A Good Old-Fashioned Cowboy Read online

  Damn.

  She opened the door and looked up at him. “Good morning.” She smelled like flowers. Or vanilla. Or both. And as she wafted away from him, everything in him went hard.

  “Yeah,” he said, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. “Where do you want this?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Back here. There’s a small kitchen area...”

  He followed her into a cubby that was behind the wooden counter in the front. She wasn’t kidding.

  “You’re right. This is small.”

  “It’s good enough for my purposes. Anyway, I’ve made some fudge. The girls tell me it’s great, but I need a second opinion.”

  “Is that a request for me to taste it?”

  The question lingered between them and she looked away. “Only if you want to.”

  “Sure.”

  Hope reached into the pan and popped two squares of fudge out. She took a bite of one and handed the other to him. She closed her eyes. “It’s so good. But I’m really not the best judge because I have no limit to my sweet tooth, and I am...you know, I’m kind of done with restraint.”

  “Right. This is on the theme of yesterday. And your cheese wedding cake.”

  “Yes. A cheese wedding cake. Not to be confused with a cheesecake for a wedding.”

  “Got it.”

  Her eyes connected with his and he felt the sizzle go through his blood. “Done with restraint,” he repeated.

  “I am.”

  He took a bite of the fudge and just about groaned out loud. “Hope, that’s better than good.”

  “Well, if you like it then it must be good because you don’t like me.”

  He huffed. “It isn’t that I don’t like you...”

  “It’s just that you don’t like me.”

  “You don’t really like me.”

  She let out a long, slow breath. “You broke my heart, Brooks.”

  He just stared at her, at that beautiful face that meant more to him still than he’d like to admit.

  “Not before you broke mine.”

  “You didn’t love me. How can I have broken your heart?”

  He gritted his teeth. “Never mind all that.”

  “Right. Um... Help me pick out a perfume, will you?” she said, the sudden change of subject throwing him off.

  “What?”

  “I said, I need you to help me pick out a perfume. Vanilla is on the left, lilac is on the right.” With her index finger she pointed to the hollows on each side of her neck just beneath her jawbone. And then she drew closer to him and for the first time in his memory, Sullivan Brooks wasn’t exactly sure what to do with a woman.

  * * *

  OH, SHE WAS doing it. She was just doing it. She was stretching up on her toes, which she still had to do even in heels because Brooks was a mountain of a man, and she was leaning in, her neck bared.

  What she wanted was his mouth right there. What she wanted was his teeth. He was some kind of a vision in that white cowboy hat, one she told herself she didn’t actually want.

  Hadn’t she told herself that for years?

  After he’d hurt her, she’d taken all the criticisms her parents had lobbed at him during her relationship and instead of pushing them away, she’d owned them. Held them. Used them as a shield.

  She didn’t like cowboys anyway. Didn’t want to take up with a damn redneck when she could have a man that had some class. Had some style.

  But wow, right now she wanted this redneck. And she wanted to be in his truck again. She could remember that night vividly, when they were kissing and rubbing all up against each other, seventeen and out of breath. Trembling with the desire for more. And he’d slid down onto the baseboards of the truck, flipped her dress up and put his mouth right over her white cotton panties. And then he... Well, he’d absolutely blown her mind.

  And to this day, no other man had ever done that to her.

  James didn’t like it. He liked other things—namely, her going down on him. He just didn’t like to reciprocate. And the sex had been fine and all, it just hadn’t been...

  Why was she thinking about sex while she was doing this? Why was she doing it at all? Kit, Pru and Charity would never know if she didn’t ask Brooks to smell her.

  Though, she knew that Pru was going to ask the minute that she saw her later today. Because that was just how Pru was.

  “Vanilla,” she whispered, angling her head.

  A muscle in his jaw jumped and he moved closer. Her heart started to beat erratically.

  “Good,” he said, his voice hard. “Not too different from the sugar I smell all day.”

  “Too common?”

  “Your skin makes it different.”

  He said it rough. He said it hard. And it shouldn’t be sexy, not in the least. Only it was. A pulse beat hard in her throat, and echoed at the base of her thighs.

  “Lilac,” she said, angling her head again, and offering him the other side of her throat.

  “I think I like the sweetness,” he said. “It’s you.” He moved his head back slightly, but their mouths were only a breath away.

  “Brooks...”

  Then he moved away quickly and Hope felt lost.

  She didn’t know what she wanted from him in this moment, but her body was telling her what it thought it needed.

  “Not a good idea,” he said, his voice rough.

  “So what?” she asked.

  “So what? You know, I’ve had twelve years of thinking about you. I don’t need twelve more.”

  Suddenly, Hope’s throat went tight, her eyes filling with tears. And she couldn’t stop them. She was just overwhelmed by it all. By the reality of what had almost happened.

