,” he said, his voice calm as he twisted to face the computer.

Jessie paced so she wouldn’t stare at Payson and wouldn’t think about what they were going to do.

“Okay. Done,” he said. Had his voice cracked a little?

“Great,” she said, laughing nervously. “I’m glad we’re doing this. It will make working together so much easier.”

When they were standing facing each other, the foot of space between them quickly heated. A barely there tremor started in her feet and quickly reached her breasts. He put his hands around her upper arms, pulling her toward him, but not against him. Her lips parted, anticipating what would come next. He hesitated. She shifted closer, and he finally leaned in, touching his lips to hers, softly, like a first kiss.

Jessie tried to stop the moan, but when her tongue touched his, the heat shot from her mouth into every inch of her body. She wanted more and clutched at his shoulders, trying to pull him closer. His hips brushed against hers and the kiss deepened. His hair was soft under her fingers as she held his mouth to hers. Then his lips were on her neck, in the one place that he knew would drive her crazy. She sucked in her breath and pressed herself against him. She didn’t want him to stop. He nuzzled that sweet spot that only he knew. Just when she was going to push him away before she totally melted, he moved back to her lips, nibbling at the edges.

“You taste the same. How could you taste the same?” Payson asked softly, not pulling away.

“Hmm.” She tried to get her brain working again. “The same toothpaste?”

He chuckled low and deep, holding her against him. “That could be.” His mouth covered hers again, exploring her thoroughly. When he finally leaned back, he whispered, “Only you could make toothpaste sexy, Jessie.” His hand roamed to the curve of her waist and the slight flare of her hips. “How can you be so soft? When I watch you walk, all I can think about is touching you. Will touching you now make me forget that?”

“Touch me,” Jessie breathed. She used her mouth to explore his lips and spoke softly against his cheek, so he could feel her breath moving across his skin, “God, Payson, why would we want to forget this?”

“Jessie,” he said, and let her go. She wrapped one long leg around the back of his knees to pull him back to her. He resisted for one second, then his fingers skimmed along her back as his mouth tasted her lips, her neck and her cheek.

When she thought she’d never take a full breath again and knew next they would be getting naked, she made herself take one step backward. They stood looking at each other, and she waited a moment for the space between them to cool.

She hoped when her brain—instead of her other parts—worked again, she’d figure out a way to see Payson every day and not remember this kiss, not remember that he tasted even better than on their long, slow wedding night. Jessie didn’t need to be a genius like Payson to know that the kiss was the stupidest idea she’d ever had. Even worse than asking for Payson’s help in the first place. She already craved his touch again. And, now, for the first time, she wondered why she’d filed for divorce when she still felt this sexual connection. Dang.

“So, what do you think?” Payson asked and then cleared his throat. His voice had been thick and deep. “Did our experiment work?”

She tried to get her thoughts into a coherent string. “It might not seem like it now,” she said, and stepped back to put more distance between them, “but can’t you feel that, um, we didn’t really have the same connection?”

“You’re right,” he said. “It was different.”

“Yep. Totally different,” she continued to lie. “Maybe we should call it a night. We proved our point.”

Chapter Five (#ulink_859c589a-71c4-5611-90d0-e22f04bf4cac)

Jessie savored the quiet of the morning, needing to figure out how to respond to last night’s “experiment.” She’d been pushing back her first impulse to get mean and go on the attack, to hurt Payson before he hurt her. She knew he didn’t deserve getting guff for agreeing to kiss her. She considered pretending that they hadn’t kissed. As tempting as that was, pretending wasn’t going to make the feelings go away. After exhausting every possibility while she tossed and turned, she’d accepted that the two of them needed to sit down and talk.

In the years since the divorce, Jessie had considered picking up the phone and calling Payson every so often. She didn’t want to get back together or anything, but she wanted—needed—to apologize for a passel of nasty comments she’d made in those last months of their marriage. She also wanted to say sorry for blaming him for not coming to her right away at the Vegas hospital and that she forgave him—even if she maybe didn’t completely—for not being with her when she needed him most.

The kiss was different.

She feared the memory of that one kiss would stick stubbornly in her brain forever. So what was she going to do? First, make sure that she and Payson weren’t alone together—except she wanted to apologize and wasn’t going to do that in front of an audience. Dang. She refused to call her mama or sister about this. They would tell her what she didn’t want to hear, that she’d been crazy, stupid, idiotic to think the kiss was a good idea.

Jessie stumbled suddenly as a pony head butted her. She turned and with exasperated affection said, “Hey, Molly, how did you get out? I should have called you Houdini. Never knew a pony who was so good at escaping.”

She took the little animal’s halter and led her back to the pen she shared with Bull, a mean-spirited chestnut gelding that Jessie boarded for her brother. Bull was smitten with Molly but pretty much hated the rest of the world. If he was out, too, Jessie’s morning would be really, really crappy—as if it wasn’t already. She didn’t want to wrestle the big horse back into his stall. Even with Molly around, he could be difficult. She hurried, her knee already aching with the thought of getting the cranky horse to cooperate. Maybe her brother should have named him Payson. She chuckled at that.

“You won’t think it’s funny if I let go of his halter,” Payson said.

She clamped down hard on her tongue to stop a screech and said through clenched teeth, “What are you doing here? How did you catch Bull?”

“I wanted to speak with you before this place filled up with people. When I got to the barn, Molly was standing in front of this big guy. I grabbed him and she trotted off. I wasn’t sure where she’d gone. I figured she’d taken off to find apples.”

Jessie was stunned into speechlessness. First, Payson had shown up looking for her after last night, and second, he’d voluntarily dealt with one of the horses, especially a troublesome one like Bull. “Molly was trying to keep Bull in? I figured she was the one trying to escape. She does it all the time when she’s in the big corrals.”

Payson shrugged and Bull leaned down and snuffled his hair. Payson pushed him away. Jessie waited for the horse to take off a finger. Nothing.

“Let me take him, and I’ll get him and Molly back in their stall.”

Jessie stepped forward and Bull immediately backed up, pulling Payson with him. The whites of the gelding’s eyes showed. Jessie stopped moving before Bull got more upset. The horse immediately settled and stepped closer to Payson. “Let me take him,” he said.

Jessie watched her horse-hating ex-husband lead Bull into his stall with Molly trotting after him like the sheepdog she thought she was. Payson gave each animal a hearty pat before he left them in the stall. Jessie stood and watched, speechless again.

“There are a few items we need to discuss,” Payson said into the silence.