Hold Me, Cowboy

“I rented the place,” he responded, not inviting her in. “Though I could ask you the same question.”

She continued to do a little bounce in place, her arms folded tight against her body, her hands clasped beneath her chin. “And you’d get the same answer,” she said. “I’m across the driveway.”

“Then you’re at the wrong door.” He made a move to shut said door, and she reached out, stopping him.

“Sam. Do you always have to be this unpleasant?”

It was a question that had been asked of him more than once. And he gave his standard answer. “Yes.”

“Sam,” she said, sounding exasperated. “The power went out, and I’m freezing to death. Can I come in?”

He let out a long-suffering sigh and stepped to the side. He didn’t like Madison West. He never had. Not from the moment he had been hired on as a farrier for the West estate eight years earlier. In all the years since he’d first met Madison, since he’d first started shoeing her horses, he’d never received one polite word from her.

But then, he’d never given one either.

She was sleek, blonde and freezing cold—and he didn’t mean because she had just come in from the storm. The woman carried her own little snow cloud right above her head at all times, and he wasn’t a fan of ice princesses. Still, something about her had always been like a burr beneath his skin that he couldn’t get at.

“Thank you,” she said crisply, stepping over the threshold.

“You’re rich and pretty,” he said, shutting the door tight behind her. “And I’m poor. And kind of an ass. It wouldn’t do for me to let you die out there in a snowdrift. I would probably end up getting hung.”

Madison sniffed, making a show of brushing snowflakes from the shoulders of her jacket. “I highly doubt you’re poor,” she said drily.

She wasn’t wrong. A lot had changed since he’d gone to work for the Wests eight years ago. Hell, a lot had changed in the past year.

The strangest thing was that his art had taken off, and along with it the metalwork and blacksmithing business he ran with his brother, Chase.

But now he was busier coming up with actual fine-art pieces than he was doing daily grunt work. One sale on a piece like that could set them up for the entire quarter. Strange, and not where he’d seen his life going, but true.

He still had trouble defining himself as an artist. In his mind, he was just a blacksmith cowboy. Most at home on the family ranch, most proficient at pounding metal into another shape. It just so happened that for some reason people wanted to spend a lot of money on that metal.

“Well,” he said, “perception is everything.”

She looked up at him, those blue eyes hitting him hard, like a punch in the gut. That was the other obnoxious thing about Madison West. She was pretty. She was more than pretty. She was the kind of pretty that kept a man up all night, hard and aching, with fantasies about her swirling in his head.

She was also the kind of woman who would probably leave icicles on a man’s member after a blow job.

No, thank you.

“Sure,” she said, waving her hand. “Now, I perceive that I need to use your phone.”

“There’s no cell service up here.”

“Landline,” she said. “I have no power. And no cell service. The source of all my problems.”

“In that case, be my guest,” he responded, turning away from her and walking toward the kitchen, where the lone phone was plugged in.

He picked up the receiver and held it out to her. She eyed it for a moment as though it were a live snake, then snatched it out of his hand. “Are you just going to stand there?”

He shrugged, crossing his arms and leaning against the door frame. “I thought I might.”

She scoffed, then dialed the number, doing the same impatient hop she’d been doing outside while she waited for the person on the other end to answer. “Christopher?”

The physical response Sam felt to her uttering another man’s name was not something he ever could have anticipated. His stomach tightened, dropped, and a lick of flame that felt a hell of a lot like jealousy sparked inside him.

“What do you mean you can’t get up here?” She looked away from him, determinedly so, her eyes fixed on the kitchen floor. “The road is closed. Okay. So that means I can’t get back down either?” There was a pause. “Right. Well, hopefully I don’t freeze to death.” Another pause. “No, you don’t need to call anybody. I’m not going to freeze to death. I’m using the neighbor’s phone. Just forget it. I don’t have cell service. I’ll call you if the power comes back on in my cabin.”

She hung up then, her expression so sharp it could have cut him clean through.

“I take it you had plans.”

She looked at him, her eyes as frosty as the weather outside. “Did you figure that out all by yourself?”

“Only just barely. You know blacksmiths aren’t known for their deductive reasoning skills. Mostly we’re famous for hitting heavy things with other heavy things.”

“Kind of like cavemen and rocks.”

He took a step toward her. “Kind of.”

She shrank back, a hint of color bleeding into her cheeks. “Well, now that we’ve established that there’s basically no difference between you and a Neanderthal, I better get back to my dark, empty cabin. And hope that you aren’t a secret serial killer.”

Her sharp tongue left cuts behind, and he had to admit he kind of enjoyed it. There weren’t very many people who sparred with him like this. Possibly because he didn’t talk to very many people. “Is that a legitimate concern you have?”

“I don’t know. The entire situation is just crazy enough that I might be trapped in a horror movie with a tortured artist blacksmith who is also secretly murdery.”

“I guarantee you I’m not murdery. If you see me outside with an ax, it will only be because I’m cutting firewood.”

She cocked her head to the side, a glint in her blue eyes that didn’t look like ice making his stomach—and everything south of there—tighten. “Well, that’s a relief. Anyway. I’m going. Dark cabin, no one waiting for me. It promises to be a seriously good time.”

“You don’t have any idea why the power is out, or how to fix it?” he asked.

“No,” she said, sounding exasperated, and about thirty seconds away from stamping her foot.

Well, damn his conscience, but he wasn’t letting her go back to an empty, dark, cold cabin. No matter that she had always treated him like a bit of muck she’d stepped in with her handmade riding boots.

“Let me have a look at your fuse box,” he said.

“You sound like you’d rather die,” she said.

“I pretty much would, but I’m not going to let you die either.” He reached for his black jacket and the matching black cowboy hat hanging on a hook. He put both on and nodded.

“Thank you,” she muttered, and he could tell the little bit of social nicety directed at him cost her dearly.

They headed toward the front door and he pushed it open, waiting for her to go out first. Since he had arrived earlier today, the temperature had dropped drastically. He had come up to the mountain to do some planning for his next few art projects. It pained him to admit, even to himself, that solitude was somewhat necessary for him to get a clear handle on what he was going to work on next.

“So,” he said, making conversation not so much for the sake of it but more to needle her and see if he could earn one of her patented death glares, “Christopher, huh? Your boyfriend?” That hot spike drove its way through his gut again and he did his best to ignore it.

“No,” she said tersely. “Just a friend.”