A Good Old-Fashioned Cowboy Page 5

  “Wow. How many years have you been waiting to say that?”

  “’Bout as long as you’ve been waiting to eat a Skittle.”

  “Right. Okay. So, I don’t exactly want to do business with someone who’s going to be mean to me every time he opens his mouth.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I’m done. I was with someone for nine years who was pretty mean to me, actually.”

  And just like that, his blood nearly boiled over. “He what?”

  “It wasn’t good, Brooks. That’s all. And I don’t... I don’t want to talk about it. I never have. Not even with the girls. I just... It’s not like he hit me or anything. But he liked so much about me, and then there was so much he didn’t like. And I didn’t really know that until... You know, it was like he had buyer’s remorse sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s not okay.”

  “I know. I agree. I just got so caught up in it. In all of it and I... You don’t want to hear this,” she said.

  “Maybe I do.”

  She sighed heavily and looked around. “There was a type. A type that most of his friends were with. And you know, for all that my family was fancy around here, they were not fancy to his family. And I wasn’t particularly...the right fit.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I was...me. You know? I have...” She poked her stomach. “This.”

  “A body?”

  “Fat. And hips. And boobs.”

  “You are listing literally all of my favorite things about you.”

  “I am not.”

  “You are.”

  “Well, they weren’t his favorite.”

  The feeling that rushed through Brooks wasn’t one he could easily articulate. Rage that another man had touched her. And that he hadn’t appreciated what had been there to touch. And a hefty dose of desire that he’d hoped he’d left somewhere in his rearview mirror twelve years ago, about the time he told Hope that he didn’t love her and never would.

  He’d destroyed things then. Ended them completely. And that was supposed to be it. She wasn’t supposed to be coming back to town, opening candy shops, and being every bit as sexy to him as she’d always been.

  “So, do you want me to bring candy and syrup by later?”

  “Yes please. Can I take some syrup now?”

  “Sure.”

  “I just want to test out some fudge recipes at home.”

  They went down the path that led to the big old repurposed barn. “Here it is,” he said. “The sugar shack.”

  She walked inside, and her jaw went slack.

  “First of all, it smells like heaven in here. Second of all, sugar shack?”

  “That’s what they’re called.”

  “Well, I want to call my candy store that.”

  It gave his chest a strange hitch to hear her say that. It reminded him of a different time. A different life. Where they’d ignored everything that was different and found common ground that felt sacred.

  He preferred to ignore that.

  He walked over to one of the spigots that came off the final filtering station and grabbed a plastic container. “Use the name if you want,” he said. “I don’t own it. And consider us square for the salmon.”

  He really didn’t want that salmon.

  He poured a hefty amount of syrup into the container and handed it to Hope.

  “Thanks. I’ll... I can share the recipe for the fudge. Once I get it right.”

  “Can’t you just find a recipe online?”

  “Brooks. It’s not going to be as good as what I can figure out.”

  He believed her.

  He walked her out toward the car, and he was left with the strangest sensation that the air wasn’t quite as sweet after she got in and began to drive away.

  Hope Marshall was back.

  And somehow, he’d gone and gotten himself tangled up with her just like he had before.

  Just like he’d promised himself he’d never do.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “IT’S MEETING TIME, HOPE,” Pru shouted from the living room.

  “Meeting!” The shout from all the girls was accompanied by a banging sound that seemed like a substitute for a chant.

  “I’m not breaking any rules! I’m just a second late because I’m making fudge. And you should all be grateful!”

  The sound of the Andrews Sisters was filtering into the kitchen from their new Victrola, like they were playing the soundtrack of her demise even as she finished her candy-making.

  She poured the fudge in its liquid state into a glass dish, and then ran toward the living room, where she was met by a mock-sorrowful-looking Charity, who was holding out the glass jar filled with slips. “I don’t make the rules.”

  “You were a hundred percent part of making the rules,” Hope grumbled, giving her friend the evil eye while she reached into the jar and grabbed the slip.

  “I take no joy in it,” Charity said.

  “You’re a liar!”

  “I had to cry,” Kit said, deadpan. “A lone, solitary tear. In front of Browning West, he of the very large hands who was not—as we had hoped—dissipated from years of hard living, but even more beautiful than he was in high school.”

  Browning West was the sort of man you didn’t forget. And he was helping Kit out with the shelving in her store, a development Hope was very much intrigued by. The bad boy of Jasper Creek High School who made most girls spin fantasies they didn’t quite understand. Not Hope, though. She’d been hung up on Brooks.

  Brooks.

  “And I feel bad for your pride,” Hope said. “I do. But do you smell what is coming from the kitchen?”

  “It’d better not be salmon,” Pru groused.

  “No. It’s not salmon, because I have no desire to incur a fish-based demerit. It’s maple fudge, because you’ll never guess who I ran into a few days ago...”

  “Who?” the girls asked in unison.

  “Sullivan Brooks.”

  “Sullivan Brooks?” Pru asked. “As in, Sullivan Brooks, the only penis you ever saw when we were in high school?”