  “I almost married him,” she said. “And do you want to know the deepest shame that I have, Brooks? That I wished I’d had sex with you. It haunted me. You haunted me.” She thumped his chest. “And I... I think you did it on purpose.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do. I think you did it on purpose because you were just...spiteful. Because you didn’t want me to marry a rich man. And what you yelled at me when I said I was going to go to college? That I was just going to find myself one of those fancy men that was fancy like me? I thought about that all the time. You made me feel like I had betrayed you somehow when you were the one who... You were the one who said you didn’t love me.”

  “What good would it have done, Hope? What good would it have done to love you?” There was something raw in his eyes that hurt her. “You already had one foot out the door, sweetheart. That was it. You were leaving. You didn’t give me any kind of promise to stay. You didn’t give me any kind of hope you might come back. I was just making it a clean break.”

  “It wasn’t a clean break, though, was it? Because though we haven’t talked to each other in twelve years, we just fall right back into it, don’t we? And doesn’t that tell you that neither of us ever really let go?”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said.

  “I do,” she said. “I know about it. We never released each other. Not really. And the worst part...? The worst part is that you were right about me. I got my head turned by all these things that didn’t matter. My parents were excited about my life for the first time ever. And that felt good. I felt like I was succeeding and the deeper I got into that life, the more I felt it. And I almost married him. I almost married him and I... I get more turned on thinking about making out with you in the back of a truck than I ever did having sex with him. And what’s that? What is that?”

  “Justice maybe,” he said.

  “What about you? How about all the girls who’ve paraded through your bed in the years since you last touched me? Did they do it for you?”

  He gritted his teeth. “I prefer them blonde. And I prefer to be a little drunk. Because then I c
an’t see quite so clearly. Leaves a lot of room for fantasy.”

  “You’re just as messed up as I am. So how about it? Don’t you think maybe...maybe we should...?” She took a step forward but her high heel caught on the wood floor and pitched her forward, right into Brooks’s solid chest. And suddenly, she was breathing hard, her heart hammering wildly. Maybe she should have been embarrassed. Maybe it should have been the kind of slapstick moment you’d see in a romantic comedy, sort of like what had happened the first day they’d seen each other. But it wasn’t funny. Nothing about it was funny.

  Because he was warm and solid in all the ways that she remembered, but more so. Because he had changed. Because the sun and his cares had worn new lines into his skin, and his beard was heavier. Because his dark blue eyes held more cares than they had when he was seventeen. Because they were different people, but the same ones all at once, and it was all the more compelling for its complication.

  And he was Brooks, that was the thing. It would always be the thing. He was Brooks, and she was Hope, and that was the thing. Because across years—twelve, to be exact—the two of them still had a connection. She hadn’t spoken to Sullivan Brooks since the day he’d told her he didn’t love her. Since she’d stood out there in the rain in front of his father’s house and he wouldn’t let her in, and she’d been weeping and asking why he couldn’t love her.

  Why he was so afraid that her saying she loved him was a lie.

  That was the last time they’d spoken. And each and every word from that conversation was scratched deep into her heart. She felt it every time it beat. She had felt shame, and then triumph, when she’d first found another man. When she’d gone on a date with James. Yes, she had felt it then.

  And then she’d told herself that Brooks was right and it was fine. That James was everything Brooks wasn’t, and it was a good thing, because she and Brooks really were too different. Because they could never, ever be together—not the way she’d fantasized.

  Back when she’d been young and foolish and drunk from his kisses.

  But she was a woman now. Not the girl she’d been the first time she’d kissed Brooks, and not the girl she’d been when she’d first stepped away from him.

  Now she had scars from Brooks, but she had scars from James too—from her parents, for that matter—and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

  Right now she just wanted...she just wanted to go back and do it over. With everything she knew now. To go back to him, knowing everything she did now.

  As the woman she was now.

  The woman who knew that a kiss didn’t mean true love, and didn’t have to.

  That was the problem.

  When she and Brooks were seventeen, it had been forever or nothing. And even when she had turned twenty-one and she’d met James, it had felt like being with him was a step toward forever. And it almost had been.

  But if she kissed Brooks now, it could just be a kiss.

  Just a kiss...

  And she realized, with a blissful sort of satisfaction that there was no chance of her phone interrupting them. There was no chance of anything stopping them now. And so she looked up at him, and she slicked her tongue over her top lip.

  And she knew. She knew she had him.

  His mouth crashed down over hers and they ignited.

  She had never forgotten those lips. They were hard and perfect against hers and it made her want to sob because a kiss hadn’t really been a kiss since Brooks.

  Brooks tore the sky away, made her see things she had never imagined might be there. A world of need, desire, and want that she had never experienced before.

  And he was doing it now.

  Even for thirty-year-old Hope, and that was a miracle all on its own.

  She had kissed him so sure of the woman she had become. The woman who might meet him on equal footing in a way she never could have before. But as soon as their lips touched, that thought was gone. It wasn’t about equal or unequal footing.

  It was just them.

  It wasn’t about James, the past, or any other kind of thing. Just Brooks and Hope. Impossible and perfect as they had ever been.

