Cowboy Proud

He choked, color climbing up from under the collar of his shirt and rising until it reached the band of his hat and disappeared. “Educate you? What do you want to know?” The skepticism in his voice made her laugh out loud. This was so much fun she’d have to add “baiting Cade Covington” to her list of hobbies.

Untucking her foot, she crossed her legs.

Cade’s eyes glazed over and the rough-around-the-edges cowboy was forced to overcorrect to get the truck back on the road.

She crossed her hands in her lap, the picture of innocence. “Educate me the cowboy way, I suppose.”

Cade slowed the truck and pulled it to the side of the empty road. He threw one arm around the headrest of her seat and shifted on his hip to face her. “You want an education?”

The undisguised, unapologetic heat in his voice paired with the sharp smell of rain and ozone from the brewing storm and caused her heart to race to a tattooing beat inside her chest.

“I don’t believe I stuttered,” she managed to get out without her voice shaking.

He traced the line of her jaw, his touch as heated as a branding iron. “This ought to be interesting, then. Want to wager on the results?”

“What?”

“You’ll end up loving or loathing me, darlin’. Which will it be?”

Caught up in the intensity of his pale blue stare, she stuttered. “L-love or loathing?”

“That’s right, Ms. Graystone,” he replied softly, pushing his black Stetson up, again revealing those just-blue eyes. “You’re stuck with me for the next two weeks by your own doing...Emma. So what do you want to bet you either love me or loathe me by the time it’s all over?”

Her wits had become veritable marbles rolling around all willy-nilly inside her. She mentally gathered what she could, forced herself to slow down and then smiled with enough heat to make the asphalt seem frosty. “You want to play? Then we’ll play. But there have to be mutually agreeable, and equally impressive, stakes.”

Now it was Cade who, licking his lips, only nodded.

“If I leave here loathing you, you’ll donate a week at the ranch to the charity of my choosing.”

“And if you end up loving me?” His words were strained, voice so dry it was almost dusty.

“‘Love’ is a little strong, don’t you think? That emotion requires time to grow and prosper, and two weeks won’t cut it.”

His eyes heated. “Ever been in love, Emma?”

Warmth suffused her cheeks. “Not really a believer in happily-ever-after endings.”

“No? What do you believe in, then?”

She shrugged.

“C’mon, Emma. There has to be something,” Cade pressed. “And why wouldn’t you believe in true love?”

“You can’t believe in something you’ve never seen, never experienced.”

His eyes widened. “Yeah, actually, you can. It’s called having faith in someone or something. It’s like sitting down in a chair. I know it’s a chair because, even if I personally have never sat in a chair, I’ve watched others do it. So when I go to sit down, I have faith the chair will do what it was supposed to do and hold me up because I’ve witnessed it do so for others. Faith.” He reached up and undid the collar button on his shirt. “You probably understand more about love than you realize you do, Emma. You’ve witnessed it, whether over dinner with friends or between a man and woman standing on a busy street corner, so caught up in each other they miss their bus and don’t care. That’s love, so you’ve got something to draw on.”

She shifted in her seat, her gaze roaming the grandeur of the plains, her mind trying to commit the smallest details to memories.

He pressed further. “So, what—you want me to believe you’ve never loved anyone and never seen someone in love?” He settled his black Stetson firmly before shaking his head. “I don’t buy it, Ms. Graystone. Someone who looks like you? She’s been loved before, even if from afar.”

“It’s pretty to think so, isn’t it? Regardless, appearances have no bearing on love, particularly true love. Have you never watched a Disney movie? Beauty and the Beast, for example. Beautiful woman falls in love with a man cursed to beastly form. But love changes everything, making her whole and him the handsome prince he’d been before.” Emma fought to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “A fantastic tale that creates false hope in girls.” She choked on a bitter laugh. “As a kid, I wasn’t given anything but the hard truth. No disillusionment. Ever.”

“My old man was a real piece of work, too. Mom? We all swore she was an angel, but we lost her way too early. I get the maladjusted family bit,” he said, resting his wrist across the steering wheel casually. “We’ve all got some kind of dysfunction that dogs our heels. Doesn’t mean we have to let it herd us where it will, though.”

“You think I let my history determine my future?” How could he judge her? “I grew up with nannies. Some were young and nubile and spent a great deal of time in my father’s office. Then there were the rigid hardliners who stayed just long enough to offend my mother before being dismissed.

