A Good Old-Fashioned Cowboy Read online

  She was hooting, in fact, wiping tears away from her cheeks. “Oh that’s ridiculous. I don’t even know why I think it’s so funny. It’s just...” She looked at him, her eyes shining. “Nothing has been funny for a really long time.” She let out a long, slow sigh, that ended on a hum. “I missed my life, Brooks. And I didn’t even realize it. And I almost... I almost went and lived a whole other one.”

  He looked at her for a moment, something inside him shifting.

  “Well I’m glad you didn’t,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “So am I. I really am. I feel like I just woke up. In a candy explosion, which is fantastic. But yeah, last night...it’s just a lot. And I shouldn’t be in a relationship.”

  “Yeah. No,” he said, ignoring the sharp sensation in his chest.

  “I mean, I have the store to set up by the centennial. And I really would like everything to be ready for a soft open before then. There’s no reason I can’t have something going before the end of August. And it would be easier if I could so that I could get it kind of up and running and get everything started so that we don’t... Well, if we can’t get the businesses going by the centennial then the rent goes up. Like, sky-high up.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  “Well...” He looked around the space. “What can I do?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE AND BROOKS were doing a pretty terrible job of not being in a relationship. The funny thing was, they didn’t actually have sex again. The timing was difficult, and she was living in a farmhouse full of women, and she’d missed her friends.

  Everyone was going through their own thing, and it required lots of intervention, and talking, and board games.

  Friendship was essential.

  She hadn’t seen the girls as often as she would have liked. With Kit in New York, Pru in California, and Charity all the way in Seattle, they’d been relegated to texts and video chats more often than not, and it just wasn’t the same. As much as she wanted Brooks, the chance to get her head on straight and focus on the candy store was important.

  Instead, she and Brooks were spending a lot of time talking.

  She couldn’t escape the fact that when they were younger they hadn’t done that.

  He talked about his mom leaving but couldn’t look at her while he did. About how his old man had got more and more drunk over the years. About how the house got more and more dilapidated. About feeling like there wasn’t much he could do about the situation.

  A whole lot of things had clicked into place as he spoke about that.

  He talked about Dave McAllister and how he was the first adult to believe in him, to show him that maybe he could make something of his life. He talked about how much that had changed him.

  She was lost in her thoughts about Brooks so much so that she broke another house rule, and incurred the wrath of the slip jar. In fact, they’d all been found in violation of the rules, which Hope owed to Pru being a Category 5 on the Pru-ricane scale.

  But she wasn’t even mad, because she knew exactly the man she’d be using the slip on. She’d protested, obviously, because if she hadn’t they’d have found another way to punish her.

  And somehow they all ended up deciding to go out to the Rusty Nail with those slips in hand.

  “I don’t have a handkerchief,” had been Hope’s only protestation.

  It was Kit who produced one. A proper handkerchief with flowers embroidered on it.

  “I found it in the house,” she said.

  “I swear one of these days we’re going to find a magic extra room. Like a Room of Requirement or something,” Kit said, as they all piled into her car. “I feel like I’m always finding new artifacts and nooks and crannies.”

  “It’s a magic house,” Charity said.

  “I think it’s haunted,” Pru said. “Sometimes I swear I smell cookies baking, but there are no cookies baking.”

  “And I think windows open by themselves,” Charity added.

  “Well,” Hope said, from her position in the back seat, “there are four of us living in the house and it’s very difficult to figure out who’s doing what at any given time.”

  “Sure,” Kit said, “be an enemy of magic and joy.”

  “And ghosts,” Pru added.

  “I will happily go on record as an enemy of ghosts,” Hope said, fussing with her seat belt. “And salmon.”

  “Seriously though,” Charity muttered darkly. “We have to get rid of the salmon. I have a plan for the Fourth of July picnic. We’ll give it to the town.”

  “Good God,” Pru said. “Are you actually trying to poison the entire town before we can open our stores and have them buy our wares?”

  “It’s not going to poison anyone,” Charity said. “It’s been in the freezer.”

  “I’m suspicious.”

  “Well, then you don’t have to make the salmon mousse.”

  Kit made dramatic gagging sounds and slumped over the steering wheel as she pulled up to the curb.

  They all got out of the car, Kit at least thirty seconds behind because she’d been so deeply committed to her feigned horror, and went into the bar.

  It was like a festival of gorgeous cowboys. That was one thing Hope had always appreciated about her hometown, and one thing she had secretly missed. Though she tried to pretend she was immune to that down-home charm, she was not. Or Wranglers. It was in her blood. There was something about Realtree camo that got her excited, and she’d never known quite what to do about that or how to reconcile it with the new life she’d created in Chicago.

  There was something about a country boy. And she couldn’t deny it.

  But there was something in particular about Brooks.

  And Brooks was currently at the bar with Garrett Roy. Hope’s stomach went tight. She was about to go over to him when Pru rubbed her hands together, her eyes gleaming. “Okay, who’s going to do a shot with me?”

