Smooth-Talking Cowboy Read online

  “You said that there was nothing going on between you and Olivia.”

  “When last we talked there wasn’t.”

  “You’re an asshole, Luke,” Bennett said. “You can wander around with that don’t-give-a-damn smile, thinking that nobody’s going to see that, but I do. You’re selfish. You don’t do a thing but what you want. Olivia’s not like that. If you hurt her, I swear to God...”

  “You hurt her,” Luke said, his temper going from zero to a hundred a hell of a lot quicker than he expected it to. “She felt like you promised her things you didn’t deliver. So if I were you, I wouldn’t be up in my face about hurting Olivia.”

  “She’s not the kind of girl you mess around with,” Bennett said. “She doesn’t know the rules to that kind of thing. And you don’t know the rules to having a relationship with a woman like her. There’s not another outcome.” Bennett continued on as though he hadn’t heard the warning note in Luke’s voice. As though he didn’t hear him at all. “You could trick her far too easily.”

  “Look,” Luke said, “first of all, Olivia’s not a girl. She’s a woman.” A woman who had come apart in his arms last night. He might have known Olivia for more than half of her life, but he didn’t see her as a kid. Not anymore. “And if there’s one thing I am, it’s honest. I’ve never promised Olivia Logan a damn thing. Not one thing. If she wants to spend time with me, that’s her business. But I’m not the one that pretended I was in love with her. I’m not the one that pretended I might marry her someday when I never had the intention of doing that. Don’t you dare lie to me and say that you did, Bennett. Because we both know that if you wanted to marry that woman I wouldn’t have been at the bar with her last night. You’re the one who lied to her. Not me.”

  “I never lied to her,” Bennett said.

  “Neither did I,” Luke said, letting the shovel fall to the ground, crossing his arms over his chest. “I offered her a drink and a good time. If she wants to take me up on those things, that’s her business. And you know whose business it isn’t? Yours. Because you gave that right up.”

  “I didn’t give up the right to care about her,” Bennett said. “To be worried about her. She deserves a man that’s going to take care of her. Not one that’s going to play with her. She’s been through enough.”

  Luke frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “Everything with her sister. You know Vanessa went off and got herself in all kinds of trouble. She and Olivia used to be close. Olivia doesn’t need to be hurt or abandoned by anyone else.”

  Luke only vaguely knew Vanessa Logan. She had never hung around the ranch as much as Olivia, and definitely not when she would have been the right age for him to pay any attention. He knew, of course, that she was involved in crappy stuff. Because it was a small town and it was impossible not to hear bits and pieces of everyone’s life from time to time. Particularly when that person was tied to a family that had as much local fame as the Logans had.

  Still, Olivia never brought her up, and Luke hadn’t spared her any thought.

  “What’s happening with Olivia and me has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with permanence, so abandonment certainly isn’t going to figure in.”

  Bennett looked like he was holding himself back from punching him. And Luke had had about enough. “If you want to have a fight, Bennett, then go ahead and hit me. I’m not going to take it lying down. But I’m not going to be the first one to throw a punch, either. So make up your damned mind. And then maybe make up your damned mind about what you want with Olivia.”

  “I want to keep her safe,” Bennett said. “That’s what I want. You’re not going to do that.”

  “Safety isn’t any fun,” Luke said, knowing he was really tempting Bennett’s temper at this point. But Luke was in the mood to see it.

  Somewhere in all of this, he realized that what he was doing might or might not help what he had promised Olivia he would help with. But he didn’t care.

  Because last night he was the one who had tasted Olivia. He was the one who had pulled her up onto his lap and let her ride him until she found satisfaction. Yeah. That was him. And that hadn’t had anything to do with Bennett, either.

  “Yeah, you say that because none of your shit has ever stuck to you,” Bennett said. “Because you don’t know anything about how hard it is to care for somebody and not be able to protect them.”

  Bile rose in Luke’s throat. He was tempted to laugh, except Bennett was so damn full of bull that he could hardly stand it. Of course, he wasn’t going to break a lifetime commitment to keeping his own stuff to himself just because Bennett had poked at his temper.

  Luke curled his hands into fists, resting them at his sides. Right about now, he wouldn’t mind throwing a punch at that Hollywood-square jaw of Bennett’s. Maybe he could get himself fired and he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of quitting. Wouldn’t have to figure out that middle ground between being at Get Out of Dodge and being gone. He could just burn it all down. Except he wasn’t that man. He didn’t do things he couldn’t take back. He knew too well how those decisions destroyed people caught in their wake.

  “You’re right,” Luke said. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. Are you going to throw that punch or not?”

  Bennett shook his head. “It’s not worth it.”

  “Why? Because you know I’ll kick your ass?” Apparently he was more interested in goading someone into a fight today than he usually was.

  “Because I’m trying to appeal to your better nature, and I’m not sure that you have one.”

  He wasn’t going to punch Bennett. He wasn’t. So instead, he smiled. A fight would only satisfy Bennett. A smile... That would piss him off.