  Too soon, he pulled away.

  “I imagine,” he said, his voice rough, “that you don’t want me stripping you naked here in your store.”

  She sucked air in between her teeth. “Well...”

  “Hope...”

  “Okay. Maybe not. Especially because all the stores have a shared basement, and honestly, Pru could pop up at any moment with a pressing feed question.”

  “A feed question?”

  “She has a feed store. Never mind.”

  “My place. Tonight.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” She was too dizzy to say no.

  And in only a few moments, he was gone, and she was left standing there, feeling featherheaded and wobbly on her high heels.

  * * *

  SHE SPENT THE next few hours practically floating on air, and she couldn’t even feel how badly her feet ached in the stupid high heels. She made good progress when it came to setting up the store, which was a good thing because the centennial was edging ever closer and she really wanted to be in a position to have a soft opening before then so she had an idea of what people liked about the store. So that it didn’t feel like such a hard deadline and a drop off a cliff into success or failure.

  If they didn’t get the shops successfully opened, the rent would go up so sharply they would never be able to afford it, and all of this would be for nothing.

  Her parents had told her that this town wasn’t what she wanted and for a while she’d thought it must be true. But she didn’t agree. She just didn’t.

  She’d made her very best friends here. Grown up walking down Main Street. Summer to her would always be the Fourth of July barbecue. Christmas would always be white lights and a big tree with a redbrick building behind it.

  Clear skies with diamond-dust stars and the smell of lilacs on the wind.

  Jasper Creek wasn’t a place to escape from. It was home. And it had taken the very real possibility of never calling it home again for her to realize that.

  She was finding the life that mattered to her here. Not the life that mattered to other people.

  And she had a feeling that her friends and family would have opinions about that. But all of their opinions were currently in her phone, nestled in a safe below her feet. She couldn’t access them even if she wanted to.

  What mattered was what was around her: the shop, the smell of the candy, the joy she took in creating different confections.

  Her friends who were here.

  And Brooks...

  Well, she wanted Brooks.

  That was clear to her.

  As clear and real as Main Street.

  At the end of the day, Hope stepped out of the store, just at the same time Pru, who looked sweaty and angry, Charity, and Kit stepped out of their stores too. They looked at each other, smiled, and put their keys in the locks, turning them nearly in sync.

  “Ready for some dinner?” Pru asked.

  “Very much,” Hope said, reaching into her purse and pulling out some Skittles.

  “You’ll spoil your appetite,” Charity scolded.

  “It’s an aperitif,” Hope said, rattling the candy around in her hand. “A sugary one.”

  She was absolutely not maintaining the figure that she had cultivated for the wedding. The figure that she had cultivated to be good enough to be James’s wife. And Brooks didn’t care. Brooks wanted to see her tonight. Brooks, for all that the two of them were complicated, was attracted to her.

  And honestly, it was a relief to have something like that be quite so simple.

  Shouldn’t it be?

  It should be, really. It didn’t have to be a big deal.

  “How did the high heels go?” Kit
asked, as they all headed down the street where they had parked this morning.

  “Oh, not so bad, really. I might actually... Maybe you guys should go out tonight. And I’ll stay in and reheat some salmon.”

  “You don’t like salmon,” Charity said, narrowing her eyes.

  “I don’t,” she said, trying to make her eyes large and solemn. “I don’t like salmon at all. However, the salmon is my responsibility. I visited it upon us. Unless the three of you have magically managed to off-load...”

  “I am considering a grand opening incentive. Also, maybe you should look into salmon candy?” Kit asked Hope.

  “No. It’s wrong to foist the salmon on all of you. Or on customers. I need to take care of it. Myself.”

  “You are up to something,” Pru said.

  “Me? I’m not up to anything.”

  “Did you complete your tasks?”

  She hedged. “Yes.”

  “Ah ha!” Pru said. “You did. You let him smell you. And you’re wearing high heels. And you’re seeing him tonight, aren’t you?”

  “I... I might be.”

  “No hookups,” Kit reminded her.

  “I feel like that was just in the house.”

  “Your feelings are not facts,” Pru said.

  “And your revisionist history isn’t either, Prudence. Anyway, I thought you all wanted me to be happy. I thought you all wanted me to have a little bit of romance in my life after my great tragedy.”

  “Not Sullivan Brooks,” Charity said. “He devastated you.”

  “I remember that. But I’m not exactly in the market to fall in love right now, so he’s not really a danger to my well-being at this point.”

  “He’s...” Charity waved her arm somewhat frantically. “Complicated. He’s complicated, and you can’t be wanting complicated.”

  “What I want,” Hope said, “is something that feels good. What I want, is someone who makes me feel good to make me feel good. About myself. Because I really don’t. And I haven’t for a long time. And he does that.”

  She swallowed hard. “James was...he really hurt me. Not by breaking up with me. By being with me. He made me feel wrong, wrong in my body. In my skin.”