  Shockingly, it was Charity who volunteered. “I will.”

  “You will?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve never done a shot before. It’s time I learned how.”

  Pru linked arms with her. “Atta girl.” The four of them walked over to the bar. Pru ordered the shots, and Hope and Kit opted for “weak-ass baby lady drinks”—Pru’s words.

  Pru nearly collapsed in a fit of laugher trying to show Charity how to take a shot, and Charity nearly collapsed in watery-eyed misery once the whiskey had gone down.

  “That’s terrible,” she croaked.

  “I know,” Pru agreed.

  Hope was still feeling agitated about Brooks and getting away to see him.

  “Hey, Pru,” Hope said over the din of an old ’80s country song. “Isn’t that your brother?”

  “And some Mathewsons,” Kit added, as they all looked across the room at the pack of handsome men. “Can you tell them apart?”

  Pru dialed up the storm in her eyes. “Yes.”

  “And is one of them your little helper?” Hope asked. “No, don’t answer. I can tell by the look on your face that he is. The one talking to Beau. Wasn’t he at our graduation party?”

  “I don’t remember,” Pru said—a clear and blatant lie.

  “Oh!” Charity pushed her shoulder. “You should ask him to dance.”

  Charity was Hope’s unlikely savior, and Hope’s next words to Kit were lost in the flurry of activity.

  “How penalized will I be if I hook up?” Hope asked.

  “Very,” Kit said, her smile lacking any kind of sincerity.

  “Well, I guess I’ll take it. I’m not dropping a handkerchief for any reason other than to have that man look at my ass.”

  Kit smiled. “Good for you.”

  “He likes it. And doesn’t think that I need to quit eating candy.”

/>   “Don’t let anyone ever tell you how much candy you should eat,” Charity said, as Pru was propelled toward Grant Mathewson. “That is nobody’s business but yours.”

  “Thank you, Charity. I always knew you were a good and supportive friend. Now, I’m off to drop a handkerchief. Pru has fulfilled her slip. Better get cracking, ladies.”

  She had a feeling that there were going to be any number of shenanigans happening tonight, and she was sort of sorry to miss them. But she had a mission, and that mission was Sullivan Brooks.

  He saw her and got up from his position at the bar. As he made his way toward her, his dark eyes smoldering beneath the brim of his cowboy hat, she turned away and slowly walked with catlike steps over to the jukebox. Then she reached into her purse, lifted up the handkerchief, and held it high before letting it flutter down to the bar floor. The bar floor was disgusting, and she had not thought this through adequately. But she smiled anyway, vaguely in Brooks’s direction, and then bent at the waist, caught the white fabric between her fingertips, and pushed her hips out behind her, before picking it up again.

  She wondered if that was what was supposed to happen with a dropped handkerchief. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be about showing your ass. Maybe the man was supposed to pick it up for you? Oh well. This was not 1945.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, a slow, lazy smile on his lips.

  “Fulfilling my challenge. And look, it worked.”

  “Yeah, is this what you were alluding to the other night when you left my place? Something about...slips and consequences?”

  “We’ve all been following dating advice from the ’40s and ’50s on how to land a husband.”

  He jerked back and she realized what she’d just said.

  “Obviously we are modern women of the world who are not using it to catch husbands.”

  “Oh, obviously.”

  “Would you like to know what my challenges have been?”

  “What I would like to know is if you’ve been using them on other men?”

  “No, I haven’t. Well, the funny thing is, my first one was that I was supposed to fall down, and a gallant stranger would come help me up.”

  “Did you fall to...get my attention?”

  She laughed. “No. I actually fell. And there you were. But anyway, that got me out of the first one. Then I had to wear high heels, and ask a man’s opinion on my perfume.”

  A slow grin spread over his face. “Yeah. I remember those.”

  “And tonight I had to drop a handkerchief.”

  “Okay. How is any of that supposed to work?”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  He leaned in. “Yeah, but that’s because of you. Not any other reason.”

  She felt restless all of a sudden. She really was falling in love with this man. And she didn’t know what to do about it. Didn’t know if there was anything she could or should do about it except...fall. She’d been too afraid to fight for him twelve years ago and she was...well, she was scared now.

  But she’d lost herself for way too long.

  And this was what she wanted. Charity was right. There was no point in making it about ideals or what was supposed to be or not supposed to be. It wasn’t about that.

  It was about Brooks. And it always had been. She just hadn’t fully realized what she needed or why.

  But he made her feel more like herself than anyone else ever had. Anyone except her friends. And if there was a man who made you feel as comfortable as the very best friends you’d known all your life, plus you were wildly attracted to him and wanted to kiss him all the time, wasn’t that something real?

  She’d never felt comfortable with James. She’d always felt like she was auditioning for something, and the reason she’d thought that was right was that it was how she’d always felt with her parents.

  And on some level she felt like that was a family.

  It wasn’t.