  “It’ll be interesting to find out, won’t it?” Luke asked.

  He watched as Bennett grappled with his rage. And for a moment he really hoped the other man would haul off and hit him, because a fight would make him feel better, too.

  But then Bennett took a step back and shook his head. “Sometimes you’re like a brother to me, Luke. And other times I’m very much reminded that you’re not one of us.”

  Much like the smile Luke had treated Bennett to, that comment landed a hell of a lot harder than a punch.

  Luke watched Bennett walk away, and no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t even be mad. Because it was true. He might have spent the past twenty years working on the Dodge ranch, but he wasn’t a Dodge, and he never would be. He was the son of a woman whose name he hadn’t spoken out loud since that dark day when he’d found her unresponsive in her room.

  The son of a woman who had imagined that he—and the rest of the world—would be better off without her, and had taken her own life, leaving nothing but money in her place.

  Money he hadn’t touched.

  Money it was starting to look like it was time to use.

  The only thing worse than suspecting that his mother might have killed herself in order for him to have that, to have those opportunities, was not taking them.

  He grabbed hold of his shovel again and punched the sharp tip through the ground, the force a satisfying release.

  Bennett didn’t think he understood loss. He didn’t think he understood taking care of someone.

  Luke understood worse than taking care of someone. He knew what it was like to try to take care of someone, to try and hold somebody to a world, to a life they didn’t want to be a part of, and to lose that battle.

  There was nothing on earth that could fix it. Nothing that could change the way it had gone. Not recriminations, not confessions. Certainly not confessions made out back behind a dude ranch between the river and the cabins, digging trenches. Made to the ex-boyfriend of the woman he had just about made love to last night in spite of every bit of better judgment saying it was wrong.

  Yeah, there was no point to any of it. He was just goi
ng to keep digging trenches. Until everything with the land and Quinn Logan was settled. Until he had talked Olivia into giving her father a recommendation for him.

  Because if there was one thing he knew, it was when to move on.

  This place had been a comfortable one for two decades, but it wasn’t a good fit anymore. For a few different reasons.

  Olivia Logan was only one of them.

  * * *

  RARELY WAS OLIVIA cranky over having a day off, but today she certainly was. It all came back to wishing she had something to keep her mind occupied, when she categorically didn’t.

  She was sick of her own company and her house by the time she got dressed in a pair of leggings and an oversize sweater and plodded into town to grab some coffee.

  She walked quickly down the sidewalk and pushed open the door to Sugar Cup, which was heavy and wooden, black paint worn down to reveal the natural grain beneath. She peeked cautiously inside, hoping that her mother and her mother’s friends weren’t in residence, and was gratified to see that they weren’t.

  She really didn’t want to face that level of rumor mill in her current state. Though, she was well aware that by leaving her house she had opened herself up to the possibility of having to talk about Luke and what had transpired at the bar last night.

  It was a tacit agreement that one made between themselves and their small town after controversy was stirred. And while she knew that, she was also willing to chance it today. She just couldn’t spend another minute cooped up and in her own head.

  She was confused, and she didn’t know what she wanted to do. Whether or not she wanted to keep hammering at this thing with Bennett, or just hide in her bedroom for the rest of her life and get a cat or twelve and try to find some kind of work that allowed her to never have to put on pants with challenging waistbands ever again.

  Yes, that was another option.

  It wasn’t like her plan to make Bennett jealous was going to work very well if she told everyone that nothing was happening with Luke and herself, but for some reason the subterfuge didn’t feel easy when there was something real to it.

  That thought stunned her, standing there in the middle of the coffee shop. She looked up at the large, wrought iron chandelier that hung down at the center of the rustic room. Then she looked back down at the distressed barn wood floor, revelation all but slapping her in the face.

  That was the problem.

  That saying there was something going on between herself and Luke had truth to it.

  If it had been a lie, if all of it had been made up, it would have been much easier.

  But it wasn’t.

  It was clear as the cold January day all of a sudden, and just as biting. That was the itch beneath her skin. The restlessness she felt whenever he was around. The restlessness she had felt whenever he was around for the past several years.

  She was attracted to him.

  A stupid revelation to have standing there dumbly in front of the extremely unamused-looking cashier, but a revelation she was having nonetheless.

  She thought back to that day they’d all gone down to the beach, bringing several trucks and coolers and barbecues. They had spent the whole day down there, and she had spent all that time artfully avoiding contact with Luke, who had seemed bound and determined to harass her on some level or another every time she turned around.

  He hadn’t been wearing a shirt, and she had found it obnoxious, in spite of the fact that most of the men there had been without shirts, since they were swimming.

  But there was something about Luke’s partial nudity that had seemed gratuitous. By virtue of the fact that he was Luke.

  She had tried to tell herself it was because he was annoying, and therefore his shirtlessness was also annoying.

  But the fact that she remembered his body in great detail even now, a couple of years later, told her something else entirely.

  She hadn’t been dating Bennett then, but she had been fully committed to the idea of being with him someday.