  Her face went hot. She did not need to be thinking about Brooks’s...that.

  And it was really hard to do because he still looked so hot, and he was bigger all over, really. Broader shoulders, broader chest. Bigger muscles. Bigger thighs. It made her wonder about other things too. Of course, they’d been pretty damn big back then, and had maybe contributed to some of her skittishness in regard to actually—

  “Yes. That Sullivan Brooks.”

  This was why she hadn’t told them yet.

  “That’s not even fair,” Pru said. “Kit got to see Browning West, you saw Sullivan Brooks...what do Charity and I get?”

  “Knitting,” Charity said, her tone sullen. “And Thingz. With a Z.”

  Hope didn’t envy Charity’s position. Taking on a legacy was harder in some ways than starting from scratch. And the name was as outdated as the stock in the store and Hope had a feeling that there would be resistance to a name change from the citizens of Jasper Creek.

  “And no hot men. The best I’m liable to get is a glimpse of Grant Mathewson at Sunday dinner and no thank you,” Pru said.

  Grant was Pru’s older brother’s best friend, and she knew that the whole situation with him was contributing to her crossness. Which, honestly, made Hope think that the Pru-ricane protested a bit too much.

  “Well, this whole meeting had nothing to do with his...with that.” Her face was hot. Lord. She was a grown woman and not a virgin and there was no reason for her to be getting overheated talking about naked men. “And everything to do with one,” she held her finger up, “the fact that I fulfilled my last slip. And two,” she held up a second finger, “that I am working with Brooks on a deal with his maple
syrup. So, the slip did work, just not for what it was intended for.”

  “I’m sorry, you have to back up,” Kit said, swaying in time with the music. “Because we need full details on how you saw Brooks and fell down.”

  “I did not see Brooks and then fall down,” she said, gesturing with the unread slip of paper still clutched in her hand. “I fell down, and Brooks saw me through the window and came to make sure I wasn’t dead.”

  “Which you obviously weren’t,” Charity said.

  “I wasn’t. But I could have been, and I didn’t have a cell phone to call for help. I couldn’t even reach the wall to knock and signal Charity for her medical expertise.”

  “I’m not currently practicing medicine,” Charity said, her expression bland. “So I couldn’t have helped either way.”

  “You took an oath, Charity.”

  “I did. It’s true. And I always keep my oaths.”

  “Anyway. He has a maple farm. And I make candy. And now I’m making maple fudge. And all of you could try some except that you’re mean and you made me draw a slip while I was only doing good things for you.”

  “And we feel awful,” Kit said, “but read it.”

  “Bitches,” Hope said, with absolutely no venom. She unfolded the slip and recoiled with great drama. “No. No, I cannot!”

  “You can’t what?” Charity asked.

  “I can’t...have him smell me.”

  “Him?” Kit asked, amusement toying with the edge of her lips.

  “Oh, you know what I mean. It’s just that I have an appointment with Brooks and it’s actually likely to be him.”

  “Smelling you?” Pru asked. “Smelling. That’s a hard pass.”

  “Can I pick again?”

  “No, you can’t pick again,” Charity said. “I am sorry, but those are the rules.”

  “You’re not sorry,” Hope said. “And you can sit there looking sweet as pie all you like, Charity, but it’s a ruse now like it was a ruse back when we were kids. You didn’t make it through medical school because you’re sweet.”

  “Smelling,” Pru repeated. “Explain.”

  Hope made an exasperated sound. “‘Ask his opinion on which perfume you should wear. Offer him a sniff.’”

  “Offer him a sniff!” Pru hooted now. “Oh...oh no.”

  And the worst part was that when Hope thought of Brooks leaning in, she imagined herself offering her neck and him...

  When she’d been with Brooks in high school he’d taught her thrilling things about her own body. About what she wanted to do with a man’s body.

  But she wasn’t in high school anymore. The mysteries of the sexual universe were solved, and she didn’t need to be taught. She knew exactly what she wanted to do to him. And what she wanted him to do to her.

  And she couldn’t escape the fact—no matter how much she wanted to—that she regretted never having slept with him. That when she’d been facing down the prospect of her whole life with James, she’d regretted never having been with another man. That she’d regretted never having been with Brooks.

  Because it left all this space for what if.

  What if being with Brooks was more mind-blowing than anything she’d ever experienced with James?

  Fundamentally, everything she’d done with Brooks had been better, but she didn’t know if that was because they’d been seventeen and desperate and she’d been afraid of getting caught or what. If it had felt intense because she’d never had an orgasm or if it really had been that intense.

  And now she was thinking about him sniffing her neck. And wondering. Really wondering.

  She wasn’t here for that kind of wondering. She wasn’t here for anything of the kind. She was supposed to be getting her life back to what she wanted. Detangling from what her parents wanted, from what James had wanted.

  She went into the kitchen and retrieved the first batch of fudge she’d made, which was cooled already, coming back in and holding it high. “Don’t you feel guilty now?”

  Her friends did not seem to feel guilty, and Hope stalked up the stairs, down the narrow hallway, and into the small bedroom she was staying in.