“It didn’t matter which camp they were in, though. Affection was forbidden. They were there to raise me, not coddle me.” She forced a smile. “My parents hated each other, but it was a strategic financial match, a practical investment of individual strengths in order to achieve mutual goals. So tell, me, Cade. Where in all of that should I have found faith in love and family? Perhaps somewhere between courses at dinner when I was allowed to eat with my parents so long as I didn’t speak? Or maybe at school, where my parents were the repeat no-shows for everything from concerts to parent-teacher conferences? No? I’ve got it! How about when I thought I’d bank on love and entered into a joint business venture they approved of with a man they’d chosen and suggested I marry in order to forge a stronger connection between the family businesses?” Her mind flashed to Michael, her business partner, the same one she currently suspected might be sabotaging the business she’d started before she’d met him and allowed him to buy in. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t get totally on board with the whole ‘love saves the day’ mentality.”

Lines appeared at the corners of Cade’s mouth as his frown deepened, but he didn’t comment on her outburst. He simply drove on, only the radio and road noise cutting the silence.

The reference to Michael reminded Emma of her worries. She’d left him a voice mail this morning, asking him to call her as soon as possible. The only thing she’d received was a text. “Good luck in the Wild West, Annie Oakley! Send a picture of you on a horse. Thanks for taking over this account and assuming responsibility for the Covington’s new dude ranch.”

The last line had bothered her. Why had he laid responsibility for both the account and, in particular, his clients at her feet?

“I’m under no delusions about what I want,” Cade said. His words sounded louder in a truck cab that had been silent as they’d traveled across the flat grassland all the way to the base of a mountain range.

She shook off thoughts of Michael. “Want? For what?”

“For our wager. When I have you wrapped around my little finger with love in your eyes, I want you to refund the money we’ve paid you and do all the PR and marketing for the dude ranch pro bono for the next two years.”

“I’ll take those stakes.” And she would do it without regret. There was a better chance of her taking up competitive hurling—Ireland’s official “sport” that was more like sanctioned war with blunt objects and no armor—than fall in love.

She glanced at him to gauge his reaction and found herself nearly struck dumb by the unguarded thrill of challenge on his face. One corner of Cade’s mouth kicked up to reveal a deep dimple, then he winked at her. He shifted his attention to the long stretch of road before them that appeared, from her vantage point, as if it turned into the mountain and then was swallowed by it.

He’d winked at her.

There’d been nothing offensive at all in the flirtatious gesture, but her body’s response was positively traitorous. Heat bloomed between her thighs. She rubbed her legs together subtly, longing for his touch, absolutely craving the kind of heat a man like Cade could offer, the kind that would assuage her unanticipated, uncomplicated desires. Her heart beat a rock-hard rhythm inside her chest and a fine sweat decorated her upper lip.

Images of the two of them intertwined flashed through her brain. Her imagination had definitely missed the memo that she was a woman who did not have physical or emotional responses. But, client or not, she craved Cade’s touch like a hummingbird craved nectar—in a mandatory, had-to-have-it kind of way.

Forcing her attention to the quickly changing scenery, she watched as they traversed a bridge straddling a wide but shallow and very rocky creek.

She also noticed that the blue of the sky was slowly being eaten away by encroaching dark clouds that were tinged with the oddest shade of green. Gesturing to the clouds, she found her voice. “Is that going to be okay?”

Cade glanced at her. “You’re safe with me, Emma.”

She nodded and swallowed so loud he had to have heard it over the radio. “Sure.” Unbidden, a quote from Mark Twain wandered through her consciousness. The famous wordsmith had said, “There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it absolutely desirable.” And he’d been absolutely right.

She’d never been sexually attracted, let alone tempted, by a client. Cade had broken that track record. Shattered it, really. But he’d broken Twain’s theoretical “rule.” Cade had started out desirable—the kind of desirable that made a woman throw caution to the wind and go where chance led her. Whatever this thing was, she’d negotiate with regret later. For the first time, Emma wanted to set all the pressures of life and work aside and do nothing more than simply experience what it was to be alive.

She knew with inexplicable certainty that this man could give her that.

3 (#ulink_dd9b5c70-9404-569d-85c1-10ef3242668d)

THE REST OF the trip back to the ranch could only be compared to jockeying a Shetland pony in the Kentucky Derby: a bumpy ride that seemed it would never end. The heat between them refused to dissipate no matter how high Cade ran the air-conditioning. She kept shooting him covert glances from the corners of her eyes. He knew because he was caught up doing the same thing, thereby catching the majority of interest in those brilliant green eyes.

What the hell am I playing at?