  Luke, and his broad shoulders, muscular chest, well-defined abs and general self, had been an obnoxious blight on the whole afternoon.

  Which seemed ridiculous, because Bennett had a fantastic body. In fact, there was not a single muscle that Luke possessed that Bennett didn’t.

  So why were Luke’s muscles emblazoned in her memory?

  “Are you ready?” The blonde behind the counter with her high, messy bun, overly lined eyes and dour expression looked out of patience with Olivia.

  That made two of them.

  “What’s the special?” Olivia asked, desperately seeking a sign.

  “A Big Hunk Mocha. It’s—”

  “Is it sweet?” Olivia asked.

  “Yes. It will make your teeth fall out.” Her expression didn’t lighten at all when she said it.

  “Perfect.” She needed sugar. Indulgence. Something to make her feel good in the midst of all the uncomfortable she was having.

  If there was one thing she’d learned over the past few weeks it was that you couldn’t eat healthy and also be sad. You had to pick one. And since happiness had been thin on the ground, sugar had been thick on it. So to speak.

  “Olivia Logan.” That hot voice, rough as a back road, washed through her. “As I live and breathe.”

  Luke. Of course it was Luke.

  It was exactly what he had said to her when he had found her broken down on the side of the road. She wondered if that made it their thing. She wasn’t sure how she felt about having a thing with Luke Hollister.

  But then, given her thoughts of the past few minutes, she supposed it was undeniable that to an extent she did, whether she wanted to or not.

  She really wished not.

  She turned slightly, suddenly feeling a bit dumpy and far too casual in her sweater and leggings. Like the overabundance of knit and stretch she was currently swimming in announced the fact that she was feeling low, and that she had needed clothing that was kind and unchallenging in order to grapple with the rest of life. Which, she currently found unkind and far too challenging.

  He was bound to know it was because of him.

  “I didn’t know you frequented coffeehouses,” she said, sounding much more clipped and snippy than she intended. Then she looked up, her eyes colliding with his, her senses fully taking in all that was Luke. He was everything she wished he wasn’t. Everything she wished that she built up to extremes in her imagination. Because surely no man could be so extravagantly handsome. Couldn’t reach past every barrier, so carefully erected and tended over the past ten years, and get to her quite so effectively. But he was.

  And he did.

  “I didn’t exactly want to hang around the ranch today,” he said. “Figured I would take my break in town.”

  “Why is that?” she asked, wandering over to the other side of the counter, where she knew her drink would appear in a few moments. She clasped her hands in front of her, then lifted them slightly, then lowered them again. She felt restless. She didn’t know what to do with her extremities, which was ridiculous. It wasn’t like they were a new discovery.

  She knew that she must stand and make conversation without feeling so incredibly conscious of her elbows and her wrists and where she was supposed to rest them. She must do it all the time. But she couldn’t exactly remember how she accomplished that.

  Luke placed an order that she couldn’t quite hear, and the sullen cashier smiled at him, treated him to quite a bit more warmth than she had treated Olivia to. Then Luke walked over to wait where she was waiting for her coffee.

  She felt tiny standing next to him, her head resting a couple of inches beneath the top of his shoulders. Typically, she wore shoes that added at least two inches to her diminutive height. But this morning she had gone for a pair of easy ballet flats, keeping with the theme of clothing that would nu
rture her wrung-out little body.

  Sadly, what it accomplished with Luke in residence was making her feel fragile. Making her feel so much more aware of the fact that he was masculine to her feminine. Large and strong where she was soft and small.

  And then she remembered what it was like to be folded up into all that strength, held close against that well-muscled chest, her thighs spread on either side of his...

  Heat crept up her neck, into her face, and she knew that he could see the evidence of her train of thought written there across her pale skin.

  “I got you a treat,” he said.

  “You didn’t have to do that.” She looked determinedly ahead, fixing her eyes on the scarred, wooden counter, gritting her teeth.

  “I wanted to.”

  “Well, I didn’t want you to.”

  “Too late.”

  Just then, her drink appeared on the counter in a mug that was meant to stay in the coffee shop, rather than beat a hasty exit. She found herself rooted to the spot anyway, because as much as she wanted to run away from Luke, she also wanted to stand there and talk to him. And she had no idea what that was about.

  Don’t you?

  “Why are you trying to escape the ranch?” she asked, reaching out and grabbing hold of her mug.

  “Bennett’s not too happy with me,” Luke said.

  Images of the night before flashed before her eyes and she felt her mouth dropping open in horror. “He doesn’t... He doesn’t know...”

  “He saw us together in the bar,” Luke said, his tone maddeningly calm. “Remember?”

  “Oh,” she said.

  Luke’s coffee arrived—in a to-go cup, which just irritated her—and then a plate with a large cinnamon roll appeared.

  “That’s for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, grabbing both the cup and the cinnamon roll and leading the way to one of the empty tables at the far end of the room.

  Olivia followed him, and she felt a little bit like an obedient terrier, following after Luke’s every move. It was the cinnamon roll. She was following the cinnamon roll.