  Pru, Kit, and Charity were family.

  Brooks was her heart.

  She wanted to be family with Brooks.

  Marry him. Be his wife.

  Have his babies.

  She wanted that. She ached for it in a way she’d never ached for James.

  But now, here in the Rusty Nail, in Jasper Creek, Oregon, she was standing there holding a handkerchief she’d just plucked off the ground explaining the particular brand of insanity she’d been embroiled in for the last few weeks and he didn’t even seem to think she was crazy. Instead, he was looking at her like she might be magical.

  “I had Skittles for dinner,” she announced.

  “Okay...?”

  “I’m just telling you. That’s who I am as a person.”

  “I like who you are as a person.”

  So she kissed him. In the middle of that crowded bar. Because why not? Because what else was there to do?

  She kissed him until neither of them could breathe. Until they were sneaking out the back door, laughing like kids.

  “I don’t really want to have you in the back of the truck again. How about we go back to my place?”

  “Wow,” she said, suddenly feeling shy. “The two of us in a bed. That’s a little bit wild, Brooks.”

  “I think I’m ready for that kind of wild with you.”

  * * *

  THEY DROVE BACK to his place in silence, and he kissed her out of the truck, up the front steps, into the house, and back to his bedroom. Kissed her all the way down onto that soft mattress.

  “How many other girls have you brought here?”

  “I’m a class act,” he said. “I take my hookups to Gold Dust.” Gold Dust was a crappy little roadside motel just outside of the main drag of Jasper Creek.

  “You do not,” she said.

  “I do. Because I think I’ve been trying to prove that I’m a particular sort of hillbilly trash for the last several years. That I was everything you should’ve run from.” He looked down at her, his eyes intense. “Maybe you should run from me now.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I ran from you for years. I don’t like where it took me.”

  “I want you,” he said.

  And in her heart, she wished he’d said I love you instead. But she would take want for now.

  He kissed her and kissed her, stripping away her clothes, stripping away her inhibitions. Brooks’s hands were magic. His mouth was a revelation. His body, strong and thick inside of hers, made her want to weep.

  And finally, she did, a broken cry of pleasure that mixed with his own.

  “I love you,” she said. She hadn’t meant to say it. She really hadn’t. “I love you, Brooks. I’m not seventeen anymore. You can’t just send me away. I know who I am. I left once already and I’m not doing it again.”

  He said nothing. He just wrapped his strong arms around her and held her.

  And she was not young enough or foolish enough to think that it was an agreement. That it was an I love you too.

  That it was anything other than a mounting disaster like the kind they’d experienced twelve years ago.

  CHAPTER TEN

  HE SHOULDN’T HAVE done it. He kept telling himself that while he poured his morning cup of coffee, still half asleep. He’d let her say that and he hadn’t said a thing in reply. He’d let her spend the night in his bed, had turned to her multiple times during the night, and he hadn’t said a thing.

  And this morning it ate at him like a beast.

  I love you.

  But she couldn’t. She’d run right out of here to Chicago. She’d been with another man for nine years. She’d nearly married him. And now what? She was retracing her steps. That was what she’d said. He was just...what she knew. What was comfortable.

  It wouldn’t end well. It just wouldn’t. It was all the same, that was the problem.

  People
didn’t change. People couldn’t change. He knew that. Not really. You could change everything around you, but you were still you. Hadn’t he spent the last twelve years proving just that? While he got better and did better and shoved it in his old man’s face, they’d both grown angrier and more bitter and it didn’t solve a damn thing. Hadn’t he proved it every night he’d gone out drinking in the bar, pretending he was a better man than his father, raving about the woman who’d left him? Just like his dad.

  He wasn’t different.

  And Hope was still too good for him, and too fancy for Jasper Creek. She wouldn’t stay. She would leave.

  His own mother had left him. Why the hell wouldn’t she?

  Love.

  People said it all the time. She must have said it to the man she was going to marry. And then she’d looked right at him and said she’d never loved that guy. It came and went that fast, that easy.

  What they had now was great. It was great sex. But that didn’t mean it was love.

  He should have said that last night. He shouldn’t have let her stay.

  His bed was still warm and it smelled of her, and all he wanted was to go back upstairs and get into it. But he shouldn’t have let her stay. He shouldn’t let her stay now.

  He heard footsteps in the hall, bare feet on the wood, and he knew it was her.

  “Good morning,” she mumbled. She was back in the clothes she’d worn the night before, so maybe she had a sense for what was coming.

  Guilt and pain gathered at the base of his spine and spread upward, making his limbs feel heavy, making his chest feel like it was made of lead.

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. Okay. I recognize this Brooks. I hoped that you making love to me for the entire night might mean that we were going to have a different conversation this morning. But I was afraid of this.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “You have that same look. That look that says we need to say goodbye. I know that look, Brooks, because it’s seared into my brain, because the last time you told me you couldn’t love me is still branded inside of me, and I really don’t need to hear you say it again.”