  The bed was neat, small, with a brass frame, and honestly, even if there wasn’t a rule against hooking up in the house, the very idea of one of them doing it here was sort of ridiculous. It was not made for that sort of carry-on. It was a sweet room. Fussy. With lace curtains and an old tatted rug. She could no more bring Sullivan Brooks into this room and—

  She pushed it out of her mind. She collected all of her comfy clothes and went down the hall to the bathroom where she drew herself a bath in the large, deep claw-foot tub that was made for soaking, and that could only be filled once in an evening before the water heater was done for the night. That meant her friends would be hauling buckets of hot water up the stairs from the stove top if they wanted to have a wash tonight. Hope didn’t feel at all bad.

  She marinated there in the tub until the confusion of the day had been washed away, and then she got out and dressed quickly, heading down the stairs to see Kit, Pru and Charity looking at her fiercely. Pru was holding the jar.

  “You’ve broken another rule.”

  “I have not,” she said. “All I did was take a bath.”

  “You left your dishes.”

  “I was going to do them.”

  “You went upstairs and took a bath, and you did it because you wanted to take all the hot water because you were mad,” Pru said, in a maddeningly patient tone. “And you left the dishes so you could do that. You’re lucky we’re not making you draw two slips of paper.”

  “I’m not drawing another slip of paper, and this is silly,” she said. “It’s all silly. Really, what are we even doing? We’re grown women who have been living in cities and doing big jobs, and we are here sharing a farmhouse with no cell phones taking dating advice from an old magazine. And so far all it’s done for me is put me in the path of the one man I absolutely shouldn’t be dating.”

  “Slip,” Kit said, pointing into the top of the jar. “The universe is calling.”

  “This isn’t the universe. This is you!”

  “Acting on behalf of the universe,” said Kit. “You can’t leave your life up to fate selectively, Hope. That’s not how it works. It’s all or nothing.”

  Granted, the first tip had brought her into contact with Brooks, which felt a lot like fate. But the idea of this had been a lot funnier when it was Kit having to cry a tear and Pru having to wear a wedding gown on a street corner.

  Less so when it was her getting smelled.

  “You’re mean,” Hope said, huffing. “I thought this was all to help me.”

  “Sometimes,” Charity said, “you have to reset a broken bone so that it heals correctly, and it is very painful. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be done. And it doesn’t mean that anyone is mean.”

  “Mean,” Hope said, taking another slip of paper out. “No,” she said.

  “What is it?” Pru crowed.

  “I have to wear high heels now? ‘High heels are much more attractive than flat shoes,’” she read. “‘It has a slenderizing effect on the legs.’”

  “It is true,” Kit said. “High heels are sexy.”

  “Paralysis of the feet isn’t sexy,” Pru said.

  “I’m with Pru on this one.”

  “Come on,” Kit said. “You can’t tell me you don’t wear high heels. I know you did back in Chicago.”

  “I’m not going to wear them on the main street of Jasper Creek.”

  “You will. With perfume.”

  And just like that, Hope’s fate was sealed. And one thing was for certain, she was about to have a very fancy day in the candy store tomorrow.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “HOWDY THERE, GARRETT.” Brooks hefted the heavy crate filled with maple syrup ou
t of the back of his truck, lifting it with ease, before slamming the bed of the pickup shut.

  Garrett Roy was standing out on the street, staring toward what used to be his grandmother’s yarn store. It had closed down a number of years ago, and had just been sitting there, filled to the brim with everything she hadn’t sold before her death.

  “You look happy,” Brooks commented.

  “Don’t like it. Those girls are in there...changing things.”

  “Yeah, I expect they are. I’m doing business with Hope.”

  “Hope Marshall?”

  Yeah, given that he had just filled Garrett’s ear with poison on the subject of Hope Marshall, he could see why the other man was looking at him a bit skeptically now.

  “Yeah. Hope Marshall. Turns out I want to line my pockets a hell of a lot more than I want to spite my face. Or whatever.”

  “Suit yourself,” Garrett said. He shook his head, putting his black cowboy hat on his head. “I don’t like it at all.”

  Since the former bull rider had breezed back into town with a chip on his shoulder after his grandma’s health had taken a bad turn, Brooks had gone for a drink with him from time to time though he wasn’t sure he’d call them friends. But then, he wasn’t sure who Garrett Roy would call a friend. Or who he would call a friend for that matter.

  He tipped his hat to Garrett and then continued on to Hope’s candy store. He stopped at the door. It was bright red, painted over layers of other colors. The building itself was made of worn brick and through the antique windows he could see...

  Hope Marshall’s ass.

  She was bent over one of the display cases and he liked very much what he saw.

  “You going to let me in?” he asked as he tapped the window with his elbow.

  Hope startled, and practically fell out of the case. And that was when he noticed that the woman was wearing...high heels.

  A little flowery summer dress and high heels that were just begging for a man to lift her and set her up on that counter, step between her legs, and let her lock her heels behind his back while he lost himself inside of her.

  She tottered over to the door, the shoes making her take deep, deliberate steps, her hips swaying slightly.